Can You Love Me Again?

Chapter 9- The 'Injured Rebel'

  She was looking at a corpse. 

 She was certain of it, certain it was a hallucination, Certain that her long lost love was dead and this was just a cruel dream.  She wouldn't know until she saw his eyes...

Always in the mirage, of hallucinations his eyes were yellow. Red rimmed like they were on Mustafar 16 years prior. They were never the blue pools she fell in love with. She would always see a cloaked figure clad in jet- black. Cold and heartless as he slaughtered Jedi and colonists alike malevolent and without mercy. Occasionally he would look exactly like the man she loved, every detail correct except his eyes. She could scarcely recall one dream his eyes had been as black as a siths heart. He had taken on a monotone, almost a robotic baritone. It bellowed through a harsh respirator even though he would appear to her as he always had. A red bladed lightsaber dangling on his hip and when he ignited it... She had woken with a start. That was definitely the most horrific, sleepless night she'd ever had and to this day it chilled her to the bone to think back on it.

However this version of her husband wasn't see through. He was extremely pale but he was very much opaque as she knew him to be. Though that still wasn't enough to convince her. In the black eyed nightmare they had been in the meadow, on the twins 8th birthday and he'd appeared in all his ghostly glory. When she asked him to stop appearing to her, to stop tormenting her with his tantalizing memory. He had only stepped closer and swept her off her feet into his arms. The blue tint that encompassed him had vanished as he held her to his chest, mumbling melodies of love and courage to her, as he held her in a dip position, caressing her hair lovingly like he used to. It was a moment she had become weak. She'd been deceived into a lie she knew to be impossible and when she was left vulnerable the scene had switched... 

She pulled herself from the traumatizing nightmare that would forever dominate her insomniac nights and glanced over at the supine laying figure that she had called her husband. He seemed so vulnerable, yet had a peaceful look on his face as his chest moved up and down at a smooth rhythm. 

She was actually afraid if she touched him, he'd fracture and fad away. Her fingers turning the contacted part to ash, and eventually the nonexistent breeze would carry it away, dissolving into the air as if it had never been there. Perhaps it wasn't. He looked too feeble to be her husband. He was paled, different from the tan she ran her fingers along and had a breathing mask covering his lips and nose that she would kiss goodnight. His hair was still a golden mane that darkened from the lack of sunlight, glowing with youth despite his older age and few silver strands along the ends. The pigment cells fading gradually. She could only imagine how dramatic he'd been when he noticed. She wished she was there for it. She just wished she was there... He was still her handsome beau, but with some damage she was only analyzing now. 

The vertical scar along his right eye was still there, creating slight redness as it always had. One of the first things she should've noticed was how his skull was wrapped tightly with gauze, it looked like a white headband in his wavy hair. The same kind of bandage had been bundled up around the perimeter of his torso and a big, clunky cast encased his left leg with only his toes protruding through to breathe. In short, he looked awful. But he was still handsome to her. 

This broken man had inflicted more pain upon her and the entire galaxy, ten times the pain he was in physically. In a sick way, this was what he deserved and Padmé was almost pleased he'd gotten what he deserved. However, the larger, more compassionate side of her grieved. This was the man who had run away with her heart, only to return now to rip the rest of it out and flee once more. 

He had choked her, left her as a single mother to raise twins, even though this son of a bantha had been alive and well, saving the galaxy the whole time, even going to emerge as their hero instead of their enemy! Come to think of it, she'd often heard rumors whenever she went out about the 'Hero of the Rebellion', 'Empires worst nightmare' and 'Restorer of peace.' She'd constantly turn on the holonet, mostly on secret news uncontrolled by the imperials and they'd only ever talk about the shining star of the insurgency. Like when he'd gone to rescue the people of Jabiim after a devastating assault on the surface and in the sky. He'd rescued the locals, even some personally, redeeming himself as a conqueror of evil, reversing his traitorous acts he did there as a padawan. Perhaps she was so lost in her misery she stopped noticing the world around her.