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“No one is now what they were before the war.” -Cathrynne Valente, Deathless
Luke
He has a face that could kill suns, Luke thinks when he sees his Vader’s new mask.
The latticework of gold that was his face has no eyes. It was like they’d been stolen. Still, Luke preferred it to the death-face he’d worn, the last time he saw his father. In place of black fabric and a shadowy cape, he is now covered in golden plates. Under his ornate golden headpiece, a stream of bronze hair flows down over his shoulders. Your father had the most gorgeous hair, once, Padme had once told Luke while combing some of his knots out. But it all burned off in a terrible battle. Maybe his hair magically grew back.
All in all, Vader is still a little scary, but he’s pretty, too, pretty like a weapon, like the lightsaber he and Leia weren’t supposed to know about, so bright it has to be hidden away.
Vader’s once deafening footsteps can barely be heard as he approaches, now that his boots fit better. He still stalks forward, with an assured grace to his every stride. Mom says he was a warrior, before. It’s easy to imagine him twirling a weapon effortlessly, though Mom forbids him from wielding her one now.
“I have to go away now,” he says. His voice still sounds like a robot’s voice, but it’s not deep like before. Despite the flatness to it, it’s got a melancholy lilt. It sounds like heartbreak.
Vader kneels and lays a gloved hand on Luke’s face, then Leia’s. There’s a garbled sound, almost like sniffling. “I… do not know when I will return.”
“He’s only here to say goodbye, ” Mom chimes in. Her arms are crossed, her eyes weary, her mouth frowning like always. Luke knows his Mom is not terribly old, but he cannot imagine her ever looking young, either.
“What’s the point of saying goodbye to someone who was never here?” Leia scoffs, and flinches away from Vader’s touch. Luke, however, remains transfixed by Vader, trying to piece together what might be under the mask. Whenever Luke looks at his reflection, he only sees a little of his mother in it; he knows that he and Leia look like Vader.
But whatever face Vader had before, was swallowed by the same battle that took his hair. Luke’s real father, he knows, is memory.
“I…will…” Vader says, but doesn’t finish.
When he stands up, he is almost comically tall. It makes him look out of place, among his family. Padme leaves with Vader, to accompany him to his ship.
I will miss you too, Luke thinks as he watches them leave.
Vader
From up here, Vader can see just how much damage was done, how many foundations were razed to the ground. How brittle the bones of a village are. Had there once been vast towering buildings here, where there was now only rubble? It was impossible to tell, whether this had been a town or a city. Buildings all looked the same when they were nothing more than bits of scrap metal.
As a Jedi, Anakin had admired architecture. He took note of particularly beautiful buildings and would sketch what he remembered of them during a spare moment. Architecture, he’d learned during one of his lessons, is history. You could learn a lot about a people, from their architecture. There is nothing left to learn now, though.
You should not expect to be welcomed, Padmé had told him. And why would he be, when he was responsible for ruination at this scale? They would not be pleased to see him here, even with his new appearance.
While he was recovering from his surgery to be fitted with this new suit, Padmé had tasked him with studying up on this planet. You’ll start here, she said, and plopped a data pad in his lap. Unlike the old days- when Anakin would spend a night at Padmé’s place looking over the details of a mission - he was to review everything on his own.
According to Vader’s readings, the leader of this planet was called Ab’lep, of a species called the Togens. During the Empire’s reign almost all of them had been sent to labor camps, and they were considered valuable workers because of how sensory their tentacles were. Though the Rebellion had liberated them, they were left without a home, and Vader knew they bore the scars of slavery still.
Vader lands on the shores of what looked to have been a port city. What stubby palm trees survived were scarcely scattered along the shoreline. Chunks of debris poke out of the sand.
Vader parks his ship and treads over to where Ab’jep is waiting for him.
“Ruiner of worlds,” Ab’jep greets, somehow sneering though there were tentacles in place of a proper mouth. He has no eyes, much like Vader himself, and a beard made up of tentacles.
“No longer.” Vader said. “I come to rebuild. To mend what is broken.”
“And how do you plan to accomplish that?” Ab’lep says. “There is too much that is broken here, for one person to fix.”
“My efforts will be tireless,” Vader assures him. He would not be allowed to go home to his children, to see Padmé, until he had done his part to fix this planet, and the next, and the next.
“What we really need is a medic,” Ab’lep says, as he leads Vader towards a camp where many of the Togens were gathered. “I’m sure you are familiar, Lord Vader, with transmitter chips?”
“Yes.” Vader answers. The scar from his own removed chip was one of a patchwork that covered his body.
“We need them removed,” Ab’lep says.
“Removal I am unsure I can do safely,” Vader answer. “I can, however, disable them.”
To tamper with the chips, he needed a piece of magnetized metal; surely, amongst all this metal, he could find one. His mask had a feature that could scan materials and tell him any useful information, and after a quick scan of the ground he found something. A rod. He plucked it off of the ground.
“What are you doing?” Ab’lep says in horror. “Chancellor Amidala said that you were forbidden from using weapons…”
“It is not a weapon.” Vader explained. “It is magnetized steel. When held up to the chip, it will render it inoperable.”
The Empire assumed the slaves were too stupid to figure that out. They’re like cattle, one of the Admirals had said during a demonstration of how the chip worked.
Vader knew it was not a matter of intelligence. That under extreme distress, even something that seemed obvious eluded you.
“Perhaps something to cut this with?” He says.
“I have tools in my tent,” Ab’lep told him. “Chancellor Amidala was very adamant that you be supervised while using them. Come.”
—-
Ab’lep leads him inside and hands him a pair of shears.
“There is still one problem,” Ab’lep says as Vader snips the metal into tiny pieces. “We do not know where in our bodies the chips were located. They sedated us when they inserted them.”
“I know where they are located.” A loud snip. “It was my job to know everything the Empire did. Is there adhesive in that toolkit?”
Ab’lep nods and rifles through the toolkit until he found some glue.
“Once I attach this metal to the chip, it will enter sleep mode.” Vader dips the metal rod in glue. “It will suffice until I can get a medic here. Turn around.”
“You are no longer in charge here,” Ab’lep complains. “But your orders are well meaning, so I will comply.”
Vader applies the glue to the back of his neck as gingerly as one might clean a wound.
“There. The chip no longer functions.”
He knew that until the chip was truly removed, the Togens would still feel as though they were watched, their every move controlled. And even after, the scar left behind from the removal would mark them like a brand. It would remind them, you were owned. That kind of memory was always skin deep.
If only he was a medic, instead of a butcher, he could do more to help.
But these hands of his- though they were fearsome hands. tipped with long golden nails that resembled claws- were new. They had not yet learned violence. By doing this, he could teach them something better.
—-
Togens line up, outside their tents, to have their chips disabled.
The Empire used to line up people like this when they were herding them into ships. They used to line up people like this when they disobeyed, and then shoot them one by one.
They used to stand like this before I butchered them.
“There are thousands of people in this village,” Ab’lep says. “You will be here until the sun sets, I imagine.”
—-
As he works, the Togens ask him questions.
“Were you sent by the Sun God?” one of them asks. “You are dressed like you are one of his disciples.”
“I am not a follower of the sun God.” Vader says. He had based the design of his new suit off of the sun dragon; off of something that survived in spite of the sun’s oppression.
“We pray to him, to bring prosperity.” The Togen says. “When the Empire came, we prayed all the time. We thought he had abandoned us, until you arrived.”
“I am no savior.” Vader says.
“Then what are you?”
The reason you have those transmitter chips, he thinks. A slaughterer of men. A runner of worlds.
But in this place, he is none of those things. Here, he is what he always has been.
“A slave without a master,” he says, and finishes his task quickly, sending the Togen away before he can ask questions.
Luke
Safe and sound and tucked into bed, Luke couldn’t help but think of Vader.
It seems to Luke that his mother could care less if Vader lived or died. But Luke cares, because Luke was taught to care about everybody. Even people who hurt people.
Was he all right out there, on a strange planet? Did he have a place to sleep?
He can’t talk to his sister about these things. Deep down inside, maybe she does wonder about how Dad is. But she would never say so. Instead she just gets angry. Luke wonders if anger is something that runs in your blood, like sadness. If it’s permanent.
After a few more restless tosses, Luke accepts that sleep won’t come to him. It often doesn’t, these days. As always, he goes to bother Mom.
She’s a light sleeper. As leader of the rebellion there was always some threat to her life. And there was always work to be done, work that kept her up until late into the night. Luke wouldn’t sleep well either, if he had to deal with all that.
At Luke’s approach she stirs, sits up.
“What is it that’s on your mind tonight, baby?” She asks.
“Just thinking about anger,” he says. “About how angry my sister is. Where does it come from, Mom?”
She ruffles his hair. “People get angry when they can’t fix things.” She says.
“If Vader fixes things…does that mean he won’t ever be angry anymore?”
She cuddles him closer. “Your father has a lot of anger. He’ll have to fix a lot of things.”
“If he does, will you let him come home?”
“That won’t be for a long time,” Padmé sighs, and that’s too sad for Luke to accept. What if Luke was all grown up, by the time Vader was finished? It seemed like even though Padmé had advocated for Vader not to be sent to jail, a part of her was still punishing him.
“If you hate Dad so much,” Luke says after a pause, “why’d you help him get a new suit?”
“I don’t hate him,” Padmé says, with a wistful smile.
“So you love him, then?”
“Not everything is so black and white. Love is a complicated thing. People who love each other can’t always be together.”
“It’s because Dad hurt people, isn’t it?” Luke asks. That was what Padmé had told him, when he’d first asked why Vader was in jail. He hurt a lot of people. And now he has to help them.
“It’s because I have to be sure I can trust him. He and I were on different sides, for a long time. I need to be sure that his loyalties no longer lie with the Empire.”
“But you want him to come home, don’t you? Someday? When you’re sure?”
Padmé kisses him on the top of his head. “Yes, baby. I do.”
Vader
As predicted, Vader is kept up well into the night, and the next morning.
Lack of sleep stopped being a problem for Vader a while ago. In his old suit it wasn’t possible to sleep. He’d gotten so used to going without sleep that even now that he could sleep, he no longer really saw a need for it.
When the blue light of dawn yawns over the horizon, Ab’lep finds Vader and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Rest,” Ab’lep says, his voice lacking its earlier hostility.
“The task is not complete,” Vader protests.
“But you are not our slave.”
“I am here to be of use-”
“You cannot do that without rest.” Ab’lep’s voice takes on a stern, almost parental tone. “I insist. It would weigh on my conscience, otherwise. There are extra tents-”
“My ship will be sufficient.” Vader says.
During the Clone Wars he’d slept on his ship quite often; comfort was a luxury that soldiers were not afforded. Though the pilot’s seat was too firm and made for poor sleeping- it was the only sleep he didn’t actively avoid back then, because he’d had a home to dream of returning to. A home he no longer has.
Home is where you are forgiven. And Vader never will be.
So now he sits in his ship, and he meditates instead of sleeps, because he knows his only dreams now will be of Tatooine.
And he stares at the com that Padme gave him for emergency purposes.
I’m always one call away, she used to say. And that was true even after all these years, even after all the blood.
He could call her, and request to get a medic down here to remove the chips. Which would really, only be an excuse to talk to her.
But she is already so full of sorrow, and the sound of his voice would only add to it.
—---
Luke
The next day, Mom almost picks it up.
The device on the counter, with a light that never stops beeping. Not the one for work- the special one. The one no one can know about.
As Luke comes down the stairs, he sees her hand hover over it, a contemplative look on her face as she stares fixedly down at the little device like it might talk to her, and tell her whether or not she should pick it up.
She decides against it. The first time, at least. And the second time. And the third.
But the fourth time, he sees her hand rest on its smooth surface, like he imagines her hand might once have rested on his father’s.
And then she grabs it, and goes into a private room.
—-
She tells Luke and Leia she’s going away tomorrow, on business. A lie that’s easy enough to believe, because she’s always away on business. And Leia believes it because she wants to.
But Luke saw how she held the com.
—
Luke hates when she leaves, but it’s less sad this time. It’s not business pulling her away, now.
When he goes to her room the night before, she is already waiting for him at the end of the bed.
“Are you going because you miss him?” Luke asks.
Padme dodges the question.
“If I never go to him,” she says, as Luke takes his place beside her, “he’ll think he’s in prison.”
“You want him to be free?” It perplexes Luke. Everyone else in the galaxy thinks he belongs in prison. When he was captured, Luke heard their neighbors cheer loudly.
“It’s not about what I want, Luke. The Empire made whole races their slaves. They put anyone who didn’t think like them in jail. We have to be better than the Empire.”
“You never answered the first question.” Luke pouts.
“Did I teach you to be this nosy?” She teases, and flicks him on the nose. “Alright, yes, I miss him. We had to be apart for a long time. But this doesn’t mean I’m bringing him home to you.”
“I know.” Says Luke, resigned. “I know I can’t see him for real. But can I see a picture?”
Padme stands up. “I have something better than a picture. Come on.”
—
She takes them to where Artoo is on display. A droid who was once a warrior like his father, but he wears no battle scars. Luke thinks he looks a little too polished now; his metal skin tells no stories.
“I wasn’t going to show this to you until you were older,” Padme says, as she crouches down to Artoo’s height and starts pressing buttons. “I was trying to protect you from pain. But I think I was protecting myself, too.”
A blue ray is beamed out from Artoo.
Luke’s first impression of his father is that he still looks like a weapon. Anger lurks in his eyes, and though he is smiling, it is the solemn smile of someone who has seen too much war.
“Apologies if I look a little tired,” his father began. “It’s been long day. As of a few hours ago, I learned that you would be coming into the galaxy, and it’s been a lot to process. It feels like soon there won’t be a galaxy left. We’re still at war. And I’m just getting this….feeling, that when the war finally does end, I won’t be around to see it. So I’m making this, in the event that I am killed.”
“I don’t know what your mother has told you about me. About my past. I don’t want to bore you. What you need to know is this:
There are worse things than fighting a War.
But when you’re a kid it doesn’t matter how terrible things are, as long as you have your mother. It doesn’t matter how terrible things are, as long as someone sings to you. My mother’s song got me through the worst of it.
This song is all I have left of her. And, maybe, it’s all you’ll have left of me. I wish I could be there, to sing it in person. For now this will have to do.”
He starts to sing. A song in a completely different language, unlike anything Luke had ever heard. A series of guttural noises, with emphasis on some of the harshest sounds a human mouth could make.
But the words sound so natural coming from his father’s mouth, more than the Basic had. They match the anger in his eyes.
The song makes Luke sleepy. He leans up against his mother.
“Let’s get you to bed,” Padmé says, and carries Luke to his room.
Vader
He is busy welding a piece of metal when she comes, a Medic in tow.
How should he greet her? Once, he would have done so with a kiss. Now he just notes her presence sullenly and pauses his work. Her face betrays no emotion as she approaches.
“Are you not tracked everywhere you go?” Vader says. If anyone were to discover her whereabouts, it would jeopardize her position as a leader.
“Not through this com,” she says.
“There are other ways to trace your movements.”
“I am perfectly capable of weighing the risks.” Padmé says crossly. She examines the mountain of scrap metal around him, and sits down on a hunk of metal beside him. “Ab’jep tells me you’ve been very productive.”
“That is my purpose, is it not?”
There’s a flicker of regret in Padmé’s previously unflinching expression. “The work you do does not determine your purpose,” she says. “Your labor is in the service of something better. This is not a punishment.”
“Have I not earned punishment?” Vader quips back. “I have earned the scorn of the people in this village. If they knew who I was they would cast me out. I am deceiving them.”
“Ab’lep knows your identity,” Padme counters. “He clearly believes you are capable of more than just destruction. Are you implying his belief is misguided?”
“I do not understand his kindness.” Vader says. “Or yours. Why come to me, when I am nothing more than a nuisance to you?”
Padme looks away, perhaps afraid her eyes would reveal too much. She stands up.Vader had hoped she would stay longer, but he was grateful for even this fleeting interaction.
But she doesn’t turn to leave.
“We should continue this conversation privately,” she says. “I have to stay until the Medic is finished, and that could be hours.”
—--
They talk. Vader tells her what he has learned of Togen culture. How the sun is sacred to them. How when they look at him, they see the sun, instead of a dragon. How they do not fear his eyeless face.
She tells him what she can about her job. About Luke and Leia. She tells him how Leia pretends to care and Luke cares too much. About how they ask if they’ll ever leave Coruscant- if they’ll ever get to see the world where she’s from, the green world.
“They get their hatred of Coruscant from you,” she says, and laughs for the first time since the war began.
“I do not hate Coruscant.” Vader says. “It is preferable to Tattooine.”
When she looks at him, a youthful sparkle he thought had dimmed returns to her eyes.
“Are you ever going to stop talking like that?” She says. “So…formal.” She plays with a lock of his bronze hair. He wonders if she misses his real hair, if the wig is as soft.
“If I recall, you always complained about my…excessive cussing,” He tries to chuckle, but it comes out static-y and distorted. “It is a habit now. Perhaps in time I will unlearn it.”
She crawls into his lap, and takes his metal face between her hands. “You’ll have plenty of time here. That is unless I steal you away first.”
“That would be inadvisable.” He says.
He touches her with hands that have never held a weapon. She calls him Anakin.
Luke
Luke spends the entire morning playing the video, over and over again on a loop.
“Who is that?” Leia asks when she shuffles into the kitchen.
Luke debates whether he should tell her. To her, Dad is a masked creature. It is easy to be mad at a masked creature, and sometimes Luke thinks that Leia likes being mad. Mad isn’t complicated.
“His name is Anakin,” Luke says. “He fought in the Clone Wars. He was a friend of Mom’s, I think.”
“Why would Mom have a holo of some random soldier from the war?” Leia crosses her arms and pouts. “I wish you wouldn’t lie to me.” She plops herself down next to him, and watches the recording.
They’re at the part where Anakin says, there are worse things than fighting a war.
“What do you think he means by that?” Leia asks. Which takes Luke aback; he didn’t think his sister would care enough to ask questions. “Mom’s always telling us how bad the Empire is. But this is supposed to be before the Empire, isn’t it?”
“I think if he wanted us to know he would have told us,” Luke says, and waits for her reaction. For her nose to scrunch up in disgust. Instead she keeps watching the holo.
“Typical Dad, keeping all his secrets. He’s not how I pictured. I was sure he’d be ugly.”
“You think Mom has bad taste?”
“I just always thought evil people were supposed to be ugly.”
Luke holds Leia the way Mom holds him. Even angry people like to be held sometimes.
“I don’t think he’s evil.” Luke says.
“Not even after everything Mom said?”
“Just listen to him sing,” Luke says, right as the song begins. “Evil people don’t sing like that.”
Leia listens. Luke is sure that like him, she’s never heard anything like it before.
“Does he ever say what it means?” Leia asks.
Luke shakes his head. It strikes him that if Anakin had been in their lives when they were younger, that they would have grown up knowing this language. “I wish he could have taught us.” He says.
“Maybe we can figure out some of it if we listen a few times.”
—
When Mom comes home, there is the hint of a smile on her face. Luke swears she looks a little younger.
Vader
Padme visits twice that week.
Vader wants to ask about the children. But she’s made it clear that going back to them is out of the question. She may come to visit, but she will never stay.
He waits for her to bring up the subject of Luke and Leia first. Padme tells him they are doing well academically. They like their tutor. They want her to be proud.
“So, they are being tutored in a private setting, then?” Vader asks. He and Padme had discussed this, before they had found themselves enemies. After Vader’s own experience at the Academy, he had wanted to spare them from the taunts.
“Sometimes I worry that they aren’t getting enough socialization,” Padme says. “But with me being away so much…I wouldn’t be able to get them to the Youth Learning Center. And given how precocious they are I doubt they would fit in.”
“Likely not,” He says. He wonders if anyone is overseeing their study of the Force. If they even know the full extent of their abilities. “I never had much need for companionship.”
“I wouldn’t consider you a role model,” Padmé mocks. It is meant in jest, but still, it stings, knowing that his own children could never look up to him.
“No. They are better off knowing nothing of me.”
“Well. That may not be entirely true,” Padmé admits, and the words must have been too truthful, because she says nothing after that. Vader is grateful his breath still comes out a wheeze- albeit, a far quieter one- so that they do not have to sit in total silence.
Luke
They show a little of the video to their droid tutor and ask the name of the language.
“Huttese,” she says. “One of the slave languages, from the Outer Rim.”
Slave languages. There’s only one way his father would have learned that.
“What does it mean?” Leia asks. The droid analyzes the song for a moment.
“Huttese is not one of the languages I am programmed to speak fluently.” The Droid says. “I can glean the meaning of some words. Boy. Sand. Master. But I cannot make sense of the grammar. This would need to be translated by a native speaker.”
No one else on Coruscant would know; and even if they did, there is no one Luke would want to share this clip with.
“Dad has to tell us himself,” says Leia. “But he’s away, remember? Mom doesn’t want us seeing him. She hates him now.”
“She’s just pretending,” Luke says. Leia raises a brow. “I saw her speak to him on the private com. I know she’s been going to visit him.”
“No way. Why would Mom keep that from us?”
“She thinks it’s best for us to stay away from us. But I’m not scared of him.” Luke boasts. “Are you?”
Leia frowns in a way that tells Luke she is, just a little. But she says, “No. Of course not.”
“Then let’s go see him. Let’s sneak onto Mom’s ship, and go with her to visit him.”
—
They put their plan into action the following day. They make sure not to wear shoes so their feet don’t make a sound. When Mom turns away to leave, they secretly follow her inside.
As they watch her press buttons on the ship, Luke wonders who piloted the ship when Mom and Dad flew together. Did they take turns? Maybe Dad held her, and they shared the pilot’s seat.
“Do you even know what planet we’re going to?” Leia whispers as Mom takes off.
“No idea,” Luke says. They’ve never been outside of Coruscant, although Luke is determined to leave one day. This isn’t the first time he’s snuck onto Mom’s ship; when she’s asleep, Luke goes to her ship and fiddles with the buttons. He’s sure with some time he can figure out how it all works, and then he can take Leia away from here, to the Green World. “It’ll be our first adventure.”
They’re flying for quite some time. The worst part is the boredom. To pass the time, Luke thinks about the Holo, and the song. It takes all his self control not to hum it.
Finally they touch down. Out the window, they can see the skeleton of what was once a great city, built on the shore of a beach. They wait a few moments for Mom to exit the ship, and then they continue following her. The sand muffles their footsteps.
Mom is headed over to a tentacled being, when she pauses- perhaps sensing she might be followed- but thankfully she doesn’t fully turn around. While she’s busy talking to him, Luke and Leia scamper off to go look for Dad.
As they wander the village, children with no eyes look at them. Luke wonders how they see, if they see.
“He came here on a ship,” Leia says. She’s always been smarter than him. “Maybe we’ll find him there.”
They continue their search, until at last they come upon it: a hulking ship, parked amongst the tents.
The door to the ship is open. They step inside.
At the patter of their small footsteps, Dad immediately jolts out of the pilot’s seat, and looks at him with his sun face, his breath a low whistle.
Mom said Dad has a lot of anger, but he doesn’t seem angry at all now. Immediately he crouches down to their level.
“Luke. Leia,” he addresses them. “Did your mother authorize this?”
“Mom doesn’t know,” Luke says.
“Then you should not be here-“
“We came because we want you to tell us what the song means,” Leia says. “The one from the holo.”
“Ah,” Vader says. “The Threnody of the Boy Who Escaped. It is about a slave boy who tries to run away, and is killed. His mother sings this song to his ghost.”
“I thought it was a happy song,” Luke says, eyes brimming with tears.
“It is happy. The boy dies free. The song means that he is loved.” Vader says.
“So if you sing it to someone,” Leia says, “that means you love them?”
“Yes.” Vader says in his stilted way. “That is what it means.”
“I’m not sure yet if I love you back.” Leia tells him. “Is that okay?”
“That is to be expected. You do not know me well enough. Do you still wish for me to sing?”
“If you do, maybe I’ll change my mind.” Leia says. So Vader begins.
—
They hear Padme trudge into the ship a few minutes later. They expect her to be angry at them. But as she watches Vader sing to the children, she can only stand there gaping at the scene.
She is always so busy, Luke doubts she’s had much time to listen to music. He wonders if she’s thinking about the same thing, thinking about how this song means you are loved, and the war is over, and maybe the world isn’t so terrible after all.