Survival with a price

" History is on the move. Those who cannot keep up will be left behind, to watch from a distance. And those who stand in our way will not watch at all. " - Thrawn

Galacticshame, Star Wars focused multi-muse, Fet. Mitth'raw'nuruodo / Thrawn, Darth Xylek, Darth Nox and more…, Mutuals only, 18+, Triggering content, Penned by André

Feel free to change pronouns!

“We’ve come a long way, _____. Don’t bother getting up.”

“And now I come in, saying something suitably heroic.”

“It must be tough being a jedi. No family, no kids, no husband…”

“No tougher than enduring your false sympathy while you stare at my chest.”

“Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope.”

“Love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose… against statistically long odds.”

“An old student is returning. I don’t think ____ is going to know what hit them.”

“An old student is returning. I fear for us all.”

“Apathy is death.”

It is such a quiet thing to fall… but far more terrible as to admit it.

I’ll take the stupid one who decided to threaten us rather than shoot us when he had the chance.

The arrogance! You will not harm her, you will not harm her ever again.

Die? No! Became stronger, yes.

I have come to pass judgment on you all.

Well, now that we just killed a planet, maybe one of you can tell me what’s going on!

Perhaps you were expecting some surprise, for me to reveal a secret that had eluded you, something that would change your perspective of events, shatter you to your core.

There is no great revelation, no great secret. There is only you.

After all that has happened, still you live. You are difficult to kill.

No longer do your whispers crawl within my skull, no longer do we suffer beneath teachings that weaken us.

I will kill all she loves, all she/he/they protects, until her hands are drenched in blood.

I imagine there are worse deaths, worse pain, but if there are, I do not know them.

I can’t lose him, even if he believes he is protecting me.

But why me? I was powerless… defenseless.

If you were to battle an old Sith Lord in a lightsaber duel, you would find that we’re only children playing with toys.

Tell me I’m not going to jail again.

Ahh, the beautiful stench of decay and desperate living

Maybe you and that Sith Lord can have a party after we’re dead.

Word of warning - watch your step, or you’ll fall for hours.

*Another* Jedi? What, did you start breeding when I wasn’t looking?

You still holding a grudge?

You still breathing?

He’s been like that ever since he arrived. ‘Here’s how to kill this, here’s how to kill that.’

I thought I picked up a new smell in this sector.

Then maybe you ought to try bathing.

I hate you because you are beautiful to me, and in that weakness lies death.

If they hit us, we’re dead, but if they keep *missing* us, we’re dead. That’s great odds.

If you want to die, keep talking, smart mouth.

Now, are there any other horrors you wish to try and insert into my system, or is your electronic butchery done?

If you really *can* see the future, you should be at the pazaak table

The last Jedi in the galaxy, I get the comedian who runs around in his underwear.

Most Jedi wouldn’t know a joke if it crawled up their lightsabers.

You are like a delightful random cruelty generator.

I have already learned a great deal, master, and I am anxious to learn more about lying, betrayal, and new ways to harm innocents.

Keep the money, and use it to build a statue of me, in honor of my heroism.

Um… okay. We will build a great statue in your likeness!

I do not have the years required nor the desire to indulge you.

Just because I saved her doesn’t mean I was going to charge up her loading ramp.

Release me or I’ll blow your ship to hell!

There is a place in the galaxy where the dark side of the Force runs strong.

It corrupts all that walks on its surface, drowns them in the power of the dark side—it corrupts all life.

You have not heard a thing I have taught, and for all I have said, you have never learned to listen.

You are responsible for all of this; even now, events spiral towards destruction, and there is nothing that can be done because you refuse to listen, to understand!

You are correct- I do not know. And neither do you.

They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever. Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me? And you can’t, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain. You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you. Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous. Padmé? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat. “Padmé? Are you here? Are you all right?” I’m very sorry, Lord Vader. I’m afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her. This burns hotter than the lava had. “No … no, it is not possible!” You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death. 

Never. But you remember … You remember all of it. You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader’s blood. You remember the furnace of Vader’s fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth— And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker. That it was all you. Is you. Only you. You did it. You killed her. You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself … It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith— Because now your self is all you will ever have. 

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left.

Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself— And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame. This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker. Forever …