Work Text:
The snow-packed hallways burned with cold in his HUD, but Vader had long since gone beyond such petty humanities as feeling cold.
Nor did he care if his subordinates felt it. The stormtroopers had insulated uniforms, and no reason to complain, even as the Rebel base slowly cooled, its heating systems damaged by the initial air assault.
One approached and saluted. “Sector A clear, sir. The Rebels were sloppy and left some equipment behind. It seems we caught them by surprise.”
“Good. Take anything useful back to the ships.”
“Yessir.”
The command center was in disrepair. Glass screens were cracked, or stood crooked from bunker blasts. Wires trailed where computers had been torn out. A datachip lay on the hard-packed ground. Vader called it into his hand with the Force, and tucked it into his belt. It could contain information on Skywalker.
Skywalker…
His spies had carried rumors that a youth named Skywalker was in the Rebellion. The name had hurled Vader into a rage at first, but after the body of the first spy was taken away, he managed to cool himself enough to think.
And that thought had hurled him into another rage.
Who would dare to use the name of Anakin Skywalker? Touting themselves as a Jedi—to give the Rebels some sort of hope, no doubt. A propaganda campaign; or egoism. Seeking glory.
Vader would give them death. A painful one.
He had not yet informed Palpatine. Doubtless his master would find some…amusement in it, and Vader did not feel like dwelling on Skywalker longer than he had to. Skywalker was dead. Vader was alive.
And Vader was securing the Empire.
He forced his heavy limbs to move from the control room. The Force danced on the edges of his perception; there were still beings in the base. Live ones. Like a hound, he followed the scent, eager for real action, something to pull him out of these…unproductive thoughts.
Screams peppered the air as slow-moving Rebels were caught. Those left behind for last during the harried evacuation. They did not slow Vader’s steps. Screams meant someone else was already dealing with them. Besides, some Rebels needed to be left alive for questioning. Vader was not planning to take prisoners.
Several tunnels were collapsed. The Force as his ally, Vader passed through them anyway, his HUD compensating for the dim of broken lights.
Finally, he reached a medbay. This, too, showed signs of the bunker bombs that had proceeded the ground assault. A scattered assortment of equipment, haphazardly strewn about as if those evacuating had not had time to empty the room. A cot half-buried in snow from a collapsed wall. Three tanks of bacta fluid, two dark…one lit. A young man floated in the lit tank, clad in only undergarments, a mask affixed to his face. His breathing was as loud as Vader’s, a thought which Vader carefully ignored.
Something drew him to look at the datapad hanging from the tank. A touch turned it on.
The glowing words burned him.
Skywalker, Luke.
Luke.
Not Anakin.
Luke.
The name P… she had picked out, if it was to be a boy, eons ago.
Luke.
Skywalker.
Vader examined the young man closer. Dark blond hair. Fair skin, with perhaps a hint of a tan, and more of a hint of the pale tinge of spacers. Perhaps his fluttering eyes were blue, if they opened all the way. His face was bruised and shredded, half-healed, and clearly not bad enough to warrant bacta; but what, precisely, had landed him the tank was not immediately clear.
Vader came back to himself and realized that he had a gloved hand on the tank.
The young man noticed a moment later.
Hazy, half-lidded eyes—yes, blue—blearily fixed themselves in his direction. The—Luke’s head lolled in the bacta as he examined Vader back.
--------------------------
It was cold.
It was cold, and he wasn’t really sure what was going on since his head felt so thick and slow, but he was pretty certain it wasn’t supposed to be cold.
Three years since Tatooine, and Luke still couldn’t get used to the lack of desert heat. Hoth was even worse; for once, everyone else was shivering with him. Han had managed to argue the quartermaster into giving Luke an extra blanket even though both Luke and the quartermaster had protested that there were limited supplies and everyone was feeling the chill, but still Luke hadn’t ever managed to get warm in his bed with both blankets.
This was worse than his bunk, though. There, at least, he could get warm enough to fall asleep, eventually. Something was waking him up…
With effort, Luke opened his eyes. Something wet like tears blurred his vision. Everything was a cool blue; snow, snow, and snow. Was he in the hangar? No, there’d been…there’d been something about…patrol…
He shivered as a chill ran up his body like a live wire.
His head was colder than his feet, but he couldn’t curl up. Something held him up, prevented him. Something wrapped around his torso.
Slowly, another thought intruded.
Was he supposed to be awake?
Something was wrong.
The thought slipped out of his head as his eyes shut again. Luke drifted, limbs too heavy to consider moving. If something was wrong, he couldn’t be the one to fix it. He was safe…safe with…Han…
Images flashed through his mind, all bright with snow.
Squinting at the horizon with his tauntaun underneath him.
A white furry beast swiping at his face.
Walls made of snow.
Han’s face poking out of a dark, fur-lined hood.
Then…blurs. Ben might have been there, he wasn’t sure.
But, safe. Han had him.
Luke slipped into unconsciousness again.
And rose at some point later. Maybe immediately. It could have been hours. The only change his tired mind could pull from the distant world around him was that, maybe, he was colder. His right arm, especially. Or…the air…or something…around it?
His body shook with another chill that lit up his entire right half.
Still, Luke couldn’t curl up. Even as cold ran up and down his legs, his torso, his arms. His body felt so heavy, and yet he couldn’t…sink.
Sink.
He was in…bacta?
Luke forced his eyes open again, although they fluttered shut just seconds later. All he saw was blue, anyway.
A subtle vibration pulsed through the space. This time, when Luke opened his eyes, there was black.
Black…and red.
Staring, something in him whispered.
Luke made more of an effort to see. His body refused to obey him. He felt clumsy, like one of the puppets in the puppet shows in Mos Eisley on Street Days. His eyes closed again, and his body hung suspended, held up by what he now realized was a harness on his chest.
The Force rippled.
Before Luke could react to that, he was being pulled up, and up, and suddenly he was freezing. He gasped, then choked on the respirator he hadn’t known was in his mouth.
Gloved hands pulled the respirator out of his teeth. Luke sucked in plain air, his heart beating fast enough to make his head pound. He was too heavy to do anything else, anything besides breathe and be rocked like a ship going through atmo as more hands grabbed him, manipulated him. He was set on some kind of surface, and he could have sworn one set of hands brushed through his hair for just a moment, but then it was gone, and he was drifting on a tide of meds again, and everything slowed.
Safe.
Han…
His lips might have formed the word. There were sounds, now, as bacta dribbled out of his ears, sounds that might have been people talking. It felt distant, though. Cold was much closer. Luke shivered. Tired as he was, he was all too aware of his bare skin, and every movement of air.
“Get him a blanket,” someone snapped, their voice modulated and deep, like they were wearing a helmet.
Luke felt eyes on him, then a blanket, then he knew no more.
---------------------------------
Vader stared at…his son. His son. Luke Skywalker.
How old was he? How many years had it been?
Vader cast his mind back, but he had not bothered to mark the years. Had it been said at the last Empire Day, when he was forced to attend one of those foolish parades at Palpatine’s side? They all blurred together.
No matter.
His son was young, that much he knew. Young, and cold. As he himself had once been, as a newly-freed boy of nine.
Young, and left behind in the Rebellion’s haste to evacuate.
“Report,” Vader said, without tearing his gaze from his son’s sleeping, bruised face.
“It appears he was being treated for hypothermia, frostbite, a concussion, and various lacerations and contusions. The bacta treatment was unfinished. The fastest path to recovery would be several more hours in a tank, but he would survive without it.”
“He will have it. Take him to the Executor and have him treated in my personal medbay, whatever he requires.”
The medic radiated confusion, but those who questioned Vader’s orders did not live long in his presence. This one had survived quite a while; he touched his datapad to the one that had been on the tank to download its contents, and made some more notes.
“Of course, milord. It will be done.”
Vader allowed himself to trace one finger down his son’s gooseflesh-pimpled arm that stuck out of the blanket. Luke’s eyelids fluttered, but the fresh sedative that had been administered minutes before did its job. He did not wake.
The medic pulled several straps over the young man, securing him to the hoversled, and pushed him out of the room.
Vader watched them go.
Luke Skywalker.
My son.
The galaxy would never be the same.