Luke received his official summons from the Emperor the next day. On edge and—ever so slightly—trembling, he flew to the Palace after his father had shut himself in his office, probably to trawl through the very little data he had on Angel.
At least, Luke hoped he had very little data.
That would be... problematic, otherwise.
His hands were slick on the controls by the time he'd arrived at the Palace; he tried to surreptitiously wipe them off on his trousers, smiling tightly at the red guard who had come to the landing pad to bring in. This was hardly the first time Palpatine had sent an escort to let him into the Palace—in fact, that was even protocol for when the Emperor had summoned guests but was not holding court in his throne room. But still...
If Palpatine had clocked onto who he was...
...he didn't like having an armed, fiercely loyal and obedient red guard at his back.
The opulent corridors of the Imperial Palace passed by with a blur, though as always Luke took a moment to let his eyes linger on the portraits of the dear friends and compatriots of the Empire that lined the south-west corridor. Padmé Amidala was sat next to some wrinkly old moff, unsmiling but with a soft gaze that made Luke feel instantly calmer when he passed under it.
His mother would have been proud of him.
He knew that. His father never missed an opportunity to tell him. He knew it like he knew his father, like he knew himself.
Like he knew Leia.
Leia was his—
No, don't think about that here.
A pair of double doors, emblazoned with the Imperial cog, taller than Luke's father and heavy enough that Luke would have needed the Force to open them alone, loomed before him. His escort stopped beside them, adopting their usual stiff-backed, alert position, and Luke glanced between them and the doors for a moment.
They were not automatic doors—Luke didn't think he'd ever been this deep into this wing of the Palace, but he could tell that. And when he put his hand up to the door to push, the silk-smooth feel of the grain, the deep, deep reddish-brown of the wood, made his brain tick.
So. Wood from one of the Wookiees' sacred trees on Kashyyyk, felled and pillaged to add to the facade of Imperial might.
Luke fought to keep his disgust off his face and pushed.
The door didn't budge. But after a moment, he felt the temperature plunge and it swung inwards of its own accord—and Luke walked inside accordingly, trying to feel larger than a tatoo-rat.
The room itself was very pleasant. A sitting room, of sorts, with the assorted two sofas and one armchair in the middle of the room. A floor to ceiling window dominated two walls, wrapping around the corner, with a spectacular view of the Coruscanti starscrapers and airlanes. Every so often a TIE on patrol would zip past, like beads on a string—like planets in adoring orbit of their star.
The carpet was thick, and soft, the colour of Naboo's emerald vineyards—the last colour, ironically enough, Luke would have expected Palpatine to favour. The man himself was standing by the corner, staring out at his Empire.
"Ah, young Skywalker." He turned at the sound of Luke, unclasping his hands from his back. He had eschewed his usual black bathrobes for a finer, burgundy and purple robe that looked vaguely like something Luke had seen a holo of him wearing as Chancellor. Luke, for all that he knew he looked perfectly neat and respectable in his simple shirt and jacket in various shades of dark red and blue, dark trousers tucked into dark boots, felt extremely underdressed.
Palpatine smiled, and Luke hoped he thought that was the only reason he felt uneasy.
He took a few steps towards the little island of sofas in the middle of the room and, unnervingly quickly, had settled onto one of them.
"Sit, sit." He patted the sofa next to him, gnarled hand gentle but firm. "Come, my boy, I don't bite."
Luke highly doubted that.
But he sat.
"Now," he folded his hands in his lap, "I'm sure you've been wondering why I called you here."
Luke did not reply, but he leaned forward slightly—ever so slightly. He didn't want to be too close to him if he could help it.
"I am aware there has been a certain... distance, between us lately. I can only assume you were too tired or busy to reply, or that my attempts to make contact were lost somewhere along the line."
Luke still said nothing.
Palpatine sighed. "I need a favour from you, my boy."
Luke, intrigued despite every gram of sense in him screaming at him not to be, asked, "What is it?"
But still, Palpatine was not forthcoming. He watched him for a moment longer. "You remind me so much of your mother, you know? Her spirit, her intelligence, her fidelity. She would be so proud of you."
Luke... suddenly wanted to cry.
He forced himself to swallow. "Thank you, Excellency." He still had no idea what the right title to use was.
"And I hear you court the same friends as she did—you know, she was close friends with Senator Organa's father too? Though I do wonder," he sighed, "what she would think of him if she suspected what I do..."
And once again, Luke said nothing.
"You are a shining jewel," Palpatine told him, lifting a hand and placing it on his shoulder. "You glow in the Force like a sun; you have power, dear boy, that I do not."
Well, Luke thought. If he was admitting that out loud, he needed something badly.
"A great change is coming," the Emperor continued. "I can sense that much, but I can sense no more. This... Angel clouds my sight."
Luke's heart began to pound.
Palpatine smiled, and patted him on the knee. "But, perhaps that is not unusual. It is for the young to see, it is for the old to understand. I need you to cast out your senses and look into the future for me; when you tell me what you see, I will tell you what it means."
Luke doubted he'd ever want Palpatine's take on events.
But, he was here. He could refuse, but so far the Emperor had been civil—surprisingly civil, considering Luke's months of stony silence—and he didn't want to know what would happen should that mask of civility fall, and expose the monster beneath.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Luke said at last, playing with the safe title, watching that ancient face with wary eyes. They were almost crinkled shut with his unfaltering smile.
Then Luke shut his eyes.
The Force crackled always at the back of his mind, and it was second nature to reach for it like a flower towards the sun. The moment he dipped his fingers into that current and felt everything crystallise around him, like sunlight had branded the world in neat, sharp lines, it was impossible to miss Palpatine's minute gasp.
Greed, possessiveness, leaked from his shields like oil, both reflecting the metaphysical sunlight in a thousand shines of iridescence and gobbling it up. Luke couldn't hold back a shiver, and the light shivered with him, trailing around his limbs like cobwebs rather than venture near the black hole.
"So much power..." Palpatine whispered, almost to himself. "It begs to be trained..."
The sooner he finished, the sooner he could leave. Luke breathed, and intentionally reached forwards, searching for... he didn't know what. He was stumbling through marble corridors of light and if he tried to see, he was lost.
Then he saw.
Flashes, only. A storm-lashed day on Coruscant but the sun shining through it in the gleaming flicker of rainbow light. The corridors of the Imperial Palace, the windows thrown open and banners in red, gold and blue fluttering in the confetti of rain. People bustled in and out, congregating as always around the bloody, beating heart of the Palace: the throne room, kept dim and dreary, except—
It wasn't.
The windows were open here, too. Light washed in, a cleansing fluid, and, sitting on the throne in robes of white, gold and pale blue...
Luke's eyes flew open. He didn't realise he was panting, heart racing, palms damp, until he tried to suck in a breath.
"What is it?" Palpatine urged. He laid a hand on Luke's pale cheek; Luke shied away, but he followed the motion until Luke was forced to accept it. "What is it, child, tell me."
Disturbed and off-guard, Luke had half a second to pull together a lie capable of withstanding Palpatine's interrogative gaze, or tell the truth.
Luke was not a liar.
"I saw... myself," he said, gaze shifting to the (as always) dim windows. Something flickered past the transparisteel; a bird, or maybe a holocam droid. Or perhaps it was nothing at all, just the darkness creeping in for his consciousness. "As..."
If he said Emperor, he was dead. Palpatine would brook no opposition, or maybe even take that as evidence that his father was mounting a coup against him (not that Luke had never debated trying to convince him to). It would make Palpatine feel threatened, which would threaten everything.
So he said, "I saw myself as your chosen successor." It wasn't a lie, it rang true—and it was vague enough to give Palpatine... hope.
Luke turned a calculatedly pleading gaze up at him. "What does it mean, Your Majesty?"
Palpatine ignored his question.
"Tell me, child," he asked instead, leaning in until his face was uncomfortably close to Luke's, "what colour were your eyes?"
Oh.
Oh no.
Teachings of the Sith were hidden, esoteric. As far as Palpatine knew, Luke had not been privy to any of them.
So he just feigned confusion. "My eyes are blue, Your Majesty."
"Yes," the word was a hiss, "but what colour were they? In the vision?"
He said, shakily but without lying, "I— I didn't think to focus on that, I assume they were blue—"
"Are you sure?"
And Luke saw his chance.
"No, sir." He shook his head. "All I saw of myself in the vision was a blur of white," and blue, "and gold."
Gold.
Palpatine sat back, satisfied, curling his lips around the soundless word.
Luke tried his question again: "Your Majesty? What does it mean?"
Palpatine resurfaced from his musings, a smile that peeled the skin away from all his yellowing teeth fixed on Luke. His hand returned to Luke's shoulder, even as he rose, and Luke—out of years of obligatory etiquette education— automatically rose with him. He felt much smaller when even the hunched-over Emperor managed to stand taller than him.
"Have no fear, young Skywalker," he soothed. It was not soothing. "It bodes only well. It tells us that your destiny approaches for you, a righting of all disgraces, and you will walk your path with all the dignity and promise you have."
Luke, again, tried not to shudder. He failed.
He hoped Palpatine took it as excitement.
"Now, that is all I have use of you for," his Emperor dismissed him. "But I have enjoyed our little discussion; I hope to call on you again soon, so we can end this months-long silence. It has been terrible."
Luke gritted his teeth.
"And I have one more, tiny request of you, Luke."
For some reason, seeing the Emperor's lips wrap around his name like that, hearing the familiarity in his tone, was the worst part of this entire ordeal.
"You can do away with all these petty titles of Majesty and Excellency and sir," he said, laying a hand on his breast. "I only wish for you to call me master, as recognition of the special relationship I hope we can cultivate—that I know we will have to cultivate, for the glory of your vision to come true."
Luke nodded respectfully, and bowed. "Yes, Y—"
"Uh, uh."
Head still down, Luke grimaced and corrected himself.
"Yes, master."
Luke's shuttle landing in the hangar of the Executor was met with the most unlikely—and honourable—of escorts. He frowned down at the man through the viewports of the cockpit and jogged down the ramp, concerned. He didn't even have any troopers with him.
"Captain Piett," he greeted, automatically giving a perfect salute and smiling to himself as Piett's eyes blew open in shock. Piett flapped his hands awkwardly until he put it away. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Oh, I heard you submitting your personal code and thought I'd take the chance to... speak to you myself, sir," he said, glancing around somewhat shiftily.
"Don't call me sir. You've known me since I used the bridge to play hide and seek as a kid. Please don't call me sir."
Piett's inscrutable face cracked a smile. "Then don't address me as Captain Piett, Luke," he shot back in that droll tone Luke instinctively smiled at. "And don't salute."
"I must've learned something in all those years away," Luke teased.
"You're a clever boy, I have no doubt you did. But there's no need to make me feel old."
"Alright, Piett," he acquiesced, and they started walking out of the hangar to where Luke knew his father's offices were. "Why did you come to meet me?"
"I just wanted to ask if you were alright."
Luke shot him a look, just as they passed an ensign who stared at the teenage boy walking comfortably in line with the captain, not half a step behind. "Why wouldn't I be alright...?" Piett knew him too well—had he heard about Angel? Did he suspect—
"Your father is in a fury. He has been on edge all day, and informed me personally that the moment you arrived I was to have you escorted straight to him so you could... debrief."
Luke snorted. "He's so dramatic."
"I would not recommend saying that to his face right now."
"Someone has to." They stepped into an open turbolift; after a moment, the doors slid shut with a ding!
"Nevertheless, he is in one of those states that I haven't seen since Gatalenta." Luke winced at the memory of what he happened there. "I thought something must have happened to you."
Luke winced further at the... concern there. Concern for him, but also for himself—and his crew.
"How many were sent to the medbay?" Luke asked quietly.
"Only two, but please answer—"
"How many died?"
Piett sighed. "Four," he muttered. "Please, just tell me what happened."
Luke shrugged. It aggravated his not-quite-completely-healed shoulder. "I assume you heard about the attack on the on-planet academy? I was there. I got shot. Father's been tearing himself apart trying to find who did it."
Piett's eyes blew wide. "You were shot!?"
"It's not bad, the medical droid cleared me."
"No wonder he's so anxious." He bounced on the balls of his feet—a nervous gesture very, very rarely seen on someone with such ironclad composure.
Luke cringed just at the thought of what had driven him to that extreme.
"I'll speak to him about this," he promised. "I... didn't realise it got so bad, when—" He cut himself off.
Actually, he had known that.
Guilt scorched in his chest.
Piett gave another droll smile at the look on his face. "You've saved a lot more lives than you've ended, Luke," he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. His sleeve slipped down as he did; Luke's eyes found the little pink bracelet looped around his wrist, cluttered with mismatching yellow, green and magenta beads.
Piett followed his gaze. "These have saved a lot of lives as well," he said. "No one you've given a bracelet to has ever come to harm; Lord Vader won't touch them."
"It shouldn't be like that," Luke muttered. It... really wasn't great that the Empire allowed his father to get away with that. Friendship bracelets made by a nine year old should not be the only thing that stopped him.
Piett just grimaced, and didn't reply.
The turbolift came to a stop, and Luke automatically made to get out, only for Piett's hand on his shoulder to stop him. He glanced at the floor: they weren't there yet.
Someone else got in instead: a tall, dark-haired man who looked oddly familiar. He smiled at Piett and, after a moment of well-masked confusion, nodded at Luke respectfully.
"Hello, Firmus," he said. Piett hummed a greeting in reply. "And you must be Lord Vader's son; it's an honour to meet you."
"Likewise, sir," Luke smiled winningly in return. "Am I correct that you're General Veers?"
He looked momentarily taken aback, but accepted Luke's hand when offered and nodded. "I am."
He was too polite or tight-lipped to ask how Luke knew, but Luke supplied it anyway: "I'm good friends with your son. You look a lot like him."
Something in Veers's posture relaxed, and he regarded Luke with something else in his gaze.
"Are you?" he said. "Have you noticed anything off about him recently?"
From what Luke had heard about the relationship between Zev and his father, he doubted there was enough consistency or total goodwill for anything to ever not be off, but Luke just took the question as the genuine paternal concern it was, and frowned.
"No," he said. Then he considered his stiff behaviour at the open day a bit more and said, "Yes, actually. Something minor, but a tiny bit off."
"Was this because he may have happened to witness you getting shot?" Piett asked dryly.
Luke laughed, as he was meant to. "Possibly." Except it had been before that, hadn't it? "I couldn't place why he seemed that way though, I'd have to talk to him more about that."
"If you can, do." Veers pinched his lips. "I don't have much time for him."
The words were cold. Luke winced at how they sounded.
But the fact he'd said them at all, to a complete stranger who still had a better relationship with his son than he did, said so much.
And Luke had to wonder how much Zev actually knew about his father's love for him, or if this poor communication just hurt him more.
"I—" Luke began to say, then the turbolift reached his floor. "I have to go."
"I assume you can find your own way from here, Luke?" Piett glanced at him. "I should be getting back to the bridge."
"I can make my own way from here, yes." Luke stepped out, and turned away, towards the dark sun that had already turned its orbit towards him. "My father's expecting me."
For a moment after Luke left, there was silence in the turbolift. Then Max remarked, "So that's Lord Vader's son, eh?"
Piett smiled. "Yes. That's Luke."
"You know, despite all your stories, I expected him to be more..."
"Like his father?"
Max exhaled a breath. "Yes."
"Understandable," Piett admitted, "but Luke's nothing like Lord Vader. He's a veritable angel."
Max raised an eyebrow. "I'm surprised he's friends with Zev and I haven't heard about it."
"Luke's friends with everyone." Piett shrugged. "It's in his nature. And if anyone can calm Lord Vader when he's enraged... he can."
"I hear," Luke said by way of greeting, striding clean into his father's meditation room and planting his hands on his hips, "that you have killed four people today."
"Spare me your bleeding heart and talk about something important," his father snapped. His hyperbaric chamber was open around him, like an oddly cracked egg, and his helmeted head stood out like a drop of ink against the white. "What did Palpatine want?"
"You have to come up with better ways of managing your anger, that don't involve murder."
"I am a Sith, and this is irrelevant."
"Those people had family, parents—imagine how you would feel if you got a message saying I had died just because my commanding officer was in a bad mood—"
"Enough." Vader stood from his seat to stride over, until he was close enough that it hurt Luke's neck, craning his head back to look him in the eye. "Answer my question."
"Resorting to intimidation, huh? That hasn't worked on me in six years."
They glared for a few minutes longer, then Vader sagged. Did not relax, remained stiff, but... loomed less.
"I did not ask you here to argue," he said tightly, and gestured Luke through to the next room, his office, where there was a scrappy sofa for Luke to sit on. Luke did, running his fingers over the Loth-wolf and shaak shaped cushions he'd insisted on having when he was little. "And nor did you come here to argue, I suspect. There is nothing more to be discussed in this subject, so I suggest we move on."
"There is everything in this subject to be discussed," Luke shot back. "And we will be covering it this evening—"
"We will not. I have work to do, and cannot return home tonight. I will see you tomorrow instead."
"—but I concede the point. Continue." Luke folded his arms across his chest and tried to ignore what he'd just learned; his heart raced. If his father wasn't on planet tonight, tonight was the perfect time to...
"Rather, you continue," Vader pointed out, seating himself at the desk. "What did Palpatine want?"
Luke grimaced. "He wanted me to look into the future for him," he said. "Apparently this whole... Angel business is clouding his sight, and he wanted me to use my shining jewel powers to look for him."
"And what did you see?" his father asked, wisely ignoring the strange imagery. Luke wasn't sure he understood it himself.
He swallowed. "I saw..."
He trailed off. His father tilted his head from behind the desk, and Luke could feel his raised eyebrow.
"I saw a day of sun and rain, with the Imperial Palace well lit for... some sort of ceremony. A celebration. A festival. Or a coronation." He worked his jaw. "And I saw myself on the throne."
He sensed nothing from his father for a moment.
Then he sensed triumph.
Luke lifted his chin. "Father? What does it mean?"
"I have no great skill with foresight, little one," Vader said immediately, though his confident tone belied his words, "but I have hope for this case. I believe you will be Emperor."
Luke froze.
It had been nagging at the back of his mind from the moment he saw it, especially with all those crimson banners fluttering, but...
To hear his father confirm it...
"I don't want to be Emperor," he whispered.
His father tilted his head. "What."
"I don't want to be Emperor," he said, a little louder. "He— Palpatine—"
"I am well aware you are not a fan of the current Emperor, son, but that is just a reason to be more excited about one day replacing him."
"It's a terrible job! I'd have to deal with politicians all day!"
His father couldn't find an argument to that.
"It would've been the perfect job for your mother," he told him instead, "and it will be the perfect job for you."
"I am not my mother!"
"But you are far more like her than you think, son," he pushed. "You are charming, you are likeable, and you are capable. You fight for justice just as fiercely as she did, and I would trust no one else with so much power." He added softly: "Not even myself."
And Luke was floored.
He stared at his father, tears clouding his sight until it was as though he were peering through bacta. He said, "You trust me that much?"
"Of course I trust you, Luke," his father replied instantly. "You are my son, and you are the greatest son I could ask for, even when nagging me about how I treat my subordinates. No one else is as capable, or as loyal, as you."
Luke blinked. One of those tears caught on the edge of his eyelid and tipped over down his cheek; he went to wipe it away.
The Force only corroborated his father's words. A part of him wanted to bask in it, revel in it: his father loved him. His father was so, so proud of him.
And Luke was a traitor.
Luke was not loyal.
Luke was the criminal his father hated and hunted so passionately.
Fresh tears flood his eyes, and he bowed his head, hoping he mistook them for overwhelming joy.
"Thank you, Father," he said. "I... don't know how the future will get there, if it gets there at all, but I will endeavour to make you proud."
His father rose, to come closer and put a hand on his shoulder. Tilted his head up to face him.
"Luke," he intoned. "You already have."
Han hadn't come back to Nar Shaddaa in months—not since the kid had enlisted him in his treason, and paid him handsomely for it. But business was slow on that front at the moment—apparently Luke had become a whole lot busier in the past week—so he figured he had the time to make a quick trip to the Smuggler's Moon, meet some old contacts.
This was not one of the old contact he'd been betting on meeting, however.
"Sana," he said, doing his best to smile winningly when, actually, his heart had just started vibrating more violently than the Falcon during the Kessel Run at the sheer power of the glare she shot him. "What a surprise! Great to see you again."
Next to him, Chewie scoffed and barely restrained from turning away from the conversation that was already going south.
Sana didn't return his smile. She just shoved through the other patrons of the crowded cantina with her finger curled round the trigger of a big black blaster, and threw herself down opposite him at his table. Chewie made a nervous sound and she grinned at him, showing perhaps more teeth than necessary.
Then the smile dropped faster than Han's hand had to his blaster, and she rested her own blaster at the edge of the table in response. He was sure it was just coincidence that the barrel was pointed directly at him.
"Likewise," she said. "You're going to make me rich."
"I am?" Chewie kicked him. "That is, I mean I can. If you wanna partner up with me, but I warn ya..."
"You," Sana informed him, "have a bounty on your head."
"What?"
She reached down, without her right hand so much as twitching away from her blaster, and tossed a bounty puck onto the table with her left. It flickered and spat out a blue image of his face, and another one of Chewie's, both with matching numbers stamped along the bottom.
"Ten thousand credits?" He swallowed and tried to stay cool. "For me? Didn't think I was that important to..."
"Jabba's a bit annoyed you dropped that shipment and never paid him back."
"I'm paying him back!" He leaned forwards. "I've got a job, a long one, very dangerous, but it pays really well. He's gotta understand that. The time he gave me ain't up yet."
"You negotiated more time then vanished off the face of the galaxy. He thinks you did a runner, and he's tired of waiting." She cocked her blaster higher. "And I'm tired of waiting for the money you owe me as well."
"The money— ah." He tried smiling again. "Now, that was all a big misunderstanding—"
"I pretended to marry you for a con, and you ran off with my cut."
"You're still bitter about that?"
She glared. He winced.
"Give me my cut now," she said, "with interest, and I will walk away without selling your location to any bounty hunters."
"Now then, Sana—"
"What's it gonna be, Solo?" Her fingers tightened on the trigger.
"I don't have the money with me right now," he said. "As you said, I gotta repay Jabba. But..."
"But?"
He tried the smile one last time. "I have a job. It's paying real well. You just gotta trust me, and I will get back to you in two standard months, with all your money."
"Trust you?" She snorted. "No thanks, Solo."
"Yeah, I wouldn't've taken that option either," he agreed. His fingers constricted around his blaster. "But I have a better way of settling this—"
A moment later, the cantina erupted with sparks and Tibanna gas and screams.
