Chapter Eleven
The second Kor dropped, Vader instinctively surged forward, his heart in his throat. At the same time, a round of blasterfire echoed through the hall, and though Vader didn't know how or why, the Force rushed back to him. He reached out desperately, still some forty yards away, and Kor slowed to a gentle rest on the floor.
Around him, the 501st stormed into the room, Jix charging ahead of them desperately shouting, "Did we get them all, Lord V? Did we get all the ysalamiri?" But Vader didn't answer and instead rushed to kneel down next to his son, picking him up and grasping him close, barely able to believe he was all right, though bawling his head off. Had Vader not still been so full of rage and fear, he might have bawled too, so inexplicably relieved was he.
"He's all right!" Jix gasped in relief, sliding down next to Kor. "He's all right," he repeated to himself, touching Kor's head with trembling fingers, as if to reassure himself. Breathing heavily, Jix looked up at Vader. "Xizor," he said, "is Purple Sky."
Vader didn't say anything, just handed Kor to Jix, his hands shaking. He couldn't process how close he had come to losing his son. Shuddering, the need to ensure this never happened again rushing through him, Vader surged to his feet and in one rage-powered jump leapt to the top of the balcony. Xizor had already fled, but Vader had a fix on that slime-ball's Force presence, and he followed it determinedly, adrenaline and anger shooting sparks down his veins, instinct screaming at him to destroy this threat. He bared his teeth, the Dark Side clouding his vision red. He was the predator, Xizor was the prey, and he was going to tear him from limb to limb.
He raced through the hall, each step carrying him twenty feet, till at last he burst into the hangar bay. Xizor was already in a pilot seat, his jet taking off. He sneered at Vader through the port window.
Vader sneered back. Xizor's final mistake: underestimating the power of the Force. With Vader as powerful as he was now, there wasn't a force in the galaxy that could stop him. As the jet backed out of the hangar, Vader reached out into the Dark Side, gathering more of it than he had ever gathered before—and Xizor's jet jerked backward from the speedway and crashed into the floor of the hangar bay, skidding to a stop a foot away from Vader.
Xizor looked up in shock, and for the first time, true terror showed on his face.
Vader bared his teeth savagely and pounced.
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After the battle, with Xizor's green blood still soaking his clothes, Vader sped back to his palace, Kor snoozing away in his front seat. Commander Cody had stayed behind at Xizor's to gather the evidence that the Falleen was Purple Sky and to fight off any remaining guards, and Vader had sent Jix off to take care of other matters. There were things Vader could have done to help clean things up at the palace, but he wanted to get Kor away from that place.
He glanced to the side, to reassure himself once more that the boy was okay. His heart clenched painfully every time he saw him bundled up in his blanket. It was incomprehensible to Vader that he had been a mere second away from losing him. Had he been any slower, his son would be dead. The thought filled him with unimaginable horror. Vader couldn't even begin to comprehend the emotions he was feeling. He hadn't even known such emotion existed.
He parked his speeder in his private hangar bay and scooped the boy up in his arms, holding him close as he strode to the turbolift. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he doubted he'd get any sleep tonight. He didn't want to put the child down.
But he would have to, Vader realized slowly, once he was inside his quarters. He would have to put the child down. He would have to let him go. It was the only way. He couldn't go through that pain again.
His hands trembled as he laid the child down on his bed. He simply stared at the boy, memorizing the soft lines of his face, the exact shade of blonde of his hair, and his blue eyes, now staring up at him sleepily. The boy did look like him; in fact, he looked almost exactly like him. But his Force signature…his Force signature…it was almost identical to his mother's. But much stronger, much more vibrant, much more alive in the Force.
He swept back a strand of hair with a shaking hand. His mind flashed to the mental picture of the boy plummeting toward the ground, and he felt his knees go weak.
The door to his quarters dinged open, and Vader whipped his head around. Jix stood in the doorway, looking exhausted and worried. Normally, Vader would have been outraged—wasn't the man ever where he was supposed to be?—but he was too exhausted. "What is it?" he asked wearily.
"Someone here to see you, Lord V. Appeared at the front entrance an hour ago. Absolutely insisted." And with that cryptic message, Jix inclined his head and marched away.
Vader stared after him blankly. Who…?
"Down here, Anakin."
Vader's eyes dropped, and there, standing not a foot above the floor, in the quarters of his palace, was the professor.
At first Vader didn't understand what he was seeing, but when he did, the room spun. How in the galaxy had the professor gotten here? Why was he even here? "I—" started Vader, his voice thick with emotion. Why had the Mriss come? To sever their friendship? Tell him what a psychopath he was? Whatever it was, Vader didn't want to hear it. He couldn't hear it from Eera. Not today. Not when he was about to lose Kor too.
"Go away," he finally muttered, turning on his heel and striding back towards his bedroom.
"Anakin!" He heard the Mriss pattering along the floor after him, and Vader's whole body trembled. He didn't want to hear what the Mriss had to say to him. "GO AWAY!" he shouted, striding more quickly to his bedroom. The room trembled with the Force.
"NO!" Eera screamed back.
Vader turned, stared down at him incredulously, then stalked into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. He instinctively knelt down next to Kor, who was staring up at him with alarmed eyes. Heat from stress bloomed in Vader's chest. He covered his head with his hands, tearing at his hair. A confusing storm of emotions warred within him—anger, fear, frustration, pain, sorry, worry, despair, heartache—and the Force tore through his room, sending a table flying into the wall, a rug rolling back and forth erratically, and a chair crashing through his door.
"Anakin!" Eera gasped, as if in pain. Vader glanced up to see the chair that had crashed through his door was half on top of the little guy. A tremor of emotion went through him at the sight, and he waved away the chair. He turned away, though, unable to look at the professor, when he saw the Mriss struggling to his feet.
"Anakin," said Eera more softly, shuffling into the room. Vader kept his back to him, not wanting to listen to whatever he had to say. This night had been painful enough as it was. His very limbs trembled.
"Jix told me about what happened," said Eera sympathetically. Vader could picture his eyes big with worry, and his hands clenched at his sides. Why was the Mriss still being so nice to him? Didn't he understand who he was? Why wasn't he cowing away in terror?
"What are you going to do?"
Vader recalled what had happened earlier—saw the boy plummeting to the ground—and his heart lurched. He swallowed thickly. His fists at his sides grew white from strain. He couldn't live through that again. He could never live through that again.
"What are you going to do?"
His eyes found Kor. "I'm going to give him away," he whispered hoarsely, staring at his son in anguish. The thought was inexplicably painful. Vader's very being cried out against it, though he didn't know why.
"Why?"
Vader tore at his hair. "Because—" His voice broke. Shameful tears burned at the back of his eyes. "Because," he gasped, "I can't—I won't…" A tear slid down his cheek. "I can't love him, Eera!" He couldn't. There was no way. That road led to pain. He knew.
There was silence for a moment.
"Yes, you can," whispered Eera. Vader closed his eyes, as if to block out his words, block out the tears. "You can, Anakin, because you already do. You already love him."
"No," Vader denied. He couldn't.
"Yes," insisted Eera, sounding like was on the verge of tears himself. "You love him. You love him desperately, Anakin. But for some reason"—his voice cracked—"and I don't know what happened to you to make this way, but you hate yourself for loving him. You hate that you do. So you don't acknowledge it all. But you love him."
"No!" Vader's voice broke. "I don't love him, Eera!"
"Yes, you do!" Tears coated the Mriss's voice. "You do, Anakin! It is because you love him that you decided to keep him!"
"No!"
"It is because you love him that you visit him every day!"
"No!"
"It is because you love him that you saved him tonight, that you rushed into Xizor's palace without any thought of your own safety or the Emperor's wrath! It is because you love him that right now your heart is filled with anguish at the thought of losing him!"
"NO!" Vader screamed, his hands over his ears, his eyes screwed shut. Behind him, his glass windows shattered into a million pieces.
"YOU LOVE HIM!" Eera shouted over the sudden gust of wind. "YOU LOVE HIM MORE THAN ANYTHING, BUT FOR SOME REASON, YOU'RE AFRAID OF LOVING HIM!"
"I can't love him!" Vader screamed.
"WHY ARE YOU SO AFRAID TO LOVE?" Eera screamed back at him. "YOU'VE LOST SOMEONE BEFORE, HAVEN'T YOU? SOMEONE CLOSE TO YOU! YOU LOST THAT PERSON IN A TERRIBLE WAY, DIDN'T YOU? AND IT'S SCARRED YOU!"
"I—" started Vader, before choking back on sobs. He saw briefly the burning sands of Tatooine, and he sunk to his knees, burying his head in his hands, his throat burning with tears.
"What happened, Anakin?" Eera's claws clutched his arm. The Mriss's voice was soft and choked with tears. "Please tell me, friend."
"I—" Vader gasped, anguish filling him. Memories he had tried to forget came rushing back to him, and suddenly he was back in that ship, staring down at the homestead.
"I—"
"It's okay." Eera wept. "It's okay to talk about it."
A tear slid down Vader's face, and he closed his eyes, trying to block it, but another escaped. "I was thirteen," he choked out, "My master was training me." He choked back a sob. That had been such a terrible time. "He brought me a Senator." His voice trembled. "A Gran. He wanted me to kill him." Another tear slid down his face. "I couldn't," he whispered, opening his eyes and staring into space, as if seeing the man again. "I couldn't summon enough Dark Side," he whispered. "I kept on staring into his eyes, and I couldn't do it." Vader would never forget the expression on that Gran's face as he knelt before him, waiting to die.
Eera's claws clenched his arm tightly. "My master said," Vader swallowed back tears, his throat burning, "he would think of another way to motivate me." His voice shook. "Two days later, we were in a spaceship, hovering over a farmstead on Tatooine." Another tear slid down his face, and a sob escaped him. "It was where my mother lived," he whispered, his voice cracking, "with my stepfather, and my stepbrother. I saw her." Vader stared into the distance, a tear sliding down his cheek, seeing in his mind's eye his mother's black hair shining in the rays of the double suns. "She was outside," he said distantly, "She was working on the vaporators." A pause. "She enjoyed being outside in the early morning. It was the nicest time of day on Tatooine." There was a long silence in which Vader's hands shook and his face was twisted in pain. At last he shuddered and choked out, "My master said—he told me—told me that he would count to ten," another tear slid down his face, burning, "and that if the Gran wasn't dead by the time he had finished counting, he would blow up the farmstead. And my mother." Vader's voice shook. He closed his eyes, but tears leaked out beneath his eyelids. He gasped. "I tried!"
There was a brief silence in the room, broken only by the gusts of wind and Kor thrashing around on the bed.
"Afterwards," Vader's voice was steadier, though it still trembled a bit, "I was able to kill the Gran."
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"It's not your fault," said Eera sometime later, stroking Vader's arm. He sounded weepy. "It's not your fault your mother died. And there's no guarantee something like that will happen to Kor."
"It almost happened tonight!" Vader wouldn't have been able to bear it.
"But you stopped it," said Eera. "You are strong now! More powerful than you were then. You can protect your son the way you couldn't protect your mother."
Vader looked down at Kor, swallowing thickly.
"Keep him, Anakin," implored Eera. "He is good for you." He was Vader's only link to humanity.
Vader hesitated. He couldn't go through that pain again.
"Love hurts," whispered Eera. "It hurts when you lose someone. But it's worth it. I promise. It's worth it."
Vader looked like he was swallowing back tears.
"Keep him, Anakin. Don't you think your mother would have wanted you to keep him? Do it," Eera implored. "For her."
A tear slid down Vader's face.
But he nodded.
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Vader knelt before the Emperor in the throne room of the Imperial Palace, his mask carefully over his face. The Emperor's councilors milled along the side of the room.
"Lord Vader," said the Emperor, sounding displeased, "I hope you have a good explanation for the events of tonight."
Of all those in the room, only Vader understood that the Emperor meant both the death of Xizor and the sudden surge in the Dark Side. Vader felt no need to explain that the surge was in any way related to his son. There was no reason for the Emperor to get any dangerous ideas. Luckily, there was another, ready-made explanation.
"Indeed, my master," said Vader, bowing his head low. "I learned of the most recent demands of Purple Sky." That was reason enough to incite Vader's rage. Both he and the Emperor knew why. Through their master-apprentice bond, Vader felt the Emperor absorb this information. "I was able to use the demands," Vader continued, "to determine the identity of Purple Sky."
"Oh?" His master arched an eyebrow. Vader felt the man's attention divert immediately from the issue of the surge in the Dark Side, anticipation singing through him.
"Yes, my master." Vader pulled out beneath his robe the infamous mask of Purple Sky, eliciting gasps from the assembled council members. "This," he said, "was found in the private quarters of Prince Xizor."
And as the Emperor took the mask, his shock and rage resonating in the Force, no more questions about the surge in the Dark Side were asked.