"I wanna stay up 'till midnight."
Vader looked down at his son who stood at his elbow. "What?"
"I wanna stay up 'till midnight to celebrate Empire Day." Luke climbed onto the couch next to his father.
"Luke, you know that I don't celebrate Empire Day."
"Yeah, but I don't see why. Jake says that all good Imperials do. He says that his daddy has a big party every year. You are the Empire, but you don't celebrate." Luke pouted.
"We don't celebrate and that's that. Do you understand?"
"No."
"I promised you could stay up tomorrow for your birthday. Two nights in a row would be dangerous for both of us." Vader said, only half joking.
"Come on, Daddy. Just once."
"No." Vader stood and picked up his son.
Luke squirmed, "I wanna stay up! I wanna stay up and watch the fireworks."
"Luke, do you know why they celebrate Empire Day?" Vader sat back down with his son in his lap.
"Yeah, they taught us about it in school."
"What happened?"
"You beat the evil Jedi and the Emperor regrouped and protected all the worlds that the Jedi had endangered. It was a really great day in galactic history." Luke was quoting, practically word for word, from his tutor.
"Yes, but that's not all. Do you know what else happened?"
"No. Teacher said that it was it."
"That was because I don't share personal details with your tutor. That was the day your mother died. I can't celebrate the day of her death, no matter what else happened that day."
"Oh." Luke was subdued and he stopped bouncing on his father's lap. "I didn't know that. If Mom was here, would you celebrate?"
"I might."
"What else do you have against it?" Luke was exasperated.
"I have given you enough of a history lesson for tonight. It's past your bed time." Vader didn't think that he could bear to continue his explanation to his son. It would be too much to tell the boy about the Jedi's betrayal, never mind Obi-Wan's much more personal one.
"I am not going to bed." Luke crossed his small arms across his chest and firmly refused to be moved.
"You may stay up if you use the time to study."
Luke nodded eagerly. He didn't mind if it meant extra study. His tutor made even the most exciting battles boring, but in his textbooks there were always good pictures and the stories were better written. The fact that he was learning about Empire Day, and therefore his father, made him more than happy to continue to peruse his textbook.
Luke ran off to his room to get his textbook and he was back in just a few moments with his schoolbag and some pieces of a model of the Jedi Temple he was making. He opened his bag and pulled out a set of simplified plans. He spread his work all across the table and turned to his father, "Would you help me get my project downstairs?"
Vader allowed his son to lead him up the stairs to his room. Sitting on the floor was a massive model building. Vader reached into the Force and used it to carry the model down the stairs.
When he reached the bottom he lowered it onto the table as his son scampered to move all the other parts out of the way.
"What is that?" Vader asked as soon as he had put the model down.
"It's part of a model of the Jedi temple. I'm going to make all the places you attacked glow red and I'm going to give it working lights and everything. It's going to be beautiful." Luke reached one tiny hand past a few columns and beams of the half-constructed superstructure and tweaked something.
"How long have you been working on this?" Vader stared in wonder at his son's meticulous work on the scale model.
"About a week now. I wanted it to be a surprise for my teacher on Empire Day, but I don't think I'll be able to finish it now. I meant in to be about half that big, but I wanted more detail than I can show in something that small."
"I'll help you. If this isn't an assigned project it's not cheating to ask for help."
Luke smiled widely, "Thank you!"
Anakin took the clumsy glove off his artificial right hand and sat down in the chair next to his son. "What do you need help with?"
"I want some little model Jedi. Can you make some for me?"
"Sure, what do you want them made of?"
Luke rummaged in his schoolbag, "This," he dropped some clay on the table in front of his father.
Vader nodded and took some of the clay and started to model tiny Jedi Masters out of it.
Luke frowned at his father's work, "No, they gotta be bigger. I want them to be the right size for the temple."
"These are the right size for your temple. Let's see that textbook." Vader reached out with the Force and lifted it over his son's head so that he could look at it. "Here, look at the camera angle."
Luke frowned at his father in confusion.
"Let's just say that the pictures in here are deceptive. The temple is bigger than they make it look."
Luke nodded, "Oh."
Vader continued his model making for a while, until he had modeled all twelve Jedi Masters. He passed them to his son for inspection.
"Wow! Those are awesome! Would you help me with the Temple now?"
"I'd be glad to." Vader took some tools and materials and started to work on the other side of Luke's Jedi Temple. It felt odd to be rebuilding the temple he had worked so hard to destroy. He carefully reconstructed ever detail he could remember and checked Luke's textbook for anything he didn't.
When he had finished one side of the building he moved back to his son's side. "Are you hungry, Luke? I can get some cookies or something for us."
"Meah."
"What?"
Luke held one hand up to his mouth and spat out several nails. "Yeah!"
Vader smiled to himself and went about making some milk and cookies for his son. He returned to find Luke half inside his temple, taking advantage of a large hole of unconstructed space.
"Oh, there you are, Snakey. I was beginning to wonder where you'd got to." Luke crawled back out of his model, carrying a decidedly disappointed looking snake.
Vader laughed.
"What is it, Daddy? Snakey just got into the Temple. I was only getting him back out."
"Look at your snake. I've never seen such a disappointed snake." Vader managed to speak through his laughter.
Luke looked at his snake's face and laughed too. "Hey, Snakey, you like vegetables, do you like milk too?" Luke spilled a bit of milk into his hand and held it out to the snake, which lapped it up eagerly.
"I won't be happy if I find out that you've been feeding your milk to the snake as well."
"I won't. I like milk." Luke took a sip of his milk then returned to feeding it to his snake.
After the milk was finished and the snake had been returned to Luke's room, so he wouldn't get in the way of construction, they resumed their work on the Jedi Temple. Vader had been reassigned to model Jedi making as Luke finished up the temple itself.
Vader was just putting the finishing touches on a model of an anonymous Jedi in training when Luke picked up the sounds of the first fireworks. The boy jumped up and ran to the window. Vader followed and they knelt on the couch, side by side to watch until the last cookie-cutter had exploded in a big 'E' across the sky.
Luke crawled back off the couch with a yawn.
"Bedtime, Luke."
"I can't go to bed now! I've almost finished my Jedi Temple! It just needs the lights to show where you had to attack!"
Vader smiled at his son, "It doesn't need those. It has all the important details. The lights wouldn't add as much as they'd take away. It's way past your bedtime and you've got another long day ahead of you tomorrow."
Luke smiled cheekily, "Don't you mean today?"
"You know what I mean, Luke. It's bedtime." Vader carefully gathered his son in his arms and carried him up the stairs to his room.
Luke curled up under the blankets as his father turned out the light. Daddy may not know it, but he'd just given his son the best Empire Day's Eve party Luke could imagine.