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Pleasurable darkness

A Mirror of Monsters

The silence in the garden was a gravestone. Anakin’s challenge, a grotesque epitaph carved into the air, hung between them, poisoning the scent of the night-blooming blossoms. He stood alone, a figure of defiant madness, his chest heaving, his eyes burning with a conviction so absolute it was terrifying. He had not challenged a Jedi Master to a duel; he had challenged a rival to a property dispute, and the prize was a person.

Obi-Wan felt the world tilt on its axis. The man before him, wearing the face of his brother, was a stranger. A monster born of trauma and darkness, speaking a language learned in the deepest pits of depravity. “Anakin, no,” he whispered, the words a useless prayer.

Mace Windu’s acceptance had been a death knell. He took another step forward, his gaze never leaving Anakin’s. The sorrow in his face had been replaced by the cold, hard granite of duty. “The Grand Training Salle. In ten minutes. Unsanctioned duels are a violation. This will be a formal disciplinary action. Witnessed.” His eyes flickered to Obi-Wan, then to Depa. The message was clear. This was no longer a personal matter. It was an affair of the Order.

Anakin laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “A formality. Good. The whole Order should see a master’s hypocrisy. They should see him fight for his new pet.”

“I am not his pet,” Depa’s voice cut through the tension, as sharp and cold as ice. She had stepped out from behind Mace, her hand no longer at her throat. The red marks stood out starkly against her skin, a brand of his making. Her eyes were not on Mace or Obi-Wan. They were locked on Anakin, and in their depths, there was no fear, no hatred, only a chilling, clinical assessment. It was the look of a biologist studying a particularly virulent specimen. “And I am not your prize. You are fighting over a ghost.”

“The ghost is mine!” Anakin roared, his control snapping. “I made you! I broke you! I own you!”

“Enough,” Mace commanded, his voice a thunderclap in the Force. He turned, his robes swirling. “Salle. Now.” He began to walk, expecting them to follow.

Obi-Wan moved to Anakin’s side, his hand reaching for his arm. “Anakin, please. Listen to me. This is madness. You can stop this. Apologize. Submit to the Council’s judgment…”

Anakin ripped his arm away as if Obi-Wan’s touch were acid. “Stay away from me,” he snarled. “You’re on his side. You always were.” He stalked after Mace, his stride filled with a predatory purpose.

Obi-Wan was left standing with Depa. The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken horrors.

“He is lost,” Obi-Wan said finally, his voice heavy with a grief that felt bottomless.

“He was lost the moment he chose power over principle,” Depa replied, her gaze distant. “The slavers didn’t break him, Obi-Wan. They just showed him a mirror, and he liked the monster he saw.” She started walking, following the path of the two duelists. “Let’s go. I want to see how this ends.”

***

The Grand Training Salle was a vast, circular chamber, its floor a polished obsidian that reflected the star-like lights in the high, domed ceiling. It was a sacred space, a cathedral dedicated to the art of the lightsaber, where generations of Jedi had honed their skills. Tonight, it was to be a slaughterhouse.

Mace stood in the center, his violet blade humming with a quiet, deadly patience. He had shed his outer robe, standing in the simple tunic of a warrior. He was a pillar of righteous judgment.

Anakin entered from the opposite side, a storm front of rage and paranoia. He didn't walk; he stomped, his boots echoing in the cavernous space. He saw only Mace, his rival, the thief who stood between him and his property.

Obi-Wan and Depa stood on the raised observation ring that circled the chamber. The space felt cold, empty, a perfect amphitheater for the tragedy about to unfold.

“There are no rules here, Skywalker,” Mace said, his voice echoing. “No points. No yielding. This ends when I say it ends.”

“It ends when you are broken at my feet,” Anakin spat, igniting his lightsaber. The blue blade shrieked to life, its sound ragged and angry. “It ends when you renounce your claim on her!”

Mace’s expression didn’t change. “I claim nothing but the authority of this Council to discipline a fallen Knight.”

“Liar!” Anakin screamed, and lunged.

It was not a duel. It was an assault. Anakin was a hurricane of pure, untempered rage. He abandoned all finesse, all strategy, for raw, bludgeoning power. His Djem So form, normally a tool of powerful counter-attacks, became a crude cudgel. He hammered at Mace’s guard, his swings so wide and ferocious that sparks flew like shrapnel. He screamed as he fought, a torrent of mad accusations and possessive declarations.

“You saw her! You wanted her! You sent me to die so you could have her!” Each sentence was punctuated by a thunderous crash of blade on blade.

Mace was a rock in the storm. His Vaapad was a perfect, dark mirror. He didn’t just block Anakin’s blows; he absorbed their kinetic energy, their rage, and channeled it, turning the storm back on itself. His movements were tight, economical, his violet blade a blur of impossible speed. He was not on the defensive; he was waiting, weathering the initial, mindless fury, letting Anakin exhaust himself on the immovable object of his will.

On the balcony, Obi-Wan gripped the railing, his knuckles white. “He’s going to kill him,” he whispered, watching his friend fight like a rabid animal. “Mace is going to kill him.”

“No,” Depa said, her voice unnervingly calm. “He is showing him. Look.”

She was right. Mace wasn’t just defending. He was teaching a lesson. With every block, he subtly shifted Anakin’s balance. With every parry, he exposed a flaw in Anakin’s wild form. He was systematically dismantling him, not just as a fighter, but as a concept.

“Is this the strength of a Keeper?” Mace’s voice cut through the clash of sabers, calm and mocking. “This mindless rage? I have seen Zygerrians with more finesse.”

The taunt hit its mark. Anakin roared and redoubled his assault, his movements becoming even sloppier, more predictable.

“You dishonor the blade you carry,” Mace continued, effortlessly turning aside a powerful overhead strike and forcing Anakin to stumble. “You dishonor the title of Knight. You fight like a common thug brawling over a stolen trinket.”

“She is not a trinket!” Anakin screamed, a vein throbbing in his temple. “She is mine!”

He spun, bringing his blade around in a powerful, horizontal sweep meant to cut Mace in half. Mace didn’t block. He simply ducked under it, the blue blade hissing inches over his head. As he rose, his own saber came up in a tight, controlled arc. There was a sharp, sizzling crackle.

Anakin cried out, not in pain, but in shock. His lightsaber, the one he had built as a Padawan, the extension of his very being, was on the floor in two smoking pieces, its kyber crystal shattered. He stood, disarmed, his hand still held aloft, clutching nothing.

He stared at his empty hand, then at Mace, his face a mask of disbelief.

Mace stood before him, his violet blade humming softly, its tip pointed directly at Anakin’s heart. The fight had lasted less than two minutes.

“It is over,” Mace said, his voice resonating with grim finality.

Anakin’s shoulders slumped. The rage seemed to drain out of him, replaced by a sudden, terrifying emptiness. He fell to his knees, the impact echoing in the silent salle. He was defeated. Broken. Helpless.

“You see?” he whispered, his gaze lifting to meet Mace’s. A strange, twisted smile played on his lips. “You won. She’s yours now. You are the Keeper.” He bowed his head in a grotesque parody of submission. “Take care of her. She… she bruises easily.”

Obi-Wan let out a choked sob. He had lost. They had all lost.

Mace’s face was a mask of cold disgust. He raised his blade, the light glinting in his dark eyes. The Jedi Code was clear. But what was the Code for this? For a mind so thoroughly poisoned, so utterly lost? Was this a helpless opponent, or a cancer that needed to be excised before it spread?

“No.”

The single word, spoken from the observation ring, was not loud, but it carried the absolute authority of a royal decree.

All three men looked up. Depa Billaba stood at the railing, her expression unreadable. She vaulted over the side, landing as softly as a cat on the obsidian floor. She walked toward them, her steps unhurried, each one a deliberate, measured beat in the silent chamber. Her discarded lightsaber lay on the floor of the garden, forgotten. She was unarmed. She was the most powerful person in the room.

She ignored Obi-Wan. She walked past Mace, her gaze fixed on the kneeling, broken figure of Anakin Skywalker. She stopped a few feet in front of him.

Anakin looked up at her, his eyes filled with a strange, hopeful madness. “Master,” he whispered, the word he had forced her to call him. “You see? He won. He is your new master. You must obey him now.” He was trying to pass the torch, to transfer ownership, to maintain the sick framework that was the only thing holding his sanity together.

Depa looked down at him, and for the first time, Anakin saw not fear, not hatred, not even the cold fury he had come to expect. He saw pity. A vast, ocean-deep pity that was more devastating than any lightsaber strike.

“You poor, broken thing,” she said, her voice soft, but each word was a perfectly sharpened dart. “You think this was about you? About him? About a prize to be won?”

She knelt, lowering herself to his level. The posture was a deliberate, stunning inversion of every lesson he had forced upon her. She was not submitting; she was condescending to meet him in his pit of misery.

“You call yourself a Keeper,” she said, her eyes searching his. “You are not a keeper. You are a ghost. You are a pathetic copy of the monsters who captured us. Zarek gave you a collar and a leash, and you put them on as eagerly as any slave. He gave you a taste of power, and you gorged yourself on it because you have nothing inside you. No honor. No strength. No self.”

Anakin flinched as if she had struck him. “No… I did it to protect you…”

“Protect me?” Her laugh was a short, bitter, heartbreaking sound. “You became my primary violator to ‘protect’ me from others. That is the logic of a slaver, Anakin. Not a hero. Not a Jedi. You didn’t protect me from the darkness. You became its most intimate agent.”

She reached out, her hand hovering near his face. He flinched, expecting a blow. Her fingers gently touched the scar over his eye.

“The slavers put chains on our wrists,” she whispered, her voice filled with a terrible, clear-eyed sorrow. “You put them on your own soul. And you tried to chain me with them. But you can’t own a person, Ani. You can only break a body. You can rent a space in their head. But you can’t have them. Not really.”

She pulled her hand back. “Look at you. You challenged a Master of the Jedi Order for the ‘rights’ to me. Do you have any idea how pathetic that is? You are not a monster to be feared. You are a child playing dress-up in a monster’s clothes, and the costume is two sizes too big.”

She stood up, towering over him. “There is no prize. There is no asset. There is no property.” She looked from his broken form to Mace, then to Obi-Wan. “There is only a woman who survived, and the sad, broken man who tried to destroy her. The duel is over. You both lose. Because the game you were playing was a lie.”

She turned her back on him, a final, absolute dismissal.

It was that act—the pity, the dismissal, the utter invalidation of his entire worldview—that finally broke him.

The Keeper persona, the rage, the jealousy, the possessiveness—it all shattered. The carefully constructed walls of his madness crumbled, and the raw, terrified, guilt-ridden soul of Anakin Skywalker, buried underneath it all, was exposed to the light.

He saw it. All of it. Not as a justification, but as a litany of his sins. Depa’s face, contorted in pain. The collar. The leash. His own hands, his own body, a weapon against her. Padmé’s face, terrified of him in their own bed. Obi-Wan’s horrified eyes in the doorway of the cell. The weight of it, the sheer, crushing, cosmic weight of his own monstrosity, crashed down on him all at once.

A sound tore from his throat, a sound of such profound, animal agony that Obi-Wan cried out his name. Anakin’s eyes rolled back in his head. He convulsed, his body hitting the floor. He began to scream, but it wasn’t a scream of rage. It was the terrified, incoherent screaming of a child trapped in a nightmare from which he could never wake. His mind, unable to reconcile the monster he had become with the hero he was supposed to be, simply broke.

Mace deactivated his saber, the snap-hiss loud in the suddenly silent chamber. He looked down at the convulsing, screaming form on the floor, then at Depa, who stood with her back to them all, a pillar of terrible, hard-won peace. Finally, his gaze met Obi-Wan’s. The anger was gone. The sorrow was gone. All that remained was the grim, weary burden of leadership.

“Healer Che,” Mace said, his voice flat and exhausted as he spoke into his comm. “Bring a full medical team and a stasis-stretcher to the Grand Salle. And alert the rest of the Council. We have a situation.”

Obi-Wan rushed forward and knelt beside Anakin, not as a Jedi Master, but as a brother, trying futilely to comfort a soul that was already gone, lost in the self-made hell of his own unforgivable actions. The Chosen One lay broken on the floor of the Jedi Temple, not by a Sith Lord, not by a rival, but by the devastating, quiet power of a victim who refused to be a prize.