Standing in the middle of the courtyard of the burnt-out Lars home with an impatient Sith Lord at his back, Luke surveyed the wreckage and tried not to feel anything.

He was not ready to be here.

Months ago, he'd had little time to do much more than scream at the unfairness, bury his family, and run off to do battle--and since then he'd avoided the subject of home, never taking the time to mourn, never bringing it up in conversation. That is, until he was dragged back here and it was shoved into his face again and he had too much time to sit and think about his fate and his foolishness...

He was not ready to be here, and especially not as a prisoner of the man who had ordered their deaths.

His emotions crashed back and forth inside him like a reek in a flimsy crate, battering their way free of his brittle restraints. His hands, still clasped in binders, were fisted tight enough that his nails nearly drew blood; his jaw was locked like iron, pressing his lips into a thin, barely-trembling line as he rode the waves of grief and fury--clinging to the anger, because it was the only thing to keep him from drowning in tears.

This was his home, the only place he'd known by that name all his life--all the joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures, laughter and tears...they still echoed between these blackened walls, glowed faintly from within the darkened rooms. He did not want to see it like this--ruined, ravaged, devoid of life.

He wasn't ready.

But Darth Vader held his figurative leash, and had brought him here; he had no choice. And the Sith was not going to give him time for his grief.

"I am here," the Dark Lord growled, jolting Luke out of his downward spiral. "I have allowed myself to be led across star systems, and brought the so-called key with me, and still there is no one--"

Angered and confused, Luke could only blink, daring a glance around the silent courtyard and wondering if he'd missed something. However, it seemed as though Vader were speaking to himself.

"I have come!" the thunderous voice boomed out in challenge, startling Luke visibly. "Show yourself, if you dare!"

Who would be here? the youth wondered to himself, standing stiffly as Vader paced around the sandcrete remains of the base of what was once the house vaporator. If he didn't find my father here before...then what...?

"Come," the Sith rumbled, and it took Luke an instant to relize that Vader was beckoning him toward the main corridor--it led to the den and his aunt and uncle's room.

Rebellious, Luke balked, scowling fiercely. But then Vader's gesture became more forceful; something intangibly solid shoved him in the back like a trooper's hand, and he stumbled.

"I will not ask again." His captor's voice was sharply bitten, annoyed.

Startled as much as he was afraid, Luke approached reluctantly--hating himself for every step, for allowing himself to be called to his enemy's heel like a recalcitrant pet. Once within the Dark Lord's reach, he was pushed ahead again, down the short tunnel into the darkness.

Vader seemed to have no trouble with the light levels; perhaps his helmet had built-in photosensitive adaptors. Luke was stuck with stumbling along half-blind, eyes struggling to adjust from the glaring desert sun outside, tripping over debris in the hall. He knew only vaguely when they had reached his guardians' room, and was certain only because Vader had stopped.

"There's nothing here," the Sith stated, flat as if he were announcing the weather--yet almost..surprised, at the same time.

If the empty state of the courtyard and visible rooms was any indicator, then likely the whole homestead had suffered the same fate. "Jawas would've stripped everything they could use or sell," he found himself muttering--though why in all hells he was offering any explanation to his family's murderer, he didn't have a clue.

"I know that," Vader snapped in reply, as if it were obvious. "The trail of breadcrumbs has led us to this place. There must be something here to find, or else another trail. This hunt is still on."

Is that what this is? Luke seethed, but held his tongue. A game to you? A chase for your sport? This is my father you're hunting!

"Come," said the dark giant once again, pushing him back toward the light. "Stay within my sight."

Why should I? Once again, Luke wished he had the courage to snarl his words at the Sith the way he had before. But again, fear held him back--fear of that awful power, that shattering explosion. It was like a strange tension in the very air around him; he knew he was a prisoner, and he knew what he was supposed to expect, but it hadn't happened--yet. He knew it would; it was just a matter of time. All the waiting just seemed like it was building up pressure--and the blast would be far worse when his time came. Like before, just above where they stood, when it seemed like the whole world had collapsed around him...

Once back out in the light, he followed Vader--sith, he was following Vader like a grumpy eopie on a short lead!--across the courtyard toward the pantry, toward the short sandcrete stairs that led to his old room.

My room--

Suddenly he was all but shouldering past the Sith Lord at the bottom of the stairs, desperate to reach his last sanctuary first, as if to guard it--this one safe place, the last piece of home--though what could he do? Block Vader out with his own body?

But his captor didn't stop him, and he only stumbled to a halt at the threshold, his eyes blurring, because it really wasn't his room any more--it was a dim half-burned empty husk like the rest of what had once been home, and nothing of his was left here in this dark hollow. Posters had burnt to ash on singed walls, starship models melted into plastic slag--and anything else that had survived or been salvageable, from furniture and tools to databooks and holovids, was pillaged and stolen like trader scrap...his own things--

He was vaguely aware of Vader stepping past him into the room, surveying the wreckage of his old life like an impassive conqueror. The Sith's regulated breaths seemed to echo against the now-bare stone walls, counting the long moments he spent studying the shadowy, scorched, featureless chamber.

"This...was yours," the Dark Lord stated, his voice...distant, though certain.

Luke did not reply; there was hardly any need, as Vader seemed sure. There was not enough left to have said for sure what this room was--shelf mountings hanging empty on the wall, twisted pieces of metal on the floor that might have come from a bedframe--

--twisted pieces of metal sheltering a too-familiar tri-winged shape that barely jutted from the jumble, and Luke was darting over to free the precious object from the pile of trash, all the while expecting the Sith's fury to unleash on his back...

Regardless of the danger, he clutched the model in bound and shaking hands and turned it over and over, in disbelief and strangely detached gratitude. The tip of its dorsal vane was broken off, the wings warped slightly from heat, the paint bubbled and faded--but it was here, and it was whole, and it was a piece of his old life that had survived.

"Incom T-16 Skyhopper," observed the low tones of the Sith Lord still standing behind him. "Considered a bush pilot's trainer for the Incom X-wing."

Luke gripped the toy as tight as he dared, his captor's voice bringing him out of his brief plunge into bittersweet memory. His jaw clenched.

There was a long silence behind him, marred only by those infuriatingly regular breaths, before Vader spoke again. "You enjoyed...model ships."

He stood up, holding on to his old toy as if he could shelter it. "I liked ships," he snapped, unable to keep himself silent any longer--not here, not with his father's murderer standing in his destroyed home like he owned the place. "These were as close as I'd ever get to flying--"

His voice gave out on him. He didn't know how he knew--perhaps it was the barest tilt of that helmeted head, a shift of shadows over the faceplate--but he was certain the Sith's mood had changed, from contemplative to something darker. He was sure there was a frown beneath the mask.

"Why is it here, relatively unharmed, when everything else in this place is either burned or stolen?"

Luke blinked, caught off-guard by the Sith Lord's abrupt, almost growling question--and realized that the query encapsulated exactly what the faint sense of wrongness in the back of his mind was trying to alert him to. The mini-'hopper shouldn't have survived the conflagration and pillaging, so why was it--?

It hadn't been left here--had it? Desperate now, he forced his mind to travel back to unwanted places--to the tense and unpleasant events just before those miserable hours, just before he'd raced home to find everything he'd loved destroyed...

The 'hopper model had not been in his bedroom--he was sure of it. He'd been...fooling around with it, somewhere else, his most beloved model because he actually had a T-16--playing little-boy space-battles he was supposed to have long since outgrown, imagining himself in the cockpit--and he'd picked it up and set it down several times while he was working, and then there was dinner, and then he'd sulked and played with it some more after the droid...

"I didn't leave it here," he blurted, before he even realized it was fact, "I left it in the garage--"

"Give it to me," Vader commanded sharply, stepping forward to take it.

"No!"

Luke pulled away like a three-year-old with his favorite toy, his long-bottled temper flaring, abruptly and unthinkingly defensive of this last thing which was his. Vader wasted no time, throwing out one arm; boy and model rapidly parted ways--Luke was flung back against the wall by an invisible hand, while the 'hopper leaped from his shock-loosened grasp as if pulled by a cord that ended in Vader's grip.

Everything seemed to freeze; the Sith Lord didn't move, but he wasn't looking at the toy in his hand--his shielded eyes remained on the crumpled boy at the wall.

Luke struggled to pull himself upright, dazed and newly bruised, trying to regain his bearings. Vader was just staring at him, as if something had given him pause; he realized he was staring up at the dark figure like a gaping child that had been punished for something he didn't know was wrong.

He felt the fear overruling him again, jarringly reminded of what this evil man was capable of--how his life hung in the balance. How his father's life balanced so precariously.

"Do not fight me," Vader grated at last--a rough, breathless tone, making him flinch. He couldn't say anything, trapped under the black gaze; all he could do was sit there and shake.

Finally, the Sith's attention turned to the model. "If you did not leave this here, then someone did," Vader went on--briskly, as if to wipe away what had just happened. "And I doubt Jawas care to be moving childrens' toys about. Someone else wanted us to find it."

Using the wall as a brace, Luke heaved to his feet, leaning against the cool stone. He was unharmed save having the wind knocked out of him, but the experience had frightened him, renewing his awe and dread of this dangerous man. It brought his anger to a seething simmer, carrying with it a renewed desire to see his father cut the Sith in half.

Vader turned the model over and about, apparently inspecting it for any sign of his so-called "trail." There was nothing Luke could see from his position--no unusual markings, no new hidden chambers, nothing but the damage of heat and chemical smoke. Nothing on the model or its slightly-listing plastic foot seemed to indicate anything of importance.

He couldn't stop the faint recoil that tightened his muscles when Vader looked up at him again. "This was in the garage," the Sith stated--a repeated fact, rather than a question. With no fanfare whatsoever, the dark giant set the model back in his startled arms--undamaged--and turned on his booted heel to march out the door.

Astonished, Luke stared after him, hanging on to the little model, but the subtle push at the back of his shoulders--something he felt with more than just his nerves--reminded him that he was lagging too far behind. Jolted out of immobility, he scuttled after the Dark Lord--once again hating himself for obeying like a cowed massif.

He didn't want that intangible force around his neck the next time.

Scowling furiously, Luke kept himself as far back as Vader seemed to allow--apparently just out of arms' reach, no more than two meters away--as they headed out the entrance tunnel toward the garage dome. It bothered him--endlessly and invasively--that the Sith Lord walked easily, without hesitating, as if he knew the place. As if he'd been here before.

He was here killing my family...

The rage churned in his gut like a cauldron, hot as the suns above. His mind was a high-wire act balancing his hate and fear--just now, precarious and swaying. A quick, blind moment when he wished he had the training or the speed or simply the guts to snatch his father's lightsaber from where it hung on Vader's belt and end this monster right here.

But his captor swirled with dark power that, this close, he could almost feel against his skin like a chill wind; the instincts he'd learned to trust all his life--more, now that he knew what they were--screamed Danger! at the very thought of attacking him.

They found the entrance to the garage blocked by a thick slab of sheetsteel that had somehow wedged itself into the doorframe, corners and edges buried in sandcrete and bedrock. It appeared to be a chunk of sandcrawler plating which, by the size of it, probably weighed more than a man--an effective barrier against all but the most determined looters. No ordinary denizens of Tatooine could have hauled the sheet into place--or removed it--without a lot of tools; cutting torches and mag-clamps and heavy lifting equipment.

Vader, however, hardly paused. "Stand aside," he ordered shortly, his voice nudging Luke out of his funk.

Blinking, Luke shifted away, behind the Sith Lord's greater bulk. Once again, Vader made a sweeping gesture with one arm--Luke involuntarily flinched at the sight of it--but instead of sending him flying, the sudden sense of pressure he could...feel somehow directed itself at the sheet of plating. The metal groaned, buckled, and burst free of its moorings in the sandstone, drifting up and out of the garage entryway before dropping unceremoniously to the sand nearby--the heavy thunk of its landing testament to the plating's weight.

Luke stared, transfixed despite himself--he'd never seen the Force do anything that visibly impressive before. He wondered, numbly, if it was his father who had put that thick "door" there the same way Vader had removed it, to keep scavengers from finding something within.

Apparently Vader had the same sentiments, striding rapidly down the now-cleared corridor. Luke followed, almost anxious--maybe something here had been spared thanks to the sealed entrance--

He nearly plowed into his captor's back when Vader came abruptly to a stop in the garage proper; shaken, he stumbled back, glancing around. Disappointment flooded him when he realized that the garage was as stripped-clean as the rest of his home--the family speeder, his Skyhopper, all the shelves and tools, the droid equipment, the storage boxes...all gone, without a single trace, and only bare sandcrete remained. The only mercy seemed to be that there was far less fire damage here, perhaps because there was only stone and metal, and just a few oils and chemicals had been present to burn.

"Someone," Vader rumbled into the stillness with a predatory air, "has been here since this place was looted."

"No one's here now," Luke muttered, glaring at the Sith's back.

"Perhaps--but they will have left a clue. It seems in this Jedi's nature to play games. The one who left that...toy...wanted us to look here."

Luke dared to peer around the black-caped figure, into the empty expanse of the room; there appeared to be nothing but scraps and ruins, like his room, but obviously that had been deceptive enough--

He caught a glimmer of silver against the sooty dust in the far corner, and instinctively went for it. Once again, Vader did not stop him from moving. It was awkward to pick up the small object with his bound wrists, and one hand occupied by his precious model, but he raised it into the dim light to discover that it was a datadisk--fairly new and unmarked, slightly larger than a credicard.

Becoming aware of Vader's presence standing over him like an imminent thundercloud made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Hurriedly, he offered the disk to the Sith Lord, barely resisting the urge to step back as he did so. "I-I found this..."

"Here is our breadcrumb, then," Vader stated with a dark sense of satisfaction, taking the delicate object. "One step closer to my quarry."

This time, Luke did step back, unable to fight down a flash of anger and a hateful grimace.

"Come," his captor commanded, striding out once again. "Back to the ship. I will be glad to leave this damned graveyard."

Rushing along with his two-meter leash, Luke couldn't stop his ire from snapping out. "This was my home!"

"Not any more," came the implacable reply, as they emerged into blinding sunlight.

"Because you took it from me--like you took everything--you killed them--!"

"I killed no one here!" Vader whirled on him, and he nearly tripped on his own feet in his hurry to backpedal, almost ending up on his rump in the sand. The black sea--the maelstrom of Force--whatever it was, it was back in full measure, screaming silently around them both, immense and terrifying. In an instant, he would feel the black fingers around his neck, crushing his throat--he could sense it gathering for another explosion--

Just as abruptly, Vader turned away again, rigid as a stone wall--violence barely bottled away like the fires inside a reactor core. "You fling accusations of things you know nothing about," he grated roughly.

Then the Sith Lord strode on toward his ship, like a passing storm rolling to the horizon. Trembling from the narrowly-averted disaster, Luke stared after him once more, stunned and dismayed by how near he'd come to the dark man's temper. He had felt the rage and frustration and...something else? Something...sadder...it had been deafening, almost painful, point-blank in his senses--senses he still didn't understand and couldn't quite interpret, like trying to learn to see in a new wavelength of light, or speak a new language that was suddenly the only way this confusing enemy spoke...

The jerk of his invisible "leash" was harsher this time--a sharp shove that nearly sprawled him into the sand, reminding him once more that he was not keeping up. Vader's black form was disappearing into the dark shuttle, and with a flash of fearful resentment Luke scurried after him, clutching his model 'hopper as if it were the only shield he had left--wishing he were running the other way, but too scared to face the Sith's explosive rage again.

Admiral Ozzel was at full attention before the hologram's pixels had even coalesced into the huge, dominating image of the Emperor. And, if the Admiral allowed himself to think that way in the presence of his sovereign, he might have considered that his Highness appeared to be in quite a sour mood indeed.

"Greetings, my Lord Emperor," Ozzel began smartly, while the two other officers in the room stood stiffly. "I have the information you requested on our findings in the Naboo System. So far reports have been vague, both about a crashing ship and the death of an elite stormtrooper squad, but we have ascertained from the Theed staff that Lord Vader was indeed here, and--"

"And now he is not," Palpatine spat impatiently, interrupting him. "Yes, I know."

Ozzel blinked, processing this slowly. "Ah...I see, your Highness...then--?"

"I've received word from the chief of Intelligence on Tatooine that Lord Vader has been seen at the Mos Eisley garrison, giving specific orders that no trace of his presence there be reported," the Emperor hissed, obviously in a fine temper over the issue. "My apprentice has obviously chosen to go off on one of his little crusades again--this time, despite all my commands. Nor will he answer my summons."

"My sincerest apologies, my Lord Emperor; sir, we also have word--"

"Get to Tatooine, Admiral. Spare nothing for maximum speed." If it were possible, Palpatine's image seemed to grow larger, blacker--he had no patience for any details and only wished his commands obeyed. "Find Lord Vader and relay to him my direct order that he return to me at once. In person if you must. Do this, now, or it will be your head instead of his."

Ozzel's throat worked for a moment before he could reply. "U-understood, my Lord--and if--"

The Emperor cut the transmission before he could even finish, the giant snarling visage vanishing into fading light.

Shaken, Ozzel turned to his two officers--for a moment, too disturbed to speak. "Fetch...fetch the Captain," he ordered, regaining his composure. "Stand down the planetary alert and notify our other ships. We make for Tatooine immediately."