The Chosen One
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- When the Sun Hits by Slowdive
Darth Vader has the word of the Emperor that he will not be disturbed today. He doesn't know the punishment for those that disobey, since no one dares disobey his Master, but he'd like to imagine that it would be death. He knows that Padmé would hate that, but even more so on her life day.
On Naboo, her people celebrate her life publicly, while her family privately mourns her. And Vader mourns with them and will continue to do so for the rest of his life.
In his bacta tank, naked before the Force and Padmé's Shiraya, he lets his sorrow drown his anger. Its waves, blue like her funeral robes, crash against the open crags of his soul and fill it with salt festering his pain.
Time slows torturously, the seconds become days, the minutes become months. A full decade later he registers something other than his pain and sadness.
His Little Moth.
Repeatedly rapping on his door for admittance.
He will not admit the eight-year-old, not just out of protectiveness, but because he cannot bear to see the repulsion in the child's green eyes.
Leave me, Little Moth, I cannot be good company for you.
The rapping ceases and the eight-year-old flits away, most likely back to his father for warmth and happiness.
Vader smothers his green jealously with blue gloom, briefly seeing fatigued cyan in his closed-eye meditations.
Half a century later, he opens his eyes and sees Rama before his tank. The boy's green eyes roam up his mutilated body and stops at his golden eyes. He goes terribly still like a victim frozen in carbonite.
His lively green eyes become as black as a moth's.
Vader lets go of his sorrow and searches the Force around his Little Moth. But the Force offers no straightforwardness; it screams like a heartbroken woman.
He pulls away and focuses on putting himself back together again. It takes him two months to be functional and another twenty days for him to reach Rama. He touches the boy's pale cheeks, hoping touch will free the boy.
Tears stream from those black eyes and his thin lips open for a scream. Yet, no sound comes through those slightly crooked teeth.
"Rama. Rama! Rama!" No amount of begging, shouting, or commanding can reach his Master's son. He nearly reaches out to his Master for a solution, but his eyes fall on a light shining in the darkness of his chambers.
The crescent, a betrothal promise on Tatooine, shines in the Force like Rama did on that day. He calls the necklace over and goes on his knees to be on Rama's level. He then gently presses the crescent between pale eyebrows, the spiritual eye.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh!" Rama cries out and blinks the darkness away. He looks wildly about like he's looking for a monster in the shadows. Vader drops the crescent and restrains the child's violent whiplashing.
"Rama, Rama, I'm here." His Little Moth cries harder and buries his snowy head into his durasteel armor plate.
"Vader!" Rama's moan turns breaks into rasps. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"
"You're back now that's what matters." He tries to reassure his Little Moth, but Rama shakes his head hard. Vader fears that the boy will cut his forehead open.
"Your brother cut you up and left you to burn on Mustafar!" Vader's seizes as though he's on the receiving end of his Master's lightning.
"…It's in the past, and the past is dead." Like her. Like our child. Like our marriage.
Rama pulls his face away and looks up at him with irritated eyes and a developing welt.
"A-And Sire was there; he touched your forehead with great pain in his yellow eyes." The silent tears continue, and Vader wants to look away from Rama. His Little Moth reminds him too much of Padmé's final moments.
"Why do you cry like that?" Rama brings a Pestage purple sleeve to wipe away some of his own tears.
"B-Because everything you loved died!"
"I mean why don't you make noise when you cry?" I was certainly screaming that day.
"Oh…." He wipes away the last remnants of his tears. "I think I learned it from Sire."
"…..Has he cried in front of you?" He shakes his head, and Vader nearly breathes a sigh of relief.
"I see the past as you know, the distant past. I think when I was baby, when I had no control of it, I saw visions of my father. But because I was a baby, I couldn't remember it clearly. Like a dream." His childish face trembles with unshed tears.
"Please, don't cry, my Little Moth." It hurts me more than when she cried.
"The worst part about my Force abilities is that I can only see the distant past. And when I just tried to see closer to the present, I felt even more useless. I was trapped, without the ability to speak or move, all I could do was crawl on my belly like a half-dead serpent!" Rama bites down on his lip to prevent himself from crying. A drop of blood wells from the self-inflicted riven and falls onto the floor.
Vader looks down to see a dot of red on the white crescent. He gingerly plucks it from the cold ground.
"Rama, you can't change the past. No one can." He holds the crescent by the chain, allowing it to twirl for the sad child. "All we can do is….move forward."
"But you're still in pain!"
"And I deserve to be, but you do not."
Rama wears a heavy frown much like his Master's whenever he's displeased.
"You can't always get your way."
"I just want you to be happy."
"You make me happy."
The Dark Lord embraces his Little Moth tightly. The crescent twirls on its chain, making itself whole, but it soon slows and then stops.
Author's Comments- No links this time.
Rama only got to experience the fight, so he's still in the dark about the Skywalker Twins being alive. For now. Maybe. But he now knows the cost of seeing closer to the present. However, the question is how long will he remember this before making the same mistake? Maybe the next part of the series will answer that.