Luke marveled at how his world was now vaster and infinitely more simple than it had ever been before. Sweat was pouring off him as he ran and leapt among Dagobah's treacherous bogs. He'd been here for weeks now, and he had no idea, none at all, what was going on in the galaxy beyond. But he knew these gnarled trees, the mucky swamps, and the sound of Yoda's cane tracing his steps through the undergrowth.

If this was what Jedi training had been like, why had his father hated it so much? Or had Anakin Skywalker ever been trained like this? Luke had to put such questions out of his mind. His family was his weakness. If he wanted to help them, he had to focus on helping the whole galaxy. It was the only way, Obi-wan had said, that held any hope at all.

Luke had to admit, he wanted to believe that. He wanted to believe there could be a future with his father and his sister, in which they were all together out from under Palpatine's cruel dominion. The only way to accomplish that was to kill the emperor and that task, both Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi assured him, would only be possible if he mastered the light side of the Force.

He loved the physical training, it was nearly as good as flying and there was no place on this planet he could not go, nor many sentient eyes following him as he did so.

His training in the Force was less straight forward. Palpatine had trained him from the very beginning to call on darkness.

"The Jedi never would have trained someone like you, Luke." Obi-wan had told him.

Luke shifted uneasily, "I'm not my father."

"No." Obi-wan agreed. "Anakin was unstained when my master brought him to Coruscant. He was just too old, and too emotional."

"I'm stained." Luke echoed, trying to fight off the flurry of feelings that tried to rise up in him.

Obi-wan's brow wrinkled, he emanated sympathy. "I was taught to believe that once a being chose the dark side they were beyond help. Obviously I no longer believe that."

"Do you suppose there is hope for my sister? Or my father?" Luke asked.

Obi-wan took a moment to think about the question, "Hope? Yes. But not expectation. They use the dark side, Luke, but occasionally they are capable of kindness, of caring."

Luke felt strangely comforted by that. Yes, his father had called Ahsoka Tano in to rescue Luke from himself. Perhaps it had been to spare Leia pain, but it had still been a kind thing to do If Vader really wanted Leia to fall to darkness he should have let Luke proceed.

So what did Vader really want? There'd been moments on Lothal when Vader hadn't seemed like a Sith Lord. He'd seemed, essentially, human. Luke knew that at least a version of Vader had returned to the light, he'd seen that in his vision in the temple. But that had been in another time, Leia's alternate future that could never be…

In that reality neither he nor his sister had bowed to Palpatine, they'd fought him and they'd won. Their father had turned back to the light at the last moment, and then he'd died on the second Deathstar.

The second Deathstar…

"Master Kenobi, I have some information I think you should know."

"What is it?" Obi-wan was staring into the fire. One thing about Dagobah was that there were no data pads and fewer entertainments.

"The emperor is building a Second Deathstar."

Obi-wan turned, face paling. "You know that for a fact?"

Luke nodded, "Yes. But you might not believe me when I tell you how I know."

"Oh?"

"Leia… well… she came back in time, or was sent I guess."

Obi-wan was looking at him strangely. Luke struggled to explain properly.

"She lived a whole different life - up to something she called the Battle of Endor, and then she got sent back. She brought all those memories back to the past with her. It happened when she was fourteen."

Obi-wan was silent for long minutes, "That explains a great deal."

"It does?" Luke asked.

"Yes. There was a disturbance in the Force at that time, but I could not explain it, I'd never sensed anything like it before. But you say she was sent back, who would have the power to do that?"

Luke hesitated, "The emperor, in the moment right before his death. At Endor."

Obi-wan smiled slightly, "He's not immortal then, finally some happy news. How many years in the future was all this?"

"Not very many." Luke supplied duly.

"Ah, then I suspect the construction of the second Deathstar must already be well underway."

"We have to destroy it!" Luke blurted.

Obi-wan smiled patiently, "We will. But tell me more of your sister's other life."

"Nerves don't suit you." Galen Marek commented, sprawled on the pristine white sofa in her apartment in his dusty grey ship suit.

"Kriff off." She spat.

Galen smiled, "Very nice. Is that your accession speech? It's succinct."

Leia laughed, "Yes. Kriff off, galaxy, I don't want to be your princess. And if you knew what I am you wouldn't want me either."

"They have absolutely no choice in the matter." Galen commented dryly.

Leia shrugged, "Neither do I."

"Well you do have one choice to make." Her sparring partner replied.

"Oh, what's that?"

"Are you going to whine and complain the whole time, or are you going to let yourself enjoy this?"

Leia sighed, "I don't enjoy taking life."

Galen grinned, "I do. You will too, if open yourself up to it."

"I don't think I can." Levity gone, the pressure in her head returned. She had no idea how to do this thing Palpatine had commanded her to do. But she had to. It was the next step.

"You killed before."

Leia nodded, "Because I had to. This is something else."

"Channel the Force first. The dark side hungers for blood." Galen advised.

"Its only going to get worse after this." Leia sighed. One death would become ten would become a hundred.

Galen looked at her, considering, "You are the least enthusiastic Sith apprentice imaginable. Don't you realize how many people I killed to get half your training? Your access?"

"Lucky me." Leia sneered. "Let's go get this over with."

"Do you have your saber?"

"Yes." Leia spat. Her irritation was giving way to anger which called the dark side, and the dark side always demanded action.

Luke woke from a nightmare of blood and gore. He'd been cutting through prisoners with a crimson lightsaber. There had been screaming. And below that tears and laughter.

He felt sick.

He crept out of the makeshift hut he had constructed and into the bushes where he vomited up the gruel that had been his dinner.

Somehow the dream was still going on, even though he was awake. He felt the dark side swirl around him, laughing as he laughed.

But he wasn't laughing. This wasn't him.

He knew that room, the secret prison within the Imperial Palace, the Emperor's own personal gulag.

Luke knelt in the dust and the mud and mediated, reaching out towards the vision.

He felt the hum of a lightsaber in his hand, and saw a second saber wielded by a wild-eyed man who looked to be near his own age.

Then with a painful crack it was over and he was gasping in the dirt, Obi-Kenobi standing over him with his saber in his hand, unlit.

"Did you just knock me on the head?" Luke gasped out, skull ringing.

"Yes." Obi-wan replied. "You were out of sorts."

Luke sighed getting to his feet, "Its Leia. She's killing prisoners. She has a red saber now. Does that mean she is Sith?"

"When you first came, you carried a red saber. Were you Sith then, Luke?"

Luke shook his head. "But she's killing people and she's laughing."

"Hmm." Was all Obi-wan said to that.

"I have to go to her, I have to stop her!" Luke yelled.

"I thought exactly the same thing when your father fell."

That deflated Luke rather quickly. "And you ended up nearly killing him."

"Yes." Obi-wan replied, suddenly shielding his reaction in the Force.

"Do you wish you had?" Luke asked quickly, before his courage failed him.

Obi-wan gave him a long look. "That isn't the Jedi way."

"But everything he's done since then."

Obi-wan bowed his head. "Anakin executed Count Dooku, Palpatine's previous apprentice. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but if we had been able to take him in alive he might have given us Palpatine. Death shuts downs all other options."

"What do I do?" Luke asked, pained.

"You train, you erase all trace of Palpatine's darkness from your heart." Obi-wan advised.

"And then?"

"Then you will reach out to your sister."

The emperor's secret prison in the bowels of the Imperial Palace was silent. Leia lay staring up at the actinic light fixtures that ran across the ceiling, not seeing, awash in sensation.

Everything was darkness, but in that darkness every color bled together, every emotion sung with poignancy, and every being for miles around was visible to her.

She focused on Galen who sat against a wall, watching her.

"Are there more?" Her own voice sounded strange to her. All she could remember hearing were screams.

"No. You killed them all." Galen Marek replied easily. "Are you having fun over there?"

Leia wiped something sticky off her face as she sat up. All around them were bodies that had once been people, a great suffering mass which she had silenced.

"Is it always like this?" She asked dreamily. It was blood on her face, on her hands, her lips.

"You've done well. Would you like to wash up?" Galen's amusement streamed off of him.

She looked at her hands, she was still holding her lightsaber, the blade turned off. She hooked it to her belt.

"We should go out into the city." She told her friend. "Find more."

Galen laughed, getting to his feet and offering her an arm as a gentleman might. "I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Oh. Okay. Yeah, we can go back to my rooms."

That sparked something in Galen's mind, she could tell. She just laughed.

Galen led her up out of the detention block. The palace guards were gone, but she sensed a sanitation crew was hiding out of sight, hoping not to draw her attention.

Galen pulled her in the opposite direction. "Ignore them, they have an important job to do. You can't kill them."

Leia giggled and leaned into Galen, letting him lead her to the turbolift. Up they went. Galen used a special code and the lift didn't stop until they had reached her floor.

The troopers who had stood guard at her door as long as she could remember were absent. They strode in to her darkened rooms.

Galen led her into the back rooms and pointed to the fresher.

She stared up at him, wondering if she should…

Minutely he shook his head, "You'll feel clearer after a shower."

Leia shrugged off her robes, not caring that she was being watched and stepped into the water which pooled red at her feet for a long time before it ran clear.

When she emerged Galen was absent but a soft robe had been set out for her.

She pulled it on, she did feel clearer now.

She wandered through the rooms of her apartment until she found Galen Marek in her sitting room.

She glanced at the red footprints she had made on her pristine carpet then shrugged, sure some cleaning droid would be around in due time to remove them.

"You're still here."

"How are you feeling?" Marek asked in return.

"Calmer I guess? I was pretty worked up." Leia couldn't help it, she blushed.

Marek shrugged, "Its like that. Soon the exhaustion will hit and you'll be dead to the world. I wanted to warn you about the dreams."

Leia wrapped her arms around herself, she'd had enough of dreams for several lifetimes. "Okay?"

"After going into the dark side so deeply you'll dream you're back in the heat of it. It may be hard to tell what is dream and what is reality. So I'm going to be out here all night in case…"

"What, I go sleepwalking and start killing people?"

Marek shrugged, "Yeah."

Leia thanked her friend and returned to her bedroom alone, the fatigue already hitting her. She thought of the screams of the prisoners as she had cut them down one by one. The red mist caused by missing limbs, and the smell of burnt flesh….

She should feel regret. She knew she should. She remembered the feeling but couldn't quite reach it. It seemed distant, abstract… like anger had felt once, not so long ago, when she'd been so damaged she couldn't walk out of her rooms without having a panic attack. Was this better? This strange cold floating, the irreality of the lives taken, just basking of the power each kill had given her.

She dreamed not of carnage but of her brother. Luke ran, hale and hearty, through the swampy jungles of a vibrant green planet. His skin had regained something of the tan he'd had when he'd first come from Tatooine and his clothing was stained through with sweat. He looked radiantly alive and… different, brighter.

She drifted like a ghost along side him as he performed Force enhanced jumps and flips through the jungle.

Then he ran into an open clearing, the sun falling down on him, and knelt in mediation.

"Leia." He spoke her name.

She hovered near him, wondering if she could reply.

Luke. Her lips made no sound and Luke did not look up.

"Leia, I beg you not to go down that path. Please. I can't bear to lose you." Luke's eyes were closed, but tears dribbled onto his cheeks.

Luke, you don't understand. She wanted to say, but it was useless. She wasn't with Luke, he couldn't hear her.