Star Wars 1. Chapter 1

Some of you might remember this story from several years ago. Back then, I posted it under the rather inflated title of 'Whither Wander with no Love.' I've since given it a thorough edit (which it desperately needed), taken out some of the more ridiculous lines, tidied here and there and written more. This first section stops where I stopped writing three years ago. In the next few days, I'll be posting the second part. Within a week or two, I'll post the third and final part.

The story addresses several issues. One that Anakin Skywalker's speech and behaviour in the original trilogy is significantly different from that of his younger self in the prequel trilogy. It always bothers me when I see OT Darth Vader appear out of nowhere, charactisation wise, in fics taking place directly after ROTS, without any attempt to bridge the trilogies by writing a less refined Vader. So this is my attempt to do just that.

Another one of my fanfic pet peeves is the thoughtless villainisation of Palpatine/Sidious/the Emperor. Those looking for a two dimensional Emperor should look elsewhere, because mine is human and has (gasp!) feelings.

Also, without fellow Vader and Palpatine writer Ansketil, this fic would never have reappeared, but she asked to send her the the files of this story a few months ago. Digging it back out lead me to read the old thing again, and subsequently re-evaluate its remaining potential. Thanks for that!

On a technical note, I'm using British Spelling rather than Canadian, so all those esses instead of zeds are supposed to be there. I'm also not using American spellings, so yes, all of those 'yous' are supposed to be there, too:)

Anyway, on with the show.

**SYNERGY  
**

by Ziggy Sternenstaub

_**Synergy** (from the Greek syn-ergo, συνεργός meaning working together) is the term used to describe a situation where the final outcome of a system is greater than the sum of its parts._

Darth Vader remembered very little of the time directly following his reconstruction. He only vaguely recalled waking up after his many surgeries, having succeeded in blocking out the memories of the terrible process itself altogether. His mind had more than enough to handle in retaining its sanity following his mutilation; he did not waste effort hanging on to the first horrible weeks that directly followed, a time spent floating in the disbelieving haze which surrounded the news of his wife's death at his own hand, pierced only by vague recollections of a journey over Coruscant in Palpatine's personal craft. The other man's presence, comforting even after all that had happened, had seemed to hold him up with the sheer strength of the older Sith's bald will. Neither had spoken, and in Vader's mind Padme fell again and again to the landing platform, an empty husk already being erased from his life. It was with a persistent masochistic fascination that the newest Sith Lord examined this truth during the journey, sitting still with nothing to do but think, nothing to picture but her sick shock and fear. He set himself to examining the events in even greater detail, agonising over his actions and raging at her betrayal.

The process took place in a silence broken only by an occasional mechanical beep and the disturbing, unfamiliar sound of his own breath. He looked at nothing, wished to see and hear nothing, feel nothing, but could not escape the relentless intensity of his mechanical sensors. They were dead to the purity he'd so taken for granted just days before, instead analysing and delivering more information than he had ever before been aware of. Shades of heat, depths of shadow he had never seen, complexities of scent and organic compositions he had not once in his life observed, along with precise pitches and tones of sound that demanded his attention even through his clear reluctance to give it. Nothing escape him now. Sounds or images projected in hundreds of combinations could no longer be construed as confusing or even slightly misinterpreted. He was able to determined their content and composition immediately, the information fed directly into his brain. It was an overwhelming alteration in his perception of the universe and one he was not ready to accept. He tried to sleep, but rest escaped him. Palpatine had assured him that he was still human enough to need sleep, but apparently sleep did not need him. He attempted to meditate but the Force seemed to slip away from him. It felt slimy and corrupt, avoiding his grasp and dribbling away. It was like trying to capture water in the palm of his bare hand. He was there, it was there, but there existed no means of holding on to it. Panic began to chew at him, slowly but inevitably. The question came to him then: Had he rejected the Jedi, destroyed his former comrades and killed his wife only to lose his own power? He did not know the answer and did not dare ask Palpatine. What good was an apprentice who did not have the Force? The answer to that question might well mean his death. He wondered then if he wanted to live, wanted to continue on without her, which brought Vader back to the memory of her pleading eyes, completing the circle of his thoughts. His agony returned and what was now history played out again in his mind's eye.

The end of the journey was not quick enough in coming and the only thing that Vader remembered of their return to 500 Republica was following Palpatine away from the landing platform. His vision had been fixed on the walk under his booted, foreign feet. He refused to glance at the people, the workers that were no doubt present, refused to see himself mirrored in their eyes, to witness his own monstrosity. The Jedi had been destroyed, but at the cost of his revealing his own darkness for all to see. The Sith would not rule under the guise of benevolence. The galaxy would look at both Master and Apprentice and know them to be creatures out of their own nightmares. Neither Vader nor Sidious could conceal it. Their nature was written in every hideous line of their living bodies.

The Emperor led his servant to a strange apartment and told the droids waiting there to prepare his apprentice for rest. The machines removed his armour and attached him to his new life support systems. They injected him with something then and he made no sound or move of protest, too apathetic to care. Moments later, he was asleep.

***

It was not a human voice. It was high and pure and full of heartrending pain. The words were unfamiliar, the language unknown, but Vader lay listening and it seemed to him that he could hear the story behind those soaring notes. Someone had been lost, this man had lost something more precious to him than his own life, and he would never again have this thing, never possess his heart's deepest desire. Vader's eyes attempted to produce tears, the agony of his own loss allowing him to experience a sympathy he would never have otherwise admitted to. The scar tissue forming up on his face in the aftermath of third degree burns did not allow him even this small bit of comfort and he remained prone, his bare mortal eyes fixated on the white duraplast ceiling, the unremitting glare of its too bright surface penetrating his deadened optical impressions. He wondered that he even had eyes left to him.

The singer stopped and Vader swallowed painfully, unsure whether he was glad for the sudden silence. The complicated system of wires and breathing apparatus covering his face itched and he reached up to scratch around the equipment as best he could. Cool metal met his blurry gaze, grey and inhuman. Vader observed his hand for several indifferent moments before it penetrated his fuzzy consciousness that this hand should look different, that this hand should be real. He flexed his grip and saw the metal digits respond accordingly. Vague panic began to eat at him, memories scratching at his wandering attention. Slowly, almost too slowly, Vader lay the hand back down at his side, deliberately closed his eyes and attempted to take a deep breath.

Nothing happened. His lungs remained cold and dead in his chest while the mechanical equipment continued its inexhaustible labour of breathing for him. Vader gritted his teeth to hold back an impossible moan of horror. Of course he had known what had happened, but he'd hoped, he'd hoped. . .

Very vaguely then, he felt someone approaching. This person seemed to be moving against his perceptions of the Force in the same horrid, deadened fashion that was afflicting his physical self. He likely would not have noticed the other were it not for the complete silence, his utter aloneness leaving him open enough to notice his visitor.

A hand fell gently on his forehead and he briefly flinched before he sensed the intention behind it: support and an intense desire to energise him. It felt familiar and he realised that this hand, this presence, had breathed life into him before, when he'd had none of his own. Without this hand, he'd be dead.

Vader glimpsed the bare of a plain black robe before Palpatine seated himself beside Vader's prone body. The younger Dark Lord shifted his gaze to the other man's face.

"Lord Vader, I felt you awaken," the old Sith said quietly. His voice sounded distorted and distant. With Vader's damaged eyes preventing him from seeing the man properly, it almost seemed to the younger Sith as though this were the benign Chancellor Palpatine, rather than the ambitious Darth Sidious. He wondered what the different was, but felt that on some fundamental level that there was one: a gaping divide spanned by a treachery that his wounded mind could not begin to comprehend.

"Yes," Vader finally attempted, feeling that some response was required, but shocked when no sound beyond a painful, dry rasp was able to escape his branded vocal cords. _I heard singing..._

"Do not attempt to speak, Lord Vader. I have been assured that, with time, you will regain some unassisted use of your voice, but for now restrict yourself to the vocoder, when you have the use of it. As for the rest of you, your sight and hearing have both maintained some noteworthy damage, as I'm sure you've noticed by now, and scent and taste functions appear to have been utterly destroyed."

Vader blinked to show that he understood while sudden frustration and horror overwhelmed him as he realised the depth of his unexpected predicament. His health was destroyed. His body had been shattered like a broken droid and in turn had been repaired as a droid would have been.

_Am I any better than that pathetic creature Grevious now? Am I even human any more? Am I a man at all? _The thought was a mental face full of cold water.

"Do not trouble yourself at this moment, Lord Vader. You will be given time to recover and come to terms with your new circumstances," Palpatine assured him in a functional tone.

Vader blinked again, unable to escape his furiously pursuing fears: the Dragon reborn, or perhaps its offspring-- the next generation of Anakin Skywalker's terrors.

"I will inform the droids to dress you now. You are to be instructed in the functions of your life support systems, both during rest and mobility. I am sure that you, my apprentice, with your technical talents, will have no trouble."

A small and painful smile crept over Vader's once sensual lips. His technical expertise. What he'd once used to modify and maintain everything from droids, ships, and fighters to the enormous tea brewer in the Jedi Temple kitchens, he would now use to maintain himself. The newly named Dark Lord had enough self awareness to be painfully attentive of the irony. If Palpatine were similarly aware, however, he said nothing on the subject. The older man stood and left the room. Moments later, the droids entered, their cold silver forms gleaming monstrously in the sunlight creeping in from a window just beyond Vader's range of perception. The Dark Lord suddenly longed to creep back, to reject them. The Force would help him, but the last time that he'd to actively use the Force, upon waking on Mustafar, it had seemed so distant, had seemed to completely reject him. He didn't dare try it again now for risk of confirming his deepest remaining fear: that his gift, his talent, the thing that made him special, was gone. So he did nothing, merely allowing the GH-7 droids to close in on him.

They replaced the jump-suit first, smooth cushioned padding and broken black on the outside, a mass of wiring on the inside. It took exactly ten minutes and thirty six seconds to connect the breathing apparatus to the chest plate controls. He watched the clock on the wall until they gave him his gauntlets and boots: unbroken leather which covered his durasteel hands and feet. The boots were lined with thick padding and he wore two pairs of socks, so that his footwear didn't fall off the bare artificial outline of human legs which now carried him. Last of all came the armour on his shoulders, an immense weight under which he was uncertain he would be able to walk, much less do battle in. His entire body felt like a stone mass, a thousand times more immense than anything he'd ever carried. Vader remained still throughout the process, feeling keenly the loss of his human mobility.

At last the droid in front of him held up the mask, and for the first time the Dark Lord saw his new face. It was black, gruesome, resembling nothing less than a human skull. In that initial moment, he was disturbed and slightly contemptuous, but there was a strange appeal to the thing which quickly occurred to his addled consciousness. It was utterly impersonal, that face, immobile and cold. There was no passion there, none of the fear, rage or even hatred which had overtaken his heart and lead him to the Dark Side of the Force. It was, he supposed, more a work of art than anything, an iron casting capable of turning the Dragon of fear which had so long haunted him onto his victims. While they trembled he would be safe inside, cold and untouched. Perhaps, he thought, his personal prison need not be quite as uncomfortable as it threatened to be. But Vader almost changed his mind as the droid, having finished hooking the thing up to the breathing apparatus wiring up from under the neck guard of his armour, lifted the mask up over his face The helmet came down from behind after it, both pieces fitting together with a hiss.

"Lord Vader, we are finished," the lead GH-7 informed him.

Vader inclined his head heavily, feeling the pull of the armour at his neck weighing him down and forcing him to concentrate far more than usual on executing his movements smoothly and gracefully.

"I will explain to you the systems of your personal equipment, Lord Vader, as well as the limited functions which you will be able to regulate for yourself, as I'm informed that you're considered to be an "independent" man." If it were possible for a droid to sound disapproving, this one had managed it. Apparently, independence was not a desirable quality in a mechanically supplemented cripple.

Vader gave no thanks but remained silent as the droid explained the process he'd just undergone, stopping now and then to ask if Vader had questions. The new Dark Lord did not. While not a medical professional, he was a trained mechanic and highly gifted amateur engineer with an intuitive understanding of machines. The workings of his life support system were hardly a mystery to him and he had no doubt that he would be able to effectively put himself together the next time.

". . .and your bed, Lord Vader, functions similarly, though the technology which augments your damaged senses has not been included, as humans do not make extensive use of their perceptive functions during the regenerative rest period. Your breathing is merely regulated and your life systems monitored. Of course, should you desire the extra enhancement for comfort or security, the systems can always be upgraded."

The droids provided Vader with a brief tour of his complicated sleeping arrangements before he curtly dismissed them. The GH-7 team turned to depart without complaint, mentioning only that they were at his personal disposal should he at any time require assistance.

"Very well," Vader nodded with haughty dignity. He watched the last medical droid disappear out the door.

And then—

"Wait! What do I get to eat?!"

**

Vader eyed the nutrient shot warily. He had the option of either receiving in through a feed drip in his life support system or injecting it directly into his body. Considering that he had very little of either his arms or his legs left to him, Vader suspected that his stomach would be the most viable target for that long, slender length of sterilised metal. Better make it midnight snacks while he snoozed, then, Vader grimaced. It looked as though any future trips to Dex's Diner could be indefinitely crossed out of his appointment book.

He would have put the nutrients back down with a resigned sigh, but even that token gesture of exasperation was denied him by the steady, rhythmic cycles of his respirator. Instead, he merely gave the object back to the silent GH-7 and pushed out of the mass of equipment that temporarily served as his bedroom. It was time to explore his new surroundings.

The fog of confusion in which he had been existing was slowly lifting and Vader was regaining his need for action. He emerged from the bedroom into a cool blue apartment with an enormous viewing balcony. The Senate was clear from where he stood, along with the charred pit containing the remains of the Jedi Temple. Vader observed his former home expressionlessly, unsure of what he should be feeling. A week ago, it had all been so simple-- perhaps too simple. The Jedi had committed treason and personally betrayed him. His counterattack had been merciless and inevitable. Now. . .

He did not quite wish to take it back, but he was beset by the oddest suspicion that, had his own actions been less irretrievable, he would perhaps at this very moment be offering shamefaced apologies to Obi-Wan for losing his temper. The apologies would be answered with a wry smile and a long suffering expression before a large hand clapped on Anakin's shoulder and Obi-Wan invited his former best friend out for a drink. Anakin losing his temper in a moment of passion was hardly an uncommon occurrence. Anakin himself had never thought much of it, as ever hearing the words of Palpatine and Padme so much more clearly than the obviously paranoid warnings of the Jedi Council.

_It's human to be angry. . ._

_Anger leads to the Dark Side. _

Confusion blurred Vader's thought once more, but not enough that he could not pinpoint where they were. 500 Republica's luxurious senatorial apartments: the very same buildings that Palpatine had once offered to hand Anakin on a golden platter, a lifetime ago.

Were they still to be his? A pretty prize for damaged goods?

The Dark Lord noticed the sparseness of the apartments as he explored further: a kitchen with no food in it, a sitting room with no furniture outside of a communications centre and a droid closet, and two extra rooms with no apparent functions. The suites were enormous, as was to be expected, but lifeless. Then there was the toilet, the thought of which Vader had so far managed to avoid. He hadn't yet asked the droids about his more precise bodily functions, but now that he was taking his nutrition directly through his bloodstream, the toilet had undoubtedly become an obsolete location. The last room was the bath, an equally puzzling challenge. How would he wash himself now? He had always kept his artificial arm carefully wrapped and free of water during bathing, for fear of rust, and now all of his limbs were mechanical. How would he manage? Was there some way to completely isolate them from water, or would he merely be confined to washing himself by hand? Even so, his mechanical limbs would require special attention. The droids would be required to tend to their upkeep. Oiling, polishing, tinkering. . . Even being a mechanic himself, there was no way he could reach the little nuances of the limbs while they were connected to his own body. Even a Jedi was not that flexible.

With one black leather glove, Vader dusted the golden surface of the bath lovingly. Never again would he merely soak in warm water, luxuriating in the pleasure and sensation of the experience. Even attempting to take that plunge into the tub would have been idiocy now. His mere clothing had become a three act melodrama, its removal anything but spontaneous. With not a small amount of bitterness, Vader left the bath and slammed the door behind him. The heavily reinforced frame did not even shudder slightly. Vader's restless, caged stride took him back to the balcony, where he lay a careful hand on the dura-plast window, glaring futilely at nothing. He had not been one to indulge in baths very often, his energy and restlessness preferring the quick satisfaction of a shower, but now that the option was denied him he longed for nothing more than to strip down and plunge into the tub. Obi-Wan would no doubt tell him that it was his rebellious streak, chaffing against Destiny once more. No doubt Obi-Wan would even have managed to make a more efficient and accepting dehumanised cyborg than that made by one Anakin Skywalker.

"Are the apartments to your satisfaction?"

Vader tensed, shocked that he had been caught unaware of another's presence. He hoped his surprise had not been too readily apparent. For only one person to know of his dulled senses was for his life to be threatened. Slowly, he turned to face his visitor.

It was Sate Pestage, appearing officious and prim in his civil servant's robes. He observed Vader with a combination of curiosity and puzzlement present only in his eyes. His bland face was far too well schooled to reveal any emotion beyond practised politeness.

"The apartments are. . .adequate," Vader responded. His search for a neutral word lent an unusual formality to his speech while the cycles of the respirator forced him to speak more slowly than he was accustomed to.

Pestage gave the smallest of smiles. "Is there anything that you require?"

"No," Vader responded flatly.

Pestage smiled once more. "I am relieved by your survival, Jedi Skywalker. The Emperor was considerably worried on your behalf."

Vader froze. Pestage knew who he was! Had Palpatine told him? Vader could not recall his birth name having passed Palpatine's lips even once since he had become Sith. Why would he have said anything to Pestage? Or was his title of Dark Lord and his Sith name to remain as secret as Palpatine's own? Darth Sidious, who was so cunning that his triumph as the Sith Master who had destroyed the Jedi was to be concealed from the galaxy. Palpatine's modest nature had not been entirely feigned, Vader deduced, but was instead a necessary component of his cleverness. So why had he not remained silent this time? Why did the Emperor's assistant now know who it was standing before him?

Pestage's facial expression remained officious, blankly polite, but after a lifetime of being surrounded by the essentially unreadable faces of the Jedi brotherhood, Vader readily recognised a mask when he saw one. There was something else hidden underneath that blandness. Did Pestage think he'd scored a point because he knew of Vader's past?

Vader turned his back on the man. It was perhaps a foolish move, but Pestage still wouldn't dare physically threaten him. There were other means to inflicting damage, but Vader had never paid any mind to petty political manoeuvres and underhanded power struggles and did not intend to start now.

Very distantly he sensed Pestage's perturbed expression. Of course, the man had not appreciated the contempt inherent in Vader's pose.

_Tough luck, _the Dark Lord thought with a certain malicious, deliberately childish satisfaction.

After several moments, Vader's outward stillness and absolute lack of movement left Pestage awkwardly, uncertainly shuffling about before the aide left out a long, frustrated sigh.

"Well, if you require anything, please inform staff over the com."

Vader remained silent.

". . .Lord Vader," Pestage added grudgingly.

"Thank you," Vader replied at last.

Pestage flounced out indignantly.

_See: give a little, get a little_, Vader thought smugly.

**

Vader opened the balcony doors and stepped out into the alcoved platform. He was high enough up that the winds could be dangerous, but a quick glance at the electronic weather monitor attached to the window pane assured him that they were reasonable enough today to risk a quick step outside. The Dark Lord's first observation was that he felt nothing at all. The fresh air did not touch him; the winds were indifferent to his presence. For all the effect that the change of location had had on him, he might as well have been a ghost. The wind swept dust about the balcony restlessly until it finally caught his long cloak, playing into its deep folds, picking it up and then tossing it back against Vader's armoured shoulders. The Dark Lord's stoicism remained unbroken and he gripped the balcony rails. He increasingly began to feel that the hold was physically necessary as exhaustion made itself increasingly known. The muscles of his thighs clenched painfully and the areas where the flesh of his legs joined the mechanical prostheses were all but screaming at him to sit down after his brief foray into exercise whilst exploring the apartment. His need to rest was quickly approached the level of desperation, but his hands remained firmly on the railing. Shuttles flew past on quiet errands, their inhabitants oblivious to the watching Dark Lord. He did not wonder who they were or where they had come from. These things did not concern him, but their apparent freedom did. He wished to fly, to spin and turn in space and forget. Pilots wore flight suits which weren't quite so different from what he wore now.

Vader's shoulders tensed quite visibly as the haunting music he'd heard on waking reached his aural sensors. The voice came from behind him, in the apartment. It was reasonable enough that it was a recording; Vader had never thought himself capable of subconsciously composing such glorious melodies, nor of conjuring that ethereal voice. He let go of the rail, the music intriguing enough to drag him away from his aimless watch. Long strides took him back inside the apartment where he followed the melody down the hallway and into the salon. There it stopped. Vader paused in confusion just as Palpatine emerged from the kitchen with a small cup in his hand. Grimacing thoughtfully, the Emperor took a sip of the steaming liquid inside while Vader's mechanics analysed the contents from a distance: Nubian Sea-herb Tea, with a hint of sweetener.

"My-master," Vader stumbled over the title, not yet completely used to that short word passing over his lips in the former Chancellor's presence.

"Lord Vader. I see you've managed to dress yourself."

"It's a skill I mastered sometime after learning how to speak," Vader reiterated with some sarcasm.

"I imagine you'll be relearning both now." Palpatine was never without a clever reply and Vader merely grunted in return.

"I would offer you some tea, but I imagine that would prove just as difficult as your attire." The Emperor grinned shortly, baring the wretched stumps of his front teeth in what seemed like bitter contempt. The cyborg's fists clenched helplessly at the mockery, but he did not dare make the reply he wished to: a swift blow to those rotten fangs with his inhumanly strong fist. Palpatine's smile deepened into something entirely sly as he soaked in his apprentice's helpless rage. Slowly, he approached Vader, closing the distance until he stood in the younger man's towering shadow.

"You are a sight to behold," Palpatine whispered sibilantly. "Inhuman. Monstrous."

He paused.

"Magnificent."

His hands drew up to Vader's armoured shoulders, clutching at the black plexisteel with a possessiveness that sent chills down the former Jedi's spine. A hair's breath of light shone between them, a light which was slowly smothered as the Emperor closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, claiming all of the scents Vader could not smell. The younger man's arms dangled at his sides and he felt curiously removed and unsure of what to do, fearing to make even the slightest movement. He suddenly did not know this small man who commanded his very soul.

The grip on his shoulder's tightened briefly before Palpatine stepped abruptly back. "But you have much to learn," he continued briskly, as though his bizarre and smothering embrace had never occurred. "Your duties will be made more difficult by your injuries. I demand, for me and for yourself, that you learn to manipulate your new body as swiftly as possibly. I am not," he continued briskly, "a health care professional; therefore, I have invited a small group of Coruscant's top physical therapists to consult with you and develop a personal training programme. They are the best this Empire has to offer, my Lord, and you will co-operate with them."

A distinctive bell sounded and Palpatine smiled pleasantly. "Ah, that should be our guests now." He removed a com-link from the depths of his voluminous black robes and spoke briefly. "Let them it."

"Yes, Your Majesty," the unseen Red Guard responded.

A second chime sounded and the Emperor handed Vader his cup before heading towards the main hallway.

"Come with me, my apprentice."

Weary and somewhat bemused, Vader followed.

A small group of four officious beings took up the doorway. They bowed to the Emperor before turning their eyes to Vader, studying him with a professional interest that made the young warrior acutely uncomfortable.

"Your Majesty. This is the patient?" asked a tall, imperious looking, older human male.

"It is," the Emperor agreed mildly.

Vader's hands tightened slightly on the cup, abruptly indignant at being relegated to an "it."

"I was made to be aware that he could not eat or drink," the human frowned, eyeing the cup.

The Emperor laughed hoarsely. "General Skywalker was merely so kind as to hold my cup."

Abruptly, the tea cup shattered. Glass fired lace-thin by Alderaani sand smiths (spun and re-spun by hand for weeks on end and then treated with natural dyes until it shone deepest black and purest silver) spilled all over the carpet, scattering almost silently and glittering like so many fallen stars. Vader watched it happen, transfixed by this small devastation at his feet. The accident went seemingly unnoticed by everyone else in the room and Vader's respirator compensated automatically for his slightly panicked, increased need for oxygen.

"Whoever it was that did it to him must have been quite the fighter," a Rodian woman noted from behind the human. "Up until recently, I didn't even know that it was possible for a Jedi to be so terribly wounded."

"You're mistaken," the Emperor corrected her softly. "Anakin Skywalker is no longer a Jedi Knight. He saw the error of his former loyalties and has assisted the Empire in the elimination of his treacherous brethren."

Vader was sure that he was behaving like the droid that he now so thoroughly resembled: standing still and awaiting his instructions. He wanted to say something but could not find the words. The chorus of "yes your majestys" from the therapists he registered disinterestedly even as he felt Palpatine's smile. From past experience, he knew that the smile would be gracious, wise and reassuring. From recent experience, he knew that it would appear perverse and grotesque on the Emperor's mutilated face.

"Please, let us sit in the salon," Palpatine offered gently. The group murmured its honoured assent and followed the ruler. Absently, Vader felt in step behind them.

"I am afraid General Skywalker has had little time for furnishing his new quarters," Palpatine advised their company after reaching the empty salon. "He only just arrived last night."

"Understandable, Your Majesty," the human offered soothingly.

"I have the Red Guard arranging a few chairs for us at the moment," Palpatine continued and spoke once again briefly into his com link, advising the guards to enter when sufficiently furniture-equipped.

"If we may introduce ourselves, Your Majesty?" the human asked. At Palpatine's acquiesce the man turned to the previous non-entity that was Darth Vader.

"I'm Lucius Farstride, General Skywalker. I'll be your prosthetics advisor. I will be teaching you to adjust to your new limbs, as well as instructing you in any difficulties you may encounter and preparing you for them."

Vader managed a brief bow of his head when the man offered his hand. Jedi did not shake hands; they demonstrated their honour with grace and distance. And while he had perhaps never been the perfect Jedi, Vader did not see fit to play friendly with a man who was sizing him up as though he were a third rate droid off the back of a Jawa transport.

"Poogba Grazatha," the Rodian woman introduced herself enthusiastically. "I've heard so much about you, General Skywalker!" She immediately offered her hand and again Vader declined. Her green pebbly skin flushed noticeably and she laughed with recognition of her faux pas. "That's right, it's not a custom of the Jedi—" A quick glance at the Emperor and she stopped, shrugging apologetically at her second error. "Er, I'll be dealing with your prosthetics as well, General Skywalker, but not with the technical functions. I'm mostly here to make sure that your body doesn't reject the implants."

Vader acknowledged the information and the next creature pushed forward for the Dark Lord's attention. This one was a critical looking Bothan in his middle years who regarded Vader searchingly with relentless eyes that sought to peel back the layers of Vader's protection and examine the damaged flesh inside.

"Gefya Zot-Kam," the Bothan introduced himself nasally. "I'll be guiding you through extensive burn therapies. With any help, we may be able to reverse much of the inevitable scarring that results from third degree burns."

Vader's right fist clenched under his cloak, but he managed to nod a third time.

"And I am Xanadu Ship," a pale red Twi-lek declared. "You are a great warrior, General Skywalker, but your body has experienced enormous trauma. I will be teaching to walk again, to move again, to sleep and to breath again and hopefully to fight again. We will hope for the best."

He did not offer his hand and Vader's nod was more a vague tip of his helmet as the Red Guard entered with chairs and arranged them in a perfect circle. Palpatine sat first and motioned his apprentice to the chair at his right side. Vader sat resignedly and noted the steadying hand on his shoulder with detachment.

General Skywalker.

Anakin Skywalker.

_Skywalker. . . _

His deadened eyes observed Palpatine with incredulity. His earlier suspicion, a suspicion that he had dismissed immediately, was true. Palpatine had every intention of forcing him to retain his birth name. It was the name of a weak and foolish man who had destroyed his own existence. How did the Emperor expect him to function at all if he were confronted every day with the six bitter syllables of his own monumental failure?

"…information was scarce at best. The bare minimum of the damage inflicted and the first measures taken were included, but we will need a full report of the injuries and operations in order to properly complete our task."

The arrogant human voice drew Vader's attention back to the discussion. Lucius Farstride was scanning through a datapad with a dissatisfied expression and not a small bit of frustration while his colleagues shifted in agreement.

"There was little more that I could include at the time," the Emperor responded. "I only arrived on the scene after the damage was inflicted and I sought contact while the droids were still in surgery. I wanted to be absolutely sure of your timely arrivals."

"I think we'll have to interview the droids later as well, then, but for now I think it best to ask General Skywalker for his own account, if he was the only one present at the time."

"Other than his attacker," the Emperor added.

"And him, of course, Your Majesty, but he's not here to give a blow by blow account."

Vader frowned at the man's tone and felt the distant sensation of the Emperor's anger, which Palpatine suppressed. Vader wondered why the Sith Lord was exercising so much restraint.

"General Skywalker, if you would be so kind as to oblige the man," the Emperor ordered under the guise of a polite request.

Vader held his tongue for a moment longer, considering his response carefully. He had no desire to relate the details of the most traumatic day of his life and had to consider what the relevant information was. The Rodian, Poogba Grazatha, smiled encouragingly and unwittingly echoed his own deliberations. "There's no need to tell us everything. Just the physically relevant information will do."

Vader nodded haltingly and cursed himself for his inadvertent shyness. He must have appeared ridiculously uncertain if he was bringing out the motherly instincts of an alien prosthetics specialist.

"I was on Mustaphar; a volcanic planet. I was there to finish off some business of the state but an…an old friend followed me there. She—" He stopped and steeled himself. Something strange and warm touched his scattered thoughts and with a vague sense of wonder he realised that it was the Emperor, sending him comfort and support. He started again. "She said she wanted to make sure that I was all right, but she'd secretly smuggled a Jedi Master with her on her ship. He wanted revenge for the Order and I was under orders to eliminate any Jedi I encountered. Of course it came to a duel. I was certain of winning, but he gained the high ground and I couldn't let him escape, so I used the Force to propel myself over him; unfortunately, I underestimated the height and distance I needed to jump to avoid his blade. He used an old technique, a twist of his sabre, and got in three cuts before I fell. He amputated both of my legs above the knees and my left arm as well. Fortunately, I still had my right prosthetic arm, because I fell back down the hill towards the lava. I managed to scrape into the gravel and so didn't fall into the river. The air was so hot there, though, horribly hot. I burst into flames and breathed in the smoke and fire. It burned my eyes and went in my nose and it was all that I could hear or see and Obi-Wan left me there. He picked up my sabre and just walked away without a mark on him, and I sacrificed myself for nothing. He deserved to die and I was the one who lost everything that it means to live!"

His voice reached the closest thing the vocoder could approximate to a shout as a choir of pain and rage sang vengeful melodies in his head. A clawed hand applied pressure on his upper arm where

feeling still meant something, even if it was only pain, and Vader fell abruptly still.

"Obi-Wan?" Grazatha asked in a very small voice. "General Obi-Wan Kenobi did this to you?"

Like so many millions, the Rodian had obviously followed the drama of the Jedi Dream Team on the Holo, Vader realised.

"He's a Jedi," the new Sith Lord responded flatly. "His name no longer matters. He no longer has one."

Grazatha sat back in her chair, obviously shaken, and shook her head. Whether it was in disagreement or sadness, Vader did not bother to ascertain.

"So—multiple amputations, scarred lungs, reduced sensory perception and massive third degree burns," Lucius Farstride noted dispassionately while comparing his statement with the information in his datapad. "I take it you don't have that pretty blond hair anymore, either?"

Vader perceived the truth then like a buzzing, petty insect just beyond his reach. The man was jealous of Anakin Skywalker, of everything that he had been and had had. He was jealous of his good looks and brilliant piloting skills and sharp technical understanding, of his instinctive tactical genius and of his skill with a blade. Equal parts cynicism and reality made the man's envy ridiculous, because there was nothing left to be jealous of. Even Anakin's tactical sense had deserted him in the heat of his passion, and pretty blond curls had not saved him from his Jedi brother's blade.

"That information, at least, has not escaped you," Vader retorted in a viciously sarcastic rumble he was sure would have done Obi-Wan proud. Luckily for everyone, the Jedi Master himself was not there, but the Emperor appeared to appreciate it just as much. Palpatine's surprised but pleased laugh emerged after a slight pause and the hand returned to Vader's upper arm for a brief but happy pat.

"Neither has the fact that you're a human wreck, General," Farstride retorted. "It's a good thing you have powerful friends, because no one else would have bothered to put you back together again after the damage you took. There's practically nothing left of you, and I don't see how you can be of much use to anyone now, much less an asset to the Republic."

"To the Empire," Palpatine interjected in a voice that clearly warned the man not to push his luck. "And I spent a great deal of money having him put back together, so you had all better make sure that the pieces are in working order."

Vader pushed out of his chair, not bothering to wait for Farstride's response. He couldn't stay a moment longer. "You don't need me here. Talk to the droids for whatever info you need and let me know when my first appointment is."

"Anakin!" Palpatine's rebuking voice chased him out of the salon and down the hallway but the Emperor did not appear in his wake. Vader didn't care. He stalked down the corridor until he reached his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. Like the bathroom, it didn't register his violence.

_I haven't shut myself up in my room since I was thirteen and Obi-Wan caught me trying to sneak off to watch the drag races in the lower levels. He set me to meditating on the error of my ways for a week. I wonder what kind of punishment a Sith Master hands out to a naughty apprentice?_

It occurred to Vader that Palpatine was probably intending to demonstrate whatever that punishment might be to his own naughty apprentice in fairly short order, but rage and a powerful, apathetic depression made the suspicion irrelevant. Vader could wait for Palpatine to come to him and then he would have a few things to say to the elder Sith Lord that he certain that the man didn't want to hear. Darth Sidious, Vader thought smugly, should have spent a few days in practical observation of Anakin Skywalker's Jedi training rather than just waiting on the sidelines with a friendly shoulder to complain on if Palpatine thought that having him as an apprentice was going to be easy.

Vader sat down on the tangle of wires and equipment that masqueraded as his bed and started to wait.

**

He did not have to wait long.

Vader shifted in his cross-legged mediation pose, his muscles made all the more uncomfortable and cramped. Despite his valiant attempt to demonstrate something like Palpatine's own terrible capacity for patience, anxiety and uneasiness troubled his stomach and forced their way up into his throat while the unfamiliar threat of the former Chancellor's anger played havoc with Vader's imagination. He felt as though he were adrift in space, sitting in a broken craft with no hope of rescue, wondering whether he'd run out of air or die of thirst first. Though Vader had never feared his own death, resilient self-preservation screamed that defying the Sith Master had not been the wisest course of action. He didn't seem to be making many wise decisions lately. A foreign urge pushed at him to find his master and offer sincere repentance before retribution was meted out.

The door edged ominously open and Vader knew that his chance to grovel had already passed. He clenched his gloves under the black cloak draped in his lap and knew that had his hands been human, his palms would have been sweating. He also knew that he should drop down to his knees as his new master crossed the wide expanse of the floor, but could not overcome the instinctive defiance that tainted his fear. The urge to push his limits was as old as his memory of punishment. His head bowed over his lap and Vader waited until Palpatine stopped at the bedside.

"My apprentice." When the voice came, Vader was surprised. It was neither cold nor angry, merely two flat and expressionless words. Uneasily, the younger man shifted on the bed.

"I feel your uncertainty, your doubt. You recognise your error but are unprepared to admit it in words. You wish to make amends, but remain defiant."

Vader was not surprised by these penetrating observations. This man had always known exactly what he was feeling and why he was feeling it. To Palpatine, Anakin Skywalker had been as transparent as glass.

"Shall I tell you a story, Lord Vader?" Palpatine lifted his eyebrows questioningly and waited patiently for an answer. Vader hesitated, knowing there was some trick to the question, but eager both for the caress for the Emperor's skilled tongue over so many syllables, and the mastery of his unexpected silences.

" . .okay."

"Mmm. Each Sith is a unique creature whose personality and abilities are characterised by the most telling of his possessions: his name. For a Sith, a name is a quality to be earned, a mark of Darkness. You, Lord Vader, earned your name not by one deed, but over many years in which you allowed the darkness to eat at your heart. You did not hesitate to let the darkness grow, because passion is the greatest part of you and power is so terribly useful. In fact, Lord Vader, a Sith's name is not chosen by his Master alone, because even a Sith Master is mortal, biased and vulnerable. Instead, in the moment of that naming, the master asks the Force itself what the pupil has earned. When you knelt before me in my office, dripping with rain and tears, I asked the Force who you were, and the Force answered. It is the way it was done in my youth, the way it has always been. "

Palpatine stopped, drew breath, and continued.

"During my own learning time, my master sometimes ordered me to eliminate his enemies. These were tasks I completed with caution. Poision, seduction, the act of stopping a man's heart in his very chest with only the smallest shift of the Force: these were my tools. Even before the Force gave me my new name, it was already clear what it would be. I was proud to be called Sidious, my apprentice, but it is a great irony that I longed for recognition of the talents that must by their very nature remain hidden, and after I earned the right to call myself a Lord of the Sith, I grew foolish. I was young, only two years older than yourself, and considered myself to be above the absolute obedience that my Master demanded. I grew insolent, and Darth Plagueis did not hesitate to put me in my place. You do remember what this is?" Palpatine held his hand out and small veins of electricity met in the air above his palm. The net of lightning crackled dangerously and swiftly grew into an enormous snake of energy that sought out Palpatine's other hand. The Sith Lord tossed the white light back and forth with the concentrated ease of a seasoned juggler.

"This is Dark Lightning, a concentration of pain and aggression of which no true Jedi would ever allow himself to make use. Its sole purpose is to torment, to deliver slow awareness of death to a victim who is a full participant in the vampiric draining of his life's own energies."

Palpatine let a nostalgic smile spread over his lips as he sat down by Vader on the bed, still playing with the lightning. "My master," he continued, "taught me how to use this lighting two weeks after I became Darth Sidious. He taught it to me, not as a reward, but as a punishment for my disrespect. He pummeled my body with intangible agony until I was able to repel his lightning and throw it back at him. I succeeded, but I spent the next two weeks in the care of our medical droids as a direct result of that lesson. "

The lightning dispersed and Palpatine slowly laid a long white hand on the left cheek of Vader's mask. "My Lord, this is a lesson that I will never teach you, and it is an ability that you will never possess. Your life support systems are sustained by internal power supplies which the lightning would instantly short circuit. This lesson, should I ever need to teach it to you, would mean your death."

The hand slowly stroked the cheek of Vader's mask and a small blue spark danced on Palpatine's fingertip. The smell of burning plastisteel invaded the younger Sith's sensors before the Emperor pulled back.

"You're a clever boy, Lord Vader. I trust I won't need to repeat this story? "

"No, my Master," Vader answered automatically, though some part of him still drew back in pain at what seemed like yet another a betrayal.

"Now, tell me why you left the salon. "

"You know why! " Vader exploded.

Palpatine blinked in disbelief and lifted a slow eyebrow. "I do? "

"Of course you do. How could you let them call me that name? How could you call me that? "

Blank confusion swam in the Emperor's yellow eyes. "I think you're a little old to worry about schoolyard monikers, Lord Vader, but in all honesty, they didn't 'call' you anything."

A frustrated sound escaped Vader's throat and the respirator croaked oddly in response. "They called me Anakin Skywalker, sir! "

If Vader was expecting sudden comprehension to dawn on Palpatine, he was disappointed. "Yes, they did, Lord Vader, because it's your name. Is there a problem with that? "

Equal parts anger and confusion warred inside of Vader turned his words into an ugly growl. „It isn't my name. It's the name of the man that came before me, but it's not my name and I won't answer to it. I won't have them looking at me and expecting a Jedi. I can't bear to see it in their eyes, the thought that they think they already know who I am. Don't you understand, Master? If that's my name, then it was me that killed her!"

Palpatine leaned back against the far wal and let out a low, amazed chuckle as his expression slowly slid from confusion to incredulity. „Ah, Lord Vader, I don't think I've ever heard of a Sith Lord who took his naming quite as seriously as you seem to have done. It is an important ritual, a mark of passage and a sign of power, but the Sith work in secrecy. We certainly didn't survice 2000 years in a galaxy riddled with Jedi by announcing „I am the Sith Lord!" to all and sundry."

"I understand that, Master, but the Jedi aren't in power any more. Why keep it a secret now?"

Palpatine shook his head and smiled condescendingly. "You have much to learn of politics, my apprentice. Do you think that this newly forged Empire would not rise up in revolt were it to learn that it is being ruled by the Sith, the villains of every bedtime story their mothers ever told them, the evil overlords of every Jedi fairytale? No, it is too early for that."

"I didn't think you cared what the people think any more," Vader retorted.

"My personal cares are irrelevant, my Lord. I am merely a cautious man. It is patience and caution, after all, which got me where I am today. I will not invite this Empire to initiate greater rebellion than certain disruptive parties are certain to already be planning. It would merely add fuel to the fire, if you'll excuse the expression. And so, Anakin Skywalker you were and Anakin Skywalker you will remain."

Vader sprung to his feet quite before he realised it, hands held pleadingly and cloak swirling frantically about his high black boots. Desperation clawed at him as he searched the Emperor's face for some sign of understanding or mercy, but Palpatine's features remained an expressionless mask that revealed nothing.

"Master, please! I cannot do your work; I can't do anything if I'm called that name. I need to be someone else. I've been me all of my life and it's never helped me at all. I was so relieved to become someone else and now you've taken that away from me too! "

Something like pity briefly surfaced in Palpatine's eyes before it vanished. "I am sorry, Lord Vader. It is simply too much of a risk."

Vader suppressed a scream and cradled his head in his hands. It was all he could do to stop himself from putting those hands around the Emperor's throat. It would be so easy to do it, to simply squeeze and wait for the Emperor to call his terrible lightning. Perhaps they would both die and this nightmare would end. He took a step forward and slow murder filled his brain with crimson anticipation. Palpatine's eyes narrowed and darkened as the man sensed danger, but Vader did not care.

"Lord Vader?" Palpatine grated. "Stay where you are."

Vader took another slow step forward and then the door chimed behind him. A GH-7 med-droid stepped in.

"I am very sorry to disturb you, masters, but Dr. Grazatha is most anxious to speak with you, Your Majesty. She has made several complaints regarding General Skywalker's—„

Grazatha burst in behind the droid and her anger slammed into Vader's dulled perceptions like a blunt axe on wet wood.

"What is the meaning of this?" Her thin arm waved an indistinguishable datapad about in the air with wild force. "17 centimetres! 17! It's absolutely outrageous, Your Majesty. Who authorised this?!"

Palpatine stood up from the bed, adjusting his robes as he brushed past Vader with a wary expression. Vader swallowed the lump in his throat, made of equal parts disappointment and relief.

"I'm afraid I don't quite know what you're referring to, my dear. If you would calm down, I'm sure we can settle the matter quite simply." Palpatine's left hand went to the specialist's shoulder, steering her out of Vader's room and down the hallway while his other hand gestured Vader to follow them. Both Vader's legs and head felt infinitely heavy as he obeyed.

"It's absolutely irresponsible, Your Majesty: the measurements that were taken for General Skywalker's prosthetic replacements. His legs are a full 17 centimetres longer than his original organic limbs. Do you have any idea the kind of strain that's going to put on his body? Prostheses are heavy enough as it is, but General Skywalker simply does not have the build, the sheer muscle mass required to support that kind of weight! His arms were also installed at only 5 centimetres longer than original length, which means there's a massive structural imbalance in his upper and lower body halves. The droid operations were nothing less than cruel, sir. Who authorised this?" Her green face flushed dark blue with an outrage that did not lessen as they reached the salon. Palpatine seated her in the circle next to her waiting colleagues.

"I authorised it," the Emperor stated simply.

She did not seem surprised. "But why? There's no reason for it and it will simply complicate the patient's already impossibly difficult situation. It will make his recovery far longer than it should be, as well as baring any possibility that that he may recover a Jedi's natural agility."

The Twi'lek therapist lifted his bald brow and interrupted. "That was entirely unlikely to begin with, but I must agree that the extra height and weight are foreign to General Skywalker's naturally slim body type. According to his medical files, his natural limbs were light and slender, but the mechanical thighs and calves are clearly both thicker than the originals. Whatever your reasons for the design, Your Majesty, it will not help the General."

Farstride snorted contemptuously and Vader tensed, wondering what the presumptuous man had to say.

"Of course it won't help him, but when did impracticality ever matter to Anakin Skywalker? If he can't be beautiful, why not tower over everyone? It's not as if there's anything else left to be frightened of, after all," he laughed mockingly.

"I didn't have anything to do with the design of these limbs," Vader snarled. "And I don't need to be tall to frighten anyone, Doctor. The Force is with me more strongly than with any other creature."

Farstride's contempt flickered into bemused superiority. „Was with you, General. You just lost half of your original body mass, after all. Do you really think that your midichlorian count came out of that battle unscathed?"

Ice stabbed Vader's heart with harsh shards of truth and this time he could not stop himself from fumbling out to the Force. The warm blanket of comfort and power answered only weakly, flickering in and out of his grasp and then disappearing once again. Vader's hands clenched the sides of his chair with horror as he shook his head in mindless, repetitive denial.

"No, no it's not true," he choked.

The silence in the room was a smothering blanket of reluctant pity and even Farstride's face showed a fissure of regret.

"It's not true!" Vader's voice rose and he turned desperately to his master. His fingers latched onto the Emperor's thick cloak and shook it with the urgent need of a child who hoped that his father could make all of the bad things just go away.

"Sir, please!"

The Emperor's voice emerged as a low croak that he threw at the medical professionals uncomfortably observing Vader's childlike outburst. "Leave us. My office will be with contact with all of you at a later date. "

The group crept out quietly, and the Emperor said nothing until the suite was empty of outsiders. Vader remained leaning on Palpatine's arm in a frozen tableau of agony.

"Lord Vader, look at me. "

Vader shook his head in denial, eyes firmly fixed on the sleeve of Palpatine's robe. The Emperor's left hand gently grasped hold of the corner of Vader's mask and turned his electronic gaze to the Sith Master's face.

"Look at me, Lord Vader. Do you remember when you first awoke from surgery? I told you of your wife's death and you were shaken to your deepest core. That is when you called on the Force and shook the lab in turn, but you could not call down the mountain on our heads and you could not destroy me. Death was in your heart, but the power to achieve it was no longer yours to command."

"I. . .don't remember."

"It's shock, I expect. You've protected yourself from the trauma of the surgery and its aftermath. The news of your wife's death was likely too much for you, and your mind denied you the knowledge of further pain."

Vader closed his eyes, unable to continue meeting Palpatine's stare, so full of of relentless verisimilitude. "So, it's true."

"It's true," the Emperor rasped.

Vader nodded slowly. "Why?"

"Why, Lord Vader? You tell me why it happened. You were by far more powerful than Kenobi, so why are you the one who lost his body and why is Kenobi still alive?"

_I was being stupid_, Vader thought without wanting to, but his pride would not allow him to repeat the words out loud. "No," he clarified, "Not why did it happen. Why did you save me?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because I'm useless. There's nothing left of me. I can't walk; I can't talk; I can't breathe; I can't use the Force! Why am I here? I've lost everything that ever made me worth anything. Why didn't Obi-Wan kill me? Why didn't you let me die?"

"Lord Vader—„

"How many? Do you know?" Vader demanded.

"How many what, Lord Vader?" The Emperor's voice sounded infinitely weary.

". . .how many midichlorians do I have left?"

A long pause ensued before Palpatine reached down beside him to pick up the datapad discarded by Farstride. A quick keyword later and the Emperor pressed the pad into Vader's glove. A glowing and slightly fluctuating bargraph and the highlighted number underneath invaded the younger Dark Lord's field of view.

Vader moaned and dropped the datapad.

"11, 221 midichlorians. Hardly unimpressive, Lord Vader. Certainly far more than average. Any other Jedi who had lost such body mass as you did would now most assuredly be Force Blind."

"And how many does Master Yoda have?" Vader demanded.

"14, 275," Palpatine recited from memory.

"And Dooku? How may did he have?"

"11, 981."

Vader lowered his helmet until it nearly touched his knees with shame.

"And you, my Master?" he asked softly.

"...14, 291."

Vader was silent.

"It is a very good number, my Lord," Palpatine said softly.

"It is nothing," the younger man declared furiously. „I am nothing. I've lost everything that made life worth living! Why did you save me?"

Palpatine sighed and let his hand descend in a feather-light touch on Vader's shoulder. "Because I was too selfish not to."

"I don't understand."

"I know that you don't, but the Force is not all of you, my Lord, though your gift was immense—is immense. You must understand that your spirit is a thing of enormous power, though your body has been denied the means to access it. When you die, you will regain your full might, but I could not let that happen yet. Your talents are many, Lord Vader, and your access to the Force still impressive, despite what you think. You will be a great leader. You will guide the Empire through its birth-throws with the strength of your fury and we will emerge on the other side as the rulers of something eternal. I have foreseen it."

"And if I don't want any part of it?"

"You do, Vader. You know that you do."

"No, I don't know. I don't know anything anymore, Master. I don't know what or who I am or even if I want to do on at all."

"Come closer to me, my boy," the Emperor invited. With the memory of thirteen years of accepting invitations from that kindly voice, Vader moved his chair against the Emperor's. The space between them was eaten by darkness.

"When I saw you on the black sands, you all but gone. Your mechanical hand hung onto your precarious position with all the tenacity of grim death himself, and it was with grim death that I first fought, even before the medical droids could begin with the first surgery. You were slipping away, for even all of your will to live and all of your fury could not protect you from the enormous damage to which your very mortal body had been subjected. I had a choice then, my apprentice, to be merciful and let you go to your eternal rest or to save you. The choice was clear: I am not a merciful man.

I took your soul in my very hands and hung on as desperately as you had clawed at the sands only hours before. I refused to surrender you to the powers that clamored for your soul. I defeated the Fire Dragon that came to spirit you away to the grave of the Sith Lords of old. I denied the Pheonix that would have weighed the good and the evil in your heart and judge you for your sins. I turned away the spirits of your dead comrades and family. Eventually, they all left you. Still I waited, because I knew what would come then. Death does not so easily relinquish a victim, and certainly not a bright flame such as yourself."

Vader turned and slowly lowered his head onto Palpatine's shoulder. The Emperor's thick brocade robe felt still-warm with the memory of a dozen childhood naps taken by a small blond boy seeking the comfort of an unjudgmental friend. Lulled into unexpected rest, Vader absorbed the familiar flow of Palpatine's voice while trying to ignore the contents of his speech, but his electronic ears delivered every word flawlessly into the core of his brain.

"He came to us then. His eyes were infinite pits of darkness, the emptiness where stars once burned. For even stars die, Lord Vader."

_Even stars die, Anakin Skywalker. . . _

And Darth Vader's heart answered: _I know._

"Death cannot be battled, cannot be resisted and cannot be bargained with. But I did all three, Lord Vader. I did it for you, as I would do it for no other. In return, Death offered me the respect due to my calculated affront and gave me your life. Do you understand, my apprentice? I battled Death himself for you. Not for the microscopic life forms in your blood, but for you. You are greater than mere mortality, greater than petty numbers on a view screen. You are my Sith Lord, and _I will not let you go._"

The Emperor's breath sounded rapid and heavy in the hollow apartments.

"I said that I could not live without her, Master," Vader reminded the other man wearily.

The Emperor's voice, when it answered, was soft but very firm. "You will find a way. There are still other things to live for."

* * *

End part one of three. Comments? Questions?


	2. Chapter 2

Xanadu Ship had trained in the martial arts of six different systems. He had started with the sinuous and deceptive arts practised on his own homeworld of Ryloth, mastering their movements by the time he was ten years old. From there he had devoured the roughhouse boxing traditionally practised on Corellia, and moved on to Alderaani _Seralla_, before mastering all three Chandrillan forms. He had then learned the famed Mon Calamari Water Dance, which was generally considered impossible to learn unless one was in fact Mon Calamari. Three months ago, he had decided to tackle another impossible art and finally fulfilled a life long ambition by beginning the study of the third Jedi form: _Soresu_. But it seemed that he had waited too long, for the Empire had summarily banned the practice of all Jedi arts Xanadu now had a great of time on his hands. It was this time for which he was thankful, because retraining Anakin Skywalker in the use of his body promised to be more than trying. The man had no patience, either with his teacher or with himself, and reacted with anger to even mild criticism. Xanadu frequently reminded himself that Skywalker had recently experienced more trauma than any sentient should have to endure.

At the moment, Xanadu was instructing Anakin in the slow, healing movements of _Seralla. _The mild stretches targeted the spiritual centres in human and humanoid bodies; regular practice ensured increased agility, limberness, and physical awareness, as well as a greater clarity of mind. Xanadu was surprised at how difficult a student Skywalker had proved to be; though the former Jedi was very physically adept, he struggled against the technique, refusing to allow mind and body to relax into the calming motions.

"You must release your awareness, General," Xanadu repeated for perhaps the fifth time that day. "Only then will you reap the full benefit of the exercises."

"I know that," Anakin snapped. Though his voice was deep and steady, his tone was full of petulance and impatience, reminding Xanadu once again how very young this man truly was. "I can't do this today. I don't understand why I can't perform my usual _Djem So_ exercises."

"Even the most gentle _Djem So_ exercises are still too belligerent and strenuous for your convalescing body. _Seralla_ actively encourages the body to connect with intrusive prostheses. I'm surprised that you did not perform this set after you had your first prosthetic arm attached."

"I did not. It's for that reason that I don't believe this is necessary."

Xanadu sighed and wiped his face with a towel. "Humour me then, General Skywalker. Even if you did not need this for your arm, all of your limbs are now artificial, and there is a far greater risk of your body rejecting them. The _Seralla _will help. Trust me."

Skywalker grunted sceptically, but relaxed into River before flowing slowly into Rose Bush. His physical mastery of the form was flawless, but Xanadu still sensed a reluctance to truly embrace the calm of the Alderaani art. The Twi'lek said nothing this time, sensing that further progress on that front would not be made today, and Skywalker continued with his _Seralla_ for perhaps another half hour before Xanadu called a halt.

"You are regaining control of your body at a remarkable rate, General. It will not be long now before you can begin to practice some of the less demanding Jedi exercises."

"Good."

Xanadu took a drink of water and noted Skywalker's discomfited, faceless shifting. Though the nutrients in the human's life support suit should keep him fully hydrated at all times, Xanadu suspected that watching others partake of oral sustenance was an unpleasant experience for the ex-Jedi.

"I think we're finished for today. Doctor Farstride should be here any moment."

"That fool," Skywalker rumbled. "I've forgotten more about mechanics than he ever knew."

The Twi'lek hesitated. "That might be the case, but medical prostheses are a bit different."

"I know a lot about those, too. I have _this_ to thank for that." Skywalker thrust out his right arm.

"Then I'm sure your sessions with him will be short." Xanadu smiled, though he felt increasingly uneasy in the ex-Jedi's presence. There was something menacing about this man, more than could be explained by his intimidating apparel, and the nervous, anguish energy that the damaged man exuded felt almost catching.

The new Emperor met him outside of the gym. Xanadu was surprised at the man's sudden appearance, the unnaturally light tread of Palpatine's very human feet.

"How is he progressing?" Palpatine asked. His voice creaked.

"He's doing very well. He's an eager and skilled student; we're lucky that he's had so much martial experience. He's very aware of his own body."

"But?" Palpatine asked, hearing the unspoken condition.

Xanadu sighed. "But he won't relax. He's tense and angry all of the time. He refuses to access his body's natural capacity to heal. Rather than gently coaxing, he _demands. _He orders his body as he would order a squadron of Clonetroopers, and no matter how often I tell him this, he appears incapable of changing his approach."

Palpatine nodded inside of his dark, enveloping cowl. "It is Anakin's way. He has ever been impatient and demanding. He has, I think, become too accustomed to the military life and its adjacent stresses and demands. I will speak with him."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." The imperial form of address still felt strange in Xanadu's mouth, but his gratitude was stronger than his discomfort. Skywalker was Palpatine's protege; perhaps the politician could talk sense to the injured Jedi.

**

Vader dropped to one knee when Palpatine entered the gymnasium.

"Master." The word felt easier now, if not entirely natural.

"Lord Vader. It has come to my attention that you have been having some problems with Master Ship's teachings."

"I have successfully mastered the first Season of _Seralla_," Vader deflected.

"Do not play the semantic game with me, my apprentice," Palpatine snapped. "You will lose."

"Sorry, Master."

"The primary goal of _Seralla _is not physical mastery, but spiritual healing. It is a neutral form which is neither repellent nor attractive to students of the Force, regardless of their spiritual allegiances. Even in your current state, you should have no trouble relaxing into it."

Vader hesitated. "If I might speak freely, Master?"

Palpatine waved a careless hand. "Proceed."

"I'm used to meditating with calm, but I can't do that anymore. This past fortnight, I've been angry and restless. I'm in pain all of the time. I _can't _relax into the exercises. It's just not possible."

Palpatine nodded and shed his dark purple, ornate outer robes. Under them he wore flexible, simple black trousers and a light linen tunic. "Then I will teach you. We will perform the River."

Vader assumed the pose, watching the emperor do the same. Palpatine's physical control was exquisite, as masterful as his control of language, and Vader didn't doubt that the older man was formidable in battle.

"Excellent form, Lord Vader, but that is no more than is to be expected. Now I want you to move beyond the physical. Prepare yourself as you do when accessing the Force, but do not touch it. Now focus on your pain, on your anger and despair. Think of those who have betrayed you, have lied to you and hurt you. Think of Padme Amidala and Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Vader clenched his teeth against the agony that seethed in his chest. He never wanted to hear those names again. It seemed that his vision was interrupted by angry black dots and his hands clenched into fists. He sensed the Force, but it was not blue and pure as he remembered it. It was black and red and it splashed across his field of vision like blood and oil across remembered battlefields.

"_Good. _I can feel your anger, your pain, your _hate."_ Palpatine's voice was deeply sensual as he breathed his approval. "Now hold onto those feelings. They are not harbingers of misery, but receptacles of power. Accept them. _Embrace_ them, Lord Vader. Dwell in them as you once dwelled in the Light."

Vader deliberately relaxed his body, mentally took a deep breath, and visualised the violent colours entering his mouth, then his lungs, and then finally his blood stream. His body was set on fire with violent emotions while his spine felt as limp as raw silk.

"Excellent. Now let yourself _flow_ into Rose Bush."

Vader's body responded before his mind could intervene. He felt the Rose Bush.

"Grass Seeds, now."

Vader responded with the long, staccato motions the form demanded; he felt at once entirely present in his body and deeply immersed in his mind. The Force hovered on the edges of his perceptions, but he did not touch it. Palpatine took him through the entire Spring set of _Seralla_ in this fashion, and when they were finished he felt energised and aware in a way he had not for months.

They finished with a series of relaxing stretches on the floor, followed by a deep meditation utterly unlike anything Vader had experienced in the Jedi Temple. He hovered in anger with perfect calm and when Palpatine told him to touch the Force, he did. It came rushing to do his bidding and he trembled at its raw power. Though his capacity was reduced, he felt that the Dark Side had a potential that the Light could not fulfill.

"Enough for today, I think, Lord Vader."

Vader blinked as he heard the light tenor of Palpatine's most relaxed speaking voice. So deeply had he been immersed, he had almost forgotten that his new master was there.

"You take well to the Sith meditations."

"Is_ that _what that was? It was incredible!" Vader was awestruck.

"Indeed. Incredible and infinitely more natural than the restrictive pap that the Jedi have been feeding you. Any untrained child's first experience with the Force is inevitably with the Dark Side, for it is the Dark Side that encompasses the strongest emotions experienced by sentients in their first years of life. It is for this reason that the Jedi prefer to take their students when they are still infants. I have no doubt that you touched the Dark Side yourself many times before you were accepted at the Temple."

"If I did, it was not like that." The taste of power lingered in Vader's mouth, insignificant next to the flood of delirious rage he had experienced in the Temple and on Mustafar, but so much more focused.

"A deliberate use of the Force always feels very different from an accidental use, as you should know. Now that you have experienced this meditation, however, I trust that you can replicate it."

"Yes, I think so, Master," Vader said slowly.

Palpatine rose and replaced his velvet robes. Vader zoomed in on the cloth, seeing every fibre, able to analyse each down to its component parts. A list of fabrics paraded across his brain, and he forced himself to look away just to stop the flood of superfluous information. It was too much.

"I have duties now to attend to, my apprentice, business in the Senate, but I will return at 21:00. We will speak further then."

"Yes, my Master." Vader bowed in the formal Jedi fashion.

Palpatine chuckled at his newest apprentice, and Vader startled. "What is so funny?"

"What a well-mannered apprentice you are, my boy. I simply don't know what Obi-Wan Kenobi had to complain about."

Vader remained sulkily silent, feeling mocked, and Palpatine chuckled once more before leaving, his formal robes trailing majestically behind him.

**

Lucius Farstride was native Coruscanti. His accent was clipped; his vowels were exquisitely rounded. His hair was brown, as were his eyes, and he was fashionably thin. He'd had the best medical training his plutocratic family could buy, while his considerable technical talents had lead him to specialise in prostheses. Currently he was working with an extremely well-financed team of medical researchers. Together they were attempting to develop coverings for artificial limbs: cloned skin which would look identical to the skin of the lost limb, and which would effectively transmit sensation to the patient's brain. The team had been formed over a year previously, and true results were not expected for another few years, but early testing had proved promising. It was unfortunate, Lucius mused, that Skywalker had not waited those few years before making himself into a multi-amputee.

The paranoid security team stationed in front of Skywalker's apartment let Lucius in after checking his credentials twice. Despite the fact that he cleared both times, the team remained nervous, and the doctor wondered exactly what their new emperor had said to them. Or perhaps it was Skywalker, Lucius mused, testing the administrative waters with his brand new legs. It was absurd how much power that boy had._ Youngest general of the GAR and media darling of the galaxy! Mothers lock up your daughters. _Not that those daughters would be swooning over Skywalker anymore. The man's injuries were atrocious, and Lucius was frankly surprised that the Jedi still lived.

The receiving area of Skywalker's apartments was empty, and Lucius glanced around impatiently, annoyed that his time was being wasted. He shucked off his shoes and entered the salon, determined to seek out the Jedi.

"Who said you could come in?" Skywalker's mechanical voice suddenly demanded. The Jedi pulled the doctor around by the shoulder to face him, and despite himself Lucius jumped with fear. The young man loomed over the doctor monolithically, and the strange black mask filled Lucius' entire frame of view. The syncopated rhythm of the respirator was much louder than he remembered.

"Well?" Skywalker asked heatedly.

"I...I was just looking for you," Lucius said defensively, gathering his wits.

Skywalker shoved him away. "You've found me," he grumbled. "Have a seat."

Lucius adjusted his clothing as he sat down. He carefully avoided looking at the Jedi, wanting his temper in order before they commenced their business. Though he knew that the physical therapist, Xanadu Ship, had met with Skywalker most every day of the past two weeks, this was the first time since their initial encounter that Lucius had seen Skywalker. He had heard from the others that Skywalker had attempted to entirely nullify his part in the recovery process, and had been less than impressed by the Jedi's arrogant presumptuousness.

When he had his professional face firmly in place, the doctor allowed himself to firmly engage eye contact with the Jedi's insectoid mask.

"Good day to you, General Skywalker," Lucius said coolly as he opened up his briefcase. With brisk motions, he started assembling his row of holofilms. "I trust you are well," he added, not without a certain amount of well-concealed malice.

"Is that a joke, Doctor?" the Jedi snapped.

"Hmm?" Lucius glanced up from his films.

"Don't mock me." Skywalker waved a brisk, admonitory finger at Lucius, and the doctor frowned at being chastised like a youngling.

"I'm hardly mocking you, General Skywalker."

"Don't call me that!" Skywalker clambered to his feet, intent on intimidation, and overbalanced. He fell to the ground in a heap of arms and legs. A furious Huttese curse emerged from his helmet. Lucius didn't speak the language, but whatever the Jedi had said sounded truly profane.

"What else am I supposed to call you, Skywalker?" Lucius asked, exasperated and confused by the man's mannerisms. He watched will ill-concealed amusement as the general hauled himself back to his heavily booted feet.

Skywalker hesitated, and the silence lingered a little too long between them.

"Well?" Lucius lifted an expectant brown eyebrow.

"Just...call me General. I know my name; I don't need to hear it all of the time."

Lucius fed one of his films into the reader. He'd heard that Skywalker was arrogant, but this was quite beyond the pale. Not wanting to be referred to by his own name? Or did the boy simply enjoy revelling in his title?

Deciding that this must be the case, Lucius sneered a little when he responded, "As you wish, _General_."

"I don't like your tone," Skywalker growled, folding his arms across his chest.

The specialist blew an exasperated sigh. "Listen, Skywalker; I don't know what you want from me!"

A prosthetic arm shot out with more speed than it should been capable of, and Skywalker's hand clamped around Lucius throat with just enough force to be remind the doctor exactly how strong the mechanical limb could be. The statistics of that particular prosthetic ran frantically through the specialist's panicked brain.

"I don't want _anything_ from you," Skywalker snarled furiously. "You're only here because the Emperor wants you to be, but, personally, I don't need you at all."

Lucius started to struggle in earnest when he felt the fingers around his throat start to contract. He clawed at Skywalker's grip as his brain was overcome with confusion. What kind of Jedi was Skywalker, to do such a thing?

Abruptly, he fell to the floor. Gasping for breath, he suffered through a minor panic attack before checking his own pulse. It was abnormally fast, and he though about the possible consequences of asphyxiation: blood clots and strokes. He wanted to go to a clinic, but still the Jedi loomed over him. Lucius remained tensely on the floor, wondering what this dangerous, unpredictable lunatic would try next.

Skywalker reached out a hand and hauled the doctor up by the arm, sitting him back down on the settee. Incredulous and alarmed, Lucius clutched at his throat and stared at the Jedi. He wanted to shout, to ask Skywalker what in the Seven Sith Hells he thought he was doing, but he didn't dare. In the end, Lucius decided to continue as though the violent interlude had never occured. He switched on the holo-projector, and a three dimensional image of the insides of Skywalker's left arm sprang into view.

"As you can see, prosthetic capabilities have increased over the past three years. These joints, which in the older models are stiffer and larger, have a wider range of movement. If you haven't already noticed, you will find that your left arm and forearm are more agile and sensitive than your right." Here Lucius sneaked a quick, wary glance at the aforementioned right limb. "It was unfortunate," he continued archly, "that your limb was amputated above the elbow joint, because it gave us no choice but to complete the amputation of the humerus in order to attach the new arm to the scapula and run the artificial deltoid 'cables' over the shoulder, thus securely anchoring the arm. Now as you know, the distal end of the humerus is connected to the ulna and radius by the elbow joint, which in your case is far stronger than the the one it replaced. The alloy used in the new model is also stronger and lighter than the one used in your older prosthetic. The average, organic human arm can support up to 136.08 kilograms. Your older prosthetic can support up to 200 kilos, but anything more is inadvisable given that extreme weights will separate the humerus from your natural scapula. The left arm, however, has been reinforced, and your chest has been strengthened with metal implants. You are therefore able to support up to 300 kilograms with your left arm."

A soft click of surprise escaped Skywalker's blank facade.

Lucius smiled grimly. "Impressive, no?"

"Very."

"Yes, we're improving on nature all of the time. Soon everyone will want one of these," Lucius said with black humour.

"I doubt that," Skywalker said grimly.

"Yes, well." Lucius cleared his throat. "You are aware of the usual problems: the possibility of heterotopic ossification: the continued growth of the bone due to conflicting signals from the brain. If this happens, the new growth can interfere with the function of the prosthetic, and you will require further, corrective surgery. There's also the possibility of phantom limb, which can be both positive and negative. Naturally, the possibility of painful sensation is not pleasant to anticipate, but it can also enhance proprioception in conjunction with the functions of the cybernetic nerves--"

Skywalker stood up and switched off the holoprojector without warning.

"General?" Lucius asked coolly. "Is there a problem?"

"I know all of this already," the Jedi snapped.

"It never hurts to review the relevant information. Just because you might not have experienced a particular side-effect with the first amputation, does not mean that it won't happen this time. Remember that your neural network now has to rewire itself three times, as well as adapting itself three times to the work it must perform with the new cybernetic nerves. It's a daunting task."

"I know that!" Skywalker snarled. "I know all of it already! _E chu ta_**, **I could read this in a kriffin' holobook. Get out!"

"Excuse me?" Lucius asked, drawing himself up indignantly.

"I said _get out_! _Get out!" _Skywalker's artificially supported voice rose to a shattering volume just as the Jedi seized hold of the holoprojector and hurled it at the doctor's head. Lucius threw himself down on the ground, rolling behind the settee. Unfortunately, the supernaturally strong arms of which he had just so approvingly spoken had no trouble seizing the enormous piece of furniture, throwing it across the room like so much rubbish. Skywalker bellowed something unintelligible before hefting the table next, tossing it at the terrified medical specialist. This time, the doctor's reflexes were not quite quick enough and the table clipped the side of his head. A wave of darkness swept over Lucius and he slipped briefly unconscious before the sensation of being lifted registered; even knowing that his chances of escaping Skywalker's grip were non-existent, he still struggled against the arms that implacably held him.

The sound of a door opening was the only warning he had before he went flying through the air, briefly defying gravity before harshly into the hallway outside Skywalker's apartments. Just before he lost consciousness entirely, Lucius heard the nervous guards muttering to each other, wondering what they were supposed to do about _this_.

* * *

Please tell me what you think. Thanks!


	3. Chapter 3

After excising Lucius Farstride from his apartments, Vader had expended his fury on the remaining furniture. Much of it now lay damaged or broken, and with his sanity restored the new Dark Lord was somewhat nervous, uncertain how Palpatine might react to this destructive outburst. He was also in a good deal more pain than usual; the tightly distended burns on his back and chest ached fiercely. Only by allowing his mind to drift into a shallow, numbing meditation was he able to somewhat ignore the sensations and put the furniture back to where it had been. He found blankets in a closet and threw them over merely damaged pieces, while the irreparably broken furniture he gave to the guards still standing dutifully in the corridor. They accepted the garbage without asking questions, though uneasy doubt pervaded their auras.

Vader glanced at the shining blue chronometer that (perversely, he thought, given that he could not eat) decorated the kitchen wall. It cast a weak azure shimmer across the black granite counter tops and informed Vader that it was now 18:30: three hours before he was expected in his master's offices. It occurred to the young Dark Lord then that he had yet to venture more than a few metres outside of his suite, and that perhaps a walk might help ease some of his pent up tension and stressful energy, if not his physical discomfort.

"Is there something else we can do for you, General Skywalker?" one of the men at the door asked as he emerged.

"No," Vader snarled. His cloak whipped about him as he strode away as quickly as he dared. All of his powers were focused on maintaining his new centre of balance, and gravity continuously sought to disrupt his concentration.

The building in which he had been installed was very near 500 Republica and displayed many of the same aesthetic qualities: sumptuous simplicity hinting at obscene wealth, ubiquitous security, and immaculately groomed inhabitants who snobbishly minded their business out of the inherent belief that no one else's could possibly be worth their time. Vader's well-trained ascetic sensibility was disturbed by the underlying message of thoughtless privilege. He doubted one of these people had ever worked a job that did not involve flapping his or her lips.

The one redeeming quality of this sort of citizen seemed to be the ability to control their emotional reaction to Vader's own intimidating new physical manifestation. The three beings he encountered greeted him only with briefly widened eyes and jerky nods of acknowledgement before scurrying off to wherever they were going. Rather than disrupting his own comportment, Vader gave no return signal to these beings, but continued briskly to the main lift at the end of the hall. The newest Dark Lord of the Sith was not entirely sure that he was ready to be seen by gaping pedestrians, but slowly mounting claustrophobia inspired by the identical, endless dark corridors of the condominium made the choice for him, and he stepped into the turbolift, where he was greeted by the usual dizzying array of buttons offering itself up to his perusal. Vader tentatively selected the floor located on the same planetary platform that supported the Senate and the former Jedi Temple.

Glaring late afternoon light accosted the Sith as he stepped outside. His visual apparatus translated the colours of the setting sun (probably a series of deep, powerful oranges to the eyes of other humans) into a wicked splash of violent reds. _The colour of murder..., _Vader's oft-times romantic sensibility suggested to him. He decided he was pleased with the designation, though the sight itself was in truth prevailingly disturbing. That all of the colours of his once kaleidoscopic reality had been reduced to one unsettled him for reasons which he, had he been asked, would not have been able to render in plain language. Perhaps because the change hinted at diminution rather than growth, or perhaps because the demonic shades reminded him of the one prevailing truth of the Dark Side: that it demanded monumental sacrifice. Were the rewards equal to the price? With the illusive wash of blood in his eyes and the harrowing cauterisation of his flesh paramount in his perceptions, Vader was not sure.

It was with relief that the former Jedi Knight allowed his disquieting train of thought to be diverted by the tremendous noise of a passing speeder bus. The great gust of air generated by the transport wrapped the Dark Lord's cape around his body, trapping it between his legs and sending him crashing to his knees. Vader felt the impact of metal on metal ring through his artificial kneecaps before it detonated in the marrow of his human bones, and had his breath not now been mechanically regulated, it would have erupted from him in a grunt of agony. A wave of dizziness washed over Vader, and large black dots swam in and out of his field of view.

"Hey, pal!" An abrasive voice with a pronounced Outer Rim accent assaulted his aural sensors. "Get off the sidewalk!"

The Sith mentally took a deep breath, waiting for the mild hallucinations to pass before slowly rising. By the time he regained his footing, the ignorant being who had so rudely addressed him was already gone, and Vader found that he did not have the energy to pursue the mild anger he'd felt at the being's disrespect. In fact, Vader was beginning to have doubts about his own good sense, as the relaxing stroll he had anticipated transformed into a serious test of his stamina. His respirator laboured to provide him with sufficient oxygen, and his legs felt even heavier than usual. Another passing speeder filled his head with a great, animal roar that inspired a rush of instinctive terror. Nausea crouched in his ruined stomach and Vader moaned with subdued disgust as his body continued to betray him. He gasped for breath, and the black dots returned with ferocity.

Vader felt Coruscant turn on its axis with sudden, malicious speed, and then the ground rushed up to meet him.

**

"_Sir? Sir, are you well?" _

"_I don't think he can hear you..."_

"_What happened?"_

"_I don't know; I just saw him fall. I don't think anything happened. He must be ill."_

"_Maybe you should take the helmet off?"_

"_No, I don't think so. He's probably a methane breather. His equipment might be malfunctioning. He needs to get to a medical centre as soon as possible."_

"_Does someone have a com?"_

"_I already called __**Volorum Medical**__."_

Vader groaned and muzzily wished that he could still put his hands over his ears. The voices buzzing above him sounded unnaturally loud and piercing.

"Sir? Are you awake?" an urgent and irritatingly concerned female voice demanded.

Vader muttered something unintelligible and fervently hoped that the female would simply leave him in peace.

"Just remain calm, sir," a male voice interjected. "The emergency transport should be here any second now."

"No," Vader finally rasped. "I can't go to the medical centre." He began to pull himself upright, and was furiously indignant when well-meaning hands pushed him back down with whispered assurances that it was all for his own good.

"Let me up!" Vader roared, and instinctively called on the Force. A scream pierced his damaged ear drums, followed by a dull thud.

"He's a Jedi!" the woman screamed with terror. "He'll kill us all!"

Palpatine's propaganda machine functioned more smoothly than he'd realised.

_Your tax credits at work,_ Vader thought with enough dry sarcasm to surprise himself.

The situation started to become distinctly uncomfortable as the female continued to screech 'Jedi' at the top of her overdeveloped lungs, and Vader began to develop a migraine, while the other milling beings furiously shifted and muttered. But despite their anger and confusion, the beings backed away readily enough when Vader stumbled up to his full, terrifying height.

The Sith lurched away just as the emergency medical transport descended onto the platform. The beings huddled about the transport like a herd of frightened children, pestering the descending medical attendants with their myriad concerns. Vader ignored the tentative orders to halt, called after his retreating body by medical personnel; he saw only the large, smooth archway that lead back into his condominium. The entrance code wavered in his mind, and he was forced to enter it three times before the computer granted him entrance. New bruises formed on his sides as he repeatedly staggered into the walls, and the guards who stood dutifully outside his doors grunted under his weight when he impotently stumped against them.

**

"Should I even bother to deliver a dire sermon highlighting the consequences of further disruptive infractions?" Palpatine's voice was wearily testy, and Vader 's reduced hearing interpreted it as coming from roughly a parsec away.

"Well?" The new monarch demanded, and slowly it dawned on the Sith apprentice that Palpatine's question had not been rhetorical.

"No, Master." Without the mask and vocabulator, Vader's voice sounded thin and weak.

Palpatine stared at him flatly.

"I mean 'yes,' Master," Vader corrected himself.

The emperor's glare did not lesson in intensity.

"Yes...no...," Vader stumbled before trailing off in defeat.

Palpatine sighed and rubbed at his now perpetually yellow eyes. "I suspect your propensity for recklessness did not die with the Jedi, but I should think that forgetting to inject your nutrient supplements _twice _before deciding to take a stroll outside in an unprotected, unsupervised environment would be beyond even you, Anakin."

Vader flinched at the name and leaned back into the bed, closing his eyes as he rolled as far onto his other side as he could connected to life support paraphernalia and dozens of additional tubes and wires.

"Enough of this," Palpatine snapped. "I'm assigning a droid to remind you when to inject your nutients, and for the time being you are confined entirely to your apartments unless I specifically inform you otherwise."

Vader stared blankly as the quiet words failed to make their way entirely to his straining ears, and Palpatine repeated the words directly into the younger man's mind.

"That's not fair!" Vader exclaimed. Unfortunately his partial deafness lead him to misjudge the volume of his own voice, and he gasped the words loudly and rapidly enough to tear at the fragile, healing flesh inside his throat. He gurgled and leaned over the side of the bed as he began hacking up thin streams of blood while Palpatine watched impassively.

"I am certain that Dr. Lucius Farstride did not think it was fair when you assaulted him, but such is life."

Vader glared helplessly as his coughing tapered off into futile gasps, while the lifesupport system worked overtime to feed his body rarefied oxygen.

"Now that that's settled," Palpatine continued blissfully. "It is time for your lesson."

"What time _is_ it?" Vader asked, finally able to speak again.

"Time?" the emperor echoed testily.

"You said my lesson was at 21:00," Vader reminded the other man.

The emperor scowled and his long white hand took up a irritable, syncopated tattoo on the shining, chrome rail of Vader's bed. "Your _lesson_," he retorted, "was at 21:00 because I had work scheduled until that hour—work that was interrupted when the guards posted to your suite commed to tell me that you had collapsed, unconscious, outside that suite, forcing me to return _before _21:00, thereby adjusting the time of your lesson. Do you understand, or will there be further contentious questions?"

"I understand, Master," Vader replied stonily. He stared straight ahead, refusing to even glance at the emperor.

"Very well." Palpatine's voice softened, and Vader imagined his eyes softening as well. He imagined that they were pale, pale blue.

Palpatine stood and walked to the computer system installed on the wall, where he entered a sequence that Vader couldn't see or hear, and then a bright holograph materialised in front of the Sith apprentice's bed. The image appeared to consist of writing, but the spindly runes and strange glyphs were not Aurabesh, nor any other alphabet with which Vader was familiar.

"What is it, Master?"

Palpatine smiled proudly. "It is Old Sithian, and this, my apprentice, is the codex of the first Sith Order."

Vader lifted the flesh where his eyebrows used to be and regarded the document with new, guarded respect. "Interesting. What does it say?"

A hint of mirth traversed Palpatine's eyes. "It is a fifty six thousand word document, Lord Vader. To summarise it would take more than a moment. Might I surmise from your reaction that you did not study the Sith texts during your Jedi education?"

"Why would we?" Vader asked blankly.

"Know thine enemy," Palpatine murmured slyly. "I suppose I should be grateful that the standards of the Order grew so lax."

"The Sith have changed so much since then—what good what it have done to read to read these documents when they have so little bearing on what they're like _now_?"

"The principles of the Order remain largely the same, even if the application has changed. And it behooves one to know one's history—and do not doubt that the histories of the Jedi and the Sith have been tied together from the very beginning. It is for that reason, Lord Vader, that you will learn to read this document yourself."

"You want me to learn the Sith language?" Vader gaped.

"Your convalescence will no doubt last many months. More than enough time for a mind of your calibre to absorb Old Sithian. You will begin with this grammar text," Palpatine stated firmly as he called up a new file.

Vader stared with dismay at the table of contents. "_Twelve_ noun cases?"

Palpatine grinned with perverse glee. "Middle Sithian has fifteen. You will be learning that next."

Vader sank down into his pillows in despair.

* * *

Just in case you're wondering why Vader is so horrified by the notion of twelve noun cases, I've included a handy-dandy summary of what those are. Swiped from Wikipaedia, naturally.

**Noun Cases:**

In grammar, the **case** of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. While most languages distinguish cases in some fashion, it is only customary to say that a language has cases when these are codified in the morphology of its nouns — that is, when nouns change their form to reflect their case.

Examples from Latin:

_homo_ (nominative) "[the] man" [as a subject] (e.g. _homo ibi stat_ the man is standing there)

_hominis_ (genitive) "the man's/of [the] man" (e.g. _nomen hominis est Claudius_ the man's name is Claudius)

_homini_ (dative) "to/for [the] man" [as an indirect object] (e.g. _homini donum dedi_ I gave a present to the man; _homo homini lupus_ Man is a wolf to man.)

_hominem_ (accusative) "[the] man" [as a direct object] (e.g._hominem vidi_ I saw the man)

_homine_ (ablative) "from/with/in/by [the] man" [in various uses not covered by the above] (e.g. _sum altior homine_ I am taller than the man).


	4. Chapter 4

Vader absorbed the Sith lanuage with the speed of truly gifted and negligence of the truly bored. The fifty two ebony runes with their uni, bi, and trilateral alphabetic resonances, their tongue-twisting consonants and unfamiliar vowels: all were neatly ordered and labled in the new Sith Lord's supremely symmetrical brain.

The runes were soon followed by the far more complex glyphs with their endless logogrammatic and determinative functions; yet, days after he had obtained a basic conversational and literary fluency in the language his writing skills lingered behind. For while Vader's keen eye for logical detail made quick work of the compositional and grammatical functions of both glyphs and runes, he wrestled far more intently with the apparently illogical aesthetic principle which mysteriously guided their arrangement on the page.

"There is nothing undisciplined about it, Anakin," Palpatine informed him when he brought up the problem. "Supremacy of rank, thought and deed guides the scribe's hand. The ancient Sith allotted honour according to achievement and natural power, and we their heirs continue to adhere to this principle."

"I know that," Vader retorted. "But the execution makes no sense! See this one here--" he pointed to a piece of lyric Sith poetry. "If I read it in the usual fashion, it says that the Sith Lady Medjalu brought great honour to her Master and her ancestors, and goes on to tell about her final battle. But you tell me that because she died before achieving her aims, the glyphs are arranged down to up instead up to down—yet the the runes are arranged in a circular fashion around each primary glyph and have to be read right to left instead of left to right—but the determinatives don't specify this anywhere! I can read it, Master, if I have some time, but how am I supposed to know to _write_ it like that?"

"The determinatives clarify noun and verb function, not compositional direction, my apprentice. You will gain an instinctive appreciation for the aesthetic principle in time. It is not an easy one, I grant, but it is worth knowing. Not all that is complex and beautiful in life is to be found within a mathematical equation, or the workings of a hyperdrive engine."

Vader accepted the dig without comment. He had learned many years ago that his mentor was not terribly technoogically inclined or talented. It didn't matter much, because their relationship had never been about what could be done with a hydrospanner, but what could be done with the mind. Still, Vader did not mind admitting that, if given the choice between grammar and physics, he would certainly prefer to be studying experimental hyperspace theory.

Palpatine had in the past demonstrated his appreciation for Anakin's mechanical inclinations by annually gifting him with a subscription to the cutting edge techno-academic journal _Known Space_, to which the Jedi otherwise would have had no access. One of Anakin's personal ambitions had long been to see his own name under an article in that very journal, but busy as he had always been, first with his training and then with the war, the dream had never come to pass.

"Think of it like you would the Nubian Colour Wheel," the Emperor interrupted Vader's yearning thoughts. "It is applied, I feel, in much the same way, and knowing it helped me immensely when I first studied Old Sithian. While there is a certain amount of standarisation in both the script and the Wheel, situational, emotional and aesthetic allowances must always be made in order to properly interpret the underlying message."

Behind his mask, Vader felt his eyes glaze over with equal parts boredom and dread. The Standard Nubian Colour Wheel was one of them most baffling features of the highly stylised Nubian culture, and one which appeared paramount in the mind of every human citizen of Naboo. Having had both a Nubian wife and mentor who both made frequent reference to the Wheel, Vader felt that he probably understood the tradition better than most non-Naboo, but its finer intricacies still left his brain in a weeping tangle.

According to the Wheel, each colour was assigned both a personal and private symbolic meaning. White for example was the public colour of joy and the private colour of melancholy. The apparent contradition was resolved through application, but the complications did not stop there, because a particular colour could have a whole slew of historical implications that might limit or expand its meaning and thereby the circumstances under which a given individual could wear it. Vader glanced down at his own armoured body, suddenly remembering that black was the public colour of power. He couldn't remember the private meaning.

"Lord Vader?" Palpatine asked testily.

"What?" Vader asked.

"I asked you if you were listening," Palpatine said with a fierce frown.

"Uh, sorry. Master," he added when the Emperor's frown deepened.

"It is clear that you're no longer concentrating on this. Study those Sith histories I uploaded yesterday before your appointment with Dr Zot-Kam."

Palpatine stood, brushing his purple robes with his small clever hands as he rose. Purple was the public colour of duty, Vader remembered, and the private colour of sensual indulgence. He wondered which the Emperor considered the teaching of language to be.

"Don't forget your nutrient injection," his master added sternly.

"Yes, Master," Vader acknowledged as he opened the history document.

He spent the next two hours reading about Darth X's'dg'gb, a Sith Lord with a history as bizarre as his name. Apparently a gifted clairvoyant, he had earned his public living as an acrobat in a travelling circus company. Vader noted with bemusement that X's'dg'gb had met his ultimate end falling from a wire which had been quite a bit higher than was advisable. His prophecies, while apparently highly accurate, were written in Old Sithian and coached in such dense, idiosyncratic poetics that many of their meanings were still in considerable doubt, often only becoming clear after the prophesied events had occurred. According to the text, Sith scholars were still known to break their brains trying to translate the twelve-hundred-year-old verses into Basic. The text noted in particular the case of Darth Fabula, who had become so utterly obsessed with the prophecies that he literally went mad—but not before composing a six-part opera whose libretto was derived entirely from X's'dg'gb's verses.

Vader's master had been thoughtful enough to include in his files a complete set of the prophecies in question. These the young Sith Lord opened with a burgeoning trepidation.

The first verse was not promising:

_Wreathed in white blossoms _(or maybe folded in cold beginnings?)

_and all the pain _(torture? catharsis?_) and forgotten glories _(victories?)_ of her forefathers_ (parents? predecessors?),

_the princess_ (heir?) _of the underworld _(the world of death? the dead world?) _strides forth to battle _

_the__knight of shadows _(the death warrior? lord of darkness?) _who stands guard _

_before the fiery_ (burned? burning?)_ path to discovery _(epiphany?)

_and triumph _(or was that salvation?).

Quite apart from the irritation Vader experienced trying to follow the twisted and linguistically ambiguous narrative, there seemed to be something vaguely familiar about the poem. Recollection hovered just beyond his grasp, and eventually he closed the file, disturbed by his inability to banish or understand the haunting _deja vu_.

Carefully standing up, the Sith stretched his treacherous limbs before going to the kitchen to check the chronometer. The blue digits informed him that it was three quarters of an hour past midday--almost time for his appointment with Dr. Zot-Kam. Resigned to his fate, Vader summoned a droid to give him his nutrient injection.

The guards announced Zot-Kam a few minutes later, and the Bothan entered the apartment with immense dignity characteristic of his kind.

"General Skywalker," he nodded. "I trust I find you well."

"I'm fine," Vader snapped, and abruptly pushed away his GH-7. The droid letter out a squawk of mechanical indigniation before righting itself and packing away its medical supplies.

"I see," Zot-Kam said calmly. To Vader's great annoyance, the Bothan didn't look the slightest bit upset with his patient's outburst. "Then you'll do well on in our session today."

"How much longer do we have to do this?" Vader growled as he followed the doctor into his own personal med-centre.

Zot-Kam chose that moment to look surprise. "Why, until we're finished, General. You don't want to leave your burns untreated, after all, particularly after the hack job those droids did on you."

"What do you mean?"

"Sealing you into a synthplast and leather encasement before your burns were properly seen to was probably the worst possible treatment they could have given you."

"I've been told I need the suit to live independently," Vader reminded him.

"Now you do, certainly," Zot-Kam agreed grimly.

Vader fell silent, curiously uneasy with the conversation. He signaled to another GH-7 to remove his mask and helmet, replacing them with the stationary life support mask beside the bed before fulling disrobing and lying facedown on the heavily padded and swathed table. He was thankful for his compromised vision as he performed these actions, for he had no wish to view any more of his irrevocably damaged body than was strictly necessary.

"I must be completely honest with you, General. Your burns are the most extensive that I have ever seen. It might a year before they are completely treated, and after that you will continue to need regular maintenance."

_Maintenance._ Vader grimaced at the mechanical nature of the word.

"You're shedding," the Bothan muttered, more to himself than his patient.

"What?" Vader rasped.

"Dead skin. I need to take it off. Given the depth of your burns, you shouldn't feel anything, but I'll apply a sedative to be sure."

A brief prick followed a minute later, and Vader felt the muscles of his back go slowly numb.

"I'm applying bacta packs right now," Zot-Kam said as he worked, "and when I'm finished with the manual treatments, you're going to spend another few hours in the tank."

Vader tensed involuntarily. _The tank. _He didn't know why, but from the very first treatment he had been deeply disturbed by the bacta tank. Floating in that narrow space, he often felt as if the walls were closing in on him, and feared that any moment he might lose the mask over his face and drown in thick, suffocating slime.

He slowly forgot his dread as the minutes dragged on; the Bothan working tirelessly on his back. Bored, Vader mentally disassembled his ARC-170, then reassembled it with modifications he had been planning for a few months. Wistfully, he took the improved craft for a mental spin.

After two standard hours, Zot-Kam started putting away his instruments. The sound roused Vader from his light trance. "We're finished. The GH-7s have prepared the bacta tank, so you can step in now."

"I need to use the 'fresher first," the Sith apprentice mumbled before he switched from the stationary life support system to a large oxygen tank which could be wheeled around in the room. The Bothan waved him over to the open 'fresher door, and Vader made good his escape.

Like everything else in his apartments, the 'fresher had been heavily modified to meet his unique medical needs. Not without self-loathing, Vader went through the now all-too-complicated process of relieving himself before applying sanitised gel to his mechanical hands.

Looking up from the sink, he accidentally caught his blurry reflection in the mirror. Grimly, he examined himself, determined to face the horror he had become. Watery blue eyes were the only feature he recognised. The rest of his face was a glaring red monstrosity.

"Now it matches what's on the inside," he whispered. He grimaced at himself. Did he really think that? Was he a monster? Hadn't he been doing his duty? But his wife's pleading face imposed itself on his inner eye, and he had no answer.

"General Skywalker?" Dr. Zot-Kam's nasal voice sounded impatiently.

"I'm coming," Vader said grimly, opening the door. He pulled his mobile life support with him to the bacta and switched to the modified breath mask before stepping into the tank.

"Are you ready?" the doctor asked.

Tensely Vader nodded, and Zot-Kam shut the tank. At once the Sith had to refrain from trying to push back out of the sealed cubicle, and if his breathing hadn't been regulated he would have been gasping. Looking down past his scarred thighs, he saw the bacta slowly filling the tank. Hypnotised, he observed as it sluggishly reached his cold, metal ankles, and then his hard, gleaming knees, before finally touching flesh. The bacta was cool and physically soothing against his burns, but Vader's panic increased exponentially. More than ever he didn't want to be in the tank.

_I'm not weak. I can do this!_

Indolently, the goo caressed his waist. Vader stared straight at the semi-transparent wall of the tank, trying to pretend that he was outside: standing; reaching for Zot-Kam's unbearably insouciant throat.

_Feel your anger, my apprentice. Embrace it! It makes you strong.... _Palpatine's lewd tuition resonated with sudden force in Vader's trembling brain, and he seized the words with the desperation of the terrified. He pictured Obi-Wan: mocking him as he burned, telling him that he was wrong; that he knew nothing; that he was unworthy of the name 'Jedi;' that he was an abomination that would vanished unmourned from the universe. That he was a _fraud_....

When the bacta reached Vader's neck, his anger at Obi-Wan was eclipsed by his pain, and he started to think of Padmé instead. The woman he'd sacrificed so much for; who hadn't understand; who had rejected his gifts; who had rejected _him_.

He snarled around his life support as the wave of bacta closed over his head, and if some part of him shook and called out for help (Mother? Master Obi-Wan? Chancellor Palpatine?) he ignored it. Instead he pictured his wife's delicate nut-brown face, distended with panic, lack of air, and heartbreak...

Vader blinked, glaring through thick jelly at the petite silhouette that had suddenly appeared outside. Graceful and poised, slender save for a hugely pregnant belly, she stood in the room; pointing at him; taunting him through the sunset mire that held him in place. Enraged, Vader began beating on the plastisteel walls of his prison. The claw-like prostheses rent tremendous gouges into the tank, but the walls held. Outside, confused shouting sounded as Zot-Kam tried to stop him, but Vader would not be stopped. Padmé stopped only metres away, and whether she was phantom or flesh and blood, he would have her.

* * *

Notes: Determinitives appear in ancient Egyptian and specify whether a hieroglyphic functions as a 'letter' or a pictograph, as well as specifying exactly what is happening in a sentence when there is more than one possible meaning.

Uni, bi, and trilaterals are groups of sounds such as "b," "sh," of "ing" in English. In pictographic languages, there might be one symbol for an 's,' one for an 'h,' and another one symbolising the 'sh' sound, thus effectively turning that combination of two sounds in one letter. The same thing for three letter sounds (or more).

The Nubian Colour Wheel is an invention of myself and a friend. We came up with it a few years ago and had all kinds of related stories in mind. None of them really got written, but the Wheel remained in my consciousness:)

Review responses:

**Pad-Cat**: Hi! Thanks so much for the great review. I'm so happy so hear that you think my charactertisation is accurate! The fact that you refer to him as Anakin just confirms it:) Yeah, he doesn't have the galaxy's best luck, does he? Sorry about the delay between the last chapter and this one, but I hope that you enjoy this!

**Anon**: Thanks for the review! Yes, I think that people too often forget that this would be a fragile time for Vader--finding out who he is again, trying to put himself together. And Palpatine does have a great sense of humour, albeit dry as sand!

**Nicky**: I was so happy with this review! I'm so flattered that you compared it to the films!

**Line Rider 94**: Thanks for the review. Sorry I didn't update as soon as you had hoped. I'd have liked to have done it, for your sake;) but Real Life got in the way!

**Jimmy the bOY**: Hey there! Thanks for the great review. Hope that you still find the characterisation as scary as ever;D

**Sean_Bateman_09**: Hi there! Glad that word of mouth does get around with my stories. Very flattering:D Thanks for the wonderful review, too. No more trouble with noun cases, but I do hope that this chapter pleased as much as the others!


	5. Chapter 5

Quite in defiance of his lucrative Coruscanti medical practice, Gefya Zot-Kam had spent most of the Clone War in the field treating victims of battle droid blaster fire. As a doctor injury was nothing new to him, but raised as he had been in the peaceful cloister of Bothawui's upper classes, the true devastation that was the result of open warfare had been a painful, eye-opening shock. Like many Clone War survivors, the front had aged him prematurely. The cool detachment in Zot-Kam's eyes and voice were no coincidence, and he didn't expect his strained marriage to last much longer either. He chalked the loss up to just one last victim of the Separatist crusade.

When Palpatine had called on him to heal Anakin Skywalker, the Bothan had expected perhaps a few blaster burns, maybe the results of a small electrical fire, but what he had discovered were the most tremendously damaging burns he had ever ever had the misfortune to witness—burns so deep that even the man's bones were scarred. Quietly moved past his ambivalent regard for the Jedi Knights, he had agreed to treat the young man, disregarding the part of himself that whispered he had never before seen such burns because victims so horrifically affected were usually quietly released from their misery.

As the treatment progressed, however, that part of him returned to whisper with increasing frequency. Though he had not known Skywalker before whatever holocaust had blazed over his young body, he thought he knew some of the man's character from frequent holocasts. Unless the 'Hero with No Fear' had been a complete media fabrication, Skywalker had once been a charming, confident and well-meaning, if slightly reserved young man—a young man who had nothing in common with Zot-Kam's tortured, belligerent patient. He did not blame the man for being embittered at the loss of his health, vitality and physical independence (and though Zot-Kam had never been told exactly what had happened, he knew lightsabre burns when he saw them...), but he wondered whether the entire project might not be a pointless endeavour.

Warned by some deep, self-preserving instinct that they could neither explain nor speak of, none of Skywalker's physicians had mentioned their doubts to their newly elected Emperor, but the doubts were there. Skywalker's ultimate survival was still an open question, as his stability wavered by the day and sometimes by the hour. Alarmed by their patient's aggressively mercurial temperament, no one doctor had dared to mention this to the brooding young man. Though Anakin's co-operation and understanding would doubtless make a difference in the effectiveness of the treatment, Zot-Kam doubted that the emotionally-scarred Jedi would change his behaviour even if fully informed. And he had to admit that some deeply unprofessional spark of fear in his core did not want the Jedi to survive. It was that spark that distrusted the unnatural powers of the cloistered warrior-monks, and had not mourned their sudden passing. It was the same spark that noticed when Skywalker's heat-damaged blue irises brightened and, entirely in defiance of medical possibility, transformed into a mesmerising shade of cruel gold. Still the specialist maintained his outward calm, treating the man's burns with the prescribed course and trying not to be too unnerved by supernatural oddities and the suffocating air of oppression that cloaked both General Skywalker and the too-frequently interested Emperor Palpatine. Dealing with loved ones was difficult enough without knowing that the worried man peering over your shoulder was the single most powerful individual alive.

Now as he was confronted with the raging spectre of the ruined man pounding on the inner walls of a bacta tank, Gefya Zot-Kam wondered how much longer he would be engaged with his Jedi patient. The beserker frenzy Skywalker was evincing could only have a negative impact on his already delicate condition.

"What's wrong with him?" a trembling female voice asked.

"What?" Zot-Kam muttered, turning to face the unexpected guest. A small, pregnant, human in some sort of official livery stood stood staring at Skywalker with wide, frightened eyes.

"Who are you?" the Bothan snapped.

"I'm a senatorial aide. I was told I could find General Anakin Skywalker here. I have an official message of thanks to deliver on behalf of --"

Quite suddenly a tremendous crack rent the air as the bacta tank burst open. The door skidded across the floor and orange goo went flying everywhere. The aide screamed and shielded her belly with her hands, and Skywalker barrelled out of the tank. Completely naked, horrifically scarred and sporting cruelly gleaming mechanical limbs, he truly looked the part of a monster, and Zot-Kam did not blame the aide for fleeing before she could deliver her message.

Spittle flew from Skywalker's gaping, virtually lipless mouth as he gasped "_Padmé!_" and tried to run after the woman. But he did not make it more than a few steps before lack of oxygen brought his ruined body to its knees. Flailing on the ground, the sorcerer silently struck out with the enigmatic power that Zot-Kam so dreaded. Propelled by invisible hands, sterilised medical instruments went flying through the air; shelves crashed, and the operating table tipped over. Finally the lights flickered a moment before going out completely.

Gasping for air and trying to calm his racing pulse, Zot-Kam called urgently for the GH-7s and started to navigate the black room.

"What do you require, Doctor?" a calm alto asked from the general vicinity of a steady blue glow.

"Restore power to the room with the emergency generator!" Zot-Kam said urgently.

The droids efficiently went about fulfilling his orders, and in less than two standard minutes Skywalker was on full life support with the burn specialist examining him. Soon enough the Bothan's worst fears were confirmed: the severely compromised Knight was in a coma. Shaking, Zot-Kam sat down next to the operating table, wondering how he was going to break the news to his employer.

* * *

Skywalker was almost immediately transferred to a fully equipped and heavily monitored private room at _Volorum Interplanetary Medical Centre._ Once Zot-Kam was certain that the Jedi was in good hands, he chose the discreet approach and sent a message to Palpatine's office, informing the emperor of what had happened, and then retreated to his own office to await dismissal from the case.

As soon as he received the message, Palpatine discharged his aides and took his private shuttle to _VIMC. _He immediately proceeded to take up watch at Anakin's bedside, holding court with the doctors there.

"When do you expect him to wake up?" the emperor asked the medical robe-vested Twi'lek who stood uneasily before him.

"Well..." the doctor hesitated.

"Well?" Palpatine coolly echoed, pinning the man with his razor-sharp blue eyes.

"We're not sure."

"Not sure?" Palpatine asked through tightly gritted teeth. "Not sure? Are you or are you not a professional medical doctor? It is your job to know; to be _sure. _I advise you therefore to _be_ sure as soon as possible, or I will get someone else to do the job."

"It's not that simple, sir," the doctor said gently, seemingly unaffected by the emperor's vicious harangue. "We're not sure because he might not wake up at all."

The blood drained from Palpatine's face, turning his already frightening visage an unhealthy shade of white. "Make sure that he does," the emperor whispered, staring levelly at the overweight orange Twi'lek.

"Sir—your Majesty," the Twi'lek corrected himself awkwardly, "I can't work miracles. He was so badly injured to begin with, and to be deprived of oxygen again..." he trailed off, perhaps waiting for realisation or resignation to fall on Palpatine's face. When it did not, the doctor sighed and reluctantly clarified: "It's entirely possible that the young man might have brain damage."

"You had better hope that he doesn't," Palpatine said grimly, and turned back to the bed.

"Sir, if that is the case, you're going to have to make some decisions--"

"_Leave_!" the emperor hissed, not looking up from the bed.

The Twi'lek sighed again and left, plunging the room into a silence that was interrupted only by the various beeps and ticks of the life support equipment. Palpatine watched the unsteadily ululating electronic thread that represented his protege's life; watched it as if his own life depended on it as he thought his own deep, unfathomable thoughts. Finally, after many minutes had passed, he reached out one pale, aged hand to very delicately touch the transparent bubble that encased Anakin's body, protecting it from infection.

"Live, my boy," the emperor whispered. "_Live_."

* * *

Rather than leave Anakin's side for longer than it took to go to the 'fresher and back, Palpatine moved his work to the hospital. Datapads and com in hand, he completed endless complex forms, legislative meetings, bureaucratic nitpicking, and a full unofficial investigation into the circumstances surrounding Anakin's accident --all while stroking his apprentice with powerful waves of Forceful energy. He hoped to effect some change in the young man's condition, but relative stability appeared to be the best he could hope for. While Sith were trained in the healing arts, the Dark Side was the physical and psychic manifestation of entropy, and more inclined to destroy than to repair.

And so one week passed with no change, and eventually the new emperor found it necessary to physically attend to the business of law-making. Hoping that he would not be gone for long, he reluctantly left Anakin's side.

"Your Majesty," Mas Amedda greeted him as he walked into the chancellery office. "The Senate convenes in one standard hour. I have your notes prepared here."

Palpatine took the proffered datapad and seated himself to scan the day's agendum.

"I don't wish to be presumptuous, your Majesty," Amedda continued, "But I think it would be prudent if you were to make an official announcement to the press concerning General Skywalker."

Palpatine looked up, slight surprise written on his features. "What sort of announcement?"

"Explaining that he was not involved with the Jedi _coup d'etat_; that he did his part to defend the Republic, and was wounded by one of his former comrades. Clarify that he is alive and in critical condition. The information would explain your recent absence from official business—the public is familiar with your close relationship—as well as exculpating General Skywalker from his former Jedi ties should he survive to take up service in the new government."

"Yes, very well," Palpatine said grimly. "I suppose I would have to make a similar announcement in any case, considering that some imbicile already let slip the information to the Senate."

The tremendous Chagrian lifted one heavy brow ridge. "Oh?"

"One of the guards on Anakin's quarters," Palpatine clarified darkly. "Told his partner, who was a secretary to Senator Punch Halliasus, who subsequently sent his aide to offer "official thanks" on behalf of theBilbringi system, no doubt hoping to curry favour before anyone else had a chance to."

"I take it the General didn't receive his visitor with diplomatic aplomb?" the vice chancellor asked with what passed for a smile.

"His visitor was a small, pregnant human female who I imagine looked astonishingly familiar through half a metre of bacta," the emperor said meaningfully. "She sent him into the mindless frenzy that landed him in that hospital bed."

Amedda winced. "Shall I have something done about the guard and the aide?"

"It is already done," the emperor replied coolly, standing up. "Schedule a meeting with the press for tomorrow at--" he activated his schedule "--14:00 hours."

"Very good, your Majesty," Amedda nodded. "If you would proceed to make-up now..."

* * *

Palpatine followed Amedda down to make-up and sat staring into his own eyes as the cosmetic artists tried to make his new, melted-wax features as presentable as possible for the Senate session. Their smiles were understandably forced when they finished, but Palpatine's thoughts weren't really on his appearance, as much as he often regretted the loss of his more human face.

The Senate that day was as much an unruly rabble as ever, though having absolute power of veto was certainly preferrable to the old days of pretending to care about the petty ambitions of his subordinates. Still he was careful...very careful indeed not to be too demanding. They were still in the earliest stages of Empire, and one false step could see him lose his hard-won title. Right now the galaxy had to believe that the word 'emperor' was still largely an honorific, and one that it had_ allowed_ him to have in thanks for his service. If the public should begin to suspect that he actually _enjoyed_ the power; that he actively _sought _it...well, that would be very unfortunate indeed at this point. No, slow and steady was best, even if he itched under the skin to abandon his agenda of carefully arranged intervals and finally revel in the power he had impossibly seized.

It was a power that had already been decades in the making, a conception that stretched back to the mystifying clairvoyant dreams of his childhood, dreams that made him scream in the dead of night, often waking his uncle's huge, slavering, many-toothed pet lizard. Solius had lavished the bizarre animal with an uncharacteristic affection and the thing had responded in kind, but young Ayrael had been convinced that the metre long, hundred and fifty kilo monster of scale and muscle had been biding its time, waiting to devour the helpless, tasty nephew in the house. He remembered how the animal used to stare at him with ravenous golden eyes, how it often tasted the air with its thick, forked tongue.

His uncle had been inconsolable when the beast finally died, Heavens knew why, and had isolated himself in his laboratory for months afterward. Smiling slightly, Palpatine recalled the sigh of relief his thirteen-year-old self had let loose when the animal was finally lowered into the great hole his uncle dug in the garden. Solius had even insisted on singing a hymn for the insatiable devourer of unfortunate small, furry animals.

In his mind the emperor saw the man who had been both guardian and teacher to him: pale-skinned like most mountain-born Nubians, tall, well-built and fit as befit the respected biologist's secret identity as the Sith Master Darth Plagueis, with blond hair that gleamed slightly red in the light of a setting sun. Blue eyes sorrowfully fixed on the upturned ground, Solius' rumbling baritone emerged smoothly from his full-lipped mouth while the slim, teenaged Ayrael, filled with mixed boredom and respite, poked a shoe at the huge lizard's flowery grave....

It was all so long ago, Palpatine sighed, and his plans had taken so long to come to fruition. His seventieth birthday had already come and gone, and still he could not fully enjoy what he had wrought. He wondered it he ever might. He thought of the title that he clutched to his secret, dark heart like a talisman: the dread honorific that he had earned through the gruelling initiation of Plagueis' demanding tuition. Would he ever be known as Sidious to more than his closest associates? In a galaxy that distrusted all things Forceful, Palpatine very much doubted it. He smiled at the irony of a Sith Empire with no Sith. Perhaps it was indeed his destiny to lurk forever in the shadows—metaphorically if not literally. But hopefully later, in a few generations, one of his successors might finally be known by his rightful title.

Thoughts of successors brought him back to the mercurial young man he had claimed as his student, and who might not survive to know what it truly meant to be Sith. Try as he might, Palpatine could not imagine another apprentice in Vader's place, though Anakin was hardly his first student. The boy had simply been paramount in his plans for so very long that he had impossibly not made contingencies. Palpatine marvelled at the uncharacteristic negligence.

* * *

He was still marvelling the next day when he stood in the green room adjacent to the press auditorium, watching the screen projecting the hundreds of reporters gathered just a wall away. All were clamouring for attention and demanding to know why they had been assembled. Sly Moore and Mas Amedda of course did an admirable job of bringing the meeting quickly to order, silencing the unruly mob, and Palpatine finally judged the time right to step out to the pulpit. A tremendous roar went up when the press caught sight of the emperor, and a thousand flashes went off as an army of cameras was raised.

"Members of the Associated Press," Palpatine greeted them calmly. He waited for the renewed excitement to dissipate before continuing. "I have called you here in order to explain my recent absence from the Senate. I have never taken my duties lightly, and it was with a heavy heart that I left those responsibilities to go to the sickbed of a dear friend."

He paused, letting the suspense build to an unbearable pitch. Only when questioning hands started to go up did he continue. "It is with both joy and sorrow that I now announce that General Anakin Skywalker did not turn his back on the Republic, in fact defended it from his treasonous brethren, at great risk to his own life. But that heroic decision was sadly not without consequence, and my young friend was grievously injured. He lies in hospital even now, in critical condition."

As he had anticipated, the press erupted in excited babble. Shouted questions from a thousand throats metamorphosed into an unintelligible, demanding storm of gibberish, and the vice chancellor and the senior administrative aide were again forced to subdue the crowd. Palpatine stared at the excited beings, vaguely hoping that his projection on the giant viewscreen did not look too indifferent.

"His Majesty will now take questions," Moore announced in her own microphone. "_One _at a time only, preceeded by raised appendages."

The appendages went up immediately, and Palpatine selected a Rodian in the third row.

"Your Majesty. Botswain Moulana, _Corellian Daily_," the Rodian introduced himself briskly. "Is General Skywalker expected to make a full recovery?"

"Yes," Palpatine answered immediately, and moved onto the next reporter before the _Corellian Daily_ man could jump in with another question.

"Jan Pierson, Your Majesty. _Coruscant Sun_," said a neatly attired human with a supremely clipped Core accent. "What exactly is the nature of General Skywalker's injuries?"

The press were like the Sith, Palpatine thought grimly. They always went straight for the throat.

"His injuries are...extensive," the emperor answered delicately. "He sustained many severe burns, and extensive damage to his respiratory system. Tragically, he is now dependent on a portable life support system."

Unwitting gasps of shock, outrage, and professional delight sounded in the auditorium as the reporters thought of the vital young man, the powerful and handsome hero that Skywalker had been...

There were many questions after that, and Palpatine answered them with carefully prepared truths and lies. As much as he would have liked to indict Obi-Wan Kenobi for his crime against Skywalker, he could not afford to alienate the images of two media darlings in one day, and so he kept the identity of Anakin's attacker vague, claiming that the investigation was still in progress.

* * *

One supremely exhausting hour later Palpatine finally fled the Rancor's maw, retreating to his office while the reporters slithered off to do their worst.

Leaning back in his chair with a steaming porcelain cup full of _tisan, _the thoroughly drained Sith Master was absently contemplating having his massage therapist sent up to his condo when his com began to chime insistently. Groaning, he thought about ignoring it, but characteristically decided to err on the side of caution.

His diligence was grimly validated when the unblinking image of the Twi'lek doctor from _Volorum Medical_ appeared on his screen.

"Your Majesty," the chubby man greeted him gravely.

"Is something wrong with General Skywalker?" Palpatine demanded. He was already searching the Force for his student's fiery aura. Surely he would have felt it if Anakin had died...

"Yes, sir. I regret to inform you that his condition has deteriorated further. His body has rejected the implanted limbs, and we've had to remove them to prevent metal poisoning."

_Will this nightmare never end? _

"Sir?" the doctor asked. Palpatine blinked and wondered if he'd voiced his weary thoughts aloud.

"I'm on my way," he said firmly, rising.

"Very good, your Majesty," the other man said gently. "We will see you soon."

The blue screen flickered once extinguished, leaving Darth Sidious standing alone in his dimly lit and very empty office.

* * *

**Notes**: Hmm, let's see. Not much this time, I think. Fewer details and more action in this chapter. The only thing I really want to address is Palpatine's memories of his youth. I don't read the EU (hate it!), so whatever crap they might have come up with about Darth Plagueis has no part in this story. I have my own long, terribly complex backstory for Plagueis, and I thought it would be nice to give you all a glimpse of him:) I'm hoping to write it all down someday, but seeing as it will definitely be novel-length, it might have to wait until all of my other projects are finished.

Solius is Plagueis' birth name, and of course the one he went by in his day to day life. As noted, he was a biologist. As not noted, he worked as a professor and researcher at Theed University.

Ayrael is the given name that a friend and I use for Palpatine. Not sure about the last name, because I do tend to think of 'Palpatine' as his ceremonial/political name, much as 'Amidala' is Padmé's.

**Unsigned Review Responses:**

**;)**: Thanks loads for the great, swift review. I'm so happy that you like all of my little details (I have such fun writing them!), and yay for plot! I'm happy you think this has one, because sometimes I wonder;) I did check out Screaming Ferret. Thanks for the rec--I like some of her stuff:) Too few people write about the Sith!

**sethnakht**: Oh, wow. This review had me on Cloud Nine for days. Comparing my Vader to Faust--those are some tall boots to fill, and I'm tremendously flattered! I too wondered about how Vader changed from the green young man of the PT to the powerful and supremely learned warlord of the OT--so I guess this was my answer:) Other versions might differ, but I'm happy that you find this one both plausible and enjoyable! That I've brought you some enlightenment regarding Palpatine's function in Vader's life also pleases me greatly.

Thanks again for the stellar feedback, and I hope that you keep reading!


	6. Chapter 6

I hope that you're all still reading, because here is another chapter!

* * *

For a woman who loved the finer things in life as fiercely as Poogba Grazatha did; who loved to dance and attend wild interactive holofilm parties; who spent her long, long nights in the most notorious of Coruscant's most exclusive clubs, and who could drink most Wookiees under the table, the dry scientific minutia of prosthetic sciences seemed a bizarrely out of character career choice. Indeed had anyone suggested such a career choice to her in the days of her fabulously misspent youth, she would have laughed and announced that she intended to be a headliner, not some pale tech lackey whose glorious destiny was to be locked away in a gloomy lab all day.

All that had been changed by her father's unexpected death. A factory worker, Haclas Grazatha had lost his left hand to a piece of industrial equipment. The Rodian man had been devastated by the loss of his primary appendage, and been almost pathetically grateful for the piece of metal that had replaced it. But as little money as he made, he could not afford regular check-ups in Rodia's two-tiered medical system, and hadn't noticed when his body started to reject the false hand—not until it was too late. Haclas died screaming from the unique agony of metal poisoning, a common side effect of the complete integration of the metal limb into body, and Poogba's life changed forever.

Determined to prevent such a thing from happening to some one else's father, the young woman gave up her budding career as a jizz dancer to study medical sciences. Applying all of her own fiery brand of determination, she was able to complete the usual eight-year course in six years. Following the receipt of her medical degree, she spent an additional three years in prosthetic specialisation and came out of school with an almost uncanny understanding of how prosthetics worked with over a dozen distinctive species.

Twelve years later she was known as one of the most respected prosthetic specialists in the Republic, and was responsible for saving thousands of lives, but the core problem remained. Rejection and metal poisoning was still terrible conditions, and ones that almost half of prosthetic recipients experienced at some point. Poogba worked with several experimental teams that were researching alternate methods of construction, but so far none had been successful. The passionate woman remained disheartened by the continued frustration of her deepest desire: to someday see the total elimination of metal poisoning.

And now she hovered anxiously over another potential victim, monitoring the comatose Anakin Skywalker for any encroaching signs of the illness that could utterly destroy the last of his already devastated health. The Rodian's watch was interrupted only by regular glances at the door. Her usually optimistic outlook was dimmed by the impending arrival of Emperor Palpatine, and she could not help but feel slightly nervous at the thought of a man who puzzled and frustrated her in equal measure.

The problem with Palpatine was that he knew absolutely nothing about the medical sciences, was in fact notoriously dependent upon his advisors when it came to anything technological. And knowing nothing, he assumed that anything was possible. Yet looking down at the leaking mass of burns that was the young man in front of her, Poogba wondered if Palpatine's ignorance might not be why Skywalker was still alive. After all, a man with a clearer understanding of the limits of medicine would most likely have given up months ago. Palpatine did not give up. He continued to demand the impossible of Skywalker's doctors and they, baffled and frustrated and overwhelmed, continued to give it. But there were limits to the abilities of even the best medical professionals, and Poogba thought that those limits had finally been reached. Severely burned and unable to absorb the oxygen his body needed, comatose and many of his organs on the verge of complete failure, Skywalker would either soon die or would hover indefinitely on the edge of death, his lifespan artificially lengthened by equipment that could afford him little more than a kind of suspended animation.

"Any change?" asked the attending physician, an orange Twi'lek called Pawel Foshouri.

Poogba looked up with a tight smile. "Nothing. We can thank the Ashla for that at least."

A bark of cynical laughter escaped her counterpart. "Can we? I'd be surprised if any of us got out of this with our careers intact."

"Mm. I hear the Outer Rim is very nice this time of year," Poogba quipped.

"Good. Maybe I'll take early retirement after all. He's not going to make it," Foshouri said grimly, walking to her side of the bed.

"Not to be the naive and optimistic one here, but we don't know that. It's not over till it's over."

Foshouri's brow ridge lifted incredulously. "Look at the guy. It's _over_."

"Then I suppose I shall not be needing you anymore, Doctor," a coldly cultured voice said from behind both doctors.

Poogba gasped and whirled around in time to see Emperor Palpatine fiercely descend upon them, like a bird of prey in winter.

"Your Majesty, I--"

"Be silent," Palpatine snapped with a new note of command in his already formidable tenor. "You--" he looked at Foshouri. "Tell me everything. Now."

"Yes, Your Majesty," the hapless Twi'lek muttered. "The prognosis is bad, sir. He'd dying. It could happen in a minute, or it could happen in a year, but very likely he is not waking up. He's on the verge of total organ failure and even with constant life support he simply cannot get the oxygen he needs."

"He managed in the weeks directly following the incident," Palpatine reminded them. "And he went into kidney and liver failure before. He recovered. He will do so again."

"According to his records, he has lost consciousness several times in the past four weeks—a sign of inadequate oxygen saturation. The fact that he has previously experienced organ failure means that he is far less likely to recover again. Furthermore, he never completely regained his full capacity—nor will he. It simply doesn't happen. "

The morbid haze of uncomprehending disinterest began to dim the emperor's eyes. "I was told that Anakin lost consciousness because of inadequate nutritional care," he said, clearly addressing the only thing he had completely understood.

"That played a part in his condition, sir, but--"

"And if his organs fail, you can transplant them."

"It's not that simple, Your Majesty," Poogba interrupted. "Clone organs are unstable; they deteriorate faster than the natural body, and we might either not find a match for a natural donor organ, or we could and they might reject anyway. Keeping his own organs is the best course of action, but they're so damaged...."

The emperor drew himself up ominously, and both doctors tensed for an order they would likely lack the power to fulfill. But before that order could be given, Skywalker's monitors began to urgently beep and screech.

"What is it?" the emperor demanded.

A quick glance confirmed Poogba's worst fears. "Metal poisoning. I'm going to have to ask you to leave, Your Majesty."

"I will not," the politician retorted frostily.

Briefly closing her eyes, Poogba prayed to the Ashla for patience. They didn't have time for this. "Please stand in the corner. Try not to get in the way."

Ignoring the resultant glare of indignation, Poogba joined the team of doctors now gathered around Skywalker.

"What do we have?" she asked Foshouri.

"Kidney and liver failure, and plastisteel in the bloodstream."

"Reached the heart?"

"Not yet," Foshouri said grimly.

Over the next few critical minutes the six other doctors put Skywalker on dialysis, while Poogba worked her magic on the poison threatening Skywalker's heart and brain. She felt the emperor's eyes on her as she worked, twin cerulean lasers burning into the back of her skull. She resisted the urge to reach back and scratch her pebbly scales with her gloved hand.

* * *

It seemed like an eternity before the mass of doctors began to thin out and Palpatine could again see the prone body of his apprentice. Reassured by the illuminated monitors next to Anakin's bed, the Sith Master took a deep breath, letting some of the tightness ease out of his chest. He even managed an artificial, politic smile for the two doctors left in the room.

"How is he?" he asked. His voice sounded raspy and weak in his own ears.

"Alive," the Twi'lek said flatly. "For now."

"Then that is all that matters," Palpatine said firmly, silently warning the man to say no more.

The warning went unheeded. "I won't be a part of this any longer, Your Majesty. There is no point to keeping him alive. He likely won't wake up again, and even if he does his quality of life will be...atrocious, if not unbearable. It is your responsibility to see that this young man does not suffer any more."

"Excuse me?" Palpatine quietly demanded. "I don't believe I heard you properly."

"Sir," Grazatha interrupted hurriedly, "What Doctor Foshouri means is that it would be kinder to let General Skywalker go to his final rest. Surely a talented young man, an _athlete _no less,would not want to live like...that. He would be more than handicapped, more than crippled. If he wakes up he would be incapacitated; frequently bedridden, and in chronic agony for the rest of his life."

"And he would be strong enough to bear it," Palpatine retorted sharply, the volume of his voice unwittingly rising.

"With all due respect, Your Majesty...I don't know that he would be. I don't know that anyone would be. I think it would be best--"

"I don't want to hear what would be best," Palpatine growled, feeling the fury of a barely leashed Sith Master peering out from behind his lying eyes. "I want both of you to leave. Right now. I will see to General Skywalker myself."

"I really don't think--"

"Inadvisable--"

"Unqualified--"

"OUT!" Palpatine roared. His unmitigated fury assaulted the ears of the medical personnel who, shocked into motion, retreated before the allusion to their new emperor's truest power, leaving him alone with the shell of a boy he'd mentored for almost fifteen years; the boy for whose very existence he was accountable.

"You never do things the easy way; do you, child?" the emperor sighed.

He rubbed at his eyes with open palms and sat down next to the bed. Quickly, before he could second-guess himself, he tapped into the Force. Harnessing his anger at the defeatist doctors who would have him kill his apprentice, he felt the dark power move through his fingertips—first sluggishly; then vibrating like panicked atoms. Only once before had he tried to save a life this way, and he had done it for this very same boy. The process was just as hazardous to himself as it was to his student. Still he could not help but try.

Heedless of the grave possibility of infection, the emperor deactivated the protective bubble that surrounded Anakin, and gently touched the paper-thin flesh of the boy's temples. As he did so, he pictured the midichlorians racing through Anakin's blood and his own; pictured their microscopic bodies working in miraculous tandem and listened for the singing that he remembered as a source of both terror and ecstasy.

At first it was a subsonic buzz in his cerebral cortex, an itch that he could not scratch, before it became the first, piercing note of a pitch pipe, giving the chorus direction. Then it was harmony, a million voices singing a thousand notes, whipping him with a storm of indefatigable song; sweeping him up and grasping his soul in a blazing, mystic fist.

He could see nothing; hear nothing; _was_ nothing. The remembered fallacy that he could possibly master the building blocks of the universe was swept away as though it had never been, and he was left limp and helpless, a slave to the midichlorians. Only one thing kept him from simply letting himself become a part of that storm: the whispered memory of a name.

_Anakin._

_

* * *

_

Anakin Skywalker was lost, sweating under twin suns and walking the pounding sands of an interminable desert. After days of walking, days of thirsting, he finally saw a little farmstead. There was a young man standing outside, working a vaporator.

"Hello? I know it's a lot to ask, but I really need something to drink. I've been walking for days. I'm surprised I'm not dead." Anakin's tongue was thick in his throat and he gagged on it, as if he were trying to swallow cotton.

The man did not respond, but continued to work his equipment.

"Hello? Did you hear me?"

The man continued to ignore him, and Anakin reached out with sudden fury. To his amazement, his hands passed right through the man's throat. The farmer did not even seem to notice. Anakin gaped, staring at his hands. He stood there for some time, shocked, and finally the farmer stood up and turned around.

It was his so-called stepbrother. Owen Lars.

"Beru?" Lars called. "Is midmeal ready yet?"

"Almost, Owen," a young, female voice responded melodiously from inside the house. "I'm just putting the baby in the high-chair now."

Desperately wanting to escape the sun, Anakin decided to go into the house, but just as he crossed the threshold the glaring light vanished and he found himself refreshed and cool and standing on the flagstones of a little café. Tendrils of bright green reached in from a tropical forest, and beautiful, brightly coloured birds nested in the surrounding trees.

People sat at low tables, kneeling on wicker mats as they ate, and demurely clad women moved about ensuring customer satisfaction. One of the waitresses caught Anakin's attention, though he could not have said why. She was rather young, in her early thirties, with a long cascade of gleaming brown hair. Her eyes smiled and her face was smooth. An invulnerable aura of peace surrounded her, and Anakin instinctively moved closer, wanting to feel that peace; wanting to calm his own perpetually raging spirit.

When he reached her side, he realised why she had caught his eye. She was his mother. Decades younger than when he had last seen her, she lacked the deep lines of care and worry that he remembered so vividly. He remembered also the stories she had told him when he was a young boy, and knew that she had not been born a slave. Was she free here? Was this happy, lovely young woman Shmi Skywalker?

"Good morrow, sir," Shmi murmured to an auburn haired man. "What may I bring you to drink?"

"Good morrow, dear lady. Tisane will do for now," a laughing, resonant tenor answered.

Anakin looked at the customer, but before he could register a face he was elsewhere once more. A dark corridor loomed in front of him, and near-tangible sorrow draped the walls. Sombre beings clad in medical robes scurried past him and did not see him. Tears tickled the corners of Anakin's eyes as his heart grew heavy for reasons he could not explain.

He wandered up and down the halls for what seemed like days, avoiding the menacing shadows that lurked in high ceilings and cracked doorways. He waited to be be somewhere else, but it did not happen, yet slowly something else did. He would turn a corner, and hear a snatch of song. Enter a room filled with sobbing beings who could not see him and be caressed by soaring voices that would disappear just as inexplicably as they had come.

Soon he was hunting the music, stalking it as he had Dooku and Grievous and the other Separatist monsters. His throat closed up with longing when he heard the high, wailing voices that could never have been human, and he thirsted for them as he had thirsted for water in the desert.

Now and then he caught snatches of the words, though they were not in Basic. He thought he remembered what the language was called, but only sometimes. The images of the song were confusing. They sang of a journey to the gates of the Underworld, of a fearless warrior confronting a terrible beast, and even that seemed familiar, but soon it was all slipping away....

The music stopped when he reached a huge door that hung thick with grief and danger, and Anakin did not hesitate to step inside. Even before he saw Palpatine bent over the bed, he knew he had reached his destination.

* * *

**Notes:**

_Re:_ "Metal poisoning." I made this up because I thought that it's likely that there are possible side effects to the SW style metal limbs.

Kidney and liver failure because a friend of mine did a lot of research on burns and he told me that kidney failure is pretty much immediate with severe burns, and liver failure often happens as well. With burns of Anakin's severity, it's probably inevitable. I imagine it happened before, and now he's relapsed, so it's happening again. Again, there are a lot of things happening that Anakin isn't aware of. He spent the first few weeks after Mustaphar more or less unconscious, after all. See part one for that.

Basically, I took a lot of medical liberties in this story. If it's wrong, it's probably something I thought up. If it's right, it's probably something my friend researched.

re: Palpatine not knowing anything about medicine. I'm tired of characters who know everything about everything. As much as I love Palpatine, the man is a politician. He would likely know very little about medicine or technology. He has other people to do these things for him. Even as a Sith, he's not required to know a whole lot more than building his lightsabre. I have a funny story in mind for that, too:D I just don't see him as being very technologically inclined, and that is the worst kind of supreme evil leader to have when you're a doctor being told to do the impossible. Ha. Poor doctors.

And I mean, come on. The only kind of man who would have a Death Star designed and build, is the kind of man who doesn't understand what goes into building one.

**Anon Reviews:**

AnonymousFan: I have kept the cardiac health of my readers in mind by not updating quite so quickly this time;P Nor do I know what Palpatine would do without his Lordie V! Thanks for the review, and sorry for the continued suspense;P

:I: Sorry I lost you with my Plagueis. I don't consider the EU canon at all, so I feel entirely okay about completely disregarding it. I wish you all the best and thanks for reading!

nicky: Yay! Thanks for the review, and I'm so happy you're enjoying:)

sethnakht: Your reviews are always so flattering! I'm not sure how to respond:) I must only say that I am deeply touched by the comparison to the Romantics. Indeed, the Romantics have been my greatest influences over the years. I always manage to come back to the core of the tempestuous loner as the driving force of my universes, at least!

Thank you also for the touching review of 'Master.' I do try to move beyond what I have been given in the films in order to produce a deeper insight into the inner workings of the characters' psyches. Nice to do know that I have been successful:)

Timmy: Oh, thanks so much indeed! Always nice to be told that one's writing fantastic. Super fantastic, even:)


	7. Chapter 7

Well, I hope that someone is still reading this. I had a hell of a time writing this chapter, hence the unreasonable delay. Enjoy! I hope:)

* * *

Emperor Palpatine's heavy cloak shifted like a waterfall of dense black velvet, a heavy spray that parted only slowly to reveal the politician's closed eyes and precariously drawn, twisted features. Anakin stared at the mutation, surprised that he had not remembered it. Absorbing the fact back into his cotton-wrapped consciousness with difficulty, the young man followed the elegant line of Palpatine's arm down the bed to study the thing that rested there. He was both puzzled and repulsed by the mutilated lump of burned flesh, the thing masquerading as a human being. He wondered who the person had once been, and why Palpatine, practical as he was, was wasting his time with what was obviously a lost cause.

Perhaps the dying person had some political value. Vaguely curious, Anakin wandered over to the name-plate at the end of the bed and read the neatly gleaming, print rows of Aurabesh on the tiny monitor.

_Skywalker, Anakin. Gen. 2__nd__ Class. _

Anakin blinked and frowned. There must have been a clerical error. Surely Palpatine could not believe that this ruined body was his?

"Sir?" he asked the man next to the bed. His voice was quiet so as not to startle his mentor but, much like Owen and Shmi, Palpatine displayed no reaction. "Sir, I'm here. That isn't me!"

Palpatine said nothing, and Anakin reached out to touch his mentor's shoulder, determined to make his presence known, only to start back when a pair of flaming yellow eyes materialised between his hand and the black-clad shoulders. Tremendous ebony wings rose up behind Palpatine, casting an inky shadow over the hospital bed, striking an awed chill in Anakin's chest when the Dragon's tongue flicked out and briefly touched the young man's cheek. His hand flew up to touch his suddenly numb face.

Though Anakin wanted nothing more than to flee, the Dragon's mesmerising eyes held the human in place. Onxy scales covered the reptile's prodigious body, and in the cracks between each plate Anakin glimpsed the terrible amber forge that heated its fearsome heart, could feel the flames that threatened immolation if he took another step.

It was in outer radius of that heat that he remembered another fire: the one that had heedlessly devoured his mortal body on the cutting black sands of Mustafar. He cringed back from the gruesome trauama of the memory, but could not banish it back to oblivion. And as he stumbled blindly in reflexive agony, the Dragon's hungry, malevolent breath scorched him with remembered years of sleepless nights, his mother's distant, inevitable screams, the possessive, horrific repetition of the nightmare in his wife's bed, and most bitterly haunting of all: the whisper that he could never banish from the high, cool dome of the Jedi Temple, the calm scorn that no one ever vocalised, but that everyone heard: _Imposter. You do not belong here. _

"What do you want?" Anakin demanded.

The Dragon said nothing and its expression did not change, but suddenly the human knew. It was waiting.

Waiting for him to die.

"You can't have me," Anakin cried. "I won't go with you!" His voice sounded thin and childish, trembling with helpless denial of what could not be denied, and he flinched with embarrassment before a creature even more remotely serene than Master Yoda. It was a serenity that both angered and shamed Anakin.

The Dragon's wing reached out over his shoulder, and he shivered under its cold shadow, trembling when it touched him again. A river of ice pounded relentlessly through his veins, numbing his limbs and chilling the outer limits of the treacherous, tempestuous storm at his core. Roiling in his breast, he was perpetually aware of its scorching heat—the power that the Jedi had always distrusted, the trembling fury that devastated whatever peace he might briefly attain. Now a seductive purr rumbled through Anakin, offering him that long-denied peace, whispering to him that it was the time to sleep, time to rest, and Anakin, soothed after a scorching lifetime, let himself be drawn into the Dragon's comforting, seductive promise.

"_You will not leave!" _The rasping fury of a human voice woke Anakin from his warm, red trance; disrupted the Dragon's hypnotic purr, and drew Anakin's attention to the sputtering life support monitor and Palpatine's angry face: drawn and pale above his black cloak, so unusually drab for that lover of elaborate trappings.

Black, Anakin suddenly remembered, was the private Nubian colour of strength, to be worn only in the most trying of times.

Palpatine's eyes flickered across the room as if searching for something. Anakin was not entirely surprised when they fell on the Dragon, almost but not quite meeting its overwhelming eyes, looking just to the side of them as the blind unnervingly did.

"If I must fight for him again, I will," the emperor promised the thing he could not see.

Anakin felt nothing as he regarded the furious man. Intellectually, he was aware of the premise of Palpatine's helpless fury, but in the aftermath of the Dragon's cold touch he could not understand it.

Black lines of power emerged from the Sith Master and curled around Anakin's helpless mortal body, enveloping it in a fashion that was both hungry and bizarrely protective. Yet Anakin understood that Palpatine's power, though impressive, was insufficient to the task of saving him from death. Death could not be denied by the living. It was only the dying themselves who could make that choice, and sometimes not even they.

Impassively, Anakin watched Palpatine struggle with something that he clearly could not comprehend. With the new-found wisdom of the disembodied, Anakin wondered at a man who insightful enough to understand all the nuances of mortal minds and hearts, yet could not seem to understand the necessity of death as the end of suffering and the evolution of the soul. The obstinate frustration on Palpatine's features spoke of a lifetime spent struggling against the constraints of mortality. This was a man who demanded to make his own fate, who laughed in the face of opposition, who could not conceive of submitting even to the great mysteries of the universe, the unspeakable words behind the curtain of breath and light, and in the most secret part of Anakin's soul, the part that was still touched by mortality, he pitied his mentor.

It was in that moment, too, that Anakin realised the futility of Palpatine's battle with the Dragon. With a flash of the supernatural insight that had guided him through all the great turning points of his life, the former Jedi suddenly understood the beast's purely metaphorical nature. The creature was the terror that lived in his own heart, and the bitter battle that must rage in Palpatine as well. Regarding the man who spewed hopeless black fire at an illusion he could not even see, Anakin was suddenly baffled that he had never seen the nameless desperation that drove the man, the ineffable terror that Palpatine himself was unlikely to perceive through the decades of lies he had buried it under.

As if from a great distance, he thought he heard the ghost of Palpatine's voice chanting a litany of triumph and empty wisdom:

_"He came to us then. His eyes were infinite pits of darkness, the emptiness where stars once burned. For even stars die, Lord Vader... Death cannot be battled, cannot be resisted and cannot be bargained with. But I did all three, Lord Vader. I did it for you, as I would do it for no other. In return, Death offered me the respect due to my calculated affront and gave me your life. Do you understand, my apprentice? I battled Death himself for you. Not for the microscopic life forms in your blood, but for you. You are greater than mere mortality, greater than petty numbers on a view screen. You are my Sith Lord, and I will not let you go."_

But this battle had never been the emperor's to win, and this Dragon was only smoke and Palpatine's oldest habit: fantastical words. Death did not acknowledge daring. Death only waited.

Touched by transformative epiphany, the ice melted from Anakin and the beast disappeared from his own perceptions, though he continued to watch the emperor do battle with what was not there while divisive concern and gruesome satisfaction tore at his own essence. Only when he could bear the sight no longer did Anakin pass the emperor's sadly savage lightnings in the quest to touch his own flesh.

The scar-laded tissues were unnaturally thick and shiny, and the young man was both puzzled and mesmerised by his ugliness. Never before had he been ugly. Even his robotic arm and the scar across his eye had only seemed to contribute to his wartime mystique, at least according to adoring communiqués he'd received from his civilian fans. Yet there was no denying the new hideousness of his body, and as he regarded it he remembered, as if from a great distance, the trembling, awkward agony of living in the towering cybernetic prison.

One ghostly hand skimmed the length of his mechanical limbs; grazed the chest that deigned to labour only with the aid of artificial respiration; touched the paper-thin skull just a hair's breadth between healthy function and irreparable brain damage. Looking at the light sheet that covered his groin and torso, Anakin could only too easily picture the melted chest, and most painful of all--irrationally but undeniably—the irreparably ruined sex organs, the ones that he had been too terrified to look at he'd had the chance.

Grieved and impotently infuriated, the soul of the newest Dark Lord of the Sith approximated sitting down on the sheets that cradled his mortal husk. The room was inexplicably quiet, interrupted only by the ceaseless beeping of the machine monitoring his vitals, and Anakin slowly looked over at his mentor, unsurprised to see the older man panting, leaning on the bed with his eyes open, no longer in the meditative trance that had suspended him halfway between the world of the living and the dying.

"Very well, child," Palpatine whispered hoarsely, grinding his words through clenched, rotting teeth. Anakin was fixated by their unhealthy colours: putrid black, greens and blues, mottled like tiny, sharp bruises. "It is up to you now. You have the _choice! _Will you die without a whisper, as the Jedi did; fade into a few fleeting paragraphs in the history texts? Are you not the man of destiny I taught you to be?"

Was he? Given his prodigious talents and the mercurial string of absurd coincidences that had elevated him from junkyard slave to the protégé of the most powerful man in the galaxy, perhaps he did indeed have a destiny. Or perhaps there was merely this element of calculation to define his life: Palpatine's ambitions seeing a unique tool and logically making use of it.

Watching his erstwhile mentor bending darkly over his inert body, Anakin was fascinated by the man's frustrated passion, anger and even, perhaps, grief; transfixed by the hand that caressed his plasticised flesh: eager, impatient, encroaching on a forbidden, near-incestuous sensuality. And if the transparent, waiting soul of Anakin Skywalker had needed to breathe, that breath would have stopped for just a moment in the wake of an understanding that gripped him like an iron clamp.

"The power that you have always yearned for await you just this side of the veil. Do not allow the weakness of this...crude flesh to stop you crossing back over. I have _felt _your passion. I know your strength! Use it!" Palpatine hissed.

Anakin hesitated, torn between the world that he had known and the promise of rest from the agony of both his body and the divisive passions that prevented him from trusting even himself. Perhaps himself most of all.

"Anakin...." The new emperor's voice was a black purr, and the treacherous black hole that was Anakin's heart responded to the tempting affection as it always had: with blind yearning and bottomless need.

This, his new understanding warned him, was at the fulcrum of their bond. He needed and needed and needed, and Palpatine gave, fed him the manipulative praise and affection that kept him tied to his new master's demands, as it had once tied him to the flattering, apocalyptic suggestions that Anakin had never once been able to refuse.

"Come back to me, Anakin: my apprentice, my triumph. Together we will be empire!"

The magnetic politician's cultured voice was saturated with charisma, thick with seduction and, even bloodless, Anakin was wildly tempted by the old man's promise. He knew it was possible...!

Next to the bed the monitors went suddenly insane, beeping and flickering wildly. Palpatine cursed as the room was flooded with masked physicians, medical aides and droids, and Anakin knew that his body was at last beginning to truly die. Vertigo shook his ghost as whatever tied him to life frayed. Light and adrenal anticipation filled him, as intoxicating as if he had breathed in helium gas.

"No! No! It is not time!" the emperor insisted, and his face was painted white by the blank surprise of a powerful man who could not believe that he was not being obeyed.

"Your Majesty, you must leave!" one of the doctors demanded. "There is no room here."

Palpatine's eyes narrowed furiously, the darkest powers of the Force a malevolent amber gleam in the instant before he lashed out with a fierce hand to burn a hole through the physician's chest. The man gaped silently, dumbly astonished as he fell to the hard, sanitised floor. The remaining doctors froze, paralysed by disbelief.

"SAVE HIM!" Palpatine roared in a voice that was much, much larger than his frail, deformed old body, and the medical personnel rushed back to their work with all the scurrying mania of the truly terrified.

What would death be like, Anakin wondered. What was beyond this impotent mirror of mortality, the helpless tether to the doomed flesh? Would it be like the legends of his parched childhood: the fire spirits of the desert, djinn-messengers from a hell richly flavoured with spices intolerable to both flesh and soul, and a heaven that ran bountiful with more cool, clear water than any native of the Dune Sea could rightfully conceive of? Would his mother be there? Would Padmé? Though they had both abandoned him, he hoped that they would be.

Or would death be as the Jedi prophesied? For the man at peace with himself, oneness with the Force: absorption into something much greater than the ego. For the man controlled by his darker passions, to become what ruled him: the formless fury that killed, the envy and fear that destroyed, the ponderous darkness that drove the heat-death of the universe.

And if it were true? What was to become of him? Was he content to contemplate eternity as the downfall of other heroes, the black Dragons in their hidden, fearful hearts?

"Anakin!"

_If it was true!_

Or perhaps it was something else entirely, something utterly, ineffably unknown. Waiting for him….

With growing fear and infinite weariness, the suspicion that he was not finished with his ugly, painful body began to tickle Anakin's back, running up his spine like the tiny, thousand-legged, poisoned insects that scurried and crouched in the million nooks and crannies of Mos Espa, surfacing only to visit senseless, anonymous death on the very young, old, and sick.

And like those very sick, Anakin felt the poison finally reach his heart: a clenched, shaking, ectoplasmic fist injecting liquid terror into his ethereal veins. The faulty machinery of decimated flesh and gleaming cybernetics may be his prison, but what if it was only in his prison that he could determine the course of his eternity? Death was no realm to enter blindly, yet as each second clicked by Anakin moved further away from life, with the increasingly hot, almost erotic pressure of the chaotic passions that promised to utterly consume him expanding in head, heart, chest, loins.

What was wrong with that? Weren't his passions his to feed as he _chose?!_

And yet... had it ever been his choice?

Palpatine's hiss of frustrated fury was as sharp as a knife as Anakin, clinging to the edge of forever, heaved his ghost at his corporeal body with the very last of his spiritual strength and all the power of his self-immolating terror.

He never heard the defeat in the emperor's voice, nor the moment that defeat was transposed into an astonishment that could not have been submerged—not even by the master.

* * *

Phew! Only one more part left! And hopefully any confusion will be cleared up there:) I'll try to get it written and posted within the next week or two.

Unsigned review responses:

**Anonymous:** Thanks for a wonderfully flattering review:) I'm so happy that you enjoy my OC 'introductions.' I thought that they deserved a little life of their own instead of being, as you say, 'just there.'

**Random:** I'm glad that you're enjoying the exploration of the emotions of both Sith. Sidious might seem like he's being a little too nice, but he can't really afford to be too cruel right now either--people are still getting used to this empire thing, and they could still revolt. But I hope that you approve of his little fit of murder in this part:)

**Sarah:** Hi! I appreciate the short reviews just as much as the long ones, so don't worry about that:) Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me what you think, and sorry about the long wait for this part!

**Wizard:** In the history of ever! Wow! I'm tremendously flattered and overjoyed that you are enjoying my story this much. Hope that you liked this chapter just as much, and thank you so much for reviewing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Epilogue**

Sate Pestage solemnly set the twelve silver candles dedicated to the Ashla into the grand ceremonial candelabra. Then he stepped back from the altar and murmured an inquiry into the invisible microphone affixed to his impeccable coiffure. He received an equally calm though indecisive response. The heavy drapery to the side of the massive ceremonial pedestal remained still.

"Sound system clear, Master Pestage," one of the technicians informed him from afar several minutes later. The man was audibly uneasy as he voiced the common honorific, clearly uncertain of what exactly he should call Palpatine's adviser in this brave new world of imperial formality.

"Acknowledged," Pestage said with the cool confidence of a man so powerful that he did not require a title. The part of him that was not focused on the business at hand enjoyed the unseen squirming.

But the insignificant tech was soon forgotten as the adviser transferred his attention to the gathering masses of people taking their seats in the basilica with subdued resignation. Most of these were not courtiers, politicians or business magnates, but the results of an open invitation to anyone who cared to attend. Accordingly there were thousands, yet that they all understood the nature of the gathering was clear in their heavily held heads, their subdued chatter, and the dumb, animal disgust with which they regarded the traditional funeral accoutrements.

Furtively, Pestage cast another glance at the curtain. Three minutes to show time. Where in blazes was Palpatine?

"You are certain about this, Lord Vader? I could still arrange to have you miraculously found stranded and grievously wounded on some Outer Rim hellhole."

"I am certain," Vader rumbled with mechanical formality, attention seemingly fixed to the high, narrow window beside him.

There was a new maturity and power to that voice that had nothing to do with the vocabulator. It seemed that the potential that Palpatine had long sensed in Anakin was at last emerging, yet still something disturbed the emperor, for he had not had any part in this newest transformation. Instead it had happened spontaneously in the month since Anakin had openly defied the physical laws of the universe and astounded both his master and his doctors by gasping back to life. Where before petulance and rank emotion had reigned supreme, now Vader seemed to be acquiring a new dignity, and the beginnings of what miraculously might even be called patience.

Perhaps the boy was becoming a man at last, Palpatine mused. He had mixed feelings on the subject, for while a man was certainly more useful to him than a boy, a boy was also more easily controlled. The Sith Master assuaged his worries by reminding himself that Vader was still Anakin. He had always been able to read Anakin with laughable ease.

"You know that if you relinquish your legal identity as Anakin Skywalker, that I cannot protect you from your enemies—and there will be many, I assure you. Remember that the strong fear to lose their power because the weak will always desire to take it from them."

"Like you did," Vader responded calmly.

Taken aback at the implication that he had ever been weak, Palpatine frowned deeply. "It is...the way of the Sith, Lord Vader. My master had let down his guard. He could not have expected anything other than what happened."

"And was he proud of you?" Vader asked elliptically.

"What an absurd question. Why this nonsense, Anakin?" the emperor asked, irritated by the unpredictable behaviour of the one person he had always been able to flawlessly predict.

Vader shrugged majestically; Palpatine heard a heavy shifting sound as the black shoulder plate lifted and settled back into place. "Just wondering."

There was a tentative knock on the green room's shining wooden door. To the emperor's indignation, the production manager did not wait for his response before popping her head inside. Palpatine idly contemplated using the Force to slam the door shut on her neck.

"I'm very, very sorry to disturb you, Your Majesty, but you'd turned off your head-set and we tried to wait as long as possible, but we're due on the air in two minutes."

Palpatine forced a charming smile. "Yes, of course, my dear. I was simply conferring with Lord Vader."

The woman smiled nervously and disappeared, no doubt curious about the mysterious, monolithic 'Lord Vader,' who had made increasingly frequent appearances in the newly-dubbed Imperial Centre's highest echelons, and of whom nothing was known save that he enjoyed Palpatine's personal favour.

"Lord Vader--" Palpatine tried one last time.

"I know what you're going to say, Master. But I'm not that man anymore, and I can't pretend to be him."

Frustrated and annoyed with his student's continued psychosis, Palpatine gathered his robes and strode to the door.

"Master..." Vader murmured.

Palpatine pivoted sharply to berate the younger man, and was instead forced to squint as the high noon glare of the orbital mirrors conjured glittering dust motes and vivid beams of golden light to pierce the lens of the emperor's pale and sensitive blue eyes. The spectacular vision adumbrated Vader's massive black shadow like a quantum singularity: the black hole impossibly burning at the heart of a moribund star.

Shocking himself, the Sith Master swallowed back a wave of sorrow that threatened to choke him. "What is it, Anakin?" he gently murmured.

"What do you think happens to dead Sith Lords?"

Surprised, Palpatine laughed. "They rot in hell. Now if you'll excuse me, my apprentice, I have to conduct your funeral."

* * *

The door closed after His Imperial Majesty, and Darth Vader was alone with the blank white walls and ceiling of the green room, so similar to the spun-cotton shroud of peace and resignation that had been his strange new companion since he had narrowly escaped death a second time. Much like the blank, saving fog that was all he could recall of the time directly following Mustafar, he remembered very little of his second convalescence-- save for a strange intuition that he had made a choice. Somewhere in that mire of weakness and pain he had _chosen _to live, _fought _for the right to breathe, and come out shaking and screaming and saturated with the knowledge that he had exchanged the right to self-pity for the right to that breath. It was time to move on, to check his painkillers, pull up his boots, and burst free of the cloaked purgatory he'd moped about in for the past half year. It was time to finally begin to discover all of the power and victories that his new life as Darth Vader had to offer-- and the final step into that life could only be the complete annihilation of Anakin Skywalker.

Even before Vader's head had cleared enough to hold a real conversation, he had known this, and the relief that his master could not quite conceal had given the younger Sith the perfect advantage. He had told Palpatine that he could not truly embrace his miraculous second chance at life until he erased the failure and naiveté of his existence as a Jedi Knight. And as reluctant as his master had clearly been to relinquish the political advantage of Anakin Skywalker-- galactic hero, wounded media darling, and the only Jedi to remain loyal to the government-- Vader had made it entirely clear that he was willing to do almost anything for his new master—except go on being General Skywalker. Sharp-tongued and furious, but burdened by the atavistic power of unspoken debt incurred when Vader made the choice to rise from his death bed, Palpatine had ungraciously agreed to his student's terms.

Now weeks later Vader strode from the green room and emerged into the subdued chaos of a technical circus. Black wires and computer circuitry were everywhere while media lackeys went about their business in furious silence, and the production manager watched the backstage monitor intently as she sweated and chain-smoked some kind of heavily spiced, alien cigarette.

"Has it started?" Vader rumbled as quietly as he could.

The woman shifted to the side to let him see the monitor. "We're a little late, but the cameras are on him."

* * *

The emperor was grave, quietly drawn and grieved in his lavender Nubian mourning robes. The hood was up on his white cloak, but his blue eyes were large and sympathetic as he turned to face his audience. Well-versed in political showmanship, he let the silence build for perhaps fifteen seconds before humming a little to clear his throat. In the cleverly concealed microphones that surrounded him, the tiny sound was enormous, and anyone who had not already stilled did so.

"Gentlebeings," the emperor rasped. "We are gathered here on this most solemn of occasions to celebrate the life, and mourn the death, of Anakin Skywalker."

A murmur went through the thousands gathered: a soft, sad sound like a midsummer night's breeze through a dark Nubian forest.

"But before we examine what made this man a hero to all good citizens of the Republic-- what made him a brave commander, a fierce warrior for justice and equality, and an idealist in a galaxy of cynics-- I would like to talk about what made him a friend."

The lack of the usual harsh holo lighting made it easy to see the beings in the first few rows, and it was clear from the expressions on their faces that his calculated plot to humanise a distant media darling had worked. Now they were not imagining a man that they had only ever glimpsed from afar-- as fantastic and untouchable as a supernova-- but a living, breathing being who might not have shared their very same troubles, but who did have friends, who _cared. _

"I hope that I am not exaggerating when I say that Anakin was my friend. I knew him since he first came to Coruscant at the tender age of nine standard years. Yet even as a child he had already seen far too much of the terrors that this galaxy has to offer, and the Jedi who so thoughtlessly preached the dogma of No Feel could not understand that child. They derided his anger and his pain because they could not understand. But like any uncloistered citizen of this galaxy, I knew about the slavery, the drugs, the senseless violence and inequality that existed--not just in the Outer Rim whence Anakin hailed--but right here at home. And when I heard of this boy who was adopted by the Jedi far too late to blindly accept their insidious cruelty, I was moved by his plight, and decided to take him under my wing.

"Though I will admit that the initial prospect of dealing with a child was somewhat terrifying," Palpatine added, and was rewarded for this inanity by a small ripple of laughter from the audience.

"The terror did not last long. Anakin was nothing less than a delight, and it was not more than a month or two before I began to regard this bright and exceedingly talented young boy as the son I had never had. And perhaps I am flattering myself unduly, but I think that Anakin returned the familial feeling. We took every opportunity in both of our busy schedules to teach each about those things that we loved most—I, about politics, history, art, music, anthropology, and languages, and he about engineering, computers, mathematics, physics, chemistry and piloting. Of course, with his usual precocious flare, it was not long before he knew the history of Coruscant better than I did, and was humming the melodies in Golden Age operas before the recordings could get to them!" the emperor lied shamelessly for a laugh.

"And I, well...I have always been hopeless at science," Palpatine admitted, charmingly hapless as he shrugged his shoulders and the crowd chuckled again.

"That said," he continued with renewed solemnity, "No blood father was more proud than I when Anakin stepped up to his place as General in the Grand Army of the Republic. Foolishly, I never for a moment believed that that terrible war would take this best and brightest of warriors. I never thought..."

His Imperial Majesty trailed off, allowing the mourners to fill in his thoughts, allowing them to vicariously experience his grief. Briefly and with subdued drama, he closed his eyes and swallowed before continuing in a strong, even voice.

"I thought that he would still be standing by my side, loyal and strong, when the last of the Separatists fell."

A sympathetic murmur now, and many of the beings were starting to hide their faces, sniffle, even to publicly weep. Palpatine contemptuously marvelled that they could be so attached to someone they had never met, that they in fact idolised a fairy-tale construct that bore precious little resemblance to the only-too-fallible, flesh-and-blood boy on which it was based. The emperor's contempt was only made greater knowing that these ridiculous beings would lament their fallen hero for a few days more, a token period, before their memories would inevitably begin to surrender the dead. Then, like all mortal ghosts, Anakin Skywalker would vanish.

The emperor followed his personal tribute (effectively moving because it had all been so very nearly true) with a detailed account of Anakin's career. He carefully skirted further mention of the boy's Jedi status, and reminded the crowd that the Order had been unfair to Skywalker whenever avoiding its mention proved impossible. The chronological account ended with sentimental pastiche of Anakin's personal holointerviews, many of them on location just after key battles had ended. Palpatine was secretly amused as he stood to the side of the great screen, observing the thirty-metre high images of the Jedi General-- all of which appeared invariably brooding, wind-tossed, and darkly heroic with a curl of toffee hair resting on the oh-so-noble brow.

After precisely nine minutes and sixteen seconds the last of the images faded away, and the artfully constructed soundtrack stilled into an anticipatory silence. Assuming an appropriately lugubrious expression, the emperor mounted the the front of the great, red-shrouded altar. There he began to sing, his carefully pleasant speaking tenor opening up to reveal a darker, baritone range as at first quietly, then more loudly, he emitted the traditional chant in _Hajake. _The language of the official state religion was all that remained of the mysterious ancient ones who lived on Coruscant millions of years ago.

"_Ak ka ke hak ka hhah maloq ha ak ha Ashla,_" Palpatine intoned, navigating a series of dark microtones that were as treacherous as a mine-field in even his talented and well-trained musical ear.

As Chancellor, he had not been required to preside over religious ceremonies. That had been the job of the _Ashlahoni_, the Arch Bishop. As Emperor, he had united church and state. Being a true servant of the Force, he considered himself far more qualified to perform the task at hand than the Force-blind and haphazardly appointed _Ashlahoni_.

"_Shaqa ka qe o ka ha Ashla, ka ki Ashla hjoqa."_

But this was the first time that he had openly exercised his new right, and he sensed the subdued, conservative horror of the people in the crowd. Some of them were no doubt still waiting for the bumbling Mon Calamari moron to appear and indignantly abrogate Palpatine's invocations.

"_Hakqe hok Ashla, Bogan hjoqa ka ha ha."_

With the slow movements of ancient ceremony, the emperor took up the long black candle that lay in front of its twelve standing silver sisters. The odd one out was the _Boganaqe_, the one to represent the Dark Side, for the ancients had acknowledged the power of death. Stealthily, Palpatine activated a cleverly-concealed mechanical lighter and held the _Boganaqe _in front of it. The flame leapt from lighter to wick; from the crowd's perspective it would appear as if the black candle had suddenly, magically ignited. Of course the audience logically knew otherwise, but it foolishly required the comfort of false magic on such occasions.

With the lit _Boganaqe _Palpatine was able to transfer fire to the twelve silver sisters, the _Ashlahja:_ the memories of the light, and the emperor was deeply tickled that people required so much light in the face of one bared sliver of darkness. Up on the thirty metre high monitor, the fire gleamed on the golden threads woven in his long lavender robes, the silver embroidery in his cloak, and the lightsabre crystal blue of his eyes. The cameras cut to a dramatic angle, and the tiny flames grew dangerously large, threatening to subsume the Sith's own image.

"_Hok ka ki ma hakqa qe o Ashlahqbogan!"_

By rote, the mourners repeated the traditional invocation of allegiance to the Force in all of its facets, be they of creation or destruction, thereby acknowledging that they could never truly understand the power that drove the universe. Accepting that when it chose to take their best and brightest that they should mourn, but that they should never ask _why_ those bright ones had been taken.

Palpatine clenched his fists in his enveloping sleeves, furious at their passivity, as blind and easily lead as nerf. The Force existed to be used.

* * *

Behind the grand curtain, Darth Vader watched the monitors and saw fury briefly touch his master's mobile face. In that moment Palpatine's soft, ceremonial grief was transformed into something hard and terrible, and it curiously stirred Vader's spiritual core. His master's anger was puzzlingly inappropriate, out of place, and as passionately if diminutively offered as another man might offer love, as another man might offer the word _forever. _It reminded Vader of something: a sweeping, magnetic force as necessary as inhaling and exhaling. Something as sprawling and golden as the Dune Sea, and as old and cold and patient as...

All too soon the emperor's face cleared, and the man who no longer called himself Anakin Skywalker lost that brief flicker of understanding. It would not trouble him for a good time to come. He was Darth Vader: a blade made anew from a dark alloy of pain and fury, forged to unspeakable perfection in the fires of Mustafar.

He was finished, and he was ready.

**Going Blind**

by Rainer Maria Rilke

She sat much like the others at tea.

At first it was as if she held her cup

a little differently than the rest.

She gave a smile. It almost hurt.

And when the time came to rise and talk

and slowly, in no special order,

pass through many rooms (talking and laughing),

then I saw her. She came behind the others,

seeming subdued, like someone who soon

will have to sing before many people;

on her pale eyes full of joy,

light fell from outside, as on a pond.

She followed slowly, taking a long time,

as though something hadn't yet been surmounted;

and yet: as if, as soon as she was past it,

she would no longer walk, but fly.

* * *

What happens when you attempt to treat an artificially crafted fictional character as if he had all of the chaotic, stratified psychological complexity of a flesh and blood man? A mess like this one, that's what! But it's my mess, and I've enjoyed sharing it. I know that I probably haven't cleared up all of your questions. Probably not even half of them. But that's the way real life works, and I suppose I wanted to treat this one like real life: essentially plotless, confusing, and frustrating, but worth it in the end. I hope that it's been worth it for all of you, too.

Thanks a million to everyone who read along!

**Final notes:**

Most of you probably know that the Ashla and the Bogan were the names Lucas gave to the Light and Dark sides of the Force in his original notes/drafts. I've used them here because I figured that the Republic probably had an official state religion of some kind, and 'Jedi' almost certainly wasn't it. For one thing, there were far too few Jedi to serve as a true priesthood, and for another we were given every indication in the films that they did not serve that kind of public function. We do know, however, that there is religion of some kind, because a 'holy man' marries Anakin and Padmé at the end of Ep II. Whether this person was a representative of a specifically Nubian religion, or a more wide-spread faith, we don't know, but I've simply extrapolated from the various data at hand.

Furthermore, I imagine that the _Ashlahoni_, the Arch Bishop of the state religion, is an appointed position, perhaps something similar to the Pope (a position that Palpatine would doubtless be only too happy to absorb into the function of emperor). The religion would also be the sort of monotheism represented by Christianity or Hinduism in that there might be different facets or faces to one god (in this case the Ashla, the life-giving, and the Bogan, the death-bringing), but both still represent *one* deity, rather than a pantheon. As for the music and language of the faith, I've given them a rather middle eastern face. The music would be very similar to what we know of ancient Greek melodies (extremely complex and built on modes), and the sacred language I picture as closely resembling an amalgam of old Egyptian and Hebrew. Very much based on hard consonants, gutteral sounds and repetitions.

Quantum Singularity: In science fiction, the term is used to refer to many different phenomena, which often approximately resemble a gravitational singularity in the scientific sense in that they are massive, localized distortions of space and time. (source Wikipedia)

Green room: television terminology for a room (usually not actually green) in which actors/speakers, etc. wait before appearing on air.

**Review Responses:**

**palpatine7: **I'm following canon in this story, so Anakin definitely wasn't going to die. :) Thanks for taking the time to comment, though, and I like the user name!

**Anonymous: **I'm very gratified to hear that I was able to effectively build suspense in what is essentially a suspenseless void. :) I'm also delighted to know that I was able to brighten up your day! Hopefully you were able to enjoy this last part just as much. Thanks for following this story!

**Nicky:** Well, you didn't have to wait nearly as long for this part as for the last. :) I'm absolutely delighted that you've enjoyed this story as much as you say, and thanks a million for following and taking the time to let me know!


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