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Vader knew his reunion with Ahsoka would never go pleasantly for either one of them. He knew where it would lead, what it would mean. That didn’t stop him from hoping, but Anakin Skywalker taught her well.
Too well, perhaps, but never enough if it was her. But not enough to defeat him. And there are even worse threats in the galaxy than Vader. Worse things that can hurt her – but then the floor gives out beneath him, Ahsoka ducks a swing to her head, and they both fall.
Vader drops into freefall, calling on the Force to steady him, but he still lands wrong from the unexpectedness, hitting the ground sideways and all his weight landing on one ankle, then crashes to the ground.
Hard.
The point is moot, because he’s always going to land hard, considering how much of his body is metal. But when he lands, he falls sideways, and then the former floor is crashing down on his head, and he lifts a hand to shield himself from the explosion.
Ahsoka lands on her knees, raising her hands skywards to block the falling debris, but some still make it past, and Vader’s vision goes dark for a minute. He strains against it all, but the pieces are still crashing.
In the end, they have to back up against a side, shifting the debris, but they ultimately crash down all around them, plunging them into darkness. They’re falling, and he tackles Ahsoka, bodily shielding her from the falling ceiling.
Ahsoka groans softly from beneath him. Vader tries to straighten, but they’re basically cramped on top of each other, nearly crushed. “Anakin?”
Anakin is gone. She doesn’t understand that. Neither did Obi-Wan at first, but he is not who he used to be. He can never be that boy again. Anakin is the one they love. The one they miss, but he’s gone.
But she has made her point clear already. Vader says nothing, only straining against the debris, collapsing again, a burning pain in his leg. Walking is hard. It feels like it was twisted somehow, the very metal where it should be attached to his bone, possibly breaking it again or twisting the connections out of place. It’s happened before.
Ahsoka reaches up, lifting a few rocks on top of them and shoving them off, hand gripping Vader’s arm. What is she doing? He watches her, just watches, because while he might intervene to save her, he would never to save himself.
Even the chance of getting to the ship is minimal.
And he cannot walk away from her and return to Sidious.
When he came to Malachor, it was only with one choice. That he kills her, or she kills him.
Either way, he will die.
“Are you going to just stand there?” she asks, irked.
“What would you have me do?” he asks instead.
“Help me?” she snaps back, teeth gritted. “The Temple is still raining down on our heads.”
“Perhaps that is as it should be.”
“Anakin, now’s not a time for lessons.” She’s angry. At him. At everything. Close to the Dark, yet too stubborn to ever touch it. There are some things she would never learn, things that he could never learn to teach her. And yet, here she is. alive, against the promise of the Jedi’s eternal destruction.
Against the promise of her death.
He reported her as dead for a reason, even if he knew it was a lie.
Just as Ahsoka wanted him to do.
Her lightsaber in the snow was a message. One he got, tried to carry through. That she was alive, and she needed to be gone. That she was done with the fight, ready to live. He had tried to stop worrying, but nothing would ever remove the constant fear for her safety, as he’d become accustomed to while he was still Anakin Skywalker.
It doesn’t feel like a life he lived. It’s been foreign, lost from him, until now that he’s right here, squeezed in this little place with Ahsoka.
She tried to kill him.
And he’s disappointed. Not that she tried, but that she didn’t succeed.
“And I am no trying to teach you. I am not your master any longer.” But I will never stop being responsible for you, he wants to say. And I still love you. Words he dares not voice. It’s a weakness. One that he, as a Sith, is not able to contain.
“Then if you’re not going to help me, can you at least tell me why? How could you do this? You destroyed the Jedi, my family, my world, my entire life.” She says it with a snarl, hurt coiling into the Force. Their bond lights with something long dimmed, but still present. No Force-bond will ever break, and the time he spent with Ahsoka, the love he felt (feels) for her has kept it alive. It hurts to feel, hurts more than his own, vibrating in his mind, and he tries to draw strength from it.
Her words are true. He did destroy her life. Just like so many others.
“The Jedi committed treason. I stood with justice.”
“No.”
“They did,” he repeats firmly,
“I saw it with my own eyes.”
“You were deceived,” she accuses.
“Perhaps,” Vader replies, slowly reaching a hand upwards to try to move the debris aside enough to get Ahsoka some more air. She pauses to cough a few times, wincing visibly. His respirator will run even with no incoming air for quite a length of time, but that won’t help her. “Perhaps not.”
“How can you do this?” she demands, hurt bleeding into the Force, through their bond and coating the air. “How could you turn on everything you taught me/ On what you trained me for?”
“I am not Anakin Skywalker any longer.”
“I think you are,” Ahsoka argues, “What does the Empire offer you? It took everything. Your people, your home, your family.”
“No,” Vader argues tiredly, “I did that. Not the Empire.”
“Sidious is keeping you enslaved.” She exhales sharply. “For months, I tried to tell myself it wasn’t you. That what I felt was wrong. That Maul lied when he said Sidious was grooming you.” Ahsoka deflates a bit, radiating deep exhaustion. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” she tells him, heartfelt. “That I walked away. I wondered all the time who was going to keep you out of trouble. I didn’t realize what would happen.”
Ahsoka blames herself. Of course, she does – that is something she would hold over herself. Always trying to be the one to help everyone. Something she learned from Anakin. His greatest failing. The one Vader still fights for. “That was my choice alone, Ahsoka. Not yours.”
“Was it?” she asks. “Where any of ours?”
Vader studies her, her face darkened by the shadows across them, by the eternal dimness of Malachor, her light the only thing on this world, tinted by a helpless desperation, a love neither of them were willing to let go, something they both shared and never quite knew how to express in a way the other understood. But here they are, years later, still unable to let go of each other, even if that wasn’t Vader’s life, and his time from before he became a Sith truly no longer matters.
Even now, she’s learned nothing. Because she won’t fight. She won’t fight him. And she should. She should do it without stopping. Because that is what he deserves. To be walked away from. To be destroyed.
“Yes,” he tells her.
“Anakin, I know many people who made mistakes throughout my time with the Rebellion. Clones. They helped enslaved their families, their brothers, the galaxy, until they realized they meant nothing.”
“We all are expendable,” Vader replies, because even if it always fills him with a surge of raw, helpless, fury, he knows it for a fact, a part of his life. “If we are not strong enough, we will die.”
“That’s not something the Jedi taught you.”
“No. My life did.”
Ahsoka sags a little bit, struggling further against the lack of ceiling, her breathing uneven right beside him. “I’m not going to fight you, Anakin. I know, now, that your life has been far from kind to you. I’m sorry I didn’t notice when we were together.”
Seventeen years, they come back, and they’re still the same. He wonders, when he looks at her, if this is how Obi-Wan felt when he saw him, that after years, he still never learned what he tried so hard to, that Obi-Wan was disappointed in it, that he still saw… him. But he didn’t. Because he still walked away. “You must know I do not fault you for that,” he replies firmly.
“Of course, you’d say that. But you were still going to stay in there until the Temple exploded.”
“Yes.”
“It would have killed you.”
“Perhaps.” She better not be expecting gratitude for how he’s still alive. Grateful would have been if she had come with him. What is the point of gratitude when he’s not grateful to be alive? This life is not one he wishes to live. No, he wants mercy. Family or death. And he’s still waiting for Ahsoka to grant him either.
“Where will you go now?”
“Back.”
“The Emperor will hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“You know…” Ahsoka pauses, Force-presence flickering with a bit of awkwardness. “You can come with me.”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“My loyalty lies with the Empire.”
“With the Empire or the Emperor?”
“Both.”
“I don’t think those are the same thing, Anakin.”
She’s caught on. Many people probably have. In truth, Vader is supporting Sidious less and less, but he has nowhere else to go. He can’t go anywhere else. He can’t. It’s not something he can even explain, but it’s always been the core of who he is. Forever too afraid to make a choice for himself. It always has to be for his masters. All he’s ever done is chosen a different one.
And what? He should try it again? When he failed before? (But does he not keep trying to teach Ahsoka to fight?)
“Perhaps not,” he replies, “But for as long as my master lives, they will continue to be.”
“Then don’t let him live.”
“I will not discuss treason.”
“Why not? We committed treason before. It’s point of view, Anakin. The Separatists would’ve said we were treasonous to them back in the war. Among other things.”
“You do not understand the things I have done, Ahsoka.”
“Back in the early days of the Empire, when the clones were still around, they – did you know they had two sisters?”
Is she telling the truth? “No.”
“They did,” Ahsoka continues, “One of them, she stayed with the Empire for a long time. Well over a year. Way back before I got involved, when Rex was still running the thing.” Rex. He tries to ignore the flare of pain and longing in his heart at the memory of his old friend. He misses him. It doesn’t surprise him that the clone had been the one to found the entire rebellion. He thinks of the clones far more than he should, whispers of the past that he can never forget. Rex. Cody. Fives. Echo. Fives is gone. He doesn’t know about the other three.
(He should have listened to Fives.)
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there when everything happened with Fives,” Ahsoka continues, “What he found saved a lot of lives. Including mine.” She sighs, grief flickering heavily around her as she looks away. “But that other clone, she was one of the leaders of a branch of the Empire’s science division. They had a whole organization running, experimenting on the clones. On her brothers. She’d never known a different life until her sister found her. The – we have Echo to thank for it, really. He blew the whole thing, pulled the clones out. I came right back into the chaos of that, after an Inquisitor destroyed the entire village I was living in to that whole mess. But that clone, she helped him. She helped destroy it, her life’s work to save her brothers. Don’t tell me what you’ve done was worse.”
It is.
Because no one else could have killed Padme and their child.
“You do not understand,” Vader tells her flatly. “What I did. What I have done. What I will do.”
“You are dangerous.” She agrees with a level of bluntness he wasn’t expecting. “More than anyone realized. But you’re still my master. I can’t leave here without you.”
“You’ll die,” he tells her tiredly.
“Maybe.”
She’s just rubbing that in his face because he keeps saying it. Vader’s seen her do that with Anakin back in the war. It’s infuriating.
“Come on,” she orders, elbowing him, “Help me get us out.”
Vader slowly lifts his hands, pushing against the rocks, and they start digging.
***
His head is spinning. He feels faint and dizzy, his respirator working faster to keep up with the air leaking from his helmet. It’s not functioning properly after Ahsoka cut it open while attempting to behead him.
He’s so proud of her.
The sun is shining dimly down on them when they stumble from beneath the debris. His leg is burning, and Ahsoka grabs his arm to carry a bit of his weight and steady him. He looks down at her, confused, even more surprised to realize that he can actually see her. His eyes are easily damaged by light, but he can see her face with his own eye now, and she’s…
It’s her.
“You look old,” he tells her flatly, helmet an inch from her montrals.
“You feel cold,” she tells him, like that’s some sort of surprise. “And your cape is very soft.”
“It is?”
“Yeah, you haven’t felt it?”
No. He hasn’t felt anything in years. Not other than the needles poking him or the droids piecing him back together. Nothing other than his life-support suit. “It’s never been sanitized.”
“You never wash your clothes?”
“My cape is technically the only piece of clothing I wear. The rest of it is a part of me.”
“Yikes.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“I don’t think you can walk.”
Vader is considering the best way to explain that pain is the way of the Sith, and his pain only gives him strength when his leg spasms with a jolt of shorted out electricity, crushed by the falling debris, and then just twists. He topples sideways, and he and Ahsoka both drop, muffling her yelp.
He tries to brace himself to avoid crushing her, but Ahsoka does well at somewhat rolling aside herself. He just lays there for a moment, panting, trying to gather the strength to scrape himself to his feet again. He can never express the agony of standing. Even years later, his skin has never healed from Mustafar. Not fully. It burned away, deep enough that no numbers of bacta treatments are enough to heal him, to lift the pain in it.
His leg is on fire again, burning and burning at the end, just like it was on Mustafar, and he can feel the smoke in the air, smothering and choking and burning, fire there’s always fire, the flames licking at him –
“Anakin!” Ahsoka yells, shaking his shoulder.
He blinks, trying to focus up on her blurring face over his head. It feels different.
“Let – let me take you back to the Rebellion. We can help you.”
“Leave me,” he orders.
“No. There’s only one ship, you idiot. We have to go together, and I’m not taking you back to Sidious. He could have given you better help than this.” She holds so much darkness. She could have become a Sith. He doesn’t want that for her.
“Leave,” he repeats.
“You’ll see Rex again.”
And then he’ll have to fight her again. He’ll have to kill all of them. He’ll have to hurt Ahsoka.
“What are you so afraid of?” Ahsoka asks softer.
“I… do not want to fight you, Ahsoka.”
“You don’t have to.”
“It is not that simple.”
“We want the same thing, Anakin. We just go about it a little differently. That doesn’t mean we have to fight.”
He doesn’t see how not. He’s not who he used to be. A lifetime ago, he could probably have figured out a way to make things work, to dodge a fight with someone he loved, but he isn’t Anakin any longer. He’s Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, and that is the only life left for him. “I do not have that choice.” He tries to pick himself up.
Ahsoka grabs his shoulder. “Stop, unless you want your leg to snap the rest of the way off. It’s not human, is it?”
“Naturally, my human legs are sparking,” Vader says with absolute seriousness.
Ahsoka groans. “Skyguy, your jokes still suck.”
“I try,” Vader promises.
He wants to say yes. Wants to let her go, but – if they go back to Mustafar, he’ll have no way to hide her from Sidious. He will have to kill her. Because she will not settle on anything short of killing Sidious himself.
Vader would like to help.
But he can’t.
He tried. With Obi-Wan. But Ahsoka means something to him that Obi-Wan doesn’t. Once, he would have done anything for her. Even if that is no longer who he is, it’s still what he wants. And he still would.
If that’s what she wanted.
Finally, grudgingly, Vader caves. “Very well. If you are willing to hinge the survival of the Rebellion on my survival.”
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Ahsoka replies. “Stay here. I’ll get the ship.”
***
He doesn’t remember passing out, but when he painfully slowly drags himself back to wakefulness, it’s to see what must be some sort of medical bay. Not nearly as advanced as some, or his own, but he feels surprisingly… non achy.
Ahsoka is nearby, her presence shining bright in the Force with a form of calm that he hasn’t sensed on her or anyone in a very long time. Calm that always evaporates every time he enters a ship or lands on a world. But Ahsoka, Ahsoka is happy. Contented, at least, for the first he has felt her in a long time. Even now. And that means the world.
But consciousness comes back with a jolt, and Vader tries to get up from where he’s lying – lying is a strange feeling that he hasn’t done in a long time – but someone’s face blurs into view immediately.
Rex’s face is aged with time, the double-aging all the clones have, lines more pronounced, and his head is shaved, though he has a beard now. It looks different on him. Makes him look more… less like a soldier. More of a rebel. But his eyes are the same, worn with so much hurt, but still bearing the same laughter and love.
“Good to see you, sir.”
It’s good to see him?
When was the last time someone thought it was good to see Vader?
“Rex,” he murmurs, dropping back and staring up at his once best friend’s face, heart clenching with an oppressive amount of longing. “You look old.”
“You look older.” Rex tells him with a laugh and a smile, though it looks pained. “It’s been a long time, sir.”
Too long. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to pull you out of trouble, just as always.”
He doesn’t understand. “Why?” Vader asks. “Why would you be here? Did Ahsoka tell you nothing?”
Rex laughs. “She told me everything. And no, I can’t say I’m overly agreeable of your recent life’s choices.”
“They were not my recent choices.”
“Alright. Would you rather me be blunter and say, everything since I went to Mandalore?”
That’s harsh. Still no less than he deserves. But still. Vader has missed him. He’s missed the brutal, fearless honesty, the one always backed with so much love and an unspeakable form of loyalty. “I was unaware you were still alive.”
“I thought you were dead,” Rex tells him, face sobering, “You look dead. You should be dead. We still have our best people working you over now. I was thinking about calling up some friends of mine, seeing what they could do for you. I wanted to ask you first. But you know, this time, I am glad to be wrong.”
“Why does it not matter to either of you?”
“Oh, it matters. Trust me, it does, but I’ve had a lot of my brothers do really stupid things, too. The Empire deceived all of us. I know there are things about the Empire that even you don’t know. Sidious might call you his apprentice, but he still keeps things from you, still tried to have your family killed.”
“What happened to Padme was my doing,” Vader argues.
“I wasn’t talking about Senator Amidala,” Rex replies, voice a little quieter, “What happened to us. Maul didn’t escape. Ahsoka let him out to cover for her attempts to escape from us. We were hunting her down. Sidious activated those chips in our heads. Sent us out to kill her. And I almost did.”
Once, years ago, Anakin promised Rex he would never be put in that situation again. That he would never have to face down another of his family, after Umbara, that he would never be forced to kill another one of them, but Fives had happened, and then – then Ahsoka.
Sidious tried to have her killed.
Vader didn’t know that. He never told him. Ahsoka never told him.
But with Rex, it makes more sense. Rex had always thought for Ahsoka’s best. He was always there, helping him raise her, care for her – and Vader, still, years later, respects him. Respects his word, his… all of it. And if this is what he thinks is best, well…
“We are not strong enough to stop the Emperor,” Vader tells him flatly.
“We weren’t strong enough to win the Clone Wars, either,” Rex replies, “And I think we all knew that. That’s why Ahsoka walked away. We knew. And that never stopped us.”
Deep down, yes, at the end, he knew. It was no simple win-win situation. It was losing, all the way around. Their way, their life, their family. The war. Because it was all a game of Sidious’s the whole time. It was never made with the chance of winning.
Neither is this.
But Vader has always gone down on the wrong side of history. He has always been evil. Why is this anymore?
At least if he’s here, he will get to be with his family again. And after seeing them both again, he cannot just walk away. He has walked away. And he has been walked away from. He has no intent of doing either ever again.
“Anakin,” Rex says, his face serious, but the depression and love he feels are flickering in the Force all the same. “Even if you do leave us here, even if you want to go back to the Empire, I need you to know we won’t be enemies. I know, for all the Emperor has done to you, and had you do, what you want is the same as us. Peace in this galaxy. We just go about it… differently. Ahsoka wanted you to have a chance to do it the same.”
He could tell him no. That it doesn’t matter and walk out, turn them in to Sidious and give them one rotation to relocate before he storms the place.
But the remnants of his family are here. And he doesn’t want to let them go. Slowly, Vader climbs to his feet, hesitantly raising a hand towards Rex.
He grasps it tightly, looking fearlessly into Vader’s repaired helmet visor.
“Perhaps I will aid you,” he concedes at last, “Bringing peace to the galaxy.”
With Rex’s smile, his fate is sealed, for better or worse.
***
Time passes faster when he’s forty than it did in the Clone Wars. Or at least it feels like it. But the friendships that form, those are longer. He meets the Ghost Crew. He spends time with them, meets many others in the rebellion. And then…
He hears of Obi-Wan.
Ezra is the one who met him, actually, found him, and wanted to bring him back.
But he didn’t want to come.
Vader is… internally grateful for it.
He knows Obi-Wan is hiding on Tatooine, and that knowledge just sets with him. He lets it lay, and lay, until they Hear of the Death Star’s completion, and Leia’s capture. It’s not until he, Ahsoka, and Rex have stormed and blown the place and brought the princess back safely, with Alderaan in ashes, that he sees Obi-Wan.
He senses him first, his presence darkened by years, dark iciness curling around him as the ship he’s in – Millennium Falcon, he heard it was called – lands in front of them.
He tries not to be nervous.
Things have changed.
He could have gone to Obi-Wan a long time ago, but why would he? His master made his point twice already. Vader wasn’t going to seek him out to see again. He’s tired of chasing. If Obi-Wan wants him, he’ll come back.
Leia, despite the way she lost her entire planet, her home and family and parents, pats his shoulder sympathetically. She knows Vader, and he would not call them friends, but it terrifies him how he’s beginning to feel towards her the same he does towards Ahsoka.
Vader ;ppls down at her.
She smiles sympathetically. “You’ll be okay.” He hopes so. He knows Ahsoka won’t take it well if Obi-Wan tries to kill him again, and it’s a joke to think him capable. Not that he has the intent of trying. He’s fought with Obi-Wan enough. He’s gone back to him enough. If he won’t come to find him, he doesn’t want to see him again.
He’s not the same as he was. He can only hope that will be enough for Obi-Wan.
He doesn’t want to fight again.
That’s a fear almost greater than that of Sidious.
“Possibly,” he replies, trying to bury his fear. The Dark Side still comes naturally to him, but after the few years of being with Ahsoka and Rex again, and with the Ghost crew among others, he’s found himself slowly drifting back towards the Light. He doesn’t mean to, but he finds it coming nonetheless.
The ramp lowers and a group of people disembarks. Artoo, Threepio, a Wookie, and a few others. Leia needs to leave, and she pats his shoulder again before drifting off to talk to the others. He feels bright in the Force. Force-sensitive. When he sees her, sometimes, he wonders if it would be unwise to train her.
He would ask.
But with her Darkness after seeing her home world destroyed, she would easily embrace the Dark Side. And Vader doesn’t know if he wants to do that to her.
People are milling about, those who came down from the ramp carried away with the crowd, leaving him standing there watching, waiting, mind blank as he watches, waiting for the inevitable.
When the area clears a bit, Leia is gone, as are the others, leaving Obi-Wan standing a short distance from him.
He looks older now, his hair white and face more worn with age and the twin suns of Tatooine. His outer robe is torn in a few places probably from overuse. The guilt hits him first. Of failure, of Mapuzo. Vader finds himself wondering if Obi-Wan regrets Mustafar just as much.
“Ahsoka was right about you,” he says finally, accent still there, though that’s changed a bit, too.
“What did she say?” he asks.
“That you changed. I did not want to think you were able.”
Yeah. He knows that. Obi-Wan walked away the second he wasn’t able to fight for being perfect anymore. From the time Anakin stopped trying to prove himself, what Obi-Wan told him all along, and all he proved was why he could never stop trying. “Have I?” he asks.
“You’re with the rebellion instead of trying to end it. Even I think that means something.”
Vader lowers his head, unable to look at his former master any longer, but can never take his Presence off guard, can never stop anticipating attack. “Do you?” he asks instead.
“I was wrong,” he says. “Vader. Or should I say Anakin?”
His heart flares with hurt, tears pricking his eyes for years unshed. “You will call me what you will,” Vader retorts instead. Because, as always, his words mean nothing. They never have. Not to Obi-Wan, not to anyone.
He remembers on Jabi’im, falling, nearly unconscious and screaming his throat raw as he attempted to drag himself back to the ship, again, reliving Mustafar in every way that counted for, and seeing Obi-Wan disappearing into the darkness, walking away as though he meant nothing, and for years, he has tried to understand.
Why.
How.
When nothing ever made him leave Ahsoka.
Because he is more than Obi-Wan ever was to him. He sees that now. Rex and Ahsoka and Leia have tried for years to make him understand that, and he finally does.
“I have called you many things,” Obi-Wan replies, “It turns out I was wrong about them all.”
“No,” Vader says flatly, firmly, an ever-present, decades-buried anger coiling to life. “You do not get to come back after everything that you did, and act as though I should forgive you. Were I to forgive anyone, it would have been my old master.”
“I won’t ask your forgiveness,” Obi-Wan tells him, surprisingly. Maybe he’s changed, too, not that it undoes the years and years of agony Vader endured at his hand. “And nor do I deserve it. But this path you were sent on was of my own making as much as yours. I see that now.”
Admitting mistakes, Vader appreciates and respects, but when this is Obi-Wan, when the already and so much fallen between them, Vader finds it hard to respect anything. Anakin Skywalker loved him. All he wanted in exchange was the same.
And he got… nothing.
Just being told that he was a failure, over and over, for how hard he tried.
“Everything I did all that time. The lives I took, my service to the Order. And it meant nothing, just as Ahsoka meant nothing.”
“You did mean something to me, Anakin. And you still do. I believed I was doing the right thing, just as you did.”
Once, that would have been enough, but Vader is no longer in the past. He is no longer Obi-Wan’s padawan. He’s not going to blindly follow anything that his master tells him. Rex and Ahsoka helped him free of that. “I knew what I was doing was not what you raised me for. Just as what Ahsoka had done. But I did not hurt her.”
“You’ve always been more attached. The one thing I could never teach. And it, of its nature, is not a bad thing.”
Praise.
That’s not what he expected.
He expected more mockery and taunts, not hints that his master regrets it. “Do you regret it?” Vader asks him bluntly.
“More than anything,” Obi-Wan replies, voice dipping a little.
He doesn’t find it in himself to believe that promise. It’s too… convenient. Easy for him to say after the fact, after having lived unknowing of what he did.
“There are so many things that I wanted to tell you. Things that I never had time for. I do regret everything I did to you. I meant to kill you, twice, and did not have the strength for either.”
“You’re a coward,” Vader snarls at him, viciously. He tried to kill Ahsoka, too. And had he hurt her, he would not be alive with it now. He would never have left her there. He doesn’t know what he would have done, had he made the blow he aimed for on Malachor, if the Temple hadn’t caved before he had the chance.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan agrees without argument. “I was.”
He didn’t expect that. Either Obi-Wan means it genuinely, and he has changed, or accepted the truth, or he’s trying to throw Vader off-guard. He thinks it’s the former, but he’s still wary. distrusting. There are very few people whom he trusts. Leia has charmed her way into that circle somehow, but aside from her, it’s only Ahsoka and Rex.
“You knew Leia,” he says instead, because that’s a safer topic.
“Yes.”
“She was the child whom you were keeping hidden from me. Trying to keep us from learning of her Force-sensitivity.”
Obi-Wan’s presence… flickers. He’s hiding something. But something more. No, there’s something special about Leia, personally, and makes him care for her deeply. And Obi-Wan does not care for people easily. He tries not to let it hurt. He moved on from Obi-Wan already. It doesn’t matter if Obi-Wan has come to care for someone else.
“Bail called me for help,” he replies, “His daughter was taken by the Empire.”
“You must know that was not my doing,” Vader tells him, “It was the Third Sister’s decision. I would not have condoned something to damage the Empire so recklessly. She was the future of Alderaan.”
“She’s the future of the galaxy,” Obi-Wan amends, “Of all of us.” He looks to where Leia disappeared through the crowd. “Did she ever tell you she was adopted?”
“Yes. She has spoken to me about many things.” Kier, too, and his heart aches with sympathy when he thinks of the boy. He was a friend of Leia’s who died in a simple accident while protecting the rebellion, a careless mistake, and she still mourns him. Nearly two decades later, Vader still grieves Padme. He understands.
He knows about Obi-Wan.
Leia cared about him. She rarely talked about him, though, because she knows how much that upset him.
She’s a gift. Truly. She reminds him of Padme sometimes.
Even more of Anakin Skywalker.
“Did she ever find out who her birth parents were?”
“No. She does not need to know. I have seen how the Organa’s raised her.”
“What if her real parents were still out there, wanting to know they had a daughter?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Because if – if there was, he would lose her again. It’s almost ridiculous how much he’s afraid of that. But Leia should get the chance to know. She deserves a real family. Not him. “But if she wishes to know,” he concedes, just as he was forced to cave when Ahsoka choose to leave the Order, and him. “She has the right for that knowledge. And you had no right to hide it from her.”
Obi-Wan looks away, his silence stretching on. “There is something you should know,” he tells him finally, after the silence stretches on for a while. “Padme didn’t die right away. She didn’t last for long, but it was long enough for her children to be born.”
Vader’s mind is swimming. He knows what his former master is trying to tell him, and he’s caught off-guard. Stunned speechless. This shouldn’t be… he always thought it was him. That they were gone.
And suddenly, everything in his life makes sense.
“What happened to her?” he asks, voice faint and strained. “If she didn’t die on Mustafar?”
“The medical droids didn’t know what happened. She only woke briefly once afterwards. She was asking for you. For years, I regretted I couldn’t have brought you back to her. She said there was still good in you. I should have believed her.”
Vader didn’t kill Padme. That’s what it means, and after believing otherwise for so long, Vader still comprehends what he’s telling him. “The children. What happened to them?” We were preparing for one, he wants to say hysterically, but says nothing. This is Obi-Wan.
“They were split, to be kept safe from the Emperor. Luke went to Tatooine. He was raised by your family there.”
Owen and Beru. They were good people. Family.
He wishes he could see them again, but he’s still afraid to ask.
“And our daughter?” he asks, though he already knows the answer, in the context and how so many years ago, he chose the name Leia for the daughter he and Padme would have.
“Bail Organa took her. He always wanted to raise a daughter.”
He already knew, but being told it still takes a weight off his chest. It’s true. Leia is his family. And he and Luke are the only living family she has. He doesn’t know what happened to Sola’s family, or if they are still alive, but otherwise, he….
Her parents just died. Would she want to know right now?
But she has. She said she did want to know about her birth parents. He just didn’t think it had ever mattered. He was wrong. It does. It means everything. Because his daughter didn’t die. His children are still alive, and he didn’t kill Padme. He failed to save her, and that still counts. But it wasn’t him who killed her.
“Why are you telling me?” he asks finally.
“I was wrong to hide her from you,” Obi-Wan replies, “And I was wrong about you. You are more than a Sith. You are still Anakin. I didn’t want to see it. But both you and her deserve to know the truth of who you are.”
Thanking him just isn’t something Vader wants to do, and neither does it feel appropriate in the circumstances. Bringing his children back is something that means more than anything to him, but considering it was Obi-Wan who ripped his life apart in the first place, ho took his family away. So instead, he just walks away, without looking back, heading in search of his daughter.
He finds Leia alone, nervousness clenching in his chest, but she does deserve the right to know, too. “Leia,” he says slowly, and she looks up at him, eyes bright with fire and passion that he loves her for and fears just the same. “There is something I must tell you.”
She waits, eyes soft, and he wonders if she would look at him the same if she knew what he is, what he’s done.
“I know you always wished to know your birth parents,” he tells her slowly. Maybe, after Alderaan, this is what she needs to hear. That she still has a living family somewhere. “And today, I was able to name them.”
“Are they alive?” she asks immediately, Force-presence flickering with a mix of fear and hope.
“Your mother is dead,” Vader tells her slowly, “She died shortly after your birth. But your father…” He finds himself hesitating, terrified, certain of rejection the same way everyone else he had ever met had rejected him at some time or another. Even Ahsoka, though he faults none of them for it. He understands why anyone would, and he doesn’t blame any of them. But the fear never goes away, always nipping at his heart. “I am your father.”
Leia twitches back from him, eyes widening, lips parting in muted shock.
“I am sorry I wasn’t there to raise you,” he says, because he needs to. I did not give you what I should have. After years of being alone, even after being back with Ahsoka again, he expects her to lash out, but instead she breaks all expectations and just hugs him. For a moment, Vader just stands there frozen, but Leia’s hugging him, crying into his shoulder, and he painfully slowly lifts his arms to hug her back.
Leia.
Leia is his daughter, and he doesn’t know how, but it makes sense now. He catches Ahsoka’s gaze in the doorway, watching them, a small smile on her face, and he wonders if she knows, when she heard. If Obi-Wan told her sometime, but he’s grateful for the revelation now, because it…
With Alderaan gone, this is what Leia needs.
She lost her home. She lost everything, except him and her brother, and he’ll make Sidious pay for what he’s done to all of them.
He will bring justice. And for the first time in a very long time, he thinks he forgives himself just a little bit, too.
He’s never been strong enough to do anything of his own, but that wasn’t wholly his fault. Rex and Ahsoka helped him understand that, too. They love him, and so does she. That has to hold for something.
All that time with Sidious he spent trapped there, not because he wanted to be there, but because he didn’t have anywhere eels to go. That wasn’t a life he needed. It was never about living, or even doing what was right, really – it was just about having someone he loves enough to die for.