I Orphaned It On Accident - Tumblr Posts

even as a shadow, even as a dream

The tomb preserved everything perfectly. 

Her image was preserved for all eternity in the stained glass. It felt almost larger than life, with her regnal portrait transferred to the stained glass. Her brown tresses framed her face sharply, and her cold eyes carried grace and class in a way that even her best speeches never truly brought on. The immaculate image she sought to cultivate every time that he saw her get ready for in the Senate was perfect. An icon for the ages. 

She stares at him in final judgment; the tone, the serenity, it all carried him back to another woman, with green locks and pale skin, who stood for light and paid the price for her folly. In another life, when his deepest nightmares merely encroached on his reality rather than merge with it, he imagined himself in black with pale skin, holding the weapon shakily as everything bled and suffered to its death. He’d sit the ashes he’d made, hovering over a body, weapon impaling as his bloody hands wrapped around the handle as the Force screamed what did you do. 

My nightmares were always my reality, only I was too weak to see it. I could only hide, and when running was impossible, I crumbled and burned everything else for a chance to escape only to fall into the fire I set ablaze. 

Vader stalks through the mausoleum, footsteps dull and angry despite the hesitance in their master. The doors whistled quietly as they shut, the small thud echoing through the chamber until it became a deafening roar. His cape swished ominously, frighteningly cheery and disturbing large swaths of air. Everything about his presence in the tomb was foul, unnatural and inhumane, yet he felt drawn to it. 

When he finally gained the arrogance to reenter Naboo and attend her mausoleum, he stopped in front of the carved doors for two minutes. His background swirled in that Force-damned red tinge, his limbs weighed him until it felt like agony to simply remain upright, and his breathing so loud it almost managed to drown out the last words of a strangled woman. 

I love you…..Anakin..

Her coffin had her image carved into it, and for a moment he reaches out, to tenderly stroke her face, and he withdraws. He is a monster, she is dead. He will forever hate himself to death, and deny himself the release of impalement, for he would never deserve it. She would remain dead, the galaxy would spin on its uncaring rotation, oblivious to the rage he wreaked upon it. He loved her, oh how he loved her, but that love could not keep her. He'd love her as misery loved him, and even misery's tight fingers felt like a loose grip as he remembered choking the life from her. He once may have proclaimed his desire to move the stars for her joy, to warp reality to her whims, to burn her enemies, smiling at their agonizing screams and to wretch the eyes from her enemies and string them like pearls, but that life was over. None of that weak man, of the lakes of Varykino, of an office corner in Coruscant, of a wine bottle on a speeder exists.

He settles for kneeling, and almost scoffs at the delusions he enjoys laboring under. For all of his denials, hatred and numb terror, he is powerless at her hands. Death, for all of its unstoppable malice and vitriol, could not crush his weakness. 

The whiteness of everything, the morning star’s light filtering through the stained glass, the marble arches and walkways, her coffin, the last image of her that he would ever see, repelled him. The purity, the kindness, the goodness, it all fell into a mockery of sorts. Everything that she dedicated herself towards, he proved himself to be the antithesis of. Her Republic was overthrown, fallen with him to create his Empire. Her belief in the goodness of the Jedi? Lost to the cold sweeps of times, which would wash the Jedi’s deeds away until they were nothing more than an ancient memory. 

The cold marble seemed to freeze into his joints, almost as a warning. Leave, do not return. Poison this place no longer, demon.  

And when Darth Vader turned to leave, he could feel arms around him. He wasn’t sure whether they were holding him in place or dragging him out: kicking, punching, screaming leave leave before he infected her forever.