(Part III of the Dark Angel Series)
In Memory of Moisie
Date: Three Standard Months After the Destruction of Death Star I
Like scarlet specters guarding the maw of the dimensional hells, the quartet of the Emperor's Royal Guard stood noiseless and inert on either side of the massive five-meter tall obsidian door. Planted several meters before them, the squad of eight Imperial Black Hole stormtroopers stood just as rigid and silent, blasters poised across their armored chests, their buffed black armor mimicking the gleaming onyx floors beneath them. They had stood like this, facing each other, opposing chess pieces controlled by similar hands, expressionless, solid, and undaunted by the howls of torture that had been coming from the other side of the colossal doors for the last several hours...
Beyond the doors lay a chamber carved of the finest obsidian in the galaxy, scores of meters wide as it was high. The far wall of the massive room was one huge window that looked out across the Imperial Throneworld's soaring skyline, the city-planet once known as Coruscant. The floors, laid with the same polished stone, caught the diminishing light of the setting sun and glistened like a pool at midnight. The room was devoid of any furniture, save for two objects. One was an enormous onyx chair centered in the window, the Emperor's throne; the second, an immense durasteel X-shaped brace jutting from the shimmering floor. The chamber would have almost presented an atmosphere of dark serenity, had the effect not been marred by the shrieking, thrashing bulk of Darth Vader.
His limbs stretched wide, Vader hung from the brace, held there by thick durasteel spikes bolted through his cybernetic wrists and ankles. Wisped ends of wire frayed from out of the wounds, and synthe-plasma the color of crude dripped from the punctures, pooling on the floor, marring its sheen. Between his hoarse, tortured cries, Vader's chest quaked and heaved with frantic attempts to override his respirator and take in desperately needed air on his own, but to no avail. The crease of his helm cut into his skull base, and the underside of his breathing mask sliced across his already scarred face with every thrash and seizure; but these small lesions were insignificant compared to the agony within the shattered window of his own tortured mind.
The stooped figure of the Emperor sat withered in his throne, contoured against the late afternoon light of peach and maroon, his hooded head tipped slightly down. He was weary, yes. Despite the decades of manipulating his physiology into something no longer completely human, small beads of sweat still managed to douse his brow and betray his complete control over his involuntary functions. The hours of administering the Force-lightning torture had been easy, and not too terribly taxing. But this...this work had always proven to be significantly demanding on him, no matter how he would prepare himself for it or how often he would dispense it. Yes, weaving his telepathic tendrils into the psychic garret of Vader's mind and ripping his sanity apart from the inside always wore poor Sidious out. Waking nightmares were a particularly laborious torment of the Dark Side.
Sidious lifted his hood slightly as he witnessed the newest image of horror blaze through Vader's mind.
"NO! NO, PLEASE! MOTHER!!! NO GODS, PLEASE, PLEASE! HANG ON! GIVE ME YOUR HAND! IT CAN'T BURN YOU IF YOU HOLD MY HAND! DON'T LET GO! NO! NO! DON'T LET-- NOOOOOO! AAAAAAHHH!" And with that final scream that ricocheted off the frigid obsidian walls, Vader's enormous hulk lurched forward off the cross. Sidious sighed with what one could almost call pity as the image of Shmi Skywalker, sinking and screaming into an ocean of Mustafar's molten lava, seared through his mind. There, he could smell her hair smoldering, see her meat crackling and blackening and curling off her bones, and watched her eyes bulge from the sockets as she screamed for her son's hand.
With a breath and a tiny flick of his finger, Palpatine altered the nightmare as easily as he would switch frequencies on the holonet. Vader's screams of horror altered as well, becoming deeper, menacing; the words spit were of a raging adolescent. "You. It's your fault, it's ALL your fault! You hate me, The Council hates me, you're all jealous of my power! Nothing was ever good enough for you! You took EVERYTHING FROM ME! EVERYTHING!" His roar suddenly erupted into a triumphant cacophony of laughter barbed with madness. "HA! THERE! Who's the master NOW? Who holds the power of life and death in his hands? Burn, you spiteful, treacherous son of a bitch! BURN IN HELL!"
A raise of the Emperor's eyebrow brought forth another image, and with it another anguished scene for Vader. "Not you. No, not you too," His resplendent bass, now hoarse with misuse, cracked with a sob. "I did it for you. I did it all for you, and our...Ah, gods..." His entire body quaked with weeping. "Come back. Don't leave, please don't leave me. Everyone leaves me...Look at me...who could ever want me...like this...?"
A slow, sated smile crept under Palpatine's black hood. As he had done many, many times throughout the last twenty years, he had pummeled Vader's mental barricades, had smashed through any defenses, leaving his apprentice drained, broken, and pliable to his commands. Now was the time to imprint his visage on Vader's mind, as his apprentice's one and only friend, his confidant, as his parent and teacher, as his whole reason for existence...raising his hood ever so slightly, Palpatine prepared himself for the final mental caress...
Until a new image flashed through his mind, an avatar not of his making, but of Vader's. Murky and unfamiliar, it slithered across Sidious's mind's eye: Pale tones of ivory flesh, slender hands with tapered fingers snaking down his apprentice's scarred, tube-implanted chest, a caress of lips, a ragged cry, eyes clenched closed and mouth agape with passion, the undeniable rhythm of human coupling, and a brief flash of scarlet hair thrown back in sexual fury and dire need...And when Vader spoke again, a web of want, desire, and doubt spun over Sidious's psyche, and the Emperor wrought his brow in angered bewilderment.
"Why, Sa,thraxxx?" Vader's chest constricted. "How could you...want...a monster? You want the darkness...are you...like me...inside? Are you a ...beast?" Vader's mask rolled from side to side, his massive chest heaving slowly, rhythmically. "A beautiful beast...?"
The swelling bulge stretching Vader's codpiece did not escape the Emperor's attention either.
Rage roiled through Palpatine's insides, his gnarled fingers gripping the arms of his throne. A new companion lurked in the shadows now, a new tether for his apprentice to grasp, a new surrogate for his needs.
Throwing up his arms, Palpatine sliced his hands through the air, breaking his psychic bondage. Vader's screams pealed off the walls as the Emperor's tendrils ripped from his mind, his whole mass convulsing and twisting. With a small, tired wave of his hand, the Emperor released the bolts through Vader's limbs, and they slammed back into the onyx brace. Vader slid hard to the floor with a resounding crash. With great effort, the Dark Lord pushed himself into a fetal fold, his helm slunk between his arms. For many long, excruciating moments, the only sound in the vast chamber was that of the mighty Dark Lord panting frantically through his respirator.
Palpatine glared at his apprentice, waiting for his desperate breaths to slow, before he chose to address him. "You wound me, child. You have torn at the very fabric of my heart. You have betrayed me."
Vader's helm sunk even lower. The shrill, childish staccato that had wracked his voice during the torture was gone, and his resonant bass, albeit rasped, had returned. "I deserve no forgiveness, my Master, that I know. I underestimated the Rebels' tenacity, and I dismissed their fortitude. I have failed you."
"BAH!" Palpatine barked, exploding to his feet. "The REBELS? You think I speak of that motley mob of thieves and terrorists!" He began to descend the dais staircase. "Twenty years of research, planning, building, wiped out in an instant! A million of the Empire's finest, gone in the blink of an eye! Our greatest achievement, our monument to our eminence, vanished! And the irony of it all? THAT, my friend, I can forgive." He stopped his slow, menacing approach a meter shy of his kneeling, shattered apprentice. "Materials can be restored. Men can be replaced, as there is never a shortage of those ravenous for power and privilege. And even such achievements as a Death Star can-- and will-- be built again. But..." His voice softened to a hurt growl. "How does one return...trust? How does one cement a union that has taken decades to enmesh, only to be rent asunder through deceit! After all of our years together, after everything I have given you--your power, your body, everything--now you keep SECRETS from me?"
Vader's chest seized clear through to his shoulders. Having no recollection whatsoever of the waking nightmares, fear and desperation twined through what remained organic of his body. What had his master seen? "My Master, everything I own, everything I am basks in the glory of your dominion. I would never—"
"And now you lie to me as well?" A heavy sigh permeated from under the black hood, and thin, dark cloaked arms folded over his thin chest. "Look at me." Vader obeyed, lifting his mask to meet the Emperor's sickly yellow eyes. With a curl to his lip that could have been either disgust or amusement, Palpatine murmured, "You have taken a lover, boy."
Vader's eyes clenched behind his optic screens, and he swallowed hard. Sidious had seen her, there was no point in denying it now. "Yes, my Master."
