He died before he was born. His body, his mind, his spirit— gone. Nothing of him existed except the child in my head.
Sometimes I thought the child was a girl, one who looked like Padme. But usually I imagined a boy who looked like me. My ego invented that, I had assumed for many years.
For nineteen years he lived only in my head. When it was quiet, when I had no duties, during those endless dark nights when I submerged myself in the past, he was there. Padme was there too, of course, but as the years passed she no longer seemed quite real. She would never age or wrinkle, her thick hair would never turn gray. She was still young and beautiful like she had been in the days when I was young and beautiful too.
But the boy— ah, we were always together. We had long conversations, good ones because I supplied his replies. He was devoted to me. He was clever and talented, and I taught him all I knew about warfare and tactics and how to stay out of the Emperor's sight and how to catch butterflies on Naboo. Sometimes I could picture him so clearly, small, blonde, looking up at me. But then I wondered if I was remembering the boy in the Temple as I stabbed him through.
Then one day he was real. I never expected he would be real. He blurted his name to Princess Leia as a commonplace name, as though it hadn't shattered the world I had grown to accept. Luke Skywalker. Even without his naming, without Obi-Wan's protective sacrifice, I would have known him. Sun-kissed skin and hair shrieked 'Tatooine'. Hiding him there made a perverse sort of sense. The last place I would ever go, save perhaps for Naboo.
I pursued him. For three years he eluded me. In those days I believed that he wouldn't have run if he'd known I was his father. He would have embraced me and declared his fealty. I would have trained him, and we would have conquered the galaxy for ourselves. We would have brought peace and prosperity to all planets. We would have caught those butterflies.
And then I found him. I tested him, eager to learn what he had learned, eager to make him mine, to share my life and my innermost self with the only one who would understand. The one who would give life and joy and fill the hollow shell that lived inside the suit.
He fought clumsily but earnestly. Obi-Wan had taught him nothing, and the realization made me furious. He had learned something, somewhere, but whoever it was had not taught him how to use his lightsaber, only to be quick and to never give up, not even when he was bested. He was bruised, battered past the point of surrendering— but he did not. He grew angry, which pleased me, but he refused to be defeated even when I removed his saber. If he had relinquished it, I would not have taken his hand. It was a small matter, easily replaced, but his scream of pain reverberated inside my mind, echoes of every dismemberment I had suffered.
I told him I was his father. But then, even then, he didn't listen. He didn't hear me. Except for one moment when I thought I had him. When I told him he could defeat Palpatine. But he chose death over me when dead was all he had ever been to me for so long. His shock, his denial, his rejection—none of it seemed possible. Until later when I retreated to my meditation pod and cried the bitter, disappointed tears that I had denied for years. He was nothing like the child in my head.
Still...when I called him, he answered. Father.
Father.
Now here we are, two decades after he died with his mother. He is dying again, and he has a twin sister. A girl! Padme would have been so happy. But she is a twin that I will never know, not even her name, not even if she is Force sensitive or if she looks like Padme. Still, I have my son and that is beyond what I ever dreamed to have.
He writhes and screams as lightning shudders through his body. I look between him and my master. Sidious, who revived me, repaired me, tortured me, kept me alive beyond my limits of endurance. Yet I endure. I am here, alive. My son is dying, but the child in my head will be there forever like he has always been.
Except...now the child has a name, a face, a build that is strong and compact, a mouth that quirks and frowns. There is determination and so much compassion in his eyes when he looks at me, it is as painful as any physical wound. He is stubborn, just as he was on Bespin. Stubborn, ignorant, yet so precious.
If I interfere to save him, I will die. He wants his father back, but I can only give him that for a moment before his heart will break.
But I will live in his head forever. I will be the father in his head— the real one, not the one he dreamed of, but the true one. If he dies, I will live there no longer, and the child in my head will be dead too.
So it is that I decide and, moments later, after he has clasped my hand too briefly, then struggled to get me to safety, we are at the base of the shuttle. He will be safe; I will be gone. All I can do now is make a last request that I know he will grant. I am his father; he will do anything for me. He already has.
I feel the brush of air on my skin, and my eyes focus on him. I wish he would stroke my face with his fingers or kiss my forehead, for I have not felt a human touch since before he was born. I wish, even, that his tears would fall from his cheeks onto mine. I do not know if he cries for his loss of a father or the destruction of his dream of one, or if he cries because he is shocked by my appearance. I know I am nothing like the father who has lived in his head for two decades.
I love you, he whispers in my mind, and I think of my mother and Padme and Obi-Wan telling me that they loved me, and I wish I had known what they meant and how they had felt. Only now, at the end, do I understand. Only now do I remember.
I love you, I whisper back, and hope he hears before I leave this sphere. I am not afraid. I know I will never be alone again. I will always have the child in my head. I will always have Luke.