A Hope in Hell
By Mina

Chapter 7

Agitated voices scratched at his hearing, the words too sharp and quick for his infant ears to discern. He was staring at Padmé, but she was sleeping, her breath rattling in her chest. There was a fear in him that was purely instinctive, as his - or, rather, Luke's - mind reached for his mother and found only a whisper-thin link to her presence.

Then Obi-Wan appeared, leaning over them. "Padmé," he said, shaking her. There was no response. He cursed, softly. "Padmé!" Still no response. Panic fluttered in Vader's stomach. Obi-Wan turned around, addressing someone behind him. "She's unconscious. We have to leave - now. Dané, take Luke." He reached over, lifting Padmé's body into his arms. She stirred briefly, her head falling against Obi-Wan's arm.

There was a harsh wailing noise in the air - a baby, crying. Him, crying.

"Anakin?" Padmé whispered, then she contracted in pain, clutching at Obi-Wan. "Anakin!"

Pain kicked Vader in the chest, and he had no idea whether it was his own reaction to the scene or Luke's.

"What's going on?!" another voice asked, and a woman came into view, lifting Vader into her arms. "Jedi Kenobi? What's wrong with her!"

"It's Anakin," Obi-Wan hissed. "He's alive."

"No! No... Anakin!" Padmé whispered.

Obi-Wan's face, for possibly only the second time in Vader's life, betrayed true distress in his expression. "I thought he was dead. I was so sure he would die. But he didn't - he's... changed. And she - she can feel it."

Dané stared at him. Without her handmaiden makeup and jewels, Vader barely recognised her. "How can she feel it? That isn't possible!"

"They had a bond," Obi-Wan said, closing his eyes in pain. "They are linked, mentally - physically. I did this to her, when I wounded Anakin. He survived through the Force, but she has no power in the Force to sustain her. And after the childbirth..."

"How do you know that? How can you -"

"I should have seen it earlier -" Obi-Wan began, but a thundering crash reverberated through the room, making Vader's teeth rattle. "It's begun," he said, and turned to run for the entranceway to the room.

"What?!" Dané called after him.

"Palpatine knows she's here. He's told the Senate there are Separatists here - there are Star Destroyers circling the planet."

"But -"

"We don't have time for this, Dané! We have to get to the ship. You go in front. I can protect you both better that way."

Dané's hands clutched around him, tightening instinctively. Then she turned and ran, and the familiar snap-hiss of a lightsaber being lit flashed through his hearing. Out in the streets, people were running, screaming - dying. A firestorm raged at the edges of his vision, the flames billowing out in waves of hot air tinged with the metallic taste of blood towards them.

"They're jamming communications - I can't call the ship. We're going to have to find a speeder and fly out to it. This way!" Obi-Wan called, and Dané ran after him, her breathing gasping in his hearing.

But Vader was focused upon Padmé, her face tight with pain. Memories - his own, this time - flashed through his mind. He had been insensible for many weeks, months even, and when he had finally woken, the sheer pain of his transformation had crashed through his mind: the fiery ache of the burn treatment, the sharp, piercing pain of the prosthetics being attached without sedatives.

He flinched from his own recollection of the sensations. The only thing that had dragged him through that dark time had been his hatred of his old master – his friend - and his fear for what had become of Padmé.

Hatred had sustained him, but Padmé had had no such power to call upon.

Time moved quickly then, racing through scenes of destruction and death, much of which he was shielded from by Dané's frightened clutch. Suddenly, with an abruptness that jolted him, someone was screaming. Dané, he thought. And Obi-Want was telling her to run. "Take the boy! GO! Get to the ship!"

And she was screaming, "I don't know where it is! Obi-Wan! I don't - No! Padmé! Padmé!!"

And then the sound of fire crackling through the air, the feeling of being thrown violently backwards as Dané clung to him. The thought, flashing through Vader's mind, that Obi-Wan had used the Force to throw Dané clear of the danger.

And then - nothing.

They started out before sunrise, just as the first daylight rays began breaking through the gauzy morning clouds. As it turned out, they were nearer the outskirts of the city than Vader had dared hope; an hour trekking through the residential streets led them out past progressively larger and larger residences, past more open space with overgrown grass and vegetation, and on towards the water meadows where Padmé's ship had supposedly been hidden.

Padmé's ship… hard to imagine it still existed, somewhere. He had hunted for it for years, never hearing any news of it. To think it - and its owner - had been here all along, buried under the rubble...

Vader was subdued, running the dreams from the previous night through his mind, feeling his hatred of Obi-Wan turning to dust.

Palpatine had attacked Theed knowing Padmé was there. And she had been killed in that assault. Palpatine had set out to rid himself of her, and he had succeeded. Palpatine, and Obi-Wan through his ignorance, had killed her.

Yes, Vader had turned to the Dark Side to save her and, in turning, had been instrumental in her death. But he had not killed her. If Palpatine had not attacked Naboo, would she have made it through? For the sake of her child, if nothing else? Obi-Wan had had faith that she might.

Vader rolled that possibility around his mind, disturbed by it, before locking it away for consideration at a later time. Right now he needed to concentrate on getting Luke and himself away from this planet.

As the mist burned away to reveal a day that could barely be described as dull, the last of the city streets gave way to fields. There was sign of a fire having raged here not all that long ago. The vegetation was scorched; dried flower heads swatted in the stiff breeze, mingling amongst grass stems so overgrown they reached above Luke's head.

Morning added an orange flair to a sky still streaked purple from the damage to Naboo's northern continent. Vader looked down at his son as the other squinted as if he was still unused to even this minimal light, or as if the light pained him somehow.

Vader felt a gut-wrenching fear suddenly, mingled with the rising sensation of an emotion he had long thought lost to him: hope. Luke was the trigger for both those emotions. The fear Vader could understand. The closer they came to finding this ship, the more Vader felt he had to lose. And the hope... the hope came from a more complicated place: filled with long-forgotten desires for a family, companionship... even love. And not only that, but from the hunger to know this child - to know him as his child. Vader had never felt such a fierce possession before, not even for Padmé.

He wanted to keep this boy beside him. He wanted to make up for the years lost to them both. Or to try, even if it would never be truly possible. And he felt such possession… such possession, it almost scared him.

But first they had to cross these plains, and the more they walked, the more pain Vader felt from his injuries; the burning ache in his leg peaked with every step he took. But the pain was worth it, and Luke continued to try and support Vader, though Vader's Force-sense had grown a little stronger overnight, and now he sensed exhaustion leaking from the boy in waves.

He knew Luke had been drained by the last few days' exertions. He also sensed that Luke refused to give in to that exertion, and he admired that even as he worried that to reach the ship before nightfall, Luke would have to push himself beyond the limits of his endurance.

To keep himself occupied, and to take his mind off those fruitless worries that lingered in the back of his mind, Vader spent time forming great plans in his mind - plans for the future, plans for Luke. Those plans had probably been there since before he had consciously started to think about them, seeded as soon as he set eyes on the Force-strong child.

Vader stumbled suddenly over one of the rough stones that had worn through the ground like old bones poking through ancient skin. His knee gave way as he stumbled, and Luke no longer had the energy to hold them both upright. They went down to the dry earth, Luke silently and Vader with a solid grunt of pain.

For a moment Vader just lay there, cursing inwardly at his own ailing body. Luke shifted, wincing, and Vader's hand went out to steady him. Luke lifted his palms and hissed in pain when he tried to raise himself back to his feet. Vader felt an odd nausea twist his gut when he saw the torn skin there. Luke slumped back down to the earth with a gasp of exhaled air.

"We gotta… get to… the forest," the boy hissed. His voice was weaker than Vader had heard it before, causing the worrying tingle of unease in his mind to turn into full-blown warning sirens, ringing urgently. But Luke's exhaustion didn't have to mean anything, really. Neither of them had slept well; both had been plagued by nightmares.

"If you can stand, I will attempt to follow," he offered.

Luke nodded, his jaw set determinately. He tried again to rise, but sank down to the ground for a third time. He wiped the back of his hand against a sweaty forehead.

A grimace touched Vader's lips. "Or we could rest a while," he suggested. He expected refusal, or tired agreement, maybe a smile of shared weariness. He didn't get any of those, though. Instead Luke turned his head up to the cold misty sky, looking at where the sun should have been, had it not been obscured by orange and magenta clouds. Luke blinked and Vader stared numbly at what he saw running down his son's cheeks: tears.

Before Naboo, how long had it been since Vader had seen anyone cry? Years, possibly. He was completely at a loss, and ill-equipped to deal with it. He had little energy left in his limbs, but he used what little he did have to reach out and pull his son closer - for warmth, of course. Luke came limply, but also seemed content to look away from him, staring at the distant, tree-lined horizon. He looked like he was searching for something with his eyes, though what it was Vader couldn't say. Something about that squeezed hard around what was left of his heart.

He had done this to his son - he, who had never thought to look to Naboo for his dead wife and child.

What was it he had thought after being captured by Jandon's gang? That all things came full-circle eventually? Even if that retribution fell upon the young, paying for their parents' errors.

Well, he had been correct, his son had indeed paid for his father's choice. His Force-strong, determinate, Light son who looked so much like he had once and felt everything so deeply, much as Padmé had. It tore pieces out of him to know that his decisions had forced his son to grow up in the dregs of Nubian society. To steal, beg... and what else? That was not all. He saw the grief etched clearly in the set of Luke's jaw, in his silence as he cried. Vader wondered, uneasily, if he had indeed got the 'whole story' as Jee had told him he should.

Luke finally turned to Vader. "I see her, you know."

Puzzled, growing cold and stiff on the ground, Vader could do nothing more than ask, "Who?"

"My mother."

Mother. He tasted the name mentally. Mother… Padmé. It was true, then, that they never die and leave you in peace. Here was her ghost, back to haunt him. Even as he thought it, he knew Luke was more than that, somehow. More than both of them, Anakin and Padmé, had ever been."You mean when you visit her grave?" he asked.

Luke shook his head. Tears dropped down his cheeks again before he swiped them away almost absently. "No. I mean I see her - sometimes. Not often, just... sometimes... I never knew her, I was a baby when she died... but I know it's her. She's trying to tell me something, but I can never figure out what." He shrugged, and the stare he turned on Vader was so full of longing that Vader didn't know what to say - he honestly didn't. That was a first for both Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader.

But he was saved from having to answer as a low booming sound rumbled through the air, making the ground tremble. Luke glanced around uncertainly and Vader followed when he rose to his feet and crouched low in the grass. Luke rose up, standing high enough to peek above the swaying blades. His eyes went suddenly wide and he let out a startled gasp.

"What -" Vader started to ask. But then Luke leapt aside as a knife sang through the air and buried itself somewhere in the grass. Cheers and hollers jumped around the field and Vader understood. Impossibly, they'd been found.

What little energy Vader had left for the Force after pouring his dwindling resources into their sudden flight across the plains, he directed into using his instincts to avoid the incoming barrage of knives and missiles, and to protecting Luke from them as well.

He kept the boy in front of him, as if he would shield him with his body. And in a way, he did. One knife found its target, but bounced to the ground when it hit plastisteel armour instead of the soft flesh it sought. The swaying grass revealed no shadows in the misty dawn light, and only the rustle of leaves told them of incoming attacks. Luke yelped when Vader again yanked him aside from another thrown blade. Vader had their blaster in his hand, but it was useless without the depth of Force contact necessary for pinpointing their pursuit.

How had Jandon caught up with them? It should not have been possible - it should not. But he and his gang had, and they were clearly incensed; the hunting cries echoed across the plains, sparking fear in Luke so keenly that Vader sensed it despite his still dampened Force sense.

Vader paused, sucking in breath. Unfortunately, his respirator was neither quiet nor inconspicuous at doing so. Vader knew that if they stayed still for long, they'd be found by the noise it made if not by whatever it was that Jandon was using to track the tracer in Luke. But he had to pause, because they were lost. They'd run with the sole aim of escaping their pursuit, and now Vader did not know in which direction lay the ship they sought. He stretched out to the Force with his fear and anger, but the Dark Side skittered away from his touch, and Vader hissed in irritation.

He turned to his son. "Do you know which way it is?"

Luke shook his head as if to clear it. His skin, Vader noticed, was getting paler by the second, despite the exertion. "Luke? Which way to Padmé's ship?!"

"I don't know!"

Laughter rippled high above them, like it was riding an ocean of swaying greenery.

"Think!" Vader urged.

"I am thinking!" Luke scowled.

Vader turned to him suddenly and grasped him by both shoulders. "Concentrate," Vader urged. "Calm down and reach out. The Force will guide you."

Luke licked his dry lips. "I can't -"

"Yes, you can. Had you been raised as you should have been, you would have been able to do this before you could walk. Trust your instincts." He crouched down like he was talking to a young padawan. "Do this, and we can leave. I'll heal all the scars, I promise, and no one will hurt you again, I promise."

Vader watched emotions flit across his son's face in quick succession before he settled on steely determination. So like Anakin.

Luke shook a drop of sweat from his forehead, furrowed his brow. One hand went to his temple as if in pain. Underneath his palms, Vader felt the boy tremble. It made no sense. They were both tired, yes, but this was different...

Then he felt, on the fringes of his ailing Force-sense, Luke's presence strengthening in his mind. And with that increased awareness, suddenly Vader understood - understood why the boy was so tired, why he kept expressing pain, why he acted so fatalistic. Because Luke was ill, very ill.

"I have it. It's this way."

Luke's reply broke through the shocked stuttering of Vader's thoughts, hauling him back to reality at the same time as he was dragged after his son. Vader followed, feeling stunned. Luke was ill. He'd sensed that keenly, brutally. More than ill - Luke's body was ravaged. He'd felt it, the slow death in each and every cell of the boy's body. It was inexplicable - and horrifying. Vader ran automatically, crouched in the grass, but inside he was reeling.

Luke was ill, deathly ill - but how, why?

As if to wake him from the stunned horror of his thoughts, another knife sliced open the air above their heads, followed by a giddy laugh. By the sound of it, their pursuers were drunk.

Luke kept running, tugging Vader along, his pale hand in Vader's own bigger, black-gloved palm. He cut them a path across the fields like a child bisecting a page, straight and direct. He was careful to leave the stalks as undisturbed as possible. Vader, his bulk larger and his leg shooting pains up his calf, was less successful, but either the surface of the grass rippled too little for their pursuers to see, or they were too drunk to notice, because they made it to the tree line.

Or almost did, anyway. Because suddenly, a louder voice lighted though the melee of predatory cat-calls.

"Jandon!" a voice screamed through the air, "Jandon, I've got a lock!"

And then a familiar voice. "You hear that, Luke!? Got you now, kid! I swear, you brat, I'll finish what I started."

Luke stumbled as if he'd been struck, going to his knees. Vader came down beside him, crouching to find Luke trembling like he would shake himself apart. He touched his hand to his forehead. The boy was burning up, his brow too warm. Vader felt his stomach turn, his heart clench in fear - how, why - why!?

Jandon called out again, closer now,. "You remember the last time you ran, kid? That ain't nothing like I'm gonna do this time."

Luke flinched as if he'd been struck, wrenching free from Vader's grasp and half-crawling, half-stumbling to his feet. "No," Luke muttered. "No - no, no, no! Not again!" Then he tore off, running desperately for the cover of the forest. Vader pushed himself to his feet and ran after him.

He saw Luke fall like it was slow motion, like Luke suddenly just gave up on escaping and threw himself to the ground. Vader reached him in seconds, yanking him back to his feet.

Luke gasped in fevered pain and terror. The boy pulled away from him, ran on, fell over again, sinking to the ground in misery and fear. "I can't," he said, looking at Vader. "I can't let him do that again. Please."

Vader didn't know what Luke feared Jandon would do - didn't truly want to know, he suspected - but he could feel time running down against them, ticking away with the rapid pulse of his blood in his ears.

He reached out and pulled the boy upright. Luke's skin was flushed, burning hot. "Come on, Luke, we'll get out of this."

But his words were drowned out by more jeering from Jandon. Vader didn't listen to the words, the threats - but Luke did, and he was shaking, caught by a fever and by terror. Whatever Jandon had done to Luke in the past, Vader swore the boy would pay for it.

"No," Luke whispered, and suddenly Vader found his arms full of shaking teenager, "No, not that." He buried his face against Vader's shoulder, and Vader didn't know whether Luke was begging him to stop Jandon or to resist punishing him for whatever he had done to Luke in the past.

"Hush, child. No one will hurt you now. But we must keep moving or they will catch -"

Vader went suddenly silent as he heard a familiar hum, the sound of approaching repulsors, and then he knew they were out of time. So that was how Jandon had caught up with them. He, too, had found a speeder somewhere. Vader came to his feet, lifting Luke up with his good arm, and started running, throwing his fate into the Force, trusting it to guide him.

Vader ran for the tree line. The grass ended where it met the forest, and Vader ran on, dodging the trees, running, running... crashing through the undergrowth, slapping aside wet leaves that grabbed at his thighs.

Finally Vader slowed, gasping for breath. He set Luke on the ground, gently, horrified beyond measure at what he could now sense from the boy: hopelessness, resignation as his body burned with a fever. What was this from, why was he ill? How long had he been like this and Vader hadn't noticed, focused as he had been on the past and on covering the miles to Padmé's ship?

"Luke?" he said, shaking the boy gently. When Luke did nothing more than groan in pain, Vader shook him harder. "Luke! Where is the ship - the ship, Luke!" No response, other than Luke curling in on himself protectively. "Luke, think. It will have medical supplies aboard. We can help you, treat you. We -"

"It's no good," Luke said, focusing on Vader with obvious effort. "You can't treat this."

It sounded like the truth - felt like the truth - but Vader couldn't even begin to accept it. "What do you mean?"

"This is the tracer, Father. It doesn't just tag you, it kills you if you get too far from the stations... from your... your owner. We passed that point hours ago." Vader looked down at him, feeling numb, not knowing what to say. What could he possibly say that would express the horror inside of him? Luke smiled, weakly. "It's okay. I knew when I told you I'd help you that this'd happen. I just wanted... to get to know you... before..." he trailed off as a spasm of pain made him curl tighter on himself.

"Luke," Vader said, reaching out, and this time he heard the despair in his voice… the anger. "You... you're dying," he said, and saying it aloud was almost too painful to bear.

Luke closed glassy blue eyes and nodded weakly. He shifted on damp ground before reaching out. Vader helped him upright, to sit against him. Luke clutched at the black material of Vader's cloak, clutching fistfuls of the fabric and bringing it closer around him, tucking it right up to his chin. "I didn't think you'd care," he said. By the strangled sound of his voice, he was crying. "You'd still get out of here alive."

Vader stopped the immediate rebuke before it could pass further than his mind. It was something he was doing more and more ever since this third visit to Naboo: thinking before he spoke. This was not threats and rhetoric for lives he cared little for. This was a life that mattered to him, and -

Force, what had he done? He was feeling love again. It was eating him from the inside out, a cancer that would have him waste away to nothing, lamenting his life. Or, at least, that was what the pre-Naboo Vader would have thought. But he, now, right here, was left clutching those feelings like a winning hand of Sabacc cards.

He pulled Luke closer. Those searching eyes that never found what they were looking for, did they see something in Vader that no one else had? Not even Vader himself? Gently, he reached out again and, taking hold of Luke's chin, forced the boy's gaze upwards.

"Is there no way to stop it?" he asked.

Luke looked up at him, still that sad frown turning down the corners of his mouth. "No. The virus activated as soon as we left the city limits. There's no cure; it's molecular."

"You should not have -"

"I had no choice," Luke interrupted weakly. "I didn't care."

Again the guilt hit Vader. He had done this; created a world for his son to live in that leached him of all hope. It was every parent's nightmare to leave a worse life behind for their children than the one they themselves had lived. Even unbeknownst parents.

"And now?"

Luke turned his face until it was hidden in the fabric of Vader's cloak. Under Vader's gloved fingers, the skin on Luke's face was pale as bones, fragile like parchment.

"I..." He looked up suddenly, his eyes seeming to swallow his face, "I only ever wanted to know you, Father, so I could hate you and stop wanting to... to love you." Luke's too-bright eyes closed briefly. "I wish I could have hated you. It would have been easier." He coughed, the sound rattling in his chest. "It's too late to do anything about it now, though."

Vader's immediate denial wouldn't be voiced. Finally he said, "It's not too late."

"For you? Yeah, maybe not."

Luke blinked almost sleepily. And Vader despaired. His hands tightened. Luke would not die. He would not allow it. His anger boiled upwards, raging at himself and at the Force for allowing him a last glimpse at happiness before snatching it away. Perhaps if he even now reached out with the full power of the Dark Side, poured all his horror and fear into his weakened contact with the Force, he could -

"Father... don't.…" Luke said, his hand tightening on Vader's. "Please don't."

But if Vader didn't, then Luke would die. And he would be alone. Horribly, devastatingly alone.

Again.

He closed his eyes, the indecision tearing at him.

"Don't," Luke said. "If you do that... none of this, none of it will have been worthwhile."

And there was too much truth in that, somehow. If Vader reached out, immersed himself in the Dark Side, tried desperately and angrily to make Luke live - who would the boy end up living with? With the man Vader had been until so recently: a violent, uncaring man? What kind of life was that? The boy had risked everything, including his life, to save Vader. What kind of insult would it be for Vader to throw that all away now?

Luke sighed, sinking quietly, limply into Vader arms, his breathing more erratic. "Don't -" Vader started to say, but he didn't know how to finish. Don't leave me? Don't die? Don't ask me to let you die? He closed his eyes, despairing.

Was this what the Jedi had meant about accepting death, then - rejoicing in it? But what was there to rejoice in? His son was dying. His son was dying - and in his arms. Vader helpless to do anything, hideously aware that Luke had fallen into insensibility. He felt like he was losing himself.

A long-dead voice came back to him: Yoda, counselling in that irritatingly convoluted way of his. Accept death, you must. Or destroy you, the grief will.

But how - how did you accept death, accept your own inability to prevent it? Vader had ever struggled with that, with accepting a limit to his powers. But here was a terrible demonstration of his limits. Only Luke could find the ship that might, by some miracle, save him. Only Luke had the power to save himself. Not Vader. Vader had perhaps never had that power. And how could he accept that?

Because he had to. Because thinking otherwise would lead him into the kind of traps he had fallen into during Padmé's final days. His desperation would not save Luke, as it hadn't saved Padmé. The Force might have intervened, had it deigned, but it hadn't, and Vader had never had the power to intervene himself. By trying, he had fallen so far he had damned not only his wife, but also himself and his son. He wouldn't make that mistake again. He swore it, with all that was left to him. He would not make that mistake again, that arrogant belief in the possibility of his own omnipotence.

He stayed on his knees for a moment, surprised to find that he had somehow come to accept that he had no control over his son's life. Not right now, anyway. It was liberating, in its own way, to accept that the responsibility did not solely lie on his shoulders. Luke had chosen to sacrifice himself for his father. Luke had chosen, not Vader, and Vader could no more change that choice than he could reverse time and change his own choices.

And that acceptance, he supposed, was a part of Light Side. Strange how it felt so natural.

Then, as Vader knelt there, reluctantly facing the consequences of Luke's choice, a low humming noise rattled the leaves of the trees, lower pitched than the repulsors of Jandon's gang had been.

Vader opened his eyes. Over the treetops a shadow appeared, like a great bird of prey hovering and waiting for carrion. Vader stared, perplexed and amazed, as a ship descended - a Nubian ship, sleek and brilliant, lowering down in the clearing.

Vader watched it settle, uncomprehending and yet stunned with recognition. This was Padmé's ship, dropping into the clearing with understated grace. But how it had got there...? How it had got here didn't matter, Vader realised, as sudden, wild hope sprang to life. He lifted Luke into his arms, the boy's unconscious body no weight at all, and ran for the ramp even as it started to lower.

A familiar figure appeared in the entranceway, backlit by the wedge of orange light.

"Master Kenobi?" it asked, in a familiar, prissy voice. "Master Kenobi, sir - are you there? Why, what a foolish question - you must be... why else would our remote activation have triggered us to - Oh, I say! Who are you!?"

Vader brushed past the droid, barely listening to his words, slapping the hatch closing mechanism, running for the med. station. Even as he ran, he wondered: was this fortune from the Light Side, then? From trusting in the Force to aid him, rather than forcing it? If Vader could just get Luke to the bunk, get the scanners on him.… How sophisticated could this virus be, anyway? Could it be a match for the ship's medicine and his own healing abilities combined? It couldn't be, could it?

... could it?