Chapter 1. Dreamer

She was beautiful. Good. Pure. Everything that was the opposite of him. And he had to have her.

"Not in this lifetime."

Vader looked up from the holo-image in his hand and glared at the accursed Jedi. "Don't you dare enter my mind."

"I don't have to," drawled the other casually, his voice more fitting for an aristocrat on a silk couch than a Jedi in chains. "Any fool could read the look on your face whenever you gaze at that thing you stole. It would be disgusting if it weren't so pathetic."

Vader lifted the hand that didn't hold the image and the wet darkness of the dungeon walls seemed to glow with the reflection of blue lightning. The Jedi's scream rose in a blood-curling crescendo to the ceiling that no eye could see.

Vader lowered his hand and the silence was filled with the echo of screams. "You would do well not to mock me, Jedi."

The Jedi hung limply in his chains. "You..." he coughed. "You would do well... not to mock yourself."

In the blink of an eye, Vader was beside his tormentor. He yanked the Jedi's head back with one gloved fist, bending it until the Jedi's eyes were staring at the ceiling. The prisoner could feel the muscles in his neck screaming as they stretched to their breaking point and for a second, he almost believed that he had succeeded in his task - he had provoked the Sith into killing him at last.

His head snapped forward as Vader let him go.

"There'll be no escape for you, Jedi."

The Sith's laughter was a mocking song in Kenobi's ears as he slumped back into his chains.

His laughter stopped abruptly the moment the dungeon doors shut behind. Lifting the holo-image back to his face, Vader slumped against the doors, and stared with hopeless obsession at the wonderful creature that he knew in his heart, should never belong to a monster like him.

''