Just to clarify, in case the format is confusing: the writing in Italics is from Anakin's POV, and the rest is from Vader's. I'm treating them like they are almost separate people in Vader's mind…except not…but anyway. This is a one-shot. I do love Star Wars, but this is my first Star Wars fanfic, based off of an idea that I just thought was interesting. Unfortunately I'm not enough of a fan to know whether any of the following story is actually possible in the world of the force, etc., or not. So please bear with my ignorance, and I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Star Wars. I am not George Lucas.
Lord Vader did not sleep well and he did not sleep often. When he did sleep, it was only for an hour or perhaps two at a time. He slept when it was necessary, and for no longer than was vital. Sleep was not comfortable for him; he could not recline easily. But when at last the sleep settled over him, it was a dark, impenetrable sleep, from which he could not be woken easily, and when he was called back to wakefulness, he felt that he was swimming up from a deep pool of total stillness. He did not dream.
He had dreamed once, he remembered that. In the first days after he had become Lord Vader and the man he had once been had died within him, after he had been so damaged in body that he had been placed in a nearly unstoppable suit of armor, one that had become like his own skin – in the weeks after all that, he had had a hundred dreams. Then one day, he had woken in horror at what his own mind had conjured up while he slept, and he trained himself to sleep beyond dreams, too deep for them to find him. The dreams, he felt, were ghosts of Anakin, of the man who had died. It was a weakness, to hold an echo of that man, and so he banished it.
But still, he did not like to sleep.
Those first dreams had been cause enough for alarm, for he was dreaming of Anakin's life. Those dreams were best left forgotten, and so he forgot them, forcing himself to erase them from his mind. Now, he didn't know them at all. Anakin himself was so distant to him that it seemed to be not only someone else's life, but a life he had only read of somewhere, or heard someone mention once.
Then one night, with nearly twenty years and a universe between himself and the man who he had once been, he dreamed of a boy.
He was not a boy, really, but nearly a man. And yet his heart, as open as his innocent face, was very young, a child's heart, filled with fears that seemed to him to be the end of all. Inconsequential things that meant nothing to his future were all he thought of as he stood, looking out over a barren, sandy landscape, in the rose-colored light of two suns setting. He was anxious to run – the instinct was in him, the tension in his very legs, longing to bolt. He wanted to be free. That boyish word – Adventure – pounded in his brain. And then another word, mournful, longing: Father. Father.
Lord Vader woke with no memory of the boy's face, but knowing certainly that the dreamer of this dream had been Anakin's ghost stirring in him, and he quickly put it out of his mind. This would happen occasionally, he told himself, even after all this time. Anakin had inhabited his mind for well over twenty years, and his ghost would not be so easily dismissed.
That Anakin's ghost inhabited in the dream did not mean that he could speak to the boy he saw – on the contrary, he was frustratingly powerless to do anything but watch as the young man held a light saber for the first time and again thought the word – Father – with such admiration and instinctive love that Anakin was moved to hold him. But of course he could not, for he did not exist in this boy's world. He knew without words that this boy was the son he might have had, the son he would have had if the boy's mother had not died carrying him. My son, he thought, and Lord Vader would wake far away with tears on his face that he could not explain with any sorrow, and a dream he did not remember.
Obi-Wan was dead – he had to be – and so Lord Vader looked with confusion on the empty cloak on the floor before him just as he heard a howl of agony and rage – "No!" – and looked up to see a boy standing across from him, staring at him with horror, before turning and running towards the ship that he must have come from. Lord Vader moved towards him, but the door closed in his face and he could do nothing as he heard the ship depart in a burst of commotion. Lord Vader was enraged at the boy's courage and alarmed at what he sensed – the force was strong with him. But more than anything, he was disgusted that his heart had begun to race, for he knew that Anakin's ghost had risen again and had recognized this boy, though Vader did not.
This dream was an old one, but Anakin's ghost remembered it. It had resurfaced in his mind long after being forced down, reminding him of his first night asleep in the armor of the monster who had invaded his soul and left him forgotten to die – Darth Vader. But Anakin would not die, he could not, for he had seen a vision of his son. He was dead, he had to be dead, and yet he saw him as clear as day, alive. An infant, quite small and fragile, with intent blue eyes. Anakin could feel his instincts, thoughts without words, a gnawing, hungry need for someone to come to him and rock him. Why was he alone, Anakin wondered; where was the child's mother? If he was alive in this world of dreams, than should she not be alive as well?
But the infant was alone, and so after a moment, Anakin turned his thoughts to the son he would have had. My son, he thought. My child. You are not alone.
Miraculously, almost strangely, the baby turned his face and met Anakin's eyes, though Anakin knew that he was not really present in the room, that this was all the stuff of dreams. And he felt the child recognize him by instinct alone, the primitive instinct of an infant to know his parents. Anakin felt the returning instinct, that of the father to protect the child, to watch over him, to love him.
But he is not real, Anakin thought. He is a dream.
Lord Vader heard, numbly, the words ring in his head. The offspring of Anakin Skywalker. The offspring. An unsentimental word that made the boy sound like nothing more than a product of science.
"How is that possible?" he asked the Emperor, the man to whom he was eternally indebted, who had made him into the powerful Sith he was. And yet he already knew. He knew, somehow, as if he had sensed it in a dream. But he did not dream.
"Search your feelings, Lord Vader," crooned the Emperor, so certain in Vader's complete detachment from Anakin that he could tell him this without fear. "You know it to be true."
Yes, he thought dully. Yes, he knew it to be true.
He could meet the boy and fight him. He could look into his eyes and feel nothing but the same hollow anger that he had felt for two decades. This boy meant nothing to him. Anakin Skywalker was a ghost in his brain, a man who should have died completely but would not be quite silenced. It was of no consequence; Anakin did not trouble him. He felt nothing. He had possession of what had once been Anakin's mind, what was left of his body, but it was another man. In that instant, standing over Luke Skywalker to tell him the truth, he could not explain this and saw no purpose to it.
"I am your father," he said, tasting a lie. In another lifetime, it had been true.
The boy was brave. He was ready to die for what he believed, no more the innocent child staring out at the emptiness of his world. But no longer did the word Father make him believe that there had once been a man who loved him. Instead, he knew that his father was broken, and twisted, and so confused by darkness that he no longer knew himself. And still, Anakin thought, still this boy loved his father, wholeheartedly. His was a noble soul.
Anakin saw him, Luke, his son, with a false hand attached where his own had once been, place his arm around a girl of his own age and look out at the stars. Both, the boy and the girl – no, Anakin corrected himself, the man and the woman – were unspeakably lovely to him, and he wanted to tell them so. But what would they have thought, even if they could hear him? Who was he to them now?
Luke, he thought. I would never have left you alone.
He woke, gasping, the oxygen being fed to his lungs no longer enough. In that moment, he saw all of his dreams, all the dreams that should have died in him, and he knew that they were not dreams, that somehow by the Force he had seen his son throughout his son's life, and his son had felt his presence. His son – Luke – had grown up longing for his father because he had known him, remembered him, deep in the recesses of his memory. Luke had sensed his father when his father went to him in dreams. And Vader felt tears on his face behind the mask again, but now he felt the sorrow too, and for the first time in twenty years he could not control his own emotions. It was all suddenly, terribly real.
Luke! I am your father, he thought, as if he had never said it before. His thoughts were beyond him, stirred and confused, and for a terrifying and wonderful moment, he could not tell Vader from Anakin, and the ghost had returned to life.