Recovering from Bespin, a feverish Luke Skywalker lets slip his parentage, but what will the Alliance do with the son of Darth Vader? Their mistake proves monumental and delivers Luke into the hands of his worst nightmare. Destiny goes into an about turn where there's only one person who can save Luke from the darkside - his father. Recovering from Bespin, a feverish Luke Skywalker lets slip his parentage, but what will the Alliance do with the son of Darth Vader? Their mistake proves monumental and delivers Luke into the hands of his worst nightmare. Destiny goes into an about turn where there's only one person who can save Luke from the darkside - his father.

C h a p t e r S i x

Palpatine was wrong. There was someone to hear Luke's pleas, and his cries plagued her with nightmares she could never hope to understand the import of.

Sand whisked around her feet and stirred the hem of her farmer's skirt as she stared down at the small pile of bleached rocks that was all that remained of Owen and Beru Lars. Twin suns blistered the air with waves of sweltering heat and the outcropping of rock soaked it up easily. Leia Organa did not. She shifted uneasily, feeling her skin prickling and burning in front of the shallow grave and monument Luke had constructed before joining General Kenobi.

Tatooine; the Dune Sea. Where this mess had really started, where Artoo and Threepio had stumbled from a torched escape pod. They had been here several days now before Leia had gathered the courage to come out to this place, whilst Lando and Chewie continued to monitor for Boba Fett arriving with his bounty. Tatooine to rebellion to Tatooine: full circle.

Soft, mournful currents of sand drifted down to her and she let her gaze rest on the grave for a long while, the homestead in the distance, reclaimed by native farmers, serving as a suitable backdrop. The tears were overwhelming her pride, standing here at the beginning. Or perhaps it was merely the end that had blossomed from here.

She was kneeling at the edge of the pyramidal heap of desert shrapnel, reading the small placard at the head of it, mind registering the words and their importance to the Tatooine farmboy-turned pilot- turned Jedi. .

Owen and Beru Lars.

There was no date, no epitaph. Just names. Apparently for Luke that had spoken volumes.

Her hand toyed with loose sand at it's base and her eyes toyed with the idea of crying. Again. Instead, she reached into her small holdall and removed the scrap of soft material there, laying it in the white dust. The black material sucked up the sunlight and was soon hot to touch as she just stared at it for long seconds, so reluctant to take this final step. Finally embracing the inevitable, she unfolded the corners and laid it out on the ground, looking at the contents, somewhat melancholy. Her fingers traced the outline of the rank insignia for a few moments and she allowed herself to think back to her friend, almost imagining his wide blue eyes. Almost seeing him, backlit by sunshine and heavy velvet drapes. She shook the image from her head, wondering where it had appeared from, sure she had never seen him like that. Tears touched her cheeks unbidden as she closed the material again, sealing away the last part of Luke Skywalker and placing it beneath the placard with a delicate, reluctant sigh.

"I know you would have been proud," she murmured to the dead beneath her feet.

"They would have been outraged."

The ground might have shuddered or she might have trembled; it mattered little which. Her heart froze in her chest, touched by a shard of ice and she couldn't move, frozen with her fingers on the small bundle. Her breath rushed out of her in a strangled cry and she kicked around in the sand, falling clumsily onto her back and trying to both crawl away and stand.

"What... what are you doing here?" Her fingers fumbled at her hip for a nonexistent blaster, still onboard the Falcon along with Lando and Chewie.

Darth Vader approached from the top of the dune, shadow stretching for her. "I am not going to hurt you, stop crawling away," he rumbled, voice dark and heavy.

She tried to gather her wits about herself; instead gathered her dress and stood slowly, considering going for her commlink. Sand grazed her skin as she swiped angrily at the tears on her cheeks, not wanting the Dark Lord to see her like this. Not since... the last time. She shuddered in the heat. His black cloak wove little trails in the sand behind him as he stepped forward and she halted him with a sharp, nervous glare.

"Well?" She brushed sand from her skirt and moved to place the grave between herself and the Dark Lord responsible for her current misery. The black visage stepped down from the dune towards her and Leia's feet threatened to drop her to the ground again in fear.

"What are you doing here?" he countered with no animosity, only sadness, stepping forward until his feet touched the bleached pile of stones. The jet black of his armour was out of place in the sandy wastes, and yet he was strangely also a part of the desert. She shook her head, trying to clear the twisted perception.

Her fingers twitched unhappily for a blaster. "Trying to find some closure. You?"

"Trying to find a beginning," he answered.

She looked up into the black mask that had tainted her nightmares up until very recently before being replaced by something deeper, darker. There was a lump in her throat that was very difficult to swallow past as she kept a steady gaze on her friend's father. Luke's father, at his guardian's grave... and, in his stance, he was clearly troubled. That was not something she was used to seeing on the Dark Lord.
Even through her fear and shock, a small thought recognised that this enigma somehow seemed less terrifying when he had a history as Anakin Skywalker.

"I thought you were out massacring the Alliance," she bit out, but was dismayed by her own lack of animosity. After all, perhaps he was merely here to mourn Luke, much as she was... empathy with Darth Vader? The thought made her sick.

"I was."

"What happened? Too easy?"

He tilted that black-masked head to one side and a ripple of fear rushed through her at recognition of one of Luke's mannerisms. "No, Princess."

"What then?" This new, strangely pensive Dark Lord was making her distinctly uneasy. If he was here to kill her, why not now?

"I heard you were here," he said. Her breath caught in her throat and she skidded back from the grave, sand screening her from him momentarily. When it cleared, he had made no move towards here. "I merely wish to talk."

Her fists clenched and unclenched. "Allright."

There were other options, like screaming or running or attacking, but somehow she wasn't inclined to take them. This was just too un-Vader-like for her.

"You left the Alliance shortly after Luke's death." To her surprise, as he spoke he leant forward over the shallow grave and lifted the fabric she had laid there, opening it and studying it with a regretful sigh. Leia felt her eye's bulge.

"Immediately after... was he really your son?" Had those words really come from her mouth? She scarcely believed she could have voiced that thought.

"Yes." That was pain. It was the first time she had heard it in Vader's voice and the humanity of it was shocking. "Princess, the reports I have are... somewhat sketchy. What happened?" He folded the fabric and replaced it under the plaque; she studied it a moment before answering.

"I..." She gave herself a heartbeat before continuing. "They got scared, he was talking deliriously when we got him out from Bespin." She shot a glance at Vader that truly was hateful. "Something about a secret. Mothma was there, she wanted to know what it was. They drugged him. He told them. There was a meeting, a sham really; they'd already decided. They... tried to convince me they would have a trial for treason."

His questioning gaze made her pause and the air grew cold around her, forcing a shiver through her muscles. A small stone tumbled from the grave to a clattering stop.

"They? Or Mon Mothma?"

Her gasp escaped in a little strangled exclamation. How had he known she was thinking that? Was he inside her head? Her eyes narrowed. "I... it was the Council that agreed-"

"Are you sure?"

She hugged her arms around her waist self-consciously as the cold black eyes of the mask tore through her, before she fetched the dignity and self-confidence of Senator Organa from the deep confines of her empty world and stood up straight. "Mon did seem a little... over-eager," she admitted. The images swirled in her head – Ackbar and Rieekan sitting passively by, not meeting her gaze, and Mon, so unlike the woman she knew, eyes shining in hatred, holding her back as the shuttle exploded.

"I see..." Oh, that was cold. That was so cold. Somehow, she almost pitied Mothma for her mistake now. Somehow, she knew the price was going to be very high indeed.

She watched Vader's fist curl in barely contained anger and hatred and carried on, finally speaking the truth she knew - Mon, not the Council, was responsible. "I knew she planned no such thing but I... I didn't expect her to move so fast!" She knew she was pleading with both herself and The Father not to blame her, but she continued, "I was trying to contact friends, trying to get help to get him away and then... then they just put him on a shuttle and blew it up."

Her voice had trailed to hoarse whisper and Vader was leaning intently forwards. "You're certain the shuttle was destroyed?"

Leia looked up sharply and, unknowingly, took a step around the grave head to face Vader, Destiny and wonderment cheering her on. "I saw it!" she growled.

"Then I am wrong." There was a queer sadness in that voice, resignation almost, and it made her heart crumple.

"Wrong...?"

He looked up at her and waved a gloved hand through the air. "I had... hoped the rumours were false."

She shook her head sadly, "Why?" The word was quiet, so quiet, it whispered on the warm Tatooine winds and with his prolonged silence, she thought perhaps he hadn't heard her. But he had.

"He's died before, and I felt it. You both died. This time... I felt nothing," he said, then he looked up as she inhaled sharply.

"What? When?" The idea - it was ridiculous, and yet something whispered in her that it was nothing more than the truth. There was more silence, more ominous silence as still as a fresh corpse.

"Mimban."

She paled, memories flooding, instinctively touching her cheek to where the vanished scars had been from her duel with Vader, stepping hurriedly backwards at the dark memories of a particularly cold Darth Vader beating her and Luke to small tattered corpses in a dusty, crumpled temple. Mimban. "No... we can't have died. That's not possible."

"It is. Luke healed you, and himself, somehow. Or did you think your injuries disappeared into mere nightmares?"

She flinched at that word – nightmares – and he saw it. The hand stretched out invitingly for her, maybe even to offer her some support, but before he could question her, she growled at him in her deepest, duskiest voice. "You...! Some father. You beat him; tried to kill him! Did kill him, and me – I remember; it was so bright! " The memories pushed through more brilliant than the Tatooine sunshine and she pulled herself away from them, still wondering but unwilling to look at them. "Why?"

He sighed and it whispered up with the heat waves. "That was not me."

She shook, "Had a bout of insanity, did we?" Sarcasm aimed at a Dark Lord; that was tempting fate.

He barely acknowledged it. "No. It was not me. Palpatine was... experimenting with clone technology. I think he thought it a perverse irony to clone me and then torture the clones until they had to be placed inside suits such as this. They went a little... crazy. And they had no knowledge that I was once Anakin Skywalker. When I found out I killed them all. Except one Palpatine already had out on a mission. To Mimban. So the clone you encountered, and killed, did not know Luke was my son." Leia was looking unconvinced. "I have a mechanical right hand, Princess. I lost it after Luke blew up the Death Star, as punishment. The clone Luke killed had a flesh hand. Did he tell you that?"

Leia gaped at the Dark Lord, at the revelation. "Yes..." She closed her eyes. "And you... you felt Luke die after the duel?"

"Yes... and you. It was... disturbing. If brief," he admitted, and Leia almost had the insane urge to offer a hand in comfort. The idea mocked her as she reopened her eyes.

"And you didn't feel that this time?"

"No."

"But you can't... sense him now?"

The answer was a long time coming, "No."

They stood silent for several minutes. Leia watched the sand churn at the graves feet. "Perhaps it was because he was unconscious."

"I doubt that."

She stared up into the black mask that conveyed nothing of the emotion in his voice; emotion he was trying hard to conceal. "If you've... hoped this all along, why haven't you been out looking for him all along?"

The stories she'd had over the past two weeks... they were chilling. Vader in a rage was deadly, and not a quick, neat death either. The man in front of her though was not shaking with rage, was not demanding her blood for failing his son. He was... despondent. She might have said afraid even, but she had never known Darth Vader to know fear.

"I was... consumed. I felt a loss in connection, and with the stories... I was a little angry."

'A little...'? That was a liberal use of the word. The silence continued until she sighed. "Is it... possible? I saw the shuttle destroyed." The words were dry and painful.

"I ask again; are you certain?"

She flinched at the words, taking a step backwards before she could stop herself, remembering those words from her time spent in his company aboard the Death Star. Her heart beat wildly.

"I... thought so." She was no longer sure. Maybe her mind was just being messed up by those weird, macabre nightmares.

"Did they retrieve bodies?" Was that... hope?

"I doubt they would bother," she admitted. Could it be possible... could she allow herself hope too? The sorrowful blue eyes from her nightmares appeared to plead with her to try.

The eager steps of Darth Vader brought him up to her and she didn't flinch. "Princess, you seem to have a preoccupation with nightmares."

Her head snapped upwards, but as she tried to move backwards from him, his hand closed around her arm and held her there. There was something intent in his stance, something desperate. "Get out of my head!" she snarled.

"Well?" His voice was mesmerising.

"I... I've been having dreams..." She glowered, trying to pull her arm free, trying to stop fresh tears and wishing for strength. All she got were some pretty bruises.

"Of...?"

She yanked hard on her arm. "They're none of your business, Vader!"

He sighed and shook his head, "And you were being so co-operative... Princess, it may be important. You... heard Luke on Bespin didn't you? Do you hear him now?" His voice pleaded with her to confirm it.

She froze and knew he had his answer. Yes she heard Luke; heard him screaming for someone to come to his aid. Guttural cries of lost hope. But they were only nightmares... weren't they? "Yes..."

The rhythmic hiss of the respirator stopped and she looked up startled. "I'm missing something here.... something important..." he murmured.

The uneasy silence was interrupted by the sound of feet skidding in the sand a strangled cry of surprise. Dark Lord and Princess turned to the new arrivals.

"Leia! Fett's here! He -"

Lando shut up very abruptly when he spotted the dark figure looming over her. Chewie, bowcaster aiming, snarled at Leia to get out of the way. She couldn't even if she'd been willing to.

"Stop and she comes to no harm." Vader growled, but to Leia there seemed to be less menace there than she had expected. Chewie faltered but didn't drop the weapon.

She barely even heard the exchanged threats, her mind bursting with confusion and indecision. Han! He was here! Fett was here! And the man that had taken him from had his hand clamped firmly around her arm. She felt desperate, needing to escape, needing to rush after Fett. And... and leave Vader here, after discovering a faint little sliver of hope she had thought lost? The idea was ludicrous. But... Han...

The hot wind stirring sand around their feet seemed to whispering at her to make a decision, and she knew it was right. If she chose wrong, they would all pay dearly. But... there was something different about Vader. Perhaps it was just her perception of him as Luke's father. Or perhaps it was something more, something of that infamous Skywalker heart. Regardless, she had to choose now: oppose Vader and go after Han. Or go with Vader on the slim, wild hope Luke was still out there. Both made her heart crumble like the sand under their feet. But maybe... maybe she could do both...

Decision made, she whirled to her two companions. "Stop! Chewie!" she called, and the wookiee faltered some more. She turned to Luke's father, sighing in resignation.

"I want to find Luke, but I cannot abandon Han."

He never moved, and probably he had expected just this. "I see."

She fought the compulsion to fight the Sith and said something she could never have expected to pass her lips. Something which bound these two together, forming a truce based solely on trust. "If you help me get Han out, I'll help you find Luke," she implored.

There it was. Co-operation, alliance, trust. Stars, it made her stomach turn. But it also felt like the right thing to do.

Chewie and Lando, bare metres from them, both inhaled sharply at her words, although they probably didn't understand their true import for Leia Organa, staunch soldier against anything and everything Vader stood for. Except that he now stood for Luke, and she couldn't fight him.

The mask considered her and she felt hope ripple down her arms beneath black-gloved fingers. "And if I refuse?"

"I don't think Chewie will hold out much longer." She smiled sweetly. He chuckled with scorn – actually chuckled – and released her.

"It isn't wise to upset a wookiee, although I think I could handle him," he said, bass tones rumbling. "Very well, but you must tell me: what do these nightmares show you?"

The mention of them; it sent her stomach into tight little corkscrews. He looked visibly shaken as she paled at the memories, bile rising in her throat as Lando and Chewie approached cautiously, not understanding the pact made between the enemies but honouring Leia's decision.

"You... you don't want to know." The words were caustic.

Vader leaned in closer and this time his voice definitely trembled with fear and pain at what she might say. Fear for his son, she realised. Human, mortal fear. "Tell me..."

"Pain, darkness. And..."

He looked at her and suddenly her world consisted only of herself, her nemesis and her nightmares. "Death."