"I still don't understand," Luke told his father later that day as the two of them sat in the palace kitchen, "If you knew I was your son, how come you didn't know I was even alive until I was on the Death Star?"

He wasn't sure what it was, but after seeing his father in his true form, it seemed weird to look at him with his mask on again. Even though he knew the truth, it really did seem like it was two different people, Anakin Skywalker under the mask, and Darth Vader when it was on. Adding to the confusion, Luke realized he'd gotten used to hearing his father's modulated voice, somehow it just seemed more natural as opposed to when he spoke without the vocoder.

"I thought you had died with your mother," the former dark lord answered. "Palpatine had told me I had killed her in a rage, the last memory I had of her, I was choking her, it had to be true."

"But that's impossible," Luke said. "Ben took me and gave me to Uncle Owen, so Mother had to have lived long enough to give birth to me."

"I know," the man in black responded. "But for 20 years there was no proof to the contrary. Your mother was dead, there were no children. Then I saw you. You look so much like both your mother and myself, and the Force was strong in you, even then, there could be no other explanation."

Luke's eyebrows gnarled together as he wracked his brain.

"But what about Leia? How could you not know she was your daughter? You had to know that she had the Force too."

"I did," Vader said. "You were very sheltered on Tatooine, Luke."

The younger Skywalker felt a small heat rising in his face, defensively he asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You didn't know about the Force until Obi-Wan taught you, before then you had no idea what you were. You must realize just because the Jedi Order was wiped off the face of the galaxy, it didn't stop Force sensitive children from continuing to be born. The galaxy is full of Force sensitives, Luke, I encounter them on a regular basis. That Leia Organa was one of them, was not proof of anything. It wasn't strong in her because she'd had no training and also had no idea what she was capable of."

"Jabba's barge," Luke murmured under his breath. "That's it."

"That's what?" Vader asked, the confusion readable in his modulated voice.

"When we rescued Han from Jabba's palace. Leia went in first posing as a bounty hunter, she freed Han from the carbon freeze but Jabba and his guards caught her and put her in chains. I went in next, and they took Han and Chewie and me to be fed to the sarlacc. While we were fighting our way loose, Leia was on the sail barge and she strangled Jabba to death with the chains." Luke's eyes were brighter now with a clarity as he realized, "There wasn't time to think about it back then, but Leia had to have used the Force to be able to choke him to death, there's just no way she could've done it of her own accord. She's not strong enough."

The whole thing was still very confusing to him though. He groaned exhaustively, and looked at his father and asked, "But is it possible Ben was wrong about Leia being my sister?"

"Obi-Wan was wrong about many things in life," Vader said, and added with a small notable hint of cynicism, "I don't see why it should be any different now just because he's dead."

"But she knew," Luke remembered, "when I told her, she said she'd always known." He thought of something else, "Did you have any idea when Mother was pregnant?"

"We didn't know much of anything, Luke," his father told him. "We guessed, we tried to plan for what was to come, all the while Palpatine was turning me against Padme."

"But if you didn't kill her, and she lived long enough to have Leia and me," Luke said, "then how did she die?"

The two looked at each other in a grim silence for a moment as all the unspoken facts weighed down on both of them.

"Everyone I cared about was destroyed because I was weak," Vader said. "I allowed Palpatine to blind me to the truth, I was a fool to believe him, and it cost your mother her life, it cost me my wife and children. It cost you a life off of that barren sand trap."

As much as the man could've remained wallowing in his own thoughts, there was a clear disturbance through the Force coming from the young man across the table, but Vader couldn't decipher what it was.

"What is the matter, Luke?"

The dark blonde blinked and said distantly, "Oh, nothing, Father, just thinking. Uh..." he pushed against the table to move his chair back and stood up, "I have some work to do on the droids in the shop, I'll...see you later."

Behind his mask Vader wore a grim expression. He could tell something was troubling his son, but as much havoc had been wreaked on the life he'd known in such a short amount of time, it was impossible to narrow down the possibilities to the true culprit. Tempted as he was, he didn't pry, Luke had a lot to deal with and he had to work through it on his own.

"Ouch!" Luke yelled as he clenched his good hand he'd just hit with the hydrospanner in his prosthetic one as he waited for the excruciating throbbing to pass. He hadn't been able to keep his mind on his work all morning, he had too much stuff flying through his head to think about, most of which he didn't dare let his father know about.

He thought back to Dagobah, when he saw Yoda dying, the last time he saw Ben's ghost. Their words came back to him, and even though it had never been in his nature before, especially to his teachers, he hated them. They'd told him to kill his father, which betrayed everything they'd taught him about being a Jedi. Why? Why did they do it? Neither of them believed he could be redeemed. He was Ben's friend and student, how could Ben say such a thing to Luke? He'd known his father far longer than Luke had, if Luke knew there was still good in him, why hadn't Ben? And Yoda, he was 900 years old, surely he should've been smarter than that. How could they do it? Why did they do it? Why did they want Luke to kill his own father so badly? Wherever they were now in the Force, if Luke had killed his father before he turned from the Dark side, he wouldn't have joined them.

A bitter laugh formed in his chest but only a hint of it made it up to his throat. Was that it? Was that what it was all about? They didn't think Anakin was entitled to spend eternity in the Force with them? How could...the miserable...the words Luke would've loved nothing more than to spew out as to what he really thought of his teachers got stuck somewhere and just wouldn't come, and just as well. So far he was able to keep his shields up so his father wouldn't be able to tell what he was thinking, but if he started swearing out a whole blue streak of obscenities he'd learned in Huttese, there'd be no hiding that from anyone in the palace.

He felt his back against the wall and sighing in defeat he slid down to the floor.

He was the last Jedi. He hadn't really had much time to think about what he was going to do once the Empire was defeated, because truthfully, even though it was the goal of every member of the Alliance, no matter what they tried it always seemed like an unattainable goal. Every time they thought they made progress, the Empire hit back and twice as hard, and they lost so many good people. Even now he hadn't given a whole lot of thought to his immediate future now that Palpatine was dead and the Empire was destroyed. For a brief period he'd considered that his being the last Jedi in the galaxy meant something of great importance, that he was destined to do something great with it. Hearing his father confirm there were still many out there who had the Force and just didn't know it, or what to do with it, he considered the possibility it might be his destiny to overhaul and restore the Jedi order. But this sobering fact kept playing in his head like a holotape stuck on repeat. Obi-Wan and Yoda were the wisest men he'd ever known, and if they could be so unbelievably wrong about this, and tried to goad him into forgetting his Jedi teaching, and kill his father, a former Jedi, instead of redeeming him...if they could be capable of something that horrible and still be recognized in the Force as Jedi warriors...then what hope was there for Luke? What was the guarantee he also wouldn't screw the whole thing up and do something as horrible as they had?

"What am I going to do?" he asked himself in a defeated whispering sigh.