A/N: Trigger warning: Vader briefly contemplates suicide.

"Well?" Vader demanded, staring at the men of the Executor. They had sent out the probe droids long enough ago that they should have a solid lead by now. Every day that passed, his son slipped further out of his hands.

One of the technicians stepped up to him, sweating and shaking. Good. He should be afraid. His level of incompetence would determine the length of his life. The aches in Vader's joints where the shoddy prosthetics met the limbs, the painful irritation of his suit rubbing against his tender, never-healed skin, and the throbbing in his throat from the Emperor's latest distant punishment had robbed any goodwill not stolen from him by the constantly fruitless search for his son.

"There have been no leads in the search for Skywalker or the Rebels so far, my lord," the low-level technician said.

Vader reached out with the Force and constricted the man's throat. As the man fell to the bridge floor, Vader turned and swept past Captain Piett. "Double our search. I want that boy found alive!"

He didn't run, he never ran, but he did make his way to his meditation chamber as fast as possible. He sighed in relief when his helmet came off and, unlike normal, he ripped off as much of his armor as he could without ripping out his life support. Some of the pain was alleviated, but not most of it. Never most of it.

He tried to hold onto his anger, but it slipped away from him into despair, as it always did. The despair soon slipped away from him too, leaving him empty. He turned his lightsaber over and over in his bare, skeletal prosthetics, and tried to remember again why he even bothered to keep on living. Why did he not just ignite the lightsaber and end it all? What did this life hold that made living worthwhile?

He trod over the old exercise he had well worn out over the past twenty-two years. He lived to serve the Emperor. The man who had once been his friend.

Vader added his new reason to live to his exercise. He lived to protect his son from the Emperor's wrath. The only way Vader knew how to accomplish this was by turning Luke.

But to turn Luke, he had to find him and capture him. And the way the search was going, and the way events with the Rebels always seemed to turn out, that would probably never happen. Luke would slip through his fingers again and again and again until Palpatine decided Luke was too much of a threat to his power and ended him.

He drew in a deep breath, reveling in the rare feeling of being able to control his breathing. He would find Luke, and he would turn him. They would rule the galaxy as father and son. And maybe then it would be easier for Vader to remember why he kept on living.

"Oh, Anakin, look how far you've fallen," a sorrowful voice said. A familiar voice.

Vader's head whipped around. Obi-Wan, that cursed man, stood in his meditation chamber, but he was see-through and blue.

The anger that had abandoned him before came easily to him now. "What are you doing here?" Vader snarled. He resisted the urge to ignite his lightsaber. He didn't have enough room to swing it and still keep the chamber intact, and he wasn't ready to go back in the suit yet.

"Not surprised to see me?" Obi-Wan commented.

Vader paused. He actually wasn't all that surprised to see Obi-Wan, even though he knew the man was dead. He wasn't entirely sure why. Maybe it had to do with what he had said to him right before he died. Even though his former master had lied to him plenty, Obi-Wan never, ever conceded a fight to him, and Vader wasn't so stupid as to not be able to recognize that he had chosen to die. It was inevitable that he would have some sort of back-up plan. "No. Come to torment me, revel in the eternal pain you've caused me?" Vader spread his arms, showing Obi-Wan the damage Mustafar had done to him in all its glory. "Well, come and look! Come taunt me in how this is all due to the Dark Side, how this is all my fault! Lecture me on how it is not the Jedi way to kill unarmed men and try to explain how you could love me and abandon me to suffer like this! Go ahead, Obi-Wan! Give it your best shot! You won't be able to do much. The Emperor you left me to has taught me a lot about enduring torture since we last met as friends."

Obi-Wan winced. "I'm not here to lecture you, Anakin. I'm not here to taunt you or tell you of my love. You seem determined not to believe me, although my brotherly love for you is the reason I could not kill you on Mustafar. I'm here because the Force has decided to send you a message. I am here to deliver that message."

Vader threw his lightsaber at Obi-Wan, taking a small amount of pleasure in seeing the hilt soar through his insubstantial body. He folded his arms across his chest and tried to pretend he didn't care, as if ghosts of dead loved ones enemies from the past regularly came to him and told them they had a message from the Force, as if this wasn't either a sign he was finally dying or the strangest intervention anyone had ever received. "Well, deliver it, so that I will not have to view your deceiving face any longer."

"You have lost your way," Obi-Wan said. "You have turned aside from your destiny, and in your choices, the whole galaxy will be doomed, the Force will remain unbalanced, and the universe will plunge into darkness unparalleled in history. However, there is still time to change your path. To assist you in this decision, the Force will send three spirits to guide you and speak what is necessary. Expect the first tonight at 0100, the second at 0200 and the third at 0300." Obi-Wan sighed and melted. "Please, listen to them, Anakin. If the Force still thinks you can turn back… It's all I ever wanted. I want you back, Anakin. I'm sorry for everything I did to you, anything I did that led you to this, but please, don't make the choice to keep suffering any longer. This can all be ended if you just turn back. You can be happy again. Do you remember when you were happy? I miss that. I miss seeing you happy. Please, just…listen to what they have to say. It may be the last chance you get."

Vader shrank under Obi-Wan's earnest, distressed gaze. He couldn't muster the anger he wanted after the desperate apology, but couldn't let his hurt at his former master go either. Feeling like the naughty padawan he had once been, he shrugged and glanced away. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the blue form fade.

Vader shrugged again. It was just a hallucination. He dredged up his old anger, finally able to hold onto it again, and sank into meditation.

His anger faded for troubledness as the strange encounter with Obi-Wan's ghost came back to him.

It was just a hallucination, he tried to assure himself as he drew himself into the closest he was going to get to sleep.