A/N: This second SW ficlet had its genesis whilst I was waiting for my flight over to visit some friends for the ROTS premiere; that experience was of course phenomenal, staggering, breathtaking – and once this particular plot bunny took hold of me, I knew I had to see it through to completion. I still feel like I don't know quite who or what I was channelling when I brainstormed and wrote it, mind you. :) Thanks for the beta-ing on this one also go to Tiffany, Ani-maniac, an awesomely talented authoress – and to Star-Drifter as well, for the beta-ing and feedback, and for making my forays into fanfic truly nurturing and enjoyable – couldn't do it without you guys, truly! :D Enjoy, then, and feedback/reviews are of course most appreciated...
Summary: Following the reconstructive surgery in the Imperial Medcenter after Mustafar, Anakin/Vader remembers the past, and reflects upon what he has become.
Disclaimer: George Lucas is The Man, the Saga's Creator, the genius and our leader. And I am honoured to play even a little with his treasured creations, and I promise to return them in mint condition afterwards.
Lost Soul
Fire.
Smoke and ash.
A torrent of lava thundering underfoot.
The roar of volcanoes like hell beasts with their mouths open wide to devour the world, belching fume, flame and death.
The heat of a blast furnace, crisping hair and blistering flesh and bone.
The air itself seething in a riotous storm of scarlet, blistering orange and yellow, a cauldron of relentless sparks and flame.
Treacherous black volcanic sands rising from oceans of boiling magma.
Burning, searing.
Consuming fire, heat and death.
And pain.
These were his memories now, ghastly, lurid and undimmed. It was, now, as it had ever been - and it could never end for him.
He remembered.
Everything.
Blinding, terrible, excruciating pain. Too fast...impossibly sudden. The smell of cauterized flesh and bone. A dizzying blur of fire and ash. Tumbling crippled down the embankment, rolling close to the deadly lava. A feral roar of rage and pain already torn from his throat...
Struggling to find purchase with his one remaining limb as his gauntlet burned away. Writhing on a bed of black pumice, digging in his fingers and twisting in panic as he slipped down farther and faster.
Grit and ash grinding into raw, burnt flesh as he struggled and lolled his head, groaning through clenched teeth like an animal. Pain gnawing at him with unrelenting fangs.
The flames leaping onto his body, eating at the stumps of his limbs, crawling up his back as he thrashed and howled.
Clawing at the rocks as fire devoured flesh and bone. Agony, as his skin cracked and peeled, leaking. And he burned alive, there on the shore of a volcano.
Sinking his metal fingers into the sand, but finding no hold. Choking on poisonous fume. Howling in pain, his throat scorched, raw and bloody. He breathed in fire and smoke, and he screamed. And kept screaming. And he would never stop.
Slipping down, down towards the surging lava, thrashing as he was engulfed in flames. Scrabbling at the crumbling rock; his outstretched, burning hand futilely straining up the slope, reaching as though in supplication to...to...
But no.
He stared up through the fire...and watched Obi-Wan turn away and clamber up the black beach, leaving him to burn.
Reaching out in utter desperation, blinded by pain and hate, he saw Obi-Wan retrieve his fallen lightsaber. He flailed and sank into the fire, and screamed as he watched Obi-Wan leave him - crippled, suffering.
Until his eyes were seared almost shut, he'd stared up the slope and shrieked after Obi-Wan's departing back. And he would always remember, and always relive it.
Everything.
Forever.
What it was, to be left to burn. By Obi-Wan.
And then...
Lying half-dead beside a river of lava, struggling to breathe through ash and flame. His every move was torture as he slowly hauled himself up the slope, one handful of crumbling rock after another. He smoldered still, and charred skin sloughed off his body.
Staring up through bloodshot eyes, gasping in mouthfuls of poisonous ash and smoke. Moaning, wheezing terribly. He saw dark shapes like demons moving above him on the cliff; they were mere shadows swimming through his vision. And then, the shadows closed their wings tight around him. And he was too weak... And with the utter darkness came bleak, black despair and anguish, and pain without end.
And then...
Awakening. Lying on an alien operating table while droids relentlessly hacked at his raw, burnt flesh. Consciousness brought excruciating pain beyond all imagining. The touch of air upon his suppurating skin was a torment; the harsh, cold sterile light in his eyes, unbearable. He had wakened to a life far worse than dying - because he yet lived, lived to suffer agony at their hands.
The blackened flesh was peeled from his bones. His skin had bubbled and cracked - and the horrendous, sickly smell of it choked him as he writhed and groaned on the cold slab. Even after being pulled from the lava bank, he was still on fire, a thousand times over. All he knew was pain.
At least if he had perished in the lava, it would all be over, and he would have no longer suffered. If he had nothing else left, he wanted to die.
But they wouldn't let him.
If he'd been able to, he would have begged for death. But he could only scream, guttural and maddened, through a throat raw, ravaged and swollen. He cried out in anguish when they drove the skeletal prosthetics into the charred stumps of his arm and legs. All of it was without any care for his suffering - no anaesthetic, no bacta. He was awake the entire time, howling like a tortured beast as they gouged, carved, and peeled apart his flesh. His pain was nothing to them as he moaned and writhed on the table. Wildly, helplessly, he lashed out at them with the remnants of his prosthetic arm - crying out, arching his back, bucking and thrashing. But they were relentless, and continued binding him to durasteel, as he screamed, struggled and suffered unbearably. He only wished for death - wished for anything to stop the pain. But it never did. And it never would.
He wanted to die when they lowered the gleaming obsidian helmet upon him; he opened his eyes to see the descending blackness...and he was terrified. Scarred and burnt, blistered lips parted in a faint whisper of denial; frantic and fearful eyes widened in horror, but it was too late.
It was a moment of pure panic and animal terror - the blind fear of the trap closing its jaws on him, the final cruel trap of the Dark Side. He could only watch the helmet seal him in, and feel the chill caress of metal on ravaged, raw flesh and bone - forever chaining him down. It was a waking, living nightmare from which he had no hope of escape. A prison of his own making.
In that last fleeting instant, just before his scalded, seared eyes ceased to see the living world, and opened anew to darkness, he understood that it was his damnation. He was sealed into his own oppressive, living tomb, trapped between this world and the next...paralyzed in a state of hell, slaved to this half-life, this cursed life.
He wanted to die when for the first time he heard that deep, sonorous respiration, hissing in and out like the breathing of some horrendous monster...only it was him. He was the monster now. Air was drawn into burned and ravaged lungs, and expelled - and it was utterly beyond his control. It was no longer real, fresh air pulled into whole, healthy lungs, as he remembered. No longer the sweet smell of wildflowers, or the perfumed air tickling his nostrils...the warmth of pure sunlight caressing his skin, or the gentle rain on his face.
There was nothing remotely human about these beastly respirations, magnified a thousand-fold to him. He was enslaved to it - without it, he would die. And yet...he had never wanted that more. But he was too weak to rip the ventilator and prosthetics from his flesh. He couldn't, though he had wanted to, in those first moments. And now, he never would.
He wanted most to die when he knew she was gone. He could no longer feel her, couldn't hold on to her. He had lost her forever...he had lost everything. He would always, always be alone - now, forever and everywhere...alone. And in his darkness and despair, he wished sometimes that he could have died with her. Better that, than...this. If it was his fault, he should have.
But mere wishing could not fix anything; it could never bring peace to the galaxy, nor order to chaos...nor even stop people from dying. It had not saved his mother. And it had not saved...her. It couldn't. Useless. Wishing could never bring her back alive, happy, and beloved into the warm shelter of his arms. It could not return to him the softness of her hand upon his cheek, or the sweet brush of her lips upon his...the love-light in her eyes, or her tender laughter...or how she'd gazed at him as though he was the most important thing in her world...just as she had been in his. Wishing could never bring back the sensation of his hand pressed against her pregnant belly, feeling the kick of a tiny foot against his palm... Wishing could not return to him that nurturing, life-giving love, the sense of completion, being truly and utterly content...only with her.
All that was part of life. And never again would he know a life like that. Imprisoned behind a black mask, he could gaze upon the outside world - yet he was not part of it. It existed, forever, just beyond his reach... He might as well be trapped behind an impenetrable durasteel wall a mile thick. It was his prison, slaving him to a cursed, damned half-life, forever unable to touch the world he'd once known. An existence which was not really living at all.
And in the crushing confines of his armoured coffin, he had wished for an end to it all - but he could never have that now. Perhaps he should have died years ago, upon the hot black sand as flames chewed his flesh. Perhaps burning to death would have been the mercy. Was it one that he did not deserve? Or was it just one that the Emperor had not granted him?
For he knew full well that it was his master's bidding which kept him alive when he should have died, and turned him into this scarred and shattered hulk. He only survived the flames because Palpatine had wished it - though why that was, he knew not. To be a mere prize of the Sith, perhaps...an instrument of fear for his master's use - a twisted, hideous monstrosity...forever a slave... He did not know why he had been saved, doomed to exist a crippled shell of what he once was. Perhaps it didn't matter. For now, he could not die. Had he even wanted to, by his own hand, he'd no doubt that Palpatine would have somehow stopped him. It would not be so easy an end for him... It was all Palpatine's doing - but ultimately, it was his own fault.
He hated this existence - hated so what he was completely dependent upon, what he had become...and yet, he could not end it. Because he had nothing else now.
He could only go on existing, since he'd lost everything he once had to live for. He surrendered himself to anger, vengeance and hatred...drowned deeper and deeper still in darkness, and slew the last of the Jedi, and brought terror to the entire galaxy - but it was all ultimately hollow.
It was not enough.
Once, he'd had everything...now, he had nothing. Only memories, lies, and betrayal...rage and despair...a wasted, shattered destiny. What they'd done to him, and what he had done.
Nothing.
It was all nothing to him now; worse, it had all been for nothing. Everything he had sacrificed - all that he had become, and done, and lost...for nothing. Utterly empty and meaningless, because he had failed. It was the greatest lie and the ultimate damnation of the Sith; the one last, worst torture reserved for him alone.
For he yet burned, within his helmet and armour...with every single artificial breath forced across raw nerves, scraping helpless lungs...with his vision through red lenses at the horror and hell of his damnation...with the pull of scar tissue, and the burns causing him endless, unrelenting pain. He despaired, and helplessly, hopelessly raged - and it would always be for nothing.
Nothing.
All he had left now.
All that he had become.
Nothing.