Blood Ties
"Father, please!"
That did it. That did it. For over 20 years Darth Vader had been a willing servant to the dark side, he never questioned it, he never considered leaving it, he was unmoved by any pleas for mercy, he killed whoever he saw fit and more than willingly stood aside and allowed entire planets to be destroyed without a second thought, without an attack of conscience. His own son's pleas to turn from the dark side and join him had failed to move him or stir so much as an inkling in the dark lord, as had the revelation itself that he had a son, that his son was actually alive.
But hearing his son cry out in pain as he lay paralyzed on the floor being tortured and slowly killed from Palpatine's Force lightning. That was too much, and the man who had been more machine than not for many years, could no longer stand by and allow it to happen.
Palpatine's sickening laughs and cries of delight very quickly changed to shocked and frightened and pained screams as Vader used the Force to bind the Emperor's arms behind his back and lift him clear off his feet into the air over Vader's head, and marched over to the railing over the reactor shaft and hurled Palpatine over the edge and watched him drop. He'd taken in a few jolts of the lightning himself, but Palpatine hadn't been able to focus towards the end and most of it just scorched the walls around them.
"Father..."
The voice was so low he almost couldn't even hear it. He turned back and saw Luke still sprawled on the floor, not moving. Vader walked over towards him and knelt down beside his son to assess his injuries.
"Luke, can you stand?"
The young Jedi had his eyes squeezed all but shut as tears of agony were forced out and trailed down his face. He forced his eyes open the tiniest slit more and looked up at him, and moaned pleadingly, "Father..."
Vader gripped Luke's shoulder with his left hand and told him, "You'll be all right, it's over now."
Around them the distant sounds of people screaming and klaxons blaring filled the throne room.
"Your friends breached our shield," Vader said, little readable emotion in it even through his vocoder, "The Death Star will be destroyed."
Luke groaned in pain and looked up at his father and told him, "I can't move."
"I won't leave you," Vader told him as he grabbed Luke's arm, draped it over his neck and lifted the younger man up in his arms. They reached the corridor and were met with a stampede of Imperials running for the emergency shuttles, the dark lord suddenly may well have been invisible.
The sirens were louder, deafening, they pounded in Luke's ears and he thought he was either going to go deaf or lose his mind before they got out of there. He said nothing and weakly clung to his father as Darth Vader got them in one of the last shuttles. Luke strapped himself in in the cockpit and Darth Vader got them out of there shortly before the entire battle station was destroyed. Luke watched the sight through the viewport, and while he knew his friends in the Rebellion would all be celebrating, it felt somehow like a hollow victory to him.
"What happens now?" he asked, dreading what the answer might be.
Vader only looked at the controls in front of him, but answered, "That depends on you."
Luke turned his head and looked at his father questioningly.
"Your friends will be waiting for you on Endor."
Luke cocked his head to the side and looked at Vader skeptically, trying to figure out what his angle was.
The dark lord told him, "You don't have to worry about me coming for them."
Luke wanted to ask why not. Instead he asked, "Why did you save me?" With every fiber of his being, he had hoped and prayed he would, just to end his suffering, he didn't want to think any father, let alone his own, could be so cruel to watch their child being murdered and just stand by and do nothing. But his father's allegiance to the dark side was well grounded in history, it seemed unreal that he could've turned from it now.
The masked face turned to him and Vader answered, the voice modulator making it sound very simple and to the point, "You are my son."
Luke blinked and felt tears stinging his eyes. He felt like he'd just woken up from a nightmare.
"Father?" He struggled to get the word out. It seemed too much to hope for.
In spite of everything, Luke felt his eyelids growing heavy and felt his head drop towards his chest.
When Luke woke up he found himself laying on a table in a room he almost immediately recognized as a med bay and saw somebody bent over his prosthetic hand.
"What're you doing? Get away! Don't touch it!" he yelled as he pulled his wrist out of the medic's grasp.
What he saw when he sat up and looked at his hand was that the damage he'd sustained back on Tatooine had been repaired, his hand looked good as new again, like an actual flesh and bone hand. He looked at the medic wide eyed and sheepishly responded, "Thanks..."
The door whooshed open and he saw Darth Vader enter the room, a new prosthetic replacing the right hand he'd lost in their fight on the Death Star.
"They do impressive work, don't they?" his father commented with no readable emotion in the words.
Luke curled and uncurled his fingers testing it out. He merely nodded in response, then asked, "Where are we?"
"Aboard the Executor."
That news gave Luke a slight sinking sensation in his stomach, but not as much as he would've expected it to.
"Where're we going?" he asked.
"Coruscant."
Luke glanced at the human medics and he turned towards his father and used their bond in the Force to ask him to ensure nobody overheard their conversation, "So what happens now? Do you...become the new Emperor now that Palpatine's dead?"
"That would be the natural progression of events," Vader answered without answering his question.
"And what happens to me now?"
"Whatever I decide."
Luke felt confused, not worried, not scared, not threatened, there was no threat in that simple statement. He thought he understood, if when they arrived, Vader ordered that he was to be let go, nobody would oppose that decision, nobody would stop him. Something had changed in his father, it wasn't clear, but Luke could feel it all the same. He had changed the minute he killed the Emperor. But he didn't have any idea what that actually meant, what his father actually planned to do now.
"How long until we arrive?" Luke wanted to know.
"Approximately 16 standard hours."
Luke nodded in understanding, having no clue what he was going to do until then, or what he was going to do when he got there.