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He is old. Old enough to have a grandson her age, a son a good generation her senior. He is sick, dependent on oxygen canules and a plethora of other medical apparatus, prosthetic limbs and member. But he is caring and he is knowledgeable. His devotion is a thing of beauty, she thinks, the way she is the universe to him when they fuck, and his fingers and tongue are skilled, and his robotic cock and hands feel almost better than real ones, certainly are used with more care than she remembers from fumbles with other lovers. He is a relic of a bygone times, yet, in bed, he is of the here and now. She thinks it must be a relief for him to feel that way, relevant and and a bringer of pleasure.
She did not expect to fall in love or into bed with him, but it happened. Back at the beginning he was just an man passing through Jakku, with armour that may have been Mandalorian and a ship that may have been Corelian, both looking older than she was and worn with use, looking for a spare part. She had it. He asked why she hadn't left Jakku and she told him of her parents, and he said in a voice that was as sad as it was completely computer-generated "Search your feelings, do you feel they will come back? I could use a co-pilot."
He's a bounty hunter. Keeps down the violence to a minimum, relying on pure intimidation rather than the arsenal strapped to his body if he can. The first time she sees his face after he removes his helmet in front of her she is shocked she isn't shocked, so extensive the scarring that covers his face and bald skull. He has blue eyes. Very nice blue eyes.
There are people after him, hired assassins and people with grudges. He refuses to say why. One of them shoots him with a slugthrower rifle in the leg, which is how she learns all below the middle of his thighs is prosthetic, the projectile revealing sparkling wires rather than drawing blood. She learns his hands are prosthetic because the sand of Jakku seizes up his finger joints and he asks her to clean and oil them.
He has a personal axe to grind freeing slaves, and he never will take a job for a slaver, which are both very fine character recommendations in her book.
He can fix anything with nothing, which the two of them have in common.
They keep to the outer rim, keeping a low profile, one more shabby and shady merc among many, passing through shabby and shady - morally, though rarely in the physical sense - towns. Doing jobs for the slightly less shady, bringing in the much shadier. He teaches her about the power he wields, the Force, showing her meditation and how to sense danger and trick those prone to it and repel blaster bolts, armed or unarmed. Explains to her how to build a lightsaber, adding on that he does not much use one, not anymore, and feels too rusty to teach her.
The first time she kisses him is somewhere around Arkanis, when they have outrun the hitmen who were after him, again, and he stops her.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Darth Vader, or ex-Darth Vader I suppose."
"How do you know?"
"I put the clues together. And you mentioned you once were the greatest swordsman alive but there weren't many alive then?"
"Then you know", he says sadly. "I am not for you. I am too old and too guilty."
"You saw my speeder. I like decrepit clunkers with history."
"I'm not decrepit", says the man that once was Vader with an amused sort of offence.
"Then I will enjoy having you prove it."