Every step was marked with the choked sobs and muted screams of the survivors as his cloak rippled behind him.
Closing his eyes wouldn't lessen the din, so he took in the sight with a critical gaze. Rebellious cells were becoming more and more common, resulting in unrest that threatened the peace he'd sacrificed everything for. It wasn't right—wasn't fair, screamed a traitorous and naïve fragment of his psyche that clung to the sullen whine of the boy he'd once been.
No! His eyes fluttered closed ever so briefly—the only weakness he'd allow himself—as he shoved away the thoughts of that boy. Thinking of Sky—no—thinking of him inevitably drew his thoughts to more dangerous territories. There were few laws that Vader truly got satisfaction from enforcing, but cleansing the world of Jedi and especially of the Hero Without Fear was one he took immense pride in. He was rarely successful in quieting the voices whispering across the Force in his weakest moments, but he could silence the voices of the living with ease.
That his work was accomplished with ease didn't help it seem any less endless. Despite the ten years since the Empire's birth, the ten years since the Republic shed the traditional weights that bound it to stagnancy and the Jedi that yoked it to prevent real progress towards peace, there were so many systems that still bucked Imperial aid. Most of these sectors were relatively quiet with their little rebellions, but for the others, there was him.
"Status report." He didn't speak to anyone in particular as he finished his survey of the smoking battlefield. Battlefields in the Clone Wars were less personal, often taking place in the void of space or in the wilderness of strategic planets or in enemy-held factories or fortresses. Battles—if they could even be called as such—since the Empire's creation were more often in once-quiet village streets. Clone Wars fallen were droids and clones born and trained for the war. Rebellion was messier, claiming the lives of civilians, of people who couldn't properly fight and didn't even understand what they were fighting for. Even now, as he walked through the streets of a once-vibrant village, there were bodies littering the ground, but there were fewer corpses in the white plastoid of his troops than of the mixed textiles and armors of the rebels so he counted that as a sort of victory.
"Sir." According to the vague imprint the trooper made against his Force sensitivity, the man that approached him first was not a clone, Vader was disappointed to note. Clones, despite so many peoples' misgivings, were loyal and daring. Now, with the Empire suspending and ultimately destroying the cloning vats of Kamino, the Imperial Academy had been aggressively and thoroughly rehauled to rapidly recruit and churn out non-clone soldiers. The issue with these stormtroopers was that they were, as a whole, horrifically ineffective. Humans—because the Imperial armies vastly preferred humans over any of the myriad species populating the galaxy—brought their own emotional qualms and baggage. They received much less training than clones, who were born and bred to the task. There were a handful of exceptions Vader had met—and he'd been quick to press those few exceptions into his personal service as they'd revealed themselves as somewhat competent—but too few to properly keep peace within the breadth of the galaxy. "The area has been secured with minimal losses. We've confirmed the capture of seventeen insurgents, including a man identified by his fellow insurgents as a former Jedi padawan. All prisoners have been secured within the transports, and the man identified as Jedi has been sedated and bound. We are in the process of identifying the dead from local and Imperial records."
Vader didn't grace this with a reply, merely allowing his feet to take him away from the trooper. He'd complete a full circuit of the village, as was his habit. The Force sang in him, though sluggish and weary when he didn't take care to summon it, and it was child's play to allow his presence to creep away from him, seeking out further traces of dissidence or—even more dangerous—a Force-sensitive. His Force presence licked out, tendrils catching at the thoughts and minds of the surviving villagers, locked in their homes and hidden from sight. He examined their tiny lives with routine boredom, casually identifying anger and fear, horror and loss.
If he was more eager for his task as Imperial enforcer, Vader might have pursued those dark emotions. In the earliest days, he had, purging entire villages and towns. Survivors of invasion were always angry, always horrified, and it took time for Vader to come to the slow, creeping realization that anger didn't equate rebellion. His anger eclipsed all the petty grudges in the Empire, but he was loyal. He needed to be, else he'd have nothing left. Sometimes darkness is all that's left. Despite the self-loathing that inevitably followed—for Vader always strove to be in full command and understanding of his environment, if he could not be his own master—the slowness of his realization was useful at times. He had a reputation of brutality and impatience, and it was a reputation that served him well when dealing with the weak hearts of traitors.
He let his senses pore over the tiny shadows around him, inconsequential compared to his own presence, and carried on his way, pace not slowing or stopping until—
Another corpse caught his eye, as unimportant as any of the others but for its size. His attention caught, Vader allowed himself a moment to slow his pace, to acknowledge the broken body of the child that lay just off his path. The body was small, a child of perhaps six or seven standard years, certainly born after the reorganization of the Republic into the Empire. A child that had certainly not known anything but the world as it was, and one who would now not know the world as it should be because of these rebellions.
Anger rose up in Vader, quick and ready, and the Force was soon to follow. Use me, it whispered, treacherous and cold but oh how similar that voice was to his Master's.
"Sir?" This time it was a clone that had approached. It was a weakness that it was a sort of relief to feel a clone's quiet Force presence beside him—it was weakness and sentimentality, yet Vader still collected clones into his service as he found them, much to Palpatine's painfully-unsubtle amusement—but that it was a clone might have been the only reason that Vader's hands remained at his side even as anger washed over him, potent and cruel.
If he were younger, he might have ordered the execution of the survivors, but Vader had grown wiser as he'd grown stronger in the Force. The child's neighbors had committed treason with their rebellion, but there would be no rebellion if not for the vestiges of the old Republic, and there was one by-gone relic of that age within his grasp.
"Bring me the padawan."
Coruscant grated against Vader's every sense. It had been tolerable enough when he had been a young man, easily distracted by the dramas and trials of life before, but now there was precious little to distract his mind from the overwhelming noise of it all. He got precious little time to enjoy any measure of quiet—and peace was far beyond him, so quiet would be all that he could hope for—but the loudness of every mind and body of Coruscant's endless city was painful to his overwrought nerves. Pain was an old friend of Vader's, though, so he continued his steady pace through the halls of what remained of a Senate.
Pain.
There was pain always. Pain in his flesh, as his body adjusted to the anesthetics his medical droids would assign. Pain in his hands, taut and itching and burning with phantom sensation that can never be satisfied, as the limbs were lost so long ago. Pain in his legs, in artificial receptors that misbehave and trigger response to kneeling, bowing, walking, if he isn't meticulous in their upkeep. Cybernetics had improved since the rise of the Republic, and his Master had been indulgent as Vader quietly explored the improvements that could be had. His suit was a marvel of engineering to be sure, but it was woefully lacking compared to the body that had been left to burn on Mustafar's shores. He missed the agility he once possessed, allowing him to move and flip and battle against any opponent with no loss of momentum or precision. He missed the feel of the sun on his face as the wind greeted him as an old friend. He missed breathing, eating.
He hated Coruscant. He hated the nostalgia that would rise up when he least expected it. It was hard, always, to not dwell on what once was, but it was impossible when he walked the same halls that she once did. And Vader was left scowling.
Mind drifting, he scarcely noticed as his path brought him to the offices reserved for his use. There was little purpose to him having an office. The only man who ever sought Vader's attention had his own office, one much more grand and imposing than he'd ever allow for his apprentice. Despite that, there was some reprieve in allowing himself to sink into the chair. He wouldn't degrade himself with a sigh or lowering his head into his hands, but Vader allowed his eyes to close and let himself drift into the embrace of the Force.
His relationship with the Force had changed all throughout his life. He remembered, vaguely and reluctantly, how elusive and shy it had been when he was just a boy. It was the warmth of a stray cat then, shy and prickly, ready to dart away the second he attempted to close a fist around any part of it, but as he'd grown more comfortable and learned the ways of the Jedi it too had grown more amendable to his touch. As a young man, he'd been fire and reckless and the Force had sung with him as he wielded it with righteous fury. It had danced within him as he piloted his way through asteroid fields, hummed with contentedness as he lay in Naboo's rolling fields with—
No. Now the Force was cowed to his whims. When he did not reach for it, it groaned, ever-present beneath the loud rasp of his respirator and the metallic clink of his body. When he sought it out, it rose up, fierce and angry and bitter, reliable and wretched, just as he was. That was how he'd truly grown in the Force. As a youth, he'd believed the Force to be something separate from him, loosely connecting all living things as the Jedi believed. That, he knew, was a lie. He was the Force, connecting all things to himself in a grasp that was as unshakeable as it was inescapable. It was that grasp that lured his attention away from his office, allowing his senses to wander further and further beyond the closed doors of the Senate as he allowed his mind to drift along the tendrils and snares of the Force. He rode the waves of it—better than podracing, exclaimed the nostalgia before he brutally silenced it, returning his attention to everything other than himself—until—
There!
A Force presence flickered somewhere, dark and uncertain, but not angry, like his so typically was. It was… fearful, he identified with a beat of a uncertainty. Fear was true enough, but Vader was familiar enough with fear that it ran in so many flavors. There was a particular strain of fear for each cause, a hue to each pang of horror and grief that sang along the strands of the Force presences he'd felt in his years of searching, hunting Force sensitives.
He wondered idly if the Inquisitors had found another one. The task of hunting Force sensitives was not technically within his realm of responsibility. The Emperor had once aimed to make sure of that. However, Vader was the Empire's premier Jedi killer. An organization dedicated to the hunt, capture, or kill of Force sensitives was sure to become his business, and so it was. It was curious, though, he hadn't heard any active leads on Force sensitives in some time. And this one… If he could feel it from Coruscant, it must be strong.
The desire for information not relating to treason was almost unknown to Vader, so used to the constant shift and rhythm of his life, that he wasn't sure what to do with the abrupt realization that he wanted to know more of the situation happening half the galaxy away. Was it that far? It must have been, for as he channeled more of his focus into that fearful presence it was only with some effort that he was able to open his eyes to… a cargo bay? Trapped in the perspective of the child as he was, it was difficult to ascertain much more than that, though the curiosity only grew.
The Force sensitive was in transit, then. Though not, Vader noticed with some discontent, on an Inquisitor vessel. Inquisitors followed strict protocol when it came to suspected Force sensitives, and the fact that he was conscious and could feel the muscles in his jaw move—in the child's jaw, he reflected after a moment—went directly against training.
"Help!" he screamed in a child's high voice. Not, not his. Curiosity grew to concern as Vader, with some difficulty, pulled himself further from the child's Force presence, the connection shaking and then snapping as he pulled away. It had been years since he'd lost even some aspect of his sense of self when projecting in this way. There was something unusual about the child—girl, Vader decided, reflecting on the voice. With some trepidation, he reached out again, exploring the presence rather than the surroundings now, trying to ascertain what precisely made this Force sensitive so unusual to his senses.
The child was strong. Strong and distinctly untrained. Not a remnant of the Jedi order, as it was unlikely he'd misjudged the sensitive's age by the shrillness of her voice. A child born at or after the rise of the Empire, likely in one of the Mid or Outer Rim worlds, else they would have been uncovered by the census mandated for nearly every Core World resident. There were a handful of exceptions to the census, Vader knew—some royalty were given certain privileges as political or personal favors, just as certain government officials and military personnel were shown some apparent favor by the Emperor when he wished to cause infighting—but the presence was also some ways away from Coruscant.
Errantly, Vader had an absurd notion to investigate the situation further. A Force sensitive child was of some concern, but not truly his, though. Opening his eyes to his office once more, Vader allowed himself a frown as he pulled up a datapad, seeking out the latest reports from the Grand Inquisitor only to find—
His blood seemed to run cold at the most recent report before rage burned the ice away, leaving sparks against his nerves as his mechanical hands creaked against the edges of the datapad threateningly. A trio of Inquisitors—including the Grand Inquisitor—had landed on a planet in the Outer Rim, seeking out one of their scraps. That wasn't at all unusual, since most remaining Jedi remnants went to ground in backwater Outer Rim planets, but what was unusual was the name of the particular planet they'd pursued their prey to.
Tatooine.
Vader's mind hadn't crossed the desert planet in years. It had been the better part of two decades since he'd last set foot on that forsaken rock and he'd quite happily never see it again. In the quiet moments when he allowed himself to wonder if the DS-1 project was truly the best thing for the Empire—if it's what she would have wanted to see as a tool to maintain peace—he allowed himself the acknowledgement that some planets truly deserved annihilation. That rock was a keepsake of his worst truths—the low origin he'd worked so hard to overcome, the pain of his first of so many losses, the site of his first massacre—and he'd happily scrub it from the sky. And there were Inquisitors there.
His anger flowed fiercely through him, but Vader forced his fingers to release some of the pressure against the datapad's edges before they collapsed under the strain. The Inquisitors were not his responsibility, but he had a hand in training many of them. If anyone were able to untangle the connection between Vader and that unforgiving rock, it would be one of his former pupils. An ordinary master might be proud of an apprentice overcoming a challenge, but this was no challenge. Vader was able to function because of his careful distancing from the man who'd died on Mustafar. If the connection were discovered, if that was a leak that could not be prevented or plugged, it would destroy what little calm he could salvage from his life. Having it be known that he was—
It was unthinkable.
Anger was a hot and burning rush, but Vader had begun to tire of burning. Patience had never been a virtue he'd professed to possess at any age, but it was one he would conquer. First, his reports—excuses—to the Emperor. Then to the Devastator.
Posted 3:04, 7.9.22
A/N: Anyone else re-obsessing over Star Wars lately? I might have a lot of questions (read: grumbled issues) about how Kenobi was handled plot-wise, but it successfully brought my attention back to this franchise and I've been a little fixated lately so here we go! Apologies for the LONG A/N. I promise that this is a very rare occurrence but I wanted to pre-empt some questions, so:
My exposure to Star Wars includes all of the movies (including Solo and Rogue One), The Mandolorian, Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, a smattering of episodes of Clone Wars, and some surprisingly deep wikia dives. I haven't read any of the extended Legends universe, nor have I watched Rebels or Bad Batch. I will be pulling from the wikia when I feel that it's appropriate, and I'll likely keep to canon as I understand it most of the time but the fact that the start of this story coincides with the start of Obi-Wan Kenobi means that there are aspects of lore that are involved that I will be writing about that I don't have a solid canon-compliant grasp of. Such as the exact structure and personal history of the Inquisitors. That said, I'll strive for everything to feel cohesive. This means that things that I'm aware are canon but don't meet my expectation of cohesion will be tossed right out. Example: Reva's every interaction with everyone in a position of authority. I will be SUBSTANCIALLY rewriting her characterization, though I'll be keeping her backstory largely the same.
This WILL be a redemption story of sorts for Vader. I love love love exploring villain/dark characters, especially ones that truly believe that they are (or at least began) as the hero of the story. This story will revolve around Vader's personal journey towards being someone who can be called Anakin again, but it will not attempt to justify or excuse Vader's actions. I don't think any level of "hey, but he's actually not the WORST person to this one specific person who he's literally the father of" will excuse the multiple mass-murders. There will be canon-compliant amounts of violence/descriptions of gore. There may be exploration of PTSD/trauma relating to said-violence. I don't think Palpatine has HEARD of grief counseling, unless that's someone who just shouts "yes, feel your pain!" over and over again. This will have some level of repercussions to be explored.
Both Luke and Leia will be involved in this story, though it will be a long time before we see Luke, Leia, and Vader in the same place at the same time. Obi-Wan will also be included, though I hope for his sake that he doesn't come in until Vader's made some progress down redemption road. There will be Force-related connections between various characters to various depths. Most bonds/connections described are NOT permanent or passively-maintained, and will need to be re-established with concentration and no small effort depending on the characters and the distance between them. A bond between characters can provide varying levels of detail/information. A lot of Force use/bond manipulation will be drawn from popular or personal head canon.
There will be clones. Some of them might get names/nicknames and their characters might be explored as Vader starts to relearn that he might benefit from interpersonal connections. Clones do not feel the exact same by their Force presence (as established by Plo Koon in Clone Wars), but there are enough similarities that Vader will always known if the trooper in front of him is a clone or not, though he will likely not know their designation. That might change if/as he relearns that humans benefit from interpersonal relationships, which means potential OCs.
On the subject of OCs, they will exist but they won't be prominently featured. Star Wars has a lot of space scenes, but the characters do not exist in a vacuum. There will be characters (named or not) on star destroyers, in rebel cells, taverns, and ravaged towns. How much we learn about these background OCs will depend very much on the POV. Since this story (especially the first 'act') will be from Vader's perspective, we won't be getting much information unless it's really pertinent. If a ten year old wanders onto the set, though? We're probably going to learn what an unsuspecting petty officer's favorite starship is and all sorts of irrelevant things, depending on the situation. I'll included canon characters as I can to minimize OCs moving plot, but the timing excludes a fair number of familiar faces and Vader is going to want meat for the grinder, so to speak.
Padme is NOT secretly alive somewhere. I promise. Either she died of heartbreak or she died from Palpatine's influence to preserve Anakin's life, but she is very much dead. Leia was adopted by the Organas as per canon, and her adoption is neither a secret nor is it particularly gossip-worthy on Alderaan, where Breha definitely made a savvy Core World political woman gesture of adopting an unfortunate orphan of the Clone Wars, inspiring a bunch of well-to do women to do the same. Luke was adopted by the Lars as per canon, although I'm likely to have the fact that slavery is not uncommon on Tatooine come up very soon.
If you have any questions, please shoot me a PM or review and I'll respond when I can! I'm revising the next chapter (hoping to post it by Monday) and working on the next but reviews will definitely help me keep this hyperfixation and stay inspired to write!