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Dreams & Nightmares
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Dreams & Nightmares
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Star Wars belongs to LFL.
The closest thing to sleep Darth Vader experienced was a deep meditative trance.  Indeed, he couldn't remember the last time he truly slept.  Instead, he retreated into the chaotic rush of the Force to connect to and draw from its power.

He was in such a trance late one night, isolated within the small meditation chamber aboard the Executor.  Sometimes the Force revealed things to him as he was in this state with its usual crystal clarity.  So as images formed in Vader's mind eye, he observed, hoping to glean new knowledge from these revelations.

What he saw startled him.

These were visions of a very different time.  They passed slowly enough for Vader to perceive them but too fast for him to stop.  The images burst forth like water escaping a crumbling dam.

He saw himself at age seven, proudly showing his mother the progress he'd made assembling that old protocol droid.  He saw himself as a boy of fourteen, swimming with two of the few Padawans he had befriended at the Temple.  Then he was a young man, a tall and beautiful youth who wielded a lightsaber with a precision and grace that left many of his fellow Jedi in awe.  He had been brash, slightly cocky, and at times impetuous, which caused friction between himself and his Master.  But he had loved the man who was the only father he'd truly known.  He saw himself with his beloved Padmé, making love to her during one of their all-too-few stolen moments together.  Then he saw her beaming with joy as she told him she was pregnant...

The visions of happiness darkened into horrors.  His mother, her body broken and bleeding, too late to save her.  The carnage of war, leaving worlds devastated.  The fire of life leaving Padmé's eyes.  His pain exploding into rage, former friends and comrades dead by his own hand.  The fury of battle against Obi-Wan, leaving his own body destroyed.  Then the one face he still trusted, offering him a new life with all of the power the Jedi could not -- would not -- give him...

Vader was finally able to pull out of the trance.  Perspiration had formed on his corpse-white forehead and if it hadn't been for the machinery that regulated his breathing, he would have been gasping.  He had believed those memories had been purged from him forever.  He wasn't that...person...anymore.  Why did they haunt him this night?

The Dark Lord knew the answer.  He had just discovered earlier that day the identity of the Rebel who fired the proton torpedoes that destroyed the Death Star, the one who was strong in the Force.

His son.