Her son

Mon Mothma summons Lord Vader for a conversation soon after the Battle of Yavin. An alternate version of how Vader finds out about Luke

The old temples were sturdy pyramids that rose block-like above the tree line, little islands rising above the sea of trees below. The leaves of the trees below ruffled as his TIE skated over and he swept back, circling the temple at the co-ordinates.

They'd scoured the planet after the rebels had left, the rabble group having fled days after the death star had been destroyed and before the Empire could gather their forces to launch a counter attack which might have been more successful had his master not demanded that Vader return to Imperial Centre immediately.

As promised, there was only the former senator when he touched down and she stood, close by her sleek, useless little vessel that must have been launched close to the planet because it seemed incapable of making the jump to hyperspace as far as Vader was concerned. She said and did nothing as he disembarked and he could feel trepidation rather than fear as she waited.

"Vader," Mon Mothma greeted as he walked towards her. Seeing her was easier with the mask, the red-tinted vision distorting her features and keeping him from remembering…

He stopped and waited, his breathing he knew was heavy and loud which usually allowed him to intimidate. Instead, Mon Mothma's curiosity started to rise and he found himself irritated by the feeling.

"Where did you get that code?" he asked, ignoring any pleasantries with the woman who, up until two years ago, had sat in the galactic senate.

The woman firmed her chin a little. "You know the answer to that," she said eventually.

It annoyed him.

She gasped in surprise when he reached out with the force, concentrating on her throat as he raised his hands, starting to curl his fingers into a careless fist. "Then you are a fool to use it," he said, lifting her from the ground a little, "and even more foolish to bring me here, alone-"

"Padme gave it to me," she gasped. "I've never used it…until now."

Something nagged at the edge of his awareness. Some kind of warning or flickering whispers that he found impossible to ignore. With an impatient flick of his fingers, he let her go and watched dispassionately as she gasped, bending over to catch her breath.

For almost a moment, his mind almost jumped to another moment, in a very different place with a very different woman-

"You have a point you wish to make," he asked, itching to kill her. The force whispered to wait to question and he obeyed, but as soon as she had said what she needed to, she would be gone, dispatched-

"I never used it," Mon Mothma said, regaining her breath though she was certainly afraid now, her eyes wide as she watched him. "But I do now, to protect her son."

Son.

Anger wasn't the right word to use, there was too much treacherous hope in the whirlwind of emotions to let anger be the one that was given strongest reign. Pain was certainly there, the continuous wound that burned more than the lava on Mustafa and left him more helpless than he had felt when he had tried to crawl up the river banks with only a burning metal hand to aid him.

"The child died with the mother," was all he could say because it was true. He knew it was true, had lived with that fact for years even if the child was something he barely gave thought too, weighted down already as he was with the agonising grief of Her death. The child was…an added wound, but one that was never something separate from his wife.

But his words must have…acknowledged that he was listening or that he'd been momentarily stunned, weakened by her words because Mon Mothma lifted her head, regal once more and held something out to him. A holo device and Vader stared at it before he reached, not really able to consciously follow what was happening.

He thumbed the switch and what he knew were blue lights flickered on, creating the image of a youth at a table on board a ship somewhere.

"Skywalker," someone off the recording asked and the youth nodded, almost seeming distracted as if his last name were of no concern. Then, the boy realised he was being addressed and looked up, startled, eyes darting to whatever committee he was facing.

"Han's trustworthy," the boy said, his outer rim accent lilting and voice earnest. "He didn't have to come back and help us."

"We paid him," said a wry voice. "Surely you can see why we have our concerns."

"No," the boy said frankly, chin firming and Vader felt something in his freeze at the sight, "I don't." Iron laced his voice now. "He came back to a fight we were losing and helped us. Helped me. Even though his ship is easily identifiable, even though he'd already been paid." His gaze flickered across, as if searching the faces of those who questioned him. "People across the galaxy call you traitors, killers, a scourge of peace. Do you really want to start judging people by their reputation?"

"I heard of his flying skills, of his name. Saw him a few times," Mon Mothma said quietly as he watched, "and I knew who his father was. And I saw that," she gestured, "And it confirmed who his mother was."

It was almost agonising. To hear his wife speak from that boy's lips. To hear that steely control, that idealism and that annoyance that no-one else saw the world the way she did. The tilt of the jaw, the way the eyes narrowed. Even the daring look at each and every person in that room, even if they all outranked the boy which seemed likely.

He needed nothing else to confirm what Mon Mothma claimed.

"He's joined the Rebel Alliance," she said as the silence stretched out between them. "You hunt us, you hunt her son."

The image was still now, at the end of the recording and clearly spliced from something else. He should close it off, remove the sight, the reminder from his gaze and-

He couldn't.

"And what makes you think you'll leave here alive?" he asked, tilting his gaze back to her. "Your pitiful attempts to use the boy to protect your pathetic insurrection-"

"Because high command want to tell the universe that we have the son of the hero without fear," she snapped. "And you and I both know where that will lead."

"Anakin Skywalker is dead-"

"And Luke believes his father was a normal Jedi. He doesn't know that if he goes looking, he could find-"

"That Jedi has been purged from all records," Vader snapped before the boy's name caught up with him and he could almost hear his wife whisper the name in his ear, one of the few times they discussed baby names.

"But not from memory," Mon Mothma snapped. "We use bounty hunters, we hide on remote planets, on places that you liberated once. Do you really believe it will stay quiet once your son knows he has something to find? And I'm not fool enough to believe he won't go looking eventually or hear the stories, but we need time…" she trailed off, her eyes distant with whatever concerns the woman had.

He wanted to tell her it wasn't him. That he had no connection to Anakin Skywalker. But the words sounded hollow in his mind and too childish to draw breath.

"Is this the extent of the protection?" he asked instead. "To not hunt your rabble?" he sneered as best he could with the mask. "You use the boy as a shield?"

"Better that than what the jedi have done," she snapped.

His mind raced. The boy at the death star…it had to have been the same boy with Kenobi-

"What did that old fool do?" Vader demanded, stepping forward furiously.

She hesitated. And then looked down at the holo disc that he still held, her eyes scanning the boy's features. "I have done many things in this war," she said, looking away again. "Things I am not proud of. We all do," she said, looking back up at him. "But I will not send Padme's son to kill his own father because he's been told he'd be avenging Anakin Skywalker."

It took a moment to unravel it, if only because, even now, he could not believe that his former master would sink to such levels.

Kenobi had named Vader as Anakin Skywalker's murderer. To his own son.

He looked away, almost paralyzed by the furious hurt that bellowed through his aching body. If he could have let out a bitter laugh he would have because he could still see Obi-Wan standing above him on Mustafa screaming down at him about love and betrayal.

Hypocrite, he wanted to scream back. Liar.

He turned away, heading back towards his fighter.

"Anakin," she said and he stopped and he hated it. He could go years not even thinking the name and then something like this-

Nothing like this had happened, he corrected. But shadows from the past would reach out and shake something lose and take months to rid himself of.

He wondered how long this one would take to fade away.

"I'm going to tell him Obi-Wan lied," she said, her voice soft. "Do you want me to tell him the rest?"

The concept was too big. All of it was too much. "No."

Xxx

It took fifteen standard days for him to study the holo disc again. In the sanctuary of his chambers, as he breathed without the crushing weight of his breathing apparatus in the suit and ignored the scarred, husk of a body that seemed to peek between dull metal, he thumbed the holo again.

At the start, the boy was staring at something, eyes narrowed and this time, without the mask he could make out with the poor vision that had been left to him after Mustafa that the child had Anakin Skywalker's colouring. And chin, even if he did hold it at the exact same angle as his stubborn mother.

He didn't realise what he was doing until his metal fingers broke the projection lights, causing the image of the boy to flicker in his grasp like the wisps of a dream.

Padme had been right.

It was hard to connect the youth with the thrumming kicks that he'd once felt in his wife's swollen belly. That little being that had shifted against his touch and flickered gently against his senses. His flesh and bone hand had cupped her stomach that first night, before the nightmares started, before his fears and doubts and deals. That one single night when all he had worried about was becoming a father and battling his own mind about whether to leave the order.

They'd made love that night. Carefully and he'd been terrified and fascinated by the changes to her body. She'd curled up close to him afterwards and he'd stroked her stomach, weaving between fear and…and dreams. Hope for a life outside of the Order that he'd never been able to imagine previously. But he'd pictured a little girl, some mix of his mother and his wife that he could protect and cradle close and keep safe the way he couldn't with the other women in his life. The idea that he could be the hero in someone's life had been warming in a way that he'd never felt before.

Strange. He'd forgotten he'd ever had that thought, that moment. Probably the only one he'd ever had with the fluttering presence. Hours later, the child had been secondary, a countdown timer to a bomb that would tear his life apart.

Childbirth had killed her. Or he had. Had Kenobi just cut the infant out of its mother's womb as she cooled? The thought repulsed him and he stared at the boy in the holo trying to hate him, trying to blame him-

But all he could see in the boy's face was his wife.

Luke Skywalker.

In another world, in another life, he might have been at Padme's side when the child was born. Perhaps held the boy to his chest. He had barely any experience of infants; it was hard to picture exactly what that familial image would have been like. But he tried for a moment before he caught himself.

The boy had been trained to be his killer.

He wondered if Mon-Mothma would keep her word. Having a force sensitive primed and ready to attack the feared Darth Vader would surely be too much of a temptation to destroy fully. She'd find excuses, he imagined. And even if she didn't, without a feasible counter-story, he imagined the boy would come for him. A reckless youth, desperate to prove himself. Determined to see justice done.

The boy would be the death of him.

And Vader knew it. The force rang around him, even as the thought formed.

Kill him a voice whispered that sounded far too much like his master for comfort.

He studied the image again. The tilt of the chin, the narrowed blue eyes, the fierce determination to do what was right and imagined it for a moment. He could make it quick, erase the last vestige of Anakin Skywalker once and for all and complete his journey to the dark side. It would be easy; any training that the boy had completed would be no match for him, no matter how strong the boy was.

His gloved, metal fingers broke the image once more.

He was her son. Idealistic. It seemed unlikely then that he'd be anything like Anakin Skywalker, brimming with frustration and ready to be twisted and turned into something…else. More? Less? No. And, just as the boy's mother had done, the child would likely dig his heels in, might waver and hesitate, but turn?

Kill him, a voice whispered again, but this time more like Kenobi, a utilitarian warning that it was better to simply act now and spare the boy from Palpatine. Avoid all the agony that would come.

Both of his masters would have killed the boy, he thought. And there was no counter voice. Nothing debating or discussing the idea, just an unending ringing silence because…

There was no conflict.

His son would be the death of him.