The dark room was lit only by the sound of the suit's built-in life support systems. Kneeling motionless, Darth Vader concentrated on the Force, trying to transcend the agony and rage and the ancient memories that had plagued him for so long. He had not dreamt since, until this night.
They came to him like ghosts through the wall. But instead of a frequency, it was a message, etched in script across the corridor of bones and time. Vader stood. Suddenly, there were sparks all around the room. Reality bent, shadow, and the void spoke.
"Darth Vader."
It was neither Basic, nor Sith, nor Galactic. It was too ancient. It was the voice of things that existed before the galaxy. The syllables of his name echoed and vibrated in his chest, as if he had been its child since before the stars were born. Vader's vision shifted as the being appeared: a towering, chaotic form with a cloak made of a nebula, over a cauldron of fangs and eyes and shifting runes, floating before him like a god not yet born.
"You are less then what you can be. Shackled with grief. Anchored with memory. I set you free. Power. Flesh. Purpose."
He inhaled slowly with a deep wheezing. Then, stepping forward, Vader spat, "You are nothing. Another hallucination. Disappear," with words that were cold and metallic. But curiosity was buried deep, a blade concealed under his cape.
The being did not fear. But it smiled, without the aid of a mouth. "I am 'Shu'ulk'Tarath, The Swallower of the Null Choirs. The Lament that is Born Backwards. The First Will After the Heat Death. You may call me... your patron."
There was a shiver in the Force, and a thousand voices in the distance wailed together as if in mourning, the sound ringing in the Sith Lord's mind. The Sith Lord himself did not move.
"You want something," he said finally. Clenched fists hung on his sides.
"A bargain. You're my champion. And in return, I give you back that which was taken from you. A power pure. Restoring you to your peak. Stamina. Strength. Youth. The more you conquer, the more power you have. Victory by consent. Seduction. Subjugation. You get back what was yours."
For a brief moment, the chamber light failed. When the light returned, the feeling was different. His hand moved. He could feel, could feel it the dull throb of a muscle and the gentle, beating pulse of living tissue that had lain dormant within his body for many years.
The hand trembled.
"You know not what you are dealing with." He spat back at the being. Now he was kneeling down to him. A crushing dust of obsidian rocks.
"But you know," the voice said in a tone as smooth as honey and fine silk. "You were Anakin Skywalker. A master of fate. A man of great desires. But your guilt and despair... they stripped you naked. They consumed you. Let me release you from your bondage. Allow me to offer you satisfaction, Vader, not the softness of feeling, but the mastery of ownership. Love is fragile. Desire commands."
Anakin. The name struck him, a ghost that would not fade. He saw her, briefly. Padmé. She was smiling. Weeping. Burning bright in his arms.
"She died because I…" He choked, not on grief, but something far worse. Guilt. Or perhaps regret that was still healing.
"She died for love, not for want. Let her go, and you break the Jedi chain you wear. Accept what's given, and make a new galaxy with your want."
Logic did not speak him. It was desire. Desire he'd suppressed. Desire for sex, for power, for beauty, for a man to want, once more. He'd buried that. He'd stifled it with grief and will. Now it boiled inside him, like a fire lit after a hundred centuries.
"I need evidence," Vader said. "Proof."
The Force coiled itself around him, like gauze on an arm. He felt a breeze blow the nerves of his back. His soul gave way. Something flared in his crotch, an explosive, blinding burn, followed by a flame he could feel, warm and pulsing. The air within his helmet was still hot. His eyes popped open within the helmet.
"Good," Shu'ulk'Tarath said, more a hush, "You are complete. You are mended."
He could feel his cock. The urge, the lust, the blood. It was beautiful. It was a disaster.
Vader did not speak. His breathing became faster, but it was not a breath of pain, but of sensation. He felt only one thought: Mustafar had not only scarred me. It had neutered me. It had made me nothing more than a corpse. But now.
Now I burn again.
"You're telling me to sleep around?" he said, "Women who give themselves?"
"It is a covenant of control. Not rape. Not force. Lust gives you servants. Servants give you control." The creature shimmered between them. "You are my hand. You are my flesh of desire. The Dark Side is only ash. You are sensation. You will feel."
The Sith raged inside of him. There was no contradiction to his sith ways, just a refinement of what it mean to be powerful.
He saw one more time Padmé's face, and he let her go.
"Then I will do it," Vader said.
There was a roar in the room which was not a sound. The bargain was struck.
A brief pause followed. Vader breathed in and out in the dancing shadows; but his chest did not move on the beat of mechanical precision. Something dark and foreign boiled inside him, as though an extinguished flame were suddenly stoked to a new roaring fire. Shu'ulk'Tarath did not speak, and yet Vader could sense the creature coiling around the base of his mind, the tendrils of the force stroking and probing into his consciousness. Shu'ulk'Tarath said nothing; it did not need to. He was being driven on its own whim, by necessity itself. So Vader took a firm breath and stepped to one side, his flowing cape rippling like the flag of a great empire.
Without warning, Darth Vader started to walk. He stepped out onto the bridge and walked along the corridors in a silence that was almost deafening. Stormtroopers parted for him, and he saw that the movement was deliberate, almost overly so. The troopers were scared, but no. They were terrified. Their bodies tensed before him, but this had nothing to do with their training. Their eyes flickered with a doubt they couldn't explain. The same man, the same armor, but no. It was no longer Darth Vader the man. Now it was Darth Vader, and something was very much alive. Something was moving in a way a dead man was not, a flame burning beneath the frozen surface. A pull in the air like gravity pulling sideways. It couldn't be seen, but it was there, and they knew it; for it was a sensation in their own hearts, and he could feel it in his.
She stood at the other end of the bridge, shoulder to shoulder with a group of Imperial officers. She was young. He couldn't quite decide how he didn't recognize her. But she turned around at the exact moment when his thought passed through his mind. Without hesitation. No hesitation at all. Instead, she was standing in the posture of a person whose role had been explained to her; the role of someone who knew that if they stood in a room with other commanders and admirals, it'd be unnatural. Her gaze held itself on the visor of Vader's helmet. It did not falter.
And the Force brushed him, hard, but gentle; as if it were a hand brushing the back of his neck.
"Her," came the low voice of Shu'ulk'Tarath, not from his lips, but in his marrow.
She turned a little to the left, flame-red hair swept to one side into a rough braid, eyes green and sharp, the gaze of a predator. Her voice did not tremble, but her pitch wavered, and the cadence, if slightly, was wrong. Slightly too even, slightly too slow.
"I wasn't told the Emperor sent you to my ship," he said, speaking from beneath his helmet. He did not ask this as a question.
"I am always present on any ships where he would have me," she said. She sounded businesslike. "He had instructed me to watch you."
The Force touched him again. Not the pressure, no, not quite. It was a magnetism, slowly, slowly pulling him along. A vibration on two frequencies which had never before crossed paths, both aware of the other. Shu'ulk'Tarath remained silent. Darth Vader could sense, dimly now, but growing stronger, that this meeting was no accident.
He said nothing at first. Then, "What is your name?" he asked.
"Mara Jade."
He held the name for a long moment, and ran it over and over in his mind. She was beautiful; she was a hard beauty, a beautiful that was dangerous, but she was more than that, too. She was important. She was connected. It wasn't that the Force rippled around her, but it shimmered. She was the sharp end. A deadly point. And yet, for him, she was vulnerable.
"She's looking at you," the entity whispered in his head. "The others are scared. She's... wondering why she isn't."
She was stepping toward him, closer than seemed appropriate by protocol. She scanned the black armor, taking a beat or two over the joints, the breast plate, the belt, then she was moving her gaze back up. "Your legend precedes you," she said. "But you're... quieter than I thought."
"I do not speak much."
"No," she said, shifting her head, "but you're not like them. Not the armor or power no." Her eyes narrowed as they continued to study him. "Something... is different."
They paused. A silence that spanned the length of space. She did not move, did not step back. And he did not step forward. Neither said anything. And even so, he found he was pulling her closer.
"I work for the Emperor," she said, and now she spoke calmly, purposefully. "He tells me many things. He does not, however, tell me what you are."
"I am his tool."
"Are you?" she asked. "Or are you different than you were?"
Vader watched her. She was daring him, and not disrespectfully, either. Inquisitively. And she hadn't moved from where she stood, her arms at her thighs. She was open now. Allowing. An openness that drew, that didn't repel.
In the Force, another pulse, this time stronger. Shu'ulk'Tharath was watching. Watching and waiting. Enjoying.
He stepped toward her. "Do you want me to be different?"
Her lips parted, and it was not shock, but wonder. She steadied herself. But it was there now. "I don't know," she admitted, her voice soft, her words tentative. "Maybe."
"You are very brave."
"I was designed for it," she said. Her voice had dropped. No one else on the bridge moved. The bridge remained filled with the voices of officers and men to the side; off the side of the room. Just noise. Her face was to him, his to hers.
"There is much in that," he agreed.
She gave him the barest of smiles, the smallest one. Enough to ignite. "Then maybe we'll see what else I'm made for."
Something snapped in the space between them. It wasn't hot, or vibrating nearly that strongly. It was the sense of some kind of lock sliding into its key, a magnet realigning. Vader said nothing. Their eyes met; then his were gone, her eyes falling away as her composure once again fell over her face. But she had smiled. And she could never take that smile back. He turned and the dark robe of his cloak followed him like a curtain and he gave them the signal, the one wordless motion that made the soldiers on his ship act.
He played his part on the bridge for an hour, slicing through briefings, orbital calculations, blockades displayed on the screen, in ice cold precision. His voice was the same, sandpaper on metal, yet it wasn't him inside. The voice was just a container. Beneath every order and calculation sat Mara, interwoven within it, the fabric threaded like a needle. Arms crossed over her back, she stood behind him, her eyes on him as she had when they had first started working together. Like a hunter stalking another like it, not like a guard guarding his own. The Force hummed about her, like silk on silk.
"She waits for you, full of pleasure," said entity, "She would like you to offer your hand. Guide her to the chamber of truth. The descent begins with a decision."
As soon as the last report was signed and the admirals turned on their heels, Vader spun to face her, his eyes straight ahead. "Come."
She said nothing, she did not question; he walked, she followed, through the darkened halls of the Star Destroyer. Men stepped aside and looked away.. She asked no questions of his destination, he gave her no answers.
The door to his apartment hissed open.
Mara entered first, her eyes flicking across the room to check for signs of danger. The room was unadorned, austere, almost ascetic, aside from a black-walled room at the end of the hall and the table of black, obsidian, beneath the low light above them. A subtle hum in the walls, the ship, she thought, was humming.
"You call this a home?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow, almost imperceptibly. "You, who could have everything, call this home."
"I do not need opulence," he said, walking past her. The door shut after them, a sound of pure silence.
"You don't need it," said Mara, stepping past her and entering the black chamber, her hand tracing the curve of the dome above. "But maybe you wish for it."
He looked at her hand, every finger a distinct motion, a motion that could only be one of search. "What I am searching for," he said, "is nothing of the flesh."
She stopped her fingers in mid-air. "Then what are you looking for?"
She didn't retreat. He came to her, slowly but inexorably, until the distance between them was no greater than a breath. "Here. Right now." The air was cut with a voice as sharp as a blade. "I want to know why you followed."
She did not move. "Perhaps curiosity."
"Curiosity can lead to your destruction," he said.
"Restraint can too."
The air stretched, snapped like a bowstring. Vader raised his gloved hand, fingers hovering over the space just above the tip of her chin, the tip of a blade, but not of steel. The air hummed, the force was ready, waiting. Her breath slowed, though it did not stop. He felt it, heard it. "You are not afraid." It was not a question.
"I think I should be."
He lifted his hand. Just the slightest. The edge of his glove grazed the side of her face and her eyelashes trembled, but she did not stir. She let him. She enjoyed it. The Force was closing the space around them, no longer passive or expectant, rather it was pressing, demanding. Shu'ulk'Tarath was uncurled in his head, reveling in the promise, in the words unsaid. This was what the old god wanted over eons, the lure that loosened all those barriers.
"I could kill you," he whispered, a breath of air, a threat.
"And I could report you," she replied, her threat and her excitement in equal measure with his. "But I will not."
Her face was nearer, only an inch separated them and a simple movement would have bridged that gap. He looked in her eyes, deeper than self-control, and saw no lies. Only desire. Only confusion. Only will. "You're different than anyone I've known," he whispered.
"You say it like it's weird."
"It is."
Her lips curved upwards in a smile, a breath, a promise. He reached for his glove and slowly peeled the black leather away from his cybernetic fingertips.
It was not a formal motion. It was not a hurried one. Rather, it was deliberate as he removed his helmet and then the neck guard on his suit. He exhaled heavily into the air, and as he exhaled. The dark knight, so feared across the galaxy, ceased to exist. There was now simply a man.
Pale, bruised, and dying, but human. And Mara did not look away.
As if to say it was normal, that the sight of him unmasked, the sight of a man beneath a suit of armor she was sworn to protect, was expected of him. Instead, she inched forward. Her hand, no longer gloved, rose and placed itself on his armor, over the spot of his heart where his pulse was racing. "I have wanted to see the face beneath that for a very long time," she admitted.
"You are the only one that can."
"I am?" They looked at one another. No words were spoken, only an understanding and a desire was communicated.
The Force crackled. The seduction grew. He nodded, leaned in.
She met him. And they kissed. The dark and light were bound. The dead and alive were united. Mara's insistent but soft mouth found his, mingling with the taste of metal from his resprator.
Her eyes, dark green emeralds, blinked, and in their gaze, she saw herself through him. They breathed, his hand resting on the side of her face and then her neck. His touch made the soft skin on her body flame.
She shuddered under his fingers and her pulse beat wildly at her throat. She groaned as her hand found his waist, sliding to his belt. Vader's penis began to strain under his tunic. He withdrew, and said, his rasping voice demanding, "Kneel."
Her gaze was fierce with desire. In a moment, she was down on her knees, undoing Vader's armor.
His hard, erect manhood stood there, a sign he had returned and was eager. It was thick and long. She held his base, looked up at him with pleading eyes, bent her head and blew her breath across it. Her eyes turned dark and hungry, her soft mouth parting to receive him. The first sensation was electric.
He bit his lip. Mara Jade flicked his head and he shuddered.
Her tongue was teasing him, moving up and down his shaft. She was desperate to swallow him whole. There was a desperate look in her eyes as she tried to take him as much as she could into her throat. Every now and again, her soft moans could be heard.
There was the constant noise of her slurping, his penis in her throat, her chest, in the tight uniform bouncing in sync with her head movement as she moved. Her nipples sticking out of her uniform.
"Suck me, you little bitch," Vader hissed. He loved using language that without restraint or clarity. It was a release.
"Take me all." Her eyes were lust-filled, she was defying him, trying to take more and more, her cheeks hollowing out more. With her red hair now free from her hat, it swayed about her, the sight of it was beautiful, and she was an action girl. She loved being submissive to only him. His hand on the back of her head, in control, just like his army on the battlefield. It was tight and it almost hurt her but she needed that tightness.
With each thrust, with each deep breath taken by the dark lord, there was a transfer of power between them, energy passed into Mara, that she would be his and no other's. She couldn't control the moisture in her eyes, but it wasn't with pain; the unshed tears betrayed her, though it was her own free will.
The muscles in his legs tensed; he was going to cum. He growled out in pleasure.
Mara Jade was desperate for it; she needed it. She felt his cock swell with semen in her mouth; the liquid, hot and slightly metallic with his cybernetics, spilled forth into her open mouth. She greedily swallowed the load, needing it, needing him. Vader looked at her as she swiped her tongue over her lips, he was breathing heavily.
"Good girl," he said with satisfaction.
"You enjoyed that." Mara Jade was looking up to her Master; her eyes a little glassy. It was a moment of lust and pleasure and there was no argument to that fact. "I need more," she purred, her voice husky. Vader's erection quivered.
He caressed her cheek, fingers soft against her skin, and she purred at the contact. "You will," he said to her, the command almost a caress. His voice was like velvet, so dark. He picked her up and put her face down on a black table in the corner; the table he used to examine her.
The black leather uniform made a creaking noise against her athletic figure, her breast against the cold blackness, her pants fell to her ankles, her underwear hauled up, her wet pussy ready for him. It was open.
Her tight anus waited for his touch, he knew the smell of her desire and her need for this encounter; there was no need to ask if she needed him. "He was done with his armor which lay scattered on the floor and his cybernetic body lay bare, scars evident and the sight of his standing cock was beautiful to her. He was hungry and it was his.
He rubbed it slowly. She turned to look at him and he fixed his eyes to hers, that delicious, terrified yet longing gaze. "Beg," he ordered, an intense mix of command and lust. Her eyes burned mutinously as she whispered back in a combination of defiance and pleading: "I don't beg." Vader responded by grabbing her hips and pulling her to him.
"You will," he told her. "You'll beg for me like the whore that you are." He put his cock at her opening, the head pressing against her wet folds. He looked at her, almost closing his eyes and taking short pants.
With lightsaber force, he drove into her, and her scream sounded. Mara resisted, her body squirming and trying to break from his grip, but he was too strong, just as he'd known he would be. Her breasts bobbed, nipples calling to him. He continued to pound, more and more frantic as his strength took the better. "Oh, fuck," Mara groaned with heavy, lustful breath.
"You're so big... You're so powerful." He kept thrusting hard into her, his dick enjoying every second of the tightness that was her. Her flesh tightened around him, as her juices made way for him, her walls shaking with every drive.
"Please," she panted in a voice that sounded strained, "please, Vader... harder." That only aroused him further. He adjusted his stance, driving in deeper, and hit just the right erogenous point, so she screamed again, the tight, almost wild clasp of her arms almost enough for him, but he was the Master, and he didn't back down; he wouldn't be denied. He reached out and wrapped his hand around her. His hand went to her clit, rubbing small circles into her, increasing pressure with every thrust.
Mara moaned louder and harder. "I'm gonna make you cum," he whispered against her ear, his hot breath causing shivers to run down her entire back.
"You're gonna scream my name." She was on fire. Every nerve was singing in her body. She couldn't keep control; it was too hard. His thrusts tore her defenses, ripping her apart piece by piece as she worked for control, but it all went up in flames. Her orgasm was coming in a rush of wild, almost feral pleasure-pain.
His wet, scorching, dick was in her to the hilt, his fingers sinking deep into the curve of her hips. It was too much. He put his hand on her head. He tightened it around her throat, pinning her down, locking her in.
Breath was stolen from her as the wave of paralyzing fear gave in to an overwhelming lust. Her orgasm hit, eyes bulging and muscles convulsing as the fist-like clamps of her pussy clamped down on his rod, tightening and tightening. The dominant pressure on her neck was nothing compared to the pleasure that took the breath out of her.
"Yeah? You like that?" The pleasure in his growl was like velvet on steel. "It feels good to be used, doesn't it?"
Her eyes rolled back, and curses poured out as pleasure took over. And he didn't stop. His hand curled around her throat, a firm possessive grasp that told her who he was, who she was as he rode her out. Mara felt her body clench, the walls of her womb pushing out his invasion, but it was useless. For every wave of pleasure that hit her, he went a little deeper and struck at her G-spot again and again.
"You're a slave from now on, you're my pet, mine." Vader breathed wetly, the heat of his words against the shell of her ear. "You will do whatever I say, whenever I say." Mara was never anything but an independent, self-sufficient female, but here, in the midst of passion, she was desperate for submissiveness and was starved for what he was offering.
And the words that came from her lips were an unexpected gift to her. "Yes, my lord." His grip on her neck disappeared. She sucked in a breath as he continued to fill and empty her. The pressure gone, her body was light and her eyes stung with tears and relief and something far more primal.
"Good girl," Vader growled. His voice held a note of approval that thrilled her as much as his cock did.
With a stinging slap on the backside, he continued to fuck her like that. "You'll take me whenever I want to use you."
"Like this, I love it," Mara Jade whispered, breathing in ragged breaths. And the realization that her master was not only more powerful and more hungry than she, but also more in control was so seductive it was an aphrodisiac in its own right. She'd never felt it like this in her life. "Yes," she panted, her eyes on his. Her voice was so deep, so full of hunger. "I will." As the climax drew near, she felt his muscles tense.
Vader smacked Mara's ass one more time. Her ass was a perfect piece of art, so hard and round that it was a temptation in and of itself to have it ravaged.
Mara gasped with the force of his slap. Her tight, wet pussy clamped down around his cock, her body shuddered from the aftershocks of the orgasm she was just on the edge of having, but she couldn't seem to stop. It was so intense, so overwhelming.
"Please, harder, again!" she begged as the intensity of her arousal rose like a wave. With one last, resolute thrust, his hips drove against the stem of her buttocks as his cock pounded, on the verge of explosive ecstasy. "Fuck, I'm cumming," he roared, as his cock shot out a stream of hot white semen, splattering the floor below, filling her with his essence.
He drove his hips into hers with a force that was both exhilarating and terrifying as he let loose. He could still hear the echoes of their combined pleasure, the sound of her gasping in the background, her words like whispers in the wind. She could feel it dripping down her thighs, and it was beautiful. It was something she could never forget. "More," she moaned.
His seed spilled over the bed, dripping between her thighs and onto the sheets. Mara felt like she'd been born to do it, to feel him inside her, to take every inch of him, to feel every part of him, to let him fill her up. "Dress," he rasped, his voice rough and hoarse. "We have work to do." Her legs faltered as she rose, trembling from the aftershocks. She pulled up her cum-stained pants and shoved her shirt into them, her hands shaking.
She didn't dare question the order; she was his, branded with the wet trails of his seed on her upper thighs and deep within her own depths. He remained standing, fully aroused and pulsing with her ravenous need.
He raised a hand, the Force crackling at his fingertips, and flicked his wrist. Off they went: the pieces of his armor. The armor spun in midair. Clunks and snicks as pieces of metal and plasteel moved and clicked back into place. His menacing black suit was reconstructed.
Mara backed up, watching, watching this strength demonstration. She felt his seed inside her, a crude reminder of his power over her. She panted for air, chest heaving, trying to regain control. Yet even now, she noticed the muscles flexing underneath his armor, radiating his strength. Vader stopped in his tracks as he finished, his helmet turned in her direction.
"Come," he growled. She followed him, legs wavering, down the ship's cramped corridors, which were far less exciting than before. Vader's footsteps echoed through the corridors, lighting the path, and her breaths did not come from fear or the feeling of being intimate.
The truth that went unsaid was so very loud. In protest of training, the natural response was to obey and follow. Something had changed. Something now belonged to him. Vader, without turning, felt her.
Their connection was personal, absolute. The mark of her submission to him remained. Mara did not try to brush it away.
If she gave this up, it meant her death, not from a command or a breach of protocol, but because she was his and his things did not betray. This truth hung heavily between them like a heavy, stifling second layer of air. The tactical briefing center's lights activated automatically as they approached. Holograms sprang to life, showing Imperial patrols, rebel activity, coordinates, a cold war, a raging, burning fire. His glove extended toward the console, but he never pressed a single button.
Mara stood waiting for his standard order, but it never arrived. He tilted his helmet, ever so slightly, like he was listening to something.
And then, an unexpected surge in the Force came over the room, like the air exploded inward, into a scene, silent and wordless. Mara blinked. Vader stood still as a knife, hand pressed to the lip of the console. Then it was like it coiled itself around his body and into his bones. That wasn't Palpatine.
That wasn't the Force at least not as she knew it. It was something far, far older. More wild. More ravenous.
"You have done well, my champion."
It wasn't a voice bouncing off walls. It wasn't a voice that emanated from them.
It was the walls. It was the air inside his breath, the blood inside his veins, the darkness that wrapped his soul like silk bathed in tar. Vader said no words out loud, but Mara knew. She felt the growing pressure in the room, felt the lights dim, just ever so slightly, as though presence did not need clarity to gorge itself. Heats surged through the armor.
Mara stepped back. He clutched his gauntleted hands into fists, red lenses burning brighter in the mask, air rippling as it shimmered outwards from him.
He wasn't opening up; he was closing off, his force flowing in to obey. She felt her own esophagus constrict as a wild fear spread throughout her stomach. His power was back. Agony, strength, pride.
The god was pleased. Mara's possession, untamed, full, intimate, had consecrated some dark sacrament.
She was the first of Vader's entourage, a harem of soldiers and servants, each one binding him further into flesh and power. And the god, pleased by the joining, blessed him lavishly. Sparks of molten metal and shattered console rained down, all disintegrated beneath the pressure of Vader's tightly closed fingers.
Alarms didn't ring. Time froze. His spine stiffened. The next breath was one. One was all.
The force closed around him in invisible tendrils, unspoken and inviolable. Mara's eyes widened.
Now she could feel nothing from him; no hint of anger, pain or determination. He was, simply, nothing, and then he was, and he stood before her.
Her voice shook. "What... did you just do?" Slowly, deliberately, Vader pivoted. "I have been made whole," he said, his vocoder more gruff than ever, as if it was trying to decode thunder. "The darkness has blessed me."
Swallowing, she took him in, eyes narrowed in concern. He wasn't any bigger now than before, but there was more space between him and the ground. His lightsaber hilt sprang off his belt, never moved by his hand, and hovered in mid-air, glowing with pent fury. "Your Force signature... it's gone." Mara spoke quietly.
"No. It has been refined." Vader moved closer and the lightsaber hissed as it fell back to its belt in a sharp click. "No one will know where I am. Not even the Emperor."
She stiffened, eyes lowering. "That... makes you a danger. To him."
He stopped in front of her. For the rest of her life, all that she could see of herself, what was left of her, looking back at her through his helmet, a jagged reflection of herself, torn and entirely possessed.
"No. It means I'm free," he exhaled. A pause. She felt the possibilities squirming beneath the surface of her skin. He could kill Palpatine now, gliding like a shadow, killing like a god. He could take her, again and again, and no one would be the wiser.
The galaxy had tilted; and they were the only ones who knew of this change. "Are you going to kill him?" She murmured.
"If he forces my hand," he replied, and that was as close as he'd ever come to a promise.
Mara stared down. "And me?"
"You belong to me," he said. "As long as you are loyal, you are alive."
The response settled within her like silk and chains, respectively. Constraining, and comfortable. A crooked smile stretched her lips.
"Good. I don't want to belong to anyone else but you." Vader's helmet tilted. Something like approval. Proprietary, perhaps. Inside him, the patron scratched his chin.
Power flowed. Destiny drew nearer. And the ship continued, humming its steady song into deep space, bearing two unsayable secrets.