The Long Road Back

Chapter One: Painful Beginnings

Notes: The humor will pick up in later chapters.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every day was the same. He should have known, shouldn't he? Why should the everyday details of being a Sith be any less boring than the everyday details of being a Jedi?

Vader had gotten through the days with intimidation tactics on his employees, routinely choking those who annoyed him, but Anakin was determined not to do that if he could help it. He was trying to regain control, not slide backwards into the darkness he'd consigned himself to.

Inside the black suit he was forced to wear, Anakin sighed, hand raising reflexively to run through his hair and encountering the helmet instead. He heaved another, longer sigh. He kept forgetting his entire head was encased. It wasn't natural to him. He still remembered having hair. And that matter wasn't the only one he routinely forgot.

He forgot the children were gone. He forgot there was no one at the Temple. He forgot he and Obi-Wan were no longer on speaking terms and undoubtedly would be so for a very long time. He hated that. Anakin found himself wanting to speak with his former friend and Master, to unburden himself to him as he should have done back then, yet knew that even if he found where Obi-Wan was hiding, the older man wouldn't wish to have a casual chat.

No, they'd end up fighting, dredging up a painful past. The same past Anakin longed to make right. He'd erred terribly in trusting Palpatine on anything. The old Sith didn't care about him. He never had. All he cared about was power. Since Anakin had undergone the operation after Mustafar, Palpatine had ceased to behave as a friend would. If Anakin hadn't realized the line between Master and Apprentice before, he certainly knew it now. Palpatine made certain he knew it.

He longed with all of his being to go back in time. He wanted to sit with Obi-Wan and tell him everything.

I'm an idiot, he berated himself. What was I thinking?

The answer rose in his mind as an image: Padmé, his beautiful, intelligent wife that he'd tossed aside in the end out of misplaced anger. He even forgot she was dead. She had never done anything to deliberately hurt him and he'd assumed the worst. He'd chosen his path for her and let himself become carried away by visions of power and glory. He'd become greedy and destroyed the very things and people he'd cared for. Childbirth had not killed Padmé. He had.

And he felt the pain of her loss every day since then. He felt as though a part of him was ripped away. All his efforts to date at closure had been unsuccessful. Still, Anakin could not accept that she had died. It did not feel right to him that he had killed her, but Palpatine insisted he had. He needed to move forward, yet how did one come to grips with murdering one's wife?

"He goes to Naboo," he said, cringing a little at the sound of his voice through the mask. He hated that rasping hissing that accompanied every breath. Once, he had breathed easily, without needing machines to aid him. He had taken deep breaths of sweet air all on his own.

He sat in his shuttle, anxiety growing the closer he came to Naboo. He had to do this. He had to let himself fall into the past. It was part of his own solitary attempts to save himself. He was making himself relive the past, to remember where things had gone so wrong. Maybe it would work and maybe not. Going to Naboo was the most painful thing he had tried so far.

Vader, of course, tried to alternately talk him out of it and push him into it.

Go on, Anakin, try it. Go for it. We both know how good you are dealing with emotional issues. Why even try? Let me handle it all. I'm good at it. I'm good with the emotional aspects. Let me take them. You won't have to think about it anymore. No reason to go there.... Set on it are you? Very well. You'll cave under the pressure of memories in minutes at most. Go ahead. It'll just bring you back closer to me. Go there if you think you're strong enough. You're not. You're weak. I'm the strong one.

In the wee hours of the morning, Anakin Skywalker, dressed as Darth Vader, stepped out of his shuttle on Naboo and began to take a tour of the past. Memories were his only companions. He forced himself to walk the streets of Theed, ignoring the whispers and the terrified expressions of the people he passed. Would he turn and kill them if they made a sound? That was what he knew they were wondering. Anakin knew people cringed and cowered when they saw him. That wasn't what he'd ever wanted.

Palpatine had turned him into a monster and he had let him.

Inside the mask, tears made tracks down his cheeks.

Vader was greatly disappointed to be wrong. Anakin did not budge from his place in ascendance under the weight of memories.

~~~~~~~~~~

Padmé Amidala Skywalker had thought she was dying when she'd felt consciousness begin to leave her after she'd birthed the twins. She'd been too weak to do much of anything except let death take her, so she'd been surprised to wake in a strange place. The bed had been soft, the room shadowed and smelling of Naboo in the spring. She'd tried to get up and found Dormé suddenly there with her, aiding her weak stumblings.

She was even now surprised by how the time had gone since that day.

Obi-Wan, Bail and Yoda had come up with a complicated plot to hide both her and the twins, splitting them all up and faking Padmé's death to make Palpatine believe she was no longer a threat. They'd contacted Dormé, whom Obi-Wan had remembered as being exceptionally loyal in her duties, and from there, Dormé had helped plan Padmé's escape. Padmé made a break from her former life, leaving her family, Ellé and Moteé safe from scrutiny. Who, they'd reasoned, would remember Dormé, who'd left service to care for her ill father? She was beyond the contemplation of the Empire.

The two of them had spent a year hidden in the hills of the lake country, while Obi-Wan and Bail settled the twins into their new homes. Slowly, Padmé's physical strength had returned. Her mental health was not as good during those months. Obi-Wan had been frank with her on what had occurred after she'd collapsed on Mustafar. No one had wanted him to tell her all of it, but she'd insisted. Padmé had told him she needed to know so she didn't harbor any false illusions for her future. She needed the terrible truth. He'd held her hand as he spoke, gently stroking the back of it, a center of calm in a life that whirled about her as a storm.

She knew it was Anakin in the horrible black suit and it tore her up inside to see him like that....

Dormé had banned news reports. She didn't think it healthy for Padmé to watch report after report, her hand reaching out towards the black-suited figure.

For weeks Padmé had not spoken, preferring to sit at the waters edge and relive treasured memories. But then she'd asked Dormé, "What now?"

Then, Dormé took her to Tatooine.

They'd been there ever since, living in Obi-Wan's small house, rarely going into town. Occasionally, Padmé got to visit Luke. Those were moments she treasured. Owen would bring him out there and stand silently to one side as Padmé held her son and wondered on the changes that occurred so rapidly in him. Her questions were answered in monosyllables and sometimes.... Sometimes Owen would smile and give her something Beru had made. A scarf to cover her face with during the midday sunlight. A few pieces of cake. Once Beru had sent a holoimage of Luke, toddling about and saying 'mama', that word all children try out as they learn language. Beru had thought Padmé would like seeing that.

Of course the image had gone back home with Owen. She couldn't have kept it, though she wished dearly she could.

Luke was older now and soon, the visits would have to stop. He'd wonder who the woman was he was taken to see and she couldn't have herself put in a position of trying to explain. Nor could she do that to Owen and Beru. She had to let Luke go now.

Padmé stepped to the rocks at the bottom of the slope and began to walk on them, hopping from rock to rock. This was her home now, as much as she hated this hot planet. It was far too warm for comfort and dry, the sand getting everywhere, as Anakin had once stated. Obi-Wan, Bail and Yoda had decided that she'd be safest here after her initial convalescence was finished, so here she was.

She glanced back at the house, seeing her two friends sitting on the steps watching her. They were talking about her she knew. Obi-Wan didn't want her to leave Tatooine and Padmé had made up her mind to do so. The time felt right. It wasn't the dangerous undertaking he insisted it was. It had been four years and the Empire thought her dead. She only wanted to go back to Naboo, to Varykino. She needed some kind of peace on the issue of Anakin. Closure.

She knew she'd never love another man and she didn't care to love another. No matter what Anakin had done, they were still married. They were husband and wife and she would consider them such until the day she really died.

Obi-Wan didn't want her to go. He told her she should stay here with him and Dormé. It was his opinion that she should live out her days there with them, settling into a rut, watching life pass her by. She'd had enough excitement for about thirty people in her young life. Of course, he didn't put it that way. He spoke of danger to her if she was found out and of danger to the babies.

Babies.

She paused on the rocks, biting her lip as she looked across the desert. Obi-Wan and Dormé thought she didn't know on that matter. They thought she was too wrapped up in her continuing grief to notice their happiness. Since going into hiding, Obi-Wan seemed to have thrown that Jedi vow not to love right out the window. He'd married Dormé two years earlier in a quiet ceremony with herself, Owen and Beru Lars present. He'd married. Jedi weren't supposed to do that. A little romance she could understand, but marriage?

She recalled Obi-Wan's words when she'd asked him about the vow Anakin had told her about. He'd tilted his head with the most amused stare, as though he couldn't believe she of all people was asking.

"Can a Jedi love? Of course we can. We can have all the relationships we wish, as long as we can keep ourselves from deep attachments that might keep us from doing our job." He'd paused. "Many of the children in the Temple were children of Jedi, Padmé. I thought you'd realized that, being as...close to Anakin as you were."

"But you married Dormé," she replied. "Married, Obi-Wan. Make this make sense to me, because Jedi can't marry."

"There are no more Jedi," he'd said quite reasonably. "Yoda and I are it for the most part. With only a few of us scattered about, I think an exception is allowed at this point. My opinion, of course, and I realize Yoda might disagree with me on the matter."

Since then, she'd had the urge to find Anakin and smack him while shouting 'you big dummy' at him over and over, along with a few strong epithets on his misunderstanding of the code. Relationships, just not marriage.

Padmé crossed her arms. Dormé was pregnant. She had to be, because Padmé well remembered the sickness and the sleepiness and the things that went with that state. Dormé was experiencing several of them, not to mention her sudden shift from being cold all the time to being hot all the time. In Padmé's opinion, this was the best time for her to go. She could leave for a few months, perhaps a year or so and come back when the baby was old enough that she wouldn't feel the pain of giving up her own children.

As though that pain will ever go away, a tiny voice whispered in her mind. You're dreaming.

It was settled, she decided. Obi-Wan and Dormé just didn't know it yet.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Talk some sense into her," Obi-Wan said for the fifth time, lips twisting with disgust. He'd spent the better part of an hour arguing with Padmé over the wisdom of her taking that trip to Naboo and he knew she would do whatever she pleased in the end. He could not keep her here against her will. Obi-Wan sighed. He remembered Captain Typho once saying that he'd be more concerned about Padmé doing something foolish than Anakin. That woman, he thought, was the most stubborn woman he'd ever been acquainted with, his Dormé included.

His Dormé. Obi-Wan glanced at her as she joined him on the steps to watch Padmé on the rocks in the Tatooine twilight. He'd been wary of getting into a relationship with another of Padmé's handmaidens, but this one had certainly worked out far better than the first. He'd never imagined that one day he'd be able to have a wife. The previous handmaiden had accused him of callously breaking her heart by saying there was no future for them that included legal marriage. She'd cried and carried on and finally stopped as though a switch had been thrown, informing him in an icy tone that whatever they had was over. He recalled feeling like the very lowest of the low right then.

How strange that his future had included marriage after all. Sometimes he had the oddest urge to find that lady and apologize to her. He had not meant to hurt her.

Dormé leaned against him, making herself comfortable. It was a wonder to him that they had fallen for each other. He would not have predicted it when she and Padmé had arrived. In fact, she had irritated him quite a bit with her bossy attitude and insistence on rearranging his belongings in the rooms.

"You know very well I can't talk my lady into anything, Ben. No one can. Once she makes up her mind, that's it. Her path is set."

Was it ever. Padmé was as unbending as he was on the issue and he knew they would wake up one day soon and find her gone. It was a foregone conclusion and Obi-Wan resigned himself to it. "She's stubborn."

"You've known her how long and you still expect her to be otherwise?"

He turned, putting an arm around her and a hand on her belly. "Well, if she does go, you are not to go with her. I'll not have you endangering our baby. You'll stay here, safe and sound."

Dormé covered his hand with hers. "I can take care of myself."

"I know you can. You don't need to prove it." He knew Dormé was as capable as Padmé and about as stubborn.

Her attention returned to Padmé, who had turned and was watching them now. "She wouldn't take me with her anyway."

The comment caught his attention, but she would not explain it. Moments later, Padmé passed them, voicing her intention of making an early night of it. She seemed true to her word, but with the inevitability of her flight from them on his mind, Obi-Wan readied the speeder. If she went, he'd rather know the vehicle would not break down halfway to town than wonder if she'd gotten there.

He turned in shortly after Dormé, pretending to sleep as he heard Padmé leave the house and Dormé follow her. His wife had not dressed, only thrown on her robe over her nightgown and he could hear their conversation perfectly well. Obi-Wan did nothing and when Dormé returned, he held her close.

~~~~~~~~~~

She took nothing with her, nothing that might hold her down. In her life, it had been a rare occurrence to travel light and she found she was looking forward to it. It was going to be a challenge. Padmé looked forward to something to keep her mind occupied. With light steps, she made her way outside and to the speeder, hearing someone behind her. She glanced back, knowing it was likely Dormé and was proven correct.

"Go back inside," Padmé ordered, looking the speeder over and noting that it was ready. She spied a small pouch on the passenger seat and opened it, not wanting to take anything of Obi-Wan or Dormé's with her. Inside she found various things that would make this trip much easier. She smiled softly to herself. Obi-Wan was thoughtful that way. He would see her taken care of as long as he could.

"My lady, Padmé. Don't do this."

Her arm was grasped, Dormé's fingers digging in.

"You can't follow where I have to go, Dormé. Go back to your house and your husband and enjoy the life you have here together. It's precious and before you know it, it'll be gone. Trust me."

Dormé released Padmé's arm. "My lady please. Stay here."

Padmé hugged her. "Take care of that baby. If all goes well, I'll be back next year or so."

~~~~~~~~~~

Dormé didn't want her to go. She was more than half afraid that Padmé wasn't ready for this step, though logically she knew she had to be if she'd set herself to it.

"My lady." Dormé heard the desperation in her own voice, but Padmé didn't acknowledge it, taking another few steps away. "It's dangerous out there." There were Tusken Raiders and creatures and every manner of dangerous things. Night here was not gentle and never had been.

"There's always danger. I don't think there's a place in this galaxy that is without danger anymore. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. No one knows I'm alive, Dormé. As far as anyone who sees me is concerned, I'm just a look-alike. Padmé is dead. I'll be careful. I promise. This is something I have to do."

With that, Padmé was gone. Dormé was reminded of another time when they had parted ways. She remembered the bus, and Padmé walking away with Anakin Skywalker. Considering how that had turned out in the end, she wasn't entirely comforted by Padmé's reassurances. With a troubled heart, she returned to bed and her husband's loving embrace.