When he was young, Vader had been told that the Force was shapeless and undefinable by physical description due to its formlessness. When he finally took the time to properly devote time to meditation—a practice that was reinforced by the unfortunate need for periodic bouts of time submerged in bacta—he began to understand that that was not true at all. The Force was not shapeless but limitless. It was undefinable, not because it refused to obey laws of nature as humans understood it but because it was changeable and fluid in which laws it obeyed at any given moment. It sang and howled, writhed and danced, warmed and froze, and all in an instance or endless days. In grudging meditation, Vader had begun to truly appreciate the strangeness of the power he wielded for all its wonders and dangers.

Limitless potential necessitated a cautious response. With the Force behaving so erratically, Vader took careful minutes to prepare his mind to slip into the beginnings of meditation the moment his shuttle made landfall in the Great Dune Sea. He would investigate the strange goings-on of the Force, then he would deal with the Inquisitors, and then he'd finally scour the name and deeds of Anakin Skywalker from Tatooine.

Skywalker. Emotion rose up and Vader was vaguely surprised to realize that anger was not first. Anger was certainly present, as it always was, but first there was…

He struggled to recognize the emotion, light and strong, and after searching his feelings disgust overwhelmed him to understand that that foul thing was pride. Pride in a slave name, for anyone native to Tatooine understood that Skywalker—Ekkreth in the old tongue—was a name carried by those born in chains. He remembered the old tongue and its stories with a vague disinterest that would scandalize the Grandmother of any slave quarter—

And Vader's scowl deepened as he forced the memories and the thoughts of before deeper into his mind. He was here on a mission, with a set goal and objective that would not be compromised because of some misplaced emotional connection that belonged not to him but to a man ten years dead. Anakin Skywalker was dead. He had killed him, along with all the other jedi.

Not all, came a traitorous whisper and Vader's voice modulator struggled to vocalize the growl that escaped him at the thought, however true it was. Obi-Wan was alive, and that was a truth that chafed and threatened the sanity Vader grasped with such a tenuous hold. That didn't matter now, he told himself firmly. As he dipped slowly into the force, it was clear that Obi-Wan was not here and so he was irrelevant. A Force presence like that of his old master would be immediately identifiable, especially as he began sending out tendrils of awareness to comb the surrounding area for any sign of his Inquisitors. Their Force presence should be easily identifiable as well, rich with darkness, flavored with cruelty and malice and familiar.

But they weren't to be found. That softened the scowl beneath his mask to a frown. The Inquisitors should be on Tatooine. All of their reports had indicated that they were tracking a jedi that had escaped into the wastes, and there had been no new follow-up to indicate that the jedi in question had been either captured or killed. With so fresh a lead, no Inquisitor would dare abandon the hunt and yet—

And yet they had. Vader was certain of it as his senses drifted further through the desert, through the spaceport town of—

Mos Espa. Recognition flared late, pain and agitation heady and strong as Vader's breathing remained even only through the grace of his respirator. Had this really been the site of his glorious return to Tatooine, the very town he'd once sworn to leave and never look back?

Memory surged and Vader's grasp on the Force shook, vibrating with the strength of the ties that had once bound him here. Anger resurfaced as long-past visions resurfaced of the once-beautiful slave who'd cared for his hurts, smiling as he sipped at tzai and—

No. Vader screamed wordlessly into the shapeless energy binding him, restricting and tightening and squeezing. That wasn't him. That boy was dead dead dead.

As was his mother.

Buried. He buried her.

No. Vader did not bury her. Vader had no time for ghosts, only an Empire held together by fear and order and the strength of his cybernetic hands.

But Skywalker's mother was buried nearby. Vader knew where, though he had never been to the site. As if sensing the turn of his thoughts, the strands of awareness that he had cast out began turning and shifting beyond Mos Espa, towards the sandpit of a moisture farm that Skywalker's mother had once lived on. It was foolishness. It was the basest, least valuable and borrowed—stolen—sentimentality, but still his attention wandered until awareness bloomed into information into—

The Force, which had been surprisingly encouraging as he had cast his attention towards the surely-abandoned moisture farm—began to chime and wriggle and preen as it announced to his senses something almost alarming: a presence unknown to him, vastly unlike his Inquisitors, but powerful and bright. It, against the void that was the litany of Force null presences that Vader was typically surrounded by, was shining and loud and rough—untrained, young, hopeful, bored.

Vader's eyes snapped open, his respirator still keeping a careful and steady pace as something new, unexpected, and uncontrolled pulsed through his very being. It wasn't fear or rage; he knew them as old friends. It wasn't base curiosity or suspicion. It was… it was…

Words failed him, but the puzzle of this new feeling and that unadulterated presence remained. It was jarring to realize that he had stood from his seat, that his cybernetic limbs had responded to unconscious thought.

There was a strange pang, throbbing down his limbs like the phantom pain that he'd never been able to shake. That pang tasted of the weakness and uncertainty of the dead Skywalker, but Vader's hold on his mind began to fray and shake as the strangeness of his most recent days piled up around him. He had maintained such a careful hold of himself, bolstered by the peace and routine and order of his every hour and day, but now it seemed that everything he lived and believed in was not certain and sure but dangerously precarious. There were too many mysteries, from how the Force teased and taunted and cursed and sung as it flowed through him to this unidentified but unquestionably strong Force presence; from the unexplained behavior of his trained Inquisitors, to the link he found growing quietly but so quickly to the Force sensitive girl that was still held captive, crying for a father that couldn't hear her.

Life had been simpler before this. It had never been simpler before. Life as Anakin Skywalker had been full of doubt as the man was torn between duty and desire, his loyalties divided until he was brought low. Skywalker was beholden to so many people, to the Jedi his padawan and P—and her. He spent days with his men, learning their names and mourning them when they couldn't follow where he led. He strove for acceptance, for respect, and it always dangled just beyond his reach. Never a Master.

Darth Vader's existence was simpler. With his side chosen, there was agony—and yes, those many hurts would never lessen or be healed—but he no longer needed to rely on lies and subterfuge to stay afloat. There was no marriage to keep secret, no Council to appease and assuage. Vader had no need for negotiations, aggressive or otherwise. When Vader arrived, there was only room for subjugation. His hands were covered in the blood of so many, but were they even his hands anymore? He had already sunk as far low as he could, and that was a relief of its own sort.

Tatooine presented too many mysteries and choices. As Vader, he had been able to distance himself from the man who'd been plagued by visions of torment, the boy who always bore the memory and the quiet, unforgettable fact that he didn't own himself. Now, as those twin suns glared at him through the shuttle's viewports, Vader felt a bitter fear rise up that the sun would melt the armor that kept him safe, kept him whole.

Whole. It was a cruel joke. He hadn't been whole in years. Even now, as rage and pain twisted and curled within him in new and strange patterns, his respirator kept his breathing even, smooth as his mind spiraled into further darkness.

Darkness. Vader craved it more every day. Darkness obscured the causes of his pain, let it all muddle and blend until he could pretend that the only causes were things that he could control, destroy. It was only in the light—however flitting and shy it might be after so long—that he was forced to remember that he had once been Skywalker. Ani.

Destroy the light. It was easy to follow his new master's new plan when it so neatly followed his own wishes. Kill the jedi. They'd betrayed him in every way that they could have. They had watched as he walked the edge of a cliff and watched solemnly as he began to fall. Destroy them.

Anger rose up, potent and reviving the sense of direction that Vader had begun to lose. Tatooine had so many mysteries, but there was one that he knew exactly how to solve. There was a light on this cursed planet, and he would extinguish it.

Destroy it.

And the shuttle came to life beneath his hands.

Do it.

Reva's eyes were sharp as they took in the environment around her. Anger rose up, bitter and burning, but she allowed it with practiced ease. Once she had been taught to let go of emotion, to remove it from herself, but that was an ability that she had never mastered. Perhaps if she'd had more time, perhaps if she'd been older at the Fall, that would not be the case but now she seethed.

The Inquisitors had taught her well. They hadn't been patient, of course, but pain had been a wonderful and persistent teacher to her over the long years. Of all of the things that they had taught her since she was first taken—taken in, taken over, she didn't care if there was a difference anymore—was that emotions were as useful a tool in her arsenal as her saber. Emotions could be used to break a man, just as they could be used to patch her together.

It was anger that kept her afloat. Anger kept her moving, kept her eyes forward and her chin up. Without anger, there would no purpose. She would have no direction, and that was unallowable. The Inquisitors had striven to give her meaning, claiming that it was an honor to be one of the Empire's dogs, but she had found her drive long before she had been plucked from the Coruscanti gutters.

Skywalker.

She saw his face still, shadows playing across the planes of his cheekbones and the scar over his eye. It haunted her like nothing else, and her service to the Empire had ensured that plenty of horror had come her way. She heard his footsteps under the screams of the citizens that still foolishly clung to dead regimes. She saw him in the light of every red lightsaber, even her own if she wasn't careful to guard her thoughts.

She would destroy him, just as he had destroyed her. He could change his face, don new masks and claim a new name, but Reva had been taught to track and to hunt down her enemies. That the Inquisitors had intended her skills to be used against rogue jedi, the scraps of a dead order, was immaterial. Vader was her prize, and she had applauded herself on discovering the means of luring him from the Emperor's side.

Obi-wan Kenobi. He was alive somewhere, living and hiding away in some backwater world and she would flush him out. No one else could discover the connection between Vader and Obi-wan, between Obi-wan and Bail. No one else could without her unique perspective. Present at the Fall, ready for the future, Reva knew that her plan would succeed. The only thing that she needed was her lynchpin, the girl.

Bail Organa had been a friend to the Jedi in the Republic. He had fought alongside them, championing their causes and virtues to the Senate, and he had mourned and fought against the Empire in its fledging years. The rumors had quieted down some—every Mid Rim planet with treacherous intent had grown quieter when it became known that Vader would be sent to seditious planets to restore order—but Reva's training ensured that she remained aware of her environment, political or physical. Organa was difficult to touch, and his wife—a queen, beloved by her people—would prove even more so, but there was another. The daughter of Alderaan's upper circles: acquired at the end of the Clone Wars in move with such political motivation that it made Reva nauseous when she thought too much about it. So she elected to not think on it so much, except for where the girl might be useful.

She was a soft target. After some initial information gathering, it seemed that the girl was practically begging to be stolen away with her unusual habits and distaste for watchers. She had been the perfect bait. Capture the girl, capture Obi-wan, capture Anakin. The cause and effect was clear in her mind as so few things were since the Jedi Temple was taken.

And now…

She was gone.

Rage was an old friend. Rage had grown from her loss, from her pain, and it had strengthened her. The Jedi might have called her reckless, insubordinate, but the jedi were dead and Reva was not. Until she joined her old friends, she'd let her anger guide her path forward. She would let it pull her through the filthy back alleys of Daiyu, through the Inquisitors that threatened to stand in her way, until the red light of her saber bathed Vader in that awful light again. She'd destroy him, just as he'd destroyed her, and then, when her friends were finally avenged and at peace, she'd be whole again.

Posted 14:18, 7.25.22

A/N:

Credit where credit is due to the wonderful Fialleril who, in their story "Double Agent Vader" gave Tatooine's slave populace a rich and beautiful culture. I won't be using many aspects of that culture or its associated language (the 'old language' mentioned in this chapter being Amatakka) since this story won't have much to do with Tatooine after they leave it, but I HIGHLY recommend reading their work if you haven't already. The world building is beautiful, and "Double Agent Vader" is told as an anthology so, even though it hasn't been updated recently, it doesn't feel like we've been left on a horrific cliffhanger. Also, it's a Vader redemption story (of a sort) so you know I'm going to sing its praises.

Not a whole lot of plot in this chapter, but I wanted to spend some time in Vader and Reva's heads. We already know that Vader is a complicated character, but I think that Reva could have been handled with a little more nuance than we see in the show. In the interest of giving her more depth, I'm going to do some retconning with her early interactions. I won't go into great depth of how every one of her interactions took place, since I want her narrative to be driven forward instead of endlessly reflecting on previous interactions. We won't see more of Reva for a little bit, but I hope you think it's narratively satisfying when we see her next.