Chapter Three

Luke

I landed in a clearing on Yavin IV, and though a sense of nostalgia passed over me, I felt more uneasy than excited, as if someone were trying to tell me I wasn’t meant to be there. Clumsily trying to reach out through the Force, I caught a slight sense of someone through the Force. It wasn’t a sort of familiar sense like I had expected...Instead, it was a bit vague. Yet it beckoned me.

“Artoo, stay here,” I commanded. The little droid tried to get out anyway, but I spoke to him with an edge in my voice. “If something happens to me, I need you to get a message to the others. Can you keep a track on me with yours and the X-wing’s sensors? I won’t be going very far.”

Artoo hooted mournfully. I could tell he wanted to go with me, but I needed to do this alone.

I walked through Yavin IV slowly, my heart pounding. Feeling that I was close, I passed through a particularly thick patch of underbrush.

And then, for a moment, my heart stopped.

Vader

I left the Executor in my personal shuttle, but as I was descending to the planet, the Intelligence officer in charge of the Skywalker investigation sent me a comm message telling me that an untraceable transmission had been sent down to the planet. They had begun to try to decode it, but the encryption was complex, and even their best splicers might not be able to make any headway. Ordinarily, I would have given Intelligence some Dark Side incentive, but I was too preoccupied with the faux Anakin Skywalker’s appearance.

As I got closer to the planet and reached out, I could sense two presences in the Force, side by side. One was bright, familiar, and mostly untrained. The other was weaker, but more experienced, and perhaps even...darker?

Impatient, I increased my speed.

Luke

I couldn’t believe it. He looked so much like the man in my vision. Older, of course, but there were some definite similarities...

He was standing by the Massassi Temple in the brown robe of a Jedi, and I could sense that his control over the Force reflected a lot more training than I had been given by Obi-Wan. I could only sense bits of his Force sense, however, as if he were hiding most of it from me.

“Are...are you Anakin Skywalker?” I croaked out, subconsciously fingering the lightsaber at my side and feeling very out of place in my orange flight suit.

The man smiled. “I knew you would come, son.”

Unable to believe or even comprehend the situation, I asked him, “Where have you been all these years?”

His smile became sad. “I was held prisoner by the Empire.”

“Why? They killed all the other Jedi.”

“They could not break me,” he said. A cloud passed over his face, and I felt terrible for asking him the question. “They wanted secrets from me that they could not get, despite their best interrogation attempts, and I finally managed to escape with the help of a kind guard...”

I shuddered. I had heard tales of interrogation from Leia...And she hadn’t even been kept by the Empire for years. Who knew what all they had done to him...My father.

At last, I was with my father.

I wanted to laugh, cry, jump in the air—do something. But fortunately I was saved from making any decision by Anakin.

He held out his arms with a grin. “Is this how you treat your dear old dad?”

I laughed at him. “Sorry, when someone comes back from the dead you tend to be a little leery.”

“For a man who came back from the dead, I’d say I’m in pretty good shape,” he chuckled.

I reached out to him through the Force, and as I felt him willing to accept me, I moved forward to embrace him.

Part I | Part II | Part IV