"How did my father die?" Luke asked, looking away from the blue glow of the lightsaber that felt so deeply right.
"A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights," Ben said, sadly. "He betrayed and murdered your father."
He had more to say, but R2 whistled something in a shrill tone which interrupted the old man entirely. The astromech droid rolled across the floor, extending a manipulator arm, and flicked C-3P0's power switch back to on.
"Oh, is something the matter?" Threepio asked. "I don't appear to have been off for more than a minute."
R2 beeped, and Threepio gasped. "Where do you learn such language, R2?"
The Astromech let out another long string of binary, which went on for long enough that Luke started to get worried, then Threepio raised his mended arm. "He says that, ah, you should tell Luke the truth or he will. Most of the rest of that was a terrible array of language which I refuse to repeat."
"The truth?" Luke asked, glancing at Ben and turning the lightsaber off with a hiss. "What does he mean, the truth?"
R2 whistled something, this time, and Threepio looked down at his counterpart before turning to the humans again. "He says… false data has caused too many bad decisions. He mentions a Mistress Amidala and I simply don't know who he means."
Ben's gaze was unfocused, as if he was looking at something a lot further away than the walls of his home.
"You must forgive an old man certain… fictions," he said. "Especially if they are ones he tells himself. But R2-D2 may well be right."
R2 beeped, and Threepio gave him a very cross look. "Yes, all right, you've made your point. And what do you mean, you always are? I distinctly remember several occasions when you were mistaken."
Ben Kenobi took a long, deep breath, then exhaled, and Luke had the faintest sense of something moving around him. Outside him. Like the shadow of a desert wind.
It reminded him a little of going from one room to another in the Lars farm, through the open courtyard during the early stages of a dust storm. There was a current going on, and you weren't truly in it, but you could feel the eddies.
"I apologize for any pain this may cause you," Ben said, eventually. "Luke… Anakin Skywalker was a man I considered close enough to be my brother… who was close enough to be my brother, and I failed him. Terribly. I did not see the lies whispered into his ear by one of his closest friends."
Luke swallowed. For a moment, he thought Ben meant that Vader had been that closest friend, but Ben continued.
"He was twisted, by the Emperor, and turned to the Dark Side of the Force," the old man told him. "We fought, and I won, but I could not bring myself to kill him… and he emerged from our battle as Darth Vader."
Ben's voice was husky, now, like it was about to break. "The good man that was Anakin Skywalker died that day," he said. "But Darth Vader did not betray him, or murder him. I failed him, and I fought him… and when I left him, unable to do what I should, I was the one who truly destroyed him."
Luke wanted to protest, to complain, to ask Ben how could you… but the raw edge to Ben's voice, and the tears trickling unnoticed down his cheeks, made him hold his tongue.
Ben had already punished himself for it, more than Luke ever could.
"Ben-" Luke began, then swallowed. "Does he know about me?"
"You were our greatest secret," Ben said. "If he knew about your survival, he would have turned the galaxy upside down searching… even here, on the outer rim, you would not have escaped his scrutiny."
"Then-" Luke felt half-a-dozen thoughts tripping over one another trying to get out, as a wild surmise bloomed like hope.
But it was too soon to ask, and the topic still raw.
"Not now," he asked. "But later. Please – tell me about the good man Anakin Skywalker."
Over the following hours – after the heartbreaking discovery of the Imperial raid, and as the miles swept behind them en route to Mos Eisley – Ben told Luke about Anakin. About his father.
Ben had confirmed that he was Obi-Wan Kenobi, but to Luke he was still just Ben. Privately Luke wondered if both Jedi had been broken by their battle, going from Obi-Wan and Anakin to Ben and Vader.
But that wasn't what Luke was focused on, during the journey. It was Anakin as a boy, as a man – as a Jedi.
He'd been born a slave, and lived around Mos Espa until being discovered by a wise Jedi in his youth and taken to be trained – a role that had fallen to Ben, after the death of Ben's own teacher. He'd been a superb pilot, an excellent technician… he'd actually built C-3P0, though the fussy droid didn't remember it, and after that Luke found himself thinking of the Protocol droid sort of like part of the family.
And as a Jedi, he'd been passionate and devoted. Ben said, once, that that was part of the problem, then shied away from it and began talking about the Clone Wars and Anakin as a hero.
On the flight to Alderaan, on board the smuggler's ship Ben had found for them, Luke learned a little about the Force and the Jedi.
It was hard to know what to think about the Jedi rules. Ben said that the Jedi way was to avoid attachment, and that love and marriage were forbidden, but – though he didn't ask, because it was still clearly a sore subject and there was time – Luke knew that he had to come from somewhere.
And then there was that comment by R2 about a Mistress Amidala.
Ben was much clearer on the nature of the Dark Side, and how it came from acting through fear or anger or hatred. And there was a picture forming there, but… it wasn't complete yet.
And most of Luke's concentration went onto trying to understand how to use the Force, anyway. In the old days of the Jedi, there had been years immersed in and saturated by other Jedi for any trainee, constant demonstrations of what was possible, learning to meditate and to dive deep within.
Luke had a training remote and a blindfold. But when he felt it, just for a moment each time, it was… profound.
"Is the ship all right?" Luke asked, glancing between Han and the Millennium Falcon.
"Seems okay if we can get to it," Han replied. "Just hope the old man got the tractor beam out of commission."
The troopers guarding the ship suddenly all began to move, boots clattering on the hangar bay floor as they headed to the left… leaving the ramp unguarded.
"Now's our chance," Han hissed. "Go!"
He went first, and Luke was halfway through following when he saw what had drawn the stormtroopers away.
Ben, lightsaber out, held up in a guard position – and, opposite him, the ominous black-clad form of Darth Vader.
Something in Luke told him that everything Ben and R2 had said was true. This was his father.
Ben glanced towards Luke, smiled, then raised his lightsaber. Vader drew back his red blade-
"Father, NO!" Luke shouted.
Darth Vader froze in place, the stormtroopers whirled to see who'd spoken, and Ben staggered back as if he'd been struck.
The next few seconds were a chaos of laser fire as the stormtroopers opened fire. Han got one, and so did Luke, but then the remaining white-armoured troopers all rose into the air and slammed into the ceiling of the docking bay.
Cameras and monitoring systems on the bay exploded, and Darth Vader strode through the blast door with Ben dragging behind him before slamming every one of the access doors closed at once with a wham of stressed metal.
"There is a homing beacon under the outer left landing strut," Vader said, still approaching. "Bring it into the ship, to destroy once we jump to Hyperspace. We will not lead Tarkin to your secret Rebel base, but he must think that my old plan is still in force."
"What's this we?" Han asked, sounding like he was falling back on his default response to an awkward situation. "What's going on?"
"I have a son," Vader replied, his voice simmering with power. "The Emperor has no hold on me now, nor does Tarkin. Now get us into space before someone realizes something is wrong."
AN:
I have a bunch of these so I thought I'd try putting them together into a single collection.
First up, R2 isn't willing to indulge an old man in his nonsense.