Chapter Text
The emergency lights go off mere minutes upon entry. He resets the altimeter and restabilizes his flight path, but the warnings flare back to life instantly.
It takes less than a blink for everything to go dark.
The TIE-fighter drops like a stone.
Sky and land swirl dizzyingly in front of his eyes, giving shape to the spiral that he became intimately familiar with as soon as he learned how to fly.
If he wants to salvage this ship, he needs to realign it and find a suitable spot to crash-land. He digs deep within himself, drawing strength from the Force, and focuses on mapping out the area underneath as well as he can, but something in the air interferes.
The smell of ozone is all around him, permeating the cockpit in spite of the pressure lock remaining intact. It is the scent of the storm as perceived in the Force—a scent no material wall can keep away—and it washes over his body and mind, filling him with tension. On this same immaterial plane, he feels the electric undercurrent of each erratic heartbeat escaping the rhythm enforced by his pacemaker.
His chest twinges.
His breath stutters.
This is an anomaly.
A strange storm—perhaps—but all things tied to the Force, no matter how unusual, are under his control.
Separating himself from this intrusion is an act that requires surgical precision. Given that he is not only mid-flight, but also rapidly advancing through new expanses of this cloud, the path he cuts for himself is rough and unsteady. There is not enough time to also account for the ship.
His thoughts lag, dream-like.
The TIE-fighter crashes.
The deceleration force throws him headfirst into the sheet of reinforced transparisteel. Before he gets to smash through it, the TIE-fighter rolls over and crumples under its own weight above him, pinning him in place between the hard ground and shattered glass.
He grunts as he tries to dislodge himself from the rubble.
Another slip-up! Why does he persist in making such mistakes? Is he not vigilant enough? The worst of it is knowing that the Emperor suspects there is something going on under his nose. Why else would he send Vader to this wasteland right now, in this crucial moment, when Vader was on the cusp of uncovering the plot against the Royal Family of Alderaan?
The Emperor can't possibly know the details yet—Vader has been trying very hard to hide this—but he is far too cautious not to cultivate a constant level of suspicion toward all, moreso toward his Sith apprentice than others. Vader can fool most, but certainly not his Master.
He stews in frustration for another minute while the wreckage crushes him slowly, then draws in one breath, takes a moment to organise his thoughts, and unleashes his anger in a radial blast that displaces the metal carcass and sends it scattering in pieces all around him.
One wing remains vertical for a few seconds before it tips to the side and falls with a loud clang on a pile of boulders nearby.
The sudden release of pressure brings with it excruciating pain. His right arm is weak and the shoulder burns fiercely. The joint is subluxed—only a few parts of his organic body remain and they all slow him down.
Without a second thought, he wrenches the bone back into its socket. Automatically, his hand flies to the button on his belt that releases painkillers directly into his bloodstream and presses it insistently. He barely feels their effect any more, but the gesture alone tricks his mind into momentary relief.
It gets him to stop thinking about the pain so much.
Pain and hatred should be making him stronger, but so far all they have done is chisel away at his attention and wear down his focus. Sometimes he can barely move and still he is tasked with the impossible. Still, he has no choice. To wield the dark side, one must shackle themselves to an anvil so that they may reach the unfathomable depths of the Force. The chains that break simply untether them from the surface—and then they sink.
Soon, he discovers more than his shoulder has been affected by the crash. His leg is bent out of shape, the ankle flattened and the foot itself pointing at an unnatural angle. The violent impact ripped out half the parts in his calf, leaving untouched only the structural rod that replaced his tibia and fibula.
Fortunately, he has memorised the blueprints of his prosthetic limbs perfectly. His leg shouldn't be hard to fix with the materials scattered around the crash site, yet the cloud, still in his mind, makes locating anything on the ground nigh impossible. Everything that breaks his line of sight doubles the effort to see beyond, in the Force.
It takes an embarrassing amount of time to gather what he needs and reassemble his leg. When he finally tries to stand, he stumbles and tips to the side at once, back to the ground on his injured limb. Deep pulsing pain flares in the muscles of his thigh with alarming intensity. He can not put his full weight on it—sharp stabs of pain travel up to the small of his back, so fierce that they make his hands twitch in response.
He requests painkillers several more times until a warning appears on his screen: ERROR! MAX SERUM LEVEL
His heart sinks.
Things always go downhill after the first warning message.
While he waits for the drugs to take effect, he studies the area he crashed in with a glare. Everywhere he turns there seems to be only rock, more rock, and charcoal given the likeness of gnarled branches. The trees are black spikes pointing toward the sky, a trap waiting for something to get skewered in it. He was foolish enough to become its prey.
The dead forest stretches on and on toward the horizon until it is swallowed by the fog. Mercifully, Vader’s destination is not too far away: a solitary mountain, an imposing sight among the wastes, dominating the background.
He needs to call for reinforcements. An imperial ship would do just fine to pick him up—provided it doesn't crash. It is a tempting option to consider, but remembering the Emperor's derisive words when he gave Vader his current assignment gives him pause.
"I'm afraid competency has been lost among the bounty hunters of today. Four I employed to seek out the disturbance in MAR-14 and all of them have vanished without a trace. Died, I presume.
"Two Inquisitors have returned empty-handed, claiming visions and confusion. I fear this quest may be too difficult even for you, my apprentice. You are already distracted.
"You disappoint me now, but it is up to you whether you will disappoint me in the future also."
Calling the Empire for anything but to break the news of his successful mission would be a shameful defeat that he cannot afford.
He could call Fett.
But Fett has been an infuriating bastard the past months, dodging calls, hiding information—a far cry from the upfront professional hitman Vader knew him as before.
Vader ponders his options while walking toward the mountain. The distance is misleading: he finds the ground more difficult to transverse than previously expected at first glance. Something is wrong. His body is heavier than usual and it isn’t just one of those days when the weight of the suit makes itself fully known.
At least the painkiller has done its job, although plenty of discomfort persists. The pain in the shoulder has subsided, now that it is back to its anatomical position. In a few hours he expects the bruising and swelling to protest anew against the many layers of his armorweave.
Being someone used to a constant amount of pain—downright agony on bad days—it is manageable. It is much closer to his average, allowing him to allocate more energy into keeping an eye on his surroundings.
There is no noise beside his mechanical breath. He steps on soft soil, boots sinking deep into the rain-soaked dirt, yet the tendrils of the Force that he sends around him to sense other life forms echo back hollowly, without so much as the negligible signs of vermian earth-dwellers.
He reaches an outcropping that gives him a good vantage point above the treeline and scans the horizon for debris other than his Tie-fighter wreckage. Although he sees none, it doesn't exclude the possibility of other crashes, as only one side of the mountain is visible.
The bounty hunters must have been brought down by the strange storm. His crash would have been fatal too, had he not been made to last under any circumstances.
The strange feeling returns. It is a featherlight touch, almost imperceptible, that slides against the periphery of his awareness. Gentle—but not quite harmless. The Emperor toys with him from a distance in this manner. Subtlety that one could mistake for gentleness, because it is a careful touch.
He is chilled to the bone.
But this is not the Emperor.
Electricity hums in the air. He can smell the columns of air that lightning would strike down through, except the storm has not unleashed itself yet. It is a ghost, if a ghost may be part of the future instead of the past.
Great grey clouds gather in the distance. Fog descends upon the forest, reducing the already poor visibility to nothing.
There is no time to waste.
The path has seen plenty of use. The ground is flat, surprisingly even for how abandoned the region is, with scratches here and there as though pairs of wheels have passed through numerous times. Primitive, slow means of transport, yet with the interference from the mountain, perhaps more reliable than any piece of technology from the Core Worlds.
The mountaintop vanishes in the blanket of clouds. How long will it take him to climb? Nevermind that—how long until the drug wears off? What a heinous mission the Emperor sent him on! But pain builds endurance. It makes him stronger. It has to.
Bracing himself for the unknown, he turns his back to the open valley and trudges along the path up the side of the mountain.
"What am I looking for?" he'd asked Emperor Palpatine before he left.
In reply he received a condescending smirk. How foolish to ask such questions. Are you not already aware of the issues your Empire deals with? Disappointing, Vader. Disappointing.
That is why the Emperor is the Master and Vader is merely his apprentice: he does not know, but he is eager to learn.
(Perhaps less eager nowadays—an issue only for Vader to deal with and no one else.)
So he left without a clear answer. The simplest of coordinates, born from a handful of rumours and hearsay, led him here, to this anomaly: on the highest point of planet Toluca, to find power trapped in the flesh.
Power.
He scoffs.
His flesh slows him down. It demands drugs to stop hurting. It demands devices to aid his movement. What power is in the flesh when without his prosthetics, he would be stuck, unable to move and fight?
He worries about the integrity of his suit. It is full of fail-safes and highly resistant to damage, but overall, it is made out of materials lacking in quality, and Vader is not interested in testing its limits in such an environment as this.
He extends a shield around himself like he did on the ship, protecting the suit from the tempestuous field. This act needs his constant attention to be maintained. He may have to keep it active until he leaves the planet altogether.
He needs an escape plan.
The path comes to an abrupt end. He glares at the wall of rock that has appeared before him. To the side, he notices a dark shadow behind a dense shrub. He uproots the shrub with a flick of his hand and sends it off the side of the mountain.
Behind the shrub is a crack in the stone, an opening too small for him to squeeze through.
He follows it with his hand, feeling a hint of coldness lurking on the other side, and steps around a pile of boulders. The crack widens and disappears under one of the larger slabs of rock.
The rock is much harder to dislodge than the shrub, but the comparison is only between these two obstacles in his path. If compared to him, then they are both insignificant.
He flicks the boulder over his shoulder, revealing an entrance: stone steps carved into the ground, descending inside of the mountain.
It is pitch black at his feet.
He adjusts the settings on his helmet, turning on the night visibility, and follows the stone ladder into the dark.
The mountain consumes him.
Past the threshold, the path is convoluted and steep, forcing him to hold onto the wall for stability. Energy thrums under his fingertips, raw and alive in the rock of this cavern.
The passage is narrow. A few turning spots are so tight he must turn sideways to advance without needing to carve the walls with his lightsaber. He seeks to conserve his energy for the time being, so he lets the rock direct him as it pleases.
His glove becomes damp from the moisture clinging to the walls. It carries a salty scent like the brine caves near the sea. If he listens closely, he thinks he hears water rushing somewhere in the distance, far below, but it is hard to tell. Dull thuds, too vague to make sense of them, echo strangely from other caverns. In spite of his best efforts to reach another presence, he continues to exist in utter solitude.
His limbs feel heavier than they should. His rebuilt leg is unsteady. Doubt infests his thoughts no matter how clearly he remembers repairing it. What if he made a mistake? He needs to look at it. He needs to see it in the light.
He picks up the pace.
Like a compass needle spinning without sense near a magnet, so does his fifth sense lack any grounding in this mountain. He can't tell what is his paranoia and what is actually prowling near him.
He turns to look behind him often, but nothing is in the dark beside the rock.
This claustrophobia is something that he should be used to. He is already encased in a metal coffin. He knows he will die in it. And yet…
A torrent of water rushes past his feet.
He stops, shocked into a stupor. As he lays his weight onto his right leg for balance, the pain in his thigh erupts anew, burning hotter than before. He bites back a whimper. The muscles are swollen under the protective layers of his suit and it hurts terribly to touch the afflicted area even lightly.
This is a nightmare.
If any more tissue dies, they might have to cut it away when he returns to Coruscant.
He breathes in, shuddering.
They can't do that any more.
He crosses the water in a few long strides. It stays near his ankles, but the flow is powerful and tumultuous. White noise covers his thoughts, disrupting his plans for recovery until the first step is the only one he can think of, repeating itself over and over in his mind: assess the wound.
Assess the wound.
Assess the wound.
The tunnel widens.
The rushing water fades into the background. Moisture clings to the stalactites and drips to the floor with poignant echoes within the larger chamber.
He follows the curvature of the wall, limping.
He will need help once he reaches the source of the anomaly. What if he calls Fett earlier? It makes sense to have him ready for liftoff as soon as possible. It would be a mistake not to ensure all resources are available to him.
Vader vividly remembers their last meeting. They were on the Slave-I and Fett was beside himself with terror—a first, which at the time Vader did not think to pay much attention to, preoccupied as he was by a piece of driftwood from his past, unexpectedly held captive in one of the prison cells on the ship.
On second thought—
He closes the channel.
He takes a few more steps forward.
Nearby, a creature whimpers.
He freezes, his heart picking up its rhythm, steadily and forcefully slamming itself against his ribcage.
The whimpers get louder, more desperate. Its breath comes out in mangled, strained sounds that burrow deep within Vader's mind, dredging up nightmares he thought he’d locked away for good.
He clenches his lightsaber tightly, shining it toward the rest of the cave. He scans its edges closely, ready to react.
Nothing shows up but rocks and debris.
IMPERIAL NETWORK CONNECTION UNSTABLE
The message pops up at the edge of his feed, distracting him.
It gives him pause.
Should he make the call now? What if the signal vanishes the rest of the way?
No imperial will see him like this. Fortunately, Boba Fett is both outside Imperial influences and someone who knows how to keep his mouth shut.
He's also an opportunistic bastard.
If Fett saw him injured, what would he do?
Hah
A foolish, baseless worry to have. He forgets who Boba Fett is: not a man in search of conquest, but of reward. Who would indulge him, if Vader were no more?
Vader would chuckle if he wasn't on the verge of crying out in pain.
He retraces his steps into the wider portion of the cave, on the lookout for any creature lurking in the dark beside him. Nothing meets his inquisitive look, but he can't shake the feeling something is dissecting him with its cold, dead eyes.
He finds a spot where the connectivity is decent and calls Fett.
Fett doesn't pick up.
Vader frowns. He leans back against the wall and stares out into the distant dark while he waits.
There is no answer.
"Don't toy with me," Vader growls. "Not now, Fett."
A gust of air blows down the back of his neck. Almost a word, given a voice by the wind.
The sensation is so unnatural that he springs forward, injuries forgotten, and slices the wall with his saber, leaving a deep gash behind.
The rock shudders from the force of the blow.
He backs up into the opposite wall, lightsaber poised defensively in front of his chest.
There is nothing in the cave. Nothing! Yet there is a coldness on his skin that should not be there. What foul creatures stalk these caverns?
He re-establishes the call.
The dial tone is a soft, intermittent chime that lets him know the connection is working. He is still alone on the line.
Pick up.
Pick up.
A croak comes from his left side.
He pivots on his feet, cursing at the white hot pain that passes through his leg at the movement. Briefly, his head fills with a cotton like haze and his concentration slips, his shield flickering from existence.
At once, the salt in the air fills his senses. The deafening sound of rushing water is all around him. He braces himself, expecting a tidal wave to flood the cavern and drown him.
The awful noises return also: a rattling breath, the sound of a body crawling on the ground, fabric sliding against rocks.
He sees it now:
A shrouded corpse lying face down at his feet.
A long, sharp, high-pitched noise fills his head—a blade if it was made of sound, plunging deep into his skull. Nausea and repulsion bubble up in his throat as he stares at the corpse transfixed, lightsaber ignited and all but useless in his paralyzed hands.
The body is humanoid, malnourished, the big bones of the body protruding through the dirty, bloody shroud like landmarks of agony. It looks like it would crumble if he touched it.
It lies perfectly still.
The longer he watches it, the harder it is to keep himself together. He desperately needs to tear his eyes away and put as much distance between them as possible.
The call disconnects with a click, snapping him out of the trance.
Vader breathes out hollowly,
.
steps over the corpse,
.
and walks away.
The corpse gurgles and wheezes behind him.
He quickens his pace.
"Fett! Answer me!"
The shrouded corpse follows him through the dark. Muffled thuds and scraping noises and agonal cries of pain follow him through the dark until—
—he swivels, lightsaber held high, and strikes the thing in one powerful blow, cutting it in half.
Rivulets of blood and a dark, tar-like substance form on the cave floor, pouring and pouring and pouring over the flat rocks until everything is stained by it. Flaky bone dust scatters everywhere in a fine, ashen layer.
He strikes it again maliciously, driving the saber through the skull itself. The cloth around its head unravels, revealing a smattering of dark tangled hair beside the flat cranium bones. The very sight of it sends new spikes of pain through his head. His eyes hurt.
He shouldn't linger here.
The walls are closing in on him, trapping him with this creature. What he came here to find is no longer his main objective—all he wants to do now is get out.
As he leaves the air pocket, he hears a soft mewling behind him, wet with blood.
His body freezes all over.
He does not turn around.
A strip of light shines ahead.
He stumbles toward it clumsily.
The opening is a crack at the root of a dead tree.
He cuts it out.
His arms are tired and drop to his sides a moment later.
How much time has he wasted walking around in the dark? It can't have been too long, else he'd have asphyxiated. His oxygen supply is not unlimited.
He climbs out through the hole and crashes to the ground on a ledge. His right leg stretches out in front of him, badly repaired and visibly swollen.
He stares at the thigh apathetically.
The tension torments him. The flesh will simply burst if he lets it stew like this any longer.
An incision would relieve the pressure inside the muscular compartment. He has no vibroblades with him. He could use his lightsaber instead, but if he is too gentle, the blade will simply cauterise and meld the layers of tissue together, increasing the pressure between the swollen muscles and the protective fascial sheet. If he is too rough, he might slip and cut too deep and…
He needs something else.
A quick look around offers little to work with: dead shrubbery, a hint of lichen, and a pile of rocks.
He calls a fist-sized rock to his hand and sharpens its edge with the lightsaber. The heat from the blade should sterilise it and ward off infection for the time being.
It takes a few moments to tear through all the layers of his suit, but he manages it with an added edge from the Force, prying the threads apart at a microscopic level. When all that's left to cut is his scarred skin, he stops to gather his wits in preparation for the blow.
One breath to calm down,
.
another to poise the rock, ready to strike,
.
.
and with the third breath, he jams it deeply into his thigh, dragging it toward his hip through flesh and blood.
Everything gets hazy after that.