A/N: Thank you for reading!
"I feel just terrible every time I question him." Luke breathed out wearily. "I know it hurts Ben more – he must think I don't trust him, though I want to! But, he harbors such… strong resentment."
Luke sat across from Vader, running a hand through his locks while Rey bounced on his knee. The girl was still tiny, but now fully capable of sitting up and babbling nonsensically as she looked at Vader with keen eyes; and fully capable of getting her grandfather to smile every time she caught his attention.
"Sometimes it's a fog over all else, and I can hardly see Ben." Luke's expression went slack, and Rey took notice when he forwent bouncing her rhythmically as he had been for the past few minutes. "I've had nightmares about it, and they blend into reality more than I'd like."
"Son…"
The Jedi scrubbed a hand down his face, letting his daughter tug the other hand so that it was bracing her from sliding off his knee and down to the frigid ground.
Vader had never seen Leia's son, let alone met him. Nevertheless, the warning signs were there from the start, while Vader hadn't sought any attempt to interfere with Luke's teachings. It was not his place, not even now, but the former Lord smoothed a gloved hand over the arm of his chair anxiously.
In his mind, the place which was always severed from any outside probing, Vader rationalized his son's capability with the fact that Ben was still a young boy. He wasn't yet twelve-standard years, and there would be many years ahead where understanding would level off Ben's temperamental disposition.
Vader had to believe that, as the other possibilities that swirled over the troubled boy's head were (not) unthinkable.
He sighed heavily. "You should not let these fears keep you from what you wish to do. Ben's path is not set in stone, you must believe that."
Luke's vision clouded over briefly, but he nodded. "I'm still… Mara will have everything under control until my return."
"I'd decided against it before, but I'm going to take Rey with me this time."
Mara was the first to bustle in, wearing a net of rags for robes and an expression closer to worry than anger. She waited for her husband to arrive, but already Vader saw the slip of a child nestled in a old-fashioned sling around her back.
Rey slept, oblivious to frenetic energy that was acutely palpable between the three adults in Vader's chambers. Vader noticed that her legs were tucked into the sling in a heap, and he felt a sliver of joy at the realization that the girl had grown since he'd last gotten a visit from her and her father.
"Why have you come?" Vader got straight to the point, growing weary as the tension overwhelmed and drained at his obsolete senses. He was – more or less – a husk of every past incarnation he'd ever taken on, and processing misery of this magnitude. He wondered with distaste how he'd withstood thousands of lives distinguishing from existence without losing his resolve.
Even a mountain eroded with enough time, he supposed.
Luke's mission to travel to the further reaches of the galaxy, where the light of billions of stars was hesitant to touch, in search of new Force-wielders was overdue. Vader had assumed that his son had already begun his journey, along with Vader's granddaughter in a bet to outlast the lingering fear that there was more danger at home than in the unknown.
Yet there she was, and there was Mara looking less put-together than Vader had ever seen her. She looked a startling shade shy of a woman he'd known once, a woman in the throes of cobbled, inscrutable legislation.
"I would have preferred leaving this up to my aunts, or even to Leia." Mara started bluntly, pacing while Luke stood with his hands behind his back.
"It's out of the question." Luke retorted, grimly. He didn't flinch when Mara turned on him, glare blazing.
"How can you say that? Luke!" Mara strode to meet her husband head-on. "How could we possibly trust our daughter with –"
She looked away from Luke's stone face and whipped toward the ever-stationary hermit. "We've come to ask if… if the worst were to happen and we had no other options… Would you keep Rey hidden?"
'Have you felt it?'
The com had come and slipped into Vader's waiting palm once he'd called for it, and though he couldn't see his son, Vader felt an electric current through his body at Luke's tone.
"Yes." Vader claimed, defeated.
A disturbance. The man had felt it like the burning of circuits in his core, popping and hissing and shaking him down to his knees when he attempted to rise from his seat. Vader had lost all feeling when it came to Mara's signature in the wider galaxy, like losing a finger to pressured nerves in one's sleep. Something deeper and sinister had lurked within that moment and beyond, when the brunette woman's life-force did not appear as a resilient spark to ignite that phantom limb. Vader had strained, but couldn't pinpoint her after she been clouded by a more familiar, less welcome cloak shrouded everything in darkness.
Vader had never seen Ben, let alone met him. But his family was so connected that all one had to do to find some sense of acquaintance was look for it. The former Lord's insides curdled when he realized that amid that shroud was a very, very familiar beast, like an extension of Vader himself.
'It's Ben. It's –' The voice on the other end fizzled out and cracked through the faulty transmission. 'Mara – I can't reach – headi – -ack –'
The sound of a high-pitched cry, coupled with the familiar aux of an accelerating ship phased the transmission out before the signal was cut off completely. Vader let the com fall to his lap as he leaned back as far as he could in his seat, shutting his aching eyes as the galaxy gave him no peace.
Vader could not remember a time when he'd been reduced to wishing for company so furiously, or for any news at all. He waited and waited and waited for some sign of life outside of the blinding chamber that burned his eyes when he continued to wake from stasis. The artificial, white lights were headache-inducing, but still better than the dreams that Vader suffered when he forced his mind to recede into unconsciousness.
Then came the unexpected, yet entirely precedent moment when his hibernation gave way to the sound of a harried landing just outside, and the furious pound of footfalls against the bald earth of the moon bearing Vader's isolation.
The doors slid open to reveal his son and granddaughter, coated in sweat and rain and tears. Luke tracked mud onto the antiseptic floor as he pushed in, hauling his daughter into the room before the entrance had time to slide close behind him.
Bits of burning ash and mud flaked from Luke's tunic as he set the child down just a hair's length away from Vader, whom had frozen while still unfocused after a dizzying attempt to rest.
The Jedi knelt to the ground in front of his daughter, bringing up steady hands to which Rey immediately walked toward. Luke wrapped his hands around the little girl's face and gently guided her closer to look into her eyes. There was no hiding the sorrow in his expression, as he stroked around his daughter's ears and swept loose strands of hair from around her sticky temples and cheeks.
"I'm going to have go away for a little bit now, sweetheart." The man said, as Vader observed quietly and kept his personal discomfort to himself. "Just until I find Mommy, and then we'll all be together again. I promise."
Rey didn't move away, but she looked anywhere but at her father while full to the brim with confusion and uneasiness. Luke pulled her into an embrace, regardless, and kissed the top of her sweat-soaked brow.
"Please, please take care of her." Luke whispered hoarsely, eyes trained on his father as he stood up from the sterile floor and relinquished his hands from around Rey's face. "Please."
Vader couldn't do anything more than remain silent, staring at the anguished man before him. The older man feared that saying anything, with his damnably weak inflection and his inability to even rise from what may as well have been another throne befitting a pathetic emperor, would only stunt the inevitability. Vader had no chance when it came to changing Luke's mind.
Rey clutched at Vader's pant leg, no doubt feeling the near-searing metal limb beneath the heat resistant material. She paid it no mind for once, as her father's pronounced outline grew less distinguishable in the gloom of the outside – the unnervingly quiet and isolating outside.
He didn't look back to meet her confused gaze, afraid for the first time in years at the real possibility that he, Luke, would crumble and turn to hiding himself. It was already impossibly painful to hear Rey's questioning probes through their bond and ignore them.
Luke Skywalker vanished, leaving behind his daughter and a barely crackling com unit that never picked up.
And he never returned.