Chapter 19

The hatch opened and Han Solo began to disembark. Obi Wan stayed in the starfighter to contain Luke while Anakin opened the glass globe and jumped out to go face Han.

"Oh, hello, Captain Solo, what brings you here?" Anakin greeted him with a nervous smile.

Han looked surprised, raising his eyebrows and putting his open hand to his chest. "How do you know me? Are my heroics now that famous that everyone knows my face? You've never seen me before, have you?"

For a moment, Anakin realized that Han didn't know who he was, and wanted to leave it that way. Being anonymous was great. But then he knew that with Luke in tow, and having to deal with him and Leia, the truth would surely come out. Might as well face up to it now. It took a lot of courage, but he had it in him. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. We have met, in, Bespin. I'm afraid I wasn't treating you very well. I regret to say, I ordered you frozen in carbonite."

Now Han was really thrown for a loss. "That was Darth Vader. Are YOU Darth Vader?"

Anakin blushed. "I used to be. Please forgive me, I am a changed man. Please, call me Anakin. Anakin Skywalker."

Now Leia emerged from the Falcon. She stood frozen in the opening, her arms outstretched at her side, her mouth gaping. "Anakin Skywalker? My FATHER?" Anakin looked up at his daughter and smiled, but he was afraid of her reaction. 'That's my daughter, Padme's daughter!' He thought as he scanned every inch of her face, thinking how much she reminded him of her mother, and how he should have thought of that when he first saw her. But then, he had been so consumed by evil as Darth Vader his feelings did not allow it. He had hurt so much he did not allow himself to feel. How much he regretted that! How badly he wanted to run to her, to touch her, to look at her, apologize to her, and bond with her. He was worried if she would readily accept him. All he could do was show her love and kindness and hope the rest found its way.

"Yes." He said honestly. "It's me, Anakin Skywalker, your father."

She had experienced a lot lately, but this was too much. "How is that possible?" She wondered out loud. She had just left Coruscant where he had been on his way to Mustafar. And he spoke of being Darth Vader? What was going on?

Anakin laughed in his old shy way, looking down with the little smile. "I was Darth Vader. But Luke killed Palpatine, and we escaped from the Death Star to my home in Coruscant."

"I know that, I sensed it."

"Good girl! We'll make a Jedi of you yet."

"But, why- do you look like you did, healthy and young? I thought you- weren't you, burned, and..." Anakin took a few moments to fill her in on his miraculous healing and all the recent events, how he had been healed with cloning techiques using youthful skin donations from Luke.. She was shocked, but not upset. She had a bombshell of her own and was about to drop it.She stared at him, her father, a father she'd never had, and had only known as a monster in the worst of times. This was too hard. She wanted to hate him, but having failed to save him in the past, she was actually relieved to see that if he was here and now that he was changed, and not like Darth Vader. She had an idea. If he were truly changed, pehaps he could stop himself on Mustafar! She didn't mention it yet. When Anakin asked her where she had been all that time after the Battle of Endor, she had quite a tale of her own to tell. But she told them there was no time, don't ask questions now, she would explain all on the way to Mustafar.

"MUSTAFAR?" Anakin screamed. He was never going back there again. "WHY Mustafar?"

Leia looked directly into his eyes and spilled the beans. "We've been back in time, father. We tried to stop what happened when you turned, but it didn't work and now we are desperate. If we hurry, there may still be a chance..."

Anakin's face was like a ghost as his enormous wide blue eyes stared at her, searching for some answer he hoped to hear. "A chance, for what?"

"To stop what happened. To save my mother."

At her words, Anakin's heart and mind raced out of control. A CHANCE TO SAVE PADME! Could this be real? He ran up and hugged Leia. She did not resist his affection but did not immediately return it. "You can take me to her, while she lived?"

Leia nodded. "Yes, father. I've been to the past, I've seen her, spoken to her. Now we're going back!"

Anakin almost passed out. Regaining his composure, Anakin motioned for Obi Wan to bring Luke, then hurried on board the Falcon. This was going to be a strange journey and and even stranger adventure!

Not having time or space for the starfighter, or the stolen TIE fighter, everyone climbed aboard the time travel ready Falcon and Han punched it out of the steamy Tattooine atmosphere. On board, Luke was carried by Anakin and placed on the old cot he layed on when he got his hand cut off after dueling Darth Vader in Bespin. He was barely conscious, and not in a good mood. Obi Wan's ghost came along, but did not show himself yet. Leia, seeing Anakin carrying Luke, went running to him. "Luke, what happened?" She said. His eyes fluttered open and tried to focus on her.

"Leia." he said in weak voice. "My shoulder, help me."

She moved his hand from the wound and looked at it. "Father tried to kill me." He whispered. Leia was at first furious and wanting to toss Anakin into outer space. But then he came through the doorway.

"That's because he tried to kill me. He has turned to the dark side."

Now she looked back at Luke with disapproval. 'Luke? The dark side? No way. Could he?'

"Search your feelings, Leia, you will know it to be true." Spoke Obi Wan's spirit. Everyone but Han could see him, including her. She had another few stunned moments as she met the force spirit of Obi Wan Kenobi. Things were getting stranger and stranger, but not much shocked her anymore. They all stood over Luke, waiting to see how he would react next. He was weakend, and would not raise a fuss in front of Han and Leia, even at his worst. He lay there, defeated and silent, barely awake. She took a few moments to clean and bandage his wound, and noticed something else on the back of his shoulder, just under the skin. If the lightsaber wound had not opened it, no one would ever have detected it.

"What's this?" She asked. "There's something wrong with your back..."

Luke managed to speak up "must be where they took that chunk out of me to regrow skin to heal Father."

Anakin walked over and looked at it. "No, that's not the same spot." He pointed to the place where the specimen was taken. "What IS that?" He wondered along with Leia. They wished they had a droid on board, but in their haste, Han and Leia had abandoned them, along with Chewy, on the Kashyyk of the past. Leia carefully slid an instrument under Luke's skin. He screamed in pain. Leia gasped. It was some kind of implant! She ran a check on it with the Falcon's computer system. It came back as a known substance, something used as a time controlled drug to slowly seep into a person's skin at intervals, affecting their mind! A chill went down her spine. Someone was using Luke! But who, and why?

Anakin came over and examined the now removed implant. "I've seen these before, the empire used them on people. Because Luke is a Jedi, his mind is too strong to be controlled, so they had to put it in his body and let it work its way through his system that way. This makes perfect sense! Though Luke was leaning to the dark side from the moment he killed the Emperor, he was never pure evil until..." he stopped talking and searched his memory, then resumed. "until after he took me home from the hospital!" He slammed one fist into the other. "There must be a droid still loyal to the empire working there, and he did this to Luke when he went in to donate tissue! Only XC-454 worked on me, and he is neutral, so I didn't get one. That explains it all! I am so relieved my son isn't really as evil as I thought. I didn't think Luke would put out my eyes and try to kill me. This took him over the brink and used his conflict over the dark side to send him too far in the wrong direction. When we get back, I will find that droid and destroy him myself. Then we will find out if he did this to anyone else, find them, and remove the implants."

Leia looked shocked at her father. He was a good man. He had really changed inside, but he looked just like the Anakin she had seen on the balcony with Padme. This was strange, but good. Of her own free will, she embraced him. He hugged her back, and they both wept. Anakin apologized for all the wrong he had done to her as Vader, and promised to continue to do anything he could to make things right. Luke, his implant removed, had fallen unconcious, but was alive and well. They left him to rest, hoping when he awoke, the old Luke Skywalker would be back.Or would he?

Obi Wan was pleased. He felt in the force Luke was going to be all right now. "Anakin, how did we not sense this?" He did ask. "It was not a something living, or eternal, not of the force. But we did sense the dark side in him, and it was there, I know it, you know I know it well. He had it in him in our duel on the Death Star. He had it in him when I brought him home, and it worried me. But he did get steadily worse and more evil as that thing released the drug into him. It took him over the edge. But we saved him, old friend, we found him and saved him. Who knows what would have become of him? Kenobi and Skywalker brought him back. We saved him from himself, and the galaxy from him as well. It was the lightsaber wound that exposed it. The force was telling us something." He sighed, closing his eyes and leaning against the doorway to rest. "Ah, I feel better now." It had been a long day.

All was quiet on the ship as it headed toward its mission ahead. Anakin found Obi Wan and stood with him, his presence was soothing and comforting. Thoughts of going to Mustafar swirled in his mind. "Obi Wan, what do you make of this time travel? Will we really be able to stop events of the past?" He did not answer. He wasn't even sure if he, as a spirit, could travel backward in time by spacecraft. He knew much of life, and the force, but this was going to be a new, though surely useful, experience for even him. The force was eternal, but physical time travel, this was yet to be explored.

Anakin walked over to the viewport and stared out at the stars as he always had as Darth Vader. "Oh Padme" he thought to himself as he gazed into the depths of space. "If there's any way to save you now, there's nothing I wouldn't do. I'm coming, my love."