Vader had been wondering how the hell he was going to get his daughters off the Death Star since his master had ordered him to follow that asshat Tarkin's orders while he was here. While he had considered telling his master to go to hell and doing as he damn well pleased, he rejected the idea in the end. Doing so would result in a near immediate death sentence for himself and his daughters which would be carried out by one or more of his master's numerous "Hands", and as he wasn't entirely certain that his master hadn't built some sort of kill switch into his life support that could be activated at the most inconvenient of moments, he wasn't about to take that risk. If he wasn't around to defend his daughters their fate would be truly horrifying indeed.

It had been in the third hour of his musing that the ship that shone like a beacon in the Force had appeared. It had been a godsend with a side order of revenge earlier than he expected, considering the fact that one of the Jedi presences he sensed aboard it was his former master Kenobi. After coming up with a totally brilliant plan on the spot, he went to Tarkin as fast as he could without arousing suspicion in the old bat and presented a plot that would appeal to the wily bastard.

The evil geezer who had taken great pleasure in blowing up Despayre and Alderaan couldn't wait for the opportunity to destroy yet another planet and had taken the bait. It was now up to him to "Personally plant a homing beacon aboard the ship while everyone was away rescuing the princesses". Once the ship was away, it could then be tracked to the Rebel base. At least that was what he had told Tarkin. In reality, the ship would get away and he'd just say something along the lines of "Oops, sorry it seems the homing beacon has malfunctioned. His daughters would be gone, but they would be safe.

The ship - which was not much to look at on the outside - was a heavily modified YT-1300 that apparently had some real sweet engines if the story of how it blew out of Mos Eisley was to be believed. It was also not as unoccupied as he had thought it would be when the swarm of Jedi had departed earlier to wreak havoc aboard the station. The bright presences of the Jedi he'd somehow missed during the purges had overshadowed at least one more ordinary one.

When he boarded the Rebel's ship to "Personally plant the homing beacon" (read: stand around and do jack for a few minutes) he found himself face to...er, looking down at someone he was reasonably certain was his step-brother Owen. The man's resemblance to Cliegg Lars was unmistakable.

"Hello Anakin." The man who may have been Owen said.

"Huh?" he said, too shocked that Owen was here and knew exactly who he was to really say anything intelligent, much less correct him on his current identity.

"A'Sharad told me about it. As far as I'm concerned, it's all Kenobi's fault." Owen said.

"Kenobi's fault?" he asked, confused.

This was not how he imagined an encounter with his Step-brother would go. He had imagined there being alot more blood, and himself punishing Owen for being too weak to save his mother. He had not pictured him standing there like a total kriffing moron.

"Anyone who would be willing to leave four babies out in the desert at night completely unsupervised where they could be found and eaten by any number of creatures couldn't have raised you properly." Owen said. "There was that, and his dismissing your visions as nightmares and not letting you go look for your mother until it was too late. I've been told that that was most likely a key event in your becoming the second most evil person in the galaxy."

He didn't know what to say to that, so he just stood there in silence until he'd determined he'd been aboard long enough to have planted a beacon in a well hidden spot and left. Owen being completely understanding, and agreeing with him that his mother's death had been at least partially Kenobi's fault had thrown him for a loop. Actually, just seeing his step-brother had thrown him for a bit of a loop. He'd almost completely forgotten about the man and when he did think of him it had been only briefly before he'd gone on to some other task after fantasizing about killing him and everyone else who helped make his life miserable.

&!&!&

"Who was that Owen?" Beru asked when she came out of the small 'fresher shortly after Anakin had left.

"It was Anakin. I told him that we didn't blame him, and blamed Kenobi instead." he said. "He just sorta stood there for a while and left. I guess that the confrontation with the family didn't go exactly as he expected it would, and just didn't know how to deal with it."

"Poor Anakin. He didn't really seem able to deal with his feelings the short time I knew him, and that probably hasn't improved much since, especially with the whole nervous breakdown." Beru said sympathetically.

(**^**)

Edited Sept. 3 2010