Author Note: My heartfelt apologies for the horrifyingly long delay in updating. I got caught up in other projects, like having COVID. Thankfully we all got through it without any serious problems, but it was definitely exhausting!

/

Blue saber clashing against red. The howling wind. The fear and despair, mixed with desperate determination as he sought to defeat a foe far too strong and powerful.

The lava pools reflecting hellish light in the distance. A beautiful woman, great with children, running toward the cloaked form of her love, her husband.

"Anakin! You're breaking my heart!"

Pain, such pain! The loss of hand and his father's lightsaber.

The loss of hope.

"No, I am your father."

The man whom he had longed for, even loved with hopeless adoration, was Darth Vader.

Darth Vader.

"No! No!" he screamed. "No!"

"Anakin, come with me!"

"Luke!"

Luke woke up with a start and bit back a scream. The death mask of Darth Vader hovered over him and he flinched away.

"Calm down, my son," the Sith ordered softly, taking a pace backwards.

Luke sat up, shaking from the intensity of the dream, and drew his chained hands up to his face as he sought to control his breathing. He had managed to retain both courage and self-possession during this entire ordeal but at the moment, he felt emotionally spent. His dream was, at least, from the past instead of the future, but it was profoundly disturbing. Padme had loved his father passionately and he had turned on her with his dark powers and choked her.

Vader, in turn, regarded his son with an uneasy eye. Luke's Force sense had been tumultuous throughout the dream, and now the boy was retreating into himself.

He felt a craven and very bizarre urge to retreat but no, there was no time. The Emperor was too great a threat.

"Luke," he repeated softly, taking a seat at the giant chair provided for him.

Luke took three more deep careful breaths before lowering his hands.

"Yes?" he responded carefully.

"I have been thinking about the Emperor. The situation is untenable."

Luke quirked a confused eyebrow, "In what way?"

"The Emperor will not permit you and your sister to both live. That is unacceptable."

Luke blinked at his father and sat up a little straighter, "Why not, Father? You seemed ready enough to wipe me out at Bespin."

The great armored form slumped slightly, "It was not my intention to harm you, Son. Indeed, I …"

He trailed off and rose to his feet, pacing up and down the room another few minutes before turning once again to his recalcitrant offspring.

"I thought you would be captured with ease, and I believed you would turn to the Dark Side. If you had, we would have destroyed the Emperor as father and son, and this situation would not have arisen."

Luke rubbed his forehead with his manacled hands, trying to massage away a growing headache, "So the danger to Leia is my fault somehow? That makes no sense!"

"She should not have announced her relationship to me to the galaxy."

"Well, I was nervous about it too," Luke admitted, "but she insisted. The thing is, people have been keeping secrets about Anakin Skywalker and his screwed up family for decades, and it hasn't worked out well for anyone. So our thinking was, let's throw truth against the galactic wall and see what sticks. It seems like it could hardly get worse."

Vader surged forward an outraged few steps to loom over his sitting son, "Worse? Of course it can get worse! If you do not turn, the Emperor will kill you! If your sister is captured, and does not turn, she too will die! You do not know Palpatine like I do; now that he is aware of the presence of my … of your twin, he will be cogitating and planning and plotting. He doubtless has ten different schemes in mind already to take advantage of this situation, and will have dozens more by the end of the week!"

Luke rolled to his feet at this, taking his own step forward until he was face to chest with his father. He tilted his head up to glare into his father's death mask.

"Then let's kill him, Father," he suggested coolly.

Vader stared down into those eyes, which his sensors informed him were blue, though there was that stupid red haze which filtered his vision …

"I cannot," he said automatically. "I must obey my master."

"You are being totally schizophrenic! You just said we should have worked together …"

"You must join the Dark Side before I can turn against Palpatine," Vader interrupted angrily.

The boy frowned at him in confusion, "Why?"

Vader clamped his mouth shut and turned away from his son, choosing to stalk up and down menacingly. It was true, was it not? The Light was weak. Palpatine would only fall if …

"You don't want to be alone," Luke said suddenly, and his voice was so soft, so compassionate, that Vader picked up a random chair and hurled it against the wall.

"I am always alone," he snarled, the room shaking. "I have been alone since I woke up in this suit in agony and my Master told me ... he told me …"

Luke took a few steps closer, his face still sympathetic, but his eyes blazing with outrage.

"That Mother was dead?"

The great head bowed and the walls stilled.

"Yes, he told me that in my anger, I killed her."

"You know you obviously did not."

This time, the ceiling shook along with the walls, "He lied to me. He knew that my guilt and grief over murdering ... over ..."

Luke sighed and retreated to gaze through the window which looked out over the rather dreary landscape of Dachat City, "When I was a boy and teen living on Tatooine, I used to feel very alone. I mean, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were very kind, and I had friends, but I was different. I didn't know it then, of course, but it was the Force. I could do things no one else could – sense sandstorms coming, fly Beggar's Canyon better at twelve than any adult could. It was a relief to meet old Ben Kenobi, really, to learn that there was something odd about our family, that these feelings I had struggled with for many years had a reason ..."

He turned around now to face his father, "You are attached to the Emperor, aren't you? Through the Dark Side? It isn't really that the Light is weaker – I mean, I know you think it is, but the problem is that you don't want to be the only Sith Lord left in the galaxy. You need another person who understands who you are, and realistically, Palpatine is the only other person in the galaxy who is a truly powerful Dark Sider."

Vader considered his son with wonder. Palpatine, he had no doubt, analyzed his emotional state with wearisome regularity, all with the goal of keeping him firmly enslaved. Indeed, his Master was an expert at using words and punishment to manipulate him, to keep him in line. But not since ... her ... had someone gazed upon him with such concern and empathy.

And Luke was right. He was afraid to be alone as the only Sith Lord. The Darkness was a powerful, but cruel, mistress. He was cut off from everyone save Palpatine by the years of fury and destruction. He hated Palpatine, and resented him, but he was also, yes, attached to him, in a sickening sort of way.

Nonetheless...

"Only with the power of the Dark Side can Palpatine be defeated," he asserted, straightening is already straight spine.

Luke's expression and Force sense were both very unconvinced, "So I am shaky on the past because no one told me much, but were there Sith Lords before you and Palpatine?"

Vader tilted his head and nodded slightly, "Yes."

"How were they defeated?"

"I defeated my predecessor, a Sith by the name of Darth Tyrannus."

"Had you turned to the Dark Side already?"

"No," Vader admitted. "It was Anakin Skywalker who defeated him in battle."

"OK, and were there any others?"

"Before Tyrannus was Darth Maul, who was defeated by Kenobi."

Luke rolled his eyes very insolently, "Ok, so the previous two Sith Lords were vanquished by Jedi, so why do you say ...?"

"Because Palpatine is ... he is powerful, my son. Not only is he mighty in the Force, he is brilliant and incredibly manipulative. Palpatine planned Tyrannus's defeat at my hands as it was one step toward turning me to the Dark Side."

"And Maul?" Luke asked shrewdly.

"His failure was unexpected, I believe," Vader admitted. He had never spoken to Palpatine about Maul's defeat at Kenobi's hands; it had never seemed important. But his former master had been but a padawan when the Zabrak Sith Lord fell to his blade; that was rather remarkable, really. Another Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn, had been assisting Kenobi but still ...

"Ok," Luke commented with determination. "I don't pretend to be any genius tactician but my gut instinct is that if we are going to wipe out Palpatine, we need to be surprising. Obviously Emperor understands you really well."

"Yes," his father confessed.

"Ok, let me think about it. He knows you, but he doesn't know me. Perhaps it is time for some Skywalker madness."

Vader actually flinched at these words. Skywalker madness was legendary. Skywalker madness was unnerving. Skywalker madness was terrifying.

But he would not lose his son and daughter. He would not.

"Very well," Vader conceded. "I am willing to at least consider some inane plan of yours."

Luke tipped his head up with an amused grin, "Thank you, Father. Now, your admiral has been hovering outside for some time. Shall we let him in to discuss this whole uranium mining near disaster?"