Han had gotten Luke in his land speeder and they'd taken off for the Imperial palace. Luke was still hysterical and futilely tried to explain what had happened, it didn't matter, Han didn't need the specifics of the how or why, he knew what had happened. He tried to get Luke to calm down, he did a little, only enough that he could actually talk now.
"You don't have to tell my father about this," Luke begged him, "you can just drop me off by the back entrance and nobody will have to know."
"Sorry, kid, I can't do that," Han said, "and this isn't just because your father would snap my neck if he found out I tried to hide this from him. He has to know, Luke."
"No!" Luke shook his head. "You don't understand, I wasn't supposed to be there. I was supposed to be home hours ago, if Father finds out about this he's going to kill me!"
"No he won't," Han told him. "Your father loves you, Luke, he'll know this wasn't your fault."
"I told him I'd be home early, I told him I'd be careful, he's going to hate me," Luke was talking more to himself now than the captain.
"Luke," Han reached over and nudged his shoulder, "stay with me, we're almost there."
"Please just land in the back, if I can get in without anyone noticing I was gone," Luke was half murmuring his words.
"That's not an option, Luke," Han said as they came upon the palace. "We'll get you to the med bay, they'll get you fixed up, you'll be alright."
"No, no one can know about this," Luke turned to him.
"Luke, you can't hide this," Han said as they landed.
"My father cannot find out about this."
Han shook his head as he helped Luke out of the speeder, "I'm sorry, Luke, but that's just not an option."
"Why not?"
Luke's blood ran cold as he got his answer in the next second.
Darth Vader was coming down from the front entrance.
Luke's whole body locked up, his eyes doubled in size and his jaw dropped, "Father!"
And with that his whole body slipped through Han's grip like jelly and he fell on the ground in a heap.
While Han was trying to get Luke loaded in his speeder, he commed his superiors and got them to patch him through to the palace guards, who got him on a direct link with Vader. Struggling with every inch of his being to stay calm and not give in to the panic that was threatening to bubble over in him, the captain gave the dark lord as detailed of an explanation of what had happened as best he could given how little he actually knew of the situation. Luke had been in full blown hysterics and bordering on shock at the time and hadn't realized the conversation had even taken place.
The next few minutes passed excruciatingly. Vader knelt down and helped Han pull Luke to his feet, and with each man standing on either side of him they kept his body supported and walked him up to the door and into the palace and made their way through the corridors to the palace med bay, all the while Luke's whole body shook and trembled as he screamed and sobbed both hysterically and incoherently.
A team of droid and human medics were waiting for them. Two human medics got Luke on an exam table but when they tried to unwrap the curtain he was draped in, he went into fight or flight mode and shot up on the table trying to escape, then screamed even louder when he was pinned down so they could restrain him.
Han made his way to the table and stood by the side and leaned down so he wasn't hovering over Luke and firmly told the teenager, to be heard over both Luke's screaming and the pandemonium of the bay room, "Luke, Luke, look at me, look at me, okay? Just focus on me, can you do that?" Luke's eyes looked at him but they weren't quite focused. "Just look at me, Luke, listen to me." Luke let out a pained sob at the probing exam, Han inched in closer to Luke till his forehead was practically touching the blonde's, "I know, I know this is hard, but just look at me, just try to ignore everyone else in this room, okay? Here," he grabbed Luke's hand and told the boy, "you squeeze my hand as hard as you have to, okay?"
Luke choked on another pained sob as he gripped the Corellian's hand with everything he had, which was stronger than Han had expected. Luke squeezed his eyes shut and let out another incoherent yelp and cried out to the man standing behind him, "I'm sorry, Father! I'm sorry!"
"Luke!" Han forced the kid to look at him and told him firmly, "Listen to me, you don't have anything to be sorry for, this was not your fault, you didn't do anything wrong, they did, nothing you did gave them any right to do this."
Vader chanced placing one gloved hand on the back of the boy's head and told him, "Captain Solo is correct." Through his neurotransmitters he could feel Luke trembling violently. To the dark lord it seemed to be taking the medics forever to tend to Luke's injuries, he could only imagine how eternal it felt to his son.
At one point, a human medic informed the dark lord, "We need to turn him over to better assess his injuries."
"NO!" Luke screamed, pressing himself flat against the exam table and making himself a dead weight.
"Luke, listen to me," Han maintained contact with the boy and told him, "you're doing great, but you have to let them do their job."
Luke squeezed his eyes shut tightly and shook his head, mumbling to himself behind pursed lips.
"I know, I know you don't want to do this, I get it, believe me, I do," Han told him, "but the sooner they can finish the exam, the quicker it'll all be over. You've just got to hang in there."
Luke let out an incoherent sob as he was turned on his stomach, he maintained a death grip on Han's hand and wrapped his other hand around the captain's wrist and pressed the side of his face against the Corellian's hand as he tried to will away the more invasive turn the exam had taken.
Luke wouldn't look at his father but he continued to hysterically apologize while Han tried to keep the boy's attention on him and off everything else that was going on. After a while Luke had to be sedated because he couldn't calm down and his vitals were steadily climbing into stroke territory. After a few more minutes of futilely struggling to stay awake, Luke fell into a medicated sleep which allowed the medics to work quicker and with fewer difficulties. Vader stayed at his son's bedside as the exam continued, and was finished. His red, unblinking lenses stared down at the battered face of his child, his child, wondering how this could have been allowed to happen? He blamed himself, he should have gone with Luke, he should have postponed meeting with the other members of the Empire, he should have done something. This should not have happened, not his son, not anyone's child but especially not his child. If Padme knew how he had failed their son...it was impossible for anyone else in the room to know it, but behind those dark red lenses his own eyes squeezed shut as he tried to block out that thought and the pain that came with it.
The medics treated Luke's wounds with bacta patches and cleaned him up as they dictated their report of the exam, confirming what Vader had already partially known and largely suspected: Luke had been violently raped, multiple times, and by multiple people, most likely for hours on end. Captain Solo had said there were three men on top of him, he had killed all of them before he even realized that Luke was the victim. There was small solace in that, it saved the dark lord having to leave his son's bedside and track them down himself, but as Luke's father, that should have been his responsibility. He could've gained some closure from personally seeing the scum of the universe who violated his son dying painfully and knowing why they were, but that situation being taken out of his hands especially left him feeling powerless and beside himself and unsure what steps to take now.
After the exam was completed, Luke was swaddled in a med bay robe and moved to a bed where he was hooked up to IVs to administer fluids, pain medication, antibiotics and antivirals to combat any potential diseases he may have contracted during his attack. Once he woke up they would place him in the bacta tank for a full treatment and go on from there.
The medics told Vader that Luke should sleep for several hours. He knew that was partially their hint that he didn't have to stay and he wouldn't miss anything if he left, but he couldn't do that. He couldn't leave his son now. He stared down at Luke, his face was hardly recognizable for all the cuts and bruises he'd sustained during his attack, though the bacta had helped with some of that. He could only hope that Luke's drug induced slumber was one of blissful oblivion, no dreams, no memories, it was bad enough he'd have to live with this when he was awake, he didn't need the horrors of it following him into his sleep as well.
Carefully, the dark lord reached down and lightly grabbed Luke's hand in his own, letting the boy feel his presence, if he actually could. They were bonded through the Force and because of that there were times they were able to communicate with each other telepathically, though it wasn't foolproof. Right now he hoped against all hope that Luke could hear everything that his father wasn't able to put into physical words currently; the simultaneous pain and love he felt for his son and what he'd been through, that it was over, he was safe now, no one could hurt him now, no one was going to hurt him again, he had lived through the attack itself, he could survive what came next.
In his sleep Luke moaned through closed lips as he curled on his side in a fetal ball and grabbed his father's arm with both hands and squeezed his father's glove clad hand against his armpit for a tighter hold, as if he were clinging to a lifeline.
In theory, Vader could break Luke's hold on him with no effort, but he couldn't. He stood there in an uncomfortable position for two hours before Luke finally let go of his arm as he turned over on his back again, his body uncurled and his legs splayed straight out. Vader draped the blanket back over his son's body to keep him warm while he slept, even tucking the corners behind his shoulders, something he used to do when Luke was little and got cold in the night.
Turning towards the human medics, Vader told them, "You will inform me when there's any change in his condition."
"Yes, Lord Vader."
Vader felt a particularly deep breath of oxygen-rich air run through his body considering the damage to his lungs, and his eyes opened as he exhaled and the breath left him again. Another long breath worked its way into him as he spent a few seconds trying to remember just what had happened. He realized he must've been in his oxygen pod for a while, his body felt even more uncomfortable than usual, and his mind felt slow. Since becoming Darth Vader many years ago, he couldn't say for certain that he actually slept. His life support suit was created to tend to most of his body's needs, sleep was no longer a priority, it was hardly even an afterthought. For certain he could say his body could function for days on end without need of sleep, but there were times, like right now, where it seemed plausible it had happened anyway. He never dreamed, thankfully, there were too many things in the past of his life he didn't need reminders of when he slept, if he slept, if he wasn't just blacking out on occasions. He was always alone when it happened, so he couldn't say anything for certain. He had no idea what time it was, how long he'd been here, the only thing he knew for certain, nobody had notified him about Luke. Luke...and suddenly everything came flooding back, and he remembered fully.
His prosthetics were especially killing him as he reattached his mask and his helmet and stood up. He had to return to the bay and find out what was happening with Luke. Surely by now there had to be some change, he at least had to be awake.
As he left his private chambers he saw one of the palace droids approaching him.
"Lord Vader, there's no update from the medics, but there's another issue that I believe requires your attention."
"What is it?"
"If you come with me it would be easier to show you."
The droid led him to the palace kitchen, and as soon as he was through the door, Darth Vader stopped dead in his tracks and behind his red lenses his eyes widened in shock.
Captain Han Solo was seated at the table, one elbow propped on the table to prop his balled up hand against his cheek as he slept sitting up.
"He's still here?" Vader asked in disbelief. His mind was scrambling now and thinking back he couldn't even remember when the Corellian had left the med bay, in hindsight it just seemed he was there one minute and gone the next sometime after Luke had been sedated.
"He never left," the droid answered, "he's been like that for the last three hours. We wanted to know if he'll be staying or if we should remove him."
Vader waved the droid off, he'd get to the bottom of this himself. He stepped over to the table and pressed the tips of his durasteel fingers into the captain's shoulder and addressed him, "Captain Solo-"
The word was hardly out of his mouth when the younger man let out a strangled yelp and jerked awake, and then shot out of the chair and to his feet, the first few sounds out of his mouth an incoherent jumble before they actually turned into words, demanding, "L-Luke? Where's Luke? What happened?"
"The medics sedated him, he's resting now," Vader answered.
Han heaved in a couple of uneasy breaths before the words actually seemed to connect in his head and he seemed to calm down a notch.
"Captain, I want to thank you for what you did for Luke."
There was a blank look in Han's eyes for a couple seconds, but it gave way to a more somber expression as he responded, "I wish I'd found him sooner."
That made two of them, but the fact remained Luke likely would've been dead by the end of it all if the Corellian hadn't come along when he had. At least Luke was alive, and he would recover.
"I had a brother."
The four words came out so suddenly and softly that the dark lord almost didn't hear them. The blank look on Han's face suggested he wasn't even aware he'd said them. It was an ambiguously cryptic statement, and any curiosity that had been sparked in Vader to inquire further was stopped in its tracks by the past tense of it. That told Vader all he needed to know. Suddenly it explained so much, the how and why Solo had been so quick to leap into action, why he remained for the exam, why he was still there, how he tried to dominate Luke's focus to block out the indignity of the exam, now it all made sense. His actions weren't merely those of a fast thinking Naval officer, but as someone who had lived through this trauma firsthand before.
It was slowly starting to dawn on Han Solo just what he'd done, and in that moment he wished he could crawl under a rock somewhere. In all the years since it had happened, he'd never told a soul about that part of his past, sure as hell never thought he'd ever bring it up to Darth Vader of all people.
He was only partially drawn out of his own thoughts by the sound of somebody speaking to Darth Vader. He turned and realized it was on the dark lord's comm link, and Han felt his stomach drop.
"What is it?"
"The medics. Luke's awake."
Darth Vader's vocoder made it impossible to detect any change in tone when he spoke, but Han could sense something ominous in what he'd said.
"What's wrong?" Han asked, already knowing he didn't want to know.
"Luke can't walk."