Summary: The things that are done in war have a lasting effect on people. Luke learns that the hard way.

Look at that! I'm back again already! Enjoy some angst and suffering, curtesy of yours truly, Lady Anguish.

Battle Fatigue

There was a ringing sound in Luke's ears that seemed determined not to leave. It pounded in his head, the phantom sounds of blaster fire and screaming and aerial strikes from the sky, that had laid waste to the ground and the people who had been below.

The surrounding area was completely decimated. What had once been lush and green was torn apart by war and stained red with blood.

Luke had never realized how awful of a color red truly was until today. It seemed to be everywhere that he looked now.

The ground battle that he'd gotten caught in had been one of the most horrifically violent things he'd ever been a part of. He had killed people before today, it was true… but not like this. This wasn't the death of hundreds of thousands with one impersonal shot. It had been face to face. One by one, over and over and over again. Truly, in every sense of the words and meaning, it had been kill or be killed. The enemy numbers never seemed to thin out and they had come from everywhere.

Luke had lost count how many people he had torn apart in a desperate effort to survive. He didn't know how many heads and limbs he had cut off or how many bodies he had cleaved in half. All he knew - all he feared to think - was that more than half the Imperial dead on the abandoned field belonged to him. He was too scared to look up and try to count.

He had come a long, long way from bulls-eyeing womp rats. For the first time, how far he'd come since Tatooine didn't make him proud. It made him want to cry.

Luke wasn't even certain what stopped the battle itself. The Rebel fleet - what was left of them now - had fled, outnumbered and brutalized perhaps beyond saving. The Empire had chased after them into hyperspace, evacuating the planet and leaving behind the remaining forces on the ground to battle it out. They had left behind their wounded as well. And that was another sound that was haunting him now - the sounds of death. Of pain and anguish and dying men all around him.

It didn't matter what side they were on. Luke had felt the fear from people and sentients on both sides until it had all blended together into one great whole. And this… this was sad. It was awful and someone… someone should help them. Someone should try and help all of them. Someone should try and make it stop.

Luke tries to stop the shaking of his hands by pressing them down harder on the wound he was desperately trying to staunch the blood flow of. He didn't know the rebel he was trying to save - didn't recognize his face and didn't care. He had killed so many people today. He thought maybe he could try and save someone now - until someone came back for them. Until help arrived.

Time felt meaningless. He is stuck in a place of suspended fear and with an overwhelming need to survive. He can't come down from the feeling - he doesn't know how to turn it off and wouldn't even if he could. He was certain that all of this would all start up all over again if he lets his guard down for even a second. Every whisper of the wind, every hint of noise… it all so feels dangerous. Murderous. Terrifying. It sends spikes of fear and adrenaline though his body and yet he can't bring himself to move because if lets go, the man he's trying to save will die and there has been so much death already.

He wishes that the screaming and the crying would stop and he closes his eyes against it.

I can't help you, he whispers out into the Force. I can't. I can't help you. I don't know how.

All he can do is stay where he is and try to save one.

Time passes in a weird way or maybe no time really passes at all. Everything feels painfully sharp and yet it comes and goes at the same time. In and out, up and down, all of it a dizzying dance that he doesn't know the steps of.

Luke's legs feel numb. He's been sitting on them for… he doesn't even know how long. Just trying to keep the blood inside this soldier's body - it keeps leaking out of the hole that had been blown through him and it has completely stained his hands and the ground underneath them both. Luke feels cold. Strange, he thinks distantly. The planet they were on was a warmer one and there is enough fire and smoke around him that is leftover from the battle to where cold shouldn't really be a possibility.

His heart is still pounding a beat in his chest but… it's quieter now. Less people screaming. Less light in the sky. But there are empty voids in the Force around him marking each and every death. It's such a hollow feeling - he almost prefers the screaming and crying to the nothingness of death.

He is aware… in some distant way, of other people who are alive. Nowhere close to him but Luke hopes that maybe the help that he has been waiting for has finally come.

Even with that hope, he still flinches violently when at the first sound of a snapping branch from somewhere nearby. There are footsteps coming his way but they are slow and cautious. A new sound reaches his ears - something slow and steady and repetitive.

It's familiar.

Luke slowly glances up for the first time and sees Vader. His father pauses and raises his hands in a strangely placating sort of way. His body is still buzzing with energy but Luke feels oddly blank and uncertain in the wake of his father's appearance. This is… not the help he had imagined. If the Empire was making it's way through the battlefield, Luke expected them to be executing any survivors as they did so.

Vader has no weapon, the way that he had on Bespin all those months ago and Luke… he doesn't know if they are enemies right now. They should be. That had been in the past. But now he knows the truth. Now he is aware of the connection that ties them together in the Force.

He knows that he doesn't want things to be the way that it had been all this time between them. His world had been altered in more ways than one on Bespin. The reality of that fact is only obvious to him now, when he can't bring himself to do anything.

Vader takes his inaction as permission to take another step forward and Luke looks down instead of meeting his eyes. He has killed too many people today. Even if he was capable, he doesn't want to add a family member to that list. That would probably destroy him entirely.

If he was honest with himself, at this moment… all he really wanted was a parent or a loved one to tell him it would all be okay. That seemed like a lot to ask for though.

Luke wishes his hands would stop shaking. Wishes that he could think straight and wishes that today had never happened in the first place. Even if he washed his hands clean, the blood was never going to come off.

"He's dead, Luke." The sound of Vader's voice is jarring and Luke feels his heart start to pound in response. He squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. The body under his hands has been cold for a while now and the eyes staring up at him were vacant and lifeless but….

"Not yet," he denies in a faint whisper. "He's still… he's still bleeding. I can stop it. I should… I should try."

He wants to be good at more than just bringing death. He needs to do more today than just kill - he wants to go back and stop all of this from happening somehow. It had been so… many… people….

There is more movement and then a wall of blackness is kneeling beside him. Luke is so tense that he feels as though his body might just snap in half entirely. He should do something - he should fight back before his father brutalized him like he'd done on Bespin - but he… he can't.

Family was supposed to be off limits. Family was supposed to mean something.

And… there is no one else left in the galaxy who he can claim as his family. Everyone else was dead - just like the hundreds of dead scattered across this battlefield. He doesn't know which or how many friends he has lost today. It feels like everyone is gone. Gone, nothing but distant memories and echoes in the Force. If Vader was gone too… then Luke would be alone.

Luke startles, trembling horribly, when a black gloved hand presses against his cheek. It's gentle and he leans into it before he can stop himself. Another hand pulls at his own, trying to lift them from where they were still pressed against the dead, broken man that he hadn't been able to save.

"Let go," Vader's voice orders quietly and the body beneath him is sliding away from him with a gentle nudge from the Force. "Let go, little one. He's gone."

Luke is frozen, staring at the bloodstained ground below. His hands are still trembling and he distantly wonders if it has started to rain. His face feels wet. The hand on his cheek moves and then his chin is being tilted up until his view is only of the death mask that he knows his father by.

"Breathe, Luke. It will be alright. Just breathe," Vader tells him patiently and it was only with that direction that Luke even realized that he was hyperventilating. Air was coming into his lungs with short, painful gasps and he lifted a hand to clutch at the front of his blood soaked shirt, clutching it desperately. The world feels like it is spinning and he wants to be sick.

"H-help me," Luke begs him, frightened of the lack of control that he feels and shaking so hard that he is surprised he hasn't fallen apart completely. He doesn't understand why he can't just stop. "Please, p-please help me."

"You need to relax -"

"I - I can't."

"Yes, you can," Vader says simply and he sounds so certain of this that Luke could almost bring himself to believe him. "Just count to five with me. We will do it together. Ready? One."

His father waits, silence falling between them as Luke tries to force the word out from his mouth. He doesn't really understand how counting will help but that hardly matters. It's a simple enough thing to do. It takes a few tries but he does it.

"Good. Two."

Two.

He sucks in air, grabbing the front of his father's suit with his other hand for the first time in an effort to hold himself steady since the world was still spinning out of control. Vader adjusts his hand - just a little, so that it isn't too close to the control panel - but otherwise lets him hang on, as if it doesn't bother him at all. It helps - Vader is solid; powerful and real - and Luke feels less likely to fall.

"Three."

Luke repeats the number, a little easier this time. He's shivering still and cold but it's… maybe a little easier to breathe? He can't tell. Maybe he's not doing it right.

"Four. You are doing very well." Vader praises when Luke struggles with this one. He's distracted by the realization that it isn't raining. He's just crying. It's probably one of the reasons that his head hurts so bad. He chokes back a sob and repeats four after another gentle prompting from his father.

"Five."

Luke finishes but it's still difficult to breathe - maybe even harder, actually - and so Vader simply starts the process over, beginning with one. Luke would be amazed by his capacity for patience if he wasn't battling so hard against his own body that seemed to be trying to betray him completely.

Fight. Danger. Survive. Win.

It was a mantra that wouldn't stop. Death was everywhere. Danger was everything. His father was dangerous but he was also off limits and it is so hard to breathe.

It takes two more patient and painful counts to five before something in him finally relaxes. There's an inkling of control coming back to his mind and he desperately reaches for it, chest heaving as the tightness in his lungs slowly fades and air comes back in with ease. It clicks somehow - really clicks - that the battle is over. The fighting is done. He can stop. The realization floods him with a breathless wave of relief and he sobs a broken sound that he has never heard himself make before.

Vader waits, giving him the time he needs to regain control. The fingers under his chin shift once more and then his father is brushing sweaty locks of hair out of his eyes. It's kindness and he craves it desperately, feeling like a little boy seeking comfort for the first time in a very, very long time. He hadn't even known that he could expect kindness from his father.

He wonders if it will last very long.

There is a new, quiet little mantra taking place in his mind - a whisper along the little thread of light that he has tried to ignore for months. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. It seems to say. Just breathe.

Just breathe, Luke thinks desperately. He can do that. Breathing is easy.

"Were you hurt?" Vader asks after a few moments go by and everything seems just a little bit calmer. Luke blinks, slowly sucking in air before releasing it again. It takes him a minute or so to comprehend the question.

"I don't know," he answers hoarsely. "I don't think so."

A strange, warm feeling flutters over him. It feels something like the rays of the sun or a pair of eyes looking at him from the inside out. It's weird. Trippy, even. He knows that it's Vader and decides to do nothing except tightens his fingers where they are still holding on to the front of his suit.

"It's cold," Luke says instead, shivering. He doesn't know if that counts as hurt though. Fingers press up against his neck, taking his pulse. Luke can feel it pounding rapidly.

"You are still a little shocky," Vader agrees after a moment, dropping his hand. "But it will pass."

That was good. Luke wouldn't normally take his father's word as truth for anything but maybe it would be okay this time around. Vader was still the only thing that seemed to be holding the world together and there wasn't anyone else that he could turn to.

"Drink," Vader says suddenly and then there is a canteen or a bottle that is pressing up against his lips. He opens his mouth on instinct and a little bit of cool water flows past his lips. He hadn't realized that he was parched until just now. His throat feels like hot sandpaper and he untangles his fingers from his shirt and tries to help hold the bottle steady. "Easy," his father warns. "Not too much."

Vader lets him drink enough to sate his thirst, while the warm feeling continues scanning the rest of him. It seems to hesitate now and then in some areas and Luke wonders if he is hurt after all. The feeling fades just as the water is taken away.

"You're being nice to me," Luke says without thinking, catching his breath. His head is a little bit clearer and he feels more like himself.

Vader pauses and there is a little flicker of an emotion that Luke doesn't know how to name. "Yes," his father answers slowly. It sounds like a question and that seems a little rude. Their past encounters have always favored violence instead of anything parental. Luke has learned what to expect and had accepted it in the aftermath of Bespin that that was who his father was… and even if he wants this moment to continue… Vader shouldn't pretend. That isn't fair.

"I, I didn't know you could be nice." Luke explains quietly. He breathes in again, letting air fill his lungs again and releasing it again. Only then does he dare to look around them for the first time. "Were… you here for all of this?"

His father follows his gaze. "No," he says after a moment. "I was not. I came after, when I heard that... you were here."

Oh. That makes sense. As much sense as anything does, really. Maybe if Vader had been here, they would have drawn blades with each other after all. Although… Luke still isn't certain where his lightsaber is. He probably lost it again. He did that a lot, it seemed like.

"I have your lightsaber," Vader says and only then does Luke realize that he'd spoken out loud. He feels his brow furrow and tries to spot where it is on his father's person. It isn't immediately obvious to him and he can feel Vader sense his confusion. "You can have it back later. Just not right now."

The blood stained on his hands catches his eyes and Luke swallows back the nausea. His fake hand is the one clutching the front of his father's suit and he shivers as he realizes what "later" probably means.

"When I can fight again, you mean?"

When Luke can stand on his own two feet without falling over from exhaustion. When the ringing in his ears is gone and he can string more than a few thoughts together at the same time. When his father could beat the shit out of him in a duel, tear him apart, and put him on his knees and probably not kill him in the process. When the duel would be worth it.

His father is silent for a long moment, no doubt reading his thoughts. He did that a lot, it seemed like. Luke wasn't certain how to make him stop and... and he doesn't really like the emotion that he senses from his father now. It's painful - like sad and shame and anger and loathing all bundled up into each other. Luke pulls away from it and closes his eyes, counting the breaths from Vader's respirator. He isn't sure if he's the source or the target for those emotions and he's afraid to find out. But this... just listening... it's soothing in the strangest sort of way.

He'd rather not fight his father at all. If he had to… if he was forced to… he doubted that he'd put in full effort. But maybe that was just because he was too tired to even conceive picking up a weapon again. Too exhausted by the idea of taking even one more life to think lifting an arm to protect himself would be worth it.

The battlefield of red dances in the corner of his eyes. The ringing in his ears is still there but there's a buzzing sound now too. Flies, or this planet's equivalent, that were attracted to the smell of death and decay. The thought made him sick to his stomach.

A hand hesitantly cards its way through his hair once more and Luke doesn't try to stop it. "I am not going to hurt you, Luke."

Luke huffs disbelievingly and feels more tears prick at the corner of his eyes. He realizes that his current grasp on control is still tenuous at best. He slowly counts to five in head once more before he responds.

"You know, it isn't very nice to lie, right?" he says quietly, glancing sideways at his father. A short silence follows and he knows that they are both thinking about the last time they saw each other.

"I am not inclined to lie to you," Vader finally says. Luke's eyes fly open as his father shifts for the first time and then his vision swims as he's suddenly pulled up to his feet. They're done here, apparently. There's a cold rush of blood that shoots through his legs as they unbend for the first time since he ended up on the ground and his knees buckle instantly. Vader holds him up while his vision blurs. The second it starts to clear, they are moving.

Or, Vader is moving and Luke is along for the ride. He thinks Vader is trying to be careful with him - gentle, the way that he had managed to be on the ground. Luke can tell in a strange sort of way that his father is way out of practice. There are Imperial ships nearby and the sight of them has his heart racing once again. He doesn't know what will happen when they get to those ships. He's scared to find out. He's more scared of being left here on this field of death by himself though.

"Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?"

Luke clears his throat and feels his chin start to quiver against his will. There go his emotions again - haywire and fragile. He stumbles and his father slows his steps a little bit, taking a moment to readjust his hold. "That... you won't lie to me?"

Vader meets his eyes. "Yes," he says and there's a promise in those words.

Luke nods again. "I… I killed a lot of people today." he admits, feeling small as he says it.

"I am not angry with you about that," Vader assures him quickly. "I am just glad that you are alive."

That's not a lie. He can feel it in the Force - it's stronger than any other feeling he has sensed between them yet and it makes his eyes water. He's alive. Someone cares that he made it out of this alive. Luke isn't entirely certain if he cares just yet... but someone else does. He lifts a bloodstained hand and scrubs fiercely at his eyes. It doesn't help. The tears fall anyways.

"What do I do?" Luke asks - begs, really. How does he move on from this? How does he forget this scene? How does he get it all out of his head and move on with his life? Is that even possible? And... and what if everyone else is really gone? The Rebellion, the fight against the Empire - what if all of it is over? "Father, w-what happens next?"

There is a moment of silence.

"You come with me," Vader said, his tone booking no room for argument. "We get you someplace quiet. We get you cleaned up... and we will take it all one step at a time. Alright?"

Luke stares up at him, imaging that he can see the eyes that are hiding behind his mask. He wonders distantly what his father really looks like. Wonders if there are other things that they have in common other than a remarkable talent for causing death and destruction. He looks away and sees the Imperial ships waiting nearby. Stormtroopers are waiting for them and other officials in uniforms. The sight of them makes his stomach twist with nerves and fear. He wonders how much his life will change, more than it already has, by walking in that direction.

But what other choice does he have?

A/N I love me a slightly ominous ending, as well as the opportunity to give Luke some SERIOUS battle trauma. Apparently finishing my big fic cleared up my brain for some creativity. Thanks for reading!