A/N: I've always wanted to write this, but only now have had the courage to try. There are threads beginning in this introduction that will be expanded on as the story continues. Please R&R!
Vader sits in a highly oxygenated chamber and lives inside his unfortunately intact mind for the rest of his days.
Or he wants to, at least.
Luke offers sincere, warm smiles every time he enters the chamber, and his father is sure that that's just due to the overabundance of oxygen going to the boy's brain.
Luke would, in turn, complain that he wasn't a boy any longer. And it was strangely heart-wrenching, how domestic they both sounded, especially without Vader's vocoder in the midst.
Leia knew that he was alive, and wanted nothing to do with him. He can't begrudge her that, certain that the former princess prayed every day to forget his existence altogether. That knowledge doesn't quell the hurt that arises whenever he asks after her, and her smuggler, and her son soon after the End of the Emperor. Vader couldn't believe that he'd survived long enough to live in the same galaxy as his grandson, and to have his son sitting next to Vader and tell him so in person.
Luke is like a messenger by then, amid his journeys to restart an all-new Order without his father's help. Vader, as Anakin or not, would never consider himself a Jedi, and would never inflict the full reality of what the original Order had been – a cruel, stifling, and long-obsolete elitist club that mislead itself as it encouraged sanitization over faith.
Luke could never hope to survive, as bright and beautiful a star as he is, and could never be asked to replicate such an appalling system. Instead, he tells Vader of the work he's done in coaxing those with Force potential to join him, to consider his cause even without the assurance that Luke was and will always be a hero in the galaxy at large.
And he tells Vader about his twin sister, about Anakin's daughter and her efforts to remake what had been shattered long before her existence.
Vader is achingly proud and feels such disgust at himself with all her achievements and failures, which he knows he doesn't deserve to have any relative pride for. And, yet.
The woman beside his son is smaller, fit but not overtly so and with mousy brown hair and shifting hazel eyes. She'd come to see him along with Luke, and Vader would have to have been an idiot not to realize that this was his future daughter-in-law, if one wanted to assign a formal title to it.
"Lord Vader." She nods and stumbles into a curtsy in his presence, ignoring the fact that he is a crumpled man with skin the pall of an ugly, empty moon. Beside her, Luke shakes his head like a sullen teen and despite himself, Vader smiles.
"I trust my son wished for you to address me otherwise."
Luke doesn't speak for his future wife – he never would, still being too good deep inside, though he sighs through his nostrils almost petulantly.
Then again, who's to say the woman, whose chin sets with pride and whose eyes speak of thunder, would even let the Last Jedi have a chance.
"I know. You are Anakin Skywalker." Her name is Mara, and she lets him know before she and Luke leave Vader's hidden domain, that which is – to the credit of Luke's stories – very like a deceased Master Yoda's in a tangled swamp. It's a room on an island of a planet, tucked away from view.
"I am more comfortable addressing the man in the suit, nonetheless."
Luke and Mara are, as a pair, less prone to visiting Vader. If the visiting enters a regulatory period, it's usually Luke who comes to keep him company. And when Luke comes bearing news or his measured and gentile presence, Vader finds that he doesn't mind that the chamber has no windows and no forms of communication, aside from the long-range Com with only Luke's contact within.
He isn't there for any of it, but Vader sees the weariness beneath Luke's glistening eyes and the lines that don't deepen around his mouth as much as they do in his forehead and that make his features sink into unkempt flesh.
Luke finds other Force Sensitives, never to be kept extinct for long.
Luke decides upon one crucial place for a Jedi temple.
Luke takes in Ben, his nephew and Vader's unseen grandson, for training. And that is when the darkness settles most perceptibly in the boy's features.
Luke and Mara marry.
The Jedi are gradually returning, and everyone knows that Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa were the children of a now deceased Dark Lord.
"Father." There's that smile again, that Luke's father had feared he'd lost in the chaos of life and mundanity. It's the same smile that Vader was finally allowed to see after the second Death Star was destroyed. And it'd never been more overwhelming since then, until now, as Luke cradled a tiny and precious lifeform in his visibly quivering arms.
"I couldn't risk bringing her just after she was born." The fair-haired boy – man – said in a hushed tone.
Luke brought the baby closer, until she was just under Vader's nose, waking and fussing at the disliked angle she was being held at. The tiny girl would've much preferred being nestled into her father's chest, where it was warm and safe and where it was easier for her to feel the love for herself that Luke broadcasted in waves.
"Father, meet Rey. Rey, meet your grandfather." Luke's voice was a humble whisper in the mostly silent chamber.
Rey.
She whimpered, before Vader brought a gloved hand closer. It killed him, to even think of laying his mechanical appendage on the baby's brow, but it would kill Luke if he didn't. The tips of his fingers rested on the crown of Rey's fragile head, and she opened large, hazel eyes at the contact as she and her grandfather made their first ever connection through the Force.
Neither Vader nor Anakin had ever fallen so far in love with another soul until that moment.
"You should never have brought her here." Vader heard himself, though his battered, aged voice was lost in the continual pump of compression and the clicking on all sides of his chamber.
There was an edge of weariness to Luke's tone, though Vader couldn't tear his eyes away from Rey. From his granddaughter.
"Father." Luke berated, gently. "Of course, I was going to."
The baby reached through the air, tiny hands flying up to meet Vader halfway and tearing his monstrous heart into shreds.