She was.

They jumped to hyperspace shortly after her. This time, Piett stayed in the cockpit and so did Luke; Luc, of course, banished to Piett's bunk where he was sulking and thinking about what he'd done. Piett barely blinked, barely let the screen out of his sight, barely dared to—Carina had never been his closest friend or confidante, he'd never got the impression that she adored him, but he respected her. She respected him.

Was... was she a Rebel?

What did this mean?

If Luke did have the same strange feelings Lord Vader so often experienced, why had they led them to Yavin?

What was going on?

They adjusted their course every so often to keep following her, so they didn't get lost in a few snarls and snags of hyperspace, but her course was, consistently, headed towards Axxila. Perhaps she was going home. Perhaps she was going to walk in on Aurelia panicking because Luc had vanished and panic herself, and then they would have to walk inside with Luke in tow and... explain everything.

Confront her about everything.

That would be an unpleasant conversation.

But, when she did revert to realspace above Axxila's atmosphere, and they reverted just behind her—distant enough to go unnoticed, but keeping a sharp eye on her tracker on the monitor—she did not fly for the part of the planet that was their home. Piett should know. She was flying for the works, the industrial sector.

The shipyards, perhaps. Perhaps the Appenza needed some work done. Or perhaps...

They tracked her to a warehouse.

It was hardly distinguishable from all the other warehouses around it, in this district of the planet: grimy, full of dirt... but strangely abandoned. Nothing was ever abandoned on this planet, there simply wasn't the space to allow perfectly good estate to languish and sit there, unused. But judging by the colour and thickness of the grime, and the lack of... well, cleanliness. Worker safety regulations, what few were actually enforced on Axxila. Anything that betrayed usage...

The lack of it all was suspicious.

Piett set down his ship on a landing strip not far from where she landed hers; the spaces in the rooms of the warehouse, stacked high with crates Piett suspected would actually be empty, served as temporary hangars for now. A hissed, hushed argument kept Luc inside—and, when Piett wasn't satisfied by that despite Luke's apparent trust of devilish nine year olds, a lock on the door did.

"Where is she?" Piett murmured to Luke as they strapped blasters to their hips and made to descend the ramp, glancing around.

Luke got a funny look on his face, distant, as he said, "Close. She wouldn't go far, and she was clearly skilled enough to know she was being followed—"

He was cut off by a shot.

Luke dived to the side almost instantly, with an agility more often seen in troopers than officers of the Imperial Navy; Piett was almost impressed. He ducked behind the crates instinctively and Piett crouched behind him, peering above them—

Then yanked his head back down when a shot nearly gave him a bald patch.

"Way to be subtle," a musical Core accent said—not clipped enough to be Coruscanti; Alderaanian. He knew who that was. "Who are you, and why were you at Yavin Four?" He heard a click, and a clatter; he wondered what other weapons or explosives she might have on her, on her familiar territory, trained on them.

For a moment, he wondered if the crates were truly so empty after all.

There was another shot. That was definitely a warning shot; it intentionally went clean over their heads and the crates weren't thick enough to provide truly decent cover, if worst came to the worst. She was intimidating them.

"Answer me, or I'll pock your little ship with so many blaster holes she'll never peg a tracker on anyone ever again."

Piett gritted his teeth, then. Threats... grandstanding... he had grown soft on the bridge of a Star Destroyer, he realised.

He had not missed this.

"I would advise against it, Carina," he said. His voice didn't shake; Luke shot him a look, and Piett wondered which voice he'd unconsciously adopted. The no, Admiral Ozzel, I am not certain that would be the best course of action voice? The please, Lord Vader, there are numerous reasons why this person should not be strangled voice? The Lars, for stars' sake, get some sleep voice? "Your son is on that ship—he snuck on board, I had no control over it—and we did not come here to fight you."

She froze.

"My son?" she said, voice cold and dangerous. "And your blasters say otherwise, you—" She cut herself off when Piett pushed himself to his feet, scrambling for her blaster, but then she froze. "Firmus?"

"Ah. So it is her," Luke said, almost amicably.

Piett ignored him. "Hello, Carina," he greeted. She hadn't lowered her blaster; if anything, the storm in those dark blue eyes she'd given Luc had only intensified. He raised his hands in a vague surrender. "I didn't know you were a Rebel."

"Clearly, or you'd have turned me over to the Empire by now," she said. It... wasn't said coldly. It was just matter-of-fact, impersonal, and perhaps that was why it bothered Piett so much.

It made him think about what Aurelia had said to him, about his loyalty to his family versus the Empire, before they'd left.

You do know that you don't have to choose?

She'd been wrong.

"I wouldn't say that," he tried carefully.

Even Luke raised his eyebrows. Carina didn't bother responding—just snorted, and fired another warning shot. "Get out of here, Firmus. And whoever you dragged here with you."

"Luke Lars, my name is," Luke said loudly, and then, pointedly tossing his blaster aside, he stood up as well.

Piett stared at him. Stared at Carina, her tall stature perched behind the stack of crates a little way away. Stared at how her mouth dropped open.

Then she yanked up her blaster and fired.

Straight at Luke.

Piett watched his life flash before his eyes, but Luke didn't even flinch. He just raised a hand, and, with a swipe of his fingers—

The bolt flicked to the side, bent to the side, to miss him completely.

Carina gaped at Luke, who stood there with his eyes narrowed, lips slightly drawn back from his teeth in a snarl. It wasn't overtly threatening... but the moment she'd shot at him, it wasn't friendly either.

She shot again. And again. And again.

She missed every time. Eventually, Luke just flexed his hand and her blaster ripped out of her grip, coming to land in his. He threw it aside.

Piett was about to faint.

He'd— he'd suspected, Luke would have the same powers, but this— this—

"You recognised my name," Luke said loudly. "We did not come here to hurt you. We did not come here to hurt anyone. But you recognised my name, so I think you know exactly who we came here to save, and I think you know exactly where he is."

Luke had been on edge this whole time, Piett knew.

Now, he thought, he might have finally been pushed off.

Carina just glared. "And how do you know that, you almighty and powerful Sith? Does the Emperor know—"

"There is nothing for Palpatine to know. I am no Sith. And I want you to tell me where Lord Vader is." Luke's voice was... layered, oddly, with something compelling and strange and intense. Piett had to pause to shake it off—clearly, from the way she moved her head side to side, as if she were hearing invisible voices, Carina did too.

"What you want is of no concern to me."

"I'm sure it isn't," Luke drawled. "But I came here to find Vader. I won't be leaving without him."

Despite the absolute terror that Piett suddenly realised was on Carina's face as she looked at Luke—Sith, she'd called him, even if Luke had denied the accusation; a warrior, a magician, like Lord Vader?—she did not back down. "You won't find him, and if you do you will never be able to recover him without getting yourself killed. If you refuse to leave without him, then you will not be leaving at all."

Her gaze slid to Piett. "I'm sorry, Firmus. I don't want you to get hurt, and I don't want Aurelia hurt when she finds out what happened. But I don't trust you not to walk away and inform the Empire of this. Duty always comes first, for you."

Piett observed her for a moment, and observed the pang in his chest. Examined the situation at large.

He'd always known he would die one day, probably younger than he needed to. He had seen a warzone and he had joined it, multiple times. He had estranged his family, turned his back on his home, in his desire to strive to improve the galaxy in whatever way he could—and if calculating violence to fight the violent was what he was good at, then so be it.

But he had expected to die when the ship exploded, in a shower of sparks and stardust; asphyxiated, falling to Lord Vader's feet as he'd seen so many men do; or even from sickness, worsened by stress. Max had told him so often that he'd get grey hairs from his fussing—had told him that the stress he was under was hardly good for his health. Max had talked him into giving in and going on this holiday to visit Aurelia and Luc and Carina in the first place.

He had not expected to be killed by family.

"Loyalty comes first for me," he corrected her gently, eyeing the way she eyed her blaster, scattered on the floor a little to the right. "As clearly it does for you."

She swallowed. He saw her tense, glance at Luke—the intense way he was studying her, like he was dissecting her with his mind. Saw her get ready to lunge for the blaster, or shout for help, or bring countless opponents down on their heads at once—

And then, the oddest thing of all happened:

Luke began to sing.

"Mirrorbright, shines the moon," he sang, "its glow as soft as an ember."

Carina jerked back, staring. "What—"

"When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember."

She laughed. It was a harsh sound; horrible. "You're singing a lullaby?" she asked. "An Alderaanian lullaby?" Her voice was shaky; there was something else going on here, it meant something else; Piett just didn't know what.

"Those you have loved but are gone," Luke smiled, "those who kept you so safe and warm."

"What is the point of this?" The blaster was forgotten. Luke's face was impassive, calm.

"The mirrorbright moon lets you see, those who have ceased to be." He held her gaze the whole time, in challenge. "Mirrorbright shines the moon, as stars die to their embers..."

And Carina froze.

She... she didn't sigh. She sucked in a breath, deeply, and stared. "What. That's— that's not the line—"

"Those who you loved are with you still," he finished quietly—almost sadly. "The moon will help you remember."

Luke fell quiet for a moment there, and all that was left in the warehouse was Carina's shock and Piett's confusion. It was— it was a lullaby. An Alderaanian lullaby; one he'd once heard Carina sing to Luc, the last time he'd seen them. What—

"Alderaan has no moon," Luke said. "But it almost did, and you know it too."

"I do know it," she snapped, then slowed down. "It— it was why I joined the Rebellion, and became a spy in the Axxilan police force. But..." She fixed him with a hard look, and spoke more slowly, "That wasn't the right line." She paused again, like she couldn't believe it herself. "That was the wrong line—the right line is 'fires die to their embers'—"

"It is."

"You know the code phrase?" she demanded. "How?"

Piett blinked.

Looked between them—Luke's deep, stoic breathing, his hands suddenly held up, placating, again; Carina's more rapid breaths, but they slowed as Luke spoke, and she realised—

"How do you think Leia Organa escaped the Death Star?"

Luke had been stationed on the battle station before it was destroyed—had been conveniently transferred off before it was destroyed, Piett remembered.

And—

"She told you the code phrase?"

"She did. If I ever needed it. You know where it came from." He smirked a little. "Conversing with other undercover Rebel agents was exactly why she told it to me."

Piett gaped.

Horror struck him—staring between Luke and Carina again, suddenly not antagonistic, suddenly not enemies, but— but—

Co-conspirators?

Rebels?

He glared at Luke. "You're—"

"Are you going to report me for this, Captain?" Luke asked, amused.

"Lord Vader—"

"—is implicit in this," he said simply.

Piett had had the rug ripped out from under him during the past day. Then it had been the floorboards themselves. Then the building's foundations.

Now the very planet he stood on seemed to have vanished.

"Lord Vader..." he said aloud. To be fair, even Carina looked shocked at that. "...a... traitor...?"

"Were you a fan of the Death Star, Firmus?" Luke fixed him with a look. "Of a battle station with the capability to destroy entire planets?"

"I..."

"Would you have been a fan of it," Luke continued, "if it had carried out the plan Tarkin concocted and destroyed Alderaan, as its example to the galaxy of what it could do?"

Piett felt like the wind had been pummelled from his lungs.

"It was going to destroy Alderaan?" He couldn't believe that. Well, he could—what was the point of a planet killer if it didn't kill a few planets?—but to know about such a station intellectually and to know the impact it would have truly had were... staggeringly different. He looked at Carina, at the pale face, the grim set of her jaw and her frown, and wondered.

Billions of people dead. One of the central bastions of culture and trade, the jewel of the Core, more so than Coruscant could ever be. Gone?

Gone.

"That..." He closed his mouth. Swallowed tightly. His throat suddenly seemed very dry. Alderaan had been under martial law since the Battle of Yavin anyway, its royal family disgraced and fleeing into the night to join the fight on the frontlines, but that... "That would have been abominable."

"It would have," Carina agreed loudly. "So here we are. If Princess Leia hadn't destroyed the Death Star, that would have happened to Yavin, and then to Alderaan."

"But Lord Vader..." It hit him like a speeder. "Lord Vader flew in the Battle of Yavin. He was the only survivor."

Luke crossed his arms across his chest. "He's the greatest starpilot in the galaxy, Firmus. Didn't you think there was a reason Leia wasn't shot down before she could fire?"

Piett didn't know what to think. He didn't know which way was up anymore. If he wasn't careful, gravity would stop working any minute.

That was alright; no one was paying attention to him anymore, anyway. Luke just turned back to Carina.

"So I'm going to ask again," he said, his pleading tones increasingly desperate, "where is Vader. He is missing, and the Emperor is going mad, getting suspicious, and—"

"And he's your father."

Gravity stopped working.

Piett whipped his head to stare at Luke, at that—at the fact he didn't deny it. At the fact he just stood there, tense, hands balled into fists... and then, slowly and agonisingly, he reached up to wipe tears from his eyes. It didn't help; they streamed down his face anyway, and his eyes glistened in the dim light.

Carina continued gently, "You're Luke Lars, right? He kept calling out to you. Half-conscious, but that was the only word he could form. It was... nerve-wracking, hit too close to home, hearing what sounded like Luc, Luc, Luc in an never ending litany, so I thought you might be his son."

She shrugged. "Then I dismissed the thought, but..." She gestured to her blaster, far away from her. "Your demonstration makes that clear." Silence reigned for a few heartbeats.

Finally, Piett had the nerve to ask, "Is it true?"

Luke sighed. Blinked fiercely, and after that, no more tears fell.

"Yes," he said. "It's true. Please, Carina. Tell me where my father is."

He sucked in a breath that seemed to rattle. "I want this... conspiracy we're planning, this coup against Palpatine, to succeed. We can't do that without him. But most of all... I want my father back."

Carina barely hesitated before she said, "There's another warehouse, a few levels down. He was captured by pirates—I was hunting them when I found their base, where they were keeping him. I was moments away from contacting... somebody, I don't know, doing something, but somehow they suspected I had Rebel ties and convinced me to strike a deal with Rebel High Command. They'd do anything to get their hands on Vader, after all. I went to the outpost on Yavin Four to get a message back to the main base..."

"So it was pirates who captured him after all," Luke observed in a monotonous voice. "I was fairly sure that High Command themselves wouldn't authorise such a ridiculous plan." He had not said that to Piett at the time, and Piett felt slighted. "Who hired the pirates?"

"What?"

"The pirates. If they're smart enough to keep Darth Vader contained, they're smart enough to know they shouldn't. Who put them up to it?"

Carina shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't ask. I was too... unnerved."

Then, despite himself, despite everything, Piett laughed.

It was a slightly maniacal laugh, he had to concede. It seemed to come from nowhere. It started, then climbed in pitch again and again and again, and he couldn't stop chuckling. Luke and Carina stared at him.

Then he said, "Yes. Lord Vader tends to be like that."

"Where is he?" Luke said. "Can you give me coordinates?"

"Better." Carina did move to pick up her blaster, then—but she didn't need to. Luke reached out a hand and summoned it to him, then tossed it to her. She raised her eyebrows but said nothing, only allowed a slight smirk to climb onto her face. "I can take you there."

"What about the ship?" Piett asked. "What about Luc?"

Carina glanced at Piett's ship—Piett tried not to feel offence at her derisive snort—then back at him. When Piett looked, he could see Luc's face as a smudge against the window, scowling. "Well, the last few days have shown that you're a stellar babysitter, Firmus," she said with a wicked grin. "Why don't you stay here and look after him, while I take Luke Lars down to rescue his father?"

"Skywalker," Luke corrected. "If we're all coming clean about everything, my name is Luke Skywalker."

Piett was already ready to faint. This did nothing to him. "Alright," he said. "Why not." Then he glared at Carina. "And really? Is that your plan?"

"Of course not." She snorted. "You'd be safer coming with us into blasterfire; Luc would eat you alive. I'll comm Aurelia, get her to come down here."

"Are you going to explain all of this to her?" Piett asked. "How you're a Rebel?"

"What makes you think she doesn't already know?" Carina shot back.

Another little piece of Piett's galaxy crumbled—Aurelia's concern the whole trip suddenly made horrible sense—but he took a deep breath. He could run across the quicksand that was his foundational beliefs. He walked on eggshells around Vader enough times.

Carina turned away to comm Aurelia. Piett and Luke exchanged a look—Luke opened his mouth with a contrite look, an apology clearly on the tip of his tongue, but Piett shook his head with a slight smile and nodded. Luke closed his mouth again and grinned back.

A great weight seemed to have rolled off his shoulders, but there was yet another still remaining. Luke was antsy, ready to barge in and rescue— and rescue his father, and Piett was going to face his commanding officer in less than ideal circumstances.

He couldn't think of a more fitting way to end this entire shitshow.

Piett had had a dramatic day and a half and this was how it ended: storming the pirates' headquarters with his Rebel sister-in-law and the son of the heir apparent to the Empire, blasters gripped tightly in their hands.

Carina led them several blocks east and several levels down, into the depths of a planet Piett had patrolled far too often. He didn't miss how despite Luke's quiet self-assuredness—the sort of confidence and unshakeable steadfastness that the father had clearly taught the son—he found it much more difficult to pick his way through Axxila's sloping, not-always-stellar architecture, their crumbling arches and ways, than Carina and Piett did.

It was petty, but Piett found himself enjoying it. Luke clearly noticed—he stuck his tongue out at Piett at one point, and nearly went over the side of the railing when he tripped two seconds later.

"Hush," Carina said. "We're coming up here."

"Up where?" Luke crouched behind her on the ledge. It was a side alley she'd led them to, ditching their speeder a few twists and turns back, the airspaces far too tight to fly through. Climbing was not fun, clambering even less so, but now Piett sort of understood Luke's fearlessness when he walked. He may stumble, he may fall, but he supposed that with those sorcerer's ways he shared with Lord Vader, he had no fear of the devastation that would come once he hit the bottom.

Still, seeing him crouched so close to the edge activated Piett's instincts—instincts that said do not do anything that would antagonise Lord Vader into killing you.

Letting his son die fell under that bracket.

"Sir," he said, and watched both Carina and Luke frown as they tried to figure out who he was addressing with that, before Luke's eyes blew wide and he stifled a snort. Carina had told them to hush, after all. "Please move away from the edge. And when we go in, if there is a firefight, you'll need to—"

"I grew up on Tatooine, Captain," Luke shot back, and Piett scowled at the jab. "I've been in firefights before; I know what to do with them."

Tatooine. He'd told Piett that already, but now it was fitting together. Lord Vader's son, who was essentially a prince of the Empire, had grown up on Tatooine—

I wanted to see the stars. If I could've got there by joining a Rebel academy and flying for the Rebellion, I would've gone there just as quickly. Not much of anything back on Tatooine, except apathy.

Piett swallowed.

How did you become Lord Vader's aide?

My father insisted it was for my own good. I'm inclined to listen to him.

This made no kriffing sense.

I can see why my father likes you too.

Stars, all the clues really had been there, hadn't they.

And—Lord Vader liked—

"Now, the pirates' complex is basically another warehouse, and they have ventilation windows, right at the top of the storage rooms," Carina said, pointing to a row of slots that ran along the walkway ahead of them, shuttered with metal. "That's where they come out. Vader is kept in a smaller, administrative room that ought to be a computer room off the side of the main one, which is this one here." She pointed a little farther ahead. "I have rope and a grappling hook; all we need to do to get in is get the windows open, then we can abseil down."

"How are we getting out?" Piett had to ask nervously. "We don't know what state Lord Vader is in."

"You—Lars. Luke." Carina winced; apparently Luc and Luke having basically the same names was just as weird for her, too. "How powerful are you with the Sith stuff? Can you levitate things?"

"Still not a Sith," Luke huffed. "But yes. I can."

"Can you levitate something as big as Vader for an extended period of time? You can always carry him, I suppose, but..." She ran a critical eye up and down Luke, then—to his offence, again—Piett. "That doesn't seem likely."

Luke laughed softly. "I can levitate him, yeah. Hopefully he'll be awake and able to walk, but I can do it. Size matters not."

Piett decided not to ask.

"Great. Now stand back." Carina stood up, walked along the walkway, cocked her blaster, and aimed at one of the windows. "This is gonna be loud, and there should be two pirates guarding Vader at any one time; they'll hear the noise and shout, then we have to get down there, get Vader, and be ready to fight our way out by the time the other pirates come running—"

The window slid open soundlessly.

Carina gaped at it. Luke shrugged.

"Sith stuff," he quipped back at her. Carina grinned, almost; Piett got the feeling she liked Luke already. Which was good for her, but while Piett could feel an exponentially growing fondness for everyone here, he was also getting extremely irritated by every action that occurred, ever. "And..."

He closed his eyes, concentrated, then relaxed his shoulders.

"The guards are out cold," he said. "Let's go."

Climbing down the rope was an experience Piett had not missed and was not in any hurry to repeat. Luke was obviously significantly younger than him, and even Carina was of an age with Aurelia, who was quite a bit younger as well. They could laugh at him all they wanted, but there was a reason Piett had switched to officer's work, and all in all this was a deeply unpleasant experience. He had never been more grateful to have his feet on solid flooring when they got down. It was a vast, cavernous hall, stacked to the brim with crates of unknown substances—probably spice; you never forgot exactly what that smelt like—as secondary walls. He moved silently down one of the aisles they formed and grimaced when he saw the small door at the end—with the pirates' unconscious bodies lying outside it. One Weequay; one human.

But he didn't flinch. He bent down to take their blasters, set them to kill—it didn't take a genius to figure out why they were on stun—and shot them. Luke's eyes went wide, as the shots punched right through their chests, but took a shaking breath.

He might call it underhanded, to kill an unconscious person like that. But so long as they were certain not to wake up and interrupt them, Piett didn't care. His entire job was killing Rebels and pirates.

And now, here he was colluding with two.

Destiny was strange, he mused. He wondered what Lord Vader—what Luke—and all his powers had to say about that.

"Can you get this door open the way you did the window?" Carina whispered to Luke.

Luke didn't respond. He was staring at the door, face pale, and the longing in those eyes was too intense for Piett to bear looking at. He glanced away—saw, out of the corner of his eye, Luke bow his head, take a deep breath, and nod.

"He's definitely in there," he said. "My feelings confirm it."

My feelings. Oh, stars, what had Piett got himself into.

Then Luke reached out a hand, and the door sprang open.

It revealed, at first, nothing. Then Luke moved forwards, fast enough that he seemed desperate, or like he knew what he was doing, or both, and the lights flickered on. That was when Piett laid eyes on the walls stripped bare of computer terminals, the small window to another room that had been boarded up, the chains that ran from where they were deeply embedded in the walls to snake around...

If that was not Lord Vader, then it was a large, broken puppet meant to depict the man.

Luke ran forwards and collapsed to his knees in front of him immediately. Carina was watching with unabashed curiosity, but Piett found something in him warring to look away, even as he knew that if the Empire itself was crashing and burning at his back, he could not tear his eyes away from this sight.

Vader was lying half-propped up against the wall, his arms dangling haphazardly from the chains embedded at shoulder level, his mask slumped forwards. There were deep, deep gashes in his legs around his boots that sparked with electricity; for a moment, fear of an entirely unnameable sort shot through Piett before he looked closer and saw that the legs were prosthetic. Still not good, but...

Luke reached for Vader's mask with trembling hands and spoke with a trembling voice: "Father..."

His voice cracked on the word. He leaned forwards, bowed his head against that mask and closed his eyes in anguish, screwed them in concentration, reaching... reaching...

"He's drugged," he said quietly, out loud, not opening his eyes. "Keep an eye on the door. Carina, how often do people come to relieve the guards?"

"I don't know."

"Then we don't know how long we have until someone realises we're here. We're living on borrowed time." He opened his eyes, climbed over Vader's shin so he was kneeling between his spread legs, with easy access to his head and torso. Pushed his sleeves up to reveal muscled arms, and laid his hands on his shoulders. Closed his eyes again. "I'm going to use the Force to remove the drug from his bloodstream—he could've done this himself, but I suspect they knocked him out too soon to do anything like that. Once he's awake, I can start working on his legs."

"I'm a handy mechanic," Carina offered. "I can work on them."

"I..." Luke tried to say delicately. "I don't think he'd want you to."

Carina shrugged. "Fair enough."

Piett didn't know how long he sat there, watching Luke Skywalker scrunch his face up in increasingly comical ways, until that respirator finally ended its constant, dim rasp and spluttered instead, Lord Vader's head seizing up and lurching forwards, his hands scrabbling where they were bound. Luke ran a gentle hand over the cuffs and unlocked them before they could be a hindrance, and caught the flailing limbs before they hit him. "Father."

Strangely enough, that seemed to motivate more struggling, more intense fights to get free, before Luke had the audacity to reach up to touch Vader's mask and reiterate, more firmly, "Father. It's me. I'm here. You're... you're not safe, but you will be soon. We'll both be safe."

One of Vader's hands came up then, trailing chains before they fell off, and Piett gawked as it reached for Luke's face. It caressed his cheek, as gentle as those hands were violent; Luke leaned into the touch with a fearsome... familiarity, and yearning, that unlocked something in Piett's heart, though he had not the faintest idea what it was.

When he looked up at Carina, she was looking away.

"Luke," Vader murmured, his words slurring together, "Luke, what are you..."

"We're getting you out. I need to work on your legs so you can walk; can you help me? I'm not as familiar with them, though I have some tools in my pack."

"Luke... you need to leave."

Luke shook his head fiercely and pulled away, ignoring how his father's hand hovered in midair between them, still reaching for him, before it dropped. "No. No. I came all the way to Axxila to find you, I've come this far, I am not leaving. Help me with your legs."

"Axxila..." Vader's gaze seemed to move to Piett then, and Piett did his best to... stand to attention. Stand to attention but look like he wasn't paying attention. Absolutely not. "Captain?" A threat was crystallising in his voice, like ice on the air...

"He helped me find you, I wouldn't have got this far without him," Luke soothed, pulling some tools out of his bag and turning towards Vader's legs. "These don't look too deep, actually—what did those pirates do, hack at your legs with a vibroblade and think that was enough when you stopped walking? Idiots—"

Vader wheezed a laugh. "Indeed, son."

"This won't take long." Luke frowned down at it in a way that sort of belied that statement. "In the meantime... what..." he swallowed. "What happened? One moment you were on your way to Dathomir, then there's radio silence from your shuttle and—"

Vader tilted his helmet to look directly at Luke, Piett forgotten. "You were afraid."

"Of course I was afraid! I thought you were dead!" Luke shivered, paused what he was doing, then got back to work.

"If I was, son, you would have been fine. You are intelligent and resourceful enough to survive in the galaxy, and Palpatine does not know the truth about you—"

"I don't care about me!" Luke exploded. "I don't— I don't care that I would've lost my only protector! I cared because I thought I'd lost you!"

He even put the tool down, then, to stare at his father; both Piett and (he suspected) Vader were taken aback to see tears in his eyes, again.

"You terrified me! Don't you dare do that again! I—"

"Luke," Vader tried to calm him, "I am here."

Luke ground out, "You almost weren't. I told you, I told you I had a bad feeling about that mission, that Palpatine was being... leery, and you had a bad feeling about it too, but you had to go and obey orders and run some mindless errand in the Outer Rim—"

"It needed to be done, for the sake of the Empire. I could not delegate it."

"Yeah, well." Luke turned back to the leg and kept tweaking. "Maybe your family needs you just as much as the Empire does."

Piett sucked in a breath, Aurelia's accusatory face flashing before his eyes. Fortunately, neither father nor son noticed.

"You are perfectly capable of protecting yourself, the fact that you made it here, just to rescue me—"

"Just to rescue you!?" Luke wasn't even looking his father in the eye as he ranted now, which somehow made it worse. "I wouldn't have got here if it wasn't for Piett, and his sister, and his sister-in-law, and his nephew—sometimes, Father, families are important to helping you out. And I already said. I don't need or want my protector."

He finished with what he was doing, putting the tool away. Then he sighed.

"But I do need my father," he finished quietly. "Now. Try to stand up."

Vader said, "Luke..."

"Try to stand up, Father. The sooner we can get out of here, the better. I think Palpatine knows I'm Force-sensitive—he kept telling me to let you die and go to meet him on Coruscant—and I don't know if he knows about the Death Star, or the coup, but he might well know about us. We need to get out of here if we're going to plan our next move."

"Palpatine was telling you to let me be lost?" Vader demanded

"Yes. Do— do you know who ordered those pirates to... capture or dispose of you?"

Vader said, through what sounded like gritted teeth, "No. I do not. But I think..."

Father and son exchanged a look.

"We can think about that later," Luke said. "Get up."

"We need to—" Vader tried to object, but when his son glared at him he huffed, and pushed himself off the wall.

He rose to his full, towering height slowly; the feeling was peculiarly like watching one of those old, large, water-ships sinking, but in reverse. Piett craned his head to look up at him and gulped... and then the spell was broken when Vader staggered, nearly fell, and Luke had to catch him. The poor boy looked tiny under his father's massive frame, but he held him steady. He even wrapped his arms around Vader's torso and buried his face in his chest, taking advantage of the moment Vader's cape obscured them both. Piett thought he might've seen Vader rest his hands against Luke's back to return the hug, but he wasn't sure—after all, the cape was in the way, and Luke was dwarfed by it all.

His mother must have been short... Piett thought, then instantly banished the idea. Curiosity into business that was not one's own, particularly when that business was that of Lord kriffing Vader himself, was rarely rewarded.

But Vader, unfortunately enough, noticed Piett and Carina then, and noticeably stiffened. "Captain Piett," he greeted. Piett was used to having a commanding finger wag in his face; there it was now, and it was perhaps the most familiar and stable thing about the whole blasted situation. "I trust you understand what it will mean if you misstep, here. If you value your discretion adequately, I may value your life in return."

Piett swallowed, but stood up a little straighter; this was common ground. "Yes, my lord."

Behind his back, Carina gaped at the way he thrived at the death threat.

"And you." Vader turned on her then, and she fought to wrestle the panic off her face. "You are?"

"Carina Antilles," she said smoothly.

"You are a Rebel."

Carina was fazed, clearly, but she didn't let that stop her. "A Rebel who helped your son."

Vader gave her a nod of respect and turned away. Piett was left gobsmacked.

"Luke?" Vader asked. "How do you intend to get us out of here?"

Luke, who was still doing his best to extricate himself from Vader's cape, opened his mouth, but Carina beat him to it.

"I found your lightsaber just outside, Vader," she said; although the lack of respect in her tone or address gave Piett a near aneurysm, as did the flippant way she tossed Vader the lightsaber, Vader did not react.

Piett suspected the pointed look from Luke had something to do with that.

Instead, Vader just took the lightsaber and, after Luke stood back, lit it. The hungry hum filled the air with static, sending hair prickling along the back of Piett's neck, but it was then that they exited the smaller room to find the comlinks of the two dead guards bleeping incessantly. It was then that both Luke and Vader tensed up; Vader strode forwards, his gait now steady and strong. Piett and Carina heard it a moment later: the clatter of running footsteps, shouting, the whirring of weapons—

When Lord Vader spoke, it was with a viciousness Piett had rarely heard.

"Captain," he said. "Keep Luke out of harm's way."

And then he tore into the waves after waves of pirates that came for them like a hurricane made flesh, bone and metal.

Playing host to Lord Darth Vader and his son was a strange experience that Piett doubted Aurelia wanted to repeat, ever again, but she was happy to do it now, nonetheless.

Carina rapped on the door with an oddly musical, rhythmic pattern, and Aurelia's footsteps came running on the other side, Luc's cry of "Mama!" sounding from beyond as well. The door hissed open, Aurelia's face was eclipsed by relief; for a moment, Carina fell on her and Piett's sister didn't even notice the three men standing on her doorstep, too wrapped up in her wife.

Piett looked away. That was not something he wanted to see his baby sister doing.

Luc came running up to them, though, and he... was far less distracted. He was grinning the moment he saw Luke, and the way Luke bent down to greet him properly—but then he clapped eyes on Vader and his eyes went wide.

"No way!" he breathed. "Are— are you—"

Vader's vocoder made a sound that might have been him preparing to growl something, but Luke jabbed him in the side with an elbow. They exchanged a look that Piett could only begin to guess at the deeper meaning of, then Vader unleashed a great sigh.

"Yes," Luke said, giving his father yet another pointed look. "He's Darth Vader."

Luc babbled. Vader tolerated it. Luke smiled.

Piett, watching them, smiled too.

At one point, when he turned his back, he thought he might have heard Vader murmur to Luke, "If this is what you were like at nine years old, young one, I wish I had been there to see it."

Luke laughed slightly. "Oh, you do not. I was even worse. Aunt Beru could barely contain me."

"Believe me," Vader replied, turning his helmet down to make eye contact with Luc, "I do."

But Piett wasn't absolutely sure he heard it—that would, after all, not be something his commanding officer would want him to hear, and therefore not something he should have heard at all—so he dismissed it, and let the warmth in his chest just... linger, reasonless.

"L— Lord Vader," Aurelia said when there finally came the time that she had to acknowledge his presence. Carina's nerves from earlier seemed to have vanished in the presence of her more timid wife, and she was smirking slightly to herself. "It— it's an honour to have you in our humble household—"

"Your wife—" That was not anger in Vader's voice. Piett knew what his anger sounded like. It was something more like pain. "—has already admitted to being a Rebel, and I have no doubt you supported her endeavours."

Carina said, "And your son has admitted to being a Rebel, as well—and from what I've heard, you supported his endeavours, too."

Vader was silent for a moment. "Indeed," he finally said. And he said no more.

Things settled down. And later...

"I go mad with worry when I find out Luc's missing, you send me a cryptic comm telling me to come pick the boy up from where you're about to walk into a firefight, and then you bring Darth kriffing Vader into our home without warning me?" Aurelia shouted at Carina in their bedroom. From what Piett could hear, there wasn't anger in that voice; just stress.

The Piett siblings were good at dealing with stress.

"Yes," Carina said in response, "I did. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"I'm sure it won't," Aurelia grumbled, but it was clear she was forgiven. "I didn't marry you because you had a tendency to be calm."

Carina added cheerfully, "Or sane."

"Or sane," Aurelia agreed, and then their words were replaced with silence, and Piett thought he might know what they were doing, so he skedaddled from that part of the flat as soon as he could.

He found Luke in the kitchen, sitting at the table and watching the stove. Aurelia had... she'd offered to have the Vaders—the Larses? The Skywalkers?—round for dinner that night, just to be polite, then they could sleep on Piett's ship and fly back to the Executor in the morning, and Luke had insisted on watching the stove while she caught up with her wife. He was there now, with another small mug of milk which Piett thought looked vaguely like vomit, his gaze very, very far away.

"What is that?" Piett asked, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice. He failed.

Luke chuckled. "It's blue milk—from Tatooine. Apparently Aurelia had it in the cupboard for cooking specific things, but she barely uses it, so she asked if I wanted some."

"And you did?"

Luke just smiled, and lifted his mug to his lips to sip some more. "It tastes a lot better when you grew up with it. Much like tashe."

"Tashe tastes delicious."

"Uh huh."

Piett kept eye contact with Luke until he was forced to drop it, the humour in those eyes too arresting to oppose.

"You look tired," he offered instead. "Surely, now that you've got your father back, you can sleep?"

Luke grimaced, putting his mug down. "I'm sorry about... well, not lying, but not telling you about that. You were kind to me, and it wasn't at all that I didn't trust you, but you understand it's a closely kept secret."

"And yet you allowed the whole of the Piett-Antilles branch of the family to know?"

Luke shrugged. "They're your family, aren't they? That speaks for them more than I can say."

Piett didn't know quite how to respond to that.

Instead, he just sat at the table next to Luke. "May I try some?"

Luke smiled. "Go ahead. It's in the cupboard over the sink."

Piett busied himself with fetching some, the movements soothing and repetitive. It was when his back was turned to Luke that he reiterated, "You do look tired, though. Does your father not want you to sleep?"

"My father is too tired himself to badger me right now—which is saying something, I can tell you." Piett still cringed at the concept of Lord Vader badgering anyone, but he just... reached for the milk.

Piett poured himself a mug of it and went back to sit beside Luke, wrapping his hands around his drink. "This... coup you and your father were discussing," he said carefully. "It—"

"I can give you more details later, Firmus, I understand—"

"I'm in."

"Huh?"

Piett lifted his mug to his lips and tried not to splutter when it touched his tongue.

"I'm in," he repeated, even as he gagged.

Luke tilted his head back and laughed

"I would suggest you take a break in the meantime, though," Piett said idly. "This will take a great deal of planning, if you intend to go after the Emperor, and... between all of this, you've had a lot of stress lately. Make sure you take some time to relax—visit your family on Tatooine, or that sister you mentioned. Go on a trip."

"Captain Piett," Luke joked. He lifted his drink of milk towards Piett, as if to toast something. "Are you telling me to go on holiday?"

"Perhaps I am." Despite himself, that smile was infectious, and he caught it. He lifted his own mug to clink it against Luke's. "It's certainly been an eye opener for me."