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Luke hadn’t slept a full night since his release from the medbay. The dreams were too present, too vivid, and he often awoke with a scream in his throat and terror in his veins.
Tonight, he lay awake and watched the stars drift outside his viewport. The Executor was stationary for now - he wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t think they were close to any systems. No systems meant no nearby Alliance bases, which meant (he hoped) he wasn’t lying in bed while his friends were being slaughtered just outside.
His nightmares were bad enough without adding that too.
A breeze ruffled through his hair and ran down his arms before sinking into his skin. Vader, again. His father checked on him often throughout the sleepless hours of the ship’s long night cycles, but never more than that. He didn’t seem to know what to do now that Luke was physically healed, but still so deeply wounded. If Luke didn’t know better, he would guess that Vader didn’t know what to do when faced with a problem he couldn’t fix, with something broken that he couldn’t repair.
A small sob slipped out of Luke without warming. He had never thought of himself as broken before, but that’s what he was now. His hands shook when he tried to practice his forms; he flinched at the sound of footsteps in corridors; his sleepless nights left him stumbling and inarticulate.
At first he had been terrified that once he was discharged from the medbay Vader would begin trying to force him into compliance, that he would be healed only to be mentally and physically tortured again until Vader and the Dark Side were the only things left to him. But Vader hadn’t done that, had mostly left him alone, until Luke was left wondering if maybe Vader just wasn’t interested in ruling the galaxy with someone who couldn’t even rule his own emotions.
He wondered why the thought of that left him feeling so much emptier than he already did. He’d never wanted to join Vader to begin with, never wanted to be a Sith, never wanted to rule the galaxy. But…it had been nice just to be wanted. To realize that his only value came from his skill as a warrior and not their apparent blood tie was more disappointing than he had expected it to be.
The door to his bedroom slid open, the door casting rectangular panels of light across the room. In a moment of unfiltered panic, Luke squeezed his eyes shut. If Vader looked in and saw him sleeping, maybe he would leave.
“Luke.”
Luke squeezed his eyes tighter.
“I know you are not sleeping. Your thoughts are loud enough to wake every Force-sensitive remaining in the galaxy.”
So much for that plan.
“Maybe I was dreaming,” Luke tried as he sat up and let the blankets pool around his waist.
Vader entered the room and let the door shut behind him. The panels of light disappeared, leaving only starlight and the blinking glow of Vader’s life support controls. For once, Luke was glad of the darkness. It was easier not to be seen.
“I know what your dreams contain,” Vader said. He approached Luke’s bed slowly, as if nearing a tooka he thought might spook too easily. “I know this was no dream.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Luke said pointedly. “That you spy on my dreams when I’m sleeping, or that you spy on my thoughts when I’m awake.”
“I am not spying. You are practically screaming into the void, desperate to be heard.”
“Then where have you been?” Luke snapped, but cut himself off as soon as the words had left him. He already looked weak enough; he didn’t need to add desperation to his growing list of flaws.
“I have been…”
Vader trailed off without answering.
“Off killing my friends?” Luke pushed, but he dreaded the answer. He was terrified that Vader would say yes, even though a part of him was desperate for just that. If he had something to rage against, a reason to hate Vader again, maybe he would feel stronger. Hate was part of the Dark Side, he knew, but he just wanted to feel something that wasn’t fear and weakness again.
Maybe this was what Yoda had been trying to warn him about all along.
But, as usual, Vader disappointed him.
“No.”
So they were back to the heart of it, then. Vader was ignoring him because he didn’t know what to do with a son who was broken.
There was a rattling noise from Vader’s mask. “You think too little of yourself, my son.”
Luke drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “I don’t know what you mean,” he lied.
Vader sat stiffly, awkwardly, on the edge of Luke’s bed. Luke shuffled away from the dip in the mattress, away from the magnetic pull he felt towards this man who was everything he hated and everything he loved.
“You think you are broken,” Vader said. “You think you are not wanted.”
“Stop spying on me,” Luke muttered into his arms.
“Am I wrong?”
Luke didn’t answer.
“You have been through a great deal, and you are not sleeping. But you are not broken and you are not unwanted.”
“Then where have you been?” Luke asked again, this time with the force of all of his fear and grief behind it. “I’m going through all this alone. I’m scared and I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep because –” He cut himself off, his chest heaving with pent-up sobs. “If I’m not unwanted then why won’t you help me?”
“I do not know how,” Vader said in a voice that was clipped and full of frustration. “Not because you are beyond repair, but because I am ill-equipped to give you what you need.”
“Then let me go,” Luke said petulantly, even though he thought it would break him even further if Vader did.
“He heard the creak of leather and whir of servos in the darkness as Vader clenched his hands into fists. “I cannot. I am…ill-equipped for that as well.
“So that’s it? I’m supposed to just rot in here? I’m useless to you, but you’re so selfish you won’t even let me go?”
“I am selfish, yes, but you are not useless,” Vader said with a fierceness that caught Luke off guard.
“But…I can’t do anything,” Luke protested weakly. “I can’t even sleep, much less fight.”
“You think I only want you for your power.”
“Don’t you?”
“You are alive,” Vader said. “You are here with me. That is all I have ever wanted.”
Luke felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Vader’s words struck him with the force of a sandstorm, equal parts wonderful and terrible. His father wanted him, even cared about him.
But still…
“If you really do care about me, you can’t just keep me locked in here all day,” he said as carefully as he could. He was so exhausted, the words threatened to slip through his fingers like sand through a sieve. “I can’t live like this. All I have are my thoughts to keep me company, but the longer I go without sleeping, the worse company my thoughts become.”
“I will have the medics provide you with sedatives,” Vader started, but Luke interrupted.
“The sleeping isn’t the problem. Well, it is, but it’s not – I mean–” He broke off and rubbed a hand through his hair. “I’m not making sense.”
“Perhaps once you have slept–”
“No,” Luke said fiercely. “You’re not listening to me! I’m trying to say–if you want to keep me here with you because I’m your son, then you need to act like a father and help me.”
For a long time the only sounds were the rasp of Vader’s respirator and the thunder of Luke’s heart in his ears. At last Vader said, “what do you need?”
Luke slumped forward to rest his head more heavily on his knees. A small amount of tension released from his shoulders – just a little bit, but every little bit helped. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But thank you for asking.”
Vader shifted himself back onto the mattress just a bit, so that he was seated more securely rather than perched on the edge like a bird about to take flight. This time, Luke let himself tilt with the mattress and slide until his feet care to rest against Vader’s thigh.
Slowly, still as if he were approaching a spooked tooka, Vader reached back and wrapped an arm around Luke. Luke stayed frozen, barely breathing, just as cautious about spooking his father as Vader was about spooking him. Vader tentatively drew him inward until Luke’s upper body rested against his side.
Luke let out a shaky breath and let his head drop against his father’s shoulder. Vader’s fingers curled around his shoulder, already trembling as his pent-up fear and exhaustion and hurt slowly started to give way to relief.
“You are safe with me,” Vader said, as softly as he could.
“I know that now.”
“I do not know how to help you. But I can be here with you nonetheless. You do not have to bear this alone.”
Luke turned his face into his father’s armor and pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the pauldron. Awkwardly, twisted as he was on the bed, he wrapped his arms around Vader’s torso and embraced his father. Before he could let go, Vader had thrown his other arm around Luke’s shoulders and was holding him tightly - a little too tightly, but it was nice to feel something that wasn’t agony or medical treatment for the first time in ages.
“Thanks,” he whispered. “And…this is helping me. It’s not as difficult as you think.”
Vader pulled his cape up and around Luke’s shoulders, draping him in weight and warmth, and ran a tentative hand over his hair. Luke’s eyes began to droop closed, and for the first time in ages he didn’t fight it.
“I know that now.”