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Vader doesn’t notice how his scales had darkened at first, or that his eyes had become a poisonous yellow. That would come later. It is his breath that burns the Jedi Temple, his lightsaber and talons which destroy those who face him. The darkness swirls within him, makes itself physical in his other form.
He relishes Obi-Wan’s fear as he spreads his wings like the ash clouds on this hellscape of a planet. He could destroy him like this, easily, but that is no feat.
Lightsabers can cut through dragon flesh as well as any other. Fire can burn those who wield it, he discovers as he writhes on the ground, flesh blistering and trying to reform itself into scales at the same time. His screeches of agony are like nothing human.
(The scales remain, some of them. Snaking down his spine, across his lower back. Scales tainted and burnt black.)
The armour is painful, restricting. But that is nothing compared to when he transforms for the first time. He is heavy and it hurts. It shouldn’t hurt, it has never hurt.
Now he wears black armour with his scales, thick plates that run down his neck to the tip of his tail, accompanied by matching ones on his belly. His head is encased in metal, mouth stiffer than before, and he walks on four metal legs. The armour is part of him now, fused to both his skins.
Vader raises his wings, and knows something is terribly wrong. They are ruined. Torn and scorched, they will never lift him again.
He screams. Screams in rage and pain and loss. His lungs burn, even more so when he releases the flames that have been building in his chest. The screams of the unfortunate souls around him almost drown out his own. Safely removed from the carnage, the Emperor laughs.
Far away on two different planets, two children wake up crying.
***
Rumours circulate in hushed whispers in Imperial barracks and among the fledgling Rebellion that Vader can transform into a great and terrible beast, but those who see it rarely live to tell the tale. Or that perhaps he controls a monster, one that follows him in his shadow and springs into blood-curdling existence when he calls. It becomes a wavering half-truth, a horror story, surely it’s more metaphor than fact?
“Have you heard the tales, dear girl?” the Emperor says to the Rebel on her knees before him. “I think we should give you an answer.”
Vader barely registers her gasp of shock when he knocks her head from her shoulders with a single swipe of his paw.
He tries not to think of the times when he used to fly, when he was more than a leashed monster in flesh and in principle. The recollections of dreams of flight and childish joy are grinded into oblivion, any musings he had in another life of whether his child would be like him quashed.
(On two separate planets, two children test their wings for the first time. They are too young to remember the fleeting feeling of deepest sorrow and rage that flashed briefly under their feelings of achievement.)
***
The Princess snarls as fiercely as he ever did. If she could, she’d be spitting flames.
He doesn’t see the truth in front of him.
(In his last moments, he wonders what could have been, if he and his children could have flown together. That would have been nice.)
***
Vader’s talons itch with wanting to kill his Master. To crush him, burn him, rend him limb from limb. His control on his savagery only loosens when he shifts skins (it never used to, did it?), it would be so easy…
He nearly did, once. But Sidious is fast, and lightning is faster. Even lightning can stop a dragon.
“You are mine,” he’d said, as Vader cowered, “and the dog does not attack the master.”
***
When he hears reports of one of the Rebels with an unusual surname becoming a golden dragon, it is fortunate the respirator keeps breathing for him. So distracted is he that he barely notices or cares that the officer reports it with wonder in his voice. That word spreads among the fleet on the back of hushed awe and amazement.
The child had lived. The child is like him.
***
He decides to toy with the Princess and her smuggler a little more while they stand at the edge of the carbon freezer. The horror rolling off the smuggler is practically visible when he changes. For the briefest moment Leia tenses, as if she is about to leap forward. She is as pale as her jacket, and a thousand emotions flicker across her face. She is clever, and may have figured out the reason Vader wants Luke. Just as intended.
(He does not know that he will haunt Solo’s carbon dreams, as a hulking black behemoth lurking in shadow. He does not know that when Han’s sight begins to return during a desert skirmish that his first reaction on seeing Luke spreading his wings in anger, larger and fiercer than he remembers and admittedly still fuzzy around the edges, will be one of pure terror.)
***
“That’s not true, that’s impossible!”
The gantry shrieks as Vader transforms.
“Use your eyes and search your feelings, you know it to be true.”
The shattering of the persona of Anakin Skywalker Luke had created was almost audible. As he stares at the scarred beast in front of him, with burning eyes and flesh melded with metal, Luke catches a glimpse of what he used to be. Strong. Proud. Whole.
Free.
Luke leaps upwards, wings snapping out as he flees, the stump of his front leg held to his chest. The sight of Vader staring up at him, in what Luke is shocked to recognise as wistfulness and envy rather than anger is something he will always carry with him.
***
The Emperor’s throne room on the second Death Star is enormous, built to accommodate the full size of his favourite pet. There is a rustle of scales as Vader slinks behind the Emperor’s chair, his eyes fixed on the floor.
“Ah yes,” the Emperor hisses, “I hear you have the same ability as your father. Prove it.”
Luke said nothing, though he looked at Vader as surreptitiously as possible when he felt a faint tap on their bond. Vader dipped his head ever so slightly.
“Two dragons,” Palpatine whispered, the greed and lust in his eyes making Luke’s scales crawl, “the only ones, both mine.”
Luke had snarled, and Vader couldn’t help feeling proud.
When Luke raises his ‘saber to bring it down on the Emperor, Vader’s tail knocks him aside. On instinct, his son shifts as he rolls down the steps, and while stalking towards him Vader is struck again by how small and fragile he looks at barely half his size.
(He notices resemblances too, he used to have large, wide wings like his son’s, and while Luke is more gracile in build and sleeker in scale, Vader remembers moving with the same fluid grace a lifetime ago.)
The differences are made starker again when Luke returns to human form, holding up his hands in a silent plea. Vader snorts, swishes his tail, but follows suit, some ridiculous moral code he thought dead with his old self stubbornly clinging to life.
(It doesn’t stop him from igniting his lightsaber though.)
***
Vader is pushed back now, doing what he can to block his son’s frenzied attacks. Suddenly, his hand is gone, and as he falls Luke rears, the transformation so swift it’s barely seen at all.
It is a very different creature pinning Vader to the floor now, with pupils so narrow they hardly exist, irises tinted with yellow. Their tentative mental link shakes under the assault of anger and fear, pounding to the beat of simple words: family sister my sister mine mine MINE
The dark scales on Luke’s back spread like black flowers unfurling, the yellow and gold darkening like bruises. Under his paw, which could crush his respirator with the slightest pressure, and with teeth poised to rip his throat out, Vader feels something he hasn’t in a long time.
Terror. Pure, primal terror.
He is held down by Luke’s metal paw, and as Luke looks at it a great shudder runs from head to tail. He blinks, pupils blown to their normal proportions, and staggers back, human again.
(Later, Luke will revisit this scene in his nightmares. But there he rips Vader apart with Palpatine’s laughter echoing in the background. He will wake, gagging on the non-existent taste of his father’s blood.)
***
It is difficult to kill a dragon.
Difficult, but not impossible.
He hangs on until they reach the forest moon, but denies his son’s request to find the medical frigate.
“Let me feel the air and see the stars one last time Luke.”
Anakin Skywalker dies in his son’s talons, feeling the wind rush by him and listening to it sing. He reaches through their bond and feels Luke’s wings as his own, Luke holding him close mentally and physically when Anakin’s strength begins to ebb.
It is the best flight Anakin has ever experienced.