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They made camp in one of the myriads of clearings that dotted the forest like stars in the night sky. An old, sick tree had fallen there and torn down a part of the canopy with it, making light for new saplings to grow and prosper. Once stately and grand – the diameter of its trunk still towered twice as tall as Luke over the forest floor – it was now a rotting carcass that sheltered hives of buzzing insects and schools of small flitting landfish.
Coincidentally, shelter was what Luke and his companion needed, too. They chose a spot under the overhanging bark that didn’t look like it was occupied by any territorial rodents or critters. Then, they each set about the respective tasks they’d taken up as a routine over the past few days. Luke went off in search of firewood (but not too far away from camp, never too far away from camp, the one he travelled with had drilled that into him the first time he’d made the mistake). His companion – as always – stalked the perimeter and cut thorny bushes with his lightsaber. Lined up in a semi-circle around their chosen corner, they were to be the wall protecting them against the predators of the night.
Luke’s injured leg felt numb from the day’s march, but he didn’t rest until he’d lugged over enough wood to last them till dawn. Fire was a strange sight on this unpopulated planet, yet it kept the worst of the terrors away almost as much as it attracted them. Also, unlike his fellow traveller, Luke didn’t have infrared sight whenever he wanted to spot an attacking beast.
By the time they withdrew behind their wall of thorns and Luke started on preparing his dinner, dusk was greying the luscious foliage all around them. Still, it would stay light for a long time yet. Sunsets lasted hours on this planet.
This evening, Luke unwrapped their last MRE. They’d have to start foraging come morning. How they would do that, with no knowledge of this world’s flora and fauna, would be a problem for tomorrow, Luke decided.
He set the meal to heat over the small fire he’d kindled, then limped back to the log where he would spend half of his night on watch. As he sat down, his left leg sent the usual spear of pain up his spine. Weary from the constant discomfort, he groaned.
His companion was up and by his side immediately. Fussing like a bantha over a calf, Darth Vader knelt and began to palm and prod at Luke’s leg. “Is it bleeding again? Are you feeling light-headed? Should I get the med kit?”
Luke was certainly starting to feel light-headed – just not because of his injury, but rather because the Dark Lord of the Sith was mother-henning him like mad and hadn’t stopped doing so since they’d crashed on this backwater piece of green rock. He sighed and tried to wiggle away from the touch. Quite predictably, since Vader seemed to have no intention of letting go, he failed.
“It’s alright,” he muttered finally. “It’s just… numb again. Nothing to worry about.”
Vader let hear something that sounded like a dismissive grunt inserted into the rhythmic rasp of his breathing. “Nothing to worry about? Foolish boy, you could be losing your leg as we speak. Take off your trousers.”
“What- no! I’m not taking off my pants in front of you!”
Vader turned a gaze on Luke that was hidden behind his mask but might have been bemused. “You already did once, and I don’t see you suffering because of it.”
“No, you took off my pants while I was unconscious and patched me up, and then you slapped me awake to drag me on this trek around half the planet without even telling me why you haven’t killed me yet,” Luke corrected in a way that was firm enough to assert some dominance but not aggressive enough to get his throat crushed in a Force choke (or at least he hoped so). “And you didn’t even let me bring Artoo!”
“The droid would only have slowed us down on this terrain – I’ve told you that a thousand times already.” Now Vader was getting to work at the zipper of Luke’s flightsuit with the one hand that remained to him, the other having fallen victim to a particularly vicious beast when they’d refilled their canteens at a stream. “And you’ll still be in your smallclothes. There’s no need to be skittish with me, boy.”
Luke slapped his hand away. “Alright then. But I can do it myself – and I’m not a boy, I’m a grown man. I’m twenty-one years old!”
Vader muttered something that Luke chose to ignore as he stood and struggled out of his boots and garishly orange flight suit, and then out of the grey overall he was wearing underneath, keeping only his socks and smallclothes on. He didn’t want to admit it, but Vader might have been right to take care of the wound. It was throbbing like it had a heartbeat of its own, and when he finally got a good look at it in the light of the waning day, his head grew a little woozy.
He didn’t realise he was swaying until after Vader had taken his elbow and guided him to sit down again. With bile rising in his throat, he made himself look again at the blackened, weeping gash that marred the otherwise smooth skin of his thigh.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, right?” he asked in a small, brittle voice he despised even as he heard himself use it.
“No,” Vader answered, so softly that it could almost make Luke believe that the Sith lord actually cared about how he felt. “No, you will be alright, Luke. I can save you – I promise.”
Luke said nothing. All he could think of retorting would have been bloated with several nasty Huttese curse words. So, he let Vader get the med kit and treat the gangrenous wound. His life was already surreal enough as it was – he didn’t need to insult a Sith lord and risk being strangled when he had only a few days left to live, anyway.
Vader cleaned out the pus and dirt and dead tissue as well as he could with one hand, pausing every time Luke winced or whined. It seemed to be taking ages. When he finally finished, Vader poured a generous helping of bacta on the now-bleeding wound, then sealed the whole thing off with synthflesh and finally wrapped Luke’s thigh in a length of pristine white bandaging.
The procedure had been awkward and stilted. It had clearly been some time since Vader had patched up a human with flesh-and-bone limbs, if he’d ever really learned it at all. Not to plagiarise Threepio’s favourite turn of phrase, but this time, Luke had a feeling that he was well and truly doomed.
“Thank you,” he muttered nonetheless as he got up and slipped back into his clothes that were stiff with mud and sweat. Aunt Beru had raised a well-mannered young man after all.
“I know it’s not much,” Vader said, as if he had sensed Luke’s despair, “but it will keep until we get to the research base.”
“The old, abandoned, and broken-down research base you’re not sure even exists anymore – you mean that one?” Limping worse now than ever, Luke shuffled the two steps over to the fire and got his MRE. “What makes you think the equipment hasn’t all rusted away? What makes you think we’ll be able to get even so much as a peep out past this system’s border?”
He plopped back down onto the log, now unhindered by Vader who had moved off to stand in the shadows. The Dark Lord of the Sith seemed to like standing in the shadows, blending into them almost to invisibility with his dark cape and armour. Luke supposed it was a certain love for drama that made him do it.
“The Force makes me think so, Luke,” Vader’s voice came, seeming to float out of the dark as an almost disembodied entity.
Luke pretended not to be spooked by the display of perfect stealth as he ignored the nonsensical answer and dug into his bland but nutritious dinner, scarfing it down so fast he almost choked. But it didn’t matter if he died of asphyxiation now or later – for die he would, and if it wasn’t the wound that killed him, it would be the half-man-half-machine he was travelling with. Of that, he was certain. He didn’t even know why the Sith lord kept him around. Maybe he was nothing more than a pet, a thing to play with while there was nothing else to do, and then to be discarded when Vader had returned to the safety of an Imperial base.
That thought finally got to Luke. He didn’t even bother to scrape the packaging of the RME clean, as he usually did, before he set it on the forest floor by his feet and hunched forward, burying his face in his hands.
A sigh of twigs, a whisper of dried and rotting leaves, and then, a warm hand fell heavily onto his shoulder.
“What is it, young one?”
He shook his head. His throat was hurting, aching. He couldn’t talk, not now. If he tried, he’d only start to weep and humiliate himself in front of his bitterest enemy.
His log groaned ominously, and he could suddenly feel the bulk of Darth Vader lowering himself to sit down beside him, torturing the already rotten wood. Then – his heart almost refused its service when he realised – he found himself being pulled against Vader’s gleaming chestplate by a pair of mechanical arms.
A hug. An embrace. The thing that had been furthest down on his list of possible things to happen today – hadn’t ever been on it at all, in fact.
Drawing his arms to his chest, Luke rested his temple against the unforgiving hardness of Vader’s armour and cried silent tears.
The hand was still on his back, stroking, soothing. Then, it was on the nape of his neck, and then, on the back of his head, with its fingers burying themselves Luke’s filthy, sweaty, unwashed hair. Warm and heavy, it oddly reminded Luke of Uncle Owen’s touch whenever he’d had to comfort him after a nightmare.
Then, Vader spoke, and the moment was over.
“Why do you cry, Luke?”
Luke inhaled, slowly, shakily. In fact, he’d just stopped crying, but he supposed that wasn’t the answer Darth Vader was looking for.
So instead, he wet his lips and said, as matter-of-factly as he could manage, “I’m going to die soon.”
The hand in his hair spasmed, flexed, then went rigid. Luke winced. Wrong thing to say.
“You will not die, puppy,” Vader rasped, hissed almost. “Not while I have you. What would make you think such foolish thoughts?”
Luke gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut till he was seeing stars. But he could not escape it forever, could not forestall answering forever. Already, he could feel impatience rise in Vader, sure to be succeeded by anger.
“You,” he breathed, and then again, louder, “You. If the infection doesn’t kill me, you will, as soon as you get bored of me. I don’t even know why you’ve kept me alive in the first place, pulled me out of the wreck – you just wanted a pet project, I s-suppose. Something to pass the time while you’re stuck on this Force-forsaken planet.”
The hand grew soft once more yet held on with increasing desperation. “Luke, no–”
Luke opened his eyes, saw that his moist breath had started to fog the smooth black plasteel of Vader’s suit, tarnishing it. Yet another offence he’d pay for with his life. “I don’t even know why you would lie. You’ll kill me, just like you killed my Aunt and Uncle, and Biggs, a-and Ben, and… just like you killed my father.”
A silence settled between them then, a still quiet that was pregnant with the cries of nightbirds and calls of far-off predators. The last light of day had been swallowed by the forest as they’d talked, and now, the stars were winking to life one after the other, framing the faces of a triad of small copper-coloured moons. The fire, in dire need of restocking, was burnt down to hot-glowing embers.
“No, Luke. You have it all wrong.”
Luke closed his eyes. Even without the fire, he was warm, hot almost. Vader’s suit was a furnace, roasting him alive in his military issue clothes. He could feel sweat pearling together on his brow.
Vader continued, “I did not kill your father. He is alive.”
Then, he was silent. But it was not a silence that simply said nothing. It was a silence that waited – waited for Luke to comprehend.
Icy cold mixed into the heat of Luke’s chest as the living Force worked around him, as puzzle pieces slipped into place and fit, as realisation dawned with mocking fingers that were dazzling and bright like early sunlight. Shivers began to wrack his body, made his teeth gnash together uncontrollably. His eyes snapped open without his conscious doing.
“You a-are him.” Luke’s sweaty fingers slipped on Vader’s chestplate as he attempted to grip it, and he had to try again. Fighting against a sudden nausea in his gut, he pulled himself upright to stare at his own double reflection in the lenses of Vader’s mask. Even he himself could see how painfully real the amazement on his face was. “You’re m-my fa-father. You’re Anakin Skyw-walker.”
“Yes, Luke.” And suddenly, the two lenses tilted away, and the cool brow of Vader’s helmet pressed against Luke’s forehead. “Yes, my son. Now, at last, you see who you truly are to me.”
Luke swallowed down bile. Darkness was crowding in on all sides, the gloom of the night, the slick black of Vader’s cape and suit, the deafening roar of heat and sound and pain.
“Save me, f-father,” he whispered, his own breath acrid and dry on his tongue.
Vader was saying something in response, holding him upright now – or was he cradling Luke? Either way, his touch was soft and secure. His voice boomed through his modulator, setting Luke’s teeth on edge, but the words had become muddled, blurred.
All Luke could think about was the dark shell encasing the soft flesh of his father, hardening it, torturing it, warping it into something it had never been intended to be. And he wondered at the man beneath it, the human, the warrior, the father. A man who – he could feel it in the Force – was hurting so, oh-so much.
Had he been right to ask Vader to save him, when it was Vader who clearly needed saving more urgently than Luke did?
Before Luke could even begin to look for an answer, the dark wave of wound fever crashed over him and pulled him under.
In all the time he lay sick, Luke had only few moments of lucidity, and that worried Vader. He’d never seen a wound fever that was so strong, so potent. It made him wonder if perhaps an as of yet unknown pathogen had struck his son down. If so, he was not sure that he would be able to keep his promise – which was an unwelcome reminder of the one he’d given so many years ago to the woman he loved and had broken.
But this time would be different. Which was why barely one day and one night after Luke had fallen prey to the fever – one day and one night of relentless, endless walking – Vader had reached the abandoned research station, cradling his son as a shivering, delirious bundle in his arms.
Now, he sat at one of the outdated and mouldy communication consoles and waited impatiently for an answer to the message he’d sent out into the indifferent vastness of the galaxy. The stumps of his amputated arms and legs ached. The non-stop march through the forest had pushed his prosthetics to their limit.
But he was willing to pay the prize, and more, if it meant the salvation of the one being that mattered to him now in this universe.
He reached out and gently rested the hand that remained to him on his son’s feverish forehead. With what he had been able to salvage from the researchers’ abandoned sleeping quarters, he’d made Luke a nest – a heap of dusty pillows and threadbare blankets on a low table. It was pathetic, and his son deserved better. But if there was anything he could not, would not stand, it was abandoning Luke in a badly lit closet while he tried to contact the Empire.
Luke keened in his sleep and turned his head into the touch. Even though the fever had made his face sallow and slick with sweat, he was still the most radiant being Vader had ever beheld, rivalling even his mother’s glow. His eyelids fluttered and, for a fraction of a heartbeat, revealed a flash of the most brilliant blue.
Then, a faint whisper filtered through the dust-saturated air. “Father?”
“I’m sorry, Luke.” Vader brushed a sweaty strand of hair from his son’s forehead before he retracted his hand. “I did not mean to wake you.”
“’S alright.” For a moment, Luke fell silent. Then, with a strain in his voice that told of how much strength it cost him to string together more than two words, he asked, “Can I… drink, please?”
Wordlessly, Vader took up one of their canteens and held it to the boy’s lips. He’d stopped trying to explain to Luke that he needn’t ever ask him for anything, that he could simply take from Vader whatever he wanted. But right now, changing that habit was not Vader’s number one priority as a parent.
Luke drank, and just as he finished and shook his head to indicate it, the communications console in front of Vader lit up. Hurriedly, Vader stoppered the canteen and put it away, then punched in the code to accept the transmission.
“Imperial research station Aleph-seven-three, this is Imperial outpost Tes-nine-nine-six. We have received your distress signal, but would like to verify your identity first before we send in–”
Vader activated the holocomm unit on his side of the call and watched the Imperial officer’s face descend into a state of awe as they realised just who had contacted them on that outdated data link.
“I trust that this will be sufficient verification for you,” he began before the underling could even so much as think of wasting his time by grovelling needlessly. “I want a rescue team dispatched to my location immediately, including a full medical detachment. The human I am travelling with has sustained a serious infection to a leg wound. Do not make me wait – it will be most beneficial to your health.”
“Yes, Lord Vader, of course, Lord Va–”
“Vader out,” he cut off the officer, then severed the connection.
Once more, silence fell, broken only by the strained whirring of the communication console and the faint breathing of his son beside him. The wait for an answer was over, and the wait for Luke’s salvation had begun.
Despite his prosthetics screaming bloody murder at the smallest movement, Vader turned once more to gaze at his son’s quiet, flawless face. In the few moments it had taken Vader to converse with the officer, Luke had fallen back asleep. One single fresh tear track had streaked down his cheek, glittering in the faint light that filtered in through broken windows far above.
Vader reached out and brushed the wetness away, before he leaned down to touch the brow of his mask to his son’s forehead. Luke stirred, murmured something incomprehensible, but did not wake.
“I will save you, my son,” Vader answered in as low a voice as his vocabulator could manage. “I could not save your mother, but I will save you, Luke. You have my word.”
Then, hoping he hadn’t just promised the impossible, he straightened back up and settled in for the wait.