Padmé Skywalker walked into her apartment, one last time.

It was just like she remembered it... almost.

Everything was just as it had been the day she had left, to go to Dagobah to have Luke and Leia. The paintings of Alderaan Bail had given her and Anakin as a wedding present, all the little trinkets Anakin had brought back for her on his journeys around the galaxy. Oh, how he had loved space... The little sculpture of an Iegoan angel-- for his angel, he whispered in her ear when he'd given it to her. The holo some journalist had taken of her, Obi-Wan, and Anakin the day they'd celebrated Naboo's hard-won freedom in a glorious celebration. The only picture there was of the three of them together.

Fourteen years ago. That day had been over fourteen years ago. They'd all been so happy then. It had only been recently that things had gotten really bad.

She looked around the apartment again, taking everything in... she knew she would never see this place again. Even if it weren't destroyed, or she had managed to live through this war... she could never bring herself to come here again. There were too many memories.

Everything was in place. Everything, that was, except Anakin.

Her heart nearly collapsed on itself as she remembered the memories of the times she'd spent here... of good times, and bad. But good or bad, they had always been with Anakin.

He was dead. It had happened months ago, and she still couldn't believe it sometimes. Her tall, dashing, strong Anakin was dead. She didn't want to believe it-- but she knew a vat of boiling metal would spare no one, not even a powerful Jedi like he was-- had been, she corrected herself.

But even as she corrected herself, a little nagging sliver of doubt wormed its way into her mind. She cursed herself-- she was letting her hopes get in the way of what was really true.

No. He is dead. You have to accept that. You have to go on... for Luke and Leia's sake. He would have wanted it that way.

She recalled the fateful day on Dagobah-- the day Luke and Leia were born. Obi-Wan had returned from here-from Naboo, to tell her the news-- He'd met Anakin there, and tried to bring him back. He'd failed, they'd fought-- and her husband had fallen into the boiling pit where the excess metal from starfighters was melted and recycled. She had been light-years away, but sometimes she imagined she could hear his scream as he fell off the catwalk, into the hot metal... it sent shivers running through the core of her soul. Obi-Wan had immediately returned to her, and told her. She hadn't believed it... until Obi-Wan had placed Anakin's saber in her hands.

The shock of the news had been so great it had sent her into early labor, the twins being born a few hours later. It seemed such a twisted irony, that they should be born the day their father died.

She made her way through the apartment, her hand running over things she knew she would never see again. The table, the couch... the bed. She wryly recalled the times she and Anakin would sneak away from formal gatherings, even their own wedding, but it would have been odd had they ever actually made it to the bedroom before they would give in to the feelings they felt, before they would...

Padmé shook her head. Every time she saw one of her children, or one of the places where she and Anakin had committed the act that had created them-- she wanted to cry, knowing she would never be able to kiss her husband again, never have him kiss her again, her Ani.

She sat down on the bed, and just sat there a moment, staring at things around the room. She knew she didn't have long here, Palpatine would be sure to find her-- she forced down her hateful thoughts about that man, hate never did anyone any good-- it certainly hadn't done any good for her husband. Anyway, she would be dealing with Palpatine soon enough. That was all she had to live for now, the Rebel Alliance... and for Leia. Hopefully, after this mission, she would be able to return to her daughter again... she wished she had a holo of her with Leia and Luke, but keeping their existence a secret from Palpatine counted on nothing of them ever existing anyway. Except for Luke-- she knew, somehow, that the way to fulfilling his destiny was to have his father's name, so he could someday clear it.

Holo...

She was finishing this train of thought as she saw something that threatened to shatter her resolve altogether. She found herself walking towards her dresser, her feet driven by some unseen force. She stopped in front of it, and picked up the object sitting there.

It was the hologram of her and Anakin at their wedding, barely three years ago. Anakin, as handsome as she'd ever seen him, decked out in his Republic dress uniform, blue eyes sparkling with unabashed love. She was in her beautiful, flowing white wedding gown, her brown hair tied up in beaded strands of Alderaanian mother-of-pearl. The newlyweds' eyes were transfixed on each other, bright and shining, their faces forever frozen in an expression of everlasting joy. Anakin's hand was caressing her face, his fingers in her elaborately styled hair... and his other hand, clasping her small one in his.

She'd wanted that moment to last forever. She'd thought it would, because her love for Anakin had never wavered, never failed. Of course, she had been wrong. His mother's death had had a profound effect on him, and his outbursts of anger became more and more prevalent. He'd even blown up at her several times-- she'd known something was wrong with her husband. She just hadn't known how bad that something was.

She prayed he'd made his peace when he died. But from what Obi-Wan had told her, that expression of pure, black hatred on his friend's face, before Obi-Wan had been forced to abandon him... Padmé shut off the train of thought, not wanting to imagine what would have become if she had completed it.

She clutched the hologram one more time, and was setting it down on the dresser again when she suddenly felt the temperature in the room drop, raising the hairs on her neck. She sensed a coldness not far away... a coldness that was eerily familiar, that she couldn't quite place.

She turned to face it-- and her body suddenly convulsed, her fingers going slack, dropping the hologram to the floor, a crack appearing in its surface.

"Who... who are you?"

A tall black figure stood in the entrance to the bedroom, over two meters tall. He was clad in a hideous armor, including his face-- it was like the skull of a demon, frozen and as black as the rest of him, and covered by a shiny black helmet. A long, flowing cape hooked in a chain around his neck came to the ground, surrounding his figure, making it seem all the more monstrous. What parts of him that weren't clad in armor were clad in leather... his legs, his arms, his hands. She vaguely noted there was a lightsaber hooked to his waist. And that breathing. Horrible, mechanized, deep. If this figure had ever once been human, she couldn't believe it.

Then suddenly she placed him-- Darth Vader, personal Sith henchman to Emperor Palpatine. She'd heard the stories of him, silently thankful she had never encountered him. Most who had met him never lived to tell about it.

The figure did not respond to her question.

Resisting the impulse to step back, she immediately assumed her cold demeanor and stance of Queen... she might no longer have been Queen, but she knew how to play the role.

"What are you doing here?"

The figure strode into the room, hands clasped behind its back, and looked around as if assessing the room... but then it stopped and turned to look at her, and it stood there for a minute, just staring at her.

"I see you are as lovely as ever, Lady Skywalker," the figure finally spoke, in deep bass tones that caused her heart to shiver. "Your Highness."

"How do you know me?" she asked, fighting to keep her stance from collapsing, though part of her felt she already knew.

A hideous sound emanated from Vader... laughter? "I know you better than you know yourself, Lady Skywalker. Better than anyone. How else would I know to find you here?

"Here... where we spent so much time together?"

She snorted, in an attempt to mask her rising fear. "I've never met you in my life." The fear in her stomach threatened to rise up and drown her throat.

"You disappoint me, Your Highness. Come now, you surely remember..." She turned away from him.

"Get out of my room, Sith," she told him, with as much of a commanding tone as she could muster.

The dark one kneeled to the floor and picked up the hologram, brushing the shattered bits of flimsiplast off the surface. "Put that down," she snapped. "You have no right to touch it."

"I have as much right as anyone. After all, I was a major participant in this event." For a second it looked as if Vader was going to crush the picture, but with an unexpected gentleness he set it back on the dresser. "Just as major as you, I believe." She could not see through the mask, but she got the eeriest sense he was probably smiling underneath-- if such were possible.

Padmé shook her head vehemently. "No."

"I remember you wanted to wear that loathsome makeup of yours. I had to spend some time convincing you that you looked far better without it."

The bubbling fear in her froze into a horrid, painful lump as suddenly the sense she'd felt early resolved itself into crystal clarity. "No."

It could not... it simply could not be...

He walked towards her again, and every instinct told her to run... but she was frozen in place. He took one gloved hand and reached for her neck... and fingered the japor snippet that hung there, for a few moments. "You still wear this, I see," the voice said with a twisted approval. "I'm honored that after all this time you still fulfill the promise you made me."

Resolve crumbling, she took a step back. "You remember the day I gave this to you? You told me you would never forget me. Forget your future husband."

She stepped back again, her hands flying to her mouth, shaking her head harder. "No... no!!!" Tears began to well up in her eyes, which focused on the black giant. "Anakin... it can't really be you..." Her knees felt wobbly, they threatened to collapse out from under her at any moment.

But everything fit. His sense, the oddly convenient time of his "death" taking place roughly the same time Vader had made his first appearance. His recollection of intimate memories only she or Anakin would have known...

"Search your feelings, Padmé... you know them to be true."

"You are not my husband!" she screamed at the figure.

"I am all Anakin Skywalker once was," Vader told her, "and still is."

"I don't believe you. My husband died in the boiling pit. He wouldn't constrain himself to being a cyborg to stay alive. He would... rather have died, than become you."

"I still had many tasks to perform. They could not be left to someone else because of a mere physical impediment."

"An impediment?" She was incredulous. "Falling into boiling metal, charring nearly every part of you, and you see that as just an impediment?"

"As I told you," the mechanical voice said, "I had unfinished business." His face turned to the wedding hologram. "I have come to resolve part of it."

"I want nothing to do with you."

He grabbed her hands, his hands cold-- Padmé had little doubt they were mechanical, as the rest of him must surely be. But the sense of it, they way he did it... for a moment it felt almost like it really was Anakin holding them...

No. She tried to pull them away, and the gentle touch vanished, tightening around her wrists. "Let go of me."

"I've come to take you with me. That's why I came here months ago... I wanted you with me, on Coruscant. My wife."

She yanked her hands away, surprising the figure enough that he moved far enough away for her to get past him. "Why doesn't he tell me himself, then? If he loves me so much?" A tear streamed down her face.

"It is me, Padmé."

"Don't call me that. You lost that right the moment you donned this black suit. You are not my Anakin anymore." She turned away. "And I am no longer your wife."

"Anakin Skywalker exists in me-- he cares for you still." Was there a sense of... pleading to his voice? She ignored it. "He-- I-- do not wish to destroy you."

"I don't care whether you kill me or not. You've already taken away everything in my life that ever meant anything. My world... my friends... the man I loved more than anything." My children... She clamped a wall down on her thoughts as she remembered they had always been free reign for him to read. "They are all gone thanks to you. I want nothing to do with you."

"Padmé, don't do this. We can still be together."

She hesitated. Oh, how she desperately wanted it to be true! Something inside her gave way, and she reached out and touched the mask, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he was right, that maybe she could touch part of him, be with him again. That she could make a connection...

Then she heard that horrible mechanical breathing again, and the illusion was shattered.

Anakin is gone. You came here to make your peace with that fact. This incident should have no bearing on your decision... except to confirm it further. Padmé took her hand away from the mask. "No."

She reached around her neck to the japor snippet. Gazing painfully at Vader, she ripped it off her neck and tossed it to his feet. "The man I loved-- the man who gave me this-- is dead. You killed him. We can never be together again, not as long as you live. I will always love Anakin-- wherever he is. You-- I want you to leave. I never want to see you again."

His tone became slightly angered. "I am alive, Padmé," he said, firmly placing a fist on his chestplate. "The heart of your husband beats here still."

"A heart kept alive by a machine," she retorted. "My Anakin would never have resorted to machinery, technology, to keep his body alive, would not sacrifice his humanity just to keep breathing. Can you even do that now, without the aid of a machine?"

The rage rose in Vader... and he suddenly reached out, and slapped her in the face.

The force of the blow knocked her to the floor, her face bleeding. He whirled away in shame-- he'd never hit her before, even as Anakin. He hadn't liked hitting her, Anakin had not liked it at all... but he had done it anyway.

She gazed at him with narrowed eyes. "I'll make this easy on you-- I'll leave. If you want to kill me, do it. I don't care. But if some shred of Anakin Skywalker exists within you-- as you say it does-- then I hope he hears this. I love him. I always will. He was a friend of the deepest kind to me. I believe you, that a part of Anakin exists within you... but I am ashamed of him that he would ever have relinquished his soul, to die and become you. If he ever returns, if he ever destroys you like you destroyed him, I will be waiting for him."

"Padmé!"

She shook her head. All she could hope to do now was leave, and try to protect her daughter... and Luke.

"I hope he will forgive you where I have failed," she whispered.

With that, she turned and walked out of the room... or ran, rather, never to see him again.

Vader felt the urge to reach out and grab her, strangle her, to stop her somehow-- but he knew he couldn't. He couldn't do it, because that tiny part of him still cared about her. He hadn't wanted to hit her. But he had, his anger dictating it so. And, while one part of him had utterly detested the action... another part had derived a certain amount of sheer pleasure from lashing at her.

Which meant she was right. Her husband was dead-- he had died in the lava pit, and Darth Vader was what had crawled out.

No. Anakin had been dead long before the pit.

He heard the door to the apartment slam. He felt anger, anger coming from the knowledge that he was completely alone now, except for Palpatine. All any part of him had cared about was gone. And the one who mattered most... she would not accept him.

He was forever cut off from that emotion called love. Anakin Skywalker was truly dead and gone.

Again, he knelt down and picked up the wedding hologram. His hands convulsed, and with a yell of a lost soul he tightened his grip on it, the force of the angry metal fingers nearly crushing it to only so much flimsiplast.

Instead, he hurled the hologram against the wall, and stormed out of the apartment. He had tasks to perform.

The hologram lay there by the wall, broken in half, between the two smiling faces, forever dividing Anakin and Padmé.

Or maybe not.