CANTO III

… vanquishing me with a beam

Of her soft smile, she spake:

"Turn thee, and list. These eyes are not thy only Paradise."

~ Dante's Paradiso, Canto XVIII

"Charming, isn't he?"

He casts a disgusted scowl across the unappetizing form of Lord Vader, such of him as was not demolished while taking on an entire city of rebelling Wookiees singlehanded. As usual with Vader's ill-considered exploits, metaphor not only fails to exaggerate the facts but falls short of them. The left arm prosthetic, he's informed, was vaporized to the elbow by the planetary defense cannon that succeeded in bringing down his fighter while he was in the middle of strafing an insurgent stronghold without a single wingman or fire support from capital ships. The other three limbs, the Wookiees ripped off when they finally got their paws on him. Which, admittedly, cost them some three or four hundred warriors to do; not that this is much of a point in Lord Vader's favor, since it cost him two thousand stormtroopers and half a sector fleet to retrieve the future of the Sith Order from underneath their furry corpses. It will be weeks before his apprentice will be good for anything.

Again. Three months this year alone he's been out of commission due to avoidable battle damage, and there is still half the year to go.

Lectures, insults, sympathy, cruelty, reward, punishment—all useless. It looks like a Sith, it acts like a Sith, it even talks like a Sith. Vader repeats his vision and mantras back readily, spouts all the right responses, proclaims his hunger for power and hatred for the Jedi in terms that ought to be music to his master's ears. But there is only one thing that Vader truly, viscerally wants anymore, even if he refuses to admit it even to himself. Kashyyyk—like Abarim, like Doloi Losa, like Iraon—is not a case of daredevil heroism, however cleverly it's been spun for the public, however the troops cheer him on. It is suicide. Worse, it is suicide by proxy. The ultimate exhibition of weakness, much like the mangled form laid bare before them.

Beside him the spirit of Padmé Amidala, wafted into being a moment ago, meets his gaze levelly for several seconds. Then she drifts to the surgical table, bends over the unconscious man whom the droids are once more reassembling, and kisses his ruined face.

There are infrequent occasions—almost all of them courtesy of the late Mrs. Skywalker—when he regrets the fact that rolling one's eyes is so unsuited to the dignity of a galactic despot. "What an entertainment you are, child. I look forward to these little interludes of ours, you know."

"Yes," she says. "I do know."

And yet the little fool always comes. "I believe he may be pining after Anakin Skywalker's poor dead wife." He bares his teeth at her, savoring the pain that is now her only handmaiden. "A pity that he never has the pleasure of your company."

What tiny measure of Force sensitivity and what admittedly tremendous force of will enables her to manifest herself at all, he no longer troubles himself to wonder. She has no strength to challenge the vise of his grip on Darth Vader. Let her whine and weep as she will; that which has arisen from the wreck of Anakin Skywalker will never hear it.

But it amuses him to see her try. She will keep on trying.

"Ani…" Her insubstantial hand traces caresses around his face. "Ani. Don't give up. Don't give up…"

Her voice devolves into a murmur, some Lake Country dialect he can't quite make out, foolish affection vomiting all over Lord Vader's unfeeling unconscious husk. He settles himself back to enjoy the spectacle. Pearls before Hutts, was that the proverb? A black pearl in this case. He grins at his private witticism.

She dissolves into nothingness after awhile, no dramatic scenes of idiotic self-sacrifice like the one of three years ago…but as she leaves, he catches the faintest suggestion of a whisper.

You have not won. He is not yours. There is still good in him.

Lord Vader wakes some days later, well on the road to recovery, and giving no indication of awareness that anyone but droids and Sith Lords attended his sickbed.

It is over a year before he looks back and realizes, not entirely to his satisfaction, that his apprentice has not resorted to suicidal tactics since the counter-insurgency operation on Kashyyyk.

tbc