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After claiming the Death Star as a waste of money, the project was immediately dismissed with the Emperor’s personal declaration. Thrawn got funds for his ships back, and Vader tried to balance on the edge of the blade. Palpatine now not busy with toying a weapon of massmurder returned his undivided attention to his puppet. 

And Vader sweated like a naughty child after calls his master started to give him regularly, terrifyingly often. The Executioner’s crew wouldn’t gossip about the strange friendship between Vader and his first personal aid in years. Finally, they lived without a choking act every Sunday and were definitely happy with that. Vader dug through the minds of people he didn’t trust enough, whose loyalty didn’t suit the label ‘impeccable’, and he didn’t find anything to suspect treason. Not yet.

Incoming celebration of the Imperial Day felt like a sudden inevitable collision of a capital ship with a broken control panel. Burning panel. And Vader sat right in front of it hysterically trying to make something work before hitting the surface and exploding. He himself could manage a heavy landing, but the passenger, oblivious to horror happening around, could not. 

The Supreme Commander position chained Vader to Coruscant, the second figure of a new state they — rather his master — were running. His mask symbolised the power of the fleet he had under his control, and that meant Luke would follow. Here, deep in space, far away from the capital, his presence in the Force was undetectable, suppressed by the darkness his father’s broken heart emitted. The risk of coming closer put his life at stake. Palpatine mastered his skill perfectly, not an amateur inquisitor to fool, but a menace too dangerous to dismiss. He’d caught Luke under magnifying glass, if not vivisected, then enslaved into his servant. It was hard to decide which option seemed worse, and Vader hoped to escape both of them in the near future. 

He caught Luke reorganising documents sent for verification and signing-up procedure, his body crouched into a question mark at the desk, keying buttons to send commands, his free hand making notes. Actually, Lars — mentally always Skywalker, though — was the worst candidate for this kind of work. He never managed to do things right, he messed up with senators’ queries, putting their letters in the wrong order to answer, and he always screwed up updating the meeting schedule. Vader pretended he followed the initial plan to intimidate annoying politicians or other high-ranks getting on his nerves with their idiotic questions and projects, but eventually he had to program an automatic revision of the timetable connected to his permanently full inbox. 

The excitement lingering in the air told that now his son was reading through something from the dockyards. Kuat might have finished the new lambda-class ship Vader ordered to visit the parade, and, eventually, they might put an update log about the present in design for the little one. But, at least, seeing him uplifted made the uneasiness in Vader’s chest bleaker, and it dissolved into the background, subsided for a while. 

Finally, Luke noticed the disturber of his quiet work and stood up. “Anything for me so far, sir?” 

“What are you going to do on the Empire day?” Vader decided not to beat around the bush, going straight to the point of the visit. In fact, the order of sending the boy away wasn’t a thing requiring such a thorough performance. But questions might arise, and the last thing Vader wanted was to expose his son to all the galactic dangers. The title Luke would inherit supposed getting in all the troubles as well. Not a prosperous perspective. 

“I thought about visiting the parade, but aren’t we working?” 

“You’re not necessary at the scene under eyes,” Vader said too quickly, so Luke tilted his head. His fingers went still, as he pushed the datapads away, but his computer remained working, its screen flickering with blue light igniting his eyes. “I don’t need an aid to walk and watch the performance. If you put on the furlong today, you may return to your home world.” 

“For a day? Travel will take almost a week from Coruscant, that’s a waste of time,” he shrugged with visible confusion.

“From here it’s 16 hours of flight. And if you put it in the list today, I will sign it till the end of standard day.” 

Luke blinked. “I— I don’t know.” 

He hadn’t seen his family for years. He saved money he was earning on his account, probably, wanted to buy something expensive or to— Vader didn’t have time to wonder about his son’s financial shenanigans. Not when he desperately needed to send the boy away as soon as possible. Before it’d start looking suspicious for their surroundings, and logs might be checked too. 

“You may spend your birthday with them. And then return. The world won’t go mad without you.” 

“But the papers—” 

“It wouldn’t be so busy here with celebrations held in the palace. Now, I give you the last chance. Yes or no?” 

“Yes, sir. I’ll be on comm if you need me.” He saluted when Vader left the office. He needed a holiday from the disaster now under his permanent surveillance. And, also, he didn’t have to give ISB any reasons to look through his aid’s personal file. 

It was a tough week, Vader should accept. He hated all the political entanglements he was forced into during balls and celebrations, and he hated this one in particular, the hatred pure. It was the day his wife died. But this year he didn’t feel so miserable. His thoughts swirled around the memories of her voice and scent, but the little silly smile of hers, gorgeous, now had been securely tied to the other person — their son. When mulling over came to the point of no return, the one throwing Vader into an endless pit of void making his soul ache worse than his missing limbs joined with durasteel prosthetics, he always stopped himself. He thought about her eyes — he remembered Luke had the same, especially when they visited worlds with lush flora, and he could see water vessels through transparisteel while landing the ship to have a short walk. He had the same spark in his eyes, though with clear blue of Anakin’s irises. So distant now, the child remained painted on the other side of his eyelids, and meditation and even blinking seemed a good way to escape harsh reality. 

Of course, it didn’t go unnoticed. The tough conversations in the garden, between odd purple-red trees on the red carpet in the hall, the intimidating plunge, rustling memories and thoughts like book pages. Vader stored the precious deeply, somewhere, where Anaking belonged, now awake from a long sleep full of nightmares. Or, it would be more precise to say, that Vader finally accepted deep down, that he was still something he believed to be destroyed a couple of decades ago. 

But if a shard of Padme lived in their heir, then Anakin had all the reasons to come back. Not the thing he used to be, probably, but something soft, stored under the black armour. It occurred that to save the world there was something more than violence he trusted, another approach, untested and unsteady. The one Padme tried to teach him, the one he didn’t properly learn. The one his son now explained to him with mere existence. 

Didn’t mean Darth Vader abruptly decided to stop hunting the rebels down, but… he had things to work out. And he needed to make his mind faster than the Emperor’s spies could reveal the secret. 

Luke returned with a shade of tan on his skin. Just a couple of days under twin suns burned his hair to gold, the true child of the desert. The one Vader was an eternity ago. His mind in an ugly turmoil, and…

He started to avoid Vader. No doubts needed to be presented to realise that the boy sensed him on his way and disappeared. And the Executioner was big enough to let him win the race for a day two, but the virtue of great patience passed Anakin as it passed Vader. And his thin patience grew thinner until it just blew up.

So, he ordered Lars in his office. And he had no chance to run away and hide on the maintenance level, fitting his body into a droid’s door. Until then Vader never expected people to be able to bend their joints that effectively. His son was full of surprises and talents, and now he stood abnormally still and straight. But his gaze wandered around the room: on the seams of the floor, on the simple empty desk, on the windowframe…

“Luke Skywalker—” Vader realised his mistake before he could take the word back. 

Luke’s head went up finally when his eyes dug into him through the black shiny layer, straight into his soul. 

“So, that’s true?” he asked, his voice barely audible. “I put two and two, when I realised that part about winning the pod race,” he added with a stern expression. “Where have you been all these years?” 

“Thought you died with your mother.” 

His face lost its colours. He walked to the couch and sat, his eyes glued now to Vader’s helmet. “Then tell me. I wish to know the truth, Father.”