Desert Moon-A Star Wars Story ( discontinued )

V - Fall of a Hero

Vader hated sand. Unfortunately for him, Tatooine was only sand. And even more unfortunately, he was utterly, and most definitely lost. When every inch of waste looked the same, it was hard to find your way unless you knew the dune sea by heart. When Anakin was a child, he knew exactly how to get across the sea without trying too hard, and for the record, he had a good memory. Vader was not Anakin and having been locked up in a Star Destroyer for weeks trying to see the faces of the ones Skywalker loved one last time, his sense of geography was a little off. The sun was setting, and Vader was loosing hope of finding the old hermit his vision showed him. The thought of the survival of this man made him even angrier for no particular reason. The thing with the dark side was that Vader got angry at people for no reason whatsoever. Anger was just a part of him now. It filled him, drowning out all the other emotions. Where there had once been compassion, kindness, and love there was now anger, hatred, and jealousy. But that was just the way things went. He couldn't help it.

Vader made his way back the way he came, hoping to find his lone TIE there, but not hoping too much. Something made him stop and turn around. There was nothing but desert behind him, framed by the light of the setting suns. To a simple passerby it might have looked like a normal scene one saw every day in the Tatooine sky, but to the Anakin within Darth Vader, it meant much more. This was the spot where, all those years ago, Anakin and Ahsoka had walked to deliver Jabba the Hutt's son back to him. They hadn't known each other well then; Anakin had thought Ahsoka a little annoying actually. Later, he had realized why their personalities clashed the way they did. Her spirit reflected his own, and he thought she had grown up too fast and become less and less like the snippy little padawan he had first met on Christophsis. Most of him was proud of her, glad to watch her become her own woman and forge her own path, but part of him didn't want to let her go. And now...now she was gone, and he would never see her again. He was selfish, arrogant, and didn't think about what affect he would have on others. 

Vader growled for the thousandth time that week. Sith didn't deal with emotions like sympathy, he thought as his feet pounded the sand. They pushed out all of those emotions because feeling at all was one step closer to weakness. And Sith weren't weak. If Vader had 5 credits for every time he heard a variation of that phrase, he would be drowning in money. His master told him that phrase, he told himself that phrase, and even when he had been known as Anakin Skywalker, he had heard that phrase spoken from Jedi and Sith alike. Now the Jedi were gone, only a myth and he was one of the last Sith in the entire blasted galaxy. Did that phrase even apply anymore? If he wasn't a Sith and still a leader of the Empire, he would have lead it pretty damn well. Vader looked up through his mask. The sea of sand all looked the same unfortunately and Vader couldn't see much because of the falling dark. He decided to keep going, if he got to his TIE soon, he might not run into Jawas or sand people. Though slaughtering random sand creatures would lighten his mood, he refused to distract himself from finding his ship.

"I hate sand," he muttered as his black figure blended into the desert night.

Coruscant was pretty at night. Anakin always thought it was like the stars you couldn't see. With all the lit up speeders and buildings it looked like a completely different galaxy then the one he was standing in now. The view from Padme's apartment was incredible. Anakin wanted to share it with Ahsoka, the way he showed her the Desert Moon, but he didn't know what to do with Padme and their child. It was all so blurred sometimes. He also didn't know how Ahsoka would take it. His brain was swarmed with conflict and he clenched his fist on the balcony. He didn't know how long he was standing there, but after what felt like a few moments, a soft hand rested on his tight fist. He turned and looked a Padme's deep brown eyes. 

"What's troubling you?" her melodic voice asked him.

Anakin gave her a weak smile. "Nothing. I'm fine."