(Cover image credit: xalala on Tumblr)
A note and a warning:
- This is a very loose sequel to my earlier fic Beyond Measure. However, you do NOT have to read Beyond Measure to understand this fic. All you need to know is that this takes place in an AU where Vader survived the Battle of Endor and was later pardoned in exchange for him helping the New Republic to fight the Imperial Remnant.
- The M rating is because there are a couple breastfeeding scenes in this. They're not graphic, but there are mentions of naked (non-sexy) boobs, so just wanted to give everyone a heads up about that just to be safe!
Ever since Mara had gotten pregnant with Ben, both Luke and her had been inundated with well-meaning parenting advice. Most of which was genuinely useful, but some of which drove them both a little crazy. Luke had the feeling, for instance, that Mara was going to roundhouse kick the next person who told her to "sleep when the baby sleeps." She never had been good at napping.
As for Luke, he could've done without all the beings—from the med droids that helped Cilghal deliver Ben to Mara's lactation consultant—who urged them to get help from family during the newborn phase. Because when beings asked, Do you have family that can help you? what they really meant was, Can your parents help you? But of course, the closest thing to a parent that Mara had was an evil megalomaniac who had been thrown down a reactor shaft more than twenty standard years ago. While Luke's only parent was, well, an ex-Lord of the Sith. And though the "ex" part had become more and more pronounced with time, that still didn't mean Vader would make good nanny material.
Still, after Ben came home from the med center, and one sleepless night stretched into two, and then five, Luke had to admit that everyone was right—they did need help. So one morning while Mara sat propped up in bed, eating cereal with one hand while holding a hungry baby to her breast with the other, Luke squinted at his comm through bleary eyes, and punched in the code for a certain former Dark Lord.
"You have acquired an excessive amount of baby gadgets, my son."
Glancing up from where he stood washing Mara's pump parts, Luke gave a strained chuckle. "I'm pretty sure this is a normal amount of baby gadgets. This is all stuff that Leia and Han recommended."
On the other side of the kitchen island, Vader stalked around the baby gear cluttering the living room of Luke and Mara's Coruscant apartment, inspecting it as if it were a squadron of stormtroopers that was failing to pass muster. "Be that as it may, if either you or your sister had thought to seek my advice—"
"You know, I did show you our registry—"
"—then I would have told you that half of these … devices …" He picked up Mara's breast milk pump from where she'd set it on the couch, and held it out at arm's length, as if it might bite him. "… are unnecessary."
Luke was too tired to argue. He just shook his head a little to himself and loaded the last of the pump parts into the sonic dishwasher.
Vader went on. "In the slave quarters of Mos Espa, women did not have hover strollers or speeder seats or automated bassinets. They raised babies with nothing more than mats on the floor and swings made out of scraps of cloth and sticks."
"That … sounds really hard." Luke frowned as he started scrubbing the milk bottles next. No one hated Tatooine more than his father, and it gave him pause that the older man was voluntarily bringing up his experience as a slave there.
Maybe it had something to do with his work of late. In the years since the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant had signed the Bastion Accords, Vader had been released from his service to the NR, and now spent his days chasing down slavers in his custom-built gunship, the Chain Breaker, and bringing them to face justice in the New Republic's courts.
Before Luke could ask, though, whether it was one of these missions that had triggered his reminiscing, the two of them were interrupted by a blood curdling wail coming from down the hall, accompanied by waves of abject misery flooding the Force.
Luke winced as he rinsed a bottle and placed it in the dishwasher rack. He knew exactly what that was: baby Ben, getting the third or fourth bath of his young life.
"What exactly is she doing to that child?" Vader demanded.
"Don't worry, Father—it's just bath time," Luke said, trying to keep his tone lightly amused, even as the screams continued. "He hates it even more than diaper changes, poor little guy."
"He sounds like he is calling for help," Vader muttered.
"Mara's with him. I'm sure she's trying her best to comfort him."
"And what is she comforting him with—an IT-O Interrogator?"
At that, the little bit of good humor that Luke had managed to hold onto during this week winked out. He took a deliberate deep breath, drawing on the Force to try to keep his temper in check as he focused on starting the dishwasher's sanitizing cycle. He could handle his father's criticisms of his belongings or even of himself, but Vader taking shots at Mara was a different matter entirely.
And for the longest time, Vader had seemed to understand that. In the years between Luke and Mara's engagement and today, Vader had—amazingly—refrained from saying anything bad about his daughter-in-law, even though Luke knew the elder Skywalker would've preferred it if his son had married someone else. That didn't mean Vader was friendly toward Mara; he talked to her for a grand total of maybe five minutes every year. But that was the same exact way he'd treated Han ever since Endor, and neither Luke nor Leia was going to complain about the fact that he ignored their spouses when their spouses were perfectly happy with that arrangement. (Leia probably wished he would ignore her, too.)
But now, to Luke's frustration, it seemed like the metaphorical gloves were finally coming off, and at the worst possible time. His father had been on Coruscant for all of an hour, and already he'd managed to insult Mara three times:
First, he'd commented that she looked awkward holding Ben.
Then, he'd made a tone-deaf joke about her postpartum figure. ("You look like you are carrying Ben's twin," he'd said, which—apparently—was supposed to be a funny reference to all the twins in the Skywalker family. With cool restraint, Mara had merely replied that the uterus takes six weeks to shrink back to normal size after birth, while Luke had had to use every calming technique that Yoda had ever taught him to keep from Force hurling the nearest blunt object at his father's head.)
And now Vader was essentially implying she was a bad mother, all while obliviously managing to remind Luke of what he'd done to Leia on the Death Star.
"Mara has been amazing with Ben from the minute he was born," Luke said, when he finally trusted himself to speak without yelling, though his voice still came out tight as a hallikset string. "She's a wonderful mother."
"She is an assassin—"
"Former assassin. You know, kind of like a former Sith Lord?"
"—which is no doubt why that poor child was screaming as if he was being murdered."
And just like that, the string snapped. "He was screaming because he's a newborn!" Luke shouted. "And they hate being wet, and they hate being cold, but you wouldn't know anything about that, because when Leia and I were Ben's age, you were taking over the galaxy!"
It was the emotional equivalent of Luke hacking off Vader's hand on the second Death Star, and the instant he finished speaking, he wished he could take the words back. His father reeled backwards, shields slamming shut, but not fast enough to hide that Luke's verbal volley had hit him right in the heart. Somewhere in the background, Ben—who had actually quieted down for a few moments—started wailing again at the top of his lungs, no doubt because of the anger Luke had pushed into the Force.
Luke sighed and closed his eyes and pressed the pad of his thumb to the space between his eyebrows. "Shavit, I'm sorry," he murmured.
Vader, for once, seemed too taken aback to respond, and a second later, Mara hurried into the room carrying a damp and still-howling Ben wrapped in a towel printed with little cartoon shaaks and banthas.
As she made a beeline for the hover crib that was currently parked near the couch, she raised her eyebrows at Luke, giving him a knowing look. With both the Force and their bond, there was no way she had missed that something was going down between him and his father. But it was clear she was too focused on the baby to worry about it. She set Ben down in the crib, then pulled a set of footie pajamas off her shoulder and laid them out next to him. Grateful for the distraction, Luke hurried over to help her.
"Oh, my poor baby," she cooed, setting a thrashing Ben atop the unzipped pajamas. "Baby, you'll feel better in your clothes. You'll feel better once you're warm. Yes, you will. Yes, you will, my sweet one."
She started trying to get one of Ben's flailing arms into a sleeve and Luke leaned over to start working on the other arm, all while pushing waves of comfort and love toward Ben in the Force. The poor little guy was still screaming, a jagged sound that scraped the ears raw, his face contorted with his eyes screwed shut and his mouth wide open, his whole body a bright, angry red from the effort.
Looming behind them, Vader said, "You are causing him distress."
"No shavit," Mara said, never taking her eyes off her task, "but we have to get him dressed."
"Shh, it's okay, it's okay," Luke said to Ben. "It's going to be okay."
He and Mara struggled to dress the baby for a few beats more—they'd gotten Ben's arms into his sleeves and were now attempting to corral his legs—when Vader suddenly thundered, "Enough!"
All at once, he pushed between Luke and Mara and scooped Ben up. He grabbed a blanket that was hanging on the side of the crib and wrapped the baby in it, then cradled him against his chest panel. "I will not stand by any longer and watch you torment my son."
Everyone froze, including Vader himself as he seemed to realize what he'd said.
It was Mara who recovered first. "He's our son," she said. She gestured at herself and Luke before crossing her arms and fixing the former Sith with a deadly glare.
"He's your grandson," Luke said in a gentler tone, stating the obvious in an attempt to soften the situation. His heart ached with guilt over his earlier outburst. Because even though Vader's shields were still tight as an airlock, it didn't take a telepathic bond to figure out what was behind that slip: his father's longing for a do-over with his own children.
"Yes. That is what I intended to say," Vader said stiffly.
"I would hope so," Mara said. "Though now that we've established those basic facts, I have to admit—" She gestured at Ben, who had actually calmed down in his grandfather's arms and was now staring cross-eyed at a blinking light on his chest. "—it looks like he might actually like you."
"Of course he prefers me."
"I wouldn't go that far."
"As I discovered with Leia's children, infants enjoy bright lights and white noise, both of which I happen to be equipped with."
As if to illustrate his point, he went silent for several seconds and merely breathed in Ben's direction. The baby yawned, clearly lulled by the sound, and snuggled deeper into his arms.
Luke laughed. "Well, how 'bout that?"
He wrapped an arm around Mara's shoulders and smiled at the sight of their son (They had a son! It still didn't seem real …) looking tiny as a Loth kitten against Vader's hulking form. Luke's cheerful expression masked a complicated mix of emotions under the surface, though, some of them much more bitter than sweet. He didn't have the energy to examine those feelings, so he shoved them aside, at least for the time being. If Ben was happy, that was all that mattered anyway.
Or at least, Luke wished that was all that mattered. But after two more fights with his father over the span of two more days, he was starting to realize that even though Ben really did like his grandfather, that didn't mean Vader staying in their apartment was a good idea.
On the one hand, the former Dark Lord was actually very helpful in a pragmatic sense. When Ben refused to sleep at night, the ex-Sith stayed up with him so that Luke and Mara could get some rest; he changed diapers; he assembled the hover stroller that he'd been so disdainful toward; and to Luke's great surprise, he even washed pump parts.
But he also gave Luke endless grief over the fact that he'd named his son after Obi-Wan, even going so far as to comm the Coruscant Vital Records office to see if they could put a halt to Ben's birth certificate being issued. And much worse than that was his insistence that Luke and Ben should move into a cabin onboard the Chain Breaker—without Mara—so that Vader could continue to help look after his grandson, while Mara could "get some free time back to sharpen knives, or however it is she chooses to relax."
It was all more upsetting for Luke than anything Vader had done in a long, long time. And not just because he kept targeting Mara, but also because this seemed to be coming out of nowhere.
Sure—twenty, fifteen, even ten years ago, this kind of behavior from his father would've been nothing. Luke would've shrugged it off, because any interaction between them back then that didn't end in someone losing a limb had felt miraculous.
But time had done its work and things had changed. When Luke thought of his father these days, the person who came to mind wasn't the Emperor's brutal enforcer, or the recovering Sith Lord who'd thought Luke was wasting his life by reviving the Jedi: It was the man who had commed Luke every day of Mara's third trimester, eager for updates on what Ben was doing in the womb, and unabashedly sharing in his son's joy over the coming baby.
So it was maddening—and saddening—that now that Ben was actually here, that emotionally supportive version of Vader had suddenly vanished.
It was on the third day of Vader's stay that Luke face-planted next to Mara in bed and said, "This was a big mistake, wasn't it?"
He'd just come from putting his foot down and telling Vader that under no circumstances did he want to hear anymore criticisms of Mara and/or veiled suggestions that he take their child and leave her. And while Vader had agreed to respect Luke's request, he had refused to concede that anything he'd said about Mara this week was wrong, which had left Luke feeling like he had a stone in the pit of his stomach. At least the conversation had been entirely in their heads, so that Mara didn't have to hear it.
Now, Luke dragged himself up into a sitting position beside her, taking comfort in the sight of her and Ben snuggled together. She was leaning back against the headboard with Ben cradled to her bare chest, braid disheveled, eyes puffy, but still as beautiful as the day she'd first threatened to kill Luke. While Ben was suckling in his sleep, his pudgy, tiny arms flung around either side of her breast, as if someone was going to steal all the milk from him if he didn't guard it.
With a tired sigh, Luke reached over and scritched Ben's fuzzy, ginger head.
Mara glanced up from gazing intently at the baby. "What's a big mistake—having a child?" she asked wryly, her voice low to keep from disturbing their sleeping son.
Luke chuckled softly. "Maybe that, too. But no, I mean asking my father to stay with us."
"What'd he do now?"
"He just …" Trailing off, Luke waved a hand vaguely through the air, not exactly sure how to explain it.
Thankfully, after that first day, Vader had gone back to talking to Mara as little as possible, and Luke still hadn't told her what Vader said during Ben's bath, or about his father's crazy plan to spirit Luke and Ben away on the Chain Breaker. It felt strange to keep things from her, but Luke was hyperaware that she had enough on her shoulders right now—recovering from childbirth, keeping another human being alive—without him dumping that information on her, too.
"I don't really want to go into detail about it," he finally said.
She opened her mouth as if to push against that, then seemed to quickly think better of it. "No, I get it," she said. "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
"But let's just say that he's said some things that are very out of line."
"Like the twin thing?" She arched an eyebrow and Luke winced at the memory.
"Force, I cannot apologize for that enough."
"Save it. You're not the one who should be apologizing." Then she shrugged. "Honestly, though, I really don't care. It's free childcare, Luke. If him being here means the two of us can get a break, he can say whatever he wants."
He narrowed his eyes in surprise. "You really feel that way?"
"Trust me, you would know if I didn't."
He probed lightly along their bond, but as far as he could tell, she wasn't putting up a front. He shook his head in amazement. Sometimes he forgot just how practical she was.
Mara peered at him more closely. "But if he's driving you crazy, you know we can look into how much something like a night nurse would cost, at least until Ben's old enough for a nanny droid to help look after him."
"That's … an idea," Luke said. He tilted his head as if thinking about it, though he already knew that he didn't want to hire help.
For one, if he spent money on a luxury like that, Uncle Owen would probably find a way to come back as a Force ghost just to chastise him ( Uncle Owen who, along with Aunt Beru, should've been here to meet Ben, and whose presence Luke missed more than ever these days).
But it wasn't just Tatooinian frugality that made Luke feel like that option was wrong. There was more to it than that.
"An idea you don't like, I take it," Mara said, breaking into his thoughts.
"It's just … I didn't just ask my father to help us for our sake. Of course we could afford help or even do this on our own if we had to. But I asked him for his sake, too. I know he regrets not being more involved with Leia's kids when they were this age. And he was just so excited when you were pregnant. So many times before Ben was born, I would imagine what it was going to be like when he finally met our baby and I just … I thought it was going to be this joyous moment. For him more than anyone. I wanted so badly for this to make him happy. And instead we're just … back to butting heads again as if I was thirty and opening the Academy all over again. And I don't even know why." Luke rubbed his forehead. "Or that's not true. I have plenty of guesses but … you know what I mean."
"Hmm." Mara shifted her hold on Ben and settled deeper into the pillows that were piled behind her back. Luke expected her to say that he wasn't responsible for his father's happiness, especially when the man was being so difficult. It was what so many people had told him in the past; it was what he was telling himself now.
But instead, she said, "Well, maybe it's like a sleep regression."
Luke frowned. "What's a sleep regression?"
In response, she fixed him with an incredulous look. "You don't know what a sleep regression is?"
"It sounds vaguely familiar, but …"
"We learned about them in that infant sleep class we took. You don't remember?"
"Oh. I probably zoned out. That woman was so boring."
In the blink of an eye, Mara Force-grabbed her tunic from where it lay crumpled on the bed and threw it at Luke's head so that it ended up draped over his face.
Laughing, he peeled it off. "Hey, at least I remember basic safety principles: You want to fill the crib with lots of pillows and blankets so the baby can suffocate. That's right, isn't it?"
"I hate you," she said.
"So you've told me. But seriously, what is a sleep regression?" He gave her leg an affectionate squeeze at the same time that he sent a wave of warmth through the bond. "And I'm sorry you're having to explain it when I should've already known."
"Well, since you apologize so nicely—" She gave him a haughty look like they were in the Imperial Court and she was deigning to grant him a dance, though her sense in the Force was clearly teasing. "—a sleep regression is when a baby who's been sleeping well suddenly starts sleeping poorly, like they did at a younger age. And these regressions usually happen because the baby is making some kind of developmental leap. So for instance, Ben will go through his first regression at four months, because that's when he'll start developing sleep stages like an adult." She paused to tenderly smooth some of the fluff on Ben's head. "He might be sleeping through the night by that age—or I certainly hope he is—and then bam, suddenly he'll start waking up again like he's a newborn all over again. And it'll seem like he's going backwards, but really, it's a sign of progress."
What she was getting at came together for Luke in a flash. "So what you're saying is that, you think my father's falling back into old behavioral patterns to deal with a situation that's new and maybe even a little stressful for him."
"Exactly. And I really do think it has the potential to be a good thing."
Luke raised his eyebrows, marveling as he always did that she had it in her to say anything good about Vader or his relationship with Luke given her history with the former Dark Lord. But she had always been surprisingly sympathetic in this arena, even back at the beginning, when she and Luke were barely friends.
Of course, when Karrde had first captured Luke, Mara hadn't actually realized that Vader was his father. It was a tightly kept secret at the time, known only by a few high-ranking members of the NR government—partly because Leia didn't want to be publicly associated with the man back then, and partly because Vader didn't want it known that he was Anakin Skywalker. But once Mara learned the truth and got free of the Command, she never once gave Luke a hard time for loving the ex-Sith, even though there were a myriad of reasons why he shouldn't. She gave Luke a hard time for plenty of other things, but never that.
"Think about it," she was saying now, "if Leia had asked him to stay with her when her kids were babies, how do you think that would've gone?"
"Leia would be in jail for homicide, that's how that would've gone."
Mara snorted. "That or there'd be a galactic holiday in her name. But really, do you think he'd have even agreed if she'd asked him?"
Luke thought of how their father used to grumble whenever he had to babysit the Solo kids, how Leia would force him to do it almost as a kind of sentence—as if he had to put in a certain number of hours with her children before she'd give him access to the person he wanted to spend time with more than anything: herself.
"Grudgingly," Luke said. "But you're right—he wasn't really big on grandkids back then."
"So it's like I said. It might seem like he's gone backwards this week, but really—"
"—this is progress," Luke finished, in the quietly awestruck tone of someone having a revelation.
His insides had felt as knotted as one of Leia's intricate updos, but now they loosened, a sense of hope shining through his tangle of emotions.
"That's actually really insightful," Luke said.
"'Actually,' farm boy?" Mara raised one of her coppery eyebrows again. "Remember, I'm a Jedi now, too. You don't have the market cornered on life wisdom anymore."
Luke gave her an easy smile. "I never had it cornered even before you were a Jedi. You've always been able to see things that I've missed or from different perspectives that I never would've considered. That's one of the many things I love about you."
For the span of a caught breath, she just blinked at him. "Thank you," she said frankly, a genuine sense of being pleased coloring her side of the bond like a blush.
Luke leaned over to give her a lingering kiss.
When they parted, a sigh escaped him. "If I'm being honest, though, it's not just my father who's gone backwards. I have, too."
"What makes you say that?"
When he'd leaned in, he'd stretched his arm out along the top of the headboard behind her. With a finger now, he worried at an imperfection in the wood near the nape of her neck. He thought of the way he'd lost his temper with his father during Ben's bath. Thought of the strange sourness he'd felt when Vader had calmed the baby afterwards.
"Take yesterday," he said. "He was talking to Ben in his crib, saying things like, oh, you got your mother's hair, your father's nose. It was cute." He smiled fondly just thinking of it. "But then he started talking about what Ben's personality'll be like when he gets older, and he said something like, 'You will be a fighter. You will get that from me.' And he sounded so proud and it was … again, it was endearing. But what I really wanted to say when I heard that—and I didn't say it, but what I really wanted to say was, 'Are you sure you want him to be a fighter? Because when I turned out to be a fighter, you cut my hand off.'"
He paused then to take stock of Mara's reaction, but there was no judgment from her, either positive or negative. Just the tiniest of nods to indicate that she was listening and her jungle green eyes focused attentively on his. Plus a sense in the Force that she was giving him plenty of space to go on.
"It's completely juvenile," he said. If she wouldn't call it, he would. "It's the kind of stuff I used to say to my uncle when I was fifteen. But I don't know." He shook his head, while at the same time triple checking that the bond he shared with his father was currently shielded. "It makes me happy to see him connecting with Ben. It really does. But I would be lying if I said that there's not some part of me that—" He forced himself to state it plainly. "That resents it. That resents that he couldn't have just been that way from the beginning with me and Leia."
When Mara spoke again, her voice was soft but fiercely protective, eyes blazing with conviction. "No one's going to fault you for feeling that way, Luke."
"I know. But I will. I forgave him years ago, and I don't believe that forgiveness is something to be given lightly. It was an implicit commitment—it was a promise—that I wouldn't hold his wrongs against me over his head. That doesn't mean I'll shield him from other people holding other wrongs over his head. But I swore to myself that I wouldn't."
But of course, she already knew that. And Luke already knew that she disagreed with the idea that he owed Vader any such commitment, but that she respected his decision enough not to try to talk him out of it.
All of that flashed between them in a single look.
When the moment passed, Luke said, "Besides, I guess I'm also just taken aback by my own self. I genuinely thought I had worked through all of this and moved on." He scoffed. "I mean, the trauma of Bespin is old enough that it could've gotten knighted at the Academy by now."
Mara choked on a laugh. "Luke!"
"Hey, it's true."
She couldn't protest Luke's gallows humor any more than that, though, because Ben had woken up, startled by the shaking from Mara's laughter. He came unlatched, arms flailing, eyes wide and darting in every direction.
"Oh no, did we wake you, sweetie?" Mara asked.
"Aww," Luke said, taking in their son's adorably bewildered expression. "Here, I can take him."
Mara very carefully transferred Ben into Luke's arms, moving as cautiously as if the baby were made of spun sugar, and might crumble into pieces with one wrong move. Just as carefully, Luke resettled Ben so that he was curled upright on Luke's chest, his head resting in the dip between Luke's collarbone and sternum. He patted Ben's back and the baby squeaked and scrunched his face up, rubbing his hands over his eyes with clumsy swipes.
"Is this comfy, little guy?" Luke peered down at his son's face, the latter's hair standing straight up and tickling the underside of Luke's chin. "Do you want to sleep more?"
In response, Ben squirmed for a second longer, then placed his fists on Luke's chest and stared open-mouthed in his mother's direction. His disorientation gave way to contentment in the Force, and Luke's chest grew tight with emotion. He pressed a kiss to Ben's crown, while Mara stroked the back of one of his dimpled hands with a finger.
As she did, her expression shifted from adoring to something sadder, though. She turned away and grabbed her bra from where she'd dropped it on the bedspread. She sat up and began to put it on.
"You okay?" Luke asked.
She fastened her bra clasp, then sat back again and picked up her sleep tunic from where Luke had laid it between them. Instead of putting it on, though, she just froze for a heartbeat with it balled in one hand, staring at its folds as if they held the answer to some age-old mystery.
"I was just thinking," she finally said, "that it's normal, you know? That it's normal that having Ben is dredging up all these old feelings about your father that you thought you had buried a long time ago." A tinge of bitterness came into her voice then. "Not that I know anything about what's normal when it comes to family, but."
Jaw tightening, her gaze drifted to the wall beyond the foot of the bed, landing almost as if by happenstance on a holo of the Skywalker-Solos, taken a few years before she and Luke got married. In the flickering picture, Luke, Han, Leia, Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin Jr. ("Pregnancy hormones," was how Han always explained it, whenever anyone asked how their youngest son had gotten his name) were all standing in a clump, throwing their arms around each other, while Vader lurked at the image's edge, a good meter of space between him and everyone else. Gazing at the holo now, Mara looked almost pained, and Luke had a feeling she was seeing something else entirely.
"Ben's birth," she said, "it's made me start thinking about a lot of things that I thought I had moved past, too."
"Like what?" Luke asked gently.
She turned to look at him again. "Like the fact that I'll never know my own family."
Luke nodded, pushing a wave of empathy through the bond. Keeping one arm snugly around Ben, he reached out for Mara's hand and she released her tunic so that she could lace her fingers through his.
She went on. "I thought I had come to terms with that years and years ago. But now that Ben's here, it's made me realize that … the Emperor didn't just rob me of my family, he robbed our son. Ben will never know my parents. He'll never get doted on by them. He'll never know whether he has aunts or uncles or cousins on my side. If he ends up having strengths or flaws that don't seem to come from me or your family, he'll never know if maybe he inherited them from someone else I'm related to. It's all just going to be a big yawning chasm for him. And it's made me so kriffing angry all over again for what—"
She cut off then, her voice catching, and Luke gave her hand a squeeze of wordless support. He let it shine through in his eyes just how much he felt for her. How angry the Emperor's actions made him, too.
"So no, it's not a mistake," she suddenly said.
Luke blinked at her, lips parting slightly in confusion.
"You asked if your father staying with us was a big mistake," she said. "And I say it's not. I want Ben to know what it's like to have a grandparent. I want him to know what it's like to be loved by a grandparent." In a wry tone, she added, "Even if said grandparent can be a bantha's ass."
Ducking his head, Luke allowed a rueful smile to ghost across his lips. It always stung whenever someone said something bad about his father, no matter how much the man deserved it. He acknowledged the small hurt and let it go into the Force, choosing to focus instead on the much stronger sense of gratitude that he felt for his wife.
"Thank you," he said, holding her gaze with his. "I can't say how much it means to me that you … put up with him."
"Well, to be fair, I'm not just doing it for you," she said. She caressed Ben's cheek, which elicited a pleased-sounding gurgle from the baby. "Not anymore."
"I shouldn't be gone for more than twenty minutes," Mara was saying as they crossed the living room.
"Mara." Luke stopped in front of the doorway to the balcony, and in a tone bordering on reprimand said, "You can take a longer walk than that. Like you said, he shouldn't be hungry again for an hour."
"I know, but sometimes he gets hungry sooner—"
"And if he does, there's pumped milk in the conservator."
She opened her mouth as if to object further, but he cut her off with a raised hand. "Seriously. Anything happens, my father and I can handle it. You need a break."
Crossing her arms, her gaze sharpened into a glare. "Fine." Then her lips quirked upward into a small smile. "I guess you win this time."
He grinned. "And you'll be glad I did."
Luke hit the release for the transparisteel door. It cycled open, letting in the dull background roar of the city, the noise of millions of speeders muffled by the privacy field that surrounded the balcony. Near the wrought stone railing, Vader stood with his back to them, cape stirring in the breeze and Artoo at his side. The top of Ben's head—capped by a pom-pommed hat—was just visible where it rested in the crook of the man's arm.
As Luke and Mara stepped onto the balcony, the former Dark Lord rotated very slowly, moving almost like a statue that had come to life, until his eye plates were fixed on them. He would have cut as nightmarish a figure as ever, if it weren't for the small infant he had nestled in his arm.
"Hi, baby!" Mara's face lit up as she zeroed in on Ben. Ignoring Vader's presence entirely, she went up to the little boy as if he were not being held by another person, but simply lying in a particularly murderous looking bassinet.
"Oh, don't you look so cute." She adjusted Ben's hat and tucked his blanket around his kicking feet. "Mommy's going to go away for just a little bit, but I'll be back very soon and I'll miss you terribly. And you'll still have Daddy and Grandpa here to play with you. Won't that be nice?"
Artoo rolled forward then and butted her shin with an indignant trill.
Putting one hand on a hip, Mara said, "Yes, tin can. Ben'll have you, too. Happy now?"
Artoo made the electronic version of a harrumph. Meanwhile, Vader loomed wordlessly over all of them, dwarfing Mara's petite form, silent save for his usual ominous breathing.
Hanging back in the doorway, Luke tensed automatically as he always did these days when watching his father and Mara interact (or try not to interact) with each other. But everything continued to unfold without incident. Holding a few loose locks of hair back from her face, Mara leaned forward to kiss Ben on the forehead. Then she took a step back and lifted her gaze to Vader's mask.
"Thank you for watching him," she said stiffly.
"It is nothing," he rumbled.
She turned to go and the death's-head mask swiveled to face Luke.
"Where is she going?" Vader asked.
"You know, she's right here," Luke said. "You can ask her yourself."
Unfazed, though, Mara was already breezing past Luke on her way back into the apartment. "Tell your father I'm going for a walk!" she called over her shoulder.
Luke just chuckled and shook his head. "I give up," he muttered to himself. He turned to his father as if this was a completely normal way to have a conversation. "She's going for a walk," he said.
"Mm," Vader intoned. "That is good that she is doing something for herself."
Luke's eyebrows raised just a little in surprise, the tension in his middle beginning to melt at the same time. That was the kind of thing he got used to hearing his father say during Mara's pregnancy, but that he hadn't heard since Ben was born.
"That's what I told her," Luke said, with a slight smile.
He walked forward to join his father, Ben, and Artoo near the railing. Grinning down at Ben, he gave the baby some head scritches. In response, Ben goggled at him, then thrust his fists into the air, a sense of glee radiating from his small body into the Force.
"Aww, you're so happy, little guy," Luke said. He enfolded one of Ben's fists in his hand and waved it around.
"Yes," Vader agreed. "He is a very happy baby. Born into a happy family, with two very loving parents."
Luke looked up, feeling surprised again at the unexpected positive sentiment. Things had been better since he'd confronted his father last week; true to his word, the man hadn't uttered one negative thing about Mara since then, and he had stopped suggesting that Luke and Ben come to live with him. But Vader hadn't said anything good about Mara either—not until this very moment—and Luke realized that what Vader was saying now was an apology.
So he offered one of his own. "Don't forget that he has a loving grandfather, too." He searched the eye plates of the mask until he caught a glimpse of his father's real eyes behind them. Luke held those eyes with his own. "He's very lucky to have you. I am, too."
"I know," Vader said.
Despite the gravity of what he was trying to convey, Luke couldn't help but snicker. "Taking tips from Han, I see?"
He felt a flash of irritation in the Force—no doubt his father about to protest that he would never take anything from his son-in-law. Before Vader could voice whatever it was that he was thinking, though, Artoo let loose another miffed series of whistles.
Luke threw his head back he laughed so hard this time. "Sorry, Artoo. I swear, Mara and I haven't forgotten you. And yes, Ben also has a kick-ass droid."
Artoo twittered insistently.
"Emphasis on the kick ass," Luke repeated after him, nodding gravely.
Artoo warbled something that roughly translated to damn straight, and Luke laid a hand on the astromech's dome and rubbed it.
The four of them fell into a companionable silence then, save for Ben's squeaky, creature-like noises. They gazed out over the city together, at the tops of the starscrapers painted gold with evening sunlight, the canyons steeped in grey shadow. At the planet's moons high above it all, looking like chalk drawings on the still-bright blue sky. And for the first time since Vader's arrival, Luke found that the resentment he'd been feeling toward him was gone. He'd been trying to wrestle it into submission for days (meditation not really being much of an option with a baby), but he hadn't conquered the emotion now, it had simply eased.
As if it were an old injury that had flared up during a rainstorm and that was quieting once more now that the clouds were passing.
A silvery, jingling sound interrupted his thoughts.
Looking over at his father and Ben, he found that Vader had produced a patchwork felt ball that was nearly the size of Ben's head. Vader shook the ball in front of Ben—it was the source of the jingling—but the baby just blinked at it before turning to gape at Vader's suit lights once more.
"I suppose he is still too young for such diversions," Vader mused.
But if the ball hadn't caught Ben's attention, it had caught Luke's. It was old and worn-looking. Well-loved, Luke thought; that was the right word for it. It was a little squashed, not really round anymore, and the colors of its cloth patches had faded with time.
Colors that were unmistakably the colors of the desert. Russet and gold, burgundy and burnt sienna.
The ball was from Tatooine. Luke was suddenly sure of it.
And he was also just as certain that it must have some deep significance for his father to have it, but what that might be, Luke could only guess.
"That's a nice toy," he said. "I'm sure he'll grow into it in a couple of months."
"Indeed."
"Is it from back home?" Luke asked, trying to sound casual and mostly failing.
For the longest moment, Vader said nothing, and Luke was half convinced that he simply wasn't going to answer.
Then suddenly Vader said, "Yes. It was mine. I suppose it still is."
The implications of that filled Luke with astonishment. "That's from Grandma Shmi?" he breathed. "You've had it all this time?"
"When the Jedi took me from her, she placed it in the bag that I packed to take to Coruscant. She had sewn this ball when she was pregnant with me and it was the only toy I ever had as an infant. You could almost say that this was her first gift to me. And when your mother became pregnant with you and your sister, I thought it would be my first gift to you as well."
Now Luke was scarcely breathing. After Endor, it had taken more than a decade before his father had started opening up about his grandmother and mother, and the man still almost never spoke of Grandma Shmi. He spoke of Padmé even less. On the rare occasions when he did, it was as if a wild convor had landed on Luke's hand. Filled with awe and wonder, he would furiously soak up every detail of the moment, and when it ended, he knew that he could do nothing but let it go.
"You see," Vader went on, studying the ball in his hand as if it were not cloth but crystal, and filled with visions of the past, "though the Jedi of old had frowned on such attachments, I kept this in my Temple quarters even after I grew to manhood. And when your mother told me that she was with child, I gave this to her. She was … very happy to know that you would have something of your grandmother's. But then …"
He fell silent and a tremor ran through the balcony, the bond between them also trembling with regret. Luke never had learned what happened after that "But then …" He wasn't sure he ever would.
He reached up to lay a hand on his father's massive pauldron. The balcony stilled.
Vader gazed into the distance. "After," he said at last, "I returned to your mother's apartment one final time. I do not know why. I did not believe there would be anything there for me. Her family had already cleared out her belongings. All that was left were the furnishings, all covered with white sheets." His voice dropped then, getting about as soft as the vocoder would allow. "And even if everything she had ever owned had still been there, it would have been empty without her." He paused, the sound of the respirator filling the aching silence. "But then I found this." He held up the ball again. "It had rolled under a sofa, no doubt when the Naberries were moving her things, and it had been forgotten."
Abruptly, his sense shifted in the Force at that, and Luke could almost feel it as the window to the past shut.
Vader said, "I know I never purchased anything for you from that infernal list of baby paraphernalia that your wife assembled."
"You mean the registry?" Luke asked, an amused smile touching his lips.
"But perhaps you and Ben might both like to have this."
He gave the ball to Luke and Luke took it gingerly, handling it as if it were as precious as Ben himself—and marveling at all the history it held in its threads. As he turned it over, it chimed, a bright, magical sound. And suddenly, he understood. He understood the strange things his father had said about the way women raised babies in the slave quarters of Mos Espa. That had not been triggered by Vader's work after all, nor had it been a bizarre criticism of how Luke and Mara were parenting, which had been Luke's second guess. It had simply been his father's way of trying to pass on something of his own mother. And of himself.
Vader said, "Sometimes I think I should have given it to your sister when her children were young. But I was … not ready to face such things then."
"Well, I'll be sure to rub it in Leia's face that I won out." Luke tried to make the words light, but his voice came out thick, the tonal equivalent of smiling with teary eyes. "And in all seriousness, this means more to me than anything else that we've gotten."
He half expected his father to say that of course his gift was superior to all others, but instead, Vader stiffened, and held Ben a little closer. With almost awkward sincerity, he said, "That does … please me, my son."
Throat tight, Luke reached out again, gripping his father's arm this time, and for a moment, the bond between them swelled with things too big to be put into words: love and a lifetime's worth of remorse.
Until a distinct sense of hunger suddenly spiked in the Force.
Luke and Vader's gazes both snapped toward Ben, who was frowning a little at his grandfather's chest panel. Luke was thinking the baby was still transfixed by the lights, when Ben's tongue darted out and licked the button in front of his face. He smacked his lips some as if trying to figure out what he'd just tasted.
"Uh oh," Luke said.
"I believe your offspring is in need of sustenance."
"Little milk monster." Luke tickled Ben's tummy through his blanket. "How can you be hungry already? Your mommy didn't feed you that long ago."
In response, Ben frowned at his father, then frowned at the button. He licked it again.
"Young one," Vader rumbled sternly. "I do not have what you seek."
Undeterred, Ben opened his mouth as wide as it would go and—practically panting with anticipation—started to run it all over the part of the chest panel he could reach, clearly hoping that something there would turn out to be a nipple.
"Cease that," Vader ordered, but to no avail, while Luke made a sputtering sound as he tried to hold in his laughter. He clamped his mouth shut and pressed a fist to it. His father turned to look at him, clearly glaring from behind the mask.
"Sorry, I'm not laughing at you," Luke said, trying not to smile behind his hand—until an increasingly frustrated Ben actually headbutted Vader's chest and Luke lost it. He clutched at the railing and doubled over in laughter. "Okay, I lied. I am laughing at you."
"I should never have saved you from the Emperor," Vader muttered darkly.
Too soon, Artoo twittered disapprovingly, but Luke just swiped tears of mirth from his eyes. Still chuckling, he said, "I'll go get a bottle."
Back inside, he filled a bottle with milk and set it in a mug of hot water to heat it up, while also sending Mara a message through their bond—in case she could feel Ben's hunger cries in the Force—that all was well and she didn't have to rush back. From the kitchen, he could see out through the living room's floor-to-ceiling windows to the balcony, so while he waited for the milk to warm, he leaned on the counter and looked on as his father tried to soothe a yowling Ben. And as Luke watched the eldest Skywalker and the youngest together, a memory sprang unbidden to his mind, of a conversation he'd had with Mirax several years ago at a Rogue Squadron party.
He couldn't remember now how they'd gotten on the topic, but somehow he'd found himself venting to Mirax about his frustration that his father wouldn't part with his suit. Sure, Luke had told her, Vader had upgraded all of its systems so that it was no longer the walking torture chamber the Emperor had originally confined him in, and Vader had even gotten better synth skin grafts, so that he no longer had to undergo the painful debridement that had been a regular part of his life before the fall of the Empire. But he refused to go through with the final medical procedures that would free him from the suit entirely, and though Luke had stopped bugging him about it—he wanted to respect his father's wishes—he would be lying if he said that it didn't still bother him.
He'd finished then, feeling sheepish that he'd unloaded all of that on Mirax. He was well aware that most of the galaxy didn't care about Vader's well-being, nor did he think they should care.
He was about to apologize when she laid a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry you're dealing with that," she said, with much more warmth and understanding than he'd expected. "Aging parents are so kriffing frustrating, aren't they? I mean, my father is exactly the same way. The man just won't take care of himself!"
Before Luke knew it, Mirax was venting herself about how Booster kept procrastinating on replacing his mechanical prosthetic eye with an organic cloned one, even though a) he could actually afford a vat-grown eye now and b) mechanical eyes were known for causing optic nerve disorders over time. And Luke realized that what he'd thought was an esoteric problem that only someone who was literal sithspawn could appreciate was actually much more commonplace.
Parents got older and didn't look after themselves as well as they should. Adult children worried. This was a problem that families faced across the galaxy.
A problem that Luke, growing up as an orphan, had once believed he'd never have the luxury of having.
He thought of that now as he watched his father from a distance using the Force to float Ben and gently bounce him in the air. He didn't know if this issue between Vader and Mara was really resolved. With Ben in the picture, could they really continue on with their current dynamic? Or would something at some point have to give? Luke didn't know. But he did know that this, too, was the kind of filial problem that his younger self would've given his right arm to deal with.
And while he wished the universe hadn't taken him so literally, he had to admit—as he grabbed the warmed milk bottle and headed back out to his family—it was a good problem to have.
A couple closing notes:
- If you've never experienced this for yourself, newborns really will headbutt you in the chest if you're not giving them what they want. True story.
- On a completely different note, I finally got a Tumblr a little over a year ago! My username is tairona-is-taken. So if you want to see what I'm doing when I'm not writing fic (which is most of my life these days ;_;), you can find me there.
Thanks so much for reading, everyone! :D