Author's note: I'm not sure where this one takes place timeline-wise. This chapter is considerably shorter than the others, and future ones will probably be under 1000 words. Other fics which could fit in this collection instead appear as drabbles in Silver Sky 1138's fic which is conveniently called "Collections". They're worth looking at.
He wakes up blind. For a moment he is utterly confused as he sits up, silk sliding away from scarlet skin. His eyes feel open, but the world is black, without even the white miasmas which appear when he looks at the insides of his eyelids.
The Force still exists everywhere. It still whispers of dangers, even if they are now as mundane as staircases or walls. He follows its currents, the vision it lays like a targeting grid over the blackness. He dresses and leaves his room as on any other day, although the confusion remains, manifested as tentative movements and the occasional stumble.
At least it is not animals, this time. It is not a blatant attack which Sidious chooses to test him with.
If Lord Sidious chooses to take his sight, he thinks, for the rest of his life, he will not speak a word of protest. It is Sidious' to take.
The currents of the Force and the smell of hot circuitry lead him down the hallway outside his quarters. This is a route often taken, and his feet know to keep to the catwalks. But he is nervous.
The Force whispers, Droids in the doorway. It does not use anything like words to convey the movements he should use, the slide to the left so that he can keep out of the oncoming line of fire, but nevertheless, the Sith apprentice follows invisible lines and moves.
Blasterfire assaults his ears with staccato screams. At first, more fear than usual rises in the darkness. But he remembers training blindfolded or helmed in the past. This is simply the next step. Four droids, the Force tells him. No make and model, but neck joints, knee joints, this wire, blind spot–
He takes the first droid apart.
Darth Sidious, watching from a balcony, wonders if perhaps he should truly obscure the apprentice's sight. Orange eyes could be gouged out, left as pink scar tissue or as another black accent on the marked face. How would that change the way the apprentice was perceived? Would it increase the fear he feeds on, or make him appear a cripple? That is not the intended effect for this one.
Sidious knows that a long night of bargaining with Republic senators makes it very likely that he is, at this very moment, taking his anger out on his apprentice by beginning a training sequence he had not planned on running.
Good, he thinks. Let him learn to deal with the truly unexpected.
But no, he will not take the Zabrak's eyes.
On the floor, the apprentice tucks and roll to the floor, recovering with a push of his legs and a Force push to send the droid whose chopping hand he just avoided to slam into two of its fellows and, finally, a wall. That particular battle droid learned well; it did not try to fire its second wrist-mounted blaster after the apprentice detonated the power pack of the first one as it fired, shattering the droid's metal hand. He was into the Force now, suffusing into it, raging with his eyes blackened. But after the next step he takes he is forced into thinking more slowly. He has backed himself up against the wall and instinct tells him to look around, although the movement is useless. It distracts him from the Force.
A blasterbolt digs into the leather of his boot and then spears the wall, and he jumps straight upward. He grabs the catwalk and swings like a monkey to the railing above it, across the gulf of the room from Sidious. He does not sense his Master, because Sidious does not allow it. The apprentice pauses for a split second and drops down again into the air, into a tight flip designed to both keep him out of the corner, nearer to the door, and to crush the chest of the battle droid he chooses to land on. This maneuver would be successful, except that halfway through the brief flight, Sidious returns the apprentice's vision.
One might say that he dissipated the cloud of the dark side, or that he released the Force's obscuration of the apprentice's corneas.
Flashes of light and the sudden existence of the visible world shock the apprentice. His perfect movements falter mid air, and his surprise is evident. But he lands with only a tiny misstep, and finishes the fight.
Again, he can see. He now knows, too, that he can survive without seeing, although the thought of the blackness quickens his heartsbeat with fear.
With the lesson born of capriciousness over, he returns to his room to await the next task. Only once, when alone, does he pass a hand over his eyes, appreciating the sight of the creases on his blackened palm.