The world was too loud.
Even in the absence of war, New York vibrated with chaos. Machines roared in the distance. Sirens echoed across concrete canyons. The Force—or dimensional energy, as it manifested here—thrummed erratically beneath it all, as if the very planet pulsed with unfinished thoughts.
Vader walked through it in silence.
He had vanished from the battlefield before S.H.I.E.L.D. could find him. Before the Avengers could ask questions. Before anyone dared to speak to the figure in black who had bent a nuclear missile to his will.
The mask remained on. The breathing constant. But within the armor, Anakin Skywalker—the ghost buried deep within—was assessing.
Strategizing.
Surviving.
Choosing the Ground
He needed solitude.
Not to hide. He did not hide. But to assess, to think, to plan—he required space unmarred by chaos.
He moved north from the city.
Stole a black civilian vehicle from an abandoned lot—a rudimentary machine, primitive in structure but functional. He hotwired the ignition without hesitation, slicing through the security panel with his saber and rewiring it with exposed fibers. The machine obeyed him.
He drove through the night.
No traffic.
No pursuit.
Only silence.
He avoided major highways, preferring back roads lined with cracked pavement and rusted fences. Hours passed. Then dawn. Then another day. He required no sleep—his suit regulated his body far beyond typical human endurance. He rationed his internal energy with meditative precision.
Eventually, he found what he was looking for.
A weathered structure hidden in the hills of upstate New York. Remote. Partially collapsed. A factory or bunker, long since abandoned. Vines clung to the walls. Crates and equipment littered the grounds—untouched in years.
He stepped inside.
Concrete. Reinforced metal. Several levels below ground. Large enough to work with. Strong enough to conceal.
Yes.
It would do.
Foundations of a Fortress
The first task was power.
He inspected the broken infrastructure with practiced eyes. Circuitry was unfamiliar in design—but the logic was clear. Flow. Input. Output. Power conduits ran beneath the floors. Severed, degraded.
He scavenged what he could from the surroundings—coils, copper, batteries from half-rotted vehicles.
In the center of the chamber, he ignited his lightsaber—then used it surgically.
Metal warped and folded at his command. He cut pipes and rewired lines. Where tools failed, he used the Force to twist bolts, levitate equipment, and stabilize materials midair.
He constructed a crude generator using salvaged components and rotational turbines from old industrial fans. He siphoned power from a local utility line—improvised grounding coils and shielding to avoid detection.
When the lights flickered on for the first time, he simply stood in the glow.
It was enough.
For now.
The Need for Knowledge
He had watched these people—seen them walk around with screens in their hands, tapping at them with obsession. Not datapads. Not comlinks. But something close.
Information flowed through the air in this world. He could feel it—buried in the digital current, like whispers in static.
He found a smashed laptop on the factory's upper floor. Cracked screen. Fried power cell.
He rebuilt it.
The components were primitive. Nothing compared to Imperial databanks. But within days, using parts scavenged from several abandoned trucks and what remained of a broken arcade nearby, he created a functioning interface.
He bypassed its authentication systems. Studied the operating language. Text was easy. Symbols and control structures were different, but the logic of code was universal.
It connected to the local "network." A wireless current.
The hive.
At first, it confused him.
There was no central database. No galactic holonet. Just billions of scattered pages, images, streams of fragmented thought. Some informative. Most... irrelevant.
But it told him everything.
News outlets described the battle he had entered.
Security footage of him—blurry, distorted, but him—had gone viral.
Speculation. Fear. Fanaticism.
And the name.
He found it printed on countless headlines.
DARTH VADER RETURNS?NYC SAVED BY FICTIONAL CHARACTER?GOD OR GHOST? WHO IS THE MAN IN BLACK?
He studied the mythos they had built around him.
He watched Star Wars.
Every film.
Every spinoff.
Every documentary.
He saw himself portrayed as a monster. A fallen hero. A slave to darkness and redemption.
He saw his pain dramatized. His sins romanticized. His breath, imitated.
He watched his fall. His rage. His betrayal. His duel on Mustafar, immortalized in slow motion and orchestral swells.
And then… he saw Luke.
Not as the boy he had known on the Death Star, but as a symbol. Hope incarnate. His son.
The son he had tried to corrupt.
The son who had saved him.
He sat motionless for hours, the screen glowing in the darkened room. Not speaking. Not moving.
Watching.
Feeling.
When the final film ended—his redemption painted in soft colors and noble sacrifice—he leaned back in the cracked metal chair, staring at the ceiling.
The sound of his own breathing echoed back at him, steady and unrelenting.
Was this what the galaxy had believed?
Was this how they had forgiven him?
Not through justice, but through myth?
It was… surreal.
Painful.
But also—clarifying.
For the first time, he saw the face of Darth Vader as others had seen it.
Not from behind the mask. But through it.
He was no longer chained to the weight of Anakin Skywalker's guilt. Nor to the legacy of Palpatine's leash. Those were ashes now.
What remained… was choice.
And in this world, untouched by Jedi or Sith—
He could choose who he became next.
The Decision
He could not remain here long.
Too many eyes.
Too many questions.
But this world—this fractured, chaotic realm—it did not understand power. It feared it. It marveled at it. But it did not wield it.
Not truly.
And yet… something about it called to him.
This was not the galaxy he had known. No Jedi Order stood in opposition. No Sith Lords whispered in the shadows. No Empire ruled from the Core. There was no structure here—no order, only entropy disguised as freedom.
A blank slate.
Untouched.
But volatile.
And in volatility, he saw opportunity.
This world had power. Stark's armor. The Hulk's rage. Thor's divine strength. Rogers' unwavering conviction. Strange tools, potent threats.
But none of it was disciplined. None of it understood what power truly meant.
Power was not strength.
It was direction.
And direction required vision.
He had once sought order through tyranny. Had once believed the galaxy could be saved through fear. Through control. That vision had died with the Empire. And with it, the slave he had been.
But what remained—what had been reborn in flame and darkness—was a will unshaken.
He would not rebuild an empire.
He would build something greater.
A citadel of logic and strength. A place immune to corruption. A world where weakness did not breed death. A legacy that was not forged through destruction—but through transcendence.
But to build such a thing…
He would need knowledge. Influence. Reach.
This world's network—its global hive—offered access to more than data. It offered visibility. Currency. Leverage.
He would learn its rules.
And then, bend them.
Silently. Carefully.
He would begin with whispers.
Appearances.
Test the boundaries of this world's strength. Observe its protectors. Understand their weaknesses—not just physical, but philosophical.
Their doubts.
Their fractures.
Their morality.
And then, when the time came… he would show them what true balance could be.
Not light.
Not dark.
But dominion through clarity.
He stood now at the edge of the factory's broken catwalk, gazing out through a shattered pane of reinforced glass. The sun was rising over the forest—its light casting golden fingers through the mist.
He did not flinch.
He simply breathed.
In. Out.
And in that rhythm… a world began to shift.
The man they called Darth Vader had not returned to conquer.
He had returned to define.
And in this new world, where fiction had become reality, and reality had no direction…
He would become inevitable.