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Darth Vader was on his ship when he received the holomessage from the emperor ordering his immediate return to Coruscant. He already knew that the message was coming, his master having dug into whatever was left of Vaders mind.
As he instructed the troopers to ready his ship for departure, he carefully avoided thinking. Instead, he focused on the never-ending rage that he was filled with, pulling from the constant agony of his existence. It hadn’t been long enough, yet, to forget the sting.
Vader was not sure if he would ever be able to forget what it had felt like waking up in the armor, the animalistic horror that had filled his mind as he looked down at mechanical limbs, seeing something more machine than man, the pain that had followed. He would have panicked if the ventilator built into his chest hadn’t begun to push his lungs in and out.
He couldn’t move, he couldn’t-
This pain only served to fuel the power of the dark side, his master had told him. Vader nodded at this. The weak tremor in his voice was disguised by the vocoder, turning surprise into something mechanical and even and cold.
“Yes, Master.”
Rage was all that Vader could feel; rage at the man who had done this to him, at his own failures, at the boy who had been foolish enough to believe that he was ever truly free. Vader looked no deeper than this.
If he lingered for too long, he would have begun to regret the choices that had led him here, would have begun to wonder what could have been…
No.
Vader had killed the hopes of that foolish boy. The Emperor was the only one who had not turned away, the only one who hadn’t betrayed him in the end. There was no one else he could turn to, nothing he could wish for; all that Skywalker had loved was dead and gone. Palpatine was all that remained.
He would not have lied.
Watching the stars pass by in hyperspace, Vader lost himself for a moment in the sheer vastness of space. It was something that never ceased to amaze him, stealing his breath away no matter how many times he had seen it. The lights streaked across the window of the ship, creating endless patterns that danced along his vision.
Vader had always been fascinated by the stars. This was perhaps the only thing he had in common with the boy who was long dead.
The mechanical gasping of his ventilator shook Vader’s thoughts away from the sky. The metal lungs were inefficient, each breath giving just enough oxygen to make it to the next. He was left on the verge of suffocation, lightheaded from the lack of air. Vader could feel his panic rising once more as his chest pushed in and out, forcing air into his broken lungs. The lack of control terrified the sith more than he would ever admit; once again, his life was in the hands of his master.
Vader steeped off of the ship without hesitation. He was not so foolish as to show any weakness. Already, the air seemed to grow thinner, mechanical breaths growing louder as he ascended to the heights of the Coruscant sky.
Each step Vader took pulled at the sockets of his prosthetics. They had not healed, metal sloughing away at burn tissue and damaged skin, bacta failing to keep the decay from spreading.
He could feel the screws in his bones, the droids having operated carelessly enough to leave the nerve endings behind. With each step, his femurs ground against steel plates, durasteel prosthetics pulling down on his joints.
Vader towered over Emperor Palpatine as he reached his throne. He had always been tall, but his master had installed prosthetic limbs more suited to a droid than a man; heavy, unfeeling things that added another foot to his height.
“On your knees.” The Emperor ordered.
“Yes, Master.” Vader responded, bowing his head.
I tell you this story to save your life.
There was once a slave boy who thought that he would never again have a master to serve. There was a master who came to take him away, promising the slave that he would never wear chains as he gave him the gift of the stars. So blinded by their light, the slave never noticed the strings that hung them from the sky.
There was once a foolish old man who thought himself a different kind of master - kind instead of cruel - and there was once a fool who believed him. There was once a slave foolish enough to think himself free.
Vader struggled to his knees, the weight of his armor threatening to send him keeling forward; Vader knew that his master would not accept such disobedience. Bending his mechanical spine as far as it would go, Vader lowered his gaze in respect as he awaited his master's punishment.
“Darth Vader… you have disappointed me once again. I am deeply unhappy with what I have heard about the incident regarding our most esteemed trading partners.” The Emperor’s voice was sickly sweet, the threat lurking behind his words.
Some long-buried part of Vader, something that had survived the fires of Mustufar, had cried out when head learned about the slavers; a thousand voices chorusing in his head as the heat of twin suns burned down onto his back, grains of sand burned into the palms of his hands.
“And to think,” the Emperor continued, “I thought that you had killed Skywalker completely. I am most disappointed to learn that he lives.” Palpatine smiled mockingly when he finished, a poor imitation of the man Vader had once thought of as a father.
“Skywalker is dead. I am what remains.” Vader insisted.
Anakin Skywalker was dead. Vader had killed him with his own two hands, squeezed out every ounce of life and watched as the other man begged for mercy. Anakin was dead, for he would have been far too weak to survive the horrors committed by his hands.
“Yet he lives,” Palpetine replied, his smile turning cruel. “Anakin Skywalker was weak and naive. You would be wise to end this foolishness and accept the truth. Have you not forgotten what he did to Padme? To your poor mother?”
Hesitating, Vader heard the Emperor’s high laughter before he saw the arcs of light dancing towards him. Trying to move he found that his cyborg parts had locked up, the metal coffin freezing around him as he tried to escape. Sensing his panic, Vader’s master only laughed harder, face twisting into something dark and evil.
There was barely time for him to brace himself before the electricity hit, sending waves of agony searing through his veins. Sparks flew as the wires of his suit fried and overloaded, white-hot lines of energy arcing between his limbs.
Anakin hid behind his mothers skirts, holding back the tears that threatened to fall from his eyes; water was too valuable to waste on Tatooine. He hadn’t meant to break the engine on the shelf of Watto’s shop, but the customer had shoved him up against it and the parts had toppled to the ground where they now lay broken.
“Here, boy!” His master ordered.
Legs shaking, Anakin walked towards his master, bracing for the shock that he knew would come. Looking up to meet his mother’s eyes, he found only sadness, endless pools of sorrows deep enough to drown in. He tried to smile at her, offering her what little comfort he could. Then, he heard the buzz of electricity and remembered nothing at all.
The pain seemed to stretch on infinitely. Vader could do nothing but scream out in silent agony. Without the vocoder, the sound came out as nothing more than the barest whisper, the power of speech another that his master had stripped away.
When the lightning finally stopped, the agony only spread. His vocoder and limbs had already been fried, but he felt a new sense of dread as his respirator sparked, shuddering once before stopping completely. Vader tried to force his chest in and out during the eerie silence that followed, but it was no use. Choking on air, Vader did not have the breath to beg his master for the mercy of a quick death.
“Tell me that Anakin is dead.” Palpatine ordered as the man in front of him gasped for breath.
“Answer me, Vader!” the sith commanded, his anger growing. Vader tried to answer, but it was no use. His lungs were far too damaged to rasp anything out and his voice modulator had been killed with the rest of the life support. He knew that Palpatine had been growing tired of him, and knew that soon he would be thrown away. Life held in his master, Vader knew better than to beg for mercy.
The second round of lightning was more intense than the first. Vader couldn’t breathe, shallow gasps of air not enough to keep the blackness from creeping across his vision. When Palpatine released control, Vader crumpled to the ground; nothing more than a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Struggling to lift his head, Vader could hear the Emperor’s receding laughter as his master walked away.
Breathe…
“Breathe, Ani.” his mother begged. Coming back into consciousness, he was too consumed by pain to open his eyes, every bone in his body aching from the shocks. Instead, he moved closer to his mother’s warmth, letting her comfort him as he lay cradled in her arms. Blinking his eyes open, he was greeted by a world that was overwhelmingly light.
Entire body on fire, he struggled to fight back tears, a single drop of water rolling down his cheek. His mother wiped the drop away, her own eyes mist with tears that would remain unshed.
“We can’t afford to waste the water” Anakin whispered between heaving breaths. Water was precious on Tatooione, something far too valuable to be wasted on tears. In the harsh desert, a couple drops could mean the difference between life and death. Shmi looked at her son with all of the sadness of the world in her gaze.
“They are coming for you, Ani,” she murmured, “one day, the Jedi will come and take you far away from here. Promise me, Ani. Promise that you won’t look back.”
Anakin buried his head in his mothers chest and clutched at her shawl until his arms stopped spasming and his heart stopped stuttering in his chest.
Without the respirator, Vader would die. He knew this.
His master had always been prone to fits of rage, but this time, he had gone too far. Struggling to raise himself up, Vader was unable to move with his limbs locked into place. The suit was nothing more than dead weight, a shackle that crushed him to the ground.
Vader felt only a sort of resignation at this. He had tried to die before, failed to end his own wretched existence dozens of times. He was not afraid.
On Mustafar, Vader had longed for Obi Wan to kill him, to finish off whatever remained of the man he had once been. It would have been a mercy. Anakin would have never been able to forgive himself for all that had been done by his hands. In surviving, he was forced to die.
When Darth Vader had woken up, trapped in a mechanical prison, he had wished for this again. Padme was gone, Palpetine told him, ended by Anakin's own hand. Vader had wondered if everything he touched was doomed to be destroyed, had wondered why he alone remained.
He once said he could not live without her. Despite this, nothing he tried was able to stop the mechanical lungs from compressing his chest.
After everything, this was how Darth Vader would die; lying on the floor of the same room he had been set on this path. The chairs of the council members had long ago been removed from a chamber, but the sith could still feel the imprints of those who had once sat there, a thousand ghosts echoing in his mind.
Vader only wanted to see the stars one last time. Pulling himself to the edge of the room, he tilted his head back to look up at the skies of Coruscant, at the setting sun and the dying rays it sent to bathe the room in mournful red.
As the sith grew still, a single tear fell from his eye.
No matter how many years Vader had been away from Tatooine, he could still feel the sand tearing at his joints, the hot sun burning down on fresh wounds. Vader was a child of the desert; this is the one thing he could never leave behind.
There was a fable that the Grandmothers had of the desert’s mercy.
Once, there was a slave whose master was cruel. The master watched as his slave worked all day under the burning suns, sand eating away at his skin until flesh was exposed, until he would collapse to his knees, begging for a drop of water. The master would only laugh at this.
One day, the slave was too weak to stand up, tired body unable to withstand the harsh days and nights. This only angered the master, who withheld water until the slave could no longer walk and forced him to work until the sand was colored red with blood. The slave only smiled at this, for he knew the freedom that death would bring.
When he was finally too weak to be useful, the master sent him into the desert. Lowering himself to the shifting sands, the slave smiled, for his master had given him the gift of the desert. As he took his last breaths, he was free.
In his dying moments, the sith surrendered to the the light. After so long spent in darkness, the light seemed to burn eating away at his skin, but Vader only clung to it tighter. Pain was familiar, something so fundamental to him that he did not know who he would be without it.
Looking at the stars one last time, Darth Vader smiled, for he was finally free.
"Have you come to free us?"