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“Dismissed, gentleman.”
The growl of energy that the Death Star emits settles within Tarkin as comfortably as his own heartbeat while the common noises that pollute the station’s efficiency resume.
“Still can’t get used to the damn buzzing on this thing,” Motti mutters to himself as he gets up. Tagge stands beside his chair already, waiting like a schoolboy. An odd camaraderie the two share, despite their differing positions. Something to be observed further.
“At least you can get out of a Walker, get some air that isn’t recycled,” Tagge agrees, wary eyes drifting to Tarkin’s chair.
Tarkin meets Tagge’s gaze, feels a burst of amusement when Tagge nods in acknowledgement and scurries out, Motti not a step behind him.
The room’s private com beeps nearly the moment the room has finally emptied. “Sir, Lord Vader has requested that you join him in his chambers immediately.”
Tarkin’s mouth twitches at the anxiety in Bast’s voice. “Very well.”
+
Once he is out of the common lift and across half of the officer’s hemisphere, Tarkin is alone again save for the occasional guard trooper. While Vader had been scheduled to return to the station before 1600, he had mentioned nothing regarding a meeting instead of a typed debriefing. It is certainly outside of protocol, but hardly cause for additional concern considering the man in question.
As Tarkin walks, free now of the standard salutes and nods, he feels a familiar thrill pass through him, as sudden and delicious as ever. He has built this station, not the workers and droids who mindlessly assembled it, not Erso and his engineers or that grasping creature Krennic. Tarkin’s is the initiative in both name and action, bringing this long-overdue station into its final operative state.
Tarkin has never been inside Vader’s private chambers before, has rarely given them a second thought beyond approving their basic designs at the Emperor’s discretion. A bacta tank, he remembers, was the only notable stipulation, along with a few standard medical droids and an oxygen gas regulation system. Tarkin had offered two Death Troopers stationed as guards in the hallway beyond, but his hospitality had been declined.
The door opens easily with the insertion of his Grand Moff’s code cylinder, and Tarkin steps into a modestly-sized room with a particularly large bacta tank at the center of it, its contents obscured by the opaque liquid. It rests surrounded by four inactive medical droids on the perimeter, spread out to accommodate it’s non-regulation size. It is an unusual sight, but Tarkin only understands the prickle of heat that rushes along the back of his neck once he realizes that there is only silence alongside it, a complete absence of the ambient growl of the station beyond. Instinctively, his mind rushes forward, solid, impervious to the gentle prodding he senses along his temples.
A familiar voice echoes from within the tank, clear and commanding. “My greetings, Governor.”
Tarkin tries not to scoff at the absurdity of being welcomed into chambers aboard his own station. “Thank you, Lord Vader.”
One of the medical droids emits a low beep and a series of whirs.
“No, power down after you dispose of the bacta,” Vader tells it in a nearly conversational fashion. “The Grand Moff will attend me.”
Tarkin raises an eyebrow, having never bothered to learn binary himself. Surely, such communications do not offer dispute to the rumors of Vader’s existence as more droid than man.
Vader’s voice is as tonelessly hard as ever as he once again addresses Tarkin. “You will attend me as I ready myself.”
An intimidation technique. Tarkin feels a bolt of frisson run through him at the brilliance of the maneuver. His responding smile is slow, indulgent.
“I would be glad to assist you.”
Vader does not respond for several moments, seeming to choose to listen to the beginning of the bacta’s draining instead.
“I’m surprised to have secured your attention at such short notice,” he finally comments. “I had expected to find you still tied up in Director Krennic’s affairs.”
There is a soreness, a reluctance present in Vader’s tone that Tarkin cannot resist prodding. “Director Krennic has business to attend to elsewhere. Eadu.”
“I suppose he has little enough to oversee on Jedha after the Star Destroyer’s arrival.”
Tarkin surprises himself with a slow, easy chuckle. “No. I imposed the protection measures. It is I who remain this station’s commander and guardian. Krennic, under my orders, has little enough to do now beyond babysitting Erso and sniffing out his certain treason.”
Vader lets out of huff of breath that Tarkin supposes might pass for a scoff. “Wise of you. I have been on Coruscant with the Emperor. He spoke highly of your continued mining efforts despite the difficulties presented recently.”
“Excellent,” Tarkin responds mildly, unconvinced of any such praise existing. Vader is merely sweetening him, trying to relax him into his sudden role as nursemaid.
“This station is shaping itself into becoming your legacy.”
Tarkin does not need to feign impassiveness as Vader’s body is slowly revealed to him in shifting shadows, the fluid thinning into semi-opacity. He has seen worse than a cauterized quadruple amputation healed by years of medical attention, hidden behind a veil of bacta like a nervous bride. “Along with the Tarkin Doctrine, yes,” he replies evenly as he studies the ghostly silhouette of a prosthetic right hand. “Although this station and the Initiative itself are, in many ways, merely extensions of it.”
The level of the bacta has sunk to the level of Tarkin’s forehead now, and as the tip of a bare head bobs from atop the fluid, the tendons of Tarkin’s neck jump to high relief at the sudden anticipation he feels. Surely, Vader has been savoring this reveal, believing that he is turning Tarkin’s own tactics against him through fear’s maturation before a sudden, deathly strike.
Tarkin finds himself drawn to Vader’s expression as it is indeed uncovered, the deeply-furrowed brow that slants into its irritated sockets in a nearly comical mimicry of sadness. A laceration, purpled with age, bisects the upper half of his skull, the skin beside it vulnerable, pale and bloodless in a way that Tarkin has never seen before on a living man.
Vader waits, seemingly for a fleeting look of shock or horror to pass over Tarkin’s features. But Tarkin is unmoved above him, fixed on Vader’s unblinking stare. His eyes are a milky green, glazed with illness and cloudy with half-blindness, a fitting addition to the rest of him.
Vader is the first to look away.
The lowering fluid continues to drain, revealing the vocal platform tucked against Vader’s neck and the breathing tube hooked into the floor of the tank. Tarkin watches as it exposes the slackness of his jaw, the yellowing teeth. Vader’s lips are curved against them, receding as though coated with dust.
“You take pride in its capabilities. Pride in building destruction,“ Vader comments loosely, and it is with a sudden satisfaction that Tarkin realizes Vader is attempting a sort of humor.
“I take pride in the Empire and in those bold enough to destroy so that it may flourish,” Tarkin replies evenly, allowing a measured smile to flirt across his mouth for an instant.
The level of the bacta sinks faster now, as though eager to reveal the weakness of the being that seeps in it. Tarkin feels no great wonder at the sight of Vader fully exposed, nor, he tells himself with a surge of confidence, did he particularly assume that he would. Without the power of the Jedi in the universe, without the machine that clenches the throats of underlings, Vader is just as he appears before him—a reanimated corpse strung together by Palpatine’s will alone. As Tarkin stares openly at the remains before him, he chides himself for ever believing that Vader possessed any such power as to radiate against the defenses of his mind.
With no bacta left to drain, the thick glass of the tank unseals, recedes, and tilts backwards into a sort of medical table. Vader’s body is now recumbent, held at the level of Tarkin’s pelvis.
Vader looks up at him once again, mouth and eyes placid.
Is this truly an exercise in power, or a demonstration of desired trust?
The realization jars Tarkin into action, forces him to make the necessary steps closer in order to stroke the skin between Vader’s lips and jaw, the touch following the curve of his second knuckles, removing the breathing tube from between Vader’s lips. Vader’s skin is thick, bloated and hot beneath his hand. Tarkin wonders, scrutinizing the expression permanently wrought into one of mourning, when exactly the lightness of a lingering touch had last been bestowed upon Vader. Even one as unsentimental as Tarkin’s is now must be rare for such a man.
Vader’s body arcs beautifully in the silent air of the chamber, fluid yet tense in equal measures.
“Yes, this station will become the Empire’s greatest asset,” Tarkin nearly croons as he removes his hand with an immediate, gripping sense of loss. “Once it is fully operational, the limits of our current hold upon the galaxy will be swiftly eradicated.”
Vader’s wheeze of a chuckle cannot possibly come without immense pain.
“Limits are not meant for men like us,” Vader gasps from between gritted teeth. “Not for our bodies, our minds, our spirits. The Force makes it so.”
Vader gestures upwards with his prosthetic hand, and Tarkin watches as the floor parts and a carved obsidian chest rises upwards from it. Atop it, Vader’s familiar helmet and mask rest like funeral offerings atop a sarcophagus. Tarkin steps forward and takes it, the chamber seeming to muffle the stride of his boots as he moves to slide the helmet onto Vader’s tender scalp. The expression upon Vader’s face is striking in its melancholy, and when Tarkin settles the mask against the lines of Vader’s breathing and vocal apparatus in a sickening hiss of needles suckering into flesh, he basks in his own pity for the man below him. His hands glide along the curvature of Vader’s helmet teasingly, fingers seeking the buttons that will secure it to the mask. It slides easily into place with a noise like the closing of a door, unsettling only in the sudden strange familiarity he feels, as though he has done this every evening for years.
As Vader below him and the chamber surrounding him flood his senses with their silence once again, Tarkin traces a path identical to the one he had drawn along Vader’s bare skin moments before. The polished black durasteel is hardly as satisfying as the mangled flesh’s pulsing had been, and Tarkin feels no desire to continue this exercise, despite the tremors that rise from Vader’s torso beneath him. He withdraws his hand, presses it to his mouth in thought.
Vader is limbless upon the table, clad only, absurdly, in his mask and a modesty covering. The similarity the latter bears to standard-issue briefs nearly draws a chuckle from deep within Tarkin’s throat. Instead, he gestures to the pile of limp cybernetics within the chest.
Vader sucks in a staggering breath. His voice, when it rises from within his mask, is its public, clinical self. “Leave them. The droids will take care of it.”
Tarkin nods. “Very well. If you have finished your debriefing, then I have business to attend to elsewhere.”
“I am finished.”
Tarkin’s gaze rakes over Vader’s form once more before he turns to walk towards the door. He can feel the weight of Vader’s milky eyes against his spine, poorly hidden by the glossy black enhancers that now cover them.
“The Empire is stronger for your vision within it.”
Tarkin looks briefly over his shoulder, lips quirking at the sentiment.
“I believe so indeed, my friend.”
Once outside the chamber, Tarkin takes a deep breath as the tactile thrum of his station syncs within him once more and does not bother to censure his flood of triumph.