Equally Cursed and Blessed

by Mina

38/.

There were probably worse ways to die, Lando thought. Some more painful, some more prolonged.

He'd always thought being stranded powerless in space, suffering the long starvation and madness of isolation, would be one of the most unpleasant. Time was the killer in that one, having the opportunity to contemplate your own destruction.

At least if this situation turned out to be his killer, he didn't have the attention or the time to contemplate his death too deeply. It was barrelling up on him, getting closer with every minute that passed as he worked in this life-draining heat, but he didn't have time to stare it in the face and wonder where it'd all gone wrong.

And that, if nothing else, he could be grateful for.

The process of keeping Executor's cooling system online was not simple. It required the fine balancing act of keeping the venting systems open without overloading the system. A simple act for a computer, an all-consuming task for a human. The process of watching numbers and shifting power between the systems accordingly made him feel oddly detached from the frantic dance of his fingers across the controls.

Irritating details he didn't have the time for intruded into the process. The sweat dripping down his face itched to be wiped away. His skin prickled with the heat. The desperate thirst in his throat made swallowing a painful reflex. Dizziness crept in.

He wondered, briefly, whether there was even anyone left alive aboard the ship. His atmosphere suit provided some protection, but most crewmembers would not be so lucky. But then, the auxiliary bridge was in the heart of the ship where there was no natural convection of the heat to space, and it was close to the engines. Those lucky enough to be nearer to the hull and further from the engines might still be alive.

Or they might not.

He could be running himself into death for nothing here.

Oddly, that thought didn't worry him. He was gambling man, and he was willing to believe there were at least a few people left alive. He was placing his last bet on that.

He kept working.

A wave of exhaustion washed through him. His hands slowed and he spared a few precious seconds to lean against the console and try to claw back some focus. Warning sounds screeched as the venting systems flailed.

"Damn it," he muttered. "So much for a heroic death, or going out in a blaze of glory. I get to be cooked by a computer. Who's going to remember me for that?"

Talking tore at his parched throat, so he shut up. And so much for memorable last words, he thought with a shake his head.

The minutes blurred as he worked. There was no space in his mind for anything but mechanical, iron-willed concentration to the task.

Exhaustion washed through him again, stronger this time. He recognised the tug of unconsciousness blurring the corners of his vision.

The console screeched warning sounds.

He reached out for it, but his hand missed, slapping at the side of the console. He sucked in a breath, trying to ignore the buzz of his blood roaring through his ears.

This is it, he thought.

Angry suddenly - whether at himself or at fate he wasn't sure - he gripped the console edge.

"This is it," a voice said from behind him.

Disoriented by hearing his thought voiced, Lando twisted around. But although he instructed his body to stop turning, his senses kept spinning and he slid to his knees.

Two suited figures had appeared in the entranceway. An astromech droid pushed its way between them, rotated its head until it spotted Lando, and motored towards him. Was that Artoo?

Help, Lando thought, though it wasn't a plea for aid but a relieved acknowledgement that someone had come to take over his task for him.

He could stop now.

He fell backwards, his helmet making a loud crack as it hit the deckplates.

"Wait," another voice said, coming closer. The words sounded warbled, as if coming across a bad comm channel. Then there was the foggy recognition that someone was trying to yank the helmet from his head. The sound of a droid's electronic warble. "Hold on," the man said.

Hold on? Lando thought, and even the sound of his own mind's voice was fractured, disintegrating. Hold onto what?

His consciousness faltered and he slipped into darkness.

A blackened streak on the rocky ground marked the path of the shuttle after it had impacted on the surface and skidded along the unforgiving ground. The line ran a straight course across the rock, through the atmosphere-maintaining force-field and between the yawning doors of the docking bay entrance. A few stray pieces of hull plating lay smouldering where they'd landed after being thrown off in the impact.

Both tractor beams had blown before the shuttle had hit the ground, and there was no assistance for the Falcon as Vader manoeuvred her through the entrance.

Vader didn't bother to waste time in either fighting or feeding the instinctive fear that lanced through him at his first sight of the shuttle. The ship was leaning precariously on the remains of its starboard wing. The port wing was intact, just. Overall it didn't look as badly damaged as Vader had feared it might be. At the speed it had been travelling at before impact, he had fully expected to find the shuttle had collided with the far wall of the docking bay.

Clearly, it hadn't.

There was no obvious explanation for that minor miracle.

Vader concentrated on performing a fast landing as he dropped the Falcon down beside the shuttle. She bounced heavily on her landing struts at the speed of the descent. Wisely, Chewbacca didn't complain.

The shuttle remained a dead spot as far as the Force was concerned. It might as well not exist. Either all occupants were dead, or the force-dampening creatures had survived the landing. Vader's fists clenched uselessly but he quashed the anxiety ruthlessly - he had to stay focused.

"Bring whatever med supplies this ship has," he said to Chewbacca, rising from his seat as he spoke. Another thought occurred to him, briefly. "And check our passenger is still in one piece after our chase. But do it quickly."

Chewbacca replied with a compliant-sounding bark.

Vader didn't bother to answer or look back, his feet carrying him with automatic speed out of the cockpit, around the curve of the corridor, down the landing ramp, across the duracrete floor.

The shuttle had come to rest under one of the giant lights that marched along the docking bay's ceiling. It sat in a circle of blue light that highlighted the smoke drifting up from the smouldering engines. The hull looked reasonably intact, but the grooves in the bay's floor and the dust that had been thrown up told of a bumpy slide along the ground.

Vader's mind reached out for a presence that wasn't to be found.

He made for the hull, hearing Chewbacca's footsteps on the Falcon's ramp behind him. Within a hand-span of the shuttle, his sense of the Force abruptly vanished. So - the creatures were still alive.

Vader was tempted to call out - Luke?! - but he didn't want to hear only the Falcon's hydraulics and the creak of cooling metal be his only answer. Foolish to be so cautious, but the words wouldn't form past the thick knot of tension in his throat. He gripped the saber tighter in his hand, unwilling to be beaten back by this fear.

"Luke!?" he called.

No answer.

The shuttle was resting with the front hatchway half obscured by the ground. The cargo storage hatch was a more obvious way in. Hitting the release mechanism did nothing. Vader lit the blade of his lightsaber and plunged it into the mechanism. The doorway lurched open a few inches. Vader gripped the hatch with both hands and yanked on it, pulling it back against the mechanism. It moved slowly, with the sound of metal heaving against metal. Chewbacca moved in to help.

"Luke?"

There was the sound of movement from inside the ship. Vader yanked harder on the hatchway. Someone was moving around in there, but who?

"Luke!"

"I'm here," a voice called.

Luke.

There was more sound of movement, closer this time, and then a crash of something hitting the hull from the inside.

A familiar face appeared in the darkness beyond the crack opened in the hatchway. "I'm here."

For a second Vader couldn't think of anything to say, only yank harder on the metal hatchway that so stubbornly didn't want to be opened, allowing some of the tension knotting his stomach to come out in brute force. The wookiee gave a determined roar as the panel moved further and began to reveal more of the inside of the shuttle - and, eventually, Vader's son.

And, incredibly, the boy looked relatively unharmed.

None of Vader's suppressed fears were in front of him: no head wounds, no burns, no missing limbs nor any of the other horrors that had gone unacknowledged through his mind in the last few minutes.

Luke was awake and alert.

And alive.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked.

Vader straightened at that, thrown from any chance of dwelling on the relief of the moment. "Am I okay?" he snorted, and finally shoved the hatchway open far enough to make a gap wide enough to get a man through. "Have we not been over this lack of awareness of your own health before?" He reached in and grasped the boy with both hands, bodily lifting him out through the doorway and pulling him away from the hull.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Luke insisted, but wisely didn't protest at being pulled from the ship.

But it wasn't any thought of injuries or danger that made Vader move away from the hull, it was the suffocating emptiness of the Force.

Three steps backwards, and it was back. And the boy's presence blossomed in his awareness of the Force.

"What happened?" Leia demanded, pacing the space between the captain's seat and the sensor station. Her arms folded over her chest, she gripped either elbow with either hand, and tried to remain focused. There was no rushing down to help Luke or Vader - she was juggling too many operations up here. But that didn't make having to stand back and watch any easier.

"I don't know, Ma'am. We're too far away and the curve of the planet obscures our-"

"Princess! We've got a communication from Executor coming through."

Leia turned to face the communications ensign. "Put it on."

The woman moved to obey. "It's audio only," she said. Leia nodded.

"Executor, this is Princess Organa. Who am I talking to?"

"To the cavalry, Your Highness. We've got the virus on the retreat - life-support systems are coming back now." There was the electronic warble of a droid in the background. "Skywalker's droid is worth his weight in oil."

She knew that voice. She couldn't imagine now how she'd ever believed that the 'medic' and his 'pilot' comrade were just defecting Imperials.

"And Lando?" she asked.

There was an ominous pause. Leia pressed her lips together, bracing herself. Nausea clawed up her throat, making her want to gag.

"I'm sorry, Your Highness."

Not being dead or dying was still surprising, and Luke was pretty sure he was telling Vader he was okay partly to let himself in on the secret, too. That had been close.

As Vader pulled him away from the ship, the Force returned like a wave crashing on top of him. Luke sucked in a breath at the sensation, feeling like he was surfacing from too long without air.

Luke attempted to pull away from Vader, to try and find more air for his suddenly hungry lungs.

"Easy," Vader warned, allowing him some distance - but not much. His hands remained heavy and insistent on Luke's shoulders. Luke closed his eyes and focused on regaining some sort of focus. Hell, he never wanted to go through this transition from Forceless-ness to Force-overload again. On the back of that thought, Luke reached out hungrily for the sensations around him, starving for the feeling of being part of the Force again.

"Slow down," Vader warned, as if picking up on the train of Luke's thoughts. And maybe he had - the bond was thrown wide open. Vader's presence surrounded him. It hadn't been that long, not really, since they'd last stood together, so how had Luke managed to forget how potent that presence was? It was an enveloping awareness of him, somehow closer and more intimate than any skin-to-skin contact could be. That strength was a frightening kind of magic he wanted to cling to.

"Give yourself a second to adjust."

Luke nodded.

"Are you injured?" Vader asked. Luke shook his head again, and picked up Vader's irritable frustration at the one-sided conversation. He grinned and opened his eyes.

"I'm fine. Really. The impact knocked out the guidance system and gave me back control for a few seconds. I had time to hit the braking thrusters and I spun her to shed speed so we didn't plough into the far wall." He nodded back towards the crippled shuttle. "It looks worse than it was."

He was suddenly engulfed by two huge, shaggy arms.

/You have the luck of a devil/ a voice said in wookiee-speak - Chewbacca. Luke spared a second to wonder how he'd missed the wookiee's presence. It wasn't too hard to find his answer: Vader's Force signature seemed to overwhelm everything the man stood next to.

"Hey, Chewie," he said, gripping the big arms. He was being bear-hugged so tight he couldn't even turn around to make eye contact. Chewie was growling at him, but too fast for Luke to keep up. He caught a few words - reckless and untamed and something that sounded like sister, but his wookiee-speak must be rusty because that last one didn't make any sense. "All right, all right - I hear you."

There was a creak from the shuttle behind them. Vader turned to face it, stiffening suddenly. "Palpatine?" he asked, without looking back at Luke.

Luke sobered quickly. "Still alive," he confirmed. "Injured, but alive."

For a second, no one spoke. The atmosphere was suddenly electric.

"Very well," Vader finally said.

He started to move back towards the shuttle. Luke frowned at his back.

"Father-"

"Keep him outside," Vader said, addressing Chewbacca with a pointed finger. "Don't let him come after me, no matter what."

Luke glared, feeling a flare of anger burst through his surprise at the order. "What?! You can't go in there alone. I'm with you." Chewbacca's hold tightened as he tried to move towards Vader. "Let me go, Chewie."

"Luke..." Vader said. From the corner of his eye, Luke saw Vader's saber hand grip the weapon tighter. "I have to do this alone."

"No, you don't," Luke insisted, frustration sharpening his words. "You don't have to fight alone. I'm with you."

Vader paused for a second before moving back to Luke. He placed a hand on Luke's shoulder. Luke glanced from the gauntlet to the eyes of Vader's helmet. "You underestimate me, Luke. This is not about a fight. We have already won."

Luke frowned. "Then what is it about?"

Vader glanced back at the shuttle. "It is about..." He paused. Through the bond, Luke felt the texture of his father's thoughts wrestling in a confusion of anticipation, and sadness, and something too complicated for Luke to define. "Putting to rest some old ghosts." He moved away again. "Stay here. This will not take long."

Luke let out an exasperated breath. Chewie, anticipating a fight, growled softly and tightened his grip. But one good Force-shove, and Chewie would be off him. They all knew it.

Vader stepped across the threshold of the ysalamiri's influence, and the bond between them was abruptly crushed.

You underestimate me... Vader had said.

And maybe Luke did. Maybe Vader didn't need his help in the form of him charging in, swinging a lightsaber. Maybe he needed Luke to show a bit more faith in him than that.

A memory flashed through his mind, seemingly a lifetime ago now: himself, hesitating at the edge of the dark side cave on Dagobah. Strapping his weapons to his belt despite Yoda's disapproval, not realising the lesson wasn't about fighting danger and defeating enemies, but about fighting temptation and defeating the enemy within.

He'd failed then.

But he had the faith in his father to know that Vader wouldn't fail now.

"Father," he said. Vader looked back over his shoulder. "You're right. Go finish it. May the Force be with you."

Vader nodded, and disappeared inside.

Luke had not lied. The inside was indeed in better shape than the exterior of the shuttle. Vader picked his way through a floor littered with the detritus of the crash, towards the cockpit.

There was the sound of laboured breathing from the fore of the ship. The sound of Vader's respirator was steadier and calmer than that pained gasping.

There was little light in the interior of the ship. Vader could barely make out the shape of his old master until he was almost on top of him. Sidious' back was to him, facing the cracked forward viewscreen.

Vader stopped.

"So... come to gloat, have we?"

The man's words had a strange timbre to them, a watery after-note. Vader supposed that was due to the twisted length of metal that protruded from the back of his seat, dark with blood from the shoulder it had impaled on its way through.

"Gloating was always your favoured weapon, Sidious, not mine," Vader said, moving around the chair to face the old man. The floor was tilted slightly at an angle, to the right and towards the fore of the ship. Vader gripped the back of the co-pilot's chair to stay upright. Palpatine's wrists were secured to his seat arms with duct-tape, although the force of the crash had loosened the tape. Not that it mattered: Palpatine wasn't going anywhere with that shaft of metal piercing his shoulder and pinning him to the chair's back.

Palpatine let out a mocking laugh. "Forty-five years old, and still as naive as the nine-year-old slave-boy who couldn't cope with leaving the protection of his mother's skirt." He grimaced. "I tried to help you, Anakin."

Vader snorted. "The days when I believed that are long since past."

"So I see." Palpatine gave a snarl that was almost feral. "Why are you here then, my friend? To watch me die like an animal?"

As gratifying as he might have once found that concept, it was no longer the prospect of killing Palpatine that was driving him on. "I've freed myself from your ties, old man. I came to make certain that this ends here."

There was a strange glint in Palpatine's eye at that. "The pet that slipped his leash," he said mockingly. "You don't know what the word 'freedom' means."

Vader said nothing. Perhaps he truly didn't know what if meant to be free, yet - but sure as there was still sand on Tatooine, he meant to find out.

Then Palpatine's expression changed. The tension left his body and he went still, his eyes closed. For a moment, Vader wondered if the man had breathed his last. But then Palpatine opened his eyes again. "Please, Anakin. For what we once shared - allow me a true death."

Vader tilted his head slightly. "As you would have given me?"

"I would not have denied you the Force, Anakin," he hissed angrily. "I may have wronged you, but if you truly believe you've left the dark side behind, tell me how you justify this callousness. Not even you denied the Jedi you slaughtered their joining with the Force. You've won. I've lost. Come, Anakin - what harm can it do to be merciful?"

The persistent use of his old name was irritating. "You appeal to a part of me that no longer exists, Sidious."

"If you are no longer my pupil, and no longer Anakin Skywalker, then who are you? Something less than them both, I think."

"Or something more," Vader countered.

Palpatine snorted and shook his head in disgust, wincing as the movement jarred the spike in his shoulder. "You're weak. You've always been weak. That is why everything you touch fails." He pinned Vader with a glare. "You're doomed to tear apart everyone who reaches out to you. You don't know the difference between love and hate. That was why you took to the Dark so easily."

Vader shook his head at the jibe. It seemed that Palpatine had abandoned all attempts at subtle persuasion for a last, scathing attack. "If that is a weakness, then so be it. Neither the Jedi nor the Sith could teach me how to stop being myself. I will take my chances."

"One wrong step from that boy of yours, and he'll be your enemy," Palpatine said, lips curled into a snarl. "You'll open your eyes one day and see that your raging emotions have torn him limb from limb." His expression softened to a mocking smile. "But then... that will hardly be a new experience for you, will it? Not after what became of his mother."

For a moment, neither man spoke.

The tirade seemed to have robbed Palpatine of his remaining energy and he sat gasping for breath.

Rage rippled through Vader briefly. He looked down at the saber in his hand. In one quick movement he could strike Sidious down, silence the poison in his words. He toyed with the idea for a moment before refocusing on the old man, re-attaching the saber to his belt.

"My children have proved they are more than capable of looking after themselves, protecting themselves. Even from me. The only true danger lies in allowing someone else to make my decisions for me." He paused, surprised by the lack of rage in his voice. But it was merely a statement of fact. He let go of his hold on the co-pilot's chair and folded his arms over his chest. "Those days are now over."

Palpatine's breathing came shallow and fast, his expression showed rage. "Don't be so sure."

"He's been ages, Chewie," Luke said, glancing for the hundredth time at the shuttle's hatchway. The air in the hanger was freezing and he shuddered. But that shiver was more than just cold, he was sure.

Chewie fixed him with a gentle stare. /He will be back/ he said. He'd given up on the restraining bear-hug and simply had his hand on Luke's shoulder.

Luke pressed his lips together. "I know," he said, turning to face Chewie. "But why is it that we meet up for the first time in weeks and one of us is running off somewhere else within a few seconds?" He smiled at the irony. "And I'm cold and hungry and ready to go home."

Chewie grunted noncommittally, clearly unconvinced that it was just hunger and cold making Luke edgy. But he reached into the med-sack and pulled out a ration bar, held it out for Luke. Luke took it with a grimace of distaste, but his stomach growled gratefully.

Halfway through his first bite of the tasteless bar, Luke frowned and stopped eating.

/Cub?/

Luke glanced up at Chewie. He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Something felt wrong. I-"

He stopped as he felt it again. Something had... changed... around them. He focused on the Force, feeling the energy rushing easily to his reach. Nothing felt any different, though. The Force still flowed freely, except for in shuttle, which it seemed to bypass like a river flowing around a boulder in its path. Nothing but-

Luke sucked in a breath.

/What is it?/ Chewie asked, laying a concerned paw on Luke's shoulder.

"The ysalamiri," he said. Chewie looked confused. "The creatures that block the Force, they're dying. I can feel the Force in the aft of the ship now - I couldn't before. I can..." He trailed off, feeling the bubble of Force-lessness shrink further.

He started towards the ship, but Chewie grabbed his arm and held him back.

"We have to warn Vader," Luke said, the words clipped. "He won't realise they're dying until the Force comes back in the cockpit, and if Palpatine is still alive-"

/He told you to stay here/ Chewie pointed out. /No matter what happened./

Luke let out a groan of frustration. "But he didn't know the ysalamiri were dying-" he stopped as the trilling sound of a comlink interrupted.

They both glanced in the direction of the sound. Luke let out a frustrated moan. There wasn't the time...

Chewie fished it from his bag and flicked it to receive.

"Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on down there?"

Leia. And she wasn't wasting time with pleasantries, Luke thought, wondering how long she'd been waiting for someone to answer a hail.

But as much as he wanted to talk to her, there wasn't time. "I'm going in there," Luke said, yanking his arm from Chewie's grasp.

Leia must have heard his voice. "Luke? Is that you?" she demanded to know, although her tone was softened with relief.

Luke closed his eyes, unable to ignore the worry in her voice. He leant closer to the pick-up. "I'm here, Leia. Sorry to worry you."

Leia's reaction was caustic. "Worry me? Worry me? Oh brother, you better be okay, because when I get my hands on you-"

"I'm fine Leia, really," he interrupted. He glanced back at the shuttle, feeling impatience coiling in his muscles. He needed to get in there. He had to warn his father...

"Good," she said. "If you're finished playing down there, we need you up here."

Luke frowned, there was something not quite right about her tone of voice. He shared a glance with Chewie. "Leia?"

"Yes?" she said, tightly.

"What's wrong? Is Executor-"

Leia's voice sounded, if it were possible, even sharper as she interrupted. "She's stable. We put two men aboard with slicing experience. They've destroyed the virus Palpatine unleashed and regained control of the life support systems. Our medical frigates are returning to help with rescuing the injured crewmembers."

Something gripped hard in Luke's chest. Her tone of voice... that wasn't just irritation at not being able to contact them. There was something more in that tone. Something cold and clinical that only crept into her voice in situations where things were going wrong.

"So I guess... we won," Luke said, though without much conviction. Chewie frowned at him, at his sombre tone of voice.

"Not without cost." Leia's voice was equally dark. Again, something foreboding tingled down Luke's spine.

"What is it? Leia?" he asked.

For a moment she didn't reply. Worry flashed across Chewie's expression.

Leia's voice caught at the end as she answered, "It's Lando. He's... he's dead."

Dead?

Dead?

"What?" Luke demanded, when the word would finally form in his throat. He felt blindsided, like someone had crept up behind him and given him a blow to the head that had turned the world to darkness. He felt the blood draining from his face, his body throttling adrenaline through his system at the shock of the blow. "Dead?"

He was aware of an angry howling sound in his ears, thought that it was the scream in his own mind until he realised it was Chewie roaring out words too quickly for Luke to interpret.

He shook his head as if that could clear the sudden fog.

Lando couldn't be dead.

They'd won.

They'd won, hadn't they?

Instinctively his mind stretched out to the Force, seeking reassurance somehow. But he couldn't find Lando's presence. Instead he found Leia's, and fell into the gut-wrenching pain that had been hidden behind her steely voice. It stirred an instinctive response in him. He wanted to run to her, to get in the Falcon and hit full throttle, to reach out and quash her pain, pain that reached a blade into his soul and twisted it, demanded solace.

On the heels of that came a flash of anger. Anger directed in too many directions at once. Firstly at Palpatine for setting up this situation in the first place, secondly at the perversity of fate for dragging him through the past few weeks' dangers and leaving him unscathed, when Lando had not been overlooked by death. And lastly at Lando himself, for going and getting himself killed.

The Force boiled up within him, seeking a target for his anger. But that last thought washed the temptation away, as he realised how futile it was, how useless the anger was if it could be directed at Lando himself.

He could direct it at Palpatine, of course. That had been his first instinct, flashing through his mind with gratuitous temptation. But he shoved it aside, sidelining it as the fool's temptation that it was. It was a blunt tool, this anger. It wouldn't only be Palpatine who suffered for his fury.

"Luke? Luke?" Leia was saying, sounding anxious.

He hadn't realised he'd closed his eyes until he opened them again. He sucked in a long breath into his tight lungs. "How did he-" he stopped, realising that Chewie was no longer beside him. Premonition made his stomach turn over.

He twisted around, searching for the wookiee. And yes, there he was, roaring out his rage, his grief, as he clambered aboard the shuttle. There was murder in his friend's body language.

"Oh, hell," Luke swore.