"Leia...Leia..."

"Luke."

"Leia."

"Luke, wake up."

"Hu-?" Luke's eyes were open before he even realized what was going on. He tilted his head back and saw his father standing over him.

"Wha...what happened?" he asked, feeling completely lost.

"You were calling for your sister."

"...Oh..." Luke slowly realized as it started to come back to him. His body felt like a boneless heap as he sagged back against the mattress, then turned over on his side and half curled into a ball. He might've slept but he felt exhausted.

"What is troubling you, Luke?" Vader asked.

"A lot of things," Luke answered as he straightened out the covers and pulled them back over him. "I'm still coming to terms with the fact that Leia is my sister, it...it's...I can't talk to you about it, it's too weird."

"Try me."

The young man looked up at his father with curious and imploring eyes.

"I don't even know where to start," Luke confessed. "The first time I saw her I couldn't get over how beautiful she was."

"On the Death Star."

Luke shook his head. "No, on the holotape she sent to Ben."

"You were there?"

"Artoo had the tape, Uncle Owen and I got he and C-3PO from the Jawas," Luke explained. "I found the tape when I was cleaning him."

"You had those tapes," Vader realized.

Luke nodded, feeling his eyes stinging. "He walked over to Ben's during the night, 3PO and I went after him the next morning, I...I was there when the Imperials came and murdered Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru trying to find the tapes...the whole place was burnt down."

For some reason the otherwise silence from his father except for his respirator felt deafening.

"The only reason you weren't killed as well..."

"Because I was with Ben."

Luke raised his hands to his face like he was lightheaded and trying to get his bearings.

"He saw her on the tape, he knew who she was...why didn't he tell me then that she was my sister? Why...why did he lie to me about you?"

Vader shook his head. "I don't know."

Luke had a distant look in his eyes and didn't appear to be looking at anything as he said, "And when I saw her in the detention cell when we went to rescue her...she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen...I fell in love with her at first sight. I thought..."

"You didn't know," Vader cut through his thoughts. "There's no way you could have known."

Luke nodded in agreement, then blinked and his eyes focused again and he stared up into those red unblinking lenses, somehow able to see what wasn't visible to the human eye.

"Stop looking at me like that," he said in an annoyed tone, "Nothing happened."

There was a small pause, then somehow, Luke would've sworn there was more than a hint of cynicism as his father replied, "It's good to know that."

"Nothing happened," he repeated, then his eyes widened, "but if Han...if he hadn't been with us the whole way, it..." Luke felt the color draining from his face, "I feel sick." He swallowed hard and said, "Ben knew who she was, and he didn't tell me. We flew to Alderaan to rescue her, and he never told me...why...why did he lie to me? About everything? Why...he..." Luke's mind went blank as he tried to think. "He gave her to the Organa family and me to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, he...of course," he said with a sneer, "he knew it would be impossible the princess of Alderaan could ever meet, let alone fall in love with a farm boy, but...when we were going to save her...why didn't he tell me?"

Vader had no answer for that.

Luke sucked in an uneasy breath and felt like a rock was in his stomach, "Ben really screwed us over."

"That's not exactly how I would put it," Vader commented, "but I agree."

Luke heard the air he was sucking in and it sounded weird, like his chest was rattling or something, he felt like he was hardly getting any air at all, and he listened to his breathing become ragged, and higher pitched.

"Why would he do that?" Luke wanted to know. "He was my only link to you, he knew the truth, and when he told me about you being a Jedi I felt so lucky that he knew you, and he could tell me about you, I thought...and he started training me, and I thought he was teaching me to be like you...I thought..."

"I know," his father's words pulled him back to the here and now. He felt himself pulled against his father, felt the shoulder armor pressing against his neck and his chin as he stared at the wall behind him. His father's words only half registered in his head as the modulated voice said, "I understand, he was my friend and teacher for many years, and he betrayed me too. He betrayed both of us."

Luke felt a weight in his chest a split second before his voice broke in a dry sob, "And he told me to kill you." He hadn't even felt the tears building in his eyes, but he blinked and they ran down his face, his throat was thick with more of them as he collapsed against his father, his voice strangled in a hiccuping sob as he tried to explain, "He wanted me to kill you..."

Luke wasn't sure what happened, if he'd passed out for a moment or not, but he felt like he'd lost a significant amount of time. The next thing he was aware of was feeling completely drained, his chest felt jittery like he was going to start crying again but the rest of him felt like he was too exhausted for it to even be a possibility. It didn't appear his position had changed any, he was still pressed against his father, and he became aware of the sensation of one gloved hand rubbing up and down his back, the other held strong on his shoulder.

"Hush, my child," his father told him, "it's over now. I'm still here, you're still here, it will be all right."

Luke closed his eyes and pressed his face harder into his father's shoulder. Very weakly he replied, "I hope so."

This time it wasn't Luke's pained screams that drew Vader out of his meditation, but it was a particularly alarming disturbance in the Force.

"Luke?"

He couldn't get a coherent reading on what it was, but there was a relentless sensation that something was wrong with his son. Leaving his meditation pod, Vader headed over to Luke's room. The door slid open and he headed in, turning on the lights he was met with a familiar but disappointing sight that Luke's bed had been slept in but he wasn't there now, which left one sinking idea where he was.

Kneeling down on one prosthetic joint, he was too close to the bed to actually see Luke under it, but he could hear him.

"Luke, come out of there."

"Come in and get me," a quiet voice called back in something resembling a child's resilience and defiance.

"Luke," the name came through the vocoder in a small growl.

There was no movement from under the bed but the former dark lord heard a small, defeated sigh. He met Luke halfway and reached a gloved hand under the bed, he felt Luke's hand grab onto it, Vader reached his other hand under and found the skinny arm it was attached to and grabbed it firmly to pull Luke out.

Once Luke's head was out from under the bed, he let go of his father's hand and pushed on the floor to crawl out the rest of the way. His appearance was disheveled, his hair was soaked in sweat, his complexion was flushed, it was obvious he'd been crying, and it was obvious he was trying his damnedest not to resume doing it now, and failing. Sucking in a long breath and vainly trying to hold onto it so it didn't come back out in a sob, Luke crawled along the floor until he closed the gap between them.

What a difference a year made. Vader remembered Cloud City. Remembered their confrontation there. Remembered Luke, his hand severed and he could no longer fight, but so desperate to escape from his father's clutches at any cost, with only one hand he crawled out to the edge of the platform on the gantry, putting as much distance between the two of them as possible. Now a year later his same son who he had maimed, was crawling into his lap and clinging to him.

Vader could feel all the tension and heartache that was coursing through his son, but he wasn't able to pin down the cause of it all. He carefully put his arms around Luke and held him close but not tight, and waited for him to calm down.

"What is the matter, Luke?"

The boy sucked in a sobbing breath and admitted, "I don't know."

Vader pulled Luke closer to him, subtly tightening his grip, letting his son feel his presence and know he wasn't alone. Luke pressed his head against Vader's shoulder as a hiccuping sob wracked his whole body.

Vader lightly touched the fingers of one gloved hand against Luke's cheek, and tried again, "Tell me what's wrong."

"I don't know!" Luke yelled in frustration over his tears, "I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't know what this is, nothing like this ever happened before, not when Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were murdered, not when Biggs died-"

Luke unexpectedly recapped the events of the past few years, all the pain and the losses he had suffered, none of which had ever affected him like this.

Vader listened to the details in silent contemplation, and when Luke finally seemed to be wearing down, he told his son, "Luke, this has been building up for four years, this is the first time you've actually been able to process everything that's happened, it's only natural it would overwhelm you."

"But why now?" Luke asked. "Why didn't it happen before?"

"Everything happened too fast for that to even be a possibility, as soon as Palpatine was dead we had to evacuate the Death Star before it exploded, then we came here, and you've had to adjust to life here, everything has finally slowed down enough for you to actually think about it."

Luke groaned as he pressed himself tighter against his father. "I feel awful."

"I know, my son, this has been a long time coming."

Luke leaned into his father for a few minutes, eyes closed, his breathing ragged, just wishing everything would go away. When he opened his eyes again, his voice was slightly stronger as he told his father, "It...it isn't just that, there's something else. Something that I've thought about a lot lately and I don't know what to do."

"What is it?" Vader asked.

Luke pushed himself back so he could actually look into the red tinted lenses of his father's mask and tell him, "From the time Ben told me that you were a Jedi, and he started training me to use the Force, I started thinking if I couldn't join the academy and be a great pilot like you, I could at least learn how to be a great Jedi...and then after I met Yoda and started training under him, I started thinking...I must be the last Jedi in the galaxy, that has to mean something, right? And...time to time on the base we'd think about what we'd do when...if...the Empire was ever finally defeated and we didn't have to battle all the time, and we could actually lead regular lives...I started thinking if I am the last Jedi, there must be something I'm supposed to do with it. Like you said, there are a lot more kids out there who have the Force and don't realize it, don't know what to do with it...that maybe it was my destiny to rebuild the Jedi order...it sounded real simple at the time, but now..." Luke's whole body shuddered as he relived all his frustrations and disappointments from the past several days. "Yoda was a great Jedi warrior, I thought he had all the answers, he must've if he was 900 years old and trained thousands of Jedi...he and Ben..." how could he even begin to explain it? Even if his father would understand it, it still wouldn't make any sense. "They told me that Jedi can't give in to anger, to any human emotions, because that way lies the Dark side...that a Jedi must only use his powers for knowledge, and defense...and then they both told me to kill you."

Luke breathed in but the inhale caught in his throat and came back out as a half sobbing whistle.

"How could they tell me that? How could they say that to me after everything else they'd taught me? They told me to kill you, and then told me not to go, not to face you...I went because I knew my friends were in danger, Yoda said my training wasn't complete and I would lose...so after we rescued Han from Jabba...I went back to complete my training, and he was sick and dying, and he told me I'd already finished my training, that he only said that so I wouldn't go and face you, but that I wouldn't be a Jedi until I confronted you. They wanted me to kill you. It doesn't make sense," he shook his head helplessly. "They knew you and they said you could not be redeemed. I knew you could, how could they be so wrong?"

"They were not perfect, Luke, they fell victim to their own senses of righteousness, of superiority."

"Right," Luke nodded, "so if they were so old, and so wise, and they taught so many Jedi...and they could be so wrong, so horribly wrong...then what hope is there for me to resurrect the Jedi order and not make the same mistakes they did?"

"Luke," Vader pulled his son against him again, let the boy feel his calming presence. He understood his son's frustrations, but he was able to see it all through different eyes now, and he wanted to enlighten his son to the facts he was too shortsighted to see for himself. "The Jedi order was never perfect, it has been flawed since it was first created, and every generation, when someone else was in charge of it, they made their own changes as they saw fit, but it was still a heavily flawed order, it was always doomed to fail."

Luke's voice was thick with tears as he asked, "Then what hope is there I won't fail it too?"

"First of all, you have to realize that you acknowledge the mistakes they made, that alone gives you an advantage over the old order," Vader told him. "It's an order that was started by imperfect men, and it will always be an imperfect order, you can't make it perfect, Luke, all you can do is make sure not to repeat the mistakes of others."

Vader felt like he'd been hit with a cold flash soaking clear into his bones, it took him a few seconds to recognize it as a large jolt of fear burning right past Luke's shields.

"But that's the other thing, Father," he said in a much quieter voice. "I don't know that I can...or that I even want to."

Luke cursed in frustration and hit his forehead against his father's shoulder armor. "When we were going into Jabba's palace to rescue Han, I felt so old, like I had lived through everything, I felt so certain about everything, I knew exactly what I was doing, I had everything figured out...and now...I'm scared, Father...I feel like that naive farm kid back on Tatooine. I don't have any idea what I'm doing anymore."

"That's because you don't have to, Luke," Vader told him. "There is nothing that you have to do right now, life as you have adapted to it the past few years is no more and nothing you've known is required any longer. The war is over, you are free, you are not a Rebel anymore, you are not a fighter pilot, you don't even have to be a Jedi."

"I can't walk away from what I am," Luke said.

"The Force will always be strong in you, young one," Vader lightly placed his hands on the sides of Luke's face to make the boy look at him. "But that doesn't mean you have to be a Jedi."

"But I am, like you."

"Yes, my son," Vader responded. "But the Jedi order didn't allow I and your mother to marry, to have you...and Palpatine wouldn't have used me to to rise to power if I wasn't. It is a double edged saber, Luke, it is also difficult for the families involved. The process was the Jedi would take Force sensitive children away from their homes and to the temples, regardless of their parents' wishes."

Luke picked his head up and looked at his father with wide unbelieving eyes. "They kidnapped them?"

"In a sense."

"Ben never told me that."

"He wouldn't have had any reason to," Vader pointed out.

Luke moaned and dropped his head on his father's shoulder again.

"Just because it was my destiny long ago to be a Jedi doesn't make it yours. You don't have to restore the order, it can die out once and for all. You can walk away from all this. The good thing is you're still young enough you can figure out what to do with your life, you are free to choose your own destiny."

"But what if I make the wrong choice?" Luke asked. "It seemed so much easier when I knew what I was supposed to be, or thought I did anyway."

"As long as it is your decision, and you don't allow yourself to fall to the Dark side, it will never be the wrong choice," Vader told him. "Whatever you decide to do with your life, I will always be proud of you."

"You really mean that, Father?" Luke asked, his eyes wide in awe.

"I do," the man in black nodded.

Luke nodded in turn. "Thank you, Father...I love you."

"I love you too, Luke."

"I'm...really glad to know you support my decision," Luke said, and added, "because right now I don't think I can even move."

Maybe it was just their bond in the Force or maybe it was actually emitting from Vader's voice modulator, but Luke would swear he heard his father laughing as he felt the combined sensation of soft leather and hard durasteel rubbing his back. Luke hugged his father and rested his head on Vader's shoulder and asked, "Can I just stay here for a few minutes?"

"Of course, my son."

Luke wrapped both arms under Vader's shoulder and closed his eyes, his breathing was still labored but he was notably calmer now than before.

Vader replayed their whole conversation in his mind and he shook his head, no wonder Luke felt overwhelmed. This was more than anyone should have to deal with in just a few years, and Luke was still so young to have it all thrust upon him, especially since he was never given any real guidance from anyone who was supposed to teach him. For that reason he shared his son's frustration at the two dead Jedi, he regretted he couldn't kill Obi-Wan again, and he resented that Yoda got to peacefully slip away from natural causes after planting such damned notions into Luke's head. Kill your father but don't give in to your emotions, what the hell were they even thinking? Flawed indeed, it sounded to Vader like both men were for one reason or another trying to trick Luke into turning to the Dark side. And he'd been harboring these thoughts for weeks without letting his father know, now everything was making so much more sense.

Luke's breathing finally calmed down and became slow, steady, rhythmic, he'd actually fallen asleep. Vader considered his options, he could take the boy with him back to his room, or he could put Luke back in bed here and hope he actually stayed in for the rest of the night, or even, and he knew this one was dead in the water as soon as he thought of it, he could simply slide Luke back under the bed where he'd wound up spending most of his nights anyway. Despite Luke's insistence that it helped him to sleep, it just wasn't becoming to Vader to actually put his son down there. Another idea occurred to him, he secured Luke in his arms and slowly stood up, swung one leg over onto Luke's bed, then the other, pressed his back against the wall for support, and laid Luke out so he slept half sitting up with his head resting against his father's chest plate. The boy never moved, never stirred, never made a sound. Vader locked his arms around Luke's chest and held him while he slept, feeling through their bond only a foggy sensation of peace and content.

"Goodnight, Luke."