"Well," Luke muttered, staring out at the shifting light of hyperspace, "Wedge should have made it to the rendezvous by now..."

Artoo, busy keeping the X-wing in one piece, did not reply--all his efforts were concentrated on keeping power flow to the hyperdrive motivator and the magnetic field. With the damage to the ship, it was a difficult task; with the S-foil actuator dead, the open wings created a hugely greater energy drag and the vibration pounded through the whole fighter. Already failing, it shuddered and whined precariously on its way, and all Luke could do was hold on tight and pray.

He glanced at the chronometer; with Wedge having made it to the transport, it would be another four hours before they left hypercomm silence and were able to communicate with Command. Another four hours before Leia found out, and would probably want to kill him.

He found himself amused by that thought--with all that had happened, and with the danger he was still in, he was more terrified of facing the Princess' temper than a messy crash at their destination or swift disintegration in hyperspace if the magnetic shield failed.

"Will we make it, Artoo?" Luke asked directly, hoping for at least a positive answer from the droid.

Sparing a bit of his attention, Artoo tweeted a short message--yes, he was optimistic, but he could make no guarantees with the condition of their ship. If the magnetic shield held, they had a good chance of arriving; what happened after leaving hyperspace was up to Luke himself.

"Great..." Luke mumbled, settling back in his chair. "Still a long way to go, though. Keep up the good work, Artoo...I think I'm gonna try to get some sleep."

If sleep was possible in the groaning, shaking ship. But he was exhausted from the battle and his nerves were strung out from all the close calls; he needed rest, or he'd be in no shape to land the ailing X-wing when they arrived.

When they got to the place that Artoo told him was called Naboo.

He wondered why he felt so sure he'd heard that name before. Maybe one of the Rebels had mentioned it...or mabe his aunt and uncle had. He knew he'd heard it somewhere...

Closing his eyes and trying to push away his worries, Luke used his contemplation of that name as a circle to calm his mind, reaching into old memories to solve his little mystery. Gradually, he nodded off in spite of the shaking fighter...

...falling into old dreams of love and adventure--dreams he'd not had since he was a child...

There was a man, and there was a boy.

The man was no longer a young man, and the boy was no longer a child; still, it did not change the joy and camaraderie between them. There were smiles, and laughter. There was companionship, and fun. There was no war, no worry, no danger. No death.

Where once they had ridden a speeder bike together, the boy perched on the man's lap and pretending to steer, now they gunned the engines of twin swoops and raced each other across the open land, laughing and shouting.

The landscape was blurred by speed--or maybe something else, but they paid no attention. Sometimes it seemed like their surroundings were green, open fields and crystal lakes; sometimes it was more like hot, white sand and craggy canyons. The man and the boy did not notice.

The man could not remember how he'd come to be here, or why there was a nagging feeling that he was supposed to be doing something else, something important--but that was drowned in the happiness he felt, the completeness.

The boy could not recall why he was supposed to be worried about danger, and where he was supposed to be going. Or why he had been frightened before--but he wasn't anymore, and he knew he was safe and together with...with...

Laughing and whooping, they chased each other across the ever-shifting land, everything but the joy and the speed forgotten--whisked away by the hot/cool wind, left behind on the sandy/grassy ground.

Trying to outdo the man, the boy pushed his swoop hard into a turn before a rough canyon wall--or was it a stand of dense trees? The swoop's repulsors whined and slipped, and the boy hit the handbrake, catching himself before he skidded into the stone/trees. Sliding to a spinning halt, throwing up sand/leaves, he tumbled off the swoop and onto the warm/soft ground.

He was not hurt; he was laughing, amused by his own blunder. He watched the other swoop pull high around a rock spire/big tree, looping around to come back for him. Still laughing, the boy sat up and waved, peering at the figure coming closer.

Somehow, he could not make out the figure's details; one moment it was a tall man in a dark tunic, and the next a huge black shadow in a billowing cloak--but mostly it was just a tall man, whose face he could not see clearly no matter how close he was, even when the man pulled up beside him. He knew, somehow, who the man was, and still something nagged at him--the man was supposed to be...gone...but since he was here that must be wrong. He was glad it was wrong.

The man brought his swoop to a gentle halt, grinning himself--it was probably time to go home to the lakehouse/farmstead, where she would be waiting with dinner and a loving smile...

Somehow he knew the boy was smiling, but he couldn't make out any details--he squinted, but the boy's figure remained...blurred to him, features obscured, and he didn't know why. All he could see was a smile that reminded him sharply of her.

Suddenly frustrated, he wanted to see the boy clearly. It was like trying to blink sand from his eyes--why couldn't he see? He reached out for the boy's shoulder, but somehow, no matter how he stepped forward, the boy remained just beyond his grasp.

Then the boy spoke, in a voice he heard but could not hear, bright with that too-familiar smile.

"Dad..."

The unspoken/spoken word grabbed at his heart and squeezed it, catching his breath with sharp claws as something clicked in his memory and his happiness turned to bittersweet, joyful agony. The boy--his son--was right in front of him, millimeters from his fingertips and almost within reach--

--he cried out in pain/hope and leaped forward, trying to catch the shadow of what might have been that had suddenly become a ghost, a wisp of nothing that broke and scattered like mist in his hands--as the light and joy shattered to pieces all around him and left him with nothing but cold darkness--

His shout echoed through the cockpit, reverberating from the viewscreens and bouncing back to him in harsh, mechanical echoes. His reflection was there in the instrument panels, lit by green and red from guages and indicators--unchanged as ever, shrouded in the unforgiving black mask.

His breath coming hard in his chest despite the respirator, Vader clenched his hands so tight they creaked, for a few scant moments caught in the raw agony and emotion that accompanied the dream.

A dream--that's all it was; a dream he'd not had in years. A wish and a plea by the long-buried part of his soul for the ones he had loved long ago; the wife and child that he had killed with his own two hands, that some part of him still longed for--the weak, frightened part of him that he denied existence within his true self.

He'd had this sort of dream before, years ago, though the details were always hazy. There was always a boy--though a few times, it was a girl, probably because he had never known if his child would have been male or female. There was always joy, contentment that he never found in the cold world he lived in now; there was never fear, or even purpose--just happiness and vivid life, until his consciousness began to recognize the discrepancies.

Invariably, the moment he realized the truth, everything was snatched away from him--crumbling to dust in his hands, reminding him ever more painfully of what he had destroyed. What his weak heart wished he had never harmed. What he longed for in moments like these, in the blurry instants just between asleep and awake, when he still remembered what it was like to feel.

And then, he remembered that such things were weakness, were useless. Such things had no place occupying the mind of a Sith Lord. They were the shattered hopes of a dead and forgotten man, not his own; he had no need for such emotion. His master had given him freedom from these things--freedom from despair and pain and fear...from joy and love and warmth...

Forcing such thoughts away, he once again found the empty place inside himself and stood there, working to lock down the walls between himself and the weaker, false emotions. The things he'd cared about then--the people he'd cared about--had turned against him, stripping him of trust, humanity, and health. His old master had destroyed his body, just as surely as she had destroyed his heart. So he had destroyed them both.

She betrayed me, he reminded himself, forcing away any slivers of old hope and grief. He turned her against me--used her against me! He made her betray me. She deserved it!

Then why, something wondered, had he heard her voice when nothing else could reach him--as he lay burning and dying in the pit, then living and suffering in his new master's hands. Somewhere in that blur of fire and black and pain, he had heard her--"Anakin, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...Anakin, please, I love you..."--as he was lost on the fiery edge of life and death.

As if she was still alive--as if she was right there, crying out to him through the flames...

No! he shouted back, trying to drown it out. She betrayed me! She deserved to die!

Did she really? Her and the child? that something said, in his own voice. The child did nothing wrong. My child was innocent! And I killed them both! I tossed them aside without a second thought...!

She betrayed me. And I have no use for children.

With a push of darkness that would have flattened anyone around him had it manifested physically, Vader--in desperation he would never admit--reached for his cold empty place once more and forced away all the cluttered, unwanted emotions belonging to another man; that long-dead, unmourned fool. He shut the doors in his mind that led to those old places, as his master had taught him; he reached for anger and power and found it, took hold of it...hid within it...

When he raised his head again, he was in control--he was Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith; right hand of the Emperor, undefeated enemy of the Jedi, immovable force of Order in the galaxy. Pointless dreams forgotten, left behind like so many swirling bright eddies in hyperspace, he sat up straight in his flight seat and checked the chronometer, giving a tight smile in spite of himself.

Naboo was not far away, now. Soon, this matter would be settled once and for all.

True to her word, Princess Leia Organa didn't budge from the Alliance Command Center--also known as the Farmhouse--until the familiar silhouette of the Millenium Falcon hove into view, coming in to a swift but tidy landing on the permacrete platform beyond the barn. Her few larger belongings already packed away in a crate on the last transport, she carried a utility duffel containing her necessities and a few changes of clothing as she hurried out to meet the old freighter's crew, General Rieekan, See-Threepio--muttering worriedly as usual--and a few remaining personell tagging behind her.

Glad to see them safely returned, she greeted Han Solo and Chewbacca pleasantly but briskly, quickly informing them of the situation. Han seemed rather startled they were leaving so soon--after his rather long-winded supply run, he'd been looking forward to a hot bath and some non-shipboard food--but Chewie, typically unrattled by the quick change, merely gave a Wookiee shrug and headed back into the Falcon to start her up again. Threepio, anxious not to be left behind, followed the furry copilot into the freighter.

Han covered his concern over Luke's absence with his usual bravado, complaining vociferously over being left behind. Hiding her affectionate smile, Leia shooed the General and remaining personnel off to their transport and saw it into the air, before she herself followed Han aboard his ship to continue their discussion.

As they lifted off, lazily tailing the more sluggish Alliance transport, Han was far less worried than Leia about Luke's situation; as far as the smuggler was concerned, Luke was a more than capable pilot--alright, maybe even a bit better than himself, he grudgingly admitted at a pointed bark from Chewie--and from the looks of things it was a simple fly, retrieve, and blow-stuff-up mission. What could go wrong? And besides, they wouldn't know until the X-wings' transport met back up with their fleet group, so there was little they could do worrying themselves over it.

Even the usually-paranoid Threepio concurred that the chances of a disaster happening on Luke's mission was approximately eight thousand five hundred forty-seven to one. But he could be mistaken, he also admitted; Master Luke did seem to have a strange effect on odds.

Attempting to relax, Leia tried to take the words of her companions to heart--tried to make herself stop fretting. Really, Han was right--Luke was a great pilot and it was a simple mission; she ought to have more faith in her friend.

Still, she couldn't stop the edge of fear and worry that followed her all the way to the Alliance's next meeting point. The dark foreboding deep in her heart had not faded--instead, it only grew stronger.

Somehow, a part of her remained certain that Luke was in trouble.