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Chapter 17 – Fathers & Sons

Vader's path back to the detention center had taken a detour. He'd left the meeting intent on heading straight for his family, yet his zeal deteriorated along the way. Without quite knowing how, he ambled his way out of the palace district and into the stately neighborhood of 250 Republica.

He drew to a stop in front of Ainar's building and laughed to himself. Naturally he'd end up at this spot. There were more than a few loose ends to tie up here. So many, he didn't even know where to begin.

Releasing his father from house arrest was the first order of business, but after that, what? Casually mention that his family had been resurrected from the dead, and they were all about to embark on some path to messy reconciliation? It sounded as ludicrous in his head as it would spoken aloud. He could only imagine Ainar's reaction to the news. A reaction he was more than justified in having.

What in the name of the Force are you thinking? Reunification? Why? So you can have another shot at destroying them all? Once wasn't enough?

Soon the words stopped being Ainar's and became Vader's own self-loathing doubts. Though his headache was gone, his skull felt heavier than lead. His helmet scraped against a concrete wall as he leaned against it for support.

So incredibly foolish. So impulsive and overzealous, thinking for one minute this could ever work. The fantasy was doomed long before it danced in his demented mind. It'd been doomed since five years ago, when the showdown on Mustafar forever shattered the illusion that love and power could coexist. Ironic, how the Jedi were right to forbid marriage. Ironic too was the fact that despite all their wisdom, they'd been blind up until the last.

For his part, Vader had shared in that blindness. But no more. His eyes were fully open now, and he saw everything with harsh clarity. He saw himself clearest of all. And what he saw was not something Padmé or the twins should ever have to see. They're endured enough. The abuse ended here and now.

Where he'd send them, he didn't yet know. Did it matter? If they returned to Naboo or took up residence just blocks from his palace, would he be able to breathe either way? Could he function on a daily basis knowing they were living and growing as a family without him?

Even if they lived in the distant galaxy Ainar had returned from, would Vader ever again enjoy a single night's rest?

He'd have to adapt. Or he'd have to trick his heart and mind into believing they were dead all over again. Whatever it took to make the separation halfway bearable.

At least he still had Ainar. Against all odds, the man hadn't recoiled from his son's sordid past. Vader still had difficulty believing it. Yet he sensed Ainar's presence several floors above, pacing anxiously, fixated on the state of Vader's soul. His deep concern was palpable even from a distance.

Vader closed that distance in under a minute, exiting the turbolift and barging into Ainar's suite without knocking first. He found his father gazing out the bay window.

"You're back."

"Quite obviously," Vader returned with equal curtness.

Ainar kept his back turned, spine and shoulders tense. "Your errands are done, then?"

"Yes."

"How productive of you. It took less than 24 hours."

"There is much contempt in your voice," Vader closed the gap between them in a few steps.

"Did you expect me to congratulate you? Am I being impolite?"

Standing next to Ainar with arms crossed, Vader kept his temper in check.

"Be careful what you assume, father."

Ainar slid his eyes sideways. "Don't patronize me! You don't lock a man in his own apartment for good reasons!"

Vader offered no rebuttal.

"So, it's over. Taken care of. That family who posed such a massive threat to the Empire is gone. An act of valor that will go down in history," Ainar bared his teeth in scorn. "At least tell me who they were. I'm dying to know how they earned such hatred from Darth Vader."

Spiteful or not, that was as good an invitation as Vader would get. It was now or never.

"They are… my family."

Ainar couldn't move. The shock of what he'd just heard made his joints lock in place.

A cascade of memories flashed before him – the scene at Anchorhead, the visions of Vader's past, and… the woman he'd encountered on the transport ship a week ago. Everything fell into astounding place.

Stars… that was my grandson I saved on the transport…

The realization nearly made Ainar collapse.

"But… I thought Padmé died?" he wheezed, still stunned.

"You and I both. She faked her death using a Kaminoan body clone in her funeral."

A rush of dizziness came over Ainar as he tried to grasp the immense impact of this news. Padmé was alive? Along with not just one child, but two? How in the universe was such a boon of good fortune possible? But more importantly, why in the world was Vader at 250 Republica instead of with his newly-recovered family?

Ainar was afraid to ask why. But he had to.

"Y-you used present tense. They are. Not they were. Does that mean… are they…"

Vader hung his head, pained by what he'd nearly done. "Fear not. They are very much alive."

Relief poured out of Ainar's chest. "Thank the Force."

Yes, that's exactly what you should thank, thought Vader grimly. If Luke and Leia hadn't sloppily used it to disarm the execution squad… he couldn't bring himself to imagine the rest.

"So where are they? Why didn't you bring them here to meet me?" Ainar turned to his son excitedly. "Well, we've already met, technically. I can't wait to see their faces when they recognize me. The Force certainly works in mysterious ways," he shook his head with a smile.

"I regret to inform you that you will never see them again."

Ainar reeled from the mental whiplash Vader was causing. "What? Why not?"

"I think it best if they remain detached from my paradigm," Vader sighed, turning away. "Letting you see them would complicate that."

"Tell me you're joking!" Ainar's eyes bulged. "What gives you the right to keep me from my own grandchildren?"

"They are my children first, your grandchildren second," Vader held firm.

"What a lovely, legalistic view of family you have!"

"I am not doing this to be unfair. I am doing it to keep them safe."

Ainar was completely beside himself. "Oh! I'm unsafe to be around! I didn't know!"

"You misunderstand –"

"I understand perfectly! Darth Vader has misgivings about my character. I shouldn't be allowed within a hundred feet of anyone's child!"

"This isn't about you!" Vader shouted back. "Stop playing the martyr for one second and let me explain!"

Although still livid, Ainar clamped his jaw shut and awaited Vader's excuse.

"After what you saw during our flight to Tatooine, you think you're the one who threatens their safety?"

Ainar's face went flat as embarrassment tinged his cheeks. "Oh. I'm sorry, I should have realized…"

"When will you stop apologizing to me? I neither want nor deserve your condolences."

"You'll get them anyway. I shouldn't let my pride make me jump to conclusions like that."

Vader smirked wanly. "Disputes like this prove we are indeed father and son."

Ainar blinked, slightly taken aback by Vader's observation. Did he mean their talent for arguing, or the short tempers that ignited those arguments? It was most likely both, Ainar realized with consternation.

Clearing his throat, he tried to collect his thoughts. "So you've decided to just toss them back in the sea?"

"Crudely put, yes."

"Did you offer them any choice in the matter?"

"There is no need. They will be relieved by it." At least Padmé will be. The twins are another matter…

Ainar caught the glitch in Vader's thoughts. "Not all of them."

"No," Vader conceded. "I suspect the children may be disappointed."

"Listen to yourself: 'the children.' You're trying to distance yourself from them. But I feel the turmoil it's causing you."

"They are too young to know what's good for them."

"What are their names?"

Vader lost his train of thought. "What?"

"I want to know their names."

Vader knew Ainar wouldn't stop badgering him until he answered.

"Luke and Leia."

"Good names. What a pity their father struggles to say them."

"I do not," Vader looked away.

"Remember who you're talking to, son. I can sense your emotions as if they were my own."

"You also saw my past as clearly as if you were there!"

"Yes, but it bears repeating that it'd have been different if I actually had been there."

"So you keep saying," Vader huffed. "Nothing can change what was!"

"You're right, nothing can. But there's no hope for the future if we don't analyze the past."

"What's left to analyze?"

"Plenty," Ainar replied thoughtfully. "Especially if we compare the past with the present."

"Explain."

"Let's review what's happened. You meet me. You sentence me to death. You change your mind."

Vader folded his arms, ambivalent.

"Then you meet Han. You sentence him to death. You change your mind."

"That was only because –"

"Let me finish. Lastly, you find your family. You have every intention of executing them. And then, lo and behold, you change your mind."

Vader shuddered at the reminder. "But I was so close to going through with it..."

"I know, I could tell," Ainar placed a hand on his son's shoulder. "The point is you've withdrawn your malice three times in as many days."

"You're one of those 'glass-half-full' people," Vader grunted.

"I have good reason to be. The Darth Vader of the past five years would not have shown leniency once, much less three times."

That same Darth Vader would have taken this as an insult, too, instead of earnest encouragement. But while he wasn't angered by Ainar's words, Vader remained cautious. His father was likely viewing things through rose-tinted lenses due to his quest to find good in Vader.

"You forget that I did not choose mercy. In each instance, outside factors forced my hand."

"Have you ever let 'outside factors' influence you like that before?"

Vader was caught off-guard by the question. "I… I don't know… that is, I think…"

"You never have. Admit it."

Vader stopped racking his memory and simply stared at his father.

"Your past is full of selfish disregard for everyone else. Not even the 'outside factor' of your unborn children could keep you from choking their mother. Yet now you've spared their lives and that of two other men, one of whom was a total stranger to you. Doesn't that strike you as unusual?"

Slowly, guardedly, Vader let this sink in. Ainar was right, of course. Selfish disregard had been a way of life for him since leaving his mother. Clinging to forbidden attachments, marrying against the Jedi code, letting his pride sabotage that marriage… the root cause had always been selfishness, pure and simple. No matter what anyone else said, he chose to follow his own defective compass, even when it became obvious that it was broken.

And now, without warning, that compass was inexplicably correcting itself. For the first time in Vader's conscious memory, he was actually letting external sources align it. It was uncomfortable, like having a broken bone reset after healing crookedly. But he was cooperating. He was letting it happen. And this was one instance where passiveness was as powerful as action.

"Whether you see it or not, you're changing," Ainar spoke again. "More than you realize, if it's drastic enough for me to notice already."

Vader felt warm and cold at the same time. "I cannot refute what you have said."

"Don't try to. Just keep listening," urged Ainar. "Your selfishness is waning by the hour. Your first instinct was to keep Padmé, Luke and Leia for yourself. To grasp them tightly and not let them go."

Vader nodded.

"But then you reconsidered. You actually thought about their well-being instead of your own desires."

"I had to. They don't deserve to live with a monster."

"A monster does not put others' interests before his own."

"Don't be so generous. Even if a monster trims his claws, he still is what he is."

"Assuming he really was a monster to begin with."

"How can there be any question? After all you've seen, you're still not convinced?!"

"I'm not the one who's fooling himself here," Ainar replied calmly. "You admit you're changing, but you say a monster can't change. You seem rather confused."

Releasing immense frustration, Vader crushed the neck of a nearby lamp with one hand.

"I did not come here to play mind games! I came to set you free from confinement, and to inform you that I will do the same for… the others."

"Still having trouble saying their names, I see."

"That is inconsequential."

"Oh, but it's not. It's a symptom of deep shame and regret. Saying their names reminds you of all the pain you've caused them."

Damn it, old man. How I wish Mortis had never infected you with the Force. For so very many reasons…

Ainar knew he was moments away from winning this argument. "You are contrite. Humbled. Different than you were just four days ago. And the real proof? You're hiding it from your master."

That hit Vader right between the eyes. He'd certainly invented plenty of alibis and excuses to appease Palpatine's suspicions. If he was the same Darth Vader through and through, unchanged from the past five years, what was he hiding from the Emperor?

His own actions betrayed themselves. His subconscious was practically screaming to be heard. And it wouldn't stop until it was.

Crushed by the weight of everything, Vader slumped into the bay window seat. Could this really be happening? His identity was shifting by the smallest fractions. The fossil of his soul was sloughing off its outermost layers. And it was evidently happening without his knowledge or consent. A little disconcerting, but not altogether unwelcome.

It must be the children, Vader reasoned. They triggered it by sensing good in me. By not fearing me.

But Luke and Leia were not the first to do so. Their acceptance of him didn't retroactively account for him sparing Han and Ainar's lives.

Ainar. It was Ainar affecting these changes all along. He'd been the first to embrace Vader, scars and all. The first to see him as human, a person, rather than the husk of evil he masqueraded as. Ainar had made an incision in Vader's soul just large enough for the Sith to peer inside and see that something, however small, still lived.

Ainar had done what no one else alive could have. Not even Padmé. Nor the twins with their smiles and buoyant spirits.

Only Ainar.

Vader was confounded for only a minute before realization struck. Padmé and the children couldn't pull him from the quicksand of desolation because they'd never plunged into it themselves. They had suffered, yes, but not to the severity or duration that Ainar had. Five years of hiding on a temperate, familiar planet was nothing compared to 27 years adrift in cold isolation. They had each other; Ainar had only his thoughts, brittle and harsh as they bounced off the panels of his ship.

How he'd survived that voyage without losing his life was impressive. But not losing his mind… that shattered limits Vader assumed no man could surpass. At best, Ainar should have been reduced to catatonic madness. He certainly shouldn't have been able to navigate back to this galaxy. Anyone else – Vader included – wouldn't have lasted one year, much less 27.

But most astounding of all was that Ainar hadn't just lasted. He'd thrived. He'd come through that portal wiser and more self-aware than when he'd left. Where other men would have surely degenerated into violent desperation, he'd surmounted obstacles with integrity. With soundness of mind and spirit.

Ainar had faced the most daunting challenges imaginable, yet he stood before Vader an average man of middle age and even temper.

Vader had two choices: loathe himself for buckling under far less pressure than his father, or see the spark of hope before him. If his father could withstand such trials, maybe deep within Vader lay a dormant seed that could somehow be brought to germinate. All it needed was a gardener who knew how to cultivate it…

Judging from the clemency he'd already shown under Ainar's influence, it was clear who qualified for that task.

Ainar sensed the arc of Vader's thoughts and smiled wanly. "You're finally starting to see."

"I… I think so."

"We'll work together, then. You'll let me help you?"

"No one stands a better chance of succeeding than you."

"Agreed, though I hope someday soon Padmé will take the reins from me."

Sighing, Vader was quiet for a time. "And when she does, what then?"

Ainar responded with a puzzled look.

"Damn it father, do I really have to say it?" Vader became agitated. "Intimacy. Physical relations! Even if she accepts my soul again, she'll never accept the rest of me!"

"Oh," Ainar blinked, caught somewhat off-guard. "I… can't speak for her on that subject. Just how extensive are your, um, injuries?"

"Extensive," Vader said through clenched teeth. The matter was obviously quite bothersome to him.

Silent from embarrassment as much as feeling helpless, Ainar pursed his lips.

Vader threw his shame aside. "I'm not taking a chance on conversion just to become her friend! If I'm going to change, it's got to be for all or nothing."

"So if your body can't be restored, all bets are off?"

"That's what I'm saying, yes."

Ainar felt winded. "That's quite the ultimatum!"

"If you were in my place, would you feel any differently?" Vader demanded. "Answer me honestly!"

"I can't say…" Ainar choked on his words.

Vader took a challenging step forward. "Let me put it this way. If you'd returned home to find Shmi still alive, but circumstances prevented you from ever joining with her again, would you be immune to that torture? Or would you keep your distance from her to maintain your sanity?"

Ainar looked him dead in the eye. "I would stay with her and sacrifice myself for the sake of the vows we exchanged."

"Then you're a better man than I am!" Vader snapped angrily. "But we both already knew that."

"Forget about me. This is about you and Padmé."

"Right. So it's really none of your business."

"Helping my son reunite with his family is as close to my business as it gets! Now tell me, was the Padmé you knew a superficial woman who only championed popular senate bills? Was she inclined to choose glitz and glamour over principles and character?"

Vader scowled, unwilling to accept Ainar's point. "No, but –"

"What makes you think she'll treat you any differently?"

"Because I'm not some tidy senate bill she can just sign and be done with!"

"Regardless, your ultimatum is still unjust. She deserves a say."

"That's your opinion," grumbled Vader. "The decision is ultimately mine."

In all things, so stubbornly selfish, Ainar griped, not caring if Vader overheard. What now? We've come this far, only to give up for such a shallow reason? I'll be damned. I can't change his mind, and there's no way for him to get what he wants…

Or was there?

Having caught Ainar's thoughts, Vader suddenly felt dizzy. Disjointed bits of memories flooded his mind in a tidal wave. Palpatine… the war strategy room… Xizor's patronizing grin… the Death Star plans hovering in midair… snippets of conversation…

"I heard you held an integral role with the new biomedical center on Rakata Prime."

"Yes, artistically as well as financially."

Rakata Prime… the biomedical center…

The rumors surrounding Xizor's newest investment were vibrant. Leading-edge techniques and procedures, some of which may or may not be fully legal, were said to be under development. Facilities rivaling those on Kamino were staffed with the galaxy's most daring, accomplished surgeons.

What better place to investigate the possibilities of body restoration? And what better time than now, with Xizor out of contact for the next few days?

There was no telling what hope, if any, Vader would find in that planet's laboratories. But he knew with chilling certainty that if he didn't explore it now, he might never again get the chance.

And what a chance it might be…

Ainar was absorbed in worrisome thoughts when Vader turned out of the room without warning.

"Where are you going?" he sputtered.

"I have a call to make to Rakata Prime."

"What? Why?" Ainar saw no connection to the issue at hand.

"I will keep you informed as things develop," Vader replied coolly. IF they develop…

Blinking in confusion, Ainar let his hands hang at his sides, watching his son exit. Whatever was about to transpire was out of his control. All he could do was hope and pray against what seemed to be dismal odds.

Which was exactly what Vader planned on doing as well.

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I enjoyed breaking the typical "Padmé reunites with Vader & redeems him" mold. Instead of having her help Vader with his inner demons, it's his father. I think too much emotional baggage would obstruct the process if Padmé was involved. Plus, Ainar has insight through the Force that Padmé lacks, which helps considerably.

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