starkniight.

_{EXHAUSTION WEARS HIM DOWN, this is true, but weariness has always been part of his life, woven into the fibres of muscles & the spirit & the mind. Obi-Wan would never mind running so long as his lungs burned for a purpose he felt was righteous. Alas, this ! this was a countenance he found impossible to meet; a creature of transient constitution, shifting before his very eyes. Darkness rises like tendrils from the very core of his being, wrap’t wisps of divine matter impossible for the human eye to focus upon & pluck from the body ( as if they could ever be separated, as if it had not always been there ! ).} 

       He is reminded of a time on Romin – the memory comes back so vividly & suddenly he is seated next to Ferus Olin in the gardens outside their temporary quarters. Anakin & Siri Tachi are still inside, likely ridding themselves of the ridiculous attire they’d been required to wear upon this mission. The boy’s lilting voice is so clear in his mind he is astonished: 
                              (  ‘Should we trust someone who always believes
                                  he speaks with the voice of absolute right?’ ) 
& yet with conscious strength he’d dissipated the warning, brushed it away like an irritating insect upon an unforgiving warm-climate planet they’d ventured to many times in their various travels. The memory fades & he is back in the cold hall, knees aching against the ground. A hand reaches upwards to ghost upon the curve of his force-inhibiting collar & he wonders if he had agreed then, if he had sought to resolve the problem if it progressed, none of this would have happened. 

         _{❝ You do not own people, Anakin. ❞ Comes the response, his hand falling from the dip of his throat back to the flat of his thigh // ( My people, my place, my Empire ! ). The offer had taken him by surprise, but wariness was still no less a terror of his soul, manifesting itself via the weight on his neck. If he were to be bound as he is now, to which extent may he contribute at all? It seemed an empty promise, uttered from the many-mouthed entity with an ease unbecoming of the person he used to know. Such possessiveness. He is troubled direly by the shifting form in front of him, unable to analyze it using the Force & likewise unable to comprehend what exactly he was seeing — this may be a blessing.} 

      _{❝ You must forgive me for my apprehension. I’ve only been out there witness to these languishes, as you say, first-hand. I am here only to spare as many lives as I can from further destruction. Your world is corrupt from the inside-out & it bleeds onto the galaxy. Padmé Amidala has done nothing for the people thus & I’m not sure that’s entirely her doing. I do not plan on becoming another silenced voice. ❞}

     ❝ && WHAT LIVES will you spare wasting away in a cell? Are you really so selfish as to remain inactive when the opportunity to create the change you seek lies right in front of you? ❞ Now this is a more familiar anger, the reaction like an open flame ignited in the room. His cape unrolls like a whip, snapping away from his shoulder with the strength of his gesticulations. Every inch of him poises to attack, but then, his expression shifts; a transition as smooth && unsettling as a ship crash in slow motion. He summons a preternatural calm that, as a knight, would have taken him a half an hour to work into.

    ❝ …I am offering a peaceful solution to a war I never intended to start. ❞ The sudden death of the former emperor ushered in a new age of political instability only a few years after settling fitfully into Sidious’s reign. The Alliance had been more than unprepared to issue an attack, but it was an opportunity not even their meticulous planning could afford to pass up. Sidious’s assassination was considered successful in the wake of Vader’s death, as no sentient could reach the emperor without first going through his attack dog. But the rebels hadn’t accounted for Vader biting the hand that feeds.

                What weight can break the diamond point will of a Jedi? ❝ Your voice was silenced the moment I led you onto my ship. ❞ He no longer fully needs one for space travel, but his former master’s constitution remains susceptible to interstellar elements. Vader has watched humans come apart like shattered porcelain in open space, their skin crystallized into a million jagged shards, spinning forever between the stars. Not even he would devise such a cruel end for someone he once regarded as a brother. Strange, inhuman thing that he may be now, he’s never taken pleasure in torture.

    ❝ I’ve waited this long for you to fight by my side again. ❞ He smiles wide && red, fangs bright against a forked tongue. ❝ I can wait a little longer. ❞ Reality shivers, && he is a six-winged seraph of ancient scripture, hanging in the radiant glory of some old creator’s palm— then he glides forward, && the change rolls off him like mist. Seeing him is like going insane. ❝ But not too long. ❞ Can this truly be the will of the Force? This personification of darkness, this divine monster.

lieutenant-sapphic:

eldritch on main. absolutely fucking macabre and incomprehensible on main.

yogsothothery:

THRESHER by Mike Diva

democraciia.

           HE TURNS, AND SHE ALLOWS HERSELF to be overwhelmed. Her chest rises and falls with rapid, shallow breaths; her heart beats an erratic, rhythmless tune. This is a breach of panic, swelling from a place kept wrapped for years —— and yet, also an involuntary retreat to a prior time, into a weaker self. Had she not wept, shaking, at the sight of him in those early days, unable to clutch her own children for fear of what it might unleash if she held even a piece of him? Before he had been warped into an entity so frightening, so unnerving as this, she had acknowledged his power over her with sobering alarm. He was captivating ( even now, especially now ), and her sense of self had been eroded by it. Disquieting was the fact that it had been so recently rebuilt, but with only willpower and the grace of luck sustaining its fragility. 

              Coming here was endangering it, allowing herself to watch him with something like awe, her mind spinning wild possibilities even as her body fought itself for the chance to escape. She leans against the window, eyes closing as she listens. The cool against her back is calming, and she imagines the sound of bubbling riverwater to complement it —— someplace familiar and comforting into which she might fall. The twins are there, splashing water as they play.

              When she pushes away from the window, she images in that moment that her steps are into a subsequent sphere —— the otherworld in which he exists, where her place must be carved by hand, where she cannot fall to pieces even as past and future intersect in the present. With it is an acceptance that she cannot navigate it alone, nor that survival is a matter solely in her own hands. 

    ❝ I will take what you give me, ❞ is her immediate answer. She stops, hands coming together as she thinks through what follows. ❝ I have no pretensions of a plan, nor some idealized strategy to share. I don’t even know the situation, not really. Only that there is danger, that we’re barreling to some crucial point. And that’s the crux of it: we. I’ve built all the walls between us that I can, and I have told myself that I should have nothing but loathing for you. And yet … I still feel the same urge to … ❞ She sighs, a shaky exhale as she bites back the words. they burst forth anyway. ❝ Be here, where you are, in the heart of the chaos. It seems that I gave you part of myself a long time ago, and that was —— remains to be —— irrevocable. ❞ 

             The panic creeping up her spine, weaving through her lungs, clutching her heart is not spurred by fear or dread, but by the awareness that she is passing through a threshold. This otherworld is a real place, and her voluntary entry is predicate on a single term. An open offer, a blank check, a surrender of sorts. Her expression is grave, and yet she wants to laugh. 

    ❝ I’m asking that you bring me inside to help however I can. That’s it. ❞ 

               LIDS FLOW OVER those terrible eyes, the beautiful grotesquerie of his face softened without those bloody knifepoints raking over her. A man / monster in repose, considering his own darkness as it swallows him. 

               He remembers her pregnancy in the short grasps of time they were allowed together; each reunion like a chapter in a holonovel, broken apart by skips in time. She rounded in phases, glowing, lunar, dampened only by the growing tension between them. He, too, had his own transformations: the erratic bouts of rage && paranoia, unfounded accusations followed by a hysterical apology. He became untethered to himself, lost to the shrieking Dark until it took his place. 

              It feels like another lifetime now, someone else’s history gleaned from a holo. He has known nothing but rage && hunger for years. An Ouroboros of the incomprehensible, marked by his own teeth. Half-obscured by rumor, the Emperor is more of a concept than a man. There’s too few people alive who have shared space with Vader to substantiate claims. He’s different in every story, a fluid amalgam that ranges from a young man to a flurry of eyed wings multiplying into eternity. But here, suffering / thriving in his presence, he is so much more. 

     ❝ && if I want you by my side? ❞ Empress, his equal in title && intention alone. Another cryptic face card to the Imperial deck. A softer hand, machinations more subtle than the blatancy of Vader’s reign.

                A man can have everything && nothing, this power has come at every imaginable price. All he’d originally wanted was to save his family, && he did, only to end up losing them in an entirely different way. ❝ I want you && the children, with me. ❞ He clenches his monstrous right hand, invoking his will through physicality. But can whatever still exists between them be salvaged when he is no longer what she loved?

               Some part of that isn’t true. Anakin was always on the very edge of human. A prophecy child, just brushing the divine, the Force under his skin like ichor. But beneath it all, that boyish, everyday allure. Someone of simple origins raised to great heights. With that part of him gone, there’s only the Force’s creation: a reckoning beyond all comprehension. 

      ❝ On Coruscant, if you wish. ❞ Though the renovated temple had only acted as a functioning palace for five years before Palpatine’s death, it remains a symbol of Imperial rule on the capital planet. Vader himself only rarely inhabits it, preferring his fortress on Mustafar as a base. But such a place is unsuited for raising children, at least before their training is underway.

               In my eldritch verse Vader eventually consumes Alderaan’s sun, throwing the planet out of orbit && killing everyone there.

starkniight.

           SILENCE. the force does not comfort him here ! – vader had ensured that when the collar was placed around his throat, an inhibitor that cut him off from all he’d ever known. obi-wan kenobi is now distinctly mortal, built only of flesh & bone. he keeps his head down when vader speaks, bright, untainted eyes only moving to follow the hand that reaches towards him, establishes his dominance by tracing along his bonds. 
            who was the coward? out of the two of them, obi-wan had at least stayed true to his morals, had never once given thought to the dark side of the force. he could no longer help anakin skywalker & thus he had dedicated himself to the rebellion, an opposing force to the reign of a false-emperor, a murderer sat on the throne. it was for the rebellion that he’d given up his life, had surrendered to spare hundreds – hundreds who had families, who had friends, who had lives to lead & whose existences did not deserve to be snuffed out so suddenly for the price of a single man. 
             foolishly, perhaps, he’d thought the surrender might offer opportunity, a chance to delve deep into the heart of vader, to tap into which bond might still exist. he was WRONG. the chains weigh heavily upon him now, prisoner of hope ! he shifts, albeit uncomfortably, to raise his gaze & stare into the blood-fire eyes of an unknown entity who wore the face of the boy he had loved. almost defiantly, obi-wan ignores much of what vader had said, opting instead to focus on one important aspect: 
                            ❝ padmé is here? ❞ a thoughtful twitch of his brow, a subtle narrowing his eyes. ❝ of all things you have told me just now, that is the most astonishing. will she be happy to know I have survived, only for you to kill me? that … is what you plan on doing, is it not? ❞
              

               KILL HIM, AFTER finally getting him back? That’s one ending to this chapter, perhaps. But not a necessary one. He allows himself the luxury of hope, inspired by his wife’s long-awaited homecoming && the surrender that enabled this reunion. 

               Alarms scream, painting red along the walls in flashes as Rebellion soldiers file into line. Vader sees them before he rounds the corner, anticipating the blaster fire that follows. Liquid darkness extinguishes each mark of light within the air, spilling in tentacles && tongues of bubbling ink that emanate from endless tail of his cape. The expression of limitless hunger, his whole body a mouth that gnaws upon the narrow corridor, slowly eating down the space between him && the soldiers. && Kenobi stands in the center of it all, a defiant light against the ravenous shadows.

               It’s only upon noticing him he draws his saber.

               His eyes burn, scraping over his prisoner like irradiated suns. ❝ That depends entirely on you. ❞ There’s a ghost in his face, the concerned pull of his brow && purse of his lips. It’s the same look of exasperated affection he’d wear when patching up his old friend. But there’s a crack in the frame, black mold snaking around the edges of his body. ❝ I have many enemies, Obi-Wan. You do not have to be another. ❞

               He’d waited for Obi-Wan on the burning planet, saw him the only sentient fit to judge his actions. To watch him steal the breath from his wife’s throat. But he hadn’t been there. He was alone in his actions, as he always is.

     ❝ Join me. ❞ The air wavers with his words. The finality of it. He is as wide as lightyears, his skin an ill-fitted thing for the infinity of him. When the Council spoke of the Chosen One they never meant this. When the Sith spoke of the Sith'ari, it was with definition. But Vader is beyond that, no description can contain him. ❝ As she did. ❞

democraciia.

              THE TWINS EVOKE SOMETHING primeval in her. It inspires a bold, unrestrained sense of necessity that has made survival easier. She would do anything for them, including live a life akin to confinement. Their very existence is a cage, one built around her with her consent, to which he holds the key to it. This, too, she handed off without any qualms to be had. Yet, motherhood suits her in this way. It gives purpose to the bars around her, to the days that tick by without occupation. She is as much a guard as a prisoner, watching over them with an unblinking stare. Even when they are out of reach, she feels them.

              Elsewhere. Where they belong. How sad that you don’t know. These responses, she rejects summarily —— sharp, hardly conciliatory, made of bad faith. ❝ I’ve left them at home, on Naboo. ❞  She stares at the mirror as she answers. ❝ This is no place for them, not now. ❞

              With deliberate steps, she moves from the counter and walks to the windows. The view outside is as mesmerizing as ever, but the discontent it provokes has grown deeper. Yet, nothing here is any more encouraging. Even behind closed eyes, she sees an unending reel of possibilities just far enough beyond reach to inspire gloom. Her hand presses against the cool glass, fingers tapping lightly the tune of a lullaby she has sang to the twins for years.

    ❝ I  know that you have no reason to trust what I’m saying, but … It’s rotting. Worse than before. It all looks the same, deceptively unchanged from years ago —— a lifetime ago, really —— ❞  Words have never failed her, and yet she knows they will never communicate to him what she needs to say. Their most consequential exchanges have always gone unspoken. ❝ It’s unstable, a weakness. ❞  The tapping of her fingers stills. ❝ Can you see it? This place has always been filled with vultures, those politicians you hate so much. So little time has passed since you dethroned him, and they’ve made the most of it. Pillaging, plundering, destroying. All behind your turned back, in your absence. Maybe even in plain sight. ❞   

             The words flow from her, descriptions of the story she has pieced together from reliable whispers, her own observation, experience. Though it stokes an anger nestled deep, a righteous rage smoldering for all of this time, her tone is far from accusatory. This is no rant, but a bitter declaration. She turns, shifting her gaze from a view concealing its transformation to her monster-husband who makes no effort to hide his. This honesty hurts no less.

   ❝ Are you content to preside over a hollow empire of ashes? Because that is what this will become, even if you believe it to not be already. That is no place for Luke and Leia. ❞ 

     ❝ THEIR PLACE IS by my side. They must be trained. ❞ He speaks && the Force shivers, receiving his words as a suggestion. What power might be amassed from destruction that reality does not just bend, but crumples to his will? No one else would dare deny him, nor would they be able to with those strange, light-swallowing eyes upon them. Irises like infernos, blazing against gloomy whites. ❝ You cannot come here offering your help && still deny me access to my own children. ❞ His rage is a finely-tuned thing now, practiced && undiluted; the wick from which his cold flame burns. 

               Vader retreats from the window, stalking farther into the apartment with the lasered focus of a hunting nexu. That dark cape flickers in impossible angles behind him as he explores. Stars wink in the darkness of his silhouette, alongside eyes && spiraling ranks of sharpened teeth. Shards of an unmade universe drip from the mouths that unzip at his shoulders; monstrous pauldrons that snap && whine before rolling over into nothingness. 

               The apartment is small, austere && full of sharp edges. Not a place for raising children, nor to hide them. Whatever she hopes from him, && her time spent here is temporary. Unless. 

               Unless.

     ❝ I never wished to preside over anything. ❞ Even then, when he’d offered her the galaxy, it had been an act of desperation. He would have said anything to stay her leave. Done anything. All he’d ever wanted was for her to be safe. && now he’s become the very thing she hides from, a dementation of his former self. Arranged himself into a hall of mirrors, each reflection more warped than the next. He’ll reach the final frame && no longer see himself staring back. Perhaps that’s what this moment is, since the mirror can no longer hold his image. 

               If this is to destroy him, she’s the only one who can hold it at bay. To tame the chambers of his snarling heart is no simple feat. Even more difficult is the task of orchestrating an empire from the graveyard Lord Vader’s made of the government.  

     ❝ I presume you have a title in mind, from where you will help. ❞ He’d refused her the occupation of senator during their initial schism. A petty stab at her freedom for separating them. But her willingness to face him has earned his respect, && the long lost echoes of their love rise, unbidden, to the surface of his thoughts. 

               In my unmasked eldritch Vader verse, his right arm has begun a strange technological transformation. It glows with eerie red light && appears connected to his arm through a strange black biological armor that’s begun to spread across his chest. The fingers have sharpened into jagged claws that bend unnaturally around his saber when he wields it. In the rare moments he needs his weapon, it becomes fused to his right hand through the same liquid black armor that encases the hilt. Vader’s not sure what will happen when the biological shell completely covers his skin, && has done extensive research to try && find a way to preserve his body. 

     ❝ I HOPED YOU were dead. ❞ He is a graveyard world; a thousand dead ships caught inextricably in his orbit. && now Obi-Wan too is condemned to ellipse a black sun. ❝ At least then you wouldn’t be a coward. ❞ Had the emperor ever expected any less? A simple blaster shot from behind could never be Obi-Wan Kenobi’s end. When his former master’s death comes it will be orchestrated by the hand he raised. 

               Vader crosses the room, downing himself to one knee so that he may face the older man on his own level. The Force inhibitor around his neck makes a heavy accessory for him to trace with a nonchalance that only acts as commentary to his status. What might make a man so powerful he retains his supremacy even on his knees? The Force is infallible, it’s only the ones who wield it who limit its potential. && he who is half of what cannot be contained can never be controlled. 

     ❝ But it doesn’t matter. ❞ The smile he wears belongs to the boy he no longer is. It makes one wonder if Vader is a truly separate side of Anakin, or if it was always there, Lurking under clouded waters; a leviathan hidden behind blue eyes. ❝ You’re here. ❞ My family. Mine. All mine. 

     ❝ It’s so quiet now, without our bond. Your suppression of its remnants was amendable, but I question your decision not to attempt to break it. ❞ He withdraws his hand from Kenobi’s collar, still crouched to face him. ❝ It was your undoing. ❞ As will I be. 

     ❝ Padmé will be happy to know you have survived. ❞

@starkniight

democraciia.

              SHE HAS RAISED HER CHIN to tyrants since her first steps into adolescence; her girlhood was spent cutting puppet strings and gnashing her teeth at intimidation. Power clothed in silk and painted like a doll begged to be ravaged, and she was trained to claw back her dignity as much as to speak well and act proper. To tremble before her own monster-husband, before his eyes and those of her own conscience, would be shameful.

              Recovering swiftly and with poise from the shock of the shattered mirror, she reaches to set the glass on the counter. The startle had nearly set it tumbling, but not quite. Had he not always acted out in this way, covering himself with dramatic gestures, wearing a cloak of melodrama so natural that it was comely? But, it had never seemed to her like something put-on, rather an outfitting into which he had been born. His grandeur was rugged, unexpected, formerly indistinguishable from those more humble parts —— all she had, without compromise, adored. His worst traits have since mutated into something terrifying, and she has watched the descent like a private horror show for years. Where he is concerned, it seems she can condition herself even to stare death in its face with a smile.

    ❝ I’m surveying the damage, ❞  she answers finally. The effort that eye contact demands is draining, but her expression remains almost serene. Her arms cross over her chest, and she leaves against the counter —— conversational, capable of appearing relaxed if not the for the unabated tension of every muscle.

              She looks past him briefly, choosing what she means to say next. Never had she relied upon a speechwriter; her own words had always been intrinsic to her voice. The power of language, studied and revered more than any faith, arrested her most forcefully in such consequential moments as these. Her orations were at times soaring, inspiring, as lofty for word-choice as for ambition. Other times, simplicity ( drawn from the heart ) felt best. 

   ❝ I’m here because I want to help —— if you’ll have me. ❞ 

                SOME PART OF Vader’s soul reels away from such an claim, spine prickling like he’s about to lunge. What help could she offer him now, the same she denied him once before? She’d rejected his ravings of a galaxy built between their hands, crafted && molded into an image fit for their ambitions. No more rules, no more people telling them no. To be the ultimate authority over their love for once && all, after a lifetime of precluded by servitude. But she’d stared at him as if he were a stranger, some kind of beast born from desperation && grief. If only she could have realized his monstrous potential before naming him one. 

                 The man on Mustafar seems so human, in retrospect. No comparison can be made to what he is now. More Force than man; every inch of him limned in a cold, devouring corona. Endlessly bathed in unnatural moonlight. It refracts as he focuses in && out of vision. The mirror rests on the wall, whole && untouched. 

     ❝ You want to help. ❞ No inflection, no question in his tone. He repeats her offer, making the words his own in effort to give them clarity. 

     ❝ && how is it you intend to help me? ❞ He doesn’t need another voice whispering in his ear. Some part of him has become one with every world under his command. Tied to his subjects by the energy that weaves through all living things. He feels…everything. && therefore must feel nothing. His heart locked behind walls, hidden in the belly of the dragon. 

               Vader recognizes the hidden effort behind her held gaze, thin lines around her eyes && mouth betraying her stoicism. Vicious eyes trail towards the nearest window, watching the jeweled outline of Coruscant’s senatorial district twinkle below them. Empires may rise, && republics may fall, but Coruscant still shimmers as though untouched by tragedy. A pristine center to a corrupted galaxy, glowing like an antibody in the dark.

     ❝ Where are Luke && Leia? ❞ Still she insists on separating him from his children at every opportunity. But they are the only creatures that can bear his presence without pause.