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Chapter One—The Son of Beru's Brother in Law

Loathing his master more than usual, Darth Vader, dark lord of the sith stalked about his ship in a nasty mood. Of course being a sith lord generally did put one in an irritable disposition but today of all days he was far more vexed.

Of all places for Obi-Wan to be rumored to hide, it had to be Tatooine. It was actually a brilliant move for the old man to make; truth be told. Despite vehemently trying to cast away the remains of Anakin for the past five years, there was still enough there to make Vader avoid the desert planet like a plague.

And so taking his TIE down to the planet's surface, the dark lord climbed out near Anchorhead the small settlement where the rumors had started.

A settlement which would undoubtedly have hell to pay should these rumors be false and Vader find he had been forced to return to his unacknowledged home planet to accomplish nothing.

He stretched out with the force, memories of burning to fuel his anger and therefore his power. He found nothing. The old man had gotten very good then at hiding himself. Then again the presence of the star destroyer above the planet had undoubtedly alerted him, if not the feeling of Vader's own significant force signature.

He did feel something in the force however, a brief flicker of panic. It was gone before he could decipher it.

Stepping out of his craft, the dark lord marched into the town. Glaring although none could see it beneath his helmet, he did not need his mammoth height as his black outfit and noisy respirator already made him easily distinguishable.

The town, if it could be called that, was small and contained the white buildings made beige with sand that so characterized Tatooine.

As he entered many of the citizens openly gaped at him, the intelligent ones quickly rushed inside their businesses or proceeded to leave in an unusual hurry.

He felt the fleeting fear not his own through the force once more, but before he could focus on his older master he became distracted by a very bright, raw force presence not far form where he stood.

He began to focus on this presence, thoughts of his former master forgotten for the time being. It wasn't just the power of this force sensitive, but there was something...familiar about this one.

A great curiosity, over took him and he began to walk towards an old parts shop, one that specialized in parts needed for the machinery that ran the many moisture farms surrounding this area.

Ignoring the voice in his head that reminded him of why he was here, and how much he wanted to leave this planet, and even his hatred for Obi-Wan, Vader continued in search of this force sensitive.

He walked into the shop, the streets now deserted as the citizens had wisely fled or hidden upon word traveling of his astoundingly surprising arrival to this sleepy little sand pit.

It had only taken minutes for them to do so, a record if he must say so himself.

When he reached the shop he knew was his destination, Vader had to hunch to enter the small doorway, when he did so the man who been haggling with a woman over the price of something or another stopped mid word and just stared.

He very likely thought he was hallucinating, as when did the second in command of the Galactic Empire just waltz into his tiny little Tatooine shop?

The man opened and closed his mouth several times, rather fish like in motion. His curly white hair starting to leak more sweat than usual to drip down his tan and deeply lined forehead as he took in a sight that was feared throughout the galaxy.

"How is eighty five unreasonable! Oh, pull yourself together Hawe! If it really alarms you that much I suppose ninety will work...Hawe? Hawe? Pay attention! Don't just ignore me, I understand these are from—Oh! What are you staring—"

The woman finally turned around to see what had frozen Hawe and in doing so gasped, dropping her hand bag as she did.

Her blue eyes widening in shock as she too stood stock still staring at the door way.

Vader looked at her and in a hazy recognition realized who it was, the woman who had been with his cowardly step family when they failed to save Anakin's mother.

She hadn't changed much in the years since he had seen her, her brown hair was cut now to frame her face instead of held back into a bun as it had been when she cried over Shmi's grave after doing nothing to prevent her death.

He immediately begin to choke her, his rage swelling over the past that he denied.

The high shelves and rows of rusted merchandise surrounding him blurring until all he saw was her shocked face as her neck snapped. His anger to great to even control the pressure to a mere choke. Something deep inside whispered it hadn't really been her who killed beloved Shmi, not even remotely, but he ignored that voice and focused instead on his anger.

She then fell dead slumped against the floor, her hand performing a weird twitching gesture as she lay there as if there was some life still not stamped out of her.

The man had just sat watching all of this in horror, his beady black eyes darting frantically around for an escape. No one had said a word from the time Vader had entered the shop.

"Do you know the whereabouts of Obi-Wan Kenobi?" Vader thundered out, of course his vocalizer left him no choice but to do this but in his anger he would have if given the option anyhow.

The man was clearly not level headed as he began to vehemently shake his head, still unable to for words.

Vader begin to put pressure on his throat and was pleased to see his eyes fill with fear.

"B—Ben! B—en Ken...!" Hawe gasped trying to convey something to the dark lord, but Vader already incensed over the unexpected appearance of Beru continued with his dark force power until all the air was deprived and the man too lay lifeless.

His temper having erased the memory of why he entered the shop, Vader turned to leave until he heard a child's cry coming from somewhere deep in the back of the measly shop. Behind the high shelves of old parts, and through the door way that led to the storage room.

Remembering the bright force presence that called him into the shop to begin with Vader stalked through the shelves, actually having to rely on the force to prevent his bulky form from toppling the merchandise that crowded the ridiculously narrow walkway between the shelves, going high enough to even be above his head.

After a few moments of this he irritably threw all of the stock against the walls clearing the aisle but ruining the shop.

As he entered the back room what he saw surprised him, a little blond boy clearly trying to quickly put what ever part he had knocked off of the shelf beside him back in it's place.

The boy turned and also stared at him, clearly having been alerted to him from the noise of his temper tantrum with the merchandise.

He stared up at the black mask, having to arch his head to far back that it almost touched his shoulders. Vader looked down at the boy in his crouched position, his large bright blue eyes unnerving the dark lord.

There was a strangely malevolent voice, almost Sidious like that made him desire to reach out and choke the child to dim the upsetting blue eyes. But he pushed aside the dark urge, dark even for him, and succumbed to his curiosity.

Besides, the boy was powerful in the force, and he been seeking an apprentice.

"Who are you?" His deep voice demanded. The boy could be given far more credit than the weak store owner, despite his clearly young age which couldn't be greater than five he rose from his squatting position near the droid he had knocked over and looked up at the helmet while answering in a shaky and high pitched child's voice.

"Luke."

"You are employed here?"

"No—I—I'm just...my Aunt Beru and me came to get some parts." The boy, Luke, stuttered through his sentence.

"Your Aunt?" Vader inquired, so the boy was vaguely related to him through marriage.

He remembered that Beru had had a sister, who had been there for the small funeral. He supposed this was her brat, strange coincidence that the child should be so strong in the force and so strangely connected to hi—Anakin, he mentally corrected.

"Yeah." The child said, clearly beginning to realize that something was the matter.

"Where's Aunt Beru?" He continued, starting to understand the strange quietness aside from the respirator.

"You need not worry about her, she is...taken care of." Vader spat, still angry over having his past, and an unpleasant part at that, thrown into his face.

However he was beginning to calm down and by doing so rationalize as his rage subsided. Obi-wan still needed to be dealt with.

But this apprentice was perfect, young therefore easily molded, and powerful, he did not need a midi-chlorian count to know this boy was strong. And what better revenge, to steal the woman's nephew and have him serve him in punishment for her failure so many years ago, her death had been far too quick.

Smiling, but not a true smile, more the smile of a villain with a plot which was of course exactly what Vader was he motioned the boy to follow him.

With nothing more than a quizzical expression, he picked up his small bag and did so, still naive in his tremendously young age.

The boy jogged to match the dark lord's steps and upon leaving the storage room cried out in disbelief.

Ignoring the wreckage around him he ran to his dead Aunt, her eyes staring eerily and blankly at the nephew she could not see now.

"Aunt! Wake up! WAKE UP!" Luke shook her shoulder hard causing her head to roll slowly, turning away from him.

Luke began to sob and did so for quite sometime before the impatient sith lord interrupted his crying.

"Come, we have no time to waste with...pointless grieving, she is dead. Accept it."

Luke turned to Vader with tears flowing down his face, at five being ill-quipped to handle grief, he looked completely shocked at the harsh blunt words the sith had offered.

"W—W—What happ—What—H—How?" Luke tried to take a deep breath to calm his hiccuping and crying, for a five year old he was well controlled.

Deciding to plant the seed now Vader answered, "A Jedi killed them."

The child looked at him bewildered but still to shocked to find any other emotion or questioning.

Vader, angry now at the wait reached forward and grabbed the boys arm, yanking him to his feet and dragging him along.

"NO! WAIT! AUNT BERU!" Luke shouted hysterically, flailing his arms wildly trying to return to the corpse of his aunt.

"Quiet!" The dark lord commanded, his baritone voice menacing enough to get the boy to stop his foolish display and just follow morosely, hiccuping and sobbing still.

"Your incessant wailing will not be tolerated. I expect you to compose yourself, now."

Luke struggled briefly again against the pull of the giant's arm but with no success the only result being a painful tightening of Vader's hold over the boy.

"Let me go! I need to go find Uncle Owen and tell him—I have to go home! LET ME GO!" Luke screamed, but his cries were unheard in the deserted streets, and the occupants who had taken refuge inside their stores were too cowardly to come to his aid, not that it would have helped.

Vader briefly considered accompanying the boy back to Lars so he could kill him, but then decided against it, he knew all to well the punishment of living without one's spouse and child. He brushed aside that thought and went on dragging the fighting boy.

He had sworn he had felt Obi-Wan through the force, he knew it. But he could gain no real sense of him and was beginning to speculate this had been a waste of time. His own desire to enact revenge on Kenobi had made him believe he felt a disturbance, maybe it had even been the boy he thought.

However he had gained an apprentice, possibly. He looked down at the crying pathetic child and knew he would have much work to do to make the boy a true sith.

Memories of another, slightly older boy crying for leaving his mother flashed through his mind but he quickly banished them.

It would probably be best to leave the boy's actual force training until a later date and simply train him in discipline and non-force skills until he was older and better able to understand the gravity of the situation Vader thought.

It was difficult to hate so much at such a young age, and for the training Vader would give him he would need his hate, but that could wait Vader thought. In the meantime he would manipulate the boy as Sidious had manipulated Anakin so that when the time came he would be loyal to Vader.

It would undoubtedly be unfortunate for him and the boy if he was to be discovered by the emperor. Vader would have to keep him hidden.

Vader mulled all of this over as he continued to march back to his ship.

Upon reaching it he took the bag from the boy, "You will no longer be needing this."

With that simple statement he began to throw the bag away into the sand despite the boy's upset protests, but a name messily scrawled across it stopped the motion as his mechanical arm was about to complete it.

And despite his disbelief his mind confusedly worked through some of the truths he knew to be so.

Luke Skywalker was written on the bag.

The bag owned by the boy who called Beru Lar's "Aunt."

Anakin Skywalker, Owen Lar's step brother.

Beru, Owen Lar's wife.

Beru; technically Anakin's sister in law. Beru was Anakin's sister in law.

"Aunt Beru," the boy's aunt.

Beru's nephew. The nephew of Anakin's sister in law.

Luke, the nephew of Owen's wife, Owen's nephew.

Owen the uncle of the boy, the brother of the boy's father.

The boy's father Owen's step brother. Luke the son of Owen's step brother.

Owen's step brother was Anakin Skywalker.

Luke was Anakin Skywalker's son.

I was Anakin Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker.

Vader felt his mouth go dry, and a feeling he could not recognize spread through him, one he had not felt in so long, a kind of lightness, a lurch of...excitement perhaps?

Looking at the blue eyes again his belief was confirmed as he also took the blonde hair, and he wondered how he hadn't seen it in the half hour since he had met his son.

The dominating sith in him did not even bother in this instance to try to claim that it was Anakin's son and not his own.

Meanwhile out in the vast Tatooine desert a man sat in the sand staring sadly at broken down speeder bike that had collapsed when he needed it most.

A single tear rolled down his weathered cheek making a trail in the layer of sand that covered his face.

A ghostly apparition appeared behind him and he never took his eyes of the speeder, but yet he spoke knowing the ghost was there.

"I have now failed the father and the son Master."

"Perhaps...maybe Luke will influence Ana—"

"DON'T call him that." The brown robed man by the speeder snapped finally turning to face the old brown haired gentlemen who appeared before him like a holo.

"It is who he is, what else would you have me call him? He is Anakin, no amount of denial on your part or his changes the fact."

"Well at any rate I don't think Vader will have a change of heart and decide to abandon the sith for the boy. Children hardly effect him. Clearly the younglings..." Obi-Wan trailed off, the memories of the closest tie he would ever have to son and brother still too painful even after such time.

"I have failed." He repeatedly miserably, remembering another time when he said nearly the same worlds on an even hotter planet.

He flinched at the image of Anakin burning on the shores, screaming as the flame ate away at his body and heart.

And today when he had sensed Vader he had known, but when he had sensed Luke in Anchorhead as well he had panicked and now due to his speeder it was too late, Luke's presence was already smothered by the sith's.

How ironic to be unable to save the son of the boy who could fix anything due to a mechanical problem.

Obi-Wan drug his finger in the sand in a very childish and un-jedi like fashion.

"You must leave. There is no point staying here now."

Obi-wan shook his head, "Dagobah I suppose?"

"No."

"No?" Obi-Wan turned quizzically to Qui-Gon.

"To Alderaan. Protect her, she might be our only hope."

As Qui-Gon faded away Obi-Wan muttered, "She is our only hope."

However Qui-Gon just smiled and replied, "We shall see."

Before Obi-Wan could ask him what he meant; he was gone.