A small ficlet written for SilverDaye after she won a small contest we were doing!

As a warning, there are one or two very mild references to suicidal ideation in this, so if that is something you're sensitive to, please take care.

"You are actually going through with this?"

Luke jerked, irritated, and pulled his hood further down over his head. It was monsoon season on Rodia; the warm, constant rain was running through his hair, twisting his locks into threads. He ignored Anakin's question and just kept walking.

Speeders whirred past, their headlights lighting the rain like mercury. The puddle that had formed in front of the door he was heading for flashed white; the canopy over it buckled under the rain, and a small waterfall tumbled down.

Anakin—the mercenary he'd hired to watch his back during this meeting, since he certainly couldn't trust any of the Imperial guards set by Palpatine to watch him—stepped over the puddle first. Before Luke could object, he'd gripped his forearm tightly and lifted him over, not so much as a drop hitting Luke's shining black boots. He nodded at him in thanks, then marched right into the building, ducking down an empty corridor, up some stairs, then into a disused meeting room. Room 203B. As they'd agreed.

"We're here," Luke said.

Anakin, reaching up to adjust the setting on his narrow square goggles, scanned the room. Whatever he was looking for, it didn't trigger his concern; he just grunted. "Ahead of schedule?"

"By at least an hour. The Rebels will show up at the arranged time, hopefully, so we'll have the room to ourselves until then."

"An excellent opportunity for an ambush."

"Which is why I brought you." Luke raised his eyebrows at him. "Unless you want to tell me that you've been bought out by either the Rebels or Palpatine to betray me too."

"Never." He was surprised at the vehemence in Anakin's voice; he hadn't heard that sort of passion from anyone since his father had died. Everyone in the Empire seemed… sterile… and Palpatine's moments of intensity had certainly never been in his favour. "You hired me to keep you safe, and I will."

"I guess that makes you dedicated to your job." He thought Anakin made a strangled noise at that, but he wasn't paying attention.

"Should you not be more concerned," Anakin paused, "about the fact that you don't know if the mercenary you hired to protect you might want to kill you?"

"You think you could?"

Anakin laughed. "Yes."

"Well, hopefully we won't find out. But the point is to get away from Palpatine—I'll take any risk for that. I've been trying ever since my father died."

There was silence at that, but Luke paid it no heed: just scanned the room, taking in the windows, the table, the board at the end of it.

"Your… father?"

"Yes." Luke cut his gaze towards him. "Darth Vader. Do you not remember his funeral?"

"I cannot say I watched it, but I… remember it occurring."

"I've been trying to get away since he left. The Alliance are my last hope."

"Your last hope?" Anakin raised his head a little. "And if you had another?"

"I do not," Luke said flatly.

"But if you did? Would you take that, rather than the Rebels?"

Luke frowned. "I would consider it."

"Then come with me."

Luke's shoulders tensed until they ached. "What?"

"Come with me. I can get you away from Palpatine."

"Really?" He knew he sounded sceptical.

"Yes. You don't need to bargain with Rebels. Come with me."

Luke narrowed his eyes, swept around the table in the centre of the room, shrugged off his soaked cloak and settled into one of the chairs. "Why are you so adamant I not treaty with Rebels? And how do I know I can trust you?"

"Because…"

Anakin hesitated.

Then he reached up to take off his goggles. The face underneath them wasn't wholly familiar, but he felt like it should be—white with scar tissue, pink in places it was healing, his eyes a fierce yellow. Luke wondered for a moment whether that was a natural eye colour of his, since it was too close to Sith yellow for comfort, but then Anakin met his gaze, quirked his lips, and suddenly darkness bowled Luke over.

Familiar.

Familiar, familiar, familiar—

"Luke," Anakin said quietly, wrapping his presence around him, and Luke's heart nearly stopped. He shoved himself to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor behind him, but it was a mistake; he was not sure his legs bore the strength to stand.

"What," he said. He clenched his fist and rested it on the table, stabilising himself, but couldn't tear his eyes away from Anakin. The Force stabilised him—but it was not him commanding it to do so. "What—"

Anakin took a concerned step forward, and Luke stared at his gait, the way he walked, his height… he was shorter than Luke remembered, which must have been the only reason he hadn't recognised him, surely…

"Father?" he whispered.

Then Vader was in front of him, wrapping him arms around him, and over a year of bottled grief spilled out. He'd shoved it down at the funeral, shoved it down in front of Palpatine, shoved it down when he'd probed their achingly silent bond like an open wound again and again, calling for his father to come back and never getting anything more than echoes. Luke sobbed, and sobbed, and Vader held him tightly.

"You were dead!"

"I am not," he murmured. His voice, quieter and raspier in person than through the vocoder Luke remembered, shivered the hair on Luke's head. "I… needed to escape. I needed to leave Palpatine's clutches, so that I could get together resources to overthrow him—"

Luke pulled back. "So you faked your death?"

"Yes." Vader went to put his hand on Luke's shoulder. "It was the only way I could be sure he would not follow me."

Luke took a shaking breath, tears still stinging his eyes. "So you left me behind?" He tried to take a deep breath, in and out, and found himself unconsciously imitating the pace his father's respirator used to rasp at; that was his default for calm, for safety. But Vader—Anakin—no longer had his respirator, and his breathing was harsh and laboured.

"I couldn't take you with me," his father whispered, reaching for Luke's arm again. "I tried. When I faked the explosion of the ship I was on, you were supposed to be with me. We were supposed to 'die' together. But—"

"But Palpatine made me stay on Coruscant," Luke remembered dully, "to continue my studies." He remembered the searing grief after the event, how he'd wished he'd been there—if only so they died together.

"I had to go ahead with it."

"And leave me behind!?"

"I didn't want to!"

"You—" He tried to yank at the anger more, he wanted to keep yelling, he wanted to erupt in a molten cascade of fury the way his father was so well known for. But it wasn't really anger he was feeling.

It was hurt.

It hurt, that he'd mourned for so long, he'd wished for so long that his father could come back and save him. And he could have—but he hadn't.

"You're alive. And you left me alone," he whispered. "With him."

Vader stepped forward. "No."

"You're… you're a mercenary now? What? What are you doing here?"

He bristled at that. "What are you doing here, Luke? Consorting with Rebels? I thought you had more morals than that—"

"And I thought you wouldn't abandon me!" Luke's face was soaked properly now, his cheeks hot. "I never thought you could still be alive, because I trusted you not to leave me alone!"

"I never did," Vader insisted. "You have never been alone in the Palace—"

"Oh, really?"

"Rex. The captain of your guard." Luke froze. "Who do you think planted him there? Why do you think he was always so intent on his job?"

"Because Palpatine wanted his prince alive and apparently healthy."

"Because he is loyal to me—and to you. If you had wanted to flee the Palace, you need only have told him. And he is only one of the men I have planted to watch over you, Luke." Vader took a tentative step forwards, and this time Luke didn't bat his hand away when it came up to gently wipe the tears off his cheeks. "You have never been alone."

"It certainly didn't feel like that." His voice cracked.

"I know." Vader's rough, pained voice cracked too. "I know, young one. I am sorry. I hurt you, and I do not expect you to forgive me for that." He rested his hand on Luke's shoulder. "But your safety has always been my priority. I wanted to overthrow Palpatine for you. I wanted you to be safe from him. And then I wanted you to be safe from any repercussions for what I did. You were my first thought, and my last." He dropped his hand. "You still are."

Luke stared with swimming eyes at his hand, now hanging in mid-air. "And that's why you took the job of hired mercenary, I suppose?" he got out. "So you didn't have to entrust anyone else with my safety?"

"I heard that you were hiring. You were not subtle, Luke—Palpatine does not know yet, I believe, but Rex discovered it, for all that you were trying to get around the guard by hiring me. We were discussing who to send, I realised that on a mission this ludicrous and dangerous, I could not bear the thought of anyone else accompanying you, and… I am weak." His hand twitched, like he wanted to cup Luke's cheek again. "I missed you."

Luke finally took his hovering hand of his own will, and studied it. They were not the prosthetics he recognised; he expected his father had taken the chance to improve his health while he was away. "So you came back. And kept trying to stop me from meeting with the Rebels."

"You do not need them. It is reckless, it is dangerous—"

"And I was desperate."

That took the power out of Vader's engines. "Yes," he said quietly. "I know."

Luke huffed, his lips curving into something that wasn't quite a smile. "And you thought you could talk me out of it? Why would I listen to Anakin?"

"Anakin… is my name. Was my name." Vader clenched his jaw. "It was the name I was born with."

Luke blinked. "Oh." He wiped his eyes fully clear, then, and looked up at him. Studied the curves of his pinkish, scarred cheeks. "And this is your face?"

"This—" Vader broke himself off with a gasp when Luke reached up to cup his cheek in his hand, delicately. He had never seen his father without the suit. He had never seen his face.

Vader's hiss was almost pained, and Luke made to withdraw, but his father leaned into the touch, eyelids fluttering closed.

"This is my face," he confirmed hoarsely.

Luke leaned up to kiss his cheek.

Before he could retreat, Vader pulled him back into a proper hug, and Luke wrapped his arms around his torso tightly.

"Don't join the Rebels, Luke," Vader whispered in his ear. "Come with me. I've missed you."

Luke hesitated for a moment, the hurt in his chest still a bleeding, open wound. He pulled back, and Vader gave him a look so loaded with emotion he didn't know where to start, wordlessly holding out a hand, palm up.

"Palpatine—"

"Will think you went with the Rebels, after all. Eventually, news of your research will get back to him. You know that."

"I…" He stared at that hand. "I don't want to be alone anymore."

"You have never been alone," Vader promised him. And when Luke put his hand in his, he closed his grip around Luke's frail, pale fingers and he finished, "You never will be."