A gauntlet tightens and durasteel groans, because alongside the now undeniable truth that Padmé Naberrie is alive? A lie festers in equal measure.

Ten years.

Ten years, he has carried her alleged ‘death’ like an open wound. He let it hollow him out until there was nothing left but purpose… and pain. So much of it was built on deception and thus the very thought now rips through him with violent clarity.

“I’ve never been kidnapped before.”

“You are not kidnapped,” he hastens to correct her. “You are under Imperial protection.”

“Ah,” a small smile graces her lips for the first time today. “Protection. How reassuring.” Padmé searches the black lenses of that blasted mask for any reaction she can glean aside from his steady breathing. “You personally escorted me from my diplomatic mission. You’ve placed me under armed guard aboard an Imperial warship,” her arms fold. “That very much sounds like a kidnapping, Lord Vader.”

Padmé Amidala Naberrie is dead.

The thought settles with a strange, dissonant finality.

It feels like wearing an ill-fitting dress at first — a borrowed identity loose around the seams.

“I warned the council of this,” she breathes as he lets her boots hit the ground once more.

“The solar flare could not have been predicted.”

“Bantha poodoo!” her biting response only draws Vader’s helm a degree in Padmé’s direction as she barrels on. It’s been a while since he’s heard the Huttese language spoken aloud… much less an obscenity from his otherwise elegant wife’s lips.

It would amuse him if not for their lives hanging on the line. She huffs “The timing may have been unexpected, but the risk is exactly as I foretold.”

For too long has he refused the truth that others accept as unchangeable. Death cannot be the end, no.

Jedi once spoke of the Force as a luminous current which binds all life together.

The Sith believe that raw, unlimited power can bend those currents to one’s will.

Somewhere between those truths must exist the answer he has been searching for over a decade… and he will not be leaving here without it.

I’LL KISS YOU TWICE FOR DEATH

Vaderdala Week 2026 Prompt: Haunted & Classical Literature.

“You should not be here,” he cuts through the silence.

“I thought—” Padmé stops herself, uncertain of how to finish that sentence without revealing she had indeed been watching him earlier.

Vader doesn’t let her off the hook as easily.

“You thought what?”

A beat. “That you might be in pain.”

hii, friends! so i was trying to come up with a fun idea for one of the free days during @vaderdalaweek and ultimately landed on this eep!! please help me write a one-shot by sending in answers with their corresponding numbers — i'll be mixing and matching them into my personal prompt for day 7, which you'll be able to read in the summary (hopefully) by then 🤞

SEND ME YOUR RANDOM ANSWERS FOR:

An adjective

A location

Something fragile

An emotion

A number