Title: Star Wars Infinities: Together As One
Author: Darth Nezumi
Summary: After being called on to assassinate Vader, Luke decides that his decision on Bespin was a mistake, and seeks out his father…
Disclaimer: Star Wars and Lucasfilm are currently the property of the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. This is a transformative work of fiction, written strictly by a fan for other fans' reading enjoyment as well as my own. Not for profit. (Note: The Inquisitor is my OC, however.)
STAR WARS INFINITIES: TOGETHER AS ONE
Bast Castle, Vjun;
Old Sith Space, Outer Rim
They made a small, silent procession through the castle, six of the Galactic Empire's best stormtroopers flanking a beautiful female Imperial agent with black hair pulled back in a tight bun, clad in what appeared to a deep blue Imperial officer's uniform and black knee-high boots, and what one could swear was a lightsaber at her belt, and the young man they escorted. The guest was blond with blue eyes, clad in a long-sleeved black shirt, brown pants, a light-colored sleeveless jacket, and black boots much like those of the woman he followed directly behind, and boasted a small sporting blaster pistol at his left hip. Much to his own chagrin, his right side should have sported a lightsaber but did not. And the reason for that absence made him ball his prosthetic right hand into a constantly tightening fist in a furtively seething fury.
Luke Skywalker's mind was reeling in outrage at what had transpired in recent weeks. On Bespin, after abandoning his continued Jedi training at the hands of Master Yoda, which had come shortly after the Alliance's crushing defeat at Hoth, he had engaged Darth Vader, the being he once believed to be the treacherous murderer of his father, only to be subdued and told that the Jedi – Both Yoda and his old mentor and friend Obi-Wan Kenobi – had deceived him about his heritage, that Vader and Anakin were one and the same. At first the would-be Jedi fiercely tried to deny it, but the truth was inescapable.
But it was not until a few days ago, when his already conflicting loyalties became more compromised at receiving a shocking directive from the President of the Alliance, Mon Mothma, that he was convinced his old mentors' deception ran deeper. He somehow knew that the Jedi had been setting him up for this all along, that Mothma was somehow involved in the setup, and that all of them intended to keep his father's existence and identity from him through deception and discretion, until the realization of who the Dark Lord of the Sith was to him came far too late.
Judging from what he believed he sensed from the Supreme Allied Commander at his refusal, and the intervention of the woman who was now leading him through corridors, great halls, and chambers of dark stone and metal dimly lit by blood red glow panels that struck him as a perfect reflection of the being who owned them, Luke suspected – feared – that they'd alerted the head of the Rebels to the fact that he had discovered the truth. He allowed himself to dread the possibility that the former senator was now attempting to recalculate the Jedi's plans for him, and even that she knew his guide was an Imperial spy, under the guise of a Rebel empathizer-turned-agent who wanted to help bring down the Empire and its tyranny, sent to either eliminate him, discredit him, or turn him to Imperial thought.
After hearing Mothma's shocking mission briefing the undercover agent was forced into some mass recalculations herself, so she had explained. This resulted in her persuading the Alliance High Council to let him accompany her, alone, on a "reconnaissance mission" to the old Sith Space on the Rim, then spiriting him to the acid-rainsoaked, barren world of Vjun. Shaken by the Council's wishes and outraged at learning what was arguably the full scope of Obi-Wan and Yoda's pretense, he had surprised everyone else present at the briefing by accepting the alternative provided by the "Alliance Captain", who would later reintroduce herself to him as an Imperial Inquisitor.
But Luke couldn't help but remember the bemusement radiating from the one face among the leadership he was most familiar with: Princess Leia Organa. Her reaction resonated more strongly than the rest of the Rebels like a ship on full alert, her concern for him that had been growing ever since they and their companions had come away from their encounter with Vader on Bespin heightened. What began as helpless shrugs of the shoulders, assumptions that he was understandably tense and withdrawn since the fight, and a nagging feeling that he wasn't telling the whole story – mingling with a desperate desire to find and rescue their lost companion, Han Solo – became increasing flashes of disbelief and alarm.
Still, he couldn't tell them, at first dreading, What would they say if I told them? What would they do? Now, however, he had a new reason to stay silent: he had crossed the line, trusted an Imperial agent, and was about to face his father again, not over crossed 'sabers, but over a metaphorical cup of caf.
They finally rounded downward about a short series of doors, corridors, staircases, and walkways coiled about an open hall before the Inquisitor halted their procession on its bottom floor before a large transparisteel window. Luke watched her take a few long strides toward the door across the hall opposite the window before pausing for a long moment, her hands clasped behind her back, and her head tilted a centimeter upward. Then she spun about-face on her heel and narrowed her blue eyes.
"Troopers," she snipped coolly. "You may leave us. Return to your previous posts."
They clipped an affirmative in unison and did as they were instructed. Once they were gone she closed the distance between them again, observing him with a serious, and almost deferential, expression. Luke thought he detected a hint of understanding.
"I sense your… indignation," she began evenly. She raised an index finger toward the ceiling, slightly tilted toward the door behind her. "I believe he does as well. Trust you me or not, young Jedi, we of the dark side understand that passion."
His gaze followed her indication. He closed his eyes for a long searching moment, attempted to tap into the Force, reach out to the dark presence of his father. He thought back to their encounter on Bespin, to his father imploring him to release his anger, and this time he did not resist. His presence tentatively neared his father's, wavering but holding as the other presence extended in kind, and when they touched he felt the shadowed joy inundating it cascade through and over his as well.
As the tide of the planet's nocturnal atmosphere in the Force receded, he opened his eyes to see the Inquisitor lift her chin as if hearing something, her eyes closed, and Luke swore he could almost hear as well as feel the two dark-siders whisper to one another. In fact, he could swear he felt the very castle resonating with his sire's darkness. It was much like Obi-Wan's hut, where, even though the old man was gone, his presence still remained. Luke was sure that if Vader were away, his presence here would linger, too.
She opened her eyes and continued: "The lesson of that passion is the first step on the path to the true nature of the Force. I have been told that this is a tenet of Code of the Sith. His Lordship will doubtless elaborate on this. Come, he wishes to see you now, hence I must escort you to his presence..."
"That, Inquisitor," said a familiar voice over equally familiar metallic respirations, "will be unnecessary."
Startled, Luke snapped around to face the ebon-clad figure of his father, and she hurriedly stepped past him and executed a low military bow.
"Milord, I have..."
"You are to be commended for your success, agent, and your continued services are not required at this time. Leave us now. I would speak with my son. Alone."
"As you wish, milords, both of you." Another low bow. She regarded Luke one last time. "May the Force serve you well." She marched away, leaving father and son to face each other.
Vader watched Luke glance after her for a long beat.
"Amazing that she got us out of there as well as she did. I thought we were as good as stuck there," he finally said. "Either she played her part that well, or we just fell that hard for it because I wasn't the only galactic idiot in the Alliance after all."
"You have much to learn, young one, if you do not believe that all is possible with the Force," the former Jedi remarked. "I specifically instructed the Fourth Sister to conceal herself from even you. Had she not, you would have revealed her to your friends, strong as you have become. Though the urgency I sense in her bringing you here surprises me." He turned the younger man almost gently by the shoulder. Murky translucent black locked with clear sky blue. "What is it, my son? Why have you come here so soon to face me again?"
"Because I felt I had to," Luke replied silkily, stunned at Vader's sudden curiosity. "When Cap- when the Fourth Sister decided to take me away, I felt there was nowhere else to turn... no one else I could really trust."
"Not even your closest friends in the Rebellion?" Vader smiled behind his mask, almost certain Luke could feel it as well as hear it, in grim amusement and dark joy. Good, he thought to himself, but you have not quite yet satisfied my question, child: Why this about face? What has made you see through the lies? "Not even the Princess?"
"No. Not with our secret. And you of all people know Leia Organa hates you. You know she'd just as soon squeal to the rest of the High Council about... us...rather than understand enough to keep quiet." He turned his face toward the window shielding them from the cold, toxic precipitation, flexing his the fingers of his right hand – his prosthetic right hand, Vader noted – as he stared out into Vjun's harsh atmosphere, looking as if he was struggling to push the princess from his mind. "Not that it matters anymore, nor that I doubt they'll suspect my faith has been shaken after what they tried to brief me on."
Shaken? Vader started at that, recognizing it as the same word he had used to describe the state of his faith in the Jedi Order and its High Council, at the Galaxies Opera House over two decades prior, to the man who would eventually become his master and the first Galactic Emperor, the very vituperative old man he now planned to overthrow with this young man at his side.
"What was it?" And as venomous and glacial as the torrent outside as his master's reply tasted, he heard himself echo it to his son, a statement more of a question. "They tried to command something of you that made you feel dishonest?"
Luke's trepidation was visible, his eyes downcast and misting over and searching. It was tangible to Vader as well, as thick as a rancor's hide, carrying the sense of dread at the prospect of being lost and alone in the galaxy: able to trust none, enemies with all...
Vader did not want his son to fear him, not this way. Yet he had to know what the Alliance had ordered, especially now that it was dire enough to make his son turn to him and then not tell him what it was, exceptionally if it was also after his son's reaction to the truth behind Obi-Wan's deception...
A face that had not been touched by any sun for over two decades instantaneously took on a whole new shade of pallor at the thought of the old Jedi, a new unseen pallor brought on by shock and outrage, reflecting a white-hot starshine of wrath that subsequently burst into a black supernova of abhorrence. Kenobi and Mothma didn't. They didn't dare attempt to put Luke up to—
No, of course they did. Why else would Obi-Wan have twisted the truth about us, unless it was to ensure the conspiracy he and the Alliance leaders had in mind came to fruition? They knew they didn't have the strength to do it, Luke. You were the best bet...
"They asked you to kill me, didn't they?"
"Yes..." His son half-whispered it as if making a painful confession, then repeated it more audibly, a testimony against the pretext delivered in a dangerous and dark tone of indignant accusation. "Yes. They did. And if you hadn't told me I probably would have, but now..." He shook his head. "Now I see why he lied. Why my guardians lied. He must have told them to lie that you were dead as part of the setup, although Owen's lie that you were a navigator on a spice freighter was part of his own agenda."
Vader nodded, feeling all the more satisfied and vindicated in ordering them executed. He hid you with them on Tatooine. I wouldn't be surprised if he chose to hide there himself. He must have known that place represented the life I once had, that I would never return. Where better to hide you both away from me, to keep the two of us apart?
Luke was thinking on his feet, talking quickly, as he paced around the Sith Lord's statuesque form. "Leia was aboard the ship in the space battle I saw over Tatooine, as were the droids, who Owen bought from the Jawas. R2-D2 was carrying a message from the princess for Obi-Wan; he escaped after tricking me into removing his restraining bolt and C-3PO left the farm first thing in the morning to search for him. The moment we found him, the Sand People attacked us. Then Obi-Wan arrived and scared them off."
Vader stiffened, remembering his pursuit of Princess Organa, his own experience with the Sand People, and of his days with the droids, but allowed his son to continue.
"Leia's message said that Obi-Wan served her father in the Clone Wars. She also told me after Yavin that her father was one of the Rebellion's founding members, just as Mon Mothma was. Maybe Obi-Wan and Yoda told them what they had planned for me."
Vader felt his mechanical respiration quicken at the mention of the Jedi Grand Master, unable to contain his disbelief. "Yoda? So he trained you after I slew Kenobi!"
"Not immediately after. Obi-Wan was guiding me in spirit for the three years that followed. It wasn't until I got into trouble with Hoth's elements just before you defeated the Rebels there that Obi-Wan told me to seek him out. I left at the end of the battle to find him. When I did, he was reluctant to train me at first, until Obi-Wan's ghost convinced him. I deserted his training several days later, when you lured me to Bespin."
"Where did you find him?" Vader demanded. "Can you tell me the coordinates?"
Luke stopped pacing, again standing just ahead of him and facing the window, and said nothing for a moment. Vader could sense he was deliberately holding back, but not out of concern for the Jedi and defiance against his father; Luke's loyalties were clearly shifting. Instead, he sensed the location was withheld only out of pure selfishness.
"Luke." The gravity in the father's tone increased as he finally spoke the name, and was punctuated as he stepped forward and jerked the son around by the shoulder this time and their eyes met again. "I need to know. Do not be grudging in your desire to confront him. We can share that vengeance, and purge the galaxy of him together."
"Dagobah," came the answer at last. "He's on Dagobah It's the second planet in a system of the same name, on the Outer Rim. But I somehow get the feeling our relationship is not the only thing they kept from us. I need to confirm this first; please don't destroy him before I have that chance."
"I would have it no other way... Son." Vader rejected out of hand the lie he initially told himself that he was only saying it to placate the now-former Jedi apprentice in favor of admitting it was true in a sense. "So you have accepted the truth at last, and my proposition...?"
"Yes." That was sincerity, spoken in a darker and more dangerous tone as none had ever heard from him before. "I pledge myself to your tutelage, and your destiny is also my own... Father."
"Very well." Satisfied, he released his grip. "You must go. Your Rebel 'friends' will be missing you. Our agent will see you safely back to their fleet."
He felt Luke's presence radiate disappointment, and confusion.
"What about my defection... and my training?"
"They have begun," the Dark Lord enlightened, "and will continue with time. But they cannot be discovered. We must act true to form if we are to avoid increasing our enemies' suspicions. And we must tread carefully if we are to turn events to our advantage, and eventually bring about the destruction of the Rebels and my Master's forces in the Empire alike, and put an end to this tedious and futile upheaval once and for all."
Luke smirked icily. "Through our powers in the Force, we'll triumph in this conflict."
"And together as one in the dark side, we shall rule the galaxy as father and son!"