"Wow," Aphra said, staring around the Emperor's vaults. "The more I look, the more stuff there is in here."

"That is how vaults work."

"It's so cool. Does he use any of this?" She leaned in to inspect an embellished golden bowl, which the Force informed Vader was an object of note to the dark side, but that Aphra probably thought was merely a valuable old trinket. She reached out to it—only to yelp when he seized her wrist with the Force and shoved her back.

"Cease your poking. It is your honour to be in here; do not give me undue reason to believe you will abuse it."

She raised an eyebrow. "You think I'm stupid enough to steal from him? With you hanging over my shoulder?"

"You have been useful to me on multiple occasions; your intelligence is not in doubt. Your wisdom, however, is."

Aphra huffed, but clearly couldn't deny that.

"Has the trap been laid?"

"I rearranged the vault so that the lightsabers are nearer the centre, with the wide-open space," Aphra recited. "There's a few goodies for Angel if they go poking around in the other rooms. A pipe by the holocrons which will release a gas to knock out a human—your mask should filter it out—when it detects someone nearby; there's all sorts of cameras and sensors in all the rooms, so you'll know they're here the moment they arrive; I installed some ray shields near the gallery store and also on either side of the entrance, which we'll both need to walk around to avoid getting stuck in them ourselves; and a bunch of other little things inspired by a particularly well-defended tomb I excavated on Vanqor—"

"Write up a report and stop babbling." But he would admit to a small sliver of satisfaction as he hooked his thumbs into his belt and glanced around the many levels of the vault, peering at each item on its shelf. Looking at it, it was evident it had been rearranged since Angel had last breached it, with the guard and cameras and general security increased… but even with an intent, wary look, unless you knew exactly what you were looking for, it was impossible to tell that that security was trap worthy.

"I expect they will attack tonight," he stated. "They have been arrogant lately, and will want to capitulate on their success as quickly as possible before security escalates yet again. We will leave for now; I will stay in the Palace watching all night, but you are dismissed."

Aphra scowled. "C'mon, I wanted to see you catch this sucker."

"Leave."

"Yes, boss."

Vader turned and strode towards the exit, the red guards outside watching him closely. Aphra yelped behind him, "Wait, one last thing—"

He walked into a walk of blue.

His suit crackled, his prosthetics seizing up temporarily and tingling; he staggered back, but forced himself to stop. Turned on the spot, wary.

Aphra said awkwardly, "I never showed you where the ray shields were."


Luke took a moment to centre himself before he deactivated the shields on his window, just enough and just for long enough that it looked like he wanted a breath of fresh air. He had gone to bed early that night, he hadn't lied to his father about that; he'd managed to have a good few hours of sleep before the alarm he'd set had awoken him again, and he felt far more refreshed than he usually did. Convenient, then, that home was so… well, close to home.

He slid out the window, and grasped the windowsill. He climbed up to perch on there for a moment, before clambering back in and deactivating the shields again, though he kept the window open. The troopers his father always had on duty were at the front door to the apartment, he could sense, and also on the roof—perhaps, he thought with a quirk of the lips, his father had learnt from the break in at Senator Falynn's—but none on the main floor. His father's respect for their privacy as a family at work, just the way he'd described to Leia.

If this went off well enough, Luke thought grimly, creeping out of his own bedroom, that would not change.

But if it didn't…

Well. If Vader realised that Angel had breached his own home and stolen his trophies, whether they left Luke untouched or not, Luke would be forced to move into the Imperial Palace faster than he could say panicking parent.

But there were no guards hanging around for now, no stormtroopers to witness what was happening and no one to get caught in the crossfire, so he just continued on. With any luck, with the way he'd done the window it would mislead later investigators into thinking he'd entered that way, rather than already being inside the building; it would also make a point, given that Angel had climbed in right past a supposedly-sleeping Luke and not so much as touched him, or tried to cut his throat in his sleep, that Angel technically had no interest in the Imperial Prince…

The corridor beyond Luke's bedroom was dark, of course, as was the living room just after. He didn't bother turning on the lights; that might clock any random passers-by into the fact that someone was awake inside, and neither he nor the hypothetical Angel wanted that. No: he knew this apartment well enough to navigate it himself.

The entrance way—the landing pad and the turbolift down to some of the lower levels, with the hangar and the garage and the kitchen. He didn't flinch away from them and kept walking.

His father's rooms were ahead.

He had been nervous this whole time, even if in a familiar, understandable way—after all, he had pulled off heists before, even though they never became any less nerve-wracking. He found himself exponentially nervous, here, though, because…

His father liked his privacy.

Luke was aware of some of his… ailments… and had a vague idea of what had caused them—Vader's raging over the Jedi Kenobi's kidnapping of Luke, and over other things Kenobi had done that he'd never gone into the specifics of, had always been fierce—but he didn't know of anything in particular. He had seen his father's face before, obviously, he'd seen it several times, he knew the colour of his father's eyes so much like his own… but he was still very out of place in his father's quarters.

And now he strode in, bold as brass, only to hesitate.

He did turn the lights on in here—or rather, they turned themselves on automatically. Thankfully there were no windows, and the only door was closed behind Luke.

Luke didn't look at the hyperbaric chamber. Didn't think about the fact he'd seen his father without the mask on in there only a few weeks ago, staring at him with undisguised adoration and trust, as Luke gently teased him into getting some sleep.

He forged on through, to the training room. Perhaps, now that Palpatine was training Luke in the Force, his father would spar with him? Perhaps… perhaps that would be allowed… He didn't know.

He just knew that there was the rack, and there were the lightsabers. How many lightsabers did they need? Three? He could fit… ten in his bag, he thought. Just in case.

He felt around each of them in the Force—nothing. No danger, as far as he could sense. Good. There was nothing…

He still had a bad feeling about this. That was what that nervousness was, he realised: foreboding. A bad feeling. A warning from the Force? He didn't know.

Could he back away? Should he back away. Or just keep going…

No.

Keep going.

He had to.

He reached for the rack of lightsabers and pulled them away, one by one, dropping them into the bag he'd slung over his shoulder when he'd dressed himself all in black. They clinked together; he amused himself by the idea of Leia chiding him for it—a lightsaber is your life, she'd quoted to him once, even thought he had never touched one himself—but there wasn't exactly anything he could do with it.

This was going well. Things were going well. He moved back out—out of his father's quarters, back toward his bedroom. Things were going well

And of course, it was at that moment that his father called out—

Luke.


Vader had been waiting in the control room nearest to the vaults and staring at the monitor for hours. There had been no change.

Nothing.

No bandit was crawling through the vents. No burglar was sidestepping the guards to get through. How were they coming? How did they intend to arrive?

What was Angel planning?

Had Vader misjudged them after all? It was… possible. Pulling off two heists in two nights must be draining; perhaps they had resolved to give it a rest this evening, despite that there was no way they were not aware that time was everything, that the more they waited the more security measures would be implemented. What did they hope to achieve by putting off this inevitable repeat attack on the Emperor's vaults? There was nowhere else on the planet where they could find lightsabers; no one except Vader and the Emperor kept Jedi weapons as trophies—

Unless they went for Vader's collection, of course.

It was, technically, not as ruthlessly guarded as Palpatine's. And while it wasn't like it was common knowledge that Vader kept such a collection, it wasn't exactly common knowledge that Palpatine did either, and it wasn't an impossible leap of logic, or faith…

Which meant…

Was Angel there now?

Was that why they had not shown up where Vader's trap was set? Were they targeting Vader's home?

His durasteel heart, usually thumping its lacklustre performance from day to monotonous day, quickened and thudded and stuttered.

Were they targeting Vader's home on the one night that his son was actually there?

Luke, he cast out desperately, all of a sudden, striding violently away from the monitor to the baffled stares of the officers manning it.

He sensed nothing, then—

A flicker of hesitant acknowledgement, of shock, of horror—

Horror.

What was happening!?

What was happening to his son!?

Luke, he demanded, Luke, my son, answer me. Are you there? Are you alright?

A spike of terror, and then that terror skyrocketed when he asked:

Is Angel there?

No response.

None, except mounting terror—the sort of terror that left you panicking, gasping for breath, unable to think or talk or logic. It cut right through to Vader's soul, and he knew.

Angel was there.

And Luke wasn't just in the line of fire.

He was the one with the biggest target on his back.


Luke. Luke.

Is Angel there?

He knew.

Luke sucked in a deep breath, shaking—he should reassure him, he should say no, they're not, he should send his father back to his work in the Palace and operate under the façade of innocence he'd been keeping up so well for so long—

But he'd hesitated.

And there was no way he could explain away the horror he'd felt—not without clueing in his father to what he was actually doing, actually thinking. The spike of fear, the panic, had to be put up to something, something terrible, something brutal, and now—

Be strong, Luke, his father said. Luke was ready to kriffing hyperventilate. Help is on the way.

No. No, no, no—

The alarm started blaring throughout the apartment.

Luke closed his eyes in horror for one horrible moment. His father had contacted the stormtroopers. The stormtroopers had set off the alarms.

They were coming.

They were coming.

Quick. There was no time to panic, no time to think—all the doors in the apartment were heavy, reinforced durasteel, for security reasons; he immediately skirted around the place and locked them, drawing out one of the lightsabers to even disable the turbolift, shoving it into the controls and welding the doors together. Every single door control panel was locked and disabled, slashed and sparking, and he stood in the centre of the living room and yanked on the Force to pile the furniture in front of the windows, closing the curtains, as a barricade. The stormtroopers pounded on the doors, he heard them open fire, but they were locked out.

There were no security cameras here, in the heart of Luke's home, he knew that well.

Troopers were barking orders, panicked explanations, nerves fraying—

LUKE!? ARE YOU THERE!? ARE YOU ALRIGHT!?

Luke didn't answer. So—

His comlink began to buzz.

And buzz, and buzz, and buzz. He could hear it from here; he strode out of the living room, from one room of the little prison he'd made for himself to another, and saw it vibrating madly on his bedside table.

Luke picked it up, and the chaotic swirl of his thoughts yielded three things.

One thing was: he was trapped.

Another thing: he was dressed from head to toe in black; he was carrying stolen lightsabers.

And finally: even if he changed now, aborted the mission, and tossed the evidence out the window… it would be impossible to totally dismiss the suspicion levelled at him, for surviving an attack like this unscathed.

Which meant…

Which meant…

Which meant that the only plan he had, a thoroughly insane one, was the best chance he was gonna get.

He accepted the call—set the comlink to voice only, no visual. His father's voice thundered.

"LUKE—!"

And Luke drew upon all those games he'd played to freak out his friends at the academy, changed his voice to the most generic lower-levels-of-Coruscant accent he could, and drawled, "This is an honour, Lord Vader."


The guards in the control room watched Vader freeze utterly, utterly still. They could not hear the voice coming out of the comlink, not from here, but they did here Vader hiss:

"Angel."


Oh my stars. Luke was ready to jump out the window and let the levels swallow him. Oh my stars, oh stars, oh stars—

What was he doing?

What was he doing!?

His father's voice was loaded with fury. This was more fury than all the other denizens of this system—no; this galaxy—would experience all together in a hundred years.

What was Luke doing?

Whatever it was, he kept doing it.

"Indeed," he said, trying to keep a lid on his fear in the Force. He failed. To a powerful wielder like his father, it probably stank. "I had hoped this heist would go off without a hitch, but I suppose we must all be prepared for certain… eventualities." Inwardly, Luke cringed. Stars.

His father was not impressed. "You are surrounded, whether my men can get in immediately or not. They will make it through eventually, I am on my way, and then your days defying the Empire will be over."

"It sounds like you've thought this all through," Luke continued monotonously, his own fear glassing his voice into calm. "But need I remind you, Vader, whose comlink this is?"

There was no response to that: just the constant, consistent sound of Vader's belaboured breathing.

Luke smirked, to get into character. "Your son is trapped in here," he said smoothly. Technically, it wasn't a lie. "You can find me… but—"

"If you touch him," Vader growled—Vader vowed"You will know the meaning of true suffering—"

"And that will not bring him back from the dead, will it? So I suggest, Vader, that you start to bargain."

Another brush against his mind—this time Luke let himself latch onto it, like his chubby hand had latched onto his father's finger when he was but a baby, and let his fear screech out. Father, Father, I'm scared, this is it, this is the end, I'm going to die here, I'm going to be tortured—

It will be fine, Luke. I swear to you this.

FATHER!

His heart was racing. Luke couldn't breathe. But still he continued in that horrid voice, that horrid monotone: "You will call off your troops, or he will lose a hand. Then we can go from there—but the hand is a good place to start, isn't it?"

"You dare—"

"I dare." Luke reached for one of the lightsabers and lit it, letting the fierce hum reverberate down the line, out of the comlink, right into Vader's eardrums. "Call them off. Now."

Still, Vader hedged—"I will not—"

"Father," he said, in his ordinary voice, and let it tremble.

Stars. Force and all the stars above. He felt terrible, he— he was manipulating his father, tormenting him intentionally, but—

I want to live.

I don't want to be caught and tortured and executed.

I don't want him to know the truth.

He'd come that far as Angel—too late to back out now.

He— he didn't know if his father loved him more than the Empire, but he did know that he loved him more than he hated Angel…

…for now

…so he let himself gasp for air, tears leaking down his face as he blatantly betrayed his father's love and trust and devotion, manipulated it to his own gain, to his face, as he said, "Father… please…"

I'm scared.

I know, little one. I know. He could hear the pain that came with that admission.

Luke, in the role of Angel, sighed. "Well, I understand your decision." And then he moved the lightsaber—

"Wait!"

There was a moment of silence. Luke waited, breath bated. When his father spoke, his voice trembling with so much pain it cut Luke right to the core.

"I will order my men to stand down."

Good, Luke tried to think through his own hysteria—good, while they were retreating he could escape, he could climb out the window, steal a speeder and fly, he could skedaddle—

"Call them out of the building altogether," he ordered. He couldn't have them seeing Angel get past the broken turbolift, to the landing pad, and flying away, sans Luke.

"I—"

"I won't bother to repeat my threat, Lord Vader, you know it already."

Vader's rage was a live wire. "I do. If you let my son go, I will oblige you."

"Let him go? Here?" Luke scoffed—even taking care to make sure that was utterly unrecognisable from his useful scoff. "What guarantee is that? You'll only pursue me, won't you?" He didn't wait for Vader to reply. "No. I will take him. I will go to my rendezvous point and dump your precious prince there, so long as you behave, and so long as I am not followed. You can retrieve him from there—I'm sure whatever connection you undoubtedly have in the Force will be enough to find him." That, inevitably, was not a plan that would work—Luke would not be able to hang around all in black, rather than the pyjamas he'd been wearing in bed, along with a stolen speeder, and not incur suspicion from the stormtroopers. But he was sure he could improvise from there.

"So it is confirmed, Angel. You do have knowledge of the Force."

Luke didn't deign to respond to that.

"I can still sense your men in the building," he warned. Gritting his teeth, he tilted the lit lightsaber in his hand and held it uncomfortably close to his skin—letting out a hiss between his teeth and a sharp pulse of pain into the Force when it scalded him slightly.

Vader said, "I have called them off."

And he had: he could sense them going, like ships retreating from orbit.

"Now let my son go."

"Were you not listening?" Luke—Angel—shot back. "No. You will get him so long as I get off this planet alive, unfollowed."

"And tell me why I should trust your word on this."

"Because you don't have a choice?" Luke sniped. His father's anger was still terrifying, so he tried to cushion that—and the guilt still lurking in his chest—by adding, "I am a thief. Not a killer. And while I would not regret ridding the galaxy of another budding Sith Lord before he can join you in wallowing in pain and destruction," he spat the words, getting into character, "I would prefer to avoid killing. For now.

"But do not push me, if you want to see him whole—that mandate does not extend to cutting off his limbs."

Vader was silent for several frozen seconds. Luke realised his brow was drenched in cold sweat.

"You will not be pursued," Vader got out, stilted. "You will not be attacked. But if you do not return my son, Angel, he will not be the Sith Lord you have to worry about."

"I'm aware of that, Lord Vader. If I don't return him, he won't have the chance to become a Sith Lord at all, will he?"

He cut the connection before he could hear his father's barbed reply.


He got out onto the landing pad, climbed over the edge and reached the hangar from there. Sure enough, it was barren of troopers, but he could sense them just beyond his reach—waiting in speeders outside the building, for Angel to come out. He could sense his father's black mood like a thunder cloud. He could sense danger at every turn.

He chose a speeder he'd never used before, though he'd helped his father work on it: it had a closed cockpit, it was fast, and it had tinted windows. He threw the lightsabers in the back seat—so much hassle for ten laserswords? Why couldn't Leia have told the Jedi to go find a temple like the one on Lothal and go make their own?—and seized the controls, shooting out of the hangar, onto the landing pad.

Into the night beyond.


"Lord Vader, Angel has left the building."

"Keep them in your sights. If they get away, your life is forfeit, Commander."

"Yes, my lord."

"What do you see of my son?"

"The speeder he stole has tinted windows and we cannot see inside; no visuals on Luke Skywalker."

"But he is in there." Vader took a deep breath and reached out: Luke was shielding now—Vader theorised that Angel, as a thrice-damned Force-sensitive, had said something to him and unnerved him, and that made him want to kill them even more—but he could distantly sense Luke's determination despite his fear. His son was so brave…

And his son was moving farther and farther away from him.

He could not trust Angel to keep their word. He would sooner lose all his limbs and burn in the fires of Mustafar again than lose Luke because he trusted a kidnapper.

"Do not let them out of your sight," he reiterated darkly. "Follow them, but do not let them see you." If Angel decided Luke was too dangerous a hostage to keep after all…

For a moment, Vader acknowledged the possibility that had been slowly but surely murdering him from the moment he'd reached out to Luke:

He might never see his son again.

He should've moved them to the Imperial Palace. He should never have moved them out. He should have installed security cameras, should have valued security over privacy, should have blasted Palpatine's orders to hell and taught Luke to defend himself with the Force, training or no training, he should—

He should never have made him Imperial Prince, and put a target on his back like this.

Except… that wasn't why he was being targeted, was it?

He was being targeted because of Vader.

Because he was his son.

And if Vader made the slightest misstep… he might never see him again.

Vader clenched his fists, and his fear fed his rage which fed his power into a heady mixture that spun the galaxy on a disc around him, Luke its centre and axis. He reached for him, trying to transmit calming waves—you will be alright, you will be alright, you will be alright—but he… didn't know how much effect they had.

His son could die, at the ruthless hands of a Rebel. And there was no way Vader could stop it.

"My lord, Angel is proving a difficult pilot to catch; they are diving between buildings and seem to be very good at slipping away—"

"Do not let them out of your sight, Commander," Vader growled. "Do not fail me."

But they kept up the chase, and Angel flew like a person possessed—better, almost, than Luke himself.

They lost them in the maze.


The Force flashed—stormtrooper carrier on the left, ambling by, trying to keep an eye on him; Luke dove straight down, gunning for the tiniest slot in the buildings.

He squeezed through. Barely.

He could still sense them following, behind him, closing in; they knew what this speeder looked like and they wouldn't give up, not so long as the Imperial Prince was supposedly on board, and Luke could not stop running. He— he had to—

"Kid!" Han shouted when he finally skidded to a halt at the rendezvous. He just blew their cover there, if this continued he would lead the troopers right here, but he had a precious five minutes, at most, before they caught up, and— "What the hell is going on?"

"No time to explain, we need to go!"

Han stood there stunned for a moment. Luke leapt out of the speeder, switched off the engine and shoved it over the edge of the concrete pathway. It dropped like a stone and smashed against some metal struts below.

"You—" Han blinked. "Are you finally coming with us? You— I know you said you couldn't leave your dad or the Rebellion, but—"

Oh.

"No, Han," Luke said. "I— I can't come with you, not permanently, but—"

Han grimaced. "Let me guess. You're in trouble."

"Yes." Luke hissed out a breath, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his lightsabers clinking together in his bag. "I— I—"

"You got caught?"

"Almost." His gaze bored into Han. "I will be, if I linger."

Han shrugged. "Then get inside, junior, and we'll get the hell off this planet."


He should not have sent out those men to follow Angel.

Vader knew that—he realised that, the moment he sensed Luke's presence lift off, into orbit. He'd hastily ordered a blockade, demanded that the traffic on the planet be halted and stopped, at that early hour of the night, but they were too slow.

They were too slow.

Luke, he called out, searching, searching…

Luke reached back. Father.

He was afraid. He was full of shame—that sent a twist in Vader's chest, and he hastened to assure him: This was not your fault, I should have protected you, I will find you, I

Angel was going to let him go.

But Vader had miscalculated—underestimated the thief. He had not been willing to take the risk, and in doing that he had risked everything.

He had risked Luke.

I will find you, he swore. I will raze the galaxy until every Rebel base, every hidey hole they could have stowed you in, is laid bare to the scourge of the light. I will rip this burglar open from the inside out for their nerve, for threatening you; I will find you, son, do not fear, I…

I will pursue you until you are safe. I will bring hell upon any Rebel sympathisers and destroy worlds and I—

Whatever he'd been about to say next, he did not say it.

The bond in his chest snapped as the ship—a dilapidated smugglers' freighter, YT-1300 Corellian in make, his men would later inform him—leapt to lightspeed and his son was suddenly parsecs away.


His son was parsecs away, and making a very awkward comm call.

"Leia," Luke said, the moment she answered—it was the middle of the night in Imperial City, yes, but this was important. She was probably already awake—"Something has happened."

Her hair was in a single plait down her back, flyaway from sleep, but it was clear she'd already been awake when he'd commed her: she planted her hands on her hips and gave him a look. "Care to explain to me why the planet's on lockdown and there are rumours that the Imperial Prince has been kidnapped, Luke?"

Luke gritted his teeth.

"Well," he tried to begin, "at least I got the lightsabers…?"