Crimson Guard

9 - Training

Training with Vader was... different. That was the way Yazasha seemed to be describing everything to herself these days. Different. Not good, not bad, just different. Perhaps because she didn't know what words to use to express what she wanted to say. Vader was not like any owner she had ever had, though that could be because he didn't technically own her. He did not control her every move, he didn't order her to do things. Every time he called on her to train either with what he called the Force or in forms with a harmless lightsaber substitute, it was a request. He asked for her to come and train, messages from him passed along by crew members included the reminder that Lord Vader requested her presence at whatever time. Different, maybe even a good different if she let herself think about it.

She wasn't punished here, either. A misstep in a form or a failure to do something he requested of her with the Force did not result in some form of pain. She wasn't denied food, she wasn't locked away somewhere too small for her, she wasn't chained, she wasn't isolated. It took her a solid three months to come around to the idea that she wouldn't be whipped for making a mistake, and three more to actually start to believe it. Six months to stop that side of her that wanted to curl up into a ball and hide every time someone moved a hand a little too fast, or Vader got a little agitated with her. Six months before she didn't feel awkward and claustrophobic in the ship, but instead some semblance of belonging. As soon as the crew grew accustomed to her presence, they relaxed around her, at least they seemed relaxed in comparison to how they behaved around her volatile instructor.

Maybe the strangest thing about training with Vader was that he was surprisingly patient, at least with her. While he was volatile and unpredictable with members of the crew, new officers the most in danger of her temper, he was surprisingly slow to anger when it came to teaching her. That may have had something to do with the fact that Yazasha had always been a fast learner, taking quickly to anything put before her. She had learned Huttese by listening to what Jabba said and then to the translator, steadily matching words and terms to their meanings in Galactic Basic. She learned to use any weapon put in front of her, and while she didn't speak much she knew what to say. Vader was patient, but she reminded herself constantly not to give him a reason to need that patience. While she knew there would be no physical punishment if she irritated him, she found herself wanting to earn his approval. It was a strange feeling, caring what someone else thought of her in such a way. The apathy that had slowly seeped into her had started to slip back out, and that was almost as terrifying as the first time she realized she didn't care much about anything but survival, and even that only out of habit.

Vader was kind, in his own way, something she realized most didn't see from him. If he saw she was tired, he wouldn't ease up on training, but he would either end training for the day early or start late the next morning. He made certain she ate, even occasionally insisting she take a break during a full day of training to eat something if her breakfast hadn't been large enough. He even began inquiring about her sleep and her health, which was strange to a girl who couldn't remember the last time someone cared about such things, but Yazasha found she didn't mind. Vader was selfish, something she herself had become over the long years of looking out only for herself, but when he was around she saw another way to use that trait. Through the Force, which she studied through the Jedi and Sith holocrons he left with her, she could sense when he reached out with it to check on her. The tendrils of the Force he sent out were never threatening, but they became genuinely comforting when her nightmares woke her. He sensed it, somehow, the distress and restlessness she felt, and Yazasha soon found she could sense his as well. Some of her nightmares were not her own, rather they were flashes of his. A brunette woman begging him to stop, a man with auburn hair and a mustache with tears in his eyes looking down, darkness and screaming. Those images woke her as well, even when they were only half-formed in her dreams, and Yazasha found herself reaching out with the Force, to comfort her teacher.

That was what she came to call him, teacher. Master was the official title, but it held a different meaning than she had grown up with. Neither of them spoke about those dreams, the half-formed wisps of memory they shared, but they didn't have to. As the Force Bond between Master and Apprentice grew, the dreams solidified and sharpened. They grew more varied, somehow dragging in even the oldest memories, the good ones that were now bitter reminders of a painful past. Just as Vader saw her past, Yazasha saw his. It was almost as though the Force was preparing them for something to come. For now, both continued to let the feeling and the connection go unspoken, both content with the knowledge of both and having no wish for sentimental talk.

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Vader was not a sentimental man. Had he been inclined to answer a question about why, his reason would have been that sentimentality had no place in his life, it never had and never would. The truth, however, is that the front he put up was a huge flaming lie. Vader was a very sentimental man. After years under Palptine, he had simply hidden the remnants of the man he had been behind closed doors. Apathy had seeped into his bones and his mind, and he simply had no longer cared if Anakin Skywalker was truly dead or not. Anakin Skywalker had been the man who loved Padme, had been the man she loved. Not Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker had been the soon-to-be father. Not Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker had been the fatherly type, the friendly type, the caring type. Not Darth Vader.

And yet somehow, his new apprentice had pulled a small spark of Anakin Skywalker out of the forgotten corner he had been shoved into for so long. Yazasha brought back old memories long before the connection in the Force had grown. Faint glimpses of the smile of a brunette woman in a yellow dress, the voice of his oldest friend fondly lecturing him, and the sight of a little togruta girl with a green lightsaber fighting by his side. When the dreams started, Vader was surprised to find that he didn't mind Yazasha knowing his past. After all, he knew hers as well. It wasn't until a week after the first dream that he realized he was acting a bit like a mother hen. As much of one as he knew how to be after the time that had passed since he had taught his last student. Another thing that should have bothered him. Yet it didn't. The connection and pull that had brought him to Yazasha in the first place had grown stronger, deeper, and yet different than any connection he had heard of between Master and Apprentice. Hurting her intentionally was not something that he had the ability to do any more, and her wellbeing became one of the most important things on his mind. It was a parental feeling, and more trust and care than he had felt in years. That apathy was slipping away, slowly and steadily, and while he was almost relieved, Vader's main concern was the Emperor. He had to focus to keep the tendrils of the Force he kept almost constantly with his apprentice from showing his alarm. If the Emperor found out his second favorite tool of manipulation was no longer present in Vader himself, the sith had no doubt that his master would have no qualms using either Vader or Yazasha to threaten the other. And neither was ready to face him, not yet. First, he would have to gauge Yazasha's sentiment towards the Emperor, then perhaps he could tell her of his ideas.