Phoenix

Summary: After Mustafar, Anakin embraces Vader.

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Star Wars is the property of George Lucas and Twentieth Century Fox.  No disrespect is intended with this fic.

Timeframe: ROTS

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The pain was so intense, he wanted to die, to escape the unbearable agony. But the steely Sith determination of Lord Vader kept him alive -- the determination to recover and to live his life with his wife and their child. When finally he could ask "Padmé -- Is she all right?" Darth Sidious had replied, " I'm sorry, Lord Vader, in your anger, you killed her."

He had briefly gone mad then, his anger and rage destroying everything around him. And Sidious had waited and watched, the anger feeding the powers of his new apprentice as well as his own. When the anger at last abated, he had wanted again to die, to join his beloved in the arms of Death. But Vader had grown too strong and the machines were too efficient to allow him to die. To manage the emotional agony, he must forget, to become wholly Vader, let nothing of Anakin remain.

And Vader grew again in power as Anakin disappeared into the ashes of forgotten memories. In triumph, Darth Vader walled off Anakin Skywalker, arose from his ashes, and walked abroad.