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Hi, thanks for the ask! Since you've sent me three emojis I've given you an extract from three of the fics in my AU series Apprentice in Waiting, in which Anakin is taken from Tatooine by Palpatine after being rejected by the Jedi in TPM and raised as a Sith in secret on Coruscant.
***
The door swung open.
Divided though they were by rank of master and slaves, Anakin, Shmi and Watto were equal in astonishment as they turned as one to face the figure that had slipped into the shop, the brief roar of the wind he had let in dulled once more to a distant shout as the sound of it was muffled by the door being pressed firmly shut. The moment that Anakin saw him, he knew that something was wrong. The figure was a man, that much was clear. An old man, he thought, if the faint impression of wrinkled skin and greying hair—all that he could glimpse beneath the shadow of his deeply hooded black robe—was anything to go by. This in itself wasn't unusual. It was hardly the first time he had seen an older man—though usually amongst masters and freemen rather than slaves. The fact that he concealed his face wasn't even all that strange. After all, Tatooine followed only the laws of the Hutts, and was full of odd characters attempting to avoid the more stringent rules of the Galactic Republic. No, what was strange was the fact that he had just walked through a raging sandstorm fierce enough to kill a grown man to get here—must have—and yet he stood unscathed and unruffled. No lacerations, no coughing, not a single scratch upon his skin or particle of sand on his robes. It was as if he had appeared by magic.
Even a week ago, he might have taken that as a good sign. A sign of freedom. Now, however... Now he knew how easily Outlanders broke their promises.
“How— How did—?!,” Watto sputtered. In his shock, he had dropped a full foot in the air, and his wings were whirring frantically to right himself. “The storm—!”
The stranger sneered.
“Do you make a habit of greeting your customers in such a manner, Master Toydarian?”
His voice was vile. A horrid croak that sounded as cold and as slimy as he felt in what Anakin now knew to be the Force. Swallowing thickly, he pressed himself closer to his mother, making no move to resist as she pushed him gently behind her, so that he was half shielded by her body. He could feel her unease pulsing like an infected wound.
“No—ah, no,” Watto stammered. He had reared back upon hearing the stranger's voice and had yet to fully recover himself. “Can I – can I help you at all?”
“That remains to be seen” replied the cold, croaky voice. The stranger's tone could not have been more dismissive if he had tried. He turned away from the Toydarian as if keeping his attention on him were a physical chore, and his gaze came to rest firmly on Anakin, peeking out uncertainly from behind his mother's legs. He could feel more than he could see the man's gleaming eyes, but he knew, somehow, that they were fixed unwaveringly, unrelentingly on him. He wanted to shrink away, to hide behind his mother, but he could sense the spark of her fear equal to his own. He wanted the man to go away, but the only person who could make him go was Watto, and that, he thought, was less likely to happen than a rainstorm in the Jundland Wastes.
“Well, if you're looking for scraps, we have only the finest—” Watto said, his shaking voice aiming for the simpering tones that he used to appease the Hutts' goons, and in the process somewhat confirming Anakin's suspicions. It did little for the stranger, who paid him barely any mind.
“I have no interest in scraps,” was all the reply he afforded to the Toydarian. His gaze did not leave Anakin once as he spoke. “Hello, my boy. Anakin, is it?”
The man's tone had suddenly turned familiar, kindly, but his presence on addressing him directly only felt colder and slimier. It was as if it were reaching out to him, like a clawed hand poised to grab him. He recoiled, biting back a whimper.
“Answer the man, boy!” Watto snapped. He didn't like it when either of his slaves acted afraid of his customers. After all, it was bad for business. But there was something different about this stranger. Something far worse than Tatooine's usual breed of scum. He could feel it, could—
“Yes, sir” he said, because he was sure that refusing this strange man would make him as angry as it would his master, and if he had learnt anything in his short life, it was that the safest way to deal with dangerous men was to appease them.
The stranger smiled. It was not a nice smile.
***
"Who are you?" he snarled. His hands gripped tight around the hills of his two lightsabers, ready to ignite them at a moment's notice. The stranger did not seem impressed, tilting his head to the side like a curious tooka.
"Am I not who you expected?"
Krell narrowed his eyes.
"Frankly, no." He frowned. "I don't believe we've crossed paths before. You aren't Count Dooku, and you certainlyaren't that Ventress woman. A new apprentice of the Count's perhaps?"
The man snorted.
"I do not represent Lord Tyranus in this matter." His quiet voice - an Outer Rim drawl that had him lingering too long on his vowels and too little on his consonants in sharp contrast to his formal speech patterns—was barely audible with the roar of water ringing in his ears, but somehow, Krell could hear the dry disdain in his tone as if he had shouted it at the top of his lungs.
"Don't you?," Krell sneered. "Then why areyou here?"
The stranger did not reply. His right hand slipped out of his voluminous sleeve as it reached down to his belt to unclip something which flashed and gleamed in the silvery light of the moon. A buzz and a snap-hiss, and a blood red blade ignited in his hand. Krell's eyes widened.
"I see," he scoffed. "So you mean to kill me? Even assuming that you could, that would be a grave mistake. I would aid your cause far better alive than through my death."
Another head tilt, this one distinctly amused.
"How so, Jedi?"
Krell snarled. How dare this insolent creature dismiss him?! This creature who must think—there was no other explanation for it, surely—that he was still a—
"Jedi?!," he spat. "Jedi?! I am no longer foolish enough to be a Jedi. I have foreseen the fall of the Order at the hands of the Sith. It is they that will win this war and I have no desire to be on the losing side. I wish to join you, train under Count Dooku's tutelage, and in return—"
"I already know what you want."
***
"Vader!" she cried. Her hands shot to her belt while her sabers should have been, only to grasp around empty air. She felt a spike of confusion and wariness from her companions at her reaction, but she didn't dare take her eyes off him to turn to look back at them.
"Ahsoka?" That was Kalifa. There was a hard edge to her voice that was belied by the nervousness she couldn't help but project into the Force. "Who is this?"
Vader's eyes—blue for the moment, not yellow—flickered from Ahsoka's face to the point over her shoulder where Kalifa stood. He gave her a long, curious look from under the shadow of his hood.
"I could ask you the same thing," he said, before snapping his attention back to Ahsoka. "I see you've found yourself some little Jedi friends."
His words set her on edge. She wished she had some way of hiding them from his attention until she determined how much of a danger he was likely to be to them. Who would he be this time - the young man who had talked her through fixing her commlink whilst they were trapped under the rubble on Geonosis, who had freed her from the cage on Zygerria and asked only for her silence and the rescue of all the slaves they could in return? Or would he be the frightening Sith she had fought on Akiva, the assassin, the Jedi-killer? And either way, could she truly trust him with the safety of her new friends? He was a Sith. Whatever else he was, he was a Sith—
But Kalifa did not seem to share her concerns. With a sudden spike of anger, she stepped out from behind Ahsoka and snarled, "We're not Jedi! Not anymore."
Vader tilted his head to one side at her words, regarding her with that same inquisitive look as before. It was a gesture that reminded Ahsoka a little of a tooka—when sizing up some new potential prey and wondering whether it would be worth the effort to try and catch.
"Oh?," he said. "Have they left you here to fend for yourselves? I can't say I'm surprised. Abandoning those in need is a habit of the Order."
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