Disclaimer: I do not own STAR WARS or any of its affiliated properties.
Author's Note: I have browsed through several fics that are collections of short stories about Vader and one or the other Skywalker twin finding out their relationship. I haven't seen this format of short fics duplicated for all three of them finding each other, so I decided to try my hand at it. 'Secrets of the Tomb' is the other work in this series currently posted to this site, with further works forthcoming for those interested in various adventures of Dad Vader finding his wayward children. Enjoy!
A Revived Hope: Part I
The Force engulfed him.
Coming out of hyperspace on the heels of Alderaan's Tantive IV, traitors and stolen plans just meters from his grasp, it drenched him. Blinded him. Surrounded him.
But this was not the rich, deep, enticing call of the Dark. Not the thunderous aftermath of bloodlust roaring in his veins, rejoicing in the slaughter of the battle-hardened rebels who sought the keys to the Emperor's unnecessary terror. Not the deliciously addictive embrace of power-generated-by-fear.
The song plundering through him was one of life emergent, of strength, the joy of promises fulfilled and a brilliant, blinding Light.
Never, not as a boy racing pods, not as a Padawan meditating and touching each strand of the Force wrapped through every youngling in the Temple, not as the Emperor's apprentice reveling in the destructive beauty of the raw power of his fury…
…never had he felt this. Never had the Force resounded in him until he felt as if metal, armor, circuitry and what was left of flesh and bone and breath had all evaporated to permit the purity of life that created and bound the Force to move through him unhindered.
In his abrupt, unintended immersion, two presences, two oceans of power, brushed his own.
A few hundred meters of space was all that separated him from one that rose in his awareness like the sunrise on a world that belonged in the memories of another man. Its familiar foundation glowed as a blazing passion for justice, sending streaks of determination and resilience into the Force.
But if the one on the Tantive IV was a sunrise, the one on the planet below blazed with the full brilliance of a new-born star. Light strobed from Tatooine like a beacon, like a flare. Both Vader and the sunrise-source felt it, touched it, marveled at it.
Both sang a song of homecoming – and though they were Light to his Shadow, Vader knew he was included in their harmony. Images that he had not permitted to cross his mind for two decades spilled forth. The bed they had shared. Her belly round and vibrant under his hands—
"It's going to be a boy, Ani!"
"When my daughter is born, you'll see how beautiful she is. Just like her—"
A third ocean met the vast shore of his expanded Force presence, and Vader felt a moment's uncharacteristic gratitude for wrenching him out of a dead man's recollections. Until he recognized it. This signature was not new. Nor was it bright, shining in its novelty like the others. It did not have their power, though it felt a great deal more controlled. It was frayed and old and tired and terrified. And awfully, treacherously, familiar.
Kenobi.
Burning, unmitigated rage surged, pulling him back into the body his old master's treachery had banished him to, shutting off the overwhelming essences in the Force that had briefly conquered the Sith's mind and body. Vader found himself once more standing on the bridge of his Star Destroyer, braced as if expecting an impact, his puzzled captain in front of him, mouth open mid-question. The Dark Lord lifted a finger, closing off most of the man's air. Not enough to kill him, just enough to make him gasp and fall still as his labored breathing filled the suddenly-silent bridge.
"Prepare my shuttle for a planet landing. Use our tractor beam on that ship – take every one of the Rebels alive and unharmed." He tore his gaze from the planet below to look at the captain as he released the stress on the man's windpipe. The officer sucked in a deep breath, but snapped to attention instead of collapsing on the nearest console. "If so much as a single captive is hurt, you will answer personally for your failures, Captain." The man nodded shortly and Vader ignored his subordinate's spike of nervousness as he swept from the bridge.
It rankled that he could not take the time to identify the origin of the Tantive IV's power immediately, but the source on the planet had to be tracked now. Kenobi was there. He had doubtless been shielding the focal point of that enormous potential.
The Sith Lord grimly acknowledged that the Jedi's choice was a clever one. Vader had successfully avoided Tatooine for over twenty years. Still – it was a testament to his one-time friend and master's prowess that this brilliance had remained masked. Vader and his Inquisitors were rigorous in the pursuit of their duties – the source of the Light below should have been noticed long ago.
It hardly mattered. He had found them now, and the call was so strong, so pervasive, that he would not lose his sense of it again. Vader did not smile beneath his mask. The years and their scars had left their mark such that the Dark Lord's muscles no longer remembered how. But a deep, burning satisfaction took up residence under his breastbone. His power curled around it, humming darkly, anticipating his revenge.
Kenobi. The master he had not destroyed on Mustafar, nor during the Purges, nor in the nearly two decades since. One of the very few to elude him.
Now...now his game was up. The Force was truly with Vader and the Empire today – not only would Kenobi meet his end, but his delayed reckoning offered a worthy recompense: a powerful Force-sensitive that the old man surely coveted as an apprentice.
Vader would take this one for himself. Kenobi's failure would be complete as the old man's hoped-for resurrection of the corrupt Jedi path turned at the Sith Lord's hand and catapulted them both to glory.
888
Darkness exploded in his awareness. Bent over the small garden that he had tended for nineteen sand-blasting Tatooine summers, Ben Kenobi gasped aloud in the silent afternoon as the Force writhed around him.
Luke's brightness touched the edges of a dimmer, but no less supple, signature. Even as Ben reached to draw the Force as a block between the young man's power and the galaxy that would tear itself apart to find him, a veil of crimson and shadow darkened his senses.
Blindly fumbling behind him, he collapsed on an ancient rock retaining wall, his instincts grasping the sum of reality while his mind struggled to order the knowledge into coherent thought. Too late...they had failed...he could feel Vader's presence, a Dark, cold nova spewing constant, tireless tendrils into the Force, even now caressing the edges of Luke's light, greedily sucking in his presence.
"Never can he learn of them, Obi-Wan. Trained, they must not be. Not until they are old enough to defend themselves."
"Master Yoda, Anakin would have wanted...the children might…"
"Hope, do you, as Senator Amidala did, that good still lives in Vader? That Skywalker lives?" Yoda's voice cracked across the years, as unyielding in Obi-Wan's memory as it had been on the day the twins were born. "Gone, is your apprentice, Obi-Wan. If we wish the galaxy to follow, give him the children, we will."
How had his shield been breached? The older Jedi had carefully planned for the day that he would speak to Luke of his heritage and thereby initiate the young man's true introduction to the Force. Shielding himself was to be his first lesson. But there was no chance that anything on Tatooine should have wreaked such havoc on the block Ben had maintained for the whole of Luke's childhood.
The Force that swirled so readily around him already knew the answer. Leia Organa. He closed tired eyes, reached for the softer splash of Light only just visible in Luke's shade. It had to be the princess. Like called to like, the Force binding that which had been separated at birth in the presence of their sire.
Organa knew better! Ben had travelled to Alderaan only twice in the years following Padmé's death, simply to familiarize himself with Leia's unique imprint in the Force, that he might recognize her if ever necessary. But the twins had been separated precisely for this reason! They were the children of the most powerful Jedi to have ever been born. Their own significant power had been clear from birth. One might be masked, but never two if they were together. They had been fortunate that Leia's power was hidden by the vibrant life of Alderaan itself. But the sole demand Obi-Wan had made of Organa all those years ago was that she was never to come close to Tatooine for any reason. Never accidentally meet Luke as they grew up. They had never been sure of what the consequences might be, and now the older man knew they were going to find out under the worst possible conditions.
She was too close. Why? Who had allowed her to come out of hyperspace over Tatooine, trailing Vader?
He could hear the Emperor's laughter echoing coldly across the years.
No time for inaction. The general still within the aging hermit shoved his whirling thoughts aside and propelled him to his feet. He was running for his speeder, far more gracefully than his age should allow. Vader had not yet landed. The princess was surely lost, as was her valuable cargo that had attracted the Dark Lord's attention, but Luke might yet be saved. Might be retrieved and successfully re-hidden.
As he kicked the speeder into gear, urging it well past the speed the aged engine alone could summon, Ben could only hope there was time to hide Owen and Beru as well.
888
Luke shaded his eyes as he stared over the farm's vaporators, staring into the midday sky. There was…something…out there. It was something well beyond his eyes' capacity to see, but he could feel it coming closer, swooping toward him.
It was not unlike the krayt dragon that had nearly snatched him at eight. The dull, heavy feeling of being prey, of being hunted...but this felt more focused, more deliberate. A krayt dragon attacked to feed or to protect. There was no malice in the animal, just instinct.
The something coming now was coiled cold Darkness, a predator as surely as the dragons were. But it was not operating on instinct. It was hunting him, specifically, and it had a reason.
His ability to feel others, to understand hidden motivations, to know things he should not have known (like when his aunt hadn't been paying attention and the fruit slicer had nearly taken her finger while he and his uncle were in the workshop), was a talent he kept to himself since he was old enough to know that others did not have this additional sense. Fixer and his gang had always been adamant about his "freakishness", so he had learned to disguise it and the insight it granted him.
But never ignore it. It was never wrong.
And as surely as he had known he could not let the krayt's claws touch him as a child, he knew this someone could not be allowed to find him.
"We have to go," he thundered down the stairs into his aunt's kitchen. Beru lifted her eyes in surprise.
"Luke?"
"Something's out there."
"Sandpeople?" she asked fearfully, picking up her nephew's seriousness.
"No." Luke ran a hand through his hair, experimentally prodding the feeling that was rapidly growing more insistent, more sure. It was not sandpeople. The Tuskens were an unpleasant lot to share Tatooine with, but this was...more powerful. More focused. More dangerous.
"Then what?"
"I don't know. But it's bad. We don't want to be here when it arrives."
Luke watched his aunt study him for a few seconds more, his frustration multiplying. Just as he opened his mouth to shout, she nodded decisively.
"Let's go. Find your uncle. He should be at the shop."
Luke sprinted back up the sand-blown stairs and shot over to the workshop. His uncle was doubtless fiddling with the droid that had broken down three days ago. They had been hoping to speak to the Jawas in the next few days – the traders' sandcrawler was due soon and they often had a passable selection of droids – but Luke knew that option was out now, in the way that he occasionally knew things.
"Uncle Owen!" he called as he hurtled into the shop.
"Luke? Good. I need you to hand me that—"
"We have to leave. Now."
His uncle's eyes flashed to his, automatic indignation flaring in the bullish set to his shoulders – only to pause as he took in his nephew's stance, the clear authority in his tone.
Owen had had little access to the holovids during the Clone Wars, but right now, Luke Skywalker looked exactly like his father had on those vids. Commanding. Assured. Powerful.
It was an illusion and it lasted but a moment as he reached for his ancient hunting blaster. "Sandpeople?"
"No. Worse, I think." Luke's eyes flicked ceiling-ward – skyward, Owen realized with a cold chill down his spine – and his nephew shivered violently. "It's closer. They're coming fast."
Time's run out.
Owen tossed the blaster to Luke. The youth caught it one-handed in surprise. "Get your aunt. Take the speeder. Head for the Wastes. Find Ben Kenobi."
There wasn't time to resent the old wizard, to wish that he and Beru hadn't been burdened with the son of a powerful Jedi nineteen years ago. They had been willing to take the boy and love him as he grew. The understanding that their lives would be forfeit for harboring the son of a Jedi – especially the son of that Jedi – had dawned gradually and too late.
And even if they'd known the risks, they would have said yes anyway. Family was family.
"Uncle Owen…you have to come with us!" Luke cried.
"There are things you don't know about yourself, Luke. About your father. Your family. Your aunt can tell you some, Ben Kenobi should know a lot more. But I know—" he pulled out a much newer blaster that Luke had never seen before. This weapon was not for hunting womp rats or scaring off dragons and sandpeople. This was a weapon banned from civilian hands. An Imperial-grade Stormtrooper blaster. A people-killer. "—that you have to get away. You cannot let the Empire take you, Luke. Never."
"The Empire?" he gaped at his uncle before grasping the most important thing. "You can't stay here!"
"Someone has to slow them down," Owen said gruffly. "Give you time to get out of here. We've known for awhile it might come to this."
Luke could only stare at his uncle and guardian, the man whose occasional hard words and demanding work he had grown up resenting. The man calmly planning on laying down his life to protect him and saying that he'd known this day could come.
"Uncle Owen—"
"Go!" the older man commanded harshly, checking the charge on his blaster. "Get out of here before they arrive!"
The screech of a speeder bike screaming to a halt shot both men into action. "Stay here!" Owen barked, but Luke was closer to the exit and darted out, blaster in hand and already aiming in the general direction of the speeder—
—it wasn't the predator. He was barely aware of lowering the blaster.
"Ben Kenobi?"
"Young Luke," the older man glanced past him, to where his uncle had hurried out behind him. "I have come to hide him. You and Beru must leave as well."
"That bad?" Owen asked grimly.
"Worse," Ben said shortly. "It is not just stormtroopers the Empire is sending."
Luke turned to his uncle as the farmer paled at this incomprehensible exchange.
"Head to Beru's parents. Tell them to pack what they can and move on again. The Empire will follow as long as they think Luke travels with you. I will take Luke elsewhere. Probably offworld. Hopefully that will be enough to lead them away after they find this place abandoned."
"I'm not sure—" Owen began.
"There is no other option, Owen Lars. You know who his father was. You know what the Emperor would do to get his hands on another Skywalker."
Luke opened his mouth, dying to ask one of the million questions suddenly tumbling for space on his tongue, but Ben gestured to him sharply. "Jump on, Luke."
"But I—"
"There is no time for goodbyes," Ben said quietly, and a feeling shivered across Luke's skin, one of sorrow and of a deep, unnerving dejá vu.
Now go, and don't look back.
A woman with sad, kind dark eyes, the uncertainty of a lonely future...
"You can contact them once we're all safe. Come!"
"Go!" Owen cried from behind him, gesturing towards Ben's speeder with his Imperial firearm. "We will speak to you soon, Luke."
Luke cast a glance at the house, where his aunt still lingered. "I will tell her. You have to go!"
"As long as you stay, you endanger them," Ben added quietly. "It is you he is coming for."
A chill swept Luke's spine from the nape of his neck to his tailbone and he shuddered violently under the glare of the suns. The Dark ocean surged against him, triumph foaming in its touch. It was close. He doubted they had ten minutes.
He raced for the speeder, jumped on behind the older man and grabbed a fistful of robe, thighs squeezing the seat only meant for one to keep himself steady.
His heart and mind were full, but his tongue was suddenly leaden. What could he possibly say in the seconds Ben was swinging the speeder about to go deep into the Wastes? Take care of the vaporators, the Hutt water tax is due soon? Please don't send me away with this wizard I hardly know? You're scaring me, what is it that frightens you? Will I ever see you again? Who was my father, really? Why would the Emperor be interested in me? Goodbye? Thank you? I love you?
So it was that they were well beyond the range of shouting by the time Luke realized that the ride was smoother than it had any right to be and the water stinging his eyes was tears.
888
Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan gritted her teeth against the unexpected onslaught.
The Imperial boarding party was nothing out of the ordinary. But the surge of the Dark, of deep, bone-cold delight that stemmed from hunting and pouncing and killing, crawled over her skin, closer than it had ever been.
Vader. It had to be the Sith Lord. Her adoptive father had made it clear that the stories of Jedi and Sith and the Force were no mere legends and had no place alongside her mythology books spanning a dozen worlds. Jedi and Sith were real. The Emperor himself was one of the dreaded users of the Dark Side, as was his much-feared Second.
He had told her at twelve that she, too, had been gifted with sensitivity to the Force, and that she had to hide her talent. The Emperor's Inquisitors were a ferocious and unforgiving task force.
"I do not wish to frighten you, Leia, but you must learn to lock down your mind. I would not have the Inquisitors take you."
"Why would they?" she asked.
"The Emperor is very...careful...about who gets to use the Force. Most of us cannot, and so it is a moot point. But for those who can...he is not keen to share."
Even at twelve, Leia had thought that attitude particularly short-sighted and selfish. But she had learned to shield her mind at her father's request and second-hand instructions. She had come to regard the Force mostly as a highly advanced form of intuition – she almost always knew when she was being lied to, which had led to a few interesting discussions in the Senate already – but aside from that, she mostly ignored the stray sensations that drifted through her consciousness and had assiduously learned to lock them out.
But Vader's strength and proximity made locking him out impossible. She had never encountered him in battle, and only distantly seen his entourage on Coruscant a few times. His presence now was...overwhelming.
And strangely, disturbingly...familiar. Familiar in the way that a never-before-seen face could feel like the features of an old friend.
The absurdity of it helped her focus. Vader was not a friend. Whatever the Force was trying to say, it would have to find a different way to convince her.
But if she felt him…could he feel her, too? Had he identified her as a Force sensitive? Would he turn her over to his Inquisitors?
She squared her shoulders and ducked down the next corridor. She didn't have time for this kind of speculation. They had been followed from Scarif, and the plans still had to get to General Kenobi, who – according to her father – was on the forsaken desert planet below. Even if her own life was forfeit, she could ensure that the mission succeeded.
Her R2-D2 unit trilled at her as she slid between stacks of machinery. "You'll need to find him, Artoo," she murmured, inserting the data disk and preparing to record the personal message she had hoped to deliver in person.
"General Kenobi. Years ago, you served with my father in the Clone Wars…"
888
Vader stood alone, boots planted in the sandy dirt, the all-too-familiar wind picking up around him. Sand still got everywhere.
He ignored the irritating element, his mind loosed in all directions. The sunrise presence still glowed over the planet – his captain was clearly following orders.
But the brilliant one had been muted again, and the one he felt most clearly as he stood was the one he most hated. His phantom limbs burned in remembrance and he fed the pain and the rage it summoned to the Dark, letting it increase the range of his search, the Force vibrating across the landscape at his command.
He had followed the Force here, only to have another voice strive to be heard. A voice that pressed him to recall this homestead from long ago, to glance to his right, to honor the plain marker placed there—
Vader ignored the voice and closed his mostly-useless eyes. He did not look around himself. The inhabitants of this place were irrelevant – aside from the one who called to him. If he could not find the one, he would grudgingly seek out the owners and they would pay for their deception. But why waste his time with moisture farmers if he could attain Kenobi's prize?
Kenobi… His extended senses found the fresh trail of his enemy. He lifted his hand, gestured, and a speeder bike floated out of his landed shuttle at his command. The old man would still be with the one Vader was seeking, of that much, the Dark Lord was sure. Now that Kenobi knew he was here, he would stick close to his investment.
All the better. Find Kenobi, kill him, take his pupil. His master would be pleased.
And he could lay that internal voice – the voice that had insolently spoken twice today – to rest.
He revved the speeder bike and took off into the gathering dark.
888
Thank you for reading the first chapter. The second one will be posted next week. Let me know what you think!