This fic was written for Slx99, as part of the 2019 Secret Santa Fic Exchange! It'll be four chapters long, which I'll be posting over the next two days or so, and I hope everyong enjoys it!

1.

The old, cracked cobblestones were worn under Luke's feet as he paused on the corner of the street, breathing deeply.

The local high street went on bustling around him, but he stayed quiet. Clenched his fists in their gloves. Listened to the noise, the Christmas-shopping crowds knocking into his rucksack, the rasp of his many-layered winter clothes over his skin.

He reached up to grip his rucksack straps—

And someone brushed past him.

The force of it tugged down his sleeve and for an instant, there was skin-on-skin contact, a rush of—

—panic, he was going to be late, and Camie had been eyeing Windy again recently and if she thought he didn't care about her anymore—

—something that quickly receded, dissipating with the air he breathed out in a sigh.

He tugged his sleeve down.

Then, and only then, did he find the courage to walk down the high street, dreading what he'd see.

When he saw it, he did a double take.

It was exactly as he remembered.

Darklighter's butchers sat on one side of it, their doors open and bright as usual. Huff gave him a wave and a smile; Luke waved back.

On the other side still stood the arts and crafts shop Luke's dad bought his wool and knitting needles from; Amilyn, with her hair dyed a pale blue today, wandered around the shelves peering at the racks of paint: poster, acrylic, oil. She was too out of it to wave at him, which suited Luke just fine. His gaze was riveted to the second-hand bookshop sandwiched between them.

A sign proclaimed the place Naberrie's Books; that was unchanged. The tables laid out in the front window, with boxes of novels and novellas; also unchanged. Even the windows looked identical, still with the distinctive shine of that absurdly tough protective glass Jobal had always got cryptic about whenever he asked.

Nothing about the shop had changed at all.

Luke... narrowed his eyes, and pushed the door open. Actually, there was one change: no ear-splitting creak heralded his entrance, but there was a shiny new bell at the top. It tinkled.

A shadow behind the desk moved; Luke hadn't even noticed him until then. "We're currently closed for a brief refurbishment," a voice rasped. "Please come back later."

Luke didn't move. His gaze wandered around the new shelves, the stacks of books disorganised and cluttered along them. His mind seemed in limbo.

The man had noticed his reticence. He turned, annoyed, and Luke caught a glimpse of a moon-white face cratered with scars. He immediately moved his gaze to the eyes—as blue as the lake at noon in the summer.

"Can I help you?"

Luke nodded—then caught himself, and shook his head. "I... I'm Luke Organa. Did Jobal—"

"Jobal mentioned you, yes." The man squinted at him. "I understand you were one of her volunteers?"

"I was her only volunteer." Luke's gaze perused the shelves, and he wasn't even sure if it was a morbid curiosity with how wrong it all looked or a subconscious attempt not to gape at the man's face.

"Is something wrong?"

Luke's gaze snapped back to him. "Oh, it's nothing—"

"Spare me the pleasantries, boy. I'm sure the mayor taught you beautiful ones, but I have no patience for them. Spit it out."

He swallowed. "It just looks wrong. I'm sorry, it's nothing, I promise. It's just jarring."

The man leaned on the counter; something about the movement meant Luke was surprised his limbs didn't creak. "What looks wrong?"

"Not wrong, sorry, just different."

The man huffed. "Fine. What looks different, then?"

Luke blinked.

Then he raised his gaze and pointed, shakily. "Well. Jobal used to have the fantasy and sci-fi books together, rather than separate. It was marked with a pretty handmade sign."

"Well if the sign was handmade and Jobal moved down to the coast then I'm afraid I can't replicate—"

"I made it."

The man stared. Luke fidgeted.

He continued, "I made the signs. Jobal always said her handwriting was a chicken scrawl"—though, come to think of it, perhaps that was rude, perhaps he shouldn't be sharing that with a literal stranger—"and my father taught me calligraphy, so..."

The man frowned. "You are the mayor's son, correct? Breha Organa's boy?"

Luke nodded; the man snorted. "Can't say I expected calligraphy to be the first thing on Bail Organa's mind, but it does fit with what I know of him."

Luke laughed and he relaxed. Marginally.

"Why don't you tell me how it used to be," he suggested. "I have no intention of changing anything about this shop; the Naberries' way... worked very well."

He held out his hand. "I'm Darth Vader."

Luke smiled. He stepped forward to shake it—

"Do you always wear your gloves indoors?"

The man's (hairless) eyebrows were raised, head tilted. Luke flushed. "I'm always cold."

The man continued to give him that look. So Luke flushed again and, stripping his gloves off, braced himself for the handshake.

Skin touch and images, stronger than anything he'd ever sensed before, exploded behind his eyes—

—a woman in a wedding dress, back turned but still achingly familiar; an old man resting a comforting hand on his shoulder; fire and stone floor against his cheek and pain—

Luke, for all that he'd been expecting it, yanked his hand back immediately.

That was so much more intense than usual.

Vader was watching him with eyes narrowed to slits. His eyebrows were high on his face, his lips flattened in a thin line—a frown.

"Luke... Organa, you said your name was, correct?"

Luke nodded mutely.

Vader's brow creased further.

"Alright," he said eventually. "I would be grateful if you could continue to volunteer here. I will need your help to rearrange all the shelves that Jobal," he glanced around, "generously put away for me."

Luke was, to be frank, still pretty freaked out.

But this was what he wanted.

So he bent down to pick up one of the books still in the boxes on the floor, revelling in the rush of excitement, surprise, that rang in his chest from its previous reader, and smiled hesitantly.

"Sure."

"How was the bookshop?" Bail asked, dumping far too much spaghetti onto Luke's plate. Luke wrinkled his nose at it. "What? You're getting too skinny."

"Leave Luke alone, Bail," Breha chided, finally putting down the newspaper she'd been reading and letting the frown fade from her face. She mock-glared at her husband across the kitchen table.

"It's alright, Mum." Luke looked his father in the eye as he splatted far too much tomato sauce onto the pasta, not even flinching as a few scarlet drops flecked his blue t-shirt. "You know Artoo will get the rest."

A cold, wet nose shoved at his knee at the sound of the name, and looked grinned down at the grey Scottie doing his best to look cute and innocent.

"You are not giving the rest to the dog."

"You know the drill, Dad. You give me too much, Artoo gets it." Luke sprinkled parmesan over his meal; some skipped away to join the tomato sauce on his t-shirt.

Bail grimaced. "Please put on a tea towel."

"I'm not wearing a bib. Bibs are for babies."

"They're also for sixteen-year-olds who eat too messily, put one on."

"How was your day, Mum?" Luke asked, turning to Breha. Bail huffed.

Breha smiled. "As good as ever, I suppose."

"Still having trouble with the— what're they called—"

"Imperials," Breha supplied, wrinkling her nose elegantly, "yes."

"It's been over fifteen years. Won't they quit?"

"I suppose the string of successes they had with Tarkin in charge probably emboldened them," Bail chimed in. Sometimes Luke forgot his father had been a politician himself, before he'd retired early to live at home and look after Luke. "But he's dead, isn't he?"

"Eyewitness accounts and DNA tests confirmed it."

"So." Bail finished dumping spaghetti on his own plate and—with a pointed glance at Luke—dug in. "They'll collapse soon enough. Unless they can get a new leader as good as he was. Or as Palpatine."

"Yes." Breha finally unfolded her hands from their solemn, mayor's position and picked up her fork. "The damage Palpatine did to the city can't—"

"Was he the one who killed my birth mother?"

The clink of utensils against china stilled.

Two sets of startled, pained brown eyes were looking at him, and he swallowed.

"She died just before he fell, didn't she?" he justified lamely. "And... I thought..."

Bail and Breha exchanged a look; Bail opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again.

Luke looked between them. "Dad?"

Bail admitted, "It... might well have been him, Luke." He grimaced. "But there's no way to know for sure who killed your mother. Or your father."

Luke frowned and looked down at his lap. Artoo shoved his head into it and Luke's hand stroked him almost on instinct.

"Luke?" Breha leaned forward to put her hand on his shoulder, careful as always not to accidentally brush his skin. "Is something the matter?"

"Yes," Bail said, "did anything bring this on?"

Luke shrugged. "The new man who's running the bookshop," he said. "Vader."

"Strange name," Bail commented.

Luke blinked. "You don't know him? He seemed to know you."

"No." Bail frowned. "Perhaps I met him years ago, in my politician days, and he remembers me from then?"

"Maybe." It didn't ring true to Luke. "He's nice enough. Wants me to keep helping out there—to keep everything the same, exactly the same." He frowned. "But when we shook hands, he made me take my gloves off, and... well, y'know what happens."

Breha frowned. "Did you see anything that upset you?"

"I saw..." It sounded stupid, but Luke said it anyway; he knew they wouldn't judge. "A woman in a wedding dress, from the back. It reminded me of wedding photos of my mother." He stabbed his fork into the spaghetti. "I don't know, it's been bothering me."

"Well," Breha tried, though she didn't sound like she believed it, "a lot of people knew Padmé."

"How many were at her wedding?"

"Perhaps she met—what was his name? Darth Vader? Perhaps she met him on one of her mercy missions," Breha suggested, and squeezed Luke's shoulder lightly. "But if you're uncomfortable at the shop I'm sure no one would blame you if—"

"No. I want to keep doing it."

Breha picked up her fork again. "Well then, make sure to report back." She smiled at him, a twinkle in her eye. "Let us know if anything interesting happens."

It already has.

Luke... debated mentioning how strange the contact had felt, like he'd seen and been seen in return. Like the man had looked right through him with the sort of piercing clarity Luke was told he had, when he did his looking himself.

But no.

His parents... as kind as they were, they did not have his... gift. They would not understand.

He shoved a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth and tried not to think about it.

The moment he got up to his room, he pulled out his computer and searched Padmé Amidala Naberrie.

Pictures flashed up, as they always did, of blood and ash-pale skin and a face slack in death, body on a funeral bier. News articles abounded, all years old. The most recent one was from perhaps eighteen months previous, titled: Padmé Amidala, fifteen years on: What was her legacy?

He clicked through and read it, but it said nothing he didn't already know. She'd been the mayor. She'd married a man called Anakin Skywalker, become pregnant (with Luke, though it wasn't like the article knew that)... and died before birth, in an attack by the gang whose activities had taken a hit by her reforms.

Palpatine had been the one to order her death. He'd died in a warehouse that burnt down a week later, body scarred and burnt almost beyond recognition. There were pictures in the article, but Luke felt queasy looking at them.

He wondered if the deaths were connected.

He thought of Vader, and wondered if his scars were connected as well.

He chewed on his lip.

Luke never went to the shop Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and he'd been busy with homework on Monday, so he didn't see Vader again until Thursday.

"I was beginning to think you weren't coming back," Vader said by way of greeting. Luke glanced around to see he'd taken Luke's meticulously drawn diagram into account; the shop was, slowly, starting to resemble what it had looked like before.

Luke didn't know why Vader was so set on keeping it the same, but he was glad of it.

Jobal had been his grandmother, even if both of them had accepted that it was best for it not to become widely known that Padmé's child had survived. The shop had been her home—and Luke's main connection to Padmé.

He did not want it to change.

"I was always going to come back," he said, dumping his rucksack. "I just had clubs to go to. School to catch up on."

"Mmhm." Vader picked up a pencil and scratched a price on the inside cover of the book. "Which clubs?"

"Languages, debate, engineering..."

"The first two make sense for a politician's son," Vader said. "The last one doesn't."

"I—" Impotent... irritation surged in him; his parents had politely dismissed him from doing it enough as it was. He didn't need this stranger judging him too. "I enjoy it."

Vader looked... taken aback. "Apologies, young one. I enjoyed engineering when I was your age, as well."

Luke blinked.

Well.

That was a thing.

"It's similar to these books, actually," he said airily. "I like picking up used pieces, feeling their history and emotions and making something new; same way I like leafing through a book and knowing someone else's experience of it, before adding my own."

Luke watched Vader out of the corner of his eye with bated breath...

Vader said, "Interesting."

Then he said, "Now. You told me Jobal had handwritten signs indicating the genres?"

Other than Vader's increasingly suspicious behaviour, nothing happened until the following Sunday.

Luke was slapping stickers on the books, smiling as the gentle waves of joy, peace, excitement washed over him. He leafed through them idly momentarily, before he moved them out of the pile and stacked them.

The bell at the door rang.

"We're not open right now," Luke called out on instinct, but then he heard Vader's sharp intake of breath and glanced up.

And cringed.

That man was old.

He immediately chided himself for thinking such an uncharitable thing; his parents would not approve. But... it was the truth.

The man's wrinkles looked like they'd been carved into his skin with a blunt butter knife, his eyes sitting in deep hollows in his face. He walked... not hunched over, but dinosaur-like. Luke squinted; he thought his hands might be trembling slightly, but he wasn't sure.

Vader growled, "Get out."

Luke shot him an inquisitive glance.

And it was that movement, unfortunately, that made the man notice him.

"It's a pleasure to see you again as well, Vader," he said, smiling. His teeth were too perfectly white for his scarred and rotting face. "But I don't think I recognise your companion?"

"Luke, go and check we have enough stickers in the back."

"Ah. Luke, is it?" Those hooded eyes surveyed him, then widened slowly. A smile stretched his lips. "I don't suppose that would be Luke Organa, the mayor's son?"

Luke, inexplicably frozen in place by that draconian stare, only nodded nervously. He had his manners after all.

Vader said, "Luke—"

The man stepped forward, holding his hand out. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

He'd held out his left hand.

Luke glanced at his own hands. His right still wore the glove, but his left... he'd taken it off to handle the books.

He swallowed. Oh.

Oh dear.

Still.

He reached up to grasp the man's hand, his chest only betraying the slightest hitch of a gasp when—

—a darkness, cold, malice, a searing flame and a gunshot and a baby's scream, rage the likes of which he'd never felt rent him in two—

—they made contact. Luke forced the images out—or, tried—and let out a deep breath.

The old man smiled and let go.

"Luke," Vader said, "go into the back room."

Luke went.

They were sitting together in the living room that evening, Luke frowning over his sheet of Huttese homework, Breha frowning over the latest updates sent to her phone and Bail peacefully knitting his fifth (mismatched) sock of the week when Luke was jerked out of his swamp of declension confusion by a, "You've been quiet all evening."

Luke glanced up at his dad, who peered at him over thin-rimmed reading glasses with a gentle, genteel smile.

Luke tried to smile back, and grimaced instead.

"What's wrong?"

Luke grimaced further. "Earlier."

"Ah." Bail put down his knitting; even Breha glanced up then, to exchange a look with him. "Did something happen when you went out with Biggs?"

"Did you finally... you know?"

"For the last time, Mum, we're not dating." Luke rolled his eyes and huffed. "And no."

"So it was at the shop," Bail surmised, tapping one knitting needle against his knee. "What was it?"

Luke shrugged. "Some old guy came in."

Breha laughed—gave him a pointed look, but laughed. "I didn't know you were open."

"We're not, yet. But this guy just walked right in and acted all... creepy."

"How so?"

"Like..." Luke wrinkled his nose. "Like that politician from Mos Eisley, that time made me go to the function for the opening of the Tatooine aqueduct."

"I see." And yep, his parents looked worried. "Did he...?"

"No. He just... asked if I was the mayor's son and said it was nice to meet me. Without introducing himself. Then he shook my hand—and made me do it without wearing my gloves."

Bail and Breha definitely exchanged an alarmed look at that.

"Do you think you—"

"He looked too happy when I flinched to have not."

Another loaded glance. "What did he look like?"

"Old," Luke reiterated. "Short, but more because he was hunched over. Pale and really scarred, like Vader."

Bail frowned. "Did he know Vader?"

"Yes. Definitely. Vader clearly hated his guts—he kept telling me to go into a backroom and he sounded worried. Kept telling the man to get out, but he didn't go."

"Did you go?"

"After he shook my hand."

One last weighted look, then...

"Luke," his mother said. "When—"

"Breha."

"What?" She shot Bail a look. Not a glare, but something firm and unyielding. "He's sixteen: he's old enough to at least talk about it."

Bail pressed his lips together and pointedly resumed knitting.

Luke frowned, Huttese work forgotten, and leaned forwards.

His mother continued, "Padmé was in the old town hall—you know, that museum out by the train station—when she was attacked, presumably on Palpatine's orders. She was technically on maternity leave, since you were due to be born any day, but she was visiting Sabé and the others who were acting mayor while she was away. Anakin was with her.

"The intruders had set a fire and the building was in the midst of evacuation, but men came after her with guns and knives. She and Anakin had been separated for some reason.

"She was shot dead.

"Sabé had her rushed to the hospital, where they barely managed to save you, and Anakin never came out of that building alive—died in the fire, we think."

Luke swallowed.

He wondered if he should feel something beyond numb shock: pride and sorrow for the mother he'd never known. Pity for the father who'd loved him so much. Hatred for the man who'd taken it all from him.

But then he thought of Jobal, Sola—the aunt who'd moved away from the memories of the town before he could open his eyes—and the quiet melancholy in their faces whenever they looked at him. The tight ferocity in their hugs.

The overwhelming grief and longing he sensed every time they slipped up and accidentally made bare skin contact with him.

That longing gnawed at his chest now.

He loved his parents. He adored being an Organa. But he knew he would have loved being an official member of the Skywalker-Naberrie family as well.

Bail and Breha were his godparents anyway. He could have had both...

...if only they'd lived.

But they hadn't.

And, Luke admitted, as his parents had always known, without Anakin...

Without someone who understood, who shared this curse-like gift with him...

He was left ever so slightly lost.

"Palpatine died a week later, in a fire at a warehouse he used for his headquarters. It was deemed an accident, but I always suspected Dormé or Cordé did it." Breha was too refined to grimace, but her serene face contorted nonetheless. "We never heard from them again."

"Where was the warehouse?" Luke found himself asking.

Bail paused his knitting, eyeing him. "You're not visiting the area. The Imperials are still at large."

"I wasn't going to visit it!"

"Then you don't need to know where it is." Bail needles clacked together pointedly. "It's history, Luke. the Imperials are in decline, Palpatine is dead—"

"Bail," Breha said.

Bail ignored her. "—and your parents would have preferred you stay safe than run around trying to avenge them."

Luke flinched. "I wasn't—"

"I know." Bail shook his head and calmed his tone. "And I'm sorry—that was harsh. But please, don't go looking. I'm sure that whatever you find, you won't like it."

Luke looked to his mother. She just nodded in agreement.

"And be careful around Vader," she added. "He seems nice enough, but...

"I don't want to lose you too."