《[翻译][星球大战]渴望的真实 by esohpe/Sophie》Khamul

2、原文 作者原文

　　Real and Needed
　　Author: esohpe
　　Gift for: imadra_blue
　　Rating: R
　　Pairing: Vader/Obi-Wan, Vader/OMC
　　Summary: Post ROTS. Everyone has a coping mechanism.
　　Disclaimer: Not mine.
　　Warnings: Frankly slightly more disturbing than I meant it to be. What can I say It's Christmas time. ;D

　　When Vader first sees him, it’s a wonder he doesn’t snap his neck.

　　Sandy-gold hair, broad shoulders, frown line between his eyes. Clean shaven, but the same strong jaw and full lips that Vader recollects through the haze of years and fixation. Capable hands on the environmental controls of the ship. His ship. Shields impossibly down. Defenceless.

　　Almost, Vader closes his grip around his heart and squeezes until the organ is bloodless, useless, just another lump of flesh. Almost. Instead, he stiffly steps forward and sits in front of the viewing panel, the purplish sky of Madras almost brown through the red tinged oculars in his mask, and nods at the pilot.

　　“Saleucami,” he says, shortly and without explanation.

　　The man nods - almost a bow - and plots a course with hands stiff from the creeping onset of rheumatism.

　　Vader watches the take-off wordlessly, his metal fingers balled so tightly into fists that it’s almost frustrating he can’t feel it. The environmental controls are at the peripheries of his vision, but he doesn’t turn to look. He has become adept at following where the Force leads him. He has followed the fleeing Jedi into any number of the hells they don’t believe exist, and he has slaughtered them, one at a time. And with every kill, he has felt himself grow stronger, more powerful, as if his very sabre thrusts bestowed upon him the life - the Force - they stole.

　　Obi-Wan Kenobi is not aboard. Vader knows this. He knows Kenobi’s signature in the Force as intimately as he knows his own. Knows what the man feels like, inside and out. Knows the sound of his breath pressed into a pillow as he sleeps. Vader is confident that he could feel Kenobi half a star system away, and the man standing by the environmental controls is decidedly not him. Vader can detect no ability in the Force from him. He is nothing.

　　He stands, and his cape shifts silently about him. He doesn’t look towards the face of his old master as he strides out of the room.

　　~

　　Kerrion, he finds out later, in the summary report. A replacement engineer sent from Coruscant with regards from the Emperor.

　　His master wasn’t always kind, Vader thinks, but his methods were certainly effective.

　　A suitable reminder of his ultimate goal.

　　~

　　On Saleucami, in one of the small settlements clinging to life on one of the grey and featureless plains, he kills a Jedi. He doesn’t know her name, but as he stares down at her slack features in the sand-dirt, he thinks Kenobi might have introduced her once, a long time ago. He hopes that in her last seconds, she had remembered his words back them - the chosen one, Qui-Gon thought, yes. Anakin. My apprentice - and had cursed the old fool for his failure.

　　He leaves shortly after the carrion reptiles arrive to strip the carcass bare, and tells the pilot to head to the nearest and busiest spaceport.

　　Kerrion watches him in something akin to awe, and Vader notices his eyes are brown. Brown, not blue-green. He is too tall, too lanky, too young, his face too narrow, not possessing that quiet, confident calm.

　　How Vader had mistaken him for someone else, even for a mere breath-span, is beyond him. It angers him, and he’s not entirely sure why.

　　~

　　Many months after the fire of Mustafar, Vader’s dreamscapes had been of colourless nothingness. Then images had started creeping in. Sometimes meaningless, sometimes not. Sometimes a hateful patchwork of the past, sometimes indiscernible moments of the future. All were washed the same red of the mask’s oculars, and twisted with hatred.

　　After a spike in the core temperature of the ship bad enough to incapacitate a couple of members of the less acclimatised species, Kerrion stands, pale and stiff-backed, in Vader’s quarters, reporting his findings on the internalised environmental equaliser in a way which shuffled entirely away from exactly whose fault it was.

　　Vader generously lets him draw to a close before wrapping the Force around his neck and lifting his heels from the ground. The likelihood of Sidious finding both an accomplished engineer and a Kenobi look-a-like was slim, he knows, at best.

　　“This is how,” he says, “the environmental engineer before you needed replacing.”

　　The man’s eyes go wide and his hands go to his throat, though he only succeeds at scrabbling uselessly at his own flesh. Vader watches him impassively for a long moment, taking some perverse pleasure in the desperate struggle. Studies the movement of lips shaping please please, studies the bunching strain of shoulders and the heaving chest, holds the gaze of eyes the wrong colour, but so similar.

　　It is only when he realises the man still isn’t dead - his struggles weakening and pain-tears running down his face - long after he should be, that he finally drops him to a crumpled, gasping heap on the floor.

　　“Get out,” he says, without inflection.

　　The man half crawls, half drags himself to the door, sobbing his thanks. Vader ignores him, waits for the sliding panel to shut behind him and shuts his eyes, feeling strangely tired.

　　That night, he dreams in technicolor. Smiling into Obi-Wan’s shoulder as he comes inside of him. When he wakes up, he can’t remember for a moment why he can’t feel his legs.

　　~

　　After watching the bodies of one of his advisors and one of his personal servers being disposed of out the airlock, Vader passes Kinneon on his way back to the control room.

　　“Go to my quarters and wait for me,” he says, without slowing, or waiting for a reply. His head feels too big for the confines of his mask, and his very skin aches. He almost wants the man to try and get out of it, because he knows nothing will stop his death today if he does.

　　Kinneon doesn’t. Just swallows a sound in his throat and murmurs, “Yes, my lord,” from behind him as Vader sweeps on down the corridor.

　　When he returns some time later, he finds the man standing to attention outside his quarters, hands at his sides and shoulders back. His fear lies palpably dense about him, and the emotion wraps around Vader’s insides in an entirely pleasant way.

　　“In,” he says, and Kinneon obeys wordlessly, turning to face him but unable to keep his eyes on the face of the mask. Vader watches him for a long moment, the fear beating from the man strong enough to be heady. “Strip,” he says, finally, settling into a chair.

　　Kinneon hesitates, startled, then nods jerkily and begins fumbling with the fastenings of his tunic, clumsy with speed. Finally he stands, pasty and shivering, his clothes in an untidy pile by his feet, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to another, waiting.

　　“You will pleasure yourself,” Vader says, after silently mapping the differences for a moment, and it is not a request.

　　Kinneon nods again, a faint stain to his cheeks, and takes a hold of himself. He leans back against the wall, slightly, eyes on Vader’s face as if to garner permission, and starts on a tremulous exhale.

　　Vader stays rigidly still throughout the display. That night, his dreams are colourless and incomprehensible.

　　~

　　Years later, when Sidious finally calls an end to the Jedi cull, Vader allows Kinneon to touch him for the first time. Then he wraps one durasteel hand around the man’s throat and crushes his windpipe, holding the naked body in front of him for a long time after it has gone lifeless and still.

　　There is grey about Kinneon’s temples, now, and Vader had long since ordered him to grow a beard. In the calm of death, eyes shut, he has never looked more like Obi-Wan.

　　Vader hopes it is enough.

　　Now that he has stopped chasing Kenobi, he has a long wait ahead of him.