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 F i f t e e n

His son looked at him across locked saber blades, his blue eyes glazed but mournful, his jaw set determinately.

Anakin jumped backwards, disengaging his blade, heart running in circles. His son scissor-stepped around the throne, the air crackling with determination. He took another step backwards, and the lightning flew from Palpatine's fingers again, towards his daughter lying in a choked heap by the wall.

He had to move forward and intercept it, letting it tangle around the ruby blade. Luke came on at him, blade slashing for an intercept. The strength of the deflection rocked Anakin's hands, almost as much as the shock of the power behind the blow rocked his emotions. Luke didn't even blink as he stepped forward again, lashing out with the blue blade. Anakin intercepted it but stepped back, retreating. Luke came on, the Force tumbling between them as son attacked father.

The slightly stiff movements were the only betrayal of Luke's imprisonment, the slight wince of pain that made it no further than his eyes as he moved the protesting muscles in an elegant attack. The small part of his mind not involved in an intricate dance of saber blades let Anakin acknowledge his son's skill, and not with a little trepidation. The blade was brought high and dipped towards Anakin's head. Again, the intercept. Again, the retreat.

Luke didn't let him have time to breathe; he came on, lashing out, fury uncontrolled, only his eyes speaking an inner turmoil.

His eyes, and his screaming through the Force; a cry of anger, frustration and confusion that scolded the tight web of energy reaching through the room, shaking it. Luke didn't want to do this, but with every fear that rose up swam a new tide of power that pushed past thought and left only action.

Even as Anakin forced himself to fight past the anguish clear there, the import of hearing that cry hit him harder than the sharp jab from Luke's saber.

The natural Force bond between father and son was back.

Anakin's head whipped upwards and he grasped the lingering tendrils of that presence, teeth gritted. Luke blanched visibly, his hands shaking.

//Luke. Hear me.//

Palpatine chuckled, slamming the barrier up again and for a long moment, filled with suppressed anger, Anakin wondered if his old Master had dipped it for a moment just to taunt him, to give him a glance at the lost child.

Luke had faltered, but with the wall back up the false certainty offered by the Darkside energy swam to him in dark waves. He clamped down fiercely on his raging emotions and swung the saber in a vicious infinity loop, forcing Anakin to stumble away again, backing dangerously towards a far wall.

He couldn't bring himself to attack though. He wouldn't. Not after Bespin.

The connection was as easily lost as it was found, and the bond between father and son was silent, Anakin screaming into the Force to try and find it.

"Not like that, Anakin." Palpatine was smiling, blue lightning twirling around his fingers. His gaze went to Leia, heaving herself off the floor with little half-sobs of pain. Palpatine raised his eyebrows.

Two choices then; let Palpatine hammer a defenceless daughter with the lightning, or attack a more-than-capable son.

Gritting his teeth, he blocked Luke's next attack, trying not to register the lingering hate there, and slashed the blade for Luke's midsection. He could have prayed to every deity he had ever heard of and not believed in when Luke intercepted the attack, a frown of dismay across his face.

"Luke, fight this. Don't let him control you." His gut performed it's own gymnastic miracles as Obi-Wan's words to him two decades ago were spoken through his mouth. He repeated the words again, not disengaging this time, but forcing a retreat from his son. It was not easy; the boy was incredibly strong, grown since Bespin in ways even Vader would never have wanted. The anger sparked in his eyes, lashing out as surely as his blade did.

"Control me? What about you?"

His voice was broken with raging emotions as the blade swept in again, lightning fast. They skidded across the rug and stone floors, too fast to follow, parrying and striking on instinct until sweat shone on Luke's face, the first sign of true life in the boy Anakin had seen since stepping into this haunted room.

A ripple of a Force-tug behind him and one of the ancient tapestries draping the walls dropped towards him, trying to smother him. He sidestepped easily. Straight into Luke's blade, the boy slashing it down towards his hand.

Anakin dodged quickly, throwing himself out of the contact as heat teased at the fabric of his armour. The dodge turned quickly into a roll as Luke snapped a leg out and dug it into his side, kicking the older man over. He hit the stone floor hard, a disturbing crunching sound in his ears that he hoped was only bent armour and not bones. He came back to his feet cleanly, crouching low, without thinking swiping the blade low for Luke's feet.

It was moving before he knew what was happening, and for a moment it didn't look like Luke would step back in time. He didn't. Instead, he leapt above the arc, landing back hard on the ground, on top of Anakin's right hand, grinding it against the stone. He was effectively immobilised for the precious few seconds that would be all his son needed to finish the fight. Anakin grunted at the pain, but held onto the lit blade. Had this been what it had felt like for all the Jedi he had 'purged' from the galaxy? To be attacked by one of your own, to try not to hurt them because you still cared, only to find yourself on the wrong end of a saber blade?

He tensed, waiting for the final sting of a saber opening him from hip to hip. It never came, the blue light bathing the stones beneath him but never falling down to slice him open. It was a seconds worth of hesitation and Anakin used it. A push of the Force and a wrenching of his hand and Luke lurched backwards with a startled curse, the blade slashing a deep gash into the flagstones.

He pushed off the floor with his left hand, hurriedly coming to his feet and skidding backwards. He got the blade back up as Luke came on again, throwing himself into the attack as much as Anakin threw himself into the defence. The only sounds in the room were Leia's muffled moans of pain, the crash of sabers, and the snow outside beating the walls. And, of course, Palpatine laughing coldly to himself.

They moved from the flagstones to the rug in front of the fire, the open space of the hall where there were no drapes to throw or walls to back opponents into. Only the sabers and themselves. Anakin whipped the blade around and down, stepping into a feint. Luke took it, and he twisted his wrist before his son got there, thrusting one hand out and into the side of Luke's head. He'd hoped to knock him out; instead Luke managed to move backwards and go with the blow, breathing heavily and momentarily dazed.

If he could have, Anakin would have taken that respite to wipe away the sweat from his forehead. With the mask covering his head, there was no point even trying. For not the first time in recent weeks, he felt like the armour that supported him was no longer a part of him, like it was permanently attaching him to Darth Vader. And hindering him.

Luke came on again, balance regained. Physically, they were equally matched. He wouldn't win this one with brute force.

"I broke his control on me, Luke. He cannot offer you anything but misery, if you search your feelings you can feel that. He cannot control you unless you want him to." The minute the words were out, he heard the mistake, wincing at it.

"Want him to? Want him?" Luke brought the saber down in a vicious arc aimed to neatly slice his neck from his torso. Anakin intercepted, pushing backwards on the blade and making Luke take a step back. "You think I wanted this?!"

"No, Luke-"

"All I ever wanted was a father to look up to, to be proud of, to be proud of me." The voice sounded strained, but the fight continued, Luke punctuating with saber blows. One of the sconces fell to the ground with a wicked smack from the backwards swing of an attack, molten wax splashing and hissing.

Luke attacked mindlessly in his fury. There was barely time for thought now, but as his son kept attacking, bleeding more and more offensive action from his father, Anakin saw with sudden clarity a way to bring the boy back. That brief contact onboard the Falcon, so long ago now, had shown it to him. Now Luke showed it to him again. Palpatine had succeeded in taking from Luke everything left worth clinging to the Light for, as he had with Anakin, years ago.

And what brought me back? Something to fight for. A family.

To drag him back Anakin needed only to offer Luke something to fight for. Such as a father.

He frowned. "Look at me, Luke." The boy set his jaw. "Look at me!" Anakin shouted, wincing when it was the bass tones of Darth Vader echoing through the room and not the gentle but determinate voice he had intended. Luke's eyes were widening in a heart-rending echo of his mother's expression of alarm. Anakin disengaged his blade and Luke made no attempt to use the opening. He just looked at him, hands clenching around the hilt of the saber.

"Reach out to me," Anakin insisted.

The boy's lips set in strangled determination, and even through their broken bond Anakin sensed his thoughts skittering as uncontrolled as dust motes in a Tatooine sandstorm. Fear kindled from a reminder that he faced Darth Vader was lit in his mind, fear that he might lose, and a deeper fear that he might win.

"Reach out," Anakin insisted, trying to get the sound of his voice to be less reminiscent of the Sith Lord. "I've changed, you have to sense that, Luke."

The frown crumpled his pale features as the uncertain tendril of Force energy reached for Anakin. He let it come, didn't hurry him, his heart thumping blood through his temples. The touch was at once achingly familiar, and tragically different to that he'd experienced a bare few months ago when he'd implored that Luke 'search your feelings'.

Luke flinched, blanched, looked ready to bolt the room. His eyes went wide. "I..."

Anakin nodded, "Darth Vader was never your father. I am."

The reaction he got was not the one he expected. The boy stood stock still, the saber hissing warningly in his hands. Palpatine was talking, but Anakin blocked it out, watching his son. He shook his head fiercely, bangs on blonde hair whipping around.

"Where were you!?" Luke cried, his voice accusing and full of a pain Anakin couldn't douse, not yet, "Where were you?!"

Palpatine laughed. Luke attacked again, and Anakin felt everything begin to tear itself apart.

Where was he? When – in those twenty years of playing the Dark Lord, abandoning a child to an orphaned upbringing on Tatooine? Or where was he, when he severed his hand on Bespin, where was the father then to protect him from the monster he had become? Or... where was he these past months? Where was he?

His blade faltered and in that moment Luke struck forward. He was good. He was far too good, calling the Force to him in his anger. Anakin stumbled, nearly fell, felt himself pushed backwards. He collided with the wall behind him with a solid thud as Luke's palm came out and a ripple of the Force knocked him off his feet.

It took a moment to gather his breath around the respirator. When he looked up, Luke stood over him, the blade at his father's throat, hand shaking, sweat glistening.

"I... I can't..." Luke was imploring, his eyes shutting down to deny what was in front of him.

"Let go, Luke. You don't need the darkness," Anakin implored. Obi-Wan's words again. They hadn't worked the first time, why would they work now? The arm holding the saber shook, the blue blade wavering in front of his throat. "You can't do this Luke, I can feel your confusion. You've been manipulated. Let it go. Just let it go, and come back with us."

The eyes remained closed, the trail of a tear worming out from under the lowered lashes and rolling down his cheek, liquid fire in the hearth light.

Anakin proffered a hand, "Luke?"

//Luke?//

The boy opened his eyes to answer, but the expression that crossed his face had Anakin's heart captured. Luke looked around in shocked pain and anguish, staggering backwards, murmuring no, no, no, no...

Confusion was replaced by clarity as a furious Palpatine stepped beyond the firelight. He felt the energy pouring into his son and came to his feet incensed as the Emperor crossed to them, his face a mask of fury. His decayed gaze was on Anakin's son, and Luke was tossing his head in denial. "Get out of my mind!" he screamed.

Anakin re-ignited his saber and went for Palpatine once more. He had the pleasure of seeing the Emperor's eyes grow wide as he back-pedalled, before the spark of Force energy leapt for his son and Luke jumped forwards to intercept the blade.

Anakin barely had time to switch it off in his shock, Luke coming within a death's whisper or being skewered by the hard light.

Such trapped devotion, such unthinking loyalty... such slavery. Anakin saw the desperation written all over Luke's features. The boy attacked again. Reaching for the bond did nothing; Palpatine blocking it yet again.

//Luke?//

No reaction, the words bouncing back at his like snow skittering off a glass pane.

Glass pane? His eyes flicked to the window and the squalls of snow.

The plan was still-born as Luke attacked again. If Anakin had thought his son was good before, he was sorely mistaken. That had been nothing compared to the savage beauty of his skill now, blows raining down with absolute accuracy despite his eyes being half-lidded, trying to shake Palpatine's influence.

As Luke's sweeping attack came in for his midsection there was a cry from across the room. "Luke, no!"

Leia was on her feet again, her emotions and her voice betraying her anguish. Anakin didn't look, but Luke did, and the distraction was enough. The seat beside the fire wobbled, then flew towards Luke. He sensed the incoming missile, lifted an arm to block it and, but not fast enough. It barrelled into him, lifting him off the floor with a cry of surprise and throwing him against the window -

- but not before he grabbed Anakin's hand, yanking him off the floor with him. Anakin bit down a cry of surprise as his feet left the ground, thumbing off the saber before it sliced through them both.

Luke's body hammered the glass, and hairline cracks spidered outwards with a loud crack. For a moment that grew too long, it seemed like the glass wouldn't give under their weight. Then it splintered into jagged fragments reflecting firelight and snowstorms.

Leia was shouting, Anakin was cursing and the wind was suddenly loud in his ears as the death grip on his hand hauled him through the broken glass after his son. The wind howled in expectation, sconces blown out, drapes whipping hard-edged tails at them as they tumbled to the snowfields beyond. For a minute they hung in the air before impact, but the window was a bare few metres above the snow and they tumbled under the direction of gravity.

Luke landed first with a suppressed cry of pain. Anakin rolled as he hit, but the snow gave under his weight and billowed over him in drifts of powdery cold. He gasped against the frigid feeling of fingers teasing cold knives through his skin. The pain from his son increased with the same sensation, but on skin unprotected by armour.

Any instinctive action of protection or attack was bitten back by the still-lit blue saber in Luke's hands.

No physical influence then. But mental, perhaps.

The shock of the cold riding through Luke's mind left him reeling and Anakin pushed forwards with the Force, searching for the elusive bond between father and son. The wind shrieked like a banshee in his ears and Palpatine was reaching out at the same time, scratching mental fingers for Anakin's son. For minute Luke was suspended in a mental tug-of-war, eyes fluttering closed.

Palpatine had the power, the experience. But Anakin had the unleashed desperation, and a forgotten ally.

"Leia!"

She got the hint. He couldn't see her, but Palpatine's cry of surprise told him she had attacked him and there was a muffled thump of bodies against snow, both of them toppling to the ground. Leia was cursing as she attacked, venting anger and disgust at what the Emperor had done to her brother. She was a firebrand, that one. Fortunate that she didn't have too much Force training, otherwise the anger pouring off her would have been enough to level a small city, never mind a distracted and shocked Emperor.

It didn't last long, Palpatine presumably throwing the girl off, lightning cracking the air open again. But it lasted long enough for Anakin. In that momentary distraction he reached back for his son.

Luke flinched visibly when he found the natural connection between them and smothered it with his own sense, feeling Palpatine's rage trying to tear it open. Anakin took the buffering, his gaze fixed on Luke.

//Help me. Preserve this.//

He heard him. Luke stumbled backwards from his advance, blade lowering uncertainly. Anakin's saber remained stubbornly unlit, the message clear. He sent a wash of feelings over Luke then. Comfort. Hope. Pride.

Love.

The boy staggered but his face lit despite the shivering, despite the snow buffeting them.

//Father?//

Oh, stars. It was like rainfall after a drought and he drank it up greedily.

//Luke, hold on to it.//

Luke blinked. Blinked again, and the wash of understanding touched his eyes. He shook his head barely perceptibly, shaking off the confusion and fear. Luke nodded. The wave of energy that poured between them was almost staggering, brighter than the white snow trying to drown them.

Luke smiled.

"Skywalker!"

They both turned; they both stopped suddenly, Luke's hand tensing around the hilt of the saber. Palpatine advanced through the deep swathes of snow, black robes sinking. Leia followed him unwillingly, his hand digging into her arm whilst she was clutching her stomach, her face pale.

* * * *

He blinked, snow-dashed lashes hitting his cheeks. The snow bit into his skin but it was wonderful in its pain. He relished it, wrapped it around himself. Pain meant you were alive, meant Luke Skywalker was alive. He took a shaky breath, the bitter air hitting the back of his throat, sore from screaming. It didn't matter, he felt alive, energy sparking along the connection between him and... Vader? Anakin?

Anakin.

The cold was digging into his skin, numbing him, and it didn't matter. None of it mattered. The impossible was true. His father was here, back to reclaim a son he loved without conditions. The black material of the robes couldn't smother him then, the sting of wounds old and new couldn't touch him, even the clawing of Palpatine through his mind didn't register.

He smiled.

"Skywalker!"

He turned at his name, the only name he would ever acknowledge, and his breath froze in the air. Leia looked at him with a half-conscious expression of pain and the anger boiled hot in his stomach. It didn't warm him.

//Calm.//

Luke's gaze flicked to his father, then to his right hand, rolling the saber between his fingers tensely. He let the dark feelings bleed into the snowfields along with blood from countless glass wounds.

He took a step forwards, feet sinking into the snow up to his thighs. "Let her go."

Palpatine's gaze fell on him, and despite himself he shivered violently, memories battering down his resolve. "Come here, Little Jedi." The shivering got worse at those hated words, and the strength flowed away from him faster, the light dimming -

- and then flowed back to him from his father, a warmth that heated frost-kissed skin and soothed screaming muscles. Luke stood taller, awash with the offered help. He had to be strong. He was strong.

-- ... stronger than you realise, I think... --

He sent gratitude back to his father, took another step towards Palpatine. The Emperor narrowed his eyes, clenched his arm harder around Leia's arm. She winced, some of the awareness coming back to her eyes and forcing her to struggle harder.

The anger drained from him, fear and desperation dropped like a dirty cloak. He looked at the Emperor and suppressed his rage, his disgust, his fear. And that left him with... pity. Where did that come from? All he saw was the empty, decaying shell of a man corrupted by too much power. Had he ever laughed or cried, shown pain or shown happiness beyond his manipulations of Luke? Ever shown a glimpse of the man's form he rested in?

No.

He looked down at the fingers of his left hand, at the little rivulets of freezing sweat and blood lying there, trying to remember if the Emperor had ever bled, even in those incensed moments when Luke had lashed out physically.

Perhaps.

--... Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter... --

Luminous beings, perhaps, but caged all the same. The Darkside had stolen Palpatine's humanity, if he'd ever had any, but left him in a frail, vulnerable human body. Vulnerable.

Another step forwards, and this time not as a slave being reeled back in but as the first eddies of a plan began to unfurl. His father stood very still, watching, even the wind was silent for a moment.

Luke adopted the face of a stricken slave, lowering his lashes to the disturbed snow. Palpatine's leering triumph leapt across the Force, fully believing in his overconfidence that he had won his slave back again. The agitated movements of his father could only reinforce the image Palpatine greedily accepted, but Luke could not look back and reassure Anakin.

The possessive trust Palpatine had in him allowed another step forwards without suspicion, the overconfidence admitting the next step. Each step let him begin to shape a plan, dismissing a purely physical attack against the man who had purged the Jedi. A lick of the saber's sting would not work. He would probably not even get close enough to light it.

Luke resisted a smile as the plan became as clear as if it had been written in blood in the snow. He would never be able to both keep the Emperor's attention and attack him at the same time. Fortunately, at last, he was no longer alone. He might not be able to attack himself, but he would provide the distraction that would break Palpatine's concentration long enough for a physical attack to reach that vulnerable, human body.

Another step, Palpatine sensing no deception.

Another.

//Luke?//

He didn't look back at his father. He could never look back.

Palpatine looked at him with eager eyes, desiring the power he knew was within Luke. Palpatine knew him. And he knew Palpatine, including his weaknesses; including his overconfidence. He would never believe his slave would turn against him now.

Palpatine smiled as Luke took the final step, desperately trying not to look into Leia's eyes.

"Luke?"

He didn't answer her.

Palpatine lifted bloodless fingers to his cheek and scraped a nail along the skin there. His lips were curling for a smile but Luke got there first, never letting it near his eyes. Palpatine's breath crystallised in front of them, his other hand letting go of Leia. She shook her head fiercely, awareness back fully.

Luke's hand snaked upwards for Palpatine's palm on his cheek and pressed it there. The Emperor betrayed his surprise in his eyes, but said nothing. The air seemed to still, the snow settling out of the blizzard.

Destiny was cheering him on as he raised his other hand to that bony palm on his cheek, the saber dropping to the snow, unlit.

Leia was staring in horror; he could feel it rolling off her as she jumped to her feet and tugged at his arm. "Luke! No!"

Shssh Leia... I have to do this.

His father was calling in his mind now too - Luke, let go... Luke, don't!... Not like this! - but he was stilled, enraptured by the scene swirling in front of him in broken glass and snow.

Luke kept his eyes locked on Palpatine's as the other attempted to free his hand. Luke kept it clamped against his cheek. He lifted one hand and pressed it against Palpatine's own cheek, completing a circle between them. Oh, it should have been sweet revenge, to use the Emperor's own tactic of distraction against him, but the disgust rolled through him, whether from himself or his audience he couldn't say, blunting his emotions. That was good, because revenge was never of the Light.

And he needed the Light.

Leia gave a startled curse and stumbled backwards from him, letting his arm go as the energy poured into him. He drew on the Force, on the Lightside he hadn't touched in so long, and it was a balm to deep burns.

"I'm not your slave." He whispered into the wind. Palpatine was focused fully on him now. Just a little more, a bit more distraction from the other figures in the snow, and an attack might make it through. "You thought to control me." He whispered against the parchment skin. "You never imagined it could be the other way around." There was a momentary pang of worry that he had let his plan slip, but Palpatine only frowned.

His father was calling in his mind, telling him this was not the way, telling him not to make the sacrifice.

//I have to do this. Be ready.//

His father redoubled his efforts to dissuade him, but Luke refocused on Palpatine. "You were wrong, your Highness. I'll never turn. You'll never have me." He breathed deep. "You want this power? Here, have it."

Luke didn't see the look of confusion on Palpatine's face. He closed his eyes. He felt more than heard Leia and his father start in shock, and smiled. The Light danced around him so easily, blindingly bright, lighting up the stormy afternoon.

--...and you, Luke Skywalker, are nothing but Darkness…--

Never had the wretched old man been so wrong. The Light came to him in a breath of fresh, cleansing air, gusting through him to the aging Darksider under his grasp. The old man was completely distracted by the attack.

//Father! Now!//

He heard him. There was the snap-hiss behind him and the snow was bathed in blood red.

"This is far from what you deserve," Luke whispered, although over the singing of the Force it was doubtful anyone heard him. Certainly they wouldn't hear him over Palpatine's enraged shriek. His hand trembled, and the snowfields trembled with him.

The air sang with the hiss of a lightsaber before it sliced cleanly through Palpatine. A tremulous minute of outrage and then, finally, thankfully, in a fit frozen sunshine, the Emperor collapsed. He choked, screamed again. And died.

Or, more exactly, burst.