When He Is Alone
Author: LVB
Summary: The white and the dark; they are both part of Vader. And when he is alone, he knows it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars or anything SW related. That honour belongs to GL and LucasFilm Ltd.
When he is alone, he is no longer a monster. He sits quietly, allowing the purity of the surrounding silence wash over him. His mind, his forever broken mind rests uneasily. An internal war echoes inside of him, mirroring the universal battle between good and evil. The white and the black, the calm and the uneasy, the light side and the dark; it turns, it twists within his mind.
His two personalities, branded by two names; two lives; two destinies. They calmly sit together when he is alone. They play a game of chess over the Force in his mind, the white and the black. They play for control; yet the Darkside always triumphs. He is always one quick move ahead, smarter, faster and all-knowing. He predicts the light side's movements and plans ahead; he thinks so hard and fast and the darkness always prevails.
His mind is always in eternal turmoil. It looks upon the darkened is thedarkened chamber he built for himself; by himself. It is dark on the outside, black, mirroring the hard machinery that clings to his body, pumping the essential life back into him. The hard black machinery that breathes for him, walks for him and talks for him. The hard, black machinery that lives for him and feels for him. Nothing.
Not a feeling, not a whisper of life, not a single tear that could carelessly float down his withered, whitened and scarred face. That is the hard, black machinery he is so accustomed to wearing.
The inside is a sterile white. The endless white walls glare at him, enticing him to show his ashen face. They mock him, tease him. They know who he used to be; they know of the internal war. They know of an age-old battle that continues in his broken mind, a mind of a thousand lost wars. They know of the turmoil, the anger and the heartache. They represent a life long left behind. They represent the ghost of the man he used to be; they are not the machine he has become.
The white walls symbolize the weakness he refused to succumb to; the absence of power, of authority, of the highest adrenalin field of the Force. They are devoid of the Darkside; and are left without menace, without intimidation. They are useless. Just as the whiteness in him was destroyed. The remnants of the sterile white exist in the farthest corner of his broken mind.
Left there long ago, it is shattered and fragmented. The jagged edges dig deep into the comfortable darkness that has existed in his mind for an age. The darkness does nothing to combat the light; they simply exist side by side, in symbiosis. Neither gaining nor losing until the time comes when he is left to think about which colour would suit him the best today. His chamber experiences the best of both worlds.
The darkness exists on the outside, but the light is on the inside. It is sterile, white and harsh on the eyes but it proves that the light, the extreme whiteness exists within the black monster somewhere. Not a monster, until the chamber doors open. Then he resumes his cold, dark ways. The chess game stops and the white retreats to the corner of the mind, waiting again to have his opportunity to win the game. It is a vicious cycle, never ceasing but slowly repeats day after day. But only when he is alone.