Shaak Ti halted in her step, lekku trembling as she identified the impossible. Seated beneath the harsh glare of the medbay's lights was Anakin Skywalker—young, intact, unmarred—yet trapped within the dark husk of Darth Vader. His eyes, still that searing blue of the Temple corridors, met hers.
"Master Ti," he spoke. No rasp, no machinery—simply his own voice behind the open faceplate, warm and intimate.
Her hand automatically went to her lightsaber. "Skywalker?" The name was acrid on her tongue. The memories flooded back—Geonosis, war, his laughter with the Padawans. And fire. Shouts. The fall of the Temple. She drew in a breath roughly. "It was you. You led the clones. You orchestrated the Purge."
Anakin didn't flinch. "The Jedi were stagnant, bound by rules while the galaxy burned." He stayed seated, hands resting on his knees, as if waiting. "They needed someone willing to act."
Shaak Ti's throat tightened. "You killed children. Padawans who trusted you." She saw them again, little initiates chasing after him in the gardens—gardens now reduced to ash.
Anakin stood, servos whirring as he removed the helmet from the chair next to him. "Trust requires sacrifice." The hiss of the seal retaining it in place on his head, and when he replied, his words came in Vader's mechanical growl. "The Order was dead anyway. I merely gave it a finish."
He moved in close, armor casting the clinical light. "Would you have allowed it to decay in its hypocrisy?"
Her hand trembled beside her saber, but the blade itself did not quiver. Rage was knotted in something deeper, something blacker—an unwelcome tugging sown by Shu'ulk'Tarath. Memories danced: gloved hands tracing the lekku, laughter—human and synthetic—along her skin. The curse corrupted her determination to ash. She balled a fist at her side. "Clean?" she breathed. "There was nothing clean about it."
Vader's head inclined, inscrutable behind the mask. "Clean doesn't matter. Necessary does." The word was delivered through the vocoder like a decree. Closer still, and she caught a glimpse of herself staring back from the black lenses of the mask. "This station is your reality now. Adapt."
He turned and departed, boots pounding across the shining floor. The doors closed behind him with a click, abandoning her to the quiet, her lekku folded close. Shu'ulk'Tarath blazed through her bloodstream, a bitter counterpoint to the ice-heavy weight of fear in her chest.
***
The sliding hangar doors hissed open. Starkiller knelt on the frigid deck, head down. At his knees was Kota's lightsaber.
The boots of Vader resonated as he entered. Starkiller did not look up. "Master. Rahm Kota is dead." His voice contained no triumph at all, but exhaustion.
The saber slid home in Vader's palm. He ignited the blue blade, and its hum filled the quietness. "You have done well." The vocoder took warmth from the tones. Starkiller at last looked up, scanning the black mask for approval. He did not see any.
"Kazdan Paratus," stated Vader, disengaging the sword. "He evades on Raxus Prime. Stronger than Kota. Stronger than you."
Starkiller's jaw clenched, but he did not speak. He knew—this wasn't training. This was execution with a different title.
His hands clenched around his own saber. "I will not fail you, Master." The words burned as ashes. Paratus—the mad hermit who twisted junk into armies—tainted his mind. Stronger than Kota? Stronger than him? Vader let the doubt hang there.
The Dark Lord turned, cape sweeping the floor like a shadow. "Go," he ordered, flat and final. "Prove your strength is more than borrowed rage."
The termination came as a forceful push. Starkiller stood up as the hanger doors swung wide again, and the vortex of hyperspace awaited outside. He did not glance back. Failure would be death. Success would be… something worse.
Vader saw the apprentice ship vanish in the blue hyperspace tunnel. Silence fell on the hangar, as dense as the nothingness beyond the Obsidian Veil.
Kota's lightsaber turned easily in his hand, its weight nothing. Palpatine. The name rang like an echo of old chains—the throne, the promises, the lies. All ash now. Shu'ulk'Tarath whispered of deeper hungers: not dominion of star systems, but dominion of flesh and will. A galaxy remade into an altar of sensation. Mara's loyalty. Shaak Ti's defiance. Foundations, not empires.
Then there was Starkiller. Power raw and feral, a storm in need of direction. Once, Vader had honed that rage into a blade for the Emperor's back. Now the whisper urged otherwise. Let Palpatine rot on his throne, clinging to a dying order. Starkiller was no tool to be thrown away after impossible trials. He was sharper than any Inquisitor, fiercer than any Sith acolyte.
The boy would stay his. Closer. Tighter. Rage bent, loyalty tested, devotion drawn out until it tasted like control.
Vader's train of thought broke up as something moved behind him—a recognizably familiar pressure in the Force, a burning and intense one, interwoven with Shu'ulk'Tarath's alien beat. Not Starkiller; that spark was dying out. He turned, slow and measured.
Shaak Ti stood stock-still in the secondary hangar doorway, her reddened skin seeming pink against the plain durasteel walls. Bright, appraising eyes traversed him and passed on beyond him to the place from which Starkiller's ship had disappeared just recently.
"An apprentice?" She was careful with her words, but the tiny flinch in her lekku denied her reserve. "Hidden. Strong. You have always been adept at keeping your secrets… and projects." The term had a lot of significance. She had observed the lad kneel.
Vader did not move. The hiss of his respirator cut through the thinning engine whine. "Secrets are the keys to survival, Master Ti," he said, each phrase measured, metallic. "You, of all people, would comprehend that." He moved a step closer, his leg servos complaining softly. "Certain secrets, however, grow so heavy for a person to bear alone. It is time that you learned of Mara Jade."
He pointed towards the darkness close to the control panel. Shaak Ti's eyes flashed that direction, and her stance changed almost imperceptibly. She'd already felt it—the presence lurking there, hard-edged, constrained, deadly.
She stepped out of the shadows as Mara Jade. Her green, vigilant eyes gazed at Shaak Ti with no apparent politeness. Her reddish mane was plaited tightly back, the stiffness of it equaling that of her jaw.
"Shaak Ti," she said deadpan, remaining just out of bludgeoning distance. One hand was close by the blaster at her hip. "The Jedi Master who survived the Purge. I've read your file."
The lekku of Shaak Ti quivered again, just a flicker, but her eyes didn't blink. Whatever this woman was, she radiated focus—the kind that resulted from so many battles and so few restful nights.
"Survival," Shaak Ti repeated, her voice frailer but distinct enough to echo through the hangar. "Something both of us seem to excel at."
Her expression didn't shift, though her presence in the Force tightened like a thread drawn taut. She'd long suspected Vader wasn't alone. There had always been another shadow beside his—a restless, razor-sharp echo whispering at the edges of his darkness.
**
The Executor's hangar engulfed them whole—a trough of gleaming black durasteel bubbling with TIE fighters and stormtroopers drilling in spotless lockstep. Mara Jade walked beside Vader, her boots ringing crisp off the deck. Her gaze scoured the bay, inventorying exits, weapons, threats. Always evaluating. Always poised. Vader cut through the turmoil like a knife through steam, his presence calling instant silence, salutes halted mid-motion. They had long since ceased questioning the woman who was with him. To do otherwise meant death.
They'd left Shaak Ti on the Obsidian Veil—deliberately. Her presence aboard the Executor would have raised too many questions among those still-loyal Imperial officers who adhered to Palpatine's doctrines. Vader did not wish her good-bye, merely a silent understanding: she could stay in the antiseptic corridors of the station or disappear into the darkness of the galaxy. Freedom, after its own perverse fashion.
A comms officer rushed towards them, his shining boots skidding across the deck. He snapped into a stiff salute, his gaze locked on Vader's mask. "Lord Vader! Priority message from Coruscant. The Emperor requires your immediate presence." The words quavered slightly, taken by the metallic echoes of the hangar.
Vader stopped. The air snapped, heavy with tension born of a sudden warning. Mara sensed it—a disturbance in the Force, cold and cutting as broken transparisteel. He nodded once, curt. "Acknowledged." The messenger retreated quickly. Vader faced Mara, his respirator cycling once, slow and measured. "Wait here. Be ready." Nothing more. Nothing more was necessary. She knew the unspoken order: watch. Listen. Be the knife in the darkness.
He proceeded to the closest secure comms room, a hardened alcove protected from eavesdroppers. The soft glow of holoprojectors illuminated the darkened bulkheads within. Vader initiated the console. The air rippled, solidifying into the stooped, hooded figure of Emperor Palpatine. Yellow eyes glowed in the darkness within. Vader kneeled, armor grating on the deck plates. "My master."
Palpatine's voice grated against the static, thin and searching. "Lord Vader. Your presence… fades from the Force. Like a specter." A clawed hand waved dismissively. "What shadows have you been spinning on the Outer Rim?" Suspicion iced the space between them, colder than space.
Vader did not stir. "My abilities grow, Master. I look for refinement beyond the coarse restrictions of the Sith." The falsehood came smoothly to his lips, practiced. Shu'ulk'Tarath's essence coiled under his words, a velvet barrier to Palpatine's telepathic probing. He sensed the Emperor's intent push against his mind—a needle probing for vulnerability—and countered it with barren stillness.
Palpatine's hood stirred, a serpentine motion. "Refinement?" Acid dripped from the word. "Or concealment? Remove your mask, Lord Vader. Let me see the face underneath." It wasn't a request. It was a test for obedience, a command for proof of identity. Vader paused—a heartbeat drawn out thin—then reached up. Latches hissed. The helmet lifted off.
Anakin Skywalker's face was there—unscarred, young, eyes blazing blue. Palpatine flinched as though he had been hit. The hologram wildly distorted. "Skywalker?" The Emperor's voice broke apart, incredulity struggling with rage. "Impossible. You were… broken." Slit yellow eyes scoured the unblemished skin, the lack of suffering. "What sorcery is this?"
"It's not magic," Anakin said, his voice level—irrefutably human. He stood up out of the darkness, his entire height towering over the trembling projection in front of him. "The Force returned me. Whole." He turned his hand in the light, bare and whole—no glove, no metal, nothing remaining to conceal. "This power is not stolen, or constructed from scraps. It's mine." The air itself appeared to vibrate, a low hum pushing against the boundaries of Palpatine's skepticism.
The Emperor's image flickered, distorted by his own fury. His gnarled hands tightened, and the atmosphere seemed to crackle. "Restored?" he spat, each syllable sharp enough to cut. "The Force offers no such… mercy." His gaze swept over Anakin's unmarred features—the eyes alive with color, almost mocking the memory of Mustafar's fire. What began as suspicion settled into something far darker. "You've consorted with powers beyond the Sith," he snarled. "Blasphemy."
Anakin did not flinch. He matched that molten gaze with icy calm. "Blasphemy assumes faith, Master," he said, almost mildly. "I have none remaining. I serve only power—my own." His hand gestured to the image, dismissive. "Your chains were made of my weakness. I wear them no longer." There was just static for a moment—the silence of rage and denial. Then the argh, dry, scraping sound of Palpatine's laughter, bitter and malignant.
"Remarkable," the Emperor said at last, the fury freezing into something colder, more deliberate. His eyes narrowed, taking in each line of Anakin's reconstructed form. "The broken apprentice… remade." The hologram rippled as he stepped closer. "More powerful than you were on Mustafar. More powerful, perhaps, than I?
Anakin's face did not waver. The helmet hung at his side like an afterthought. "Pain no longer controls me. Nor do the machines you gave me. Nor your teachings." The words were even, but an undercurrent ran beneath—a gentle warning. Palpatine's laughter became more complete, hollow and conscious.
"Excellent," he taunted, his eyes blazing with predatory hunger. "The Sith thrive on conflict—master and apprentice, power against power." The hologram flared, casting light on his deformed smile. "I have looked for years for someone worthy to replace me. And now—now you are here. Restored. Unbroken." His voice fell, almost in awe. "Mustafar was the fire. This… this is the metal reborn."
Anakin drew the helmet back over his face. The vocoder grated on—cold, final—like a verdict. "I do not wish for your throne, Master." Palpatine's smile contracted, then locked. Anakin continued, slow, almost casual. "Keep your Empire. I want something cleaner. A collection. A harem." The word dropped into the antiseptic quiet of the room, naked and obscene. "Jedi survivors have a power of their own. I will have it."
The Emperor's hologram faltered; disgust crept over his face. "Jedi?" he sneered. "You would infect yourself with their weakness?" The contempt was thick and immediate. "Vermin. They are to be destroyed."
Vader's respirator gurgled once—slow, deliberate—a beast tallying heartbeats. "Weakness?" the vocoder answered, flat as a tombstone. "No. Tempered by my will, their strength is a blade no Sith has ever forged." He let the idea hang, stark and terrible. "Mara Jade will not be a handmaiden at the foot of the throne. She is the first strand in a tapestry I will weave." He seemed oddly fond of the metaphor; it was chilling. "They will kneel. Not to the Light. To me."
Palpatine's eyes, yellow slits, narrowed further, the hologram rippling with his frown. The silence was a slow, sour thing. At last, with resentful calculation, the Emperor agreed. "Very well. Contain them. Crush them until there is nothing left." His voice sliced like a blade through static. "And Mara Jade—your… pet?" The word was disdainful. "If she serves you better than your saber, let her rot in your bedchamber, Lord Vader. Provided that she never dares to look toward my throne."