Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars. Or anything that makes money, really.
Note: This story is something of a writing exercise, and much darker than anything I normally write. If it seems a little jumpy in places, that's intentional. And any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Only Love
I hate you! he screams as the needles pierce his skin, driving bone-deep, sending shudders of exquisite agony all through his body. He feels the searing kiss of the needle on each finger, slowly, one by one. They are filled with something that makes the pain even greater, but he cannot pass out.
A hand raises, black, and a dark glowering death mask appears before him, and the same question, always the same question, like a meaningless litany. Where is the rebel base?
He doesn't know. He can't remember. Where is the rebel base? He doesn't know. Where is the rebel base? He doesn't even remember his own name.
I hate you!
Sometimes, he thinks the mask is laughing at him, only he doesn't remember what it means to laugh. The words are an endless litany in his head. Where is the rebel base? I hate you! Where is the rebel base? I don't know. I think my name was Dem— Where is the rebel base? No, that's not it. I can't remember. Where is the rebel base?
I hate you!
And then there is pain.
He doesn't remember how long he's been here. Maybe he's always been here. The needles are his father and the blood his mother, and he is pain.
He wonders if there is something human behind the mask. It is an idle thought, mostly because he has little else to wonder about. He wonders if it has eyes, and a face. He wonders if it feels anything.
He wonders if it ever cries.
He doesn't want to die. He hurts, and there is so much pain, and he is pain, but he doesn't want to die.
He knows that he will soon, though. He can't remember why he is here, or what the mask wants from him, but he knows that whatever it is, he cannot give it. And so, of course, he will die. In his mind now, it seems perfectly logical.
He wonders if the man behind the mask is afraid of dying, too.
He is thinking about love.
He thinks that someone loved him once, and that maybe he loved them too. He thinks that love is something pure and bright and beautiful, and he wishes he could remember what it feels like.
He thinks that he wants to know what love feels like just once before he dies. He wonders if it feels like brokenness.
The needles are kissing him again, but he is past feeling. His mind drifts, and he wonders if the man behind the mask has ever known what love is.
He doubts it, and for some reason, that saddens him.
You are of no more use to us, the mask says, and he knows that he will die now. He thinks of tears, and flowers, and a girl's smiling face (whose name he cannot remember), and he realizes he is not afraid any more.
The black hand that holds the needle hesitates, and he wonders if the man behind the mask knows what it's like to die.
But the needle falls, and he feels its prick like a drop of rain.
I forgive you, he says, and time shatters.
In the end, only forgiveness remains.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.