"Feel free to come down any time, Your Worship!" Han shouted. There was no response from the crows' nest, only the wind in the sails and Chewie's admonishment.
"Yeah, I know she misses the kid," Han snapped back at him. "We all miss the kid. He was actually good company!" He shouted up at Leia again. "But that's why we're heading all the way out here. On the crazy hope that we'll find someone who'll help us save him." To be honest, Han didn't think there was much point. He didn't know why he was here, and he doubted he would stay for much longer. They were nearing Naboo now; as far as ferrying them there went, his role in this was nearly up.
But every time he thought about giving up, of ditching Her Highnessness and leaving Luke to his fate, something twisted in his gut. He remembered Luke, back in Mos Eisley, desperate and scared.
It had been weeks since they'd left Bespin. What was happening to the kid, captured by Vader?
What did he want with him?
There was still no response from Leia.
Han cursed, and stared out to sea. He shook his head hard. He had a job to do, damn it, this ship wasn't gonna run itself. They were a crew of three, minus Luke plus Her Worship, after all. He needed to stop worrying about what she was angry about today, and—
Wait.
He squinted out to sea. Was that. . .?
"Chewie," he called out, voice urgent. "That ship look familiar to you?"
Chewie peered at it for a few pregnant moments. Then he roared his confirmation.
Han was right—it was the same pirates who'd ambushed them in the Core; the ship's ragged black sails were hard to miss. But it wasn't alone. This time, it was accompanied by four more.
"Blast it," Han said, almost idly, then with more vigour. "Blast it, blast it, blast it. Toss me that spyglass." Chewie did; he extended it, focusing on the ship in the lead. "They're almost within cannon range."
Chewie asked—
"Yeah it's occurred to me to shoot back! But we need Her Highnessness down here for that, or we don't have enough spare hands!" He shut the spyglass with a snap, and tossed it back to him. "You plot us an alternate course to Naboo; I'll take the helm and get us the hell out of here. Hey! Princess!" he shouted up into the crows' nest. "Get down here now, we need you!"
"Oh really?" she remarked on her way down. "That's hardly a—"
"The pirates that attacked us before are inbound, I need you to man the cannon while Chewie and I get us outta here!"
She was good in a crisis, he'd give her that. She sharpened immediately, picking out the threat with a cool, calculating air and moving to meet it. "I'm on it."
There was a chirping above them; they both glanced up, to see a crimson starbird with a bold blue chest chittering down at them from the yards. As Han rolled his eyes, imagining what the kid would say, it took off, wheeling towards Naboo.
"Why don't we just follow the starbird," Leia remarked dryly. "She seems to know where she's going."
"I don't have time for this." Han took the steps up to the helm two at a time, muttering. "I don't have time to—"
Bang.
Instinctively Han hit the deck; when he rolled back to his feet, he saw Leia and Chewie had done the same. None of them had been hit.
But the mizzenmast—the biggest, most important mast of the two—had. It splintered, teetering on the brink of collapse—
"We need to get out of here now."
Especially if those pirates were trying to incapacitate the Falcon, not kill them all. Usually Han might settle for a surrender—hey, even he got boarded sometimes, and Imperials usually didn't beat you up too much if you didn't beat them up too much—but they'd already humiliated these pirates once. He doubted they'd do them any decencies.
So he grabbed the helm and heaved. The entire ship rocked to starboard, but they needed to get away as soon as possible—
Another bang—another. One was from them, leaving a smoking hole in one of the pirates' side ships—good shot, Your Highnessness—and the other—
The other careened into the mizzenmast again, which fractured completely. The whole structure went down hard, punching through to the decks below—no, Leia, Leia was down there—
"Leia!"
He leapt down the steps, scrambling towards the wreckage of what used to be a part of his ship. Leia had been manning the cannons below decks, she'd been right in the way of that—
"I'm alright, Captain," she snapped, glaring up at him through the hole. Something loosened in his chest. Her face was pale, hair sprinkled with splinters and sawdust, but she was alive. And so were he and Chewie. "Now, get us out of here and—" She cut herself off.
After a moment, Han heard it too.
A high-pitched whistling.
He glanced up. A high-pitched whistling, coming from a positive storm of starbirds, their scarlet plumage flashing in the light and behind them—
Ships. A dozen or so.
Sailing, straight as an arrow, for the pirates.
And Han forgot about getting back to the helm, getting out of there, as he stood and stared and watched them open fire.
The pirate ships returned fire, but they were outnumbered three to one—almost as badly as they'd outnumbered the Falcon. And these new ships battered them into pieces, until their sails and masts were threads and splinters, their cannons cold.
By the time the newcomers actually boarded the pirate ships, there was very little resistance left.
There did appear to still be some resistance, but Han stopped caring because one of the ships was approaching the Falcon now. He had the urge to run, get out of there—in the worst case scenario, this was just another threat for them to deal with—until his eyes caught on the flag being hoisted to the top of the mainmast.
A red, stylised starbird on a blue background.
That was when he started to suspect.
And then the ship drew up alongside the Falcon, a plank thrown between them so a woman with Leia's colouring and Luke's smile could board, and he knew who this was.
Her posture was perfect, her brown hair pulled into a bun so ruthless not a single hair escaped. It just exacerbated her resemblance to Leia, clambering up onto the deck to see what was going on.
The starbird from earlier, with the blue chest, swooped in the settle on her shoulder. Leia's eyes blew wide.
But it was Han who drawled, "Padmé Naberrie, I presume?"
"You presume correctly, Captain," Padmé Naberrie—her mother—said, before turning her attention on her. Her brown eyes—like hers!—roved over her hungrily before she greeted, in a voice soft with reverence, "Leia."
"Mother." The title tasted odd on her tongue. She'd never had the need to use it before.
"Leia," Padmé said again, taking a step forward. She'd barely blinked. "Leia." The name was like a chant.
A sob ripped itself out of Leia's chest, and she flung herself forward.
Padmé caught her easily, though they were about the same size, and then a bird was taking flight and there were arms around her and she was hugging her. Hugging her. Her mother, whom she'd never met, a figure who only existed in ink and paper and childish imaginings, was hugging her—
She squeezed her so hard she thought they'd both suffocate. She wouldn't mind. She'd met her mother, was hugging her mother; the world could go to hell for all she cared and she would die happy. She'd met her mother, and she'd met Luke—
Luke.
The thought sobered her, dried her tears. She may have met their mother, but Luke hadn't. The world couldn't go to hell just yet.
So she pulled back from the hug, though she couldn't quite bring herself to let go of her mother's hands. When Padmé met her eye, she knew that she understood.
"I heard about Alderaan," Padmé whispered. "Bail, Breha. . . And," she took a deep breath, "I heard about Luke."
Leia hugged her again, if only to disguise the fact that suddenly she couldn't make herself stand on her own. Burying her face in her mother's shoulder, she just whispered, "Why?"
Padmé held her gently and said, equally gently, "This is why it was always going to be dangerous to meet as a family."
Dangerous. That word had been a staple in the letters, the excuses for why they weren't together, why they weren't happy. Leia had loved her aunt and uncle, just as Luke had loved his, but it wasn't the same. She wanted her family.
"Why?" she choked out again.
Padmé drew back. "That's a complicated question," she said, her voice warbling, "with a complicated answer. And you deserve to know it in full—you will know it in full—but I can't tell it to you here. Or now." She glanced at Han over Leia shoulder; Leia was suddenly very aware that he had been standing there awkwardly the whole time. "We'll take you back to base and explain it there?" The question was directed at Han, but her hand tightened around Leia's.
Han cast a rueful glance at the Falcon's general state of disrepair. "Yeah," he said. "That'll work."
But, still—
Leia asked, "How?"
"How did I know you were in trouble?" Padmé quirked an eyebrow, then nodded at the starbird still wheeling above them, like some sort of sentry. "Sabé told me."
Leia glanced up at the blue-chested bird which had been with them for so much of the journey. The question was on the tip of her tongue, but she shook her head.
There was a lot she still needed to understand.
For a good few days—weeks, nearly—Luke drifted in and out of consciousness.
The first time he'd slept, he'd slept like the dead for hours, and woken with a sour taste in his mouth. Bandages were wrapped round his head, arms and torso—no matter how minor the injuries were, they were wrapped up and treated.
And there was a blanket tucked round his shoulders, a pillow under his head.
A part of him wondered whether this was Vader's attempt at a mercy, but he spent more time worrying about the fact that apparently he'd had a medic check over him without waking up. How deeply had he slept?
He decided that the food was probably drugged.
He only picked at the meals after that, no matter how his stomach growled. With the barest dregs of the drug ingested and the general lethargy of being kept in dim lighting all day, he floated in some sort of delirium. Eyes half-open, mind half-asleep. It was the only sleep he got.
The only sleep he got, because every time he fell asleep completely he saw a flash of silver, heard Biggs's scream, watched Vader's lips form the words my son—
He jerked awake quickly, every time.
So it was in one of those transcendent states of near sleep that he heard the singing.
He felt it more than heard it—the Imperial sailors were stamping on the decks above, and it vibrated through his teeth, his bones. There wasn't much by way of a melody, but the rhythm of the thumping was familiar. It took him a moment to place it.
When he finally did, it felt like he'd been punched.
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
Early in the morning!
He closed his eyes. If he listened to the thumping, and ignored the timbre of the voices, he could superimpose more beloved ones on top of it all. Han had taught him and Leia this song shortly before the fiasco on Bespin.
"Way hay and up she rises," Luke murmured. "Way hay and up she rises."
Way hay and up she rises
Early in the morning!
Leia had tried to turn her nose up at it, for austerity's sake, but she'd ended up laughing and joining in. He'd taken her hand and they'd spun across the deck. Han had actually, genuinely smiled as they yanked him and Chewie in to make a circle, and Luke's heart warmed at the memory.
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
Early in the morning!
Han had finished with a bellow, he remembered, and looked extremely. . . cheerful. . . for hours afterwards. Luke wondered if he'd ever see that level of happiness on his face again.
He wondered if he'd ever see Han again.
The warmth fled.
A woman was standing outside Luke's cell.
Barely awake, Luke cracked his eyes open to study her. The light from the tiny porthole overhead bounced off the bars of the cells opposite to land on dark skin; pale, geometric tattoos; white hair hanging in three plaits. Two of the plaits were draped across the front of her shoulders; he followed them down to the twin short swords sheathed at her belt, their hilts worn with use.
In her hands she carried a pitcher of water.
"What do you want," he croaked out, obstinately not looking at the water, even as his parched throat burned with the effort of speech.
"Just to talk to you," she said in a tone that couldn't quite be described as coy, but he didn't know what the word for it was. It was coyness without the amusement; instead, there was a sharp-edged tension, a gravitas dragging the corners of her lips down into a frown.
Once again, he forcibly scraped words out of his throat. "Why."
"Because," she said simply, settling down into a cross-legged position on the floor. There she sat, directly opposite him now, a mere few feet away, rusted bars between them. "You're my Master's son." She manoeuvred the pitcher between the bars to push it towards him. "Drink. It'll help your throat."
He wanted to refuse. He should refuse, on principle, if only because this was Vader's ship, Vader's water, and he wouldn't accept anything the man—his father—tried to give him. And if getting to him through this gentler woman, who just wanted to talk, was his new plan. . .
. . .then it was working.
It was working, because. . . Luke was thirsty. Luke was thirsty, and tired, and had spent an unspecified amount of time alone. Vader and the sailors put on rotation to guard the cells didn't count; they were nothing but hostile. There were no other prisoners; few survived this long, anyway, other than him.
He needed company—kind company. And this woman was offering it.
So he drank the water. And when he spoke, he began with, "I thought it was supposed to be bad luck to bring women onto a ship."
The woman raised an eyebrow at that; her tattoos shifted with the movement. "Something tells you don't really believe that."
"No," he admitted, "but most Imperials do." It was why they rarely hired women as sailors. In fact, his aunt had told him that his grandmother had wanted to sail only to be turned down by the Coruscanti Navy; even before there was any Empire, the ideas held their ground.
But his aunt had also said that his father had been in the Coruscanti Navy, and while that was clearly true, it was still—
He didn't want to think about this.
The woman inclined her head to concede the point, and didn't say anything else.
The silence stretched on. Luke, desperate to talk to anyone who would listen, kept talking. "Did you say—" He swallowed. "I was your Master's son?"
"Yes."
"And. . . by Master. . ."
"No!" She seemed horrified by the implication. "No. Anakin may be a cruel man, but he is not a slaver. He was a slave—I'd assume you know this. The entire Empire stands against slavery."
Luke breathed a sigh of relief. But. . . "Anakin?"
"Anakin Skywalker," she said, a sad smile on her lips, "your father?"
"I'd hoped. . ." That he was lying. That Vader isn't Anakin. "I was told my father was killed by pirates."
She shrugged, though there was nothing casual about it. "Well, I'm afraid that's not true. Your father is Vader, whether or not you like it."
"What did you mean by 'Master', then?" The question burst out before he could stop it. Even if he knew it wasn't associated with slavery, the word left a bad taste in his mouth.
She tilted her head; her plaits shifted across her front. "I was his Padawan, back when he was a Jedi. He was my teacher—my Master."
"Padawan?" There was so much here he didn't understand—so much he didn't know. "You were a Jedi?" A thought hit him. "What's your name, even?"
The question caught her off guard. "Oh—of course." She gave a small smile, and bowed her head a little. "I'm Ahsoka Tano, your father's Padawan learner." She gave him a moment to process that, then asked, "What do you know about the Jedi, Luke?"
He nearly flinched at someone calling him by his given name—only Vader had done that recently, and that didn't exactly make him happy—but answered, "I know there are legends about them. That they served the goddess Amidala," and again, he tried not to think too much about the implications of his birth in that, "and sailed the seas, not bound to any state, unofficially carrying out justice wherever they went. They ferried traders across the fastest, most dangerous routes and helped them bring wealth back to their homelands. They dealt with all manners of beasts from legends. They had a moral code and stuck to it; in many places, they were so respected that the mere idea of impersonating a Jedi was considered the highest of all crimes."
"That's all true," Ahsoka admitted, "but what do you know about their flaws?"
Luke didn't say anything. He took another drink of water instead.
Ahsoka sighed. "They served Amidala. A lot of nations didn't like how unpredictable the will of a goddess could be, especially when it was a goddess they didn't even believe in. Though technically they were protected under the law of the Republic—" She paused. "The Republic was—"
"A trade alliance between most of the lands in the continent, I know."
Rude. He chastised himself for interrupting—Amidala, he sounded like Aunt Beru—but Ahsoka didn't seem to mind.
"Yes." She smiled slightly. "The Republic was discovering new lands every day, sailing through the dangerous waters where Amidala's monsters lived. They needed the Jedi, for their sailing skills, their ability to calm the creatures and fight them off when necessary. They even needed their diplomacy when they made contact with new civilisations. But. . ."
She grimaced. "But the Jedi still drew a lot of criticism, and from a lot of places. When they fell under attack, few could be stirred to defend them.
"And then they did fall under attack, and well. . . I'm sure Imperial history covered what happened next."
"They were wiped out. Palpatine started taking over other countries through the Republic's trade laws and his stranglehold on trade routes. He kept control through the military. The Empire grew larger."
"Yeah."
Luke sighed. "What's your point, Ahsoka?"
"The Jedi weren't perfect. When your father talks to you about it all, and you inevitably argue with him, I want you to keep that in mind."
"And what about you?" Luke challenged. "Do you still consider yourself a Jedi?"
Ahsoka's hands fluttered down to rest on the pommels of her short swords. As she checked no one was near enough to listen, the blades flashed in the light—for the first time, Luke noticed that now-familiar symbol stamped onto them. The symbol of the Jedi Order.
"Do I still follow their morals, of serving the greater society before serving yourself? Do I still serve Amidala?" The look she gave him was weighted with something. "Yes. Purely and simply: Yes."
"Then why do you stay?"
She swallowed, and admitted, "Because I believe there's still good in him. There has to be."
She seemed to come to her senses, then, and rose to her feet in one, fluid motion. "Your father will have finished his work in an hour. After that, he'll have you summoned to his quarters. He wants to talk to you. Just. . . keep what I've said in mind."
She was almost out of sight when he said, "Wait."
She paused.
"The Jedi weren't flawless," Luke said slowly, "obviously. They fell. But the prosperity they brought, the peace. . . They were needed." He shook his head. "They were heroes. Today, there are no heroes on the high seas. They're gone, and we. . ." He swallowed, trying not to think of Old Ben. Of how he'd looked when he calmed that sea monster. Of the muted passion he'd always seemed to feel towards keeping Luke safe. "And now we need them more than ever."
Ahsoka was quiet for a moment.
"Perhaps," she admitted, then let the door swing shut behind her.
Ahsoka had been right: Vader did come for him a short while later.
There remained little to do in his cell except sleep, so that was what he did. It meant that when heavy footsteps alerted him to Vader's approach, once again he found himself with his eyes half-open, peering up at someone on the outside of his cell, even as they peered down and in—just as it had been with Ahsoka.
But Ahsoka and Vader were two very different people.
And Ahsoka had never towered in quite the way Vader did, nor was her shadow anywhere near as long. From the moment his footsteps stopped, and Luke knew he was standing in front of him, his presence was stifling—almost supernatural.
"What do you want," he said, just as he'd said to Ahsoka, only his throat wasn't dry anymore. He hadn't quite finished the pitcher of water yet; it was nestled in the crook of his elbow, lest the rocking of the ship send it flying.
Vader watched him for a moment, blue eyes curiously alight as he took him in. Then his right hand—metal, Luke observed with some surprise; how did he manage to move it?—twisted a key in the lock and the door creaked open.
"Come with me," his father said.
Luke eyed the door, making no move to get up. "What's to stop me from—"
"We are on a ship, in the middle of the sea, boy. Any lifeboat that's launched, should it somehow outrun the Devastator, would take at least three days to reach the nearest landmass. Limited freshwater provisions, under the hot sun the entire time? You were a resident of Tatooine; you know the effects. Your own will to live is what's stopping you. Now, my son," he held out his left hand—his flesh hand. "Come."
Reluctantly, Luke pushed himself to his feet and made to take the hand. Vader seized his wrist before he could, and yanked him the rest of the way out.
"I'm escorting you to my quarters. Don't test me by trying to escape," he warned.
Luke gritted his teeth. "We're on the way to Coruscant, right?" Coruscant was one small island among many; if he timed it right, and managed to escape while they were near one. . .
Vader's hand tightened on his arm, like he could sense his thoughts. "Yes. We have been due back there for weeks."
"Then why aren't you?"
"I was sure that whatever the Emperor wanted to talk to me about, it could wait until I had secured you."
Luke grimaced slightly at that, even as he began to climb the steps and squint at the sudden influx of light. They passed the saloon and deckhouse on the way up; he was hyperaware of sailors' gazes on him, which lingered even after he'd passed on.
They reached Vader's quarters soon enough; even the infamously massive Devastator really didn't have much space aboard it for living quarters. That said, Vader's were surprisingly large—larger than the deckhouse they'd just passed, and certainly Luke's cell. He took a moment to look around, but the space was ruthlessly practical. The papers on the desk were put away, the clothes all stored in a trunk, the sheets on the bed folded there. The only memento Vader seemed to have was the japor snippet round his throat—the one he was fiddling with, almost nervously, as he watched Luke.
Luke's gaze flicked from the necklace to the metal hand clutching it, wondering. . . "How does your hand work?"
"Magic." Vader said it as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
Luke huffed a breath. "Seriously?"
"I do not joke, young one," Vader said. "It works with magic. The magic of the sea."
"My name is Luke," he snapped, "use it, or don't talk to me at all. Preferably the latter." Before Vader could react to that, he barrelled on, "What do you mean magic?"
Vader stilled. "I mean that when my organic hand was cut off by a pirates, your mother enchanted the metal one I built so it worked just the same."
Luke closed his eyes. "My mother."
"Yes. Amidala, the Goddess of the Sea."
"What—" He shook his head, not sure whether to laugh or cringe. "How?"
"I was a Jedi." Vader's voice had suddenly gone hard. "My job was to serve her, to serve the sea. I just happened to love her as well—and she loved me back. She made herself a woman, Padmé Naberrie, and we lived together happily for many years." It sounded so sensible the way he said it, did he not realise— "Your mother was a goddess, Luke."
He was quiet for a moment, mulling it over, then asked, "Then why aren't you happy now?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why aren't you happy now, Father?" The title slipped out, unintended; he barrelled on before either of them could latch onto it. "You said you lived together happily. What happened?"
"She became pregnant." Luke went cold. "She found it difficult to remain human while in the process of creation—she was slipping away from me. I was always worried she would never come back.
"My friend, Palpatine, taught me how to bind her godly essence in a talisman so she could stay with me forever. I did."
Luke couldn't breathe. He could see where this was going. "And how did she react?"
"She betrayed me." The words were a growl. "She had little to no magic anymore—it was all in the talisman—she couldn't stop me, but she told the rest of the Jedi. Turned them against me—Kenobi tried to kill me—" Luke took a quick step back as Vader thumped his hand against his wooden leg. "—and left me missing another limb. And when the Jedi were all dead, she ran off with you."
He swallowed harshly. He wasn't looking at Luke anymore—he was staring out of the porthole, into the sky, the storm now brewing there.
"Palpatine. . . he gave me a place in his growing Empire, a means to hunt her—and you—down. I wanted her back, and if she refused, if she betrayed me again. . . I still wanted you.
"But she had vanished. I heard nothing until the rumour that. . ." He trailed off, moving his gaze back onto Luke. It roved across his face as he said, "That the child had died. She lived, but our baby had died. It was a child of the sea; without that magic, without Padmé's magic, it couldn't survive. I thought. . ."
And then it clicked. "You thought that you had killed me."
"Yes." The word was an exhale. He reached out slightly to touch Luke's face. "So when I heard your name. . ."
"You decided torturing and murdering my best friend was an acceptable way to get to me." Luke shook his head, taking another step back. Vader's hand dropped to his side. "Why?"
"You are my son," Vader said, and the words meant something then, made his heart stutter in a way they hadn't before. His father wanted him—
And then he ruined it with, "You are also Amidala's son. You will be a great asset to the Empire."
All the breath left Luke at once.
He shook his head. "I hate the Empire. It's overly harsh on its people, oppresses those from the outer territories, maintains control through brutal acts of force. . . Alderaan," he whispered, thinking of Leia, then—worse—thinking of how she would react knowing the man responsible was her father. "It's not right."
"It decimated slavery throughout the continent."
Luke paused. Anakin and Shmi Skywalker had been slaves—he knew that. He wondered how much his uncle's story matched up with the truth.
"I know," he said, "and I am glad. But one good thing isn't enough to make up for a lifetime of bad things. It's not enough for redemption."
Vader was quiet. He didn't respond—perhaps he couldn't respond. Did he know how terrible the Empire could be? What it did to its subjects? How undeniably evil it was?
He had to—he was Darth Vader.
But didn't that just make the fact he still fought for them worse?
"The Empire is not evil," Vader said after a moment. "I cannot tell you why. But I will endeavour to show you."
Luke sighed again. "Father. . ." He closed his eyes. "What do you want? What's the point of this talk?"
"You're my son," he said. "I want to know you." He gestured to a chair, and after Luke sat down in it he took a seat as well. "Tell me about yourself."
Luke took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. Later—they could continue this argument later.
So instead he said, "What do you want to know?"
When Luke got back to his cell, the pitcher of water had been knocked over in the rocking of the ship, the water all seeping away. He went to sleep discontented, bothered by his conversation with his father.
When he woke up, the pitcher was full again.
The convor shook its wings as it hopped onto Ahsoka's shoulder; she suppressed a smile. Morai wasn't anything like the comm hawks the Imperials usually used to deliver messages, but that made sense. After all, it wasn't an Imperial message she was sending.
"Here," she said, holding out her arm. The convor jumped onto it, and she tied the note to her leg. It was short, negligible in weight—it was barely a hindrance as Morai shook out her wings, and launched herself into the night.
Ahsoka watched her grow ever smaller with a wistful smile, until she was just another speck of white among the stars. Then she turned away.
The message was sent; her plan was set into motion.
She only hoped Padmé would be able to follow it through.