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Hands of Time
Luke Skywalker wasn't aware if he'd lost consciousness and just regained it or not. Everything felt strange, there wasn't a word he could put to it. There were several that could try: fuzzy, hazy, foggy, none really did the sensation justice. He only knew he was in more pain now than he could ever remember feeling, and at first he didn't know why. The pain surged throughout his entire body, but some parts were becoming painfully numb and were impossible to move, because something was constricting him. At first he couldn't figure out what it was, he couldn't see where he was either. He could see, but everything was dark, too dark to make out any real details. But his blood ran cold when he heard a familiar mechanical sound, and realized that wherever he was, he had fallen into Darth Vader's clutches. His blood turned to ice as he realized that that was literally what had happened. The excruciating pain he was feeling all seemed to be stemming from the dark lord's deathly grip on the young commander.
He didn't know where Vader had come from, he didn't remember what had happened, but here he was, and here they both were, and he felt the man's arms pressed around him so tightly it was choking the air out of him, he tried to scream in pain but could only get out a few choked groans. He squeezed his eyes all but shut from the pain and felt them sting with tears that didn't even build up, they were just suddenly there and trying to break loose.
This wasn't some Force thing like when Darth Vader choked people to death without touching them, he could feel the man's armored body against him, felt his arms wrapped around him like a vise, why? What was he doing? Why was he doing it?
He threw his head back and got out half of a pained scream as the sensation got worse. What was Vader doing to him? Was this supposed to be some torture technique to make him talk? In that moment, it would've worked, he would've told Vader whatever he wanted to know...except he couldn't remember a damn thing about what that might be.
He couldn't get the words out but his mind was screaming, Stop! Please stop!
The respirator was almost deafening in his ears, but he heard plain as day the dark lord's words, which sounded strangely reassuring. "Do not be afraid, my son, I won't let you go."
So much for being able to read minds. If Luke could actually breathe, let alone let out all the screams that were racing around in his head, he'd laugh humorlessly at the situation. What the hell did that even mean? Won't let him go from what? The pain surged in his body again and he tried to scream again, it was louder this time but still cut off short.
"Please!" he just barely got the word out as he felt the death grip making his sides burn in agony. "Please...I can't breathe!"
"Yes you can," Darth Vader told him, even through the vocoder there was no readable emotion to the words, "it just feels like you can't."
"F-Father!" Luke choked the word out as tears stung his eyes and half blinded him as they were squeezed out through the pain. It had been the first time he'd actually acknowledged the dark lord as being that. He'd struggled with that revelation for months, and still hadn't been ready to come to terms with it. He still wasn't, but the word had come out anyway. Luke felt a sharper stab of pain shoot through his whole body and he dropped his head on Vader's armor-covered shoulder and cried out, "Father, please!"
"Calm yourself, my son."
The words sharply penetrated Luke like an ice storm. It sounded so easy when he said it, but there was nothing easy about anything that was going on. He only half heard the second part of the sentence, "I know you're in pain, unfortunately it cannot be helped."
The pain was getting even worse, Luke was sure he would die from it alone long before Vader got done torturing him. The pain must've been making him delirious because he found himself sobbing in excruciating pain and bleakly wondering what he'd done to deserve something as horrible as this?
"Luke!"
A small yelp escaped him as he picked his head up and realized his eyes had been closed. He still couldn't make out where they were, but it occurred to him they were moving.
A couple things occurred to him, that his arms were free, that Vader's arms were locked around his ribs and the back of his waist, which was being constricted to the point of total numbness, what didn't occur to him was given how much taller Darth Vader was from him, and that he was able to rest his head against the dark lord's shoulder. Having everything below his waist numbed, he wasn't aware that his feet weren't even touching the ground. Nor did it really occur to him that were he merely hauled over Darth Vader's shoulder, the man would've had a lower hold on him than his waist. Luke couldn't figure out what was going on, where they were going, what was happening to him.
"Let me go," Luke pleaded feebly, suddenly feeling completely exhausted and drained of any energy, "please let me go."
"You will be all right, Luke, but you have to stay awake."
Luke's vision was getting blurry and felt like he was seeing some things double, how Vader thought he could possibly fall asleep like this was beyond him. All the same though, he felt his eyelids getting heavy and felt his head slump over Vader's shoulder again, weakly murmuring, "Father, please...Father...please..."
The death grip around his torso didn't let up, but he felt a gloved hand on his back and heard that mechanical booming voice, "Stay with me, my child, it's almost over."
What was almost over? That was the last full thought Luke had before everything went black, and quiet.
The men who served Darth Vader knew full well better than to question anything the dark lord did or ordered them to do, still that didn't stop them from gawking in confusion and shock when he returned to the ship carrying a nearly unconscious Luke Skywalker in his arms, the Rebel commander's head hung over the dark lord's shoulder, his boots limply swayed nearly a foot off the ground, he was weakly murmuring something but nothing coherent.
Darth Vader barked at the men to inform the medics to get ready for an incoming patient in the ship's med bay, and they knew better than to argue about why he'd waste his time having them fix up a member of the Rebel scum.
As he carried Luke to the bay, Vader heard him murmuring tiredly, frantically, weakly. The boy had been teetering on unconsciousness for a while but he'd kept talking, or tried to. At this point everything was only coming out in single syllables as Luke faintly repeated, "Fa'h, plea'e, fa'h, plea'e..."
The human medics in the bay were just as surprised by the sight that met them as the rest of the crew had been. Nobody could figure out why the dark lord had brought a Rebel onboard, still alive, and was having him treated. For that matter, nobody could even tell what was wrong with him, until Vader eased him down on the exam table and finally removed his arms from around the young man's waist and they saw a large bloody laceration that had saturated the gash on the side of his flight suit, and saw that Lord Vader was covered in the pilot's blood up to his durasteel elbow.
He'd felt the boy's screams of pain and terror long before he actually heard them. He'd known that Luke was on the same planet he was, and somewhere close by, and in trouble. Nobody had commed in that they'd found one of the Rebels, which didn't leave a lot of possibilities, so he'd gone searching for Luke himself. He'd found him just inside the entrance to a cave, something had happened, whether it had been hit with a blaster shot, or the planet's natural seismic activity, part of the entrance had caved in, several stalactites had broken loose from the cave ceiling and one in particular had knocked Luke down, pinned him to the floor and pierced through his suit as well as his flesh. The boy was lucky only in that he hadn't been crushed to death, the sheer weight of the thing pinned him down but its weight wasn't on him, and somehow when he'd been impaled by the spike it had missed all organs, bones and major arteries, but he would still bleed out before he ever got to a med bay.
Luke had still been screaming when Vader entered the cave, but he was running out of air and shortly afterwards passed out before he even realized he wasn't alone. Using the Force to move the large jagged mineral deposit off of his son had been the easy part. Figuring out what to do next had been more difficult. There wasn't any point in wasting time contacting the ship and having anyone come out to collect Luke. He didn't bother to think about how he would explain this peculiar scene when he returned onboard, he pulled Luke to his feet, the boy was more unconscious than not and in no condition to walk, and the blood was gushing out of his side. He'd locked his arms around the boy's waist in a death grip to keep the pressure tight and staunch the blood off until they reached the med bay, lifted Luke off his feet so the boy's chest was pressed against his for leverage, and walked back to the Executor. The dark lord had never been more aware of his prosthetics, but he kept a steady pace, only one thought in his mind as he made the trip back to his flagship, Luke would survive. There was no other option.
Through their bond in the Force when Luke regained consciousness, Vader had been aware of his pain and his fear, his misunderstanding, he thought his father was hurting him, he didn't know the pain was from the injuries he'd suffered in the cave, and any pain Vader was further causing him was just to keep him alive. Vader had decided ignorance would be better, if Luke knew the true extent of his injuries, he would panic, and while he couldn't possibly break loose from his father's hold on him, it wouldn't make the walk back to the Executor any easier for either of them. Back in the C...long ago, he'd seen a lot of men with treatable injuries die because they panicked, that would not happen with his son.
The medics went to work cutting Luke's flight suit off, the laceration was so big he needed 50 stitches before they could even put him in the bacta tank simply so he didn't bleed out before the bacta could do its job. The medic droids applied the sutures, their programming and durasteel parts quicker and more accurate and effective than any human medic's trained hands, one of the human medics, braver than the rest though it wasn't audible as he chanced asking Vader, but only got out a hesitant, "Milord?"
Vader explained simply, allowing no room for argument, "The Emperor has plans for young Skywalker, he will not escape his fate this easily."
That was the end of the discussion. As he spoke he pressed a gloved hand against Luke's face and pried one eyelid up and saw the pupil was unresponsive though the boy continued to weakly ramble incoherently and intermittently. Through the Force though, he communicated to Luke, "Do not fear, young one, you are safe now. No harm will come to you here." He would see to that.
Once the sutures were in place, Luke was placed in the bacta tank where he floated unresponsively for a couple of hours. He was taken out, the wound site cleaned and the stitches removed, and he was placed back in the tank for the bacta to finish its job. Several hours later he was taken out again, dressed in a white medical robe and placed in one of the bay beds, unconscious but healed. The wound was not only closed up, aside from a section of pink inflamed skin that would suffer mild scarring, there was no trace of the large gaping hole that had been torn into him.
When Luke woke up, he knew right away he was in an Imperial med bay, how he knew that he wasn't sure, his memory was foggy and he couldn't remember a whole lot of anything. He tried to think, tried to remember, how had he gotten here? Why was he here? Was he being treated for something? And why would the Imperials do that? Oh wait...they would if Darth Vader told them to, but why would he do that? He...Luke slowly started to remember, he remembered the pain, remembered the sound of that respirator, remembered that booming voice. Vader had found him, where? He couldn't remember. Vader had tried to kill him, no wait, that wasn't it. It had felt like it, but...he tried to remember what it was Vader had said.
"Do not be afraid, my son, I won't let you go."
He couldn't figure out what that meant at the time...but now a few things were starting to come back to him. He'd had a disembodied sensation below his waist but despite that fact, he did remember his feet kicking and there was only air under them. Vader had been carrying him...why? And why had he...wait...wait...
He heard a deafening sound in his head, the ceiling caving in on him, he remembered pain, a sharp pain, heard his own screams...and then there was just nothing.
Darth Vader had found him in that cave, and...saved him? That didn't make any sense. And yet...
He pushed the blanket down, pulled his robe up and looked at his side, there was some bruising from Vader's arms locking around his waist, but the big gash he'd felt in his side was gone. The bruises overlapped with the large area of skin that was miraculously wound-free.
That was it. Vader had kept pressure on the wound to keep him from bleeding to death. But why would he do that? The man was pure evil, he had no conscience, no compassion, he'd murdered millions of innocent people...
"No...I am your father."
Those words woke him up at night in a cold sweat. How could it be true? And yet it had to be. It had to be, but it couldn't be, his father was a brave man, a good man, a Jedi knight, a pilot in the Clone Wars, how could...what could've...it hurt his head to even try and think about it. He couldn't resolve everything he'd heard about his father, to that thing they'd spent three years fighting.
And yet he heard his own words echoing in his ears, "Father, please!" Whether he wanted to or not, he apparently had accepted the fact Darth Vader was his father. But what did that mean?
Luke looked around the bay and tried to figure out how he was going to get out of here. He got up and went over to the door but it wouldn't open, and even trying to use the Force he couldn't get it to budge. Defeated, he staggered back over to his bed and lay down, resigning himself to the fact he may not get away this time.
He felt something in his chest, and heard a sound come out of his mouth that he didn't recognize, it came again, and again, and he recognized it as a laugh, broken up one sound at a time, completely humorless, but he laughed all the same. Luke laughed as the sad irony hit him, the first and only time in his entire life that his father ever hugged him was just to keep him from bleeding to death. He guessed in the grand scheme that really counted for a lot, but...
The bay door opened and Vader marched into the room, Luke felt his eyes widen as much as they could. The moment of truth, what was going to happen to him now?
"Get up," the dark lord told him.
Luke did as he was told, and only then saw an Imperial uniform draped over the foot of the bed.
"Get dressed," Vader ordered him.
Luke felt his heart jump into his throat as he took the robe off and got dressed. He guessed they were going to take a trip to the Imperial City and see the Emperor.
There were mirrors in the med bay, Luke caught a glimpse of himself in one, he tried to tell himself that this wasn't any different from the time he and Han knocked out those Stormtroopers and stole their armor...but he couldn't convince himself of that. This suit felt like a second skin trying to fuse onto him, trying to make him an Imperial against his will.
The door whooshed open again and Luke turned and saw one of the medics entering the room, who did a double take at the sight of the patient out of bed.
"What are you-" he turned and saw the other man in the room, "Lord Vader..."
Darth Vader raised a hand and the medic's eyes went blank. Luke could tell he wasn't being choked, he looked like he'd gone into a trance of some kind.
"You didn't see us," the dark lord told the medic.
The man's eyes remained blank but his mouth dropped open and he said almost mechanically, "I didn't see you."
"We were never here," Vader told the man as he motioned for Luke to follow him out.
"You were never here," the medic blindly repeated as the two men walked past him and out the door.
Luke stared at his father with wide eyes in awe. He hadn't seen anything like that since he and Ben got stopped in his landspeeder with Artoo and 3PO.
"How'd you..." he started to ask, and then the question was forgotten as he looked past Vader and was met with an unsettling sight of all the Stormtroopers and Imperials keeled over on the floor, unresponsive. Luke felt his stomach drop.
"You didn't..."
"No, I didn't," Vader told him. "They are merely unconscious, and when they wake up, they won't remember you were here."
Luke wasn't sure if he was hearing right. He looked up at the masked man and asked, "What?"
"Follow me."
"What's going on?" Luke asked. Vader was so much taller than he was, he had to run to keep up with the dark lord.
Without answering, Darth Vader explained, "The boarding ramp is down, you will find your X-wing where you left it, go."
Luke stopped in his tracks and looked at his father. This had to be some kind of trick, a trap, something. There was no way he'd just let him go.
"Why?" Luke demanded to know before he'd take another step.
He would've sworn through the vocoder he heard his father sigh in frustration. Darth Vader turned to him and told the younger Skywalker, "If you do not join me, the Emperor will destroy you, you are not strong enough to defeat him yet. I just found out six months ago that you existed at all, I can't lose you already."
Luke felt his eyes open as wide as they could and felt like the bones and muscles in his body were starting to turn to gel. He felt his jaw drop slightly and felt his bottom lip doing something akin to quivering as the words finally absorbed in his brain and he realized what his father was saying.
An involuntary sound rose up from his chest, followed by another, and he finally managed to choke out, "Father..."
Luke forgot for a minute just what this man was capable of doing and threw his arms around his father and pressed the side of his face into the black chest plate. A few seconds later he felt an unpleasant sensation of the air being choked out of him again, but he realized this time it was from his father's arms wrapped tight around his back. Luke felt like his brain was melting, his father was actually hugging him, and this time it wasn't to keep him from dying. It was because this man was his father, and despite everything, he...he...
"Luke."
He didn't know if Vader said his name or just thought it and he picked it up through the Force, either way it resonated in his head and he was able to feel so much off of it. Including something so faint he almost missed it, that Vader would've done anything he had to to stop Luke from going back to the Rebels, but something was compelling him that he had to let his son go for now, if there was any hope of beating the Emperor.
"Father..." Luke felt torn, so confused. There was still good in this man, he could feel it, he could feel his father's conflict, something the Emperor hadn't been able to drive away.
He felt a gloved hand tightly grip a handful of the hair on the back of his head and felt his head jerk back with a pained moan, though he knew his father hadn't meant to hurt him. Whatever was happening between them through the Force was affecting both of them. Luke didn't really want to leave his father, but he knew he had to, he knew he couldn't stay here, he did not belong. Maybe his father didn't belong with him either, the Alliance would never accept him even if he defected, but Luke knew his father was not all evil, whatever remained of Anakin Skywalker had to be saved, he had to figure out a way to save him.
Vader's booming voice drove Luke out of his thoughts as he finally felt the other man let go of him and pull away.
"Be careful, Luke."
The pilot slowly nodded dazedly.
"I will," he promised. He looked up into the red tinted lenses and said earnestly, "Thank you for saving my life."
Luke ran down the boarding ramp and out into the night, he didn't have any idea how far away his X-wing was but he knew he'd find it before the night was over. He found his way back to the cave where he'd nearly gotten killed, and made a quick exit as his ship left the ground and left the planet and his father far behind him. He could hardly keep his mind on keeping himself in the air and he could hardly see the controls as his eyes teared up and continued to do so every time a couple tears ran down his face.
Luke felt hope swell in his chest as he saw the Millennium Falcon touch down on the moon's surface, and he waited for the ramp to lower and the occupants to exit. He'd never been so grateful to contact the freighter ship and learn how close their coordinates were, he'd asked Leia to send somebody with a change of clothes. He didn't relish the idea of returning to the base naked but he would've rather done that than show up in the Imperial flight suit he was wearing and have to answer everybody's questions.
"Luke?"
Leia's voice called out in the night.
"Luke?"
That was Lando, he'd been helping them since Han got carbon frozen and shipped back to Tatooine to Jabba the Hutt.
A wookiee howl also filled the night air. The whole gang was out looking for him.
"I'm over here," he called from behind a large rock.
In the faint light from the stars above, he saw Leia coming over towards him with a bundle under her arm. She stopped a few feet from the rock and asked, "Are you...are you..."
"I'm decent," he answered with a slight roll of his eyes, feeling his own cheeks change color in sheer amusement of her own embarrassment, "I just need to change my clothes before I head back." He stepped out from behind the rock to show them why.
"Luke."
"What happened?"
A questioning snarl from Chewbacca joined their questions.
"I...somehow I wound up on the same planet as Vader's ship," Luke told them.
"What?" Leia asked. "What'd they do to you?"
"Uh...well, I got captured I guess," he answered, "I really don't remember a lot of the details."
"How'd you escape?" Leia asked.
"Uh...it's kind of a long story," he said, "but don't worry, I managed to get away before they spotted me. They won't be able to track me here."
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Luke glanced down for a second before looking at her and answering, "Yeah...yeah, I'm okay. Thanks for coming. You guys head on back, I'll catch up soon."
"Okay," Leia said hesitantly, "If you're sure."
"I'll be fine. Thanks."
He waited until the Falcon had taken off before he changed his clothes. He shed the Imperial uniform and tossed it on the ground, so glad to be rid of it, he felt like he could breathe again. Before he put his other clothes on, he looked down, and in the starlight he saw the huge bruises going clear around his waist. They still hurt, but he would be sad when they were gone. The only physical proof he would ever have of his father's love.