Chapter Three: Recuperation
"You're supposed to be resting," Luke insisted as his father prepared for the trip he refused to put off.
"I will rest," Anakin replied, pulling out a cloak and examining it. "When I come back."
"I --"
"Master Luke, the Princess would like to speak with you," C-3PO interrupted him as the droid and his counterpart came through the door. He saw Anakin and turned. "Oh, hello, sir, I don't believe we've – Artoo Detoo, what has gotten into you?"
The little astromech had rolled forward faster than Luke had ever seen him move before, beeping and whistling so quickly it made Luke's head spin, and stopped before Anakin, who bent down.
"Artoo Detoo," he murmured, and much to the astonishment of Luke and C-3PO, gave the little droid a hug. "I've missed you, Artoo."
The astromech cooed.
Anakin stood, his hand still trailing along the top of R2-D2's dome. "And you don't remember me, Threepio?"
"I – I – I, ah, no, sir. Should I?"
"Yes." Anakin frowned thoughtfully. "Artoo?"
The droid answered with a beep.
"Did he undergo a memory wipe, or a memory card replacement?"
A whistle.
Anakin smiled. "Good. I can fix that." He paused. "When I get back."
And with that, he swept out the door with R2-D2 at his heels, leaving a very surprised Luke in his wake.
"How is . . . um . . . he doing?" Leia asked her brother. She had managed to avoid Anakin for the past couple of days. She wasn't even sure what to call him. It felt strange to use his given name, knowing of their relationship, yet she still couldn't bring herself to verbally acknowledge him as her father. That, more than anything else, told her that she was not ready to face him.
Luke frowned at her. His relationship with Anakin had taken off splendidly – he could not relate with her on this. "Ask him yourself. He's headed down to the hangar bay."
"The hangar bay? What's he doing there?"
Luke sighed. "He's going to Bast Castle, his residence on Vjun. He wants to build a new lightsaber, and for that he needs crystals. He doesn't want to take the time to order them in, and he says he has some at Bast." He shook his head. "I tried to talk him out of it, but it was like arguing with a wall. Or with you."
Leia glared at him, them asked, "Did he at least take someone with him?"
"Artoo went after him; he'll probably take him along." He told her about Anakin's encounter with the droids.
Leia shook her head in disbelief. "What are the chances? And he said he could restore Threepio's memory? I didn't think that was possible."
"Neither did I. You'll have to ask him about it," Luke tossed over his shoulder as he left Leia's quarters.
Leia gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to throw something at him.
Anakin flattened himself against the outer wall of Bast Castle, unsure whether to be happy that his guards were doing their jobs or frustrated because without the black armour he was unrecognizable as the king of this castle, which meant that the vigilant sentries would shoot him on sight.
Luckily for Anakin, there was more than one way to enter the fortress. If he could get to it without being detected, of course.
And, as luck would have it, the only place he could land his ship without drawing attention to himself wasn't anywhere near the hidden door he needed to find. Thank goodness for Force illusions.
This is ridiculous, Anakin thought, irritated. I'm breaking into my own home.
At least he had managed to convince R2-D2 to stay with the ship. The astromech had insisted on accompanying him on the flight, but even the oddly curious droid did not relish attempting to outwit Vader's staff.
Finally, Anakin spotted the metal ring on the ground that would open the trapdoor to a tunnel that led to the lowest level of the castle. Making sure no one would see the movement and feeling very out of place at a place he had claimed as Vader, Anakin lifted the door and slipped into the ground.
Darting silently through the hallways of Bast Castle wasn't hard, and a flick of the Force turned the attention of any maids he needed to creep past. It wasn't long before he was within his private suite of rooms.
However, even Darth Vader's dreary yet tasteful quarters needed to be cleaned.
Anakin felt the girl a split second before they saw each other. "Briar!" he hissed as her hand darted for her comlink, ready to hit the emergency button.
She froze. All her senses told her that this was not Lord Vader, yet what other stranger would know her name? She hadn't even thought he'd remember it – he had only asked for it once, when he had uncharacteristically sought her opinion on a piece of art for his study. He had gone with her suggestion, but --
Briar stared uneasily at the intruder. "Yes?" she replied suspiciously.
Speaking lowly and rapidly, he recounted to her in intimate detail that day when she had chosen the painting for him.
Despite his appearance, her instincts told her he was indeed the Sith Lord she served. "My lord?"
He nodded solemnly.
"M-My lord, please forgive me, I --"
"You did what I trained you to do, Briar; do not apologize for that," he interrupted as he approached her.
She stared at him. What had gotten into him?
He grinned down at her. "Please move, Briar. I need to get to the bedroom."
Still shocked, she did as ordered, and he entered the hyperbaric bedchamber. After a moment, she moved to the doorway on watched him.
"How did you get in here?" she finally worked up the courage to ask.
"Let's just say I neglected to tell the guards about a certain entrance," he said as he moved around the room, tucking a couple cloth bags into his pockets. He paused, then picked up a final object, a lightsaber. "I think that's all I need." He looked back at her. "Are you going to let me leave undetected?"
"Are you going to come back?" Briar asked. "Nobody believes you've died, like the HoloNet is saying."
"I'll be back," Anakin replied thoughtfully, "but I think I'll comm first next time. They can't shoot me over the comm."
Luke greeted Anakin in the hangar bay. "Leia and Jix are both mad at you for taking off like that."
Miffed, Anakin replied, "I asked Mon Mothma if I could go. She said yes. Jix is just put out because I normally send him on thefts, and Leia – well, when is Leia not mad at me? I haven't even seen Leia since . . . ah," he looked down, feeling extremely guilty, "Bespin."
Luke opened his mouth, but Anakin overrode him, shaking of his feelings of extreme guilt in order to put on a cheerful face for his son. "Anyway, I have enough crystals for about seven lightsabers. I need to make those, fix Threepio's memory, and build a dozen or so dueling droids. And I want to do it all before Mon Mothma decides I've had enough time to recover and throws me out into the field."
It normally took a Jedi about a month to create a lightsaber – they were very picky when it came to their blades and therefore took the time to ensure that every element was perfect.
Anakin did not possess the patience required to spend a month on a single project. His first lightsaber had taken him two and a half weeks to construct. Now he only needed one. If pressed, he could produce a top quality weapon in as little as two days.
Luke sat on the floor, the crystals Anakin had retrieved spread out before him, arranged by colour: red, blue, green and violet. Anakin knelt on the other side of the crystals.
"All of these, except the red ones, are corusca gems," Anakin told his son. "Corusca gems do not occur in red, so the red ones are synthetic crystals. However, I've always preferred corusca gems because they are hard, meaning the blade is stronger, and because they produce precise, high quality weapons. For my style of fighting, both are extremely important. I don't like it when my lightsabers break the moment I need them most."
Luke looked up, surprised. "Lightsabers can break?"
Anakin burst into laughter, and couldn't seem to stop. Luke's cheeks reddened. How was he supposed to know something like that?
Finally, Anakin calmed down enough to reply. "Sorry. Yes, my son, lightsabers can break." He chuckled. "If only you knew how many lightsabers I've destroyed in my lifetime . . ."
He composed himself. "Alright, so we have two lightsabers already." He placed them next to the crystals.
"Your red one and . . ." Luke's eyes lit up. "Hey! That's Ben's!"
Anakin smiled. "It is indeed. Anyway, I was thinking we make one more blade of each colour, and then make training blades out of the excess blue."
"Training blades?"
"Ones that sting, perhaps burn occasionally. You can't teach or practice with anything lethal, or you'll learn to pull your swings, and that is never good."
Luke absorbed that. "It makes sense," he agreed.
His father grinned. "Then let's get started."
Working together, Anakin and Luke finished the seven blades in just shy of five weeks. The training blades were simpler to make, and required less time than the real ones, which needed extensive work. They now had six lethal lightsabers and three training blades. Surveying their handiwork, Luke was wondering where they were going to store them all when he heard a commotion in the hall. Anakin opened the door and father and son stepping out into an explosive argument between Jix and Leia. Piett, trying to calm them down – without success – looked ready to faint with relief when he saw them.
Luke could sympathize. Despite her petite frame, Leia could be just as frightening as Vader when she was angry; Jix, who was not a small man to begin with, seemed to grow unnervingly larger and more dangerous the more furious he became.
Anakin didn't seem to notice. He spent a moment trying to decipher the problem from their unintelligible shouts, then gave up and added his own voice to the din. "SHUT UP!"
Miraculously, they listened. "Now," the Jedi Master said calmly, "who wants to tell me what happened?"
Jix got his mouth open first, much to Leia's outrage. "Me and the Executor crew converted that big, empty storage room into a gymnasium for you and the kid to train in," Jix explained. "We knew you were busy, and we had time to spare, so we decided to do it for you."
"The base here is becoming steadily more populated!" Leia interjected hotly, forgetting to be nervous around Anakin in her fury. "We are going to need that space!"
Anakin contemplated this. "But you do not need it yet, correct?"
Leia frowned at him. "No, but --"
"I will make you a deal, Princess," Anakin cut in. "We, and anyone else who wishes to, may use the gymnasium until the rest of the base is full. When that time comes, we will hand the space over to be used as needed, without complaint. Alright?"
It was a fair compromise, and Leia knew it. She nodded reluctantly.
"Jixton?"
The big man sighed. "Fine."
"Excellent." Anakin turned to Luke. "Find Threepio. I'll get the blades. Let's go check out this arena!"
As Threepio wandered around the storeroom-turned-gymnasium, Anakin and Luke mounted a cabinet on the wall for the lightsabers. They each chose a primary weapon; Luke the only green one, and Anakin a blue one he had built specifically for himself. Obi-Wan's blade received a place of honour, mounted at the top pf the cabinet's interior. The violet and two red lightsabers went underneath it and to the left, while the three blue training blades went on the right. They decided to seal the cabinet with the Force, so that nobody who wasn't supposed to could open it. That done, with their new weapons hanging symbolically from their belts, they went to meet Threepio.
"You handled that scene back there really well," Luke commented. "I think you made a good impression on Leia."
"Threepio!" Anakin yelled at the protocol droid. "Come here!" As the droid bustled over, Anakin replied, "You think so? I hope you're right, Luke."
The gymnasium was big enough to house a couple of starfighters comfortably. Anakin and Luke met Threepio in the middle of it. "You called, sir?" the golden droid asked Anakin.
"I did," he replied. "I want to fix your memory now."
"I wasn't aware there was anything wrong with my memory, sir."
"I know you aren't. That's why I'm fixing it."
"But if there's nothing wrong --"
"There is something wrong; you just don't know it."
"I'm sorry, sir, I – oh, I don't think you should be doing that!"
Digging through the wires at the back of Threepio's head, Anakin muttered back, "Funny, I really think I should."
Watching with interest, Luke said, "I didn't think it was possible to fix memory modifications."
"If the entire memory card was removed and replaced with a clean one, it's not. However, according to Artoo, Threepio here has only been wiped. With a wipe, the information isn't totally removed, which means that with a simple series of manipulations --" Anakin grinned mischievously, "-- it can be regained."
Sometime during Anakin's spiel, Threepio had powered down. Now, as Anakin replaced the plate that covered the back of his head, his photoreceptors brightened again.
"Recognize me now?" Anakin asked.
Threepio gasped. "Master Anakin? Oh, the Maker has returned! Oh my, I do think I am going to short-circuit!"
Luke's jaw dropped. "You're his maker?"
"Oh yes, Master Luke, Master Anakin built me as a child --"
"Any more surprises?" Luke asked. "Are you secretly married, or anything else I should know about?"
"Well . . . not anymore."
Luke's eyebrows shot into his hair.
"Ask Threepio," Anakin said as he caught sight of someone in the doorway.
As the droid regaled Luke with Anakin's life story, Anakin himself jogged over to Mon Mothma. "Master Skywalker," she greeted him with a smile.
Grateful that she was so comfortable around him, Anakin gave an elaborate yet elegant bow. "At you service, Commander."
She chuckled at his antics. "You have never been at anyone's service but your own, Master Jedi. However, we do have a mission for you."
