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“Luke?” Vader murmured—or, tried to. His vocoder boomed everything. “You should not be awake.”
Luke was young, small, and seemed to vanish into the shadows when he glanced down at his feet, his yellow blanket trailing behind him as he walked closer to Vader’s meditation pod. He muttered something.
“What?”
“I said I had a bad dream,” Luke said louder, more clearly.
Vader sighed to himself, and stood, his heart constricting in his chest. He didn’t know how to comfort bad dreams. He didn’t know what to do—the last time he’d tried to handle a nightmare, he’d…
He’d killed his wife.
“Come along,” he said finally, letting out another breath that the respirator protested against. He stepped forward, took Luke’s hand… then glanced down at him.
Bent down, wrapped his arm around Luke’s tiny torso and lifted him into his arms. Luke didn’t react except to lean his head against Vader’s shoulder.
“Do you want to tell me what it was about?” Vader asked.
Luke closed his eyes, and drew his yellow blanket up to hold tighter. In an instinctive move, he wrapped the cloak around his father’s shoulders as well as his own, despite the fact that Vader was far less affected by the cold.
Vader knew that his life support suit bled heat, so he shifted his grip on Luke to bring him closer, to warm him more. “You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Pulptine,” Luke said. “It was Pulptine.”
Oh.
Vader had taken Luke to a military parade that morning. Luke had… met Palpatine, interacted with him, to an extent Vader usually tried to keep him away from.
No wonder he was having nightmares.
He should really send Luke away.
Keep him away from Palpatine. Keep him safe.
“Palpatine won’t hurt you,” he soothed. “I promise.”
Luke said, “But he wants to.”
“But he won’t. I’ll protect you.”
Luke gave him a look with his big blue eyes, then buried his cheek against Vader’s shoulder again. He tugged at the blanket, trying to wrap it around himself. “You’re hogging the blanket.”
“You can take it, little one. I don’t need it.”
“Won’t you be cold?”
I am always cold . That was the nature of the dark side. That was the nature of the Sith.
But he held Luke against him, basked in the comfort of his light, and found that the dark side and the Sith had never seemed quite so far away.
He should send Luke away from Palpatine, to keep him safe. But, he knew, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
“No, little one,” he promised. “I am not cold at all.”