This was familiar. Vader calmly stroked over the top of Luke's head as his younger son laid curled beside him with his head resting on his father's knees. Despite the bad angle, Vader could still make out the small pout on Luke's face, reminding him so much of when Luke was a boy and came home upset because none of the other kids wanted to play with him.
The eye that Vader could see turned up towards him and Luke said, "I don't get it, why doesn't Han want me to help him repair the ship?"
"This is all still a large adjustment for your brother," Vader told him. "He needs some time by himself."
Luke pulled his upper body up from the bed and looked at his father and replied, "But he's been by himself his whole life."
"Yes, but that's also what he's used to...this is still new for him," Vader explained. "And don't forget, in hibernation he had no concept of time, over a month has passed but not for Han, as far as he can tell this might as well be the next day."
Luke's pout only grew as he settled back down against his father's knees and said despondently, "We were able to get the Falcon fixed up great the first time."
Under his mask, Vader smiled to himself as he patted Luke's back. Vader understood Han's need for time alone to think and figure out everything, but Luke was taking it as a personal rejection.
"It'll take a while to make all the necessary repairs, he'll want your help eventually, you just have to be patient with your brother," he told his son, "and in the meantime you'll just have to keep your old father company."
Luke choked on a snort and giggled as he pressed his head deeper against his father's durasteel knee.
Han sighed and groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. He lost track of how many hours he'd been up alternating between working on his ship, drinking Corellian brandy, and drinking while working. He didn't even remember what day it was, only that he hadn't been to bed for a couple of them. He was beyond exhausted, every inch of him was streaked in oil and grime from the work he'd been doing, and, when he felt like he was just about to collapse, something was starting to occur to him, that only served to make him feel even worse than he currently did.
He'd shut himself up on the Millennium Falcon and hadn't allowed anyone else onboard, not Vader, not Luke. He wanted to just be by himself and think as he worked on getting the ship back in operating order. And he'd thought a lot, about a lot of things, and when that started to get to be too much he started drinking, but even that hadn't been able to keep all the pesky thoughts out, they persevered and found their way in regardless, and now, for the first time in his life, Han Solo was truly starting to feel like a heel.
Ever since this whole mess had started, one of the only things he'd really devoted much time to was the issue of how it all affected him, how he didn't appreciate having his whole life turned upside down by his newfound family.
Now however, he was starting to try and see everything from his father's point of view. Tried to think about what it had to have been like for Vader, Anakin Skywalker back then, a teenaged father, with this massive responsibility weighing on him. What must it have been like for him to give Han up? Clearly it couldn't have been a decision made lightly.
Han sat on the floor and thought about it for a while, and tried to put himself in the same father's boots 25 years later when he finally found the son he'd given up so long ago...what must that have even been like once he realized it? Try as he might, he couldn't imagine it, but his father had lived it. So had it really been so horrible he'd wanted Han to move in with them, to be right there with his father? Sure, at the time it felt like his entire life was being rearranged and wasn't even his own anymore, but in retrospect...the Imperial Navy had decided to discharge him after the crash, Vader hadn't been responsible for that, he merely hadn't opposed the decision. Not that Han would've ever asked him to, sure, they might've kept him on, but once everybody found out they were related, and there still wasn't any guarantee that wasn't going to be public knowledge, then everybody would decide he'd only made the fleet because he was Vader's son, which had actually been the truth, he just hadn't been aware of it at the time.
Something else dawned on Han...aside from the initial questions when Vader was trying to establish the probability of Han being his son, he never pried into Han's past, he never broached the subject about Han's life growing up...and it only stood to reason he had to be burning with questions, wanting to know all about his firstborn son's life...but he'd respected Han's privacy and given him his space and never pressed the subject. Instead, Vader stood back and silently waited for Han to open that door, which, he realized now, he never had. Han only had sparse knowledge about the whole Jedi order, but it was obvious Vader had to have been one once, because that was the only way to explain the massive amount of patience the man had exercised through this whole ordeal. Han hadn't ever minded hearing bits and pieces about Luke's life or even Vader's past, but it hadn't occurred to him to do the same and enlighten them about his own early life.
He supposed part of that had been merely wanting to avoid any debates that could've come up about his mother, the woman who had adopted him and raised him, versus their mother, the woman who gave he and Luke their very lives, who had at least raised Luke through his most formative years. It had been easier just being on his own and not having to worry about anybody else. Again, tact had never been his strong suit, and he knew he had a good thing going here with his father and brother, he didn't want to chance ruining it by saying the wrong thing, especially after seeing his birth mother's grave, seeing her, how beautiful she was...he shook his head and tried to clear those thoughts away. He had an idea Vader had a better grasp on all this, but he certainly didn't want Luke to ever think he was undermining how important their mother was, but all he had to go on by comparison was his mother, his and his alone, his by choice, who was a working class Corellian, not of significant beauty if he could be honest, but growing up she'd been his whole universe, try as he might he could never imagine having anyone else for a mother. Not even his 'real' one. Even now, knowing what he did, it all struck him as a strange concept.
The man sat in the middle of the floor with his knees to his chest, one hand balled up against his cheek, his eyes burning, their lids feeling like they weighed a ton, all he wanted to do was go to sleep and deal with this in the morning.
But therein lay another issue. Those dreams he'd been having ever since this whole mess started. Not really nightmares, but they just left him feeling generally weirded out when he woke up and remembered them. He wasn't so dense that he didn't know what his subconscious was to up, but night after night, dreams about him being a kid again, looking down in a crib and seeing a blonde haired baby, instinctively knowing it was his little brother. Other dreams, the ones he'd especially tried to avoid recurring,
-strong arms locked around him, immobilizing him, a strange rocking sensation-
Yeah, no deep thought required for that one.
Han still remembered the night the blood test was done. At first, everything just seemed to blur together, time was at a standstill, and it all slowly sunk in that what Vader had told him was true. A few minutes had passed in almost silence aside from Vader's respirator, neither of them said anything. He didn't know, maybe they were both afraid actually saying something would make it too real too quick, or make it feel even more unbelievable. He had no idea what to say and was just looking for the first opportunity to get the hell out of there. Vader moved towards him and he saw the gloved hand extended towards him. His instincts had him pushed a foot back across the floor before he even realized he'd done it. Vader had taken the hint and stayed where he was and made no further attempt to touch his son.
The only person who had ever touched him...well Han wasn't going to get into that either. But he remembered his childhood on Corellia, most of the kids in their neighborhood had multiple siblings, but a lot of them didn't have fathers, and the ones that did, from what Han had observed, they weren't good for much except beating their kids. Subconsciously if nothing else, he'd always known all fathers weren't like that, but it was generally the first image that came to mind whenever he thought of them. Somehow he'd never drawn the conclusion his own father might be an abusive bastard too, but he'd resigned himself to his self-made fact that his father, whoever he was, wherever he was, was dead, and had died long ago, it was a non-issue. When he saw Vader actually reaching for him, all the old instincts had come flooding back mingled with a set of all new ones as well. On one hand he knew the reputation Vader had throughout the galaxy, most people were afraid of him, with good reason or not, it just seemed a safe side to err on. But he'd also known, the first time he met Luke, he could tell, whatever Darth Vader was to the rest of the galaxy, he was a good father to his kid; Han had been able to tell just from Luke's bubbling personality and the light in his eyes, he'd been raised by good parents, he wasn't scared of them.
So many things had been racing through Han's mind when he drew away from Vader. Above all else, he didn't want the man to touch him. He'd just found out the guy was his father, even though he'd known for a couple weeks it was a possibility it was all still too much for him to process all at once, he didn't want it getting even more confusing by letting any actual emotions join the mix and those tended to follow physical contact. When he came back weeks later because of Luke, the same thing had happened, he still wasn't at a point he was ready for the man to touch him. Maybe it was this infamous family strain of stubbornness he'd heard so much about, but at the spur of the moment, Han had decided to initiate the contact himself, somehow him touching his father first had made all the difference in the universe. Han had spent so much of his life actively not thinking about if his parents were alive, if they'd kept him, what might have been, he especially never wasted much time thinking about his father holding him. When it actually happened...well, he'd sooner eat his blaster than admit it to anyone, but, and as much as he hated to admit it even to himself, it actually felt pretty good, strange, but good. It wasn't like when he was a kid and his mom hugged him, it was something different altogether, he couldn't even think of any words to fit it. Aside from the obvious, he hadn't thought much of it at the time, but when the dreams started occurring he realized just how strongly it had affected him, and that disturbed him. He'd spent his entire career avoiding any emotional relations with anybody, it was all about the job, he flew his missions, he did what he had to, but in the end, worst come to worst, he only had himself to worry about. He didn't have that luxury anymore.
The end of his military career was still a vibroblade in his back and felt like an actual weight on his chest that Han would carry around for the rest of his days. But right now even that paled in comparison to this newfound fact. He no longer had the option of only looking out for himself, of only caring what happened to him. Among other things, Han now had to come to terms with the fact that he had been locked in carbonite for a month, he didn't even know how to begin to grasp a loss of time of that amount. Time didn't exist in carbon hibernation, something did, but time just spanned on forever, it never changed, it...actually it bore some semblance to the blindness that had followed it, though thankfully that was a far shorter experience. But all this was coupled with the fact Vader had actually gone to Tatooine, had confronted and killed Jabba the Hutt, something most people in the galaxy would never even dream of and none would ever attempt, all to rescue him. Nobody he'd ever known in his entire life would be willing to take that risk, go to all that trouble to save him, none would even try. Perhaps that was the most overwhelming fact of all, how much time and effort and resources Vader had poured into finding him and saving him, when he barely even knew the man. All he knew was that he was his son...a wave of coldness washed through Han as he thought again of just what all Vader had put up with himself through all this, and how much it had to have meant to he himself to get Han back no matter what. Hmm, so that's what a father's love looked like.
Han felt his eyelids getting heavier, and felt his chin drop to his chest, and it seemed he just sat on the floor like that for several minutes, not asleep but barely awake, waiting, trying to figure out what to do next.
He was only faintly aware of himself murmuring, half asleep, "I want my mother," before his eyes opened and he realized he'd actually fallen asleep, but for how long he had no idea. With an occasional sigh and/or groan, he pulled himself up from the floor and looked out the windscreen. It was still night, though he still had no idea which day it was supposed to be. He thought for a minute, then came to a decision.