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Chapter Text

Planetary rings of debris surrounded both the planet and its moon, chaining them together and highlighting their differences. The planet was a crater-pitted wasteland which, if it had ever had an atmosphere, had been stripped of it at some point, leaving nothing behind. In contrast, the moon had a shimmer of gases about it; protective and concealing. Thin, miles-long cirrus clouds gently enveloped the dark satellite, like white scars from the claws of some beast.

A beast which still lingered, though whether that was on the planet or the moon was impossible to tell. There didn't seem to be a reason for the dark side to be swamping the planet and its moon so thoroughly, if mutedly, but that could always be investigated later.

Frowning at the planet and its attendant moon, Vader stretched his senses out through the Force. The darkness tugged at his attention, rubbed against his temper and prickled claws into his control; it was there to be commanded, but would just as soon twist its wielder into the same sort of beast it was. He ignored it and stretched further, though it still took the Executor being locked into orbit around the nameless planet for him to be close enough to reach through the distraction of the dark side that swamped this system and find what he was actually looking for.

His son.

Luke's presence was, as always, bright, burning away the darkness as much as he called it to himself, a tempting prey.

Prey which wasn't so easily ensnared, considering his own failure on Cloud City.

Gritting his teeth, Vader pushed that thought away; this time, there'd be no failure.

Luke

The light, having been swirling sluggishly, bent towards his call before Luke realised who it came from - just like he had answered after the princess had picked him up from underneath Cloud City - and then drew back from him without replying.

Son, the time will soon come when you can no longer ignore this

Very, very soon in fact, something which Luke undoubtedly realised. But, despite this, there was neither subconscious nor conscious reply to his call, and Vader got the distinct sensation of Luke having turned his back to him. If it wasn't so childish and annoying, it'd almost be amusing. The sigh remained private, not transmitted by the vocoder, and Vader opened his eyes again, turning to Piett.

"Admiral, ready the shuttle and a squad." This time, he wouldn't allow his son the freedom of choosing to accept any overtures or not. This time, there would be no ledges to let himself fall off of. This time, he would bring Luke back with him.

The uncertainty of what to do - how it would go - after that was pushed aside. His master demanded the child be turned, and that would still happen. But despite his failure on Bespin, there was still some vague hope that Luke would accept the offer given back then. Maybe he could still...

"Yes, my lord," Admiral Piett said, his reply drawing Vader out of his thoughts and he left the bridge, burning away any thoughts of later. What mattered at the moment was getting Luke.

***
His tongue was tingling. It felt clumsy in his mouth, and he couldn't feel the tips of his ears or the fingers on his left hand. In contrast, his right hand was starkly there against the slowly dissipating numbness of the rest of him. There, and sort of aching. It didn't feel quite right. Just as this moon didn't feel quite right, just as...

He didn't need to look to know there was a shuttle approaching from the ship orbiting the planet - not that the ship could be seen from here, probably being on the other side of the planet than the same side the moon was on. But he knew it nonetheless, just as he'd realised - a little too late to attempt to pretend he hadn't heard his father's call - that Vader had entered the system.

Trying to swallow, Luke got stuck partway, partly from the lingering effects of the stun bolt, partly from the dry nervousness that that turned his throat into a desert. Closing his eyes, he took a slow, measured breath. Another - and then gritted his teeth against the hand yanking on his hair, a rush of pins-and-needles following through his numb scalp.

"You're lucky you're worth more than just the labour you could be capable of, Skywalker. As it is, you'll make up for all the goods you lost me," the twi'lek woman - who Luke was pretty sure was named Navda, but he couldn't swear on it - snapped as she gave another twist on his hair, which seemed to chase off the stun bolt effects on the upper part of his body. At least he could feel the tips of his ears again, and his tongue stopped feeling like it was too large for his mouth.

"People aren't property, you know," Luke muttered, only half paying attention to her chuckling as he closed his eyes again and tried to release the tension in his shoulders. It went... so-so, considering the cuffs keeping them behind his back didn't help, but it let him straighten up as the shuttle landed in front of them.

He'd metaphysically turned his back on his father when he'd attempted to talk to him just before, but it'd be a shade harder to do it in person... And Luke wasn't even sure he wanted to do that.

Not that he was at all sure how to deal with this yet either, though. He hadn't expected to meet with his father again so soon after Bespin... if you counted a little over two months later 'soon'. It felt like (far too) soon, and staring at the shuttle brought back echoes of the damning declaration. He knew it was true, no matter how his brain rebelled; the veracity of it rung clearly through the Force. But what to do with that knowledge, he didn't know. It wasn't like his father was anything like he'd hoped for.

Well, not anymore, anyway. The past was still there, but how was that supposed to weigh up against the present?

He wanted... he shook his head and then stilled halfway through as the twi'lek tightened her hand again, pulling his head up and back, sending little burning pulses through his abused neck muscles.

He wasn't sure what he wanted. Well, aside from the woman to stop yanking on his hair and to no longer be cuffed, of course.

The shuttle's ramp descended fully, and despite the fact that he'd rather take a step (or two, or be in another solar system entirely at the moment) back, Luke also couldn't help the tiny little grin at seeing his father have to bend over not to walk into the protruding nose of the shuttle. After the Sith lord came a squad of stormtroopers, which made a ripple of tension flicker through the gathered group of pirates. They did, however, keep their guns pointed at the ground.

Luke kept his back as straight as he could with the strain on his shoulders and upper back as Vader approached, staring straight ahead - which left him staring into the armour covering his father's chest, annoyingly enough. At least Navda... if that was her name, let go of his hair to grip his shoulder instead.

This was not good.

"As you see, Lord Vader. One Skywalker, perfectly unharmed," Navda said with a grin that showed off her filed-pointy teeth as she tightened the hold on Luke's shoulder and shook him a little. It rattled his still tender brain around in his skull, sending promises of a future headache spearing through him, and he narrowed his eyes.

Completely unharmed via judicious use of stun bolts, that was, and Luke had to consciously relax to push away the uncharitable annoyance pin-wheeling around him, seeming to call the muddled shadows that swirled around on the moon closer to him. Not the same darkness that his father emanated, but only in terms of active malevolence. The black helm twitched down towards him, but whether it was from the emotions he was probably failing to shield properly or from his actual thoughts, Luke didn't know.

"That is apparent," Vader rumbled, and did he mishear something or was that sarcasm? Luke determinedly didn't look up to stare into the mask, mostly because it wouldn't tell him anything.

The darkness around his father was still - well, not exactly. It was agitated, reaching, but he couldn't get any read on any possible emotions. Shielded too well. And also, he had to admit, because it was harder to read things on this moon. It'd been the issue since he crashed, really; the darkness seemed to cling and conceal, but at the same time beckoned with crystal clarity.

A crystal clarity that would be offered if he only would harness said darkness, but that brought back memories of the cave on Dagobah, of Cloud City, and formed a knot somewhere low in his stomach. He wouldn't go there.

Vader reached for him, then, and Luke reflexively twitched and would've taken a step back if the twi'lek woman hadn't gotten there before him, yanking him back with her harshly enough he thumped back into her side. The gloved hand that had been stretching forward turned into a fist, and while he couldn't literally see the darkness gathering, Luke would still swear on it.

This time, he also got a flicker of anger from the dark lord.

"I want my credits first, Lord Vader. Skywalker here has cost me a lot, and you can have him when it's all been transferred," Navda snapped and then smiled, just a quick flash of pointed teeth, "why don't we walk over to my office and settle this, right now, and then you can do whatever you want with the whelp."

Despite her self-assured demand, Luke could feel the tension in the grip she had on his shoulder, especially when she switched to grip his upper arm instead. Then there was also the shiver of not-quite-fear that resonated with the humming darkness that seemed to cling to the rock beneath their feet and all too eagerly had gathered around his father. Vader, in turn, was probably picking up the same things that he was, the way he stared at the green-skinned twi'lek woman for a long moment before he dipped his helm slowly.

"Very well. Lead the way, then." Somehow, that acquiescing gesture coupled with what was clearly a demand shouldn't still be able to sound like a threat, but that's what it was. Luke glanced from the hulking form of his father to Navda, who huffed, bared her teeth in a snarl and whirled around, stalking away.

Which of course meant he got pulled along as well, but thankfully he was no longer stunned enough he stumbled over his own feet at the sudden movement. That'd have been embarrassing, especially in front of... everybody. No one here was someone he'd feel more embarrassed about making a fool out of himself.

Well, that's what he told himself anyway, while having to half-skip along every few steps to keep up with the longer strides of Navda and his father. Vader had fallen in on his other side, close enough that the cloak snapped against his leg with each step. It was a heavy reminder of the situation, of what would happen shortly - no way to avoid going with his father now, unless a miracle happened - but it was also weirdly reassuring.

Luke suppressed a sigh and frowned at the ground. His father had chopped off his hand (and that was really the least of it); his presence, even in the middle of a bunch of criminals which hardly wished him well considering he'd set almost all their 'goods' free, shouldn't feel reassuring. Rational thought couldn't compete with the impression, though, even if it was a very overbearing impression of reassurance.

They walked between the prefabricated modules and the pieces of black, green-veined rock which in some cases had been made into walls of other buildings. Most of the pirates' camp appeared squat and impermanent compared to the erosion-chipped stairs at the opposite end from where the shuttle had landed. The top of the stairs was partly shielded by a piece of what Luke thought looked like a wall to some larger building, and had been made to serve as the back wall to Nadva's otherwise pre-fab 'office' building.

Luke wondered if his father had seen the pit on the other side of the camp, where the slaves had been kept... Wondered if he even cared anymore. Shaking his head and taking the stairs two at a time to keep up with the twi-lek woman, Luke would rather not be here.

Not just because of the cuffs keeping his hands tied behind his back, or because these criminals were pirates and slavers and would probably have tried to sell of him off if Navda hadn't recognised him and called in the bounty. Also not because of the towering shadow that strode along beside them, his cloak nearly wrapping around one of Luke's legs with every step like it was a live thing.

No, it was something with this piece of building itself, whatever this scrap of a ruin had once been part of. The rock felt almost warm beneath his feet, while the whispers of the dark side seemed strongest here, trailing after his father like smoke wafting from a fire, but tugging at the edges of his patience as well.

Even Navda seemed to be hounded by the intangible tendrils of the Force, as if it was trying to call attention to itself.

"This place... what is it?" Vader suddenly spoke up, halting them at the top of the stairs as he looked around, hands wrapped around his belt. Navda turned around, snorting.

"No idea. Got similar ruins to this place down on the planet, but not like it's profitable to make a base on a planet that's lost its atmo. We're just taking advantage of the scraps whatever poor idiots built it left behind, Lord Vader," Navda said with a shrug, the split-ends of her lekku twitching like snake tongues, "finished sightseeing, then? I'd rather have you off my rock as soon as possible, if you don't mind."

The air seemed to constrict just slightly as Vader turned towards Luke and the twi'lek woman, the Force stirring eagerly around them. Luke shifted, took a breath, and didn't know what he was preparing for. Could he even get out of the cuffs fast enough, if something happened?

"Make no mistake, pirate. While I have no wish of remaining for any longer than necessary in your presence, if I deem it so, we will be staying as long as we need to," Vader snapped, his presence seeming to expand and Luke was pretty sure he was sneering. What he was also sure of was that the mutedly oppressive air of the moon seemed to be getting heavier by the second, and, shifting on his feet, the rock below seemed to be... vibrating.

"Look, can we do this grandstanding elsewhere? I don't---"

Navda tightened her grip on his arm, pointy nails digging in through the cloth of his flight suit, and his father snapped his head down, the mask staring down at him. Reflexively, he winced - not so much from the tight grip on his arm, but rather from the way the Force swirled around his father, in something Luke wasn't sure if it was an attack or not. But regardless of if it was or not, he pulled himself together, mental shields coming up.

"This isn't---"

Whatever else his father said couldn't be heard.

The subtle vibration underneath their feet suddenly turned deafening, then shifted into an inexorable noise of rock-and-metal on rock, and the ground shook. The Force heaved around them, suddenly alive instead of nipping at their attention; heavy, malevolent intent burned through the air and Vader reached for him.

Luke wasn't sure if he'd taken a step back, trying to duck away from the hand, or if he'd just lost his footing while actually leaning towards his father, since, if nothing else, Vader did want him alive.

Whichever it had been didn't matter.

The ground fell away, Navda's grip on his arm disappeared either as if she had or maybe he had, and there was nothing to see except flickering darkness. The roar in his ears pressed down on his brain and what Luke realised what his very self in the Force, pushing down and trying to crush him. Screwing his eyes shut to suppress the immediate urge to lash out, he pulled the calm to himself through the darkness hammering at him, no matter how hard that was, and pushed the heavy presence away.

Immediately, the ground came up to meet him.

***
He'd missed.

Anger boiled up and he slammed his fist into the wall now towering up beside and around him, a high-vaulted entrance hall of some kind. Vader didn't care whatever building had just, quite literally, risen out of the ground like a striking sand demon. He'd somehow missed snagging at Luke's flight suit, and he'd fallen down - or literally disappeared - deeper into whatever the building was.

Rock cracked into spiderweb patterns and gave underneath his fist as he let his anger drive into the Force for a moment longer, then he straightened up, glowering down the darkened corridor.

Behind him doors stood open to the stairs that had previously led up to nothing more than a cracked platform and a pre-fab module building, but now was the entrance to this building. In the upper third of the doorway a slash of violet-blue sky could be seen along with a few tendrils of pearlescent clouds.

Metal plates were interspersed between the green-veined black rock, forming some sort of pattern - or maybe the metal was the key to moving the building, having pushed it out of the ground. The floor underneath his feet was smooth, worn down by feet long gone. There was, however, carvings near the entrance, barely imperceptible bas-relief scratches still stubbornly clinging to the stones. Carvings which spelled out something very familiar.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

Perhaps he should've tried to have some research done before taking his shuttle down to the moon, but frankly this moon wasn't the only satellite in the galaxy that was swamped with the dark side, however ancient. Thus, with no names to search, even if he had the coordinates of the system, getting results would've posed a near impossibility. Especially if the previous inhabitants hadn't wanted anything known and made sure to leave no evidence behind.

Staring narrowly down the darkened corridor, Vader was pretty sure this wasn't a trap. It didn't feel like one. The dark side sang around him, wild and raging, but that was all. No, this wasn't a trap, whatever this old Sith complex had once been. That didn't take away from the fact that Luke was now somewhere in there.

Snorting, he turned around to cast a look out the doors, stretched his attention out... there were no living beings within miles outside. Whatever had happened to the pirates and his stormtroopers, they were probably somewhere inside as well. Acceptable if unfortunate losses where his soldiers were concerned.

All acceptable except for his son.

Luke could probably... no would eventually get out, that was not in question. Luke's potential was vast, and even as ill-trained as he was, he had been doing reasonably (surprisingly) well. Crossing his arms over his chest, Vader was admittedly rather more concerned with another issue entirely; that Luke would also probably somehow find a way to avoid him while getting out of the building.

"Far too good at escaping," Vader muttered, annoyance - and, admittedly, some pride - weaving together with the thrumming of the dark side all around him. Years of avoiding his father's search and the bounty placed on him, culminating at Cloud City, was all the evidence one needed for Luke's capability of escape.

He wouldn't accept another one.

Nor another rejection - he needed his son at his side. It was merely a question of making sure Luke saw that, and understood all he stood to gain from it. He'd miscalculated on Cloud City, but now he could rectify that mistake. As long as he actually left this moon with his son.

Turning around with a snap that sent his cloak flaring about him, Darth Vader turned away from the doors and walked further into the Sith complex.

Chapter Text

The stone was smooth and warm beneath his cheek, but that was the most beneficial thing to be said about it. The black absorbed what faint light there was and made the green veins in the stone nearly glow.

Sitting up and rubbing the back of his head, Luke froze, then dropped his hands, looking them over. No handcuffs. Looking around, he found them on the floor just behind him, but he didn't have a clue how he got free from them. Did they unlock while he was... pushing... before? Had he accidentally used the dark side, what with it being all around him, and managed to destroy the lock or unlock them?

Nothing felt different and maybe it didn't matter.

"Ben?" Standing up, Luke knew that his call wouldn't have been responded to. Ben had been quiet since he left Dagobah, after all... but, here and now, maybe he couldn't come, even if he wanted to. Biting his lip, Luke frowned. Besides the headache that had only been a threat earlier and now was pressing against his temples, the air seemed to simmer, pulling at him, and he felt...

"V---" he cut himself off, closed his eyes, and had to take a breath that felt like it was burning all the way down to his lungs to get rid of the sudden burst of anger, frustration and confusion. Another breath, and then a third, and as he focused on his breathing it didn't feel as bad. This place...

He shook his head. This place was dangerous, but whatever he thought about Darth Vader being Anakin Skywalker being his father, avoiding it wouldn't help him. Here or later, really. He didn't feel ready to admit to it, not in any sort of... irrevocable way, and he wanted to ask Ben, ask Yoda if it was true, but maybe he'd have no time for it.

He didn't want to admit it even if he already knew it was true, but in this place it might simply be safer to try and accept it. Vader's claim on Cloud City had rung true in the Force, and it continued to do so now.

"Father?"

His voice died down without an echo, unnervingly enough, and the shadows in either end of the corridor didn't stir. He was, apparently, alone. It was more of a relief than he'd like to admit to, but on the other hand... where was Vader? Outside, simply waiting for him? Or would he end up walking right into the man?

Closing his eyes and trying to reach out through the Force got nothing but a seething mass of ill intent. He could tell his father was close - that strange connection they could communicate through was strong from their proximity - but actually pinpointing his location just wasn't possible. Looking down each end of the corridor didn't give much of a clue to which way might get him out of here, and with a frown he turned to the right - and whipped back around at the sound of two lightsabers striking each other.

Breath catching in his throat, Luke caught sight of the combatants as they seemed to melt out of the darkness in the other end of the corridor, not believing his eyes as the faint light slid down a threadbare brown robe and bounced off thin, white hair. That couldn't be right!

On some level Luke knew it wasn't right either, knew that this had already happened. It didn't make it any easier to watch as the red and blue lightsabers struck each other again and again and then the blue one was held vertically, in no way capable of defending against the next strike.

"No!" It was useless and several years too late, just like the first time, but the yell escaped him anyway, and anger flared up again.

Vader - or the apparition of him - turned as if he'd heard him, but instead it was to meet a slash of blue with his lightsaber and then Ben and Vader were fighting again and Luke swallowed, tightening his hands into fists.

He needed to...

Should...

Thoughts roiling around in his head, Luke was rooted to the spot as Ben was too slow - this time the lightsaber wasn't held upright like it had been on the Death Star, merely too slow to block a thrust and it went right through him. The robe collapsed, empty again, and Luke closed his eyes.

It wasn't real.

The noise of lightsabers clashing again made him look once more and he needed to move, to do something, but his feet were rooted to the ground and there was bile at the back of his throat as Vader raised his lightsaber and struck again, a wide, arcing slash that tore through the robe---

Something clattered to the ground, rolled and came to a stop against his right boot. Startled out of his frozen anger, Luke looked down.

A lightsaber.

Staring at it for a baffled moment, Luke glanced between it and the fight going on in the other end of the corridor. Swallowed and tapped the lightsaber with his foot and caught it under his sole to stop it from rolling away.

It was definitely real.

Slowly, he looked up again, stared at the two locked in their duel.

There was a buzzing in his ears and it'd be so easy to just... bend down and pick it up.

Easy like taking his weapons into the cave on Dagobah. Easy like drawing and igniting his lightsaber first on Cloud City.

Closing his eyes, Luke tilted his head back, held the breath he'd taken until his lungs burned and the ache in his skull thumped like hammers, and slowly breathed it out.

It'd be easy, yes, but this... wasn't real. Even if whatever it was was solid like the vision in the cave had been, it wasn't real. Pressing down on the lightsaber underneath his foot, Luke kicked it away and watched it bounce against the wall once, roll across the floor, bounce into the other wall and disappear into the darkness.

A weapon might be a good idea, especially against his father, but he wasn't going to take a weapon practically offered by this place, dripping in the dark side as it was.

Determinedly, he turned away just as a scream cut through the air, and he twitched, freezing between one step and the next. Leia. That sounded like Leia.

Except Leia wasn't here.

No matter how much that sounded like her. She wasn't, and he was going to walk over to that side corridor a few meters down and not stop. Squaring his shoulders, Luke did just that, but then stopped in the archway, biting his lip. He couldn't just... another piercing scream, and Luke narrowed his eyes and took a firm step down the stairs.

Which then promptly folded away under his feet and it was like sliding down the innards of Cloud City again but he really hoped he wouldn't be dropped out over an endless abyss--- the thought was jarred right out of his head as he fell with a thump against what was probably a hatch, and Luke rolled to his knees as soon as he could, looking around sharply.

He couldn't see a single thing, and jumping when you couldn't see was probably foolish, but it was better than... Something clicked, and the metal beneath his feet vibrated faintly.

"Oh no..."

Gripping at the sides of the tunnel did nothing, the walls too smooth to grab, and the hatch itself wasn't just folding open, but rather sliding into the walls, leaving nothing to grab onto and then he was falling, again.

He got a flash of a huge chamber, lit in sickly greenish-white before he landed.

Thankfully, it wasn't far, but crashing shoulder-first into the ground wasn't the most pleasant thing ever and his headache momentarily bloomed into a monster at the jarring crash. That shoulder, further, had already been abused as he'd already slammed it into the bottom of the tunnel above and maybe even when he ended up in the corridor earlier, too.

Swallowing a groan, Luke slowly stood up, gently massaging his shoulder as he looked around.

The first thing he saw was the shimmer of a forcefield. The second thing was that the bit of floor he stood on wasn't actually very expansive; it was more like a pillar. Getting up next to the force field and peering over the edge where it ended gave only an abyss below. There was more floor, but it was clear across the chamber, a walkway wrapped around the empty center.

And then there was the pirate clearly stuck to a mechanism Luke was pretty sure would either disable the force field (which would allow him to jump across, the distance didn't seem too far for that) or give him a bridge and get rid of the force field.

"Hello," Luke called, but, predictably, didn't get any reply other than a slightly panic-stricken scowl.

Studying what he could see of the mechanism from his position, though, Luke grimaced. He couldn't tell how it worked. It was unwieldy and stood free of any wall, a pylon of a sorts but without any obvious mechanisms that'd explain how it worked or which could be manipulated.

Squinting through force field and headache, Luke stretched out towards it, carefully skirting the Togrutan male as he tried to find... ah, that thing could be moved. Maybe this wouldn't be hard, for once... and then pain licked against the outskirts of his awareness, through the Force.

Not his own, though.

"Stop!" the Togruta yelled, twisting, looking wildly from where he was trying to get himself free and across the chamber to Luke, eyes wide and scowl gone, "you can't do that! It'll kill me!"

Startled out of his concentration, Luke staggered backwards a step and swallowed the nausea that came with another burst from his headache and for a moment he just stared, not hearing the Togruta as he spoke again, clearly worried from the silence.

"You wouldn't, right?"

Blinking at the tone, Luke shook his head and closed his eyes, focusing on the other side of the chamber... and got a better look at what the mechanism the Togruta was strung up to looked like. For all its smooth appearance from this side, the thing that'd - hopefully - activate a bridge and deactivate the force field was a long, cruel spike, set to pierce right through the Togrutan's chest to reach into the components behind him.

And he didn't have the fine control needed to get the Togruta down, Luke realised, if that would work at all. The spot where the Togruta's hands were stuck into the pylon structure itself seemed sort of... opaque to his Force-sense.

Opening his eyes again, Luke rubbed his temples.

"I'll figure something else out, don't worry," Luke called and then sighed, rubbing his neck and then rested a hand against his chin. Killing someone to get out of here wasn't something he was about to do, no.

Not even a pirate and a slaver. But how to get out otherwise? Especially with how the Togruta was stuck to the mechanism itself, and, looking around, he couldn't see anything else that would be additional devices for the force field.

Maybe he should just try looking around through the Force again, considering this couldn't be a normal building. Not with the way the dark side was swamping everything. He'd hardly gathered his concentration again, however, when that darkly warm connection burst to life suddenly, startling him.

Has Obi-Wan not taught you how to shield yourself, Luke? Pointed annoyance dripped across the connection and preceded the dark figure striding into the chamber. Vader stopped at the edge and stared across the abyss at Luke, planting his hands on his hips.

"I didn't think it'd be necessary at the moment, you know," Luke said, not responding over the link in favour of simply addressing the man out loud. Briefly screwing his eyes shut to ward against the headache that would probably need some assistance to go away, Luke straightened up again, staring back at the slightly distorted figure of his father through the force field. He wasn't going to point out Yoda's part in his teaching for as long as was possible, so better his father think Ben had done more than he actually had.

"Every little twitch of you reaching through the Force is like an earthquake, young one. Whether it's 'necessary' or not, maintaining proper shielding at all times would merely be prudent and a proper respect for the power you're wielding," Vader said, helm tilted slightly, and Luke was inexplicably annoyed.

"Not as if I can actually hide from you, shielded or not," he snapped back before he felt the dark eagerly rousing around him and forced himself to take a breath and relax - as much as he could, at least.

"I'm not the only Force user around, son, and others can be shielded against. Why are you still over there?"

Rolling his eyes at what was either an admonishment or just plain disapproval, Luke wasn't sure, he gestured around the pillar, the force field and the wider chamber.

"I was trying to work out how to get out of here, without killing anyone. I'm sure it's possible." But the fact that he couldn't easily see anything was a bit worrying, and stretching out to sweep the room with other senses than his eyes didn't really help, either. Whatever was part of the equipment for the force field was probably deeper than what he could easily reach---

The Togruta suddenly screamed and Luke jerked, catching himself before he fell against the force field and sucked a sharp breath in.

"Father, no!"

It came easier than he thought it ever could, which was both terrifying and reassuring in its own way. It felt... right.

"Y-yes, let's not..." the Togruta stammered, voice wavering with pain. He quickly fell silent, glancing into Vader's reflective mask while the black hand fell against Vader's side and the device fell back into its neutral position as the dark lord whirled around, staring at Luke for an indeterminable moment of harsh silence.

"And how do you plan on freeing yourself, then?" Very pointed probing, but there was suddenly a curious amount of patience underneath it and a lack of tension in Vader's shoulders. Not that Luke allowed himself the time to consider if it had anything to do with what he'd just addressed Vader as or not.

Both because he wasn't sure he was ready to think about it, for several reasons, and because he wasn't sure his father would give him the time he needed.

"Well," frowning, Luke dragged a hand through his hair and then rested it against his chin, "can he be moved from the device at all?" His few glimpses with the Force suggested no, but he wasn't gong to trust that or what little he could see from this distance through the force field. Luke watched his father tilt his helm, presumably glancing between him and the device beside him, and then a rumbling snort echoed through the chamber as Vader made a show of circling the pylon.

The Togruta wasn't too pleased by that behaviour, given the way he followed every step with wide eyes, but Luke was relieved his father was at least indulging him. A relief that quickly dried up when Vader reached out to pull at the Torgutan's arms where they went into the device, making the man choke on a cry.

"If his hands are chopped off, it'll be possible to remove him," Vader said, coolly dispassionate because yes, of course he didn't care either way.

"Let's not be... hasty..." the Togruta said, squirming, and Luke sighed and rubbed his chin, trying to think of anything else, but there didn't really seem to be many other options to go with. Maybe it'd be easier to think without the headache, but it wasn't going to go away just because he wished it to.

"I know losing a hand... or both hands, isn't high on anyone's list, but I'm not sure there's any other option, and it's better than the alternative, right?" It wasn't much in the way of comfort or a convincing argument, and the Togruta clearly wasn't convinced, the way he shook his head sharply enough to send his lekku flying.

"There's another way, right? I---"

"We don't have time for this," Vader snapped and apparently whatever patience he'd dredged up was thoroughly spent for in the next second the lose part of the pylon jerked forward and there was a loud, wet crunch followed by the underlying hum of the force field cutting out as the field flickered out of existence.

Gritting his teeth, Luke swallowed frustration and unease both, feeling the dark side whirl through the room and gathering around his father in agitated flickers.

"If you'd just given me a few more moments," Luke said, frowning, and glanced down at what now bridged the platform he stood on and the walkway around the edge of the room.

It wasn't so much a bridge on its own so much as a thin, flattened pole that had extended from the platform side of the room. Its age was also apparent, rust generously spotting it and in some places the pole had been partially thinned into less than half its full mass.

It didn't look particularly safe.

"I wasn't going to be dragging around a handless pirate who'd need minded every step on the way, and neither should you. We have better things to do." Vader's hands were now resting on his belt, and there was an imperious angle to his pose that almost made Luke sigh. Instead he frowned as he cautiously took a first, sliding step out on the pole.

It trembled beneath him, but held.

"It would've been better than killing him, and what I do with my time isn't any of your business, father." It was, once again, easier than he'd thought to say it, and Luke spared the attention to glance up through his lashes at Vader as he spoke, seeing the man still minutely before he cocked his helm and Luke had the distinct feeling Vader was meeting his gaze.

"Now, it certainly is. And you would spare a slaver, young one?"

Swaying on his perch, Luke frowned, dropped his gaze to the pole and then closed his eyes.

Your eyes can decieve you, and all that. Maybe this would be easier if he stopped trying to stare at the pole. Or at his father, for that matter. Taking a moment to center himself, sinking past the headache, Luke did his best to ignore the agitated heat of the dark side so close, so easily touched - he was annoyed, and it would be very, very easy to just...

He shook his head and sank past it, finding the strains of pure Force underneath the dark and pulled it to himself.

"Everyone can change as long as they're alive, father..." a realisation that made his breath freeze briefly in his lungs struck him, but it was hope he wasn't sure of yet and Luke pushed past it, spoke before Vader could interrupt him, because he could feel that interruption coming like a storm, "and the Empire condones slavery, so why would you care?"

Challenge, pure and simple.

Challenge to the man here and now as well as to the past, but Luke focused on the Force around him and the pole beneath his feet and started to run, listening to the blood in his veins, his own and his father's breathing and the vibrations of the pole as much as the suddenly slow, angry-dead words Vader was speaking.

"I---"

The air around him was alive while his father first started and then cut himself off, and the heat of his glare that could be felt through the mask, even across the room, suddenly evaporated. It was curious, but Luke was concentrating on other things.

"It is..."

So slowly, those words came, even if Luke knew they weren't really spoken slowly in any way. It just seemed like that, now that he was properly attuned to the Force.

Just like the four weaknesses in the pole, both behind and in front of him, were now starkly clear. Equally as clear was the break that was coming and would plunge him down into whatever was at the bottom of this room when he got close enough to distribute the weight wrong. With all that, it was ease itself to gather himself at the right moment and jump---

"of no consequence. To you or to me," Vader said, the words rumbling through him just as he landed with neat precision on the walkway. The way the words suddenly sped up almost made the curious way that was phrased pass him by completely, but he caught it. Tilting his head, Luke stared up at his father while the pole crumbled to several pieces and fell down behind them.

He wanted to dig into that statement, because that was the biggest lie - well, not the biggest, but nearly so - he'd ever heard, but instead he took a breath and shrugged.

"If you say so." And while Luke just knew it wouldn't work, he still whirled around, intent to run for another doorway than the one they were closest to and wasn't at all surprised to suddenly have a large, black-gloved hand clamped down tight on his shoulder, jerking him back.

"I hope you didn't expect that to work," Vader said, helm tilted and exasperation dripping from every word, "we're going this way." That said, he turned around and started to walk towards the doorway he'd come through, and while Luke could have fought, he needed to get out of here as much as Vader did, and who knew what this place actually held? Working together might be the better option.

So instead of dragging his heels or trying to get free - well, for the moment, anyway - Luke glanced up at his father and followed along. He wasn't sure the steel-clamp hand around his upper arm was absolutely necessary, though. It wasn't really doing anything for the headache, but curiously enough it seemed... better, now.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping it would," Luke said and then sighed, "if I promise not to run, could you let go?"

It took a long, quiet pause before Vader responded, walking with the sort of single-minded stride that meant Luke had to skip every other step to keep up without falling over.

"You expect me to believe that?"

The curious thing was, it almost felt as if Vader wanted to believe him, even as the grip tightened a little further. Puzzling over that, Luke frowned, staring at the floor for a brief moment before he decided to just take the plunge. So to speak.

Hopefully a less terrifying plunge compared to Cloud City.

"I promise to not try to escape as long as we're in this building, how's that sound?" Luke wondered if it was a mistake to make that promise, because making it meant giving himself less time to get away and getting away... Well, he couldn't just go with his father at the end of this, regardless of anything else.

But at the same time...

"I suppose that would allow both of us the ability to navigate this space without being encumbered by recalcitrant prisoners," Vader allowed, voice dry even past the vocoder, and let go of Luke's arm, "even if such a promise shouldn't be necessary for much longer."

Ominous inevitability Luke decided not to look too closely at, and instead just took a step to the side so he wasn't right next to his father and could roll his shoulder without worrying about elbowing him. This was... not what he'd expected to happen after he'd gotten caught by the pirates trying to help their slaves escape.

Swallowing the sigh that wanted to make its own escape, Luke glanced around the stark black corridor. There were less of the green veins in the slabs of rock set at intervals in the floor and walls, and the metal was black as well, dull but mostly unmarked beyond spots of rust at the edges of the metal where they joined the rock.

The ceiling was only slightly more run-down, some metal sheets having rusted away enough to show circuitry or cables beyond, especially around the intermittent light fixtures. For a building that was... however old it was, it was pretty impressive, Luke had to admit.

What he'd rather not admit, Luke thought, was how easy it was walking right next to his father.

Glancing up at the dark, silent behemoth walking beside him, half a step in front of him, Luke frowned. Cloud City was still a dark smudge in the back of his mind, and sometimes his prosthetic didn't feel right - sometimes it still felt like he didn't have a hand at all, even if phantom limb pain wasn't something he'd experienced much of - and yet... Nothing, he supposed.

It wasn't like he wanted anything to do with Vader's offer, either dark side training or ruling the galaxy.

He still wasn't sure what the latter offer had even been about; if his father wanted to rule, couldn't he just have gotten rid of the Emperor himself? Or did he think he couldn't, not alone? That thought was somewhat alien, the apparent possibility that this powerful man who seemed impossible to defeat, wouldn't risk attacking the Emperor... was the Emperor simply that powerful, then, or was the issue something else?

... and why would the Emperor so fear him (want him), that him apparently defeating him was a possibility, as his father had implied?

"Luke, you may wish to shield yourself," Vader rumbled, and Luke jerked, felt his face grow hot, and scowled.

"Were you reading my mind?"

"No. But with a mind as unguarded as yours, it is inevitable. You worry and fret about what I plan for your future, and you are doing it loudly," Vader said and there was an unmistakable note of smugness Luke thought wasn't very becoming of a man his father's age. That thought was quickly followed by what he could only describe as a sharp mental tap and he shook his head.

"Hey!"

If I am respecting your privacy even when you're showing such a severe lack of control, I believe I am due some respect in turn, son.

The mental address startled Luke out of his annoyance and he took a breath and shook his head. He opened his mouth to reply and then paused, deciding to actually use this strange link actively for once.

Fine. I'm sorry.

It was strange, this thing, and actually looking over the connection now, Luke realised with something that felt like a seven year old's pain over the lack of a father, that it had always been there. Muted, suppressed into near-oblivion, but still there.

What if he'd accidentally prodded it into being active earlier, long before Vader proclaimed their relationship..?

"Obi-Wan shielded you well." dark, so very dark, and Luke couldn't actually read his father's tone at all this time, but the link was seething and he reflexively flinched away from it - to do so mentally was an odd thing he hadn't even been aware was possible, but it clearly was.

"Considering your first act was to chop my hand off and then offer me the galaxy, maybe he was right to do it," Luke said, and maybe it was petty - he wasn't even sure why he said it, but he couldn't have stopped the words even if he wanted to.

And suddenly the dark seething wasn't just over the link but rather very, very real and Vader whirled around sharply enough the cape flared out like a live thing.

"He had no right!" the bellow thundered down the corridor and then turned into an echo while Luke stared up at the dark lord, unflinching but with wide eyes. Had he imagined the twinge of pain beneath the clearly possessive rage? Luke wasn't sure, and took a wary step back either way, because pain or not, the possessiveness and rage were very much real. When the darkness swirling around his father just followed him, however, implacable and yet protective, he stopped.

If he'd been with his father from the beginning, would he have ended up this bad..? Luke pushed the thought away, wrapped it under layers of determination and decided not to think about it.

Too late now, anyway.

"Maybe not, but he obviously thought it was necessary."

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say (or maybe the earlier thought had been, Luke wasn't sure how well he'd shielded it, to be honest), because the rage flared brighter, stronger, and the metal in the walls started to vibrate, slowly buckling outwards while cracks started to appear in the black stone---

"Father, stop! Destroying the corridor we're in and collapsing it on top of us won't change anything!" Glancing around the corridor nervously as tiny pebbles bounced off his head and rained down on the floor, Luke tightened his hands into fists for a brief moment before he reached out towards the dark figure that suddenly seemed miles away and untouchable.

Reached out and hoped it'd be enough, because he couldn't even pull the Force to himself in an effort to protect himself should his father lose control - all he could feel was a wall of rage.

The rattling stopped, however, and there were several silent minutes filled only by the muted grinding of cracked stone settling and the harsh, even breathing from Vader's respirator. Then the dark lord abruptly turned and stormed down the corridor in the direction they'd been going earlier.

Staring quietly after his father for a moment, Luke shook his head and slowly followed after.

Being hidden away being necessary or not, Luke still resented the lie he'd been told. It'd left him unprepared for Cloud City - for any confrontation.

Had Yoda and Ben never considered his father might reveal the truth, or had they hoped that if he was better trained he wouldn't have cared?

Staring at the cloak flaring about his father, Luke lowered his gaze to the floor. Despite everything Vader had done, to him, his friends, and the galaxy, he wasn't sure he'd have wanted to not care.

***

It didn't matter whether he'd been able to raise his son or not. It shouldn't matter that his former, and now very dead, Master hadn't just turned his wife against him, but stolen his child as well. And then also lied to the boy.

Anakin Skywalker might be dead and gone, but he hadn't killed him.

If anyone was guilty of that deed it was Obi-Wan himself.

What was most startling - strangely damning - wasn't that he didn't have to wait for Luke to catch up and thus didn't to turn back to grab him and drag him along. What was most startling was that Luke's pause to follow didn't come from fear.

Of course he was proud as well, but he wouldn't have been surprised to feel the same emotions battering at him as what had been exploding from Luke during the last part of their fight on Cloud City. Thinking back on it, some of his expressions had been very familiar, found on her face---

The child, Vader reluctantly admitted to himself, was fully entitled to those feelings.

And again, he shouldn't care either way.

Even so, there was a stark part of him that wasn't just pleased, but relieved that Luke hadn't been cringing in fear just now. He'd been worried, yes, but at the prospect of being buried under rock and metal, not afraid of him. Not that Luke shouldn't be - it would only be right, truly.

Yet there the young man was, trailing along five meters behind him and Vader had the distinct impression the distance between them was for him and not for Luke.

Rolling his eyes, he almost whirled around to disabuse him of the notion, but held himself back. Because maybe letting some of these ridiculous sentiments stand uncontested would assist him in bringing Luke around to his side of things.

He didn't have much belief in it - his Master was probably right, and he was now just wasting his time - but with the chance presented once again, Vader found himself reaching for it nonetheless. It was a foolish, useless desire, but Luke was his son and together they could set things right where his Master's slower methods hadn't worked.

(Would never work, because it wasn't actually what his Master was after, but that thought was put aside.)

The whole... Cloud City incident should probably have been conducted differently, but he'd been focused on trying to get what he had been planning for as well as fulfilling his Master's command. If he'd only managed to catch Luke before his Master had found out... Well, what ifs were useless, and here and now was a new opportunity.

He would not squander it.

Chapter Text

The corridor wound along, curving slightly, and Luke was pretty sure that it was also inclining somewhat downwards; only a few steps here and there that raised the floor a bit countered the downwards slope. If he wasn't imagining things it was quite clear they weren't close to getting out, and that whatever way Vader had used to get in wasn't there to let them out again.

"Luke. Stop lurking."

Looking up from where he'd been staring at the floor as he walked, Luke snorted and jogged to catch up with his father, having been walking behind him since the... ah, outburst of parental offense almost ten minutes earlier.

"Well, I wasn't the one who---"

"Do not finish that sentence," Vader wasn't even looking at him as he spoke, he simply raised a hand in the air and the heavy warning in the dark voice was all too clear. Luke just smirked, though he made sure to turn his head to the side first, just to be sure it wasn't seen. Perhaps just as well, since it let him spot the cables that hung from a hole in the ceiling before he walked into them, and they weren't the only ones; this part of the corridor was in much worse repair than when they'd left the chamber he'd been dumped in, and there were large holes in the ceiling with cables and circuitry hanging down.

Cables and circuitry which were yanked out of the way and fell to the floor, spitting electricity to the air as his father unceremoniously ripped out what was in his way instead of ducking around it.

"I don't think we're getting out the way you got in, Father. Is this even the same way?" Luke said as he ducked under and away from the frayed ends of swinging cables. Stepping over the mess on the floor and focusing on not getting his feet caught, Luke almost missed the noise amid the crackling hum of live wires and metal-on-stone.

It was a short burst of almost static-laced air, rumbling quietly underneath the rest of the sounds, and it made Luke pause. Staring at the broad back in front of him, Luke turned his face away again, even if his father still had his back to him and couldn't see the half-twist to his lips.

He hadn't thought his father could sigh through the respirator and the vocoder, but apparently it was possible. It was silly to be amused by such a simple thing, but it was such a human thing...

"That seems to be evident by now. This building is a bit more active than I anticipated, even with the activation. But perhaps---" Vader abruptly stopped and Luke came to a sharp stop himself while one black-gloved hand was laid against the wall and the Force stirred around them. The dark side drew close with eager swiftness, and there was a single, heavy pulse from his father that practically slammed against the wall through his hand.

Luke felt like the wall should've shattered, or at least developed a few cracks from the way that Force-carried intent/demand had crashed into the wall, but it was left pristine. Two meters down from them, though, the wall spit apart and his father made another noise Luke couldn't have imagined the vocoder allowing; a non-verbal pleased one.

"Take note, young one; with proper force behind your desire, you'll get the result you want."

"Han says the same thing, but him hitting the Falcon only gets results half the time," Luke half-jogged past his father and avoided the hand reaching for him that just as soon fell back against Vader's side when he stopped at the doorway and didn't barrel straight through. No matter what Cloud City might have taught Vader about his tendency to just rush into things, he was perfectly capable of being cautious.

Really, he had been on Cloud City as well, but since he decided that springing the trap would be the best way to rescue Han and Leia instead of actually listening to Leia's words and not just running straight after her, he'd still walked right into the trap.

Mentally shaking that thought away, Luke considered the room beyond the doorway. It was large and dome-shaped, though not of the same immense size as the first room he'd found himself in. It was also - apparently, anyway - completely empty. The floor was smooth stone, gray instead of the green-veined black of the corridor, and the walls and domed ceiling made up by even rows of slightly rusty metal panelling. What it didn't obviously have, however, was a door, which made it a questionable choice if they were to get out, but the demand his father had hammered against and into the wall must mean there should be a door somewhere around here.

Cautiously, he took a single step inside, and while there was a low, buzzing awareness of... something immediately brushing over his mind from the Force, that was it. Turning back to look up into the opaque lenses of Vader's mask, Luke cocked his head in question, and his father nodded sharply, striding into the room ahead of him as if it was the bridge of his flagship and not an empty expanse of dilapidated building.

Their steps echoed through the room, and Luke veered off to feel his way along the wall while his father stalked to the center of the room, turning around with his hands on his hips and his helm tilted.

The funny thing about each slightly rust-pitted panel was that they weren't completely flush against the wall. It might just be that since the building was old, the panels were slowly falling out of place, but something seemed... off, about it. The door sliding closed with a very clear noise of a lock snapping shut made the faint sense of not-quite-warning flaring up into a real one, and Luke took a quick step away from the wall.

"Father---"

"Over here, Luke. Now."

He'd argue about the tone, but the scrape of metal on metal was loud and then he was facing a gun folding out of the wall as the panel in turn folded into the wall. To both the right and left guns had folded out as well, and some distance might be prudent; Luke jumped backward, drawing on the Force to cross the distance in a single leap and land at Vader's side, taking a deep breath.

There were now guns not just in the spot of the wall he'd been facing, but everywhere. Each panel in the walls and ceiling had folded away, and while Luke was pretty sure (hoping) some of them weren't working, this amount of guns all aimed at them would still be a very large problem.

There was just no way to protect yourself from all of them at once, even if you had a lightsaber. Which he didn't. Vader did, but no matter how good his father was with it, it was very doubtful he could protect them both with a single lightsaber. Or even himself, there were so many cannons pointing at them. They needed something else...

He let the breath out, and the guns powered up.

He could destroy all of these, Vader knew, but he couldn't destroy them all and not have the boy caught up in the attack as well. Luke landed beside him with the same unconscious grace and self-possession he'd crossed the distance in the room with the force field trap in, and looked around sharply. The child, for all the lack of... well, any number of things, had been growing exponentially in the Force lately, but even so, Luke wouldn't be able to protect himself against the lasers and the sweeping attack he could use to take out most, if not all, guns in a single go.

Gritting his teeth, his respirator cycling in, Vader undid the clasp to his cloak with one hand and ignited the lightsaber in the other, tossing the cloak aside so it landed on top of Luke. He didn't need to turn his head to get the view of him staggering, completely covered by the cloak and his muffled protest sharply indignant.

"Keep it, since you don't have a lightsaber. I need to---"

"But what about---"

Did the child have no sense of self-preservation, and why did he care? Not that there wasn't some small part of Vader that was smugly pleased, because it might promise something could go his way, but he was under no illusions that he had done anything so far to actually earn even a speck of concern.

"I am not the one without a weapon that can be used as defence, young one!"

The guns powered up, he breathed out and there was no more time for thought or protests.

The noise of the guns loud in his ears, Luke was trying to center himself. Everything slowed even as he straightened under the weight of the heavy armourweave, going past the fear - for himself, for his father, of the guns - and right into crystal-clear sharpness.

He knew what he needed to do, and he twisted sideways, feeling several shots glance off the cloak, the movement causing it to sway slowly around him while he took hold of one of the gun turrets with the Force and yanked.

One, two turrets were left smoking, ruined with one shot, spitting fire and electricity and he let the cannon go, ducked and slid back half a step. Plasma splattered in slow, drawn-out glowing arcs into the floor beyond his retreating feet, dissipated off the folds around his left shoulder and nearly burned off the hair that wasn't covered by the cloth on his head.

He took hold of another turret, aware of other things; the seven... thirteen guns Vader had destroyed with deflected bolts, both by his lightsaber and his hand; the pressing, contained thunder of his father, trapped lightning in a cup that was way too small, and he could tell that all that anger and rage, along with an infinitesimally small frisson of fear, was pulled tight around the man.

Tight enough all he had to do was not get distracted by it, not fall prey to his own fear, but he was too busy for that.

Another five guns gone, and he nudged another two aside, sending their bolts into three other turrets and amazed that this was getting easier---

The warning shot ice through him at the same time as he was yanked back and a blade of red swept across his field of vision and red bolts scattered away, but despite not having been hit, there was the distinct smell of something burning. He glanced down and saw the glove smoking in two spots, one of which probably would've corresponded with a spot under his upper right collarbone, a spot where the cloak hadn't, at the moment before he was yanked back, covered his chest well enough.

"Pay attention and continue," Vader rumbled somewhere right above his head, and Luke realised, right before he was pushed away, that his father had almost, basically, been curled around him for a brief moment, an arm across his chest.

"But---"

"NOW."

Shaking his head, Luke tried and failed to push away the frustration (worry for his father; why was he worried?) that burned along, inside, his mind and it wasn't made any easier that he couldn't seem to return to that perfect equilibrium as everything moved in real-time now. Stumbling, Luke twisted away, barely missing a handful of bolts and the only reason he hadn't been hit, again, was that there were simply less guns to fire at him.

Gritting his teeth in an attempt at swallowing down the anger, he lashed out, the heat of his father's anger bolstering his own and.

Stop.

Breath caught in his lungs, everything frozen, and he knew exactly what he needed to do. It would just take one single slam with the Force, such a simple, easy thing, and it would all---

Eyes snapping open, Luke wove away from three bolts coming at him like he was drunk, just fast enough to have them do nothing more than burn into the floor by his feet and spatter molten metal around, or glance off the cloak.

He had just... almost...

Closing his eyes, he took a breath, held it and let go. All of it. Stepped back - was now partly wedged against one ruined gun, with the one next to it unable to rotate far enough to face him - let the breath out and while it wasn't perfect he could...

Duck.

Grab three turrets, yanking one of them off-course from his father, the other two aimed squarely at other guns to let their fire spray elsewhere.

Pull up the turret he was partly hiding against with his hands while snagging another two with the Force, then he had to let go of the hot metal and four bolts reduced the turret nearly to slag.

Another gun pulled out of its alignment, knowing perfectly where to aim it, and while there was a breath-long moment where he almost toppled over when the heavy armourweave wrapped around his legs as he whipped around, he kicked it loose stretched out again.

There was nothing but the need to move, to pull at each functioning flow of electronic and plasma that was attached to the walls or ceiling, a perfect dance that, if he'd had the thought to spare, would've brought up a few sessions on Dagobah.

Luke, however, didn't have those thoughts to spare.

What he did have was a glittering moment where the laser bolts shearing through the air seemed to move in slow-motion, their paths visible ahead of them like hot hair, easily avoided.

There was still the smell of something having been charred by blaster bolts and it was clinging to his nose when Luke realised there were no more cannons being fired. There was smoke near the ceiling, thick enough to look like black mist, and sparks were spitting from nearly every partially-melted or dangling turret.

"... we're done?" Staggering suddenly under the weight of the cloak as he turned to his father, Luke shook it off his head and was aware of two things; his head was swimming like he'd run a whole day through the swamps of Dagobah with Yoda on his back, and his shoulders were aching like nothing.

"It would seem so."

The words flooded through Luke with something like sharp-edged relief, and he had intended to walk over to his father and check if he was all right, but the moment he realised what he was thinking, Luke frowned and simply slumped down on the floor, cloak dragging him down, and hid his face in his hands. Resting it there, that was, not hiding.

It wasn't, really, the concern that stumped him. Well, maybe a little. Because even if he certainly didn't want to kill his father, there was still a step (or several) between that realisation and the one of not wishing any harm to come to the man who'd chopped off his hand. Tortured Han and Leia. Any number of other things. It wasn't like the list was short.

Taking a shuddering breath in and ignoring how tired he felt, Luke dropped his hands to his lap and looked up, raising an eyebrow as he watched his father stalk around the room, lightsaber still lit.

"If... there was anything else in here, I think it'd have activated by now, right?" Luke said and bit his lip to make sure he didn't grin when that masked face turned towards him with a distinctly flat, unimpressed air hovering around the broad shape and didn't respond. That sort of mulish silence and his floundering awareness of his worry, if not exactly yet acceptance of it, made him continue. "How's your arm?"

"Functional," Vader snapped shortly, stopping suddenly and slowly turning around - Luke had a moment to stare, because something looked off and he wasn't sure why---

Cloak.

That was what was off; his father wasn't wearing the cloak, and while it didn't make him look any less imposing, there was a missing element to his movements that Luke had, apparently, baked into his impression of 'Darth Vader'.

"I would've thought, however, that your concern over any damage I might have sustained would come not from worry for my well-being, but from a need to assess your increased chances of escape, Son." The dry words were mocking enough Luke almost snapped his reply, but his embarrassment over Vader having been able to tell where the question really came from made the anger fizzle out into a sulky annoyance.

"I'm pretty sure you'd need a few more injuries than a damaged arm for me to easily get away, and maybe I'm just worried about our chances to get out of here alive, Father," Luke said with a scowl, carefully shrugging off the cloak and determinedly not wincing at the noise the cloth made as it met the rest of it where it was pooled on the floor.

This thing was ridiculously heavy.

"Considering your display not even five minutes past, young one, I don't think you need to be as pessimistic about your chances as you are being." Vader waited to speak until Luke was nearly upright, muffling a groan as he lifted the cloak with him.

"What?" Wide, blue startled eyes stared up at him as Luke turned around, dropping the cloak back on the floor with a heavy thump. It was nearly amusing. Not that Luke would be able to get away that easily, having become (impressively) stronger or not.

It seemed rather offensive, almost, how unaware Luke was of the bright blaze of strength and pure Force presence around him, that was him. Vader wondered, briefly, if this... light, like a sun, was what his former Master and the others had seen when looking at him.

Thinking of the past, however, wasn't something he wished to do. Resisting the urge to sigh and pushing down any minute amount of pleasure he might feel at the power his son was displaying, Vader cocked his helm and finally turned his lightsaber off and strode across the room to where Luke was standing.

"You managed to sustain Force-enhanced speed in addition to telekinesis, manipulating multiple objects at a time, for seventeen minutes and with only a few moments of lapse in-between, Luke. Very impressive."

"Oh." Luke stared up at him, blinking and barely stepping aside to allow him to bend down, pick up his cloak and sweep it around his shoulders with a practised, one-handed movement so he could snap the chain shut and let the armourweave cloth to fall down his back and over his shoulders.

'Impressive' wasn't really the word for it, truth to be told. How much formal training did the boy have? A few months? Not a year to him, Vader would surmise, which meant Luke was picking up all of this very fast indeed, after only being introduced to the concepts, if that. Vader also had the distinct impression that whatever training Luke had had, wasn't for once focused much on theory or philosophy. No, he had probably been trained to do what Obi-Wan couldn't.

Kill him and his Master.

Suppressing his snort, Vader turned away from his son - the child was almost blushing, and he wasn't sure he liked whatever the twist in his chest was at seeing that - and his overwhelmingly bright presence to walk across the rest of the floor to the doors that had been revealed now that the turrets had fallen silent.

Not quite opposite to where they had entered, it didn't take more than a negligent brush of the dark side to make them slide open, and the corridor beyond lit up with flickering hesitance as he took half a step outside. Carefully hooking his lightsaber back on his belt, he flexed his hand. The damage was negligent, most of the force and heat absorbed by the outer layers of the gauntlet, but he was experiencing some lag in input and reaction, plus some small loss of fine motor control.

It wouldn't matter when he'd need to use his lightsaber again, but it would need to be rectified as soon as possible either way.

"Come."

There was that tone again.

Luke sighed and didn't care how loud it was - in fact, for a very adolescent, petty moment, he rather revelled in it - and reluctantly followed his father. He felt very sluggish, now. Not so much because of the speed he'd been moving at earlier, since it hadn't really felt like he'd been moving fast. It was more like everything else had been moving slow.

No, he felt slow from the ache that thrummed down through his shoulders and along his torso, and in addition his earlier headache was threatening to re-emerge. Of course, most of that was probably from wearing an armourweave cloak made for a man broader and more than a head taller than he was... not to mention definitely used to carrying not just the weight of the armourweave, but all the additional armour as well.

In fact...

"Isn't it heavy?" Luke asked while he forced his complaining body to catch up with Vader's brisk and completely inconsiderate stride, trying to give an angled look up into one of the shielded eye-holes of the mask. Not that he could see anything behind the visor, especially not with the rather abysmal lighting in here, but he wanted to at least try to meet Vader's gaze.

His response, at first, was a snort, a muted, heavy rattle that shortened Vader's steps for half a step, and then he tilted his helm and looked down at Luke.

"What is?"

"The cloak. The suit. All of it," Luke said with an eyeroll. How much of it was necessary, anyway? Oh, he knew the rumours, stories, as much as anyone else; that it was an extensive life-support system, but even so. Was all of it actually necessary?

"Necessity, young one, does not take such things as 'heaviness' into account." There was a bite in those words, but Luke didn't feel like the ire was aimed at him. No more than anything in general of his father simply walking along the corridor, hands rhythmically balling into fists and radiating a cloud of barely-restrained anger was, anyway.

"I meant aside from any necessary life-support, Father." It was getting... so very easy to call this man that, and maybe that was a victory for him adjusting to the reality of it, but it did nothing for his long-harboured dreams of the father that had apparently been a navigator on a spice freighter according to Uncle Owen, and then had turned into a Jedi Knight thanks to Ben. And even if he'd heard more than one thing since joining the Alliance that would imply that Ben's words hadn't all been a lie, that still didn't really help. It was just... how did one go from that to this?

"Armour is hardly unnecessary," Vader said, helm tilting again and his voice going dry, "unless you would like to put yourself on equal footing with the average TIE pilot and divest of your X-wing's shields?"

Grimacing at the thought, Luke snorted.

"Don't forget the life-support," Luke said, and after a short pause raised his head to meet - he thought, anyway - his father's masked stare, "why don't they have shields or life-support anyway? That seems--"

"I am not about to discuss the finer points of imperial military strategy and the usefulness of a pilot's psychological state with you, Luke, unless you'd actually consider joining me."

Staring quietly and shaking his head, Luke could nonetheless accept that. Even more so because the harsh tone reminded him of some of the generals and other commanders - this wasn't even a personal rebuke, or, really, an attempt to win him over. It was more a professional rebuke coming from Vader's official position. He knew his father was the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy, but the capacity he'd seen the man in had never actually... tied his impressions of 'Darth Vader' to that position in Imperial naval military.

"Fine. I still think it's a terrible idea, but fine."

"Duly noted."

Luke absolutely did not look up at that, but he knew he hadn't imagined the amused inflection.

Who was his father, anyway?

The man was irritable, angry, possessive... and then there were more things, other things, most of which Luke couldn't get a good read on, but which simmered underneath the more obvious emotions. Suppressing a sigh as they walked down a broken flight of stairs as the corridor widened into something like a hall with a very old-fashioned and very broken light-fixture hanging from chains above them, Luke wondered how much Anakin Skywalker had changed to turn into Darth Vader.

What had his mother seen? Ben? Any number of those who'd followed his successes during the Clone Wars?

Mother...

Frowning, Luke glanced up at Vader again, about to open his mouth to ask a question which had never gotten an answer from his aunt and uncle and which he hadn't thought to ask of Ben, when Vader held a hand up.

"Be alert. We have no idea if the next room will hold something similar to the last one."

He had a fleeting wonder if his father had managed to read his mind through their connection well enough again to know what he'd been thinking about, but he didn't think so. So he shuffled the thought aside for later and straightened his back even as all his muscles from neck to lower back complained.

"I'm ready."

Chapter Text

The doors opened when Vader waved his hand at them, sliding apart with a noise of metal on metal and then, with a scraping protest of metal on stone they jerked, then stopped. The gap wasn't even wide enough to allow Luke to pass through without having to turn sideways, much less letting Darth Vader through.

Luke eyed the opening and shrugged.

"Well, I guess we'll get through any---" Luke had to duck away as his father stepped forward and with an angry, piercing shriek, the doors were pulled apart. He honestly couldn't tell if Vader had used the Force to force the doors open, or simply pulled them open with sheer brute strength.

Also, something smelled he realised now.

The stink wafted from the open doorway and the Force quivered around them. Following his father into the room beyond Luke stopped at the top of the wide, curving stairs that led down to a rounded, open space about ten steps down and saw what was producing the smell.

"Aren't those your stormtroopers?" Luke asked, frowning and trying to breathe through the miasma of blaster bolts, spilled blood, and burned flesh. He'd never particularly liked the instances when the fighting had been happening in close quarters and you ended up with bodies all around you. Mostly due to how obvious the cost of a battle was like that, but also, a little, due to the smells.

Not as bad as bodies left lying under the twin suns of Tatooine, but plenty unpleasant.

"... Yes," Vader ground out, crossing his arms over his chest as he stared out over the round chamber, littered with the bodies of about half his stormtrooper squad and a handful of slavers... and a few animals, as well.

The stormtroopers were mostly around the base of the stairs, six of the animals among them and with one stormtrooper off to the side of the door, by a control panel that had been dismantled - clearly an attempt at getting the door to open.

The pirates, it seemed, had been far less organised, and were scattered over the rest of the floor, though one lay half-crushed under the rubble of the stairs that should have been opposite to the ones Luke and Vader were standing at the top of. Three more of the animals, sleek, black bodies with a canine look to them and thin tails that ended in barbs, were spread near or on top of the pirates.

"I wonder what happened..." Shaking his head, Luke bounded down the stairs to kneel down by the closest... body, because despite the faint hope he'd been harbouring and all the proof contrary to that hope, the man was definitely dead. They all were, a fact only strengthened by a lingering, multi-voiced echo of a cry in the Force.

"The leader of this group of outlaws happened," Vader said, and Luke looked up from the stormtrooper's corpse. His father was still at the top of the stairs, but was now kneeling down with one hand resting on the floor. Dimly, the heated darkness of the Force could be felt around him, and Luke wondered what he was doing that he knew that.

"What?"

"The Twi'lek with a penchant for yanking you around by your hair, son," Vader said dryly, and Luke scowled up at him, even if he wasn't sure his father was even vaguely looking at him at the moment, "she seems to possess some... small amount of Force-sensitivity, which the complex is either bolstering or bringing to the fore. She walked into this room with my squad and the slavers already engaged."

He paused, helm twitching slightly and then he stood up, hands curling around his belt.

"Shortly after she entered, the animals came in as well and immediately went after her. She spared no time in crossing the room and tearing down the stairs with a lightsaber she must have found somewhere, leaving her compatriots and the stormtroopers to deal with the creatures."

"... are you serious?" standing up, Luke spread his arms wide to encompass the room and its very dead inhabitants, "how do you know that? What did you do?" It must be some form of Force power, Luke guessed, but he couldn't see how. And, vaguely guiltily, he wondered if it was restricted only to the dark side, or if this was something anyone could access.

The second after he said that and his father tilted his helm, staring down at him, Luke regretted asking. He did not want another lecture about the dark side or another offer of training in the same. He tensed, about to open his mouth and tell Vader to ignore what he'd said when the dark lord started to descend the stairs.

"It is merely a question of focusing on an object or a spot in a location and calling up what has happened to it. Most easily done for recent events," he said, almost mildly, if such a thing was possible for Darth Vader, and, as he stepped down on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, simply looked down at Luke for a quiet moment and Luke couldn't imagine what he was thinking.

He waited, but still nothing came about the dark side; no pointed words, no generous offers, nothing.

Frowning up at his father, Luke glanced down at the floor and then, after another few quiet moments - he should probably say something about moving on, but the temptation was too strong and his father had mentioned nothing about the dark side being key in this - he knelt back down again, splaying his palm on the floor.

The floor was that sort of rough-smooth under his hand made from being worn down a long time ago, having lost its initial polish and then been polished by steps instead. Not warm, but not cool either. It was just... stone.

Stone, Luke realised as he frowned, eyes closed, that thrummed.

Frustration.

He drew back, realised that the stab of emotion had been washed out, carrying nothing of the dark side even as it pressed against him constantly. He relaxed into it again, focusing on the room, the bodies, and what had happened.

Frustration, annoyance, sight limited by the helmet as always and they hadn't found the way back out yet, or found their commander. He walked into the next chamber on the flank, rifle raised in ready position, and the captain barked out an order that had them spreading out as the pirates in the room started to fire.

The door had closed behind them, but nonetheless this ought to be a short job - the thugs were few.

Where the Twi'lek who jumped down onto the floor came from, he didn't see, but her entrance was followed by cheers from the outlaws... and growls from sleek, black-skinned canine-like animals.

Fighting to keep them off, to keep the pirates away, demands for updated from their designated slicer at the door, his companions dying one by one after the Twi'lek jumped up the opposite stairs, destroyed them and the animals turned to focus on them---

Heavy weight against him, armour holding up to the claws but the barbed tail sliding between the gaps and puncturing the body glove and someone needed to shoot it off of him---

Black cloud of anger, and, underneath that, something sharper but infinitely more aching lurked, and Luke lurched, pulled out of the backwards flash with his father's hand on his shoulder - that's where those other emotions had come from - and trying to shake the breathless fog of someone else's experiences away.

"You were too close to the corpse."

"What?" Standing up forced his father's hand off his shoulder, and Luke rubbed his temples and swallowed down the faint threat of a resurgence of his headache, feeling raw, agitated.

"You were close enough to the corpse that you picked up on his last experiences in this room," Vader said, voice rolling through the room like contained thunder, and stared down at him before he suddenly pointed sharply, "Obi-Wan did not teach you much, though such a failure doesn't---"

"He didn't have time," Luke snapped, shaking his head and stepping away from both Vader and the dead stormtroopers, trying to calm down. It wasn't easy; apparently having picked up the dead stormtrooper's last experiences had also left him with the last vestiges of his frustration and panic right before he died, and he really couldn't afford that.

"He had twenty years---" Vader cut himself off, and Luke frowned up at the ruined stairs but refused to turn around. He probably shouldn't have said Ben hadn't had time to train him. That would implicate someone else, wouldn't it?

Cold rushed through him as he realised he'd messed up.

"Yoda." Something between a hiss and a snarl came from Vader, and it was full of dark contempt - but, strangely enough, not the same sort of venom his father spoke of Obi-Wan with.

"Leave him alone, Father!" Anger boiled up again as he whirled around, knowing there was one simple way of silencing his father, stopping him from being a threat if he just...

Staring up at the black, armoured shape and the helmet, hands balled into fists tight enough the knuckles on his left hand were aching and his fingers were biting into both of his palms, Luke shook his head.

"You think taking a step back is going to stop me, Luke?"

Ignoring his father's voice, Luke closed his eyes, breathed out. Let it go and didn't let the roar around him drag him back.

"And you want me to attack you, is that it?" he said, hearing the sharp challenging sarcasm in his own voice before he let go of that as well, noting distantly that his father didn't reply to that.

But he was focusing on the bright core of calm he was digging up in the swirl of violence, anger and death that hovered in the room, and tried not to pay attention to the little curl of pleasure the thought that his father didn't actually want him to fall to the dark side in a way that would put them at odds with each other caused.

Because he didn't need that thought at the moment. He just needed the crystal clear clarity of the calm found himself in, even in the middle of all this noise.

It was... surprisingly easy after he actually made an effort (but just as easy would be to let the emotions run back in and follow the earlier impulse). Yes, obviously the dark side was easy, because it was easier to get angry and lash out than try to remain calm enough to understand... or at least to listen and try and reason.

Letting a breath out, feeling sharp, tiny prickles try to dig into him but failing to get purchase on what for the moment was a surface like frictionless transparisteel, Luke opened his eyes again and was, once again, staring right at his father. Who had, he realised, attempted to get past his shields.

But Yoda was safe. Leia was safe. Han wasn't, but they'd rescue him.

"For now he'll be left where he is," Vader said, slow threat in the words, but Luke barely twitched his head - he knew his father didn't know where Yoda was, so the threat was next to completely empty, "and I would not leave your training inconsistent, which is what it currently is... and even that is only at best."

Frowning, Luke wanted to deny it was inconsistent, but, dropping his gaze away, he knew he couldn't. Ben hadn't had much time at all, but he'd had more than a month with Yoda and that training had been focusing on physical and mental discipline, yes, but most of the practical applications had been...

Floating things, which definitely was useful in any number of applications; lightsaber forms, though he hadn't felt like he'd learned much by simply trying to copy what Yoda was telling him until he'd gotten to apply it on Cloud City. And he'd never admit to his father that he'd been picking up things as they fought and applying them as they went...

Mental and physical strength and discipline in the Force and Yoda's philosophy to bolster that, but it hadn't, really, been very varied. It'd been, Luke realised now and looking at it from this end, a very focused sort of training. Focusing on his future ability of standing up against and fighting the Emperor and Darth Vader.

The realisation was a cold ghost in his veins, but he met his father's masked gaze with his head high and chin out.

"Perhaps, but I have the rest of my life to learn more," he hoped, because if Yoda were to die, who was supposed to teach him? He pushed that thought away and continued, "and I'm not going to learn the ways of the dark side, Father." Turning away and crossing the room to stand at the bottom of the ruins of the other staircase, Luke looked up towards the ledge and then glanced around the room again.

"But thanks for the pointers," he said quietly, and was, honestly, surprised both for the softening of his father's mood and that he could feel the slight lightening at all. It was a flicker of dark pleasure that felt warm over the bond, and when had he gotten so good at reading his father's emotions, when they weren't (as) guarded?

He had, after all, felt like the moon had, up until recently, made it harder than usual to get a read on the people around him, especially his father after he arrived.

Now, though... Maybe their connection, which was probably strengthened by their proximity, was helping him. Swallowing the small smile that wanted to escape, because he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, Luke caught sight of the crushed slaver under the rubble of the stairs.

"Are we just leaving them here?"

It didn't exactly feel right.

"You have another suggestion, young one?" Vader said, voice dry but lacking any mocking Luke would otherwise have expected from his suggestion, and he huffed and almost smiled again, just thanks to the way that had been said.

"I... guess not, no." He didn't like it, but he admitted there wasn't really anything else to do about it.

"Then we are leaving," his father said just as he almost literally flew past him in a Force-powered jump, cloak flared out behind him and landing up on the floor at the top of the ruined stairs. Rolling his eyes at the unnecessary drama, Luke took a breath, gathered the Force to himself, and jumped up as well.

Jumped, and realised a moment too late that his chosen angle was too close to the stairs and he'd---

A black glove closed around his wrist just as he started to tip back over the edge after barely getting his booted toes on the floor, pulling him in and onto the floor properly with a firm yank. Thankfully he caught himself before he stumbled right into Vader's chest, however.

At least Vader didn't say anything about it, merely held tight for a moment and Luke had the vague feeling that if the situation was different - so vastly different it probably didn't matter at all - he would've been pulled close. His father let go, however, and slammed this set doors open with the Force as well. He stepped over the two animals that lay in front of the doors with as much care as if they hadn't been there at all, one of them felled by a lightsaber, the other having had its head crushed and beheaded by the door itself.

Stepping over the dead animals, Luke was once again following his father down a corridor. He wondered if now would be a good time to ask some questions, or if he should wait...

Twenty minutes after they'd left the room behind them for corridors and stairs that kept going down, Darth Vader felt a trickle of impatience foul up his otherwise perfectly agreeable frustration. Frustration over the situation, frustration that his son had caught him out. While he did want Luke to turn he wanted him on his side, not on his own and certainly not on his Master's.

The impatience came from other sources; such as the fact that he'd wasted time making them backtrack once and still having the second choice point them insistently downwards, which wasn't at all where they wanted to go.

The second was more personal and came from that he could tell Luke wanted to ask something as the bond was practically vibrating from end to end with it. It started like a gentle nudge just beyond him, continually tugging at his attention without actually articulating anything... mostly because Luke was actually managing to shield himself pretty well, but partly because Vader wasn't trying to push the connection across to Luke's end to find out whatever it was.

Perhaps he should, however, just to get this over with.

"If you are going to ask, I suggest you do so now, before I decide to render you unconscious. Your attempt at restraint is only making your desire to ask even more obvious, Luke," Vader growled, mood worn even thinner by the fact that he couldn't figure out what the question might be about.

It didn't seem like it'd have anything to do with what happened in the room, and beyond that he wasn't sure what it might be about. Briefly, in a flash of desire and rage, he wondered if he'd have been able to tell, to read his son better and thus know, if Obi-Wan hadn't stolen Luke from him.

"It's not restraint," Luke said, lengthening his steps enough to come up alongside him instead of walking half a step behind, and despite his frustration earlier over the inability to read Luke, he could now tell that underneath the slight sarcasm of the reply lay... wariness. Or caution, at the least.

Behind the safety of his mask, Vader quirked an eyebrow, feeling the oldest and only healed scar now present on his head stretch with the motion.

"I was just trying to figure out a good moment to ask," Luke continued and then let out a soft exhalation, not quite a sigh, and glanced up at him, an eyebrow hiked up on his forehead as well. And while that should have made his son look more like him, he was sure, all he suddenly could think of was---

He squashed the thought before it finished.

"But I guess there won't really be a good moment... not for this."

Suddenly, he had a bad feeling about this. Tightening his hands into fists, he opened his mouth to order Luke to not ask (as if that would actually work), but he wasn't fast enough.

"What..." a glance up at him again, painfully bright (which was the only thing he could tell through the red haze, but he knew they were blue. Of course they were) eyes earnest in that as-of-yet unmarred face, and Luke swallowed and quickly pulled himself together, "was my mother's name?"

"You don't know?" The question slid out as a muted snarl in-between confusion, anger and a dull, thudding ache that emanated from somewhere low in his torso and stabbed into the half-healed wounds on his head as he whirled around to face Luke, who'd stopped, staring up at him between glancing around the corridor.

The stones were creaking, but he paid no attention to that - was it slightly hotter in here, or was it simply the heat coming off old, discarded memories, still smouldering from where they'd been formed?

"No one told me---"

"Obi-Wan knew!" roaring, he slammed his fist into the wall, following it with a not-entirely-satisfying slam with the Force as well. Surface cracks crawled across the stone until it met a metal plate on one side and stones on the three other sides. He couldn't even trust his former master in this one tiny thing, which didn't even have anything to do with him, when the man had seen fit to take their child?

Couldn't have spared him these questions, which brought up memories... A flicker of one in particular lit up; Tatooine and hatred, soft hands and anger-dried tears and her voice...

He tried to remember names but none came.

"The... your aunt and uncle knew as well," he finally hissed, letting the respirator force even breaths in and out of him as Luke shook his head, shock threaded brightly through the nova that was his Force presence.

"They've... Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru met my mother?"

Limbs and bodies on the sand, her slumped body in the hut behind him after he'd freed her from the straps, riding back with sand blasting his exposed flesh, her hands in his hair--- There was a hand on his arm.

The whole corridor was shaking, and Luke's hand was digging into his arm, compressing the layers of leather and synths just enough to be registered by the basic pressure-sensitive sensors in his arm, staring up at him with his jaw clenched.

It's okay. I'm sorry I---

"I don't need your pity," he snarled and yanked his arm free, using it to point at his son, and then took a deliberate off-cycle breath.

This touching upon things he wished to have nothing to do with or not, he needed to control himself. Which was usually less of an issue - even his Master making digs about his past could normally be weathered better than this.

Perhaps he was not above the complex affecting him... Eyes narrowing at that thought, he drew himself up and deliberately - for the moment, anyway - let go of the storm. It wasn't easy, and Luke twitched where he was still standing close beside him but otherwise didn't move.

That he kept coming close... Keeping himself still and shoulders tense, he dipped his head into a slow nod, glancing down at Luke before he started walking again.

"Once." He could do this much. He wasn't about to open up and bare a past which no longer mattered, which no longer had any meaning, and his son better pick up on that he wasn't to ask any more questions, but he would do this much. Luke caught up with him, question clear on his face and over their bond. "They met her once."

But, he supposed, the Larses had had no real reason to assume (even less know) that the woman he'd had with him when he came to see his mother was Luke's mother when Obi-Wan gave them Anakin Skywalker's son.

That had, after all, been years later and while he could never imagine ever getting close to another except her, for others, he knew, partners could come and go. Even their lapses in control while staying at the homestead would only have revealed that they had felt something for each other then and there---

He shook that line of thought away and glowered down the corridor. Right underneath the tense control his emotions were still jagged, far more... acute than they'd been in a long time, and he did not need this.

He flexed his hands. It was quiet now, still aside from the small pebbles and faint traces of dust he and Luke were kicking up.

Peaceful, almost.

"Her name---"

He closed his eyes against the feeling of heat that seemed to persist, against the memories of her face that, despite the hazy red over his vision due to the mask, always retained its proper colours, and set his jaw.

"Her name was Padmé."

He opened his eyes again and refused to look down at his son, because in that moment he was sure he would not see the child of their union, but the mother instead.

A name wasn't much, really. But it was parsecs more than what he'd had just moments before, more than he'd ever think he'd get. That answer also stirred up questions he'd thought dead - by necessity more than anything else, Luke now realised, since what was he supposed to do other than accept it when the answers to the questions had been 'we don't know, Luke.'?

Unfortunately, Luke thought as he walked alongside his father, casting glances up at the stiff tenseness of his body as he strode down the corridor, all those questions would probably not get answers. Again. Swallowing down disappointment and frustration both, Luke focused on what he did have.

A name, and the faint flickers of images that had inadvertently been broadcast over the bond.

His mother.

The thought was somewhat incomprehensible.

His father had always been more present, even when most inquiries got replies such as 'stop asking, Luke, we've told you what we know', or 'I don't want to talk about it'.

He'd had something of him, at least, whereas his mother... Nothing. Despite that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru had apparently met her once, but maybe his parents hadn't revealed their relationship?

Tilting his head to peer up at his father, Luke wondered what had happened. It was clear he still loved the woman who was his mother, even through the initial angry reaction... Walking around the rubble on the floor that came from a half-collapsed wall and revealed metal, wiring and more stone behind it, Luke tried to hold on to the vague images he'd gotten; curly brown hair and pale skin... it wasn't much.

Definitely far more than he was supposed to have, though, so he wouldn't mention it to his father.

This time skipping over the next pile of rubble, Luke looked down the corridor with a frown. Looking up at Vader again, Luke hoped he had time to collect himself.

"It's hotter in here, isn't it?"

It took a moment. Two, and then his father actually stopped, a delayed tilt of his helm that somehow read almost bewildered.

"What?" An impression only strengthened by the tone of his voice, and Luke was pretty well surprised by the fact that the rumbling bass could sound so confused.

"The temperature, Father. It's warmer than it was in the other room and the corridors before that, isn't it?" Not that he needed an answer; Luke was pretty convinced now that it was, the way his jacket was sticking slightly to his back and strands were now sticking to his forehead instead of flopping about freely.

There was silence behind him, only punctured by the respirator he continued on, went around the corner two meters down and stopped as heat suddenly slammed up against him in a dry, near-physical wave.

Oh.

The light no longer came from the intermittent light fixtures that dotted the walls in the corridor behind them. Instead it came from the yellow-red glow that emanated like the heat from the white-gold liquid in the shaft this corridor ended in.

Why did someone think filling the bottom of a shaft with molten metal was a good idea for a... what? trap? test? whatever these things that they'd walked into so far were supposed to be. Luke shook his head and eyed the pool of glowing liquid no more than fifteen centimeters below the edge of the floor and thus his feet. This was getting somewhat ridiculous.

"We're going back," Vader growled above him, having silently - near so, anyway, disregarding the noise of the respirator, which he was starting to be able to tune out, he realised - come up behind him. Luke sighed and gestured at the shaft, noticing there seemed to be at least one narrow ledge a fair bit up on the wall of it. Hard to see, both thanks to the dim lighting and the way the wall itself was textured.

"If we turn back now, don't you think we'll find the corridor suddenly blocked at some point, but definitely before we can choose another direction to avoid this thing entirely?"

His father didn't reply, but the connection between them fouled with a distinct blend of annoyance-frustration-loathing before Vader sharply pulled it back and all Luke could read of his father was the general dark cloud that hung around him.

At least they wouldn't argue about this, then, but, as Luke leaned forward to peer around the shaft, he didn't exactly feel eager to jump to the first ledge. Here the danger was obviously present, compared to the room with the fold-out guns, and while he still didn't doubt that this would be the only way given to them, actually jumping right into it wasn't an attractive prospect.

But, they could also not just stand here indefinitely, so Luke focused on the ledge and tensed, ready to jump - and then there was a hand clamp-tight on his shoulder, pushing him back just slightly before his father jumped instead. He landed with surprising grace on the ledge with just about enough space for him to turn around, and their gazes met for a moment before Luke jumped after his father.

He landed on the ledge just as Vader went for the next one, and for the bare moment both of their full weights were on the ledge, there was a grinding groan from it. Frowning down at the interlocking pieces of metal and smooth stone underneath his feet, Luke wondered if he'd imagined the faint trembling---

"Don't fall behind." There was that tone of voice again, imperious and demanding, with a tiny amount of what he'd have called concern if it'd been anyone else. It might even actually have been concern, though shaded through his father's desire to not let him 'get away'.

"No, Father," Luke said, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes and jumped, first once, taking the next ledge easily, reorienting himself carefully while Vader jumped to another one, still above him. Peering up into the dim shaft and breathing slowly in the oppressive heat, Luke set his jaw and jumped again.

Twice in quick succession, airborne for brief, glorious moments and his feet barely touching the third ledge, he landed on the fourth before Vader had left it.

Instantly, the ledge beneath their feet shuddered, a tremble which racked the wall as well and Luke pushed against the trembling wall, trying to get purchase for his hands and feet - the ledge was getting smaller, he realised when a shift of his right foot almost met air when there'd been rock and metal there before.

The space on the ledge was only barely wide enough to allow one to turn without immediately unbalancing and falling off, and with the whole shaft rumbling and the ledge getting smaller, Luke wasn't sure how he kept his balance. A muffled, angry curse in well-worn, familiarly-accented Huttese floated past him at the same time Vader fell past him.

Hot air billowed up and Luke turned without being aware of it, reaching for the nearest bit of black he could. He missed and reached lower, tunnel-vision groping for any solid bit of his father's body he could reach. He'd overbalance in another moment, but that thought seemed far away.

Vader fell with the sort of slow-motion slide Force-awareness lent, and as a jerk went through his body, vibrating from arm down to his feet, Luke knew he wouldn't be able to stay on the ledge for long.

But at least his hand had closed around a wrist while he wedged himself against the wall, pressing back against both wall and ledge and the only reason both of them didn't fall was because his father, he realised as he glanced around, was bracing his feet against the wall under the ledge and holding onto the ledge with his other hand.

It was, at best, an... awkward position, for both of them.

At least the ledge and shaft both had stopped shaking. Apparently you could not stand two on a ledge. It was also no longer big enough for said two people.

"I doubt you will get an opportunity like this again, son," Vader said, helm tilted up towards him and with a curious sort of... resignation? in his voice. Luke swore, echoing his father as old, familiar Huttese fell out and Uncle Owen would've had him doing chores for days for that. The only small grace in this was that his artificial hand couldn't sweat, which meant that there was no way he would be slipping on the leather of the black glove.

"Well, that's a good thing, because despite what you've done to my friends, the galaxy, and me, and despite that I definitely have no interest in ruling the galaxy with you or your offer of training, Father, I don't actually want you dead," Luke said, sweat trickling down his forehead and along his nose, teeth gritted and trying to shift his weight so he wouldn't lose his balance and pitch over, which would send them both into the liquid below.

The air was oppressively hot, and there were quiet, shifting sounds coming from the molten metal below, but even the harsh rake of air through his lungs as he breathed fell away briefly as a thought crystallised.

He meant it.

He didn't want Darth Vader - Anakin Skywalker - dead. Even less by his own hand.

There was a silence, and Vader's mask seemed both more inscrutable than it'd ever been and as transparent as a pane of transparisteel; there was only bewilderment over the bond. And though Luke was sure it'd be followed up by the dark, smug pleasure that he'd felt at other times, for the moment there was a surprisingly honest openness. He didn't give his father the time to recuperate, just sucked in a too-hot breath and jerked his chin since his hands were somewhat busy.

"Think you can drop to the ledge below?"

Apathy, cold and familiar - even more so than the rage and hatred that'd been with him for just as long - made him only slowly turn his head to consider the ledge below them.

It was... not impossible, now that there was at least some time to plan the drop instead of falling heedlessly. Luke's affirmation didn't do much other than delay the inevitable though; other people had claimed to love him, and where had that ended?

The heat squeezing against the outside of the suit and the faint, subtle noises of the white-hot viscous liquid below was an all too familiar reminder of both of those two people, and this time, his Master would not come.

Still, he looked back up, past Luke and frowned, then let out a slow sigh that the vocoder didn't pick up on.

"Yes. But there are fewer ledges above us now, Luke. I suggest you let go---"

"What kind of attitude is that?" Luke was now staring down at him, and despite the mask his son's fierce scowl seemed to meet his gaze unerringly, annoyance and exasperation freely - perhaps even deliberately - snapping across the bond.

Vader scowled himself, even as that pulled on half-healed wounds, and shifted his stance just slightly, trying to alleviate the pull on Luke's arm and balance.

"It is perfectly---"

"Stupid," his son proclaimed with the sort of finality he was more used to wielding himself against his own troops (clone troopers or Imperial ones) and stupid, useless officers. And suddenly a bright red lance of annoyance pierced through the gray flatness, lightening the oppressive air.

How dare he?

"I have an idea, so if you just drop down to the ledge we can try to get out of here," Luke continued blithely, either ignorant of his reaction or deliberately ignoring it... Probably the latter, Vader admitted with a soft snort; the child was utterly, nearly enrage-inducing, defiant, especially at the worst possible times.

The gray lifted, and suddenly he was just angry at hanging over a pit of molten metal; it might not be lava, but the similarity mocked him.

"Fine." It took nothing more than half a thought to carefully reposition himself and then push away from the wall with the Force, landing on the lower ledge with enough force to crack the stone. The molten metal was less than thirty centimeters below his feet, which meant more of it was being pumped into the shaft... and that the corridor that'd led in here had been sealed up.

Sneering down at the white-golden liquid beneath his feet, Vader looked back up, feeling inexplicably relieved Luke was no longer fighting against both his weight and gravity to keep from falling over. The boy was now properly standing up and leaning against the wall.

"And now, young one?" He'd said he had a plan, after all, though it probably just entailed some careful jumping to ensure they didn't end up on the same ledge again.

"Now, you jump between the ledges... I'll take the walls," Luke said with a bright grin that suddenly had him thinking of a dusty ring, the noise of Geonosians chittering, blasters and lightsabers whining and 'No, I call this aggressive negotiations.'. The respirator struggled to keep the cycle as he sucked a breath in and ignored the hiss of the molten metal reaching the bottom of the ledge he stood on.

"Luke---"

The infuriating child then gave him a salute and pushed away from the ledge and the wall, turning into a dark blur before he made brief contact with the opposite wall. While Force-assisted speed meant Luke was moving too fast for Vader to see him turn around so he could angle himself, he went flying diagonally upwards with the next jump, clearly in control of what he was doing.

He was learning so quickly.

Letting out a huff, Vader jumped off the ledge just as the liquid reached the soles of his boots. And, apparently, Luke hadn't been entirely foolish in choosing his alternate route to scaling the shaft; right before he jumped off the ledge he'd been hanging off moments before, it started to fold away under his feet.

Not fast enough, however.

The hot air made even the oxygenated and circulated air he breathed uncomfortable - and uncomfortably familiar - to breathe, but despite the fewer ledges, it was simple to jump between them now. Once or twice he even ignored one of the ledges left entirely, and aimed for the ledge above instead, finally catching up with Luke.

He would not admit he'd done it deliberately.

He would also not admit that he put more force and speed into his jumps, so that he landed half a second before Luke at the top of the shaft, stepping away from the oppressive, reddish-lit heat of the shaft into the darkness of the chamber.

Or it would have been darkness if his mask didn't contain night-vision, though there wasn't much to see except for the large hole in the middle of the floor of the room.

Luke took a few deep breaths behind him, the air sweetened by slightly stale but functioning climate-controlled air exchange.

"Well... that was fun," Luke murmured as he stepped up beside him, and both of them ignored the loud burble from behind them as the molten metal reached the top of the shaft and then started to sink down again. Luke was squinting into the darkness, a frown slowly forming on his face.

"… there's something alive in here."

Briefly closing his eyes, Vader couldn't disagree. There was... something...

He drew his lightsaber just as that something became a mass of darker shadows spilling out of the pit in the middle of the room and scraped poison claws against his mind.

Chapter Text

It was cold.

Cold which crept along his limbs and into his veins, cold which rushed in through his nose and mouth and down into his lungs, freezing him from the inside out and how was he going to get back like this? When the cold and whiteout made it impossible to see, impossible to walk and his blood slowed... He'd never thought anything could be this cold. They'd warned him, of course. Acquired clothes for the climate, but it'd been such an odd concept.

He'd felt slightly cold ever since they'd first stepped onto the Falcon, taking off for space and Alderaan; everything was colder than Tatooine, and that had been weird. Not that he hadn't been cold before; of course he had.

Tatooine nights were cold, after all. But you wouldn't freeze from them. Not like you could on Hoth. It had been amusing at first, amusing and fascinating; snow (frozen water!) everywhere so that it looked like a desert, and it could be moulded into structures. It'd been okay even when he realised at the end of the first day that he just couldn't get warm. But it'd been nothing to worry about, right?

Except it had. He remembered it'd been so hard to fall asleep, and then near impossible to remain sleeping through the night, because it was so cold.

Cold wasn't supposed to be able to squeeze you until you shattered apart, until you couldn't think and your body wouldn't obey you. Cold should have been a refuge from the burning heat of the day and the twin suns, not making his skin achingly numb and making it hard to walk and see and move and that sent a primal thrill raking through him as the temperatures plummeted further.

He'd die here. Because it was too cold to move, to think, he'd die---

Stomping down on something that brushed against his leg, Luke jerked and staggered a step back, blinking into the darkness. He might die, and that was... well, it wasn't all right, but death could happen at any time. He'd chosen death before another reality once, and either way, it wasn't cold in here.

Shivering in remembrance anyway, Luke rubbed his arms and took a deep breath of stale and cool, but definitely not freezing air. The heat from the shaft behind him still lingered in the air, in the metal and stone underneath his feet. It wasn't swelteringly hot, no, but it wasn't kill-cold either.

Which he'd known.

Frowning, Luke squinted as he looked around, but he couldn't make out anything of the room around him. It was pitch-black, and not even putting a hand close enough to his face the palm was brushing his nose helped. He could, on the other hand, still feel the thing that was in here, with him and his father---

Father.

It was still too dark to see anything, but maybe the lights from the electronics on his father's belt and the control box would give him something to go by...

They flickered in the dark, tiny green and red dots of light, and suddenly he thought about the cave. About Bespin. He shook his head, but the red and green light was red and blue, flickering lances and a shadow in the dark that carried his face. That wasn't true, he knew. Even walking through this place, soaked in the dark side, he hadn't...

Except he almost had.

I don't want to lose you to the Emperor the way I lost Vader.

And he'd been so certain that it wouldn't (won't) happen, hadn't he?

So certain, despite that he'd wanted revenge for his father's death. So certain, despite the fact that his father was Darth Vader, and not killed by him.

His heart thudding in his ears, Luke closed his eyes against the remembered lances of red and blue striking each other, but it didn't help. It also didn't help that he remembered the hand offered to him all too well, and his face behind Vader's mask. What if he was just delaying the inevitable?

Was Ben right?

Stomach twisting around itself as the thoughts refused to disappear, Luke wasn't sure they'd ever been this strong. He'd wondered, dreamed, feared for days, a few weeks after they got back from Cloud City, but as they let him get back into missions while he, Leia, Chewie and Lando slowly tried to plan for Han's rescue, those worries had subsided.

But now they stood out brightly against the darkness, and it was hard to breathe while his heart refused to calm down. Was he just tricking himself? Was he foolish to relax, even a little, in his father's company because that would only help him turn him, in the end? Had the vision in the cave not been a warning, not even just a possibility, but a certain future?

Though Yoda had said the future was always in motion---

The thought didn't hold, and he thought, briefly, he'd taken the offered hand. Or not jumped out of the carbon freezing pit in time, waking up in front of the Emperor, having lost Han and Leia and everything. But he knew that hadn't happened.

I don't want to lose you to the Emperor the way I lost Vader.

His father wanted him to join him, to use the dark side and even if they killed the Emperor, what did that help the Rebellion, the Galaxy? His father wanted him to rule with him... Ben was afraid it'd happen, the Emperor and Vader apparently wanted it to happen, if for different reasons; the vision in the cave could be a pointer that it would happen, and what if it did?

He couldn't breathe as the fears weighed down and the flickering whispers of Yoda's rough, accented voice muttering fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate only squeezed his heart harder.

I don't want to lose you to the Emperor the way I lost Vader.

Trying to swallow, to breathe, Luke felt like he was back out on the scaffolding over the abyss of Cloud City's innards, his stomach having fallen before he did---

Before he did.

He hadn't Fallen. He'd fallen. He'd chosen something else than accepting either of Vader's offers.

Once again left blinking into the darkness, Luke realised the pressure on his chest wasn't from anxious fear - not completely, anyway, and that was lightening by the moment - and that, while there was a chance he might end up as his father, he'd chosen something else at least once.

And maybe he wouldn't choose it twice, but it was equally possible he would.

He'd chosen to fall to potential death instead of taking his father's offer, no matter how the thought of being at his father's side, as he thought about it afterwards, brought flickers of guilty, wondering what if feelings.

The vision in the cave was a warning, not truth.

And now, even as other half-formed fears pressed against his mind - losing Leia and Han (he already had, and it was his fault, too), losing Wedge and the other Rogues, losing his father, the faint spear of fear that crawled up at the echo of a krayt dragon's howl through the rocks - he could also tell that while they certainly were his fears, they were being pushed from an outside source.

Taking a stubborn breath against the pressure on his chest, Luke shifted his feet - and realised he was dangling in the air.

Reality settled in properly with a sharp yank as he twisted in the grip of a... tentacle? that was wrapped around his chest, keeping him aloft and--- Grimacing at the sudden waft of putrid air that rushed up from below, Luke wondered if he wasn't right above the creature's mouth. Glancing down got him nothing but slightly shifting darkness.

Despite that, however, he had the sudden, vague impression of standing out in Tatooine's glaring early morning sunlight, the sarlacc's beak and tentacles below him... Shaking his head, Luke twisted and kicked out, swinging himself as much as he was able in the tentacle's grip, twisted again and then dropped away, the tentacle unable to hold onto him. He immediately grabbed at it before he fell out of reach, aware of where he was, most probably, hanging, and used it to swing away, throwing himself through the air.

Only a tingling warning through the Force let him mostly avoid the tentacle that came for him, and he braced himself right before impact and turned away, the tentacle slamming into his side instead of catching him full across the chest. It still drove most of his breath out of him, but at least he could once again use the tentacle as a handhold.

He drew himself up, landing on top of it, stepped back to avoid the unseen lash of the tentacle's end and turned around, running along it. He could see absolutely nothing, but he didn't need to. There was a nervous prickle under his skin, the very natural fear of misstepping in the dark or not seeing danger coming, and the thousand-and-one fears that attempted to crop up from being pushed from...

The creature itself, perhaps?

Gritting his teeth and dodging another whiplash by a tentacle that came close enough his hair ruffled, he ducked between two others, and wondered if it was his imagination or if the creature was becoming faster, stronger every second that passed. That didn't make sense...

Closing his eyes even if it didn't really matter, Luke reached out - and felt like he'd been physically hit, staggering on the tentacle he stood on, swearing quietly as another one wrapped around his right wrist. Yanking on his hand as he got his balance back, he tore his hand free and dashed away again.

"Father?" Calling out, his voice echoing in the darkness, got no response, and the Force, now that he was actually paying attention, was a black hole of despair.

The creature was a dim nexus somewhere behind him and to the left, muted ill-intent cloaked in strengthening shadows of fear, but somewhere in front of him was glass-still lake with a storm underneath, a darkly glowing bonfire; Vader. His father, who at the moment was easily read, probably due to the creature's influence.

He seemed quite unaware Luke had called to him.

Father? Wincing at the unresponsive bond, Luke slapped another tentacle away, making sure to use his prosthetic hand and all the strength he could muster; the tentacle he stood on shuddered as the hit impacted and a sharp, sweet smell punctured the stale air as its skin ripped open. Luke leapt, swung from a tentacle and gripped another, wondering where the floor was.

He had the distinct feeling he was being kept in the air by the mass of tentacles practically boiling around him, even as he kept avoiding being grabbed. That wouldn't last forever, though. He needed to reach his father...

Of course, he was having some issues merely keeping up with keeping out of the way, muscles starting to protest since they hadn't exactly been resting once since this whole thing began, but there was nothing for it. His heart was an even hammer in his chest, and his blood was loud - but that helped. He focused on the rush of blood in his ears and jumped, stretching out.

He could see it clearly now.

His father was a dark star in the abyss around them, the mass of the creature half in-half-out of... a hole? in the floor, its tentacles a moving cage that kept him in the air and constantly somewhat unbalanced. Luke wasn't actually sure he had the control and concentration he needed to keep himself free while trying to reach Vader, but he knew he had to do something.

That meant trying his best.

(Somewhere, a twitch of a memory chastised in Yoda's voice that there was no try; do or do not, and while Luke thought he understood now what Yoda had meant, there was still nothing he could do but try. Try and aim for succeeding.)

He landed, immediately yanked off his feet by the tentacle undulating underneath him, but he let himself fall and trusted his body to know what it was doing. Caught an arch of dry, knobby flesh, swung, landed again.

He reached out.

Their connection was unresponsive, but, Luke realised, not because it was closed down. There simply was no active response to his careful prodding, and, as he was aware of another near miss, almost losing his balance and falling, distance between two moving tentacles misjudged, Luke knew he couldn't be careful any longer. Regardless of not wanting to invade his father's privacy or not.

The slam of a tentacle against his leg and the brief lance of pain that shot through him as the loop it'd wrapped around his thigh before he wiggled out of it both firmed his mind and threw him out of his concentration. Gritting his teeth, he let the next breath out as slow as he could, struggled for a moment against the nervous frustration clawing at his stomach, and let go.

Pushed, and this time didn't stop when he reached the concentrated explosion that was Vader on the other end of the connection.

Suddenly, he couldn't breathe. Not from cold, though, but scorching heat, and Luke could swear the tips of his hair was being singed. It was like the shaft--- No, it actually was the shaft, though there wasn't molten metal bubbling beneath, but lava. And he didn't pull his father up, but let him go.

Why would his father be afraid of something that hadn't happened? Heat billowed up and the lava erupted, reaching hungrily - and suddenly he understood. Because he (or rather, the image of him, Luke wasn't actually looking at this scene from the faint wavery form of himself where it was in it) wasn't the issue here. His action in this was incidental, and Luke remembered the way his father had wanted to avoid the shaft.

I wouldn't have let that happen, you know.

Sluggish, angry confusion billowed up in response, and the whole scene wavered, though the oppressive heat still hammered down, raking down skin and through lungs - which they didn't really have here.

This isn't even here, Father. It's not hot.

Another rush of anger, slightly less confused this time, and briefly, Luke thought that would be it. But the hazy lava exploded upwards, seemingly drenching them and there was the fizzling crackle of electronics burning and a weight on his lungs---

Pushing the sensations back - they weren't his, this wasn't really happening - Luke tried to understand the seeming sluggishness of his limbs, the stubborn insistence that it was hard to breathe, and loud angry beeping and flashings from... Chest? No, not his.

Wait.

Life support.

He shouldn't be here, shouldn't be experiencing this, shouldn't know this. Battling the twin sensations of slow, inevitable draining of life and being unable to do anything about it (impotent rage and smothering resignation permeated everything) and his own guilt at being privy to something he shouldn't be experiencing, Luke steadied himself.

He was only doing this because his father seemed unable to pull himself out of it.

Your life support is fine, you know. At least for now.

Slow, again; the response was so slow, but the spike of rage cracked against him and pain erupted. Luke blinked against the darkness, stumbling over the knobbly flesh of the tentacles and groaned. His headache was back, thumping between his temples, and, fighting against nausea, he stretched out along the bond again.

His father still wasn't responding.

"You're really annoying, you know that?" Luke muttered, addressing the end of the tentacle, shaped like a club, that snapped past his face close enough to scrub skin off the tip of his nose.

This time he didn't hesitate, plunging himself along the bond at the same time as he jumped off a tentacle and grabbed another to swing himself around, ignoring the protesting muscles in his arms and legs.

Immediately, there was slashes of red light interspersed with lighting.

A lightsaber, wielded either by Vader himself or some smaller, shadowy figures, hacking at...

Luke told himself he didn't have a stomach here; the vertigo sensation was wholly metaphysical. It still was rather unsettling seeing himself being killed.

Lightning, coming from pale, gnarled hands from an equally twisted and cowled old man, yellow eyes clear even in the flickering darkness, and it was getting hard to keep the images separate from everything else. They weren't his, certainly weren't his fears - maybe strangely enough, Luke realised, he wasn't actually afraid of his father killing him, though his father clearly was - but the unrelenting cascade of twisting scenes hammered at his sense of equilibrium.

He needed to---

Needed...

Father, I'm not planning on dying any time soon! Not his fears, not his images. The immediate intensity suddenly washed away and turned muted, and Luke was relieved to once again feel something of a response from his father. There was something else, here too, though... Pulling his attention back to what he was doing, Luke tried to ignore the cold glitter of something deeper in, something that was much older than the other fears.

... this is hardly something you can ensure, Luke.

If he could smile in here, he would have, but either way he felt far lighter at the first actual response from his father. It was still somewhat sluggish and with a decidedly mulish bent to it, but Vader was now genuinely aware that he was here.

No, but I could've died at any point over the last three years, and I'm getting a new lightsaber as soon as I can. It almost didn't hurt, talking about that, but again that small, cold flicker deeper within distracted him. What was that, anyway..?

You've learned quickly, young one, and while I don't doubt you could take the Inquisitors, I have over twenty years of experience on you, and the Emperor---

It's a good thing you don't actually want to kill me, then, isn't it. Luke felt another glittering stab of amusement, and his father's annoyed response, but continued before he could formulate an answer. But we're both going to be dead soon if you don't come and help me with this... whatever it is.

With...? Confusion, and then rage in the moment Vader's attention was drawn outwards and noticed what had been going on. In that still moment, this close to his father's core and the man distracted, Luke had a clearer sensation of that cold, guarded little glitter, and he... could...

He drew back fast enough his headache flared into a spiked point into his left eye when he realised what he'd been about to do, feeling bile in his mouth. Trying to read his father that deeply... What had he been thinking?

Then his legs gave under him and his vision briefly swam, coloured lights in the darkness and he knew he wouldn't be able to avoid the tentacle he could clearly feel was coming for him--- but then he was yanked to a stop in midair and the tentacle was batted away by an unseen hand. Further away, a lightsaber ignited, a brilliant slash of red in the darkness.

Luke couldn't see so much as feel the first strike into the creature, the whole nest of tentacles lashing about him and somehow narrowly not hitting him. The lightsaber arced through the air, red glow casting faint illumination on greenish-gray flesh and his father's black armour, and the next tentacle that came for him was severed by the flying lightsaber scything through the air, taking out another two before it returned to the hand of its owner.

Vader was a dense cloud of rage and he seemed to have no issue jumping from tentacle to tentacle and hacking away while at the same time keeping Luke in the air and out of reach.

Luke, grimacing, wondered if he'd simply surprised his father so badly he hadn't reacted in time to grab him when he'd let himself fall in Cloud City...

"Could you maybe put me down, Father?" Twisting physically got him nowhere, and the cautious push against the hold keeping him in place was only responded to by the grip tightening further and cutting off his ability to move. "Father!"

"Stay there until I'm done."

Luke wasn't sure whether to be angry or incredulously amused, but either way it was ridiculous!

Caught as he was, there wasn't much to do aside from... well, hanging there, watching his father's progress half by the faint halo of red light the lightsaber cast, half through the Force. Vader slid down a convulsing tentacle, buried his lightsaber in one as it came at him and, Luke thought, squeezed another until it popped in half with a wet, tearing noise. Another two were severed as the lightsaber danced in a complicated pattern of longer arcs and short, angry thrusts, and the creature was running out of tentacles to throw in Vader's way.

And then the dark lord jumped and fell, lightsaber first, into the center. There was no scream, but the convulsions shuddered through the air and lashed through the Force, a death that echoed enough to hammer against his Force sense with loss regardless of the creature having used the dark side to poison their minds with their fears or not.

After a minute it stilled, but he wasn't immediately dropped; instead he was put down on the floor, well away from the scattered limbs of the creature and his father landed beside him with a heavy thump.

"I suggest you construct your new lightsaber as soon as possible, son," Vader said, the rumble humming through the darkness, and Luke just sighed.

"We've been busy, but I will." So far, at least two of these situations would've been easier if he'd had a lightsaber already, after all. Knowing he had something he should say, Luke still concentrated on walking, because each step was now slower than it should be and the headache was apparently back to stay.

These past... two? three, maybe, he wasn't sure, hours hadn't been kind to him. It was strange to think that he'd used the Force far more in the last few hours than he had during the month of training with Yoda...

The door on the other side of the room behind the creature opened on their approach, and the corridor beyond was softly lit up like the others had been before they'd come upon the shaft. Luke took a breath and concentrated on taking one step after the other, ignoring twitching, aching muscles. If he stopped now, he'd probably not be able to start walking again.

"Father..." trailing off, waiting until he saw the helmet angle down towards him, Luke looked up to meet the opaque gaze of the mask, "I only went in there to help you, but I almost... went where I shouldn't. I'm sorry."

Staring down at his son, he wasn't sure whether he was surprised at the apology, or not surprised that Luke would apologise. He knew, of course, what Luke was referring to. He hadn't noticed Luke's divided attention while it was happening, but he'd still been aware of that last almost-attempt to go deeper.

Some part was exasperated that his son hadn't pushed his advantage when he'd had the chance. The rest...

"But you did not," he finally said and raised his head to stare down the corridor instead, away from those bright eyes. Eyes which he knew were blue, but he couldn't see it... "You should sit down."

He stopped while Luke continued a few steps... faltered, took another and then turned around, staring up at him with narrow bleariness.

"We should get out of here," Luke said, quietly stubborn even as he (unintentionally) broadcasted his aching weariness across the bond. He gave Luke another moment then started off towards him, slowly and deliberately. Luke backed off, hit the wall, and sighed.

"I think we can take a few minutes. Sit."

Luke had actually started sliding down before he'd finished speaking, and by the way he slumped against the wall as he settled down, Vader decided it hadn't been a bad idea to allow for some rest.

Now that he thought about it, he'd landed at the moon late in the evening local time, so with that on top of the exertion so far, it wasn't odd that Luke was flagging. Normally, a Luke too tired to do much of anything would've been ideal for getting him back on the Executor with a minimum of resistance, but the fact was that they just didn't know what else was between them and the exit.

And despite his son's indiscretion just earlier, he had so far otherwise shown himself to be indispensable. Which he'd known; his son was a brilliant nova the Force, and grew even as he looked at him. All that didn't stop the angry frustration over having been unable to recognise the induced fears for what they were, and requiring Luke to help pull him out of the creature's grip.

Shaking the thought away, Vader looked back at Luke, expecting some sort of comment any moment now... And realised none would be forthcoming, because his son's chest was sinking and rising with slow evenness and his eyes were closed.

Somehow, Luke had already fallen asleep.

Somehow, he'd felt comfortable enough to fall asleep in his father's presence.

Forcing himself to breathe slowly and not move, Vader stared down at his son, at the way the light caught in the dark-blond hair, the curve of the nose which was far too much like hers, the slack, open hands where they rested on Luke's lap, and he couldn't keep the thoughts away.

The thoughts which recalled the moment behind the pillar when Padmé had told him she was pregnant, his stunned (scared) surprise and the tiny, treacherous thought that...

Children follow the mother.

The one certain reality that would ensure any child born of a free mother was born free as well. Not that any such child couldn't be enslaved later---

Hands balling into fists and his jaw tightening until Luke shifted, a frown creasing his forehead, and Vader forced himself to calm down, let go... Luke stilled, and, after a moment, Vader moved.

Hesitated halfway then closed the distance and knelt down by his son, staring. It took several long minutes before he slowly raised his hand and lightly brushed the fringe aside. Luke turned his head towards him, and it took all his willpower not to rear back and probably pull his son out of sleep.

Unless he could somehow keep Luke from his Master's grip, the child, while born free like his mother, would follow the father instead, and that was much too close to the old, scarred fear he kept hidden underneath the others.

The one which he had been able to discard shortly after Obi-Wan took him as his Padawan. The one which had come back, angry and hard and resigned, a few years after his Master had declared the Empire from the ashes of the failed and rotten Republic.

The fear, not that he would never be able to say "no, Master", but rather that he would end up saying "yes, Master" for the rest of his life.

Pulling his hand away from Luke's face and trying to ignore the surely imaginary warmth that lingered to the fingertips of his gloves, Vader stood up, crossed to the other wall, crossed his arms, and leaned back.

Somehow, he would get Luke to his side and keep the child from his Master. Padmé's son had been born free, and it should stay that way.

Chapter Text

Luke jerked awake with the distinct feeling of having slept too long. Like Uncle Owen had been standing over him for the last half hour yelling at him to get up, his chores weren't going to do themselves. Or like he'd slept through an all-alert battle alarm and would wake up to stormtroopers standing above his bunk, aiming blasters at his face, or worse, Darth Vader---

Darth Vader, who definitely was here, he remembered as the last few days and hours slotted back into his memory and Luke stifled the sleep-drunken chuckles that almost escaped and rubbed his face, feeling the cold fire that was his father nearby.

"How long was I asleep?" Stretching, Luke slowly stood up and found the headache gone, his muscles aching but not screaming, and a distinct gnawing knot of hunger in his stomach. He wasn't sure when he'd last eaten... mid-morning today? Or would that be yesterday? What time was it now?

"Five hours. It is several hours after local midnight, now," Vader said, the rumbling baritone revealing nothing, and his cold, fiery Force presence just as still, if pressed close around his son. Luke stared and shook his head sharply, vaguely aware of his father's Force presence withdrawing sharply now that he'd noticed it - or rather, was awake to notice it.

"And you didn't wake me up earlier?" Luke wasn't sure what he thought about Vader watching over him as he slept - on the one hand, it caused a tiny ember to warm his insides, dangerously pleased; on the other, he'd actually been able to sleep that long in the presence of that cold, dark fire? His father's presence was pretty... singular. And for the third, whatever he hoped this would end with, what he hoped to attain, Vader was, technically, still his enemy.

And yet he'd slept.

"Are you in a hurry, Luke?" Quiet, dark sarcasm in Vader's voice, and Luke rolled his eyes while he reflexively checked himself over, briefly surprised at the lack of both blaster and lightsaber until his brain caught up with the rest of him. The outlaws had taken his blaster, and he'd lost the lightsaber two months ago. He wasn't sure if it was funny or sad he still forgot that sometimes, still expected the lightsaber to hang from his belt.

"No, but I thought you were. Especially since, if I'm well-rested, it should give me a greater chance once we're out of here," Luke said, and at the same time wasn't sure why he was bringing attention back to the hopefully-nearing reality of 'when we're out of here' and what that'd bring. Vader stilled, his shoulders stiffening under the cloak and the armour before he pulled away from the wall, which he'd apparently been resting against, and raised a hand and a finger at him.

"Being well-rested will not save you, and we aren't out of here yet. While your skills are indeed growing, becoming overconfident is ill-advised, young one," Vader said and then whirled around on his heels, taking off down the corridor and leaving Luke to catch up as he wished. He was also left wondering if that choice bit of parental advice was just an attempt at undermining him, or if it had come from any particular... experience.

Luke would almost bet on the latter, even if he wasn't exactly sure why.

"And what will, Father?" Luke asked quietly, asking about more than what would 'save him' from escaping Vader once they were out of here, because now that he was thinking about it, now that he wasn't caught up in how oppressively unpleasant and cold the corridors and rooms they walked through felt (though they still were), or asking his father questions about the past, or... a number of other things, now that he was thinking about later, it seemed pertinent to talk about it.

Vader walked a few more steps and then stopped, cloak swaying briefly with the motion before it came to rest, still, on the dully smooth floor.

"The dark side."

There was a curious and very much unnecessary pompousness in that declaration, and Luke frowned, about to say something when Vader turned around, hands on his hips, and, still caught in that richly vibrating pompousness, continued.

"Only the dark side will see you through the confrontation with the Emperor, Luke. Only with the dark side can you survive at his side or against him. It will give you the power you need so we ca---"

"When we're out of here, if I don't get away, will you hand me over to him?" Luke crossed his arms and lifted his chin, interrupting the somewhat-familiar rant before it was finished, eyes narrowed, "would you have handed me over if I hadn't jumped out of the carbon freezing pit on Cloud City, and Leia hadn't come back for me? If Artoo hadn't activated the hyperdrive?"

The shadows around them drew in, seemingly pooling at his father's feet and in the folds of his cloak, but Luke didn't move and kept his gaze locked to the mask as the silence stretched.

"Yes." It was a sigh more than a word, but Vader remained stiffly straight, looming. "He knows, and there was, and is, no way I would be able to capture you and train you in secret now that he knows you exist. I had hoped that wouldn't be so, but at the moment I see no other possibility."

"Father---" suppressing the frustrated groan that wanted to escape, Luke dragged a hand through his hair, "wouldn't the Emperor make sure I would end up loyal to him if I turned, not to you? I don't want to kill you, but if I turn and he's the one in control, isn't that what would happen?"

The shadows around them whispered an unequivocal yes, and despite that, Luke walked closer, crossing the distance between them and reached out, laying a hand on his father's arm. Through the layers of leather and whatever else made up the glove, he could feel durasteel hardness underneath.

"If that is what will happen. Perhaps it is too late for anything else," Vader said, his deep, resonant voice carrying echoes of that same apathy that had made an appearance in the shaft with the molten metal, "Sith are expected to vie for power, son; sooner or later you would rise up against him and take your rightful place."

Apathy, and some strange sort of acceptance. Luke stared, aghast, and shook his head, sharply enough to send his hair flying about.

"My 'rightful place'? Father, I don't want it! Especially not if you're dead, and at my hand at that. I don't want to give up the Alliance's fight, but if you would just come with me we could have time to plan, or just hide---"

"It is too late for that, Luke. My Master can find me if he cares to, and my place, regardless, is at his side. If you persist in this foolishness, you will end up dead."

The bond was seething with a tangled knot of feelings after that statement, and Luke only had a few brief moments to poke at it before Vader pulled it close again, aware of how he'd been projecting. Those moments had been enough, however, and the mess was telling all on its own; acceptance, fatalistic and tired; pleading, raw and angry; denial, possessive and full of desperation.

It was flattering, almost, but also frustrating. He pushed it aside and considered the way his father had said two of the words in his declaration. 'My' and 'Master'. Especially that last word. Something cold - something which had nothing to do with the dark side pressing in so close - curled in his stomach.

"I won't turn, Father. I'm not going to kneel at the feet of a slave master---"

Vader twitched, a full-body, not-quite-tremble jerk that didn't actually unseat Luke's hand where it was still loosely resting, half curled, around his father's arm. That they were still standing this close felt like something of a reassurance, even with the yawning abyss between them from the words they were saying.

"He brought order where the Republic failed," Vader hissed, the intended whiplash glancing harmlessly off of their bond, the rage soft and ineffective. His father knew. Hadn't even refuted what Luke had called the Emperor, even if he'd tried to redirect it. Briefly, Luke was reminded of that small, distant fear he had noticed but not gotten close to while they were dealing with the creature that drew up those fears, but regardless of if that had anything to do with this, he shouldn't pry deeper.

"So we make it better! Maybe there'll always be slavery, maybe we could make sure there won't be, which we should, but at least the Re---"

"The clone troopers."

Luke closed his mouth about what he'd been about to say, blinking uncertainly up at Vader and the old darkness in those words.

"What?"

"The clones were forbidden to leave the army and could not choose to do something else before they'd formally finished their training and joined the army," his father said, slowly, helm inclined just slightly, but he wasn't looking down at Luke, but somewhere off to the side, "they were made to be loyal."

For a brief, dizzying moment, even the baritone produced by the vocoder couldn't disguise the softness in those words, something that made Vader sound... not so much younger, as more human. As if he was speaking without the mask even while it was still firmly on and sealed around him.

"And who created the army, anyway?" Luke wondered, honestly. He knew the official story, of course. But, like he'd known Vader was telling the truth when he'd told him he was his father, there was something that tugged ever-so-gently at his attention, saying that there was something wrong with that official story.

Silence, and then...

"The Chancellor." The same almost-human, not-exactly-younger tone again, in a quiet, weary admission.

Chancellor Palpatine, that was. The Chancellor and the Sith Lord and Master who'd been scheming to take control of the galaxy, had created a slave army for the Republic, which didn't allow slavery. Luke took a breath, tried to center himself and collect his thoughts, to figure out how to go where he needed to from here.

"And you'd turn me over to him. To the one who ens---"

"He gave me power!" Vader roared, and this time he stepped clear away - backwards - yanking his arm free, but Luke reached out again. He didn't grab for his father's arm, though, simply held his hand out.

"You don't have to do this, Father! Whatever he wants, you can decide what you want to do! You're a person, Father, and even if you're Darth Vader now, you can still be Anakin Skywalker too!" Luke had fully expected his father to interrupt him again, while he was saying those last few words, but he just stared, the mask opaque, the gaze inscrutable, hands clutching at his belt in a way that would have been subtle if it wasn't right in Luke's view.

"That name... means---" Vader growled but the rest of the probable sentence didn't finish; instead he turned sharply on his heels, but didn't immediately stalk off, "come."

This discussion was over, and while nothing had really been solved it still... Luke wasn't sure, but something still lightened the cold oppressiveness around him. Maybe it was the fact that his father hadn't been able to deny his name. Maybe it was that he waited for Luke to catch up before he stalked off down the corridor again. More the former than the latter, though.

Somehow, he needed to help give his father a way out - because clearly he couldn't see any. Pausing momentarily at that thought, Luke frowned and then made himself continue walking so he didn't fall behind. Needed to? Just because he didn't want to kill his father...

Staring down the corridor but not quite seeing the wide stretch of metal and stone and the arching ceiling above them, Luke considered it. No, he didn't want to kill his father, and if... he could bring his father back... Why shouldn't he? Doubtlessly the man didn't exactly deserve it, but if he could, if he could give his father that chance, the opportunity...

He would.

"Father---"

"Quiet," Vader said harshly, but there was a quickness to that reply that made it less forbidding and far more guarded than what was probably intended. Luke sighed and shook his head, turning aside to hide the slight pull on his lips. But the reason he'd actually tried to say something persisted and seemed to thicken subtly with every step they took, and Luke looked around with a frown, the faint smile gone.

"I just wanted to ask if it felt colder to you."

That helm tilted down towards him, a suggestion of the mask meeting his gaze and then lifted to look down the corridor.

"No. The temperature is the same as it has been since we entered this complex, aside from that... shaft," his father said, deep distaste colouring the last word.

"... Okay." Luke was pretty sure his father was completely correct, too, but that didn't take away the sensation--- Which was coming from the Force, Luke realised as they took a corner in the corridor and came up on an open circular area and a pair of elaborately etched metal doors. There was a nearly choking sense of freezing darkness around them, something similar to the echo he experienced when his father talked about the Emperor.

The dark side was thick here, and his empty stomach roiled unpleasantly.

"Is it another trap?"

Vader stopped and even seemed somewhat surprised at the question - Luke was sure that if his father hadn't been wearing the mask, he'd have seen the raised eyebrow he was sure his father was sporting just now.

"I do not believe so. This..." he trailed off, turning towards the set of etched doors, the deep furrows sporting no corrosion but bearing only traces of their old gilding in the patterns, "I think this is the center of the building. The control room, if you wish," Vader said, voice somewhat dry, and while that was a relief when juxtaposed to the emotions that had roiled around earlier, for some reason it didn't lighten Luke's uneasiness.

"This should present us with a way out of here."

Something was... not off, exactly. No more than this whole building, this whole moon, steeped in the dark side as it was, was, anyway. He just felt deeply uncomfortable, like he'd done in the cave on Dagobah. Maybe that was just what a deep concentration of the dark side felt like. Vader started off again, walking with easy confidence towards the doors, and Luke shook his head.

"Father, wait---"

The doors opened when Vader was within reach, and pale, yellow light spilled into the corridor. With a frown, Luke hurried after him, feeling the heavy knot of vague nausea tighten further when he walked through the doors.

The room beyond was pyramidal, all sharp angles with the pointed ceiling swathed in darkness. The floor was polished, casting faint, twisted reflections even in the rather poor light, age and wear apparently not having had any effect in here. The walls were black, devoid of the green veins the stone had carried elsewhere, absorbing most of what light reached them.

In the middle of the room was a pedestal, a miniature pyramid as if all the mass of the stone that had once filled the room had been reduced to this single point.

Atop the pointed end of the pedestal hovered an elaborate metal device or construct in the same pyramidal shape as the room and the pedestal, its pointed end meeting the pedestal's own. It was dully brass and black, though there were letters and what seemed like circuitry running through the black, glowing a sickly pale yellow.

That was where the light came from, and Luke swallowed against the pressure on his chest.

"What is that?"

"A holocron." His father was walking, slowly but deliberately, closer to the pedestal and its hovering artefact, and Luke had to resist the urge to ask him to come back. "Sith holocron. They store information for the use and control of the Force."

"The dark side of the Force, I suppose." Luke, despite the uneasiness sliding through his veins and what still felt like nausea in the back of his throat, still managed to raise an eyebrow, and his father looked back at him with a distinctly amused air - something that was reflected through their connection.

"There are Jedi holocrons as well, Luke, but yes. Obviously this would be for the dark side of the Force," Vader said, briefly tilting his helm before he turned back around and reached out. Before Luke could ask him not to, there was a distinct pulse of collected darkness from his father, pushing against and then into the holocron.

The pulse in the Force sunk into the device, and then the yellow light flared and the holocron... fell apart. Or opened, was perhaps the correct word, metal sliding apart into smaller pieces and revealing a light-sucking pyramid-shaped core that nonetheless glowed with the same pale yellow light as the outer layers did.

Said light flickered and then drew in momentarily, before it expanded upwards in a tight beam and resolving itself into the shape of a being; the flat, reptoid looks and the braided top-knot revealed it to most probably be a Falleen.

"Greetings. I was wondering when you would make your way here," it said, and despite that there was no real weight to the words, it still sounded faintly amused.

"Who are you."

Luke raised his eyebrows at the tone in his father's voice; that hadn't even been a question, more like a demand disguised as a question. Cautiously, he walked closer, straying sideways somewhat to come up alongside his father. He still kept several meters away from the pedestal where his father stood, and he wasn't sure what he thought of the brief glance the projection gave him, even less of the equally brief and sharp smile.

"I am Thalsi An, former Examiner and currently the Gatekeeper. And you are the ones who activated the complex," Thalsi An said, making a quick little bow and causing the light to scatter briefly before it coalesced again with a curious waver to it that caused Luke to have to swallow down a brief wave of nausea.

"This place... what is it?" Luke asked, frowning, and he ignored his father's sharp twitch of his helm and the snap of caution along the bond, "I mean, all the traps, are they just for keeping most people away from the holocron?"

"Traps?" Thalsi An laughed, the braided topknot swaying with the simulated motion of the projection, and they shook their head, "they aren't traps, little would-be Jedi. This complex isn't for hiding the holocron I guard. I can do that very well myself." Amusement coloured the Force around them in dark bands of not-colour and pressure that weighed down on Luke's eyes and chest it felt like as Thalsi An tapped a finger to their cheek.

"This complex is for guiding would-be Sith to break their chains. A graduation course, if you will," they said, tilted their head and a ridged browridge was arched, pointed teeth rippling the yellow light with their smile, "if one goes through the tests with the proper... mindset, these 'traps', as you call them, are all easily bested."

Vader stared quietly down at the holocron and its projected Gatekeeper, the silence growing heavier by the minute until there was a rumbling snort from the vocoder.

"And that means what?" There was an edge to those words that Luke was pretty sure meant his father knew what Thalsi An meant, now that they'd partially explained, and meant further that Vader didn't particularly want to hear it, but was asking anyway. Thalsi An twitched their head, another faint little smile flickering over their face.

"Come now, my Lord," they said, and despite the amusement that seemed to coat every other word the Gatekeeper said, there was a surprising amount of respect there, "it's hardly a riddle; the cannon room you passed through would've been neutralised before a single shot was fired if either of you had been willing to exercise the sort of move both of you considered, for example."

"But that would've---" Luke cut himself off, biting his lip as Thalsi An turned to him, browridge quirked.

"Killed the other? Of course. The same would've applied if you'd have been willing to sacrifice the intruder caught in the trap; and if you'd have picked up the lightsaber and fought the visions, you'd have been able to leave that much quicker. You made all of it much harder on yourselves. The shaft..." Thalsi An paused and smiled toothily again, "I think you know how the shaft would've been cleared."

"But all of that would've required us to---"

"What about the planet?"

Luke turned an incredulous stare at his father. How was that at all important here? Why did all of the implied easy solutions mean that they'd have to kill someone, or give up something for power--- Blinking, Luke stared emptily at the hovering holocron, only half listening to Thalsi An's explanation and suddenly feeling foolish.

"That? Settlements for Sith, of course. Especially those preparing to go through the challenges of the complex. Internal... conflicts reduced the planet to the state you see today. It happened a long time ago now," Thalsi An said, flashing another unconcerned smile.

"Can we please focus?" Luke snapped, annoyance bubbling up, chased along by the tension bearing down on him. His father turned to him, tension stiffening his posture and their bond quivering with that earlier chastisement again, but he shook it off. "Do you really mean that everything that matters for the Sith is power?"

Luke wasn't sure if he was angry or disappointed, and at what in that case?

His father?

What it implied for his turning? Why had he turned, anyway? The question broke through the building pressure inside and Luke turned to look up at his father, but Thalsi An spoke before he could articulate any of the thoughts.

"Power to attain your goals, yes. Power to attain your desires, whatever they may be. But above all, whatever those goals and desires are, the ability to attain power. Anything that is not in pursuit of that, anything that would stand in the way, is to be discarded." Despite the fact that Thalsi An's voice didn't echo, didn't have any weight, the words seemed to ring throughout the room, and his father was now even stiffer than before if that was possible, hands balled into fists at his sides.

The Emperor had wanted - did want - power, Luke was pretty sure. Looking at his father, though...

"What did you want the power for, Father?" he asked quietly, voice hushed, the words swallowed by the dark pressure that was crowding in. He felt like he couldn't move.

"It doesn't matter," Vader snapped, crossing his arms over his chest, and Luke scowled.

"It does matter!" He had a feeling it was the key to a lot of things, in some way. "Did you just feel like the Jedi weren't... what, teaching you enough?"

"Yes."

Luke stared up at his father, and while the darkness seemed to have smudged his outline, making him blend into the shadows, his masked gaze stood out.

"You're lying," Luke tilted his head, frowned, "at least partly." And he was lying, Luke could tell. There was more here, and not just a quest for power for power's sake.

"I can help you," Thalsi An said, breaking the stare father and son were sharing and smiled up at the dark lord, "I can help you make it about power, my Lord. Give you what you need, even with your body being what it is, to remove your Master, as is the way of the Sith. All... you need to do..."

Thalsi An's smile widened, the braided topknot now pooling around their robed feet as they spread their hands wide, and suddenly Luke couldn't move, and the darkness had swallowed the whole room, pressing in and down and he felt sick and disconnected. Was he breathing? He thought so, but he couldn't tell.

He also couldn't tell if there was floor beneath his feet any longer, and the only sensation was of cold pressure, closing in. Not like laying in the snow on Hoth, slowly freezing to death. This was just... creeping numbness in his mind, and trying to reach out---

What had he even been doing?

"... is to leave the last link to the past here and leave."

A door, not the one they'd come in through, opened up, though the doorway was as dark as the room, only distant light marking the outline of the doorway.

"Leave the last, weak reason behind, discard the lies your master used to lure you, take your rightful place and break the chains both the Jedi and your Master placed upon you," Thalsi An spoke slowly, voice quiet, almost a whisper and seemingly in tune with the shadows that were now filling the room, with the light dancing from the holocron.

That light lit up his mind as well, and his respirator was the only noise in the room now, unnaturally loud. It was obvious Luke hadn't heard what the Gatekeeper had just said, might not be aware of anything currently going on, because there was a slack sort of tension through his whole body where he stood a few meters away, a vague frown on his face and looking at nothing.

It was disconcerting, but Vader's attention was pulled back to the Gatekeeper of the holocron, and the power now pulsing around them.

"Leave?" He wasn't considering it, of course.

That was what he told himself, anyway, but the cold fire now dancing around them - in conjunction with his own, drawing it to itself and strengthening it - was pulling at his attention and smoothed out earlier worries.

The desire to keep Luke out of his Master's hands, the resigned realisation and acceptance that that would probably not be possible and maybe it would simply be best to get it over with and hope for the best; the frustration over Luke's continued refusal, since if he would just give in, he would be better equipped to face the Emperor.

All that sunk underneath the Gatekeeper's offer, the urge for revenge against his Master, who, besides from being the only one who was still at his side, who still meant anything, had lied to him. Had lied about so many things, but most particularly---

"Leave, yes. The child won't even notice. He'll even be... safe here. Your master will never touch him, and you can get the power you deserve, what he's withholding from you," Thalsi An said with a smile, the slightly darker gold pooling in the hologram's eyes glittering and the dark side singing with the promised power.

He didn't need his Master for this, for those promises that had been given and then left unfulfilled, or continually delayed. He could get it this way instead. Vader breathed in slowly, and even the respirator's controlled filtering was eased further, cool, dark air flowing in like the fire that was wrapped around his limbs, smoothing the movement, easing the workings of the (deliberately) sub-optimal prosthetics. With that, he could focus easier, pour the pain twinging from all the imperfections into the glittering darkness and it fed right back into him, a towering bonfire that had once been his but which had been lost in the slashes of a lightsaber and fire.

It was back now, and while his usual fire was far more than some could even imagine holding in their hands, he'd missed that bonfire.

All he had to do was what he'd been aiming for throughout this whole farce; leave. Then he could finally get rid of his Master, and then...

Then.

Vader froze midstep, having already taken one towards the door, and the fire collapsed. It drew back from him and stretched backwards, towards the single one thing that actually meant anything, regardless of what his Master would do or how things would play out.

The doorway was invitingly outlined by the distant light and he could still feel the dark pulsing around him, just waiting. But what did that matter, what did any of it matter without her? She had turned on him in the end, and yet he couldn't let her go, because she was the reason for everything, and she was gone.

But her son, his son, was here. The child which, despite continuing to rebuff him, reject him, just the same kept his hand stretched out. Despite what he'd done to the boy... and he didn't even really expect Vader to follow or even take that offered hand, but still he kept offering it.

"You will release him," Vader growled as he turned around, stalking back and grabbing Luke's arm while he glared at the Gatekeeper, flexing his other hand and feeling the power he still had, despite all that had been done to him. Thalsi An stared, the steady yellow light from the holocron piercingly bright in the darkness, and then they turned their head aside, still, for some reason, looking amused.

"As you wish."

There was no noise or even any noticeable lightening of the dark side's presence in the room, but Luke shuddered, sucking a sudden breath in as he staggered into Vader, reaching out with the hand still free and catching a handful of cloak, as if reassuring himself there was something solid there.

"Wh-what happened?"

Vader snorted heavily, privately relieved the child seemed no worse for wear, even if he was squinting despite the low light in the room. Thalsi An chuckled and swept their arms out.

"Your father has decided to remain fettered, boy. So strong, and yet denying the power he could wield again, even when freely offered... Well, no matter, I suppose. One of you have still learned what they should from this and you two have provided some amusement."

"Cease your blathering." Ignoring the pain from the wounds on his head being pulled from the sneer on his face, Vader reached a hand out and started to squeeze through the Force. Would this destroy the holocron? He didn't know, and frankly, he didn't care at all.

The Gatekeeper just laughed, then the light from the core suddenly cut out and the whole holocron closed itself up again, the pieces interlocking over the black core until there was that upsidedown pyramid hovering over the pedestal and then, as the metal of the outer layer just started to dent and the room shuddered around them, the pedestal, and the holocron with it, disappeared into the floor.

He staggered half a step forward as all the resistance he'd been pushing against was suddenly gone, Luke straining against him, helping him regain his balance as much as he was still using him for support.

"... All right. I don't know what happened, but we have a door so I guess that's... good enough?" Luke said, shaking his head slowly as he rubbed his face and glanced from said doorway up at his father. Vader merely straightened up and started to walk, practically pulling his son along during the first few steps before Luke gathered himself and ducked out from Vader's side.

He did not miss the child being so close willingly. He also didn't almost reach out to draw him back. Foolish sentimentality which had no place here, and especially not when they got out and he... did whatever he needed to do.

Briefly closing his eyes, no revelation came to him, but there should be time yet to decide. Not that he should need to decide at all because the ending to this was a foregone conclusion. Or ought to be, anyway. At the moment, it did not seem to be.

Chapter Text

Clearly it had been a good thing that his father hadn't woken him up, because Luke was pretty sure that he'd feel much, much worse after that thing with the holocron Gatekeeper if he hadn't had a few hours of sleep behind him. As it was, there was an insistent cold that clung to his brain and muscles both, slowing him down, but the further they walked from the holocron chamber, the better he felt.

Unfortunately, it also allowed him to notice the growing impression that this would be over soon.

The Force, all of it, no distinction, was bubbling with anticipation, and Vader's footsteps was lengthening while his were shortening. Not that he didn't want to get out of here; no, he certainly did. He just didn't have a proper plan for when they did.

The corridor was wide, more well-lit than any area they'd walked through so far had been and seemed to be in as good repair as it could possibly be, and Luke let his hand trail over the green veins in the black stones, skipping over the metal plates, as he walked past. He needed to find Artoo, get Artoo and himself to his X-wing, and leave. All the while first getting away from and then avoiding his father.

And the trouble was, how was he supposed to do that?

He'd need to be fast as soon as they got out of the building. Speed, given that he didn't have any weapon at all (and fighting at the moment wouldn't really work, he was pretty sure), was his best bet. The problem was that he couldn't really hide after he'd gotten away, because their connection was like a beacon as long as they were on the same planet.

... How far did the connection reach, anyway?

"I did not think that, as an aspiring Jedi, you would be eager to remain here, Luke."

Looking up, Luke saw he'd fallen quite far behind his father, who now stood nearly at the opposite end of the corridor, in an open doorway, hands on his hips. It was a very expectant pose, and despite the turn his mood had taken, Luke smiled. Their bond turned muddled with confused annoyance, and he had to stifle a laugh.

"Maybe I'm just tired," he said lightly, shrugging when he finally caught up to his father and peered past him.

An entrance hall.

It arched upwards in several mezzanine levels, each one angled inwards smaller and smaller to create an inverted pyramid... Which, he supposed, was a design that wasn't unexpected considering the room with the holocron. Diagonally across the floor from the door they stood at was a high, narrow hallway that, by the pale light only barely outlining the open doorway on the far side, led out.

This was it, then. He felt his shoulders tense and glanced up at his father, who was staring in the direction of the entrance hallway as well, if he was judging the angle of the helmet right. He wondered what he was thinking.

"This is where you came in?"

"Yes. Come."

Snorting at the tone, Luke did follow as his father stalked off, but paused after a few steps, glancing up at the upper levels with a frown.

"What about the leader?"

"What?" Vader stopped, whirling around and wrapped his hands around his belt, his tone terse. Not quite out of patience yet, but soon. Luke waved a hand to the door behind him and the corridor beyond.

"The Twi'lek woman. You said she'd been in the room where we found the animals and your stormtroopers and her thugs, and the Gatekeeper said 'one of us' had learned something from this, but he wasn't speaking about us. So where is she?" There was a prickling between his shoulder blades and the hair at the back of his neck stood up, while the Force twitched restlessly about him, something indistinct in the air.

His father snorted, a heavy, rolling sound, and shook his head.

"What does it matter? She is most probably still lost, and do you really care if she is trapped in here, son?"

Ending up rolling his eyes this time at the dismissive, nearly condescending tone, Luke opened his mouth and then immediately closed it, frowned and then looked up at the same time his father did.

"If I were you, Lord Vader, I would listen to Skywalker," Navda said, standing on the balustrade two levels above them, right hand resting against a support pillar and a lightsaber in her left. Luke squinted up, trying to catch the details of it and even from this distance and with her hand in the way, he was pretty sure it was the same lightsaber he'd kicked away before he'd ended up falling into that force field trap.

"You are hardly a threat, pirate, and if you actually believe a few hours in here would make you into one, you are welcome to come down here and I will disabuse you of that notion."

Luke winced, flashes of their first meeting after the Death Star run flickering through his head, and then the confrontation at Bespin only a month ago. Vader hadn't been particularly kind regarding his abilities that first time, but in Cloud City... he'd both praised and disparaged the very same. His father's tone here, talking to Navda, was a perfect mirror - a bit colder, more deadly - of the one he'd used at their first meeting.

Navda laughed.

"Well, then. It's a good thing I'm not actually going to fight you, then, isn't it, my lord?" she flashed her pointy teeth in a wide smile and ignited her lightsaber, the red blade unfolding in a sparkling hum. Luke could tell she was actually more nervous than she seemed; the Force was prickly with her anxious fear, but she was also focused.

Almost terrifyingly so, a confidence he wasn't sure where it came from because did she actually think Vader wouldn't stop her? Did she actually think she would win in a fight against the dark lord?

There was something off, here...

Navda jumped off the balustrade, flipping once as she descended, her lekku streaming up above her, and the Force reared up, drew back, a pressure that lay heavy in the back of his head somehow. Vader shifted his stance slightly wider and drew his lightsaber just before Navda landed on the floor with a thump.

The floor rattled with the sudden flare of a Force push, but Luke couldn't feel it, so had Navda missed? Been unable to put the right pressure or something? He stumbled as the floor heaved underneath him, and something black flew past him, back towards the door they'd come through and Luke realised it wasn't him Navda had been aiming for.

It wasn't him the whole building was heaving around, neatly shuttling the dark lord backwards and out of the entrance hall.

Fath---

The crackling hum of a lightsaber slashing through the air cut off his mental cry and he jumped back, the red blade missing him by less than an arm's length, though Navda looked angry he'd managed to avoid her at all.

Luke!

The doors slammed closed, but Luke had caught sight of something flying through the air towards him. His father's call alerting him to his intentions, he didn't even need to look to know where his hand needed to be. And then his hand closed around the hilt and he was swinging around to face Navda before he even fully realised what it was he was gripping.

It was heavy.

Heavy and somewhat larger than his father's other lightsaber, making it rather more awkward in his hands.

But it was balanced in the same way, the same elegant, precise weight that favoured strength over complicated manoeuvres.

He glanced down at it, then up at Navda, her dark eyes narrowed and pointy teeth bared, and he let his thumb hover on the activation button, almost exactly where he'd expect it to be. It was familiar enough he felt a pang go through him.

"We don't have to fight," Luke said while sending a silent probing along the bond to his father; the response was irritated, but carrying a distinct, if wordless, 'fine' with it. He was simply locked out of the entrance hall.

"You can do what you want, Skywalker, but if you don't defend yourself..." Navda trailed off, smirking at him. Now all the earlier anxiety was gone, and she blazed brightly in the Force, confidence and aggression darkening it.

Then she leapt.

***
Slamming his fist against the closed door, it reverberated with the hit and sent a ringing echo down the corridor, but did nothing else. The door remained closed. The floor was no longer heaving - the building was, in fact, as still as a building ought to be, now that he was out of the entrance hall.

Scowling at the door despite the way it pulled at his skin and wounds, Vader turned away, crossing his arms. This corridor, compared to the other ones they'd walked through, had doors and stairs - no obvious turbolifts, however - in the walls every now and then. It would stand to reason that at least one of them would lead upwards and to the mezzanine levels of the entrance hall.

Not that Luke wasn't capable of defeating the Twi'lek; he had full confidence in his son's skills in this case, but he hadn't gotten this far, this close for something to happen now.

Not when the exit was literally only meters away and he could...

What?

Vader stopped, one foot on the first step of the stair he'd chosen, staring unseeing at the steps in front of him.

You'd hand me over to him.

Something settled, dark and heavy, in the pit of his stomach. It was a feeling he'd recently become reacquainted with after lacking it for almost two decades.

I'll never turn.

What was he going to do with the child? It had seemed so very simple just half a day ago, before he landed on this moon to pick Luke up, and now... Hands tightening around his belt, Vader scowled. Luke just didn't understand. Apathetic acceptance for the inevitability of his Master getting Luke clashed with the angry desire to keep the boy for himself, to keep Luke out of Palpatine's hands, the way he hadn't been. But his Master wouldn't just give up, and if Luke wouldn't turn, he'd be killed.

One way or another.

There were a few ways for such a confrontation to go, and they'd already touched upon some of them.

His belt creaked under the strain of his grip as he closed his eyes, thought past the pulse thundering in his head and through the half-healed wounds.

This should be easy.

Simple. Luke was as much a potential asset as he was a threat, and if he couldn't guarantee the one which was most beneficial to him, he should just kill him.

Pre-empt his Master turning his son against him.

But that thought revealed his weakness; how far he'd fallen from his goals - or how far he'd always had to them, because he couldn't do that. He should. He both should do it and should be able to, and maybe once he could have, he wasn't sure. But now?

His Master would laugh, sneering, at his weakness, because what he wanted was something else entirely.

He chuckled quietly; a dry, dead sound, because he hadn't ever gotten to keep anything that he'd wanted for long, had he?

And yet, once again, there was...

You're a person, Father, and even if you're Darth Vader now, you can still be Anakin Skywalker too!

His son was naïve.

Luke was a ball of boundless faith and anger and love, and he didn't deserve a single drop of it. And yet, somehow, he already had been given a surprising amount of it. More than he'd ever expect, even if, as the boy's father, he was certainly due his loyalty. Luke had rejected him, continued to do so, and yet was embracing him in ways he hadn't expected to ever be privy to again.

Not after her death...

Son... He reached out before he thought about it, followed the bright line that led through the fabric of the Force to its incandescent end, and brushed against it, carefully.

Father? An immediate, if distracted reply. Worry and annoyance twining together as his son split his attention, giving him unintentional flashes of two red blades parrying and slashing at each other, bright, angry blurs in the faint light of the entrance hall. The child was a nova. What is it?

More concern, attention splintering further and Luke stumbled---

He drew back, sharply.

Concentrate! he snapped and didn't listen for the probably exasperated reply, just drew fully back to himself again, staring up the stairs once more.

What was he going to do?

***
No thought went into turning on his father's lightsaber and bringing it up in a guard, right before Navda's blade crashed into his. With her whole weight behind her leap, he slid back a couple of steps and almost stumbled before he dug his weight in. His father's weapon was a bright, and, he was sure, a purely imaginary hungry thrum in his hands, the red blades crackling where they strained against each other.

He met the Twi'lek's glare between the focused beams and wondered why she was so angry.

Sure, he'd intentionally made her lose almost thirty slaves, accidentally made her lose all of her thugs - though she'd probably killed a fair amount herself, by her own choice - in here and it was doubtful she would get paid, now.

So, all right, she probably had quite a few reasons to be out for his blood.

Flashing Navda a tight smile, Luke reached into the Force, past the cold fieriness of the dark side around them, and relaxed just a shade. He could feel her triumph when she started to push him back and down, but before he could lose his balance he leapt sideways, swinging the weapon in a wide arc behind him.

She swore, something in Twi'leki that had her lekku twitching sharply, and she jumped to keep up with him, lightsaber swinging in a complicated pattern that would've ended in a lethal thrust.

If he'd let her complete it. If he couldn't feel the Force whispering just when he had to parry it, leaving crackling energy singing off their blades before he stepped sideways, swinging around. Then he thrust at Navda, forcing her to step back in a parry of her own before she lunged forward again, lightsaber slashing through the air.

He could easily tell she wasn't as good as his father, not by a long shot. It made sense, of course, that she wasn't, but she handled the saber with a confidence and skill he hadn't had until years later, and he felt somewhat jealous. Letting out a sharp exhale through his nose, Luke shook that away and concentrated on ducking, lowering his lightsaber, then pulling it up in another parry, the movements quick, precise.

Potentially lethal, if he missed a step or was a breath too slow, and this made it all the more obvious that his and Vader's duel in Cloud City hadn't at all been intended to kill him. It'd been a test, a taunt, and, finally, an angry outburst when he hadn't backed down when his father thought he should have. But it hadn't been a fight where Vader had intended to kill him.

This, however, most certainly was.

He leapt back, flipping through the air, and landed at the bottom of a stair, lightsaber held low. Pulled the Force to him and pushed, mentally, against Navda.

"We really don't have to fight," Luke insisted quietly, trying to put as much soothing intention into it as he could. This wasn't exactly right, but he also didn't feel like fighting her. She deserved some sort of punishment for dealing in slaves at the least, but him killing her wouldn't really make up for the lives she'd ruined so far.

He'd kill her if he had to, though, and at least that would mean she would no longer be enslaving anyone else.

Navda paused between one step and the next, briefly looking confused. Then her face contorted into rage and she leapt again, whirling in the air, and he barely brought up his lightsaber in time, feeling the deadly energy slice close along his side as he twisted away, deflecting her blade.

"That won't work on me, boy!" Her lekku jerked with her scream, and Luke retreated up the stairs, then leapt off them, twisting around in the air as a cold slash of warning trilled through him, their lightsabers clashing briefly before they pushed apart, landing - and she leapt him again.

And then, ducking away from a swipe that almost took off the top of his head, the back of his mind tingled with a familiar darkness.

Son...

Worry shot through him instantly - was something going on? Did Vader need his help?

Father? Luke swayed back from a sharp cut which might have taken off his nose at the least if it'd reached him, snapped out with his own lightsaber and ducked away, meeting Navda's next slash with a parry.

He needed to end this somehow, and soon. Especially if his father had ended up in something else and needed assistance. Though, despite having spent hours in this complex together with him, Luke wasn't sure what that help that might be needed would be.

Frowning as he got no response, only picked up a slow swirl of dark, hovering attention, Luke backed away from Navda and tried again.

What is it? He completely missed that there was a crack in the floor where he stepped, intent as he was on parrying the flurry of blows Navda kept raining on him, intent on his father's presence through the bond. So he stumbled, falling down underneath Navda's wild grin and brought the lightsaber up above him, arms straining to keep her from cutting down and through him.

Concentrate! His father's response whipped through him with the sharpness of a military commander's order and then he suddenly withdrew. Luke stared narrowly up at Navda past their glowing blades and snorted. Didn't dare to split his attention again to roll his eyes. Whatever that had been, he did have other things to worry about.

He needed... Glancing around as he twisted, parried and stepped sideways, he found what he was looking for.

Maybe he wouldn't have been able to do this before today, but the room with the cannons earlier had honed his ability to multi-task with the Force. So Luke leapt over Navda and yanked the debris to himself, sending them spinning around her.

"You're a fool if you think that will help you, Skywalker," Navda huffed, anger darkening her tone and lending new strength to her blows, but Luke shrugged even as he parried.

Sent one piece of cracked rock from a lose flagstone spinning at her. It was deflected. Ducking, he sent two more at her, one small enough it vaporized on her blade, the other she deflected back at him, though she staggered back underneath his thrust, not quite able to split her attention.

He bent away, thrust his - his father's - red blade up, and two pieces of rock fell to the floor at his feet.

Navda laughed, yellow glittering in her dark eyes, ducked away from the punch he aimed at her midsection but missed the kick, and he sent her flying into a pillar. He leapt right after her, copying her opening move and she brought her lightsaber up to ward the impending blow off. And even as the Force tingled a warning located somewhere low - she was going to kick him and stab him in the gut, he could tell - he threw his last projectile at her.

Eyes widening, she twisted around, but she couldn't decide whether to block the stab that was being aimed at her head or slash at the sharp, rusty piece of metal wall panel that came at her. He buried his lightsaber into the pillar and let go, letting her kick send him sprawling even as the metal slammed into her skull.

Navda crumpled.

Rolling over on his side, Luke stared at the Twi'lek for several moments, but she didn't move. Letting out a sigh, he rubbed his face.

"I didn't give you that lightsaber for you not to use it, Luke," Vader said, his voice reverberating through the dark entrance hall, and Luke looked up to see his father standing by the balustrade two levels up, arms crossed.

"I did use it," he defended himself while he got back up to his feet and wandered over to Navda, checking her over - bleeding and unconscious, but not dead - and then removed his father's lightsaber and turned it off. The hole in the pillar glowed hotly, but slowly started to cool off with the lightsaber removed.

"That, young one, is a Sith weapon. It is not used in the same manner a Jedi weapon is." Vader could've walked down the stairs as there was a set of them leading downwards not even ten meters to his left, but instead he leapt over the balustrade and fell to the floor, a thunderous crack whipping through the hall as he landed. Luke winced, then stared, blinking, as his father straightened up, seemingly unconcerned with the distance he'd leapt and the spiderweb of cracks radiating out of the small crater he'd created.

How heavy was his father, anyway?

"If you haven't noticed, Father, I'm not Sith. So of course I'm not going to use it that way," Luke said with a roll of his eyes, but smiled as he walked over and held the lightsaber out to his father, feeling a strange sort of giddiness in the pit of his stomach, "thank you for letting me use it."

"Tainting a perfectly good weapon," his father said as he took his lightsaber back, but the curiously grumbling tone was surprisingly light, and Vader froze when Luke reached out, wrapping his hand around his wrist, squeezing.

Thank you for the protection, Father.

Despite the mask, Luke felt like he was looking right into a very, very startled expression for a breathless, suspended moment. Then, while Vader nearly yanked at his hand to free it so he could hook his lightsaber back at his belt, he rested a heavy hand on his shoulder as he walked past Luke, and briefly the bond glowed with something warm.

Vader rolled Navda over and pulled out a pair of binders, cuffing her and grabbing the back of her shirt as he stood up, quite unconcernedly lifting her up by her clothes. Luke opened his mouth, closed it, and then tilted his head.

"Those were for me, weren't they?"

His father walked past him and towards the exit without responding at first, and Luke trailed after, casting glances at Navda. Why was he even bothering to bring her..?

"If you plan on going through with your rescue attempt of Captain Solo, young one, I suggest you leave before I am no longer preoccupied with the Emperor's new potential Inquisitor."

Ah.

Should he... do something about that? Luke frowned and lengthened his steps, ending up having to jog for a few meters to properly catch up with his father. He shouldn't let him give another potential asset to the Emperor, should he?

"Consider that whatever potential advantage she may give to the Emperor if she survives her training, compared to the definitive one he would gain if I were to present you, Luke, I suggest you cease those thoughts."

For once, Luke didn't complain about his father eavesdropping on his thoughts, instead he just let out a sigh and had to quietly concede the point. Even if he also was sure that, here and now, his father wouldn't hand him over. That strange, muted giddiness from earlier briefly twisted around his guts again.

"I suppose, so, but..." he glanced down at the unconscious Twi'lek hanging from his father's fist, legs dragging over the floor, and frowned. Then they were finally outside again, and Luke was briefly distracted by the cool night air, taking in a deep breath and letting it out with something like relief.

The dark side was still humming out here, too, but it wasn't quite as suffocating as inside the complex, and there was suddenly no longer a weight on his shoulders that had been there ever since they ended up inside the building. He looked up at his father as they walked down the pitted stairs, but a loud hooting pulled his attention forward, to the ground.

"Artoo!" Smile splitting his face with happy relief, he took the last few steps in a jump and knelt by the astromech, patting his dome. "Am I glad to see you! I'm glad you're all right." He'd been pretty sure the little droid was, since he'd been hidden when the pirates got him after he sent off the slaves, but he had worried, still.

Artoo chirped and twittered, the happy noise soon turning more questioning, and he chuckled.

"I'm fine. And since the X-wing definitely ought to have recovered from the ion shots by now, we should be able to leave," Luke said with a nod, patting Artoo's dome again as he stood up, then looked around for his father. Who was disappearing into the shuttle where it still was where it had been landed, and Luke wondered, reluctantly, if he should just leave now. His father would have no excuse if he waited around for too long, but on the other hand, he didn't want to just leave without saying some sort of goodbye...

Biting his lip, Luke hesitated until almost fifteen minutes had passed and his father hadn't reappeared. He knew he shouldn't stay.

"Okay, come on, Artoo. We should get back to the ship." Turning away from the sight of the shuttle and starting to walk off in the direction that'd lead them back to where he'd sort-of-landed the X-wing, Luke felt somewhat disappointed. He'd wanted to say goodbye, yes, but he'd also wanted so much more...

There were questions, thoughts, things he'd wanted to say and do---

Luke.

Whipping around right before he walked around the corner of one of the pre-fab buildings at the edge of the camp, Luke took a few steps back so the shuttle was in view again, as well as his father. He smiled, he couldn't help it.

"Father---"

"Here," Vader interrupted him, tossing a datapad that he caught without thinking about, glancing down at it. It wasn't turned on, and his fingers strayed with undeniably curiosity.

"Don't read that until you are away," his father rumbled and Luke clutched at the datapad uncertainly, raising an eyebrow, "you do need to leave, Luke."

That was true, but Luke was pretty sure that wasn't why Vader was telling him to wait, but he decided not to question it.

"What's on it?" he asked instead, feeling another million things burning on his tongue, across their bond. His father, tall, heavy, armoured and armed... shifted. Looked away.

"Ask your droid for clarifications or further information. Do not get caught as you leave the system, young one." Vader turned on his heels and stalked back to the shuttle, and Luke stared. Sighed and glanced down at Artoo, who gave a little twitter as his dome swivelled around.

"Yeah, I guess we'll see, huh?"

Looking up again to watch his father disappear into the shuttle, Luke smiled lopsidedly and turned to walk back to his X-wing again, but reached out along that bright, but shaded connection they shared.

I'll see you later, Father.

Leave, Luke. Do not wish for things you shouldn't want. And do not unduly endanger yourself for that smuggler.

Luke laughed as he helped Artoo over a crumbled bit of old ruin wall, shaking his head. The thing was, even if he didn't wish to meet his father again (which he did, even if he probably shouldn't) the Force sung with the heavy knowledge that it would happen.

What he wasn't sure of, as he looked that definitive knowledge over, was how it would happen.

That wasn't set in stone yet.

***
Sitting in his X-wing half an hour later just after having jumped to hyperspace, Luke pulled out the datapad his father had given him and turned it on. There was only one file saved to it, and when he brought it up it demanded a password. Staring at it blankly for several minutes, he hesitantly entered his own name.

The screen flashed with acceptance, and then his breath caught in his throat.

Father...

There was no response. He didn't exactly expect one when in hyperspace anyway. He stared at the name glowing innocently up at him from the screen and swallowed down the lump in his throat as he eyed the rest. There wasn't much. Planet of origin, age, siblings, parents, career - he felt his eyes widen, incredulous - addresses for residences, a date which was around four years before he was born...

"... Artoo... What did he mean, by telling me I should ask you for more information about Padmé Amidala?"

If a droid could radiate stunned surprise, Artoo was certainly doing that, before there was a nearly explosive burst of noise from the astromech. Luke stared at the screen where the X-wing was displaying Artoo's binary as text, and couldn't quite believe it.

"You knew her? And my father? Why'd you never say anything?" Luke wasn't sure whether he was angry, surprised, or just happy over this coincidence. Was it even a coincidence? Artoo's response, after a few moments of silence, was... sheepish.

"Well, you're going to tell me what you know now, okay?"

Something like cautious agreement, and Luke was pretty sure Artoo wouldn't tell him everything, but he'd tell him enough. Clutching the datapad tighter for a moment, Luke felt a bright, stupid grin cross his face. Whatever was going to happen in the next few months, he had a good feeling about it.

And not just because he now, finally, would get to know more about his parents. Both of them.

There was also that knowledge from earlier, pointing towards a few things which, while it might not bring down the Empire, would certainly help him. And his father and friends, he hoped.