Would you be surprised, my love, if I told you that I can remember the very moment that your heart stopped beating? No, not the date. The moment. The second. The exact vacuous empty fraction of time. I will never stop living it. The mechanical knocking of my machine's heart echoes heavily in me while the ghost of your heartbeat flutters like a bird in my ruined chest, a cruel mockery of what once was. My heart thuds. The memory of yours beats. It is all I know of humanity now, this shade that is my memory of you.

The remembrance of you tortures me. I hear your voice in my mind, the smooth sweet sound of it like the water trickling the fountain room of the Temple. Like a white-robed crowd of pilgrims singing praises at a holy shrine. Like flutterplumes. Like Dantooine's purple plains. Like all that used to heal and soothe me. Your voice was a meditation. Now, it finds the raw and weeping sores in my soul and burns into them with the words "Anakin, you're breaking my heart."

These are the only words I can conjure with my sorcerer's powers. I have forgotten the kindly wizard spells to call forth happier words. This black-robed necromancer can only hear the words it wants nothing more than to forget. But if I were to will away this hated phrase, would I lose you?

Do I want to stop hearing you or hold onto this two-edged memory until it cuts through me?

But even the honey-flavored thoughts, those not soaked in blood and screams, carve ragged holes in me. Do you recall the time I came home sooner than expected, surprising you? I woke you with a soft kiss and you were sleep-ruffled. You hair was mussed. Your pillow had etched red lines onto your cheek reminiscent of the fading scars you wore proudly on your back, echoes of an old battle. You smiled that sleepy smile that only I have seen and you were the Angel I had long ago dreamed you to be.

This memory makes me weep, tears like ashes that rub dustily against my scarred cheek. I could kiss you a thousand times and you would not wake, smile or no. These dusty tears might as well be shards of transparisteel next to the memory of your lips on my cheek. Against the memory of you, everything else is blaster bolts. Everything else is sarlacc teeth. The pain of remembering you is only slightly less than the agony of your absence. This constant dying that is not death is my punishment. I have been made to live without you.

As in now when the taste of you comes to me as I inhale. You always tasted of something sweet and tangy. You tasted the way I always imagined light might taste, subtle and tart. I want to keep the taste in my lungs, let it wash over my tongue, flower-shaped and heavy.

But this demon suit does not grant me even this most tiny of desires. It forces another breath into me, this one tasting of metal and my own burnt flesh. Each breath, save that last one, makes me want to vomit. Even that is denied me. I cannot die. I do not live. The Force has exacted its retribution for my betrayal. I will never find peace.

How could I ever imagine that I deserve absolution? How can I beg to be forgiven when the taste of the soft skin of your throat mingles with the white-hot feel of it tightened under my power? Your light-taste, your flower-shaped flavor, blackened under murderous rage.

When your eyes never cease to follow my every movement?

I can see your clear brown eyes, shining with wisdom and that tiny bit of terrified awe which sparked in them like a flame whenever I was near. Those eyes, two warriors, had stared down assassins of two varieties, political and mercenary, and never weakened. They had widened in joy with a widening of arms to your lovely nieces. They had battled with me in a political chamber and dared me to disagree. They had turned smoky with rage or desire. Sometimes both.

It was only in those last acidic weeks that I saw them at their most beautiful. You were never one for tears, my love. You were too mighty to show your weaknesses. Your eyes burned when others' watered and you nearly always hid behind this flame. But I, the monster, with my disgusting black-holed soul pulled tears from you, ripped them from you. You are beautiful when you cry, Padmé. Tears turned your eyes sparkly in a way I can no longer bear to describe. The very last time your eyes glittered that way…..

…..you were begging me for your life, begging me to allow you to help me.

Padmé, my love, my shame, how can I ever tell you how utterly sorry I am? How can I tell you that forgiveness drives me, that absolution is my only dream.

That I wake in the night from nightmares of your endless judgment?

Padmé, my soul, the love I have for you defines the best part of me, the only worthy part. I have become a flagellant, merciless in remembering you. The sting of that final memory is both my survival and my torture. I embrace both.

Could I move you to forgiveness if I told you that I pray, I beg……

……….to die?

This where all my agonies meet, though, my love.

I cannot ask your forgiveness. I have you taken away your voice. But I know, and hate, that you would give it if this phantom heartbeat I felt were truly yours.

You cannot forgive.

I cannot die.

This is my Hell.

And Angels have no place here.