Breathing Ashes

Chapter 8 - Awakening

Author's Note: The road towards healing will be rocky, but... well, enjoy! :'D

~ Amina Gila

Vader returns to consciousness slowly. The first thing he realizes is that he feels different. The Force is stronger, more present, and he doesn't hurt everywhere. He doesn't feel that exhaustion that he's so used to either. He feels... in a way he hasn't in so long that he no longer remembers what it was once like.

When he opens his eyes again, it's to somewhere in a medbay, but he's in a bed, not the operating table he last remembers. He can actually see colors again, instead of just red. On occasion, of course, he could when he was in his meditation pod, but this is different. Especially because his eyesight is clear, unlike it's been since... Mustafar.

And he hasn't felt something this soft since – since before.

Obi-Wan is standing near his bed, unsurprisingly, an expectant look on his face. Currently, his eyes are blue, but that doesn't say much about how easily he can flip out.

Vader instinctively moves to sit up but freezes mid-move at the sudden feel of the bed underneath his palms. He sucks in a startled breath, looking down at his arms. (For a moment, he really wishes that Obi-Wan wasn't watching all of this, though his former master seems to be now rather pointedly studying something on the other side of the room.) They're still prosthetic, but he can feel with them.

Now that he's actually thinking about it, the sensation isn't quite the same as it used to be, but he hasn't touched something with his human hands in so long he's no longer sure he remembers the difference.

The fact that he can feel is far more than he could ask for.

As is, the place where his prosthetics connect to him don't hurt like they used to. Or at all, really. He doesn't even know how to cope without that pain.

"I couldn't actually regenerate them. The droids said these are the best prosthetics available," Obi-Wan says a little somberly. Vader just wishes that moment when he lost his limbs didn't promptly flash through his mind.

But this doesn't entirely make sense either way because there is no reason Obi-Wan would be this... kind. He isn't. And Sith do not... be like this. And he doesn't know why his master would do this when he knows how much it would dampen his connection to the Dark Side – it's fueled by pain, after all, and if he can't constantly feed that into the Dark Side, he has no idea how to do this.

"They are... acceptable," he offers uncertainly.

"How do you feel?"

He doesn't know how to answer that. He doesn't know what that means. "What do you desire of me?" he inquires instead. It's jarring to sound the way he did when he was younger again. He can hardly remember what it was like to be free, and it's admittedly quite unnerving to be so in Obi-Wan's presence. Without his armor, he feels... exposed.

Obi-Wan eyes him searchingly for a moment. "We will continue our search for your family," he replies finally, "I have a lead now that may work."

Finally. He had been questioning if they would find a way, but at least there is a chance of it – though the thought of seeing Padme again fills him with dread more than anything else. Will she accept him? Or will she reject him like she did on Mustafar? He still doesn't understand why she brought Obi-Wan there or why she was lying to him. He doesn't want to ask Obi-Wan for answers about that, either.

It was Padme who betrayed him, and who he betrayed.

... more than once.

"How am I to use the Dark Side without pain to fuel it?" he asks, because he doesn't know what to say to that. Physical pain was hardly the only thing that fueled it, but it was still much of it. Already it's not responding him to quite the same way. And the pain had made it easier to focus on nothing but the mission, no matter what it was. Thinking of anything more was too taxing.