Darth Vader is not a man who dreams. His sleep is dark, silent, and short. What little rest he gets shows him only a condemning vision of what death might be like. Perfectly blank, infinitely restless.
Tonight, he lingered in no such shadow. Had he been awake, he might have called it a nightmare. But in the dream world, where your deepest wishes were the rule and the dead walked smiling among the living, where reality shook hands with fiction and night mingled with day, here he accepted his dream joyously. After all, why shouldn't he?
He was surrounded by love on all sides. On his right was his brother, that dashing smirk of his hiding in a sharp, well-groomed beard. On his left was the love of his life, her radiant smile drowning any unease, any unhappiness. And he, Anakin, merely held their hands. The beautiful green meadows of Naboo stretched out around them, the distance gracefully dotted with expansive blue lakes.
Anakin had always wished he'd been born on Naboo instead. Right here in Theed. Right beside his wife. Then, he wouldn't have to go through anything bad.
But the dream shifted, and before he knew it, his wife was no longer there. But he wasn't unhappy. At least not that much. He still had his brother. They fought together, they lived together. Far away from the core, they brought victory to the Republic, and things were so simple. He was just a general. A hero to many, but a brother to the only man who mattered.
The mere thought of his beloved brother brought joy to Anakin's heavy chest. Even under a hail of blaster fire, even faced with certain death and despair, he held on. Because his brother was there. And that was all he needed to survive - to live.
But, again, the dream shifted. And all of a sudden, dream turned into nightmare as he was grappled between brother and wife and his father. In the end, he was torn apart.
He wished he'd have died.
Waking up, his first realization was that he sadly hadn't. The other was that he was no longer boiling alive inside his suit. It was still hot, the kind of relentless heat that plagued all homes on Tatooine apart from the richest, but he was clearly no longer burning atop the sands of the Dune Sea. He could feel that the surface below him was hard, though the area closest to his body was soft, likely a thin mattress of some sort.
He couldn't move. Or, rather, he could, but only as much as a Dagobah worm could wriggle. No legs. No arms. Even the one metal arm that had survived the wreckage was no longer connected to his body.
The only limbs he could feel were the phantom limbs he'd lost so many years ago, one longer than the other. He was entirely helpless.
His eyes flashed open, photoreceptors still charred by the crash painfully bringing the world into focus. A beige-brown ceiling met him. A few breaths brought dusty air crashing into his lungs, and once more he was seized by a jarring coughing attack, his breathing apparatus straining. With his thoughts as muddy as they were, it was clear his ventilation unit remained near-failing.
The shuffling of feet compelled Vader to turn his attention outside his own pain, and he forced his breathing into subservience, bringing it down from painful coughs into merely laboured breathing, the kind that scraped at his insides and made him feel like a rusty tin can. The person didn't move.
With his focus in the moment, Vader was able to bring his floundering consciousness into the Force, to reach out with a trembling, invisible hand to touch the other.
What he found was a blinding light, burning his phantom hand, making his pained body jerk in realization and recognition.
"...Kenobi." The word scraped out of his mask, transformed from a raspy whisper into a mechanical whine. The burning flame next to him didn't move, didn't even react. With nothing else to do, Vader brought his consciousness back into his body, and with a trembling twist of the neck, he brought the man into view.
In the barely four years it had been since he last saw him, Obi-Wan Kenobi seemed to have aged ten years. The edges of his beard - now a fair bit longer and wilder - had turned a gravelly grey. Wrinkles stretched across his face, crow-feet tapping along the edges of his eyes. Nothing in his face showed malice. Nothing in his face showed mercy. Merely disinterest.
His thin body, clearly so much weaker than it had once been, was draped in a dark-brown coat, its edges singed and torn by sand and the rigours of hermit life. His hand gently clutched a degloved metallic hand. The man who used to be Vader's master raised the metal hand to his face, regarded it for a moment, and then turned to look at his former apprentice. "A most peculiar creation."
Darth Vader's breaths echoed through the small hut, ragged and painful. Although his mind worked furiously to understand what he was looking at, he couldn't understand it in the least. Least of all, he couldn't reply.
Kenobi let his hand fall again, and he turned away from Vader to look at some indeterminable point on the wall. "Do not assume that I have left you alive for sentimental reasons, Darth."
Someplace deep inside Vader, in the heart of Anakin, something hardened. He took a deep breath, suppressed a cough, and tried to retain his flickering consciousness.
"You are free to kill me, should you wish to do so. Though you wouldn't live to revel in my death for long. There is nothing here on Tatooine. Nothing but sand, death, and us." Kenobi spoke softly, but his hard words seemed to reverberate through the entire hut, through the world, through the galaxy.
Vader made to move, his upper body lifting slightly off of whatever he was lying atop, but a stabbing pain in his side brought him crashing right back.
"I wouldn't attempt that, were I you," Kenobi said, and in five easy steps, he brought himself to a sand-coloured chair upon which he seated himself. "Moving will only bring you closer to death. I've brought you here, and I will do no more. Die as you please, Darth. I will not stop you."
A hiss of pain seeped through Vader's clenched teeth. His consciousness, murky and black and all of a sudden red with searing hot anger and hatred, suddenly lashed out, and he lifted one of his arms - now only a stump - towards his former master, feeling the Force make up for the distance, feeling how it twisted and obeyed and wrapped around the throat of Kenobi as easily as a vine snake wraps around its victim.
Kenobi didn't move. He merely looked.
A twitch of an invisible hand made the Force wrench Kenobi's throat shut.
The older man buckled over, one hand reaching ever so slightly for his throat before falling again. He did not fight. A pained grunt escaped his lips, but no more. A second passed. Two. Vader could feel his mind filling up, swimming with blood and death, his will and life drowning in it as he channelled all of his whole, every piece that was him and every piece that wasn't into the familiar act of choking a man to death.
But the one who fell was not Kenobi, but Vader.
With a metallic rasp, his stump collapsed back on the bed, and Vader lost his grip on the man who made him into a man.
Kenobi drew a ragged breath, looked up, and seemed no different from a mere ten seconds before. The only thing that so much as suggested that Vader had attempted to kill him was the slight rasp in his breath. Nothing else. "Then, you've come to your senses?" Kenobi rose from his seat, moving closer to Vader, and all of a sudden he was right there above him. And for some reason, when Vader looked up there into his eyes, looked at the man who had taken everything from him, his hatred seemed to melt away.
Because when he looked into those hard, uncaring eyes, all he felt was a bitter sense of loss. That there should have been something in those eyes that wasn't there.
Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was hate.
Maybe it was love.
Vader didn't know, because the next thing he did was to drain back into restless slumber, the face of the man he used to consider his brother slipping out of his conscious mind.
Unbeknownst to Vader, in this very moment, Obi-Wan Kenobi made one of the hardest decisions of his life as he left the room in which the Dark Lord of the Sith rested and found a box of trinkets. He'd never been much good with mechanics, always much better with animals and living things. And when he found a small box with small gears and cogs and things that held use that Kenobi could hardly understand, he took it and brought it to where Darth Vader rested, and gingerly, carefully, he placed it beside the bed.
Whatever it would do, Kenobi could not know. That was for the Force to decide. Should Vader against all odds survive the night despite his respirator being on the cusp of failing, despite every injury inflicted upon his body, then he was meant to live just a little longer.
That was all for the Force to decide.
For now, Kenobi could do nothing but stand guard. Not that he wanted to do anything else.
During the night, that cold night that was almost as freezing as the day was hot, Vader found himself overcome by a fever. Every inch of his body seemed to burn from the inside out, all focusing on his abdomen, where a shard of shrapnel remained lodged in his side. Blood had long since congealed into a bandaging scab, but that didn't stop infection and disease from spreading, not to speak of simply making the wound worse. Each strained breath Vader took deepened his wounds. Each dream that flitted through his feverish mind brought him one step closer to the final rest of empty night.
Phantom limbs spasmed and writhed in pain. Sweat blossomed across his body, drenching his already blood-soaked and torn suit. He tossed and turned, he groaned and coughed and with every second that passed, he died a little more.
His dreams were no different. Battles upon battles, every enemy bearing the face of a friend, every ally clad in separatist regalia. He was the battle droids, he was the Neimoidian blockade of Naboo, he was the corrupt senators and the Sith Lord Chancellor. Every second he killed an ally, every moment he saved an enemy. The minutes were days, the hours were months. And every time he looked down, he bore the limbs of Grievous, and the head of Dooku, and the wild eyes of Maul.
He was it all, and he was in pain.
During the night, he awoke only to make sure that he was still alive. To prove to himself that his dreamed death was not real. But every time, he returned to the dream. To the world where everything was wrong.
Binary suns dawned on Tatooine, and Kenobi found Vader alive.
Alive, though barely breathing.
His mind remained drowning in a bloody swamp of pain and death, but through it all, he pulled on the Force. Sith could not use the Force to heal. That was a Jedi ability, something that allowed the Force to act as an agent of light and life. Sith could only use it to kill. To strengthen oneself through the emotions of pain. To steal life and joy from others. In Vader's hands, the Force was useless to keep himself alive.
Until he, in the still dawn of the dunes, noticed a small box of odds-and-ends placed just beside his stony cot. And through his pain, through the haze threatening to swallow him whole, he was able to stretch out.
Small trinkets rose silently from within the box. Some were useless, others less so. Some were toys, others had once been a part of blasters and speeders. Vader would need every part to repair his breathing apparatus. That came first. That was what he needed. He could barely think, but he could feel. The Force didn't require either.
The little odds-and-ends gently disassembled themselves in front of Vader, and at the same time, the front plate of Vader's suit slowly came loose.
A misstep, a difference of mere seconds, could cost him his life. He had no choice but to work with what little he had.
And he did not have a lot. Cogs and gears and half-empty power packs floated before Vader's mutilated body as his chest opened up, parted, and exposed the inner wiring of who he was. Wires and metal twisted and moved like charmed snakes, burnt and destroyed parts floating to be replaced, other parts left alone, some fixed into shape.
His breathing grew worse with each second. But he wasn't thinking about that. He wasn't thinking about anything.
He was engaged in moving meditation, working on himself, bringing himself back to life.
The Force in the hands of a Sith cannot be used to create or preserve life.
Then, what is Vader?
He lived. He survived, and his chest plate closed again, systems running a check on themselves, his breathing growing marginally less pained, taking on the same raggedness that he was used to. Painful, but not more so than usual. The lights blinked green and red in the right places, and for a while, Vader let himself breathe. Dust was filtered properly and life slowly returned to his body. What little life there was in what little body he had.
With his consciousness restored, his full mastery of the Force returned to him. With it, he stretched out, feeling where he was, what this place really was.
It was out in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere. The hut was small and contained next to nothing of any sort. Once a Jedi, always a Jedi. Kenobi seemed to possess even fewer things than Anakin and Shmi had had, and they didn't even own themselves.
But what truly dragged Vader's attention from the pain still assaulting every inch of his body, be it the burns of the cuts of the stabs, was the beacon of light that was Kenobi.
He was more brilliant than ever.
How could Vader not have noticed him before? Right here on Tatooine, practically right under the nose of the Empire. The Emperor couldn't have been able to tell. He had never known Kenobi. Vader, on the other hand, should have known. Right here, shining like a beacon. Beckoning him home.
And yet, he hadn't. Had his arrogance blinded him so fully that such a bright light as Kenobi could have evaded his careful eye? Red-hot shame began to bubble and boil just beneath Vader's charred skin. He'd been foolish. Just as he knew every thought and idea that coursed through Kenobi's head, so, too, did Kenobi understand every weakness that Vader tried to hide. Including his naked hatred of his birth planet.
But there was something else to it. At this distance, being in the very same hut as him, Kenobi's presence in the Force was like a massive burning pyre. At a distance, however, it was more subdued.
Like a singular paper-lantern in an endless night-choked desert. Feeble, flickering within the fickle barrier. Yet strong enough to keep the night at a distance.
Yes, that is what Kenobi was. Invisible at a distance, ever-present up close.
Warm. That, too.
The night was cold. Even a sand-panther might like to bask in the suns, when the night parted and the sands were cold.
A familiar presence. Kenobi's touch seemed to linger on every inch of the hut, his warm glow enveloping it all in ever-present calm, a curious scent of Coruscant roses somehow lingering all the way out here on Tatooine, out here where only cacti bloomed. Vader's mask took it in, and he breathed deeply of that scent, but when that inhuman calm seemed to fill his mutilated body again, he felt it was wrong.
Because when hot air met cold clouds, storms brewed.
Vader jerked where he laid, his own presence lashing out against the welcoming warmth around him, banishing it and the memories of too-long ago as well. The dawn air around his bed slowly turned cold and bone-chilling, as it always was around him. The Force seemingly turned to ice.
He breathed deeply, taking in his own presence, his own metalling scent. Like oiled cogs and exposed wiring and dried blood.
He tried to collect himself, to turn the icy Force around him into a rejuvenating whirlpool, to fully return to consciousness. But that was hard when he could feel Kenobi's pyre of a presence coming closer. Out of the corner of his eye, at the edge of his photoreceptors, he saw Kenobi step into the room, carrying a small bowl. Vader's concentration slipped, and all of a sudden Kenobi's mere existence dispelled his icy little corner, warming it with Coruscant roses and-, and womp rat stew?
Kenobi took a sip of his stew, walked inside, and sat down on that very same chair he had occupied yesterday.
But Vader was stronger now. His breathing was steady, rhythmic, and even as Kenobi began to speak, Vader was pulling himself together, concentrating the Force into an icy cold hand to choke him with. The room started to freeze again.
Kenobi brought a spoon-full of stew to his mouth, blew on it, and took a bite. "It would seem the Force is with you, old friend."
Vader's invisible hand stalled.
"I had expected the night to claim you. Then again, I hadn't expected you to survive Mustafar either." His voice is sleek, hard, almost as cold as Vader's presence. Through the natural warmth of his presence, his voice resembled a shimmering vibroblade, reaching out and stabbing into Vader's already half-dead body.
Vader made a sound that might have seemed like a snort, was it not muffled by electronics and machinery. "I survived because you were weak. Your flawed compassion allowed me to recover, and now, you will die for your traitorous ways." Vader's icy cold hand caressed Kenobi's exposed throat, showing him that with a mere thought he could end this farce.
Kenobi simply took another sip of soup. "Again, you may kill me if you so please," Kenobi said. "However, I should expect you to know better. Do you think you could survive a day out here?"
"I've survived the sands before. I can survive them again."
All that met him was a dismissive, almost comedic shrug. "Perhaps with your limbs intact. If that is how you would like to die, I'm not stopping you. Leave. The door is open." A wave brought Vader's attention to the gaping doorway. A stream of sunlight stretched through it, flakes of dust and sand dancing in it.
Vader didn't have to consciously dismiss the idea of braving the Dune Sea on foot. Without foot. Without arms, too. Kenobi must still have the one he plundered from Vader. "I thought not."
Vader growled; a deep, droid-like noise that grated at his still-damaged lungs. As a matter of fact, his whole body was damaged. His nightly fever had abated somewhat, but the infection in his abdomen reigned yet.
And there was nothing he could do about it. His master had promised to teach him the abilities of Darth Plagueis, but with Padmé's death, Vader hadn't seen much need to learn. Not that his master even tried to make good on his oath. Even the thought of using the Force to heal his broken body was preposterous. Healing was a light-side power, one he no longer had access to. That used to be a point of pride. Now it felt more foolish than anything.
Accessing the damage done to him, he found that his injuries had grown worse than yesterday. Few aggressive micro-organisms could survive on the hot dunes of Tatooine, but the ones that did were exceptionally dangerous. Anakin had been immune to most, but even he had fallen sick at times. During those times, he was usually still forced to work. Only on rare occasions did his illness grow so bad to leave him bedridden, at which time his dear mother would tell him to take it easy, relax, everything would be alright. And while he laid in bed, fidgeting, trying to think of something to do, she would return, with a bowl of womp rat stew in hand.
Vader's dry eyes dragged themselves to stare at the bowl. It had to be it. Womp rats weren't very good to eat. Very rubbery texture, and the smell was just hideous. But it warmed the body when the nights were cold and his mother and he couldn't afford anything else.
All of a sudden, the idea that Kenobi - Coruscanti high-born with a distaste for anything apart from the high-quality meals of the Jedi Temple - would ever eat womp rat stew was a preposterous one. Or maybe it was funny. Vader couldn't really choose one, and in the end, he was unable to bring himself to so much as smile at the thought.
But somehow, despite his eyes and mask showing nothing, Kenobi must have noticed Vader's wondrous gaze. "There's isn't much to eat out here. Snakes and the like." A bitter chuckle escaped his lips before he caught himself and settled back into being stone-faced. "When you can't get a job, you have to make do with what the Living Force gives you."
He sounded so much like Qui-Gon. But Vader didn't say that. Instead, he said, "You are as indoctrinated in your old Jedi ways as you ever was. When will you realize your time is past?"
This time, Kenobi let his bitter smile show. It was not a smile Vader had seen before, and for some reason, he never wanted to see it again. "Maybe never. Maybe today. Am I to assume you've forgotten every lesson the Order taught you?" His voice grew deep with regret. "Every lesson I taught you?"
"The order taught me nothing but lies," Vader spat. "They never wanted me to begin with. Had there never been a war, I would have remained your unfortunate Padawan for years. Without the war, I would have never-"
"Are you happy?" Kenobi asked, his gaze distant, flying out of the window and over the dunes.
Since Vader has no answer, Kenobi continued. "Can't you realize that you've lost everything, Darth?"
"I," Vader bit out, "am not your apprentice."
Kenobi shook his head as though that had nothing to do with anything. "Don't believe me blind. Your wounds are grave. Within a week, maybe as little as a few days, you'll be dead." Kenobi turned back to look at Vader, his eyes as cold as ice. "I have already mourned Anakin. I will not mourn you."
Maybe if Vader hadn't been on the brink of death, he might have been able to answer. Or maybe if he wasn't feverish. Or maybe if he wasn't bleeding out.
Or maybe he was just a coward.
Kenobi finished his bowl of stew and left. Left Vader lying there, wondering if he should have killed his own mentor or not. Maybe he couldn't. He couldn't tell any longer. The day passed in what could only be described as a blur, the passing ebb and flow of warmth and cold alerting him of when Kenobi was close. He didn't eat much. Vader himself didn't eat at all. His suit could keep him somewhat sustained for a few days, but in the end, he was unable to live without spending some amount of time in a bacta tank.
Kenobi left at times. Vader would drift into uneasy rest, his sleep plagued by nightmares he thought he'd forgotten. The cold of his presence would seep out into the room, choking the bright trail Kenobi left behind. But then Kenobi returned, and Vader stirred only enough to tell that the warmth once more had become omnipresent. Banishing Vader's cold in a waft of Coruscant roses.
Worst of all, when Kenobi was around, when he lingered in the room Vader found himself in, he was no longer plagued by nightmares. And he hated that.
As a Sith, he accepted pain. It was from there that he drew power. When he fought, he thought of his mother, and of the sand people, and of Padmé, and of everyone he had ever lost. Every mistake he ever made. That was how Sith operated. Denying your pain was to deny your true nature.
But in the moment, when the warmth of Kenobi's presence made his nightmares shift into mere dreams, Vader did not - could not - complain.
As far as he could tell, this was unintentional.
In the brief waking moments where Vader saw Kenobi eye-to-eye, all he found meeting him was a cold stare. About as welcoming as a freezing blizzard. But his presence was warm, and where his arms remained fast at his sides, his presence opened wide, inviting Vader into its warmth.
Vader did not accept.
As twilight befell the planet, Vader listened silently as Kenobi made dinner. Womp rat stew again. All was quiet. Outside, the distant bleat of banthas created a backdrop to the night of Tatooine. But closer, much closer than that, another sound hummed through the hut. A whistled melody, thin and strong and homely and all-too-familiar. It was a little song Vader had heard many times, before he was Vader, before he was even Jedi. Before he left Tatooine, when it was just him and his mother. And they'd sing it together. Beneath the starry sky, where he would point at each and wonder what it was like. He knew one day he'd explore them all, but in what order? What would he say to the people there? It was all very important to discuss, and his mother had listened most intently.
Kenobi did not whistle the melody. His song was the harmony, beautiful and quaint, but never meant to be alone. And for a brief second, a single moment where sleep still seemed to tug at his mind and infection kept his body feverish, he thought that it might be nice if he should join in.
Then that moment passed, and all that was left was disgust at the very idea.
Vader could not know how Kenobi had come to learn only one part of the song, but it was unimportant. The harmony thinned out as Kenobi entered the room. Although his presence was as radiant and warm as ever, his gaze was icy. He moved with the stilted walk of a soldier ready for battle, rather than a Jedi hermit carrying womp rat stew.
He saw down and began to eat. Silence stretched between them.
Vader closed his eyes, forcing out the icicle eyes of his former master, and let the warm presence envelop him. It wasn't conscious, he was too sick to consider that. It simply happened, and he let it cover him like a warm covering of dune. And he slept.