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A mission led him to a moon he didn't care about and doing things he didn't want to. The Captain of the squadron sent him specific coordinates because they claimed to have found something valuable, and he reluctantly landed the shuttle in an area crawling with snowtroopers. The moon was in the middle of nowhere, abandoned and unhabited, and he didn't understand why he was being sent there.
The Force pulsed in recognition around him, and for the first time in months, Vader's interest peaked. The Captain approached him on trembling knees, and Vader was still getting used to people fearing him. He asked about the status of the ship, his eyes already scanning every inch of the crash. It wasn't imperial, and he would have known if an imperial ship of that size had crashed recently.
The Captain spoke. “It is an old Republic Venator-class Star Destroyer, and according to the data we could retrieve it crashed on First Empire Day, sir.” Vader clenched his jaw and walked towards the ruins, feeling goosebumps all over his skin.
The remains of a Republic cruiser laid in front of him, frozen by snow and time. There is only so much time can change, yet the Republic cruiser is as he remembered them before Palpatine wiped all Clone Wars holos from existence. There were two helmets on sticks, painted orange and blue, and he clenched his fists and instinctively repressed his memories. The clones had painted their helmets orange to welcome her back. She said to him they would catch up later (she promised him!) but she lied— then abandoned and betrayed him.
His cape barely touched the snow, the wind picking it up, and Vader thanked it because he didn't want any part of him touching that soil even if the blood had already dried. He blinked, feeling nothing but old disappointment, and looked at the ground. Another orange helmet was drowning beneath a thin layer of snow, and he was reminded of how the sand also swallowed everything. The galaxy had always been merciless, so why shouldn't he be?
A glint in the snow caught his attention and Vader called out on the Force to give him enough strength to kneel. Moving around in the suit wasn't easy, but it angered him enough to keep walking. He went down, feeling the pain of his prosthetics on his flesh—a pain he wasn't used to yet—and picked it up.
A lightsaber. The first thing he noticed was that the tilt was too small to be a grown Jedi's, and that its owner must have been in the cruiser when it crashed. Another dead Jedi to the list, thought Vader, as he rubbed the ice off with contempt. His curiosity got the best of him and he decided to ignite it. The Force shook around him, and the snowtroopers took a few steps back, already getting used to leaving Darth Vader alone.
The blue light became the brightest object in the area, despite the snow that reflected the blinding sunlight. He recognized that lightsaber and would recognize it anywhere: in snow, desert or underwater. Images of a young man spending endless hours on a Republic cruiser fixing it came to his mind, but these were images of a war long past, all its heroes and foes meaningless and forgotten now.
The past made him weak, and there was only the future to think about.
Vader would never admit it, but he knew the future was cold and empty. Everything was subject to constant change: since he stopped walking the snow had already covered his feet and he was slowly sinking into the ground. He knew if he stood still for a few days it might swallow him completely. All things changed, and he couldn’t stop that. No one could say that he hadn't tried, but everyone was powerless when it came to time. Time killed everything and gave nothing back but ruins and corpses, and he was always there to pick up the ashes.
Vader's instincts wanted to fix the cruiser and find what was salvageable. He was good at fixing things, but even if he fixed the cruiser, it would be useless— because a Republic ship would never fly in an Imperial sky.
There was nothing he could do anymore.
He tilted the lightsaber carefully, ignoring how it was suffocating him. It shouldn't be here and it should have never returned to him, not in these circumstances. The padawan must have died here with the 501st when the Order was given and he was with—
A movement through the Force caught his attention. Among the ruins of old metal and eroded red paint, he saw a bird. He could pull it in if he wanted to, but he decided to watch. The convor flew free in circles, disrespecting the rules of gravity and weight, willingly imprisoning itself to a life of routine. To Vader there was something contemptuous about pilots, ships and flying animals. They were all unrestricted and given the false illusion of freedom, but movement didn't always mean freedom, and Vader knew that all too well.
The bird was free, but it chose to stay here and fly around the crash anyway. It was the only living thing around the area, probably on the moon too, yet it was completely meaningless to him because all the other life forms here were long gone.
The wind picked up speed and the cape tugged him backwards to drag him out of the moon. His prosthetics made it nearly impossible to move, so he didn't even flinch at the wind. He had to get going, the ruins of an old crash were hardly something he dwelled on.
He tried deactivating the lightsaber but his fingers hesitated. His hand was shaking, because deactivating the lightsaber meant erasing all the memories he had of Skywalker's padawan, his mentorship and how proud he was of her once. A small smile tried to fight its way to his lips, but he crushed it.
She betrayed him and was now dead like everyone else.
Vader forced his hand to deactivate the weapon. He watched the lightsaber suppress all the memories back into the hilt.
There was another helmet on the ground and he wanted to throw it back to the cruiser where it belonged. The helmet was trying to escape the crash, to keep moving forward, to start somewhere new and continue living but Vader knew better. The storm was starting to gain speed, and the snow would eventually swallow the helmet again. It had no other choice but to accept that.
There was nothing he could do anymore. It was all over so long ago.
He walked back to his shuttle and the Captain approached him in a hurry.
“Prepare a team to get rid of the crash.” ordered Vader absentmindedly in a voice that wasn't his and would never be. The sky was too bright for how angry he was, and he wanted to punch it and tear it apart because he knew it would change, as everything around him did. The troopers had already moved from where he had last seen them. Even the sun would set soon, and he wanted to keep everything in one place with glue or violence. Preferably both.
Suddenly he remembered the bird, the only thing with free will in that area that could fly away but chose to stay. The convor would never leave, it was permanent in a galaxy that breathed life and exhaled death. He turned around to where it had flown in circles, but it was gone. The Force laughed at him.
Darth Vader wasn't used to feeling powerless. The Empire's second in command was everything but powerless. He knew the names he got called, all the rumours of him being a cyborg monster and he enjoyed them because they were all true.
A trooper fell dead as Darth Vader walked back into his shuttle, clenching his fists to avoid tearing it in two. Her lightsaber felt heavier in his hand than his entire suit did.
Vader had the power to change anything but time. He promised himself that one day he would master it all, and then he would finally feel free.