Of Old Memories
Anakin Skywalker walked among the sky all his life, and not once in his whole existence did he play by the rules.
Look where that got him.
It was thoughts like this that drove the walking hunk of metal into a murderous rage. Eleven-thousand, five hundred and thirty-two. That's how many lives he had taken in the past three years, all in the name of the glorious emperor. He counted every single one of them. He knew that recompence would eventually be paid upon him. He welcomed it. Ever since the night of the attack on the Jedi Temple he hadn't slept. One-Thousand and Ninety-Five days he had been awake. He could not go to sleep and face Padme in his dreams. He was a coward. A Sith had no need to sleep, the force was his nourishment, just as much as it was his punishment. Even so, Vader was tired. He had served the Empire for only three years, but those years had destroyed him.
The Dark Lord stalked through his chambers on Mustafar, headed towards his compression chamber. It was an improved version of the mobile chambers on his star destroyer, consisting of a very large room that was in itself a chamber. It was the only place where he could find a semblance of peace. He slammed his fist against the release mechanism, slightly cracking it in the process, and walked into his chamber. He sat down in the aged chair and used the force to flip the switch that began the decompression process.
His lungs screamed in protests as the chamber forced pure oxygen straight through his mangled throat towards his lungs. Why did he continue to suffer through this? Why did he live in agony? He hadn't had a single day of comfort since he killed his angel. He initiated the wash cycle and watched through lidded eyes as the water did its thing. Washing was the worst part because he had to disconnect all of his limbs to avoid shock. He was only waterproof when the suit was on. He hung there uselessly as the robot arms roughly washed his everything. The dryers came on and he was dry and clean within seconds. The system clothed him and lifted him into his leg prosthetics.
They say everything is healed with time.
Not for Vader
He sat in his thronelike chair, taking in the room before him. There was a massive holoscreen in front of him. He pressed a button next to his armrest and the holoscreen swiftly expanded all around him. He flicked another button, and another machine shot out and attached itself to the entry point at the back of his head. He thought hard and a field appeared around him.
"Ani?" a voice called out.
Something violent started clawing at Vader's chest. It was raw and uncaged. Something Primordial was ripping his insides out. Tears started flowing down the man's once angular face, staining his cheeks with a wetness that felt like fire.
"Padme!" another voice called out "I'm by the lake."
The scene shifted onto a young woman running down a sloping hill towards a man down by the lake. It was him. Himself from another life.
Vader watched the interaction play out through blindingly blue eyes. Tears did not escape his eyes; the dark lord did not cry. He did not deserve to shed tears for the dead. He deserved nothing but to suffer for all of eternity by the hands of his greed.
He had the universe at his fingertips. Hadn't he wanted that? No, he had nothing. He was nothing. Nothing could stop the sucking void that filled his lungs with every breath. Nothing would be ok. Where there had once been peace and joy within him, there was now nothing. Darkness darker than night. His heart was torn out, replaced with cold durasteel.
His eyes shot open when there was an irritating chime that shattered his inner conflict. His eyes, which were just blue shot into a deep yellow. He barked into his mic and received news that he was expected to make contact with the emperor. He sat up, in an incredibly foul mood and got fitted in his suit. The machinery swiftly placed the metal cage on him, almost as if it could feel his rage and didn't want him to take it out on itself. He used the force to fling the door open and broke out of his chamber at a brisk pace towards the communications room.
He kneeled where he was meant to and waited for the display to shimmer on. It took thirty minutes for his master to call him, and every minute was pure suffering. The suit took advantage of the fact that he often had to kneel and made it incredibly painful to do so. The face of Darth Sidious came onto the holo, as disgusting as ever.
"What is your bidding, my master?"
The emperor's eyes narrowed as he looked down upon the bowed head of his servant. "My friend, you are to journey to Tatooine and deal with the Hutts, they are out of control."
Vader's head flipped up and focused on his master's face. Tatooine? The man was crazy if he thought Vader would go there. He hadn't been on the Planet since his slaughter of the Tusken Raiders. He couldn't deal with that part of his past yet. "My master, surely a regiment of Troopers will do. The Hutts are no match for the might of the 501st.
"Your advice is noted and discarded. The Hutts are more powerful than you think, it will require a delicate hand to deal with their leader." The emperor followed his statement up with a surge of force lightning through his bond with Vader, immediately dropping him to the floor as every nerve in his body was set afire. "You do not question me, Lord Vader"
"Yes, my lord" he managed to say in between labored breathing.
"Pathetic. Stand Lord Vader, a Sith does not show weakness." His master snarled.
"Yes, my lord" he said as he slowly got to his feet. He could feel nothing but utter despair as he looked the man in the eyes. Darkness seemed to permeate in the air as his master's rage grew.
"You are to depart immediately! I want you off Mustafar within the hour and in Mos Espa by 6pm galactic standard"
"Yes, my master." He ground out through a bloodied mouth.
Lord Vader was off Mustafar in thirty minutes and in hyperspace in forty-five. He stood at the viewing port of his star destroyer and called for the jump to hyperspace. He started to think as the stars flashed by. Could he face his past?
He would make his way into Mos Espa and start to gather information. A smile began to grow behind his mask. He knew a certain slaver who he could go to for information. The flying bug that was not fit to kiss his boots. Watto would know suffering, as he knew suffering. The years growing up as the bug's property would be revenged.
As the Executor exited hyperspace, Lord Vader felt all of his deranged joy leave him. Tatooine stood before him in all of its sandy glory. Something tugged at his heart seeing his home world once more from space. He shivered in his climate-controlled suit, not from cold but from his inherent dislike of the world. Still, something pulled him towards the lumbering sand world.
"Ready my shuttle at once" the Sith demanded. The men on deck scrambled to fulfill his orders, lest he begin executing people.
Lord Vader made his way down through the super star destroyer towards his personal shuttle. He was to face something harder than he had ever faced. His past loomed like a predator over prey. He would face it and destroy it all the same.
It was late in Mos Espa, the suns already down. Vader docked his ship and, wasting no time exited. He left his Troopers on his destroyer, they only ever got in the way anyways. He made his way through the small city, only a few drifters on the streets. His hulking black figure blended with the dark of the desert night. With his respirator audio turned off, he was simply a shadow in the night.
One drunk being that resembled a creature that he had pod-raced against bumped into him, and it swiftly lost its life. With reinforced doorstep arms, it took little force to crush the throat. He left the being with its fingers clawing its throat as a last-ditch effort to get air.
The Sith Apprentice continued down the road, illuminated by yellow glow globes. The streets became more and more familiar the closer he got. One of the drunks that he passed looked eerily similar to a man who would frequent his mother's abode. As a child, he did not understand what was happening. He knew now that his mother sold herself to put food on the table during their enslavement under the Hutts. The man's throat was broken, and he fell over without cause.
After some time, he came to the shop where he had spent the majority of his youth. It seemed much the same as when he had left it, light streaming through an open window. Memories started to flash through his mind, memories of a simpler time. Watto had been one of the few tolerable slavers in Tatooine. Shmi and himself were more or less respected, even if they had to sacrifice to make by.
There was a soft hum of music coming from the interior of the shop. Watto was listening to something classical, perhaps even from the Republic era. Vader frowned. That music was banned in the Empire and was punishable by flogging or even death.
He contemplated blasting the door open in a fit of rage but decided against it. He would try something else for once in his life. He knocked on the door and waited. Waiting for lesser beings was a unfamiliar to him, but he forgot about it in anticipation for the reunion. He sat for well over a minute before the door cracked open, allowing a little bit of light to show through.
"Hello? What is it? We're closed go away" angry voice called out.
"Eh, chee banadomullee ra" He replied, using a phrase that only himself, his mother and Watto shared when he was a child
"How do you know that saying? There are only two people who could have known what that meant, and one of them is dea…." The door swung open and Watto stumbled backwards upon seeing what Anakin had become. "Ani?" he repeated.
"It's me, Watto." He rumbled.
Seeing the bug below him made his stomach retch. It had become old, or as old as you can be as a Toydarian. The creature had to have been pushing 80 standard years. Even so, he was still able to hover in Toydarian style.
Watto's eyes were soft in his old age. Vader eclipsed the being by several times. The bug recoiled slightly when Vader stepped through the doorframe into the familiar setting.
"What has happened to you Ani? You are so big, hardly the boy I lost to that Jedi." Watto finally said.
"I am not here to debate my size, bug. I need information on the Hutts."
Watto's eyes widened. Vader walked through the shop, reminiscing on his past.
"The Hutts are very powerful Ani, you would be hard pressed to destroy them even with your fancy machines." Watto said in reference to the walkers and hoverbikes that Vader had helped design.
"Do not call me that, bug." Vader snapped. "I am Lord Vader, apprentice to the Emperor of the Galactic Empire."
The small being smiled up at the hulking monster that crept through his shop. His eyes once again softened as he replied. "You will always be little Ani to me, son."
Vader snapped his attention towards the Toydarian. It was that he realized how old the bug had become.
"You have no right to call me that after you did what you did to me and my mother" Vader spoke angrily.
The bug's eyes softened at the mention of Vader's long dead mother. "Ah yes, Shmi." He said simply.
Vader looked at him quizzically, not that the mask showed his emotion underneath. The Sith could feel the emotion pouring off the creature. The emotion was sadness. Something that he was all too familiar with.
"What are you playing at, bug." Vader said angrily.
"I know how powerful you are. I know how much you must despise me." Watto said. "Nothing can fix what I did to you, but Ani, I hope that you hear me when I say that I grew to love you and your mother."
Vader looked at the bug in shock. Had he just said that, after years of owning the Sith and his mother. He was about to reach out in anger and destroy the bug when he noticed something that was hanging from the wall. It was a holopicture.
As he approached the holopicture, he realized what it was. It was a picture of a younger version of himself, alongside his mother. They seemed to be eating some kind of soup in what passed for a lounge in the shop. Food that had been provided by the bug. It was a simple picture, but it made Vader feel more than he had in years.
Watto had treated them much better than other slaves in Tatooine. Sure, he had been a strict owner but the bug had never laid a hand on him or his mother. He had provided them with food and a roof over their heads. Good clothing adorned their backs, and they were never hungry.
"Let me show you something, Ani." The bug said before taking off through the still open door.
Vader followed the bug curiously as he weaved through the streets of Mos Espa. It wasn't long until he realized where the bug was taking him. He had walked the path many times as a child. He was heading towards his childhood home, not far down the road.
The door to his childhood home was mostly unchanged, If not a little sandblasted. He glanced down at the bug, who was fumbling with a keycard of some sort. The door whirred to life and open to show a dark room. The bug entered, and light soon filled the main living room. A light switch activated and what Vader saw nearly brought him to his knees. The bug came back out to the street and looked up at the hulking sith lord.
"I left it just as the two of you had it" he said, "I couldn't bear to change a thing. A cleaning bot comes in once a month to get rid of the dust, but that's all."
The sight of his childhood home left him hallow and empty. He could not believe that his former master had left it the way he had. Watto flew over to him and dropped himself to his frail feet. The creature looked up at him.
"I know that you probably hate me. I would kill the bastard who had me enslaved. Kill me if you want Ani, but I need you to know that I cared for you." The bug seemed broken as he spoke. His own torment splayed all over his face. "Come by in the morning and I'll tell ya all about the Hutts. If you want to kill me after, go ahead. It is better than I deserve."
The bug flew off into the night back towards his shop. Vader watched him fly off and disappear into the night. He turned around and faced his past.
As he entered the room where he and his mother had spent nights playing games, his heart felt heavier and heavier. A sadness unlike any other had settled upon him. His sadness was usually filled with self-loathing and hatred, but in the current moment all he could feel was shame. His hands brushed over the small table where they had their breakfast every morning.
The kitchenette was smaller than her remembered. Everything was meticulously placed just as his mother had left it. A teapot was still on the burner system, ready to serve guests. The sadness built, weighing him down more and more.
The dark side did not come to him in the home of his youth. There was nothing to satiate the sleeplessness that he had experienced over the past years. Sadness mixed with fatigue until it was unbearable. He found himself wandering down the hall, past his old bedroom full of junk parts from his C3PO build. Memories assailed him everywhere he went in the home. His mother's bedroom stood before him, separated by a sliding door. He pressed his hand to the door control and watched as it slid open to reveal a familiar room.
His mother's room was just as she left it before she was sold to the Lars family. A large bed filled most of the room. Memories of sleeping in his mother's bed during bad sandstorms assailed him. The memories were like knives to the heart. The empty house was quieter than anything he had ever experienced.
His durasteel hands moved, seemingly own their own accord. They reached to the release clasp on his helmet and activated the release. With a hiss, his helmet was removed and he experienced. He could still smell his mother in the air, as if she had been in the room minutes before, not years.
Lord Vader did not cry. It was not something he believed himself capable of. In that moment, the Sith Lord did not cry. The small boy buried deep withing that Sith Lord did. Tears streamed down his ruined face. Even as he struggled to breath, he forcibly detached his armor until he was in only his silk underclothing.
With nothing but the force sustaining his bodily functions, he crawled into his mother's bed. Even in the constant pain that he knew so well, he curled into a ball as much as he could, tears streaming down his face as he did. He buried his face in his mother's sheets, feeling an emptiness like no other.
Lord Vader had not slept for one-thousand and thirty-two days. In that moment, surrounded by the ghosts of his past he fell into sleep's embrace. He did this not knowing if he would ever again wake.
The End
A/N, I know that not a lot of people will like this take, but I like to believe that deep down Watto genuinely cared about Anakin and his mother Shmi. This story started as something much different, and my brain took it down a rabbit hole. If you enjoyed, leave a comment. If you did not enjoy, I'm sorry. Also, I DO NOT OWN STAR WARS OR ANY OF IT"S CHARACTERS, ONLY DISNEY DOES.
· TheFallen1617