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“Padmé!”
She turned away from him without so much as a word. Ice burned him from the inside out, the flutters of memory curling his grip.
“Padmé!” he repeated, but this time his voice was mixed with one she’d never heard in life, but that he knew well. His grip settled elsewhere, this time, holding her in place as he stomped up the stairs of the shrine.
He stepped into the shrine, ignoring the way the floor protested his weight, and strode directly for Padmé. With a single motion, he made her turn and face him.
Her eyes were filled with grief, but they were dry as she struggled against him.
“Let me go, Anakin.”
“There’s nothing out there for you,” he said. He hadn’t even spared the world beyond the shrine a glance, but he didn’t need to. He knew he spoke the truth. “You have to stay here, Padmé, where I can keep you safe.”
“Safe?” she echoed. “You killed me, Anakin.”
For a moment his grip faltered.
“Stop running away,” he ordered. “That’s how you got hurt the first time. I don’t want to keep hurting you.”
He stepped forward, and his foot went through the fragile wooden floor. He stumbled, but refused to let it break his grip on her.
The ice wasn’t just inside him. It was in the shrine, too, growing and cracking and straining the structure. The roof began to crumble, and Padmé’s eyes went wide.
“Anakin, please!”
The floor crumbled away, but he refused to loosen his grip, even as they fell. She would not leave this place. She would not leave him.
The bacta tank shattered, and Vader gasped in shallow breaths as he woke up. Alarms blared, and a medical droid was quick to reattach his helmet.
He was alone.