Star Wars One-Shots

Reset (3) - Chapter 3: Inevitable

Author's Note: This is the last part of Reset, and I hope y'all enjoy it! :D

~ Amina Gila

It's been a year since... everything. A year since everything first fell apart. A year that they've spent on the run, staying in the same place for rarely longer than a couple months before moving on again. A year that Vader has had to try and put something back together after he lost everything.

It's easiest with Luke and Leia. (And Artoo, of course.)

It's his responsibility to protect and care for the twins, and he knows he would do anything for them. (He already did before.) He can't imagine a world where he wasn't raising them. He can't imagine how he could have lasted with Sidious, all that time believing Padme and his child were dead because of him.

They're a year old now, and they're just starting to learn to talk. They're everything he could have wanted – more than he thought he would have or deserves to.

Padme is the next easiest to be around, now at least. They've worked out many of the problems they had before, even if memories of what happened between them in the other future still haunt them both at times. She wants him to turn back, though. Ahsoka does too. They keep insisting that he can, and... He doesn't believe it.

He might not find himself actively drawing on the Dark Side, totally losing himself in it, the way he used to nearly as often, but it's still... there. It always will be. (He deserves no less anyway.)

He and Ahsoka have... talked from time to time – whenever she has time to spend with them, instead of helping the newly forming rebellion – but he knows how disappointed she is in him. As if that's a surprise. How could she not be?

With Ahsoka around so much, though, Padme has gotten involved a little in the Rebellion too, as much as she can be, anyway. It tooks her months to recover, and she still isn't fully healed, but she's far better than she used to be. He doesn't know much of what they do; they don't really talk about it to him, and to be fair, he doesn't really ask, either.

But he hasn't gotten involved in any rebel activity himself until right now. He doesn't like it. He hates how Sidious is making the Empire, but in reality, he doesn't know of any other way.

"Missiles!" Obi-Wan warns, as the Imperial fighters streak after them.

"I see them," Vader retorts, abruptly spinning the ship out of the way and the two collide.

Obi-Wan looks like he's feeling steadily sicker as Vader spins the ship again, to avoid the incoming laser fire. They're far outnumbered here, but they have other advantages. "With your flying, I won't be able to hit anything," Obi-Wan complains, as he tries taking aim again.

Vader hadn't wanted the mission, but Padme insisted the two of them go. They had to go here to warn a Jedi that the Empire was on its way, except they got here a little too late. And now, they're the next targets.

It hurts so much being here with Obi-Wan, just like... how things used to be, when they aren't and never will be again. They tolerate each other because they have to, because they've lived in the same house, in closer quarters than ever before, for the past year. But it feels like there's a wall between them – a wall of fire and ice – they can never cross.

Maybe that's for the best. He can hardly forget what happened on Mustafar. It still haunts him constantly, and it probably always will. He misses how things used to be, but that doesn't mean it was ever real.

Vader doesn't grant Obi-Wan's whines with a response, instead trying and, this time, failing to move out of the way in time. More laser shots bounce off their shields, and lights flash furiously on the controls as they give out entirely.