Author's Note: For those about to read this a few notes. First, this is a side fic of "Finishing the Hat" so if you haven't read at least part of that you'll be a tad confused. Second, this is obviously NOT CANON.

Once, perhaps, Anakin Skywalker won a pod race that he should never have lost in the first place.

"Mom, he sold the pod. Look at all the money we have!" Anakin burst into his home to where his mother was sweeping the floor, Qui-Gon behind him, and showed her all the credits practically falling out of his hands.

Behind her Lee and Obito loitered by the window, both watching with strangely blank looks on their faces, that look that said even now they were waiting for something unseen to happen, something Anakin couldn't even guess at but with the credits in hand he didn't have any time for that.

His mother's smile turned to one of delight as she walked over to him, closing her hands around his, "Oh, my goodness, that's wonderful."

It was more money than they'd ever had, even more than Lee or Obito had been able to get their hands on in months of being here. This was… This was real money, the kind of money that went towards freedom or buying a shop or all of those things that Anakin had only ever dreamed of.

Except even as he thought this, behind him, Qui-Gon said, "And Anakin has been freed."

Anakin turned back, some of the credits spilling out of his hands as he gaped at the man, wondering if he could have possibly heard right, "What?"

Qui-Gon though just smiled, a warm kind smile that reached his eyes in a way so few smiles did on this desert planet, "You're no longer a slave, Anakin."

Anakin said nothing for a moment, letting all the credits spill to a floor, and then a grin was on his face as he moved to his mother and Lee and Obito behind her, "Did you hear that, Mom? Did you hear that Lee, Obito…"

He then looked over to Qui-Gon, grinning, because he hadn't remembered anything like that being a part of winning before but then given that no human had ever come close to winning Anakin really hadn't paid too much attention, "Was that part of the prize?"

Qui-Gon's smile grew slightly more mischievous as he said, "Let's just say Watto has learned an important lesson about gambling."

"Now you can make your dreams come true, Annie. You're free!" Shmi said, pulling Anakin close and hugging him tightly with tears in the corner of her eyes.

Over this though, in a voice far less joyful but instead distant and stoic, Lee said, "So then, Jinn, Anakin Skywalker is going to become a jedi?"

Anakin paused, looked back, saw Lee and Obito both giving Qui-Gon a rather pointed look which Qui-Gon did not flinch under. An undercurrent of tension flooded the room and suddenly Anakin felt as if he didn't understand what was going on at all. Even as Qui-Gon said, to both the pair and to Anakin, "Our meeting was not a coincidence. Nothing happens by accident, a fact I'm sure you're both as painfully aware of as I am."

Qui-Gon then turned to Anakin, a regretful look on his face as he said, "Anakin, you may not be accepted by the council. More, training to be a jedi is not easy, and even if you succeed it is a hard life filled with sacrifice."

Anakin opened his mouth, and he didn't know what to think then, and even in retrospect, but it was like the words just spilled out of his mouth, "But it's what I want, what I've always dreamed about!"

Lee sighed, stepped forward from the window, and for a moment she was bathed in the golden light of the desert. She kneeled down in front of him, took Anakin's hands in hers, squeezing them gently, "Anakin, this path is yours and yours alone, but this… If you want to become a shinobi, rather than a jedi… Then this will be your last chance."

Obito looked down at her, his own twin eyes filled with something as he quietly said, "Shishou."

Lee paid him no mind, apparently having come to her own unshakeable decision.

Her eyes were such a burning green as she looked at him, even as he opened his mouth to ask what the difference truly was, and she continued, "I don't know anything about the jedi, I don't know anything about the kind of life they live, so… Think carefully, Anakin, I wish I could offer you more time, more information, but we can't choose the time where we meet crossroads like these. So, choose very carefully."

"Choose carefully?!" Obito hissed in his native tongue, "Shishou, we know nothing about them, he knows nothing about them! More, we've been training him for months now, standard stuff I know, but are we really going to let…"

"It is still his choice," Lee said back, not even looking at her apprentice, "And if he chooses this road instead, then so be it. And if he chooses our path and leaves behind everything he's ever known, well then, that's his choice too. Nonetheless, it's his choice, and I won't make it for him."

"How do you know if he has any idea what he's choosing?!" Obito asked, as if Anakin wasn't even there, couldn't hear and understand everything he'd said.

"Do any of us, Obito?" Lee asked in turn, and then, still looking deep into Anakin's eyes, as if to the very depths of his soul, she said in Basic again, "Choose carefully, Anakin Skywalker."

Choose carefully, she said, in a second choose carefully even when, at the end of things, he knew so little about Konoha or the jedi order. Except, at the end of things, his dreams had always been filled with jedi knights and star ships, and more, his dreams were filled with Padme. Somehow, looking at Lee, he knew that if he went with her then he'd lose Padme in every way that mattered.

That even if he did ever see her again, somehow came back to the republic from a planet that only Obito and Lee had ever heard of, they'd be strangers to one another.

So, looking over at his mother, at Obito then Lee, then Qui-Gon he said, "I want to go."

Lee stood, head bowed, shadows falling over her face as she simply nodded, stepping back to stand even with Obito even as Qui-Gon, nodding towards her with an odd look in his eyes, said, "Then pack your things, Anakin. We don't have much time."

Anakin reached over, hugged his mother tightly, then made his way over to his room to begin packing all of his things, until he stopped in his tracks. He turned, looked back, watched Qui-Gon and his mom just stare at each other, like they were having a conversation that Anakin couldn't hear.

"What about mom?" Anakin asked, "Is she free too?"

Qui-Gon opened his mouth, an apologetic and sorrowful look on his face that told Anakin all he needed to know, that Watto wouldn't have gambled with the lives of both of his slaves and…

Lee interjected, summoning the credits off the floor much to the raised eyebrows of Qui-Gon, "That, Anakin, Obito and I can take care of. Consider it one last gift."

"But I…"

His mother, who seemed so fragile yet so happy at the same time, moved over and took Anakin's hands in hers, "My place is here, Anakin, my future is here. You though, oh Annie, you have so many worlds ahead of you and I can't stand in the way of that. You have to let me go, Annie, and just know that I will always love you no matter how far you wander."

Anakin felt tears burning in the corner of his eyes, as he whispered, "I'm going to miss you so much."

Then, looking at Lee, he asked, "You promise, Lee? You promise that you and Obito will free her?"

Lee made some hand motion, a proverbial tipping of a hat, as she said with a small smile, "I don't think I could do anything less, Anakin Skywalker."

Anakin just nodded, forcing tears away from his eyes, and then fled to the other room to pack his things, pretending not to hear as his mother assured Qui-Gon that it was alright because, "He was in my life for such a short time."

And as Anakin, later, walked away from everything he'd ever known with a simple pack, following after the jedi Qui-Gon Jinn, he didn't look back. His mother's words rang in his ears, so, he didn't look back and couldn't even guess what expression Lee, his mother, and Obito were staring at him with.

He told himself that he'd see them again, all three of them, but he never would.

When he finally, ten years later as a jedi, came back to find his mother she had indeed been freed by Lee and Obito some years ago, but had married a moisture farmer at the end of the desert. The sand people raided the farm and tore her apart. Anakin destroyed every last inch of that village until nothing was left but blood and smoke.

No, Anakin Skywalker would never see any of them again. Would know Qui-Gon Jinn for such a short amount of time before the man was slain on Naboo, leaving Anakin to the care ant tutelage of his young grieving padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi. Would only find Padme again after ten years and even then, only manage to truly hold onto her for three more. And Obi-Wan, well, there was no end to the bitterness he felt towards Obi-Wan Kenobi's treacherous shadow.

Vader though, Vader, at the very least, would see Lee Eru, shinobi master one last time after it was all long since over.

He found her on the edge of the empire, an unknown thorn in his side wreaking havoc on what was left of Kashyyyk. She did not even run, didn't hide, but just waited with a strange smile on her face until he himself, Lord Vader and second in command of the empire, descended to the planet to put a stop to her once and for all.

And there she was, sitting in an unassuming tree home of some fled Wookie family, pale, red-headed, the force burning within her so brightly that it was a wonder he didn't go blind just staring at her, and even fifteen years later she looked as if she hadn't even aged a day.

Hadn't even had the decency to age when Anakin Skywalker's body had burned and left only this hulking mechanical husk behind.

"You," he said slowly, the dark side of the force dancing at his wrathful call, "You have some nerve, Lee Eru of Konohagakure."

"Forgive me, Anakin," she said, perfectly at ease with the blood and the death and the dark side of the force lingering in the room as she sat perfectly still in her chair, pouring herself a cup of tea out of thin air, a miracle that he hadn't thought to question as an ignorant child but now seethed at even as she continued, "I was… delayed for many years."

"Delayed," he said shortly, with no small amount of mirth, as if she believed Anakin had truly been expecting and waiting for her and…

And perhaps he had, perhaps, as Anakin Skywalker had looked towards Palpatine and the dark side of the force in desperation, perhaps he had also thought of Lee Eru and thought that if anyone could save his wife and child it would be her. Except the galaxy hadn't seen a single sign of Lee since that last day on Tatooine.

She had abandoned them, abandoned him, with such ease.

"War," Lee said shortly, "Or something close to it. Shortly after you left with the jedi there was an attempted kidnapping by Kumo of the Hyuga clan heir. This won't mean much to you but to us… It was very nearly a fourth war, a show of power was needed, and tensions for years were on the rise as Suna grew more impoverished and desperate, Kiri destroyed itself in bitter civil war, and Iwa slavered at the thought of revenge against the yondaime hokage. It was a long time until I could be spared again."

She looked over at him, seemed to somehow see through the dark mask, and noted with a wry smile, "Though, I suppose that means very little to you."

He reached out in the force, lifted her out of her seat and pinned her in the air, the air like dark fingers wrapping around her pale and delicate looking throat. However, Lee was no common soldier to be put gasping and shaking in his place, and the force struck back at him with blinding strength as Lee swatted him down like a fly, looking as if he'd never touched her in the first place.

What a jedi, what a sith, this strange woman would have made.

"You're correct, it does mean little, to me and to the empire," Vader said, motioning out towards the burning planet they had found themselves in, "Any opportunity for good, for saving the jedi, for saving the republic, has slipped through your fingers, Lee Eru."

She just looked at him, looked at him as if he was the one who was missing something here, and finally, still sipping her tea with all the serenity of his old infuriating master, she said, "It was your choice, Anakin, not mine."

He paused, those words sliding into him as easily as Sidious' did, and he wanted to laugh and scream in the same moment, "My choice? Are you implying, Lee, that the choice of an ignorant child is responsible for all this?"

"You had a choice, Anakin," Lee insisted, leaning forward across the table, green eyes somehow seeing through the suit to the shriveled remains of Anakin Skywalker, "Which is more than most people receive."

"How was I supposed to know what the jedi really were?!" he asked, hands pounding down on the table, "How was I supposed to know what the republic was?! Anakin Skywalker was a child slave who dreamed of being a jedi! How could you have expected that ignorant thing to make a choice?!"

"Life is, one can say, a series of choices," Lee mused, pale fingers tapping against the wood of the table, and oh how Vader longed to break them, to break them and break this woman and see her weep before him, "And for better or worse, you have consistently chosen to destroy yourself and everything you've ever loved. If it makes you feel better though, Obito is of your opinion. He thought you were in no position to make that sort of decision. But then, had I simply kidnapped you and hauled your unwilling ass to Konoha, watched as you mired yourself in bitterness and rage, I believe we'd still be in the same position we are today. Only, you would be holding your separation from Padme Amidala over my head instead of Kenobi's."

What would she know about that? What could she possibly know about Obi-Wan Kenobi, about Padme, about his son, and that last horrific day on Mustafar? She had not been there. No, she and her apprentice had been notably absent from the universe on a day when perhaps they had been needed more than any other.

"Out of respect for Obito, and respect for what you once were, and perhaps even respect for Kenobi, I have come, Anakin, to offer you another choice," Lee's words interrupted his thought, and he looked over to her, noting the unnatural way she seemed to glow. Perhaps, in the way, that Anakin had once nearly glowed with the light side of the force and all his raw power.

"Another choice?" he asked, "What do you think you can offer me, woman, that I cannot simply take?"

"Oblivion," Lee said shortly, and yet the word almost seemed to echo inside his mind, "I can end this, for you, here and now."

"End this?" he asked, "You mean end me? You think you have the power…"

"I might be the only one who does have the power," Lee said calmly, not a hint of doubt in her mind as the force burned within her, "More, this will be your last chance to make this choice so easily. Anakin, you are barely even a person anymore, and if you keep going… Well, you know where this road leads."

"Do I?"

"Slavery, the death of planets, poverty, despair…" Lee trailed off, "This isn't a world you have to live in. So, Anakin, choose very carefully."

Choices, he was tired of her choices, no, her illusion of choices. Just as when he was a child he knew there was no true choice here, Anakin Skywalker was always going to damn himself on the jedi path, just as he now would not take her offer of an honorable suicide.

No, there had only been one time the woman could have been of any use, and that was years ago now, on the day Obi-Wan Kenobi turned Padme against him.

So, Anakin simply ignited his lightsaber, a glowing, burning, red, and struck down over the table and over Lee Eru's pretty head. However, before it could strike she was already gone, the force only whispering in her absence while she, once again, just like everyone else in his life, danced out of reach like she had never been there in the first place.

Author's Note: Requested by the 600th reviewer of "Finishing the Hat", KYnR who asked for a fic where, for whatever reason, Obito and Lee leave the story early and then Lee later meets Vader. So, we have this, oh Anakin, you're so good at destroying yourself.

Thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, Naruto, or Star Wars