If love be truth than live no lies
Let me swim around your eyes
I've found a place I'll never leave
Shut my mouth and just believe
Love is the truth I realize
Not a stream of pretty lies
To use us up, and waste our time.
---'Pure and Simple', The Lightening Seeds ---------
Djana woke long before she needed to, with the sounds of her nocturnal terrors and desires ringing clear and full in her ears. Sunlight, pale and watery, poured through the curtains and tormented her face with a taste of illusory freedom. She settled back against the grey and green velvet pillows, turning her mind to the day ahead.
Today, she would begin learning to develop her abilities. Today, the years of forced indolence and impotent fury would be blown away like the hollow husk of a cicada's shed skin. Today she would take up her position, not at the feet of the loathsome Emperor, but kneeling before the black-clad, black-souled Sith Lord to whom her allegiance had always belonged somehow.
Djana stretched, then rose naked from the bed and moved to stand in front of the window.
Again, he did not knock.
A Sith Lord never knocks.
"I had thought you were resting, Mistress Eleison."
She turned around slowly, making no move to cover herself. What was the point? He could see into her very soul, and how could mere clothing ever be adequate to shield her from that terrible gaze?
"I cannot rest. The screams you inspired last night still echo in my head."
He seemed to nod ever so slightly, acknowledging what she'd guessed hours before.
"The damned never sleep, so they say."
"Are you suggesting I'm damned?"
"Are you suggesting you are not?"
There was really no reply to this. Languidly, Djana slipped a robe over her shoulders and sat down at the small table.
"When does my training begin?"
"This afternoon, Mistress Eleison. I expect you to be ready."
"Are you to be my Master?"
He regarded her in silence. There was something terribly unnatural about the way he sat perfectly still, hands folded, silent as a statue. Finally he spoke.
"Mistress Eleison, you are already aware of the answer to that."
His words slammed into her stomach like a concussion grenade.
Of course she knew. The next words she spoke, she was not even consciously aware of.
"You have been my Master since the day we met."
He inclined his head in the subtlest indication of assent.
"The student knows when the Master presents themself. It was the same with me. You will learn from me, follow my teachings, trust my guidance in all things and in doing so become more valuable to the Emperor than you have ever dreamed possible."
"I would welcome that, my Lord."
"I expect you to obey me."
"I would dream of no less, Lord Vader. Command me."
He rose to his feet, a midnight menace in the still white doldrums of her life.
"I question your motives, Mistress."
Djana dropped her gaze, staring at the folded hands in her lap. They seemed alien to her, the hands of someone else that had been somehow grafted to her arms. These hands had done terrible things, unspeakable things for the man she was forced to serve. But they had never killed, never harmed, never been more than instruments of vile putrid pleasure before. She raised her eyes to the inscrutable black mask once more.
"I will become more than what I am or I will die, Lord Vader. But I have one request before we proceed down this path."
"You dare?" It was not said in rage. His voice indicated a certain amount of grim amusement rather than irritation at her impertinence. Djana swallowed hard, then rose to her feet as well and stood before him.
"If I should fail - "
"You will be killed, I would imagine."
"If I should fail," Djana repeated, more firmly this time, "And death is the punishment chosen for me, then I ask for the privilage of choosing the manner in which my sentence is carried out."
"And this would entail?"
"You, my Lord. If I am to be killed, I ask only that I die at the hands of my true Master. I haven't had much honor in my life, and not much glory either. To die beneath your power is both, and it is the only thing I request."
He was silent for a while, the only sound his metallic breathing. Then he extended a huge black hand to her, and she tentatively grasped it in the standard gesture of agreement.
"Mistress Eleison, if you fail I will see to it that your fate is carried out just as you have asked." There was a hint of something new in his voice, perhaps laughter. Perhaps respect. "But I warn you; do not fail."
"It is not my intention, my Lord."
His grip was strong, made doubly so by the power of the durasteel hydraulics at work somewhere beyond those black gloves. She wondered if he could feel her hand shake slightly as he touched her.
"Could you crush a man's skull with this hand?" she found herself asking suddenly. Vader tilted his head to one side, a tone of cool amusement tinging his voice when he answered her.
"If need be. I have never been asked to do so physically before."
"But our master has asked many other things of you."
"And I will ask many things of you as well, Mistress."
That gave her pause, and she drew closer without even realizing it. Hypnotizing, the play of light across that gleaming metallic helm, the fathomless unreadable eye areas never blinking.
"What would you ask of me?" Djana asked quietly. The Sith Lord tightened his grip on her hand ever so slightly, and she gasped from the pain. He pulled her against the cold steel of his chest, menacing and beautiful as a demon from the very deepest parts of the nightmares that she never had anymore.
His other hand drew forth from somewhere beneath his cloak the handle of his light saber. With a casual flick, the gleaming energy weapon sprang to life. Djana did not flinch, and she did not look away from his eyes. Her breath was suddenly coming very fast, and her heart was beating so loudly in her chest that she was certain he could hear it.
She had never been this close to him before.
"Take this saber in your right hand and drive it through the palm of your left, Mistress Eleison." He rumbled softly. She blinked, surprised, the spell broken.
"What?"
"I said," he released her hand and thrust the pommel of the light saber into it, "Drive the point of this weapon through your hand. Now."
"My Lord, I - "
"I have given you an order."
Djana began to tremble. She looked down at her small white hand and it suddenly seemed fragile and vulnerable in the light of the hissing energy beam. She gritted her teeth and lifted her hand up, hovering for a moment over the glowing tip of the blade. The anticipation of what would surely be unbearable agony was horrible. She looked beseechingly up at the sith Lord before her. His gaze, as always, was impassive.
And she drove the light saber through her hand.
The shock of pain was unlike anything she had ever felt, and she fell to her knees instantly, dropping the light saber with a scream. The stink of burning flesh was horrible. She cradled the injured hand against her chest, her eyes squeezed shut and fighting hard to keep from losing conciousness. It was worse than any beating she had ever received, worse than the vile intrusions of the Emperor, worse than the imagined tortures she longed for beneath the ministrations of her new Master.
And then he was on his knees beside her, prising her hand away from the injured palm and taking it into both of his with an almost gentle insistance.
Through her tears, Djana watched as he pressed a spotless black clad finger to the wound, pulling a vial of painkiller from a compartment on his side and pouring it into the smoking hole through her hand. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. Was this mercy? Mercy from the most feared and reviled creature in all the many worlds that the Empire held in thrall? She leaned against him, and suddenly wished with all her heart for the power to reach behind his mask, his armor, and touch the flesh beneath. Would it be warm? Or as cold as the metal that forever barred him from the world?
And then the moment of tenderness was over, and he pulled her roughly to her feet and pushed her into a chair. "You hesitated, Mistress Eleison." He said, and it was an accusation. There was anger in his voice.
"F-forgive me, my Lord. It will not happen again."
"See that it does not. You must learn to submit to my every command with out question, and without cowardice."
"I will."
"Consider this your first lesson. You will not find me as forgiving in the future."
Djana looked up at him, drying her eyes with her uninjured hand.
"Master, I will not fail you."
He said nothing, and a minute later he'd swept from the room, closing the door and locking it behind him.
Djana was furious with herself for her weakness, and spent a great deal of time brooding over the wound in her hand, ahich was already scarring over. The painkiller he'd given her was laced with a potent restorative, and inside an hour her hand bore nothing more serious than a small white scar.
She stared at it, concentrating. It was the first badge of her transformation, something like a medal in a way.
To anyone else it would have merely been a scar.
To Djana it was more. It was the lingering kiss of a lover, and she treasured it for the rest of her life.
The guards came for her as promised at three in the afternoon, and she went with them determined not to show the Emperor any fear. It was with a lighter heart than ever before that she found herself standing in front of the door to his chambers. She raised her hand and pressed the call button.
"Enter." A mechanical voice instructed, and she did so.
