Picks up where the previous chapter left off. Please REVIEW! Guest reviews don't require registration. Do we like a brief exploration of Padmé's flashbacks? I feel like I've undersold that bit.
Anakin rests within the bacta tank when Padmé returns to their shared quarters.
She cannot be sure whether he sleeps or not. She is never entirely sure how much he is able to sleep.
She grabs a datapad, and begins reading through her reports, laying back on the bed as she considers him. His eyes are closed, his breathing even, the respirator hissing noticeably inside their small quarters.
It is only a few hours before he emerges. She can afford to wait.
And wait, she does.
Time flies. She reads. Tries not to think. Overthink. There is much about which they must converse. She is no fool. The toddler had affected him. Its cries pierced his heart as surely as the sight of him holding the babe had pierced her own. He had been so gentle. She had been so proud.
The man she had met a year prior could have never…but now…
Her musings fade as he begins to stir, bubbles bursting forth from the respirator as his breathing accelerates and his eyes open.
She offers him a smile of greeting that he seems to ignore.
Anakin emerges from the tank, liquid dripping from his frame. Her smile fades as he meets her eyes. There's a storm brewing there. Morose. Like a fog rolling into a low valley. Dark and foreboding. Not threatening. But thick with sorrow.
He does not speak. And she dares not to make a sound. Instead, she pretends to focus her attention on her datapad.
Anakin climbs into their shared bed, and she joins him silently, continuing to review her datapad even as he turns on his side to face away from her, his eyes staring blankly at the cramped wall.
His moods shift this way sometimes. He becomes withdrawn. Hollow. It is as if his soul has gone dormant and slumbers somewhere far away from here. Away from the pain. The hurt. The shattered hopes.
Soon enough, his weak breaths even and deepen as he slips into sleep.
She'll never get used to the sound of those wheezing gasps. The very sound of them pains her, but she tries not to focus on them. Instead, Padmé puts down the datapad and stares at him at the fragile miracle that is his continued existence. Her eyes follow the soft rise and fall of his shoulder blades with knowing reverence. How long will he keep breathing? How much longer can he survive on the battlefield?
No matter the outcome of their offensive march against the Empire—a march that Anakin has spear-headed—his will not be a long life. Anakin Skywalker is a man living on borrowed time, and even all the best surgeons with all the best technology could have done nothing to change that.
He has a few more years left. Perhaps a decade, if they are lucky. But no man can live in such a condition and still reach old age. Not even a Jedi. Not even her husband. Especially not a man who insists upon flinging himself back into battle.
Anakin had always believed deeply in justice. Perhaps that is why he insists on punishing himself now. He has judged himself guilty of some of the most heinous of humanity's crimes. And for that, she fears he has all but sentenced himself to death. A slow one. A painful one full of physical degradations and hypoxia. Cut off. Isolated from everyone he had ever loved. All except for her. And that only because she had not let him.
The child in the infirmary had unsettled him. Upset him. It had reminded him too much of their own children. Children he never got to raise. If she is being honest with herself, it had reminded her, too, of all the years they'd lost, all the years they stand to lose.
Padmé had wanted to ask him…had hoped this encounter would be enough to convince him that it was time he let go of his stubborn martyrdom and finally meet their children.
If he dies, when he dies, she will not be able to live with herself if she has to explain to the children that she had kept their father from them. A father they idolized, if only from their mother's stories. They are both Force-sensitive. Given all she has seen, Padmé is certain that, on some level, they will feel his death. And when that day comes, as things are now, the children will see that as a betrayal from which she will never recover their trust. (Even if it is said father who insisted on punishing himself by his estrangement.)
Even as she thinks, he utters whimpering cries in his slumber. Cries the source of which she can never quite place. She knows that Darth Sidious had been his chief torturer, though Anakin is too proud to admit it. Still, the cries somehow do not seem to be the cries of a man at the mercy of a sadist but rather, a man overcome with horror at the sight of something unspeakable.
She ghosts a hand over his back, reminding his subconscious that she is there, and after a moment, his cries soften and fade back into the whine of his breathing. She is comforted by the warmth of the mottled tissue, reminding her that, for tonight, he is alive and safe within their bed.
She should be sleeping. But she knows sleep will not come easy. She regrets too much. And has too little time. To waste it on sleeping.
Padmé counts his breaths. One…Two…Three. Stutters. Four. A groan. Five…Six…
She has to ask him. Now. Before she loses her courage.
"Anakin…" She calls softly. "Anakin…"
She hears his breathing shift. He's stirring. She fixes her eyes forward. She cannot look at him. Not right now. Otherwise, she might lose heart.
"What…?" He asks groggily. His voice is rasping and gravelly. Barely understandable.
"I need to talk to you." She bites out.
He rolls over. From the corner of her eye, she sees his eyes narrowing up at her with resignation. "Can it not wait?"
"It cannot." She says firmly. It is now or never. "Anakin, I—I think it is time you met the children. I was going to slip away to see them soon, and—"
"No." He intones sharply, his voice taking on unnatural strength. His shoulders square as he sits up, his expression hardening. "My decision on that is final."
"Why, Anakin? What are you afraid of?" She asks, her voice rising. "You're not protecting them! You're punishing them. They need you, Anakin. They need their father. And you're running out of time before—"
"Before what, Padmé?" He growls. "Before they're grown? It is far too late for that."
"No!" She snaps indignantly. "I just thought—"
"You thought that brat in the MedBay changed something?" He spits.
"Stop it, Anakin. Stop antagonizing me! I'm only trying to do what's best for our children."
"So am I." He answers darkly.
"Why won't you just go to them?" Padmé asks, tears springing to her eyes. "Don't you want to do what's best for them?"
"Oh, but I am, Padmé. Oh, but I am…" And suddenly, she sees a flicker of yellow. Just a hint around the irises. She flinches involuntarily, and he leans forward, baring bright white teeth.
"I killed children, remember? You were there. Not just the first time with the Tusken Raiders. But at the Temple, too."
Her heart suddenly beats faster, and she feels herself shifting backward.
"Do you know they ran to me, Padmé? The Younglings. This one, a little blond boy, came up to me and asked me what we were going to do. What we were going to do…"
Padmé swallows hard, her muscles tensing, abruptly wishing there was a much greater span of distance between them than the mere hands-length. She knows where this is going. She knows where this story ends….
"I do not want to hear this…" She means it to come out as a command; instead, it comes out as a plea. It is one thing to know what he'd done. It was another thing to hear it come out of his own twisted lips.
"Oh, but you need to know what I did, Padmé. Do you know what I did? I sliced him in half where he stood. He never even got to scream. As pieces of his body thudded to the floor, another child screamed, and I turned, and I cut her throat."
She stares into his eyes and watches, transfixed in horror, as they slowly bleed yellow, and he crawls closer toward her. It is Mustafar. It is Mustafar and those hateful yellow eyes.
She almost tastes the choking lava ash…
"Anakin…" She whimpers. "You're scaring me…"
"Am I?"
"But you didn't want to do those things—"
"Oh, but I did, Padmé. I knelt at Palpatine's feet, and I gave myself to him willingly. I am a monster. Monsters may hide their nature. May put it aside for a moment. But it does not change what they are. That little boy…that one in the MedBay…whose plasma cannons do you think it was that burned his tender little arms? Hmm? And his mother. Scorched beyond all human recognition—"
"That wasn't your fault! Civilians shouldn't have been there, and you can't know that it was your cannons." She tries, rallying herself and attempting to keep her head. War has hardened her. Yet where he is concerned, she is somehow once again twenty-five and struggling to assert herself in the midst of their strange marriage.
"Mine or my men's. Does it matter who pulled the trigger? I started this war, this war that butchers little children. I murder everything I touch, Padmé. Especially children."
Talking to him had been a mistake. A grave mistake. He leans closer, and she falls backward, catching herself as she scrambles out of the bed.
"I nearly killed our children once!" He snarls. "Do you really want to give me a second try!?"
He won't hurt her. She knows this. And yet her mind screams in fear, feeling the heat of hot lava, picturing his face screaming "liar!" as the world faded to black…
"I think you should go." She manages to choke.
She sees him swallow, and the yellow fades dull in his eyes. There is a look there that is quickly hidden.
"Yes, I think I should."
He grabs his armor and garments. Affixing them in breakneck fashion and, wordlessly, he turns and leaves.
The door shuts, and Padmé crumples. She had believed in him. Perhaps too much. Had hoped beyond hope that they could be together again. A family. A real family. Perhaps for the first time. And yet… And yet…
Oh, she was a fool! She knew. She knew who he was. But somehow, until now, he'd been so subdued, so chastened…she could almost forget what he had done. She could almost forget that Darth Vader dismembered living Rebels and crushed their throats with his fingers. That he broke children's necks to make their fathers pay. That he was a man who had murdered the Younglings who ran to him for help.
Oh, Force. She had been such a fool, mesmerized by those tearful, harmless eyes that had almost made her forget they had once been poison yellow.
For a split second, she thinks perhaps she should go after him. But somehow, she does not think it matters. Perhaps he will come back. But, perhaps, he will leave the base. And if he does, she doubts she would have it within her power to stop him.
There is nothing left to be done, and so, heartbroken and bereft, she lays down alone in a bed too large and tries to sleep. Weariness consumes her, but her dreams are plagued by memories of fire and suffocation, of hatred and betrayal.
At half past three, her comm chimes and pulls her from her nightmares.
It is the MedBay informing her that the civilian mother has succumbed to her injuries. Padmé takes the news with her mouth set in a grim line. It is yet another body to add to the mounting piles of Anakin's Empire. Darth Vader's Empire, her mind supplies.
Padmé does not sleep again.
Instead, she waits as the minutes tick by. In the hour before dawn, she rises and dresses, walking the empty halls with a heavy heart and aching body. Her eyes search but do not find Darth Vader's shape in any of the common areas or corridors. She should be worried. Somehow, she is relieved.
She makes her way to the infirmary. Pausing only briefly to collect herself before she enters the ward. She salutes the attending nurses and moves to bow to the sheet-draped body, paying her respects in the custom of royalty. (The only custom she knows). The death is not surprising. But it does not make it any less tragic.
She asks after the child and is told they're in a makeshift nursery they've constructed from a storeroom. Apparently, the boy child had screamed all night for his dead mother. As if he'd known she was gone.
Automatically, her feet make their way in the direction indicated by the nurses, who follow after her with doting tedium.
Poor. Poor. Poor little soul. Another victim. Another life. A life ruined by Darth Vader's Empire.
The door of the storeroom swings open. And she does a double take. Triple take. Scrubbing her eyes to ensure she has not hallucinated what she sees.
There is a seated figure beside the makeshift crib; its pauldrons are clad in white, and its helm tilts forward so that it touches the figure's chest. In its arms, a small pink shape, all clad in white bandages, rests in peaceful slumber, its body swaddled all in infirmary linens.
The scene would be angelic if it weren't for the blood her mind sees dripping off those white pauldrons. The imagined screams of tortured children echo like ghosts.
"Lord Vader came in here a few hours after his mother died, asking what all the ruckus was about…" the nurse behind her explains "…the baby was wailing and…well, I didn't think it would work, but the little thing kept reaching for him and screaming and so I finally just handed him off, and the baby settled right to sleep…actually, I guess the both of them did."
It is true. Darth Vader is very much asleep. Passed out in the chair with a baby in his arms. Even with the armor, he suddenly looks so very small. Nothing like the menace she'd seen only hours earlier; the darkness, the anger, the…horror.
It is only now that it occurs to her how vehement his words had been. How pointed. How disgusted and outraged by what he'd done and failed to do.
"I read the mother's file…" The nurse whispers, breaking the sanctity of her thoughts. "…the baby's father was a Stormtrooper."
Padmé shoots back an annoyed look. What does this have to do with anything?
"The armor…" The nurse intones, gesturing toward Vader's sleeping form. "…I think the child thinks that's his father."
Padmé's eyebrows go up, and she turns to look more closely. It's true. Now painted white, Anakin's armor bears a strong resemblance to that of the Stormtrooper's.
And in that moment, her heart begins to thaw toward him. To harden herself was what he had wanted. He had wanted to frighten her. To drive her away. To convince her that not enough of the good man she married remained to be worth anything to Luke and Leia.
Every word he had said was true. But it had not told the full story.
It had not been Mustafar.
In the light of day, she can see that clearly. There will never be another Mustafar. There will never be another Empire Day. Anakin Skywalker would rather lose everything, including her, than risk the lives of his children ever again.
It was Darth Vader who had slaughtered Younglings. It was Darth Vader who had murdered the Tusken children. But it was also Darth Vader that she had married. Darth Vader, whom she loved, even still. And it was Darth Vader who tortured himself for his mountain of carnage.
Because when no one was watching, when there was nothing to be gained, when Darth Sidious's smothering shadow no longer loomed over him, even Darth Vader (not Anakin Skywalker) took a screaming, grieving child into his arms and rocked them back to sleep.
The time will come for her to talk with Anakin, but for this moment, she will give him space. Waking him in the middle of the night and springing the idea on him had been a miscalculation. They had both been too tired, too raw. She will give him time, not only for his sake but for her own.
Padmé turns and leaves silently, beckoning the nurse to follow and closing the door behind her. She leaves the woman with instructions to update her on the child's well-being before making a mental note that she must find a permanent place for the orphaned child.
Padmé goes back to her datapad and to her reports. As she works, a news bulletin comes across her screen for her perusal. An announcement from the Emperor. The corners of her mouth quirk as she reads its contents and saves the file for later.
The day passes uneventfully, and as it draws to a close, she receives a call requesting her presence in MedBay. They provide no further details, merely stating that it is something she is going to want to see for herself.
When she arrives, she is met by the same nurse as in the morning, who informs her almost disbelievingly that she should "have a peek inside the nursery."
The door to the storeroom is cracked; its opening is barely wide enough to see inside, but wide enough it is.
After the morning's events, she is not surprised to see Anakin's armored shape looming over what passes for the baby's crib. However, she is unprepared for the sight of him holding a baby bottle in one hand, the toddler cradled stiffly in the other.
"Is he…feeding…the baby?" She mouths in shock to the woman who had summoned her. The nurse smiles, nodding vigorously, as she motions Padmé back and explains in hushed tones that, since the previous evening, the baby had been all but refusing the formula they'd attempted to feed him.
Apparently, when the child came close to passing sixteen hours without having eaten, at last, the desperate nurse had summoned the audacity to suggest that Anakin have a go at the task.
And to her shock, he had agreed.
Padmé stares incredulously at the woman, eyeing the door before dismissing her. She takes a step toward the storeroom. Hesitates. And then slowly pushes open the door.
He turns as she enters. Anakin's shoulders straighten. Stiffen.
"General." He greets curtly. The vocabulator is deep and booming in the tiny space. Caught in the act of something she is sure he would rather she had not seen in light of the previous night's argument.
She eyes the toddler, who suckles hungrily on the bottle. Anakin does not move, maintaining his composure as if there is nothing unusual about the scene in which he now participates.
Padmé stands there for a moment, staring at him.
After a moment, she steps into the room and takes a seat in the chair that he had previously occupied that morning. She looks up at him and sees the helm tilt, indicating his eyes study her as well. She does not dare to break the calm of the fantastical scene with words. Here, words would not do justice. Instead, her eyes follow the toddler, who grabs for everything within reach of his small fingers, including Anakin's chest plate and all its blinking lights.
She could intervene. She could re-adjust the child in his arms and pull their hands away. Instead, she waits with curiosity as Anakin does not react, merely guiding his own hesitant, awkward hand to redirect the child back to the bottle.
Those prosthetic hands, so unaccustomed to kindness, seem stiff and clumsy at the task. It is strange to see his armored form in such a gentle light.
She knows him as he is behind the mask. Knows him vulnerable in the bacta tank. Naked in her arms. Asleep at her side. In those ways, she knows his gentleness as intimately as the smell of his skin. But this…this shell has long been like another being. A duality. Lord Vader and Anakin Skywalker, two halves of her husband that she supposes up till now her mind had never fully reconciled as one and the same.
The helm is tilted down, the lenses focused on the child. Yet she knows somehow his face is thoughtful behind the mask. She hears the static of him clearing his throat before he speaks and braces herself for whatever he may wish to say…
"Every night, I see that boy's face." He says tonelessly, his face still tilted toward the child. "I see him looking up at me, asking me to save him. And every night, I slaughter him. Again, and again, and again."
She swallows as the helm raises and turns in her direction.
"I wish with all my heart that I had stopped then. That I had gathered those children behind me and turned myself on the Clones. That I had ended it then and there. But I did not. I murdered them. Little ones, just like this one."
Padmé's eyes turn to the toddler, and she struggles to picture Anakin as she had once known him, bringing his saber down to butcher an innocent child. Her mind struggles to comprehend it, to reconcile it with the sight of him before her, bottle-feeding an orphaned toddler.
"I know I frightened you, Padmé, and for that, I am sorry, but you deserve the truth. Luke and Leia deserve the truth. My crimes are known far and wide, and to see the hatred in their eyes when they learn who I am, what I am. I could not bear it."
"They would not hate you…" She says softly. Tentatively. It is the first time she has dared to speak. The child remains clinging and squirming in his arms, oblivious to the gravity of the words spoken between the two adults.
"Then they would be fools." He says, setting aside the now-empty bottle and lowering the child into the crib. "I am not a father." He adds, turning toward her. "I am not a husband." He straightens up to his full height. "I am a killer, Padmé." The vocabulator almost seems to crack around the word, and she is sure the mask hides a face full of anguish.
"If a killer is all you are, then why are you here, Anakin?" She retorts sharply, standing and striding toward him. "Not just here with me, but in this room, caring for this child?"
"I should not be." He says curtly, his hands clenching as he looks away from her. "But your nurses prefer it if their charges do not starve themselves. And this one seems intent on doing so unless I feed him."
Padmé's eyes narrow at his obstinance. Without thinking, she grabs his shoulders to stare up at where she knows his eyes to be behind the mask.
"Look at me, Anakin." She orders angrily. A moment passes before he turns the helm to face her, the blank mask shielding so much and yet so little.
"If you are the monster you claim you are, then why does it torture you? Why do you care that you murdered those innocent children?"
The air goes silent. As if the world itself stands frozen in horror at the evil described in the words leaving her tongue. She has said it aloud. Accepted it and declared it. Acknowledging the weight of his deeds.
But she will not stop there. Not now.
"You are a man who was trapped and desperate. A man who followed a madman blindly. You may be a murderer, but you are not a monster."
"I—"
"No, Anakin." She says boldly, squeezing his shoulders. "Monsters do not feel shame or guilt. Monsters do not care for orphaned children. And monsters do not wake their wives in the dead of the night whimpering and begging for forgiveness..!"
Her voice is almost shrill. Desperate. Grating. But her fear and love and worry all pour out like a jumble of deconstructed pieces from the container of her heart.
"You have done evil things, and perhaps you would prefer that I hate you or fear you, but I don't, Anakin. I don't! You will not live forever." She stresses. "Even if we win this war, we both know your years are numbered. I do not want Luke and Leia to lose you without ever having even met you!"
He does not answer, he merely stands frozen, his muscles tense beneath her grip. She takes it to mean he is stunned. If she is being honest, she is stunned at herself, at her own intensity. Even so, she does not regret the outpouring of emotion.
After a moment, she turns and strides away.
Oh, Anakin. You idiot. Who liked the contrast when he says he's not a father? I loved the irony of writing that bit. Please read and review. BTW, I promise, for those of you who have read this and the Oblation of Obi-Wan Kenobi, I have not abandoned that story. I just want the finale to be perfect.