@vipis said: “ I’d follow you to the bitter end; as I always have. ” → meme // ACCEPTING
IN A CLOAK OF WODE, OR BATHED IN HEALING BLUE, THE DARK LORD STILL HAD CLAWS; claws that sunk into yielding flesh and tormented the minds of those who knew him, for the Sith was never truly unarmed, even suspended in thick remedial bacta that lapped at his wounds like parched beasts at a spring.
Even now, wrapped in bandages like a precious artefact in a sterile room, with its sterile white sheets and sterile white lights, the darkness spread from him like a creeping vine; spines and tendrils prying into every crack and crevice of his allies and enemies mind’s alike —- perhaps even into his own mind. Immobility provided ample opportunity for thoughts to sprout into hideous strangling things, and one such thought had grown so verdant, it made his hands braid like roots into the linen.
It was consuming him, bloody and bared teeth, staring up at him with slit pupils set in emerald green eyes, towers of mangled metal curling over its grisly form, pearl-white bones protruding from where its chest might be. Consume me, then, he thought, parting hair slick with blood from its face, gazing into a maw that screamed a discordant cry so rending it shattered his spine to splinters.
Vader’s deep chest heaved, waking with a start to the sterile white room, with its sterile white sheets and lights… But he wasn’t alone. He could feel it; a feeling he had come to recognise fondly, although now it bathed him in guilt.
❛❛ Enna ? ❜❜ the grit of his natural voice croaked out, unfiltered by his vocoder ❛❛ Why... are you here… ? ❜❜ did she even know ? In that moment, it felt like the space between them had ballooned into something quiet and ugly, filling the sterile void of the medbay with bittersweet reticence.
What eventually came was a quiet, tepid reply “ I’d follow you to the bitter end; as I always have ” and Lord Vader could do nothing but sink into the mattress, hoping it, and his guilt, would swallow him up.