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It wasn’t that it was never cold on Tatooine; it was that Owen and Beru were always warm. When the temperature plummeted in the night, they turned the lights off but drew in close to each other, huddling. Beru would hold Luke long into the night even as he grew older, and her repertoire of bedtime stories ran thin. Having a monster for half of his soul was easier when he was with family who knew and understood.
But space was cold. Luke learned that from his very first trip.
He transformed once, by accident, in the living quarters of the Falcon. Han was still tinkering with the navicomputer even though they’d long since jumped to hyperspace. It would be a while before Han found out about Luke, and Ben wasn’t there to help explain it when he did, later. But Chewie was there. Chewie witnessed Luke’s transformation in front of Ben and helped explain it to Han, when the time came.
That first time, Luke’s head was groggy. The cold had swept in to colonise every corner of his cells. His limbs ached. When he lifted his head, the cabin was infinitely larger around him, the lights too bright and bleeding colour in his eyes, and Threepio’s, “Oh, my!” was like a blaster bolt to his ear drums.
Ben threw a blanket over him. When Luke’s limbs were soft instead of scaley again, and the world had stopped running like watercolours around him, Ben said, “I was afraid of this.”
Luke got out through a throat still shedding scales like teardrops: “You knew?”
“Your father had similar… transformations. And I’ve kept an eye on you, as you grew up. Remember that krayt dragon?”
Luke closed his eyes. “Distantly.” The memory was a flurry of sand and excitement, a great, gaping maw coming at him—then coming to a stop. “You rescued me. You came and scared it away.”
“It was already scared away, Luke,” Ben said. “It knew you were a dragon far more powerful than it could hope to best, even as a youngling.”
Because that was what Luke was, when he transformed. It was humiliating. It came at moments of high stress, sensory and emotional both; he had no control. One moment he was human, jaw clenched, hands in fists, shoulders tense. The next, he was on the floor, the world a lurid, cacophonous haze to his intense senses, a squalling, bleating babe.
Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen had had no idea why this happened to him. They knew that his father had transformed under moments of high stress, from Shmi’s testimony, but all they knew was what Shmi had improvised for her young son. Love. Compassion. Sufficient care to help manage the stress that caused those transformations when it came.
On the floor of the Falcon on the way to the Death Star, Luke accepted Ben’s hand up, stood, and nodded to R2, C-3PO, Chewie.
C-3PO didn’t mention it again. He was a blabbermouth, but he was a diplomatic droid. When he was explicitly charged with a delicate topic, he avoided it.
R2 would do even more, over the next few years. He would monitor Luke’s behaviour in the X-wing, to ensure it wasn’t so cold he automatically transformed. When Luke did transform in the middle of battle, and a biting, anxious child took his place, R2 locked the X-wing into automatic control and handled the battle until Luke was human again. (R2 didn’t say, in the binary equivalent of what it meant, until Luke was himself again. R2 seemed to understand earlier than Luke did that the glitches were part of Luke’s design, coded into his being, rather than a bug that had snuck in through a zero day.)
Chewie, finally, said nothing to Han that day when he marched back into the living area of the Falcon, declaring how they should all thank him for outrunning the Imperial slugs. But he did intervene several months later to cut of Han’s startled, “What the fuck?” when he walked into Luke’s cabin on the Falcon to see a baby dragon fast asleep on the floor. Chewie had explained it all to Han before Luke even woke up.
Even with his aunt and uncle dead, the warmth didn’t entirely fade. Luke had friends to step in and provide it, when the galaxy tried to freeze his heart, to bring out the monster in him. But this was a war. This was space.
And space is cold.
Luke couldn’t hide his other half from High Command for long, of course. Before he went forwards to admit it, he supplemented his testimony with all the research he could muster.
Dragons weren’t unheard of, but they weren’t heard of in a pleasant way. Stories abounded across cultures of mystical beings who turned up as friends, then turned their cheek and suddenly pounced, enormous beasts with fire for hearts and knives for teeth and claws. Some stories remembered them as noble creatures, who fought evil as fiercely as any warrior; others spoke in hushed tones of beasts who were easily angered, took offence at bizarre, arcane slights, and burned villages with abandon.
But every story referred to them as beasts. They just walked and talked like sentients, some of the time.
They were—Luke was—rare, though. The last stories went back thousands of years, to a time where much of the galaxy hadn’t yet been mapped and the stars still held little familiarity to stave off their mystery. Until a few decades ago.
Until Vader.
“I had suspected as much, Commander Skywalker,” Mothma told him gently, when he confessed to her. He hoped that her using his title was a good sign. She had only recently promoted him, and he had come to her as soon as he had the nerve so that she knew exactly who she was promoting. “Your father was the same.”
Until Anakin Skywalker.
“I thought he was a hero,” Luke said. “Not a... monster.”
Mothma pursed her lips and looked into the distance above Luke’s shoulder. “You know that I was a pacifist,” she said. “Necessity has stripped me of that. But I am still intimately familiar with the fact that in war, monsters will become heroes, to their own side.”
Luke bristled. Mothma noticed but didn’t take back what she had said. “You are a hero to the Alliance.”
That made sense. It was true, even. He had become one by killing a million people in one blow. Both in the figurative sense that Mothma had given him, and in the literal sense. The assault on his mind of so many people dying at once had knocked him out of his human form entirely. He had transformed there and then, in the flight from the Death Star’s debris, and R2 had had to seize control to get them back to Yavin IV safely. That was how he had returned to the Rebellion: with teeth, claws, and a fire to burn the galaxy down.
Mothma tapped her fingers on her desk, bringing Luke’s mind back to the present. “We don’t have to make it a secret,” she said. “We won’t put it in propaganda, of course, but ensuring that your fellow pilots know about it, that it goes through the base by word of mouth… I think it will bolster them, knowing we have a star dragon on our side. Let rumours spread to the Empire, as well.”
“A star dragon?” Luke hadn’t heard it called that before. It sounded more… epic. Like something in the stories he’d loved.
“That’s the name from the stories,” she said. “You’re like purrgils. You’re meant to be able to fly through space unaided—even through hyperspace. Enormous, majestic, fantastical creatures.” She blinked but looked unruffled at the fact she’d just called Luke a creature. “You can see why I hardly think it would hurt morale for people to know about you. It’s intimidating having Vader as an enemy”—Luke swallowed. He hated the concept of Vader being the only one like him—“and it would help to know we have one as an ally, too.”
Luke nodded. “I understand—”
“But I would recommend avoiding transforming where you can,” she added swiftly. She gave him a meaningful look that he had no idea how to interpret. “Especially in public. In your private bunkroom or on the Falcon, that should be fine. Leia has always known how to be… discreet. And Captain Solo…” She wrinkled her nose. “He doesn’t hold much credibility among the soldiers.”
“You mean no one would believe him anyway?”
“I think it’s best that Alliance members benefit from the narrative of what you are before seeing the reality,” Mothma finished. “You cannot fly between the stars yet, after all.”
No. Luke could not.
Luke, when he was a dragon, was a baby.
That was something he did not understand. And he had no one to ask about it, since he obviously refused to approach Vader. Every so often, Leia gave him a queer look after he transformed, but she never said anything. Her tongue was tied by something he didn’t understand.
Luke was twenty-two years old, by now. He had murdered millions of people in this war. He was a commander, a half-decent Jedi, and a respected leader. But his other half had the awareness and maturity of body of a hatchling.
Aunt Beru did used to speculate about that, when he was old enough to have noticed no change. His dragon form was always a baby. It never grew bigger or older, even as Luke’s human form grew so fast she was constantly readjusting his clothes to make them fit. True, Luke never spent any time in that form that wasn’t the bare minimum, and he tried to avoid thinking about it as much as he could, but it was odd. Was his other half just… too young, in the grand scheme of things? How long did star dragons live for? Was Luke still a baby, by their standards?
How old was Vader, if that was the case?
Because Vader was truly a beast. Even in his human form, striding around in his mask and cape, he cut a dreadful figure; when he shifted into a star dragon, he was doom incarnate. A flap of his wings was a thunderclap. They shifted air pressure so much they could cause storms if the atmospheric conditions were right. At his full height, wings spread, he was the size of the Falcon. It caused… problems… when he was coming for Luke, and Han was trying to get them all out of there.
They had several run-ins over the years. Every time, Han, with his usual tactlessness, would shout: “Can you do anything to help against him yet?”
“I can do this,” Luke would say from the rear cannon, and then he would fire a volley at Vader’s gorgeous wings.
Because they were. Monster or not, Luke had to always stop and admire Vader in full battle mode. When he reverted to realspace from his hyperspace trips, his wings crackled red, fire shooting up and down his wings to light him up, the brightest thing in the sky. His head was gigantic, crowned with black horns streaked with gold, like marble. And those teeth…
The krayt dragon on Tatooine may have been wrong to run from Luke. But it would not have been able to run from Vader.
Once, in space battle, he was sweeping around the Falcon. Luke and Leia were firing at him with everything they had while Han frantically plotted hyperspace coordinates, but his scales were hard as beskar. Their shots pinged right off. Vader glided around every viewport on the ship, peering through, as if mocking them—at least, Luke thought he was mocking them.
When Vader reached the window of the rear cannon, Luke realised he had been looking for him.
Vader angled his rings until he was metres from the viewport, bringing his eye up to stare at Luke. His iris blazed crimson and gold in concentric rings, like a sun in the last throes of its life. Like a combustion engine ready to blow.
I can see you, hatchling, a voice rumbled in Luke’s head. It shook his own blunt, tiny human teeth. It pounded his skull. His heart spasmed in his chest.
“Obviously,” Luke muttered to himself. He gripped the trigger tighter and angled the cannon. Vader’s eyes weren’t shielded by impenetrable scales. And his eyeball was right there. His pupil was a bullseye, the way the womprats back home had always been. He lined up the shot.
I can see you, Vader reiterated, as you should be.
Luke’s finger hesitated on the trigger.
Vader roared.
Luke knew that space wasn’t a total vacuum—especially this close to near-planet orbit, as they danced over Dantooine—but still, it seemed supernatural that so much sound should be carried by such little matter. The roar thundered into the side of the Falcon. Han shouted as she bucked. It bent and twisted the transparisteel separating Luke from Vader, but it didn’t break. It didn’t shatter. That wasn’t what the roar had been for.
His brain shut down.
The noise was intolerable. Overwhelming. Absolutely devastating—his senses were set alight and left to burn and scream, and Luke’s hatchling brain apparently couldn’t handle that. His flesh slipped out of his grip, but the trigger was the last thing he let go. He squeezed it.
There was a bang and a splatter of something liquid over the transparisteel of the viewport. He didn’t see it. He collapsed to his knees—except not his knees, because he no longer had knees in the way humans did. His limp, reptilian body slumped out of the chair and to the floor.
There you are, hatchling, Vader said. His voice was softer, now. It was a rumble that knocked Luke out entirely.
What Vader had planned to do in that moment, he failed to. Luke woke up in human form later, on his bunk, with Leia leaning over him in concern. The story he dragged out of the crew was that Vader had tried to attack the ship again, but Luke’s shot to the eye had knocked him off course and slowed him down. It was seconds—but it was seconds that Han needed to jump to hyperspace.
It didn’t matter. Vader succeeded at the same manoeuvre a week later. In the middle of a dogfight, with Luke cornered and separated from the rest of his squadron, Vader shattered the fabric of spacetime with a roar. Luke transformed in his cockpit; R2 seized the controls.
And Vader seized the X-wing.
His claws wrapped around the whole thing with a crunch. Metal shrieked. Luke, in hatchling form, howled in terror—his own roar, of sorts. If nothing else, it was high enough to shatter transparisteel, tearing apart the rest of the ship. Luke’s tiny body, unbound by the crash webbing now, launched into the black abyss.
Vader’s draconic grin was broad and gleaming.
It was so dark and cold, here. The one source of heat that Luke could rely on as a hatchling, the fire in his heart, seemed pitiful. Stars were pinpricks of light that blurred into oblivion when his vision wavered from the strain of it all. This was an extreme—and extremely stressful—environment.
But it was one that star dragons were designed for.
Luke’s wings, stubby and thick, spread. He flapped them. Something more than matter moved beneath them; he shot away from his ship, away from R2’s frantic attempts to steer it back towards him. Away from Vader. Towards the starlight, towards the distant silence, as far from the firefight as he could get.
Energy soared through him. His muscles trembled with unparalleled joy. In such a young body, it was easy to remember his clumsy days as a child when he first got into a Skyhopper and felt the galaxy sear past him in the same way. Something swelled inside him.
Then Vader descended on him like a shadow.
The fight was nothing. His claws were the size of Luke’s wings; he snatched Luke in them so tightly he could hardly breathe. It was a good thing star dragons did not breathe in space. That same joyous energy trembled through Vader, through his muscles, and into Luke, even as he tried to protest and squirm away.
He wanted to fly. He wanted to fly.
You will fly, hatchling, Vader promised him. Here.
Vader’s wings beat hard once. Twice. The trembling sped to a buzz. Light dazzled all around Luke, until he was ready to faint again, and then—
It was less that they shot into hyperspace than that hyperspace wrapped a tunnel around them, just for them, like a blanket Leia would tuck around Luke’s shoulders. The blue lights whizzed by, stars just beyond Luke’s reach. His child eyes wide and glossy, reflecting the glories of the universe back at it, he reached out a limb.
Vader tightened his grip on him. Luke squealed. Then, Vader adjusted his grip, so he held Luke’s torso, but not his wings. Luke wriggled in vain, but his wings clipped free.
The currents of spacetime sifted underneath them. It was sublime.
He tried to wriggle more. He wanted to fly. He wanted to feel this fully—he wanted to escape this, he wanted—
That’s enough, Vader said. Another avalanche of sound shut down Luke’s nervous system, and then he knew no more.
Luke came to still in dragon form, on a soft bed. The first thing he registered as unusual was that the tips of his wings were warm. Usually, whenever he was in this form, it was because he was cold—coming from Tatooine, cold was the main sensory experience that overwhelmed him. If his wings were warm… this was bizarre. He’d never had his dragon form taken care of like that before.
The room itself was odd as well. He was definitely on a ship. The thrum of the engine through the floor and the hum of hyperspace in his heart was unmistakeable. But if this was a ship, he’d never seen a room this big before. It was vast—and the bed was, too. An ocean of mattress separated him from the walls and the floor. Several doors studded the walls, a fair way away but as large as the doors to the Massassi Temple had been on Yavin. The ceiling was so high Luke was sure he could fly his X-wing through here.
Which was the point, wasn’t it? It took a moment to occur to him, but it was obvious. This obscene waste of space wasn’t for Luke. This wasn’t Luke’s space. This cavern of a set of quarters was Vader’s.
The bed was new. He could smell that—a fresh mattress, unstained by grime or time; sheets as soft and untouched as clouds. Another give away was how complete the set was. When he scrambled to extricate himself from the middle of the vast bed, he left gouges in the mattress and sheets. His claws didn’t slide through the sheets, not the way they did in his bunk when he accidentally transformed back on base. The sheets were tougher than that. But it seemed that Vader had still prioritised softness over strength, because Luke did poke holes in them, in the pillows, in the mattress. Feathers fluffed out.
Eventually, he reached the edge of the bed. The floor was cold and clacked under his claws, but still much warmer than he’d expected. The first door he tried was a refresher. It had a normal human toilet and… something else. It looked something like a large litter tray with a flush function on it. Luke became abruptly aware, for the first time, that he did need to pee in dragon form.
Once that was done, he moved to the next door, then hesitated. It was cold behind there. He could sense it. Anticipation prickled along the back of his neck.
He turned around and waddled to the other side of the room, his claws clacking against the hard floor. His limbs still felt gangly and too big for him. In using the refresher, he’d bashed into the door and various nozzles several times, and now he still regularly stumbled over his own feet. His head was heavy. His senses sparkled with stimulation, until it teased the edge of his capacity for it all. He could sense they were in hyperspace, yes, but having been through hyperspace some mental compass in his mind was tracking, sensing, watching their flight… And the rest of the ship, moving through the starlight around him, he could feel like dolls dancing at his fingertips…
And behind him, in the door he’d left behind… he knew what was behind there, too.
The wall at this side of the room was a viewport, floor to ceiling. The swirl of hyperspace was mesmerising and tickled some ancient instinct of his, that told him he was safe, he was home, he was on the move, heading towards adventure. But if he wrested his gaze from the stars to look at his own reflection in the glass, something didn’t look right.
He cocked his head.
Never had he properly looked himself in the mirror while in this form. Mirrors on Tatooine and in the Rebellion had always been rare, anyway. But he’d caught glimpses of himself reflected in viewports and water and others’ terrified eyes, and now that he looked at himself, hard… He was certain that he was larger than he used to be.
His old form was the size of a puppy. That was why he became so helpless. So weak. But now, he was the same size as, if not slightly larger than, his human self. He tilted his head. Or was he? He was definitely that size now, but he was wracking his brain trying to remember what size he’d been before. Too small for the crash webbing on any ship to catch him. He must have been smaller. But he’d never paid much attention to it.
Moving in this form seemed easier now, as well. He was clumsy, but not nearly as bad as he used to be. And his wings no longer seemed so impossibly stumpy and thick. If anything, they dragged behind him like the train of a dress, too thin and large for his skinny reptilian torso. A growth spurt?
What? Why now?
He stared at his foreign body. Golden scales. Large blue eyes, which reflected the swirl of hyperspace so acutely he thought he might have stored galaxies inside them. His head was top heavy and too big for his torso as well, and… he hadn’t thought he had the same infrastructure before. It used to be a generic round blob of scales with eyes and two nostrils. Now it seemed almost sculpted, with small crenellations along the flow of his nose, his snout, and around his ears. Two baby horns poked up at the back of his head.
Smoke scrolled out of one of his nostrils. His chest felt like it was burning.
You have grown, hatchling.
Luke saw the shadow looming in the viewport against the backdrop of stars before he heard the voice. He spun around, just in time to see one of the sets of massive doors at the end of the room slide open. Briefly, around Vader’s bulk, he caught glimpse of an equally large hyperbaric chamber like the sort he’d seen medics use for pilots who’d had problems with smoke inhalation. Then the door slid shut, and Vader towered before him, every inch the Imperial dragon.
He opened his mouth to speak, to swear, but his tongue didn’t work that way, and he didn’t have lips nearly as flexible as he was accustomed to. A deep rumble spread from Vader—laughter.
You do not know how to speak.
Luke roared instead, indignation flooding him. He’d locked him up, he’d snatched him out of the dogfight, and now he mocked him? The roar started weak—and it finished that way. It was so high-pitched it was shrill, and the transparisteel shuddered unpleasantly at the sound of it. He roared for as long as he could, but it finished with a hiccup. A tiny spurt of flame burst out to pitter patter and extinguish on the hard floor.
Not so grown, Vader amended. You still cry like a child. I am glad.
Luke opened his mouth to roar again, but Vader crossed the space in two strides and grasped Luke in his jaws. He kicked his legs, squealing some more. Vader’s mouth was hot and smelled so much of smoke it made Luke dizzy, but his grip was gentle. His throw was not. He tossed Luke back onto the enormous bed, where he bounced several times, then landed on his face.
Settle down. We have much to discuss.
Kark you. Luke thought it, then thought it again, so hard he hoped the galaxy rang with the force of his thought. Kark you!
I am unsurprised, but disappointed, that these are your first words.
These aren’t my first words! His frustration meant he somehow landed on that neural pathway again, the opening to the hyperlane between the stars that transmitted thoughts and feelings, and he blared that out as well. My first words were—
He stopped.
Vader lay down on the floor and settled his enormous draconic head on the edge of the bed. His head was still bigger than Luke’s whole body, but perhaps it was to make himself seem smaller, less threatening. Luke dismissed that thought as quickly as it came. They were what?
Unbidden, Luke’s tongue flicked out to scrape against his scaly lips. The sensation was soothing.
His first words had been Ann Boo. It might’ve been baby babble, but Aunt Beru had been insistent that he’d said Aunt Beru. A week later, he’d said, much clearer, Unc Own, which was less like babble. She had liked claiming that he said her name first, and Owen had gone with it.
He said nothing to Vader.
Vader seemed to pick up on that. As you wish. We have much to discuss, anyway. While disappointed at your lack of familiarity with your dragon form, I am pleased that I have time to teach you.
Luke’s outrage meant he lost hold of that pathway to understanding. His fury at the sheer idea turned into more of a whining, barking protest than anything intelligible.
Do not be so impertinent, Vader warned. He was still amused, though. Did you never wonder where this gift of yours came from? Star dragons are rare beasts. Rare, mythological, and extremely powerful. I know that you knew you received this gift from your father.
Luke looked away from him.
This is correct, but not the full truth. You received your gift from me. Perhaps Vader tried to smile, then. Luke was just suddenly aware of his teeth, gleaming under his lips, a promise of violence if Luke disappointed him. And I look forward to teaching you, my son.
Luke didn’t know how much time he spent trapped on the Executor, Vader’s personal flagship. A long time. It definitely took a long time to get used to the concept of being Vader’s son.
But it shouldn’t have. Deep down, he’d known. He’d always known. What were the odds of there being two rare star dragons at once, both taught by Ben Kenobi, and that one had killed the other?
The knowledge had been there every time he saw the fear in a Rebel’s eyes when they learnt what he was. He’d known who they were comparing him to. Luke had feared standing in Vader’s shadow even before he knew just how far that shadow extended.
It didn’t matter, though. Luke might need time to process all of this, but Vader certainly didn’t give it to him.
These were indeed Vader’s quarters. Luke found out that night that Vader slept here as well. It was, apparently, traditional for dragon hatchlings to sleep beside their parents, before their inner fires were strong enough to keep them warm themselves.
And considering how often you transform against your wishes due to a slight chill, Vader informed Luke, it is evident that your inner fire is abominably weak.
Luke hated that he was right. He tried to avoid Vader entirely, running from the refresher to the room with the (thankfully closed) hyperbaric chamber to the viewport and back again to evade his snapping jaws. Vader just laughed at him. The doors were locked; there was nowhere to go. His father seized him by the back of his neck—apparently he had plenty of loose skin there, to grow into. Luke had thought that reptiles shed their skin instead of growing into it, like snakes, but what did he know about dragons?—and dragged him back to the enormous mattress. A great foot came down to pin him in place, then Vader pressed him against his warm belly. To Luke’s utter horror and humiliation, he fell asleep immediately.
He had been at war for so long that relaxation was a foreign concept. When he woke, being well-rested, calm, and relaxed was so alien he felt he’d been dumped in other body. He supposed he had.
Heat suffused him, from Vader’s belly against him but also from his own core. The wings on his back twitched and stretched, supple instead of unwieldy, intrinsic instead of other. He rolled away, and this time Vader didn’t snap at him or smack him with a clawed foot to keep him in position. Instead, Luke could feel his crimson gaze on his back as Luke staggered, more gracefully than before, out of the quagmire that was the soft bed and into the refresher. The dragon toilet was easier to use the next time around.
While in there, the decrease in temperature and the clearing of his head as he woke up left him shaking.
He was trapped here. Vader was his father. And he felt like his father. Luke’s dragon form had no problem sleeping next to him like he was the only thing preventing Luke from crashing into a black hole or being set upon by cold, sharp enemies. Luke might be an adult in human form, but as a dragon, he was nothing more than a child with instincts that emphasised flight over fight, and those instincts desperately wanted him to be protected—and thus manipulated, judging by how Vader had used them so far—by his mortal enemy.
Vader hadn’t killed his father, no. But he was fundamentally changing Luke’s identity in an entirely different way.
Luke? Vader was outside the refresher. Luke turned and locked the door before he tried to come in—that seemed the sort of thing Vader would do. Sure enough, Vader tried to open the door. He had the Force, so Luke was sure he’d figure out how to press the button from the other side in a few minutes, but it bought him time to think.
Luke. Vader sounded stern. Open this door. Are you well?
He stared in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. There must be some way to control the transformation. He ignored the fact that his wings were apparently longer together, his golden, scaled head apparently larger and fuller, and thought about his human form. Longed for his human form. Soft skin that didn’t itch nearly so badly, warm blood, hair that insulated his head, and opposable thumbs. Vader could control the transformation; Luke could, too. He didn’t want to be a dragon. He didn’t want to be a dragon—
The door rattled again. Luke. Come out now.
He didn’t want to hear Vader’s voice in his head.
Fingers gripped the basin of the sink. Luke opened his eyes. He’d unconsciously stretched up while transforming and grabbed the first thing he could find to steady himself, but there he was. Messy hair, wild-eyed, still in his ruined pilot’s suit.
Pilot’s suit. His X-wing. Where was R2? Had he got away safely? What had happened to—
Focus. Focus.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tugged on his hair. It was grounding, the pressure. At least he could transform at will, now. When he wasn’t too overwhelmed; when he made sure he was in control of himself. That wasn’t anything he’d done before. That wasn’t anything he’d wanted to do before. His dragon form had been something to escape. Something to suffer through when necessary, but otherwise ignore.
But Vader, the great star dragon of the Empire, was his father. He was right outside now, and he had started banging on the door.
There was no escaping this.
The door gave way. It crumpled to the side—not enough that Vader could get his whole body in, but enough that he could get his head in. He shoved it through, right into Luke’s torso, and sent him tumbling back to the floor.
Luke. Answer me.
He could still hear Vader in his head as a human, then. Luke didn’t know what he’d been expecting.
He dragged a hand across his face. “What do you want?”
Why are you in your human form?
“I don’t like being a dragon! You keep—” His breath caught. “You keep using my instincts against me!”
I am your father.
“And you’re my enemy!”
Only because you were kidnapped. You should not have had to be raised around humans. Look at how out of place you are in your own skin. Look at your stunted development—
“Oh, shut up,” Luke snarled. “Are you just gonna insult me?”
You are my child, Luke. We should have been together. I intend to fix this injustice. I intend to give to you your heritage.
Luke shoved himself off the cool tile floor with the palm of his hand, staggering to his feet. Still, he had to crane his neck to look Vader in the eye. The sight of those eyes nearly made him flinch. His father was terrifying.
His father was a monster.
“I don’t want anything to do with you,” Luke said. “I want you to leave me alone.”
The words seemed to land where nothing else had. It was Vader’s turn to nearly flinch. He recovered himself admirably, but Luke noticed a change in him. We are family, he insisted. And, because of your poor upbringing and your own denial of yourself, you are still a hatchling. My hatchling.
Luke’s teeth chattered as he glared. His arms came up to hug himself. At first, he assumed it was his own instinctual self-defence mechanism. Then, his gaze slid to the thermostat in the corner of the refresher. It was steadily getting colder.
“Really?” Luke bit out. “You’re doing this? You dislike me being a human so much that you’ll force me to transform back?”
Being a human has only brought me pain. We are far stronger as dragons.
“You’re pathetic.”
And you are weak. If you were at the stage of development you are meant to be, this cold would be nothing to you. As a dragon, you would be the beacon that burned the cold away.
Luke tucked his chin against his chest, dropping Vader’s gaze. He couldn’t deny his own weakness. It was a burden he’d suffered for years, now, every time he couldn’t control his transformation. “You’re still pathetic.”
I am your father. This is for your own good.
“You’re the right hand of the Emperor. You’re the dragon of the Empire. You don’t know what good means.” Luke turned his back. “I am glad not to have been raised into a monster like you!”
The words rang out with more venom than he’d realised he could muster. He was physically shuddering now, the cold sinking its teeth into his blood, his bones, the tender beat of his heart. If he had expected Vader to react in some way, he did not. He just stared at him, ever more intently.
Do you think that you will not join the Empire? he asked.
“Of course I won’t. What did I just say? I won’t become a monster like you.”
That is not something you can escape, Luke, his father assured him.
He leaned forwards and opened his mouth. His ivory teeth sparkling under the harsh lights of the refresher; his tongue was a red, wet pillow; his lips peeled back like the rim of an abyss. There was nowhere for Luke to run, and it was too cold to run, anyway. Luke was on his knees, then on clawed feet, and then he was a dragon hatchling in his father’s jaws again.
We are both monsters already.
Vader couldn’t be with Luke in his—their, now—quarters the entire time, so Luke did have time to think to himself. And to systematically tear up the bed, and try to destroy the doors, and knock out the transparisteel viewports. And, when all was done, to try to fix the door that Vader had broken when he’d forced his way into the refresher. But there was a lot of thinking being done, as well.
Sometime later in his indeterminate imprisonment, it came to him.
He had always, always wanted to fly.
Was that just a product of being promised a father who had travelled the stars before his death? Was it born of the fact his name was Skywalker and he yearned to live up to it? Or had there been something more there?
He was a dragon. He always had been.
Did that make him a monster?
It depended on what dragons were, at the end of the day. And even after all of his research, Luke knew that he didn’t really know.
So when Vader came back to their quarters one evening, transforming into dragon form as soon as he passed through the doors—he had to use his human form around the ship, but it was clear which he preferred—Luke was waiting for him, watching the stars. He turned around to look at his father.
I’m cold, he said. He’d grown more used to speaking like this, without tongues. It was another form of acceptance.
Vader inclined his head and took the peace offering for what it was. Come here.
He settled on the (still pretty ruined) bed. Luke jumped over to him and pressed himself to his chest, closing his eyes. This was his father. His father wanted to take care of him. And Luke let him.
If Luke was ever to figure any of this out, he would have to figure out who his father was.
What is the fire inside? he asked.
Vader stilled beside him, as if he didn’t believe Luke was asking a genuine, non-resentful question. Luke?
What is the fire inside? Why don’t I have it yet? Luke’s wings had grown still, his body getting lankier and his claws longer. But he still felt weak and childish. He still felt utterly dependent on outside protection, when he was in this form.
Still, he wore it as often as he could, even when Vader was absent. He had neglected it for so long. He needed to grow accustomed to it.
It is the energy that drives us, Vader said finally. Much like the Force. It comes from channelling the energy we have into something we need. It requires intent at first. Then it becomes instinctual, unless times are difficult. In those times, it requires focus once more.
So, without that experience and focus, I get cold.
You could die, without it.
Luke shivered to himself. Why do I transform into a dragon when I’m cold, then? Humans are warm-blooded. Turning into a dragon could be more dangerous—
Your inner fire is still there when you are a human. Again, like the Force. It is simply that your dragon form cuts closer to your core than your human self. Vader grunted and shifted slightly. It is your truer self.
That part made Luke sceptical, but the rest he allowed to settle in his mind, turning it over. He was a dragon, even when he was a human. He was a human, even when he was a dragon.
He was all, and he was more.
Is that why I’m more sensitive, as a dragon? he continued. To noise. Cold. Light. Textures… I’ll shut down if it’s all too much.
If you are more aware you will always be more overwhelmed. Power requires training to wield. Vader cracked an eye open and peered down at him. And discipline.
Luke snorted and knocked Vader with his head. Vader’s shoulders shook with a rumble that Luke could fool himself was laughter.
I never knew how to explain my power before, Luke admitted. It was a moment of vulnerability that he shouldn’t have allowed, not with Vader. Even if, in letting himself view this monster as another part of himself, Vader had started to feel like his father, as well as claim to be him.
And it was a moment of vulnerability Vader leapt on. That is why you belong in the Empire. We are star dragons. We are immortal beasts, equal to none—we cannot be explained. The Emperor understands this. We need explain ourselves to no one.
Except to him.
Vader growled. Luke flinched back, and Vader stopped, letting Luke snuggle against him again.
Can you teach me to fly? Luke asked. But his timing, immediately after a small act of rebellion, was off. Vader tensed.
No. They both knew that Luke would just try to escape. But Vader softened it with: The Emperor encourages me not to fly outside of battle. It preserves the secret and surprise of what we star dragons can do.
The word encourage seemed to be doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Luke probed further. Why do star dragons fly at all?
Vader frowned. He hadn’t expected that question. Because we can.
There was nothing more to it.
What else would there be to it? Why would the galaxy produce dragons that could soar between stars were it not for the sheer thrill of flight, the excitement of discovery? That was, ultimately, what had always drawn Luke to the skies. The knowledge that he could fly, if he wanted to. And he had very much wanted to.
Except outside of battle, Luke said.
Yes, Vader said. Except outside of battle.
Luke grew at an astonishing rate over the next few weeks.
He hardly spent time in his human form—partly to please his father, partly to accelerate the process as much as possible. He ate all the food Vader provided and then some. The muscles on his back thickened, his wings growing tougher and stronger. His claws sharpened and strengthened, until they no longer felt like they’d splinter on the first slash. He noticed his eyes as well, one day, when he looked in the mirror. They were spangled with silver, purple, gold, black, brown, yellow, green… Galaxies spun behind his irises.
He was changing. And for the first time in a long while, he felt strong.
His senses were such that he could tell when Vader changed their course. The folds of hyperspace slipped around them, soft as silk, and stars tugged like gravity on the corners of his mind. It was no surprise when his father came back to their quarters that evening to say, We are returning to Coruscant.
Luke tensed up immediately. He shifted into human form, the better to fully express his irritation. He was large enough as a dragon by now that he felt himself shrink as he did. “Why?”
Vader was indeed irritated by that shift, but he didn’t say anything about it. I must report back to my master. And he is most anxious to meet you.
“I am not anxious to meet him.”
Vader’s irritation grew, like a knot or snarl in the Force that wrapped around them both. I had thought you had become more reasonable about your place in the Empire.
“You were wrong. Accepting… you… doesn’t mean accepting the Empire.”
It does.
Luke turned to face the viewport, his back to Vader. Hyperspace sang beyond it, threads of light spinning together like fate. He felt an answering call shake through his bones, his fingers twitching. “I can accept this,” he said. “This… is beautiful.”
He felt the fire in his chest roar in response. It had only got stronger, the more time he spent with Vader. Vader’s had too, he’d noticed.
“The Empire is not,” he finished. “But if you can’t already see that, Father, it would be a waste of breath to tell you why.”
He’d known there would be a moment where all of this would come to a head. He had resolved, even when he opened himself up to Vader and his own dragon form, he wouldn’t join the Empire.
If Vader was going to make him meet Palpatine, this was coming to a head.
Still, he gave his father one last chance. “Please,” he said, and pretended it was a plea. “Turn the ship around. I don’t want to meet Palpatine. I won’t meet Palpatine.”
No, Vader said. As he was always going to say. You are being irrational.
“I hate the Empire. I hate the Emperor. You know this.”
I did not. I thought you had come to your senses.
“The Empire is a source of evil in the galaxy.”
The Empire is necessary to fight evil in the galaxy. We are monsters, but we are monsters with a purpose. The Empire is too.
Luke turned back to look at his father. He was so much bigger than Luke. So much older. So much more experienced.
“We are not monsters,” Luke said. “And we don’t have to be.”
Space is cold, Luke.
“It doesn’t have to be, either.” Luke took a deep breath. “Come find me when you’re ready to accept that.”
Then he transformed.
Vader seemed to have expected it—he must have felt the rising tension in the room, the energy Luke was drawing on. But he’d expected Luke to leap at him. Luke just landed on all fours, spread his wings to seem as large as possible, then roared.
He couldn’t roar properly. Not yet. It wasn’t deep and trembling like Vader’s, but he wasn’t trying to make it so. He wasn’t trying to be anything other than what he was. When the roar came out childish, high-pitched and shrill, he leaned into it. Louder. Higher. Louder. Higher.
Vader cringed, his feet twitching as if he wanted to cover his ears. But then he bared his own teeth and pounced.
Too late.
A jet of blue flame erupted from Luke’s mouth. His chest burned hotter than it ever had before. The bed caught fire, the floor, and Vader flinched back from that. The fire alarm started its shrill cry, adding to Luke’s painful roar, and Vader flinched from that as well. For all his posturing, he was vulnerable to sensory overload just as Luke was. Luke was holding onto his own sanity by a thread by the time he closed his mouth, but that didn’t matter. He’d achieved his aim.
The transparisteel viewport had thick cracks through it, spiderwebbing across the whole wall. They split the galaxy into sectors; he looked through them to a complex web of stars and maps and hyperlanes beyond. Then he launched himself out of the ship. The viewport shattered, shards glancing off his thick, scaled skin, and the cold of space enveloped him.
Vader roared. He recovered from his flinch to lunge after him, through the ruined viewport, but they had leapt into the frantic race of hyperspace, and Luke was systems and parsecs away by the time he followed. Their bond stretched into oblivion, but Luke still felt the echo of his rage and betrayal shudder down it, into his heart, making his wings bank suddenly mid-flight.
He recovered. Hyperspace was a smooth tunnel around him. He spread his wings wider and soared.
This was what he was born for. This was what he could do. He was glowing. He was flying.
The new Rebel base was meant to be on Hoth—that was where they’d been evacuating to, when he’d been captured. The thought of such a cold world had filled Luke with dread, but he was a dragon. He could make his own warmth, now. Nothing was going to stop him.
The galaxy spun around him, the tugs and pulls of it all instinct at the back of his mind. He followed the siren call home.
Landing on Hoth nearly caused an impromptu evacuation on their part. He was infinitely larger than he had been when he’d left—he might’ve even grown mid-flight, his wings and legs swelling in the comfortable safety of hyperspace—and the only large dragon they knew of was Vader. When he came bombing out of hyperspace, the recognisable thundercrack and flash of a star dragon’s appearance sent an alarm blaring through the base.
It took some time to calm everyone down, but they did eventually. Then, there was excitement. Jubilation, especially among Luke’s friends. And a debrief with High Command, during which Luke felt his gaze keep sliding towards Leia. Her face was blank, but something about her seemed to radiate longing.
That was something he would unpack much, much later.
And it was a few weeks later that he came into the canteen in human form to find the place in uproar. Upon prodding, Leia showed him the feed that had caused such excitement.
An iconic black dragon flew over the Coruscant skyline. The Imperial Palace was burning.
The newsreader had admirable control, but he was clearly panicking. The Emperor was missing. Grand Moff Tarkin was missing. It had been an Imperial ball, and so many Imperials were either injured or dead… What were they to do against the Rebellion now?
“Did you have something to do with this?” Leia murmured to him.
“Possibly,” he murmured back.
Hope swelled in his chest. With it, his fire only burned brighter.