At Last

The silence was the first thing Darth Vader noticed. The last things he'd been aware of hearing were a combination of screams, from Luke, from Palpatine, and klaxons going off, the Death Star was being evacuated before the Rebels destroyed it. Something else he realized that maybe should've alarmed him initially, the lack of a sound he had had to live with for over 20 years, he couldn't hear the mechanical breathing of his respirator.

A strange sense of calm came over Darth Vader as he gradually realized he must finally be dead, because this was the first time in over 20 years that every part of him didn't hurt.

Free. He was finally free from that damned life support suit, those archaic prosthetics, the never ending burning sensation that filled every cell of his body, a neverending reminder of the lava pit on Mustafar, of his fall to the dark side.

For so many years he'd dreamed of the day he would no longer be prisoner to that constant, undying torture. Had he been a smarter man, he would've dismantled his life support suit himself as soon as he found himself in it. If he'd been smarter, he wouldn't have been so weak to let Palpatine manipulate him to join the dark side in the first place. So much senseless death and destruction would never have taken place. His wife would still be alive, he would've seen his son born, he wouldn't have carried around guilt for 20 years that he had murdered both Padme and Luke. For years he'd planned to kill Palpatine when the time and the opportunity were right, then, when he'd found out Luke was alive, that he had in fact not murdered his son in his mother's womb, finding him had become Vader's first priority. Convincing Luke to join forces with him to destroy Palpatine was second.

Luke had been too smart for that, however. He had been determined to defeat the Emperor on his own terms, without resorting to violence, and for that, he was nearly killed. At least Vader could face death with the peace of mind that his son was safe now. His dying legacy had been to save his son, and in return...in a way his son had saved him, too late for them to salvage any kind of relationship, but it was enough.

Vader could see nothing. And though he couldn't feel pain, he felt something. He was aware of several sensations, though he couldn't place them.

There was one. Something...soft, something...familiar, brushed against his cracked, scarred lips. A sensation he hadn't known for over 20 years, and was sure he would never know again.

He finally heard something. He heard...a voice. Also familiar, though in that moment he couldn't put a name to it, but he took comfort in hearing it speak.

At some point he heard something else. He heard himself breathing. Heard himself breathing, not the mechanical koosh of his respirator. That surprised him. He wasn't aware that dead people still breathed when they crossed from one realm to another.

"Father?"

Vader heard a particularly loud and somewhat labored breath run through his body. That didn't sound right. He felt his eyelids twitching, felt them open and was immediately met with a blinding bright light, and closed his eyes tightly in response. It took a few seconds for him to realize it was because his mask was gone, he no longer had the tinted protection of his red lenses. What was going on?

"Father?"

Luke!

That couldn't be right. That would mean Luke was dead too, and he couldn't be dead, Vader had died saving him.

No...that wasn't right either. Vader hadn't died saving his son...

"You're my father, Anakin Skywalker."

"That name no longer has any meaning to me."

Except it did.

He slowly opened his eyes again. The light was still there, and he realized so was someone standing over him. Bit by bit, he let his eyes adjust to the light, it honestly wasn't as bad as he'd thought it'd be. Slowly, he opened them fully and was met with an overhead view of the lights in a med bay ceiling. And standing off to his side...

"Luke."

He didn't recognize his own voice without the vocoder. It sounded weak, tired, old. Well, he was. But what was going on?

He could hear relief in his son's voice. "Father!"

"What are...you doing here?"

He looked up at his son's face, looked into his son's blue eyes, yes...just like he remembered seeing Luke on the Death Star once Luke took his mask off. Except...he realized something was different. Luke was the same...but he could see him clearer now than before. He could see...his eyes moved to the side and he took in the various sights of the bay room, everything was crystal clear.

But...how?

"How are you feeling, Father?" Luke asked.

He turned back towards his son. "What?"

Luke had a relieved smile on his face as he told his father, "You were out of it for a long time, for a while you were talking in your sleep."

Sleep? No. He didn't sleep, except sitting up in his oxygen pod, the only time he could take his mask off and...

And why couldn't he hear his respirator working? Because, he started to realize, it wasn't there. And yet...his lungs weren't burning in rapid protest. How?

"Luke...what's going on?"

"You've been in the med bay for a while," his son told him, "undergoing some...treatments."

He heard the words, but they meant nothing to him. The only treatments he ever got involved having his prosthetic limbs removed and being placed in a bacta tank, which couldn't...

One eye rolled to its corner to look at his son as he said, his weak voice taking on as accusatory tone as he could manage, "You did something."

Luke nodded.

"I got you help."

He didn't understand.

Luke simultaneously seemed to get even taller as he hovered over his father and asked, "Do you want to sit up?"

Did he want to sit--none of this was making any sense.

Before he could actually say anything though, Luke grabbed his hand and his prosthetic arm and pulled him up.

Now he had a slightly better view of the room around him, it was empty save for the two of them. He was also able to get a better look at himself, he glanced down, and felt his eyes strain as they opened as wide as possible.

"What happened?" he repeated, alarmed by a new discovery, that his life support suit was in fact gone. His prosthetics didn't look the same whatsoever.

"Like I said," Luke said ambiguously, "I got you help."

He looked up at his son and asked, "What did you do, Luke?"

Luke looked like he was bracing himself for how his father might react.

"It's a long story."

"The medics said that if you'd gotten proper bacta treatments years ago, your burns would've healed more effectively," Luke told him.

His father shook his head. "I have." He didn't understand what Luke was telling him.

Luke shook his head, "No, Father. I found out that Palpatine had been tampering with the bacta so it was diluted, you never got a full treatment in the tank."

"What?"

Of all things he'd known Palpatine was capable of, that should've been the least surprising, but that he'd even thought of it, let alone pulled it off, still came as a genuine shock to him.

Knowing how much excruciating, neverending pain he'd been in for over 20 years, and that it could've been prevented, he felt a weight in his chest, if he'd had the strength and still had the ability, he would sob.

But that still left so many unanswered questions. What had happened to his life support suit? Why was he able to breathe without his respirator?

Perhaps he just didn't have his shields up, he hadn't focused on that. Luke explained without his father asking, "Once I found that out, I asked the medics what else Palpatine had done to you that they could fix."

He blinked. "What?"

Luke told him, "They found out your lungs were in such bad shape, even with the life support suit you should've been dead long ago. They were able to remove them and replace them with synth lungs. It was a very long and iffy process, but they work, and once your body didn't reject them, the medics found you didn't need your respirator anymore."

Synth organs. He'd always been told it wasn't a possibility, that his remaining flesh body was in too poor of shape to tolerate them, let alone withstand such an invasive procedure.

That was one major weight off his chest so to speak, but then...

"What about my eyes?"

They had been damaged by the heat and lava as well, he'd needed his mask and the red lenses to enhance his vision.

Luke pursed his lips together hesitantly before he answered, "Bionic transplants."

A sound caught in his throat. He was even more machine than man now than he'd already been.

"It wasn't easy," Luke said. "They did three transplants before one actually worked."

He could sense the dread coursing through Luke as he recounted what had been going on while his father was unconscious and unaware. Felt the fear Luke had lived with for so long that it wouldn't work, that at his father's expense he had made the wrong decision.

He said nothing, feeling in awe of all of this. Luke took the silence as a need to further explain, "They made new prosthetics, they'll work better, move easier, more like real limbs..." he held up his hand and said, "look more like them too, I know."

He raised his hand and looked at it in shock. It actually looked like a flesh and blood hand. He tested flexing his fingers. It was surreal, like watching someone else's hand.

"How...why did you do all this?"

It seemed a fair question. Another one was how Luke actually got anyone, let alone a whole team of medics, to agree to go along with it when he was one of the most feared figures in the galaxy, and if he were still alive...

How was he still alive? He had been electrocuted by Palpatine's Force lightning, far worse than he'd ever endured before.

Wait...it was slowly starting to occur to him that that wasn't what had actually happened at all.

Luke had explained he'd been kept in a medicated coma for months while the techs and medics worked vigorously and endlessly on him. Could it have all been a drug induced dream? It seemed impossible. But then...

"What did happen with Palpatine?" he asked.

Luke looked hesitant again as he paused before answering. "I decided to come find you, to turn myself over to you. I decided you were right, if we teamed up we could destroy Palpatine. I wasn't..." he struggled to explain, "I wasn't going to join you, but you knew more about him than anyone, you would know his weaknesses, it could work. I tracked you to the Death Star, I managed to get past the Imperials, I found out you two were up in the throne room."

Ah yes, now he was starting to remember, and he wished he didn't.

Despite loyally serving Palpatine and doing as he commanded for over 20 years, he had also been Palpatine's available target to torture on a whim. He had been subjected to Palpatine's Force lightning more times than he could remember, any time he had failed to carry out Palpatine's orders exactly, if the Emperor had detected a trace of insubordination in the dark lord. He couldn't remember specifically what had happened, but for whatever reason, the sith had seen fit to subject his enforcer to another round of agonizing punishment.

He remembered being hit so hard with the Force lightning, he instantly dropped to the floor, feeling himself burning alive all over again, heard himself screaming in excruciating pain, unable to move save a little futile writhing around as Palpatine hit him again, he would've sworn he could feel his body turning inside out at that point. This time was far worse than any torture session he'd endured previously, and over the years there had been several times he would've sworn he wouldn't survive it.

And then something had happened, he'd heard Palpatine screaming, but he was in too much searing, blinding pain to notice. Suddenly he couldn't hear Palpatine anymore, but he heard another familiar voice. This one was far more welcome.

"Father!"

It had been Luke.

He'd felt his head lifted off the floor and knew he was looking up at his son but he was in too much pain to even see straight. He was aware of Luke talking to him as he felt his body being dragged along the floor.

"Stay with me, Father, you're going to be alright."

That was the last thing he could actually recall. How Luke was able to accomplish any of this was beyond him.

Luke cast one eye down towards the part of his father's body that was still covered with a sheet.

"They weren't able to do anything about the tubes."

No. He'd known that long ago. As much as he hated his life support suit, he'd at least taken some small comfort in that it allowed him to hide any and all of his bodily vulnerabilities and indignities from the rest of the galaxy.

He shifted against the bed, and stopped as he felt something against the base of his neck.

"What is that?" he asked his son.

"A time release med dispenser," Luke answered, "it administers synthetic spice for pain."

Synthetic spice? He tried to chuckle but didn't have the strength. What would they think of next?

"How did you...manage...any of this?" he wanted to know.

"Ummm," Luke's eyes rolled upward as he looked like he was trying to remember the details, "after I killed the Emperor..."

"You killed Palpatine?"

Instinctively he knew there could be no other explanation, but that didn't make it any less shocking to actually hear his son confess.

Luke simply nodded, rather unemotionally about it. "Yeah."

He felt his fingers moving, twitching, flexing, as if he were testing them, then, acting on memory and impulse, he raised his new prosthetic arms, grabbed Luke and pulled him onto the med bay bed half on him and half beside him. He gazed into his son's eyes, blue as his own had been a long time ago.

"You killed Palpatine?"

Luke nodded slowly.

It seemed too incredible to be true.

"How?" he asked.

Even though Luke had little readable emotion on his face, he looked less proud of himself now as he answered, "Uh...well...when I entered the throne room, he had his back to me...so I...I just, kind of..." the words failed him so he made a slashing gesture with his arm that left little to the imagination.

"Oh, Luke."

Even though he couldn't think of a more fitting person for it to happen to, he knew it still had to be a disturbing sight for his son to witness.

Luke shrugged and said meekly, "I don't recall anyone saying Jedi had to fight fair."

This time he did laugh. The sound was weak, it sounded like an old man, and it hurt his chest, but he laughed.

"Ben and Yoda told me that a Jedi must only use his power for knowledge and defense," Luke told him as he pushed himself off the bed and back to his feet, "as many people as the Emperor already had killed, and as many more as he would've...I can't see how killing him in any way, shape, or form, could be anything other than defense."

The rest remained unsaid, that the intergalactic blood on Palpatine's hands aside, Luke had acted in defense, of his father. Oh, there was irony.

"And then what?" he asked.

Luke explained, "After that...I, dragged you over to the turbolift...and...I managed to trigger the Death Star's klaxons so the Imperials thought the station was going to self destruct...I got us to one of the escape shuttles, and once we took off...I arranged it so the Death Star did in fact self destruct."

After what he'd just heard, he guessed he shouldn't be surprised. If Luke could do it once...why not again when the second battle station wasn't even completed yet?

"I flew us to Coruscant and found a med bay...and we've been here ever since," Luke said, as if it were really just as simple as that.

We?

"You've been here...all this time?"

Luke nodded firmly. "Somebody had to serve as your advocate. All things considered, nobody was too willing to work on you."

"I can imagine," he replied. "How did you get them to agree to that?"

"I had to barter with Mon Mothma for your freedom," Luke told him. "I told everyone that you killed the Emperor, and I pointed out they didn't have much recourse in the way of bringing charges of war crimes against you since you'd be able to use the Force to elude any sanctions they could resort to." He became slightly more somber as he added, "I told them that I would assume full responsibility for you."

It sounded amusing, but he knew the implications to that were should he actually continue his reign of terror as a dark lord, that Luke's life would be the one endangered from the same Rebellion he had fought alongside with for years. In theory, anyone who could kill Palpatine could wipe out the Rebels as well, but killing Palpatine was an entirely different act from killing the people who had become his family. Luke couldn't do it, he knew that much about his son, and if he couldn't, he would be killed. The answer was simple enough, he didn't dare do anything that could endanger his son, not after it took so long to find him.

"It doesn't explain," he said as he took Luke's hands in his new ones, still a strange experience, "why they would agree to this."

One corner of Luke's mouth turned upward in a slight but knowing smirk. "I had a bargaining chip. Before I came to see you, I had to go back to Tatooine and rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt. I gave him an ultimatum, either we all go free, or he would be destroyed. Jabba...laughed, he didn't believe me...and he was destroyed. Once word of his death got out, it turned out a lot of people across the galaxy owed him money, several prospective techs and medics included. They could hardly refuse after that."

He laughed again. It still hurt, he did it anyway.

"How long...how long have I been here?"

"Five months."

He looked at his son in awe. "And you've been here the whole time?"

Luke nodded.

His eyes looked around the room again, and he just noticed now a few small things that seemed to verify what Luke said: an empty bed on the other side of the bay that the sheet was creased and crumpled from constant use, a chair beside his own bed that had seen a gradual buildup of wear and tear.

"I couldn't leave you," Luke told him, as if reading his thoughts. "I couldn't be gone, in case something happened, if anything went wrong...I had to be here."

That put a weight back on his chest. No one in the galaxy would ever have sacrificed so much for him, especially not after he turned to the dark side. Luke was willing to risk everything for a father he didn't even know, a father who maimed him the last time they met. How or why he would even consider such a notion was far more than he could comprehend.

Now, however, Luke's calm resolve appeared to be disintegrating. He pursed his lips tight together but it didn't conceal the fact they were trembling, as was the rest of him.

"Did...did I do the right thing?"

They were bonded through the Force, but even without it, he would know Luke's question pertained to all the trouble he'd gone through not just to save his father's life but to improve the quality of it.

The question weighed on his mind. Months in this place, so many experimental treatments, operations, failed transplants, every single time Luke had to dread the possibility it wouldn't work, or worse, it may actually kill his father. Even if it didn't, perhaps when he finally regained consciousness he would wish it had for all the painful procedures his body had been subjected to.

He slowly nodded his head, watching Luke's eyes. He placed one prosthetic hand on Luke's arm and slowly pulled the boy down towards him again to see him better.

"You have done so much...for someone, who doesn't deserve it."

A hurt expression filled Luke's eyes as he told his father, "You didn't deserve to be in constant pain for 25 years. I had to do something."

"So you did."

He felt the skin around his mouth being pulled tight as he managed to weakly smile.

"I owe you a debt I will never be able to repay."

Luke blinked, futilely trying to fight back the tears starting to build up, "You're alive...that's all I need."

"My son..."

He pulled Luke closer to him and tilted his head back to press his scarred lips against Luke's forehead.

Yes, his son. His son, who for over 20 years he'd believed was dead, that he had killed him when he killed his mother. Once he discovered Luke was alive, he realized it was impossible he had been responsible for his wife's death.

Now he remembered. That was what happened on the Death Star just before Luke arrived.

"So," Palpatine had said suddenly as he turned to face his loyal servant, "you seek to destroy me."

Had he really dropped his shields so pathetically? Or was it just an educated guess? 25 years it stood to reason he was bound to discover the truth sooner or later, especially after Palpatine was the very one to drop the bombshell about 'the son of Skywalker' on him in the first place.

"You killed Padme."

There hadn't been an iota of surprise on Palpatine's face. If anything, he'd looked pleased.

"Yes."

That one word, how smug he was about it, how delighted he appeared to be about it, he could have killed Palpatine then and there.

But he didn't. For some reason he didn't understand even now, he didn't.

That had been his undoing.

Or rather it would have been, if by some miracle his son hadn't picked that exact time to appear.

His son, who behind his hatred and his 20 year quest for galactic domination, he mourned the loss of every day. His mind had tried to fill in the blanks of what he couldn't remember, what Palpatine had told him he'd done, he was haunted by visions of the child he had killed in the womb. The son he would never see, hold, feel his child's skin against his.

And now...now, it had finally happened.