sith_happened | Vader's room [late evening]

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Vader's room [late evening]

Vader's mood had not improved as the week had progressed and tomorrow he would have to face a bunch of his idiot students' idiot parents.

And he was trying very hard not to remember his last Parents' Weekend in Fandom. Those memories brought up feelings that were a lot like regret.

So he was sitting in his room ~~brooding~~ ~~sulking~~ meditating.

As you do when you're an anti-social, evil, Sith Lord.

[OOC: Radio squirrels--as far as you can tell, Vader is raging nonsensically at absolutely nothing. Oh, this'll do wonders for his reputation...]

Enter Lord Vader (Track 11) - John Williams

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A small shimmer rippled through the Force as a blue, somewhat transparent figure appeared in the corner. In the bare moment he had before he was noticed, he watched Vader thoughtfully.

"Sulking again, Vader? I should have thought you'd be too old for that by now."

Powerful dark lords don't squeak when they've been surprised.

However much they might want to.

"You!" Vader snarled.

"Me," Obi-Wan responded agreeably, folding his arms.

"I thought I should try and keep an eye on Luke." He paused, pointedly. "Since he doesn't have any parents to look after him."

Vader picked up a nearby vase and threw it at Obi-Wan, fully aware it wouldn't actually do anything.

"You hid him from me!" he raged.

The vase passed through him, shattering on the wall behind.

"Considering how Padme died? Considering you tried to kill me?" Obi-Wan thought 20 years in the wastelands of Tatooine had burned the old hurt out of him, but surprisingly, a few old sparks still remained. "Anakin was my brother. What would you have done?"

"He's my son!" Vader yelled. "Mine! You had no rights to him!"

His voice dropped. "Do you have any idea what my master did when he discovered exactly who had destroyed his Death Star?"

And if the "my master" stung for Obi-Wan, well, that was the intention.

"We have plans for the boy," he continued in a more menacing tone.

"He is Anakin's son, Vader," he replied, with a hint of steel in his voice. And yet he flinched minutely at the mention of Vader's new master.

"And you may find he has a few surprises in him." If there was any indication in Obi-Wan's expression that that was a hope, rather than a certainty, well, he was doing his best to hide it.

"Does it make you feel better to think of Anakin and Vader as two different people?" Vader sneered. "Less of a failure?"

No, Vader hadn't been practicing for a fight like this for the last twenty years. Why would you think that?

For a ghost, Obi-Wan looks suddenly very old, and very tired.

"It makes me feel better to think that my friend, my student, is dead, and not that he was corrupted by the utmost evil under my very nose. Not that I failed to save him. Yes."

Sometimes being wholly and purely honest with Anakin used to work, when all other logic and arguments carried no weight.

"So you see why I can't fail his son as well," he said grimly.

"But you're dead," Vader pointed out with no little satisfaction in his voice. "And the Jedi are gone. There is only me."

He slammed up higher emotional barriers. Obi-Wan was making him feel something like guilt, and that was completely unacceptable.

"And when you are dead, Vader, what then? Or has the Emperor shared his secrets of eternal life?" Obi-Wan matched his satisfied tone. "Evil consumes itself, and when you are dead, there will be nothing. Only Luke."

"Not if I take Luke down with me," Vader threatened.

And that was the first time he'd ever said the name out loud.

Obi-Wan stared in shock. "Even you--would you truly destroy your own son? For what, spite? To hurt me?"

Every time he thought he'd seen the worst depths the Sith could sink to, they found new lows.

"Because my master commands it," Vader said, sounding maybe just the tiniest bit conflicted about it.

It could just be the voice box, though.

Obi-Wan can't see Anakin's eyes behind the solid darkness of his mask, but he looks at him a long time before answering.

"I remember telling you - asking you - to do any number of less vile things when I was your master, and you often had little difficulty with disobeying."

A note of scorn crept into his voice. "Is this what you betrayed the Jedi for? Threw all your life and your friends away for? Servitude to a new master who twists you to his will?"

After Padmé was gone, what did it matter? Vader shoved that thought firmly away.

"This master does more than merely look disappointed when he's disobeyed," Vader snapped. "He doesn't lecture."

"No, I imagine he doesn't," Obi-Wan remarked evenly. "Though I can't imagine preferring his alternative."

"What are you doing here, Vader? Is that the best future you can think of for the son of Anakin Skywalker, to be a broken servant of evil?"

"It's better than being dead, his only other option," Vader replied after too long of a pause.

A ghost of a smile crossed Obi-Wan's face. "It's not so bad, you know."

"Lots of dancing and singing in the hereafter?" Vader asked sarcastically. "Sorry I didn't go when you left me for dead all those years ago."

Any hint of humor vanished. "You brought that on yourself, Vader. I watched you murder Jedi younglings. You attacked Padmé, of all people."

"I couldn't save you, but I hoped to save her. And her child."

A pair of brown eyes flashed into Vader's mind. He shoved that image ruthlessly away.

He wasn't going to explain himself to a self-righteous ghost.

"Then your failure will be complete."

As if that fear didn't already haunt him.

Luke was alone now, with barely a few hours of instruction that hardly qualified as Jedi training -- though given how Anakin turned out after a lifetime of Obi-Wan's teaching, Luke could scarcely do worse.

But he hid his fears and faked nonchalance in his reply. "You've said that before, and recently. Not long before he blew up your Death Star, wasn't it?"

Force, how Vader had hated that machine.

"He won't be repeating that," he said.

Fortunately, the Death Star had been one of a kind, so there would be no need to repeat that last suicide attack.

"He won't turn, Vader. He doesn't have your anger. If you try, you will fail, and if you fail, you'll have to kill him."

As far as Obi-wan was concerned, the man who had been his student, his brother, his partner, had died in the lava of Mustafar. But if some small part of Vader still thought of himself as Anakin, he had to try and appeal to him, however useless it might be.

"If he is truly your son, will you really be able to kill him? Will you kill Padmé's son?"

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was Vader's mechanical breathing.

"If my master commands it of me, yes," he said, and that should've been an easier thing to say.

Obi-Wan nodded slowly, as if something had just been confirmed for him.

"Anakin would never have answered so."

For the 100th time since the Jedi fell, for the thousandth time, Obi-Wan thought, Forgive me, Qui-Gon, for failing you. Forgive me, Anakin.

"Anakin would've been tossed from your arrogant and oppressive Order for having a son," Vader snapped back.

Obi-Wan bowed his head. Twenty years with little to do but think on the past had led him to realizing that the Order had had its flaws, painful as that was to acknowledge.

"But he would still have been a Jedi, even if he wasn't with the Order. Not a perversion of everything he had fought so hard for during the war."

"You wouldn't have been this understanding back then," Vader sniped.

"Possibly not. Probably not." Another hard acknowledgement.

"But it would have been an infinitely more preferable outcome than this."

I miss you. I hate this. I never wanted to end up this way.

Vader squashed all of those thoughts.

"The past cannot be changed. This," Vader swept his hand across his chest, "is what I am. What you helped me become."

Taking responsibility for anything had never been his strong suit.

As if he hadn't had many a sleepless night with that same thought.

"You chose to keep your feelings for Padmé a secret, instead of coming to me for help," he retorted. "You chose to enter the Temple with your lightsaber and your troops and slaughter everyone inside. I was a little preoccupied walking into a trap that your master set for me to be there helping you murder the younglings."

That moment in the Council chamber still haunted Vader. "It was what had to happen," he snarled. It was supposed to save Padmé, a small part of him cried. He shoved that aside as well.

"I'd do it again."

And the truly sad part was that he would.

"It was what you made happen, Vader." Obi-Wan would've given anything at the time to save Anakin, but the past was done. "And I did what I had to do. What comes of it all, we'll have to see."

The future was always in motion, and not even Yoda could tell him whether all their loss would ever mean anything, whether there was any hope in Anakin's children. Looking at Vader's chillingly blank eyemasks, Obi-Wan had to hope.

"I'll win," Vader promised. "Luke's not strong enough to stop me."

"Strength is found in surprising places, Vader." Obi-Wan gave a grim smile. "And Skywalkers have always excelled in defying the odds."

"Not always," Vader said, turning away, and it wasn't clear--even to him--if he was talking about Luke or Anakin.

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Vader's room [late evening]

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