Desert Moon-A Star Wars Story ( discontinued )

III - Over the Edge

Vader had gone to a point of no return. The dreams had come faster and more vivid now that he had given himself over to them. He shut the rest of the world out just to see Ahsoka smile again. He had neglected his officers to hear Padme's laugh resound in his head. He had turned off all communications to his private chambers to hear Obi-Wan congratulate him on a successful mission. Anakin Skywalker was rejoicing at their faces and it made Vader more angry. The Emperor had given up on Vader for the time being and only called him when it was absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, Vader partially wanted the dreams to end. They had torn him from the very fine establishment that this Empire was. The Empire didn't deal with weak emotions like love and compassion. Vader had everything he had been promised, he had everything he ever needed to live and function as a human being.

But he didn't have the people he needed to show him compassion. He had pushed them away and they had turned their backs on him. Every wrong thing that happened to Anakin Skywalker, was because Darth Vader had been planted in him from the moment his mother gave birth. There was that feeling of corruption, of not agreeing with authority. It had eaten away at Skywalker's soul, feeding him lies and deception about those he cared about. Anakin only hated Obi-Wan because he was told too. But all the cards had been dealt in Obi-Wan's favor and not Anakin's. It didn't matter if Anakin was wrong most of the time (which he usually was) or if the council seemed to favor master over apprentice. Everything happened for the good of Obi-Wan, and Anakin was pushed to doing things rashly to try and get the council's attention. It had hardened Vader's heart towards Obi-Wan Kenobi. Vader hated Obi-Wan as much as Anakin Skywalker had loved him.

A sharp knock on the door jerked him out of this train of thought. "What?" He had asked specifically asked to be uninterrupted today. 

"Lord Vader," came a shaking voice from the other side of the metal. "Admiral Tarkin wishes to speak with you. There's a p-problem with the blockade."

Oh right, Vader had completely forgotten. They were in a blockade over one of the Imperial mining planets. With a growl, he rose and left the room, not glancing back at the officer on the other side of the door. When he stormed onto the bridge, everyone stopped talking to watch him storm up to Tarkin. "I was informed of a problem."

"Yes," said Tarkin. "Something has come up on the surface of the moon. A mining segment has gone completely offline and hasn't responded to the last calls we have sent. According to the monitors on the ground, there hasn't been any movement or progress in the output of the sector for a while now."

"And this concerns me how?" Vader asked, using one of Skywalker's supposedly snappy lines.

"Well the Empire needs the metal from this moon to build it's ships," said Tarkin. "The fault in this sector could cause a chain reaction of rebellion that might have us shut down the entire operation. I believe the sector needs a little, how do I word this, push to get things going."

Vader growled. He hated being assertive. He hated mining. He hated Tarkin. He hated everything at the moment and stormed off the bridge hissing to a nearby officer, "Ready my ship."

Anakin had been waiting for years to be promoted to a Master. He felt as though he deserved it. He had killed Palpatine before any other Jedi could. And before him, Dooku. He had fulfilled his destiny as the Chosen One and destroyed the Sith. 

But there was something that he thought didn't feel quite right. 

Ahsoka was back, Padme was going to have their child, Obi-Wan couldn't stop beaming out of pride for him, but Anakin didn't really feel happy himself. He sat in the old garage with the gadgets and gizmos he had collected since he had arrived on Coruscant. Younger Anakin usually liked to put his hand to something when he got bored during Obi-Wan's training. Which tended to be very often. Other people's old junk had been the young Jedi's treasure. One thing Anakin loved about building things that were made from space scrap was to see what he could build out of almost nothing. When he was sixteen, he had had this big dream to build a ship and go find his mother back on Tatooine. He had gotten it partially assembled and kept a growing collection of credits somewhere on Coruscant hidden away so Obi-Wan wouldn't find them. If he could go back and take the things he had done to those people on Tatooine, he would do it. Save all their lives and possibly his mother's. He had just felt so...helpless.