It waits for the day, I will let it out
To give it a reason, to give it its might
Nova observed her reflection, lips curled in disgust at the corps-like girl who gazed back at her. Her long pale hair that hung limp and lifeless about her face sucked even more vitality out of her pallid visage. Eyes flicking around her Nova watched the three maids bustling about her chambers, pulling out fabrics and jewels for her to wear. A flash of red appeared in the corner of her vision and Nova whipped around and glared at the new maid holding a gorgeous red sash in her hands.
"What do you think you're doing with that?" Nova snarled, standing from her chair to advance upon the young woman. She dropped to her knees and cowered before her; Nova held her very life in her hands. At fourteen she was only five feet tall standing in bare feet. Her weakly lithe form was not particularly intimidating but her whims could be deadly to the offending maid.
"I-I thought the red w-w-would look-k nice." She managed to stutter out fearfully.
"You are not here to think," Nova reprimanded her. "I will wear white."
"Y-y-yes milad-dy."
Rolling her eyes Nova sank back into the chair and crossed her arms across her chest in annoyance. She hated preparing for court. Yet wherever the Emperor desired her she would be. A bolt of fear coursed down her spine at the thought of him. His sadistic smirk forever imprinted upon her mind's eye. In the silky slip she wore pale scars could be seen crisscrossing her skin, most of them concentrated around her breasts and inner thighs but some extending down her arms and legs.
An aging woman stepped forward, carefully applying chalky powder beneath Nova's eyes concealing the dark purple circles. Staring into the mirror stoically Nova watched as her appearance was meticulously sculpted into one of porcelain beauty. The barest touch of rouge was brushed across her cheeks giving her the minutest hint of life. Nova felt only revulsion at this thought. Why should her outward appearance reflect life when she felt so dead inside?
For four years now she had been his Mistress. Four years. It had seemed like an eternity. There was nothing that could give life back to her. He had been sure to rob it from her completely. The Emperor's very presence seemed to leech away her youth and beauty turning her more and more into the image of death's lover. And how he reveled in her achingly slow demise. She could see the flash of victory behind his pale beady eyes every time he looked at her, his perverse smirk burning her with its tormenting joy. She hated him. It was a rotten poison corroding her insides. But more than anything she feared him. He terrified her. The flick of his wrist bringing her instant pain, claws like a wild beast ripping into her soft skin. His omnipresent oppression wrapped around her as a foreboding cloud of dismay and helplessness. She could not escape him. Never. Cursed to be his until he murderously ended her existence.
A crystal veil half obscured her face as the maid tugged her hair into an elaborate updo, long strands trailing down to brush the hollow of her back between her shoulder blades in now luscious curls. Nova observed the fine-boned girl staring back at her from the mirror, delicately crafted into a beautiful frail creature. The soft shimmering jewels barely weighted down the lightly flowing layers of her dress and she was sea-foam; gracefully drifting through the air to shatter broken and mangled on the unforgiving shore.
The maids stood back in reverence taken aback by the transformation that had occurred and mentally congratulating themselves on their supernatural powers to mutate the dull dead corpse into the breathtaking ice shard that stood before them. Nova hated them all. The pathetic puppets that stood by and cleaned up the Emperor's mess. Scraping up her ashy remains and depositing them in an ornate urn.
I fear who I am becoming,
I feel that I am losing the struggle within
I can no longer restrain it,
My strength, it is fading
I have to give in
Vader sat beside the Emperor staring out at the mass of twirling bodies. A cacophony of shimmering colors, sickeningly gaudy and eccentric clothing, merged and separated as if some creature had been ripped apart and its insides splattered across a decaying wall. This was the Emperor's court: his puppets that clamored before him in gleeful servitude to lick at his shoes like rabid half-dead dogs. Vader knew nothing more pathetic than the sight he witnessed each time he was forced to sit at his Master's side and survey the disgusting crowd. He would love nothing more than to crush each of the offending insects within his dark gloved fist. To show them fear, kick the mutts and send them running to slowly die of their rotting madness.
As he continued to glare out at the crowd, feeling sicker and sicker as each moment passed, his eyes were drawn to a sudden split in the sea of disease. Her monochromatic palate separated her from the whirlwind in a way none had managed to achieve successfully. People drew back from her sharply and her lithe frame commanded instant obedience. It expected it without question or hesitation. Her stoic face was half hidden by a veil of delicate material and priceless stones. Eyes downcast but chin raised an imperceptible notch as if to set her apart from them all.
She approached them and curtsied deeply, long lashes obscuring deep dead eyes. Freezing in the depth of her bow she managed to craft her pose as both reverent and sarcastic and Vader could feel the Emperor's lips peel slowly back into a sickening grin. His amusement wafted off of him as he relaxed into his throne waving his hand to release her from her homage. Stepping forward Nova's eyes lifted to capture them both in her icy gaze before sitting down across from Vader on the Emperor's left.
Vader had seen Nova briefly throughout her bondage as the Emperor's Mistress. She was impossible to miss, striding silently down a hallway like a wasting wraith in her pale attire. Her dress at court tonight was far more intricate than any he had gleaned her in previously yet even had she been clothed in only a simple white slip the contrast she made sitting next to the overwhelming blackness of the Emperor was almost painful to gaze at. He looked like the grim reaper and she his unwilling victim.
"You look beautiful tonight my butterfly," the Emperor's silky voice breathed poisonous towards her.
"Thank you my Lord," she acknowledged her jaw clenching in disgust as he ran his fingers across the backs of her knuckles. Her eyes never left the crowd and Vader could sense an equal if not greater loathing seeping from her. She was shrouded in a cloak of hate, fear, and anguish, and Vader recognized the Emperor's cumulative work of long years engraving it into her soul. He had rotted her from the inside out.
"Lord Vader you have met I believe," He introduced and her hollow eyes flickered up to freeze him within their empty depths. It was the one and only time she looked upon them the entire night they sat there. And Vader was grateful, he had no desire to be looked at like that ever again. It was a reflection of his own charred soul screaming out from her mangled insides.
Hold down your head now,
Just let me pass by
Don't feed my fear,
If you don't want it out
A piercing scream nearly made Vader jump as he wandered through the halls of the Imperial Palace. Hand moving to his lightsaber he slipped stealthily through the hallways towards the sound of the disturbance his muscles tense. He could sense pain radiating out in waves and when he registered movement Vader dropped back into the shadows to observe what was happening. He was almost surprised to see the Emperor dragging Nova down the hallway by her hair. She was struggling with him, both hands grasping his wrist in a desperate attempt to take some of the pressure off of her scalp. Tears streamed down her pale face washing her make-up away to reveal dark circles beneath her eyes.
A droplet of blood seeped down her forehead and suddenly somehow, as if she had sensed his presence her eyes found him in the dark. They pleaded desperately with him to intervene, screaming into his mind. Her pitiful visage almost brought to life by the fear that exploded from her wide thickly lashed eyes. She was reduced only to a child now, shivering from fright and loneliness. It was almost beautiful in a perversely poetic way. The untouchable being he had seen at court was completely removed and what showed itself now was completely maskless. Bare, raw, honest and real. But Vader remained rooted to the spot. As soon as she realized he would not help her her face changed to an expression of hate and she struggled even more against the Emperor. They physically burned him like the fires of Mustafar, baptizing him in destructive cleansing flames.
"Let me go!" Nova cried desperately angry at expecting any hope from the lifeless man in his metallic black suit. With a sudden jerk forward the Emperor had thrown her against a wall. Vader flinched at the ringing slap that echoed down the empty corridor. Her sobs dissolved into muffled sniffles and Vader turned and quickly left heading for the lifts. All he wanted was to get out of the Palace and as far away from her as possible. Her tear-filled haunted eyes burned into his mind.
It seemed eternities compounded upon eternities before he had left her and Nova sobbed at the pain which permeated her entire being. With more determination and courage than a soldier plunging into certain death Nova gritted her teeth and drew herself from the hallway floor to shaky knees and slowly trekked back to her room. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the fleeting image of her tattered reflection in the mirror on the wall before she disappeared into the bathroom sliding to the pale tile of the showering and turning on the water. The freezing droplets burned her skin and fresh wounds, blood swirling down the drain to be gobbled up by the blackness within. Scalding tears betrayed her soul as she sobbed into the steady rush of water, each drop biting her skin.
Nova did not know how long she remained under the unforgiving torrent of ice but she did not crawl out until her entire body was numb and raw from the cold. Her skeletal form mocked her from the mirror; bony, cadaverous. She was more deathly pale than usual and the dark circles below her eyes were nearly black with a dark bruise forming on her left cheek like a death wound. Hollow, sunken cheeks leeched even more life from her and for once the dead girl in the mirror did not strike fear into her heart at her inevitable future.
Slipping on a thin robe Nova moved out onto her balcony overlooking all of Coruscant; the sleepless city. The whir and whine of speeders and transports came towards her on the playful wind that danced across her body. It raised prominent gooseflesh across her thin legs and tortured her mind. Why could the wind twirl here and there, heedless of the desires and commands of others? Unshackled and free?
Hands clenched on the railing of the balcony Nova stared down the staggering distance to the ground, barely visible so far below. The thought entered her mind innocently as a sugar-coated thorn. What would it be like to jump? To fall the fatal distance into oblivion. It was not the first time she had courted such a thought. And yet tonight she could not brush it away, and she was oh so tired. So very very tired. Would she stay conscious the entire way down? The thought wasn't particularly appealing.
But how beautiful, how abstractly artistic when her body impacted upon the pavement below splattering blood and bone across the sidewalk. Would people care then? Would they finally realize, recognize, her pain? Perhaps someone would pause a moment to wonder why they had stood silently by all those years stitching her carefully and cautiously back together while doing nothing. Nova smiled a ghastly smile at that thought. And she could sleep. She could sleep peacefully and finally and completely. Forever.
And suddenly the world was rushing by her ears and she was hurtling towards the ground. Nova didn't remember jumping but she was falling and the wind was welcoming her into its comforting embrace. Closing her eyes Nova awaited the inevitable with bittersweet joy.
It's the fear,
The fear of the dark
It's growing inside of me
They won, they will come to life
Have to save,
Save my beloved,
There is no escaping
Because my fate is horror and doom
Even from untold stories below her Vader sensed her intent as he moved out of the Imperial Palace. Her decision was projected through the force as if by a megaphone. Looking up he could make out the pale figure plummeting towards him And Vader thought of walking away. His foot lifted to take him far from her and let her be done with it. To release her from her torture into the depths of the dark. He understood her reasoning. How many times had he faltered in battle in a whimsical hope for the end only to have another piece of machinery replacing a limb or an organ? How many times had he touched his hand to his lightsaber and fantasized at how quick it would be. Yes, he should just walk away.
But he hesitated.
He couldn't leave. Wouldn't. For some reason he would not allow her release from her prison until she had suffered all he had and more. Why did she deserve escape when he was bound here forever? She who did not know the meaning of pain?
Nova drifted the last few meters unconscious into his arms. A sad smile tugged at her blue lips and Vader almost thought she was dead already but the gentle drumming of a pulse convinced him otherwise. It was a long trek back to her room but Vader did his best to avoid others not knowing why. For some reason this moment was his. She was at her lowest and most desperate point at it was all his. Not even the Emperor was granted this privilege, only him.
As he laid her back in her bed, drawing the covers up over her thin form Vader almost regretted his decision. Steeling his soul against such offending thoughts Vader turned and quickly disappeared from her room.
Long ago, it came to me and ever since that day,
Infected with it's rage
But it ends today
Vader could not look at the pale whisp hanging delicately upon the Emperor's arm. Nova's red rimmed eyes spoke volumes And he could feel her hate burning into his soul. As Vader accepted his Master's farewells he could feel her questions scalding him.
Why did you save me?
Why did you let me live?
Their watery blue depths cried out for answers he could not give. As he turned and disappeared onto his ship Vader hoped that next time he was not there to save her, that next time she did succeed.
Shoving thoughts of Nova to the back of his mind he concentrated on his immediate mission. Vader was being sent to oversee the construction of the death star.