astramajestic.

                    ^{between a rock and a hard place, she’d choose to be crushed. confusing and painful she’s so generally detached from the world swampy soil that her feet are in right now. padmé wonders if he feels the stutter in her mechanized breath as he touches her. does he feel the pull of her muscles as she has to steady herself not to retreat from his touch or lean into it in equal measure. he’s already shown too much emotion to consolidate him to the shell she had thought him to be. it did not mean there was not a monster there, but it was something.}

                   ^{the look she gives him is muted behind the dull   ( these days )    brown of her eyes. the way he holds her face reminds her of when there were eyes that might stare back at her. when  there had been a gentleness in his troubled eyes. padmé had never doubted, would never doubt, that he bad loved her, even if that love had lead them all to ruination… and she misses him, misses him like her own softness.} 

                    ^{there’d been something sweet in her once too, and time, age, had stripped it of her. becoming ryoo had been an exercise in weaving steel cable through her skin, replacing all of her gentle thoughts with the hard edges of just accepting the atrocity around her. padmé doesn’t know how real the threat in his voice is as he asks for their daughters name. she wants to tell him. instead she just looks down, lets her eyes fall closed for a moment. her lashes touch the bruises beneath her eyes where sleep should’ve been.}

                    ^{his touch is gone, demand repeated, and the no is on her lips when they’re interrupted.}

                    ^{the next thing that dawns on her is horror, and she remembers WHY she’s ryoo, why padmé has no place here, these terrors that would have the soft creature she once was doubled over sobbing, asking how he could do it. ryoo knows how he does it, why he does it. when they fall she shudders physically, taking it as an excuse to turn her back on him and start back towards her ship, to see if the vessel can be salvaged. it’s reality that has come crashing down on her narrow shoulders. anakin or vader, it doesn’t matter what remains him. he’s still   ——   this is STILL the man that he has become. her own anger is palpable. he’s not the only one who wants to scream, who fails to understand.           “i don’t know why it surprises me that you’d kill a dozen to save my life. you’ve murdered half the good in the galaxy to the same FAILED means, haven’t you?”}

                    ^{“i’m not worth it,”          she very near shouts, voice slightly distorted, edges clipping as she half turns back to him.          “i was  NEVER WORTH  the price you were willing to pay.”}

              UNLIKE MOST, SHE already knows that there was a man before the machine, the trouble is finding out how much of him is left. This belligerent affection he harbors for her has evolved as he has, but still remains rooted purely in the blazing inferno of human life she’d once known as Anakin Skywalker. But if Anakin Skywalker was an inferno, Vader is his remains. A cold black winter, what had burned now dead && savaged. To face that is haunting. Vader realizes the effect of his appearance, of his actions. She sees a monster—&& perhaps, yes, that’s what he is—but she sees something else too. Something Vader felt the day he learned Luke is his son, a waver in composition of his darkness. 

               But it’s not enough to turn him kind. After two decades he’s not sure if he’s capable of it, even in her presence. But the look on her face when she sees what he’s done is enough to make him regret that. There’s no way to teach these sharp hands how to hold soft things. 

     ❝ Padmé— ❞ he follows her with little effort, long strides dwarfing her own. ❝ Would you have rather me use your blaster? You are no fool, you know why I asked if your weapon was registered. ❞ It’s easier to deflect, to bury. It always has. But the stormtroopers aren’t really what this is about. 

     ❝ You were everything! ❞ It’s Vader’s turn to shout now, a quivering howl that has, for all its fearful resonance, some inherent sadness in it. ❝ You were worth anything. ❞ The Sith lord’s voice creaks as though there is still smoke from his pyre caught in his throat. ❝ My sacrifices— my mistakes, are unforgivable; && they are my own. ❞ He gestures briefly to the field of black && white corpses, ❝ their deaths are not on your hands. None of them are. ❞ Does she blame herself for what he’s become? Like her love had nourished destruction in him from their very first embrace, when truly it was he who poisoned them?

     ❝ …Not every death was in your name. Love has not motivated my violence in a long time. ❞ But it could, stars, it could. If only he would reach a little further, if only she would reach back.