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The Sith is young.
That is what I think, as I stand here, staring at the medical cot.
A well aimed blaster shot and reflexes too slow for a human let alone a Jedi or Sith, Plo Koon had dragged his limp body back into the ship as I’d tried to keep anybody from getting another shot.
As the door closed, I’d jumped up, yanking Lord Vader inside, wincing at the heaviness, and working together, they’d pulled him up onto the medical cot, gotten out of the droids way, and watched as their wariness turned to horror.
The Sith looks smaller with the layers and layers of fabric and armour (and medical equipment?) stripped off. The hollowness of his cheeks, the bags under his eyes, the sickly pale skin and frown his face is contorted into, like he’s about to cry even in his sleep, all make him look small.
Despite his hight the medical cot is made for a range of species and he’s dwarfed in the white fabric, he looks fragile, what I had thought had been an unbreakable in out of breath is wobbly and weak, kept alive by the droids and machines.
He could be human passing, but it’s hard to tell with the scars that twist his skin, pulling one of his shoulders a little higher than the other, his lips peeled a bit open as if they don’t close as comfortably as they should, as if he’s wincing.
Skilled enough to nearly best me, yet he looks young enough to be a Padawan, not even an old one at that.
The droid keeps speaking. Adding more and more to a list I keep assuming must have ended in a monotone voice that betrays none of the horror.
Plo Koons horror radiates so strongly in the force I sway a little on my feet, nauseous enough to make me want to sit down. But I swallow, there is no time for that.
“A Sith.” I remind Plo Koon. Plo Koon who considers people older than Vader his children,
“Master Windu.” the title makes me put more effort into schooling my face, we are close, he talks to me as Mace, his friend.
“He’s our enemy.” I insist
“Is he really?” Plo Koon turns to me, focused and so he would be looking me dead in the eyes without his mask. He gestures sharply to the bed “Is that our enemy. A- a child who is being tortured possibly on purpose-”
“This patient is around 24 standard years.” the droid cuts them both off, pulling something from somewhere with a slick sound, and a few drops against the metal of the bedframe or floor. It starts the list again, starvation, electrocution, infection and old, old scars that are reopened and unhealed.
I take a deep breath, he is a Sith. The dark side has a cost he chose to pay.
“Master Koon-”
“I think we have failed.”
I recoil,
“We try, we do all that we can, but-”
“No buts. No buts in this.” he sounds scathing, “Lord Vader has done nothing, not a thing to us, not a thing we have even heard rumors about, and yet we distrust him and plot his downfall. We were the ones who failed to find him as a child and protect him, this was us!
“What if he came here to ask for help? What is the demand we predict he is going to make is that? What is he makes none?” Plo Koon demands “Was the council not told this? Did ali not befriend him and warn us that he needed help? But without even considering we assumed and deemed her tricked, deceived, and ignored it.”
“We have no idea what he’s done.” I whisper
“We have no proof of any crime, no reason to believe he has commit one beyond the fact he acts scary and is probably a Sith. Even if we did this hardly looks like somebody in their right mind, making their own choices.”
“He is a Sith!”
“He is barely an adult! He couldn’t stand! He passed out from untreated injuries and dehydration! Is a choice we don’t know if he even got to choose enough to condemn him?” Plo Koon moves in front of Darth Vader protectively, whose-
“He’s awake.” I say
Darth Vader’s eyes, all molten, red hot gold and embers, bounce between us.
Plo Koon softens. Darth Vader draws his force signature in closer, walls that seem like durastell are all cold impenetrable and harsh lines and sharp corners.
Injuried or not he is powerful and dangerous.
Still glancing between both of us, he tries and fails to use his hands, prosthetic glitching and heavy, bumping into his face as his fingers weakly curl around the oxygen mask’s tubes, brushing his skin with his fingertips, before his arm slides onto the bed in a pose that looks uncomfortable and involuntary.
Plo Koon reaches out, and he flinches, then goes still and glossy eyed as Plo Koon gently rearranged his arm so it’s tucked under the blanket.
“He-” I hiss. Plo Koon stamps on my food. Moving to hide me from Darth vader’s view
“Wh-” he wheezes, distrust and wariness and caution and wrong-wrong-danger-getout so thick in the air around him I want to crawl out of my skin.
“You are safe.” Plo Koon says, dropping his shields enough to see the truth of the words, I panic and try to shove them back up but get pushed away. “My name is Plo Koon, and you are safe with me. You will not be harmed, we can heal you, help you.”
The steel walls crack and shatter, revealing a storm of emotions, the dark side itself so tangled up in Darth Vader’s mind I flinch.
“You can rest.” Plo Koon offers
The clouds part, just for a second, just enough to let me get a wave of a second hand feeling so sad my breath catches in my chest, blue and bleeding.
It’s covered up, an phantom hole aching in my chest, I am full of lingering grief for something or somebody I do not know, clinging onto me like mud.
“You are safe.”
Self hatred and guilt, the weight of responsibility, terror and a weariness so heavy I collapse backwards into my seat soften, into grief and pain, fear that’s eclipsed by a tiredness that slowly consumed all of Vader’s signature.
My heart sinks.
Grimacing like he’s about to burst into sobs, his expression relaxes, and his walls draw up again, more of a habit that anything purposeful.
“It… it’s an act.” I whisper, Plo Koon shakes his head, back still turned to me
“No.” and I know he’s right.
And we both know, gifted the knowledge in the humming of the ship’s systems and the medbay’s different lights and the liminal time of hyperspace, that it is far too late for the Jedi to make it up to Vader.
But we can give him a good night’s rest.