A few more weeks passed. It was late evening, and shadows were just starting to cloak the buildings around the apartment. Luke was in the middle of a particularly thorny essay about the invention of the Marg Sabl and its strengths and weaknesses, amusing himself with wondering whether Ahsoka would consider it a breach of protocol if he commed her just to ask about it. She'd invented the manoeuvre, after all.

Perhaps it was because he was thinking about her; perhaps it was because he was just distracted at that moment. Still, that moment coincidentally happened to be the moment he noticed her presence on the planet.

She was nearby—that was the only reason he noticed her. Leia, sitting on the sofa opposite him, glanced up, but she clearly didn't recognise the presence. "Who's that?"

He put his datapad to the side. Ahsoka was lucky they lived so far from the Palace, and she was lucky their father was on a short excursion to Alderaan for a few days. It was unlikely either Vader or Palpatine could sense her at this distance, not among the billions of minds on the planet and the chiaroscuro of them all.

"Ahsoka," he said, frowning and reaching out. You shouldn't be here.

Her mind was warm when it reached out; it was oddly jarring. He'd never realised, until he met her, just how cold everyone around him was—including Leia. No, she agreed, but I figured this was something I should explain in person. Bring your sister.

Luke looked up at Leia, who was still watching him with furrowed brows. He pushed himself up, swung his legs off the table, and said, "She wants to talk to us both."

Ahsoka had decided to climb to some irritating landing pad again, but at least this time the walkway was wide enough to accommodate a speeder. Luke didn't have to lead Leia through the rigmarole that was jumping from strut to strut; they just flew right over and settled down a few metres away from where she was.

She sat on the walkway cross-legged, in a loose meditation pose, her hands loose and relaxed on her knees. Her twin lightsabers were prominent at her side.

Upon their approach, she opened her eyes and tilted her head towards them, gaze resting curiously on Leia in particular.

Leia was staring at her as well. "Ahsoka Tano."

"Leia Skywalker," Ahsoka replied easily. "Pleasure to meet you."

"What is this about?"

He and Leia said it at the same time—they exchanged grins while Ahsoka laughed. She clambered to her feet, and turned to face them fully.

Luke tilted his head back to meet her eyes, suddenly aware that the two of them, as fairly diminutive humans, were tiny compared to an adult Togruta.

"Operation Eclipse," she said simply.

Luke sucked in a breath.

Ahsoka cast him an amused glance, but she addressed Leia when she said, "Your brother tells me you've both been assigned to this case?" Leia nodded. "What does the Empire know about it?"

"Not much," Leia admitted.

"Good. Padmé's been working on this for years. Saw's been continually on her case for not taking enough action because she never seems to do anything, all our resources are diverted towards this. If it was discovered now. . ."

Luke was itching to ask, but he didn't. Ahsoka would tell him everything he didn't to know; it was a security hazard, otherwise. He'd just have to trust that. . . his mother. . . knew what she was doing.

Huh. He'd never directly acknowledged her as his mother in such a familial way before.

Leia, however, was not as patient as him. She crossed her arms across her chest. "And what do you want us to know about it?"

"We're going to bomb the central power grid on Coruscant."

Leia and Luke exchanged a look.

"Well then," Luke commented, "a guess I made a few months ago might be more accurate than we thought."

Leia grumbled, "I hate that you were right."

"You guessed this?"

"It was a possibility. It never went into any official reports; they're for hard evidence and occasionally premonitions from the Force, not hunches."

Ahsoka sighed. "Well, you were correct. We want to take out the central power grid, take down the power for most of the planet, then take the planet while it's still dark. Without power, its defences might be severely compromised."

"What about emergency power?"

"It takes a few minutes to kick in, and is fairly minimal. If our attack is swift enough, we catch the Imperials off guard so that when it floods back in, we still have the upper hand. And," she added quietly, "the infiltration team will hopefully have taken out Palpatine by then."

Leia thought about it. A planet—a beacon of millions of lights—going dark for minutes on end, before the light returned and everything was the same, but different.

She said, "Eclipse."

Ahsoka nodded.

Luke shook his head. "It has its merits, but it won't work. The Palace itself is on a separate grid—"

"Our escapee spies from a few weeks ago"—she shot Leia a grin—"have planted their own little surprises on the Palace's power generators. We just need someone who has a high enough clearance to get to the control room and trigger it."

Luke blinked, knowing what she meant and getting a little thrill from it.

Leia asked, "If they're disabled by the time of the attack?"

"The infiltrators knew their stuff. With any luck, they'll have hidden them well enough that they aren't found for several more years. Erso and Andor are some of the best the Partisans and the rest of the Rebellion have to offer."

Erso. Luke squished down on the recognition the name evoked in him. He'd think about it later.

Instead, he asked quietly, "And the fleet?" Ahsoka winced, and he pushed, "How are you gonna get past them? Even if they're in the Outer Rim at whatever point you choose to attack, they'll be here within days, and you will not be able to hold Coruscant for long."

Ahsoka was silent for a moment.

Luke felt Leia look at him, concerned, but he didn't look back.

Finally, Ahsoka said, "Anakin controls the fleet."

That was not what Luke had been expecting. He frowned. "And. . .?"

"His capacity for attachment is. . . known to us. It was partly what got us into this situation with the Empire in the first place."

Luke's eyebrows flew up. That was a story he had not heard. But. . . "So?"

"He loved your mother with every fibre of his being, back when he stilled called himself Anakin Skywalker. Padmé's original plan was to reveal that she was alive at an opportune moment and. . . persuade him to stand down." Ahsoka shifted, folding her hands behind her back. She didn't meet Luke's stare. "The Anakin I knew would have done it in a heartbeat. He would have done anything for her."

"He won't now."

Luke, jerked out of his slightly-aghast, slightly-impressed reverie, looked at his sister. Her arms were folded across her chest.

She said simply, "He won't. He loves the Empire, he's given everything he has to it. He won't give it up for a woman who let him believe she was dead for nearly twenty years."

Her voice was confident, and her shields were tight. Luke was fairly sure Ahsoka couldn't sense the uncertainty she was feeling, but he could.

He reached out to rest one hand on her shoulder. Warm, comfortable, solid. She relaxed slightly.

Ahsoka narrowed her eyes at him. "You told me, with certainty, that if it came down to it he would choose you two over the Empire."

Luke flinched at the memory. It had been more attack at his mother than defence of his father. But it was true.

Leia thought so too. "Well, we are a different story. He'd do it for us."

"So he loves you more than Padmé?"

"No." They said it in unison; it was true. He was too reluctant to talk about their mother, in too much pain, for him to love her anything less than life itself.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? There was too much pain. There was too much to ever forgive. There wasn't with the two of them.

But if he finds out we betrayed him?

Luke crushed the thought violently. Now. . . was not the time to think about that. There might never be a time to think about that.

Ahsoka held up her hands. "Alright, alright. I don't understand. But I need to know one thing: Would he do it for you?"

Luke grimaced. Shared a glance with Leia. Swallowed.

". . .probably."

Ahsoka nodded. "Good," she said grimly, "because in light of recent events, you're the ones we're relying on to talk him round."

Luke was left genuinely stunned for a moment.

Leia found her voice first. "What? You want us to—"

"Leia," Ahsoka interrupted, infuriatingly calmly. "This is a major military operation, one Padmé's been developing for years. This is why she left you on Tatooine: so she could devote her time to this, and dissolve the Empire, and make a more peaceful galaxy for you to grow up in." Leia flinched back; Luke moved his hand from her left shoulder to her right, so he was hugging her to his side. "Every mission to rescue pilots with Rebel sympathies"—a glance at Luke—"every spy placed in the Kuat shipyards"—back to Leia—"and every moment spend building the Rebellion into a credible threat, has all led up to this. This is going to happen, with or without you. But without you. . . it will fail."

Luke was frozen. He wasn't sure whether he was holding Leia up, or she was holding him up. He couldn't move a muscle.

Ahsoka sighed. "Just. . . think about it," she offered. "The Rebellion needs you—we need your information, we need your efforts alongside everyone else's, and we need your father as well. If we take Coruscant within the next year, this Death Star will never been unleashed. Tarkin can be removed from power. We can make things right.

"I'll be back within a few days to hear your formal decision on the matter—there's someone else I'll have with me then, as well. He wants to talk to you. I. . .

"I'm sorry I have to force you into this position. But one thing I'm not sorry about, is that it will be over soon." She smiled, a little sadly. "One way or another."

Luke was on edge for days. The knowledge that his sister was supporting him eased the burden somewhat—they could share the pressure, as they'd shared everything since they were born—but still. The thought that Palpatine was now looking for a Rebel spy highly placed in the Empire was bad enough. The thought that he was being asked to betray his father while he was at it. . .

But he had already betrayed his father just by doing this, hadn't he?

And his father had betrayed him long ago. And his sister. And his mother.

Force, their family was a mess.

So when Palpatine talked to him amiably in the throne room one day, he couldn't force himself to relax. The conversation was a mocking parody of the one they'd had after he'd electrocuted him for the first time; Luke let some of that comparison leak past his shields and spotted the moment Palpatine recognised it, the attempt at a warmth smile on his face shifting to something a little more smug.

Let him think that was why Luke was tense. If it distracted from the real reason. . .

"So, my boy," Palpatine asked to begin it, gesturing Luke to sit down on the steps—just like last time—and sitting down next to him. There were a deplorable lack of chairs in the throne room. "How go your studies?"

It wasn't an unusual question. Palpatine had checked in with them often over the years, prodded them to keep speaking about their interests and fears and just talking to them. Getting to know them. It had seemed like a grandfatherly act when they were little.

Now Luke understood it was about keeping your friends close. . . and your enemies closer.

He could manipulate them all the better if he knew them, after all.

Luke said, "Well, Master. For all that it's difficult adjusting back to the classroom again." He tried to make it sound like a joke, and could not believe he'd ever thought that the smile forming on Palpatine's face could be kind.

The conversation continued, back and forth, back and forth, and the whole time Palpatine didn't so much as let a hint of suspicion slip. He didn't even mention Luke introducing himself to Erso as Skywalker at Kuat; Luke toyed with the idea that he might not have heard of it, then instantly discarded the thought. There was no way he hadn't heard of it. He had so many spies and informers, desperate to sell anyone out and climb to the top, and the bridge of the Devastator had been full of them that day.

Which made his silence all the more suspicious.

Kriff.

But the conversation went well. Luke was careful not to let even a crack form in his shields; despite his tension, he was cordial and even managed to make a few jokes; when he stood up to bow at the end, he was as subservient and obsequious as ever. He loathed it, but he performed it.

When he turned to stride out of the room, he felt those yellow eyes burning a hole in his back.

He strode faster.

His heart jack-hammered against his ribs. He paused for a moment, once he was outside, but he could still feel the gazes of the red guards on him, searching.

He kept walking.

He would argue that he had no control over where his legs took him next, muscle memory guiding them more than logical thought, but that was only part true. The truth was, he needed to settle his mind somehow. He needed to do something simple, repetitive, but that still took up most of his thoughts.

He could have headed for the training room, but he didn't want to run into his father by accident; if he sensed Luke was stressed enough to train in the rooms of the Imperial Palace instead of waiting until he got home, he would certainly come check on him. Luke didn't think he could face him—not with Ahsoka's request hanging over his head.

The second option that came to mind was one he would have sooner died than volunteer for, six months ago. But things had changed since then.

The Archives' blue light was a lot softer than he remembered.

He walked right up to Horada's desk and wasted no time in holding out his lightsaber, emitter facing towards him. She didn't respond at first, slowly moving those ice-pale eyes up the document she was reading before they settled on Luke.

No shock passed her face. Jocasta Nu had broken into these Archives once, had a lightsaber duel with both his father and the Grand Inquisitor, and deleted all the data the Jedi had collected, leaving the Empire to reconstruct everything from scratch. One arrogant teenager changing his ways was nothing to her.

She just raised one eyebrow, and took the proffered lightsaber.

"Is there anything you'd like me to file?" Luke asked.

A faint smile curled her lips—the first Luke had ever seen on her. It made him feel like he'd achieved something.

She jerked her head towards an empty desk halfway down the room. "Cynthia's ill today. Take her workload, and you'll have saved her—and me—several headaches for tomorrow."

He nodded, and got to work.

It was soothing, returning to the job that had been foisted on him all those months ago. Palpatine had done it to crush his dreams of serving at his father's side, teach him obedience. All it had taught him was patience. How to search for what he wanted to know. How to wait for the right moment to strike.

And for all that he knew that raw facts could be manipulated, falsified and spun to suit any agenda. . . it was soothing to have something reliably true under his hands. Horada was meticulous, if nothing else: she valued honesty.

It was almost like it was fated, what happened next. After the déjà vu of his conversation with Palpatine, and coming to the Archives, it was only natural that she turned up as well.

Mara Jade was perusing the shelves when she paused, goggling at Luke with unabashed shock. He smiled faintly—calmly—at her, before turning his gaze back to the datapad.

A moment later, there was the scrape of a chair being pulled up in front of it, and Jade dropped herself into it. "Never thought I'd see you in here again."

It was a friendly enough opening, almost unheard of for an Inquisitor. Luke desperately hoped it was because they were developing something akin to a friendship, and not because she wanted something from him.

"Well, what can I say." He shrugged, waving the datapad in his hand, and drawled, "I've always had a thirst for knowledge."

"Aren't you supposed to be in lessons right now?"

"I said knowledge, not writing essays until my hand drops off."

She laughed. It was an odd, nervous sound—like she didn't know quite what to do with it—but it was genuine. Luke wondered how often an Inquisitor actually laughed genuinely. "Politics?"

"Military strategy," he grumbled. "The Marg Sabl." That particular essay had proved as difficult as Leia when she hadn't had enough sleep.

"I see." A brief silence fell, and he could tell she was just as uncomfortable as he was, because she ploughed on, "What have you learnt here?"

"Well, for one thing," he said, glancing at the datapad in his hand, "there was apparently an exploratory vessel sent to seek out the Chiss homeworld once that disappeared, then reappeared on the other side of the galaxy, with none of the two hundred thousand crew members having the faintest clue how that got there."

"Fascinating. Reading up on conspiracy theories now?"

"I wish. This datapad," he waved to another, "is about how the population of ryoo flowers on Naboo has fluctuated in the last two hundred years. Apparently it surged shortly after Queen Amidala's peace treaty with the Gungans. Perhaps the Gungans who moved to Theed were especially fond of it."

He realised after he said it that he probably shouldn't have mentioned Amidala, but if she was fazed, she didn't show it.

"Really?"

"Really."

She smirked a little, but in a cheerful way; for one breathless moment, Luke thought her eyes looked green.

But then she looked up at him and they were as yellow as acid, and he let out a breath. Must have been a trick of the light.

"Anything else interesting you've found?"

Luke was still staring at her eyes, trying to find that angle they'd looked green from. He could have sworn he hadn't imagined it.

But if he hadn't. . . that meant. . .

He admitted quietly, "I found the records for the Inquisitorius. Where each member was. . . acquired."

She froze.

He continued, "You're on there, if— if you're interested. Your birth name, parents—"

"Don't." The mask hissed shut, and Luke fought the urge to grimace. "I am the Sixth Sister. All that I am is the Emperor's. That is all that is important."

He inclined his head in acquiescence. "As you wish. I just thought you might be curious."

She pushed herself to her feet, a little too quickly. Luke caught the chair with the Force before it could clatter to the floor—he'd just gotten on Horada's good side, he didn't want to ruin that so quickly.

Jade didn't notice. She stormed off too quickly to.

Though, Luke noted with melancholy amusement, she had to pause to retrieve her lightsaber from Horada first.

"Care to tell me what that was about?" said a voice.

Luke yelped—of all the call backs he'd experienced in one day, Leia had to rejuvenate that one as well.

He scowled at her as she stole Jade's vacated chair. "Where were you hiding?"

"Behind that shelf." Leia nodded to it, the scrappy bun on her head bouncing with the motion. "You must have been very distracted not to notice me."

"I suppose I was."

Leia's eyes flicked to the door, slamming shut behind Jade, then back to him. "Yes," she said. "You were."

He fidgeted. "Don't give me that look."

"You're insane."

"I know."

"She's an Inquisitor."

"I know."

"And—what? Telling her you care enough about her individuality to have found her name?" She shook her head. "You're insane." You're going to make Palpatine suspicious.

He hung his head. "I know."

She watched him for a second more.

But—

She raised an eyebrow. But what?

Leia. . .

Luke reflexively glanced behind him and leaned forward, for all that here was no way anyone could hear him anyway.

. . .I think he already is.

His vision was clouded.

Palpatine leaned back on his throne, frowning. Luke's tension could well stem from the simple fear of being in his presence in such a carefully orchestrated reminder of the last time he'd failed him—certainly, Palpatine had every intention of using the boy's natural empathy, fear, intuition to draw him further into his trap. His visions of Vader's death had only grown stronger in the six months since he first voiced them, and since then he'd been greeted with. . . snippets more, of a future he was very eager to see come to pass.

He saw Luke, glaring at his father and pledging his loyalty to Palpatine above all others.

He saw Vader, kneeling raggedly on the throne room floor, all the fight beaten out of him.

He saw Leia, fury in her snarl and desperation in her scream as she brought her crimson lightsaber crashing down against her brother's. . .

. . .and he saw her, the woman who had started this all, hanging her head and weeping for all she had wrought.

That was the sweetest vision of all.

But the Force wasn't feeding him these snippets with the usual steady flow, the certainty. He wasn't receiving them with clarity or context. They were just that: snippets. Blurry snippets, hinting at a greater story to come but hinting just as vehemently that there was far more to it than the images he grasped.

His vision was clouded, and he didn't like it.

There was a spy in his palace.

Multiple spies, for all he knew; yes, the Force assured him so. How many? Two—three? That felt about right. . .

How important were they, that they blurred his vision so? Because they were the thorn that the fabric of the universe snagged on; they, he could feel, were the tipping point on which this future he glimpsed rested.

The future he desired so fiercely was dependent on a handful of Rebels. It was. . . irksome. He didn't even know who they were.

So he meditated.

Ever a pleasant experience, he exhaled euphorically as the dark side rushed through him, made him feel. . . alive. . . in a way he rarely did. It sustained his ailing body, soothed his aches, but that was the least of what it offered. Pain was nothing to him, compared to the power he could achieve.

His own talents in the Force were significant. But as always, when he revelled in the power he could touch, he reached out to remind himself of his most devoted servants and acolytes—and his most powerful.

After all, ruling the galaxy was nothing. True power was being able to exert his will and control over every free thinking being inside it, including. . .

He found Vader first, if only by virtue of sheer strength in the Force and their bond. His apprentice was the customary storm of anger and hatred, tearing through the crew of his still-new flagship in orbit. Tearing through the crew, and removing several of Palpatine's more efficient spies, he should note; he would deal with that later. That was one game he especially enjoyed playing.

Luke and Leia came second, again by dint of their enormous potential. Leia was deep in her studies in their mother's apartment, which was where Luke should be. . . but he wasn't. In fact, he was much closer, mind ruffled but slowly soothing. . .

Well. That boy had proven a surprising capacity for surprising him recently. Palpatine wasn't sure whether to be amused, intrigued or threatened by it.

Why would he willingly return to the Archives?

Luke Skywalker, he had reportedly introduced himself to Galen Erso as, as nosy yet self-conscious as an eighteen-year-old could be. He was a talented agent; he must have known that name would make it back to Palpatine.

But what did it mean?

He had his suspicions about what Leia had truly done while she was on Tatooine. Her muted reaction to his twin suns comment had tipped that off to him, and the fact Luke knew his name was Skywalker was proof enough. Vader would never have divulged that information voluntarily.

He had, even, begun to use the knowledge to drag Leia away from her father and towards him. She was certainly feeling angry with him, betrayed, lied to, and she had always been the twin who looked up to him the most. She was the one most likely to pledge unconditional obedience to him, above all of her beloved family members.

Strange, then, that the vision had shown Luke doing so. . .

He frowned. Shook his head. No, he was thinking about this the wrong way: it was not one twin or the other. He could have both, and the father, and he could even break their attachment to each other while he was doing it. They were not the issue right now, however oddly they'd been acting due to their familial squabbles; what concerned him was the identity of these spies.

So he moved his focus off them, gladly. They'd always been annoyingly light in the Force, and eleven years on the nests of shadows that were Mustafar and Coruscant hadn't changed that. They simply loved each other too much. He'd do his best to change that in the future, but again: this wasn't his focus right this moment. They were powerful anyway.

His Inquisitors were harder to sense, but if anything they were more satisfying than the Skywalkers. They would never rebel against him, did not have even the slightest thought of it. He had perfect control of a slavishly loyal, ruthless killing squad to carry out his bidding. While he thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Skywalkers when the Inquisitors' flat state of mind grew dull, they provided the blueprint and guide for what he hoped the twins would be in the near future: they were his.

Only. . . not all of them had that flat state of mind that bored him so easily.

He frowned, and pushed harder, eager to see if perhaps he could find some entertainment among them after all. The mind in question was racked with the same constantly exploding nebula of anger, hatred and suffering that he taught all of his disciples—the broken and confused made the best followers—but also, more peculiarly, guilt. Confusion. Desire, in that it was a personal, selfish desire, and not just pure ambition.

He reached out to that strange, strange mind, and sifted through it without resistance. Whether she was consciously aware of her master's presence or not, she bowed to it.

What he found allowed him to fill in the pieces of the puzzle he'd been missing. And then. . .

. . .the future began to resolve itself, clearly, twisting into bright, multi-coloured possibilities heretofore undreamt of. . .

His fingers ghosted over the button for the comlink embedded in the arm of his throne. Eyes still shut, he waited for the call to connect.

"Your Majesty?"

"Summon Lord Vader, his children, and the Sixth Sister to my main throne room," he ordered. "I would speak with them immediately."

The man didn't question him. He never did. Instant, unswerving obedience; that was what the Emperor craved, and that was what he would exact from his followers, one way or another.

He steepled his fingers in his lap, and finally opened his eyes, resting them on the closed doors to the throne room with a barely-restrained anticipation.