Vader had had a very bad day. He considered not going to his little rebel, but he remembered the last time he'd done that. Luke had been terrified. Little arms had clung to Vader the entire visit.
"Dad!" Luke stood and walked to his father's side. He was either unaware or unafraid of Vader's bad mood.
"I'm sorry Luke. Today might not be a good day to talk."
"Please, Dad. Don't go." Luke's hands took one of Vader's. "Tell me what's wrong. I might be able to take your mind off it."
"I am surrounded by idiots and imbeciles." Vader allowed Luke to guide him over to a corner of his cell. They sat on the floor and Luke lay against Vader's comforting bulk.
"Did anything in particular go wrong today?"
Vader counted off problems on his fingers, "The hyperdrive failed because the last idiot to repair the stupid thing mixed up the wires. No one bothered to check that the wires were in the correct order and they spent hours trying to find the source of the power failure. Another moron managed to destroy all the weapons on the entire Star Destroyer. The captain electrocuted himself trying to fix something when there was a qualified man right next to him. He won't be out of hospital for weeks. I can't think of one thing that could have gone wrong that didn't."
"Oh. I'm sorry." Luke felt that he should be able to make it better for his adoptive father, but he didn't know how.
"Don't worry, Luke. You're one of the few people I can't relate to the mistakes. How was your day?"
"Nothing compared to yours. They found out that I have a weird set of pressure points that cause me more pain than most tortures and they've been having fun with them ever since. They forgot to feed me. They twisted one of my ankles and it hurts like you wouldn't believe. Like I said, nothing too new."
Vader looked at Luke's feet. The right one was twisted at an extremely odd angle. He heard the boy's stomach growl. Luke whimpered slightly as he tried to curl into a ball against Vader. Every movement was clearly painful for the child. Vader felt a burning pain for the boy. Everything was engineered to make his life as painful as possible.
"Dad?"
"Yes, Luke?"
"I was wondering if you would teach me to use the Force."
"I can't do that, you might get away."
"Please, just teach me something. Something I could practice to take my mind off the pain. Something that would impress my father." Luke looked at his hands and his voice got very small.
Vader felt like he was being torn apart. Half of him wanted to make the boy happy, but at the same time he knew that anything he taught the boy could be used to escape. "Luke, your father would be proud of you, no matter what. You don't need to be able to use the Force." Vader brushed his adopted son's hair out of his blue eyes.
"Please, just something harmless. It means a lot to me." Luke almost gave Vader puppy dog's eyes, but he thought better of it just in time. "Come on, what harm could I do with, I don't know, levitation or something."
"You'd be surprised."
"I can already do it a bit. Look." Luke pulled off one shoe and threw it against the opposite wall. He held up one hand and levitated the shoe a couple of inches off the ground. "I just want to be better at it."
Vader held up one hand too and made Luke's shoe fly in circles. Luke laughed. Vader carefully gathered his son in the Force too and flew him up to the top of the cell. Luke moaned softly and clutched at his twisted ankle, but as soon as he could keep it from moving he started to laugh again.
Vader gently let his little rebel fall like a leaf, drifting to and fro. Luke landed in his father's lap, laughing softly. Vader called Luke's shoe back and helped him put it on over his half destroyed foot. Luke flinched repeatedly and slipped his arms around Vader's neck for comfort and protection from his pain.
As soon as the shoe was on Vader carefully stroked his son`s back as the poor boy moaned softly.