Did you know I'm not the only artist who makes a fanfic comic about Luke and Leia as kids? I'd recommend checking out @silvereddaye's comic, The Tinies.
I tried my best to emulate the Tinies' style. It was an interesting challenge! The ultimate result feels like a strange mixture of my style and Silver's, but i tried my best!
Some young Luke and Vader fluff written for @silvereddaye
Luke was asleep. Vader took a breath out of sync with his respirator in order to sigh—unsure if it was a contented or tired one—and hold the child tighter against his chest, the boy wriggling unconsciously in his sleep to press closer against Vader’s body. Space was cold, Vader remembered from a time when temperature had still mattered to him, and Luke was from Tatooine. Vader, meanwhile, bled heat from his machinery.
Luke clung to him and he was not complaining.
If a few straggling troopers or officers stared as Vader marched through the Star Destroyer’s corridors, a young child clinging to his side, he ignored them. If the dignitary currently occupying the finest rooms on the ship was indignant at being tossed out, he ignored him. He clutched his son and pretended, for a moment, that he could feel the soft curls on his head through his leather gloves and durasteel hands.
He was trying to be gentle.
He didn’t know how well he was succeeding, but Luke was not crying—not the way he’d cried when he’d first seen Vader, highly emotional and relieved and afraid and overwhelmed all at once at having to leave his aunt and uncle for an unknown man in the stars. Luke was sleeping, peacefully. He stirred just as Vader approached his own quarters.
“Pa… pa?” he asked. The word was clumsy in his mouth, on his young tongue, but not as clumsy as Vader would have expected—he wondered how often Luke had used it when whispering to himself. “Where… are we…”
“My home,” Vader said. Luke’s nose crinkled at the lie, but there was no truth to tell him, as far as home went. “Come inside, Luke…” His voice wavered—he hadn’t known that his vocoded voice could waver. “I want to show you something.”
Luke yawned, fresh tears filling his eyes as he remembered his situation, but Vader kept him on his hip and carried him through, hushing him gently. Their Force-bond was strong, and powerful, and undoubtedly far too much for an untrained boy who’d grown up in an empty desert, but Vader took care not to bowl him over with his emotions; he saw ripples, not waves, of reassurances, until Luke’s death grip twisted in his cape relaxed.
“Wha tis’t?” Luke mumbled, eyes blurry. Vader carried him into the large room his hyperbaric chamber stood in the middle of; Luke perked up at the sight of it, curiosity overriding his exhaustion, and stared.
Vader pressed a button, and the pod hissed open.
Luke let go of Vader’s cape to reach out a hand and point at the pod, his face creasing, his mouth opened in a faint oh. “Wha…”
“This is where I can breathe without the mask, Luke,” Vader said. “This is… I…” He stopped, and just repeated. “I want to show you something.”
Luke dropped his hand as they walked into the chamber, instead tilting his head back as the dome of it arched over them, staring. Vader brought his attention back to him when he sat down in the seat in the centre, and put Luke on the floor.
Luke scrunched up his face.
“No— no, little one,” Vader hushed. “One moment.”
The pod locked the doors and there was a hiss as the seals were put in place; Luke was distracted from his tantrum to stare at the sound, tilting his head then glancing at Vader in conclusion—and shouting. Vader used the Force to keep the boy still as the arms descended, deconstructed his mask like they were stripping his mental shields away, layer by excruciating layer, and then…
He blinked.
His eyesight wasn’t as good outside of the suit, but for now he saw a blur of white, dirty white, and… gold. He moved his gaze from Luke’s desert robes to his head of wild hair, to the hole where his mouth had fallen open, and… he stared.
Held out a hand for Luke to come closer, now that the mechanical arms were gone.
“Papa?” Luke said querulously, keeping his distance.
Vader nodded. “It’s me, Luke,” he said hoarsely. Luke narrowed his eyes at his unaltered voice—thin, weak, frail, everything he hated—and Vader hastened to reach out in the Force, sending the same soothing ripples he’d been sending in the hours since he found him. It’s me. It’s your father.
Luke took a tentative step forward, then another one. Then he reached up, and Vader reached down, and pulled Luke into his lap, where the boy sat and stared up at him.
He reached up a hand to place it on Vader’s scarred cheek.
It hurt—there were still unhealed sores there, and it always hurt. But just the shock, of having a warm, gentle skin on his skin, delicately brushing against it…
Vader let out a sob and leaned into the touch like a drunkard leaned on a steady wall.
Luke looked alarmed, but smiled, broadly, showing his gap-toothed grin with an reckless abandon, and raised his other hand to Vader’s cheek, squidging it like he might his food, or sand, or toys. Vader covered that hand with his own, curling the cold metal fingers around the tiny flesh ones with the sort of precision his prosthetics had not been known to have, and smiled back.
At first it was a tentative smile, not daring to try it too hard, not daring to shift the pudgy hands from his face, not daring to scare him… But then Luke’s eyes blew wide and he positively beamed, shuffling closer—
He poked a finger in Vader’s mouth and giggled.
Vader shut his mouth firmly the moment he extracted it, but couldn’t stop smiling, now.
Luke was here. This… this marvellous, impossible, wonderful boy was here, right in front of him, smiling at him, loving him… He’d survived the hellworld of Mustafar and the hellworld of Tatooine and now he was sitting right here, beaming at Vader for all he was worth.
“Papa!” Luke said excitedly.
Vader tousled his hair with all the affection he could possibly muster, trying to stop it from crashing down their bond and crushing his son flat. He didn’t want to hurt him. He would make sure that no one would hurt him, ever.
“Hello, Luke,” he choked out. “It’s nice to meet you.”
