Work Text:
The planet was cold, not that Vader could feel it.
All around him, stormtroopers milled around the crash site, cataloging everything they could find. This particular crash, being on such a desolate backwater moon, had escaped Imperial attention for years. But when scans had picked up signs of a Republic ship, and when a later probe investigation had uncovered a clone helmet, painted with a very particular orange and white pattern, a squad had been dispatched with Vader at the helm.
It wasn’t that Vader cared about what was found here. No, he told himself. It was that Ahsoka Tano had been a powerful Jedi, skilled for her age, and if she was alive, she was a potential threat, someone who could know who he had once been.
He was here to confirm her death or begin tracking her down, nothing more. And if the blue markings on the other recovered helmets were familiar, Vader felt nothing but a cold detachedness. The clones had done their job. Their deaths were inevitable, he told himself. They were meant to be replaced after the Jedi were gone.
Viper probes floated over the snow, and troopers carried old Republic guns back and forth, packing them into crates to bring back to Coruscant and scrap. Others were standing in the shadow of the Tribunal , using shovels to dig up the buried helmets, carefully scanning them and entering them into a database, checking off each number as they confirmed more and more to be dead. The helmets were then packed away, likely to melt the plastoid down and form it into new stormtrooper armor.
As Vader moved towards the crates that were meant to be packed into their ship, the stormtroopers gave him a wide berth. He could sense their fear when they saw him, their unease towards his dark helmet and the lightsaber hanging from his belt.
He finally had the power he had longed for during the war. He could taste it, feel it wrap itself around him in every stutter of a heartbeat when he moved too fast, in every helmeted face that would never quite look him in the eye. The power was heady. It intoxicated him, made him think this. This is what I was meant for . It carried him through each brutal mission, every time he took a sadistic sort of glee from having the strength needed to choke a man with nothing but the Force, every time he would give an order and officials ran to complete it, every time he could almost taste the thick fear of the stormtroopers when they saw what he was capable of.
It was also lonely.
Vader curled a gloved hand into a fist, smashing the thought. No. He would not allow the endlessly-infuriating quiet voice of Anakin to invade his thoughts. He had what he wanted now, the respect that the Jedi would never have given him. They were dead now. He had won, had proven himself to be better than them all, shown them that they were wrong to push him to the side. He had won .
It hadn’t been the Republic or the Separatists to win the Clone Wars. No, it had been him , the one who had brought it to an end and had helped an empire rise.
Silently, he cursed this backwater moon. There was too much here to remind him of his past and the unfairness of how he had been treated. He took a slow breath, looking out towards the shadow of the Tribunal . He was here for a reason, he reminded himself. He was here for the Empire. He needed to know what had happened at this wreck, if anyone had survived and needed to be dealt with. Nothing more.
Still, he decided he would deal with the actual crash site later. It wouldn’t make sense, he reasoned, for him to waste his time looking over a site that had already been examined.
He wasn’t avoiding it, he told himself. There is nothing in that crash site for you to fear. There is nothing there that you have lost . The rage roared deep within, shouting its agreement. Any losses that had happened there had simply been the deaths of soldiers, bred for this end.
Vader repeated the thought as approached what seemed to be the center of operations for the stormtroopers. Before examining the crash site, it would be good to determine how many had died. It would give him an idea of the likelihood of survival for the traitorous Jedi, or a hint at who, exactly, had made the graves.
The stormtroopers tensed as he grew closer, and as soon as he ordered one to bring him the database of everything collected from the site, they quickly dispersed. He took a dark joy in their fear, in knowing that he was terrifying enough, powerful enough, that they could barely stand to be in his presence.
As he waited, Vader peered into the crate closest to him, one of the many filled with helmets. They had been sorted, the ones covered in Ahsoka’s facial colors stripped of color and put into one set of crates, the ones with the trademark blue and white thrown haphazardly into another. Seeing the helmets, Vader felt restless , thrown a bit off-balance. It was like staring back in time, to when he had been a different man entirely, and he didn’t like it.
He had known the clones that the helmets had belonged to, and while Vader may have tried to distance himself from everything that reminded him of his past, but that didn’t mean he could forget . 501st blue shone up at him from the crates, the painted helmets a stark contrast to the uniform white plastoid of the stormtroopers that now surrounded him.
They had served him loyally during the war, and for that, he regretted their loss. Some of them still did now, as stormtroopers, but he had been meticulous in ensuring that none of them had come on this mission with him. The clones were good soldiers, yes, but their bonds of brotherhood still ran deep. The equivalent of a mass grave of their brothers that had died for the Empire to rise was not something Vader was eager to show them. They were still men, after all, and he couldn’t risk dissent.
Loyalty could only extend so far.
In the crate, a helmet with the symbol of the Republic painted boldly across it looked back at him, and wasn’t that fitting? Two masks, both representative of their own government, one the marker of a dead man and one the cover of a face that the galaxy thought dead.
Vader could see his own face in the empty visor of Jesse’s helmet, and the eyes he saw reflected back at himself seemed just as empty.
He looked away.
“Here’s the database, sir,” the trooper he had spoken to said, returning with a datapad. Numbers scrolled by in a blur, and at the top, the words 501st Known Dead blinked steadily at him.
“This is complete?”
The trooper nodded. “With the addition of CT-5597, yes, Lord Vader.”
Vader looked back down at the datapad again. Maybe he was wrong, and had misread the list. Maybe he had skipped over the number. But he knew, even as he looked, that he hadn’t.
One number was missing.
Rex .
Vader knew he had been on the Tribunal . He had assigned Rex to the mission himself, made him a commander just so Ahsoka could take the men to Mandalore. But no matter how closely he looked at the datapad, CT-7567 was missing.
He had survived .
A wave of emotion surged through Vader.
Rex had been one of his best men during the war. He had been his loyal captain and his trusted friend. He had been a good soldier, loyal to the Republic. When the Empire had risen, Vader had wondered where Rex was, missing his presence at his side. Rex had been loyal, and even if he hadn’t possessed his strong loyalty, the chip in his head wouldn’t let him do anything different.
Or so Vader had thought.
Apparently, he had been wrong. Something must have happened on the Tribunal , something that let Rex disobey, and Vader wondered if it had happened before he received the orders. Had it been Rex who had had to relay the order to kill Ahsoka, or had he tried to warn her? Had he tried to kill her, or had he tried to save her? Had he fought with her, or with his brothers?
Given the graves and Rex’s missing helmet, Vader felt like he knew the answer.
For a moment, and only a moment, Vader allowed himself a pang of regret. Rex had been a good soldier. He would have made a good commander at Vader’s side. But it seemed that he had chosen his own path, away from the Empire, and that, Vader mourned. It was a shame, really, that Rex would have to die.
But his pity, his regret, they could not cloud him or his thoughts.
The Empire came first. The Empire and the power he held in it stood above all else, and if the loss of an old friend hurt? Vader would use that, turn it into his fierce anger. The loss was a betrayal, yet another person who had turned away from him, and Vader would not allow it to go unpunished.
He stood there for a moment, turning his head to look at where the graves loomed like specters in the distance. Their presence seemed like a mockery now, taunting him as another symbol of the things he had lost during the rise of the Empire. He put the datapad down roughly, shoving the proof of Rex’s betrayal away.
He couldn’t linger on that. He was here for something else.
As if the Force itself had heard him, a voice spoke up from his side. “Lord Vader, we found something you might want to see.”
Vader turned to the stormtrooper who had stepped up beside him.
“What is it?”
“We found it by the graves, Lord Vader,” the trooper said, holding out an object that was as familiar to Vader as his own hand, and for a second, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
It was a lightsaber. Snow was crusted around it, ice sticking to the metal like glue, but the shape was unmistakable. Looking at it, he didn’t know why it felt like a gut punch that the trooper had found it. He didn’t take it from where it sat in the trooper’s palm. He couldn’t bring himself to, not with everything that saber had meant, the Order it had represented. The person it had represented.
“Put it with the rest of the materials being shipped back to Coruscant,” he heard himself order, but it was like he was at a distance. Everything in him drew his attention away, towards where the wreck of the Tribunal loomed.
We found it by the graves .
But not in one.
“Get back to work,” he said, the words terse and robotic through his mask, and the trooper nodded before hurrying off to the ship, taking the saber with him. Vader barely noticed him go as he strode away from the riot of troopers still working behind him, moving towards the quiet of the crash. The Tribunal lay before him, the once-great ship now a defeated wreck. It was not, he thought, unlike the Republic that had made it. Snow covered the metal, and the hangar doors stuck up at an awkward angle, wrenched out of shape by the crash. The red paint of the Republic still sat on them, faded now, yet instantly recognizable. In this lighting, it looked like blood. The bridge still stood tall above him, and he found himself wondering if that was where Ahsoka had been when the orders had come through.
He walked over, closer to the graves, where most of the troopers had cleared out. Are you alive? He thought. Did you bury them, even after they tried to kill you? He wouldn’t be surprised if she had. Ahsoka had always cared, had always held a deep compassion for the men she fought alongside. She was good, strong in her beliefs and her morals. She would have been one of the best Jedi, if only-
No . Vader reached for the rage that burned deep within, smoldering at the center of his dark armor. He was being soft, being corrupted by the Jedi, always the Jedi-
Ahsoka Tano was a traitor. She abandoned you , he told himself viciously. She walked away, time and time again. She didn’t care about you. The small, weak, Anakin part of himself wanted to argue with him, put he covered it quickly, shoving it back into memories of Mustafar, of burning, burning, burning -
Frustrated, Vader turned his attention to the snow beneath his boots. One of the sabers had been found, but that wasn’t enough to determine if Ahsoka had survived or not. Maybe she had simply dropped one, knowing two would mark her as a more specific target. Maybe she had died, and whoever had buried the clones had buried her as well, marking the grave with her lightsabers instead of a helmet.
This weapon is your life , a familiar voice echoed in the back of his mind, taunting him, always taunting him. Don’t lose it . Yet a lightsaber had been found with no sign of its owner. Lost.
What happened to you?
He reached out in the Force, searching for the telltale hum of a kyber crystal. It didn’t take long to find it. The crystal sang to him with an aching familiarity, one that drew him back to the months he had spent keeping it by his side after Ahsoka had left. He concentrated more, feeling the rush of the Force around the crystal’s presence. Here , it cried as it flowed around him, an intense shock of light surrounding the darkness he had embraced. Here, here. With you, under you, in you, you .
He withdrew sharply, shutting the light out, but he looked around, and there, beneath his feet, sat a lightsaber. It looked so unassuming, half-buried in the snow. Just a simple metal cylinder, something that could be anything, really. A piece of scrap metal, thrown from the crash site. The trash of some long-ago traveler. A spare part dropped from a cart that the stormtroopers guided through the snow. But Vader knew it wasn’t. The proof of that sat in an Imperial shuttle, the other half of this now-whole set.
Slowly, he knelt down, feeling like he was watching himself from a great distance as he brushed the snow off of the saber hilt. It was light in his hand, so light for something that represented so much, and suddenly, the lightsaber hanging from his belt felt very heavy in comparison.
The hilt was so unassuming, the metal still gleaming under the weak light of the sun, despite the time it had spent abandoned. How many hours, how many days had he spent seeing that hilt, meditating with it after Ahsoka had left, searching for any reason why he had been left again, the pain intermingling with his desperate need to know that she was safe.
And now here the saber was, in front of him again as he wondered about her fate, in front of him again as he stood alone. Abandoned, taken for granted, never trusted, never cared for , Vader’s mind whispered to him, but it felt less intense with this saber in his hand.
Whose fault was it, really, that Ahsoka wasn’t by his side now? Whose fault was it, really, that if she was alive, they stood on opposite sides of the Force?
He weighed the hilt in his hand for a moment, debating. Trying to turn it on would be a finality, a seal on Ahsoka’s fate. How could a working lightsaber escape a deadly crash, if not in the hand of the Jedi that had carried it? And if it didn’t light, it carried the grim possibility of a body left undiscovered in the wreckage, her weapons thrown from the ship by pure chance. He could leave it here, now. Put the saber down and walk away, back to the stormtroopers that waited for him, and leave Ahsoka’s fate to the Force. The Empire would never know what happened to her, but neither would he.
Anakin Skywalker ignited his padawan’s lightsaber.
The blue was even brighter than he remembered it being, a striking beacon against the pure white background of this snowy and desolate moon. It shone like a mockery of his past, of the weapon he himself had once carried. Distantly, he wondered at the image he knew he made. The dark armor of Darth Vader, standing alone in front of the wreckage of a Republic he had helped bring down, holding the very symbol of the Order he had killed and marked as traitors.
A dark suit of armor, the epitome of fear, holding one of the brightest symbols of hope that the galaxy had had.
For a moment, the grief that rose up within Anakin threatened to choke him. He had done this. His actions had given Palpatine the push needed to bring the Republic to its knees, to put the Jedi Order at the mercy of the clones that they had trusted like they had trusted no one else.
If Ahsoka was dead, if she hadn’t been the one to carry this saber from the crash site, it was because of him.
If his little sister was gone, it was because of him .
No, she betrayed us. They all betrayed us . Somewhere inside him, Vader raged, but the burning passion was muted, held at bay by the blazing light of Ahsoka’s saber.
Anakin stared blankly at the blade, his little sister’s blade. She was alive, he thought. She had to be. The lightsaber worked too well, had no damage from a disastrous crash, had been placed too far from the crash and the other graves for it to be yet another marker of a life swept away in the relentless tide of the Empire.
He didn’t know if it was wishful thinking or something that was actually true.
The cry of a bird interrupted his thoughts, and Anakin looked up. A lone convor soared through the sky, circling him and the wreckage. It felt familiar, in a way, like a memory long-forgotten. For a moment, Anakin stood there, watching the convor as Ahsoka’s lightsaber burned, steady and blue. The world was silent in that moment, still and peaceful in a way he couldn’t quite place, and then the convor cawed once more before flying off towards the horizon, and the sound of a ship’s engine powering up drew him back to the present.
He deactivated the saber, letting his hand fall to his side as he turned back towards the ships, where the stormtroopers were preparing to leave. It was heavy in his grip now, like the possibility of Ahsoka’s survival was pulling it down, and for a moment, a shred of his shattered soul mourned it, the idea that if she was alive, she would be the enemy, a target in need of elimination.
But the moment couldn’t last, not in this galaxy, not on this moon. He had chosen his path, just as Ahsoka had chosen hers. If she was out there, he would find her, and then he would do his duty. The snow crunched with a finality as Darth Vader strode back towards the ships, tucking the lightsaber away onto his belt.
The Empire was waiting.