"sitting in my glasshouse // while your ghost is sleeping down the hall // watching the little birds fly// kamikaze missions into the walls"
-"Glass House", Ani DiFranco, Not a Pretty Girl Album
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Faces in the Passageway 3a/?
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
http://www.demando.net/
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You remember another part of this twisted fairy tale-- sometimes you think you're a child with fever, and these are the demons you see behind the beautiful face of Snow White, in the wicked Queen's mirror (god, how could she stand to *look* so much?), the chaos lingering just behind those happily ever afters. It never goes end that way, really; they just choose to stop the story before the next crest of the storm. You remember, standing, dripping in pearls, making words from the ancient, holy language that said you and he, together forever.
And then there's something else, something after the fire; you're trapped in the pieces of your body, and you can't even scream. The sky is glass-- a coffin, and you know that your ruins will never truly mend. His face hovers, and you know it's not a ghost, or a wishful memory, because it's so grotesque. The fire has touched him and changed him too, but the worst is that you know. You know it's him tied up in the puppet strings, because you can see his eyes and god they are so blue...
"When I grow up," you say to your little sister. You're sitting on the narrow gray ledge outside the room your family shares. Swinging your legs in counter-time, you hold hands and gaze up through the myriad maze of skyscrapers to that little patch of azure sky that reminds you of home. "When I grow up, I will only ever marry someone with the sky in their eyes."
[I don't have a sister]
You do, and you don't. You are, and you aren't; you're the same, but all the rules and faces are different, and you don't know what is what. Desperately, you wish you could merge, be of both, but the parts won't go together at all.
(You and I are the same thing, and we're both going to die!)
The fire.
He's taken your hand in his-- leather clad fingers are stronger than your wedding band, and his breathing is the sound of death ridding over the sand...
You're so happy, you want to cry.
Yalith could see herself reflected in Vader's mask-- all wide eyes and a fear so much larger than everything that she buckled under it's force. Swiftly, she looked down to their joined hands, and pulled a slow breath into the shrinking space of her lungs. She could feel him looking at her, and knew that behind the polished ebony, his eyes were so blue it hurt.
"Anakin..." she said, to put a name to her sorrow. Now she flinched, half-remembering rage from him at those sounds. Anger did not come-- only the touch of his gloved finger, tracing down her cheek.
"Yalith!" the voice was sharp and alien, echoing from the upstairs corridor with the beginnings of worry. Slowly, Yalith took a step back, wondering how she had freed her hand and holding the appendage to her chest like an injured bird. "Yalith," and again, accompanied by footsteps.
"I'm coming!" she called, and groped blindly backwards for the staircase, overwhelmed by the sound of the ocean in her ears. It was Vader, the death-noise of his breath.
Her own labored respiration was in time with his.
'She was real is real and alive', Vader thought, even as her fingers disentangled themselves from his own with phantom grace. In the time before, she had been just as specter-like; something made of shadow and the light coming through the window-- even then, he always had to touch her to make sure she would not blur and fade with all the other, pleasant things. He watched the panicked rise and fall of her chest as she backed away, and anger flared within him that her body would betray her so readily. There was pain in her new, strange red-opal eyes, and he thought he could see the long ago fire therein.
'I'd come back for you, if you took too long.'
He _reached_, binding the dark side to his will and moved his consciousness along the strings of her vocal chords. Here; the rung for her low whisper, and here the note of her determined command, and here the high, sweet note of her happiness. The damaged trachea was familiar, like looking in mirror; it was all by the hand of smoke and hideous heat. Now, pressing apart the walls of Padme's throat so that air might flow to her lungs, he touched the Force to the tissue in her lungs. One by one, the poisonous swelling vanished-- shimmering like bubbles that fly too high towards the summer sun. As when he preformed the trick on himself, he was careful as he withdrew his attention, and the thankfulness in her eyes stirred the young boy screaming somewhere, lost in the overwhelming armor.
"I have to go," she said, lips caressing the air, grateful to breathe. She turned suddenly, a blur of black skirts, and took up the steps as fast as her body dared.
Stubbornly, Vader's mind worked the machines wired to it; he kept his arms still and did not reach out for her, he kept his legs straight and did not go after her. Bolts and wires and reconstructed nerves obeyed-- as faulty flesh would not have. Before, he had chased after her, and the smoldering remains of her consequence was something he could see any time he wanted. All he had to do was close his eyes.
Somehow, she had transcended petty ivory bones, as he had transcended the ruins of the one called Skywalker.
Later, he promised himself, as he carefully moved the thoughts through the maze of his mind and stalked towards the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor waited.
Later.
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"Strip," Dr. Antilles' voice was dry and unimpressed as her eyes narrowed behind the faint pink tint of her glasses. Yalith hooked her fingers in the silver buttons of her ebony day dress automatically, her chin steady and level as the older woman's skilled hands touched over the scars that marked her body like a landscape. A map, Yalith though, with a sad internal smile, as though she was trying to get someplace and didn't quite remember the way.
"This isn't new," the doctor murmured faintly, touching a raised line of red flesh
high on Yalith's arm.
"No," Yalith answered, listening her voice echo in the sterile office, "I just pulled off the scab." Without thinking, touched two of her fingers to the wide, claw-like birth-mark on her back and shuddered.
"I see," said Corrin Antilles, which meant that she didn't. She brushed a lock of strawberry hair behind her ear, and Yalith favored her with a smile. At least, the schoolgirl thought, she doesn't pretend to care. "Well," the older woman lifted the discarded dress between thumb and forefinger, draping it over her exposed patient, "They're all accounted for-- fifteen scars for nine suicide attempts. Now, if you'll get dressed again, we'll take a look at your lungs."
"Yes, Doctor," Yalith's voice was soft as she pulled the dress over her head and tried to work her hair free of its tangle on a button. She paused, gazing at the colored crystal data cubes littering the doctor's desk, before climbing like a lithe cat into the examination chair.
"Well, Missy," the doctor bit her lip as she bared the nape of Yalith's neck and touched a micro-holder to it, "Your last doctor complained of your occasional suicide attempts and petty self-mutilation, but I haven't seen a thing of it while you've been in my care." She swung her body past the instrumentation, looking Yalith in the eye. Their foreheads touched, and Yalith could see how the tint of Corrin Antilles' glasses changed her eyes from vague blue to a purple almost sad enough to be gray, "I'm not so egotistical as to think I had anything to do with that. You want to tell me why you've given up playing with knives?"
Yalith tilted her head, just slightly, so that her voice touched the curve of the other woman's ear, "I have to wait to die, now."
"Strange thing to say, for a girl who was so all-fired impatient for her own demise." Dr. Antilles pulled away, absently flipping a switch and running her fingers over the keys of her medical droid. "Your body seems to agree. Lungs stable for now-- not to say that you won't have any more attacks, but I think we won't see anymore deterioration until the weather warms up a bit."
The patient made a non-committal noise in the back of her throat.
"Great," the doctor rolled her eyes, "my two most difficult patients in one day. If I didn't drink already, you'd both drive me to it."
"Both?" Yalith echoed.
"Scram, kid," Corrin Antilles ordered, removing the sensors from Yalith's pale skin, "See you in a week. Oh, and--"
The young girl paused at the door, and the light from the hallway made her seem like an entirely different person, "Yes?"
"Your blood read-outs show you haven't been taking your medicine," she frowned over the blue prism reflecting the data, "You're not planing to throw yourself an "all you can eat" pill party, are you? I don't have time to pump your stomach this month."
"Don't worry, doctor," Yalith's voice was sweet with the knowledge that her death would hurt no one, "I'll work it into your schedule before I do that." The door swung free in the child's absence, leaving Corrin with a slight chill she never really acknowledged.
"This sucks rocks," she muttered, calling up the computer screen and finding it barred with a message that Lord Vader had taken the liberty of canceling the rest of her work day. The office was filled with the chiming of glass data as the young doctor scooped up files hurriedly-- all the while eyeing her orders and moving her mouth to form silent Corellian curses. "Once just wasn't enough, today, was it? Nooo," she pulled on her heavy wool coat with one hand, her hair and glasses sightly askew, "He has to ruin my day twice. God hates me." There came a click and several taps as Corrin locked her office, shaking her head as she moved her hunched form towards her speeder.
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Vader had known Corrin Antilles since he'd risen from the ashes of his other self. She was, perhaps, the one kindness Palpatine had accorded him, even if that had served the Emperor well. She'd been the first to his grotesque body after the fire pit, and when she'd pulled aside the thick curtain over his bacta rich environment, she hadn't lied.
"Straight off," she'd said, leaning down to look in the ruins of his face, "You're about this far," her fingers moved together, not pressing, but touching lightly, "from dying and you're a sorry sight to see." He'd leaned back into the warm chemical waves, submerging like a frightened serpent and watched her with narrow eyes. He'd hated her then, and that was what she was for. There was no coddling from Doctor Antilles; her hard arctic eyes had bored into him until at last she'd coaxed forward the blind, animal ferocity of his temper. He'd broken her leg that day, the dark side flexing and brushing her aside effortlessly. The next morning she came back on crutches to ask him whether he wanted to die, or finish wrecking the galaxy with his Master. A misanthrope in the most literal sense, she hated everyone and herself, so Vader never felt singled out. It was her long, claw-like hands that kept his breathing apparatus in top condition, and in a way he considered her an extension of his machinery. Only twice, in his mind, had she distinguished herself from the tubes and pumps, but it was enough to earn her a smidgen of grudging respect.
A woman had set fire to the Imperial Archives in the name of Queen Amidala, and the charred body looked so like Padme that Vader had found himself trembling close to insanity at the thought of her death. It was too close-- three months in the suit and five months under Palpatine had left him grasping at his lost wife's image with a love twisted into something else. Corrin had been merciless; took the body into her lab and whistled a wedding dance as she sharpened her scalpel under the harsh light. He'd stood in the corner, breathing his rage like the finest red wine. The knife went to the breast bone, split the body to the navel while Corrin talked in a recorder about the corpse's age and height and weight.
"You going to stand and wish me dead on the cutting table all afternoon, or are you going'ta leave?" she'd looked at him over her rose-colored glasses; she saw everything in tints of pink and said she could love only the most beautiful things, no matter how bad they were on the inside.
"I'm sorry," sarcasm rushed through his vocoder, "throw back to Anakin. I find I still get upset when witnessing sacrilege. It's rude to cut up holy things." She'd sliced some more, then, handling the corpse almost tenderly. Her fingers ran along the empty woman's abdomen and she hissed through her lips. "This ain't your wife." Surprisingly, she didn't look at him, allowing him his private relief. "This lady's never been pregnant."
"Sabe," he'd said, and left without bothering to explain himself.
Then, when the real death came, he'd carried the pieces of Padme back to his ship, encasing her in the life support chamber and feeling every moment of the possible two hours she could live without drastic assistance. Corrin had come to the threshold, taken a step forward and then looked about to turn on her heel. He'd seen her catch her breathe and hold her lips away from her teeth in silent reverence. Even shattered, Padme was beautiful; the most beautiful, and he could see that Corrin could not help but love her too.
"I'm gonna say something," she'd tossed her spoiled-strawberry hair, "and afterwards, I don't care if you kill me, or whatever." Silence from his end of the room, and she had continued, "You know song birds, right? Really pretty. Long feathered tails; things look like flying jewelry. On Dantooine, they sometimes take the best songbirds and preserve them. A song bird dies? They take the brain out and put it in a nice silver mechanical body; shines like the moon. It's not the same, though. They kill themselves, in the new body, break 'em right against their cages."
"You will help her," he'd said, and meant it.
"Sure," Corrin looked at the chamber, a funny smile on her face. Within, Padme was a grotesque Sleeping Beauty-- a rose with briars twisted around it. "Her lower face gone? Okay, we'll make a nice china mask to cover it. Her hands? I'm thinking gold wire mesh with garnets on the end. Nail-polish like. Real ladies have pretty nails. Her hair? We can do synthetics. It won't be near as nice as the real thing, but we can make it incandescent. Distinctive. Her breasts? I'm thinking you'd still like her to be soft, so maybe live silk. Exaggerate her curves too, perhaps, decorate her body with little crimson embroidery." The doctor put a finger in her mouth, considering, "Sounds like a mighty pretty cage."
He'd sent her across the room again with his power fisted around her throat, but he hadn't killed her. Instead, he'd sent everyone away and wept over his beloved, before he buried her in a cave on Tatooine. You don't cut up holy things.
He refused to be blasphemous.
That was something that would never change.
"Lord Vader? Doctor Antilles is here, just as you asked. Grand Moff Tarkin also sent a courier to see why you did not attend the status conference. There's a disk here, but it's classified."
It was like always being born, the way the ceiling of his chamber lifted to reveal the rest of the world. "Do not dignify Grand Moff Tarkin with a reply," he informed the orderly, "Send the doctor in."
A pause, soft footsteps, and a snort of disproval. Eyeing the doctor, Vader very carefully sent her a pain at the base of her spine.
"Lord Vader," Corrin bowed. Discomfort flashed only briefly in her eyes, "You wanted the files on Yalith Minborne?"