Revenge of the Jedi (6/17)
Tragically, we've had to drop our Netflix account, which means no more free ATLA! :( But hey, now I'll get the commentaries, since I'm totally going to buy it now. And I got four thousand dollars for this term, so I can afford it. In other news, omg circumbinary planet and they're totally calling it Tatooine because scientists are geeks and the ultimate in Ascended Fans. <3
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Title: Revenge of the Jedi (6/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Leia struggles with her guilt over the Alderaanians and welcomes some more refugees, including a very important one, Luke has a vision of the present that makes him disturbingly happy, and Shmi expositions.
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Chapter Six
The moment that Alderaan was destroyed, Leia Organa became the most powerful symbol the Rebellion possessed.
Before, she had been a spy, saboteur, and sometime leader. Afterwards, she held no rank or position other than Princess Leia. It didn’t matter -- or rather, it mattered immensely. It made her the face of the Rebellion, and ensured that the assorted generals and admirals deferred to her in everything but where she went, what she wore, and how she lived.
She gave commands, and others chose her clothes. Leia considered it an eminently satisfying exchange, except when the symbolizing went too far.
“I like white,” she said, most of her attention focused on her datapad. Rieekan’s report looked promising, she thought, scrolling down while Susrin Atral prattled on about her wardrobe. He wasn’t part of the military leadership, but a former representative in the Senate. They hadn’t quite known what to do with him, when he first defected; in the end, they’d put him to work managing the Rebellion’s image, and therefore Leia’s.
“Princess, you are the daughter of Alderaan,” Atral said impatiently. “You need -- ”
Leia glanced up, her hands tightening on the datapad. Her eyes were very cold. “I am the daughter of Padmé Amidala and Bail Organa,” she said.
He gulped and changed the subject.
After she returned from Cloud City, however, the arrangement became considerably less satisfactory. The high command seemed convinced that Imperial agents were crouching in the brush at all times, ready to capture her if she were left alone for a single minute. Not that she was ever alone, because Han -- well, he’d always mocked her rank, but the last thing he’d said to Chewie was exactly what everyone else was saying now.
The princess -- you have to take care of her.
Chewbacca had taken it to heart. As soon as he returned from Tatooine, he began accompanying her everywhere she went and only reluctantly refrained from guarding her bed at night.
“I’ll be fine,” Leia said, trying to keep her frustration out of her voice. She wasn’t irritated with Chewie, and he’d had to put up with enough of her temper tantrums already. “I’ve got droids and my blaster and I doubt there are stormtroopers lurking under my window. Besides, it’s creepy to have someone watching me while I sleep -- I wouldn’t get any rest that way.”
Nevertheless, Chewie’s protection was apparently insufficient. She couldn’t so much as leave her chambers without the escort of three guards, each armed to the teeth. If she’d ever actually been attacked, they would only have been in her way.
She never was, of course, because she never left the base. The Rebellion still sent diplomats on missions to meet potential allies, of course, but Leia hadn’t received any assignments since her return. She made tactical decisions, she delivered orders, she looked tragic, she passed on Luke’s clairvoyant intelligence reports, and all of this, apparently, made her too important to be risked in anything else.
Leia bit back her frustration and forced herself to think rationally. She was good at diplomacy, certainly, but others could do it nearly as well. Nobody else could be Princess Leia, heiress to the graveyard of Alderaan.
I don’t deserve it. The thought had crept into her mind almost unawares. But it was true. What had she done for her people? True, it wasn’t her fault that Alderaan had been destroyed; Tarkin had just needed an excuse. He’d told her that much, and he’d done it even when there wasn’t an excuse. No, it wasn’t her fault.
Afterwards, they’d been on the run all the way to Hoth -- she’d looked for Alderaanians when she could, but that was infrequent at best. Then the Empire had attacked and she’d escaped to Cloud City -- some escape! -- and come back and . . . there hadn’t been time for anything but coordinating efforts and foiling the likes of Jerjerrod. She could only begin to guess how many had been off-planet at all, let alone who they were.
Staying with the Rebellion, fighting the Empire - that was the best thing she could do for her fellow Alderaanians. She knew it. She couldn’t do anything more than she was already doing. Still, when people talked as if she alone had suffered from Alderaan’s destruction, made her the sole symbol of it, she couldn’t help but think of the however-many millions of Alderaanians scattered across the galaxy, and how little she deserved to claim any kind of sovereignty over them.
Then, of course, she went back to work.
They were expecting an influx of refugees today -- political prisoners that Luke’s latest vision had helped locate. (She imagined what the Leia Organa of five years ago would have thought of that sentence, and almost laughed aloud.) If everything went well, they should be here by mid-afternoon, and naturally Leia intended to greet them.
Everything did go well, for once -- Threepio expressed some astonishment, and then, as if half-expecting a response, looked at the air next to him. That afternoon, Leia stood between Rieekan and Madine in her old regalia, hair coiled over her ears. The robes hung loosely on her frame -- she’d lost weight during her flight to, and stay at, Cloud City, and never quite gained it back. Atral tightened her belt and insisted it didn’t matter.
The newly-liberated prisoners arrived only a little later than expected. Leia recognized them more from her files than from the Senate, but it sufficed; she nodded and smiled and called them by name, and they seemed gratified. Then the captain ran up the ramp and escorted a woman down -- a woman who they all knew on sight, though none of them had expected to find her in this prison, or indeed, alive at all.
Seven years ago, Mon Mothma of Chandrila had been one of the twenty-six senators who founded the Rebellion. The other twenty-five were all dead now; the last of them had died with Alderaan, and passed his mantle onto his daughter.
The generals stared at her in near-disbelief.
“Senator Mothma,” said Leia, and bowed respectfully.
Mothma’s smile was reserved but kind, and her reciprocal bow as deep as Leia’s.
“Senator Organa,” she replied.
In the week that followed Shmi’s visit, Luke did his best to put his incomprehensible relatives out of his mind, with varying success. Even his failures, however, didn’t seem to impede his increasing control. The Force spread out around him in vast, convoluted, crisp lines. He used it so constantly now that it was less trouble to balance his mundane sight with that granted to him by the Force, than to spend a day detaching himself from it.
Detachment, he thought, was not one of his strong points. Yoda, however, assured him that it was not necessary in this case. He would even grow accustomed to the strange double-vision in time.
Then, of course, he told him to continue his exercises -- more clairvoyance, today.
“Keep your focus on the present,” Yoda instructed him. “Other places, other people. Not other times.”
“But I -- ” Luke snapped his mouth shut before his master could glare at him. “Yes, Yoda.”
He could send his mind drifting across the galaxy. Something would come; it always did. But without any guiding impulse from him, it was usually something he would have much rather not seen. Luke tried to think of something, anything, to focus his sight on. Little of late had drawn his attention from his legacy and his training.
He’d worried about the Rebellion, naturally, just in a vague, general way. Well, and Leia, but she could take care of herself.
The future tugged at him, and he firmly suppressed it. There was that Imperial officer, of course, the one foolhardy enough to cross --
Vader stood in front of the only viewscreen in the room, blocking out the stars. Strangely, Luke couldn’t sense him -- not any more than usual, at least.
Well, not so strangely. He wasn’t there.
“Luke Skywalker,” said Vader.
Luke started. I’m not here, he reminded himself. I’m not here. I’m not here.
Vader turned from the window to face an Imperial officer. The same officer, Luke realized, that he had seen before -- the one who had defied Vader’s orders to look for him.
Oh, no.
With a sinking feeling, Luke remembered Yoda’s conviction that there was no possible danger from this man. The man himself, however, didn’t seem to have lost a scrap of his previous assurance.
“My Lord,” he said smoothly, “there seems to have been a misunderstanding. I’m sure -- ”
“Spare me your futile excuses, Lieutenant,” said Vader. “My commands in respect to Skywalker were quite clear. There has been no misunderstanding.”
“I -- ”
“You defied my orders,” Vader said, his voice so calm that anyone with a modicum of intelligence could tell that murderous rage simmered just beneath it. “I suggest you explain why.”
Janren looked surprised. “Eleven million credits,” he said, his shrug very nearly insolent.
Vader, to his son’s surprise, did not kill him on the spot, but simply said, “So the Emperor has offered a reward for his capture? Fascinating,” in a tone of supreme disinterest.
The redundancy seemed as odd as his evident abstraction. He didn’t seem to much care what he said, or what the other man did. Yet his manner, as far as Luke could read it, was intent and focused, as if he were listening to something else, as if he were . . .
As if he were probing the officer’s mind. Luke would have shuddered, if his body weren’t back in the swamp. Of course. Vader really didn’t care what Janren said; he just wanted him thinking about it.
“I suppose,” said Janren indifferently.
“Have you mentioned the lead to anyone?”
Janren laughed. “So someone else could claim my reward? No.” He paused just long enough to make Luke wonder if he perhaps had a death wish. “Sir.”
Vader stared down at the man, who permitted his lip to curl slightly.
“Lord Vader, I -- ”
“Did you expect, Lieutenant,” Vader said idly, “to capture a Jedi Knight with nothing more than a blaster?”
“A frothing lunatic, you mean?” His eyes landed on Vader’s lightsaber and whatever small wits he possessed reasserted themselves. He backtracked. “I am a fully trained officer in the Imperial Starfleet, my lord, and Skywalker is only a boy. Jedi or not.”
“Or not?” Vader repeated. “Do you doubt that he is a Jedi?”
The officer’s sneering expression gained a hint of bewilderment. “Er -- no? That is -- I assumed, Lord Vader, that you would have had him interrogated and executed earlier, if he were more than a lucky charlatan.”
“Luke Skywalker is a Jedi,” Vader told him, intent once more. “The only Jedi that I have permitted to live. In your anxiety to receive a few million credits for his capture, did you ever stop to wonder why I forbade you to do so? Why, of all the Jedi in the galaxy, I have spared this one boy?”
Janren stared at him. For the first time, he seemed to suspect that unexplained tolerance, from Vader, was unlikely to be beneficial to his career. His brow furrowed.
Vader, Luke suspected, was smiling. “You know, of course, that, I, too, am a Jedi.”
“Well, yes, but not -- ”
“I have been one for most of my life,” Vader said, then added thoughtfully, “though for much of that time, I was known by another name. Anakin Skywalker.”
The officer’s confusion gave way to horror. He backed so far into his chair that it started to teeter backwards. “Lord Vader, I -- I didn’t realize -- I never thought -- ”
One of Vader’s gloved hands tightened into a fist. “Your petty greed would have endangered my son,” he snarled, no longer bothering with even superficial calm. “My son.” He lifted his other hand.
Janren swallowed, then seemed to recover himself, his expression settling back into a sneer. “You can’t touch me. I’m not a nobody like Needa,” he said, throwing his head back defiantly. “I’m related to the Emperor himself! Senator Amidala was my aunt. You can’t -- ”
“No, she wasn't,” said Vader, and crushed his throat.
Luke couldn’t bring himself to detail his vision to Yoda, and certainly not to Obi-Wan. Thankfully, they had judged his abilities sufficiently advanced for him to meditate by himself, in whatever fashion, and place, he wished. He returned to the tree he’d collapsed by, when he’d contacted Leia the week before, and meditated while perched on one of the giant exposed roots.
On the first day, nothing came of it, but on the second, Shmi materialized before he’d even closed his eyes.
“Good morning, Luke.”
“Hello, Grandmother,” he said, trying to look less desperately relieved than he felt. “How -- how are you? Um -- ”
“The same as usual,” said Shmi mildly. She gave him a sharp glance. “What is wrong? I can tell something has happened.”
Luke hesitated. It occurred to him, belatedly, that while she clearly had some idea of what had followed her death, for both their family and the galaxy, she might not know exactly what had become of Vader. If so, she didn’t need to know. After all, however monstrous he might be, he was her son. That would make everything different for her.
For everyone, he thought, feeling almost as if it were his throat seizing up.
Shmi lowered her eyes. “It’s Anakin, isn’t it?”
“I . . .”
“I’ve seen what he’s done, Luke,” she said, pain flitting across her face. “I doubt -- I doubt anything could much surprise me, now.”
“I thought you couldn’t go near him,” said Luke, surprised.
Shmi’s mouth twitched. “He commands Star Destroyers. I haven’t needed to go near him to see what he does.”
“Oh.”
She turned her gaze back to him. “Has he hurt you again?”
“Hurt . . .?” he repeated, puzzled, then remembered his hand. “Oh! No. I haven’t seen him. I mean -- I have, but not in person.”
“A vision, then?”
Luke nodded miserably. He paused only a moment more, then told her everything he’d seen. The pain on her face didn’t disappear, but it . . . dissipated, a little.
“Oh, Anakin,” she said, in exactly the same tone that Biggs’ mother had used when she found his beetle collection.
“It’s awful,” said Luke, a little more weakly than he’d have liked, “but -- ”
Shmi gave him a steady look. He groaned, leaning slightly forward and letting his upper arms rest on his thighs. He suppressed the urge to hide his face behind his hands.
“I’m not sorry,” he admitted in a whisper. “Father -- he shouldn’t have done it. I know that. That man deserved to be demoted -- or fired -- or even court-martialed. Not murdered. I should be horrified. But I’m not. I’m glad Father choked him and I’m glad he’s dead!”
He made himself glance at her, half-expecting her to back away, or just to look at him with the affectionate wariness he remembered from his childhood. She was a ghost, he reminded himself. He couldn’t hurt her. And he couldn’t just slip into the Dark Side without noticing. Besides, if he had, she wouldn’t be able to approach him.
Instead, Shmi reached out a hand and then, with a sigh, drew it back. “Luke, you are not responsible for your father.”
His mind quailed at the thought. Of course he wasn’t responsible for Vader! Vader had chosen to make himself a curse since before Luke could remember. But a part of him, the part that felt that underlying sameness between them, knew that it was his responsibility to voice the qualms that Vader wouldn’t let himself feel, to disapprove of his excesses, to detach himself from the galaxy that Vader loved, as much as he loved anything.
“It’s not my fault he does things like this,” Luke said, “and I know it’s not my job to stop him, but I think it’s my -- my task, to be everything he’s not. To . . . make up for him, in a way. And I can’t do that if I’m cheering him on!”
“Your task -- ” Shmi paused, tilting her head. “I cannot tell you where your destiny lies, Luke, but I will say that you must be as wary of losing your humanity as of falling to the Dark Side.”
“It’s only human to be relieved that one less person is trying to kill me, you mean?” Luke swung his legs back and forth, thinking. “But I’m a Jedi. I have to be better than that. I should prize all life, I should -- ”
“Perhaps,” said Shmi, “you should consider just why you were pleased to see this man die.”
Luke flinched. Still, he cast his mind back obediently enough.
“I was horrified, at first,” he said slowly. “It was only when . . . I already knew he was unpleasant, and I didn’t want him dead, but -- it’s one thing to believe someone’s hunting you out of misguided idealism. I can understand something like that. It’s a lot harder to mind somebody getting killed when that person was ready to sell you into torment for a small fortune. You understand?”
“Certainly -- I cannot say I felt any grief when I heard that one of my crueller masters had died.” She smiled at his horrified look. “I knew nothing other than slavery for fifteen years. I have been bought and sold more times than I can count. But not you. You are free.”
“And Father,” he began, and stopped. When he thought of Darth Vader, many words crossed his mind. Free was not one of them. Luke swallowed and continued. “Not minding isn’t the same as enjoying it, though.”
She nodded her agreement.
Luke sat in silence for a few minutes, letting realization creep up on him, settling in all the cracks and edges he’d been careful to keep blank, always pulling himself back before he went too far. Except he’d gone much further than too far this time.
“It wasn’t him,” he said, almost to himself. “His being my enemy and a horrible person besides -- that didn’t make me hate him, it just made me not care what happened to him. I was glad because Father hated him.”
Luke couldn’t bear to look at his grandmother’s kind, gentle face. How did we come from you?
“Oh, Luke,” said Shmi.
“I shouldn’t -- it shouldn’t matter,” he said. His tongue felt thick and difficult. “I’ve known for awhile that he . . . values me. As something of his. Of course he wouldn’t let someone else kill me.”
“We all know there was never any danger of that,” Shmi told him, and she didn’t bother drawing her hand back. Perhaps it was because she was touching the prosthetic, but the brush of her fingers over his didn’t feel unsettling at all. Just . . . insubstantial. “Did Anakin think there was?”
Luke hesitated. At most, Vader had seemed darkly amused at the thought. “No,” he admitted.
She gave a satisfied nod. “Luke, your father is -- deeply flawed. We both know that. We know he has not been properly himself in almost twenty years. But he has never been foolish. If you were not in any real danger, and this lieutenant had no intentions of passing his suspicions on to anyone, then Anakin must have known that his intervention was completely unnecessary.”
“Well,” said Luke, “I don’t imagine he takes defiance well. And I could sense . . . something. I mean, apart from the rage and hatred and so on. Just like on Cloud City. But I wasn’t really there this time, so -- ”
His brows drew together. He still remembered those last few minutes in the carbon-freezing chamber with greater clarity than anything he had experienced since. Vader’s looming presence battering against his mind. Luke’s fury rising with his terror, transforming from weakness into strength, into a rush of power that had him burying his father’s lightsaber in Vader’s shoulder before he knew what had happened.
That, he thought, was why he’d never been that outraged by the loss of his hand. He hadn’t drawn on the Dark Side for more than a few seconds, but -- well.
Luke put aside the agony of the red lightsaber slicing through his wrist, put aside his panic and despair. What had he sensed? The usual Dark Side cocktail of aggression, rage, and hatred. Not remorse, certainly. Perhaps dismay. And something else, something that hadn’t done more than niggle at his mind at the time, but now, with the advantage of distance, seemed woefully out of place.
Indecision? From Vader?
Yes. For a moment, there had been a sense of conflict, the dark presence forcing itself towards some cold, bleak necessity, then swinging violently away, into a sort of variegated confusion. Luke had never felt anything like that necessity, though of course he had no doubt what it was, but the other, that jumble of pride, fierce attachment, ambition, loyalty, vigilance, and the Force only knew what else -- he knew exactly what that was.
That was what he had sensed again yesterday, distant but unmistakably the same. And this time he had half-recognized it, enough to feel distinct enjoyment at the sight of his father acting on it -- even if that action was reprehensible, to say the least -- but it couldn’t . . . he wasn’t supposed to --
Luke lifted astonished eyes to his grandmother’s. She nodded.
“It’s impossible,” he said helplessly, more to himself than to her. Shmi lifted her translucent hand to his cheek.
“Luke, your father loves you,” she said. “He will remember it before the end.”
Promise? he thought childishly, remembering the small boy he had been, staring at the sky and dreaming of his father. Luke smiled at himself, but he suspected he still seemed about five. “You’re sure? How?”
“The Force is strong in our family,” said Shmi, her smile very nearly mischievous. “I am quite sure."
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Title: Revenge of the Jedi (6/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Leia struggles with her guilt over the Alderaanians and welcomes some more refugees, including a very important one, Luke has a vision of the present that makes him disturbingly happy, and Shmi expositions.
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Chapter Six
The moment that Alderaan was destroyed, Leia Organa became the most powerful symbol the Rebellion possessed.
Before, she had been a spy, saboteur, and sometime leader. Afterwards, she held no rank or position other than Princess Leia. It didn’t matter -- or rather, it mattered immensely. It made her the face of the Rebellion, and ensured that the assorted generals and admirals deferred to her in everything but where she went, what she wore, and how she lived.
She gave commands, and others chose her clothes. Leia considered it an eminently satisfying exchange, except when the symbolizing went too far.
“I like white,” she said, most of her attention focused on her datapad. Rieekan’s report looked promising, she thought, scrolling down while Susrin Atral prattled on about her wardrobe. He wasn’t part of the military leadership, but a former representative in the Senate. They hadn’t quite known what to do with him, when he first defected; in the end, they’d put him to work managing the Rebellion’s image, and therefore Leia’s.
“Princess, you are the daughter of Alderaan,” Atral said impatiently. “You need -- ”
Leia glanced up, her hands tightening on the datapad. Her eyes were very cold. “I am the daughter of Padmé Amidala and Bail Organa,” she said.
He gulped and changed the subject.
After she returned from Cloud City, however, the arrangement became considerably less satisfactory. The high command seemed convinced that Imperial agents were crouching in the brush at all times, ready to capture her if she were left alone for a single minute. Not that she was ever alone, because Han -- well, he’d always mocked her rank, but the last thing he’d said to Chewie was exactly what everyone else was saying now.
The princess -- you have to take care of her.
Chewbacca had taken it to heart. As soon as he returned from Tatooine, he began accompanying her everywhere she went and only reluctantly refrained from guarding her bed at night.
“I’ll be fine,” Leia said, trying to keep her frustration out of her voice. She wasn’t irritated with Chewie, and he’d had to put up with enough of her temper tantrums already. “I’ve got droids and my blaster and I doubt there are stormtroopers lurking under my window. Besides, it’s creepy to have someone watching me while I sleep -- I wouldn’t get any rest that way.”
Nevertheless, Chewie’s protection was apparently insufficient. She couldn’t so much as leave her chambers without the escort of three guards, each armed to the teeth. If she’d ever actually been attacked, they would only have been in her way.
She never was, of course, because she never left the base. The Rebellion still sent diplomats on missions to meet potential allies, of course, but Leia hadn’t received any assignments since her return. She made tactical decisions, she delivered orders, she looked tragic, she passed on Luke’s clairvoyant intelligence reports, and all of this, apparently, made her too important to be risked in anything else.
Leia bit back her frustration and forced herself to think rationally. She was good at diplomacy, certainly, but others could do it nearly as well. Nobody else could be Princess Leia, heiress to the graveyard of Alderaan.
I don’t deserve it. The thought had crept into her mind almost unawares. But it was true. What had she done for her people? True, it wasn’t her fault that Alderaan had been destroyed; Tarkin had just needed an excuse. He’d told her that much, and he’d done it even when there wasn’t an excuse. No, it wasn’t her fault.
Afterwards, they’d been on the run all the way to Hoth -- she’d looked for Alderaanians when she could, but that was infrequent at best. Then the Empire had attacked and she’d escaped to Cloud City -- some escape! -- and come back and . . . there hadn’t been time for anything but coordinating efforts and foiling the likes of Jerjerrod. She could only begin to guess how many had been off-planet at all, let alone who they were.
Staying with the Rebellion, fighting the Empire - that was the best thing she could do for her fellow Alderaanians. She knew it. She couldn’t do anything more than she was already doing. Still, when people talked as if she alone had suffered from Alderaan’s destruction, made her the sole symbol of it, she couldn’t help but think of the however-many millions of Alderaanians scattered across the galaxy, and how little she deserved to claim any kind of sovereignty over them.
Then, of course, she went back to work.
They were expecting an influx of refugees today -- political prisoners that Luke’s latest vision had helped locate. (She imagined what the Leia Organa of five years ago would have thought of that sentence, and almost laughed aloud.) If everything went well, they should be here by mid-afternoon, and naturally Leia intended to greet them.
Everything did go well, for once -- Threepio expressed some astonishment, and then, as if half-expecting a response, looked at the air next to him. That afternoon, Leia stood between Rieekan and Madine in her old regalia, hair coiled over her ears. The robes hung loosely on her frame -- she’d lost weight during her flight to, and stay at, Cloud City, and never quite gained it back. Atral tightened her belt and insisted it didn’t matter.
The newly-liberated prisoners arrived only a little later than expected. Leia recognized them more from her files than from the Senate, but it sufficed; she nodded and smiled and called them by name, and they seemed gratified. Then the captain ran up the ramp and escorted a woman down -- a woman who they all knew on sight, though none of them had expected to find her in this prison, or indeed, alive at all.
Seven years ago, Mon Mothma of Chandrila had been one of the twenty-six senators who founded the Rebellion. The other twenty-five were all dead now; the last of them had died with Alderaan, and passed his mantle onto his daughter.
The generals stared at her in near-disbelief.
“Senator Mothma,” said Leia, and bowed respectfully.
Mothma’s smile was reserved but kind, and her reciprocal bow as deep as Leia’s.
“Senator Organa,” she replied.
In the week that followed Shmi’s visit, Luke did his best to put his incomprehensible relatives out of his mind, with varying success. Even his failures, however, didn’t seem to impede his increasing control. The Force spread out around him in vast, convoluted, crisp lines. He used it so constantly now that it was less trouble to balance his mundane sight with that granted to him by the Force, than to spend a day detaching himself from it.
Detachment, he thought, was not one of his strong points. Yoda, however, assured him that it was not necessary in this case. He would even grow accustomed to the strange double-vision in time.
Then, of course, he told him to continue his exercises -- more clairvoyance, today.
“Keep your focus on the present,” Yoda instructed him. “Other places, other people. Not other times.”
“But I -- ” Luke snapped his mouth shut before his master could glare at him. “Yes, Yoda.”
He could send his mind drifting across the galaxy. Something would come; it always did. But without any guiding impulse from him, it was usually something he would have much rather not seen. Luke tried to think of something, anything, to focus his sight on. Little of late had drawn his attention from his legacy and his training.
He’d worried about the Rebellion, naturally, just in a vague, general way. Well, and Leia, but she could take care of herself.
The future tugged at him, and he firmly suppressed it. There was that Imperial officer, of course, the one foolhardy enough to cross --
Vader stood in front of the only viewscreen in the room, blocking out the stars. Strangely, Luke couldn’t sense him -- not any more than usual, at least.
Well, not so strangely. He wasn’t there.
“Luke Skywalker,” said Vader.
Luke started. I’m not here, he reminded himself. I’m not here. I’m not here.
Vader turned from the window to face an Imperial officer. The same officer, Luke realized, that he had seen before -- the one who had defied Vader’s orders to look for him.
Oh, no.
With a sinking feeling, Luke remembered Yoda’s conviction that there was no possible danger from this man. The man himself, however, didn’t seem to have lost a scrap of his previous assurance.
“My Lord,” he said smoothly, “there seems to have been a misunderstanding. I’m sure -- ”
“Spare me your futile excuses, Lieutenant,” said Vader. “My commands in respect to Skywalker were quite clear. There has been no misunderstanding.”
“I -- ”
“You defied my orders,” Vader said, his voice so calm that anyone with a modicum of intelligence could tell that murderous rage simmered just beneath it. “I suggest you explain why.”
Janren looked surprised. “Eleven million credits,” he said, his shrug very nearly insolent.
Vader, to his son’s surprise, did not kill him on the spot, but simply said, “So the Emperor has offered a reward for his capture? Fascinating,” in a tone of supreme disinterest.
The redundancy seemed as odd as his evident abstraction. He didn’t seem to much care what he said, or what the other man did. Yet his manner, as far as Luke could read it, was intent and focused, as if he were listening to something else, as if he were . . .
As if he were probing the officer’s mind. Luke would have shuddered, if his body weren’t back in the swamp. Of course. Vader really didn’t care what Janren said; he just wanted him thinking about it.
“I suppose,” said Janren indifferently.
“Have you mentioned the lead to anyone?”
Janren laughed. “So someone else could claim my reward? No.” He paused just long enough to make Luke wonder if he perhaps had a death wish. “Sir.”
Vader stared down at the man, who permitted his lip to curl slightly.
“Lord Vader, I -- ”
“Did you expect, Lieutenant,” Vader said idly, “to capture a Jedi Knight with nothing more than a blaster?”
“A frothing lunatic, you mean?” His eyes landed on Vader’s lightsaber and whatever small wits he possessed reasserted themselves. He backtracked. “I am a fully trained officer in the Imperial Starfleet, my lord, and Skywalker is only a boy. Jedi or not.”
“Or not?” Vader repeated. “Do you doubt that he is a Jedi?”
The officer’s sneering expression gained a hint of bewilderment. “Er -- no? That is -- I assumed, Lord Vader, that you would have had him interrogated and executed earlier, if he were more than a lucky charlatan.”
“Luke Skywalker is a Jedi,” Vader told him, intent once more. “The only Jedi that I have permitted to live. In your anxiety to receive a few million credits for his capture, did you ever stop to wonder why I forbade you to do so? Why, of all the Jedi in the galaxy, I have spared this one boy?”
Janren stared at him. For the first time, he seemed to suspect that unexplained tolerance, from Vader, was unlikely to be beneficial to his career. His brow furrowed.
Vader, Luke suspected, was smiling. “You know, of course, that, I, too, am a Jedi.”
“Well, yes, but not -- ”
“I have been one for most of my life,” Vader said, then added thoughtfully, “though for much of that time, I was known by another name. Anakin Skywalker.”
The officer’s confusion gave way to horror. He backed so far into his chair that it started to teeter backwards. “Lord Vader, I -- I didn’t realize -- I never thought -- ”
One of Vader’s gloved hands tightened into a fist. “Your petty greed would have endangered my son,” he snarled, no longer bothering with even superficial calm. “My son.” He lifted his other hand.
Janren swallowed, then seemed to recover himself, his expression settling back into a sneer. “You can’t touch me. I’m not a nobody like Needa,” he said, throwing his head back defiantly. “I’m related to the Emperor himself! Senator Amidala was my aunt. You can’t -- ”
“No, she wasn't,” said Vader, and crushed his throat.
Luke couldn’t bring himself to detail his vision to Yoda, and certainly not to Obi-Wan. Thankfully, they had judged his abilities sufficiently advanced for him to meditate by himself, in whatever fashion, and place, he wished. He returned to the tree he’d collapsed by, when he’d contacted Leia the week before, and meditated while perched on one of the giant exposed roots.
On the first day, nothing came of it, but on the second, Shmi materialized before he’d even closed his eyes.
“Good morning, Luke.”
“Hello, Grandmother,” he said, trying to look less desperately relieved than he felt. “How -- how are you? Um -- ”
“The same as usual,” said Shmi mildly. She gave him a sharp glance. “What is wrong? I can tell something has happened.”
Luke hesitated. It occurred to him, belatedly, that while she clearly had some idea of what had followed her death, for both their family and the galaxy, she might not know exactly what had become of Vader. If so, she didn’t need to know. After all, however monstrous he might be, he was her son. That would make everything different for her.
For everyone, he thought, feeling almost as if it were his throat seizing up.
Shmi lowered her eyes. “It’s Anakin, isn’t it?”
“I . . .”
“I’ve seen what he’s done, Luke,” she said, pain flitting across her face. “I doubt -- I doubt anything could much surprise me, now.”
“I thought you couldn’t go near him,” said Luke, surprised.
Shmi’s mouth twitched. “He commands Star Destroyers. I haven’t needed to go near him to see what he does.”
“Oh.”
She turned her gaze back to him. “Has he hurt you again?”
“Hurt . . .?” he repeated, puzzled, then remembered his hand. “Oh! No. I haven’t seen him. I mean -- I have, but not in person.”
“A vision, then?”
Luke nodded miserably. He paused only a moment more, then told her everything he’d seen. The pain on her face didn’t disappear, but it . . . dissipated, a little.
“Oh, Anakin,” she said, in exactly the same tone that Biggs’ mother had used when she found his beetle collection.
“It’s awful,” said Luke, a little more weakly than he’d have liked, “but -- ”
Shmi gave him a steady look. He groaned, leaning slightly forward and letting his upper arms rest on his thighs. He suppressed the urge to hide his face behind his hands.
“I’m not sorry,” he admitted in a whisper. “Father -- he shouldn’t have done it. I know that. That man deserved to be demoted -- or fired -- or even court-martialed. Not murdered. I should be horrified. But I’m not. I’m glad Father choked him and I’m glad he’s dead!”
He made himself glance at her, half-expecting her to back away, or just to look at him with the affectionate wariness he remembered from his childhood. She was a ghost, he reminded himself. He couldn’t hurt her. And he couldn’t just slip into the Dark Side without noticing. Besides, if he had, she wouldn’t be able to approach him.
Instead, Shmi reached out a hand and then, with a sigh, drew it back. “Luke, you are not responsible for your father.”
His mind quailed at the thought. Of course he wasn’t responsible for Vader! Vader had chosen to make himself a curse since before Luke could remember. But a part of him, the part that felt that underlying sameness between them, knew that it was his responsibility to voice the qualms that Vader wouldn’t let himself feel, to disapprove of his excesses, to detach himself from the galaxy that Vader loved, as much as he loved anything.
“It’s not my fault he does things like this,” Luke said, “and I know it’s not my job to stop him, but I think it’s my -- my task, to be everything he’s not. To . . . make up for him, in a way. And I can’t do that if I’m cheering him on!”
“Your task -- ” Shmi paused, tilting her head. “I cannot tell you where your destiny lies, Luke, but I will say that you must be as wary of losing your humanity as of falling to the Dark Side.”
“It’s only human to be relieved that one less person is trying to kill me, you mean?” Luke swung his legs back and forth, thinking. “But I’m a Jedi. I have to be better than that. I should prize all life, I should -- ”
“Perhaps,” said Shmi, “you should consider just why you were pleased to see this man die.”
Luke flinched. Still, he cast his mind back obediently enough.
“I was horrified, at first,” he said slowly. “It was only when . . . I already knew he was unpleasant, and I didn’t want him dead, but -- it’s one thing to believe someone’s hunting you out of misguided idealism. I can understand something like that. It’s a lot harder to mind somebody getting killed when that person was ready to sell you into torment for a small fortune. You understand?”
“Certainly -- I cannot say I felt any grief when I heard that one of my crueller masters had died.” She smiled at his horrified look. “I knew nothing other than slavery for fifteen years. I have been bought and sold more times than I can count. But not you. You are free.”
“And Father,” he began, and stopped. When he thought of Darth Vader, many words crossed his mind. Free was not one of them. Luke swallowed and continued. “Not minding isn’t the same as enjoying it, though.”
She nodded her agreement.
Luke sat in silence for a few minutes, letting realization creep up on him, settling in all the cracks and edges he’d been careful to keep blank, always pulling himself back before he went too far. Except he’d gone much further than too far this time.
“It wasn’t him,” he said, almost to himself. “His being my enemy and a horrible person besides -- that didn’t make me hate him, it just made me not care what happened to him. I was glad because Father hated him.”
Luke couldn’t bear to look at his grandmother’s kind, gentle face. How did we come from you?
“Oh, Luke,” said Shmi.
“I shouldn’t -- it shouldn’t matter,” he said. His tongue felt thick and difficult. “I’ve known for awhile that he . . . values me. As something of his. Of course he wouldn’t let someone else kill me.”
“We all know there was never any danger of that,” Shmi told him, and she didn’t bother drawing her hand back. Perhaps it was because she was touching the prosthetic, but the brush of her fingers over his didn’t feel unsettling at all. Just . . . insubstantial. “Did Anakin think there was?”
Luke hesitated. At most, Vader had seemed darkly amused at the thought. “No,” he admitted.
She gave a satisfied nod. “Luke, your father is -- deeply flawed. We both know that. We know he has not been properly himself in almost twenty years. But he has never been foolish. If you were not in any real danger, and this lieutenant had no intentions of passing his suspicions on to anyone, then Anakin must have known that his intervention was completely unnecessary.”
“Well,” said Luke, “I don’t imagine he takes defiance well. And I could sense . . . something. I mean, apart from the rage and hatred and so on. Just like on Cloud City. But I wasn’t really there this time, so -- ”
His brows drew together. He still remembered those last few minutes in the carbon-freezing chamber with greater clarity than anything he had experienced since. Vader’s looming presence battering against his mind. Luke’s fury rising with his terror, transforming from weakness into strength, into a rush of power that had him burying his father’s lightsaber in Vader’s shoulder before he knew what had happened.
That, he thought, was why he’d never been that outraged by the loss of his hand. He hadn’t drawn on the Dark Side for more than a few seconds, but -- well.
Luke put aside the agony of the red lightsaber slicing through his wrist, put aside his panic and despair. What had he sensed? The usual Dark Side cocktail of aggression, rage, and hatred. Not remorse, certainly. Perhaps dismay. And something else, something that hadn’t done more than niggle at his mind at the time, but now, with the advantage of distance, seemed woefully out of place.
Indecision? From Vader?
Yes. For a moment, there had been a sense of conflict, the dark presence forcing itself towards some cold, bleak necessity, then swinging violently away, into a sort of variegated confusion. Luke had never felt anything like that necessity, though of course he had no doubt what it was, but the other, that jumble of pride, fierce attachment, ambition, loyalty, vigilance, and the Force only knew what else -- he knew exactly what that was.
That was what he had sensed again yesterday, distant but unmistakably the same. And this time he had half-recognized it, enough to feel distinct enjoyment at the sight of his father acting on it -- even if that action was reprehensible, to say the least -- but it couldn’t . . . he wasn’t supposed to --
Luke lifted astonished eyes to his grandmother’s. She nodded.
“It’s impossible,” he said helplessly, more to himself than to her. Shmi lifted her translucent hand to his cheek.
“Luke, your father loves you,” she said. “He will remember it before the end.”
Promise? he thought childishly, remembering the small boy he had been, staring at the sky and dreaming of his father. Luke smiled at himself, but he suspected he still seemed about five. “You’re sure? How?”
“The Force is strong in our family,” said Shmi, her smile very nearly mischievous. “I am quite sure."