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Sky Walker: The god of the sky has many names—Anakin, Vader... And he's played many roles, in his immortal life: brother, friend, lover. More recently: warmonger. And then there was the new one, no less important: Father.

"You can't stop for too long, Anakin," Obi-Wan said, the softness in his words belying the steel underneath. "That was the deal—that was your punishment."

"Vader," he just grunted in reply, pointing towards the horizon. The sun had just finished its descent, only a copper stain on the horizon to show it had ever been there at all.

Anakin by day; Vader by night. That was his dual nature, the two faces of the god of the sky, and Obi-Wan damn well knew that.

"Well, alright, Vader," his ex-friend replied. Friends and brothers for millennia, only for this war to drive them apart. "But you've been dawdling in these mountains for three weeks now, and you know the rules: you can't stay in one place for more than a month. That was the deal that you agreed to. You have one week to say your goodbyes, then leave."

"I don't need an entire week to say farewell," he spat.

Obi-Wan just gave him a look. That was the famous look of the god of justice; it looked right through you, and saw the truth. At least, it saw the truth from a certain point of view. "You're in this entire mess because of your attachment to humans," he pointed out softly. "I wish you luck in your goodbyes."

Obi-Wan left with the last of the daylight. And once the week was up, so did Anakin.

That was the deal.

Anakin, Vader, the god of the sky, had been banished from his own realm for a hundred years as punishment for what he did during the War, and was forced to wander the earth as punishment. And while one hundred years was the blink of an eye to a god, it was longer than most humans lived, and therein lay the problem.

Because Anakin was prone to attachment.

Because Anakin loved humans—especially individual humans—more than he loved his fellow gods. If he loved his fellow gods at all.

So wandering the earth, needing food and water like any mortal but unable to die like one? Watching the kindness of those who helped him wither away along with their bodies, their souls, their minds? Knowing that no matter how strong the bonds he forged were, he would have to leave in a month and possibly never see them again?

It was a torment perfectly designed for him. Barely better than what Palpatine himself, the orchestrator of the War, had been punished with.

And although he did have a way of immortalising those he cherished, of respecting them in that way, he could only use on one person every hundred years. That was the nature of the blessing. Shmi, the kind-hearted human woman who'd taken him in and raised him when his own godly sires would not, had been the first to receive the honour. And he knew who he wanted to be the second.

The person who was the reason he'd lost the War.

The person who had turned down offers of immortality in order to save him from Palpatine's gruesome fate.

The person whom he'd never met, but who, out of everyone, might be the only friend he had.

Luke.

The road was rough under his feet, and he was exhausted. This mortal body knew pain like he never had before. But he kept walking anyway.

There was a house up ahead—an entire village, in fact. He could see it on the horizon, twinkling against the twilight.

He had nothing but the clothes on his back—no food, no water, no money. It had been weeks since he last ate, longer since he'd had any shelter to sleep in, but he didn't die. He couldn't die. He was a god.

But he was so tired. . .

"Are you alright?"

A voice—real or imagined?

There was only one way to tell. Vader turned to look at the speaker.

Real.

He was a young man, in his early-twenties at the oldest, with sun-bleached hair and bright blue eyes the colour of the sky at its zenith. And he was frowning at him.

"Are you alright?" he asked, and Vader tried to answer.

The man—a boy, really—insisted that Vader come back to his home with him. Eat with him. Stay for the night.

He tried to thank him for his kindness but he was waved away. "It's the least I can do," the boy insisted, pushing a mug of something hot into his hands and wrapping a blanket round his shoulders. "My sister's away, so we've got a spare bed, and you looked half dead. The War caused so much misery; it's our duty to try and help wherever we can."

It clicked then. A refugee, fleeing the war-ravaged areas not far west of here. The boy thought he was a refugee.

There were certainly enough around for it to be plausible. Vader had caused most of them himself.

The thought made him cold. He shouldn't be here.

He shouldn't be here, accepting this generosity, when he was the one who'd caused all the suffering in the first place. He didn't deserve the mercy he'd been given—he deserved to burn in a hell-place for eternity like Palpatine had been condemned to, he shouldn't be here—

"What's your name, by the way?" the boy asked, coming in with pillows and a tray of sandwiches. He set them onto a table and sat down next to him on the sofa, smiling at him.

He noticed that Vader hadn't touched the sandwiches. "Oh, please, take them! You look like you need them."

It wasn't rude, not in the way he meant it—Vader did look half-starved, the bones in his face unnaturally prominent, and he knew it.

Hesitantly, he picked up one of the sandwiches and started chewing. Every bite tasted like butter and guilt.

He swallowed, and maybe it was his emotional state, maybe it was the sense of fate around the boy, but the name he offered was "Ani." No one had called him that since Shmi had died.

The boy smiled wider. "It's nice to meet you, Ani. I'm Luke Naberrie."

The War had been fought between the gods as well as the humans—namely because Vader got himself involved. He knew now, with hindsight, that the trickster god Palpatine had purposefully stirred it up between two human societies, one of whom Vader was particularly fond of. He'd interceded on their behalf, calling upon all the forces and powers and monsters of mythology to crush the opposition. Obi-Wan hadn't approved.

He wasn't the only one.

The main bulk of the Jedi—the ruling council of the gods—had condemned his actions. You are too attached to humans, they said. We leave them to fight their own wars. And when he hadn't stopped, they'd taken action.

The darkest creatures Palpatine had taught him to summon, from before the very depths of time, versus the might of the gods. It had been a war that lasted years, until that final confrontation.

Vader hadn't been there. All he knew was that Luke and Leia Naberrie, the demigod products of his short, glorious time with the human Padmé Naberrie some twenty years earlier, had devised a plan to take on Palpatine and they won. They'd bound him, ready to deliver to the gods for justice.

And then, when they were offered immortality as a thanks for their heroics, they'd both turned it down. Leia had asked for the gods' help for rebuilding instead, and he knew that she had been very involved in the project. That was probably why she was away on the fateful day he stumbled onto his son's doorstep.

Luke, meanwhile, had asked for something different.

He'd asked for mercy for his father.

Not an eternity of torment, but one hundred years.

But he hadn't specified how merciful the gods should be, and they hadn't quite adhered to the spirit of the request. A hundred years of torment designed to teach him a lesson about attachment wouldn't be considered merciful to most.

But it was better than two hundred.

Luke had done that. Luke had given him that second chance.

All that remained to be known was why.

Luke slept in his sister's—in Leia's—room, giving Vader his. And although his mortal body was heavy with exhaustion, crying out for sleep, his mind whirred.

This was his son's home. He was in his son's life.

He couldn't just sleep through that.

It was raining outside. The wind hit the window hard, the moonlight catching on the raindrops like a shimmering sheet of silk. He peered through the window and looked up at the stars, searching for Shmi the Sky Walker in the heavens. There she was—the face of the woman who'd loved him when no one else would, immortalised in the stars.

If he closed his eyes and listened, he could almost imagine he was somewhere higher than this, in the clouds, with the wind calling to him. . .

"Couldn't sleep?"

He didn't jump at the sound of Luke's soft voice against the still night, no matter how surprising it was. Instead, he just turned to see the boy standing at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas, a mug of something hot in his hand. Dark hollows shaded his face.

"Couldn't you?" he asked pointedly, a protective urge rushing through him.

Luke shook his head. "Nightmares," he said shortly, pressing his lips together.

Vader went cold. "I see." His eyes flitted around the corridor, anywhere but Luke's haggard expression, landing on a picture hanging just behind Luke in the stairwell. "Is that—"

He swallowed tightly, his heart spasming in his chest.

"Is that your mother?" he asked, knowing full well it was. He could recognise Padmé anywhere.

Luke turned to see what he was looking at, and the shadows on his face grew starker. "Yes," he said quietly. "She died a few years ago."

"Why?" Why, fate, why did you have to kill her?

Luke gave him a look, and he amended the question to, "What of?"

"'A broken heart', according to the doctor." Luke's laugh was humourless. "Supposedly brought upon her by the realisation that my father was never coming back. She just lost the will to live." He shook his head. "I don't believe it for a second."

"You shouldn't." The words were out before he could control himself, and Luke gave him another look. But neither of them pressed the matter.

Silence fell again, thicker and heavier than the silence of the night, and that was when Vader said, "You're the demigod who defeated Palpatine. Who got Vader a merciful punishment." He felt like he did a good job of not spitting the word merciful like a bad taste in his mouth.

Luke's lips pinched together. "Has everyone heard about that?"

Vader nodded slowly. Luke sighed.

Now—he could push the matter now, and ask the question that had been eating him alive for nearly a year now. Why?

Why do it?

You could've had everything—why give that up for the father who's ostensibly done nothing for you?

The word was on the tip of his tongue.

But Luke looked so tired. And, for one heart-stopping moment of terror, Vader realised that maybe he didn't want to know the answer. That maybe it would only hurt him more.

So he just nodded his head, and went back to bed.

Ostensibly, he had done nothing for Luke and his sister.

But that didn't mean he hadn't done as much as he could.

The Jedi Council was staunch in its stance against attachments to humans, so if a god had already been involved with a human and produced children, it was near impossible to get their approval to actually see the children. And if they caught you doing it without approval. . .

Well.

Being merciful wasn't in their nature.

But that didn't mean Anakin hadn't tried.

When the twins were babies, especially. When Padmé was tired and run off her feet and one of them was about to start crying? He came, and rocked the crib until they fell asleep, unknowingly soothed by their father's presence. He cast wards around the house, good luck charms, then again when they moved house, then again. He helped Padmé get the job promotion she was gunning for so they were more financially secure. He did everything he could.

But he wasn't there.

So if Luke decided to reject him, to cast him away. . .

He would understand.

The next morning saw bright skies where the rain had washed them clean, and a Luke who seemed to be forcing himself to be "alright" by will alone.

"Ani," he greeted without looking up when Anakin finally slunk down to breakfast the next morning. "How did you—" He glanced up then, and frowned. "Did you sleep?"

"Did you?" Anakin deflected pointedly, taking a chair on the opposite side of the table. Luke still looked exhausted, but the smile plastered to his feet seemed to keep him awake by sheer force.

Luke just waved off the question. "Would you like eggs for breakfast?" he asked. "I'm not great at scrambling them, but I can fry them."

"Uh, that would be great, thanks," Anakin got out, the words sticking in his throat. "And, Luke. . . I need to tell you something."

"What is it?" Either Luke didn't hear the urgency in his voice, or was ignoring it, because his tone was light, and his back was turned as he handled the frying pan.

Anakin took in a deep breath. Then another. Then another.

Then he just said it. "I'm Anakin. Vader. Your father."

Luke didn't even turn around to say, "I know."

Anakin blinked. "What?"

"I said I know," Luke repeated simply, cracking an egg. "You have this sort of aura around you—Leia's better at recognising it than I am, but we both remember it from when we were little. You rocking our cradles, and the wards you put on the house. We could recognise you anywhere, even when you've been shoved in a human form. I felt it a few times during the War." During traumatic experiences, went unsaid, and with a stab of self-loathing Anakin wondered if his 'aura' was triggering some of the nightmares Luke so clearly suffered from.

"You—" He shook his head. "You know? You knew? And you still took me in?"

Luke actually turned around at that, puzzlement on his face. "Yes," he said, as if it should be obvious, as if there was nothing strange about any of this—

Just. . . "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why take me in? Why help me? Why—" He choked on the words. "Why give up immortality for me?"

"You're my father," Luke said. "I love you."

Perhaps Anakin's disbelief was obvious, because Luke kept talking.

"I remember you. I remember those wards protecting us, the feel of you cradling us against your chest when we were crying, what your love felt like when you tried to get us to calm down. And I love you. Of course I was going to help you in whatever way I can."

Anakin shook his head again. He was crying, he realised—tears were dripping down his face, into the crook of his neck. He could taste salt on his lips. "I just. . ." He sighed.

Luke was watching him carefully—and sadly. "Are you going to leave now?"

Anakin wiped at his eyes. "What?"

"You never stayed for more than a night, before." Luke's expression was pained. "Are you going to leave now?"

"No!" Anakin shook his head violently. "No. The terms of the punishment are that I can stay in one place for a month," he explained. "Can— may I stay for a month? To get to know you properly?"

Luke's brow was creased, lips slightly parted. He looked confused.

Then, like dawn breaking, a grin split his face. He ducked his head, cheeks reddening as he said, "I'd— I'd love that."

Anakin knew he could only stay for a month. And he didn't know how many times he'd be able to return after that.

But he did know that Luke—and, perhaps, fate—had bought him this one chance to know his children. And he wasn't going to squander it.

Anakin did stay for a month. And then he had to leave again, Luke watching him go from the top of the path, silent tears streaming down his face. Anakin had explained that after he left that he didn't know where his wanderings would take him—or when they would lead him back here.

And indeed, it was five years before he saw him again. By that point Leia and her husband were occupying the house he'd first met Luke in; Luke was living with his wife and young son in a house a few streets over. Anakin and Mara took one look at each other and instantly hated each other, but the snarking back and forth entertained them both until there was nothing left between them but grudging respect.

After that, it was fifteen years. Then ten. Then twenty. Then fifteen more.

By that point, they both knew that the likelihood of Anakin seeing Luke again before he died was slim. Luke hadn't cried over it since that first parting, but he cried now, and Anakin cried with him.

Sure enough, five years later he came across a house, and inside it was Luke and Mara's son, mourning both his parents' passing.

Anakin still had thirty years of wandering left to do, and wander he did. He carried Luke's story with him all over, so that he may never forget, and when he became a god again, he didn't.

When he became a god again, he gave him the blessing he'd held onto for so long.

Shmi was no longer alone in the heavens. Luke was there too, caught with his brilliant smile.

The two Sky Walkers, captured in time and space, immortalised across the stars for the rest of eternity.