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Chapter Text

The world was quiet, but not in the way one hopes for after a battle.

It was the silence of the aftermath. The silence that lingers in the air like the ghost of a scream, still echoing faintly though the source has long since fallen still. Anakin Skywalker stood alone on a ridge that overlooked what remained of the battlefield below. The scorched plains of Geonosis stretched out before him in endless waves of ochre and rust, dotted with craters, burning hulks of destroyed walkers, and the scattered remains of droids and clone troopers alike.

He didn’t move. The wind tugged gently at his dark Jedi cloak, catching its frayed edges and swirling red dust into the folds. A thin veil of ash clung to his boots, his gloves, even to his face—though he did not seem to notice. His lightsaber, still warm from combat, hung deactivated in his hand, dangling from gloved fingers that refused to unclench. The blade had been active far longer than necessary.

It wasn’t over. Not really. Not for him.

The battle had ended hours ago. The final wave of Separatist resistance had collapsed under the coordinated assault by the Republic’s clone forces, backed by Jedi Generals Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Another tactical victory. Another step closer to peace, according to the reports.
But to Anakin, there was nothing victorious about it.

He could still hear the dying—an echo lodged in the space just behind his eyes. The sharp reports of blaster fire. The shriek of metal giving way beneath the cut of a lightsaber. The dull, sickening thud of a clone trooper’s body hitting the dirt. Too many of them had died today. Again.
He closed his eyes and drew in a slow, measured breath. Even the air here tasted of death—charred metal, burnt ozone, and something acrid that clung to the nostrils long after you left the planet behind.

Behind him, boots crunched softly in the dust, hesitant but approaching. He didn’t need to turn to know who it was. There was only one presence in the Force that flickered with that particular mixture of light, heat, and concern.

“Skyguy?” Ahsoka’s voice was soft, almost uncertain. “The transports are ready. We’re starting to pull out.”

Anakin didn’t turn. He didn’t respond at first, either. The words caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat. Finally, after too long a pause, he said without emotion, “I’m fine.”

Ahsoka stepped up beside him, her lekku and montrals dusted with orange ash, her armor scratched and smeared with blood and grime. Her posture was tense but careful, like she was trying to balance respect with worry.

“You always say that,” she said gently. “Even when it’s not true.”

Anakin exhaled slowly, but he didn’t argue. She was right, of course. He always said he was fine. Because to admit otherwise would be to open a door he wasn’t sure he could ever close again.

“They were waiting for us,” he muttered. “That Neimoidian commander stalled for time. He pretended to surrender. Bought enough minutes for the droid reinforcements to encircle our forward units.”

Ahsoka’s eyes shifted. “I know. I saw the aftermath.”

“I killed him.”

“I know that, too.”

Anakin turned to look at her finally. His expression wasn’t angry. It wasn’t cold. It was just… weary. Too weary for someone so young.

“He was unarmed. I cut him down anyway. The clones around me—they hesitated. I didn’t.”

Ahsoka held his gaze. “He wasn’t unarmed, not really. He was dangerous in a different way. You did what you thought was right.”

“I didn’t think,” Anakin said. “I reacted. I always do.”

The silence stretched between them. The sun—a harsh, bloated thing—hung low in the sky, casting their shadows long and distorted across the jagged ridge.

“I don’t want to lose who we are,” Ahsoka said finally, voice small but steady. “This war… it changes people. I see it in the faces of the clones. I see it in the Council. I see it in you, too.”

Anakin’s eyes closed again. “I’m trying,” he said, barely audible. “But every time I try to do the right thing, I lose something.”

“You haven’t lost me.”

He looked at her. Really looked. There was sincerity in her eyes. She meant it.

He smiled, faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“No,” he said. “But you haven’t seen how far I’ve already fallen.”

She blinked. “Anakin…”

He turned away before she could say more. His gaze drifted back over the ravaged battlefield. There was no glory here. No triumph. Just loss, and questions no lightsaber could answer.
But more than the carnage around him, more than the gnawing guilt in his chest, he was haunted by something else—something deeper.

Something watching.

It came in dreams. It whispered in moments of silence. A cold presence that lingered just beyond the edges of consciousness, waiting. It wore the faces of the people he loved. Sometimes it was his mother, reaching out to him with bloodied hands. Sometimes it was Padmé, her mouth moving in a scream he couldn’t hear. And sometimes—most terrifying of all—it was Obi-Wan.

The worst part was… it didn’t feel like an enemy.

It felt like a truth he wasn’t ready to name.

Chapter Text

“Sleep is a kindness war does not afford.”

The ship vibrated softly beneath Anakin’s feet. Long after the engines had powered up and the command deck returned to its usual routines of clone chatter and status checks, the hum of hyperspace remained, omnipresent, like a heartbeat. Ordinarily, he found comfort in it. The consistency. The rhythm. But tonight, it felt too loud.

He lay still in his bunk, staring at the ceiling as if it held answers, though none came.

His sleep had been shallow at best. His body exhausted, begging for rest, but his mind had no such mercy left in it. Each time he closed his eyes, he was back there—on Geonosis, on Tatooine, on the hangar floor where Dooku had sliced through his flesh and his pride. Or worse—he saw her. Padmé. Crying. Dying. And he was powerless. It always ended the same way: reaching for her, fingers outstretched, unable to close the gap as her form faded into shadow.

He jerked upright, breath ragged, a sheen of cold sweat across his forehead. His right hand flexed instinctively, but the faint whine of servos reminded him: it wasn’t his hand anymore. Just the memory of one. He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, the cool metal floor grounding him. The chrono on the wall blinked uselessly—early morning hours, the kind where time no longer mattered. He couldn’t stay here. Not in the dark. Not in the silence.

He rose, pulling on his robe and saber, more out of habit than necessity. The halls of the ship were mostly deserted at this hour, save for the occasional clone on patrol or droid sweeping the floors. They all nodded in deference or offered a clipped "General Skywalker, sir," but he didn’t stop. Didn’t return their greetings. Not tonight.

He found himself drawn toward the observation deck—the only place on the Venator-class Star Destroyer where the war couldn’t quite reach. There, stars spread endlessly in every direction, a breathtaking reminder that the galaxy was far too vast to be controlled. Anakin stood with his arms crossed, his silhouette outlined against the sprawling map of the stars. Even here, the quiet did not bring peace.

A voice broke the silence behind him.

“You should be asleep.”

He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to.

“I could say the same to you, Obi-Wan.”

Soft footsteps approached, deliberate and careful. Obi-Wan always moved with purpose—never aimless, never unbalanced. Anakin had always admired that about him. Even envied it.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” Obi-Wan said. He came to stand beside Anakin, his arms tucked into the sleeves of his robe. “Though I suspect your reasons are more... complicated than mine.”

Anakin smirked, a bitter thing. “You think I’m brooding.”

“I know you’re brooding. The difference is, you’re worse at hiding it than you think.”

They stood in silence for a few moments. The stars shimmered beyond the transparisteel, motionless, cold. It was beautiful, Anakin thought, how something so distant could seem so peaceful. Untouched by the war. Untouched by him.

“I killed a man who had surrendered,” Anakin said finally. “I didn’t give him the chance to speak. I saw an opportunity and acted.”

Obi-Wan’s expression didn’t change. “You did what you thought necessary in the moment.”

Anakin turned to him sharply. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not,” Obi-Wan said, calm as always. “But you seem to think you’re the first Jedi to make a choice like that in war.”

“The first?” Anakin repeated, a humorless laugh escaping him. “No. But maybe the first who doesn’t feel guilty about it.”

Obi-Wan regarded him for a long moment. “That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

Anakin turned his eyes back to the stars. “I feel something. But I don’t think it’s guilt. Not anymore. Maybe I’m just... tired of pretending. Tired of being told to hold back, to follow the Code, when everything around us is burning.”

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed. “You’re beginning to sound like—”

“Don’t say Dooku,” Anakin snapped, his voice a quiet thunder. “Don’t compare me to him.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Obi-Wan said gently. “But I will say this: the Jedi Code is not perfect. But it’s kept us from becoming what we fight.”

Anakin’s eyes glinted. “Has it, though?”

There was no reply to that. Only silence.

“I keep seeing her,” Anakin said after a long pause. His voice had changed—lower, more uncertain. “In dreams. Padmé. Dying.”

Obi-Wan’s expression shifted subtly. “A vision?”

“I don’t know. It feels real. It feels like what I saw on Tatooine before my mother died.”

Obi-Wan’s face fell. “Anakin…”

“I can’t lose her,” Anakin said, barely above a whisper. “Not her.”

The plea in his voice was raw. Unfiltered. Like the voice of the boy he once was, buried beneath the armor of a Jedi General. Obi-Wan placed a hand on his shoulder, but Anakin didn’t turn to face him.

“There’s no certainty in visions,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “The future is always in motion.”

“But what if I could stop it?” Anakin said. “What if there was a way to prevent it before it happens? Wouldn’t you do anything to save the person you love?”

Obi-Wan didn’t answer.

Anakin turned, searching his face. “Wouldn’t you?”

There was something in Obi-Wan’s expression—an old pain, worn smooth by time. He didn’t speak it aloud. He never would. But Anakin saw the answer written in his silence. Yes. And it terrified him. Because if Obi-Wan, the most disciplined Jedi he knew, had once considered choosing love over duty… then perhaps the slope was even more slippery than Anakin feared.

Obi-Wan finally spoke, his voice composed but not cold. “What we choose to do with fear is what defines us, Anakin. The Council taught you that. I taught you that.”

“I’m not afraid,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan held his gaze.

“Yes, you are.”

The words landed softly. Not as an accusation, but as truth. And truth could cut deeper than any lightsaber. Anakin looked away. And Obi-Wan, sensing that the moment could not be pushed further, stepped back.

“Get some rest, Anakin,” he said, gently. “We leave for Coruscant in the morning.”

Anakin didn’t answer. He stood in silence long after Obi-Wan had gone, staring into the void between the stars.

Out there, beyond hyperspace, beyond the illusion of peace, something moved. Something stirred. And in the quiet corners of his mind, it whispered his name.

Chapter Text

“Dreams pass in time.” But some do not. Some remain. Some rot inside you, refusing to die.

The sky was wrong.

That was the first sign.

It stretched out in every direction—too vast, too wide—like a canopy of fire stitched with stars, bleeding orange and red as if the entire galaxy were ablaze. Ash floated through the air like snow. But the flakes weren’t soft or silent; they whispered. Tiny voices, rustling against his skin. They said names. Names he didn’t want to hear.

And in the distance, a figure—small at first, then growing nearer.

He knew her stride before he saw her face.

She moved with that same quiet dignity, the same grace that always made his chest ache. Even now, even here, her presence calmed him. But the peace was fragile, like glass already cracked.

“Anakin,” she said.

Padmé. Her voice was clear despite the chaos around them, cutting through the wind like a thread of silk.

He tried to speak, but no sound came. He tried to reach for her, but his hands—his hands —were gone. Flesh replaced with jagged metal, wires exposed, dripping something dark.

She looked at him, and in her eyes, he saw it: not love. Not fear. But sorrow.

“You’re walking toward a cliff,” she said, standing still as the world crumbled behind her.

“I know,” he managed to say.

“Then why don’t you stop?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but fire spilled out instead. His lungs burned. His heart thundered.

“Because I’ve already fallen.”

She stepped forward, placed a hand on his cheek.

Her skin was cold.

“You can still climb back.”

“No,” he whispered, breath catching. “I can’t. I’m doing this to save you.”

Padmé’s expression broke, her features contorting with grief. Her eyes began to weep—but the tears were red, the same color as Mustafar’s lava, as blood on his saber.

“Then you’ll lose everything.”

And then she was gone. Not vanishing like smoke, but collapsing—disintegrating into dust, her form blowing away on a wind that howled like the screams of the dying.

Anakin fell to his knees in the dream. Alone. Empty. Burning.

He awoke with a cry strangled in his throat.

His quarters on the Resolute were cold, and the silence was absolute—oppressive, even. No alarms. No battles. Just the faint background hum of life support systems.

He sat up slowly, muscles tight, his heart hammering. He pressed the heel of his flesh palm into his temple and dragged his other hand—metal and whirring—across his face, as if he could wipe the dream away.

But it clung to him.

It always did.

These weren’t just dreams anymore. He knew the difference. Jedi trained for years to interpret visions. They taught you to distinguish illusion from premonition. And he had ignored them once before. On Tatooine.

His mother had called to him in nightmares for weeks. He’d written them off as fear. As attachment. And by the time he had listened—by the time he had arrived—she was dying in his arms.

His mother.

Shmi.

He could still feel her trembling breath against his chest, her final heartbeat as she slipped into the Force. He could still hear the rage that had followed, the roar in his ears as he cut down the Tuskens. Not just the warriors. All of them.

Even the children.

He’d told Padmé about it. He’d confessed, back when he thought confession would help. She’d stayed. She hadn’t flinched. But sometimes, when she looked at him a certain way, he wondered if she remembered.

If she ever feared he might lose control again.

He stood, the metal plating cold beneath his bare feet. His robe hung loosely over his sleep clothes, but he barely noticed. He left his quarters and moved through the ship, walking aimlessly, not knowing where he was going—only that he couldn’t sit in that room and relive it again.

Eventually, he ended up in the forward meditation chamber, a small, dimly lit room barely used by the clones and rarely frequented by the Jedi aboard. A pair of unlit candles rested on a shelf beside a stone basin of water. It was quiet here. Not peaceful, but quiet.

He dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

He tried to meditate.

To center himself.

But the Force felt twisted.

Not absent—never absent. But… loud. Unruly. Too many threads pulling at once, like a symphony played out of tune.

And through it, something darker.

A voice.

Not external. Not a sound.

A presence .

“You could have saved her.”

Anakin’s eyes flew open. He was alone.

Of course he was.

He looked into the basin of water. His reflection stared back—young, scarred, lined with exhaustion. But the eyes… the eyes were wrong.

Too gold.

He splashed the water and stood abruptly. The robe slid from his shoulders. He didn’t pick it up.

He walked the corridors of the ship like a ghost, passing clones who saluted him with weary deference. He nodded automatically, barely seeing them.

Their loyalty was unshakeable.

And yet, what did it cost them?

Obedience. A life of war. A name replaced by a number.

They’d been bred for sacrifice.

And now, he wondered—so had he.

The next morning, Anakin stood on the bridge as Coruscant’s skyline came into view through the forward viewport. The familiar spires, the hazy atmosphere, the never-ending traffic lanes—it should have comforted him. It should have felt like home.

But it didn’t.

It felt like a cage.

And somewhere out there—he could feel it—Padmé waited. Her presence in the Force was a warm ember, just strong enough to remind him what he could still lose.

He would not fail her.

Not this time.

No matter the cost.

Chapter Text

The war was ending. Or so they said. But for Anakin, it was only beginning.

The Jedi Temple rose like a sacred monument over Coruscant’s restless sprawl, its towers piercing the sky with elegant defiance. Yet to Anakin, its once-soothing silhouette no longer offered comfort. It loomed, cold and impersonal, a monolith of judgment rather than sanctuary. The shadows inside were longer now, the halls quieter. A stillness had taken root within the Order—not of peace, but of hesitation. Of something coiled tightly, waiting to strike.

He walked those halls now with careful steps, his cloak brushing the polished floors, boots echoing off the silent stone. His footsteps should have been familiar here. He had run down these corridors as a boy. Trained within these walls. Bled on these floors during sparring matches with Obi-Wan. But now, the Temple felt foreign. Watching him. Measuring him.

And he knew why.

He had been summoned.

Not invited.

Summoned.

The Council had made it clear: his position was under scrutiny. Not because he had failed. But because he had succeeded too well. Too quickly. Too boldly. He was winning battles no one else could. Leading clones to victory after victory, often by relying on instinct, improvisation—and sometimes, yes, rage.

They praised him in public.

And whispered in private.

The elevator doors opened with a low hiss, revealing the Council chamber, where light poured in through tall windows overlooking the sprawl of the city-planet. The air inside was heavy. Twelve chairs circled the chamber, and nearly all were filled. Masters. Judges. Watchers of the Force.

Anakin stepped in, his hands behind his back, his posture formal.

“Anakin,” Mace Windu said, his voice flat. “Take your seat.”

He moved to the open place at the center, the sun catching on the edges of his armor as he knelt. His expression was carefully neutral, though every muscle in his body was coiled like a wire drawn too tight.

Obi-Wan sat across from him, his face composed—but weary. He had said nothing on the flight back. Anakin hadn’t asked why.

Master Yoda studied him with that quiet, inscrutable expression that made it impossible to tell what he was thinking. Only that he was thinking. Deeply.

“We’ve reviewed the reports from Geonosis,” Windu began. “As well as Commander Rex’s account of the engagement.”

Anakin waited.

“You disobeyed a direct order to withdraw and regroup,” Windu continued.

“We would have lost our position,” Anakin replied. “The Neimoidian’s surrender was a stalling tactic. If I had waited—”

“You took it upon yourself to decide that,” Windu interrupted. “You made that judgment alone. The Jedi Code is clear. We do not act in anger.”

“I didn’t,” Anakin said, with a little too much force. “I acted in clarity.”

A pause.

Yoda’s ears twitched.

“Clarity,” the old Master echoed softly. “Or desperation?”

Anakin bit back his reply.

“You’ve grown powerful,” Ki-Adi-Mundi said. “No one questions your abilities. But power without control—without balance—is a danger.”

Danger.

There it was again.

They didn’t trust him. No matter what he did—no matter how many battles he won, lives he saved—they never truly accepted him.

Not as one of them.

“You summoned me to scold me?” he asked, not hiding the edge in his tone.

Obi-Wan stirred. “Anakin, that’s not—”

“You think I don’t know what’s happening?” Anakin cut in. “You’ve spoken in shadows for months now. You question my loyalty. My intentions. My connection to the Chancellor.”

Windu’s eyes narrowed. “Your relationship with Chancellor Palpatine has become… unusually close. He has appointed you as his personal representative on the Jedi Council, an honor traditionally reserved for senior members of the Order.”

“Then perhaps the Order should consider why the Chancellor felt the need to act on his own.”

That silenced them for a breath.

“You believe yourself wiser than the Council?” Windu asked, voice dangerously calm.

“No,” Anakin said. “I believe you’re afraid.”

“Fear,” Yoda murmured, “leads to suffering.”

Anakin stood. Slowly. Deliberately.

“I know what fear leads to,” he said, voice low.

He left the chamber without waiting for dismissal.

He found Obi-Wan waiting for him later, on the veranda outside the Jedi Archives. The wind was light, the sky pale with evening sun, casting warm gold across the city. It should have been beautiful. But beauty was no longer a comfort.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Obi-Wan said without preamble.

“Doing what?” Anakin asked, arms folded across his chest.

“Pushing everyone away.”

Anakin laughed bitterly. “I don’t have to push. They back away on their own.”

“That’s not true,” Obi-Wan said. “I haven’t.”

“You don’t count.”

Obi-Wan looked away, jaw tightening. “I’ve fought beside you for over a decade. I’ve bled with you. We’ve saved each other more times than I can count. But I can’t keep standing between you and the rest of the Order, Anakin. Not if you keep stepping toward the edge.”

“I’m trying to stop people from dying,” Anakin said. “Is that so wrong?”

Obi-Wan’s voice dropped. “And who are you willing to become to make that happen?”

The question lingered.

And Anakin had no answer.

Later that night, in his apartment far from the Temple’s towering spires, Anakin sat beside Padmé. She was asleep, curled against him, her breath even, her features soft. She looked so peaceful in that moment, untouched by the storms of politics or war.

But he couldn’t sleep.

He traced his gloved fingers over her shoulder, gently. Reverently. As if memorizing her.

In his mind, her death played again—over and over. Her final cry. Her outstretched hand. The emptiness that followed.

He would stop it.

Even if it meant defying the Council.

Even if it meant stepping into darkness.

He rose without waking her, moving to the balcony, where the Coruscant skyline glowed like a city of stars. And there, in the quiet, he felt it again.

A whisper.

Not a sound. A presence.

“There is another way.”

Chapter Text

Love should be sanctuary. But in Anakin Skywalker’s arms, even love trembled.

Padmé smelled like jasmine and warm linen. Her hair was still damp from a late shower, clinging to her neck in dark, curling strands. She moved through their apartment barefoot, wrapped in a soft robe the color of pearl, humming an old Naboo lullaby. The sound was faint, nearly lost under the murmur of Coruscant’s never-ending traffic below.

Anakin stood in the kitchen, hands braced against the counter, unmoving.

The song faded.

She stepped behind him, sliding her arms around his waist, resting her cheek against his back.

“You’re quiet tonight,” she said.

“I’m always quiet lately.”

She didn’t respond immediately. Her embrace tightened just a little.

“Did something happen at the Temple?”

He didn’t answer.

The silence stretched between them, not empty, but crowded—with all the things he wanted to say, and couldn’t. Things like I saw you die again last night. I’m terrified I’ll lose you. I’d burn the galaxy to keep you safe. I already might have started.

He turned in her arms, lifted a hand to brush a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Nothing new,” he said, softly. “They don’t trust me.”

Padmé looked up at him, eyes filled with concern. “Why? You’ve done everything they’ve asked. More.”

“They don’t see it that way. To them, I’m reckless. Dangerous. Too close to Palpatine. Too emotional. Too human .”

She smiled, faintly. “Well, that’s why I married you.”

He chuckled, and for a moment, some of the darkness inside him receded.

But it didn’t last.

He stepped back and moved to the window, arms crossed over his chest, looking out over the city. Lights shimmered across the durasteel jungle. Infinite life. Infinite loss.

“You’re not safe here,” he said quietly.

Padmé joined him at the window. “Anakin…”

“You should go back to Naboo,” he said. “Let me arrange security. Somewhere remote. Somewhere the war can’t reach.”

“You want me to hide.”

“I want you alive.”

Padmé exhaled, folding her arms. “You think I haven’t thought about what might happen? About what this war could cost us? I have. Every day. But I’m not leaving. Not like this. Not when everything is falling apart.”

He turned toward her, eyes sharp. “And if you die? What then?”

Her answer was calm, heartbreaking in its simplicity.

“Then I die knowing I stayed with you.”

His breath caught.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You think this is about war. About politics. But it’s more than that. I’ve seen it, Padmé. I’ve felt it. You—dying in childbirth. Screaming. Alone. And I couldn’t stop it.”

She stared at him.

“Anakin… are these dreams?”

He nodded. Once.

“They’re more than dreams. Visions. Like the ones I had before my mother died. And I didn’t act fast enough then.”

He stepped forward, gently cupping her face in both hands. His touch trembled.

“I won’t let that happen again.”

Padmé searched his eyes. “What are you going to do?”

His answer came without hesitation.

“Whatever it takes.”

The Chancellor’s office smelled of polished wood, old velvet, and the subtle tang of ozone from the hovercameras embedded in the ceiling. The chamber was dim, lit mostly by the soft light pouring in from the massive windows behind the desk. Outside, thunderclouds rolled in across the city. The storm was close now.

Palpatine sat behind his curved desk, fingers steepled beneath his chin, watching Anakin with that same serene, grandfatherly expression he always wore in these private meetings.

He poured two glasses of dark red Chandrilan wine and passed one across the desk. Anakin didn’t take it.

“You seem troubled,” Palpatine said.

Anakin didn’t sit.

“I’m not troubled. I’m angry.”

Palpatine tilted his head. “At the Council?”

“They doubt me. They question my loyalty, my judgment. And now—now they want me to spy on you.”

That earned a raised brow.

“Is that so?”

“They want me to report on your movements. Your decisions. They think you’re gaining too much power.”

Palpatine leaned back, sipping his wine, unaffected. “And what do you think, Anakin?”

“I think they’re afraid of change.”

Palpatine smiled.

“You’re perceptive, as always. The Jedi believe themselves incorruptible, but they fear the very power they claim to wield. They deny their emotions, their attachments. Even their compassion. And that, my boy, is why they will fall.”

Anakin didn’t answer.

Palpatine rose from his chair, moving slowly to the window. The city beyond flickered with lights as lightning arced across the sky.

“There is a legend, Anakin,” he said, voice smooth as silk. “Of a Sith Lord who had such knowledge of the dark side, he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.”

Anakin stilled.

It was a trap. He knew it was a trap.

But he leaned in.

“Is it possible?”

Palpatine turned. “Not from a Jedi.”

The silence that followed was not heavy—but full of offer.

“You have great power, Anakin,” Palpatine said. “More than any Jedi I’ve ever known. But the Jedi will never allow you to fully realize it. They fear what you might become. I, on the other hand… believe in you.”

Anakin’s fists clenched.

The temptation was no longer a whisper.

It was a promise.

That night, Anakin stood in the Temple archives, alone.

The holograms glowed around him—histories, prophecies, secrets. The Jedi had hoarded knowledge for generations. So much of it locked behind cryptic language and half-truths. He searched for anything—any clue about preserving life through the Force. Nothing concrete. Only fragments.

A vision passed over him again: Padmé’s scream, her hand slipping from his.

He gripped the edge of the terminal until his knuckles whitened.

He couldn’t find the answers here.

But he knew where they were.

Chapter Text

The line between light and dark is not so easily defined. Sometimes, you step forward and do not know if you have crossed.

The air in Coruscant was thick with the storm. The evening sky had darkened to a charcoal black, punctuated by jagged streaks of lightning. The sound of thunder was a constant growl in the distance, the prelude to a fury that never quite arrived. But Anakin felt the storm within him—the pressure in his chest, the thrum of something untamed—and it felt closer than any tempest outside.

He stood at the edge of his balcony, eyes focused on the horizon, where the city stretched out in a mess of lights and rising towers, burning in the dark. The constant, quiet hum of traffic passed beneath him, oblivious to the gravity of his thoughts.

Padmé was in the other room, speaking with a representative from the Senate, discussing the state of the Republic. His presence was secondary, as it always was in these moments.

But his mind was elsewhere.

You could save her. You could keep her alive.

The whisper was becoming clearer now, less like a phantom voice and more like an echo within his mind. His breath slowed, chest tight, as he turned away from the view. He walked into the apartment, past Padmé’s desk, where holograms of the Senate’s reports flickered. Her quiet voice filled the space.

“I’m sorry, but I need to reschedule. I’ll meet with you again tomorrow,” she said, speaking into a commlink.

She didn’t notice him enter.

He wasn’t sure how to begin the conversation anymore. This conversation. The one that was too heavy, too dangerous to have. Too fragile to break.

“I spoke with the Chancellor today,” he said, his voice tight, raw.

Padmé looked up from her desk, her gaze softening. “What did he say?”

“He… he gave me something to think about.”

She placed her commlink down and stood, walking toward him. Her face softened, concern replacing the careful neutrality she had worn while speaking with her colleague. “Anakin, you’re upset. What happened?”

He swallowed. You can still walk away. Just tell her. Tell her you’re scared.

But the words didn’t come.

He will give you what you need.

“I’ve been thinking about the future,” Anakin said instead. “About us. About what happens after the war.”

Padmé studied him. “We’ll rebuild, Anakin. We’ll find peace. Together.”

“I’m not sure peace is enough anymore,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if it’s even possible. Not with everything at stake.”

“Anakin, the Republic will survive,” Padmé said, her voice gentle, though she didn’t quite meet his eyes. “We can help shape that future. Together.”

He shook his head, moving toward her, stopping just out of reach. “No. I can’t. I’m not enough . I’m not strong enough to keep you safe, Padmé. To keep you alive .”

Her eyes softened, but there was an undercurrent of concern in them, something he hadn’t seen before. She stepped forward, but she hesitated. “What do you mean? Anakin—what are you saying?”

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said, his voice strained, raw. “I saw you die. I couldn’t stop it . I don’t care what it takes—I will do whatever I have to, to make sure you’re not taken from me.”

The words hung in the air like a declaration of war, and for a long moment, Padmé didn’t speak.

Instead, she reached out, touching his face. The softness of her touch, the warmth of her hand against his skin, only served to deepen the distance between them.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” she said softly. “Anakin, please, don’t shut me out. You can’t save everyone with fear and power. You have to trust in the love you have—”

“I can’t,” he said, cutting her off. His voice trembled, but he pressed on. “ I won’t trust in love alone. Not if it can’t save you. I need to do more. I can do more. There is a way.”

Padmé’s brow furrowed. She took a step back, the realization settling between them.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice thick with concern.

His pulse hammered in his throat, and for a moment, the room felt like it was closing in. The shadow of a decision—an action —swept through him like a cold wind.

“I’m talking about power, Padmé. Power that can save you. Power that can save us both.”

Her gaze was steady but full of the kind of fear that made his heart lurch in his chest. “Anakin… what are you saying?”

He looked at her then, his breath coming shallow, desperate.

“The Chancellor… he has shown me a way. A way to stop death. To stop pain. To stop losing.”

For a moment, there was only silence. Then, Padmé took a step toward him, reaching for his arm, but her touch was tentative, hesitant.

“Anakin… I love you. But this… whatever the Chancellor is telling you—it’s not the answer. It can’t be.”

His body tensed, and his hand clenched into a fist. The warmth from her hand against his arm felt like a betrayal. He jerked away from her, the space between them suddenly vast, filled with a suffocating distance that neither of them could cross.

“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice harsh. “You don’t understand what it’s like to feel powerless . To feel like you can’t do anything, and watch everything you care about slip away.”

“I do understand,” Padmé replied quietly, her voice soft yet unwavering. “I’ve seen the horrors of war. But this—this path you’re walking—will only destroy you. You’re stronger than this, Anakin. I know you are.”

He turned away, his chest heaving as he struggled to steady his breathing. The storm outside had begun in earnest, and the rain lashed against the windows. But inside, the storm had already broken, tearing apart the fragile trust that had held them together.

“I will not lose you,” Anakin said, his voice low and final. “And I won’t let anyone take you from me. Not again.”

Without another word, he turned and walked out of the room, leaving Padmé standing there, her face pale, the weight of his words lingering in the air like smoke.

The next day, Anakin stood in front of the grand windows of the Senate Hall, staring out over the Republic’s capital. The storm had subsided, but the air felt thick with unspoken words, with a future that seemed to shift just beyond his reach. His hands were clasped behind his back, and the weight of his decision still rested on his shoulders, like an invisible mantle.

“Anakin,” came a voice from behind.

He turned to see Chancellor Palpatine entering the room, his robes sweeping gracefully around him. His expression was calm, measured, but his eyes held something deeper—something calculating.

“You’ve made your choice, I see.”

Anakin stiffened, his mind racing, but his voice was steady. “I’m ready, Chancellor. I’ve… thought about what you said.”

Palpatine smiled, a slow, knowing smile. “I knew you would come to understand. You are the Chosen One, Anakin. Your destiny is far greater than any Jedi could comprehend. The power you seek is within your grasp. All you need to do is reach out.”

Anakin’s breath caught in his throat, but he didn’t flinch. “What do I need to do?”

“Trust me,” Palpatine said, his voice soothing, persuasive. “And I will show you the way. Together, we will bring balance.”

Anakin nodded, his heart a strange mixture of fear and determination.

In that moment, the path before him was clear.

And there would be no turning back.

Chapter Text

Coruscant's towers pierced the darkness, their surfaces alive with streams of traffic and advertisements that never stopped moving. Anakin tracked the patterns from his apartment window—speeders weaving between platforms, holographic displays cycling through messages in a dozen languages, the distant hum of generators keeping the city's heart beating.

None of it mattered.

He sat on the edge of his bed, flexing his fingers. The tremor had started three days ago, after his last conversation with Palpatine. Not fear—something else. Something that felt like hunger, like standing at the edge of a cliff and wanting to jump.

The vision played behind his closed eyelids again. Padmé on the birthing table, her face pale, her breathing shallow. The sound she made when the life left her body. He'd jolted awake from it again this morning, sheets soaked with sweat, her name on his lips.

Anakin opened his eyes, studied his hands in the dim light filtering through the window. These hands had built podracers, wielded lightsabers, held Padmé while she slept. Soon they might hold the power to prevent the future he'd seen.

The door chimed.

He stood, pulling on his outer robe. For a moment he thought it might be Padmé—she'd been trying to reach him for days, leaving messages he hadn't returned. But her touch in the Force felt different, warmer. This presence carried the familiar weight of judgment.

Master Windu stood in the corridor, his brown robes neat despite the late hour. "Anakin. We need to talk."

Anakin stepped aside, gesturing him in. The apartment felt smaller with Windu's presence filling it, his disapproval radiating outward like heat from a forge.

"The Council sent you." Anakin didn't phrase it as a question.

"The Council is concerned." Windu moved to the center of the room but didn't sit. "Your recent actions—the unauthorized missions, your growing proximity to the Chancellor—they're creating questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"The kind that matter." Windu's gaze fixed on him. "You missed three Council sessions this week. You've been operating outside established protocols. And there are reports that you've been spending considerable time in the Chancellor's private offices."

Anakin felt the familiar fire spark in his chest. "I've been doing my job. Saving lives. Fighting this war while the Council debates philosophy."

"The Council maintains order—"

"The Council maintains traditions." The words came out sharper than he'd intended. "I've spent years following orders, playing by rules that don't account for reality. Meanwhile, people die. The war drags on. And you wonder why I seek counsel elsewhere."

Windu's expression didn't change, but something shifted in the Force around him. "The Jedi Code exists for reasons you may not fully understand yet. Power without restraint leads to destruction."

"Whose destruction?" Anakin moved closer. "The Separatists'? The slavers'? The ones who would hurt innocent people?"

"Your own."

The simple words hit like a physical blow. Anakin stopped moving, his hands clenching at his sides. "You think I'm falling."

"I think you're afraid." Windu's voice carried something that might have been compassion. "Fear leads down paths we can't return from."

Anakin turned away, facing the window again. The city sprawled below, millions of beings living their lives, unaware that their fate might rest in the decisions he made in the next few days. "The dreams are getting stronger."

"Dreams?"

"Padmé dies." The admission came out flat, factual. "I see it clearly now. Not just glimpses—the whole thing. And I can't stop it."

Windu was quiet for a long moment. "Visions of the future are notoriously unreliable. They show possibilities, not certainties."

"This feels certain."

"Because you're making it certain." Windu moved closer. "The more you focus on preventing a particular outcome, the more likely you are to cause it. This is basic Force philosophy, Anakin."

"Philosophy won't save her."

"No. But wisdom might."

Anakin faced him again. Windu looked older in the apartment's dim lighting, the weight of the war visible in the lines around his eyes. For a moment, Anakin remembered being nineteen, eager to prove himself, looking up to the Masters who seemed to have all the answers.

"The Chancellor has offered me knowledge," Anakin said. "Ways to prevent death itself."

Something dangerous flickered in Windu's expression. "What kind of knowledge?"

"The kind the Jedi would never teach."

"For good reason." Windu stepped forward. "Anakin, whatever Palpatine has told you—"

"He's told me the truth." The words felt like a betrayal even as he said them. "That the Jedi are holding me back. That there are powers beyond what you're willing to share. That saving the people I love matters more than following arbitrary rules."

"Those rules protect us—"

"From what? From actually making a difference?" Anakin's voice rose. "I could end this war tomorrow if you'd let me. I could save lives the Council writes off as acceptable losses. I could protect the people who matter."

"And who decides who matters?" Windu's voice remained level. "You? Based on your attachments? Your desires?"

The question hung in the air between them. Anakin felt the weight of it, the implications. He thought of Padmé's laugh, her hand in his, the way she looked at him like he was something worth saving.

"She matters," he said quietly.

"I know." Windu's expression softened. "But if you sacrifice everything else to save one person, what have you really saved?"

Anakin stared at him, seeing the trap in the logic, the way it would lead him back to the same place—following orders, accepting limitations, watching the people he loved slip away while he adhered to principles that meant nothing if they couldn't protect what mattered most.

"I can't go back to the Temple," he said.

"Then you've already chosen."

The finality in Windu's voice made something cold settle in Anakin's chest. The Jedi Master stood there for another moment, studying him with what looked like disappointment and something else—grief, maybe, for what was being lost.

"I'm sorry, Anakin," Windu said. "For all of it."

Then he was gone, leaving Anakin alone with the city lights and the certainty that there was no path back from what came next.

The Chancellor's office felt different at night. The daytime bustle of aides and visitors gave way to something quieter, more intimate. Palpatine sat behind his desk, reviewing holographic reports, but Anakin sensed his attention the moment he entered.

"You look troubled, my boy."

Anakin moved to the viewport, watching the endless stream of traffic flow between the towers. "Windu came to see me."

"I suspected he might." Palpatine's voice carried no surprise. "The Jedi are becoming concerned about our friendship."

"They think you're manipulating me."

"And what do you think?"

Anakin considered the question. Over the months of their conversations, Palpatine had never asked him to do anything, never demanded loyalty or obedience. He'd simply listened, offered perspective, shared knowledge the Jedi seemed determined to keep hidden.

"I think you're the only one who's been honest with me."

"Honesty is a rare gift in politics." Palpatine stood, moved to join him at the viewport. "Especially when it concerns uncomfortable truths."

"Like the fact that the Jedi are losing this war."

"Among other things."

They stood in silence, watching the city breathe around them. Anakin felt the Chancellor's presence—calm, assured, carrying none of the constant tension that seemed to radiate from the Jedi Council these days.

"There is another way," Palpatine said eventually.

"What way?"

"A path that doesn't require you to choose between power and compassion. Between saving those you love and serving the greater good." Palpatine turned to face him. "But it would require you to abandon certain... preconceptions."

Anakin met his gaze. "About the Force?"

"About everything." The Chancellor's eyes seemed to catch the light from the city below. "The Jedi teach that the dark side is corruption, that power inevitably leads to evil. But what if they're wrong? What if power is simply a tool, and the corruption comes from denying yourself the means to protect what matters?"

The words resonated through Anakin's chest like a struck bell. "You're talking about Sith knowledge."

"I'm talking about completeness. The Jedi know half the Force—the half that constrains, that limits, that accepts loss as inevitable. But there is another half, one that embraces strength, that refuses to accept defeat." Palpatine's voice dropped lower. "One that could save your wife."

Anakin felt the moment crystallize around him—the choice he'd been moving toward for weeks, maybe months, finally made clear. The apartment, Windu's disappointment, the dreams of Padmé dying, all of it had led to this conversation, this offer.

"What would I have to do?"

Palpatine smiled, and in that expression Anakin saw something that might have been relief, or satisfaction, or simple human understanding.

"Help me bring order to the galaxy," the Chancellor said. "Help me end this war. Help me create a system where the people we care about don't have to die for the sake of someone else's principles."

Anakin nodded. The decision felt less like a choice than a recognition of something that had already been decided, written into the Force itself from the moment he'd first seen Padmé die in his dreams.

"Together," Palpatine continued, "we can save everyone who matters."

The city lights blurred beyond the viewport as Anakin stepped across a line he couldn't see but could feel cutting through everything he'd been, separating it from everything he was about to become.

Chapter Text

You cannot choose the moment of your own downfall, for that is the nature of the fall. It arrives with the inevitability of gravity, and all you can do is wait for the ground to come crashing up to meet you.

Anakin Skywalker was no longer a Jedi.

The thought was at once liberating and suffocating. It was a paradox that gnawed at him, but in the depths of his heart, he knew that the decision had already been made. He had walked away from the Jedi Temple—no longer a servant to their Code—and into the arms of something darker, more powerful. The weight of that choice was heavy, but it was a weight he had chosen to carry.

Now, as he stood before the full council of the Galactic Senate, his fingers twitched at his sides. He could feel their eyes upon him— everyone’s eyes—and the quiet dread building like the calm before a storm.

Palpatine had called him here, and as always, Anakin trusted the Chancellor’s words. They would bring peace. They would bring power. All they had to do was take control of the Republic, and the galaxy would be saved. He would save it.

The doors to the Senate hall opened with a sharp hiss, and Anakin strode forward, his footsteps steady, yet each one felt like a drumbeat echoing into a distant, inevitable future.

The chamber was a spectacle, as it always was. The towering walls of Coruscant’s Senate chamber were lined with Senators from all across the galaxy—humans and aliens alike. But Anakin’s focus was singular. The dark, all-knowing gaze of Chancellor Palpatine met his, and he couldn’t help but feel a jolt of familiarity and something deeper—something almost familial . The Emperor, in waiting.

Palpatine rose from his podium, his smile warm and fatherly, the crowd falling silent as he began to speak.

“My fellow Senators,” he began, voice smooth, commanding. “Today, we face a turning point. The Clone Wars have raged across our galaxy, costing countless lives. The Jedi—once revered as our protectors—have failed to protect us. They have lost their way, and they are too bound to their Code to see the truth.”

Anakin’s heart beat louder, faster, as he stepped forward, standing beside Palpatine. The moment felt surreal. The walls of the Senate chamber pressed in around him, and yet the presence of the Chancellor seemed to swell, filling the air like a force he could no longer resist.

“Anakin Skywalker, a hero of this Republic,” Palpatine continued, his gaze never leaving the young Jedi. “Has seen through the lies of the Jedi Order. He has seen their corruption. He has fought to protect you all, while they refused to act. Now, we stand on the edge of something greater—an Empire that will bring peace to our galaxy, a peace that the Jedi could never achieve.”

Anakin's heart stilled at the words, but there was no turning back. He was ready. He had been ready for this moment. For the truth to finally be recognized.

“Chancellor,” Anakin spoke, his voice steady, though a cold fire burned in his chest. “The Jedi are too bound by their rules. They cannot protect us anymore. I have seen what the war has done to our Republic. We must end it—by any means necessary.”

The Senate hall buzzed with murmurs. The voices of dissent rose, but Palpatine raised a hand, silencing them.

“We are all familiar with the power of the Jedi,” Palpatine said. “And we are also aware that there are Jedi who stand against us. I ask for the support of this body, to grant me the authority to deal with these traitors and to give Anakin Skywalker the power to ensure the Republic’s future is secure.”

Anakin felt a strange rush of exhilaration course through him as the room filled with applause, the Senators standing in support. It was as if the galaxy had finally acknowledged him—the truth he had always known, now made real.

The Chancellor's gaze was still locked on Anakin. “The time has come,” he whispered, “for you to take your place as my hand.”

The words reverberated in his chest. The Emperor’s Hand. It was a title that called to him, filled him with a strange sense of purpose.

Later that night, in the private chamber Palpatine had offered him, Anakin stood at the window, gazing out over the skyline of Coruscant. The city was alive beneath him, a thousand lights twinkling like stars.

Palpatine entered behind him, his footsteps soft on the polished floor. There was a weight to his presence—one that filled the room and made it feel smaller, more contained. “You have made the right choice, Anakin. This is where you belong.”

Anakin’s voice was low, almost reverent. “I can feel it, Chancellor. The power... It’s all within my reach.”

Palpatine’s smile deepened. “You are a powerful man, Anakin. But even more than that, you are a man who sees . You are not bound by the limitations of the Jedi. You can shape the future with your own hands.”

Anakin turned slowly, meeting Palpatine’s gaze. There was something cold in his chest, something he couldn’t name, but it was familiar, like a hunger gnawing at his insides. “I want to protect Padmé. I want to keep her safe...”

“Of course, Anakin,” Palpatine said softly. “You have the power to do just that. But you must be willing to embrace everything that comes with it. Power requires sacrifice.”

Anakin clenched his fists. “I’ll do anything.”

The smile that passed over Palpatine’s face was unsettling. “Anything, indeed.”

The following days blurred together. The Republic was shaken by the passing of emergency powers to the Chancellor, and the Jedi Council was in disarray, unable to comprehend the scope of what was happening. Anakin spent more and more time with Palpatine, moving deeper into the web that had been so carefully woven around him. He was no longer a Jedi Knight—he was something else entirely.

He had become Palpatine’s weapon.

One night, as Anakin sat alone in his quarters, the door chimed, and he opened it to find Padmé standing there, her face pale, her eyes filled with confusion and fear. She had been distant lately, but now she seemed almost frail before him.

“Anakin…” she began, voice trembling. “What are you doing? The Jedi… they said you’ve turned against them. That you’re with Palpatine now. What’s happening?”

Anakin’s chest tightened. He couldn’t look at her, not now—not when the truth was so close .

“You don’t understand,” he whispered.

“Anakin, please!” she cried, stepping forward. “I know you. You’re not like this. You can’t be. Please … come back to me. Come back to us.”

Anakin finally met her gaze, and the pain that filled him was unbearable. He reached out, but the darkness was already there, like a wall between them.

“I’ve already made my choice, Padmé,” he said, his voice flat, distant. “I can’t go back. You don’t understand… you don’t see it. I’m doing this for you. For all of us.”

Padmé’s eyes filled with tears. “Anakin, no. You’re becoming someone else. This isn’t you. The man I loved... he wouldn’t do this.”

Anakin flinched at the words, but they didn’t cut him as deeply as they should have. He had already severed too many ties.

“I am the man you loved,” he said softly, a shadow in his voice. “I’ve just… changed.”

Padmé’s hand trembled as she reached for him, but she stopped just short, as though afraid to touch him. The silence between them was suffocating, and in that silence, Anakin knew that the person she loved had already been lost.

“You can’t save me anymore,” he said.

With that, Padmé turned away, leaving him standing alone in the dimly lit room.

The next morning, Anakin stood before the hologram of Palpatine. The Emperor’s voice was a low murmur in the back of his mind, pulling at the edges of his resolve.

“It’s time, Anakin,” Palpatine said, his voice smooth as ever. “The Jedi must fall. The Republic will be ours.”

Anakin nodded. He could feel the truth of Palpatine’s words settle deep in his bones, the promise of power that would ensure Padmé’s safety—their future.

The galaxy would tremble before him.

And in that moment, Anakin Skywalker felt his soul slip further into darkness.

Chapter Text

The blue glow of hyperspace dissolved into the familiar constellation of Coruscant's traffic lanes. Anakin's fighter cut through the streams of speeder traffic, the 501st's transport ships flanking him in tight formation. Below, the Jedi Temple's spires pierced the afternoon haze like ancient swords thrust skyward.

Commander Appo's voice crackled through the comm. "General, the men are asking about our mission parameters."

Anakin's knuckles whitened against the flight controls. The inhibitor chips would handle the clones' compliance—Palpatine had assured him of that. The troopers who had fought beside him, bled beside him, would execute Order 66 without question when the time came. They would have no choice.

"Maintain formation. Land at the Temple's east platform."

"Copy that, General."

The designation felt hollow in his mouth. He was no longer their general. He was something else now—Lord Vader, though the name still sat foreign on his tongue. The Sith title would come with time, Palpatine had promised. First, he had to earn it.

His fighter's landing gear struck the Temple platform with a mechanical shriek. Through the cockpit's transparisteel, he watched Clone Troopers—his troopers—deploy from their transports with practiced efficiency. DC-15A blaster rifles snapped to ready positions. Blue and white armor gleamed under Coruscant's twin suns.

Anakin's boots hit the platform. The Force whispered warnings from the Temple's depths—a low thrum of unease rippling through the ancient stones. The Jedi felt something coming. They just didn't know what.

"CT-7567," Anakin called to the clone captain approaching him.

"Sir." Captain Rex's voice carried the same mechanical precision as always, but something flickered behind his visor. The inhibitor chip hadn't fully suppressed his personality yet—that would come with the order itself.

"Surround the Temple. No one enters or leaves without my command."

"Understood, sir. What about the Temple Guards?"

Anakin's lightsaber hilt pressed cold against his palm. "Leave them to me."

The Temple's main entrance loomed before him—twelve meters of burnished metal adorned with Jedi insignia that had stood for a thousand generations. Anakin pressed his palm against the biometric scanner. The massive doors groaned open, recognizing him as they had countless times before.

But not as the same man.

The Great Hall stretched ahead, its vaulted ceiling disappearing into shadow. Younglings' laughter echoed from the training chambers below—a sound that would end today. Anakin forced himself forward, each step echoing off polished stone.

"Skywalker." Master Cin Drallig emerged from the shadows, lightsaber already in hand. The Temple's chief of security moved with predatory grace, his weathered face carved with suspicion. "The clones outside—what's their purpose here?"

"Stand aside, Master Drallig."

"You reek of the dark side." Drallig's blade ignited with a snap-hiss, yellow energy casting harsh shadows across the walls. "What have you done?"

Anakin's own lightsaber blazed to life—but the familiar blue had shifted to crimson, powered by his kyber crystal's corruption. The sound was different now, angrier, like a wounded animal's snarl.

Drallig's eyes widened. "Anakin... no."

"Lord Vader."

Their blades met in a shower of sparks. Drallig fought with textbook precision—each form executed flawlessly, each strike calculated for maximum efficiency. But textbooks couldn't account for the raw power flowing through Anakin's limbs, the dark side energy that made his muscles sing with violent potential.

Anakin's blade carved through Drallig's guard, found flesh. The security chief collapsed, his lightsaber clattering across stone.

Through the Temple's corridors, Anakin heard the first screams.

His comlink crackled. Commander Cody's voice, transmitted from across the galaxy: "Lord Sidious, we have executed Order 66. The Jedi on Utapau has been eliminated."

Similar reports flooded the comm channels—clone commanders throughout the galaxy confirming their Jedi generals' deaths. The purge had begun.

Anakin strode deeper into the Temple, following pathways burned into his muscle memory. Behind him, the 501st poured through entrances they had secured, their blasters spitting red death. Temple Guards fell in corridors they had sworn to protect, their double-bladed sabers no match for coordinated clone fire.

The younglings' training chamber door slid open at his approach.

Twelve small figures looked up from their practice forms, miniature training sabers humming with blue energy no brighter than fireflies. The youngest—a Twi'lek girl with purple skin—couldn't have reached his knee. Her training saber trembled in grip too small for the hilt.

Their instructor, Master Bolla Ropal, shifted between Anakin and his students. The Twi'lek's lekku twitched—the unconscious movement Anakin remembered from briefings where Ropal had argued for more humanitarian aid to war-torn systems.

"Master Skywalker?" The sandy-haired human boy—Sors Bandeam, Anakin's memory supplied—stepped forward. His stance mimicked Form I perfectly, shoulders square, chin raised. Everything about him screamed hope, determination, the absolute certainty that good would triumph because adults had promised it would.

Anakin's throat constricted. The boy's eyes held the same fierce light that had once burned in a nine-year-old slave on Tatooine, the same naive faith that had asked, "Are you an angel?"

"Master Skywalker," Sors said again, lowering his practice saber. "What's happening? The explosions—we heard screaming."

Through the chamber's walls, blaster fire echoed like rainfall. A child started crying—not from this room, but somewhere deeper in the Temple. The sound cut through steel and stone as if it were flesh.

Anakin's lightsaber hilt slicked with palm sweat. His thumb found the activation switch, traced its familiar ridge. One movement. One choice. Padmé's life bought with twelve small breaths that would simply... stop.

"The Jedi Council planned to overthrow the Republic," he heard himself say. The words felt rehearsed, borrowed from someone else's mouth. "Chancellor Palpatine discovered the plot. You're all traitors to democracy."

Master Ropal's nictitating membranes flicked across his eyes—the Twi'lek equivalent of a flinch. "Anakin, these are children. Whatever's happened, whatever you've been told—"

"Master Skywalker would never hurt us," interrupted a Rodian youngling, her antennae quivering. "He saved my homeworld. He brought medicine to Ryloth when the Separatists—" Her voice cracked. "This is a mistake. This has to be a mistake."

The Force pressed against Anakin's consciousness like water against a cracking dam. Through it, he felt their terror—not the sharp, clean fear of battle, but the deep, wordless confusion of creatures who had never conceived that safety could simply vanish. Their instructor's mounting horror. The way Sors Bandeam still stood protectively in front of the smaller children, somehow convinced that his meter-tall frame could shield them from whatever nightmare had invaded their sanctuary.

Padmé's face flickered behind Anakin's eyes. Not as she was now—pregnant, beautiful, trusting—but as she would be in his visions. Twisted in agony, crying his name as death took her. The medical droid's voice echoing: "We cannot explain what happened. She has lost the will to live."

His lightsaber ignited.

The crimson blade cast bloody shadows across twelve small faces. Several children stumbled backward. The Twi'lek girl dropped her practice saber; it clattered against stone like falling bones.

"No," Master Ropal breathed. "Anakin, no. They trust you."

Sors Bandeam didn't retreat. His young face set with determination that would have made any Jedi Master proud. "Master Skywalker, I don't understand. What did we do wrong? Just tell us what we did wrong and we'll fix it."

The boy's absolute faith shattered something in Anakin's chest. For one crystalline moment, he saw himself through Sors' eyes—not Lord Vader, architect of galactic peace, but a towering figure with a burning blade who had come to murder children in their place of learning.

The purple-skinned Twi'lek was crying now, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. She couldn't be older than five. Maybe six. Barely old enough to hold a lightsaber, let alone understand why someone would want to kill her for the crime of existing.

"Please," she whispered. "I want my mama."

Anakin's vision blurred. In the Force, he felt Padmé's heartbeat synchronizing with the child's—two hearts beating in rhythm, terror and innocence bleeding together until he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

The blade moved.

Sors Bandeam fell first, his hand still reaching toward his training saber, still believing until the end that this was some test he could pass if he just tried hard enough. The others followed—small lights winking out in the Force like candles snuffed by wind.

When silence returned to the chamber, Anakin stood alone among twelve cooling bodies. The purple-skinned girl had died clutching a small datapad—a picture of her family, he realized. Parents who would never see their daughter again, who would never know that her last word had been "mama" spoken in the voice of someone who still believed her parents could save her from anything.

His lightsaber powered down with a soft hiss. The sudden darkness seemed absolute, broken only by the red emergency lighting that painted everything the color of spilled blood.

In the echoing quiet, Anakin waited for triumph, for the satisfaction of decisive action, for anything other than the hollow ache spreading through his chest like poison.

Instead, he heard only the phantom echo of a five-year-old girl calling for her mother.

Outside, Coruscant's twin suns set behind a sky full of gunships. The Republic was dead. The Empire would rise from its ashes, bringing order to chaos, peace to war.

And in a sterile medical facility across the city, Padmé Amidala felt the first labor pains that would bring his children into the world—children who would never know that their first breath came at the cost of twelve others' last.

The Council chambers stood empty, their occupants scattered across distant battlefields. Through the transparisteel windows, Coruscant's skyline stretched endlessly—a monument to civilization that would survive this day's work. The Republic would endure, transformed and purified.

Around the Temple, clone gunships circled in precise formation. Red blaster bolts lit up the afternoon sky as 501st troopers eliminated any Jedi attempting to escape. Each shot was another thread severed, another voice silenced in the Force's great tapestry.

The dark side sang in Anakin's veins as he walked through corridors painted with smoke and shadow. The Temple's ancient stones absorbed the screams, the blaster fire, the dying gasps of a thousand years of tradition.

This was the price of Padmé's life. This was the cost of peace.

Chapter Text

There is no salvation for the fallen. There is only the darkness that waits to swallow you whole. The galaxy would tremble before him, but no one could save him from the emptiness that had overtaken his soul.

The black armor felt cold against Anakin Skywalker’s skin.

He had always known, somewhere deep in the marrow of himself, that this was where he was headed. But knowing didn’t soften the weight of it. The suit clung to him like a tomb—sleek, cold, unyielding. His gloved fingers skimmed the armor’s surface, tracing curves and joints that now defined his silhouette. The face that once stood for hope, for victory, was buried beneath metal and shadow. Only the steady rasp of the respirator broke the silence, mechanical and inhuman, a sound that reminded him with every breath: the man he’d been was gone.

Anakin Skywalker was gone.

In his place stood Darth Vader.

The memory burned hotter than the flames of Mustafar ever had. Anakin remembered the way Obi-Wan looked at him—like a stranger, like something broken beyond repair. Each word they'd shouted had landed heavier than the last, not just as accusations but as a lifetime of unspoken grief unraveling between them. Anakin had swung with rage, but there'd been desperation beneath it, something like pleading buried under the crackle of his lightsaber. He had wanted to win, yes, but more than that, he'd wanted Obi-Wan to understand. And when the fight ended, with Anakin maimed and burning, it wasn’t the fire that hurt most—it was Obi-Wan’s voice, quiet with sorrow, saying he had loved him. Past tense.

Anakin had screamed, but not just from pain. It was the grief, raw and jagged, tearing through what little remained of the boy who once called Obi-Wan "Master." As the lava licked at his skin and his limbs failed him, Anakin clung to that final image: Obi-Wan walking away, cloaked in ash and silence, leaving him behind like a failed mission, like a fallen comrade too far gone.

He sometimes found himself reaching for memories that weren’t quite his—fragments of a voice he barely remembered, the warm timbre of Qui-Gon Jinn speaking to him with quiet conviction. He'd only known the man for days, but in those days, Qui-Gon had seen him—not as a project, not as a prophecy, but as a person. A boy. A child with too much hope and too little protection. And then Qui-Gon was gone, and Obi-Wan—grieving, young, unready—had tried to step into the role left behind. He had tried to be both master and brother, father and friend, and for a while Anakin had believed that might be enough. But Obi-Wan was not Qui-Gon. Where Qui-Gon had challenged the Council, Obi-Wan followed it. Where Qui-Gon had knelt in the desert and freed a slave boy with a promise, Obi-Wan taught restraint, obedience, detachment. Anakin loved him—he would always love him—but sometimes love soured when it was asked to fill too many roles.

Becoming a Sith hadn't been a choice so much as a collapse. The shift from Jedi to something else tore through him like wildfire, burning away everything soft and hopeful. The war inside him had been loud—furious, grieving, desperate—but that noise had quieted. What was left behind didn’t dream of peace or balance. That man was already ash. In his place stood something forged in loss and fire, colder than vengeance, steadier than faith.

Palpatine stood before him, his smile wide and knowing, his hands clasped behind his back. His presence filled the room, suffocating, like the shadow of a predator closing in on its prey. “You have done well, my apprentice,” Palpatine said, his voice thick with approval. “The Jedi are no more. The Republic is yours to command.”

Vader’s voice, now distorted by the respirator that filled his lungs with every breath, came out as a low growl. “The Jedi are gone, and with them, the last remnants of the old Republic. The galaxy will know true peace now.”

Palpatine’s smile deepened, his eyes gleaming with pride. “Yes, yes, peace. And order. The Empire will be strong, and together, we will bring about a new era—one where the Sith rule, and the Jedi’s weakness is nothing but a distant memory.”

Vader’s mind was a whirlpool of conflicting emotions—fragments of memories, of love, of pain, of rage. He thought of Padmé. He thought of her cries, her desperate pleas for him to return to the light. Her face still haunted him, even now. The last time he had seen her, she had begged him to come back. But there was no going back, was there?

He had made his choice.

Padmé had been part of the old life. The life that no longer existed. The galaxy needed a new order. And he would give it to them, even if it meant sacrificing everything he had ever known. Even if it meant destroying the very thing he had once loved.

His breath, amplified by the mask, echoed in the room like the sound of death itself. “I will do whatever is necessary to ensure peace.”

Palpatine’s eyes gleamed. “And that is why you will be powerful. You are no longer bound by the limitations of the Jedi. You will see the galaxy through the eyes of a true ruler.”

Vader nodded, though he felt a deep emptiness inside. He was powerful, yes. But at what cost?

The Imperial fleet had already been mobilized. The galaxy trembled under the might of the Empire that Palpatine had promised would bring peace. And Vader—the Emperor’s right hand—stood at the helm of that mighty force. The Republic was gone, its crumbling Senate replaced by the iron grip of the Empire. The Jedi were destroyed, their temples reduced to rubble, their teachings buried in the sands of time.

The Empire’s reign had begun.

But as the fleet cruised through the stars, as the Emperor’s new order took root across the galaxy, there was one thing Vader could not ignore: the emptiness that gnawed at him.

Padmé was gone.

She had died, just as the visions had foretold. And it had been his fault.

At first, he had believed that power—the power to change the future—would be enough to fill the void. But no amount of power could erase the pain that had taken root in his heart. No matter how many systems the Empire subjugated, no matter how many planets fell into line, it would never bring her back.

The memory of Padmé’s face—the way she had looked at him when she had left him—haunted him like a specter. The way her eyes had filled with betrayal. The way she had asked him to choose her, to choose them . But he had chosen power. He had chosen the Sith. And now, she was gone. And with her, the last vestiges of the man he had once been.

Vader stood in his private chambers aboard the Executor, staring out into the cold expanse of space. His reflection was distorted in the dark glass—his own face a grotesque mask of the man he had been. He barely recognized the figure that stood before him.

It wasn’t just his appearance that had changed. It was everything. His soul felt like a blackened void, consumed by the darkness of the Force, the weight of his actions.

Even beneath the mask, a flicker of something long buried stirred whenever he thought of Ahsoka. She was a ghost from a life that felt both distant and painfully close—his former apprentice, the girl who once trusted him without question. Her defiance, her strength, the way she left him behind when he fell… it haunted him more than any wound. In the quiet moments, when the armor was just a shell and the darkness softened, he wondered if redemption was possible—not for the galaxy, but for himself, if only through the hope he once saw reflected in her eyes.

The door behind him hissed open, and he turned. A figure stood in the doorway—a shadow in the dim light. It was Darth Sidious.

“My apprentice,” Palpatine’s voice purred, dripping with satisfaction. “You are more powerful than ever. The galaxy is yours to command.”

Vader said nothing, his eyes distant, lost in the swirl of his thoughts. He had no desire to rule the galaxy. He had no desire for power anymore. It was a means to an end, nothing more.

The Emperor stepped forward, sensing the unease in his apprentice. “You must not dwell on what you’ve lost, Anakin. The galaxy is vast. There are endless opportunities to shape it as we see fit. You have the power now. You have the strength to command the future.”

Vader shook his head slowly. “I have power, yes. But I lost everything else.”

Palpatine’s eyes narrowed, his lips curling into a sinister smile. “Everything you’ve lost will be returned to you. That is the promise I made to you, my apprentice. Together, we will reshape the galaxy, and nothing—nothing—will stand in our way.”

Vader clenched his fists at his sides, his breath becoming more labored, but he remained silent. The promises of the Sith rang hollow in his ears. He had once believed in them, had once trusted in their vision. But now, they felt like empty words, unfulfilled promises.

There was only one thing left for him to do. One final task.

The Imperial fleet descended upon the planet Naboo. The Emperor had given the order, and Vader had carried it out without hesitation. Naboo—the world that had once been the seat of Padmé’s political power—was now a symbol of everything he had lost.

Vader stood on the balcony of the Imperial command center, looking out over the beautiful but now war-torn landscape. The green hills and the vast lakes that had once been so peaceful now seemed lifeless. The beauty of the world was now marred by the shadow of the Empire.

A flash of memory hit him—Padmé, standing in this very spot, looking out over the horizon with such hope in her eyes. It felt like another life. A life he would never return to.

He could still hear her voice, faint and distant, in his mind: I don’t want to lose you, Anakin. I love you.

But it was too late. There was no going back. The price of peace had been too great.

A fleet of ships moved into position above Naboo, their engines humming ominously in the distance. The Empire had come to enforce its will, and nothing would stand in their way. No amount of resistance could ever stop what had already begun.

And in that moment, as the shadow of the Empire stretched across the galaxy, Anakin Skywalker—the man who had once been a hero—was lost. In his place stood Darth Vader, the Emperor’s enforcer, the dark lord of the Sith.

The galaxy would tremble. And he, too, would tremble. But not in the way he had once hoped.

Chapter Text

The light fades, and with it, so too does the man who was once Anakin Skywalker. The galaxy, vast and unforgiving, does not mourn him. It only yields to his power, an unspoken promise that he will bring order through destruction. There is no redemption. Only the darkness that consumes everything in its path, leaving behind nothing but ash and silence.

The Death Star loomed over the galaxy like a silent god of destruction, its shadow casting a pall over the stars that stretched across the void. Its surface, cold and metallic, reflected no warmth from the distant suns it passed. Beneath its cold, calculating exterior—within corridors that hummed with the constant thrum of machinery and the echo of marching boots—Darth Vader stood at the heart of the Empire. Unshakable, unyielding, and utterly determined to see his Master's vision fulfilled.

The transformation had been complete, but the scars ran deeper than the mechanical limbs that now sustained him. He had learned to shut off the pain, to silence the grief, to bury the loneliness that gnawed at him like a persistent hunger. The physical agony of his ruined body was nothing compared to the emotional wasteland that stretched endlessly within his mind. They had all died, one by one—his mother, his mentor, his friends, his brothers-in-arms. But the pain of her loss, Padmé's loss, was the most insidious of all. It festered in the corners of his consciousness like an infected wound, haunting him in the dead of night when even the mechanical rhythm of his breathing couldn't drown out the whispers of what might have been.

The Emperor had promised him everything—power beyond measure, strength to bend the galaxy to his will, control over life and death itself. But what had it brought him? A galaxy trembling in chains, and a soul that felt hollow, consumed by regret so profound it threatened to collapse inward like a dying star. The irony was not lost on him: he who could crush a man's windpipe with a thought, who could command fleets that blotted out stars, felt more powerless than he ever had as a slave boy on Tatooine.

Yet, the galaxy would never know this torment. They would only see his strength, his terrible, inexorable strength.

Vader stood alone in the command center aboard the Executor, his flagship and the manifestation of Imperial might. The super Star Destroyer stretched for kilometers in every direction, its hull bristling with weapons capable of reducing entire cities to rubble. Through the massive viewport before him, the stars wheeled slowly past—distant suns that had witnessed the birth and death of civilizations, now bearing silent testimony to the Empire's dominion.

His helmet cast a cold reflection in the viewport, a dark silhouette that seemed to dominate the entire expanse of space beyond. The reflection showed nothing of the man beneath—no hint of the scarred flesh, the mechanical respirator that kept him alive, the eyes that had once sparkled with hope and now burned only with the embers of rage. His breath, amplified by the life support systems woven throughout his suit, was the only sound in the room—steady, unrelenting, like the ticking of some cosmic clock counting down to an inevitable doom.

Behind him, officers moved with careful precision, their voices hushed, their movements economical. They had learned that efficiency pleased their Dark Lord, while mistakes... mistakes were often fatal. Admiral Piett approached with measured steps, his boots clicking against the polished deck plating.

"Lord Vader," Piett began, his voice carefully modulated to show respect without betraying the fear that Vader could sense radiating from him like heat from a forge. "The fleet reports all sectors secured. Resistance in the Corellian system has been... eliminated."

Vader did not turn. The word 'eliminated' carried so much weight, so much finality. Millions of lives reduced to a single, clinical term. Once, such wholesale destruction would have horrified him. Once, he would have sought another way, a path that preserved life rather than snuffing it out. But that man was dead, as dead as the worlds that had dared to resist Imperial rule.

"Good," Vader replied, his voice carrying the modulated distortion that made even simple words sound like pronouncements of doom. "And the survivors?"

"Relocated to detention facilities on Kessel, my Lord. They will provide labor for the spice mines."

A different kind of death sentence, Vader knew. The spice mines of Kessel were where hope went to die, where beings were worked until their bodies failed and their spirits were ground to dust. It was efficient. It was practical. It served the Empire's needs.

It was everything he had once stood against.

The galaxy was vast, and now it bent to his will—or rather, to the will he served. For Vader knew, even in his power, even in his terrible strength, that he was still a servant. The Emperor's voice crackled through the commlink in his helmet, a constant reminder of the invisible chains that bound him more surely than any physical restraint.

"Darth Vader," Palpatine's voice hummed through the encrypted channel, smooth as silk and twice as deadly. Each syllable dripped with the confidence of absolute power, the satisfaction of a predator who had finally cornered all his prey. "The rebellion grows stronger by the day. I trust you are ensuring that no force can challenge our rule."

The rebellion. Even now, even with the galaxy under the Empire's boot, there were those who refused to kneel. Vader felt a complex mixture of emotions at the thought—anger at their defiance, yes, but also something else. Something that might have been respect, if he had allowed himself to feel such things. They fought knowing they would lose. They died knowing their deaths would change nothing. There was a kind of courage in that, a kind of nobility that reminded him of—

He crushed the thought before it could fully form.

"Of course, Master," Vader replied, each word heavy with authority and the promise of violence. "The galaxy will know no resistance. The Empire will be unchallenged."

"Good," Palpatine responded, and Vader could hear the smile in his voice—that cold, cruel smile that had once seemed grandfatherly and wise. "I will leave the eradication of the remaining dissidents to you. Their rebellion must be crushed utterly. Root and branch, my apprentice. I expect no less than perfection."

The commlink clicked off, leaving Vader in the relative silence of the command bridge. But the Emperor's presence lingered, as it always did—a dark whisper at the edge of his consciousness, a reminder that even in his power, he was not free. Had never been free. Not as a slave, not as a Jedi, and certainly not now.

The Emperor had been right all along, hadn't he? The Sith possessed the power to bring order to chaos, to impose will upon an unruly galaxy. The Jedi, with their endless debates and their paralytic adherence to ancient codes, had failed. They had let corruption fester, had allowed evil to flourish while they meditated on philosophy and preached patience to the suffering.

But even as he told himself this familiar litany, Vader felt the hollow ache in his chest grow deeper.

On Coruscant, the heart of the Empire, the ancient Senate building stood empty, its chambers where democracy had once struggled to survive now silent as a tomb. The Imperial Palace rose beside it like a dark monument to absolute power, its spires reaching toward the sky as if trying to pierce the heavens themselves. Within its walls, Emperor Palpatine held court, receiving the supplication of governors and admirals, dispensing rewards and punishments with equal coldness.

Vader walked through the grand halls of the Imperial Palace, his cape flowing behind him like liquid shadow. His presence was a suffocating force that made everyone in his path pause and step aside—not just from respect or protocol, but from primal fear. The officers, the aides, the courtiers who had flocked to power like carrion birds—all of them cowered in the shadow of his dark presence. None dared to meet his gaze directly, for to do so was to risk seeing their own death reflected in the crimson gleam of his optical sensors.

The palace was magnificent in its cold grandeur—marble floors that had been quarried from a dozen worlds, tapestries that depicted the Empire's victories in threads of gold and silver, statues of the Emperor that seemed to watch from every alcove. But as Vader walked these halls, he saw other things overlaid like ghostly images from another time.

He saw the Temple. The Jedi Temple as it had been—not the scorched ruin it was now, but alive with the presence of those who had served the Light. He saw younglings running through corridors that now echoed only with the sound of his mechanical breathing. He saw masters debating philosophy in chambers now used to plan genocide. He saw—

He saw her.

Padmé, as she had been in those stolen moments when they could forget the weight of responsibility and simply be together. Her laugh echoing in halls that now knew only the sound of marching boots. Her voice, warm and alive, speaking of dreams for a better galaxy—dreams that had died with her.

The visions came unbidden, as they always did. Memory and imagination blurred together until he could no longer tell what was real and what was the creation of a mind slowly fragmenting under the weight of its own contradictions. Sometimes he would turn a corner expecting to see her there, waiting for him with that smile that had been his anchor in a galaxy gone mad.

But there was only darkness. Only the Empire. Only the endless, suffocating weight of what he had become.

Vader's thoughts drifted once more to Padmé, as they always did in the quiet moments between atrocities. He had told himself so many lies over the years—that her death had been necessary, that it had been the price for saving her, for saving the galaxy from chaos and corruption. But the truth was more painful than any physical wound: he had not saved her. He had killed her.

Not with his hands, perhaps—though even that was debatable, given what had happened on Mustafar. But with his choices. With his fear. With his desperate, grasping need to control everything, to prevent loss by accumulating power. The very thing he had sought to prevent, he had caused.

That day—the day of her death—was etched into his mind with crystalline clarity, replaying itself like a holovid stuck in an endless loop. He remembered the antiseptic smell of the medical facility on Polis Massa, the soft hum of the life support equipment that had been unable to save her. He had stood in the observation gallery, his new mechanical limbs still unfamiliar, watching as the medical droids worked frantically to preserve a life that was already slipping away.

She had looked so small on that table, so fragile. The woman who had stood before the Senate and challenged corruption, who had faced down assassins and walked unafraid into war zones, reduced to a pale figure fighting for each breath. And when the droids had finally stepped back, when the steady beeping of the monitors had given way to that terrible, final tone, he had felt something inside himself die as well.

But it was her words that haunted him most. Words spoken not to him, but about him, to Obi-Wan as she lay dying: "There is good in him. I know... I know there is still good in him."

She had hoped. Even as he knelt in submission before Palpatine, even as he helped hunt down and slaughter the Jedi, even as he became everything she had feared he might become—she had hoped. She had believed that somewhere beneath the darkness, beneath the fear and rage and pain, the man she had loved still existed.

Sometimes, in the deepest hours of the night cycle aboard his Star Destroyer, Vader wondered if she had been right. If somewhere in the tangled wreckage of his soul, some fragment of Anakin Skywalker still lived. But then morning would come, and with it new orders from the Emperor, new worlds to subjugate, new rebels to crush. And he would remember that hope was a luxury he could no longer afford.

The dark side was all he had now. It flowed through him like molten metal through his veins, granting him strength beyond measure but at a cost that grew steeper with each passing year. It consumed everything—joy, love, compassion, hope—and left only hunger in its wake. Hunger for power, for control, for the ability to reshape reality according to his will.

But it could not bring her back. Nothing could bring her back.

It was on a desolate world in the far reaches of the Outer Rim that the spark of rebellion would reignite, though few would recognize its significance at the time. The planet was called Ryloth—a world of barren stone and hardy people who had survived centuries of oppression under various masters. To most Imperial planners, it was a footnote, a backwater world whose only value lay in its location along certain hyperspace routes.

But symbols were often born in the most unlikely places.

Vader and his fleet arrived in the system without warning, the Executor and its escort dropping out of hyperspace with the terrible majesty of an approaching storm. From the bridge of his flagship, Vader surveyed the world below—a scarred ball of rock and determination that had somehow managed to breed defiance like a virus.

Intelligence reports indicated that Ryloth had become a rallying point for various resistance cells scattered across the Outer Rim. Nothing significant by Imperial standards—a few hundred beings at most, armed with outdated weapons and sustained by little more than hope and desperation. They posed no real threat to the Empire's power, but they had become something far more dangerous: a symbol.

The rebels had established their base in the ruins of an ancient city, carved from the living rock of a mountain that had stood since before humans had first looked up at the stars. The Twi'lek architects of old had built it to last, and it had weathered millennia of war and conquest. Now it served as the final refuge for those who refused to accept the Empire's rule.

As Vader's shuttle descended through the thin atmosphere, he could feel them through the Force—hundreds of sparks of life burning with the bright intensity of the desperate. Fear was there, yes, but also determination. They knew they were going to die. They had known it the moment Imperial ships appeared in their sky. But they had chosen to stand anyway.

Once, he might have respected that choice. Once, he might have found another way.

Now, he simply prepared to extinguish those lights forever.

The rebel base was a maze of tunnels and chambers carved deep into the mountain's heart. Emergency lighting cast everything in harsh red shadows, and the air recyclers worked overtime to keep the atmosphere breathable for the mix of species that had found refuge here. Humans, Twi'leks, Mon Calamari, even a few Wookiees—beings from across the galaxy united only by their refusal to kneel.

In the command center, such as it was, the rebel leaders hunched over a holographic display showing the Imperial fleet in orbit. The ships hung there like predators circling wounded prey, their weapons trained on the planet's surface. Escape was impossible—even if they had possessed ships capable of running the blockade, there was nowhere in the galaxy they could hide from the Empire's reach.

"He's coming," whispered Cham Syndulla, the Twi'lek who had led resistance on Ryloth for longer than some of the younger rebels had been alive. His lekku twitched with nervous energy, but his voice remained steady. "Vader himself. I can feel it."

The others knew what that meant. When Darth Vader took personal interest in a rebellion, it was not to negotiate or show mercy. It was to make an example that would be remembered for generations.

"Then we make our stand here," said another voice—a human woman whose face bore the scars of a dozen battles. "We knew this day would come. We've all known since the moment we chose this path."

They had chosen. That was what separated them from the billions who lived under Imperial rule without complaint. Not courage—many of those billions possessed courage. Not strength—the Empire's military might dwarfed anything the rebels could field. They had chosen to believe that something was worth dying for, even if they could not live to see it flourish.

Far above, Vader felt their resolution like a distant flame. Part of him—a part he tried not to acknowledge—understood it. Had he not once made a similar choice? Had he not once stood ready to die for something greater than himself?

But that had been Anakin Skywalker's choice. Anakin Skywalker was dead.

Vader descended to the surface with his personal legion—the 501st, once led by a young Jedi general named Anakin Skywalker, now the instrument of his will. The irony was not lost on him. These same troopers had once followed him into battle against the Separatists, had trusted him with their lives, had called him "General" with genuine respect and affection.

Now they followed him to slaughter those who stood for the same principles they had once fought to defend.

The mountain trembled under the weight of Imperial walkers, their massive forms picking their way across the rocky terrain like mechanical predators. Overhead, TIE fighters screamed through the thin air, their solar panels catching the light of Ryloth's pale sun. It was a display of overwhelming force, designed not just to crush resistance but to break the spirit of anyone who might think to resist in the future.

But as Vader walked through the ruins of the ancient city, something stirred within him—a feeling he had not experienced in years. The stones beneath his feet had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, had sheltered generations of beings who had struggled and loved and hoped and despaired. There was history here, deeper than the Empire, older than the Republic.

For a moment—just a moment—he remembered what it felt like to protect rather than destroy.

The moment passed. It had to pass. There was no room for such weakness in what he had become.

The battle, if it could be called that, was brief and brutal. Imperial forces poured into the tunnels like a flood of white armor and red death, their blasters lighting up the ancient corridors with deadly fire. The rebels fought back with everything they had—makeshift explosives, captured Imperial weapons, desperate courage—but they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned.

Vader moved through the chaos like a force of nature, his lightsaber cutting through the darkness in crimson arcs. Where he walked, resistance crumbled. Blaster bolts that should have found their mark were deflected harmlessly aside. Rebels who tried to stand against him were crushed by invisible hands or sent flying into stone walls with bone-crushing force.

But even as he cut them down, he could feel their defiance. They died cursing his name, died believing that their sacrifice would somehow matter, that their deaths would water the seeds of something greater. It was a faith he had once shared, a belief he had once held sacred.

Now it was simply another delusion to be extinguished.

In the deepest chamber of the base, he found the last of them—a handful of survivors clustered around their fallen leader. Cham Syndulla lay dying, his chest torn open by shrapnel, but his eyes still burned with unquenched fire. As Vader approached, the old Twi'lek raised his head with tremendous effort.

"I... I remember you," Syndulla gasped, blood frothing at his lips. "From the Clone Wars. You were... different then. You fought for freedom. For justice."

Vader said nothing. His lightsaber hummed in the darkness, its light painting everything the color of blood.

"What happened to you?" the dying rebel whispered. "What turned the hero of the Republic into... this?"

The question hung in the air like smoke from a burning city. What had happened? When had the path to save those he loved become the road to destroying everything he had once stood for? When had fear transformed into hate, and hate into suffering beyond measure?

"Anakin Skywalker is dead," Vader replied, his voice echoing in the confined space. "I destroyed him."

"No," Syndulla said, his voice growing weaker but his conviction somehow stronger. "You can't... can't destroy hope. It lives... in places you'll never... never reach..."

The rebel leader's eyes closed, his final breath rattling in his chest. Around him, the last of his followers waited for their own end, their faces showing not fear but a kind of terrible peace.

Vader raised his lightsaber.

As the final rebel stronghold burned behind him, as the mountain that had sheltered dreams of freedom became a tomb, Vader felt the familiar hollowness expand within his chest. There was no victory here, no satisfaction. Only another step down a path that seemed to stretch endlessly into darkness.

He stood on a ridge overlooking the ancient city, watching as Imperial forces systematically destroyed what remained of the rebel base. The fires would burn for days, visible from orbit—a beacon that would send a message across the galaxy. This is what happens to those who defy the Empire. This is the price of resistance.

But even as he watched the flames consume everything, Vader could not escape the echo of Syndulla's words. The old rebel had known him—had remembered the man he had been during the Clone Wars. A time when his name had been spoken with gratitude rather than terror, when children had looked up to him as a hero rather than fleeing in fear.

That man seemed like a stranger now, like someone from another lifetime. But the memories remained, buried deep beneath layers of pain and rage and self-loathing. Memories of laughter shared with Obi-Wan during peaceful moments between battles. Memories of pride in his Padawan's growth, of satisfaction in a mission completed without unnecessary loss of life. Memories of Padmé's smile when he told her of Republic victories won with mercy rather than massacre.

"You can't destroy hope," Syndulla had said. But hope was exactly what Vader had been trying to destroy—in others, and most of all in himself. Hope was dangerous. Hope led to attachment, and attachment led to loss, and loss led to the kind of pain that could drive a man to burn down the galaxy just to make it stop.

Better to feel nothing. Better to be the instrument of order, however brutal. Better to be the Empire's dark sword than to risk caring again.

But even as he told himself this, even as he climbed aboard his shuttle and prepared to return to the Executor, Vader could not shake the feeling that something had changed during the battle. Some crack had appeared in the armor he had built around his heart, and through that crack, unwanted light was beginning to seep.

Back aboard his flagship, Vader stood once again before the great viewport, watching as Ryloth fell away behind them. The planet looked peaceful from this distance—just another world in an Empire of millions, its recent trauma invisible from space. Soon, new colonists would arrive, Imperial citizens who would build their lives on the graves of rebels and never know what had been sacrificed for their security.

The cycle would continue. Resistance would rise, and the Empire would crush it. Order would be maintained through strength, peace through fear. It was efficient. It was necessary. It was the only way to prevent the chaos that had consumed the Republic.

So why did it feel like failure?

Behind him, Admiral Piett approached with another report, another world brought to heel, another victory for the Empire. The man's voice was carefully neutral as he recited casualty figures and resource allocations, but Vader could sense the unease beneath the professional facade. Even his own officers, loyal as they were, sometimes wondered if the price of order was worth paying.

"Is there anything else, my Lord?" Piett asked when he had finished his report.

Vader continued to stare out at the stars, each one a sun that warmed worlds where beings lived and loved and struggled and died, mostly without ever knowing that their fates were decided by a man in a black mask who had forgotten how to feel anything but rage.

"No," he said at last. "You are dismissed."

As Piett's footsteps faded, Vader was left alone with the silence that had become his only companion. The mechanical rhythm of his breathing, the distant hum of the ship's engines, the whisper of recycled air through ventilation systems—these were the sounds of his existence now. No laughter, no conversation, no connection to anything beyond the cold machinery that kept him alive and the colder will that drove him forward.

In the reflection on the viewport, he saw his helmet staring back—an expressionless mask that revealed nothing of the man beneath. Sometimes he wondered if there was still a man beneath it, or if years of pain and isolation had finally completed the transformation Palpatine had begun. Perhaps he truly was nothing more than a machine now, a weapon wrapped in the illusion of humanity.

But then he would remember her voice, speaking words of love and hope even as she died. And he would know that somewhere in the darkness of what he had become, some fragment of Anakin Skywalker endured—if only to suffer.

The Emperor's dark promise had been fulfilled, or so it seemed. The galaxy bowed before Imperial might, and Vader's power was unquestioned from the Core Worlds to the Outer Rim. Rebellion existed only in scattered pockets, more nuisance than threat. The Jedi were extinct, their ancient enemy finally victorious after a thousand years of waiting.

Peace reigned—the peace of the grave, the peace of those too frightened to speak, the peace of despair. It was not the peace Padmé had dreamed of, not the peace the Republic had promised, but it was order. It was stability. It was everything the Empire claimed to offer.

But in the cold loneliness of his chambers aboard the Executor, in the silence that stretched between one breath and the next, Vader could feel the truth that he had spent years trying to deny. The promise had been broken long ago—not Palpatine's promise, but his own. The promise he had made to a dying woman, to the memory of the man he had been, to the ideals he had once served.

There was no turning back, of course. Too much blood stained his hands, too many worlds had burned at his command. The galaxy would never forgive him, and he would never forgive himself. The path he walked led only deeper into darkness, and with each step, the light that had once guided him grew dimmer and more distant.

But still, in the deepest part of the night, when the ship was quiet and the stars were cold and distant, he could feel her presence—faint but undeniable. Not a ghost, not a vision, but something deeper. The memory of love that had once made him believe he could be better than he was, that had made him dream of a galaxy where children could grow up without fear.

That dream was dead, killed by his own hands. But its echo remained, a whisper in the darkness that no amount of rage or pain could completely silence. And perhaps—just perhaps—that whisper was enough to suggest that even in the heart of the Empire's shadow, even in the depths of despair, hope could not be entirely destroyed.

For hope, like love, like the light itself, had a way of enduring in the most unlikely places. And sometimes, in the darkness between the stars, a single spark was all it took to start a fire that could burn down an empire.

The galaxy waited, patient as only the cosmos could be, for that spark to ignite.

And in his tower of black metal and bitter memory, Darth Vader breathed his mechanical breath and tried not to remember what it felt like to hope.

Chapter Text

There is no triumph for the fallen. Only echoes. The darkness may have consumed him, but the man he was still lingers in the shadows, a ghost of what could have been. Vader is the Emperor's enforcer, but who is Anakin Skywalker now?

The cold, sterile corridors of the Death Star were alive with the hum of machinery—a constant drone that vibrated through the durasteel walls and into the bones of every soul aboard. The deep thrum of engines pulsed like the heartbeat of some massive, mechanical beast, while the calculated footsteps of stormtroopers marched in perfect rhythm, their boots striking the polished floors with military precision. The silence between these sounds was oppressive, the air thick with the weight of expectation and the acrid smell of recycled atmosphere, tinged with the metallic tang of machinery and the faint ozone of electrical systems.

Darth Vader stood before the massive viewport in his private chamber, a towering figure of black against the star-filled void. His cape hung motionless behind him, the fabric so dark it seemed to absorb the pale light reflecting off the Death Star's hull. The stars seemed so far away, pinpricks of light in an endless sea of nothing—a distant memory of worlds he had once known, people he had once loved. There was nothing out there for him now. No warmth from the Force, no presence calling to him, no love to guide him home. Only the vast emptiness of space, as hollow as the cavity where his heart used to be.

The mechanical wheeze of his respirator filled the silence, each breath a labored reminder of what he had become. In... wheeze. Out... wheeze. The rhythm was hypnotic, maddening, a constant percussion that marked time in a life that felt suspended between death and something worse. His body, once a vessel of hope and strength, was now just a machine—a tool of the Emperor's will, encased in black armor that felt more like a coffin than protection.

He wasn't sure what had led him to this place anymore. The path seemed so clear once—save Padmé, bring order to the galaxy, stop the wars that consumed worlds and lives. He had chosen this—chosen the Empire, chosen power over the weakness of the Jedi Council's endless deliberations. But now that he had it, the cold truth settled heavily upon his shoulders like a shroud. The rebellion had been crushed on a dozen worlds. The Senate had fallen, its members scattered or dead. The Jedi were extinct, their temples reduced to ash. The galaxy was under Imperial control, under his control.

And yet... none of it mattered.

Not anymore.

The Force moved around him like a sluggish river, polluted with the dark side's corruption. Where once it had sung with life and possibility, now it whispered of death and dominion. He could feel every soul aboard the Death Star—their fear, their ambition, their desperate hope for survival in a galaxy that had forgotten mercy. The sensation was overwhelming, a constant background noise of mortal terror that he had learned to tune out, the way one learns to ignore the sound of rain.

But in the rare moments of solitude like this, when the Empire was silent and the stars seemed to watch over him like distant, judgmental eyes, his thoughts would drift back to the past. To the days when he had been someone else entirely.

Anakin Skywalker.

The name tasted like ash in his mouth, a bitter reminder of dreams long dead. He had once been a Jedi, a hero of the Republic who flew between stars on wings of hope. He had dreamed of a life of peace, of love, of something greater than himself. He had believed in the ideals of the Jedi Order—justice, compassion, selflessness. He had believed in the Force, in balance, in the future. Children had looked up to him. Padmé had seen something in him worth loving.

But all of that had crumbled, torn apart by his own hands in a single moment of desperate fury.

And in its place, Darth Vader had emerged—born not in triumph, but in the screaming agony of Mustafar's fires.

The door to his chamber hissed open, breaking his reverie. The sound of hesitant footsteps approached, measured and careful. An officer appeared in his peripheral vision, standing at rigid attention. The man's presence was faint in the Force, insignificant in the grand scheme of things—another cog in the Imperial machine. But there was something in the officer's posture, in the way he held himself, that caught Vader's attention. It was fear, yes, but not the simple terror of a subordinate facing his superior. This was deeper—a fear born of doubt, of questions that had no safe answers.

Why did I volunteer for this assignment? Lieutenant Commander Jerrik Thorne thought, his mouth dry as dust. Credits aren't worth dying for, and everyone knows what happens to officers who bring bad news to Lord Vader.

"Lord Vader," the officer spoke, his voice trembling slightly despite his best efforts to maintain composure. His Imperial uniform was pristine, pressed to perfection, but sweat beaded on his forehead. "The Emperor has summoned you. He wishes to speak with you immediately."

Vader turned slowly, his cape billowing behind him like the wings of some great predator. The officer—a lieutenant commander by his rank insignia—took an involuntary step back as those black lenses fixed upon him. The man's fear spiked in the Force, sharp and acrid.

"Lead the way," Vader commanded, his voice a mechanical rasp that seemed to echo from the depths of hell itself.

The officer led him through the labyrinthine halls of the Death Star, passing by troops and technicians who scurried to and fro with the urgency of a machine that never stopped. Storm troopers snapped to attention as they passed, their white armor gleaming under the harsh corridor lighting. Technicians in gray uniforms pressed themselves against walls, their tools clutched in trembling hands. The air recycling systems hummed overhead, pushing the stale atmosphere through filters that could never quite remove the smell of fear and metal.

Just keep walking, Thorne told himself, his boots clicking against the polished floor. Don't think about the bodies floating in space around Alderaan. Don't think about what we've become.

The corridors stretched on endlessly, a maze of Imperial efficiency designed to dwarf the individual and remind everyone of their place in the greater machine. Blast doors sealed with pneumatic hisses as they passed, security checkpoints scanned their biosignatures, and the ever-present security cameras tracked their movement with mechanical precision. The Death Star was more than a weapon—it was a monument to order, to the crushing weight of Imperial authority.

They passed through the detention level, where the screams of rebel prisoners echoed from behind reinforced doors. The sounds made Vader's steps slow for just a moment, something flickering in the depths of his consciousness like a candle in a hurricane. He had been in cells like these once, as a slave on Tatooine, powerless and afraid. The memory was sharp, painful—the taste of fear and sand, the weight of chains both real and metaphorical.

But that boy was dead. Had been dead for years.

The door to the Emperor's private chamber slid open with a mechanical whisper, revealing the dark figure seated upon his throne. The room was a study in shadows and crimson light, the walls lined with ancient Sith artifacts and holographic displays showing the galaxy's current state. Palpatine was draped in the shadows like they were royal robes, his eyes gleaming with malice and satisfaction. The Emperor's skeletal fingers rested lightly on the armrests of his throne, his presence filling the room like the very darkness that had consumed Anakin all those years ago.

The throne room stank of ozone and something else—something organic and rotten, like flowers left too long in stagnant water. It was the smell of the dark side concentrated, of power without conscience, of ambition without limit.

"Vader," Palpatine greeted him, his voice thick with satisfaction and false warmth. "I trust that the rebellion's last remnants have been dealt with accordingly?"

"They are no more," Vader replied, his voice cold, his words flat and without emotion. "The galaxy is at peace."

It was a lie, of course. Peace was not the absence of rebellion—it was the presence of justice, of hope, of something worth protecting. What they had created was not peace but the silence of the grave, the quiet that comes after all the singers have been shot.

Palpatine's smile was thin and twisted, a predatory grin that spoke of victory purchased with blood. "Indeed. And you, my apprentice, are the reason for this peace. You are the power behind the Empire's strength. The sword that cuts away the chaos of democracy."

Vader's fists clenched at his sides, the servos in his armor whining softly with the tension. The weight of the words pressed upon him like a physical force. The Emperor had trained him, molded him into this—a tool of destruction wrapped in the flesh of a man who had once dreamed of freedom. It was what he had always wanted, wasn't it? Power. Control. Order. The strength to protect what mattered.

But the taste of victory was bitter as poison.

"You have served me well, my apprentice," Palpatine continued, his voice dripping with praise that felt like acid on exposed nerves. "But there are those still in the shadows, hiding from the inevitable. They will rise again. It is only a matter of time. The spark of rebellion burns in too many hearts."

Vader felt a flicker of something stir within him—something he had not felt in years. It was a remnant of the man he used to be, a fragment of Anakin Skywalker that had somehow survived the fires of Mustafar. A fleeting hope. A deep, aching desire to change things, to make them right, to find some path back to the light.

But it was too late for that. There was no turning back from what he had done. The younglings' faces haunted him still, their trust transforming to terror in their final moments. Padmé's broken body on Polis Massa. The screams of Alderaan dying in space. Some sins were too great for redemption.

"The Rebellion will be dealt with," Vader said, his voice firm but hollow. "I will find them, wherever they hide. No one will defy the Empire."

Palpatine leaned forward slightly, his eyes narrowing, sensing the shift in Vader's emotional state through their connection in the Force. "There is no need to concern yourself with such philosophical matters, my friend. The galaxy is under your control now. You are my enforcer. You are the Empire's sword, cutting away the diseased flesh of chaos."

Vader nodded, but inside, something twisted and writhed like a living thing. The hollow ache in his chest grew, a gnawing emptiness that would never be filled. He was powerful beyond measure, feared across the galaxy, master of the dark side—and utterly, completely alone.

This is what I wanted, he told himself. This is what I chose.

But the lie tasted like blood in his mouth.

Later that evening, Vader stood alone on the observation deck of the Death Star, the same viewport where he had begun his vigil. The stars stretched out before him, distant and uncaring, their light taking years to reach him—photons that had begun their journey when he was still Anakin, still whole, still capable of love. His reflection stared back at him from the transparisteel—a grotesque mask of machinery, a silhouette of darkness that blocked out the light of distant suns.

The deck was empty except for him, the night shift skeleton crew having learned to avoid the Dark Lord's preferred meditation space. The only sounds were the distant hum of the Death Star's systems and the rhythmic wheeze of his respirator. In the quiet of the night, with no one to impress or intimidate, the weight of his choices settled on him like a burial shroud.

In the silence, he could still hear her voice, as clear as if she stood beside him.

I know there is still good in you, Anakin. I know there is.

Padmé.

The thought of her—her gentle smile, the way she had looked at him with such love and hope, the softness of her hand in his—was a wound that would never heal. He had destroyed everything she had stood for. He had betrayed her trust, her love, her faith in him. He had killed her as surely as if he had strangled her with his own hands.

And now, he had become the very thing she had feared.

The weight of his choices, the consequences of his fall, crushed him with an intensity that he had not expected. His body, encased in black armor, felt like a prison. His mind, so sharp and focused, could not escape the darkness that had taken root within him like a cancer. Every breath was a reminder of his failures, every heartbeat a countdown to an end that would never come.

What had he become?

Vader's hands clenched tightly into fists, the sound of the metal scraping against metal echoing in the cold air. He was Darth Vader, enforcer of the Empire. He was the Emperor's right hand, the most feared man in the galaxy. He had power beyond measure. He had control over life and death. But it meant nothing without the one thing that had once given his life meaning.

Love.

It was gone. And in its place, only darkness remained—a darkness so complete it threatened to swallow the stars themselves.

He closed his eyes, trying to block out the image of her face, the sound of her voice, the memory of her final words. But it was futile. The past was inescapable. The man he had been—Anakin Skywalker—was gone, buried beneath years of rage and regret. He had chosen the dark side. He had chosen power over compassion, order over justice, fear over love.

And now, he was left with nothing but the hollow echo of the man he once was, reverberating through the empty corridors of his mechanical heart.

The stars watched silently, offering no judgment, no comfort, no hope.

Just the endless, terrible silence of space.