My last multi-chapter AU that I wrote for Xtober 2020, finally posted to FFN. Warning: this is dark, and ends dark, so don't read if you don't like that. Major character death, twisted thoughts and unhappy endings abound.
That entire mission had been a disaster.
The rain sluiced down around him, trickling through the rocks that were mounded on top of him, hitting his head with a mocking tap, tap, tap that ran down his back in rivulets of freezing quicksilver.
His leg hurt.
His leg really hurt.
He coughed. Eadu was cold, so, so cold for a boy from Tatooine, and the rain was getting to him. The avalanche wasn't the only thing on this planet that had taken him by surprise, but it was the most painful thing—now, with his right arm and leg trapped under the collapsed boulders, his life only saved by his momentary, panicked use of the Force, all he could do was lie there.
Lie there, and remember Leia's horrified expression as he fell—as the Imperial troops ambushed them, and the shots and the thermal detonators had gone off, and the mountain had shaken around them—
And now he was here.
He was here, and he could hear him.
Luke.
The kish-kosh, kish-kosh of that respirator, in that moment, was the worst thing he had ever heard.
He needed to get up. He needed to escape, he needed to get to Leia, he needed to apologise and find a way out of this—
He needed to make this right.
This had been a disaster.
This whole mission had been a disaster.
He heard Vader when he approached. Felt, intimately, the trembling of the rocks as they slowly but surely levitated above him, in a grand display of power Luke would never be able to match, would always aspire to match, and then he was there. Darth Vader, lord of the Sith and scourge of the Rebellion, was standing there, framed by lightning and rocks and clouds, his lightsaber lit in his right hand.
Luke squeezed his eyes shut when Vader dropped the rocks away to the side with a thud, far away from him. He did not want to look at his injured limbs; they… He didn't know an adequate vocabulary to describe the sort of agony they were in.
He almost flinched when Vader knelt down beside him and brushed his cheek, tenderly.
"You did well, my son."
And yes: there was pride in his father's voice. Luke had done everything he had wanted him to.
"Rest now," Vader said, his voice impossibly gentle. "It will be alright. I am here. You are safe." He brushed Luke's cheek with the back of his hand again, then slipped his arms under Luke's shoulders and legs. Luke cried out when he jostled him, but Vader lifted him anyway. "I am proud of you, little one."
Luke hated the way his heart flopped at those words—hated how much he still craved hearing them.
"You did so well," Vader continued, and he could hear the pride, now, as Vader carried him back up the mountain side. "You destroyed the Death Star, killed Palpatine and Tarkin with it—I was so impressed with your piloting, Luke, I did not so much as have to pretend to not be able to catch you—and the intelligence you passed on… Troops are storming Hoth as we speak; soon the rest of Rebel command will be in our custody. Your ambush went off perfectly, and the Princess's team are all captured at the local base. This— I did not expect you to fall…" A pause, and Luke knew Vader was struggling under the weight of the pain Luke couldn't quite keep from him through the Force, but ploughed on. "But you will heal. I will take you back to Coruscant immediately."
Another feather gentle brush against his cheek. "Only the best medical care for my son and heir, now that I am Emperor. You have brought the galaxy to peace, Luke. Your mother would be proud of you."
But she wouldn't be, would she?
He'd told Leia about his mother—to get her to trust him, to appeal to her hero worship of Padmé Amidala. She'd told him about her, her dedication to democracy, how she would have fought with the Rebellion if she'd lived.
She would not have supported the Empire. His father was wrong. If she could see what her husband and son had done, she would have shared the expression Leia had, less than an hour ago, when they'd been ambushed by troops who called him Lord Skywalker: one of horror, disgust and betrayal.
"You have done so well," Vader murmured again. "I look forward to having you home, and I have missed you greatly… but this was a resounding success."
It was an overwhelming success. Luke had deceived the entire Rebellion and got away with it, he had handed the Empire the tools it needed to reign eternal, he had brought the war to a swift and brutal end.
But it was a disaster.
Because spies were meant to stay loyal. Sons were meant to stay loyal.
Imperial agents weren't meant to feel sympathy for terrorists, or defect.
And what sort of Imperial Prince did it make him, Luke had to wonder, if in the end… he thought the Rebellion had been right?