I was severely debating writing more of this before I actually posted any, but I've already written quite a bit so here we are. Updates will be every Saturday, so long as life doesn't get in the way, and if you see a grammar/spelling mistake or plot hole or something, please mention it in the reviews; I'd love to discuss it with you and I'll do my best to fix it. This started out as a sort of Beauty and the Beast AU, but then it got an actual plotline and began to deviate from it a lot, so... I hope you enjoy it!

The hum of the three lightsabers reverberated around the temple. Through the eye plate on the intact side of his mask, Ahsoka's new ones looked just as red as everything else did, while his own was a deeper red, crimson, red on red. Through his other eye, exposed to the elements now Ahsoka had cut half his mask away. . .

The white lightsaber was bright, the light as cutting to his damaged retinas as the weapon was to flesh. It was hard to look it.

Or perhaps Ahsoka herself was hard to look at, after so long.

She cut one hand forward in a slash of her lightsaber while the other hand was pushed him back with the Force. The move would've worked on anyone else—certainly, it had on his Inquisitors—but he'd taught it to her. He just pushed back, using the Force to keep himself on balance.

Ahsoka stumbled back, momentary confusion and realisation flashing over her face, then her lips curled away from her teeth in a snarl. Vader struck again while she was off-balance, she raised her lightsaber to parry, missed—

And Vader's lightsaber sheared right through her torso.

Or rather, it sheared through where her torso should have been.

Vader took half a step back, but that was all the shock he allowed himself to show. As he'd cut through her, Ahsoka had just vanished, leaving behind only a pair of vambraces and her two lightsabers to show that she'd ever been there at all.

Inexplicably, amidst the silence of Vader's shock, somewhere in the distance, a convor chirped.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was meditating—as he always seemed to be, these days—when he felt the disturbance in the Force.

It used to be an effort, diving deep down into the very core of himself, casting away the memories of Anakin and Satine and Padmé and Cody and everyone else whom he'd loved, before the dark times, but had to let go of if he was to achieve what Qui-Gon was insistent he needed to achieve. Now. . .

Now he passed the faces without a glance back. Satine was gone. Padmé was gone. Anakin was as good as gone. His love hadn't been enough to save them, so now he would find another way to help. His tried and tested method of caring too much obviously wasn't working.

But there was still one person left in need of love and protection.

As a habit, as he always did, he reached out to Luke before he took the dive, where the boy was sleeping through the cold night. His peaceful mind didn't flinch at Obi-Wan's gentle probe, and he withdrew soon enough, satisfied that the boy was safe. The shields he'd erected around his mind were still intact.

Not that he would need those shields if Owen allowed Obi-Wan to train him to build his own. . .

Obi-Wan shook his head. That was a petty thought, beneath him, and he was supposed to be meditating. Supposed to be shedding all attachments before he ascended; he'd only reached out to Luke to ascertain that he was safe, not to reopen old speeders of thought that always crashed at the same turning.

Luke was safe. He could shed that attachment now, and go deeper.

Deeper, until his consciousness was all but separated from his body, and he was transcendent. He could feel the krayt dragon hunting its prey a few klicks north. He could feel the myriad of life forms in Mos Eisley, on the other side of the planet. He could even feel the unnatural lack of life forms on Geonosis, less than a parsec away.

Even with such attuned senses, even at the years and years he'd spent in the dark times with the darkness clouding the Force, it was unusual that he should feel so. . .apprehensive about this.

Something was about to happen. Something important, that would change everything. He reached deeper into the Force, ever deeper, Qui-Gon's voice echoing in his mind.

"Let go, Obi-Wan," he was saying, or had said, or would soon say. "Let go."

It came to him slowly, in flashes. A planet of dark earth and stone. Cracks in the ground that led to a chamber of shadows and darkness, the rotting corpses of Sith and Jedi alike strewn about the floor as testament to the great battle that had once been fought there, now forgotten. A temple standing at the centre of it all, falling apart at the seams, and in it—

If he still had some semblance of control over his corporeal form, he might've gasped. Two figures were fighting, one of them as familiar as his own flesh and blood, the fighting style uncanny, despite the heavy suit and red lightsaber that had changed his perception.

And the other figure, she was familiar too.

It was an effort not to hold on, to continue to reject the images of attachment as they rose up: Ahsoka, teasing Anakin. Ahsoka, comparing kills with Anakin. Ahsoka, bowing to Anakin with true, non-sarcastic respect for the first time.

And the worst image of all, the one right in front of him: Ahsoka, trying to kill Anakin.

No. Anakin trying to kill Ahsoka.

"I won't leave you. Not this time," rang in his ears, but he couldn't have said who uttered them, or when, or where. But they were relevant here and now, they were relevant to his understanding of the scene as he watched Ana—Vader block Ahsoka's attempt to push him back and swing his saber in a way Obi-Wan knew was damning. Ahsoka wouldn't survive that.

And she didn't.

She vanished the moment he cut through her.

Obi-Wan had kept himself detached until then, but this was too much. It was too much to see his apprentice's apprentice die, killed by his old apprentice himself, and the sudden surge of distinctly chaotic emotions dragged him from his trance, leaving him shivering on the hard floor of his hut.

All the breath left him at once. Ahsoka had survived.

And then Ahsoka had died.

Every time he learned of the death of another Jedi, his heart twisted. Ahsoka was no exception, but that wasn't what he was focusing on now.

Anakin had killed Ahsoka.

Anakin had loved Ahsoka.

He'd loved Padmé too, Obi-Wan knew, but in a different way. She had been Anakin's wife; Ahsoka was his apprentice, a sister-like figure, a pseudo-daughter.

Obi-Wan supposed he'd hoped, deep down, that although Anakin had tried to kill Padmé, the person he purportedly loved most in the galaxy, he wouldn't be able to kill Ahsoka.

He wouldn't be able to kill Luke.

Clearly, he'd been wrong.

When Luke faced his father—and he would face him, there was no doubt about that—he would be shown no mercy. If anything, he'd be shown an even larger drive for Vader to kill him than usual, to obliterate any links to the past. Ahsoka hadn't survived such an encounter.

Would Luke?

Not without training. Extensive training. Ahsoka had been professionally trained under the greatest minds in the Jedi Order, and had intimate knowledge of the way her opponent fought and thought, and she'd still lost. Luke, as great of a Jedi as he had the potential to be, didn't stand a chance as he was. He was nowhere near ready.

But one day, Luke would face Vader. He would need to be ready then, but Obi-Wan had no way of knowing where or when then may be.

Soon, the Force whispered. Soon.

He had limited time to train Luke as best he could, and he needed to start soon.

Obi-Wan flexed his hand, itching to reach for his lightsaber, and breathed deeply.

He needed to start soon, with or without Owen's permission.

Luke needed to be trained. There was no point in waiting any longer.

It had been at least a year since Malachor, and the duel that had occurred there, when Vader saw Ahsoka again.

At first, he had the perfectly reasonable thought that it was another hallucination brought on by his time in the bacta tank—his mind did so love to torment him with especially cruel ones—until she spoke. Because Ahsoka was walking around his hyperbaric chamber, talking, getting snippy with him, and there was nothing that wasn't possible, with the Force.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

Ahsoka shifted her weight onto her right leg and folded her arms, an idiosyncrasy that sent a pang through his chest and ire in his gut simultaneously. She was being difficult, as always.

"Why do you think I have to want something, Skyguy?" she asked, faking innocence. "Can't I just have come to see my old master again, considering the bad terms we left on? After all," she added, eyes glittering, "it's not like there's any other old friends I can visit. They're all dead."

Ignoring that jab, he just boomed, "You are also dead. I killed you. Cease bothering me."

Ahsoka just tilted her head at that, and smirked. Sitting down on the floor—apparently her ghost form was corporeal enough to do that—she crossed her legs and said, simply and flatly, "No."

His temper exploded, a rolling wave of the Dark Side that crashed through the room, ripping up medical instruments and upturning the deactivated droids. Even Ahsoka wasn't immune; her blue, glowing form stuttered and flickered at the onslaught, like a glitchy hologram.

She recovered soon enough, and planted her hands on her hips to glare at him.

He snapped again, "What do you want?"

She shook her head. "Do you remember Mortis, Anakin?"

"That name no longer—" He stopped when he actually registered what she said. "Mortis?"

She nodded. "With the Father and the Son," she paused slightly, "and the Daughter."

"I remember that you died, and somehow came back again," he said bitingly. "Is this a habit of yours?"

A chuckle forced its way out of her throat at that. "The Force isn't happy with you, Anakin," she told him. "You were the Chosen One. You were meant to destroy the Sith, not join them."

Heat flashed through his mind at the words, heat and light and burning and the agony of Padmé's death and Obi-Wan screaming—

He lashed out with his hand, trying to choke Ahsoka as he'd choked so many people, but he couldn't get a grip on her throat. The Dark Side roiled around him, around her, but it couldn't touch her.

How had she even known what to say? How had she known those words?

She cocked her head. "Are you finished?" she asked drolly. "Because the Force isn't happy with you, and nobody else is. The Daughter sent me—"

"The Daughter is dead."

Ahsoka lifted her arm; there was a chirp, and from somewhere a convor flew to land on it. "The Daughter is as alive as I am," and there was a humour in her voice, her face, as she stroked the convor's feathers, the same sort of humour that Obi-Wan had, that Ahsoka must have learned from him. "But she can't manifest herself in a sentient form—not one that can talk to the living, anyway. So she sent me."

The convor shuffled around on her arm to peer at Vader, ruffling its brownish feathers. It cocked its head exactly the same way Ahsoka had, and chirped at him. It was the same chirp he'd heard when he killed Ahsoka eighteen months ago.

Was she implying that this creature—

"This is preposterous," he seethed. "Impossible."

"All things are possible through the Force, Master." She shrugged, continuing to stroke the bird. "Either way, the Force isn't happy with you. It wants you to turn back to the Light."

"And why," his voice was low, bitter, sarcastic, "would I do that?"

"Because at this moment, there's a Jedi Padawan wandering lost on the planet outside," Ahsoka told him. "He turns eighteen in three months. If you haven't left the Sith behind by then, he dies." There was a bitter twist to her mouth as she said that last part, like she didn't approve of it, but Vader had more pertinent things to worry about than his ex-Padawan's approval.

"Why would I care if another Jedi brat died?" he retorted, feeling his lips curl back from his teeth in a snarl that tugged on the partially-healed scars on his face.

Ahsoka's image was fading now, her blue light getting dimmer and dimmer, from translucent to transparent, and she just smiled at him like she knew something he didn't.

"Why would I care?" he demanded again.

She just shrugged. At the motion, the convor leapt off her shoulder and soared about the room, before zooming out the door, disappearing to wherever it had come from in the first place.

"Indeed," Ahsoka said. "Why would you?"

The first thing Luke was aware of was an intense heat. It wasn't any worse than he was used to—in fact, it was about on par with the heat of the twin suns—but he'd gone to sleep in the homestead, designed to keep the heat out, during one of Tatooine's freezing nights, so the the first thing he was aware of was confusion.

That confusion only got worse the more he woke up.

The planet he was on seemed to be in its night cycle—at least, the sky was dark, if he was on a planet at all—but it was very bright anyway, and harsh orange-red glow that permeated his eyelids and stung his closed eyes, like—

He turned his eyes downward. He seemed to be lying on some sort of ledge above a river of lava. Every so often, the lava several metres below would smack against the side of the river, the black rock—volcanic, he processed numbly—and dust and debris crumbling into it. The rock he lay on was slowly being eroded away.

So Luke did the only sensible thing he could've done in that situation: he scrambled backwards.

Once he was off the very lip of the precipice, he let his breath escape him in a sigh.

What was he doing here?

The last thing he remembered was crashing to sleep in his bed at the homestead, exhausted after a long morning of fixing vaporators for Uncle Owen and a long afternoon of Jedi training with Old Ben, hearing more stories about his father as he worked on his lightsaber forms. He'd fallen asleep daydreaming about one particular story that had stood out to him: Ben, his father and his father's Padawan teaching farmers how to fight against pirates on Felucia. . .

And now, he was—

He didn't even know where he was.

He glanced around. He couldn't see much: the lava river flowed through the base of what looked like. . . a mountain range, perhaps? Everything was either black or orange or red; the lava burned brightly against the darkness of the sky and the stone. He squinted against it as he peered around, but there were a lot of jagged rocks in the area; he couldn't seen very far anyway.

Although, one of those rocks. . .

He squinted again, and the mountain-like silhouette resolved itself into what it was: a castle. A castle of the same black stone, with several spires jabbing upwards, like some eerie illustration out of a gothic holobook.

It looked creepy, Luke had to admit. He had a bad feeling about this.

A bad feeling. . .

Tentatively, he lowered the shields that Ben had so painstakingly taught him over the past eighteen months and felt around himself, before cringing back again. This place stank of the Dark Side. Tatooine had its own Dark Side nexus, he knew—the remnant of whatever had seared the ground to dust and sand—but this was fresher, more powerful, overwhelming. Not only was there history to the Dark Side of the Force here, but something personal, something agonising and angry and tragic, something—

You were the Chosen One!

He jerked his head round so hard whiplash shot up his neck, but there was no one there. Funny; he could've almost sworn that sounded like Ben. . .

Luke shook his head. He was wasting his time, contemplating things that weren't relevant: he didn't know where he was, how he'd got here, and now he was hearing voices? Ben had mentioned that sometimes he heard voices himself, of his own Master, Qui-Gon, speaking to him, but sometimes you didn't hear voices because someone was speaking to you.

Sometimes you heard them because you were going crazy.

He needed to get to that castle, ask where he was—it seemed to be the only point of civilisation on this planet anyway. He could sense maybe two or three life-forms inside it, as opposed to stark zero on the rest of the planet, and while one of them felt drenched in cold and anger and hatred, they might be open to helping him.

After all, it wasn't like he'd done anything wrong.

So he pressed the palms of his hands to the ground and pushed himself to his feet, frowning as an ache shot through his arms and legs. He hadn't been that worn out when he went to sleep. How long had he been lying on the hard ground, to produce that sort of pain?

Or was it a remnant of whatever way he'd travelled here. . .?

He shook his head. He didn't have time for this, and a few aches and pains didn't matter. He could still heave himself to his feet, still do his best to stagger toward the castle, navigating the rocky terrain with about as much grace as a worrt. His father's lightsaber slapped at his waist with every step, the loose, sun-bleached clothes he always wore swinging in synchrony with it—of course, he was starting to remember, he'd been too tired the previous night and forgotten to change out of his day clothes—and he patted the weapon idly, before unclipping it and gripping it in his right hand.

Its familiar ridges and grooves, the comfortable weight of it, calmed him. He felt his heart rate steady as he took a deep breath, cloggy with ash and soot, and tried to clear his head.

It wasn't meditation, but. . . it would do.

He continued the trek.

He didn't know how long he'd been walking—an hour? Two?—when he saw the movement, but it was more instinct than warning from the Force that had him freezing in place, ducking behind the nearest rock, tightening the shields around his mind until they were foolproof. Someone was coming.

Someone, he realised with dawning horror as the sound reached his ears, rasping, repetitive, unrelenting, who used a respirator.

It couldn't be him. Of all the people it could be, it couldn't be him—

Luke couldn't help himself. He peered around the rock he was hiding behind and squinted at the figure.

The minimal wind on the planet caught the edge of the person's dark cape, flapping it loudly, but he strode forward as if it barely bothered him. His gait was steady, strong, stable; he walked like a droid with no time for pauses or breaks. The firelight from the lava played across the contours of his mask, and Luke stifled a gasp as he ducked back down behind the rock, legs suddenly shaking.

That was Darth Vader.

He was on the same planet as Darth kriffing Vader.

. . .your father was betrayed and murdered by a young Jedi. . .

. . .was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil. . .

He gripped his lightsaber tighter, glad that he was already holding it and didn't have to risk the sound that unclipping it from his belt could make. Because if he struck now, while the Sith Lord wasn't expecting him, he could get revenge for his father's death, without worrying about Vader's undoubtably superior duelling skills.

Except, that wasn't how he wanted his revenge to go, and revenge wasn't the Jedi way. Ben had made sure to put a focus on that, and Luke had listened, most of the time.

If he was to kill Vader, he wanted it to be in honourable combat, face to face, where the Sith Lord knew whose hand his death came at and why. Assassination, or death by a lucky shot, was. . . distasteful.

Even for the man who'd murdered his father. . .

A sudden surge of anger flared up at the thought; Luke did his best to quash it. It wasn't the Jedi way, and he was fairly sure some of that had leaked past his shields. . .

The temperature around him suddenly plummeted, despite the lava flows nearby. He shivered.

Heart in his throat, he glanced back round the rock at Vader.

Only to find the Sith Lord staring right at him.

The boy's shields were half-decent, he'd give him that. When they held, all Vader could sense was a vague dissimilation, that he was nearby, but he couldn't pinpoint his location. One could even say they were surprisingly good for a Padawan who'd no doubt been trained by the lowliest dregs of the Jedi, the only survivors of Order 66.

And when the burst of fury breached his shields, and Vader got a taste of his Force potential, that was impressive as well.

His gaze snapped towards a half-formed boulder a good few metres away, and stalked towards it, letting his dark intent spill into the Force, staining the atmosphere around them. If the boy was as strong as he seemed to be, then he would feel it, and he would cower.

Only, he didn't.

Instead, he looked around the rock to stare Vader in the eye.

And that was almost as unsettling as Ahsoka's implication that he would somehow care what happened to the brat: even through the darkness, even through the eye plates of his mask, the boy managed to meet his gaze with unerring accuracy.

Then the boy's moment of bravado seemed to pass, and his eyes widened to a near comical size. He began to scramble backwards almost before his legs caught up, more shuffle than walk, until he got his feet under him and made to bolt—

No. Vader reached out a hand, and the Force caught him by the throat. He dangled in the air, choking, feet kicking pitifully, as Vader stalked closer.

What was so special about this particular Padawan? True, his Force potential had felt impressive, in the moment he'd felt it. Was it something to do with that?

Vader watched him kick for a few more moments, the rhythmic rasp of his respirator seeming to set the boy on edge more and more. As his fear increased, his control lessened, and then—

There.

A crack in his mental shields, letting his presence spill out. Vader's probe widened the gap, and he forced his way in, going deeper and deeper—

Twin suns.

Vader almost recoiled at the images that flashed past of a planet he'd rather forget, but he went deeper anyway—

Twin suns, and the homestead underneath them, sun-bleached and sand-blasted but home. . .

A T-16 Skyhopper sitting in the garage, and a teenage boy secretly practicing levitation by summoning the tools and parts for repairing it to hand instead of reaching for them himself. . .

A Tusken Raider, yowling at him as he brought his gaderffii down on him only for the boy to dodge at the last moment. . .

And a much older version of Obi-Wan Kenobi smiling down at him fondly, face lined with wrinkles and hair lined with grey.

Vader resurfaced with shock. This— this brat was Obi-Wan's Padawan?

His replacement?

His anger boiled to the surface again; Vader constricted his Force-grip around the boy's neck, until he couldn't breathe at all, desperately gasping and heaving for air.

Obi-Wan was on Tatooine, of all places to go, and Vader would have to go there if he wanted to face him. Just the thought of returning to that planet made him squeeze tighter and tighter, until the boy was scrabbling at his throat, as if he could pry away the metaphysical grip with his own two hands.

Only, one of those hands had something in it. . .

He didn't bother to think as he yanked the metal cylinder out of the boy's hand. It smacked into his with a satisfying thud, and he inspected it up close, the boy still hanging suspended, struggling to breathe.

He knew this lightsaber.

The structure, the shape, the weight. It was the last lightsaber he'd had, the one he'd lost on this very planet in his duel with Obi-Wan.

He glared at the boy, and tightened his grip again—he'd loosened it in his distraction, and the brat had managed to get some meagre oxygen into his lungs. "Where did you get this lightsaber?"

And Force, he hadn't even cared about most of his lightsabers, he'd lost and built enough in his youth to prove that, but seeing it again coupled with Ahsoka's appearance was bringing back memories of Padmé and the Senate and this was the lightsaber he'd built to protect her—

When I finished constructing my lightsaber, Obi-Wan said to me 'Anakin, this weapon is your life.'

He squeezed in tighter in his hands, the metal creaking under his grip.

This weapon is my life.

It's yours.

"Where did you get it!" he thundered again, watching the boy's face get redder and redder.

He released him, standing impassive as he dropped to the ground, gasping for air. Tears streamed down his face, but Vader didn't care; all he cared about was getting answers—why was this boy so special what was Ahsoka talking about why did he have this lightsaber—and he would be all too pleased the strangle him again in order to get them.

The brat tried to stand, but his legs shook too much and he collapsed onto the ground again with a grunt. Vader, impatience flaring, took a step forward and he scrambled back on instinct, terror spiking in the Force before he took several deep breaths to calm himself down.

And then he glared.

"I got it from my Master," he said, lifting his chin high and proud. "But I guess you don't remember the weapons of the Jedi you murder."

"Kenobi is not dead," Vader snapped. Surprise flashed across the his face at the name—how had he known? "Nor is this lightsaber his. So where did you get it, and why do you have it?"

The brat shook his head in disgust. "I wasn't talking about Ben," he spat. "That's my father's lightsaber."

Everything stopped.

His respirator still forced air into his ruined lungs, the lava flows still lapped against the rock far below, and the boy was still moving, fidgeting, rubbing his throat, but Vader couldn't so much as twitch.

Time was turning backwards, or at least it must be, because he could vividly see Ahsoka's glowing blue face in front of him, mouth quirked upwards in a smirk.

Why would I care?

Indeed. Why would you?

This— this boy— Kenobi—

He clenched his fist. Unclenched it again. Then he looked back at the boy.

The boy, who was—

The Force was singing brightly around them, more brightly than it ever did on a Dark Side nexus like Mustafar. What he was thinking. . .it couldn't be true.

But the Force. . .

His head snapped up. "What's your name?" he asked the boy, voice sharp, because he had to know, he had to know—

The boy froze. He'd been slowly, subtly shuffling away, though his face and the emotions Vader could sense screamed his confusion, but now Vader was marching towards him and he was scrambling faster, faster, faster—

Not fast enough.

Vader caught him by the front of his clothes—sun-bleached, old, worn; definitely the clothes of one of Tatooine's many moisture farmers—and yanked him to his feet. "What is your name?" he demanded again, shaking him a little for good measure.

The boy was still unsteady on his legs, voice still a hoarse whisper from a near-crushed throat, but what he said shattered Vader's world anyway. "Luke Skywalker."

There was a speeder crash somewhere in his chest, even if somehow, in some way, he'd known what the boy was going to say.

He let go of his clothes. Took a step back.

The boy—Luke—collapsed to the ground again.

Vader could only stare.

The red-tinted eye plates obscured his vision, as did the near-darkness, but he could see well enough to make out the pale hair (his) the shape of the nose (Padmé) the pale eyes (his) the slight stature (Padmé) the cleft in the chin (his). . .

"You. . ." Vader trailed off. There was nothing he could say, so he said, rather stupidly, "You're the son of Anakin Skywalker."

For some reason, that just upset Luke even more. He was still breathing heavily, rasping, still releasing massive chunks of his anger and aggression into the Force, but his voice came out tight and controlled anyway. "Yes," he bit out, "and you killed him!"

His voice rose into a ragged shout at the end of the sentence, a part of Vader's brain processed, like he'd waited a long time to shout that at someone, but the rest of his brain was preoccupied with the more pertinent part of that statement.

"I killed him?" he asked. His mounting anger—he was angry on a regular basis, but couldn't remember the last time he'd been this angry—broke out through his voice, dampening it to a venomous hiss. "Who told you such a ridiculous lie?" The images from the boy's mind flickered through his memory, and he clenched his fists again.

"Kenobi," he growled. It wasn't a question. "He told you this."

Luke lifted his chin again, the gesture a call-back to another person's arrogance, and the mannerisms he'd had. "Yes."

"Of course." Vader's hands went slack at his sides. "One can always rely on Kenobi to lie."

Anger—indignant, insipid anger—flared up again, the boy's voice jumping up an octave as he snapped, "He didn't lie!" The words sounded like they were scraping along his damaged vocal cords.

"No?" he asked mockingly. "Because I can tell you this, and the Force will verify it for me: I did not kill Anakin Skywalker."

The words were harsh, their truth harsher. Luke paled when he heard them, but his reaction wasn't one of anger, as Vader had expected.

Instead, something that looked painfully like hope blossomed on his face. "Is—" Luke cut himself off, biting his lip. His conflict ran rampant in the Force; he'd accidentally dropped his shields, somehow, in the turmoil of the conversation. He tilted his head back to look Vader in the eye again—with the same accuracy—and asked, almost tentatively, "Is he alive then?"

The Force was swelling around them, ready for the crescendo. Vader hooked his thumbs into the loops on his belt, and said slowly, carefully, "I did not kill Anakin Skywalker."

The hope on Luke's face only grew in its intensity at his words. It was shattered with his next ones.

"I am Anakin Skywalker."

Luke's mouth fell open. For a moment, he said nothing.

Then—

"That— that's not true," he said, the words scraping their way out of his throat, shaking his head, taking a step back. Vader reached for him on instinct, but Luke batted his hand away with surprising force, his face briefly twisting into something ugly. His voice was fraying, cracking. "That's impossible!"

"It is true," Vader said, inexorable, undeniable, honest. He reached out a hand to grasp Luke by the collar; this time, Luke didn't bat him away. "And you are coming with me," he paused, "my son."