Death Star

The man once known as Anakin Skywalker disembarked from the Lambda-class shuttle and walked out onto the surface of Quarif. Pausing, he put a gloved hand to the surface of the world, and let the Force flow.

There was nothing. The soil was dead. The world was dead. The atmosphere was barely breathable, and if not for his apparatus, his ruined lungs would have already succumbed to the toxic atmosphere. He had flown the shuttle himself, and thus, stood on the surface of this ruined planet, in the knowledge that he was only one of two on this piece of rock drifting through space.

The man once known as Anakin Skywalker paused, before Darth Vader rose to his feet and began to walk across the surface.

The sky was still a pale blue – the cataclysm that had befallen Quarif had not stripped it of its entire atmosphere. Yet it meant little. Nothing grew on this world anymore. Whatever life had survived the cataclysm that had struck it had perished due to the loss of its ozone layer. Again, his suit protected him from the worst of the ultraviolet rays pouring down. In time, Quarif might have some benefit to the Empire – a whole world to mine, or to function as a penal colony, and without the issue of native agitators resisting Imperial rule. One year since the destruction of the Death Star, the Empire was in need of materials for starships and other armaments, and had no shortage of agitators to lock up and/or to serve as manual labour. Simple mathematics dictated that more armaments meant fewer agitators, but both he and the emperor knew the truth – kill one man, ten more sprung up in his place. The head had to be cut off before the body. Problem was, none of them could find the head, which had gone to ground since the Battle of Yavin, and had no shortage of fingers to worm their way into the bodies of Imperial worlds.

It was like a cancer, he reflected. The same type of cancer he'd have got in the minutes he'd been on Quarif, were it not for his armour. Pausing, he reached out with the Force, searching for the only other living being on this world. Dust was carried in the wind. Up in the sky, a quartet of moons looked down at him – all of them barren, all of them lifeless even before the cataclysm that had struck this world. All he had to do was stretch out with his senses and-

There.

Vader kept moving towards one of the hills, stripped bare of anything bar rock and dirt. Casting his mind back to a world whose name he no longer spoke of, he could imagine grass and trees growing there. Populated by animals both mundane and wondrous. The types of things one did not see on the bridge of the Executor, nor the cityscape of Imperial Centre. Things that once, as a foolish child, he had yearned for. Things that, in his moments of weakness as a scarred adult, he missed.

He quickened his pace, his breathing apparatus adjusting itself to keep up with him. Twenty years he had been in this suit of armour, to the point that it was now like a second skin. Twenty years had he carried the laser sword at his belt, which he took out. Reaching the face of the hill, he saw the cave, and more importantly, light emanating from its depths. Stretching out with the Force, he-

There you are.

...walked into its depths. He did not activate his lightsabre, for his vision was enhanced by his helmet's HUD, making up for the lack of light. But even then, there was light at the end of the very literal tunnel before him. For a moment, he hesitated, wondering if it was a trap – it was too easy. In the days of the Purge, it had never been this easy. In those days, more scars had been added to his body every time a lightsabre pierced armour and flesh. In those days…

The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe.

Fire. Visions of fire filled his mind. Fire that had consumed his body when his master had betrayed him. Fire that had consumed Alderaan by the hand of Wilhuff Tarkin. Fire that had consumed the same instrument of Alderaan's demise at Yavin. Fire that had left the Jedi two decades ago. Fire so faint, that it was now obvious to him that it was not a trap. That in the dying of the light, embers could not aspire to be a torch.

He walked down into the depths of the cave. Towards the illumination globes. The crates of supplies. And the form of Lucille Cerano, seated upon the rock. Mediating, with eyes closed and breathing shallow.

"There you are," she said.

Meditating, as if waiting for death. Certainly, it occurred to him that he could end this little charade here and now with but a flick of his weapon, or through the power of the Dark Side.

"Well?" she asked. "Are you going to do it?"

He paused – he had seen despair work in many forms over the last two decades. Despair that he had overcome. Despair that had gripped the last of the Jedi that had survived Order 66, and the Purge that followed. Rarely however, had despair been so carefree.

"No?" she asked, opening her eyes. "Well, fine. If you're here to talk, I'll talk."

Vader remained silent – distraction and deflection. What else would one expect from a Jedi.

"How did you find me?"

But he would play the game as he had, before the true rules had been revealed along with their true colours.

"It was easy to find you," the Sith lord said. "Though quite by chance."

"Really? How so?"

"Hiding on a dead world has some wisdom. But any life signs were sure to stick out."

"Yes, and until recently, no-one had any reason to scan this rock." She smiled, as only the damned could. "Even here I hear whispers. Some of them say that the Empire is searching a lot of rocks like this one."

Vader remained silent. That was true – it was why the Executor had come to Quarif in the first place. Why, when it had picked up only but a single lifeform, he had come to the world in person.

"And yet, only you are here," Cerano said. "Interesting. I didn't know the lapdog of the emperor did all the work for his New Order."

He remained silent for but a moment. Cerano was stalling – perhaps she dared believe that she could survive this. Perhaps she wanted to stay alive as long as possible. Certainly he could understand that – death had tempted him on Mustafar. Only anger and hatred had kept him alive long enough for Palpatine to find and save him.

"How long have you been here?" Vader asked

"Ten, fifteen years?" Cerano sighed. "It's hard to keep track of time here."

"Fifteen years in a cave," the Sith lord mused. He looked around the treasure trove, like something out of a children's story involving thieves. "You kept yourself well stocked."

"Former servants of the Republic have certain privileges." Cerano sighed. "You didn't answer my question? Why come here yourself? Why not destroy the world from orbit?"

Vader said nothing. Technically, Cerano had never asked him a question, but thinking of her earlier words, he knew what she was getting at.

"I felt it, y'know," she said. "About a year ago." She got to her feet. "Was it you who pulled the trigger?"

"I do not-"

"One day, I felt it," she whispered. "Billions of lives, just…gone. They say…they say that Alderaan is no longer there."

Vader said nothing.

"Was it you?" she asked.

He still said nothing.

"Tell me!"

This station is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it.

"It was," he said.

"Then…did you feel them?" Cerano said. "When you consigned two billion innocents to fire and fury?"

"I…heard it," Vader said.

Cerano said nothing. Even without mastery of the Force, he would have felt her anger. Seen that fire return. In truth, he had not been the one to pull the trigger, or press the button, or even suggest that the jewel of the galaxy be destroyed. But the lie served him, for reasons that Cerano would never understand. All that she needed was just a bit more nudge.

"But then, what of it?" Vader asked. "We stand in the ruins of this world also marked by death."

"The hell you-"

"Quarif was subjected to the gamma ray burst of a supernova ten-thousand years ago, that sterilized any inhabitable world within a thirty-five light year radius. The world remains, but the loss of life is just the same."

"I…you can't possibly compare-"

"I wonder though, if this was intentional? To be cut off so far from the Force…did you hope to slip away? Hiding in the dark, grovelling in the light, waiting for-"

"Enough!"

Cerano activated her lightsabre and with a speed beyond any normal human, lunged at the lord of the Sith.

Good.

The lie had worked. Cerano's feelings had been stoked. He would be given a just, proper victory – the victory that Obi-Wan had denied him on the Death Star.

Cerano's lightsabre was green – the colour of fields, the colour of life. A colour that Quarif no longer had. Green cut through the air. Green cut through the dark. Green moved with the speed of thought…and came to nothing, as a red blade made itself manifest in the dark, blocking its strike.

"Pitiful."

He summoned the powers of the Dark Side – the Force was fleeting here. Life generated the Light, death the Dark, but there was nothing of any of that here. Yet through his passion, he could summon the energy to send Cerano hurtling through the air. Not too hard though – she was still able to land on the same rock she'd meditated upon. One that he began walking over to, lightsabre in hand.

Cerano didn't say anything. Maybe she was trying to keep her own emotions under check. Maybe she'd seen his plan. Maybe…

You're not the one I'm after.

The bitter truth, one he'd dared tangle with on the Executor. The rebel pilot that had destroyed the Death Star. The one who had cried out in anger when he struck down his former master. The Force was strong with him – he'd felt it on the Death Star, and felt it in his TIE/ad. If he found that boy, he could-

Oh.

Cerano was attacking him. With ease, he deflected every one of her blows. His passions were dull, his fire low, yet it was no challenge. It was never a challenge. Mustafar had crippled his body, but he had adapted to his limitations – strength rather than speed. Raw power rather than finesse. Of course, he wasn't entirely without those things, he reflected, as he manoeuvred his blade, striking Cerano's arm, then leg.

She cried out. Odd. Most of them tried to avoid screaming when a burning blade touched their flesh. As he summoned the Jedi's fallen lightsabre and held both by her neck, he was taken back to battles past. Obi-Wan had managed to stand his ground. Dooku had met his end with dignity. This one though…how old was she? He suspected that it was in a file somewhere in Imperial Centre. Easily over twenty, but given the way she was quivering, the way that tears streamed down her cheeks…it reminded him of a child. The child that men became when faced with death. The child that he had once been. The children he had once…murdered.

"Do it," she hissed.

It was an unpleasant memory as he gave Cerano the same death he had given Dooku. Undignified, but painless – and a quicker death than staying on this world would provide.

For a moment, he stood there. Thinking of the billions who had perished on Alderaan. The million or so Imperial soldiers who had perished on the Death Star. The echoes of both, long faded into the Force. And here, in the nexus, the dead world, bereft of life and death. Between the two, residing in grey. For a moment, as he stood as victor and murderer, he felt at…peace.

For a moment, Darth Vader stood there, before the man once named Anakin Skywalker walked out of the cave.

A/N

The idea for this came when I caught snipits of a documentary that dealt with supernovae and the like. TBH, it really irritated me how the narrator consistently insisted on anthropomorphising stars, like "death stars" (for gamma rays) or "vampire stars" (where in a binary star system one star steals the mass of its counterpart), as if the audience is too dumb to be invested without stars being likened to pop culture or myth. Somehow that irritation translated to...this?

Yeah, I dunno how either, especially since Star Wars is far removed from any real-world physics, but, well, what can I say? The Force moves in interesting ways. 0_0