A/N- Sorry that it took me so long to update. My school schedule is ridiculous, leaving me little time to write, and on top of that, I was having Writer's Block like no other. Thank you all for your patience with me, and enjoy the next angst-ridden update.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Shock was the first thing that Anakin Skywalker felt. It rippled through him, devastating him, ripping his soul apart. It was akin to how it had felt when the cruelty of his master had been revealed ten years ago. I am very sorry, Lord Vader. I'm afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her. This time was only more cruel, because he could see her on the ground, could see the blood trickling down her mouth, could see the light leaving her eyes.

Only this time it was not his power, not his that choked her and made her fall. This time, it was power that belonged to another. Pain ripped at Anakin, wordless, limitless agony, so much that he wanted to scream with it, to raise his hands and ask what he had done that she would be ripped away from him, even as his soul plunged deeper into darkness and he knew why, knew why she had been taken from him. The weight of his sins threatened to close in on him again, threatened to drown him in the rushing tide until he forgot everything that had happened, everything that he had accomplished. And even as his soul ripped itself to shreds, another emotion rose in him.

Anger. A darker, purer sense of hatred rose in him. He had thought that he had hated men in his lifetime; The Sand people, Obi-Wan, and then the Emperor; but this hate surpassed all rationalities, all bounds of reason. It rose in him, overwhelming everything, all his healing and renewing. It was the most intense thing he had ever felt, having such intensity that he almost trembled, shaking with the force of his world-shattering fury.

They had taken her from him, ripped her from his arms when he had promised to keep her safe. There would be no tears; everything he felt ran far too deep for that.

He charged the stunned Nilar and the rest of the group, embracing his grief and his fury and his anger all at once, allowing them to overcome him, not caring that he had fallen. He was a whirl of movement and dark, rejoicing in the deaths, relishing in them with a sense of righteous vengeance that only seemed to add to his grief, to double the pain upon itself.

He found it mildly ironic that the man who had killed his wife, this one who had dared to tempt Lord Vader's fury, was standing back, awe-struck by this display of power. Anakin advanced, wielding his power, using it, giving his soul to the dragon once more.

He shot Nilar back, using all the power he could. The man paused for a second, before he was slammed against one of the walls of Bast Castle, falling limply on the ground, an indent where his body had impacted the metal just moments earlier. Anakin advanced, knowing he was going to enjoy this…

And stopped, as something cried out to him, something called out from what seemed to be light-years away. It was a familiar call, one that he knew as well as he knew himself. He paused, just for a moment, waiting and listening. What he felt was enough to make him pause, enough to make him regret all of what he had just done.

It was Padmé. Her presence called to him, even in its weakness illuminating him, casting off the shadow of Vader from him, making him feel shame and rapture all at once. Love filled him until he was brimming with it, overflowing with it. And he knew his unworthiness, and wept in his heart, tears of bitter hatred.

I love you, she whispered softly into his mind. I will never leave you, as you will never leave me, even in death, beloved.

And it gave him strength, gave him determination enough to allow the light to enter him and become part of him. It allowed him to rise up out of the mire of despair and look with new clarity and renewed vision. Hope colored by desperation came to him, and as he looked towards the cowering Imperial officer, he could feel only pity.

He came forward towards the man, suddenly aware of the breathing from the mask and how he could intimidate people. The darkness battled within him once more, and he crushed it.

"I will allow you to escape with your life," Anakin said softly. The man glared up at him, his eyes burning with revulsion. "I have long since passed the point when it is my decision who is to die and who is to live."

Nilar glared and then spat, anger and humiliation coursing through his body. He got up and ran from Anakin's sight, going to get more troops.

Anakin was already gone, caring no more for the anger that had overpowered him only minutes before. He cradled Padmé's head in his lap, stroking her hair back, comforting her, pleading with her, asking her forgiveness in the Force. I love you, he told her. You cannot leave me.

Her strength was waning such that she could not respond. The things he caught from her disoriented mind were only images; a boy and a girl, reaching out to touch them, love overcoming even the pain for just a few, breathtaking seconds…

"Love," he whispered aloud, tears catching in his throat, "Please…"

Her eyes focused for a few seconds, meeting his eyes even through the mask in a powerful blaze.

"Luke," she whispered brokenly. "Leia. Save them."

Through his trembling, he somehow managed to whisper to her, "I have to save you first."

And then her eyes glazed over, and although he could still feel her in the Force, he sensed her fading at such a rate that he could actually feel the life flowing out from her body, could actually sense her presence fading dangerously. It was then that he knew she would not survive, and then that he lost all hope.

Somehow, he managed to carry her all the way through the halls of Bast Castle to his starship. Somehow, he managed to numb the pain enough to cradle her in his arms, sheltering her. Every step was a burden for him; even to move seemed too much to ask, to manage to overcome the sense of inevitable grief and doom that hung over him.

When he came to the starship, he set her down gently on the medical table, his eyes burning once again with a kind of bitter determination. It was the same drive, the same possessive sense of love that had made him kill younglings that day, force himself to commit atrocities in the name of love… because he could not live without her.

The two droids waited in the background. 4-6C, the medical droid, waited patiently until his master was out of the room, then went in and started immediately to diagnose the problem. 9-HP simply waited outside, and then said in a mild tone of voice,

"If Lady Padmé dies, I believe Lord Vader will be quite perturbed with you."

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Anakin sat down at the controls, his lips pursed, his focus absolute. He started to rise the craft, knowing that he would have to show exceptional piloting to avoid both being destroyed by the fleet that waited outside and also have to escape the imminent explosion of Bast Castle.

There was a sickening sense in his stomach of numbness that refused to leave; apathy descended on him, blocking him off from all emotion. He felt dazed, and could only see the world through a haze.

She was going to die, to leave him alone forever. There would be no second chances, that was certain; she would not come back to life again as she had before. She was going to leave him, and it would be worse because he had tasted what it could have been like, had felt the soft sweetness of her love, and the absence of it…

He knew he should have been panicking, should have been in the back corridor with Padmé, should have been weeping or screaming or something else that showed incredible emotion. Instead, there was nothing. There was a place inside of him where there should have been vast, sweeping pain as there had been before, but he found that it was numb, devoid of all thought and feeling.

He powered up the ship, his eyes burning with cold fire. The Imperial ships powered up and began to come after him, but he paid no attention to them. All of them would be dead and gone within the next couple of minutes. Instead, he focused intently on the time it would take them to get to empty space, where there would be nothing but blackness and stars.

The ship was being shot at now. A few of the blasts landed, managing to injure the vessel mildly. Anakin did not care, and still worked over the calculations, perfecting them with mechanical efficiency. Just as he was moving the ship away from the planet, preparing to jump away from the it, Bast Castle exploded.

The entirety of it was eerily silent before exploding in a fireball that arched into space, drawing all the ships in orbit towards it with a spectacle of gravity that pulled everything into the inferno that once had been Vader's fortress.

He did not say anything, witnessing the deaths of the Imperial Stormtroopers with a face that seemed to be chiseled out of the same material as his mask, not even flinching when he felt their deaths through the Force. He only set the coordinates into his navigator and waited as he felt the slight acceleration of the ship pulling itself into space, cables groaning slightly with the effort.

Once the ship had stabled itself, he walked back to Padmé, the numbness beginning to unthaw as she reached across to him, straining with the effort.

He entered the room where the medical droid was looking over his wife, adding a few small patches of what looked like highly absorbent cloth to the wound, which was a gaping hole in her chest, bleeding through the thick fabric of her robe.

He leaned down and grabbed her hand, sorrow overcoming him as he bent his head. There were no more tears; this went far deeper then this, far too much to cure with simple weeping.

Padmé, he whispered to her softly in their connection, the most intimate thing they had ever shared, the merging of souls, emotions and thoughts, I lost you once. If I did again, it would destroy me.

No, she said softly into his heart. When I am gone- for it was a matter of when, not of if now, they both knew- You will go on, Love. She soothed him with her very presence, as she always had, as he had thought she always would. He only clung to her tighter, hanging onto her presence with everything that he could muster. She was slowly receding, the water of her life pouring out slowly.

Suddenly, a presence Anakin had not felt in twenty years, a presence that was distinctive and recognizable, a strong, individual presence, came to him.

"Qui-Gon?"