Luke's screams had drawn Vader out of his meditation.

"Luke?"

He put his mask and helmet on and left his pod. Luke had finally returned to his own room and was sleeping there again, presumably anyway. Vader left his room, and in the hall he heard the rumble of thunder and saw lightning flash through the windows, briefly lighting up the entire second floor of the palace. He crossed over to Luke's room, slid the door open and walked in. Thunder crashed overhead and it was met with familiar, pained screams coming from...under the bed.

"Luke."

Vader got down on one knee, reached under the bed, grabbed Luke's arm and pulled him out to see him. He'd assumed Luke was having a nightmare, but to his horror, Luke's eyes were wide open as he continued screaming and his whole body was writhing and seizing.

The Force lightning. It suddenly hit Vader. The storm had caused Luke to flashback to the Death Star when Palpatine electrocuted him. That's where he'd heard the screams before.

"Oh Luke..."

The boy's body was responding to the storm just like he was being tortured all over again, every booming crash of thunder and Luke's body would go rigid, then limp, he'd try curling into a ball only to have his whole body jerkily stretch out to its full length, all the while he screamed as if he were in horrific pain.

Vader sat on the floor against Luke's bed and pulled the boy up against him so Luke's back was to his chest plate. He tightly wrapped his durasteel arms around Luke's torso to try and restrain him so he didn't lash out and hurt himself. He felt every tremor running through Luke's body as it automatically responded to the thunder and lightning as if Palpatine were slowly killing him all over again. Luke whimpered and moaned before a particularly violent spasm made his whole body jerk and he screamed in pain. As Vader held his son as immobile as possible, he tried to talk Luke through it, reassuring the boy that it was all over and he was safe now, for all the good that seemed to do, but he needed to know that Luke knew it too.

The seizures continued for about an hour until the storm finally subsided, by which time Luke was physically and emotionally exhausted, he didn't have the strength to do anything except turn his head to lean against his father, and weakly dry-sob. Vader readjusted his hold so he was hugging Luke instead of just restraining him, and told him, "It's all right, Luke, it's over now, you're all right."

Luke moaned and moved in his father's hold and rested his head on Vader's armored shoulder as he breathed raggedly, trying to calm down.

Yet another reminder just how much he had failed his son, how much Luke had to suffer for his own weakness.

"Luke..."

The former dark lord lowered his head to better look at his son at the same time Luke raised his head to look at him and there was a blunt sound of contact as the grille of Vader's mouthpiece hit Luke in the nose. The young blonde clasped both hands over his nose and yelped in pain.

"I'm sorry," Vader told him as he tried to get Luke to lower his hands to see the damage for himself, but the boy resisted, muffled yelps still escaping him. "I'm sorry."

A different sound emerged from Luke's mouth but it was too muffled for Vader to determine what it was. Then it happened again, and again, and he realized Luke was laughing, each time it was followed by another grunt of pain, but he was laughing at the situation. In spite of himself, Vader found himself laughing as well.

"Ouch!"

"It doesn't appear to be broken," Vader concluded as he drew his gloved fingers away from Luke's bruised nose.

"I guess there's that anyway," Luke nasally replied.

"I am sorry."

"It's alright, Father."

The only good thing about this whole comedy of errors was it had served to break up the tension following Luke's flashback. Outside the storm had died down and was long forgotten.

"Do you think you can go back to sleep now?"

Luke looked into the red lenses and asked, "Can I stay with you?"

Vader was silent for a few seconds before answering, "Of course."

Luke felt a particularly long breath enter his body and work its way back out, it was the first clue he had that he had been asleep and was now awake. He felt content, safe, calm, but not particularly comfortable.

"Hmm, Father?" he groggily called out before his eyes actually opened.

Maybe he'd heard the mechanized breathing of his father's respirator before, but it didn't register until now. Luke opened his eyes and realized he was laying on the bed in his father's room, but something didn't seem right. He looked down and saw the reason for that was a pair of durasteel legs sticking out from under his ribs.

"Huh?"

Luke half turned and realized Vader was sitting on the edge of the bed, with Luke sprawled across his knees.

"Father?" Luke pressed his palms into the mattress to push himself up. "What's going on?"

"It's morning," his father said in lieu of an answer. "How are you feeling?"

A little sore for obvious reasons, but other than that...

"I'm fine," he answered.

Luke tried again to reach out to Han through the Force. He'd wanted to try Leia but it was too risky, now that she knew the truth, that she was his sister, she had the Force too, no, Han was a safer target because he wouldn't know what was going on and he'd have no way of trying to answer Luke.

There were no words, no actual coherent thoughts, all Luke felt was a fog of depression. Luke decided to try something else, and focused all his attention on reaching through the Force to pick up on Chewbacca's thoughts. Granted he wasn't sure if the Force would enable him to actually interpret whatever the wookiee was thinking, but he could probably at least get a general reading off Chewie's emotions.

For the longest time there was nothing and he wasn't sure the idea was going to work at all, then, he felt something. He heard something as well, a long, mournful howl.

That seemed to answer Luke's question. Whatever was going on with his friends, it wasn't good. He wondered how much longer they'd have to stay here before he could go back and let them know he wasn't dead. Though he still wasn't looking forward to that discussion, how could he even explain it?

Pushing that thought to the back of his mind, or trying to, Luke resumed the work on his new light saber in the privacy of his workshop.

There was another thunderstorm the next night. At least this one started earlier in the evening so it didn't catch Luke off guard. He pulled back the curtain and stared out into the black night, listening to the pouring rain beating down outside, heard the wind battering against the outer palace wall, lightning made everything blinding white for a second, followed by several thunderheads exploding on top of one another like a series of concussion missiles.

"Get away from that window," his father said as he entered the room.

Luke all but jumped as he turned to look at his father.

"Is it dangerous?" he asked.

"Let's just say it's not preferred," Vader told him.

Luke nodded silently in understanding.

The young Jedi felt beside himself. He'd been tinkering in his workshop all day, he wasn't tired enough to go to sleep, and he didn't feel like disappearing to his room. Despite the progress the two of them had made to actually talk with one another and bond, it didn't feel to Luke like they had much to discuss tonight. He looked around the room, he wasn't sure what this one was supposed to be. There were a few antique shelves built into the walls and a few ancient books half lined up, half slumped at an angle, resting on them. Luke inched along one of the shelves and leaned his head in as close as possible to the spines of the antique non-holo books, the titles were half eroded from time. He picked one up and opened the cover, the pages were still intact, as was the printing. He laid on the floor on his stomach and calmly read through it while the thunder still rumbled and crashed outside and the rain continued to beat down in droves.

Vader seated himself on an ancient wrought durasteel couch in the room and looked at Luke. There was something very ironic to all of this. This is how he would've imagined his life 20 years ago turning out, a quiet night at home, Luke playing on the floor staying close to him. Deep past his chest plate, his heart ached for how much they had all lost, because he had allowed Palpatine to deceive him, and it had cost him everything. It was only because of Obi-Wan, regardless of how much Vader still hated the man and wished he could kill him again, that he'd had any chance at redemption, had any chance to finally find his son and to know him.

He got lost in his own thoughts for a while, and when he finally focused on the here and now again, he saw Luke had fallen asleep on the floor, his arms folded under his head, the book lay open a few inches from him. Vader stood up, stepped over to Luke, crouched down to lift the boy up in his arms, and carried Luke upstairs and put him to bed in his own room. The storm continued to brew outside but it wasn't near as loud as the previous one, he trusted, hoped, that Luke would sleep through it tonight.

Luke was half asleep, but what pulled him more to the side of awake was the distressed sounds of a woman crying.

"Leia?" he called out in his sleep, "Leia, what's wrong?"

Luke opened his eyes and sat up and found himself in his bedroom. It took him a minute to remember that Leia wasn't here, Leia was several systems away...but he would've sworn he'd heard her.

"Leia?"

More alert now, Luke tried reaching through the Force to find out if it had just been a nightmare, or if something was really going on with his sister.

A wave of melancholy hit him like a a force field. It was like nothing he'd ever experienced before, it was almost paralyzing.

"Leia?"

Luke felt physically sick, his head was spinning, his heart was racing, his stomach was pulsing, he cut off contact right before it felt like he was going to have a seizure. He spent several minutes laying on his bed writhing in pain and disorientation and waiting for the feeling to wear off.