Author's Note: If you like this one of mine, I would recommend my other short Anakin/Padme fic "Let it Be Enough" (which I personally feel is the better of the two). This was inspired, of course, by Episode III, and does contain spoilers.
Anakin is dreaming (while I suppose Darth Vader is merely sleeping). The whole dream-setting is perhaps overrated and overdone, but I really don't care.
PS. You can tell I like the idea of Naboo in the morning, huh?
"Padmé!" Anakin cries as he wakes, sitting up in his bed—the bed he shares with his wife. For a few moments he can do nothing but repeat her name, sweating all over and gulping air down his throat. It seems remarkable that he should breathe so easily, but he can't quite put his finger on why. "Padmé!" He calls again, and this time feels the weight next to him shift on the bed, her wonderful, warm body sitting up as well. His wife lightly rubs her eyes, and her hair is tasseled, messy, slept-in. Padmé's mouth is drawn in annoyance at being woken, but there is no real anger in it.
"Anakin, what's wrong?" Her voice is how Anakin remembers it, how he knows that it has always been. The dim almost-light of an almost-dawn seems to sneak into the room, getting brighter gradually, almost unnoticed. The young man wipes his thick hair away from his eyes, feels it soaked with sweat, and wonders again why it seems that his breathing is so easy—he is reminded of dreams as a child, where he could breath underwater (though the fact that he could dream of water on Tatooine is probably ironic in itself).
"I had the most terrible dream," He tells her, kissing her brow, then her cheek, and at last her lips. Carefully, with the painstaking slowness of deep, raw love, Anakin runs the back of his hand over her cheek, runs his hand through her hair and down the back of her neck. Though he knows that they are both safe, that they are comfortable in their bed and out of harm's way on beautiful Naboo, he thinks that there is something wrong in the picture, that there is something just barely amiss. And in the darkness of the almost-morning, secured away under deliciously cozy sheets, he brings himself to do something that he does not do often enough: he tells her his dreams.
"I had a dream of war—I had a dream that the Jedi were shot in the back by their allies. I had a dream that… that Senator Palpatine was not what he seems. I had a dream and he played me like a damn fool and I followed along and, and, and I did it to save you but it wasn't enough…" Anakin's words tumble out, clumsy and vulnerable. He regrets having started, but not that he has, he does not think he will be able to stop.
"Anakin, slow down. Please, what's wrong?" Padmé touches his face lightly, with long, graceful fingers, her perfect brow lined with concern.
"I killed children, Padmé. I killed younglings, and I killed the defenseless, and I should have killed Palpatine when I had the chance but I didn't. I knew what he was and I was too stupid or too confused… I was too scared to do what had to be done."
"Younglings? Anakin, what are you talking about?" Her hand draws back a fraction, her mouth a tight line. He can't bear to feel her pull away from him, feels such a horrible, agonizing cold when she does. Catching her smooth hand in his calloused one, Anakin holds her, gently but firmly. Again there is a feeling that something is not right with this, and he suspects it has to do with the lighting: for some reason, though the morning has found its way inside of the room, everything is still too dark. It's as if really, behind all the things he is seeing there is really an emptiness, a blackness that reminds him of dead space without any stars.
"I did it to save you Padmé. I hurt you, too, but I only wanted to save you. I was just—I'm just so afraid to lose you, and I did it all to save you. It wasn't enough, do you understand? I killed so many people, but it wasn't enough to keep you from dying." There is a nervous nausea rising in his throat, and he thinks for a moment that he can't see her face, even when he is sitting right next to her. Her features seem to swim out of focus, as if his eyes simply stopped working for a second or two.
"It was only a dream," She tells him, but he can see that hearing this has troubled her. He knows that she doesn't like his dreams, that they scare her because they scare him. Again he takes her wrists, searches her face for something, anything: the room is too dark, and his eyes won't work right.
"But it wasn't," Anakin whispers, as if telling her this is the most vital thing in all the galaxy. "I couldn't save you. He tricked me, and he lied, and he knew it, he knew that I couldn't save you." Tears spread wet on his cheeks, and he understands why his vision is unclear, and why his dream had felt so real—though it fills him with the most distressing sorrow (and for now it is sorrow, not hatred that he feels), he knows that this is the dream, and that the other is his waking life. "I didn't save you Padmé," His is barely audible, choked and pathetic as the darkness swims in front of his eyes. He grips her arms with all the power in his body, but she does not cry out: after all, a dream-woman does not feel.
"I'm so sorry," Anakin whimpers. His breath does not come easy now: feels lodged snug and bulging in his throat. He must be waking slowly, somewhere in his real life. "I'm so sorry."
"Anakin," Padmé urges, saying the words he can never, ever forget as he feels his heart already begin to seal itself for the next day. Once more he will become a puppet to the man—the creature—that caused all the pain, all the suffering. "You're breaking my heart."
He tries to hold on to the dream. He tries to kiss her a last time.
Instead he finds himself waking in darkness, the true darkness of space.
How many times has he had that dream?
Obviously, he (who is now not Anakin, but Darth Vader) cannot keep any record: he cannot allow the Master to know. He tells himself that this is because he will not have the Master see weakness in him: the truth is that he will not allow the Master the pleasure of knowing how deep the canyon of his love was and still is, and how filled it has become with hatred. His secrets, of course, do not matter; the Master knows.
Already now, as he approaches full consciousness, with the artificial light coming on (light that can hardly even be called light, not after one has spent any time on Naboo), the man is losing the battle to keep that dream alive inside of him. The feel of her hands, the whisper of her hair, the way light always seemed to catch itself in her eyes: each one is a single sweet thing he would like to remember in such a repulsive place, in his disgusting life as the Emperor's own personal marionette. Darth Vader pushes Anakin's thoughts aside, shoves them into a remote, uninhabited corner of his mind that he will not allow the Master to see.
By the time the man who was once Anakin Skywalker rises from bed, the last wisps of his night's dreams are nothing but a handful of dust in the wind.