Awakening
By
Lady
Aeryn
Slightly updated version of the
Anakin/Vader story I posted a while back. Initially an installment I
wrote for an Episode III round robin story "My Dear Padme: Anakin's Death," but
I thought could stand well on its own. Acknowledgements still go to Hiroko01 of TheForce.Net's Jedi
Council for starting the story, and Mara Jade, Emperor's Hand for
continuing it, and allowing me to add to it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The
two sabers clashed, red on green, blue eyes locked on blue. One pair filled with pleading and
hopelessness, the other with impassioned, pure rage at the other. His eyes.
No. I don't want to be here. Not back here. Of all the places my mind had to bring me back here, where I… I…
They
clashed again, and again, forcing the duel closer and ever closer to the edge
of the cliff which stood over the pit of molten lava. Obi-Wan continued to plead to his former Padawan to end this now,
to stop— but they fell on deaf ears.
"You're the one who did
this, Kenobi! Not me," Anakin bit at his opponent, delivering a
blow that had Obi-Wan not blocked it, would have chopped his hair to about the
level of his armpits. The collision of
the blades made a sharp hissing sound and sent sparks through the sulfuric
atmosphere of the cavern. Both duelists
were soaked with perspiration due to the intense heat, which grew ever stronger
as the lava pit's edge drew nearer. Both were breathing heavily, but with still enough circulating air in
their lungs for one of them to scream at the other.
"Where
is my wife?!" The thought repeated
in his mind, over and over— his mind reeking with Obi-Wan's betrayal.
Obi-Wan
had taken Padmé away from him. His own wife— had stolen her, hidden her
away in a place far beyond the reach of her husband— and then he had the nerve
to keep him away from her, in the name of the promise he'd made to Anakin, to
protect his beloved wife. He had taken
Anakin's request to keep Padmé safe from harm too far… Contemptuous bastard.
"Where
is she?"
How
dare he do that— who was he to tell him when he could see his own wife?
His
dear Padmé, his angel... He could feel
her, the warm softness of her presence… but he could not see her. He could not see where she was. She was lost to him. It was more than he could stand.
Gods,
how he missed her.
What
gave him the right?!
The
duel raged on, and Obi-Wan must have sensed the end was near for him— for he
went on the offensive at last, driving green strikes through Anakin's
defense. Anakin was caught off guard,
and both were so focused that neither noticed the imminent nearness of the lava
pit— until it was too late.
The
heel of Anakin's boot caught on the edge of the cliff— but the volcanic rock
was crumbly, not suited to support human weight. He tried to bring himself back on balance— but only succeeded in
destroying the rock completely, his foothold lost.
He
fell.
"Anakin! Nooooooo!"
For
a few moments, there was nothingness, hot air hurtling past him…
The
next thing he felt was the sudden horrid burning, the lava crawling up his
body… the last thing he saw was the contorted image of Obi-Wan's face, staring
down at him…
And
then her face, dark tresses framing her head as she shook it sadly at
what her beloved had become, lovely dark eyes beseeching him, beckoning to
him….
Scorning
him.
His
eyes snapped open, his breathing fast and heavy, in a combination of relief and
anger—relief that the horrid dream had ended… but anger at the memory of that
encounter.
And
what it had cost him.
The
breathing slowed, a breathing that he now noticed sounded like the respirating
of a demon lurking in the shadows. Not
like a human.
His
eyes were open, but the sight of the medbay ceiling above him was different from
when he had last seen it. It still
looked the same, but was… he couldn't really explain it, but it was almost as
if he wasn't seeing it at all, that it was somehow being fed to him. The sheets were gone, he realized— as was
the machinery that had been hooked by horrendous tubes to nearly orifice of his
ragged body, keeping the barely functioning flesh functioning. The dream-induced weariness wore off, and he
became acutely aware of a weight on his head, that made it heavy and difficult
to lift. Anakin reached a hand (a hand
that he noted now wore a leather glove) to his face—
And
found he could no longer touch it. The
sore, tender lava-scarred flesh of his face was gone. All he felt was a horrid cold mask of plasteel, no doubt a
mechanical mockery of the human face that resided in it. He sat up quickly, the weight of the new
mask painfully making itself prominent as his head was nearly snapped back by
the inertia and weight of the mask— and the shock that his attempt to sit had
actually succeeded.
"Ah,
Lord Vader. I'm pleased to see you've
finally rejoined the land of the living." Anakin turned his aching head towards the sound of the voice, the
radiating dark sense of that presence filling Anakin to the core with hungering
power. His weak body suddenly felt
rejuvenated, and he desperately sucked the dark energy into himself like a
Sarlaac would its prey.
While
Anakin had changed, some things had stayed the same. Emperor Palpatine's hideously wrinkled skin was barely visible
under the dark folds of the robe— a robe markedly similar to the one he had
worn as Darth Sidious, yet somehow different— but then maybe that was just
Anakin.
No. You're not Anakin anymore. You stopped being him a long time ago. When
exactly he couldn't be sure; the line between his old self and Darth Vader was
so hopelessly blurred at times, he couldn't remember when exactly Anakin
Skywalker had ended and Vader had begun.
Yet,
at least.
"I
see the medics did a commendable job with your recovery," Palpatine nodded in approval. "I must say I rather prefer this appearance
to your old one. Much more
intimidating."
"Yes,"
Vader murmured, in a voice that was no longer his own— deep and mechanized, not
with the elegant inflections Anakin Skywalker had used when he had spoken. No matter how he felt, angry or despaired,
or not, his voice sounded the same. His
emotions were inconveyable. Piece by
piece, Skywalker had died— or maybe he still was. Whatever the case may have been then, one thing was certain: he
wasn't the man he had been before.
The
Emperor chuckled softly, and a lipless smile could just be made out under his
hood—most people might not have seen it so clearly, but to Vader's new optical
sensors it was as clear as the desert sand glare from Tatooine's twin suns. "The voice, too, I see. I suppose I should have expected no less—
they would have dearly suffered had they… erred." The burning yellow eyes sharply focused on Vader. "Can you move?"
Wordlessly,
Anakin moved his legs— mechanical replacements the exact length of his old
ones— to turn and sit on the edge of the barely padded medical platform that
had been his home for countless weeks. Another bit of movement, and he was standing up, towering over the
shrouded form of his Master.
"Excellent,
excellent. Your motor functions don't
seem to have suffered." Aside from
the fact that they aren't mine anymore. "Now, if you will come with me, Lord Vader— I have something of a
recovery gift for you."
************************
It
was cold, black, metallic and almost spherical— almost like a giant practice
remote, taking up a good portion of the hold that served as Vader's spartan
quarters. With the press of a button by
Palpatine, the sphere split vertically, the top lifting up to reveal a static
white chamber, filled with machinery and a large chair in the center, which
faced a private viewscreen on the far wall of the quarters.
"Your
personal meditation chamber," the Emperor proclaimed proudly, "a marvel of
Imperial engineering. Self-contained
atmosphere, biomedical hookups." He
turned to his apprentice, who had donned a dark flowing cape, hooked by a small
chain around his neck. "The one place
where you will be able to exist free of the biomechanical armor you wear so
well— you will be able to practice your dark side meditations, and if you
wish…" he gestured to the wretched biomechanical devices in the chamber, which
made Vader's leather-clad skin crawl at the memory of the medbay… "another can
be built, but I think you'll agree this will adequately suffice for now."
Vader
simply stared at the shiny black shell. In its reflective surface, he finally saw a glimpse of the new body he
wore. Skull-like, his mask was warped
and twisted. His body was covered in
leather and armor, machinery in the places where flesh had been horribly burned
away, still hooked up to his internal systems. No, he was no longer hooked to the machinery— the machinery was now
permanently hooked up to him. The only difference between this suit and the bed in the medbay was the
fact that he could walk in this. Really, he wasn't sure if this was at all preferable.
The
twisted reflection stared back at him just as simply as he had at it. He was a demon by nearly every possible
specification. Including his own. In a way, he was relieved—the mask covered
up that scarred mass of tissue that passed for a human face, that reminder of
the weak man he had been. With the mask
on he would never have to worry about seeing that face, that man again. Tearing his focus off the mockery of a reflection,
he shifted his mechanical-enhanced gaze to the chamber itself.
It
looked like a prison cell to him. When
he went in there he would be completely cut off from the outside world,
surrounded by the medbay-like sterile white. Even though he would be able to breathe on his own, it would only be in
that small, confined space. He would
still be a slave to the machinery in exchange to keep his dark, bitter heart
beating.
A
slave…
You're still nothing but a damned slave, a voice welled up suddenly from inside of him, from
a person long gone. You've never
been anything but a damned slave.
In
an impulsive rage, Vader crushed the voice, sending it down back into the
depths from whence it came.
Palpatine
must have caught the brief whiff of anger from his apprentice, for he
smiled. "Very good, my young
apprentice. Your anger is strong, a
deadly power. But you must not hold
back— your anger serves you, and it can not do that if it is buried away."
"Yes,
my Master."
Palpatine's
smile became a horridly twisted grin. "I'll leave you two alone. Why
don't you break it in… get a feel for it?"
"As
you wish," Vader said simply, biting back the sarcastic remark he would rather
have made. He bowed slightly as the
robed figure slowly made his way from the massive hold, his cackling echoing
faintly in the huge metal walls.
When
he was alone, he made his way reluctantly into the chamber. As Vader seated himself in the central chair
of the pod, the black shell of the chamber began to close around him once more,
leaving him isolated… yet still not completely alone.
Slave...
