FURNACE HEART;

         ❛ — this couldn’t have waited? ❜

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬,  so i must do it.   there is terrifying intimacy in here , which comes with terrifying violence.   do you understand ?   it must be me , & i am afraid and alone in here , but only i can tell this story now—

i’m in a spacious chamber , cathedral-like , where there is light only for the sake of it , & 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠.  it is enough.  there is anger here too , the reddening organ of it , & i dare not touch it , even if it is mine.  if this place is the banal miracle of violence , this man is the ravenous god of it , & yet bigger than god , a carcinogenic shadow , a tumor , a wound.

i feel the cold fingertip of fear ,  how it touches my throat  so slowly.  fear is a close enough cousin to anger , obi-wan has told me as much ,  but i think i feel something in between them , a two-headed animal.  & i let it pass through me , like water.  i wish someone else was here to tell this story in my place.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 :  where i have nothing but my last vestiges of courage and the darkest satisfaction from having completed my mission before this.  i said this place was a cathedral — i was wrong.  𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐚 𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐛.  why am i here ?

his words pass through me too , like water , or sand , or flame.  but the voice & the breathing stay — what frightens me the most is that inhuman voice comes from inhuman figure , that whatever lies beneath the machine must be flesh , must be alive as i am alive.  it breathes ! artificially and rhythmically , but it breathes !   a black hole warps the space around light & only darkness exists inside of it & nothing more.  he bends the dark around him , i see it as a physical event.  i hate the very essence of his existence for it , the black-hearted thing that he is.    ❛ nothing to fear from the emperor’s murderous dog ? ❜ 

silence then , or almost the idea of it.  there is always his breathing , or strange , angry gasps that are entirely mine.  ❛ nothing to fear when you have taken me against my will ? murdered my friends , destroyed my ship ? and you dare speak of safety ?  ❜

           there is no man in this suit.

          darth vader is haloed by the flames that devour him still, eating at the edges, red-against-chrome-against-black. each slow exhale is another loss of self, heavy with that messianic ache he never asked to have. when you cannot see the body, it simply stops existing— it ascends— so i’ll say it again: there is no man in this suit. and yet, if there was any remnant of one, it’d be his heart— a writhing, ugly lump of a thing, bent into the shape of her palms. it resounds, it rages, slamming against his chest in erratic beats. she has always brought that out in him. even in what was once her death did darth vader lose himself in her, and he threatens to do so once more.

           but what had stopped him then stops him now.

          obi-wan.   it’s a brief, fleeting feeling, but it washes over him all the same, this tether to an old life that exists in her thoughts. the softness that had begun blooming in his throat quickly crumbles into ash. a voice that has been his for so long he can barely remember the old one rips from him, made more harsh by the man who’d nearly stolen it.

          ❛ — i speak only the truth, your highness. your little rebellion is nothing more than another lie of the jedi meant to keep you from me. do not be fooled by your precious hope. ❜ 

          her face holds a fragility here, and darth vader pauses, nearly choking on it. they stand so far from each other as they did on this planet all those years ago, and just as he did then, he wishes to close the distance— to cross over and crush her to his chest until they are one body, one blood, one heartbeat. but he is no longer that laughable boy, and she doesn’t reach for him with the same longing she held before.

          no matter. he will bend all of time and space to create their new eternity now. ( fear can feel like love when you’ve lost the memory of it. )

          for the first time in a long time, darth vader is afraid.

          @liberdie wavers in and out of his sight like a thin line of fog— a vision, perhaps, or an apparition. if she weren’t so rooted to the ground in that sort of proud, spiritous way of hers that he could never quite recall he would think she were a dream– something conjured in the force to taunt him still. but she has yet to waver– her expression cold, her shoulders tense– and his body remembers the loss of something holy: her love, like sand, drifting through his fingers, the hunger that rises like bile up the back of his throat wanting to cure the ache.   ❛ i do not anticipate an immediate acceptance in your arrival, ❜   a slow inhale, a tilt of the head to gaze out of the viewport to the fiery light of mustafar. a weary heaviness rolls off of him in waves.   ❛ you see this as a place where many things came to die. but i trust in due time you will come to value our arrangement; it is simply a place-holder until a more permanent solution becomes available for us. ❜   he looks at her again– almost too quick, a snap of a dragon’s tail– and studies her in the depths of a pregnant pause. he finds that still, after all this time, he wants to hold her. he wants to reach out into the emptiness between them and pull her to his chest, pull her so close until she is apart of him, until his heart is in her mouth. he wants nothing but the delight of a devouring, a delight in her, a ravenous wanting that hurts to the bone over and over and over again. but he knows a step towards her would only push her two steps back, an animal at the very end of a chain, and so he stands with enough space between them to coax the wants away, enough space that only the force could pull her to his side.

         he stands, as if to test the patience of her fangs, and waits.