His blood
His life...everything was fading
Hazing into the icy blue of snow in darkness.
Only those ruby red circles remained...
The snow flurried and turned to sand and dust; a whipwind in the desert, scarlet suns setting over the heat-rippled horizon.
Tatooine--dense, bone-deep warmth, the sand itself oozing heat in the balmy dusk.
Twin suns setting, blazing a waning trail through pallid skies, writhing in their own heat haze.
People, places, memories as warm as the pale sand...
Were they his at all? So long ago...
His past, his future, his whole life was fading with the setting suns...
Falling into Darkness...
... ... ... ...
...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
After failing to coerce Skywalker to kneel yesterday, Palpatine returned quite literally with a vengeance and brought him to his knees by force, no longer in the mood to play games.
On entering the cell, before his painfully weak Jedi had even begun struggling upright, he threw a lance of bright white power at him, hurling him back and making him cry out in shock.
Two Red Guards dragged him to the center of the cell, hauling him upright then kicking at the backs of his knees to force him to a kneeling position, holding him there with his arms twisted behind his back as Palpatine crouched before him, the boy shouting out in frustrated resentment and bare pain.
Palpatine took his blood-spiked hair and yanked his head up, holding him still against his weak struggle as he looked into those wild, stormy ice-blue eyes, full of indignant outrage.
"You should kneel before your Master."
"You are not my Master!" He yelled, but the words were broken, made hoarse by frailty and his parched throat.
"Then get up," Palpatine goaded, and the boy let out an animal sound part fury, part frustration, and utterly lost.
"Let him go," Palpatine said at last, rising and turning away as his Jedi wrenched free of them, not looking back until they were gone, the door secured behind them.
Skywalker had remained on his knees, collapsing back to sit on his bare heel, his broken ankle twisted awkwardly to the side to protect it, one hand clutched tightly to him, the other to the cold white floor, stained by dark smears of long-dry blood.
For a moment Palpatine thought he had learned his lesson, but the slump in the boy's shoulders and the fact that he used his hand to keep his swaying body upright hinted that he was simply incapable of doing anything more in this moment.
He circled his Jedi, careful to remain out of his reach should he lash out like a wounded animal, aware now that he could do that, that he was balanced this close to the edge...
The revelation had shocked them both yesterday: Skywalker's ability to repel the lightening--to turn it back on its source. But the reminder of his power only drove Palpatine's vindictive, obsessive need to dominate. He knew he was gambling with his very life; this was why he had to control his Jedi so completely. He pushed and goaded him towards the Darkness, knowing that in the moment he succumbed, the boy would hold unequalled power. Power which could so easily be turned on his new Master.
This was always the way with the Dark Side--personal experience had taught Palpatine this, a lesson hard-learned by his own Master. But now, with Skywalker, the risk was tenfold, because his power would be absolute.
As his father should have been but never was; incredible potential dwindled and diminished by a debilitated body.
Not so his child--what power to hold, to direct and channel as Palpatine saw fit. The very thought made him dizzy with anticipation, the wild, enervating fear in his own black heart pushing him on to control completely, mind and soul.
Yes, fear; it was a long time since he had felt fear. But here, before this being who crackled and pulsed with power, he tasted the acid tang in the back of his throat again and it made him feel alive. And the more he feared, the more he felt the driving desire to own that which inspired it.
He could sense the power building like a pressure keg within his Jedi, screaming for release now.
Just a little further; push him just a little harder.
He crouched again to lift his Jedi's chin, face bloody and bruised, breath shallow and broken. "Where are your reserves, my friend? Where is that iron will, now?"
The boy was silent, numb with exhaustion.
"Have you nothing left to give? Is this the sum of all your convictions? How easily those principles crumble."
Still the boy was silent; didn't even pull away when Palpatine released him to reach out and run pale fingers through his dark, blood-matted hair as his head dropped forward.
He sensed the boy flounder in wretched despair for long seconds before that obstinate, intractable will lifted his sagging head. But Palpatine only smiled at him, yellow teeth against grey skin.
"The end is in sight. Just a little longer," he promised, very sure. Again he raked long fingers through his Jedi's hair, nails to scalp, fingers closing, holding him tight. "Do you sense it? Shall we move forward?"
He leaned in close to whisper against the boy's grazed, bleeding skin. "Now is the true test, my friend...because I have not even begun to break you. I have not even begun to tear you apart. Your worst nightmare that howls in the dead of night is nothing. What happens here, in this room, will make it pale; wither by comparison. And there is no waking--there is no respite. I have not shown you a fraction of the power which I will turn on you. What I am willing to do to set you free. Don't give in yet, Jedi--the fight is just begun."
He held against the boy's sagging head. "What do you fear, Jedi? What do you see in the dark when your demons come?"
The boy's chest heaved as he summoned the strength to speak. It took long seconds, but when he did, he was unmoved, raising a scuffed and scarred face as his split lip curled into a snarl.
"Have you finished?" he spat it out, resentment giving him voice, coloring words and thoughts alike.
Palpatine stared in malevolent silence, yellow eyes glowing.
Skywalker's own eyes narrowed, cold as ice, voice broken and weak but invested with a power and conviction which held Palpatine captive. "I know...I know what you'll do. And I know why.
"Because I see you too--I see you. I know what you see--your demon in the dark. It's hunted you and it's haunted you since you first gained power and it stalks you still. Everything that you've done has been to contain it and control it--everything. You've spent a lifetime building walls within walls to protect yourself from it. You've wasted decades raising those defenses to try to make yourself completely impregnable...but there's one tiny spark of doubt in your mind and it burns through your soul, and in the dead of night it howls in the darkness. Because nothing could stop it--nothing. Not even you. I know what you see in the darkness because it burns when you look in my eyes. I know what you see in the dark when your demon comes...
"I know that it's me."
.
.
.
To be continued...
.
Chapter 19
.
.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
.
.
.
Palpatine walked down the empty corridors of this dedicated level of the Detention Center, designed specifically to hold his Jedi. The twelve Royal Guards who had left the cell with him followed at a discrete distance, their sense in the Force casually brutal, indifferent to the pain they inflicted on Palpatine's command.