Lifeless
Breath One
Cold. Internal cold.
Even if your heart keep beating it doesn't mean that your blood that rushes through your body can keep your body warm. Your heart can be cold inside, it can be lifeless although it still keeps beating.
He felt cold. For years now. Was there a time it was any different? He could not remember. At some point in his life, even before he ever met his Master Plagueis, a strange coolness took his heart captive. Since then it was never rescued.
Love did not cross his way nor did true friendship. As a Sith he did not believe in it. He had seen love a lots of times. So called friends, colleagues...fell in love, married and started a family. They often tried to intruduce him to women. Some even were of his taste, but he forbid himself to fell for them. He dated a few times just for the record so rumours were kept low. For society it appeared to be strange if a man stayed single for longer than necessary. And showing no interest in any kind of sexual relationship to women or even men was suspicious. So short term relationships from time to time were the only opportunity he made up for himself.
Each of these arrangements survived no longer than 6 months and he organized it, that he was always the one who was left. As someone whose heart had been broken again and again, it made him even so friendly to his colleagues. He seemed harmless, emotional, dedicated.
All that he was not.
That was his mask. A wolf in sheep's clothing.
With open eyes he stared into the darkness at the ceiling, while his lungs again and again took up air and then let out again. His breathing was the only sound in the bedroom, even the traffic noise outside did not penetrate the soundproof window.
With each breath, it got colder inside him. His heart seemed covered with ice, as it would freeze every moment and adjust its service. Then the blood would not circulate in his body anymore and enter death.
He sat up suddenly, startled. The breath escaped his lungs abruptly. Trembling. The whole body seemed to escape his control.
Breathe! Damn, breathe!
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
Stay calm.
Fingers dug into the sheets to control the tremor. It was the only chance to calm the body. It seemed strange to him that a body trembling from the cold was able to sweat at the same time.
The muscles worked, consumed energy, generated heat. But not enough heat to keep him warm.
It was not the first time that he was able to experience this state of his body. He was regularly reminded of the constant presence of this icy cold. At night. While sleeping, or when he lay awake, ... as in most nights.
Get up!
After shaking, the nausea came. This has always been, now was no exception. The lump in his stomach, also as icy and hard as always, began to move. A feel for choking went over into a need to vomit.
And now run!
Hastily he fled out of bed, got tangled up in the bedcover, almost fell to the ground, caught himself at the last moment and managed to somehow made it in time to the adjoining bathroom. Regurgitated wine tastes like vinegar, if it takes the output through the mouth. It burns when it washes up on mucous membranes before it is to be spew out over parted lips and then runs into the sink below.
A first wave, a second one. After the third wave his stomach was empty, his body trembling again addicted to his physical condition and the expiration closer than a few moments before. He was filling water in a beaker and rinsed his mouth to get rid of the sour taste. The shaking did not stop, the cold was also staying.
He did not need to look up. He knew if he would look in the mirror he would see into the eyes of a deranged man, who more and more outdated with each passing day, and that this procedure was indeed the consequences of isolation and self-denial from day to day.
You're already dead, you just do not comprehend yet. We start to perish the day we were born. It is a long-term process in which the meat starts to rot onto the bone itself and organs adjust service after the body has depleted its last energy. And then the body begins to digest itself, by beginning to decompose from the inside.
He looked up. The face in the mirror was staring at him with eyes wide open. Palpatine was not too far from death.