Breaths Are Harder To Take
Title: Breaths Are Harder To Take
Author: Disco Shop Girl
Time: Post ROTJ
Summary: An Anakin dies reflection A–P
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, the settings and events talked about aren't mine, and this is fiction.
Anakin lay there, feeling his life force drain away from him. Breaths were getting harder and harder to take.
He entreated his son to remove his mask, but thoughts of one person only filled his mind.
Padmé.
He hadn't allowed himself to be so consumed by the thought of her in years. Most nights he thought of her, when he was alone, and all was quiet. But it was usually of how she'd betrayed him so implicitly. Of how she'd been betraying the republic by undermining the Emperor.
Or the last time he'd seen her on Mustafar. When he'd run to meet her as she landed, overjoyed though he'd told her to stay away. So desperate to kiss her and hold her and tell her that now he knew – he'd made it so that everything would be alright. Only to see she'd betrayed him – brought Obi-Wan with her to kill him.
He didn't usually remember how happy they'd been. Not how his life had changed as she appeared on that sun-drenched terrace in her wedding dress. Or the brief time they'd snatched together for those few heart-wrenchingly beautiful years.
And he had not once allowed himself to think of that brief day where he'd been so fulfilled to know she was pregnant with his child. His. And they would have their family they both desperately wanted and life would change forever.
But as he sucked his last few breaths those thoughts were all that filled him. The most wonderful time of his life.
With Padmé.
Much more fulfilling thoughts took over his consciousness, pushed away all the unhappiness. One in particular.
Though he'd squeezed the life out of his beloved in confused rage, she lived on. Her refusal to give up on him manifested beyond her grave in this boy kneeling over him. And the passion and beauty he'd denied the universe when he denied her her breath lived on in another being. Her daughter. Daughter.
There had been two of them in there. And one of them was exactly like her. Perfectly like her. Understood how the universe should work, and loved with unequalled passion.
Obi-Wan's taunts, from right after he'd killed his first master came back to him. Her last words were that there was still good in you Anakin. Twenty years later and you're still proving her wrong.
'You were right, Padmé' his heart softly murmured, and already he could feel her presence returning to his awareness.
It was like coming home. He'd been so lost without it. It may have never occurred to him to look for his child, but he'd known the minute the emperor had said it, that she was truly gone. The incompleteness inside of him fairly screamed it.
And now it was coming back.
'Padmé' his heart started to sing once more.
He moved to strengthen their bond, to remove himself from the horrors of himself that had kept him from her. In his mind, the visions became blurred. Padmé, everything that he loved. Her willingness not to give up on the goodness inside him was Luke. And everything he loved, her mind, her body, her soul, lived in his twin. In his mind, the twin became Padmé.
And she had to know before it was too late, that she was right. Always, always right. She'd loved him to the death, and so it would be for him.
"Tell your sister, you were right," he croaked, his final words as he tried to suck in a last breath.
And failed.
But Luke would tell her. Luke would tell Padmé she had been right not to give up on him.
Clarity came with death. Relief came with death.
Padmé burst back into his awareness and he cried out in relief, his ethereal being sinking to his knees in final liberation. Her arms came around him, and he burrowed into her. Warmth. Love.
'Now I am complete' his mind echoed his mother's words to him and as his own essence entwined in his beloved's he knew what she meant. Complete. He was complete.
One thing only existed for him now, the only thing he'd ever wanted to exist for.
Padmé.