I don't own Star Wars.

Please let me know what you think. Spoilers for Empire Strikes Back.

Why didn't you tell me?

Luke wasn't surprised when Leia took him to the meagre sickbay on the Falcon and she took a good look at the state of him, but her eyes widened in horror when she saw he was missing one of his hands. "Luke, what happened?" She whispered in horror as she immediately gathered the medical supplies in the bay.

Luke sat on the bunk, cradling his stump. He had known the question was going to be coming whether he wanted it or not, after all, it wouldn't take long or that much before everyone noticed he was missing one of his hands. But at the same time, Luke genuinely didn't want to talk to anybody about his experiences with Bespin. He was tired following the long duel, and the loss of his hand had sapped him of a lot of his strength; thanks to Yoda's training, Luke had learnt how he could use the Force to grant him strength and help him heal himself, but right now his fatigue and the horrifying discovery of who Darth Vader was to him and the implications of what it could mean for him in the future, had shaken Luke so much, the Jedi apprentice doubted he could levitate even a coin, never mind use the Force to calm his nerves and heal his injuries.

He needed time to rest.

He wanted to find some way of getting some peace without anyone bothering him so he could think about Vader's revelations while keeping what he had just learnt as a secret while he came to terms with it himself. If anybody discovered he was the son of Darth Vader…

He had duelled Vader before, but on that occasion outside intervention had saved his life, but now…

Luke wondered why Vader had even bothered to duel him in the first place; had the Sith Lord cyborg ignited his own lightsaber in response to Luke doing the same with his hand-me-down weapon, or had he just wanted to talk without fighting and he didn't get the chance until Vader had cornered Luke on that gantry?

Somehow Luke had the impression it was a mix of the two, really; a part of him guessed Vader had wanted to test him to see how good he was. That would make sense since Vader had offered to help complete Luke's training to help the Sith Lord kill Palpatine. But Luke wasn't ignorant. He had known thanks to his studies under Yoda how the Sith operated and he had known what Vader wanted from him.

Vader wanted to make him a member of the Rule of Two, with Vader himself as the master and Luke the apprentice Sith.

Once, a thousand years ago, there had been hundreds of Sith Lords who had vied for control of the galaxy and one of the reasons why they had fallen so easy, was because they had been assassinated by other Sith Lords. If it weren't for Darth Bane then the Sith Order would have died out completely.

While Yoda was uncertain how Bane had done it or even what the Sith Lord had done in the interim following the utter defeat of the Sith Order, the old Grand Master did know Bane had reorganised the Sith so there would only be two Sith.

A master and an apprentice.

One to hold the power, the other to crave it, but both would balance the other out, and the Sith Master would not kill off his apprentice unless they had found another, but the same could not be said for the apprentice. It was their job to kill the Sith Master and take the position themselves. When he had heard of this Rule of Two and how it had eventually led to the run-up to the Clone Wars before Palpatine initiated Order 66, and the end of the Jedi Order and the creation of the Galactic Empire out of the ashes of the Republic, Luke had been confused by the Rule of Two.

How could a society even one as ancient as the Sith themselves exist like that? What if something happened to both of the Sith at the same time that neither the master nor the apprentice could foresee? While the Jedi had tremendous vision, they had been mortal. The Sith were not any different, despite their inherent arrogance and belief in their own power. There was only so much they could see, after all.

But what Vader wanted from Luke was obvious.

The discovery of who Darth Vader really was and what he meant to Luke as a person "I'll give you the full story later," he croaked, too tired to really give the girl who had wormed her way into his life in such a way he considered her his sister, "but Vader cut my hand off in the duel before I managed to escape him."

"Then we're both lucky. Nobody ever escapes Darth Vader, Luke. Either we're the galaxy's blessing, or someone up high wants us to stick it to the evil son of a bitch!" Leia was so fixated on her work she didn't notice Luke's reaction.

"I don't care," Luke grunted while he let Leia tend to his injuries. He had to admit he was impressed by Leia's first aid skills, and he wondered where she had learnt them but he pushed that thought aside. It was likely Leia had seen too many people hurt during the fighting against the Empire that she was inspired to do her part to help.

That would have been so much like her.

Luke sighed as Leia injected him with painkillers from a medical pack he recognised from the Rebel Alliance. Idly he wondered how Han had got hold of it, but he decided to ignore it for now; Han had likely got hold of it when he got injured fixing the Falcon. At that moment he wondered where Han was. At the same time, he wondered what had happened on Bespin, and what that gurney he had seen pushed through the city was…

"Leia, what happened on Bespin?" Luke asked, inwardly hoping that Leia could take his mind off Vader's revelation and his exhaustion.

Leia stiffened and tensed at the question and he knew he had made a mistake. "Why do you want to know?" She asked stiffly.

"Please, Leia. You were being used to get to me, and I need to know what they did to you."

Leia sighed. She wouldn't normally discuss something like this with someone else, especially considering how furious she was with Lando and towards Vader, but she had such a love for Luke that startled even herself. "Vader captured us on Bespin after getting to Lando, the man who took the controls."

"He helped Vader?"

"No, I'm starting to think he was threatened; we'll need to sit down with him later and find out what happened, but essentially Vader somehow discovered where we would be since we couldn't get the hyperdrive working and we needed to make repairs. When he was ready he captured us. He…," Leia bit her lip and she began to sob, but she choked down the sobbing fit with effort and Luke realised how hard this was for her. "He tortured Han, for absolutely no reason. Han wasn't even asked any questions!"

By now Luke was regretting asking about what happened on Bespin. But now he had started her off, Leia was unable to stop.

"Luke, Vader had Han frozen in Carbonite and he sent him off to Jabba the Hutt!"

"What?" Luke gasped in horror, but then he felt his heart sink to his stomach. One of Han's priorities until this moment in time was to gather more than enough cash and pay off whatever he had taken from Jabba. Luke, a native of Tatooine, knew precisely how dangerous Jabba the Hutt was, but for some reason, Han had always put off paying the gangster. Hutts liked to think of themselves as generous, but in truth, they merely wished to hold people to their debts.

"It's my fault, Luke; I kept heckling Han into remaining with the Rebellion that he stayed!" Leia was on the verge of hysteria.

Luke found himself sitting up on the bunk - his best guess for later would be he had unknowingly made use of the Force to help him sit up despite his injuries - and he wrapped his arm around Leia. "Leia, Han made his choices. He made the mistake of bargaining with Jabba in the first place. I grew up on Tatooine; if there is one thing you learn on Tatooine, it's you don't make bargains with the Hutts because they will bleed you dry. But at the same time I think even if he had paid off his debt, Jabba would have demanded more. It's the nature of a Hutt to demand money. All we need to do is find a way of getting to him and rescuing him."

"Do you think it's that easy, considering what half of the galaxy knows of Jabba the Hutt?" Leia asked pointedly.

Luke looked down grimly for a second, glancing at his stump before he looked up at her seriously. "There is always a way, Leia. We just need a plan."

"I know," Leia agreed while she looked down, much like Luke had a second ago before she looked up at him worriedly. "Luke, what happened with Vader?"

Luke closed his eyes as he remembered the duel against the Sith Lord, recalling the way he had started to wonder if Vader was deliberately testing him in a more brutal way than Yoda had, but the worst part was Luka still wasn't sure what he could do or think about Vader's revelation.

It wasn't every day you learnt Darth Vader, the most hated and feared man in the galaxy who was seen as more terrifying than the more elusive Palpatine, was actually your father.

He didn't dare tell Leia about that part. He knew how much she hated Vader, who knew what she would do when she was already emotionally shattered?

"I confronted him in a large room where I think the carbonate freezing took place," Luke began, remembering the duel's beginning as if he had been in a dream. "We moved through the engineering parts of the city, but he could have killed me at any time."

"But he didn't? Luke, the Rebellion managed to get tons of footage of Vader fighting rebels, and half a dozen fighters over the years. How was it he didn't kill you?"

"I don't know," Luke replied, although he wondered if he was telling a partial truth, it was mixed with confusion; again, he wondered if Vader had been testing him to see if he could be turned to the dark side.

Even if he had ignited the lightsaber first and took the first swing at the Sith Lord, Luke knew Vader could easily have found a way of stopping the fight before it reached the point where the Sith became angry enough to slash his hand off.

But he hadn't.

Yes, Luke might have carried on fighting, trying to land a swing against the Sith Lord while trying to avenge Anakin Skywalker's death in the hotheaded and impulsive way Obi-Wan and Yoda had lectured and cautioned him about many times over his training, but Vader surely was capable of finding ways of dealing with attacks without resorting to the lightsaber?

Familial relationship aside (the implications of what Vader had told him only made him question the things he had learnt in the past about his father, but now he was having a good idea why Obi-Wan and the Lars lied to him all of these years), Vader had continued with the duel regardless and he only stopped when he had taken off Luke's hand.

X

Later on, with his eyes closed while he concentrated on the Force through the meditative techniques Yoda had taught him so he could heal better than with the painkillers Leia had pumped into him, Luke was lying on the bunk in the medical bay after Leia had left after their brief talk. He had known she would not leave well alone unless he told her about as much of the fight with Vader while leaving out some of the finer details.

All he had done in the end was describe how Vader had attacked him as one of the last of the Jedi in the galaxy, and he had put up enough of a good fight despite the loss of his hand, and left it at that while asking for Leia to not reveal too much to Alliance High Command about what happened; while Vader and likely Palpatine knew about him as a Jedi, the fewer people actually knew of the Jedi Order coming back, the better.

Many would see the return of the Jedi as their only hope to end Palpatine's reign of terror over the galaxy and bring justice to those slaughtered by Vader, but at the same time he was only one man and if he died, the Jedi died with him. Leia had not liked the reminder that thanks to the Sith and their propaganda, the Jedi were seen as traitors and evil, but she had conceded the point.

Luke had promised to tell the story to Mon Mothma, and a few other members of the Alliance Command council later when he was healed, but not until then.

In the meantime, he just wanted to rest, and let his aching body recover. But his mind was racing as Luke confronted what he had known, or rather what he had thought he had known about his father.

Anakin Skywalker was a very sore topic back on the Lars farm, and until now Luke had never understood why; when Obi-Wan had told him Anakin was a Jedi Knight, Luke had wondered what would possess Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru to lie like that. There was no doubt in his mind his relatives who'd been murdered in such a pointless, brutal way had known. But what Luke could not grasp was the pack of lies he was facing now.

Obi-Wan had told him Vader had betrayed and murdered his father but did he and Yoda really think Luke wouldn't discover the truth at some point? While Luke had been on Dagobah, Yoda had taught him some of the tenets of the Jedi Code; Luke hadn't thought much about the code and the implications behind some of its tenets, but now he couldn't help but think about the non-attachment rule where the Jedi had to literally cut themselves off from everything.

Yoda had told him that the Jedi had not evolved during the thousand years after the Sith wars, whereas the Sith had evolved and they had struck out from behind the scenes. The old Jedi Master had made it clear to Luke the old Jedi practices had to the Order's downfall, but now Luke could see clearly that Yoda might recognise the failings of the Jedi Order on the whole but it was painfully clear there were aspects of the Code that Yoda still believed in completely. He was simply too old to not see there was another way.

No, there was more to it than that. Luke knew that, but what he couldn't grasp was why.

But Obi-Wan…? There was no excuse there…, although Luke had noted how bitter the now deceased Jedi Master had referred to Vader. Luke didn't blame the Jedi Master for that, but to consistently lie to him…?

Luke?

Surprised and worried by how easily Vader could communicate with him through the Force, Luke sat up, "Father?" He asked, knowing Vader was on board his ship and the Falcon was quite close to it. Thanks to Leia, he knew the Falcon's hyperdrive was playing up, but surely they had gotten it fixed by now?

It surprised and concerned him with how easily he now accepted Darth Vader was in fact Anakin Skywalker, but he knew it to be true. It was instinct.

Son, come with me.

Luke felt tears rise in his eyes. What had turned Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader? How had Palpatine corrupted him? "Ben," he whispered, pushing the connection to the side; while it was tempting to find a way to ensure the Falcon was captured by Vader, the last thing Luke wanted was to be destroyed the same way Anakin had been, "Why didn't you tell me?"

The Falcon shook under another laser blast. The impacts were becoming more frequent, and the longer the hyperdrive wasn't working, the easier it would be for Vader's ship to capture them. With a sigh, Luke got to his feet and staggered to the cockpit. He nodded a greeting towards Lando, who gently stepped around him - he was too tired to get a feel of the man through the Force, but from what he could tell from reading the Force the man who usually showed emotions like cunning and insincerity seemed to have a heart of gold like Han. Luke could feel the man's regret and anger towards himself for not being able to do more for Han and the others and fear for Vader.

Luke didn't blame him.

The whole left side of the cockpit windows was filled by the vast grey bulk of Vader's Star Destroyer. "It's Vader," he whispered, wishing he could take the pilot controls from Leia since he could use his natural flair for piloting to play a few games. But he couldn't. Even if he had his second hand, there was little doubt in his mind, Vader, being his father, and a great pilot, could anticipate his moves.

Luke sighed as he took a seat at the back as Leia managed to pass the bow of the Star Destroyer..but that was all she could do. But at the same time, he felt detached from everything to truly care, especially after learning.

Luke, it is your destiny!

Luke ducked his head and resisted the urge to scream and cry when he heard Vader, his father's, voice inside his head. He had thought the lies Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were bad, but what shattered his faith the most was how Obi-Wan and Yoda had lied to him, but what he really wanted to know was why. Why had his father thrown away his life just to become Palpatine's henchmen? What was the point? What was going on? But what made him physically sick was how Vader had his own twisted beliefs on what his destiny was.

"Ben," he sighed under his breath, "why didn't you tell me?"

Before he had gone into Bespin, Luke had wanted to become a Jedi and tear down the Sith's sick empire, but right now he didn't know who to believe or even whom to trust but he knew he would rather die than become another Vader. His vision in the cave had worried and frightened him since he knew it would be only too simple for him to turn to the dark side.

But right now… Luke didn't give a damn about his so-called destiny. All he wanted to do was rest, find someplace quiet where he could reflect on what he had just learnt, and make a plan from there while coming up with a way of freeing Han from Jabba's clutches.

Suddenly the Falcon lurched backwards, Leia screamed in surprise as everyone in the cockpit were thrown off their feet, or in Luke and Leia's case, out of their chairs.

Luke frowned at the controls. "Leia, try the hyperdrive again! Quickly!"

Leia righted herself quickly and tried the hyperdrive. When the ship shot into the hyperspace vortex, Luke couldn't help but grin as he thought of R2's skill, but his smile faded when he felt disappointment and upset in the Force. It was coming from Vader.

He had no idea when he would meet his father again, but Luke had every intention of getting answers about what had happened to his father…