He walked with a spring in his step; the air was cool across his face, sweet in his nostrils, full of flowers and green grass and blue water. He was almost home--it was another day's end, and all was well; she would be waiting for him when he arrived.

Then he was striding through the door, throwing aside his cloak. He swore he could smell shaak stew, and it made his mouth water. There was crying--an infant, somewhere...upstairs?

Where was she? She should be hurrying by any moment to look after the baby...

That's right--he was looking for her. He was supposed to tell her something--supposed to warn her. She was...in danger. Right? Wasn't that what he was supposed to tell her? Or...maybe he was just supposed to tell her the baby was crying...

Was the baby in danger? Was that it?

Worry and confusion filled him; something was wrong--he knew it. He had to find her. He all but ran through the house, searching. Where was she? She should be here!

He heard her voice--and his worry shattered like thin ice. There she was--she was alright! He hurried into the room, a grin on his face--

She was there, and she was talking with...Obi-Wan, his master, young and strong. No, Obi-Wan was not his master any more...he was old...he was...

All he knew was that rage flooded him at the sight of the other man. "You!" he snarled. "You turned against me! You all did!"

She turned to gaze at him, her dark eyes brimming. "Anakin, you're breaking my heart!"

Pain lanced through him. "You betrayed me!" he roared, charging forward, lightsaber raised. "You betrayed me for him!”

Rage fueling the Force all around him, he flew past her like a freight railer to clash with Obi-Wan, two blue lightsabers crackling together.

Wait...blue...?

Force and energy screamed between them as they fought. Obi-Wan matched him blow for blow, no longer a slow old man; he could almost smell sulfur in the room.

But then Obi-Wan stopped, saluting with his lightsaber.

He saw his opening and went for it.

“You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you,” Obi-Wan said--and then was cut in half.

“No!” Wait--wait--that wasn't right! Obi-Wan didn't care--Obi-Wan betrayed him, turned against him. But he yearned for what was lost long ago...he didn't want it to be like this! “No--come back!”

The baby was no longer crying in the background; there was a voice he heard but could not hear, calling for him.

“...Father...Father...help me...!”

The plea struck him deep inside--that voice, his son! He whirled toward the sound, and shouted in disbelief--she was lying on the floor. Frozen and pale on the ground...where he'd...he'd thrown her aside with the Force in his fury. She was so still, not a breath left in her--

--no, oh gods and hells and Force, NO!--

--and he screamed in dismay.

Someone was standing over her body, kneeling at her side--the blurry figure of the son he’d never known. The boy was crying, staring up at him with accusing eyes, and there was no smile this time.

Because he’d killed the boy’s mother--the one he loved, the one he’d die for, he killed her and he did it without even thinking, and he hadn’t even cared...!

The boy fixed him with those crystal blue eyes and spoke with a Rebel pilot’s voice.

“I hate you!”

Cut to the very core, he cried out in loss and agony--

--a sharp, hoarse shout that echoed through his quarters. Once again, Vader was jolted awake in anguish, sitting up rigidly in his bed, as the edges of another dream/nightmare faded from his eyes.

He was breathing hard, his respirator picking up the pace to keep up with the stress--sweat poured from every pore that still functioned, and his heart felt like it would beat out of his chest despite its regulator.

"...you're breaking my heart..."

"I hate you!"

He himself had howled those burning, spiteful words before. But to have them flung back in his face in such anguish and rage, coming from someone he loved...oh, burning skies...it was pure pain...!

He pressed his forehead into the cool mechanical palm of his right hand. For a few moments, he was once again caught between sleep and awareness--caught in that weak, emotional place where dreams were remembered and tears were cried.

...I killed her I killed her I killed her oh Force I killed her...!

His left hand made a fist, while his right hand shook. Half of him tried to seek refuge in rage, while the other half wept in anguish. He could never forgive, or be forgiven; he was utterly alone--he'd made his own damning choice to destroy everyone and everything close to him. There was nothing left but sorrow, anger, and hate--nothing left but his own black, bitter, broken heart.

...I killed her and our child and everyone who ever mattered to me--they hate me and he hates me and I killed everyone I loved--what am I doing here--hells, what am I doing...?

...what am I doing?

What am I doing?

"Stop it!"

The rasp of his own voice shocked him out of the mental mire, so rarely did he speak without his vocoder. The cold metal of his jointed, mechanical fingers against his temples began to bring reason back to his flailing, falling mind--freezing the tears that dammed up behind his eyes. Eventually, order began to return; truth prevailed over emotion, and he remembered his purpose.

I killed everyone who betrayed me, he told himself, pulling his cloak of anger over the old wounds. They died as traitors deserve! Cowards, murderers, and fools--Windu and the whole Jedi Order! And her...she and Kenobi were the worst of all...promising trust to my face, then stabbing me in the back!

Raising his head at last, he checked his chronometer. He had been asleep many hours, and Naboo was far behind. No reason to keep dwelling in the past, even if Tatooine loomed close. He had no love for that planet.

But it was high time he got up and saw to matters at hand--namely, the Rebel pilot sitting in his brig. At the very least, he should give the boy some water; dead prisoners rarely helped anyone. Scowling at himself, pushing the last remnants of the dream away, he turned out of the bed to set his mechanical feet on the floor.

Without his life-sustaining suit, he was little more than a cripple--a fit, strong, Force-gifted man, but a cripple nonetheless. Not even Sith could live indefinitely without air, and his scarred lungs could no longer breathe on their own--and that was only one of his problems.

It was a bloody chore getting his armor off to rest--but he couldn't sleep in it, or his neck would never be the same and he’d have so many sores he’d lose what skin he had left. But at least his bed had an oxygen unit built into it, and was temperature-controlled, so he could sleep comfortably without the heavy armor and helmet. The sleeping mask was light and soft, but was never made to operate separately from the bed.

And it was equally difficult to suit himself back up again, especially in the “rustic” confines of his shuttle’s personal chambers; here, he had no machines to help him with his boots and helmet--he just had to struggle through on his own. Making the tenuous and ever-painful step from the sleep mask to his daily one, lifting the heavy armor and strapping it on, fumbling with his ever-so-clumsy mechanical limbs to get his gloves on...

But by all hells, he was never going to walk out that door without every last bit of his armor--it was all that stood between him and the world. His own face was a nightmare he had refused to look upon for years; at least the mask was a distinguished and elegant nightmare.

Not for the first time, he wondered if it was worth it to ask his master for some time off for a little medical research...

Never mind that; he had more important things to think about. Making certain his helmet was secure, Vader set his shoulders and strode out the door.

His ship was still in order; up the hall to the fore, the cockpit was dark and quiet, the astro-droid sitting silently in its harness. Its dome rotated to regard him as he leaned in the hatch to check the navigation controls; it only tweeted softly, interrogatively.

Vader ignored the droid; satisfied with the results of his perusal, he headed for the rear of the ship, past his living quarters and the small sitting area and kitchenette. It was there he picked up a bottle of stored water from the refrigeration unit, recalling that his prisoner would need at least this to stay alive.

Beyond the sitting area, there was a security door to open; then, at last, he was standing in the aftmost chamber of his personal vessel--a small anteroom with a computer terminal, and the door to the holding cell. It had been years since he’d had anyone else aboard.

Curious, Vader sent tendrils of the Force ahead into the cell, finding--strangely--little abject terror any more; now there was a sense of low-grade tension, nervousness, and tedium, as well as...faint, subconscious awareness. On some level, the boy knew that he was coming, accounting for the increasing anxiety in him.

Bracing himself for possible deception and attack--habit, really--Vader palmed the door key and stepped inside.

Within the cell, the boy sat on the floor against the sleeping platform on the far side, his hands still trapped in binders in front of him. As Vader entered, the youth’s head jerked up to stare at the Sith Lord almost guiltily. He pulled his legs up, withdrawing defensively, as the dark figure towered over him even from the doorway.

It was then that Vader realized he was hearing music.

That made no sense; Vader himself did not prefer to listen to music, so he would not have left it on anywhere in the ship, and there was nothing in the cell that should have been able to produce any. At first, he thought his helmet’s audio receptors had completely fritzed--and then, he realized the sounds were coming from the wall beside the door.

The cell comm panel had somehow been unscrewed from the wall, the small speaker hanging by wires alone. Behind it, it was obvious someone had been poking around in the innards of the comm; various wires were pulled out, cut, or spliced into other wires.

Apparently, this unit had been rigged to pull hyperwave radio transmissions from the receiver in the cockpit. Unsurprisingly, the radio receiver ran through the same systems the ship’s intercom did--but what the young pilot had thought to accomplish with a mere receiver was baffling. There was no way to contact anyone; all he could do was pick up whatever was on the band the cockpit radio was set to--Coruscant symphony, apparently. Vader hadn’t turned the radio on in years.

The biggest mystery, in Vader’s eyes, was how a young pilot would know how to splice wires in the rear of a ship to pass through the intersystem comm lines and shunt power from the speaker’s energy source to the radio’s feed. Not to mention--how in space had he gotten the panel off?

“You’ve been busy,” he growled, displeased.

“I was bored,” the boy muttered stubbornly, almost like a petulant toddler.

“You will not dismantle any more parts of my ship, or I’ll make sure you don’t have hands to meddle with,” Vader threatened, shaking a stern finger at the youth. Really--fiddling with electronics out of boredom? Didn’t a prisoner have more important things to worry about? “We will be arriving at our next destination in less than four hours. You will come quietly, and you will present yourself alive to whoever waits for you there. If you interfere after that, your death will come much sooner.”

Defiant, the youth stared at the middle of the floor, refusing to rise from his huddle. Vader glared down at him, perturbed that he couldn’t use his usual methods of extracting information; he needed the boy living and whole when they arrived, else the little “key” wouldn’t unlock his door and the mission would be a failure.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi gave you that lightsaber,” he stated, not beating around the bush. “Don’t try to lie. What was your relationship to him?”

The boy’s hands were white-knuckled, but he didn’t answer.

“Speak!”

Vader’s bark of command made the youth jump visibly, huge eyes staring at him like a krali fawn stares at a gundark. Swallowing hard, the boy seemed ready to fold himself into his corner and disappear, but his voice--quiet and raspy with fear--did not fail him.

“He was...going to teach me.”

“Going to? He taught you nothing of the Force?”

“Just...a little bit,” the boy husked, turning his eyes down to the floor. “You killed him.”

“And good riddance,” the Sith Lord growled. “He died a traitor and a fool. You’ll soon join him, if you persist against me.”

“What did I ever do to you?” the young pilot burst out, his fearful fawn-eyes suddenly like those of a warrior--bold and bright, if only for a few moments. “You’ve taken everything from me and I never did anything to you! You killed my father and my family and--!”

“You ally yourself with Rebels and Jedi, brat,” Vader snapped, “and that makes you my enemy. I have neither patience nor mercy for my enemies.”

“You killed my family first,” the boy murmured, his nerve lost but his defiance remaining, as he stared once more at the floor. “I had nowhere else to go...so I followed Ben.”

“Ben?” Vader growled. “Obi-Wan’s alias?”

“I was just a normal kid,” the youth whispered, blinking back tears. “They were just farmers...and you killed them, and I had nothing...”

Struck, Vader stared down at the boy, faint shards of old guilt taking hold in his angry heart. Irritated by his own hesitation, he turned away--this stubborn, stilted conversation was likely to be fruitless anyway. “We will be arriving on Tatooine soon. I suggest you prepare for this confrontation,” he informed the young pilot tersely, tossing the water bottle carelessly into the cell. “And don’t meddle with any more of my ship.”

With that, he stomped out of the cell, brooding in his own dark thoughts--completely missing the startled stare the boy sent after him.

As the shuttle came into orbit above Tatooine, Vader began to search for the location of the address given in the message. He was certain he knew where it was--certain he'd seen the address before, and it had been important.

He didn't realize how important until the shuttle was pulling low over the humped shapes of small buildings, coming in for a landing not far from the central structure. It was evening on this side of the desert planet, but he could see his landing site quite clearly. Too clearly.

But then, he reflected angrily, he should have known. If that damned impostor had the gall to drag him through the Naboo lakehouse, of course they were going to take him straight back here.

The little homestead where Shmi Skywalker had spent the last years of her life. A farm. A family. Lars.

It hurt to remember her, so he refused to. Pushed her back into the dark underdepths of his mind where a thousand other pains resided.

But...something was wrong here. Rising from his seat at the controls, Vader peered out the viewscreen at the little farmstead, taking in the aged structures and scattered debris. No one emerged to greet them--many of the small outbuildings were damaged and collapsed, their contents gutted. There were scorch-marks, soot deposits.

The place had been attacked.

Inexplicable anger rose in him, though he knew he should be far beyond caring for these simple folk. Had the brutish Tuskens returned to finish their cruel work?

With a shake of his head, he turned away to march into the back. Such things didn't matter any more; his business was with the impostor, and the rest could go hang. He didn't care about the Lars--Shmi Skywalker was dead, and with her any connection to the wretched farmers.

This time, the boy was sitting on the sleeping platform when he entered, looking rather pensive. "Get up," Vader commanded. "We've arrived."

Pale and grim, the boy glared at him but rose from his spot, squeezing furtively past the Sith Lord to precede him through the ship. Impatient, Vader herded the youth to the ramp, anxious to lure out the impostor and get this farce over with. He was tired of old memories bringing up bad dreams.

The young pilot's feet had hardly touched sand when he pulled up short, causing Vader to nearly trip over him. The dark lord was about to snap out a dire reprimand when the boy's soft, hoarse voice spoke a single word that halted the angry Sith with a jolt of surprise.

"Home..."