The winds were blowing hard all night and still the next morning when Luke got up. In the time they'd been on Belladoom he'd observed the weather patterns enough to know it got warm in the day, then cooled down at night. Today however, it was as warm when the sun first came up, as it had been when it went down the night before. He stayed busy most of the morning tinkering in his workshop, by the afternoon he decided to go outside and explore the wooded area behind the castle. It had gotten hot, it must've gone up 20 degrees from that morning, and the wind was still blowing hard enough it actually howled, sometimes it whistled. Luke looked up to the sky and saw a wall of dark clouds off in the distance that were coming that way, and as they got closer he saw that some of the clouds were rotating. Something in the Force was telling him there was danger involved and he should head inside, but he was just too fascinated to break away from this unusual sight. He'd never seen weather like this at home on Tatooine, or for that matter anywhere the Rebels had set up base over the years. It was just...hypnotizing, he just stood there and gazed up at the rapidly moving, rapidly changing clouds, watching them, waiting to see what happened next.

Soon, the whole sky was blacked out and it looked like it was night, and it started to rain. There was a rumble of thunder from somewhere as well. Suddenly Luke felt strange, uneasy. The air had changed, the pressure. The temperature was starting to drop, and very quickly the rain started coming down harder. He turned to head back to the palace.

Then suddenly, it was like a switch was flipped. A deafening wind came out of nowhere and blew with enough force that it nearly knocked Luke off his feet, he felt his body struggling to remain upright, and almost as quickly as that had happened, the rain beat down harder and faster than anything Luke had ever known before. He made a shrieking gasp as he felt the wind knocked out of him by the freezing cold water that felt like hundreds of pounds of it was pelting him per second. He tried to keep running for home, but the combined wind and rain proved to be too much and he was knocked to the ground. He fell face first into a deep mud puddle and struggled to get out. This was worse than the swamp on Dagobah. The wind howled even louder now and Luke thought his eardrums would burst from the noise, he covered his ears and kept his head down near the water as he waited, hoping this was a short lived storm and it would break at least long enough for him to get up and get to the palace.

Instead, if it were even possible, the wind blew harder, the rain poured down faster, heavier, colder, Luke could hardly even breathe, he was only faintly aware of the high pitched gasping sounds coming out of him as he felt the puddle starting to rise.

"LUKE!"

For a split-second he thought he was hearing things and had finally lost his mind. Then he saw a black boot near his face and realized it was his father. He felt a durasteel hand grab him by the arm and jerk him to his feet, the wind tried to knock him back down, but Vader maintained a death grip on him and kept him upright.

"Father!" Luke barely had the breath in him for that single word, the rain was beating down hard enough he could about drown standing up.

He felt another hand pressing on the back of his head. He heard his father's deep booming voice, "Keep your head down," and the next thing Luke was aware of was he was being pulled along through the storm.

The wind blew hard enough Luke couldn't keep his eyes open, not that it mattered, the rain was pouring down too thick for him to even see. He felt himself press his face against his father's chest plate to partially shield him. He felt his legs moving under him but it didn't feel to him like they were actually getting anywhere. It felt to him like the storm could actually be strong enough to carry them both away and send them flying through the air. Luke tried to breathe, every single inhale or exhale existed as a high pitched gasp, it was just too much, too much wind, too much rain, too much freezing cold, they were never going to get home.

Luke's eyes shot open as another thought occurred to him.

"Father!"

"Keep your head down!" Vader ordered him as he continued dragging Luke through the woods.

Luke chanced opening his eyes every few seconds to try and get any bearing on where they were. Finally he saw blurred lights, windows in the palace, they'd reached it, but they still had to get to the door. Vader pulled Luke along until he could hear the doors open, and they made it through the threshold, and suddenly everything was quiet, and still.

Luke rubbed the water out of his eyes and gasped and heaved trying to catch his breath. He was soaked clear through the bone, it was like he'd been tossed in a lake in all his clothes, which by now had to have weighed 30 pounds at least. Water spilled all over the floor as he stood there, trying to get his bearings straight. He'd just barely caught his breath when he turned and saw his father's life support suit was also soaking wet. That was what had struck terror into the young Jedi's heart as they trekked through the storm.

"Father! Your suit-"

Vader however didn't seem fazed, and merely pointed out, "It wouldn't be very effective if it wasn't waterproof, would it?"

Luke hadn't even thought about it. All he knew was they had never encountered Vader in any system where it rained, he'd never seen his father get wet. It was just a natural assumption with all the circuitry involved, it couldn't sustain contact with water.

Through the walls of the palace Luke could hear the winds continuing to howl and heard the rain beat against the windows.

"Are we safe here?" Luke never had to consider that question pertaining to weather before, but now he was terrified.

Vader nodded. "This palace has withstood storms far more damaging than this."

Luke wasn't sure he even wanted to know how his father knew that.

"We are safe," Vader assured him. "Go dry off and change your clothes."

Luke didn't need to be told twice. He went up to his room, water squishing under his boots with every step he took, once upstairs he dropped his clothes on the floor with a wet and pronounced thud, then had to use two towels from the fresher to dry off enough he was just damp before putting on another set of clothes.

However long he'd been out in the storm had been enough to chill him clear through, he couldn't get warm so he wrapped himself up in the blanket from his bed as he ran his hand across his face as he considered the irony. The last Jedi, who'd blown up the first Death Star, had redeemed the powerful Darth Vader to his original Jedi identity Anakin Skywalker, gone on all these death defying missions...and he nearly gets killed by a rainstorm. He was almost glad Leia and the others couldn't see him now, it was pathetic. Granted if they had to be out in that same storm, they wouldn't think so, still...

"Luke?" Vader's voice was muffled through the door.

"Come in," Luke responded.

The door whooshed open and Vader entered.

"How are you feeling?"

Luke nodded uncertainly. "Better...thank you for coming to get me...I really thought I was going to die out there."

"It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility," Vader pointed out.

Luke knew it, but somehow hearing his father confirm it was just too much. He stepped over to his father and put his arms around him, clinging to him like a little kid, but he didn't care. After the past couple weeks his nerves had just about had all they could take.

"Father, can I stay with you tonight?"

Aside from his modulated breathing there was an awkward silence that filled the room. Luke couldn't quite reach through to his father's thoughts through their bond, but he tried again. "Please, can I just stay in your room? I can't stay here alone another night, it's just too empty, it's too much..."

He felt a gloved hand patting his arm just under the shoulder.

"We will figure something out," Vader said for an answer.

Vader had his mask and helmet reattached and exited his meditation pod. He stepped out into the master bedchamber and stopped at the large double bed that rested several feet away from his pod. Luke was stretched out on his stomach with his arms folded under his head. For some reason the boy was intent on laying across it the wrong way so his head rested at the foot of the bed and his feet were at the top. Vader pointed a finger towards the bed and the pillow levitated off the top and floated down to the bottom, Vader lightly raised Luke's head enough for it to slip in under him, then adjusted his aim to make the top sheet jump up and drape over Luke's body. As close as he'd get to tucking the boy in without it waking Luke up.

Luke had spent the last few nights in Vader's room. The former dark lord wasn't sure exactly how he felt about it, though he supposed he should be grateful at least Luke seemed able to sleep here without tunneling under the bed. He knew none of this had been easy on his son, and he knew Luke was dealing with everything the only way he knew how to, still he worried about how his son was fairing, but he kept his opinions to himself, as much of the damage as he was personally responsible for, the last thing Luke needed was any advice from his father.

Once the storm had cleared, Luke returned to the woods and saw that several trees had fallen victim to the severe winds. Some were split clear down the middle, the tops of several had fallen to the ground, a few were nearly ripped out of the ground completely. The grass was discolored and laying flat from being whipped down by the gale forces. This was a beautiful place, and for the most part it still was, but it was a strange concept to the young Jedi that so much damage could've been caused just by a passing storm. He retraced his steps to the ravine where the ground had been split open. Nearing the edge, he stopped there and crouched down to see down below. No further damage had been done there, and the kyber crystal were all still firmly in place.

Luke wandered back through the woods and looked at the tall, mammoth trees that were now shredded into ruins, and he thought for a minute, and he decided to try something. Using the Force, as he'd learned from Yoda to levitate his X-wing, he levitated the trees off the ground, the ones that still clung to the soil by the base were lifted clear out to the roots and hung in the air. One by one Luke dropped them in a clearing, one on top of the other. The broken pieces that had been split in half or torn off the tops also rose into the air and joined the trees that had been removed fully intact. Once they were all piled together, Luke pointed an index finger at the heap, and a small spark of Force lightning shot out from his fingertip, hit the fallen trees, a spark ignited and the whole thing went up in a massive bonfire. Luke stood there in awe and silent wonder and just watched it burn. He watched the flames grow and dance, heard the occasional crackle and pop of the wood, it was even more hypnotic than the storm clouds had been. It gave Luke a strange feeling, he felt nothing but he also simultaneously felt a small sensation of accomplishment.

When the trees had burnt to shriveled shells of what they once were, and the flames had nowhere to go but to touch the dirt ground, the fire finally died out. Luke turned and looked at the woods. Without the maimed trees amid the ones that still stood tall and proud, it was once again a very beautiful place. But now Luke felt hollow taking in the vast beauty of the planet's nature. He felt numbed to it. There was just so much to think about, and try to find answers for, answers that wouldn't come to him, and there was no one he could talk to about any of it.