Chapter 11.

                                    

                                          
Vader's POV
                          
__________
                          
I coughed and choked, spluttering in the billowing dust, stumbling backwards to get out of it. Tripping into someone, I flung my saber around, only to have it caught on another person's blade.
                          
"Vader, it's me," Asajj spoke quietly, keeping her saber aloft until I switched mine off and looked down shame-facedly.
                          
"I didn't realize," I muttered, then jumped when her blade suddenly began hissing. I stared at it bamboozled for a second before she clicked it off, smiling slightly at my expression. Holding out her gloved hand, she watched as droplets splattered on her palm, then glanced at me.
                          
"Oh, it's raining," I said softly, mimicking her action and marvelling at the water that hit my hand. And it was. The storm clouds had finally broken, haven given up their raging war in the sky, instead letting water trickle down. It started as a light shower, then grew in strength until it was a pouring, heaving mass of blackened clouds.
                          
"Sky tears," I murmured, rooted to the spot even after I was drenched to the skin. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Asajj looking at me. "I used to call it that. When I first moved to Coruscant, I thought the sky was crying. We didn't get rain like this on Tatooine."
                          
"Sky tears?" Asajj repeated, her voice gentle and tainted by flecks of something else. Was it ... sympathy?
                          
I shook my head, attempting to pull myself from my reverie. Now was not the time to relive the past. I had a job to do, and I had already failed once because ... because I had. But try as I might, I couldn't shake the memories – whether they were from thirteen minutes or thirteen years back.
                          
"What is it?" I was astounded, gazing starry-eyed at the mysterious substance that raced down the window I had smashed myself against.
                          
"What's what, Anakin?" he asked in amusement, sitting beside me.
                          
"That!" I followed what could only be described as a "sky tear" with my finger until it disappeared from the glass, then turned to my new master in excitement. "What is that?"
                          
A frown of confusion twisted his features. "Are you asking what ... what rain is, Anakin?"
                          
I gasped then plastered my face against the window again. "That's rain?! But-but I thought that was only in books and stories!"
                          
His expression softened. "Yes, that's rain. Anakin, it's raining."
                          
The precious moments, so irreversibly etched into my mind, somehow brought back the last thirteen minutes and I could not for the life of me tear my attention from them.
                          
"I was protecting you." His voice was nearly drowned out by the tantrums of the storm and the roaring of a machine's engine. "If you had let out that power, it would only have been worse for you."
                          
He was protecting me. My whole world turned to ice. Not a sound, or a thought, or a feeling, could penetrate the frozen numbness that had become my heart. How could his statement ever be true? 
                          
And yet somehow, words spilled from my lips, spoken from on the surface of the icy lake where apparently skated coherency and emotions. "You nearly killed me!" a voice that sounded remarkably like mine was shouting, the bitter hurt and furious anger echoing below the thick lid of frozen water and endlessly circulating through the dark currents that swept beneath. "You betrayed me!"
                          
Then he was leaving; he was running. He was running from me. And what I feared most happened: I wasn't strong enough to kill him then and there. I had the opportunity. But I did not have the strength.