Work Text:
Across the Galaxy, the eighth Empire Day was being celebrated far and wide, but deep into the night in the Rebel base on Dantooine, the mood was far more sombre. Sequestered in her private bunk, away from the crowds mourning the anniversary of the Republic’s demise, Padmé Amidala sat weeping over an old, worn Jedi robe, mourning the anniversary of her husband’s disappearance. She had been holding the tears in all day, trying to put on a brave face for the people who depended on her—for the others in the Alliance, for her beloved Luke and Leia who should not have to bear the burden of her misery—but now that she was alone, she could no longer stop them. They came in floods, in torrents, and not even the realisation that she was staining Anakin’s cloak—the last thing she had of him, save for the japor snippet she always wore about her neck and the bright smiles of their two children, snatched during her forced flight from Coruscant all those years ago—with her crying was enough to dry them up. Anakin, oh Anakin. How she longed to have him beside her. For a sign—any single, solitary sign that he was alive, and safe.
But the years had stretched by, and that sign that she had been hoping for with all her heart had not come.
Eight years. Eight years since the Empire had risen from the corpse of the Republic, and her husband had been counted among the dead of Order 66. Eight years since Obi-Wan and Ahsoka and everyone who had known him had given up hope of him having survived the encounter with Darth Sidious that they could only presume must have occurred. But not her. She had feared it sometimes, in her darker moments, but she had never truly believed it. How could she? Anakin and she had been—were—two halves of a whole. Even with how withdrawn and...different he had become in the days leading up to his disappearance, how far he had been starting to pull away from her and all those who cared for him, she would know if he— She would feel it, even without the aid of the Force that her Jedi friends had the benefit of, deep in her bones. She would know if he had died. And besides, there was no real evidence that he had been—that he had been— No body, no witnesses. Only a few snapped Force bonds and the fact that nobody knew where he was. While that seemed to be enough to convince all the remaining Jedi she knew, it wasn’t enough for her. She wouldn't believe it. She refused to believe it.
But not believing it didn’t make the absence of him hurt any less keenly.
Padmé sniffled, a fresh wave of tears trickling down her cheeks. It always hurt this time of year, remembering everything that she had lost. It hurt everyone in the Alliance—the birth of the Empire had had so many casualties. She had been feeling it—badly—for a while now, and nothing had really made it better, save perhaps for the bright company of her children when they were at their happiest. Missions left her feeling sore and bruised in her heart as well as her body—how could they not when the institution that had ripped both her family and her life's work apart marched inexorably on no matter what they did, as if they were nothing more than annoying bugs that barely warranted swatting? The most recent one—to the Kuat Drive Yards—had been hard, their aims only half accomplished when they were discovered, she and Obi-Wan forced to fight their way through what felt like an endless sea of stormtroopers to escape. Though of course, as bad as it had been, it could have been worse. At the very least, they hadn't encountered Darth Vader.
The intelligence they had received from their informant in the Drive Yards hadn't mentioned that Darth Sidious' third and current Sith apprentice would be there for an inspection, and it was only by sheer dumb luck—or as Obi-Wan had claimed, the will of the Force—that they had just happened to miss him. Had he not been called back to Imperial Centre by the Emperor the day before they arrived on Kuat, they would surely have had him to contend with. Which was concerning, to say the least, as it either suggested that their informant was unreliable—or possibly even a double agent—or else that nobody at all knew that he had been coming to Kuat, and that he had been sent there as much on his master's whim as he had been called away again.
She didn't know why that second reason should concern her as much as the first, but it did. The thought that Palpatine could yank on his enforcer's chain and send him anywhere he wanted just because he wanted to...concerned her. Vader concerned her. Which, of course, made sense. The whole of the Rebel Alliance was concerned by Vader—and more than a little afraid of him. But underneath that healthy alarm that any enemy of the Empire would feel upon hearing the Sith Lord's name, there was a concern which did not make sense. Something about Vader made her uneasy—in a vague, nebulous way that she could not quite grasp, but didn't feel like it was connected to the reasons he unsettled other people. Perhaps it was the way he held himself so still when he appeared behind the Emperor in Galaxy-wide transmissions, as if he would not countenance so much as a twitch should his master not command it. Or perhaps it was the way he concealed himself—the robe and the mask, allowing nothing beneath to be so much as glimpsed. Somehow, Padmé had the idea that if he were to remove that mask, she would not like what she would see behind it.
She scowled at herself, balling her hands—still buried in the billowing folds of Anakin's cloak—into fists. Now wasn't the time to be thinking of Darth Vader of all people. It hadn't made her feel better, certainly hadn't made her stop crying. She bowed her head low over the robe, rubbing her thumb over the fabric in an attempt to soothe herself, and wishing he had not been gone so long that it no longer smelt like him. Oh Anakin. Anakin. Where was he? What had happened to him? What was happening to him even now that he could not find his way back to them—?
"Mommy?"
Padmé gave a sudden start at the sound of the small, trembling voice behind her. Head snapping up as she was pulled sharply out of her spiralling thoughts, she wished—not for the first time—that she had the ability to sense people in the Force, the way the Jedi did, before they could creep up on her without her noticing. She turned around, blinking rapidly to chase the tears away from her eyes. Her vision blurred and coalesced, then morphed into a mirror image of her own face—smaller and younger, but dark eyes just as full of tears as her own.
Leia.
Her daughter could act so grown up for her age sometimes that people often forgot she would only be eight years old in a few days time. To Padmé, however, stood in front of the door that connected the twins' room to hers, dressed in her nightclothes and dark hair tumbling out of her plait into wide, glistening eyes, she looked heartbreakingly young. Despite it all, though, she was clearly trying not to cry, her jaw clenched tight around what, in another child that had not grown up with the threat of the Empire looming over their head, might have been loud, wailing sobs.
"Oh, sweetheart, what's the matter?," Padmé asked, her voice quivering with the force of her own sadness as her brow crumpled into a worried frown. "Are you hurt? Do you need—?"
Leia shook his head, and all of a sudden, Padmé was struck by the horrid thought that perhaps Leia was sensing her distress, experiencing it as if it were her own— But no, Leia had been...off all evening, quiet and moody and uncommunicative in a way that was all too much like her father had been when something had been wrong but he hadn't wanted to burden her with it. She knew from experience—she had to bite down on her lip to fight back another wave of tears—with Anakin that pushing did not help, and so she had tried to give her space, trusting that she would come to her on her own when she was ready. Apparently, that time was now.
Wordlessly, she held out a hand, plastering a reassuring smile on her face that was as shaky as her voice. Leia dashed forward, clambering up onto her lap. Instinctively, Padmé reached out and began to stroke her hair, watching as her gaze flicked down to Anakin's old robe, recognition sparking in her eyes. A little hand stretched out and took a fistful of the dark fabric in its grip.
"Mommy...," she whispered, her voice somehow uncertain and determined all at once. "Is Daddy...is Daddy dead?"
Padmé's hand on her head stilled. Her whole body froze, her mind, her heart. It was as if the winter of Hoth had seeped right into her bones, turning her to living ice. She was choking, couldn't breathe, couldn't speak. What could she say? Oh Force, what in the Galaxy could she say to her precious daughter who, out of nowhere, suddenly wanted to know if her daddy was dead—?
"What?" Instead of any of the comforting things that she wanted to say—should be saying—the words burst out of her without permission or intervention from her brain. "What makes you say that?"
Leia's expression turned mutinous, and Padmé felt her breath catch in her throat, the ache deep in her chest threatening to overwhelm her. Their daughter may resemble her in colouring and features, but that look was all Anakin. She had seen it on his face more times than she could possibly count— more and more as the war had gone on and he had started turning into a shadow of the man he had once been. When he had complained of the Jedi Council, in the aftermath of Obi-Wan's faked death. It was the look of someone who suspected they were being lied to, not trusted, and was masking the hurt that caused them with anger.
"I heard people talking," she said, almost belligerently, as if daring her mother to contradict her, but her tone was belied by the tears that were still shining in her eyes. "They said that Obi-Wan is sad around this time of year because it's when Daddy was killed by the Emperor. That's why he's upset, isn't it? Because Daddy was his best friend and he died and now he's sad without him—"
"Daddy disappeared, Leia," Padmé interrupted her gently. The hand on her head finally came unstuck, and she began stroking her hair again in slow, soothing motions. The little girl was fast working herself up into a crying fit, and she had to get her out of it. She couldn't afford to wallow in her own misery when her daughter needed her, no matter how much she might have wanted to. “Nobody knows what happened to him, but that doesn't mean he's dead.”
She knew that the others in the Alliance wouldn't—didn't—want her to tell her children this. Bail and Obi-Wan wanted her to accept her husband's death as fact, just as they had thought it best for Luke and Leia. “You must face this, for your own good and theirs,” Obi-Wan had told her the last time the subject had been brought up. “Don't let them be burdened by an attachment to a memory. Anakin is gone, Padmé. You know this.” In return, Padmé had longed to snap at him that his insistence that Anakin had died had not brought him any greater measure of peace than hers that he was alive, but that would have been cruel of her, and so she had held her tongue. Still, cruel though it may have been, it wasn't necessarily untrue. Obi-Wan had dealt with his sadness over Anakin's loss by throwing himself into the Alliance's cause, mission after mission, but these most recent ones—as it was every year in the build-up to Empire Day—he had been different. Raw, like a still healing scab that had been picked at until it threatened to start bleeding again. Clearly, he hadn't been hiding his hurt and grief nearly so well as he had thought—or would have liked—if everyone from these “people” who had been discussing his moods to little Leia had picked up on it.
Leia...
Leia. Her beloved daughter, who was still sitting in her lap with wide, tear-filled eyes, staring up at her with an expression that was somewhere between truculent and pleading. Not wanting to be lied to, even for her own good, but still desperate to be convinced that what she had heard wasn't true. It was a burden that Padmé had never wanted her to suffer, even though she had known deep down that it would eventually become unavoidable. Of course it would, when the rest of the Alliance was so convinced that Anakin was dead. Would Luke have to face it soon too? If Leia had already come across talk like this, what would he hear, what might he have already have heard—?
But that was a problem for the future. Now, she had to be strong for Leia. Couldn't let her be crushed under the the weight of the fear that her father had died, when she was sure in her heart that it would have been a lie.
“It doesn't mean he's dead, sweetheart,” she repeated, insistent. “We don't know he's dead.”
Leia's eyes flashed.
“But you think it!,” she retorted hotly. “They all think he's dead! Obi-Wan and Bail and Ahsoka think it! You think it too—you're crying!”
Yes, she was. She could feel the wetness on her cheeks, the soreness in her eyes, despite her attempts to suppress her tears for Leia's sake. Once she had started, it seemed as if she had opened up a well inside her that would never dry up. Those tears weren't only for Anakin now, but also for her children—her darling Luke and Leia who were expected to let go of their father's memory without even having had the chance to remember him. For Obi-Wan and Ahsoka who had let go of all hope and instead were mired in their own grief. And for herself, who felt so empty and alone without her husband by her side. Staring down into Leia's big brown eyes, fierce and frightened and stubborn and sad, she was suddenly struck by the memory of brushing her hair out on the balcony of her apartment on Coruscant, telling Anakin of her plans for a nursery at Varykino, before the dreams and the plotting and everything that had gone wrong. Why, of all the things that could have happened, was this the Galaxy that their children had been born into?
But she knew the answer to that. It was all Palpatine's fault. Everything was his doing, and she would bring him to justice for all the terrible things he had wrought.
“I'm crying because I want your daddy to be here with us, as a family,” she admitted quietly. “I miss him, and that makes me sad.”
Leia's lip wobbled, the tears spilling out from her eyes and over her round cheeks. Softly, tenderly, Padmé reached out and wiped them away with her thumb.
“I don't think he's dead, Leia,” she murmured, with a small, melancholy smile. “I promise you, I wouldn't tell you that if I didn't truly believe it. I feel in my heart that he's out there somewhere, trying to get back to us.”
She felt Leia's gaze on her, searching her face—or perhaps her Force presence—for a lie. Finally, the last of her anger and argumentativeness faded from her expression, leaving in its place something fragile and vulnerable and ever so slightly hopeful.
“Really?” she whispered. If Padmé's heart had not shattered eight years ago on an outbound flight from Coruscant in the wreckage of Order 66, it would have cleaved in two there and then. Force, she looked so young, so innocent. Too innocent for this to be her life.
“Yes, my darling.” Wrapping her arms about her, she pulled her small body to her chest, tucking her head beneath her chin and holding her close. “Really.”
She felt Leia snuggle into her, the sensation of her head resting atop her heart filling her with such love that, just for a moment, it was enough to chase her sadness away. Tugging at the old Jedi robe, she wrapped it carefully around both their shoulders. Large enough to have once swamped six foot tall Anakin in billowing fabric, it swaddled the pair of them easily in something like an embrace.
“I hope he does.” Leia's voice was muffled as she pressed against her, a hint of tiredness starting to seep into it. She pulled at the hem of the cloak, nestling deep into it. Her eyes closed as sleep began to creep up on her. “I want to meet him.”
Padmé smiled tremulously, though Leia could no longer see it. I want you to meet him too, my darling, she thought. Oh Force, how I want you to meet him too. Where are you, Anakin? Where in the Galaxy are you, my love?
The sun was starting to rise over Imperial Centre, marking an end to the Empire Day celebrations that had stretched well into the night, and deep in the inner sanctum of Emperor Palpatine's palace, the Sith Lord Darth Vader was sitting at the workbench in his quarters, fixing the wheel of a mouse droid.
"There." Spitting out the screwdriver he had clasped between his teeth, the young Sith set his tools down on the bench with a soft clink. "Is that better now?"
The little droid beeped up at him, whizzing around in an experimental circle, first clockwise, then anti-clockwise. Its name was MSE-6-L407X, he had discovered when he had found it trundling rather pathetically along on one of his night-time walks through the palace that his master didn't strictly approve of but did not technically forbid. It had been suffering the consequences of a sharply-delivered and ill-deserved kick from whom he could only presume from the long ranting description he had managed to get out of the droid to be Director Krennic, presumably frustrated enough from an audience with the Emperor and Moff Tarkin that had not gone at all in his favour to take it out on passing maintenance staff. Naturally, upon coming across it, Vader had offered to help it out—and to lend a sympathetic ear to the droid's complaints about the poor quality of the organic models that populated the Imperial Palace. That he could well understand—Krennic and his ilk grated on his nerves.
<Affirmative> Having run through its series of tests, MSE-6-L407X rolled forward and nudged itself beneath his hand, beeping in gratitude. <Status: all systems at optimal functioning>
Vader smiled. It was an expression that would have shocked the "faulty organic models"—as MSE-6-L407X had termed them—that made up the Emperor's court had they known what his face looked like to associate it with him, and for good reason. Vader hardly ever smiled. He was not to pursue personal happiness, not when his life and his service was owed to his master. But he liked droids, and he liked fixing things. His master indulged him, allowed him this one little distraction to quiet his mind as long as he had not incurred any punishment, and so in the little time that he had between missions and his intensive and seemingly never ending Sith training, he took full advantage of that rare show of tolerance.
Of course, the sycophants that surrounded his master would have been just as shocked to hear that the infamous Sith Lord they scattered from like insects whenever he made an appearance in their domain helped out broken droids in his spare time as they would have been to discover that he might ever do anything so normal as smile, but what did he care about that? The only opinion that mattered to him was his master's.
"Good. That's good." He patted the little droid atop the chassis once, twice, three times. Then he picked it up and set it down on the floor at his feet. "Now go on. I'm sure you've got duties to get back to. Just try to stay out of the path of any faulty organics in future."
MSE-6-L407X beeped at him again, bumping against his booted foot in a gesture that was unmistakably affectionate before whizzing away through one of the tunnels built throughout the palace so that the mouse droids could move around as unobtrusively to guests and residents as possible. As it whirred out of sight, Vader's smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. He turned to the mess of tools and spare parts left on the bench, and began to meticulously clear them away—his master didn’t like clutter. That done, he wiped down his hands with a coarse rag, replacing the old, worn glove that he wore over his prosthetic when doing mechanical work with the one he wore for everyday use. He was starting to feel hungry, he noticed. There weren’t any windows in his quarters, but he could see from the chrono on the wall that it was early morning—the droid that brought his meals when he was staying in the palace would be here in a little under an hour.
But none of that was enough to distract him as he wanted to be distracted.
Ever since he had returned from his inspection of the Kuat Drive Yards, recalled early by his master in order to fulfil his duties in the build-up to the eighth Empire Day, there had been...something niggling at him. Something in the Force, or something mired deep in the fog of his mind, he didn’t know, but whatever it was, it wouldn’t leave him alone. When he had tentatively brought the subject up to his master, he had told him that it must be because of the Rebel attack on the Drive Yards that had occurred after he had returned to Imperial Centre. Or rather, he had snarled it at him through bouts of Force lightning that had had him screaming and writhing on the floor at the foot of the Emperor’s throne. Lord Sidious had been displeased by the attack. Very displeased.
(It had been...a bad day. Vader was still feeling ever so slightly twitchy in the aftermath of those shocks).
As much as he tried to make himself believe it, however, there was something about his master’s explanation that didn’t feel quite right. Which was absurd. But the attack had been several days ago and that feeling hadn’t gone. It felt as if there was something important he was missing, something that he needed to know but was just out of reach, trapped on the other side of a ray shield that kept him away—no, several ray shields all stacked up one after the other, so that their flickering lights distorted and warped whatever was on the other side of them until he couldn’t make out the shape of it at all. He didn’t like that feeling. It made him doubt his master, and if there was one thing he must never do, it was that. Lord Sidious was never wrong, and to even countenance such a possibility would have severe consequences.
And yet that feeling would not let him be. It nagged and nagged at him. Nagged at him when he hadn’t been able to take it anymore and had resorted to prowling through the corridors at night to fend away his errant thoughts. Even now, it nagged at him, telling him there was something, something, something—
With a frustrated hiss, he ran his mechno hand through his hair, tugging hard on a few strands to ground himself in something other than that elusive and—he suspected with no small degree of dread—traitorous feeling. He needed to stop this, couldn’t keep—
He felt another sharp tug, not on his scalp, but on his mind, and he froze as if he had been caught in the jaws of a krayt. Then, a pneumatic hiss as the outer door to his quarters opened and a familiar presence slinked through it in search of him.
Emperor Palpatine. Darth Sidious. His master.
Even if he hadn’t been able to sense him, he would have known who it was. The only other people that ever came to visit him here were the droids, and his meal was still not due for some time yet. It was a little surprising that he should come to him so early in the day but...well, his master was the Emperor of the Galaxy. It could be reasonably expected for him to keep odd hours if the seriousness of any given situation demanded it.
One look at the thunderous expression half-concealed by the shadow of his hood told him that Lord Sidious most definitely here for one of those serious situations.
"Lord Vader" he croaked, his voice was as hard as durasteel.
"Master." Vader scrambled from the workbench and down onto the floor to greet him. His master had made it very clear that he was to kneel to him whenever he was in his presence, unless he had been given permission to stand. The few times he had not quite obeyed to the man's satisfaction had been punished very harshly indeed, and it was an experience he was not at all keen to repeat. "What—?"
"Quiet."
Vader's mouth clicked sharply shut. His master sounded angry. He didn't like it when his master was angry. A gnarled white hand slipped out from beneath the sleeve of his robe, and Vader fought not to flinch away. But instead of an arc of agonising blue lightning sparking from his fingertips, his master merely waved his hand in an almost negligent gesture, telling him wordlessly to rise. Vader obeyed without pause or question. Lord Sidious hated delays, and he despised hesitation in a servant.
"Do you know where this is from?"
His master reached out and placed a small holoprojector down onto the workbench. The room flooded with blue light as it activated, playing a vidfeed which—he could tell from the angle of the shot—must have come from the HUD of a stormtrooper. It was of a hangar bay—a familiar hangar bay—flooded with troopers, firing at two people fighting against them to escape. One was a Jedi, whirling and slashing and stabbing, slicing through plastisteel armour as if it were butter. He was Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the few Jedi masters to have escaped the Purge during the rise of the Empire. The other was smaller, slighter. A woman, cloaked, face concealed under the shadow of her hood.
"Yes, master," Vader said, watching the recording from his usual place three steps behind and to the right of the man's shoulder. Lord Sidious forbade him from standing at his side like an equal, and he would have taken a very dim view of him looming over him to try and get a closer look. Not that he was sure it was possible for anyone, let alone him, to loom in Sidious' presence. Yes, physically speaking, he fairly towered over his master, who was hunched and withered and had never been particularly tall to start with, but despite their difference in size, he had always felt small beside him. "It is from the Rebel attack on the Kuat Drive Yards."
He did not elaborate, nor ask questions—his master did not appreciate questions. He must trust that all would be explained in time. Instead, he focused all of his attention on to what was happening on the recording. The woman was in trouble, grappling with a trooper that had caught hold of her blaster arm, and was forcing the weapon as far away from him and his fellow soldiers as he could. His other hand came up to grasp at her cloak. She tried to stop him, but it was too late. Her hood tumbled down, revealing her face for all to see.
"Tell me, my friend," his master hissed, his yellow eyes narrowed as they fixed on the woman on the recording, tracking her movements like a hunting anooba. "Do you recognise her?"
Vader blinked. He frowned, watching the woman intently as, having been rescued from her predicament by the Jedi, she raised her slim hand blaster and struck two troopers down in quick succession. She was very beautiful, her eyes that she thought must be a dark brown burning with a fierce determination as she rushed to defend her companion's back, firing again and again into the fray. Some of her dark hair had come loose from her elaborate bun, and as he followed her movements with his eyes, he was suddenly struck by a strange sense that he had seen her like this before. On a desert world, hair in a similar disarray, white bodysuit torn and wielding a heavy duty blaster. Breathless and smiling, saying something that had him smiling back, a soft, warm glow sparking deep in his chest despite the fear and desperation and death all around them—
And then it was gone, slipping from his mind like melting snow. As if it had never been.
"No, master" he said.
Lord Sidious' eyes narrowed almost to slits as he turned around to scrutinise him. Vader held himself still as he felt the man's dark presence prodding at his mind through their bond, searching for anything that might expose his words as a lie. He made no move to shield himself under the attention, to push the man out. Vader always obeyed his master.
"That," Sidious snarled, his presence retreating from Vader's mind as he turned back to the still playing holorecording, eyes flashing dangerously, "is Padmé Amidala."
Vader blinked. The name struck a chord within him. Which...well, of course it did. His master had told him about Queen turned Senator Amidala of Naboo, the young woman he had mentored through her political career in the days of the Republic. The same woman who had betrayed him by siding with the Jedi in their failed coup at the birth of the Empire by helping to found the traitorous Rebellion within the heart of the Senate itself. He understood why his master was so angry now, having been so abruptly confronted with the face of someone whom he had given nothing but friendship and support, and had returned the favour by stabbing him in the back. But what he didn't understand...Well, what he didn't understand was...
"Amidala?," he asked with a frown. "I thought she was declared dead."
His master had told him so. His distinctly remembered it, when he had asked what had become of the traitors that had tried to overthrow him. Lord Sidious had said that she had died for her treason, but not before she could sow the seeds of her dissent into the very foundations of the Empire itself—and that was why he, Vader, must be vigilant in rooting every last trace of it out lest all they had ever worked towards be destroyed. He had listened attentively, even as his heart had ached in his chest to the point of agony, for reasons he had not and still did not understand. He knew that was what his master had told him. So how was she here, now, alive?
"She was presumed so," Sidious spat out, his eyes still fixed on the recording, "based on the information we had after the Jedi's coup. Clearly that information was...misleading."
Misleading? Vader frowned. His master had never struck him as the kind of man who could be misled. But perhaps if the evidence had been convincing enough... He focused all the more intently on the woman in the recording, his eyes narrowed. She had turned her attention to the trooper whose HUD the recording had come from, her gaze directed right at the camera. For one long moment, it was as if their eyes had locked despite the long stretch of space and the few days that stood between them, as if she were staring past all the shields he had built up around his mind right to some hidden place within him that not even he could see. His breath hitched, unable to tear himself away from that blue-tinged stare, blurring strangely as his eyes began to sting with the force of it. It seemed almost to go on forever, before she raised her blaster right in front of her and, steely determination glinting in her eyes, fired. A flash of light and the recording went sideways, abruptly shorting out. Vader shook himself, the spell broken.
The recording ended, there was a long silence.
“I'm sure you understand how this displeases me, Vader,” Lord Sidious eventually spoke, once it had dragged out to the point of becoming unbearable. “Of all the betrayals I have suffered, hers was by far the most painful. But perhaps you are already moved by my plight.”
Without warning, Vader felt an immense, invisible pressure clamp down on him, pushing and pushing until he had no choice but to go with it. He forced back a cry as he crumpled to the floor, knees jarring painfully against the ground below him. The pressure didn't let up, keeping him kneeling at Sidious' feet as he whirled round in a rage to face him. One gnarled hand shot out with the speed and precision of a striking serpent, grasping at his chin and forcing his head painfully far back, so that he could do nothing but stare up into those furious yellow eyes. Throat tightening, Vader felt himself begin to panic. No, no, no. He hadn't done anything to be punished— What had he done to make his master angry? He didn't—
“Unless,” Lord Sidious hissed venomously, “you have some other reason to shed tears over this traitor, apprentice.”
...What?
He wasn't crying. Of course he wasn't. Why would he cry over this Rebel who had betrayed the man to whom he owed his absolute loyalty? Besides, he hardly ever cried. His master didn't like it. But his cheeks did feel warm and wet, and his eyes were blurring and stinging. He could feel them now—the tears that were still trickling from the corners of his eyes, into his hair now rather than down his cheeks because of the uncomfortable angle he was being held at. What was happening? Why—? Why was he—?
“Master...,” he whimpered, caught in the grip of a shame and fear so intense that he could hardly speak. “I...I don't— I don't understand—”
Sidious' eyes flashed.
“Don't you?,” he sneered. His nails bit into Vader's skin as his grip tightened. “Then perhaps I should have you...meditate on the subject. In your cell.”
No, no, no. Nonononono. He hated the cell. Too small, so that he couldn't even stretch his arms out to their full extent without hitting a wall. Too dark, pitch black without the slightest hint of light to see by when the door was sealed shut. Too quiet, with no noise from outside ever finding its way in, and only the sound of his own panicked breathing to occupy him. It was his master's favourite punishment for him, outside of the Force lightning. Leave him there for long enough to stew in the darkness and the silence and the sensation of gnawing hunger in his gut and walls coming in too close, too close, and he would learn his lesson for life. He would never repeat his transgression again.
Then, sometimes, his master was kind to him afterwards.
“Please, master, please...” he begged. He hadn't meant to transgress. He would take whatever punishment that was given to him—confinement to his quarters, being denied meals, anything, just not the cell—
“Silence!”
Sidious gave him a sharp shake, before his hand retreated and he suddenly drew back. Vader's head fell forward, a curtain of hair falling into his eyes. The invisible pressure remained, like an ice cold hand on the back of his neck keeping him bowed in supplication.
“The Empire will hunt her down, and she will die,” his master croaked. Instead of anger, there was now a note of glee in his voice. Vader felt his treacherous heart clench inexplicably at the proclamation, a few more tears slipping from his equally treacherous eyes. “When the time comes, you shall kill her for me.”
Even as something deep within him—something faint and far away and unreachable—screamed and howled at the words, Vader said the only thing he could say.
“Yes, master.”
Appeased, Lord Sidious' lips twisted into a smile. He reached out and—Vader forced himself not to flinch—rested his hand on top of his mess of blond curls.
“Be careful of these Rebels, Lord Vader,” he said. “They are cunning and deceitful, and if they were to ever learn of your...deficiencies, they wouldn't hesitate to use them to twist your mind against me.”
Vader swallowed. It was an old warning—a much repeated warning. That if his enemies were ever to discover how little memory he had of his own life, how many years upon years he was missing, they would surely take it as an opportunity to fill his head with lies. Another hot wave of shame washed over him at the thought. He would never doubt his master, but perhaps if this were how he reacted to seeing a simple holorecording of a Rebel woman he didn't even know...perhaps Lord Sidious was right to be concerned—
“I understand, master” he whispered, hollowly.
Sidious snorted.
“So you say,” he mused. “You have always been too trusting, too ready to attach yourself to those who would do you harm.”
One final pat on the head, and he pulled away. Reaching out to the holoprojector, he started to play the recording again. Vader frowned, confused, then started violently as he felt the invisible grip that had been holding him by the nape of his neck transfer to his head, forcing him to turn and watch.
“Whatever sympathy you may feel for these people,” Lord Sidious said, “you must destroy it.”
For a moment, he saw the face of Padmé Amidala once again, revealed as her hood tumbled down and she grappled with the trooper that had attacked her. Then, his master stretched out a skeletal white hand and curled it into a fist. The holoprojector cracked in several places at once, then crumbled into dust. Amidala's face disappeared in a shower of sparks.
Vader stared for one long moment at the place she had been, tears still dripping down his face. He felt empty inside.
“Yes, master” he said once again, and meant it. He always meant it. Vader lived to obey his master, and no holorecordings of strangers or inexplicable displays of emotion would change that.
(It was a long time after Sidious left that his tears finally dried up).