Han Solo downed another hot cup of caf and shook his head, trying to clear his mind as he and Piett went over their next debate.
"Where could she have stored that kid that we couldn't find him?"
"Where was she for five years?" Piett asked.
"Good question. Next one," Han thought, "is there anyone still there? Anyone watching the kid? Or is he going to starve to death before we find him?"
"I sincerely hope not," Piett responded. "After this long that would just be cruel for everyone involved."
"Okay...let's recap," Han said. "We raided every home from one end of the galaxy to the other, every bar, every temple, every cantina, every school-"
"We checked every bounter hunter ship," Piett rubbed his eyes, "checked every detention center, every Imperial stockade, anywhere he could've been stowed away under any pretenses."
The door hissed open as Darth Vader entered the room.
"Milord, we were just-"
"I know, Piett, I know," the dark lord sounded as defeated as they felt. "Are you sure we checked every planet in the galaxy?"
"Every one that would support human life anyway," Han Solo pointed out, "the others seem obvious but we sent spy droids in anyway just to make sure, they never turned up anything." He thought for a minute. "Maybe we've been going at this wrong...we searched homes, businesses, ships, detainment centers...we checked every place people would be, what about dead parts on live planets? Take that sand trap, Tatooine, how much of that place is inhabitable anyway?"
"We sent out spy droids to dead zones on live planets too," Piett pinched the bridge of his nose as he answered.
"Yeah..." Han said quietly, and thought, and added, "and we had radar, alarms, we had the whole palace surrounded with surveillance droids and security patrols, and they still found a way in. What would it be for them to hack the droids to turn up an empty search? We should've checked the spots out ourselves."
"It might not have made a difference," Vader thought out loud.
He'd been trying to make any sense of out what happened with Padme ever since they left Mustafar. Light or Dark, all power came through the Force, meaning Padme had to become well versed in it in order to even become a sith. And...it was the only way to explain the human medics at the bay, who had said she'd died in childbirth and the body had been incinerated. He'd once thought only Jedi could have that effect on people, to tell them something which they automatically believed to be true and rotely repeated. But Padme must've done the same thing when she walked out and abandoned Luke, it was the only explanation.
As such, even if the members of the fleet had found anything in the dead spots, either they wouldn't have lived to report it...or they wouldn't remember it.
"I should've conducted the searches myself," he realized. He was the only one who it wouldn't have worked on.
"We're not giving up," Han said as he stood up from the table, "we just have to figure out what our next move is."
As had happened for over five years, the days passed, passed without any leads, without any new information. The men serving under Vader retraced their searches to make sure nothing was overlooked. Vader spent the nights in his meditation pod desperately trying to reach out to Luke, hoping the boy would answer him. Now and then he would actually fall asleep, and he would remember various points of Luke's life as a child.
He remembered Luke at five years old, falling asleep in his lap, holding onto his big holobook he brought in to show his father that he could read, and his eyes would grow heavy and he'd nod off in the middle of a sentence. He remembered Zadu lecturing him when Luke bit onto his thumb one time when he was teething, to not let the boy make a habit of it because the curve would deform his teeth, that when he started sucking his own thumb that he'd fare better using his little finger instead. He remembered Luke at one year old, sitting in Zadu's lap and trying to feed himself with a spoon out of a bowl of tepid soup, and failing hilariously. He remembered Luke at eight years old running out to meet him when he stepped off the ramp to the Executor and jumping into his arms, wielding something in his hand.
"Father, look what I made!"
"What did you do, Luke?"
"It's my new ship, do you like it?"
"It's very good."
"It's called the Millennium Falcon."
He remembered Luke at 13, one of the rare times he wasn't sick in bed with paralyzing muscle pains and dizzy spells, slipping into his private chamber one night.
"Father?"
"Luke, what're you doing up?"
"Father, can I stay with you tonight?"
"Is something the matter?"
"No..."
The way Luke shifted his weight from one side to another and glanced towards the floor suggested otherwise.
"Did you have a nightmare?"
Luke turned his eyes even closer to the floor in answer.
"What was it?"
Luke finally looked up at him and answered, "You were gone...you were gone and I was alone. I don't want to be alone. Please, can I stay with you?"
The mechanized sound of his regulated breathing was the only sound in the room. The dark lord answered by crossing over to his son in two steps, pulling the boy into his arms, and lifting him off his feet so Luke's face rested against the side of his helmet, letting their bond through the Force say what he couldn't put into words.
All those memories felt like they had just happened yesterday, but combined they felt like an eternity had passed since then. It was now going on six years since Luke had been kidnapped from their home, and Vader felt like he wasn't any closer to finding his son than in the beginning. He feared he would never find his son now.
Han Solo went up to the second floor of the Imperial Palace and found the door to Luke's room open, and heard a sound coming from inside. He poked his head in and was met with a bizarre sight. Darth Vader seated on the edge of the boy's bed, playing a holotape of Luke laughing about something and turning around with his arms held out to his sides.
It was only then the dark lord seemed to realize he had company, and lifted his head.
"Sorry, I'll come back later," Han said as he backed out from the room.
"No," Darth Vader told him, "stay."
Han stuck his head in again and asked, "You sure?"
His only answer was a single nod as the man in black returned to watching the holotape.
Han felt very awkward and wasn't sure what to do, so he gradually inched his way over to the other man, and watched him watching Luke on the tape.
"Are you alright?" he asked, not sure what else to say.
Vader reached over and shut off the music box. "If Luke is in fact still alive, he would be 20 years old today."
Han felt like a rock was in his stomach. "His nameday."
"For almost six years," Vader swept an arm in gesture around the room, "his room has been kept as he had it, nothing has been disturbed, this is the way he wanted it, so it has stayed just as he kept it, so when he came home..."
"Hey," Han told him, "we're not giving up, I'm not giving up, Luke's out there, now I didn't know him that well, but I could tell, he's tougher than he looks, stronger, we're gonna find him."
"I sincerely wish that were true, Captain Solo," Darth Vader responded, a hint of despair coming through the vocoder, "but the more time passes, the more unlikely it seems. It's been six years, we should've found him by now. I'm worried wherever he is, his time is running out."
"I'm not giving up," Han repeated. "I'm going to double back and check on some of my contacts, somebody, somewhere, has to know where Luke is."