Author's note: Call this an experiment. Random, un-chronological cuts of detention without trial, torture, and the dark night of the Master's soul, a rather confused mixture of political incarceration and the Empire. Basically an AU asking what might have taken place had Obi-Wan fallen to the Dark Side instead of Anakin. Partially inspired by reports of 'interrogation methods' aka torture being taught to elite US and UK troops.
Disclaimer: I don't think any of the characters here are actually recognisable, but anyway, I think we all know they belong to LucasFilm.
COKE
Chapter I: Sole Anchor
There is darkness.
Only darkness. Only the pressing, choking, stifling black. I strain my eyes. Useless. Nothing. Only darkness. Hesitantly, I close my eyes, open them. There is a little difference. And there is only darkness, a great feeling of nakedness, as though I were alone and defenseless, and the Dark waits beyond the void to consume me.
No, not beyond the void. Closer.
The Darkness breathes in me.
I don't care. Why should I? They told me when they brought me here. There is no way out. There is no escape. Don't try. At first I didn't believe it. But I didn't try, either. Now I know better. I haven't tried to get out, but I know.
No way out. Darkness stirs the shreds of my soul.
A mad terror overtakes me. Shaking with fear, I try, try so hard to lift my left hand…Can't…I can't—I don't know which one it is. I can't remember. I don't know. Can't feel. So dark, my sole anchor the neutrality of the floor. No way out.
I close my eyes. It makes little difference, of course, merely a habit I have had for a very long time. When I look…inside…It helps me find—something—not light, nor vain hope, not quite of the omnipresent darkness. A grey-paletted limbo. It is painful, this emptiness. But my fear of the darkness is an old habit, and it is as choking as the Dark is terrible. And this hollowness is all I have to hold on to.
I am lost in the darkness. And in the void, I forget how to feel. There is no way out.
I lift my left hand, clench it tight, into a cool, unyielding fist. Flex it tentatively. Brush my fingers across my naked ribs
…Cold, damp skin…
…cold…
…cold…
…pain…
…pain…
Night falls on the closed dark.
Sitting alone, naked, cold. When did I fall asleep? So tired…They never let me sleep. There'll be hell to pay. And no way out.
A noise! A sound, like a blade of grass snapping in a coke breeze. I turn, see a glint of light. Light! I don't know if I should cower in fear or cry for joy, so I half-tilt my face to it. And then it is gone, just like that. Would the light come back?
A muffled hiss, like something heavy locomoting through the dank stale air, and a kind of spreading shock. Dull, sickening thump of bruising flesh. And a high, thin yelp, the sound a small animal in veritable distress would make…my voice, crying out—My voice? My own?—Hand raised, involuntarily clutching my jaw, my fingers drenched with that spurt of warm wetness. Is that the constricting sting of tears?
I miss the second telltale hiss. Feel only a light looseness, like flying through the air, as my cheekbones crunch jarringly. Tepidity flooding my eyes, stinging. Wet hands groping, groping for a way out. But there is no way out. Only in. So I clutch my knees in, trying not to try, searching for numbness, sprawl on the slick bloodiness. There is no way out. My chin clicks sharply on the floor. No fear in this saturated matrix of horror. Dizzy, in the cold vacuum, everything—dark, light, blood, pain—falling away from me. And a voice, I'll teach you fear.
…yes…
You will fear me. The Dark and the Void and the Light between…all of this, all of this could be yours. Come to hell.
…Anything…
And I wake to hell. Sobbing, screaming, crying no, and then, too hoarse for words, a linear track of agony. The Darkness eats into the rawness like acid. And after a while, I realize it's gone, it must be gone, it's over. But still that terrible flash arcs, and this emptiness is dulled by the reverberation of pain. No way out.
How can this be truth? The light of truth is my way of life. I have known no other path. But life has become a meaningless abstraction of bareness, broken only by the long shadows of pain. And I wonder, and the reason why I wonder sears with all the unadulterated agony of a knife taking to fragile flesh. There is no way out…it burns…
Burning. Burning, burning, burning conflagration. No way out. All twisting to wretched convoluted slag. Falling to white ash, cauterized in the flames. White ash in the bloodied flames. White on red…plunging…down. A scream. Denial, pain, someone help me! Screaming despair. No way out. And then…and then…a solitary rag of raw silk fluttering in the wind. Smoke, death, blood, mingled in the smell of the air. No way out. Hell is raging inside of me. No way out. Break out of the snap-hissing weapon, pound on the machine. No way out. Blue, green, red fire, throwing deep shadows on the face of the man with his mouth moving, whispering something, I can't make out, under the endless repeated screams dividing him and me, hold on, hold on, just hold on…A litany, a threat, a prayer, a poem, a promise…of…blinding bright pain!…and then his sharp unyielding profile, his eyes closed, prone, lying down, hands folded on his chest. Doesn't account for the harsh violent shapes of orange and dark zigzagging across his skin, like bloody tattoos. Segueing into an ensanguined vision of heated sand and crushed glass—sunset a poisoned potion reducing all to a golden haze, annulling the façade of a thin colourless wedding veil.
A tree falls in the forest…Who hears it? Clouds are always white from above, after all. But I below, I cannot escape the rain. It is futile to try; there is no way out. One last scream of impotent grief—one last time, I throw up my hands to shield myself. And after that, it's far too late to retrieve what falls away.
