That's... Good.

Vader gets slightly less hesitant when she notices that.

Excellent!

There's something warm in her, a sense on the edge of Dalia's awareness.

Can Dalia... sort of gently poke at that?

Yes, though Vader's attention sharpens towards her. 

(The feeling is - love, not quite happiness, but certainly some pleasure. Vader loves her daughter - and she offers that more strongly as Dalia pokes.)

Heeee Dalia likes that.

Long breath.

And Vader reaches out even more to Dalia, her mind pressing gently against her daughter's. (There's more than love, this close, more of Vader's constant roil of emotions lurking under it - more of the full complexity of her mind.)

And a voice in Dalia's head, light and soft: 'I love you, dear heart.'

Vader feels closer than normal in the Force, much easier to reach back towards.

'I love you too, mama.'

Dalia passes her bright, burning heart back for Vader to see. Full of love, compassion, of brilliant desire for all her loved ones to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be themselves.

It hurts, receiving that - Vader reaches hungrily for more.

'I don't want to be the one to destroy your heart,' she thinks, and it isn't meant for Dalia - but Dalia hears it anyways. 

'You could never.'

There's a storm of remembered pain in her - betrayal of many kinds, heartbreak,  grief - 

'Those we love or trust have the most power to destroy us.'

Hug?

Hug. (Vader would be shaking, if that was really a coherent concept in this suit.)

'I never want you to know the suffering I have.'

'I'm sorry, mama.'

Her emotions indicate she'd very much like to be crying or keening in sorrow, right now. She doesn't make a noise beyond the deep, regular hiss of her ventilator. 

There's something bitter and angry in her too, though, under the love and the pain and the grief. A tiny whisper of 'But you've never listened before' that she's trying very, very hard to strangle before it can reach Dalia.

'I think we can make things better, if we try.'

'How.'

Dalia- flinches, a little.

She isn't mentally together enough to apologize. Doesn't know if she wants to. 

She does flinch back from Dalia's own flinch, though. 

"Sorry."

'It's - '

She wants to say 'not your fault.' She believes that, she does - but Vader's head gets tangled up easily, and Dalia never takes her side - 

'Things will be better when the Emperor dies,' she thinks, angry and vicious and bitter - trying to hide that from Dalia, too, but her mind's too raw to be sure. 

Dalia doesn't know what to do.

Things with mama and mother seem more complicated than she thought.

But she knows she loves mama and she knows she can hug her.

Hug.

(She's having a breakdown, and she can't stop - )

'Why don't you - just - believe me about her - why do you take her side - '

Sad Dalia. Still full of love but also sad.

'...I don't want there to be sides.'

'There already are.'

Something in Vader's mind snaps, and she shoves her thoughts, her memories into Dalia - vicious, angry, lashing out - 

Vader's memories from before the Fall of the Republic feel like they happened to someone else. Not even an innocent version of her, but - someone hopeful and full of love, someone Palpatine destroyed and poured Vader into the ruined shell of. She has them, though, as patchy and unreal and distant as they are, and she's angry on that girl's behalf, too.

Palpatine as the Chancellor - playing at being Anakin's friend, inserting herself into her life in a thousand insidious ways - Anakin's memories growing fuzzy and irregular after meetings with her, lost time and a creeping sense of dread - a war, started on Palpatine's whim, the forced revelation of Anakin's prowess in battle meditation and Palpatine's relentless machinations to throw her into the front, to force her to use it again and again and again, feeling thousands - millions - of deaths as viscerally as if they were her own - Palpatine's knowing smile -

Her unwilling pregnancy, and Vader tries to steer away from how utterly violated she felt, how terrified she was, how much she hated being pregnant - how the knowledge of it kept slipping her mind, and every time she tried to terminate it she'd forget what she was doing - she tries not to dump that on Dalia because it wasn't her fault - Palpatine's knowledge of the pregnancy, her smug self-satisfaction - 

Threats to the only person Anakin loved anymore (the slow destruction of anyone else). A distance created by Senate demands and war schedules between Anakin and anyone who could have rescued her - 

Anakin's leash slipping just enough - her determination overcoming her fear - that she told the Jedi Council what Palpatine was, and it was a trap - Anakin loved the Jedi, and Palpatine manipulated her into being complicit in their fall - 

The death of Anakin's Jedi Master at her own hands, with static in her mind. Palpatine on the scene nearly immediately - stopping Anakin from killing herself - 

The aftermath.

Palpatine, a thousand questions -

Where did your child go?' she asked, holding Anakin's face in her hands. Anakin's body is broken, in pain. 

'I killed her,' Anakin had spat, rage and despair and grief. 'You'll never have her.'

Palpatine tsk'ed. 'You really expect me to believe that?' 

And pain, in Anakin's body and mind, lightning coursing through her as Palpatine tore through her mind. 

It wasn't just Anakin's child that Palpatine wanted. A thousand secrets of the Jedi, any hint to where the survivors might hide - 

Anakin let herself be destroyed rather than give up her secrets, and Palpatine made Vader from what was left. Vader hadn't known those secrets; her memory has returned in patches, unreliable trickles - she hadn't known Dalia was alive until Palpatine found her and slaughtered the family that Anakin's network had given her to, the family that died trying to protect her - Vader had believed Anakin's lie, and the knowledge of it had nearly destroyed her again. 

(Palpatine stopped her from killing herself more times than she can count. This suit is the last part of that - Vader can't destroy the life support herself. She's tried.)

(Palpatine threatening Dalia on a hundred separate occasions, forcing Vader to commit atrocities - to stop trying to kill herself whenever she got half a chance - if she wanted her daughter alive and whole and sane. Palpatine's smile, the same easy friendliness she speaks to Dalia with falling from her lips.)

(Palpatine taunts her, still. Rubs salt in the wounds for no reason other than that she can. Palpatine adopted Dalia as one of those taunts, one of those threats, and the first time Dalia went to Palpatine to confirm something Vader had said about how Palpatine harmed her - when Dalia believed the Emperor over her own mother - after that, Palpatine had taunted Vader about how unloved she is, about her worthlessness in the eyes of anyone other than the Emperor. An attack dog, never a mother.)