Revenge of the Jedi (16/17)
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Title: Revenge of the Jedi (16/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Luke and Leia continue their training, Yoda reveals the last secret he'd been keeping, Leia enters the Dark Side cave, and they begin Han's rescue.
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Chapter Sixteen
Leia practiced religiously while she was gone, and still more so once she returned. Her mind was so full of the colony and the Imperials and the Force and Han that she had little attention to spare for Luke’s decidedly odd behaviour, when he wasn’t teaching her. She noticed only that he seemed to have acquired a collection of voles for some reason, which Yoda regarded with some bemusement.
“-- guard, you must be,” he said, his voice thin and scratchy.
“Yes, Master,” Luke replied, in the tone he always got when he’d had an idea that might either be brilliant or awful, and wasn’t sure which. Leia hadn’t meant to overhear and had more important concerns anyway; she went back to fiercely meditating.
She didn’t sense the Force the way Luke did, not yet. It was too overwhelming to try and keep the ordinary world separate from her vision in the Force. Still, she sufficiently proved herself that Luke decided she was ready to actually do something. He had her levitating for hours, then running at impossible speeds, then dodging balls that he launched at her from every possible direction -- using the Force so she couldn’t guess from which direction.
She was tired, often bruised, and constantly irritable, but she was improving.
Luke, for his part, was learning so quickly that his head felt stuffed with information, and using most of his spare time to practice healing on the voles he’d found. He felt rather guilty about it, even after he explained to Yoda, who rather to his own surprise, found nothing to complain of in Luke’s conduct -- or his father’s. Once or twice, Luke even thought he saw Obi-Wan by the cage, looking even more ambivalent than usual. He hadn’t relented in his conviction that Luke’s destiny was to avenge the Jedi by killing Vader and Palpatine.
That would never happen; not the former, anyway. He’d never kill his father, least of all now. Luke thought it’d be far better to bring the Jedi back, as they ought to have been. However warped Vader’s interpretation of events, and his thinking in general, Luke suspected there’d been at least an inkling of truth in what he’d said about them. It seemed like all the Jedi of that time had been soldiers like Obi-Wan, who fought for Imperial warlords and called it justice, or those who abandoned the galaxy to its own doom, like Yoda. He’d have to be better than that. So would Leia.
And Father?
He didn’t know. As his training had progressed, he’d heard considerably less about galactic domination and nothing about turning to the Dark Side. Perhaps Vader was biding his time, but -- he didn't think so. All he’d sensed from him was determination vying with the occasional fleeting regret. Luke didn’t expect that Vader would come back, would even feel remorse. But he thought it was a possibility now, which was more than he’d even considered before.
He honestly couldn’t think of a better revenge on the Empire, however unlikely it might be.
Vader himself would have been surprised to realize that Luke sensed anything different in him at all -- the exact degree of surprise depending on the hour, the day, his particular mood at the time, and what he’d been demonstrating that day. He very carefully did not think about Luke’s rapid improvement as a healer, except when he permitted himself to consider that it might be useful at some point in the future, and that an emperor who healed would likely be more popular than an emperor who blew up planets.
He also did not think about his struggles with the increasingly unstable Dark Side, to the point that it was almost a relief to fall back to the Living Force, however slippery it might be. Sometimes, he didn’t bother instructing Luke via explanation even when the explanation was . . . less than complex. It wasn’t any weakness on his own part, of course; demonstrations were quicker, and he remembered, now, that he’d always followed them more easily than dry lectures. It was no surprise to find that Luke was the same.
It was worthwhile, too, to be able to think without the distraction of pain and the erratic, clouded Dark Side. He needed the latter’s power, and the former fueled that power, but he was as much tactician as anything else, now. He needed the occasional moment of clarity, too.
He needed it all the more at present, as the moffs and admiralty had finally realized that the Rebellion’s pinpoint accuracy was probably not coincidental. Nobody suspected him, of course; the admirals blamed the moffs, and vice-versa.
“Admiral Piett?” said Luke, incredulous. He had not met Piett in person, but by now he’d seen him on the holocam more than once. Vader had decided that his training was too important to be interrupted for political squabbles, and simply kept him out of the range of the holocam -- and didn’t hold any conversations that he’d rather didn’t go straight to Princess Leia’s ears. “But he couldn’t betray the Empire any more than he could . . . I don’t know, change his expression. Jerjerrod really blamed him?”
“Yes,” said Vader shortly.
“To your face?”
“Yes.”
Luke, sobering, glanced up from his current exercise -- repairing a droid without touching it -- and bit his lip. “And he’s still alive?”
“At the moment.”
Luke relaxed and went back to the droid. Vader was, for once, unsurprised by his reaction. It had become apparent to him that Luke found sudden deaths to be . . . distressing, when they came by Vader’s hand, without due process, for all that he rarely argued with him over it. Normally, Vader would not have altered his habits around anyone's preferences, but in fact it was highly inconvenient to kill his subordinates. Janren’s death, which he did not regret, had taken weeks to smooth over. And on the heels of that thought came another: it was also rather stupid to kill his subordinates.
Dead men, after all, could neither pay for their errors nor learn from them. Except Jedi, of course -- and even there, Vader had his doubts.
To himself, however, he could admit that he had looked at Jerjerrod’s smirking, simpering face, and thought nothing except that Luke would be upset if he killed him. Only then had he also concluded that it would be highly inconvenient, accomplish nothing, and that he didn’t particularly want to. At any rate, it amused him to think that Jerjerrod largely owed his survival to the tender sensibilities of a Rebel.
It was perhaps a week after this that Luke’s fine control over levitation advanced to the point that Vader mentioned, in passing, that he could probably survive the construction of a lightsaber.
Luke stared at him. Over the previous weeks, Vader had mentioned, also in passing, the various horrific fates that had befallen a number of Jedi apprentices who began construction before they were fully prepared.
“You’re sure?” he said doubtfully. “My . . . other teacher didn’t think --”
“Your other teacher would have had me wait until I was thirty,” said Vader, and elected not to mention what he’d been doing with his lightsaber at thirty. He continued on, “As I was saying, lightning is possible to create with the Dark Side, but it is extremely volatile and would likely kill me.”
“Um, you don’t need to show me,” Luke said. “About my lightsaber, I read in some of your files that every single part needs to be assembled with every other single part at the same moment or the whole thing will explode. Wouldn’t it be safer to do from a distance?”
“No. It’s impossible to control the components well enough from more than about a foot away. You can do it from where you’re sitting now.”
“But you’re right here,” Luke protested. “If anything goes wrong, it’ll kill you.”
Vader looked at him for a moment. “I can leave the room,” he said. “Or perhaps you’d like me to fly you to a suitably remote location?”
“No. I . . . no.” Luke sighed, then took out the components. He’d studied the lightsaber he now carried for weeks, and the diagrams Vader had -- inexplicably, as with so many other things over the years -- kept, and tracked down each component. The crystal he’d saved for last, paring down the strongest of the three he’d chosen until it was a glowing stone no larger than his thumb.
Vader watched, still wrapped in the Living Force from his latest demonstration, and he hadn’t bothered to release it yet -- but ready to grasp the quicker Dark Side at any sign of trouble.
Luke took a deep breath, then held his hands out, perhaps six inches from his body, the left palm-up and perpendicular to his belly, the right palm-down and at shoulder level. All the components floated into the air between the hands, his face bathed in the light of the crystal. They drew closer together until they were barely a hair’s-breadth apart. Luke’s forehead was damp with sweat, his eyes wide but determined.
Vader didn’t dare move, and had silenced the respirator for the moment. There was a tiny twitch in the Force, and the lightsaber flew together.
Luke stared down at the weapon, still floating between his hands. Then he let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and Vader’s respirator started up again.
“Look, Father, I -- ” Luke gave a happy, startled grin. “I’ve got to see it.” He jumped up, lightsaber in his hand, and flicked the switch. The blade flashed out, a slightly deeper blue than the other had been.
Luke was, in everything but name, a Jedi Knight. Ridiculously enough, Vader felt -- not disappointed, but -- not quite as relieved as he’d expected he would be. Of course, he was not remotely ready to face the Emperor. If anything, he would have to train even more intensively now.
“I am pleased you weren’t actually dead,” said Vader.
Luke laughed again, then looked over at him. “So am I, Father. Do you want yours back now?”
“No. I’m sure you can find some worthy purpose for it.”
“Your father’s what?”
She stared at the lightsaber. Luke had taught her a few basic forms with it, nothing more -- until now.
“I thought you’d like to have it,” said Luke, “now that I’ve got my own. You’ll need to practice with it fairly constantly, and -- well, I thought it’d be all right, but -- ”
“It’s fine,” she said, reaching for the extended hilt. She gave a small laugh. “Really. Um. It must have all kinds of history. Where did he get it?”
Luke wet his lips, then said, “He made it himself. But it does have a history. My father was a slave, you know.”
Leia lowered her hand, staring at him in horror. “What?”
“The Hutts captured my grandmother when she was a young woman, and he -- well, he was born into it. He had a transmitter embedded in his body when he was just a few days old. And they were lucky. They got sold to a small-time slaver in Mos Espa. He had a little shop. I don’t know if it’s still there. I never really wanted to see. But my uncle’s father came in to the shop one day, and . . . and he kept coming back even though he didn’t need to buy anything else. He fell in love with my grandmother and bought her freedom, and my father’s.”
Leia couldn’t help but wonder how much Luke’s grandmother had really had to say about all this.
“Uncle Owen and Father were close, but they didn’t get on. Once, Aunt Beru told me that Father wasn’t . . . even though he was just a little boy when he was freed, it was always there with him. It was there when Obi-Wan found him, and when he went to -- when he became a Jedi and a soldier, when he built this. Sometimes I think it still is.”
“But he’s dead,” said Leia.
“And that transmitter is still wherever his body is,” said Luke. “It’s not about feeling awful or anything. It’s just -- this came from him, and that’s where he came from. And it’s where we’re going.”
Leia looked down at the weapon, turned it in her hand. “That’s . . . quite a history,” she said. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Sure.” Luke pointed at the hook on the side. “That’s where it slides onto your belt, though you won’t be putting it there just now. It’s time to start learning how to fight properly.”
She grinned.
Her smile quickly faded, however, since Luke’s definition of fight properly did not, in fact, include fighting him. At least not directly.
“I picked up a remote on my way back,” he said, holding it up. “So basically, I’ll be shooting lasers at you and you need to deflect them. Don’t worry, I won’t have you do it blindfolded it right away.”
“Blindfolded,” repeated Leia.
In fact, it was exactly as he described it, except that -- of course -- he didn’t hold the remote, but levitated it through the air and had it shoot at her from different angles. He assured her that she did much better than he had, the first time he tried -- “though,” he added, “to be fair, it was the first thing I tried.”
She still went to bed rubbing her legs, unsure how many times she’d been hit. She did it better the next, and when Luke tied a piece of cloth over her eyes, she found herself automatically reaching out to sense the bolts flying at her. She still got hit a few times, but much less than she had the first day, with her eyes wide open.
The next day, she headed back out to follow some reports of a struggling Alderaanian community on Phaedria and bring more supplies to Carathis, leaving Luke and Yoda watching her go.
“Hm. Soon, urgent business you will have, too?” said Yoda, squinting up at him.
Luke hesitated. “Not just yet. Maybe the day after tomorrow. But it’s not urgent, exactly. Just -- ”
“Hmm?”
“He doesn’t kill people when I’m around,” Luke said, almost in one breath. “He doesn’t . . . he doesn’t like my being upset, or something.”
Yoda simply sighed. “Not the way of the Jedi, is this.”
“It’s not any kind of decent moral code,” Luke agreed, “but -- it’s better than the alternative. Sometimes I think the galaxy would have been better off I hadn’t been stolen from him. Though maybe I’d have ended up a monster. I don’t know.” He paused. “Speaking of kidnapping --”
He related his vision of a few weeks earlier. “Father didn’t even seem to know about it.”
“Know of it he does not.”
Luke glanced down at him sharply. “But you’ve seen it?”
“No.” Yoda yawned, and stepped into the hut. Luke trailed after him. “Tired, I am. But time, it is, for you to know this.”
Luke suppressed a groan. “Another secret?”
“Heh. Last secret,” Yoda promised him. “Think back, to your vision. Strike as you strange, anything did?”
“Well, it was all strange. But -- nothing in particular.” Luke laughed a little. “Except that I was an incredibly loud baby.”
“Hm, yes, and no. Saw a child being taken away, you did. And heard a child scream. Not the same child.”
“What?” Luke shook his head, then dropped his face in his hands. “That’s not . . . I can’t even say it’s impossible any more. But it’s not very likely. Why would my mother have put me in a cradle with someone else’s baby?” He thought back. “Even a huge cradle.”
“Not someone else’s,” said Yoda. “ Hers. Your sister.”
“But I have no sister!” Luke protested.
Yoda rubbed his eyes, and Luke felt a pang of guilt.
“Look, you can explain all this -- somehow -- later, all right? It’s not --”
“No! Tell you now, I must. Ambra, the Jedi you saw. A gift for foresight, he had, but no control. No consideration of consequences. Disliked your father always. And then he saw something. Perhaps the future that has occurred. Perhaps another. Never did we know. Planned to take Skywalker’s child.”
Luke stared at him.
“But two there were. Twins, born early. Weakened, was your mother; easy to convince that she had no daughter. But forced to flee, he was.”
Luke managed a very small smile. “Senator Amidala interfered.”
“Mm, yes. He took the girl and fled.” Yoda shook his head. “Cast him out of the Order, we did, but never found him. Nor the girl. Never discovered anything, except her last name. Your mother’s, he gave her.”
“I have a sister,” Luke repeated blankly. “A sister. And I . . . but Father told me I was an only child. He wasn’t lying. He --”
“Away, he was, when you were born -- in battle,” said Yoda. “Unstable he was already, and enraged he would have been. Better, we thought -- if he did not know.”
“His daughter was kidnapped, and you thought it best that he didn’t know he’d ever had one?” Luke gave him a horrified look, and forced himself to remember that Yoda was dying, and this was almost twenty-one years ago. But -- his sister -- he had a sister -- a twin -- and his father, their father --
Yoda bowed his head. “Regret this, I do.”
“Is she even alive?” The Purges. Oh, Force.
“Perhaps. Never knew anything more,” said Yoda. “Nothing to follow was there. Too many Nelliths.”
“I’ll figure out what happened,” Luke said, and looked over at Yoda’s emaciated form and drooping eyelids. “Yoda, it’s . . . I forgive you, all right?” He didn’t know whether he meant it or not, but he needed to say it. “Just -- you need your rest. You can go to sleep now.”
“Mm. Rest I shall,” he agreed, and drifted off, his head wobbling. Luke dropped his head on his hand.
Father and I can find out anything. We’ll find her, somehow. But I’ll have to tell him. And they thought he’d be enraged back then -- !
Leia returned to a Yoda who barely woke, and a Luke whose moods were even more erratic than usual. Still, she’d improved enough that he discarded the remote, and let her fight against him.
She lost, of course -- she hadn’t reasonably expected to win against a taller, stronger, more experienced opponent, but it was by far the most enjoyable thing she’d done so far. They kept practicing, Leia’s abilities slowly increasing, until she managed to draw out their duel through twenty minutes and into the woods, even earning a brief retreat from him.
Then something changed; she felt an odd, awful sense of familiarity, and a chill went down her spine. Luke promptly knocked her lightsaber out of her hand.
“Oh,” he said, and turned around, staring towards a dank cave.
Leia eyed it. “What is this place? I don’t like it.”
“The Dark Side is very strong here -- I don’t know why,” said Luke. “I’ve only been inside once.”
Leia felt a strong urge to run away, so far that she’d never see it again. She scowled and took a step closer. “Once? Did you --”
“I failed,” said Luke simply. “I thought I could prove myself with my lightsaber. I suppose this means it’s your turn.”
Leia’s free hand went to her blaster, then stopped. “So, it’s some kind of test? Of what I can do with the Force?”
“It’s a test of what you are,” he told her. He paused, then gave a sudden smile. “I’ve probably told you too much already. I didn’t know anything when I went in. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Leia said firmly, and left the blaster beside Luke’s lightsaber.
She crawled into the cave, ducking beneath hanging vines. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a snake the size of her leg, lazily observing her, while a bright red frog hopped up a branch. She almost slipped on the damp moss beneath her feet. Nothing seemed particularly menacing -- not by Dagobah standards, at any rate.
Leia glanced back, half-meaning to ask Luke if he’d got the wrong cave, somehow, but she couldn’t see past the entrance. A heavy fog had gathered behind her, obscuring everything it touched, and giving her the distinct impression that going through it would be very unwise.
Not the wrong cave, then.
A voice shouted out of the darkness. “That’s her! That’s the princess!”
Leia spun around, seeing nothing but the oppressive gloom of the cave. She barely restrained a scornful laugh. Of course, what supernatural test of character would be complete without spectral voices and delusions?
“That’s all?” she demanded incredulously.
A blaster bolt flew past her ear. Instinctively, Leia raced away: she didn’t have any weapons, she was going to get killed, she was --
She was going to be a Jedi and she wasn’t running from anyone.
Leia stopped in her tracks. She could hear their voices approaching. Had she really been tracked down? Or was it just some trick of the cave? What had happened to Luke in here?
How did you succeed? How did you fail?
She could hear the voices approaching again. Leia could have sworn she caught a Coruscanti accent amid the murmuring. She waited, her breath coming fast.
“Ah, this way,” said the Coruscanti voice. “Princess Leia, you must realize there’s no point in hiding. There’s no one else to die for you now.”
It was Tarkin.
Leia forgot everything. She forgot that he was dead -- Luke, you killed him, everyone said you killed him, how could you let him not be dead? -- forgot that this was a test, forgot every thought of success or failure. She forgot everything except that he was here, somehow, and she hated him, and Alderaan, he wouldn’t take Alderaan away from her again.
She could feel power building in her, like -- like -- she didn’t know. She’d never felt anything like this before. But she knew she could make them pay. She had power, now, more power than Tarkin with his mechanical terror could ever think of --
Booted feet came around the corner, towards her, and Leia sprang out with outstretched hands, thinking of nothing except power and hatred and she hadn’t even decided which way she was going to kill them, and lightning burst from her fingertips, crackling and blinding her.
Leia dropped her hands, and the Force, in sheer astonishment. Her hands didn’t hurt at all. It couldn’t have been real lightning, just . . . some odd Force trick. But she could smell burning clothes.
She stepped forward, peering around, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
There was a dead body sprawled out in front of her. But it wasn't Tarkin’s. It was her father's.
Leia was subdued for the next day. She could tell Luke knew that she’d failed, though he didn’t say anything -- didn’t even try to comfort her. She didn’t know if he’d become that excruciatingly sensitive, or if he was simply too abstracted with other matters. In any case, they didn’t declare her unfit to be a Jedi and cast her out, as she half-expected.
Luke may have failed, but she didn’t think he’d failed like that.
She continued her training with renewed zeal, practicing with Luke, with the remote, with just about anything she could convince to stand still long enough. They laid out their plan, whispering together, and Yoda awoke long enough to inform them the Force would be with them.
Then they put the plan in motion. The droids went in first, Artoo concealing their lightsabers and positively gleeful about it. Leia contacted Chewbacca, who agreed to be a prisoner yet again, and she marched inside in full bounty hunter regalia. The explosive was a bit of a risk, but she and Luke had agreed that it was worthwhile to earn her bona fides.
Leia was careful neither to pay too much or too little attention to Han, his features still frozen in a rictus of agony. It would be so easy to sneak out and rescue him, she thought. Just --
No. No, this was why they had plans. She’d fooled Jabba for now. Better to keep it that way.
She watched, half-sickened, as the slave-dancers were paraded before Jabba, and one fed to a half-starved Rancor. Had Luke’s grandmother been one of those once?
She didn’t so much as twitch when Luke himself marched in. The trick didn’t work on Jabba, but that wasn’t important. Everybody was in place. She looked over at Lando, and he gave a slight nod. If Fett, not far behind her, noticed the exchange or recognized him, he gave no hint of it.
Leia stood stock-still when she saw Luke standing on the trapdoor.
Luke? she thought, but he never seemed to hear her unless she spoke aloud. And she couldn’t help him if she got captured too. She remained in place, trying not to listen for screams.
It worked. Somehow, it worked. Luke killed the Rancor, and Jabba led his entire retinue out onto his barges. Leia stalked around, avoiding Boba Fett, and wandering as close to the plank as she could. Everything was ready. Threepio -- well, he’d done his part. There was Artoo with the lightsabers. Lando. Chewie. Luke.
She was just beside the guards now, right as Luke stepped off the edge of the plank.
“No!” Leia shouted, yanking off her mask, and their moment of shock was all the time she needed. She raced off the plank after him.
Title: Revenge of the Jedi (16/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Luke and Leia continue their training, Yoda reveals the last secret he'd been keeping, Leia enters the Dark Side cave, and they begin Han's rescue.
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Chapter Sixteen
Leia practiced religiously while she was gone, and still more so once she returned. Her mind was so full of the colony and the Imperials and the Force and Han that she had little attention to spare for Luke’s decidedly odd behaviour, when he wasn’t teaching her. She noticed only that he seemed to have acquired a collection of voles for some reason, which Yoda regarded with some bemusement.
“-- guard, you must be,” he said, his voice thin and scratchy.
“Yes, Master,” Luke replied, in the tone he always got when he’d had an idea that might either be brilliant or awful, and wasn’t sure which. Leia hadn’t meant to overhear and had more important concerns anyway; she went back to fiercely meditating.
She didn’t sense the Force the way Luke did, not yet. It was too overwhelming to try and keep the ordinary world separate from her vision in the Force. Still, she sufficiently proved herself that Luke decided she was ready to actually do something. He had her levitating for hours, then running at impossible speeds, then dodging balls that he launched at her from every possible direction -- using the Force so she couldn’t guess from which direction.
She was tired, often bruised, and constantly irritable, but she was improving.
Luke, for his part, was learning so quickly that his head felt stuffed with information, and using most of his spare time to practice healing on the voles he’d found. He felt rather guilty about it, even after he explained to Yoda, who rather to his own surprise, found nothing to complain of in Luke’s conduct -- or his father’s. Once or twice, Luke even thought he saw Obi-Wan by the cage, looking even more ambivalent than usual. He hadn’t relented in his conviction that Luke’s destiny was to avenge the Jedi by killing Vader and Palpatine.
That would never happen; not the former, anyway. He’d never kill his father, least of all now. Luke thought it’d be far better to bring the Jedi back, as they ought to have been. However warped Vader’s interpretation of events, and his thinking in general, Luke suspected there’d been at least an inkling of truth in what he’d said about them. It seemed like all the Jedi of that time had been soldiers like Obi-Wan, who fought for Imperial warlords and called it justice, or those who abandoned the galaxy to its own doom, like Yoda. He’d have to be better than that. So would Leia.
And Father?
He didn’t know. As his training had progressed, he’d heard considerably less about galactic domination and nothing about turning to the Dark Side. Perhaps Vader was biding his time, but -- he didn't think so. All he’d sensed from him was determination vying with the occasional fleeting regret. Luke didn’t expect that Vader would come back, would even feel remorse. But he thought it was a possibility now, which was more than he’d even considered before.
He honestly couldn’t think of a better revenge on the Empire, however unlikely it might be.
Vader himself would have been surprised to realize that Luke sensed anything different in him at all -- the exact degree of surprise depending on the hour, the day, his particular mood at the time, and what he’d been demonstrating that day. He very carefully did not think about Luke’s rapid improvement as a healer, except when he permitted himself to consider that it might be useful at some point in the future, and that an emperor who healed would likely be more popular than an emperor who blew up planets.
He also did not think about his struggles with the increasingly unstable Dark Side, to the point that it was almost a relief to fall back to the Living Force, however slippery it might be. Sometimes, he didn’t bother instructing Luke via explanation even when the explanation was . . . less than complex. It wasn’t any weakness on his own part, of course; demonstrations were quicker, and he remembered, now, that he’d always followed them more easily than dry lectures. It was no surprise to find that Luke was the same.
It was worthwhile, too, to be able to think without the distraction of pain and the erratic, clouded Dark Side. He needed the latter’s power, and the former fueled that power, but he was as much tactician as anything else, now. He needed the occasional moment of clarity, too.
He needed it all the more at present, as the moffs and admiralty had finally realized that the Rebellion’s pinpoint accuracy was probably not coincidental. Nobody suspected him, of course; the admirals blamed the moffs, and vice-versa.
“Admiral Piett?” said Luke, incredulous. He had not met Piett in person, but by now he’d seen him on the holocam more than once. Vader had decided that his training was too important to be interrupted for political squabbles, and simply kept him out of the range of the holocam -- and didn’t hold any conversations that he’d rather didn’t go straight to Princess Leia’s ears. “But he couldn’t betray the Empire any more than he could . . . I don’t know, change his expression. Jerjerrod really blamed him?”
“Yes,” said Vader shortly.
“To your face?”
“Yes.”
Luke, sobering, glanced up from his current exercise -- repairing a droid without touching it -- and bit his lip. “And he’s still alive?”
“At the moment.”
Luke relaxed and went back to the droid. Vader was, for once, unsurprised by his reaction. It had become apparent to him that Luke found sudden deaths to be . . . distressing, when they came by Vader’s hand, without due process, for all that he rarely argued with him over it. Normally, Vader would not have altered his habits around anyone's preferences, but in fact it was highly inconvenient to kill his subordinates. Janren’s death, which he did not regret, had taken weeks to smooth over. And on the heels of that thought came another: it was also rather stupid to kill his subordinates.
Dead men, after all, could neither pay for their errors nor learn from them. Except Jedi, of course -- and even there, Vader had his doubts.
To himself, however, he could admit that he had looked at Jerjerrod’s smirking, simpering face, and thought nothing except that Luke would be upset if he killed him. Only then had he also concluded that it would be highly inconvenient, accomplish nothing, and that he didn’t particularly want to. At any rate, it amused him to think that Jerjerrod largely owed his survival to the tender sensibilities of a Rebel.
It was perhaps a week after this that Luke’s fine control over levitation advanced to the point that Vader mentioned, in passing, that he could probably survive the construction of a lightsaber.
Luke stared at him. Over the previous weeks, Vader had mentioned, also in passing, the various horrific fates that had befallen a number of Jedi apprentices who began construction before they were fully prepared.
“You’re sure?” he said doubtfully. “My . . . other teacher didn’t think --”
“Your other teacher would have had me wait until I was thirty,” said Vader, and elected not to mention what he’d been doing with his lightsaber at thirty. He continued on, “As I was saying, lightning is possible to create with the Dark Side, but it is extremely volatile and would likely kill me.”
“Um, you don’t need to show me,” Luke said. “About my lightsaber, I read in some of your files that every single part needs to be assembled with every other single part at the same moment or the whole thing will explode. Wouldn’t it be safer to do from a distance?”
“No. It’s impossible to control the components well enough from more than about a foot away. You can do it from where you’re sitting now.”
“But you’re right here,” Luke protested. “If anything goes wrong, it’ll kill you.”
Vader looked at him for a moment. “I can leave the room,” he said. “Or perhaps you’d like me to fly you to a suitably remote location?”
“No. I . . . no.” Luke sighed, then took out the components. He’d studied the lightsaber he now carried for weeks, and the diagrams Vader had -- inexplicably, as with so many other things over the years -- kept, and tracked down each component. The crystal he’d saved for last, paring down the strongest of the three he’d chosen until it was a glowing stone no larger than his thumb.
Vader watched, still wrapped in the Living Force from his latest demonstration, and he hadn’t bothered to release it yet -- but ready to grasp the quicker Dark Side at any sign of trouble.
Luke took a deep breath, then held his hands out, perhaps six inches from his body, the left palm-up and perpendicular to his belly, the right palm-down and at shoulder level. All the components floated into the air between the hands, his face bathed in the light of the crystal. They drew closer together until they were barely a hair’s-breadth apart. Luke’s forehead was damp with sweat, his eyes wide but determined.
Vader didn’t dare move, and had silenced the respirator for the moment. There was a tiny twitch in the Force, and the lightsaber flew together.
Luke stared down at the weapon, still floating between his hands. Then he let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and Vader’s respirator started up again.
“Look, Father, I -- ” Luke gave a happy, startled grin. “I’ve got to see it.” He jumped up, lightsaber in his hand, and flicked the switch. The blade flashed out, a slightly deeper blue than the other had been.
Luke was, in everything but name, a Jedi Knight. Ridiculously enough, Vader felt -- not disappointed, but -- not quite as relieved as he’d expected he would be. Of course, he was not remotely ready to face the Emperor. If anything, he would have to train even more intensively now.
“I am pleased you weren’t actually dead,” said Vader.
Luke laughed again, then looked over at him. “So am I, Father. Do you want yours back now?”
“No. I’m sure you can find some worthy purpose for it.”
“Your father’s what?”
She stared at the lightsaber. Luke had taught her a few basic forms with it, nothing more -- until now.
“I thought you’d like to have it,” said Luke, “now that I’ve got my own. You’ll need to practice with it fairly constantly, and -- well, I thought it’d be all right, but -- ”
“It’s fine,” she said, reaching for the extended hilt. She gave a small laugh. “Really. Um. It must have all kinds of history. Where did he get it?”
Luke wet his lips, then said, “He made it himself. But it does have a history. My father was a slave, you know.”
Leia lowered her hand, staring at him in horror. “What?”
“The Hutts captured my grandmother when she was a young woman, and he -- well, he was born into it. He had a transmitter embedded in his body when he was just a few days old. And they were lucky. They got sold to a small-time slaver in Mos Espa. He had a little shop. I don’t know if it’s still there. I never really wanted to see. But my uncle’s father came in to the shop one day, and . . . and he kept coming back even though he didn’t need to buy anything else. He fell in love with my grandmother and bought her freedom, and my father’s.”
Leia couldn’t help but wonder how much Luke’s grandmother had really had to say about all this.
“Uncle Owen and Father were close, but they didn’t get on. Once, Aunt Beru told me that Father wasn’t . . . even though he was just a little boy when he was freed, it was always there with him. It was there when Obi-Wan found him, and when he went to -- when he became a Jedi and a soldier, when he built this. Sometimes I think it still is.”
“But he’s dead,” said Leia.
“And that transmitter is still wherever his body is,” said Luke. “It’s not about feeling awful or anything. It’s just -- this came from him, and that’s where he came from. And it’s where we’re going.”
Leia looked down at the weapon, turned it in her hand. “That’s . . . quite a history,” she said. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Sure.” Luke pointed at the hook on the side. “That’s where it slides onto your belt, though you won’t be putting it there just now. It’s time to start learning how to fight properly.”
She grinned.
Her smile quickly faded, however, since Luke’s definition of fight properly did not, in fact, include fighting him. At least not directly.
“I picked up a remote on my way back,” he said, holding it up. “So basically, I’ll be shooting lasers at you and you need to deflect them. Don’t worry, I won’t have you do it blindfolded it right away.”
“Blindfolded,” repeated Leia.
In fact, it was exactly as he described it, except that -- of course -- he didn’t hold the remote, but levitated it through the air and had it shoot at her from different angles. He assured her that she did much better than he had, the first time he tried -- “though,” he added, “to be fair, it was the first thing I tried.”
She still went to bed rubbing her legs, unsure how many times she’d been hit. She did it better the next, and when Luke tied a piece of cloth over her eyes, she found herself automatically reaching out to sense the bolts flying at her. She still got hit a few times, but much less than she had the first day, with her eyes wide open.
The next day, she headed back out to follow some reports of a struggling Alderaanian community on Phaedria and bring more supplies to Carathis, leaving Luke and Yoda watching her go.
“Hm. Soon, urgent business you will have, too?” said Yoda, squinting up at him.
Luke hesitated. “Not just yet. Maybe the day after tomorrow. But it’s not urgent, exactly. Just -- ”
“Hmm?”
“He doesn’t kill people when I’m around,” Luke said, almost in one breath. “He doesn’t . . . he doesn’t like my being upset, or something.”
Yoda simply sighed. “Not the way of the Jedi, is this.”
“It’s not any kind of decent moral code,” Luke agreed, “but -- it’s better than the alternative. Sometimes I think the galaxy would have been better off I hadn’t been stolen from him. Though maybe I’d have ended up a monster. I don’t know.” He paused. “Speaking of kidnapping --”
He related his vision of a few weeks earlier. “Father didn’t even seem to know about it.”
“Know of it he does not.”
Luke glanced down at him sharply. “But you’ve seen it?”
“No.” Yoda yawned, and stepped into the hut. Luke trailed after him. “Tired, I am. But time, it is, for you to know this.”
Luke suppressed a groan. “Another secret?”
“Heh. Last secret,” Yoda promised him. “Think back, to your vision. Strike as you strange, anything did?”
“Well, it was all strange. But -- nothing in particular.” Luke laughed a little. “Except that I was an incredibly loud baby.”
“Hm, yes, and no. Saw a child being taken away, you did. And heard a child scream. Not the same child.”
“What?” Luke shook his head, then dropped his face in his hands. “That’s not . . . I can’t even say it’s impossible any more. But it’s not very likely. Why would my mother have put me in a cradle with someone else’s baby?” He thought back. “Even a huge cradle.”
“Not someone else’s,” said Yoda. “ Hers. Your sister.”
“But I have no sister!” Luke protested.
Yoda rubbed his eyes, and Luke felt a pang of guilt.
“Look, you can explain all this -- somehow -- later, all right? It’s not --”
“No! Tell you now, I must. Ambra, the Jedi you saw. A gift for foresight, he had, but no control. No consideration of consequences. Disliked your father always. And then he saw something. Perhaps the future that has occurred. Perhaps another. Never did we know. Planned to take Skywalker’s child.”
Luke stared at him.
“But two there were. Twins, born early. Weakened, was your mother; easy to convince that she had no daughter. But forced to flee, he was.”
Luke managed a very small smile. “Senator Amidala interfered.”
“Mm, yes. He took the girl and fled.” Yoda shook his head. “Cast him out of the Order, we did, but never found him. Nor the girl. Never discovered anything, except her last name. Your mother’s, he gave her.”
“I have a sister,” Luke repeated blankly. “A sister. And I . . . but Father told me I was an only child. He wasn’t lying. He --”
“Away, he was, when you were born -- in battle,” said Yoda. “Unstable he was already, and enraged he would have been. Better, we thought -- if he did not know.”
“His daughter was kidnapped, and you thought it best that he didn’t know he’d ever had one?” Luke gave him a horrified look, and forced himself to remember that Yoda was dying, and this was almost twenty-one years ago. But -- his sister -- he had a sister -- a twin -- and his father, their father --
Yoda bowed his head. “Regret this, I do.”
“Is she even alive?” The Purges. Oh, Force.
“Perhaps. Never knew anything more,” said Yoda. “Nothing to follow was there. Too many Nelliths.”
“I’ll figure out what happened,” Luke said, and looked over at Yoda’s emaciated form and drooping eyelids. “Yoda, it’s . . . I forgive you, all right?” He didn’t know whether he meant it or not, but he needed to say it. “Just -- you need your rest. You can go to sleep now.”
“Mm. Rest I shall,” he agreed, and drifted off, his head wobbling. Luke dropped his head on his hand.
Father and I can find out anything. We’ll find her, somehow. But I’ll have to tell him. And they thought he’d be enraged back then -- !
Leia returned to a Yoda who barely woke, and a Luke whose moods were even more erratic than usual. Still, she’d improved enough that he discarded the remote, and let her fight against him.
She lost, of course -- she hadn’t reasonably expected to win against a taller, stronger, more experienced opponent, but it was by far the most enjoyable thing she’d done so far. They kept practicing, Leia’s abilities slowly increasing, until she managed to draw out their duel through twenty minutes and into the woods, even earning a brief retreat from him.
Then something changed; she felt an odd, awful sense of familiarity, and a chill went down her spine. Luke promptly knocked her lightsaber out of her hand.
“Oh,” he said, and turned around, staring towards a dank cave.
Leia eyed it. “What is this place? I don’t like it.”
“The Dark Side is very strong here -- I don’t know why,” said Luke. “I’ve only been inside once.”
Leia felt a strong urge to run away, so far that she’d never see it again. She scowled and took a step closer. “Once? Did you --”
“I failed,” said Luke simply. “I thought I could prove myself with my lightsaber. I suppose this means it’s your turn.”
Leia’s free hand went to her blaster, then stopped. “So, it’s some kind of test? Of what I can do with the Force?”
“It’s a test of what you are,” he told her. He paused, then gave a sudden smile. “I’ve probably told you too much already. I didn’t know anything when I went in. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Leia said firmly, and left the blaster beside Luke’s lightsaber.
She crawled into the cave, ducking beneath hanging vines. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a snake the size of her leg, lazily observing her, while a bright red frog hopped up a branch. She almost slipped on the damp moss beneath her feet. Nothing seemed particularly menacing -- not by Dagobah standards, at any rate.
Leia glanced back, half-meaning to ask Luke if he’d got the wrong cave, somehow, but she couldn’t see past the entrance. A heavy fog had gathered behind her, obscuring everything it touched, and giving her the distinct impression that going through it would be very unwise.
Not the wrong cave, then.
A voice shouted out of the darkness. “That’s her! That’s the princess!”
Leia spun around, seeing nothing but the oppressive gloom of the cave. She barely restrained a scornful laugh. Of course, what supernatural test of character would be complete without spectral voices and delusions?
“That’s all?” she demanded incredulously.
A blaster bolt flew past her ear. Instinctively, Leia raced away: she didn’t have any weapons, she was going to get killed, she was --
She was going to be a Jedi and she wasn’t running from anyone.
Leia stopped in her tracks. She could hear their voices approaching. Had she really been tracked down? Or was it just some trick of the cave? What had happened to Luke in here?
How did you succeed? How did you fail?
She could hear the voices approaching again. Leia could have sworn she caught a Coruscanti accent amid the murmuring. She waited, her breath coming fast.
“Ah, this way,” said the Coruscanti voice. “Princess Leia, you must realize there’s no point in hiding. There’s no one else to die for you now.”
It was Tarkin.
Leia forgot everything. She forgot that he was dead -- Luke, you killed him, everyone said you killed him, how could you let him not be dead? -- forgot that this was a test, forgot every thought of success or failure. She forgot everything except that he was here, somehow, and she hated him, and Alderaan, he wouldn’t take Alderaan away from her again.
She could feel power building in her, like -- like -- she didn’t know. She’d never felt anything like this before. But she knew she could make them pay. She had power, now, more power than Tarkin with his mechanical terror could ever think of --
Booted feet came around the corner, towards her, and Leia sprang out with outstretched hands, thinking of nothing except power and hatred and she hadn’t even decided which way she was going to kill them, and lightning burst from her fingertips, crackling and blinding her.
Leia dropped her hands, and the Force, in sheer astonishment. Her hands didn’t hurt at all. It couldn’t have been real lightning, just . . . some odd Force trick. But she could smell burning clothes.
She stepped forward, peering around, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
There was a dead body sprawled out in front of her. But it wasn't Tarkin’s. It was her father's.
Leia was subdued for the next day. She could tell Luke knew that she’d failed, though he didn’t say anything -- didn’t even try to comfort her. She didn’t know if he’d become that excruciatingly sensitive, or if he was simply too abstracted with other matters. In any case, they didn’t declare her unfit to be a Jedi and cast her out, as she half-expected.
Luke may have failed, but she didn’t think he’d failed like that.
She continued her training with renewed zeal, practicing with Luke, with the remote, with just about anything she could convince to stand still long enough. They laid out their plan, whispering together, and Yoda awoke long enough to inform them the Force would be with them.
Then they put the plan in motion. The droids went in first, Artoo concealing their lightsabers and positively gleeful about it. Leia contacted Chewbacca, who agreed to be a prisoner yet again, and she marched inside in full bounty hunter regalia. The explosive was a bit of a risk, but she and Luke had agreed that it was worthwhile to earn her bona fides.
Leia was careful neither to pay too much or too little attention to Han, his features still frozen in a rictus of agony. It would be so easy to sneak out and rescue him, she thought. Just --
No. No, this was why they had plans. She’d fooled Jabba for now. Better to keep it that way.
She watched, half-sickened, as the slave-dancers were paraded before Jabba, and one fed to a half-starved Rancor. Had Luke’s grandmother been one of those once?
She didn’t so much as twitch when Luke himself marched in. The trick didn’t work on Jabba, but that wasn’t important. Everybody was in place. She looked over at Lando, and he gave a slight nod. If Fett, not far behind her, noticed the exchange or recognized him, he gave no hint of it.
Leia stood stock-still when she saw Luke standing on the trapdoor.
Luke? she thought, but he never seemed to hear her unless she spoke aloud. And she couldn’t help him if she got captured too. She remained in place, trying not to listen for screams.
It worked. Somehow, it worked. Luke killed the Rancor, and Jabba led his entire retinue out onto his barges. Leia stalked around, avoiding Boba Fett, and wandering as close to the plank as she could. Everything was ready. Threepio -- well, he’d done his part. There was Artoo with the lightsabers. Lando. Chewie. Luke.
She was just beside the guards now, right as Luke stepped off the edge of the plank.
“No!” Leia shouted, yanking off her mask, and their moment of shock was all the time she needed. She raced off the plank after him.