Disclaimer: STAR WARS now belongs to Walt Disney, credit for the characters and many of the scenes in this fic go to George Lucas. No copyright infringement intended.

Author's Note: This piece is a companion story to Son, Unknown, detailing Vader's discovery of his daughter's identity. Any dialogue you recognize belongs to the original trilogy. Please enjoy!

Daughter, Unacknowledged

"You cannot hide forever, Luke."

Gone was the brash boy he had faced down over Bespin three years ago. He could sense his son's presence – whether the strength of their bond came from their family connection, his familiarity with the boy's style or Luke's innate power he would never know – but the Jedi was successfully masking his precise location.

In Cloud City it had been all offensive, all righteous fury and possessive rage igniting his presence like a nova, the foundations for a Dark continuation already laid.

But not here. It had taken significant goading for Luke to lash out at the Emperor, and his fury had swiftly cooled when he realized it was his father he was fighting.

"I have accepted that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father." Those words had touched a hope Vader had long cast aside, a connection to a past he could not now explore.

"It is too late for me, son."

"Then my father is truly dead."

But the sorrow from the forest moon of Endor had not transmuted into rage at his betrayal.

"I will not fight you."

"Give yourself to the Dark Side." Vader prodded, sweeping the underbelly of the throne room for any sign of his son. On Bespin, it had been the thought of his friends, deliberately trapped there to bait him, that had driven Luke to aggression. The Sith Lord pitched his voice towards luring.

"It is the only way you can save your friends." Ah. There. Recoil. The backlash of unexpected thoughts, a flood of images, memories of laughing faces and saddened eyes, of triumphant celebrations and grief-striking losses. The faces of those dearest to his son seared to the front of his mind, offering themselves for perusal by a Force-user of Vader's skill.

Never mind that it had been this exact promise, his fealty in exchange for the knowledge to protect those he loved, that had brought Anakin to his knees—

"He had such a knowledge of the Dark Side, he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying."

"He could actually…save people from death?"

"The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be…unnatural."

"Is it possible to learn this power?"

"Not from a Jedi."

He shoved away that line of thought, burying it before it could turn into a string of memories he had kept long-repressed. They would not serve him here. Irrelevant. Useless. A distraction, nothing more.

"Yes…your thoughts betray you," he continued gently. "Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for…" The most persistent image flashing before him was a girl, features slightly blurred…a crown of braids, a slim figure…was the boy in love with her? Unbidden, Padmé's face flashed across his mind, her eyes wide and pleading and in pain…the desperate look she had worn the last time he had gazed on his beloved.

In love? No…he separated his tangled emotions from those radiating from Luke. This was a different emotion, love, still, but less flame and more protective…like the dearest of family…

A sister? A twin? A second child he had never known?

Vader clamped down on the rush of feelings, smothered by the black suit as his flesh had been, that threatened to overrun him. His daughter could wait. If Luke fell, she would follow.

"…your sister." Luke's emotional landscape spiked to red, and Vader could feel the brushfire of true fury smoldering there. He had only to push a little farther. "So. You have a twin sister."

Her likeness revolved in Luke's mind as he struggled to hold onto his growing fear and rage, and Vader saw her face—

—and stopped dead.

The rich dark hair over sable eyes that blazed defiance and occasionally compassion, the pert nose, the firm mouth, so very like her mother's—

Leia Organa? The Alderaanian Princess, member of the long-defunct Imperial Senate, a Rebel leader who had done nothing but defy him. A woman he had captured. Twice. A woman he had tortured. The firebrand whose world he had stood by to see destroyed.

Luke's twin. Padmé's daughter. His child.

Leia. An image of the last time he'd seen her in the flesh – now more than three years ago – flashed across his mind's eye. Slim in her white flight suit, dwarfed by the massive Wookie she clung to, anguish twisting her features as she gazed on the carbon-frozen face of Captain Solo.

Of course. He had sensed it then – the flash of a strength so like and yet unlike Skywalker's, a blistering in the Force such that he had thought for a moment that his son had already arrived…

"Put him in," he commanded tersely.

The Wookie roared as his soldiers approached, sending stormstroopers flying in all directions. Boba Fett, from his place next to Vader lifted his blaster, and the Sith reacted instinctively, shoving it downwards, away from the princess, her lover, and the infuriated beast.

"Stop! Stop! Stop! Listen to me!" It was the smuggler, shoving himself between the next unlucky trooper and his co-pilot. "Hey! Listen to me. Chewie! Chewie – this won't help me!"

Another roar. "Hey! Save your strength. There'll be another time."

She was watching him. Not the exchange between her lover and her friend, but him. He could feel her fear of loss, the bitterness of her hatred, touched by the Dark Side…and a hint of a plea. As if she were reaching to him, seeking behind the mask, her eyes begging for mercy when her mouth would never shape the words…

She had never before acknowledged the strange connection he had felt between them, a link born of their innate gifts with the Force. But then she was backing away, breaking their gaze to join Solo in taming the Wookie

"The princess. You have to take care of her. You hear me? Huh?"

Vader had no eyes for their passionate goodbye kiss. "I love you!" "I know." The girl's power was growing – there was no denying it. Why she would look to him when he had provided her with nothing but pain since her coming-of-age was beyond him. But the time for setting this enigma aside was past. He had come for Skywalker, but he would take Organa too. There was something about her that struck a chord in him. It was not strictly the Force, either. It had been present when he'd first met her as a child, and now, that peculiar, pleading glance…

"Calrissian. Take the princess and the Wookie to my ship."

"You said they'd be left in the city under my supervision!"

Vader raised an eyebrow – a habit he'd never broken in spite of the fact that no one had seen his face for more than twenty years. "I am altering the deal," he stated flatly. "Pray that I don't alter it any further."

With Skywalker in his possession, perhaps the girl could be trained, too. Certainly their fall would be easier if it were accomplished together...

And he had felt her escape – a flare of triumph interrupting the pain of Solo's disappearance in the hands of the bounty hunter.

He had heard his son's call to her, weak after his fall and the shock of losing his hand…Leia…hear me…

She had. And when he joined her, the sense of their Force-presence had more than doubled, making it possible to track them across the galaxy without eyes, instruments, or sensors.

For a few minutes, he savored the thought of snaring both...and then the Falcon disappeared into hyperspace.

Carrying his son. And now, he knew, his daughter as well.

The image of Leia as Luke had last seen her continued to flicker at the forefront of Vader's mind – her long hair free and flowing over the simple dress the tiny natives of the moon had given her. In profile she looked enough like her mother to make his heart ache as it hadn't since his wife died.

How had he not seen the similarities for so many years?

For it wasn't only her face that Leia had inherited from Padmé. Her ability to complete her duties under pressure, her iron-clad will, her inborn air of command – and her total contempt for all that did not fit her view of the galaxy as it ought to be. Like her mother, so unimpressed by the displays of power the Empire used to enforce its will.

How could he have been so blind? He had felt her touch the Force more than once. She had called to him, not like Luke, not with the rawness of his power, but he had felt her touch when she had been no more than a child, and there was no doubt that she shared her brother's birthright. He had learned to track her faint signature himself years ago, and he had never wondered how Force-blind Organa had produced such a child? Never thought to see the striking similarity, the too-easily-read expressions that had belonged to his long-dead wife in the maturing Princess? The passionate child who was dismantling the galaxy as thoroughly as her mother had before her?

I should have known. The Force told me, if I had but listened. Luke had been hidden from him with delicacy and care, shielded by the master Vader had once thought dead, but Leia had remained on display for the galaxy to see – for him to notice – since she had been seven years old and he had travelled to Alderaan for the first time in his service to Emperor.

888

Alderaan, Eighteen Years Earlier

"Lord Vader." Viceroy Bail Organa stood on the landing platform of Alderaan's Royal Palace with his personal guard and a hastily-assembled honor guard that lined the wide walkway. Vader allowed himself to be slightly impressed. Organa had been given no warning as to their arrival. Alderaan's air-traffic control had only identified them a double handful of minutes earlier. But here he stood, impeccably groomed, a full guard compliment in perfect position as befitted Darth Vader's rank and his own.

Vader had a number of memories of Organa from Coruscant. He was a shrewd man and a politically astute ruler. His mild manner during his Senate term had endeared him to many, and sown the seeds of his treasonous Rebellion.

The Sith Lord hated him – a rare, if dubious, honor. Anger and aggression flowed easily in a fight, but Vader seldom hated individuals.

But Organa was one who should have the wit to see what the Empire was setting out to accomplish, and appreciate the order the Emperor was attempting to establish. Alderaan was a de-militarized planet that claimed to want the same bounties of peace and prosperity for all the planets of the former Old Republic. How was that to be accomplished if the various elements of the galaxy that made their living from murder and mayhem were not brought to heel or put down?

"Viceroy Organa."

"We had no knowledge of your coming, my Lord," Organa fell into step beside him, the shorter man forcing his strides to lengthen, matching Vader's unaccommodating gait. "I regret to report that we have made no preparations for a man of your station."

"Others thrive on ceremony, Viceroy," Vader said dismissively. "You may dispense with your insincerity. You are no more pleased to see me than I am to be here."

To Organa's credit, he made no attempt to deny the Sith's bald-faced assessment.

As they approached the large, ornate doors that would lead them inside, his clones and Organa's personal guard (a peculiar formality on a planet where weapons were forbidden) tailing them, Vader was arrested in his movement by a ripple in the Force.

It was so faint that he could not pinpoint a source, but another caress brushed over the edges of his awareness, convincing him that he wasn't imagining the touch. Organa had stopped a few paces ahead and was eyeing him warily. "Is something wrong, Lord Vader?"

No doubt several things but, unlike those, this is nothing to do with you, Vader thought. His gaze travelled to the now-open doors.

Standing in the full glory of her traditional processional robes was Alderaan's Queen, Breha Organa, and next to her, tiny – no more than seven or eight – was her daughter, Leia, stiff with the effort of upholding her family's dignity and beautiful in the way of small children, her fine brown hair intricately braided and woven with silver to fall over the shoulder of her green gown.

Unexpectedly, Vader found his focus drawn to the girl. He could see the set of her jaw as she studied him, trying to suppress her initial reaction – that of fear – in the face of this strange, Imperial monster made of leather and electrical circuits, so foreign to her world.

Something about her called to him, rustling instincts he thought long dead – a desire to touch, almost to hold, as he had briefly imagined cradling his own child before both mother and son had been carried beyond his reach.

He shook the unseemly feeling. Like the trunks that had carried the accessories of Anakin Skywalker, those memories were under lock and key, and he never let them out to speak.

"Your Highness," he greeted her as gently as the respirator and his own ruined vocal cords would allow.

She startled slightly at being addressed – it was not her turn to be spoken to until her mother was greeted, if she was acknowledged at all – but her training overrode surprise at the anomaly, and she quickly bowed her head before moving forward, away from her mother, her hand outstretched. Vader took it delicately in his mechanical one, the size and lily-whiteness of her skin on his large, rough black gloves presenting a striking contrast.

"Lord Vader. You are welcome to Alderaan," the child piped. Something touched the soul he had wound in darkness as she gazed up at his mask, using her discipline to overcome her shyness and offer him the only sincere greeting of welcome he'd ever had.

"I thank you, Princess Leia." He squeezed her fingers very gently, carefully controlling the circuits in his hands to apply a reassuring pressure instead of a bruising one.

"Lord Vader," Organa spoke, drawing his attention a shade too quickly, as if he wished his daughter to fade into the background as Leia returned to her mother. "If you would permit me to guide you to our council room? I will have refreshment brought for you – and your staff." Vader, of course, could not eat outside of the confines of his rooms on his Star Destroyer, but it was the necessary diplomatic offer.

"Your Majesty," the former Jedi acknowledged Breha with a nod as he brushed past where she stood, a protective hand on her daughter's shoulder.

He could feel the girl's eyes fastened on him as he strode ahead of Organa to the council room, could sense her curiosity. Her fear had vanished, leaving room for something similar to…liking?

No, that was his instinct. Vader put it down. The girl was a pretty child with a touch of the Force. Nothing more. Left in the hands of the Organas, she would one day doubtless stand against him as a dangerous and wily adult.

One more reason to remove them from power as quickly as possible, he reflected coldly. The sooner the Rebellion died and the Empire could cease wasting resources on pointless chases and battles, the sooner they could turn their eyes towards fixing the galaxy. To allow others like the Organas to poison young minds against them…

They entered the council room. There was much to accomplish. Vader put the princess and her probable fate from his mind.

888

Coruscant, Eleven Years Later

"Alderaan has a new Senator," Governor Tarkin remarked idly as they strode towards the lift that would take them into the Imperial Senate's massive chamber.

Vader's scowl went unseen, but the added depth to his deep timbre made his displeasure clear. "The Alderaanian royal family has harbored Rebel sympathies from the beginning. We would do well to put Viceroy Organa under the direct heel of a Regional Governor instead of encouraging their treasonous talk in the Senate with another who is no doubt exactly like him."

Tarkin smiled briefly, or at least, his mouth moved upwards in a fleeting expression that had no warmth. "I agree with you, my friend, but patience has paid off. We will have nothing to worry about within the year. Even the Core worlds will find that they are not as…indispensable…as they believe themselves to be now."

"It will be finished on schedule, then?" Vader was surprised in the peculiar way of those who have been awaiting something for so long that its actual completion came as a faint shock. The Death Star had been in the planning for more than thirty years.

"It will. And then…I suspect that the Imperial Senate will cease to matter, and Alderaan will be one of our first targets. In threat, if not in fact."

The lift opened on this pronouncement, and Tarkin took his place on the prominent row of Regional Governors, while Vader made his way up to the elevated podium to sit in his master's place.

The Senate session was long, and boring, as always. Vader tuned most of it out, knowing that the audio-visual recording equipment incorporated into his armor would preserve the whole dull mess and allow him to replay any parts that might need analysis.

As the face of the Emperor's version of justice galaxy-wide, Vader seldom had to suffer the Senate, or Coruscant in general, for that matter, his presence only required on those rare occasions when the Emperor himself was otherwise engaged. He had come to hate the city-planet, capital of the Galactic Empire, as deeply as he had ever despised Tatooine as a young man. Fawning courtiers, mewling idiots, puling supplicants…better to be in the Outer systems, hunting Rebels and bringing some kind of order to the chaos the Old Republic had allowed to flourish unchecked.

If Tarkin was right about the Senate's imminent dissolution, the Sith Lord felt the day couldn't come too soon.

A ripple in the Force, accompanied by a sense of very dim recognition, caused him to re-focus. It was faint, like a rebounded echo in this place that had once seen so many Jedi, but he could tell that it was generated by a single person in the here-and-now, not the faded imprint of one of his former comrades. A senatorial seat had glided forward and she was announced: Princess Leia Organa, daughter of Viceroy Bail Organa of Alderaan.

Tarkin had just reminded him that Alderaan's representative had been turned over in the last election. Vader had not recalled that the replacement was the princess that had stirred in him a last shadow of tender emotion so many years ago. He studied her, grateful for the concealment of his mask. The endearingly shy girl had become a confident, charming woman. She could not have been any older than eighteen, dressed in simple, elegant robes of pure white, the color and cut emphasizing both her woman's body and her innocence.

Vader frowned as she spoke, her eloquent words and punctuating hand gestures nibbling at the edges of his recollection even as they outlined a compromise that skirted close to sedition. This rebound he felt from her, grown in power but now subdued, could it be trained? Should it be? He had never taken an apprentice, but once, there had been many Sith…and Alderaan was a planet that had produced more than its fair percentage of Jedi.

He mentally cleared the question, focusing instead on her words. She caused the Force to ripple, but there had been others he had sensed in his years as the Emperor's right hand, and it might be no more than the strength of her personality. He was grasping at unlikely straws. The smallest Padawan of the old Temple had more Force imprint than this woman from Alderaan. And her ideas made her dangerous, even if she had piqued his interest when she was a child. It was her speech he needed to attend to. He had spent years waiting for an Alderaanian to make a mistake, to slip up and reveal just enough to justify an arrest. Perhaps the Force would be on his side today.

An unasked tickle at the back of his brain told him that he doubted it. The Force had taken a side.

Hers.

888

Present Day

"Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me," Vader grimly acknowledged, prodding the Force. He had little doubt that it had been his old master's idea to separate the twins and hide them. He felt the sharp rage rising, and he wished savagely that the old man was alive once more so that he could have the pleasure of killing him again. When he had defeated Obi-Wan six years ago, he had only been aware that the man had taken a pupil, and that the student's presence in the Force was quite strong.

When Vader had discovered that it was his son that Kenobi had been training, it had cost him his best spy, and more than one unfortunate officer his life as they had failed to apprehend Luke.

But now he had his son in hand, and his daughter was with the Rebel forces below, easily within grasp.

"Now his failure is complete."

Fear surged once more from Luke, and shame at his unwitting betrayal. Vader could not smile beneath his mask, but a surge of triumph peeled up his spine. The girl was Luke's weak spot. All it took was a little harder push—

"If you will not turn to the Dark Side, then perhaps she will."

"No!" The cry of rage came from behind him, and Vader spun to meet the searing green blade with his own.

Kenobi had separated them – but it had been their father that had reunited them, and every moment from the day of her capture aboard the Tantive IV to this had brought them to the battle his son would lose. Her open declarations of treason, her unlikely rescue at the hands of her brother and the smuggler…

888

Six Years Earlier

The Executor was bearing down on the Tantive IV, and this time he rode not the vain hope of an ill-spoken word, but was within a hair's breadth of possessing the hard evidence he so desperately needed to remove the entire government of Rebel-sympathizers from Alderaan's top tier…and guide him to the stronghold of the Rebellion itself.

As they had closed on the ship that had intersected the transmission of the Death Star's plans, the ripple he had associated with her passionate speech in the Senate again flickered through his consciousness. The absolute certainty granted to those familiar with the Force settled in him. She was aboard the ship.

So much the better. He would be able to handle her personally.

He heard the synchronized marching of stormtrooper feet, and hoped that they had captured someone more useful than the idiot captain who had tried to tell him that the courier vessel was on a diplomatic mission.

The touch of the Force increased minutely, and he was unsurprised when his troops rounded the corner with Princess Leia marching between them.

"Darth Vader. Only you would be so bold." Her voice dripped unsurprised disdain. "The Imperial Senate will not sit still for this. When they hear you've attacked a diplomatic—"

"Don't act so surprised, Your Highness," Vader cut her off. "You weren't on any mercy mission this time. Several transmissions were beamed to this ship by Rebel spies. I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan!"

She was a wonderful liar. But then, she had to be. As yet, despite intensive efforts, they had no proof that linked the fiery nineteen-year-old Alderaanian Princess to the on-going Rebellion that had been born with the Empire itself. "You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor!" he snapped. It would take more tools than he had at his immediate disposal to break her. "Take her away!"

And as she left, a flicker of disgust, like worms on bared skin, trickled over him. He wondered if she knew she was projecting her feelings, how easy it made her to read, how weak it was to broadcast so.

"Holding her is dangerous!" his underling cut in as they strode away. "If word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the Rebellion in the Senate." Vader waved him off, irritated by the interruption…but the elusive touch of the princess' power was gone, evaporated like an illusion.

The commander approached with the news that an escape pod had been jettisoned – the stolen plans probably in them. Vader dismissed the passing shudder as he set about completing his master's task.

888

Present Day

His son was beating him back, the dim glow of the Dark Side swamping his aura as Luke channeled his power through the fear he felt for his sister, slashing at Vader and driving the older man under punishing blows—

Vader staggered, lost his footing, and his son's green saber seared through leather and circuitry, taking off his right hand and sending the bright red of his lightsaber spinning into darkness. The Dark Lord fell to the deck, pain lancing from his damaged nerves.

Laughter echoed over them, cruel in its eagerness. "Good. Good. Your hate has made you powerful. Now. Fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side."

The Dark surged, smelling blood and power, and for a moment Luke's eyes flashed yellow. He was nearly there, the black coursed in his blood, reaching to take control of Vader's weak heart, singing for his son to end the threat to his friends, as it had once promised Anakin that he could spare those he loved…

Darkness battled Light for the soul of the son that had been so sure his father could be saved. I feel the good in you. The conflict. Luke had delivered himself to Vader with the incorruptible belief that his father would turn back the tide of the Dark.

And now the poison shone in those eyes, feeding on desperation, whispering the seductive call that had claimed his father before him. I did this, Vader realized grimly, and the reality was far different than the grand visions he'd had of turning his son on Bespin. There was no glory here. No justice. No desire to make the galaxy better. Isolation bred rage, and rage became hatred – that was the only path to tread successfully into the Dark.

"Take your father's place at my side."

"Always two, there are. A master and an apprentice."

Never three. His master had never wanted a third. He had always been seeking a replacement.

Luke withdrew. The sickly yellow cast faded, leaving his eyes the clear blue that Anakin had once had. Vader watched his son stare at his mechanical hand that had replaced the flesh-and-blood version Vader had severed as if he'd never seen it before. Then he rose, deactivating his lightsaber and throwing it to one side, squaring his shoulders as he turned to the Emperor.

"Never. I'll never turn to the Dark Side. You've failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi." He glanced down at his stricken father, and Vader saw – unbelievably – pride in those eyes, "Like my father before me."

The Emperor's face hardened as he studied Luke's resolve. "So be it. Jedi."

He raised his hands. "If you will not be turned…you will be destroyed." Lightning shot from the gnarled fingers, wrapping around Luke and throwing him to one side. "Young fool." It was almost a sigh, a caress as the Emperor descended the staircase to more thoroughly enjoy the pain of his victim. "Only now, at the end, do you understand." His features twisted, and the Force strobing from his hands shattered the air more violently. Luke's head snapped back under the onslaught.

"Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side. You will pay the price for your lack of vision."

"Father, please!" Luke begged, collapsing to the metal deck.

Vader could hear the echo of her voice in Luke's cry...and as he struggled to his feet, he was standing on the bridge of another Death Star, and another of his children was having her heart torn out before his eyes.

"Father, please!"

No...Leia had not said that. Had not known to say it and he would not have been able to grant her wish even if she had...but the pleading call was identical...

"No! Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons, you can't poss—"

"You will prefer another target, a military target, then name the system!" Silence, her eyes weighing the image of her home planet hovering like a jewel in space before them, and the icy conviction in Tarkin's grey gaze. He moved towards her with a quickness that suggested savagery, forcing her back against Vader. "I grow tired of asking this, so it'll be the last time. Where is the Rebel base?"

She took a deep breath. The Force flickered at the edge of Vader's consciousness, a conscious reining, a gathering of emotion. The Sith Lord could feel the struggle going on within the girl pressed against him, her presence in the Force surprising – though more for its familiarity now than its existence. "Dantooine." She took her eyes from the screen, studying the ground. "They're on Dantooine."

"There. You see, Lord Vader, she can be reasonable." He turned to the commander. "Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready."

"What?!"

"You're far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration, but don't worry. We will deal with your Rebel friends soon enough."

"No…!" she started forward, but Vader gripped her shoulder, seeking a firmer connection to her latent power more than control of her body – if she charged the gunner or slapped Tarkin it would be no more than a small measure of justice.

In her distress, the Force rippled from her so strongly that he was momentarily startled to feel the narrow shape of her shoulder – she was thin under her Senatorial gown, and the Sith could have lifted two of her with one hand – without the Force.

A child, Vader realized, and quickly shoved the unwelcome thought away. The first-term Senator had not yet cleared her twentieth birthday. But she was already a charismatic leader, one that shone with the Force, and she did not support the Empire. It had taken the threat of destroying her entire homeworld just to shake her composure.

The planet exploded, Vader heard the terrified panic of several-hundred-million minds shrieking as they were incinerated—

—and a blast of sorrow, not fleeting and destroyed, but enduring, horrified, the deep misery born of great love, that came from the body of the girl under his glove.

"Father!"

Luke's voice yanked him back to the throne room of the second Death Star.

Years of ruthless emotional suppression had been all that supported him through the first, brutal shock of Luke's revelation. Vader had not let himself feel surprise as they battled. Had not permitted the searing, emotional mess of anger, love, protectiveness, fear and ferocious pride that he had come to feel for his son to rise in response to this second, indomitable child.

But the battle was finished, and his delayed reaction was presenting its bill.

He had failed her. Her childhood had been blasted into oblivion by an abomination of Imperial technology, and he had done no more than stand by and watch.

As he stood watching her brother, one of her best friends, dying now.

His son writhed under his master's hands, blue bolts wracking the body he had dedicated six years to finding. Six years of tracking, of reports, of patient sifting through the Force and his network of spies spread galaxy-wide. Occasional confrontations the only chances he had of seeing his son grow from an eager boy to a seasoned Jedi, the last of his kind.

Soon to be totally extinct. His son's years spent mastering for the Force was all that had allowed him to hold out against the Emperor's power even this long. But within the next five minutes the Dark would win, would shock Luke's heart into silence.

And Vader would begin his search anew.

"Especially for…your sister."

His son twisting in agony, his master's back to him with all the casual assurance that Vader presented no threat...The scathing skepticism he had buried when he had chosen to follow the Emperor reared its head, speaking with Padmé's voice. He had condemned the corruption of the Old Republic and sworn his allegiance to something worse, had written his path across the galaxy in blood trying to fix it. They had failed. He had failed. Could he condemn his children to the same? To die or to spend a lifetime killing?

"You couldn't bring yourself to kill me before and I don't believe you'll destroy me now." The boy meant it. There was an unconquerable part of his son, a light that flared as stubbornly as an undying dwarf star, that refused to accept that his father could be Darkness incarnate, that Light could find no niche in his soul.

Could he allow Luke to die just to prove him wrong?

The fact of Luke's existence had shaken the Sith lord's certainty about the universe for the first time in decades. And his son's surety that Vader could be redeemed had eventually cracked the darkness the older man had wrapped round himself, making him doubt the finality of his chosen path.

News of a second child, a girl, had wedged itself into the crack his son had made and slammed itself home with the strength of a star destroyer. Did he wantthis? This life that had taken him away from his children and only brought them back together in violence?

Forgive me, Padmé, Vader thought, watching his son writhe, and felt the dull ache of a sadness that rage had never relieved surge through his weak heart. He did not know whether he asked forgiveness for his hand in the destruction of a peaceful world, in condemning their daughter to death, or for failing to recognize the clear resemblance between his beloved and the young woman he had trained to hate him. He wasn't sure it mattered.

I should have seen, Vader reflected grimly, watching his master's face twist with the pleasure of causing pain to his son.

Some of the Jedi at the old Temple had claimed that with death came clarity. Now, Vader wasn't sure that they had properly understood the order. He felt as if he was seeing clearly for the first time in decades. And the path he saw laid so plainly in front of him would mean his death.

Within arms reach, the Emperor had finished playing with his foe. "Now, young Skywalker, you will die."

To be replaced with another. Vader felt the cruel, casual certainty of that assumption as if it had been spoken.

The Emperor had, after all, heard the entirety of their conversation as they dueled, witnessed the taunts Vader had used to engage his son's hatred, to access his aggression.

The instant his son's heart had ceased beating, Vader would be on a shuttle back to Endor's moon, to bring his daughter – Force-sensitive, Force-talented, but untrained and defenseless – to his master's feet. There would be no battle between them. Vader knew, in that peculiar way he had grown accustomed to knowing with Luke, that Leia had never so much as touched a lightsaber.

Luke arched in agony as the poisonous electricity jolted through him, crawling over his body in crackling streams, but his thrashing was calming slightly as his skin smoked, his physical frame readying itself for death.

Padmé's dark eyes watched him from across the years.

Her son – their son – was dying.

The decision had been made when he'd seen the future stretching in front of him. Suddenly, he was moving.

It was only as pain ratcheted through him that he realized that he'd lifted his master, the man who had unmade and then re-shaped him. The man who had lied to him to secure his loyalty. The man who would destroy his children without a second thought.

His strength was already flagging. Exhausted by the duel – his son was younger than he, stronger, and his final burst of hatred had been vicious – Vader felt his body failing. The Force-generated electricity flooding from the Emperor combined with the circuits that kept him alive to hasten his end. He could feel the erratic tattoo of his damaged heartbeat threatening to give way. He staggered as he struggled to reach the core's drop shaft, each step requiring a reason to keep going.

Right. For capturing his daughter and holding her captive, forcing her to witness the destruction of everything she loved aboard the first Death Star. Left. For killing Obi-Wan – who had served Luke as a father more than Vader ever could – right in front of his son. Right. For the pain in Leia's face when he imprisoned her lover in carbonite. Left. For luring Luke to Bespin only to offer him a life as slave to the Emperor. Right. For his failure to know his magnificent daughter, despite years of desperate war. Left. For his willingness to bring his son to this torture chamber.

Luke's mind had been deliberately opened to him when the Jedi had come to him on the forest moon. As they spoke, his son had mentally presented him with a string of fleeting images: Vader (shorn of his suit and looking like an older version of Luke himself) training with his son, fixing a ship together, talking, laughing, being. The pictures were woven together by an hungry longing for family that both Luke and Anakin had been denied. Accepted. Ideal. Impossible.

He had spent decades serving the cause of Darkness. He would never be acceptable in the coming world, in the galaxy that would rise with his children from the Empire's ashes.

Anakin Skywalker knew too well that there was no such thing as a clean slate. But he could have a meaningful exit.

He threw the Emperor over the railing and collapsed to the deck.

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The corridor rocked, sparks spitting from burning electrical circuits.

The Death Star was under attack. The shield had come down sometime between Luke's first furious charge with his lightsaber and now, when Vader was staggering with his son towards the ship bays, the pair of them completely ignored by the panicked soldiers tearing around them.

The Rebel who had fired the missile that destroyed the first Death Star was aboard this one, but there was bound to be another crack shot out there.

Luke stumbled under his father's weight, and Vader fell. Struggling to sit up, the Sith Lord could feel the machinery that had kept his battered and ruined body running for decades winding down. Insight arrived with the intensity of a Force vision. He would not even survive the journey to the moon where his daughter waited. He would never be able to tell her…anything. At least, not in this life.

"Luke. Help me take…this mask off."

Concerned compassion graced his son's features. "But you'll die."

"Nothing…can stop that now. Just for once…let me…look on you…with my own eyes." He could sense Luke's objections, the genuine sorrow flowing with his Force. A well of some gentle emotion stole through the Sith. Vader had commanded hundreds of thousands, had affected millions of lives, and yet this boy he had nearly destroyed, his son, would be the sole person to grieve his passing.

And perhaps, one day, his daughter would learn to forgive him, and also grieve.

The shape of Luke's face blurred with the removal of the helmet's corrective eyes, but the color and texture of it came into focus. Vader abruptly experienced the burning wish that he could have seen this face every day for the past twenty-four years.

"Now, go, my son. Leave me."

"No. I can't leave you, I've got to save you," Luke replied earnestly.

Vader tried to smile, the unfamiliar motion tugging at his lips. "You already have, Luke. You were right. You were right about me." There had been enough good to save his children. In the end, it was all that he had needed. "Tell your sister…" that I always respected her as an enemy and adversary. That I loved her for the few minutes I knew she was mine. That I know she'll one day use the Force as adeptly as you. That I am proud of her for all she has accomplished, and hopeful for all that you will both live to see, "…you were right."

"Father," Luke's voice was closing as black crowded the edges of Vader's vision. His lungs felt heavy, too full of air that he had ceased being able to breathe decades ago…he exhaled, sliding out of his son's grasp, "I won't leave you," came the last, pleading murmur.

But I must leave you, my son. Vision faded. Sound faded. Smell faded.

And there was only the feeling of his son's fingers squeezing his armored shoulder, as if he were a child who would never let go.

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Author's Note: Hope you liked it. Please let me know what you think!