He still remembered his first pod racer.

It had been his second love, after his mother. His shining beacon of hope for freedom.

The frame had been what started it all. A miracle. A sign.

The scrap heaps on the edge of town never had anything big. That was bought or sold on the market. The best you could hope for was small bits and pieces only worth something together if you took the hours to collect them.

Anakin had been an obedient slave. He had to be, because obedient slaves were the ones allowed small freedoms by their master. The freedom to spend those hours collecting parts.

As he poured over the piles, searching for something no one else could fix, he found the rusting frame.

He recognized it from the races a year ago. The driver had been an idiot, some stoopa rich boy from the Republic, and apparently he was idiot enough to toss his pod rather than to sell it as scrap.

Hours later, in the dead of night, he returned with his friends and mother. Together they dragged the heavy metal thing through the sand to the slave quarters, where Anakin covered it with a thick blanket to keep it safe from the winds. He'd gone to bed, hands twitching with his eagerness to work on it.

Even now, he could close his eyes and see the pod. He could imagine it in his mind and reach out to fix every outdated tube and ill fitting part as if it were in front of him. Could remember working by the three brother moon's glow night after night. Could remember his want for it to be finished, because then he'd finally have a pod of his own. A pod that would work with his small frame and four inflexible appendages, not against them. A pod that he could win a race with.

The design had been good, the mechanics a work of art, the system, perfect. And yet, deep with Anakin there had been an itch he couldn't shake. An itch that said if he didn't have decades old fragile wire and thrice outdated parts only he could make function, it would be better. Faster. More stable. And it would already be the fastest Pod on Tatooine, he'd known that deep in his bones.

He'd planned meticulously what he would do when he was done. He would begin in the smallest races, where anyone could enter and it was free, and keep on winning until he had enough for the entrance fee for the bigger ones. Then he would race until he had a sponsor, and then, with a few more big wins, he might have enough to free himself.

Anakin had confided, once, to Kixter that he felt there was a krayt dragon inside him. Kixter had laughed.

"Krayt dragons are free." He told Anakin. "You are a slave. You don't have a kryat dragon, you have a salacc, who is trapped in one place and may only eat what his master gives him."

Shame had burned within Anakin, for he liked to imagine, sometimes, that if he let his dragon loose, he would be free at last. But now that fantasy was stolen from him.

But once he was free, then, surely, it would be a Krayt dragon at last. Surely. Surely. Once he was freed.

He'd have prefered to free his mother first, but if Watto caught wind of what he was doing it would be over before he could blink. But once he was free, no one would be able to stop him.

After that, there had only been a vague idea of racing and winning and earning until he had freed every slave on Tatooine. They would do as they willed always, with no master to pacify for a few moments of fleeting freedom. They would have families that would never be torn apart. Marry, in public, with no quick ceremony done in secret.

It never came to pass.

When Vader saw the pod for sale in the underground of Coruscant he couldn't help but stare.

It was not, as it first appeared, the pod Anakin had made in his youth. But it was the same model, and the frame had a strikingly similar design painted onto it. It sat there, a coincidence that reawakened an old urge from a past life.

Vader was an obedient slave, however, and he quickly returned to the task his master had given.

"I am the master of all, apprentice." His master had hissed in his ear while he clutched at his arm, not daring to utter a sound. "The senate, their planets, the very stars they encircle are mine. There is no place you could go, no place you could escape from me, my apprentice. Do not forget your purpose, for I have no use for that which does not serve me. Do you serve me, apprentice?"

"Yes, my master."

"Then do not disobey me again."

Late in the night he returned and purchased the pod from the half asleep booth owner. He rented a garage near his master's palace, and began work on it in the in-between moments of the missions.

Now, the only limit he had was his own patience. He scoured the net and underground booths. He outbid hundreds of other hopefuls by listing ridiculously high prices on auctions, only to scrap the won part in favor of a new, better, find. He stopped by planets on his missions to pick up the perfect couplers. He deliberated for hours over coding. He wore the calluses on his hands down to nothing, sanding the whole machine down manually, and gained new ones in their place.

It almost felt too easy. The ideal image from Anakin's nine year old mind too perfectly met. But there it was, shining and perfect in front of him.

He thought that would be the end of it, but a newer, deeper itch replaced the old one. An urge to hear the duet whine of the engine's in his ears as he pushed them to their limits. To feel the humm of the controls under his hands, ready at the slightest twitch to follow his command. To see the track blur in front of him and to slide into the almost sleeping state where there was no danger, for he flitted around it like a leaf in the wind.

He waited until after a particularly long mission from his master, to decrease the chance that he would be called away at the last minute, and signed himself up for the largest underground pod race on Coruscant.

The twi'lek at the desk had been reluctant to allow him in, with his lack of sponsors and past racing history, but her mind was weak, and easy to twist. He was given a spot.

He tugged the floating pod into the small garage given him. Around him indentured servants, mechanics and racers alike tinkering feverishly on their pods, making last minute adjustments and repairs.

Vader merely leaned against the frame of his pod and crossed his arms. His pod was in perfect condition, and she needed nothing more from him.

Tapping his foot, he waited for the minutes to slip by to the race where he would finally scratch that itch into nonexistence.

"Excuse me?"

He looked at the woman standing in the entrance.

Coruscant had circled its sun on a regular basis for billions of years. For all the millions of years of history on the planet, the people had always been able to depend on the regular path the planet has taken around the sun. They had based their calendars, their time system after it. When it became the center of the galaxy, so had the galaxy come to depend on that rotation too.

The military ran on Coruscant time. Rivaling planets arranged meetings through Coruscant time, so as to not favor one over the other. The galaxy standard time matched Coruscant's, and operated around that dependable rotation.

But on that day, at that moment, the world of Coruscant swung to a shuddering stop, and the galaxy would never be the same.

He spoke in the new silence the frozen world offered.

"Are you an angel?"

Maul had not been an bad master, compared to those Anakin had had before. He was better, even, than Watto, and Watto had been heaven compared to the hutt that had owned him before him.

He never starved Anakin, never denied him water. He gave Anakin a lightsaber, and taught him to use it.

He did hit him, or grab him by the neck through what Anakin was coming to learn was the force, and lift him up to emphasize a certain lesson. But it was nothing Anakin couldn't bear with a full stomach and a body well watered.

But even these bouts of violence were near and few once Anakin learned the proper reverence. Maul demanded respect, and the respect he demanded was a different flavor than what Anakin had grown up with, but he learned.

There were times, even, when he was even kind, when he seemed almost fond of Anakin. Watto also occasionally had these moments, but he was experienced enough as a master to not allow it to spoil his slaves. Maul had obviously never been a master before, because he did not seem to realize the risks he was taking in spoiling Anakin.

These times came most often when he returned from his own master, after being punished for one reason or another.

It was strange. Anakin was used to pain bringing out the worst in his masters. When they would take their own abusives and put them on him.

But pain seemed to humble Maul. He would stagger through the door and sit himself on the floor in the training room, grasping whatever part his own master had seen fit to correct that day.

"Show me how your strength has grown, my apprentice." He would gasp out. And he would watch while Anakin showed him how his control over the force had improved and how he was moving through the kata's.

When Anakin finished he would smile. Not the rabid, mad smile that came to him when he was high on his own schemes as an addict on spice, but an exhausted, satisfied sort of smile.

"Such strength." He would compliment Anakin. "Such power. Soon, my apprentice, soon, we shall be two."

And then he would sleep for hours, right there, on the training room floor. Anakin learned not to try to treat his master's injuries. The pain, apparently, gave him strength as a Sith.

It was the times of mad glee that Anakin had to be careful of. When, so wrapped up in his mind, Maul was not satisfied with any progress Anakin made, and would duel him for hours upon hours, shouting at him with critiques and not quite touching him with the lightsaber to burn him whenever he made a more egregious mistake.

But, more often, he was quiet and exhausted, and he was pleased. When, after a days lesson, they would sit down together and he would set a hand on Anakin's shoulder and stare at him almost fondly, and tell him stories from his youth, that his mother told him before she gave him up to the males.

"She held me longer than the others." He admitted to Anakin. "I was not much younger than you when she finally gave me up. When the others finally forced her to give me up. She bore no daughters, see, and she hoped to teach me some of the magic of the sisters. But, alas, it was not to be."

"Mothers must always give up their children on Tatooine." Anakin murmured. He had been lucky to have as much time with his own mother as he had had.

"Yes." Maul had grasped his leg between his hands. It had been drenched in boiling acid, and it would not allow him to sleep. Anakin rather suspected he talked to distract himself. "It is… similar. Only your mothers do not do so willingly. Mine do. I was only allowed to stay so long because my mother knew me to be clever. I spoke young, and I learned quickly, and the sisters found me an anomaly, something to be studied. But the time came, and I was sent away."

"And then your master came for you." Anakin whispered.

"Yes." Maul hissed and bowed over, clenching his teeth. "Yes. My master. He came and he saw my cleverness and he took me. I am a powerful apprentice, but I am not powerful enough to defeat my master. Nor am I as clever as him, but I know his ways and I believe I can outsmart him, once."

"And I shall be the power." Anakin said solemnly. "I am more powerful than he."

"Yes. You're power in the force, even now, is stronger than his." Maul had smiled at him, and he had ruffled Anakin's hair. "And then we shall rule the galaxy."

"And free the slaves."

He laughed. "If you so wish it, so will I let it be."

It would take many years of hard work, Anakin knew, to free all the slaves in all the worlds. But Maul was a kind master, and he would allow that time, because Anakin would give him the galaxy to rule.

Sometimes, Anakin thought it did not feel like he was a slave for Maul, for there were times when Maul was so weak, and Anakin was growing so powerful that Anakin could have killed Maul and gone back to free his mother. But he found himself not wanting to. He found himself believing in the plans Maul set out for them both, and wanting to fulfill them.

His mother would rather all the slaves be freed, he reasoned, than just one, or a village. Anakin saw, now, that he could not free the slaves alone, he would need the resources of the Empire his master's master had built, and only then could he free the slaves, and let them remain free.

"Now." Maul wrenched his leg into the position for mediating, and stared down at Anakin. "Put up your shields, and I will test their strength."

The wine was tart in his mouth. Soured by the taste of a sweet fruit. Shuura. She'd called it. From her planet.

It made sense. Her presence in the force, though drawn close around her, was tinged with its sweet fresh smell. He hadn't been surprised at all when she told him it was her favorite fruit. That she'd used to eat them by the dozens from her grandmother's tree, that she specially ordered crates of the things to be brought to Coruscant. Nevermind they didn't taste quite as good. Nevermind the cost.

He took another sip of the wine.

Beside him, Padme held her own glass, swirling her drink idly while she watched.

"Padme?" He asked.

His voice was thin, small, without his helmet's amplification. But he liked it. He liked feeling small for once. It made it so much easier to be with Padme without feeling like he was in danger of crushing her every moment.

A smile curled at the corner of her mouth. "Yes?"

He injected a bit of whining into his voice, so she would think he was joking, even if what he felt was true. "What does the wine do for you that I can't?"

She set the glass down and she turned to look up at him. A rush of pleasure went up his spine.

"What's it like working for Lord Vader?"

And just like that, it was gone.

He frowned, and he set his own glass down. He'd told her he was a pilot in Darth Vader's Black Squadron. An easy excuse as to why he was gone whenever Vader was, and it also explained his piloting skills. A good lie, but no lie came without its inconveniences.

"I- why do you ask?" He said. When he tried to scooch back her hand caught his. Even now it sent a rush of prickling needles up his arm. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling. It was very pleasant. Everything about her was pleasant.

Slowly she rubbed his palm, messaging it into the soothing way she'd learned he'd liked. Just the way Anakin's mother used to do, though she didn't know about that.

"You can't tell me a lot, I know. Security. It's just… I've heard some… interesting rumors." She stared up at him, wide eyed and innocent.

"Well," he forced one side of his mouth to quirk up, "I'll be sure to answer your questions, my lady."

She smiled then, and he dizzily drank in the happiness that trickled out from her force presence. And the nervousness. He rubbed her hand with his thumb, trying to even out the rough emotion.

"I heard-" she gripped his hand, "I heard he… destroyed an entire city. Because… because of an illness that escaped from a research facility here."

For a moment he left the warm, dim restaurant. He stood at the head of the Star Destroyer, gazing down at the planet below. He felt the force bend and collapse below as it rushed to fill the spaces left by the millions of dead. The light of the explosions below burned, just for a moment, brighter than the system's sun before fading into a scorched chard spot.

Vader grumbled angrily. That was supposed to be covered by the imperial propaganda team. No one was supposed to know, and if Padme knew that meant there was a leak. He would have to report this-

But that meant revealing his visits with Padme. They would take her, interview her on who had told her, who she had told, they might even torture her.

He sent Vader away.

"Ridiculous." He said. "He only has authority over military matters. And that mainly pertains to the rebels, these days. Why would he have the authority to bomb a city?" He laughed. "Where do you hear these things, my lady?"

"They spread through the Senate." She bit her lip. "I was wondering if there was any truth to them."

"There's no truth." He assured her. But the worry didn't disappear from her presence. She didn't believe him.

"Padme." He took her other hand and looked into her eyes. He tried to nudge her in the force, just to sooth her, but it was like trying to knock over a wall with a feather. "Padme, I promise, we don't do things like that. That's rebel talk. You shouldn't listen to it."

She sighed, and she leaned up to kiss his cheek. He closed his eyes and tried to not lean so desperately into her touch. "I have to listen. It's my job. Senator Amidala depends on me to find these things for her."

He shouldn't, but he damned her precious Senator Amidala in every way he could. He was surprised how many Huttese curses he could remember if he tried.

It was easy to worship her, when you knew of what she had been through, and what she had done. How she had been elected queen of her people at fourteen, and had subsequently, been invaded by the dreaded Federationalists.

She had traveled to Coruscant, but the Senate had been too slow and too indecisive and she had returned to free her people.

For ten years, as the Federation spread to other planets, and they in turn began to fight back, and finally the Republic moved it's sluggish feet and sent out soldiers, sending the galaxy headfirst into a civil war, she had run a resistance. By the end of the war it had spread across the entirety of Federation territory and it was said it was only with the combined might of the newly introduced Clone Troopers lead by General Thrawn and Lord Vader and her intelligence that the Federation was crushed at last.

It was easy to worship that, easy to pledge your life to those who preformed such heroics. But Vader knew the whispers, the rumors that no one else did. That her rebellion had never died, only buried itself deeper. That the former queen hated the Empire that had formed to end the slow Republic and bring a swift end to the war, and even now she fought against it in secret.

Because of her, Padme had to listen to that treasoness talk, and if anyone found out how much she knew, he might not get there in time to save her.

Her head nudged its way into the space between his shoulder and his jaw, and he wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her against him. He tasted the sweet Shuura fruit on his tongue, though he'd eaten no fruit, souring the aftertaste of his wine. He smelled the ancient dusty smells of the Theed palace she was so fond of. He felt the traces of warmth and love from her family, whom she'd left long ago to serve Amidala.

He wanted to cry. She was so good.

"I love you." She whispered. "No matter what. You know that, right?"

"I know." He whispered, pressing his cheek against the warm pillow of her hair. "I love you too."

The worry inside her shifted into crushing disappointment.

He wished he knew how to fix the whispers of negative emotions she always seemed to feel, even in her happiest moments. He wished he could remove the things that threatened to poison her against him. He wished she was free of Amidala, and he of his master so they could love each other the way they wanted.

Sidious was not a good master.

Anakin felt him approaching through the force. A void, a pit of oily, pervasive darkness that left a shadow trailing behind it longer than the shadows on Tatooine at dusk. It came so quickly Anakin had no time to set up his shields. The oily cold slipped into his chest and squeezed, and he could not breath, and his heart seemed to pound in an odd way, from side to side against his ribs instead of the front of his chest.

Sidious entered the home Maul had brought Anakin to, and he carried Maul's head in his hands.

It had been cut off with a lightsaber, for Anakin could see the charred edges around the neck, but the main arteries had burst through the cataurization brought by the heat of the blade, and blood gushed from the base of the head, staining Sidious' hand and sleeve, dripping to the floors Anakin was so careful to keep clean.

He had stared, numbly, at the blood and thought of how much work it would be to scrub it off the tiles. Blood was the worst, because Anakin must work slowly, or be caught up in the past and futures of those who had once had it flowing in their veins. Blood always seemed to carry ghosts the strongest for Anakin.

Sidious lifted the head for Anakin to examine, then he dropped it in a pool of its own blood. The horns clacked first against the floor, then the skull thunked dully.

It would be difficult, Anakin thought, to clean it up. There was so much, and though Maul did not demand cleanliness from Anakin, he never felt quite safe from his master unless there was a spotless home for him to come to.

The red, wrinkled hand of Sidious grasped Anakin's chin and lifted it to look up on the face of Sidious, under the dark cowl. His fingers trailed the blood of Maul across his chin.

Anakin knew, when he saw Sidious, that he was truly evil.

The elderly could not be cruel on Tatooine, for they depended on the mercy of those around them to be fed and watered. Neither could the young disregard the elderly, for their years gave them experience, and it was only through them could they hope to live past what should have been their golden years.

But this while this man wore the face of the elderly, his eyes glowed with an everlasting power that promised he lived because he willed it, and so it would be always. It was a cruel disguise.

"I see that all the years I have allowed my apprentice to live were not a waste." The man's lip curled, revealing pearly white teeth. "Well, boy, will you serve me?" His hand tightened. "Be warned, I have no use for that which does not serve me. And that which does not serve me…"

This was a lesson Anakin knew well.

He went to his knees, the way Maul had always demanded of him. His pants became soaked in the memories and dreams of his former master. The stain would never come out.

"I will serve you."

The gold of the man's eyes burned an almost brilliant orange. "Then from now on, you shall be known as Darth…" he paused, and his head cocked in thought, "Vader."

The engines screamed to their highest point, shuddering in their effort to fulfill that which was demanded of them, then suddenly choked, and died. That is, the engines in the pod next to him. He grinned, not that the racer could see it under the helmet, and pushed his own pod forward, blasting past his brief rival and sped past the finishing line with twenty meters to spare.

The crowd roared. He came to a screeching halt and leapt out of the pod to the top of the hood and threw his arms up, basking in the crushing waves of their approval.

He watched the pit carefully, searching through the mechanics and family of the racers. He found Padme and Sabe stood silently to the side of the screaming crowd, blending in the way they had been trained.

Padme's eyes shone with relief, he could tell, even if there were far too many people to detect her emotions easily. Anakin's mother had looked exactly the same every time Watto had made him race.

He went through the formality of accepting the prize money, and the prize. A top of the line speeder bike and some ticket to a luxury cruise through the mid and inner core of the galaxy, and a trophy.

It took twenty minutes. Twenty, long, agonizing minutes. Vader had to bite his own tongue until it bled to sate the dark side, which writhed and hissed in response to his own frustration. He might have strangled the announcer otherwise.

But at last it finished. He hopped off the platform and into his pod, driving off to his garage. Now the largest, and securiest, garage the arena had.

Padme and Sabe waited there.

Quickly he leaped out, tearing off his helmet. He grinned at her. "Well, my lady?"

She smiled a little, gazing out with her large brown eyes from underneath that hood of hers. "Very impressive."

"Impressive?" A new voice said. They all turned to see Eirtae sauntering through the garage door. "You're a force born miracle. That's what you are. Do you know what the ticket owner said when I told him you'd lose the first race, win the second without killing anyone, and then crash Jutahouliponus, the best damn racer on this planet in the first lap of the third? He laughed at me. But he looked pretty sober when I came back." She held up her pad. "Sure you don't want a cut?"

Anakin shook his head.

Though she did not know it, there was no amount he could give Ertae that would repay the debt he owed her. It was her who had sent Padme to question the new, mysterious racer, and without that moment he was not sure he ever would have found her.

The revelation terrified him more than the worst of his master's tortures.

Padme and Sabe frowned disapprovingly. Ertae rolled her eyes, setting her hands on her waist underneath the robes. "Oh, come on! Only millionaires are allowed to bet at these races. I thought I saw Senator Hupri- hey!"

She turned to Anakin again. "Maybe a meeting with you will finally get him to join Amidala's group. They need him, he's the senator of the system-oh… that system where all the duresteel mines are."

"No." Sabe said firmly.

"Please-"

"It's bad enough you keep dragging us to these races, let alone illegally betting to get a few credits-"

They kept on bickering, while Padme watched from the sidelines, amused.

Anakin moved to her side and held out the chip with the credits he'd won. "Here." He said in a low voice.

She glanced up at him smiling in her gentle way. "Anakin, I can't. I'd be no better than Ertae."

"I cannot give it back." He told her. "I do not need it. Please, my lady, you work so hard, you must be allowed some moments to yourself."

The smile vanished. "I am needed here."

"Please, my lady, allow yourself this freedom." He whispered desperately.

She sighed, then let a corner of her mouth curl upwards again. "Fine. I'll take the credits, but you keep that ticket and the bike. The girls would never forgive me if I went without them. Besides, you need a vacation just as much as I, and I know how much you like tinkering with things."

Anakin was silent, but nodded. He had taken her to his garage once. Somehow over the last year he'd acquired another pod, and a space ship too, which he was working steadily through. He was trying to make it as fast as possible, faster than any ship before it. Which meant studying the hyperdrive and building his own from the ground up.

Padme had handed him tools and listened while he explained what he was doing with each machine.

He'd gotten absolutely nothing done those hours, couldn't keep his eyes off her face, couldn't think to do anything more complex than tightening screws and adjusting the alignment of tubes, but she had barely stopped looking at him the whole time either. At the end, when she had to go, he'd kissed her, and she'd kissed him back. A lot.

He always thought it was lucky his master hadn't called him for the next day or so. He'd been blinding with all the joy in him.

He looped his arm around hers, savoring the taste of Shurra. She giggled up at him, and they walked through the hanger door, leaving Ertae and Sabe still fighting.

Kill all the Jedi.

Anakin was sorry to cut down the Kel Dor. He had a presence in the force unlike any Jedi Anakin had ever encountered for, and his love for the younglings he defended, and their love for him was so strong Anakin nearly choked on the familiar feeling.

He missed his mother.

But he was a traitor to the Republic, now the Empire. The Jedi's attack on his master was unforgivable, in the eyes the Empire, and so Vader went with the troops of the Empire and they slaughtered their way through the Jedi temple.

The dark side flowed as plentifully as blood that night, and even Vader hardly knew himself through the haze of pain and memories that rang through the force. The Salacc fed and fed, as Sidious and Maul taught him, and even though he was a constant blurr, each motion of his blade a killing strike, no part of his body allowed rest for hours on end, his arms and legs still trembled with unused energy.

The soldiers, constricted from the citizens of the Republic to fight against the Federation, fought by his side, but Vader knew he could have gone to that temple alone and he would have won. The soldiers were merely there to patrol the perimeter, to create a fence so the bantha would have no place to escape the slaughter.

The Kel Dor fought well, nearly broke the perimeter of soldiers to escape with a group of younglings. Anakin happened to be nearby as the call for back up came.

Vader was quite shocked when the lightening spilled from the Jedi's clawed hands. He had thought lightening to be a Sith technique, and yet this Jedi used it without drawing on the dark. He was obviously unpracticed, his arms straining to remain locked into place to keep it pointed where he willed it. Not at all like the languid ease his master spewed bolts left and right.

It only took a moment for Vader to adjust. He soon had the man in a chokehold, and the lightening promptly stopped. It was easy to cut him down. Pity, Anakin would have like to have known how he did it.

Anakin killed the younglings after that, almost lazily. He already had his back turned as the last of them of them fell to the ground, ready to head back to the center of the trap.

But his eyes caught a flash of orange, and he found himself looking down in the heap of younglings.

There was a young Togruta girl laying half under another human boy, a wound in her side, he had cut deep enough the blood was already oozing through the dark burns. Unlike the others, her expression was not one of fear, but determination.

Anakin knelt and touched her still warm blood, and promptly froze.

A warm body slotting into his side, forehead pressing into his chest. "Master!" Cried the Togruta girl-

The hiss of her two lightsabers joined his, and the screams of their crystals wound together into a trio of pain and death as they fought back to back, master and apprentice-

Love, so clearly stretched between them, her face warm with admiration and eagerness, so ready to obey-

He laid in the earth, arms and legs cut away, screaming in pain as he mourned the limbs he had lost, the things he had been unable to protect, and the Togruta knelt beside him, her hands grasping his shoulders to drag him to safety-

"Come, Ahsoka." She clasped his hand as he helped her off the ground, then he swept her up into his arms when he saw she limped-

Her hands were so small in his, yet strong and supple as he guided them through their work, as they constructed her second lightsaber.

"Come on, Skyguy." She rolled her golden eyes as she stood over him, he lay on something soft, something comforting, a mattress. "As if I would ever leave you behind."

Her voice, desperate and hoarse from screaming. "No! Come with us! Please-"

He jerked his hand away.

The Togrutta's body lay innocently before him. It did not breathe.

He found himself weeping for the apprentice he would never have, and the love that would never be born between them.

Slowly, he rose and turned back to the temple, where the roaring waves of darkness waited to claim him again.

He finished his work inside by the time Coruscant's sun had risen again, and he sent the soldiers back to their posts in the city. All there was left to do was to collect a few of the more valuable artifacts his master could not trust his lesser accolades with and his work would be done.

He saw the Togruta dashing across the courtyard as he left the building, artifacts in hand.

He dropped them, heedless of the damage it caused and reached out in the force and brought her up.

Her legs swung wildly for a few moments before she went limp. The wound in her side had scabbed some, and now he saw it was not nearly as deep as it had first appeared to be. Still, it was impressive she could fight back the pain enough to try and escape, let alone that she had managed to fool him into thinking she was dead.

Vader brought the girl up to him, and she glared fiercely at him, unafraid.

"Ahsoka." He said, and her eyes widened. "I did not want this."

He had wanted it in the moment, yes, when the dark side of the force pounded blood through his veins so quickly he felt he would burst, when the Salacc drank in the pain and he found himself sated and strong.

But now, he merely had a headache from all the death he had caused, and regret for all the cleaning there would have to be.

She spat on him. Snippy indeed.

"I did not." He repeated, unbothered. "My master wanted this, and I must do his bidding. I must, if I am to have the freedom for my own plottings."

"Liar." The girl snapped. "You're a Sith master. Only a Sith master could kill all the Jedi like that."

Vader watched her for a moment. Then Anakin slowly reached up and removed his helmet, tossing his head to unstick his hair from the sides of his head.

The girl's eyes widened.

"I am the apprentice." Anakin told her, and he held out his hand. "But my master and I do not want the same things. I wish to kill him, and you- you could help me."

"No."

He stretched out his fingers. "I have forseen it, Ahsoka. We are to be master and apprentice."

"No."

He sighed. "You looked the Kel Dor, did you not?"

"Master Plo?" The girl's face changed. "No, I did not. I like him. He was good. You killed him."

"My master made me kill him. And you did love him." Anakin bit his lip, wondering what he could allow her that would make her serve and work for him to have those few precious freedoms. "There are many others, in the galaxy, that loved and love him as you have. If we are to stop my master from ending all of them, we must work together. This is why I serve him, so I may strike him down when he does not see it coming. But I need help. I need help to protect the love in this galaxy."

Finally, her eyes looked down, and she clenched her jaw, her hands tightened into fists. Finally, she looked up, and took his hand.

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