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"in a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that is to be destroyed first." Tarkin sneers. He starts to continue, but no sound erupts from his throat save for a strangled cough."
"No, Moff, she has not." Vader does not entirely understand why he does this, why he feels the need to spare the home of the girl who stands before him, defiant even in the face of imminent death. She reminds him of someone, a name he will not speak. There is a list of those names that he keeps in his mind, all long gone, all his fault. A wife, a mother, a child, a brother, an apprentice, a friend.
"My Lord," Tarkin chokes out, his face turning purple. Vader does not release his grip. The technicians are watching them from all sides now. The Princess is confused-- what had been her doom is now that of her torturer, her interrogator.
"You will set a course for the planet of Tatooine." Vader instructs the cowering techs and operators. "You will destroy the planet and everything on it. If the Princess does not comply, you will move on to Geonosis, Christophsis, Mustafar, and Mandalore." He is weak; his sparing of Alderaan proves that. But the destruction of the slave-ridden Outer Rim dustball will rid him of the weakness, he is sure. The same for each planet where he loved someone, each planet where he lost them.
He will spare one, although he knows it leaves the weakness to fester. He will spare Naboo, because of the body buried there, because he cannot destroy that memory, and the only thing worse than realizing he is not there is realizing that he cannot be.
Vader releases Tarkin, who collapses to the ground, wheezing and hacking. The man is pathetic, a whining weasel who deserves to be obliterated as much as the sites of the Sith Lord's weakness. "Yes, Lord Vader."
The Princess stands frozen, as if she thinks that if she does not move, she will become invisible, if she does not move, she can escape. Vader knows that feeling, and he knows that no matter how hard you try, the things you are hiding from will always find you.
He has a strange urge to tell her this, to teach her to embrace the darkness rather than hide from it. Vader does not know where the feeling comes from, why he wants to protect this enemy. This is what he had imagined feeling for his child, but that dream is as gone as his lost limbs and his dead family.
They arrive at Tatooine, and Vader wonders whether the feeling that erupts in him is guilt, or revulsion, or longing. Perhaps all of them. It does not matter. Soon his past will be gone, and he will be stronger than even the Emperor. His master is a hoarder, attached to planets and people and things, and all those things can be used against him. In just minutes, Vader will be free.
"Would you like to tell us where your base is, Princess?" Tarkin raises his eyebrows at the girl. He is clearly confused by this turn of events- a remote planet in the middle of nowhere serves no purpose of leverage.
"Do you really think I'm just going to tell you?" She asks. Vader can sense her thoughts, to an extent. He knows that she believes protecting the Rebellion to be the most important thing, and that she will forever regret dooming these people, but that they would be far more doomed to remain under Imperial control. He cannot sense where her base is, but he tries, although more for Tarkin's and the Emperor's sakes than anything else.
Tatooine is to be his target-- then they can find her base.
"You may fire when ready." Tarkin tells the techs.
The green beam is bright, far brighter than anything that has ever existed on that planet. That is all Vader can register, until the wave of Force-screams hit him and he is nearly bowled over. He swears that he hears his mother's voice among them.
"Everyone. Out." Vader gasps. They obey. Even Tarkin, for once, takes the Princess by the arm and leads her from the room.
As soon as the door slides shut behind his workers, the feared Sith Lord Darth Vader falls to his knees before the ruined ashes of his planet. His mind is a spinning whirlwind of echoes, lost in the swirl of memories he's tried to forget.
A small boy, playing with the stuffed tooka-cat his mother had made him as he hides under a pile of rags in a Hutt's palace.
An older, taller child, showing lost strangers to his home in a sandstorm, speeding down the podrace track, winning the race and greeting his new friends with a soot-stained smile.
A young man, returning in search of a left-behind mother to find her lost, dying, dead. Killing to avenge her, but finding only pain in his victory.
A few months later, returning the child of the one who enslaved him, trekking across the empty sand and pretending the memories weren't suffocating him while he could still breathe.
There are people, too. Ghosts that already haunt him-- a mother he couldn't save, a stepfather dead of grief, a tribe of raiders killed for revenge-- and the ghosts that will join his nightmares after today-- a stepbrother and sister-in law who never wanted to leave, childhood friends who couldn't escape, families that took him in during sandstorms and Tusken raids.
This was supposed to make the Sith Lord stronger, but all that is left is a grieving Jedi who made all the wrong choices.