Entry tags:

Arrival + Open to all

Post-Medical/Around the Hospital:

After arriving and getting his debriefing, Vader took time to see to his own physical state. Awakening and not needing assistance breathing was been a shock he hadn't had time to process, feeling fabric on his skin - his skin, not a patchwork of skin, blisters, synthskin, and the wide swatches of scar tissue that was mostly still numb had bordered on sensor overload. Not that he still wasn't covered in scars - so many - but he could get a sense of feeling from them, not just pressure. It seemed his would-be captors understood his gloves and gauntlets served a practical purpose to protect his cybernetic arms and his heavy boots served the same function for his legs. And they must not have known how to take his helmet apart. The neck seal being open and having a breeze rush up against his face was certainly sensory overload. An exam - one he was unhappy about - later and a recommendation under the strongest possible terms he seek to establish care for further follow-up finished, he'd at least had a long list of options. Something he hadn't had before and some questions about the chip and a thick folder of paperwork in his hand, Vader started to explore the area. Making sure he could memorize the area in low light, as he knew his vision at nighttime would be difficult and if the helmet was damaged well.

That would be problematic at best.

Xin Night Market:

Two things Vader had purchased immediately: a large backpack in a familiar military style and a drop bag which fashioned around the waist and dropped down the length of one thigh to buckle behind his knee. He had no illusions he'd fill the military-style bag, it was partly for the familiarity of something on his back and in case of finding something bulky. The other bag, however - that was more purchased with purpose in mind. He'd spent time examining the various bags, the pouches: their size and durability of them, and the fasteners.

And he bartered expertly. He meant it for tools, bits and bobs, and technology he could salvage or break down for other parts. But he was also keeping an eye out for faces he knew.

Magic Markets

Given the odd dimensionality of this place, Vader made short work of hunting for things in the magic markets. Anything which looked like it may be related to the galaxy he was from, things relating to the Sith Order, the current one and the ancient ones. But also anything related to the Force. Be he was also searching for information on the Tethers, Tian, and Heba.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The number of people Vader allows to touch his suit, much less so intimately touch him is probably frighteningly low. Normally at best someone would be smacked. But his grandson he allows. It's even welcome. A circuit of types.

His helmet is highly polished and smoothed, given it's one he's currently wearing. And he tends to keep them in good shape. "Even as a shadow, I am honored to have been your confidant." He did understand, completely.

Somehow that makes the fact he had a real family out there even more real than the people he's met. Spoken with.

Once that touch is allowed, he can't help but let it linger. He had laid his hand on that mask so many times, searching it for any vision or memory it might hold, but this is the first time there's been a real, living person underneath it.

"I'm glad." He truly is glad. He'd held such conflicting images of Vader in his head. One, the steely powerhouse that Snoke had wanted him to perfectly emulate, and another, the grandfather who could care and accept him without fear. Somehow, he's seen some of both in the very short time they've been together here.

Vader would not be quick to shake off the touch unless they were interrupted. It wasn't weakness but vulnerability that he was protecting against. If other Sith had been able to cultivate families and it hadn't always ended in full-scale slaughter, he could as well. Especially here, it seemed.

He increased the pressure he was putting on Kylo's jaw, just a fraction, permission, not demand, to come in closer. You're safe with me, he wanted to say. But such things were easy to say and difficult to prove. And it was the proving he wanted to do. "Tell me about your name, how it came to be." Vader was both things, or at least he wanted to be. He became this to secure his family, to protect and provide for them. Whatever he had to do, whatever cruel act at Palpatine's hand or heel, he would preform, no matter the cost to his soul, to keep his family safe.

Now he was understanding Palpatine would never allow that to occur. But that didn't mean he couldn't, wouldn't, find a way out of spite if nothing else.

Kylo steps closer at the prompt. He feels the intent and accepts it. True safety is something he's long forgotten how to feel, but to Vader's credit, this is the quickest he's gotten to feeling a semblance of it in a very long time.

"Ren is the name given to the leader of the Knights of Ren." How familiar might his grandfather be with them, he wonders? His understanding is that they had existed for long enough, but had never been very well known. His own awareness of them had been entirely by chance.

"I had met them once on a trip with Luke. We were enemies then, but they noticed the darkness in me. I sought them out again when I turned my back on the light." At the time, it was all he could think of, aside from just running to Snoke and letting him decide every part of his next moves.

"Kylo is my own. A name I came up with sometime when I was young."

Knights of Ren he knew. Mostly through their dealings with Crimson Dawn which really had been amusing more than threatening, at least on his end. Maul was no threat to him and even less of one to Palpatine - after all, he'd raised him. He knew Maul's weaknesses inside and out, and had probably created some of them. And Maul had even more cybernetics than he did, really. Palpatine favored Force Lightning.

And Maul had been trained as Sith Assassian, only shifted to 'Apprentice' by lack of other options. Ventress had always been more of a threat. Really he'd considered them more of a distraction than anything. But in a galaxy without the Empire...

Well. He could see their appeal. What if he'd run into them, as a group, on Tatooine after his mother? Without Padmé and especially if Obi-Wan had been killed on Geonosis? Yes, he could easily see the appeal.

"I was unaware they named themselves. Keeping your own name is special." Given most Dark Side groups somewhat followed similar traditions of the Sith, with Masters naming their students. "Was it a good fit for you?"

In honesty, it hadn't occurred to him that choosing a name would be strange. Not just the Knights, but Snoke, too, had asked him about it. His hand drops to Vader's shoulder, much as his grandfather's had been on him before. He nods.

"Much more than the one I was born with."

If Kylo doesn't feel it fits him, then Vader isn't inclined to ask him what it was. He spends too much time protesting Anakin Skywalker is dead to be a hypocrite about it. But then, he was also aware of Naboo's culture.

He reacted up, taking Kylo's face in both of his hands. "My wife, yes she was my wife, we married in secret because we had to, was from Naboo. They are generally a wonderful people. Respectful. They have a tradition there, of changing your name if yours no longer fits, if you grow beyond it, or if you simply must cut ties with your past. She changed hers, and most of her most loyal changed theirs to match her's to honor her. Did you know that about your grandmother?" Probably the most shocking thing about Vader was how his voice softened, gentled, when he spoke of Padmé.

He's prepared for that question, but it doesn't come. He might be curious, one day, to know what his grandfather thinks about him having been named after Obi-Wan Kenobi, with all the innate pressure that entails even if it hadn't been done in the most immediately recognizable form. But it's not something he wants to get into right at this moment.

The insights about his grandmother are far less expected. "No, I didn't know that." Being from Naboo, yes, but not the rest. He knows something of Padmé Amidala, but nothing too specific, similarly to how he knows relatively little about Anakin Skywalker. Any stories from his mother or uncle's lives centered on the people who had adopted them... and considering how they had entirely concealed his relationship to Vader, that calls into question what little he does know. "I was never told much about either of you."

Given the pressure that was unceremoniously dropped on his tiny back when he was ten, he would have even more understood Kylo changing his name. It was too much to drop on a child.

"I'm not surprised in my case." He kept his life a mystery on purpose. "But it grieves me to think you don't know about her." Her, the center of his universe. His reason for being. "Your eyes are darker than her's but I do see their influence. She wanted to help people. To make the galaxy better for them."

The tone of his grandfather's voice isn't lost on him. It's obvious that he cared about his wife, deeply. Even saw value in her compassion. It brings into focus just how wrong Snoke had been, about so many things. His former master surely would have seen the inherent influence of someone so altruistic as yet another flaw.

"Is that what you want?" There's no expectation in that question, one way or the other. No judgement. Only curiosity.

"My aim was to bring peace and security to my new empire. In peace, an end to the slavers and pirates who supplied them. Enforced cooperation between systems and corporations so no one starved. It won't happen under Palpatine but I intended for him to live this long. To rule this long. I had other plans for that Throne." But they had failed, Padmè's rejection and death. And that had broken him. In ways only knowing his son had lived had started to repair.

Kylo is silent for a moment, searching what bits of his grandfather's face he can find through the mask, finding what emotions he can sense around the chip. It's all too familiar.

"You wanted her to rule with you. But she wouldn't." It's said as an observation, a discovery, with only a hint of a question underneath. The tone of his voice gives enough of a clue that it's an inference he makes from personal experience.

"No, she would not." It's heavy. Buried under an entire dune heavy. Thee just decades later hurt and burned and Luke's rejection fresh on top of it.

Vader rubbed his thumbs over Kylo's cheeks, a soothing motion. "Did they turn from you too?" Because yes he caught that.

It hurts and soothes all at once, to know his grandfather had been through what he had. Kylo is not often sympathetic, but it's all to easy to imagine the depth of what Vader had felt. Rey had been an intuition, a hope he had been willing to place on brief connections and a feeling. Padmè had been his grandfather's wife, and someone known to be capable as a ruler, and had still made the same choice.

It takes Kylo a moment to speak, and when he does, all he says is, "Have you met Rey?"

There's no soothing on Vader's end - just hurt and hurting for. A fatal flaw for Anakin Skywalker, his compassion. But one Vader hadn't entirely killer in himself. At least for some.

"Not a far as I know, although not everyone has given a name." But they wasn't uncommon and he also hadn't asked everyone.

"She would have treated you as an enemy, if you had. She's stubbornly attached to the Resistance." All the moreso now, it would seem. That glimmer of hope he'd had when he offered her his hand seems so foolish in retrospect. And yet it hasn't completely died, even now.

It occurs to him as he says it that he still hasn't gotten into what the current state of galactic politics looks like. He'd said the Empire fell, and that will leave the question of exactly what Rey's side is so dead set on resisting.

"I haven't told you my position. I currently lead the First Order. We're working on rebuilding what the Empire had been."

Vader made a sound, still used to breathing against the ventilation, a puff of air out his nose and a deeper sound in his throat. "That is hardly an identifying characteristic." Yes he'd met a couple but only one who's known him by name. One who was probably from the same time as Kylo, now that he thought if it. Still - he'd need more information.

"Build it better. Without the delusions of those using it for their own ends. There's enough suffering and war, people was peace. They want food. Clean water. Freedom from fear pirates or worse are going to tear through their homes and enslave them. Listen to the Force, not the greed of other.The Resistance will lose power if you prove your not the monster they say. Study the Empire's failures so you don't repeat them." Enspite the commands, Vader's voice is proud. Steady. Approving.

He hears the approval. What he feels for himself is shame, realising just how far he had strayed from whatever might have been. In honesty, he hadn't gotten to thinking through what he wanted as a far reaching vision for the galaxy. His time has been spent on things far closer and often more petty. Simply solidifying his position in the wake of Snoke's death, and having to struggle to create so small a change as getting people to stop stealing children in an attempt to raise future Storm Troopers. It was all more difficult than he'd imagined, for what little he had ever imagined being in charge. But he hadn't planned on doing it alone.

He nods, an acknowledgement that what his grandfather says is something he can agree with, even as another part of him wonders whether he may truly be the monster they say. But he's not Snoke. He's not Palpatine. And he never wants to be. At least there's that.

"Rey was an enemy to start with. But the Force connected us." Snoke's doing, he had claimed, but Kylo doesn't believe that. The bond was still too strong in his absence, and there remained too much to draw them together for it be entirely outside influence. Somehow, he can't help but think that still, even with Rey barely willing to speak to him, and the recent revelation of Palpatine's involvement in everything muddying the water. He doesn't allow himself to think to hard about that last, in the moment. Someday, he'll ask his grandfather advice with regard to the former Emperor, but not right now. Not when he still hasn't sorted any of it out for himself.

"There was a time, a year ago, when I offered for her to join me. To help me make things better. To make the galaxy as we want, instead of how it has been." Instead, she had left him on a torn apart ship, with not much of a plan and only anger to drive him. "But she refused."

It's the remains of Palpatine's leadership still. Mop one being secure. Everyone scrambling and fighting within themselves for power. It was meant to prevent unity. And unity was what was needed.

"A Force Bond that comes to be without your attempting it is very powerful. It certainly means you're linked together. The Force wills it." That rejection must have been crushing. "What did you feel from her, then?"

They're still linked, even now. Even if she stubbornly refuses to allow the connection between them and he's given up on convincing her. It's something beyond their own opinions.

"She wanted to take my hand." He had felt that, perfectly clearly, in the moment before she'd chosen to fight instead. "She wouldn't allow herself to."

Some Force Bonds are. He knows, the legend anyway. He knows he's kept one, even though he should. He knows he should.

He won't.

Stubbornness runs in the bloodline, it's how they survive.

"Then find out why. What she objected to." Because that was better than recoiling in horror. That - that someone could work with.

He has an answer to that already. At least, he thinks he does.

"The Resistance was more important to her." She had been on his side, up until she found she was wrong in her assumption that he would go out of his way to save what was left of his mother's fleet. In retrospect, maybe he would have let them go, had she accepted his offer in exchange. But she'd run to protect them, instead, and so here they are with little left to say to one another.

"But why? Why do they matter so much to her? You have to learn people's motives, so you can plan around them." He'd learned to do that worth some officers. The ones with working with.

Some petulant part of him would like to insist that there's absolutely no reason why they should and she's just being ridiculous, but the truth is he does understand, even if he doesn't agree, and he's wondered over and over again whether letting the Resistance go in that instance is a concession he should have made. Though, after everything, he suspects she still would have turned against him even if he had.

"She was always alone." It's the first thing he'd seen when he looked into her mind, back then. "Her parents abandoned her on Jakku when she was young, and she spent years waiting for them to come back for her. She sees the Resistance as family she never had--though she barely even knew them at the time."

She'd barely known him, either, if he's honest, but that's beside the point. He had been offering her the belonging she was seeking, in his mind more true than anything the people she'd hardly even fought alongside could offer, and she'd refused it. Because he wasn't good enough for her. He never is. The year that's passed since has done nothing but give her more time to grow close to them, and farther from him.

"And to them, the First Order can never be anything but the enemy."

It's Kylo saying 'Jakku' that made something click. The girl - hostile, angry, seeking a fight, bring up Leia - that makes it all click.

"That girl." Even if, he knows, Kylo doesn't know what Vader is referring to. "The people or Leia?" To him there was a difference.

Because with Leia...yes...that's going to be a Problem.

Arrival + Open to all

Post-Medical/Around the Hospital:

Xin Night Market:

Magic Markets

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