Author's Note:
This originally started as a single-chapter story, but it's turned into a longer story. I am currently writing chapter 4 and need to post the others up here. This story came to me when I wondered what the rebellious Anakin got up to between Episode I and II. It occurred to me that it was quite possible he had a couple of flings (being a teenage boy and all) and I wondered what would happen if he ended up having a kid he didn't know about. What would happen to them once he became Vader? I tried to make this a darker, more emotional story than my usual light, humorous style. Let me know if it worked.
Need to post:
Chapter Three: Conspiracy
(If you like these I intend to post up a few other stories I'm working on: Why Earth? where Vader and other Star Wars characters are stranded on Earth and meet crazed fans and forgotten Jedi among other things; the Darth Loki stories, about a female Sith Lord exiled to Earth after the fall of the Empire and how she copes with everyday life (alternate universe story); Tales of Anakin, a series of stories about Ani when he was a padawan; an AU story about how a tool of the Sith lords becomes Empress and makes a great deal of changes – and its sequel, about how Imperial Princess Christylana (now aged twelve and raised on the non-Republic world of Earth) deals with discovering her identity as the daughter of Lord Vader and the former Galactic Empress Ariana.)
-------------------------------------
I DWELL IN SHADOWS
Chapter One:
I have spent the most part of my life alone. I travel, another ordinary creature in a crowd of others, unremarkable, with names that disappear as soon as I pass on. My life has been spent moving from place to place, as I tried to leave myself and the truth behind.
I moved out on my own when I was sixteen. Caution had been instilled in me by my mother. Living on Coruscant as she did in the days of the Republic, she had seen firsthand the terrible power of the Imperial will and what it was capable of. She'd moved to the little planet I grew up on so that I would not be within the focus of the Imperial gaze. From an early age I understood the care I had to take. Mother had told me about how the Jedi had been ruthlessly hunted and slaughtered, tens of thousands of them. If I was ever discovered, my fate would far, far worse. So I drift, dwelling in the shadows, nameless and unknown. Alone.
Or I did. Things changed.
It was all the fault of those stupid rebels. I hadn't known they were rebels, of course. The word was that they were spice runners, shipping things that the Empire wouldn't approve of in return for a large fee. Naturally I chose to board the ship that would take me somewhere discreetly, no question asked, so that I could melt into anonymity on some other far-flung planet. Unfortunately, a bunch of stormtroopers and an Imperial officer boarded us and promptly has us all arrested as rebel spies.
We were frogmarched aboard the Imperial ship. As we made our way down the corridors, flanked by soldiers in white armour, my mouth was dry and my heart beating fast. I swallowed. Desperately I tried to remain calm, searching for some way out of my current situation. Suddenly an officer approached.
"Lord Vader will interview them separately."
Vader.
My stomach gave a jolt. He was here. I felt sick. I realised, with both excitement and dread, that after all this time running from him I was finally going to meet the man who haunted my dreams. We continued walking for a while, stopping at a metal door to the left, which the soldiers opened. I had a glimpse of a small, bare room before I was thrust inside. Stumbling forward, I heard the door clang shut behind me. I straightened up and looked around. Bright white lights glared at me from an equally white ceiling. There was a large metal desk in the middle of the room, a small metal chair on the far side of it. I went and sat on the chair, facing the closed door, I waited.
I waited for a long time. Faintly I could hear screaming. I was tempted to reach out, to find out what was happening to the others, but instinct told me that such action would only fuel my fears. So I shut myself away from the universe, aware only of myself and the small, cold white room.
I jerked to attention as the door opened and the moment I had been inexorably travelling towards since my arrest came. He walked through.
His presence filled the tiny room, a menacing, powerful presence full of brooding darkness. I pulled my light tighter around me so that he would not see it and become suspicious. I was awed and frightened, yet breathless with anticipation. I felt lightheaded. Here he stood, enormously tall and clothed in his mechanical, inhuman suit, the sound of his breathing cycle increasing the uncanny feeling. He looked like a terrible spectre of grim legend, a harbinger of terror and death.
Darth Vader.
And I was finally face to face with him.
"Hello, my lord," I said coolly, gazing as sardonically at him as I could. He spoke, in a voice that was as cold, expressionless, and mechanical as the rest of him.
"You and your companions were found carrying treasonous material."
"Look," I said rudely, "I didn't know they were rebels, okay? I was just hitching a lift so there's no need to-"
He hit me. I went backwards, rolling over the back of the chair as it fell and I hit the wall, hard. It hurt. In a sort of shock I laughed. Under the bright lights it all seemed so surreal. The laugh stabbed at me, and I winced.
"Ow." I turned my head, muscles jabbing painfully as I did so, so that I could see him standing there. I laughed again, this time ignoring the pain.
"You don't know who I am, do you?"
It was a stupid thing to say, but it simply rolled off my tongue before I could stop it. It just seemed so ironic, that it was him doing this to me. Having said as much as I had, I was forced to continue talking.
"Remember Verena? You know, the one you had a fling with when you were still Ana-" I choked and spluttered as an invisible force latched on to my windpipe. I tried to speak, and failed. I panicked. I couldn't die, not like this. I stopped shielding, and my light burst forth in all its glory to send dazzling shimmers all around the room, bouncing off the darkness.
Suddenly I was able to breathe. Coughing, doubled over with the pain of it, I was unable to look at him. Finally the spasms ceased, and I straightened up a little where I was sprawled on the floor. He was standing there, his inaction a prod for me to keep talking. I did so.
"I'm her daughter, Verena's daughter. Brianna Skywalker."
There. I'd said it. The secret that I'd carried around with me since I was a small child. I felt realisation hit him. He, Darth Vader, terror of the galaxy, was my father.
"How old are you?" he demanded. The voice was cold, but the emotions swirling around him were not. Confusion, anger, astonishment, pleasure, perturbation, resentment, defiance. And pain.
It was the pain that got me. The colossal pain that enshrouded him, pain at what he had done to me, pain at what I must be feeling and thinking, pain at what he had become and pain at all he had lost. As I watched the pain turned to bitterness and hate, hate of the Emperor and of himself. That in turn became anger that I had showed up in the first place and caused him to feel all he did.
"I'm twenty-three," I replied, as the anger overcame the pain.
"It was idiotic of you to go on that ship!" he boomed at me. Before I knew what was happening, he lifted me and set me on my feet, righting the chair as he did so. He turned away from me, facing the opposite wall, his anger beating at me as I leant on the desk feeling rather sick and wobbly.
"I didn't know they were rebels," I told him once more. "I'm not stupid. I thought they were spice runners."
His emotions swirled around me again. Painfully I sat at the chair, still leaning heavily on the desk, waiting for some calming of his feelings. Presently they subsided a little, and he turned to look at me. I looked back squarely. Mother says I have her hair, long, and golden as the sun. My smile is hers, my voice. But my eyes, and my build, tall and thin, she says are his. I wished I could see him outside his life-support system, so that I could judge the truth of this. I think of the other traits Mother says I inherited from him. There are no signs of my humour, my impulsiveness, my volatile spirit in this barely-human cyborg. Only the remains of a soul which I can only dimly perceive, and an overwhelming darkness.
He spoke.
"Stand." I tried, but my head spins and my legs give way. Stars filled my vision. As I lost consciousness, a swiftly-increasing black mist consuming all, I knew he had come close and taken hold of me. I fainted.
Groggily, I became aware once more. At first I had trouble understanding what had happened; I felt woozy and nauseous. This soon passed, however, and I realised that I was being carried down a hallway. He stopped at a door, opened it, and entered. The medic inside was startled. I suppose the sight of the Dark Lord carrying an injured, dirty, barely-conscious young woman is an unusual sight.
"Lord Vader..." the medic begins, only to be halted by the invisible grasp on his throat.
"You will treat this girl."
Vader released him, and coughing, the medic approached me. Gently I am placed on the examining table. I make no move as the medic scrutinises my injuries. Gently he probes my swelling face. Bacta is applied. The doctor makes a discovery.
"One of her ribs is fractured." The medic's voice was full of disapproval, but he is ignored. Deftly I am treated where necessary. The pain slowly subsides but for that in my left side, and the nausea lessens. Gingerly I sit up. Vader was suddenly by my side again, helping me down, and I was led briskly down more hallways with his grip on my arm.
To my surprise we entered a docking area where several non-Imperial ships are parked. Vader approached an unprepossessing individual sipping a cup of some kind of stimulant. The man eyed us warily over his mug as we came to a stop in front of him.
"Lord Vader." It is a curt acknowledgement, not the usual respectful greeting.
"You will take this girl to Brilspith," he was commanded by the cold voice that issued from the fearsome figure towering beside me. I stared up at him wonderingly, at a loss.
"You will make no stops along the way. You will be well-paid."
"Yes, my lord," the man – I assumed a pilot – replied, eying me with cautious curiosity. Am I some sort of rebel double-agent, perhaps?
I am bundled efficiently into one of the ships nearby. Vader briefly disappeared, then reappeared by my side.
"You will remain on Brilspith and keep a low profile," I am told expressionlessly. No emotion swirling around him now. I wondered what was going on. A small bag was dropped into my lap. He turned to leave, then stopped to add one more thing.
"You are no Skywalker." He left the hangar, leaving me staring after him, the pilot staring at me with a suddenly thoughtful look. I wondered just how much he knows.
As we entered open space, I looked in the bag. Credits – many credits. All hundred-credit chips. There must be thousands in my lap. I looked up to see that the pilot was watching me, flying on auto for the time being. I just stared for a moment.
"Generous of him," the pilot commented. I nodded.
"Family, are you?" His shrewd eyes continued looking at me. He's obviously grasped the import of Vader's parting words. I don't really know what to say. I think about what Vader has just done: smuggled me off the Imperial ship when he should have given me to the emperor, given me credits and a destination that will help secure my safety. So that I will not suffer his fate. I looked up at the pilot again, and my numb, swollen face managed a tiny smile.
"I was."
He regarded me some more, then turned away.
"You ever wanted to be a pilot, kid?" I wondered how he knew, then caught the slight smile on his face. Again I wondered exactly how much he knows. And who is he?
"Yeah," I reply. He nods.
"I knew a pod-racer once. Only human ever able to do it. He won a race on Tatooine when he was only nine years old. Friend of mine, he was." He looked back at me.
"Now, if he ever had a kid, I know she'd love to learn how to fly this thing before she reaches Brilspith." He grinned at me. I smiled back, realisation flooding through me.
My new life had begun.
