Chapter 4

.o.o.o.o.o.

Their short stay upon Cantonica was over less than twenty six standard hours from when it began. A quick, efficient stop, Vader thought. Exactly what he'd intended. Before leaving self-proclaimed businessman, Lando Calrissian to his embarrassing fate, Vader had instructed Ahsoka to encourage the man's silence in whatever way she deemed fit. He could only hope she proved persuasive enough. The ISB and the Inquisition and whoever else might be lurking in their wake would be slowed in their chase by the same degree that Calrissian could hold his tongue.

Vader was not optimistic.

They requisitioned the modified Corellian light freighter from Calrissian, Ahsoka having stolen his access cylinder at some point in the night. The exterior was... tasteless to say the least, with its neon paint job and shag-covered interior. But what was worse was the condition it turned out to be in.

It certainly hadn't looked so poorly put-together from the outside, Vader mused once they were well into their trans-galactic journey.

He opened the rusted hatch in the floor that would allow him to access the fuel lines and locate the leak. He wriggled down into the innards of the ship until he could crawl along the greasy duct. The metal walls amplified the sickly whine of the hyperdrive, causing a stir of unease in his gut. This type of ship did not have the endurance for the long hyperspace jumps it was being put through, but they were now on their final jump. It must hold. He shimmied along, tools clenched in both fists until he was upon the leak.

He worked, gagging from the strong stench of fuel by the time the problem had been dealt with. Turning in the confined space, he crawled his way back to the hatch, but not before a relief valve of some sort belched hot steam into his face. Freshly burned and glowering, he pulled himself back into the main body of the ship, consoling himself with the fact that he would soon be ruling the galaxy and such tasks would be beneath him.

He growled in annoyance when he noticed a warning light blinking on the life support control panel and trudged over to assess the problem. The exchanger had failed a few hours ago, and oxygen levels were falling, but they would make it, so long as he could contain each catastrophe as it arose.

The lights flickered overhead and a different console started producing a low beeping, indicating a new malfunction. Vader tossed his hydrospanner at the offending machine.

"-can you hear me?" came Ahsoka's uncertain voice over the intership com, barely audible from within the static. She didn't wait for an answer. "We're reverting soon and I'm gonna need all the help I can get up here."

Vader left the engine room in order to return to the cockpit, realizing there was little else he could do. The air in the cockpit was already hot and stale, and Vader felt a new twinge of annoyance when he saw what awaited him inside. The Togruta woman he currently called a traveling companion wore nothing but her scant underclothes, and was currently bent over the console housing the flight computer.

He held his tongue this time, knowing he'd soon find the temperature uncomfortable as well, perhaps more-so, considering his greatly diminished number of sweat glands.

"We're two minutes from realspace in the Tatoo system," she informed Vader, mopping beaded sweat from her brow, "But we have another problem. I think this ship was stolen even before we stole it."

"It does not surprise me," Vader replied. It wasn't as if the man they'd taken it from had a habit of honest transactions.

"The system keeps locking me out. I don't think Calrissian had the proper access codes at all. He was using a backdoor of some sort but it keeps failing." Vader sat in the chair aside hers, attempting to make sense of what she was telling him. The computer system was refusing to navigate past the welcome screen and only basic functions were available. The ship didn't even seem to recognize that it was in hyperspace.

"Everything will have to be done by hand," Vader realized, "Start making the necessary calculations."

"I have, but I cannot change the values for the atmospheric shielding," Ahsoka said, mild alarm was now creeping into her voice. Reversion was fast approaching, which would dump them within Tatooine's gravitational influence. Vader's eyes tracked over the flight console, over each of his manual controls as he thought hard.

"Use the deflector shields," Vader decided.

"They'll siphon all our power. We won't have anything left for the landing," Ahsoka argued.

"Would you rather burn up in atmosphere?" he snapped at her. She flinched and silently went to work. The situation was indeed dire, cutting off all her usual commentary, but Vader found it was doing wonders for his concentration.

Reversion was jarring, and the impact of it threw them both forward in their seats. Vader took a moment to recover from the awkward transition, cursing the Corellian shipmaker that had decided this heap of parts was fit for production.

Ahsoka prepared for what was certain to be a rough landing. She pulled on her usual layers of clothing and brought an emergency pack to her seat with her before fastening the seldom-used restraints.

Tatooine was below them, calling them down like a siren with her red sands. Tatooine. Why did it seem as though this desolate, insignificant rock was refusing to let him go? Why was he lead back here time and time again as though it were actually the center of the galaxy? After his last visit he'd vowed never to return. There was nothing for him on-planet any longer, only memories that Darth Vader had no use for.

The viewport was already glowing from their entry into the atmosphere, and in a few short minutes, their power levels had depleted almost to the point of exhaustion. They were free falling with all other systems failing. Gravity held them in place and they both held their breath as they spiraled toward the surface.

"In case the worst should happen," Ahsoka said, "...It was nice... knowing you again."

Coming from her, it was unexpectedly sincere, and Vader had nothing to say to it. His hands yanked on the stick so hard he was afraid he might break it. He was fortunate. The ship responded by changing the angle of their dive enough to avoid certain death. They skipped once across the sand, hit a bank with one wing and flipped forward.

Consciousness ceased there.

He remembered all those years ago, when he'd been a young boy toiling away in a parts shop. The days had been monotonous and uneventful, filled with hours upon hours of small repair jobs on droids. Life had been so dull that when the occasional customer trusted him with a landspeeder repair he'd be ecstatic, and he'd extol his mother with the details for days after.

He'd stared at the girl when she'd come into Watto's shop because he'd never seen anything like her. She wasn't simply beautiful. She was otherworldly, incomprehensible, a complete wonder on which to feast his eyes. And he could not deny that he had held that image of Padme in his mind every single day thereafter. She, herself, was a focal point in his life. And he had been irrevocably changed just by laying his eyes upon her.

Calling her an angel had been a reflex, because he knew there was no way she could be the same creature as him- something so flawed and so base.

The suns cast their rays into his eyes, blinding him, as heat licked at his sides to let him know he was burning again. A shadow fell over him, hands grasped his arms and began to drag him through rough sand that scraped against him like shards of glass. This time, he thought not of the Angels of Iego and their divine beauty. Instead, what came to mind were the legendary shadow huntresses of Carakala, goddesses of war and blood sacrifice.

She hauled him into the shade of the nearest ridge, panting with the effort. When she leaned over him the tips of her montrals lightly brushed the skin of his neck and face.

"Hey," she said breathlessly, lightly slapping his scarred cheek with her palm, "Keep those eyes open for a bit. You're concussed."

Suddenly, everything slid back into focus and reality caught up with him. It was fortunate that Ahsoka withdrew and gave him back some dignity in that moment or he might have shoved her away. He coughed and spat a sandy mouthful at the wide open sky, pretending that he was spitting in the face of the forces of the universe that wanted him dead. He sat up against the rock wall, already feeling the beginnings of a splitting headache. Sand had packed into the joints of his mechanical limbs, causing their movements to become stiff. He could feel the coarse grains peppered into his sparse hair and lodged between the layers of his clothing. The view of the endless, red dunes before him was mocking in its harsh beauty, welcoming him home in the most cruel of ways, and he stared back at it with all his hatred.

They could make no move from their patch of shade until nightfall, and so hours passed in which they did nothing but watch the suns' positions in the sky. When twilight came, Ahsoka attempted to pack what supplies she could salvage from the wreck, and Vader noticed her favoring her right arm.

"It's nothing," she dismissed when he sent a questioning probe through the Force. When she next walked past him, he reached out and snatched her wrist, causing her to cry out in agony while held in his grip.

"It is not nothing," Vader replied, examining the appendage. It was badly swollen, and he could feel the misalignment of the bones beneath his fingers. "It is broken." He directed her to sit as he navigated the medi-pack to his side, pulling out the bacta-infused dressings. She submitted to his care, finally relaxing under his close scrutiny as he wound the bandages tightly around her wrist. He located more injuries along the same side of her body- bruising, cuts, and a fractured clavicle that would require her to carry her arm in an improvised sling.

She was damaged. She would be of little use in a fight with these injuries. He knew it. She knew it, and it clearly troubled her. She feared he would discard her, and perhaps she was right to fear such a thing.

Because for a fleeting moment he had felt guilt over her injuries and he wondered if he should cut ties with her in order to saver her more suffering. He shouldn't feel such things. She was a soldier under his direction. A tool. And she had volunteered herself to such abuse besides.

Night was truly upon them and he shouldered the bag containing their meager belongings. It would be a dry, hot walk, but the ship's coordinates had put them within a day's travel of Mos Espa. Ahsoka fell in beside him, arm set in a sling around her neck and together they disappeared into the vastness of the desert.

.o.o.o.o.o.

The sky faded into further darkness as the hours passed. It seemed as though every star in the galaxy was on display, uninhibited by the light pollution of a dense city. In the night the desert became an ocean of blackness and they were lost in its inky, shadowy depths.

It hearkened back to an earlier time, Ahsoka realized as they walked. One of their very first missions together had been to Tatooine. She had attempted to pry into his past and he had rebuffed her. She didn't have the courage to try again now.

But this was his home, wasn't it? Did being here make him feel anything at all?

Old sins cast long shadows.She had always wondered why Master Yoda had first uttered that phrase in reference to Anakin, but now she understood. Anakin had interpreted it as, Your past can ruin your future if you let it. Except that was an oversimplification. Past mistakes and past trauma could ruin your future if they could not be overcome.

Small hints from Obi-Wan over the years had helped her to piece together her master's life before the Jedi temple. It was well known that he had been too old when he was presented before the council and he would not have been trained if not for Qui-Gon's insistence. What was not well-known was that Anakin had once been a slave. Even less known was the fact that upon returning to Tatooine during his padawan years, he'd found his mother brutally beaten and she'd died in his arms.

Did he consider that event an old sin? Was it even now casting a long shadow?

Vader kept up a brutal pace and Ahsoka began to struggle to keep up. The broken bones in her collar and her wrist stabbed her with every step she took and she could feel the beginnings of a fever in response to the injuries sustained in the crash.

She could not become a burden to him. The moment she proved useless to him would mark the end of their cooperation. She had promised him, hadn't she? She wouldn't leave him.

The night wore on and pain and exhaustion frayed her determination. When they were still several hours from dawn, the light of the stars was suddenly snuffed out. Complete blackness overtook them until they could no longer even see the glow on the horizon that was their destination. The wind began to pick up, starting as a light breeze and quickly becoming a torrent of air. Sand blew into her face, into her eyes, into her mouth until she thought to pull the front of her robe over her face. She could not hear. She could not see. Even the Force seemed strangely muted and out of reach, but through it she could still sense that they were surrounded by flat nothingness with nowhere to shelter. She was stricken by the immense power of nature and its destructive capabilities. Here was a true display of the Force, an event of such energy that no Jedi or Sith could ever come close of accomplishing, and it sucked all of the power of the ethereal into a swirling vortex that she could not access.

Eventually, she stumbled to her knees, caught by her good arm, and she found that she did not have the strength to stand again. The sand she had fallen upon seemed cool and comfortable and it might be nice to curl up against the wind and wait until the storm had passed.

She almost ignored the questioning probe in the Force when it finally reached her.

I'll catch up, she sent sleepily. Just a rest. A short rest. Drowning. She was drowning in exhaustion and darkness and sand and wind.

In answer to her distress, a part of her that had long laid dormant suddenly flared to life. It was the bond in the Force that the two of them had once shared. A stressed and neglected link, abandoned and mostly forgotten since the day she had walked away from the Jedi temple. She hadn't realized how desperately she had been reaching for it- like she had been pounding at a locked door with all of her strength before it had finally been flung open from the other side.

Flooded with warmth and relief and peace, she did not notice the arms that came to lift her. Nor did she wake when she was pulled atop another's back and carried along.

When she next opened her eyes it was to the blueish light of dawn. Thirst scratched at the back of her throat and her head throbbed in dehydrated protest. Her broken arm and shoulder ached fiercely when she moved them. Reality fell in around her and she realized she was lying in the shade of an abandoned sandcrawler. As she sat up, a damp piece of cloth that had been laid across her forehead fell into her lap. A canteen of water had been set nearby. Dizzily, she reached for it and guzzled the last of its contents greedily.

Vader was sat crosslegged at the edge of the sandcrawler's shade. He'd shed his robe and tunic, leaving his scarred torso bare in the morning light. It was hard to look upon his ruined form. Though still thickly muscled, his skin was pale and mottled with old burns that must extend to his entire body, or at least what was left of it. She could see where the prosthetics of his arms met the flesh. His head was bowed and his mechanical fingers raked through his sparse hair in an attempt to remove the coarse sand grains that had settled there.

Why? She desperately wanted to ask. You could have just left me to die. It was confusing. This man was not Anakin Skywalker, he had proven that much to her. No more were they master and padawan. No more could she even call him a friend or a brother-in-arms. And yet he shared her company, bandaged her wounds, and carried her to shelter. What did he want? Certainly, he knew why she was still here. She'd made little effort to hide her curiosity and her desire to understand the man that he had become. His own motives regarding her were not so clear, unfortunately.

"Have you recovered your strength?" Vader asked without turning to her, breaking the silence of the still dawn.

"I have," she answered.

"Then let us press on before the heat becomes... disagreeable."

Together, they left their shelter and made for the cluster of domed, dust-coated buildings that were finally in sight. A dirt road formed under their feet and their surroundings melded into the edges of the city.

Ships headed for the spaceport landing pads thundered overhead. The streets of the lower districts stank in the heat. Sentients pulled veils and brimmed hats over their sun-baked faces and swatted away flies. There was little reason to be out and about in the unbearable high noon temperatures, and so there were few people lingering outdoors. They simply shuffled from one, grimy establishment to the next.

Vader led her into a marketplace of sorts, though most of the vendors seemed to have deserted their stalls for shadier places in the extreme heat of the day.

She followed him through the mess of tents and stands. He towered over the scuttling Jawas, Dugs and other shorter species. Sentients looked up as he passed them, immediately singling him out as an oddity, an outsider. Ahsoka got the distinct feeling of being... unwelcome.

They came upon a small, domed building with a canvas awning. An elderly, grizzled toydarian was sat with a mess of droid parts in front of him. Vader stopped before the creature, casting a shadow over his work, but the Toydarian was so involved in his project that he failed to notice.

Some time passed and nothing happened, leaving Ahsoka puzzled as to what her old master was doing. What did he need droid parts for? Eventually Vader reached out a metallic hand and, with surprising gentleness, took the droid motivator from the Toydarian's shaking fingers. He proceeded to untangle the wires before setting the part back down. The blue-skinned alien finally raised his head, and Ahsoka saw that his eyes were opaque and unseeing in his advanced age.

Finally, Vader said something in Huttese. Her understanding of the language was not perfect, but she caught the meaning anyway.

"I'm looking for Luke Skywalker," he rumbled in his menacing voice. Though Vader's forwardness surprised her, the Toydarian's answer was even more shocking. His attention remained on his work, and he seemed not perturbed in the slightest.

"You should not have come back here, boy. You haunt me enough, eh. You and your mother both."

"Tell me about Luke Skywalker," Vader growled, insistent.

"Don't say the name," the Toydarian snapped with a sharp gesture, "It's taboo around here now. Mention that name and the bounty hunters come calling."

"You know something," Vader rumbled, stepping closer. The old parts dealer was not so easily intimidated. He was too wizened, too close to death to respond to threats.

"I think you know where to look," the alien said in a low voice. Vader's hand was resting above his lightsaber.

None of this bizarre exchange meant anything to Ahsoka. This Toydarian could only be someone from her master's whole minute Vader stood, unmoving and unblinking, lost in silent contemplation, thoughts completely obscured in the Force.

The moment was broken with a peal of childish laughter. Two children, a human girl and a Rhodian boy emerged from the building. The boy was armed with a hydrospanner and the girl carried what looked to have once been a buzz droid clutched to her chest. Ahsoka couldn't help her smile as they circled back around the Toydarian and watched Vader cautiously.

A middle-aged human woman followed from the building, an exasperated expression in her lined face. "Watto, dear. Come inside. It is too hot to be working outdoors." She smiled politely when she suddenly noticed Vader and Ahsoka.

"Oh pardon me," she began kindly, "Is there something I can help you with?"

Vader's slow building rage had somehow been halted. He'd gone stiff, and he stared at the woman as if she were a ghost from the past.

"No," Vader growled eventually, "There is nothing more I require."

Then, with a final glare, he stepped away and left the Toydarian and the puzzled human woman to their business. Something about that conversation appeared to have shaken him, though she dared not question him about it.

They moved through the market, buying water, some questionable meat upon a spits, and making casual inquiries about the Millenium Falcon that yielded little. They eventually purchased a landspeeder using the credits Ahsoka had won in her sabacc game on Cantonica. She watched sullenly as they changed hands, wishing she could have spent them on a bed and a refreshing shower instead.

And then they were on the road once again, leaving the respectable bits of civilization behind in favor of the more lawless parts of the planet.

.o.o.o.o.o.

Vader drove them through the night and the next morning they were stopped at a crossroads with nothingness in every direction. The sun beat down upon them relentlessly. Aside him, Ahsoka took out her holomap of the landscape and studied it.

"From what little we know, we may want to hang around the cantinas of Mos Eisley for a bit and see if our mark has docked in town. Otherwise we might want to try scouting out Jabba's palace. Apparently, Solo owes a pretty substantial sum to the crime lord, and rumor has it that he might return any day to settle up."

Vader was hardly listening to her. Her words were nearly lost in the whistling wind as the desert consumed him. More and more, his original motivation for coming to Tatooine had faded. He could not bring himself to care about Solo, or the Millenium Falcon, or even Luke Skywalker. His demons were calling to him, begging him to put them to rest once and for all.

Vader turned the speeder onto the narrow trail leading away from Mos Eisley, the opposite of the direction that Ahsoka had been indicating. She huffed in frustration.

"Just where do you think you are taking us?" she demanded to know. He looked to her, wondering for a moment how he had gotten to this point, sitting in a speeder in the hot sun on a hopeless mission and listening to her yap at him. He felt as though he was still living during the Clone Wars.

Everything between then and now could have just been a dream, a vision. A nightmare, perhaps? He crushed the thought immediately. He'd accomplished more as Darth Vader than the entire Jedi Order had managed in centuries of existence. The time he'd spent as a Jedi, and as a soldier in the Clone Wars had been a simple era in his life. It was... pure... in a way, unburdened by responsibility or questions of morality. But that life had also been a lie, and he had since discovered the truth.

"A short detour," Vader finally answered.

They reached the house when the sun was high. It was a small dome perched upon the edges of the Jundland Wastes, overlooking a vast plot of land. Vaporators dotted the flat earth, arranged in a semi-regular pattern and spaced at even intervals. The furthest were only white specs in the distance.

Vader stepped from the vehicle and Ahsoka followed close behind, reduced to quiet curiosity.

"I think you know where to look." Those low-spoken words uttered by the old Toydarian had set his nerves on end, and had made the visit to this run-down moisture farm inevitable.

He'd been uncertain as to what he'd find upon arrival, but charred remains had not been forefront in his mind. The house had suffered a fire in the recent past, with even the outside stone covered in black soot.

He swept across the property, almost relieved that he need not confront any living inhabitants. They would not know him any longer, and in truth, what would he have done to them? Would he have run his saber through them as he had with other relics of his past? Would he have allowed them to cower in their home while he payed his respects for the final time?

The physical evidence of what had transpired was difficult to ignore. Footprints that had survived in windless alcoves clearly belonged to stormtroopers, as did the blaster-made scorch marks. Even without those things, the Force whispered of violence and terror, a man and woman begging for their lives with weapons pointed in their faces.

He did not know how the Lars' might have run afoul of the law, or the crime that might have warranted such a barbaric execution. The truth was that the Empire conducted summary punishments such as this with very little justification in many of the systems that they controlled. Once upon a time, Vader, caught up in Palpatine's authoritarian fantasies, had considered such measures necessary. However, to see how they might have been put to use on people he had known personally was unsettling to say the least.

He found his mother's grave in the place where he had laid her to rest. He knelt, hunched over the crudely made headstone for several minutes, reveling in what once was. He tried to imagine her face, her scent, her laughter, desperately chasing threads of sensation, but they all slipped from his grasp. Time had eroded memories even more harshly than the sand had eroded the large rock before him.

He reached out a metal hand, allowing his palm to rest against the sun-warmed stone and he bowed his head in anguish.

Even before the Force alerted him, Vader heard the unmistakable noise of a blaster discharging its fuel cell. His head snapped up. Someone was here. Someone was watching them. The scars in the Force surrounding this homestead had momentarily blinded him to any outside dangers. He rose from the dusty ground. Everything was still and quiet again, though now Vader's hand went to his belt where his saber hung.

Ahsoka was at his side in an instant, having noticed his changed demeanor. Years of sleepless nights upon battlefields and behind enemy lines had taught her never to ignore such signals from him.

"Four?" she guessed in a hushed tone, casting her senses out.

"Five," Vader corrected as he zeroed in on all the hidden lifeforms. Ahsoka stepped in front of him, adopting a defensive stance, though she had not yet drawn her saber.

"Who's there?" she called into the dusty air, "We don't want any trouble. We're only passing through."

"Stand down, stand down," called the voice of an older man, somewhere beyond the crest of the dune before them. Four masked hunters stood, revealing how they'd managed to encircle the small structure, though they did not fully lower their lethal-looking blaster rifles.

The man who had spoken rose from his own vantage, hand-held blaster still at the ready. He was portly, a little beyond middle aged, balding, though he still managed a thick, grey mustache. He was dressed in clothing that could be considered well-to-do, though that was only by Tatooine's standards. He approached so that he was close enough to address them, though his tone was anything but friendly.

"You strangers are trespassing," he informed them, fingers hooked into his belt as he attempted to study them with an air of authority, "Folks get shot for less around here, I'll have you know."

A moment passed in which none of them moved. Ahsoka was poised, awaiting Vader's response and he contemplated, gold eyes flicking toward each of the rifles trained upon him. It was unfortunate that allowing bodies to pile up wherever he went was a sure to leave a trail for interested parties to follow.

The newcomer was busy studying their robes and the weapons upon their belts with shrewd eyes.

"You're part of the same cult as old Ben Kenobi, I'd reckon. If you're looking for him, he lives out in the Wastes, though no one's seen him in months."

Ahsoka's eyes widened and she looked to Vader again, but his narrowed gaze told her to remain silent. What else might this fool tell them?

"This is the residence of Cliegg Lars, is it not?" said Vader shortly, taking it upon himself to make dialogue.

"Who wants to know?"

"A long lost relation," he growled in response. The man's eyebrows drew up in surprise and he gazed upon Vader with renewed interest, attempting to see beneath the hood of his cloak.

"The old man died long ago. Left the property to his son and daughter-in-law," the stranger relented.

"Owen and Beru," Vader recalled their names, dredging them up from the depths of Anakin Skywalker's memory. The man before him nodded solemnly.

"Dead too. A damn shame. Got into some trouble with the Imps, it would seem."

"Imperial stormtroopers did this?" Ahsoka blurted, gazing at the destruction anew.

"Why?" Vader asked the man. His answer was preceded by a shrug.

"Hell if I know. An altercation over some droids if the stories are to be believed. Anyway, you're too late. The property went to auction at the end of the season. This land now belongs to the Darklighter family."

"I care not for this dirt hovel and the sand it sits upon," Vader snarled.

"Then I suggest you folks be on your way."

Vader did not move from the grave. His hand still gripped the warm stone as he glared at the newcomer. His mother's resting place was sacred. He could not bear the thought that it might soon be dozed over to make place for a new dwelling. Or perhaps a vaporator would be placed over her, so that a young slave could toil away atop her dead body.

Inexplicably, the portly stranger lowered his blaster and his expression softened. He stepped closer so that when he next spoke, he no longer had to raise his voice to be heard over the desert wind.

"She was a good woman," the older man said gruffly as he gestured at the grave, "Tough as nails. Skin thick as a bantha's. When she was taken, Cliegg was beside himself. I organized the first search party in his stead, but I was young and stupid. I led several men to their deaths that day," He holstered his blaster and held out his hand, "I'll give her all the respect she deserves, you have my word on that. The name's Huff Darklighter, by the way."

Vader ignored the offered hand. He did not care to hear a retelling of his mother's capture and death. He was already far too familiar. If not for the four hired guns currently pointing blaster riffles at his back, he might have already hauled this man up by his collar and smashed his face against his mother's gravestone. He was making too many dangerous assumptions. The man had guessed him to be Anakin Skywalker. It was, perhaps, a reasonable conclusion to draw given that he was standing guard over Shmi Skywalker's grave and had claimed to be a relation of the Lars'. His former self was not entirely unknown in these parts, after all.

Darklighter let his hand fall eventually, face hardening.

"If you're looking for your boy, I can only tell you that he's long gone. Seems to have made something of himself among the rebels though. Name's all over the holonet."

"Boy?" Ahsoka repeated.

Shmi Skywalker.

Anakin Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi.

It really couldn't be that simple, could it?

"I think you know where to look."

He could not ignore the prompting from the Force.

"Like I said, you're too late. Nineteen years too late," Darklighter continued, "That child needed a father and where were you? Off living a spacer's life."

A crack split his mother's headstone and Vader removed his palm. He intended to grab this man by his fat neck in response to these baseless accusations. He started forward without another thought, but was forced to halt his stride when Ahsoka used her good hand to seize his prosthetic arm. He turned a murderous stare upon her, but she did not cower. Instead she held his gaze for a moment, prepared to rein in his blood-lust, urging him not to forsake their cover and force them to contend with the four riflemen.

Rage boiled in his veins. Luke Skywalker had been here, a child being raised up by these insipid farmers. Luke Skywalker believed that he was the son of Anakin Skywalker and so did this whole Force-forsaken village.

The question remained of just who might have propagated this outrageous lie.

"Kenobi," Vader spat the name with such hatred that he felt Ahsoka flinch at his side. Without another word, he wrenched his arm free of her hold and turned back toward the parked speeder. His robes caught the wind and billowed out behind him. He was vaguely aware of Ahsoka offering a hasty apology to the farmer and his men, but his own eyes were already fixed on the Jundland Wastes, the treacherous, rocky structures that rose up as bulwarks in the distance.

.o.o.o.o.

They were forced to abandon the landspeeder when the terrain became too rocky and unsteady to support the repulsors. Making certain it was safely tucked away, they continued on foot towards the remains of an old Force signature. The land was treacherous and the suns burned hot and unforgiving overhead. Sweat made the sand stick to her body, and her lips were becoming dry and parched.

Vader walked before her upon the narrow footpath that was steeply sloped and after studying his back in silence for some time, she finally opened her mouth.

"You know, I think we should really stop and think about this," she said, panting in the heat, "What if it's all true? What if Luke Skywalker really is-"

"Impossible," Vader snapped, cutting her off.

"How can you be sure?" she argued.

He paused in his ascent, turning and looking down upon her. In his golden eyes she saw a flash of naked astonishment, as if he could not believe she distrusted him. She wanted to scoff.

"Perhaps I should have never ceded that most crucial of childhood lessons to another master. Clearly, your education is lacking," he dismissed as he resumed the arduous climb. She felt her face flush in anger and embarrassment.

"Obi-Wan was more than thorough on the subject," Ahsoka said flatly, scrambling up behind him, "And you weren't exactly a paragon of Jedi virtues, my old master. From the way Master Mundi and Master Windu would speak of you, there was never a skirt left unturned."

He exhaled a noise of pure frustration.

"I, of course, knew you weren't ever that good, but still, it's not unreasonable to think there could be several little Skywalkers spread out across-"

"ENOUGH!" he roared, whirling around so fast that she shied away and lost her footing, sliding several feet back into the canyon before catching herself. "It is impossible," he reiterated in no uncertain terms.

She had to concede that perhaps the playboy perception had been misleading. Perhaps he'd been more faithful to the Jedi Code than she realized.

Or perhaps he'd been faithful to something else... someone else. She remembered Senator Amidala of Naboo, and his poorly disguised pining and romantic overtures. She kept her mouth shut, but one eyebrow stayed raised in skepticism.

The dwelling they sought was nestled within a wide canyon, set upon a mesa carved into the steep wall by years of erosion. The steep incline of the path leading up to it pulled at the muscles of her legs as she forced herself to keep up with Vader, who trudged on mercilessly.

When they reached the small compound they found it abandoned and dilapidated. The outer walls had crumbled and the domed abode had caved in on itself partially. The single vaporator lay in pieces aside the building, all its vital components looted long ago.

Obi-Wan, Ahsoka thought forlornly.

Obi-Wan had been as much her master as Anakin had. In fact, it had been Obi-Wan who had first inquired after her, and she had assumed that he would be the one to train her. She was shocked to find orders to report to General Skywalker instead upon reaching Christophsis. Anakin had been similarly surprised to have been assigned a padawan, and it hadn't been until she was much older that she finally realized she had been part of a ploy.

The Council had used her as a tool, had forced Anakin to take charge of her in order to teach him a much needed lesson in responsibility. They were never meant to remain together long-term, but she suspected Anakin had the will to defy the Council in every way he could. Instead of balking, he had accepted the challenge.

But he had been too young- even he had recognized it- and so while he could instruct her in the martial, in the saber forms and in combat strategies, it was Obi-Wan who stepped up to fill the gaps in her education. It was Obi-Wan who taught her the finer points of meditation, the philosophy of the Jedi and the nature of the Light and Dark sides of the Force.

She closed her eyes, reaching for the Force, seeking out that old, familiar presence of Master Obi-Wan. She grasped desperately at the threads... the small traces she could feel all around her. It filled her with overwhelming despair- a sadness so deep and disquieting that she was forced to withdraw lest it consume her and lead her to a dark place.

"He was here," she whispered, knowing that Vader would feel it too.

They entered the main building and parted ways to search the two rooms. It was horribly cluttered, with items and furniture strewn about as though others had already been through it. All was covered in a thick layer of dust and sand.

She shoved various bits of debris aside, revealing the hut to be filled with ordinary, household items. She picked up a metal pan which was still covered in cooking grease. Silverware was strewn across the floor, along with empty cans. Rusted tools were scattered near an upturned work bench, and a clothesline of musty rags hung from the ceiling above her.

Something led her to explore a hatch set into the back wall. She pulled out a dusty chest and creaked open the lid. She inhaled a shuddering breath and her eyes prickled at the corners when she looked down upon a neatly folded set of Jedi robes, complete with the shoulder guards Obi-Wan had worn all throughout the Clone Wars. She stared at the faded Jedi crest and felt a new wave of deep sadness.

"Help me make sense of all this, Master Obi-Wan," she whispered, voice cracking on the words. "Show me that this has all been some great, tragic misunderstanding."

A glow could be seen emanating from within the folded clothing. She parted the fabric and her hand closed around a cubical object. A holocron, she realized, and her heartbeat began to quicken. She sat back and used the Force to open the device, now desperate to see what sort of message had been stored upon it.

"This is Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. I regret to report that both our Jedi Order and the Republic have fallen..."

There was the crunch of broken pottery beneath boots and Vader returned to stand behind her, drawn over by the voice emanating from the holocron. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared defensively at the recording.

"...this message is a warning and a reminder for any surviving Jedi. Trust in the Force..."

She had heard this message before, she realized quickly. It was heard by any Jedi attempting to contact the Jedi Temple after Order 66 had taken place. In all the chaos of the coup and the slaughter at the Temple, she had assumed that Obi-Wan had been killed shortly after recording this, and it had made it near unbearable to listen to. Even now, knowing that he had actually survived, it still broke her heart to hear the anguish in his words and to see the defeat reflected in the posture of the holo representation of the man.

With a small motion of her hand, the next entry played. It was Obi-Wan, now in desert garb, but still prim and professional as usual.

"I have created this log in order to detail what shall be my final mission on behalf of the Jedi Order..."

She did not dare to breathe. Would it be Obi-Wan who would give them the answers they sought? Even from beyond the grave?

"The journey to Tatooine was uneventful and it doesn't seem as though I attracted any undue attention. The child was delivered to his family and they agreed to take him into their home to raise him. I will remain nearby as a precaution..."

"...Desert life is proving harsher than I expected. Water is difficult to come by. I have acquired a vaporator from a retired farmer in Mos Eisley..."

There was an unwieldy amount of entries and she did her best to skip over the mundane.

"A group of bandits has been raiding the nearby farmsteads. I can do little without the ability to draw my lightsaber. I never imagined I'd feel so helpless..."

"The desert is a lonely place. I am an outcast. The locals think me strange for living a hermit's life. Occasionally, when one of the friendlier tribes of Tuskans migrates this way, I am allowed to partake in certain festivities, but I find their customs barbaric and they find my celibacy offensive."

Sometimes Obi-Wan appeared determined. In other entries, he appeared worn down. However, Ahsoka had gathered that his life after the Order had only a single purpose, and it was to stand guard over Luke Skywalker. The evidence was mounting. It was obvious that even Obi-Wan believed the boy to be Anakin's son.

A son. Could it be true?

Sometimes there were bottles littering the floor as Obi-Wan spoke and they seemed to increase in number in the later entries. There were times where he seemed to have lost his sanity, giving into the loneliness and grief that had come with living in exile. It was difficult to watch the decline.

"It haunts me every day, thinking about where I might have gone wrong... what I might have done differently," Obi-Wan began in one particularly morose segment. Seated upon a metal stool, his head was hung and he did not even look into the recording device. "You were the best of us. In so many ways," The hand that was pulling at his thinning hair raked down over his sun-worn face in a tired gesture. "You great fool! Why did you never confide in me? We all knew about Padme! Did you think you were the first Jedi to ever be involved in such a scandal? Your blind arrogance never ceases to amaze me!" Slowly, Obi-Wan was working himself into a rage, something that Ahsoka had never before witnessed of the even-tempered Jedi master. Behind her, she felt Vader's glowering hatred falter, to be replaced with a flicker of uncertainty. His arms unfurled and fell to his sides.

"She never stopped believing in you, even at the bitter end, even after what you did to her. She barely survived the birth, and yet even with her dying breath she refused to renounce you! You do not deserve her loyalty! I hope you're satisfied. You traded her life for the false promises of the Dark Side." Obi-Wan clenched his jaw, and in that expression Ahsoka could see all of the conflict and all of the heartache that tormented him day in and day out.

"I regret that I was unable to kill you that day on Mustafar, and I am certain that I shall pay dearly for that mistake. Now, it will be up to your son to bring the balance that you could not, and I can only hope, on the day that he faces you, that he only knows you as the monster you've become."

It was Ahsoka that reached up to stop the playback, unable to listen to another word. Her hand shook as it closed around the holocron and she felt sick to her stomach. The conflict between Obi-Wan and Vader was finally taking form in her mind, and it horrified her. For so long, she could only wonder about what had happened between them, slowly fitting pieces together as time passed. But this... it was too much. She never imagined it could have gotten this bad.

They must have fought on Mustafar, where Obi-Wan had left Vader mortally wounded. Obi-Wan had witnessed Padme's death and then had claimed the child for the Jedi Order. She wanted to believe this was done to protect the child. Ahsoka remembered how vague Vader had been earlier in their journey when speaking of Luke Skywalker's intended fate, ignorant of his lineage or not. But then Obi-Wan's act could not have been entirely altruistic. There was a darker purpose in spiriting the child away.

"...that he only knows you as the monster you've become." That was a declaration of vengeance if she'd ever heard one.

She felt as if they were strangers all of a sudden. These were not the same men she'd fought the Clone Wars with. Fear and rage and desperation had warped them both beyond recognition. She would have never believed that Anakin would murder his Jedi brethren in cold blood, but the evidence was in the flesh, standing behind her. She would have never believed that Obi-Wan would attempt to kill his own former padawan, but the evidence was still ringing in her ears.

And Padme... Senator Amidala. That fierce and beautiful woman who could sway a thousand votes with a single Sentate speech, caught up in a dangerous love affair. A scandalous wartime romance told in secret visits and forbidden kisses. Ahsoka could imagine it far too well because, as Obi-Wan had said, Anakin's infatuation with Padme had hardly been a secret. But to think it had progressed to this point... Just what sort of dark fate had befallen her? What had Anakin done?

"She was alive... I felt it. She was alive, and so was the child," Vader spoke as if he could scarcely believe what he was saying. Ahsoka broke from her own, angry musing to regard him out of the corner of her eye. He stared down at his hand, flexing his metal fingers whilst truth finally took hold upon him. So he had known about the child then? She fumed upon realizing that he had never confided in her either. Unlike Obi-Wan, she had been no stranger to scandal. She would have understood! She could have done something to help, if only she'd been given the chance.

"Then why have you been denying it?" Ahsoka demanded in a dark voice. All indulgence and pity was lost, replaced with bitter betrayal. Vader was silent for a few long seconds, on the brink of a horrible admittance.

"I was told... that I killed them."

It was then that everything crystallized into perfect clarity. The reason Vader had resisted the connection. The reason Obi-Wan had seen fit to protect the child from the father. Numbing cold settled within her. Monster, Obi-Wan had said. That part, it appeared, Vader had accepted whole-heartedly.

"You disgust me," she said, voice cracking with emotion, "You and Obi-Wan both, and you both got what you deserved in the end!"

He loomed behind her, huge and menacing with anger radiating from his form. Her shoulders hunched as she prepared herself for whatever he was about to unleash upon her.

"I will suffer no judgment from you!" he snarled, pacing like a hungry predator behind her, "You were not there. You do not know the decisions that had to be made, and the lives that were at stake because of them!"

"If I'd been there, I'd have died with the rest of the padawans, isn't that right?!" she choked out, "Tell me I'm wrong."

"You would have stood at my side. You would have performed the task yourself."

She bit back a sob, unable to stop the possibility from playing out in her head. She shook her head against the image, unwilling to accept that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. She liked to think that she would have stood for what was right, what she believed in, but was that just another delusion?

She certainly would not have taken Obi-Wan's side in the matter either. She'd have had no desire to defend the Jedi and their corrupt institution.

Her answer was the same as it had been to any impossible situation. Get out. Flee. Leave. Disappear. Avoid.

He was a murderer and she was a coward. She was an idiot. Useless, worthless, helpless to stop her Jedi family from falling apart.

She was wasting her time. That niggling thought at the back of her mind that no good would come of resurrecting this old bond had returned in earnest. Master Yoda had warned her never to get caught up in her fantasies and she had never learned. Always an optimist, always being let down. Always seeing people for what they could be instead of what they were, and always paying the price.

This endeavor had been dangerous and self-indulgent from the very start, and it was time to put an end to it. She was clutching the holocron so hard that its metal corners bit into the skin of her palm and when she realized this, she allowed her grip to slacken until the cube fell with a thud onto the sandy floor. Slowly, she stood on shaking legs and drew the hood of her cloak over her head.

"I'm sorry," she said, voice barely more than a whisper. I won't leave you. Her one promise to him, about to be broken once again. She turned, heading for the exit of the hut. He did not attempt to stop her as she brushed past him. Within the door frame she hesitated, looking back toward him from the corner of her eye. "You just... make it impossible to stay."

"You have nowhere to go," Vader reminded her. And though he very well could have been speaking of the fact that they remained in the middle of the desert highlands, she knew he meant it more generally.

"Its clear to me who the real victim in all of this is, and he's going to need my protection. I'll find him without your help and I'll tell him the truth that he is owed," she responded, more certain of this than anything else thus far. She felt angry and betrayed, but more than that she was disappointed. She could have let sleeping nexus lie, and now she only had herself to blame by following Vader down this lothcat hole.

"Good luck, I suppose," she added in a small voice, because even after everything, she could not bring herself to wish him ill. Now knowing just what Darth Vader had forfeited in order to stand at the head of an Empire... well she sincerely hoped, for his own peace of mind, that the throne he coveted would prove worth it all in the end.

.o.o.o.o.o.