Vader blinked up at the ceiling, trying to comprehend where he was. Why couldn't he move? Why couldn't he roll over? Where was Luke? Why hadn't the boy leaned over him with his comforting expression of concern?

He closed his eyes and lay still a moment longer. When he felt strong enough, he sat up, looking around for the boy.

What looked back at him was a hospital room. One of the medical technicians turned to him.

"You're awake."

Vader was too preoccupied with worrying about Luke to realize how stupid a comment it had been. "Where's Luke?"

The man gently tried to push Vader back into the pillows. "You're not at home anymore."

"Where is Luke?"

"Sir, you're in the hospital."

"I know that! Where is Luke?"

"Would you like to see the note he left you?"

"Yes!"

The man looked at Vader with an unexplainable look of pity on his face and handed him a folded piece of durasheet.

Vader unfolded it and read,

Father,

I've called a doctor for you. I know you said not to, but you've been unconscious for two days, and I, at which point there were several large smudges that almost blanked out the next few words, know I don't have long left. I've been doing everything I can. I keep you cool when you're too warm, and I give you more blankets when you're too cold. But I can't keep this up much longer. Once I've finished writing this letter, I'll go down to a garbage disposal and wait. That way, it'll be easier for you to get rid of my body when you come back.

Thank you for sheltering me these past few months. Living with you has meant the galaxy to me, no matter how cruel you're being. I've loved being near you. It's been wonderful to be close to you since you've been ill. Not that I mean that cruelly, it's just that seeing you helpless, and being able to protect you, it's made my whole life feel worthwhile. When I came up that first day, and found you unable to move, it felt like the galaxy was smiling on me and saying "Here you are, for everything you've lived through, have this one chance to feel it was worth something."

I'm glad we had this time together. I felt so good when you called me by my name for the first time. I don't know if it occurred to you, but that was the first time anyone since Mom called me by my name.

You used to be so cruel. It was hard to wake up every morning and come upstairs to make you food, knowing that you would beat me when you came near me. But I always came anyway. And for a while you just got crueler, and it got harder and harder to come upstairs. But there came that day when I couldn't get up. I tried so hard. Especially when you called for me after the battle. I wanted to come and be beaten. I felt so rotten, so useless to you I honestly thought I deserved it.

But you came to me. You came and found me. And I thought you were going to beat me. But you didn't. You picked me up and you were so kind to me. You held me in your arms. You fed me. I knew about that room you had for me when I was a baby. It was one of the places I used to go to cry. There were two.

When you had been awful to me, I would go to one or the other. The room for baby me, or your room to look at the photos of Mom. I'm so sorry I broke that one. I hope you were able to fix it.

I'm sorry. My mind is wandering. I guess it knows that I don't have long left.

You nursed me back to health. It took a lot of work, because I was so weak, but you did it anyway. So of course I came to help you. And on top of all that kindness you gave me, there was that day in the hanger before you fell ill. You nearly called me son.

I knew from the moment I was given to you that when you called me son, all would be forgiven. So when you nearly did, my heart flew into my throat. I was so hopeful. But you stopped speaking. You turned away and looked so upset. You looked like it had all been a terrible mistake. It's why I ran from you again that day. But I couldn't keep myself from coming back to you, hoping that you would care for me, and give me that title. I was so lost, needing that honour.

Being called son, just once, would have made me so happy. It would have gratified my entire life's worth of dreams. But you never did. And now I'm dying. And I think you might be dying. And I'm so afraid. The doctor is coming now. I can hear him at the door. I pretended to be you on the phone. Maybe he won't have caught on.

I hope I haven't been too much of a bother. I love you, Father.

Your unacknowledged son,

Luke.

"We found him curled up against a wall. We didn't understand what was wrong with him. He looked perfectly healthy. But he was clearly dying. So we picked him up to try to treat him as well. More specifically, I picked him up. You have no idea what it feels like to reach for a living being's body, to lift it, and to feel only cloth under your arms. When we took the wrappings off, all that remained was a ribcage with pale skin barely covering it."

Vader was still staring at the letter in horror. His son? Luke was his son? "Is-is he alive?"

The medic nodded, "Barely."

"Take me to him." Vader said, expecting to be denied, and to have to threaten his way to seeing the boy.

"Of course. For you, the coma was just your body's way of telling you to allow yourself to heal."

Vader threw aside the implied, for your son, it was dying, and stood up. As he entered the hall, he recognized the area as a low risk unit. The knot in his stomach tightened slowly with each step he took towards his son. Each hall seemed to take him into a higher risk area, until he couldn't bring himself to look at the signs anymore.

At long last, the medic led him into a final hallway, which didn't lead into another. Vader grasped the meaning instantly, there is no higher risk.

The medic stopped. "We can't convince him to eat. Every time we try, he gets scared. Being scared has the potential to kill him now. A few times, we've tried force-feeding him. He's too weak for that now, of course. And each time we managed to force his body to swallow something, he rolled over, and vomited it right back up. Every time he denies food, bringing himself a little closer to death, he cries that you didn't want him to eat."

Vader knew the man hated him for how he had treated Luke. He hated himself for it as well. "I tried to tell him that he should eat when he was hungry, but he wouldn't listen." The man didn't answer, but Vader felt compelled to continue. "I didn't try hard enough."

The man nodded sharply, and opened the door for Vader.

The moment Vader saw his son, his heart fell. Fell past all levels of falling he had ever known. To his surprise, he had discovered something more painful than losing Padmé. At least she had known how deeply he cared about her.

Now their child lay in front of him, barely alive, believing his father held some mysterious flaw against him. Held it against him so strongly that he wanted his child dead for it. Nothing, nothing in the galaxy could be more painful than having the only person you cared about, in the entire universe, dying because he didn't know how deeply you cared.

My son. Oh, Luke. My baby. I didn't know. I'm so sorry, Luke, I didn't know. He began to approach the child, walking like a sleepwalker. In his sleep, the child thrashed a couple of times, nearly tearing out his IV. It's the only thing keeping him alive, Vader tortured himself, without that, he'd be dead already.

There was a woman standing beside Luke's bed, holding his skeletal hand and speaking softly. She looked up as Vader entered.

"Lord Vader," she said with a curt nod.

"Who are you? What are you doing to my son?" Vader asked.

She glared at him, "My name is Leia Organa. I've been visiting your son. It's how I let my people know that I will be a good leader. Unlike you. Imagine, forcing your child to lie about your abilities as a parent. Imagine telling a starved child to lie that he was anorexic. Imagine, gaining an ally through a process like that. Then imagine that he still cared for you. That he was willing to die for you. I don't even mean take a bullet. I mean, imagine that he would call a doctor for you, and go curl up in a dark corner of your home and wait to die. Imagine that people who cared tried to save him, offered him a better father. Offered him a chance to be royalty. Imagine that the words his true father had spoken to him kept him so broken that he continued to starve himself. What gives you the right to enslave anybody? Least of all your own son. They found the tracker when they x-rayed him for any other complications. He was lucky it malfunctioned."

Vader bowed his head silently, knowing the words were too true to argue with.

He reached for his son's nearly dead body, carefully lifting it.

"Luke?"

Nothing.

"Luke, wake up." Vader gave the boy the gentlest of shakes, and Luke's eyes flickered open. But as quickly as they had opened, they closed again.

"Luke, wake up. I need you to eat something."

Again, Luke's eyes opened, more slowly this time, as though it was the action of opening them that had made him so tired that he had had to close them again right afterward. "Father?"

Father. He called me father. All his life, he's wanted to, and now he finally has. "Yes, Luke. Open up, alright? I'm going to feed you."

As though she sensed the urgency of the hushed conversation, Leia handed him a bottle.

Just like last time. I'm feeding my son again. Feeding him from a bottle because I've denied him food.

But Luke didn't accept the bottle, turning his pale face away from it. "Father wouldn't want…"

"Luke, I'm your father, I'm right here."

"You're not. I'm imagining you. Or they're lying to me again," then he silenced himself again, panting as though he'd run a marathon.

"Luke, you're not imagining me. Luke, my son. My only child, I'm here."

Luke looked up, his eyes opening wide for the first time. Then, as though he still didn't quite believe what he was seeing, he reached up, gently touching Vader's face.

Vader opened his mouth to reassure Luke again that they were together, but Luke just continued to gently touch his face, as if verifying what he saw with what he could touch. Then, suddenly, the boy let his arms fall to his sides, opening his mouth as he did so.

Taking it as an acceptance of his offer of food, Vader gently rested the nipple of the bottle on his son's lower lip. Slowly, the boy's mouth closed on it, and he began to drink.

As the boy continued sipping, Vader felt a great weight lift from his chest. The boy knew he accepted him now. He knew that he was who he said he was. He was drinking, allowing himself to be healed. He was crying too, unsurprisingly. And, looking down at his son's helpless face, Vader felt tears running down his own cheeks.

"Everything's going to be okay, Luke."

The child didn't respond. Of course he didn't respond. He was probably still too weak to answer.

"Incredible," It was the princess who spoke. "He can still forgive you. After everything you've done to him, he can still forgive you. It won't be so easy to regain my trust."

Vader held his son close against himself, not wanting what he was about to say to put the helpless child in danger, "Princess, with all due respect, I honestly don't care whether you forgive me. Unless you mean to tell me that I have not one, but two long-lost children running around the galaxy, I don't care."

The instant he said it, he knew something was wrong. The girl didn't look at him with an expression of resentful acceptance that he had won the argument, but one of disparaging pity.

"I'm the one who could convince him to eat once in a while. Even if he did vomit it up immediately, he knew he could trust his twin sister to tell him to do what was right. He always apologised to me when he was finished. He would lose all the nourishment he had, and then he would cry that he was sorry, but he couldn't do that for me."

Vader looked from his son's hollow, pale face to the healthy, rapidly reddening face of the young princess. Any likeness they may have shared was quickly being hidden.

"Do you have any idea how many times he asked me where you were? He must have begged me to tell him for hours on end. And I answered him. Each time he cried for an answer, I told him. But he couldn't accept the answer that you were in a hospital bed too, unconscious, not caring about him. The one time he did seem to understand it, he tried to stand up to go and see you."

She threw down a second bottle she had been about to hand to Vader and shouted, "He said he needed to take you your breakfast! He wanted to wait on you, even in the condition he was in! I had to hold him into bed while they prepared a shot to knock him out! As he drifted off, he cried and asked me to take you something to eat when you woke up!"

In Vader's arms, Luke was crying harder, shaking frantically. Vader held the child close, hushing him gently. Suddenly, the princess was there too, her hand resting in Luke's hair.

Vader didn't know whether to draw back, and allow the more experienced princess to care for the boy, or continue attempting by himself to show that it was important that he be the one to comfort his son. Of course, it was important to him that he be the one to comfort the child, but he had no experience in comfort. Only harming. And if he had to choose between his own attempts and the princess's success... he drew back slowly, unsure of how she would react.

She knelt on the floor before her father and brother, carefully extracting the sobbing boy from their father's arms. Careful not to take the IV from his wrist, she held him on the floor. Vader stood, and carefully levitated the two of them up onto the bed so they would be comfortable. The girl glared at him, and Luke didn't seem to have noticed, but something about it felt right.

He didn't know what to do. Luke should stay with the princess. If they were on Alderaan, as the girl's talk seemed to have indicated, it would be a good home for Luke. He could learn to swim, and play in the lakes. He could finally gain some memories of happy, childish things, like climbing trees, playing with friends, enjoying life. It would be for the best. He would be royalty. Safe, happy, with his sister.

Vader wanted desperately to keep the boy close, to possessively keep the child under his own wing. But it was selfish. He didn't deserve Luke. The princess was right.

He watched them for a moment or two longer, then turned to leave.

He would go home. He would clean up everything that would remind him of his son's pain. He would ask for a couple of photos of his children together to keep beside his bed, with the ones of Padmé. He could feel himself crying once more. He would send Luke the one he had broken. He would send it with all the answers to everything, explaining everything that had been hurting Luke when he wrote what he'd meant to be a suicide note.

"Where in the nine Sith hells do you think you're going?" snapped a sharp voice from behind him.

He turned back to see the princess looking up at him from where she was comforting her brother.

He sighed softly. He hadn't wanted to be forced to voice what he was thinking. "I'm going home. You should keep Luke. He'll be safe and happy here. He can forget about me. I know I have no right to ask, but please promise me that you'll keep him safe. Promise you'll help him to make a few good memories of being a child."

The princess's anger was rising again, "Forget about you? He can't forget about you! If you leave now, you're just running away from responsibility! But that's all you're good at, isn't it?"

"I know what it sounds like. But- he'll be happier if I'm not here. If I'm here, it'll just be a constant reminder of what happened."

The princess gently rested her weak brother back on his bed and stood up, beginning to advance towards Vader. For a short girl, she had an incredible presence as she stomped up to him.

"You're thinking only about yourself. It'll be hard for you if you have to be reminded every day of your life of what you've done to Luke. If you leave now, I can tell you exactly what will happen. Luke will stop eating. Even I won't be able to convince him to eat. He'll get more and more ill until he finally doesn't wake up. He'll die, and if, by some miracle, I manage to convince him to survive this, if I manage to convince him that his life is worth living, he won't have whatever wonderful, fairy-tale ending you're thinking of. Oh, we'd try. We'd do everything with him. We would take him to the beaches, the forests, across the entire galaxy. But he wouldn't be there. Not really. He wouldn't play. He wouldn't be making happy memories. He would be hiding in the darkest corner he could find, wondering what he did wrong. Wondering why he went on living when you abandoned him again!"

He abandoned me, Vader thought, The graffiti on the bathroom wall. It wasn't how he felt when I went on missions. It was how he perceived the fact that I hadn't raised him.

He looked at the child on the hospital cot. Then he looked back at the furious princess. The boy on the cot started to cry out softly again. He looked back to the princess, unsure whether she was going to do her infinitely better job of comforting him, or if he should give it his best shot.

"Why should I have to be the one to comfort him when it's you who's hurt him?" the princess snarled.

He walked back to the cot, sitting on the edge, carefully lifting his child. The boy gave a final sob and buried himself against his father, not even shaking. Apparently he just needed to be held.

"Luke, I'm going to leave you here, with your sister, all right? She and her adoptive parents will take good care of you. I'm going to go home. I'll send you your things, and if you want, you can write to me."

He felt the princess's glare. But what he was really aware of was his son's response. Instead of slowly, sadly releasing him, as he had expected, the boy clung tightly to his tunic.

"No."

"Luke, it's what's best for everyone."

"No."

"Luke, please. If I got angry, I might hurt you again by accident." Vader begged.

The soft spoken, tortured, starved, weak child looked straight into his father's face and said with utmost certainty, "If you go, I'm coming with you."