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He looked up at Luke - his son, sweet and Light and so like Padme - as the boy gingerly unclasped the helmet from around his head, and lifted it off Vader’s head with a gentleness that he had not received in over 20 years.
He could hardly remember the last time he saw things not in shades of red, purple or black, but he was glad that the first thing he saw were his son’s blue eyes.
Anakin tried to smile at his son, face cracking under the strain. Not only was he trying to use face muscles that, again, had not been used in over 20 years, but the deep layers of scar tissue all over his body meant his skin was tough and not used to stretching.
Luke had, impressively, had little reaction when seeing his face; Anakin was sure it can’t have been pretty. It certainly didn’t feel pretty. But the boy - because he was a boy, barely 23, but then again Anakin was younger when he Fell - did not look shocked, only sorrowful. He wanted to tell him not to be sorry, but he couldn’t help just drinking in the sight of his son, how now without those blasted lenses he could see more of a resemblance to himself, as well as Padme’s height and her steadfast emotions.
His only regret was that he would not get to truly see Leia in the same way. Naturally he had met her previously, several times in fact. It was hard to remember anything, however, before he had met Luke, when he was swamped in that dark, all-encompassing cloud, and afterwards he really was only focused in on Luke’s bright light. The princess and her smuggler boytoy were just afterthoughts of bait. Now though… he strained to remember her. Dark-haired, he thought, with more than a passing resemblance to Padme, and certainly similar to the vague memories of his mother that he still had left. And his temper to go along with it, although she was considerably less reckless than he had been. The Organas’ good influence, he supposed.
He wished he could have apologised.
“Now go, my son.” He forced through his throat, unused to speaking without the respirator and modulator. His throat was lines of pain, and his chest grew tighter and tighter with each breath. He could hear the bangs, the sounds of the ongoing fight and the desperate crawl to flee the Death Star, and he would not let Luke die. Not anymore. “Leave me-” his chest was rocked with a spasm, causing him to choke. Luke’s eyes lit up with panic.
“No, you’re coming with me. I’ll not leave you here, I’ve got to save you.”
Anakin looked up into his son’s earnest, worried face, and thought back to that moment after the Death Star’s construction, where his son’s light had pierced through the dark veil that hung over his life.
“You already have, Luke.”
He can feel the dark closing in on his surroundings, the way it’s getting harder and harder to breathe through battered, smoke-rotted lungs. But he needs Luke to understand what he has done for Anakin, not Vader.
“You were right. You were right about me.”
The darkness begins to swallow him up. Not the malevolent darkness of the last 23 years, but a darkness of sweet relief.
He forces out one last whisper.
“Tell your sister you were right.”
And the darkness comes over him.
He blinks quickly, and all of a sudden has the very disconcerting feeling of staring at his own body. Luke has a hand on his shoulder - he couldn’t even feel that through the numbness and the synth leather.
“Father!” He can hear the tears in Luke’s voice. “I won’t leave you!”
He still cannot breathe properly. Is this the punishment, then? Is he to spend the rest of his life forced to relive his death?
“Anakin!”
He spins around so quickly he ends up overbalancing and falling to his knees. They’re no longer in the Death Star, just surrounded by a navy sort of darkness and pathways of stars. Obi-Wan kneels in front of him, not the old, broken Obi-Wan Kenobi he killed on the first Death Star but Obi-Wan as he knew him, sarcastic and kind and his master.
“Anakin, you’re having a panic attack, please just breathe-”
Anakin flings himself at his old Master, now more conscious of the tears pouring down his face and his gasping, heaving breaths. But he can’t seem to make himself stop, not after Obi-Wan, after 20 years of betrayal and heartache, still gathers him in the folds of his robe like he is still a fresh padawan, away from the only home he has ever known.
“I- I left Luke-”
“You are allowed to rest, Anakin.” Obi-Wan gently rubbed his fingers through his hair and Anakin had missed the touch of another person. He pushes further into his master like a tooka, craving that soft pressure and warmth. “It is not your fault. You have put things right, dear one. And now, Luke can grieve his father properly.”
Anakin begrudgingly let go of Obi-Wan a little and harshly scrubbed his face. It felt strange, in all honesty, to feel like he had a body again. It was like those first few months as Vader, when he could barely walk his dysmorphia was so strong.
“How could Luke still love me, at the end?”
“I’m not sure I’m exactly the right person to ask.” Obi-Wan stroked his beard and Anakin felt a wave of nostalgia so strong he almost began crying again. “I suppose he could always feel the remnants of light in you. You Skywalkers, you love so strongly; Luke had the faith in you to keep him going. After all, you may have told me you killed Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader, but we both know that that wasn’t really true. And Luke showed us both.”
“I regret it, now. Not having more time with him. And Leia.”
He rested the side of his head against Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “I know. And you will appear to him again, but- let’s stay here for a moment.”
“Yes. Let’s.”