Recovering from Bespin, a feverish Luke Skywalker lets slip his parentage, but what will the Alliance do with the son of Darth Vader? Their mistake proves monumental and delivers Luke into the hands of his worst nightmare. Destiny goes into an about turn where there's only one person who can save Luke from the darkside - his father.

C h a p t e r Fi v e

Leia Organa, former Princess of Alderaan, former Senator, former member of the Rebel Alliance, wondered if the misery was ever going to end. She swirled her drink around the glass before taking another sip, face wrinkling at the acrid taste that was mostly pure alcohol mixed with a little of something that tasted a little of swamp water. Lovely. Such high-class establishments she found herself drinking at these days.

She stifled the smirk behind another grimace at the taste and kept her eyes on the cantina entrance, waiting. Since leaving the medical frigate aboard a commandeered shuttle, which her conscience had demanded she return after landing, she had called Chewie and Lando and asked for a ride. Things were moving far too fast for her; far too fast. A week ago, she had been a high-ranking member of the Alliance Council. Now she was... neither rebel nor imperial; neither outlaw nor common citizen. Just Leia. All she was, had been and ever would be was described by what she had lost and it left her feeling like an empty shell of the feisty Princess Han and Luke had pulled from the heart of the Death Star.

Han and Luke; both lost to her now. Both leaving very deep scars in a heart they had managed to defrost from the icy attitude she had used as security. With them, it had felt so good to be open. Without them here it just felt vulnerable and bare; free for the whole world, alliance, senate and cantina, to scrutinise and she didn't like that. She swirled the drink again, unable to force herself to take another swig of the tepid liquid.

Several denizens had approached her in various stages of drunken disrepair, and she had waved them all off easily and with detest, emphasised by her 'borrowed' blaster. How ironic; the Princess of Alderaan who had had everything she ever wished for was now reduced to a white ship-suit and a borrowed blaster, concealed by a homespun cloak, also not hers. The strangest thing about that was that she really didn't care.

Again, she swirled the drink; again, she grimaced at the taste. Rank heat waves rose into the air around her, sweat and smoke heavy in the dark light.

"Princess?" The voice was concern and charm mixed more equally than her drink was, and she realised with some chagrin that she had swapped studying the entranceway for studying the glass.

She looked up, eyes heavy, into the wide brown eyes of a large wookiee and the concerned, down-turned mouth of Lando Calrissian.

"Hello," she offered weakly. Her fingers rubbed at the chipped glass of her drink as they seated themselves opposite her. From their worried expressions, she knew they had figured out something had gone seriously wrong and she hadn't called them for a social visit. Perhaps the rumours were spreading faster than she could run.

"What happened?" Lando's dark skin shone with sweat and she wondered if they had run from the docking bay to the cantina.

She didn't offer a smile and found her fingertips shaking. "Luke's dead."

Oh, she could have broken that better. It was cruel on all three of them to give it out so deadpan. There was silence from across the table and she glanced back up and into outright shock.

"Luke's... what?!? He wasn't that badly injured!" Lando protested, Chewbacca strangely mute. With trepidation, she studied Calrissian's clearly upset face. He had barely known Luke; had, in fact, been instrumental in his near-capture by Vader. And here he was; caring. But then Luke tended to have that effect on people. He was instinctively likable.

Had been instinctively likable.

Tears threatened her sore cheeks, stinging her eyes as surely as the tepid alcohol in her hands would. She was squeezing the glass so hard she was sure it would shatter into as many sharp little shards as her heart had. She concentrated on the liquid as Chewbacca found his voice, still quiet but rumbling deeper than she had ever heard it before. She understood little of what he said and looked to Lando in askance.

"He asked how it happened," Lando said. He looked at the glass cracking in her hands and slowly, gently pried her dirty fingers open with his own, setting the glass back onto the table.

My hands are dirty.

My hands are dirty to, what are you afraid of?

Afraid of? Of loss, of heartbreak, of exactly what she was experiencing now. She splayed her fingers out on the metal-grill tabletop and knew she had to answer Luke's friends. "They executed him. No; actually, they murdered him."

Chewie finally found his voice. He howled in outrage and disbelief and she looked at him with big, sad brown eyes. The cantina patrons barely gave them any spare glances.

"Chewie... Chewie...! Quiet down!" Lando hissed at him, grabbing handfuls of shaggy fur to try and attract the furious wookiee's attention before he started dicing the cantina occupants with those sharp claws extended in outrage.

Lando, a woefully inadequate hold on the wookiee's arms stopping any carnage, looked over at Leia where she remained seated. "Why?"

This was the hard part, the part where Chewie really was likely to start tearing arms off the nearest sentient. The part she could barely say. So she only whispered it.

"They got scared. They found something out..." Come on Leia, say it. She put on an emotionless mask and steeled herself as both Lando and Chewie looked down at the quite, petite figure. "Luke was Darth Vader's son."

If possible, they were even quieter than they had been at her first revelation. Chewie stood absolutely still for a full ten seconds. Then the outburst came and she sat quietly by and let them shout at her, letting them deny it just as she had. She studied her hands, barely hearing the shouts. "It's true, they did a blood test. And then they killed him, because they got scared."

Dust motes danced in the air between them and she felt strangely detached, unwilling to touch that emotional pain again, or feel it in empathy. "He didn't know," she added, forestalling any questions about Luke's loyalty. She didn't think Chewie would have asked anyway.

Something like recognition passed over Lando's lips as he asked a question weighted with intent seriousness and wonder. "Then the reports from the fleet... Vader is massacring them. Is it because...?" Perhaps there was even pride there.

Leia simply nodded and gave a small little mirthless smile. "He's not happy."

Chewie burst back into a violent fury again, not knowing what else to do and she barely saw anything more, mind lolling in memories. When the table in front of her was violently overturned and her erstwhile drink spilled to the floor, she looked up at the wookiee, his rage apparently spent.

"We have to go to Tatooine," she said.

Lando, she saw, did not know what to say, and so for once said nothing. He knew he had no place in their grief, having barely known Luke, but he felt it just the same. She could see it in his suddenly dimmed eyes.

"Han?"

She licked her lips and rose from the seat. "And... there's something I have to do."

* * * *

Stop it! Leave me alone, please leave me-

"- alone!! Please!"

The fingers caressing the sensitive skin on his hip dissolved into the reality of a bright morning. The blistering heat of a fever and an open fire were replaced by brilliant sunshine and cold stone beneath his back. And, when his eyes obeyed his command to open, the whistling squalls of snow were replaced by motes of dust skipping across the air.

Luke Skywalker blinked, unmoving, mind clearing like the deserts before a sandstorm, turbulence of fitful nightmares dying on his lips. Nightmares. The unreal; the conjured that couldn't touch you like those dirty, cold hands had touched him and-

"Nooo..."

The moan was weak but not lilting, his voice no longer catching on a fever, and it came from his first look around the room where he lay, to the fireplace and velvet drapes that were cold and bare in morning sunshine. No nightmare this; no imaginary hand smothering his face, no spectra leering over him. This was reality, as cold as the stone beneath his back and as clear as the swathes of snow beyond the stone-carved window.

"Nap time's over, Skywalker." Despite the cruel taint on the silky voice, he was glad that he at least owned the name he had thought belonged to him. It seemed to be all he had left from the last time he had fallen asleep. This was no stark medical facility, no rebel barracks and no shuttle. This was... this was a cold, broad, stone-walled room that echoed with his words and diminished him to a small, confused rebel.

The world blanched in indignation at his attempts to sit up, and he knew it was too soon. Still, he rested his back against frigid stone window mounts, mountains beyond spearing a bright cloudless sky. Somehow, he doubted his own position was so bright and hopeful. From the shadows by the fireplace, the woman with the red-gold hair and the voice like silk stepped forward, her face a picture of scorn.

"Up," she ordered, cat-stepping forward across deep-pile rugs. "The Emperor will be here soon."

The Emperor!? His mind whirled and his fingers clutched at the edge of the stone window seat he sat upon as the memories of last night flooded his mind in a black, ugly tide. Fingers on his face, his chest, his hip. Sore, bruised lips pleading with a sick old man with putrid eyes to stop. The Emperor.

His back collided with the cold window at her words. A reply was not needed; he knew she saw the fear blossom in tired blue eyes and there was something there, on her face... his lips struggled to name it but his mind flailed blindly for an answer to her curiously incongruous expression. As quickly as it had appeared, it was banished as she turned expectantly to a far door, large and old like everything else in the room. His fingers gripped tighter onto the edge as the air sang in anticipation. Or perhaps it was just the furious, terrified blinking of his eyes rustling in his ears.

The door opened and Palpatine entered in a wash of black robes and dark Force waves spilling into the room. The Royal Guards in their towering red uniforms were dismissed as he spitted Luke with a gaze that ripped right through any barriers he had been attempting to construct. The humourless cackling only helped to dissolve Luke's resolve into a mushy pile of lost hopes.

The redhead stepped away from Luke and bowed reverently. Luke would have stood to present a more formidable presence in front of his enemy, but he didn't think Palpatine would be impressed by him collapsing to the floor in a terrified little heap. His heart hammered so hard he thought it would pummel itself to an early grave against his ribs.

"Dismissed, Jade." His voice was as Luke remembered; salty and sharp like quicklime.

Jade whispered from the room and left Jedi and Sith facing each other in an uneasy standoff. Luke found his feet under him and stepped forward boldly, banishing memories of his crackled, spindly hands on him from last night. "Emperor Palpatine." He inclined his head, trying to mask his fear behind icy determination, not bowing; there was no respect in his stance. Loathing perhaps, but no reverence.

Palpatine stepped within breathing distance of Luke and laughed, teeth and eyes shining yellow in the sunlight. Luke almost wished he was still delirious and didn't have to confront this.

And why was he confronting this, anyway? Where was Vader, if his plan had been to bring 'Skywalker' before the Emperor? And where was Leia, beautiful loyal Leia, if Vader had not brought him here? Where were his friends, and more importantly his enemies? And where was his self-confidence and unwavering hope? Were they all bunkered out together under the same fear rushing through his veins like glitterstem?

In his reverie, he never saw the spindly white hand reach out for his cheek before chalky nails brushed against it, Luke's disgust boiling hot in his stomach. He backed against the stone ledge of the window-seat and he wished fervently to have the fever back and to escape reality. He wished even harder that he knew how in Sith he had gotten here.

"You're confused, my young Apprentice. Do not be, it is very simple and soon you will understand all." The hands raked over his cheek almost affectionately and Luke nearly, nearly pushed the dictator from him. But he didn't; he'd heard the stories of Palpatine's wrath. It was not time to test it yet.

"Where am I? Where's Leia?" Only hurriedly assembled Jedi resolve allowed him to ask.

Palpatine looked at him quizzically and patted his cheek. "It matters not. You will be here a while yet, that is all you need know. Concern yourself with more important things."

After a life under the shadows of half-truths and outright lies, Luke disliked intently being kept in ignorance. It must have shown on his face because Palpatine laughed as he turned away to a large seat by the fire, robes billowing behind him in a black cloud that disturbed the sunny day.

"What do you want?" He barely realised his hands were shaking and his cheek felt immeasurably dirty as Palpatine hid in the shadows of the chair.

"Why, nothing more than you, utterly and completely, my young Apprentice."

Luke's resolve faltered for a moment at that, his heart fluttering in persecution and detest. To be owned? To be controlled? By this disgusting slime? Never.

"Never."

Somehow, he had expected, hoped for even, a better reaction than mocking laughter from the dictator. It turned his blood grey.

"Sit." A bleached white hand indicated the chair opposite Palpatine's. When he didn't move the Emperor scowled and a rush of air like dust over parchment indicated his displeasure. "Sit, and be thankful I do not demand you kneel permanently in my presence."

No, but there will come a time for that, won't there?

He pursed his lips in annoyance at the future whispering in his ear. He didn't like it. He sat.

"You wonder, no?"

"Yes." He was well aware of the darkness he sat in, of the darkness he was facing, but he could not deny his confusion, nor did he try. "I don't understand." Was that a weakness he had revealed? No - Palpatine well understood his confusion. Voicing it hurt no one, and ignorance was his worst enemy here.

"Then let me explain. I rescued you." His hands lay flush with the arms of the large chair and the smile mocked him until Luke felt very small, very open. He felt like those eyes tore his dignity; his confidence from him layer by layer to reveal a frightened little Jedi underneath. And where was Vader in all this?

"You... what?" Diplomacy was never his thing. The words sounded provincial in his ears. Palpatine's steady gaze was stripping him of the years in the Alliance, of his training, leaving only a callow farmboy underneath. One who lived in lies and ignorance.

"The Alliance may swear allegiance to the Force, but in reality they only revere it as a primitive culture rushes to worship a malevolent God. In fear. They feared you, they tried to destroy you. But then, you knew they would." He leered at Luke and Luke shifted uncomfortably in the deep seat.

--... they want revenge from me and will take it from you… --

The question was almost on his lips, the question about whether it was because of his blood relations, but his mind banished it in a fit of denial. He shook his head barely perceptibly and knew Palpatine had seen it anyway. "Because of Vader?"

"Yes."

The word was pleasurable in the dictator's lips and sour in Luke's mind. "Because of my father."

Palpatine looked at him in askance and confusion, and that sent a shiver up Luke's spine, his throat suddenly dry.

"Your father?"

Luke's heart, as much as it had been clambering for an escape route from his chest, suddenly stopped and he imagined Palpatine holding it bleeding in those white, white hands, leering. "Vader."

The chuckle was ghastly, and it tore through him, turbolaser fire through flimsiplast. "Your father? Ahhh... Little Jedi!! Foolish Jedi!! But... ah, so cunning! Vader tried to win you through your heart, by giving you a hope to run to!"

The laugh was too much for Luke's nerves and his fingers dug into the arms of the chair, world spinning madly. "He's not...."

"No!"

He was so still, so very still, his heart truly torn from his chest. Played; like a foolish, callow, lowly farmboy. "No! That's not true! That's-"

"Impossible? I'm afraid not. Ah, but what a clever ploy by Vader. I must congratulate him on the attempt." The eyes took on a distant look and Luke barely knew he was standing, stalking the Darksider in front of him. Lost, found, and lost again. Abandoned, reclaimed, rejected. It brought burning tears to tired eyes.

//Father!!!//

Palpatine seemed utterly unconcerned, almost contemptuous, about the boy in front of him, hands balled in fury and loss. "Who are you calling, Little Jedi?! Your father died twenty years ago, slain by the man you gave his title to! Oh – this is delicious. He would have died twice over!"

//Father!//

Would his mind never stop giving Vader that designation now? Where it had been so hard to accept, now it was hard to destroy. And, indeed, there was absolutely no answer to his pleas. He choked down a cry of anguish, feeling like nothing more than a little Force-sensitive doll for the rulers of the galaxy to play with when they got bored or melancholy.

"You have no father, little Jedi. You're so alone."

Oh, that was too cruel. Weren't those the words he had screamed in his delirious mind when Leia had herded him to the medical frigate? Wasn't that a cry of denial now turned into lost hope? Truly, Palpatine sat in front of him now with Luke's heart neatly removed from his chest.

Enraged, Luke lunged for the small Darksider. He was so weak, so frail; surely Luke's bare hands could strangle the life from him?

He was in for a sore disappointment. Palpatine came swiftly to his feet as the attacked was launched and blistering white-hot sparks erupted from his fingers. The shock barely registered before the lightning struck Luke. His forward momentum reversed, he slammed back into the chair he had vacated, crying out. But now, now, he no longer had anyone to cry to. Leia and the Alliance wanted him dead, and his father was once again lost to him. Who was left? Only the Emperor and his cackling yellow eyes.

The despot advanced, bony fingers spread and he leered as another shot burst through the weak mental shielding Luke threw up. He writhed in pain, not hearing his own pleas to stop, and neither did Palpatine. There was a sickening look of glee on the old man's face.

Finally, after seconds of sheeting pain, Luke opened burning eyes to find Palpatine stretching out a hand for his cheek and the tears rolling large down his face. Tears are for the weak... and the truly desperate.

Luke jerked his head backwards, was rewarded by hitting the back of his head on the chair. His skin screamed at him, but his desperation and despair hollered mockingly as Palpatine's hand settled over his bruised lips.

"Never do that again." There was no need for threats; they were implicit. Luke shuddered as the hand brushed his lips.

"Little Jedi," he whispered, proximity choking, "you have lost so much. Your friends, your family, yourself. And they have all lied haven't they? Lied to the innocence they thought to use as they willed? Let me tell you a truth, my Little Jedi." The Emperor's breath whispered against Luke's skin and he thought he might gag, but the words echoed around his head enticingly. "What you learn here will be your comfort. The power you yield will be companionship. The Force is the only truth you will ever know, and it's intimacy will replace the human comforts that would burn and betray you. And knowledge – that too you can have. Never to be deceived again. Never to be vulnerable with your innocence. Never to hurt like this again." His hands caressed Luke's chest in ownership over where his heart lay. "Will you take that? Will you forsake ignorance and learn?"

His mouth faltered under the cold fingers, and he wanted to throw Palpatine off him but... where would he run to? Who would he run to? The only embrace left was in the freezing snow beyond these stone walls, or in the misery of life as a fugitive from two would-be governments.

"No." His voice was hoarse and they both heard the lie.

Where were his Jedi skills? Where was his control? It was lost - lost from the moment the Emperor had touched him and threatened his dignity, swallowed by the black hole that resided in his heart when he had lost his father. And, more than that, it was doomed from the very outset, from the moment he had left Dagobah.

Dagobah – he had thought Ben and Yoda had wanted him to stay because he lacked the skills. Now he thought it was because he lacked knowledge, because he wallowed in ignorance. But that, after all, was their fault!

"So, Yoda lives still? Do not fear, I will kill him for you," Palpatine whispered and Luke felt the tears of outrage slip over Palpatine's fingertips.

"Hush, child. Do not be weak, I can show you such power that you will never cry again. Take it."

He shook his head, trying to clear the fog that had descended, Palpatine's formidable presence looming over him, offering, enticing, intoxicating in a dark cloud of forbidden power. He didn't trust himself to answer. The dictator saw this and softly, with deceptive care, planted old cracked lips in a kiss on Luke's forehead, brushing the tears away with his thumb.

"N-o."

"Yes."

//Help me!//

Palpatine laughed at his mental cry and whispered. "There is no one to hear you, Little Jedi. You, you're mind and body, are now mine."