Life in Death
Nothing.
He felt nothing.
Vader moved slightly, bracing himself for the wave of pain that was sure to overtake him… but none did.
Third degree burns, he surmised. Nerve endings destroyed…
He stopped. How could he even create coherent sentences? His mind was still fogged somewhat by the indescribable pain he had suffered for the first few moments before the numbness had come… the blessed, non-feeling that had saved his sanity and helped him cling to life.
Slowly, he stretched out his arm—his only arm, he remembered suddenly, as a sharp, lancing pain shot through the stump of his left arm when he attempted to move it. A moan of pain escaped him and he lay still for a moment.
The hot winds blowing off the river of lava behind him shifted… and then the stench hit him, revolting and terrible—the reek of burnt flesh. A wave of nausea rolled over him and he fought the urge to be sick.
Hatred, black and vile, long stored away and now feeding on his pain, humiliation, and anger, rose out of the blackness of his twisted heart. Obi-Wan had done this to him; Obi-Wan had destroyed him, left him for dead.
I hate you, he spat in his mind. His throat was raw from his screams of anguish and loathing, but his mind continued to seethe against his former Master.
Not my Master, he thought. the manipulator, the liar, the one who twisted reality and forced me to believe the Jedi's lies. But he is alone now, and one day… one day I will have my revenge.
His hatred feuling him, he reached out his cybernetic arm again, groaning involuntarily as lesser burns shot fiery jolts of pain through him; he dug his fingers into the dirt, dragging himself a few centimetres up the incline.
I can't go on, his exhausted body gasped.
Obi-Wan still lives, he told himself.
He dragged himself forward again.