A/N: Thank you to everyone who commented! Please R&R!
Vader felt the headrest before anything else, warm and solid. He wasn't entirely conscious yet, somewhere a-slip in between dreaming and waking.
Lingering so close to the ground, having to pry one's gaze from the dark, obsidian gravel below – rock formed from volcanic activity that went dormant long ago – and crane one's neck up over the cliff's edge. A spray of sea and salt flecked against his face, and he could feel it all as the wind ruffled his clothes and danced with his hair.
Ashen eyelids fluttered as the dream pressed on. A dream… a genuinely good dream that seemed like a memory.
He could see a widespread ocean before him, so vast and galactically-proportioned that it surely must've dwarfed their home. Even their island in the middle of one all-consuming sea was too big to comprehend for him, or whomever it was that remembered it.
It couldn't be his own. He had few good memories, and those he did were too far away as well as too recent to recall as such.
He turned and saw the outline of a mechanized hand, wiry and shining like a warning beacon among the organic and the natural, at eye level with himself.
Vader's eyes opened, and he squinted at the artificial florescence that appeared from that damnable image. The mechanical hand was gone, as was the ocean and the island, but it was like he'd woken just as he was about to crash into a sun.
When he groaned, it was his natural voice that filled the moderate silence and what made him realize that he'd been resting offhandedly. Vader's sleep, if it could be called that, had been fitful, deep, and rather devoid of anything close to a weary thought or a heart-starting terror. And immediately, Vader sat up straight in his damnable chair and put his mind back up to focusing on their hideout.
"Rey…?" He called out in the void space, still too white and sanitary but intact. Vader had never regained the energy to do something about it despite hating his surroundings – well, resenting them. In that moment, however, the former lord was grateful that nothing stood apart as out of the ordinary as he tried to scan every inch of space surrounding himself. The chair turned, in time to swivel and for Vader to breathe a ragged sigh of relief while he watched the only active shape aside from himself jogging forward.
Rey was alright. She looked no worse for wear, still a living mess of browns, tans, and greens amid the harsh white around her. Her visage reminded Vader of Endor. Of Naboo, of Dubrillion, of so many more places that Vader could barely put a name to, let alone remember visiting or inhabiting.
All that truly mattered was that when he saw her coming toward him without hesitation, he could recall the jubilation of seeing more green in the galaxy than when he'd seen a forest here or a tree there.
Vader pitched forward, ruminations dissipating as he watched the little girl racing toward him fall to the ground. He was on the cusp of raising his voice in panic, for the last time Rey had fallen, she'd chipped one of her front teeth and tried to hide her tears for ten long minutes. Before he could do anything, the girl was already standing back up, opulent hazel eyes upon Vader as she walked forward with notable care. She no longer toddled, but carried herself with graceful steps and a vision that failed to look down for assurance that she was balancing upon the cold metal floor. Even after a tumble…
Rey reached him, crawling up onto the seat before he was drawing her into his lamp with one arm. Her fearlessness was no longer surprising nor daunting, but the way with which she stared, solemn and searching even as she sought a hug, felt too familiar for comfort.
Vader's granddaughter took after him in many ways, and it was both fascinating and distressing to see such a young life weighted by a quiet, Spartan existence like this one. With an imposing, but severely depressed exile like himself.
She pouted at him and his thoughts, brow furrowing as she forced his gaze by shoving her tiny hands against his pale face, acting as a parent would toward a abhorrent child . "Your arm."
Vader followed her words, looking down at one arm, then the other. He realized in a flash what she meant, even as she elaborated. "T's all cluttered."
His right arm was upended against the armrest, the inner workings of the machine-driven forearm from wrist to elbow split open and revealing wires and circuitry. From a glance, it greatly resembled sinew and veins like a normal, organic limb would have; but that was mere medical trickery at work. The multicolored tubing and the knots of gears that ground together and circumvented electrical mishap were artificial as they'd been since Vader had last had them replaced.
"I must've been working on it… before I…" He had no idea why he'd leave an entire part of himself, mechanized or not, opened and vulnerable like this. "…Had my rest."
Rey peered at the opening, nose nearly pressed into the whirring cluster of faulty acid-green and acid-blue dyed wires, with analytical eyes. As soon as she'd gotten up to meet his eye, Rey was off, descending from Vader's enormous throne and running away.
"Where are you going, little one?" He asked, slightly alarmed as she bounded back to where she'd come from. The chamber wasn't that big, even with its addition built to accommodate over-night visits from before, from when Luke had visited, alone and then with a bundled, newborn Rey.
She never stopped, rounded a corner, and was gone from sight. "Fix it!"
When Rey returned, she had a tool box to drag along the ground. It rolled on little wheels over the divots in the floor, but it was no astronomic droid, only a little thing with specialized supplies inside. She held it out to him first, and Vader lifted the both with one arm, feeling surprised over how easy it was getting to rotate his own joints move without becoming overly exhausted.
"You know I can fix it myself. I shouldn't have left it like this in the first place." Vader posited, but trying to grab the harris wrench from her was like trying to retrieve a bantha from a sarlaac pit.
She hunched over the offending appendage, as she'd done many times in the past. Only 5 standard years-old and Rey was equipped to manage Vader's limb circuitry like she were a medic three times her age.
Briefly, Vader wondered if the Force, of the ghost of Obi-Wan himself, were playing a lifelong joke on him, still. "Unless…"
He tried to make Rey face him, mimicking what she'd done beforehand, but when his glove went to lift under her chin, Rey shied away from him. She grumbled, and Vader smiled. "Unless, little one, it was you who put me to sleep."
Rey continued to pry into the arm, not daring to look at her grandfather for even a moment. Her guilt and unease were so tangible through their connection, nevertheless, any resistance was genuinely futile.
He fought to be stern. "Rey."
"It is I that should be putting you to sleep, not the other way around."
She looked up, wild-eyed and defiant. And yet, her lower lip trembled. "You wouldn't sleep without my help! You couldn't!"
"Rey."
Her greenish eyes filled with tears, and the guileless, earnest agony that rolled off her being in waves made Vader back away from trying to pacify her with something other than words. Where physical strength on his part was ever-growing, enduring the sensitivity of their bond was still too much at times. It had been the same with Rey's father, with there being moments where Vader could barely handle the good feelings that were sent his way – the appreciation, the loyalty, humor, and even the love.
Finally, like the child she was meant to be, Rey moved away from the toolbox and embraced her grandfather's middle. She could barely wrap her arms around him, sniffling and trying to keep the worst of it inside. Vader had failed on multiple occasions to tell her that experiencing her hurt and her worry on the outside was just as well as when she underwent them inside. He wanted to say as much, but held back for some unsightly, ugly reasoning within that told him that he wouldn't be able to stomach it himself.
"You were cold, again." Her tinny voice was muffled by his chest, head dipped to the side to keep away from his ever-lit chest plate. Vader carefully patted her back with his good hand, feeling a sting and watching as his vision of the white oxygen chamber blurred into an incomprehensible mesh.
He waited it out in silence, until Rey was all-cried-out and back to fixing his arm like nothing had ever happened.