Rolling masses of liquid rock fill the air with an orange glow which does not reflect off of the black, scorched ground surrounding the rivers of lava. Embers burst into the air like fireworks but this is not a place of celebration. No, quite the contrary. The heat alone is enough to exhaust an athlete, let alone the noxious fumes which choke the lungs of most species. This is a place where nothing grows and where nothing thrives; but something does live.
Bubbles rise inside the Bacta tank; the cylindrical, transparent healing chamber built for the war hero contained inside. Breathing is laborious. It takes machines to make these charred lungs work now. The large, empty room surrounding the tank is dimly lit. It hurts to see. These damaged eyes are usually augmented by his mask. He tries not to move, to simply float in his castle chamber. Movement aches. The cybernetics snag at his nerve endings constantly. There is no rest for this hero.
He squints and looks out across the vast wasteland in front of his chamber, out of the wall-sized window ahead. On that spot, that very ground, a man he once knew had died. A good man, once, he had only wished to protect the people he loved. He was so weak. Destroyed by the very people he once tried to protect, the man was killed by his weakness. A mistake never to be repeated. The hero channelled his anger into power, power which aided in his pain relief. It was never enough. He was always in pain now. A pain he could never grow accustomed to.
Time seems to lose all linearity in his chamber, he finds himself back in time, in the Jedi temple with his friends. No. His enemies. The Jedi were never friends to him, they never trusted him, they didn't even want to train him, they never accepted him. They are dead now and he is alive. Hatred fuels his burning heart and his scorched body. Hatred not just for the Jedi but also for his past mentor. The man who made him what he is today. He looks down to see his two missing arms and his two missing legs, each ending in a socket for his mechanical prosthetics. He is more machine now than man. A monster, feared by the galaxy. Rightly so, too. If people cannot see for themselves what is right then they must be told what is. The Emperor knows this all too well. People thought the Jedi were righteous and true but they were all liars, just as power hungry as the separatists. His face began to fold into a look of pure rage, even under his breathing mask. His rage was again channelled into raw power for his broken body.
After a time of meditation, of length of which he could not judge in here, he was snapped conscious by the sounds of screaming, by the sounds of lightsabers duelling all around him. An attack! Yes! But one from the past. Memories had arisen inside the Sith Lord, memories from long ago; memories from another life, another person. Men and women of all ages cut down by his mighty, royal-blue blade of light and choked by his own hands until they breathed no more. Their dying eyes haunted him for every moment of his life. Even in the brief moments of sleep he is able to get, those eyes, those screams, those bodies terrorise his dreams. The children he slaughtered in the name of justice plague his existence terribly. As they should. A whisper emerges from the terrible din, a voice he does not hear often, it speaks to him from beyond. "They were your friends" the voice whispers, "they were your family" the voice torments him. Rage fills him again but not at the people who distrusted him, not at his mentor who dismembered him, not at his lover who abandoned him, no, but at himself. The voice rings in his melted ears, the voice of Anakin Skywalker, the hero of the clone wars. The weak man. The dead man. Betrayed by his master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and abandoned by his pregnant lover, Padmé Amidala, Anakin had reached out and had murdered his wife in his anger and confusion. "How could you?" the voice whispered as it was forced back into submission. Forced back into silence. The Sith Lord, hero of the great Jedi purge, slammed his damaged eyes shut and allowed himself to weep for just a moment. What a monster he has become. A broken body full of twisted metal imprisoned in a claustrophobic life support suit badly built using Sith alchemy. He hates that suit. The moments in this Bacta tank may be wrought with raw emotional distress but this pain paled in comparison to what that prison causes him every day. The suit snags on his prosthetics constantly, the lights on his chest blink continually, and the breathing, the continuous sound of him inhaling and exhaling keeps him awake most of all. This tank was the closest thing he could get to comfort and rest for the past 19 years; since the day he murdered his lover; since the day he was cut down on that spot right there, by Obi-Wan; since the day Anakin Skywalker died as a dismembered body burning into ash and dust and history. The day Darth Vader was truly born.
A ship lands in the distance. Vader needed not to be told this, he can feel everything with the force. His tank begins to drain and his suit comes into full view. That suit, that prison, boils more anger to the surface. Vader knows the pain is about to return, the discomfort and the restlessness. His brief escape from his physical torture was now at its end.
As he reunites with his mechanical limbs Vader begins to push back his sorrow and mental torture in lieu of his physical one. However, his memories haunt his every moment. Padmé. No. These memories may plague him but they are not his own. Obi-Wan, Padmé, the Jedi temple, they are all his memories, Anakin's, and Anakin is dead, cut down by his master but ultimately killed by Vader himself, like so many Jedi after him. Vader has no dead lover, no previous master before the Emperor and no child.
Lord Vader's suit is finally completely reattached as his helmet is lowered over his breathing mask. The sound of his ominous breath fills the chamber once more. Inhaling. Exhaling. The pain returns. Vader is placed back inside his cell and although he tries to dismiss these thoughts and memories as mere spectres of a dead Jedi's past he looks out one last time at the grave of his soul and sighs in sorrow and lament. He strides out of his chamber, leaving whatever remnants of Anakin Skywalker's ghost in the tank behind him. However, he continues to carry the weight of his depression and regret upon his broad, armoured shoulders as the door closes promptly behind him.