dear_mun | (no subject)

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[So here's an ambiguously canon scarred-up child with a mechanical arm and severe Stockholm's Syndrome.]

Um. You're not Master Vader. I don't - I don't have to do what you say! [Clearly that idea delights him.] So I say I don't need a home. All I need is to be wherever Master wants me, doing whatever he wants me to do. He knows best. If I do everything right, he won't have to hurt me or anything!

- But he wants me to be secret. Master told me not to let anyone know... this... this isn't very secret. Why did you do this? He's not going to be happy!

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He kept an apprentice?

[Someone... talking to him. Tao doesn't know how to act, it's been so long -]

He wouldn't want me to say. I'm not saying. You can't make me.

[Unfortunately for him, a Reverend Mother can read truth or falsehood in the smallest tic. Not that it's hard to read in his case.]

I was under the impression that he was too obnoxious to succesfully keep one. But clearly I was wrong. He's quite fully capable of keeping a frightened child under his thumb!

Don't talk like that about him! Master is a great man! I'm not under his thumb, I wouldn't know what to do without him.

You will come to realize it some day, as his son did.

I don't want that. He wouldn't like it.

[Someone has impeccable timing.

Vader releases the breath he's been holding, the ventilator's rasp unmistakable as it fills up the silence. Not happy? Closer to bewildered, to be quite honest.]

Who are you?

[This is one of the few times you'll ever see someone give an unforced smile at the sight of you, Vader. Even if it does come on a boy who has the air of a whipped puppy.]

Master!

I'm - I'm Tao.

Your apprentice. [Augh have to prove it] Look - you gave me this arm. You made it for me. [Prosthetic right to the shoulder. It does look like his style - no synthflesh or anything.]

[The smile is an aberration. Though he hasn't been confined to this suit for very long, Vader has grown accustomed to the expressions of shock he's encountered, the undercurrent of fear people have afforded him. Tao's eagerness is off-putting.

He spares a glance at the boy's arm, then has to look again. Closing in on Tao, Vader moves to take him by the wrist, studying the prosthesis. The similarity to his own is remarkable, but he shoves the observation away as readily as he does Tao.]

It's of Jedi construction.

[Vader delivers the word like he might an epithet, full of bile and condemnation. His next question is one he's already made an educated guess at.]

Are you a Jedi, boy?

[Tao can't help it; he gasps when he's touched. He is afraid, but he's been afraid for years - it's not as important as that trembling worshipfulness, the desperate yearning for approval.]

No, Master! I'm not! I - I was, before, but you came. You saved me. [By killing everyone else. But you didn't kill Tao, and you took him with you, and made a replacement for the arm you almost cut off, so... trauma-logic.]

[Tao has a lightsaber scaled to his size - also made by you - but he hasn't reached for it.]

[Tao is not a threat, Vader is certain. Much of his recovery has felt like an exercise in futility, the Force so frustratingly distant to him. It's nothing like it was before.

That he can still sense the truth in Tao's words is off-putting. He makes certain the sneer can be heard in his voice.]

And why would I save someone like you?

[With the slightest inclination of his head, indicating the lightsaber:]

Do you intend to use that against me, Tao? Do you know what I've done to the Jedi?

[There's just this kind of twitch in Tao's sense, a sudden sickened plunge. The bizarre affection - even love - he feels for Vader is a defensive mechanism, but it still runs deep enough to completely derail the incredible wellspring of loss and rage and despair that Vader opened in him on that day.]

[The Dark Side is with him, and strongly. But he doesn't, cannot, hate Vader.]

You said - I had potential. When you came. I was the only one.

[And the moment seems to be over.]

No, no, never! Unless you wanted - unless - sometimes you tell me to defend myself, so I try, but I would never hurt you. You're so strong anyway, I couldn't, but I wouldn't if I could.

I...I don't mind. If you don't believe me, and you want to kill me. Master, there is no better way to die than at your will.

[...this? Is absolute truth as he knows it. Tao may love Vader as part of a basic survival instinct, but he sees that mostly one-sided bond as more important than his own life.]

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