Author Note: I decided to expand this into a four chapter mini-fic. I know this is a short chapter but that's how it rolled :-).

17 year old Luke Skywalker stared in disbelief at the armored giant standing before him.

"…My dear children, I was once Anakin Skywalker. I am your father."

He heard a gasp beside him from his sister, an indrawn breath of shock and dismay.

He found himself unable to turn away from the gaze of the man who stood in front of him, a man of great power, of remarkable and even mystical abilities.

Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith.

Even on Tatooine, Luke had heard of Darth Vader. Fixer, one of the older boys, had tormented a much younger Luke with stories of how the Dark Lord, like the Greater Krayt Dragon of Beggar's Canyon, would creep into the homes of small boys and eat their hearts out. By the time Luke was a jaded teen, he had given up on such childish beliefs.

Now, staring at the ebony colossus, breathlessly aware of how the man had just shaken the entire building to its core and had prompted the transparisteel windows to quiver and splinter, Luke was struck with the certainty that if anything, Fixer had understated the man's power.

With a violent effort, he pulled his attention away from the mesmerizing gaze of the Dark Lord, and glanced with trepidation at the woman at his side.

Sweet and precious Leia. His newly discovered twin sister. Daughter of Alderaan. Queen of a world blanketed in sorrow at the tragic and sudden loss of their former queen and viceroy. Brave, intelligent, gifted.

Broken, after the loss of her family, her health, even her hair. (Her long, lustrous hair was symbolic of her status as the Heir, and Luke had sensed her pain when it had fallen away from her scalp, destroyed by the radiation that had nearly taken her life.)

A surge of anger filled his heart. This lie from the Dark Lord could not have anything to do with him, Luke Skywalker of Tatooine. He was nothing, an uncouth, uneducated farmboy from a 5th rate farm on an 8th rate planet. But Leia… Leia was a queen and a major galactic player. He couldn't imagine why the Emperor's second in command would voice such a lie, but…

"I am not fabricating this for political reasons, young one," the bass voice rumbled softly.

Luke's eyes widened in shock. Was it true, as sometimes claimed in whispers, that the Dark Lord could indeed read minds?

And deep in Luke's heart and mind, where the Light inside danced and shone, he sensed (as he sometimes did) that the Man spoke what he believed to be truth.

(He had always Known things that he should not. The approach of a distant sandstorm. The tiny broken wire in a faulty circuit. The battle cries of approaching Tuskens long before they could be heard by human ears. He had Known, and knew that his relatives feared his Knowing.)

He realized his hands were trembling.

He shook his head, not negatively but incredulously. It obviously could not be true.

"My Lord," he said, in a voice which sounded strange in his own ears, "I'm afraid that is impossible. Our father… our father was a navigator on a freighter who died before we were born. My uncle at least told me that…"

(He heard the tinge of bitterness in his voice. His uncle had told him little enough of the mysterious man who had sired him.)

The black helmet tilted, as if considering, and the deep voice spoke, "Your uncle? You spoke of the Lars? Is your uncle Owen Lars?"

Luke shuddered in disbelief, even as he took an involuntary step back.

"Yes… Are you acquainted with my uncle?"

"He is my stepbrother and therefore your step-uncle. I met him but once, on a moisture farm outside Tosche Station."

Luke's voice failed entirely. Mutely, he shook his head. His whole life he had been told his father was dead. It could not be. It could not!

"My son," the Dark Lord rumbled softly, "Have you spent your entire life thus far on Tatooine?"

He could not form words but again the Man seemed to Know.

"I see you have."

There was bitterness, and melancholy, and even grief bleeding through the vocoder, though Luke could not discern the underlying cause for so much unhappiness. He disliked Tatooine but he did not loathe it.

(Though now that he had seen other worlds, he knew it would be harder to go back, to stay where the hot suns beat relentlessly down, where children and slaves suffered and died for lack of water. His first view of Alderaan, during the frantic race to save his sister's life, had provoked an awe that would have humiliated him if the rush of so much blue, so much water, had not filled every corpuscle of his body with mad delight. How incredible to live in a world where water was plentiful.)

"My mother died on Tatooine, and I buried her on the northwest corner of the Lars' farm," the deep Voice continued.

This, finally, convinced Luke. There was a grave in the northwest corner, with no name, but a grave tended faithfully and lovingly by his aunt and uncle and himself. A grave where the bones of his grandmother lay.

Indeed, this Man was his father.

"I don't, I don't understand," Luke found himself stammering, "Why… how?"

The Dark Lord stepped forward carefully, as if afraid of frightening him, "My son, I was told that your mother died with my child unborn. By someone… I trusted. I thought you dead. I neither knew that my Beloved carried twins, nor that you survived. My children… my dear children, this is the most wonderful day of my life."

"I am not your daughter, Lord Vader. I am the daughter of a dead man," Leia Organa stated, her eyes flashing with weary fire.