Date Begun: November 22nd, 2001
Date Finished: June 6th, 2002
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Faces in the Passageway 2/?
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
http://www.demando.net/
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It was the change in the air that made Hisae stop and turn around. Bewildered, she lifted her hand, uncurling the fingers that had, moments ago, been interlocked with those of her best friend. For a few, insane moments, it seemed as if Yalith had never been; the girl that shared lunch with Hisae, lived on the floor bellow her apartment, that had been her best friend since before she could remember-- well, she was gone. She never had been. Drawing in a frightened breath, Hisae raised her fingers to her temples, trying to anchor herself in the moment.
"Yali!?" she called, cupping her hands to make the sound bigger. "Yalith!" The wind only made a hollow noise, like the sound of dying, as it raced through the spires of the city. Now frantic, Hisae turned to see Morja and Resu walking far ahead, seemingly in another world altogether. "Guys!" she tried to run, a few off-beat steps on the pavement, but she moved no further when the other girls turned their dispassionate eyes to her.
"Something wrong, Hisae?" Resu's smile was slight, somehow faintly amused. An image sprung to life in Hisae's mind: a seamstress, selecting a thread the color of Yalith, ripping, digging in with the needle, tearing it mercilessly away.
"Yalith is gone!" Hisae managed past the worry in her throat. She searched Resu's eyes, then Morja's, for some sign of concern or recognition.
"Oh," Morja shrugged, "Strange. Well, you know how weird she is. She probably just wandered off."
"She might have had an attack someplace," Resu's voice was sugar laced with acid, and she stared at Hisae across the space between them. Hisae spun away quickly, feeling her anger as though it was a blaster in her hand. Down the path which she'd come, people dotted the bridge like miniatures until they disappeared in the maze of buildings. It was more crowded than she remembered.
Now she was running, ignoring the world caught under glass beneath her feet. Her eyes cast themselves amongst the strangers-- other school girls, minor diplomats, tourists-- as if she was looking for someone she hadn't seen in years. There was a young woman standing by the fencing, clinging to the wire as though she might weave herself through it. Hisae stopped, staring at the unfamiliar girl, who stood so regally in her private, bizarre grief. The wind moved through her long brown locks, and for a moment Hisae saw something familiar resurface in the girl's profile. Choaked with relief and a growing sense of helplessness, Hisae rushed forward.
"Yalith!"
* * * * * * * * *
You used to think you didn't have a heart anymore, in your nightmares you'd find your breast carved open, utterly empty. You could see right through yourself, in these dreams, you were split from breast bone to navel with all that you'd lost; but now you know, you know you have a heart because the fire is burning through it.
"Ani, help me!" your voice is an open thing, inhuman, for the fire is kissing along your throat. It holds to your hand too, burning, peeling away flesh like the petals of a flower. How white your bones are, like the little ivory tokens you played with as a child, how polished they seem! He's coming for you, He's almost to your side, and the sound of his breathing is the only thing you can hear over the pain.
"Ani..." it doesn't even sound like his name, this mutilated noise you make. He's taken you by the shoulders now, and you're crumbling in his grasp. Why aren't you dead now, why? The pain reshapes the world, you're seeing the Ani you lost, somewhere inside that mask. He's picked you up, cradling you like a doll, carrying you out of the flames. Yes, you think, this must be outside the flames, because your body feels the touch of cold like a long forgotten dream. You're laying on the pavement now, watching the smoke rise like the forms of angels from your own body. How strange it is to smolder, to be aware that you have no feet, no hands. There is a story like that somewhere, a maiden with no hands, who craned her neck to taste an apple. Dimly, you remember the feel of your babies in the arms you no longer have; how they nestled to your breasts while you spoke and sang to them. You tried to give them freedom, you pray that their cage is wider and weaker than yours.
You have only ashes to give them now.
You feel Him touch your cheek, hear him say a word that used to make sense to you, and though your eyes are open you can't see anything anymore....
"YALITH!"
Her hands were so cold, but they were though, even though she couldn't move them. There was a touch of warm, real skin against her own, wide hands gripping her wrists, slowly bringing her away from the fence. Yalith stared at the new face blankly; seeing short ebony hair, green eyes and square jaw as separate things. In an instant, they snapped together, and a fresh torrent of tears (had she been crying?) cascaded down her cheeks.
"Hisae," she said brokenly.
"What... Yalith, what happened?" Hisae's hands fell away from Yalith's wrists, hovering uselessly in the air. Her eyes seemed to search her friend's face, looking for the person she knew.
Taking a deep breath, Yalith tasted her own tears and blood, "I don't-- Oh, Force, Hisae. I don't know!" She felt herself fall forward, her own hands coming to her mouth for anther coughing fit, so it was a relief when Hisae caught her in a supportive hug. Utterly exhausted, Yalith turned her face into Hisae's shoulder and wept bitterly.
"You... you looked so strange! I almost didn't know it was you... What happened?" Hisae asked again, like a mantra. Yalith searched her own mind frantically, but the time when she had been calmly walking towards Omoshiroi Shokudo seemed like a fragment of someone else's life. Briefly, the face of Death floated before her eyes, surrounded by flames and housing someone that she had once loved dearly. It was like the last strains of music over the night-time dunes, and she lost it almost immediately.
"I saw something," Yalith murmured as she pulled away. An odd feeling of doubleness encased her; though the sadness and anger still raged against one another, she felt somehow removed from them. Removed from herself. She looked down at her hands, feeling their cold as she cradled them against each other, "I know it's silly, but I got scared and started coughing." Now she raised her eyes to meet Hisae's, "I don't even remember what it was I saw!" She tried to laugh, too, but the it came out twisted and she started crying all over again. Hisae smiled worriedly, as though she sensed that Yalith was lying to herself, and pressed her hand against the other girl's forehead.
"You're burning up," she said, shrugging out of her long wool coat. She held it out, draping it on Yalith's shoulders.
"You'll catch cold too," the other girl pointed out, absently wiping her face with her scarf.
Hisae's lips burst into a forced, cocky grin, "Hey, Stormtroopers have to have endurance!" The words were rout, almost automatic, thrust out to give the situation familiarity. She held out her bare arms, as if to prove her point. Yalith let out a breath and new tears as she shook her head miserably.
"I'm sorry, Hisae," she wanted to claw at her own cheeks, bleed instead of cry, "I don't know what's wrong with me!" The last bit was a sob, and Hisae put her hand on her friend's shoulder. For a moment they stood there, taking relief in human comfort that was somehow dulled by their lack of understanding. Suddenly, Hisae took her hand away to brush at her hair, confusion in her eyes. A moment later, Yalith felt something wet against her palm, and a dull murmur of surprise seemed to rise from the city itself. Droplets of water dashed themselves to the ground, first a few, then so many that their sound was the roar of thousands fleeing.
"Rain..." Yalith's voice was reverent. She held out her hand, watching the drops pool in her palm.
Hisae stared upward, "It hasn't rained on Coruscant since before we were born! I don't believe it--"
"--I don't believe it," He says, standing in the balcony doorway, looking out at the rain. You smile at Him, feeling the raindrops slide across your skin, soak into your hair.
"Don't believe what?" your smile is positively wicked, you sit on the balcony ledge in your wet nightgown and beckon Him to join you.
"Water from the sky!" He shakes His head, "Damn. It can't be real."
Your voice is soft, "Well, come out and enjoy it. There's---"
"--exception to every rule, I guess. But, wow..." the ebony haired girl shook her head, as if to stem the words tumbling from her mouth. She took Yalith's hand in her own. " We'd better get going, or we'll catch our death now." Yalith nodded, mute with the new weeping growing in the pit of her stomach. Can something be stolen when you never had it in the first place? She reached down, picking up her school bag and cradling it against her chest, as though for protection. She allowed Hisae to lead her towards the transport station, turning her attention to the strange silence that had overtaken the city.
With no understanding, she found herself wondering if Anakin still didn't believe in rain.
* * * * * *
Until nightfall, Vader refused to let himself think of Padme, or the strange resurfacing of her signature in the Force.
Shut away from the world in his own, private mechanical Hell, Vader found himself slowly changing. Over the years, he'd noticed his own thought patterns change, grow more layered, until some of his memories seemed almost alien. In objective moments, he considered it the price extracted for continuing life supported by a machine; in times such as this, he was merely grateful. The link between Sith and Apprentice was thick and strangling; when Palpatine had first begun to teach him, the old man had been able to read each stray thought. At night, Vader's master sent him nightmares of Padme, moving against Obiwan, run through with a sword, and a thousand other little horrors that attempted to drive away affection for the one thing Anakin Skywalker really cared about. Stubbornly, Vader had held on, isolating Her from the rest of his life-- on good days he could make it so that she was not associated with his other life, she was merely a tantalizing vision. He loved Her so much that the love became grotesque. He hated her for loving the man he'd once been; for touching Anakin Skywalker, for laying alongside him. He loved her because he didn't know how to stop.
Slowly-- he didn't remember exactly when-- he'd began to realize that the Emperor no longer sensed his secret, ardent thoughts, and his own mind had become a rambling maze he couldn't comprehend. He could lift thoughts to other levels, keep them silent, if he consciously blocked in the Emperor's presence. So today, for the first time in many years, Vader had slowly laid the encounter with his wife high above detection. It wasn't completely fool-proof, for the Emperor's cobra gaze had rested on him far to long for comfort, but there was nothing specific to betray him.
Now, alone in his chambers, he unfolded that moment and saw it once more. It had been her, standing on the high bridge. Her aura had brushed against his, suddenly after years of absolute void. He'd held her limp, smoldering china body in his arms, he'd laid her in the ground and watched the sand cover her, but... she was alive.
She rises from the lounge, her hair and waist swaying ever so slightly before she slipping into his lap. It seems to him that her smile, now wide and full, holds all the mysteries in creation. Lightly, she brushed her hand across his brow, and he stared up at her silently.
"I'd come back for you, if you took too long."
"I will not tolerate this!" he cried, as if to deny the vision of Padme, smiling, eyes bright and honest. His arm swept across the table, merciless. Spare parts, data cubes, and holo equipment fell to their doom on the floor, and the sound of their breaking was the sound of the ceaseless roar in his years. Motionless and enraged, Vader cast his glance about the long room. In his private sanctuary, so vast and empty, the ghosts were particularly strong. Rain committed suicide on the high-domed roof, surreal, thrusting more memories upon him. Turning, he pressed a smooth button on the wall, sending for droids to clean up the wreckage on the floor. Dispassionately, he watched them race about, before he slowly reached out into the Force. She was still there, soul pouring against his. Intoxicating. The emotions were tumultuous and hard to decode, her where-abouts were vague. Still, within his deaths-head mask, Lord Vader lifted what remained of his mouth in a smile. She was somewhere on the planet, somewhere close by.
It would only be a matter of time before he found her.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Hisae squeezed Yalith's hand, feeling the tiny tapering fingers and the chill that seemed to come from the little bones themselves, then let go. The pearl metalic door of Yalith's apartment reflected their forms in shimmering tones of white, making them look like ghosts wandered in from a windy country side. Nearby, they could see a patch of cold stars though the round corridoor window-- it seemed as though night had followed them home.
"Well..." Hisae began, moving her hands because she didn't know what to do them. Her body protested the movement; exhaustion had curled sleepily in her veins, and she wondered why it had taken them so long to get home. It came to her that, perhaps, they'd had a longer way to go than it seemed.
"It's alright, Hisae," Yalith didn't turn, simply stood with eyes like a doll's; glass marbles that had seen too much and nothing at all. "I can make t through the door. I'm not that bad off yet."
"I didn't mean it like that," the black-haired girl protested, watching Yalith's finger come up to rest against the pass key pannel.
"I know," the other girl said as the door slid open. "Oh," she shrugged out of the violet fabric resting against her shoulders, "your coat. Thanks for letting me borrow it."
"You're welcome." They stood in the threshold now, half and half, before Hisae started down he hall towards the lift. "Say..." she turned, holding the jacket aganst her chest as though it was her only connection with her friend. "Call me when you're..." the words weighed against her tongue, sweet and sour, "when you're Yalith again, okay?" There wasn't any other way to put it.
"I will," the once familiar face smiled, and then vanished, until all Hisae could see was her own ghostly face.
-----------------
"Yalith Minborne," whispered Yalith harshly, pausing after wards with her mouth open like she could breathe the sounds right back in. "Yalith Minborne," she said again, because she needed so desperately to make sure she didn't forget. Mirrors are the enemy of man; you look in them and they show you everything on the surface and make you think 'f I wasn't here, where would I be...?' Now Yalith pressed her cheek against the cool polished looking-glass in the entrance hall and tried to grab for the disconcerting 'who am I?'. At least then, there was a specific 'I', something solid, even if it wasn't easy to define. Her breath spread like waves of an ocean, obscuring the mirror until she felt herself pouring out of her body with it. Her hands came up to the wall, pushed violently so that she stumbled with her arms moving like a gwaky baby bird.
"Yalith?" Hanip's voice, incarnation of the word 'matron' and everything it sounded like.
"I'm fine," she lied, so used to it that she didn't even feel guilty. She pushed past the nurse, not wanting the sleeping pills or the sedation syringes or the breathing apparatus that always seemed to sprout from the nurse's hands. Her touched off the wall in the kitchen, then curled around the knob of the refridgeration unit as she grabbed inside blinding. She relished the cold that rushed against her body, the jars shivering together as she moved them about. Red like autumn dripping down the window caught her eye; her hand was over the lid and then her fingers dipping inside. Kuroberries, moist and bursting like saddness on the tongue. The tears rolling down Yalith's face tasted no different. She swallowed them and held more to her mouth; she needed to eat to proove herself alive. Otherwise...
// You're sitting at the table, back straight and hands folded; and you're thinking that this is just like the Academy, were you learned that being lady-like was a lot like being dead. You've pushed your plate away and Bail is frowning at you over the crystaline dishes and the bottles that look like blood but really have wine.
"Padme," Bail says, as though you are his child, or his little sister he has mind to swat at for being naughty. "You need to eat."
"I'm full," you say, because you are. You're ripe with your pregnancy, like a peach wth the sun tuching it just a little. The babies inside you radiate warmth so that you're only cold in your fingers and tes, but that funny little fossilized ruby in your chest just might be a heart again.
"You'll hurt the babies," Bail says. He thinks they're his, or likes to pretend he can make them be. He touches your belly like he's trying to erase the past and make up something new, so you just shy away these days. Right now you just look a him with the gaze of your new self, the self you cut Anakin out of so you can hold on to your children. Bail comes around the table and you move a little in your chair, protecting yourself, and you know somehow jus how the fear looks on your face with the light from the diamond chandlier. Bail has given you shelter in one way and left you unguarded in another, because he hates Anakin and hates Vader and doesn't understand the difference.
His hand is on your shoulder, he says, "Padme, please--"//
"-- please slow down, you'll make yourself sick!" It was Hanip's voice, and Hanip's hand on her shoulder, but Yalith herself was so blurred that she dropped the jar and lashed out anyway. Inside, she felt as though someone had opened their cupped hands, and now she was a creature with wings, beating desperately away from the living cage. She ran, and felt the heels of her shoes on the backs of her legs, felt her lungs become raw with protest. In the powder room off the entrance hall, she drapped over the side of the toilet like it was a coffin and was violently ill.
//"Leave me alone," you say, climbing to your feet. You're thinking that you want to leave, that in avoiding Vader and hiding with Bail you're just exchanging one jailer for another. You move away, not running, but feeling purpose in your stride. You hold up the skirts of your heavy, pearl-encrusted gown, feeling as though the rich fabric is pressing down on your breast and hurting your children. You are warm, even as you leave the bright dinning hall and the faint sound of Alderaa's wind choir that Bail so likes. You have your children, suspended and safe inside, and you smehow think that you never want to give birth because you can't bare to have them in this dark and dirty world.//
She couldn't breathe. The smell of blood was heavy as the scent of honey-suckles when it's a cool summer evening and you're in love; it was a twisted smell, and it made Yalith curl inward as her body tried to tear itself to pieces and flush them down the drain. Her hands went to her stomach for comfort-- she needed to feel her babies and the roundness of her full moon body. She could count her ribs and her abdomen was cold stone and hurting; she felt so robbed that she screamed past the blood and took in and breath, biting on the ar with her teeth. There were people around her, white women like antiseptic angels.
"Where are my children?" she shrieked with the fear of every mother. Her mind conjured a demon of shadows who scooped up her babies like precious stones for inspection. She could see heir little handprints on the wall, black as death and reaching for her.
//You need to give birth though, you need to hold your babies to your breast and touched them with your hands, know that they are you and Anakin and love. You'll cradle them and murmur, "I love you, I love you so much and I'll never mean to hurt you."
She hurt them and herself because she wanted Anakin to come home. //
"Where are my babies?" Yalith writhed in the hands belonging to the worried faces. Her body heaved with the last of it's sickness and she was taken to sit by the wall, where she kicked and dug her fingers into the tile floor until her nails bled. "Where are my children? Where are my children?" Metal touched her arm, pierced the skin and breathed liquid into her blood stream; she knew what it was and fought with what little time she had left. Her voice dropped an octive, sounding like a little girl frightened on a cold winter day as she slumped towards the ground.
"Where are my children?"
And then she was silent, with her long hair spread over the pink and gold bathroom floor.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Yalith woke several times, always in different places, and always with the strange, liquid sleep curling in her mind. Once, she was kneeling, a ripe apple of a woman, holding the muscles in her legs until she thought they would fray and break. 'You can do it', someone kept saying, someone who's pale eyes were no match for His blue, someone she respected but no longer trusted, someone who's hands would take away what she what he body released into the world on wings of blood. Later, she knew, she would fight him; her hands would be crawls, fighting those that held her down while his large ones bore a precious half away.
'He loves you,' she knew he would say it, felt the words ringing in her ears. She was an iron maiden inside those words, pricked again and again. The man, the once trusted now-stranger looked at her with eyes that said all his mouth wouldn't; that he found her suspicious, strange, that any love she'd inspired had been her own fault. She would strike him across the face, draw blood with his nails, and tell him no one could count all the blame.
She woke again, with a hand trailing down her side, tracing, and warmth at her side. Because she was crying, standing outside the bed as well as laying in it, she didn't hear what He said, but it lodged in cradle of her hips anyway.
'You're body isn't made of lines-- it's something different entirely,' and then, tying arms about her that almost hurt, 'Padme. I love you." With His lips in her hair, on the fine china spread of her ribcage, in so many places at once, 'I love you so much I can't breathe.'
Yalith bent upwards, her body arching like a delicate bow. There was an arrow pierced through her, she could feel it her heart and lungs, the two pressed together, could taste the silver on her tongue. Crying out, she begged to them all, her nurses and the thief and the one that she couldn't stop loving; I have been pierced through, I am dying and I'm already dead, help me. There was darkness for a while, and after that a place where it was could and He presumed her with his breathing hissing at her heels.
Her body protested when her soul finally lay still within it, and she once more remembered her mother's words, cut your skin open and your spirit bleeds out. It was wonderful to feel her body, her slim solid hands, the cold in her feet, she bit her lip and anchored herself.
"Nurse--," her voice was soft, she did not care which one came to her aid. A weathered hand cupped her own, pressed cylinders into her palm as though they were garnets. A voice said-- well, she really did hear it-- that she should take them, that they would leave her to sleep. Now the whispering of skirts, like the voices in the morgues when the living are away, and Yalith lay feeling her limbs, waiting. Lifting her fingers, then her hand, then the length of her arm, she stretched them speculatively, turning them over in the dim light from the city. Now her spine- roused like a serpent, the sirens of the deep- her legs over the side of the bed. There was no fear in her; she knew she was the same girl who had slipped like a dead flower petal between the cracks of consciousness. There were things she knew and had no words for; how raw she had once made her throat trying to find sounds for it! Looking to the shadows, she could see her Shadow Man in each angle of non-light; he would have the words for it, and though as strange and sweet to her as Death, she could see her finger dipping behind he's grinning black skull. There was someone else under there... and she almost cried for want. Rising, she left the sheets to settle like shed skin behind her, passed through the fresher door and felt herself reflected a hundred times; here I walk alone, I am a child, I am a queen-- here I drift in from the hot sun to someone with the impossible sky in his eyes (Are you an angel?) -- here my footsteps are like dancing, here we walk together and do not touch-- and here, here I am alone, passing through corridors and faces and here I know what the thing is called hell.
In the fresher, she touched her hand to the face in the mirror, and with her lips tilted up, she said, "Hey... you." For a moment, the mirror seemed to warm as though she was really touched flesh, before she took her hand away and reached into the drawer. The pills settled on the counter, clicking like the legs of metal spiders; in her hand Yalith cradled a jar. A cosmetics jar, the scalloped pink kind with a woman's perfect silhouette, and a gold lid with raised letters expressing hope or faith or beauty or something close to it. Turning the lid, the young girl breathed in deeply-- memory rose on the scent of old pearl lotion. The scent was her mothers, and the jar had been her mothers, but the myriad orange crimson blood light blue deep storm-sky pills were Yalith's. She knew them all, could recite their names and the ailments they were intended to ease-- the damage they could do on overdose was carved into the back of her spine. Delicately, she plucked up the new pills and dropped them in, watching them settle against their companions. Her wrist twisted quickly, with enlightened disinterest, sealing death for another time. She laughed at her mortality because she could not laugh at the shadow man; because if she wasn't amused by her own demise, she might think of happier times that never really happened in the first place.
The rose-crystal clock on the wall read the time to be so late that it was early, and because the nurses had stolen time from her, Yalith did not go to bed. In the dim glow of the lamp on her nightstand, she reached under her bed and pulled forth another one of her mother's keepsakes, concealing Yalith's own things like a child in the womb. The lamp threw old, dusty yellow light on the ceiling and into her lap as she folded herself onto the window seat. Her pale hands cradled an ebony deeper than the stars and riddled with the colors of blood and the sky when snow is falling. Spreading the cloth over her knees, she wieled her needle like a sword, leaving crimson like wounds in her wake. She bent close to see her work, seeped from her fingers and into the fabric. It was like weaving a new body, or remaking in the old. Because she was thinking about the words she'd said once, when they'd been chained together, and exultant glow on his face, burning away her fear, she began to chant, like the sound of water breaking itself on the rocks.
"Needle, needle, dip and dart,
Thrusting up and down,
Where's the man who can ease the heart,
Like a satin gown?
Satin glows in candle-light,
Satins for the proud,
They shall say who watch at night,
What a fine shroud!" Tears came from her eyes; she dropped the needle to fling them from her cheeks. Only part of her understood what was happening inside, but the other drew comfort from it all the same. "Ani," she said, head bent, "Help me to hate you. Oh please, Ani," she choked and coughed and didn't care, "it was so much easier being dead."
Her eyes showed themselves to the world again-- she knew intellectually that she must have slept once more, but it seemed as though a mere single breath had passed her lips. The colors around here were bright and harsh, all a dirty yellow in the lamp light, and she looked past the confines of her room to see a figure hovering in the threshold, knowing instantly what had awakened her.
"What do you want?" she asked the man who answered to the word 'Father'. He look a step forward, let the yellow light touch him, and she could see his empty eyes through the thick glasses, saw the white of his hair obscuring it all. He was thin and lean, this man called father, he dressed in the uniform of an Imperial scientist, and he looked at the world as though the whole of it was in a test tube waiting for him to shake it up.
"I've...," he came to stand before her, opening his bony hands as if to take from her, "I've done a horrible thing. Oh, my daughter, forgive me..."
"It is not my place to give or with hold forgiveness," she said in a calm voice, water supporting a fallen leaf.
"The world you live in is horrible now..."
Scarlet light, a voice, the flames (ANAKIN!!).
"No more horrible than the one before that," she said diplomatically.
"The Emperor is so pleased," light came, brief and artificial, to her father's eyes, "oh, he laughs about it all the time. He picked the name for it, too." Father lifted his hands, to support his guilt, "Whole planets, gone. Stardust-- like the song your mother used to sing to you."
Yalith's voice quivered like a reed in a storm, " What are you talking about?"
He sank to his knees, laid his head in her lap with a violence that made her hands flutter-- frightened birds. The needle lodged itself in her palm, and Yalith was relieved to have her hand cry instead of her eyes.
"You remember that song you used to sing to little Yalith?" he was saying into her thigh, "The lullaby, Musei, the lullaby. And now, look what I've done for our baby..."
Yalith swallowed her scream, beating at his shoulders with her small fists, "Stop it! Stop it! It's me, my name is Yalith-- it's ME!" The shroud had fallen at her feet, she wanted to grab it up and suffocate herself. "Oh, please don't do this..." Her frightened eyes found her mother's portrait on the wall; hair so black it was blue, eyes the color of new gold.. it was wrong, it all was all wrong. They looked nothing alike. "Stop it! I'm not Musei!" she bit hard into her cheek, "I'm Yalith, your daughter!" Finally, terrified into childhood, "Papa, PLEASE!" He raised his head, bottle-glass green eyes clouded with sleep and things Yalith could not vocalize. The words for it landed in her stomach, dissolving into sickness there.
"No, you're not Musei," his hands rested on her knees, as though he was praying, before he climbed to his feet, "I can see that you aren't, now."
"I'm Yalith," her voice was empty, and though the air was warm, she felt a chill creeping up her cheekbones.
"Do you want you know what the Emperor is calling it?" he asked, pausing at the door.
"Calling what?" her legs drew together, comforting each other; she felt infinetly dirty and alone.
"The Death Star!" he clapped his hands, "I had very little to do with it, but I'm helping! The Death Star!" His voice drifted down the hallway, along with the sound of a closing door. Yalith imagined him in there, still talking to her Mother, who was dead and had to borrow other people's bodies sometimes. Fumbling, her fingers found and turned the lampkey, she let out her sorrow in one long dry sob. Her fingers tangled in the shroud, she drew it about herself for warmth.
He wraps your smoldering body in His cloak; holds you like the child He once was to you. You feel Him touch your cheek, hear Him say a word that used to make sense to you, and though your eyes are open you can't see anything anymore....
That night, she slept in the cradle of the claw-footed bathtub, with her head pillowed on her shroud. She was afraid to sleep in her bed, afraid she might dream of old embraces, might 'wake' to feel His finger tracing the contours of her body and hear him whisper that word.
Angel.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Once, Vader had removed his helmet outside his sterile atmosphere-- he'd stood straight and hated, letting only the dark side keep him alive. It was disgusting at times, to be dependent on the machines he'd manipulated so well in his youth. Now, too, Vader gathered his rage, let it weave through the material of his suit; he left the Doctor Antillie's office with quick strides, it was a reproach to depend on anyone else at all. His breath hissed out rhythmically, audible only because he could taste more air. Hands fisted at his sides, he descended the staircase, the high green curve of the building throwing all sounds back at him. It pleased him, at least, to know he was in functioning at peak condition; the Emperor had given him the task of hunting out the rebels in the city, and Vader felt sadistic pleasure at being able to strike so openly at the thing she created to betray him. She-- he moved what remained of his mouth to make her name silently, and reached out once more. Her indistinct where abouts reeked of Obiwan's tampering, but as long as she was on the planet, he could touch her whenever he liked. It was becoming old habit one more, to draw from her indescribable sheen, and he remembered with reluctance the time before; how her strange light had coursed through his veins, how sweet the nectar of her aura. The dark side paled, seemed to recoil, and Vader stopped at the foot of the stairs.
Padme entered with the cool Coruscant air, her hand linked with the gloved one of an older woman. The raven touch of her lashes veiled her eyes, she was absently folding a soft fur cloak over her arm, straightening the tight pleats of her black dress. To Vader, there was an explosion of all the things he associated with her; glass and the nightsky and swimming to an island out in the lake-- she stopped as suddenly as he had, a clockwork ballerina. Only the pull of her companion kept her feet moving with little disjointed steps. Looking at her, Vader saw that she was Padme and was not. His eyes adjusted to take in her face, a first unfamiliar, and then the one he knew well. Her features were not the same; her nose tipped up a little, her lips were smaller, and her eyes the color of sunset seen through wavering glass-- all silver and opal and red, with none of the brown from before. Somehow, her face was more than the things that lent to it, she looked exactly like Padme without any real similarity. Her hands held onto one another, lovely little things. He recognized her motion, too, the sway of her hair behind her, though it was now brown-red turning black at the ends, as though burned. He needed none of these things to know it was her, he was filled to the top with her sunshine moonlight presence, but he feasted on her appearance anyway; watching her mouth form a perfect cherry-rimed 'o'. Her eyes were wide, twin suns turned ebony -- he saw behind them that she was afraid, and something else he could not quite name.
The white-clad woman ushered Padme past him; he saw his wife's profile, and felt the flickering shadows of a person he'd forgotten how to be.
"Yalith," hissed the woman, "it's rude to stare." But he too, was staring; he turned to watch her move away, drank in the looks she gave him over her shoulder. As she came to the steps, she struggled to keep eye connect, speaking briefly to her companion. He did not hear what she said, but the pitch and tone of it nestled between his ears like a warm animal. The woman left, an anti-shadow, up the stairs, and Padme remained, leaning against the banister for a moment. She took one step forward, then another, always with her eyes on him; Vader felt the world once more become the one he had known-- the most beloved standing in the doorway and light, brought in my the hot desert wind.
"No," she said, in answer to the old question, the one he did not ask. His breathing became shallow-- she was wrong, but he would contradict her later. It was as though the fire had never been, or else that had both been changed by it to the point where it no longer mattered. He did what he had wanted to do, had intended to do, when he found her in the echoing house.
Vader reached out and took Padme's small hand in his own.