Consciousness resurfaced in brief flashes—white ones, rather than the purple flashes he'd blacked out to. He wasn't sure if the excruciating. . . feeling in his cells as they tore themselves apart and stitched themselves back together was a holdover from the injuries or because Palpatine had dragged him back to the waking world just to punish him again, but burning was an insignificant word to describe it. It felt like a screech tasted, like a tiny klaxon in each and every nucleus of every cell of all his tissues screaming in one overwhelming cacophony.
He groaned.
When he finally prised his eyelids open it was to the sharp light of the medbay on the Sovereign II. The beams of the lamp were like Ahsoka had taken her lightsabers to his eyes and blinded him—at least until a large, head-shaped shadow gave him some respite.
His vision blurred, eyes watery and hazed, but after a moment of fierce blinking and shallow breathing, he recognised Han's rugged face.
He also recognised Han prodding him.
"Hey!" he snapped. Or tried to snap. He croaked it, more like. "That—"
"Hurts, Solo, and his pain is giving me a headache," Mara said. She, unlike him, actually managed to snap. "Stop it."
Han retracted his hand. "You awake?"
Even the sound of his voice, quiet as it was, sent agony washing through the tender tissue of his brain. "Unfortunately," he rasped. "What—"
"We're on the Sovereign II; we've left Coruscant."
"I got that," Luke muttered, trying his best to sit up—then Mara put a gentle but firm hand out and pushed him back down again.
"You're injured. If you want to recover quickly, stay still and let your body heal itself," she ordered.
Then she smiled, and it almost wasn't vicious. "Unless you want me to beat you in a practise duel again."
Luke snorted, and tried to sit up despite her words. "What do you mean again?"
"Be still, Skywalker."
Luke lay still. "Where're we going?"
"What?"
He glanced between them. "You said we're on the Sovereign II. You said we're not on Coruscant. And I can sense we're in hyperspace. So—where're we going?"
"I thought you already knew everything."
He smiled. "Remind me."
Han shrugged. "Eadu," he said. "Whatever's there, I dunno that name." Neither did Luke—though it did sound vaguely familiar, some facility or something—
"In light of Tarkin's failure at Cymoon," Mara cut in—Luke and Han exchanged a look at the mention of that—"our master is sending him to check over some of his other, most important projects, to ensure that their security has not been compromised. This is his last chance; Cymoon was a significant blow.
"Eadu, I believe, is the location of Galen Erso's facility."
Luke's eyes blew wide. Mara nodded grimly. "Indeed."
Han glanced between them. "Huh?"
Neither moved to explain it.
But. . .
Eadu.
Galen Erso.
The main developer of the Death Star, the man who understood it above all else—
—the man who'd always seemed to loathe the Empire—
—the man who could tell Luke everything he needed to know about it.
This was his chance!
He could find a weakness, right from the creator; he could find a weakness, find how to destroy it, then somehow give Mara and all of Tarkin's forces the slip and escape back to the Rebellion. . .
This was his chance.
Luke fought to keep the smile off his face, lest Mara get suspicious. But when he lay down again, he wept into his pillow, and it was not because of the pain.
There were rivulets of liquid dripping onto her, mapping out a complex study of her head, arms and torso, violet, but caught and dazzled the light like quicksilver, blue-white ropes of fire snaking around her and constricting, scorching—
Leia sat up with a scream.
The early hours of the morning were cold and quiet. It only made the thunder of her panicked breaths louder in her ears, made the sudden, vast absence of pain chilly in a foreboding way.
Nightmares, again.
She'd thought they'd finished.
She hadn't stopped the nightmares, of course, but she'd slept through them before, they'd been borne of petty fears and disjointed uncertainties and the vague addling of the unconscious mind. But this. . .
She knew the difference between dreams and reality.
This was the latter.
And, knowing what she did now. . .
The nightmares had stopped after their final, failed rescue attempt. They'd stopped after Luke had pretended to start working with Palpatine again, after he'd stopped being actively tortured, so the fact that they'd started again. . .
Had Luke been found out?
The mere thought of it crushed all breath from her lungs; she threw herself to the floor of her little bunk room, on her hands and knees, and bent over double, heavy great breaths—
Had he been discovered?
Had Palpatine—
A light, peaceful touch on her mind.
Master. Yoda. He was awake—or she'd woken him, with her sudden eruption of turmoil—and wanted to speak to her.
She threw on some more substantial clothes, clipped her new lightsaber to her belt, and jogged out to meet him, whether it was four am or not.
She was never going to get back to sleep after that.
He was in the empty hangar bay they always used for lessons, meditating; Leia had to wonder if constantly sitting on the floor ever got uncomfortable.
He tilted his head when she sat down cross-legged in front of him, doing her best impression of demure and dutiful, and it was one of those few moments she had when it struck her how old he was.
"Well?" he hmphed. "A trouble, have you?"
She rested her palms on her knees and bowed her head. "A nightmare."
He hummed. "Much chaos, there is, for now. Evacuating, we are? That archaeologist—escaped, has she."
"I know. We're dealing with it—we're leaving anyway." Her voice broke off. "But things were chaotic before. And for a bit, I stopped having nightmares anyway."
"Nightmares. . ." he murmured, and she wondered what he was remembering. "About what?"
Despite herself, her flat palms clenched into fists. "Lightning. Getting electrocuted, fried, by Palpatine and his kriffing Force lightning—"
"Who is? Yourself? Or someone else?"
"Someone else."
"Someone close to you."
Leia swallowed. "I'm convinced that it's Luke."
He didn't respond to that, for some reason—just gave another little hmph.
"Premonitions?" he asked, voice oddly wry. She wasn't sure; his voice sometimes seemed to be wryness incarnate, on occasion.
"I don't think so—it's. . . entirely possible, that it's just something happening right now to my brother, parsecs and parsecs away, that I'm sensing."
"Possible? Indeed. These. . . visions," he mused, "what to do with them, you wish to know?"
"Yes. I— I can't do anything to help Luke, no matter how much I want to"—her nails buried themselves harshly in the soft heels of her hands—"so I need to block it out."
She added sadly, "So I don't lose faith."
"Hmm. Faith. In what?"
She looked at him. "In Luke. That he can succeed in his mission—the mission he set himself, to find out how to destroy the Death Star, to no doubt do something stupidly heroic, that I'll see him again—"
"Careful you must be of the fear of loss, Leia," he told her. "A path, it is, back to the dark side."
"I know!" She buried her face in her hands. "But I don't know what to do! I— I'm so afraid for him, what if he gets caught, what if he dies—"
"Death is a natural part of life," he informed her. "Rejoice, you must, for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not, miss them do not."
She shook her head. "I can't do that."
"Neither could your father, when your age, was he," Yoda admitted. Her skin crawled at the comparison. "Or, older, perhaps—look the same to old eyes, the young do. But let go of his fear of losing his wife, Anakin could not. Now here we stand."
"I am not about to commit genocide," Leia said through gritted teeth. She threw herself to her feet and paced. "But I cannot sit back and allow my brother to be killed on this ridiculous errand he's set himself!"
He sighed.
She whirled on him. "What do you think I should do? Leave him to die?"
"If you honour what he fights for," he told her, "yes."
The words hit her like a punch to the gut.
"Lost, your brother is. Learn to let go, you must, and allow him to do what little he can."
Leia froze at that.
Turned to him, deadly slowly.
"What do you mean," she whispered, "lost?"
Yoda's gaze didn't waver from hers—he had the nerve to look her in the eye. That somehow made it so much worse.
"In the heart of the Sith, he is," he said baldly. "Never return, can he—not alive, and not light. Never renounce the darkness, will he be able to, and so he must die, so the light can thrive."
"My brother," she spat, "is lighter than I will ever be. He is better, kinder, has more faith, more trusting, more trustworthy—"
"And seen him, you have not, since the Sith sank their claws in, no? Lost, he is. Risk you, and the future of the Order, I will not."
Leia spun on her foot, lightsaber leaping from floor to hand to lit as she whirled, and carved a slash in midair as she levelled it at Yoda's wrinkled throat.
"I am not a Jedi!"
He didn't flinch at the blade, a perfect purple, bright and humming, that waggled in his face.
"I agreed to learn the light," Leia panted fiercely, "not your dogmatic ways. I will not abandon my brother."
"If he survives, because he turned back to the Sith, it will be, so kill him, someone must—"
"No one has to!"
"—and preferably, must it be—"
"No." She backed off, staring at her teacher with wide, horrified eyes. "What— I will not. No."
"You must."
"You're wrong," she breathed. "You're wrong about the future and you're wrong about my brother." She breathed in deeply; tears wetted her face like summer rain. "He will succeed. He'll come back to the light, no matter what you, or Palpatine, or any other old, tired men who've messed up this entire kriffing galaxy have to say about it. I have faith in him."
And that, she realised belatedly, was exactly what she'd come in here for.
"Naive and foolish, you are," Yoda said sadly. "Thought like you do, Obi-Wan did, but tell him that young Skywalker must not be told of you, or the Rebellion, lest he use it against you, I did. Regret it, I do not."
"Obi-Wan?" Leia breathed.
Yoda said nothing.
Leia took a step towards him. "Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said, "Old Ben. . . is dead. Has been for eleven years."
But she remembered the ghost on Jedha, the voice that had whispered to her. . .
Before Yoda could say anything else, she turned on her heel and stormed out.
Eadu was a rain-lashed, windswept planet, and Luke was drenched from the moment he stepped out of the shuttle. He shivered in the cold, but made sure to keep his back straight, and when Tarkin looked back at him—glared back at him—he could find nothing off about his composure.
Thank the Force they advanced to the facility quickly, though—it was cold.
The Eadu research facility was all grey lines and harsh lights—Imperial architecture in a nutshell, but this time against the backdrop of craggy mountains and knifing rain, flashing like mercury. Luke grimaced looking round it.
There was a small entourage in the main foyer to meet Tarkin, headed by a man in white. Luke flattened his lips to keep them from twitching into a smile; he recognised that man.
"Governor Tarkin, you honour us with your visit," Krennic said. He barely managed to mask the dislike in his voice.
Tarkin parried: "Well, you've done such excellent work here, Director Krennic, it would be remiss of me not to ensure that it continues. . ."
Luke let his attention wander as they exchanged barbs, finally landing on the row of scientists behind Krennic. The man who stood closest to Krennic, wearing a dark suit, exuded discomfort. His gaze landed on Luke, widened in recognition, then sliced away fast enough for Luke to work out that this was not a skilled deceiver.
Galen Erso.
He remembered him.
The head scientist of the Death Star project, father to a known insurrectionist. . . and, from what Luke could tell, no fan of the Empire himself.
Once upon a time, Luke may have wondered why he worked for the Empire at all, then, but he was no longer so naive. And by all accounts, the Empire wanted him because he was a genius.
Luke understood why Palpatine had forced him to work on this project.
But he did know that it meant Erso—capable of genius the rest of the Empire had no hope of replicating—had every interest in sabotaging the death-machine he was pushed so hard to build.
If anyone was going to tell Luke what that thing's weaknesses were, he decided, narrowing his eyes a fraction, it was him.
They were led into a receiving room, where drinks were offered around and officers were expected to mingle and. . . chat. Krennic was obviously trying to make a good impression on Tarkin, rivals though they were, or at least try to imitate the very heights of Imperial hospitality. Erso's scientists all looked stiff and ill at ease in their crisp suits and high-end company, but Luke had to admire how well they were composing themselves regardless.
He wandered over to the window over a gap in the mountains, where Erso stood, and offered him a flute of wine. He'd barely touched his own yet—as little an effect it had on him, it still wasn't worth the risk of poisoning or intoxication—but he took a sip now, to signal that it was safe.
Erso, highly reluctant, took it.
"Galen Erso, right?" Luke said after a moment of staring at the bright lights beyond the window, the gushing rain. "We met at Kuat."
Erso was watching him a little too intently. "We did," he confirmed, and only then did he take a sip, barely letting the liquid touch his lips before he lowered his glass again.
Luke hadn't drugged it, or even offered the glass with the thought that alcohol might make extracting the information easier. But it was a good indicator of how much Erso felt he could trust him.
Lightning flashed beyond the window.
"Beautiful weather here," Luke drawled, and Erso chuckled to himself hesitantly, despite the tension. Luke let himself smile. "Of all the planets I've lived on, I can't say I'm that used to rain."
Erso glanced sideways at him. He was a scientist: curiosity was one of his defining traits, and even he could see how strange it was that someone of Luke's age was this high up in the Imperial aristocracy. So it was only half-politeness that had him asking, "Where have you lived then?"
"Well I lived on Tatooine for a few years," Luke said humorously. Erso laughed again at that, still stilted.
Luke could feel his bodyguards' gazes on his back, but he'd asked them to hang back for a reason. If Mara got suspicious, so be it.
"That is. . . quite the difference," Erso admitted.
"Then I moved to a lava planet."
Another chuckle; still forced, but less so. "It's not getting much better."
"Well, then I moved to Coruscant," Luke admitted. "So I have seen rain, but—"
"It's not real rain there," Erso told him, "believe me. I'm from Grange, but I've lived on Coruscant before; their meteorological controlled rain is nothing like the natural kind."
"How does it even work?" Luke asked. To an extent he was genuinely curious, and he let that shine through in his voice—no one had ever explained it to him, and when he was younger he used to think the meteorological department must have it out for him, always scheduling rain on days he wanted to be cheered up, before he'd grown up and realised he wasn't the centre of the universe—but. . . he also just wanted to get Erso talking. "I know about how weather is caused, of course, but how do they manipulate it artificially? What sort of a water waste is it?"
Erso hesitated. Luke could sense, without diving too deep into his mind, that he was warming to Luke, but still didn't trust anyone wearing an Imperial uniform.
The soft pink of his emotions though. . . Luke's childish chatter reminded him of something, someone, dear; someone familial, who he cared about more than anything and missed fiercely. . .
Knowing what Luke knew about him, it was not hard to guess who that person was.
Luke pushed further: "Do they control the whole planet? I heard somewhere that there were ethical discrepancies between which areas got the dangerous storms, if the rich—"
"It works," Erso said hurriedly—cutting him off before he implicated them both in potentially treasonous words—"like this."
And as he explained it, as Luke asked more questions and Erso fell into the rhythm of explaining something he found interesting, his shoulders ever so slightly loosened.
Wow. The boss's new ship—the Executioner? Whatever it was called—was big.
Aphra tried to get her gawking mouth closed and her clearance codes transmitted, before that tetchy captain sniping at her over the comms blew a fuse (and her ship)—hells he needed to relax a tiny bit—and guided her ship into the hangar she'd been ordered to.
She'd barely touched down when she glanced out of the viewport and flinched—there was a tall, dark, fuming Sith Lord already standing in the doorway to the hangar and he did not look pleased.
She swallowed, and made sure the holo she'd reconstructed from what the brat had left behind was ready to play on her small, handheld holoprojector.
Then she went out to greet him.
"Boss!" she said. She wiped her palms on her trousers—little Leia had even raided her wardrobe and left it a mess—and kept the projector tucked under her arm. "You'll never believe—"
Her words were suddenly, violently cut off as she was tossed into the air, and intense pressure around her throat.
The projector clattered to the floor.
"Ahsoka!"
Leia barged into her office without asking permission to pass, heart still hammering in her neck, and Ahsoka barely had the chance to put down the datapad she'd been reading before she barrelled on: "Did you know about Ben Kenobi?"
"What?" Ahsoka asked, but there was something in her voice—
Leia straightened herself to her full (diminutive) height and folded her arms together. Ahsoka's office was a poky little room at the back of the base, with no windows but well-lit from various datapads and screens, and she felt like if she could only summon enough attitude, she would fill the space to bursting.
"When I was on Jedha, building my lightsaber," Leia said. "The temple wouldn't let me in at first. It was for two people: the master and the apprentice."
Ahsoka's frown was more a pinch of the mouth. "I'm aware of that type of temple," she said. "Kanan, Ezra and I visited one on Lothal to try to contact Master Yoda. That was when we were told to go to. . ."
Leia, intrigued despite her single-mindedness, asked, "Go where?"
That pinched frown became a pinched smile. "Malachor."
Ah.
Where Kanan had been blinded. Where her father had sworn to kill Ahsoka, and nearly succeeded.
"Alright," she said, swallowing. "Anyway, it wouldn't let me in on my own. And the only reason I got in was because someone showed up to help me."
"I see." If Ahsoka saw where she was going with this, she didn't let on. "A local?"
"No. A ghost."
Ahsoka let out a breath.
Closed her eyes.
"You saw Obi-Wan's ghost too?"
"So," Leia pressed, "you have seen him?"
"He turned up one night, a few weeks ago. It was the middle of the night, I had been fast asleep; I assumed I'd just been dreaming, and I was extremely confused about it, until. . ."
"Until?"
She sighed. "Until we watched Luke's message. Obi-Wan contacted me to let me know that Luke had spoken to him, was planning on playing his game and winning. He said he would've told you, but Master Yoda thought the news would distract you from training—thought that—"
"Luke was a lost cause," Leia finished viciously. "I know."
"Uh huh. I could feel your argument from here." Ahsoka grimaced. "When I woke up again, the memory was fuzzy—there was a good chance it was just a dream, I've had dreams about lost comrades returning before. . ."
Leia decided not to ask. Ahsoka cleared her throat.
"I was in doubt," she said softly. "I didn't want to tell you or your mother—I suspected that it might well be true, knowing Luke, but I didn't want to get your hopes up. I figured if it was true, Obi-Wan would show up again—and I don't know how this manifestation thing works, but he never did. And then I figured that I'd know for sure when Luke told us himself." She smiled faintly. "And then he did."
Leia's mind was whirring, but— "You should've told me."
"And risk upsetting you again? You'd only just settled down, begun to accept Yoda's teachings. Your nightmares had only just calmed." She softened her voice. "How many have you had just since seeing Luke's message?"
Leia chose not to comment.
"I didn't want to risk it. Not on a false hope."
Trying to ignore the tightness in her chest, Leia nodded. "Thank you," she croaked. "Thank you for looking out for me, after me, as well as you do. I don't deserve it."
Ahsoka's face gentled, and she rose from her seat to come and take Leia's hands. She carefully unfurled them from their fists, plucking the nails from their beds in her palms one by one, then wrapped her arms around her.
Leia leaned into her chest and tried not to sob.
"Of course you do, Leia," Ahsoka murmured. "I know none of this has been easy for you, but you're still trying so hard. We're all so proud of you."
Tears leaked from the corners of Leia's eyes. She drew back, using her thumb to wipe them away.
"Thank you," she reiterated. "Now, I—"
"Meditate with me," Ahsoka said. "C'mon—let's try and reach Obi-Wan, and have him explain everything to us. And," she hesitated. "Try not to think too harshly of Master Yoda. I love him dearly, but I left the Jedi because they had severe problems in their approaches to problems, and he is a product and perpetuator of those problems."
She said quietly, "We just need to show him other ways of doing things. He's old, not incorrigible; he'll change his mind when confronted with facts."
Leia nodded. When Ahsoka wrapped an arm around her waist and led her out to find a place to meditate, she leaned into her touch.
They meditated, and when they reached Obi-Wan Kenobi, he explained everything.
"What do you have for me," Vader hissed, "that is not failure?"
Her face was purpling now, but he did not feel inclined to lessen his grip—the last he'd seen of his son, he was half-dead and in agony; when he'd seen her message he had allowed hope to spring that his daughter would be returned to him, that they could find a way to save Luke and extract him from the tangled web Palpatine had woven together—
But when her ship had dropped out of hyperspace, he had not sensed his daughter.
He had sensed only her, and the sort of nervousness that came from complete, and utter, failure.
She tried to gasp something out through his stranglehold. "Ho. . . lo. . ."
He just tightened it further.
He should close his hand completely, here and now; he should crush her skull and snap her spine and end her miserable excuse for an existence, the way he longed to do to Palpatine, she had failed him—
"About. . . Luke. . ."
It was that name that snapped him out of it.
He dumped her to the floor.
"What did you say?"
It took several seconds before she was able to speak, but she dared not wait any longer—she knew full well that his patience was not infinite.
"I do not have your daughter, my lord," she croaked, still massaging her bruising neck. "But I have two other things of interest."
She swallowed, grimaced when it hurt, and he restrained the urge to tap his foot.
He was a Sith Lord. Sith Lords did not tap their feet.
"And?" he growled.
She went on: "I tried to capture her on Cymoon One. I failed, and they captured me instead, and the girl took my ship to go. . . somewhere. I don't know; she wiped the navicomputer—"
The temperature was plummeting; his patience was shortening.
"—but! They took me back to the central Rebel base. A small one, where all the administration is, and where Leia is staying."
He paused.
She said, "It's on Dantooine."
So. Grand Admiral Thrawn's investigations had been correct; that was where the elusive Amidala who spat on his late wife's name was hiding. He wanted to grind his teeth and grin in triumph simultaneously.
But he knew where his daughter was.
He could take a taskforce there, retrieve her himself—
"And," Aphra continued, interrupting his daydreams of power and reunification and strength, "because the girl used my ship for some unknown purpose, I have some traces of her. There's sand everywhere; wherever she went was a desert world. A set of Rebel fatigues she left behind, spare parts that I suspect come from a lightsaber—certain parts were also taken from my ship that I think could've been used to build a lightsaber. . ."
Leia had built herself a new lightsaber? Why? Was her Sith one not good enough?
Were— were the Rebel Jedi teaching her the weakness of the light?
Aphra felt the room growing colder again and finished hurriedly: "And I found a message."
His gaze snapped to hers.
"On the holoprojector in the cockpit—she clearly inserted a datachip in there to view it, and the ship downloaded some of the information. The machine was corrupted by some of the sand floating about, but I managed to reconstruct as much of the message she was viewing as possible, and it was from your son."
Had his lungs not been regulated, he would have stopped breathing. "What?"
Aphra shakily got to her feet again, and picked up to the machine that had clattered to the floor when he'd strangled her. She held it out; it was a holoprojector.
"See for yourself," she said. "Preferably in a secure place; I don't think you want this getting out."
Vader took the holoprojector gingerly.
Luke had sent Leia a message?
How? When?
What had he said?
"Leave," he ordered. "Continue to track the Rebels' movements, and take any chance you can to recapture my daughter, but do not storm the base on Dantooine; I will find people to do that myself."
She had the nerve to snort. "Trust me, I wasn't planning on it."
He glared. "Leave. I will send you further instructions once I have viewed whatever you have brought me."
She swallowed, nodded her head—not quite a bow, but he'd take it—and scurried up the ramp to her ship. He didn't bother sticking around to watch her go.
He took the turbolift right to his quarters, and wasted no time in striding into his hyperbaric chamber. With a hiss, it depressurised and his helmet was removed, and—finally—Vader pressed the button his thumb had been hovering above for far too long.
It was a grainy image, the surroundings unrecognisable—his son unrecognisable, almost, save by the tilt of his posture, the slope of his chin and the cadence of his voice.
"Leia," he said, and Vader's heart clenched. "Ahsoka," he said, and he let out a growl. "M— Mother—"
Vader roared.
That— did he still believe that the terrorist touting herself as Amidala was his mother? That Padmé would ever even associate with the group?
He—
He was still talking.
". . .what you must think of me, but—kghkk—" Static interrupted him, the gaps in the files. "—message is. Telling you what I'm doing, so. . . whatever you think of me, you can think it based on the facts."
It cleared up briefly—it cleared up, was perfect, so Vader had no reason to believe that the next part was anything but what Luke had genuinely said:
"I did not return to the Empire.
"I will never, ever, return to the Empire. I promise. I just had to—khk kgkhk— I figured that spying again, as high as the risk would be, was the best way to go about it."
Luke was a spy.
Luke had lied to his master, lied to Vader, lied to Tarkin, to be a spy—
". . .original plan was to get out of the cell—khk—grab as much information as I could and run at the first chance I got."
Luke had lied. . . to escape.
Vader almost smiled.
Because it might still work. Luke was already far from Coruscant, and smart enough to give anyone the slip; if he was careful, if he didn't get too involved with a certain Inquisitor Palpatine had sent to keep an eye on him. . .
He watched the rest with equal growing amusement and disdain, until—
". . .but then I found out, that Tarkin has been given control of the Death Star.
"And as his aide, I can get to the plans."
He was insane.
"—find out if there are any weaknesses—kghgkkhk— Because it needs to be destroyed."
His son was insane. He was going to get himself killed, Tarkin—
Vader paused.
Tarkin was headed to Eadu.
Galen Erso's facility. If there was a weakness, Luke would find it there, and he could find a way to destroy it.
Vader didn't know how he felt about that.
There was more—a vague, interrupted warning about an imminent attack, heartfelt apologies, and then—
"I love you."
Vader jerked back in his chair at that—at the tenderness, the desperation in it.
More useless details—
And then Luke turned to the holocam and mouthed I love you, again.
The holo ended. Vader sat in silence—in shock.
He should take this to his emperor. He should confront Luke.
But if he did that, his son would die.
I will not have a Rebel son.
Then you will have a dead one.
The regular rasp of his respirator was the only sound to be heard.
I will not have a Rebel son.
Then you will have a dead one.
With hands that would have shaken, had they been flesh and bone, Vader replayed the holo. But only one part—the end.
Luke mouthed I love you at the viewer.
Vader watched it again.
And again.
And again.
But not once did he succeed in convincing himself that the platitude was aimed at him.