Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘—And that is how to properly friction stir weld a corner joint!’ Luke said with a bright smile as he tilted the finished result underneath the overhead camera, shutting down the welder machine and flipping up his face mask. ‘Like this, the tension strength increases exponentially and you don’t have to worry about the inherent instability of your hands due to your heart pumping blood through your veins, which allows you to control the torch better. It also, of course, makes for a straighter weld line that has less potential fracture points.’

He put down the finished durasteel corner example and picked up the welding “torch” again, flipping it to show the tool’s welding probe. ‘As you can see, it also produces less wear on the equipment,’ he pointed out as he trailed his pinky along the edge of the FSW torch. ‘There’s less signs of disintegration on the welding probe and shoulders, which means it can be used more often before replacement. I tried the regulations method taught to you people, and in my experience this method makes your welding bit last about three to four times longer, so it’s nothing to sniff at and should allow you to get more out of your FSW torch.’

He set the torch down again and clapped his hands together in lieu of smiling at the camera that couldn’t even see him. ‘And that’s about the long and short of it,’ he said happily as he began to wrap up the video. ‘If you still have any questions, let me know, and I’ll either add a footnote or make a supplementary video. As always, I expect you all to wear your safety gear and to check your equipment before use, and I wish you the very best of luck.’

With that, he reached up to the overhead camera and cut the footage, a short chirp telling him that the footage had been saved and stored. Sighing happily, he stripped off his thick protective gloves and ran a hand through his hair.

It’d been a few days since the party, and while the mess hall had been back to the usual SNAFU the next day, the high spirits originating from it were still lingering in the air, lightening the atmosphere into something welcoming and pleasant.

People seemed to smile more, and Luke hadn’t been able to go anywhere so far without dozens of passing greetings, many newly-familiar faces from the festival amongst them, and Luke could admit to himself that it filled him with warmth to see the surprised delight on their faces when he returned their greeting by Name.

There had been something new in those kinds of greetings as well, a kind of respect and something he would almost describe as reverence, for lack of better word, that made the sands in the back of his mind sing in triumph. He hadn’t quite known what to do with that, and when he had mentioned it to Vader when asking for advice, the man had just laughed and told him to go along with it.

Apparently, many of the Troopers and Crewmates did something similar for him, and it was meant as a sign of respect and faith in his abilities. Or at least, that was what Vader had been able to make of it, as people usually got cagey when asked about it, even in more subtle manners.

Speaking of Vader…

He huffed out a breath as he remembered the last few days. Waking up the day after the festival with Vader still guarding his sleep had been an exercise in balance as both fondness and the embarrassment of the realization that he had clung to the man like he was wont to do in less coherent states had warred within him.

On the one hand, Vader had stayed, and hadn’t so much as made a single complaint in the morning for having spent the night seated on the floor of Luke's room. On the other hand, he’d apparently latched on hard enough to the man’s presence while groggy with exhaustion and some residual worry that his Home had felt incapable of leaving him.

Needless to say, the morning had consisted of several awkward apologies and explanations on his part as well as amused and mild reassurances on Vader's part. It had been the last time Vader guarded his sleep, both of them returning to some semblance of normal, but Luke could admit to the fact that some part of him missed the comforting dark presence of the man enveloping him in his sleep like the softest and thickest of blankets. Okay, most of him. Most of him missed it.

On the other hand, something had definitely shifted in their relationship, and he couldn’t ever recall having anything quite like it before. Not even Biggs had felt this much like they were living between each other’s heartbeats sometimes, as if something had intertwined within them in this whole ordeal that went deeper than words could really describe. Something that felt fundamental and essential to who he was.

Like there was a— a string— no, multiple strings running between them. Threads of their own tapestry of life unraveling and reaching across the pale to weave into that of the other, and it felt like he found more and more of his own threads reaching out across and meeting Vader's own threads in the middle. Felt like it would be so, so easy to just reach out and unravel a whole ream of himself to stretch across that space where he ended and something else began. Like he could just reach out and strengthen those threads until it was less like interwoven tapestries and more like two dyes bleeding into each other, never to be separated.

It would be so easy, and some part of him that was unconcerned with the consequences screamed at him to take the leap, to just do it and damn what came after.

But he couldn’t.

Not until Vader was Free. Not until he was sure binding himself to his Home in that manner wouldn’t also bind him to the man’s Master.

He sighed as he hit the transfer button on the side of the camera, footage transferring to his data workstation for further processing and editing so it could be added to the budding archive he was building. Frankly speaking, even what he was doing now was already playing a very dangerous game. Each thread of himself that wove into Vader, and each thread that the man wove into him in return was a threat to his Freedom in and of itself, a hundred tiny hooks in him that, if his Home’s Master ever found out about, could prove to be catastrophic.

But.

It could prove equally catastrophic to Vader's Master.

Vader had a hundred hooks in Luke that pulled him ever closer to his Home, day by day, but equally, Luke had his own hooks in Vader, and he could tell that he was pulling on the man just as surely as he was being pulled on, drawing each other into an orbit while escaping the pull of the black hole of greed and gluttony that would devour them both whole for what they could give.

As long as said black hole remained unaware of that fact long enough for Luke to craft a plan, they would survive. They might even thrive.

Which he still didn’t even have the faintest inkling of how to accomplish.

He groaned as he rubbed a hand over his face, flopping down into the bureau chair in front of his data workstation and opening the file containing the raw footage. Vader was chainblind, yes, but even if he hadn’t been, Luke could already see that this would be the single most challenging Flight he could have possibly taken on. For one thing, Vader missed one of the main advantages his usual charges had and in fact, had the entirely opposite of it: anonymity.

Slaves usually weren’t regarded as anything much at all by their Masters, merely part of the backdrop like furniture or machinery, only there when needed and barely something to think of at any other point. There were exceptions to that rule, obviously, but rule of thumb went that a Master wouldn’t be able to pick out a former slave—even one they had kept chained as a cherished possession—from a crowd if even the barest of changes were made to a slave’s appearance. Different clothes, a change in posture and attitude, a wash to remove the grime from the skin or a dust bath to scruff them up, it was all usually enough to make them evade notice at a glance.

Not Vader.

His mentor was the face of the empire in more ways than one, and the darling of the PR department if one could make such a judgement based on the sheer amount of recruitment posters bore his image. Suns, even on Tatooine Luke had known what his Home had looked like due to the sheer extent of which his face was near-ubiquitous in the empire and—

Wait.

Luke froze in his seat as he went over that last thought one more time, something hissing with the sour tone of an oversight.

Vader's face…

Vader's mask.

The winds of the Storm sang with triumph in mind as he bolted upright in his chair, footage forgotten as a wild, dangerous, and utterly insane thought took hold in his mind.

Vader's face was ubiquitous in the empire. But the face they knew was his mask. And for all that he’d never seen the man without it, it had to be removable in some fashion or other, which meant that it could be changed. Modified.

Reinvented .

Vader, as he stood now, was perhaps the most recognizable man currently alive. But if Luke could figure out how to create something, anything that could take over the medical functions of the suit…

He already had one hurdle down.

Shivering as something shifted in his mind, he felt a chill run down his back as he thought the plan through. It would take a lot of work, more than he perhaps had ever poured into anything, as he didn’t know the first thing about engineering medical equipment beyond what had been shown to him by Vader while working on his own prosthesis, but…

He had several weeks of light duty ahead of him. If there was ever a time to study up, it would be now.

Tapping his fingers along the edge of his workstation, the sound of enamel against steel filling the room, Luke thought of what he would need to start learning as he sank back into his chair. Rubbing a hand over his chin, he began to go over what he knew about the nature of Vader's injuries.

The man was a quadruple amputee by his own admission, and had sustained critical fire damage in the past that was severe enough to put him into the suit that he was now known by, injured to the point that apparently not even bacta and the empire’s best—

Luke froze as his train of thoughts screeched to a halt in its tracks.

Best?

Something grated within his mind, like a port that wouldn’t fit its slot or two gears spinning out of sync, not matching quite the whole way.

Best… he assumed that the medical attention Vader had gotten was the best but… why?

Vader's medical treatment would have been given to him by his Master and Masters didn’t— they didn’t—

Suns fucking Fire.

Something angry and molten settled into Luke's stomach, just in time for his heart to drop into it as his blood boiled at the thought that had jumped to the forefront, taunting and whispering of something that seemed so at odds with the way everything in the empire was the hoarded results of hard labor of millions of inventors and researchers and engineers like him. Cutting, bleeding edge, the greatest of the greatest—

Or so they wanted you to believe.

Hadn’t he proven otherwise?

He growled low in his throat as his thoughts began to lead him down a dangerous path.

A dangerous path that made something inside him shriek with rage.

The empire tended to have the latest tech in all manner of things, and the resources to replace it with the latest model whenever the old one broke, true, but—

But they only did so with the things they valued.

They didn’t value the TIE Pilots. They didn’t value the Crewmates. They sure as hell didn’t value the Stormtroopers.

And Masters never valued their slaves. Not where it mattered.

And what the empire didn’t value, they created once, only once, and then drove to the point of— of—

Of breaking.

And discarding.

He closed his eyes. Mind be still, and heart be strong. Deep breaths. Mind be still, and heart be strong.

Deep breaths.

Suns and sand, he wished he could Name the emperor his Enemy!

Letting his growl sharpen into an outright snarl, he dismissed the file of video footage from his station and opened up the holonet, needing to confirm something. Within seconds he had set up the filters for the image search he had in mind, and typing in the keywords, he watched as his computer began to pull up image after image from eighteen years ago.

When Darth Vader had first entered the galactic stage.

He pursed his lips as he began to sort through them, discarding all the blurry, grainy shots from journalists and paparazzi alike trying to get a glimpse of the “mysterious newcomer” to the empire, until at last, he found a holo that came from an official press release, introducing his mentor to the galaxy at large. It was from the official imperial archives, and he pursed his lips as he hesitated clicking through, something shivering in the back of his mind at something… off.

He knew better than to ignore it this time.

Backing out of the search, he opened up the guts of his computer’s connection with the holonet and began strategically altering and erasing a few lines of code, namely, any identifiers on his digital trail through the holonet’s archives. His personal ID code as required by regulations, his workshop code, even his ship codes were all carefully erased. He would reinstate them later, but for now, he needed to be as unremarkable and nondescript as could be.

He hesitated on erasing the identifying code for Death Squadron though. He didn’t want to be identified, yes, but… a search for Darth Vader done from his own personal fleet? Especially if he coded his IDs to look like that of a standard issue comm? There was as little suspicion about that as there was about breathing, and not the kind Vader did either.

Grinning as he inputted the codes that would allow him to present himself as an ordinary Crewmate aboard the Tyrant, he hit enter and watched his alterations load in. Much of his advanced access would be cut off until he reinstated his proper codes, or simply went dark, but for this he hardly needed it. For this, he needed to blend in with the crowd.

Getting back into the search, he clicked the redirection link into the imperial public archives and was satisfied when the no warning came against the action. It seemed that whatever had been watching him had successfully been shaken off, at least for the moment.

Downloading the image of Vader at the highest resolution he could get, he proceeded with the rest of his plan and searched for similar images through later years. 2 ISC, 3 ISC, 7 ISC, 12 ISC, 16 ISC… there were pictures of Vader at the definitions he was looking for practically everywhere, and he quickly grabbed the ones he needed from the relevant timeframes before backing out of the archives and search, taking care to scrub the images of any metadata before he reverted his codes.

Pressing his lips into a thin line as he sorted through the images, he began to compile them into a timeline, setting them side by side and—

He’d really hoped that he hadn’t been about to find what he just had.

Suns and sand.

He sighed as he scrubbed a hand over his face, looking at the images of his mentor through the years.

Now he could be wrong about many things. It could be that the suits were purposely designed to look the same to preserve the image that was Darth Vader, Fist of the Empire, Specter of the Battlefields, The Black Death, and that the technology inside of them had been steadily advancing but—

But from all that he had seen of the empire, he thought that applying Occam’s razor to this issue brought about the far more likely answer.

It was also the answer that was making his blood simmer in a low boil and something inside him snarl in rage.

His Home had been living with the same medical equipment for over eighteen years. Eighteen years, and judging by the fact that he knew that Vader's suit regularly sustained damage in battle and had to be replaced or repaired, it wasn’t even the same suit.

Which meant that he’d been given the exact same medical technology again and again, for the last eighteen years. Medical technology that Luke knew to be outdated from the fact that Vader had repeatedly told him that his own prosthesis would be a step up from what the man had.

Suns, how was he only now putting all of this together?

He groaned as he dropped his head down to his workstation with a soft thunk. He knew why, of course. He wasn’t blind to the fact that losing a hand and the recovery process had made him unable to… really consider everyone else’s situation while his own had still been so dire, but even the comforting words of his Aunt that told him he couldn’t pour from an empty cup didn’t mitigate the irrational shame he felt at having missed all of this.

Thunking his head against the workstation once more for good measure, he roundly trounced those irrational thoughts with the fact that he knew now, and could start to make a difference now.

Even if he wished he had known just a bit earlier. He heaved in a deep breath and sighed it out, lifting his head up from where he’d let it drop. Well, no matter now. What’s done was done, and he had too much work ahead of him to allow shame to have anything to do with it. Then there was of course the matter that a new appearance did not a plan make, but at least he had finally found the place to start planning his Home’s Flight. Medical equipment.

Well, at least it wasn’t a small thing he had found. He would need to start deepening his understanding of how the human body (and he was… fairly certain that Vader was human, even if some of the things he could do seemed to be pretty out of the blue) and what kind of medical equipment would be needed for injuries like Vader's.

Which brought him to the second point: he would need to recruit someone aware of the extent of the man’s injuries who wasn’t in the pocket of Vader's Master and who would be willing to point him in the right direction in regards to what he would need to research in order to make Vader's medical equipment. At least he had a good suspicion of where he would be able to find someone like that, or someone who would know who he needed to ask, even if they didn’t know the information themselves. The only question would be whether or not Kix would be willing to help him out.

Clicking his tongue as he noted down a reminder to speak to Kix during his next checkup, he began to formulate a plan as to how he would be able to gather knowledge of the medical equipment necessary without raising any red flags amongst his mentor’s potential watchers. He would need to fake a paper trail to convince any watchers that his interest in medical equipment was entirely unrelated to Vader's own situation and, well…

Looking down at his own right hand as he idly fiddled with his comm unit, he grinned as he thought that, for all that he still had… mixed feelings about his own arm on occasion, at least he couldn’t have asked for a more air-tight alibi if he tried.

Rolling his shoulders, he opened up his notepad on his comm, set on the dictation feature, and pulled up both his video footage file and editing software, determined to get some work done while he brainstormed as well. It would be a good familiar exercise for keeping his hands busy, if nothing else.

Cutting, recutting, and polishing up the footage to archive quality while he occasionally murmured the beginnings of a plan to himself and his comm, Luke began to make steady progress along both checklists.

Clean up the audio, list what would be needed to run a clean Flight, cut and recut the footage, contemplate which people he would trust to help him in arranging everything, figure out the beats of the video to ensure that it ran smoothly, ponder how he would need to evade his charge’s Master and drawing blanks… Honestly, if it weren’t for his surroundings and the fact that the Master he was aiming to outwit was the very emperor of the known galaxy himself, he would’ve thought he was back on Tatooine, working on the next episode of Scrap Hunting while planning out a Flight on Jabba’s own slave quarters.

In the end, he had another finished video for the archive and the skeletal outlines of a plan. He would need to think more on it all, and resign himself to the fact that this particular Flight might take months upon months—if not years—to pull off, but he was determined to make it work and stubborn enough to try.

“Aggressive caring,” as his Uncle called it, had its advantages. One of which was that with lives on the line, he could bite into a problem and not let go until it yielded.

Hitting the enter key, the video titled “How To Friction Stir Weld A Corner Joint” went live and added itself to the archive, the third of the day so far.

Scrolling through the archive he’d made so far, he grinned as he went through the seven other videos already in the archive, each only fifteen minutes long or less, where he’d demonstrated proper soldering techniques, the ways to cut and weld various dissimilar materials, structuring polymers, and many other such things.

So far they seemed to have been well-received, and he spent more than a little time fielding questions from his various Corps members who wanted to pick his brain on all nitty-gritty details of engineering work. He hadn’t received any kind of hate mail yet, and neither had anyone given him the cold shoulder or the evil eye, so he could assume that he wasn’t secretly being resented and undermined by his own people with some degree of confidence, and really? After years of posting to the holonet, that was better than he expected this to go.

Closing out the archive and editing software while locking the notes he’d made on his comm behind three different layers of encryption and passwords, Luke pushed off from the workstation and stretched languidly, swiveling his chair around. That concluded that for the day. Any more and Erribas would likely come marching in and remind him off his Medic’s orders. Speaking of which…

Stretching out his prosthetic hand and performing the hand exercises Tai'li had advised him to do while he walked, he began running over his mental list of what else he could do for the day. Working was out, as he’d already completed what little he was allowed and Erribas had made it more than clear that they could and would inform Vader if he wasn’t adhering to his recovery orders, the traitor.

Still, that left a whole host of other things for him to do, one of which he was seriously considering at the moment.

Fingering the pendant around his neck, he thought of playing a working song or two for his Corps while they were performing their duties.

Ever since he’d revealed at the festival that he was, according to his Corps, “a damn fine singer,” he received more than one request for an encore or a song of some kind. Something which had frankly surprised him at first, but everyone had been so utterly genuine and hopeful in their requests for music that he hadn’t really been able to find it in himself to say no.

So these last few days he’d spent a not-insignificant portion of his time singing and playing his ocarina for his people, the cavernous nature of the main hangar making his one voice or instrument carry farther than it did even across the plains or through the mountains back home, reaching more people without him ever having to move a muscle.

Grinning slightly, he resolved to pick a song with as good of a beat as he was able to produce on any instrument that wasn’t a percussion instrument.

Maybe he should ask his Aunt and Uncle to send him one of those now that he had the money to afford an extra instrument? Perhaps a kalimba like Aunt Beru played? He had some practice on it, and the tones you could produce with the little thing were something he had loved to fall asleep to when he’d been a kid. If nothing else, it would support the instrument makers in the Wastes.

Musing over the choices to be made while the back of his mind still lingered on the plans now hidden on his comm, he opened the new and improved blast doors that once more guarded his workshop (with added security measures in place. Just in case).

Walking out the doors and into the hallway outside, Luke greeted the Engineers still working away at repairing the damage done by Vader in his rampage to get to him, over two weeks ago. The damage left from the gouges in the walls wasn’t particularly deep, but it was both extensive and time consuming to repair, something that he had pointedly read out loud to the man when he had gone to give a report on the progress made on the things he broke.

It had eventually devolved into them arguing back and forth over what the superior method of repairing the damage was, which had then devolved even further from there until they were both complaining about the method the regs said was the best, but an attempt had been made by him. That probably counted for something, yes?

Making his way into the main hangar where, finally, finally, finally the ATR-6s were getting their heat shielding and heat reduction upgrades, Luke looked around at his people with a small smile.

His people.

Even if it had been more than proven in the last two weeks that there were more people aboard who wanted him as an Enemy than expected, he had also learned that those people were outnumbered a thousand to one by the people who wanted him as a friend. Who accepted and wanted him amongst them for the exact same reasons that others wanted him dead.

And the others hadn’t survived the Law of the Desert, leaving him as the last part of a conflict he hadn’t even known had existed.

Him, and the thousands upon thousands of people who had apparently chosen his side.

He would prove himself worthy of that choice. One step at a time.

Greeting his people as he walked through the drydocks holding the massive ships, sparks flying all around as layer upon layer of newly-developed heat shielding was applied, he searched for a place to station himself where the music would be able to reach the most people.

Eventually, he decided on the pile of containers and assorted clutter situated in a cross-section between the rows of drydocks. Stacked high into a rough pyramid-esque shape, the topmost crate was nearly level with the top of the nearby ATR-6s, a good handful of meters off the ground. The perfect post if you wanted to be heard.

Grinning, he took a small running start and leaped onto the first spool of steel-cable as thick as his arm, keeping his balance as he threw his weight up and over the edge of the container it was leaning against. Running up the side of said container a few steps and clamping down his hands on the edge above him, he was incredibly grateful that Vader had apparently taken this sort of use of his hand into consideration. His prosthesis clutched the edge with the unrelenting grip of a krayt’s jaws and he didn’t doubt that if he really tried, he might even be able to dent the container with it.

Smiling grimly, he hauled himself up onto the container with ease. It wasn’t his real hand, and it would likely never quite match up to it, no matter how pleasantly it sang whenever he focused on it, but it had its uses. And clearly, it would pull its weight when it came to helping Luke out in his day-to-day life.

He could learn to live with it.

Clambering to the top of the towering stack of crates with swift ease, he looked out over the rows upon rows of ATR-6s getting modified in the large drydocks, the high vantage point even allowing him to see over and between the dozens of ships as the air was alive with the clanging, shrieking, and rasping of tools. Breathing in the distinct and sharp smell of burning metal while sparks flew everywhere around him, Luke smiled brightly while taking a seat on the edge of the container, overlooking the great ships crawling with Engineers. Walking over the tops, balancing on the edges with the same fearlessness of the mountain irrex ^[22] back home, making leaps between the ships in their row like gravity couldn’t touch them. They hung from the sides and crawled under the bellies of the ship as they did their work, and Luke, quite frankly, couldn’t be prouder of being allowed to lead these people.

But for now, he was relegated to the sidelines until Tai'li said that he’d recovered enough to resume his full duties, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t support them in different ways.

Pulling out his ocarina and setting his fingers to the tone holes, he took a deep breath, and began to play.

A low, trembling note coursed through the air, and he smiled against the mouth piece when he heard several cheers rise up from around the hangar, more than one calling his name as he began a cheerful tune with a rhythmic beat to it. It wasn’t a work song like he had been taught by his Aunt and Siblings, but it was a song that anyone in the navy would know, and sure enough, over the clanking of tools that began to grow more and more rhythmical as he provided the guideline of notes, the call-and-response of the work song began to echo through the air.

‘Oh with a stick and spanner, we work under a banner, of a cog, that keeps us moving on,’ a couple of deep, sonorous voices began to sing, and Luke was pleasantly surprised when he recognized Erribas as one of them. ‘And though the day is long, and we only have our song—’

‘They keep us working on,’ the other Engineers echoed back, holding the last tone until it could be felt in the very metal they were working with.

‘Oh with some oil and some grease, we need no thanks or please, as we upkeep, the ships we stand upon,’ the call team sang, the rhythm growing more and more elaborate and other Engineers became aware of what was happening and synced up their own work to the beat. ‘But as the engines roar, and our starships proudly soar—’

‘They keep us working on,’ the response singers droned as Luke slipped some grace notes into the song that, with the encouraging cheers of his Corps, turned into a short solo melody before the song continued.

‘Oh with a bolt and a screw, they’ll shout and cuss at you, and tell us, that it never mattered all,’ they sang cheerfully, ‘But when the engines fail, and it’s up to us to blaze the trail—’

‘They keep us working on,’ his Corps sang, a small sliver of smugness in the air amidst the triumphant song, and Luke barely kept from laughing as they continued on that way.

They all kept it up for a good long while, the singers occasionally falling silent when Luke began another verse in the song, cheering him on when he pushed his little pendant’s limits in the pitch it could produce. Trills and crescendos, rapid fire jumps between octaves that nearly had him fumble his instrument while something sang with the voice of the Storm in the back of his mind—it was an exhilarating thing to do while his people worked away at their tasks.

Exhilarating enough, in fact, that he didn’t notice the dark presence at the corners of his awareness had come a lot closer until he played out the last note, his Corps taking a moment to applaud and cheer at the cooperative performance they’d all just given. Smiling at his people, he followed the whisp of darkness at the edge of his mind downwards, and smiled even wider when he saw a familiar black presence looking up at him from the base of the container pyramid, fondness and pride brushing up against him.

Nodding back down to acknowledge that he was now aware of Vader's presence, his mentor tilted his head sideways with a little jerking gesture, urging him to come down.

Tucking his pendant back into his overalls and giving everything a quick stretch, Luke shot a quick gesture of warning to Vader and hopped off of the edge, not surprised in the slightest when he only fell a couple of centimeters before he was caught in the same intangible embrace that had lowered him off of the stage at the festival only a couple of days ago.

Ever since then, whenever Vader came to look for him and he’d managed to get up or under somewhere, the man now made use of this inexplicable ability of his after Luke had signaled his complete non-issue with it being used on him. He’d almost asked what it was, but something… something had shifted its attention towards him once he’d begun contemplating that. Something that he’d felt before.

It wasn’t his patron the Storm, that much was for certain, and it was none of the five Moons and Suns either, or the Desert. He’d felt their presence before and this was… something different. Something that had followed him since his very first memories, sometimes that whispered along with the Storm and the Desert when he called upon them.

He’d avoided it so far, as something in him knew that once he answered, he would never, ever be able to turn back. The road would be one for which he would have to follow to the end once he’d set the first step.

A road whose end he could not see, even in his dreams. Dreams which had only ever shown him an endless void, blacker than black, and a single spark, sleeping in a heart of darkness.

No matter how many times he’d had this dream when he’d asked the Desert what his end would be if he followed the Thing down the path it was urging, it had never changed, or gotten any clearer.

So for now, when that something stirred, he backed off, went the other way, until it had gone back to sleep again or lost interest in him. Perhaps it could be called cowardice, but he had responsibilities to uphold, people relying on him, and Vows to keep. And as much as his curiosity tempted him… there would be a later for it, hopefully, but there might never be a later for his Siblings and Home if he went off to follow the Thing down a path unknown.

Which meant that the question of how Vader was able to perform his feats of wizardry was kept a mystery. For now.

Floating through the air while being carried with all the care one would expect for a newborn kitten, he could satisfy himself with knowing that whatever it was, it was clearly Vader down to the core.

Smiling at the man while he was carefully set on the ground, he felt the strange sense of looking down to the familiar mask one moment and up at it another. Vader tilted his head at him as well, and a sense of warmth and something incredibly fond wrapped around him like a hug in greeting, much to Luke's delight.

‘Hey,’ he greeted quietly, taking up his usual spot at Vader's side, standing close enough to lean against him while the man angled himself to make a little nook for Luke to fit into.

A soft hum of static greeted him as the warmth wrapped tighter for just a moment. ‘Hello, little one,’ Vader rumbled back, quiet and content. ‘That was quite the performance.’

He shrugged a shoulder and flashed an unrepentant, lopsided grin. ‘They like the music, and who am I to deny them?’

‘Their Head Engineer, little one,’ Vader returned drily.

He adopted a surprised expression like that had just occurred to him, and he could already feel the amusement begin to well up next to him. ‘Really? Then I guess shouldn’t have let them get away with brewing alcohol in the empty oil drums either, huh?’

‘Only if you desire to have a mutiny on your hands,’ Vader retorted easily, voice rumbling more than usual as laughter wove its way through it.

‘True,’ Luke agreed blithely, ‘A drink a day keeps the “accidental airlock malfunction” at bay.’

Rumbling out a short burst of a static laugh, Vader placed a hand on his shoulder and began to lead him out of the drydocks and to the adjacent elevator station. ‘Very much so,’ he agreed easily, ‘You learn your wisdom fast, little one.’

‘As any Desert Child does,’ he agreed quietly, ‘But aside from all that, what did you come to get me for?’

Vader rumbled out a short sound as they made their way into the station, a whisp of something… odd made itself known in the presence of the man, a tangle of emotions that Luke couldn’t readily identify. ‘A few days back a matter was brought to my attention. Apparently, someone had breached the communications blockade while the lockdown of the ship had still been in effect. A breach which bore a very distinctive ID code,’ Vader noted, angling his mask down just a tad so that he would be able to give Luke a look from the corner of his eyes that could be felt even through the lenses and—

Oh.

Luke winced as he remembered how it had been surprisingly difficult to get his messages to send while he’d been in the recovery wing. ‘That… was a blockade?’ he asked carefully, stepping into the elevator Vader guided him to.

The vocoder droned out a long sound of static in a sigh that was distinctly exasperate. ‘Are you telling me you did not realize that you were bypassing a communications blockade, little one?’ Vader asked him, the air a complicated mix of something stunned and curious as the doors slid closed.

Luke rubbed a hand along the back of his neck as he nodded. ‘I mean, I did think that it was unusually difficult to get a message to go through, but—’

‘Luke,’ Vader interrupted bluntly, ‘Are you meaning to tell me that you have been sending messages to your family from deep space without submitting them to the communications department for screening?’

He winced. ‘Kinda?’

Vader stared at him, emotions warring around them as his mentor processed that statement. ‘How.’

He fidgeted in place under the man’s gaze and rubbed his neck again. ‘Uhh, I… may or may not have… thought that the rerouting of my messages was a glitch? And… fixed it?’ he admitted nervously. A train of thought that was a bit ridiculous now that he thought about it, but nine months ago it had seemed to make perfect sense.

He really should have reevaluated that assessment sooner.

Vader stared at him in complete silence for a while before sighing out a long, deep blare of static. ‘I do not know whether to disapprove of your flagrant disregard for the rules, or be proud that you managed to do so successfully and utterly undetected for this long, little one,’ Vader stated flatly, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down pointedly at Luke, who winced at the words.

‘The second one?’ he tried tentatively while looking up into the red lenses, feeling the air around him waver as he did so. ‘Please?’

Vader tilted his head down even further, and Luke got the distinct impression of a supremely unimpressed look. ‘You will close the backdoor you created, and you will show the Communications Officers exactly what you did to breach their security like this twice, as well as any other additional weak points,’ he ordered flatly, and Luke nodded dejectedly.

‘I will,’ he agreed quietly as the elevator doors slid open and allowed them through, already missing the easy chatting with his friends and family back home, but he got the feeling that this was completely non-negotiable.

Vader sighed again. ‘And as for your communications…’ he continued, uncrossing his arms and placing a hand on Luke's shoulder again, ‘I will arrange something so you can continue to maintain your connections, but for now… come with me.’ With that, he gently pushed Luke back into a walking pace as they headed out of the elevator station and into the railcar station, where a railcar was already awaiting them.

‘As I said,’ Vader rumbled quietly while the doors slid closed behind them, the railcar coming to life with a jolt as it began to hurtle along the tracks, ‘We caught your breach of the communications blockade this time, and subsequently, the return message sent by your family as well.’ He squeezed Luke shoulder softly, and the warmth from earlier wrapped around him once more. ‘They were incredibly concerned about you, and inquired after your wellbeing.’

Luke swallowed as he realized he’d never gotten any message back from his Aunt and Uncle after he’d notified them of the loss of his arm. Everything had just been so… hectic that it had completely slipped his mind. ‘What… did you say to them?’ he asked quietly as he sat down in one of the synthleather seats, thinking of what his Aunt and Uncle could have possibly felt knowing that he’d lost a limb like this.

‘…I told them that you would inform them of that yourself,’ Vader admitted quietly.

Luke's eyes snapped up, wide and open as they processed Vader's statement. ‘What?’ he asked, voice small as a bit of hope flared to life at those words.

‘I told them that you would tell them yourself, little star,’ Vader repeated, demeanor visibly softening as a sense of comfort carefully brushed up against him. ‘It is… not standard regulation, admittedly,’ his Home continued quietly, ‘But neither are your circumstances.’ He sighed lightly while rubbing a comforting thumb along Luke's shoulder, and he lightly leaned into the touch. ‘There are barely any regulations concerning what to do when an Officer and Engineer of your rank is targeted by a conspiracy in this manner. None, in fact. And even less so when it comes to matters involving family.’

Luke's eyes went even wider as his mind began to conjure up images of what that might mean while Vader continued his explanation.

‘Therefore, as advised by Medic Pelli and Medic Valent who are in agreement that it would do you good, I made the executive decision to allow for a brief moment of direct communication with one’s family when possible. Both in your case, and should it occur, in any future cases where applicable,’ Vader explained, darkness heavy and warm around Luke, filled with care.

Direct communication. ‘Does that mean—?’ Luke asked, cutting himself off halfway through the question, barely daring to believe it.

Vader inclined his head and an incredible sense of something deep and warm and safe briefly pressed in on him. ‘We are entering the Arkanis sector as the next stop in our patrol in only a few minutes time,’ Vader continued softly, ‘And all the necessary arrangements are in place. If you wish, you have a holocall slot scheduled first in line.’

A holocall… he hadn’t thought he would be able to have those with his Aunt and Uncle at any point in time. You needed both ends to have a comm station or unit equipped to take direct calls, and while that in and off itself wasn’t a chore—it was a standard feature, after all—it was a much larger issue the further away you were from the person you wanted to call. On-planet and the immediate atmosphere was the standard range, but anything beyond that required greater and greater power to ensure that the signal transmitted fast enough to actually carry a conversation. The moment you went outside the immediate system you were often just better off sending a message unless at least one party in the conversation could get their hands on a comm station that could transmit and receive its signal through hyperspace. You only needed one comm station to be able to open up a hyperspace link, but that kind of station would have to be able to be able to pull on a massive power supply to do the work of two.

And those kinds of stations were only available to either the rich, criminal, or military.

Apparently, he now qualified as the latter. Or rather, Vader qualified and had decide to use that for Luke's benefit.

‘Little one?’ Vader asked hesitantly, and Luke abruptly realized that he’d been quite for too long, ‘Are you… alright?’

Luke nodded, and abruptly realized with a sniff that his eyes were stinging with tears. He would get to talk to his family. ‘Yeah,’ he said, wiping his sleeve at his eyes, ‘Yeah, I’m fine, I just—’ He just what? He could hardly summon up the words if he tried, and none of them seemed adequate anyways so…

He abruptly stood up and, before he could think any better of it, wrapped his arms around Vader's torso in a fierce hug, burying his face into Vader's chest plate while the man made a startled noise, surprise and shock blooming all around them as Luke held on.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered into the chest plate, heart feeling like it had been poured full of something thick and molten. He would get to talk to his family, and Vader was reason.

A soft sound emanated from the vocoder, and the surprise and shock smoothed out into something deep and dark and safe and warm as Vader wrapped his arms around Luke in a mutual embrace, and he felt the hard, flat surface of something coming to rest on the top of his head. Smiling, he tucked his own head further under Vader's chin, hugging the man just a little tighter while trying to be mindful of the control box in his chest.

‘You are very welcome, little star,’ Vader rumbled back, voice like soft thunder so close to Luke's ear and so deeply comforting. ‘Now come, we are nearly there, and your family is waiting.’

Sure enough, the railcar began to slow down, and reluctant though he was, Luke released his Home from his embrace as the car pulled into the station. The doors slid open, and they both walked out, side by side, Luke nearly leaning against Vader in lieu of being able to continue the hug that had been so very comforting.

People gave them a wide berth in the station, and Luke didn’t even bother to wonder why. He knew that people had been more than a little cagey around Vader these last couple of weeks, and when he’d watched the security footage of what was being called “The Massacre,” it wasn’t hard to see why. If everyone was much like Zev or General Veers when it came to killing, he didn’t doubt that it was a nasty sight to see, and admittedly, he’d been morbidly fascinated by what Vader had managed to do to Ozzel, even as his instincts had been yowling that it was all taking too damn long to finish the job.

He hardly had the room to talk though. Aside from Ozzel, he’d done worse to slavers when the situation had called for it. Sometimes you really didn’t have any other choice than to bury a snatcher squad hot on your trail in a landslide, a tar pit, or lead them right to the edge of your local greater krayt’s nest, and that was that.

But still, that wariness had begun to dissipate ever since the party, and even though people were still giving them plenty of space, he could see subtle smiles in the throngs of people here and there too as Luke and Vader passed through.

Surprisingly enough, Vader directed him to the private elevator instead of one of the public ones that could lead them to the comm department. Glancing up at Vader with a questioning look, he felt the man softly squeeze his shoulder in reassurance as he glanced down in turn, the panel hiding the elevator already sliding open along with the doors.

‘I assumed you would wish to speak freely to your family,’ Vader murmured as they stepped into the elevator. ‘The comm station in my chambers is unmonitored and better equipped to handle the call than the ones situated in the communications department. In this manner there will be no interference with your conversation and no infringement on your privacy.’

Luke smiled and bumped softly against Vader's side as the elevator took them up to his Home’s chambers. ‘You assumed right,’ he muttered back. ‘Thank you. That means… more to me than you might think.’

Vader hummed lowly as the elevator chimed and the doors slid open. ‘I think, little one,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘That I might understand better than you would expect.’

Before Luke could ask what that meant (though, remembering what he knew about Vader's past, he had a pretty good idea), the man had already begun to step out and Luke quickly followed suit.

Walking down the familiar corridors steeped in his Home’s dark and ubiquitous presence, Luke thought with a smile that perhaps out of all the places on the Lady, here it felt the most like he’d stepped outside her protective bounds and was simply treading the starless night outside.

It felt like coming home.

Vader guided him with a gentle hand into his meditation chamber, past the hyperbaric chamber itself, and into the office adjacent to the meditation chamber. Dropping his hand from Luke's shoulder and lengthening his stride as he walked over towards the bureau situated in the middle of the dark, windowless room, Luke looked around while the man fiddled with something on—or in— the desk.

The office was bare and highly utilitarian from what Luke could see, but, oddly enough, and in a way that contrasted with what he had seen from the man’s office on Imperial Center, there appeared to be things on the wall here.

Curiosity piqued and Vader still busy with what Luke could only assume was setting up the holocall, Luke walked over to the odd fixtures on the wall and was surprised to see that they were… holo picture frames. Picture frames that flickered to life the moment Luke approached and—

Oh.

Staring in wonder at the holodisplay in front of him, Luke saw his own face looking back, laughing as he attempted to get one of the mouse droids from the GMN to sit still while he modified the little droid’s optic sensors, failing miserably due to the efforts of the mischievous droid. The holo played out to show the mouse droid—who he remembered Leia later Naming Toby—making a break for it and crashing straight into Luke due to the aforementioned optic sensors needing replacing, sending both of them sprawling over the floor.

He remembered that day. Vader had come in to ask him about the tune up for his TIE AD-X1 while Luke had been busy working through another dozen or so mouse droids to give them the upgrades needed to enter the GMN, and this had happened right before the man had announced himself.

Where had this holo come from though?

Walking along the walls, Luke watched as his proximity triggered the other holodisplays to flicker to life, and… all of them were of him. Him and the droids of the GMN. Him and his Corps, both in professional settings and just horsing around. Him and the Troopers, during SUTA project, checking Wick’s armor while he and the man talked, during the various times he’d been invited to hang out with the 501^st, during the trip to Imperial Center. Him giving various presentations, from the very first improvised one that had started the whole SUTA project madness to the final ones in Imperial Center.

Even ones of him at the party, carried around on the shoulders of Bellow and Creek as he’d greeted all those people and he was struck every time by how it looked so… reverential from an outsider’s perspective. Trailing a finger along the picture frame, Luke caught the flickering of blue from the corner of his eye as the holodisplay directly next to him came to life, displaying a holo of him looking up at the flower rain of the party in wonder, the perspective showing that it was definitely Vader who had taken the shot.

All of them, they were of him.

Where had they come from?

‘You are not the only one who knows your way around a comm unit’s camera, little one,’ Vader's voice came from behind him, a lot closer than he had expected and he startled as he whirled around, finding Vader looking at the holodisplays as well. ‘I… hope you do not mind, but recently I have begun taking footage of moments I wish to remember.’ He tilted his mask slightly to glance towards Luke. ‘The ones most dear to me are the ones I choose to display here to… remind me of better times when the world seems too bleak.’

Luke opened and closed his mouth, trying to respond but coming up blank for a while. What to say to that? He chewed the inside of his cheek as he looked at all those little moments of joy, most of them he remembered as having taken place just before Vader had come in or announced himself or otherwise. And—

‘They’re… all of me,’ he whispered softly, wonder in his tone and unable to find any other sensible thing to say.

Vader rumbled out a short laugh, static seeming to tingle through the air. ‘Yes,’ Vader agreed calmly, contently. ‘It is… easy to find the joy in life when you are around, little one.’ A brush of tender warmth pressed up against the edges of Luke's awareness. ‘Very easy indeed.’

Luke looked back towards the holos and remembered those moments. The moments pictured, yes, but also the moments right after, when Luke had spotted Vader and he remembered—

‘Likewise,’ he whispered back, remembering the happiness that had colored his memories whenever Vader had shown up. The safety and comfort. The simple joy of seeing his mentor, his Home, and maybe, someday, if he was quick and clever and lucky enough to manage the Flight of a lifetime, his Father. He smiled. ‘You make it easy as well.’

Luke was hardly even surprised when he felt the air abruptly tangle into a snarl of emotions, even as Vader didn’t say a word. The man clearly had little experience with these kinds of matters, and with every tidbit revealed about his past, Luke was less and less surprised over why. Vader had had a rough life, something which, even if the man hadn’t directly told him so, he still would have realized from the simple fact that he was chainblind. And while he didn’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of it, it was clear that simple, uncomplicated joy was in desperate short supply in his life. A thought that saddened Luke as much as it made him determined to stick close and try to show that there was something more to life than what he’d gotten used to.

So he simply stood there, watching the little moments of joy in the picture frames while Vader sorted out his own emotions. Stood there until he heard a faint chime from behind him that startled both of them out of their musings.

Turning around revealed that the desk with which Vader had been working was now emitting a pulsing blue light from the center-back of its work surface, perfectly in sync with each chime.

‘Ah,’ Vader noted with a hint of triumph in his presence, ‘The connection has established itself.’

Abruptly yanked back to the present and remembering that he was here to talk to his family, Luke's heartrate skyrocketed as a wide smile spread over his face. Barely stopping himself from running over to the desk, he ignored the amused rumblings coming from Vader as he nearly bounced in place.

‘So when does the call start?’ Luke asked, feeling nearly over the Moons at the idea of getting to talk to his Aunt and Uncle again for the first time in months.

‘As soon as you take a seat and allow me to make the explanation, little one,’ Vader chided, laughter in every line of his posture. Laughter that only got more prominent as Luke nearly vaulted into the leather chair behind the desk, only to find that it was large enough to nearly swallow his frame whole.

Definitely Vader-sized, he thought as he arranged himself in the bureau chair, trying to find a comfortable position in the furniture that was clearly made for a person three times his size. When he was at last arranged in a semi-dignified position in the chair and Vader's shoulders were shaking with laughter, Luke beamed up at the man with an expectant grin.

‘Alright then,’ Vader rumbled, amusement in every tone as he walked over to the spot next to his chair, placing a hand on the backrest as he leaned in to point out a few, discrete buttons in a circular arrangement on the bureau. ‘This is the panel that controls the short-range communications array, which is the one you will be using, little one. The center button is for beginning and ending the call,’ he explained with a brief gesture, before shifting over to those around it. ‘These are for volume control, and the others are for functions such as tracing the call, sending through various file forms, and activating the holodisplay or similarly deactivating it. I ask that you not touch any but the first three,’ he finished, pointing out the remaining controls.

Luke nodded once. ‘Got it,’ he agreed seriously, before glancing between the blinking light and the control panel. ‘So just… press the button and begin the call?’ he asked, feeling giddy and nervous at the same time.

At Vader's nod, he reached out and pressed the center button. The pulsing blue light blinked rapidly thrice and—

The holodisplay came to life in a brilliant blue, his Aunt and Uncle looking back at him in equal parts surprise and joy.

‘Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru!’ Luke cried out in greeting, feeling like his mouth might split in two from how wide he was smiling.

‘Luke,’ Aunt Beru breathed, clasping a hand over her mouth before she and Owen seemed to catch sight of the person standing next to him. ‘And—’ she cut herself off, looking wide-eyed at Vader.

Something that Vader evidently realized as well, as he let his hand slide down from the backrest to Luke's shoulder, squeezing lightly to draw Luke's attention away from the crystal-clear image of his Aunt and Uncle for a moment. ‘I will be meditating in my chamber,’ he informed Luke quietly. ‘Enjoy your time with your family, and come find me when you are done.’ A question that didn’t sound like a question, but Luke had known his Home long enough to catch it anyway.

‘I will,’ Luke responded just as quietly, smiling warmly at the man as Vader nodded back. With that, he watched as Vader swept out of the room, his mantle billowing in his wake. As the door slid shut, he looked back to his Aunt and Uncle, biting his lip to stop from laughing as he saw their stunned faces. ‘So,’ he said, barely keeping himself from laughing, ‘How have you all been?’

‘Luke Skywalker,’ his Aunt said flatly, a hint of danger in her voice and Luke was very, very grateful all of a sudden that he was having this conversation while a couple of lightyears away from home. ‘Was that who I think it was.’

‘Yeah,’ he admitted with a smile, ‘That was Vader. He’s the one I’ve been telling you about in my messages. Apparently, there’s a lot more to him than the news would like to have you believe.’

‘Luke,’ Uncle Owen said with a shaky quality to his voice. ‘Nephew. Are you telling your Aunt and I that the person you Named your Home… was Darth Vader?’ At Luke's nod, he rubbed a hand over his face while heaving out a heavy breath. ‘Luke, what have you been doing?’

‘Hey now,’ he rebuked gently, raising an eyebrow, ‘Who’s been spending nearly every day with him these last few months?’ His Uncle shot him a dark look, and Luke met it evenly. ‘I’m telling you, there’s a lot more to him than they show him to be. Besides, aren’t you the one who told me to never trust what was being sold to me until I see it with my own eyes?’

His Uncle breathed out a heavy breath and Luke braced himself for another argument, but Aunt Beru quickly intervened and placed a hand on his Uncle's arm, shooting him a look that Luke clearly recognized as a warning to keep it civil. The tension retreated as both his Uncle and Luke himself calmed down, the tension retreating back under his Aunt's gaze.

A gaze which she turned to Luke with a smile that only wavered slightly around the edges. ‘So. Darth Vader,’ she muttered, breathing deeply as her smile settled into something truly genuine. ‘You always push beyond the possible, don’t you, na krayt’ta?’ ^[23]

Luke smiled as he rubbed the back of his neck, ducking his head slightly in embarrassed even as he shrugged his shoulders. ‘It just kinda happened,’ he admitted with a grin, looking up at his Aunt and Uncle and feeling relief when he saw that both their expressions had softened enough that he felt the worry of another argument with his Uncle abate. ‘But he’s… kinder and more patient than you might think. Much more gentle too,’ he admitted as he recalled all those little moments over the last nine months. ‘He’s… taken me under his wing and been teaching me all kinds of things, as well as sticking up for me and keeping me safe.’

‘That… does sound rather different than the news you usually hear about him,’ his Aunt admitted with a smile, tension leaking out of her shoulders as well as those of his Uncle.

His Uncle, sighed deeply with a shake of his head and smiled wryly, even if it didn’t reach his eyes just yet. ‘Looks like you’re leaving us in the dust again, Nephew,’ he noted, gruff voice contradicting the softening in his expression. ‘Care to fill your old Aunt and Uncle in on the adventures you’ve been having? Apparently with the right-hand man of the emperor?’

‘And how that resulted in us getting a message telling us that you— that you lost a hand?’ his Aunt added lightly, even as her voice wavered when it landed on his prosthetic right hand.

He blew out a long breath as he pulled a hand through his hair, thinking back to the months’ worth of—admittedly—crazy adventures that more often than not had resulted in even more unexpected situations. ‘How long have you got?’ he asked with a wry smile.

His Aunt and Uncle shared a look that Luke recognized from seeing it all too often when he’d come home all too late, covered in grime and the occasional scratch, and a head full of adventure. Eventually, they both sighed and turned back to him. ‘We have the time,’ Aunt Beru said easily, ‘We arranged with the Darklighters to be allowed to use their comm station, so we’re not on a time limit.’

‘Or watched,’ his Uncle added significantly, and that, more than anything else, made the last tension in Luke's shoulders bleed away.

‘Alright, then get comfortable, ‘cause this is… going to be a long one,’ he admitted with a sheepish smile that made his Aunt laugh brightly.

‘With you it always is, na krayt’ta,’ she said with a smile.

‘Tell me about it,’ his Uncle grumbled with a roll of his eyes.

And with that, Luke launched into his story, telling his Aunt and Uncle about his arrival on the Lady, how big everything was there, how he’d feared he would get lost both physically and mentally in the structure, and how Vader had immediately set about making sure he was comfortable and taken care of—much to the relief of his Aunt as she murmured a quick blessing to his mentor. How he’d assigned him tutors and guides and even put in the legwork himself in getting Luke up to speed, giving lessons and advice and allowing Luke to drop by with questions no matter the time of day.

How he’d realized then and there that there was a lot more to the man than the rumors had told him, and how he’d set about finding out more about the man, chipping away at his walls one bit at a time until he could see beyond the mask. How he’d found a whole different man behind the prickly exterior, one who was gentle and kind and more than a little mischievous.

A part at which his Uncle barked out a laugh while Luke groused about the man’s favorite prank of sneaking up on him unnoticed, Luke whining that no, stop laughing, he was supposed to be on his side here!

He told them of the new people he’d met along the way as well, and how, while he had a rough start of it with many of them at first, he managed to win them over with the occasional nudge from Vader to point him in the right direction.

Of his Corps, and how terribly proud he was of them and the fact that they let him lead them, something his Aunt and Uncle had shared a smile over that Luke didn’t quite understand. Of the Troopers and the Pilots and the Crewmates and all the different types of droids. He told of them of Captain Piett, now promoted to Admiral. Of General Veers, and Zev, and how he would be joining him soon enough as Luke helped run him though his own Flight.

He definitely didn’t miss the proud look he got from his Aunt as he explained that bit. Or the exasperated one from his Uncle as he looked towards the sky to ask the Suns for strength.

He recounted them the whole ordeal of the SUTA project, how much work had gone into it, how much the people had helped him, how supportive everyone, especially Vader, had been, and how, in the end, he’d managed to pull it off. A story which Aunt muttered a small blessing of the Moons over while his Uncle gruffly told him that he’d done good by the bucketheads, even if they were some of the rudest people he’d ever met.

He followed up with the whole adventure on Imperial Center, agreeing with his Uncle that it was just weird that you could rename a whole planet like that, and telling them all about the gardens and palace and the presentations he’d given. At which point his Aunt interjected and told him that they’d both definitely been made aware of those, watching them at home over the holonet. His Uncle told him that they were both obviously very proud of him and that he’d done a great job of it, but really, did he have to lay it on that thick?

Luke rolled his eyes as he told his Uncle that sometimes you had to dazzle them to get them to go along with your plan, and continued to tell them about the whole party that had come after, and how he’d discovered that one of his long-time online friends was, surprise, the Princess of Alderaan. And he had the holo to prove it.

Proudly showing off the picture of Zev, Leia, and him at the gala, he laughed as his Aunt gushed over how terribly handsome and beautiful they all looked in their formal dress while his Uncle rubbed the bridge of his nose while muttering about how of course it was a Princess. Of course.

‘You really couldn’t have picked at least one more down-to-earth type to shoot the breeze with?’ his Uncle grumbled, even as Luke knew that he didn’t mean it.

‘Well, since they picked me, Uncle, not really,’ he pointed out with a grin. ‘Especially Leia. I don’t think anything in world and the stars beyond could get her to do anything she didn’t want to.’

‘She sounds brilliant,’ his Aunt opinioned happily, that gleam in her eyes that his Uncle had always quietly told him was just like that of Grandmother Shmi. ‘A proper young lady who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to get it.’

‘Considering she threatened General Veers without so many words and he took it as a threat between friends?’ Luke noted with some amusement, his Aunt brightening up even further, ‘Definitely.’

‘Alright,’ his Uncle said, rubbing his chin, ‘She does sound like the decent sort. But there’s been more than one rumor that you met more of the royal types that evening. Any of them that you wanna tell us about?’

Luke mood abruptly soured and he nodded as he squared his jaw. ‘Yes,’ he said darkly as he remembered one of the other royals he’d had some interaction with that day. ‘One.’

His Uncle raised his eyebrows even as something hardened in his eyes. ‘Now that doesn’t sound like your usual cheer, Luke,’ he noted calmly. ‘Who was it?’

‘And what did they do?’ his Aunt added with a similar hard look in her eyes, both of them sensing the shift in him.

Luke sighed as he prepared to give the whole story. ‘So, you know how there was some time between the first and last presentation I gave?’ he began cautiously, waiting until they’d both nodded their affirmation. ‘Well, in that time I got summoned by the emperor.’

His Aunt made a surprised noise while his Uncle's face hardened even further. ‘You didn’t say you’d talked to the recluse himself,’ he noted bluntly, ‘And judging by that look you’ve got, Nephew, he was none too pleasant either.’

‘What went wrong?’ his Aunt asked quickly, a roughened kind of edge in her voice that every Child would recognize, and one that Luke was more than familiar with from when Flights crashed or nearly did and he came home with more than his usual share of scrapes.

‘Nothing,’ Luke answered bluntly, ‘Everything went exactly as planned by either of us, and that’s precisely the problem.’ He growled under his breath as he remembered the Red Guard coming to sweep him away with barely a word, and how, with one order, the emperor had managed to put a desperate fear into Vader's heart that Luke hadn’t seen truly leave until days later. ‘He sent a fucking snatcher squad to “retrieve” me for his summons,’ he snarled out, his Aunt going pale in the face as she abruptly sank her nails into his Uncle's arm, his Uncle not even noticing as he swore under his breath.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed grimly, ‘And he wasn’t even particularly subtle about it. They would’ve just kidnapped me without anyone knowing or accompanying me if it hadn’t been for Vader thinking on his feet and the Troopers refusing to leave me.’

‘A right blessing of sense from the bucketheads then,’ his Uncle growled out. ‘And blessings on your Home as well, for keeping his head.’

‘He barely did,’ Luke noted with a grim set to his jaw and sadness in his voice. ‘For good reason too. While talking with the emperor, who is a lying creep of sleemo by the way, I— I realized that the resemblance of the methods he used wasn’t just a coincidence,’ he whispered out, pulling a hand through his hair as he recalled the kneeling Red Guard, Vader's fear, the man having been a Child and still calling the man “Master.”

‘He’s a Master,’ his Aunt whispered out, her conviction bleeding through in her voice beyond a shadow of doubt. ‘He’s a Master, oh Luke.’

Luke nodded miserably. ‘Not just a Master,’ he admitted quietly. ‘He’s Vader's Master.’

His Uncle swore loudly while his Aunt clenched her jaw, eyes wide and filled with a fear that spoke of memories and experience. ‘Darth Vader is— Your Home is—?’ she whispered out, unable to bring her to finish the sentence.

‘Yeah,’ Luke answered miserably as he thought back to his mentor’s fear of the emperor. ‘He is.’ Luke sighed deeply as he leant back against backrest that was at least three times to large for him. ‘Suns, he really is, even if he doesn’t see it himself.’

‘What do you mean?’ his Uncle asked urgently, but his Aunt was already shaking her head in horror.

‘Luke, na krayt’ta, are you—? No,’ she whispered miserably, making the sign of Laa, the youngest Moon and her patron, over her heart, ‘Please tell me—’

‘Chainblind,’ Luke muttered miserably. ‘And some part of him knows it too.’ He sighed deeply. ‘The part of him that was once of the Desert knows it too, and before you say anything—’ he spoke out in a hard tone as his Aunt and Uncle drew in sharp breaths, ‘He invoked his Right, and renounced his Name, so no, I don’t know much more and what I do know is under a Vow of silence.’

The room was silent for a while, just the electric hum of the holodisplay and the deep breaths of Luke as he went over all the times where he knew he’d seen something in Vader, something that knew that none of this was right, before it had been chased out of view again.

Eventually, his Aunt spoke up again. ‘Luke, are you— are you sure about— about him?’ she asked quietly, and he could hear that same war within her that he had felt when he’d first looked at Vader's gift of a shiranaa tree. That war between belief and disbelief and knowing which you’d rather have proven right.

But Aunt Beru wouldn’t be getting the result she wanted like Luke did.

With a sigh, he sat back up and began rolling up the right sleeve of his overalls, exposing his prosthesis fully and showing off the intricate line work on the arm. ‘See this?’ he asked as he held up his prosthesis for his Aunt and Uncle to see, dispassionately noting the flinch in them as they were confronted with the reality that Luke really had lost a limb. He let them look at it for a moment longer as he traced a finger over the lines of the Storm, the Runner’s wings, the Star Paths, and the Suns and Moons.

‘The engravings aren’t my design,’ he told them quietly. ‘In fact, I had no kind of input in them whatsoever beyond the fact that Vader knew my background as a runner. Knowledge which I entrusted to him after we’d had more than one discussion on the topic.’ Just two, but they didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t like it mattered anyway. He knew he could trust Vader. ‘Vader designed this, of his own volition, and without any kind of input from me,’ he explained gravely as his Aunt and Uncle looked at the prosthesis as if spellbound. ‘How would you explain this, if not for the fact that once, long ago, he was one of us?’

They were quiet for a little while longer, but eventually, Aunt Beru nodded slightly, her eyes shining as she looked at the prosthesis. ‘He was a Sibling,’ she whispered, voice rough. ‘And so far from home.’

‘Suns’ Fire, the poor bastard,’ Uncle Owen muttered as he rubbed a hand over his face, looking twice his age for a moment as he glanced back up at Luke's arm.

‘Yeah,’ Luke agreed quietly. ‘Yeah, I can agree with all of that,’ he said as he lapsed into silence for a moment, running his right hand through his hair, the strands feeling odd against his sensors.

A moment that was broken when Aunt Beru made an odd choking noise, and looking at her, Luke saw her staring at the floor, wide-eyed and pale, tears still in her eyes as he clamped a hand over her mouth.

‘Auntie?’ he asked quietly.

‘You’re going to run his Flight,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper and rough with tears, ‘Aren’t you?’

He swallowed as he nodded once. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted, ‘I am.’

‘Absolutely not,’ his Uncle immediately interjected, hard and uncompromising.

‘Owen…’ Aunt Beru tried, but his Uncle shook his head hard as he glared at Luke.

‘No, I forbid it,’ he repeated harshly, jabbing a finger in Luke's direction. ‘You are not running this Flight,’ he hissed, ‘Under absolutely no circumstances are you allowed to.’

Luke looked his Uncle in the eyes and… paused for a moment. Nine months ago, this would have been enough to, if not stop him, at least lead to a long, bitter argument that drew out deep into the night. It would have soured Luke's whole mood and left him bitterly wondering why his Uncle seemed intent on opposing him at every turn.

But now?

He sighed deeply as he straightened up in the chair at least three times too large for him, and felt like there was probably no better visual to show how deep he was into a situation far too large for him, but that he would have to manage anyway. Looking his Uncle in the eye, Luke felt… calm. Calm and perhaps a little regretful for what he was about to say.

‘Unfortunately, Uncle Owen,’ he told the man who had raised him evenly, meeting the furious gaze head on, ‘I’m afraid you’re in no position to stop me.’

His Uncle growled, narrowing his eyes. ‘What.’

‘Owen, enough,’ Aunt Beru tried again, shaking his arm, ‘He’s right—’

‘No,’ Uncle Owen denied, shaking off her grip and leaning closer to the camera of the holodisplay while Luke remained perfectly still, something brewing under the surface of his skin. ‘You are not running this Flight, young man, do you understand me? No more backtalk! No more attitude! You are not doing it and—'

‘Uncle Owen,’ Luke interrupted, his voice carrying a hard authority that made even the most rusted of gearheads sit up and pay attention, his Uncle no different. ‘You are not my keeper.’

His Uncle flinched backwards as if slapped at those words and his Aunt gave him a reproachful look. ‘Luke,’ she whispered, horrified, but did not refute him when Luke shot her a look asking her if he was wrong.

He sighed as he looked his equally horrified Uncle in the eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle,’ he murmured sincerely, ‘But it’s the truth. You do not own me, and I am no longer a kid you can expect to simply obey. And as much as I wish that I didn’t, I… I have to do this. I have to. And if you won’t agree, then I’m sorry, but I can’t let you stop me.’ He breathed out a short breath as he squared his shoulders and held his chin high. ‘I can’t. Not on this.’

The room lapsed into silence again as Uncle Owen held his gaze, stubborn as a bull bantha, but Luke would not give in. Not here. Not where it mattered.

Something that his Uncle evidently also realized as he swallowed heavily and sighed, his head dropping down into his hands as he leant heavily on his elbows, suddenly looking so very, very old.

‘Uncle?’ he asked cautiously, the part of him that was still a kid, looking up to his Uncle as he showed him how to hold and shoot a rifle terrified that he might have broken something irreparable, even as he knew that he couldn’t give in on this.

‘Suns,’ his Uncle sighed heavily as he rubbed a hand over his face, his hair sticking up slightly at his fringes from how often he had repeated the gesture so far. ‘I know,’ he said at last. ‘Suns and sand, I know.’ He looked up tiredly at Luke, something terribly sad and lost in his eyes. ‘But admittedly, I had hoped you didn’t, Nephew,’ he said quietly, ‘Not yet, at least.’

Luke's shoulder’s slumped as he realized that his Uncle had been playing his bluff and he’d just called it. ‘Uncle…’ he said sadly.

‘This could kill you, Luke,’ his Uncle retorted simply, something bone-tired in his voice. ‘And… and it likely will.’ He heaved out a heavy breath. ‘Suns’ Fire,’ he muttered, ‘You’re talking about trying to run the right-hand man of the emperor through a Flight, do you even realize what that would mean?’

‘Don’t mourn me before I’m dead, Uncle,’ he murmured chidingly, a wan smile on his face as the back of his mind whispered at the truth of his Uncle's words. ‘I met the emperor, and have lived with Vader for these last few months. I’d say I have at least a marginally deeper understanding of the situation than you,’ he pointed out, not even having the energy to be sarcastic about it and only coming off as terribly sincere as he was feeling. He closed his eyes as he leant back in the chair.

‘You’re right though,’ he admitted. ‘This… might end up killing me. In fact, if I’m not extremely careful, clever, and lucky, it will kill me.’ He sighed quietly as he cracked open his eyes to look at the saddened but understanding faces of his Aunt and Uncle, even if his Uncle looked especially unhappy at his understanding of the situation.

‘But I have to try,’ he asserted firmly, righting himself again in the chair. ‘Everything that I stand for and that I Vowed says that I should. And…’ he trailed off, unsure of how to explain the rest.

‘…And you can’t leave him there,’ his Aunt spoke up quietly, understanding in her eyes even as some part of her looked like she’d lost Luke already. ‘Can you?’ She smiled weakly when Luke shrugged his shoulders and looked away. ‘You truly are so much like your father,’ she muttered quietly, something unbearably proud and sad in her eyes.

That made him perk up. ‘Yeah?’ he asked just as quietly.

‘Yes,’ she said with a nod. ‘I… only met him once, but in that time he was always rushing off to help someone, even when it was already too late.’ She leaned against Uncle Owen, and glancing over, he saw his Uncle blinking away uncharacteristic tears as he nodded along to his Aunt's words. ‘He would’ve been so proud of you Luke,’ she said with a knowing smile, ‘So very proud.’

Uncle Owen sighed as he rested his head on top of Aunt Beru’s. ‘Too right he would,’ he muttered. ‘He’d have been yelling it from the rooftops.’

Luke pressed his lips together as he nodded, feeling tears sting at his own eyes as well. His father… There was never much talk of him, for all that his Aunt and Uncle respected him a great deal. Aside from the fact that he'd been a navigator on a spice freighter, that he’d left Luke behind on Tatooine with his Aunt and Uncle and dying shortly after, and that he was a Freed man and overall a good person, he knew very little of him. To hear that he was like the man whose specter had always seemed to lurk around every corner of his life… to hear that he would have been proud of who Luke had become…

‘Thank you,’ he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper and broke halfway through. ‘I…’

‘We know, Luke,’ his Aunt reassured him, smiling lightly. ‘And we’re…  so sorry that we’ve never let you know that before, but…’ she trailed off, looking to Owen, who sighed.

‘But you’re so much like your father, Luke,’ he explained quietly. ‘Always haring off on the next adventure. Always the first to volunteer when there’s danger afoot that needs fighting.’ He sighed again, something deeply pained in the sound. ‘Always looking to the stars, not knowing that one day, you might die so very far from home,’ he finished, voice soft with regret.

That… ‘You sound like you knew him well,’ he noted, feeling the impression that his Aunt and Uncle had always given of only knowing his father briefly shake on its foundation.

‘We only met him once,’ his Uncle told him quietly. ‘Too short for any kind of proper family claim, but that time was more than enough. He was a storm of a person, and I don’t think he even always realized just how much he rattled and shook the world around him. Larger than life, in a certain sense.’

‘He also jumped right in when help was needed,’ his Aunt chimed in, eyes far away with memories. ‘No hesitation. No second thoughts.’ She smiled slightly, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘And then he was off again. Off to help someone else. And a few years later, we got you.’

‘Did you see him again?’ Luke asked eagerly.

‘No,’ his Uncle told him with some regret in his tone, and Luke's hope deflated. ‘You were brought to us by a friend of his.’ His Uncle wrinkled his nose. ‘Old Ben,’ he said as if it were a curse word, and his Aunt rolled her eyes at her husband’s distaste for the kooky old hermit, but—

‘Wait,’ Luke said, head spinning with this new information. ‘Wait. Old Ben knew my father?’

‘Well enough to be entrusted with you,’ his Aunt said with a light smile. ‘At least, that’s what he told us. He said he’d remembered being told about us sometime in the past, and figured that, since he couldn’t raise you himself, he would entrust you to us.’

His Uncle scoffed. ‘Good thing too,’ he groused. ‘Can you imagine him trying to raise a babe on a diet of snakes and eopie milk?’

‘Oh hush,’ his Aunt scolded his Uncle, ‘He tries his best.’

Luke, meanwhile, felt like his head was swimming with this new information. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘That I need to have a talk with Ben next time I see him.’

‘Be careful about that,’ his Aunt warned him sternly, ‘We only asked him a couple of times about your father since every time he nearly burst into tears and looked like he aged ten years on the spot. He might tell you something, but if he asks you to back off, you will, young man, you hear me?’

He nodded rapidly, and made a mental note to brace himself if Old Ben actually got talking. Whatever could upset a crazy hermit wizard was likely not going to be too good for his mental health.

‘It’ll probably be a long time coming anyway,’ he noted idly, before the reality of the situation sunk in again. ‘If it comes at all.’ He had to remember that there was no guarantee for success here. None at all.

His Aunt and Uncle's demeanor sobered up alongside his own as they remembered the context in which this was being discussed. ‘Yes,’ his Aunt agreed with a faint smile that he could tell she didn’t feel. ‘If it comes at all.’ She heaved a shuddering breath and looked towards Uncle Owen, a silent conversation taking place that Luke couldn’t hope to unravel.

Whatever was discussed, it ended with both of them close to tears as Uncle Owen sighed deeply, nodding resignedly. Gripping each other’s hand, they looked back at Luke, who straightened up in anticipation of the verdict about to be delivered.

‘You’re sure about this?’ Uncle Owen asked him seriously, voice rough and seemingly on the edge of breaking. ‘You know the risks of— of running this Flight in particular and you’re sure?’

Luke nodded firmly. ‘Yes.’

‘And there’s nothing we can say to ask you to please not risk yourself like this?’ he tried, an edge of desperation to his Uncle's voice that yanked at Luke's heart but that made him square his jaw all the same.

‘You know the Vows of a Runner as well as I do, Uncle,’ he pointed out gently. ‘This is what I chose for my life, what I Vowed to the Storm, and there is no turning back now.’ And even if he could… that fear whenever Vader had been confronted with his Master… ‘Especially not now,’ he admitted quietly.

His Uncle heaved a shuddering breath and nodded, his Aunt gripping his hand in quiet support as she smiled, first at him, and then at Luke. ‘Then you have our blessing, na krayt’ta,’ she Vowed quietly, the tongue of Karilaa trilling through the room with something ancient on its heels. ‘Blessing of the Storm, may the Moons guide your path and the Desert hide your tracks.’

‘Remind the poor bastard of what it means to have Freedom in your blood,’ his Uncle instructed him with a shaky grin that was real nonetheless. ‘And bring him home.’

Luke grinned back, relief and elation coursing through him as he nodded, nearly beaming. ‘I will. I promise, I will.’ It wasn’t a Vow, nothing that would bind his very soul to his word, but it was a promise nonetheless, and his word was on it. He wouldn’t fail here. Not as long as he had breath in his lungs and a beat in his heart.

‘We know you will,’ his Aunt said, smiling a smile that made the lines around her eyes crinkle up, ‘And we couldn’t be prouder of you.’

‘But be careful, okay?’ Uncle Owen said while wrapping his arm just a little further around his Aunt. ‘We trust that you know what you’re doing but… it’s lonely out there for a runner without your family or Siblings at your back.’

Luke laughed softly and dipped his head in a half shrug, half nod. ‘I will, Uncle,’ he agreed, ‘But if you think I’m alone out here, I haven’t been telling the stories right.’

‘Oh, let your Uncle worry,’ Aunt Beru chided with a grin, ‘You know he’d be lost otherwise. Now, on to the more practical things. Do you have a network out there? Something to stand you by?’

‘Of a sort,’ Luke admitted as he shifted gears into the more practical side of it all, the one that held no room for fear or sentimentality. ‘They’re no runners or Children, but they do care. And even if they don’t have much room to work with, there are a lot more of them than there are on Tatooine. I know for a fact that a good part of them are willing to work with and defend me.’

His Aunt hummed thoughtfully as she parsed that information. ‘How many souls are we talking about here, dozens, more?’

Luke barely stifled a cackle as he remembered the festival from a few days ago. ‘Try several hundred thousand,’ he corrected with a smirk, laughing when his Uncle seemingly choked on nothing and his Aunt's face went slack with shock. Then her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

‘Very funny, na krayt’ta,’ she deadpanned as she gave him a look that Luke knew all too well from his youth and when he’d run his mouth too far even for her taste. It felt good to be able to defend himself with reality stranger than fiction in this case.

‘I’m serious as a heat stroke,’ he told them through his laughter, pulling out his datapad to find the pictures Slice had taken it upon himself to send to him. Selecting the one showing him being carried on Bellow and Creek’s shoulders with a true sea of people around him, all reaching out to him, he flipped the pad over and showed the picture to his Aunt and Uncle. ‘See?’ he said, pointing to the small figure in the middle of a crowd of outstretched arms. ‘That’s me. This was during the surprise party they threw for me a few days ago, to welcome me back to the daily life on the Lady. The people wanted to greet me personally, so Bellow and Creek took it upon themselves to carry me around like that to make it easier.’

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ his Uncle said as he rubbed his chin, looking at the massive crowd of people gathered around moving and pulsing like a murmuration of keshtrels ^[24] in the evening.

‘And you’re sure that they would help you, and that they’re not just going along with the crowd?’ his Aunt asked, a hint of wonder in her voice as she looked at the holo.

‘Considering that the reason I was out of commission was because the higher ups had conspired to kill me and the rest of the crew wasn’t having it?’ Luke noted lightly, ‘I’m pretty sure. They might not be willing to help run the Flight itself when the time comes, but they’ll likely at least be willing to look the other way. That much I trust.’

‘Alright! Back it up!’ Uncle Owen said while looking at his with a bewildered expression. ‘There was a conspiracy of what!?’

Luke grinned, and wasn’t that an odd feeling? He could laugh about this now. He could probably still cry about it too if pressed hard enough, but the laugh felt just as real. ‘Yeah, that’s how I lost my arm. Vader killed them though, so it’s all good.’

Aunt Beru looked at him oddly before sighing deeply. ‘Alright, na krayt’ta, from the top, and with all the details, please.’

Luke grinned even wider until he beamed, with excited gestures he launched into the story of sabotage, treason, intrigue, conspiracy, and eventually, of healing and Home too. With all the messy details and video clips lent to him by the clones, the one of The Massacre nearly turning his Uncle green around the gills when they’d come to Ozzel’s execution even as he looked to be approving. His is Aunt, meanwhile looked to be about two seconds away from cheering Vader on.

‘Well,’ his Uncle noted when the video was finished, still looking a bit green in the face, ‘Even if he needs a Flight out of the chains of his Master, he can clearly hold his own in defense of you well enough. You picked a good one to Name your Home, Luke.’

‘He’s decent enough,’ his Aunt agreed happily, ‘But he’s a bit of a showoff as well. It sends a message though, I suppose.’

‘Right?’ Luke said with a grin. ‘I mean, he’s no runner, but then, I don’t think he really needs to be.’

‘You don’t fan your feathers unless you have the teeth to back it up,’ his Uncle agreed with a nod, regaining some color in his face as Luke clicked away from the video. ‘Well then,’ he sighed, smiling shakily, ‘At least when the Flight goes through, he should be able to defend himself without you having to guard him too much.’

Luke smiled sadly at his Uncle as he dipped his head in a nod. ‘Yeah, he should.’

‘Good,’ his Uncle said, nodding, ‘That’s— that’s good. I—’ He cut off, swallowing hard while breathing deeply as his Aunt rubbed her thumb over his forearm while smiling at Luke.

‘We’ll help you in whatever way we can, Luke,’ she promised with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘But… promise your Uncle and I that you will remember the lessons She taught you, okay? That you’ll stay in the cover of your patron. The Storm and Desert know your Name, na krayt’ta,’ she whispered with that familiar tone that shifted the sands in the back of his mind as if in agreement. ‘Don’t forget that.’

It wasn’t a Vow he could make, even as he could promise, and they all knew it. Flights were dangerous and unpredictable, and no matter how much you tried, things could go belly up in less than a second at any moment. Even the aid of his patron, the Storm, and the unusually intense attention it and the Desert paid to him could all come up for naught the moment he slipped up even the tiniest bit and didn’t manage to correct his mistake in time. No, a Vow was not something a runner could make on the success of their Flight, and they all knew it.

But he could promise.

And so he did. ‘I will,’ he promised, his word heavy on his tongue as he spoke it into Existence. ‘I promise.’

His Aunt's smile widened and saddened at the same time, an unspoken understanding in the air that didn’t need to be explained. ‘You do your Name proud, Luke,’ she whispered, her smile at last touching her eyes. She laughed with a shudder to her voice and quickly wiped at her eyes. ‘Now then, with that out of the way… is there anything else you want to share with us about this new friend of yours?’ She grinned as Luke's shoulder slumped with his laugh. Of course.

His Uncle grinned as well as he rested his head on top of his Aunt's again. ‘That’s right…’ he muttered, affecting a thoughtful tone and look. ‘Our dearest Nephew forgot to mention that a certain someone goes by the Name of Darth Vader and talked all about him like he was just another coworker.’ He gave Luke a mock-stern look that had him playfully cowering while failing spectacularly to hide a wide grin. ‘Details, Nephew. And skip none.’

‘Alright, alright,’ he gave in, holding his hands up in surrender. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Well for one thing,’ his Aunt began with mischievous look. ‘What sparked all of this? What’s the story behind this Naming, na krayt’ta?’

Luke huffed out a breath and smiled slightly as he remembered what had started this all. ‘A song,’ he admitted. ‘A song and… a tree.’ Luke chuckled as he shook his head. ‘And the fact that Vader can apparently be both nervous and shy.’

Aunt Beru made a delighted cooing noise as leaned against Uncle Owen, resting her head on his shoulder while Luke began telling the story of how Vader had gifted him a whole tree as his first attempt at clarifying to Luke what he meant to him, and, when that failed, had been altogether too shy and nervous to correct Luke when he’d made the wrong assumption in thinking Vader didn’t know what the tree meant on Tatooine. And then, when he’d been distraught, panicking, and miserable, how Vader had sung him to sleep with a Desert song. A lullaby, to be exact. A point in the story at which his Aunt's eyes had already begun to water, and his Uncle was looking to be close behind.

When he’d arrived at the next morning and the conversation they’d had, minus everything that would violate Vader's Right to Secrecy, Aunt Beru had silent tears running along her cheeks as he spoke of Vader's nervous confession to him. By the time he’d reached him hugging the idiot and telling him that he was his Home too, Uncle Owen had closed his eyes and pressed his cheek against Aunt Beru’s temple, a small light glittering in the blue light of the holodisplay telling him that he wasn’t much better off than his Aunt.

When he finally finished the story with him falling asleep in Vader's arms again, his Aunt was dabbing at her eyes with her sleeves, giggling softly. ‘Well,’ she said, once she’d regained some of her composure, ‘That’s certainly a very different side than you usually get to hear from the news.’

‘He’s a lot like Uncle Owen that way,’ Luke agreed with a grin, ‘Prickly on the outside and with a gooey soft center.’ His Uncle made an affronted noise, proclaiming slander while he and Aunt Beru laughed. ‘But yeah,’ he said quietly when they’d all calmed down again. ‘That’s the story of how we Named each other Home.’

‘Home…’ Aunt Beru whispered with a far away look for a moment as something seemed to occur to her. ‘Home, and nothing else?’

Both his and Uncle Owen’s eyes widened as they caught what she was implying. ‘That’s right,’ his Uncle muttered. ‘Didn’t you say there was a second meaning to that fancy gift of his? Something about welcoming children into the family on… Naboo, was it?’

Luke averted his eyes as he remembered that particular part of this whole… thing that was still building between him and Vader, rubbing his neck. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted, ‘And… I want to. Want to ask him, that is. And I think he wants to ask me, but…’

‘He’s a shy one,’ his Aunt finished knowingly, ‘Yes, that much is clear. But… you haven’t asked either?’

Luke sighed unhappily, sinking back into the chair as he recalled all the circumstances around this all. ‘I can’t,’ he admitted miserably. ‘Not while he’s still chainblind and in chains. It’s dangerous enough to have even Named him my Home while he’s still in chains.’

‘Oh, Luke,’ she sighed fondly, sadly, her voice heavy with the wisdom of experience and loss. ‘If you feel that it is best, then of course we stand behind you, but na krayt’ta,’ she said earnestly, ‘If you want it, if you truly want it…’ She sighed. ‘Some things… they’re worth risking it all for.’ She took Uncle Owen’s hand in her own, smiling quietly. ‘They’re worth it.’

Luke huffed out a soft laugh. ‘I know,’ he murmured, ‘But… this Master—Vader's Master—he’s like nothing you or I have ever seen before, Auntie. He’s dangerous in a seeping, creeping, and insidious way, and something tells me is that all he would need is a single opening to lock a chain around my neck as well.’ He grinned tiredly at her. ‘He’s dangerous like the sandswimmer is, not the sarlacc, though he presents himself as the later.’

‘I see,’ Aunt Beru muttered pensively, before breathing deeply. ‘In that case, it may be best to do as you say, but know that when you are ready, and if he accepts, you can tell him that I would Name him Brother as well.’ She laughed softly. ‘Moons know that he wouldn’t ask himself.’

‘The same goes for me,’ Uncle Owen agreed with a grin. ‘You tell him that once you two get around to coming home again, I’ll be more than happy to Name the man who could Name you Home my Brother.’

Luke beamed bright enough that he thought he probably strained something, but he hardly cared. His family would Name Vader Family. Just like that. And sure, it might yet be a long time before he could finally find himself in the circumstances where he would be able to ask Vader if he could Name him Father but…

But when he did, they would be Family.

Or at least, if Vader agreed to it, but, well, he remembered these last few weeks. Remembered how Vader had cared for and comforted him. How pleased he’d been with Luke drawing close to him, and how the warmth around the man felt so much like— like love.

He remembered it all, and something in him whispered, knew, believed that should he ask… should he ask, Vader wouldn’t say no. At least not to him. He had no idea how willing he would be to be adopted as a Brother by people he’d never met before but the mere fact that the possibility was there was enough to make Luke smile bright.

‘Alright,’ he agreed, giddy and a little breathless. ‘I’ll tell him. When the time comes, I’ll tell him.’

‘Good,’ his Uncle said with a determined grin. ‘If we’re gonna help you with this whole mess of madness, the least we can get out of it is a Brother.’

‘Owen,’ Aunt Beru scolded. ‘We’d help him regardless.’

‘We would,’ Uncle Owen agreed, ‘But if we’re going to defy the old recluse himself and make off with his prize chained while we’re at it, we may as well expand the family too.’

His Aunt sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she muttered, before turning to Luke. ‘And you,’ she said while pointing a finger at him. ‘You’re going to keep us updated, young man,’ she said sternly. ‘With Names, this time,’ she added, Uncle Owen nodding along sternly. ‘I would like to know if you’ve gone and befriended another royal before we have to find out months later again.’

Luke winced, but nodded. ‘Got it.’

Aunt Beru’s expression softened again. ‘Good. And ask us if you need anything. Our reach might be limited, but nothing beats the Desert when it comes to runner’s aid.’

‘That it doesn’t,’ he agreed with a grin, before sobering up a little. ‘Don’t suppose you could send me my kit? I’ve got my knife, but something more would be… appreciated.’

His Aunt and Uncle looked at each other, seemed to come to an agreement, and turned back to him, Aunt Beru smiling wryly. ‘I don’t think it’s the tether and grappling hook you are referring to, right?’ At Luke's telling shrug, she chuckled out a knowing laugh. ‘It might be a while before we figure out how, but… we’ll see what we can do.’

‘Thank you,’ he said sincerely, the mere thought of having his usual kit relaxing something he hadn’t known had tensed up. ‘That would help tremendously—’

Something thudded loudly, and judging by his Aunt and Uncle's reaction, it was on their end as they turned around to face the sound. Someone called something from off-screen, and his Uncle got up to talk to them, his Aunt keeping her eyes on them. After a few moments, his Uncle came back. ‘It seems we have something of a time limit after all,’ his Uncle told them dryly as he took a seat. ‘That was Nalaa asking if we were done yet. Apparently, it’s been over three hours and last sunset is in less than an hour, so if we want to get home before nightfall, we have to be on our way.’

‘Suns, that long?’ his Aunt asked, a bit shocked, Uncle Owen shrugging in a “what can you do” manner. She sighed, and looked back to Luke. ‘I’m sorry, na krayt’ta, but…’

‘Go,’ he told them with a smile. Three hours. That was more than enough. ‘You don’t want to be caught out after dark, and I’ll be fine.’

‘The fact that the last time we saw you, you had an arm more and a Home less would argue otherwise,’ his Uncle retorted as dry as dust.

‘Owen,’ his Aunt hissed, but Luke could only laugh. It was true enough, after all.

‘But I’m still alive, right?’ he asked with a grin. ‘Still alive, and making plans to stay that way.’

Rolling his eyes, his Uncle shrugged a shoulder in reluctant agreement. ‘A point was made, I guess.’ They both held their respective faces for approximately three seconds before bursting out laughing.

His Aunt huffed as she shot them both a narrow look, but before long her mouth was twitching into a smile as well. ‘You two…’ she grumbled good-naturedly, before letting the smile shine through in its entirety as they both calmed down. Uncle Owen sat back down next to her for a moment, and Luke felt their call draw to a close.

‘I will miss you both,’ he told them truthfully, ‘But… I won’t deny that this has been the biggest adventure I’ve ever been on and I… I don’t think I’ll be ready to give it up for a long while yet. Maybe not ever again, really.’

His Aunt and Uncle shared a look before both smiling softly at him, something quietly resigned but peaceful in their eyes. ‘I think… I think we always knew that would be the case,’ Aunt Beru admitted. ‘You’re a Skywalker, na krayt’ta, not meant for the ground. Even if you carry the Desert and Storm with you, the stars have always called to you, and I think that some part of us always knew that the day you answered would be the day you would find your home for good. And it wouldn’t be on the ground.’

‘Always larger than life,’ his Uncle added on with a rare, gentle smile. ‘It’s in your blood. And though we feared what it might mean, we also knew that one day… one day there would be no stopping you as you outgrew our small home and began to long for something more. Began to long for the sky just like your father.’ His grin widened, and Luke flushed as he realized his Uncle was looking at him with pride. ‘And now look at you. Look at you. Only a few months, and you’ve grown so much. The leader of thousands, Home of Darth Vader, and planning to try and run a Flight like no other before. You’ve grown into those wings of yours, Nephew, I’m not surprised that you want to stretch them further.’

‘We’re proud of you, na krayt’ta,’ Aunt Beru whispered with eyes that shone as wet as Luke felt his own grow. ‘So very, very proud.’

‘That we are,’ Uncle Owen agreed as he wrapped an arm around Aunt Beru’s shoulders again. ‘And if you want to keep flying, we’ll stand by you. But please, Nephew,’ he said quietly, ‘Remember that you can always come home.’

‘I will,’ Luke promised, wiping a sleeve over his eyes. ‘Suns, I will.’

‘Then remember one more thing,’ Uncle Owen said, reaching out a hand towards the display, palm turned towards Luke. ‘Remember that no matter what, we love you, Luke.’

‘We love you, na krayt’ta,’ Aunt Beru said, copying his Uncle’s gesture. ‘No matter how far you fly, or how much you grow, we will always love you. Remember that.’

Luke carefully placed his hand over their own, and although he touched only light, for a moment he could swear he felt their warmth. ‘I will remember,’ he promised, eyes stinging with tears as he smiled wide enough that his cheeks hurt. ‘And I love you too. Remember that as well. I love you both too.’

‘We will,’ they both promised, and there was no hiding anyone’s tears now, not theirs or Luke's.

‘Remember to write,’ his Aunt told him softly. ‘And remember to take what you want, no matter the risk, if it’s what your heart truly desires.’ It didn’t need to be clarified as to what she was referring.

‘I will,’ Luke told her, tears sliding down his cheeks. ‘And play a song for me, next time the Storm howls?’

‘I will,’ she promised, voice filled with more emotions than Luke could possibly decipher.

‘And remember to keep your allies close,’ his Uncle told him, voice gruff even as his eyes were kind. ‘You’ve found some decent folk out there, so keep them close, you hear me?’

‘I will,’ Luke told him as well, ‘Look out for HK-77 for me?’

His Uncle huffed out a laugh. ‘I will,’ he agreed thickly, ‘The rustbucket’s grown on me anyway.’

There was a thumping on their end again, and Luke knew that it was their signal that his Aunt and Uncle had to leave. ‘I love you both,’ he told them one last time, tears hot on his cheeks even as he smiled. ‘And one day I’ll introduce you to Vader. You’ll love him, trust me.’

Aunt Beru gave him a brilliant smile while Uncle Owen chuckled. ‘I don’t doubt we will,’ he told him earnestly.

‘And we love you too,’ she returned. ‘May the Storm give you wings until we speak again,’ she murmured to him, the tongue of the Desert sounding so sweet coming from her.

‘And may the Desert watch over you both,’ he returned, keep his eyes on them even as his Aunt reached to something out of sight until the last things he saw before the call disconnected were their smiles and eyes that looked at his with so much love.

Then a beep sounded, and his hand was only touching air.

Letting his hand slowly drop from where it’d been outstretched, Luke sunk back into the oversized chair as he smiled a bit to himself. His family loved him, a fact which he’d always known, but hearing it again directly from them made something inside him settle and strengthen again. His Aunt and Uncle supported him on his mission to plan a Flight for Vader, and even if the whole galaxy turned against him, he knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he would have them in his corner.

It wouldn’t be easy, and frankly speaking, it could still very well kill him. But with his family supporting him, it all seemed a lot less daunting and a lot more like a challenge. He would need to plan, and learn, and brush up on every trick in the book as well as find ways to try and begin training again without drawing too much attention. He would need to turn his very understanding of the Lady and the empire inside out if he was going to get a lay of the land, and even then, he probably still wouldn’t be done.

But now, after talking to his family, and with his Home and hopefully future-family next door as his darkness slowly began to press up to him again with inquisitive little pokes, he could see the paths he would have to take clearer than ever.

Grinning wide, he pushed himself up out of the chair and hit the button to properly end the call, intent on finding Vader again now that he’d regained his footing and foundation, remembering the course ahead.

Walking out towards the door to the meditation chamber, Luke knew it wouldn’t be easy.

But he also knew that for every obstacle, and for every hinderance, there would be a way around. For every locked door, a key. For every confrontation, an answer. He just needed to find them, learn them, and use them.

It wouldn’t be easy, but he remembered now the first lesson the Storm had ever taught him.

In order to learn the difference between falling and flying, you would have to take a leap of faith. In order to find the key to success, you had to know how to fail. In order to walk the line between life and death, you had to accept both.

And in order to run Vader along his Flight?

He would simply have to try.

Smiling bright and with head held high, Luke stepped through the door.

Ready to try.

1. [22] Mountain Irrex: An odd-toed ungulate native to the Kashmi Ridge on Tatooine. Four-legged and standing at between one-point-five and two meters high at the shoulder, these oddly reptile-like mammals patrol the vast mountains and cliffs of the northern half of the planet. Herbivorous, they often migrate between the patches of green in the mountain valleys in order to sustain their large bodies. Prized for their wool, milk, shed horns, and ability to carry heavy loads over mountain terrain, these creatures were partially-domesticated by the Children dwelling in the mountains long ago.
2. While a wild herd of irrex might reach the size of about fifteen to twenty individuals at its largest, herds managed and guided by the Children can reach sizes of up to several hundred. These kinds of herds are often managed by whole clans of people, and they lead a nomadic existence as they travel around the mountains in search of grazing areas for their herds. Agile, fast, and utterly fearless, irrex can be fiercely dangerous when defending themselves or their young, and the whole herd will defend as a single entity whenever possible, driving off even some of the fiercest predators on Tatooine when in large enough numbers, including the ever-fear lesser krayt. Within the culture of the Children, they are a symbol of steadfastness, bravery in the face of danger, and the strength of the many. ^{[ ▲ ]}
3. [23] Na Krayt’ta: translates into “My [fierce] little dragon” in Karilaa, the language of the Children. The word “fierce” is omitted in the nickname due to the root of the word finding itself directly in “krayt,” the word for dragon. It was thus likely considered redundant by the Children, but the proper translation into basic ought to add the word in order to truly capture the spirit. ^{[ ▲ ]}
4. [24] Keshtrel: a small proto-bird that flocks into the thousands, sometimes millions if the food is plentiful. They’re storm-chasers, and where the rains go, the flocks of keshtrels will soon follow. Keeping plenty of their reptilian ancestor’s characteristics, keshtrels are voracious omnivores that will eat nearly anything that will fit into their toothy little beaks while being able to survive on very little water, to the point of sometimes only needing the water they can extract from their food. For any crops, a flock of keshtrels is bad news, but the Children make the best of the situation by hunting the little proto-birds by the hundreds per individual hunt, creating all manner of long-lasting, protein-rich foods from them. It hardly makes a dent into the population though, as keshtrels breed as fast as they are numerous, with chicks hatching and maturing in as little as three weeks to a month. The dancing patterns they make as they flock together have been the inspiration for many an artist. ^{[ ▲ ]}