InsaneJournal

They'd locked her up with a murderbot she'd set free. He was currently shut off, deprogrammed, not installed, so he was propped up against the wall opposite the giant window. Kind of weird and pervy for a military installation. The last prison she was in had bars and was ready to fall into a sun if the power was cut off. This was… oddly mundane.

Still the tranquilizer they'd dosed her with was almost like primitive poison of some sort. The hangover was brutal; Aphra found herself downing almost an entire pitcher of water in an hour. She spent the next hour trying to find faults in their security, but without her tools, that was limited. She gave up after that hour to beat on the glass until someone came to the window.

None of them wore masks.

Not a single one of them looked Imperial, Rebel, or Stormtrooper. There were no droids, and given the air she was breathing — not sterile, no smell of oil or the whir of running engines — she was planetside. The portal they claimed she'd come through reminded her of a hyperlane, but she'd fallen through without a suit or a ship, and that just wasn't possible. Aphra had taken them at their word, but military types weren't her favorite and as soon as she moved her hand to her blaster, the world had gone black.

Stalled and running through ideas in her head, she sat on the floor, a computer in front of her and open. The tech was rudimentary at best. There would be no way to make much out of this.

Sometimes, getting to know people came with getting to know their distinctive signatures in the Force. For a Force-wielder, and especially for a particularly powerful one, this sometimes meant getting a sense of someone's presence even without actively searching for them. Anakin hadn't been doing anything particularly notable that evening when he was expectedly struck by a presence that made him… furious, for some reason, which was confusing at first until he realized why he had that reaction. He was sensing someone Vader would know. Someone Vader would not be… pleased about.

The traitorous Doctor Aphra was here. He had to get his brief fury under control before Vader's memories made his conscious persona shift. Her presence had never been apparent before, however, so she must have just arrived and that meant she was in the military quarantine. Anakin was quick to set out for the base. He'd only been there before to get his son from their medical wing, not the actual quarantine, so there was some delay in explaining to the employees there that he was there to see someone who had just arrived. At least they were used to how the "displaced" sometimes just knew someone had arrived before that arrival had communications access. But Aphra didn't yet have an approved guest list, so when she had regained consciousness, someone informed her that she had a visitor who was identifying himself as someone who knew her but that she would not recognize by name or face, so did she want to allow this person to come to the window and turn on the comms or not? Did she want further identification first?

Hollow voices through an old intercom. They had these on some planets left behind in the dark ages, before the Republic. Not even holos or much in the way of scans. It was looking as if her degree in archaeology might actually come in handy here.

If she could figure out a kriffing way out.

She glanced up from her work picking through the bits of technology she could put to use and wondering how she could supercharge some of this to do what she wanted it to do. There were pieces she didn't even recognize in this thing. The materials are similar to what she'd used on the regular, but it didn't make sense. Maybe she should concern herself with Triple Zero instead.

Over her shoulder, she caught sight of the protocol cum torture droid. Activating him meant that she was going to hear an earful because she'd have to put that damn protocol back into place and change it because Trip knew exactly where it was now.

No, best not to think about that now. Not with a visitor at the gates. Probably someone she owed money to.

With a disaffected tone, she answered, "I'll need a name so I can figure out how to prep myself for this visitor. You know, a girl has to figure out if she's going to have to bribe her way out of a situation or set up a barricade."

"He says you used to work for him," the worker told her. "And his name is Anakin Skywalker, but that you won't recognize what he looks like and maybe never heard that name." The worker shrugged.

The name brought Aphra to her feet. She pressed her hands and face against the window, glancing down the corridor to catch sight of Skywalker. Anakin wasn't a name she'd heard before, but Skywalker. That was no coincidence.

Was Luke here under a different name?

But he'd told her to stay away from his friends.

"Send him in already!"

The worker walked away to leave them to it; Anakin walked up the corridor to the window. He inhaled sharply, remembering how he— no, Vader— had seen her through the viewport of an airlock before sending her to what should have been her death. It was a death she had explicitly identified as the one she never wanted and had begged not to suffer. But she had betrayed him. Vader. It was taking an active effort to stay present as Anakin with the intensity of memories and emotions, and he doubted he'd be able to keep it up.

He could see Triple-Zero was apparently deactivated, which was definitely for the best as far as everyone's continued existence. The droid wouldn't be helpful right now. No Beetee, apparently, which was also for the best. That pair might well have attempted to explode their way out of quarantine or hold Aphra hostage in a bid to get released. It looked like Aphra might have been trying to free herself, too. Unsurprising.

He sat down in the seat on the visitor's side of the window. The sound quality from the speakers wasn't terrible, but it still created a distortion when he spoke through the comms. "Doctor Aphra. You're alive."

"I know. Isn't it great? Being alive is wonderful."

There was something familiar about him. That name was not a coincidence; she just had to figure out how he was tied to Luke. She cocked her head to the side. There were some physical similarities there. Brother? Cousin? A younger uncle? Too young to be his father.

She breathed on the window in front of her until there was a sufficient amount of fog there to write on. She began to doodle circuitry not unlike the tattoos she sported on her right arm.

"So who paid you to stop by? Oh, or was it Luke? Did he tell you to come here and tell me to stay away from his friends? What do they think I was doing? I was rich and I was safe and I was on a beach with my cocktail research. And now I'm sitting in this annoyingly clean room with a droid who is going to kill me if I don't put a master-slave protocol on him when I reprogram him, because obviously I will — reprogram him. I'm that stupid and reckless."

Vader wouldn't have described Aphra being alive as 'great' or 'wonderful', but Anakin had more mixed feelings about it. There was a history and shared experiences between them, after all. The memories weren't entirely negative. She had been… useful, in many ways, when she wasn't betraying him to the Emperor.

But then there was that familiar nonstop chatter. He sighed when she finally stopped talking. "No, Luke has nothing to do with this. But you should still stay away from him." He pointed to where Triple-Zero's form was slumped. "Make sure you don't leave the droid with any loopholes this time. He will exploit them again, you know that. But it would be better for you and everyone that you leave him deactivated. Do you never learn?"

Aphra froze.

Talk of the loophole gurgled acid in her stomach. Vader. Triple Zero had gotten a hold of his other Master and gotten kill orders from him. Aphra had kept him from murdering people for too long, and she knew that it would someday backfire. Had he gotten a hold of this guy? Gave him some vague threats to deliver? Used the name Skywalker because he knew that she would give him an audience, knowing just how nosy she was?

No.

Vader would never give out that information. Vader. Didn't. Talk.

Something vague that she was told before she tried for her blaster floated to the surface of her memory: timelines are often off. A light pinged in Aphra's head. It looked an awful lot like the lights in Beetee's front panel: seemingly harmless but always ready to spring to action.

Suddenly, Aphra began to laugh. It started as a light rumble, but she couldn't control it. It dipped and weaved until it had her pitched over clutching her stomach. "That explains so much."

Speaking of circuits, Anakin could practically see the circuits firing as she took in what he said. Her reaction, though, was confusing. He tilted his head slightly and frowned. "It… what? What explains what?"

It took a few more moments and a sore diaphragm and stomach before she could talk again. When she did, she leaned against the glass window. She'd never really thought about Vader as a man. She'd assumed there were parts of him that were human enough, but that crazy mask and the ventilator did wonders in making him a whole lot scarier. If this guy had been running around murdering people, she wouldn't have been nearly as scared. Triple Zero was a badder bad ass and he was a damn protocol droid.

"Come on. I can put two and two together. I might be reckless, but I'm not a moron. You got so into intense about this Skywalker kid — and now I have the final piece of the puzzle, Lord Darth Vader Sir!"

Anakin was really, really close to facepalming in his annoyance; on another level, closing off her windpipe to stop the laughter. He didn’t, though, just… thought really, really hard about it.

“You may not be a moron, but do you think it wise to laugh at me, Aphra?” It would probably sound a lot more intimidating with the vocoder dropping his voice. He was a little fuzzy on the personality line for the moment.

"So here's the thing," she started, holding up a finger. "I act like I don't pay attention, but as long as I'm in this room, you can't do anything to me." She hoped to the stars that it was true, that the stupid booklet and the idiot guards weren't lying to her. It was a risk she was just going to have to take.

It was strange to be standing in front of your formal idol, seeing him in the flesh for the first (only?) time, and realizing that he was just another human being like everyone else. Beneath that helmet was this. She leaned a little closer to the window. "Besides you're dying to know how I escaped, aren't you? You show me what's under the glove, and I'll tell you."

"You'll be released after 48 hours, and I can be patient." His common sense reminded him that the base would probably object to immediately attacking someone on their premises, but he didn't need to point that out. She'd realize it anyway. Of course, she also well knew he had wiped out larger forces before, though that was with a lightsaber and he'd returned his to Ahsoka after their duel. Not his best threat.

He did want to know how she'd somehow survived after the airlock, and it wasn't an outrageous request for her to make. He rolled his eyes and loosened the buckled straps that helped keep the glove fitted, then pulled it off of the prosthetic arm. He wiggled his mechanical fingers almost sarcastically at her and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Okay, so more function and less terrible fashion choices. Aphra had surmised as much. Most people didn't wear only one glove. Unless they were going to kill you and keep it clean, but even then, doing things by hand like that was messy. At least with a blaster, you could dispose of the evidence in the booster engines of a ship. Melt away anything that could tie you to it. Or you could just wipe the evidence on your blaster, how many shots and what settings were used. Most people didn't know how to do that, and Aphra figured they deserved to get caught.

But the prosthetic was making sense now. He'd been so disgusted by Cylo v 1.0 through Infinity, calling them abominations and actively trying to destroy them that she'd figured it out. Insecurity. Self-hatred. There were a few things she was starting to understand about the Force, and what she was learning was that if she had it, she'd definitely be down the Dark Side. There was no way she could be as moral or just as Luke. Or even that Princess from Alderaan.

"I knew you would pick whatever I thought was the worst way to die. Like I said: big fan. I counted on you chucking me out of the airlock so I had Trip and Beetee pick me up not long after." She paused and looked at him. Aphra saw a boy, not much older than she was, and she was suddenly reminded of that day on Dantooine where she'd nearly met her end there. She'd told the Trooper to take off his helmet: now you're a human being with a face. Now Darth Vader had a face, and even if he was still the same calculating, terrifying weapon of the Empire, it was different. "Remember the credit scam? That's basically it. Spent a week in a bacta tank though."

"I see." He tapped a metal finger on the glass, a distinctly different sound from what flesh would make. It was definitely too thick to punch through without using the Force to enhance the blow, and even then, it would undoubtedly set off alarms. This arm, at least, had his own design enhancements and had become comfortable to him. It wasn't chosen for him by the Emperor or Cylo. He wondered for a moment what Aphra would make of having actual circuitry in her arm instead of just having it tattooed on.

"You betrayed me, Aphra. That the Emperor ultimately approved does not change that you betrayed me. Was that merely to ensure I would fulfill your plan to escape me, or was there a contingency if I did not act as you expected?"

Aphra knew she'd betrayed him, but she had no other choice. She'd been captured, and she'd end up dead either way. All she could do was try to set it up the way she thought it would go. It was her cynicism that made her pragmatic; she understood how the world worked. She really hated it sometimes. The goodness she'd experienced at Luke's side had tainted her. Infected her.

"I had no choice. You sent my own droids after me, and I told you: I like being alive. They took me to him, and it was die right there like an animal or try and talk my way out of it." She'd spent agonizing days beforehand drinking herself stupid over this, knowing that he'd take any failure as a betrayal. Her carefree demeanor was gone, replaced with honesty. "I had faith in you, that the Emperor wouldn't harm you."

To say that Vader was "sensitive" about betrayal, considering how he tended to react to perceived betrayal, would be almost a joke. The kind of joke he might choke for.

But Aphra wasn't joking now. When she stopped her jokes, the contrast was almost startling in its blunt pragmatism. He tapped the glass a few more times, almost thoughtfully, as he considered her words.

"The Emperor has harmed me many times and in many ways. You had no way of knowing that he wouldn't eliminate me for acting against him. Just… faith."

"You're his right hand. And his left hand. He's not stupid enough to cut off either of those. Test them, push them to their limits, but never cut them off." Aphra's devotion to Vader would have been apparent if it weren't for how… honest this conversation was. In the back of her mind, she realized he was telling her this for one reason: he was planning to kill her again the second she stepped outside.

She'd better get Triple Zero setup without Vader or Skywalker as a Master to close up that loophole. She was going to need a whole lot of protection.

"How many times did I try to prove myself? I showed up at the rendezvous even though I'd messed up. I let myself get captured to get you off of Vrogas Vas because I had faith in you. Because — because I believed in you." She turned away from the glass, leaning back against it. "Not that that matters. I was always expendable. I knew that no matter what I did, at some point, I was always going to end up dead."

She was being metaphorical about the hands, of course, but Vader still gave her an incredulous look and then started laughing himself. Not mirthful laughter, certainly, but he laughed. "I don't have prosthetics to begin with because of him, but you're mistaken if you think he never removed them, or considered replacing me. That is what Cylo's minions were for. I'm far from irreplaceable in his eyes."

He realized that, strangely, Aphra seemed to think he was. She had far more regard for him than his own master did. It wasn't a fond regard any more, however. It couldn't be. He had meant to kill her, after all. He couldn't believe that her capture was intentional and not the result of some mistake on her part, but it was true that he didn't know precisely how she'd come to be in Rebel custody after he'd made her wreck her own ship.

He leaned away from the window and stood up when she leaned against it; he wasn't leaving, but the arrangement at the moment was uncomfortable in some way. In response to her remarks about her own expendability, he simply acknowledged, "Yes."

Without the black mask and cape, Darth Vader wasn't faceless anymore, and it was hard to look at him, knowing that she had betrayed him. Maybe not to the Rebels, because there was no way that Leia with that pole up her butt was going to torture her. Sana, maybe, but definitely not with Leia's blessing. And without torture, Aphra would never give up Vader.

Aphra decided to delve back into false optimism and playing the girl without a care in the world. "So I'll be let out of here in 48 hours, they say. Think you could at least give me the lightsaber to the throat this time? I realize it's not your favorite option, but I like to think that I was impressive enough in my death defying escape that maybe you'd do me the courtesy the second time around?"

He considered the benefits of allowing her to continue thinking he would soon kill her versus telling her the truth of his intentions regarding her life. The benefits weren't many or lasting. He knew her 'cheerfulness' for what it really was as well.

"No."

He gave that a little time for her to consider what the 'no' was actually to before he clarified. "No, I won't be killing you. Not here. But I were to do so, you haven't earned the choice of your death. If you had been loyal to me instead, I would have used the lightsaber… I believe you called it 'nice and quick'? But surely you had no plan to survive that. Perhaps betraying me was indeed the only way to survive."

He wasn't approving of the betrayal, of course, but on some level, he was acknowledging her cunning. He wasn't saying it, but he was… impressed. Not only had she ensured her own survival, she had done so in a way that fooled him into believing he had succeeded in killing her. It hadn't occurred to him back then that she had actually counted on him acting as expected. Few had the foresight to make such preparations despite knowing his reputation for dealing with disappointments, and especially to succeed in them.

Aphra had heard long before what he could do to a person with his lightsaber. As soon as he showed up, she was already calculating how to do this, because no matter what she did, she was expendable. If he succeeded, she was a witness: disposable. If she failed, she was worthless. All she could do is try to play the game for as long as she could, and yes, ultimately she knew that she would have to betray him.

That was the only way she had a chance to survive. There was no coming back from a lightsaber to the throat.

"You know," she started in her usual glib way, turning around and sizing him up. "You're shorter than I thought you'd be."

He stared at her for a moment, caught wrong-footed by the sudden non-sequitur, and then he made a small annoyed sound and gestured dismissively with his prosthetic hand. "I was… modified, and it included making me taller." Why he bothered to tell her that, he couldn't exactly say. He could have just ignored her remark and he especially could have not offered any explanation for the difference in his size. Perhaps it was because Anakin was generally more open and less secretive than Vader.

She had to admit that hearing an answer wasn't something she'd expected. Most of his replies were one word or shuffling her back to the task at hand. Maybe on occasion giving away something without an actual answer. Aphra could usually tell when she'd struck a nerve. She struck a lot of those, come to think on it.

She also had to admit that seeing expressions, while it diminished some of his imposing nature, gave her something to push for. Buttons were meant to be pushed, and if she could actually get a reaction out of Darth Vader? Well, that was just neat. Aphra grinned.

"You also have a wider range of emotions. I like it."

"My range of emotions is more apparent," he countered. The lack of mask concealing his expressions and being able to fully use his natural voice certainly made him more expressive; it was true, though, that he actually experienced a wider range of emotions before becoming Vader. "And they aren't for you to like or not."

She ignored it, continuing on her in observations. "You're wearing Jedi gear. My father studied the Ordu Aspectu really obsessively. I don't know if you know but they were a splinter group of the Jedi." Immortal Rur of that sect was who Aphra had pitted against Vader when she was trying to escape from Sorca Retreat after Rur had gained his own damn body and nearly slaughtered all of her buyers. Once again, she'd had faith that Vader would crush Rur, and she was positive that he had.

This was a young Vader, or as he'd introduced himself as Anakin Skywalker. He shouldn't have any of these memories. Timelines, yes, but that didn't make up for the fact that he knew these things and yet was definitely not wearing his usual garb. "How do you know all of the stuff with me if you're — are you younger than I am?"

"The clothes are just out of habit. I'm not a Jedi any more. And I'm not a Lord of the Sith yet, either." Anakin sat back down by the window; it seemed she had much more to say, as was usual for her, so might as well get comfortable. "Sometimes whatever causes us to come here also makes us have knowledge of our future. At least, I assume it's from the same source as the portals. That's how I know you, even though at this age I don't. I'm about twenty-four now. It'll be about twenty years before you and I meet."

Baffled though she was, Aphra took the information in stride. She always did, or at least always tried to. Anyone else meeting the infamous Darth Vader and taking him into their home would have been all stuttering and shaking with fear. Sure, there was a healthy dose of that, but she worked in the underworld way too long to know that showing that fear would get you nowhere but dead in a ditch.

"So you're in between jobs." He was the same age she was, which seemed so very wrong. "And looking good. People would never suspect you're the baddest badass around with that earnest face. I see where Luke gets his looks. You Skywalker boys and your hair."

"'Baddest badass around'..." He just had to facepalm at all that, and then immediately regretted it because he gave himself a faceful of durasteel instead of a glove. Oops. He tried to act like he hadn't just done that, though. "... Sure. In between jobs is one way to put it."

Things churned in Aphra's head. Things that she was sure Vader (or Anakin) wouldn't want to talk about. Like how he'd gotten involved with a queen and impregnated her. She knew the why he left his son: he didn't know he had one. That explained the urgent missions to Tatooine and Naboo. He was beginning to realize that someone had seriously betrayed him to the point of hiding his son from him.

"Don't get me wrong. The scar's a nice touch. Gives you just the right amount of experience." She sat down in front of the window. "How'd you get it?"

"I don't always win my fights or come out unscathed." He didn't feel inclined to give her a full story. "Lightsaber. You were born sometime during the Clone Wars, weren't you? You know what the role of the Jedi was."

Aphra wasn't inclined to give him any kind of emotional information that he could use against her later. While she was unused to this weirdly open version of him, she knew she could trust one thing: it would be used against her. She shook her head and gave a nonchalant shrug. "Neutral system. My parents were peace lovers."

"There were no truly neutral systems," Anakin pointed out. He didn't know if she was deflecting or mistaken in belief. "They could claim neutrality in policy or principle, but it never lasted. The Republic or the Separatists would inevitably exert influence and bring the war to them. Just as Palpatine intended."

"Nah, sometimes a world was untouched by the Jedi or the Separatists and it was raiders or pirates who showed up." That was enough information for now. She didn't like to think about her mother's death or how neglectful her father had been. All she appreciated from that time was the light and warmth of the fire from her father's house. "You guys left a whole lot of planets defenseless, did you know that?"

His voice went cold again as he answered her, "I'm well aware. I should have said, there were no worlds untouched in some way by the war, even if unofficially. Plenty were already being neglected and exploited before the war, too. And yet the Senate couldn't bother to care what happened to them."

"I'm pretty sure that's how things go when you have an entire galaxy to look after. All those systems. Planets are bound to slip through the cracks. That's where people like me thrive." She steepled her fingers together, fluttering the fingertips, the universal symbol that someone was Up to Something. When wasn't she?

And that was all she wanted to talk about the Clone Wars and her childhood. Luckily, she was well-versed and well-known for abrupt changes in conversation. "So what's it's like out there? They said this planet is Earth? I've never heard of it."

"That's where thugs, gangsters, slavers, and those who do business with them thrive." Was he lumping her in with the scum? Maybe just a bit.

"It's not even in our galaxy. I haven't been able to plot it in relation to ours. It isn't the most primitive planet I've ever seen, but I'm sure you've noticed it's technologically behind. Far behind. They're bound to this one planet."

She caught that, but she honestly couldn't care less. Her best customers were thugs, gangsters, and slavers. Rebels too from time to time. Pirates. All the shady folks who dangled on the fringes where the Empire didn't have quite a stranglehold on things. That was the whole reason he picked her to work with. Did he think it was an insult?

"One planet?" She groaned loudly, letting her neck slack and her head loll backward. "That's so boring!!"

"The farthest they've sent anyone is to their own moon. They send out probes, but can't retrieve them. And so on. Triple-Zero and other droids we have here with us are beyond what they can program."

"You're enjoying this bit of torture way too much," she answered, still moaning and groaning like a child. What the hell was she going to do on a planet without a means to get off it? Why was she here? How was she going to make credits? What was she going to do to make sure Vader Light didn't murder her?

"If I was going to torture you, this isn't how I would do it." He could relate to the complaining, but he wasn't going to tell her that. They never had friendly chats before and they certainly weren't having one now.

No, no friendly chats ever. Aphra had never had friends before. Maybe for a short time at University, but to be honest, most of them were people she'd never understand. Sana. She couldn't figure her out, and now the woman was out for her blood every chance she got. Not that Aphra could blame her. Susina would go on to spend too much of her life on a fake discovery, and Aphra didn't even care. "I know how I'd torture you."

Anakin stared at her silently, incredulous, though not nearly as inscrutably as it would be with his face masked. His expression was clearly wondering what the hell she was thinking.

Aphra grinned, wide and full of mirth. "I'd ask you every single question I could from how you lost your hand to where you grew up to how you hooked up a power coupling with a Queen. Every question ever. Even if you never answered a single one, it would drive you bonkers!"

"Hmm." She was right about how tortuously irritating that would be for him. He stood up slowly, lifted his hand, and gave her a little wave. "But luckily for me, you can't do that now, can you?"

"So where were you born? Do you have any brothers or sisters? How old were you when you were taken to the Jedi Temple?" The questions came unbidden, a random slew of them. It was purposeful though; Aphra was intentionally trying to drive him off. It was working too. "How come you never got synthskin over your prosthetic? How do you pick your nose with that thing?"

He reached out for the comm button, voice almost singsong as he answered, "Leaving now!" The feed shut off, leaving her voice only a muffled impression of her voice through the glass, and he waved at her again. It was working very, very well.

"Have you accidentally cut yourself when using the bathroom with that thing? Can I see it? Can I upgrade it? Can I touch it? Come on," she called after him, following him to the edge of the window. "Let me touch it!"

And as soon as he was out of sight and she could no longer see his less-than-imposing ass, Aphra straightened her shoulders and instantly became a whole lot more serious. She was going to have to reactivate that damn torture droid, and he was going to try and figure out as many loopholes as he could. This time, she was sure she could never remove those protocols.

Great. The two scariest beings in the Galaxy, and both of them were stuck on the same planet with her.