The familiar ache, the burning feeling deep in his chest, he knew it would subside when his stroke cut through the boy that struggled to resist his pull. He knew that the crimson of his blade would be tempered by the life of the young boy. Jedi? Hardly, the Jedi were no more- the boy was just a remnant of a broken past. That crimson, deep in his heart, burning through his soul, would see to it that they all were cleansed, that the galaxy was pure of this disease, this-
WHAM.
The stinging heat of a pale bluish lightsaber ploughed across his vision. He stumbled, and the burning in him rose to a roar, as he bent over, reeling from the blow. He would end that woman, who dared land a strike on him-
Yet suddenly, a fleeting feeling.
The vision in his right eye was clearer. The right lens of his mask had been cleaved off, leaving an eye open to the outside, and a strange sense of yearning accompanied the new, vibrant colours he hadn't seen in a long time. His laboured breathing no longer seemed to be his, and flashes of laughter, love, and unity echoed through his scarred psyche. A name that he'd known all along, but had refused to say, bounded from the derelict pits of his past, breaking through the walls he had built ever since the burning heat of his descent into the darkness.
"Ah..Ahsoka…" he croaked.
The woman, who he saw was turned away, getting up from the floor, froze. He didn't see it- he sensed it through the Force. His eyes were fixated on the ground, yet they saw nothing. Something inside him was stirring, something warm, and yet it made the heat of his ancient burns, and the places where his armor drilled into his flesh, ache with a new intensity. As though his body mourned for what his mind refused to remember.
Vader struggled to stamp out this sudden myriad of emotions. The Sith Holocron was escaping the Empire's hands, and it was imperative he killed these new rebels. But he could not- he was trapped in the pull of something he could not discern.
Anakin Skywalker's Padawan stood before him. All these years…
"Ahsoka." he repeated, his voice a little more steady.
She stood up in front of him. "I'm not leaving you," he heard her shout, "Not this time."
The words collided into him, as though the Force itself compelled it. Something washed over him- pure, raw emotion. Feelings he thought had died with Skywalker.
Anakin Skywalker… a name that had once given him pride… now it had been routed from his veins, snuffed out by the ashes of Mustafar, set ablaze by the anguish and anger of Vader, until all that was left…
Crimson seared through his heart again, burning with its former ferocity, and the pain in his body welled up, fuelling his immersion in the Dark Side once more. Anakin Skywalker was dead, he thought. Now Darth Vader was here, from the ashes of his memory. A weakness that had been set ablaze from its own foolishness, its own folly.
"Then you will die," he growled. He ignited the fiery column of red. The familiar burning sensation of anger coursed through his limbs, as his grip tightened around the lightsaber, ready to extinguish the tiniest remnant of the past. A past that had ought to stay dead.
Nothing could faze him anymore. Not even the shining tear that seemed to roll down the woman's face, as she ignited her own lightsabers, rushing to battle him. Not even the promise, that he would never be betrayed again.
