WHAT IS REAL

V

Pain is real for Anakin. Palpatine revels in his healing pain. He knows this will help bring Vader out stronger and make Anakin weaker. He awoke in a bacta tank and all reality swirled into a mixture of physical pain and mental pain. 

The physical pain brought to light his deepest darkest thoughts. Visions of Ventress charging at him both light sabers barely missing his head: Her hatred radiating toward him as she threw him across the jungle floor. Padme's sweet face contorted into pain and then death. Obi Wan charging at him in the control room on Mustafar, never in hatred only in determination; Then his satisfaction at rendering him limbless and leaving him to die on the sand. 

Screams of rage filled his mind. Count Dooku's face right before he cut off his head swirled amongst the face of his beloved mother's dead face along with many of the sand people he had murdered. Countless faces of Jedi younglings lying on the floor after he had killed them. All these tortured his mind while the burns on his body tortured him physically. Anakin suddenly blacked out again leaving the world of pain behind but its traces never truly leaving him.

Inside the darkness of his mind a new being appeared. He rose out of the darkness to stand unafraid, powerful and ruthless. He stood dressed in black and standing beside him was someone who had been a friend mentor and now Master. Anakin was nothing anymore only Vader existed now.

Oh! Anakin lived because a small part of him still loved. The part of his heart that Padme had held so carefully. Vader knew how to stamp part down and make it weak. There was no room in his weaker man to show himself too often. 

He did allow his thoughts to drift to Padme. Not often mind you, but he did think about her. Mostly when he was in a meditative state. He could think on her and yet get himself back to the Darker side before he finished.

This was now Vader's reality and he reveled in it.

What else was real?

Padme was not dead.

She lies still as death on the hard cool table on Polis Massa. The medical Droids tested her and they declared her dead. She was sent to Naboo where she was taken to the morgue to be prepared for her funeral.

Obi Wan and Bail mourned for her but they could not attend the funeral. Bail took the baby girl to his home on Alderan; Obi Wan took the boy to Tatooine to live with his uncle and aunt. They never knew things had changed.