“Anakin,” Luke replied, letting the weight of the name hang in the silence, but if the meager attempt at unsettling the Sith had any effect, Darth Vader didn’t let it show. Instead, he rose from his chair and stepped towards the viewport, his eyes unblinking, holding Luke in place with their terrible intensity.

Standing there, with only a few feet of space separating them, Luke knew that this moment was everything he had worked towards. All those years of training, of hiding and biding his time, this moment was what it would all culminate in. The Jedi he had become--the Jedi his father failed to be--the Jedi Obi-wan couldn’t save… whatever happened now…

“You’re afraid,” Vader’s voice drew Luke out of his head, “The chosen hero meant to destroy the greatest evils of the galaxy, save the Force, and restore the glory of the Jedi.” Luke noticed the edge of mockery in Vader’s voice. “Is that who you are, Skywalker?”

“I am a Jedi.” His grip on his helmet tightened with the declaration. “And I’m not here to stop the galaxy’s greatest evils. Just you.”

A smile touched Vader’s lips, but Luke could feel that there were no emotions running through him. The only thing he could sense off the Sith was power, as if he were void of every other attachment--the only truth, the only constant being power.

Vader’s eyes turned from Luke and fell on Tatooine.

“My mother lived and died a slave on this world. My father, I never knew. She had always told me I was her miracle, a gift she couldn’t explain. But a gift for a slave is just more property for the master, and so I lived my years with her in servitude.”

Luke listened; he had learned from Obi-wan that his master, Qui-Gon Jinn had arranged for his father’s freedom on Tatooine days before Jinn’s death and the escalation of the Separatist movement. It all seemed like ancient history for a bygone era, but even a world as barren as Tatooine touches the life of the rest of the galaxy in its own ways.

“My only memories of her now are of pain. Of failure. Of weakness. I watched her die, because I was too weak to do anything else. I took revenge for her life, because I was too weak to save it. I couldn’t save my own mother from the hands of savages, and who was I? The Chosen One of the all powerful Jedi Order,” the dark blue fabric of Vader’s robes seemed to vibrate. “I could slaughter a hundred worlds and still be too weak to do anything for her now.”

Luke had to swallow before he could speak. “There’s a better way… she wanted you to have a better life; to explore those worlds not destroy them, Father.” He could feel the earnestness in his voice springing from the inane thought that if he just believed and hoped, it’d be enough to change things. “It’s not too late to undo the pain you’ve caused. You’re the Emperor. If you say the word, Tatooine is spared, the Empire stands down, and we--” Luke’s voice cut off, unable to speak the visions he’d had so many times before this.

But Vader seemed to read his mind. Every emotion Luke felt seemed to drain from him and spiral into the void of Vader’s dark silhouette, feeding his already bloated power even more.

“And we won’t have to battle.” Vader finished the young Jedi’s sentence, and Luke nodded, his lips pursed and his eyes adamant. He couldn’t let his fears betray him, not now. “Because you know if we do, at the end, you’ll either fall…” Vader’s head tilted back just enough so that his eyes could grip Luke. “Or die.”

Faster than thought, and only surviving due to the muscle memory of cold night terrors, Luke ignited his lightsaber in time to catch Vader’s before it could sever him in half across his chest. His helmet hit the ground by his feet with a thud muted by the hissing of the violet and red blades. Luke gritted his teeth so hard they threatened to crack; the pain of holding back the weight of the dark lord’s attack as real as any nightmare.

There was only a moment for Luke to focus himself and choose a method to retaliate, but the moment vanished in the blink of an eye as Vader pressed on with his assault, this time unleashing a flurry of slashes that seemed to materialize from every angle. Luke fell into the patterns of Soresu, but the defensive ploy only seemed to entice Vader to lean even more into his ferocity. A stray jab that Luke had failed to even perceive glanced off the mandalorian armor plating he wore on his left arm, searing the sturdy metal and only confirming that if he didn’t focus, then everything he had feared would come to be.

With a heavy grunt, Luke parried a downward blow from Vader’s lightsaber, but rather than using the opportunity to chance a counterattack, he rolled to the side and distanced himself from the Sith, using the throne as a buffer between himself and Vader. The tactic worked, but slightly shaken, Luke began to wonder if it only succeeded because Vader allowed it. The sheer difference in their powers causing him to doubt his own strength.