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“How are you feeling, Anakin?”
Darth Vader did not move from where he lay, staring blankly up at the ceiling above his cot in the high security cell that the Rebels had placed him in after his failure to eliminate the Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, some weeks ago. She asked him that each time she visited—Padmé Amidala, one of the founders of the Rebellion, and the woman who claimed to be his wife. Everyday, she came to see him, though he could never be quite sure of when her visit would be. She was quite late today—the droids that attended him had already given him his evening meal and his nightly dose of Force suppressants, and he had just reached the stage of feeling vaguely woozy from the renewed sensation of being cut off from his power when he heard the hiss of his cell door opening and closing, and the soft voice that had seemed ever so slightly familiar to him even as he heard it for the first time speaking in soothing, gentle tones. Here. The same as ever.
“I didn't think you were coming today” he said in lieu of an answer. His voice was hoarse and cracked from tiredness—a far cry from the intimidating bass that his mask's vocoder afforded him. It had been slashed in two by Kenobi's saber before he had been brought here. Kenobi, whose smug self assurance had turned to abject horror the moment he had seen his face. Kenobi, who had pleaded with him to remember him as he had tried to get his hands round his throat upon waking up in an unfamiliar cell surrounded by enemies—
“I'm sorry,” Amidala said. There was a rustle of fabric as she moved closer, coming to perch beside him on the cot. “There was some urgent business that I had to attend to. But I'm here now.”
Yes, Vader thought. You are. He turned his head to look at her—though she barely came up to his shoulder when they were both standing, lying prone as he was, she seemed to fairly tower over him. His instinct should be to flinch away, he thought, to keep his distance from his jailer, trapped in this cell as he was. But somehow, it wasn't. There was something, something— Besides, he had neither the will nor the energy to lift a finger, let alone anything else.
That was it. Yes, that was it.
“Are you alright?,” Amidala asked with a frown. “You don't look well.”
Alright? If he had been asked that before his capture by the Rebellion, he thought he could have said what that meant. Alright was a day that he hadn't made his master angry, hadn't brought any punishments on himself—no lightning, no choking, no dark cell. But now, here, everything was getting muddled up in his mind. He couldn't think like this, not when he was cut off from the Force and had no way of knowing lie from truth. She was close—so close—and he wished he could sense her intentions as he could with everybody except his m— No, so that he could escape this place and return to Lord Sidious with the leaders of the Rebellion in tow. That was what he wanted. It was.
And if he hadn't tried as hard as he might have done to escape, well, that was just because the Force suppressants were making him feel strange and it was hard to concentrate or— His eyelids drooped, heavy with exhaustion. He couldn't think about this right now.
“Tired” he replied, then froze. He hadn't intended to say that. Don't admit weakness. Sith don't have weakness. But there was something about Amidala that made him want to trust her, and he was far too exhausted and empty to fight against the urge.
“Did you not sleep well last night?” Amidala asked. Her hand twitched oddly at her side, as if she had instinctively started to reach for him and aborted the action before she could. She looked very sad, but she always looked sad.
“I don't sleep well” she admitted. He'd never slept well, for as long as he could remember. Nightmares plagued him—of his master's punishments, of his missions, and other, more elusive things that left him shaking and crying with terror but could never recall beyond vague impressions of deep darkness and red light and a vicious cackling in his ears once he woke. It was the latter that had haunted him last night, chasing him back into wakefulness whenever his eyelids so much as drooped shut. In the end, he had decided to forgo rest entirely, bundling himself up in the warm robe that Amidala had brought him, and waited for morning to come.
“You never did before, either,” Amidala said. “The war...”
She trailed off, suddenly distinctly misty-eyed. The war. He knew that she meant the Clone War. They told him he had fought in it as a General. A Jedi General. Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. He had met the man who had claimed to be his captain, briefly. Rex. And the woman who had supposedly been his padawan—Ahsoka Tano. She had cried when she'd seen him, even as she held him back from attacking her.
“I don't remember the war,” he murmured. He knew, vaguely, that he shouldn't be telling her all of this—if she was lying, revealing anything about his situation was only giving her further fodder for her deception, and that wasn't even taking into considering the general principle of not revealing information that could be used against you to your enemies. But there was something, that strong urge in his mind that he could neither identify nor understand, that was telling him he should be honest with her, should trust her. That it was both good and right to do so. Well, Lord Sidious had always said he was far too trusting, that it would be his downfall if his master were not there to prevent it. “My master told me I fought in it.”
He saw her flinch at the word “master”, biting down so hard on her lip he thought she might make it bleed. She looked as if she were about to cry. Of course, he knew what she thought of his master (she was wrong, naturally; his master had done everything for him, she was wrong, she had to be wrong), what she claimed he had done to him. If she was lying, he thought, she must be an excellent actor.
“Is that...all he told you?” She sounded like she was trying to stay calm, but he could hear the tremor in her voice.
“He didn't tell me much about...before,” Vader replied flatly. He had asked, sometimes, but his master didn't like questions. His hands shook at the memory of purple lightning burning through his veins. “He didn't think it was important.”
He certainly hadn't cared to tell him that he had once been a Jedi Knight. Which he wasn't. He had never been a Jedi. He hadn't. He was getting muddled, confused after weeks on end in this cell with no company but various Rebels regarding him with earnest looks and filling his head with equally earnest words about how he had been used and deceived and that they loved him and wanted nothing more than to help him heal from what the Emperor had done to him— No. No, it wasn't true. He wouldn't believe it. He wouldn't betray his master like that—his master to whom he owed everything. Everything. And yet...
And yet. There was something that didn't sit right in all of this. If he had fought in the Clone War as a powerful Force sensitive, surely he must have been a Jedi? If he had been a Republic soldier at least. All the Darksiders that fought in the war, as far as he was aware, had been Separatists. Surely he couldn't have been a Separatist? They had been evil, spreading chaos and carnage across the Galaxy to the point where his master had been forced to create the Empire to restore order and security when the ineffectual Republic proved less than capable, bogged down by its bureaucracy and over-reliance on the Jedi Order. But if neither were true, then surely he couldn't have fought in the war—not in an official capacity at least. But then, that must mean that, whichever way he looked at it, his master had lied to him and if his master had lied to him once—
No. He wouldn't allow himself to consider it. He wouldn't. His master hadn't lied to him. There was a reasonable explanation. There must be. There must be. Biting back the distressed little noise that was building in his throat, he squeezed his eyes shut, twisting his fingers together beneath the sleeves of his robes. His master hated it when he did that—he'd struck him on several occasions when he failed to suppress the nervous gesture—but Amidala didn't seem to mind it.
“Can I get you anything?,” she asked. “Anything that might help—?”
Vader shook his head.
“I don't need anything.”
“But do you want anything?”
The question had his eyes shooting back open as he turned back to stare at her, incredulous. Want anything? Want anything? He wasn't supposed to want things. He wanted what his master wanted, because he was to serve his master in all things and he owed his master everything—it would be low and ungrateful to want more than he was given—
He wanted...
He wanted...
He looked up at Amidala's beautiful face hovering above him, and he wanted more than anything for what she was saying not to be a lie. That he was her husband, that she loved him, and wanted him to be safe and well and protected from any who would try to hurt him—
No.
“I can't—” he gasped out. He could feel the edges of panic coming upon him, and with great difficulty, he forced himself to breathe slow and deep, counting the seconds as he did when these attacks came upon him. His master didn't like it when he— It was weakness and Sith didn't show weakness— He couldn't— “I...I don't know.”
The admission made him feel small and weak and pathetic, but it didn't seem as frightening with her as it would have done with his master. That, despite the fact that he knew it wasn't the answer she wanted, she wouldn't lash out like Lord Sidious did when he was displeased. All she did was smile at him sadly through a film of tears, giving him a tiny, barely perceptible nod.
“That's alright,” she said. “Would you like me to leave you to rest?”
“I...” Vader swallowed. He was suddenly aware of the fact that, faced with the prospect of her leaving, he really did not want her to go. He shouldn't, of course he shouldn't—his master would be so angry if he knew—but he didn't want— He couldn't ask her to— “Will you...will you stay?”
Amidala's eyes widened at the hesitant question, and for one long moment, he was sure he had made a horrible mistake, but then her face split into the first true smile he had seen upon it. Small though it was, and as hesitant as he felt, it seemed to him to be blinding in its intensity.
“Yes, Ani.” She reached out, slowly, carefully to cradle his flesh hand in both of her own. They were small and strong, the warmth of her touch pleasant against his skin. He did not pull away. “Yes, I'll stay with you. Try and get some sleep. I'll be here with you.”
That night, for the first time he could remember, he slept soundly, still holding onto her hand.