Chapter Text
When one becomes accustomed to pain; reliant, even— the sudden absence can leave one adrift, freefalling amidst the intensity of proverbial silence.
Vader was intimately acquainted.
Agony had eclipsed every sense, what physical sensitivity left had been alight, awash with burning nerves. His psyche fared little better, so fully consumed by his own tumultuous feelings of desolation and rage.
Unrelenting, so very destructive rage.
When Anakin Skywalker's eyelashes fluttered shut for the final time, he allowed it, if simply because he was desperate for a peace that he had never been given. He had never truly been free. Always a pawn, a tool to serve another's wishes. A cyclical enslavement that for the latter part of his life, had been so in all but name. For one prophesied to bring balance, a certain irony could be found in the balance that was never afforded to him. Perhaps there was a touch of anger, a hint of a boy who once cried out at unfairness in all forms. That boy had been long since buried by the bastion of darkness known as Lord Vader; lost in modulated breath.
They were all gone. The boy from Tatooine, the man shouldering a war he never wanted, and the Emperor’s Hand. In a manner of speaking, Anakin was no longer bound. Becoming one with the Force had been his only escape from the life of a slave— if only it allowed him rest. Instead, it gave an opportunity; a chance to ensure the one who had orchestrated his suffering would share in it.
The Chosen One awoke, void of torment, clutching at a throat that drew air without struggle. Cerulean eyes blinked through tears, tinted blonde curls brushing his trembling shoulders. He could... feel; he could move without eliciting discomfort—
'I'm drowning.'