(I like to think this little snippet is a prequel to this drabble)
Also @kana7o your art is so good thank you for the continued inspiration 💖
No matter how many times Vader ignores him or yells at him or tries to make him go away, Obi-Wan is always there lingering in the corner of his eye. Sometimes he looks stern, his mouth a tight flat line in that impossible way of his. Especially when Vader is doing something questionable. But mostly he just looks sad. Insufferably and irrevocably sad.
Vader hates it. He hates him. Obi-Wan is supposed to be gone. For decades he's haunted Vader's every step. And yet even now he cannot be free of him.
Vader stands at the window looking out at the galaxy of stars. At all the winking lights of planets and systems the Empire has brought peace to. He does not turn to look but he knows Obi-Wan is there.
"You kept him from me." Vader growls. "My son." He had no right. No right at all. But even as the thought angers him, Vader lets his hatred simmer rather than build. It would do no good to rage at a ghost when he can save it for something that mattered.
"I will find him and turn him to the Dark Side. You have prevented nothing, old man. You’ve failed yet again." They'd stand together side by side as father and son.
Obi-Wan says nothing. He never has. He never does. How Vader had raged at him at first. Useless threats flying at him to speak. But perhaps one could not talk beyond the veil. Vader is still half convinced he is not even real. No one else can see him. Not a single officer or trooper has pointed him out or looked his way. Obi-Wan is exactly as he appeared. A ghost.
Was he really there or was he a vision? Had the culmination of his revenge come so suddenly and unsatisfactory that his mind decided to concoct a replacement? Was he slipping as his youth shed away year by year?
Obi-Wan lays his head upon his shoulder. Vader cannot feel it but he imagines that he can. Fingers reach for his gloved palm. Vader's hand twitches. Ah, he thinks, this must be a dream then. Obi-Wan would have never reached out for him. Neither before nor after his death. Even so, the proof that his old master really isn't here makes his already struggling lungs scrape painfully against what remains of his ribcage.
"Master…" He says quietly, the voice modulator as soft as it can physically be.
Transparent eyes flicker up to look at him. They are nowhere near the brilliance they once were. They never will be again.
The ghost of Obi-Wan lifts his other hands to trace his face, or rather his helmet. His skin underneath. It always burns.
For a moment it is just the two of them, or rather just him and his growing delusion. The only sound is the respirator working to keep him alive. But then the moment is gone, like a flickering candle. This isn't real.
He turns heel to leave, his cape whirling behind him. He has work to do.
Vader stops, his entire body frozen stiff. When he turns to look back Obi-Wan is already gone.
theartofmadeline
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