"Are you sure we're going the right way, Padmé?" Vader grumbled as he trudged through the snow.
"Yes," the woman in front of him replied, "and it's Senator, to you."
Vader noticed she was shaking and reached out to the Force.
She's weak. Yet she has the mental strength to try to fool me into thinking otherwise.
"Padmé, you need to rest," said Vader.
"No, I don't," Padmé countered. "It's not much…"
Her sentence trailed off as she collapsed forward into the snow. Vader knelt down beside her and placed a gloved hand against her neck.
Good- she has a pulse.
Because she had been walking in front of him, Vader had not noticed until now how blue her skin had become. He knew that if they did not make it to the base soon, she might not last much longer.
Vader gently picked her up and slung the bag she had been carrying over his shoulder as she murmured something like "no, I can walk".
"Don't fight me right now, Senator," he commanded. "You don't have the strength and I'm saving your life."
She slowly relaxed in his arms.
By the time Vader spotted the building, or rather, what was left of it, in the distance, it was beginning to get dark. It was a fact that no human had ever survived a night on Hoth due to the sharp decline in already frigid temperatures. He quickened his pace, cursing when he almost slipped on a small sheet of ice.
When he reached the base, Vader set Padmé and the bags down and pushed the door open. He carefully moved her inside and shut the door behind them. To his dismay, it was not much warmer inside, probably due to the many holes in the walls from Imperial cannons.
Trusting that Padmé would survive without him for a few minutes, Vader explored the base. The technology the rebels had been utilizing here far exceeded what he thought they were capable of. It was all destroyed now, of course, with pieces of furniture overturned and strewn about. In some rooms, large icicles had formed and hung from the ceiling.
Finally, he found what he had been searching for: a room with no holes in the wall to expose them to the outside. Well, it was more of a storage closet, but it would have to do. It was about the same size as the pod he and Padmé had been stuck in together.
Vader returned to where he had left her and the bags and scooped her up again, carrying her to the closet. He left the door cracked for a bit of light and attempted to make a bed for her out of a couple orange rebel suits that had been hanging in there before covering her in his cloak again. He removed his left glove and felt her forehead and cheeks with his hand. It was the first skin-to-skin contact he had experienced in years.
Hypothermia. If I can't warm her up soon, she'll go into shock.
Vader realized in that moment that this would be the first life he had ever saved. He wasn't sure where to begin. He was so accustomed to just letting people die or killing them himself. He wasn't even able to save his own life when he was snatched from the forest so many years ago…
Stop it, Vader.
He contemplated for a moment doing just that and letting Padmé die. It would certainly solve the problem of having to explain to the Empire when they rescued him why he was camping out in a former rebel base with a known rebel leader. He was already mortified by the prospect of needing to be rescued and this would only make it worse.
But as Vader stared at her still form, the Force was driving him to make an effort to save her. She was an Angel, and Angels weren't supposed to die.
He grabbed a bunch of empty wooden hangers off the rack above them and made a pile, then snapped a mop in half and started frantically rubbing the sticks together. Nothing was happening except a few barely visible sparks.
I am Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, and I can't make a kriffing fire.
With intense concentration, he was finally able to achieve his desired effect, even if it took longer than he might have liked.
Vader moved to sit beside an unconscious Padmé and slowly reached out to grab one of her hands. It was so smooth and so tiny. And so cold. He gently held it over the fire, massaging each of her fingers until circulation started coming back.
It was such a small thing- the touching of hands. But he felt something that he was sure he had never felt before and could not find a word to describe it. This greatly frustrated him.
Vader repeated the process with her other hand and noticed she was beginning to stir. He gently let go, not wanting to frighten her as she awoke. She gasped anyway, clearly not expecting a masked man to be leaning over her.
"It's me," he said.
"Vader?" Padmé said. "What happened? Where am I? Is this prison?"
"No," Vader responded. "You passed out and almost froze to death. This is a storage closet at your rebel base. It was the warmest room I could find."
He noticed that Padmé was staring at him with a confused expression. "What?" he asked.
"Were you holding my hand?" she said.
"No," Vader replied.
"Really?" Padmé continued. "Because I could have sworn someone was touching me and your glove is off."
Vader glanced down at his palm, ignored the question, and quickly put his glove back on.
"You need to eat," he said, pulling a packet of dried food out of one of the emergency pod bags. She accepted it without complaint.
"You should eat too," Padmé noted.
Vader was starving, but didn't want to remove his mask in front of her.
"You're right," he replied, grabbing a packet of food and moving toward the door.
"Really?" said Padmé. "Why do you care so much if I see what you look like?"
Because I am insanely attracted to you and after you see how ugly I am, I highly doubt it will be mutual.
"Because I am the most fearsome man in the galaxy with this mask and I can't have you going around telling your little rebel friends what I look like if we ever make it out of here," Vader answered. "Now eat."
Vader exited the closet and shut the door behind him. He made his way to what was once a control room and removed his helmet and mask. He swallowed the food in three bites, examining each of the damaged panels to see which one controlled communications. It was, of course, in terrible shape and would need extensive repairs that might not even be possible with what little tools he had available. Even if he was able to repair it, what if the communication line only connected to other rebel bases? Padmé might end up winning this time after all.
Vader began to work on it anyway, but had to return to the closet when the skies darkened and the frosty winds blowing in through the holes became too overwhelming.
The fire was dying when he entered and he could barely see Padmé. He could tell that she was still cold and it was unlikely that rebuilding the tiny fire would do much.
"You're tired," he stated, sitting down across from her. "You should sleep."
"Don't tell me how I feel," Padmé snapped.
"Don't tell me I'm wrong when I'm not," Vader countered.
"Aren't you going to sleep too?" Padmé asked.
"No," Vader answered.
"Afraid I'll assassinate you?" she said. He couldn't tell if she was teasing or serious.
"If you do, Senator," he replied, "you'll be shit out of luck because the communicator out there is broken and you know just as well as I do that out of the two of us, I have a much better chance at fixing it."
Padmé opened her mouth to say something, but her body involuntary jerked a couple times, trying and failing to warm itself.
Vader knew what he had to do, but also knew that he shouldn't do it. She wouldn't like it.
But I would.
His mind was made up and he started moving closer to Padmé. He wrapped one of his arms around her and started pulling her closer, but she instantly pulled away.
"What the hell are you doing?" she said, clutching his cloak to her tightly.
"You need body heat and more layers," Vader explained, "unless you want to die."
"Are you asking me to cuddle with you, Lord Vader?" Padmé asked with a certain degree of resentment.
"No," said Vader, "but you should be asking to…engage in close contact…with me if you value your life."
"You can't say the word 'cuddle'," said Padmé, her body jerking again.
"Padmé," he warned.
"Why do you want to save me anyway?" she asked. "I'm of no value to you. I have no further information to offer you and can provide no means of escape from here."
"You are of much further value to me than you know," Vader replied.
Did I really just say that?
"What do you mean?" said Padmé.
"Just…cuddle with me," he answered. "You're still my prisoner and that's an order."
Vader hated giving her the satisfaction of hearing him say the word "cuddle", but it worked. She scooted over to him willingly.
Vader slowly pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly. She was tense for a bit, but he could feel her relaxing when she started to warm up and drift into sleep.
Vader began to experience the same feeling he had earlier when he had held her hand, but much stronger this time. It wasn't the Light Side, but it also wasn't the Dark. It was something else entirely. His head was burning trying to make sense of this emotion. All he had known for the past decade was fear, anger, and hatred. He had to embrace these emotions to give him strength.
Now, Vader wasn't sure. He still felt just as strong as he did when he embraced the Dark Side, but he wasn't using fear, anger, or hatred as fuel.
What is this?
Vader gazed down at the Senator, breathing normally in his arms, and decided to meditate on this. He desperately needed answers.
So, for some reason, the reviews you all have been leaving for the past few days aren't showing up publicly. I emailed support asking about it, but they haven't gotten back to me. I do, however, have email alerts set up and have been reading your reviews through email. Thanks so much for all your encouragement. Let me know what you think about Vader in this chapter!