Without Chaos Nothing Can Evolve...
Darth Vader stared out into the void that was his home. Space. Living among the stars, traveling from space station to space station, planet orbit to planet orbit, living his name. Skywalker. Vader's thoughts faltered. His former name. His Jedi name. Anakin's name. Not his.
Huck-whoosh. Huck-whoosh. Huck-whoosh. Lord Vader focused on the sound of his artificial breathing. Huck-whoosh, huck-whoosh. Just another thing to be angry about, to be bitter for… to hate his former master and friend for. His thoughts were disturbed when another incompetent fool rushed into the observatory with another annoying message about another something Lord Vader hardly cared about. Vader supposed it should be disturbing that all he lived for, breathed for was anger. His Master at least lived for the accumulation of power, the satisfaction of greed. He rarely thought about it, though. The Council, the Padawans, Obi-Wan… Padme and his child, all in the past. His anger was his present and his future.
His black synthleather-encased fingers idly flipped through the book as his eyes skimmed the delicately faded black script. Books. Rare things these days and until a year after his turn to the dark side… something he'd never heard of. A silly little thing to be fascinated with to be sure, but the one thing besides his anger he was actually… if not interested in than at least curious about.
Books. So much wisdom contained between the pages. Stories to be read, true and made up, with a moral or just for some lighthearted fun. Nowadays no one ever puts such effort into the telling of a story. It's all just bare bone facts and figures, matter-of-fact and straightforward answers. This universe has allowed evolution to strip away its creativity. Pity. But not really. He doesn't care about the languishing imaginations of today's youth and yesterday's Golden generation. In his bouts of a complete lack of caring for anything - simply losing interest even in his boiling hatred - he feels nothing. Just cold. Just emptiness. Just… nothing except this curious… curiosity about books. Leather-bound covers filled with printed and sometimes hand scripted - though those were an even rarer find than the printed - pages in-between. His Lord and Master never could understand his fascination for that particular legacy of bygone eras. Vader could hardly muster any energy to care. And we come back to the revolving thought in his head. This universe has allowed evolution to strip away its creativity. His eye caught a particular phrase. One that - peculiarly enough - actually managed to peak some long-forgotten feeling of… interest.
Without order, nothing can exist; without chaos, nothing can evolve.
It fit somehow. In a way that he might have been able to understand had he been human once more, but as such, as the machine that he was, he could not comprehend. The phrase echoed around and around his mind, like he once had around a track in a nearly forgotten Boonta Eve pod race all those tortuous years ago.
An unseen smirk, just a little lift of the lips on one side, twitched across his face. He could almost hear the roar of the crowd, the shots of Tuskan Raiders as their projectile weapons pinged off of shining metal bodies, the zooom of the engines as he winged around a tight corner, a corner so tight no average human could have pulled it off. He imagined the smile on his mother's face, brilliant and shining as he pulled in as the winner. Qui- Gon as he -
Vader's mind abruptly shut down. Closing the door on the memory of that particular man. A man he had not known long, had not had the privilege of getting to know, but who had loved him, cared for him deeply. Had faith in him, trusted him, wished him to succeed and move forward in life. A man he had not thought about since the day he'd overheard the disgruntled voices of his Master and Masters Yoda and Windu discussing how Qui-Gon had trapped Obi-Wan into this training with a death wish, one thing a Jedi must concede to the dying. He had not dared think about that man - the only one to ever have completely trusted in him - or he would have gone mad with pain; having known such trust and then having it ripped away with one swipe of a red, glowing, two-handed staff saber. Lord Vader stood abruptly, flinging the book across the room and watching in perverse not-quite-pleasure as it hit the wall, its fragile pages falling in a macabre imitation of the younglings as they fell, one by one. Then nothing.
But why not? All he had was nothing, even his anger, in a warped sense to him, was nothing.
Without order, nothing can exist; without chaos, nothing can evolve.
These words, scribbled in a book so many eons ago, flashed through his mind as he watched the execution of yet another rebel. Order had once existed, then chaos, and after came evolution. More advancements in technology had been made after the chaos that was the Clone Wars and the Outer Rim Sieges and his turn to the dark side than had during the entire thousand year reign of the Republic. These inane thoughts swam through and around and over that one echoing statement. It made sense, there was irrefutable proof that it was a tried and true philosophy.
Funny, he had a vague thought that when he was human, he would have enjoyed that statement. Funny, how things work out though.
Vader rose from his kneeling position, thankful that the meeting with his Master was over with. He was getting too old to kneel and too careless in his shields. It wouldn't do for the Emperor to know that there was a burning flame of anger inside his chest specifically with Darth Sidious' name on it. It was one thing to suspect - for the man could do nothing else - but to know was an entirely different story… he just couldn't understand why it was so. Funny, he would have been able to understand, had he been human.