"BEN!" Luke's voice echoed across the distance between him and the Dark Lord who stood on the other side of the gap in the floor, alerting all the Stormtroopers in the way to his presence. Slowly, the tall man who now stood over the pile of robes that had been Ben Kenobi turned to face him. Luke's breath stopped as he looked at Darth Sadow, Dark Lord of the Sith and consort to Darth Revan, Empress of the Galactic Empire.
Suddenly, Sadow was no longer thirty feet away, across the room.
He was right in front of Luke, not two feet from his face.
The waves of evil were so strong, so powerful; they forced Luke to his knees within a matter of seconds. He looked up, and up, and up, until his gaze met Sadow's strange, unique yellow eyes. He knew in that instant that he was dead. He closed his eyes, waiting for the blow that would separate his head from his shoulders…
It never came.
Luke opened his eyes, confused. He looked at Sadow again, but this time he blanched.
Sadow was grinning.
Not just grinning, laughing.
The Dark Lord of the Sith was laughing at him.
And then he wasn't. Like someone had flipped a switch in his head, he stopped laughing and became deadly serious. Then, slowly, a small smile slid over his face.
Raising his hand, he gently placed his fingers on Luke's forehead, and trailed them down to his chin. The touch felt so good, so right, that Luke's eyes closed involuntarily, and he shivered. Two hands cupped the sides of his face, gently, so gently. Luke couldn't even conceive that this man, the one who had just killed Ben, could possibly be so soft. His eyes opened again, and he looked at Sadow.
Sadow was still smiling, but it seemed tinged with sadness, grief, and…was that pain? "You are… You are so beautiful." He whispered, a note of wonder in his voice. Luke's brow crinkled in confusion. Was Sadow gay? No, he was with Revan, and he would never leave her. Then why…
Sadow's fingers were on his temples. "Sleep," The Dark Lord whispered. Luke was suddenly overcome with an exhaustion the likes of which he had never felt before. He didn't even have a chance to yawn before he descended into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He didn't feel Sadow pick him up and sling him over his shoulder, didn't hear Leia's cry and Han's "Leave him, princess, we have to go!" He didn't wake even as the Falcon took off with a roar, or as Sadow muttered "You really need to eat more, son…" while strapping him in to the copilot seat of a two-man starship and setting a course for Rakata, the capital of the Empire, and the Star Forge that was his home.