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Chapter 13 – Do you see what I see

Ainar's dreams were full of turmoil the night before departing for Tatooine, and not just because that leg of their trip had been added without warning. Behind each of his eyelids hung an image that shrieked for answers: that of his son's unmasked face, and that of his bride's.

Who was she? What was her name? How long had they been joined before… that suit?

From what he glimpsed before Vader shut the vision away, she was beautiful. Her flushed cheeks and tender brown eyes evinced a love deeper than Varykino's lakes – although he didn't know that name, or that of Naboo. That ceremony could have taken place anywhere in the galaxy. Likewise, that young, blooming flower of a woman could be anywhere now.

Unless she wasn't blooming anymore...

Ainar banished the thought, too sickened by it to see straight. He spent the remainder of the night trying to imagine myriad other fates she could have met. His imagination did a subpar job.

The silver rays of sunrise felt both delayed and premature. Ainar heard Vader rustle awake and was seized by his first pangs of real doubt.

"I intend to know more than half, son," Ainar stated with firm resolve. "Everything."

"You don't know what you're asking. You'll regret it."

Maybe he would. But it was too late to turn back now.

Neither he nor Vader spoke while the latter inspected the shuttle's systems before takeoff. The silence continued half an hour after leaving Zygerria's atmosphere. Just when Ainar thought Vader had rescinded his offer, the dark lord finally blurted something.

"Three hours to Tatooine."

"All right," Ainar blinked.

"We're on autopilot now."

Ainar acknowledged this mutely.

Vader stared at the passing stars. "Do you still wish to know my demons?"

It was hard to say who was more anxious. Both men refrained from looking at each other.

"I do," Ainar said with more steadiness than he felt.

Father and son's thoughts aligned in total synchronization. This needs to happen. If it doesn't, everything is for naught. This trip… this connection that defies all logic and reason… it might as well have been a daydream.

A force – but not necessarily the Force – made Vader swivel to face his father, who pivoted toward him in turn.

"Very well. If that is your choice," declared Vader with dark finality.

Ainar blinked twice and plunged into the sun-soaked youth of Anakin Skywalker.

"Mom!" an eight-year-old boy with bleached hair came running into the kitchen. "Look what I caught!"

A woman with eyes siphoned of nearly all joy stooped to see what was cupped tightly in his hands.

"It's a kreetle!" he announced with gusto, prying a few fingers apart to let her see.

"My, that's a big one. Be careful it doesn't bite you!"

"Naw, it won't. I stuck a hartel nut between its pinchers."

"Good thinking."

"Can I keep it?"

Shmi grimaced. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" Anakin pouted.

"Because they need a lot of food, Anakin. We can't afford a pet, not even a kreetle."

"I'll work extra hours for Watto!" he bargained.

"Then when would you have time to spend with it?"

Anakin frowned, lacking the higher reasoning to see this obstacle on his own.

"Why don't you put your friend back where you found him, and then wash your hands for dinner," Shmi gave him a half-hearted smile. "We're having your favorite tonight."

"Fried bantha strips with cheese sauce?"

"That's it!" she ruffled his hair. "So cheer up."

Anakin appeared ambivalent as he scuffed outside to release the kreetle, squatting next to the clay urn where he'd first spotted it.

"We coulda been best friends, little guy," he confided, rolling the insect in his palms. "Maybe if I had a dad, he'd let me keep you. I bet he would."

The creature wriggled its six legs in response.

"I bet he'd get us out of here so I could have all the pets I want. And mom wouldn't be so sad all the time."

The kreetle skittered under the pot without a backwards glance. It couldn't grasp Anakin's hardship. By the downcast look in his eyes, nobody did.

Before Ainar could summon a mournful tear for his son's childhood, the scene shifted. Adobe walls were replaced with elegantly curved windows, beyond which lay more prosperity than the dustbowl of Mos Eisley would develop in a hundred lifetimes. In place of rough, unfinished floors were gleaming tiles… and on them stood not a pair of worn moccasins, but brown leather boots no slave would ever possess.

That was because Anakin was no longer a slave. Clothed in the tan layers of a Jedi padawan, Ainar's thirteen-year-old son stood rigidly before a semicircle of robed masters – and to the left of a bearded man.

"How goes the training, Obi-Wan?" a green Jedi of diminutive stature asked.

The man in question blinked self-consciously. "Fair, Master Yoda."

"A mixed report, I sense you have to give."

"Yes," Obi-Wan coughed. "Nothing harmful this time, just... practical jokes."

Yoda lifted his brow at Anakin. "Really? What sort of tomfoolery?"

"Well, last night I got a transmission from the Twi'lek exotic dancers guild," Obi-Wan's face burned red. "Someone signed me up for a free trial subscription of their holo broadcast."

"I see," Yoda kneaded his armrest, discomfited.

"Twice this week I've had my cereal switched with Toydarian hound kibble."

"Didn't you smell it when you opened the box?" Mace Windu wrinkled his nose.

"My sinuses have been clogged from exposure to miniature bantha fur," Obi-Wan glowered at his padawan. "Don't ask me where he found one, but he just had to bring it home."

"Removed from your living quarters now, is it?"

"Oh yes. That was gone in a heartbeat."

Yoda and the others nodded, assuming that concluded things. They assumed wrong.

"Yes, gone in a heartbeat… unlike the hair dye he put in my shampoo," Obi-Wan flung his hood back.

A dozen Jedi masters – some more than a hundred years old – found it difficult to keep straight faces. Such was the challenge when Obi-Wan Kenobi stared back at them with multi-colored locks of orange, green, and yellow hair.

"Four months. That's how long it lasts."

Mace slid a hand across his mouth, feigning a cough. "It's barely noticeable."

Even Yoda struggled to maintain decorum. "An interesting look that is on you, Obi-Wan."

"I'm glad everyone else finds it amusing," Obi-Wan flicked the hood back up. "Try not to forget who's behind these pranks."

"Ahem, yes," Yoda straightened in his seat. "Young Skywalker, what have you to say for yourself?"

Anakin glared flatly. "Nothing."

Obi-Wan sighed in exasperation. "You see? This is the disrespect I get daily. The boy–"

"The boy has a name, you know!" yelled Anakin.

"Which you'll deserve to be called when you start acting like a decent padawan!"

"How about you stop acting like a douche a first!"

"Speaking that way is unacceptable in our quarters, and even less so before the council!"

"See, that's your problem – so uptight and proper all the time. Just tell me to quit running my mouth, not this 'even less so before the council' crap," Anakin mocked.

Obi-Wan balled his fists, fighting to subdue his anger. "Any advice you have would be most welcome, Master Yoda."

"Tried to discipline him have you?"

"Extra chores, longer meditation sessions… I've done everything."

"No effect on obedience?"

"None that I can see."

Yoda nodded, pressing his lips. "Seen this type of behavior before, we have."

"You have?" Obi-Wan exhaled in relief.

"Yes, many times."

"Thank goodness! Tell me what I can do."

Yoda and Mace shared a conspiratorial glance.

"Persevere."

"What?"

"With great patience."

Dumbstruck, Obi-Wan gaped at them. "That's it? That's the best you can offer?"

"Until found is the cure for puberty's angst, yes."

"You're telling me I just have to put up with it until he finishes puberty?" he balked.

"Unless you've got a time machine to jump five years into the future," Mace quipped.

"I can't believe you're writing this off as typical adolescent antics."

"Typical, perhaps not entirely," Yoda conceded. "Less severe it might be if a father figure he had before age ten. Rebelling against many things, he subconsciously is."

Anakin locked his arms against his chest, brooding at the chamber floor. He was obviously in no mood to confirm or deny Yoda's psychological profiling. Sighing heavily, Obi-Wan bowed to the council, biting his tongue when Anakin barely dipped his head.

"Very well then. We bid you good day, Masters."

"Good day to you both as well," Yoda returned sincerely.

Unheard to all but Ainar in his omniscience, Obi-Wan's parting thoughts were less gracious than his words.

Some days, honoring Qui-Gon's dying wish is a lot harder than others...

Obi-Wan's disgruntled face vanished along with the Jedi council room. Ainar watched in awe as Anakin's teenage years elapsed rapidly. Milestones overlapped each other in quick succession: the broadening of his shoulders, the lowering of his larynx, the masterful fine-tuning of his mechanical skills. The cherubic features of his pre-teen youth morphed into sharp, taut angles of manhood. He looked virtually indistinguishable from Ainar at age nineteen.

"Ani? My goodness, you've grown."

She was standing before him, grinning, her petite figure draped in the fine clothes of a diplomat. In an ironic reversal of height, Anakin now towered over her, belying his inferior age. But judging by the idyllic scenes that followed on Naboo, their age gap mattered little to either of them.

Reasonably, or so he thought, Ainar predicted the next vignette would depict their wedding.

The Tuscan Raider massacre he saw instead jarred him back to reality.

Vader had, after all, prefaced this autobiography with ample warning.

When the wedding scene unfolded minutes later, Ainar was too unnerved to bask in its sweetness. What seemed enchanting the first time he saw it now felt tainted and ominous. What good could come from a love that turned a blind eye to murder?

The answer came in three years' time, when a war-weary Anakin threw himself into his wife's arms… and stepped back, overwhelmed, to behold her distended womb. Yet another tainted moment where joy mixed with pain – a ratio that grew more toxic each time Anakin experienced one of those dreams.

Dreams whose horror the Chancellor gradually persuaded Anakin to make come true.

Midway through the Jedi temple slaughter, Ainar numbed himself. He had to in order to tolerate the rest. The Separatist bloodshed on Mustafar… the heated confrontation on the landing platform… her pregnant form hitting the ground, unconscious… and then the battle. A battle whose outcome solved one half of the riddle that was Darth Vader.

The other half unraveled as footage of her funeral procession filled the gloomy streets of Theed. Somber faces mourned the woman in the casket as much as the unborn child whose profile swelled above the rim. Anguished outrage propelled them forward, vainly hoping to find answers in their beloved senator's wake.

But instead of answers, they received terror. Oppression. Starvation. They should have known Padmé Amidala's death heralded the end of justice as they knew it. In time, it all became commonplace. Soon few remembered life without the Empire measuring their every breath, or Darth Vader's chilling visage on every other holo PSA. Visits to Amidala's memorial grew more infrequent as citizens focused on avoiding all graveyards, temporarily and permanently.

Priorities changed. And life – to some extent or another – marched on.

Except for Ainar's grandchild and its mother.

Sliding back into the present, Ainar pressed both palms into his eye sockets. One breath a time, he'd eventually regain the ability to look his son in the lens-covered eye. But not yet. Not until he could lower his hands without them shaking.

It might be a while.

Good thing they still had over three hours until Tatooine.

"LOOK at me! I am death, darkness, and destruction incarnate!"

Up until minutes ago, Ainar had considered those words hyperbole. His skepticism was now forever abolished.

So the question was, if his mood was no longer as skeptical, what was it? Traumatized? Revolted? Self-imploded from shock? He was all those things, and yet none of them. Or more accurately, he was an odd amalgamation of them all, with something else intertwined.

Empathy.

Maybe it was wrong to harbor such feelings. Perhaps he should have stifled them the instant they surged in his breast. Any other being would have done so without compunction.

He didn't care. He'd already broken too many rules to count. What was one more?

"Well?" The silence was becoming too much for Vader. "Now do you regret it?"

Ainar kept his eyes sealed. "The only thing I regret is not being there."

"For what? The first massacre I committed, or the hundredth?" Vader jeered.

"Before everything."

Vader could hardly believe his ears. Was his father really suggesting what he seemed to be?

"You honestly think your presence could have altered my fate?"

To Ainar, it was the most self-evident, painfully obvious fact of all. "Don't you see?"

"Do not delude yourself, father. Destiny cannot be bent or molded on a whim."

"You call Mortis a whim? A mere fluke in the cosmos?"

"No – that was all preordained by destiny. Believing that you could have somehow altered it is the whimsical part."

Ainar dropped his hands and fixed Vader with a reproving stare. "So you're convinced it was all meant to be. Every last part."

Not entirely… but that is the belief that keeps me sane, Vader shielded his thoughts.

"Yes."

"So in the two days since we found each other, you've run every hypothetical scenario and deemed that my presence would've had absolutely no effect?"

"I need not," Vader growled.

"Like hell you don't!" Ainar propelled from his chair and paced the cabin. "Take your mother, for instance! She'd have never married Cliegg Lars if we'd remained together. Which means she wouldn't have been on that farm when the raiders came through… no abduction, no death."

And no murderous rage on the Sand People…

Vader thrust the thought away, intensely disliking where Ainar's speech was headed.

"She and I would both still be here. We'd be a safe haven for you and… Padmé," Ainar swallowed. "You'd have others to turn to besides Palpatine, who manipulated his way into the hole I left in your life."

"Enough!" roared Vader, snapping an armrest from his chair. "It is a capital offense to slander the Emperor!"

"Yet you do it all the time in your own thoughts," Ainar convicted. "Vader, he exploited and lied to you! Why do you remain loyal to him?"

The answer seared Vader's heart in flames hotter than Mustafar.

I have no one else.

"You do now."

Those three small words hung between them until Tatooine's parched orb appeared. Hours passed in a matter of minutes, thanks to the vivid imagery filling both their minds. Few visions captivated men like those of what might have been.

For Vader, that involved a series of childhood snapshots with a father always in the background. Tall and solid, steady and faithful through the years… there to guide his first steps, his first engineering project, and his first foray into the realm of young adulthood and love. There, along with Shmi, to celebrate when that love manifested itself in a family.

A family Ainar watched on private reels in his own mind. A family that had been cruelly denied the opportunity to frolic on Varykino's beaches.

A family that, if Ainar had his way, might include a little boy resembling the one he saved on that transport a week ago.

Beneath the cowls of her hood, the mother – Pedna – had kept her features bashfully hidden. Ainar's memory tried to form a composite picture, but his subconscious was too heavily influenced by Padmé to see anything but her.

Wishful thinking, Ainar, he shook his head, helping Vader navigate their descent. She's gone. It's just you and Vader. A small, imperfect family, but a family nonetheless.

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Revisiting the canyons and alleyways of his youth was no less poignant for Vader than Zygerria was for Ainar. Mos Eisley had changed little in eight years, with its rows of slave housing still as dismal-looking as ever. Standing before the hovel he once shared with his mother, Vader said little. He couldn't choose between feeling emancipated from his former life, or even more trapped than when he was Watto's property.

He had, after all, called someone master every day of his life.

Some may have deserved the title more than others, but that was beside the point.

Today's excursion wasn't for bemoaning past or present iniquities, however. It was for Vader to learn what had befallen Watto, longtime owner of his eponymous Junk Shop and swindler of many a dupable Jawa.

He was puzzled and provoked to discover the shop's sign had seen the only change in all of Mos Eisley. Instead of Watto's name in peeling letters, it said Wald. The W was still the same faded calligraphy as before.

Vader walked up to the cluttered counter and found a Rodian bent over a crate of spark plugs.

"Where is the owner of this establishment?"

Standing quickly, the Rodian's multi-faceted eyes blinked, then blinked more fiercely upon recognizing his patron.

"I am the owner," he gulped.

"Where is Watto?"

"H-he bet on the wrong race a while back. Went bankrupt, sold all his assets and moved to Anchorhead. I took over the shop when he left."

Recognition hit Vader. Wald… Watto's carefree Rodian assistant he'd befriended as a boy. The imp had certainly grown taller. Then again, so had Vader. And many other things besides…

How unfortunate they couldn't reminisce now. Even if he told Wald the truth, the cowering Rodian would never welcome a trip down memory lane with the Dark Lord, no matter who he claimed to have once been.

And so this portion of their Tatooine tour was at an end.

"It's off to Anchorhead then," Vader proclaimed, striding intently toward their shuttle with Ainar running to keep up yet again.

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