Chapter Text
After completing Fortress Vader, his final castle after nine failed previous ones that were destroyed during his attempts at resurrecting his beloved wife, Vader found himself oddly restless. Part of him wasn’t, part of him was dismally resigned to enduring the rest of the solitary life he had sentenced himself to, it just wanted to drown in apathy and fully embrace his role as the brutal machine of war he was made into by both his masters and little else, become the necessary evil that would at least ensure some order in the Galaxy in the form of the Empire and remain under the Emperor's service since there was nothing else for him to do. Yet another part of him, one that still longed for more than his currently bereft life despite the complete failure his quest to get Padmé back had concluded in, couldn't help but keep wondering about the very last thing he saw before getting thrown back into his body….
Most of what he saw in… he hesitated on what to label the place he experienced beyond the door as, it didn't seem like it actually was whatever lies beyond death, it was too personally pointed at him to be that. And despite Momin’s claims and his own ambitions, he didn’t think it was possible to dive into the Dark side or the Force itself, not ever as its own descendent. Maybe it was simply another plane of existence, closer to the Force than the mortal plane, but not enough to reach the afterlife, if there even was such a thing. Whatever it had all been, whether he had actually been travelling through a different plane or simply having an overextended vision, it mostly showed him things he already knew.
It took him on a walk through his past, everything that made him into who and what he was, all the pain and loss that left him a husk of a man. He didn’t know if the plane itself was trying to stop him from continuing on his single-minded mission to recover his wife, but it certainly felt like it was throwing a lot of obstacles his way when he was confronted with all the Jedi he killed, but there were a few who he knew still remained like Obi-Wan. But most were just shadows of the past, everything there was an echo and not the real thing, just like many of the disembodied echoes he heard were familiar enough. Although interestingly enough there were a couple of glimpses of the future in there, like a confrontation with his old Padawan which had not come to pass yet, as he looked like his current self and she looked older than the last time saw her. That was already quite an intriguing revelation, and a meeting he was oddly looking forward to if it did come to pass, but it wasn’t the only thing that could possibly be a vision of what was to come.
Because what intrigued Vader the most was the last thing he saw before returning to his body, the only other sight he was shown that wasn’t pulled from his past. The bright blue pillar of Light that appeared in the middle of a desolate field, and the figure within it that definitely held a lightsaber as he looked at him, as if he could see him with perfect clarity despite the vast distance between them…. Somehow that person, that boy for even as far away as he was, Vader somehow could tell without doubt that it was a young man, was familiar… yet he could swear he had never seen him before.
So, who was it? Vader had gone into that plane, he had built and destroyed castle after castle trying to open the door, exclusively in search of Padmé. He walked all the way to that balcony where he finally saw her, destroying everything and everyone in his way to reach her, and when he finally did she… she rejected him. Said that she didn’t know him, that Anakin Skywalker was dead, before she jumped off the balcony and despite his efforts to hold onto her was hit by lightning. He failed to save her. Again. Despite all his power, all his efforts, she was lost to him, and she would remain so….
If that was even her. Maybe it was just another shadow, and not her real soul… now that he thought about it, that red lightning had distorted her image when she declared that his old self was dead and after jumping, turning her eyes as gold as his. Much as he deserved her hatred for what he had done to her and their child, he didn’t think that there was any way she could Fall to the Dark side through it. She looked heartbroken last time he saw her, not vengeful… but if she came back as a wraith of some sort the saddest part was that quite honestly Vader would rather be haunted by her rancorous ghost for the rest of his life than continue being alone. Which might be the reason that vision of her disappeared into thin air after that ray of red lightning, denying him even that bittersweet torment.
But at that moment, after seeing his beloved at last and losing her again, he didn’t think about any of that. He didn’t think at all, he couldn't, all he could do was drown in his renewed misery. He was once more made aware of his desolate existence, that he would spend the rest of it alone, as Padmé and her love for him were no more. She would never return. She would never whisper words laced with affection to him while he kissed her again, he would never feel her soft skin under his fingers as he tried to convey his ardour through passionate touch again for he didn’t even have any real fingers anymore, he would never see her look at him with adoration while he revered her like the divine being she was ever again. Without her, Anakin Skywalker did cease to exist, for he couldn't live without her, but even as the remnant of the man he used to be he couldn't stand the heartache that her absence created. His soul would forever remain shattered and his heart cold and empty. Vader was a dead star-dragon who lost everything he treasured, who had burned in his own fire until it went out, and now he would remain as a hollow beast, destined to remain broken and forlorn. Forever.
This whole quest had been his last ditch attempt at regaining his wife, his only love, the only woman who gave his life meaning, the only person that made him feel alive… and he had failed. He was overwhelmed by pain and grief, his agony resounding around him in repeating negatives like that first scream that tore through his mutilated throat after he first rose as Darth Vader and was told of his wife’s demise, falling to his knees as the balcony’s stone cracked under the weight of his guilt and sorrow….
And only in that moment, only when he was at the lowest he had ever been, did he see that light in the distance. That boy bathed in Light, who saw him and his unravelling soul and didn’t look away with pity or disgust, not even horror even though Vader could sense that he was startled, but stared as if he was seeing something he had been searching for his whole life. If that boy was real somehow, and not just another part of the vision… who could ever reach out to him with such intensity, with such accuracy, when he was in the absolute depths of despair? And why would Vader see this unknown person and somehow know that he was meant to be prominent in his life...?
Something was telling him that the boy was important, the same kind of gut instinct that once told him that Padmé was significant to him the first time he met her. He knew instantly that he would marry her, and despite how ridiculously hopeful that sounded for a nine year old who just met the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and the ten years in which all he could do was fantasise about the Queen and later senator of Naboo like the infatuated boy he was, he was right in the end. It was destiny after all, it was the will of the Force that they met, and their reunion was just as fated. Vader’s instincts were very rarely wrong, since the Force had always guided them, and for the boy to appear to him when Vader was so immersed in that plane he undoubtedly had to be of the highest importance to him. But who could ever claim a notable role in Vader’s life by this point? There was no one left and there would never be again, that had been the reason he was despairing in the first place. And yet… why did he see that boy, then? Who was he?
Vader unsuccessfully tried to ignore all those questions at first, to distract himself with work like finishing his castle’s interior and facilities now that it was clear this version of it was here to stay. Or do everything else he usually spent his time and attention with in order not to think about deeper questions, like why was he stubbornly clinging to life and continuing to serve his new master without purpose. After failing to resurrect his beloved, realizing that the power to overcome death that he was promised for his allegiance to the Sith order was an utter lie, that he had sold his soul and destroyed his entire life for nothing, everything seemed so pointless….
It already felt like nothing mattered anymore before, obviously, since without Padmé the dead star-dragon that Vader had now fully become had lost his greatest and dearest treasure, and his existence was therefore meaningless. He tried to tell himself that he at least had power now, even if he was still serving another he was the second most powerful man in the Galaxy and with all the unleashed power of the Dark side he should be able to obtain all that he wanted. But now that the illusion of bringing her back was gone it was far worse than before, for he couldn’t even trick himself into thinking he could still salvage this, fix it like he used to fix everything he saw broken, this was beyond repair. He was beyond repair, and while he logically knew that he would always remain a monster from now on since he had already committed to his Dark path and would never stray, accepting that he would also have to remain a wreck was a bit more difficult to do.
While he did somewhat manage not to think about why he was even continuing with his pointless existence when he had nothing to live for, as he already had seven years of practice on doing precisely that, he still couldn't stop thinking about that mysterious figure that appeared to him when everything seemed lost. One day, fed up with how much it distracted him, he decided to try to follow up on it since apparently that would be the only thing to get that boy off his mind. He couldn't go back to that plane after destroying the altar and everything else, but if the boy had reached him there it was possible that he was connected to him as it was… somehow.
At least now that the castle had some minimal amenities and the constant attacks on it from the local population had stopped, he could marginally relax and take his time investigating this mystery. Vader entered his newly installed hyperbaric chamber and meditated deeply, trying to reach the part of him that connected him to others, despite how much he had avoided it for the last few years. He used to treasure his bonds to the people he cared about so deeply, to bolster them and hold onto them very strongly, constantly making sure they were as perfect and firm as could be. Going through his bonds used to be like doing maintenance on his ships, something he did gladly and which filled him with satisfaction every time he finished and could behold their splendour just like he would look at his reflection on the shiny surface of his interceptor after giving it a wash.
Trying to go over his bonds now felt like trying to sort out the cables of an old and rusty engine that got recovered from a totalled ship and then splashed with acid, a machine so damaged and corroded that it looked like it would crumble into a pile of molten metal the moment you touched it. Most of his bonds were either straight up broken or tainted so badly they could never possibly return to their former glory, worn and mangled, turned into an unravelling messy cord rather than the durable cable that they used to be.
He hesitated when he brushed over the broken ones first, since he could discard them as the source of that luminous figure and shouldn’t even pay attention to them, but he couldn't help taking a small moment to mourn them. His mother, Qui-Gon, Padmé, many of the 501st that he had lost… they were gone, dead and beyond his reach no matter how much he had tried to change it, but they still haunted him. Holding the broken end of a bond years after it was cut wasn’t an enjoyable experience, but he could not shake them off either… to do so would feel like disrespecting their memory, and much as the memories tortured him he didn’t think he could ever let them go. Especially after all he had just gone through, after relieving the pain of losing Padmé his bond with her felt like a reopened wound, pulsing with pain. A pain that despite only being emotional felt greater than the excruciating physical pain he still felt from his body, a pain so great that it would have made him crawl and beg for mercy had he not known this was just punishment for his grave crimes.
Revelling in pain and anguish was a regular occurance in Vader’s life as a dark lord of the Sith, but he was not meditating in order to extinguish those persistent flickers of Light within him at the moment. He needed to focus and continue his search. He allowed himself a moment of weakness, holding onto the once magnificent bond that tethered him to his wife and whispering through it, knowing in reality he was sending a message through a cut cord that would never make it to its destinatary.
“I am sorry, Padmé… I hate myself for what I did to you and our child, and I am sorry that I couldn’t bring you back. Wherever you are, the part of me that died alongside you must be with you. I hope it will be enough, since I can scarcely hope I will join you once I leave this realm. But for as long as I roam the Galaxy bound to this broken body made of scarred flesh and wires, and wherever I end up after my aching frozen heart stops beating, know that I am and will always be yours, my love…”
Since he was in the hyperbaric chamber he could at least attempt a deep breath, as quivering as it was when he took it. His lungs did get a bit better over the years, it didn’t feel like he was breathing through ashes and blistering flesh anymore like it did at the start whenever he breathed with his own means instead of the respirator, but they would also never regain their previous capacity. But he wasn’t concentrating on his deteriorating body today, but his equally ruined psyche.
The bonds that remained active were a more complicated matter than the broken ones he kept beyond reason, his need to hoard everything he owned overruling any other possible decision as to what to do with them no matter how much they hurt. The Jedi always told him to let go, the only advice Yoda gave him when he asked him how to stop his visions was to let go of everything he feared to lose, but he couldn’t let go even of what he had already lost much less what he still held. All his bonds that weren’t cut also remained here, tightly tied to him despite his current negligence on reinforcing them from time to time.
Of course, the bond he held with Palpatine was there and at the moment was most prominent. A bond that he once thought tied him with a friend and mentor, someone he could consider practically family, but that now revealed its true wicked nature: a bond between master and… apprentice. Vader knew it was less than that, the relationship he had with his current master was nothing like the one he used to have with his Jedi master, it wasn’t a relationship based on teaching as the more benevolent meaning of the word should imply. No, he was owned by his current master just as much as he was owned by his slave master as a child. Actually it was worse than back then, at least when he was a child he never accepted his chains, he rebelled against them and the dehumanisation they forced upon him by making him property instead of a person until the very day he was freed. But now, now that he was enslaved once more and almost of his own volition… he didn't. The day he was named Vader he had pledged himself to Palpatine’s teachings, but he might as well have signed a contract in which he sold himself for a power that he didn’t even gain. It was all based on lies, he had sacrificed even his own freedom for nothing. Now he was just a tool, a blunt instrument for his master to use against his enemies, but he would rather be that monstrous weapon he was forged into than a man when it hurt far less to be so, so he had reinforced his chains himself by committing atrocity after atrocity in order to forget he was ever anything else.
The worst part was realizing that this was what Palpatine had been seeking from him for the very beginning, that was the only reason he had befriended and mentored Anakin Skywalker: making him his apprentice. He never cared, all his words of praise and displays of trust, all his promises of power and influence had been false, they were the sweet bait used to lure him into a trap. He wanted Anakin to trust him, to trust he was telling him the truth when he offered him the power to save his wife, and like a fool he had believed him. He had believed him and done exactly as he said in a futile effort to save his family, paying with innocent blood for a price he was denied. A price that could not even be granted by the one who had offered it, Palpatine simply wanted Anakin to chain himself to the Dark side and himself as he became Darth Vader, and now there was no going back. It all occurred exactly as the Emperor had foreseen, except maybe for Vader’s injuries… he was so unmistakably disappointed by his apprentice’s weakness for Vader to believe that at least had not been in his plan. But he turned even that to his advantage, encasing him into a life support suit that kept him in constant pain and made him vulnerable to his favourite attack, making Vader even more subservient and dependent to him.
That knowledge, that truth that much as he tried to ignore he realized was the reality of their current relationship, turned the bond between himself and his Emperor even uglier to look at than it already was, tainted as it became with the reveal of Palpatine’s vile intentions and the way he took advantage of Vader’s old self’s weaknesses in order to snake into his life under false premises. He realized that the bond became a tight leash going from his master’s hand to a collar that pierced into Vader’s neck, one that would choke him whenever he tried to act out or stray too far from his master. Vader still clung to it regardless, mostly out of sheer desperation as it was the only bond he had where the other person accepted him back, the only reciprocal connection he had left at all.
The other two most prominent bonds he still had were shrouded by rejection, betrayal, pain and partly unknowingness. First of all was obviously Obi-Wan, his Jedi master, a man who once was like a father to him, and that he now hated for the mutilation that sentenced him to his current excruciating and bleak existence. Their bond as master and Padawan was strong, so strong that maybe it truly had not merely been his own wistful delusion that his master cared about him more than he was supposed or allowed to as Jedi. Obi-Wan did claim to apparently love him once, even if he never said so before it became irrelevant as it was turned into past tense. Much as he now loathed to contemplate the notion, Vader did once love Obi-Wan… Anakin Skywalker loved Obi-Wan like he was his father, and he had wanted him to love him back. He had worked really hard to make him love him, to earn his appreciation and make him proud to be his master, to be more than that if he ever was willing to be truly like family. His opinion of him was something that he held in the highest regards, which was why he never shared so many parts of him that he thought he would disapprove of with the man. The sun-dragon that he still used to be and his blazing heart, along with his already insatiable greed, and all of his ruthlessness had to be hidden at all costs, just like his tendency towards attachment and his marriage.
Their bond and its undeniable depth was something that he once had cherished as a possible sign that he was as important to his master as the man was to him, that maybe he wasn’t the only one to care about him like family and Obi-Wan may be attached to him too, even if that was against the rules. It made them into a perfect team, The Team in fact, and if their continued unrivalled success during a time of war wasn’t proof that the Jedi and their insistence on non attachment and needing to let go was detrimental in the long run he didn’t know what could. They could have never been so in sync in battle without their bond, they could have never become as close as they did without it, just as they could have never achieved that easy comradery that made them unbeatable whenever they embarked on a mission together and earned them Galaxy wide fame.
When he Fell to the Dark side, everything changed. He didn’t anticipate being confronted by Obi-Wan so soon, or that he would deviously use Padmé to find him and turn her against him the way he did. While he did foresee that the model Jedi his master was would never concede to join him on the Dark side or even simply stand aside and let his old Padawan continue through the Dark path, despite everything… despite everything a part of him had hoped that their fight wouldn't come to the end it ultimately had. While Vader certainly entered into the fray trying to win, trying to kill his old master if he was forced to by the old man’s refusal to join his side, he thought that if Obi-Wan was the one to win the duel he at least he would have the decency to finish him off quickly. Instead he crippled him, leaving him to die a painful death which in the end didn’t come.
Honestly, what did he truly expect? That Obi-Wan would suddenly realize that the Jedi were wrong about attachment or the Dark side or anything else that his old master so wholeheartedly believed? No, nowadays Vader couldn’t believe he had ever been so naive as to think that his old master would or even could accept him and love him as he truly was in any way. While Anakin may have held some resentment for Obi-Wan because of his constant refusals to show him the level of appreciation that he wanted, or because he so often sided with the Jedi council and chastised him for all his failures as Jedi, his love for him generally overruled those smaller hang ups… Vader only held hatred and contempt for the man that had such a heavy hand in creating him.
Obi-Wan’s actions when he left him to burn twisted all that love into hate, a bitter grudge, one that had taken a permanent place within Vader’s cold merciless heart, an almost indomitable hate, for a dead star-dragon reacted to disloyalty and betrayal with vicious retribution. It was a grudge that would remain unfulfilled until he found his master again and he turned all that disillusionment and unwanted pity that Obi-Wan felt for his Fallen Padawan, for Vader knew that was what he saw in Obi-Wan’s eyes when he walked away, into an equally intense hatred. Maybe if they both hated each other like that, if he could make Obi-Wan hate him back, it would prove that he was still important to him in some way….
The bond between them was still there to this day, since Vader knew for a fact that Obi-Wan wasn't dead, even if the man tried to hide from him in the Force. And much as the old Jedi might have tried to sever their bond over the years or block him entirely, for he must have or it wouldn’t be so damaged, Vader refused to let go of it. And so, it still remained. It was nothing like it used to be, in the past it was filled with the older Jedi’s mild presence, at least whenever he and Obi-Wan weren’t having a disagreement. The old Jedi master always exuded that kind of calm that he always tried to instil into his Padawan but never quite achieved through their bond, and Anakin contributed his warm and cautiously open admiration and gratitude for his master, maybe even some affection when he was feeling bold. Now with Obi-Wan’s side closed it was only filled with Vader’s own scorn, with the contempt that his master’s betrayal had turned all the feelings he used to have for him into, like Obi-Wan’s heinous acts planted a poison that had corrupted all of his Padawan’s feelings into their current state. If Vader ever tried to touch their bond, if he ever came close, he could still feel the phantom pain of the limbs he no longer had, the ashes on his tongue as he screamed when the fires of Mustafar swallowed him alive, the hot volcanic sand scrubbing against his open wounds and his blistered skin while he tried to crawl to safety for what felt like ages….
But he would still not let the bond go. He never would. No matter how much it hurt, or maybe precisely because of that, he was never going to give it up. It was his, it was his when Obi-Wan was his only master and this link was the only way he could feel like he might mean more than that to the man he considered his father, and it was his now that it only contained Vader’s outrage at the man’s betrayal. In any case, even if the bond with Obi-Wan still remained no matter how frayed it had become, he hadn’t been the mysterious figure that he saw in his moment of utter despair. The boy in the pillar of light was far younger, and Vader would have recognized Obi-Wan anywhere and knew that wasn't him. So he moved on, finding his other surprisingly still active bond.
This one was of course Ahsoka. Up until Vader saw that brief vision of a fight between them during his resurrection attempt, he had been convinced that she was dead. The first days of the Empire were hectic, his transformation into Darth Vader and the tasks he was given by his master like constructing a Sith lightsaber kept him so busy he barely had time to contemplate where his wayward Padawan had gone after the siege of Mandalore for a long while, but he did go look for her once the chance arrived. All he found was a crashed Venator, with a cemetery of clones with helmets painted to imitate the markings on their commander’s face under it, and her lightsaber abandoned in the snow. While someone had to have survived in order to bury the corpses, finding her lightsaber convinced him she was amongst the bodies, for she would have never left her lightsaber behind. Not again, surely not after he gave them back to her, after he showed her his appreciation by keeping them in good condition and returning to her weapons that she shouldn't even be allowed to have as someone who abandoned the order.
Maybe he shouldn’t be that surprised that she had somehow survived and yet never even tried to look for him… maybe this was another case in which he was always more invested than the other person was into their relationship as well. It certainly felt that way near the end, when she suddenly reappeared and he was full of excitement at seeing her again after so long, while she simply wanted to talk business and go deal with Maul, barely paying him much attention. The fact that she left the Jedi order at all, that she abandoned him after he tried his best to clear her name and managed to do so, already felt like a slap in the face back in the day. Anakin had often wanted to leave the Jedi order, especially after marrying in secret, but he never did so, and besides his sense of duty, his own attachment to Obi-Wan and Ahsoka was a big reason why he couldn’t just leave. He belonged with them, Obi-Wan was like his father and Ahsoka like his sister, they were just as his as he was theirs….
Or so he had foolishly thought. For all that the Jedi claimed to be a big family, they couldn’t understand what such bonds actually meant, the devotion and loyalty that they required on both ends. Anakin did, he had a mother that loved him for the first years of his existence and who had been his only shelter from the harshness of a slaves life, he also had a wife whom he loved with all that he was and with whom he wanted to make his own family, he was a sun-dragon with a passionate heart that burned like a furnace and therefore he offered his own undying love and commitment to those he considered his without a second thought. The fact he never got the same level of devotion back chaffed, and even if he rationally understood that both Obi-Wan and Ahsoka had been raised in the temple and therefore could not be expected to be as intense as he was, it was still frustrating. Ahsoka was a bit better about that than Obi-Wan, for the most part, but she left him first and that still stung.
The bond between himself and Ahsoka had withered from disuse long before he ever Fell, its magnitude and his awareness of it increasingly reduced ever since her abandonment of the Jedi order, so much so that he hadn't noticed it wasn't actually broken until he came looking for it. She was indeed alive then, but still as distant as she became after leaving him… well, if what he saw was a vision of the future then they would meet again eventually. Maybe when they did so he could convince her to join him on the Dark side this time, she already rejected the Jedi ways, surely they didn’t need to be enemies. It was a promising idea… and one he would revisit when he found her again, but now he had more pressing matters to attend.
While Ahsoka was not the boy at the end of his vision, that his bond with her remained active and he hadn't noticed meant that there was a possibility that perhaps there could be some other bond connected to him that he also failed to notice… so he continued to search.
Very close to Ahsoka’s was the one he had to Rex, which was also presumed dead alongside her. It was also inert, a bond that had been one sided from the start due to the clone’s lack of Force sensibility was barely noticeable as it was anyway, but… it also seemed to be intact. Perhaps his old captain survived as well in that case? That would be good news for all his remaining clone troopers on the 501st if he ever found him, and it was comforting to know that perhaps he hadn't lost one of his most trusted soldiers. But again, while interesting and something he would have to put more focus into in the future, it was not what he was looking for.
He continued carefully combing through the treads that connected him to other people until he arrived at one he had never dared to look at closely since he was raised from the operating table that made him into what he was, for it would be far more painful to do so than to endure the days of surgery that he had just survived. A link that tied him to… to his unborn child. It barely had time to form, the baby wasn’t really conscious yet and therefore unable to sustain it on their end, but the mere idea of having his own child and how excited he was to be a father coupled with the few moments were he got to lay his hand on Padmé’s pregnant belly and feel a kick had been enough to establish it. After seeing the footage of Padmé’s funeral, which he forced himself to watch almost as a form of punishment, and seeing that she still looked pregnant… he grieved for that loss too, but he never looked for this burgeoning bond again. It would only result in feeling another broken bond anyway, a very painful one too since it was barely there to begin with, so he never bothered.
He hesitated to yank on it now, to feel the emptiness that waited for him at the other side of it like it did at the end of the one that connected to the child's mother, but… he was being throughout. So he took hold of it, afraid that just reaching for it with his filthy hands would make it dissolve as such a pure and frail thread came in contact with something so vile, and gave it a pull with resignation. He expected it to give away, to fall inert. Instead there was suddenly awareness at the other end of it, like he just woke someone up from a deep sleep.
Vader jolted, so shocked he leaned back in his seat with something close to a gasp. It almost made him cough, like he was suddenly drowning even though he should be unable to, surrounded by rich oxygen as he was. He felt like his breath got stolen away by what this could imply.
No… no, it couldn't be. He must be imagining it. It was not possible. His child died unborn, the child died along with Padmé when he killed her at Mustafar!
Unless… unless he hadn't killed her that day. She was alive when he let her go in order to fight against Obi-Wan, he had been certain of that, but being confronted with her corpse he thought he might have actually imagined it or that she died while he was too busy concentrating on his duel to notice. But if she hadn’t died immediately… if she died after giving birth, or after whoever took her had enough time to extract the child… if his child had somehow… survived….
That silhouette, the figure of a young man with a lightsaber that Vader glimpsed when he was past his event horizon, about to give up entirely… it could have easily been his child….
Padmé was so sure it would be a boy. She wanted to call him Luke, if it was.
Now with renewed purpose and concrete determination, Vader focused completely on the thin thread, sending a intrigued pulse through it. He got an equally inquiring and rather confused response, like the receiver wasn't even sure about what he just felt or why, much less how to properly respond to it. But it was a response, a conscious and very real response. There was someone on the other side of this bond, someone young, but strong and brilliant in the Force like a beautiful flaming star, all raw untamed power….
Luke. This was Luke Skywalker, son of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, who was impossibly alive. His son, his only son… he lived….
He felt the boy’s warmth brush at his presence curiously and repeatedly, like he was trying to discern what he was or gauge how massive he was. Vader’s cold and imposing presence, even at such a vast distance and when he was feeling remarkably tame instead of his usual stormy demeanour, had to be quite a thing to behold for a young boy who was unfamiliar with him. He attempted to decide whether he should say something, if he should even try when the child probably wouldn't be able to hear him or respond properly, how to explain their bond when it was still so weak and mostly one-sided, but the boy was faster than him.
“Why did you wake me up…?” Luke sent through their link, sounding so young and innocent that something within Vader ached. Actually it sounded more like a mumble, like his son’s mental voice was sluggish with sleep “I was dreaming something real nice…”
It must still be nighttime wherever his son was. Vader was surprised that the child could actually speak to him, or really that he was perceiving him at all…. Maybe it was because Vader was in deep meditation and Luke was almost asleep? They could be connecting on a very subconscious level for the boy, so much so that in the morning he might think Vader was just part of another dream.
“I did not mean to wake you, little one…” he said as apologetically as he could. And wasn’t it strange to be concerned for another being after spending so long disregarding other people’s feelings and doing as he pleased? But he hadn’t meant to disturb him and his evidently peaceful sleep “What were you dreaming about?”
“I was dreaming about flying!” he could almost picture the boy’s joyous smile, his entire presence filled with a bubbly excitement as an image of a starship was unintentionally sent through their bond “Flying a starship so fast that not even a shooting star could catch me!”
Vader smiled too, wide and open even if it pulled painfully at some of his scars. It was a fond smile that he hadn’t believed himself capable of anymore, a smile he used to have whenever he found Ahsoka trying to fix an engine or a droid in the same way he had taught her to. His son liked flying so much he dreamt about it, even that mental picture of a ship depicted a clone Z-95 Headhunter surprisingly accurately. A child after his own heart, then. Not surprising, Luke already had his father’s entire heart in his grasp if he really was who he believed him to be, and Vader couldn’t see how he wouldn’t by this point when this conversation was taking place at all.
“That sounds like a wonderful dream” Vader remarked “Now I feel doubly sorry to have interrupted it”
“It was great… I dreamed that my father was flying with me too…” the child muttered, making Vader startle a little.
“Do you dream about your father often?” he questioned as delicately as he could manage.
“All the time” Vader got the impression of a wistful sigh “I wish I knew him, but… he is dead. I can only meet him in dreams”
If the boy had been dreaming about his father when Vader first pulled at their bond, this open connection made even more sense. He had caught his son in a liminal space between sleep and wakefulness, and when the father he was dreaming up called out to him, Luke recognized him for who he was on some primal subconscious level. Until they met in reality, until they both knew who they were to each other, the bond wouldn’t properly snap into place as the unbreakable connection that it would become, but this vague perception was enough for their words to carry through it.
While he longed to reveal the full truth as soon as possible, to tell his son that his father wasn’t dead at all and he was speaking to him, this wasn’t the proper way to do so. He doubted Luke would remember much of this conversation once he was fully awake, it would be like trying to remember a dream, the regular kind of dreams that faded the second you left the sheets of your bed unlike the visions that Vader used to be haunted by. He wanted his son to remember the moment his father claimed him back with perfect clarity, he wanted Luke to know that he was a miracle that Vader could scarcely believe was real and that he wanted to revere as such. Still, it wouldn't hurt to test the waters a little and find some information….
“What do you know about your father?”
“Not much. His name was Anakin Skywalker. He used to be a slave, but he was freed after he won a race and left the planet. He was a pilot on a spice freighter, and he died around the time I was born” was the response he got, which only made Vader frown.
Apparently whoever was raising his son did know who his father actually was, if they knew he used to be a slave, which was a bit concerning on its own but… well, Luke should probably know that he was a freeborn son of a slave. That was very important knowledge for the child of anyone who was born a slave, and Vader wasn’t sure if he would have been brave enough to tell him that himself. But to tell Luke that his father was a pilot on a spice freighter? Where did such a blatant lie come from? It made him sound like some kind of scoundrel. Although the knowledge he used to be a Jedi knight and general might be a lot for a small child to be expected to keep secret if they were trying to hide him. No matter, he would correct all of his son’s misconceptions in time. It was something far more important to learn what his son felt about his absent father.
“It sounds like you still miss him a lot, Luke” he ventured, which let him feel an enormous amount of longing coming from the boy’s forlorn heart in response.
“I do… I’ve always wanted to be with him, for my father to come and take me away from all this sand and into the stars. It’s all I’ve ever dreamed, all I’ve ever wanted, it’s always been my father…” Luke confessed, the longing becoming more acute, a hunger for a father that mirrored Vader’s own desire for his son “My father, taking me in his arms and hugging me tight… being proud of me, loving me, wanting me… just seeing him once would be enough, just to know that he didn’t abandon me…”
Vader wanted to curl entirely around his son’s brilliant presence, but the limited range of their bond at the moment prevented him from doing so. He wanted to surround him with his cold presence, cover him with it like a heavy blanket and press up against him, hold him in his arms like the boy wanted and declare his eternal allegiance and unrelenting desire to keep him for the rest of time, make sure that his son knew that he would never be alone again because he was HIS, and a dead star-dragon such as he never would let go of his most precious treasure. Ever.
It was almost dizzying to realize that Luke wanted his father. His son wanted him. His son wanted his father, as any child would, and he was made to believe he was abandoned by him when that was the furthest thing from the truth. Vader couldn’t help the small displeased growl that escaped through both his throat and the dead star-dragon’s teeth at the notion, at the idea that Luke, his only son, was forced to be fatherless and be left wanting when Vader had been there ready to provide anything he could ever ask of him. That Vader himself had been left to wander the Galaxy as this shadow of his former self with nothing to care for when he had a son he could have been raising.
“T-that was a scary sound…” Luke whispered in a trembling tone, the fright in his voice making Vader instantly stop, pulling his ire under control.
His son should never sound so scared, much less for that fear to be of the one who would make certain nothing hurt him ever again. Of course, as it was, the boy didn’t know that yet. Luke didn’t know that his father’s beastly presence that he could barely perceive wanted to bring him underwing, that all the menacing sounds and unhinged fury he could unleash would always be directed at their enemies while he would be safe tucked against his father’s side.
“I must apologise once more, Luke… your sorrows merely reminded me of my own woes, and I was mad that we were both made to suffer when we should not have to” he hastily offered, since it was the truth anyway “I was not mad at you, and I did not mean to scare you. That is the last thing I want”
Controlling his temper had always been an issue for him, and last time he lost it with someone he cared for… he made a mistake that he would have to pay for and regret the rest of his life. He would not repeat it. It was inconceivable, his son was all that Vader had left, if he hurt him or scared him away like he did with Padmé…. He would be back to having nothing. He couldn’t go on being empty like that if Luke was real, although honestly Vader could almost believe himself delusional enough to be imagining this, but if he was not his son was the only person in the entire Galaxy that might actually want him. Even if the child changed his mind once he met him, Vader could not ignore this, the boy would finally chase away the emptiness that had turned his heart into a tomb… he was the only one that could, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, his one and only son with the love of his life….
“It’s fine, you feel… lonely?” his son said, interrupting his thoughts and making a frustrated noise, probably confused as to what he was even sensing from his father “I understand, I get lonely too, especially on a cold night like this… you could stay here with me for a while if it makes you feel better. We could be alone together”
The offer was entirely genuine and if this kept up the boy was going to kill him with kindness. His son was reaching back to him on pure instinct, perceiving his father’s soul-rendering loneliness and immediately offering him companionship. Perhaps part of him could feel that he belonged with him, that he and this cold presence that unknowingly was his father should be together, and wanted to keep him near… Vader certainly felt drawn to him like nothing else. He wanted more than to be barely able to perceive the warmth and Light that the boy emanated, he wanted to be able to behold him entirely, to take in all of the gentle and tender feelings that Luke felt for his father and make all of the boy’s sadness disappear along with his own by claiming him as his….
“Would that I could, my little one…” he admitted longingly “But not yet… I would rather spend time with you in person. I am coming for you, I will bring you with me to the stars, where you always belonged”
“You’re gonna… you’re gonna come for me?” Luke gasped. There was a note of hope in his voice, of anticipation and almost disbelief, as he likely had been expecting to hear those words his whole life.
“Of course, Luke… I promise I will be there soon. You have waited long enough, but your days of yearning are over, as are mine. I will be with you, as it was always meant to be” he purred with satisfaction, unable to hold back when he could feel the child’s equally intense yearning despite how faint their connection still was “It is our destiny to be together…”
He could see it now, he would claim his son, raise him into a capable young man that could help him kill his master at last, and one day they would rule the Galaxy as father and son. Their triumph was assured, they were the rightful rulers after all, Vader had always meant to give his family reign over the Galaxy and they were graced by the Force itself. They would spread peace and order through their thriving Empire, and they would be both adored and feared as one does a powerful god that could as easily bless you as trample you under his heel. It would be glorious.
“Our destiny…?” Luke repeated questioningly. Vader could feel his confusion at the grandeur with which Vader had referred to it, probably a bit too intense for such a young child to comprehend “You… you say that like we belong together… like… we are… connected, or something”
His son evidently had great instincts, but must be a bit unsure of himself since he hadn’t dared to use the word family, despite that being clearly what he must be feeling and Vader was implying despite his best efforts at subtlety. Which admittedly weren’t very good, but a sleepy child wasn’t too attentive either.
“You will understand once we are reunited. For now, go back to sleep, my child… ” he insisted, putting a bit of a Force suggestion into his words and sending Luke as much safety and reassurance as he could manage, blanketing him with his presence with as much fervour as their weak bond would allow.
He wished he could hold him in his arms and cradle him until he drifted off, tuck him into bed, do all the things parents often did when they put their children to sleep, but for now this would have to do. He could feel their bond wane again as the boy lost consciousness, his brilliant presence still warm but far more serene in his sleep. For all a moment all he could do was bask in it, even this dampened glimpse of the child he had greatly anticipated and thought lost forever so beautiful and so fulfilling that he almost felt bewildered. As if the notion that he hadn’t lost everything after all had suddenly unmoored him, since part of what created the foundation for his entire life in the Dark had vanished.
Actually, yes, that was exactly what just happened, because that was definitely his child. His son, Luke. He had a son! A son, just like Padmé always insisted they would have with her motherly intuition and of course she was right, his wife was always right about everything, he should have known she would be correct on this too. The boy would be… he would be seven now… no, he was seven now. He was seven, because he was alive!
But how could it be possible? Padmé was dead, Vader was absolutely certain of that even before he watched the funeral, and she did still look pregnant in it… which meant that… at some point between Mustafar and her arrival on Naboo someone stole his son, hid him away somewhere, and altered her body to make it seem like she was still with child before they buried her. It was repugnant to think that someone was willing to do such a thing to her after death, to defile and alter her body solely in the name of maintaining a lie… he was going to have to investigate that too, and make sure whoever was responsible met a suitable end for that crime.
More importantly, if his son lived, that meant that Vader definitely couldn’t have killed Padmé at Mustafar, because a child still in their mother's womb couldn't survive said mother’s death. The Emperor said that he killed her in his anger, and when Vader remembered that he had attacked her he took him at his word… he truly was a fool. How could he believe the words of such a notorious liar again? Vader should have known better! But at the time he was still growing used to the idea that a man he used to trust so implicitly turned out to be the Sith lord, that he had lied to him and in fact the entire Galaxy for years… he hadn’t yet internalised that Sidious always lied. But he should have at least suspected something! Palpatine hadn’t even been there! How could he have known what happened?! Vader’s senses had been right after all, she was still alive when the battle between him and Obi-Wan began.
Obi-Wan… could this whole ruse be Obi-Wan’s doing? Obi-Wan was there. He walked away while Vader burned, and left quite a while before the Emperor arrived. He was the only one who could have taken Padmé away that day. He wouldn't put it past him and Yoda, since apparently the grandmaster of the order also survived his battle with Sidious around the same time, to take the child of Anakin Skywalker and abscond with him. The son of the chosen one, a son that was probably as strong in the Force as his father if not more due to Vader’s diminished state after his grave injuries, one that they could try to mould him into the perfect Jedi knight that they failed to make the father….
Did they plan to use him to defeat his father in the future? To turn him against him as they did with his mother? Make him despise Vader and finish the job they were too cowardly and too weak to do themselves? Use Luke, like they always used Anakin when he was still under their care, for their benefit? Trick him into committing patricide without a care for their blood ties?
Vader began to seethe with rage at the notion. They would not take his son or said child’s loyalties from him! He was his father, the only one that his son should ever be devoted to was him, not the hypocritical and sanctimonious order that had stolen Luke from his real family! His son belonged to him, he was born from him and his wife, he was his flesh and blood, he was his, all his!
The Jedi only managed to hide the boy until now because Vader wasn’t looking for him, he would have never conceived that there was any son for him to seek, but that was over now. The Force must have given him that vision in order to lead him to his child, the Force itself decreed that they should be reunited! The Jedi stood no chance against the will of the Force, nor against him who had always been stronger than any of them, even before, when he had to restrain his own power and greed in order to fit among the regular Jedi. Now he had no reason to hold back, and if not for his broken body, he would be absolutely unstoppable. Vader wasn’t going to let his decaying health stand in his way on this matter though, he was going to retrieve his boy, he was going to take his son back, Luke would be his and if any Jedi stood in his way he would crush them and tear them to ribbons!
He growled again, this time letting loose as there was no child that could hear and be frightened by the low and dangerous sound that reverberated through the air and the Force ominously. For a moment he felt more dead star-dragon than man… his possessiveness and his need to retrieve his only family was igniting the fire he thought completely extinguished within him back to life, even if it was now cold like the Darkness that had consumed him. His entire presence was writhing and churning, roaring like the wild beast whose young were endangered that he was as Vader impatiently began to put his helmet back on and call for the Devastator, demanding they get ready to set off as soon as he came on board.
He hadn’t felt so alive in years, so resolute, so adamantly determined to take what was his and his alone back, to retrieve and hoard his son for himself, keep him away from all the thieves that had dared to try and deprive the dead star-dragon of his greatest treasure. He would not be denied and he would not be stopped, he was an infuriated monster about to start on a rampage should anyone impede him from recovering what was his. Luke, his son… he would be his. It would all be his, the Empire, the entire Galaxy, and once it was he would give it all to his child as the greatest gift he could manage. Vader’s destiny was his own, not the one the Jedi or the Sith had ever tried to make for him, he made his own fate and he was about to intertwine said destiny with the only one worthy of sharing the majesty he was now driven to obtain: his son, Luke Skywalker.