Rocky bits [After dark and NFB]
The plans had been made, the trap had been set. The shuttle had contacted Vader earlier to let him know it was in orbit, waiting to transfer them to Imperial Center.
The Emperor's orders were not something to be ignored. That had been made very clear.
Vader made his way towards the top of the rocky bits on the far side of the island, then gazed down at the water as it crashed against the rocks all those meters below him.
Skywalker would be along soon enough. He had made certain of it.
Luke raced towards the part of the island his visions had showed him. Vader would kill Leia if he didn't stop him. And Aeryn. And Rory. Vader'd tear the entire school apart just to get to him. Luke had seen it.
His hand clutched compulsively around the hilt of his father's lightsaber. He'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit he'd kind of been looking forward to facing Vader.
The scales needed to be balanced.
He reached the top, saw the black figure waiting for him, and almost turned around.
What had he been thinking? He wasn't ready. He wasn't trained.
He clenched his jaw. He wasn't backing down.
Luke moved out of the shadows and stared at the monster who had been haunting his thoughts for months.
Vader stared back. Had he ever been that young?
"The Force is with you, young Skywalker," he said, voice heavy with menace, "But you are not a Jedi yet."
Luke stepped closer, his heart hammering in his chest.
The man in front of him had caused the suffering and deaths of trillions of sentient beings. It was past time that someone held him accountable. Luke ignited the lightsaber and lunged forward.
Vader felt a surge of anger pour through him as Luke moved to attack. That was a weapon he'd made coming at him. Somewhere Obi-Wan was smirking about that. He was sure of it.
He lit his own lightsaber, red light reflecting threateningly in the darkness, then held it lightly in his right hand as he effortlessly blocked Luke's motion.
Luke's expression firmed as he moved into a series of attacking blows with the lightsaber. His father had made this look much easier.
Vader countered, then allowed himself to fall back for a moment as he got a better feel for what Luke could do with a lightsaber.
His conclusion: Not nearly enough.
Luke narrowed his eyes as he continued attacking, using a sequence he'd seen his father do on the videos. The lightsabers crackled together when they touched, a noise like nothing Luke had ever heard before.
"You've learned much, young one," Vader commented, leaving off the "from me" part of the sentence. He would have recognized that spin anywhere.
Then he began to counter Luke's advances. In a few careful slashes and parries he'd put him on the defensive and heading towards a nearby cave.
Luke was a little too concerned about where Vader's blade was aimed--at parts of himself that Luke would rather keep--to notice that he was being herded.
Frantically trying to remember the movements his father had made, Luke swiped his lightsaber towards Vader's legs.
"You'll find I'm full of surprises," he said.
Someone that big couldn't move all that quickly, right?
Vader held in a mental sigh--his respirator didn't allow for that sort of physical reaction anyway--and he moved casually to avoid Luke's--his--lightsaber.
There was no challenge to this.
"Your destiny lies with me, Skywalker," he said, stepping closer. "Obi-Wan knew this to be true."
Which is why he kept you from me all these years, he thought bitterly to himself.
Luke took a reflexive step backward. "No," he said. Ben wouldn't have left something like that out, he told himself.
Vader lunged forward again, lightsaber flashing as he used his greater height and weight to shove Luke towards the cave's mouth.
More concerned with what had been said than where he was going, Luke tripped and fell backwards into the cave.
"All too easy," Vader muttered, waving his hand and sending a cascade of rocks tumbling down to block the entrance.
He concentrated on the canister he had left inside the cave--fascinating what you could make when you melted fertilizer and sand together--and it broke open with a small pop.
"Perhaps you are not as strong as the Emperor thought."
Then Vader waited. It would only take a few moments for the gas to cause Luke to pass out, then they could be on their way. It was past time that he left this place.
Luke blinked his eyes, trying to adjust to the sudden darkness.
"I have a bad feeling about this," he said to himself, standing up and brushing off the dust.
Then he noticed the sound of hissing. "Gas," he said. "Terrific."
He turned towards the entrance. "Lifting rocks can't be too tough," he said, centering himself and reaching into the Force. "And what's out there's probably not as bad as what's in here."
Vader crossed his arms over his chest and watched as the rocks began moving away from the cave.
"Impressive," he said dryly.
Luke scrambled out of the cave and reignited his lightsaber, then stepped towards Vader and attacked again.
"Most impressive," Vader said, parrying. "Obi-Wan has taught you well," he continued, hating his old master just a little bit more for that. "You have controlled your fear."
Luke blinked. His control over his fear had nothing to do with anything Ben had taught him and everything with how Rory faced off against this man week after week.
He moved further away from the cave and increased his efforts. Slash, slash, parry, duck, parry, parry.
Generations of Jedi were counting on him. He wasn't going to let them down.
"Now release your anger," Vader continued in the same implacable voice, tirelessly evading Luke's attempts to hurt him. "Only your hatred can destroy me."
And then I'll be gone and you'll be someone else's problem, Vader thought. Why did you have to have my eyes?
Luke really, really wanted to, but something in the back of his mind screamed against the idea of doing anything Vader asked for.
He lashed out with a kick to Vader's chest like Aeryn had taught him instead.
Aggressive defense, he told himself.
With a cry of surprise, Vader fell from the precipice they had been dueling on into the darkness of the rocks below.
Luke stared down into mists, breathing heavily, then slowly began to climb down the rocks.
He had to make sure that Vader was really dead. That had seemed a little easy.
Of course it had seemed a little easy. Vader hadn't even landed hard.
Now he was in the shadows, lightsaber extinguished, waiting for Luke to arrive.
Luke hopped the last few feet down from his climb, then began to creep around the rocks and shrubs, cursing the wind for blowing in the wrong direction.
It shouldn't be possible for someone so tall and noisy to blend in like this.
Vader hadn't been hiding, merely biding his time. The wind kicked up again, fluttering his cape against a tree.
The rhythmic sound of his breathing became louder as he stepped forward.
Luke ignited his lightsaber and attacked again, trying to ignore the protests his muscles were making.
Vader met the attack with one of his own, his lightsaber almost casually rebuffing all of Luke's moves.
In his head, Vader was quickly coming up with Plan B.
He was going to have to hurt the boy.
He felt more conflicted about it than he'd thought possible.
Luke was growing frustrated.
Blows to Vader's shoulders, to his legs, to his chest: nothing was connecting. All of the moves his father had done were being countered with an apparent lack of effort, or even interest.
And as Luke grew frustrated, he grew sloppy.
He was so focused on trying to hurt Vader that he wasn't paying attention to anything else around him.
That mistake was going to cost him.
Vader's left hand flicked out and a huge tree branch came flying towards Luke's face.
His instincts screamed out a warning and Luke spun and sliced the branch in half with bare seconds to spare.
Vader was not at all inclined to give Luke time to recover, simultaneously slashing down on him with the lightsaber from the front and throwing a rock at the back of his head.
Luke was fast enough to dodge one or the other.
Not both.
The rock hit him squarely, making him stagger forward. Stars flashed in front of his eyes.
Vader stepped back and gestured with his lightsaber towards the area around them.
Branches and rocks of all sizes--mostly on the incredibly large and heavy side--hurtled towards Luke.
Luke was tired. His lightsaber flashed out, but not nearly quickly enough.
And the more branches and rocks that got through, the slower he moved.
He was soon a mass of cuts and bruises with the beginnings of a truly impressive pair of black eyes courtesy of a tree branch that had hit him squarely across the face.
If Vader felt any guilt about what he was doing, it certainly wasn't showing as the projectiles he was hurling pushed Luke slowly towards the edge of the cliff.
Luke stumbled backwards as another boulder slammed into his knee.
He was too close to the edge to recover.
Gravity took over and Luke plummeted for an endless moment until his fingers found a tree branch that was jutting out of the rock over the water below.
His lightsaber was still on the cliff, useless and 10 meters above him.
Vader hurried to the edge and looked down.
He didn't want the Emperor's prize destroyed, he told himself, and tried to ignore the tightness he felt in his chest until he saw the blond head clinging to the branch.
Skywalker stubborness.
...and in that moment, Vader knew what he had to say.
Fighting back a wave of absolute terror, Luke clung to the branch by his fingernails, then swung his legs up, heaved himself on top of it, and tried to remember how to breathe.
In, out, in, out...it took him a few minutes to realize he wasn't the only one breathing out there in the dark.
He closed his eyes and reached into the Force, begging for more strength as he called his lightsaber to his hand.
Then he looked at the tireless enemy waiting for him and struck out once more.
Vader batted the blows away with more ferocity than he'd shown during the rest of the fight.
"It is useless to resist," he growled, trying to get Luke off of the branch. Can't you see I'm trying to save you? a part of himself that Vader had ignored for years shouted. "Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi-Wan did."
Luke glared. You don't get to talk about Ben any more, he thought, standing up and answering Vader's attacks with more energy. Slash, duck, slash, duck, faster than thought.
He was running on instinct and the Force. Nothing else could possibly save him.
The lightsabers hissed and crackled when they met and set sparks off on the rocks around them when the strokes went wide.
As Vader aimed for Luke's right shoulder, Luke ducked out of the way, then repeated that same move against his enemy.
The lightsaber connected with his shoulder, frying circuitry, and Vader let out a cry more of surprise than pain.
This boy, this untrained boy, had managed to land a blow against the terror of all Jedi.
If Vader weren't so incredibly angry, he might almost be proud of him.
Such a gesture couldn't go unavenged, of course. Vader closed the distance between them, lightsaber moving faster and faster.
Luke was beyond exhausted, his left eye swelling shut from the hit he had taken from a tree branch. He couldn't keep track of the two lightsabers any longer.
And then that was no longer a problem.
There was just the one--red--lightsaber.
And unimaginable pain.
He shrieked out in agony as he fell over, then cradled the arm that used to have a right hand close to his chest.
He'd lost his hand. Vader had cut off his hand.
And he'd lost his father's lightsaber.
He wasn't sure which part hurt the most. His nerves were screaming "hand", though, so he shoved the psychological trauma aside to deal with later.
Vader stared at him for a long moment.
A tiny voice in the back of his head whispered, Rory is going to kill you for this.
He tried to ignore it.
"There is no escape," he said, looking down at Luke curled up on himself on the log. "Don't make me destroy you."
You cut off my hand! Luke's mind screamed back as he crawled further out onto the branch, away from nightmare figure and his lightsaber.
"Luke," Vader said, the first time he'd ever called his son by his name, "you do not yet realize your importance. You've only begun to discover your power. Join me," he said, raising his hand into a fist, "and I will complete your training." His voice took on a new passion. "With our combined power we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy."
Luke bit back a hysterical "Are you kidding me?" and moved further down the branch.
It creaked ominously, but it was better out here than back on land with Vader.
"I'll never join you," he spat.
"If you only knew the power of the dark side," Vader continued, then paused. "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father."
"He told me enough," Luke shouted back, fighting tears as he crept still further away. "He told me you killed him."
"No," Vader said. "I am your father."
The world tilted and spun.
The pictures Luke had of Anakin flashed before his eyes: a tall blond man, smiling, laughing, happy, focused.
He heard Ben's voice in his head, "He was a cunning warrior. And a good friend."
He saw Rory sitting on his bed. "He was quiet. Kind of shy sometimes. A little stubborn and kind of arrogant. Kind. Devoted. Compassionate. Serious. Brash. Loving. And a very good friend."
And then he looked back at the monster on the cliff. Who enslaved billions. Tortured billions. Murdered billions. Destroyed a legacy of peace and justice that had lasted for ten thousand years.
"No," he whispered. "No," he said more loudly. "That's not true. That's impossible!"
"Search your feelings," Vader demanded, "you know it to be true."
Luke clung to the tree branch like it would save him.
It couldn't possibly be true. Anakin Skywalker...Darth Vader. No.
Some part deep inside of him whispered that it was.
"Nooooo!" he screamed, tears falling down his cheeks as the perfect image he had created of his father shattered into a thousand painful shards. "Nooooooo!"
"Luke," Vader continued, "you can destroy the Emperor. He has forseen this. It is your destiny. Join me and we can rule the galaxy as father and son."
Luke flinched at the words "father and son," and began looking around. There had to be another choice than joining with that...his brain couldn't come up with a word to describe Vader right now.
He looked way, way down at the waves crashing against the rocks and wondered a little woozily how deep it was. Then he wondered if it really mattered. That option, however it ended, was better than the dark side. Better than becoming...that.
Vader held out his hand. "Come with me," he said. "It is the only way."
Luke stretched out with his feelings towards the broken mockery of a person in front of him, desperate to find anything familiar.
He found hatred, pain, anger, self-loathing...nothing of the man he had wanted so desperately to become.
Anakin might still be in there--Luke hoped he was--but it wasn't worth the cost to find out.
Ben, why didn't you tell me?
He looked at Vader--at his father--and then let go of the branch, plummeting towards the water a hundred feet below.
Vader watched him fall, Obi-Wan's voice echoing in his head. Will you kill Padmé's son?
He stared for a long, long time at the water until he saw Luke pull himself onto the shore and limp slowly towards the clinic.
The Emperor would be enraged, he knew as he walked down to the beach, but Luke was alive, so they could try again.
A tug from the Force sent him towards a jut of rocks. Nestled between them was his old lightsaber.
Vader noticed as he picked it up that it didn't fit into his hand any longer, a lesson he needed to be reminded of right now. It stopped him from feeling something like that was a lot like regret.
When a trooper had caught sight of the duel between Vader and Luke, he had immediately recognised the lightsabers. They were Jedi weapons and if they were fighting, the trooper wasn't dumb enough to try to intervene on his own. However, by the time back up had arrived, the struggle had been over and only one of them was still standing.
As soon as back up arrived, the troopers made it down to the beach and warily approached Vader. "Halt!" the lieutenant shouted, keeping his gun aimed at Vader.
Vader stopped walking. "Yes, trooper?" he asked.
"You were involved in a fight just now," the lieutenant stated. "Surrender your weapons and tell us where the one you were fighting with went to."
Vader flicked his fingers and concentrated. "You don't need my weapons."
"The trooper hesitated for a moment before he contradicted himself. "We don't need your weapons," he repeated.
"You're very sorry for having disturbed me," Vader added, a twinge of annoyance in his voice.
"I'm very sorry for having disturbed you, sir," the lieutenant repeated once more, starting to lower his weapon and indicating for the others to follow his example.
"Move along," Vader said, flicking his hand again.
"Move along," the trooper said without pause and then motioned to his troops to do the exact same thing.
Vader continued on his way back to the school. It was nice to know that wherever in the universe he was, the troopers would always be easily manipulated.
Even if they didn't recognize exactly who he was.
[OOC: Pre-played with tatooine_doofus and fandomtroopers. No IC interaction possible, OOC feedback rather desperately craved...]
The Emperor's orders were not something to be ignored. That had been made very clear.
Vader made his way towards the top of the rocky bits on the far side of the island, then gazed down at the water as it crashed against the rocks all those meters below him.
Skywalker would be along soon enough. He had made certain of it.
Luke raced towards the part of the island his visions had showed him. Vader would kill Leia if he didn't stop him. And Aeryn. And Rory. Vader'd tear the entire school apart just to get to him. Luke had seen it.
His hand clutched compulsively around the hilt of his father's lightsaber. He'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit he'd kind of been looking forward to facing Vader.
The scales needed to be balanced.
He reached the top, saw the black figure waiting for him, and almost turned around.
What had he been thinking? He wasn't ready. He wasn't trained.
He clenched his jaw. He wasn't backing down.
Luke moved out of the shadows and stared at the monster who had been haunting his thoughts for months.
Vader stared back. Had he ever been that young?
"The Force is with you, young Skywalker," he said, voice heavy with menace, "But you are not a Jedi yet."
Luke stepped closer, his heart hammering in his chest.
The man in front of him had caused the suffering and deaths of trillions of sentient beings. It was past time that someone held him accountable. Luke ignited the lightsaber and lunged forward.
Vader felt a surge of anger pour through him as Luke moved to attack. That was a weapon he'd made coming at him. Somewhere Obi-Wan was smirking about that. He was sure of it.
He lit his own lightsaber, red light reflecting threateningly in the darkness, then held it lightly in his right hand as he effortlessly blocked Luke's motion.
Luke's expression firmed as he moved into a series of attacking blows with the lightsaber. His father had made this look much easier.
Vader countered, then allowed himself to fall back for a moment as he got a better feel for what Luke could do with a lightsaber.
His conclusion: Not nearly enough.
Luke narrowed his eyes as he continued attacking, using a sequence he'd seen his father do on the videos. The lightsabers crackled together when they touched, a noise like nothing Luke had ever heard before.
"You've learned much, young one," Vader commented, leaving off the "from me" part of the sentence. He would have recognized that spin anywhere.
Then he began to counter Luke's advances. In a few careful slashes and parries he'd put him on the defensive and heading towards a nearby cave.
Luke was a little too concerned about where Vader's blade was aimed--at parts of himself that Luke would rather keep--to notice that he was being herded.
Frantically trying to remember the movements his father had made, Luke swiped his lightsaber towards Vader's legs.
"You'll find I'm full of surprises," he said.
Someone that big couldn't move all that quickly, right?
Vader held in a mental sigh--his respirator didn't allow for that sort of physical reaction anyway--and he moved casually to avoid Luke's--his--lightsaber.
There was no challenge to this.
"Your destiny lies with me, Skywalker," he said, stepping closer. "Obi-Wan knew this to be true."
Which is why he kept you from me all these years, he thought bitterly to himself.
Luke took a reflexive step backward. "No," he said. Ben wouldn't have left something like that out, he told himself.
Vader lunged forward again, lightsaber flashing as he used his greater height and weight to shove Luke towards the cave's mouth.
More concerned with what had been said than where he was going, Luke tripped and fell backwards into the cave.
"All too easy," Vader muttered, waving his hand and sending a cascade of rocks tumbling down to block the entrance.
He concentrated on the canister he had left inside the cave--fascinating what you could make when you melted fertilizer and sand together--and it broke open with a small pop.
"Perhaps you are not as strong as the Emperor thought."
Then Vader waited. It would only take a few moments for the gas to cause Luke to pass out, then they could be on their way. It was past time that he left this place.
Luke blinked his eyes, trying to adjust to the sudden darkness.
"I have a bad feeling about this," he said to himself, standing up and brushing off the dust.
Then he noticed the sound of hissing. "Gas," he said. "Terrific."
He turned towards the entrance. "Lifting rocks can't be too tough," he said, centering himself and reaching into the Force. "And what's out there's probably not as bad as what's in here."
Vader crossed his arms over his chest and watched as the rocks began moving away from the cave.
"Impressive," he said dryly.
Luke scrambled out of the cave and reignited his lightsaber, then stepped towards Vader and attacked again.
"Most impressive," Vader said, parrying. "Obi-Wan has taught you well," he continued, hating his old master just a little bit more for that. "You have controlled your fear."
Luke blinked. His control over his fear had nothing to do with anything Ben had taught him and everything with how Rory faced off against this man week after week.
He moved further away from the cave and increased his efforts. Slash, slash, parry, duck, parry, parry.
Generations of Jedi were counting on him. He wasn't going to let them down.
"Now release your anger," Vader continued in the same implacable voice, tirelessly evading Luke's attempts to hurt him. "Only your hatred can destroy me."
And then I'll be gone and you'll be someone else's problem, Vader thought. Why did you have to have my eyes?
Luke really, really wanted to, but something in the back of his mind screamed against the idea of doing anything Vader asked for.
He lashed out with a kick to Vader's chest like Aeryn had taught him instead.
Aggressive defense, he told himself.
With a cry of surprise, Vader fell from the precipice they had been dueling on into the darkness of the rocks below.
Luke stared down into mists, breathing heavily, then slowly began to climb down the rocks.
He had to make sure that Vader was really dead. That had seemed a little easy.
Of course it had seemed a little easy. Vader hadn't even landed hard.
Now he was in the shadows, lightsaber extinguished, waiting for Luke to arrive.
Luke hopped the last few feet down from his climb, then began to creep around the rocks and shrubs, cursing the wind for blowing in the wrong direction.
It shouldn't be possible for someone so tall and noisy to blend in like this.
Vader hadn't been hiding, merely biding his time. The wind kicked up again, fluttering his cape against a tree.
The rhythmic sound of his breathing became louder as he stepped forward.
Luke ignited his lightsaber and attacked again, trying to ignore the protests his muscles were making.
Vader met the attack with one of his own, his lightsaber almost casually rebuffing all of Luke's moves.
In his head, Vader was quickly coming up with Plan B.
He was going to have to hurt the boy.
He felt more conflicted about it than he'd thought possible.
Luke was growing frustrated.
Blows to Vader's shoulders, to his legs, to his chest: nothing was connecting. All of the moves his father had done were being countered with an apparent lack of effort, or even interest.
And as Luke grew frustrated, he grew sloppy.
He was so focused on trying to hurt Vader that he wasn't paying attention to anything else around him.
That mistake was going to cost him.
Vader's left hand flicked out and a huge tree branch came flying towards Luke's face.
His instincts screamed out a warning and Luke spun and sliced the branch in half with bare seconds to spare.
Vader was not at all inclined to give Luke time to recover, simultaneously slashing down on him with the lightsaber from the front and throwing a rock at the back of his head.
Luke was fast enough to dodge one or the other.
Not both.
The rock hit him squarely, making him stagger forward. Stars flashed in front of his eyes.
Vader stepped back and gestured with his lightsaber towards the area around them.
Branches and rocks of all sizes--mostly on the incredibly large and heavy side--hurtled towards Luke.
Luke was tired. His lightsaber flashed out, but not nearly quickly enough.
And the more branches and rocks that got through, the slower he moved.
He was soon a mass of cuts and bruises with the beginnings of a truly impressive pair of black eyes courtesy of a tree branch that had hit him squarely across the face.
If Vader felt any guilt about what he was doing, it certainly wasn't showing as the projectiles he was hurling pushed Luke slowly towards the edge of the cliff.
Luke stumbled backwards as another boulder slammed into his knee.
He was too close to the edge to recover.
Gravity took over and Luke plummeted for an endless moment until his fingers found a tree branch that was jutting out of the rock over the water below.
His lightsaber was still on the cliff, useless and 10 meters above him.
Vader hurried to the edge and looked down.
He didn't want the Emperor's prize destroyed, he told himself, and tried to ignore the tightness he felt in his chest until he saw the blond head clinging to the branch.
Skywalker stubborness.
...and in that moment, Vader knew what he had to say.
Fighting back a wave of absolute terror, Luke clung to the branch by his fingernails, then swung his legs up, heaved himself on top of it, and tried to remember how to breathe.
In, out, in, out...it took him a few minutes to realize he wasn't the only one breathing out there in the dark.
He closed his eyes and reached into the Force, begging for more strength as he called his lightsaber to his hand.
Then he looked at the tireless enemy waiting for him and struck out once more.
Vader batted the blows away with more ferocity than he'd shown during the rest of the fight.
"It is useless to resist," he growled, trying to get Luke off of the branch. Can't you see I'm trying to save you? a part of himself that Vader had ignored for years shouted. "Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi-Wan did."
Luke glared. You don't get to talk about Ben any more, he thought, standing up and answering Vader's attacks with more energy. Slash, duck, slash, duck, faster than thought.
He was running on instinct and the Force. Nothing else could possibly save him.
The lightsabers hissed and crackled when they met and set sparks off on the rocks around them when the strokes went wide.
As Vader aimed for Luke's right shoulder, Luke ducked out of the way, then repeated that same move against his enemy.
The lightsaber connected with his shoulder, frying circuitry, and Vader let out a cry more of surprise than pain.
This boy, this untrained boy, had managed to land a blow against the terror of all Jedi.
If Vader weren't so incredibly angry, he might almost be proud of him.
Such a gesture couldn't go unavenged, of course. Vader closed the distance between them, lightsaber moving faster and faster.
Luke was beyond exhausted, his left eye swelling shut from the hit he had taken from a tree branch. He couldn't keep track of the two lightsabers any longer.
And then that was no longer a problem.
There was just the one--red--lightsaber.
And unimaginable pain.
He shrieked out in agony as he fell over, then cradled the arm that used to have a right hand close to his chest.
He'd lost his hand. Vader had cut off his hand.
And he'd lost his father's lightsaber.
He wasn't sure which part hurt the most. His nerves were screaming "hand", though, so he shoved the psychological trauma aside to deal with later.
Vader stared at him for a long moment.
A tiny voice in the back of his head whispered, Rory is going to kill you for this.
He tried to ignore it.
"There is no escape," he said, looking down at Luke curled up on himself on the log. "Don't make me destroy you."
You cut off my hand! Luke's mind screamed back as he crawled further out onto the branch, away from nightmare figure and his lightsaber.
"Luke," Vader said, the first time he'd ever called his son by his name, "you do not yet realize your importance. You've only begun to discover your power. Join me," he said, raising his hand into a fist, "and I will complete your training." His voice took on a new passion. "With our combined power we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy."
Luke bit back a hysterical "Are you kidding me?" and moved further down the branch.
It creaked ominously, but it was better out here than back on land with Vader.
"I'll never join you," he spat.
"If you only knew the power of the dark side," Vader continued, then paused. "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father."
"He told me enough," Luke shouted back, fighting tears as he crept still further away. "He told me you killed him."
"No," Vader said. "I am your father."
The world tilted and spun.
The pictures Luke had of Anakin flashed before his eyes: a tall blond man, smiling, laughing, happy, focused.
He heard Ben's voice in his head, "He was a cunning warrior. And a good friend."
He saw Rory sitting on his bed. "He was quiet. Kind of shy sometimes. A little stubborn and kind of arrogant. Kind. Devoted. Compassionate. Serious. Brash. Loving. And a very good friend."
And then he looked back at the monster on the cliff. Who enslaved billions. Tortured billions. Murdered billions. Destroyed a legacy of peace and justice that had lasted for ten thousand years.
"No," he whispered. "No," he said more loudly. "That's not true. That's impossible!"
"Search your feelings," Vader demanded, "you know it to be true."
Luke clung to the tree branch like it would save him.
It couldn't possibly be true. Anakin Skywalker...Darth Vader. No.
Some part deep inside of him whispered that it was.
"Nooooo!" he screamed, tears falling down his cheeks as the perfect image he had created of his father shattered into a thousand painful shards. "Nooooooo!"
"Luke," Vader continued, "you can destroy the Emperor. He has forseen this. It is your destiny. Join me and we can rule the galaxy as father and son."
Luke flinched at the words "father and son," and began looking around. There had to be another choice than joining with that...his brain couldn't come up with a word to describe Vader right now.
He looked way, way down at the waves crashing against the rocks and wondered a little woozily how deep it was. Then he wondered if it really mattered. That option, however it ended, was better than the dark side. Better than becoming...that.
Vader held out his hand. "Come with me," he said. "It is the only way."
Luke stretched out with his feelings towards the broken mockery of a person in front of him, desperate to find anything familiar.
He found hatred, pain, anger, self-loathing...nothing of the man he had wanted so desperately to become.
Anakin might still be in there--Luke hoped he was--but it wasn't worth the cost to find out.
Ben, why didn't you tell me?
He looked at Vader--at his father--and then let go of the branch, plummeting towards the water a hundred feet below.
Vader watched him fall, Obi-Wan's voice echoing in his head. Will you kill Padmé's son?
He stared for a long, long time at the water until he saw Luke pull himself onto the shore and limp slowly towards the clinic.
The Emperor would be enraged, he knew as he walked down to the beach, but Luke was alive, so they could try again.
A tug from the Force sent him towards a jut of rocks. Nestled between them was his old lightsaber.
Vader noticed as he picked it up that it didn't fit into his hand any longer, a lesson he needed to be reminded of right now. It stopped him from feeling something like that was a lot like regret.
When a trooper had caught sight of the duel between Vader and Luke, he had immediately recognised the lightsabers. They were Jedi weapons and if they were fighting, the trooper wasn't dumb enough to try to intervene on his own. However, by the time back up had arrived, the struggle had been over and only one of them was still standing.
As soon as back up arrived, the troopers made it down to the beach and warily approached Vader. "Halt!" the lieutenant shouted, keeping his gun aimed at Vader.
Vader stopped walking. "Yes, trooper?" he asked.
"You were involved in a fight just now," the lieutenant stated. "Surrender your weapons and tell us where the one you were fighting with went to."
Vader flicked his fingers and concentrated. "You don't need my weapons."
"The trooper hesitated for a moment before he contradicted himself. "We don't need your weapons," he repeated.
"You're very sorry for having disturbed me," Vader added, a twinge of annoyance in his voice.
"I'm very sorry for having disturbed you, sir," the lieutenant repeated once more, starting to lower his weapon and indicating for the others to follow his example.
"Move along," Vader said, flicking his hand again.
"Move along," the trooper said without pause and then motioned to his troops to do the exact same thing.
Vader continued on his way back to the school. It was nice to know that wherever in the universe he was, the troopers would always be easily manipulated.
Even if they didn't recognize exactly who he was.
[OOC: Pre-played with tatooine_doofus and fandomtroopers. No IC interaction possible, OOC feedback rather desperately craved...]