annexedlogs | The number one drama causer is at it again. He's not really sorry.

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The number one drama causer is at it again. He's not really sorry.

Who: Vader
What: Self-surgery, healing, dragging people into his mess
When: Early month, prior to the mini-missions
Where: A room in a rent-by-the-day building in the Magitech, Obi-Wan's hut, probably other places as things develop
Content Warnings: self-surgery, blood (lots of blood), to be updated as needed

Given the chip implanted into them was at the base of their skulls, what it did, and the experiences he had with implanted chips - both in his men and in himself - it probably shouldn't surprise anyone he decided to handle it himself.

Not that he hasn't taken done preparations. A field surgery kit, mirrors, some kind of healing gel and bandages, a tarp on the floor under a cheap chair, and furniture moved away. The room was paid for a couple of days. After thinking it over before he started, he sent a text message to Padmé and a message to Obi-Wan.

Then he washed his hands, the back of his head and his neck, and sat in the chair, prepared so the mirrors allowed him to see the back of his head and neck clearly, even when his hands were in the way. And started cutting. Peeling. The scar tissue was thick, tough, and hard to pull apart. But pull it apart he did, because he didn't want to cut nerves or large blood vessels - there wasn't a bacta tank here. It took time, to get down to muscle, to scrap it away from the implants in his spine without harming his implants or causing too much muscle damage (what he thought was too much anyway).

He didn't winch or flinch, only swore when a blade broke. Angerly threw the disposable ones across the room and set a blade into the reusable ones.

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He'd had the right hand for more than half his life now, and the rest only barely less than half now. They are him. Flesh or metal, it didn't matter, he'd melded them to himself.

Vader had been tormented by phantom pains since he was a teenager - and it said much about the twisted nature of the Dark Side that he'd inflict that own kind of permanent pain on his own son, whom he admitted to loving, who he attempted to protect and strengthen. However much guilt Vader felt about that, even if here it wasn't done, it just added to his own personal torment.

"In the Force? Yes. With my right hand as clearly as you would with yours. The other limbs are more muted in sensation. Sensation passed that is different. Scar does not transmit as normal skin. Pressure and pain most clearly, old scars feel heat, cold, touch the least. Fresh ones feel them more, unless they are just layering the old, as those nerves are long since gone. Mustafar's lava bank took those long ago." Which had been a trick, he'd been sure, back then. The worst of the burns hadn't hurt. He'd been cold, without skin he'd been unable to hold his own body temperature, and it was still something he constantly fought to do. Without the Force it was impossible.

Rey listens with more interest than she'd like, and an uncomfortable amount of sympathy besides. If it weren't Vader she'd have made a point to ask him about the right prosthetic in more detail; the desire to know how things work was almost as strong as the desire to help people, and if it was knowledge she could take to someone with the correct engineering skills here -- well. Vader was perfectly capable of doing so himself, if he wanted four matching limbs. It wasn't her business.

She takes a breath to steady herself and forces herself to meet Vader's eyes without fear or hesitation before she begins. She's ready for cold, but still her breath catches in her throat when she rests her fingertips lightly on the least scarred patch of skin the can find on Vader's chest and opens herself more fully to the Force. It's a cold so deep she could drown in it, and for a moment she forgets his warning and nearly withdraws in a panic.

Don't fight it.

It's almost a whisper from the Force itself. She'd felt the same once before, on Ahch-To, when the mysterious cave had sent her plunging into icy dark waters that she's still not sure how she navigated well enough to survive. It's another few seconds before she can release enough of her own instincts to breathe normally, and the cold doesn't lift -- but she can feel herself again, too, and the Light within her.

Force healing is a tricky thing; Juhani had told her that the Force Healers of old could've worked true miracles, and as she allows her awareness to spread out a little at a time, she's acutely aware of what could be healed if she were stronger. If she had more training. The Force couldn't regrow limbs, no, but she has the sense that someone better than her could have repaired much of the old scar tissue. Someone who'd learned how to draw more on the Force and less on herself.

As it is, Rey's as careful with her own energy as she knows how to be, and fortunately the worst injury had already been closed. She didn't need to stop the flow of blood or knit together a broken bone, only speed along a natural healing process that's already begun. It's still harder than she'd expected to find the Light against the unrelenting cold. It's there, though, and though she half expects something within Vader to push back against it even as careful as she's being. She allows the energy to spread slowly from her fingertips, relaxing slightly as this much, at least, feels familiar. The Light's there. It won't drop her and leave her alone in the cold.

Least scarred is a trick - it just so happens to be the thin, translucent skin over the bottom of the implant in his chest, his heart just under that space. There's no subcutaneous fat, not on his chest, his limbs, his face, his diet back home too lacking and even here it's lean and he doesn't consume enough calories, preferring to draw on the Force.

Muscle he has but it's not a healthy build. Not what what one would expect of the Empire's best weapon or technical number two.

And he might hand warned her to not fight the cold but he does fight the Light. It's more akin to trying to bathe a tooka - wriggling, pulling, threats of teeth and claws, less an attack and more an attempt to get away. Kriff he even tensed when she touched him, bracing. He's clearly not comfortable, tiny movements in his body as the Light, her Light, spreads through him, into the wound, into his femurs and pelvis to spread along producing blood, it itched.

Itched like falling into a patch of poison leaves and vines, itching and burning even if it wasn't a fire-burn. Somewhere deep and hidden inside him, like called like. Her light called to what he denied lived in him. At was like a star peeking from behind an eclipse, blindingly bright and sudden before slipping back behind the moon, almost completely covered, the smallest sliver remaining.

It said a lot about his discipline that he only squirmed a tiny amount.

It's more difficult than she's expecting, though she's not sure if it's merely the scope of this task compared to the smaller, simpler injuries she's healed prior to this. Maybe it's the conflict within her, the sense that maybe this was wrong -- that maybe she was wrong, one way or another. The sense of struggle makes her want to push harder against that resistance, whether it's her own or Vader's, and she has to forcibly remind herself that that's not how Force healing operates. She'll only hurt herself if she tries to keep too tight a control; just wanting it more doesn't work when it comes to healing.

In the midst of all of it, there's a sense of recognition that creeps into the edges of her awareness as she tries to get out of her own way and let the Force do its work. Beneath all the overbearing cold is something of Luke, and of Kylo. Even Leia. And somehow, impossibly, to her -- though not by the same blood bond that tied the others.

She frowns with the effort and the concentration it takes not to linger on the places her mind wants to go, the doors through which the Force could lead her if she strayed from her intent. There's something just out of reach; a presence she doesn't understand. Something malevolent; something that wants her as it had wanted Ben Solo and Anakin Skywalker before him. Something that dares her to look, to see a truth she can't begin to fathom.

She realizes she's stopped breathing for a moment, that her heart's beating too fast and too hard, and a tiny beads of sweat have begun to gather on her forehead from the effort this healing has taken. Not enough to hurt her, not yet -- but when she lets the connection go and pulls her hand away, it's gone cold as ice, and she can't quite suppress the urge to shiver. She opens her eyes and the room takes a moment to stop swimming, but still somehow seems too small to contain all three of them. She can't quite catch her breath.

She rises and nearly stumbles, pushing past Kylo with only a shake of her head. She can't be here any longer. This isn't a safe space to have whatever reaction this is, and there's not enough air. She tries some word of explanation, but she's not sure what actually comes out beyond a slightly muddled version of I'm sorry, and then she's fleeing for the outdoors in search of space to breathe.

He doesn't mean to snoop. He doesn't, truly. He'd be furious if she did, he's giving her the same courtesy. But there's something so familiar in her.

Not just linked to her but in her.

Oh. Oh. His stomach drops as realization hits and that's when the Dark slides back over the Light.

Oh no.

Vader can see the panic - he can feel it, and there isn't time to pull his own face together as she's running away.

"Go. Kylo go. Calm her. Go." It wasn't just him trying to hemp his grandson. It was repayment of a debt.

The rest they're desk with later.

The answers Vader gives to the question give him a lot to think about. The experience is alien, but in the case of his grandfather, it's easy to find sympathy. There's nothing particular to say to it, so he doesn't, particularly as it becomes obvious how much Rey needs to focus to do the healing, and how much Vader needs to focus in order to allow it.

The explosion of motion the moment they separate stuns him enough that for a moment he has no idea what to do. The impulse to run after her is there, but so is the urge to stay and make sure his grandfather is actually alright, since that had seemed trying for him as well. That, and he's not sure Rey would want him to follow.

He looks between his grandfather and the door Rey had just disappeared through, lost. It's only the words that make him act, and then he gives just a small nod before running after her.

Rey doesn't get far before dizziness overtakes her and she has to lean against the side of the hut to try to regain her bearings.

You're fine. You're fine. It wasn't you.

She repeats it over and over again, no closer to believing it than she was when she'd fled, as she tries to rub some warmth back into the hand that's gone cold and numb in the wake of the healing. It's not usually this bad, and she's not sure if it's her own panic or something to do with how much of the Dark she felt in Vader or just the complexity of the task she'd just done. Maybe all three.

She's got her teeth clenched tightly together to keep them from chattering, which is the only thing that stops her from immediately responding once she realizes she's been followed. A protest of I'm fine dies before she can even fully form the thought; clearly she's not, and she doesn't have the energy to argue the point.

"I just. Need a minute."

She finally grits it out with minimal chattering, though her voice lacks its usual strength. Kylo's presence isn't unwelcome in itself; she just doesn't want anyone to see her like this.

It's for the best that she didn't attempt that lie. Kylo would have had none of it. As it is, he looks her over with concern.

"You're freezing." The chatter of her teeth and the way she's holding herself speak of trying to preserve warmth. But even her presence in the Force is cold, in a way he's not used to feeling so clearly from her. Vader had clearly meant it, about diving into ice.

She's also putting a lot of effort into keeping her thoughts small and quiet so that Kylo doesn't get a sense of how muddled they are. The familiarity she'd felt once she'd gotten used to the cold. The way that somehow Vader of all people made her feel the same sort of longing for a family she'd never know. The way that a part of her recognized him -- and then went immediately to that same dark place that she wakes in a panic from nearly every night, now. The part of her that sees herself on the Sith throne. The part she's been trying desperately to convince herself doesn't come from her.

"I don't understand. It's not usually like this."

Her hand usually tingles a little in the aftermath, maybe feels a little cramped til she can shake it out. She's used to being exhausted in the immediate aftermath, but it's nothing a nap doesn't cure. This isn't that, to say nothing of the lingering tendrils of panic that threaten to claw their way back up her throat. She's never had an emotional reaction like this to simply healing someone.

She's blocking him from her thoughts, enough that it's hard to fully establish the context of her comment.

"Healing?" He doesn't really doubt that that's what she means in general, but he's not sure what's throwing her quite so badly. It seems obvious that it would be different in some way from whatever she's done before. He assumes she's never healed someone so attuned to the Dark Side, nor presumably someone she considers an enemy. But it also seems like this goes beyond that. "What was different?"

She shakes her head and folds her arms more tightly to keep herself from trying to shiver. The cold's receding the longer she stands here, but she's no less unsettled. It's still a little harder to breathe than she'd like, and it takes her a minute to gather an explanation that makes sense.

"Not just healing. I don't know. I felt -- there was something --"

She shakes her head again, almost as though to clear it.

"It's too much. I can't explain it now."

Later, maybe. With some time and distance between herself and Vader. Between the horrible familiarity that felt like it pulled her in several directions at once. Between herself and that dark something that came for her dreams as she slept.

He waits, not really able to even guess what she might say. When she does speak, she cuts herself off. What had she felt, if not the darkness she surely knew was there already?

"Okay." It's an awkward reply, not satisfying to either his curiosity or concern, but he knows what it's like to not be able to articulate something, so he can respect it from her. From there, he doesn't know what to say, nor what he can usefully do in this situation.

"Are you-" he starts, and stops. There's no point to asking such a clichéd thing as are you alright, when it's so very obvious she isn't. The question that takes its place is a more difficult one to ask. But she had trusted him before. She had been willing to cry on. This time, he's the one who's less certain about offering.

Go Kylo. Calm her.

"Is there something I can do?"

She might be able to explain it to him later, once she sorts it all out for herself. His question catches her by surprise, and she searches his face for some sign of what's shifted again between them. He'd been holding her at a distance after their last encounter; she hadn't expected healing Vader to change that, not really, not when the thing that angered him hadn't changed.

"Aren't you angry with me?"

His presence helps her more than she wants it to, honestly, but she doesn't want him to stay out of some sense that he owes her. She'll be fine in another few minutes, enough to walk back home, anyway.

Did that stop him being angry at her about tethering with Luke of all people? No, not really. He doesn't plan on denying that. But it isn't solely a sense of responsibility, nor solely his grandfather's instruction, that brought him out here, either. Whatever this is, it's happening because she chose to heal Vader--something he hadn't expected she would do. And also, it's her. Kylo has long trained himself to ignore the suffering of others, but she's an exception, angry or not.

"You were angry with me when you bandaged me up before." He's not entirely certain what had motivated her then, but he imagines there must have been similarities. She might have written it off with the excuse of practicality, but he remembers the way she nearly called him back when he left.

She's been angry with him for most of the time she's known him. She probably still is on some level that has become too exhausting to keep up now that they're no longer at war. They'll need to reckon with it all one day, she imagines, but it had been a relief to stop blocking him out quite so hard, and she'd felt stung when she realized that he'd begun to shut her out instead.

Some of the tension drops from her shoulders, and she moves back to the front step of Obi-Wan's hut and sits, leaving room for him to do the same.

"Can you just sit with me for a few minutes? You don't have to say anything."

She's not sure if it's the same for him, if physical proximity, even though the Force, seems to help him feel somehow more right so long as they aren't trying to hurt one another, with words or weapons. She's not sure she can even explain it in words any more than she can explain what happened back inside, but she knows she can find her balance again if he stays a while, more quickly than if she just walks back home in her current state.

It's the same, and he can't say that blocking her out has done him any favors. That's probably a big part of why he's willing to forgive at least enough to not hold it against her in this moment.

For now, he doesn't say anything. He just nods and sits beside her, not close enough to be touching, but not putting noticeable distance between them, either.

She's quiet a while, too, at least until she settles enough that she can take a full breath without feeling like she's about to start shivering again. Vader's Force signature is still so very present in the Force that it's hard to shake the lingering sense of cold, but she's able to notice it and let it be, now, rather than feeling as though it'll overwhelm her.

The silence feels too loud after a while, and there's so much that had gone unsaid that she's not sure where to begin. An explanation of why she was here seemed as good a place to start as any.

"I don't hate him, you know. You can't heal someone you hate."

Not at the same instant, anyway. Maybe she could go back to hating Vader eventually, though it was honestly a difficult emotion for her to hold onto for long. Anger, yes, but not hate.

The silence does feel too loud. Probably sooner for him than for her, but he doesn't have any idea what to say, so he just doesn't. When she eventually speaks, it doesn't surprise him--after all, she wouldn't have done that if she did hate Vader--but it still doesn't exactly make sense to him why she had chosen to offer that healing in the first place.

"What made you decide to?"

It's a difficult question to answer. She's not even sure she knows, beyond the fact that she could, and it had felt like the right thing to do.

"He has people who care about him. Any one of you could've asked me to if you'd known I could do it."

They hadn't, but given that she would've done it if asked, she didn't see a reason to withhold the offer just because they didn't. It's the closest answer she can find to the more complicated one, which was that he felt like someone she ought to care about, herself. She's not sure if that's her bond with Kylo, her tether with Luke, or just the envy of all of them for having a family at all.

"Hm." He's not sure that entirely makes sense to him, either, but it's something of an answer, at least. He's quiet for a moment, until the silence starts to feel loud once again.

"He told me to go after you, when you left."

She frowns at that, unsure of what to make of it. She didn't hate Vader; she even saw the shadows of what must've been a good person, once. But she's not sure why that would extend to caring enough to send Kylo after her. Or why it would occur to him to do so to begin with, when she and Kylo hadn't even been speaking.

"Why?"

Why wouldn't he? Kylo wasn't surprised by it at all in the moment, only grateful that Vader had made that decision for him while he'd failed to, himself.

"You healed him. He saw how it panicked you." Even if none of them fully understood why, it was obvious that had been the cause.

"And he knows about our connection. He trusts the Force, like I do."

The implication that Darth Vader had demonstrated concern for her is one hell of a thing to come to terms with, so much so that for a moment Rey feels as though she might burst into either hysterical laughter or tears over the way it makes her feel. She's already so overwhelmed by everything she'd just experienced that it's almost one thing too many. But, once again, she finds Kylo's words pulling her back from that hysterical edge.

"You still trust the Force when it comes to our connection? Enough to tell him about it in a way that didn't make him immediately despise me?"

It's surprising, considering how few positive interactions they'd had, even here. She'd spoken reasonably kindly of Kylo to Luke when she'd explained things, then, but she hadn't been willing to let go of her anger at him back then, either. Or at the older Luke, for that matter. She supposes it's not so strange to think that Kylo would've done the same, even angry.

A slight nod answers the question. He hasn't been happy with her since the last time they talked, and hasn't wanted to let her in during that time, but he still believes there's ultimately a reason for whatever this is between them.

"He told me I should talk to you. Try to understand." That had been said about her stubborn connection to the Resistance and hatred of the First Order, before he'd even known about her choice of tethers. Still, he supposes it's advice he should follow, now that she's here. He draws in a bracing breath before asking, "Why Luke?"

Rey's still trying to process the fact that Darth Vader gave Kylo advice that seemed likely to help the two of them reconcile when he hits her with the question. She nearly flinches; she hadn't been expecting to talk about it yet. She's entirely too tired for whatever argument they're about to have, now that the adrenaline that came with panic has started to wear off.

Still, she supposes he deserves an answer. It hadn't been a complicated one on her end.

"I didn't want it to be a stranger, and I thought someone I knew, a Force user -- we already know how to get into other people's heads, and how to stay out. There weren't that many choices who were correctly aligned."

She'd offered to tether to Obi-Wan, for that matter, but she'd respected his privacy enough not to push when it seemed he was trying to gently deflect.

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