Hello! Welcome! Before you get in here, I would like to say that this takes place in 12 BBY, 7 years after Mustafar. Every time the fic says "four" instead, assume it's a mistake. Alrighty? Okay! See ya, have fun!
Fire the likes of which he hadn't seen since Mustafar spewed around him, massive plumes of smoke filling his cramped cockpit with the choking odour of charred wiring and melting durasteel. The world outside spun like the centre of a gyroscope, bringing the quickly approaching expanse of sand into a kaleidoscope formation. Had Darth Vader had the capacity to vomit, this would be the point at which he would do so.
Several G's pressed his half-metal body into the cramped seat and although he could barely consider anything other than the intense pain and searing heat all around him, his metal hands swiftly moved over the controls of his custom-built imperial starfighter, futilely bringing the spinning, smoke-belching starship under some form of control. One of his wings had long since been torn off, the other faring no better as fire and gravity both scratched and clawed at it. Vader himself could feel his consciousness slipping, and before he could attempt any further evasive measure, his craft crashed into the endless Dune Sea below.
A cloud of sand and shimmering heat exploded, the craft itself bounding two times before finally smashing into the side of a massive sandhill, now no more than a crushed plasteel can. The only intact wing had bounced off fifteen paces away, lying in a small heap of scrap metal. No use to him now.
But for how destroyed and cracked the fighter was, Vader himself was even worse off. As he blinked back into consciousness, he found his two droid-like legs crushed beneath the collapsed controls, now as useful to him as the rest of the craft. Electrical impulses indicating pain shot through his brain but he suppressed them, his focus falling rather on the most important part of his body, namely his breathing apparatus. It wasn't completely destroyed, but several of the warning lights blinked fervently, and even just sitting there, one of his two hands buried in the jaws of the crashed fighter, he could feel his consciousness slipping.
No! He couldn't let himself relax. The craft was still puking smoke all around him, clearly mere moments from exploding in a final burst of life that would surely take him with it.
Noxious smoke slipped into his face mask, only barely filtered enough to be somewhat breathable. But just that was enough to send Vader into a spasmodic coughing fit that buckled him over, bringing him to the grim realization that it wasn't only three of his limbs that had been damaged, but his physical body as well. Scrapes and cuts could be ignored, but more dangerous would be the cracked pieces of his body armour piercing into his abdomen. Ordinarily, he would spend this moment removing these. But even with his mind blotted with toxic fumes and a mere slip away from unconsciousness, he could tell that removing these would only give him a quicker death by means of bleeding out.
But that was for later. Right now, he had to get out of this death trap.
That began with tearing off his three destroyed mechanical limbs. Despite the fire around him and the whine of metal against metal, he could easily pick up the whirr and fatal clunks as his limbs tried to move. One of his legs was more pinned than the other and removing it was just a matter of moving his body in the other direction. The other was not quite as simple, and he was forced to stab the metallic fingers of his one good arm into the leg, just above the knee, and separate it directly from the socket. The metal groaned and twisted, but it was never made to be removed easily, and when he finally removed the entire thing, so, too, did he remove part of the socket on his stump, making him exhale sharply in long-forgotten pain.
The process was repeated with his pinned left arm. Finally, he unbuckled out of the seat, dragged his body from the collapsed cockpit, heaved himself through a cracked window, his world blinking into darkness with every strained breath, the too-bright world swimming outside his photoreceptors, and when he finally tore himself fully from the wreckage, he tumbled on top of the thing he hated the most: sand.
In the parts of his body where his suit had been scraped open, exposing skin, his flesh seemed to sizzle on top of the intensely hot sands. His face was pressed up against the dunes, and even from within his helmet, he could feel the burning heat sear through his ventilation unit, charring his lungs from the inside. His left stump, part of its socket destroyed, exposing flesh, bled fresh blood onto the sand. The blood became vapour in mere moments.
His consciousness swam, pain and heat crashing into him as the two merciless suns bore down to turn his black back into a material more alike a lightsaber than cloth. But he couldn't lie still. Though his vision was filled with white blots and black flashes, he had to keep going. The fighter would explode at any moment, and when that happened, he had to be as far away as possible.
He reached out with his one good hand and dug his fingers into the sand, feeling it shift in his grasp. Whether covered by suit or not, he could feel his flesh boil. And still, he dragged his body along. One, two. One, two. As far as he could go. The only thing he could do to go faster was to try to pull on his pain, on his anger at the situation, on his hatred of this whole planet, to try to gain strength. But with his breathing growing more strained by the moment, oxygen only barely reaching his brain, that was only barely possible.
And when the ship exploded in an ionic blast that threw shrapnel far enough to stab into the one limb Vader actually had left, he didn't much feel like trying to get further. The best he could do was try to roll over, to bring his mind and eyes away from the planet he hated so dearly, to instead stare up at the sky.
While his breathing apparatus whined and whirred, Vader let his eyes flow shut, the murky darkness mercifully removing him from the endless light, drawing him into dreamless sleep, where his only solace was in not having to see the nightmares that used to plague his every resting moment years past. The ones that brought him into this waking nightmare. Where every breath is pained and every movement is strained.
But his sleep was only a momentary escape. For Vader, much like for Anakin, taking a still moment to think is torture. Because if you think, you have to feel things. The pain of what you've done. Who you've lost. What you are.
But when you sleep, you don't have to think about that. Just endless, benevolent nothingness.
That was not what he woke up to.
The inhuman sounds that almost might have come from a human roused his consciousness with great prejudice, his yet-dark, uncertain gaze bringing meek focus to the face hunched over him. Or, rather, the lack of face. It was a mask, two bulbous eyes made out of goggles and below: what seemed to be a gaping, toothy mouth. A mask he had seen countless times. As a boy, he saw them out of the corner of his eyes, watching him; deciding whether he was worth the time or not. As a young man, in his dreams, and, later - cowering before his burning blade.
A Tusken raider.
The roar of banthas filled the air, the mocking sounds of Tuskans resounding around them. A foot or two poked him in the side, awakening the stabbing pain he'd almost forgotten. The various sounds that followed likely translated to something along the lines of is it dead? which he, by some means, might just be.
Although Vader at this moment was consumed by the murky, muddy swamp-waters of oxygen deficiency, even then, the sight of these dreaded creatures allowed a red haze to fall over his already misty mind. In a mere instant, he snapped to attention. His body jerked painfully, making the Tuskens close to him - he couldn't possibly know how many there were - each took a careful step back. But not far enough. Before Vader himself could consider what he was doing, his only functioning hand shot out to seize the ankle of a nearby raider. The Tuskan gave a loud sound of shock, but at that point, Vader's anger had already successfully crushed the bone as best he could with his charred machinery.
The Tuskan gave a shout of pain, stumbling back, though Vader wouldn't let go, even though the Tuskan was already crippled. The others around him, each of them as undefined and distant as a stormy cloud, gave shouts of anger or warning, approaching on him with their blasters raised, muzzles trained on him.
Vader couldn't focus on one. He couldn't even focus on all of them. So when he roused the Force, when he fed it an anger that had chewed away at his innards for years upon years, the Force lashed out indiscriminately. All close to him flew directly away from him, knocked away as though they'd been struck by a raging bantha.
But it wasn't enough.
Vader was severely weakened by the crash. His body was mutilated. The sands stained red by the blood seeping out of his slashed suit and open wounds.
The Force may have lashed out on command, but it struck sand as well as it did bodies. They flew only a short distance, barely even bruised. Shocked more than pained. Far from ready to give up. All Vader could tell of this was what little the Force decided to whisper into his ears: that they were afraid, and that they were ready.
Vader was exhausted. Even just that, a Force-push of the same strength as what a traitorous Jedi Padawan might have accomplished, even just that had sapped his strength to the last drop. He had nothing left to give. And the Tuskens were already back on their feet. The only one he had so much as remotely injured was the one still struggling in his durasteel grip. Maybe he could take out one. Maybe he could bring at least one with him to his grave.
But, as much as Vader believed it not to be so, the Force was with him.
Or maybe it was against him.
Because as he laid there, battered and beaten, there was a sound. A roar. One he had heard only a few times in his life. One his mother had told him to avoid. That should he hear that sound, his only hope for survival was to run. Because when you were pursued by a Krait Dragon, being seen was as good as being dead.
And that was the sound he heard.
A massive sound, instantly dragging him back to his childhood, his grip on the Tuskan releasing as the thoughts of a boy scattered through his mind: I need to run! I need to get out of here! But he was not the one to run. The Tusken raiders were. Giving cries of warning and fear, they threw themselves toward their equally panicked banthas, and in a matter of seconds, they were all gone.
So this was how he died. Eaten semi-alive by a Krait Dragon.
If Vader's consciousness hadn't been on the brink, if he hadn't been drowning in heat and death and mechanical malfunctions poisoning him from the inside, he might have felt suitably upset at such an unfair death. The Chosen One, death by big lizard. But he couldn't bring himself to care. With the Tusken raiders gone, the film painting his hazy world in blood-red slowly receded. His consciousness, too, began to flitter and buckle under the strain of living, of breathing the hot, dry air.
But no Krait Dragon came. No lumbering steps, no wheezy breathing, no low murmuring of hearts the size of three fists.
Merely human steps. Soft and easy.
Like a two-footed sand panther, moving easily. There wasn't a scrap of fear in those steps, not that Vader could tell. His consciousness was receding on itself, collapsing under the breathless exhaustion of his lungs being crushed, of his breathing apparatus slowly, meticulously failing on him. And so it wasn't until the man stood just above him, face barely visible under a soft hood of brown, that Vader could tell he was no longer alone.
When the man leaned down, when his face came close enough for Vader to slowly, tiredly tell his features apart from another - not even then did he register a threat.
Because four years ago, Obi-Wan Kenobi wouldn't have been a threat to him.
And right now, right when Vader lay dying and breathless, his mechanical body finally failing on him, his mind receded so many years he no longer believed himself to be a Sith - or a Jedi - or even a man, right now, he couldn't possibly imagine Obi-Wan to be a threat.
Obi-Wan was, after all, his brother.