Work Text:
Beseiged
by Sue
The Executor was en route to Nanntooine, a planet that could have easily passed for Tatooine any day. There was one outstanding difference, though. Nanntoiine had three suns, which made living on it much more difficult. The Emperor had given Lord Vader implicit instructions covering how he should proceed. The essence of matters Sidious and he discussed always remained with him long after their discussions concluded. It was the nature of the relationship, a curious relationship which opportunity and timing had forged. They had finished speaking some time ago.
Palpatine, true to imperious form, had impressed upon Vader that dissension was to be expected on worlds where sympathy for the Jedi was deep-seated. Distrust of the newly-emerging Empire was only natural and would be tolerated, up to a point. It was incumbent upon Sidious that he monitor populaces who chose to drag their collective feet, so to speak, instead of falling in step with the way things worked now. He, the Emperor, would make allowances for some resistance as long as it did not infect worlds which he considered essential to the Empire's long-term goals.
His imposing holographic image had presented itself just before Vader had given orders that he was not to be disturbed unless there was a critical need. The War had officially ended several standard months ago, and Palpatine's pet tenant was now, "Solidifying the Empire, world by world will take time, old friend, but all is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen."
Vader was in sync with his Master's tone, his dictums. With the dawn of this vital, new Emperor-dominated leadership, the sullied Republic, with its corrupt ways, and those who had connived to perpetuate it, was history at long last. Resisting the `enlightened,' newly-emerging Empire would be a vain campaign embarked upon by desperate fools who longed for brutal, ignominious deaths.
Once the Emperor's wraithlike image had disappeared, Vader had headed for his quarters. Despite his unwavering allegiance to the one who had saved him from the inferno of Mustafar, the rising Dark Lord found that he was not as settled with a matter as he should have been. What had happened was over and done with, he reminded himself. Destiny had called his name on that fateful day. He had been suited in the armor he was now forced to wear. After all the travail that he had been put through, he had asked about Padme. The cut and dry answer that Sidious had given him had delivered the final blow, having ripped his heart from its moorings.
Padme had been killed; she was dead. Palpatine had made it clear that he, his illustrious new apprentice, had ended her life. It had been his duty to mete out to her what she had deserved. The Senator from Naboo had betrayed the Republic, and had betrayed him, her loyal husband. He could have done no less.
It was not unusual, however, for his tattered conscience to sometimes prod...'You are far too trusting...'
His bouts of doubting Palpatine had begun as simply as that. While trusting Palpatine, the only one who had not turned his back on him, Vader knew it was all so strange, somehow. Something unshakable had kept counteracting his full acceptance of what Sidious would tell him every chance he could. As time had levied distance between Vader and the horrors of Mustafar, a keen form of non-acceptance had begun to shift his perspective.
Doubt, full-blown and unyielding, had claimed him, serving as his guiding light. It helped keep his vision sharp and focused. The passage of time had only served to strengthen his autonomous conviction. He would believe what he knew he must.
He had killed her? He had done the hateful deed? His Padme had been the embodiment of sheer elegance the like of which could never die. He had murdered his elegant wife of noble birth who had been Naboo's peerless queen at such a tender age? He was the scoundrel? Ludicrous, that was, despite her betrayal on more than one count, alone.
As he waved his gloved hand to gain admittance to his quarters, his love for Padme swelled. It had not fled; it was eternal. He thought back to when he had used the Force to choke her. In that very instance, he had never loved her more. He had been trying to jolt her to her senses. She had been his reason for doing everything, every decision he had made, every action he had taken. He had done it all for her sake. "Nothing can wedge us apart, Padme," Vader muttered faintly, as though in a trance. "Not even your absence. We love each other too much."
The thought pummled him, turning his insides to mush. His passion, like embers that never truly go out, rekindled. Light years away from his intransigent Master, Lord Vader rankled. His anger forced him to settle the matter within himself once and for all. "The love we shared never died, Padme. I love you every bit as much as when we were together in the flesh. I did not kill you. I could never have done it. I did not, no matter how much my Master torments me with it. You are my `Angel,' like the ones who grace the Moons of Iego. I will never let you go."
Those words were the purest truth. It was the norm rather than the exception that whenever the feared Sith succumbed to sleep his beloved, the love of his life, preciously visited him. Padme in his dreams made each one of them sublime.
Though Padme could not be with him the way he wished for her to be, she had come to be his salvation, nevertheless. Without those bewitching, nocturnal visitations, madness, in all its pitiless
totality, might have claimed him long ago. While wide awake, Vader lived the true nightmare. In slumber's soothing embrace, Padme communed with him and he found solace.
In his dreams, she never blamed him for ending her life and the life of their baby.
Vader stormed into his quarters, freshly antagonized. He considered how his Master, never needing much provocation, seemed to relish hammering it home that it was he who had murdered his wife.
The Emperor's drubbing was crucial. "In your anger, you killed her, Lord Vader."
Along with the reminder, Sidious would promptly reiterate that the Force guided one down a certain path for reasons that might not become apparent until some future time.
"She died as a result of your anger at her betrayal."
Vader had been at great odds with himself in the beginning and had initially agreed with Palpatine. "You are right, my Master. I brought about the very thing I feared for her. I am to blame."
Much time had passed, but what he had said back then in Sidious' medical facility echoed in his mind...
The Dark Lord glared at his restorative chamber and balled his gloved hands into tight fists. "I am not," he said aloud, as though he were suffocating from within. Here, alone in his quarters this standard night, he was putting an end to such blind acceptance. Seething with anger, he allowed other, more urgent thoughts he had tried to ignore, influence him. He delved into himself deeply. "I reject your premise, Master, and bide my time. She lives within me. We dwell together as one."
He had not murdered Padme. No matter how much she had hurt him, he would have never harmed as much as a hair on her head. He would have done anything for Padme just as surely as his mother had always done the impossible for him. Despite that life of brazen hardship, Shmi had always managed to keep food in his stomach, clothes on his back, shoes on his feet, a roof over his head.
The thought fed his strength and resolve to overturn layers of pain and sorrow.
`No, my Master, no. I will never accept your claim. You are mistaken. I killed neither her, nor our child. I could not. One day I will know fully.'
The Darkness was his consort. He welcomed it hungrily as it buttressed and fortified him. The cavernous well that the Dark Side created in him was immense. The seductive side of the Force was a powerful ally that shielded his punitive, vengeful thoughts from the Emperor.
Palpatine was mistaken, and that was not as impossible as it seemed. He wielded great power. No one in her or his right mind would argue that. Wielding such power did not make one infallible. He had touted that he could help save Padme, but that had amounted to nothing more than smooth talk. His knowledge had been and still was, incomplete. At this stage, the Emperor did not know how to cheat death any more than he did. It was not traitorous to think that Sidious was mistaken about what had truly happened to Padme.
Despite the Emperor's having dangled saving Padme from death like a yellow tu-broot, his beloved had not been spared. The Emperor stood unrivaled when it came to coloring perceptions. By his duplicity and connivance, he had fooled an entire galaxy. Sidious probed the richness of the mysterious knowledge that he assured was the true power of the Dark Side. Vader knew he could wait, and continue to be the obedient servant all the while. The promise of his learning what his Master would share with him acted as a coupling seal, binding him snugly in place at Palpatine's side. Vader envisioned how his Master would impart what he had gained to him. Once he possessed this distinction of power, nothing would be impossible for him, not even bringing Padme back from the void--their dead child too!
What Vader sought would set things right...
Arrogance, supremacy and anger, always anger, snarled within him. The virulence of hatred sizzled in his blood like some daft legacy. Sounding malignant, he clamored, "I did not kill her--one of Them ended my angel's life! They are responsible! I can feel it! I will kill Them!"
Darth Vader fed this idea as a mother took her hungry infant to her bosom, nurturing it as it nurtured him. He would root out the vicious murderers who had killed Padme. This night, he had finally succeeded. He had thoroughly convinced that cold-blooded Separatists, who had somehow managed to evade the magnificent carnage he had wrought on Mustafar, were the guilty ones. Most of them had been in the control room, but there had to have been a band, perhaps, that had been in some other covert place. While he and Obi-Wan had fought the fight of the damned, motherless Seps had captured Padme as she had lain unconscious. Once in their inhuman clutches, they had tortured her before killing her. Had not the Sand People done unspeakable things to his mother before they had killed her?
Vader grew more incensed as revenge like inky clouds overwhelmed his mind. They were Padme's murders and their child's. He was not.
He was going to be methodical about the matter as he scoured former Sep worlds. Inexorably, he would flush them out of seclusion, drive them from their assorted enclaves and pockets of resistance. He would learn these killers' miserable identities. He would prevail. He would masterfully avenge the deaths of Padme Amidala-Skywalker, and their innocent baby. Oddly, he thought that if their firstborn had been a son, he would have liked to have named him Luke. Vader's legs buckled, but might from a more powerful source bolstered him and he vowed, "Those butchers will wish that they had never been born!" He knew he needed to shroud his objective in secrecy lest his Master compromise him, and withhold from him the power which he craved.
`I will avenge you, Beloved. I will not fail you, not you, not our unborn. This I promise and will carry out.'
If it was the last thing he ever did in this merciless life, he would not rest until he fulfilled this facet of his destiny which was now integral, primal.
Sighing heavily, having prepared himself, Vader tucked himself away in his hyperbaric chamber. The discomforts he endured to keep himself fit for his master's dictates sorely tried him. The persistent thought of his being more man than machine plagued him so often. It sickened him when he viewed the wreckage of what had once been supple, vibrant flesh. His limber legs, which had moved so gracefully once, his arms and hands, which he used to maneuver with great elegance, had been sacrificed. His priceless limbs were only the tangibles of what had been lost.
`My mother...you, Padme...the greatest losses of my life...'
Within the confines of his regenerative chamber, Vader wallowed in numbing sorrow. The father of the man, the irrepressible tow-haired lad who had swept the Podraces on Tatooine that memorable day, whispered to him as he often did when the Dark Side slackened its chokehold of its own volition. Remarkably, leeway was granted, allowing Vader to feel things that stabbed him to his core.
"Is this the freedom Mom wished for you?" Anakin's boyish voice rustled in Vader's heart, pricking the Dark Lord's embattled conscience. "I do not think so..."
Shmi had lived for her precious boy having the best of everything. Jinn's grand offer of taking him to Coruscant, training her dear son to become Jedi, had breathed life into that hope.
"It is all the Jedi's fault," the Sith Lord peevishly insisted.
"You are still a prisoner, Anni," impish young Skywalker leaked into Vader's inner ear. "A slave to a tyrant. Compared to him, Watto was your grandfather."
The Dark One balked. "I am more powerful than Mom could have ever imagined." He clenched his manufactured hands, invigorated. "If I had been as powerful then, as I am now, I could have saved her! One day, I will be more powerful than the Emperor! And then--"
"He will kill you. Palpatine cares nothing for you. You are his tool. Tools are used, not loved. Qui-Gon loved you, believed in you. You believed in him, you know. You did. He never lied to
you," the Anakin side of him defended. "Not once. You loved him for his goodness, his gentle honesty. And many other things, besides."
Vader shut his eyes, but opened his mind unreservedly to what he needed to remember; it was incumbent. It startled him soundly when he considered how much there was that had never been fully driven from him.
The Anakin side of his insight coaxed the Dark Side to loosen some of its mesmerizing hold over this man who was consumed by so much hurt.
"Let go of your hate, Anni. Where has it gotten you?"
Where, indeed?
"You wanted to kill her, remember? You used the Force, nearly choking the life out of her..."
"But I did not!" Vader shouted ferally, the lurid memory, like a lightsaber, slashed him. "I--I was angry, hurt. I thought she had betrayed me, taking Obi-Wan's side. I never meant to kill her! Never! I could not! I wanted only to save her! So help me the Force!"
"Consciously you could not, of course not, but you are not always certain that you did not. Sometimes, you doubt, and it might just be possible that it was you who ended her life."
"No, no," Vader wailed.
It was true, horribly true. It was part of the nightmare, the worst of it, whether he had killed her, or had not. He saw her then, his Padme, having arrived on Mustafar in her own vessel, she running to him, he taking her in his arms, holding onto her for dear life in the aftermath of all that he had done. Vader cringed, recalling how, as he had tried to make her see sense, she had stood before him, not trusting him. Then, appalled, he had seen her eyes fill with fear-- fear of him. She had feared him because she knew she had done wrong; it had been foolish of her not to trust him, her own husband, who loved her more than life itself. Not trust him--not trust him! He, who had been ready to lay the entire galaxy at her feet? She, standing there, defying him, thinking that she knew better than he what they as a couple needed.
"Anakin, you are breaking my heart."
"You are with him," Vader thundered, saturating his chamber with rancor. The battle with Obi-Wan raged once again.
Her fear and distrust, and yes, disloyalty, had made him livid, with the Dark Side goading him for as many times. The next thing he knew, he was Force choking his wife, feeling as though someone else had forced his hand, until...Obi-Wan had jealously ordered him to let her go.
"Padme was ever faithful. Deception comes in many guises."
"I was deceived by those whom I thought were my friends."
"Padme was your greatest friend, your staunchest ally. You were rash in your judgment, goaded into thinking otherwise."
"I..." Vader hung his head down, beset by perdition. When he opened his eyes he admitted, "I...know."
"But, there is a recourse..."
Vader went still like glacialstone from the depths of Hoth, yielding. He did as the inner voice had advised; he let go of his hate, at least slackening it for the time being. He allowed something he had not felt in some time to color his thinking...clemency. Maybe he had rushed too quickly to judgment, believing his wife had renounced him for another. She could never have done that. She had been carrying their child, after all. There was no mistake about that; the Force had confirmed that the baby Padme carried was his.
Painfully, yet gradually, golden moments with his fledgling family trickled, then tumbled through his mind. His stupor grew profound. Ah, yes, he was home, with his "Angel" once more. Truly, with her, he was free, free to revel in her exuberant laughter, bask in her adoring smiles. He was reborn in her selfless love, honor bound to spend the rest of his life with the Queen of his heart. What better way was there to live one's life?
"Padme," Vader huskily called out.
He was sleepy, he was woozy, teetering on the brink of unconsciousness, exhausted from the rigors of his cunning Master's latest campaign. His heart beat raggedly as he heard her whisper the pet name she loved to use...
"Anni, come to bed. You look so tired. You will harm yourself if you are not careful, despite all your Jedi prowess."
He thought he heard her gentle laughter sweeten her request.
"Were are you?" he asked, closing his eyes, straining to see.
"Where do you want me to be, Anni?"
Absently, with a wistful lilt, completely swallowed up by the moment, Vader responded, "In the meadow...on Naboo."
Padme laughed lightly again. "What am I doing?"
Sounding the way he had spoken that rare day, Vader readily replied, "You are reaching for me."
"What do I want?"
Seeing her clearly, as she had been that rare day, he answered, "A kiss."
"A kiss."
"A real one," Vader interjected with his ruined brow furrowing, his scorched cheeks flushed.
"Yes, Anni. Kiss me the way lovers kiss..."
Vader's smile was warm and true, as real as the smile he had given her after his lips had separated from hers.I am tired." Then, almost sounding overwhelmed, he continued, "But, I cannot rest. Not yet, my love. There is so much I must see to." Befuddled, he continued, "It's not too late. I can still save you...you and our child."
The vision that had plagued him ever since she had told him of her pregnancy swept through his mind, renting any hope for sustaining his equilibrium. As though a tractor beam had wrenched him away, he relived the terrible moment in her apartment on Coruscant when he had revealed to her what he could never stop seeing in the worst of his nightmarish dreams.
"You die in childbirth..."
Padme dies in childbirth! It struck like a Hothan lightning bolt as never before. How in the Sithly universe could he have forgotten his most vivid visions, the ones he had had both day and night?
First, faces melted, and then were flushed away. The bizarre gave way to his becoming an eyewitness to the brutal battle he had fought with his former soft-spoken Master, the gentle-eyed one, who had taken Qui-Gon's place. The fiery tableau tormented him so often; it clawed at his soul. Whenever his beautiful phantom, with the deepest, darkest eyes one woman could ever have, was with him once more, he would be waging all out war with Obi-Wan all over again. Now, with sleep fighting hard to claim him, hellish visions of that frenzied conflict successfully robbed him of peace.
"You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you!"
"Once, once I loved you too, Obi-Wan. You came to become the father I never had," Vader, to his scalding consternation, heard himself murmur. Could he ever forgive his betrayer, his only betrayer. Just as he had convinced himself that he had never killed Padme, she, in turn, had never betrayed him. She never could have. It had been made to look as though she had.
If only he and Obi-Wan had never fought. Would Padme still be alive if they had not sought like madmen to destroy each other?
"I thought the Jedi were forbidden to love," the Sith Lord heard his wife say, remembering their conversation aboard that cramped, grimy transport, two lifetimes ago.
Vader groaned, much the way he had when Palpatine had informed him of his responsibility for ending her life...her fragile, exceptional life. Her life, which he had valued more than his own, still did.
Again, in half-whispers, Vader told her, "He will show me the way. The way to get you back. Until then, I must obey my Master, but it is you who truly rules me, even in death, my `Angel.'"
"I know, Anni. You will have tomorrow. But, tonight, I need you..."
Breath, heavy and stale, clogged in his useless windpipe as he felt the comfort she brought fondle his ravaged soul. He needed her too, sorely, as never before. As that empowering thought filled him through and through, he snapped fully awake, drowsy no more. Like the command he had over his lightsaber, he was at the beck and call of something that had gnawed at him for some time now. On the strength of his beloved's long-suffering request, he would do what he must. He could do it; he possessed the ability, and time had come to put that ability to the test.
"All that I do, I do for you, my `Angel.' Trust me. I will not fail you--no--not this time."
He would learn the truth, once and for all. The time was now at hand.
VvVvVvVv
Already, Vader's unfailing determination had led to this most telling discovery. His undying love for her had spurred him onward, ever onward. Blind compulsion had driven him like an entity separated from him. He had dug his heels in and had refused to be turned. His insight, coupled with his newer abilities, had served him well.
end