Note: This part rated M only for psychological manipulation.
Thanks for your comments -- and all those questions! Hopefully, they'll be answered by the time the story ends (awhile yet). :)
The lights were on. Luke opened his eyes, blinking. A computer hummed in the next room. He sat up.
This was his bed. This was his room, his prison-suite. This was a plain jumpsuit he was wearing. But where were the mirrors? Mirrors and blood...
He raised his hands. No blood. No cuts. No scars.
He rose and padded barefoot into the living area. He stood in the center of the room, afraid to think.
The door slid open. Quester and Krish Starflyer entered, both carrying trays. "Thought we'd join you for dinner," Krish announced.
"I hope you don't mind company," Quester added politely.
He couldn't tell if they were real. If he spoke, would his dream end?
Krish was talking, but Luke paid no attention to the words of a ghost. He watched as Quester leaned over the monitor. "Obi-Wan Kenobi killed your father?" the physician mused aloud as he read. "I thought Lord Vader had killed-- or reportedly killed-- your father."
"Vader isn't listed as one of Kenobi's students," Luke whispered slowly.
"Well, he wouldn't be, would he?" Quester returned to the table. "Have something to eat. You're overwrought."
Luke remained standing, staring down at the other two as they loaded their plates. "Why wouldn't he be listed?" he asked, reading his lines in this macabre play.
"'Darth Vader' is a title, not a name," the physician replied coolly. "I thought you understood that."
A title, not a name.
Anakin Skywalker's title.
It was so simple, so obvious. He should have seen it earlier.
Hadn't he seen it earlier?
"Can you help me wake up?" he asked the doctor.
Quester smiled faintly. "You're not sleeping. Sit down and eat."
He sat. Krish speared a large square of dark meat and put it on Luke's plate. Quester added cooked vegetables. Luke stared.
"Eat it," Quester ordered.
He obeyed, chewing and swallowing, tasting nothing. "Is Vader back?"
"Back? He didn't go anywhere."
Vader's gone, he's left you... "I want to see him."
"Why?"
Slowly, he raised his eyes to the physician's profile. "I want to see him."
Quester paused with the fork midway to his mouth and looked at Luke for a long, silent moment before replying, "I'll let him know."
"So," Krish interjected brightly, "how was your day? Aren't you getting tired of all that research? Maybe you can come with me to the gym one day, work out. Would you like that?"
It occurred to him that Quester hadn't addressed Krish. Which he wouldn't, if Krish were dead. "Doctor," he asked carefully, "is someone else here?"
"Are you running a fever?" A cool hand rested on his forehead. "No. Are you feeling otherwise unwell?"
Why did he have to repeat everything. "Is someone else here?"
"Am I invisible?" Krish joked.
Luke folded his arms and waited, his gaze fixed on Quester.
"Captain Starflyer is here. Can't you see him?"
Agitated, he pushed back his chair and stood. "Get out. Tell Vader I want to see him. Now."
"I don't know if--"
"NOW!" he shouted, pushed beyond his limits of understanding. Only Vader could help him differentiate between the truth and the falsehoods, the reality and the hallucinations. Only Vader could help... if he would.
As soon as they left, with a furious gesture Luke swept the trays from the table, sending their contents splattering across the floor. Panting, he clenched his fists, desperate to destroy more, to find a release for the confusion and rage inside him. But there was nothing left to break in his prison -- except the computer and its peripherals, and he needed them. Taking deep breaths, he focused on calming himself. Slowly unwinding his fingers, he stretched, trying to find relaxation in movement. After several minutes, he realized he was as calm as he was going to be in these circumstances and sat down at the monitor, determined to find the information again.
To prove that he hadn't been lost in a nightmare.
To prove that he wasn't losing his mind.
He keyed in "Kenobi fight padawan".
Instead of dozens of entries, there was only one, and it proved to be a nearly generic reference to Jedi training.
"Kenobi fight padawan death".
Nothing.
But he remembered-- he remembered!
Kenobi confronted Skywalker, who had become Senator Palpatine's protégé and was suspected of masterminding the vicious attack that left the Jedi Council decimated. Despite the unexpected betrayal by his padawan, Kenobi was able to defeat Skywalker, though both Master Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker were lost after this fight to the death.
He couldn't have made up all that, could he? Was his mind so disturbed that he could have hallucinated the strange tortures, the confusion...? Then there was his accidental killing of Krish Starflyer, the bizarre behavior of Dr. Quester...
I'm going mad.
His fingers began shaking so much that he could no longer type. He folded his arms, trying to stop the quivers from rippling upward and infecting his entire body.
I'm going mad.
Was Vader not Anakin Skywalker? Was that belief a monster born in the depths of his irrationality? Why wasn't the Force helping him? Yoda hadn't taught him how to cope with insanity.
The lights went out, but that didn't matter any more. There were no established day and night cycles in this nightmare of an existence. There were only lights and no-lights. Perhaps if he thought that way, then it wouldn't matter how his captors manipulated his time-sense. Maybe that was the way to cope, by ignoring what he saw and heard and was told, and relying on the Force to guide him. Maybe he needed to let go, like in the Death Star trench, just let go and be guided.
Peace. He needed to find peace.
Luke closed his eyes, embracing the darkness and accepting it as a passing moment that he did not need to fight. He drifted into meditation, uncaring about the passage of time, and was content.
When "daylight" returned, he felt calmer, more centered than he had since leaving Dagobah. Focusing on his search of the databanks, he once again entered the key phrases. There! For a moment, the names flashed on the monitor: Kenobi Skywalker Palpatine. Then they were gone, leaving the usual list of non-information. Somehow he was being blocked from seeing what he sought. If the Force had allowed him a momentary glimpse, eventually it would reveal everything. All he had to do was practice.
"Good morning," Dr. Quester said from the doorway. "Did you have a good sleep?"
"Hello," he replied softly, refusing to be baited. They were watching him, knew his every move, knew that he had sat in front of the computer, in the dark, for however long the "night" had been. "Is Vader coming?" He was prepared for the inevitable refusal...or, at best, a long delay while Vader left him fretting and anxious.
"I am not coming, I am here," the deep voice rumbled.
Luke spun around in the chair, noting that Quester was also taken by surprise.
"My Lord," the physician said with a nod, quickly recovering his composure, "I did not realize--"
"Why would you? You are dismissed."
With a sharp click of heels and crisp bow, Quester departed, leaving Luke to wonder just how long the doctor had been in military service. For a moment, he immersed himself in the steady sounds of Vader's measured breaths; there was a strange sort of comfort in it. Luke rose from the chair and faced the Dark Lord.
"Thank you for coming."
"You sent for me."
"Yes. But I didn't really think you would come."
Vader moved, beginning to prowl around the quarters like a caged cat. "Nor did I. I am unused to being summoned quite so...proprietarily."
A very odd feeling swept through him, leaving him to wonder if it was his emotion or Vader's. He felt strangely warm, almost happy, and, most alarmingly, he felt relaxed. Maybe Vader was manipulating him, trying to lower his defenses, but...
...there was that moment he remembered...was a dream or a hallucination...or was it real?
"You saved me," he said to the restless man.
"It would have been a waste to allow you to fall."
"Not in Cloud City." He shook his head. "Yesterday...or...whenever it was. In the room of mirrors. You picked me up and saved me and said..."
"You were dreaming, child."
"No." The barest suggestion of a smile touched his lips. Child. The man known as Darth Vader would say that to the child of no other man. "You said, give me my son."
Vader's back was to him; nonetheless, Luke felt his surprise and uncertainty. "You're Anakin Skywalker," he pressed. "You're my father. You and Ben fought. I found that in one of the databases."
"Indeed?" Vader whirled. "Show me."
"You know I can't," Luke replied calmly. "It's been blocked somehow. You wanted me to find out, so why are you denying it? You were a Jedi, and now you are... this... a monster."
The harsh laugh, when amplified by the vocoder, sounded more angry than amused. "You have imagined all this. Your grip on reality is tenuous at best. I will instruct Dr. Quester to run tests to determine your mental stability."
Without even a nod, the dark giant strode toward the door.
"Father!"
The naming didn't cause the Dark Lord to hesitate.
Anakin Skywalker was gone or perhaps, Luke mused sadly, had never been in the room. Maybe Ben had told the truth. Maybe his father was truly dead.