My plot bunnies had babies. This chapter is told from Anakin's perspective. Please review or leave a quick comment! I love knowing certain lines made people feel and what they liked and didn't like.
Being in her arms again had felt like something from a fever dream. The familiar shape of her body, the tenderness of her touches, it had all been too perfect to be real. When she'd left to return to her own quarters, he had almost wondered if it had been a dream. Those few moments beneath her lips, he'd almost felt like…well…himself…again.
But still, alone in the emptiness of his quarters, he is forced to face the truth.
Heavenly though it was, the encounter has changed nothing. She cannot claim him publicly as her husband, lest she lose the faith of her Rebels, many of whom already doubt her for accepting his defection. Her sweet lies and promises of future trysts are nothing but hopeful words spoken by a woman whose sense has been overwhelmed by idealism.
And so he does the only thing that he can: he files the moment away in his memories as a reward for his tolerance of the insipid Rebel fools. Despite their blind optimism, their cause is no more just than that of his Emperor. He sees that now. Rather than a moral equivalency, he has come to see them all as amoral manifestations of a disorderly universe, be it an Empire or a Republic, the systems have continued to flounder and falter under greed, lawlessness, and slavery. Being with Padmé is his only consolation. The children do not know of him. At his request, he plans for it to stay that way. He has foregone any chance at fatherhood. A fate he sealed for himself the moment he wrapped the Force around their mother's neck.
No matter what Padmé had said in the heat of their passion, he knows she hates him, knows it in the way her eyes lingered on the ruin of his body, a temple ravaged by the destruction of his own mistakes. He has brought this on himself and yet it is somehow insufficient penance. When he had, at last, with disbelief, discovered that she was alive, he had not hesitated to flee to her side. Even so, such a break for freedom had nearly cost him his life and had angered the Emperor to the tune of a bounty on his head of one hundred thousand credits.
Even this does nothing to assuage the guilt that dogs his steps with each and every undeserved day. He has not come out of any belief in the Rebel cause. Or any cause, for that matter. To him, it is all the same. He has come here for one purpose and one person only: to pay restitution to the woman he had wronged, the woman he had claimed to love completely. To live out the remainder of his life in her service. A living apology for his mistakes.
The morning after her visit to his chambers, he volunteers to accompany a Rebel taskforce gathering field reconnaissance on the Emperor's latest super-weapon. His announcement triggers widened eyes and fearful glances, but he hardly notices. All he sees is the surprise and concern written in Padmé's wrinkled brow and the disappointment in the pursing of her lips. The twinge her disappointment brings is all the more evidence for why his leaving is for the best. The more distance there is between them, the easier it will be to part with the vexing false hopes her visit has implanted. By the time he returns, the memory of their intimacy will have been forgotten, and she will have come to her senses enough to stop teasing him with the pretty facade of an ersatz marriage.
And so, he leaves.
He spends three weeks surrounded by the yawping Rebel fools who pester him with stupid glances and questions, blissfully ignorant of the power and punishing intolerance he keeps dutifully at bay. The thought of Padmé's disappointment keeps his anger in check, even as the weeks wear on, and his patience grows thin. Soon enough, he begins to regret the rashness of his decision. The suit is uncomfortable at the best of times, torturous at the worst. Without the aid of his modified chamber, especially regular time in the bacta tank, maintaining the sterility and cleanliness necessary to prevent the suit from causing infection in his fetid skin is very nearly impossible.
By the time they make the journey back, he is so bone-achingly tired and nauseous that he almost looks forward to letting the med droids carve off the septic tissue.
Much to his frustration, as soon as they arrive on base, he, along with the rest of the grumbling crew, is immediately summoned by a "superior officer" to debrief in the main conference room. With an inaudible growl, he bites past the headache pounding inside his skull and obediently follows the assembling crowd, all of whom still manage to give him wide berth despite the narrow hallways.
By the time he arrives, the room is already packed to bursting, the heat of hundreds of bodies rising in the air like a stench as the leader of the away mission discusses schematics and the intelligence gathered during their trip. For a moment, he is tempted to show just a modicum of his power, to strangle the offending Rebel who has demanded his presence but quickly thinks better of the impulse.
Quite unintentionally, he finds himself standing over Padmé, who flashes a brief smile at the sight of him that he thinks for just a moment must be his imagination.
As the meeting begins and the man drones on, he finds it increasingly difficult to focus on the sound of his voice, the world fading in and out like a poorly tuned radio. He is catching every other word and thinks for a second that perhaps the audio enhancers in the helm have failed...
...
And then he opens his eyes to a blank ceiling and Padmé's face looming blurrily over him.
"Anakin…" She calls softly. "Anakin…can you hear me…?"
With a jolt, he sits up, the world tilting as he swallows down the bile that comes up in his mouth. Inexplicably, the room that had been filled with a dozen vibrating sentients seemingly just a moment prior is now void and empty.
"Easy…" Padmé admonishes, bracing him. "It's just us. You collapsed, so I sent everyone out."
That would explain the throng of life signatures buzzing with grating curiosity outside the doorway.
"How do you feel?"
Weak. He thinks disgustedly. I feel weak. He had been sick and weak for days, but in the field, there was no means by which he could access the bacta necessary to stave off such episodes. He is better than this. Stronger than this. But much to his frustration, he finds himself keeling over and hears her give a grunt as she takes the brunt of his weight.
"Anakin…answer me." Padmé pushes. "What's wrong?"
"I am perfectly alright, General. It is merely a malfunction of my armor," he answers curtly, "If you will permit me, I will retire to my chambers to repair it. My apologies for the disruption."
His lie is rewarded with a hard stare. Concern and frustration dance over her face in a way that he finds strangely painful.
"You're ill, Anakin. I know that. But I cannot help you if you do not tell me what's wrong."
He bites back a growl behind the vocoder.
"It is nothing. A minor infection. Nothing I cannot treat on my own. Which I would have done, had I been permitted to retire to my quarters in the first place instead of being summoned for an inane and irrelevant briefing on the information I allowed your rag-tag group to obtain."
Her jaw tightens, but she lets the jab slide.
"Very well, then I will help you back to your rooms. But if it's affecting you this much, this is certainly more than a minor infection…"
"I do not need—"
"Stop." She snaps, giving him a hard stare as she pulls his arm over her shoulder. "You can hardly sit up, yet expect me to believe you can make it all the way back to your quarters unassisted? You are ill and you need help. Stop pushing me away, Anakin! Just stop it. I am tired of it. You joined the Rebellion to be with me, and yet ran away the morning after I came to your chambers. Do not think me so blind as not to know what you were doing."
"I joined you, to make amends to you." His heart labors and the world tilts dangerously as she helps him to his feet, leaving him leaning on her more than he would care to admit.
"And your Rebels cannot see you assisting me like this." He grates, attempting to push her away, swaying as the floor seems to buck beneath him.
She grabs his shoulders as he staggers, steadying him with a firm grip. "I do not care. Let them see. You are my husband, and I am not leaving you alone in this condition."
He looks down at her through the HUD, his vision still blurry in a way that gives her face an almost angelic glow. "That night with you was a lovely dream, but at some point you must face the truth, Padmé. I forfeited all rights to be your husband years ago."
His head and body hurt too much to be having this argument.
"And that is not your judgment to make." She says lightly, pulling his arm over her shoulder again and wrapping a hand around his waist as she helps him toward the door.
The hallway that greets them is filled with dozens of eyes, gaping and staring, the weight of their gaze adding to the fever burning inside him.
"Move." Padme snaps at a particularly burly soldier who stands staring, blocking their exit. "Yes, Lord Vader has taken ill. That should be no concern of yours." In an instant, the man steps aside, a chastised slump in his shoulders as he averts his gaze.
The rest of the Rebels continue to gawk as they limp through the base, making way in stunned silence at the sight of the small frame of the Rebel leader supporting the hulking weight of the Emperor's attack dog.
Fortunately for the Rebels, he will barely remember the trip from the conference room to his quarters. Though a part of him will think that he must have hallucinated what he does remember because he swears he heard one of them—some ensign who'd been underfoot during the away mission—wish him well as they passed.
They only just make it to his quarters, the doors coming into his field vision, when his last conscious memory is of warning Padmé that he feels as if he "…might faint again..."
And then he knows nothingness.
...
Some time later, he awakens in a familiar sea of bacta, feeling much improved over his earlier state. Relief floods through him as he flexes his muscles, feeling the comforting sting of freshly debrided tissue.
Apparently, his stubborn wife has succeeded in providing the care he had so desperately needed.
As he opens his eyes to take in the familiar distorted sight of his empty chambers beyond the glass walls of the tank, he is shocked to see that he is not alone. Instead, he finds Padmé's shape floating alongside his body.
Unbidden, a lump forms in his throat. Evidently, she had joined him while he slumbered.
He is suddenly reminded of how she used to lie with him during the Clone Wars whenever he was sick or injured. She would tuck his curls behind his ears, petting the crown of his head as he'd listen to her work, scratching away at her stylus. A bed of comfort in a sea of chaos.
She hasn't forgotten. And neither has he.
For that is what she is doing. Comforting him by lying with him in the only place that she can, floating in a sea of bacta. Though her face is obscured by a rebreather, he can tell she is awake as her eyes open and then crinkle at the sight of him, a swell of bubbles rising from her mask. In an instant, she reaches out to touch him, cupping his face in her hand as if to tell him, again, that it is all going to be okay.
And as he stares awestruck into tender eyes.
For the first time—
A part of him finds that he is starting to believe her.
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