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depressed-sock · 2 months ago

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Stand by my side one last time (1132 words) by depressed-sock Gift for Ormspryde Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader & Shmi Skywalker Characters: Darth Vader, Shmi Skywalker Additional Tags: Ghosts, Haunting, Vader's mind unraveling slowly, Canonical Character Death, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, The Force ...

The galaxy is laid out before him. Vast blackness filled with stars. A pane of glass and cold metal the only separation between him and the void that waits beyond. Only that eternity between him and what’s left of his family. Between him and his children-

His fist clenches, his breath shudders.

His lungs ache.

She stands like a ghost at his shoulder. Staring out with him into the galaxy. Shoulder to shoulder. He’s taller than she’d ever know in life. She’s smaller than his memories do any justice.

I never wanted this for you. Voice whisper soft and nonexistent. How far has his mind unraveled to show him visions of her? He could turn his head, see her for the first time in so very long. Will she be etched like stone? A ghost who has not changed from the time he was a child.

Does he even remember what she looks like? Would she disappear like sand through his fingers?

It all comes to an end eventually. She says it like it’s supposed to soothe him. Like it wasn’t her death that was the first stone to make him slip into the dark waters of the Force.

How far gone is he now? He’s been drowning in the dark for so long. It takes and takes and takes. Leaving nothing behind that she would recognize. That she would love. Only hate and destruction. Bitterness until the very end. How can he still keep going?

How can he stop?

His breath hisses. The pain pulses. Nothing soothes it, he can’t allow it. A punishment, a reminder, his burden to bear. His power to have as a Sith.

His birthright. His destiny.

She places a hand on his shoulder, no warmth, no pressure. Just a ghost, just a ghost, just a ghost.

I’m sorry, Anakin.

“Enough,” his voice comes out as a growl, swiping away the vision that was never there in the first place.

She would not recognize her son. He can’t even recognize himself.

…

A woman kneels at his feet. A prisoner brought for him to interrogate. Rebel Scum. Traitors. Not worth his time, not even worth his effort. There’s only one thing that matters and all others are a waste. He has to find them, has to know. Has to see them. Has to have them within his grasp. His son is so much like Shmi, his daughter is so much like Padmé. They’re both too much like him.

The woman stares up at him, meets where his eyes would be just under his mask. Not with defiance but with acceptance. She knows she’s going to die. Crows-feet at her eyes, drawn lines on her face. Dark hair that is slowly turning grey, put up in a way that echoes memories long forgotten. So much older than he expected. So much older than remembered. Sand dusts her like a veil, brought with her from whatever planet she was taken from.

He raises his hand, she raises with it. Swallowing around an invisible grip that holds her neck tighter and tighter.

“You will tell me-”

“When will you come home, Ani?” Her rasped whisper cuts him off. “When will this be enough?”

Her neck snaps so easily.

Like a twig under his boot. Like so many others before her.

Why can’t he let her go? Why can’t she let him go? Why, why, why, why- His breathing is gasps fighting for air. His pain like lightning through his every nerve.

…

It stays in his head. The sound rebounds and replays over and over again. She haunts his steps. Leaves trails of sand through hallways that only his boots step into. Leaving behind footsteps. The only proof that he exists left in the thing he has hated all his life. An irony not lost on him as his boots sink into the ground. Trying so hard to bring him back to a place he never wants to return to.

He is not here. He can never be there.

It will never be enough.

There’s something in him that refuses to be carved out, to be changed. Maybe it was something that was there from the very start. It made him wrong. Made him more than any one person should be. He is power, he is the Force.

But not really. No one can be everything and everyone at once, Anakin. She says as she stands at his Emperors side. Looking down on her son with pity in her eyes as he kneels. You’ve wrapped yourself in chains even after being freed from them.

His fist tightens. His emperor says words, gives orders. They fall from his mouth like drips of poison and not a single sound escapes. It doesn’t take much to know what his orders are though. Not when this is something that has happened again and again. Echo upon echo.

He is falling. Down and down into the void that has been waiting for him his whole life.

He stands. He follows his orders.

She hums a song that makes him feel the beating heat of twin suns. He is a child, hands in the course sand staring up at the night sky that was so full of possibilities. He is a man, staring down at a grave as the suns beat down against his back. His hands covered in blood that does not exist. The hum of his lightsabers burning in his ears.

There is a graveyard laid out before him.

She won’t let him forget.

She won’t let herself forgive.

He can’t even forgive himself.

…

His breath comes out is rasps. His son at his side as he begins to fade, to intertwine, to become one with the force. There is no forgiveness to find there, no understanding, no way to escape the things he’s done because they are a part of him as much as they are a part of the force. Scars left behind by his own hands.

But Luke sits here and let’s him choose to become a little bit better just before the end. To find what little peace he can in the forgiveness only his son can give to a man who has done the unforgivable.

She stands just behind his son. Smile soft as she brushes her hand through Luke’s hair. His son doesn’t move, isn’t even aware that she is there.

It’s time. Her voice is like it is in his memories. Soft and certain. She was so much stronger than he could ever be.

She steps forward, she kneels down. Hands placed on his. Warm, soft pressure with the callouses of hard work. It’s time to go home, Anakin .

She is not really there.

He is gone long before he can ever understand that.

#star wars the original trilogy #darth vader #shmi skywalker #my writing #fanfic #sock-writes #gift fic

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depressed-sock · 2 months ago

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Escape the Cycle, Begin Anew (2839 words) by depressed-sock Gift for annathecrow Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Arla Fett & Asajj Ventress, Arla Fett & Tarre Vizsla Characters: Arla Fett, Asajj Ventress, Tarre Vizsla Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, The Mandalorian Darksaber (Star Wars), Haunted Mandalorian Darksaber (Star Wars), escaping, Swords & Sorcery, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Baggage, Force-Sensitive Arla Fett, Worldbuilding, kind of a rescue more of an escort mission, Unreliable Narrator, Hopeful Ending, the begining of recovery

...

Run child run

The darkness following your steps fast approaches

Run child run

The throat you have cut is not yet done with you

The clattering of hooves on stone wakes Arla from her sleep. Groggy but still aware enough that she doesn’t immediately jolt free from her bedroll. There’s the faint sound of people talking, nothing loud or close enough that she can immediately tell if it’s the hunter’s after her and her charge. The only thing that keeps her nerves calm is the fact that she’s set up camp far enough off the road that they shouldn’t draw any attention from unwanted eyes.

Arla lets herself blink awake. The air is settled in a way it can only be in the early morning surrounded by hundreds of trees and wildlife. Her charge sits cross-legged and as far from Arla as she dares to get. Glaring from under the dark hood of her cloak. Her pale skin and hair hidden from within the shadows.

“There’s three riders.” The girl murmurs under her breath. Eyes so clear and piercing that Arla swears that whatever the girl is seeing it’s something that goes beyond reality. “We should kill them.”

Arla sighs. She has a very bad feeling this is a conversation that’s going to be repeated on more than this occasion. “No,” she says, stretching as she stands. “That’ll be too much of a hassle and we don’t need anymore attention drawn towards us.” Not after what Arla has already done. Her breath almost hitches at the thought before she squashes the reaction away with practiced ease.

Instead she forces herself to smile. To tease. “Besides I thought your kind didn’t like violence.”

The girl bares her teeth. There’s still a faint red stain that runs down her chin. She’d gotten the guard good when the idiot had grabbed her despite Arla’s warnings. Served the fucker right if you ask her.

“My teacher clearly displayed otherwise,” she hisses before what she says seems to catch up to her. She looks away pained, knees coming up so that she can hold them close. Arla should feel something. Sympathy, empathy. But it’s empty.

She’s empty.

She swallows, looks towards the treeline, straight towards the road. If she concentrates hard enough she can almost imagine what the girl had seen. Three blurs that ride together closely. Searching. Hunting. Arla shakes her head, lets the imaginary scene fade back into nothingness.

“We’ll wait for the sun to fully rise then set out again towards your temple.” Towards the Jedi, she doesn’t dare to say out loud. It’s almost funny that she’d end up being the one to seek them out considering her own people’s sordid history with the mystics. But… the girl needs them and Arla… her hand strays towards the hilt of the sword on her hip.

It’s leather grip unnaturally warm as she touches it. Something sings in her veins, something calls out to her from far away. Shadows become more defined, light becomes a haze of mist.

The girls eyes watch her again. Eye’s straying towards the sword. Arla has seen the temptation in those eyes. It’s the same that had filled Arla’s the moment she had set her eyes on the black blade. Watching as Tor wielded it to slaughter her parents. Hearing the way it screamed out with her in agony and mourning.

Unlike Arla though, the girl won’t take it. Not when she wields two swords of her own.

Besides, the sword wouldn’t let itself be taken. At least not until Arla lays dead in the ground. A s mall comfort that at least she’ll never again have to be worried about being unarmed.

Now if only it didn’t come with a curse that’s so fucking annoying.

“It’s not my temple,” the girl says, drawing Arla’s attention back to her. “They’ve never even met me before.”

Arla waves her words off, “Doesn’t matter, they’ll still take you in.” They’re all a soft touch like that. The girl’s teacher was proof enough of that. Sticking his nose into business that he should have just stayed out of. He could have lived a longer life, instead he’s dead by Tor’s hands and it’s Arla’s fault.

She breathes through the feeling. Cuts it out, cuts it away.

Now she’s stuck with a teenage girl who could level the whole fucking forest if she screams in just the wrong way. Or collapse a whole fucking castle. Like she’s already done. Really what was Arla thinking when she decided to take on a kid with barely any control over her gifts?

‘You could teach her.’ The annoyance that has haunted her since she first picked up her sword says. As if he were an actual person with actual opinions and thoughts. Arla doesn’t look his way, instead she starts gathering her things and readying the horses. ‘Ignoring me won’t get you anywhere fast.’

It sure won’t but at least she’ll have to deal a little less with people thinking she’s crazy for talking to thin air.

The girl looks up, staring past Arla’s shoulder and straight towards the thing that doesn’t exist. Like a fucking cat whose seen a ghost. “Does he ever shut up?” She asks, nose scrunched in disgust.

Arla just gives a long tired sigh.

The voices from the road are growing louder.

Arla bites her lip, brushes a hand against the stark white of the horse’s neck she had stolen when she’d made her escape. There’s a growing nervousness in the air. Thick and heavy as it seems to press in on her, telling her to run, to flee.

“Fuck it, get your things in your pack we’re leaving now.” The horse taps it’s hooves against the ground like it can sense exactly what Arla is sensing.

‘Run fast child. The darkness grows closer to your own steps.’

Arla curses under her breath, swings her pack onto her back and quickly lifts herself onto the horse’s back. Reaching down to drag the girl up and in front of her. She clicks her heels against it’s sides and the horse sets off straight into a gallop. Through the trees, following a path that only Arla can see.

Little does she know that it’s already far too late for escape.

She raises the sword just in time to block the axe aiming to behead her. There’s blood dripping down her broken nose and a twinging pain in her right leg where she’d landed on it moments before. The horse is gone, the girl is out of sight. Arla bares her teeth at her attacker as she kicks out, shifting her stance so that the black blade slides along the wood of the axe.

Too fast for the other to react as she twists with just enough force to crack through the wood breaking the axe’s wooden handle in half. She grabs her attacker’s tunic, head slamming into the others with enough force to make her own head ring. He stumbles back stunned. Then there’s two bright red blades shoving through his back and out of his chest.

He gasps like a man drowning before he fall to the forest floor dead.

The girl adjusts her grip on her swords, sneering down at the body before giving Arla a look. “I told you we should have killed them.”

Arla sighs, reaching up and resetting her nose with a hiss of pain. “Yeah, yeah. Keep moving Girl, there’s still two more out there and we’re down a horse.”

“I have a name,” the girl hisses as Arla pushes her forward, urging her into a run. Arla can feel the shadows growing darker as the sky has turns grey above them. They’re coming. He’s near.

“We all have names, it’s still best you keep yours to yourself.” Because if Arla knew it she’d get attached. Maybe it’s too late for that though, she thinks as she dodges under a branch. She’s already given up so much for this girl. Defied everything that had been drilled into her over and over again.

She stood against Tor. Took his sword. Shoved it through his throat. Her breathing grows harsher. Her lungs hurt, her heart races. She has to stop thinking about it. She has to keep going forward.

‘Arla, breathe.’

The sword is still in her hand, warm as it sings through her veins. Calms her mind, fills the space that has gone brittle. It moves her legs, it works her lungs. She is here, stuck in her own head. She is here, stuck in her own body.

Yet she feels like she’s flying high above as she races through the brush. The girl at her side. In sync, in time. As if they know the same steps to a dance Arla has only ever dreamed of. Each branch dodged, each root stepped over.

Together they run as one.

Until they can run no further. Exhaustion forcing them both to a stop.

Tor grits his teeth, as he studies the hastily abandoned campsite. His neck twinges as he rubs the aching wound that had burned shut as the blade left his body. It should have killed him. Magic. He wants to spit out a curse in disgust but truly he cannot complain about the results. He knew that the damn thing would one day be his downfall but not even it can truly strike to kill him as it’s true wielder.

“Sir! Weller is dead!” His scout reports as they make their way through the brush. Not bothering to silence his steps. Which can only mean one thing.

“They’re gone,” his voice is like stone cracking underneath a hammer. The fool who had rushed ahead has lost Tor his quarry. He curses. “Leave his body for the dogs.”

They at least deserve a good meal.

Arla holds the blade under the moonlight. Fingers tracing that cracks that have slowly started to appear over the days that she’s had it. Brittle, ready to shatter at any given moment or on the wrong strike.

It feels like her.

Barely holding on by a thread as she remembers each life she’s taken. She could have left, she should have left. There’s family out there in the world but she could never bring herself to seek them out.

Maybe it’s the shame. The knowledge that she did not fight for herself. Not until there was nothing left of herself to fight for.

Arla sets the blade down on her bedding, the fire burns lower and lower but sleep is not something she can find tonight.

Neither can the girl who stands across from her. Blades twirling in a practiced dance. Red streaks through the dark of night as they glow. They look as if the very metal has been placed within a forge. Burning bright and dangerous. Arla can almost hear the way they scream with each swing.

“How do you do that?”

The girl hesitates, pausing her stance and breathing heavy. “It’s… It’s just how it is.” Her face scrunches in displeasure before swinging her swords down, following through into a twirl that let’s her cut the air just behind her. “You follow the way they want to move, let their energy enter you. Be the heart to pump their blood.”

“Is that why yours are red?” Arla asks drawing her knee up to set her chin on.

The question seems to catch the girl, falling out of her stance in the first clumsy move Arla has seen from her. She curses, drops the swords to the ground like they’ve burnt her. Maybe they did with the way they darken the grass they’ve landed on.

She wraps her arms around herself, glaring down. Nails dig into pale skin. The quiet of the night seeps into the conversation.

“They’re not supposed to be red.” A quiet admission. “I’m not supposed to be-” Her voice cuts off as she bites her lip and looks away.

‘They are as much her soul as they completely separate things.’ The man who should not be there says. He stands next to the girl, a blue glow of light that shapes a suit of armour. He motions to Arla’s own sword, ‘As my blade is becoming a part of your soul.’

Arla stands, anger filling the void within her, “I don’t want it.”

‘You do though.’ He says like it’s just a simple truth. That it’s the only truth that can matter. ‘You’re the first in centuries to wield it and know what it means to do so.’ He motions his head to her hand. ‘You two are so entwined that you cannot separate for long.’

Her hand tightens on the grip, leather biting back with a frosty chill. It wants to move, to strike out. They lash out together, a dark line left behind in the air where the ghost once stood as the girl jumps back out of the way. “Shut up.”

A tug, her stance shifts. Blocking the blade aimed to maim her. Mist falls like ash around them.

Arla swallows, staring straight through the ghost of a man long dead. He’s not real. That doesn’t stop the weight of him pushing her back, boots sliding across the dirt as if she where the one made of thin air. She can’t help the way her limbs lock up, or how the fear drips down her spine in a way it never has before.

‘Are you going to just sit there?’ His sword slaps hers down and he lunges forward. She barely has time to think let alone dodge. She slips, falling back on to her ass as she tries to scramble away from the next swing of sword. ‘Up apprentice.’

She’s dragged to her feet by the swords will. Feet planted, arms raised and ready to defend. She wants to stop.

‘You feel it, don’t you? The way the world moves under your feet? The way the very air moves around and through you?’

She can. It’s been so loud for so long. No way to block it out. Everything is alive. Everything. Is. Her. Arla can barely breath but she doesn’t need to. Not when she the air in her lungs and the roots in the ground.

His sword hits hers. A quick round of blows exchanged before he backs off again. Prowling around her like a predator playing with his prey. ‘Who are you?’

She’s an assassin, a killer, a murderer, Tor’s well trained dog.

She’s a daughter, a sister, an orphan.

She’s-

She twists, knocking his sword away from where he intended to pierce her spine. She growls, low and frustrated. The sword grows heavier and heavier.

‘Who are you?’

“The person whose going to kick your ass if you don’t cut it the fuck out.”

He laughs with such glee it’s almost like he hasn’t laughed in years. ‘You’re going to need a sword for that.’ Then he’s there in front of her, the black blade shatters against his ghostly one. There’s a sword through her neck. A mockery of what she’d done to Tor before she’d gotten enough sense to just run.

Arla breathes heavy, shivers from the chill of the ethereal blade that pulls free. No injury left behind except for the broken pieces of a sword that is not hers.

She falls to her knees, hands on the shards. He turns to the girl. She takes a step back, panic clear in her face. ‘Forge the blade anew. Your soul should not be left to rot.’ Then he’s gone. A whisper on the wind in the black of night as the moon above eclipses.

Arla wants to cry, to bang her fists into the ground and scream about how unfair this all is. She’s supposed to be free, she’s supposed to be something else, someone else now. Why can’t it be simple?

The girl watches her before her uneasy gaze shifts to her own dual swords that lie on the ground. She kneels, gently picks up each one and sheaths them. “Ventress.” She says to the dead grass in front of her.

“What?” Arla asks, voice cracking.

“My name is Ventress.” She stands, walking over to Arla hand stretching out to her, “I know a forge. We both need it.”

Arla stares at that outstretched hand. “The temple?”

“Holds nothing for me.” A pause before she adds on quietly, “Not as I am now.”

“I don’t know how to forge.”

“You will.”

Arla stares up at this girl. When she first saw her in that cell she’d seen an after image of herself overlaid. Now she just sees Ventress. A teenager whose lost the only family she’s ever known and still fighting back. Arla reaches out, grasps that hand that helps her to her feet.

“To your forge then.”

“And after to vengeance.”

Arla stares the girl down. Tor is not dead, she knows this in a way she should not. He’ll always be there, hunting her every step. “Then to vengeance.” She agrees.

#star wars legends #arla fett #tarre vizsla #asajj ventress #fantasy au #my writing #fanfic #sock-writes #gift fic

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