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Chapter Text

The hum of the three lightsabers reverberated around the temple. Through the eye plate on the intact side of his mask, Ahsoka's new ones looked just as red as everything else did, while his own was a deeper red, crimson, red on red. Through his other eye, exposed to the elements now Ahsoka had cut half his mask away. . .

The white lightsaber was bright, the light as cutting to his damaged retinas as the weapon was to flesh. It was hard to look it.

Or perhaps Ahsoka herself was hard to look at, after so long.

She cut one hand forward in a slash of her lightsaber while the other hand was pushed him back with the Force. The move would've worked on anyone else—certainly, it had on his Inquisitors—but he'd taught it to her. He just pushed back, using the Force to keep himself on balance.

Ahsoka stumbled back, momentary confusion and realisation flashing over her face, then her lips curled away from her teeth in a snarl. Vader struck again while she was off-balance, she raised her lightsaber to parry, missed—

And Vader's lightsaber sheared right through her torso.

Or rather, it sheared through where her torso should have been.

Vader took half a step back, but that was all the shock he allowed himself to show. As he'd cut through her, Ahsoka had just vanished, leaving behind only a pair of vambraces and her two lightsabers to show that she'd ever been there at all.

Inexplicably, amidst the silence of Vader's shock, somewhere in the distance, a convor chirped.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was meditating—as he always seemed to be, these days—when he felt the disturbance in the Force.

It used to be an effort, diving deep down into the very core of himself, casting away the memories of Anakin and Satine and Padmé and Cody and everyone else whom he'd loved, before the dark times, but had to let go of if he was to achieve what Qui-Gon was insistent he needed to achieve. Now. . .

Now he passed the faces without a glance back. Satine was gone. Padmé was gone. Anakin was as good as gone. His love hadn't been enough to save them, so now he would find another way to help. His tried and tested method of caring too much obviously wasn't working.

But there was still one person left in need of love and protection.

As a habit, as he always did, he reached out to Luke before he took the dive, where the boy was sleeping through the cold night. His peaceful mind didn't flinch at Obi-Wan's gentle probe, and he withdrew soon enough, satisfied that the boy was safe. The shields he'd erected around his mind were still intact.

Not that he would need those shields if Owen allowed Obi-Wan to train him to build his own. . .

Obi-Wan shook his head. That was a petty thought, beneath him, and he was supposed to be meditating. Supposed to be shedding all attachments before he ascended; he'd only reached out to Luke to ascertain that he was safe, not to reopen old speeders of thought that always crashed at the same turning.

Luke was safe. He could shed that attachment now, and go deeper.

Deeper, until his consciousness was all but separated from his body, and he was transcendent. He could feel the krayt dragon hunting its prey a few klicks north. He could feel the myriad of life forms in Mos Eisley, on the other side of the planet. He could even feel the unnatural lack of life forms on Geonosis, less than a parsec away.

Even with such attuned senses, even at the years and years he'd spent in the dark times with the darkness clouding the Force, it was unusual that he should feel so. . .apprehensive about this.

Something was about to happen. Something important, that would change everything. He reached deeper into the Force, ever deeper, Qui-Gon's voice echoing in his mind.

"Let go, Obi-Wan," he was saying, or had said, or would soon say. "Let go."

It came to him slowly, in flashes. A planet of dark earth and stone. Cracks in the ground that led to a chamber of shadows and darkness, the rotting corpses of Sith and Jedi alike strewn about the floor as testament to the great battle that had once been fought there, now forgotten. A temple standing at the centre of it all, falling apart at the seams, and in it—

If he still had some semblance of control over his corporeal form, he might've gasped. Two figures were fighting, one of them as familiar as his own flesh and blood, the fighting style uncanny, despite the heavy suit and red lightsaber that had changed his perception.

And the other figure, she was familiar too.

It was an effort not to hold on, to continue to reject the images of attachment as they rose up: Ahsoka, teasing Anakin. Ahsoka, comparing kills with Anakin. Ahsoka, bowing to Anakin with true, non-sarcastic respect for the first time.

And the worst image of all, the one right in front of him: Ahsoka, trying to kill Anakin.

No. Anakin trying to kill Ahsoka.

"I won't leave you. Not this time," rang in his ears, but he couldn't have said who uttered them, or when, or where. But they were relevant here and now, they were relevant to his understanding of the scene as he watched Ana—Vader block Ahsoka's attempt to push him back and swing his saber in a way Obi-Wan knew was damning. Ahsoka wouldn't survive that.

And she didn't.

She vanished the moment he cut through her.

Obi-Wan had kept himself detached until then, but this was too much. It was too much to see his apprentice's apprentice die, killed by his old apprentice himself, and the sudden surge of distinctly chaotic emotions dragged him from his trance, leaving him shivering on the hard floor of his hut.

All the breath left him at once. Ahsoka had survived.

And then Ahsoka had died.

Every time he learned of the death of another Jedi, his heart twisted. Ahsoka was no exception, but that wasn't what he was focusing on now.

Anakin had killed Ahsoka.

Anakin had loved Ahsoka.

He'd loved Padmé too, Obi-Wan knew, but in a different way. She had been Anakin's wife; Ahsoka was his apprentice, a sister-like figure, a pseudo-daughter.

Obi-Wan supposed he'd hoped, deep down, that although Anakin had tried to kill Padmé, the person he purportedly loved most in the galaxy, he wouldn't be able to kill Ahsoka.

He wouldn't be able to kill Luke.

Clearly, he'd been wrong.

When Luke faced his father—and he would face him, there was no doubt about that—he would be shown no mercy. If anything, he'd be shown an even larger drive for Vader to kill him than usual, to obliterate any links to the past. Ahsoka hadn't survived such an encounter.

Would Luke?

Not without training. Extensive training. Ahsoka had been professionally trained under the greatest minds in the Jedi Order, and had intimate knowledge of the way her opponent fought and thought, and she'd still lost. Luke, as great of a Jedi as he had the potential to be, didn't stand a chance as he was. He was nowhere near ready.

But one day, Luke would face Vader. He would need to be ready then, but Obi-Wan had no way of knowing where or when then may be.

Soon, the Force whispered. Soon.

He had limited time to train Luke as best he could, and he needed to start soon.

Obi-Wan flexed his hand, itching to reach for his lightsaber, and breathed deeply.

He needed to start soon, with or without Owen's permission.

Luke needed to be trained. There was no point in waiting any longer.

It had been at least a year since Malachor, and the duel that had occurred there, when Vader saw Ahsoka again.

At first, he had the perfectly reasonable thought that it was another hallucination brought on by his time in the bacta tank—his mind did so love to torment him with especially cruel ones—until she spoke. Because Ahsoka was walking around his hyperbaric chamber, talking, getting snippy with him, and there was nothing that wasn't possible, with the Force.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

Ahsoka shifted her weight onto her right leg and folded her arms, an idiosyncrasy that sent a pang through his chest and ire in his gut simultaneously. She was being difficult, as always.

"Why do you think I have to want something, Skyguy?" she asked, faking innocence. "Can't I just have come to see my old master again, considering the bad terms we left on? After all," she added, eyes glittering, "it's not like there's any other old friends I can visit. They're all dead."

Ignoring that jab, he just boomed, "You are also dead. I killed you. Cease bothering me."

Ahsoka just tilted her head at that, and smirked. Sitting down on the floor—apparently her ghost form was corporeal enough to do that—she crossed her legs and said, simply and flatly, "No."

His temper exploded, a rolling wave of the Dark Side that crashed through the room, ripping up medical instruments and upturning the deactivated droids. Even Ahsoka wasn't immune; her blue, glowing form stuttered and flickered at the onslaught, like a glitchy hologram.

She recovered soon enough, and planted her hands on her hips to glare at him.

He snapped again, "What do you want?"

She shook her head. "Do you remember Mortis, Anakin?"

"That name no longer—" He stopped when he actually registered what she said. "Mortis?"

She nodded. "With the Father and the Son," she paused slightly, "and the Daughter."

"I remember that you died, and somehow came back again," he said bitingly. "Is this a habit of yours?"

A chuckle forced its way out of her throat at that. "The Force isn't happy with you, Anakin," she told him. "You were the Chosen One. You were meant to destroy the Sith, not join them."

Heat flashed through his mind at the words, heat and light and burning and the agony of Padmé's death and Obi-Wan screaming—

He lashed out with his hand, trying to choke Ahsoka as he'd choked so many people, but he couldn't get a grip on her throat. The Dark Side roiled around him, around her, but it couldn't touch her.

How had she even known what to say? How had she known those words?

She cocked her head. "Are you finished?" she asked drolly. "Because the Force isn't happy with you, and nobody else is. The Daughter sent me—"

"The Daughter is dead."

Ahsoka lifted her arm; there was a chirp, and from somewhere a convor flew to land on it. "The Daughter is as alive as I am," and there was a humour in her voice, her face, as she stroked the convor's feathers, the same sort of humour that Obi-Wan had, that Ahsoka must have learned from him. "But she can't manifest herself in a sentient form—not one that can talk to the living, anyway. So she sent me."

The convor shuffled around on her arm to peer at Vader, ruffling its brownish feathers. It cocked its head exactly the same way Ahsoka had, and chirped at him. It was the same chirp he'd heard when he killed Ahsoka eighteen months ago.

Was she implying that this creature—

"This is preposterous," he seethed. "Impossible."

"All things are possible through the Force, Master." She shrugged, continuing to stroke the bird. "Either way, the Force isn't happy with you. It wants you to turn back to the Light."

"And why," his voice was low, bitter, sarcastic, "would I do that?"

"Because at this moment, there's a Jedi Padawan wandering lost on the planet outside," Ahsoka told him. "He turns eighteen in three months. If you haven't left the Sith behind by then, he dies." There was a bitter twist to her mouth as she said that last part, like she didn't approve of it, but Vader had more pertinent things to worry about than his ex-Padawan's approval.

"Why would I care if another Jedi brat died?" he retorted, feeling his lips curl back from his teeth in a snarl that tugged on the partially-healed scars on his face.

Ahsoka's image was fading now, her blue light getting dimmer and dimmer, from translucent to transparent, and she just smiled at him like she knew something he didn't.

"Why would I care?" he demanded again.

She just shrugged. At the motion, the convor leapt off her shoulder and soared about the room, before zooming out the door, disappearing to wherever it had come from in the first place.

"Indeed," Ahsoka said. "Why would you?"

The first thing Luke was aware of was an intense heat. It wasn't any worse than he was used to—in fact, it was about on par with the heat of the twin suns—but he'd gone to sleep in the homestead, designed to keep the heat out, during one of Tatooine's freezing nights, so the the first thing he was aware of was confusion.

That confusion only got worse the more he woke up.

The planet he was on seemed to be in its night cycle—at least, the sky was dark, if he was on a planet at all—but it was very bright anyway, and harsh orange-red glow that permeated his eyelids and stung his closed eyes, like—

He turned his eyes downward. He seemed to be lying on some sort of ledge above a river of lava. Every so often, the lava several metres below would smack against the side of the river, the black rock—volcanic, he processed numbly—and dust and debris crumbling into it. The rock he lay on was slowly being eroded away.

So Luke did the only sensible thing he could've done in that situation: he scrambled backwards.

Once he was off the very lip of the precipice, he let his breath escape him in a sigh.

What was he doing here?

The last thing he remembered was crashing to sleep in his bed at the homestead, exhausted after a long morning of fixing vaporators for Uncle Owen and a long afternoon of Jedi training with Old Ben, hearing more stories about his father as he worked on his lightsaber forms. He'd fallen asleep daydreaming about one particular story that had stood out to him: Ben, his father and his father's Padawan teaching farmers how to fight against pirates on Felucia. . .

And now, he was—

He didn't even know where he was.

He glanced around. He couldn't see much: the lava river flowed through the base of what looked like. . . a mountain range, perhaps? Everything was either black or orange or red; the lava burned brightly against the darkness of the sky and the stone. He squinted against it as he peered around, but there were a lot of jagged rocks in the area; he couldn't see very far anyway.

Although, one of those rocks. . .

He squinted again, and the mountain-like silhouette resolved itself into what it was: a castle. A castle of the same black stone, with several spires jabbing upwards, like some eerie illustration out of a gothic holobook.

It looked creepy, Luke had to admit. He had a bad feeling about this.

A bad feeling. . .

Tentatively, he lowered the shields that Ben had so painstakingly taught him over the past eighteen months and felt around himself, before cringing back again. This place stank of the Dark Side. Tatooine had its own Dark Side nexus, he knew—the remnant of whatever had seared the ground to dust and sand—but this was fresher, more powerful, overwhelming. Not only was there history to the Dark Side of the Force here, but something personal, something agonising and angry and tragic, something—

You were the Chosen One!

He jerked his head round so hard whiplash shot up his neck, but there was no one there. Funny; he could've almost sworn that sounded like Ben. . .

Luke shook his head. He was wasting his time, contemplating things that weren't relevant: he didn't know where he was, how he'd got here, and now he was hearing voices? Ben had mentioned that sometimes he heard voices himself, of his own Master, Qui-Gon, speaking to him, but sometimes you didn't hear voices because someone was speaking to you.

Sometimes you heard them because you were going crazy.

He needed to get to that castle, ask where he was—it seemed to be the only point of civilisation on this planet anyway. He could sense maybe two or three life-forms inside it, as opposed to stark zero on the rest of the planet, and while one of them felt drenched in cold and anger and hatred, they might be open to helping him.

After all, it wasn't like he'd done anything wrong.

So he pressed the palms of his hands to the ground and pushed himself to his feet, frowning as an ache shot through his arms and legs. He hadn't been that worn out when he went to sleep. How long had he been lying on the hard ground, to produce that sort of pain?

Or was it a remnant of whatever way he'd travelled here. . .?

He shook his head. He didn't have time for this, and a few aches and pains didn't matter. He could still heave himself to his feet, still do his best to stagger toward the castle, navigating the rocky terrain with about as much grace as a worrt. His father's lightsaber slapped at his waist with every step, the loose, sun-bleached clothes he always wore swinging in synchrony with it—of course, he was starting to remember, he'd been too tired the previous night and forgotten to change out of his day clothes—and he patted the weapon idly, before unclipping it and gripping it in his right hand.

Its familiar ridges and grooves, the comfortable weight of it, calmed him. He felt his heart rate steady as he took a deep breath, cloggy with ash and soot, and tried to clear his head.

It wasn't meditation, but. . . it would do.

He continued the trek.

He didn't know how long he'd been walking—an hour? Two?—when he saw the movement, but it was more instinct than warning from the Force that had him freezing in place, ducking behind the nearest rock, tightening the shields around his mind until they were foolproof. Someone was coming.

Someone, he realised with dawning horror as the sound reached his ears, rasping, repetitive, unrelenting, who used a respirator.

It couldn't be him. Of all the people it could be, it couldn't be him—

Luke couldn't help himself. He peered around the rock he was hiding behind and squinted at the figure.

The minimal wind on the planet caught the edge of the person's dark cape, flapping it loudly, but he strode forward as if it barely bothered him. His gait was steady, strong, stable; he walked like a droid with no time for pauses or breaks. The firelight from the lava played across the contours of his mask, and Luke stifled a gasp as he ducked back down behind the rock, legs suddenly shaking.

That was Darth Vader.

He was on the same planet as Darth kriffing Vader.

. . .your father was betrayed and murdered by a young Jedi. . .

. . .was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil. . .

He gripped his lightsaber tighter, glad that he was already holding it and didn't have to risk the sound that unclipping it from his belt could make. Because if he struck now, while the Sith Lord wasn't expecting him, he could get revenge for his father's death, without worrying about Vader's undoubtably superior duelling skills.

Except, that wasn't how he wanted his revenge to go, and revenge wasn't the Jedi way. Ben had made sure to put a focus on that, and Luke had listened, most of the time.

If he was to kill Vader, he wanted it to be in honourable combat, face to face, where the Sith Lord knew whose hand his death came at and why. Assassination, or death by a lucky shot, was. . . distasteful.

Even for the man who'd murdered his father. . .

A sudden surge of anger flared up at the thought; Luke did his best to quash it. It wasn't the Jedi way, and he was fairly sure some of that had leaked past his shields. . .

The temperature around him suddenly plummeted, despite the lava flows nearby. He shivered.

Heart in his throat, he glanced back round the rock at Vader.

Only to find the Sith Lord staring right at him.

The boy's shields were half-decent, he'd give him that. When they held, all Vader could sense was a vague dissimilation, that he was nearby, but he couldn't pinpoint his location. One could even say they were surprisingly good for a Padawan who'd no doubt been trained by the lowliest dregs of the Jedi, the only survivors of Order 66.

And when the burst of fury breached his shields, and Vader got a taste of his Force potential, that was impressive as well.

His gaze snapped towards a half-formed boulder a good few metres away, and stalked towards it, letting his dark intent spill into the Force, staining the atmosphere around them. If the boy was as strong as he seemed to be, then he would feel it, and he would cower.

Only, he didn't.

Instead, he looked around the rock to stare Vader in the eye.

And that was almost as unsettling as Ahsoka's implication that he would somehow care what happened to the brat: even through the darkness, even through the eye plates of his mask, the boy managed to meet his gaze with unerring accuracy.

Then the boy's moment of bravado seemed to pass, and his eyes widened to a near comical size. He began to scramble backwards almost before his legs caught up, more shuffle than walk, until he got his feet under him and made to bolt—

No. Vader reached out a hand, and the Force caught him by the throat. He dangled in the air, choking, feet kicking pitifully, as Vader stalked closer.

What was so special about this particular Padawan? True, his Force potential had felt impressive, in the moment he'd felt it. Was it something to do with that?

Vader watched him kick for a few more moments, the rhythmic rasp of his respirator seeming to set the boy on edge more and more. As his fear increased, his control lessened, and then—

There.

A crack in his mental shields, letting his presence spill out. Vader's probe widened the gap, and he forced his way in, going deeper and deeper—

Twin suns.

Vader almost recoiled at the images that flashed past of a planet he'd rather forget, but he went deeper anyway—

Twin suns, and the homestead underneath them, sun-bleached and sand-blasted but home. . .

A T-16 Skyhopper sitting in the garage, and a teenage boy secretly practicing levitation by summoning the tools and parts for repairing it to hand instead of reaching for them himself. . .

A Tusken Raider, yowling at him as he brought his gaderffii down on him only for the boy to dodge at the last moment. . .

And a much older version of Obi-Wan Kenobi smiling down at him fondly, face lined with wrinkles and hair lined with grey.

Vader resurfaced with shock. This— this brat was Obi-Wan's Padawan?

His replacement?

His anger boiled to the surface again; Vader constricted his Force-grip around the boy's neck, until he couldn't breathe at all, desperately gasping and heaving for air.

Obi-Wan was on Tatooine, of all places to go, and Vader would have to go there if he wanted to face him. Just the thought of returning to that planet made him squeeze tighter and tighter, until the boy was scrabbling at his throat, as if he could pry away the metaphysical grip with his own two hands.

Only, one of those hands had something in it. . .

He didn't bother to think as he yanked the metal cylinder out of the boy's hand. It smacked into his with a satisfying thud, and he inspected it up close, the boy still hanging suspended, struggling to breathe.

He knew this lightsaber.

The structure, the shape, the weight. It was the last lightsaber he'd had, the one he'd lost on this very planet in his duel with Obi-Wan.

He glared at the boy, and tightened his grip again—he'd loosened it in his distraction, and the brat had managed to get some meagre oxygen into his lungs. "Where did you get this lightsaber?"

And Force, he hadn't even cared about most of his lightsabers, he'd lost and built enough in his youth to prove that, but seeing it again coupled with Ahsoka's appearance was bringing back memories of Padmé and the Senate and this was the lightsaber he'd built to protect her—

When I finished constructing my lightsaber, Obi-Wan said to me 'Anakin, this weapon is your life.'

He squeezed in tighter in his hands, the metal creaking under his grip.

This weapon is my life.

It's yours.

"Where did you get it!" he thundered again, watching the boy's face get redder and redder.

He released him, standing impassive as he dropped to the ground, gasping for air. Tears streamed down his face, but Vader didn't care; all he cared about was getting answers—why was this boy so special what was Ahsoka talking about why did he have this lightsaber—and he would be all too pleased the strangle him again in order to get them.

The brat tried to stand, but his legs shook too much and he collapsed onto the ground again with a grunt. Vader, impatience flaring, took a step forward and he scrambled back on instinct, terror spiking in the Force before he took several deep breaths to calm himself down.

And then he glared.

"I got it from my Master," he said, lifting his chin high and proud. "But I guess you don't remember the weapons of the Jedi you murder."

"Kenobi is not dead," Vader snapped. Surprise flashed across the his face at the name—how had he known? "Nor is this lightsaber his. So where did you get it, and why do you have it?"

The brat shook his head in disgust. "I wasn't talking about Ben," he spat. "That's my father's lightsaber."

Everything stopped.

His respirator still forced air into his ruined lungs, the lava flows still lapped against the rock far below, and the boy was still moving, fidgeting, rubbing his throat, but Vader couldn't so much as twitch.

Time was turning backwards, or at least it must be, because he could vividly see Ahsoka's glowing blue face in front of him, mouth quirked upwards in a smirk.

Why would I care?

Indeed. Why would you?

This— this boy— Kenobi—

He clenched his fist. Unclenched it again. Then he looked back at the boy.

The boy, who was—

The Force was singing brightly around them, more brightly than it ever did on a Dark Side nexus like Mustafar. What he was thinking. . .it couldn't be true.

But the Force. . .

His head snapped up. "What's your name?" he asked the boy, voice sharp, because he had to know, he had to know—

The boy froze. He'd been slowly, subtly shuffling away, though his face and the emotions Vader could sense screamed his confusion, but now Vader was marching towards him and he was scrambling faster, faster, faster—

Not fast enough.

Vader caught him by the front of his clothes—sun-bleached, old, worn; definitely the clothes of one of Tatooine's many moisture farmers—and yanked him to his feet. "What is your name?" he demanded again, shaking him a little for good measure.

The boy was still unsteady on his legs, voice still a hoarse whisper from a near-crushed throat, but what he said shattered Vader's world anyway. "Luke Skywalker."

There was a speeder crash somewhere in his chest, even if somehow, in some way, he'd known what the boy was going to say.

He let go of his clothes. Took a step back.

The boy—Luke—collapsed to the ground again.

Vader could only stare.

The red-tinted eye plates obscured his vision, as did the near-darkness, but he could see well enough to make out the pale hair (his) the shape of the nose (Padmé) the pale eyes (his) the slight stature (Padmé) the cleft in the chin (his). . .

"You. . ." Vader trailed off. There was nothing he could say, so he said, rather stupidly, "You're the son of Anakin Skywalker."

For some reason, that just upset Luke even more. He was still breathing heavily, rasping, still releasing massive chunks of his anger and aggression into the Force, but his voice came out tight and controlled anyway. "Yes," he bit out, "and you killed him!"

His voice rose into a ragged shout at the end of the sentence, a part of Vader's brain processed, like he'd waited a long time to shout that at someone, but the rest of his brain was preoccupied with the more pertinent part of that statement.

"I killed him?" he asked. His mounting anger—he was angry on a regular basis, but couldn't remember the last time he'd been this angry—broke out through his voice, dampening it to a venomous hiss. "Who told you such a ridiculous lie?" The images from the boy's mind flickered through his memory, and he clenched his fists again.

"Kenobi," he growled. It wasn't a question. "He told you this."

Luke lifted his chin again, the gesture a call-back to another person's arrogance, and the mannerisms he'd had. "Yes."

"Of course." Vader's hands went slack at his sides. "One can always rely on Kenobi to lie."

Anger—indignant, insipid anger—flared up again, the boy's voice jumping up an octave as he snapped, "He didn't lie!" The words sounded like they were scraping along his damaged vocal cords.

"No?" he asked mockingly. "Because I can tell you this, and the Force will verify it for me: I did not kill Anakin Skywalker."

The words were harsh, their truth harsher. Luke paled when he heard them, but his reaction wasn't one of anger, as Vader had expected.

Instead, something that looked painfully like hope blossomed on his face. "Is—" Luke cut himself off, biting his lip. His conflict ran rampant in the Force; he'd accidentally dropped his shields, somehow, in the turmoil of the conversation. He tilted his head back to look Vader in the eye again—with the same accuracy—and asked, almost tentatively, "Is he alive then?"

The Force was swelling around them, ready for the crescendo. Vader hooked his thumbs into the loops on his belt, and said slowly, carefully, "I did not kill Anakin Skywalker."

The hope on Luke's face only grew in its intensity at his words. It was shattered with his next ones.

"I am Anakin Skywalker."

Luke's mouth fell open. For a moment, he said nothing.

Then—

"That— that's not true," he said, the words scraping their way out of his throat, shaking his head, taking a step back. Vader reached for him on instinct, but Luke batted his hand away with surprising force, his face briefly twisting into something ugly. His voice was fraying, cracking. "That's impossible!"

"It is true," Vader said, inexorable, undeniable, honest. He reached out a hand to grasp Luke by the collar; this time, Luke didn't bat him away. "And you are coming with me," he paused, "my son."

Chapter Text

Luke collapsed onto the bed he'd been given and stared at the ceiling for a long time.

He shouldn't have been surprised when Vader dragged him towards the castle he'd seen earlier; he'd already confirmed that there was no one else on-planet earlier. But it just felt horribly cruel of the Force that the place he'd considered going to for mercy or help was now his prison.

Oh, Vader hadn't said that this was a prison, but the truth was simple: Luke was a Jedi—he wouldn't be allowed to leave unless he joined Vader. Not alive, in any case.

And it didn't matter if Vader's claim was true—which it couldn't be, it just couldn't—Luke doubted he would have any qualms about killing him anyway.

So if leaving of his own accord wasn't an option, then Luke would have to find a way to escape on his own.

Invigorated by the thought, he sat up and looked around. The room wasn't that large, with one measly little window that the reddish light from the lava filtered through, so it was very dim inside and Luke had to squint to look at everything. For a moment he studied the window, debating if that could be used to escape, but it was fairly small and high up. If he stacked stuff underneath it and climbed up, he might be able to wriggle through—

The door swung open.

Luke swore; whiplash lanced up his spine as he snapped his head round to see Vader standing in the doorway like some menacing black monolith.

"Language," Vader chided, surprisingly mildly.

Luke dropped his hand from his neck, hysterical laughter bubbling up from somewhere inside him. Vader was chiding him for swearing? Uncle Owen he would expect this from, but Vader—

"Language?" he asked, scoffing. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

Vader crossed his arms over his chest. "Your father," he said pointedly, and Luke could feel the glare through the mask as he shook his head.

"Stop saying that!" He meant to say it calmly, insistent, but it came out a shout. His voice was still hoarse from when Vader had been choking him, and he coughed after raising his voice that much.

Vader stiffened. "It's true," he said, "and you need to go to the medbay, Luke."

"Yeah, because of you!" He was shouting again now, and he coughed harder. "You—!"

Vader seemed to be out of patience. "Come to the medbay," he said, flatly and sternly. "Now."

Luke lifted his chin in defiance, opening his mouth to spit at Vader exactly what he thought of him—I don't need anything from you—but the third fit of coughing it brought on didn't help his point.

A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder and pulled him towards the door. Luke tried to twist his hand round, to glare at Vader as he was marched through the corridors, but it was awkward, and the Sith Lord didn't even seem to be looking at him, anyway.

It was a surprisingly short time before they stopped outside a door. Vader keyed in the access code, then it slid aside, and then Luke was dragged through a room with a large pod taking up most of the space, before coming across another door, which slid open at their approach.

"Is that a hyperbaric chamber?" he asked, but got no reply before he was dragged into the next room.

It was full of medical instruments, including a table which several medical droids hovered around. They powered up when the two of them entered the room, one trundling forward. "Good day, my lord, are you—"

Vader just shoved Luke forward; he stumbled, and narrowly managed to avoid collapsing onto the medical table. "Check him for injuries," he ordered, then stepped back against the flurry of motion as the droids moved to do their job.

"Of course, my lord," the one who'd spoken earlier said, then gave Luke a gentle push. "Please sit down on the operating table, sir."

Operating table? Luke shot Vader a questioning glance, but if the Sith Lord noticed it, he didn't acknowledge it.

"Er, alright," Luke said instead. The moment he sat down the droids swarmed him, scanners and needles and metal limbs prodding and poking and passing over him as the first droid let out a flurry of questions.

"Have you experienced any serious fatigue lately?"

"Do you have difficulty breathing?"

"Have you had any unexplained aches or pains?"

Luke tried to answer each question as best he could, but he was getting uncomfortable having all this attention focused on him. He wasn't one who ever liked having to wait to heal, and acting like a little cough could hurt him was absolutely—

There was a beep as one of the medical droids finished its scan of his throat, and then it started giving its report in an inflectionless voice.

"The patient is completely healthy aside from lack of a few vaccinations and nutrient deficiencies, and the damage to his throat. His trachea has been partially crushed, which could cause breathing difficulties in times of high duress and strain. We may be able to fix this if we operate on him now."

Luke was just left blinking. Partially crushed? Had Vader—

He threw the man a sideways glance. Of course he had.

"Do it," Vader said. "And fix the lack of nutrients and vaccines while you do."

"Yes, my lord." The medical droid turned back to Luke, who eyed it with a wary expression. "You will need to be sedated for this, sir, or the operation—"

"You're not knocking me out," Luke said flatly, shooting Vader a distrustful glance. The droid trundled away to prepare the necessary shot anyway.

His supposed father stepped forwards. "Luke, you need to—"

"No!"

"You might die." Despite the bass tones of the vocoder, it sounded almost like Vader's voice had broken on the word.

It didn't help Luke's temper. "Because of you!" he insisted, hand going to his throat as reflex. He could feel the burr on the inside of his throat that meant he needed to cough again, but doing so would only worsen his case, so he kept quiet.

"Do not test me on this, Luke," Vader growled. "I will not let you die as well."

As well? "Why would you care?"

Vader seemed to still at the words, suddenly straightening up and going very, very quiet.

Then—

"I am your father."

Luke shot upright on the table, ignoring the outraged tut of the droid. "You," he said heatedly, as if that would make his denial carry any more weight, the words scratching along the edge of his throat, "are not my—"

The droid jabbed him with the shot without warning. Luke cut off mid-sentence, staring at the small red hole in his arm where the needle entered, then looked back at the droid in disbelief. Vader was practically radiating smugness.

"You—" He didn't finish that sentence either. The drug worked quickly, and soon enough he knew nothing but oblivion.

And in that oblivion, there was the Force, and it told him exactly what he didn't want to hear.

Vader couldn't stand to stay in the room as Luke's throat was operated on; it reminded him too much of days shortly after his rebirth, where all he knew was fire and pain and betrayal, and the droids worked day and night to keep him alive. He didn't care for the memory.

Instead, he retreated to his hyperbaric chamber in the next room—far enough away to avoid unpleasant flashbacks, but close enough that he could constantly monitor the boy's state through the Force. The droids were reliable, they'd certainly kept him alive when he seemed on the brink of death, but he didn't want to take chances.

His son was alive. He wouldn't let him die so soon.

But how was he alive? Padmé had died—he'd killed her himself. So how had the child she was carrying, whether he was ready to be born or not, survived?

The answer came to him readily, probably because he'd known it all along: Kenobi. He clenched his fists, feeling the leather creak under the strain. The Jedi had taken his child, possibly even cut him from his dead mother's womb, and trained him to be a Jedi.

Trained him to kill his father.

It didn't matter. It didn't matter, was of no consequence, because Vader had the boy now and he would give him the galaxy. He'd missed Luke's childhood, but the boy was still young; they would have time to bond, he would have time to show Luke the failings of the Jedi. To bring Luke round to his way of thinking. From the power he'd sensed in Luke already, together they'd be unstoppable.

Except—

He turns eighteen in three months. If you haven't left the Sith behind by then, he dies.

If what Ahsoka said was true, they didn't have time. Three months was barely anything. If Ahsoka had foreseen some great threat to Luke that would come in three months' time, then Vader would have to find a way to save him while he did, the way he hadn't been able to save Padmé:

He would have to get Palpatine to teach him Plagueis's secret of immortality, as had been promised to him all those years ago.

He'd been too late to save Padmé, too rash and drunk on his own power, and it had been her undoing. He'd burned as she died, still ignorant of the only power he'd sought to gain from his new role. And after she was gone. . .

After she was gone, there wasn't anyone worth saving.

Now there was. Now, he needed to get that secret off of Palpatine. There was simply no other way. Leaving the Sith certainly wasn't an option—this was his destiny—but neither was letting Luke die. At least he knew when it would happen now, instead of the agony that was waiting on tenterhooks for when time would run out.

The only issue was how to get the secret from Palpatine without revealing the existence of his son.

Vader glanced towards the general direction Luke was in, even if there was no way of seeing him through the wall of the room and the closed hyperbaric chamber.

Because he knew what would happen if Palpatine ever got wind of the fact that there was a new, extremely powerful potential servant for him to use. The very existence of the Inquisitorius had proven to Vader that his Master could and would replace him the moment it was advantageous, and Luke was almost as powerful as him, young and uninjured. Vader couldn't allow Palpatine to sink his claws into him, or treat him like the Inquisitors had been treated. Luke deserved better than that.

So Vader would have to be subtle. He would have to be clever, underhanded, resourceful.

He would have to do what any given politician does on a regular basis.

He clenched his fists again, and focused on his breathing for several cycles, just the word invoking memories of Obi-Wan shaking his head in scorn, of her insisting that she had important work to do—

Despite being best friend to one of them, and husband to the other, he had never had much of a head for politics.

Luke resurfaced an unknown amount of time later, the muscles in his throat feeling stiff and his head woozy. Other than that, he felt better than he had in years—rejuvenated, even. Warm and healthy and alive.

Instinctively, he made to sit up, to swing his legs over the side of the bed—because it was a bed, not the medical table, he recognised—but there was a tugging in the right arm, and he glanced down.

A tube ran into his arm, presumably providing nutrients while he was unconscious and couldn't feed himself, and he stilled automatically at the sight of it, resisting the urge to rip it out; nearly two decades of living as a reckless child in Uncle Owen's household had led to a lot of lectures on properly looking after himself and not trying to shun medicine that could save his life.

He wasn't lying there for very long before the droids came into the room to start poking and prodding him again, testing whether or not he had the clean bill of health they'd predicted, but he found this time he could tune their administrations out, letting his gaze wander around the room.

There was a lot of medical equipment in here. Spare prosthetics, various instruments that looked like they could easily be repurposed for use in interrogation, and even massive tanks of a murky substance he recognised as bacta. He had to stare at that for a while: bacta was expensive. How rich was this man?

He glanced to his right, through the door he'd been dragged, where he somehow knew his— where he knew Vader would be. His presence in the Force was pretty impossible to miss, a small galaxy with a black hole at the centre of it, sucking all light and warmth and heat out of the surroundings. Funny, though: there were stars in that galaxy as well, spots of light among the darkness that Luke would never have expected from Darth Vader of all people. . .

And he steadfastly wasn't going to think about how easy it had been to locate the man, or the way that a channel of his mind seemed to lead straight to him, similar but different to the master-apprentice bond he had with Ben. . .

Nope, he wasn't going to think about that.

He glanced up at the droids when they stopped poking him and asked, "Are you done?"

"Yes, sir," one of them said. Idly, Luke wondered if it was the same one that had done most of the talking yesterday, but there was no way of knowing—they all looked the same. "You are perfectly healthy, and are cleared to leave. The master wants to see you in his personal chambers as soon as possible."

Luke grimaced. It didn't take a genius to work out who that was. "Alright, I'll head over there," he said, having no such intentions. But the droids were satisfied, and they shooed him out of Vader's personal medbay. He walked slowly past the pod he'd noted the last time he'd passed through here—it was a hyperbaric chamber!—but quickly moved on. He could sense that Vader was close, and he wanted to have as much time to explore the castle and potential ways of escaping it before he caught on to what he was doing.

He did his best to orient himself the moment he stepped out of the room. Vader's presence—and, presumably, his personal chambers—were to his right, so Luke veered left, round a bend in the corridor, down a flight of stairs—

Luke. Vader's voice rippled through the Force directly into his mind, heavy with annoyance. It made the boy flinch; how was he supposed to ignore this new bond between them if the man kept using it?

But he'd resolved to ignore it, so he would ignore it. The stairs kept going round, a spiral structure that led deeper and deeper into the castle—

Luke. Stop running away from this. We need to talk.

Again, he flinched. Then he bit his lip and kept moving.

Luke—

Luke yelped when he took another turn in the spiral staircase only to come across an old man in a dark, drab robe. The man's face, heavily lined with age and (no doubt) the stress of working with such a temperamental employer, pinched when he saw Luke; before the boy knew it there was a vice-like grip on his upper arm—much stronger than the man looked—and he was being dragged back the way he came.

Up the staircase, along the corridor, round the bend, past the medbay. . .and then round one more bend to get to Vader's chambers.

The man stopped abruptly outside the door to key in a code. It hissed open, then the man released his grip on Luke and shoved him inside, before standing in the doorway again to prevent his escape.

Luke looked around.

The room was circular, with almost half of its space dominated by a massive viewport that showed off the deadly, chaotic grandeur of Mustafar's fiery surface. Vader stood in front of it, looking out at the planet he'd chosen to build his base on; if Luke hadn't known he was human, he mused, he might've assumed he was a part of the scenery, a towering black rock that had been there for hundreds of years and would probably be there for hundreds more.

"My lord," the old man who'd caught him said, "here is Skywalker."

"Very well," Vader said, not turning away from the viewport. Luke was somewhere between stung and relieved. "You are dismissed, Vaneé."

The old man bowed his head, then left, the door hissing shut and locking behind him.

That was when Vader finally turned to look at him.

Luke immediately wished he hadn't.

Even through the mask, he could feel Vader's stare. The branches of the galaxy that was Vader's Force presence stretched out to and around him, sucking the light and warmth out of the air, making him shiver. He imagined he could see through the red-tinted eye plates to the eyes beyond, his irises that sickly Sith yellow, glowing with an inner flame.

"You were foolish to think you could ever escape so carelessly," Vader remarked, not quite idly, but close enough. "I hope you didn't honestly believe you had a chance."

Luke just shifted, uncomfortable. It wasn't so much as hoping he could escape as trying to prove he wasn't under Vader's thumb, but he didn't want to say that. It sounded. . . petty.

Fortunately, Vader didn't press the matter. Instead, he just asked, almost hesitantly, "How do you feel?"

Those tendrils of Vader's Force presence probed him again, but this time it felt warmer, more like the prods of those medical droids, and Luke forced himself to relax.

"Better," he admitted, forcing the words out. It didn't make sense to anger the man, especially when he was claiming to be— "I feel healthier than ever, really."

Vader nodded. "You were in the bacta tank for a long time to make sure any and all injuries were healed."

"Bacta?" Luke asked, some of his incredulity seeping into his voice.

Vader tilted his head. "You are surprised?"

"It's just—" Luke bit his lip. "Bacta's expensive."

Vader didn't comment on that, though Luke thought he felt a slight shift in the Dark Lord, even if he couldn't for the life of him say what that shift was.

The man waved his hand and a door in the corner on the room slid open. Luke tried not to feel envy at the sight—he'd progressed extremely far in his Jedi training in the past years or so, according to Ben, but still. . . Vader used it so naturally.

Vader waved his hand again, and, begrudgingly, Luke stepped towards the door. It was dark in the next room, but from what he could see it seemed to be some sort of study.

"Come, young one," Vader said. "We have much to discuss."

It was a study. And it was very obviously Vader's study as well—the reports were all organised with the sort of brutal order one would expect a leader of the Empire to have, and the seat was so massive it wouldn't be practical for anyone else, anyway.

That didn't seem to stop Vader, though. "Sit," he told Luke, gesturing to the chair.

Luke blinked. It wasn't like there were any other chairs in the room, but even so. . . "Isn't this your chair?"

"It is," Vader said, folding his hands behind his back, "but I prefer to stand, and you have just completed a session in bacta. You will likely tire of standing fairly quickly."

The same familiar defiance reared its head in Luke's chest again, but he quashed it down. That— that made sense. No matter how healthy he felt, no matter how rigorous his Jedi training could get, walking up and down those stairs had tired his post-operation body out, and he needed to save his strength.

Luke sat. The massive chair dwarfed his slight frame.

"Good," Vader praised, and the sound of it half made Luke want to stand up again. He didn't. He wasn't that petty. "Now, we have something important to discuss." He paused. "Namely, the threat on your life."

Luke blinked once. Twice.

Then he scoffed.

"The last I checked, Vader," he said, hand going to his throat by instinct, "the greatest threat to my life is you."

Vader bowed his head. "That was true, and I. . . regret that, Luke. But nevertheless, we must move forward. You—"

"Move forward?" Luke felt anger rising in him, and he strained to quash it down—not the Jedi way—but his next words came out biting nonetheless. "You nearly killed me!"

"I did not know who you were, at that point."

"And I suppose that makes it so much better then?"

"Luke," Vader thundered, "you are going to die in three months."

Something inside him quailed at the tone before he even registered the words.

"I—" He cut himself off. "What? How— How do you know?"

"I have been told," Vader ground out, "by a reliable source, that you will die on your eighteenth birthday."

Luke crossed his arms and cocked one of his eyebrows. The overall effect of the look was probably diminished by how small he seemed in the massive chair, but at least it conveyed how he felt. "What reliable source?"

Vader crossed his arms in retaliation, but he hesitated before answering, and when he did, he said haltingly, "My old apprentice—she came back as a ghost. . ."

Luke almost laughed.

He wanted to laugh. Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, going senile and talking to ghosts? That was unbelievable, a hilarious joke if only because of its impossibility.

But this wasn't a joke. This was real.

He was the prisoner of a madman.

". . .okay," Luke said. His hand absently touched his throat again, reminding himself to tread carefully, a faint shiver running through him at the memory of what had happened the last time he'd aggravated Vader. "Your dead apprentice told you I'm going to die in three months. Right."

"You think I'm insane?" Vader demanded. "I'm not insane."

"I'm sure you're not," Luke said, placating, doing his best to inject soothing touches of the Force into his voice. It had always worked on the eopie back home, why not—

"Your lack of faith disturbs me," Vader hissed. The man was clearly not an eopie. "I am in as perfect health as ever," Luke gave a pointed look to the suit, which Vader ignored, "and I am telling the truth about this. Your life is in danger."

"I don't think—"

"You might die, Luke!" he shouted. "I will not allow that to happen."

"Why not?" Luke's voice was getting louder and louder now as well; he flinched at the sound waves echoing back at him in the small office, but refused to back down. "You were perfectly willing to when you started choking me!"

"I have already stated that I didn't know who you were then—"

"So what?" Luke was positively shaking now. "You see no issue with killing random people simply because they turn up where they're not supposed to be? You're so entrenched in the Dark Side that your anger overrides your basic respect for sentient life?"

He was left gasping, breathing heavily after the outburst; he found he kept touching his throat, frightened. He had felt a brief pressure on it during his rant, but now—

It was fine. Everything was fine.

Until Vader sneered, "I see Kenobi has already drummed his hypocritical ideals of Light and Dark into your head."

Luke took a deep breath to steady himself—not the Jedi way not the Jedi way not the Jedi way—and stated, "My views on the Force don't have any bearing on the conversation, except that the Dark Side is more likely to lead to the deaths of innocent people. But you didn't answer the question." He fixed Vader with a glare. "So, you don't have any respect for sentient life?"

"Most sentients are useless, irritating—"

"That's a yes, then." He shook his head, feeling strangely deflated. Disappointed.

He bit his lip. "And. . . you say you're Anakin Skywalker?"

"That name no longer has any meaning for me."

"But you used to be," Luke pushed on. "So, what changed?"

For a moment, Vader seemed almost caught off guard, turning away from him slightly. "What?"

"What changed?" Luke repeated. "I— I've heard so many stories about you," his voice broke slightly, "from Ben, and I know he was telling the truth when he was telling them. They always made him so happy to remember them, before he got sad because he remembered you were dead." He said the word with some bitterness. Then he shook his head. "What changed? What turned you from the Jedi hero in those stories to," he ran his gaze up and down Vader's considerable bulk, not bothering to hide his disgust, "this?"

Vader turned back to him abruptly, cape snapping about him. "This is who I have always been," he thundered. "The anger you saw has always been a part of me, as your anger is a part of you," Luke winced slightly at the comparison, "and if Obi-Wan or Ahsoka or even Padmé herself ever believed I was or am someone different, then they never knew me at all." He turned away again. "The only thing that changed was I gave up my foolish naïveté and accepted what my destiny had in store for me."

There was a brief pause after that, like both of them were trying to recover after Vader's outburst, then Luke had to ask—

"Who's Padmé?"

He instantly got the feeling that it had been the wrong thing to say. Vader stilled, fists clenching, then looked over his shoulder at him.

"You don't know?" he hissed.

Luke shook his head.

Something crackled and crumpled; Luke jumped, wide eyed, as several datapads stacked in the corner crumpled under some invisible force. Glancing back at Vader, he flinched. He didn't need to guess what had just happened.

The ruined datapads hovered where they were for a moment, then something hurled them at the wall. They fell to the ground with a clatter.

"So you mean to tell me," Vader continued, still with that deadly softness to his voice, "that Obi-Wan stole you away from me, raised you on a pathetic world like Tatooine, trained you to one day kill me, and he didn't even have the decency to tell you your mother's name?"

Luke thought his heart might stop beating. The sheer hate in Vader's voice scared him, but. . . He touched the Force, and could've sworn there was a lingering sense of betrayal there too—a deep, profound loneliness.

Luke closed his eyes, and felt a single tear escape through his lashes, sliding down his face. If anything, that was the saddest thing: Vader felt betrayed by Obi-Wan. Vader—his father—had loved Obi-Wan.

So that meant, if all of Ben's stories were true. . .

If Anakin Skywalker, a good man, no matter what this empty shell of him might claim, had become. . . this in the face of the Dark Side, then what hope did Luke have?

Suddenly, all of Ben's warnings came back to him in a lot more clarity.

He sucked in a breath. "My— my mother?"

He'd never had a name for her; she was always some faceless figure in his imaginings who'd never seemed real. His uncle had said he didn't know who she was. Aunt Beru had admitted once that the only time she'd met his father, there'd been a young woman with him, but Luke knew as well as she did that they could just be friends, or even romantically involved at the time, only to end it before Luke was even conceived.

Eventually, he'd stopped asking about her. He'd known there was no information left to find, so he'd turned his efforts to asking about his father, because at least he knew there was something there, something his guardians weren't telling him. He'd stopped wanting more, because what's the point in wanting something you knew you would never get?

Except, now he had a name. A name, and a source of information about the woman he'd never known.

And now he wanted so much worse than he used to.

Luke opened his mouth to ask something—anything—about her, but before he could, Vader said bitterly, "Obi-Wan betrayed me. Turned her against me, and probably cut you from her dead womb." Luke flinched at the imagery, but. . . everything about his father seemed to lead the man back to Ben. It was an obsession.

"Why do you hate Ben so much?"

Vader's gaze snapped to his, voice heated. "He turned your mother against me, cut off my three remaining limbs and left me to burn to death in the lava of this very planet, then stole you and hid you from me, so you were denied the luxuries growing up that you deserved."

"Stole me?" Luke didn't like that—although stole may be a perfectly reasonable word to use, the way his father said it. . .

"You are mine," Vader hissed, "and he had no rights to you. I was robbed of your childhood, seeing you grow up, but I will rectify that now. Now, you are at my side, where you belong, and you will stay there, and finally, Obi-Wan's failure will be complete."

Luke stood up abruptly. "I see," he said in a flat tone. "So, you don't care about my life and wellbeing because of who I am as a person. You care about it because you want revenge on Ben."

Vader just stared at him for a moment. "I—"

He didn't finish. Luke had already walked out of the door, and his father made no move to stop him.

Chapter Text

Vader wasn't sure how long it had been since his son had left. It could've been anything between seconds and hours.

He just kept staring at the door Luke had left through, oddly reluctant to move despite the anguish and despair he could feel rolling through the Force.

Luke was crying.

Something twisted in his gut at the thought of it.

You don't care about my life and wellbeing because of who I am as a person. You care about it because you want revenge on Ben.

The boy was half-right. Vader did want revenge on Obi-Wan, and the way he was planning on getting it was, he had to admit, through Luke. But that was by no means the only reason.

"Then perhaps you should tell him that," a voice said. Vader snapped his head round—it had sounded like Ahsoka—but there was no one there. At least, no one that he could see.

He shook his head, and suppressed a sigh. Perhaps the boy was right. Perhaps he was going crazy.

But the boy wasn't right about everything, and Vader needed to correct him on one such fundamental truth.

And to do that he needed to find him.

So Vader cast out his senses again in an attempt to track down Luke's Force signature. The boy was. . . passable. . . at shielding, but as Vader had already seen, they crumbled during fits of high emotion. And he was definitely in one of those right now.

So the amount of turmoil he was broadcasting coupled with his blindingly bright Force signature made him easy to locate against the Dark Side nexus that was Mustafar. It was good, Vader thought suddenly, that he could keep Luke here; the planet's darkness would easily hide his presence in the Force from the Emperor as long as the man was as far away as Coruscant.

But it couldn't hide him here and now, so it took Vader mere moments to locate him. He was still moving, up a staircase in one of the two towers. He couldn't suppress his smile.

The tuning towers served as conduits for the Dark Side, increasing Vader's power and capabilities. Perhaps they would do the same to Luke, help him accept the Dark Side later, and introduce him to the sort of power that could save him from death.

The way it had been meant to save Padmé. . .

He strode out of the room before he could finish the thought.

He needed to talk to Luke.

Luke hadn't known where he was going when he stormed out. He hadn't even been running at first until the reality of what he'd said—and what it meant—caught up to him and he picked up his pace, sprinting through the halls to who-knew-where, until he was at the top of a random flight of stairs and all the emotions were crushing him to pieces.

As was the truth he was slowly starting to accept.

Darth Vader was his father.

And it wasn't like he hadn't accepted it—well, known it—before, but now the full weight of it was coursing through him, crashing down—

Darth Vader was his father. Ben had lied, his aunt and uncle had lied, because Darth Vader was his—

He sucked in a deep breath, hyperaware of the tears that were coursing down his face. He made to scrub them away, taking deep breaths to calm himself, his racing heart, harsh breathing.

This wasn't the Jedi way.

He automatically reached for his—no his father's lightsaber, but it wasn't at his waist. Of course. Vader had taken in when he'd first. . . found him.

Even so, Luke needed, needed so badly it was an ache in his bones, to grip it tightly, feel the familiar design and scuffs on it, the sense of love and dedication he always got from it. Sometimes, he even heard whispers of the past—this weapon is my life. It's yours.

Now, though. . .

Now he had a small, secret fear that if he got it back, if he tried to get that same comfort from it, he would only feel hate and anger and pain, because Darth Vader was his—

His shoulders stilled when he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs behind him, and the already-freezing stairwell became even colder. Vader was here.

He didn't bother hiding his red-rimmed eyes when he raised his head from his knees to glare at him. "What do you want?"

Vader hesitated, then sat down on the step next to him. It was almost funny, seeing the Dark Lord try to hunch over enough that he could sit in such a small space next to such a small person. "I—" He cut himself off, breath hissing out of his respirator in what sounded suspiciously like a sigh.

"I came to. . .apologise, young one," he tried again, the words slow and halting. "I. . . didn't realise the negative impression I was making. I don't care for your wellbeing simply because you are Obi-Wan's last hope. You are my son—Padmé's son. Of course I. . . care about you."

He shook his head. "You're still doing it," he said quietly. "You're still linking me to a past I have no idea of. And maybe I am a link to that past, to when you were Anakin Skywalker before whatever happened, happened and you ended up like this, but I am sick of people comparing me that way. I am sick of Ben looking at me, training me and wishing I was my father. At first," his voice broke a little, "I loved it! I idolised him—you—and I loved that there was something to compare. But after I while. . ."

He shook his head. "I was a replacement," he whispered. "I was a replacement, no matter how much I love him, no matter how much he says he loves me—"

Luke saw his father's right fist clench, gaze still fixed on the steps in front of them, and heard echoes of that same voice he'd heard outside when he first arrived—You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!

"Obi-Wan's declarations of love mean nothing," Vader growled. Luke kept rambling regardless.

"—and I don't want you looking at me and seeing all the people you've lost, as well. You say you care about me because I'm Padmé's son, but I never met her." His breaths were coming faster now, his voice louder and angrier. "And I wish I had, believe me, I always wanted my parents, but I didn't.

"So don't compare me to someone I've never met," he said fiercely, before his voice broke again. "Or maybe do, I want to know what my mother was like—I don't know. I just—"

He took a deep breath to keep himself from collapsing into sobs. He didn't know what it was about this place that his emotions seemed to be spilling left, right and centre, but it wasn't easy to talk through, anyway. He could feel the scream building in his throat, the urge to destroy something in his anger, but. . .

That was the Dark Side Ben had warned him about. He knew that. He didn't want any part of it.

But the pressure built anyway, until his breaths turned to gasps, and he couldn't breathe—

"Young one," Vader began, and there was condescension in his voice, a lecture, as if Luke's feelings were somehow getting in the way of his plans and Luke just—

"Don't," he gasped out. "Father, just don't."

Vader stilled, but he didn't.

A heavy weight settled on his shoulder as his father put his hand there instead, and Luke grasped the hand tightly, looking for something, anything, to ground him in reality. After a moment, he managed to calm his breathing again, to call on some of the meditation techniques Ben had taught him.

Breathe.

His chest rose and fell. He closed his eyes, felt the pounding in his head subside.

Just breathe.

Tears were still running freely, but now his throat was unstuck, and his heart rate was steady again.

He blinked to try to clear his vision, then said, "I'm sorry. I'm not saying this very well. I—" He bit his lip. "I don't mind the comparisons. I want to know about my history, and my mother, and Ben. But I'm not defined by that history. I'm not them, and I don't want to be a focus for your obsession with them."

Vader turned his helmet to face him, and Luke tried to meet his eye, regardless of the fact he couldn't see them through the eye plates.

"I'm not Padmé," he said softly, "I'm not your revenge, and I'm not Ben's last hope. I'm a person, and my name is Luke."

There was a moment of stillness, of a careful deliberation that didn't match with anything Luke had seen of Vader so far, then his father squeezed his shoulder.

"I'm glad to have met you, Luke," he said with finality, and Luke felt there was some sort of weight here he wasn't picking up on, but he was too happy at his message being understood to inquire what it was.

He could easily ask later. He wanted to hear more stories, more of his father's history, more—

As long as he knew he wasn't being treated like a replacement for them.

After their. . . conversation (he refused to call it a heart-to-heart. That sounded far too sappy) Vader insisted that Luke return to Vaneé's room—the bedroom he'd been dumped in when he first arrived. Vader had requested that a new bed be installed in another, more pleasant room, so Luke could make himself at home, but until that was finished his son would stay in the only decent bed in the castle. If Vaneé had a problem with sleeping on a rug on the floor somewhere else for the next few nights, he could either make sure the bed came quicker, or find alternative employment. Either way, he knew he wouldn't survive bringing his complaints to Vader himself.

Ostensibly, Vader had insisted Luke needed sleep after his operation, and that running up a few thousand steps then immediately bursting into tears had exhausted him. Sure enough, when Vader probed him a mere half hour after leaving him in the rooms, his son was fast asleep.

But really? Vader had just needed some time to himself to process everything Luke had said.

He strode into his training room and flicked on three of his droids with the Force. They came at him armed with two red lightsabers each, but it was practically second nature to dodge and duck and weave around them now, watching their torsos, limbs and finally their heads spit out showers of sparks with every strike.

He was angry, and frustrated, and confused, and that only made his fighting all the more deadly as he swung—

Only to find there were no opponents left. They were all deactivated on the floor, in pieces.

He let out a short, sharp breath in disgust. Pathetic. Those droids were just—

"You programmed them, Anakin."

Vader whirled round, already knowing who it is, already knowing he wasn't in this mood for this.

"That name means nothing to me," he snarled at Ahsoka, the amused quirk to her lips only enraging him more.

"Really," she said dryly. "Because you claim Anakin Skywalker's son as your own, don't you? How could Luke be your son if you weren't Anakin Skywalker?"

"Do not talk to me about Luke," Vader snapped, lifting a finger to point at her accusingly. "Not when he may not have nearly died if you had just deigned to tell me that the Jedi Padawan wandering about outside was my son!"

"I'm not the one who nearly choked him to death, Master," Ahsoka said quietly. "Nor did I choke Padmé. That was all—"

"Do not speak of her, either!" he seethed, reaching for the lightsaber at his belt again. "She betrayed me!"

Now Ahsoka just looked tired. Tired and sad. "No, Anakin," she said gently, like she was talking to one of those younglings she'd been so fond of. "She didn't. You know full well she didn't. And you would've known that at the time if you weren't so consumed by the thrill of the Dark Side."

"I turned to the Dark Side to save her!"

"I know you did." Ahsoka sighed, and shifted where she stood, bright blue eyes flicking everywhere around the room except to him. "But it was the wrong choice."

"It was the only choice! My visions were going to come true, and I would not let Padmé die," he paused and swallowed, "the way my mother did."

Ahsoka just shook her head. "It was the wrong choice."

"It was the only—"

"You are not the only one who's had visions, Anakin!"

Vader almost took a step back at the ferocity in the shout. He hadn't realised how agitated his former apprentice was getting. She was shaking all over; she clenched her fists and took several harsh breaths before she continued.

"All Jedi get visions," she hissed. "All of us. And we all lose those we love, as well. Obi-Wan lost Satine. I was betrayed by Barriss. You have to put the wellbeing of everyone over your personal attachments. That's the price for being a Jedi. It's not easy, but that's our job. If you didn't like it, you could've just left the Order, instead of slaughtering everybody!"

Vader shook his head vehemently. "Padmé was going to die," he said stubbornly. "Everything I did, I did for her."

"The future is always in motion, Anakin." Ahsoka folded her arms. "I had visions of death once, remember? Padmé's death. I stopped them from coming true without resorting to the Dark Side. Why couldn't you?"

Her voice broke. When she spoke next, it was much more quietly. "I was the Padawan, and I saved her," she whispered. "You were my Master. You were supposed to be better than me, do better, so why couldn't you?"

"Because I was weak!" The sudden rush of sheer rage startled him as much as it did Ahsoka; it ripped through the room like it had the other day, rattling the remaining training droids in their places. "I have told you this. Anakin Skywalker was weak. If you ever thought of him otherwise," he said, turning away, "then you never knew him at all."

Ahsoka paused for a moment, before she said to his back, "You say you destroyed Anakin Skywalker, but still you claim his son. You say you hate Obi-Wan, but when Luke said Ben wished you were still with him you became angrier than ever. And you say everything you did was for Padmé, but you destroyed the democracy she loved, nearly killed her baby, and choked her to unconsciousness for a crime she didn't commit." Ahsoka paused again, and Vader could almost see her tilting her head, the slight, confused frown on her face. "So who are you, and what do you want?"

Who are you?

What do you want?

Vader didn't have an answer.

It was just as well; when he turned back around, she had disappeared.

The first thing Luke was aware of upon waking was the gentle brush of a foreign mind against his own, and the feeling instantly jolted him into full consciousness. The only person he'd ever felt do that was Ben, and his mental touch was always light and weak—what could be expected, his mentor always said, when they had been training together for such a short time and lived an hour's journey away from each other. This one was stronger—not just from proximity and the power of the other person, but also in terms of the bond he could feel. It wasn't just the necessary connection between Master and Padawan; it was familial, bound by blood and, with a start, Luke realised it had always been there.

Bury deep, too deep in his psyche for him to ever notice before it was prodded awake, but there.

What? he sent along it, the alarm he'd felt at the sensation starting to fade and his sleepiness making the words thick and sticky with exhaustion.

Were you sleeping?

He rolled his eyes. He knew Vader couldn't see him, so he broadcast the general emotion across the bond in a way that had never failed to amuse and exasperate Ben all at once. No, I've been dancing. That's why I'm so tired.

There is no need to be disrespectful, Vader replied, but there didn't seem to be much heat in it. Luke wondered if there would've been if there'd been heat in Luke's reply, or if he'd been difficult, but he hadn't, so it seemed like Vader was sticking to a non-confrontational approach as well. If you're so tired, perhaps you should go back to sleep.

No! I'm fine! He was awake now, and he did not relish the idea of being left to his own devices in a room he couldn't escape. Not that escape had really crossed his mind after his conversation with his father the previous day, even if—

Even if Ben must be worried sick, let alone his aunt and uncle.

Luke swallowed harshly. He'd already been missing for—what, four or five days? How had they felt when they woken up to find him gone?

Uncle Owen might have assumed that he'd run away—again—but Luke hadn't packed any clothes, and all the speeders were still in the garage. The next most natural thing, of course, would be to assume he'd been taken by Tuskens, but if there weren't any signs of a fight. . .

Luke felt Vader's presence press against him more tightly when it sensed his distress. Are you well, Luke? Vader asked, something between worry and an anger at whatever had dared distress him rolling across the bond. I was going to ask if you would like to do some Force and lightsaber training with me, but—

No, I'd love to, Luke said hurriedly, then bit his lip and tacked on warily, In the Dark Side?

There was the mental equivalent of a sigh, then: We shall discuss this in person, as well as whatever was distressing you earlier. Do not think I'll let it go so easily.

Wouldn't dream of it, Luke quipped back, doggedly not thinking about how easy it was to joke about with this man, a Sith Lord who'd murdered thousand, if not millions, of sentients, since Luke was born. I'll wait for you to pick me up, since I can't actually go anywhere at the moment. A pointed jab accompanied that sentence.

More satisfactory accommodations are being arranged, my son, Vader promised, then his presence faded from the bond and Luke was alone.

He sighed, and rolled off the bed. It wasn't a massively soft bed, but it was softer than what he got on Tatooine, so a part of him didn't want to leave. That same sleep-fogged part of his brain didn't even question it when he saw a sharp, crisp set of jacket and trousers laid out for him to wear, both an unassuming charcoal grey, and just tugged them on. He could ask where his father had got the clothes from on such short notice at a later date.

He was looking at himself in the small mirror just under the window when the door hissed open and Vader stepped in.

Luke turned around to see him, doing his best to ignore the fact that he was pretty sure he was wearing an Imperial uniform in front of a man who was the face of the Imperial regime.

He nodded towards the door. "Let's go."

Vader's training room had several droids attached to racks on the walls, a few of which was in pieces, but what disturbed Luke the most were the scorch marks on the floor.

"What are these?" he mused, half to himself, scuffing his own boots next to them. There had been an ensign's black, polished boots left in his room to match the rest of the uniform, but they were tight, and pinched his feet in uncomfortable places, so he'd forewent them and tugged on the boots he'd had on arriving instead, as sun-bleached and worn as everything as on Tatooine.

He probably looked odd, but he didn't particularly care.

"The droids are electronic," Vader pointed out, not without amusement. There was care radiating from the man as well, like he was trying to walk on eggshells after what had happened the previous day.

Luke huffed. "Of course. Because it's impossible to build droids that won't scorch the floor so badly when you cut them up with a lightsaber that the mark is permanent."

"Are you implying you could?" There was a challenge, in his voice and over the bond, but a fair amount of curiosity as well.

Luke refused to be cowed, and lifted his chin. "Perhaps. I'll have to look into it."

"Of course." Luke half-thought his father was mocking him, but he moved on and drew his lightsaber too soon for him to tell. There was a long, long rack of lightsabers along one wall, each hilt very obviously different and unique; Vader used the Force to yank one off and toss it at Luke, who caught and lit it more on instinct than anything.

The blade that shot out was a brilliant green. Luke, used to the icy blue of his father's, was momentarily taken aback—only momentarily, but it was long enough for another doubt to creep into his mind.

Vader's mask turned towards him, like he sensed Luke's unease before Luke himself did.

"This is a Jedi's lightsaber, isn't it?"

Vader paused, then said, in a tone that Luke felt was way too mild for this situation, "It was."

Luke swallowed, and switched off the blade, placing it gently on the ground next to him and kicking it away. "Can't I just use my father's— I mean, your old lightsaber? I've trained with that before anyway."

Vader paused again, mask following the movement of the lightsaber across the floor, then nodded and unclipped his old lightsaber from his belt. "As you wish."

Luke accepted it with a mounting relief he couldn't quite keep behind his mental shields, wrapping his hands around the familiar hilt and practically melting into the forms he'd practiced so religiously.

Vader cocked his helmet ever so slowly, and a Luke had the slight discomfort of feeling like he was being sized up.

Then—

"Defend yourself," Vader said, and came up him with a flurry of blows.

Luke hissed as he caught the first one of his blade, but his muscles screamed from the effort. His father was strong, and he was so much bigger than Luke—

Vader struck again, and again, and then—

"Obi-Wan's teachings are evident in you," he said with disapproval, even as he continued his assault. Luke opened his mouth to snap a retort, but it came out in a strained hiss when the crossed lightsabers came unnervingly close to his face. "You favour Form Three to a ridiculous degree, focus too heavily on defence. How are you supposed to win a fight," he punctuated the word with a slash Luke barely avoided, "if you barely fight back?" That word, too, was accompanied by a push against their locked lightsabers, and the floor slid under Luke's feet.

"I'm struggling just to defend myself right now," he got out through gritted teeth, swinging his saber only to have it met at every thrust. Frustration bubbled up in him; he did his best to release it into the Force, but quickly found out that a deadly laser sword swinging straight for your face is generally pretty distracting.

"Use it," Vader said suddenly. "Use your frustration, let it give you power—"

"No," Luke said, "I will not use the Dark Side."

Vader stood staring at him for a moment, cape still swinging around him, red lightsaber lit and burning, and for a single, unbelievable, irrational moment, Luke thought he was going to cut him down there and then.

But then Vader switched off his lightsaber, and clipped it back onto his belt.

"Son," he said, voice surprisingly urgent, "you need to learn to embrace the Dark Side, the power it gives you. It's the only way you'll survive whatever is going to happen."

Luke wasn't convinced, and he knew he sure as hell didn't look it, so Vader continued, "It can grant you your wildest dreams, make you every wish a reality."

"And what did it get you, Father?" Luke asked. "An evil-looking castle, a cool cape and an over-inflated sense of drama?" Vader bristled at that, but before he could object Luke barrelled on, "And what did you have to sacrifice to get that?"

Luke switched off his lightsaber, and the hiss of Vader's respirator was the only sound to be heard. He shook his head. "I won't turn to the Dark Side, Father. I promise you that."

"Obi-Wan has spread his lies and poisoned you against me."

"When will you start to believe that I'm not a creature of Obi-Wan's making?" His voice was steadily becoming more and more vehement, his hand gestures more passionate. "I am who I am, and this is me talking when I say that I don't want to live with anger and hate and fear for the rest of my life. There's enough of that in the world already. I don't want to be a Sith."

"You are deciding without all the facts, Luke," Vader insisted, "and now you are away from Obi-Wan, I will make sure you know them to the fullest."

Away from Obi-Wan. . . Unbidden, the guilt from earlier that day sprung to mind, and he swallowed.

Vader, never one to miss anything, was instantly on alert. "What is it."

The unease radiating from Luke was exactly the same type he'd had earlier, and if Vader were a person who gambled with money the way he gambled with his officers' lives, he would have bet it was the same thing bothering him.

"It's just. . ." Luke swallowed again, then dared to try to meet Vader's eye. As always, Vader was unnerved by how accurate he was. "My aunt and uncle are probably worried sick about me."

Vader first reaction was to sneer, to dismiss those lowly farmers who'd dared hide his son from him for so long, but Luke seemed to sense that and kept talking.

"I've been missing nearly a week now, and Aunt Beru will be screaming at the local authorities, it'll have spread all around Anchorhead, I wouldn't be surprised if Biggs had heard it all the way in the Imperial Academy. . ." He sighed. "I just. . . don't want to worry them any more than necessary. Do you think. . ."

He knew what he was asking, and knew that Luke was expecting him to say a firm no.

As he should.

Except something was nagging at him. It'll have spread all around Anchorhead. . .

Anchorhead was a small town; it was doubtful that anyone of note was there to eavesdrop on the disappearance of a boy named Luke Skywalker and report back to any of the Emperor's spies or Vader's political enemies, like Tarkin. The governor was going to get control of that damned battle station soon, and he fairly sure he was aware of Vader's past life; he might want leverage against him to keep himself in power.

He might threaten Luke. That might be the threat Ahsoka had warned him about.

And while he probably wouldn't hear it from Anchorhead, if this Biggs talked too much at the Imperial Academy. . .

No. Vader couldn't risk that.

"I'll set up a holocall with them," he ground out, ignoring the surprise and delight emanating from his son at the prospect of getting to speak to his kidnappers. "Until then, show me how much Obi-Wan has taught you of the techniques themselves."

Luke narrowed his eyes at the very obvious subject change, but settled into Form I without protest and lit the lightsaber.

Chapter Text

The suite with the holoprojector in it was a small, black room not far from Vader's quarters; presumably the Dark Lord had to get to it quickly when he received the alert that someone important was calling. Luke gave the matter a glancing thought, but didn't particularly care.

He was going to talk to Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen.

Vader's movements were stiff as he waved Luke into the room, his displeasure rolling off of him in waves, but Luke ignored that, too. Vader's manservant, whoever he was—his father hadn't bothered to give him a name—had already set it up accordingly; all Luke had to do was punch in the right frequency.

He did so, double-checking and triple-checking as he did, even if he'd had the string of numbers hammered into his head for as long as he could remember. If you're ever lost, call home.

He wouldn't say he was lost, per se, but it felt like he was, something in his chest easing at the thought of calling home.

The holoprojector lit up with a miniature image of his aunt—at least, a miniature image of his aunt that appeared through a heavily cloaked frequency. The image was broken and crude, but he recognised the general shape of her face, the mannerisms in the way she moved, and it was clear she recognised him as well.

"This is the Lars Farm, Tatooine— Luke!"

"Hey, Aunt Beru," he said, a smile curving his face at the familiar sight of her, and ignoring the black behemoth that was Darth Vader standing just outside of the range of hologram and listening to every word.

"Where have you been?" Her voice was a storm, loud and angry, but he could hear in her voice how terrified she'd been, see in the slant of her shoulders that a massive weight had just rolled off them.

She turned to shout over her shoulder, "Owen, it's Luke!"

Uncle Owen came into view as well, and Luke was suddenly glad that he couldn't see their faces too well. He didn't want to see the fury in his uncle's, or the stress he knew his disappearance would've caused them. "Luke!" He glared. "Where are you? Where have you been? Why did you—"

"I didn't run away, Uncle Owen," Luke cut him off, insistent. "I don't know what happened. I went to sleep in my room, then I woke up and I was on a completely different planet with lava everywhere—"

There was a predatory spike in the Force from his father, and Luke clamped his mouth shut. They'd been through what he was and wasn't allowed to tell them, for risk of whoever Vader thought could be listening in hearing it, and location had been high on the list of don't say a word.

Privately, Luke wondered if Vader was secretly worried that Ben would come along to steal him away again.

"Anyway, I didn't run, but I can't come back right now," he continued, wincing at the words, and the onslaught he knew they would cause.

"What? Luke, your uncle and I—"

"I need you for the harvest—"

"I'm sorry, Uncle Owen," he said, "but I just can't. I can't tell you why."

Uncle Owen was still seething, he could tell, but Beru cocked her head in a familiar gesture, and he knew exactly the sort of shrewd analysis he'd be able to see on her face if the connection was clear.

"Did you get in trouble with the Empire?" she asked, and Luke grimaced, tossing Vader a glance.

"I— I guess you could say that," he admitted. "Of a sort."

His aunt sighed, then smiled at him, but even he could tell there was worry on the other end of it. "Of course," she said, "you can't say. But Luke—" She sighed again. "How can we be sure you'll be safe?"

Luke could almost feel Vader bristle at the implication, but of course his aunt didn't know who she was insulting—

Then there was a beeping, which yanked Luke back into the present. He shot Vader a worried look; his father had stiffened, panic roiling round them—

Shut down the connection, he said over their bond, and Luke could sense the urgency in it, but he couldn't—

"What?" He didn't understand what was happening.

Vader marched forward, clearly intent on shutting it off himself, and Luke's eyes went wide.

"No, it's fine, I can do it—" He turned back to his aunt and uncle, scrambling for the disconnect button. "I have to go," he rushed out, "but I love you, I miss you, and I promise you I'll be safe."

"How can you—"

"Because," Luke got in, just before he cut the call off, "I'm with my father."

Then Vader grabbed him by the scruff of his collar, and threw him out of the room.

Luke landed with an oomph, wincing at the bruises he could feel forming on his back, then sat up quickly. "Hey! What—"

He cut himself off. The door had already slammed shut behind him.

For perhaps the first time since his rebirth as Darth Vader, he was grateful for his respirator. It kept his breathing in sync and repetitive and unsuspicious; without it, the Emperor would have been able to tell his state of panic just by his ragged breaths.

When he deigned to answer the call, that was.

Sith Lords did not fidget, but that was the best word to describe what Vader did as he waited for the call the connect. He'd half thought his heart would stop when the alert came through that the Emperor was making contact, and Luke had taken far too long to disconnect the call, and now it seemed like the Emperor was trying to keep Vader waiting as well.

He tried to calm his raging emotions enough that Palpatine wouldn't pick up on anything out of the ordinary, but it was hard, with Luke lying dazed on the floor outside and the memory of him telling his kidnappers that he loved them still ringing in his ears.

It did not help when Ahsoka chose that moment to make her appearance as well.

She was in the room, just outside of the range of the holocall. The faint blue light she emitted did little to illuminate the place, but it was enough to see her giving him a sardonic thumbs up with extreme clarity.

He shook his head, building up his shields and purging all thoughts of Luke and Ahsoka from his mind. The Emperor couldn't know—

"Looks like your equipment's malfunctioning, Skyguy," Ahsoka observed with a cheer she could only have learned from Obi-Wan. "I've never seen a call take this long to connect before."

"The Emperor is punishing me for being tardy," he growled out.

"Oh?"

"I didn't answer fast enough the first time he contacted me, so now he's returning the favour."

"I see," Ahsoka said. "Why do you put up with this guy again?"

"He is my Master," Vader said, slightly affronted, then— "And he has the power to save Luke from death. I need him to teach it to me."

"Uh huh," she said. "So, you're gonna what? Just ask him to teach you something you haven't shown an interest in for seventeen years and hope he doesn't get suspicious?" She paused. "Or are you going to tell him about Luke?" There was a lot more worry in her voice, now.

"If he found out about Luke and his power, he would just try to use him. Either as an Inquisitor or. . ." He hesitated. "Luke wouldn't survive the amount of brutality the Inquisitors are subject to."

"You mean you subject the Inquisitors to," Ahsoka corrected, then she narrowed her eyes. "And what was the other thing Palpatine would do?"

"He would try to use Luke as a replacement apprentice," Vader said quietly, "and make him kill me."

"Oh." The word was so expressive, so passionate, so Ahsoka that Vader was left stunned for a moment.

Then the moment passed, and Ahsoka was smirking at him again, and a familiar ire was rising in his throat. "So, your brilliant plan is to be subtle?" She scoffed. "That's not exactly your strong point, Master."

"Perhaps," he admitted grudgingly, "but it will work. It has to."

"Perhaps," Ahsoka countered, imitating his deep voice when she said it. He scowled under the mask. "Or, you could just save Luke by doing what the Force wants and turning back to the Light."

He jabbed a finger at her. "The Light Side is weak. Only the Dark Side has the strength necessary to save Pad— to save Luke."

She gave a wry smile, but he was surprised at the amount of sadness in it. "How could I argue with that?" she asked. "After all, it worked so well the last time, didn't it?"

And before Vader could come up with a counter to that jibe—before he could even breathe after it—the hologram flickered on, and Ahsoka disappeared.

Vader hastily lowered himself to one knee as the Emperor's massive head materialised in front of him. "Master."

"Lord Vader," Palpatine replied, his voice impossible to read. "Rise, my old friend." Vader did so. "I trust I didn't keep you waiting too long?"

Vader shook his head. "No, my Master."

"I'm curious," the Emperor said anyway, leaning forward, "who were you in contact with when I first tried to reach you?"

The words stuck in his throat, but eventually Vader got out, "Director Krennic contacted me to discuss his project."

"Again? He is getting arrogant," Palpatine mused, but it didn't fool either of them. His Master knew he was lying.

But it would probably come to nothing. Treachery was the way of the Sith; the Emperor would probably assume that Vader was attempting to organise a coup against him. A matter that would be dealt with later, when he had the full pleasure of watching all of Vader's carefully laid plans crumble around him.

The silence dragged on for too long, so Vader said, words stilted, as if they had to be pried out of him, "What is thy bidding, my master?"

"I have sensed a disturbance in the Force," he said, and for a moment Vader's heart leapt—not Luke, he can't have sensed Luke— before he continued, "I would like you to investigate it."

"What would you have me do?"

"Go to the Lothal sector," he commanded. " Grand Admiral Thrawn is expecting you in a week. Observe his progress. I believe the Rebels causing trouble in that sector are responsible for this disturbance, and I want to see how he handles the threat. Ensure Thrawn survives it, if you can. He's a useful asset to the Empire."

"Of course, Master."

"The Force is shifting towards the Light," Palpatine murmured. "My vision is. . . clouded. Something monumental is coming." He turned his burning gaze back on Vader. "I can only hope you prove up to the task, Apprentice."

"You have trained me well, Master." Vader bowed his head to hide the calculation on his face at his next words, as if he wasn't wearing a mask anyway: "But I fear I will need more training to become the true Sith Lord you told me I could be." You promised me I could be. The power I could have.

I will need more training to get the power to save my son.

Vader knew his. . . obsequience. . . was as likely to attract Palpatine's notice as a direct statement, but Palpatine already thought he was planning a coup. Allowing the man to know that Vader sought more power in the Dark Side would only help with that notion.

But his Master wasn't stupid. He wouldn't let Vader get all the power at once. "All in good time, Apprentice," he promised darkly. Vader half expected him to start cackling. "Soon, you'll get the power you were promised. Until then, to Lothal."

The hologram winked out.

Vader suppressed a sigh, and turned to exit the room. When he did, he found Luke seated cross-legged on the floor, scowling fiercely at him.

"Why'd you have to—"

"Get back to your room," Vader said, and his tone brooked no argument. Luke looked sullen, but didn't argue; considering it was the start of the night cycle already, he'd probably expected this. "Now."

He said sardonically, "Why of course, Father mine," and even affected a small bow to go with it, but was scurrying off before Vader's swat got anywhere near him.

Obi-Wan was worried about Luke. That in itself was not unusual. Obi-Wan had spent the last seventeen years worrying about Luke Skywalker.

But instead of a slight ache in his chest, brought by either a sense of unease from the Force or old-fashioned paranoia, this was a sharp sort of worry, one that he couldn't dismiss with a quick meditation session, growing more and more intense as the days wore on. The closest to panicking that the vaunted Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi had ever come.

Luke Skywalker was missing.

It wasn't unheard of for Luke to runaway. He'd done in several times before, back when he was much younger and more naive, and he'd been forced back home purely by lack of decent transport, hunger, sandstorms and family friends who'd recognised him and sighed. But this was different.

Even without taking into account the fact that Luke hadn't packed any clothes, the speeder was still in the garage, and no one had reported a scrawny, underage boy in any of the major ports of Tatooine, Luke wouldn't have run away. Obi-Wan had promised to teach him the Jedi mind tricks the next day; while Luke hadn't exactly. . . approved. . . of the morality of them, he was always excited to learn more about the Force. He would've been there at their daily lessons, on time, practically bubbling with enthusiasm.

He reminded him so much of Anakin sometimes. . .

Something very strange was going on here, and Obi-Wan had meditated on it extensively, no matter that his ill-advised attachment had made his judgement. . . clouded, and the Force hard to read. It didn't feel like the Dark Side; indeed, Luke's disappearance felt ordained by the Force itself, and the Light Side of it at that. As a Jedi, as a Master who'd sent out that very message to all surviving Jedi at the end of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan knew he should trust the Force.

But in order to achieve the full level of enlightenment Qui-Gon spoke of, Obi-Wan would have to release all attachments. And he was very much attached.

He sighed as he sensed the Force presence of Owen Lars come closer and closer. He'd been tracking him here from the moment he was in range, awaiting his arrival with the sort of dread and morbid anticipation of a man on death row.

Owen had always disliked him, but it had been courteous at first. Before that incident with the Skyhopper parts and the Jawas when Luke was nine, when Owen had made the hour-long trip to Ob-Wan's front door just to shout in his face that the Lars family wanted nothing to do with the trouble he brought. Since then, relations with the Larses had been. . . strained, to say the least.

They'd almost reached breaking point when he'd insisted Luke be trained, just after Ahsoka died. Owen had been apoplectic at the mere idea; his fury when he found out Obi-Wan had told Luke about the Jedi and stoked his boyish imagination until he would've sneaked out to train with or without his uncle's consent couldn't be described by mere words.

Owen had never really permitted Luke to train with Obi-Wan, nor had he ever approved of Luke being given Anakin's old lightsaber, but he had let him continue, if only by not commenting when he chose to spend his precious free time out by the Jundland Wastes instead of in Tosche Station with his friends.

And ever since Luke had disappeared. . .

Well, the anger bordering on hatred Owen radiated as Obi-Wan answered the door was an adequate example of how things had gone since then.

"For the last time, Owen," Obi-Wan said, before the man could get a word out, "I don't know where Luke's gone, I am searching for him, and I will contact you the moment I find him."

Owen ignored him "I've had enough of your lies, Kenobi!" he shouted. "Luke just contacted us. We don't know where he is, but we know he's safe."

Obi-Wan relaxed slightly, despite how unbelievable the rest of this situation was. "Good. I—"

"And I want you to tell me the truth now, old man," Owen continued, voice getting more and more heated. "None of your lies and half-truths; you're not the Negotiator here. This is about my nephew, who I raised, and the step-brother you told me was dead!"

Obi-Wan went cold at the mention of Anakin. Oh, no, he begged silently, Force, please no.

"So tell me, Kenobi," there was a mad spark to Owen's eye, eerily calm in his rage, "what did Luke mean when he said he was with his father?"

Luke woke the next day to the sight of red-tinted light streaming through the window of his room, and a tickle in his throat. He coughed harshly until the feeling receded, then glared at the dust motes he could see drifting about the room. They must've been at fault for it.

He yawned, and stretched his arms as far as he could reach. He felt groggy, lethargic in a way that he hadn't felt in years, since the first and only time he'd been ill enough for Uncle Owen to let him forego his chores and sleep in.

Sleeping in—that was it. Luke was used to being up at the crack of dawn every day, sometimes even before the second sun had risen, in order to get his chores and schoolwork done. Since he'd come to Mustafar and been injured, his father seemed insistent on making sure he get enough sleep to recover.

It was. . . odd, waking up on his own accord instead of to Aunt Beru's prodding.

He groaned to himself, and rolled over, until he was lying on the edge of the bed. He could see the floor from here, if he cracked his eyes open, the thin layer of dust covering it. . .

He reached out an arm from under the covers, goosebumps prickling along his skin from the cold air, and drew a line in the dust.

Funny how there should be dust in Vader's castle, Luke mused as he lightly brushed his finger along the floor. It made sense—it was a big castle, after all, and there were only so many places droids could cover—but he had to wonder what it did to the many, many droids and ships and various other pieces of machinery that his father had proven himself to have, let alone Vader's respirator itself. Wouldn't it clog up, or something?

Mind wandering away from the image of his father having to cough, instead of the constant, grinding rasp of his respirator, Luke glanced back down at the floor. He'd sketched a seemingly random bunch of lines; he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes slightly, drawing an arch, then two circles, a triangle. . .

He stifled a snort. He'd drawn a bad caricature of Vader, more like a child's scribble really, with a triangle and circle for a head, sticks for legs, and hands planted firmly on his hips. The way he looked when he was about to give him a lecture.

"Not the most mature of tasks, young one," a voice said, amused.

Luke almost fell out of the bed. With a yelp, he sat up to see his father standing in the room, helmet tilted towards the drawings. "I—"

"I came when I sensed you were awake," Vader said. "You know, if you wanted to draw, I do own several styluses for when I have to fill out forms on flimsi."

"I—" Luke tried again, then flushed red. "So long as it's an ink stylus," he quipped. "I've heard horror stories about blood styluses."

"Indeed."

Fortunately, Vader seemed to be done with teasing him about that, and just waved his hand at the end of the bed. "The clothes I commissioned for you have arrived, and your bedroom is prepared. Once you're dressed, I will move you there."

Luke frowned. "My bedroom?"

"Of course." Vader seemed surprised he had to clarify. "These are my manservant's rooms. You were only using them as long as it took him to arrange your quarters."

Oh. "And where has your manservant been sleeping in the meantime?"

Vader didn't answer that; Luke felt a brief stab of guilt for stealing the man's bed.

"I'll be gone as soon as possible, then," he said, flinging back to covers and jumping to his feet. The floor was cold against his bare skin, but he ignored it as he studied the clothes someone—Vader? That would be a sight to see—had laid out.

Honestly, they didn't look that different to the uniforms he'd been wearing so far. The same shade of harsh black, the same general cut, except the fabric was much easier to move in, the Imperial insignia was gone, and there was a small black cape that came with it.

He threw Vader a look when he saw that particular accessory, but his father didn't seem to notice.

"Come," he said. "I'll show you to your new quarters."

Luke raised his eyebrows, but picked up the cape and tossed it over his arm. He wasn't going to actually wear it. That would be ridiculous—

Reflexively, he glanced around the room to check if he'd left anything behind, before berating himself. He didn't have anything; the only thing he'd brought with him was his lightsaber, and his father had that.

He jogged to catch up with him.

If Luke's—no, Vader's manservant's—quarters had been close to the Dark Lord's—probably because the man had to always be on hand to serve him, he mused—then Luke was surprised at how close his were. They were practically next door, wide and spacious, with what looked like multiple rooms inside one complex.

What. . .

Luke couldn't help himself: he wandered forward, and drifted round the room as if caught in a breeze. Random things seemed to catch his eye: the pattern on the carpet, a painting of Tatooine's twin suns hung on the west wall, a couple of plants sitting on the windowsill.

And the windows. They covered half the room, made of a thick, thick glass, showing off the fiery landscape of Mustafar in all its dramatic glory. Looking at it like this, Luke could almost see why his father had chosen this spot as his base. The view was spectacular.

Speaking of his father. . .

Luke glanced over his shoulder. Vader had hung back in the doorway, watching him. He almost seemed nervous, and although Luke knew there was no way he could tell, he seemed to meet trying to meet Luke's eye.

Luke let him, and gave him a small smile, watching some sort of tension sag out of his father's shoulders.

Then he went to the nearest door, hit the button to open it, and peered inside.

It was a refresher. Other than that, there was nothing particularly interesting about it, beyond the fact that the shower stall seemed to have a setting for sonic and water. Luke couldn't contain his grin at that, although the thought of using water to wash was a strange one.

He closed that door, then looked in the other. While the main room seemed to have been designed as a training room, with a sofa or two loaded with cushions overlooking the view, this one was a proper bedroom. The queen-sized double bed jutted out from one wall, and even if Luke had just woken up, it looked extremely inviting.

He shut the door quickly. "What is all this?"

Vader moved to cross his arms, almost defensively. "I already told you. Your rooms."

"But—" He shook his head. "Were these here before?"

"No. Vaneé," that must be the manservant's name, "has been getting them put together the past week you've been here. It was originally a training room of mine, hence why it's so close to my quarters."

Luke looked up at him sceptically. "You can't throw together the plumbing needed to build a refresher in a guest room on a moment's whim."

"No," Vader conceded, "but when the castle was first built, this was supposed to be a suite for visiting dignitaries. One time one such dignitary annoyed me enough that I. . . removed him from the premises, and swore to never accept diplomats into here again. Training rooms are so much more useful."

Luke cocked his head; hair fell across his face. "You mean you killed him."

". . .yes."

Luke just gave him his I'm-disappointed-in-you look.

Vader waved his hand towards one of the doors he hadn't opened. "You're probably hungry, Luke. Go in there and eat."

"Eat?" Now that he thought about it, he was hungry—he hadn't eaten since he'd arrived, he thought, other than whatever random snacks he'd been offered when they were training. True, he'd been fed nutrients through a sustenance tube, but. . .

"You weren't supposed to eat too much too soon after the operation or it could cause complications," Vader said, "so I assume you're starving. You need to eat."

Luke wasn't about to disagree, so with a frown, he approached the door and opened it.

The room was essentially a small library, with shelf after shelf of datapads and datareaders and datachips. But in the middle was a small table, and it was laden with food.

His mouth watered at the sight of it.

Even so, he made a point to look around the room before he sat down and dug in. From the labels he could read, there seemed to be a massive range of interests represented here, everything from astronavigation to xenobiology to ancient Core World literature—presumably because Vaneé hadn't known what sort of topic interested Luke personally.

He turned when a splat of noise came out of Vader's vocoder—something between a scoff and a sigh.

"Sit down and eat, Luke," his father said flatly. "You need your strength."

Slowly, Luke sat himself down on the chair and picked up the utensils. There was some sort of green vegetable he'd never seen before, a tender steak that was slightly browner than the bantha steaks he was used to, and he poked at them both warily. Vader made another sound that sounded like a laugh.

At least there was flatbread. That he recognised, as well as the glass of water sitting next to the plate.

So he went for the flatbread first, then tentatively cut off a corner of the steak and tried it. It was nice, which was probably the only thing that gave him the courage to try the vegetables.

As he ate, Vader lowered himself into the chair opposite and talked.

"We need to discuss something that I've been putting off for too long," he began, and Luke slowly raised his eyes to look at him. There was something menacing about those words.

"Your birthday is Empire Day, correct?"

Luke's eyebrows shot up at the benign question, but he nodded. "Yeah, roundabout then. The calendar's slightly different on Tatooine, and Aunt Beru said they didn't adopt me until a few days after I was born, but we think it was Empire Day."

Vader nodded, carefully ignoring the mention of his aunt. "Empire Day was when Padmé died, yes."

Luke blinked. Oh.

"So your eighteenth birthday will be in three months," Vader said.

Luke frowned. Was that what this was all about? "I'm not going to die, Father."

Vader turned on him with unexpected ferocity. "I am not willing to risk it!" Luke flinched back, and his father was silent for a few cycles of his respirator before he continued, "I have been told by a person I trust that you will die, and I will not let that happen. You need to become more powerful, more—" He broke off.

Luke was watching him. He said, impossibly gently, "I'm not going to turn to the Dark Side."

Vader was silent again for a few moments. When he spoke, his voice was tight and menacing.

"We shall see, my son," he said. "We shall see."

Chapter Text

Once Luke was finished eating, Vader left, claiming he had "important paperwork to do." Personally, Luke thought that being the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy should be more interesting than his father made out.

They'd agreed on a time for a training session later, but until then, Luke had several hours to kill and a whole load of datapads to read—and an especially interesting one about the advantages and disadvantages of different types of starfighters. . .

At first, he tried taking them to the main room to read on the sofa, in front of the spectacular view of the surface of Mustafar. But that selfsame view eventually proved to be too distracting, and as much as he enjoyed watching the lava streams break again the land, he did want to read this manual, so he retreated to the library.

When he came out, he was in for a surprise.

While he'd been in the study, someone had delivered a pile of broken droids parts into the main room—Luke recognised them as what was left of one of the droids he'd seen Vader destroy earlier—with a toolbox sitting next to them and a note attached to it.

You said you could improve the droids. Prove it.

Luke grinned, and got to work.

"Remember to use the Force to bolster your movements, you should be able to use it as easily during combat as any other time, use it to catch your opponent off guard, distract them—"

"Like you're trying to do to me now?" Luke asked, pushing back against Vader's attack with his cobalt blade and having to retreat a step.

Vader scoffed. "I have no use for such petty tricks."

"No," Luke panted, "I'm sure you—"

He ducked as the angry red lightsaber crashed toward his torso again, flipped over his father's head and turned to strike—

"—don't."

His father parried his attack with ease. "Stay focused, and they won't work."

"Are you calling me—" Luke grunted as Vader used his momentary distraction to knock the lightsaber out of his hand.

"Case in point, young one," his father said. Luke scowled up at him; he could've sworn he was smiling. "Now, surrender."

Instead of dignifying that with a response, Luke flung his hand out to summon one of the training droids' lightsabers to hand. It landed squarely in his palm; he lit it without hesitation, the hum of the crimson beam somehow less bloodthirsty than Vader's, and charged.

The fight only lasted another five minutes before he was disarmed again, but that was five minutes longer than it would've lasted. Luke thought he did pretty well, all in all.

"That's enough for today," Vader said, extinguishing his lightsaber. Luke looked up at him, panting, keenly aware of the sweat soaking his hair and forehead and arms. "We've been at this for hours."

Luke nodded, still gasping for air. "Okay. Will we do this tomorrow, or. . ."

"Actually," Vader said delicately—Luke took notice of that; there was very little that a person with as menacing a voice as Darth Vader could or would say 'delicately'—"I've been ordered by my Master to go to the Lothal sector. I leave tomorrow morning."

"Oh." Luke pressed his lips together, unsure what to say.

Vader's helmet tilted to look down at him. "I'll be back within a week, son. You'll be perfectly safe here. Vaneé will make sure you're fed, and you can exercise in your rooms, work on the droid, read the datapads. You'll be fine."

Luke forced a small smile, "I know I'll be."

His father's hand landed on his shoulder, a solid weight and anchor. It didn't quite chase away the coldness in his bones, but it certainly helped.

As Vader keyed in the code to open the door, Luke threw a glance around the room. There—the lightsaber he'd summoned from the droid had rolled to a stop near to where he'd dumped the cape his father insisted he wear.

Under the guise of going to retrieve the garment, Luke slipped the lightsaber under his shirt and hid the incriminating bulge with the cloak.

Then he followed after his father.

His father left the next day. Luke was there on the landing pad to see him off—he didn't know which of them was more surprised when he suddenly hugged Vader tightly, and Vader hugged him back.

He stayed to watch the Lambda-class shuttle leave, and long after it'd broke atmosphere.

When he was wandering back up to his rooms, however, he glimpsed the silhouette of a man vanishing round a corner.

Luke jogged to catch up with him. "Wait! Are you Vaneé?"

The man paused, then turned to look at him. It was the man Luke had seen on the day he woke up, who'd stopped him from running away from Vader.

He skidded to a halt in front of him. "I just wanted to thank you," he gasped out, "for arranging my rooms. They're lovely. And to apologise for kicking you out of yours."

Vaneé blinked once, twice. Then he said, in a voice hoarse from age, "Of course, sir."

Then he walked away, and Luke was left standing there for a moment before he had to return to his quarters.

Perhaps it was wrong of him, but he didn't even wait until his father had been gone an hour to pry the lightsaber he'd filched out from where he'd hidden it between two shelves in the library.

There was something about the lightsaber that he'd felt during the duel, and he could sense it now, almost like—

"You can feel the crystal's song, can't you?"

Luke whirled, heart hammering in his chest, only for his breath to stick in his throat.

Standing between the sofa and the window was a Togrutan woman, her lekku striped with dark blue and white patterns. That wasn't what caught his attention.

What caught his attention was that she was glowing.

"You're a ghost," he realised aloud.

She smiled slightly, but nodded. "Yes. My name is Ahsoka Tano. I—"

"You were my father's apprentice," Luke said, eyes blowing wide. "Ben told me stories about you." He paused, trying to remember. "He said you were reckless." That was a point that had come up a lot—mainly in the form don't you dare copy her, Luke Skywalker, or Owen will have my head.

"He's not wrong," Ahsoka admitted, "but I'm not here to talk about myself. I came to—"

"Wait." The realisation hit him at a thousand klicks an hour. "Are you the one who said I'm going to die?"

Ahsoka tilted her head. "Anakin told you about that?"

Ignoring her use of the name Anakin—he'd accepted that Vader was his father, but reconciling Anakin Skywalker with Darth Vader was still proving to be quite the challenge—he nodded. "I thought he was hallucinating."

She snorted. "Honestly? I'd think that as well. But he wasn't. And you are going to die on your eighteenth birthday, if your father doesn't turn back to the Light."

"If he doesn't turn back to the Light?" Luke queried. Ahsoka nodded, and he scoffed. "So he's been preaching at me to turn to the Dark Side in order to survive, when we can avoid all of this mess so long as he just stops killing people?"

Ahsoka said it simply—almost sweetly. "Yes."

Luke sucked in a breath. "Why is he so—"

"Difficult?"

"Yeah."

They exchanged a look, and laughed.

"Luke," Ahsoka said after they calmed down, "Anakin won't listen to me. He didn't listen to Obi-Wan. He didn't listen to Padmé. You need to make him listen to you. Get him to turn back to the Light Side of the Force, or you will die, and the galaxy will suffer."

"What makes you think I can do it, when nobody else has been able to?" he asked, aware of how tired he sounded. He was tired—it was difficult enough maintaining his own grasp on the Light Side when surrounded by the negativity that was this planet, let alone trying to pull his father with him.

"You're his son," Ahsoka said simply. "Family means everything to him." There was a pause. "Don't you believe he can be saved?"

Luke paused himself, and had to look away as he said, "I do." Then, with a wry smile, "I suppose I'll have to try."

"Do or do not, there is no try," Ahsoka corrected, but she was smiling too. "Good." More seriously, she asked, "You're sure you're up to it?"

He was scared by the idea, remembering all too well what his father's rage looked like—he clutched the lightsaber closer to his chest at the thought of it—but he nodded. "I'm sure." Then, looking down at the lightsaber and in a desperate attempt to change the subject, he asked, "What did you say about the lightsaber, again?"

"That you can feel the crystal's song."

He nodded. "Right, but—what does that mean?"

Ahsoka frowned in thought, then took a seat on the sofa. As she started speaking, Luke wandered round to sit on the other side of it, listening intently.

"I assume Obi-Wan taught you about how each Jedi has a kyber crystal in their lightsaber, and that they are chosen by the crystal, not the other way around?" He nodded. "If you can hear a crystal singing to you, then that's your crystal."

Brows furrowed, Luke glanced down at the lightsaber. "You mean. . . this is my crystal? In the lightsaber? But it's been corrupted." He switched the saber on the demonstrate, pointed the emitter away from either of them, and winced when the red blade shot out. "And—it's in pain."

Ahsoka nodded. "That crystal was in an Inquisitor's lightsaber before they died, and Vader took the lightsaber," she explained. "Inquisitors are Dark Side Force users who serve the Emperor by hunting down Jedi, and they don't bother trying to find their individual kyber crystal. They just claim whatever crystals they can find, pillage what little was left of Ilum, and your crystal must have been found before you could find it. And now," she waved her hand towards it, "here it is."

His hand clenched around the lightsaber hilt, remembering the moment—a moment of instinct more than intelligence—that led to him summoning it to his hand. He'd barely thought about it; it had seemed so natural.

He took a deep breath, trying to clear his mind of the mournful song his crystal was singing. "How—" He took another breath. "How do I make it stop hurting?"

The look on Ahsoka's face was infinitely compassionate, gentle, sympathetic. She reached for her waist, only to grasp at thin air. She dropped her hand again.

"The Sith corrupt their crystals by pouring all their hate and anger into them until they bleed," she explained, "but it's possible to reverse the change by doing the opposite, and showing them peace and harmony and joy again. My last pair of lightsabers were made with redeemed crystals which I obtained from an Inquisitor."

Luke grasped the hilt again. "So if I do this," he closed his eyes and focused on a sense of joyous calm, feeling it seep into his surroundings, "the crystal will stop hurting?"

It did feel somewhat calmer, less agonised—when he switched it on, it was slightly pinker.

"Yes," Ahsoka said. "Only more focused, or for a longer stretch of time."

Luke nodded. "I'll keep doing it later."

"And I'll visit you again later as well," Ahsoka said. Luke blinked—she was growing dimmer and dimmer, until he could barely see her. "I need to go, now, but one last thing: Obi-Wan is worried about you."

At the mention of his teacher's name, Luke closed his eyes, reflexively reaching into their master-student bond. He couldn't feel anything; he was too far away. "I know."

"You should comm him as soon as possible."

"I will."

"Then may the Force be with you, Luke," she said, "and good luck with your father."

When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.

He was working on the droids Vader had given him, mulling over what Ahsoka had said, when he found the ink stylus his father had left in the toolbox.

His smile didn't fade for a long, long time.

After forty-eight hours in hyperspace aboard the Devastator, Vader finally arrived in the system where Thrawn had docked his fleet—just in time to see one of the ships explode.

When he met with Thrawn, the Chiss admiral seemed unfazed, but his escort certainly was not.

"Admiral," Vader growled, already hating the man and this ship and these Rebels and his master for sending him out here. He just wanted to be back on Mustafar, with Luke. "What is the meaning of this disaster?"

Someone was going to die today, and Vader didn't much care who.

It wasn't until the three days had passed that Luke actually built up the courage to sneak out of his rooms and into the castle proper.

Three days of meditating, of carefully tracking Vaneé's—oddly lacking; was he trained to shield?—presence in the Force, until he was sure he knew that man's daily routine. The droids wouldn't question it if an organic walked past them, but Vaneé certainly might.

Then, certain he knew the way to the holocall suite and back, he snuck out of his room in the dead of night, when Vaneé was asleep, the lightsaber he'd stolen clipped to his belt for good luck.

He'd been working on purifying it. He hadn't quite got there yet—it was an uphill battle, especially on Mustafar—but he was close. Ahsoka estimated perhaps one more day, then he would be able to rebuild the lightsaber hilt into one that fit his fighting style better.

Even today, he'd been sure to take the time to meditate before the sun set, to keep helping pull his crystal back towards the light. It felt like a good luck charm as he crept along the hallways, making sure not to cause too much noise.

He didn't seem to, and his memory served him well—he found the holocall suite soon enough. What was slightly tougher was remembering the code to open the door, but after a few missed tries, the light flashed green and the door hissed open. He ducked inside quickly.

For a moment the room was dark after the door closed, then the lights came on and the comm system whirred to life. He eyed the keypad, quickly running the frequency through his head.

Ben had been sure to impress on him at the start of his training that this frequency was to be used in emergencies only. Luke hadn't even been supposed to know it, but Old Ben Kenobi didn't have any other comlink in case the signal could be tracked, and Ben wanted to make sure that there was always a line of communication available between them if the Force failed.

So Luke was careful as he typed out the numbers, the individual chimes of the keypad strange and unfamiliar to his ears. He'd never had cause to use it before.

The comm rung, and rung, until—surprisingly quickly, if Luke was being honest—the blue light coalesced into a familiar figure.

"Bail, thank the Force you commed back, I need to—" He broke himself off when he saw him. "Luke?"

Luke didn't realise he was smiling until his cheeks were aching. "Hey, Ben." In the stunned pause that followed, he asked idly, "Who's Bail?"

Ben shook his head. "One of the only three people in the galaxy who knows to contact me on this number. I was expecting him to call— Never mind." His voice turned stern. "Luke, where are you?"

Luke bit his lip, and countered with, "Why did you tell me my father was dead?"

Ben sighed. "So you are with him," he said tiredly. "Luke, where did you go? Why?"

"I didn't exactly choose to!" he snapped. "All I do is go to sleep on Tatooine and when I wake up I'm—" He bit his tongue just in time, but Ben was already on alert.

"You're where?" he asked. "Luke, you have to—"

"I don't have to do anything. You lied to me, Ben." His throat tightened as he said it.

"And I'm sorry," Ben said emphatically. "I'm sorry that it was necessary. But it was necessary, and it was necessary for a reason, and that reason still stands today. Vader will kill you, Luke."

"My father won't—"

"He's not your father," Ben whispered. "Anakin died, was killed by Darth Vader. Betrayed and murdered by him. He's more machine than man, now, and he is not your father. He'll kill you."

"He won't—"

"You mean to tell me he hasn't hurt you already?" Ben asked, his scepticism obvious in his voice.

Luke opened his mouth to say no, no he hadn't, but then the memory of being choked came to mind, the red clouding his vision, the agony in his throat and desperate breaths that had no air in them—

"He—" didn't know it was me, Luke wanted to say, but that was pathetic.

"I'm not as helpless as you think," he said fiercely instead. "And I'm not alone. Ahsoka's with me."

"Ahsoka?" The word was incredulous. "Luke, Ahsoka's dead. Vader killed her eighteen months ago."

Everything stuttered to a halt.

"What?" His father had killed Ahsoka, a person who clearly cared about—even loved—him? "Father killed Ahsoka?"

She hadn't mentioned that.

"He killed Ahsoka," Ben reaffirmed. "He killed Padmé. He tried to kill me on Mustafar, all those years ago." Luke really hoped he didn't notice the way he flinched at the name of the planet. "He'll kill you too. You need to get out of here."

Luke shook his head. "I can't leave," he said. "Ben, the Force brought me here to save my father. I won't leave."

His teacher was silent for a few moments. "The Force brought you there?" he asked. "Where did you learn that?"

"Ahsoka." Unconsciously, Luke's hand went to wrap around the lightsaber at his waist. "She's a ghost, now—she retained her consciousness after death. She said the Force brought me here to make my father turn back to the Light, giving him an ultimatum."

Ben's face drained of colour, and Luke regretted using that word. "Ultimatum?" he asked, voice tight. "What ultimatum?"

Luke swallowed. "If he doesn't turn back to the Light by my eighteenth birthday," he said quietly, "I die."

Ben closed his eyes, and the look of utmost resignation on his face broke Luke's heart. "Oh."

"So, I can't leave. I have to save him."

"You can't save him."

"I have to try."

Eyes still closed, Ben quirked a smile. "Do or do not, there is no try," he quoted.

Luke nodded. "Then I will," he promised. "I will save him. You have my word, Ben."

The man still didn't open his eyes when he said, "I suppose you have to go now."

"I don't want Father's manservant to wake up and realise I've hacked into his comm system," he said apologetically. "But. . . may the Force be with you, Ben. And—" He paused, taking a deep breath. "I love you."

Ben actually opened his eyes at that—they were shining with tears.

Luke had heard him speak wistfully about the Clone Wars and the Jedi, recite tales of Anakin and Ahsoka and Rex and Cody, seen the way Ben looked at him like he was the second coming of his father, and he had felt all the sorrow that came with that.

But he had never seen his Master cry.

So he was left with a sort of awe as a tear slid down Ben's cheek. The man didn't wipe it away as he lifted his chin and said, "And I love you, Luke. I never said it to Anakin, not when I should have. I'm not going to repeat that mistake, so I'm telling you now: I love you, little one. Even if I don't agree with you, you've made me prouder than I can say."

Luke couldn't speak now for the tears clogging his throat, blurring his eyes. He didn't need to—Ben clicked off the comms for him.

But he stayed in that dark room for a long time, staring where the hologram of his Master had hovered.

And it was there and then, still drunk of the sensation of pure, unselfish love, that he unclipped the lightsaber from his belt and poured that love into the crystal inside it, his optimism, hope for the future, the joy he felt at just being alive and knowing the wonderful people he knew, who loved him as much as he loved them.

When he was done, and there was no more emotion to pour—empty, like a cup to be filled—he brushed the Force and dissembled the lightsaber, the individual parts floating into the air around him.

At the centre of it all, his kyber crystal shone like a miniature star: painless and happy and alive.

Chapter Text

His father returned a few days later. Luke was in the middle of working on the droids when the door hissed open to reveal the massive form of Darth Vader standing there.

For a moment, stand there was all he did, then he cleared his throat and said slowly, "I. . . had hoped to see you on the landing platform, young one."

Luke blinked. "I'm sorry. I was so caught up with," he waved his hand at the droid, "everything that I didn't sense you until just now."

Something that sounded like a scoff burst out of Vader's vocoder, and Luke had the funny feeling his father was smiling at him. "I cannot say I am surprised." He turned to take in the work Luke had done over the past few days—several droids were half-intact, scattered around the room—only for his gaze to freeze on one of the walls.

Luke turned to see what he was looking at— Oh.

He scratched the back of his neck, grimacing when he got oil smeared all down his skin with the motion. "You gave me the stylus for a reason," he argued.

"Indeed I did." Vader still sounded amused. "This is not what I had in mind, however. Defacing the walls. . ."

"They are not defaced," Luke insisted, a touch of ire in his voice. He had worked hard on the myriad of doodles that one of the walls was now covered from top to bottom in—did Vader really think Luke could have reached high enough to draw those starfighters along the top without putting a hell of a lot of time and effort into levitating himself up there? "They are improved."

"From a certain point of view," Vader said dryly, in a mock-Coruscanti accent, and for a moment Luke could've sworn he sounded exactly like Ben.

Then the moment passed, and his father seemed to realise what he'd done.

He said stiffly, "Of course, I personally agree that the designs are preferable to a blank wall."

Luke nodded. "Ahsoka did as well. Oh yeah—I spoke to the ghost of your dead apprentice while you were away."

For a moment, Luke could've sworn his father had stopped breathing. "What."

"Yup." Luke popped the end of the word, a smirk creeping onto his face. "She told me a lot of stories about you and Ben."

Vader still hadn't moved—Luke would've thought he was a statue if it wasn't for the blinking lights of his life support. "What."

"Is it true you once raced each other to the doorstep of a B'omarr Monastery on Teth and she saved your life from a bunch of battle droids once you got there?"

Vader whirled on him then, a single figure jabbing in his direction. "Firstly, do not believe everything she says, young one: I was the first one there, and she by no means saved my life. Secondly, it is beneath you to engage in such childish gossip from unreliable sources."

Luke just crossed his legs where he was sitting on the floor. "Well then, I suppose I'd better hear the full story from you," he said innocently. "Just to get my facts straight."

An exasperated sigh spat out of Vader's vocoder, but to Luke's genuine surprise, his father waved them over to the sofa where he began methodically breaking down every detail of the mission, including the non-heroic parts in some misguided attempt to disillusion Luke from the excitement of it all.

"We were on Teth to rescue Jabba the Hutt's son, so as a resident of Tatooine I'm sure you can imagine how revolting that was. . ."

Mysteriously enough, the next morning another of the walls had been drawn on. The crude cartoon showed a young Togruta girl leaning against a tank and smirking, while a scowling human man stood surrounded by the wreckage of several blasted battle droids.

Vader was not amused, but at least Ahsoka liked it.

The days passed quickly after that, and quickly bled into weeks. Despite Vader's initial reluctance to tell stories, Luke incessant questioning and the fact that he knew full well Ahsoka would just fill Luke's head with a heavily fabricated version of events anyway eventually wore down his resolve. He even ended up enjoying the storytelling. Luke was a good listener.

That didn't mean Vader was all too thrilled when images of Asajj Ventress and (an anatomically incorrect) General Grievous joined the picture of him and Ahsoka.

But they sparred daily, and Vader found himself enjoying helping Luke add to Obi-Wan's teachings in the Force, as well.

That was exactly what they were doing one evening when the sun was just going down. The heavy layer of ash and clouds hanging over the planet meant the sun couldn't actually be seen, but the sky was lit up in red and yellow and black anyway, like the mirror image of the surface down below. The amber light suffused Luke's quarters with a homely, familiar warmth as he sat cross-legged on the floor, his eyes scrunched in concentration as sweat beaded on his forehead and an array of random objects—the stylus, a spanner, two springs and a handful of credit chips—orbited his head.

"Now try and move them simultaneously," Vader ordered, aware that he couldn't quite keep his pride out of his voice. Luke was progressing well. "Down to the floor, then back up again."

He felt a spike of challenge from the Force, a sheer determination on Luke's part to do this despite his obvious exhaustion. It had been a long day.

Moments passed, nothing happening. Then one of the springs dipped, followed by two credit chips, the other spring, then the stylus and spanner plummeted—Luke's hands twitched as though to catch them physically, and he barely stopped them before they hit the floor.

Luke took a deep breath, eyes still closed, and then the trembling items stilled, the still-hovering ones floating slowly down, then down—

Until Luke lost control of a credit chip.

After one fell, they all fell.

Luke hissed out a breath through his teeth, surprisingly potent anger and frustration rising in the Force, until he took a moment to breathe. It dissipated, leaving no trace it had ever been there.

Vader said disapprovingly, "Your anger is incredibly powerful. If you would only use it, it would help you."

Luke slanted him a look. "I'm not going to use the Dark Side, Father."

Vader sighed behind his mask. "It is the path to true power," he insisted, "you'll need it before—"

Luke stood up in one fluid motion, scattering the objects about the floor, and stood with his hands on his hips. It looked odd, a figure so much smaller than him glaring at him, but what Luke said distracted Vader from his amusement soon enough.

"You keep saying that, Father, but I'm hearing differently." He gestured with his right hand. "I was talking to Ahsoka—"

Nothing about that sentence boded well.

"—and she told me more about my supposedly imminent death, and why I was brought here. She said the Force gave you an ultimatum."

Unseen behind his mask, Vader closed his eyes. "Son, you don't—"

"Tell me the truth," Luke demanded. "If I die on my eighteenth birthday, will it be because you refused to turn back to the Light?"

Vader stubbornly refused to interpret the pain—betrayal—in Luke's voice, and instead barrelled on. "I am doing everything in my power to save you—"

"Except the one thing you know will work."

Vader opened his eyes again to look at his son. Luke was standing in a slightly defensive stance, hand clasped together in front of him, fingers fiddling, his chin raised and defiant. There was something suspiciously silver in his eyes, something that made the bottom fall out of Vader's stomach.

He'd seen people sob, scream, beg for mercy. But he hadn't seen anyone cry.

Not since—

Anakin, you're breaking my heart.

You're going down a path I can't follow.

Vader shook his head, but the ghostly echoes of Padmé's voice kept chasing him.

Please. . .come back to me.

"Enough!" he roared, and Luke flinched so badly he collapsed back against the sofa. For a moment, Vader stood there, a twinge of guilt twanging through him as the sheer terror in Luke's face—terror of him, the way she'd been terrified of him, at the very end—then he clenched his fists.

"Do not defy me, my son," he hissed. "I am doing everything that has a chance of working to save you. The Light Side is weak. It failed the galaxy, and it failed your mother, and I will not give it the opportunity to fail you as well. Turning back to the Light will do nothing but bring my Master's wrath down on our heads, and if that happens you will wish I had let you die instead."

He shook his head, whirled round in a dramatic sweep of his cape and started pacing. "The Dark Side is all there is. All there is. The galaxy is built on the suffering on innocents—it always has been, even during the reign of the Republic and the Jedi you so idolise—and the Light Side will do nothing against it." He looked sharply back at Luke. "I will not allow you to be another sufferer."

But Luke was shaking his head. For a moment, the gesture reminded him immensely of Padmé during their many, many political arguments when she heavily disapproved of his argument. She would almost always proceed to verbally eviscerate him, using all her skills as an orator and morality and logic to prove him wrong. Almost by habit, he braced himself for the onslaught—

Only to find none forthcoming.

Luke was just shaking his head.

"You're wrong, Father," he said softly. That was it: no argument, no reasoning. Just honest faith and belief suffused with an innate goodness, the likes of which a Sith planet such as Mustafar had likely never seen before. "I know you're wrong."

The strangest thing was, Luke's blind faith disabled any comeback just as effectively as Padmé's verbal eviscerations did, and Vader genuinely had no idea how to respond.

Time kept passing, and Luke would be lying if he said he hadn't noticed how his father's offers to join the Dark Side became fewer and farther between. Luke's counter offers, for his father to return to the Light instead, still fell on deaf ears, but he let nothing dissuade him.

Do or do not, there is no try. He'd told Ben he would do it, so he would do it.

Vader was talking again, this time about how important it was to keep track of your lightsaber, only he'd gone slightly off-topic and starting directly quoting Ben's speech, and recounting every single time Ben himself had lost his lightsaber and had had the speech quoted back at him. That quickly dissolved into examples of—perfectly reasonable!—situations where Anakin had lost his lightsaber, and it was during one of these that Luke's thoughts ground to a halt—and not just because of the ire radiating from his father.

"A group of bounty hunters," Vader said the words in exactly the same tone Uncle Owen said Sand People, or— or bounty hunters, come to think of it, "had locked down the Senate Rotunda and taken a group of senators hostage in order to free Ziro the Hutt." Luke could sense his ire rise at the mere thought of the Hutt, and that ire only rose exponentially at the next part: "Padmé was one of them."

"My mother?" Of course it was—Vader had already said that she had been Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo, but that was all he would ever say of her. "Could—" He swallowed and Vader stopped talking to look at him. "Could you tell me about her?"

Vader was silent for a moment, and Luke got the impression that in any other circumstance—any of circumstance—he would've been Force-choked just for mentioning her. But this wasn't any other circumstance.

This was a son asking after his mother, and Vader had already grown used to telling stories of better times.

Purely to keep Ahsoka from messing with the facts, of course, but who was to say Ahsoka's interpretations—viewed through the narrow lens of the Jedi—could be relied upon to tell about someone as important as Padmé?

So Vader said, "Of course. What do you want to know?"

Worlds spun before Luke's eyes, infinite possibilities and questions and answers. Everything.

The word came to his tongue—he wanted to know everything, more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life.

So that was what he asked for, and Vader was happy—at least, willing—to oblige him.

The chime of navicomputer woke Obi-Wan from his meditative trance, and he came to soon enough that he was in the cockpit of the freighter when the streaks turned to stars again, and the roiling lava planet of Mustafar took up half of the viewport.

"You're sure this is where you want to go?" the Twi'lek smuggler he'd hired asked sceptically, checking the scanners. "There's practically no life on the planet below—no life in this entire system, I'd wager."

Except that wasn't true, Obi-Wan could tell, because something was here. It was dim, cloaked by the cloistering darkness of the planet itself, but there was a nexus in that darkness—no, two nexuses, one light, one dark. The dark one was larger, thriving and writhing, even in its state of what Obi-Wan recognised as the Dark Side's version of a meditative trance.

Vader. It had to be.

Which meant the other one—

Obi-Wan reached out again, and nearly cried for joy. He hadn't been sure, when Owen had said that Luke had mentioned lava, even when Luke had flinched at the name during the comm conversation, even when the Force's sense for irony and Anakin's sense for drama supported his theory. He hadn't dared to be sure.

But Luke was down there. Asleep—his presence was calm and still in a way the boy could never be while awake—but he was there. Obi-Wan could feel it.

Which meant that he was done here.

He couldn't very well storm the planet in a piece-of-junk freighter with a reluctant pilot. He'd hired the smuggler to take him here, then take him back. He'd only come here to confirm what he already knew; now, his business here was concluded until next time.

Because he would be back.

Vader was never coming back to the Light, and Obi-Wan wasn't about to let Luke die because of his old student's failings—because of Obi-Wan's failings. He loved the boy too much for that.

"Uh, Ben?" the smuggler asked, her orange lekku twitching nervously. "I hope you're done here, because there's a ship showing up the scanners. A big ship." When he didn't answer, she glanced up at him. "Like, Star Destroyer big."

Because it was a Star Destroyer. As they'd moved round the planet's orbit, the tip of Vader's flagship on the other side of the planet had come into view, the shadow it cast onto the fiery surface dark and jagged.

"We need to get away before they notice us."

Obi-Wan finally moved at that. "Agreed," he said. He didn't want to raise Vader's suspicions if it wasn't necessary. "Back to Tatooine, then."

In the few minutes it took before they jumped to lightspeed, he did his best to push positive feelings towards Luke across their half-dormant training bond. It's alright, Luke, he promised. I'll get you out of there. Everything will turn out fine.

Then he was gone.

Luke woke up in an oddly good mood, distant whispers breaking against the back of his mind—everything will turn out fine—and he smiled. The Force felt. . . calm. . . today, in a way he hadn't sensed since he was on Tatooine, and a brief probe of his father's mind showed he was still in his meditative trance.

Now was as good a time as any to finish building his lightsaber. The Force was practically telling him to.

He knew he'd prepared the grip, and had all the parts he'd need—Ahsoka had told him so the previous day. So it was now, with the lights still dimmed during the night cycle and his father still in meditation, with that lingering sense of hope still clinging to him, that he sat cross-legged on the floor.

He could feel his kyber crystal like he felt the blood in his veins, could sense the outline of each of the components he'd either scavenged from the stolen lightsaber or crafted out of spare metal from the droids, and through the Force and fading memories of Ben's training, he could see the path, as clear as day, of how they would all fit together.

He brought his hands in front of him and clasped them together, feeling as much as hearing the components click into place before him.

He relaxed his grip on the saber, and felt the heavy metal cylinder topple into his lap. When he opened his eyes, it seemed prosaically unreal, glinting a dull grey in the dim light.

He lifted it into his right hand, weighing the way it felt against his palm. He'd based the design off his father's blue lightsaber, and Obi-Wan's, and Ahsoka had given him some hints and tips as well. . .

Nevertheless, he'd be lying if he said he hadn't been worried that the design wouldn't be right for him.

But it was. It fit perfectly in his hand, and for once Luke could see why Obi-Wan had put so much stock in emphasising that a lightsaber is an extension of your body. The kyber crystal—the blade—hummed with his every thought; he hadn't felt this in tune with anything since. . .

Since red and blood and warmth and pressed up against someone precious and dear, then cold and screaming and loss and pain and that someone being torn away and replaced by the stark loneliness of hyperspace.

It was more impression than memory—Luke frowned, but he shook it off. He'd ask Ben about it some other time.

His thumb hovered over the activation button, then froze. Something was coming. . .

He swept out his senses with the Force and almost jumped out of his skin when he felt the small galaxy of his father's Force presence swirling and stirring, then wake up. In a moment, he would have his suit and prosthetics again, and then he would do what he did every morning without fail: come and check on Luke.

Which meant that Luke needed to hide his lightsaber.

It wasn't that Luke was expressly going against his father's wishes by building the saber. But Vader was fiercely critical of anything to do with the Light Side, and probably wouldn't take well to the thievery and dissection of one of his droids' sabers.

And there was also that the fact that Luke had kept this a secret for so long—for perfectly logical reasons!—would by no means go down well with his father if he found out now.

So Luke spent several minutes huffing and puffing to lift the mattress with his hands—he didn't dare to use the Force, or Vader would sense it—and slip the saber under there, before letting the mattress drop and heading into the refresher to change.

When he came out, Vader was already in the room.

"You're ready," his father said approvingly. "Good. Your breakfast is in the study, then we'll continue working on your lightsaber skills."

Luke didn't object.

Vader had been in a good mood all morning while training his son—Luke was progressing fantastically—but all that positivity abruptly dissipated when the chime on his built-in comlink interrupted a particularly fierce duel.

Especially when it was the Emperor who was calling.

He stormed off without telling Luke anything. If the boy was smart enough, he'd figure it out on his own; if he wasn't, well, Vader could deal with that later.

Right now, he needed to focus on his Master.

He paused briefly just outside the suite his comm unit was in, pulling the Dark Side tightly around him and taking deep breaths to steady his emotions, build up his mental shields. His Master could not know about Luke.

Then he stepped into the room, to find a larger-than-life blue hologram of the Emperor's head waiting for him. Hastily, he lowered himself onto one knee, ignoring as always the strains and pains in his body as he did so—he'd always half expected those pains were the reason his Master made him kneel. Inducing pain in him, allow him more power over the Dark Side. Make him stronger.

Unseen, Vader's hands clenched at his sides. Not strong enough.

"What is thy bidding, my Master?"

"I want a report on the progress you have made since your mission to Lothal," Palpatine said. "I'm sure your sojourn has been restful and meditative, and that you have long since repaired any damage your suit sustained."

Vader was quiet for a few breathing cycles too long, but he knew his Master was expecting it. After he'd returned from his trip to the Lothal sector, only to find that Thrawn had failed to stop the Rebels escaping Atollon—the planet Governor Pryce had assured him was their base, which Thrawn had supposedly gone to overrun and destroy—he'd told his Master his suit was malfunctioning, that he needed rest and time to repair it.

He was fairly sure Palpatine hadn't believed him—still suspected he was plotting a coup—but his Master had let it slide anyway. Nothing would entertain the Emperor like a carefully-planned and executed coup going south—since that was what it would inevitably do. Many had tried to overthrow his Master, and many had failed.

It had been two months since Vader had been able to get himself assigned to Mustafar indefinitely, to be with Luke. Now it seemed that his time was up.

"I have repaired my suit satisfactorily, Master, and am eager to return to action," he said carefully, because what else could he have said? Under no circumstances would he require more than two standard months to himself, and he did not want his Master digging in further than necessary.

"I am glad, my old friend," Palpatine replied, faux-benevolently, a faint smile on his lips, "because you will be accompanying me to Naboo for the Empire Day celebrations in a month's time."

The bottom fell out of Vader stomach; he swallowed harshly. "I am honoured, Master," he said stiffly, "but surely I can be of better use else—"

"My decision on this matter is final, Lord Vader," the Emperor interrupted him, and although there'd been no noticeable change in volume his tone was harder, now. Colder. "My home planet seems to have lost its way—its current queen is nursing dangerously anti-Imperial ideas—and it must be reminded of our strength. I'm sure she can be persuaded to see reason."

He paused, then added slyly, "And it has not escaped my notice that this year would have been the eighteenth birthday of Senator Amidala's child, had it survived. I'm sure you would like to pay your respects to her, as well."

Something in the comm unit whined, then threw off sparks as it crumpled. Vader didn't react; the Emperor just laughed.

"Well done, my friend," he encouraged. "Use your anger—use the anger and pain that her untimely death brought you. Perhaps, after the celebrations, we can continue your training in the Dark Side, while your feelings are still fresh."

Vader didn't give voice to the storm inside his soul—he needed to be trained now, Luke was in danger now, after Empire Day it would be too late—but nor could he say anything else without betraying it. So he just bowed his head again and uttered those words that had become all but meaningless: "Thank you, my Master."

"Have the Devastator arrive at Coruscant one week before Empire Day, and we will be at Naboo in plenty of time to start the celebrations," Palpatine ordered.

Vader ran the maths: that was three weeks from now. The trip from Mustafar to Coruscant typically took approximately six days, leaving him and Luke with two weeks, two precious weeks, before everything would come to a head.

He would have to bring Luke with him, he realised with mounting fear, bring Luke onto a ship which would ferry his Master halfway across the galaxy, and somehow still keep him a secret.

No; that was impossible. There must be another way, there had to be another way—

There was.

He could leave Luke on Mustafar for Empire Day, and not be there to save him when he died.

Vader gritted his teeth.

That was unacceptable.

So he just bowed his head and grovelled, as he always had. As he always would.

"I will be there, my Master."

The call disconnected, and Vader was left kneeling there for a long time in thought. Then he sensed it.

Impossibly light against the darkness of Mustafar, similar to Luke's signature but not. Different. Dimmer.

Different, dimmer, and utterly familiar.

A growl escaped his vocoder.

"Kenobi."

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan had a bad feeling about this.

The fighter Bail had loaned him for this mission—an A-wing—was unfamiliar under his hands, and Obi-Wan may be a good pilot, but he was not at Anakin's level of skill. He couldn't go into battle with a craft he didn't know well and expect to survive for too long.

But Bail didn't have any Jedi starfighters to hand, for fear of them being found and him being accused of treason, so the A-wing was the best he could do, despite his professed concern for Luke's predicament. He couldn't be seen to go against Vader, or Leia would be put in danger.

So Obi-Wan was stuck with this.

He wasn't even sure what his plan was, which was very unlike him—he just knew he needed to get Luke out of there. Now.

His attachment was clouding his judgement. He would never fully become one with the Force, as Qui-Gon wanted him to, if he kept this up.

But Luke needed him.

So he just clutched the controls of the fighter more tightly, and set his orbit of the planet so he was always on the opposite side to the Star Destroyer—less chance of him being picked up on their scanners. Then he ran a few scans of his own, with his fighter and with the Force.

He needed to know the layout of the terrain and the castle if he was going to save Luke.

He sat back, and stretched out with his senses, stubbornly ignoring what Bail had told him about the planet—Luke is a Jedi, and Mustafar is where Jedi go to die—searching, searching. . .

Luke he found easily enough, their Master-Padawan bond making his blinding Force presence even simpler to track than it already was. But, as it had been the last time he'd visited, his presence was eclipsed by the raging darkness of his father—

Of Vader, he corrected himself. Anakin Skywalker was dead. The monstrosity who wore the little flesh he still had and laid claim to Anakin's son was not the boy Obi-Wan had raised.

The sensors beeped, and Obi-Wan glanced over them, frowning. There was too much interference from the ash clouds to get a good reading from up here. He'd have to adjust his course so he was in a lower orbit.

He made the necessary tweaks, then sat back and stared out the viewport. For all of Mustafar's negative associations, he had to admit that it was a dramatic sight to look at. It was like the evil twin of Naboo or Alderaan: fire where there should be water, death where there should be life.

Speaking of life. . .

Obi-Wan frowned again. Something was moving down there, changing, but he couldn't tell what it was. He stretched out with his senses—

Anger, black and boiling over, spilling into the atmosphere around and even beyond it, dark claws reaching for Obi-Wan with all the wrath of a vengeful god. The dark star of Vader's Force presence was moving, swelling and roiling. . .

. . .and it was getting closer.

Obi-Wan's brow creased, heart thudding in his throat. He leaned forward, gaze firmly fixed on the dark clouds—

Just in time to see a TIE fighter burst out of them.

It was barrelling towards him at such a speed it cut through the clouds neatly, quickly leaving them behind for the emptiness of space. Obi-Wan studied the fighter for a moment—a TIE Advanced, he confirmed grimly—then punched coordinates into the navicomputer. He needed to get away from here, return when Vader wasn't nearby, ready to attack.

Two minutes until he could jump. Obi-Wan clutched the controls tightly, dreading the fight that was sure to ensue. Two minutes was a lifetime in battle—certainly enough time for a Sith Lord to blast him into ashes and stardust.

One and a half minutes. Vader was still coming closer, and closer; Obi-Wan tensed further, ready to flee, bolt, evade at the slightest motion, then—

Then the TIE stopped.

It hung in midair, hovering, and Obi-Wan's comm was flashing. He blinked.

Vader was hailing him?

He swallowed before he accepted the call, unsure what his ex-apprentice would ever want to say to him. For several moments, there was only the sound of Vader's harsh breathing in the cockpit.

Guilt shot through Obi-Wan. I did that. I put him in that suit.

But clearly, Vader wasn't going to be the one to speak first, so Obi-Wan did.

"Well, Darth," he drawled, putting the slightest emphasis on Vader's Sith title, "if you've come to kill me, old friend, just sitting there isn't going to do that."

There was the hiss of a sigh. "I would certainly like to, Kenobi," the bone-chilling mechanical voice of his former apprentice said, anger—and betrayal—in every syllable. "But Luke loves you," the words were spat, "and I am not willing to jeopardise my relationship with my son over the likes of you. Leave."

"I'm honoured," Obi-Wan replied dryly, mind whirring. So Vader was working to get Luke on his side, rather than killing him outright when he didn't comply. That gave him a bit more time, even if he still didn't want to lose him the way he'd lost Vader. "But Luke isn't your son."

A moment of shock, then rage. Endless, all-consuming rage. "Luke is—"

"The son of Anakin Skywalker. Are you Anakin?"

"That name no longer has any meaning—"

"Case in point. Luke isn't your son, but his aunt and uncle have raised him. They'd like him back."

"Owen Lars is not my brother, and therefore—"

"But Luke loves them," Obi-Wan cut him off. "As he loves me."

The rage only doubled at that—tripled—his dark star growing denser and denser until it was a black hole of hate and fear. . . "Leave, Kenobi," Vader growled. "Before I shoot first, and deal with the consequences later."

"Luke would never forgive you."

"Luke would learn to."

Obi-Wan glanced at the navicomputer. Thirty seconds before he could make the jump, and he might as well make it. There was no way this rescue mission would work—he could never get down to the planet without Vader shooting him out of the sky—and he was of no use to Luke dead. He would have to find another way to save him.

Obi-Wan sighed, and probed his former apprentice's mind. There was the characteristic anger, and the hate, but there was also the fear—the fear, and the loneliness. Vader had no one left besides Luke; he would fight tooth and nail to keep him.

In his mind, Obi-Wan saw a longing that was the twin to the longing in his own: a desire to do nothing more than joke with him again, be with him. They'd been brothers; they'd loved each other.

But then it had all fallen apart, and there was no fixing what had happened.

So as the navicomputer flashed green, and the engines started whirring in anticipation of hyperspace, Obi-Wan just sighed again and said, "Luke would forgive you for killing me. Eventually. That's what he's like." And then, more quietly—it was a truth neither of them wanted to hear—"But you'd never forgive yourself."

Then the stars turned to streaks, and he left Mustafar far behind.

The wound in his soul left behind by Obi-Wan's parting words was bleeding, spilling out, hate and anger and pain clouding his vision. He was so angry—

He crashed his starfighter on the way into the hangar, his hands shook so badly, and several other engines in the room sparked and died with the onslaught of his power. He stormed through the empty hallways, Vaneé having long since learned to avoid him when he was in this mood, and automatically headed for Luke's room, knowing full well that while he was reluctant to risk hurting his son, Luke was the thing most likely to calm him down right now.

Luke, however, didn't seem to be in a calming mood. "What was that?" he asked, voice harsh and worried, the moment the door hissed open. He either didn't notice the state his father was in, or didn't care. "I sensed you and Ben, miles above the planet. What happened? Why did you leave our training so suddenly?"

"The Emperor called."

"What does that have to do with Ben?"

"The Emperor called," Vader said tightly, "and then I sensed Obi-Wan above the planet. I went to confront him."

Luke tensed at that, his worry broadcast into the Force. He could very clearly see that his father was uninjured, Vader knew, so that meant his worry had to be for. . .

Obi-Wan.

"What happened." There was more dread in those two words than there had any right to be.

"Obi-Wan had come to steal you away again," Vader said. "I chased him off."

Luke clenched his fists. "He didn't steal me."

"He did. He stole you from your mother's womb, stole you from me—"

"I am not yours!" Luke seemed as startled by the sudden shout as Vader was. He blinked his eyes harshly. "We have been over this. I am a person, and my name is Luke. I am not anyone's."

"You were stolen from me." Vader ignored him, barrelling on. Inexorable, unstoppable, unreachable. "You were stolen and hidden away on a lowly dustball and forced to grow up in sub-par conditions with—"

"Insult my aunt and uncle." Luke's tone was flat. "I dare you."

A part of Vader—the part consumed by the Dark Side, most of Vader—wanted to keep pushing, at those words. Wanted to push, and push, shove his son further over the precipice of anger, and see was chaos would ensue.

But the part of him that was a father hesitated. So he didn't do that for exactly the same reason he hadn't killed Kenobi: he did not want to destroy whatever relationship he could build with Luke.

The boy was still talking.

"I was happy," he said, hands gesturing to emphasise the point, raw emotion leaking out of his voice. "Sure, I wasn't happy as I could've been, and I missed my parents, but I was happy. Can you say the same about if I'd been brought up here? Would I have been able to be happy," he spat the word, arms waving around him, "with all of the pressure of the Dark Side crashing down on me?"

Vader clenched his fists, his anger rising again. "You—"

He didn't know what he was going to say, angry or placating, helpful or damning, but it didn't matter, because that was when he noticed the item clipped to Luke's belt.

It was clipped to the belt at his back, and come to think of it Vader had seen Luke put it there in a hasty movement when he'd first barged in, like he didn't want him to see it.

It looked like a—

Vader held his hand out; it was yanked from the boy's belt, despite his startled cries of protest, and landed squarely in his hand for examination.

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. Luke had fallen silent.

It was a lightsaber.

And it wasn't any lightsaber Vader had in his armoury.

It was certainly similar enough—it looked to be made of the pieces of one of his droids' lightsabers, but modelled in a style that seemed like a cross between his and Obi-Wan's.

Luke had not had any lightsaber other than Anakin's blue one when he'd arrived. Vader had not given him any other than a droid's one since then.

And the kyber crystal in it felt different, not the soothing song of his old crystal or the agony of every corrupted crystal in the castle. Instead, it felt slightly like Ahsoka's new ones had had, in that distant encounter they'd had: in pain, but healing, and a peace that was all the sweeter for it.

He hit the activation button, and jerked backwards at the vibrant white of the blade that came out.

Just like Ahsoka's.

Luke had built his own lightsaber—his own weapon. And while under any other circumstances Vader would be proud, there remained to be seen the fact that he hadn't told his father about it.

Perhaps Vader had been an Imperial for too long, but out of all the possible explanations, only one sprang to mind:

Assassination.

His fury roiled its ugly head again, this time in full force. He roared, sweeping his hand round, and the Force was swept with it. Crashes filled the room: droids pieces off the table, cushions off the sofa, Luke off his feet.

Then Vader yanked him back up again.

"What is the meaning of this."

Luke was kicking his feet frantically, hands scrabbling at his throat—Vader was choking him. He was choking his son, a part of his brain registered, he could kill his son right here, right now, exactly the way he'd killed Padmé.

The rest of his brain, too caught up in the rush of emotion and breaking of tension—that call with the Emperor, the confrontation with Obi-Wan, all of it had led up to this—didn't care. He squeezed tighter.

Something gave under his grip, and a single strangled scream escaped Luke's throat. There was a flash of hope beneath the terror, then Luke was stretching out his hand, grasping desperately in midair for something—

And a wave from the Force slammed Vader off his feet.

His head rung, his prosthetics shooting pain signals into his brain, but he was still aware of Luke collapsing to the ground, rubbing his throat, tears streaming haphazardly down his face. He staggered to his feet again, throwing one last, terrified glance at Vader.

Then he fled the room.

He needed to get away, needed to get away, needed to get away—

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe.

He was going to die like this.

It was more instinct than intellect that had him waving his hand out, grabbing fistfuls of the Force in his desperation and throwing out, out, get this horrible feeling away from him—

The ground smacked into him, leaving him dizzy, disorientated, on death's door. Hot blood soaked the back of his head, a jagged pain in his scalp and in his throat.

He couldn't breathe—

He shot one look at the black heap in the corner—his father, his father had done this to him, his father—and the sheer, heart-stopping terror in his chest had him throwing himself to his feet, tripping, catching himself, forwards and forwards until he was out of the room, down the corridor, leaving that cold, painful darkness far behind.

He more fell down the stairs than ran—he did fall when, in his desperation, he crashed into Vaneé on his way down. He stumbled, lost his balance. There was one blissful moment where he hung in the air—

—then there was a loud crack. His elbow was bleeding, his head ringing on the edge of the staircase, all breath thumped out of him.

He could just lie there, he thought. His mind was moving slowly, everything just dark shapes against the blurred image on his retina, but he could think that: he could lie there, lose himself in the pain washing over him, and rasp his final breaths.

Except the Force was with him. It always had been. And through it, he could feel that menacing darkness—his father—coming closer.

The part of him that had evolved from an animal squeaked; a primal urge to run invaded his mind. So he did.

One foot, the other foot, veer right, veer left, and he didn't know where he was going so long as it was away from him and—

And there was a door. A door he recognised, somewhere underneath his panic, as the one he'd come in through all those weeks ago.

The Force billowed ahead of him, blasting the door open and into the planet beyond and Luke followed it, staggering out and tripping down the steps just outside.

The ground was rough against his cheek, sticky with blood.

But he was still coming.

So Luke kept running.

The terrain was rough, and the path narrow. In his dazed state, it was a miracle that Luke stayed on the beaten path—the safe path—for as long as he did.

Which was to say, not very long at all.

On Tatooine, in the spring, the winds would come out of the East and whip the desert into dunes and hills. Luke and Biggs and all the others had quickly made a sport of jumping down them, sliding down them on boards, skidding and landing into the soft sand. They knew they were safe—it was one of the few activities they did that they were actually allowed to do—but the adrenaline kick from that moment where you began to fall was what they lived for.

So there was a moment where, when Luke staggered off the edge of the cliff, vision clouded with red, he was caught in a moment of adrenaline-fuelled limbo and he thought of home.

Then he began to fall.

The wind against his face was momentarily cool, gentle against the heat of the fire and the heat of his wounds, but he was still falling, and falling, and falling—

Spasms shot up his side, pain tearing down it, as something clamped itself round the delicate bones of his wrist. It squeezed tighter and tighter, the rough surface rubbing against his skin as he kept slipping anyway, and then something else was grabbing his lower arm, something with five digits, that felt like—

A hand. A hand, and a glove.

Luke almost sobbed when the wind caught the edge of a black cape, flapping it in his face.

This—

He—

Vader—

"I've got you, Luke," his father said, voice unreadable but there. And a sob did escape Luke's throat at that, because he might not know how he felt about this after everything that had happened—after his father had almost killed him—but he did know that he wasn't going to die. Not today.

The thought was on repeat in his head, drumming and drilling; slowly but surely, the cold, cutting fear began to recede.

And he was tired. The blackness in his vision was closing in now, with no adrenaline left to chase it away, and he was so very tired. . .

"Hold on, Luke," Vader said, and was that a spike of fear in his voice? He might never know. . . "Stay with me. Stay awake."

Stay awake. That mantra replaced the other, pounding in his head and in his heart and in his blood, as the star-filled galaxy of Vader's Force presence stretched out to encompass him, and then Luke was floating. . .

He jerked when his father let go off his hand, but he was still floating upwards. He wasn't falling. The lip of the precipice was beneath him now, solid rock moving under him, and he was gently lowered to the floor.

He was trembling.

He was trembling, his hands and legs and shoulders racked with shudders, mind dizzied and dim. He was alive. He was alive. He was—

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, gripping it tightly. It hurt—everything hurt—but it was soothing, reassuring. An anchor to reality.

"Luke—" Vader tried to say, voice tight, but he cut himself off. "Little one. . ."

It said a lot about everything that'd happened that day that Luke didn't so much as twitch in surprise when Vader's arms went round him and he was being hugged.

Luke buried his face in his father's shoulder. He couldn't see anything through the black of the armour, but he closed his eyes anyway. After that, it wasn't long before the darkness lingering in his peripheral vision swept in to carry him away.

Chapter Text

Luke was let out of the medbay a week later, after the droids—and Vader, especially—had finally decided that he was in optimum health and that there would be no side effects to finally letting him roam free.

Vader came to collect him shortly after he woke up, and was escorted back to his rooms in silence. The surgery to repair the damage to his crushed throat—again—had left a ring of scars on his neck, and Luke could sense his father very pointedly avoid looking at them.

The door to his quarters hissed open, and when they stepped inside, Luke made a beeline for his bedroom—as far away from Vader as possible.

"Luke," his father said before he reached the door. "We need to talk."

Luke just turned his head. "I don't have anything to say to you." His voice—small and quiet, a croak—just accentuated the point.

It was the first thing he'd said since. . . that day.

Vader was silent for three cycles of the respirator, then he said, "Luke—"

Luke turned back. He hit the button to open the door, and made to step forward—

Only for the door to shut again.

He frowned. Pressed the button.

Once again, the door opened briefly, before slamming shut.

Luke whirled on Vader, who just stood with his arms crossed. A black monolith.

"You'll break it."

"If that's what's needed to get you to listen."

"You—" He sucked in a breath through his nose, the air whistling through his scarred trachea. "You are so petty."

Vader took one, slow, pointed step forward. "I said," he repeated, enunciating every syllable—to make himself understood or to hold onto his temper?—"We need to talk."

He sighed. "What could we possibly have to talk about?"

The words were rebellious, but also an invitation—what do you want to talk about? Vader took it.

"The Emperor contacted me shortly before the. . . incident," he said carefully. "I'm to accompany him to Naboo for the Empire Day celebrations. The full Empire Day celebrations, starting one week before the event."

"So? That's three weeks away."

"Yes," Vader ground out, "but I am to escort my Master from Coruscant to Naboo, which will take approximately two weeks in hyperspace. Meaning I have to leave in one week."

"So you're leaving me here. In a week." It would probably be best, give Vader some time to think about, oh maybe not trying to kill your son—

"No," his father replied. "You're coming with me."

That left him speechless. "But—"

"You are going to die on Empire Day, Luke," Vader thundered. "My Master has a secret that I know will save you—I just need to get him to teach it to me. But I cannot save you when you're on the other side of the galaxy to me. So you're going to come with me, on the same ship as the Emperor if need be, and in order to stay safe while doing it you need to practice shielding."

"I can already shield," Luke protested, then cut himself off as he coughed slightly. He felt concern rise in Vader, and wasn't that a confusing thought he really didn't need right now; he waved it away. "Probably just a bit of dust. But I can shield."

Vader's mood darkened again. "Not well enough."

Vader waved his hand towards the study—where Luke worked on the droid parts. "Continue working on your project. I will help you. Make sure you keep your shields impeccable at all times—the moment I sense a weakening, I will attack, and you will not like it when I do."

Luke swallowed. "Do you have to help me?"

He didn't need the Force to sense his father's mood then—the room's temperature dropped significantly.

"Yes." The word was a growl. After all, who else is going to do it? "I have to be there, so I can test your shielding, so you can come with me to Naboo, so I can save you."

"And what will you do if you can't?"

Vader seemed brought up short by the question.

Luke continued doggedly anyway. "What will you do if I die?"

"That is not an option."

Luke shook his head. "What would you have done if you'd killed me a week ago," he touched his throat unconsciously, "or if I'd fallen into the lava?"

Luke could feel his father's gaze on his throat, but he didn't get an answer.

Rubbing the scars there at the thought, he decided not to push for one. He probably wouldn't like it, anyway.

The week passed quickly. Far too quickly, for Vader's taste, because now everything was coming to a head.

The shuttle that Captain Piett had sent to pick him up descended slowly, the wings folded above it, but when Vader caught irritability rising in him he knew it wasn't to do with the shuttle's approach—although that was annoying. He was concerned for Luke.

Luke, who was currently standing next to him and was quite obviously doing his best not to fidget.

Luke, he chided. Stand still. You're supposed to be a stormtrooper.

And indeed, there was no way anyone without the Force could tell that Luke wasn't another one of many, many carbon-copy stormtroopers who were sometimes used as extra security for Vader's castle. Not if he stopped fidgeting, at least.

You know the plan? he asked his son, if only to distract him a little, give him focus.

No sound came out of the stormtrooper helmet, but the feeling of a sigh was huffed across their bond anyway. Of course I do. Don't make me rattle it off for the hundredth time. There was still resentment in the 'voice', still a lot of distrust radiating from his son, but. . . He hoped it was starting to get better.

He hoped.

Vader quirked an eyebrow. Humour me.

Luke definitely rolled his eyes at that, but he dutifully recited, We get into the hangar on the Devastator. You'll order me to stay inside the shuttle to guard it, then an officer loyal to you will come to escort me to the techs' quarters and introduce me as a new tech, where I'll be staying for the duration of the trip.

Vader nodded once, all the approval he would show. And the code phrase so you know you're following the right officer?

"Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?"

He couldn't stop himself when he felt Luke's ire at the phrase, even if it risked to alienate him further: he smirked under the mask. Good. Now quiet.

The shuttle was there.

After his less-than-successful attempt to rescue Luke from Mustafar, Obi-Wan was left on edge. He'd been living in paranoia for years—since the Clone Wars had started, practically—but it seemed like the lack of action in his life had started to catch up to him; instead of steeling himself against the nerves, he found himself unravelling, panicking, every possible way something could go wrong for Luke running through his head—

When the comm chimed, he jumped out of his skin.

Then his heart leapt into his throat. Luke?

He hit the button to accept the call.

He couldn't keep the disappointment off his face when the figure that materialised wore the neat, orderly garb of a Viceroy of Alderaan, but he did his best to smile at Bail anyway as the man started talking.

"You know I can't talk for long, Ben, so I just wanted to be the first to tell you of the fantastic Empire Day celebrations that will be held this year," Bail said, tone light and conversational, as if he was talking to a close friend about something that genuinely enthused him. There was always the risk of even a cloaked frequency being eavesdropped on by Imperials.

So Obi-Wan nodded, pursing his lips, and listened to what Bail was actually telling him—what his spies had picked up.

"I hear the Emperor himself will be visiting Naboo for the honour, as well as a sizeable chunk of the military. Perhaps even Vader will be there!"

"That would be an honour indeed, Bail," he said quietly, then allowed some of his genuine gratitude to seep into his voice as he said: "Thank you for telling me."

There was a soft smile on Bail's lips as he bowed at the waist, and said, "Of course, old friend. I'll always be there to help you, when I can."

Tell me if you need my help, but I may not be able to help indefinitely.

Obi-Wan nodded. "Thank you," he said again, then clicked off the comm, feeling both rejuvenated and inexplicably tired.

Bail's spies had come through. The Emperor was going to Naboo for Empire Day. His apprentice would accompany him. And Ana— Vader would bring Luke with him, whether the Emperor knew about him or not.

But what if he doesn't bring him?

Obi-Wan dispelled the thought. If he knew anything about his ex-Padawan, it was that he didn't let go of things. He wouldn't let Luke go, not when Luke was supposedly going to die around Empire Day.

The thought seized his heart, constricting it in his chest. Luke was going to die.

No. No. Obi-Wan could get him out of there by then. Luke may be convinced there was no way for him to survive other than redeeming the monster his father had become, but it was clearly a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Vader didn't turn back to the Light soon, let go of his negative feelings, the Dark Side's chokehold over his anger and restraint would be what made him lose control and kill his son.

He would be the reason Luke died around Empire Day.

Obi-Wan wouldn't let that happen.

He stood up, not quite sure his was imagining the creaking of his old joints, and used an idle flip of the Force to summon his lightsaber to hand. He lit it, but instead of the rush of adrenaline and pride he would feel in his youth, now he had only resolve.

He would go to Naboo. He would get Luke out of there.

And maybe the Force would lead him to a final duel with his old apprentice, while he was at it. Whatever the result.

There is no death, there is the Force.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, reaching into the Force, probing, probing—

All he saw were flashes: a red lightsaber, a white lightsaber, Luke—he swallowed harshly—screaming in pain, and violet Force lightning dancing around them.

He retreated from the Force with a jolt, and stared at the hilt of his saber.

Someone was going to die from this encounter.

He closed his eyes, breathed in and out. But that didn't change the truth he felt in the words: someone—someone important, someone at the centre of everything—was going to die.

He just hoped it wasn't Luke.

Luke had started fidgeting again by the time the black-clad officer, face lined with stern creases, marched into the shuttle and sneered, "Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?"

"I was conscripted, sir," he replied quickly, tangling his fingers together, finishing the code phrase.

The officer's sternness didn't fade, but the disapproval did; he nodded once, then waved his hand in a sharp gesture towards the door. "Follow me then, Ensign, and I'll show you to your quarters."

He was led through the stark, utilitarian corridors that tended to characterise Imperial facilities for quite a while, trailing behind the man in such a way that he passed for a small escort, before they stopped outside a nondescript door.

It didn't have a code needed to unlock it; the officer—his rank badge said he was a captain, Luke believed, and the fact that he had a captain helping him was jarring in its own right—just jabbed the open button and the door slid to the side, revealing a small storage room full of cleaning supplies and mouse droids.

"There's a tech's uniform in the box, second furthest on the right," the man said curtly. "Get changed quickly, and leave the armour in the same box."

Luke watched him for a moment too long, and the lines in his face deepened with stress. Belatedly, he realised: the officer wasn't being stern, or impatient. He was nervous.

Luke nodded. "Alright," he said, then slipped inside.

The room was dim, even with the lights on, but he could see fully well as he opened the indicated box and carefully unfolded his new uniform.

He couldn't believe he was here.

He couldn't believe he was here, going along with Vader's stupid plan, when he could be literally anywhere else.

But Luke didn't want to die. And, he knew, Vader didn't want him to die either. Supposedly.

His actions so far begged to differ.

But even so. Whether or not he was safe to be around, whether or not Luke liked the feeling of walking on eggshells while near him, he was here.

He changed quickly and quietly, careful not to rattle the armour too much as he shoved it into the box, then pulled the cap down smartly over his eyes as he stepped outside again.

He nodded at his escort. "I'm ready, Captain. . ."

"Piett," he said. "Come this way, Ensign."

He was led through even more corridors, deeper and deeper into the heart of the Star Destroyer, and Luke was suddenly starting to appreciate the sheer scale of this ship. He'd been impressed while watching it from the shuttle, but now, wandering around. . . He could get lost for days on end in the bowels of this vessel, and no one would know where he had gone.

The humming in the air, the walls, the floor, got louder and louder as they walked. Luke could feel it through the soles of his boots; it rattled his skull and set his teeth on edge. They were getting close to the engine and the main reactor.

Which meant they were also getting close to—

They turned a corner, and despite the fact that Vader had told him under no circumstances to drop his mental shields while he was on board this vessel, he could still feel the blaze of dozens of presences in the rooms along this corridor, each of them going about their daily lives and chattering excitedly to each other. Six techs to a room, Vader had said.

They stopped outside of a door marked 1138. Piett straightened his back, his pinched expression relaxing marginally with relief. "These are your quarters," he said. "This," he held out his hand, "is your code cylinder." Luke took it. "I'll take my leave of you now."

Luke nodded. "Alright." The man had already half-turned away when he blurted out, "Thank you."

Piett's eyebrows lifted slightly, but he nodded. "You're welcome, Ensign," he said, not warmly, but with none of the tension he'd had earlier either.

Luke smiled at his retreating back, then the smile dropped as he studied the door. He took a deep breath, then swiped his cylinder. The door hissed open.

He stepped inside. "Hi, I'm the new tech. Are you are. . .?"

Vader had told Luke to keep his head down, and so far he had. At several points during the six day hyperspace journey, he'd gently probed the boy's Force signature while he was working, before hastily retreating when Luke's answering curiosity threatened to shine through his shields. He knew the boy was getting antsy—Vader hadn't exactly been forthcoming with details about what was going on, not in the least because he himself didn't know the full scope of it—on top of the general distrust that still lingered, but there hadn't seemed to be any major incidents within the ship's technicians, so as far as Luke was concerned he seemed to be getting on fine.

So far, at least.

Because instead of the usual spangled starscape he was greeted with when he gazed out of the viewport on the bridge, the view was blocked by a planet. A planet brighter than the stars could ever hope to be.

Over the years, Vader had learned to hate Coruscant with a burning passion.

Now, though, he could hear his admiral submitting their clearance codes as they came in to dock above the planet.

He focused on the oxygen from his respirator seeping into his lungs, the solidity of the floor under his feet. He didn't have to go onto the damned planet himself, thank the Force, his Master would be coming directly onto the ship via his private shuttle, but. . .

His breath rasped out of the respirator. He didn't like this, all the same.

Luke was working on a glitch in one of the backup reactors when he felt it. Shields up or not, the chill that swept over him made him shudder where he was crouched, the spanner he was holding rattling against the floor as he held out a hand to steady himself.

The tech working next to him perked his head up. "You alright, Luke?"

He nodded, left hand drifting to rub his arm. "Yeah, I think so. I just. . ." He shook his head.

The other tech was shaking his head as well, with much more vigour. "I know. I'm annoyed as well that the Emperor's probably coming aboard right now and we don't get to see him. I mean, I get that we're just techs, and we're not supposed to be there if it's a formal military greeting party, but come on. Imagine getting to see the Emperor up close! I wonder. . ."

Luke kept working, letting the man babble on, and, despite the faint ache that was still in his throat, he hoped his father was alright.

Vader could feel the eyes of all the troopers in the room watching him, but he ignored it, lowering himself onto one knee in front of the shuttle that had just set down in the Devastator's main hangar bay. Steam hissed from the seals as the ramp lowered; although Vader couldn't see the procession of main guards, with his head down like this, he could certainly imagine them, and the awe he felt from some of the newer troopers standing to attention grated on his nerves.

Finally, he recognised the rhythmic clack of his Master's cane against the metal ramp, as he descended in all his shrivelled glory. The cowl of his robe was up to hide his face, and Vader couldn't help the thought that, as per usual, his Master was being unnecessarily overdramatic. There was no need for all this pomp.

But he didn't let his objections be known, either through the Force or out loud, and remained kneeling until the Emperor was in front of him, the trailing hem of his robe inches from Vader's knee.

"Rise, my friend," his Master said warmly—or, as warmly as the man ever did. "We have much to do, and we should get underway. I'm sure my home planet is anxiously awaiting our arrival."

They were probably very anxious indeed, as Palpatine no doubt knew. If he was displeased by the slightest thing, he could and would raze Theed to the ground.

Considering that was the location of Padmé's grave, it wasn't a nice thought.

Vader rose to his feet to walk alongside his Master as they exited the hangar, feeling the Force signatures of the troops still stationed inside sag with relief.

"I trust my quarters have been prepared?" Palpatine asked, like he didn't know already.

"Of course, Master," he replied. "This way."

"Ah, Lord Vader," the Emperor said, his voice a contented purr. "Always so reliable. You embody the very spirit of our good Empire." The spirit of bowing and scraping before you. "Truly, I think this will be the greatest Empire Day yet."

When a lone tech was summoned to Lord Vader's quarters and Luke happened to be the only one without a job to do, he knew it wasn't a coincidence.

He did his best not to hurry on the way to his father's quarters, to avoid drawing attention, but it was difficult. It was also difficult smothering his laughter when he saw the pitying looks the other techs gave him—even if he couldn't squash the tiny kernel of fear he had himself, after. . . everything—but he made do.

He may have attracted a few odd stares as he went—less for his enthusiasm, he sensed with a scowl, and more because he genuinely was below height regulations—but he made it to just outside Vader's quarters quickly, without too much trouble.

Once there, though, he paused for a moment. Was he supposed to knock? Or—

That train of thought was cut off fairly quickly when the door suddenly hissed open, and a tendril of the Force yanked him inside.

He yelped and barely recovered his balance when Vader was on him, hugging him.

There was still that natural urge to tense up, the scars around his throat burned at the sight of the black behemoth, but he tried his best to relax. To melt into the embrace.

This was his father.

Hugging his father was a dream come true.

Soon enough, though, Vader was pulling back and ushering him inside.

"The Emperor is aboard?"

"Yes," his father said, voice dark. "You have to be extremely careful not to drop your shields, and I won't be able to meet with you too often or risk attracting attention."

Luke nodded, ignoring the twinge in his chest at the thought of it. "Alright." He made to say something else, but as they stepped into a room in Vader's quarters, he was taken aback by the fact the bed there didn't seem to be used. At all. "Don't you sleep?"

Vader seemed taken aback by the question, his helmet turning towards the bed Luke was frowning at. "No," he said, like it was obvious. "I meditate in the bacta tank. It helps with my injuries."

"Your—" Luke bit his tongue. Right. The injuries Ben had given him.

But. . . "You don't sleep at all? Just meditate?"

"No, my son. On Mustafar, I don't have a bed at all. Now, we need to—"

"You don't have a bed?" Luke dragged up every memory he had of Mustafar, but as far as he could remember, he'd never seen where his father slept. The only part of Vader's quarters that he'd seen was the medbay—and oh, didn't that say everything he needed to know about his stay—but he'd only ever caught brief glimpses of everywhere else.

"This is irrelevant, Luke," Vader said, slightly firmer this time, and Luke tried not to tense up. He must have sensed it, because Vader's voice was dark with disapproval, but he barrelled on anyway: "We have limited time before you are missed, and I need to explain the situation. My Master is on this ship. He knows a way to save you. Once he's told it to me, I'll summon you here again, and I will save you."

Luke sighed. For all his father's certainty. . . he had his doubts. "Alright," he said dubiously, still not sure whether he even believed he was going to die at all. "Is that all?"

Vader hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "You should go," he said slowly.

Luke pressed his together, then nodded back. "Alright," he repeated, and turned to leave.

"Wait." He froze, looking back over his shoulder. His father was silent for three cycles of the respirator, then: "You know that. . . that I care for you, Luke. Don't you?"

He had never heard anyone sound so unsure, let alone Vader himself. All he could do was nod silently.

"And. . ." Vader paused again. "I'm proud of you."

Luke's lips were slightly parted, is breath hissing in and out over them. "You—" He blinked hard; there was tears in his eyes. He didn't smile, or get the urge to smile, but something ballooned in his chest anyway, large and buoyant and lighter than air.

"I—" He swallowed. "Thank you, Father."

Vader just inclined his hand in an oddly respectful way. "You are welcome, my son."

Chapter Text

"The bridge crew has estimated another two days before our arrival, Master."

Palpatine raised his head from the makeshift throne he had installed in his guest quarters on the ship, favouring Vader with a sly smile.

"Yes, my friend—I can feel the anger in you growing with every parsec we cross."

Vader clenched his fists, wanting to punch something, but his Master had risen from his throne now, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Patience, Lord Vader," he said, his voice a mockery of a soothing tone. "I am angry as well; the murder of Senator Amidala was a tragedy, as was her decision to turn against us in the end. I'm sure, had the Jedi not twisted her mind, she would have been one of the very champions of our Empire. I—" He lowered his gaze. "I am truly saddened that she cannot be here with us today, to celebrate eighteen years of the peace she fought so hard for. She deserved so much better than the death of a traitor."

Vader couldn't speak—couldn't move. He'd found himself frozen up.

"She was so giving," the Emperor continued to muse, no doubt enjoying the turbulent emotions he could feel rising in his apprentice. "Even in death, she gave you exactly what a good Sith needs to become powerful: Pain."

The leather of Vader's gloves creaked, but he just kept squeezing his hands tighter.

"But while the galaxy moves on, she will not be forgotten. She is a public hero on Naboo, did you know? Most of the graffiti is of her face and her name." And oh, Palpatine's glee just exploded in the Force at that, at the idea that while he was down there Vader would have to see her everywhere— "And you shall exact vengeance on her behalf, I'm sure." He paused, then asked, "Tell me—how goes the hunt for Obi-Wan Kenobi?"

He was within my grasp, and I let him go. "Fruitless, so far, Master, but I will not stop looking."

"Of course. If there is anything I know about you, Lord Vader—" and I know much about you, was what was implied, "—it's that you are relentless. I'm sure you shall find him in due time."

Then Palpatine paused again, calculation flashing across his face. He turned to watch Vader through narrow eyes, then said, "Perhaps even sooner, if we pick up your Sith training soon, and grow your power."

Vader stiffened. This was a test, he could tell, but he wasn't sure what he was being tested for.

Even so, Luke's life was on the line. If he could push Palpatine now, get him to tell him what he needed to know. . .

"Of course, my Master," he said gravely. "In particular, I would know how to manipulate the midichlorians to reverse death."

At that, Palpatine's eyebrow arched, and something cold sank in Vader's stomach. It had been a trap—and he'd walked right into it.

"Of course, Lord Vader," the Emperor said slowly, smiling even wider now. "A Sith always gets what is his due, and that knowledge is what I promised you all those years ago, isn't it? A pity you didn't learn it in time—if you had, perhaps Senator Amidala would be eagerly awaiting our arrival as we speak."

And they were back to Padmé. Vader gritted his teeth. "Yes, but I shall learn it now, so nothing like that will ever happen again." I promise you, Luke: it will never happen again.

"Of course, my apprentice," his Master acquiesced. "I shall teach it to you upon our arrival. Until then, let an old man savour his coveted knowledge for a few days more."

Vader nodded stiffly. There wasn't much else he could do. It would be cutting it a bit close, but it offered a chance for him. . .

"Although, my friend, I must ask," Palpatine asked, and suddenly his yellow eyes were alight with fire and intensity and Vader had a bad feeling about this— "Why do you seek this knowledge now? My old Master used it to save the ones he loved from dying. Whom do you seek to save?"

Vader thoughts stuttered to a halt. He knew.

His Master knew.

There was no way he could know, but he had to, there was no other way he would ask that, and now—

Luke.

Was Luke in danger?

The rasp of his respirator was steady in his ears. He tried to ground himself, bring himself back to the present, but his mind was a mess of confusion and chaos; all he could get out was a stilted, "No one of interest, my Master."

He said it too late.

His silence had already damned him.

Palpatine settled back in his throne, his smugness practically radiating from him. "'No one of interest," he echoed. "Of course, Lord Vader." He smiled. "Whatever you say."

Luke's head was spinning, and he wasn't sure it was the rotating cogs he was staring at were at fault.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. He'd woken up that morning with his mind slightly fuzzy, but he hadn't thought it was bad!

But now he could barely see. His eyes kept slipping out of focus, seeing double—was there one cog in front of him, or two?—and his head ached. The scars on his neck throbbed. There was a pressure building behind his eyes, getting worse and worse and worse, until he wanted to scream—

He stood up abruptly, the blood rushing out of his head. He was flapping and floundering for a moment as he staggered back, before he found his balance again.

"Ensign!" a sharp voice barked; a week of working near that voice had Luke internally cringing at the scolding he was about to receive for abandoning his post, but the human officers were now dark shadows flitting across his vision and he—couldn't—see—

"Ensign?" The sharp voice sounded worried now; there was the hurried clack of frantic footsteps, then his commanding officer was next to him, seizing his forearms as Luke swayed back and forth and back and forth and back and forth— "Ensign, what's wrong?"

"Luke?" another voice said, then more voices joined the clamour, and everything was just so loud—

A startled cry, his arms ripped out of the officer's grip, as his vision blacked out completely and he collapsed to the floor.

Not being able to sense Luke set Vader on edge on the average day, but suddenly, three days into the four day voyage, anxiety gripped him.

Irrational, unbelievable, illogical anxiety, but anxiety nonetheless.

On instinct, he swept through the ship with the Force, sensing each and every consciousness, every presence. His Master was the only acknowledgement he expected, and it was the only one he got; he make an effort to ignore the amusement radiating from him. He was sure his own turmoil was palpable, but he didn't care. He needed to find Luke.

Something had happened to Luke.

And yes, there he was, he could sense him. He relaxed marginally.

But he was in his quarters, unconscious, in the middle of the day cycle when he should've been working down by the reactors—

He turned with a snap, his cape flicking against the legs of his desk. There was a stack of datapads atop the desk; with a flick of his wrist, the top two went flying against the wall, where they crunched into pieces.

He didn't spare them a thought. He had no doubt they were important—they didn't make it to the top of the pile for no reason, after all—but the one third from the top, hidden from prying eyes, was what interested him. He summoned it to hand.

The latest update from Captain Piett flashed onto the surface, the neat lines of text scrolling across his vision. The Ensign showed some discomfort when being teased by the other techs in the mess hall due to his height, but the teasing was of good nature and I believe his peers show him no threat—

The pad creaked as Vader's grip tightened. This report was from hours ago, the captain, as always, carrying out his duties impeccably and reporting in twice a day. He couldn't complain—especially since Piett was supervising Luke at the same time as carrying out his own duties, so as to not seem suspicious.

What it did mean was that the next report wasn't due for another three standard hours, and Vader needed to know what was happening now.

Desperately, he hit the refresh button on the datapad, more as something to do than because he believed another report would come up, telling him everything he needed to know.

Which it did.

He blinked at it for a moment, two, then almost snapped the device in half lunging to open it.

The subject of the report was marked EMERGENCY, sending alarm bells ringing in his mind. He read it through in a rush, a daze, then had to stop to process it.

Then he read it again, slower, more thoughtful.

Luke was what was at stake here. If he acted wrong, in any way, Luke would be the one to suffer.

So he forced himself to stay calm as he read about how his only son had collapsed, ill, in the middle of his duties and been escorted to the medbay. Piett had tried speaking to his commanding officer on what happened, but the man himself seemed without a clue.

The medical officers who'd examined him had said they had no idea what Luke's condition was, or what was wrong. They'd given him a bacta shot and put him to sleep, but even then they reported he was tossing and turning, reportedly in pain—for a while, at least.

After that, he'd gone completely still.

Something tightened in his chest.

No—this couldn't be it. They still had eight days until Empire Day. Luke wasn't supposed to be taken from him until his eighteenth birthday—he couldn't die now, without having spoken to his father for days, surrounded by strangers.

The wall behind Vader bent under an invisible assault. Luke wasn't going to—

He mashed the comlink in his arm and growled, "Inform the medbay staff that I am conducting an impromptu inspection and that they are to lock it down from visitors."

"But, my lord," Piett's voice came through, surprised and slightly panicked. "We will be arriving at Naboo in six hours, the Emperor needs you to—"

"I am well aware of what the Emperor needs, and he will have it, but I want that medbay prepared for inspection, Captain." The word itself was a threat. "Now."

"Ah, Lord Vader," Palpatine sighed. "Isn't it beautiful? I had so missed my home."

Vader didn't answer—was wound up far too tight to even try. When he'd visited Luke in the medbay, the boy had been alive, but unconscious, and completely unresponsive. Eventually, Vader had dared to push through the boy's shields, weighing his fear that his Master would sense it against the fear for Luke's life, and gone deep—deeper than he should have, perhaps; it might be dangerous to push that far into someone's mind. But it was necessary.

And it just highlighted his worries even further: anyone, Force-sensitive or not, even on the very brink of death, should have reacted to that.

But Luke was still unresponsive.

"I'm sure it will be painful for you," Palpatine continued, jolting Vader back to the present, "but I require you to accompany me to the Theed Royal Palace to see the Queen, then stand by me during my speech on Palace Plaza. I know it may cause some discomfort, bring back unwanted memories, but the Empire needs to be seen as united. Infallible. My friend," he reached across the seat of the shuttle to place a hand on Vader's shoulder, "you are an integral part of what our Empire represents."

Slowly, Vader turned his head to look at his Master head on. The man just smiled.

"Order," he whispered. "Loyalty. Reliability. You embody those words, Lord Vader. You are what the rest of the galaxy aspires to be. You have never failed me, never betrayed me."

The hand fell away from his arm, as Palpatine turned back to the viewport and the tranquil planet floating beyond it.

But even with his face turned away, Vader could hear the mockery in his voice as he said, "And I'm sure you never will."

His Master had been right. This was bringing back bad memories.

The hangar, where he'd flown the starfighter that had destroyed the droid control ship and saved Naboo. The throne room, where he and Padmé had sat and listened to Queen Jamillia talk about the Separatist crisis. The countryside, where Padmé and Ahsoka had been carried out of that mad scientist's facility, ill from the Blue Shadow Virus.

He hated it all, but what he hated most was Palace Plaza, where they'd hosted the festival to celebrate the liberation of Naboo after the blockade. It brought up the most memories of all.

Sunlight streaming through, the place a riot of colour and noise, Padmé splendid in the queen's full regalia, standing next to Boss Nass. When she looked down at little Anakin Skywalker, her smile couldn't have been wider, and it had made him giddy, his child's crush on her expanding with every moment into the galaxy-altering thing it had become. His former self had loved Palace Plaza if only because the feeling of overwhelming joy he associated with it never faded, never altered, until. . .

A rainy day in Theed, one he couldn't witness in person as he was. . . indisposed. . . but one he watched later, his pain feeding his anger feeding his hate. Padmé's beautiful face, slack in death; the japor snippet wound through her fingers; the flowers in her hair. She'd been made to look pregnant on her deathbed as six white gualaars pulled her through the city.

Obi-Wan's doing, no doubt, in an attempt to keep Luke away from him. To perpetuate the lie that the child had died with her. . .

The entire planet of Naboo had gone into mourning when she died—they had loved her so, so much—and it didn't help the situation that he could still feel the echoes of that grief in the stones, in the atmosphere around him. It had been thirty years since Padmé had smiled at him during that festival, and now all the joy was gone.

He was distantly aware of Palpatine giving a speech, something about how proud he was of Naboo's role in the Republic and later the Empire, how special the day was, how much it meant to him. . . It all sounded very similar to what he'd said at the Festival of Light during the Clone Wars, and that comparison sent his mind trailing back to happier times, even with the looming threat to the then-Chancellor's life. . .

If there's trouble Ahsoka will get you, the Queen and the rest of your staff to safety.

He squeezed his hands into fists. Safety.

What about you? Padmé's voice said in his memory, always, always concerned with other people, never herself, never looking after herself as much as she should—

Hopefully I'll be where I always am.

Ahsoka— He means saving the day.

Padmé's laugh. Of course he does.

She'd always teased him about that, his need to save the day, to save everyone, and sometimes the teasing had come to a line she wouldn't let him cross—I can do what I want, Anakin, and you won't let me do anything.

But it hadn't been in the middle of a reckless, selfless, senseless stunt that she met her end. No. It had been in the lie she believed, and the person she ran to for reassurance.

He hadn't been able to save her.

He barely flinched as there was a bang somewhere, and the first of the many, many build up parades he'd be forced to attend this week started, the music obnoxiously loud and patriotic. Everything was in black and white and grey—the colours of the Empire—nothing like that celebration thirty years ago, where he'd known nothing but joy and hope for the future. . .

He felt a spike of anger from his Master; he turned to look at him, and received a glare in return. He was being too sullen, not acting as he should at these events. It brought the Emperor glee to see him so conflicted, he knew, but it wasn't good for the Empire image.

Under any other circumstances he wouldn't have cared. His Master had brought him to Naboo; his Master could deal with the fallout from it. But he needed the man in a good mood if he was ever going to stand a chance at getting Plagueis's secret to immortality off him.

He hadn't been able to save Padmé. But he would save Luke. He swore it.

So he straightened up to watch the parade, noting that unsurprisingly, no Gungans had been invited to attend.

His mood went from petulant to anxious to worse the longer he stood in the place of Padmé's funeral, and the moment he got back to the ship he went to check on Luke. Palpatine was residing in the Theed Royal Palace, he knew, so it was relatively safe to. And he was nervous. He needed to reassure himself that Luke was fine.

Luke was not fine.

After a charged conversation between him and the medics—one which several of them did not survive—he decided that he had to risk moving Luke to his own quarters. Vader had much better medical supplies there, away from the prying eyes of other sick and wounded Imperials, and, as Luke had so astutely noticed before, there was a bed there that he didn't have any use for.

The whole time, he worried and stressed and feared that his Master would think to check the ship's logs and question why a lowly tech was being treated in the quarters of Lord Vader himself. But it was worth the risk, if it meant that Luke was more likely to live. Besides—Luke was registered as 'Luke Whitesun', should anyone ask for his full name, which might stall his Master's investigations for a short amount of time, at least.

It wasn't long, however, until he saw the mistake he'd made.

As long as Luke was on the other side of the ship, Vader couldn't go to him. He could force himself to get on with his work. But as long as Luke was near him, then the boy's every twitch—or lack thereof—drew his attention, disrupting his focus and productivity.

It had been three hours since Luke had been moved, and Vader had reviewed a mere fraction of the datapads he had to get through.

But, he had to admit, this arrangement was still better. It was still better, because the moment Luke's awareness in the Force spiked and he began to wake, a groan stirring the unused muscles in his throat, Vader was next to him waiting.

"Father. . .?" Luke slurred, still half-asleep, and the pacemakers in Vader's chest protested the sudden leaps his heart was taking at the word. "Is that—"

"I'm here, my son." He saw his fingers twitch and seized Luke's hand, clutching it tightly. The next words stuck in his throat. "How do you feel?"

"Like a bantha ran me over, then backed up again for round two." Another groan forced its way out of his throat as Luke made the effort to raise his head slightly, squinting into the room. "What happened?"

"You fainted in the middle of your shift," Vader said, some of the heart-stopping fear beginning to fade now that Luke was awake. Perhaps this was a temporary illness he'd caught, or the product of something otherwise harmless. "Your fellow techs were very worried."

"Yeah, I. . . think I remember that?" Luke rubbed his eyes. "I don't know why I feel so awful, though, it seemed to come out of nowhere. . ."

"None of your bunkmates could you passed you a virus?"

Luke shook his head no—and Vader had known there was no way, of course; the medics had conducted a thorough investigation into why Luke was so ill when they realised that the symptoms weren't any they recognised, but he just needed to be sure—then said hurriedly, as if anticipating what Vader was going to ask, "And none of us have had any drinks or spice on board, so you can rule that out as a cause as well."

Vader gave him a sceptical look.

"It's true! I swear, none of us—" He was cut off by a sharp coughing fit. The sounds were harsh and painful; tears streamed down his face by the end of it, and he looked pale again.

The fear Vader had felt earlier returned. "You're sure it came out of nowhere?" he demanded, looking Luke up and down again. Now he'd been awake a few minutes, his body seemed to be tiring once more. Luke looked like death again.

Clearly, the illness hadn't passed overnight.

"I'm sure," his son insisted, rubbing his throat in the aftermath of the coughing fit.

"Nothing was hurting before, or hurting worse than anything else?"

"No—" Luke began vehemently, then his fingers stilled on his throat.

Right over the scars there.

Vader looked away. "Then I don't know what this is," he said, "and I don't know how to stop it. But it's one week until Empire Day, and if this is what kills you. . ." He bowed his head. "I will find a way to stop it."

"I know, Father," Luke said quietly, his hand dropping back into his lap. He sat up further, bracing himself against the wall, and surveyed the rest of the room—the medical droids, the dim lights, the closed doors—before his gaze latched onto Vader. "I know you'll try your hardest to stop me from dying. But this won't kill me." He tried for a grin. "I didn't spend nearly eighteen years on a death planet like Tatooine just to be taken down by a few coughing fits."

"You don't know that, son," Vader said. "You can't—"

"So we've arrived at Naboo since I was out?" Luke asked. Vader didn't begrudge him the change of subject. "Have you been down to the planet yet? Was it fun?"

A scowl twisted his lips behind the mask, tugging on the scars. "It was not fun," he said, enunciating the word with a particular brand of disgust. "Naboo holds nothing but bad memories and tragedy for me."

"Because my mother died?"

Vader hung his head. "Because your mother died."

"But you said she was from Naboo," Luke pushed. "Don't you have any happy memories there?"

The scene he'd thought of earlier flashed to mind—Padmé, radiant in a Queen of Naboo's splendour, standing in front of an entire crowd of adoring people, and choosing to smile at him. "A few, I suppose."

A faint smile touched Luke's lips, and although it was nothing compared to what Padmé's had been like, his mind couldn't help but compare the two. The shape of the nose was so similar, the slow, naturalness of the action, the genuine joy he could feel behind it. . . "Tell me about it."

There were so many other things Vader needed to be doing. He had a stack of datapads to review, a skill he needed to learn off his Master, an entire fleet to run and a child to save.

But if he only had one week left with that child, then the rest of the galaxy could go to hell for all he cared.

So Luke heard his stories, and Vader hoped against hope that he would survive to hear even more.

Chapter Text

Luke's health didn't improve over the next few days. He still had good spells, a handful of precious hours when he could sit up, move around, talk to his father. . . but then he would go pale again and becoming increasingly exhausted. He tried hiding his exhaustion from Vader once, to prevent fussing, and was marginally successful—until he fainted. Being carried back to bed was not his finest moment.

It took a toll on Luke's mental state, Vader could tell. Not that he blamed him—it took a toll on him, too. Constantly worrying, constantly anxious. . . He had received more than a few glares the past three days as his Master caught on to how distracted he was during the countless parades he had to sit through.

But sit through them he would, because the alternative of displeasing his Master, giving him cause to further investigate why his apprentice was so out of it. . . No. That wasn't an option.

Even if it was fast becoming clear that simply sitting through them was not enough for the Emperor.

Vader had been escorting his Master back to his suite in Theed Royal Palace when it happened. The accusation started light, conversational, but Vader had long since learned that a conversation with his Master was anything but.

"Tell me, Lord Vader," Palpatine said. "Will you be returning to the Devastator for the night?"

Vader swallowed hard, then said carefully, "I have much work to catch up on, Master." It wasn't a lie. "As honourable as this celebration is," now that was a lie, "it is interfering dangerously with fleet movements and scheduling."

"Of course, my friend, I know how hard you work." Palpatine and his retinue halted outside the entrance to his suite; the red guards took their positions outside his door as Vader followed him inside. "But," he added the moment the door slid shut behind them, "I have to wonder if there's another reason to it."

Vader was silent for one cycle of his respirator. Two. "Another reason, Master?"

The Emperor smiled sagely, but the white-knuckled grip on his cane betrayed the weight to his words. "Yes."

"There is no other reason."

Lightning crackled through him, frying his nerves, setting his senses alight. The familiar urge to scream rose in his throat; through sheer force of will he quelled it to a grunt.

Palpatine's eyes still seemed to flicker with some inner flame. "Do not lie to me." His voice was low, harsh—a far cry from the cheerful lilt of a few moments ago. "Or if you do, at least put some effort into ensuring I do not find out."

Vader took a few hissed breaths off-sync with his respirator, clutching his side—the lightning had meant to cause pain, not kill. But it'd done its job well. "Master—"

"Silence." Palpatine's cane clacked against the floor as he halted, and turned to face him. The Emperor's suite was luxurious—all plush colours and comfortable furniture and effective heating—but it suddenly became very, very cold. "Did you really think you could hide from me the lowly tech you currently house in your quarters? The apprentice you've taken on? Luke." Palpatine smiled at the spike of terror that shot through Vader. "Luke Whitesun, wasn't it?"

Barely, infinitesimally, Vader relaxed behind his shields. He didn't know—not the whole truth, anyway.

"He is strong, Lord Vader, I'll give you that." The words seemed to be pried from Palpatine's gums and dropped to the floor between them. "And I have felt his presence disappear on occasion these past few days; he is taking to shielding well. But you are no Sith Master." His lips curled back to reveal yellowed, rotting teeth. "You said yourself: you know nothing of what there is to be taught. You are unworthy."

"Master—"

"You may continue to house the boy until Empire Day is over," the Emperor ordered. "After that, you will turn him over to me, and I will train him. His potential is too great to be wasted on a half-trained failure of a Sith Lord."

Once upon a time, the words would've stung. They would've enraged him. Now, all he felt was the familiar dragon of fear creeping into his chest and wrapping its tail around his heart.

He wasn't strong enough to face Palpatine alone. Perhaps with Luke fully trained. . . but Luke would die in a few days, or be turned over to his Master for training. There was no way out of this.

So Vader just bowed and said, "It will be done, my Master."

Sheev Palpatine's plot to take over the galaxy had involved turning a Republic governed by him into an Empire ruled by him, and slowly implementing changes after that until he held complete control. It was brilliant, and it had worked—much to Obi-Wan's loss—but that didn't mean it was flawless.

Especially since the slowly implemented changes were. . . well, implemented slowly, especially in the case of the military. Why change what already worked?

So Obi-Wan, Jedi Master and General in the Clone Wars, had little to no bother getting onto the main Star Destroyer in the fleet. It was like coming home.

A little more difficult had been getting into the Naboo system in the first place, under heavy security for the Empire Day celebrations as it was, but Obi-Wan knew firsthand the pains of over-entitled tourists, so it hadn't taken much to get the officer duty to wave him past with disgust.

Afterwards. . . Well, they didn't exactly leave lieutenant-commanders' uniforms lying around, but he made do. He had to.

He needed to save Luke, and he would.

Regardless of Vader's determination and efforts, the days continued to tick by, until finally, Empire Day came.

The largest celebration was planned. Vader had sat in on enough meetings between the Emperor, the Queen and several event planners that even if he'd never paid attention, he was still hyperaware of every detail. The floats, the incessant parades. . . even the colours of the fireworks had been puzzled and agonised over.

But Vader wasn't going to attend. He refused.

His Master blasted him with lightning when he did. Then again. Then again.

But at the end of the day, once he'd been electrocuted to within an inch of his life, he wasn't fit to be seen in public. Vader dragged himself back onto his quarters with failing life support and his nerves on fire. Luke didn't even wake up.

At least, not until Vader staggered out of the medical room in his quarters again, the droids having done their work and saved his life again. By that point Luke was already awake—and worried.

"Father?" he croaked, eyes squinting up at him. His health had deteriorated rapidly the past few days; his good spells were rare, replaced by states of constant pain and exhaustion. "What— What. . . happened?"

"A minor disagreement with my Master," Vader said dismissively. "It is nothing."

But Luke frowned harder, and Vader felt a clumsy probe through the Force. It was easy to forget, he mused, that their bond worked both ways. As he could sense Luke's emotions, so too could Luke sense his.

And his pain.

He locked his shields down the moment the thought crossed his mind—Luke didn't need any more pain right now—but the damage was done. Luke blue eyes filled with tears, and in his weakened state he couldn't stop them from falling. "He nearly killed you."

"No. I'm too valuable to him to kill. He just wanted to inflict some pain."

"Feels like he succeeded at that."

Vader forced a chuckle. "That he did."

Luke was silent for a moment, then: "Why—" He took a breath. "Why did he want to hurt you?"

"It was a punishment."

"For what?"

Vader sighed. "I refused to attend the parade on Naboo. It won't have too major an impact on Imperial morale; he was just angry that I disobeyed orders."

"Why. . . did you?" No sooner had he said it than realisation flashed across Luke's face; his eyes grew wide with panic, he tried to sit up. Vader gently pushed him back onto the bed, ignoring the way his chest ached at the fear in his son's eyes. "What day is it?"

The words tasted bitter as he said them; when they fell, it was with the ring of a funeral bell. "Empire Day."

Luke closed his eyes, more tears welling up and escaping from under his eyelids. "I'm not going to die," he said stubbornly, but his voice shook. "I don't believe it."

But faith had nothing to do with the fact that Luke was ill of a disease no one knew the cure to, one only the Force could bring about, and the Force had predicted that he would die today.

"Happy birthday, Luke," Vader whispered. It was cruel. It was cruel, because nothing about this was happy at all.

Nothing was happy about the fact his son was dying, and there was no way to save him except. . . except. . .

But that went against the destiny the Force had granted him, and anyway, it would alert his Master that something was wrong if there was such a momentous shift. Even if it worked, he would demand Luke be turned over to him immediately, and Vader would be killed.

There was no hope.

"Father. . ."

Vader's head snapped back up at Luke's strained whisper. One hand, pale and trembling, snaked out from under the covers to tug a sheet of blanket at where it had pooled on the floor. Vader instinctively reached out, picked it up to drape it over his son—

But Luke shook his head. He just gestured at the spot of floor the blanket had previously covered.

Vader bent over to look, and his heart almost stopped beating.

There was an image scratched into the floor. A crude image, rendered by what seemed to be fingernail markings, but he recognised the outfit, the two purposeful dots—beauty marks—on each of the woman's cheeks.

Padmé.

Padmé, from the memory he'd shown Luke, of the celebration on Palace Plaza—

He bowed his head. "Thank you, my son."

It was the first time Luke had sketched anything since Vader had nearly killed him.

Luke smiled, a little wistfully. Vader had the sense he wasn't looking at him. Instead, he was looking past him, into some far-fetched dream he had, which might be the last thing he ever saw—

"What's that?"

"What?"

"That," Luke said, brows furrowed. He still wasn't looking at Vader. His shields had slipped completely, his light shining out and branding wherever it touched. "The person who just came onto the ship."

Vader stretched out with his senses. . . and then went cold.

His Master was here.

It could be nothing—should be nothing—but Emperor Palpatine had taken a shuttle and chosen to arrive in the hangar bay closest to Vader's quarters. Unannounced. Without shielding his presence.

Vader turned to Luke—dying, fragile Luke, whose light could gutter out any moment now. "I'll be back soon." The words hurt to say.

But he needed to know what his Master was doing.

He had a bad feeling about this.

With Luke's shields down, Obi-Wan sensed where he was on the ship easily, but he had to plan his attack right. He'd had to wait for Vader to leave.

So the moment the man did, he struck.

He didn't know the code to get into Vader's quarters, but it didn't matter. He had a lightsaber and the Force; everything else could take care of itself. Even if it left several smoking doorways in his wake.

He was almost suspicious of the lack of security he encountered around Vader's quarters—he wasn't objecting, but it seemed. . . odd. Then again, there'd been no official announcement about Luke, so if Vader was trying to keep him a secret then reducing the amount of people who might interact with him would be one way of doing it. . .

The last door hissed open in front of him, and he stepped through, eyes quickly adjusting to the dimness the room. He pulled out his lightsaber and squinted around by the blue light, cautiously aware of a constant sound, a rasped breathing. . .

But it wasn't Vader's respirator he was hearing, he realised. Because there was a bed in this room, and Luke's Force presence was muted. He was asleep.

Obi-Wan winced at the sound of his laboured breaths—was he ill?—and quickly moved over to his side. He placed a hand on his shoulder, for a moment just marvelling at the fact that he was here, Luke was here. He hadn't failed Padmé.

Not yet, at least.

He glanced around, still on the alert for Vader, but the Sith Lord was nowhere to be found. And that was suspicious. Where was he?

A faint groan jerked his attention back to Luke. The boy stirred, eyes peeling open with a grunt. "Ben? Is that—"

"Luke," Obi-Wan said, and hugged him.

He didn't know what had come over him. But the sheer relief that he was alive, that Vader hadn't killed him, that he still remembered and loved Obi-Wan, made him want to cry.

He didn't. Now was not the time for that.

"We need to get out of here," he said, pulling back. "Can you stand?"

Luke nodded. "Yeah—I think this is one of the illness's good spells, but what—?" His eyes blew wide suddenly, and Obi-Wan felt it too. There was a dark spike in the Force, a concentration of anger and hatred and fear and it felt. . . violent.

And familiar.

"Father," Luke said, then lunged to his feet. Obi-Wan grabbed him, caught him before he toppled over, but Luke just pushed him away again. "He's in trouble—I have to go help him—"

"Luke, we need to go—"

"No." Something in Obi-Wan stilled at the word, the vehemence of it. The lightsaber's glare reflected in Luke's eyes, blue on blue, but he couldn't have said whether the gaze or the blade itself was more deadly. "I have to go and help him."

"Luke—"

"I'm going to help him," Luke reiterated, heading for the door. He stumbled a few days, swayed back and forth, but soon found his feet again. With a wave of his hand, he stretched into the Force and summoned an object to hand. A hilt—no, Obi-Wan realised. A lightsaber.

"Where—"

"Father smuggled it on board at Mustafar," Luke said, and there it was again: Luke's casual use of Father. Obi-Wan didn't know what to make of this.

And that wasn't Anakin's old lightsaber. . .

Luke punched the control panel, and the door slid open. He tossed one look over his shoulder. "Are you coming?"

Obi-Wan sighed. Deeply.

This was so— so— Anakin. Running off without planning—against all of his perfectly made plans, even—and for what? A Sith Lord—who was not Anakin—who may or may not be in trouble?

The Jedi practiced compassion, sure, but this was unbelievable.

He shook his head, but followed the boy anyway, as he inevitably would've.

Yoda had given him one job, and although he might have failed Satine, failed Padmé, failed Anakin. . . He would be damned before he failed Luke as well.

"Master," Vader said, trying to hide the panic in his tone. "What are you doing here?"

"Don't worry, Lord Vader, this isn't a test," Palpatine said, even if Vader knew full well he was lying. Everything was a test with him. "I simply realised that if I'm going to be training Whitesun, it would be. . . beneficial. . . for me to meet him beforehand, to ensure he knows the consequences of defiance."

Vader gritted his teeth. Consequences of defiance. "He is ill currently, my Master," he said. That wasn't a lie. "I would hate for you to become infected also." That was.

But the Emperor just waved past his poor attempt at stalling. "I'm certain the Dark Side will be able to handle what my medical team cannot. I would meet him now."

Vader still hesitated.

Irritation threaded itself into Palpatine's voice. "Now, Lord Vader."

Another moment of hesitation, then— "No."

The silence that fell in the wake of the word hissed, somehow, heavy and malevolent. The Emperor barely flinched.

"No?" he asked, the word soft and mocking. "No?"

Vader shook his head. "No. You can't see him."

"Lord Vader," Palpatine said. He was practically whispering now. "Are you refusing a direct order?"

He clenched his fists, but ground out, "Yes."

And that was when Palpatine smiled.

Something in Vader went cold at the sight of it.

"Is there a reason for this?" his Master continued. "Or just a spat of pathetic rebellion?"

Was there a reason you destroyed that droid? Watto had asked once, knowing full well what the answer was but still enjoying the power that came from tormenting a small boy. Is this rebellion? Or are you just being pathetic?

But his new Master went one step further: "Is there a reason I can't see your son?"

Everything stopped.

Every inch of his Master's face, every shadow, every wrinkle, every fold, was thrown into sharp relief, dizzying detail, but Vader could see none of it. All he could see, for one fateful instant, was Luke: Luke, choking in the red light of the lava. Luke, massaging the scars on his throat. Luke, frowning at the droid he was working on.

His Master knew.

His Master knew, and it didn't matter how—if it was spies, or if Vaneé or Piett had betrayed him, or if he'd just sensed the truth through the Force—because now Luke was in danger.

So—

"Yes." The word hissed alongside his lightsaber as it snapped out, the red blade hungry and alive. "There is every reason you can't see him."

Torture, training, murder—it didn't matter what Palpatine had in mind for him, it couldn't be good. And Vader wouldn't let that happen.

"Lord Vader," Palpatine said on a sigh, raising his hands. His eyed the lightsaber with distaste before turning his gaze back to him. "I think you've forgotten which once of us is the apprentice, the slave—"

A burst of violet, then nothing but pain, screaming pain, the sizzling of nerves and sinuses—

"—and which is the Master."

Walking at the brisk, slightly hurried pace most officers on the Devastator seemed to favour, few spared Obi-Wan and Luke a glance until they were long past. The only opposition they met was just outside the hangar bay his father was in, and even then it wasn't anything one of Ben's famed mind tricks couldn't solve.

Well, a mind trick coupled with a stun shot from the officer's own blaster.

Obi-Wan clipped the blaster to his belt, even as Luke saw him curl his lip at it. "Now, Luke, we need to be careful," he warned. "You heard that officer—Vader ordered that he wasn't going to be disturbed, so—"

Luke ignored him, and barged right in, leaving his Master cursing in his wake.

What he found brought him up short.

The screaming was the worst part of it. A horrible sound—a strangled note too high for the vocoder, equals parts static and organic voice. It was unnatural, coming from his father.

And what was causing it, that violet lightning that danced around him, beautiful in its deadliness—

Luke didn't think. He ran straight at them, his tired body twinging in protest. A roar scraped out of his throat, accompanied by the snap-hiss of his lightsaber as the Emperor turned, eyes wide with glee—

And then Luke was screaming as well.

Whatever part of his body the illness had spared was suddenly under attack, being rent in two—his lungs and eye sockets and brains were fried where they sat—pain lanced up and down his neck, around his scars, and he had the horrible déjà vu of the last time something like this had happened—

"Luke," he heard, from very far away, and the onslaught stopped.

He moaned, his head lolling to rest his cheek against the cold floor. He didn't know when he'd collapsed, but his lightsaber wasn't in his hand—it was a few inches away from him, glinting in the light.

He made to reach for it, but his hand spasmed, and fell still.

"You must be Whitesun," he heard the Emperor sneer, and he forced his eyes open—when had he closed them?—to peer up at that shrivelled face, the burning eyes. His father stood next to him—no, kneeled next to him, unmoving. He'd fallen to his knees, smoke still curling off the surface of his armour.

And the mask was turned towards him. "Luke. . ."

"Or is it Skywalker?" the Emperor continued, but Luke wasn't listening. There were tears running down his face; he could feel his heart beating erratically, his body trying to fix the damage that had been done. . . "You were correct, Lord Vader. He does seem to be ill." He raised his hands again. "But I'm sure he can survive a little more."

A scream tore out of Luke's throat even before the lightning hit him; he scrambled for his lightsaber, rolling across the floor, hit the button. The blade roared to life, painfully bright against his eyes—

And the lightning bounced right off of it.

He sucked in a breath, more tears spilling over his cheeks, and held the lightsaber in front of him with trembling hands. The lightning kept bouncing off, dissipating across the room. The air was charged—he could feel it in his teeth, feel his hair stand on end—but he wasn't in agony any more.

Then there was a tug through the Force, and his lightsaber flew out of his grip.

It landed in one of Palpatine's gnarled hands; Luke looked up, eyes wide. The Emperor was smirking as he lit it, examining it from all angles.

"Not the weapon of a Jedi," he said, something that was almost approval in his voice. Then it turned dark with, "But nor is it the weapon of a Sith."

Then the pain struck again.

His head was thrown back, collided with the floor; his vision flickered, the violet bolts all he could see. He couldn't hear his own screams anymore, couldn't feel his back arch against the ground, but he could feel something. If nothing else, he had the Force.

And through the Force, cutting through the fog of pain and his father's stillness, across a bond he hadn't used since waking up on Mustafar. . .

Fear. Fear and resolve.

Then he did hear something: a single blast.

His eyes were wide open, but his vision didn't clear until Palpatine's body had already slumped to the ground, an angry red hole in his chest. A standing a few feet behind him. . .

Ben.

Ben, holding out the blaster they'd taken from that officer. A single wisp of smoke rose from it.

Laughter boiled up in his throat. He let it spill out, no matter how it burned. Ben had— He'd—

He tried to sit up, push up with his hands, but spasms racked his muscles again and he collapsed, face turned away from Ben.

Towards his father's still form.

Awareness—and fear—barrelled into him at once. Father—

But there was someone standing over him, a cool shadow falling across his face. "Sleep, Luke," Ben said gently, something like pain scarring his face. "You're severely injured."

Luke kept struggling. "Father— He needs— I—"

"I will have Anakin taken care of, Luke, I promise," Ben soothed, and Luke wasn't so out of it that he missed the way Obi-Wan's voice broke on Anakin. "But you need to sleep."

Still, Luke shook his head. "I need to—"

Obi-Wan sighed, and suddenly something heavy weighed down on Luke's eyelids. He couldn't help but close them—just for a moment!—but then—

Oblivion.

Chapter Text

Luke was hurting, Luke was in pain, just like she had been. . .

But he couldn't wake up.

No—no, that couldn't be right. Because he'd been on the Devastator before, and now he was—

"Ani?"

His heart stopped at the sound of the voice.

He turned, mouth already fallen open. His surroundings were intimately familiar to him, the sand-blasted walls of the slave quarters, the bench that C-3PO, half-finished and in pieces, lay on.

And his mother, ducking through the door, smiling with the gentleness that the desert had never managed to steal.

Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and he felt—as he always had, with her—the sheer, unselfish love radiating from her heart. "You're back! I thought Watto might have kept you late."

"Watto's dead," he heard himself say, only that was wrong. He didn't know what had happened to the Toydarian since he'd last seen him—that last trip to Tatooine, when. . . except he wouldn't think about that. But he didn't know what had happened to Watto, and he liked to tell himself he didn't care.

No, his former Master wasn't dead. Another Master was.

"Ani?" his mother asked. He was worrying her now; he felt the familiar pang of guilt. "Are you alright?"

He shook his head. "This— this isn't right." The last time he'd been in these quarters—seen his mother uninjured—everything had been. . . larger. He'd looked up at her; the hovel had towered over his nine-year-old head. Now. . .

He looked down, hoping to see flesh and bone. He was greeted by black-gloved hands. His prosthetics.

He was Vader.

But his mother was still looking at him with love, still smiling gently at him, like he was still that tiny, naive, powerless, innocent little boy—

And then a memory flashed to mind: Luke, his boy, writhing in pain on the ground.

And he realised what was so odd. He couldn't hear his respirator.

He wasn't breathing.

He looked up sharply, meeting his mother's eyes. Her brows furrowed with concern. "Ani?"

Her voice. . . rippled. . . getting louder and quieter, overlapping with someone else's. "Ani? Anakin?"

"Anakin? Anakin!"

His eyes flew open. Air shot into his throat as he gasped, but it wasn't enough, he needed more—

Something was shoved into his face—his respirator. The pure, filtered oxygen barrelled in, almost bowling him over, but he could breathe again, and his vision cleared.

The ceiling he was staring at was familiar. It looked like. . .

He sat up sharply, ignoring the twinged protest of his body. Sure enough, it was his personal medbay.

And Obi-Wan was there.

"Anakin," his old Master said. He didn't say anything else.

But Vader did. "That is not my name," he hissed, reaching for the Dark Side, ready to snap this pathetic Jedi in half like a twig—

Only to fall back against the operating table again, his head in agony from the effort. He was too injured; he couldn't focus, even with the pain fuelling him.

"That's what I thought as well," Obi-Wan continued, ignoring him. "Except, when the monitors showed you were waking up, I shouted Vader several times. You only responded to Anakin."

"You didn't call me Anakin. My mother did."

Obi-Wan ignored that as well, which Vader appreciated later, when he was more lucid, because it did sound a little crazy. "And," he continued, "when you were immobilised, and the Emperor was torturing Luke, I felt. . ." He sighed. "You were distant, but you were afraid. For him. Not because he was an asset to you, or you hoped to turn him. Because you loved him."

"Why—" demanded Vader, straining forwards again only to flinch back. Again. "Why does that make any difference?"

"Because Sith aren't supposed to love!" Obi-Wan shouted. "Because you're a Sith, and you love Luke, and that doesn't make any sense, and everything I understand is coming to pieces!"

Vader didn't move. Barely breathed, even with the respirator pumping oxygen into his lungs.

"I loved you, Anakin," Obi-Wan whispered. "I loved you, and you loved Padmé, so when you became a Sith you couldn't be the same person I knew, it couldn't be safe to leave Luke with you, because Sith Lords don't love." He shook his head. "But you're Vader, and you love Luke, and Luke loves you back, so I don't know what to think anymore."

He was still angry—still so, so angry—and he said as much. " I loved you too, Obi-Wan." His voice was biting. "But you cut off my limbs and left me to burn to death."

"Yes," Obi-Wan said. "I did." He stood up. "Luke is in his bed, in the other room. He's alive, but I don't know for how much longer."

Something clenched in Vader's chest. "What day is it?"

"You were asleep for twenty four standard hours. Empire Day was yesterday."

And Luke's still alive? Still dying?

He didn't say them out loud, but it didn't matter. Obi-Wan seemed to know what he was thinking anyway.

He pursed his lips. "You'd better come through," he said. "Luke might feel better with you there."

Even with Luke's desert tan still stubbornly clinging to his face, Vader had never seen anyone look so pale.

Almost on its own volition, his hand stretched out to brush the fringe out of his face. Luke didn't react to it at all; he just kept sleeping.

"Obviously I don't know what he was like before Palpatine electrocuted him," Obi-Wan said behind him, "but he seems to be deteriorating a lot faster now that the lightning's done its damage. He won't survive tomorrow, if that, we think."

"We?" Vader asked quietly. Not that he particularly cared. All of his passion, his fire, seemed to be dying with Luke.

"We," Obi-Wan confirmed, and then another voice spoke.

"Hey, Skyguy."

That sent his temper boiling again. He whirled round, reaching for his lightsaber and pointing the lit blade at Ahsoka's throat.

Not that it would do much. She didn't even flinch.

"You," he seethed. "You told Obi-Wan that Luke is going to die?"

"She did," Obi-Wan confirmed, looking like he had a bad taste in his mouth. He spoke with the same dry tone he always had, but the terrified glance he shot Luke's dying form betrayed his panic. "I wish I could say it was my first time speaking to such a ghost, but my life's not that mundane, I'm afraid."

Vader decided he wasn't going to ask. "And," he kept ranting, jabbing a finger at his ex-Padawan, "did she tell you why he's going to die?"

"Because you didn't return to the Light."

"I have nothing to do with this!" Vader clenched his fists. "You're the one who says he's going to die, without telling me how to save him!"

Ahsoka shook her head. "Stop reassigning blame, Anakin—"

"That is not my name."

"—I have told you everything I know," she continued regardless. "The Force wants you to turn back to the Light, so it's holding Luke as a hostage to do it. I don't agree with it—"

"I'm sure you don't."

"—but this is what's happening, and I've told you how to stop it. You're the one in denial."

"Because I know that it won't work," he hissed. "The Force doesn't want me to turn back; the Dark Side is my destiny. And the one person who knew the secret to immortality, who could've saved Luke, was just shot through the chest. By him." He jabbed a finger at Obi-Wan.

His old Master frowned, but didn't refute the accusations. "Have you tried healing Luke through the Force?"

"Of course I have." The Dark Side was unyielding; it gave so much, but there were some things it couldn't give. It could sustain someone, keep them alive. . . but it couldn't heal them. He couldn't save Luke with it—not through the techniques he knew, at least. And the technique he needed had died with his Master.

Ahsoka said quietly, "Have you tried using the Light?"

"Of course not!"

She looked. . . saddened. . . by that. "If you don't then Luke will die on his eighteenth birthday."

He jerked his head up to glare at her. "Then why isn't he dead already?"

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan exchanged a look. They were silent for one tense minute.

Then—

"Because Luke wasn't born on Empire Day."

He blinked. "What." Shook his head. "Luke said—"

"When I delivered Luke to the Lars homestead, I didn't tell them the precise date of his birth," Obi-Wan said baldly. "I didn't know the precise date of his birth; everything happened so quickly, I didn't check the medical records on Polis Massa, and I didn't know how long we'd been in hyperspace. So I just told the Larses that he was a few days old, and they tied his birthday to Empire Day so they had a reliable date to celebrate that corresponded with the calendar on Tatooine. But Luke wasn't born on Empire Day."

"He had to have been," Vader said. "Padmé—"

"—was at the senate session where Palpatine made himself Emperor," Obi-Wan said. "That is the event that Empire Day celebrates. But Padmé didn't give birth then and there. She gave birth around two days later."

Vader shook his head again. "Impossible. Luke must have been born on Mustafar."

"Why?"

"Because I killed her!" He didn't realise he was shouting until he stopped. "I killed her," he repeated. "She couldn't have survived until two days later, let alone give birth. It's impossible."

"It's not impossible," Obi-Wan insisted, "because you didn't kill her."

Everything stopped.

Distantly, Vader could hear the blood pounding in his head, but that was all he could hear. Ahsoka's mouth was moving, Obi-Wan was sighing, Luke shifting in his sleep, but all Vader could hear was his pulse.

His pulse, and the Force.

Truth, it sang. Truth.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "I—" He took a breath. "I didn't?"

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. "You choked her into unconsciousness. Wounded her badly. But you didn't kill her."

"Then—" He swallowed. "How did she die?"

"We don't know," Obi-Wan admitted. There was a chair next to Luke's bed; he collapsed into it, sighing. "The medical droid said she was perfectly healthy, that there was no reason for her to die. I suspect Palpatine was involved somehow." He was quiet for a moment, then— "Her last words were that there was still good in you."

Vader closed his eyes. Padmé, his angel. . . She'd always had faith in him.

"So Luke will die tomorrow," he said stiffly, trying to push away the image of her beautiful face slack in death, hair woven with white flowers. "That's still only two more days to live."

Obi-Wan wasn't tricked by his attempt to divert the conversation—and nor was Ahsoka. She just gazed at him. The light radiating off her hurt his eyes. "You betrayed Padmé," she said. "You hurt her, badly. But you didn't kill her." She shook her head. "Don't let Luke die as well."

"I can't save him," he said, wanting to ignore the way his voice broke on the words. Fear—fear had always ruled his life, for as long as he could remember, and this was the first time he'd acknowledged that dangerous dragon out loud in what felt like forever. I can't turn back to the Light.

"Padmé believed you can," Obi-Wan said. "Luke believed you can." He shut his mouth, swallowed, then— "I believe you can." He met Vader's eye. "All you have to do is try. All you have to do," his lips quirked in a wry, almost self-deprecating smile, "is let go."

Silence fell, but Vader had moved his gaze away from Ahsoka and Obi-Wan, to Luke.

The only thing left of Padmé, and an incredibly precious thing in and of himself.

He rested his hand on his shoulder, eyes roving over his face. He couldn't lose Luke. After everything else, he couldn't lose Luke as well. The galaxy could go to hell for all he cared, so long as he didn't lose Luke.

So he took a deep breath, and reached for those feelings, of love and self-sacrifice, of wanting to give up something for the betterment of someone else. When it came to him, as easily as breathing, the Force felt. . . purer. . . than it had in a long time.

He looked over at Obi-Wan. "Help me," he asked, then through gritted teeth, "please."

Obi-Wan watched him for a moment, then nodded. Something eased in his chest. All the hatred, the anger, the blame. . .

He let go of it, and allowed himself to hope instead.

It was going well, so far. It was going unbelievably well, especially since twenty four hours ago, Obi-Wan could never have believed that Vader could turn back to the Light.

And now he had. For Luke.

They'd been working on him for hours. Ahsoka had left at some point, unable to help; as they neared the three hour mark Obi-Wan started to think that maybe Vader—Anakin?—needed a break.

In the end, it was Obi-Wan who needed to take a break. Using the Light Side of the Force seemed the opposite of tiring for Vader—it seemed to be reinvigorating him, even, healing him just as much as it healed Luke.

It was a marvel.

But as long as Obi-Wan was taking a break, he figured he could do something useful. After all, none of this was happening in a bubble, and the fact remained that he had technically just killed the Emperor of the known galaxy. He knew full well just how. . . catastrophic. . . the fallout of that would be. If there wasn't a leader or system of government ready to replace the previous one, then countless beings would fight to fill the power vacuum. A second civil war might be on their hands.

Fortunately enough, he knew exactly who may or may not be willing (if not quite ready) to install a new system of government.

Which was why immediately after he'd checked the holonet for news—there was some speculation as to why Palpatine hadn't turned up to the main parade on Empire Day, but other than a few doomsayers it seemed like Ahsoka's plan to throw the Emperor's body in a trash compactor had worked—he commed Bail.

The man picked up surprisingly quickly considering Obi-Wan was contacting him on a secure comlink that he had no other reason to use. Then again, he'd known about the situation with Luke and Vader, he would've undoubtably heard about the rumours that something had happened to the Emperor. He'd probably been waiting for this call.

"Ben," Bail said, sticking to their codenames, but he didn't miss how Bail's lips went to mouth Obi-Wan before he cut himself off. He was desperate. "What's the situation? What's happening?"

"Grandfather's dead," he said carefully, and despite how it galled him to call Palpatine anything as affectionate as Grandfather, he had to get the message across without anyone else being able to work out what he was talking about. "My brother returned to us to say goodbye to his body."

Anakin came back to the Light just after he died.

"I see," Bail said. His face was pained, but something akin to hope was beginning to dawn. "And your nephew?"

Luke. "Ill," Obi-Wan said, a smile creeping onto his face, "but recovering very well. He'll be right as day soon."

Bail had no obvious reaction, but Obi-Wan was skilled at reading people. He saw the man's shoulders relax, the tiny smile that crept onto his face. "I'm glad."

"And now I need to talk to you about who's going to inherit Grandfather's prospects." Bail's eyes widened marginally but Obi-Wan barrelled on. "You're the only relative I can trust to think clearly, to talk about what will best prevent family conflict. We need you."

We need your Rebellion, and your New Republic, was what he was saying. Bail raised his eyebrows.

"Where would you propose we meet? You know the cousins—if they find out where we're holding the talk, or even think we're holding the talk, they'll come crashing in and ruin everything. We need somewhere they won't expect us to be."

We need somewhere the Empire won't expect us to be.

Obi-Wan bit his lip, then offered, "How about my brother's marriage venue? I'll be there, and so will he and my nephew. They'll have some insights to share, I'm sure." He paused. "We're even on the right planet now."

"My sister's old leisure house?" Bail asked. Padmé's lake house? Varykino?

"That's the one," Obi-Wan confirmed. "I'll meet you there in two of your days?" Alderaanian days lasted eighteen hours, rather than Coruscant's standard twenty-four; it might be enough to throw off any eavesdropping Imperials on the timing.

"I'll make time for it," Bail promised. It doesn't sound feasible, but I'll be there anyway.

Obi-Wan nodded. "Thank you," he said. "For everything."

There was a moment of shock, then Bail allowed a large smile to spread over his face. "Thank you, Ben," he said. "I'll see you soon."

"It had to be here that we came to, didn't it?" Vader—Anakin—his father grumbled.

Luke frowned. "What's so special about here?" He coughed slightly as he said it, feeling his father's panic spike, but he waved it off. He'd woken up, he'd recovered; he just needed a little more rest, now.

He smiled at Anakin, letting all his pride and happiness shine out with it. I knew you could turn back to the Light. I knew it.

And he had. He had, and now the Emperor was dead, they were going about negotiating how to set up a Republic in its place, and he had his father back.

The future looked bright.

"It's where your parents got married," Ahsoka told him, flickering into existence behind him. He tilted his head up to face her, unflinching—he'd almost become used to her doing that.

"Really?" he asked, excitement rising in his chest. He turned his head to his father for clarification, but Anakin was facing out across the lake. He didn't seem to have heard him. "Father?"

He jerked himself out of his stupor then, and tilted his head so his mask was facing Luke. "Yes?"

"Is it true this is where you married my mother?"

Another silence, more gazing at the lake, something that felt like. . . nostalgia. . . emanating off the man, then. . .

"Yes," he said. His voice was wistful. "I'll tell you about it—about her—later." He inclined his helmet to the other shore. "Organa is here. And he seems to have someone else with him."

He was right. Luke squinted, and there was another, smaller figure next to him. As the speeder they were taking grew nearer, he could make out more details—a young woman, about his age, with brown hair lashed into two buns.

He didn't recognise her, but there was a feeling of. . . familiarity. . . to her. He knew her from somewhere, somehow.

He was so preoccupied with the feeling that he missed the look exchanged between Ahsoka and Obi-Wan, but he didn't miss his father's slightly heated, "Why has Organa brought his daughter to such a delicate discussion?"

It was rhetorical, but Luke turned to ask Ben the answer anyway, so he didn't miss the second look he and Ahsoka exchanged, loaded with caution. Luke frowned. They almost seemed. . . hopeful.

When they seemed to come to a decision, Ahsoka just said with a coy smile: "Indeed. Why would he?"