Chapter Fourteen

Vader walked up to his personal chambers in what could have been described as a daze. His thoughts were racing ahead of him, jumping to second steps. He was in turmoil after the events of the night before had sunk in, and needed time alone, uninterrupted to think.

He opened the door impatiently with a flick of his wrist, striding into the cavernous room before the door slid shut behind him.

His personal quarters looked quite different from the night before. The lighting was no longer a candlelit color, but a bright white light that illuminated everything in the room, revealing dark benches set across the room and a giant raised platform that bristled with needles and wires. It was where he slept, allowing him the freedom of removing the suit.

He walked over to a side of the chamber that was simply a patch of plain black, glossy stone and stared at it, not really seeing it.

He had saved her. Joy rose at the thought until what might have been a genuine smile came across his face. She lived, and was safe. He mouthed the word to himself. Safe.

But what concerned the Dark Lord more was the method he used to save her. He had drawn from the light side of the force, something that had changed him more then he was willing to admit. He had forgotten the peace and tranquility the Force had brought him, something that he had lacked for a long time. It was as if a gap had opened after always having been there without his knowledge, and had been filled until he had forgotten the name Vader.

But that was not true, he realized in a flash of illumination. The gap was not filled. He still longed for something else, something he could not name… The elusive word came to him with a suddenness that made his jaw drop and lean his two hands against the wall in a weakness that was brought on by everything that he had been avoiding.

Love. The need throbbed in him, making him clench and unclench his fist. Acceptance. Forgiveness. He needed her to be willing to touch him and smile and say that it was alright, that there was no longer any need for him to feel the emotions that raged within him deep below the surface.

"Master Skywalker, there are too many of them. What are we going to do?"

Vader saw himself as Padmé had seen him in that moment. A look came over his then-handsome face, and he raised his lightsaber. Vader wanted to shake his head, to deny to the cold monster of self-condemnation that it was not him, that it was someone else that was striking one child down after another… after another.

A snarl tore from him until it became a cry of anguish and then a yell, echoing with power over the whole room. There was no one to hear it, no one to tell him to stop blaming himself, to relax.

He thought of what he had asked of Padmé when she could not even hear him, the request he had made to her prone form.

"Forgive me."

Vader's hands left the wall, scraping soundlessly. She could not forgive him. The ache inside him would remain unfulfilled, and he would have to deal with the pain himself, for it was what he had wrought by his own doing.

His love for her seemed not to be the hope it always had been; it seemed to him to now be a curse that lit him on fire, that burned him in the throes of his own venom, the poison which had spread through him until it had killed all memory of Anakin Skywalker.

Even as he wanted to be at peace again, to rest at last from the emotions that consumed him and tore him, it could never be possible. Ten years of misdeeds did not suddenly become acceptable after a single repentance. That was the final irony, that even if he wanted to return to being Anakin Skywalker, to peace and love, that he could not, because if she did not forgive him, he could not forgive himself.

He grasped for the anger again, searching for something that could fill the deep chasm inside of him, something that could replace the need for love. It was not there, and he groped wildly for it, searching deep within himself until he came to the core of where all his bitterness sprung from.

Obi-Wan. His old master's anguished cry of 'You were the chosen one!' rang in his head. Chosen for what, Obi-Wan? He questioned the Jedi silently, not daring to speak aloud. Chosen for this life, where I would almost rather die then live? Chosen to bear the life-choking weight of all my sins? Chosen to deceive you and try to kill my own wife?

Numbness and apathy gripped him until he was able to control his emotions, able to regulate the pain in the same way the machines on his body regulated his breathing. Every breath out, he let go of his pain, grabbing on instead to his hate and his anger. They seemed to be shallow, almost-nothings, but they were all he had, and they were all he could ever have, so he clung to them.

His thoughts were interrupted by an almost-sob, a wretched cry that tore the gasping hole in him open again.

"Anakin?"

------

Once again, I promise that it will get lighter and les angsty later on.