AN: I want to thank everyone who has been kind enough to post a review/comment on this series. I wish I could reply to the amazing guest reviews!

As I have said in my profile I am working on the story, but it is slow going due to a massive amount of work commitments. I have also had some issues with the structure and order of the scenes and what ones flowed better as an opening after the prologue. I settled on this...

My "cover" for the story (also my profile pic) is a drawing by the wonderful artist Craig Gilliland of Major Erwin Rhovan who drew him exactly how I pictured him.

Many many thanks to Lovesdaryl (check out her stunning Walking Dead fic) and Kazlynh (again check out her Star Wars, Stargate Atlantis et al...) for giving up on their precious time to beta read and to make suggestions to improve on the scene.

Disclaimer: I make no claim of ownership to Star Wars and it's related characters and situations. I am not in this for any profit - just the fun. However, some elements of the story are original to me and Rhovan is most certainly mine.


Dark Times: Chapter 7

For Darkness Restores

Part One

Darkness…

Sound.

A thrum. A beat.

Silence.

Darkness…

Sound.

A thrum. A beat. Murmurs.

Silence.

Darkness…

Sound.

A thrum. A beat. Murmurs. Voices.

Silence.

Darkness…

Sound.

A thrum. A beat. Murmurs. Voices. Words…

"… still… stable… consciousness… waking…"

A light.

Bright. Painful.

Silence.

Darkness…

A thrum. A beat. Murmur. Voices. Words.

Light.

Bright. Painful. Shadow. Face.

"I am your Master."

Darkness…

ooOOoo

This was the first time Vader had seen his son since placing him in Palpatine's care.

He had been ordered away from Imperial Centre, sent on a mission to burn a swathe of destruction across the Galaxy having no other choice but to leave Luke with his master. Using his anger, his burning hatred, he had gloried in the ruin he wrought, revelled in the death and devastation he had left in his wake as he chased every hint and lead to the Rebellion; to the alliance of traitors who had sheltered and concealed his child from him. He had razed villages, cities, countries, continents and planets looking for the ones who had given his son refuge and succour. He had hunted their fleet, harrying and harassing and destroying cargo haulers, freighters and battle cruisers every time he had caught up with them.

The names and places were seared into his mind, branded in his memory: Antar IV, Dagelin Minor, Nadiem and Hoth. Tens of thousands had died as Vader rid himself of his anger and frustration at having to leave his son alone and helpless with Palpatine, with Sidious, with the vile creature that the former chancellor had become.

There had been no other way to save Luke. No other way to protect and nurture the tiny flicker of life that had remained within his grievously injured son.

"I… w..in… fath..er…"

How those words haunted him. How they taunted. The image of his son bleeding out onto the Horaarn snow had been seared into his memory to rise every time he closed his eyes, every time he paused, every time he reached for the Force. The clarity of those few moments were engrained into his mind; the thick blood spilling from Luke's mouth, the choking and gurgling as Luke fought for breath. The jerks of Luke's dying body, the kicks of his legs as Vader pulled him into his arms.

The panic and horror and overwhelming sense of déjà vu. This was not the first time he had held someone he…

loved…

…. valued as they died.

"Oh, my son. My grown up son. I am so proud of you."

His mother had smiled and she had died.

Luke had also smiled as he succumbed to his injures. His eyes, his bright blue eyes, dulling and dimming, becoming fixed and unfocused as the life left him.

"I… w..in…fath..er…"

Those words and that smile. In his final moments Luke had understood. Luke had recognised his sire, his father, and had remained a Rebel to the end.

Such courage. Such tenacity. Such strength.

My son.

The moments following had been frantic as he had lifted Luke from the ground, turning for the shuttle only to find the medical capsule and the medics already behind him and he realised it had only been mere seconds since the shot.

It had felt a life time.

He had placed his son in the capsule and Luke was rushed into the shuttle as a second shot resounded within its belly and his son's assassin was dragged, stunned, to the back of the compartment.

The ship did not move, did not lift off and depart for the Executor until Luke's body was hooked up to the capsule's sensors, his wounds dressed and his blood replaced with the reserves of Vader's own; carried wherever he went. Arteries and veins were threaded with lines and tubes and blood flowed out to be externally oxygenated and returned to be artificially pumped around Luke's vascular system.

Once aboard the Executor, once they were in hyperspace and rushing to Imperial Centre, he had stood to the side watching as the surgeons worked, perfecting and completing the field medic's efforts.

And all the while he could feel the life still within his son, he could feel the infinitesimal pulse within the Force. There were no feelings, no thoughts, no consciousness that he could recognise as Luke, just that minute vibration and all the while he had expected it to simply wink out of existence like a failing candle flame in the softest breeze.

It hadn't. It had flickered and dimmed. Flared and sputtered. Fell to a tiny glow... and Palpatine had nurtured it, fed it kindling and now…

Now Luke lived. Now Luke strengthened; his presence in the Force growing, flaming, the small spark of life now burning as strongly as ever.

It was only a few scant days ago that the Force had briefly exploded. The violence of the flash, the power of the shock…

"I am you master!"

… jolting him from his meditation. Throwing him viciously from restful darkness.

He knew what had happened even before Palpatine had contacted him to tell him that Luke had woken and finally…. finally… gave permission for Vader to return to Imperial Centre, his temporary exile from the planet called to an overdue halt.

"You have served me well, my friend," Palpatine had placated, via the hologram transmission, but Vader could hear the humour in his voice, the dripping guile. "It is time for you to return… He has awakened."

The Executor was turned around, course plotted and engaged for a journey of several days and for every one of the long, drawn-out, days Vader had locked himself away warning that any interruption before they had reached their destination would result in immediate termination of the offender's position. No one doubted the meaning behind his order.

Luke had awakened!

The very thought sent a thrill through him; a strange concoction of hope and fear, of rising anticipation and crushing despair. Yes, Luke had wakened. Luke had survived, had stirred, and the Force churned with wild expectation and yet he was not in charge of his son's destiny, he was not the one guiding his son into his new life and he had to wonder…

…fear…

… what kind of creature Palpatine planned to mould from his child and if that tiny spark he had felt within the shell of Luke Skywalker would survive Palpatine's manipulations.

On arrival at the Pinnacle Tower he had been denied immediate access to Luke, had crushed the life from the officer who had delivered the news, tossed him aside before striding to his master's temporary throne room; interrupting court. Dipping his knee and head before Palpatine's sovereignty he had ground out. "What is thy bidding, my Master?"

Palpatine had cleared the room before rising and stepping down the stairs towards his supplicant.

"You think harshly of me, my friend."

Vader swallowed, allowed a breath before answering, kept his eyes to the floor. "He is my son."

"Hmmm," Palpatine murmured, pursing his thin lips. "You have always been fettered by attachment, Lord Vader. Shackled first by your mother, Kenobi and the Jedi Order and then by Senator Amidala and now your offspring. It was your weakness and it remains your weakness."

"I killed Kenobi," Vader offered, anger biting at the Emperor's barbed taunt. He drew himself up, standing without invitation as Palpatine walked past him, "and I…"

The Emperor was nodding as he walked. "Yes, yes," he conceded, placating his apprentice; this was an old argument, "and you killed your wife for her betrayal."

Vader was silent, quiet rage and grief at the reminder…

… the lie

coiling as he walked beside his master. It was a familiar place for him, a reminder of the past; the Chancellor and his young Jedi friend walking together as one offered sage advice to the other.

"Ah!" Palpatine grinned, picking up on his feelings. "You think me a liar now that you know your offspring was born." He stopped, turned and looked up into the dark visage, the fixed expression that hid the coiling, blistering fire that burned beneath. "Do you think because she lived long enough to birth the boy that you are not responsible for her death? You wounded her, weakened her, your actions led to her death. You killed her, never forget that."

Lesson delivered, Palpatine resumed walking. Silence hung between them until they reached the doors of the throne room, but the Force was churning, roiling with Vader's grief and anger. His searing hatred for his once-mentor barely held in check.

Hiding his grin, Palaptine waved a hand and the doors swung open. Stepping through he broke the cloying quiet. "I sense much conflict within you, Lord Vader. A conflict that I have not felt since before the birth of the Empire. Your feelings are unclear, clouded once more by sentimentality."

"He is my son," Vader stated again by way of explanation. Luke was his child, darkness or not, it was that simple.

"Hmmm," Palaptine mused, thin lips pressed together in annoyance. "I feared that this might happen. You always did let your heart lead where your head should prevail."

A squad of Imperial Guards stepped in behind them. Their red robes rustling, brushing across smooth floor of the great hallway as they walked.

"You should know, my friend, that the boy is no longer your son. That Rebel is dead, undeserving of your… compassion," he said the word with revulsion, as though it defiled him somehow. As though a creature of darkness could be tainted, sullied, by such a notion. "His flesh may be of your flesh, but his emerging mind is mine. I have shaped him, crafted him. I have given him the opportunity to redeem for his past incarnation with a new identity."

Vader walked, saying nothing but feeling everything.

"I have seen within his mind. He remembers nothing, his mind is blank like a newborn's…"

And Vader was given hope at the lie he heard within his master's voice.

"… ready to be filled, ready to be trained and fashioned to my design. He is my creation and his only wish will be to do my bidding and…"

Vader's fists curled, the fires of outrage blazed white hot and Palpatine chuckled beside him in glee at the waves of scorching anger that burned through the Force.

"… should he disappoint me, I will not hesitate to destroy him." The Emperor stopped and turned to his long time apprentice, looking up at the blank, expressionless façade. "Are we clear, Lord Vader?"

Vader gritted his teeth and bowed his head in submission; he had no other choice. This was darkness, this was the Sith and his son's life depended on Palpatine's whims. He forced the words out. "We are clear, my master."

Palpatine resumed walking. "Then you will go to the detention levels and bring my agent to me. It seems the boy is struggling to surface from his coma. Although his memory and mind are impaired the medics suggest a… familiar… face and voice could reach his instinctive subconscious and ground him. I do not believe that you or Major Rhovan would be appropriate candidates and I am given to understand that young Skywalker and the girl were becoming close."

Vader's mind was a storm at the contradiction from Palpatine. His son remembered nothing and yet he needed a familiar face to help ease him from his coma. Vader agreed that Rhovan or himself would be unsuitable to sit by his bedside; they were both too firmly linked to the trauma that Luke had suffered, both too involved in the hurt that Luke had endured. But Palpatine's agent, she…

"She was the one who shot him," he stated, unable to keep the question from his tone.

A chuckle from the despot. "Yes, she did. But consider her motives. Consider her position in the Alliance. She was mistakenly believing she was fulfilling her mission for me by killing Skywalker, but what was truly in her mind? What was in Skywalker's when he saw her?"

Vader's mind worked quickly, pieces of information falling into place. The woman had appeared on Ra'imar helping Luke into his fighter; a helmeted figure, features obscured by distance, by the smoke of battle. She had appeared on Horaarn to shoot his son in the chest. Her mission had been to keep father and son apart, to watch Skywalker from within the Alliance ranks. All this time, Palpatine had known of his child, just as Vader had suspected.

Did Luke know what she was, did he suspect?

Vader had watched the holonet broadcast of the assassination attempt. He had seen the determination on her face, the willingness to die for her mission, her cause and yet… he had also seen the compassion in her eyes and had been told of his son's demand.

"Do it."

Both expecting to die. Both prepared to die.

Both robbed of the chance.

"She was being merciful," he intoned.

"Yes," Palpatine hissed. "She was trying to save him from you, from me. She betrayed us both, my friend."

"And yet she lives," Vader pointed out.

Another chuckle. "I had intended on leaving her where she is. She understands the price for betrayal, she knows what my expectations of her were and yet she acted against me. Skywalker was not to die."

Again Vader sensed the lie.

"She lives only because she did, in her own way, attempt to fulfil her mission."

"How so?"

Palpatine grinned, yellow and blackened teeth bared and framed by thin lips. "She kept Skywalker from you. She came between a father and a son and you, my friend, have damaged, burned and wounded the Rebellion because of it. The Alliance is scattered and harried in the wake of Horaarn and Hoth and it will not be long before they crumble completely. I would call that a success….

"… Yes, bring her to me, Lord Vader. Let us use her compassion for your dead son to bring my creation to life and then we can use him to crush the lingering Rebellion."

Vader now stood in an antechamber looking in through the one-way window at his son as he lay sleeping on a form fitting medical bed. Luke was tilted upright by the bed to ease his breathing, his body warm and alive, and his heart beating strongly, his lungs breathing on their own; pulling in oxygen provided by the thin nasal cannula that was threaded across his face. The blaster wound had healed, the scar fading to a patch of pale skin thanks to bacta immersion.

The Dark Lord had learned that Luke had only just begun to open his eyes and he was struggling to remain conscious, prone to slipping back into sleep after only a few minutes and retaining no memory of his previous wakefulness. His brain was unable to lay down new pathways and new memories and his eyes would barely focus before his eyelids would flutter and close and he would be lost once more; his new world forgotten.

Which is why Palpatine had called for his agent. He had thought a recognisable face would spark something within Luke's brain, a feeling of familiarity that could lay down a foundation on which to build. The woman's presence might anchor him and she could be something for the Emperor to use to manipulate the boy as he had used Padme to manipulate his father.

Vader's anger and grief was raw, coldly burning, that he, the boy's father, was not to be by his son's side. However, he understood and had agreed that the sight of him could be overwhelming for Luke's emerging consciousness. It was better that Luke be introduced to his father once his mind had healed, once his mind had developed.

Vader's head dipped down. His measured breathing cycle continuing unabated despite his raging emotions.

Guilt…

It was necessary. It was needed. To ensure his son's survival this accursed location, where his own persona had been constructed in pain and darkness, had been the only place in the galaxy where Luke could be saved and Palpatine was the only person with enough power and knowledge of the Force to compel the boy's body to heal.

But at what cost?

At what cost to the Galaxy? At what cost to Luke?

He brought his head up, eyes burning behind the mask; Luke was alive and growing stronger by the day and soon all that would change…

Soon…

The Dark Lord stiffened, sensing Palpatine approaching and the door of the antechamber opened, the Emperor entering, robes rustling as he walked and it reminded Vader of the vipers on Tatooine that would skim across the sand, scales swishing before striking.

He turned and dipped to his knee as Palpatine approached.

"He is near waking," Palpatine noted without preamble and without acknowledging Vader's veneration. He stopped before the one-way window gazing in at his creation as the boy's body jerked on the bed and his head rolled on the pillow. "Can you feel him?"

Vader drew himself to his feet to stand by his master. "Yes, Master."

Palpatine closed his eyes and Vader could feel him reaching out within the Force to touch Luke's emerging presence; it bled into the Force, leaking through spaces and fractures creating haphazard patterns like a puzzle that never quite joined, pieces that didn't quite fit.

There were no thoughts. No coherence. No understanding. Luke's mind was like an empty, darkened chamber into which dust-filled light seeped through cracks in a broken, boarded window.

A moan filtered into the antechamber, a gasp, and again Luke's body jolted and shuddered, arms and legs caught by padded restraints that secured him to the bed for his own protection.

Palpatine abruptly turned and stepped through the door into Luke's room, leaving Vader alone. The Dark Lord watched as the Emperor stepped to Luke's side just in time for the boy's eyelids to flicker open.

At first there was a hazy emptiness, then awareness and confusion filled the blue eyes, Palpatine reached out a clawed hand, took Luke's chin and turned the boy's head toward him.

"I am your master," he intoned, using the Force to add weight and sway to his words.

Vader closed his eyes at the sudden cut of pain at Palpatine's words. His helmet dipped, and he reached for the Force to centre himself, to purge the weakness of his feelings.

He was a Sith Lord, not a father.

Luke slowly blinked, eyes staring up at the man standing above him.

"I am your master," Palpatine told him again. Repeating the words as he always did when the youth's eyes opened, imprinting the message… no… not imprinting it. Branding it, burning it into Luke's inchoate mind.

Vader opened his eyes as Palpatine repeated the words for a third time, anger and choler colouring his words and the Force deepened and darkened with the Emperor's frustration at the lack of acknowledgement from the youth. A thin trickle of saliva ran from Luke's mouth and Palpatine withdrew his hand with a noise of disgust, wiping the offending fluid away on his robes.

Humoured Vader smiled. Luke may not know it but he had just won a small victory against his new master and had made him retreat.

Suddenly the youth stiffened on the bed, his attention on Palpatine wavered and, with poorly controlled, jerking movements, Luke's head turned on the pillow to stare directly at the window and at Vader.

All Luke was seeing was a blank wall, but… His son had felt him! Had sensed him! Luke knew he was there! Heart beating a little faster with a combination of excitement, wonder and dread, Vader could feel Luke searching for him. The youth's actions were instinctive, were a reaction to his presence and not their biological relationship, but he had turned from his master to seek his father and that was a slight Palpatine would not tolerate.

Palpatine's eyes flashed toward him, there was a spike of fury in the Force.

Vader closed himself off, locked down his barriers, shutting down access to his son. It was necessary to save Luke and himself from Palpatine's wrath. He had seen beings terminated for lesser slights to the Emperor. He steeled himself for what was coming…

… and Palpatine relaxed. The scorching heat of anger was driven down to simmer and boil just beneath his passive surface. He turned his attention back to Luke, rolled the youth's head back on the pillow until the blue eyes once more fixed on him.

"My child," he soothed, his voice betraying none of his ire. "Your master has a gift for you. Something… someone… to help you. Someone who knows you. Someone close."

Vader turned away as the door to Luke's room opened and Palpatine's double agent entered. He had no wish to see this. No wish to watch as his son was manipulated and lied to just as he had once been manipulated and controlled by half-truths and falsehoods cleverly hidden in the folds of fact.

My Child…

The Emperor's words were deliberate. A message to the boy's father that Luke was no longer his, that Luke now belonged to Palpatine. His being, his soul, indeed the very memories that Luke would recover, that Luke would lay down along new neural pathways would all be created and controlled by the Sith Master.

Here his father had no sway. Here his father would have no say, no purpose. He had been summoned here only to see and hear this moment; another of Palpatine's lessons.

Lesson learned and knowing what Palpatine wanted, knowing what his orders would be without being told, Vader reluctantly turned on his heel and strode from the medical centre. He headed straight to the landing platform and his waiting shuttle, desolation trailing at his heels.

His place was in the Galaxy. His place was with his fleet hunting for a rebellion that barely existed and not with a boy who was his son in flesh only.

ooOOoo

To be continued….