If you did not read my rewrite of chapter 5, I suggest you do that now. If you don't want to, then basically, where we're at right now is Padme is going into labor. So I set it back a bit. Also I am sorry for not updating sooner but I was at camp. Also, I think ther might be a little confusion. That last chapter was by no means the end of the story. So, read, hopefully enjoy, and please review!

"Master—we must go to her—"

"You cannot, Anakin, not in the state you're in—"

A state you put me in. But if you had not hurt me, I suppose I would have stayed with Sidious. Stayed with the law. But if the law tells me to kill children, how can the law be right? Is the lesser evil taking freedom or taking lives? Slaughtering hope or slaughtering innocence?

"I'll go to Padme, she will want someone familiar, at least—"

But no—that's how it was in my vision. Padme, weak and in pain, with Obi-wan standing over her, touching her shoulder and comforting her as she struggled to hold on.

"Obi-wan, please, for her sake, don't go!" I say desperately. How can I make him understand?

He frowns, confusion barely concealed. "Why not? I wouldn't think you would want her to be alone."

"I don't, Master, but in the visions I had, where she—died—you were there, and you spoke to her as she grew weaker. If you aren't there, then my vision can't come true—she will live. Master, she must live.

"Anakin, I've told you, the droids found nothing at all that could possibly result in death. Besides, you need to rest. If Padme was going to die, then my being out of the room at the time will not change that."

"Master!"

But he's gone already, leaving me alone.

Then I have a companion, as guilt comes and overpowers me and tries to swallow me. I remember waking up at the Temple and seeing all the children around me, dead, and I walked around looking for anybody alive, anybody to tell me what had happened. I remember watching the security holos and myself in a rage and destroying children just like my own child about to be born.

I killed sons and daughters. Will their parents ever know? Who is left to tell them that the people they trusted with their baby's life killed them, even as they begged him for mercy? Will they blame themselves as they realize their infant, their little one, would still be alive, if they hadn't given them away all those years ago? And who is left to tell them?

I remember how dazed I was, running out of the Temple. Panic. Confusion. And then Lord Sidious came. Oh how calm he was! How confident! And I went to him because he had a job for me to do, and I needed to do something, anything.

The Separatist Leaders begged for mercy too. But my staff was hellfire sent from death, and it knew only killing. Oh, how clearly I can see their faces now—

More clearly than the children.

But even now I can remember vaguely their faces, and I can use older memories, from before, when I never dreamed of killing, to attach names to the faces. The dark-haired girl is Lyra, the small boy was Hi'enlas. And as I run the security holo through my mind over and over it become so real the actually memory floods back in a torrent of emotion and a flood of numbness and I watch through my own eyes as the blue light ignites and snuffs out the little stars one by one…

I should die. A child-killer does not deserve to live. Where is my saber? But no, I cannot hold it. And I deserve that, and so much more, I should be torn apart limb by limb for eternity until my screams outlast the cries of all the children ever harmed.

There is a fine line between love and hate, and it's so hard to know when you've crossed it. I remember how my love for Padme was transformed into a hatred so real and pure that I wanted her to never have existed or exist again.

But the line between heroism and villainy is even thinner, nearly invisible. Am I the brave man who sacrificed his soul for the one he cared about? Or am I the cruel and merciless beast who selfishly slaughters children because of his fear? Am I the only one who was loyal to democracy, no matter what it took? Or am I the greedy tyrant, who, when presented with power, sought it hungrily?

I must have been here hours, I don't know it could have been less. Countless times I've murdered since you left me here, Obi-wan, the tape replaying endlessly in my mind. Endless times I've been betrayed by you and burned over and over, until that agony becomes more real than the present where droids hurry in and out, replacing the fluids in my IV and checking my blood pressure and giving me more anesthesia until I'm not sure which is real and which is a dream.

Then, so many eons after you left me, reality hobbles back in, and slowly the dreamworld is drowned out by reality, because there is Padme, alive—oh, I've killed for nothing, because you would have lived—but I nearly killed you!

And in your arms is a bundle of blankets, our child, our beautiful creation, and I want to shout, to tell you to take her far from here, away from me, least my blackness infect her and her horrible innocence.

But I am too numb, and I do not move, and I do not speak. I just watch as the droid pushes you, in your wheelchair, closer and closer. And I close my eyes so that I will not have to see her face. Just like the children I killed. And someone just like me could come and steal her away someday because of love. Or I could steal her. If someone told me harm would come to Padme unless I stifled her pure and sweet cry, what could I do? I can't be around this child. I might hurt her. She shouldn't be here, she or her mother, or even Obi-wan, or—

Who is this? I can feel a fourth being in the room, so quiet and faint, but stong.

"Anakin," Padme says, her face flushed and exhausted, her mahogany locks hanging out of place, "meet our children. Children, this is your father."

What? Children? How can this be! Padme only sensed a girl, just one—twins! But that explains the fourth presence—a boy. My son.

"We have to name them."

I give an almost imperceptible nod. I am mesmerized by the darker child's face—she looks like Padme. And her solemn eyes stare back at me, and I look away. She understands, I know. Somehow she knows what I've done. So entranced am I with her tiny features that I barely notice Obi-wan slip out the door.

And the boy. He looks for all the galaxy like me. His eyes are pale and deep, and his light hair curls lazily over his forehead. If he is trained to be a Jedi, will he be like me? But no, that's not possible, this child is so perfect, not capable of hurting anything. He couldn't be.

"Luke and Lyra?" Padme suggests tentatively.

No. Lyra is one that I murdered, that I struck down. I will respect her memory. Her killer has not right to give his child her sacred name.

"Not Lyra."

"Leia?"

"Leia…" It is so perfect. It suits this tiny being, from her curious wide eyes to her halo of brown hair. Are you an angel? So many years ago…

"But their full names must be Luke Obi-wan Skywalker and Leia Schmi Skywalker. Please, Padme, let me honor them."

"They both deserve whatever honor we can give them, many times over…"

And the four of us are huddled together. And for a minute I think that everything could really turn out all right. Because right now everything is still and at peace. Love fills the room and encloses us until there is no Darkness and no sin and no past or future. Just now and our family of one.

Obi-wan knocks at the door. "Excuse me, Anakin, but Master Yoda needs to speak to you immediately before you go into surgery."

And the door creaks open, and the tiny green master hobbles in, leaning heavily on his cane.