The boy was his son.
Luke was his son.
He'd been so trapped in resentment for so long that the sudden release of it, like air bubbles popping underwater, left him empty. Something was fizzing up to fill it—joy?—but he couldn't tell what yet. The intensity hadn't vanished, and now it felt more familiar. The same tight ache in his chest after seeing Padmé. The same longing in his gut.
He had a son. His name was Luke.
Vader stopped altogether. He didn't know how long he'd been walking, but he hoped it was far enough that Luke didn't hear the scream he unleashed, nor hear how the tree bark buckled under his gauntleted fist.
Their child had lived.
Their child had lived, and Padmé had… Padmé had said…
When he'd turned Artoo and Threepio into birds for daring to deny him access, when he'd burst through in a hazy rage, desperate to see her, she'd looked up at him from her bed, pale and sweaty still from her ordeal, and she had said…
She had lied.
She must have given the baby to Obi-Wan. The thought filled him with more fury than he'd ever felt before—if the rage he'd directed at the unnamed brat he'd been chasing had been the sun, then this was the sun in the throes of its fiery demise. He screamed again.
When he turned his face up towards the sky, it was dusk, and the first few stars were starting to twinkle on the horizon. Under the starlight, he realised he was crying.
Padmé hadn't just betrayed him by refusing to listen to him. She'd hidden their son from him too. After everything he had done for their family, she hadn't trusted him to take care of him. Why had she been so foolish? What had she thought would happen? Why—
His furious questions ceased as quickly as they had come.
Padmé was no fool.
It crashed into him like a horse galloping over his prostrate body. She was no fool; she was right. He'd wanted to do so much for their child, but he'd been too blinded by… everything, by Palpatine, by the Empire, by his dreams of a safe, glorious future. He'd chased his child across the continent, terrorised him, betrayed him and stolen his heart-map and burned it, nearly killed him. Luke had wanted to talk to him in Tatooine, wanted to know him, and he had shown him why Obi-Wan and Padmé warned against it. Luke had been too scared to tell him the truth, before.
This was the situation he had made for himself.
This was the situation he had to deal with.
He reached into his pocket, and drew out the ruined remains of Luke's heart-map. The bloodspot was still there, in the glade where Luke was. So he hadn't left yet? Was he still resting, still packing to leave? It would be hours before Vader returned.
He would find out when he returned, he supposed bitterly. There was still an opportunity for him to return to the ashes of a cold fire and footprints long set into the mud.
The heart-map burned his hands, but he couldn't stop looking at it. Theed and Naboo, the only scraps of it left, and the most poorly, inaccurately rendered scraps of it at that. That hurt even more.
Padmé had written to Luke. Good. She must have known the risk, but perhaps she had also known how much Luke needed someone, and she had stepped in to help her son. Even if it had set Vader on his trail.
What had he done?
What could he do now?
Find Piett. Get the towel, and the blankets, and possibly even a sleeping bag. Some horses. He needed to be a father to his son, even if he did not know how.
But first he punched the tree again. And again. The bark crumpled like paper, but the tree didn't flinch, so he drew his sword and swung.
A few minutes later, when he was on his knees, surrounded by flickering flames that chewed at the glowing edges of his armour, his intense, miserable obsession found its release.
No birds slept that night. Who could sleep beside the ragged sobs of a monster?
Piett was confused and concerned at his strict orders to pack up everything and return to their nearest military base—one on the Naboo-Alderaanian border—but did it. He was loyal and reliable, even if he asked a very pertinent question.
"And if the Emperor enquires where you are?"
Vader froze. The Emperor. His master would understand his side-tracked hunt, but he would not be happy about it. He already despised Vader's constant visits towards Padmé, how he was drawn into her orbit like a comet compelled to be a moon.
"Inform him that I am on a private mission. I will share more details with him when I am certain of their veracity."
Piett nodded, but Vader caught his momentary flickering grimace. The Emperor asked demanding questions.
Vader didn't care. Night was falling and he still had to make it back to Luke—if he was there at all. So he mounted one of the horses he'd commandeered, slung the packs of supplies over his shoulder, and galloped into the night.
When he came upon the glade with the stream again, there was a small, shivering fire. Luke was settled against a large boulder, his boots close to and warmed by the flames, while the two birds huddled in his lap. His makeshift towel was thrown over them all to keep them warm, but he was still shivering.
Vader approached quietly on foot, drew out the thickest blanket he'd brought, and gently tucked it over them, careful not to disturb his dozing son.
Luke cracked an eye open. "I knew you were there. You pinged my wards."
Of course he had set up wards before he went to sleep. Clever boy.
Vader looked down at him. "I did not think you would still be here."
Luke stretched his arms and settled back under the blanket, his shivers easing. "Where else would I go?"
Vader wished Luke had said I wanted to stay, or I would never leave you again now that I trust you, or I want to come with you. But it was true that Luke did not have many options. He may want to come with the father he had always dreamed of, but experience had taught him practicality.
And his father deserved it.
Vader stripped off his armour and sat down next to him, a flick of his fingers roaring the fire higher and hotter. Luke closed his eyes at the searing brightness; his shoulders slackened, like they'd been kept stiff by ice now thawed. Artoo yelped when he opened his eyes to see Vader so near and scrambled to Luke's other side.
"That's a point," Luke murmured, "that I wanted to bring up."
Vader smiled at him tenderly. "Bring it up."
"I've been searching for years now to find a way to break your curse on Artoo and Threepio. Can you break it?"
Vader froze. There were six eyes on him now.
"Yes," he said. "Probably."
"Probably? What does that mean?"
"It is a Nab curse—I take it you are somewhat familiar with their fairy tales about transfiguring people into animals and back again?"
"I thought those were Alderaanian," Luke said while his birds nodded vigorously. They stopped to stare at him.
"What?" Threepio uttered at Luke, sounding aghast with patriotic pride.
"They are not Alderaanian. They are Nab."
"Well, it's not like I would know that first-hand, would I?"
Point taken.
"When we visit Padmé, if she permits me to access her library, I can reverse it," Vader said.
"You can?"
"I will."
Luke was silent for a moment. "Can you tell me about her?"
Vader looked at him. "Your mother?"
"Yeah. Ben didn't really… he didn't talk about her, or you, and the birds struggle with long, detailed conversations—"
"I can tell you about us." Vader smiled. "Can you tell me about you?"
They were on the road bright and early the next morning. It was much easier to pass on horseback, Luke learned, and Vader learned it was much faster to pass on horseback with only two people—plus two birds flying overhead.
There wasn't much time for talking on the road, not with the winds whistling right through them and the hooves thundering beneath. But the rhythm of the world provided plenty of space for Luke to think.
He thought this must be a bad idea.
Why had this engendered such a large change, so immediately? He knew Vader was obsessive—he had been the venomous target of that obsession for too long—but how quickly could he change focus? How intensely did he focus when he did?
His mother had mentioned in her letters that he still visited her, frequently, whether or not she wanted him there. Did that mean he simply would not be assuaged in his goals? And what were his goals? He'd wanted the Codex to help the Empire expand, to gain glory, to…
Padmé had said that he still wanted to love her, for them to be together. He still craved love. Did that expand to adulation? And did that dip back into…
Luke was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't realise he was shivering until Vader held out a hand to slow both their horses down to a trot. He reached into the packs and drew out Luke's heavy coat.
"Your mother will murder me," he said, "if I bring you to her with a cold."
The action was so domestic that Luke nearly cried. Once they were on the move again, he hid the tears as a reaction to the frigid wind stinging his eyes.
Perhaps all his father had wanted was a family, to love and be loved. Perhaps, when he'd realised that his actions had cost him that, he'd had to make do with scraps of Imperial adulation.
"Are you warmer now?" Vader shouted over the cacophony outside and inside of his mind.
"Yes!" Luke called back. His mouth curved into a smile unbidden. "A lot warmer."
They reached the gates of Theed and Luke lowered his hood, obscuring half his face, as they rode through.
The guards clearly recognised Vader. One of them widened her eyes the moment she saw his armour; even without the helmet, there were not many dark knights as infamous as Vader, and he had forcefully moved through here with a massive force only a few days earlier. She scowled at him, but opened the gates to allow for entry.
No one stopped them on the way to the Palace. No one stopped them on the way in, though the birds—mindful that wild animals may not be wanted—flew out and round to find the throne room windows. Vader murmured to Luke as they went, random pieces of information he thought he might like to know, and Luke picked up his pack as he listened. A few servants scurried back and forth, but it seemed that there was an informal protocol for dealing with Vader, which flew in the face of standard etiquette. No one announced them, no one made them wait in the waiting chamber; one maid simply said to another, "Inform the Queen that Lord Vader is here to see her." The irritated again ran unspoken.
The second maid glanced at Luke. "And a squire?"
The first shrugged. "And a squire."
They were led in. Luke had taken off his jacket the moment they stepped into the warm, sheltered palace, and let a manservant take it away with a twinge of awkwardness. That was his coat. Usually, if he lost sight of his possessions, he never saw them again.
Vader was no use. He wasn't even looking at Luke anymore—or rather, not at what Luke was doing. He was staring between Luke and the double doors that separated them from Padmé, and his breathing was ragged.
A lady-in-waiting returned. "You may see Her Majesty now," she intoned, and Vader marched forwards so fast that Luke struggled to keep up. Passing the lady with a bashful smile, only to be met with a stern look, he reddened at the realisation of how… underdressed he was. Vader's armour was muddied, but ornate. All of these attendants were smart, the colours of their tunics and dresses as bright as ripe berries. Luke was in a yellowed white shirt, trousers three years too small for him, and muddy boots. His finest coat had been taken from him.
He felt even smaller when they entered the throne room, and he was faced with the indignity of tracking mud across the mosaic and marble floor. His own terrified face stared back at him in dozens of diamond gems, flashing in the assorted colours of the pattern underfoot. When he lifted his head again from the awkward bow, he realised that Vader had not bowed, and nor had Padmé shown any sort of respect, and his two parents were instead engaged in staring at each other aggressively and Luke looked like a fool.
"Vader," Padmé greeted, her tone as cold as ice. She looked frightened. "Back so soon? I had heard your army were heading for Alderaan—"
"I am not with my army." Vader planted his hand on Luke's shoulder and pushed him forward. "Evidently."
Padmé's gaze moved to Luke for the first time, and she froze.
"This is Luke," Vader said, as though she had not realised it.
She clearly hadn't picked up on the tenderness in his voice, because her face whitened even further. The fear that had permeated her before seemed to triple into dread as she mouthed, Luke.
Did she think he had caught him? Did she think he would kill him in front of her, now, just to make a point?
"You did not tell me," Vader's voice thundered with sudden emotion, pain that Luke had guessed at but not yet seen, "our child had lived."
The fear vanished.
She stood up, all that intensity switched from a practical fear to a single-minded focus on Luke. "I could not trust you."
"You could—"
"Shut up, Anakin," she snapped, and in moments she was right in front of Luke, staring at him. They were almost of a height with each other.
Her hands fluttered out, like she wanted to touch him—his shoulder, his cheek, his hair. He stared at her, seeing his mother in person for the first time in his life, and did not know what to think.
She looked tired.
She looked like Leia, with a nose like his, and the same anxious movement he made when he didn't know what to say. Her dress was rumpled and less-than-idyllic, makeup could only hide so many circles around her eyes, and when she whispered it was in Nab.
"My son," she said.
Luke had never said the word, "Mother," in Nab before, but the melodic sound of it made him cry as he surged forwards and held her.
She crumpled into him, burying her face in his neck. She was shaking—or perhaps he was shaking, or both of them were shaking, and there was mud on her chartreuse silk dress and the braids he'd tied his hair back into just like in her diagrams were falling apart, tickling both of their ears. He tightened his grip; she tightened hers. Their hearts beat through flesh and fabric like two startled birds, and before long they were beating in synchrony, as they must have years ago, when he was still one half of a whole in her womb.
"My son," she murmured in the language he'd learned to honour her, but never spoken organically. "My boy, my Luke, my child…"
She drew back, still clinging to his wrist like she couldn't bear to part with him, his pulse fluttering under her thumb, and looked him in the face. Pressed her hand to his cheek. "Oh, you look like—"
She cut herself off.
Vader was still watching them, naked longing in his eyes.
Padmé squeezed Luke's hand tightly. "I couldn't trust you," she said. It sounded almost like an apology.
"You could not trust me?" Vader bit out. "Everything I did was for you and Luke—"
"Then why did it make us suffer so much? Why did it nearly kill us?"
"Why did you tell me it had killed him—"
"Luke," she whispered, while Vader continued shouting. His words were drowned out by the feather-light touch of her voice. "Go through that door on the back—follow Sabé. There's someone there who'll take care of you until I can see you." She let go of his hand like he was an anchor in raging waters.
"No!" Vader reached for Luke. "Luke can stay here, he—"
"Does not deserve to have to deal with this."
Vader paused. Then nodded. "We," he said viciously, "have a long overdue conversation."
Padmé's response was rapid and probably equally cutting. But Luke had already started walking for the door near the back of the throne room, where a lady who looked a great deal like his mother widened her eyes at him, then ushered him along.
"Come on," she said. "Quickly."
"I'm Luke," he offered.
She smiled. "I know."
Sabé led him out of the throne room and into a corridor he would never have noticed had it not been pointed out to him, where they slipped out. Shouting echoed through to him at one point; he winced at his parents' voices, and Sabé gave him a sympathetic grimace, though she seemed more focused on intently listening to how the conversation was going.
To see if she needed to step in to protect Padmé, perhaps.
But they kept passing and eventually left the throne room behind, ducking into a wider, more ornate corridor that was clearly not meant to be secretive. Luke was back to feeling out of place in his scuffed, weary clothes, but no one gave him a second glance. And he wasn't so distracted by his insecurities that he didn't notice the noises.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
He flinched when he first heard them, then perked his head up. Those weren't explosions—well, they were, but of a very specific variety. He recognised them.
The palace gardens were vast and sprawling. Sabé led him out there, and he gasped at the feeling of the sun on his face. The cold winds from the hills couldn't penetrate the high, thick hedges, so it was warm here. He was so distracted by the buttery warmth that it was only after a moment that he noticed a repurposed archery practice range just ahead of him, the path lined with bright white stones, and his sister shooting at the targets with wild abandon.
There was a small crowd gathered to watch her, mainly maids and manservants without any immediate tasks to do. Gasps and clapping broke out every time she made a particularly daring shot—applause which quickly fell silent when the onlookers noticed Sabé striding towards them.
Leia noticed the quiet and turned to look as well. She smiled patiently at Sabé, before her gaze slid to Luke and her face lit up with both joy and fear. "Luke!"
He grinned at her. She grinned back, uncertain, and holstered her guns. "Guess practice's over, then."
"Oh, keep going. I wouldn't dare to interrupt you." He was bursting with questions—why was his sister here, when she was meant to be far away from the Empire?—but he didn't want to ruin her fun.
"Nope. I have too much to ask you. Namely: what the fuck are you doing here?" She hopped over the fence of the range and wandered over to him, while Sabé went to disperse the crowd.
Luke grimaced. "Vader didn't follow you two. He followed me."
"I know." She gestured with her hand and they started walking farther into the gardens, where the hedges fanned out to encase wide flowerbeds, trees three times taller than Vader, narrow streams that whispered around their feet. "Ahsoka and I were keeping an eye on them as they travelled. There was a rockfall in one of the paths we took—the Codex was out of date—"
"The Codex is out of date!?"
"That's how maps work, Luke. But yes. We had to take a detour, and when we got a better view of them, we spotted pretty quickly that they weren't after us; they were after you."
Luke nodded. "My heart-map… It was leading Vader to me. Not the Codex."
"Ahsoka thought as much. But…" She narrowed her eyes. "Was it because he's been obsessed with hunting you for years? Was what he wanted so much to kill you? When we saw how close he was getting, calculating your trajectory, Ahsoka and I split up; she kept taking the Codex north and I doubled back here."
"Why?"
"Because I have two pistols," Leia said, "but our mother has thousands of soldiers. If anyone was going to save you, she was. And she was going to be the one with the motive. There's meant to be a tactical military meeting in the next hour or so debating it."
"Well that's not necessary, thankfully."
"Yes." She squeezed his hand. "But are you going to bring Vader down on the palace? If he won't stop hunting you—"
"Father," Luke said, enunciating the title clearly, "is the one who brought me here."
Leia froze.
"Father?" she asked.
"He found me. He demanded to know where the Codex was, that he knew it was near, and I knew that it wasn't the Codex his heart wanted. It was…"
"You. You sappy sod." Her tone was fond, but hopeless. "You didn't tell him—"
"I had nothing left to lose, and… I had hope. If he was searching, all along, for me…"
"You were lonely and you wanted a father figure, because Ben left you on your own."
Luke gritted his teeth. "Well, Vader's here now, talking to Mother, and… I don't know. But he's not looking for the Codex. He's apologetic. He's… he's not a monster anymore, Leia, and I don't think I was wrong to trust him."
She studied him, fingering her pistols. "Are you certain?"
"As certain as the gods."
"That's not very certain at all. We've had this conversation."
He smiled. "It's the most certain I can be."
She nodded and dropped her hand from her holster. "Then it's enough for me, I guess."
"You guess?"
"That's the most certain I can be."
He punched her in the arm.
She smirked, but it fell quickly. "Did you tell him about me?"
"I haven't told him anything he doesn't already know."
"Who are you, Ben? Yes or no."
"No."
"Alright. Good. I'll tell him myself. Where is he?"
"Getting yelled at by Mother."
Leia grinned. "I like Mother a lot."
"I liked her a lot in the letters. I've interacted with her for five minutes in person."
"You'll like her too."
"I'll take your word for it."
"You'd better." She went to turn back towards the palace, but Luke's hand shot out to stop her. They were hidden from the main doors to the gardens by a bustling rhododendron bush, and for a moment he took in a deep breath of its sweet scent.
"Thank you," he said, "for keeping the Codex safe. And for coming back to save me."
"You were always going to go back to save the birds. Just as they were always going to fly to you at the first chance." Leia clasped his proffered arm. "The gods may not be here, Luke. But we are."
He blinked back tears. "Thank you again."
"What for this time?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he slung an arm around her shoulders, ignoring her amused, bemused glance, and started moving them back towards the palace.
"Our son is alive," Vader thundered, "and you told me he had died. You told me I had killed him."
"We have two children, Anakin. Twins. A boy and a girl."
Vader staggered back as if he'd been hit. And he had been, twice, in the last twenty-four hours. "Luke… Luke did not say…"
"Luke has not trusted you with everything yet?"
His shoulders sagged. In the vast throne room, with the high arching ceilings, stained-glass windows, mosaics, paintings, marble, and a thousand other histories glaring down at him, he felt so small. "He has not yet had cause to."
Her eyes glittered with tears, but they were hard, like conkers buried in November frost. "Indeed. You have hardly been kind to him."
"If you had told me who he was when I last confronted you about him, all of this could have been averted!"
"Why should I trust you with my family?"
"Because they are my family too!"
"Then behave like it!" She drew herself up, taking a step back to better look him in the eye. "You resent how much I always return to that night, Anakin, but the fact remains that it destroyed everything, and you have not so much as made a move to try to make up for it. You brought my country's political infrastructure crumbling down. You changed the face of the continent from one of uneasy peace to all-out war. You unleashed the monster that had been threatening us. You robbed me of my two closest companions, turned them into birds, and cost us the future we had been working towards. You nearly cost us the lives of our children. Do you not understand how deep this schism is?"
Vader let out a breath. "I wanted us all to be safe. The Empire was going to be a threat whatever happened, and I did not know what the future would hold. But I knew I wanted it to be stable for us! Palpatine guaranteed that."
"He guarantees nothing. And you tore our family apart."
They stared at each other.
"Yes," Vader said eventually. "I see that now."
"Do you?"
"I do."
"Why did you do it in the first place?" She still seemed angry, but his admission—two decades overdue—seemed to have mollified her. "We could have had everything until you committed high treason."
"I wanted us to have everything."
She folded her arms. "I don't follow your logic."
"Naboo is not perfect. Nowhere in this continent is perfect, is safe. Not since the gods abandoned us for their home on Ahch-To, damn them—even Obi-Wan, Luke tells me, went hunting for them to find help because it's true." He took a deep breath. "I was going to make the world safe. Secure. I didn't want my child growing up in a warzone the way I did."
Her face softened. That was the most sympathy he'd got from her in years. "If you were so afraid of all of this, why did you not speak to me? Or Obi-Wan? You must have known…"
"I knew that despite years of the Jedi's most advanced education, I knew nothing about the future. None of our spells cover it. I wasn't going to let something like the Delta Wars happen again. I tried asking you about Naboo, and its political conflict—there were rumours that the Empire would blockade us again, and I didn't want us to be conquered without some sort of deal that protected us—but you insisted that everything was fine. You were retiring. You wouldn't have been retiring if you were worried about anything, but I was still worried, and you would not listen to me."
Padmé bowed her head. "Then I am sorry," she admitted, "for that. I didn't realise how scared you were."
"If things went wrong, we would have only had ourselves to count on. I couldn't let things go wrong. The Empire was coming anyway, so—"
"You should have spoken to me."
"You didn't listen."
"You didn't tell me you were going to commit treason!" She shook her head. "Never mind. We've retrodden this a thousand times. But what are you going to do now? I didn't expect that knowing the child lived would change so much."
"Didn't you?" Fury welled in him suddenly. "I did everything for our family, and you thought that being told our child died wouldn't be the final nail in the coffin?"
"I thought you had betrayed our family! Chosen money, or fame and prestige, instead. I wouldn't have my children grow up in the Empire. I couldn't trust you not to sell them out again."
"They would have grown up in Naboo. In the Empire."
"Naboo will never be a willing part of the Empire, Anakin. You need to let that dream go. It's impossible."
"I thought our child being alive was impossible," he shot back. "I thought there was no such thing as miracles anymore. But Luke is here and well." Perhaps… perhaps the gods were not as absent as he had thought. At least, perhaps they were not so doomed without them.
"'Well' is a strong way to put it."
That shut him up.
"Everything I have done has been to try to make the world better," he said, "for them, or for their memory. But I have only made them miserable and put them in danger."
Padmé folded her arms across her chest. "Yes. And what are you going to do about it?"
He looked out one of the stained-glass windows. "I cannot bring back the Jedi libraries I destroyed. That is what the children would want, but I cannot do it."
"You can return the knowledge you hoarded and help rebuild them."
"I cannot." She glared at him. He hastened to explain. "We do not have much knowledge. We attempted to loot them, but there was fire, and destruction. When the Emperor wanted a population subjugated, their cultural centres were destroyed. That included the Jedi, when they refused to exclusively serve the Empire. And plenty of people would rather see their books destroyed than seized by invaders."
"The Jedi would never do that. Their entire philosophy abhors the destruction of any resource, no matter its quality."
"The Jedi and their establishments were at the whim of local authorities," Vader said. "Their respect for the communities they served was greater."
"I see." She turned away. "You've caused so much destruction."
"I know."
"But you still haven't answered my question. What are you going to do about this?"
He swallowed. "I am going back to the Empire." Before he could watch her erupt or deflate, whichever path she would have taken, he forged on. "What small amount of looted knowledge remains is in Coruscant, locked up in archives. I have betrayed a kingdom before and brought it down from the inside. I can do it again."
She lifted her gaze to meet his. Assessing.
"Indeed you can," she said.
"So…" He almost didn't dare to ask. He stepped forwards, reached for her hand and to his surprise, was allowed to take it. "Where does that leave us?"
She looked up at him, and the flinty-eyed look she usually sported melted into something more like melancholy. She gave a small smile.
"Ask me again when the world is stable, and we'll see."
"The world will never be stable, Padmé." It seemed she had always known that better than he did.
"Then we'll see." Her smile widened as she glanced up to one of the windows above the throne room, open to let some breeze in. "But you do have to prove yourself, first. You can't undo all that you've done, but you can undo some of it."
"Anything."
And when he saw two tired birds soar in through the open window, stumbling onto the floor from their circuitous flight, he knew what he had to do.
Sabé showed him to a guest room next to Leia's, in one of the higher towers of the palace and away from prying eyes. She'd brought his coat and bags up from the entrance for him, but it felt odd even trying to unpack them. The room was four times the size of the one he'd shared with Leia in the Appenza Sanctuary, the bed was bigger than a salt flat, and hanging up his coat and single ratty change of clothes in the wardrobe looked more sad than lively.
He glanced around to ask if there was a change of clothes he could borrow—he felt uncomfortable in his traveller's wear, still—but Sabé had already vanished. Perhaps it was to get some supplies for him. Perhaps not. Either way, he ended up just hanging his pack off one of the hooks, leaving his boots at the base of the bed, and slipping on the fluffy slippers at the bottom of the wardrobe. They were warm, comfy, and a dark enough red that he wasn't concerned about getting them dirty.
A few paces to the right of the bed there was a bay window giving him a spectacular view over the Chommell Valley, colours as bright as freshly dyed thread. He curled up in the window seat for a while, just enjoying watching the comings and goings, before he got up to use the lavatory. There was an attached room—two, even—and he assumed one of those would be one, so he approached.
It was a study.
With a desk.
All else forgotten, he ran back to grab his pack. His books, brushes, pens, paper, all jostled together as he yanked them towards the desk and started putting them away. He lifted up the lid, a fistful of pencils in his hand, and froze.
There were already supplies in here. A lot of them. He hadn't seen this much parchment since he'd last stocked up.
He pulled out a sheet of papyrus. Considered it, its size. Looked out the diamond-paned study window to the heathery hills that shadowed the horizon.
Vader found him there, maybe several hours later, with the barest sketches of a map in front of him, the River Chommell and the vibrant farmlands spiralling out from his pen. The road he'd taken through the hills was clearly marked, as was the road Vader had dragged them down to get to Theed. He was idly doodling into the margins a pattern of blackberries, olives, raspberries, all tangled up with the Naboo royal crest, when the door behind him opened.
He glanced up, hearing the audible pause when the newcomer couldn't see him in the bedroom proper. "In here."
Another pause, then Vader's distinctive steps traipsed through, and his silhouette filled the doorway. He wasn't wearing his armour anymore, Luke realised; he almost didn't recognise him. He was wearing a pale blue shirt that puffed around the sleeves, black trousers and small-heeled shoes with large shiny buckles. Luke's mouth quirked up at the sight.
Vader saw the smile, and offered a tentative one of his own. "Your mother insisted I change."
"Oh, it suits you."
"You do not sound entirely sincere."
"I am. It's just very strange seeing you dressed for anything but war."
The smile dropped. Vader stepped forward tentatively, glancing out the window, then glancing at Luke's half-formed draft. "A map of Naboo?"
"Force of habit." Luke watched Vader come even closer, lean over and inspect it, and tried to keep himself steady. He could show a map to his father, no matter how poorly it had ended last time. "Come to a new place, get to know it."
"Must you get to know a place through mapping?"
"No. Not always. But it helps order my thoughts." Luke admitted, "I actually have a terrible sense of direction otherwise."
Vader glanced up at him with a faint smirk. "Really?"
"Really. Not much of a cartogra—"
"Me too."
Luke blinked.
Then he laughed. "Is that why you got lost in the foothills? We were waiting for ages to ambush you."
"That may have been because your mother's handmaiden gave me intentionally faulty directions." Luke burst out laughing. "Probably to buy you time to run. But yes."
"Good on her."
"Indeed." Vader's hand came out to touch the map. When Luke automatically moved to block it, he stopped. Luke froze, realising what he'd done, and backed away, but Vader had already withdrawn. He traced the motion in the air, instead. "The river's meander should be a little wider—it runs just on the other side of Theed."
Luke frowned and pointed out the window. "I thought it bisects the city."
"Not quite. Those buildings there are outlying villages—close and well-developed, but not considered part of the actual city. At its narrowest point the river serves as the moat for half the castle walls. We crossed it on the way in."
"Huh. So we did." Luke scuffed over and fixed his sketch. "Better?"
"Better. And move the placement of Spinnaker a little higher, it's practically on the border with Chandrila."
Luke nodded. "Anything else?"
"Well…" Vader hesitated. "Is this the first time you've been to Naboo?"
"I've been through the Naboo-Alderaanian borderland hills a lot."
"But never to the river valley?"
"Never to the river valley. Is it that obvious?"
His father paused again. Not a word came out of his mouth at the moment, it seemed, that was not as carefully measured as he could make it. "Your depiction of it—in your heart-map and here. It doesn't carry your style of mapmaking. It carries mine. I assumed everything you knew was based off the maps in the Codex that I had contributed."
Luke clenched his fist around the pencil. A few days ago, he would have been horrified that Vader could read that much about him from a single sheet of paper. Now… now, he found, he liked being known.
"It was like my father was showing me around the home I never knew," he said.
Vader put his hand on Luke's. "I can show you around in person, now."
Luke jerked his head up, surprised at the intensity of feeling in his own gut. "I'd love that. When?"
"Today, preferably. I have to go back to the Empire tomorrow."
"What?" He went cold.
"Your mother and I were discussing it, and it seems quite obvious that it is impossible to be a double agent from here."
All his breath left him at once. "You're defecting?"
"Nothing is as I thought it was. My child—my children are alive. The order I thought I was creating has done nothing but harm them. It seems time to do something about it."
"Children?" Luke smiled. "You know about Leia, then?"
"I've met her." He paused—stared vacantly at the map. "She terrifies me."
Luke laughed. "Me too."
"But it makes me feel better leaving you, after everything, knowing that she has your back."
Luke nodded wistfully. "She always has," he said. "I should have reached out to her sooner." His gaze flicked up. "I should have reached out to you, sooner. I should have told you the truth, rather than let it go on for this long."
"You did not know if you could trust me. You did not know if you could trust anything at all." Vader took his other hand, then, and knelt in front of him. "Believe me, Luke. I understand that."
Luke closed his eyes and squeezed his hands.
Silence fell for a few moments, and now that he wasn't immersed in his work, he realised he could hear when people ascended the stairs. The slaps of their footsteps echoed through the stone walls, and his eyes flew open, questioning…
Vader chuckled. He released one of Luke's hands to trail his over the map, the decorative doodles in the margins. Nestled among the berries and brambles, Luke had sketched two bright birds, one preening the other.
Vader's thumb twitched, and the pencil lines shivered. The birds cocked their heads, staring out of the paper in bewilderment, before hopping from one leg to the other and taking off. They swept over the map itself—tiny smudges even fell on the landscape where their shadows would—and looping in curling patterns, chasing each other with silent joy.
Luke stared, mesmerised, before there was a knock on his bedroom door.
"Luke? Master Luke?"
No one had ever called him Master Luke before. He glanced confusedly at his father and got only a cryptic nod in reply, then stood up to go and see.
There were two men milling about his bedroom aimlessly. The smaller of them, a stocky man with a silver moustache and a blue coat, was perched on the decorative ironwork at the foot of the bed. The taller one had a monocle, with a shock of blond hair and knobbly joints, like he'd been given twice as many elbows as he needed when he was created. His head was up sharp, scanning the ceiling idly.
When Luke stepped out, their beady-eyed attention snapped to him.
"Master Luke!" the taller man said. "I must say, you seem much smaller when I view you as a human!"
Luke's mouth fell open. "…Threepio?"
Threepio's face lit up. "Yes! And this is—"
"Artoo," Luke breathed, staring at the friend who'd been living in his pocket for at least the last decade.
He wasn't sure who stepped forwards first, but suddenly he was being crushed against a broad chest, one of Threepio's stiff elbows digging into his shoulder, and he began to cry.
"Master Luke, don't! Don't do that. We came to see you, show you that you found someone to turn us back after all. And Mistress Padmé and Mistress Leia are waiting downstairs, we were here to tell you that yourself and Vader should come down for a full conversation and…"
Threepio's chatter, far more natural and flowing than it had ever been as a bird, washed over him. Luke listened to every word, as he had always done, and held onto Artoo tightly, as he had always done. He kept holding on and listening, all the way down the stairs to the parlour where his sister and mother were, as his father followed behind. When he reached it, he was met with smiles, and he had to blink away the tears in his eyes.
Why had he ever tried to go to Ahch-To? Ben had gone to look for hope in a land of myth, and he had been wrong. Luke had been wrong to try to emulate him.
Hope was right in front of him, and it always had been.
Thanks for reading!