"He's completely insane, you know," says The Girl.
"I know, I know," The Man replies. "How I know."
Luke simply smiles, not understanding their words. Instead, he thinks.
His thoughts don't usually make sense, and he usually can't hold down more than one thought at one time, or for more than a few seconds, but it seems right to him, even when it seems wrong.
He always tries to think about nice things, nice things he can see, as he doesn't understand the things he can't anymore. He still feels things he can't see, and some of those things he likes while others he doesn't.
"Can he even use the Force anymore?" asks The Girl.
"He can't control it," says The Man.
Sometimes he feels nice, like when The Man gives him a present or The Girl smiles at him, but other times he feels bad, like when HE comes to visit, or when he walks through a crowd, which he doesn't do often, and never willingly.
"Can he shield?" she asks, to which The Man says "no".
Whenever he goes out, all of this thoughts become different. There might be no order to them, no sense, but they're his, and to him they're sensible.
But when he's out, out in the open and so, so vulnerable and scared, his own thoughts become strange and different and a hundred other words that he once might of known yet no longer understands the meaning of.
"Can he even talk anymore?" asks The Girl.
"Not anymore, I don't think," The Man replies.
Luke listens to their words, even though the syllables no longer have any meaning for him. They're just pretty sounds. Pretty, because almost everything is pretty to him anymore. Sounds, colors, music, the shiny black armor The Man wears and the beautiful red hair of The Girl.
He thinks her hair looks like flames, in fact. When he first saw her, whenever that was (as time doesn't really exist to him anymore) he thought her scalp was on fire, and that eventually her face and head and body would just burn away. That didn't happen, however, not that Luke knows why.
"What was he like before?" asks The Girl, idly twirling a flame around her finger.
"He was . . . a good person, and happy," says The Man in his baritone. "Nothing like he is now."
Vaguely, Luke knows that he might've once been different. That, once upon a time, he was happy, and he could do all of those things that The Girl and The Man can do now. Once upon a time, he could understand all those pretty noises and those things he can't see. Once upon a time, he didn't think everything was pretty. Things had contrast, and there was light and dark and beauty, not just pretty and ugly.
But that was like a dream to him, one that fades more and more with each passing day, as his thoughts become more and more confused. There's only the Now, as he no longer understands the Then.
"What did He do?" asks The Girl, and somehow, Luke knows they're talking about HIM.
"The Force," The Man replies, and it's enough of an explanation.
Luke remembers HIM. HE was shriveled, and ugly, and whenever he's close to HIM he gets one of those feelings he can't understand, only its so much darker than usual that it makes Luke just want to scream and cry and run as far away as he can as fast as he can.
HE was the last thing Luke can remember before the Now, but the memory is accompanied by all those horrible feelings and sensations that he no longer understands, only they're worse than those he feels now, even though they've faded.
"I still don't get why you care," says The Man, his expressionless black sockets fixed on The Girl's face.
"We're connected," she says. "When Palpatine . . ." She pauses, and swallows. "When it was happening, I could feel it. So I care."
Luke doesn't understand who The Man is, as he has no recollection of the word 'father', even though it evokes one of those faded, weathered feelings he can no longer comprehend. Nor, in fact, does Luke know who The Girl is, as the concept of a 'name' no longer has meaning to him, though whenever he hears that strange, strange sound that somehow seems to take the form 'Mara', one of those abstract feelings comes to him, though this time its good instead of bad.
"At least He let him live," says The Girl. "Organa and Solo were killed."
"He made my son into a constant reminder of his power," says The Man, and Luke gets a rush of foreign feelings that disrupt his shattered thoughts. He can't identify them, but they don't make him feel nice. "So he let me have him to keep."
"Sick bastard," muttered The Girl, and Luke shivers at the emotion he feels from her.
"Isn't he?" agrees The Man, slowly turning his head to look at Luke, who lays inelegantly sprawled across a sofa, his ability for any true grace and balance long since gone.
Luke doesn't look back, and continues staring at the pretty moving pictures that dance on the screen in front of his eyes. He retreats even further into himself whenever he hears the sounds that form 'Organa' and 'Solo', even though he's long since forgotten what those words meant to him.
"He's insane, you know," says Mara Jade sadly, staring at the man she was bonded to though the Force.
"I know," Darth Vader replies, his mechanical voice somehow managing to convey all of the anguish that came with witnessing his child being tortured to insanity by his Master.
"I know it more than anything."
On the couch, Luke smiles, not understanding their words yet somehow content in his madness.
Author's Note: Ahh, good old insanity. I've been up for almost twenty-four hours straight, so if it makes no sense whatsoever, that's probably why.
I've never seen a fic where Luke is insane, so I decided to write my own. I'm not sure how well I protrayed the actual madness, and you'll have to suspend your disbelief on the Mara thing, but I like it anyway.
So, read and review please!
-snarryvader81 (aka Anna)