“My boy… my sweet boy,” she cried, the words breaking over a sob.
He merely looked on, his expression carefully blank, staring at her with the wide-eyed, vacant confusion of one who had just returned from the brink of death.
Inside, he was dissecting her reaction, noting the tremors in her hands and the puffiness of her eyes.
“How… how long have I been asleep?” he asked.
His boyish voice was thin and reed-like, the pitch perfect for playing the part of a bewildered child.
“Three days,” she whispered, her hand trembling as she brushed a stray lock of auburn hair from his brow.
“And in that time, I stayed by your side every hour, checking upon you, praying to the Mother to keep you whole.”
‘How touching,’ the Sith Lord thought sarcastically, the sentiment holding no amount of feeling.
To her, he offered a weak, weary smile, a carefully calibrated twitch of the lips designed to placate her soaring emotions and draw her deeper into his orbit.
It was a weaponized comfort.
He mastered emotions, psychological manipulations, and facial expressions during his time as an apprentice and as a politician.
“My head hurts,” he murmured, raising a small, trembling hand to touch his temple.
Catelyn was on him instantly.
She mimicked the gesture, her palm warming against his skin, before sliding her hand down to the pulse point of his neck.
She was searching for the heat of the fever, desperate to see if the fire that had nearly consumed her son had finally burned itself out, and to her relief it was fading.
He sat perfectly still, a predator that allowed its prey to handle it.
He felt the frantic thrum of her heart through her hand; this here was a woman who would do anything for him.
He felt her feelings and her whole being through the force; he felt it all.
She was such a kind, loving mother, but she was also a weak-willed woman.
He needed her gone.
He needed silence to sift through the data of his new life without her mewling in his ears.
“Give me a moment, Mother.”
He didn’t just speak the words; he laced them with intent from the Force, a sharp, invisible needle stitching a command into the fabric of her mind.
Even in this childish body, the force mind trick felt as natural to him as breathing.
He felt the familiar resistance of a weak mind, followed by the satisfying snap of her will folding.
“I’ll… I’ll give you a moment, then,” Catelyn said.
Her voice had lost its melodic warmth, turning flat and oddly calm.
Her eyes glazed over for a second, the pupils dilating as the suggestion took root.
She didn’t question why she was leaving her “sick” son so soon after he woke; she simply stood, her movements stiff and mechanical, and walked toward the door.
She was no longer a grieving mother; she was a puppet whose strings had just been jerked.
The door thudded shut behind her.
He sank back into the furs, the mask of the innocent boy falling away to reveal the cold, calculating void beneath.
He needed to process the information he had scavenged from the boy’s memories, names, alliances, and the feudal structure of this ‘Westeros.’ The warmth of a father’s praise and the petty rivalries with siblings are all part of reaching the strategic marrow.
He was in a lost cage, but a Sith did not fear cages.
A Sith simply learned how to turn the bars into weapons.
He pulled on the dark side even more, forcing himself off this stiff cot of furs and fabrics called a bed.
He swung his legs around, his feet meeting the stone floor with a slap that sent a jolt of feeling through his body.
He wiggled his small toes, watching the movement with a detached fascination.
This body was a soft, unformed thing, but it was strangely resilient.
The raw power now coursing through him would have burst the heart of a weaker vessel upon transfer, yet this “Stark” blood seemed built to endure the power of the dark side.
He stood, his balance precarious, and surveyed the room.
His eyes landed on a polished copper lid resting atop a vanity.
He assumed it was meant to serve as a mirror, and indeed it was, as he saw a bucket in one corner holding what seemed like urine, a piss pot.
How far he had fallen.
Another sneer curled his lip.
How pathetic, he thought, his mind flashing to the obsidian halls of his inner palace and the flawless marble floors of his other secret villas and hideouts.
This world was so backwards; they lacked the basic technological advancement to produce silvered glass or a decent refresher.
They lived like insects in the dirt, preening themselves with scrap metal or whatever else they did.
He moved towards the copper surface, his gait uneven as he adjusted to the shorter center of gravity.
He reached out with a hand, steadying himself against the wood, and looked.
Through the distorted, orange tint of the copper, a face stared back.
Auburn hair, matted and wild.
High cheekbones are already beginning to sharpen.
And eyes, large, blue, and currently reflecting a visage that a nine-year-old boy would possess, indeed.
There was another observation: it couldn’t have been a coincidence; he looked awfully similar to that of his time as a younger boy on Naboo.
It wasn’t far off, and he wondered how that woman, his mother, looked so much like the real one he had rid himself of long ago.
It was a comely face.
A face people would trust.
A face of brightness, cheer, and youth.
The perfect camouflage, he realized as a smile took root at the thought of what he could do once again.
He leaned closer to the copper, his reflection warping in the metal.
He practiced a look of wide-eyed innocence, then a look of noble determination.
It was a facade he would wear until the day he found some way to return to the galaxy he knew.
He needed to contact his allies, his faithful through the Force, so they could find some way to reach him and take him away from this place and back to his fortress on Exegol, where he would wait, plot, and scheme to take revenge on Luke Skywalker and the rebels and purge the empire of the weakness that had failed him in destroying the rebellion.
Robb Stark, son of Eddard Stark.
This body and name will serve.
For now.
Hope you guys like it.