The Naberrie family immediately summons the best doctor their considerable fortune can afford to their spreading estate in the Lake Country, but after the administration of pain-killing drugs and the swift delivery of two healthy infants, there is little left to do but weep and fret. Padmé Naberrie, noble and fair, of eminent word and valiant deed, is rapidly dying, and no one can seem to say why. The most sophisticated emdee droids available are unable to identify the cause of her weakening pulse, her shortening breath.

The skilled surgeon-midwife, a human woman with short, graying hair and sever, hawk-like eyes, leads Sir Ruwee and Lady Jobal into an adjoining room to discuss their daughter's worsening condition. She is considering risky treatments, violent interventions, for which she will need their consent. Irrelevancies, Vader thinks. By the time they have made a decision, the patient will already be dead.

She is lying in her girlhood bed, atop a sumptuous yellow and gold brocade as he kneels beside her, enveloping her tiny, perfect hand within the crudely mismatched pair of his own. Her parents, he knows, maintain these palatial chambers just to house her during her infrequent visits, a shocking waste of space if you ask him. He considers, not for the first time, how very different his wife's upbringing must have been from his own, and wonders, with a pang, which one the lives of their children more closely resembled, hidden away from him for nineteen years.

"Take care of them, when I am gone," she murmurs, as though she has read his mind. "If you don't, I'll find out about it, and I'll have my revenge." Her eyes are closed, her face smiling and serene, and beaded with sweat like a pale blossom with dew.

"I'm so sorry- I didn't mean it-" he heaves and shudders. "Stay with me-" He is trying desperately to reach inside of her and mend what he has broken, but the fine, pearly threads of her are slipping away, unraveling and scattering like soft, feathery spores across the black, fertile blanket of eternity. His power shakes the windows and walls, but it's no use. He is all blunt fist and no fingers, even now, even now, and he can't get a grip.

"It is time," she says simply. The rich, yellow fabric beneath her is ruined, as syrupy blood begins to pool between her thighs.

"Don't leave me again," he sobs.

But his pleas go ignored. She is beyond him now, in a place without pain or fear.

"Everyone I love is in this house," she hums, falling still. "I am at peace." After a moment though, her eyes flick open, as if she has suddenly remembered one last thing. "Anakin-" she croaks, her voice beginning to fade. He bows his neck to let her stroke his burning, tear-stained face:

"There is... still good... in you..."


Things happen fast.

Obi Wan is standing at Padmé's bedside, while a woman he has never met (Padmé's sister Sola, he is informed) is weeping loudly into his shoulder. His brow creases ruefully as he contemplates the surgeon-midwife's medkit, left open on an end table. Replete with glass capsules of green and teal liquid, anti-hemorrhaging agents, single-use injection devices, miles of bacta-treated gauze- But all the cleverest tools of the healer are useless against the subtle poison that is the Dark Side of the Force.

Anakin Skywalker (or whoever currently inhabits his body) is kneeling on the floor in front of them, reverently laying his head against Padmé's still breast, and making a quiet, choked sound. Then, seeming to compose himself, he stands, and turns his back to the great senator, revealing her in full.

With a trickle of blood from her nose, and a smile on her lips, she is dead.

Sola screams.

Immediately, a dozen people are rushing into the room, more members of House Naberrie who Obi Wan has never met. There is yelling, and shoving, the end table is felled, and glass capsules of bright medicine are sent skipping across the floor. And then the scene of grief is receding, and the Jedi master is being dragged by the wrist through a series of chambers, and along a dark, tree-lined terrace, and out into a magnificent garden filled with the songs of insects and the soft night air. And before he can ask what's happening there are lips on his own and pair of arms slung hungrily around his neck.

"Comfort me," Vader demands sharply, coming up at last for breath.

"What-?" Obi Wan gasps, uncomprehending, the instant his mouth is freed.

"My wife has just died... again. I believe it is customary to offer comfort."

"I don't... what-?"

"Oh, Padmé..." the Sith sighs, regarding his boots. "Such a fine flower. How I despoiled her. It's funny," he muses. "I remember her being so worldly, so glamorous. But I was young when I knew her, and easily awed. She seems a mere girl to me now."

"Of course," Obi Wan rolls his eyes. "Because you've grown so mature. I suppose that explains your shocking blitheness. Is this what you think passes for wisdom? For Stars' sake, you watched her die this time. Are you not grieved?"

"I grieved for years," Vader spits. "She was as good as dead from the moment we got here! What do you want me to-" Tears are pouring down his face.

"I-" Obi Wan falters. "I'm sorry."

"Back then it was too much feeling, and now it's not enough. There is no pleasing you at all, is there?!" He pivots suddenly, throwing up his arms in frustration. "Well, Kenobi? Won't you do as I ask?"

"But what-" Obi Wan sputters, shaking his head. "What could you possibly want from me? Apart from that 'vengeance' your lot is always going on about, I mean," he says dryly.

"Isn't it obvious?" Vader cries, eyes huge and glassy with desire. "Feel this!" He presses their lips together again, eagerly squeezing Obi Wan's body against his own. "It feels good, doesn't it?" he asks breathlessly, dragging trembling hands through Obi Wan's hair. "Better than even my fondest memories of it- Better than anything- Surely even you aren't so utterly insensate-"

"You've stopped trying to kill me, then?" Obi Wan snorts. "I didn't realize we'd established that."

"It wouldn't be to much purpose now, would it?"

"You intend to spare me," he scowls, recoiling in disgust, "just so that you can use me for-?" He shudders, feeling that dark soul intertwining with his own, humming with lush, savage emotions as it alternately strangles and strokes him.

And suddenly, the reality of it freezes his blood: They are bonded, a Jedi and a Sith, in the most sacred and intimate manner imaginable. Never, in all recorded history, has there been such a monstrous, unnatural union. And that's not even the worst of it. The worst of it, is that Vader is right:

It feels good.

So good, in fact, that he can't even seem to be properly horrified by it. Can't seem to summon the will to tear himself away. He has spent a lifetime striving to remain pure, to shield himself from the corrupting touch of the Dark Side- But this particular touch is so welcome, so familiar... It feels like- Like coming home at the end of a long and perilous journey. Like being bathed in rain, after eons spent wandering the desert. Like the closest thing to love in all its fullness he has ever allowed himself to feel.

"It is very simple, old friend," Vader is saying. "My only objective now is to avoid pain and suffering, and to seek comfort and pleasure." Softly nuzzling their faces together, he breathes these words into the Jedi's blush-brightened ear. "This is it," he murmurs. "This is enjoyment. It doesn't get any better than this. When you knew me, I was young and foolish- I didn't realize that the most precious thing of all was already mine, until I had lost it. I thought there was more. He promised me more-" His grip around Obi Wan's shoulders tightens dangerously, as he gathers up all his pain and anger and plunges it into the warm, blue ocean of their bond, hoping to drown it. "But there is no more. I have been from one end of this galaxy to the other, and I have yet to find anything which surpasses the sweetness of spirit-bearing flesh."

"But what-" Obi Wan swallows. "What exactly do you want from me?" His voice is quiet and strained with fear, his body brittle with stillness. Could the price of a different outcome, a better world, really be... this?

Vader pulls back so that they are eye-to-eye. "I want continuous access to this," he says. "Your flesh, your spirit. It has to be yours, you see," he smiles darkly. "It would take me years to build a bond like this with anyone else."

"And why in the nine hells should I grant you such... 'access,' as you so crudely put it?"

Vader laughs. "I am not foolish enough to think there won't be conditions." He presses their foreheads together, growling keen, and covetous, and low. "Tell me what I must do, in order to have you."

Obi Wan's thoughts are tumbling, cacophonous, but one truth rings out above the din: Every moment which Darth Vader spends moaning and sighing into the front of his tunics is a moment he doesn't spend running around terrorizing the galaxy.

This is it. He may not get another chance to influence events. He grasps the Sith's head with both hands, forcing the other to hold his gaze. Thinking quickly, he speaks in a voice cool and firm. "You will cooperate with me, and refrain from violence."

"Within reason," Vader snorts. "I can't promise I won't do what I must."

"You will renounce your Sith master, and sever your bond with him."

"It is already done."

"And..." Obi Wan sighs, subduing the twin beasts of agony and hope in his heart. "You will answer to the name your mother gave you."

The dark creature's eyes flash with reckless ire, but they are blue, thank the Stars, still blue. "You would like that wouldn't you?" he hisses. "I suppose you want me to call you 'Master' as well?"

"That isn't necessary."

"But you'd like it." He caresses Obi Wan's cheek with a kind of brutal, mock-affection. "It would give you pleasure." He laughs caustically. But then something grips his features, a look of naked, desperate, animal loneliness, and when he opens his mouth again, it is Anakin who speaks. "Listen, Obi Wan, I- All the things we believed in, none of them matter. I've been everywhere now, I've seen all of it, what it all amounts to, and there's nothing-" He takes a shuddering breath, fisting his natural hand in Obi Wan's hair. "The chance to feel more pleasure is the only reason to continue existing. That is what I believe now. There is nothing else."