Work Text:
Across the Stars
"Luke... help me... take this mask off..."
"But you'll die."
"Nothing can stop that now... just for once... let me look on you with my own eyes..."
"..."
"Now... go, my son... Leave me..."
"No! You're coming with me. I can't leave you here. I've got to save you!"
"You already have, Luke..."
~.~
His father’s Force signature was fading fast—so terribly fast. Like sand slipping endlessly through an hourglass, except the grains didn’t gather at the bottom; they simply dissolved into the void.
Death was a vastly different phenomenon for those gifted with the Force. For an ordinary person, it was merely watching someone close their eyes and slip away. But for a Force-sensitive, every agonizing millisecond was felt, trickling away through phantom fingers.
Physically, the moment his father’s eyes closed and his head rolled back, Luke threw himself over the unresponsive body, cradling him in a desperate, agonized embrace.
So many years had passed. An entire desert of secrets and half-truths had kept them apart for far too long.
Luke had grown up believing his father was dead, dreaming of the chance to have known him. Meanwhile, his father had endured those very same years hollowed out, consumed by darkness, believing his children were dead.
Though born in the Outer Rim, Luke had grown up under the black shadow of the Empire, learning the hard way what it meant to be a subject of its regime. He had learned to fear that shadow, never imagining that his own father was the very shadow driving the Empire forward.
When he finally uncovered the truth about Darth Vader, it nearly destroyed him. The pain, the denial, the sheer outrage shattered his soul with such brutality that jumping into the abyss of Cloud City felt effortless. Death was preferable to accepting that this machine... this monster... was the father he had once idolized.
But the Force is wise. It is knowing. It is a sentient current that, in its own way, can mend wounds, soothe old grudges, dispel fear, and teach acceptance, forgiveness, and love.
The Force had shown him that deep down—in the quietest depths—there was still good in his father. The Force had given him reason to believe.
And now that he had truly found who his father was, he couldn't imagine a life without him.
So as he held him, feeling him slip away, Luke poured his entire heart and soul into the embrace. He cradled him not just in the physical realm, but instinctively in the spiritual as well. His own Force signature reached desperately forward, wrapping around his father’s fading Force signature with everything he had, refusing to let go, anchoring it to his very being.
He held on to it like his most precious treasure—as if his own life depended on it. And amidst the roaring explosions and the chaos tearing everything apart around them, Luke held his father, refusing to surrender him to the dark.
And then, as if sensing his despair, his silent plea... impossibly, agonizingly faint... Luke felt his father embrace him back.
...
Luke maneuvered the shuttle as fast as he could, pulling away from the collapsing Death Star and fleeing into the sea of stars as far as it could carry them. It was from a safe distance, moments later, that he watched the second space station erupt like a supernova and vanish from existence, entirely wiped from the fabric of the universe.
A shockwave rippled through the space around them, violently thrusting the shuttle forward. Only his exceptional reflexes and pilot instincts—inherited straight from his father—allowed him to master the controls and keep the craft steady, safely clearing the immediate vicinity of Endor's moon and plunging deeper into the dark, open expanse of space.
Sensing that the immediate danger had passed, the young man's blue eyes, sick with worry, frantically searched for his father, finding him still lying on the deck just behind his pilot's seat, exactly where he had left him.
The mask was back in place, though the damaged respirator barely managed to force his lightning-scorched lungs to keep functioning. The mechanical wheeze of the vocoder echoed too faintly, too broken, too fragmented, and his father's presence in the Force—so fragile and faint now—kept slipping away by the second. Luke held onto him with everything he had.
He had very little time; he knew it. He needed to find immediate medical help, or his father would die. He needed a safe haven, for the Alliance could not know Vader was alive, or they would execute him without a second thought.
Luke drew in ragged, desperate breaths, unable to see a single viable path forward. Forcing himself to quiet his spirit, he cloaked himself in the Force—in its light, its tranquility, and its unwavering certitude—and trusted it to show him the way to save his father.
And like an ethereal whisper, the answer came to him at once.
Back in the pilot barracks, amid the banter and tales of camaraderie, the pilots used to taunt one another with ghost stories of the Outer Rim.
Think you're brave? Let's see you fly anywhere near Mustafar! That's Vader's private system, a nightmare of a world! If you can fly there, get close to it and not die, then you can call yourself brave!
Setting his jaw with grim determination, Luke punched the new coordinates into the navicomputer and engaged the hyperdrive.
In the chaotic wake of the Empire's sudden collapse, no one would ever dare look for them there.
...
The inhospitable world welcomed them. Mustafar spread out before him in all directions: black, jagged mountains roamed by nightmarish creatures, endless rivers of red and gold lava, dark and dreary skies, and a desolation that stretched as far as the eye could see.
It was a planet born of nightmares, just as the pilots had once described it. Yet, in that harrowing moment, it was the only safe sanctuary capable of sheltering them.
Luke found his father's castle soon and, without ceremony or a second thought for whatever dangers might lurk within, set the shuttle down upon the main courtyard of the massive, imposing fortress. He lowered the ramp, carrying the heavy, broken form of the fallen Sith Lord in his arms, using both his physical strength and the power of the Force to bear him toward the grand entrance of the terrifying building.
His gaze met a group of droid servants of various models watching him in a mixture of shock and uncertainty. The young Jedi pleaded with them:
"Please! Please, help him! He is my father—please, help my father!"
They recognized their master; Vader was the lord to whom they were bound in service. They did not hesitate to take them in and assume immediate care of the half-living shell of their creator. A protocol droid briskly translated the routine medical procedures they were so accustomed to performing for the Sith Lord severe injuries—not merely the old, enduring wounds, but also the freshly inflicted ones as well.
Standing close by, Luke watched with a mixture of fascination, sorrow, and profound anxiety as they stripped away his father's black armor and his destroyed mechanical limbs, securing an oxygen mask over his face and finally revealing to the young man's eyes the full, devastating extent of the old deformities, deep scars, and broken body of the man before him.
...
He was floating in a bacta tank; Vader recognized it instantly. After so many years of constantly resorting to it merely to stay alive, the familiar sensation gave him that certainty long before any other discernment could take hold. His mind was sluggish, his strength depleted, and his Force signature felt almost detached from him, yet he could still sense it there, alongside something else he could not immediately name. It wrapped around him, held him close, cradled him with immense tenderness, and refused to let go.
He should have been dead—that was the only logical truth he possessed.
Why wasn't he dead?
Vader forced his eyes open, his vision blurred and heavy. Through the viscous fluid and the thick transparisteel viewport, he saw a young man standing beside the tank, watching him. The face was intensely, agonizingly familiar, but... how did he know him?
The youth pressed a hand against the glass, as if longing to touch him—a gesture of quiet, fragile gentleness.
Darkness reclaimed him, and Vader slipped back into unconsciousness.
...
Vader felt his consciousness drift in limbo for an eternity.
An absolute, pitch-black void stretching to the end of time; devoid of sensation or emotion, thought or memory. He simply existed, drifting along currents neither dark nor bright.
Here, there was no light side of the Force; nor was there a dark side.
In that timeless expanse, he just existed unburdened by either side of the Force, no longer dragged and manipulated by its currents. It was just him—his fundamental being, the very essence of his life.
And as time bled on, his perception expanding, he noticed that something around him had shifted.
He was no longer floating in the void, formless and purposeless; instead, his body rested upon cushions, impossibly soft and comforting. He felt them cradle him, and a sensation he hadn't felt in decades suddenly flooded his every sense.
The softness brushed against his fingertips and toes, sinking into the surface.
Tentatively, he commanded them to move, and, inwardly awed, felt his tips graze the plush fabric beneath. His arms were bare; he wore no boots. For the first time in ages, his skin registered every sensation long since robbed from him—severed in the raging fires of Mustafar on the day his world ended.
The silence struck him; there was no loud sound of breathing.
He would have wept if he could, but a profound lethargy gripped his frame, making it a struggle to even twitch. His bones felt heavy and weary, weighed down by a supernatural exhaustion accumulated over decades—an familiar ache that made him feel every dark, bitter year he had lived, submerged in the darkness of his own hatred and remorse.
And as if understanding precisely what he felt, a second presence made itself known. It was made of pure light, so gentle and affectionate. It drew near, settling at the edge of his bed, as soft, tender hands touched his face, caressing his cheeks with infinite tenderness. He felt them glide across skin free of scars, brushing away locks of hair from closed eyes that he had long ago lost to the fire. It soothed his being, easing his fatigue, lightening his heart, and filling him with a renewed surge of energy.
Vader felt a tear slip down his face, for he recognized her sweet, familiar touch—long yearned for—before she even spoke a single word.
"Ani..." she whispered, just as she used to. Her hand glided across his cheek, gently wiping away the moisture.
He opened his eyes.
He knew he was dreaming, for this was impossible. In the decades that had passed, he had never dreamt; his subconscious had always been cloaked in the dense, profound darkness of the dark side. Yet now, once again, he was dreaming.
She was as beautiful as the first time he had laid eyes on her, so many, many years ago: young, her countenance radiant. She wore a light, semi-transparent blue gown that clung to the curves of her form, her long brown hair cascading in waves over her shoulders down to the small of her back. She sat beside him on the bed, her face lovely and delicate, yet possessed by that unwavering, fierce determination intrinsic to her very being.
Her deep, lively brown eyes were entirely devoid of judgment, resentment, disappointment, hurt, or contempt. In them, there was only a love that had remained profound, genuine, and unyielding through decades of darkness.
She looked at him as she had done long ago, in days forgotten: as when they had embraced in secret; as when they had pledged their vows before the mirrored surface of the lake; as when, in the veil of dusk, they had surrendered to one another in passion; as when she had done at sunset on Coruscant —moments before he surrendered himself entirely to the darkness and destroyed everything they had once been.
And Vader wept, because he was unworthy of her grace.
"Are you an angel...?" he asked softly, his voice weak and broken, entirely uncharacteristic of the imposing vocoder that had defined him until then.
Padmé smiled softly in recognition.
"Kind words for a boy... that is how I met him. He grew into a man deeply loved by me, but the shadow tore us apart and took him away... I missed him so much, all this time, every single moment."
Her gentle voice completely undid him. Her fingers continued to stroke his face softly, wiping away tears that seemed endless.
"This... this is impossible," he said, his voice choked with emotion. "For I have committed a sin; I have done the unspeakable... I am not worthy of your love—much less of standing in your light."
"Love travels beyond the stars, beyond time, beyond the understanding of men, Ani," Padmé told him. "It is steadfast, certain, and enduring. One cannot erase a heart that has been given freely."
"Padmé..." Vader whispered, low and measured, as if afraid that by daring to speak her name aloud, she would vanish.
Instead, his wife remained seated on the edge of the bed, serene and calm. Her touch was the most real thing he had felt in decades, watching him with eyes that held profound wisdom and the nuances of a quiet sorrow.
"You have always had my heart, Ani—even when you were too blind to see it; even when the darkness around you was so dense it prevented you from feeling it. I have been with you, by your side, all these years. The Force allowed me to linger in this world. I was able to watch our children grow into the wonderful people they are; I was able to see you reunite with them."
Vader closed his eyes and turned away from her, pulling his face from the gentle warmth of her hand, utterly and entirely bitter.
"Then you know I am not a good man, and that everything you once believed in me has crumbled away."
He drew a deep breath. Though silence permeated the room, in his mind he heard it—the vocoder, clear and sharp accentuating every movement in his chest, haunting and grim:
"To my shame... now I know you saw the monster I became. You saw every life I reaped, every planet I destroyed. You saw the deepest abyss of this universe where I buried myself in hatred, and how it draped my shoulders in an impenetrable black mantle. You saw me raise a fortress over the lava and the fire that consumed me; you saw how my body was disfigured beyond recognition. You saw me mold the galaxy against everything you once fervently defended, and you saw that nothing more remained of the man you once loved."
Vader raised his gaze to look at her once more; his eyes were still as yellow as gold.
"Anakin Skywalker is dead... and I... am what remains."
"Yet, here you are." Padmé replied simply, without judgment, without resentment, unfazed by those words—a quiet acknowledgment of their truth.
Where was here?
He could not tell, yet it reflected what had once been their temporary bridal quarters on Naboo. The room was pleasant, warmed by a fireplace that continued to crackle in the background, its flames dancing to heat the space. Through the open balcony doors, the sky was growing faintly dark over the mirrored surface of the lake.
He had never thought he would see that place again; he had avoided it all the years following his Fall, for it was simply too painful.
He had not spoken the question aloud, but she had understood it all the same.
"This is a sanctuary of healing woven by the Force; a place for the mending of wounds that afflict the soul. It has no fixed location or specific shape—it assumes whatever appearance you desire, whatever brings the most comfort to the spirit. I chose this place because it was here that we began, our story together. It was here that I recognized and accepted my love for you, here that we pledged our vows, here that we gave form to our children."
She explained softly, then added:
"It is a place whose essence is made of pure light, where the densest, unbroken shadows cannot enter."
"I am a Sith, Padmé..." Vader told her, his voice dry and bitter. "There is no light in me. There hasn't been for a very, very long time."
"If your heart did not possess even a small fraction of light, you would not be here."
Padmé watched him, forever gentle and attentive.
"You surrendered yourself to the dark side... you did all that you did... yet from the very first second you learned of our son, you loved him. Your love for Luke coaxed those timid threads of light back into the Force within your heart. And as I always believed until my final breath, our son could see it too. He believed there was still goodness in you, even when you were incapable of believing it yourself."
Vader closed his eyes; he felt her hand touch him once more, gently stroking the golden locks of his hair. The sensation of being normal, just as he had been in his youth, was breaking him apart from the inside.
"In the end, you fulfilled the Jedi prophecies; by choosing to save our son, you returned to the light, you destroyed Palpatine, and you brought balance back to the Force. You saved the galaxy."
"Across a trail of death, blood, and destruction."
"Yet you saved the galaxy all the same. You came back to us." She emphasized the final phrase, speaking it with force, vehemently—with that unwavering, fierce determination of hers that brooked no contradiction. "What is done cannot be undone, but you can still shape the future. You can do something for those who, in the wake of the Empire's fall, are left helpless and in need of assistance."
"It is too late for me..." Vader murmured. "I am the very shape of what tormented them."
"It is never too late to do what is right; you still can," Padmé argued gently, her fingers still tracing his face.
His golden eyes met her warm brown ones.
Wide, exhausted, honest.
"My time to go has passed. I am living when I should not be; breathing when my lungs can no longer sustain it. My body has been broken by my hatred, and it has been so for a very long time. Why am I not dead?"
"Luke is holding you, Ani..." His wife answered softly. "He is embracing you with the very essence of his life through the Force."
"He should not..." Vader spoke, distressed, yet unable to move or muster any reaction in the lethargic state he found himself in. His body refused to obey him, and he remained completely inert in his wife's arms. "He has to let me go. He has to move forward, look after his sister, and forget the shadow I was in his life."
"He will not give up on you, my love; nor will the Force. You are still the Chosen One, and there is still work for you to do."
"I want to die." The Sith Lord confessed, the words devoid of emotion—tired, heavy, and entirely true, rising straight from what remained of his soul.
"You need to live," Padmé told him, watching him with immense compassion, gazing deeply into his golden eyes. He looked back at her with open resignation.
"Why won't you give up on me, Padmé?" Vader whispered.
"I could never... because I love you too much, Ani..." Her angel replied, as if it were the simplest and most fundamental truth in the entire universe.
"Do not call me that..." He choked out, his voice thick with emotion.
"I love you," Padmé said with a tender smile upon her lips. "I love you; Vader, Anakin—it matters not what you have chosen to call yourself now. I love you, and that is as immutable as the existence of the universe around us."
"Padmé..." Vader whispered then, tears renewing themselves upon his face, for he had never stopped loving her through all those long, bitter, and agonizing years.
He had never stopped loving her; he never would, not even after every star in the galaxy had burned out.
He watched his wife lean over him, nesting within his arms and resting her head against his chest just as they had done so many times before. She embraced him, as they had done by the lake on Naboo, so long ago when there was nothing left in the world save for their love.
He wept, and she held him close, rocking him with tender grace.
"Ever since our son was a child, Luke longed to have known his father. He grew up treasuring the few stories that were told to him about you; the first human—and the only one—ever to win the Boonta Eve Classic. It was his greatest dream—to be also a swift pilot and travel across the galaxy, exactly like his father," Padmé spoke to him now in a whisper shared between them. "It is this very wish that now drives him to desperately hold on to you and plead with the Force for you to stay. He wants to make up for the years stolen from you, he wants to get to know you, everything about you—the good, the bad—and trade make-believe dreams for real memories."
Padmé lifted her face to gaze at her husband once more.
"He wants you to have the chance to live without the suit; to live on the light side of the Force; to introduce you to his sister."
This made Vader close his eyes with bitter and profound shame. There, in that ethereal place, his entire being lay bare—even though his form was now clothed in his old, dark Jedi robes. It revealed him as he truly was: the very essence of his soul still severely corrupted and only just beginning a faint, fragile process of healing. Nothing could be concealed from her.
The revelation he had brushed against during the duel with his son on the Death Star now lay bare to him in its full, undeniable entirety. He recognized Leia for who she was, and his wrongs toward his daughter were so grave, running so deeply, that there was no possible world in which she would ever forgive him.
"Give it time," Padmé told him then, softly, her knowing gaze reading his darkest thoughts. "Step by step, minute by minute, one gesture at a time. There will come a day when Leia will seek you out of her own accord, and when that happens, she will be ready to listen."
Vader watched his wife, his golden eyes shimmering with deep emotion. Just as it would take time for them to become blue once more.
"The Force has granted you a few more years so that you may come to know our children and help mend a broken world. Go to him now—our son is waiting for you."
His body finally responded then. He managed to raise his hand and firmly grasp his wife's hand where it rested against his cheek, feeling her soft, warm skin beneath his fingertips.
"I do not want to go; I want to stay with you, please, Padmé..." he pleaded. He knew he was unworthy, knew he did not deserve it, but he desired it so fiercely that if he were to die right here, right now, and his consciousness remained trapped in this moment forever, it would be enough for him.
His wife smiled with serene grace.
"You will not lose me, Ani... you never lost me. Every time you grow weary and your eyes close in sleep, you will awaken here once more, and I will be waiting for you."
She pressed her lips to his in a lingering kiss.
...
Vader opened his eyes, blurred and swimming with tears, still dazed by the vivid dream shaped by the Force. It took him a few moments to anchor himself in his surroundings, letting his fogged, numb mind claw its way back to the reality of recent events.
He lay upon the specialized recovery bed in his private quarters. The towering, sheer black walls—so suffocatingly familiar—testified that he was within his castle on Mustafar, his solitary fortress for decades. In the distant background, the soft, methodical clatter of medical droids coming and going echoed faintly. He was only half-dressed, wearing solely black trousers with the cuffs rolled up to his knees. His chest lay bare and heavily scarred, his sickly, ash-white skin lightly slicked with wetness, the unmistakable, medicinal tang of bacta clinging to his form. His mechanical limbs were detached, a transparent respiratory mask strapped to his face, forcing clean, purified air in and out of his battered lungs. A tangle of cables and wires connected him to the consoles, monitoring his vitals while quietly pumping essential nutrients and medication directly into his body to keep him tethered to life.
It was a pathetic, humiliating existence, yet still, he endured. His body was deadened by heavy sedatives; he felt no pain, yet breathing remained a labored struggle even with the respirator. His half-closed eyes could barely make out the shapes before him, but his perception of the Force remained utterly intact and absolute. And it was through that ethereal sight, lying completely stripped of his armor in his hideously deformed shape, that he felt the presence of his son within the chamber.
When he had been dying on the Death Star, certain that it would be the last time he ever looked upon his son, he had begged Luke to take off his mask so that he might see him with his own eyes.
Now, he was no longer dying—a solid, undeniable truth resonating within the Force. Yet here he was, seeing Luke with his own very eyes once more. Acutely self-conscious of his failures, of his horrific body, of the bitter reality that he was more machine now than man, Vader felt a sudden surge of shame at standing—or rather, lying—so exposed before his son. But there was nothing left to conceal his form, nothing to spare Luke the startling, brutally honest sight of what his father had truly become.
Luke, however, stood close to him—far too close. His eyes were wide with wonder, filled with awe and deeply softened by relief. His presence in the Force, impossibly bright, strong, and warm like a rising sun, still cradled every inch of Vader's pitiful, shadowed form, holding him with a fierce, almost religious fervor in an iron grip, utterly unwilling to let him go.
"Father..." The young man spoke, flashing him a radiant smile as he sat down on the edge of the bed, moving with extreme care so as not to disturb the man in his fragile state of recovery.
"Luke..." Vader forced himself to utter the name. His voice was nearly nonexistent, far too weak; his chest flared with pain from the effort. That spike of agony echoed through the Force, and the younger man instantly reprimanded him.
"Don't speak. You need absolute rest. The droids are working to stabilize your vitals; you were severely injured by the lightning. You're still in a very delicate condition, please—you mustn't exert yourself."
Luke... my son... my son...
Vader repeated it over and over through the bond they shared in the Force. Even as he heard the words, he didn't care about their literal meaning—his son was right there. His son was safe. He raised his phantom hand toward him, only to realize once again in the very next second that all his mechanical limbs were missing. Yet even still, Luke understood his intent. One of the young man's hands grasped his stump with infinite gentleness, cradling it tenderly against his chest, while the other, made of flesh and ungloved, reached up to touch his father's face, stroking his scarred cheek.
The bright, radiant presence of his son still wrapped tighter around him within the Force.
"I'm here, Father. I'm right here."
That warm palm, those soft, gentle fingers sliding across his pale, scarred, and disfigured skin; eyes that gazed back at him without a shred of judgment, brimming with infinite love and profound joy, as pure and celestial blue as his own once were. Vader felt himself utterly overwhelmed by the emotion, and it broke him. Tears slipped down his face once more—tears that had remained dry for decades, now returning with the fierce, unstoppable force of a tidal wave.
It was too much—an overwhelming joy that felt almost too vast for his broken frame to contain. Yet it washed through his chest, forcing him to breath and his heart to beat, breathing life back into him, wrapping its stubborn light around his darkness and making him whole again.
Physically, he could do nothing, completely surrendered to the tender, comforting warmth of his son's touch. But through the Force, Vader pulled him close with all his might, holding the boy against his heart with every ounce of fierce, desperate love he had for him.
Luke smiled, his own face bathed in tears, feeling every bit as deeply as his father did.
"I'm here, Father. I'm going to stay right here with you. Rest now... We have all the time in the world."
Moving with infinite care, the young man leaned forward and embraced his father's broken form, cradling the man's head against the crook of his shoulder and pulling him close to his chest. And Vader wept—wept for a grace he knew he had never deserved, yet devoured with all the ravenous, starving hunger of his soul.
He had his son. He had his wife. And he would dedicate every remaining day of his life to earning back his daughter as well, no matter if it took days, months, or years.
Luke held him close as they both wept, both physically and through the unbroken embrace of the Force, and he never let go.