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Vader had stared at the file for so long that the sparse text had been burned into his memory. Objectively, there wasn’t much information there to be studied, but the Sith Lord took in every letter with the air of a starving man thrown a loaf of bread.
Luke Skywalker
Planet of Origin: Tatooine
Association: Rebel Alliance
Criminal Record: High Treason; Destruction of the Death Star
Age: 20 Galactic Standard Years
Height: 1.7 meters (estimated)
Weight: 65 kilograms (estimated)
Hair Color: Blond
Eye Color: Blue
Vader’s eyes lingered on the last line. Blue. His son had blue eyes. He, too, had once had blue eyes, he recalled vaguely, but that was in another life. The person he was now could barely even recall what the color looked like. The fires of Mustafar had taken his good eyesight from him when it took his hearing, his sense of touch, even his ability to breathe on his own. Kenobi had taken them from him. For twenty years, Darth Vader had viewed the world through red lenses, only removing his helmet in the stark black and white environment of his personal chamber.
So, no, Vader didn’t truly remember the sight of blue. He didn’t remember many colors at all. Objectively, he knew that what human eyes perceived as blue was simply light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometers.
But if Vader dusted off Anakin Skywalker’s broken memories, he knew what blue felt like.
Blue was the color of longing, of the expansive inky sky, not quite black, that a young boy looked up at and dreamed of visiting after a hard day’s work under a hot sun.
(Blue was the color of anger, of a saber swung in revenge to slaughter a whole people for the sin of a mother’s murder. Their lives for hers, harsh justice meted out in the desert.)
Blue was the color of brotherhood, of Obi-wan’s lightsaber dancing beside his, of Ahsoka’s montrals out of the corner of his eye, of the paint that decorated the 501st’s armor.
(Blue was the color of betrayal, of his so-called brother’s lightsaber as it amputated his limbs, of Ahsoka’s back to him as she left the Temple. The 501st hadn’t betrayed him, but their armor had long since been replaced with impersonal white.)
Blue was the color of love, of the lakes on Naboo where a Jedi and a Senator were simply a man and a women, where the two became one, where they would have raised their child.
(Blue was the color of death, of the gown his angel was buried in, the one he hadn’t seen until he could no longer tell on his own what color it was. The Holonet assured him it was blue. He didn’t know why that mattered when she couldn’t see it.)
There was a reason Darth Vader didn’t often purposefully venture into Skywalker’s memories. He didn’t need color to serve his master, and he certainly didn’t need the memories of the young man who had destroyed everything he touched.
But this blue. This blue, Luke’s blue, meant something different to Lord Vader. No longer did blue mean longing or anger or brotherhood or betrayal or love or death. For the first time in decades, Vader allowed himself to feel hope. Because maybe, just maybe, this blue-eyed boy --his son!-- meant he would not be alone any longer.