The Long Road Back

Chapter Two: Changes Begun

Notes: Completely disregarding Vader/Anakin's real physical condition as put forth in many sources recently....

~~~~~~~~~~

As Vader, Anakin went to Varykino. He had no trouble gaining entry and for the large part, the wedding party going on did not disturb him. They were surprised, of course, that the empire would send him, but they were honored....Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. He could walk around the building and grounds all he wanted. Which he did, wondering as he strolled if the building was still owned by Padmé's family. No answer suddenly burst into his mind and he didn't feel like asking.

Anakin headed for the balcony, ignoring the large spread of food and drink in the dining room. He never ate in front of another person, not with his appearance as it was. The scarring on his face wasn't quite as bad as it could have been, yet was still enough to cause him discomfort for another person to see. He disliked having people staring at him as he tried to eat. Palpatine occasionally forced him to eat with others present. It delighted his Master to humiliate and humble Anakin in any way he could, continuing reminders that he wasn't what he had been.

Good riddance to that youth, Vader murmured. He was weak. You're weak. Face it. Without me you are nothing. A shallow man with shallow ambition. I'm the one who gives us strength, Anakin. I'm the one who has gotten us where we are.

And where are we, he countered. In servitude to a tyrant. Enslaved. The same way we began our life. How is that desirable?

He found someone already there. For a long moment, he stood at the door, watching her, this girl he saw with the long hair and the flowing dress.

She was not Padmé. He had to tell himself that several times. For one thing, she was too young, likely younger than Anakin himself. Her hair was similar to Padmé's, long and curled, but the color was dark blond, not dark brown, and she was taller than his wife had been by several inches. Nevertheless, Anakin drank in the sight of her. It had been too long since he'd seen an image of Padmé and this young woman satisfied a bit of that longing.

Palpatine refused to have any images of her anywhere his pet apprentice could see. No sense in dwelling on the past, was there, he'd said. She's dead already. Get on with it. It seemed strange to Anakin that Palpatine would not rub in Padmé's death more. Knowing now the sorts of things his Master liked to use against him, he would have thought her death would be the ultimate weapon. But Palpatine didn't use it anymore after that one time. He rarely mentioned her and if he did, it was with contempt and impatience, as though she was not worth remembering.

Padmé betrayed us, Anakin. She and Obi-Wan both. Don't you remember that little part?

He tried to tune out Vader's voice.

The woman glanced over her shoulder, fear rippling across her pretty features. Ignoring it, he stepped towards her, joining her at the rail. "Describe the evening to me," he requested. His voice through the mask made the request sound like an order. He didn't intend it as such. She could refuse or answer, he didn't care which.

Her gaze flicked down him and back up. Slowly, she gave a nod of consent and swallowed hard. When she spoke, he recognized the accent and thought a moment on where he'd heard it before. Dormé. She had that accent. Was this woman from that same region? Anakin frowned. Why ever was he thinking about Dormé? "The air is cooling, but the breeze is still warm, carrying the scents of wildflowers and water. There will likely be rain this evening."

Anakin watched, darkly amused by her attempts at nonchalance, as though she spoke with a Sith Lord every day. He smiled, let his glance drift over her, surprised to feel a stirring inside him. A yearning.

His smile faded and he stared at her as he had once stared at Padmé, in appreciation for her feminine charms. He looked and what he saw pleased him. The thrust of her breasts, the indent of her waist, and the curve of her hips. And then the slim column of her neck and the line of her back.

Something stirred.... Life. He felt as though he had been dead and was now coming back to life.

His hand raised, touched her back. She stiffened. Anakin sensed her terror of him and was saddened because he could not feel her skin through the glove he wore. The skin of her back looked smooth and soft.

She was holding her breath, pressed tightly to the balcony, as though she intended to merge with it. Her jaw was clenched hard and he surmised that sheer will was keeping her from screaming. What was she thinking? Did she wonder what was behind the mask? Was her imagination conjuring up gruesome images and frightened ideas of why he was touching her back? Did she think he would cart her off to be part of some sort of harem? Palpatine had been amused by rumors of Imperial harems and not discouraged them.

The idea was ridiculous in his opinion. Palpatine didn't lust after women, he lusted after power. Any woman he'd had anything with had been a means to an end: power of some sort.

Anakin hadn't even considered until this moment that he himself could still feel those sort of longings. He had assumed after Mustafar and the burns.... But he could feel those longings. He did feel them, and a physical response to the longings.

Now that he knew....

Anakin lifted his hand from her, returned it to the railing. "You may go."

He remembered what it had been like to have a woman look at him with love and wanted to revisit that place. He wanted to take off the helmet and feel soft lips on his and gentle fingertips trailing his skin. Anakin wanted to feel. No more hiding away and running from everything. No more terror from all who saw him. This was not a life, it was a hellish prison.

I was loved once, he thought. And I will be again, whether Palpatine likes it or not.

A seed of further rebellion was planted in his mind, sprouting quickly in the Naboo evening.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The trip to Naboo was uneventful and while Padmé had hoped to find Varykino empty, she instead found the remnants of a wedding party helping to clean up after their reception. She didn't recognize anyone, but supposed the family could be friends of her parents or sister, made since Padmé's 'death'. They were all abuzz with the news that the empire had honored their little reception with the appearance of the Emperor's right hand, Darth Vader.

She had started at that, looked nervously about and been told that he had gone hours earlier after startling the bride's sister out on the balcony. The girl was still upset.

Curious, Padmé searched her out. The girl, perhaps eighteen, was with another girl, hesitant to tell what had upset her. Padmé asked to speak with her and slowly managed to draw the story from the girl.

She had been out on the balcony and Lord Vader had followed her, joined her at the railing and asked her to describe the evening. After she had, he had touched her back in a suggestive manner. The girl had asked in all seriousness if there was any truth to the rumors of secret harems and was she going to be taken away?

Padmé did her best to reassure the girl. She didn't think there could be any truth to that particular rumor. The description of the incident prompted a wondering in her mind of why Anakin had come here and why had he touched that girl's back? Had he lost himself in memory? It gave her something to think about and she took her leave of the place without staying as she'd intended, instead going to the cottage she and Dormé had shared.

It was habitable still, and clean. Padmé bought supplies and settled in, then tried to find diversions to keep her mind and body occupied. Her first idea led her to a large building outside the nearest town.

She stared at the large sign that read 'Nursery'. Couldn't this place be normal and be called a greenhouse? Of all the things the local greenhouse had to be called, 'nursery' was the absolute worst. It gave her terrible pangs for her two children. Was fate picking on her?

Padmé pushed through the doors and was immediately greeted by a salesman. She let herself be talked into several pretty flowering plants and one scraggly piece of greenery that looked as though it needed a bit of love. Ivy, she thought it was called. Well, no matter what it looked like, he gave it to her free with her purchase and wasn't that a good thing?

After a few hours of browsing and daydreaming about her tiny cottage surrounded by a pretty flower garden she'd tended herself, she toted her purchases home. Then came the process of planting and watering, which took her the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening. She followed her diagrams carefully, envisioning the loveliness that would bloom. This had to be easier than planting from seeds. She already knew she was a failure at that.

Padmé was too tired to fix dinner. Snagging a make-do dinner of crackers and cheese, she managed to fall asleep while watching the latest Senatorial proceedings on the HoloNet. She didn't have the energy to yell at those idiots she'd worked with. Really, how stupid could they be? It amazed her that some of them could even function.

For a week, she watered her garden and for a week she watched her pretty flowers wither away.

That greenery sure perked up though. In fact, it began to spread....

~~~~~~~~~~

It was not difficult to make an appointment with a human doctor and make him forget about it when it was over. Anakin had done it before, but never on the scale he was currently planning. He went first to his personal physician.

"I wish an honest and thorough assessment of my health."

"Yes, Lord Vader," the man replied.

Anakin waved a hand. "You will not inform the Emperor of this visit."

"I will not inform the Emperor of this visit."

"You will not inform anyone of this visit."

"I will not inform anyone of this visit."

"You will tell me the truth of my physical condition." The man dutifully repeated the words.

With the formalities in place, he subjected himself to several painful hours of prodding and poking and left the office with an idea of what needed to be done. He was relieved to learn that for four years, Palpatine had been altering medical records and programming droids to give him false information. Anakin was not in as bad a shape as he'd been led to believe, though he was in bad shape.

He needed quite a bit of reconstruction on the burn scars and it was recommended that his mechanics be updated. Marvelous advances had been made in the field in the past four years and he should have new cybernetic limbs. That prognosis alone gave him a healthy respect for having a human doctor instead of a droid tending him. Droids tended to look at his limbs and see only that they were functioning as they should. Aesthetics were wasted on droids.

As for his lungs, there was a slight chance he could regain some lung capacity, but the inner scarring was quite extensive. Any efforts there would be slow and painful and likely frustrating. If he wished to go without the mask, he would have to keep a portable respirator with oxygen tank nearby and even that was no guarantee of any sort of comfort. The physician had an idea for his voice box, but needed to research it a bit more and there was a revolutionary new eye surgery just beginning to garner attention that might help his vision.

Then, there were the mental and emotional issues. It was advised that he see a therapist to come to grips with the changes in his life.

Fine, he decided. He'd do that. He'd talk to a therapist and work through his angers and issues. If it would help him regain himself, then he'd do anything. What he would not do was continue to live like this. He had made a promise to himself and he was going to keep it.

And so, he began the process, which was just as painful and slow and humiliating as he'd thought it would be. However, even as bad as it was, it was never as painful and humiliating as Palpatine's comments and actions.

~~~~~~~~~~

It was a strange experience, Padmé reflected, to visit one's own grave and set flowers upon it as though simply another mourner. She went there as a goodbye to her former life, letting go of the last of who she had been.

Okay, she wasn't quite to the point of that lofty goal, but she hoped to get there someday. As the weeks had passed, she'd had a long time to think on what had happened and what had, ultimately, gone wrong. Now that she'd thought on it all, she was hoping to release it into the past and make a quiet life for herself here on Naboo. She intended to be a hermit, living alone, going few places and keeping always to herself.

Her grave was well-tended, with masses of flowers and plenty of mourners still after four years. She kept her cloak hood up and her head down, waiting until a small family of mourners had stepped away to go to the stone.

It was a shock to realize that the small family was her sister, brother-in-law and nieces.

Padmé paused on the walkway leading to the grave, holding the flowers to her chest. With one hand, she fastened the veil to hide her face and proceeded at a slower pace to the stone. When she went to kneel, she dropped the bouquet, flowers scattering.

"Let me help you," a familiar voice said.

Sola knelt beside her, helping to gather the flowers back into a bouquet. Padmé stared at her, hoping she wouldn't burst into tears and felt them prickling in the corners of her eyes anyway. "Thank you," she whispered.

Sola handed them to her with a small, sad smile. "You're welcome. My sister loved those flowers. She used to say that any flower that can grow in desolation is hardy and worth more than a glance. Not every flower can be exotic, but all are beautiful."

Padmé mouthed the words as Sola said them.

"Not many people knew her preference in flowers. Only one other person has brought these." Sola gestured to one very large bouquet set slightly back from all the rest. In the center of the bouquet was a flash of metal. Padmé couldn't tell what the metal was. "You must have known her personally to know her preference."

She shook her head, avoiding Sola's eyes and keeping her voice a whisper. "I barely knew her."

"Still, to know this flower...." She frowned, leaning closer. "Did we meet once, you and I? You seem familiar to me. Were you a handmaiden at one point?"

"I do not recall us meeting."

Sola nodded. "Forgive me. I just..." She touched Padmé's shoulder, gave it a squeeze and was gone, walking back down the path.

Padmé continued to kneel as mourners went by, holding her bouquet. When no more went by her, she glanced around to find herself alone. Only then did she go to the large bouquet, reaching out to it. Her fingers grasped the metal and she brought it close, recognizing the design. It was a small holographic picture case Anakin had kept. After a moment of fumbling with it, Padmé remembered how to turn it on.

She saw herself on the balcony of the Coruscant apartment, laughing and smiling, a few frames where she spoke to another.

"You're teasing me again...Of course you would. Now turn that off...I mean it...You never worry....I love you."

Only her voice remained, the other voice erased, but Padmé didn't need to hear the voice to remember the conversation.

"You're teasing me again." He'd been teasing her unmercifully about something she had quickly forgotten.

"I would never do that." He always teased.

"Of course you would. Now turn that off."

"Relax. No one'll see it. " That cocky grin he got on his lips, so smug in his belief that no one could crack whatever codes he'd put in it.

"I mean it."

"You're worrying again. It's coded on playback. No one can see it unless I show them how to unscramble it." She did worry and with good reason.

"You never worry." Or at least it never looked as though he worried. He would charge off without a thought as to what would happen later.

" Yes I do."

There was a pause, where she'd glanced down, and back up, then smiled gently. "I love you."

"I love you too, Padmé. Don't doubt that. I'll always love you." He'd turned it off then and proceeded to prove his affections to her.

The image began to replay. Padmé switched it off and tucked the device into her cloak. How long ago had Anakin been here? She hardly thought any other person would leave the device there. It had to be Anakin, assuming no one would know how to start the device after all the tinkering he'd done to it. But he'd once shown her how to start it.

Padmé left her flowers sitting beside that bouquet and went home to her cottage.

She spent the afternoon trying to rip out the ivy she'd planted. It was spreading almost faster than she could keep on top of it. She'd lost count of how many afternoons she'd spent ripping it out only to notice the stupid plant was growing in the same place a few days later.

Going inside, she got out her embroidery, intending on trying to stitch for a bit. So far, she pricked her fingers more than actually stitched and she was beginning to have fond memories of the painting she'd just decided she was hopeless at. At least with it, she could pretend she'd meant to use the ugly colors her paints had smeared into. She couldn't exactly claim the bloodstains on her embroidery was artistic license now could she?

With a long sigh, she noticed something green beside the window. What was that? She didn't recall anything green on the wall before. Getting back up, she crossed to it and leaned close.

Oh for--

Disgust turned her lips. It was that blasted ivy, grown through the foundation of the cottage.

Geez, she thought. It's like Jar-Jar. Get rid of it and it comes right back.

~~~~~~~~~~

After several treatments, Anakin began to feel somewhat like his old self. He could look in a mirror and see himself beneath the scars. The surgeons were doing a marvelous job at reconstruction and if Palpatine ever wondered what Anakin was up to, he never said a word on it.

Anakin smiled at his reflection, then grimaced. Okay, so maybe he still had a very long way to go until he was back to his old handsome self. He took several long, slow breaths, and began the process of putting the hated black suit back on. The sooner he was out of it the better. He'd begun to wear it as a uniform as the treatments continued, something to put on in the morning -- or when he was ordered to terrorize a rebel or something -- and take off in the evenings.

The prognosis on his lungs had gotten slightly better. They'd now decided that a miracle could happen and he might someday be able to breath for hours at a time without needing a respirator. For now, he had strict orders not to go too long without the respirator.

For once, he followed orders to the letter. Anakin had never had a problem doing things his own way when he thought his way was better, but this was something he wanted almost as much as he'd wanted Padmé. He'd fixated on regaining his health as much as possible. A healing process. Becoming a new man.

Anakin pursued that end with a single mindedness that would have sent old Palpatine into a fit if he'd known about it. He smiled at the thought and finished getting dressed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Palpatine felt a great disturbance in the Force and scowled. What was Anakin up to now? It was Anakin, too, and not Vader. Anakin was -- inconceivably -- taking back control of his body, trying to shove Vader aside. How was he doing it, because Palpatine had never considered him very strong of will before. Look how easily he'd caved in to the dark side. A few misleading suggestions, a murder or two and he was hooked. Not strong of will at all. Or was he?

He almost regretted making the boy kill all those Jedi. Now, he was stuck with him. He'd have to wait for a child to be born and grow before he could have a new apprentice. Anakin was getting on his nerves, always angsting over his dead wife and over the perfectly reasonable killing that needed done on a daily level.

How had he not seen that Anakin was so.... Oh, what was the word he was looking for? Palpatine drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair, endeavoring to think of an appropriate word for his apprentice. Wishy-washy? No. Spineless? No. Naïve? No, he'd already known that Anakin was as naïve as they grew 'em at the Jedi Temple.

Immature. That was the word. How had Kenobi managed not to slap the boy? Now that Palpatine spent each day with him, he ruminated upon that, concluding that Kenobi was more patient than the Sith ever could be. Powerful or not, he should not have concentrated his efforts on Anakin, he saw that now. He should have concentrated on Kenobi. The Sith would have used Kenobi's patience. Kenobi would have made a wonderful Sith.

He imagined the bearded man as a Sith, slashing away at enemies with that cavalier attitude Kenobi and Anakin had appeared to share when they'd fought. Was it any wonder, Palpatine thought, that he had been blinded to the truth? Anakin had simply been outwardly a more appropriate choice, being the Chosen One and all. Really, he should have groomed Kenobi instead.

All that patience....

Ahh well, he thought, let us concentrate on what is, not what gloriously could have been.

What, seriously, was Anakin up to? He'd gone off to Naboo -- again. Naboo of all places. Palpatine had thought the memories of the place would be too much for poor, emotional Anakin. Anakin had so many wonderful moments with his darling Padmé there.

Ugh. The sentimentality of it made him want to puke. A place was a place, nothing more. No one saw him crying over the things that had happened and the places they'd happened in.

Not to mention that Anakin was spending far too much time by himself for comfort. Alone and in total ascendance, with Vader too far below the surface. Anakin was still such a...teenager that he might get ideas if off alone, in the suit or not. His ideas could be dangerous. After all, his romance with Padmé was one of those ideas and look how that had turned out.

Anakin married with a pregnant wife....

Palpatine's brows v-ed into a frown. He'd better find something to bring Anakin back to Coruscant and quick. He couldn't have a repeat of the whole 'Padmé affair'. Not at this stage of his plans and there were too many nubile girls on Naboo for Anakin to fall for. Best to have him here.