Luke was sitting up in the bed bay, the sheet was drawn back to reveal the bruises on his legs and knees from when he'd tried to stand up and promptly fell to the floor. One lone tear slowly trailed down his face but otherwise his expression was largely unreadable as were his thoughts from what Vader could gather. He stood by his son's bedside with one gloved hand clamped on his shoulder as they both listened to the findings of the tests that had been done. One of the medics, a short haired human woman in her late 20s, showed Darth Vader a series of scans that had been taken of Luke during and after his examination to determine the cause of his paralysis. Both scans were identical.

"As you can see," she concluded, "there is no physical cause for the condition, there was no damage to the spinal cord, no broken bones in his legs, no damage to the muscles, the tendons, the ligaments."

He saw it, and he didn't get it.

"What is causing it then?" he wanted to know, but if there was no physical cause, what answer could there possibly be? He had a very skewered view of Luke through the corner of one lens through the corner of his eye, but he could see his son looking up at him in silent wonder and worry as to why this was happening. He wanted to reassure his son that he would be alright, but for that to happen he needed the medic to tell him that Luke would be alright, that there was an explanation for this, one that could be treated.

The medic looked up at the red unblinking lenses. Her attempt at maintaining a stoic, deadpanned expression, was less than successful but she managed to keep her voice steady as she asked, "Could I speak to you in private, Lord Vader?"

He felt his stomach drop. What was it? If there was no physical damage, what could she have to talk to him alone about?

"Father?" Luke's voice trembled and threatened to break as he looked up at the dark lord.

Vader absently patted Luke on the shoulder and told him, "We will get this figured out, you just rest," and he followed the medic out of the room.

The two of them left the bay and stepped into an empty corridor. The woman swallowed tensely and looked somewhat uncertain of herself as she explained, "We have run all the tests and scans at our disposal, there is no organic cause for his condition, no physical cause."

"Then what is it?" Vader asked.

There were a hundred different micro-expressions on her face that indicated she wasn't sure if she was doing the right thing or not, but she forced herself to calmly answer, "I believe that it is psychosomatic."

The only sound in the room for a few seconds was the steady mechanical kooshing of Vader's respirator. Then out of nowhere, one durasteel hand reached out and grabbed the medic by the throat and he lifted her off her feet with her neck in a death grip.

The woman gasped painfully as she was just barely able to get the words out, "Please...please!"

"You're saying my son is insane?" Vader demanded to know.

He couldn't allow this. Luke had already been through too much, and he hadn't been able to protect his son. He could not allow Luke to endure any further indignities, he would not stand by and listen as his son was ridiculed, belittled, insulted...

The medic's eyes bulged and her hands futilely reached to try and pry the durasteel fingers off her throat as she just barely managed to wheeze out, "I've seen this before...I've seen this before!"

Vader paused for a few seconds upon hearing this, then released his grip on the woman's neck, causing her to hit the ground knees first, with enough force her whole body practically curled in a ball, and she stayed that way for a few pained seconds before the dark lord demanded, "Explain!", the 'quickly' needn't be added for her to understand how short the dark lord's temper was.

"In my training!" the medic said as she painfully pulled herself to her feet and subconsciously took a step back from Darth Vader. "In my training, we were brought in on a case of a teenage girl who had been bedridden for two years, her mother was taking care of her, they'd seen the best medics and doctors in the system, all conducted the same tests, all turned up negative, there was no apparent cause for her paralysis. While my superiors were going over her medical history with her mother, I spoke with her, and during that time I found out that prior to her sudden incapacitation, she and her mother had had a horrible fight and she'd stormed out of the house and ran away. A few weeks later her legs simply gave out, she collapsed in the street, the local Espos picked her up and took her to a med bay, the mother was contacted and had to take her back home. There was no sign of trauma, nothing that could logically explain why she couldn't walk, but two years of seeing the best medics that side of the galaxy, she still could not. We weren't able to be of any further service, we couldn't find anything that anyone before us didn't. But I later found out through a mutual acquaintance that within the third year, one day she was simply able to use her legs again. She had to spend a few months in manual rehabilitation to rebuild the muscles in her legs, but she was finally able to walk again."

There was a small pause before she added, looking straight up into the red lenses, "At the time she was very young, she would've been far too young to make it on her own at the time in question. By the time she fully recovered, she was an adult. I believe that when she realized what she'd done, the anxiety hit her so hard that her brain sent signals to make her body lock up, rendering her helpless; her mother may not have wanted her back home in her normal state after their fight, but she could hardly refuse to take care of her daughter when she was an invalid. So she had her mother to take care of her for three more years, until she was old enough to be out in the galaxy by herself. You will forgive me for saying so, Lord Vader, but I firmly believe that Luke's episode was brought on by his fear of you."

"His...fear of...me?"

The words didn't sound real even as he said them. The rest of the galaxy feared him, but Luke was his son, he'd done everything in his power that he knew to do to be a good father and raise Luke as best he could without Padme to help him. Luke wasn't afraid of him...was he?

"His fear..." the medic explained, "that he has disappointed you. Before we sedated him the only coherent thing he kept repeating was that he was sorry, he was addressing you...I think at the time he feared your anger as much...if not more, than the men who raped him."

He couldn't possibly be hearing this right. If he was, he should have choked her to death. How could anyone even suggest such a thing? How could anyone compare him to the men responsible for brutalizing his child?

"He disobeyed you," the medic said, "and he knows it. In his mind, the rape was a direct result of him not being home on time, the attack was only part of the punishment that he brought on himself...and he knows he still has to endure whatever punishment you decide to carry out for him violating his curfew."

Vader wasn't even aware his gaze had traveled downward until he realized he had to raise his head to look the woman in the eyes.

"His fears are based on what he already knows from previous times he disobeyed you and was punished, and the fear of the unknown, because nothing this bad has ever happened to him before, he can only assume your anger will be insurmountable. I think his subconscious is trying to buy time, if you were going to punish him, you would hardly dole it out at full force when he's so helpless. You saw how he was when you brought him in. His body was in fight or flight mode then, this is different, but not entirely. He simultaneously dreads when the bottom falls out, and is trying to anticipate it so the blow won't be so hard. Just because the men responsible for this are dead, doesn't mean his mind believes the attack to be over, he still doesn't believe he's safe, to him, this is just a lull in the storm, the worst is still to come."

Now Vader felt like his mind went completely blank for a moment as he tried to process all of this.

"He...told you this?"

The medic shook her head. "He'd never dare say a word against you, you know that."

Yes, he did. Perhaps that was part of the problem. He could feel his mind reeling.

"You will notify me as soon as he can be discharged," Vader told the medic.

The woman nodded. "Yes, Lord Vader."

Vader's prosthetics suddenly felt very unsteady as he turned and headed back to the med bay. When the door opened and he saw his son, Luke tried to push himself to sit up higher on the bed as he asked, a mild look of panic on his face, "What is it, Father? What...what did she say?"

How to answer? He couldn't tell him the truth, even if Luke suspected, having it confirmed would send him into a full blown panic attack, and right now he didn't trust his own ability to not say the wrong thing and only make it worse. Not just yet anyway, everything was too fresh, it still cut too deep, once Luke had had some time to recover, then Vader could figure out how to broach that subject. In the meantime, he felt very strange, he always demanded Luke be completely honest with him, and in return Vader was always as honest with Luke as he deemed fit, of course there were certain things Luke didn't need to know, especially when he was younger. Besides, strange as it sounded, Vader wasn't well versed in lying, he'd had little use for it in his adult life, he threatened people, and he had the power to back up his threats, he didn't need to resort to deceit to get what he wanted. But there was no way he could see any good coming out of telling his child the truth.

"She said," he told Luke, "it could take a few days, right now you need complete rest, you overexerted your entire body, all the muscles, the nerves, it's all connected, not entirely different from when you were little and overloaded your computer, remember?"

There was something, just a hint of a crack of a smile on Luke's face and a small choked snort caught in his throat as the memory came back to him.

Vader reached down and patted Luke's thigh through his blanket. If he could actually feel it, the boy gave no indication.

"Do you need anything?"

Luke pursed his lips together and shook his head.

"Try to get some sleep, in a few days you will feel better, and we will know more then."

Luke nodded uncertainly.

"I...love you, Father," he said with small wavers in his voice as if he wasn't sure he could even say the words.

The red lenses stared down at him for a moment. Behind them, Vader froze for a moment as he tried to make sense of any of this. How could Luke ever think his father could be angry at him because he was attacked? On another hand, just what had he done to actually deserve a child like this? Luke had never given him any real trouble, just some of the usual pains of growing up and trying to assert his own independence, the usual headaches for a parent but it sure beat the hell out of a mindless droid for a child who couldn't make their own decisions.

Carefully, more than he could ever remember being, Vader reached out with both hands and cautiously cupped Luke's battered face in them and told his son, "I love you too, Luke, never forget that."

A few days later, Luke was propped up in his bed reading a holobook when the door slid open and his father walked in.

"What's going on?" he asked as he put his book down.

"The medics informed me that you are ready to discharge," Vader told him.

Luke felt his body tense up in unease. "But I still can't walk."

Vader nodded. "I know, but that doesn't mean you have to stay here."

His father came over to his bed, pulled back the covers and Luke felt the two gloved hands slide underneath him, his heart felt like it was in his throat as he asked, "Where're we going?"

Vader lifted Luke in his arms, one behind the boy's back, the other under his thighs, and told him, "I'm taking you up to your room, you can finish recovering there in private. I know you don't like being a spectacle."

No he didn't, and his father truly had no idea just how much Luke had hated everybody standing around him, checking on him every day, he really couldn't imagine the way it made Luke feel after what happened that night. Luke wrapped an arm tightly around his father's armored shoulder and felt like he was holding on for dear life as they left the bay.

He also squeezed his upper body tight against his father as he begged half under his breath, "No, Father, please, I don't want everyone to see me."

He'd known the palace staff and the guards, droid and human, all of his life, but the thought of them seeing him like this made him want to curl into a ball and die.

"It's all right, Luke," Vader told him, and the boy saw they weren't heading to the staircase at the front, they were taking a shortcut in the palace's hydrolift, which eliminated the possibility of most of the staff seeing them.

"Father," Luke said when he felt the lift start to move, "what did the medics say? What's wrong with me?"

In lieu of an answer, if actually possible, Vader held the boy tighter against him and nuzzled the grille of his mouth piece against the top of Luke's head.

The hydrolift reached the top floor and Vader walked over to Luke's room, willing the door open with the Force.

"They believe the extent of your attack sent your entire body into a deep shock and it essentially reset the muscle memories in your brain," Vader told him.

"What's that mean?" Luke felt his stomach drop.

"It means," Vader answered as he laid Luke down on his bed, "that you will have to relearn how to walk, your body will have to relearn how to work the muscles. I know you would rather do that where people aren't watching you."

Luke glumly nodded and asked, "Do you think it will actually work?"

"I do," Vader said, "but it doesn't matter what I think. You have to believe it will, or it won't."

Luke looked down at the blanket covering his legs.

Vader considered leaving and letting Luke rest for a while, but he decided he'd put this off long enough.

"There's something we need to talk about."

And there it was. He saw Luke's entire body go stiff, saw his breathing become labored as he tried to brace himself for what was coming.

"Luke, look at me."

Luke tipped his head even lower and shook his head. "I can't. I'm sorry, Father, I know you're mad at me."

"I..."

He stopped himself before the first thing that came to mind came out, he knew it wouldn't do either of them any good.

"No," Vader shook his head, "I'm not angry at you, Luke."

"Disappointed then," Luke still couldn't lift his head any, "first time you trusted me out alone and I let you down."

"Luke...this wasn't your fault."

Luke nodded. "Yes it was. If I'd just gotten home on time like you said, none of this would've happened."

"No. Captain Solo was correct, it doesn't matter what you did, Luke, nothing you did would've justified what those men did to you."

"Maybe not justified," Luke slowly lifted his head up, "but it is my fault. I'm sorry, Father, I really meant to be home in time...but I just hated for the night to already be over, I thought if I just stayed a few more minutes, it wouldn't make any difference...and time just flew by, and then I realized how late it was, and I was rushing to get home, and that's when I ducked in that alley and they grabbed me." He looked up at his father, his lips pursed tight but his eyes welling up with tears, "If I'd just left earlier...if I'd just gotten home..."

"Luke..." Vader slowly and carefully gathered his son in his arms and lifted him up, and in turn he sat down on the bed and sat Luke across his lap, like he used to do when Luke was a small boy, "when I told you I didn't want you out late...the last thing I ever would've thought would be that this could happen. I've tried to protect you from everything out in the galaxy."

Luke nodded and said through a voice thick with tears, "And then I screw it all up."

"No, child," Vader brushed the tears away with one gloved hand, "there is truly nothing you could ever do, that would warrant an attack like you suffered. It has nothing to do with your actions, those men made that choice, and if it wasn't you, they would've found someone else. You were simply in the wrong place..."

"At the wrong time," Luke quietly finished. "You see? It is that simple, if I'd just gone home sooner, it never would've happened."

Vader futilely tried to sigh around his respirator. "That's not entirely true."

Luke looked up at him, confusion in his tear-filled eyes. "What?"

"If you had gotten home sooner, this may not have happened that night, and it may not have been those men...but that doesn't guarantee it would never have happened. What you went through is a fate no one should have to suffer, but the truth is it happens all over the galaxy, to all different people; it used to be publicly assumed that it only happened to slaves, but it happens in all ranks, in the royal families, no one is truly immune, Luke."

For a split second he remembered Han Solo in the palace kitchen, that look in his eyes.

"I had a brother."

"It can happen to anyone," Vader's own voice brought him back to the present as he told his son, "the only people responsible are the predators themselves. It's nothing you did, it's nothing anyone did. I don't want you to worry about this anymore, you have nothing to feel guilty about, and you are not in trouble." He added firmly, "I am hurt that this happened to you, but you are my son, Luke, and the love I feel for you can never be diminished by anything you do. The only thing that I care about is that you recover from this."

Luke's shoulders rose and fell in time with his labored breathing, he looked up in the red lenses and asked, a meek voice as if it was hoping for too much, "Really?"

Vader hugged Luke tight against him and told his son, "You are the only thing in the galaxy that matters to me, and you are safe now. No one is going to hurt you again."

Luke dropped his head on his father's armored shoulder and the dark lord felt the violent tremors running through Luke as he burst into a series of hyperventilating sobs. Vader squeezed one durasteel arm tight against the boy's back and held him close.

"It's all right, Luke," he said as he reached with his other hand and softly patted the boy's back.

Luke's breaths came out in louder, piercing sobs and after a few tries he managed to form actual words around them, "I...I was so...scared! When...when I realized how late it was, I tried to get home...but there were so many people and...and I couldn't get out...and I was terrified you'd be waiting when I got back, so...so I tr-tried to take a shortcut through the alley an-and then..."

Behind the red lenses, Vader's eyes widened in concern. Luke fell into another incoherent set of sobbing screams, and they just seemed to keep getting louder, and louder...at this rate, it might even be possible for him to tear his own vocal cords if he didn't calm down.

"I th-thought they were going to kill me," Luke tearfully confessed, "the pain was so bad a-and it went on f-forever and I thought I was just going to die, and the...the more time went on, I wished that they would've...I really wished they had, so I wouldn't have to feel anything anymore...an-and so I wouldn't have to face you..."

Behind the mask, behind the armor, behind the chest plate, Darth Vader felt his heart break.

"Luke..."

"I was so scared of w-wh-what you'd do when you found out," Luke told him. "I'm so sorry, Father."

Vader felt a strain in his prosthetics as he hugged his son even tighter against him, behind his mask his eyes burned as he felt tears, a sensation he hadn't known since he'd buried his wife.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Luke," he told his son, the vocoder covering any wavering in his own voice at that moment, "you did nothing wrong."

He on the other hand was sorry that Luke had honestly believed that his father would be angry at him for what happened, but he didn't dare say it to Luke; the boy had suffered enough, and he knew that admission would only weigh on Luke's guilt that he'd even told his father the truth and said anything at all. No, it was better if the child didn't know that, not yet anyway. There would be time later for Vader to be completely honest with him, once they got past this.

"You're going to be all right, Luke," Vader told his son. "It's over now, you're safe now."

Luke held tightly to his father and cried for what felt like forever, eventually he started to wear down and became quieter, then quiet, and Vader felt the boy's head slump against his shoulder. He was asleep, and Vader tried letting out a sigh in relief, but it was still an exercise in futility with his respirator. Gently, he laid Luke back against the pillows, stood up, pulled the covers over Luke and tucked him in.

"You're home now, Luke."