#esb au

There was no reason for him to keep fighting! His friends had escaped, he was clearly outmatched, and yet he persisted. There was a faint whisper at the back of Vader’s mind that Luke fought so desperately because he thought that he had to. But the greedy hiss of the darkness drowned it out.

Luke’s energy was flagging, but he rallied, and batted away Vader’s lightsaber with an impressive strength in his swing. For someone with absolutely no formal training, Luke had a power to his stance, and even to his clumsy parries and thrusts, that was gratifyingly intimidating. He was going to be a force to be reckoned with one day. 

Provided he just stopped resisting.

The blades sparked and hissed against each other in a brilliant flash of light, then Luke ducked another lunge. This was beginning to grow tiresome. Their time was growing ever shorter, and the emperor would not accept another excuse. When the boy lashed out and caught Vader with a glancing blow to the shoulder, his fury overtook him. Again and again he slashed at that blasted blue blade, that insidious reminder of a man who was dead- a life that no longer existed- until he could feel Luke’s muscles trembling under the strain.

With a particularly vicious momentum, he swung-

And the boy screamed.

His hand-

His hand was-

The lightsaber -- his lightsaber -- tumbled down into the empty shaft below. Luke fell to his knees, clutching the stump of his right wrist. His face was twisted in pain.

Darth Vader had not had a right hand of flesh and blood for longer than Luke Skywalker had been alive. And yet, for a brief instant, he swore that it was his wrist that burned, that it was his scorched flesh that he could smell, in spite of the mask’s filters. 

Look! The Force suddenly clawed at his mind, denying him the chance to retreat into the comfort of his rage. Look at what you have wrought. 

Luke was so…

Small. 

He was so small, there on the ground. Huddled. Was he trying to present a smaller target? Or bracing for a killing blow? 

“He is just a boy.” 

His own words rang mockingly in his ears.

“Just a boy…” Darth Vader said aloud.

As if the revelation had only just hit him, he stumbled back a step. “You’re just a boy.” 

Luke looked up slowly, inching backward. The fear rolled off him in waves, shimmering like heat. He was confused, and disoriented, and very close to shock.

“I’m-”

What was he to say? What was there to be said?

“Ani...something wonderful has happened.”

Had he been so prepared to maim when he’d first learned the boy’s name? Or was his desperation fueled by the emperor’s recent discovery of Luke’s survival?

“This is the happiest day of my life.” 

Would that naive boy have said the same thing if he had known that only twenty-two years later he would be staring down at the bloodied, beaten form of his own terrified child? That he would be the one responsible for the pain in his eyes?

How had it been twenty-two years?

How had it only been twenty-two years?

“My boy…”

The words fled his heart before he could stop them.

Luke’s eyes widened, and he pulled farther away. Too close to the edge.

“M’not your boy,” he rasped harshly.

But Vader barely heard him. Slowly, so slowly he knelt, lightsaber falling from his slack hand. The hilt bounced once, and deactivated with a snapping hiss. One inch higher, and he very well could have killed the boy. His boy.

“I…”

Vader had never been a conversationalist. He certainly wasn’t going to start now. But Luke seemed to have finally noticed that something was wrong.

“I’m…”

Hot shame began to burn in his gut, just a twinge at first, building into a bonfire. 

“Something wonderful has-” 

“I could have killed you,” he breathed. “I almost killed you.”

Confusion tinted Luke’s eyes, swimming with pain. “What are you talking about?” he asked with as much suspicion as he could muster.

It wasn’t supposed to go this far. He was supposed to have trapped Luke in carbonite -- spirited him away to the old fortress on Vjun his master had forgotten about when the castle on Mustafar was built. He was supposed to have released Luke there, and broken it to him more gradually that he had been lied to.

It wasn’t supposed to go this far.

Sith Lords did not regret.

But Darth Vader did.

“The only good thing I ever put into this universe,” Vader marveled, a thread of emotion coloring his fearsome baritone, “And I almost killed him.”

Carefully, almost reverently, he reached out. His hand dwarfed the boy’s face as he lifted his chin. “My boy…”

Luke’s head jerked back. “You...you’re crazy!” he gasped. “You didn’t- you killed him! Obi-wan told me. My father was Anakin Skywalker!”

The gentle grip on his face shifted, and then without warning he was pulled forward. He cried out in both fear and indignation as Vader wrapped his arms around him.

“Yes,” the Sith murmured, “I was.”

The words registered slowly. Piece by piece, syllable by syllable, they marched mercilessly into Luke’s heart. He wanted to scream, to close his ears to it. But the Force detected no lie.

A hand covered the back of Luke’s skull, pressing him against Vader’s tabard and breastplate. Vader was…

Vader was trembling.

Luke could feel it now. Vader was trembling. 

“Luke,” his enemy murmured, almost too low to be heard over the wind. “Oh, my son. I almost killed you. So many times, I almost killed you and I never even knew-”

He drew back enough to allow him to look more closely at the boy. Horror was etched across his features. The truth was beginning to sink in.

“Obi-wan told me you killed my father,” Luke whispered in a meaningless denial.

“Obi-wan lied,” Vader answered.

Luke shook his head wildly. “No!”

Vader caught hold of his face between his fingers again. “Obi-wan. Lied.”

He brushed away a tear that was beginning to slide down the boy’s cheek.

“Oh Luke…”

Han could hear her screaming from just out of sight, calling for him.

“Leia!” he yelled.

“Help me, please!”

Han stumbled around somehow feeling both sluggish and full of adrenaline. She was in the corner, curled into a tiny ball and looking around at everything with wide, terrified eyes.

“It’s okay, Leia,” he tried to say, the words somehow not making it past his throat. He couldn’t cross the last few feet of floor to reach her.

Some sort of warning siren was screaming overhead and something was clanging against the metal door.

“Han! Don’t let them in, don’t let them in!” she yelled. He was torn between running to the door to fend off whoever was on the other side, and running to Leia to hold her, calm her, protect her.

  “Leia, it’s okay, it’s alright, Leia, Leia,” Han soothed wildly, facing the door, trying to prepare himself for whatever was about to burst through.

[Cub, Cub! Wake up!] Rough Wookie paws shook him awake and Han sat up in bed, fighting against them.

“Get back! No, not Leia!” Han hollered flapping his arms.

[Cub, calm down! The little one isn’t here.] Chewie dropped Han back into his bed, snapping on the overhead lights. [Can you please try to keep it down when you have your mating dreams?] he requested, an annoyed look resting on his face.

“Mating—Chewie, she’s not okay! She’s…scared, or hurt or—” Han’s feet were tangled in the sheet and he fell out of the bed in his rush to get out. “I’ve gotta—gotta find her,” Han exclaimed, scrambling to his feet.

[It’s alright, Cub. The little one is fine. It was just a bad dream,] he said.

“A dream. Right,” Han muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Just…a dream. Not real.”

[Go back to sleep,] Chewie recommended, [and no mating dreams.] Han fumbled back into bed as Chewbacca left, catching the lights and shutting the door behind him.

Han lay in the dark, trying his best to calm down from the nightmare. His heart wouldn’t stop crashing against his chest, and he couldn’t get the picture of Leia, terrified and screaming, out of his mind.

It was probably nothing. He didn’t have the force, there was no way that he was somehow seeing what was happening with Leia, and he’d seen her just a few hours ago. She’d mentioned that her evening plans involved an hour or so in her office before turning in for the night. Leia was probably fast asleep by now.

Then again, it had felt so real.

Come off it. She’s fine, and even if she’s not, she wouldn’t let you do anything about it.

Han rolled over, determined to think himself to sleep.

In the silence of his cabin, all he could hear were Leia’s screams and his own futile attempts to call back to her.

Jamming his feet into his boots and pulling on a shirt and his coat, he set off down the Falcon’s ramp and through the deserted halls of Hoth.

His knuckles stopped just shy of her door. What was he supposed to say? What was he even doing here? He drug himself out of his bed just to drag Leia out of hers? Boy, she’d be pissed. That’d be a new thing for them, though, not even being able to make it through the night without having to stop for an argument break…

But...this wasn’t about an argument. It might cause one, but he had to know she was okay. If she wanted to tear his head off afterward, then so be it. Better to have the image of Leia mad as hell in his head than the one that was currently front and center.

Han raised his hand and knocked gently. It slid open almost instantaneously and she was there, her head in shadow.  

“Princess, I…uh, well…”

 "Come in, Han,” she bade quietly, almost hoarsely. Her quiet invitation startled him, and he stood stupidly in the hall for a moment before following her. He unzipped his jacket and left it carefully on the back of her single chair.

"Well, Leia, I was just passing by--”

“Passing by? In your Mookie the Mynock sleep pants?

“--and I thought I might, uh, hem. See how your night was going. You know, just in case it was—”

“Luke told you?” she demanded.

“Not that great—what? I haven’t seen the kid since dinner.”

“Luke didn’t tell you that he was “passing by,” too, and he heard me having a nightmare,” Leia spat, flopping down onto the rug in front of her bed, which was a tangled mess of sheets and blankets, not unlike his own. Knees drawn up to her chest, Leia wrapped her arms around her legs and hid her face. The pose was so like his nightmare and Han grit his teeth against the welling anxiety.

“Leia, I swear, no one told me. I was asleep, too, dreamin’ about…ah, weird stuff,” he concluded, sitting down beside her. She gave a mirthless laugh that sounded dangerously close to a sob.

“You want to talk about it?” she asked dryly.

“Uh…not really. You?” Leia didn’t answer, and Han took her silence to mean ‘Hells no.’ Still, he sensed she had something more to say, so he waited quietly for her to gather her words.

“Have you ever had a dream where…you see someone, and no matter how hard you try to get to them, you can’t?”

Han’s mouth was too dry to speak. He nodded.

“You can scream and yell and kick and fight, but nothing gets you past the last meter of space between you?” The waver in her normally iron-clad voice broke his last barrier.

“I’m right here, Sweetheart.”

Leia took a deep breath and leaned against him. He put his arm around her and held her close, seeking as much comfort from the embrace as he was offering. She sagged into him with palpable relief and Han massaged her upper arm with his thumb, trying to remind this brain that this was real, not the terrified, screaming image of her he’d seen in her head.

“I dreamt about what happened on Ord Mantell,” she whispered. “What could have happened.”

Han bit back an involuntary shudder.

“Yeah. Didn’t look too good, there. But we made it through.”

“I know that’s why you have to leave.”

His heart stopped for a moment. Rieekan was supposed to be the only one who knew he’d revoked his enlistment offer.

“Sweetheart…”

“Han, we made it through what happened on Ord Mantell. And I think we can make it through that, too. Leaving.”

Taking his arm from around her, Han sat back, turning to look into her eyes.

“At least, I’m willing to try if you are,” she whispered. Han was silent for a moment, searching her face. He’d never seen her so open and vulnerable, and the sight scared him just a little.

 “Stars, Leia, I’ll try anything,” he promised, pulling her tightly, roughly, into his arms.

She fit herself against him and tightened her arms around his chest, burying her face in his neck. Keeping her flush to him, Han shifted to lean against her bunk again. One hand worked small circles up and down her spine, the other at the nape of her neck, warming the exposed skin.

“I’m sorry you had a nightmare,” he murmured.

              “It won’t be the last one, I’m sure,” Leia answered, sitting up a bit but leaving her hands on his shoulders. “But…I finally made it across the gap, and…I’m so relieved,” she breathed.

“Me, too.” Han traced the curve of her cheek with one finger. “Sweetheart, can I kiss you?”

Leia nodded and closed her eyes, leaning toward him. He closed the distance and felt all the cold traces of the nightmare dissipate in an instant. Her mouth moved sensuously against his and he held her as close as possible, his fingers tangling in the loose hairs around her neck as she sighed into his mouth.

The ventilation kicked on and Leia shivered under his hands as the air blew into the room. Han fumbled around on her bed and pulled the heavy down comforter around them. Leia settled into his chest.              

“Sweetheart,” Han finally began. “I think I lo…” he trailed off in the middle of the word, not able to name the feeling quite yet.

“I know. Me too.”