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After talking to Ben, Luke had decided to go to the Jedi Temple and practice some of his lightsaber forms, working off some of the energy that had built up with a full night of sleep and a healing trance besides. As well as to calm his mind, keep it focused; he had the sense that they were standing on the brink, watching the storm come swiftly in, and knew that he and the other Jedi would need to get together and work things out, checking in with all of them.

Focus. Feel the Force, let it flow through you.

His green blade sliced through the air, leaving glowing trails behind, concentrating on those first teachings Obi-Wan had given to him on the Falcon, many years ago. And gradually, Luke slipped into a sort of trance, the Force wrapping around him and supporting every simulated parry, every practiced strike.

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Luke thought about this. It had been a long path from the second Death Star to the title he carried, and not all of it was pleasant, and it certainly wasn't the shortest tale...

"I started with a class of a dozen Jedi hopefuls; by the time I took on the title of Grand Master there were a couple hundred. We'd just gone through a horrific war, and our numbers were reduced... and we lacked cohesiveness. Making myself Grand Master gave the other Jedi someone to look up to, a leader. It helped hold us together." He shrugged, too modest for self-aggrandizement. "Everyone said I should be the one, since I brought the New Jedi Order to life."

Vader set his chin on his folded hands.

"Do not believe you can throw me off with a simply answer. You are betrayed by the way you reveal very little by saying quite a bit-- I sense the influence of the extinct Order within you. Have they been grooming you since you were small? When I would have given you the entire Galaxy to do with as you pleased?"

"I first picked up a lightsaber when I was nineteen, and didn't do any formal training until I was twenty-two," Luke replied evenly. "And trust me, all that was enough for me to try and handle. And... when I started training others, it wasn't easy at all. It was nerve-wracking, and I worried I wouldn't be a good enough teacher, and..."

He trailed off, realizing the comfortable tone of voice he'd slipped into.

Had Vader been holding something, he would have dropped it.

"Nineteen? The Jedi do not wait to corrupt their youth-- it is a process that begins days after birth!" he said, stunned. "Even I...at a young age, I was nearly rejected. I was, and would have been cast aside had they not felt compelled to respect a dead man's wish."

He had not been wanted there, not even in the beginning.

"What...how did you spend nineteen years, if not with the Jedi?"

"I was raised on Tatooine with my aunt and uncle," Luke replied. "I worked on their moisture farm, and spent nineteen years wanting to get off that rock. In hindsight I think it was better I stayed; it's a period of time I can ground myself in. I have memories of a place that was less complicated."

He mulled over what Vader had said some more. "I read that the old Order preferred to get a candidate soon after birth," Luke mused aloud. "That's something else that changed."

"TATOOINE!" Vader roared, slamming his fist into his thigh. "Kenobi knew! He knew I would never look for you there! He knew I would never go back to that Force-forsaken hellhole! He trapped you there! He kept you there, on that hellish prison, and I..."

Vader's outburst dissolved into grumblings, and he mentally added this to a steadily growing list of Reasons Hated Obi-Wan.

"I am glad to hear the Order no longer separates infants from their families and begins brainwashing them," Vader said, with a very thin layer of calm. "You have done much good by abolishing that practice."

"Well, it just didn't make sense to maintain," Luke explained. "A lot of the trainees were adults already themselves, with children of their own. Most of the training starts around five or six, and that only training of the loosest kind. Mostly playing."

He'd been struggling to maintain his calm, though. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru might not have been his biological parents, but they raised him and cared for him as best they could. "He did it because he didn't want me found by the Emperor. He didn't want me to become--" like you, Luke almost said, but stopped himself. "He wanted my sister and I to be the hope of the Jedi. The Emperor was oppressive, enslaving whole swaths of society because they weren't human enough, allowing corruption and greed to rule instead of democracy."

Luke shook his head. "I think I was better off."

"Better off living in poverty? I would have given you entire worlds! He-- he knows why I would never return there, he made you suffer because of what I did to fix this Galaxy..." Vader shook his head. "We were rebuilding, restructuring. There were some who chose not to willingly contribute to that effort, so they were made to learn the meaning of hard work and sacrifice."

"Hey, I might not have had a lot, but I had enough and I was fine with that," Luke replied. "When I was old enough I got a speeder--surprised I didn't wreck it with all the stupid stunts my friends and I pulled--"

He folded his hands into his sleeves. "Enough of them died in the Rebellion."

And they deserved it sat on the very tip of Vader's tongue, held in check by a rare flash of common sense and consideration for Luke's feelings.

"That is unfortunate," he said. That they wasted their lives for such a meaningless act of terrorism, he finished, internally.

"You have told me you are a pilot," he said, his mood brightening with the mention of his most favorite thing, "it is to be expected, it is in your blood. I am surprised you remained planetside for so long, to be honest."

"Uncle Owen needed help around the farm," Luke said with a shrug. "And I wasn't old enough to enlist in the Academy, so I stayed. Even when I was old enough, I stayed--he needed my help, after all. But yes, I'm a fair hand with a ship. I prefer starfighters. But mostly Ben and Mara and I fly together."

The Shadow had a three-person crew, after all. They were three. It worked.

"Owen?" Vader frowned. "He is the one you lived with? Where was Kenobi and the others? Lars' son is not a man to buy into the Jedi teachings."

He settled into a more relaxed pose. "You share my gift if you share my passion. It cannot be any other way."

"Obi-Wan didn't have much to do with us--he just kind of watched from afar. I grew up thinking he was just eccentric old Ben Kenobi, a hermit out beyond the Dune Sea." Luke smiled. "I sure found out I was wrong quickly when he saved me from a bunch of sandpeople. But he was the one who was always telling me to trust my feelings when I got behind the controls of my speeder... although I tried not to tell him I was using that to go out racing through Beggar's Canyon with my friends."

Vader's face turned chalk white, even paler than usual, and caused his scars to stand out even more prominently.

"Lars let you out with a way to defend yourself-- among the Sand People?" he growled. "Kenobi as well? I cannot--"

He stood and began pacing, hands clasped behind his back. "I would never have let you-- did they not care to make sure you were-- you could have--"

"I had a blaster," Luke said, suddenly curious but figuring that it was better for both of them if he not inquire as to why the mention of sandpeople got that particular reaction out of his father. "One of them just got the jump on me. Like I said, I'd have been a goner for sure if Obi-Wan hadn't been there."

"Then Kenobi has finally learned his lesson," Vader said, bitterness heavy in his voice, "about just how dangerous the Sand People can be. They do not deserve to be referred to in such a manner-- they are animals. Savage, brutal animals and they should all be put down."

There was a long moment as Vader finally settled back onto the pillow.

"I assume you took to backwoods racing because the old podracing rings have finally been shut down, correct?"

"We just lived too far out to ever get into it. It didn't appeal to me anyway--I'd rather race with my friends and stay out of the way of the Hutts."

Vader nodded. "A wise choice. The Hutts are vile in their own way, and their time will come soon enough."

He exhaled, looking at the floor before meeting Luke's gaze. "You seemed...happy," he said. "If you had to be stolen from me, then..."

He did not want to say it.

"Then ultimately, it is best that you were relatively free from the Jedi and...content. I would want you to be such a way."

What he wanted was his son back, but such was impossible.

"I think I probably would have figured out my heritage eventually, and that I am a Jedi," Luke said carefully. "If not by someone telling me then on my own."

"The Force is indeed strong in you," Vader said, proudly. This was the safest way to interperate that statement. "Stronger than it is in me, in this state. It is small wonder you rose to the top of the Order, rising over Kenobi and the remaining Jedi."

"Obi-Wan was long dead by the time I became Grand Master," Luke said. "He died a few days after we left Tatooine. And until the Republic got established on Coruscant, I didn't think there were any Jedi left save my sister and I. Then I met Mara, and then Leia had her twins, and, well, I figured there had to be more Jedi who'd been born since... you know."

Vader manages to keep his mouth shut, but there's an unmistakable curl of his lip that says good even more loudly than if he'd shouted it.

I only regret that I was not able to give him the death he deserved

"Jade was hardly a Jedi when I knew her," Vader said, acidly, "but it would appear she has changed her allegiance by now. Perhaps, in the absence of the Emperor...?"

He couldn't ask what he needed to know. Where was his master in all of this?

"The Emperor died six years after I joined the Rebellion," Luke said. "Aboard the second Death Star at Endor." He paused, unsure if he should continue. "You struck him down when he used Force lightning on me."

Vader knew, somehow- he knew the Emperor was dead, there as no way he would have allowed the Republic to rise again, but to know that it has happened at his hands...

"It seems," he said, very heavily, after a long moment of silence, "that I am always forced to choose between my loyalties."

It wouldn't be the first time someone he gave his life to died at his hands.

Luke folded his hands, looking at his father steadily. "Do you think it was a good one, listening to what I've said?"