Chapter Text
Luke leaned in towards Leia, the brush held carefully in his hands and still not quite believing she'd asked this of him - the second time, even, and this time she was definitely less stiff than the first. Her gaze, even if he couldn't see it right now, was distant and soft. Less dull than the first time, when he'd found her standing listlessly in front of the tiny mirror in the attached refresher in her bunk, brush at risk from falling from her hand. He hadn't asked how she was, only gently taking the brush from her and asked if she'd wanted help.
He'd been half a second from being tossed out on his head at that, he'd realised it even back then as her eyes had flashed to his in the mirror and she'd whirled around, a snarl on her face - and then she'd just... stopped, face twisting and then settling into distant coolness. She'd opened her mouth and the first word out of her mouth would probably have been 'leave', except he got there before her with 'Leia' and she'd snapped her mouth closed and just... stared at him, the seconds growing longer. Long enough he'd started to wonder if he should get a medic, but then she'd grabbed his wrist and dragged him out of the refresher. Pushed him down onto her bed and sat down herself, her voice very, very quiet as she said 'yes'.
This time wasn't like that. She'd had an argument at dinner (for once not with Han, but rather held in loud Alderano with a squat, square-faced young man a few years older than them), and while there were undoubtedly other people she could've pulled with her, her gaze had landed on him and he'd just... gotten up and followed her.
Let the door close behind them and went to get the brush while she undid her braids (he knew better than to help her with that), started going through the thick, lustrous fall of brown with it. The angry tension in her shoulders had slowly eased, but now there were periodic trembles running through them instead.
Another slow, careful pass of the brush, Leia's hair long since gone smooth enough that the brush didn't snag and felt like silk in his hands, and Luke leaned in a little closer, to her but didn't touch her otherwise.
"... Leia?"
Her breath came out in a hot, shuddering huff, and she was silent a few more seconds.
"... We, were on a mission during the anniversary memorial," she said, her voice slow and burning. Too affected to sound flat, just now, but the line of her face that he could just barely see was as flat as her voice wasn't, even if one was as controlled as the other. And her hands, tangled in the covers of her bed, were white-knuckled.
"We--- Yeah. We were, weren't we." And he had to swallow down the sudden, tight lump in his throat. He'd forgotten.
He'd... well, not forgotten. Not really. Pushed it aside, more like. He'd been thinking about it a lot going up to the anniversary of Alderaan's annihilation and the Death Star's destruction, but the closer it'd gotten to the day he'd lost Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, the more he'd desperately tried to keep himself busy and not think. And then he'd missed it completely, not to say anything about being on a mission during the official memorial for Alderaan and the Rogue One crew.
"Yes. Corporal Aldos didn't... agree with my priorities."
Luke didn't know how she managed to say that sounding as composed as she did when at the same time another shudder, faint and barely visible beyond the tremble of fine, fly-away strands of hair haloing her head, ran through her shoulders. Dropping the brush on the bed, he reached out to grasp her shoulders, squeezing. Almost said one thing, and then hesitated and changed his mind.
"... I forgot as well," he said after a few seconds of silence, feeling guilty tightness close up his throat for a moment. Long enough, though, for Leia to suck in a breath and awkwardly twist around to face him. One hand on his shoulder and the other burying in his hair, not quite cupping his face, her own pulled into a grimaced moue somewhere between relief and sympathy.
"Oh, Luke..."
"I guess my priorities are the same as yours." He had to swallow down the lump again, then, and smiled tightly at her. Lifted one hand off her shoulder to only just brush a few fingertips under her dry, hot cheek. No tears there, even if it might be better if there were.
Leia huffed a laughter that wasn't really one and pulled him into a hug. He wrapped his arms around her just as she did the same, the hug tight and nearly desperate, Luke leaning his weight on her soft hair while Leia's face was buried against his shoulder. Not for long, no, but the solid warmth of the hug seemed to transfer something far more ephemeral between them, wrapping lightly around some secret core. His nascent and building connection to the Force trembled with something just beyond his reach, but for the moment Luke couldn't care less about things he didn't understand, even when they had to do with the Force.
The important thing was Leia, and the easing of the intermittent trembles running through her shoulders. Months ago, he would've been happy for more than one reason for what was happening (unhappy, but still pleased); right now, all that mattered was that he could help her in whatever small way.
The sudden chime of both their comlinks and not just Leia's alone was even more startling than if it had only been hers. At least they were already shifting apart, with a last, trailing stroke of her small hand through his hair in a soothing motion that made him smile and feel lucky to have precisely this.
"You better take that, Lieutenant Skywalker," Leia said with a small grin as she straightened up, picking up her own comlink and gesturing with it, "and I'll take mine."
"Yes ma'am," grinning at her and giving her a mock salute, Luke slid off the bed, pausing in the doorway as it slid open for him, "thanks for letting me help with your hair."
Their eyes met, and Leia smiled faintly.
"Thank you, Luke," she said before she turned to her comlink, and he took that as his cue to step outside for his call.
"Lieutenant Skywalker here."
"Briefing room 365, Lieutenant. Command wants to be proactive about checking out prospective base sites, so they've chosen a group of you to perform the first crop of flybys and initial assessments."
Luke wondered if that was what Leia's call was for as well, as her door opened again behind him while he acknowledged the order and turned off his comlink, throwing a look over his shoulder. "Room 365?"
Her eyebrows shooting up as she twisted a quick braid up on her head and pinned it in place, she shook her head.
"Main command. We've got potential new allies, so I'm part of the diplomatic unit we're sending off. I'll come with you as far as I can," Leia said with a smile and stuck her arm in the crook of his elbow and led them off. Chuckling, Luke didn't protest, and instead matched his steps to hers until they parted, a kiss dropped on his cheek as a goodbye.
Giving her a wave right as he ducked into the briefing room, he barely got two steps inside before there was a growled greeting to his left and he was yanked into a hug.
"Chewie!" Laughing, Luke ruffled the fur on the Wookiee's long upper arms when he got his arms free to do so, and looked to Chewie's other side where Han threw a smirk and a little wave at him. "Han! You guys got dragged into this?" Glancing between them, Chewie's low whuffed chuckle interrupted Han's 'As usual, kid' and Han grunted and settled back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Fine, we volunteered, since Her Worship doesn't look to need any help right now, and while I like not straining my ship, just hanging around here ain't my style," he said, then paused, glancing across Chewbacca and only very briefly met Luke's gaze, leaving him to arch an eyebrow in silent question. "Uh. Feeling any better, the both of you? Chewie scared that guy half to death, too, after you'd left."
Questioning expression melting into a wide smile, Luke nodded. Felt better just from that, even if neither he nor Leia really felt that much better. But someone - Han - caring and saying so..? Well, why wouldn't it make him feel better? As did the gentle ruffle of Chewie's large paw through his hair, though he shook it off with a gentle whack.
"Better, yeah. I guess it'll... get easier. Maybe." He hadn't intended to sink the mood, especially not as he had felt better about it just a second or two ago, and yet here he was, voice dropping.
"Hey, kid..." The hand on his shoulder this time was distinctly non-furry, even if Chewie groaned a soft commiseration, and Luke let himself lean into that, is just for a moment. Then he straightened up and shook his head... and had to brush his fringe out of his eyes, after that. Maybe he should consider a haircut, one of these days.
"Leia's got it worse, anyway," he said softly, waving it off and turning towards the front of the room. He didn't recognise the officer that walked up to the holo-projection table, but that was hardly odd, both with rotations and people coming and going. Throwing a quick look around, he grinned and waved to Wedge and Hobbie over on the other side of the room, and did the same for three other pilots from other squadrons he recognised, but there were more here he didn't recognise than he did, despite their number being no more than fifteen.
"All right, all of you know why you're here, so I'll cut to the chase," the officer said, a female Twi'lek with one of her lekku cut off halfway and scars covering both the stump and the full one in long, striated lines, pink against her rich red. "We've got about sixty potential sites, and we're doing these assessments in sets of fifteen. You're the first crop, and unfortunately some of you will have slightly more work to do, depending on the planets in question."
Gesturing around her, she turned to the projection table and turned it on, inserting a chip; nine planets and six moons, highlighted against their planets, were brought up.
"Some of these will be planetary flybys, where we have no coordinates for possible base sites at all, so if you get one of those, your job will be to give us not just an idea if the planet itself is viable, but any possible sites for further investigation," she glanced up as she spoke, her bright gaze roaming across the room and meeting their eyes, "others, we have enough info to be able to give you potential base-site coordinates, so your job there is to simply investigate if those are suitable. If not, if time allows or it's safe, do a wider flyby unless the planet isn't viable at all. We're counting about one to three days for each of you, so report in every day if you're not returning tomorrow. Understood?"
A chorus of 'ayes' later and a round of datapad chips having been distributed, Luke parted with Han and Chewie close to the hangars to go to the one his X-wing was parked in, comming Artoo on the way to let him know they had a mission, as small as it was. They met before either of them had gotten to Red Squadron's hangar, and Luke grinned, dropping a hand to Artoo's dome as the droid rolled up beside him.
"Hey, buddy! Ready for an adventure?"
Artoo's agreeable chirp was cheery, and Luke chuckled as they both got settled in the X-wing as soon as he'd jumped into a flightsuit. It didn't take long for them to start taxiing out of the hangar, and since they wouldn't need to get out of the gravity well of a planet, they should soon be away... Artoo distracted him with an inquiring whistle and a short question on the screen, though, and Luke shrugged.
"I don't know, some abandoned mining planet? It was apparently used as a Separatist base during the Clone Wars, so Command's probably hoping some of the structures will be usable still and we won't have to build from the ground up... Mustafar, I thi--- Artoo!"
Yanking his hand away from the navicomputer to clap both of them over his ears thanks to the loud discordant near-shriek Artoo just piped into the cockpit, Luke swore quietly under his breath. Shaking his head and throwing a quick glare over his shoulder, he entered the coordinates to let the navicomputer do its calculations while he glanced back to the screen and the new lines of text there.
"Safe? Why wouldn't it be safe? Come on, Artoo, what's the problem? If they didn't think there wouldn't hopefully be something usable there, they wouldn't have included it in the list."
Artoo's grumbling whistle was reluctant and the screen stayed blank, so Luke shrugged and simply waited for the chime of the navicomputer to tell him it was ready.
"It'll be fine, Artoo."
That's what he'd said anyway, but as they skimmed lower and lower towards Mustafar, the scan readings giving him back negligible amounts of lifeforms and some scattered technology and buildings, Luke was growing... uneasy. He wasn't sure what it was and had just about convinced himself it was merely the awe-inspiring and dangerous landscape below him that was causing it as they came upon the first collection of... well, those buildings didn't look very promising, but he had to try, right?
Artoo's vehement twittering accompanied by the rush comments on-screen about that the place was probably structurally unsafe wasn't very encouraging, but he huffed as he took them down to land on a scorched, half-melted platform anyway. Artoo was probably right, though; the whole place looked liked it'd been suffering from the spurts of lava and general exposure for years, and if there were any shield generators to keep the buildings safe, they'd long since burned out. If this place was salvageable at all, they'd have to replace the shields at minimum...
"I'll just have a look around, Artoo, give me a sec," he said and winced as the cockpit cracked open, hot, ashy air swirling in. There were probably far better places to look for other abandoned structures, and yet here he was... Artoo blatted a sharp noise, and Luke chuckled, though he felt weirdly tense, still - that sense of unease was thick, now, but that was probably just thanks to the hot, thick air, so dry it felt like it was scorching his lungs.
This place was not friendly, but that just meant that if there was some place protected enough to throw up some pre-fab buildings if they couldn't find anything abandoned that'd fit the bill, it would be a really good place for a possible new base.
"All right, let's see..." The metal clanged dully as he jumped down from the X-wing, but two steps away from it, Luke slowed down, growing more hesitant. Then, after another five, he came to a complete stop.
It felt impossible to breathe.
Like the air was taking up all the space in his throat but unable to move any further and now the jangling unease had spread to echo in the Force, a warning with no clear source or reason.
Squinting through the heat waver in the air, Luke frowned. Swallowed heavily, but the sensation of there being something that was constricting his throat, was still there, and it was only when he staggered back to the X-wing that the hot pressure seemed to let up. Artoo whistled, rattling against his socket, and Luke waved a warding hand at him.
"No, stay there. I'll get back up. This place doesn't look very useful, so let's see if there's something else 'round here." Maybe he could've just gotten a breathing mask and continued, but as he lifted off the platform and took a turn over the buildings, they really didn't look like they would've been all that useful.
Better look elsewhere... and it had nothing at all to do with that while the unease remained, the screaming edge of it was gone as they continued, just high enough to avoid the highest plumes of lava that spouted up from the glowing rivers and lakes. The planet looked like it'd had a few layers of crust scraped off, the inner blood spilling everywhere, or maybe like it'd been turned inside out.
"... This place's giving me the creeps," Luke muttered after a few minutes, veering away from a giant lavafall and steering up along the river. It looked like there was something more building-like poking up further above... Which proved to the right, as they crested the rise and a low 'flood plain' opened up below, a huge, stark spire rising up next to the lava river and up from the black sand and rock of the plain. Artoo made a strange little noise, the screen on translating it as a wordless question, and Luke shrugged.
"Think it's the headquarters of the former mining operation or something?"
Artoo's answering whistle was hesitant, but also hesitantly agreeing, and Luke took them around the tower several times - whatever it was, it had a functioning shield, and when he landed down below on the large stretch of polished rock in front of what seemed to be the entrance and opened the cockpit, the air was... more breathable. Clearly the shield extended out over this 'entrance area' as well, otherwise it certainly wouldn't feel this cool and easy to breathe.
"Stay here Artoo. I'll have a look... I'll keep my comm open, all right?"
Of course, Artoo didn't like that at all, but Luke turned around halfway to the entrance, hands on his hips and shaking his head.
"Look, we don't know what the place looks like inside, or if anything works aside from the shield generators! If no elevators work in there, you're gonna have a hell of a time with the stairs!"
Not that Artoo couldn't walk up and down stairs. It just took time and effort, and they weren't supposed to stay here for a week. Grumbling, Artoo settled down and twittered a reprimand over the comm too for good measure. Chuckling, Luke gave him a wave and continued towards the doors - which opened before he got within even a few meters of it, a cloaked and masked guy in red armour and flowing red robes stepping out, a pike of some sort in one hand.
"One single assassin?" the guard, or whatever he was, chuckled, his voice muffled behind his helmet as his pike buzzed to life with plasma charge. Luke stopped and took a step backwards, just staring for a confused moment. Imperial? He didn't look like he was part of any of the regular army or navy, if so... "Are you rebel scum so hard up fo---"
Luke had barely put a hand to his hip as the masked and armoured guard lowered his pike when Artoo warbled from the comm and the Force jangled - he didn't need both of them to realise what Artoo was going to do. So what Luke didn't even bother to yell to Artoo that he was overreacting, just dropped to the hard, polished stone and rolled. The guard leapt after him, pike swinging down...
And straight into the path of the X-wing's cannons as the ones on the right wing blazed to life.
Luke kept rolling, cursing quietly as his back felt like it'd melted, but as he rolled over the ground, it didn't hurt. He hadn't actually been hit, but those cannons weren't meant to be used on small targets like that. Looking up as he got to his knees, Luke groaned quietly, pressing his lips together briefly. It was... quite a sight. Not really enough left to be ill over, but...
"Artoo..." Throwing a look over his shoulder at his X-wing and the droid still in the socket on its back, Artoo's warbled twitter was smugly pleased, then chirped again and Luke huffed. "No, Artoo. I'll be careful, but I think we need to check this out."
'We' meaning 'him', currently, and he crept inside, alert for running into a legion of stormtroopers, workers, anything... but the hall beyond the doors was empty, and the corridors beyond as well. It didn't... actually seem like anyone lived here at a first look, and the further he got through the spire, the more he wondered if the red-clad man had been part of something larger at all. Though there had been that weird comment about him supposedly being 'an assassin', though what there was in this place to assassinate, Luke wasn't sure.
Because there didn't really seem to be anything here, as he wandered, taking turbolifts a few floors at a time as he came across them, following... he wasn't sure. Something. The creeping unease tingled in the back of his head along with the Force, a tense string plucked to keep him on edge even when, again, there didn't seem to be a reason or source for it.
At least there didn't seem to be until he came to the door.
That was a ridiculous way to think of it, because the double doors didn't look any different from the other doors he'd walked past (though he had, by now, spotted some signs of habitation), but he couldn't call it 'a' door. There was a weight to it that suggested more than that, as much as it looked like every other set of doors in the spire.
It was colder, here.
It seemed to seep out from behind the double doors, even if, when he laid his hand on the metal, it was no colder than the wall to the left or the right of it. It was cold in the Force, somehow, and he didn't know what that meant. It felt like like anger, a burn so cold it was acid and hot in the back of his throat. Like death, if death would have a feeling beyond what you yourself thought about what you were seeing, feeling, in the face of it.
Luke had never considered that such things would be felt through the Force, before. It was also a little bit familiar, but he couldn't put a finger on it. Whatever else he was picking up aside from the very clear darkness that had swaddled the Force and he'd only noticed now, it was... muted. Diluted? He shrugged mentally. It didn't feel danger, however, not like the other times he'd gotten warnings through the Force.
"Well, let's see what this is about, then..." Despite saying that, something told him that Mustafar wouldn't be a good idea for a base, and that meant he should leave now. But the door in front of him taunted him with whatever could be inside - maybe this place wasn't Imperial, but something to do with the Force? With the Jedi? It could explain why he was feeling things in the Force, couldn't it?
With that thought in mind, he took the two steps sideways needed to reach the panel to trigger the door, and it slid open silently, no alarms or anything at all springing to life as he stepped inside.
The room was lit only sparingly, but it was enough to see by. Not that there was much to see; all that seemed to be in the room was a bacta tank filled with bacta so stuffed with additives the liquid was milky instead of clear. Milky, but not opaque.
And where he'd first thought there was nothing inside the tank, the liquid swirled around something and Luke came to a stop, nearly stumbling on his own feet.
"What---"
The guard had wondered why there was only one assassin.
Luke had wondered what there even was in this place to assassinate.
The answer hung, partially obscured by bacta and muted in the Force, probably due to sleep (he'd never thought you might feel different in the Force while sleeping, but apparently that was so), in front of him. Limbless, pale like bones picked clean by scavengers, scoured by sand and bleached by the suns, and with an awkward-looking panel stuck in his chest, right in front of him.
"Vader?" It shouldn't be a question, even hissed as it'd been, because he knew. Knew despite that there wasn't really any actual way to tell without the suit - Darth Vader had all limbs though and here there were none, severed at different lengths... prosthetics? - but he did know. He could feel it.
Luke crossed the distance before he realised he had, one hand on his lightsaber and the other smacking into cool, solid plexi as he stared, breath caught in his throat and pulse thundering in his ears.
He could do this.
For Leia, for Biggs, for Ben, and for so many others.
He could do this, and his lack of mastery of the Force wouldn't matter, Vader's superior skill with a lightsaber wouldn't matter, nothing would matter--- closing his eyes and tightening his trembling hand around the lightsaber where he'd pressed the blade end against the plexi, angled upwards towards the black box on Vader's chest, Luke swallowed down bile.
He could do it, and then what?
The man was asleep, hanging in a bacta tank - he really would be nothing more than an assassin, like this. And maybe that was all Darth Vader deserved. Maybe he deserved even less than that, but whenever he'd envisioned killing Vader, it'd been in battle, their blades meeting, or in a dog fight, not like... not like this. It would be like walking into a hospital and starting to shoot people.
Luke recoiled at the thought, his anger collapsing in on itself. He couldn't... he couldn't do that.
Opening his eyes, Luke almost jumped back, but he was at the same time frozen as he met the blue eyes staring at him, hazy and relaxed. There was even a small smile - it looked painful, even that little smile, the way it must be pulling on the... wound? sores? to the side up along Vader's left cheek - on the pale face, though he couldn't imagine why the man was smiling.
He couldn't move. His hand was still flat against the plexi as he stared at Vader and Vader... stared back at him, definitely not awake just yet and he should move and get out of here now, if he couldn't kill him like this, but he couldn't---
Something brushed through his hair, but he knew there was nothing behind him, and it wasn't even a sudden draft.
It felt like fingers, trailing along the crown of his head and then brushing his fringe aside. Vader's lips moved, slowly---
"You!"
Luke ripped himself away and whirled around, falling back against the bacta tank as his legs responded a second later than his brain wanted. Another red-clad and red-armoured guard. This he could do. Smiling grimly, he lit his lightsaber and pulled his blaster out of its holster, but before he got the chance to fire or the guard the chance to lunge forward, both of them paused.
The room was vibrating, and the guard was no longer looking at him. Luke, despite that he knew it was ill-advised, glanced behind him.
Vader was staring straight at him, and his eyes were burning yellow, not blue.
The plexi in the bacta tank cracked.
"Oh, hells---" Firing at the guard mostly seemed to make him start moving, because he practically threw himself out of the room instead of attacking him, and Luke followed unthinkingly as metal warped around him, the door shrieking a protest as it slid closed behind him. "Artoo! Start up the ship!"
He hardly heard the answering warble from the comm as he yelped and threw himself sideways into the wall, away from the lit pike that'd almost ripped into his shoulder.
"Going somewhere, rebel scum?" Slightly different voice, still muffled in the same way as the other guard's, and Luke grunted, whipping up his lightsaber between them to meet the pike's next downwards cut. His lightsaber didn't cut through the pike however, but rather met the plasma and held there, the pike hissing and spitting against the lightsaber's humming. Behind them there was the noise of metal being rent apart, and Luke knew he was living on borrowed time.
"Get out of the way!"
Out out out, he needed out.
"Funny, reb---!"
"Move!"
The guard staggered back a few steps for no seeming reason, and Luke didn't even question it (though when he'd get time for it later, he'd be frustrated that he still hadn't learned how to do that in a controlled fashion). He leapt forward, past the guard - and then staggered back a step as the floor in front of him was lit up with laser blasts. Cursing, he turned back around to deflect the shots aimed at him.
Or, well, that was the theory, and he had done this before, but it wasn't easy and not a single one of the reflected shots ended up where he wanted them to; that was, in the guard. The floor and walls, however, were soon littered with sooty burns and Luke was distinctly aware of the only sounds being his own breathing, his lightsaber's humming, and the whine from the guard's blaster as he advanced on him, forcing him to stay put by shooting around his feet every time he started to try and back off towards the turbolift.
The point was, there were no more sounds of tearing metal from within the bacta tank room, however muffled.
No sounds at all, in fact, and Luke glanced away from the guard for a second and toward the doors further down the corridor - just in time to see them open.
"No!" He couldn't take both of them. Stars, he couldn't even take Vader, and he knew it. As the man strode through the doors, once again fully suited, Luke's blaster was ripped out of his holster and went flying into Vader's hand.
Luke decided not to wait around to have his lightsaber likewise stolen and risked it, whirling around to run down the corridor again. There was a strange lack of blasts hitting either the floor or him, though, and he looked over his shoulder and stumbled to a stop. The guard lay face-down on the floor, a smoking hole on his back. Luke blinked, gaping down at the corpse.
Slowly looking up from the corpse at Vader, they started at each other, neither of them moving. The stale-mate was broken by the soft thunder of approaching steps from the other end of the corridor behind Vader. A second or two later revealed it to be an old man in a black cloak coming running, and surprisingly quickly too, and Luke watched, dumbstruck, as Vader turned around and shot him, too.
"W-what... what are you doing?!" Levelling his lightsaber up in front of him as Vader turned around to face him again and tossed his blaster behind him, Luke had no idea if the slight pause - was Vader swaying a little on his feet? - was intentional or not. The cock of the helmet definitely was, though.
"Very tragic, that rebel assassins would penetrate this deeply into the fortress, isn't it," the deep rumble shouldn't be able to sound sarcastic, relayed through a vocoder as it was, but somehow it did. Luke shook his head slowly, feeling like a pole-axed dewback.
"But that's..." That's not what happened. Not that it mattered. Vader's reasons for doing this didn't matter either, and he straightened up, glowering. "You're not in the tank any longer, Vader."
"Astute, young one. Put the weapon down. I do not wish to harm you."
"You don't..." He must be kidding, right? Luke grimaced. His earlier intention to flee was gone, now, and he set his jaw. "I have no idea why you did that, but don't expect me to thank you!"
He leaped forward again, and their lightsabers - where had Vader's come from, how fast had he lit it? - met with a crackling hiss. Vader was an unbending wall for a few, very long seconds, but then he slid half a step backwards, and Luke could feel the slight unsteadiness in his footing. Getting out of the bacta tank like he had had clearly affected him. This would be his chance!
The swing he took was too wild, too wide, but while Vader got his blade up only just in time, the deflection that followed forced Luke forward, or he'd leave himself open. Vader immediately followed it up with a thrust, but it seemed... far slower than it should be, and he could parry it easily, despite the clumsiness of the move.
"You have promise, Skywalker, but need training."
"Yeah, and whose fault is that?!" Angry again now and wondering why he hadn't taken his chance before Vader woke up (he knew why, still, and couldn't regret it), Luke lunged - and Vader stepped aside instead. Something push him in the back as he staggered from the lack of resistance, sending him sprawling onto the floor while his lightsaber was yanked away by nothing but the iron grip of the Force.
"Obi-Wan was an old, failed man and teacher, young one. I will finish your training," Vader rumbled and Luke rolled around, getting to his feet as Vader stepped up in front of him, the red lightsaber casting eerie light and shadow on the floor and up on Vader.
"Wh--- no you won't!" Who did Vader think he was? Who did he think Luke was, that he'd accept? Just because he was desperate to learn the ways of the Force didn't mean he wanted to learn it from just anyone. And definitely not from the man who'd killed his father, killed Ben and Biggs and so many others.
His blaster should be somewhere around here, shouldn't it? Vader had just tossed it away...
"We will continue this discussion later, Skywalker."
Luke was, for a crucial second, incredulously staring up at Vader, because that tone, even filtered through the vocoder as it was, sounded like Uncle Owen shutting him down when he thought he was being childish. Though with - somehow - more humour underlying the words than his uncle had ever used at that implied point in an argument and he couldn't believe he'd just heard those words from Darth Vader---
Something brushed his mind. Implacable, gentle.
It whispered sleep, and no matter Luke's shocked outrage, he slumped to the floor, out cold.
Darth Vader stood over his unconscious son, and despite the ruin he'd made of the bacta tank room, felt triumphant. He would tell his master his 'sanctuary' on Mustafar was no longer secure, that the rebels had found him, the bodies shot with a blaster more than enough proof, and that he would, for the foreseeable future, establish his base on Executor. It was, after all, both mobile, well-armed and well equipped to deal with his needs.
It would also be a good place to hide his son.
He shifted a little unsteadily on his feet as he relaxed, just a little - and then immediately stiffened again as the turbolift chimed. The knowledge that there was no way his master could know what had happened here just yet was the only reason he could turn around to face the turbolift calmly, and then stared at the angrily screeching little droid that rolled out with something approaching unreality.
For a second, despite that he could feel the slight resistance of Luke's leg pressing against his heel, he wondered if he was still in the tank. That couldn't...
He had heard the boy yell 'Artoo'... but that didn't mean it meant anything. Other droids would end up with the same designation, even when they were of the same make and type---
He turned the astromech off at a distance and resolved to examine that later. He needed to secure his son, and remove them all to the Executor. Turning around, Darth Vader knelt very, very carefully - the interrupted cycle had done him no favours, even less the way he'd practically broken out of the bacta tank - and picked his son up. Vaneé's room would do until after he'd had his talk with his master.
Standing up, Darth Vader paused. Stared down at the slack, but still slightly frowning, face of the young man he held, and clutched him a little more firmly, ignoring the murmured protest.
Finally.
Nothing would stop him now.