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arielsojourner · 6 years

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Vader Strikes Back - Part the 8th

Not beta read/really rough/not really proof read/plot holes and OUT of order. Also spoilers for the original first story in AO3 Back From the Future: Episode VI The Clone Wars. Check the tag #vader strikes back on my page for the other parts to this mess/fic outline.

I am on a ROLL. Ha-ha! This first of three major story arcs for this fic are FINALLY coming together even in this rough draft form! I may even have more to post in the next day or so. I have IDEAS! Such ideas, I cannot tell you. Let us just see if they actually WORK together so bear with me.

Please note that we are jumping around in time. Not all of Part 8 happens AFTER sections of Part 7. The snippets in this post may seem completely out of order and they are. I will rearrange the order of the various parts when I finalize this for posting on AO3. So please don’t be too confused. This is just the order that my muse is interested in writing these scenes and there will be more related to this part.

Finally, you may see some familiar hints of Tatooine slave culture and use of Amatakka in this section and future sections. I asked and received permission from the amazing @fialleril ahead of time to use some words from this language. They are just an amazing author. Follow them on tumblr. If you have not already, READ EVERYTHING they have ever written on AO3. I am not kidding. They are amazing!

A month into the Tatooine campaign and Rex was at his wits end. He felt that he’d crisscrossed the planet at least a dozen times, been to palaces, mansions, cities, towns, and villages, (and places that had delusions and fever dreams of village-hood). He’d been to the race course, the fighting pits, just about every cantina and watering hole on the planet and he was still always ten steps behind Vader.

Vader moved across the planet like a force of nature, leaving a swath of destruction in his wake at the level of most planetary disasters. Rex had seen some remarkable feats of martial strength by Jedi and Sith alike, but nothing compared to this.

The problem was, with Vader always on the move, the clone Captain could hardly plan an effective strategy! While finding an organized Underground on Tatooine was a relief and a blessing, the Trail runners were not trained to follow the chain of command and had their own very distinct ideas of how to wage a slave revolt and revolution.

(Rex never again wanted to witness unarmed civilians both young and old throwing themselves on the weapons of the enemy to open up a way for his men attack. He didn’t want to see slaves, knowing their transmitters were about to be triggered, using themselves as sentient bombs to help others escape. Rex could have lived his entire life without knowing that with an effective scanner, slaves would undergo invasive surgery to free themselves from implanted bombs with no anesthesia and little to no way to provide sterile conditions. Bearing witness during one such surgery to test out the effectiveness of the scanner Vader had designed was enough to put him off food for days and he was a veteran of some of the bloodiest fighting of the Clone Wars!)

If only they had more support from the GAR, but no, he had to plan and implement the campaign with the scant resources they had. Things would be a lot easier if Vader would just give him some idea of his plan of attack so Rex could arrange for a more effective liberation effort. But Vader never seemed to sit still. Rex would catch up to him at one location, finish the attack and relief effort, turn to consult with the man and find him gone.

Even when Vader did not immediately leave a town or palace or farmstead, he did not seem to rest. He would wander out into the fast approaching night, like some sort of silent specter, always moving, never still.

(Some of the locals would whisper . . . something as he passed by. It wasn’t in any language that Rex or even Echo recognized).

Rex knew there was a human man underneath that armor but since Luke had died, no one would believe it.

Vader didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. He had not gone back to the sealed chambers he had aboard the Dauntless since they’d first made planet fall. Rex seriously wondered how long Vader could continue like this.

The only solution that Rex could figure out would be to move with Vader and talk to him as they traveled. Spying the dark cloaked figure heading out through the twists and turns of the city, Rex grabbed a datapad and his helmet and ran off after him.

Vader walked.

When he wasn’t killing slavers, he walked. His feet took him to many places. Many he’d seen before when Palpatine had ordered him to treat with Jabba on behalf of the Empire (one of the Emperor’s favorite sadistic games). Other places were remnants of his childhood. (The slaver quarters looked the same all over the planet. One weather beaten hovel was very much like the next. Junk shops and garages were ubiquitous.)

He was alone while he walked.

“I’ve never seen Mos Espa,” the voice to his left said in the growing dusk. “I’ve seen Mos Eisley and I’ve flown Beggar’s Canyon enough times, but I never got as far as this.”

Vader turned a corner and then another, halting to let some children run passed him.

(It was so strange that despite his mask, no child shrank in fright from him here.)

“It really is something, especially the race track. I wonder if they are still flying your old racing colors. You did win the Classic after all. Shall we go and look?”

Vader hesitated. To the right down through the market, passed Watto’s old shop, was the way to the track. To the left was the winding route to the quarters.

He turned left.

There was no one to show the flag off to anyway. No one living cared about such things, least of all him. But when he entered the old shabby courtyard of the slave quarters he wondered if he’d made a mistake in turning left, because the grandmother of the quarters was sitting and telling stories to a host of children who had flocked to her, children waiting and hoping that some family member may soon be free and come and find them.

Vader didn’t want to hear any stories. He didn’t want to remember. He wanted to finish this campaign, kill every single slaver and crime lord he could get his hands on and then leave and never return.

“I know this one,” the voice said excitedly. “Listen, this is the best part!”

Vader edged around the crowd and finally ducked down a narrow alleyway, the old woman’s voice fading.

He hurried forward not wanting to listen for a moment, only stopping when he finally reached a familiar door. It was so much smaller than he remembered. He looked at the frame and noted the symbols etched innocuously around it, easily mistaken for scratches and wear and tear. To those who knew how to read them though, they provided an access code and informed visitors that no one was living in the hovel currently. Vader went inside and out of a long forgotten habit, he shook himself from head to toe, trying to dislodge as much sand as he could.

The place was dark. The air wasn’t something that Vader could smell or taste but he was sure it was stale from long abandonment. There was no furniture except a few worn chairs at a familiar table, but Vader knew that behind a false back of one of the kitchen cupboards would be a hidden storage space with a few necessities if anyone was traveling the Trail and needed a place to rest.

He stood in the entry way, lost. He didn’t know where to go or what to do next. He didn’t want to remember.

Which begged the question, why then had he come here?

“I think you came because do want to remember,” the voice said quietly. “I think . . . I think you’ve been keekta-du since long before you went by the name Vader. But you can remember where you came from. Your feet know the Trail to take. We are desert people. Desert people don’t forget.”

Vader didn’t respond. There was nothing and no one to respond to.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there in the dark until he heard a tapping on the door. The Force easily supplied him with the identity of who had followed him. He turned and opened the door to let Captain Rex and some of Luke’s students enter.

“Be sure to shake the sand off,” he counseled as he headed into the kitchen.

Anakin did not look away from the viewscreen but at Obi-Wan’s request he did pause the holovid, the image of Hardcase futility digging into the side of a mountain frozen in front of him.

“What do you want, Master?” he asked dully.

Obi-Wan paused, not sure what to say. Tatooine had long been a forbidden subject between them. Not since the very earliest days of their lives together had Anakin so much has hinted at his background or mentioned much of his past, (his nightmares about his mother’s death notwithstanding). Obi-Wan couldn’t pin point when Anakin had stopped talking about his past, but the words had dried up. Then the quirky strange things little Anakin used to do back in the beginning had ceased and his accent and way of talking had changed. At the time, Obi-Wan had thought Anakin had “let go” of the past.

He’d obviously been wrong about that as he had about so many things when it came to Anakin.

But things were different now. Things were supposed to be different between them. No more pretending. No more lying. He steeled himself and stepped closer and placed a hand on Anakin’s tense shoulder.

He counted it as a victory when Anakin does not shrug him off.

“I’ve received a message from Coruscant. There’s an emergency meeting called by the High Council. Do you want to listen in?”

Obi-Wan had been making this offer since they’d come to Naboo, breaking all traditions, rules and protocols by allowing his former Padawan to view meetings that should be shrouded in Silence. But it was more important now to demonstrate trust, to change the habits of a life time that nearly destroyed Anakin, the Order, and the entire galaxy. Obi-Wan may lose sleep over a lot of things, but breaking this rule was not one of them.

“It’s going to be about Tatooine,” Anakin said in a small voice, his fingers tracing the edges of the comm array buttons in front of him. “These holovids haven’t leaked onto the Galactic Holonet, but they’re all over the GAR servers. Every Jedi officer and every one of the troops have access to these vids.”

“Very likely, yes,” Obi-Wan agreed. He’d watched a few himself (just a few as it turned his stomach to watch, as all he could see was Anakin in the face of every liberated slave).

“And what is the Council going to do about it? They’ve already sent Master Windu out . . . hunting Vader.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Anakin turned in his seat, his eyes burning as he looked at his former Master. “Will the Council use Vader as an excuse to interfere with the campaign?”

“I don’t know.”

Anakin clenched his jaw. “You don’t know. You don’t know.” He stood suddenly, pushing the hand off his shoulder and began to pace. “He’s liberating the planet. He killed Jabba. He’s freeing the slaves. How is that a bad thing?”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Obi-Wan insisted, hoping to calm his friend. “It’s not.”

“Slavery’s supposed to be illegal, not that anyone would know looking at the galaxy.”

“It is illegal, Anakin.”

“They why don’t you know what the Council is going to do?!” Anakin exploded. “This is simple. This is so, so simple. Slavery bad. Liberation good. What is there to decide?”

Obi-Wan hesitated but then pressed on to disclose the most damning piece of news he had. “Master Yoda’s message setting the meeting mentioned a petitioner from the Hutt Clans.”

Anakin visibly recoiled as if struck. Items around the room started to vibrate and rattle. Obi-Wan raised a hand, trying to calm him, but Anakin was having none of it. “So the Hutts are going to beg the Jedi Order to intervene and protect them and the Order’s going to agree, is that it? Slaves begging for the Order’s help, well, the Council doesn’t have time for that but when an emissary of that slime ridden filth comes knocking there’s a special session of the Council? Is that what this is? My troops and innocent civilians all fighting, dying, for freedom but because of politics, because Vader is leading the charge, the Order is going to help the Hutts?!”

Anakin turned his head to the side and let out a spitting curse in a language that Obi-Wan had never heard before, but was so obviously vile it resonated through the Force like a slap in the face.

“I will not support that, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, trying to forget the mission the Council had forced upon his student-- the rescue of Jabba’s son, the securing of Hutt hyperspace lanes for the war effort, (a sham war, a fake conflict orchestrated by a Sith, where he and other Jedi had compromised and compromised until there was nearly nothing left that made them Jedi to begin with). “Listen to me, I will not support the Hutts.”

Anakin looked at him, eyes searching his face, his feelings searching the Force.

(Anakin was checking. Obi-Wan hadn’t realized it before. He’d seen Anakin do this throughout his years of teaching him, but until recently Obi-Wan had never put two and two together. He thought his former Padawan was sulky and silent, and at times arrogant. Now Obi-Wan could see what before he never could. Anakin was checking to see if Obi-Wan was lying).

Obi-Wan was not lying. He was done with lying, no matter how painful it was.

Because he’d seen the consequences of lying that day the twins were born and Palpatine was defeated.

He never wanted to see Anakin that close to Falling ever again.

(He never wanted to see Anakin become the tortured violent shell of a man that was Vader.)

Anakin must have found him to be sincere because he did not turn his still visible anger against his brother. “And if the Council decides to help the Hutts retake Tatooine anyway?” he asked bitterly.

“They better not,” Padme’s interjected sharply. She entered the room and handed Anakin one of the twins to carry without a by your leave.

Immediately, everything in the room stilled, the cloud of anger evaporated like morning fog as Anakin cradled Leia in his arms.

Obi-Wan blinked at the sudden lifting of Anakin’s spirits. Nothing and no technique Obi-Wan had ever taught him (or that Anakin had taught himself) had ever worked as well to ground Anakin in the light like his children. It was awe inspiring each time Obi-Wan witnessed it.

But Padme was still talking and her tone of command was quick to refocus Obi-Wan’s thoughts. “I’ve already conferred with Satine and Bail on this. The Republic will not get involved in Tatooine. I can’t convince them to officially help given the current precarious political and economic knife’s edge we find ourselves on, especially with the Accords not finalized, but the Republic won’t interfere. We won’t provide aide to the Hutts to stop the liberation. When Vader manages to secure the planet, reconstruction funding and resources will be available through the League’s free market. That much I can do. But you make sure you tell them that, Obi-Wan,” she said, rocking Luke in her arms. “You tell the Council that if they back the Hutts to undo all the good that is happening on Tatooine I will personally see to it that each and every one of them regret it until their dying day,” she said with a finality of a death knell. “In the most legal and ethically way possible, of course,” she added after a beat of stunned silence.

“Of course,” Obi-Wan echoed weakly, more than a little unnerved. Sometimes he forgot that at 14 Padme had ruled a planet and fought a war to protect it from the Trade Federation (no doubt to Palpatine’s total consternation, he realized with bitter remembrance and hindsight). He really shouldn’t forget that. He spared a glance over to Anakin, who had managed to take his eyes off his daughter’s face to gaze at his terrifying wife with stars in his eyes. (As per usual, Anakin was largely useless in curbing the Senator’s more vicious tendencies and obviously found them to be a wildly attractive quality.) “Well,” he said shaking himself. “I’d best comm the Council.”

Padme nodded and then she and Anakin took a seat on the couch out of holocamera range to watch.

Obi-Wan took his seat and a deep breath, and activated the comm system.

#vader strikes back #luke and vader save the galaxy #star wars the clone wars #prequels

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