[fic] no illumination in either pain or pleasure
Title: no illumination in either pain or pleasure
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13ish (for mentions of prostitution & sex)
Spoilers: Draws from the EU but doesn't follow it...so no real spoilers.
Disclaimer: Obviously, Star Wars is not mine.
Summary: Follows Interpenetration which makes it part of the Second Chances universe. XD.
All his (their) plans take a backseat to the more immediate problem Padmé’s health. She’s fragile, hair and limbs long wasted, and he carefully feeds her from the electrolyte and sugar mixtures he finds in the emergency rations. Apparently, starvation was one of the planned for problems on Corva Yag. Though, of course, to the scientists’ dismay, the Emperor’s displeasure at their failures obviously had not.
He shaves her head with the safety razor he finds in the fresher, taking away the dead, rotting hair. Washes the bacta off her as gently as he can. Kisses the blue veins visible on her temples. Bundles her in discarded flightsuits.
She sleeps more often than not, and he carries her down to the hanger bay, making a nest of bedding by the half-ruined hulk of a ship he’s trying to salvage. Sometimes, when he’s tired beyond reason - forgetting as he does that, young or not, his organic body needs more rest - he stretches out beside her. Buries his head into the hollow of her throat and murmurs the apologies he’s composed throughout the long years after her death, words he always thought he’d never get a chance to say. Tries not to hate himself for the spark of shameful joy he has that she’s too weak to walk away from him, that she has to hear what he has to say, has to take his gentle kisses.
And the days pass, and he knows he needs to get her off-planet, to Coruscant and a real medical facility as quickly as he can.
The ship gets them as far as Adarlon before the thrusters give out. He can’t fix it. Not without credits to buy the parts, and he winds up selling the workable parts of the ship for a room in one of the spaceport’s shadier living units.
Padmé can keep down solid food again, and they’ve ration bars aplenty. She can take a half of one at midday and another half at dusk. He feeds her them, piece by piece, and looks through the flimsies for work.
They’re in (New) Republic space and that means there’s not much legal work for an underage humanoid male without any identity.
He can steal, of course. He’s always been quick, and he has the force. But he finds that pickpocketing only brings guilt, and he wonders what that says about him as a person: as Vader, he has murdered countless of beings in cold blood, and yet it is the idea of parting a spice-high sentient from his credit tabs that makes the bile rise in his throat.
There is always another option. His mother hadn’t always been a household administrator: she had once been a favourite of the pilots, before her body thickened with child. Before she had been sold from Arcan IV. Before she had become plain Shmi, prematurely aged by Tatooine’s twin suns.
Once she had been Lakshmi, given the name due to her precocious beauty.
***
It was a beauty he had inherited.
There had been no real brothels on Tatooine, and Hutts had favoured humanoid females (Twi’leks, mostly) over humanoid males, but his mother had always said that had they still been on Arcan IV he would have fetched a great price.
Back before Watto started using him to race, before Anakin had learnt to feel the actual shame of slavery, this had used to please him, that in his mother’s old profession, he would be highly valued.
Of course, the older he grew, so too did his pride, and he bristled at the cutting (if accurate) epithet of whore’s bastard.
But now, here in a small, claustrophobic room in Spacer’s Row, he once again examines his face in the cracked glass. As he did over a life-time ago.
At sixteen he is still gawky, still filling out, but his face falls into the symmetrical standard for galactic beauty. His hair is still baby-blond; it won’t darken for another standard year. And he knows the hollowness of his cheeks and the skinniness of his hips make his height less threatening to those in the market for purchasing boys rather than men.
He shuts his eyes. Hard. Tries not to think ahead to what this night will bring if his plan proves successful. Tries not to think at all. Especially not that his mother had accepted this in her quiet, calm way, had even tried to glamourize it to her young son.
A jedi does what he must for the sake of the mission.
He recalls Obi-Wan saying this, and he knows it’s true now, just as it was true then. But he cannot stop his shaking, and the force - always responsive to him - begins to shake, too.
“Ani?” Padmé asks, voice soft, slight, and worried from the dilapidated sleep-couch. “What’s wrong?” He winces at the way the force must be jostling both the sleep-couch and her tiny body. He needs to get it together. She’s been bruising far too easily.
He settles into the familiar stance for moving meditation. Keeps his back to her and tries to channel his energy back inside himself, keeping it from harming her. Like it did so long ago when it crushed her trachea.
“Nothing,” he lies. “Nothing at all.”
***
Of course, like all the plans of his (real) youth, this one goes just as wrong. He gets caught straight off, the heavy-set male he’s been propositioning quickly making himself scarce.
Thanks to Imperial intelligence files, he knows the faces of Corinna and Kandra A’Daasha, even if he’s never met them. He knew they were Rebel sympathizers, and he knew the Glow Dome doubled as a safe-house, and the years have not altered them overmuch. But he hardly thought one of them (Corinna? Kandra?) would take notice of yet another illegal transaction being conducted in their club.
“Thanks,” he tells her dryly, acting for all the galaxy as if he does this sort of thing all the time. And not that he wishes that he was trapped back behind that infernal mask, but he would give anything to be able to set his features as impenetrable as all that black armor had been. “There went my chance of breaking even this month.”
“Aren’t you a little young for a guild member?” she counters.
He refrains from answering, just stares at her.
“At least two standard years too young,” she continues. Then she breaks into a smile that belies her severe features. “And far too much in need of a good meal.”
She and her sister feed him ryshcate pastry and blue milk, and he can feel their kindness behind this act. He wants to bring Padmé here, let her soak up the gentle contentment of the A’Daashas’ kitchen.
And he’s so busy building his fantasy of her being here, sitting next to him like she did that one time in her parents’ home, that he almost misses Kandra’s offer.
***
He returns to their room, jubilant, and Padmé turns over on her side to look properly at him. Props her head up on one small hand. “You’re happy,” she observes. Her tone is flat. Neutral.
“I found a job,” he says, setting down the container of ryshcate on the dirty table. “Well, was offered a job, actually. It’s with droids. And I can take as much food as I like. Good food, Padmé. I’ve brought some ryshcate. Would you like a piece? I think your stomach might be able to take it.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“The first thing we’re going to do is get you to a medic,” he continues. “Then we’re going to start saving. We need to get back to Coruscant, and - “
“Stop it,” she says.
So he stops. Stops dead in his tracks.
“Stop pretending everything’s fine,” she says. “I can’t bear it, Anakin.”
“Padmé -“
“I know what you did tonight,” she says. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“All right,” Anakin says. He sits on the floor, head in his hands. “I won’t deny I was going to do it, but - “
“Come here.”
And even wasted, in this hell-hole she is regal, sitting up in bed in a way she hasn’t been strong enough to do before tonight. Posture royal from all those years as queen. Speaking from her diaphragm instead of her throat, and he’s helpless before her. Crawling forward to kneel beside the sleep-couch. He buries his head in her lap, and she’s crying over him as she used to do whenever he did something particularly stupid.
“You never think of me at all, do you?” she whispers, hands fisting into his hair. “Don’t you ever think of what it’s like for me - to wait behind like this? To wonder if you’re lying dead in a gutter somewhere?”
And of course she’s right.
“Did you bring me back only to kill me a second time?”
It’s the first time she’s explicitly referenced his part in her death, and even though it’s hardly revelation, he can’t take the damning words from her lips.
“I - I -- " He stares blindly at the blanket. Wets his lips. “I love you, Padmé. I would never - " He chokes back the rest of the sentence because he has.
“-hurt me?” she finishes, relentless though her voice is starting to fail her. “Of course you would. You have. You do, Anakin.” Her fingers are gentle now in his hair, short nails running through his equally short hair.
She exhales, a breathy little sigh. He knows this trick of hers. It’s how she’s always resigned herself to a particular course of action, and he finds himself waiting, dread-sick in his stomach, for her to tell him to get out. He doesn’t think he’ll have the willpower to go, and she doesn't have the strength to actually make him, and that just makes him feel sicker.
“So,” she says, voice deliberately light, “lie down and tell me about this new job of yours.”
And he is so pathetically grateful. Because he’s never, ever deserved her and she’s a fool to forgive him and let him back into her bed and into her heart. And he grasps the bedclothes tight with his hands because she’s too weak to grasp.
“Let me get you some ryshcate first,” he finally manages.
“All right, Anakin,” she says.
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Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13ish (for mentions of prostitution & sex)
Spoilers: Draws from the EU but doesn't follow it...so no real spoilers.
Disclaimer: Obviously, Star Wars is not mine.
Summary: Follows Interpenetration which makes it part of the Second Chances universe. XD.
All his (their) plans take a backseat to the more immediate problem Padmé’s health. She’s fragile, hair and limbs long wasted, and he carefully feeds her from the electrolyte and sugar mixtures he finds in the emergency rations. Apparently, starvation was one of the planned for problems on Corva Yag. Though, of course, to the scientists’ dismay, the Emperor’s displeasure at their failures obviously had not.
He shaves her head with the safety razor he finds in the fresher, taking away the dead, rotting hair. Washes the bacta off her as gently as he can. Kisses the blue veins visible on her temples. Bundles her in discarded flightsuits.
She sleeps more often than not, and he carries her down to the hanger bay, making a nest of bedding by the half-ruined hulk of a ship he’s trying to salvage. Sometimes, when he’s tired beyond reason - forgetting as he does that, young or not, his organic body needs more rest - he stretches out beside her. Buries his head into the hollow of her throat and murmurs the apologies he’s composed throughout the long years after her death, words he always thought he’d never get a chance to say. Tries not to hate himself for the spark of shameful joy he has that she’s too weak to walk away from him, that she has to hear what he has to say, has to take his gentle kisses.
And the days pass, and he knows he needs to get her off-planet, to Coruscant and a real medical facility as quickly as he can.
The ship gets them as far as Adarlon before the thrusters give out. He can’t fix it. Not without credits to buy the parts, and he winds up selling the workable parts of the ship for a room in one of the spaceport’s shadier living units.
Padmé can keep down solid food again, and they’ve ration bars aplenty. She can take a half of one at midday and another half at dusk. He feeds her them, piece by piece, and looks through the flimsies for work.
They’re in (New) Republic space and that means there’s not much legal work for an underage humanoid male without any identity.
He can steal, of course. He’s always been quick, and he has the force. But he finds that pickpocketing only brings guilt, and he wonders what that says about him as a person: as Vader, he has murdered countless of beings in cold blood, and yet it is the idea of parting a spice-high sentient from his credit tabs that makes the bile rise in his throat.
There is always another option. His mother hadn’t always been a household administrator: she had once been a favourite of the pilots, before her body thickened with child. Before she had been sold from Arcan IV. Before she had become plain Shmi, prematurely aged by Tatooine’s twin suns.
Once she had been Lakshmi, given the name due to her precocious beauty.
***
It was a beauty he had inherited.
There had been no real brothels on Tatooine, and Hutts had favoured humanoid females (Twi’leks, mostly) over humanoid males, but his mother had always said that had they still been on Arcan IV he would have fetched a great price.
Back before Watto started using him to race, before Anakin had learnt to feel the actual shame of slavery, this had used to please him, that in his mother’s old profession, he would be highly valued.
Of course, the older he grew, so too did his pride, and he bristled at the cutting (if accurate) epithet of whore’s bastard.
But now, here in a small, claustrophobic room in Spacer’s Row, he once again examines his face in the cracked glass. As he did over a life-time ago.
At sixteen he is still gawky, still filling out, but his face falls into the symmetrical standard for galactic beauty. His hair is still baby-blond; it won’t darken for another standard year. And he knows the hollowness of his cheeks and the skinniness of his hips make his height less threatening to those in the market for purchasing boys rather than men.
He shuts his eyes. Hard. Tries not to think ahead to what this night will bring if his plan proves successful. Tries not to think at all. Especially not that his mother had accepted this in her quiet, calm way, had even tried to glamourize it to her young son.
A jedi does what he must for the sake of the mission.
He recalls Obi-Wan saying this, and he knows it’s true now, just as it was true then. But he cannot stop his shaking, and the force - always responsive to him - begins to shake, too.
“Ani?” Padmé asks, voice soft, slight, and worried from the dilapidated sleep-couch. “What’s wrong?” He winces at the way the force must be jostling both the sleep-couch and her tiny body. He needs to get it together. She’s been bruising far too easily.
He settles into the familiar stance for moving meditation. Keeps his back to her and tries to channel his energy back inside himself, keeping it from harming her. Like it did so long ago when it crushed her trachea.
“Nothing,” he lies. “Nothing at all.”
***
Of course, like all the plans of his (real) youth, this one goes just as wrong. He gets caught straight off, the heavy-set male he’s been propositioning quickly making himself scarce.
Thanks to Imperial intelligence files, he knows the faces of Corinna and Kandra A’Daasha, even if he’s never met them. He knew they were Rebel sympathizers, and he knew the Glow Dome doubled as a safe-house, and the years have not altered them overmuch. But he hardly thought one of them (Corinna? Kandra?) would take notice of yet another illegal transaction being conducted in their club.
“Thanks,” he tells her dryly, acting for all the galaxy as if he does this sort of thing all the time. And not that he wishes that he was trapped back behind that infernal mask, but he would give anything to be able to set his features as impenetrable as all that black armor had been. “There went my chance of breaking even this month.”
“Aren’t you a little young for a guild member?” she counters.
He refrains from answering, just stares at her.
“At least two standard years too young,” she continues. Then she breaks into a smile that belies her severe features. “And far too much in need of a good meal.”
She and her sister feed him ryshcate pastry and blue milk, and he can feel their kindness behind this act. He wants to bring Padmé here, let her soak up the gentle contentment of the A’Daashas’ kitchen.
And he’s so busy building his fantasy of her being here, sitting next to him like she did that one time in her parents’ home, that he almost misses Kandra’s offer.
***
He returns to their room, jubilant, and Padmé turns over on her side to look properly at him. Props her head up on one small hand. “You’re happy,” she observes. Her tone is flat. Neutral.
“I found a job,” he says, setting down the container of ryshcate on the dirty table. “Well, was offered a job, actually. It’s with droids. And I can take as much food as I like. Good food, Padmé. I’ve brought some ryshcate. Would you like a piece? I think your stomach might be able to take it.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“The first thing we’re going to do is get you to a medic,” he continues. “Then we’re going to start saving. We need to get back to Coruscant, and - “
“Stop it,” she says.
So he stops. Stops dead in his tracks.
“Stop pretending everything’s fine,” she says. “I can’t bear it, Anakin.”
“Padmé -“
“I know what you did tonight,” she says. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“All right,” Anakin says. He sits on the floor, head in his hands. “I won’t deny I was going to do it, but - “
“Come here.”
And even wasted, in this hell-hole she is regal, sitting up in bed in a way she hasn’t been strong enough to do before tonight. Posture royal from all those years as queen. Speaking from her diaphragm instead of her throat, and he’s helpless before her. Crawling forward to kneel beside the sleep-couch. He buries his head in her lap, and she’s crying over him as she used to do whenever he did something particularly stupid.
“You never think of me at all, do you?” she whispers, hands fisting into his hair. “Don’t you ever think of what it’s like for me - to wait behind like this? To wonder if you’re lying dead in a gutter somewhere?”
And of course she’s right.
“Did you bring me back only to kill me a second time?”
It’s the first time she’s explicitly referenced his part in her death, and even though it’s hardly revelation, he can’t take the damning words from her lips.
“I - I -- " He stares blindly at the blanket. Wets his lips. “I love you, Padmé. I would never - " He chokes back the rest of the sentence because he has.
“-hurt me?” she finishes, relentless though her voice is starting to fail her. “Of course you would. You have. You do, Anakin.” Her fingers are gentle now in his hair, short nails running through his equally short hair.
She exhales, a breathy little sigh. He knows this trick of hers. It’s how she’s always resigned herself to a particular course of action, and he finds himself waiting, dread-sick in his stomach, for her to tell him to get out. He doesn’t think he’ll have the willpower to go, and she doesn't have the strength to actually make him, and that just makes him feel sicker.
“So,” she says, voice deliberately light, “lie down and tell me about this new job of yours.”
And he is so pathetically grateful. Because he’s never, ever deserved her and she’s a fool to forgive him and let him back into her bed and into her heart. And he grasps the bedclothes tight with his hands because she’s too weak to grasp.
“Let me get you some ryshcate first,” he finally manages.
“All right, Anakin,” she says.
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