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. 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 N i n e

The door was open.

He lifted tired eyes, heavy under lashes that hid him from the darkness swirling in little eddies around him and frothing over with power when he touched them. His hands wrapped around the deep carving on the seat he knelt beside, skin burning from the movement after hours of pressing against the hard wooden floor. He felt the whisper-thin tendrils of dark energy that entangled his legs and arms offer a little support as he hauled himself to standing, teeth gritted, legs trembling.

His body protested but his mind was gagged. The door... it was open.

His fingers pushed into the carving of the seat arm until the skin began to bruise and he looked down at the white marks on his fingertips, sudden hope blistering through him. He nearly leapt forwards as the implications blossomed full and fervent in his head – the door is open!! - and he staggered towards it.

The movement; sudden, exhilarating, and of his own volition, was a mistake. He fell to hands and knees as his legs gave out in a little cry of pain. He was sucking in hope and crying out despair, his fingers digging into the rug, thick and reeking of the Emperor, as he pulled himself to a half stand, stumbling forwards, half supported by one hand on the floor and half by solid, desperate determination.

His heart thudded against his bruised ribs, the only sound in the room. He didn't even know when his Master had left, didn't even remember when he had obediently knelt by his side and when he had been left there to a restless silence, nor why he had docilely stayed like that, knees digging into the floor. He didn't know. It didn't matter. The door mattered – the doorway, the escape. No guards. No drugs. No Emperor. He could make it.

Adrenaline surged through his bruised veins, nowhere near quenching his thirst for action, pushing him further towards the door. The long black robes tried to entangle his feet, snaking around his legs like the little swirls of dark energy he felt, trying to make him trip, trying to make him fall.

But he didn't.

His hands grasped at the wooden doorframe as he stumbled, muscles mewling like tortured, confused children at their sudden abuse. It didn't matter. His eyes burned with tears, and they were joyful not sad; not scared, not like the little spice-trails that had glittered his cheeks for so long now. So long.... he didn't even know how long.

His hands found purchase on the frame and he stood, sucking in breath, drinking in air that did not belong to that cursed room behind him, where the Emperor taught, toyed with and tempted his little pet. Luke was past even retching at the memories. They didn't matter. The corridor mattered.

He walked out and collided in a dazed stumble with the opposite wall. He took that energy and focused it forwards pushing off the wall and moving down the corridor. He felt drunk. He felt like he was wandering back to his bunk after a night on frigid Hoth with his friends and a case of whiskey. His friends... they were... who were they? He pushed his pale fists into his eyes, trying to see them, but all he saw were crackled white hands and putrid eyes.

--... Your faith in your friends would have destroyed you. They tried, but they failed, my young apprentice. Failed only because of my intervention... --

He found his throat constricting at the words, and he saw... who was that? A man with an easy smile and a gluttonous ego and a blaster always strapped to his hip. His friend... what had his name been?

Kid.

Kid? No; no that wasn't right. He had called Luke that.

Kid. As in... son?

His hands trembled as he guided himself along stone passageways. Palpatine kept few servants here, and fewer droids. It was as lonely as the grave, and colder.

Son.

He dug little red welts into his palm with his fingernails, trying to hear that voice, trying to understand its meaning, to know who said it. Trying to understand the longing that was tearing him apart.

But... it didn't matter. It didn't. Because Palpatine, hard, cruel, cold Palpatine said that it didn't matter. That Luke had betrayed the voice and that it never really cared anyway. And Palpatine said so; and Palpatine was always right.

Luke stumbled over his own feet and finally fell.

The heavy black of the robes Palpatine dressed his little doll in billowed as they settled, funeral shroud and christening veil both. He was dying here; he felt it. But it wasn't true death; it was his mind dying, dissected by Palpatine's sharp little claws, pieces nicked out of him and explored before being discarded or twisted, replaced or restructured.

Each day, each day with her bright sunshine and her howling nights, he felt himself die a little; death by degrees. Slowly. Oh-so painfully. And yet, it wasn't death. It was birth. It was replacement. It was Palpatine sculpting with little, delicate, well-placed carving strokes on the raw potential he saw in Luke Skywalker.

That was the detached view; that was the third person view. But Luke lived this first person, his mind shattering into little shards like coloured glass needles, and Palpatine picking a precious few to re-use, crushing the rest beneath his feet as he stormed around that cold, cold room, 'teaching'.

His palms rested on the cold stone and he pushed up off the floor, back on his feet, moving again, a drunkard staggering from the brewery like his life depended on it. And it did.

A servant rounded the corner as Luke did and they collided, dark Little Jedi and confused human slave stumbling. The tall human's eyes bugged like he'd taken a step through an open airlock and Luke panicked. Truly. His fear called that dark power to him, that power Palpatine poured into him with little strokes and sucked up greedily when his toy worked as it was supposed to.

The servant went for a weapon, any weapon and Luke stepped out into detached, emotionless third person as the boy he had once been threw his hand out and crushed the servant against the wall, bantha stepping on a jawa. The man never even found the time to scream as his body convulsed and the jawbone cracked with a hollow whumph!

He looked at the body curiously, shock in its unseeing eyes. His hand fell to his side, the dark power whirling little bug trails around his mind, searing little paths through to that ability in his memory. It was beautiful and it was irreversible. Perhaps Luke Skywalker was already dead.

He stumbled on.

* * * *

He pelted down darkened stairwells and through low doorways.

Chaos reigned. It reigned in a galaxy under Palpatine's withered little hands, it reigned in Lord Vader's mind when he tried to untangle his feelings from his motives about his son, and it reigned in Jabbas smoking, darkened Palace.

Vader swept through, down, going down, following the cry he had heard in his mind. Somebody get me out of here!

In the darkness, cloaked by a Darkside veil that hid him from any of the Palace guards not running around in panic, he could move freely. He could have chosen to go after Jabba the Hutt, he did after all have an old debt to settle, or to get Solo himself and avoid any more mishaps. But he didn't. He followed the Princess's frantic call, wondering at how it had reached him, wondering at why it had felt like his heart had undergone sudden decompression and imploded.

His saber lit ruby-red in the dark light before the Rancor pit and the guard's eyes bulged before the blade slipped through him and he collapsed with a tired sigh.

Emotions boiled through the Dark Lord, dark and confusing. He was running for the door to the pit, slicing hurriedly through the bars and slipping into the dark. The sudden urgency he felt was overpowering. Yes he needed the Princess alive to find his son, but there was something else here, screaming in background like an obstinate child...

The Rancor loomed large and he couldn't see the little Princess behind it, but he could feel her presence, fear pouring off in a torrent that nearly knocked him over in shock at its potency. Never had he been able to sense another's emotions so effortlessly, except with....

The saber sizzled and skin burst when he swiped it across the rancor's thigh. It howled in rage and turned on him, Leia calling out to him through the darkness, screaming, telling him to go after Han.

Stubborn, foolish girl. So much like Luke in that respect. So much.

A Rancor fist grabbed at him and it fell to the floor, severed as the blade cut through it. The creature became irate and lashed out behind it, striking Organa and throwing her to a collision with the wall to land in a dark little heap on the floor.

Something like panic hit him as she hit the stone wall and the Force rushed to him. He pushed and the Rancor howled in pain before falling unconscious as its head struck the pit side. Dust, blood, spittle rained down as it collapsed to the floor and Vader jumped around it to the Princess' side. She was raising herself onto one elbow, moaning weakly. Something struck him like a kick to his heart and pieces of a puzzle he hadn't even known he was trying to solve began to fall into place.

"Han..."

Stubborn, foolish girl.

Why did he care so much, why was there a little voice screaming at him to get her out of there? Darth Vader didn't care about her, Darth Vader didn't waste emotions on the pain of others, or their fear. Darth Vader had no emotions like that.

Well, then, perhaps there was more to him than just Darth Vader.

The thought tore through him and he stood very still in the dark, saber hissing, knowing that with that thought he had contradicted everything he had forced himself to believe in for the past twenty years and finding a strange, perverse comfort in it. Perhaps it was just revisiting Tatooine that had made these emotions start boiling up in him.

Except... hadn't it started on Bespin? Started when blue eyes locked on blue and burned away the light-years between Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker? Hadn't it erupted after Luke's death?

He lifted her small form into his arms and headed out of the pit, the rancor not stirring. His hands touched her arm where the creature had slashed her skin with razor-sharp claws, drawing blood. Electricity bounded up his arm and realisation began pounding at the door to be let in.

* * * *

The big, flat door rumbled aside and wind gusted through to him, nearly shattering his resolve in the icy bite on his pale skin. The heavy black robes hid none of it, and the darkness could not banish it.

A delicious sound, a comforting embrace, a loving kiss against his mind pulled him forwards into the open docking bay. The stone slipped under his feet but he didn't fall. Not yet. Tired eyes took in the large room, devoid of vehicles, devoid of life, snow drifting through the open door to creep across the stone.

The sound built and he turned his head, trying to find it, feeling like a small black smudge against the cool white and stone background.

But that sound... it was beautiful, and he had not seen nor heard beauty in... too long. It wrapped him in a warm embrace of love and he blinked back tears of joy at the sound, so familiar and warm in the frigid air.

He stumbled for the entrance to the empty docking bay, stumbled until his legs gave out and he was kneeling in the snow before the doors, Hoth flashing through his mind... Hoth and a creature that attacked him, a man that rescued him, a...

Frustrated and angry, he shook the memories away, unable to understand them any longer. They were... not his.

One pale, pale hand went to his forehead and he cried out in frustration. The singing built and he lifted his head as a snowy wind whipped at his hair, brushing feather-like cold fingers over his face so unlike Palpatine's claws. He forced his eyes to open past the tears freezing on his cheeks, little icicles mocking the swathes of frostbitten snow before him. Born in a desert... died in a desert? Why not?

He couldn't get his feet to stand so he half-crawled forwards and the singing built until he looked up, lashes blurring with heavy snowdrifts. He looked up into the big, sad brown eyes of a woman, her hand reaching tentatively for his cheek. He would have gasped, would have screamed but the wind stole his voice.

It didn't steal hers. She sang, voice a smoky timbre that reminded him of... someone. He knew the song though – it was a lullaby. A child's lullaby, soothing and gentle and familiar and her hand brushed away his fear and despair with the sparkling, blue, eerily unreal touch.

He formed a word on his lips and didn't even recognise it himself, a word he had never addressed anyone with and his mind didn't understand. Mother.

She smiled brilliantly and nodded and he still didn't understand.

There was a murderous chuckle behind him, a familiar voice grating slicing the air as the woman faltered, smile fleeing before the Emperor. She look troubled, her song dying and her throat choked with tears. Her ethereal arm slipped through Luke's, grasping for him as he turned to his Master.

His breath froze in front of him as Palpatine stepped into the snow, smiling.

"Leave us, Amidala. You failed far too long ago to make up for it now."

The words sent little ripples through the woman's figure and she shot a harrowed glance at Luke that was pure despair. Then the wind took her, blowing little glittering sparkles away with the swirls of snow that made it into the hanger entrance. He looked at them despairingly, heart wrenching for her and not understanding why.

"Does nobody stay dead anymore?"

His lips were floundering in silence and he turned as he felt a presence behind him, approaching and then he couldn't turn away from those furious yellow eyes, frozen in the snow. The bitter cold was turning his skin a sickly shade of pink and there was a memory there... something... another unreal figure in the snow....

Had he had his voice, he might have screamed in frustration.

A hand was laid in his freezing hair, "Obi-Wan would have done better to appear himself than send her," Palpatine muttered, and the words fled from Luke's mind even as he wondered at them, shoved away by the little weaving tangles of dark energy the Emperor splayed in Luke's mind.

* * * *

He tried to push away the feeling that he was missing something. Tried not to starting shouting in annoyance at the frustrating confusion and the dark little fingers of the Force that seemed to be playing in his mind, steeling the information away as he tried to chase it down.

He took the steps up from the pit two at time, the saber still lit and bathing terrified, confused faces in blood-light. He slowed to a walk as he entered the throne room and strode across the dance floor, Jabba bellowing.

Leia's head lolled against his arm, mumbling soft words. The room was hot and smoky but her skin was frozen, her lips blue. She shivered violently and he looked at her in yet more confusion, wondering how she could be so cold and who she was talking to. She looked locked in a trance.

He was striding for the alcove where Solo's frozen form was still hanging when Leia said something coherent.

"Mother..."

He hit a mental wall and rebounded, almost dropping his bundle of disguised princess as the truth finally registered in his mind. Her lips moved more but he couldn't hear her. She had a distant, far-away look in her eyes, glazed and murky and a strange blue playing across them.

Leia Organa, adopted daughter or Bail Organa, friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Leia Organa, rescued by a Tatooine farmboy who formed an inexplicable fascination for her.

Leia Organa, who sensed his son's thoughts even when he could not-

"Amidala?" Her brow puckered in confusion and he nearly, nearly dropped her then, on hearing a name so sorely missed and so hated in his darkest moments. And then, remembering her... looking at the Princess... it was obvious. Blindingly obvious, and he felt like a fool.

Leia Organa was his daughter.

Oh, but how she looked like her. How foolish he had been, how blind. But wasn't it like Kenobi to hide her in plain sight as he had hidden his son on his home world?

Something broke then, something died, something withered in his heart and he felt... joy. It poisoned him, Darth Vader, whose emotions could only ever revolve around his hatred. He had lost a son... gained a daughter.

No. Luke was not lost. Not yet. But if he stood here all day staring in amazement at the daughter he had never before imagined existed, then he would be lost.

He cradled her a little closer, held her a little tighter, and moved for the block of carbonite as a wookiee with singed hair and Calrissian with his blaster held defensively joined him, faces grim.

* * * *

"Where are you running to, Little Jedi?" The hand left his hair, the fingers scraping his skin as the Emperor stood and moved away from him.

In the cold light of morning, dark little snowflakes smudged the white of the sky as he peered up into it, knowing his voice was lost again, like so much else in his life. Gone. Taken. Ripped away.

The voice whispered hot in his mind, "Go then. Run. If that is what you wish."

Luke's heart soared, reaching for the sky with her white background and her dark specks of snow, the absolute opposite of the night sky he had longed to be close to on... Tatooine? Where was that? What was that?

His hands sunk into the snow up to his wrists as he pushed off the floor and he stood, shaking. He didn't look back, he'd never look back, as he stumbled forwards and the Emperor made no move to stop him.

He stopped himself.

He hit a wall, but there was nothing there. He felt a leash tighten around his throat but there was nobody holding it. He coughed and choked for words, a little dark statue against the snow. Against freedom. Against.... loneliness, death, weakness.

"Why have you stopped, Little Jedi?" The words swept in darkness over the snow, a shadow appearing over him.

"I..." Frost kissed his lips and silenced him. His dreams died. His heart died. He died.

Palpatine let him Fall back down to the snow and the room sang with his victory, dark and sickening, not at all like the soft, comforting words of that strange woman who touched his cheek with true compassion, not possession.

He wanted to move. He wanted to run. He wanted his feet under him, his sanity back in his hands, running to a cold death beyond the Palace walls.

Palpatine knelt behind him and Luke choked on words of protest when he encircled his body in arms that offered no warmth, no comfort, only ownership and pain. His body cried for him to fight and he shook uncontrollably when he didn't.

The black robes of the Emperor wrapped around him, pulling him back against his Master and the lips whispered breath without heat against his cheeks. "Are you going to leave me now, Little Jedi?"

Yes!

"You... you've taken everything from me." He wanted to fight but the Emperor touched his lips to silence him. His voice whispered protests against those fingers but neither heard them.

"I've given you truth."

Luke's eyes closed until there was only the biting wind and the Emperor, the coarse fabric of his robes rubbing against his cheek.

"I don't want it!" he gasped.

The wind slapped him, stinging his face. Palpatine's fingers enclosed on ice-kissed cheeks, hand across his mouth, his eyes, blocking out all perceptions except sound. Luke's fear poured out of him as it had that first night and his resilience fled into the snow storm that had built around them, whipping at them, laughing at Master and apprentice.

"You do. You felt it, earlier. You want it. It is a part of you now." The hand tightened and he was pressed back tighter against the Emperor, all fight gone. Yes, he had felt it. Yes it had felt good. "Will you leave me now, Little Dark Jedi?"

Little Jedi... shush... quiet now... please...

Stay//leave? Live//die? Dark//light? Who was he asking? Luke Skywalker or... someone else? Palpatine's little plaything?

"I hate you."

"I know. Will you leave?"

--... Luke you must get out... get up...--

"... No."