The birds screamed in their cage and Vader snarled back. They were lucky he hadn't skewered them yet.
"Be silent! Before I silence you permanently."
The yellow one—Threepio, if he remembered correctly, that was the one that used to be Threepio—backed away, while Artoo barrelled forwards to nip at his fingers. He was puffed up bigger than a croquet ball and twice as furious. Vader had no patience for his insipid cheeping.
But Threepio could speak—somewhat. "Birds! Birds! Permanently!" he screeched. "You! You! Birds. Permanently!"
Vader drew out his dagger to threaten them, but hesitated. Watched Artoo's distinctive glare, recognisable even as an avian.
He put the dagger back, shrugged off his cape, and threw it over the cage. They squawked their displeasure at the lack of light, but he gestured at his troopers and they hauled it into the wagon.
Why he'd bothered going into the nearest town and buying the cage was beyond him. Why he hadn't just let them go, like the useless, foolish birds they were. Why he couldn't… Why…
He felt the way he did after seeing Padmé, but without the buzz of happiness she always elicited. He scowled.
"We ride within the hour," he commanded.
"Sir, the men haven't eaten yet," Piett responded, though he'd nodded at the order.
"Then feed them. And feed the birds while you're at it, I don't want them dead just yet." He hated himself the moment the words exited his mouth.
Piett eyed the cage and the cacophony therein. "And what should I feed them, sir?"
"What do you have?"
"The men have been eating the standard rations, we restocked in Theed, and the wild berries around here are proving particularly popular—"
"Give them berries. I don't care." He waved his hand. "But we ride within the hour."
"And where do we ride?"
"After the boy!"
Piett hesitated. He'd clearly seen the fire. He knew that most of their maps had been destroyed in it; they were essentially marching ahead blind, not knowing the terrain. "We are tracking him, then? I'll get the scouts on it."
Vader had been reckless, enchanting his sword around such flammable information. But the boy had been sentimental, and that had been his downfall.
"No," he said. He reached into his pocked, and pulled out a charred, burnt piece of parchment. He unfolded it, scowling at the hole in the middle… but it was still legible. After he wiped it down, much of Naboo and Rodia could still be viewed, though Coruscant was a gaping hole in the centre and the edges of the world had been seared away.
But the Codex was still in Naboo. It was still in the world that mattered. He could see that bloodspot moving north, and he intended to hunt it to the bitter end.
"Forget the hour," Vader said, and pocketed the map again. "We ride now."
Luke had never travelled alone.
It was horrible. His friends were ghosts on his shoulder; he kept turning to let Artoo smell those yellow flowers he liked, or let Threepio stretch his wings, but there was no one there. He'd left them behind.
Not for long. Not for long.
Ben's safehouse was about a day's trek away, and he should get there by tomorrow at noon. With Vader off his tail for the first time in nearly two years, unbound by any companions who might have different needs and wants to him, he didn't know what to do with his questionable freedom.
What he did, after six hours of walking alone, was cry.
Leia and Ahsoka had stolen some of Vader's horses to get them to Alderaan swiftly. But Luke hadn't wanted to ride. He liked walking, and with so much of Naboo's economy dependent on agriculture and the transport of perishable goods, even their most rundown roads were beautifully paved. And he didn't want to have to deal with an unknown lifeform when he didn't even know how to deal with himself.
But his feet hurt. His heart hurt. He was carrying his pack on his back like a mule, and it held all his worldly possessions. He even still had the food he'd bought in Little Corel for Artoo and Threepio. He wouldn't be throwing that away—it would be needed after he saved them.
How, exactly, he would do that, he didn't know. He'd broken into Vader's camp once. He would study Ben's spare magic books and loot his resources, but unless there was a miracle waiting to be discovered, Vader would catch him.
Maybe getting himself caught would help. Maybe that could get him close to his friends. Maybe…
He set up camp that night, in the rain. Despite his exhaustion, he didn't sleep very much at all.
The next morning, he woke with the dawn. Despite the dried tears crusting his cheeks, he got up, shivered in the dewy cold, and washed his face in the stream that babbled alongside the meadow he'd slept in. He packed up his stuff without thinking.
When he turned to leave, he noticed the fence between him and the road was overgrown with brambles. When he glanced at his legs, he saw bloody scratches he hadn't seen at all last night. He'd clearly been out of it.
But that didn't matter. They were shallow, and didn't hurt, and there was food in front of him. Raspberries, blackberries, bilberries burst from the brambles and he fell upon them, too tired to get out his rations and too unmotivated to eat the dull things. At least berries were sweet. They tasted like colour and joy.
When he'd eaten enough to stain his tongue violet, he had a proper look around. He was near the hilltop here, with a spectacular view over Theed. The sun was above the horizon, but not high enough to warm the earth, and the dew glistened, iridescent. It was like the world was dusted with tears.
Fresh eyes showed him that the road he'd been walking was, indeed, much more beautiful than he'd given it credit for. He'd been wrapped in a miasma of misery yesterday but now he smiled at the road. The brambles from his meadow were hardly the only ones, but beyond that there were flowers. The grassy banks of the road burst with them.
In a sudden urge to get closer to the sun, he scrambled for the other side of the road and ducked up a deer path there. The long grass pressed cool, damp fingerprints onto his trousers. He climbed and climbed. The wind rustled his hair.
Looking back down at the road from above, he could make out rough patterns here and there. It was like someone had once curated these flower displays, for all travellers between north and south Naboo, but they had run wild since then. Cornflowers perked amongst poppies, marigolds, little white daisies carpeting the grass. They reminded him of Ben's beautiful illustrations, on all the maps of Naboo in the Codex. They reminded him of the printed flowers that bordered the letters his mother sent him.
The path wound round to a small outcrop on the outside of the hill, where it started to plummet into the valley below. He sat down on the moss and leaned back, letting the long grass soak his hair. He'd have to check for ticks later, but…
It was a spectacular view of the valley. Olive farms, orchards, great fields of grain in the fertile Chommell basin. The sparkling, tumbling river that wound through it. Theed, its glistening towers and curving walls, was the jewel that glittering at the centre in blue stone and stained glass.
He didn't have the Codex with him—and wasn't it strange, to lose such a burden and feel only the heavier for it—but he still had his mother's letters. He'd never thrown any of them away. Running his fingers over the Nab flowers in the corners of them was the next best thing.
Thinking of her, and noticing the poorly-drawn diagrams she'd given him, he reached up to undo his hair. It was a mess from being left in the same style since before the night of the fire—Leia would be ashamed—so he took it out and shook it out. His fingers were hesitant and fumbling as he went to plait it again.
Two plaits. Two Ryl plaits, Leia had called them. It took several attempts, but the view was nice to look at as he did them. He could see the high spires of the palace his mother lived in and wondered how she would have taught him if they were able to see, to speak to, to hold each other.
Would he have grown up in the palace? What was it like? He'd never thought to ask that before. He opened his mouth—
But the only living connection he had to her, the friends that had been hers and were now his, were gone. His shoulders felt heavy without their weights.
When he finally tied off the second plait with Leia's green ribbon, he stood up, glanced down into the valley… and froze.
He couldn't just see the valley, the river, and the horizon from here. He could see the roads through the hills.
And one of them was clogged with soldiers.
He was far farther west than they had been when Luke tried to steal back the map. And the map had been destroyed. Even if it hadn't been, Vader should be following Leia and Ahsoka: two quick riders, on horseback, shooting a straight course for the north like comets.
Why was Vader here?
Was Vader tracking him?
Luke hadn't thought to ward against traditional tracking techniques. He was usually very good at staying hidden, at moving through lands without being noticed. It was the most vital skill Ben had taught him. But ever since he knew that no amount of unturned mud would stop Vader from knowing he had come this way, he'd slackened on that front.
That was clearly a mistake.
He needed to go. He needed to move. He'd left tracks behind here already—the stripped bushes, the flattened grass from his tent, the worn roads. And there was no quick divergence from this path until he reached the main road that ran all the way along to the hills that bordered Coruscant, where Ben's safehouse was. He had to keep going straight, and they would know where to follow.
They were faster than him. He needed to slow them down.
His hands dropped from his hair to shove everything back into his pack and sling it over his shoulders. He kept low as he peered over the side to get a better look at the approaching troops but didn't dare get out his spyglass. The glint of light off of metal might give away his position. So he had to crawl forwards, forge through long grass until he was lying belly-down on the edge of the outcrop…
And just on his right, hidden in a tiny, sheltered dip in the ground, was a cluster of foxgloves.
His gaze fell on them, and stayed there.
His men had been making adequate progress the day before, and Vader knew the boy was close. He had no qualms about setting down camp a mere few miles from where he was; night was rising and the boy would be camping in a meadow nearby, if the remains of the camp they'd found that morning were any indication. Vader kept his eyes peeled for smoke the whole evening, but none came.
The boy knew they were pursuing him. He dared not light a traditional fire. And the map was no help here, either: the boy's knowledge of Naboo remained abysmal, and the bloodspot floated in the middle of nowhere. For all Vader could tell, they were right on top of it.
They would have to find him themselves. That was of no worry. He had trackers.
At least, he had had trackers.
When he marched back to the main camp, it was quiet.
He stared around, incensed. Where were the soldiers? They were meant to be moving out within minutes, and yet—
"Lord Vader!" Piett marched up to him, pale as a skull. "We… uh…"
"Where are the men, Piett?"
"They are incapacitated, sir."
"Incapacitated?"
Piett swallowed. "Yes, sir. Representatives from each tent have reported similar symptoms. Several stomach upsets, headaches, blurred vision, and—ahem—diarrhoea—"
"They are sick."
"Yes, sir."
"All of them?"
"No, sir, we have perhaps a dozen men with no symptoms or mild symptoms—"
"Worthless." Vader stormed away. Piett kept up with him, which somewhat defeated the point of the gesture, but it meant he had someone to bark orders at. "What in all the dead gods' names could have caused—"
He paused.
He had stormed over towards the wagon that the infernal birds were in; they were staring at him judgementally. The judgement of feathered creatures was not something that amused him, but he managed to brush off his irritation when he noticed something far more pertinent.
There were berries lying at the base of their cage. The berries he'd ordered they be fed with, at the last camp and at this one. They hadn't eaten these ones.
He marched up to them, took one hard blackberry between his fingers—clearly his men had taken the plump ones for themselves—and squeezed it. He gestured it at the birds. "Why have you not eaten?"
They said nothing. Of course they did. They were birds.
"What…" But he had his suspicions. His men's proclivity for Naboo's natural wild fruits was hardly a secret for anyone who had seen their camp. And one that the boy shared, from what the trackers had found at his last base. Which meant…
"Why!?"
He shouted it and shook the cage. Threepio fell on top of Artoo, both shrieking. He slammed the cage back down and the berries rolled out to stain the wood of the wagon.
"Why!" Threepio accused right back. Whatever inanity he was trying to say did not get transmitted with it. "Why!"
"Why is the boy so vexing!?" he hissed. Now that he knew what he was looking for, when he examined the crushed berries he picked up he could detect it: poison, of a natural, local sort. Mushrooms? Foxgloves? He hadn't played with plants in a long time. "Why!?"
"Why?" Threepio asked, sounding confused now. Piett was staring at him with horror.
Vader threw down the berries and stomped on them, the sole of his boot coated in their crimson guts.
"I have chased him to every place under the sun," Vader hissed. "And still, he evades me! Still, he defies and irks me! Why him? Why is he so dedicated? I am one of the highest powers on this continent, his failure is inevitable and any victory of his temporary, there are no gods' blessings or ironies for him to rely on. Why does he still fight?"
Threepio was silent for a moment before he said, "Sun."
Vader stared in hopeless disgust, wondering why he was raving to a bird.
"Sun!" Threepio repeated, more insistently. "Sun! Sun! Sun!"
"Cease that racket!" Perhaps he should change him back to a human, just long enough to speak. But no. That would be confronting his past, and Vader had no interest in the past anymore. He only had interest in the uncertain future.
"Sun!"
Vader tossed the cage open and reached in to grab Threepio. He did it none too gently and plucked a feather from his wing as he did. Artoo took the open door as a chance to dash out and scratch at Vader's face; he batted him away. He still had scabs and scars from the last time he'd had that form of attack.
"You wear my patience thin," he snapped. "Get out of my sight." And then he let Threepio go.
He took off immediately, Artoo shooting after him. Threepio's plumage wasn't native to Naboo and he was easy to trace through the sky and beyond, shooting north… and north east.
"My lord?" Piett asked. "We are releasing them?"
"The men are evidently useless. I will find what we seek myself." He opened his fist again. Threepio's bright yellow feather lay in it like a quill he would write his own destiny with. "And when they lead me straight to their brat, I will finally kill him."
Except, he wasn't so certain anymore.
He was the one in command. He had all the power in the continent, save for the Emperor's domain. He was one of the strongest magic wielders to have ever lived, and yet time and time again he was bested by a mere, weak boy.
Something was wrong.
Something kept going wrong. It could not be destiny if destiny was dead, but if not… what else?
"I will be back by nightfall," he vowed, and marched for his horse.
He had already walked a long way that day and his feet were protesting it vehemently. The wooded area he finally took shelter in, next to a stream that sang sweetly in a grove that shielded him from the wind, would have to do. Sleepy and tired out from the emotional turmoil of… well, years, he made to lean back to nap.
Then, through a gap in the trees, he saw a yellow smudge high above.
He sat up, shielding his eyes. The world sparked around him, and indeed that yellow spot—being orbited by a darker, smaller, blue spot—was familiar. Familiar, and growing closer, and closer…
He gasped aloud. Threepio and Artoo barrelled towards him, shrieking, and his grin split his face like fire through ice as they swooped over his head. He scrambled to his feet, gaping at them, spinning around to look at both of them, so elated he wanted to cry, and…
When they settled on his shoulders, Artoo on the left and Threepio on the right, he did cry.
He stumbled back to sit down on the tree stump again, laughing as his vision blurred. Artoo knocked his head against his chin and Threepio squawked loudly; he stroked them both, marvelling that they were there. They were real.
His friends were here.
His friends were safe.
Threepio cawed again, and Luke realised he wanted to speak.
"How…" He did not know how to speak. "Why…"
Threepio squawked, insistent.
"Uh, me, you, yes, no, Vader, Leia, Ahsoka, camp, travel, escape, found, flight, woods, Naboo, soldiers, we, I, alone, where, and, trapped, lost—"
"We. Escape. Vader!" Threepio crowed delightedly. Then he saddened. "Vader…"
"Vader?"
"Vader…"
"Escape?"
"No."
Luke frowned. "You mean… Vader released you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Why!" Threepio flapped his wings in distress. "Why! Why!"
Then he glanced around. "Where. Leia. And. Ahsoka?"
"They have gone back to Alderaan, buddies."
"You. Alone?"
"Yes. But don't worry, I'm not being followed anymore, right? Even if Vader has the map, Leia and Ahsoka have the Codex."
"Leia and Ahsoka have the Codex!?" Threepio's tone wasn't a screech, for once—it was low and shocked, and a little horrified.
Luke knew what the question was without having to give Threepio the words for it. "Yes. I… I couldn't keep it. I needed to rescue you."
"Rescue?"
"Of course. And… it needs to be safe. I can't keep endangering it like that. They're taking it back to Alderaan, and…" His throat went dry. He thought of what Ben would think of him, willingly giving up what generations of their line had worked for. He whispered, "I'm sorry." Who it was meant for, he wasn't sure.
"Sorry?"
He turned his gaze back to his friends. "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean for that to happen at all, all the way coming here, I've been worrying about you so much—I was going to Ben's old safehouse to find a way to rescue you—"
"Sorry?" Threepio shook his head. Luke smiled. His friends had retained far more humanity than Vader had expected, when he'd cast the spell on them like that. "No. No. Vader…"
"I know. I know you won't want me to blame myself. But…"
"Vader. Going."
Luke froze.
"What?"
"Vader. Going."
"Where is Vader going?" He had a nasty suspicion. "Here?"
"Yes."
"Vader is coming here?"
"Vader is coming here."
Luke swore. Threepio swore too, with the exact same words. He had to laugh at that, but— "Why? I don't have anything, why is he coming after me…"
Threepio said nothing.
"Do you know? Don't you know?"
"Don't know."
Luke bowed his head. "That's fair enough. Let's…" He glanced around. His feet still hurt like divine punishment wrought upon him, but burning alive from the inside would hurt far more. "Let's get going then. We need to keep moving."
Artoo whistled his agreement. Luke forced himself to his feet, gathered up all his things, muttering to himself. "We need to go. We need to go. We need to—"
"And yet, you are too late."
And Luke lifted his head with a silent resignation. The feeling settled around his shoulders like falling snow.
When he turned, Vader was stalking towards him down the beaten path. He looked… different. He hadn't bothered with his helmet, and his horribly familiar face was on full display, glowering at Luke and the birds on his shoulders. His sword was already out, making little loops in the air as he strode and it bounced. Some of the leaves and twigs on the ground caught aflame; he left a trail of fire where he walked.
Luke lifted a hand and the stream lapped outwards, extinguishing the flames. Vader flinched, stared down at his soaked boots, and glared even more fiercely.
"Was that what you call an attack?"
"That was what I call preventing a forest fire. It's a beautiful landscape; it would be a shame for you to destroy it with your carelessness."
His words were biting, sharper than he'd intended, but he shot them like he was spitting cherry pips and angled his body so the birds were hidden by his plaits. Artoo complained and ducked away—and dived for Vader, as always.
Luke let out a pained noise. Vader just batted Artoo aside with his gauntleted hand. He went spinning in mid-air, landing squat in the stream and shrieking as he was dragged along, before he managed to climb out again.
"I don't want to fight you. I was quite enjoying not being followed and not having to fight, for once."
Vader raised his eyebrows. It was a gesture Leia did all the time. "How cowardly."
"I don't care for your metric of courage, then." That wasn't true. Luke cared very much what his father thought, but he should stop letting his heart get razored like that.
"I have been hunting you for nigh on two years, and you honestly believed that it ended there? No, boy. This song and dance only ends with you dead."
Luke swallowed. He hadn't expected this. He hadn't… "You're hunting me, then? Not the Codex?"
Vader sneered. "Both."
Luke didn't have time to process this before Vader lunged.
He dodged aside just in time, a fire leaping up amongst the twigs at his feet before the moist earth diminished it.
"You have mocked me, taken my wife's loyalty when she would not give it to me, usurped my position under Obi-Wan, denied me what I seek, dragged me on a worthless chase across the continent, and poisoned my men!" Vader's shouts were actually less terrifying than his normal voice. He sounded… unhinged. Obsessed. "The epic ends here."
"This has been epic for you?" Luke hissed. "It's been pretty shit to me."
Vader snarled and swung again: this time Luke was expecting it and met him. A shower of water arced over him to drench the blade and while Vader staggered, Luke focused on the metals, feeling them shudder against the water molecules and willed them…
"Rust?" Vader shook his sword, and the red flecks growing like crystals under Luke's attention sluiced right off. "Is that the best you can do, boy?"
"It's called creativity."
Vader lashed forwards to grab him by the neck. Luke hadn't expected that, hadn't expected to have to dodge something like that, and now he was choking, his windpipe crushed more and more with every twitch of his tightening grip. Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw Vader's sword shimmer, then catch alight again.
He could run him through in an instant. Luke was about to die.
"I have offered to spare your life in the past, if you would only give me the Codex," Vader said softly.
Luke choked out, "If you're still offering that, I highly doubt—"
"I am not." Vader tightened his grip again. "This hunt has been too arduous to end it so unspectacularly."
Luke closed his eyes.
But instead of the hot metal in his gut that he'd expected, he knew only cold, whistling air. Then he slammed into a rocky bottom and cried out. Water choked him.
He sat up with a gasp, his cuts and bruises from the impact weeping blood into the stream. He shook the water out of his eyes, plaits rattling over his shoulders, and stared at Vader.
"You will see me take possession of it," the dramatic bastard intoned, as he tore apart Luke's pack and ransacked his things. "You will…"
But Luke did not have many things.
It was less than a minute before Vader ground out, furious, "Where is it."
His head was full of chicken wire. "Where's what?"
"The Codex." Vader slammed down his ruined pack and strode over to him. Boots splashed in the stream; he planted his foot on Luke's chest and pressed down with his whole weight. Luke gasped. "Where is it?"
He couldn't exactly speak when he couldn't breathe. Vader seemed to realise that, scoffed, and removed his boot.
"I don't have it." Taunts aside, there was no reason to lie to his father. Not now.
Vader raised a severe eyebrow. "You… don't… have it."
"I don't! Someone else does."
"Do you genuinely think that I will believe that?" Vader reached into the pocket of his long coat, the coattails flaring dramatically under his plate armour with the motion, and ripped out a burnt oblong piece of parchment. Luke stared. It was his heart-map. Intact. Vader had rescued it.
"This has led me right here, boy," Vader snapped. "I know that you have the Codex here. So it is either on you, or nearby, and either way you are going to tell me where it is."
"It's in Alderaan," Luke said.
Vader snarled. "Stop lying—"
"I'm not lying."
The heart-map had led Vader here.
The realisation was freeing—he was remembering what Ahsoka had said, what his mother had said, what he'd always desperately wanted but not dared let himself believe…
He laughed aloud. Vader jerked back. Luke wondered when the last time was that he'd heard someone make a sound of pure, shocked joy.
"I'm not lying," he said. "I don't have the Codex."
"That is impossible. I have been tracking the Codex, and the map has led me here."
"My heart-map led you here," Luke said. "So maybe you weren't tracking the Codex."
It was the explanation he would have died to hear over a year ago. It was the explanation that Ahsoka had offered, but that he'd dismissed without a thought.
Vader scorned the words, curling his lip at him and turning away—to storm off, to rummage again, Luke didn't know. At least he wasn't trying to kill Luke anymore.
"What else would I be searching for!?" Vader snapped, without turning to look at him. He'd upended the bag again, and every line of his shoulders twitched with desperation. "Do you intend to tell me that this entire hunt, my quest, has been for nothing? For something worthless? For something other than the Codex that should be mine?"
"Perhaps. Your quest." Luke scrambled to his feet, dripping water pink with blood, and resisted the urge to reach out after him. "Do you know… Why did you want the Codex?"
Vader did look back at him, then. Anger fuelled his gaze, but mostly it was the mad haze of confused obsession that twisted his face. "Why do you think, boy? To bring stability to the Empire! To reclaim what is mine!"
"To reclaim what is yours?" Luke repeated.
Vader turned away again. "If you continue to repeat me uselessly, I will transform you into a parrot just like your friend."
Luke felt a spark of outrage at that—a spark of doubt, at the reminder of his father's brutality—but forged onwards. He had nothing left to lose except the precious thing he'd just gained, the tiny fire that he'd plunged his hand into before and been scorched by.
Hope.
"You shouted at me about your wife," Luke said slowly.
"Do not speak of her."
"Why shouldn't I?" he asked. "She's my mother."
Vader's shoulders tensed. He went very, very still.
He said, "What."
Luke said, "Do you even know what my name is?"
"Luke. She… she called you Luke."
Luke nodded, though Vader still wasn't looking at him. "Luke Skywalker."
Vader turned around.
His gaze dragged over Luke: his soaked, dark blond hair; his face; the clothes on his back. Artoo and Threepio cheeped their shock at the admission and he snapped his gaze around to look at them, too, realisation—along with horror?—blooming across his face.
"I had thought," he mused to himself, "that Obi-Wan's replacement apprentice looked a great deal like me."
Then: "I have been hunting my son."
Luke didn't say anything. It was painful, fascinating, and guiltily gratifying all at once, to see his father implode like this.
Vader looked down at Luke's heart-map, still in his hand. It was burnt nearly to obliteration, only the scrap of land Vader had needed remaining. Naboo—and Theed, which descended from the Nab word for home—were the only lands left.
"I have been hunting for my son," he realised quietly, and Luke turned away rather than see whatever naked emotion crossed his face.
But the movement drew his attention. Vader stared at him anew, then—almost as if he were possessed—his arm jerked out. "This is yours. Luke." He mouthed son, but couldn't bring himself to say it.
Luke shook his head and crossed his arms across his chest. He was wet and cold. "No. Keep it. It's been yours for long enough."
"You made it. It's your heart-map."
"I gave it to you in Tatooine. Keep it."
"I nearly destroyed it, Luke."
"It's still yours."
If there was a touch of joy in Vader's face as he tucked the map away again, gently, it didn't quite strike as inappropriate. But the air was still pregnant with regret.
"Come out of the stream," Vader said. "You must be freezing."
Luke stepped forwards awkwardly, nearly tripping on a hidden rock. His father caught him, guided him out, then let go like he thought his touch would scald Luke.
But his gaze ran over the cuts and bruises before Luke could even think to address them, and Luke shivered as they knitted themselves together, faster and smoother than he'd ever been able to make them.
"Do you have a towel?" Vader asked, looking regretfully back at the things he'd scattered across the muddy forest floor."
"No. And I only have one blanket."
"You can use that, then I will fetch one from camp for you later."
Luke tensed. "I'm not coming back to the camp." His father opened his mouth to protest. "I'm not going anywhere near the Empire."
"You—" Irritation entered Vader's voice, then, though he tried to temper it. "You, and your mother, you do not understand—"
"I'm not telling you where the Codex is, either," Luke added.
"I know it is in Alderaan."
"You don't know anything about Alderaan. Not enough to invade it."
Vader admitted, "Indeed." A pause. "And it is clearly not why this hunt was so important or fateful, despite my delusions." He picked up Luke's ratty blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. "You need a new blanket."
"I was going to buy one in Little Corel."
Vader flinched. "I see." When Threepio and Artoo fluttered out of nowhere to perch on Luke's shoulders, he flinched again. "Ah."
"What?" Luke asked, a little harsher than he'd intended. Artoo had hopped down to the earth again and was cheeping pointedly at Luke's Little Corel coat. Vader noticed, and picked it up, ignoring the row of bloody pecks Artoo left on his wrists and palms, wherever the armour didn't cover.
"You must be more than intimately familiar," Vader said as he settled the coat around Luke's shoulders, touch tender and careful, "with my cruelty."
Luke snuggled into the coat. "I am. I… I didn't want to—"
"Clearly your mother did not, either." There was bitterness there too. "Even when she learned I was hunting you."
Luke frowned. "She… sent you after me without—"
"We can ask her ourselves."
"What?"
Vader's hand twitched, like he wanted to rest it on Luke's shoulder but didn't dare. "If you will not come with my army, then we will have to travel to Theed. It is the nearest place to settle, for now."
"I promised I'd meet Leia—" He cut himself off, bit his tongue. Later. He'd decide whether to tell their father about Leia… later.
"Will this Leia begrudge you the chance to see your mother again?"
"I've never met her," Luke admitted.
Vader gained a peculiar expression, then turned away. "Then it is decided. We shall go to Theed." He paused. "If… you wish to travel with me."
Luke hadn't thought he would be given the choice. He didn't know if he'd have the chance to refuse. "If I understand why you've changed yourself so suddenly, maybe."
"Changed?" Vader paused in his motions. "I am the same. But you are my son."
"If I'd thought that would matter, I'd have told you over a year ago. Family didn't stop you from betraying Naboo."
"I betrayed Naboo for my family."
"And if you betray me for family now?"
Vader paused. "I just want you to meet your mother. She misses you. She worries about you."
Luke wondered how intense those feelings of hers must have been, for Vader to pick up on them even as she tried to keep them a secret. "Then. I will. I suppose."
Vader nodded. "I will return to camp to gather some things, and some more robust blankets, and order Piett to take the troops back to Coruscant. I will return forthwith to begin the journey. I should not be more than a few hours, but it may be wise to set up camp soon."
A few hours would be enough time to run. A few hours would take him almost to the Alderaanian border. Vader must know this.
But he was offering it anyway.
Luke nodded. "I'll see you then, Father."
Though Vader was already turned away, Luke could see him smile. It was Luke's smile that he wore. Perhaps that comparison to a monster wasn't as terrible as he'd assumed it was. He hadn't known the full story, before.
He hadn't known that a monster could love as well as hate.
Sitting down again, he scanned around for firewood, debating. If he wanted to stay and wait, he would start a fire. If he wanted to flee—to Alderaan or to Naboo by himself—he would have to pack up and get moving.
He didn't know what he wanted to do yet. But that didn't matter. He waited there as the day gave way to night, and he still had time to figure things out.