WHUMPTOBER No. 13 CAN'T MAKE AN OMELETTE WITHOUT BREAKING A FEW LEGS
Fracture | Dislocation | "Are you here to break me out?"
No warnings here! The start of this was hellishly difficult to write, but I'm proud I finished :D Hope you enjoy!
Ahsoka's lightsaber smashed into his mask, blinding him with brilliant light. Vader stumbled back, cursing, but caught her next strike on his blade.
"Anakin," she whispered. His mask had fractured; her face swam in front of him, white and bright. That light reflected off of her, the smooth, uniform metal walls of the corridor, until it was almost an endless mirage. Nothing quite seemed real.
"Ahsoka," he said. "You… are… dead."
"You tried once." She smirked at him, with that same, painful cockiness, as if the pain behind it was not clear as day. "I got saved on Malachor. And now I'm here to save someone else. Where's Luke?"
The name lit his brain like fireworks. "With the Rebellion," he growled. His lightsaber snapped back on; he stalked towards her. "With you—"
She caught his strike, brow creasing. "He's not," she said. "We know you took him. I'm here to rescue him."
"I was wondering why you had bothered to sneak onto the Executor after so successfully making your escape. Where is my son?"
She held her lightsabers aloft, keeping her suspicious gaze on him. "That's what you're gonna tell me. You kidnapped him, and—"
"I," he informed her, his voice chilly, "did no such thing."
"Then where is he?" she snapped.
"I wasn't aware that the two of you were acquainted."
"You're not aware of a lot of things, Anakin. I heard what happened on Bespin."
The mere mention of it sent fury coursing through him. "That boy tried to kill himself—"
"You cut off his hand!" She threw out her right arm for emphasis, a passionate gesture that was so familiar it gnawed at his heart. "And I heard the ultimatum you gave him. Join me or die? Where are you keeping him? Have you killed him already?"
"He is my son—"
"I was your padawan. You tried to kill me."
He gritted his teeth. "You were too dangerous to be left alive."
"So, I should see that as a compliment?" She was stalking around him now, teeth bared. She flickered in his vision.
"In another life, you would have. I suspect you do anyway."
To his gratification—and to his horror that he reacted with gratification at all—she smirked again. "Maybe." She lifted her sabers again. "But you still gotta tell me where Luke is, or we're resuming this fight."
"You are searching for him quite fiercely."
"He's Anakin Skywalker's son."
"Anakin Skywalker is dead."
She shrugged. "That just means he's not your son, then."
"He is my son," he growled. "And I do not have him. What has happened? Why has he vanished?"
"You don't know?"
"If your Rebels have misplaced him," he vowed, "I will carve you all into—"
"You're doing your best to do that already," she drawled, but she glared at him, searching. "You really don't know?"
"I do not." He turned away from her, knowing the dismissive gesture would irk her. It didn't, though—she'd apparently grown up, which irked him—and she just extinguished her sabers. "But I will find him."
"Let me help you," she said.
"Why would I accept help from you?"
"Because my plans were always better than yours."
"That is untrue." They scoffed simultaneously. "And why would you want to help me?"
"Because I don't trust you with him. And I won't let you hurt him again."
"What does my son mean to you?"
She bared her teeth. "We already covered this. He's Anakin's son. And Padmé's. And he's a good kid." She looked him up and down. "You don't have a good history when it comes to dealing with people you care about."
"Cutting off his hand was necessary—"
"You tried to kill me, Anakin," she bit out.
Vader shook it off. "That was necessary too," he informed her. "If you had decided to join me, it would not have been."
"I wouldn't have. And neither will Luke."
"It is his destiny."
"Just like yours was to destroy the Sith?" She stalked forwards; Vader stepped back to maintain space between them. "His destiny is an invention. If you try to force him into it, it won't end well for you."
"You know nothing."
"So what is your plan?" She thrust out a hand to gesture. "Hand him over to Palpatine? Anakin, Palpatine is evil."
"Sidious will not be allowed anywhere near my son!"
She narrowed her eyes. "So, you'll torture him yourself? I know what you did to Inquisitors."
"Luke will turn. Of his own free will. Torture will not be necessary."
"But it'll be an option. You know that I won't allow that."
"I will not allow Luke to be tortured either," Vader snapped. "And if you truly care so much, then you are wasting my time when I should be finding him. Leave my ship and cease this distraction!"
She didn't leave his ship. Nor did she cease her distraction. Instead, she followed him to his quarters, questioning him with every step. It was like the years had melted away, and they were young again, but the careful distance she left between them betrayed how far they had diverged.
"How are you gonna find him?" she nagged. "What are you doing? He could be anywhere—captured by bounty hunters, preyed on by some serial killer, or even just got himself lost."
"Or he could have been captured by Trandoshans?" Vader asked pointedly. "And will be hunted for sport?"
She paused and crossed her arms in the doorway to his quarters, eyes narrowed. "Any number of communities would want to hunt a Jedi for sport, Skyguy." She winced at the nickname.
"And I do not know where any of them are."
"I know a few."
He let his respirator cycle. "I am aware." He had failed, that time. He would not fail this time. "There is no need. I will find him."
"I repeat: how?"
"We are connected." The thought came to him immediately, hope reeling him in like a fish on a line. "I can reach out to him."
"Connected?" She paused. "Like the Master and Padawan bond?"
"No." Ahsoka had no relatives with the Force. She had no concept of what this could feel like. "Far, far stronger. I can speak with him from the other side of the galaxy."
She pursed her lips. "I'm gonna guess you abused this."
"He never responded." He didn't know how to interpret the heartbreak on Ahsoka's face, but he hated it. "I can use it now."
"Then do it. Let's find out where he is—what's happening there. Time might be of the—"
He closed his eyes before bothering to hear what she was about to finish with and reached.
The galaxy was so, so dark. With Ahsoka right in front of him, their old bond—withered and wretched—struggled to latch onto him again, establish a connection, but he callously waved it away. Further out from his ship was the blackness of space, then the vast, incomprehensible sprawl of the galaxy that had made him, stars exploding in the impossible distance. One star exploded far more loudly than the others.
That star was screaming.
Luke, he intoned. Luke, what is it—
It was still screaming.
"Luke, Luke, Luke…" he chanted desperately, trying to establish a connection. Trying to get a response. He was brought back to himself by Ahsoka grabbing and yanking on his arm.
"Find out where he is!" she ordered. "Get a read on his location!"
He stared at her hand on his arm. She was so much bigger than she'd used to be. Malachor had been dark and brief; he hadn't had the chance to watch her up close, and see the quiet, invisible death of the teenager he'd taught, subsumed by the woman she'd become. "I cannot do that."
"Why not?"
"If I was at all capable of doing that, your Rebel base would have been sacked months ago!"
She gritted her teeth. For a moment, he thought she'd bare them at him, her sharp incisors glinting. "You're meant to be the Chosen One," she said.
He yanked his arm away. "I am a Sith."
"You are the most powerful Force-wielder to ever live," she said again. "Maybe you couldn't look for me, before. But you can look for him, so do it."
"I searched for you." The words burst out of him like a dam breaking. He hadn't known he'd wanted to say them at all. "You know that, when you were with the Trandoshans, you thanked me—"
"I'm talking about after Order Sixty-Six." She glared at him. "Maybe, when you set that off, killing every Jedi in the galaxy, you weren't thinking of me. Maybe you couldn't think of me, for whatever reason. I don't care." That was a lie. She bled with how much she cared.
"You were not a Jedi. They were only meant to destroy Jedi."
"Tell that to Rex, who had to have brain surgery before he stopped trying to kill me."
If Vader had been able to gasp, he would have. The 501st shouldn't have received orders to kill Ahsoka. She wasn't a part of the Jedi. The fact that they had, when Vader wasn't the one who'd sent them…
He would have to unpack that later.
"I searched for you," he repeated, his mouth dry. "I found you. I found your grave and your lightsabers."
"You didn't find me."
"A lightsaber is a Jedi's life."
"I'm not a Jedi, Anakin." Her blue eyes burned before she looked away.
He couldn't handle this. He couldn't handle his former apprentice standing in front of him, confronting him with everything he'd done wrong by her when she was the one who'd left him alone in the Jedi, she was the one who'd faked her death…
And he was the one who'd almost caused it.
"I…" he began. He did not know what to say. Sith didn't know remorse. Nor did they know regret. Therefore, whatever this was, it was impossible for him to know it.
"Do you want to know why I want to stay?" she asked. When he didn't respond, she continued: "I don't trust you not to ruin it with Luke, like you did with the rest of us." She'd made that perfectly clear. "I want to make sure that you do better."
"Why?"
"Because he deserves it!" she snapped. "And so did I. But what's done is done. I won't let it happen again."
"I will do what is necessary," he said.
Her voice was acerbic. "I'm sure you will."
He turned away from her, unsettled, his cape flaring. Instead of examining this conversation further, he looked for Luke.
Where are you? he asked, calling into the void, grasping for that little light that could be in danger of vanishing any moment. Where are you…?
Nothing. He pushed harder. His pacemaker started to send warning signals to his mask as his heart sped up; his limbs shuddered with energy; Ahsoka, distantly, gasped. That sensory input from his flesh and metal body meant nothing to him. He kept channelling the Force, reaching out…
Tell me, he pleaded. Tell me, and I will help you. I will save you.
Luke's mind, when it heard his call, did not trust him. It did not tell him. But, it seemed, the Force took pity on him.
"He is on a ship," Vader said aloud. "A ship that is looking to leave Corellia. He is bound, and the engines are beginning to start."
"We're in the Outer Rim," Ahsoka said. "We can't get to Corellia before that ship takes off—where's it going? Where's it come from?"
"Luke was captured on Rodia. Corellia was the changeover place, to prevent their ship from being tracked."
"Tracked by who? What are they trying to do?"
Vader clenched his fists when he saw it. His mind halfway to the ether, hovering on a plane that spun backwards, he watched the trajectory of the ship that held his son in its dark, ravenous belly, and who awaited it with such hungry anticipation.
"Tracked," he said, "by me."
"You said you didn't know where he was."
"I did not lie."
"Then—"
"Palpatine has captured him," Vader announced. "The ship is leaving Corellia as we speak to deliver him to Coruscant and into his waiting hands. We are in the Outer Rim. By the time we reach Coruscant, he will have had Luke for far longer than he requires to cause lasting damage."
"To his body or mind?"
Vader said, "To his soul."
Ahsoka folded her hands behind her back and paced the room, avoiding Vader's hyperbaric chamber as she did. "Then we need to move. We might be too late—"
"I will not abandon him."
"I wasn't suggesting that. I'm not gonna leave him to his fate. It'd just be more difficult."
Vader kept his mind on that ethereal plane and pushed farther in. He watched his son streaking farther and farther away from him, through the frenetic tunnel of space-time, growing increasingly distant. The galaxy spun on its axis, the black hole at its centre tugging Luke towards it like a maw, and Vader spun with it.
He said, "I thought you were dead, Ahsoka."
She clenched her jaw. "I know. It's not relevant right now."
"Had I known that you had lived," he said, and lifted his hand, "I would have reshaped the galaxy in order to find you again."
Once he tried, every part of him that was human and not as immortal as life itself aching and screaming, to fold the fabric of reality into the shape he wanted, not the shape ordained by chance and fate, it seemed as easy and tranquil as folding clothes. He felt like he was back in Padmé's apartment on Coruscant, overjoyed at seeing her again for the first time in ten years, thrilled at his assignment to guard her on Naboo, watching her pack her beautiful gowns into her case, one by one. The texture of space-time was not dissimilar to velvet.
Wormholes bisected that fabric throughout the galaxy, piercing one fold and pinning it to the next until planets that should be millions of parsecs away could be reached with one hop down a thin silver thread. He remembered his mother, sewing homespun clothes for them. Her ghostly hands shaped his into the correct grip on the needle. He dragged the fabric into a tall, billowing loop, pulled his hand back, fingers poised, and punched.
The Executor rocked underneath them. Vader did not look at Ahsoka, but he saw her anyway, as he saw everything in this state: her pale-faced shock, how she reached for her lightsabers, how she stared at him in the Force, not fathoming what he had done, as the new gravitational forces threatened to pull them right out of their position.
She should not look so shocked. This had been her idea.
Vader was the Chosen One.
If he needed to dislocate an entire arm of the galaxy in order to save his son, he could. He would.
Ahsoka stormed into the next room over. He did not follow with his body, but he followed with his mind: she stormed up to the viewport there and gaped at the sight beyond it. Laid out before the Executor's nose lay a great, exploding tunnel of light, noise, and matter. And through it lay Corellia.
"You've changed the entire geography of these systems!?" she shouted back to him. "What did you do to the galaxy—"
Her words cut off when the wormhole swallowed a ship and spat it out in front of them. That ship glowed like a firefly.
Luke, Vader said. I am here.
And, finally, Luke replied.
Father? It was weak, terrified, but—encouragingly—relieved. Are you here to break me out?
Vader was back in his own body in a blink. The wormhole did not collapse once he released it: it was made and would not be unmade. He could deal with the consequences of that later. Instead, he strode up to the viewport beside Ahsoka, pulling a comm out of his pocket.
"Admiral," he barked. "Tractor that ship in and place all its occupants under arrest, aside from Skywalker. Protect him with your life. He may require medical attention."
"Yes, my lord."
"What are you going to do with him now, Anakin?" Ahsoka murmured. Her awe still bloomed bright in the Force, her glance more affectionate, but he could hear her wariness.
She needed more of an apology. But, more than that, she needed more evidence that she could trust him again.
He would prove it to her.
Finally, he turned back to Luke.
I'm Anakin Skywalker, he promised him. I'm here to rescue you.