Tatooine was as it always had been. Hateable.
The golden-red sun looked ready to lower itself, followed closely by its constant companion. Dry air lifted the Sith Lord's black cape as he got off his black speeder, his shadow stretching over the brown desert.
He took a step. Mounds of sand crushed and flattened softly under his boots and dust rose with the motion. Nothing penetrated the insulation of his suit; but even being affixed with internal cooling units and layers of heat-protective fabrics and armor, he felt the insufferable heat.
Miles away sat his shuttle, ready for his return. Inside a specialized unit monitored the area. Droids and stormtroopers were ready to enact his command. His only command had been for them to wait.
Vader observed the rocky region. He looked ahead through his lenses, zoomed in with his optic scope: the area was very near.
He walked. He started to recognize it all: the dwelling, the barren land, the vaporators and binary sunset and how it all settled together. Familiar things resurfacing from under the dark mines of his memory...
Shoveling pounds' worth of sand and grime. Placing a wrapped-up body into the freshly dug hole. Kneeling. Praying. Staring at a gravestone, clawing hot sand between his fingers...
Setting suns...
The residual feelings bristled in Vader, trying to derail him. He did not give in to them, outwardly; he was too old and too ready for this reawakened weakness. He knew how to mentally steel himself by now. The pain barely reached at his core before he froze it, before it could leak like a burning pool into his heart. Redirect it, determine its course. Merge it back into the numbed places, like worms devouring a cold corpse. A staple in the way of the Sith: either let the pain serve you or strengthen yourself beyond it.
It was an instinctive reaction for Vader, usually. But for this matter it was pointless to banish the very emotions and memories that had brought him here. For this, he would allow himself... weakness... A test of his own self-control... Impartial and impersonal duty tended to occupy his time, and it was a rarity that he partook in anything relating to his former life...
But he had to be here. Bear the displeasure and, yes, the internal weakness of being here, on this planet. One last time.
Vader looked ahead at the shapeless flatlands. He trod across the field of the moisture farm. Antenna-like vaporators were forked spaciously into the ground . Up close he saw the white joints were calcified with aging dirt, many of them missing parts, all of them unworking. No doubt remnants of a farming batch that had been abandoned.
When he'd passed the graveyard of broken vaporators, he stopped. The sunlight shifted over him. Against the dimming fiery sky he saw a silhouette, like a rounded boulder against the blazing horizon. It reflected the suns' glow, making the whitish dome look like it was under a golden disc. The domed dwelling sat there, quiet, clearly abandoned, its windows dark.
Vader let himself look at the modest dwelling a moment longer, than turned his back to it. He stared out toward the surrounding area. He searched...
He didn't see it.
They'd hidden it. Or destroyed it.
Understandable, but Vader still frowned. He quickly activated another setting of his optic sensors. Colored visuals appeared, the sandy ground turned to bright yellow pixels, the dwelling and the rod-like vaporators turned to static whiteness, all their shapes distinct. Vader swept the area more...
And it was there. A blue square beneath scattered yellow. The gravestone, now buried and lying horizontal. Beneath it was a mass of violet resembling a humanoid figure.
Vader turned off the sensor. The colors dissolved and his red-tinted vision returned. He was still.
He breathed. He looked up into the twilit sky.
With the Empire's recent trouble negotiating with the ever-greedy Hutts, and their profit lines suspiciously thinning, the Emperor had ordered him to come to Tatooine. To make one final offer. As expected, Jabba had agreed to comply, if only when met face-to-face with the likes of Darth Vader, but that hadn't concealed an iota of his true intentions. He had been claiming the Hutts clans' allegiance to the Empire time and time again with no change in results. Unlike any ambassador sent to him before, Vader easily sensed he was lying and had confirmed his treachery. No doubt the gluttonous slug thought the Hutts too valuable to be severed from the Empire, regardless of the accusations. Unfortunate for him and his clan, the Empire held a weapon that could wipe them out.
It had been unprecedented that the Death Star, in its twenty long-spanning years of construction, had finally been completed this year. Krennic's recent death and Tarkin's improved direction had seen to that. Alderaan had been the first test, followed months later by the rebellious Mon Cala. With the completion of the gigantic battle station, Tarkin was adamant to make its power known, to choose strategic targets while instilling the reality to the galaxy that the Empire had this weapon and would use it without warning.
It had been decided by the Imperial Council beforehand that, should the negotiations with the Hutts fail, Tatooine would be the next target. A world in the Outer Rim, crime-ridden, of no political importance, it served only as a sign of the Hutts' reign.
Tatooine... by some surreal, determinate chance... Tatooine was now in line to be destroyed. Vader had his misgivings regarding Tarkin and his beloved death-ray machine, but for this he had to feel some level of gratitude. It was to be deemed officially as a service to the galaxy, a purging of an infestation of crime, and in the ranks of the Empire a warning for disloyal allies, but to Vader it was Force's will aligning with his own. It had brought about this opportunity, this excuse. Yes, this world always brought out his weakness, a strange intermixing of emotions, but this time his visit would end in some form of catharsis. He could not not relish the destruction of this world.
The firing was hours away. Before tomorrow Tatooine would be reduced to shattered cosmic dust... along with all its inhabitants. Living and nonliving.
Vader stared at the ground.
Slowly, he raised a black leather hand. The sand below shifted. There was quiet rumbling, the whispering of sand, and then it came: a peek of smooth stone. The head of the stone rose... and rose...
It stopped halfway. Grains of sand rolled and fell around it. At its center was etched writing, cut off and half-buried.
Vader stiffened. He turned away. He stepped aside. His wind grew strong and his cape whipped over his shoulders, the black armorweave enveloping him like winged arms.
He observed the last gleam of the red-gold sun, its yellow-white twin still flaring as a full globe. Their pinkish glow spread over the desertlands. Somewhere amid the bitter winds he could hear a quiet, desperate voice:
Why did she have to die? Why couldn't I—
Vader's stance faltered slightly; he immediately straightened. He lightly growled, the sound coming out through his vocoder like static. His metal-embedded chest rose and fell with a certain soreness. He called on the dark side, the energy that was always so willing and ready, tried to mold the pain with it, make it serve him...
The pain lessened, but remained. Always. Like screams reverberating down a hall without end.
Mother. Loss. The passing of time hadn't closed those childish wounds completely, and he would not allow it to. A Sith thrived on pain. But he was also a Sith who signified strength. Darth Vader. Enforcer. Warrior. Lord.
And soon enough, Emperor.
For that, he needed to be all but infallible. Weakness here in the solitude of the desert was one thing. Standing before Sidious was another. That fight would come soon... it had to come...
For that... perhaps the Force was truly in his favor, putting him in this place to see this planet's destruction. It was time to grow beyond this wound.
Shmi Skywalker had been dead for nineteen years. Her remains would be obliterated, along with the cursed world that had enslaved her, and the animals that had killed her. And he would let it. All of it, it would burn.
Part of him objected, saying he had the means to... relocate the remains. They could be placed quietly on Coruscant with a private burial if he wished...
It would not happen. He would not stand it, observing while her deteriorated body was extracted and moved from one place to another — at the same time he knew himself, and knew he would not let mere strangers do the deed — and the Emperor would know, of course, would only use it against him...
So. Here he was, standing here at his mother's grave, one last time. It was all he could do. Once the Death Star destroyed this world... perhaps... no, certainly, his need for grief would come to a point. A point that he could pass.
Never again would he be forced to come to this planet, never would he revisit his dead mother or the sadness of her life. That reopened wound could be numbed, could finally—
"Who are you?"
The Dark Lord turned.
Several feet away stood a young man in simple brownish-white garb, a bag slung around his shoulder. His eyes opened wide on his young tanned face. With a gasp he backed away at the sight of the Dark Lord.
Vader observed him in silence, bothered by having his repose interrupted, but he waited idly. He was, he found, not in the mood for violence.
The boy shuddered as he stared at him. He shook his head in disbelief, as if trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He squeezed his eyes shut as if fighting off the light of the sun, opened them, breathed roughly.
The boy knew who he was, Vader could tell. His careful movements showed he was struck with a knowing fear, but strangely he moved closer towards Vader. The distress in his face was steadily giving way to a hardened earnest. Anger brimmed beneath his fear.
"You're... Darth... Vader... you—" he started, the words sounding like a labor for him to speak aloud.
Vader interjected, "Imperial business is being conducted here. Leave now."
The boy's head jerked back in alarm. Consequently the wind blew suddenly at him and he wrenched, his straw-blond bangs flinging. He swept them over his forehead and held them place. Red-faced and shoulders slumped, he drew out a stored breath.
"The last time... the Empire had 'business' here... they burned the place down... and two innocent people died," he said, t a tremble in his voice. He glared at the Dark Lord now with a laser-focused loathing. "W-What else... do you people want? There's nothing left!... "
A grudge, a friend of the Larses, thought indifferently. The boy seemed wired to move and took another step. He stopped, met with the Dark Lord's continuous glare, which he seemed all too aware of despite the mask. The youth swallowed hard, clenched his fists, gnawed his bottom lip, quaking in his quiet anger. Still he didn't turn back, didn't paid no heed to Vader's orders. He stood there, rooted to the spot.
Whatever this was, Vader's patience had no patience to find out, his default preference for solitude was building by the second. He rose a hand, whether to Force-push the boy away or choke him to limp lifelessness where he stood, he didn't know... but distraction prevented either of them:
"Master Luke, he looks dangerous! Please please, let's just go! I told you it wasn't safe here, if you'd only listened..."
Vader froze.
His gaze followed the pompous electronic voice to its source, turned to the left and saw... at some distance behind the boy, nearly obscured by the Lars dwelling...
There sat a parked landspeeder. A droid sat in the backseat, waving its arms fretfully, its body gold-plated and its face bearing two glowing yellow-white eyes.
Vader stared at his old, hand-built droid.
The boy stared at the Dark Lord.
Thousands of miles away in orbit, the Death Star stared at Tatooine.
