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‘Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has forseen this, it is your destiny. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son! Come with me, it is the only way!’
Vader held his mechanical left hand out to the shivering youth who had until now been looking wildly around for some other salvation, but suddenly maintained unnerving steady eye contact. Luke apparently disagreed with his assessment on the number of ways he could extricate himself from the situation he found himself in as he let go of the communications arm he had been clinging to, electing to fall into an abyss instead.
Vader sighed, and with a wave of his still outstretched mechanical hand, he levitated his son back up to eye-level.
‘I have been thinking about this day for years now. This is really not how I wanted our reunion to go. Here…’
He held his metallic arm out to assist with concentration given his own distracted state, elated to finally meet his son. He kept Luke in the telekinetic hold while his right hand fished for a datapad in a pocket in the back of his armour. Dropping into a crouch, Vader was grateful for the mechanical knees, having overheard many a senior bridge officer of similar age complain about their own. He typed away one-handedly at the device on the ground before levitating it out to his son.
‘Before you go, take this. Tell no one. I’d like to see you again, just to talk, that’s all.’
Vader had considered dropping his son like a microphone into the abyss for dramatic effect, after all, Luke chose that for himself first. But that was no way to foster trust with his long-lost son, so instead he dumped his arse on the walkway and strode out of there, using the Force to enhance the fluttering of his cape as he left.
*
Luke knocked on the loading ramp of the battered freighter in the docking bay on Tatooine. When he finally logged into the messaging account Vader had given him details for, there was only a single message with a date, time, and location. A part of him balked at the notion of meeting Vader somewhere so personal, but then Vader was Uncle Owen’s brother. Of course once he figured out his relation to Luke he would have known where Luke grew up.
A rusty whirr sounded as the ramp descended, at the top obscured by the darkness was the back of a familiar fluttering black cape.
‘Enter,’ he heard Vader say, before the cape whipped out of sight.
Luke cautiously climbed the ramp, waiting until he was at the top to ignite his lightsaber lest he draw unnecessary attention from other sentients at the spaceport, but Vader wasn’t there.
‘Turn that thing off, you don’t need it,’ came Vader’s voice from the direction of the cockpit.
His father was already in the process of taking off, and without turning to greet his son, waved in the direction of a tray with an ice bucket, cocktail shaker, and pair of cocktail glasses.
‘Help yourself.’
Luke poured a fruity-smelling beverage over a handful of ice, and had been about to take a sip before considering that it could be poisoned.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Orbit. I hate Tatooine, and it’s precisely because I hate Tatooine that the Emperor won’t think to look for us here flying around in an old freighter.’
Luke finally felt as if he had something in common with his father.
‘Yeah, I’m not a fan of it either.’ Luke reflexively wanted to take a sip from his drink to punctuate his remark and diffuse a little of the awkwardness, but it wasn’t quite worth risking poisoning for, so he kept his hands still.
The ship settled into a high orbit above the planet. Luke found his attention drawn to the slowly moving double-shadow of the sunsets. Vader turned around and put a handful of ice into the remaining glass, pouring a drink from the same cocktail shaker. For a second Luke wondered how exactly Vader managed to drink in his helmet, but then he produced a bright pink bendy straw from somewhere in his armour which clashed horribly with the orange-brown beverage, and removed his helmet.
Luke nearly spilled his drink in shock.
‘Horrific, isn’t it? Obi-Wan’s handiwork.’ Vader took a sip of the drink through his bendy straw and didn’t immediately keel over dead, so Luke risked a sip as well. ‘It’s the sand that does it for me.’
‘What?’
‘That, and the slavery. And the Tuskens, since they killed your grandmother. The entrenched poverty, the Hutts, those Krayt dragons… There are multiple good reasons to hate Tatooine, but it’s the sand that makes my skin crawl the most just thinking about it.’
‘I hated that there was nothing to do.’
‘Nothing good to do, at any rate. Hey, does Threepio still help out Owen and Beru?’
Luke grimaced at the memory of his aunt and uncle’s charred corpses even more than he was already grimacing at his father’s disfigured face.
‘They were killed by stormtroopers back when they were looking for the astromech droid with the Death Star plans.’
‘Shame. Was that the astromech droid I saw you flying with over Yavin? Did you know it belonged to your mother? Crafty little bastard, I’m sure he serves you well. I should be upset on the Emperor’s behalf, but frankly the more chaos Artoo can cause him, the better.’
‘Artoo never told me!’
‘No? I doubt he’s let anyone near enough to him to memory-wipe him, he’s just suffering from an excess of personality.’ Vader took another sip through his bendy straw. ‘It’s called a Tatooine Sunset. It’s really just an alcoholic fruit tea, but I’m quite partial to it.’
Luke tasted his drink again. He knew it was fruity, but for the life of him couldn’t guess which fruits were in it.
‘There was a reason you asked me to join you here, right?’
‘Is it really too much that a father wants to spend some quality time with his son? But yes, I did ask you here because I want you to join me. Not yet, I’m learning to respect a firm “no” when a family member gives one to me. Your mother also refused the power I offered her, emotions were running high, Palpatine had manipulated me into being so paranoid of the Jedi I was half-convinced she was having an affair with Obi-Wan! Could you imagine? Ridiculous. Anyway, I wish I could take back what I did, but I can’t, and your mother died because of it.’
‘…How did she die?’
‘Broken heart.’ Vader pointedly looked away from Luke as if entranced by the planet below, and awkwardly sipped his drink. ‘…Anyway, even if you won’t join me now, I need you to join me when you’re ready, because we’re the only two people who can take down the Emperor.’
‘What about the Emperor’s Hands or the Inquisitors?’
‘Ha! Good one. When I told the Jedi Council that Palpatine was the Sith Lord they were looking for, they sent four Masters to arrest him. He took out three on his own, and was just toying with the fourth when I showed up to assist him. You would have seen how much the Inquisitors struggled against Ahsoka, Cal, Kanan before he died, Kanan’s Padawan Ezra…’
‘I haven’t met any of these people, I only joined the Rebellion just after you blew up Alderaan.’
‘Seriously? You escaped the Death Star with no training, and Yavin was your first battle?’ Vader looked impressed. ‘Anyway, the Grand Inquisitor referred to Kanan as a Jedi Knight, but that was just to lessen his embarrassment over being repeatedly foiled by someone who was still technically a Padawan. To be fair, some of those former Padawans survived confrontations with me as well, but I had been suffering from major depression for years at that point. Within a few months of your mother’s death the medic droids started suggesting I take antidepressants, but I refused. Drugs weren’t going to bring her back to life, so what was the point? It wasn’t until I learned that you were still alive that life was worth living again. But by then it was too late, I couldn’t take the antidepressants because then the Emperor would get suspicious over my changed mental state, and might know that I knew he had lied to me. But if I had killed your mother on Mustafar, then you would have died before you were even born, and yet here you are.’
Luke took a second to process that his father's admission meant he probably didn’t actually know how his mother died, but given Vader's reputation, he wasn’t willing to provoke him in close quarters.
‘Surely there are actual Jedi Knights out there you could recruit?’
‘What part of “killed three Jedi Masters and was toying with a fourth” did you not understand? So don’t get me started on Cere, she actually was a Knight but she severed her own connection to the Force in order to hide. She’s also dead now.’
‘…How did she die?’
‘I killed her.’ Vader was less embarrassed after that admission, and casually refilled his cocktail glass. ‘But not even she would have lasted more than ten seconds in a confrontation with the Emperor. And all of those I just mentioned: Padawans, Inquisitors, Hands, in a group? I give them a minute. Only you and I, together have the power to defeat him.’
‘Is he really so powerful?’
‘Through his knowledge of Sith alchemy he has become so. He’s also shrewd and cunning. He is not to be underestimated. That’s why I wanted the chance to impress upon you just how hard you have to train for that day in the future when you and I take him on together, because if you get destroyed, then all hope is lost… Unless you happen to have a child of your own out there who could try again after us?’
Luke coughed into his cocktail glass. ‘No.’
‘Hmmm. You know that Alderaanian princess you rescued was pretty feisty. Decent Force connection, too. What about her?’
‘She’s spoken for, Dad.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Vader threw his hands up in mock surrender, spilling a little of his drink. ‘Forgive me for wanting something nice for my son.’
‘What about you? Ever think about remarrying?’
Vader’s hands slowly dropped, and he sighed wistfully. ‘If you had only met your mother, you would understand why there could be no one else out there for me. Now let’s get you back to your rebellion. And the next time I see you, I want to be a grandparent.’