Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine

By The Secret History (Ziggy Sternenstaub)

“You are who you are when nobody's watching.” ― Stephen Fry

Part One: The Fallen

"They slept huddled together in the rank quilts in the dark and the cold. He held the boy close to him. So thin. My heart, he said. My heart." — Cormac McCarthy (The Road)

The mining platforms have shields.

This is the one fact that Vader cannot avoid, the truth that he is reminded of now that he has been forced to return to Mustafar. It is true he was only forced for a certain value of the word. No one explicitly told him that he must go to Mustafar, only that he must stay in one place and not leave. Given the delicacy of the situation, the choice of prison was his own, and of those individuals who would willfully and cruelly choose to isolate him on the mining planet, none knows of Vader’s connection to it. It would, he thinks, come as a surprise to such beings that Palpatine himself had not done the same. The nature of the relationship between master and apprentice was complex, nuanced, and not, even at the very end, one that Vader would characterize as having been entirely adversarial.

Palpatine had been equal parts impatient and horrified when Vader conveyed his intention to build a permanent personal retreat at the site of his most devastating defeat.

“What is the meaning of such foolishness, Vader?”

“Surely meditation on Mustafar can only produce an awe-inspiring well of darkness.”

Palpatine cast a doubtful yellow eye upon him. “There are limits even to the capacity of the Sith to repurpose trauma. You may find yourself regretting this…project.”

The emperor had done nothing to delay construction. While much of the former chancellor’s personality had been carefully crafted for public consumption, his teaching prerogative had been genuine. He had allowed his student to make his own mistakes and learn from them. Vader had found himself so pathetically grateful for the freedom that he had almost cancelled the project but, drunk on his newfound latitude to order the construction of such mammoth folly, he had powered through his hesitation.

His master had been correct, of course. The memories and sensations associated with Mustafar had been powerfully disturbing and more inclined to inspire depression and lassitude than Dark might. After his first, agonizing stay of ten standard days in the tower, which he had managed only out of stubborn pride, Vader had quietly avoided the place, perhaps visiting a few weeks every year. He had maintained the fortress only as a receptacle of his most powerful secrets and few, cherished physical possessions.

Now he lives in his folly. Going to his private quarters on Coruscant is not a possibility. The Imperial Palace was bombed last week, for one thing.

Standing on a balcony, Vader is mesmerized by the leap and twists of the liquid flame below the fortress’ platforms, balconies, and buttresses. Despite his unease, he has fallen into a ritual of lingering outside each night, gauntlets clasped to a railing. There he gazes down into the rivers of magma, where he imagines that he might smell his own cooking flesh, that ghost-memory of a scent that still wakes him screaming on those rare occasions when he falls into a true sleep. Everything is red behind his visor, but Mustafar’s fires glow with a feral threat that he still remembers with monstrous clarity. In those dreams, Vader always stops, poised on the riverbank, his body insulated from the fire in that moment before—prompted by the even greater fire in his blood—he had made the error that would change the rest of his life.

As a young man, Vader had been too angry to recognize the risk. Proclaiming his might to Kenobi and certain of his own righteousness, he had felt only the faintest shadow of the heat that would consume him when he fell onto the glistening black shale. Because the mining platforms had shields, it was impossible for the body to understand the explosive temperatures beyond the range of their protection. The platforms were intended for the exploration and harvesting of Mustafar’s rich natural resources. One person, surfing along the surface, could travel at moderately high speeds for upwards of two hours without coming to harm.

There had been, Vader understands now, no sane reason to ever leave the platform. He could have sped around the back and pursued his former master from another location. He could have adjourned the fight, left it for another time, let Kenobi flee while he recovered his equilibrium.

So many times he had sought to change the outcome of that day, in the wreckage of sleep that tormented him, in those fragments of dreams. He recreated the event in each one of them, sought the ocean of power in his blood in a frantic effort to reconstruct the past. If only, he might have, somehow, just for a moment…

It had never happened. The past is another country, and Mustafar is the manifestation of Vader’s ultimate powerlessness. Despite the millions of soldiers who had answered to his demands, he often feels like an animal, a captured Krayt Dragon pacing the cage. How magnificent the dragon is, he hears the murmurs of the hovering, awe-struck crowds, how beautiful in its own strange way. Yet it is the gawking crowd that stands on the outside and moves freely, that dares to poke the fur and teeth and claws through the bars with their long, sharp sticks.

Luke! 

Vader sends the word into the luminous red ether of Mustafar, howls it with all the agony and desire of that stopped zoo animal. He needs his son like a slave left wandering the Jundland Wastes needs water. Sometimes the masters did that, he remembers. Those cruel and wasteful creatures would lead a slave out into the desert for nothing more than sport or to be rid of a burden when the slave was too old or weak. The master would deactivate the slave’s chip and tell them that if they could get out alive that they would be free. Anakin had never heard of those poor, failing creatures surviving. Even among the slaves, there had not been a whisper of one success, and there were few creatures that thrived on mythology and tale-telling more than slaves.

Vader retreats from the balcony and into the polished expanse of his personal quarters. Not his bedroom, but his meditation chamber, with the pod set in the centre of the room like a sliced egg. Vader activates it, and the top half rises while the former Dark Lord removes his armour and helmet. He attaches the pod’s breathing apparatus to his mouth and nose before climbing inside.

“Luke,” Vader rasps. The thready whisper of his voice is hatefully weak, almost inaudible. “Luke, come to me.”

He does not send his voice beyond the planet, although he might have done that, and more. Astral projection, even partial physical manifestation, are among his abilities, but the danger is not to be underestimated. Vader’s weakened body threatens to fail even on good days; most of his strength in the Force is now dedicated to supporting flesh and bones which would have perished decades ago, were he less gifted. In the absence of that animating force, the chance of “the Chosen One” dying of heart failure is not insignificant.

Chosen by whom, he wonders, not for the first time. Not by the Jedi, certainly. By the Sith, or one Sith in particular, perhaps, but this had not been the belief of his Masters in the Order. Reluctantly, they had conceded his superior talent and mysterious importance, although they had never failed to remind him of his debt to their generosity.

“Luke,” Vader whispers, one last time.

The silence of his tower echoes back to him. There is no longer even a servant here to hear his ruined pleas. He has dismissed Vaneé, told him to go home. Vader tries not to think too hard on the knowledge that Vaneé is Nubian. The man has returned to that planet that midwifed both Padmé and Palpatine, those two very different yet oddly similar linchpins in Vader's destiny. Even now, Vaneé might be looking out over the Lake Country, recovering the shape of his mind and living his remaining years in some semblance of peace. Gradually, he would forget most of the time that he had spent in Vader’s thrall, and only vague shadows and murmured threats would remain to haunt his sleep, which would be natural, restful, and deep.

Vader tilts his eyes up to the dark and shadowed arches where carved Sith glyphs can be glimpsed, painted with chemicals that light up red for his artificial vision, and he pictures the delicately handsome features of Luke’s face.

There is a reason why Vader does not dare call for his child outside of Mustafar’s borders. 

“You fail to understand, Lord Vader. We do not want your money.”

Like a judge from her bench, Mon Mothma of Chandrilla stared down at the Sith who lay prone in his hospital bed. He had at least had sufficient warning to replace the mask over his exposed features, but Vader was still forced to twist his healing back and neck to look up at the woman. This insolent creature dared to raise herself above him when mere days before he would have squeezed the life from her without once touching her repulsive flesh. Even before the Senate had been disbanded, and Mothma had transitioned from occasional rabble-rouser to full-time revolutionary, the woman had irritated Vader. Her always-modulated tone and carefully crafted composure made his remaining skin itch. Although Vader could no longer make any claim to being an honest man, he never appeared to be anything other than what he was. Mothma’s pretense of virtue was contemptible, and it was only for the sake of Vader’s reclaimed child that he refrained from expressing his contempt in the clearest terms.

“There is little that you required more than money. You are attempting to overthrow the establishment. Such ambition requires capital.”

“We don’t need yours.”

A new voice. Vader shifted his gaze to the side without moving his head. He did not want Leia Organa to know that he was looking at her. He did not want to look at her. A fine pain shot through his chest each time he was forced to meet her furious eyes, which were lit with an inner fire that he recognized now as his own. Only the detailed readings of his visor informed him that the girl’s eyes were brown. They might have been blue. Despite coloration, she looked more like Anakin than Padme. He thought it might be why he had failed to recognize her as his daughter.

It could be so difficult to see oneself.

Vader folded his arms across his chest, seeking the reassurance of his own solidity. He was still surprised to be alive. Only sheer, absurd chance had saved his life on the Death Star. When he had seized his master in that last, fatal embrace, he had been been blinded by Palpatine’s lightning. Unable to see what lay before him, he had tripped over his own son, prone on the ground, and Palpatine had flown from his grip and into the very exhaust pit Vader had intended to make serve as his emperor’s grave.

Those few crucial moments away from Palpatine’s fatal sorceries had saved his life-support from failing entirely and given Luke the time necessary to recover and fly them both away from the battle station. Vader remembered stammering out the coordinates for the private medical facility before he lost consciousness, half-convinced that he was going to die anyway. He had awoken days later, and he still wasn’t certain if he was disappointed or relieved to be alive.

“We don’t need you,” Organa insisted when he failed to answer.

I don’t need you.

They both heard the words that she could not say. The condemnation was like a flame in her eyes, even if she could not give it voice. Vader had known the princess for many years. He remembered her white-skirted little form flitting through the Senate gardens, all chubby cheeks and rounded limbs. Bail Organa had begun bringing her to Coruscant before she was even ten years old, young enough not to have any kind of control over a native gift in in the Force, but also young enough to blend into the scenery, to be just one more mischievous child among many in the Imperial Gardens. The interlude with the Inquisitors had barely registered with Vader; the Organa princess had been mere bait for Kenobi, as far as he was concerned, and by the time Leia had attracted Vader’s personal attention, he was too accustomed to her presence to see anything more than the defiant, sharp-tongued junior politician.

It was an oversight that he had to cause to regret. She would have made a magnificent student; with that iron will that was just like a heavy cover on an unfathomably deep well of fury and resentment. That she had the discipline to equal his teachings, Vader did not doubt for a moment. She had played the roles of senator, spy, insurrectionist commander and planetary royalty simultaneously, unflinchingly. The pacifist daughter of Alderaan was a warrior from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. This was no child of Organa’s, that soft, pampered prince. The flame burned in Leia as it had in her mother when she defended Naboo from invasion, as it had in her father, when he had defended the Republic.

As it did in me. I am her father. Me.

It had been easy to keep regret at bay when he could believe that someone else, some Sith spirit with another name, had wrapped an invisible fist around his wife’s neck and squeezed it until she could no longer live. She had lived just long enough, he knew now, to deliver the lives of their children. There were many ways to die from what he had done, even if he had not held on long enough to see her slain. Blood clots, brain damage, a crushed esophagus-these were only the least fanciful outcomes. Pressing the dark power onto a living being always required a price to be exacted, either from the user or the victim. To have been betrayed by her own husband and felt her lifeforce suffocated by his violence would have been sufficient to fatally weaken even such as bright spirit as hers.

And there had always been something fragile in Padme, hadn’t there, Vader reflected. Some core of sensitivity and doubt that he had been drawn to possess. He hesitated to ascribe weakness to her, yet he knew with the heightened senses of a seasoned predator that she had been vulnerable to his possession. Padme had been sheltered, trained for active politics from an even earlier age than Organa’s adopted daughter. She had had little chance to grow as a person outside of that role.

Even when barely more than a boy, Anakin had known just exactly how to press her, to make the naïve former queen feel lonely and wanted so that she would surrender to his hungry advances. How horrified he had been to discover that his own mentor had used the same tactics on him. Not because he had been naïve enough to believe that Palpatine was entirely pure of heart, but because he hated to see that same weakness in himself that he had exploited in his wife.

Still prone on his bed, Vader swung his helmet in Leia Organa’s direction. He let her feel the weight of his gaze and saw that she did not flinch. Padme also would have felt his eyes, but something inside of her would have flinched, and he would have known and thrilled to it. This girl who was their daughter did not give an inch.

“If we had known that Commander Skywalker had intended to facilitate your recovery, we would have taken pains to prevent it.”

Mothma’s typically subdued delivery almost failed to deliver her meaning, but Vader had been tutored by the most subtle of masters and he understood the language of political subterfuge, of threats delivered with a mild countenance.

“Then it is fortunate that he did not inform you.”

I was of greater worth to him than your good opinion.

The so-called Chancellor of the New Republic narrowed her eyes down at him. She had hazel eyes, he recalled, and she had been plain even in her youth. Nothing at all like Amidala’s radiant, delicate beauty that had been followed so ardently by fashion publications and the paparazzi, who were usually more inclined to stalk young holovid stars than politicians.

“Nevertheless,” Mothma insisted. To his irritation, her inflection had barely changed. Only her heartrate had accelerated, perceptible to him through the Force and his visor’s numeric output.

“So,” Vader interjected. “If you will not have my money and you will not have me, what do you wish of me?”

“Commander Skywalker has petitioned on your behalf. He revealed certain…facts which make him reluctant to agree to your execution. This is unfortunate, but we have acquiesced to the commander’s request- as a reward of sorts. He is the man who brought down both the emperor and his heir, after all.”

Luke had physically done neither, and yet it was true that without him the Death Star would certainly have annihilated the forest moon and the rebel fleet. And though Vader had slain his master, he would never have done so without the primal need to save the life of his child.

“And so you will permit me to walk away from this ship a free man?”

Vader found the thought so unlikely, so ludicrous, that he was amused. Inappropriate, perhaps, but given the turn for the surreal his life had suddenly taken, he was inclined to find pleasure wherever he could. Watching the line between Mothma’s eyebrows deepen was its own kind of enjoyment.

“Hardly,” Princess Leia scoffed. She at least had no reason to conceal her contempt. Vader felt a deep flash of admiration warm his chest. There were not many people alive who could witness the destruction of their entire world, be made to participate in it, and not be ruined by the experience. The stalwart General Kenobi himself had fled into exile after the razing of the temple, as had the arrogant old Grandmaster himself. Yet here was Vader’s daughter, still fighting, still lit by fury. Even Luke was not so bold. In truth, Luke reminded Vader far more of Padme than of himself. He possessed that same fragile purity, the urge to self-sacrifice, to give and give of himself until there was nothing left.

As soon as Vader thought it, he knew that this fact of his son’s personality was true, and he feared for him. The fire in his chest turned from one of fierce pride to one of terror as he recalled the young man, curled on the floor of Palpatine’s makeshift throne room, caught in what certainly would have been his death-throws. Vader had seen others reduced to charred bones and ash by Palpatine’s lightnings, and that would have been Luke’s fate had he not intervened.

Vader had never feared his master’s lightning because he had never expected it to be turned on him. However cruel Palpatine had been—and certainly he had been among the cruelest of beings—he would not have risked his successor’s life by ruining the technology that allowed Vader to draw breath. Yet he had turned the fell energy on Vader’s son, and with lethal intent. The eerie silence of his fury had been a harbinger, and Vader thought that he should have known to act, to beg a boon of his emperor or throw himself in front of his child. Perhaps they might all have survived, and Vader would not now be so utterly adrift, forced each moment to confront the legacy that had been stolen from him without the buffer of the Dark Side to sooth his hurt and stoke his anger.

He looked at the stern faces aligned before him. These presumptuous Republicans would never permit him to leave freely. After the confrontation on the battle station, Luke had been clever enough to improvise with the Force and support his father’s damaged life support equipment while he brought Vader to help, but not clever enough to conceal his location from his newly found and beloved twin for more than a few days. One informed, Princess Leia had wasted no time in descending upon the private medical facility with a battery of troops and the former Senator Mothma in tow. The troops had stationed themselves around the clinic, while Mothma entered with Organa.

Vader sensed a certain proprietary motivation in the older woman, a desire to protect the younger, perhaps. Was she aware of the princess’s connection to him, he wondered, or did she only know of his son? It made little difference. Whatever she imagined that Organa might want from Vader was unlikely to be correct.

Vader reached out to the princess’s mind and saw her sense it, saw her recoil in fury.

“Don’t touch me,” Leia hissed.

“You are as a well-shielded as ever, Princess. You need not fear me.”

Vader heard the soothing note in his own voice, the stroke of a gentle hand over a child’s brow. His seared nasal passages that had smelt nothing in twenty-three years twitched at the imagined scent of an infant, something pure and soft and sweet. His arms ached to hold the mewling, needful creatures that had been stolen away from him, to experience the innocent fatherhood that had been stolen from him.

“I am not afraid of you,” Organa declared. Her chin tilted upwards exactly as it had when she had been brought to him on the Tantive IV. Her cheeks had been soft and rounded then, still like a child’s. Now her face was long and slim, her hair loose and heavy on her back, a shining-dark waterfall. This was no young girl, but a woman now.

Vader’s chest continued to rise and fall, mechanically, through the heavy ache that filled it. The stumps of his arms and legs burned more than usual, phantom limb pain made worse by longing and sorrow.

“What do you wish of me, then?”

He addressed the princess, his daughter, and ignored Mothma entirely. It was true that Organa was no longer frightened of what he might do to her body. That fear had been burned from her through overfamiliarity. They knew each other too well now. The only thing she feared was that he might reveal her true identity.

Vader met her eyes through the shield of his mask, through the innumerable wounds that separated them.

“I will not hurt you anymore, Princess.” He said it softly, openly, like the vow that it was.

"Your promises mean nothing to me," Leia scoffed. 

There was scorn there, and injury, a betrayal that he was certain she had no wish to feel. Betrayal meant that you had expected something different or felt that you had a right to it. To feel betrayed was to acknowledge their connection, to burn for some other world that might have been, one that she had foresworn. He had no doubt that she longed to be Organa’s daughter entirely.

When she said the word “father” she would never mean Anakin Skywalker.

Before his eyes, Leia’s shoulders stiffened and her back went up like soldier’s. She looked a commander, and every inch the ruler that she was meant to be.

But oh, such an empress his daughter would have made, Vader thought, and then— Lost worlds. Lost worlds.

Leia grimaced as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. It was impossible, but then hadn’t this girl always done the impossible?

“Here, Lord Vader,” she whispered down at him, with such poison in her voice, “is what you will do.”

"You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.”

― Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

Leave Luke alone.

The platforms have shields, and Darth Vader uses them. The heir to a crumbling empire stands on the lowest balcony of his fortress and feels the heat press against his face. It is perceptible through his helmet, but it does not burn; it does not monstrously transform him as it had in his youth. The fire lingers at a distance, like a gunfighter, trying to stare him down.

Leave Luke alone.

This is his daughter’s demand, and the price of Vader’s life. Leave Luke alone; conceal himself far from his son and discourage him from seeking his father’s company. Say nothing of the terms. Say nothing of Leia’s demand, and Luke would never know that his sister had betrayed him. Obey her demand, and perhaps Vader might win for himself the meagerest portion of her respect.

Conversely, fail to obey, contact Luke, with the knowledge that Leia will come for him, unflinchingly, to destroy him before the child that still loves him. The young woman’s strength in the Force may be insufficient to face Vader in combat, but Luke will never run from his sister, and the Alliance Council, and by proxy Leia, has tapes and holographs and written communiques, hard physical evidence of brutal acts military conquest and torture that Vader had committed in his emperor’s name. It is one thing to know that his father is a monster, Leia had insinuated, but another thing entirely for Luke to see those atrocities. Not cauterizing lightsabre cuts or remote torture droids, but blood and bone and viscera spread across prison floors after profound violations of body and mind. Vader can always count on Luke forgiving harm to his own person, but the question was if he could truly count on Luke forgiving what the boy would perceive as the torture and murder of innocents, whatever their political status.

Leia is not certain that Luke would forgive, and neither is Vader. It is a pretty trap his daughter has set, one that relies on logic and Vader’s own fear of rejection. It certainly would not have worked before Endor. The Dark Side of the Force had insulated him against the fear off loss. He felt nothing when he severed his own son’s hand. If the princess had threatened him with emotional loss and ruin then, he would have destroyed her. But everything is different now. Vader has abandoned and destroyed all that he had devoted himself to for the past quarter century. He has betrayed his empire. He has murdered his emperor. He quite literally has no one left but his son. Vader also has little doubt that this idealistic nonsense about not needing his money was the princess’ doing. Given how underfunded the Rebellion has always been, the other members of the so-called Alliance Ruling Council would have taken his money and even his personal assistance for the war effort. A few qualms of conscience would have been no match for desperate greed.

Leia will not extend his offer to her high command, Vader is sure. He knows with equal certainty that she has already cowed the milk-souled, too moral Mon Mothma with the ferocity of her hatred.

Leave Luke…alone.

Sparks blow up from the roiling magma, almost landing on Vader, almost touching him. What transformation would be left for him if the fire were to seize him? When he was young, Vader had thought this planet sufficiently merciless to excise every ghost of idealism and love from his flesh. He had imagined the compassion leaving him like some small, soft animal shaken in the jaws of a dog until the white coat ran dark with blood and the head flopped sullenly on the spine.

In the early days of the empire, Vader had been as lifeless as such a creature, and as cold and distant as a statue in a museum. No one could threaten him, nothing could touch him, because there had been nothing left for him to desire. He had followed his master’s will, and that had been enough.

Leave Luke.

The skies of Mustafar are always black. The surface is always the same, terrible red, a fire that Vader’s assisted vision can easily distinguish from other shades. When he had still been Sith, still the devoted bridegroom to blood and darkness in her glory, this place had been a test of his devotion, and he had passed the test every time. Now Vader is devoted to nothing. No longer Sith, yet certainly no Jedi.

He is only a mortal, and barely a man.

So few pieces of himself have been left human and real, Vader thinks, and yet the heart—the heart can still tremble in the breast.

A wave of magma thrusts against the tower with such ferocity that Vader almost believes it will break through the shielding. Perhaps he even wishes for it. He would never willingly destroy himself, but if he were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, he could not be blamed for losing the fight.

The wave recedes. Vader continues to stand. He clenches his gloved metal hands on the obsidian rail and squeezes until he feels it tremble under his false fingers. One more measure of pressure and it will crumble.

Leave Luke.

The former Sith turns abruptly away from the hellish vista. His long legs close the distance to the arched doorway, and his satin cape flares out behind him. Palpatine had always enjoyed watching his “performance” with the garment, he remembers.

Clever performance, my dear boy.

Vader’s head spins like a wheel on its axle, and a flash of new pain shoots through the bones and muscles of his neck. Pain is something he is so accustomed to that he often fails to notice its nuances and individual expressions, but the jolt of fear and longing that travelled through his body at the imagined sound of his master’s voice sends his hand shooting upwards to clutch at the place where his head meets his spine. He fumbles uselessly against the unyielding carapace of armour and helmet, and he is so disoriented that he swears in Huttese, a low-class habit that he had thought broken decades past.

Exhausted, Vader leans the crown of his helmet against the smooth inside wall of the tower. His arms land on either side of his eyes, and he pushes as hard as he can with hands and mind.

He is willing the Force to topple the whole tower into the blazing crimson sea.

The faces of his children pass through his mind’s eye, and the power fails to respond to a desire that he cannot fully realize. From the moment that he had learned of the continued existence of his offspring-first son and then daughter-he had lost possession of his life. Even his master had lost possession of him, who had once so utterly belonged to him, who had willingly declared Palpatine the master of him, of blood and bones and soul. His emperor had been free to do entirely as he pleased with Vader, and Vader had never once protested or wished it to be otherwise.

Until the security camera.

Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?

I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you!

Skywalker. A name that Vader had buried like a murderer digging a grave after midnight, only to find that the corpse still drew breath.

A sonorous chime bounces against the walls of the Mustafar fortress. In the marble silence, the ringing is so insistent that Vader perceives it as a foreign thing, a mystical rather than mechanical intrusion. It is, perhaps, there to herald the return of a great and terrible sorcerer of the past. Vader wonders if his master has heard him from within the abyss to which Vader had banished him. Vader's respirator struggles to keep up with the sudden acceleration of his heartrate.

The chime comes again, no more or less urgently than before. Vader startles when he recognizes it as the banal intervention of a comm-call. It has been so long since he has heard one. Weeks, perhaps months. How long has he been here? On the third chime, he wakes from his stupor and commands the fortress to redirect the call the nearest console. He arrives after the fifth ring and sees his son’s face. Luke’s eyes are a bit tired, and a new bruise has blackened his cheek. Vader feels his heart clench urgently in response to his child’s suffering. He despises the feeling, how his own mental well-being now depends upon his son’s wellness. He hates how subject to the whims of biology he has become.

He hates how much he loves this boy.

“Luke.”

“Father! Where are you? We were supposed to meet for training.”

Ah yes. He has forgotten—perhaps deliberately-- the promise he had made to his son, to meet in the mid-Rim for training and the pleasure of Luke’s company.

“An urgent matter required my attention.” He keeps it vague and tries to ignore the hurt that blooms in the youthful sapphire of his child’s eyes. It is a lie, of course. Nothing urgent requires his attention these days. In the beginning, thousands of officials and military officers had called every day, begging for his aide, begging him to take the throne. Even Mothma had called several times: brisk, business-like contact, checking that he was still in his place. Vader grew tired of the coms eventually and had changed all the codes. There are still several living individuals who know the location of the fortress, but none have dared to call on him in person. As for Mothma, Vader had forwarded the new codes in a written message and informed her that he would only communicate face-to-face with Leia. His daughter has yet to meet his challenge.

“Anything I can help with?” Luke rallies quickly, with the generosity that is so integral to his spirit.

“I think…no.”

This is when Vader is meant to discourage his son from calling by claiming that this urgent something still requires his full attention. Luke should occupy himself with whatever business he prefers, be it searching for lost Jedi, as he had suggested before their parting, or establishing some new folly of a government. Whenever Vader has reason to consider either of these things, he feels exhaustion press down on him like the palm of a massive hand. He is only forty-five Standards, but starting over is a prospect as arduous as rebuilding the Imperial Palace with his own hands. He wonders how his master had found the energy and desire to fulfill his vast ambitions when Palpatine had already reached the age at which most well-to-do humans in the Core began considering retirement. His master’s personal energy was unparallel in Vader’s experience, and he had often felt unequal to it. Vader does not believe that he will even live to see the sixty-six Standard Coruscanti Rotations that Palpatine had achieved before winning his throne.

He shifts in front of the comm unit and a jolt of agony runs down his spine and thighs. It is so much harder to ignore now that he has lost the Dark. Perhaps if he were not in constant pain, his scoured flesh both numbed and burning, he might be more motivated to scale the heights of ambition again. He would like to give more to his children than his wholly inadequate life. His son and daughter deserve the whole galaxy handed to them on a palladium disc.

“Father?” Luke is waving his gloved hand at the screen, and Vader suspects that he has been trying to get his attention for some time.

“Luke… I have a matter of some urgency to tend to. I will contact you when I am able.”

He quickly ends the call. Luke’s image winks away, but not before Vader sees his mouth open in protest. A new call begins only a moment later and it rings for a long time. While Vader does not answer, he fails to leave the console; his huge body remains bent over the controls while his muscles contract with new pains, until Luke at last stops. 

After, Vader wanders the tower, listening to the echoes of his footsteps. The heaviness of his tread, the noise and the shock that travel up his metal limbs until they reach his truncated flesh, is the only thing that convinces him he hasn’t fallen dead somewhere in this labyrinth. Perhaps his ghost continues to move out of mere habit. He imagines stumbling across his own corpse, that ruined vessel, for so long tethered to this world through countless surgeries and augmentations.

It is true that if he died here, there would be no one to find him. He has given Luke his new comm-code, but not the coordinates of his fortress, and even the most skilled slicer would be hard pressed to break through Vader’s custom firewall. No, should he died, Vader imagines that he would lie there for months that would turn to years, then centuries. Perhaps some intrepid explorer would stumble upon him eventually, drawn by rumours of strange noises and vengeful spirits. That is, should the mining shields last that long. If they fail, Vader’s dark tower will be reclaimed by the planet, his body consumed by magma and flames greedy for whatever they had not devoured in his youth.

By evening, he is sufficiently exhausted from his wandering that he feels able to sleep. Chained to his medical equipment, half upright on a bed surrounded by monitors, Vader is keenly aware of his dependencies and weaknesses. His medical droid sits in the corner, deactivated until he has need of it. He long ago wiped the machine of its personality files. It serves as the mere equipment that it is, free of the quirky pretense of consciousness that so many sentients find comforting in their mechanical servants. The droid is remotely linked to Vader’s own monitors and has been programmed to activate only if he is in distress.

Peering into the hollow visage of the droid, Vader considers disabling it. If he were to stop breathing in his sleep and no one were there to save him, it would not be suicide, he reasons, but mere fate. Has he not already lived more years than had been allotted him, sustained by an artifice of breath?

Luke and Leia’s faces pass though Vader’s mind again, and he squeezes his eyes shut. Like a true child of Tatooine, his scarred tear-ducts refuse to relinquish a scrap of moisture. Yet he feels the threat of it so keenly, it seems his scars must surrender to his desire for weeping.

The next time Luke calls, Vader recognizes the chime for what it is. He hurries to the com with the urgency of a father and imagines that he is some ordinary working man- a mechanic, perhaps, eager to welcome his grown child home. Luke is twenty-three, just the age when he might be finishing a university education or starting higher studies, had he grown up with the opportunities he was entitled to. He would have made a wonderful engineer. Perhaps he might still, Vader considers, if he could nudge his son in the right direction. He might drop a few discreet inquiries. The University of Corusca has a fantastic aerospace program, and Vader is familiar with the director.

“Father! I’ve found a Jedi artifact!”

Vader’s fantasy of an accomplished—and safe—career for his child falls apart like the house of cards that it is. There is a wild look in those blue eyes, a blinding joy that no engineering degree, however prestigious, could possible equal. The multi-faceted little box in Luke’s hand gleams in the blue holonet light like a cursed jewel. It is a Jedi Holocron, of course.

“Where did you get that?” Vader demands.

“On Dagobah, where Yoda lived. It was hidden inside the wall of his house. I still can’t believe that I was able to find it. It was like I knew it was there.”

Vader grimaces. “It is no surprise. Holocrons are teaching devices with a kind of rudimentary artificial awareness. They sense the nearness of Force users and emit a signal that we can detect.”

“Really?” Luke reexamines the object perched on his hand. “I don’t remember sensing anything.”

“While you lack sufficient finesse to deliberately trace the signal, I have no doubt that you were aware of it, and it of you.”

Luke smiles at the artifact; he appears as bright and eager as a young boy with a new toy starship. Vader’s chest performs the curious contraction to which he has so recently become accustomed. He wonders if his equipment is malfunctioning because he feels short of breath.

Impossible.

“You should not keep it.” He is so flustered that his suggestion emerges as a sharp bark.

His body misbehaves again, heart clenching, when Luke looks at him reproachfully. “There’s so much that I don’t know, so many things that I didn’t get a chance to learn before Ben and Yoda died. And you won’t teach me.”

A hint of frustration escapes Luke’s typically patient demeanour. Vader never explicitly said that he would not teach his son, but he had shied away from answering when Luke asked, before missing their arranged meeting. Luke had drawn the proper conclusion. Although fully trained in the disciplines of two Orders, Vader cannot pretend to embrace the narrow and judgmental aesthetic of the Jedi when he has long since abandoned their teachings. Nor can he pretend to be equal to the legacy of the Sith. He is the last living Lord of the Dark Order, but he will never take an apprentice, never pass down the teachings of his master. When he dies, the Sith will die, and Vader prefers that the Jedi die as well. As for Luke, he is no Jedi, certainly not in the old way. This is, Vader feels, a positive judgement of his son’s character, which is far too affectionate and forgiving for any cold and narrow-minded Knight.

“You need nothing the Holocron has to offer. You have already surpassed the merits of any Jedi.”

Luke laughs as if Vader has told a joke. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“I do not.”

Vader feels the miserable pit of depression opening for him again, but despite his reticence, his son draws him out, entangling him in another conversation about the Jedi Order. Although it is a subject of no interest to him, and one which carries with it a great deal of discomfort, he forces himself to answer Luke’s questions for no better reason than his child’s desire for answers.

“Will you come to me?”

Luke asks him as their conversation is drawing to a natural close. Vader flicks a glance at a nearby chronometer and is startled to see that they have been speaking for more than an hour. He cannot not recall a time within the last half-decade when he has conversed at such length, not even with Palpatine. There had perhaps been times when he listened to the emperor for an hour or more, but to speak, to smile under his shadowed cover, to come close to wanting to laugh…no, such a thing has not happened for sufficient years that he is unable to put a number to them.

“Father? I want you to show me how the cube works. Will you come? Or let me come to you? Give me your coordinates. I’ll come to you.”

Come with me!

How fiercely Luke had spoken those words on Endor. Fiercely, yet tenderly enough to stir Vader’s heart from within its ebony encasement. How Vader longs to say yes now and go to his son, his tender and sentimental child, but to break his word to the princess would have its own consequences, which he is not prepared to face. With a parent’s sudden, paralyzing devotion, he finds himself unable to choose between his twins. He loves them both, although they could hardly be more different. He wonders if this is how Padmé had felt while their children had grown within her, because the love swells each day like a parasite, a foreign body expanding inside of his own. The love did not come from the colour of the children’s hair or eyes or the swiftness and youth of their bodies, nor even from the cleverness of their minds. It is not the love for a spouse which demands that two people work to remain attractive and devoted just to sustain the bond between them.

No, this love is something far more elemental, a power as immutable as that Force that sustains life. Just just the Force, the love lives in his blood. It does not grow weaker with exertion. It will never spend itself with use. The mere knowledge of his children’s lives makes it grow stronger. Glancing at their faces and hearing their voices makes the love burn, as surely as the unseen power in his hand has stolen away the breaths of countless men and not a few women. Even his daughter’s scowl and suspicious eyes confirm his love for her, if only because they hurt him so. If Leia knew, Vader is certain that she would be pleased by how she pains him. That one, he thinks again, would make a magnificent Sith.

Dwelling on what has been denied him, Vader is suddenly tired, all his energy for speech leaving him, like the tide going out.

“Give me your coordinates,” Luke insists.

“I cannot.”

“But why?” Luke visibly reigns in his frustration. “Don’t you want to see me? Teach me? Even if you don’t want to teach me anything, we can at least meet. I miss you, Father.”

The plea in his voice is such that Vader longs to submit, but his dilemma remains. Frustration and near-rage flash through him. How easy it would be to reject the boy’s fragile need. Vader is no knight, not with all the blood on his hands. Opening himself to the Dark again would not even be a Fall. He has hardly clawed his way up to the pure and lofty heights, merely tethered himself a few feet from the floor of the abyss.

“I am otherwise occupied.”

Vader hears the snarl in his own voice and flips off the comm unit before he can see the hurt etched on his son’s face. He can hardly bear to wound the young man, and yet how Luke tries him, demands so much of him.

The Sith is alone with a blank screen, and the tower’s silence presses on him like heavy gravity. It slows his footsteps when he again takes to pacing the dozens of empty corridors, all of which had once served some purpose. A layer of ash has begun to cover everything, volcanic dust too fine for the shields. The particulate matter has always infiltrated the ducts and blown in from the narrow windows and balconies, only to be cleaned up by droids that Vader has now put into storage. He makes a note to activate a few just to take care of the mess, only to forget again when he arrives at the garage, where he usually keeps a few personal projects.

He has a custom TIE advanced parked here now; he has been working on its long-range hyperspace capabilities, increasing speed and decreasing fuel consumption. His efforts have been rewarded with a one-man craft of phenomenal quality, and he had been in the process of documenting his work not long before the disastrous defeat at Endor. He had been planning on publishing his findings; he keeps a paper-only identity for engineering work. There is a string of patents and innovations in spacecraft, atmospheric craft, droid mechanics, and cutting-edge medical prostheses attached to a name that has long been famous in certain quarters, although no one has ever seen the reclusive “Walker Jinn”.

He had begun publishing even while he had still gone by the name of Skywalker, with contacts provided by his mentor, the Supreme Chancellor. After the transition to the Empire, Vader had contemplated bringing his scientific research under the umbrella of his new identity. The recognition was owed to him, but something had stayed his hand.

Compassion, he realizes, for who would want to heal their body with the innovations of a murderer?

All pointless now, useless to continue the work. Vader circumnavigates the parked craft, running a gloved hand over the foils as he contemplates how easy it would be to simply get in and go to his son. Perhaps his daughter might not even know. If he were to explain the matter delicately enough, it is possible the boy will agree there is no need to tell her.

A laugh tries to escape Vader. It gets caught somewhere inside the machinery that sustains him and emerges as a burst of static. Fool idea. It is extremely unlikely that Luke would be able to keep such a secret for more than a few days.

The boy is not that kind.

Vader’s hands find their place on the computer he uses for blueprints and conceptual designs. He thinks of Luke’s ship, a neat little X-Wing, and begins working out ways to improve its function. It has shields already, but that doesn’t mean that Vader is happy with his child zipping around the stars with just a few thin centimetres of scrap metal between Luke and the ever-lasting void.

Thus engaged, hours pass, ticking relentlessly towards the close of another day. The darkness outside of the tower deepens when it is bereft of Mustafar’s faint sunlight, barely visible through a carbon-heavy atmosphere. Vader is not yet happy with his work, but he closes the file and leaves the garage. He thinks he might read a bit before sleeping. There is a paper on experimental hyperspace mechanics that has been on his to-do list for some time. That and then, to finish the day, perhaps one of his master’s favourites, a courtly novel written by a princess of the old Sith Empire, the story of a passionate love affair set against a backdrop of fierce intrigue and betrayal.

Palpatine used to read him passages from it, in social overtures disguised as lessons in Sith culture. That was years ago, before the loss of Alderaan, before he had seen that security tape. Yet even now, Vader cherishes the rise and fall of his mentor’s reading voice—the one constant of the last thirty-five years of his life. Dwelling on it, he is clasped by a sense memory of those high, cultured tones dropping into the rumbling baritone that Palpatine had always reserved for its greatest effect, soothing his apprentice into a peaceful pleasure.

It is a pleasure that Vader fails to achieve tonight. In his chambers, with only the quiscent 21-F for company, he seeks to replace the whisper of his own mind’s voice with the memory of his master’s, to no avail. The Lady Haibinai hurtles towards her predestined destruction in a story set some three thousand years in the past, but Vader finds that he has no thirst for the blood she will shed in the final act.

He has his own destruction to contend with, which seems equally inevitable.

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.              - Anne Sexton, The Starry Night

Vader closes the realbook. It had been a gift from his master in the first year of his Sith apprenticeship. The ancient novel is etched onto heavy, textured paper, render in stylized calligraphy and interspersed with full-page illustrations, key scenes from the story drawn in jewel-bright inks. As a Jedi, Anakin would never have been allowed to own such a beautiful object, and Palpatine had given it to him as an unspoken promise to provide for all of Vader’s needs, both those of the body and those of the mind. 

The failed Sith Lord caresses the thick ruby cover one last time before he sets the book on the bedside table and switches off the lights. Dreams come. A baby cries in the night and a young man murmurs, at once hushing and soothing the child. Vader hears the young man’s low laugh and finally recognizes his own voice, whole and robust, followed by an older man’s:

I am so pleased that you remembered the mining platforms have shields, Anakin.  

Still in the nightmare’s grip, Vader startles violently. The part of him that is self-aware wants to wake. It struggles against the grip of sleep, but his damaged body is so exhausted from the effort of continuing to live that he cannot force it to stir. At other times, it has refused to sleep, and he has begged for the paralysis that torments him now. 

When Vader finally wakes, hours later, he is shaking and feverish. The room sways and shimmers around him, and he knows that he is very ill. Reluctantly, he calls the activation code for the 21-F. The droid blinks on and immediately assesses his condition against his medical records. Because Vader had deactivated the personality applications, the droid does not fuss and scold as other med-units are apt to. It treats him in efficient silence, only speaking to convey its recommendations. It prescribes bedrest and gives medication for the fever, with a course of Bacta to follow later, before powering down at Vader’s command. 

Vader despises bedrest, but the tremendous effort of will and Force that had so often moved his body in the past refuses to come, and he is struck by a lassitude that sees him remain on his back for much of the day, recovering like a mortal man and too tired to even read, loathing his helplessness but too weak to fight it. 
Occasionally, the comm unit reminds him that life outside of his fortress still exists. Whenever he looks at the call sign, it is always Luke. Befuddled by illness, he forgets that he has changed his codes and wonders why no one else wants to talk to him. Surely there must be thousands, millions, of beings who still require the attention of Palpatine’s heir. Should he desire it, Vader might storm Coruscant tomorrow and claim the throne for himself with minimal opposition. Even the quarrelsome inner circle would recognize his claim, given the urgent need to stand united against the Rebel faction, which was proving itself far more troublesome than anyone had believed possible. 

Vader feels bizarrely hurt by the rejection of petty officials and self-absorbed military bureaucrats. He recalls his fanciful suspicion of his own death from the day before—or had it merely been a day? Perhaps it had already been weeks, years. Perhaps, he contemplates, no one has called because he truly is dead after all. 

The last and former Lord of the Sith casts his eyes around to search for confirmation of this eminently reasonable idea. There are no shadows lurking in the corners, yet the flames that leap just outside of his tower could not more perfectly mirror the rumoured fires of Hell. This bitter abandonment and accompanying purgatory of self-doubt must be the psychological torment of that eternal prison, twin to the physical agonies of immolation. When, then, had he perished? Mere months before, or in his youth, after that leap that only a young fool would have taken? Are his children, these new vessels of his torment, even real? If he died as a young man, then his children had still been in utero. Perhaps they had survived, after all, to visit their father in condemning dreams. Or it may be that his offspring had perished when Padmé Amidala had fallen. Perhaps their spirits exist now to torture him, appearing to him fully grown to best stock his regret for all that he has lost. 

Vader stumbles out of his bed and replaces his boots from where they sit slumped next to the bed. He stands up, only to catch himself on the bed’s metal frame when a wave of dizziness threatens to send him sprawling on the floor. He looks at the medical droid and contemplates summoning it again. The dark, empty eye sockets of the droid meet his fevered gaze, and it seems to Vader that the deactivated creature turns its head to track his movements. 

The Sith staggers back from it in precipitous terror. If he is truly dead, then this creature is nothing so harmless as a droid. It must be a ghoul, sent to stoke his fever. Now that he has determined the truth of his surroundings, calling upon the 21-F would be pure folly.

He stumbles from his bed and out of the room. The corridor is empty and cold, but Vader is in retreat from the 21-F creature, and he willingly chooses exposure over remaining with it. The heels of his boots skittering on the bare expanse of gleaming black marble create a sharp chorus of sound, like an entire squadron of Stormtroopers skipping down the hall in unison. 

Vader has no conscious destination in mind but is unsurprised to arrive at the room where Palpatine had stayed on those few occasions when he had deigned to visit his apprentice in his “vanity project,” as the emperor had inevitably referred to the Mustafar tower. Such visits had become exceeding rare in the past five years, dwindling to nothing in the last two, as both Palpatine’s health and restraint had declined. Yet some essence of Vader’s master lingers even now, as faint and potent as a whiff of aged perfume. 

Vader falls to his knees next to the bed. His gauntlets clutched onto the thick, jewel-green duvet. He tangles the fabric in his fingers and lowers the dome of his helmet to the weighted fabric. He wishes that he might press his nose into the scent of it. 

“Master? Can you hear me?”

His inquiry disturbs the silence of the tower. When he asks once more, he thinks that the resultant nothingness is one of anger. 

Vader fumbles under the covers, searching for some physical trace of the bed’s former occupant. No doubt the droids would have cleaned the room after Palpatine’s last visit, yet it had sometimes been his master’s habit to leave small tokens or puzzles for him. After the last visit, Vader had avoided searching out of fear of what he might find. 

His fingers find the catch in the mattress, a seal that can be opened to manually change the stuffing. He fishes about in the cavity of the bed, encountering only highest-quality natural materials. A little to the side then and…ah!

Vader inspects what he has found, devouring the treasure with his eyes. It is a man’s gold bracelet, forged in the form of a Dragon. The creature’s long, sleek body is curled into a circle, with folded wings and gemstone eyes. The stones are a deep garnet; one of them is cracked down the centre, shattered by some long-ago disaster. Vader recognizes the bracelet as Palpatine’s heirloom, a Sith relic claimed from the emperor’s own master, the infamous “Darth Plagueis the Wise”. Vader had often admired the jewelry, hinting at his desire to possess the bracelet which had been too large to fit Palpatine’s slim wrist. 

The Dragon is an ancient Sith symbol, Lord Vader, one of both hunger and violence, but also of sorcery and enchantment. The creature has been extinct since the last great conflict with the Jedi, when the Light-blinded hunted our familiars to extinction, and it serves now as a symbol of all that has been lost to us, but it also represents transformation. While the spirit of the Dragon can be a powerful ally, it is both treacherous and unpredictable.

With Palpatine’s remembered murmur in his ears, Vader pulls off his gauntlet. Beneath the black leather is a man’s white hand, whole and natural looking. He regards the limb with suspicion. Years ago, he had planned to replace the entirety of burned and lost skin with human-appearing synth-skin. In this way he might have walked in the world again as a man, his deformities nicely covered, with only his ruined lungs left to contend with. Vader had been certain that in time he might even find the solution to that most fundamental of problems, but all of his plans had gone disastrously wrong. While he had expended a great deal of time, money and effort in attempting to restore his lost body, Vader had ultimately found that it was much easier to make a limb look human that to believe that it is. He ultimately abandoned the project, leaving the burned natural skin on his own body and only using the artificial covering for his prosthetics. These he despises looking at, and even in his own quarters Vader usually keeps his false arms and legs covered. Too often when he looks upon the flawless synth-skin, he is irrationally yet undeniably certain that his real appendages have been eaten and replaced by shapeshifting, alien creatures which might turn on him if he does not bind them.

He braves the creatures now to slide the bracelet onto his wrist, where it fits perfectly. Is it coincidence, Vader wonders, or had his master known how smoothly it would slide onto his arm? What exactly had Palpatine’s intention been in leaving him the treasure—was it a mere whim, a gift, or a puzzle to test him? He is overcome by a sudden wave of shame and regret, wishing keenly that he had searched the mattress sooner, when Palpatine had still lived to explain the significance of the gift to him. He wonders if his master had believed that Vader had found it long ago and had not even had the common decency to acknowledge the gift. 

Vader slips his glove back on the hand to protect the bracelet. Despite the ancient insult to the giver, he feels in some way that the heirloom will act as a talisman to prevent the false skin from devouring what is left of him. Concealed under his armour, the Dragon will keep him safe from his own treacherous body.

Perhaps it might even guide him through the terror of his next undertaking. 

There are rituals that Palpatine had exposed him to over the course of Vader’s long apprenticeship, some more esoteric than he had ever expected to make use of. Though Vader has long come to believe that the story of “Darth Plagueis the Wise” had been the bait on the hook, and that his mentor had no means of unnaturally extending life, Palpatine had assured him that it was indeed possible for a Sith Lord to call upon spirits, the disembodied essences of those who had already passed beyond the veil. 

Vader recalls reacting with childish enthusiasm; he had wanted to enact the ritual immediately. There had been so many things he had wanted to say: to Padmé and to his mother, even to Qui-Gon Jinn, who had been so instrumental to the course of his destiny, however briefly he had been present in Anakin’s life. 

“Caution, my boy,” Palpatine murmured. He lifted one long, white finger in a gesture to mirror his warning.

“The dead can be useful, but they are not as we knew them. The transition to another world makes the spirit both more and less than it once was. The dead rarely speak whole truths. Whether by nature or design, they are often misleading, tricksome.. And should you think to call to your lovely wife, you should know that summoning the souls of the less Force-sensitive is a precarious endeavour at best. They can rarely be tethered for long and are often difficult to see and hear. I do not believe that you would be satisfied with the results.”

The young Sith apprentice had not heeded this warning. Even after the metamorphosis on Mustafar, there had still been some threads of recklessness in him, bright as the few copper strands that had once seeded Palpatine’s own grey and white hair. 

“I must try to reach her, Master.”

“And what will you say to her, my child? That you are sorry? And…are you?”

Such a question, with an answer wholly unsatisfying to any potential shade of his wife: I’m sorry that you’re dead, but you made me do it? I’m sorry that I had to kill you, but you were not listening to me? 

The truth, as Palpatine had not hesitated to point out, was that Vader would do the same thing again should the circumstances repeat themselves, and the once-Queen Amidala would not fail to act as she always had—with an outraged morality incompatible with Vader’s naked ambition. And as for Shmi, could any mother fail to express the deepest horror and sorrow at her son’s monstrous transformation?

Finally, Vader had been forced to concede that summoning any of his loved ones would only be the greatest folly. Save it for uncovering the secrets of their enemies, Palpatine had advised. Leave your wife and mother to their well-deserved rests. 

There had been another reason, too, that he had acquiesced, one perhaps more practical.

For there is always a cost to such a summoning, Palpatine had murmured, his eyes large in the midnight sanctuary of their tutelage. You must surrender some portion of your own life’s essence that the dead might use it to appear in the living realm. The greater the sacrifice of your energies, the longer the summoned spirit will remain. 

For this reason, the ritual must only be performed in the direst of need. 

Vader had asked what it meant to pay with one’s life energies. Would it be a temporary exhaustion, such as could be replenished with sleep? 

Palpatine had met him with an enigmatic smile and a finger clicking open a data file. Several detailed medical scans appeared, each several weeks apart and dating from the height of the Clone Wars. 

“Look,” Palpatine breathed. He tapped the screen. 
The space under the emperor’s finger showed the cellular breakdown of a man in his mid-sixties. The finger moved to the next scan. It had been dated three months later, yet the cellular breakdown aged the man to his early seventies. 

“That’s impossible!” The still-foreign crack and boom of Vader’s own amplified voice startled him, and he jumped. 

“Nevertheless…given the already fragile state of your health, my boy, I would recommend the process only when all other avenues have failed you.”

His need could not be more dire now, and given that he is certainly already dead, the process cannot not kill him. Still Vader despairs that the spirits of both the damned and the holy avoid him. They flit through his memory, trailing arias of love and condemnation, but refuse to materialize. 

And so he must force them to his side. 

With his goal in mind, Vader seeks the confines of his little-used physical library. Usually when he reads, it is from a datapad rather than a book, far more practical for a man who is rarely in one place for long. Yet there are texts here which he does not dare expose to the security risk of data transfer. Finally, hidden behind a compartment in his wall that not even Vanée had been privy to, is a small collection of paper realbooks, most of them hundreds of years old, and all handwritten.

These are the apprentice texts of his predecessors in the Sith Order. Now that Palpatine is dead by Vader’s own hand, he is also entitled to learn from the texts of the bygone masters. They too are concealed in a secret place, in Palpatine’s private quarters on Imperial Centre. The thought of retrieving them is tempting. Vader has no intention of claiming his Mastery, yet perhaps the books might be of use in an emergency. 

A new wave of feverish heat passes over Vader’s skin. He forgot to take the second dose of medication, and the fever has roared to new life. Then he remembers again that he is dead. The fever is not the result of some rogue microbe, but the first of the eternal punishments of Hell. Vader is dead, and there will be no more Sith Masters, no Apprentices. There is only one thing left to be done now, which may ease his own transition into the realm of all of those Sith who came before him. 

Vader selects his own apprentice text. The content progresses from a shaky, block-like hand, printed during the early days of his apprenticeship when he was still healing, to the smooth, bold cursive he adopted after he had successfully improved the fine motor functions of his prosthetic fingers. Vader flips through the fragile and elegant paper pages (each individual leaf is worth more than a week’s average salary for a Core worker) until he finds the description of the ritual, then carefully lays out the summoning circle, precisely as it had been revealed to him. Salt is required, which he had remembered and brought in abundance from a kitchen thankfully stocked before Vanée’s departure. Wax candles as well, easy enough to acquire, and the blood of an animal. There are no animals on Mustafar, and so for this he had needed to improvise, grabbing a few nerfs steaks from Vanée’s stores. He had used the heat from his lightsabre to melt the meat and release the necessary juices. With this  he paints glyphs in the ancient Sith language, placing them at carefully calculated points around the circle. He is pleased to see that even in his weakened state he manages to describe the circle almost perfectly, with no hint of overlapping points at the place where the end joins with the beginning. 

The work with the blood comes together in a less satisfactory fashion. The old fluid is watery and pale, nothing like the thick and viscous life stream that Palpatine had described. Vader gives up on drawing and takes to scraping the floor with the nerf blood, leaving ragged traces of red that look as if they have been inscribed with a failing stylus. 

When Vader finishes, he regards the results dubiously. He compares the images on the floor with the diagram his own hand had carefully rendered in the journal. The resemblance is not strong, but he recites the words from the book anyway, throwing all his desire to communicate with the departed dead into his voice. Already sepulcher with the vocabulator, Vader is satisfied to hear his timbre resonate more fiercely than ever. A rush of wind with no point of origin fills the library, stirring the salt on the ground. 

Nothing further happens. Vader stares at the handwritten journal with its forbidding diagrams. There is a picture he had sketched in the corner of some manner of hell-beast. He can’t remember if it’s an accurate depiction of something his master had described, or his own flight of artistic fancy. 

Abruptly, his fever recedes, and he is swept by a cool breeze of sanity that brings with it a pause, a chance to reconsider. He stares at the dried, flaky nerf blood on the floor and wonders why it is there. He is quite certain that the ritual is a fake, some joke of Sidious’, or even the oft-quoted “Plagueis the Wise”. His hand trembles around the book while he struggles against the desire to tear the priceless artifact into pieces. 

Anakin.

Vader whirls in a circle, his weighty cloak flapping around him with a sound like wind.

“Who dares?” he roars. 

Anakin. Heed me. 

Vader directs his frankly shocked stare on the arcane circle, where a ghostly white figure flickers. It holds the shape of a man for a moment, only to scatter into an amorphous collection of light.

“Obi-Wan?” Vader rasps. 

No. His teacher. 

The light takes form again, and he can see it: the shock of long, silvery hair that had once lain on Qui-Gon Jinn’s back, now lifted into a burning halo. The mystic’s eyes, always too passionate for a Jedi, too present, gaze forever into the distance, at something that Vader can neither see nor imagine. He feels a chill in his body that is neither fever nor health, but shock, and something close to terror. A garbled shout escapes his vocabulator, and Vader kicks the circle of salt, determined to banish what he might once have desired. 

The shining black surface of his boot stops just before it meets the smooth white grains. The spectre in the circle points a hand at him, extending one long digit right at Vader’s heart. He staggers back just before the echo of Qui-Gon Jinn blows away, replaced by a black cloud which surges and pulsates, as if it had consumed the Jedi Master and is now digesting him. 

Lord Vader…you have much to answer for. 

The voice is a spectral bass, amplified and unnatural, but that this is the voice of his master Vader does not doubt for a moment. He falls to his knees at once, bowing his head. The black storm flickers and vanishes, and Vader once again cannot see beyond the ordinary mortal confines of the library. 

“Master?” He looks around the room, desperately searching corners.

The black cloud returns in slow streaks, like exhaust from atmospheric craft. 

You circle is shoddy. The spectral voice is as critical as the living teacher he remembers. You must make a proper sacrifice. 

Vader examines his glyphs on the floor; the red-brown scratches resemble the fumbling of a child. Vader knows that Sidious is correct; he has shamed his teacher in this, and drawn random forces to himself with his error. 

If there is nothing else available, then you must give of yourself, Vader. The circle demands more. 

More than that, his master demands it. Vader knows what is required, but to give it is not only dangerous, but nearly impossible. He has so little flesh left to him, and to access it would require a breech in his protective medical suit. 

“How?” 

You must take the risk, my boy. 

Vader is disoriented by the terrible familiarity of the spectre, its voice so dry and amused, and the eyes, peering out of the storm, so keen and companionable. The younger Sith feels as he had conversing with Palpatine alone over a table of fresh-cut flowers. Since he had no longer been able share a meal or drink with his master, Palpatine had often offered him other opportunities for enjoyment. And though he could neither smell the bouquet, nor even see their proper colours, the mere shape of such bright, lovely young objects had on occasion imparted to him pleasure. 

Perhaps it is time to reciprocate. 

Slowly, Vader lets his hand drift to the controls of his helmet. Accessing the flesh of his neck and face is easier than his torso, and he can survive for short periods of time without the ventilator. If he dies…Vader hesitates. He is no longer sure why he is performing this ritual. Hadn’t he been sure that he had died? Had he or had he not? 

Just what is he hoping to accomplish here?

Vader! Lord Sidious hisses, and the dark, faceless cloud roils, impatient and furious. 

On command, Vader releases the concealed catches. His helmet opens with a hiss. Immediately Vader feels that he cannot catch his breath; the scorched lungs strain for sufficient fuel to power the burden of body. Still Vader does not forget his purpose. He takes the sharp blade (no ritual dagger, alas, but a kitchen knife) and carefully nicks his own throat before bending over the salt. Carnal red, bright as garnets, deep as the eyes of the snake wound around his wrist, drip into the salt crystals, turning them a vibrant pink.

Still kneeling, he turns his eyes up the circle, where Palpatine’s dark storm assumes a more perceptibly human form. 

Good… the emperor croons. Beautiful, Vader…

"Master.” Vader gasps, his voice a mere, strained whisper. “Tell me what I must do.”

Claim the Sith mantle. Claim the throne, the spectre responds at once. 

“I…cannot.”

Palpatine’s ghost flickers with unmistakable contempt.

It is what I chose you for. Chosen One, it cackles.

Vader flinches away from the bitter remnant of his past, the demands of people who had been unable to save themselves, yet expected a child they despised to do it for them. 

“I must know…what to do. Please!”

Then follow the Dragon, Anakin Skywalker. Palpatine's spirit flickers and contorts, as if the words are being physically pulled out of him. Follow the Dragon home.

“I don’t understand. Master!” Vader gasps and can say no more.

Gravely ill and dangerously weakened, it occurs to Vader that he has precious little blood to spare, and that if he keeps bleeding for even a few more seconds, face bared to air he cannot breathe, that he will likely die. At least with the pain in his throat and lungs, Vader is finally certain that he is not dead. He has not died, but his master indeed no longer lives, and this malicious revenant would thrill to see his treacherous apprentice join him in the abyss. 

He understands what Palpatine had meant when he said that the dead were not the same as the living. However much his master might have despised what Vader had done, he would have wanted his student to live if there were even the slightest chance that he might carry on the Sith tradition. And if the need were true, he would have taken profound pleasure in seeing Vader enact a fundamentally dark and twisted ritual. The creature that he had called to him, however, only desires Vader’s death, and all the better if he can trick him into doing the deed himself. 

With his weak natural vision already further blurring, Vader seals his helmet with shaking hands. His throat continues to bleed, but slowly; he has not sliced deeply enough for a mortal wound. The respirator takes up its task once more, as relentless as a heartbeat, but Vader has already been too long without its aid. He feels his fragile body falling, as heavily as a mighty tree on Endor’s moon. His only comfort comes when his armour meets the ground, scattering the salt in bloody clumps and breaking the ritual seal. 

A furious shriek splits the air. Having lost the salt circle, the fresh blood, and an active summoner, Palpatine’s malicious ghost has no choice but to dissipate in a burst of grey smoke and a wind that rips through the library, scattering datachips and shattering comm-screens. Vader’s own journal flies from his prone body, and priceless artifacts etched on paper take wing before fluttering back to the floor, where they lie, as still as their author. 

In the moment before Vader loses consciousness, he thinks that he hears someone calling him. He cannot hear the words, but the voice sounds loving and urgent, and Vader hopes that it is his mother. Perhaps Shmi might arrive like the Dragon of his master’s command, flying in at last to bring him home. 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.  —Robert Frost

“Father.”

It is this word, and only this word, that pierces the veil of darkness that has fallen across Vader’s consciousness. He has lost so many selves and so many ways of being. He is no longer child-prodigy, Jedi Padawan or Knight, Republic General, young Sith learner or powerful Lord, heir to a Galaxy. Bereft of that long string of past identities, he has only one remaining to him: Father. Yes, he is a father, and it was for this word that he must wake. But Vader resists, because he knows, too, the heartache that awaits him. His children are no tender younglings, but grown warriors.

He has lost more than his past. He has lost his present.

“Father, you must wake up. Please.”

More than half-dead after contacting his master’s malignant spectre, he had believed that Shmi Skywalker had manifested as a psychopomp, a kindly spirit to escort him into the worlds beyond worlds. Yet Vader lives, and it was not his mother that he had heard, but his son. Luke is loyal; he has come for his father through all obstacles and against all odds. Yet Vader’s soul sighs against the tremendous demand of his child: Live. He wishes to resist but no longer has the strength to try.

When Luke reaches into Vader’s cavernous spiritual interior, he does not fight the hands and mind that return him to the prison of his body. He opens eyelids that feel as heavy as lead and finds himself prone on his hospital bed. His helmet has been removed and replaced by a clear oxygen mask, and his medi-droid is bending over him, tending to wires and monitors. Vader stares at the droid; as if recalling a nightmare, he remembers thinking that it was a demon sent to torment him.

“You’re awake.” There is a rasp in Luke’s voice that betrays tears; his blue eyes, too, are suspiciously bright. Vader regards their crystal hue and is mesmerized. Even after dozens of surgeries, his own natural eyes, which he had elected to keep, remain weak from the fire they were exposed to, but he can see enough to know that Luke’s eyes are brighter, clearer than his own, like sapphires in the elegant setting of his son’s bones.

"I am awake," he confirms. “And you are…here.”

He has to stop speaking because even those few words tear at his throat. Too many years speaking through the vocabulator have weakened his vocal cords and made it difficult to project his voice beyond a whisper.

Luke seems to know what he means without further exposition. “I had a premonition that something might happen. I had the comm-code traced.”

“That…should not…be possible.”

A chuckle escapes his son. “Yeah, well, I know a guy.”

“Hm.”

Further speech is delayed when Vader gasps for breath. The oxygen mask sits over his face like a regulation field tent in a storm: enough to keep him alive and not much more.

Luke’s face draws closed, grave. “What happened, Father? The way I found you, you were almost dead. There was blood all over the floor, and strange… things. I didn’t see anyone else here, but it looked as though…were you attacked?”

Vader feels his lip draw up in a mirthless grin. “No.”

His son looks away from him, unwilling or unable to meet his eyes. He does not appear  surprised. It would be obvious to a soldier of even rudimentary experience that his injuries had been self-inflicted.

“What then? Tell me. You can talk to me, Father,” Luke coaxes.

Vader wonders about his Apprentice journal. Had Luke been too distracted to pick up the pages and examine the relics? It seems unlikely, yet perhaps his urgency had been sufficient to leave them on the ground where they lay. Vader’s legs twitch; he feels a restless desire to rise from his bed and collect the book before his son can see the details of the ritual.

“I do not remember clearly. I had a fever.”

“Yes, your droid told me he prescribed medication, but you didn’t take your second dose.”

“The fever was too strong. Everything was strange, distorted. I thought that…”

“Yes?”

“I thought that I was already dead. I was certain that I must have died with the emperor and had since descended to the underworld.”

Vader falls silent to observe the effect that his words have on his son. The young man has turned pale. There is something so genuine about the boy, the Sith thinks. Very little of what he does is for show. Even as a child, Anakin had known the value of a good act, but Luke is not acting. This sincerity is so powerful that it makes Vader feel guilty for the way he is misleading his son, covering up the worst of what he has done with the smallest part of the truth.

“That’s awful.”

Vader turns wistful eyes away from Luke. He carefully arranges his facial features into a position of torment. It is more challenging than it had been in his youth; too many years of wearing the mask had caused not only his voice to atrophy, but also his conscious control of his face. Yet Luke appears disinclined to dig any deeper. He takes his father’s hand and squeezes it, then pauses.

“What’s this?” He indicates the Dragon bracelet with its scarlet eyes, conspicuously perched on Vader’s wrist.

Vader stares at the jewelry as though it had appeared there without his permission; abruptly, he begins coughing, gasping for breath. He waves his hands through the air, urging the medi-droid to act. Luke is pushed to the side while the droid sets to work.

“I will have to replace the mask, my Lord.”

He hears the machine speak as if from a great distance. Genuinely exhausted, Vader manages to lift his fingers just enough to give assent. Before he allows himself to fall back into slumber, he sees the mask fitted to the collar. The LED display blinks to life and his vision turns once more brilliant red: as red as the eyes of the Dragon.

When Vader returns to sleep this time it is utterly dreamless, as slow and black as the bottom floor of an ocean, and when he wakes, he knows that many hours have passed. His skin feels wet, and he is alarmingly light; his suit has been stripped from him and his prosthetics removed before he was suspended in Bacta. Despite how accustomed he is to the treatment, necessary for preserving his remaining natural flesh and organs, Vader is furious with his droid.

No matter how many times he is submerged, the indignity never decreases. However ambivalent he may be toward his prostheses, the devices permit him to function. With the mechanics removed, not only is Vader immobile, but he is also assaulted by self-hatred. It is almost impossible to convince himself that he is still a human being. This limbless, disembodied torso reminds him of nothing more than a writhing grub, a pallid, disgusting creature that any sentient being would rightfully smear under their boot-heel.

Did Luke see him like this; Vader furiously wonders, and immediately begins to struggle against the walls of his tank. He can imagine no greater humiliation than his child witnessing the desecration of his body. Does he believe that this was the body that gave life to him? Luke must not believe that. Anakin had been many unfortunate things in his youth—foolish, credulous, and impetuous chief among them—but ugly had never been one of them, and Vader still thinks of his lost body with irresistible yearning, however often Palpatine may have chided him.

We are not this crude matter, Lord Vader.

In this, all of his masters were in agreement.

Vader still struggles inside the tank, too unfocused to summon the Force. After far too long, his droid appears to deactivate the device and begin the extraction process. The oxygen mask struggles to keep pace with his increased heartrate. Even after he is removed, suspended above his equipment, he trembles with cold and fury. The exterior showerheads wash off the excess solution before 21-F reattaches his helmet and mask, and then his legs and arms, the Dragon bracelet still on his wrist. 

Only after his full suit has been replaced does Vader allow his rage to materialize. His connection to the Dark is strong and steady for the first time since Endor, and he reaches out with an invisible hand to clench the impudent mass of chips and wires. The droid implodes at once, rapidly shrinking until it reaches the size of a credit chip, and then smaller still, almost invisible. Only then does Vader release the creature’s remains.

The miniscule scrap of metal drops to the floor with a shuddering clang that betrays its true weight. Vader strides across the floor and picks up the piece of metal with an effort. It is exactly as heavy as the droid had been. He levitates the tiny, dense sphere into the air, letting it hover in his psychic grip. Then, with a mental flick, he launches it across the room.

The tiny piece of super-compressed metal whips into the reinforced glass of the Bacta tank and, like a steel round shot from a pre-ion cannon, shatters it. Glass explodes across the room in every direction, only curving around Vader’s statuesque form before shredding much of his medical equipment. The sounds of utter destruction fill the air of the chamber. Vader sees his means of sustaining his life disappearing, but still he exults. The Sith raises his hateful synthetic arms above his head and clenches his fists, channeling the power that lives inside of him. He does not need to manipulate his body to use it, but there is something so viscerally satisfying about using its blunt biology as an instrument of the Force.

A rough knocking abruptly starts on his door, urgent thumps that refuse to die even when Vader ignores them. It is Luke, of course. Vader can hear when his son begins calling for him, his voice urgent and frightened. He thinks about ignoring it and pulling the whole damn room down on his own head, but the chance of the hallway ceiling collapsing on Luke is too great, and a breach in the tower would also admit the deadly gases and destructive heat of Mustafar, subjecting Luke to a fate very like Vader’s own, if he even survived.

“Father, open the door!”

Vader hovers in the space between two choices: life and death. If he opens the door, he will have to live, and live with Luke, who will expect more of his father than this turning of ghostly circles in his spectral tower. He would have to give of himself to his son, even if it meant disappointing him or even losing his love entirely, when Leia followed through on her threat.

But if he were to die, that would not be the end of his torment. He has witnessed that the dead continue to exist in some form, that consciousness does not die with the body. Vader has not made his peace with either the Dark or the Light, and he fears that his spirit might be forced to exist in some tormented state between both, lost forever along the river of his own error.

“Father!”

Vader falls to his knees and closes his eyes. He decides to do nothing and wait for the choice to make itself. If Luke forces the reinforced titanium door and does not rip away the half of the ceiling in the process, Vader will live. If Luke cannot, Vader will remain within. He has destroyed his intravenous nutrition, his droid, his Bacta tank, and his antibiotics. It will be a slow, terrible death, but it will be a death.

A few more furious bangs sound on the portal, probably made by his son’s prosthetic hand (and oh, what he had done to his child!), because the blows are heavy and resonant. Finally, the noise ceases. If Vader were able to hold his breath, he would do so. He wonders if Luke will simply leave, as so many have before him. He cannot decide if he wishes for that outcome or dreads it.

A subtle clicking noise lifts Vader’s head with involuntary curiosity. The door to the hospital wing hisses smoothly open, and his son steps inside. The smug expression on Luke’s face slides off like water when he beholds the devastation that his father has wrought.

“What happened here?” Luke gasps.

“A slight misunderstanding with my medidroid.”

“A slight misunderstanding? Where’s the droid?”

Vader rises smoothly to his feet. He knows that he appears casual and confident, and not at all like a man who had just been considering the pros and cons of transitioning to the next life. He strides to the other side of the room, grabbing his discarded cape along the way and fastening it to the chain at his throat. Its silken ripple warms him; the cape is an item of loveliness and elegance, and wearing it allows him to feel that he has reclaimed the smallest part of his own lost beauty.

Vader spots the tiny sphere that had been 21-F and levitates it back into his hand.

“Here is the droid,” he rumbles clinically.

Luke’s eyes pop. “What-how did you do that?”

“A simple application of Force. I am more curious to discover how you got into this room.”

“A simple application of a code-slicing stick programmed made by Lobot—this guy who worked for Lando Calrissian.”

Vader grimaces. “I have heard the name in certain circles. I take it that this same Lobot breached my comm security.”

“You got it. It’s nice to have friends, right?”

“Hm. And you came here expecting to need a slicing stick created by a professional?”

“Well, it is your super-secret hideout. Whatever made you build it on a planet covered in fire? That must have been some construction crew. And you have no idea how much trouble I even had landing.”

“In fact, I do have some idea,” Vader retorts, dry as old bone. He does not deign to comment on the construction crew, which had been entirely composed of droids and computerized heavy equipment.

“Be very careful, my son,” he adds, “the platforms have shields which keep out the gases and much of the heat, but step onto any of the banks or islands and you will burn up almost immediately.”

“Well…yeah.”

Why would I be that dumb? Luke does not voice the words, but he thinks them so strongly that Vader cannot help but hear. Why indeed, he reflects, with no small amount of bitterness. It seems that even a boy dumb enough to join the Rebel Alliance was not as dumb as Anakin Skywalker.

“It looks like you really ripped the place apart.” Luke turns a circle, taking in the full extent of the damage. “Is that a Bacta tank spread all over the floor?”

Vader’s muscles tense. He lets a few breaths go by, listening to the cycling of the respirator, before he can answer.

“You were not here when 21-F submerged me.”

“No, he kicked me out of your clinic as soon as you lost your breath. I thought,” his son hesitates, “I thought that you might want some privacy.”

Vader performs the only expression of mirth he is still capable of, a hacking laugh that sounds more like a burst of static. So. There had been no need for this outburst, this terror that Luke had been witness to the pitiful remnants of his father’s body. Both droid and son had worked to preserve his dignity. The destruction had been wrought for nothing: the loss of the complex programming of the medical droid, entirely customized to his needs over many years, and all the life-sustaining equipment—all lost to a violent, childish tantrum. Worst of all, the rage that had moved him flickers pitifully and spurts out, fallen victim to his confusion and chagrin.

A hot sensation of loss sweeps through Vader’s chest. He looks at the wall of the hospital wing—his self-inflicted prison—and knows that he must leave this place, and the tower that contains it. There is nothing for him now on Mustafar, if there ever was.

“Come with me, Luke.” Vader holds out his hand as he had on Cloud City, not even two years ago, yet a lifetime.

“Where, exactly?” The boy asks very carefully; it is likely Luke thinks his father is planning a bid for the throne.

There will be no more coups, Vader knows, with sudden, bone-deep certainty, no more cabals. He will neither work to undermine the Rebellion from within, nor throw himself into the succession, the bloodbath on half-ravaged Coruscant that threatens to erupt into all-out war, and likely will. His forty-sixth Standard is still half a year away and he lacks the energy, the all-consuming desire for power that, well into his ninth decade, had still crackled within Palpatine so strongly that it had at times been physically perceptible, the smell of ozone lingering long after the lighting had died.

Palpatine must be very disappointed, Vader thinks clinically. He looks down at his hand, extended to his child in an offer rife with feeling but empty of direction. He does not know what to do. In his helpless deathwish, he had hoped for some last command from his emperor, something to steer him now that he has been freed of all his masters.

At least he has not become so pathetic as to chain himself to a new commander, though he has no doubt there are plenty on Coruscant who would be willing to assume that role. For a moment he imagines how easy and familiar it would be to seek out one among the would-be rulers and offer his services. With the dedicated aid of a newly-made Sith Master, an ambitious bureaucrat might succeed in doing away with the upstart Rebel sympathizers who have been razing the capital.

He contemplates the idea and notes the creeping exhaustion that follows it. His muscles tremble within the confines of his armour, straining just to hold it up, and his head throbs. Even after the destruction of his body, lit aflame on the riverbank, Vader had found strength in the Dark. Even if he had longed to be healed, he had rarely felt the pain of his wounds. Battle and killing had always brought a rush of energy and power to him. Even thinking of such things had often been sufficient to motivate him, but the Force flickers now within him like a guttered flame.

“Father?” Luke asks.

What was it that his master’s shade had said to him, in those last moments when Vader’s will had pulled something real from the bitter ghost?

Follow the Dragon, Anakin Skywalker.

Vader had risked much to contact the emperor, and it is likely that he has paid for the dark ritual with premature aging and a further degeneration of his health, but Palpatine’s command had been opaque, useless. There are no more Dragons. Once the familiars and personal battle-chargers of the Sith sorcerers and nobles who had ruled the ancient Empire, the highly intelligent beasts had soared over the skies of the Sith system, their bodies as immense and powerful as the largest atmospheric craft. Many Dragons had bonded for life with their masters. Songs had been composed in honour of the faithful mounts. Epics had been written. But the Sith Dragons are gone now, all gone, hunted to extinction after the last Sith Wars, by Jedi who had claimed that the animals were Dark creatures.

“Father?” Luke prompts him urgently; he must have drifted off again, lost in bitter ruminations. “Where do you want to go?”

Follow the Dragon, Anakin Skywalker, the emperor had said. Not Vader. Anakin.

Vader had never seen a Dragon, but Anakin had. Not those flighted creatures of fell beauty, but something earth-bound and far less tame. Vader closes his eyes now to hear the shriek and bellow of the Krayt Dragon that had rung out over the dunes to reach the ears of a young boy standing at the border between city and sands.

“Home,” Vader says, and his voice is a slow rumble that would have been a whisper, were he capable of one.  

He sees nothing around him, neither hospital wing nor even son. After so many years, the hot winds of memory rise within his heart, and he yearns to return to that place he had forsworn. There is an older oath yet than the one he had made on his mother's grave: not to flee, but to return with his sword in hand and lead the slaves to their freedom. For the first time in many years, he recalls his boyhood dream and believes it is possible.

The past beckons Vader with a desert song, and at last he listens.

“My son, I want to go home.”

“For all of us there is a twilight zone between history and memory.” –Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire

Vader’s personal shuttle is Imperial-issue and, despite its many modifications, too provocative a choice in the post-Endor political climate. Likewise, both his TIE-advanced and Luke’s X-Wing are out of the question, and so they settle for an unmarked freighter that Vader has used in the past to transport sensitive equipment. It needs a refuel and a safety check, which will take some time, so when Luke mentions that he’s hungry Vader directs him to the kitchens to find whatever victuals Vanée may have left behind.

“I will tend to the ship while you satisfy yourself,” Vader says to Luke. He keeps his voice flat, almost indifferent, discouraging his son from detecting his anxiety. The fate of Vader's apprentice journal, which he had last seen scattered over the breadth of the library floor, nags for his attention more incessantly now that Vader is certain of departure.

“The kitchen is on the second level. It is small, as it was largely for the use of my attendant, as well as any…guests I might have entertained.”

Luke cracks a smile. “I guess you got a lot of those.”

“Ever so many.” He hears a sly hint of laughter in his own voice, the special pleasure of irony piercing the numbness that has gripped him since Endor. He almost regrets it; it is so much easier to feel nothing, but Luke’s peel of laughter is its own reward. It is too easy to picture those bright eyes in the face of a smiling young child, and his own hand, whole and human, ruffling the boy’s sun-bleached hair.

“Take the vertical lift and turn right when you exit. You will find the kitchen at the end of the hallway.”

He considers warning the boy not to explore the other rooms, but there is nothing too alarming in the kitchen corridor, and if Luke lingers now it is all to the good.

The failed Sith watches his son step into the elevator and resists the urge to lift his hand in farewell. Every time he sees his child feels like the last, but he is determined not to let Luke know. Still his fingers twitch at his side, and only stop twitching when the lift doors slide silently shut.

Immediately, Vader turns away and hurries from the hangar. Despite his lingering weakness, he pushes himself to reach the library and complete his task quickly enough that Luke will never suspect his absence. The library is far from the garage, but the horizontal lift transports him  across the immense base of the building, turning several times as it moves, and then to the other side, where he catches another lift to the top of the tower. All his shields must have been down for Luke to have found him here. The fortress is by no means easy to navigate; as a young Sith Apprentice, inspired by Palpatine’s mythic stories of dark labyrinths on Byss and Korriban, Vader had personally designed the building to be disorienting. There had still been some youthful joy in the project, Vader realizes, some spark of fun that his disabling encounter with Kenobi had not killed. But what the Jedi had failed to finish, the passage of time had done with efficiency, and he now regards the excess complexity of the tower with impatience.

When he arrives, Vader finds the library exactly as he had left it: fully dismantled, pieces of datachips and holoreaders blown everywhere, and the ruined ritual circle smeared across the floor like a uncleaned kitchen table. The scattered pages of his apprentice text are still there, apparently untouched by Luke, their cursive script and diagrams clear. Vader gathers them in his arms like a precious, living thing, and puts them back in order as he goes. He considers the completed pile and knows that he can’t possibly bring it with him; it’s far too bulky and conspicuous, and Luke would be sure to object. Nevertheless, throwing it away or leaving it here to rot is anathema to the Sith Lord who spent many years absorbing his master’s teachings.

At last he takes an unbroken data scanner from the wall and runs it rapidly over each page before replacing the physical book in its hidden compartment. He dithers over the other apprentice texts for a moment, trying to remember if there’s anything in them that he didn’t record in some form in his own journals. He considers the time—Luke must have reached the kitchen by now, and unless he is planning to cook a full meal, is probably already eating—but Vader might need something in the other books, some morsel he has forgotten. He scans all of them, and even working as quickly as possible it takes him nearly ten more minutes to store the entire collection in his datapad. He backs the whole thing up onto a datadisc, which is certainly a security risk, but necessary should something happen to the pad.

Once both are tucked into the pocket he keeps in the back of his suit, he regards the library uneasily. It would be better to destroy the entire collection now that he has what he needs; leaving it here risks discovery by other forces. But the collection has been kept by the Sith Order for more than one thousand years, and many of the techniques and histories described therein are older still. He is the sole caretaker of this knowledge now, as well as the physical artifacts it is contained in, and he refuses to make another hasty decision that he may come to regret. It is true that Palpatine’s entire collection of texts, as well as the more arcane and illuminating Sith holocrons, still exists somewhere deep under the fractured Imperial Palace, but their accessibility has been severely compromised, and Vader must now act as if his own collection is the only one remaining.

He leaves the remaining mess in the library and takes the lift back down and across to the garage. He is worried that he will find Luke already there and feels a burst of relief when he finds the space empty. Vader hastily starts the machine that lifts the freighter and begins moving it into place for fuelling and inspection. As he works, he contemplates what kind of excuse he can give his son for his lateness, should Luke ask. He decides to say that he wasn’t feeling well. It is not even a lie; the trip to the library and back has left him alarmingly light-headed. Despite the truth of this, the burden of deception weighs on him heavily, and the contents of his datapad equally burden his mind. He begins to doubt the necessity of bringing the Sith texts with him. Were Luke to discover those files, his son might well give up on him. The boy is all Vader has left in this world. He simply cannot risk it.

His hand creeps into the back of his cloak, where the datapad and the disc lie against the small of his back. He need only crush it in his bionic fist to reduce the texts to inaccessible, electronic waste. It is true that the originals are still in his library, but he has no time to make further copies. If he can summon the mental fortitude now to do just this one thing, his life could change for the better. He might open himself to the Light truly and instruct his son in the Jedi techniques that the child so desires. Even Leia might soften if she were to see him truly repent and take up the Knight’s mantle that he had cast off in his reckless youth.

A sudden flash of memory seizes him, and he sees a beautiful girl walking into a junk shop on Tatooine, asking if he’s a slave.

I’m a person and my name is Anakin! he had shot back, too resentful to be easy on her, although he was already half in love with her.

“Anakin,” he repeats now, tasting the name as he has not in a very long time. It is his; there is no denying that, and yet it isn’t. The name feels wrong, awkward, heavy on his tongue. But again he is no Darth Vader, no fearless and terrible Lord of the Sith. That too feels wrong. And so, for now, he remains only Vader, lingering in some empty country between the two men he has been.

He is sufficiently distracted by his quandary that he senses Luke only moments before the boy clears the doors.

Vader’s hand drops from the rectangular object wedged into his back pocket.

There will be time enough later, he assures himself, and knows it at once for false. Bitter knowledge of his own self and a flash of untamed premonition inform him that this had been his one chance to annihilate Darth Bane’s legacy. Like his master’s bracelet that sits concealed on Vader’s wrist, the Sith texts will travel with him.

Yes, Vader sees, a path has been discarded, and another, begun, but he does not yet know where it leads.

“Hi,” Luke says, giving a breathlessly casual wave. “Did you make much progress with the ship?”

Vader’s hands drop to the console; he shakes his head. “Perhaps you might assist me.”

Luke crosses the room at a swift pace. He appears to understand at once that Vader requires his support, and the former Dark Lord is too relieved to be humiliated. The boy has enough tact not to ask if he’s well when Vader’s hands so clearly tremble on the screen. Vader himself regards his fingers suspiciously, unable to parse how much of his own illness is genuine and how much is wilful deception. There has been too much of both in his life to know.

The deception, at least, serves its purpose. Luke helps put the freighter through its paces without asking why he was delayed. Once they have determined that the craft is space-worthy, they begin packing it with what they will need for the journey. Vader himself requires very little. He does not, cannot, change clothes, but he throws a very large brown cloak into the cabin for use as a disguise, as well his medical bed and what other equipment he can salvage from the clinic.  This is pitifully little; he recalls entrusting Vanée with ordering his supplies, but he does not even know where his aide had kept the extras. There are hundreds of rooms in the fortress and Vader has no time to search them. He curses his shortsightedness in not ordering a complete report from Vanée before his dismissal, and more so in not making another order himself. He will need a Bacta chamber, and most likely sooner than usual. He also has no desire to worry his son, and making an immediate detour to acquire medical equipment will do just that.

He does locate another medical droid before they leave, its processor visible in the central computer. It lacks the complex knowledge of its predecessor, but there will be plenty of time for programming on the ship. There is also a full supply of antibiotics and stimulants, since these things are necessary to keep Vader’s blighted natural flesh in motion, especially now that he cannot rely on the Dark to keep him going.

The last thing he puts into the freighter is the intravenous solution he uses in lieu of solid food. He keeps that in his personal quarters and, combined with what he finds on his old shuttle, he has enough to sustain himself for several months. He broods about what will happen after that. Medical technology on Tatooine has always been in short supply; it is unlikely he will find the kind of high-quality solution that his shattered body requires to sustain itself.

Like many other things, he will have to deal with this when the time comes.

Luke too loads whatever solid food is left in the fortress onto the freighter, including military space rations that he finds in Vader's shuttle, likely left behind by members of the 501st who had travelled with Vader in the past. That is fortunate, because it is best not to make any stops between Mustafar and Tatooine. Vader’s financial resources are vast, even with the fluctuating value of the Imperial Credit, but every stop means risking discovery. The galaxy at large might think him dead now, lost on the Death Star alongside the emperor, but should his survival become general knowledge, every political and military institution in the galaxy will want a piece of him.

They board the freighter soon after. Vader slips into the pilot’s seat and Luke effortlessly takes up his place as co-pilot. For a moment they are in harmony, working together to do something that they both love, and Vader feels a buzz of happiness fill his chest. This is what he had imagined those many years ago, when Padmé had told him that he was going to be a father.

Ani, something wonderful has happened.

He shivers; it is as if he can hear his wife’s voice in the cockpit with them. Impossible; Padmé had been minimally Force-sensitive, certainly not enough to manifest as a spirit independently. And yet he some fragment of her there with himself and his son; he feels her motherly pride as well as her protective fury, as strong as a storm. Whatever weakness he had sensed in her must have been utterly scourged by death.

Don’t hurt our children.

Like her daughter, she demands only one thing, but Vader is not certain that he can acquiesce. He is always hurting the ones he loves. When he looks at Luke, he sees the living young man that Padmé had carried and birthed, but he also sees the child never born, aborted by his own vengeful will in a climactic encounter that his visions had repeatedly predicted but never explained.

Recalling that awful clairvoyance now, Vader feels a panic as fresh as the one that had plagued him twenty-three years before. Despite the physical reality of his son sitting next to him, pressure builds in Vader’s chest, and his hands shake on the ship’s controls as they had in the hangar.

“Father?” Luke murmurs next to him. The boy is eerily prescient of Vader’s feelings.

“I am well,” Vader answers. He steadies his hands by meditating on the nerve impulses from the stumps of his arms. Responding to his surer touch, the ship rises higher. At the same time Mustafar seems to sink lower, rapidly shrinking under Vader’s intent gaze. This may be the last time he ever sees the world that had so wounded him, and he watches it as rapaciously as a lover. Kenobi used to tell him that he hung onto suffering as jealously as one, as though misery might make him happy.

Perhaps that is true, but only because his experience of happiness has always been so limited that it is easier to find enjoyment in pain. If he could speak with himself at twenty-three years, Vader has no doubt that young man would swear on all that is holy that he desired only to live with Padmé and raise their children, surrounded by the peace and beauty of the Naboo Lake Country. And it would not be a lie, Vader knows, but it would also not be the truth. For had he not embraced the panic of those visions with a familiarity that was close to relief? Had he not followed the downward spiral of those last few disastrous days of the Republic as eagerly as a hunter on the trail of life-sustaining game?

Anakin, you’re going down a path I can’t follow.

In the ship, in the present, Vader and Luke ease out of orbit. Vader turns his eyes away from Mustafar, and it is not Padmé's voice he hears, but the weary, gentle warning of his mother.

Don’t look back.

The ethereal light of hyperspace flickers outside of the ship’s front viewport. Vader tracks the dimension’s ebb and flow with idle passes of his eyes. He can’t see the blue colour through his visor, but he knows that it is there, and even the lightest shade of red that he perceives in the helmet—a delicate rose pink—is soothing. He contemplates re-calibrating his helmet for shades of blue instead of red. The red is part of a system designed to shade his eyes from harmful rays, even to promote healing, and it has not bothered him in many years, but he suspects that with a bit of thought he might be able to redesign the mask, even change its dangerously familiar iconography to something more anonymous. It is an idea that it both attractive and terrifying. For almost a quarter century, he has acted as his master's living homage to Sith history, and he is no longer sure of how to be anything else.

Hyperspace roils again in front of him, and Vader discards notions of redesign to picture himself floating through the infinite light, cradled by a space that stretches on to eternity. Out there, there is nothing that can harm him. He could swim through it as he had his first river, days after the Battle of Theed. Just before the Jedi had returned to Coruscant, Padmé, disguised again as a handmaiden, had taken Anakin out into the mountains.

“I’m sure you’re going to need to know how to swim, Anakin.”

“Obi-Wan said I’ll learn in the Temple pool.”

Padmé had laughed, a light trill that sounded just like the kind of bone pennywhistles the slaves played in the desert. Anakin had not often been allowed to attend such clandestine festivities, which always took place long after the suns slipped under the horizon, but still he remembered the musicians playing, their hands and mouths making sweet music, while slave dancers leapt around fires with such furious joy that it was as if they had forgotten they were not free.

“Learning in a river is nothing like swimming in a pool,” Padmé said. “The water is cold and rough and fresh. It moves swiftly, and coming down from a mountain glacier, you can drink it straight from the river. Come on, you’ll love it.”

Heedless of the barely concealed bodyguards who stood within the trees, Padmé discarded first her long, purple and yellow robe, and then the orange lace veil trailing down from her head, leaving her lustrous brown hair exposed. Her face turned up to the sunlight glimmering through the mountain pines, and shadows danced across the perfect expanse of her skin, bare expect for the long navy bathing costume that hugged her from neck to knee.

Anakin stared at her with naked admiration. He had never met anyone like this girl.

“Come on, now!” Padmé called. She raced for the water with an eagerness that betrayed her own youth. When she stepped off the rocks into the icy stream, she laughed and splashed water into the air. Anakin smiled and edged to the water, slowly shrugging off his tunic to reveal his new swimsuit. A gift from Padmé, it was sky blue, the first brightly-coloured piece of clothing he had ever owned, and he was very proud of it.

Anakin put one foot on the rocks and shimmied down a bit.

“This way?” he asked.

Padmé reached out her hand and clasped Anakin’s smaller one. “Right here.”

She pulled him into the river.

Vader starts in his seat, as if he had met the same shock of water these many years later. He hears a tinny electronic voice close by and turns to see Luke sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, scrolling through a datapad and smiling.

“Catching up on my messages,” Luke offers before depressing the next one.

Princess Leia’s voice emerges from the speaker.

“Luke, you need to come back. We' ll soon have contacts on the ground in the Core. Within half a year we can have a real shot at the capital. You can search for Jedi remnants later; we need you now. I need you. Contact me directly for coordinates.”

Vader stiffens. “Do not contact her,” he orders.

Luke’s pale brown eyebrows extend in a surprised arch. “We’re in hyperspace. I can’t exactly send back now.”

“I am aware of that,” Vader volleys back irritably. “But I do not believe that your sister will support your intention to accompany me to Tatooine.”

Luke smiles, and this time it is a fond, gentle lift of his lip, something sweet. “I guess not.”

It is an agreement only with Vader’s statement, not with his command, and the Sith scrambles for something more to say. He needs an enticement, not an order, because the boy is not one of his troops and has no real reason to listen outside of personal loyalty.

Vader picks something out of the air, working on instinct alone. “You wouldn’t want the girl to think less of you.”

Luke’s hands still on his datapad; his body quiets. There is something there, something personal, and this time Vader does not resist the temptation to breach the boy’s thoughts. He does it stealthily, with his considerable training and experience. Despite the boy’s raw talent, Luke’s knowledge of technique is sorely lacking, and he notices nothing. Vader reaches into his most vivid memories, replaying now in that moment of vulnerability, and sees the boy, lying in a hospital bed after some injury, recovering. Next to him, the fire-tempered queen of Alderaan’s dust argues with a disreputable character—Solo, Vader realizes. The words are indistinct because Luke does not remember them clearly enough, except for the last:

“I guess you don’t know much about women.”

Leia bends over Luke and kisses him, ardently, not the kiss of a sister, but of a lover. It is half-revenge, but the passion is real, and Luke responds with enthusiasm and real desire.

Vader withdraws as the boy buries the memory deep, covering it with shame and abstinence. His children had not known they were of the same blood, when first they came together. Kenobi had failed to reveal this fact, even knowing that they must be drawn to one another. The boy, especially, would have been enchanted by the Organa girl’s sophistication and beauty, and he had fallen for her as hard as Anakin had for a long ago child-queen.

That fool, Vader curses Kenobi. But he can make use of this. It is clear to him that while Luke has surrendered to his rival and consigned the princess to Solo’s care, the adoration that burns within the boy is not of the brotherly kind. Luke denies it, refuses to look at it, but he loves the princess as he has never loved another.

“She is an impressive young woman,” Vader continues smoothly, while the boy broods and dwells on his shame. “While Kenobi and Organa’s conspiracy was despicable, your sister has benefited from their choices. She is well-educated, powerful and supremely confident, a senator and leader in her own right by the time she was eighteen years old. And she is beautiful.”

He pauses and waits for the boy.

“Yes,” Luke says at last, softly. “She’s amazing.”

“Indeed. She does her family credit. Both of her families,” Vader stresses, just in case Luke has forgotten what he is referring to. A flash of anxiety from the boy assures him he has not.

“But she has Solo to help her now. She doesn’t need you.”

The burn in Luke’s heart grows stronger, and Vader savours his victory for just a moment before closing the trap.

“Not now. You can join her later… when we have completed our own mission.”

Luke stares out into the blue expanse as though it might give him answers. Vader knows all too well that it will not, and the boy is too afraid of his own feelings to defy Vader’s words. Yes, later, Luke is telling himself, after the mission.

And who knows how long this mission will take. And perhaps after this one there will be another, on another planet afflicted with slavery. It may be years before Vader’s children see each other again.

Unbidden, Vader’s vow to his daughter returns, another Dragon in his memory:

“I will not hurt you anymore, Princess.”

Well. What is one more broken promise among a thousand.

At last, Luke nods and pushes the datapad away.

In the ship’s night, Vader paces, unable to sleep. He has his medical bed, but no Bacta tank, and he aches powerfully every time he tries to lie down. His fragile skull feels like an egg rolling against the sheets, and he repeatedly pictures it breaking open. The image does as much to keep him awake as the pains in his body. He shifts in the bed, discomfited by the tubes of the ventilator and afflicted with twin agonies of physical and intellectual pain, as well the restless boredom that never quite leaves him. His blurry gaze catches on the indistinct form of the replacement droid parked on the far side of his cabin. Vader triggers the mechanism to replace his helmet and hauls himself from the bed, determined to make use of his time.

In a moment, he has the back of the droid’s head open. Tinkering with its processor, refining it for his need, imparts the slightest sense of contentment and takes the edge off his fury and depression. The ship is nearly stable under him as it hurtles relentlessly through the dimension that allows them to shave centuries off the journey between systems. Without the hyperdrive, he never would have met Padmé. They would have lived and died without coming within a billion kilometres of each other. As it was, they had always been from different worlds.

Vader frowns over his work. He has been thinking too much of his wife these last days, digging at ancient wounds every time Luke’s expression mirrors the woman who had been his mother, every time he says something that Vader can easily imagine coming from her mouth.

The droid buzzes to life under Vader’s hands. Its movements are smooth and unhurried, efficient.

“How many I serve, Master?” it inquires.

“You will refer to me as “my Lord.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Satisfied, Vader begins to impart the necessary knowledge of his condition. The droid’s extensive medical library cross-references with his exposition and, together with the machine, Vader determines a course of care for his time on the ship. When the droid protests that Vader’s condition is sever and life-threatening, Vader goes back into the processor to remove some of its excessive personality, as he had done with the old droid.

His condition is always severe and life-threatening. If he listens to the droids, he'll spend the rest of his life in a Bacta tank.

It is nearing ship’s morning when Vader finally finishes his work. He powers down the droid but is still not tired. Pacing from one end of the three-metre captain's cabin to the other end, Vader takes the datapad from his back pocket and loads the most recent reports from INN. He had failed to keep abreast of the Empire’s situation during his period of active illness, and he is distressed to see the government he has sacrificed so much for is in an egregious state.

In lieu of throwing their resources behind a single candidate for the throne, governors are claiming their sectors as personal fiefdoms, and defending them with mercenary troops. Adjacent governors are making tries for the lands of their fellows, sparking lesser wars in multiple systems. On Corscant, the people who had rioted in the capital and destroyed part of the palace had turned out not to be real rebel troopers, but disaffected Coruscanti from the lower levels, seizing the chance to inflict some damage on the wealthy upper city.

That, Vader notes, explains his daughter's comment that they “will soon have contacts on the ground”—clearly there are people interested in the Alliance cause, but they have not managed to make contact yet, or are perhaps too volatile to organize themselves for the effort.

Most of the rioters have since been put down, but periodic outbreaks of unrest continue to plague Imperial City, aided by the fact that there are no fewer than ten prospective emperors vying for leadership of the galaxy. Mostly the usual suspects--Palpatine’s inner circle of moffs, ministers and old conspirators--but there are a few surprising faces, including, Vader sees with raised eyebrows, Queen Apilana of Naboo, who is proclaiming herself to be Palpatine’s “spiritual and cultural successor.”

His master at least would have been amused by that. He had supported Apilana’s repeated bids for the Nubian throne, delighted to see his homeplanet with an “empress” of its own. So yes, he would have laughed and praised the woman for all of five minutes before ordering Vader to crush every one of the upstart claimants to the Sith legacy, Apilana included.

For a moment, Vader permits himself to imagine taking the throne that had been promised him. He sees the galaxy laid out before him like a feast, the reward for his unspeakable suffering, for all that he has sacrificed: body, family, some might say his very soul. As emperor he would be rewarded in equal measure for what he had lost, and the vistas of his ownership would be almost as endless as the stars themselves, for no matter how far he travelled, everything he touched would be his. No longer would he be “lord,” as delicious as that title had been to a boy born into devastating penury, but majesty.

He would be “Your Majesty,” and each act of his rule would be burned into the annals of history, pages catching fire at the breath of his name.

Very slowly, Vader replaces the datapad at the small of his back. A rush of exhaustion claims his limbs while a glance at the chrono tells him that he has two hours until he is due at the helm again. He will need every moment of those two hours to sustain himself.

The mechanism above the bed removes his helmet again, and Vader is asleep almost immediately—but in that instant before the blackness swallows him, he once more sees that grotesque vision of his skull cracking, and the redness of his brains—his consciousness, the whole of his physical being, his past and his future—spilling over the white sheets in a slow, sanguinary torrent.

And I know a father

Who had a son

He longed to tell him all the reasons

For the things he’d done

He came a long way

Just to explain

He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping

Then he turned around and headed home again

—Paul Simon, Slip Slidin’ Away

When they finally drop from hyperspace, Tatooine confronts them like a great, glaring eye of gold, set in a vast, dark face. Immobilized, Vader stares from the viewport. It has been four years since he last approached the planet that had captured, claimed and raised him, and even then, he had refused to look upon it. Now the time has come, and as Vader glares back at the golden eye, he allows a thread of rage and sorrow to colour his own eyes molten.

Pacing the cage of memory, he is startled to feel a touch on his arm, as light as a breath, and looks down to see his son’s natural hand resting on him.

“Are you ready for this, Father?” Luke asks, his face tilted up towards Vader’s mask.

Vader stares at the hand and does not answer. He does not know how to answer this question. What is ready? He is here because he must be here. It is that simple. 

Luke shifts next to him and removes his hand. Vader flexes his own fingers inside his glove, shrugging off the memory of the touch, unsure if he wants it or not. A child he might embrace, offer physical affection to, but his son is a man, and Vader can imagine all too well Luke’s distress if he were to feel the hard ridges of the armour, the utterly encompassing nature of the equipment that keeps the pitiful remnants of Vader’s body clinging to life.

“We’ll have to adjust our orbit,” he says instead of answering the question. “We’re coming in Mos Eisley side.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“I am unfamiliar with Mos Eisley. I lived in Mos Espa.”

“I’ve never been to Mos Espa.” Luke huffs and smiles. “Actually, I’ve barely been to Mos Eisley. Ben brought me there to find a pilot when we were trying to get to Alderaan. We ended up in the grittiest, scuzziest looking cantina on the planet. Of course, that’s where we met Han and Chewie.”

Luke’s voice washes over Vader as the boy blithely reminisces, but the Sith had stopped listening as soon as the boy mentioned Kenobi’s alias. His old master had spent decades on Tatooine, and Vader can think of no more fitting a place for the man to sit, slowly drying out under the suns, but it doesn’t come close to making them square when, every waking moment, Vader can feel the reminder of Kenobi’s betrayal.

“There were these two guys in the bar. I was so fresh off the farm; they picked me out of the crowd right away and started pushing me around. I thought I was dead, but then Ben just appeared out of nowhere with his lightsabre, and before anyone knew what was happening, there was an arm on the floor.”

The ball of tension inside of Vader releases like a thermal detonator. White light fills his field of vision; he is not sure it’s real until he feels the ship tilt. At the same time, he hears Luke fumbling around the console, trying to set it aright.

“We’re under attack!” Luke shouts.

Vader reaches out and presses a random series of buttons on the consol. At the same time, he dampens his connection to the Force. The light dissipates at once. Vader’s visor adjusts seamlessly, and he is able to watch as Luke, still blinded, digs his palms into his eyes and furiously rubs.

“It’s a wiring issue,” Vader dismisses.

“Has this happened before?” The boy still sounds half-hysterical.

“No.”

Too much detail will betray a lie. It is a lie, yet it isn’t. This is the first time in Vader’s adult life that the Force has acted without his knowledge or consent. In his childhood, it had moved through his body in subtle and miraculous ways, aiding him when he had need. Certainly nothing so explosive or theatrical as this light had ever occurred, and Vader is uneasy with the notion that he has lost his control entirely. He pictures a future in which power leaks from him in the same way that bodily fluids escape elderly people—unexpectedly, dangerously, without warning or dignity.

Luke, oblivious, busies himself with the control, checking and rechecking connections, and even when he learns back, the young man still appears unsatisfied.

“There’s nothing, as far as I can tell, but that was strange. We should service it as soon as we land.”

Vader offers a noncommittal wave of his hand. He is pleased that his deception has succeeded. The explosion of Force had been too sudden and shocking for Luke to perceive its supernatural origin. His son has raw power and instinct, but very little of Vader’s experience.

“What are you going to do about, ah--” Luke waves his hand vaguely at Vader, encompassing his famously recognizable frame and attire.

“A cloak should suffice.”

Vader rummages in the hold of the ship and pulls out a rudimentary disguise consisting of the roughly woven, dark brown robe he had brought from Mustafar, as well as a dangling accessory for the front of his mask. It will allow him to effectively pose as a member of a methane-breathing species, and serves the practical function of altering his vocabulator. Twice filtered, the sound of his voice will be further digitized and rendered unrecognizable.

Finally, Vader attaches a false id chrono to his glove; when scanned, it will display credentials for a ship mechanic by the name of Zaabrass Pelka. Pelka will be brisk, business-like, retiring. Although his height is remarkable, the mechanic will be inclined to fade into the background.

Vader regards the false name with approval before tapping out of the system and donning the robe, pulling the voluminous hood over the top of his helmet. He attaches the tangling hose with a discreet strap, then returns to the cabin.

“Well?”

Luke scans him from head to foot. “You don’t look like yourself anymore, but what if you get pulled over by Stormtroopers and searched?”

“I am still capable of performing a simple Mind Trick. Whatever you may believe.”

Vader hears the scathing note in his own voice, but his son fails to engage, merely tossing him a grin before turning back to the controls. Vader lowers himself heavily into the co-pilot’s seat; his son is an excellent pilot, and Vader has no objection to relinquishing the captain’s chair.

“We’re coming up on Mos Espa,” Luke reports. 

The ship slows under the boy’s direction, easing in towards the atmosphere now that they have a landing site.

“Looks like we’re being hailed by customs,” his son mutters, flipping a switch.

“Identify yourself, incoming vessel.”

“This is the Dune Hunter, Control, captained by Zaabrass Pelka, with Luke Naberrie as crew. We are seeking landing in Mos Espa.”

“State your business.”

“Market trade for water.” Water is always welcome on Tatooine and will warrant the most cursory inspection.

“Transmit your passports.”

They wait in silence after Luke transmits their papers—high-quality forgeries, both programmed by Vader. On a whim, he had given Luke Padmé’s family name. His son had not reacted, leading Vader to suspect that the boy knows nothing of his mother. Owen Lars had raised Luke. Cliegg Lars’ son had met Padmé once, very briefly, but given the circumstances of the meeting... Vader again shies away from the memory. It is not the time. Not yet.

He stands abruptly from the co-pilot’s seat. His cape produces a low hiss as it moves through the air, while the former Sith Lord begins to pace. Luke, still seated, taps out a rhythmic beat on the console.

Both stop when the next transmission comes through.

“You are cleared for landing, Dune Hunter. Welcome to Tatooine. Enjoy your stay.”

“Thank you, Control.”

Luke exhales noisily as he puts the ship into a landing cycle. “Sounds like the Imperial outpost is still in control here.”

“They are unlikely to surrender it unless by force, although I am certain that they will have heard of the emperor’s fall by now. Disappointing as this may be to you, Imperial troops at least have consistent protocols. The Hutts do not.”

Luke falls into a disgruntled silence, reminded abruptly of how his father had grown up. That, at least, Anakin’s parochial stepbrother had not seen fit to conceal. If Lars had still lived, Vader would have appreciated having a discussion with him about priorities.

A flashing memory of the man’s face—young and still untouched by the withering sands—flits through Vader’s brain. Padmé had been standing in front of him. Lars had nodded greeting, absent but still respectful of this woman who was so different from every other woman he had ever seen. A rose found blooming in the desert.

Struck again by recollection that he is unprepared to explore, Vader clenches the arm of the seat with one steel hand, applying pressure until he hears a shriek of metal.

“What’s that?” Luke yelps.

“Outgassing.”

Luke glances over and his eyes immediately land on Vader’s hand, clenched around an armrest now bent towards the deck.

“Yeah, I see that.”

Behind his layers of concealment, Vader clenches his teeth. He is abruptly irritated by everything, including his own child, as though he has stripped down to what remains of his skin and begun walking through the Dune Sea naked. The grit is rubbing against him, rubbing away the protections of many years, making him bleed. But when Luke reaches Mos Espa his landing is so smooth that a hot flash of pride in Vader’s chest wipes away some of the grit.

He offers a nod to his son. “Excellent.”

“Thanks.”

Luke beams, and Vader sees a little boy’s smile in the young man’s face. He closes his eyes to block the vision, and has to do it again when the gangplank goes down and a scorching, familiar blast of dust and wind sweeps into the ship. It catches in the folds of Vader’s brown robe, wrapping the fabric around his legs.

He wishes that he could come as himself; he feels abruptly weak for having been forced to cover his body. It is not possible for his throat to close with the breathing tube inside, but he feels the spasm, the flesh, wracked by emotion, trying to reject the implant.

Luke insists on performing a thorough diagnostic on the ship, trying to pin-point the source of the explosion. Vader joins him when he feels sufficiently collected. They spend an hour going through the systems, with Luke frowning the whole time. He only stops when the ship is hailed again by the local Imperial garrison. News of the water has spread, and they want to send an agent to make a trade at once.

“You have done business here more recently than I. Deal with them,” Vader says. He remains best over the console to give the impression that he is continuing the diagnostics.

“I really don’t want to sell to the water to Stormtroopers.” Luke crosses his arms, perhaps unconsciously mimicking one of Vader’s own mannerisms.

Vader decides to take a more casual tact in turn and shrugs. His shoulderguard lifts and falls back heavily, leaving a tiny explosion of pain in its wake.

“They need to drink like anyone else.”

He can almost hear Luke biting his tongue, but their argument is cut short by a buzz at the gangplank. There must have been an officer at the docking bay already. Vader is vindictively delighted by this display of Imperial efficiency.

“Go,” he insists. “Do not keep them waiting. It will only invite suspicion.”

The boy, trained by the Alliance to avoid that kind of notice, nods curtly, and leaves. Vader hears the murmur of conversation; it goes on for some time before Luke comes back in. He avoids looking at his father as he goes back into the hold to retrieve several barrels of water. He rolls them out himself, not asking for help, but when Vader stands up and starts lending his strength to the endeavour, Luke’s stiff posture relaxes, and he offers a grateful smile.

The boy is far too soft. Vader holds in the sharp words because they need to get rid of the officer lingering outside. He hangs back before he becomes visible in the hatch and listens to the end of the exchange.

“This is all that you have?” the officer demands.

“We’re a small ship,” Luke answers, diplomatically.

Vader hears a sound like a hand hitting the top of a barrel.

“You came to sell water, and this is all you brought? I don’t believe you.”

Vader tenses and his hands creeps to the waist of his robe, where he can easily find his lightsabre. Dispensing with one officer will be no trouble.

“Seems normal to me,” Luke says, lowering his voice to a smooth murmur.

The former Sith pauses to gage the tension in the air; his hand still hovers near his belt. The officer is not as weak-willed some, and the former Sith can feel him fighting the suggestion.

“There is no more water!” Vader sends the thought flying through the air, battering against the officer with a psychic sledgehammer. He hears a gasp of pain from outside.

“Yes, normal,” the officer agrees after a moment. His voice is no longer crisp and authoritarian, but a vague, confused mutter.

Luke transfers the barrels to the officer, and the man transfers payment to Luke, but it’s clear that Vader has inflicted lingering damage, because he hears his son lending aid to the man, reminding him of what they’re doing.

“Do you need help? Can I contact your squad for you?”

Idiot! Vader thinks.

He is at least somewhat gratified with the officer snaps to, humiliated by the boy’s pity.

“Naturally not! Go about your business.”

Vader hears the humming of a hovercraft as the man leaves. He returns to the cockpit and immediately begins to pace, and when Luke walks in Vader has worked himself into such a fury that he feels like himself for the first time in months.  He has a speech ready for the boy, full of lightly veiled threats and stern parental disapproval, but before he can launch in it, the boy starts haranguing him first.

“What was that?” Luke demands. “You just about turned the man’s brains to mush! He’ll be lucky to be able to button his own tunic tomorrow. I know that you know the difference between right and wrong, so don’t pretend that you don’t. Father—” he insists, sensing Vader’s fury, “Please. We need to work together. I want to have you in my life for a very long time, but you can’t do this. I might not agree with the man’s political affiliation, but he is a living being, a sentient person. You can’t just hurt people because they refuse to do what you want!”

The last words burst from Luke at a shout. Everything that Vader was planning to say—a curt reminder that Luke is responsible for the deaths of more than a million soldiers on the Death Star, as well as countless others in lesser skirmishes, and an infuriated confession that he had avoided cutting the man down just because he knew his son would disapprove, only to still end up chastised by his child—dissolves in front of the onslaught of Luke’s emotional agony. He is too angry to talk and too certain of his son’s error to forgive him, but he no longer wants to antagonize him.

He walks out of the cockpit instead. Brushes past the boy without looking at him and starts down the gangplank. His boots made the same sharp noises going down the plank that they have for decades, familiar enough to straighten his spine. He waits to hear Luke following him; it’s another minute before his son comes down behind him with the same sharp clip, and he pictures Luke’s boots—tall, shining brown leather, grazing the knee, where they meet the sandy trousers, belted just below a navy-blue jacket. Handsome clothes, but unmemorable. Luke is from Tatooine too; he knows how to blend into the market, disappear into the crowd of oddball creatures that perpetually roam the unpaved streets.

“Where are we going?”

Luke asks long after the silence has become unbearable, but when he speaks it is as if an elastic band has been released from between them. The boy has agreed to leave the argument behind them, and Vader must be gracious enough to do the same.

“You have never been to Mos Espa.”

“No, I only had a landspeeder when I lived here; it wasn’t a great idea to try to cross the entire Dune Sea in something that slow, especially with all of the Raiders.”

 Luke realizes his gaff only after he has mentioned the Tuskens. Vader watches the ubiquitous dust stir under their feet, and from under the shoes, boots and sandals of the beings in the main street of Mos Espa. The town would be unremarkable, easily resembling ten thousand other settlements across the Outer Rim, were it not for the memories.

“Where did you live?”

It is clear to Vader that the boy is doing his best to start an innocuous conversation, but Luke seems to have a talent for saying the wrong thing. Vader lets a few cycles of his respirator pass.

“Nevermind,” his son mutters.

“In the slave quarters,” Vader snaps. His glove clenches at his side, then releases, as he repeats more softly-- “We lived in the slave quarters.”

They turn the next corner together, Luke cautiously falling in step beside his father. Their paces match as they move into a smaller, narrower alley. Clanking and beeping sounds ring from the open garage door of a small mechanic’s shop.

Vader watches the door with a narrow focus, standing so still that he fails to move out of the way of a speeder. The horn beeps furiously from behind him; at the same time Luke slams into his side, pushing him out of the way of the narrow craft. The driver turns to toss a few careless curses over its shoulder before disappearing around the next corner.

“That speeder almost took your head off! What were you doing?”

There is a mad rage on his son’s face that has nothing in common with the Dark because it is fed by a softness that cannot be expelled from Luke’s heart. And thought he had cursed that softness only minutes before, Vader finds himself answering, volunteering excess information as if a switch had been flipped.

“I was looking at that shop. I used to work there.”

He extends a long, cloaked arm towards the place where he had spent six years of childhood. It looks so small now, so utterly unremarkable. He could knock it down with his own two hands if he wished.

He feels Luke’s stare at the side of his head, the banked words and questions gone unasked because his son likely already knows the answers. Vader refuses to look at him and see pity in his eyes, so he crosses the few metres to the Watto’s old shop just to escape it.

The last time he had seen Watto, the Toydarian been working at a stall in the main street, selling bits of junk, so Vader doesn’t expect to find him now, but when he peers into the open arch, he sees the too-familiar, winged form of his former owner. Watto appears appreciably older, but not infirm. Toydarians can live as long as two hundred years.

Vader stands as if turned to stone, a statue taking up the entry way. Watto cannot not help but notice, flitting over to him.

“Welcome, welcome to Watto’s shop of wonders. Weesa got everything you need!” He waves an expansive arm, taking in the collection of junk that fills every corner. When Vader fails to answer, the Toydarian narrows his bulbous eyes. “You a do need something, huh?” he demands.

Luke appears behind Vader and links his arm through his father’s, giving it a tug.

“No, we don’t need anything. Sorry.”

There is a rushing in the former Dark Lord’s ears. It should not be possible for the quality of his hearing to change; his auditory senses are as strictly regulated as his vision. Luke tugs on Vader’s arm again, but the former Sith is at least three times his son’s weight, and his boots are rooted to the earth like stones.

“Father!” Luke insists from somewhere far away.

“Hey, is der a something wrong wit’ him? I don’t want any crazy people in my shop!”

The items on the shelves begin to tremble, metal scraping against metal. Watto glances around, letting out raucous cries of protest.

“Whats a happening! You some kinda Jedi?”

“There are no more Jedi, Watto,” Vader forces the words out through clenched teeth.

“Hey, do I know you?”

Chut chut, Watto.

Ani? Little Ani?

Luke’s arm is still tugging on him, but Vader ignores it easily. He reaches up to slowly peel the brown hood from his face, releasing the methane-breather prop from the grill of his mask. The Sith Lord’s face stares down at the slaver, who backs up in sudden terror. Even Tatooine isn’t far enough from Imperial Centre not to know Darth Vader.

“I…ugh…,” Watto stumbles, backing rapidly into the shadows of his shop. Vader follows him, and he lets the brown robe fall to the ground as he walks. There are something he must do as himself.

“I swear--I didn’t do it! I got whatever you want…here, take everything!”

“I want nothing from you.” Vader advances another step.

“We should go,” Luke insists.

“No. I will not run. I have been running for so long. You taught me that, Watto,” Vader says. He crosses his arms.

Some trick of the Force or pure intuition flickers in Watto’s eyes. He scans Vader from the bottom of his boots, all the way to his helmet, and stares directly into the death mask.

“I taught you… Ani?” Watto whispers.

Vader takes a step back, as if he has been struck.

“Little Ani?” Watto repeats. This time, he does not sound amazed. He sounds terrified.

The past battles with the present for space in Vader’s head. Memory becomes reality, and the trembling of the shipyard junk intensifies. Metal parts lift into the air, hovering there. Vader raises a gauntlet, and the parts spin around until their sharpest ends point at Watto. Next to Vader, he hears his son’s harsh breathing.

“When I was a child, I believed that you were better than Gardulla, better than the other slavers, because you patted me on the head or sometimes gave me sweets. But you left that chip inside of me, beat me when you felt I needed it, and risked my life on foolish games. You still owned me.”

Watto swallows heavily. “Yeah, but, uh, look at you now, huh?”

“Yes, look at me now.” Vader sweeps a slow arm through the little shop. “Right back where I started.”

A frantic moan escapes Watto; he had not been certain, but now he knows who, what, Vader had been. No one could be allowed to live with such knowledge, and Vader’s reputation for brutality is well known even in the Rim.

Toydarians are highly resistant to the Force; closing Watto’s throat will not have the desired effect. The sharp objects hovering in the air, however, are real. They close in on Watto according to Vader’s desire, and as they approach the Toydarian backs away in fluttering increments. He waves his hands through the air, as though he could block weaponized mechanical parts with his bare skin. It is unlikely; the direct inverse to their Force-resistance is that Toydarians have almost no ability to use the Force themselves.

“Father, stop!” Luke screams.

Vader had almost entirely forgotten about the boy. The items in the air obey the Luke's command just the same, hovering mere inches from Watto’s eyes. Vader turns on his son, his lightsabre leaping into his hand. The red blade springs from the hilt, buzzing a counterpoint to the fury under his skin.

“This worm owned me, owned my mother—your own grandmother. We were merchandise to him. How much more flesh do you think has passed through his hands, sentience bartered and paid for like the parts on these shelves?”

“Er, I don’t buy slaves no more! You a right, Ani, it’s a bad deal. Bad for business!”

Watto babbles a stream of words, reaching for anything that might change Vader’s mind. Crafty creature that he is, he floats towards Luke as he speaks, sensing where his only protection lies. Vader turns the lightsabre on the Toydarian just as Watto darts behind the would-be Jedi.

“Let him be,” Luke pleads. “Not for him—for you. Don’t go back down this path. You said it yourself. He’s nothing.”

Watto offers a vague, grumbling protest—"I wouldn’t say nothin’”—while another voice echoes Luke’s words, Padmé once more refusing to be silent.  

Anakin, you’re going down a path I can’t follow.

Then as now, there are no choices.

Vader deactivates his blood-hued blade and allows his shoulders to slump in defeat. Luke regards him cautiously before he lets out a relieved breath.

“Thank you, Father,” he whispers.

“Fine boy you have, Ani,” Watto adds from behind Luke’s back. Despite his absurd, jovial muttering, the despicable little slaver is careful to keep every one of his limbs concealed behind the young man.

Vader releases the sharp objects. They land with muted clangs, on the sand and against each other.

“Be grateful that my son is a better man than I, Watto,” he rumbles.

“Imma grateful!”

“Come, Luke. Our business here is concluded.”

Vader retrieves his brown cloak and replaces both it and the accessory for his mask. He ignores the muted clanging and banging behind him. Watto is in shock, senselessly floating about and knocking into the junk that lines his walls. Vader can visualize the shop perfectly, can see where the sharp little tools had landed in the dirt.

When Luke leaves, Vader follows without looking back. He waits until they are almost to the main street before he retrieves a screwdriver with a flicker of Force and lets it home in on the Toydarian. This is difficult work, finding the target without seeing it, but he invites the rage of his hollow childhood to flood his core, lets it power his mind’s eye and sense the living heat of the creature that had once owned him. He has to be careful.

Luke must never know.

Only once he is certain does Vader release the tool and, precisely as he had shattered the Bacta tank on Mustafar, he drives the sharp mental end through Watto’s protruding eye and into that resistant alien brain, eliminating its dangerous knowledge.

His aim is excellent, and he needs only one thrust.

“I’m so proud of you, Father,” Luke says. He loops his arm into Vader’s, the Sith’s limb once more roughly cloaked in brown weave, and steers them back into the market.

Facilis descensus Averno:

Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;

Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,

Hoc opus, hic labor est.

--Vigil, the Aeneid

Father and son linger in the crowds for some time. They browse at the slim offerings in the market stalls, peering into the little tents. The city has changed a great deal over a quarter of a century; more things have been altered than not. It was a Dark miracle that Watto had still been flitting about in the same old shop. Most of Tatootine’s merchants are not native to the planet; nor do they tend to settle long. As far as Vader can recall, many of the local junk traders are small-time criminals, prone to getting in debt with the Hutts. He knows none of them. Only in the crowd of shoppers does the Sith glimpse a face that might be familiar, as if he had once seen it in a dream. But when he blinks, the familiar vanishes into the dust and glaring suns.

Vader makes his way farther up the main drag. He watches as the products in the market turn from mechanical parts to practical clothing, and then decorative items and street food, hawked by human crones so dried out and withered that he can hardly tell if he is looking at men or women. These are some of the only real locals, ancient creatures who sit here year after year, decade after decade, gradually turning to stone. Many of them are probably former slaves, and Vader is careful not to look too deeply into their enveloping hoods, not wanting to see anyone who might have been young and strong when he was a child.

Luke falls behind to look at a juice shop, while Vader continues. He finally stops by a rickety table of trinkets near the end of the row and reaches out to toy with a japor snippet. Such things are highly personal, rarely for sale. That it is on this table now suggests a long story, one of desperation, if not death.

“How much for this?” he asks. He is careful to keep his voice idle, only vaguely interested.

The seller stirs, and light eyes, probably blue eyes, somehow still bright, peered out from under a rough-spun hood that is very similar to his own.

“Do you know what this is?” the merchant croaks.

Vader traces the intricate glyphs on the carving. The artist had been skilled. The Sky Goddess is there, forming a dome with her body, bending over the desert. Precious drops of water pour from her open mouth. On the other side of the snippet is the Prince of the Underworld. His mouth is also open, but only torrid winds and dry sand pour from it.

“It is a duality,” he rumbles softly. He now knows why this snippet is not in the hands of an owner, but not why it is here in the market. “Carved for a funeral and buried with the dead.”

“You’re a local.”

“Not for many years,” Vader avows immediately.

“But you remember.”

“Why is this here?” he insists. “Why wasn’t it buried?”

The old one hesitates. “It likely was. It came to me from a scavenger.”

“So. Looted from the dead.”

A sigh emanates from the hood. “I’d rather not sell it. But I’m still alive, and I must eat.”

Vader tilts his head to look up at the suns. Tatoo One is moving across the sky, while Tatoo Two lies concealed behind one of Tatooine’s thin clouds.

“Yes, I suppose you must,” he agrees at last. “So how much?”

They barter then, with Vader easily falling back into an ancient rhythm. Luke catches up in the middle of the business and watches. Bargaining is considered something of an art on Tatooine, and a skilled barterer can draw a crowd of spectators, especially when the stakes are high. Vader knows how to drive a bargain, but after a few minutes they agree to a price that he thinks only a few credits more than the thing is worth. It was possible that japor is less valuable than it once was, however, because the merchant is satisfied.

“It’s all yours, Son of Suns,” the crone proclaims, chuckling. “Son of Suns” is the Tusken term for a native. It is a loanword among the slave classes, and some of the farmers, the ones who had truly “gone native.”

“I wasn’t born here.” Vader objects to the epithet.

“Hm. But if you were not born here, you were brought here,” the crone says knowingly.

“…yes.”

A grin moves the lips just below the hood.  “Who was born here? I wasn’t. But I was brought here so long ago that the Suns got into my bones. So we are all Children of the Suns now.” The merchant looks over at Luke, assessing him in turn. “This your boy?”

“Yes.”

“He looks at ease. Is he a Son of Suns, too?”

“Yes, Ancient One,” Luke says. “I grew up near Mos Eisley.”

“Hmm. Mos Eisley, huh. A den of criminals and villainy.”

Luke smiles. “Someone else I once knew said the same.”

“A wise being. Here, something for you, too.” The seller reaches inside a little cloth bag and pulls out another snippet. Smaller, with only one word glyph carved on it: Home. “That one I did myself, before my hands started shaking too much.”

“I can’t.” Luke presses the japor snippet back on its maker. “You said it yourself. You need to eat. Sell it to someone else.”

“Well, then, if I need to eat, how about a donation of your own?” The crone cackles when astonishment blooms on the young man’s face. “Now, now, don’t worry. I want you to have it, if you can buy it or no. Someday, when you have the need, it will lead you home.”

Luke fishes around in his pockets and pulls out a transfer stick. “I only have Imperial credits.”

“I expect I’ll manage.”

He sends the merchant a sum that does not surprise Vader; the boy is generous to a fault. Then he takes the snippet and hangs it around his neck, tucking it into his tunic with a gentle pat.

“You’ve a pure heart,” the old one says, regarding Luke with narrowed eyes. Only the barest sliver of colour glitters in the high-noon light. “Be careful. Put your credits back in your pocket and keep them there. Mos Espa is no place for the pure. Mind your father, now.”

“There is light in him, too.” Luke insists, although no one had claimed otherwise.

The old one nods. “Yes, like a star in the night sky. Go now.” She fixes her gaze on Vader. “I sense that you have other ghosts to greet, Wandering Son.”

Vader offers a low, slow bow and takes his leave. As he walks, he feels the crone’s eyes follow him.

“Did you know them?” Luke asks. “They seemed to know you.”

“No,” he says quietly, “But they have the True Sight, an ability in the Force. Untrained, but strong. Such things were not unheard of among the slaves. The desperation of that life could wake many gifts, things to help us survive.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

“It is different for the moisture farmers. They are here by choice; they mine the water in the air like men on other planets mine diamonds or Kyber Crystals.”

“I never wanted to stay. Uncle Owen kept promising that I could leave, but it was always after one more season, one more harvest.” He sighs. “I wanted to go to the Imperial Academy, become a pilot. I guess that you would have liked that.”

“How terribly foolish your guardians were to register you under the name of Skywalker.”

Luke shrugs. “I’m not sure how much they really knew. They didn’t want me to leave, but they always said you were a navigator on a spice freighter.”

Vader mulled this fact, positing a likely scenario. “It is possible that Kenobi did not know I had survived our confrontation, at least in the beginning. He left me for dead. Once he knew otherwise…the name was perhaps already in the system, and it was too late. He was in any case clever enough to bring you to the last place in the galaxy I was likely to look.”

“Did you even know that we existed?”

Vader pauses at this reminder of that other child of his and feels a tightening in his chest. He would rather have continued forgetting. “No. I thought that you had perished with your mother. I had no reason to search for you.”

Luke deftly skirts the mention of his mother, although Vader feels his keen interest. Luke is right to avoid it; that story can only bring pain to them both.

“Would you have come for me if you’d known?”

“At once.” Through any obstacle. Through war and Darkness, dying planets and the fire of expanding stars. Always.

“I know,” his son says. “Somehow, I’ve always known… You would have come for us both. And maybe it’s better that you never did, but I needed to hear that you would have come.”

Vader has no desire to discuss the matter. He knows that it will stir his anger and distress his son. He finds it unendurable to think about how his children had been stolen from him, raised by near-strangers, and taught values entirely in opposition to his own. Luke, at least, can be spoken to, but Vader’s daughter is so committed to the false idol of the Republic that pursuing even an amicable relationship with her would be like chasing a Krayt Dragon through a storm. In his heart, Vader curses Bail Organa, that paragon of mild-mannered arrogance, as the thief that he was. If the Prince Consort of Alderaan were standing in front of him, in his own person and not merely as one of millions on a doomed planet, Vader would cut him down without hesitation.

“Where are you going now?” Luke asks.

“There is only one place left.”

The slave quarters wait for him, an inevitability at the end of the long road. The suns still inch across the sky, and Vader follows them west, to the small collection of huts located just outside of the town limits.  

The first thing he thinks when he sees them is how large they are. The hut he grew up in was tiny, true, but compared to slave accommodations he has seen on other Hutt-controlled planets, they are luxurious. Vader remembers how he had shared quarters with his mother—just two people with a whole house of their own. There are a lot of free, working-class people in the heart of the Empire who do not have the same kind of space.

But then, space is not a problem on Tatooine. Only water is, and that Watto had not provided beyond the bare minimum, hardly enough to support one person. Shmi had been forced to do freelance electronics work for extra portions of water. Once Anakin had been skilled enough in mechanics, he had begun to contribute. His mother had hated it, but she had had no choice but to accept his help. His growing body had needed more water than she could provide on her own.

“This was where we lived.” Vader hears his own voice as he speaks, and it sounds like the muted crackle of a signal picked up from some distant, untraceable system.

He sees his son swallow in the corner of his eye, Luke gazing upon the little huts in mixed amazement and repulsion.

“I knew that you were slaves. Uncle Owen never hid it from me; he told me that Grandad Cliegg freed Nana Shmi from bondage. But I never saw the place she came from. I never saw…this.”

“Come.”

Vader strides down the dune towards the little domes. His robe flaps in the wind behind him, while Luke slides down the hill like a snowboarder, the sand turning slippery and smooth with judicious application of Force. Vader deplores the lack of caution but cannot bear to criticize the delighted smile that lits up his son’s face. It makes him look like a boy again, like that star-struck child that had recklessly burst into Leia Organa’s cell on the Death Star.

“Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?” Pitch perfect Organa, sceptical and superior.

And the boy, so entirely free of artifice. “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you!”

If ever Vader had needed his faith in the Force confirmed—he had not—it would have been through the sheer, staggering improbability of his twin children meeting in such a fashion And how brave they both were, how strong, both failing to buckle under the loss of all they had ever known and loved.

Once, Anakin too had lost a home. He had not thought it worth keeping at the time, but there had been a kind of certainty and security in this place, an understanding of himself that he had left behind with it. It has been thirty-six Standard years since he has last seen his slave house, but Vader knows it at once. It is a little older and more scoured by the local storms, but it has been maintained. From the recently swept steps, Vader knows that someone lives here now, but he senses no presence in the Force. At this time of the day, the slaves are always working.

He touches the rough dome of the house, running his hand down until it reaches the base.  He recalls a little metal box he had put there, long ago. He remembers digging a hole in the later evenings, after the suns had set, and putting a few hard-won treasures inside, treasures he had not taken with him. He thinks there had been sufficient time to retrieve it when he left Tatooine with Qui-Gon Jinn; but perhaps the boy he had been had intended to leave some precious part of himself with his mother, that it might connect them across the stars.

If the box is still there, it is buried deeply under the foundation. There is no chance of digging it out with his hands, so he seeks it with the Force. He is careful to avoid upsetting the foundation of the house, carefully displacing sand before tugging the little metal container gently free.

“What’s that?” Luke asks, coming up behind him.

“It was mine, long ago.”

He gently cracks open the box. There isn’t as much inside as he had thought, but he is just as certain that nothing has been stolen. These are simply a child’s treasures; to adult eyes, they are cheap and brittle things: a few pretty stones he had dug out of the desert and polished with a cloth in Watto’s shop, an iron round from a Tusken’s manual rifle, a few trading cards with pictures of formerly famous podracers from the Malastare circuit, all now long dead. And there too, his own first efforts at carving japor snippets, rough compared to his later work, but childishly sincere, the glyph for love rendered next to his mother’s name.

Vader lifts the snippet by the cord. Japor snippets are not wood, although they resemble it. There are no trees on Tatooine, only scattered cacti, certainly nothing strong enough to carve, but there are animals. Japor snippets are made from bone, scavenged from womp rats and dewbacks and, sometimes, rarely, Krayt dragons. Dragon bones make the best carving material, but are the most sought after, and are usually reserved for larger renderings, full figures rather than pendants.

The necklace he had carved for Padmé had been made from a Dragon bone, Vader remembers. He had been lucky enough to scavenge a piece and had been saving it for something special.

Padmé had been special.

Still holding the metal box in one hand, Vader dangles the ancient necklace by its cord, letting the sun lingered on the lines of the glyph.

“What’s that one mean?” Luke asks. He reaches out to trace the sign with a cautious finger. “We never really learned this. They don’t teach it at school.”

“I don’t expect they would. This is slave culture, secret knowledge. The glyphs were originally based on Tusken language, but changed considerably over centuries of interaction with Huttese, and institutionalized Hutt slavery, until they were no longer mutually intelligible.”

“How did they pass down the knowledge? Most of the slaves weren’t originally from here, right?”

“Some were, but since we all spoke Huttese in the markets, everyone learned, and knowing how to read was not as rare as you might think, since most of us conducted some form of business for our masters. I came here when I was two or three years old, and so I learned very quickly.”

“But where were you from before that?”

Vader hesitates. A few fleeting images pass through his head, but he can seize none of them. Someplace hot, even hotter than here, he thinks, and he had worn something rough, wrapped around him in layers. “I don’t know. My mother told me not to think about it. Don’t look back,” he murmurs.

“She sounds practical.”

“She was strong. Strong like a tree that knows when to bend.”

He clenches his hand over the japor snippet. He wants to crush it, but can’t make himself do it, so his hand trembles until Luke gently reaches out to slip it from his fingers.

“I could hold onto that for you, if you want.”

He lets his son keep the trinket while Vader closes the rest of the little boy treasures back into the box, slipping it once more under the house. Let it disappear or stay there for centuries until some future scholar finds it and rejoices. His former name is carved on the inside of the lid in Huttese syllabics, so perhaps they might.

“Do you want to go inside?” Luke asks.

“No. This house has seen many occupants since my mother left it. Her presence has long since been erased.”

Still, he linger and runs his hands down the side of the hut, trying to peel back the decades to find a few fleeting impressions. It says much of his need that he at last catches a glimpse of Shmi, standing on the steps at sunset, her large brown eyes (so like Leia’s!) filled with the utmost calm, like the silence at the bottom of a dune.

She would have made an excellent Jedi, Vader is startled to realize. Not the righteous and domineering knights of those last, bitter days of the Republic, but something like the Jedi had claimed to be, were perhaps meant to be: full of both love and acceptance. Willing to follow whatever path the Force revealed, but never ashamed to be human.

It could not have been a coincidence that she had understood the misfit Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn so well, and that Jinn had showed Shmi such respect, despite her pitiful station in life.

Vader’s metal digits dig a path through the dome; tiny pebbles trickle to the ground. He feels Luke’s hand settle onto his shoulder, drawing him slowly out of the past.

He is so focused on these two sensations that he fails to register the faint presence of another being approaching.

“Hey, who are you?” A man’s voice lances through the air behind him.

“Let me handle this,” Luke whispers.

Under his robe, Vader’s heavy shoulder plate lifts in what passes for a shrug. He will let Luke handle it if he is able.

“We just wanted to look at the house,” Luke says. He sounds friendly, calm. “I think a friend of ours might have lived here once.”

Wrong answer. Vader presses his lips into a thin line, while the newcomer’s eyebrows lift in a sceptical arch.  

“You look like a freeborn. How could you know anyone here?”

Vader examines the interloper. Human, middle aged, maybe in his fifties, and dark-skinned with hair that was probably entirely black at one point but is now heavily touched with light streaks that are either white or grey.

“You don’t look like a slave yourself,” Luke answers mildly. “Maybe you’re the intruder.”

The man laughs, but Vader senses danger beneath the mirth. “Now I know you’re lying. I lived here for half of my life, until I saved up enough to buy my freedom. I still have a lot of friends here.”

There is something itching at Vader about this man, as if he knows him, or should know him. He scans him in the Force on the off-chance he’s a deep-cover Jedi, but the former slave is almost psi-null, barely broadcasting.

Vader decides to take a risk.

“A Son of the Suns returns from a long journey,” he says. He speaks in that dialect of Huttese peculiar to Tatooine’s slave class, insular and unmistakable. The accent returns to his tongue effortlessly, even after so many years.

“The Suns welcome their Wandering Son.” The man says it immediately, thoughtlessly.

The ritual phrases are usually spoken after masters send their workers out on some task to another town, to the Hutt enclave, or into the desert. Any such journey might be a slave’s last, and the words are always spoken, the greetings never forgotten.

“What’s your name?” the local asks.

The answer leaps out into the air like a Krayt Dragon on the move, scales shimmering in the mid-noon sun like fire, and Vader can deny neither their heat nor their truth:

“Anakin. My name is Anakin Skywalker.”

They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. --Dorothy Parker

Vader is not sure what kind of reaction he had been expecting, if he had been expecting anything, but he is taken aback by the stranger’s abrupt pallor. The blood drains from the stranger's face so swiftly that Vader's heat-vision loses sight of his individual features. In one smooth movement, the man draws a blaster from his worn jacket. He points it at Vader with a very steady hand.

“You’re a liar. Anakin Skywalker is dead.”

Vader keeps the surge of his anger at bay. He retreats into the cool, analytical headspace that always served him so well as a military commander. Rash anger has no place on the battlefield. Mustafar had taught him that, and whenever he has forgotten, he has always paid for it.

The platforms have shields.

“You sound as if you know me,” Vader said. “But I do not know you.”

“Even if you were Anakin, you wouldn’t remember me; it’s been so long. But I was his friend when we were children, and I won’t stand for anyone to use his name.”

The itch of memory blooms into knowledge. The man in front of him looks ten years older than he should, but life on Tatooine is very hard.

“You are Kitster Banai.”

Kitster stares and visibly struggles for composure. “So you’re well-prepared! That doesn’t mean you’re him.”

“Well prepared for what? What operation would benefit from a pretender to the name of a long-dead Jedi?”

“You said it yourself. Long dead. Perfect to step into his shoes.”

“It is true I have not claimed that name for many years. But I remember finding you after our work was done for the day. We would run to the cantina at the end of the main drag, the one with no name, whose owner did not mind children, and we’d use the water we’d filched from the city’s main vaporators to buy ruby bliels and a bowlful of pallies.” Vader hears the formal intonation of his own voice slowly falling away, softened by the onslaught of childhood.

“By the Sky Goddess,” Kitster whispers. “It is you. But how? You were the golden boy of the Republic, our home-town boy made good. Even out here, we’d see you on the public broadcasts. And we knew when you died at the end of the war. The Emperor even gave you a public funeral.”

“He did?” Luke asks. The boy cannot conceal his astonishment. “No one ever mentioned that to me.”

“Sparing your delicate sensibilities, no doubt,” Vader says. “It was a matter of public record that General Anakin Skywalker defended the Emperor against the treachery of the Jedi Order, at the cost of his own life.”

“Who’s this?” Kitster asks.

“My son, Luke Skywalker.”

“Luke Skywalker? That Luke Skywalker? I always wondered… Look—” Kitster lowers the blaster with slow caution. “You might as well come with me. This is no place to talk.”

He turns from the houses and begins to trek back up the hill. He does not look back to check if they are following, and Vader hesitates, unsure if he wishes to. He has good memories of Kitster, but they are a child’s pure and joyous recollections of first friendship, virtually untouched by the corruption that had surrounded them. Vader is a man now, a man who has done terrible things and who will, in all likelihood, do more. If he draws Kitster into his orbit, there is no guarantee that his former friend will survive it.

Luke makes the choice for him, trotting behind Kitster with an eagerness that he has not shown in many days. When Vader continues to hesitate, Luke turns back to wave him onward.

This is what you came here for, right?

The shared thought reaches across the space between them, and Vader knows that it is true. Something has called him back to this place that he despises. He had thought it was Watto, but even the Toydarian’s death has not diffused the restless spark within him. Instead, it led him to Kitster.

Vader walks up the hill after his son. His long legs consume the space until he is almost moving at a run, hampered only by the coarse robe twisting around his mechanical limbs. Ahead of him, Kitster’s body vanishes into the glare of the suns, consumed by light until it becomes a sparse black shadow. He sees Luke fall into step beside his old friend and slows down so that he will not do the same. He allows Kitster to lead them out of the slave quarters and into the part of the town where the freeborn and freedslaves have always lived.

Kitster runs up the short flight of steps to the door of a house hardly any different from the house Anakin grew up in. “Come on, then.”

After he vanishes inside, with Luke just a step behind, Vader pauses with his hand on the doorframe, head bowed.

Don’t look back.

Shmi had said that so many years ago, with her child on a different threshold, one leading into a life that would take him away from her forever. She is decades dead, but her voice is in the air again now, in the winds that touch the Children of the Suns.

Don't look back.

She might have meant this entire undertaking, but Vader is inclined to think that she would have said it at this door. There is something waiting for him here, inside, at this moment. Something he is meant to see. That it is a figure out of his past that brings it to him should have no bearing.

Vader goes inside.

Kitster is already serving a cup of Bantha milk to Luke, who has taken a seat on a low bench. The inside of the house is eclectically furnished, in the way of someone who picked up bits and pieces as time and money allowed, but it is neat, and clean. Light pours down from an open skylight, common in Tatooine houses, while panels on the roofs and sides collect energy for nighttime use.

Kitster offers Vader an uncertain smile. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No.”

He cannot drink like that now. Dwelling on it had depressed him in the past; eventually, he had weaponized it. Vader has often used this additional layer of separation between himself and the rest of galaxy as a means of discomfiting both his allies and his enemies. People who are uncomfortable are easier to manipulate.

Sidious’ lessons in the art of manipulation had been both extensive and effective, but Vader feels strangely heavy now, unwilling or perhaps unable to move the people around him like chess pieces. It is not the Light that holds him back, as Luke would likely claim, but a feeling of having lived past his time, of being extraneous. What use is it to strategize when he has already reached the apotheosis of power, only to recklessly tumble from its heights.

Kitster pours himself a glass and puts the Bantha milk back in the fridge. He takes his time doing this, Vader notes, delaying speech.

“So.” Kitster clears his throat.  “I can’t imagine you’ve come back to this armpit of the universe just for a trip down memory lane. Why are you here?”

The answer leaps from Vader’s brain to his mouth like a bird in flight, like a book he had laid aside long ago and is now ready to pick up again.

“I have returned to free the slaves.”

Kitster chokes on his milk, mid-swallow. Blue liquid dribbles from his lips; he swipes his sleeve across his mouth.  

“Free the slaves?” he repeats. “You still dream big, huh, Ani?”

Vader flinches behind his coverings. It has been so long since he had been called that; he almost feels like that child again, hearing it.

“Perhaps. But I have resources to call upon, knowledge of the computer system used to curtail the slaves’ movements, and the means to undermine the control mechanisms of the masters. I can do this, but it will be easier with help. Will you join me?”

Vader holds out his hand, as he had to his son that terrible day on Bespin. His black glove emerges from the brown wrappings. Kitster stares at it with bald curiosity before looking back at Vader’s equally occluded face.

“How do I know it’s really you? Why are you so covered up? You look like a methane breather.”

“An intentional misrepresentation. I will explain the matter to you, later perhaps.”

He holds out his hand again, turning it slightly to invite a clasp. “Well?”

Kitster's face loses all expression. “You’re a lot more convincing than you used to be. Fine. I’m in.”

He takes Vader’s hand, and his own hand is lost at once in the enormous leather glove.

“Huh. You didn’t look so…huge on the holonet, during the Clone Wars.”

“Later. We have work to do.”

Vader deftly retrieves the datapad from the small of his back and sets it up in the centre of Kitster’s living room table. In in addition to the Sith texts, now heavily encrypted in a hidden folder, Vader has loaded the pad with anything he thought he might need on Tatooine, including state-of-the-art hacking programs, the keys to the planetary databases on Tatooine, and all current espionage on the local Hutt outpost.

Since Jabba’s death, the gangster’s operation has mostly been managed by his aunt. Unlike her kinsman, Gardulla does not suffer from a perverted weakness for bipedal females. She is tougher, stricter, more focused. She does not hold perpetual court in the compound, as Jabba had, but keeps business hours. The old dance floor has been cleared of the jizz band and the girls. Now only a bevy of guards is permitted to approach the regal platform. There are, Vader had been informed, no long, dangling ropes or chains permitted anywhere near the mistress. The report had boiled down to one indisputable fact: Gardulla is smart. If she makes a mistake, she does not make it twice.

Vader can attest to that. He has very few memories of his time in the custody of Gardulla, having been so young, but what he can recall matches with the report. Jabba had been ambitious, but sloppy. Gardulla’s operation had been run like a garrison. Her slave quarters had been clean and well-organized, her slaves fed efficiently, if austerely. No one had starved, and no one had been beaten without provocation, but she had been more of a re-selling operation. Most of the sentients she purchased had been trained, groomed, and then sold again for three times the initial purchasing cost within a Tatooine year.

Vader offers a quick rundown of the reports on the Hutt operation, with Kitster nodding along as if he had heard it all before.

“Word on the street is that she’s making better profits than Jabba, but a lot of his people miss the old style, the parties and hand-outs. Jabba was known for lending out his best girls as bonuses, even giving them away if you did a really good job, and there were some mercenaries who worked with him for years just for that.”

“Nice,” Luke snorts. He sounds tough, cynical, but it is all borrowed bravado, probably from his smuggler friend Captain Solo. The boy looks down at the ground after he says it.

“Yeah,” Kitster agrees, voice soft. “I’ve heard some stories about Jabba’s girls…but then I heard it was one of them that did away with them.”

“It was,” Luke says, and he appears suddenly, fiercely proud. “My best friend, Princess Leia of Alderaan.”

“Warrior,” Kitster says, with a low whistle.

“I can’t think of a better way to describe her.”

Yes, Vader thinks, there is. My daughter. She is my daughter.

There is no chance to say it, no circumstance under which he can frankly proclaim that one glorious truth. For all the times that Leia Organa has defied him, has looked straight into his face and attempted to level him with that haughty, regal sneer, he had been furious. Yet he can only imagine the same face looking at him and offering a scoffing, but undeniably affectionate: “Father.”

Or even Dad.

Vader closes his eyes for just a moment, trying blot out the lingering image of that face. A young girl’s face; the way she had looked in the Senate. She doesn’t look like that anymore. Dwelling on the past will not deliver his stolen child back into his arms, just as it had not delivered a young Luke to him.

“Father?” Luke asks. The boy is staring him expectantly, and Vader realizes that he has probably been silent for a long time, standing motionless.

“Do you believe it would be wise to recruit from among Jabba’s former agents?” the former Lord asks Kitster. He keeps his manner brisk, as if he had not faltered.

Kitster hesitates. “Do you think we’d need to?”

“We will need help, preferably experienced, professional help with a good understanding of the compound and Gardulla’s methods.”

“These people aren’t cheap. They’ll wanna be paid.”

“Leave that to me.” Vader crosses his arms.

“Are there any other former slaves—or even current ones—who might be interested in helping?” Luke asked. “People who might know the networks, the local procedures?”

“Sure. But it’s hard to know who to trust. Some of the slaves might be too scared of their chips being activated; they could run to the masters. And the freed…” Kitster shakes his head.

“Some of them join the slavers,” Vader fills in grimly.

"You can't be serious," Luke gasps.

Kitster shakes his head. “It pays well, boy. About the only thing in this town that does. Not everyone will do it, but some will.”

“I grew up near Anchorhead. The only slaves there had been working for the same shops and trades for so long that they were basically treated the same as freeborn. I had no idea the slave trade was so…pervasive.”

Luke stumbles over the word, but he at least knows it. His time with the Princess has paid in some refinement, Vader notes, if not in a love of the law.

“That’s because you’re from Mos Eisley side,” Kitster says. “There’s a lot more economic diversity there. It’s the main space port, much bigger than Mos Espa. A lot of credits go through Mos Eisley from food imports, building materials, luxury goods for the Hutts. Mos Espa pretty much just has slaves. A bit of spaceport trade here and there, mechanical parts, but…”

“That will be of great use to us,” Vader proclaims. “We will not have to split our resources. We can focus largely on Mos Espa and the Hutt enclave. At the same time, we will network to make contact with the victims of slaver operations in Mos Eisley and other smaller cities and communities.”

There is admiration for his father on Luke’s face, unadulterated, for perhaps the first time, by fear or sorrow. And it does feel good to be doing something practical again, to be useful. Vader thinks of his daughter’s promise to destroy him if he dares to contact her brother. He has no doubt that she means it, but he decides to set it aside for now.

Leia may come to him if she wishes. Until then he has work to do.

They start small, with logistics. Vader is no longer the Supreme Commander of the United Imperial Armed Forces and Palpatine’s unofficial Crown Prince. He cannot walk into the Hutt enclave, order Gardulla to disband her trade, and expect obedience. Even at the height of his political power, it would have been a risky endeavour, given the Hutts’ quasi-independent status and immense financial influence. Now, it would be a foolish gesture, and certain death for thousands of slaves. Better to begin with establishing a network: arms dealers, mercenaries for guerrilla operations, hackers for the chips, boltholes with beds, clothes, and food for the freed slaves. After, transport for anyone who wants to leave Tatooine, and then a network to move them back to their homeplanets, or elsewhere if they’re from here and refugee status.

Given the galactic recession and ongoing civil war, a refugee’s life would not be Vader’s own first choice, but there will be ex-slaves with legitimate reasons for pursuing that avenue. As for Vader, he is determined to finish the first quest he ever set for himself, the one that had moved through a young boy’s dreams since the first night he had truly understood what the chip inside his body meant. His early fascination with droids had been sparked once he realized that he had as little autonomy as a machine.

After the disastrous confrontation with Kenobi, Vader had often had cause to meditate on the monstrous irony of his own literal mechanization.

In Kitster’s house, Vader concentrates on a map of the area projected from his datapad, while Kitster stands beside him, pointing out areas of interest. Luke hadn’t spoken in a number of minutes when he yawns. His gloved right hand goes up to his mouth, and he shakes his head briskly.

“Sorry. It was a long trip.”

“You did much of the piloting, my son. We will find a place to rest and continue this in the morning.”

“You can stay here,” Kitster says at once. “No—” he raises a hand when Luke starts to protest, “I won’t hear of you going to a motel. There are only a few and every one of them will rob you blind. Come on, I have a cot in the back.”

Kitster hustles the still-yawning Luke away from the table, leaving Vader alone for a few minutes, staring down at the map. He traces the line where the city meets the sand with one leather-clad finger.

“He’s already out,” Kitster murmurs when he returns.

“I am unsurprised. He has been under a great deal of stress.”

Kitster nods, leaning back against the sofa before spinning away to the kitchenette. From a cupboard, he pulls out something that definitely does not look like milk.

“Drink?” he offers, pouring clear liquid into a glass.

Unexpectedly, Vader aches for the relaxation and comradery of a shared drink. Kitster is the first person in years to treat him like a human being instead of a force of nature or a monster. Even Luke is more inclined to view his father as a fallen hero than a man. Vader usually enjoys the dramatization, his life redrawn in mythic proportions, but tonight he aches to nod and hold out his hand for the glass.

Absurd.

“I can’t,” he says. “I have sustained…some damage.”

Kitster takes a slow drink and stares into his glass before he looks up to pin Vader with a thoughtful eye. “I thought as much. What happened?”

Vader let a few breaths cycle, contemplating how much to say. “I was in a fire. My lungs were almost destroyed. I have used an assisted breathing device since that day. Taking it out to eat or drink in public is not an option.”

His childhood friend’s mouth hangs open, and his eyes are at least as wide. He looks like a paused holovid.

“Shit,” Kitster sighs. “I’m so sorry, Ani.”

Vader crosses his arms again. “It has been a long time. I am accustomed to living with this.”

“Still… aren’t there other options? You said you had some money. What about cloned lungs?”

“I attempted it. My body did not accept the transfer; not uncommon among…people who were Jedi.”

“But why?” Kitster appears sceptical, understandably so. The Jedi were never transparent regarding their gifts.

“Cloned tissue often does not have the same kind of connection to the Force. Even the Kaminoans have not been able to breed clones with abilities equal to the original templates of Force masters. It was they who oversaw my own transplant, but they saved my original organs. I was warned that the transplant might not take; that they may need to reattach my damaged originals. That proved…accurate.” The delicate syllables contain a wealth of remembered suffering.

Kitster shoots him a shrewd glance. “You have friends in high places.”

“Had. That is not so much the case now.”

“Hm. The dunes have been shifting,” Kitster says, bland as porridge, and takes another drink.

Vader allows himself a few seconds to run through a mental list of profanity. This man is shrewd. Kitster has already guessed enough to put the pieces together, if he allows himself to make the final, improbable leap that Darth Vader is sitting in his living room, wishing for a drink.

“Well.” Kitster sets the empty glass down on the table with a clink. “Back to business. I know a few people who might be interested in putting up freed slaves once we have some. A couple of people you might even remember.”

Vader welcomes the change of subject. “Oh?”

“Ami, for one. She’s still in Mos Espa. Her mistress freed her when she came of age; she’s part owner of the business now.”

Vader recalls a heavy blonde child around his own age. She had been house slave to a seamstress, really more of a budding apprentice than a servant.

“The girl was more comfortable than most of our peer group. Are you certain she would be interested in contributing to our endeavour?”

“Ami’s cool,” Kitster insists, “We were together for a while. I know her.”

“I will keep it in mind. Who else?”

Kitster lists a few more people that Vader recalls even less clearly: a few sympathetic adults who  by some miracle still live, as well as children he had played with less often, including Heber, a red-headed boy who had disparaged Anakin’s pod-racing and insisted he was going to end up “bug spat.” Vader remembers the phraseology with irritating clarity, but still waves a hand in agreement. According to Kitster, Heber is still a slave; he might be a useful insider, and Vader does not consider himself so petty as to condemn a man for a few cruel comments made more than thirty-five years ago. 

Not yet. He will reserve judgment.

“Anyone else?”

Kitser clears his throat. “Well, I’m not sure how you feel about this, but…nevermind.”

Vader is intrigued despite himself. “Who?”

“Well…there’s someone who has been pretty vocal about how he feels about the slave trade. Seems a friend of his got roped in for debts and sold off.”

“Who?” Vader insists. This seems like something he won’t want to hear, which makes him want to hear it.

Kitster laughs. “You’ll never go for it, but—it’s Sebulba.”

“Sebulba,” Vader echoes. “The Dug?”

“Do you know many other Sebulbas?”

“I’ve met a few.” Mostly prisoners; the name was always memorable.

“Well?” Kitster prods him when Vader says nothing more. “What do you think? I mean, I know it’s crazy, but he’s a Dug, still in the prime of his life after all these years, great reflexes, an experienced pilot. Motivated. He could be a real asset.”

Oh, my master, if you could see me now.

All those years of keeping Anakin Skywalker in his lonely grave, and now that Vader has dug him up, Anakin's whole life has surfaced with him.

“Let us see,” Vader hedges. “If we have need of him.”

“Great. Well, let’s find you somewhere to sleep. I have the evening shift tomorrow, so I can help you look up a few people in the morning.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a mechanic.” Kitster chuckles and reaches out to slap Vader lightly on the back. The former Dark Lord tenses and resists the impulse to strike out in earnest. “I learned a thing or two about machines from this old friend of mine. Crazy human kid who built a podracer and drove it in the Boota Eve Classic. Lived to tell the tale.”

“A strange child, indeed.”

“Strange, maybe, but great.” He offers Vader a lingering look, an expression that Vader finds oddly difficult to interpret. “Come on, then. It’s late.”

Outside the tiny, circular window of Kitster’s home, Tatooine’s moon hovers in the sky like a watchful eye. The Tuskens refer to it as the Eye of the Sky, the Goddess’s own gaze upon her people.

It has been a very long time since Vader believed that.

The moon vanishes behind a wispy cloud, but the eerily bright light of a satellite reflecting two suns still glares across the sky. Vader looks back at it until he is forced to blink, then follows Kitster down the hall.

Part Two: Child of the Desert

Help, I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
The place is a madhouse,
Feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far?

-Twilight Zone, by Golden Earring

Luke Skywalker stands half-bent over a glowing blue map projected onto a long metal table. He taps a few locations before looking up at his audience. Vader stands slightly to the back, giving his son room to work, while Kitster, Ami, Heber and a loose connection of mercenaries gather around the table proper. It stands to the back of an abandoned textile warehouse that Vader recently acquired for their purposes. His growing team spent much of the past two days cleaning out piles of sand and the sort of alarmingly venomous scorpions and spiders that Vader has not seen since he was a child.

“Our first priority will be to destabilize the local political arena,” Luke says. “The slave chips aren’t connected to a central server, so we need a distraction to contact slaves individually and give them the confidence to accept our offer. Once we’ve freed enough people, slavers will start to feel the pressure.”

“So what’s the plan?” Kitster asks.

“That’s where they come in.” Luke nods to the armoured mercenaries. “We need to instigate a war with Gardulla, but we don’t want to kill her, at least not yet. We’re looking for a lot of flash and bang, good cover. You’ll need your own cover, though. You’re working for a yet-unknown rival gangster looking to take over the Tatooine scene.”

A Bith mercenary rattles his blaster. “Is this gangster going to remain unknown forever? Seems suspicious; might look too much like cover.”

This one used to work for Jabba and misses the good old days of women and wine, Vader recalls.

“That’s where my father comes in. He can change his appearance, no one knows what he really looks like. He can show up at some point to lead the troops when things get hot and make a big reveal.”

The Bith produces a watery snort. “Maybe he can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk? I won’t take orders from an old man in a ratty robe who can’t even be bothered to show his face to me.”

Hiding your face is anathema in Bith culture. Stormtroopers met stiff planetary resistance in the early years of the Empire, to the point that soldiers posted to garrisons on Bith now habitually remove their helmets in non-combat situations.

Luke, who probably knows nothing of this, stares at the mercenary. “You agreed to this job.”

“Well, maybe I’m un-agreeing to it. I thought the orders were coming from real warriors. In fact-” He pauses, and Vader tenses, sensing what is coming next, “-Maybe I should just share the details of this little operation with Gardulla.”

“That would be most unwise,” Vader says. The new tone on his vocabulator is not as resonant or deep as his old, iconic voice, but it carries as well, in a raspy, electronic whisper that reaches the listeners as clearly as if Vader is standing next to each one of them.

The Bith slowly clicks the safety from his blaster. “Yeah, Faceless? Tell you what. You give me twice the money and I’ll start being wise again. Up front.”

Vader ignores the chorus of outrage from his son and childhood companions, as well as the aura of tentative interest from the other mercenaries. No doubt they are wondering if they might be in a position to make the same demands. All of this is irrelevant, and Vader focuses on the problem in front of him. The Bith isn’t planning a killshot, only a bit of intimidation, but Vader is not the kind of man who will allow himself to be threatened, even when concealing his abilities would be more pragmatic.

His hand shoots up at the same time the Bith takes aim. A rough tug with the Force sends the mercenary’s blaster flying across the room and onto the floor near Vader. A second tug and the Bith himself follows.

“Perhaps you wish to reconsider,” Vader intones smoothly.

The Bith peers up into the shadows of Vader’s cowl, and his face freezes in an expression of stupefaction that slowly transforms into terror. He has seen something, Vader realizes. This close, it is almost impossible not to. The hapless Bith opens his mouth, and Vader knows that the next word to emerge must be his name.

Vader kicks the mercenary with one heavy black boot. The shining toe shoots from under the brown robe to throw the Bith back onto his own blaster, still lying on the floor before the former Sith. Vader applies pressure with the Force, activates the blaster, and lets it go off in the Bith’s back.

The mercenary jerks once and gasps.

“Vader…”

It is so quiet that no one else could possibly have heard him. The Bith’s lifeforce spasms in the Force, then falls silent.

“Does anyone else wish to negotiate?” Vader demands in a voice as smooth as silk.

The remaining mercenaries shake their heads and fall all over themselves to reassure their employer that they are happy with their contracts. The Bith’s death does appear to be an accident, and no one can prove otherwise, but there is proof and there is knowing, and these creatures are experienced killers who recognize another killer.

It is unfortunate that he has revealed his connection to the Force so early, Vader thinks, but perhaps it is simply pragmatic. He could not have concealed his abilities for long. His only real regret is the expression on his son’s face, one of mixed suspicion and sorrow. It had all happened so quickly that Luke could not have sensed when he pulled the trigger. The boy has a raw natural talent, but his formal training might charitably be called haphazard.

With palpable wariness, the conspirators return to their previous positions around the table. The meeting resumes in a desultory fashion, and the participants visibly make an effort to ignore Vader as he floats the Bith’s corpse into a discrete corner. It will remain there until he has a free moment to dispose of it.

Not for the first time, he misses the military. There had always been people to do these things for him, and no questions asked.

Vader soon sends the mercenaries out to make trouble with Gardulla’s people. They have instructions to shoot up the nearest clubhouse, located close to the centre of the city. The building is highly visible, meant to remind the locals of the Hutt’s influence. Now it will be public enough that hundreds of people would see that first conflict and start the rumour mill. Luke, worried about harming bystanders, has protested the plan from the beginning,

“It’s too dangerous,” Vader’s son says again. “The clubhouse is near the market. Children play there.”

The former dark lord waves a dismissive hand. “Slave children who are used to avoiding trouble. They will hear the first shot and scatter.”

“It’s still dangerous.” Ami speaks up for the first time. “Your son is right.”

She does not call Vader by name. He had not been as close with her as he had been with Kister, but they had been friends of a sort. Yet she senses something about him. The woman who been a chubby slave girl is now tall, thickly muscled for a female, and perspicacious. Vader suspects that she has a more than average Force sensitivity. Perhaps not enough to have been a Jedi, but close. If they keep her in the crew, he will have to watch her, and that is a distraction that he does not need.

“They are professionals; they will take care. Now,” he says briskly,  “To our own part. As soon as we have our cover, we will begin contacting suitable slaves. In the beginning we cannot be indiscriminate.” He points a stern finger at Luke. “My son?”

Luke appears startled but assumes the lead with admirable ease.

“Right. That’s where you come in.” He nods to Kitster and the other locals, “You know the community. Who would be happy to make contact with us and not betray us to their masters. Start with who you know best, let them know that there’s someone interested in helping. Say no more than that, but gauge their reactions and report back.”

“What about the chips?” Heber asks. “What about my chip?”

Unsurprising that this one bring it up. Vader recalls a child with a smart mouth, a bit of a bully, but mostly a conformist. The man grown is almost unrecognizable. Like Kitster, Heber is old before his time. His ginger hair has mostly turned white, and his face is a mass of wrinkles and scars. A wide burn scores the length of one cheek, and his mouth is turned down in a permanent droop that indicates he may already have suffered a stroke.

He looks almost as bad as I do. Vader’s lip quirks up ironically behind his coverings.

“You must know the the chips are individually programmed. There is no central control for the local population; each master purchases the chip and the associated software when they acquire the slave. For this reason, we cannot disable the chips remotely. Each slave must consent to surgery to remove the device.”

“Are you kidding?” Heber slurs through violently trembling lips. “You’re as nuts-o as ever, Skywalker. If we knew where to find the chips, we’d have dug them out ages ago. If you don’t know where they are, then this is all kriffin pointless!”

Vader’s fingers itch to close around the insolent throat. He allows his breath to cycle a few times to achieve calm. To his surprise, Luke says nothing, only watches him closely.

“Fortunately for you,” Vader says at last, “I do have the means of locating your problem.”

He reaches into his robe, withdrawing the device he cobbled together over the last few days.  The Jedi Order of his youth had no experience with removing slave chips and no interest in making the effort, since Anakin’s software had been deactivated. Skywalker had therefore taken it upon himself to complete the device he had begun constructing on Tatooine. He had eventually succeeded in identifying the chips’s frequency, and by age thirteen he had located the chip in his own body. It had been buried deep inside of his neck; removing it had been no small risk, and he had spent another two years begging for permission to visit a surgeon before the Council had finally acquiesced to what they considered a largely “cosmetic” procedure. Some of the Jedi had gone so far as to suggest that he might keep the chip inside of his body as a means of practising emotional detachment from his past. The masters had only agreed to the surgery once Anakin had pointed out that the device had been installed when he was a small child; as a growing teenager there was a chance it might move and damage him internally.

A jolt of ancient anger shoots through Vader. His powerlessness before the Council had contributed a great deal to his resentment of the Order.

Vader displays the scanner now to his audience of slaves and former slaves.

“I designed this many years ago to locate my own chip. It is effective, and once located the devices will be removed surgically. To that end, Kitster has recruited a willing professional. Any further questions?”

Heber backs down with a grimace, but Vader senses that he is not done.

“So when the hell does mine come out?” the slave grunts.

“Not yet. The chip is connected to active computer software which not only threatens your life but can also track your movements in real time. If we remove it now, your master will know almost immediately, which will make you useless to our purposes. You agreed to participate in this operation.”

“If it tracks our movements, then should Heber be here?” Ami asks. Her aura in the Force is more suspicious than worried.

Luke steps in at last. “We have a signal scrambler here. Any messages sent from this location are safe.”

“Where are you getting all this equipment, then? Are you thieves?” Ami’s voice rises. “We don’t need any more trouble than we already have, and now someone’s dead!”

Vader’s scarred cheek twitches with irritation. He had already forgotten the Bith.

“Yeah,” Heber asserts with renewed confidence, “What’s the deal? Are you pulling some kind of scam with us?”

The former Sith Lord loses his patience. “The door is there if you no longer wish to participate. Of course…we will have to take certain measures to prevent you from betraying our confidence.”

Heber shifts a little closer to Ami. The woman lays a reassuring arm on his shoulder.

“Like what?” she asks.

Ami’s demeanour is calm again, but Vader can sense her unease. Not yet fear, it still provides a soothing tonic for his raw nerves.

“Your memories will be removed.”

His cool words incite real terror, and further feedback that sets his feet more solidly on the ground. He feels as if he is growing roots there, tendrils of Force to connect him to the entire building, and deeper, to the core of the planet. In this way he might remake the shoddy landmark to reflect his desires. Just as the concrete and sand beneath him would submit, so too would the whole of this miserable world.

Kitster shifts into his field of view, breaking the connection.

“Hey, Ani.” Kitster holds up his hands like a Stormtrooper entering a hostage situation. “We’ll be all right. No one’s planning to talk, and everyone wants the same thing here. Right?”

He throws a look at Ami and Heber, who stare back before slowly looking away. Heber mutters vague assurances. Ami grimaces and says nothing.

“Right. Looks like we’re all good here!” Kitster claps his hands together, as if by force he might make it so.

Vader slowly releases the dark energy that has gathered, unbidden, in his blood. He waves an idle hand back to the map on the table. It flicks through to the next setting. Gardulla’s compound disappears, replaced by a detailed layout of Mos Espa.

“Slave quarters are here, here, and here.” He points to three locations separated by the central market. “I am certain they have names, but for clarity’s sake we will label them alphabetically.” He taps each location, assigning a letter, “Each quarter will be assigned an agent based on familiarity. This agent will be responsible for contacting individuals in their assigned quarter.”

“I lived here in “C” before I was freed,” Kitster says. “I know a lot of people there.”

“Very well. Kitster is the agent for Quarter C. Heber, where do you live currently?”

“Next to Quagmire’s kaff shop. Uh, in A,” he says, after Vader fails to respond.

“Heber is A. Ami, are you sufficiently familiar with quarter B to make contact?”

“I lived in A before, but I know people from all over. Everyone comes to the shop.”

“Very well.”

Vader takes some more time to explain his expectations, assigning com calls, code words, and check in schedules. He finds himself frustrated and confounded by questions that his men in the service never would have asked, because they were soldiers and soldiers understand procedure. These people are not soldiers, and even fear of him does not discourage them from repeatedly interrupting his instructions with their confused demands.

He asks them to confirm his orders several times, while Luke offers encouragement and friendly reminders. The boy is a good commander, organized and charming, at ease with his subordinates, and Vader feels a sudden and distracting burst of pride warm his bones. If only his son had taken his hand in Cloud City, the boy would be leading armies now instead of a group of people so sparse that Vader hesitates to even label them “rag-tag.”

“Do we get blasters or something?” Heber asks.

Vader closes his eyes, exasperated.

Predictably, Luke is more patient. “Do you know how to use a blaster?”

“No, but what if someone figures out what we’re doing?”

“You have no plausible reason to be in possession of a blaster,” Luke says gently. “If you’re caught, it’s better to act normal and deny everything. Having a blaster or a knife will only make things worse for you. Remember that you’re just talking to people right now. We can see about getting you something if we expect you to end up in a combat situation, later.”

Heber’s lopsided expression further distorts with frustration. He had been hoping for a weapon, Vader senses, and likely for personal reasons. Fed up to his ears with fools, Vader dismisses Heber and Ami, sending them back into the city. When Kitster starts following them, Vader holds him back.

“What do you think?” Kitster mutters.

“Heber is useless, and Ami is too clever to be trustworthy. We will need additional help.”

“Well…there’s always Sebulba.”

Vader folds his sack-clothed arms across his chest. It always comes back to some shade of the past, some ghost that he does not wish to revisit. .

Luke flicked a glance between the two of them. “Who’s Sebulba?”

“A Dug with an undeveloped sense of personal safety,” Vader mutters.

“Or maybe an overdeveloped one,” Kitster says. “He did sabotage your pod, after all. The best way to win at conflict is to avoid it.”

A confused smile hovers around Luke’s mouth. “Doesn’t sound like you were friends.”

“Not at all. But Sebulba is skilled, and certainly more disciplined than our current agents. My primary concern is how well he is likely to take orders.”

“Especially from you, right?” Kitster says.

Vader ignores the quip. “Sound him out, Kitster. See if he is interested in a job—paid. If he will not obey me, he will obey his own greed.”

“You were always a smart kid, Ani.” Kitster backs away laughing, as if he can actually see the scowl that crosses Vader’s face.

“Be seeing you!” His boyhood friend slips out the warehouse door.

Vader sinks slowly into a sturdy metal chair that holds his weight. He grips the arm with one gloved hand and increases power to the cooling system of his suit with the other. He feels flushed, nearly feverish. His body has been more unreliable than usual these last few months. He feels frequently ill and overtaxed, and he wonders if the cause is his near-death in Palpatine’s space station or the psychological stress of his fall from power and subsequent loss of autonomy. Certainly, he has lost the predatory focus that constantly drawing on the Dark provided, the constant influx of sustaining rage and terror that his shattered body had relied on as a kind of sustenance.

“Father, are you all right?” Luke sinks into the chair next to him. The blue eyes fix on Vader, troubled and all-too-earnest. He leans in front from the side, his body in three-quarter view.

Padme used to do that.

Vader’s shoulders sag. “This was the last place I ever wished to return to.”

“But you chose to come back.”

“I felt… I had unfinished business.”

“I think you still do. Father, you told me that you had a dream when you were just a child, and that it was no ordinary dream. You were carrying a sword made of light, leading the slaves to freedom. That dream was the only reason you recognized the lightsabres on the Jedi that landed on Tatooine, weeks later. The dream is still waiting for you,” the boy insists. “You are the only one who can make it true. If you don’t fight for the slaves, no one will. No one can. Only you.”

“It will make little difference. If we free every slave on this planet, even if we outlaw slavery on Tatooine by force, there will still be millions of slaves in other systems, and billions more working for such poor remuneration that they are in effect legal slaves. The average wage on Corellia is .5 Imperial credits an hour.” He numbly remembers reading that in official documentation only weeks before the battle at Endor.

“You’re right.” Luke reaches out for his hand and squeezes Vader’s limp fingers. “That means you have more to do still, doesn’t it? You can’t give up. Not yet.”

Not ever. Isn’t that what his child is really saying? You can’t give up ever. The thought is exhausting.

Luke leans back from Vader and settles in his chair at a distance. The former dark lord tenses. He senses an uncomfortable conversation about to happen.

“Father. About the mercenary. I know what happened was an accident.” Luke pauses and looks over into the shadowed corner where the body still lays. “But it was avoidable. You have to be more careful. You must. I don’t want to lose you again. Please, Father.”

Again Luke moves in, squeezing the metal hand clamped to the chair with his own black-gloved prosthetic. Vader stares down at the replacement for the living appendage he had severed from his child.

“Very well. Is that all?”

Luke grimaces. “It isn’t an order. This is for you, too. You have to want it.”

I don’t know what I want anymore.

The thought is so sudden and bleak that it can only be the truth. Behind the mask and cowl, Vader closes his eyes.

“I require rest. We will resume our business when the mercenaries report back.”

His son sighs and nods. “All right. I’ll take care of the Bith, if you like.”

Vader waves a hand in assent and watches Luke walk to over to the body, his footsteps slow and heavy, before the former Sith heaves his bulk out of the chair and turns to the back of the warehouse. There are a couple of smaller storerooms there that they have repurposed as bedrooms, and Vader purchased a closed-top landspeeder so that he could move most of his medical equipment over from the ship. Now he sits on his medical bed, removes his helmet, and lets the abominable new droid hook him up to the ventilator and the scanners. He closes his eyes and leans back as much as he can with the metal collar of his suit cradling his neck. He feels too vulnerable in this place to strip the neck and shoulder guard from the suit, but sleeping like this will leave him in agony by morning. He really will need to purchase a Bacta tank, Vader thinks. He will ask Luke to find what he needs later, or perhaps Kitster.

If he has to live like other people, then he can at least make good use of them.