AUTHOR'S NOTES: Darth Sidious is even more twisted in the comics, and I absolutely hate him. His genetic and cloning experiments are truly nightmarish; I wrote this in that spirit. Can occur at any time canonically between the end of ROTS and the beginning of ANH. Please read and review! Make sure to read chapter two. This was originally one chapter but a PM suggested splitting them.
Madness renders all things into metaphors. Metaphors do not maim nor meddle as meditations on materiality might.
As with many of his Master's dealings, he remains unaware of the forces that have been set into motion until they have become nascent.
There is a fire burning. Its embers are low but bright. He feels it long before he knows it is there, smoldering like some insouciant spark, unnoticed and harmless until it bursts into an inferno. All it takes is activation energy and the fuel of his life force to make the reaction self-sustaining. By then, his fate is sealed; the initial combustion has long since taken place.
He is to let it burn, or so the Master has commanded until it has consumed or exhumed him.
It is an honor, or so he is told, to become both kindling and tinder; his hatred, his anger, the dying remnants of a blackhole that was once a supernova, the fuel with which to taint a brighter star. In its ascendance, it shall take his place amidst the cold blackness of space.
It is the will of his Master.
Like Darth Plagueis before him, Darth Sidious, too, shall play Prometheus.
And he, he, the tool, the servant, shall be the Pramant, the tool with which his Master shall create the fire. Nobody ever asks tools what they desire. Nobody ever asks them how they feel. Whether they grow sick, or sore, swollen, or saddened with their labors.
No, tools, like slaves, are only kept so long as they are useful.
He is a hearth and a sacrifice, a home for the growing conflagration, and a willing victim of his hunger. Slowly, it burns brighter and brighter; not even the gravity of a black hole can consume its light. It eats at the kindling, hungry for more, its flaming scorching the vessel that would keep it contained.
His life-force is a fragile cord, feeding that fire which the Force has conceived. His ever-cunning Master devised the assurance that to cut the cord would be to extinguish himself. Should the fire burn out, his Master promises they shall try again. And again. Until the Master has burnt the last of his timber.
And so the vessel carries on. He carries on.
Day by day, just a little more sluggish. Only a little more clumsy. Because, he is yet useful, and there is work to be done.
Until his use is at its end.
He feels it as surely as his Master sees and delights in breaking his beast of burden, his impudent war horse hobbled as its life is drained away.
Unlike Hephaestus, bound by lameness to the forge of the gods, he hates the fire, the fire that will spell his destruction. At the Master's bidding, he seeks to taint it with his anger, his hate, his darkness. But the fire. The fire does not hate him back. Instead, the tongues of its flame reach for him, caressing him. Bringing rays of light to the dead star that had heretofore done nothing but consume them.
The black hole begins to collapse upon itself, unable to contain the light it carries.
His Master is displeased.
The endothermic process is all but complete when the Pramant rallies and flees the hand of Prometheus. The fire it carries is drawn elsewhere, one flame drawn to another; it is dimmer, but still a mighty furnace. He is so tired, so weak, so expended, and yet the flame urges him to rise.
Safety. It whispers. Peace. Healing. The host can do nothing but obey.
In a barren desert on Tatooine, the two fires meet, their white heat a contrast to the black chasm of his heart. Perhaps the desert makes them burn all the brighter. Heat is light, and light is heat. The light within him blazes so brightly, it is nearly blinding. Even Obi-Wan cannot help but draw near, fear overridden with horror at the strange result of Sidious' abomination. It is burning him up, consuming him, pushing its way to the surface, glowing beneath his very flesh.
The dimmer fire of Kenobi draws near to where he has fallen and reaches out with shock, pressing his palm to the mantle, then cupping the hearthstone to feel the fury of the flames distended within. And then he understands: Vader's second Master has also set him on fire, so that a new Phoenix may be born. A new bird for Sidious' iron cage.
Without question, Kenobi caresses the flame tucked deep inside. Without a word, he brings the tired vessel into his home and gives it a place to rest.
Days pass as fulminations of lightning begin to crack the firebox, before either quite knows it, the hearth is crumbling, the flames having been so fed and so nurtured as to melt the stone that contained them. It is suffocating. Dying, just as the hearth collapses around it, snuffing it out.
No! His mind roars. The gentle flame. It cannot die. He cannot let the light be extinguished!
As a crimson blade ignites, it carves a bloody crescent through which shall slip the embers of the fire. And Obi-Wan is there to greet it, sparking it back to life.
This must be why it brought him thus. To the open air of an empty planet, and to the ignition source called Obi-Wan Kenobi. Oxidant, accelerant, it needs air, it must breathe!
The combustion is complete. And he has failed his Master. The star remains untainted. A perfect gibbous sun. Untouched by the black hole's gravity.
Oh, he has never been so glad of failure!
And as the light retreats, it grows smaller and smaller, until it shrinks and folds into the shape of new life wrapped in white blankets. And all he can do is watch and bleed.
He is in pain. Such mind-numbing pain. One would think he would be accustomed. But the light is still burning. That is all that matters.
Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan!
He is here. Obi-Wan will care for the light now that he no longer can.
In the fatal afterglow, Kenobi touches him, holds him, and speaks to him softly, the words punctuated by the crackles of the new inferno, the one that shall be free as wildfire. It is so familiar. And he is so tired. He forgets why he gave it up in the first place.
This is the end. The black hole is gone. All that is left are the glimmers of the supernova that once was Anakin Skywalker, and the light of that now familiar star, who, till now, has been naught but a glow inside his mind.
He sleeps and then awakens, cool water is held to charred lips, and he drinks it deeply, gratefully as it slakes his scorched throat. On Tattooine, it is an unthinkable generosity. How long has it been since water passed his lips? It feels so good. It feels so right. Like kerosene on a bonfire.
He is surprised to find that Obi-Wan has burned the core of him, but he burned it now with healing, rended pieces soldered together with undue care and tenderness.
The old man whispers of triplet suns rising like raiments on his skin, their rays warming his pale flesh. A new birth and an old. It is too wonderful to be true.
Then he hears them, their voices ringing in the Force.
Burn! They beg. Rage! Blaze and join our light!
For the first time since he could remember, his Master had been wrong. The fire did not burn out what was left of his star.
It has only reignited it.
END NOTES: Please review! Guest reviews always accepted, no registration required. This plot bunny has been running around in my brain for a while, and finally, I just had to get it out. For some reason, Vader has been my muse as of late. Part of a horror writing challenge.
