A/N: Bringing this story over to Webnovel to see if it generates interest. Will be posting one chapter a day until we're caught up with the other websites and then you can expect an update once a week.
-x-X-x-
"Invader Syndrome - In which the perfect combination of traits and characteristics allows a non-native species to successfully dominate a new environment."
-x-X-x-
Every breath he's taken for over twenty years has been a labor. Not a labor of love, but of hatred, spite, and despair. And yet, while his breathing doesn't get any easier as the mask comes away and Vader beholds his son with his own two eyes for the first time, he feels lighter than he has in decades.
At the same time, he knows full well that he isn't long for this world. And Luke… Luke still has a chance to escape.
"… Go, my son. Leave… me."
Luke's face falls and he shakes his head, immediately rejecting such an idea. Willful to the end, just like his father… and just like his mother as well.
"No… I can't… I won't. You're coming with me, father. I can't just leave you here, I have to save you!"
Vader can feel it through the Force, Luke's emotions, his need to be the source of Vader's salvation. And yet, despite the passion, his son is a shining beacon of Light even now. Still, he can tell how much Luke needs this. Unfortunately, Vader's time is short. Each word is a struggle, but he forces them out all the same.
"You already have… Luke. You were right. You can tell your sister… that you were… right."
With that final sentence, Vader's strength fails him. For more than forty years he's been one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy in some shape or form. From podracing as a child, to waging war as a Jedi Knight, to cloaking the galaxy in fear as a Sith Lord.
But nobody lives forever. Not Palpatine… and not him. His eyes drift shut on the final sight of his son's heartbroken expression, and all Vader can hope is that Luke will make it out alive.
… However, the fading of consciousness doesn't happen as he expects it to. Instead of falling into darkness, it's almost as though he's rising up out of a pit. The pain falls away from him like water cascading off of his body and when Vader opens his eyes again, he's somewhere else entirely.
Luke is gone as is the suit. So is the Death Star and the alarm klaxons as well as the distant sounds of space battle. Instead Vader stands, whole of mind and body for the first time in decades. Looking down, he can't see the floor, only mist. And looking around, he sees only more mist, a void surrounding him on all sides.
"Anakin."
Vader turns as a familiar voice reaches his ears and meets the eyes of his old master. Obi-Wan Kenobi stands a few feet away, having appeared out of the mist in the form Vader last saw him all those years ago on Mustafar. Before the amputations and the burning. Before the suit.
Only, as soon as they meet one another's eyes, the hope on Obi-Wan's face fades away. His expression becomes something a bit harder. Not quite judging… but nevertheless slightly disappointed.
"Vader."
Vader dips his head in acknowledgment. The suit might be gone and he might be whole once more, but the truth is… the truth is he's not actually Anakin Skywalker again. Anakin died back then. Not even on Mustafar… no, Vader suspects that Anakin Skywalker died with the younglings in the Council Chambers.
Before that moment, some small part of Anakin still lived on. But when he killed children in the mistaken belief that it would save Padme, Anakin died with them and Vader was all that was left in his place.
"You told Luke…"
Obi-Wan trails off with a grimace. Vader sighs and gives a half-hearted shrug in response.
"I told my son what he needed to hear, Obi-Wan. The truth is there's no real coming back for someone like me. Once you start down the path of the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny. Isn't that right, Master Yoda?"
At his name being called, the ancient Grandmaster of the Jedi appears from the mists, his long ears twitching slightly as he stands hunched over, even in this place. Unlike Obi-Wan, Yoda is older than the last time Vader saw him, showing the accumulation of every year he spent in exile.
"Hm. Throw my words back at me, you do. Yet consume you, the Dark Side did not."
Vader raises an amused eyebrow at that, prompting Yoda to point a gnarled finger at him.
"Chose your son, you did. In the end, beat power, love did."
… He definitely didn't miss the old alien's way of speaking. Letting out a sigh, Vader shakes his head.
"I chose Luke over Palpatine, not power. I am no fool. For all my strength, for all the death and destruction I waged across the galaxy throughout the life of the Empire, I know full well that I reached my limits long ago. Power was not something I could continue to seek, not as I was. The options were saving my son or continuing a half-life as Palpatine's dog… in the end, it wasn't a difficult choice to make."
Both Jedi fall quiet at that, taking a moment to process and internalize Vader's words. Which gives him the chance to bring up a grievance he has with the two of them.
"And lucky that I did as well, because Luke surely wasn't ready to face two Sith Lords, no thanks to you two! What were you both thinking, leaving him untrained for almost twenty years?! If not for our connections, Luke would be dead right now… or he would be Palpatine's prisoner as the Emperor sought to break him down and forge him into a weapon anew!"
Yoda harumphs, though Obi-Wan at least has the good sense to look ashamed. He still tries to defend them though.
"We couldn't. If the boy were trained too early, you might have sensed it. And… our ways failed. The Jedi Order failed. He needed time to grow into his own, to make his own decisions and become his own man before he received any training from us."
Vader narrows his eyes, a scoff on his lips, but Obi-Wan plows forward.
"He will be better for it, Vader. He will build a better Jedi Order than the one you destroyed. Unshackled from the mistakes of the past. Free of the traditions that led us to ruin in the first place."
… He had to admit, he liked the sound of that. Especially since it implied…
"So then he'll make it off the Death Star. He'll survive."
Obi-Wan and Yoda share a look before the former ultimately nods.
"He made it to a ship and escaped. He insisted on dragging your body with him which cut it a little close, but he was gone by the time the second Death Star was destroyed."
Vader sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose at hearing the foolhardiness of his son.
"Why would he waste time with my damn body?!"
"… He's giving you a proper Jedi funeral. A burning."
For a brief moment, Vader is sent back in time over three decades, to a moment when he was just a boy with a freshly crafted Padawan Braid and Obi-Wan's hand on his shoulder as they watched Qui-Gon's own burning together.
Silence falls for a moment as Vader loses himself in the memory. But finally, he shakes himself out of it, looking to Obi-Wan and Yoda with a growing consternation on his face.
"What happens now? You know full well that I'm not one of you. And yet here we are, talking in some sort of misty afterlife all the same. Should I expect to just… fade away at any moment? Is there… anybody else in this place?"
He doesn't say her name. He knows full well that he's not worthy of it. And yet, it almost feels like it hangs in the air all the same, as Obi-Wan and Yoda share another loaded glance. He readies himself for their response. Will it be a fight, perhaps? Even now, he doesn't think he can bring himself to just lay down and die. He-
"We don't know."
Wait, what? His incredulous expression causes an exasperated look to spread across his old Master's face.
"Honestly Anakin- sorry, Vader. It's not like this is something either of us have been doing for very long. Qui-Gon prepared us for becoming one with the Force, but I've only been dead for a few years now and Yoda here, barely a few weeks."
Vader blinks, caught off guard by just how recent the Grandmaster's death had been. Before Obi-Wan can continue to make excuses however, there's a sudden… pressure. And it feels like something has hooked itself in Vader's gut.
"Wha-?"
"Anaki-!"
Obi-Wan's cry is cut off not by the man himself being silenced, but by Vader suddenly being dragged away from the two dead Jedi. The misty void turns out to be far bigger than it initially seemed as both Obi-Wan and Yoda disappear in a flash and Vader finds himself traveling faster and faster through the air.
It gets so… turbulent that he finds himself shutting his eyes against the pressure, his teeth grinding together as he hisses from feeling like he's being squeezed through a very, very tight tube. He's-!
-x-X-x-
And then, just like that, he wakes up. Eyes snapping open, Vader comes up out of bed feeling both amazing and paradoxically strange at the same time. He hadn't even realized it, but he wasn't breathing back in the void. The absence of twenty year old pain had masked the absence of every other sensation as well.
Not anymore. Feeling returns to him and Vader sucks in a deep breath, completely unaided by outside forces. Working lungs… you really didn't know what you were missing until it was gone.
Shaking, the Sith Lord brings his hands up to his face… and finds himself staring at a flesh and blood hand alongside a robotic hand covered by a black glove. Disbelief fills every pore of his body as he looks around his unfamiliar quarters only to realize he does in fact recognize this place. These are temporary quarters… within the Jedi Temple.
Leaping from his bed, Vader makes for the refresher, stepping inside and quickly locating the mirror. Staring back at him is the youthful face of Anakin Skywalker. Very youthful. In fact, just based off of the haircut… he can tell he's only few months off from losing his Padawan Braid and being promoted to the rank of Jedi Knight. The braid's absence is the most telling part, but the fact that he hasn't had the chance to fully grow his hair out to its preferred length yet is the second damning clue.
It seems impossible, but Vader… if he didn't know any better, he would say he was back near the start of the Clone Wars. Within the first year of the war, at the very least. Too late to do anything about the Battle of Geonosis or saving his arm, but years ahead of everything else that was to come.
This was… he had traveled in time somehow. Was this the Force? A reward for belatedly bringing balance to the Force by killing Sidious and then dying himself? He was-
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Vader tenses up as someone very insistently bangs on the door to his quarters. He throws his senses out and is shocked when he immediately recognizes the familiar Force Presence of the woman outside. Without really thinking about it, he finds himself striding out of the refresher and over to the door, palming the release and staring into the eyes of his former Padawan a moment later.
"… Snips?"
Except something isn't right. Ahsoka Tano should not be eye level with him right now. She should be young enough to be his Padawan, but instead she stands there staring into his eyes, an unreadable expression on her face as she plants her hands on her hips and lets out a shuddering breath.
"What the hell are you doing, Skyguy?"
It takes him a moment to realize what she's even talking about but when he finally does, Vader curses under his breath and immediately sets about rectifying matters. There was an awful lot of terrible shit to hate about the last twenty years he'd spent in that suit, but one of the few things he'd never had to worry about was restraint.
Not only was he a half-cyborg and a limbless torso, which had in turn crippled much of his Force Potential… but also, there weren't enough Force Users in the Galaxy left to worry about holding back.
Reining in his Force Presence had become something he'd done on very rare occasions while hunting down Jedi holdouts for the purposes of sneaking up on them. As opposed to something he did all the time like back when he was a Jedi and there was still an entire Jedi Order running out.
… Like now. And seeing as he was in the middle of the Jedi Temple, Vader should be grateful it was only this strange, older Ahsoka who had sensed the hurricane of Darkness coming off of him, rather than anyone else. Quickly pulling himself together, packing down his Force Presence in a ham-fisted but functional fashion, Vader forces a smile onto his lips.
"Sorry about that Snips, I can only imagine how that must have felt through the Padawan B-!"
Before he can make excuses for all the Darkness she'd no doubt just experienced however, Ahsoka cuts him off mid-sentence.
"Hey! Don't start with that again, Skyguy. I might be Master Kenobi's Padawan, but you know that's because of extenuating circumstances. We're still the same age and I'll be a Knight soon enough!"
Wait… what? Vader blinks, processing that for a moment. Ahsoka was his age. Ergo, she hadn't been made his Padawan and instead was assigned to Obi-Wan (as she should have been to begin with, his own voice whispers in the back of his head).
Likewise, Vader could easily intuit what 'extenuating circumstances' might be. The Battle of Geonosis had seen hundreds of Jedi of all ranks slain. The battles directly after had killed even more as the Jedi who weren't ready for a war were rather rapidly weeded out from those who were.
Ahsoka's first Master had died and after Vader's promotion, Obi-Wan had been free to take up and finish her training.
It all made sense… except for the Togruta's age. Why was she older? If all he'd done was travel back in time, then what did that discrepancy mean?
"Anakin…"
Vader tenses as his old name passes through Ahsoka's lips. Not just because it's not a name he recognizes as his own anymore, but because of the tone the Togruta says it in. He was expecting her to get upset with him. To demand answers to why he felt so Dark there before reining in his Force Presence.
Instead, Ahsoka Tano looks like she's aroused as she takes a step towards him, breathing out his old name in a sultry whisper. And before Vader can react, she's grabbed him by the front of his robes and slammed her lips into his, kissing him for all he's worth.
… So apparently THIS was now happening.
-x-X-x-
The Vote:
[X] Do the thing and sexually dominate this horny Togruta wench - 67%
[ ] Wait no, stop Ahsoka and figure out what the hell is going on first - 19%
[ ] Wait no, if he's this far back in time... he has to get to Padme - 13%
-x-X-x-
A/N: There will always be FIVE more chapters of this story on my Pat/reon for people to read ahead and vote on the direction of the story, until we're finished here. Google "Cambrian P atreon" without the space in order to find my page!