Tatooine.

For some reason, Luke was on Tatooine, yet he knew he wasn't on Tatooine. His right hand still throbbed, but in his subconscious it was fully there, flesh and all. Padmé nor Vader were anywhere to be seen, and the entire sandy planet seemed to waver in and out of reality. Luke wasn't sure what was happening to his actual body, but he feared for a moment that he was dead.

He started when a tall man, a Gungan, and a girl whisked past him as if he wasn't even there. The girl was talking to the tall man, an annoyed expression on her face and complaints about their situation coming out in a youthful voice. Drawn towards the strange group, Luke numbly followed them, his walking more like floating in his half-dream world.

As he got closer to the group, he noticed how familiar the girl looked, her scowl and her wide brown eyes resembling Leia almost identically. But who it really looked like was..."Padmé?" Luke breathed in surprise. She was so young.

She had to be in her early teens at most, and Luke couldn't help the surreal feeling of seeing his mother this way. The fact that she actually was his mother was still a hard concept to wrap around, this woman marrying someone as evil as Darth Vader...

"Are you an angel?"

Luke looked up to see a tow-headed little boy in normal Tatooinian fatigues sitting on a countertop and casting wide blue eyes at Padmé. Padmé looked surprised at the words, but Luke was the one who was more shocked. This was Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, his father.

"What?" Padmé asked, her eyebrows raised and her expression one of confusion and faint amusement.

The boy looked unfazed, a light pink hue on his cheeks as he continued to clean a ship part in his hand with an oil-stained rag. "An angel." He said as if it was obvious, getting another blink from the girl before him. "I've heard the deep space pilots talk about them. They live on the Moons of Iego I think. They're the most beautiful creatures in the universe. They are good and kind, and so pretty they make even the most hardened spice pirate cry."

The naive, high-pitched voice emanating a sentence so adorable made Luke giggle slightly at thinking of Darth Vader being this young boy. Padmé giggled as well, smiling brightly and making Anakin shift embarrassedly.

"I've never heard of angels." Padmé said, crossing her arms and stepping closer to the boy to inspect the piece he was cleaning in his tiny, grubby hands. Anakin looked up at her, his bright blue irises sparkling with admiration.

"You must be one...maybe you just don't know it." That made Padmé smile even brighter.

"You're a funny little boy. How do you know so much?" Padmé asked, genuinely curious.

Anakin looked proud of his knowledge and took the opportunity to boast to the teenage girl before him. "Since I was very little, three, I think. My Mom and I were sold to Gardulla the Hutt, but she lost us to Watto after betting on the pod races. Watto's a lot better of a master than Gardulla though." The little boy was unfazed by his own words, still giddily kicking his feet back and forth as he sat on the counter, but Padmé took two steps back, horrorstruck.

"You're...a slave?"

Anakin frowned for a minute at her expression and then furrowed his eyebrows tightly together, slamming his piece of machinery down in a small fit of temper. "I'm a person and my name is Anakin!"

Padmé blinked and colored in embarrassment. Of course the boy would be sore about the term 'slave'. It's not exactly like he had chose his life of forced labor. And he was so young... "I'm sorry. I don't fully understand. This is a strange world to me."

Anakin accepted her apology instantly, sobering back up to his youthful self. "You're a strange girl to me."

Before Padmé could respond, the same tall man Luke had seen before came strolling in, his face set in a scowl. He gestured for Padmé and the Gungan to follow him, his eyes never once grazing over Anakin. "We're leaving," He said gruffly.

Luke wished he knew who the man was, but was too focused on his future parents saying their farewells to each other.

"I'm glad I met you...ah..." Padmé hesitated on the boy's name, a blush on her cheeks.

"...Anakin." Anakin provided, flashing faint dimples.

"Anakin." Padmé said, smiling back.

"Anakin Skywalker." the boy completed, confirming Luke's theory.

"Padmé Naberrie." Padmé said before the tall man called her back once more. She gave a regretful expression and walked off, Anakin watching her go sadly.

"I-I'm glad I met you too!" He called, wincing as a harsh call of violent Huttese came from around the corner.

"Coming!" Anakin called, jumping off the counter and darting out of the workshop, making Luke's vision fade out into a new scene.

He couldn't think hard on the moments he had just witnessed, mainly on the concern if they were real or just a figment of his imagination. The Force however seemed to be humming with glee, making Luke a bit more anxious to see his next destination.

This time he was in a meadow overlooking a beautiful waterfall. The grass was a vibrant emerald and brushed his shoes lightly, the entire place warm with the Light side of the Force. He hummed in content and fell to his knees, allowing the peace to flow over him before laughing started flowing in his ears.

Startled, he looked up to see a young man in his late teens along with a woman only maybe a few years his senior relaxing amongst the flowers. The young woman was donned in a incredible bright yellow floral dress with no shoes and her hair done up intricately. The design of the outfit instantly allowed Luke to know where he was.

Naboo.

He smiled and shifted closer to the couple, not having to guess who they were. He briefly wondered how the two had met again after a chance meeting on Tatooine, but he figured it had something to do with his father once being a Jedi. At least Ben hadn't lied about that. Besides, he vaguely remembered something Aunt Beru saying about Grandma Shmi once being a slave and that she had died a free woman. So at least Luke had the relief that his father had been freed from that horrid life.

"I don't know..." Padmé was saying, picking flowers absentmindedly as Anakin stared at her with awe in his azure irises. Luke smiled fondly, ignoring his questioning thoughts and plopping down beside Anakin and Padmé, watching them with equal longing in his eyes. He had always wanted to know so much about his parents, and even now he was only getting snippets...

"Sure you do... you just don't want to tell me." Anakin teased, poking Padmé in her side and making her laugh lightly.

She cast knowing brown eyes his way and raised an eyebrow playfully. "Are you going to use one of your Jedi mind tricks on me?"

Anakin mocked a scandalized look, which made Padmé laugh even harder. "They only work on the weak-minded, and you are anything but weak-minded."

Padmé blushed, sighing for a moment before giving in.

"All right..." she scoffed, unbelieving that she had given in, "His name was Palo. I was twelve. We were both in the Legislative Youth Program. He was a few years older then I... very cute... dark curly hair... dreamy eyes..."

Luke laughed the exact moment his father frowned, a look of intense jealousy shooting across his features. "All right, I get the picture...whatever happened to him?"

Padmé rolled her eyes at Anakin's obvious jealousy, but continued with her story. "I went on to become a Queen. He went on to become an artist."

"Maybe he was the smart one." Anakin said, only half joking.

Padmé blinked, leaning forward in curiosity. "You really don't like politicians, do you?"

"I like two or three, but I'm not really sure about one of them..." Anakin smiled coyly, getting another laugh out of Padmé. "Besides, I don't think the system works."

Luke froze, his brain buzzing with such intense emotion that he had almost forgotten what he now knew of his father's future. Darth Vader didn't kill Anakin Skywalker, he was Anakin Skywalker. With his brief knowledge on the Jedi and the Clone Wars, Luke suddenly felt uncomfortable in this strange vision. This was his parents past, something he had no right intruding in.

In reality, they were strangers to him, people he had never known. And they didn't know him either...so how could they care about their obviously unplanned son after all the hell they'd been through? He knew Padmé must've had good intentions when leaving him with Owen and Beru, but he still couldn't help but feel...insignificant.

"How would you have it work?" Padmé asked, Luke now covering his ears in an attempt to force the conversation away.

"We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problems, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it." Anakin said firmly, his padawan braid swinging with his head as he spoke.

"That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree. In fact, they hardly ever do." Padmé said sadly, sighing lightly.

"Then they should be made to." Anakin said, his voice going cold for a moment, much similar to the way he had reacted back on Tatooine when Padmé had called him a slave. Luke couldn't help but notice the sudden shifts his father had, the back and forth call of the Light and the Dark.

"By whom? Who's going to make them?" Padmé asked genuinely, seeming to take Anakin's political opinion to heart despite the fact that, as a Jedi, he really had no place in politics whatsoever. He was a peacekeeper, that was all.

"I don't know. Someone." Anakin said, his eyes cast down and his hands fumbling with the saber on his belt. Padmé watched the nervous tick with cautious eyes, her years in politics allowing her to read people well.

"You?" She whispered.

"Of course not me." Anakin scoffed, the dark expression gone.

"But someone." Padmé said, her tone giving away her disapproval of the idea.

"Someone wise." Anakin commented, not seeming to notice Padmé's concern.

"That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me."

"Well, if it works..."

Both of their straight faces suddenly broke, bright smiles gracing both of them.

"You're making fun of me!" Padmé cried, pushing Anakin back and watching him smirk.

"Oh no, I'd be much too frightened to tease a Senator." Anakin joked sarcastically, making Padmé laugh again.

"You're so bad!" She picked up a piece of fruit she had brought along with her for their picnic and tossed it at him, narrowing her eyes as the boy's Jedi reflexes allowed him to catch the assaulting fruit. Padmé simply threw two more, huffing sarcastically as Anakin caught those as well.

"You're always so serious. Always carrying the weight of the universe on your shoulders." Anakin then started to juggle the fruit, making Padmé grasp her stomach and laugh, throwing more fruit at him once she gained her composure. Anakin managed to juggle the added fruit as well until there were too many, the Jedi losing control and ducking as the food fell on his head. Their laughing grew louder, both of them playfully shoving each other like children at this point.

Luke reached out a hand in an attempt to feel a part of the moment before the scene wavered again, this time slamming him down onto a cold metal walkway, heat rising around him and smoke in his throat. He coughed, slowly sitting up and blinking through a red haze to make out his surroundings. It was almost the polar opposite of the peaceful Nubian meadows he had just been in

There was a ship nearby on what was obviously a docking bay, and the entire platform he was resting on was surround by flowing lava and exploding fire, the planet not recognizable to him.

He had a feeling that he shouldn't be there, again feeling like an intruder, but the Force was urging him forward, telling him he needed to know. If anything, him knowing the truth of his past was vital to his entire destiny behind his namesake. There was so much gaps in time he was missing and still needed to know from Padmé herself, but he knew that the specific moments the Force were showing him now were things that would hurt her to talk about. He couldn't push her no matter how betrayed he felt at her not telling him of her identity in the first place. She had loved Anakin a lot...so losing him must have devastated her just as much as it had obviously devastated Anakin.

The sudden clapping of footsteps startled Luke to look up, a cloaked figure running desperately towards another figure emerging from the ship, both of them embracing tightly and mumbling in each others arms. Cautiously, Luke approached them, startling back for only a moment when he saw the bump of Padmé's stomach. That was him in there. He swallowed tightly and instead focused on his father, the man's normally blue eyes dimmer and painfully haunted. His Force presence was more similar to Vader's than the little boy he had seen in that junk shop...

"Padmé, I saw your ship..." Anakin breathed, stroking the woman's hair and looking relieved.

"Anakin..." Padmé simply muttered, her eyes thick with tears and her face and hair tainted with ash. She looked exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and it all put at least 10 added years onto her still youthful body.

"It's all right, you're safe now. What are you doing out here? I told you to wait for me." Anakin whispered, concerned.

"I was so worried about you. Obi-Wan told me terrible things." Padmé forced out, her breathing heavy and one of her hands hovering over her abdomen and rubbing gentle massages.

"What things?" Anakin said with a frown, not failing to notice the labor pains his wife was going through.

"He said you turned to the dark side...that you killed younglings." Padmé said, her eyes pained and her lip trembling. Luke audibly gasped, stepping backwards. Had he really...

"Obi-Wan is trying to turn you against me." Anakin growled, his eyes fading into a dull golden yellow.

"He cares about us." Padmé pleaded, reaching a hand up only for it to be swatted away, Anakin backing up in anger.

"Us?"

Padmé hesitated for only the briefest of seconds. "H-He knows...he wants to help you—"

"Is Obi-Wan going to protect you? He can't...he can't help you. He's not strong enough." Anakin snarled, his fists clenching tightly.

"Anakin, all I want is your love." Padmé pleaded, stepping closer to her husband and closing the gap between them once again.

Anakin shook his head, scoffing. "Love won't save you, Padmé. Only my new powers can do that."

Padmé looked scandalized, not believing that Anakin was speaking this way. "At what cost? You are a good person. Don't do this."

"I won't lose you the way I lost my mother!" Anakin screamed, startling another reaction out of Luke. He knew how his paternal grandmother had died because Aunt Beru had told him the story as a child in order to scare him into not leaving the homestead late at night in fear of the tusken raiders. He had never contemplated his father being there in her last moments... "I've become more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of and I've done it for you. To protect you."

"I don't need that Anakin. Just come away with me. Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can." Padmé begged, rubbing her stomach for emphasis and smiling faintly. "You thought it was a girl, remember? Don't you want to see her grow up?"

"No, don't you see? We don't have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him, and together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be. Our child will live the life of a royal!"

Padmé was the one to step back this time, her eyes wide with sudden realization. "I don't believe what I'm hearing...Obi-Wan was right. You've changed."

Another venomous snarl left Anakin's throat, his eyes growing darker and darker, "I don't want to hear any more about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me. Don't you turn against me too."

"I don't know you anymore. Anakin, you're breaking my heart. I'll never stop loving you, but you are going down a path I can't follow. Please..."

"Because of Obi-Wan?" Anakin challenged.

Padmé breathed in frustration. "No! It's because of what you've done...what you plan to do. Stop, stop now. Come back! I love you."

Anakin's gaze flickered up for a split second and all traces of the heroic Jedi Knight, husband and future father flickered away, replaced by a callous, merciless murderer. Luke spun towards the ship, his eyes widening in horror.

"Liar!" Anakin roared.

The confusion on Padmé's face only lasted a few moments before she turned around and shrieked in panic. She knew Anakin instantly had the wrong idea. "N-No!"

"You're with him. You've betrayed me! You brought him here to kill me!" Anakin accused.

Padmé's head was shaking violently, her breaths coming more strained than before and her tears leaking full force. "No... Anakin. I swear...I..."

Ignoring her, Anakin reached out with the Force, reaching out tightly and wrapping tendrils around the pregnant woman's trachea, cutting off her ability to breathe and at the same time, the baby's ability to breathe. Luke gasped in time with his mother, falling to his knees and gasping for breath.

Padmé's hands went to her throat and she wobbled in place, her eyes never leaving Anakin's as he glared emotionlessly at her dying breaths.

"Anakin..." She wheezed.

Obi-Wan and Anakin began arguing, but Luke barely heard it as the blood rushed to his ears. His eyes began to cross just as he made out the fuzzy picture of Padmé collapsing into unconsciousness, one final breath leaving her before she seemed to go still.

Luke, unable to remain upright either, fell forward and managed one last breath to scream, "Mother!"

Luke...

Luke.

Luke!

Luke sat bolt upright, gasping and sweating buckets. Small hands held tight to his shoulders, gripping tightly as a soothing voice sent reassuring words though his scattered thoughts to calm him down.

Luke still couldn't focus on anything, but he was pretty sure he had somehow managed to find himself in his proper body now. He began to shake violently as the hands pressed something cold into his hands and then raised it to his lips. Icy liquid seeped down his throat and he choked, the voice remaining calm and instructing him to sip slowly.

He did as requested and finally managed a decent breath of air, the trauma of his real life experiences and his dream experiences melding together into one big mental breakdown. After what seemed like eternity, he finally managed to blink out an image of his caretaker.

When the warm, familiar brown eyes met him, a guilty crinkling smile accompanying them, Luke tried not to feel too much remorse as he jerked away.

Padmé frowned at her son, the cuts on his skin healing well with the bacta treatment and his tattered fatigues having been replaced with cleaner and more casual Imperial attire. Padmé herself had been healed and cleaned up, but she had been conscious for much longer than Luke, unable to stand him tossing and turning in his troubled sleep. Once he had begun struggling to breathe is when she had really panicked however, knowing that Force visions could taunt a soul to insanity.

But now, seeing him visually recoil from her upon awakening, she wondered what exactly the Force had shown him.

"You were dreaming about your mother, weren't you?" She asked calmly, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. Maybe he didn't really know the truth...maybe he had misheard her on the gantry or had been too traumatized after the loss of his hand to remember properly...

"Yes." He whispered hoarsely, circles prominent under his eyelids. "It's you...isn't it?"

Padmé sighed, knowing she had been too optimistic. "What did you see?"

"Too much." Luke shuddered, "Yet not nearly enough."

A loose lock of gray hair fell into the older woman's eyes and she brushed away with a long breath, her eyes deep with pain and memories long shoved away. She pulled a necklace out from underneath her shirt, glad the healers hadn't disturbed it. She unraveled it and placed it in Luke's hand, her face full of nostalgia.

"Your father gave me this not too log after we first met. Said I could use it to remember him by. It's a japor snippet." Luke looked awed as Padmé unclasped the jewelry and wrapped it around his neck, smiling deeply. "I loved your father deeply. And he loved me...but Anakin was always troubled." Padmé paused, moving away from the clasp of the necklace and taking Luke's left hand once again, the flesh cold and limp in her palms and her eyes refusing to look at the prosthetic one they had fitted around his right stump feeling the snippet on his collarbone. "He was raised a slave and then brought into the Jedi Order under hard circumstances. They gave him the label The Chosen One which already put quite a burden on his shoulders at a young age. Obi-Wan trained him as a promise to his old master that died, but the two formed a close bond very quickly. Anakin was always reckless and extremely emotional which went against everything the Jedi stood for...so adding his love for me on top of that..." Padmé bit her lip, looking at Luke's expectant face. "Jedi weren't allowed to have attachments, so once Anakin and I were married in secret right before the Clone Wars, it complicated things. He was strongly passionate about the Republic, his Master, his Padawan, and me. He only ever wanted that dreaded war to end. But after the death of his mother, the loss of his Padawan, and the nightmares he had about my death...I guess it just drove him further and further away. I became pregnant, which made our marriage that much harder to hide, and I figured we would both leave our careers and carry out our personal life on my homeworld of Naboo. The purges changed everything though...Palpatine took power, the Republic was effectively dissolved, thus creating the Empire, and the Clone Wars were over just like that. After I gave birth, Master Yoda figured it best to fake my death and send you away for your safety. Hence why I've been in hiding all these years. I know Anakin is still alive somewhere in the darkness that has consumed him, but Vader is pushing him away, not allowing him to breathe in a sense. "

"So, you're saying that Vader actually did kill my father...just...metaphorically." Luke said, frowning. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Padmé smiled lightly. "I hated lying to you, but you have to understand why I did so. For you and your sister both."

Luke paused, looking up at Padmé in confusion. "My—"

"I figured it would be best to reveal all secrets now so we can focus more on an escape plan. Vader knows we're awake and he'll come in here soon enough. I need your complete trust in me Luke." Padmé said, deadly serious.

"O-of course, Padm—I mean...mother." Luke said, the word feeling foreign in his mouth yet strangely right at the same time.

Padmé smiled, reaching up and caressing her thumb over Luke's cheek, absentmindedly tracing a faint lightsaber cut and wincing. "I gave birth to twins 22 years ago. A girl and a boy. Luke and—"

"Leia." Luke breathed, stumbling backwards in shock. A sudden click in his mind opened up a bond he never realized he had, equally as bright as the one he shared with Padmé and even Vader now that he knew of his relationship with them. However, this third bond was infinitely more comforting than his parents, the Force presence almost a part of him as he felt a gasp that was not his in his own throat.

The cell door whooshing open behind them startled both Luke and Padmé just as, in another cell not too far away, Leia Organa sat bolt upright, her hands at her head as if blocking a headache, and an almost silent word on her lips.

"Luke..."

A/N

You guys have literally been waiting a month and I finally got this done. AGH! Again, I thoroughly apologize, but writer's block mixed with a busy schedule is not the best thing in the world for a writer.

Anyways, I really hope you guys enjoyed and I'll try my best to not take as long on the next chapter but I can't make any promises. I at least got 4K words in this chapter so I'm pretty satisfied with that. :)

Love you guys! Thank you so much for being patient and staying with this story!

*space kisses*

May the Force be With You,

- lucky_ducky_123