Saga - PT Saga - OT Amnesia | Vader AU, drama, RotS-RotJ | One-shot, fic-gift for SatineNaberrie

This story was written as a fic-gift for SatineNaberrie, who wanted an AU of at least 1,000 words with dialogue, that would not be a crack-fic, that would not include bad shown as good, Leia, Mara Jade, Hutts and smugglers and that would not be centered on a Rebel point of view. The characters she wanted were either Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, or Duchess Satine & Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Padme & Luke.

I decided to go for Vader and Luke, but I had zero experience writing AUs so far, so I hope this won't be disappointing

Note: The sentences in italics in the first part are borrowed from the RotS novelisation. There's a whole bunch of other sentences borrowed from the films, but I'm sure everyone will recognise them.

Amnesia

The man – the wreck of a man – strapped to the table screamed and writhed in pain as the med droids operated on him to replace charred flesh and organs with synthetic ones and to adjust artificial limbs to the stumps of his legs and arms. The cloaked figure standing in the shadows of the room revelled in the fear, the agony, the hatred radiating from him. Darth Vader had been diminished, maimed in his fateful duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar, but Emperor Palpatine was confident that Anakin Skywalker was now gone forever. Only one who had fully embraced the power of the Dark Side could flood the Force with such raw emotion, and the Sith Lord knew that his new apprentice had surrendered to him for all time.

The ear-splitting shrieks abruptly subsided when the droids began fitting the black armour on the reconstructed body, and Palpatine could not sense the patient’s mind anymore. He took a step forward, but the Ubrikkian DD-13 surgical droid merely nodded as he flipped the switch that would adjust the helmet on the scarred head. “My lord, the construction is finished. He lives.”

The table slowly rotated to vertical, and Palpatine leaned close. “Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?”

The black mask turned towards him with mild indifference. “Who are you?”

At this Palpatine was taken aback. He reached out with the Force, probing his apprentice’s mind to assess his thoughts and feelings, and he sensed the rising anguish as the cyborg rotated his head from one side to the other, taking in the room. “Where am I?”

The anguish evolved into panic as Vader sought to step away from the operating table, only to find out that he was held back by the wrist and ankle restraints. “What is this? Where am I? Why am I burning?”

The medical cabinets began to shake, their doors swinging open of their own accord to disgorge tools and vials that crashed on the durasteel floor. Palpatine closed his eyes, relishing the wave of torment that engulfed the operating theatre, until the din was such that it stifled the cyborg’s mechanical breathing. He could feel that the explosion was near.

The bulging black eyes finally returned to him. “Who am I?” Vader bellowed, yanking a leg away from the operating table. “Who am I?”

Palpatine burst out into mad cackles as a tsunami of anger crashed over the room, taking everything in its wake. Glass panes shattered under the onslaught, pieces of furniture collapsed, parts of the ceiling caved in, the droids blew up in a flash of sparks, and the Emperor had to wrap himself in a Force bubble to deflect his apprentice’s fury. The armour-clad body finally tore itself away from the table and fell to its knees in defeat. “Who am I?” he asked again. The whisper was abnormally amplified by the helmet’s vocabulator.

Palpatine allowed himself a smile as he stepped forward and rested a hand on the cyborg’s shoulder. “You are Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith. You are my apprentice. In time, I will help you remember everything.”

* * *​

The flashing images hit Darth Vader as soon as the tractor beam pulled the battered Corellian freighter aboard the Death Star, and their intensity was such that he failed to steady himself against the transparisteel wall of the deserted corridor leading to the hangar bay and fell to his knees. It was not the first time that the Dark Lord experienced a surge of long-forgotten memories, but they had never come to him so clearly before – and they brought anguish and pain unlike anything he had felt since the day he had woken up on the operating table nineteen years ago.

Despite the Emperor’s repeated reassurances that completing his training in the ways of the Sith would ultimately help him recover his full mental faculties, Darth Vader felt that two decades of efforts had been poorly rewarded, if at all, and the intermittent glimpses into his past life had led him to suspect that his master was deliberately holding back information from him. He knew that, like all Force-sensitive children during the days of the Old Republic, he had been stolen from his family as an infant to be brainwashed by the Jedi. He knew that the Jedi were a monastic order that claimed to defend the values of the Republic but had cut themselves off from the Galactic community and, when the time came, had sought to grab power for themselves. He knew that, alone among them, he had stood up to their attempted coup, that he had saved then-Chancellor Palpatine from assassination, and that, in his endeavour to eliminate the last remnants of the Jedi Order, he had been trapped, betrayed and reduced to this pitiful, diminished state – a cyborg with amnesia.

He didn’t know his name, but he knew that it hadn’t always been Darth Vader.

And then, there were those fleeting images that floated before his eyes at night, when he was alone in his hyperbaric chamber – images of two women, one of them with a sad, tired face, the other an angelic figure with a bulging belly. He knew that they were not Jedi, and with time he had come to believe that they were his family.

He knew that he had had a family, and he wondered why his master never spoke of it. It enraged him.

But his master was his only tie to his past, and he bided his time until a clue could set him on the path to finding his own identity. He often asked himself if he had always been this man – patient, devious, scheming – and the frequent urge to burst into a fit of rage told him that probably not. But he reserved his anger for the Jedi that the Emperor sent him chasing across the Galaxy, hacking them to pieces when they failed to reveal who he had been, and he waited. One day, the right victim would come to him, and he would know. And then he would demand the rest of the answers from none other than the Emperor himself.

But when the Corellian freighter that materialised out of nowhere among the remains of Alderaan was pulled on board, he felt a presence that caused a vision of extraordinary clarity, a vision of his old self before the armour. He saw himself running, leaping, climbing in a landscape of stone and lava, duelling with a ginger-haired man who was trying to kill him. He felt a shining blade cleave through his legs and arm, and he felt himself be engulfed in a sea of flames. The pain that seared through him was worse than anything he had experienced, and for a moment he lost control again, as he had nineteen years earlier. When he was finally able to scramble to his feet, the corridor bore scorch marks and his chest plate was smoking. In his ire, he had nearly set himself on fire – but he knew that the chief culprit for his condition was on the Death Star.

The man who could reveal who he had been was right there, as if taunting him to come and ask.

He hesitated to go after him immediately, but he knew that, with his life support systems partially disabled, he would not be able to confront and vanquish his enemy. Tarkin could take care of the situation while the droids repaired him, and he would bide his time once more. It was obvious that the passengers of the captured freighter would seek to disable the tractor beam and escape, and he was confident that, through meditation, he would be able to monitor their movements.

He spun on his heel and returned to his hyperbaric chamber. Despite the Emperor’s lectures on passion and power, he had learned one thing. Patience was a virtue, and a skill he had come to master over the past nineteen years. A few more hours wouldn’t change anything.

* * *​

Defeat was nothing to him. Pain was nothing, fear was nothing, punishment by his master was nothing. Because now, he knew. And the Emperor had just given him another clue to who he was.

He’d had yet another vision when the Emperor, in a fit of rage at the loss of his new toy, had chopped his mechanical hand off. He had seen himself duelling an elderly aristocrat, side-by-side with the ginger-haired Jedi named Obi-Wan Kenobi. He knew, now, that Obi-Wan had been his comrade-in-arms before turning against him, and somehow it didn’t even anger him.

‘Anakin,’ Obi-Wan had said during their duel on the Death Star. ‘Anakin’ – it had been his name, and the Emperor had unwittingly confirmed it by giving him the vision. Obi-Wan had known him. Obi-Wan had been his friend.

Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi – that was a place to start. That was all that mattered.

As soon as he had a new prosthetic fitted, he sat at a HoloNet terminal and began his search.

It took some poking around and fiddling – he had never been good at slicing, but his hands, seemingly of their own accord, found a way to rewire the computer and plug it directly into the Emperor’s private databases – but it was worth the effort. What he found blew him away.

He had been a hero, the Hero With No Fear. He had fought in the Clone Wars to save the Republic from the Separatists, he had stood up to entire armies on his own, he had been a skilled pilot – he still was – and a talented duellist. He had owned a blue lightsaber, one disturbingly similar to the one hanging from the belt of the young man who had escaped the Death Star. It was said that he was the Chosen One, the one who would bring balance to the Force

But there was more.

He hadn’t been an infant when he arrived in the Jedi Temple. He had been nine years old. A long-gone Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, found him on Tatooine, where he was a slave, and he earned his freedom by winning a podrace. The Jedi hadn’t stolen him – he had followed them of his own volition. He had chosen to be a Jedi.

And there, on the old news report holo where his child-self lifted the Boonta Eve cup triumphantly over his head, were the two women he had been seeing in his dreams. The beautiful, younger one stood in the background – the caption didn’t name her – and the older, tired-looking one was at his side, mussing his windswept hair. Shmi Skywalker, the mother of Anakin Skywalker. He had had a family.

He still had a family. The fair-haired, blue-eyed youth who had screamed in dismay when Obi-Wan had died, who had shot at him wildly, who had destroyed the Death Star – who carried a lightsaber, his lightsaber – was called Luke Skywalker. He had a son, and he didn’t remember him. And his son, obviously, had a mother.

What else was there that the Emperor didn’t tell him?

How many more lies?

Rage bubbled up inside him, and he was sorely tempted to return to the throne room, to unleash his fury against the Emperor who had deceived him, who had used him for all these years, who had shaped him into a contemptible, obedient Jedi-hunting tool. But the vision of the three-way duel flashed in front of his eyes once more, and he remembered how he had lost his hand to Count Dooku. He had been rash, he had wanted revenge here and now. And he had failed. No, this time he would wait. He would find Luke, he would tell him the truth, and they would exact vengeance on the Emperor as father and son.

* * *​

When Luke Skywalker ignited his lightsaber in the carbon-freeze chamber, Darth Vader remained immobile. It had taken him nearly three years to find himself once more in the presence of his son, and he felt the need to look at him before beginning what he expected to be a difficult conversation.

The young man had been well-trained, judging from his posture alone, but Darth Vader already knew this from the long meditation sessions where he reached out with the Force to locate his presence. He knew of course that such efforts were bound to be in vain – it was impossible to pinpoint a single Force signature among the billions of beings who populated the Galaxy – but to his surprise they were not entirely fruitless. Luke was so strong, so powerful – so pure – that he shone like a beacon of light, and even if Vader couldn’t identify the planet he was on at any given time, he was able to catch a few glimpses of what his son was doing. It was like observing him from a distance, from behind an opaque veil, but he had felt him grow into his own, seek to train himself and finally find a master who could teach him how to tame the wild energy that simmered inside him. He often wondered if it had been the same for him – how the triumphant child from Tatooine, fresh off his victory in the Boonta Eve race, had been taught to channel the invisible energy field that ebbed and flowed around and within him, until he unlearned it all.

He finally crossed his arms over his armour-plated chest and spoke, doing his best to curb the ominous inflection that the vocabulator gave to his voice. “Put away your weapon. You will not need it.”

He felt puzzlement roll off the youth in waves – puzzlement and something more, a spark of surprise at hearing something he had already been told. Luke still had much to learn, he was not doing a very good job at shielding his emotions, and Vader caught sight of a dream-like memory where Luke beheaded a helmeted figure, only to find out that the face behind the mask was his own. The blue blade, however, remained upright, humming between them as if to cover the sound of their thoughts. “You fear me,” he said. “Or rather, you fear becoming like me. You do not need to fear that. As long as you know who you are, as long as you trust who you are, you will remain yourself.”

Luke lowered the lightsaber ever so slightly, but he remained on the defensive. “What sort of elaborate trap is this?” he asked. His feeble attempt at a biting tone failed rather miserably. He had visibly come to Bespin expecting a head-on confrontation with his father, and he was genuinely perplexed by this turn of events.

“This is no trap, Luke. It was an invitation, the only sort of invitation that you would accept from me.”

The shimmering blue blade rose again. “Capturing – kidnapping – torturing Han and Leia, an invitation?”

“Would you have come had I simply asked you to?”

The young man looked around carefully, as if expecting any number of devices to ambush him. Vader felt him sweep the room with his Force sense to detect any hints of deceit, but he could find none. The blue eyes finally returned to the towering black figure above him. “Why would you ask me to come?”

“Because there are things that I need to know, and I am hoping that you have the answers.”

Luke raised his chin proudly. “You won’t get any answers from me. I’m a loyal member of the Rebel Alliance, and I’m a Jedi. You can try to kill me, like you killed my father, but I won’t betray my friends.”

Anger welled up in the Dark Lord’s chest, so sudden and violent that it threatened to suffocate him. “Is that what Obi-Wan told you? That I killed your father?”

His tone had become so cold and dangerous that Luke took a step back. “Yes. He told me that you killed him. You killed them all.”

All Vader could do, in order to maintain his composure, was to shake his head in dismay. “No. I am your father.”

Luke’s scream was heartrending, but it was the wave of fury, of distress, of agony that flooded the chamber that told Vader how unprepared the young man had been for this revelation – and yet there was something so familiar to these emotions, so incredibly intimate that Vader took it as more proof, if any was needed, that Luke was his son. “Search your feelings, Luke. You know it to be true.”

He was struggling to find something else to say, something to soften the blow, when Luke’s misery suddenly morphed into resentment and hatred, and without warning he held his lightsaber high and charged.

Darth Vader retreated hastily, without drawing his own weapon. He was determined not to fight, but Luke kept coming on furiously, swinging his blade in powerful blows that threatened to behead him. They had reached a side room with a circular window that overlooked the central shaft of Cloud City, when the Dark Lord decided that enough was enough. He Force-shoved Luke back with one hand, and summoned the hilt of the blue lightsaber with the other.

And as the weapon landed in his palm, it suddenly happened.

He was bombarded by a flurry of memories, his entire life coming back to him within seconds. He remembered his childhood, his mother, Watto’s junk shop, he remembered Qui-Gon and Artoo and the handmaiden, he remembered fighting on Naboo, being accepted as Obi-Wan’s apprentice, training to become a knight. He remembered falling in love with Padmé and marrying her, he remembered slaughtering the Tusken Raiders that had abducted and killed his mother, he remembered fearing for Padmé’s life. He remembered how Chancellor Palpatine had told him that he held the secret to defeating death, and he remembered pledging himself to the Sith in order to save his wife and child. And as he understood how thoroughly, how completely he had been manipulated, deceived, abused, both before he lost his memories and before he recovered them, he exploded once more with uncontrollable rage.

He came to his senses to find that he was duelling Luke on a gangway outside the broken window – he thought for a moment that his outburst had blown it out, but the hatred in his son’s expression was such that he wondered for a moment if the young man could have done it. Luke had somehow snatched his lightsaber from his belt and was wielding the red blade aggressively, his face set in a determined scowl, his bright blue eyes now circled with gold. A fierce slash sliced off the cyborg’s arm, and he found himself retreating on a gantry that hung over the depths of the floating city.

The young man pressed his advantage, following him on the narrow girder. “There is no escape,” he said cruelly. “I will kill you now and end this destructive conflict.”

Vader suppressed the pain in the artificial nerve endings embedded in his prosthetic limb and looked at his son straight in the eyes. “You may. I will not fight. But know that if you do, the Emperor will have won.”

He didn’t move back fast enough when Luke brought the lightsaber down again, and the tip of the glowing weapon grazed his face, chipping away at his mask and uncovering his eye and his scarred cheekbone. He steeled himself for the second blow that he expected to come and take what was left of his life, when Luke suddenly inhaled sharply and stepped back.

The Force held its breath as father and son looked at each other, blue eyes staring into blue eyes. Then Luke let out a sob, dropped the red blade to the floor and ran away.

Darth Vader scrambled onto the gangway and climbed back into the devastated room. A voice was announcing over the loudspeakers that the Empire had taken control of Cloud City, and that citizens were invited to evacuate. He activated his helmet’s comlink with a flick of his tongue and switched to the private frequency that only he and Commander Rex knew existed. A chirp indicated that the connection was established.

“Disable the bounty hunter and release Captain Solo. I have no need for him anymore.”

* * *​

Darth Vader could hardly contain his impatience as the Imperial walker approached the platform in the middle of the forest. The door slid aside and Luke appeared, flanked by two troopers. A commander walked up to the Dark Lord and handed him a lightsaber. “This is the Rebel who surrendered to us. He was armed only with this.”

Vader nodded. “Resume your search for his companions. You are not to confront them, and if you do, get yourself killed first. I want them alive.”

The officer bowed crisply and returned to the AT-AT. Father and son stood for a moment on the platform as the huge vehicle lumbered away. There was an uneasy silence.

“I have been expecting you,” Vader finally said. “Or rather, I was hoping that you would come.”

Luke looked at him calmly. “I know, father.”

The heavy, armoured shoulders barely twitched, but the tone was eager. “So, you have accepted the truth.”

The young man lowered his voice. “I’ve accepted the truth that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.”

A sigh escaped from the mask. “It is the name of my true self. I had forgotten it for far too long, but I was finally able to remember. And now I will reclaim it – if you will help me.” He looked down at the lightsaber in his hand. “I see you have constructed a new lightsaber. Your skills are complete. Indeed, you are powerful, as the Emperor has foreseen, and he fears your power. Obi-Wan knew this to be true. That is why he kept you hidden until the time was right.”

He could sense Luke’s doubts, his hesitation and, simmering underneath, his loathing for the black-armoured cyborg but also his avid curiosity to learn the truth. “Why should I believe you?” he blurted. “Why should I trust you? But then, how can I trust Obi-Wan? He said you killed my father, why did he lie to me?”

Vader shook his head. “I was seduced by the Emperor, by the dark side of the Force. I ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man I had been in the past was destroyed. For two decades I could not even remember having been him. So what Obi-Wan told you was true... from a certain point of view.”

Luke suppressed a snort. “A certain point of view?”

Darth Vader’s attention was briefly diverted by a shimmering blue figure that materialised behind his son. The elderly, bearded man was smiling kindly, as if to encourage him. He blinked under his mask a few times, but when the apparition didn’t fade away, he decided to ignore its presence and ploughed on. “Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. There was a time when I had convinced myself that the Jedi were evil, that they prevented me from living my life to the fullest. Then I woke up one terrible day to find that I had forgotten who I was, who I had been – everything. I don’t blame you for being angry. I caused untold pain and suffering to millions of beings in this Galaxy, first in my attempt to overstep the boundaries of life, then in my quest to remember who I am. Today could be the day I set things right.” He paused briefly and added, “We can set things right. We can take on the Emperor, as father and son, and destroy him before it is too late. But for this, you must let go of your hatred, and not fear that you will find yourself behind my mask.”

Luke’s entire body jerked. “How... how do you know?”

Vader went to rest a hand on his shoulder, but pulled back at the young man’s revulsion. “You still had much to learn at the time of our encounter on Cloud City. I could read your thoughts like an open book. Today however” – he let out a sigh – “it is your turn to read mine. Look at me, and tell me what you see.”

He watched his son in silence and waited until he felt the brush of a conscience against his. He dropped all his mental shields and let Luke explore the deepest parts of his soul, those he hardly dared avow to himself. The young man’s eyes closed as he focused, and he began speaking.

“I see a fragmented mind. I see the mind of a man who tried to be too many things at once, and failed. I see pain and sorrow and despair. I see a life driven by anguish and hatred but also by love. I see a man desperately trying to remember the two women who loved him.” He paused as warmth flooded the forest platform. “I see your mother. I see my mother.” The smile of the ghostly figure behind him widened. “I see a man who made his only real choice too late, who, given a choice between being a Jedi and being a simple man, chose both and lost both. I see that you know you can never be a Jedi again. You want to be a simple man, a man with an identity and a memory.”

The blue eyes opened. Darth Vader sighed again. “No, I cannot be a Jedi. I probably never could. But you can, if you will learn to forgive me. And I will simply be your father and stand by your side.” The blue ghost nodded approvingly. “Is there anything else you see, Luke?”

Luke closed his eyes once more, deep in meditation. “I don’t sense any deceit in you – everything you told me was true. But I also sense the Emperor nearby. I sense a trap.”

“Indeed, there is a trap,” Vader said gravely. “Not one laid by me,” he added when Luke gave a start. “One laid by the Emperor. He has lured the Rebel fleet to come here, and he will destroy it once and for all – unless, of course, you and I stop him.”

There was a brief silence. Luke finally looked up at his father. All reluctance, all suspicion, all doubt was gone from his expression. He was now determined, confident, serene. “What will we do about it, father?”

The black mask nodded imperceptibly to the shimmering ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was now beaming, and a tiny chuckle escaped from the vocabulator. Darth Vader patted his son on the shoulder – Luke didn’t shy away from him this time – and gestured towards the Lambda-class shuttle that had brought him to Endor.

“As my old master – and yours – would say: spring the trap.”

 

Oh oh oh! Superb Vader and excellent Luke characterizations! Like duh, should I be surprised?

 

Oh, very interesting AU. At first I was worried that such a big change would make things go bad for our heroes, but in the end, it worked out. All the little tweaks were so interesting and made so much sense. And the anger Vader had at the beginning was so palpable. I really enjoyed this story!

 

Palpatine is a jerk.
Memory loss and finding yourself on an operating table would be scary.
The memory loss was an interesting concept.
Thanks for writing this.

 

Epic start! Brilliant take on the Trilogy too. Please let me know if there's an update coming for this

 

I love your unusual solution for Vader´s inner conflict! Your stories are like jelly beans with an yet unknown flavour. See, you have this talent of mixing ingredients like characters & background stories in interesting ways.

 

What a great look at how things could have gone! How given the right nudge/mistake from Palpatine, Vader could have become a good guy.

I especially enjoyed how Vader said Obi-wan's 'from a certain point of view' speech. I think in some ways, that works better than coming from Obi-wan. I also loved when Luke looked into Vader's mind to see the truth. It was a beautiful moment.

Fantastic story! Nothing disappointing about it at all!

 

Thank you all for reading and reviewing! I'm a bit late in replying here, but I got there at long last

Thank you and yes, you should I'm actually not entirely happy with the way I wrote Luke here, but then again it was my first time writing him. I'll do better next time

Thanks! It seems that the common theme of my fics since I joined the boards has been that, however you rearrange events, they always come to the same conclusion. I'll have to try something different after I finish my current stories!

"Palpatine is a jerk" -- understatement of the century

I had a look at your fics (still need to review) to see how you handle the Vader/Luke relationship, but I was stuck as to how to write something in the same vein that would be a different story from yours, so I decided to go for something different in that, after the memory loss, the relationship between them would have to start from scratch. I realise that this probably wasn't what you were looking for, but it was the best I could do in the time I had (oh, and writing Padmé and Luke was even more daunting!)

Thank you I actually have a vague idea for a couple more scenes in this story, which I may or may not write in the coming months -- I'll tag you if I do.

Thank you! Writing the Cloud City duel was my favourite moment in this story, and it was to an extent inspired by the role of the lightsaber in triggering memories and visions in TFA. I was looking for a way to balance out Vader's "external" investigation of his own past with an adequate trigger for his memories to come flooding back, and when I first saw Rey's vision in TFA it gave me the solution (needless to say, I had to watch TFA a second time to see what was in the vision, since the first time I was busy thinking about this fic )

Thank you Do I also have Bertie Bott's earwax-flavoured beans in my collection?

Thanks! My interpretation of Palpatine (both in canon and in this AU) is that he became over time so ensconced in the ways of the Sith that he can't imagine Vader turning against him for another reason than the Sith apprentice turning against his master. And, well, he got that wrong

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by to read this

 

Finally gotten around to reviewing this - what a unique and interesting AU! I love Luke and Vader stories, and this is certainly a twist but makes so much sense. It's wonderful and gratifying to see Vader reclaim his identity along with his memories.

This was wonderful - so very Luke - I think you captured him very well. And he and Vader working together against the Emperor - springing the trap indeed!

 

Thank you Do I also have Bertie Bott's earwax-flavoured beans in my collection?

Then Anakin would have turned to the dark side without any hesitation. Right after tasting them.

 

It's neat how this begins so closely parallel to the saga as we see it onscreen that it reads as a reinterpretation until after ANH. So much is similar at first. And then we get to see how the divergences snowball once Vader begins putting together the pieces of his past.

The remixed Cloud City duel is fantastic -- as other reviewers said too, I really liked how his confusion and denial result in a situation where Luke is the more angry and out of control one, in a way going a lot like the fight in the throne room in ROTJ. That brush with the dark side makes a lot of sense for an ESB-era Luke confronted with such strange behavior and claims from his as-far-as-he-knows worst enemy. He hasn't had the chance to process it some and mature like he did by the time of ROTJ.

Especially liked this, since I think Anakin may have felt exactly that way about things during/after ROTJ, had he survived.

Though I'd like to see more of this if you're ever inspired to continue it, I also like how the conclusion here is open-ended. Luke and Anakin have reached at least a temporary resolution... which means whatever is next may or may not be totally off the map from what we know.

 

Good story. I can imagine Palpatine manipulating Anakin horribly in this situation. I'm glad that it ended well. Good Anakin characterization.