Pairing: References Anakin/Obi-Wan in the past.
Disclaimer: All together now: I am not George Lucas. I make no profit from this.
Warnings: Mild references to sex.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to Furiosity for pointing me in the right direction and her thorough beta reading. Thanks must also be given to Luthe for her helpful beta reading, and to Pixy for her wonderful advice. The title is a reference "Haunted" by Poe. Written for the 2007 Jedi Mistletoe Star Wars Holiday Exchange, for Pronker.
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A sinister chill had clung to Darth Vader since Bespin. As he stepped into his near-empty room, the temperature dropped several degrees. He pressed the window screen button, half-expecting it to frost over. The screen shifted into slats, admitting wan strips of light but no warmth.
The door finished sealing with a hiss, and once the air purified, Vader removed his helmet. Now that he could see with his own eyes, he walked to the window and gazed out. Coruscant glittered in the distance, a separate world from the Imperial Palace.
"Coruscant was always lovely in the late afternoon, wouldn't you agree, Darth?"
Vader neither jumped nor turned around. He had vaguely registered Obi-Wan Kenobi's presence since leaving Bespin. Vader considered putting his helmet back on to block out the sound of Obi-Wan's voice, but it hung heavy from his fingers, and he tired of looking at a world covered in a veil of blood.
Obi-Wan had started haunting him since shortly after his death, but Vader had not expected to see him so soon after the debacle on Bespin. One would think the dead would respect the living more.
"You are angry," Obi-Wan said.
Vader closed his eyes and sat down upon the meditation mat. Luke, his son, his only remaining link to Padmé, had rejected him. When Luke had jumped off the gantry platform, Vader had remembered what pain felt like, pain worse than the fires of Mustafar.
"I take it back." Obi-Wan manifested on the chair before Vader. "You are beyond anger. You are crushed."
Vader could see the seams of the chair through Obi-Wan's blue-tinged phantom. Obi-Wan's mastery over death still amazed him. Vader examined Obi-Wan's face. He chose a different form every time he visited Vader, sometimes a child, sometimes an adult, but never as the withered old man that had died on the Death Star. This time, Obi-Wan appeared as a young man, his translucent face every bit as handsome as Vader remembered.
Obi-Wan appeared to recline in the chair. "Luke will never belong to you, Darth. You know that now."
The temperature dropped several more degrees, along with Vader's tone. "He does not belong to you, either, dead man."
Obi-Wan's smile was so smug that Vader wanted to kill him all over again. "No. He is his mother's son, I think. He believes in impossible things, noble things, much like Padmé did."
"Do not dare to speak her name!"
"Or what?" Obi-Wan leaned forward and clasped his hands over his knees. The edges of his ghostly form shimmered. "Will you kill me again?"
"Even in death, you never tire of mocking me."
"I do not come here to mock you."
"Then why do you come here?"
Obi-Wan bowed his head. When he looked up again, his eyes shone bluer than they had in life. Vader could not see through those eyes; they were the only points of reality left to Obi-Wan. "To see if you regret, Darth. To see if Padmé's conviction was true."
"I regret nothing." Vader took a deep breath of the sterilized air. Every time he heard Padmé's name, something that Vader no longer had a name for stirred deep within him. He wished Obi-Wan would stop tormenting him with Padmé's name.
"Of course not. Regret is something only human beings can feel. You are a machine now."
Vader narrowed his eyes. "And you are dead. Tell me then, what did you regret in life? Training me?" Obi-Wan had never wanted him—Vader had always known this. Obi-Wan had seen Anakin as nothing more than a way fulfill his duty as the perfect Jedi.
Obi-Wan stood up and moved closer to Vader. "No. In life, I once regretted many things. Most of all, I regretted growing too close to you."
Vader paused. A memory flashed through his mind of Obi-Wan lying beneath him, face half-hidden by a pillow. He felt smooth, firm skin beneath fingers that no longer existed. The smell of sex and musk and sweat. The sound of Obi-Wan breathing through his mouth. The bittersweet taste of Obi-Wan on his tongue. Vader stifled the memory, shuddering.
"Too close to me? You spurned me. No doubt overcome by guilt for sleeping with your seventeen-year-old apprentice."
"If your age or your place as my apprentice had bothered me, I wouldn't have become intimate with you in the first place." Obi-Wan's appearance shifted to how he had looked that one, hot, heady night. His hair hung long, his face smooth and beardless. "I feared attachment."
Vader did not want to feel the sting of Obi-Wan's rejection once again. He stood up. "Perfect Jedi fear nothing."
"But I did fear. Sometimes, I wonder if you inherited my sins, Darth. Those sins later consumed you. I failed you in so many ways."
Vader knew that Obi-Wan did not speak as the living did, that the sound of his voice could only be perceived in Vader's mind. Yet, sorrow clung to Obi-Wan's words, so thick, so heavy, that Vader could taste it. It pained him more than hearing Padmé's name spoken so casually, more than Luke's rejection. Hate coursed even through the electrowires of Vader's cybernetic limbs. His hand sliced through Obi-Wan just as his lightsaber had done three years ago, only this time Obi-Wan did not disappear.
A sudden warmth spread through his arm, setting every remaining living cell in Vader's body alight. The bars of light shining through his window seemed brighter.
Obi-Wan did not walk or glide; he moved through moments in time. With every passing second, wrinkles etched across his face, and his thinning hair whitened until the old man who had cheated death on the Death Star stood before Vader.
"I am not human any longer, Darth. You killed me. In death, I regret only one thing."
"I could not care less. You mean nothing to me, old man."
"Even the dark side cannot disguise that falsehood. I can still feel your hatred and resentment towards me."
Vader said nothing.
"I regret that your destiny now belongs to your son. Now, he must destroy the Sith… and you."
"That is not Luke's destiny," Vader ground out. "His destiny is to join me, to accept the dark side. To see the truth behind your deceit."
"His destiny does not involve becoming a slave." Obi-Wan's expression sharpened. "Qui-Gon went through such lengths to free you, and then you spit on his memory by enslaving yourself again, this time to a far crueler Master."
The dark side erupted from Vader with a fierce, wordless roar. The metal walls buckled, and the window slats arched back into the glass until it cracked. Polluted air leaked into Vader's room.
Obi-Wan's apparition wavered and crackled as he glanced at the broken window. "You can blame no one but yourself." His gaze fixed on Vader as he faded away.
Vader snapped his helmet back on, and shades of red once again defined his world. He stared at the spot where Obi-Wan had stood and silenced the mysterious stirring deep inside of him. Sith Lords did not regret.
The door slid open, revealing a trembling Imperial officer. "Lord Vader, forgive me for intruding, but the Emperor requests your immediate presence. He said he sensed a disturbance in your room." The young man's eyes flicked about the room, no doubt taking note of the damage. Damage done to the Emperor's property.
Behind his mask, Vader smiled in defeat. For once, Obi-Wan had not lied: Vader was a slave. He had no choice now but to embrace it.
"Send a crew to repair this room immediately," Vader barked, his synthesized voice sounding more foreign to him than ever.
Ignoring the officer's stammering, Vader swept off towards his Master. He sensed Obi-Wan's presence, though he could no longer see or hear him. Palpatine never seemed to sense Obi-Wan at all.
Nor did Palpatine notice the fraction of warmth that now darkled inside Vader.