A/N: I'm shamefully tardy with this. I have no excuse other than work is really sucking the life out of me. Can I get personal for a sec? Being a teacher (I'm a teacher, a responsible adult, believe it or not) in the month of April is like being in actual hell and there's no escape from the chaos which borders on anarchy. The children are done with their standardized testing and their eyes have glazed over and there's only one thing on everybody's mind: SUMMER. Except that school isn't out until almost June, even though there's nothing more to learn because the standardized tests are over. 'Murica's education system at its finest. Writing, my usual reprieve, has been the last thing on my mind. (I have, however, managed to finish both the Clone Wars and Rebels series and can I just say…tears. Everywhere. Expect fics to crop up right away.) Thank you for indulging my rant. I know many of you are students are adults experiencing the same thing: daily madness.
Skin Deep
Chapter 4
As he walked with Thrawn to the landing dock, Vader kept his hands behind his back, clenched around several datachips.
"Your research was most enlightening," he said tightly. "I did not expect such…depth. I'm surprised you were able to uncover such detailed records of Skywalker's birth, considering how carefully they were hidden."
The two men stopped and Thrawn stepped in front of Vader, facing him. "I told you I would be thorough. Most beings I spoke to were very forthcoming, and it wasn't difficult to access servers to fill in the rest. Nothing really can be erased, you know. The old holo-security footage from Polis Massa was a particularly compelling find." He waved a hand dismissively. His features were schooled in a mask of disinterest, but Vader knew better.
"It was a tragic little story, Amidala and Skywalker," Thrawn said passively. "Given the timing of Order 66, it seems likely that Amidala never knew what became of him."
"Is there a question in that, Grand Admiral?" Vader's voice held an unmistakable edge, even through the mask.
Thrawn shrugged. "Speculation."
"No need." He paused. "I killed Skywalker myself at the beginning of the Purge."
Thrawn's eyebrows rose a fraction of a centimeter. "Of course. Well," he turned and took a step forward, watching Vader from the corner of his eye. "I'm sure you have many things to attend to. And I assume that you'll be the one to inform the Emperor you've uncovered the pilot's name?"
Vader nodded once. "The Emperor will be appropriately briefed."
Thrawn didn't miss the subtle emphasis on appropriately.
Vader stood back, in his customary place on the landing dock, as Thrawn walked up the landing ramp of his shuttle. He turned.
"You could have used other, non-Imperial avenues for this investigation, Lord Vader, with less risk of discovery. Why give the task to me?" He asked plaintively. He was trying, one last time, to read the man behind the mask.
Vader shifted to fold his arms across his chest. "No one else has your skill-set and…reputation, Admiral. I knew you wouldn't speak to the Emperor out of turn. And," he added wryly, "now I owe you a favor."
Thrawn gave a tight-lipped smile. "Indeed."
Seeing her face was one thing; in moments of weakness over the years, he had gazed at her holo-image, had allowed memories to surface in his mind.
But hearing her voice—her voice, not the faded echo in his mind—nearly ruined him.
Unregulated now by the devices in his suit, his heart slammed and stuttered against his ribs. His breaths came hard, shallow, and painful. Thrawn left him hours and hours' worth of recordings, files, and images to sift through. Only about half of them pertained to the rebel Luke Skywalker. The other half pertained to Skywalker's parents.
Parents.
Himself and Padmé.
As he watched every recording, looked at every image, read every document, he asked himself over and over, How?
He remembered the rage, the heartbrokenness, the betrayal he felt when he saw Obi-Wan come down the ramp of her ship. He remembered choking her. He remembered raising his hand and using the Force to curl around her windpipe, because how dare she betray him this way? After every horrible thing he'd done to protect her, how dare she? He remembered how she clutched at her throat, how her eyes were full of tears, how she gasped and begged for him to stop. He remembered how her body went limp and her head snapped against the permacrete when he finally let her go.
He remembered the moment when he reached out and couldn't feel her presence in the Force. Like a flame snuffed out, she was gone. And he knew, he knew that what his master said was true: He'd killed her. Few people could withstand a physical trauma like the one he'd dealt her, let alone someone in the late stages of pregnancy, when the body was already pushed to its limits.
Pregnant.
She'd been pregnant when she died, pregnant when she was buried, and everyone knew it. Force, half the galaxy had seen images of her funeral via the HoloNet! In the months before the Empire clamped down on the flow of information, headlines ran rampant: Former Nubian Queen, Senator Amidala Discovered to be Pregnant; Killed in Tragic Accident.
Apparently, that was only half the truth.
Padmé had a living son to prove it.
Grinding his teeth, Vader opened the files from Polis Massa once again. There were two documents and a stream of holo-footage. The two documents, Vader saw, had been verified and uploaded within moments of each other. One was a medical record and death certificate, falsified to state that Padmé died before she could deliver her child. One was a birth record, detailing the physical condition of a five pound human child. The child's name was not listed, nor were his parents'. The two documents could have been unrelated, except that they weren't.
Vader opened the holo-vid. It was a stream of security footage from Polis Massa. How Thrawn had managed to recover this, Vader couldn't even guess.
There had been one camera facing the landing dock and one inside the medical center, focused on the upper half of the patient bed, the place where Padmé died. The footage was old and degraded, sometimes nothing more than a blur of static. But there were four things Vader saw very clearly.
One: Padmé's ship landed at Polis Massa and when the ramp lowered, Obi-Wan ran out, cradling her limp body in his arms.
Two: Moments after giving birth, Padmé reached out to touch her newborn's forehead, her face twisted in pain. Obi-Wan, carefully holding the baby, bent low so she could reach. The footage cut out before Vader could see whether Padmé had the chance to hold their child.
Three: Padmé died, chest heaving for air and tears pooling in the corners of her eyes as she fought for consciousness. The baby, Vader noticed, started squirming and crying in Obi-Wan's arms as soon as his mother breathed her last. She looked exactly the way she had in his nightmares.
Four: Obi-Wan left Polis Massa aboard Padmé's ship and he walked up the ramp slowly, as if he'd aged thirty years, a small bundle held gently in his arms.
Vader turned off the holo projector. He'd seen enough for now.
Damn it all.
The answers had been with Kenobi the whole time, except—
It seems in your anger, you killed her.
Except for that.
He remembered it again. (He wondered if it would be a loop, a living nightmare in his mind forever.)
He remembered again the moment when Anakin Skywalker truly died. It was the moment he'd reached out with the Force and choked Padmé, cutting off her air supply, watching her wither right in front of him. Yet, that hadn't killed her.
Stress cardiomyopathy. That was the official cause of death, just as Thrawn told him. He researched the condition, also known as broken heart syndrome. And she did have a broken heart; she told him as much herself. But she also gave birth to a child, someone who needed her and would depend on her. Padmé wouldn't have given up on her son—their son. She wouldn't have just laid down and died, for Force's sake! He saw for himself on the holo-footage from Polis Massa: she struggled and fought for her very last breath.
Something else had been at work that day.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? It's a Sith legend.
Vader reopened Padmé's death certificate. He looked at the exact time she'd died. He committed it to memory. Then he opened his own medical records, and searched for the entry from that very same day, scoured the document to find what he was looking for, what he suspected was there.
He compared the time of Padmé's death to the time his surgery had been completed.
Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful, so wise that he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life.
The time stamps were identical to the millisecond.
It seems in your anger, you killed her.
I—I couldn't have!
He didn't.
Palpatine lied.
Treachery is the way of the Sith, a whisper said.
Vader screamed.
A/N: I hope I didn't let you guys down with this chapter. It's short and not exactly what I wanted, but I think I'll hit my stride with what's coming next. Thanks for your patience.