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Inside I'm Hollow 2/3
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
http://www.demando.net/
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"You've died before. Tell me what it's like."
Breathe in, breathe out. Machines working lungs for a murder.
"What?" Even his voice... she could hear the slight, almost inaudible touch of Anakin's tenor, somewhere inside the deep rumble of Vader's vocoder. Padme turned her cheek to the cold metal bench, letting a slight stir of air past her lips. Darkness lapped along her fingers and toes, but she could imagine the shapes the warmth of her breath might make; a momentary flower, a curled, vanishing dragon. The sound of his boots on the stone floor now, he was somewhere both near and far in the darkness.
She repeated her request. "Something had to happen between Anakin," her bones braced themselves, waiting for his rage at the mention of that name. There was nothing, and she continued, "between Anakin and Vader. You died, you had to have. Tell me what it's like."
Breathe in, breathe out. And again.
"Why do you want to know?"
"You're going to kill me, aren't you?"
His glove along her cheek, touching over her lips, which were cracked and broken and remembered nothing.
"No." He paused, took her right hand in his own. "You will not die, Padme."
Patiently, she endured, flexing the muscles in her free fingers as though her body was a foreign vessel.
"I wish you would." A cough clawed at her insides and she reflexively tried to cover her mouth and stem the blood. The machine reacted, and, when she was done screaming, she continued as if nothing had happened. "Let me die, I mean."
He gripped her hand tightly, she felt her pinkie bend like white china heated, then break as though it had been thrown it the ground.
"Never."
Down the hall, Padme heard the faint cries of a little boy with blue eyes. She pretended there was silence-- she had no comfort to give him. Her throat clutched around her heart, a taste sweet like red candy. Breathe in, breathe out; she wondered if he even really heard it anymore.
"Take off the mask," she gripped his hand back with sudden ferocity, "I want to see your eyes." Maybe they wouldn't be blue at all, maybe they'd be some other color all together and she could know that Anakin was dead, really dead and never coming back. She wouldn't wonder, wouldn't feel anything for the man who puppeted her husband's bones.
He moved away from her-- backwards-- in the darkness, but he was still there. In some higher level of sight, she sensed him conjuring an image, and waited calmly for it to solidify. She imagined herself controlling her broken body from a distance, someplace else entirely. Perhaps someone kept her soul in a jar. Crimson fell over her eyes, and when she cast her upwards, she saw black iron growing through the red glass window. Other sounds, now; the sigh of those sleeping peacefully. The Senator and the Jedi lay in their separate beds, their faces smooth and careless as statues.
"Why do you keep bringing me here?" her mind swam in the richness of the memory-- it seemed so long ago that perhaps it had happened to someone else. Her lungs demanded release once more, but she lay still in the space between the beds.
"The window. Open it and you open your mind to a part of the Force even the Emperor can't touch."
"Take off your mask and I'll open the window," she challenged childishly. Then, suddenly:"The Force!" She laughed, thinking wildly that she might wake the politician and her warrior, might send them from the room and down a path that would never lead to where she was now. "There's something..." her throat spasmed, her tongue tasted the copper of her blood, "the Jedi didn't think of."
Vader took another step back, a growl unwinding from his mask like an animal on a chain. The red window fell in pieces around her, vanished.
Padme's voice was quiet, the sound of leaves on cold stone, "What if the Force is insane? Dark, light-- what if it doesn't matter, because the Force is mad and ill?"
Even when the door closed, she continued to talk to herself in the moving shadows.
* * * * * * * * *
The cold in her fingers and the feel of glass against her feet made her real-- the vision pulled her in from that and anchored her with the chill of the wind on her body. The wind, yes! It cried as it raced through the streets, screamed and wailed between the high spindle towers, wept and committed suicide on walls of citadels. All round Padme, the wind was a terrible, frightened wraith; she felt it stir her hair and the short cream dress she never remembered having worn. The body she'd left had been nude.
The world was bathed in blue and gray, from the platform she was standing on to the sky above. Turning slowly, her eyes raced along her surroundings, hungry and fearful at the same time. Tall glass trees, swayed gently beside her, stirring the violet and blue crystal wind chimes hung from them like wreaths. It was like a child's garden, a fairy tale warped and made beautiful. Surely, here, there was a glass princess with body draped in gold to glide through the forest on her glass steed. Perhaps, Padme thought wryly, you could see right through to her heart. One foot in front of the other, she moved through the forest to the small porcaline meadow beyond. The fabricated world came to a stop abruptly, and as Padme approached the edge of the platform, she saw the city washing out bellow and stretching towards the horizon. Coruscant again, then. Another step forward, with her hands out slightly for fear she could not keep her balance. There were no guard rails here, no walls, just the end of the platform and the city-planet below. The wind cried it's widow's grief and Padme cried too, standing on the very edge with her toes curled over. Silently, she tipped her head up and prayed for something she could not put to words.
"Aren't you frightened?" a young woman's voice, like honey and cinnamon. Padme closed her eyes tightly and felt the platform solid beneath her feet. One step backwards, two, three, and she turned around. There was girl standing in the wind at the threshold of the meadow, smiling with a warmth that somehow chilled Padme to the bone. Brown eyes met Padme's own opal, and the older woman realized with start that she girl could see her. She was used to being an invisible observer, or trapped in another body, so that now she felt almost obscenely exposed. The girl took a step forward, her grace somehow so familiar that Padme wanted to cry.
"Aren't you scared, standing so close to the edge?" she titled her head, bird-like, waiting for Padme's response. "No, I see that you're not." The girl turned, her hair-- so brown that it was ebony with red hidden inside-- tumbling over her bare shoulders and becoming lost in the deep folds of her gown. "Come into the forest with me," another smile, beckoning.
They crossed the meadow in silence, wove through the trees as the girl lead, seemly at random. Laughing, the young woman rounded the bend ahead of Padme and almost danced into another small glade. Here the glass trees were all around, lending to the older woman's nervousness, and the sound of crystal wind chimes was as constant as the wind.
"Come on,"the girl called again. She stopped briefly to run her hand along the smooth contours of a glass deer bent to drink from a porcaline pond, before seating herself in a billow of black skirts. Padme approached cautiously, kneeling opposite the stranger (how can you not know!? you know! you know!).
"Thank you," she said, to fill the space. The girl smiled again-- so perfect and practiced! Reaching to one of the vases set into the ground, the girl 'picked' a violet flower.
"Here," she held it out to Padme, who felt her mother's heart still and cry out as though stabbed. The girl's face, her eyes....
"Leia..." she breathed, feeling her tears in the pit of her stomach. Taking the flower, she held it in both hands, feeling the cold glass against her palms.
"That's right," Leia took another flower for herself, admiring it like a child. The sight should have radiated warmth, but somehow Padme felt that Leia was cold, cold through to the bone. "It's nice to have someone up here with me, for once."
"This is.. beautiful," Padme lied, and felt sick with it.
"I know," Leia leaned back, a happy sigh escaping her parted lips, "My father built this for me, because he loves me."
"Your... father?" she almost couldn't say the word.
"Why, yes of course," the younger girl dropped her flower, looking up in surprise. The small work of art fell to the ground, shattering. Leia didn't seem to notice. "I thought if you knew my name you would surely know who I am." Now she winked, a mischievous smile playing along her mouth and in her eyes, "Some call me the Baby Senator, even if I don't like it very much. Otherwise, I'm known as Lady Vader." The flower was Padme's life-line, she gripped it and breathed the hideous name. "Yes," Leia nodded, as if Padme had said it with reverence. "It's so nice of father to let me have the title, even if I'm only sixteen. He says I'm very much like mother. I think," the Lady said, sliding her finger along the edge of her gown, "that I shall be just like mother when I grow up. Father did love her so. I shall be his very best girl, and--"
The cry that tore itself from Padme's lips was wordless and raw-- it was every word for betrayal, hurt and helpless love. Her hands moved towards each other with strength born of pain, and the flower broke, cutting into her palms. She couldn't feel it, her heart was already in two.
Freeze.
* * * * * * * * *
"She's almost ready, then?"
You! Padme rallied against the voice, the serpent who had whispered so deceptively in her ear. In her mind's eye, she could see Palpatine's carved face, see the nameless darkness growing behind his eyes. 'Move!' she ordered her arms, her legs, 'Clench, raise up!' she commanded her hands. No movement came, it was as though she was trapped in container. In the body of a doll.
"Yes, my Master."
She felt the needle in her arm, felt the liquid sleep slithering in her veins like a white snake.
"She has made much progress."
Somehow, she sensed Palpatine reach out a hand. The claws of her nightmares, reaching out to snatch away everything she loved. Vader beat him to it, she felt his false fingers on the back of her hand.
"Yes, my Master. This time she registered the Force on a physical level."
The words meant nothing-- she was outraged with their presence, with her inability to move, with the future the Force had held out for her daughter. A cold princess, moving amidst her world's artifical beauty.
'My Leia...'
"Excellent," said the Emperor, and was gone.
Vader stayed by her side, bandaging her hands, which should not have been cut and bleeding.
* * * * * * * * *
They no longer allowed her to sleep. The light was always on, an eternal angry sun; she suffered under it with eyes opened and closed; seeing the torture chamber or just the sickly pink behind her eyes. They would not let her eat, and she began to feel her body prey on itself, devouring inwards with relish despite the pain. When she was five, she'd been stricken with a horrible fever that brought dreams of shadows moving along the walls, singing, and girls who had voices but no bodies. Now, she sometimes thought she was that child, could almost feel her mother's cool touch; and sometimes, when she screamed her throat raw, she thought herself still a child, and the world around her just a nightmare.
* * * * * * * * *
A memory:
Shadows, a girl and a boy, a queen and a slave-- older now, lovers not so much in deed as the way they looked and spoke to one another, the careful hands with which they handled their new affection.
Sunset now. A table, chairs, a thin pot of honeyed Ojya juice, and cups, all of them shadows. They drink together, their faces only shadowy profiles.
"You know, when I was younger, I used to lie... just because."
She takes a sip. "Because why?"
"I don't know. I guess... if I had a secret, something only I knew, it made it really mine. I owned it."
With understanding, "You didn't own anything else."
"No, I didn't." Pause, he drinks and sets his cup down, "I kept little secrets, but they were important to me."
"I think I understand. When I was a girl, if something really wonderful happened, I wouldn't tell anyone."
"Not anyone?"
"No. I guess, like you said, it made it mine; but it also kept it from being real. It could be as overwhelming or small as I wanted it to be."
A sigh, they reach out across the table. Hands touch, kiss, fingers weave together.
A whisper, "This isn't real."
"We're the only ones who know."
"No one else would understand."
"Exactly."
They are happy.
... Were.
* * * * * * * * *
The roar of the ocean was in her ears and in her veins. Padme fell back, hands instinctively bracing herself against the marble railing. She found herself on a staircase curling downward into darkness, and the sound of endless waves. Barefoot, she moved gingerly, down one step at a time. Her fingers examined the ornate railing, the soft velvet walls with quiet awe. She had felt things the last time as well, but now each sensation was rich and heavy. She decided not to think about what that might mean.
The stairs themselves were like seashells, spiraling down, and Padme stopped for a moment at the bottom, leaning against the wall and breathing in the smell of salt water. Her eyes roamed over the marble door before her-- she longed to stay where she was, but knew that she could not leave voluntarily. Her hand touched the doorknob, cool brass against her palm, and the breath she took was in time with click of the latch. The first thing-- the only thing-- her eyes found was the ocean pounding beyond the far side of the room. Tall windows lined the wall, curving with it in a semi circle, and on the other side, waves raged. The image was so surreal, nearly impossible, that Padme was fascinated. The room was underwater, she could only see a patch of turbulent sky when the waves pulled away; again and again, the water struck the windows, always promising death but never bringing it. At last, Padme tore her gaze away and found herself dwarfed in the magnitude of the new chamber. High velvet walls, a color so dark it could have been red or black or purple or some new shade all together. There were book shelves, too, with thick volumes in Nubian and Basic-- her old childhood favorites. Here was the one about the woman who raged across a cloud-world to save her beloved sister, and here the one that told of a young man who married a snow goddess and came to his end. Almost spellbound, Padme reached out to touch one, before pulling her hand back. Her trust was all but gone, leaked out of her veins as Vader and Obiwan and the Jedi and Anakin (beloved Ani) cut into her again and again. Even familiar things were dangerous.
"Hello!" cried a voice. Such funny things, faces, Padme thought, fighting down the wave of despair that threatened to climb inside and gut her. 'My face can not show the whole of my being, you can not look in my eyes and see all the parts of me I have seen.' The doll, and the murderess... on and on. She was beginning to think that faces lied, that these women had no connection to her save passing resemblance. Liar.
"Hello," Padme said politely, moving towards the sound. So large was the room that she had missed it's sole occupant; herself, ripe as the moon with child and radiant with a strange darkness.
"I know you," said the other Padme-- Amidala, "I know you as well as I know myself!" She giggled at her own joke, gesturing for Padme to come closer. She reclined on a fine, almost liquid ivory lounge, this stranger, propped up amongst silken pillows and draped in sheer crimson. "Pull the chair over, dear," she suggested. Lifting the surprisingly light scrolled seat, Padme set it down opposite her mirror, leaving the long round table between them. Somehow, the soft satin cushions pressed uncomfortably against her back. "Enjui?"
"Yes," Padme licked her dry lips, "Thank you."
"I bet I know just how you take it!" Amidala's mischievous grin was somehow child-like. She poured the deep, creamy violet Enjui juice with practiced grace, setting each cup on a saucer. Holding out one for her guest, Amidala paused. "You're not..." she eyed Padme with a look somehow reminiscent of a little girl plagued by nightmares, "You're not here to hurt the babies, are you?"
"No," Padme breathed sincerely, arms aching, breasts aching, longing to hold her children.
"Good," Amidala handed over the saucer and cup, "I didn't think you would, but you never can be too careful." She stirred her Enjui, mouth lax with resentful sorrow. "There are so many people that do want to hurt the babies, you know. They just don't understand."
"I see," Padme took a sip, reluctantly relishing the sweet, dainty taste. "What wouldn't they understand?"
"Him, mostly." Just the way she said it, the way her tongue moved over the word, told Padme who 'he' was. The saucer shook in her hand.
"What about him?" she couldn't keep the quiet hysteria out of her voice.
"Oh, you don't understand either," Amidala frowned, "but I can help you. When you put things through fire, they change, right?"
Padme nodded, hands fisted in her dress.
"Well," Amidala continued, "He's just like that. The fire made him change... but he's not so very different."
Quietly, dangerously, "Yes, he is."
"No!" the mirror shook her long ropes of hair, "He's still my Ani, really! He's so angry and sad sometimes, but that's why I'm here. I can help him, and the babies-- when they come-- will help him. He's really still Ani, and he loves me so much. He just holds me sometimes because he can't touch me anymore and-- I want so badly to help him not hurt. We're going to fix things together," Amidala sat up, eyes bright. Through the sheer silken dress, Padme could see the dusk of her nipples, and the bruise marks on her shoulders. "Ani-- I still call him that, you know, because I'm the only one that really knows him. Ani's just tolerating the 'Emperor' right now, but it's only a matter of time. I'll be Queen again, and I know just what needs to be done." For a long moment, they locked eyes, and--slowly-- Amidala's widened. "Why are you looking at me like that!?" Her voice rose, "He loves me, he still does and I love him, all of him. We're supposed to be together! I *tried*..."
"STOP IT!" Cups and saucers fell to the floor, Enjui splashing everywhere. It wasn't until later that Padme realized her arm had swept them off the table. She was standing now, looming over her counterpart. Her voice dripped with her own self-disgust. "How can you *be* so selfish?"
"The Jedi kept us apart, they never..."
"Damn the Jedi! Anakin-- VADER-- has killed people with his own two hands. That's no one's fault but his own."
"He had to kill those people..." Amidala protested weakly, "They made him.."
"*He* did it," Padme hissed, "and I see you, all of you. I see those bruises. Tell me, *Angel*," she was sick, sick to her stomach and hating herself, "does he touch you tenderly as often as he squeezes his hand around your lovely neck?"
Amidala was suddenly, violently quiet. A smile bloomed on her face, slowly. "I have a secret!" she sing-songed.
"What." A command.
"You love him too!" Amidala laughed and laughed, then sobered just as suddenly. Her eyes were full of childlike innocence when she said, "If you love him, you should be with him."
'She's insane,' Padme realized with sudden terror, 'There's nothing behind her eyes!'
"No!" Amidala grabbed hold of Padme's hand, her delicate fingers boring into flesh, "I'm not crazy! I'm not! I can help you understand!"
"I don't want to understand," Padme wept. She backed away, heedless as she cut her heel on the broken glass. Sobs tore themselves from her throat as she tired to swallow them whole. "The galaxy will go to hell because of you..."
The room shook briefly, and was silent.
Just the light in Amidala's empty, child face sent coils of cold to wrap around Padme's heart.
"He's here," Padme whispered between heart-beats. The tears were steady, acid rain down her face now, and she turned, running, moving her legs to work out her own fear. Thrusting open the door, she stumbled through, and found herself in the old room.
Separate beds, crimson darkness, voices.
"I knew you, a long time ago."
And another voice, a little boy's-- "Open the window!"
Padme leapt towards the bright stained glass, relishing the pain as her body met with it.
The red window embraced Padme, and shattered.
* * * * * * *
Crying.
Cool water, mixed with her own blood, surrounded her, suspended her. She lay in the bath tub with her wrists cut, and the little boy with his bright blue eyes leaned over her, whispering,
"Padme, I love you, don't go away."
"You're dead!" she wept, and was back in the torture chamber. Her bonds were gone, she was standing on the far side of the room with no memory of how she got there. The doors, the racks of implements, the horrid bench all shook with her despair. Wind curled around, but she somehow knew it was of her creation and did not fear it at all. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement of white; Stormtroopers. Their blasters melted in their hands and they scattered like frightened doves. Now the lamp, her eternal painful sun, swinging from side to side; Padme let her eyes rest on it, and the bulb cracked and fell. She took the brightness within herself, gathering it against her like a child. The darkness was not the same as the Dark Side as it settled around her shoulders, she felt somehow she made her own Light.
A sound. Breathe in, breathe out.
"Padme..." he said, and the little boy's voice echoed his. He was coming towards her, hand outstretched, offering. She felt something rise up inside her, it was as if she had terrible angel's wings at her back. The otherworldly woman, no longer a person but still painfully human.
"You!" tears were the sound of rain in Padme's voice. "I won't let you touch me again." (I miss you, Anakin...) She swept her hand towards him defensively, but it was as if her body had acquired new dimensions. Her Hand extended far beyond the tips of her fingers. Vader slid across the floor, meeting with the wall and settling against it. Utterly still. She did not run to him and she did not approach him like a frightened deer, she did not know how she came to be by his side at all. Her fingers found the latches of the helmet with uncanny ease, and she pulled it away almost frantically. "Don't be dead..." a whisper.
He really wasn't Anakin anymore. Anakin was somewhere else, in a bottle like she had been, so that Vader was hollow and she was hollow and she didn't know if either of them could be saved.
His eye lids moved, once, and then again.
Blue.
Anakin's eyes, so blue it hurt and made you want to cry, so blue they couldn't be real, so blue that Padme wanted to fling her soul to oblivion. He moved his hand to reach for her, he thought he was dying but she knew he wasn't. Padme stared hard, trying to read the strange language somewhere in his dark double moons, but there was nothing there for her.
"Padme..."
Her heart was not broken, because she had no heart to break.
Standing in the desert, now, all of her-- the body she'd so frequently abandoned and that something she supposed was her soul. Sand stung her cut feet and heat rushed to smother her. There was a sound, someone falling to the sand.
Anakin-- her Ani, the little boy with blue eyes.
["I knew you, a long time ago."]
He was kneeling on the sand, face filled with the look you only see in churches, hands out stretched to touch her body. She looked at him and saw that she frightened him, saw that he loved her anyway, that he thought she was death and would gladly go with her.
"I love you," he said, and she raised her voice to call out long and low over the dunes.
"An angel," said the little boy in the empty desert. Before him, the suns were setting, but he saw nothing but the horrible glory the angel had personified. She was gone now, of course, but she would come back. For a moment, Anakin contemplated the small pocket knife at his side. He could call the Angel to him, she would take him into her arms. There was no need, he decided, pocketing the knife once more, he would see her soon enough. He smiled, hiding the experience deep inside, vowing to tell no one.
The Angel of Death would be his sweetest secret.
All he had to do was wait.