Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Luke, come on!” Wedge shouted, waving him forward.

Just before he crossed the threshold, the Force blared a warning so loudly Luke stumbled--and the galaxy exploded.

Fire ran up through the air like a starving womp rat. He threw his arms around his face, instinctively forming a shield with the Force. Still the impact flung him through the wall. Mid-flight, he realized there had been a boom.

When he hit the ground, there was silence. Vibrations shook his body. Whhmm whmm whhmm-whmm, whmm-whmm-whhmm…whmm, whmm…WHHMM.

Luke’s eyes flung open and he coughed on the automatic sharp inhale. Dust choked the air.

Wedge!

His voice was soundless. There was only the ringing in his ears.

Wedge!

Luke forced himself to stand, using a Chewie-sized chunk of duracrete that had landed just centimeters from him as support. Smaller chunks were still raining down. Little fires smoldered here and there. His legs shook like a newborn bantha calf. He whistled, loud and winding, the signal he and Uncle Owen used to use on the farm with the hired farmhands to find each other in sandstorms. That, too, was silent.

Cold wrapped around him like creeping vines. His stomach twisted.

Vader.

Father.

Here? NOW? How had Vader gotten here? Intelligence said he was three systems away!

Luke buried his signature in the idea of sand to hide it. The coldness didn’t retreat, but it could no longer cling so tightly to his skin. Luke’s gaze darted around. Chunks of charred duracrete littered what used to be the empty brick warehouse they were supposed to meet their contact in—they were here to broker a deal to get more weapons for the Alliance—and below the duracrete, purple bricks and dust. Three of the walls had been completely blown out - the only one left standing was on the far side from him. The roof was now open sky and billowing dust, one durasteel support beam dangling in the air.

Stormtroopers appeared on the hill of rubble. Luke glanced back, but they were coming from there, too. They hadn’t spotted him yet. He ducked into a crevice made by fallen duracrete.

Back pressed firmly to brick, Luke let out a slow breath.

Nothing here, nothing here, there is nothing to see or feel or notice…

He still couldn’t hear anything. The crevice limited his field of vision, so he couldn’t really see, either. He held back a cough. He hid his face in his dusty shirt, hoping for slightly clearer air, and began rocking side to side unconsciously. If he didn’t move, he would explode, and then his father would find him for sure, find him in spasming, screeching pieces…

The thought of his father being here was too much. Sound trickled back in slowly, and every crunch sounded like Vader’s heavy footfalls, and before he knew it Luke found himself humming quietly, a single, drawn-out note that lasted until his lungs were pressed empty. He inhaled quickly and began again, closing his eyes.

Nothing here, nothing here, there is nothing to see or feel or notice…

A voice cut the relative silence and stilled Luke’s voice.

“I know you are hiding here, young one. It is useless. Come out. Before I am forced to drag you.”

Vader.

It sounded like he had been talking while Luke’s ears were out of commission. How was he here?!

Luke pressed himself tighter against the fallen section of duracrete he was hiding under. Almost without his permission, a hum came buzzing up out of his throat.

He silenced it immediately, heart pounding. His rocking sped up.

Had Vader heard?

Slow, heavy footsteps paced the rubble. His father had deactivated his lightsaber moments ago, but Luke knew better than to hope that it would stay that way. Bespin had been a more than adequate teacher of what Vader was capable of—what he was capable of doing to his own son.

Luke found himself clutching his wrist where flesh met prosthetic, and realized he was humming again. He swallowed the sound.

“Is this all the Jedi taught you? How to hide and run? It will not help you for long. When you join me,” when, “I will teach you more than they dared to. The Jedi were cowards. Do not follow in their footsteps, my son.”

The anxiety coalescing in his body came out in a sound like a hissing pipe.

Luke forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out. It didn’t help.

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Tswu. Tswu. Tswu tswu tswu tswu.” Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick—

Vader’s footsteps became more deliberate.

Luke stilled his clicking tongue with effort. Seconds later, he was humming again.

Why couldn’t he stop making those noises? Stop it, stop it, stop it!

He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to stop himself from humming. Stopping was what he was supposed to do, what he needed to do, what he wanted to do, but the thought of doing so felt like holding back a cough. Or, years ago, like staying indoors while Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru raised their voices at each other in the kitchen, arguing something about Luke and his father.

Had…had they known?

He’d never felt anything but love from them, neither ever expressed any regret for taking him in, but was that what their arguments were about? Whether he would turn out like his monster of a father, whether it was worth the risk to continue to feed and clothe him?

The sound of Vader’s breathing grew louder.

Luke buried his Force signature in meters of sand, far below his father’s perception. Vader’s footsteps stopped. There was only the slow in…out of his respirator.

Luke found himself humming at the same frequency as it. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“ Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmm. ” 

Plastisteel-gloved fingers grabbed his upper arm, digging into his flesh, and Luke cried out. A stormtrooper yanked him to his feet, slapping binders on his wrists before he could react.

Still humming, Luke internally cursed himself. He was supposed to be a Jedi! The Force gave him incredible reflexes - no one could thread the Needle like him, no one could have made the Death Star shot like him. 

But he was distracted, and anxious, and all twisted up inside.

“Found him, sir!”

Too late, Luke tried to jerk his arm out of the trooper’s grip. At the last second, he remembered to use the Force. The trooper stumbled back with a shout, just barely letting go. Luke watched him fall as if in slow motion. He tried to use the opportunity to run, but another body slammed into him, tackling him to the ground.

“You’re not getting away this time, Jedi, ” a second trooper growled from on top of him.

Luke bucked and kicked, and threw him off with the Force. Hissing sounds came out of his mouth on automatic pilot.

Electricity raced through his veins. A scream tore his throat.

When he came to, he was on the ground. Smoke rose from his limbs, barely visible through blurry vision. His leg spasmed. His veins felt like fire.

“Did you have to have it all the way up?” one trooper sneered.

The other spit. It landed just centimeters from Luke’s head. “Jedi scum are nearly unkillable. Wanted to make sure he felt it.”

They hauled Luke’s limp body up. Weak whistles slid from his tongue.

He swayed on his feet even as they walked, subtly rocking to dispel the pain.

Without warning, they stopped.

A gloved hand lifted Luke’s whistling face. His bleary eyes beheld the black form of his father.

“I told you you would not get away.”

The low rumble of his father’s modulated voice was too tempting. Luke hummed low in his throat to match it, extending the sound until his lungs ran out of air, and continuing after a quickly gasped breath.

Vader merely observed him.

“Can he walk?”

The arms holding Luke up let go. He hit the ground with a huff of air, cutting off his hum. Temporarily. Hating himself, hating this situation, hating everything, his lips fell open and the hum became something like a moan, eerily one-noted and long. Luke curled in on himself.

A boot landed in his kidney. Luke gasped.

“Up, Jedi scum.”

The stormtrooper suddenly began choking. Luke looked up, eyes wide in horror. His voice raised in pitch, desperate. Instead of one long sound, he made short ones, like an alarm.

A sickening void burst in the Force, like a popped pustule.

The stormtrooper fell. Lifeless.

Luke’s breaths came out long and loud, almost like words. “ Haah. Haah. Haah. Haah. ” He shook his head to get rid of the feeling, but it didn’t go away. The stormtrooper was dead. At Luke’s father’s hand.

Where were Wedge and their contact? Had they gotten away? Luke had certainly done a job of distracting the Imperials, if inadvertently.

His eyes rolled around, barely taking in the scene. It was all gray-purple dust, white armor, black armor.

He tried to ask about his friend, but it came out as another short whistle.

Vader merely stared.

Luke met his gaze, whistling over and over. Tswu. Tswu. Tswu. Tswu. Tswu. 

An eternity passed between their gazes. A second eternity passed when Luke’s slid away, unable to look at his own reflection in those black lenses any longer. The Force was still filled with death, sticky and all-consuming. Luke couldn’t feel anything beyond that, and the slow combustion inside his own body at being so close to his father, at being in the custody of Imperials, at not knowing where Wedge was or what had happened to their contact or what would happen to the arms deal now. Whatever his father thought was a mystery.

Finally, the Force wound around him, cold and pressing. It cajoled Luke to lean into it, as insistent as the whistles sliding off his tongue.

There was nowhere for Luke to go but under.

.

.

.

Vader supervised as stormtroopers that he hadn’t yet killed lifted his son onto a hover-stretcher. It was almost…eerie to see the boy silent after the vocal display he’d put on.

Anguish laced Vader’s veins, that he did not know whether such a display was normal for the boy or not. He had pushed him into unconsciousness rather than try to reason or communicate with him. Asleep, parenting was much simpler. Yes, like this, he could almost pretend…

The stormtroopers pushed the hover-stretcher towards the landing shuttle just outside the destroyed warehouse. Vader watched it go, watched Luke’s dust-covered, limp form, his closed eyes.

…that no time had passed at all. That over twenty years had not been stolen from father and son. That Vader had raised his boy from birth, and Luke was merely sleeping, and that when he woke, they would be on the same side, and conversation would be easy.

He knew that it would not. Anakin had been a fool. Vader was not. It would be difficult to bring Luke to his side, as the boy had demonstrated on Bespin, by choosing to fall to his death rather than join his father.

Vader followed the hover-stretcher out of the warehouse.

Now that he had his son in custody, however, he had a chance. The boy would not find any easy escape this time; death would not be an option. Vader would…take his time, and ensure that he brought the boy around by any means necessary.

Light fell on Vader’ helmet. His eye-lenses adjusted automatically to the brightness.

Yes, now that Luke was in hand, the whole galaxy was open to possibilities again. He would learn who his son was. He would bring his son to his side. They would make up for all the years lost, and forge new ones together, in a galaxy made better by their collaboration.

Together, they would take down Palpatine.

Together, they would make the galaxy as it should be, as it should have been from the start…