Warning: This chapter is spoiler/speculation for Revenge of the Sith

Chapter Four

"Anakin, what is it?"

She was horrified. Perhaps as much as he was.

Anakin ran his hands over his face and tried to compose himself, the rivulets of sweat rolling from his face too fast for him to hide. He rolled to the side and gathered the black sleeping robe from the chair, pulling it over his bare chest. He turned to his wife and gathered her to him.

"It was nothing. You know me and my overactive imagination. Just a nightmare, it must have been the wine," he said with a tentative smile.

"It didn't sound like 'nothing', Ani. You were frightened. Horribly so," Padmé said, her voice shaking with fear.

"Please. How can I help you if you don't tell me what is troubling you?"

"It's nothing. It's the same old dream, from the past, so I know it can't happen. It's nothing. It's actually very silly," he lied. "I want you to get some rest…for the baby."

He hated to use their unborn child to end the argument, but he couldn't discuss this with his wife. He must find some other place to voice his fears, anywhere but Padmé. He turned to lay on his side, his real hand slowly and hypnotically rubbing his wife's swollen abdomen until her breath slowed into the steady rhythm of sleep.

He had been plagued with dreams, visions, or nightmares - whatever one chose to call them – practically from birth.

His mother had seen them as evidence of his abilities. The Jedi saw it as evidence of his birthright. He saw it as a personal curse.

He could tell the significant dreams from the more capricious ones, for they always returned. Their importance made themselves known by the way they settled morbidly on his heart when he woke. He had felt them only a few times before.

The last time had been before his mother died.

He rose from the bed quickly; only remembering to check for his wife's sleeping form as he turned to leave their bedroom. He gathered the light sleep robe around him to ward off the chill and stepped outside to the veranda.

Padmé had insisted on having the veranda constructed and added to their Coruscant apartment soon after their marriage. She made the argument that she needed a place for a small ship to be able to dock in case she must make a fast get away. Her life had indeed been threatened at every turn. He laughed to himself as he imagined his wife, the senator, contrary to her nature, batting her eyelashes as the senate funding committee fell for the demure act his wife could pull off so well. They never stood a chance.

The slight breeze coming from the upper atmosphere of Coruscant washed over him as he stepped to the balcony and looked over the city, the muted lights and street sounds having the calming effect he had intended. He decided then and there that he would swallow his pride and see Master Yoda tomorrow.

The dream haunted him every night now. He was becoming more and more frightened with each passing day. Maybe the old Master would be able to extract some meaning from his dream. Maybe it wasn't a premonition, but a warning.

He had to find out. He would not lose his wife. He would do whatever he must to prevent it.

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Darth Vader awoke violently. It had been over twenty-five years since that dream had come to him. The dream that taunted him like a cuda beast, dancing and taunting before its final strike, not killing its prey outright, but making it suffer with images of its own death before it came.

That dream had been the end.

He had sought counsel of everyone, his premonition of his wife's death as she gave birth to their child had haunted him to desperation in the last days of his former life. It drove him to madness, as he looked for a crack in the crystal ball that were his visions in the Force. He had even lowered himself to begging for an answer from Master Yoda, but the Master had only quipped sadly at Anakin's vague pleas about the acceptance of things to come. For it was from the Force…

How dare he? Vader shook with fury even now. How easy it must have been to shake his green head in compassion for the young Jedi, when he had nothing to lose.

It was then that he had turned in desperation to the one place where he knew the answer could be identified. Palpatine.

Palpatine had spoken to him of the ancient mythological power of life over death many times, knowing Anakin's interest in the subject. Anakin had accepted that power, only too late, as his life folded before his eyes in those last days of the diseased Old Republic.

The Jedi would never interrupt the work of the Force. He was the Chosen One and he had control over nothing, or so he thought. The Jedi had led him to this place as sure as the Force created all things.

It was after his wife's death that he had come to this place in his relationship with the Force. This odd sort of co-existence that led him to ask nothing of the Light, for it had laughed in his face and made a fool of him.

It had manipulated him as surely as if he were a puppet and it the puppet master. Anakin Skywalker may have been a Jedi, but in the end he was a fool and an idiot.

And now his son lived. He lived in spite of Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi.

Vader blinked away sweat and pushed the button on the sleeping chamber. He rose and paused to look at the holo rotating slowly at his bedside. His son's eyes stared at him knowingly. They were Anakin Skywalker's eyes.

He hated how the past came back in his weakest moments, while he slept. Somehow, he would get a grip on the situation before going to the construction site of the second Death Star. His son must be made to see his destiny.

He finished up his morning routine and prepared a mental list of the tasks he would need to get done today. He punched in the required code and exited his chambers, a strange sense of forboding settling on him.

to be continued...