From a story called Ash and Ember, as of yet unpublished, but will definitely be my darkest -- and possibly most ambitious -- piece so far. lots of good skywalker angst to be found in this one hehe.

For the entirety of his existence, Darth Vader had been intimately familiar with pain. It was what fueled his very being, fed his hatred and stoked his connection to the Dark Side. He was in pain now, as he’d always been.

So why was this pain so different?

It was, in a sense, familiar, but connected to a distant, rejected part of himself. It dug deeper than the scarring that coated what remained of his flesh and it hurt far more profoundly. It reminded him of a woman who lay broken in his arms, whispering assurances to him even as the life drained from her eyes. It reminded him of a vast, sprawling emptiness scorched beneath two suns. It reminded him of a woman collapsing onto the rocks as boiling lakes of molten rock swirled around them. This was a pain he did not want but was uncertain how to stop.