Darth Vader awoke feeling strangely rejuvenated. The fever that had plagued him all of yesterday seemed all but banished, though a slight movement of his lower body ensured that the stabbing piece of armour remained in his side. Clearly, whatever had caused the infection to regress was a temporary measure. For the moment being. The real question here was rather how it had happened; why; and who had done it. The odds of someone using a stim on him or giving him a bacta swab were even lower than the only other option: Force healing.

Anakin Skywalker had never been much good at it. Always more of a fighter than a healer. His Jedi peer Barriss Offee had been better at it than him, but it didn't mean he was unable to use it. As a Sith, however, Vader couldn't imagine anything lower than using the Force to heal himself, even as a last-ditch effort in the throes of sleep. But the only other possibility was equally implausible.

After all, why should Kenobi ever help him?

He had said as much himself. This was one of the rare occurrences where Vader could imagine trusting Kenobi on his word. Rationally, there was absolutely no reason for the old Jedi Master to help him.

But Vader wasn't about to assume anything without any clear evidence. Oh, he would hypothesize, of course, but until he saw it with his own photoreceptors, he wouldn't say anything.

That day, it almost seemed like Kenobi looked at Vader with a half-formed sense of care.

It might have been Vader's imagination, or perhaps because he was, for once, more awake than not, but Kenobi seemed to linger in his room just a little more often. When Vader nodded off into unconsciousness, he found that the room remained warm, even when Kenobi left. In that warmth, Vader could only draw still dreams of pleasantry. To his waking self, they might have been nightmares, but in the moment, sitting with Padmé on the meadows outside Theed, there was nothing better.

Towards the evening, Vader found himself lying in his cot, Kenobi sitting silent across the room, eating stew. He craned his neck to see his former master, his breath wheezing. "Jedi do not mourn," he said, as softly as his mechanical throat would allow.

Kenobi turned his eyes from the bowl of stew in his hand. "Pardon?"

"I said," Vader breathed through gritted teeth, "Jedi do not mourn."

Realization slowly dawned on Kenobi's features, but no shame. Nothing that might suggest that the un-Jedi-like behaviour he had apparently engaged in had brought him shame. Nothing of the sort. If anything, he simply seemed curious. "Out here, there are many things you need to do that most Jedi would not."

"To think," Vader said. "That the perfect Jedi Master, predestined for the council, could ever fall so low." Kenobi did not respond. The innocent interest smeared on his face brought a bitter edge to Vader's voice. "For years, you always did right. Never any attachments, never any thoughts of your own. The perfect Jedi, unlike your dear apprentice - Skywalker."

The mention of Anakin's name finally brought some sort of emotion onto the face of his former master. "Do not think I haven't heard of your exploits, Darth. The massacres, the slaughters. How you hunt down every Jedi you can find. And yet, you speak as though you aren't Anakin."

"Anakin was weak, and I killed-,"

"You are a coward to believe that," Kenobi growled. "Does it make you feel good, to pretend to be a Sith Lord? Is it easier to stand the atrocities you've committed if they're on the hands of Darth Vader, not Anakin Skywalker? You used to be so eager for confrontation. And now you cower in the face of yourself. You may have the body of a machine, but beneath that, you are still merely a boy."

"I am not a boy," Vader choked out through clenched teeth. "And I am not Anakin Skywalker!"

With that exclamation, Vader threw his upper body off of the bench, lifting his head and left stump to point at Kenobi, lashing out through force in a powerful pike of ice-

Only to meet a raised hand, stopping him as easily as an adult stops the tantrum of a child. "You are not the man I raised. But you are Anakin Skywalker. A twisted perversion of the man I knew, but still him." A stabbing pain in his side brought Vader crashing back down on his cot, coughing and sputtering. Kenobi raised from where he sat and moved over to stand above Vader like a malevolent ghost of his past. "I did not fight Darth Vader on Mustafar. I did not call Darth Vader my brother, and I did not say that I loved him." A hand, older and warmer than it had ever been, fell on the forehead of Vader's helmet. "Darth Vader is only a mask. Beneath, you remain Anakin Skywalker."

A brief look of pain flashed over Kenobi's features before he turned away, moving back to his bowl of stew. As Darth Vader lay panting and heaving, Kenobi left the room. Twilight turned to night, but Vader could not sleep.

A returned fever clawed at the back of his mind, attempting to pull him down and into the soggy mud of warfare that his dreams and nightmares would bring. But he remained awake.

He was Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith. Apprentice of Darth Sidious.

Anakin Skywalker was dead. He was weak.

Or maybe he was just a coward.

Instead of facing what he had done, what he had become, he hid behind a title. He took the coward's way out. Buried himself so deep within the dark side that the only part sticking out was a metallic hand. And these past four years, fours years of death and ordering and murder, it had all been Anakin. Every bit of it. Because Anakin wasn't some avatar of the light side that only popped out when he was a Jedi or when he did as the Chosen One should do. In the same way, Vader wasn't some manifestation of the dark side of the Force that acted only as a Sith Lord should.

Both were Anakin, because Anakin was a human.

Anakin loved, Anakin hated. He could be jovial, he could be angry. A perfect avatar of the Force would show neither contempt nor compassion. The Chosen One was not an avatar. He was not above human emotion, and he was not perfect.

He was perfectly human, and no human could possibly deal with the things Anakin had done.

Lying awake in the cold night of Tatooine, his only warmth being the presence of Kenobi, Darth Vader slowly realized that his title was nothing but a mask. Darth Vader was not a person, much as how Palpatine had never been a person either. His Master had always been Sidious. Supreme Chancellor was a title and a persona that Sidious played to perfection.

Right now, Anakin was play-pretending being a Sith Lord.

Had it been daytime, Vader would not have been able to accept this, or even consider it for that matter. It was simply not a thought that Darth Vader was allowed to have. But in the glow of Kenobi's presence, resting over the whole hut like a blanket, Vader took in the situation, turned it over in his mind, and considered it from every perspective. Moving meditation.

It was laid before him like the wares in a marketplace, and still, and still, he could not accept it.

If he wasn't Darth Vader, then who was he? Who was Anakin Skywalker? Slave? Son? Jedi? General? Husband? Brother?

Was he member of the Jedi Council or proxy-son of the Chancellor?

Vader's feverish mind darkened at the thought of the council. They had betrayed him. Or, rather… They had betrayed Anakin. Yes, that was it. The council betrayed Anakin. Forced him to spy on the man who might as well have been his father. The only reason the council recognized him at all was because the Chancellor appointed him as his representative on the Council. Not that he was given a vote. Just a glorified wiretap.

But all of a sudden, Vader wondered why he was upset at all. The only reason Vader had to despite the Jedi council - and all Jedi for that matter - was because they betrayed the Republic. Their betrayal of Anakin Skywalker had nothing to do with Vader.

And yet, in need of power, whose memories of pain did Vader call upon if not Anakin's? Whose anger did he inherit, whose body did he possess?

In the dark shiver of the night, Darth Vader became Anakin Skywalker.

The nightmares that took hold of him were no longer so kind as to show him only his life before taking the title of Darth Vader. Now that time was over. The galaxy stretched out before him, its weak, whimpering flesh exposed, and he dug in with claws of durasteed. Worlds he had previously liberated now struggled in his choking grasp. People he had once considered his brothers and sisters were trampled beneath his mechanical boots.

Massacre after massacre committed by his hand. Not by Darth Vader, by him.

And he hated it. Almost as much as he hated himself. The Empire marched and he moved like a phantom trapped in his own body.

But just like yesterday, in the middle of the night, when his pain was at its height and he was sure the fever would claim him, the warm presence arrived. It moved into his room like a ghost, stretched out its hand, and let it fall on his chest. He stirred only briefly enough to catch a glimpse of his former master, and in that moment of weakness, he thought, thank the Force.

His dreams following his healing were not of anything before his turn. It had nothing to do with his current Master, or with his wife, or even with himself.

It was of his brother.

Standing tall above him, looking down at him. A spire of strength and virtue.

That was it. He dreamt of Kenobi.

It was one of the most pleasant dreams he had ever had.

When he woke up to stare into the face of the real Kenobi, he was far less delighted. For a start, he couldn't even tell what business Kenobi would have standing so close to him, mere inches from his cot. Or why his eyes seemed so soft. Or why that felt so much better than the icy glare he used to receive.

Kenobi spoke before Vader could demand him to leave. "I could heal you, you know."

Vader blanched. "Of course you could," he said cautiously. "However, you choose not to. Is this some sort of tease?"

And, surprisingly, Kenobi gave a smile. A sly one. That kind of half-smile that always followed a sarcastic line or sassy taunt. "Nothing of the sort. I am not merely stating fact. Should you want me to, I would heal your wounds."

"You must be joking," was the only reply Vader could think of.

Now Kenobi turned to look elsewhere. "Let's just say that I've had a… Change of heart." He glanced back to look at Vader, and in his eye was that old shining glimmer of mischievousness. The kind that said no matter what you do, I'm right.

With no other way of giving himself any sort of leverage in the conversation, Vader said, "Do not believe me so large a fool not to know you've been healing me in the night. There must be some hidden purpose to this."

"Nothing of the sort," Kenobi said, shaking his head. "No hidden agendas. No bartering. Were you to ask me, I would heal you."

A tense moment passed between them.

"...I will not stop you," Vader finally said.

But Kenobi merely shook his head yet again. "Not like that. Not in that way. You have to ask me for it." The profound sense of confusion that passed over Vader prompted Kenobi to continue. "If you want me to heal your wounds, I need to hear you say it. You have to say 'heal my wounds, please,' or I will gladly let you die."

Vader suppressed the instinctual need to ask for a recess to collect his thoughts. Instead, after only a moment of respite, he asked, "Very well then, Kenobi. Heal my wounds, if you so desire."

Kenobi was not content. "Heal my wounds, what?"

And all of a sudden Vader remembered why he tried to kill Kenobi in the first place. But the opportunity was too good to pass up. Humiliation or not, he needed to live. "Heal my wounds, please," Vader growled from beneath his mask. If he hadn't been wearing the death's head, Kenobi would surely have seen the dark scowl that passed over his face.

But since he couldn't, Kenobi gave a victorious smirk of the likes only he could pull off.

And then he just left. But only for a moment, because he returned with a small knife, and for a moment Vader wondered if he could bear being killed by a regular knife. But that didn't happen, because all Kenobi did was approach and put the small knife on Vader's circuit-covered chest. Maybe he assumed that Vader wouldn't be able to move it without any limbs.

Dragging the little chair over to where Vader laid, Kenobi was proven right. With a quick swipe, he took hold of the knife, and sat down. Vader should have suspected it before, but only now did Kenobi prove the use of the knife.

He slit an incision along the side of Vader's suit.

The thick insolation easily gave way to the sharp knife, quickly revealing the flesh beneath. Vader had no time to object as a large hole was opened up. Within, caked with dried blood and sand and white infected tissue, was a large gash caused by the slice of armour still lodged inside him. But Kenobi's attention wasn't on the wound or even the infected flesh. It was on the skin ringing it.

Wrinkled, charred pale, fleshy webbing thrashing to and fro. Uneven bumps and ridges to hide old wounds. Bacta was famous for its ability to heal wounds without leaving any scar tissue, but even with years of near-daily bacta treatments, Vader's skin remained calloused, recovered only on the surface level.

Kenobi's fingers ran over the exposed skin, over the bumps and the webbing. Over all the damage he had caused.

In the end, the most he could do was to give Vader a sympathetic look. And then it was gone, and he was all business, and Vader had to wonder if he had imagined the whole thing. Because he had to have. Kenobi was the man who had betrayed him. The man who cast him into despair, who turned his wife against him, who rejected him at every turn. Why should he regret the damage he caused Vader?

The first thing Kenobi did was to remove the shard. This was not an easy task. It was lodged inside, caked blood trapping it in place, seizing muscles clenching it tight. With no anaesthetics to administer, removing it was an incredibly painful ordeal. Vader took it all with no complaint outside a sharp inhale.

With the only plug and surrounding scabs removed, fresh blood began to flow anew, spilling out onto his abdomen and suit and bed. He'd already lost a lot of blood only days earlier and still hadn't recovered, so he began to feel woozy within only seconds of the wound opening.

But Kenobi was not a pushover.

Before he actually began Force healing, he used the Force to squeeze shut the blood-belching arteries, and only then did he start to work on the flesh.

It was warm. It felt as though Kenobi had plunged his hand inside of Vader, and with the softest touch, started to reassemble him from the inside. So much of Vader was machine, but what was flesh-and-blood was rendered anew by Kenobi's deft hand. Still, Vader's body remained wounded.

No time wasted, Kenobi sliced open the suit wherever a wound was - scrape or deeper - and healed it with a gentle touch. He didn't even need to think. Kenobi merely let the Force act through him, guiding him to where the tissue was damaged, and let it work from there.

The Force flowed from within Kenobi and into Vader. The light permeated him. It seeped into every wound, filling his dead body with life.

He felt young. Not in body, but in spirit. It had been too many years since he last felt the Force flow through him undeterred, unaltered to change purpose. Vader, if anyone, should know the difference between the light and dark side of the Force. The light let the Force act through them. The dark imposed its will upon the Force. Letting emotion manipulate it into deeds of death instead of acts of life.

Here, now, Vader was filled with light. It flowed through his chest, though his head, through his phantom limbs.

And it felt good.

But not of the same kind that blood-fever would bring. Not the black rage that exploded from immense use of the dark, but instead a calm, serene warmth. A mellow happiness. Joy of the spirit, not the flesh.

In some far-off and buried part of his mind, he realized why Kenobi had offered to heal him. That with this feeling, with this knowledge of how good the light felt, how right it felt, he might just change. But it was so far off, and Vader couldn't hear it over the loving hum possessing him, mind and soul.

Vader felt a solemn sadness when it ended, when each surface wound was healed, the infection banished completely.

The warmth in his chest, the living Force thriving in him for once, began to grow stale and cold as the dark side within him corrupted it. It made him unhappy. It shouldn't have, but it did.

And he didn't feel slightly angry about it.

All he felt was the bitter regret of knowing what he had lost.

Kenobi, his task finished, stood up. He ran one hand over Vader's circuit board, listened to his ragged, mechanical breathing for a second, and finally said, "Should you let me, I might be able to heal your breathing."

Vader was weak, and he was uncertain, but he was not deaf. "...What?"

Kenobi gave a grave yet resolute nod. "It would be risky, and I would likely need your help, but I believe it is possible."

"No doctor in the galaxy can heal me," Vader breathed.

"Were they Jedi?"

To that, Vader had no answer.

Kenobi looked out of the window, at how the sun had almost waned completely. "I'll let you consider it. With your current disposition I doubt it would be possible, but all men can change." The way he said that almost made Vader's blood boil. Not because it implied that if Vader changed just a little he could regain his breathing, but rather because it suggested that he could change. That there was something in him worth changing for. That should he change, he could save some little part of himself.

That some little part of him was worth saving to Obi-Wan.

It struck him to silence.

Kenobi left.

And although Vader's mind was no longer muddled with fever, although his body was bereft of any obvious pain, although his breathing apparatus was working… He let himself drift off to sleep.

Silent, calm, sleep.

In the dream, he was playing with a whisper of a creature. A little flying caterpillar of light that flew around him in starry patterns. When he tried to touch it, his freezing hands made the caterpillar recoil. But if he sat still, if he crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap, and if he waited for just a moment… The caterpillar would touch down and float into his hand. His hands melted, the caterpillar became a cocoon, and together, they flew.

It was the middle of the night. Deep darkness enveloped the hut, but through the night-vision of his photoreceptors, Vader could see Kenobi beside him. His hand was laid over Vader's chest and he was seated on the little chair. He was leaned over, his upper body resting on the side of Vader's cot. Vader did not move. Quiet, deep breaths escaped Kenobi's throat. He wasn't meditating. No, he was asleep.

How could he be so foolish?

Vader was a Sith Lord! And now he was almost fully healed. His power in the Force had returned to him in full, and he had no reason to spare Kenobi's life. Should Vader wish to, he could easily snap Kenobi's neck, leave the hut and find some way out of here. He had one arm, and finding scrap parts to construct the others would take less thought than the death of his former master. Be it a bantha or a Krait Dragon, taming it through the power of the dark side would be as easy as killing it.

There was no reason to remain.

Through the Force, Vader moved. He had no limbs, but the Force became his arms of invisible ice. Snaking their way through the air. Eyes and intent focused on his former master. The air seemed to freeze to a sudden chill. The night enveloped Kenobi's paper lantern. Phantom limbs slipped around his meek throat. A squeeze would end it all. He'd be dead. A thorn in Vader's side - gone. Another Jedi traitor killed.

Everything would end.

"...Anakin…" Kenobi murmured slowly. In the darkness, Vader could see Kenobi's face twist in pain. A knot formed within his chest. "I… loved you…"

Vader watched quietly as Kenobi's grip on his suit grew tighter, trying to pull the torn fabric closer. In the dark of the night, Kenobi's lantern seemed so subdued. Weak. In the wind, it could easily be blown out. Become consumed by the night. It was no pyre, no blinding light. Merely a candle in the dark.

Vader gently reached out, and though he may not have had a physical hand, he let his invisible Force-hand fall atop Kenobi's head.

The older man, previously stirring as though deeply consumed by some impenetrable nightmare, now calmed. His face relaxed. Breathing becoming deep and slow and calm.

Vader let his head fall again, and fell back asleep.

Maybe this wasn't all so bad.