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VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
I didn't know what was the matter with me. My regulator was having a hard time keeping up with my lungs. The veins in the parts of my extremities that still lived were pulsing painfully---my heart would not slow. As I swooped through the smokey, air-scortched corridors of the Tantive V, the captured ship, my mind wrestled with the possibilities even as I was made to banter back and forth with an underling.
"Holding her is dangerous," the officer, who was a good head shorter than myself, snapped like some little self-important lap-pet. "If word of this gets out, it could create sympathy for the Rebellion in the Senate."
What was he talking about? The fool. My left hand clenched.
What? My left hand clenched?
I relaxed the metal tendons and kept my steps even, answering the underling flatly and automatically. My thoughts were not with him. This operation was simple enough, and I issued commands faultlessly.
"...she is my only link to finding their secret base," I heard myself admitting.
"She'll die before she'll tell you anything!" the other yelped.
"Leave that to me," I growled. And then I realized it---I was angry. Angry. When was the last time I had actually gotten angry?
My jaw snapped shut inside my helmet as a door closed on that path of thought.
But why should I be angry right now? Yet, I was. I had strangled the captain to death with my own hand. I couldn't remember the last time I had done something like that. And I had actually raised my voice. It was punishing me for such abuse, now. I could feel a scraping pain running up and down my throat.
Odd.
Reaching outside myself, the way I had forever, I touched a tendril of power and bent it to my will. My heartbeat calmed. My breathing slowed. My tone became even. And again I felt nothing.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
The metallic tone of my feet hitting the floor changed when I entered the detention area. The officers on duty instantly straightened and saluted as my cloak swept the tops of their boots. I paid them no attention. I was bringing an interrogator droid to question our priority captive: Princess Organa of Alderaan.
I had insisted that I be the one to draw her out. Moff Tarkin had given me little resistance. I was not about to let one of the twisty-mouthed, squinty-eyed Imperial detention officers go anywhere near her. When she had met me in the corridors of the Tantive V, bound and contained, the princess had greeted me, a Sith Lord, with a fiery temper and defiant sarcasm. I had never, in my entire life, been snapped back at with such vehemence and unafraid self-assurance. Needless to say, that had not improved my mood. But it had persuaded me that no one else could possibly handle her. She would cut them to ribbons, and in turn, they would get absolutely nothing from her.
I pressed the door release and the entrance hissed open. She sat in the corner, her delicately strong fingers folded in her lap. She lifted her eyes to me.
I caught a flash of fear. It filled the room like a finger of lightning, but just for an instant. Then she sat back, in command of herself again. Admirable.
I descended into the cell, ducking as I went, and stood directly before her.
"And now, Your Highness," I intoned. "We will discuss the location of your hidden Rebel base."
I turned pointedly, and the circular, menacing-looking, interrogator droid hummed into the room, floating eerily closer. The princess stared at it, apprehension clearly struggling behind her steely countenance.
"What is that?" she asked tightly.
"It is a mind probe," I told her deliberately. "It will inject you with various chemicals that will slowly break down your defenses, show you all of your worst fears, and bring to the surface all of your greatest pain." I took a step closer to her, my cloak rustling. She did not cower, but she would not look at me.
"And then," I went on, my artificial voice like the growling of a beast. "If you do not answer every question I pose, it will break your mind, and leave you utterly destroyed for the rest of your life."
She said nothing. She did not move. Then, slowly, she lifted her eyes to mine.
Her dark gaze cut into me, driving down through my chest to stab into the places that somehow remained injured. Absently, I felt my brow furrow, which had not happened in years. What---
"I am not afraid of you, Vader," she said softly, her scarlet mouth quirking in a gently wry smile. "I have nothing to lose." She took a deep breath and tilted her head upward a bit more. "My life is about to be destroyed anyway."
I stopped.
The sound of my regulator echoed through the room. She did not turn from me. And suddenly, I could not move. The look in her auburn eyes had utterly frozen me.
Why?
On an impulse, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I dismissed the droid with a swift gesture of my left hand. The princess twitched, and watched it buzz perplexedly out of the cell. The door hissed shut again. She and I were alone.
She stared at the closed door, and her eyebrows came together. She glanced suspiciously at me out of the corner of her eye, but she did not speak. I could feel her defenses: solid, like a wall of granite. I would just have to find the fissures.
"What is your name?" I began.
"You know my name," she answered flatly.
"Not your given name," I lied. I wanted to hear how she would reply. She faced me again, and canted her head.
"Leia," she told me. Then she cocked a severe eyebrow. "What is yours?"
"You know mine very well," I said flatly, allowing a threat to vibrate in the undertone. She shook her head once.
"No. Even I know that Sith lords do not go by the names their mothers gave them. Your name is not Vader. What is your real name?"
I stared at her. My throat closed. Was it possible that someone had just dared to ask me that? Fury blazed across my temples---anger of a strength I had not felt in ages, and it filled my living frame with scorching heat.
"You are in no position to be asking questions," I countered, the sudden rage I felt nearly blinding me. "You shall answer mine."
"I will answer nothing," she said quietly, her expression closing as she turned her head to face the far wall. "And nothing you can do to me will change that."
"You have no idea who I am," I murmured wrathfully. "---what I am capable of." And with that, I gathered the Force around me. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and wrapping the power around me like a black cloak of thunder clouds. In just one more moment, it would reach its full strength, and I would unleash it like a cannon blast against this woman's feeble defenses, smashing through them and breaking her mind like a twig between my fingers.
"Who are you, then, Lord Vader?" she whispered, her long-lashed eyelids drifting closed. "Who are you, beneath all of that blackness and metal?"
My control faltered. She raised her head again, and her eyes were filled with sadness. I fought against mentally staggering.
"What did you look like when you were young, I wonder?" she continued, her tone still soft and regulated, her gaze intensifying as she almost tried to search my face through the lenses that covered my eyes. "And what happened to you that you are forced to wear all of this?"
The power slipped through my fingers. A vivid image of my nine-year-old hand cupping a fistful of sand darted through my mind---and I watched the soil slide out of my grip and blow away in the wind.
All of a sudden, I was a mere shell standing there in that prison. And I could no longer face her.
I whirled, marched toward the door and made it to the first step. I slowed. I halted. My failure slowly reached me. I had said I would find her fissures. Instead, she had found mine.
"Anakin," I said, almost involuntarily.
She did not speak, but I could sense her startled question. I turned my helmed head, just a fraction.
"My name was Anakin." I activated the release with the Force, and exited. The door hissed shut behind me. "But he is dead," I finished. And just to prove it, I promptly stopped the heart of the first officer who failed to instantly salute me, and stepped over his dead body as I entered the turbolift.
TBC