The dreams did not, as Vader might have expected, come after days when he had done part. evil.

[quigonejinn]

When Anakin was fourteen, a mission with Obi-Wan took them to a planet where the crust was more than forty-five percent ferromagnetic metal. Even the crystals incorporated significant amounts into their structures and could, therefore, be magnetized.

As an exercise for Anakin, as a sort of useful punishment for his lack of focus, Obi-Wan assigned him the job of using the Force to manipulate his personal magnetic field and use it to reshape a particularly loosely-bonded crystal that Obi-Wan had come across. For example, there was the transport they had used to arrive at this planet and various local landmarks. Furniture that they had in their rooms, basic shapes. Crude objects, mainly, because Anakin was still having trouble with finesse and small-scale control. Anakin could blow apart doors and jump from the clouds unharmed, but he had problems summoning objects from across the room without breaking every window, and Obi-Wan did not think that Anakin would be able to master anything more complicated.

Therefore, at the end of the stay, Anakin surprised Obi-Wan by modeling Obi-Wan's own face back at him.

It was whole, complete, from the slope of the forehead down to the shape of the chin. When Obi-Wan's expression moved in surprise, the model moved, too. The eyes widened; the jaw dropped, and after Obi-Wan swallowed down his shock, he congratulated Anakin. It was admittedly a masterful job. Instead of Anakin answering back directly, though, with proper Padawan humility, the face winked and smirked. If Anakin could have made it bow, he would have, and Obi-Wan had been exasperated by that, of course, and twenty years later, Anakin, as Vader, had a dream that sent him back to that room.

There was little physiological need for him to sleep anymore, but there were times when he would lapse into a state that was much like dreaming. On this occaision, it was all there, entirely in his memory, vivid and uncolored in a way that he never saw anymore.

The bay windows looking out into the garden. The curving furniture that he had spent hours and hours modeling and breaking his brain on. The marble floor that he'd slipped on when he'd come out of the 'fresher their first night there, the flowers in a vase on a table, and he was standing in the center of the room with the crystal in his hands again.

There was no Obi-Wan, though, not in even in his hands. There was some small triumph in that, but no matter how he tried, in the dream, Vader found that he could not get the crystal in his hands to take on any shape but his own, at twenty-one and full of love and hope.

That was, somehow, for Vader, worse.

Comments

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

why it was worse if it was a triumph that Obi-Wan wasn't there

Yeah, the snip is kind of thin. After a night of sleep, it really does look like the start of something rather than something that can stand by itself, but the stuff about the lack of Obi-Wan and the sculpting, I think I'm going to keep. Like, the thing about Obi-Wan not showing up and him sculpting himself?

It's supposed to be a sign of how fundamentally, down-to-the-core self-centered Anakin is. When he grieves for the past, he's not really thinking about how it's fucked other people over, but instead, he's all focused on how much things suck for him. And showing himself at 21 is was supposed to be a stab at showing how his younger, better self has taken the place of Obi-Wan -- the person that haunts him, tries to make him become better, and with whom he has this immensely complicated relationship.

*pokes snip* Yeah, it's gonna take some forward and backwriting to get it all to really fill in properly, never mind the whole bit about Qui-Gon. XD

One of the things that I've been having an insanely hard time buying about most Vaderfic is how much he seems to get all emo about Obi-Wan as Vader. Um, no, guys, he thought that Obi-Wan had betrayed ihm him. And if there was residual emo left about his old Master, I have a hard time thinking that Anakin wouldn't somehow manage to squish and exclude it. The denial is strong in that one.