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The Emperor Vader strode down the corridor, barely taking notice of the clone troopers who saluted him. His mind dwelt on his favorite prisoner. Or sometimes his second-favorite prisoner.
It depended on which one of them had irritated him last.
He shortly arrived before the cell door, taking in a deep breath of the swirl of emotions he could feel just beyond the durasteel barrier. Fear. Pain. Anger. Grief... He gave an irritated jerk of his head at that last one. The first three had long since ceased to matter to him, except as a delectable treat, but the last...
It made him feel as though he had done something wrong. And he couldn't do anything wrong, not any more. No one still existed who stood above him -- just another Master, leaning over him and making him feel small, so weak and helpless... No one told Vader what to do. No one told Vader he couldn't do something. And no one -- no one who valued their neck -- should tell him that he shouldn't do something. That he shouldn't have done something. That his great Empire was a mistake, mere folly and weakness, yet another reason for some gentle but firm voice to scold him, to tell him You know that your judgment needs work, Anakin, you should have known better...
Impatiently, he flicked his wrist, activating the unlocking mechanism with a subtle twist in the Force. See -- therein lay proof that he had changed, that he was a man in the full flower of his power. Had he really been little Ani, he would have torn the door loose of its moorings and flung it across the corridor, for a thought like that. Vader could control himself.
But he couldn't control his smirk at the flinch through the Force as the man inside the cell took in the sight of him, for all that his old Master's face remained fixed in a hangdog expression of dignified resignation. Jedi dignity didn't mean anything -- not anymore. After all, there were no more Jedi.
Stepping in smoothly, he made the door slide shut behind him without taking his eyes off of his old Master. "There's no need to look at me like that, Obi-Wan," he remarked calmly, amused by the deadened twinge of disgust at him so casually using Kenobi's name. "You brought this on yourself."
Kenobi's gaze strayed involuntarily to the casts on his broken legs before returning to Vader, narrow-eyed and full of hate. He would never call it that, of course, not Obi-Wan. Too uncivilized an emotion. But Vader could feel it from him all the same.
(Anakin Skywalker might have felt sickened, might have fallen to his knees and clutched at the great white casts, begging for forgiveness. Anakin Skywalker could never have borne someone he loved rejecting him, even for a moment, let alone regarding him with pure hatred. Anakin Skywalker would have wept until he couldn't see, Anakin Skywalker would have thrown away all his worldly trappings and thrown himself, body and soul, into a quest for forgiveness...
Anakin Skywalker was dead.)
"If you hadn't tried to flee, I wouldn't have had to do this to you," Vader said soothingly, crossing his arms at the same time that he lightly ruffled Kenobi's bronze hair with a touch of the Force. Once Kenobi would have reprimanded him for using the Force so casually. Now no one would ever reprimand him again. The crushing of the airway made it rather difficult...
Still, Kenobi's lips peeled back from his teeth in a silent snarl. His reply, when it came, was as clipped and civilized as ever. "They taught you well on Tatooine."
A fool like Skywalker might have lashed out, irresistibly baited. Vader only smiled. "No, Obi-Wan. There, the fragments of your skull would be scraped off the walls by the sobbing slaves who loved you best." He chuckled, sharpening his emotions into a blade aimed at Kenobi. "The Jedi taught me well. Teaching me to restrain myself, subdue myself, cripple myself... For my own good, right? Not because they feared my power?"
"They feared what you would become." The silent undertone: And they were right to fear.
Once, it might have hurt him. Vader took it as a compliment. "As I said, my power." He paced around the small cell, keeping his gaze fixed on Kenobi. "And you were foremost among them, weren't you, my Master? Always scolding me, disciplining me, admonishing me to never do what I wanted, to slow down, to always keep myself still and my head bowed, awaiting the will of the Force..." He stopped in his tracks, aiming a cocky smile at Kenobi. "And now I am simply returning the favor. For, you see, that is exactly where you should be sitting right now, Kenobi. Because it is my will. And the Force acts through me."
"So says every delusional Sith," Kenobi hissed through his teeth.
The Sith holocrons that Vader had inherited from his other former Master's collection would have sneered, saying that Jedi were far more deluded -- having the raw audacity to equate their own subconscious whims and instincts to the supreme will of a nonexistent universal consciousness. Vader couldn't care less for philosophy ("typical Banite rootless ingrate," the holocrons would whine). He merely liked to provoke the once-unflappable Obi-Wan Kenobi. "I thought only we dealt in absolutes?" he inquired with false sweetness, and watched Kenobi struggle to rein in his anger and his hate. The reminder of his humiliating defeat at Mustafar never ceased to sting the man. As well it should. He had gone there all afire with righteousness and revenge, and left the planet a defeated captive. The gap between his intentions and his results were so very Skywalker-ish. Truly, the student did rub off on the master.
(Sometimes, he dreamed of a path in which he had been just a bit slower and Kenobi a bit faster. The burning blade flashed up, and...
After he awoke screaming, he would assure himself, as he retrieved the day's garments from the ruin of the room in which he had slept, that the turmoil within him was nothing more than a phantom-pain where Skywalker had once been, no different from the occasional shooting pain in the arm that long ago had been replaced by durasteel actuators. Nothing more.)
Kenobi shut his eyes, leaning back against the smooth cell wall and tilting his head back. Vader rolled his eyes at the familiar rhythms of a Jedi breathing technique. Sometimes, he wondered if he ought to choke him a bit, just to throw him off -- but he'd found him beneath him to be that petty. So far. "And how," Kenobi inquired, his voice dripping with equally false solicitude, "is Senator Amidala?"
Vader's smile disappeared. His lip curling, he said shortly, "The Empress is well. Much like you, of course, she continues to be restrained for her own well-being." He shrugged, his hands surreptitiously tightening on his folded arms. "I cannot help your refusal to recover. Only you can choose--"
"Anakin, do you never stop to think what you have done to the people who love you?"
Vader realized only after he flinched that he had done it. Rage flared at the thought that, after all this time, Kenobi still had the ability to get under his skin; with the practiced skill of a Sith, he curbed it, flattening it into something that would only give him further power. "Who love me?" he mused, raising his gloved hand of flesh to tap at his lips. "I suppose the twins are a little irritated with me for forcing them to speak real Basic rather than relying solely on Force nudges and twinspeak, but they'll appreciate it when they're a little older. Aside from that, no, I can't think of anything..." He aimed a narrow, sidelong glance at Kenobi. "Those are the people who love me. As for those who loved me?" His mouth spread in a cold smile. "The Empire has no mercy for traitors, Kenobi."
"Who betrayed us first?" his old Master countered.
The wife who had clung to a dying shadow of democracy, and still preferred weeping over its corpse to the embrace of her own husband? The Master who had loved him only so long as he remained a shadow of the man he knew he could be?
"Yourselves," Vader replied curtly.