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He held his son in his arms – like he had held his mother once; first and last embrace he could give him. Cold wind of the reactor shaft howled around him, his lightsaber lay abandoned on the walkway, the flesh of his arm burned where Luke had got a hit on him, and none of that mattered now.
He should be dead instead; for what he had done, he wanted to crawl into some hole on an uninhabited planet far away and die like the wretched creature he was.
It was not supposed to go like this; he did not even plan to fight in earnest. It had only been – a test, to see if Luke was ready to become a Sith. And a necessary lesson of loss, like the one Vader himself had been subjected to. But he did not intend to actually harm his child – he never would have –
The exact cause did not matter now, whether it was a technical malfunction, the slightest accidental twitch of cybernetics; or if his grip on the Force slipped as he guided the lightsaber. Instead of severing Luke's hand, Vader's blade sliced across his torso.
Vader caught him before he fell, and Luke tried to speak but he only coughed and stilled within seconds; his presence in the Force faded, body already beyond the help of medical droids. Perhaps if Vader had known more Sith sorcery, if he had been more powerful, he could have saved him...
(He had tried, again and again, and all that ever brought was more pain.)
And he was left alone, with the body of his child in his arms, with eyes that could not cry and a throat that could not scream, and once again with no hope.
He regretted the day he was born, not in fire, not in the cold of space, but in desert sands; and this time there was no one he could take it out on but himself - this time, it was him. He killed his son – just like he had killed her... He could blame the Jedi, the Rebellion, the Emperor all he wanted but in the end it was ever only him; he had everything and discarded it out of – pride? Resentment?
...fear?