SUMMARY: The trio have escaped the planet, but there is still the matter of Leia's infection.

A/N: Boy I sure hope this is okay because I did not do a final edit because it is the last day before my spring break, I am pooped, and I have lost all objectivity about my own fic

Vader took mere seconds to ensure the ship was in orbit and away, far away, from the planet surface, before he turned all his attention to his children.

Luke was picking himself off the deck of the ship. He looked shaken, dirty and bruised, but a rapid perusal of his Force signature indicated no serious injuries.

But Leia…

Forgetting all sense of Sith dignity, he scooped Leia against him with his one working arm and just about ran for the med bay. He examined her signature.

There was nothing, nothing at all.

No. There remained a tiny, winking light that was her presence. She was alive. She had to be alive. A coma is the last symptom, Doctor Monega said in his memory but he forced that aside.

The monitors in the med bay began going off as soon as he hooked her into the medical bed, but smashing the loudest alarms solved that issue. It was difficult with only one arm; his left hung uselessly at his side, the torn circuitry sending impulses spasmodically up and down his nerve endings. He was peripherally aware of Luke entering the room, face white, his own Force presence screaming his fear, but he was too busy hooking his daughter up to the IVs to maintain life, the oxygen mask to sustain it, the monitors to check heartbeat, blood pressure. Each step took twice as long as it should have, time that Leia did not have.

The winking light vanished.

Terror, worse than he had ever felt, struck him. He lashed out wildly into the Force, seeking her presence somewhere, anywhere, even as the monitors - the ones he had left unbroken - pulsed into nothingness. She could not die. He would not let her die.

But this is your doing. That little voice that he had ignored for so long, was back. Look at her. You gave permission for this project. This was of your making.

If this was his doing, then he had to fix it. He owed it to her, to…

To what? What is she to you? There's no cure and nothing the machines can do. There was nothing you could do on the planet, nothing you can do with the Force. With all your power, all you've done to acquire it, you could not think of one thing to help down there, so what has changed here?

He knew. He knew who she was. He knew now what she - what she was -

What is she to you?

She was his daughter.

A means to power, isn't she? That's all she is, isn't she?

Yes. A means to end the Emperor's tyrannical rule. To shape the galaxy as he wished it.

Well, you don't need her. You have the boy. He has power too, as strong as his sister's. What does it matter if the girl dies? Two are better than one, yes, but there's you and there's the boy. Two there must be, a master and apprentice, so does this not work out better for you anyway?

No. He wanted Leia - his daughter alive. To share in their glory, their power, to… to…

You thought of killing the boy before.

Before he knew who he was!

A minor difference. So the girl is dead instead. Two there must be…

Vader placed his one working hand on the medical bed, slumping over the edge.

No.

No, it was far more than that.

She was his daughter. Not just a possible apprentice, not just a figure of powerful Force potential. She was living proof of his and Padmé's love - he could admit that now - as was Luke. She was a part of him, flesh and blood and bone, with Padmé's wisdom, Padmé's sense of justice, Padmé's spirit - and something of himself, too, his fire, his passion. She was all that and more, and he wanted, needed, her to survive.

What had he done? Opened himself up to these emotions, this… love? After all he had lost, all he had suffered, one would think he'd have learned… yet here he was, acknowledging and even hungering for this child and her love, allowing himself to develop this attachment all the while knowing that she was dying from her disease, telling himself, as he had so many years ago, that with enough power and will he could save her.

He could even keep the ones he loved from dying…

But you can't do that, can you? The insidious voice was back. You could do nothing then. You've learned nothing since. What has Palpatine taught you? What can you do now? You could not save Padmé and you cannot save her. The Dark Side does not heal. The Dark Side does not have room for those who cannot survive.

He pressed his fist against the edge of the bed, a tearing in his chest as Leia's heartbeat slowed with each passing moment. His mind flitted to the last hypo in Luke's pack. For a painless end. If he did not use that, Leia would transform, become one of the same mindless victims he had cut down, over and over again - despite her wishes, despite Luke's wishes. A wild part of him wanted that to happen if only to retain some part of his daughter on this plane of existence.

But in the end, that wouldn't be her. It would not be Leia with her fire, her independence, her will; it would merely be a shadow, a half-life, the most violent, ravaged part of her that remained. And in the end, as her midi-chlorians died, so would she, suffering all the while. How long was he willing to let her stay in that state, out of his own selfish need to keep her? And when it came to it, did he have the ability to watch her die anyway? To even kill her as he had all the others?

If he gave her the injection, he would kill her anyway.

Can you do that? the voice asked. Can you kill your own child? It sneered at him. You believed for years that you killed Padmé and her child with her. How is this any different?

Yet how could he simply stand there and end his daughter's life, knowingly, coldly?

You already did that when you allowed the project to go forward.

Vader grasped Leia's arm, insensible towards Luke's wide-eyed stare. It was his mother all over again, watching her tortured death throes in the Tusken camp. It was seeing his men fall before the Separatists, unable to save them from the horrors of the battlefield. It was hearing that Padmé had died at his hands. But there would be no glimmer of hope at the end of this, no miraculous discovery that her child - children - had survived. It would only be himself and his choices, and he would have to live with that to the end of his life.

Each of Leia's heartbeats was quieter than the last, a longer gap than the last, counting down the seconds as she succumbed to the virus ravaging her body. Helplessly, he reached out one last time to that feather-light bond, the only thing still existing between them. There were flutterings of confusion and fear thrumming along it, the last vestiges of Leia's bright, fierce little mind as she verged into death. He sank into it, into her Force presence, into the the last throes of her failing body, sending out feelings of comfort and safety and assurance. She would surely feel the falseness of these emotions, but he had to do it so she would not leave this world alone -

Vader halted, if his mental presence could be said to halt.

Carefully, he threaded his way about Leia's presence; peered further into the recesses of her bodily functions. He could see a way forward, a way to go deeper, closer. Gently, he probed the dying organs, forcing back nausea and his own complicated feelings about the dying lung tissue, the disintegrating cells, the viral particles coating every surface of her body. They clumped around one source on her right arm, the location of her bite. Sensing their deadness in the Force, Vader could not contain his own anger and grief, a palpable force that pressed against the particles and sent them scattering down her bloodstream in a lashing wave.

Sent them scattering…

A germ of an idea settled into his mind and he pushed again at the viral particles again, this time with more intent. The virus was not sentient - it could not even be said to be truly living - but like any infectious agent, it had a purpose, a directive, which was simply to spread, to reproduce. Clamping down on his own emotions, Vader pressed at that directive, persuaded it, altered it, told it that its sole function in life was no longer to spread but merely to move.

It moved.

The idea germinated and Vader pushed his mind force against more of them. He was surrounded by them, very much like the horde of infected. But Vader was not a flesh-and-blood being here; he was a vergence in the Force and safe from them. But they were not safe from him - and at that thought he hurled-throttled-slammed the full power of his presence against them, all of them, telling them to move.

They fled from him in a wave.

He could feel his heart racing in his body, his real body, a distant but distinct pounding that he was aware of in the smallest corner of his mind. But it was not enough to affect one area and so he expanded all his senses outward, spreading it through his entire awareness of Leia's body to determine the extent of her illness. He had to work quickly before it was too late, before her body was beyond the limits of what the med bay could sustain her. If he did this fast enough, if he should rid her body of the virus, both the agents and the infected cells, then with the aid of the med bay…

She might recover.

It was the tiniest thread of hope, a one-in-a-million chance. Vader was nearing the limits of his own energy already; this might very well push him beyond that. And he did not fool himself: there were hundreds of thousands, likely millions, of cells he would need to identify as infected, one by one, and eliminate; millions or even billions of viral particles he would have to locate and tell to move, to scatter, to run, individually or as a group, to where he wanted them to go. It would stretch the boundaries of his concentration, require all his focus, all the power he could gather.

Size matters not.

This was Leia, his daughter, and for his children he was willing to do anything.

With a singular purpose, he bent his mind to the task ahead of him and plunged into the depths of his daughter's bodily presence.

The most difficult thing was to orient himself - for many precious moments he had no sense of up or down, of left or right, of going deeper into the body or towards the surface. All he had to rely upon was the pulsing of the heartbeat, the flow of the bloodstream, the sensation of gravity, to find his way around. It took more seconds to begin to identify what he was feeling: whether he was passing by a vital organ or a bone, whether the spark of movement was muscle or nerve.

Once he knew where he was, then, only then, could he begin.

Vader was not aware of his body save in the most faraway sense as he worked. Occasionally he got some twinge as the stump of his legs rebelled against standing in one position for so long, felt an ache in his arm that grew, and faded, as he ignored it. All he knew was finding a virus and telling it to go-move-shift towards the source, the area of greatest concentration of infection, the bite mark. He had begun there, where they were all gathered, a dead area of flesh and Force that had made even his mind mote wary. Then he gathered himself outward, telling the particles that had extended up her arm to go back; following them down the line of her shoulder and collar to say go back; up to her brain and her sensory organs and up and down her spine, go back.

There had been an almost equal amount of viral concentration in her brain as there was in the bite, and he spent much time there. He could not tell the infected cells to go back. What he could do, however, was tell them to burst. That was harder, the cell's prerogatives, while still rudimentary, were infinitely more complex than the virus's, and they resisted the urge to lyse themselves. But he was persistent, he enacted his will on them, on every piece of infected tissue. And when they burst in a haze of cellular material, remnants of the symbiotic midi-chlorians, and unformed viral particles, he told them, go back. Sometimes he came too late, came in time to see a cell die of its own accord. Every virus that burst out, he would have to stop before it could latch to its next victim, whisper go back. Even the dead tissue, bone and cartilage and skin and hair, he examined minutely, knowing that even one virus left could begin the cycle anew.

And yet, even as he let the Force flow through him, he felt himself flagging.

It was his own fault, he thought detachedly, for he had neither slept nor fully rested for days. He had kept up a concentrated shield to mask himself and his children for several of those days, one that had limited his own connection to the Force; had fought hundreds of the infected, survived bombardment, nearly had his arm torn off by an infected rancor. Still he had kept going, and he had to keep going now, even as he felt viral agents slip his grasp. Felt them spreading beyond the area he was trying to contain them in as his attention wavered. He could not hold them at bay while searching for them, so he must work faster, but his energy, too, was sinking. Twice he allowed particles to slip past and infect a new cell and he had sighed internally, cursed himself for allowing it to happen. But he must continue, must keep up the split awareness if he was to save his daughter -

Until, all of a sudden, a second awareness touched his.

Luke had no idea what was going on.

He had followed Vader in a haze of fear as he swept off with Leia and placed her in some kind of med bay (he'd never seen or even been in one before, any time he got sick or hurt he'd been treated at home). He had watched as Vader had monitored her in a way that even he could recognize was a frenzied panic. And then Vader had just… stopped moving. He wasn't even moving now, he was just standing over Leia, hands on the bed, staring at her intently. Even his respirator had slowed down. Luke had actually called out to him and received no response.

What was he doing?

What could Luke do?

He pulled himself up over the edge of the bed, onto those pristine white sheets with his muddy boots and dirty clothing. Leia was sleeping - or so he hoped. She moved even less than Vader, was paler than her own dress, and her arm was laid out, bare and with the bite openly exposed. It was even more horrible to look at than before. The wound had turned her whole lower arm and most of her hand black and withered. The bite itself had dried and crusted over, yet the scabbing tissue still shone wetly with pus and ooze, the flesh rotten. It even smelled terrible.

She wasn't dead, was she? There were tons of those monitor things around and they were still beeping softly. Vader had smashed some of the loudest ones, which Luke had actually been a little happy about, because all the red flashing lights and blaring alarms had made him quite panicked. But the quieter ones remained, particularly one that Luke thought was measuring her heartbeat. He'd seen them in holomovies. It even looked like the ones from there, with the digital spikes of her heartbeat and the flashing numbers. The only difference was the spikes in the movies were never as small, or as far apart, as Leia's were. And he knew, with sure instinct, that this could only be a bad thing, just as he knew that the wavering bond between him and Leia was a bad thing.

Tentatively, he started to reach out to it, but it was such a light, fragile thing he was afraid even that might break it. But there was a stronger bond, if he traveled down a similar yet parallel path. It felt very much like Leia's, but darker, older. Vader, he thought, and after a glance at the man, still unmoving, he pressed hesitantly against it.

He was very surprised when he felt Vader press back.

Actually, it wasn't a pressing back, because that would be gentle. This felt more like a push, a wordless shove away. Luke gasped, clutching at the blankets, so unexpected was the feeling. He waited for another shove, but the sensation faded as soon as he withdrew.

What was that? He had never felt anything like that before, and while he was a little nervous, it hadn't been painful, just… surprising. Vader himself had not moved or spoken. Luke hesitated, thinking more and more that maybe he had just imagined it. Gathering himself up, he found his connection to Vader and reached out to it again.

Luke.

He jumped at Vader's mental voice. Before he could formulate something to say, Vader spoke again.

Luke. Rest.

There was something weird about Vader's mind voice. It didn't sound weak, just… distracted. It kept rising in waves of volume, sometimes louder and sometimes quiet, like the sound on a malfunctioning hologram. Luke almost wanted to back out at that, but he was desperate for an answer to his one burning question.

Is Leia going to be okay?

A very, very long silence, as if Vader was weighing his words - or pulling himself away from whatever was grabbing his attention.

Finally: Perhaps. Another pause. If this works.

Luke wrinkled his forehead. If what works?

It is… difficult to explain. And then he went quiet again, and Luke thought at first he was trying to figure out how to explain it, until he felt his presence drifting away. He hovered indecisively where he was for a moment - wherever he was - before following Vader's presence.

And was plunged into a completely foreign world.

Everything went dark and watery; Luke didn't know how to explain that it felt watery, only that it was exactly like being back down in the sewer pipes. There was the deep murmur of waves pressing against his ears; the louder rush of currents dragging him in their wake. He wanted to flail about but he had no arms, no legs, he was nothing but a floating presence, just a tiny sand grain being swept along by the wind, only instead of flying he was thrashing, bumping into anything that was in the way. He could not tell what was happening, where he was, what he was doing, and his real body jerked in an agonized struggle to get out.

Luke! Remain calm!

He knew that voice. Luke grasped onto it, clung to it, the one safety line in the darkness.

Let go, Luke. Pull yourself back. You do not need to be here.

Vader's mind-voice still had that distracted sound. Luke poked hesitantly at it. Vader's presence did not move away, but just held onto him in a resigned sort of way.

Where are we?

Again, that pause. Then, with the feeling of a sigh: We - I - am in Leia's body. Or a representation of it in the Force.

Her body?! Was that the rushing noise? Was that her blood? And that dull pounding that he was starting to make out distantly - was it her heartbeat?

Yes. That is what you're sensing, and more: the virus, the disease that is killing her. For a moment, his voice sounded strained. I can use the Force to gather the virus away from her body. Move it somewhere to deal with later. And for a second, Luke had a flash of an image: Leia's arm, blackened and filled with the little particles that he was beginning to be able to see - to sense - in his mind's eye.

You can heal her? he asked.

I can… stop what is harming her. The words were tinged with something heavy. For healing, she must do that on her own.

Let me help! Without waiting for permission, he tried to stretch out, to get a better sense of this… virus thing, of Leia's own presence. It seemed that just by doing so, his vision was clearing, lightening; he had a feeling of being very small and in an enclosed space that stretched out in a maze of connections, of hundreds of thousands of living things surrounding him, all the same and yet different, ignoring him, intent on their separate but related functions.

Luke. Vader's mind voice interrupted his exploration, pushing him back. You must rest. I do not need help.

That felt like a lie, and the thought traveled along their bond before he could stop it.

Vader's signature flared, blistering and angry for half a second, before something clamped down on it. Luke flinched back minutely but held his ground. There was a long moment of silence. Vader had not exactly forced him out, so Luke tried to further figure out where he was. He had taken some classes on the human body before as well as seen his fair share of injuries, so he had a somewhat good idea of what the body looked like. He tried to visualize it: Leia's body stretched out and him bobbing along somewhere in it, a tiny little fuzz ball. He was in her blood, right? That was why everything felt wet. But where? Along the arm? The leg?

And as he was concentrating, something else began to dominate his focus. It was not a clear feeling, but it was a strong one: the feeling that there was something going deeply wrong in Leia's body. Something that didn't belong there. It was the little particles, smaller than cells, that Luke had begun to get a sense of, little voids in his mind's eye. But if he focused on one, he could begin to visualize their spiked bodies busily scurrying over Leia's cells and poking themselves in.

Luke, I… Vader's voice startled him out of his observations. A beat. He sensed Vader's focus wavering, towards him and towards Leia and towards… something else. He had the strangest sense of an apology flowing along their bond, quiet and muted.

He pressed back reassuringly.

Vader's presence was still a moment longer. There was a feeling of something tugging at it. Luke, said Vader's mind-voice, suddenly resolved, follow me.

And it seemed Luke did follow him, or follow the dark, looming presence that was Vader in his mind, traveling up and down and through a maze of passages until Vader - or rather, his presence - paused in front of a mass of the wrong things that was in Leia's body, thousands, millions of them. Luke wondered why they didn't burst out in a frenzy towards the rest of the body, until he felt something like Vader's mind, or part of his presence, erected in front of them like a wall.

Or a shield.

Yes, Luke, a shield, said Vader, and Luke realized he had sensed his thoughts. Listen to me, Luke, and for a moment he sounded as weary as when they were fleeing through the swamp. If you wish to help your - to help Leia, you must hold these things at bay, do you understand?

At bay?

Envision a shield. His voice was low, persuasive. Remember what I taught you? There you created a shield around yourself. Now you must extend it outwards. Hold back the virus that would hurt Leia.

He tried, tried to envision a big wall made of stone and metal, pressing against the swarming things that Vader had called a virus. For long seconds it didn't work - he could feel it flickering around him, then fading, and even when he got it to stay he couldn't move it away from him. Panic began to build.

Luke, focus. Do not let your fear rule you. The touch of Vader's mind was soothing, sending calming waves.

I can't do it! Despair threatened to choke him. He wanted to help, but he couldn't do it.

Luke. He heard admonishment in Vader's tone. Do not doubt yourself. You have done… remarkably well, given your lack of training. Again, he felt the touch of Vader's presence against his, like a guiding hand. You can create a shield around yourself?

I - yes. I think so. He felt it wavering around him, before solidifying as he focused more strongly on it.

Good. It is no different from that. You are simply placing it around something else. Stretch out, until you feel the virus -

The bad things?

Yes. Can you feel them?

He could, millions of them, beating at the barrier. His barrier. It was holding, at least for now, though it still felt unsteady, unsure. When had he placed it around them? Yet he had, barely even realizing it. You want me to keep them back? All of them?

Yes. I can search out the others, send them to you, and it would be much easier if you can do this. He paused for a moment. It would help.

There's so many of them!

Size matters not. There was a faint flicker of memory in those words. It doesn't matter how many, Luke. They are simple beings and you have the unlimited power of the Force with you. They will obey you.

Luke wanted so much to believe him. He felt his body taking deep gulps of air, and tried to let it steady him. This would help Leia. Vader had said it would. And he wanted to, needed to help her.

Okay.

A shield, a shield, he had to keep up the shield. He could sense Vader's own shield, and he poked at it experimentally, letting it guide him in what he had to do. His barrier seemed so thin and weak compared to Vader's. Even now it blinked out of existence. He had to do it, and he had to keep doing it. Just like when he made one for himself.

He squeezed his eyes tight. He had made one around himself, unknowingly, and now he was doing it again, knowingly. He just had to… keep it up. He scrambled for some way to make sense of this, because whatever he was doing, he had to make sure it stayed up. Vader waited, patiently, on the outskirts of his awareness as he fumbled with the Force. At some point, Luke felt something, an encouraging nudge, flowing through their bond.

What if he pretended the things he had to hold back was himself, Luke? He tried to think of it that way. If they were himself, then the shield could extend out. He just had to reach for them, feel them, get a sense of what they were and what they were like. They felt so strange, so different, but they weren't very different from each other. It wasn't like a bunch of individual monsters, more just a lot of foreign objects that were the same… he envisioned, maybe, a lot of spiky balls -

And with a weird shivery feeling, he felt the shield billow out, like the tip of a sand dune being blown forth by a breeze, felt the shield settle near Vader's and extend out and out and out.

Good, Luke. Can you hold it?

He drew forward, expecting, with the millions of little wrong things, to feel bombarded, pelted, like when he had been caught in a storm. But it was not like that; it was more like tiny nudges against his barrier before they drifted off. It did not relent, the nudging, but stayed constant, because new ones were always surging towards him, yet these things weren't… smart, he thought. They were just mindless things whose sole purpose was to make Leia sick.

If he could sense a smile through a mental link, then that might have been what Vader sent him. Good. You are doing very well. The words sent a cascade of warmth through him. I will return.

And his presence… did not leave, but withdrew, and Luke imagined himself positioned like a guard at a wall as Vader traveled down a road and out of sight - no, traveled through Leia's body. He could almost see him soaring through bone and muscle and blood, maybe going to the different organs or traveling along nerves and up and down limbs.

As for Luke himself, for a little while it took all his focus to keep the barrier up. He did not dare let even one virus through, some part sensing that, as unintelligent as these things were, they were deadly should they be let loose. But after a while, the concentration it took became familiar, like becoming used to lifting a weight because he had done it everyday. In a little while, he realized that he only needed most of his focus to keep the barrier up. Then only half his focus. And soon, just a bit, as if the force of his mind had built the wall up, brick by brick, until it was near impenetrable.

But only for one side. At regular intervals he would feel one on the other side, the outer side, slip past his barrier as easily as a fusion cutter through duraplast. Lingering on each of those, though, was Vader's presence, Vader's force of mind, telling them to go to Luke. It did not take concentration to let them through; they went in easily and then stayed contained. Luke wasn't sure what that meant - was his shield that weak to Vader? Or was it because he was just focusing on keeping everything inside and not out?

After a time, though, it stopped concerning him. Floating there, or at least that was what it felt like, he let the part of his mind - his Force sense, he supposed - drift to Vader's bond. It acknowledged him but only abstractly, seemingly busy, and Luke could sense even that muddled his concentration a bit. So he searched, finding the other bond, Leia's bond. Hers was inert, unmoving, but not dead, merely like one asleep, so he only sent a little message down, a sense of safety-help-comfort, before starting to move away.

What he did not expect was to feel something get sent back.

Darkness, deep, heavy, impenetrable. That was all Leia knew for endless stretches of time. It was not scary, though. It was more a sensation of nothingness, of floating in the void of space, not seeing or hearing anything, drifting constantly on the edge of sleep. Time had no meaning here. But there was nothing painful, nothing frightening, and for a long time, who knew how long, she simply rested there. Sometimes she'd feel tiny pinpricks on the edge of the darkness, but never enough to draw her attention for long.

And then, a voice.

Leia?

At first she thought she imagined it. But the message lingered there, a little floating light amidst the darkness, emitting warmth and love. After a length of time, Leia drew closer to it, or at least felt the floating part of herself go nearer. She touched it, sent her own message back of sleepy contentment.

The little light seemed to wriggle with surprise before exploding as bright as the sun. Leia!

It was familiar. Leia tried to remember, though everything felt so distant here in the night. Then she knew. Luke?

Pleasure and relief. Are you all right?

Hmm… She drifted again. She felt all right. There wasn't much of anything she was feeling, really.

Leia? We're trying to help you! So just hold on, okay?

Help her? It was difficult to find words here. But feelings, those she could send, ones of questioning and the slightest disturbance. What did she need help for?

Don't you remember? You were bitten. You're really sick.

Again, the struggle to recall. She tried to pierce through the fog that the darkness had draped over her. Sickness. A bite. Luke. That thought niggled. When she traveled down the thought that was Luke, she could begin to recall… Yes, a ship. The infected, so many of them. She would be one of them too, soon. And there had been pain and fear. Anger, thought not at them. She shied back from all these memories, preferring the sheltering darkness, where nothing hurt her. But something about it prickled at her, something else connected to Luke…

Vader's here, too, offered the Luke-light. We're going to make you better, okay?

Vader. The name flashed in the darkness, and suddenly she was aware of him, too. He was harder to spot than Luke, who shone so brightly, but now that she knew, she sensed him so strongly she didn't know how she had missed him in the first place. He felt further away, not fully aware of her, but there all the same. Even as she noticed him, she felt his presence tug, not at her, but at Luke, like there was a tether connecting them two. And her. The Luke-light seemed to dim in response to Vader's pull, and she sent out that questioning emotion, now tinged with a little fear. She did not want to be left alone here, now that she knew there were others.

Luke's response emitted guilt-shame-fear. He said I shouldn't disturb you. You need to rest. He seemed to grow more distant - or maybe it was her, like she was on a ship flying away from his brightness. I'm sorry.

Leia gathered herself up. No. Wait. Even those words were difficult to formulate. She stopped, trying to draw on her own energy. What… are… you… doing?

There was a sense of the Luke-light getting smaller, but also brighter, like his presence was trying to sneak towards her, out of sight of the larger, stronger, darker presence that hovered watchfully nearby. It made Leia want to giggle. Could she giggle in this place?

We're trying to get the virus out of you or something. Vader's going around and moving them, I think? And I'm holding them somewhere. He paused. I'm not sure where. I'm not really sure of any of this.

Get the virus out? Could they do that? She tried to put all of it together, the virus, and Luke, and Vader. Was the darkness getting a little brighter as well? Can… I… help?

Whatever Luke was going to say was cut off as the huge and overwhelming presence that was Vader suddenly made itself known. Luke's light shrank even further, whether to hide or because it was being dimmed by the great blackness, Leia wasn't sure. But when Vader spoke, he addressed only Leia.

You need to rest.

Leia, reduced back to emotions in his presence, managed to squeak out a myriad of them: curiosity and confusion and the need to help all intertwined with a plea.

You are ill. Vader's tone, or rather his presence, grew a little softer, less overwhelming. We are doing well enough without you. Rest.

She changed her own tone now, to one of sheer stubbornness.

Vader's presence flared. Child - He cut himself off, the black star that was his Force signature dying down. Leia imagined herself, a light as tiny as Luke's standing firm against his massive form. But there was something else, and she tried to pull herself together again.

You're… tired. A memory came back to her, dim and ill-formed, of her saying these exact words to him already.

It is nothing. Something appeared to draw his attention away, his form growing smaller for a brief moment. Beside him and far away, Luke floated silently, a tiny speck of light.

I… can… help.

He truly did sound weary now. And what would you do?

Show… me…

His reply seemed to take centuries. She waited and waited, holding herself there, until at last he spoke. As you wish.

The darkness erupted, bursting out in a cascade of color, and with a shock that sent Leia reeling, she felt herself bobbing like a leaf in the ocean, somewhere huge and massive and… familiar. It was so familiar. Herself! It was herself. As soon as she identified it she knew, deep in her mind, where she was. But it was also not entirely herself, she felt that immediately. There were strangers - it was the only way she could think of them - or invaders, things that did not belong there.

That's… the virus? She tried to point out the invaders with her presence, envisioning a little arm-blob of her light sticking out.

Whether it worked or not, Vader seemed to understand. Yes. The source, and the area with the most concentration of them, is the bite on your arm. I am gathering them from the rest of your body while Luke holds them at the bite mark, to keep them from spreading. A distinct pause, like he was trying to find the right words. What else can you sense?

Leia spread herself out; it was so weird, being simultaneously in and apart from herself. But it was also easy, because it was her own body, and it was so known to her that at first all she sensed were those wrong things, the virus, their foreignness standing out starkly to her. They were everywhere in her body, but were especially concentrated, now that Vader had pointed them out, in her arm, millions of them gathered in that place like a festering hole.

But then she began to sense something else, a feeling of wrongness that was more subtle. Floating over herself, over her own… cells, that was it, she'd learned that from her tutors… floating over them, she could tell that while a lot of them were okay, there were some that were not. Some had the same distinct feeling of strangeness as the virus, but more muted.

You can feel that? It was Vader, and she mentally turned, realizing that he was following her, in a way.

Yes. She gathered herself up again. What… is it?

Infection. The virus has invaded that cell. It is growing inside there, waiting for the right moment to emerge. When it does, many more of them will erupt from the cell, spreading the sickness further. There was a tense silence, and again Leia had that sense of Vader trying to formulate his words. Or, perhaps, trying to decide something. Can you sense more of them?

Leia stretched out and gave the mental version of a nod, which she hoped Vader understood. Now that she had noticed this one, it was easier to spot all the others, to sense that… strangeness that was slowly growing within them. On and on she sensed more of them, in various states of… bursting, she supposed. Some were almost completely unnoticeable, maybe just starting to mature, whereas others were almost ready to explode.

A question occurred to her. Can you… feel them?

Vader replied, Not as well as you. Another silence. He was doing that a lot. Leia. Do you truly wish to help?

Of course she did! This was her body, she was the one who was sick, she could feel Luke and Vader helping too, feel how draining it was. Why should they be doing everything? She needed to help! She wasn't sure how much of that got through to Vader - maybe some of it, maybe only a little, maybe even all of it - but she knew what the result was: the mental version of him sighing.

Very well, young one. His presence grew rapidly sharper, larger, closer to her. She felt him indicate, she wasn't sure how, one of the cells that she had noticed and was about to burst. That is one of them? And when she agreed, his presence dove straight onto it - and the cell tore itself open. Dozens of little virus things exploded out, but before they could latch onto any new cell, Vader simply shooed them off. Or did something that made them leave.

How… did you… do that?

They are rudimentary beings, not even fully alive, was his response. It is easy to compel them. He readied himself. Where is the next?

Here. She pointed it out. And that one.

So on and on they went. Luke's presence hovered in the back of Leia's mind, if she could call it that, but it was Vader who was beside her, Vader to whom she indicated the infected cells. Sometimes he would grow silent, attention appearing to wander, but Leia soon figured out that he wasn't not listening to her; rather, he was finding free-floating bits of viruses and sending them to Luke, at the same time that he was lingered near her, awaiting her indication of some newly infected cell.

Leia did not know how much time passed. After a while, she stopped mentally sending words, or even feelings, to Vader. Her mute indication was enough for him, as if he had spent enough time with her that he knew what she meant without her needing to say anything. It was good, in a way, for the longer they went, the more Leia felt the darkness beckoning, ever closer, urging her to rest in its folds. But she ignored it as best as she could, pushed onward by the feeling of… cleanliness, she thought it was. Like sweeping her body into order. Because as they continued, she saw the less of the viruses, the less of those wrong cells. What began as one every few seconds, became one every few minutes, then one every half an hour, and then… and then…

And then Vader's presence was touching her mind gently, and he said softly, It is almost finished, young one. We can take it from here. You may rest.

Leia stretched out her presence to him. She was quite… tired, if her little mind-presence could feel tired. Like she had been stretched thin. Yet still she asked one thing: Really?

Yes. And she was sure she could feel an affectionate approval in his tone. Go now. Sleep.

And maybe it was the darkness, or maybe it was Vader, or maybe even both, for as she heard those words, a warm wave of drowsiness swept over her.

Then there was nothing but peaceful bliss.

Luke had been holding the shield so long he could not seem to remember a time when he wasn't doing that. So when Vader returned - or rather, when the presence that was Leia blinked out and he turned his full attention back to Luke - and told him to stop, he was not even sure how to do that.

What about Leia? he asked. He had felt her flicker away and a momentary fear struck him. Is she okay?

She is resting, Vader assured him. As you must rest. I can deal with the rest myself.

There was something in those words, something Vader was hiding. What are you going to do?

I… The pause went on too long. Yes, Vader was definitely hiding something. I will destroy the virus, once and for all.

How?

That is none of your concern. The words were harsh, and Luke shrank a little. As if realizing that, Vader's next words were a little softer. You can let go of the shield, Luke. I am here.

And yes, Luke could feel something solidifying alongside his own shield, strengthening it. But it took him some time to figure out how to pull his own shield down, to finally withdraw, and then even longer to begin to retreat to his body.

When he did, it was disorienting, being thrown into a world of light and color, with gravity and sound and sensation all pulling at different parts of him. He blinked rapidly, his entire body dazed and heavy. There was something under his hands too, crinkly and soft - a sheet, he realized. And that annoying, incessant beeping - those were the monitors. He blinked again, shaking his head, wondering why everything was so bright. So white. Long moments passed before he could make out little shapes and recognize the med bay, the bed, Leia…

Leia! He rubbed his eyes, but he was still so disoriented that he missed his face entirely and ended up hitting thin air. He tried again, and again when it didn't help, until at last his vision cleared enough for him to stare intently at the girl. There was color in her face, and her breathing was heavier, deeper. He could see the rise and fall of her chest and the flicker of her eyelids as she slept. Even the monitor was beeping consistently.

She looks so much better! he thought.

Vader's voice made him jump. The virus has been cleansed from much of her body, but it still must be eliminated.

Oops. He must have sent his last thought mentally. But Vader seemed to wave it off - or his presence did. Physically he remained in the exact same position as before, standing over Leia.

It is no matter. You are readjusting to being back in your physical form.

Luke frowned. Something about Vader still sounded indistinct, like he was speaking to him through a long tunnel.

Luke. He jumped again. Had Vader heard that as well? Lie down. Rest. You have tired yourself helping her.

Isn't there anything else I can do? he asked plaintively.

He had a funny feeling that Vader wanted him gone - not because he was annoyed, but because there was something he did not want Luke to know or to see. You have done more than was required, Luke. There was pride in the voice, and it eased his feeling of being rejected. For now, you must heal as well. Sleep.

Now that Vader had mentioned it, Luke was feeling drained. He stretched, started to look for Leia's arm, the bitten one, but then decided he did not want to see. He wondered if he could sleep next to Leia; there was enough room there. Rather than asking, he simply lay down there, curling atop the blanket. As soon as his head hit the soft pad, he felt tiredness overtake him. Maybe that's Vader, he thought sleepily, but if it was, it was too strong for him to resist. With the soft beeping in his ears, he soon drifted off.

It was with a sense of relief that Vader felt his son fall into blissful unconsciousness, a relief that only a small part of him had the space to pay heed to.

The rest was spent on maintaining the mental barrier to keep the millions of viral particles trapped in one part of his daughter's body. And just doing that was taking almost all his will, all his concentration.

What was left of Leia's lower right arm, where all the virus had been forced into, had turned into a blackened husk that reminded Vader all too much of his own sufferings on the banks of a lava river. There was an ache in his prosthetic arm just from looking at it.

There was little hope of it healing. He had had some thought of forcing the virus to eject itself from the wound, an opening in the flesh it could leak from like pus, but the wound itself had long since closed up. There was little blood left in that part of her body to circulate the virus outwards, and the cells of her limb had been dead so long that Vader did not think anything might help it to recover.

Nor could he think of a way to destroy them quickly- unlike cells, they did not have a simple mechanism to burst apart, a sort of button he could enact his will upon. The only way would be to go to each particle and break them apart individually, and he did not have the time or the focus to do that. There was nothing he could do… except for one thing. The only one he could think of, the only thing he could do, standing over her, using all his mental powers to keep the virus at bay.

He could only feel some comfort that neither of the children would be awake to witness it.

Vader ignited his lightsaber and, without hesitating, brought it down on Leia's arm.

If anyone's ever read The Jedi Academy trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson, then you'll probably see what inspired most of this chapter. There's section in that trilogy in which Mon Mothma is poisoned by, like, nanobots in a drink, I think, but is healed through the Force by a Jedi named Cilghal. She quite literally does the same thing I described here: using the Force to physically remove each nanobot from Mon Mothma's body. The book states there are billions of them in her body, so yes, it is about exhausting as it sounds here; Cilghal apparently takes nine hours to completely cleanse Mon Mothma and collapses right after. I took a few liberties to make it SLIGHTLY easier on everyone involved: viruses are generally a bit bigger (so hopefully less of them...) and Vader has help and is not just powering through it alone (though he sure as hell intended to).

We're almost done guys! Two more chapters! Next up, the big reveals.