Disclaimer: So very not mine.
Breathless
By: Mika
It's funny, how I can feel his fingers rough against my neck, hard enough to bruise, catching my breath in the palm of his hand. He isn't touching me, not really. Not as I slide to the ground to catch me, or to clench my hand as the pain starts. I touched him once, at least I liked to think I did. That there was a time when words weren't phantom fingertips on bare skin.
He was trying to save me. I tried to save him. Neither of us were brave enough.
If I open my eyes I know it wasn't my fault, that raiders and ruin had carved their path across his face long ago. Instead I shut them, embracing the blame and the guilt, holding them to me as a lover. They can not take the guilt away from me, I will not let them. It is all I had left of the man who used to be Anakin Skywalker.
And it isn't enough.
I reached out to him for comfort though he wasn't there, though I felt I would die as the spasms wracked through me. I cursed Palpatine's name as I beat my hands against his chest and asked him why love couldn't be enough and only a weak baby's cry replied. I wrap myself in the pain, and I am tired of being strong.
They put the baby in my arms and all I see is him, distorted by eyes that are far too blue to be his. "Luke." Light. In him I put the dream of a little boy who still believed in angels.
They hand me the girl. I stare at her. She is not me, there are no fragments of broken dreams in her eyes. Strange and beautiful. To her I leave my knowledge, my love and my fears. "Leia." All I have left. Weariness.
The children without a father.
It isn't that I want to die, that I give up hope. I give it to him. To Anakin. Luke. I wonder if he'll ever forgive me for leaving. He never forgave me for being strong.
I die so they can live. So Anakin will remember. So I can touch him one last time. Phantom fingers around my throat, as I pull them tighter, harder. One last embrace.