Chapter Fifteen: Visitor

I moved silently through the ship, my footsteps nearly impossible to hear. I was heading toward one of the removable shuttles Han had replaced the escape pods with. They were the latest craze; not only did they allow one to leave the ship while in space, they could be steered and controlled to a degree pods could not, and they were equipped with enough of an engine to travel in short spurts. Plus, they could re-dock on the host ship. It would be more than enough to get me to the Executor and back without anyone noticing.

The shuttle was already on standby mode as a precaution, and I took a moment to familiarize myself with the controls before I activated the engine and navigating systems. Then I detached from the Falcon (wincing at the roar of the motor), carefully turned the small craft around, and left the cave the way we had entered it.

It wasn't until I saw the blinking lights of the Executor that I began to panic. In my desire and haste to find out what Vader had up his sleeve that I had completely and utterly forgotten about the sleeping habits of the two million or so men he employed.

Or, more aptly, their lack thereof.

I mentally debated the pros and cons of turning tail and fleeing back to the Falcon, torn between wanting to be involved in Vader's plan to destroy the Emperor and not wanting to die surrounded by people who hated me. By the time I finally came to my senses and decided to run while I still could, I was close enough to the massive Dreadnaught to see inside individual openings on the side of the ship, including a small docking bay that looked rather . . . empty.

Well. That's . . . convenient.

I was not hailed as I slowly slid toward that docking bay, driven by my curiosity. Besides, I had an amazing sense of danger, and it was as quiet as could be at the moment.

I let the shuttle float through the atmosphere shield and gently set it on the ground. Then I lowered the boarding ramp and cautiously stepped into the clean – practically sterile – surroundings of the docking bay.

"You have to leave."

My heartbeat skyrocketed. I whirled around.

"Now," Jix added, his eyes shadowed.

I raised my chin. "Why?"

"Because somebody is bound to find out that I scratched your presence from the radar records, and if you're still here when that happens, it will be near impossible to get you out." His eyes darkened as he shifted his weight impatiently, waiting for me to obediently leave like a good little girl.

Unfortunately for him, I wasn't in the mood to be obedient.

"I want to speak to Vader," I told him haughtily in my best Princess voice.

I'm afraid you can't do that," he replied calmly and firmly, though the slight crow's feet at the edges of his eyes deepened.

He was hiding something, I was sure of it. Something about Vader. And I wanted to know what it was.

I started down the hallway that looked like the main one. Jix slid in front of me and blocked my path, his face set.

"Look," I said impatiently. "I'm here to see Vader. I don't care if he's busy, I risked a lot to make this trip and I'm not leaving until I have some answers. So we can do this the easy way or the hard way, but I will get my way in the end. Your choice."

Jix simply stared at me in disbelief. I took the opportunity to duck past him and dash down the hall. I managed to make it about halfway down before he caught up with me again. This time, he didn't even make a sound; he simply pulled out his blaster and leveled it at my forehead, right between my eyes.

"You wouldn't," I stated quietly, suddenly uneasy. Jix, who had been so cheery when he'd introduced himself to me forever ago, looked far too serious for my taste.

"Wouldn't kill you?" he specified with a tight grin. "Nah. But I would stun you, bundle you into that shuttle of yours and send you back out into space, drifting until you came to your senses again. Care to test me?"

I gulped and lifted my chin, preparing to reply, when a ripping pain shot through my abdomen, causing me to double over as a chilling scream echoed from the room in front of me and to my left.

I straightened to find Jix heading for the door. "What's going on in there?" I demanded as I jogged to catch up with him. "The slaughter of baby animals?"

"Go home," he hissed at me, shouldering the door open and bursting into the room.

"Not on your life," I muttered under my breath as I followed him in. "Or mine," I added as an afterthought.

The room was even more sterile-looking than the docking bay was; a closer examination of my surroundings revealed the reason why. It was a medical bay – a small one, but quite advanced if the instruments in my view were any indication. It was definitely safe for surgery.

There were two people in the room besides Jix and myself – a white-robed doctor, who appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties, and a patient I couldn't see very well, but I could tell that the person's skin was nearly as pale as the doctor's coat.

The doctor himself was standing over the patient, who was lying on the bed. The doctor was using only his hands, pressing different points on the patient's body, probably attempting to lessen the pain by manipulating pressure points – Luke had received similar treatments after being attacked on Hoth.

The man on the bed was sucking air hungrily from a loud oxygen machine, and his chest rose and fell laboriously with the effort. Occasionally his arms and legs would stir, seeming both restless and lethargic, flashing gold in the harsh lights. I noted the large red gash on his abdomen – only half cleaned of blood but obviously a surgical cut and neatly stitched up – a split second before another tidal wave of pain lanced through me. At the same time, the man on the bed cried outand arched his back, rising off the bed, apparently coming out of his drug-haze.

Jix watched the whole scene with an anxious frown, worry lines appearing between his eyebrows and ignoring me completely. "Can't you give him something?"

The doctor barely spared him a glance. "I've already got him on enough morphine to drop a Wookiee. Anything more could kill him. Could you finish cleaning off the incision? It's really bothering me."

Jix and I moved at the same time; he glared at me as I reached the wash basin first. He stood over my shoulder, hovering, and shifted his weight from foot to foot in distress as I gingerly applied the soft cloth to the stitches. "This is Uncle D we're talking about. He's not going down from an overdose."

Uncle D? I knew that name . . .

The doctor glanced at me dispassionately over the man's bare abdomen, then looked briefly up at Jix. "That's not a chance I'm willing to take."

And then I nearly dropped the cloth in shock."Uncle D – that's what you call Vader!" I said over my shoulder to Jix. Then I looked down at the man beneath my hands, hardly able to believe it. Tentatively, I once more touched the cloth to his skin, studying him all the more closely as I gently washed the blood off the cut.

His arms were prosthetic from the elbow down, one slightly higher up the arm and a darker gold than the other. Neither had any synth-skin covering itmerely the golden skeleton with the circuits wrapped around and attached to it. His legs, disappearing into the sheet, were the same. His skin was as white as snow – nearly transparentand covered with thick scars, most notably a deep laceration across his eye. Part of his skull, in the back, appeared to have been removed, or caved in, and I was glad I couldn't see it clearly due to his position on the bed and mine beside his ribcage. He was bald, without even eyelashes, and the skin around his eyes appeared bruised, making him look almost like a corpse – I'd actually seen corpses look better than he did. However, despite all the imperfections, all the damage, he still had a physique that most men half his age would envy . . . but what was his age, anyway? I couldn't tell; the scars and hair loss fooled me. I guessed at about mid-sixties.

"How old is he?" I asked softly.

Jix and the doctor exchanged a look. Finally, with a roll of his eyes and a tightening of his lips, Jix indicated surrender.

"Forty-five," the doctor said.

I stared at him in shock. "What happened to him?" I finally managed to ask.

The doctor simply shook his head.

So this was what Jix hadn't wanted me to see. His boss, naked except for a strategically placed sheet, and obviously the victim of some horrific, unspeakable injury. As another wall of pain washed over me, I wondered if this was something Vader had to live with all the time.

I straightened as the pain subsided and was reaching for the cloth again when strong, cool metal fingers closed over my wrist. I jerked my head up to look at his – Vader's – face

– and fell into eyes bluer than the water of the Alderaanian Lakes, bluer than the summer sky after a storm, a more brilliant hue than any jewel I had ever seen, so blue that it seemed impossible for such a shade to occur naturally –

– but here it was, staring back at me from the face of the battered, bloody arch-villain of the galaxy.

"Angel?" he whispered, those beautiful eyes slightly unfocused but no less bright from the drug-haze. The word startled me, and I started breathing again.

"Um . . ." I licked my suddenly dry lips. "No. Sorry."

That obviously wasn't the answer he was expecting. He blinked, and his eyes cleared, becoming sharp and penetrating and, if possible, even more intense. He released my wrist as if I had burned him and attempted to sit up, wincing. "Sorry," he muttered, casting his eyes down as if embarrassed.

As if he had expected me to be someone else . . . an angel . . . or someone who answered to the name Angel.

My father had told me stories about angels. They were exceedingly beautiful creatures who were purely good, who always did the right thing. The idea of an angel – or even someone who resembled an angel – having anything to do with Vader was preposterous. I didn't know him well, but I knew him well enough to know that much.

Then I looked down at the man on the bed; the man who was barely a man anymore. He was struggling simply to sit up. I didn't know this man at all.

The doctor placed his hands on Vader's shoulder and back, attempting to help him ease into a sitting position. "This is early, even for you," he commented.

Vader looked up at him. "The Princess . . . wishes to speak with me," he replied simply, as if I was the reason he'd woken so soon after his surgery. His voice was low and rough, and it seemed painful for him to speak.

Vader had surgery. Vader needed surgery. The idea was mind-boggling. He'd always seemed so strong, invincible. To have him transformed into a mockery of a human being right before my eyes . . .

The doctor looked at me sharply. "Can it wait?"

"She has . . . gone through enough. Let . . . her speak." He looked at me expectantly.

"Make it quick," the doctor requested.

I nodded and took at deep breath. "How did you know –"

"It's . . . the middle of the night, Leia. It's . . . rather obvious that you snuck out of your friend's . . . ship and came here in secret, looking for . . . answers. You're lucky you weren't . . . shot down on sight."

"I understand Mr. Jixton had something to do with that."

A wry grin flitted across Vader's face under the oxygen mask as he heaved another breath. "No doubt."

Suddenly, another spasm of pain shot through both our bodies. He recovered first, but when I looked up at him again, those amazing blue eyes were a sickening, haunted yellow, without a trace of blue in them. Unconsciously, I stepped back in horror and ended up pressed against Jix's chest.

Jix slid his arm around my waist, holding me tightly against him, and lowered his head until his mouth was beside my ear. "Be careful," he told me, his voice so low that only I could hear it, though by the sarcastic, twisted smile on Vader's face, he know doubt knew what Jix was telling me. "Yellow means he's immersed in the Dark Side. He's . . . volatile, in such a state."

I swallowed nervously as Jix eased his grip and dropped his arm, leaving me to face Vader alone.

"Well?" Vader asked, and his tone was colder, harsher than it had been a mere second before.

I cowered against Jix's broad chest, terrified by those eyes. "I – I – I just wanted to, to see what you said you had to show me. About – you know. Right?" I finished uncertainly, finding it difficult to reconcile both – or all three – versions of Vader in my mind.

Vader frowned fiercely.

"But you know, I just – I better go. It's fine. No big deal." I eased around Jix, toward the door, never turning my back on Vader.

I was almost there when he spoke again. "What are you going to do, Leia?"

I started at the sound of my given name on his damaged lips. "What?"

"You are one of five people who know my deepest secret." I must have looked confused, because he continued, "You know that I'm broken. What are you going to do with that knowledge?"

Oh, the possibilities. I looked into his eyes, forcing myself not to flinch, searching for the challenge that wasn't in his tone. All I could see in his eyes, evil as they were, was pain and desperation.

And then I knew what I was going to do.

"Nothing," I told him, lifting my chin. "It's your secret, and I'm going to keep it, because I'm you're my ally, and that's what allies do. We watch each other's backs; we keep each other strong. And so that is what I'm going to do for you."

The evil yellow light faded from his eyes, returning them to their breathtaking blue, but the pain didn't come back – or if it did, I didn't feel it (why was I feeling it, anyway?) and he didn't show it. He simply stared at me, and soon respect and gratitude crept into his gaze.

Respect and gratitude. From Darth Vader. The world as I knew it was ending.

"Thank you," he said softly.

I nodded, then ducked my head and bolted out the door.