No. 19 ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Knees Buckling | Repeatedly Passing Out | Head Lolling
Mind yourself on this one. There isn't a suicide in it, but it could be read as an attempt, so please take care of yourself
"And you, young Skywalker?" Palpatine asked him kindly. "What do you think of Lord Vader's new motion to destroy your Rebellion?"
Luke, handcuffed to the table in the meeting room he'd been dragged to, gave the Emperor of the galaxy the most withering look he could muster. "I think it sucks."
His father made a noise that might have been a snort. Luke turned that look on him as well. Just because he'd come to accept their blood relationship—and there was no other choice, having been scooped up on a random mission, flown straight to Coruscant, and given the worst news possible—doesn't mean he exempted him from any of this.
Palpatine continued, fully turning away from Vader and looking down at Luke. It really wasn't fair that in a room clearly designed for people to sit around a table, Luke was the only one sitting. "And yet I'm sure you understand its efficacy. With the Rebels so clearly concentrated in Bothan space, striking at the key planets he listed to find the Rebel base is a solid plan."
"Why am I here?" Luke demanded. "You don't want me to hear all of this. I'm a Rebel."
"Your reactions are certainly telling."
"They're not useful unless you're right."
"Luke, there is no need for hysteria," his father informed him. "You should be here. It is important to see how the Empire is run."
"Why? I'm sure as hell not gonna help it run any smoother."
"One day." Palpatine patted him on the head. "You will. A year and a half with the Rebellion may have ruined your mind, but we will claim it back."
Luke glared. "You want to talk about who ruined my mind?"
"I must concede that you are right, however. Simply observing your reactions to our intelligence is only useful if we hit information both true and dangerous. Its use is limited." Palpatine glanced at Vader, who nodded in response. "But your use is infinite. As it is now."
"Don't you dare—"
Luke cut himself off with a strangled cry. The fingers that pushed into his mind were cold enough that he felt every one, like they were trailing frost down his back. He piled up what rudimentary shields he could afford and wished that Ben had bothered to teach him this.
They were enough, thank the stars. When he opened his eyes, he was breathing hard, leaning on the table with both hands. His chair lay behind him, kicked over in his struggle. He glared at Palpatine—at his father, who watched this happen and allowed it.
"Get out of my head!"
"Our presence in your mind is necessary, Luke," Vader informed him. "You cannot shield yourself and you continue to refuse to learn."
"I won't learn from you."
"Then you require our protection," Palpatine insisted. "The galaxy can be so loud for someone with so much raw power."
Luke shook his head. "Stop it," he said weakly.
Palpatine sighed. "Far be it from be to intrude. I shall retreat. Your natural shields, though crass and untrained, are enough to hinder us. Perhaps you can protect yourself on instinct, this time?" The this time was just mocking. They had been here before. "Lord Vader, let go of your son's mind."
"Master—"
"He must learn."
Luke's knees buckled underneath him when Coruscant crashed in.
Numbers were cold, distant, and unfathomable. He hadn't even known how to pronounce Coruscant when he joined the Rebellion: school called it Imperial Centre, and he'd only ever seen the real name written down. He still accidentally said Coruskant sometimes, which Palpatine had certainly mocked him for. When he'd joined the Rebels, he definitely hadn't known what population: one trillion was meant to mean.
What it would mean for him.
It was the heart of the Empire, but so many Rebel missions ran here. It was the place to disappear, Leia had told him once. Whenever she'd tried to escape the authorities, she just went down several levels and was lost in the din. Policing that many people was impossible. The air traffic was a free for all, and only got strict if you tried to fly close to the important government buildings. It was, paradoxically, one of the safest places for a Rebel to be assigned.
No one could find you amidst all this noise. Luke couldn't find himself.
His mind didn't even know how to fathom this vast input from an unpractised sense. He could hear oil bubbling in a speeder tank a hundred levels below him. It was that he fixated on, until the bubbling grew louder, became a shriek, and he realised his head was ringing.
He opened his eyes on the floor. Pain dissected his scalp: he'd hit his head in the fall. Hot blood pumped out of his nose, his ears. Distantly, he lifted a hand to touch it. Now that the input had ceased, it seemed almost devoid of colour.
"Ah, I see," Palpatine said. His oily presence slunk around Luke's mind. The loudness of Coruscant tried to trickle through, but he was holding it back. Barely. Threateningly. "A scan of Bothan Space would be useless. They aren't on a planet. They have allies on Bothawui's rings that stock their carrier ship."
"I don't know," Luke said to the ceiling uselessly. "I'm not assigned to Bothan Space."
"You are Commander Skywalker of Rogue Squadron," Palpatine said. "You have doubtlessly flown with such important missions. I have it on good authority from your own chaotic mind."
"You are far more important that you seem to wish to see yourself," Vader added. Palpatine gave his apprentice an amused, irritated look, but Luke's head was spinning too much to process it. His left arm was still hanging above him. He was still bound to the table. The skin around his wrist was red and raw.
"Leave me alone," he repeated. He tried to sit up, but his head swam and lolled against his chest. "Leave me—"
"I will train you, if you consent." His father was dogged. He had been for all the weeks Luke had endured this. "You need not suffer this indignity. Your power is enough to crumple the galaxy in your fist if you wish to."
"I don't, thanks."
"Defending yourself from Coruscant, even with our heightened sensitivity, will be simple once you allow me to teach you how."
"I won't use the dark side."
"It is the only way to true power. And in an arena like this, weakness cannot be tolerated." The way Vader looked him up and down like that made him feel sick.
How long would they drag him around like this? How long could he stand it? He hadn't been more than a hundred metres away from the Sith Lords tormenting the galaxy in over three weeks. It was impossible to stop them from picking whatever information they wanted out of his mind. And his last escape attempt…
Was this his life? To forever trail in his father's footsteps, because they refused to teach him to shield without the dark side, and he refused to learn it? He could not leave their side. Not while he was on this planet.
This couldn't be his life. He wouldn't let it.
The binder around his left wrist snapped open; the Force was used on instinct. He stood up, knees shaking. Palpatine raised an eyebrow at him.
"Are you well, young Skywalker?" he asked. "You seem overwhelmed."
"Go to hell," Luke snapped and stumbled for the door.
Vader made to follow him, but Palpatine stopped him. Luke heard him say, just as he hit the button to open the door—it wasn't locked; why would it be locked, when Luke was bound to them so thoroughly anyway?—"Let him go, my friend. He will come back. He knows that he needs you."
Every step away from his father was harder. His limbs trembled. He ran into the wall several times. The pressure against the eggshell-thin walls around his mind thumped and thumped and thumped. Hairline fractures formed.
He had made it six corridors away before the eggshell smashed. His fingers went numb; his breathing skipped, like his brain forgot how to order it; his ears whined, although the overload wasn't coming from there. He clung to consciousness with the fervour of a drowning man and, even as he stumbled to his knees, he crawled forwards.
The officers walking down the corridor gave him a wide berth. They were used to the Emperor's pet Jedi by now.
The grey floor underneath him was neon yellow as he placed his cheek against it; the cool touch grounded him, almost, but it was intense enough that it stung as well. He felt like something had skinned half his face off.
The first thing he noticed for a long, long time was his father's boots in his vision. The second thing was that the cacophony vanished. Luke was proud of himself for staying conscious for that one, at least.
"You cannot go on like this, Luke," his father told him.
"Neither can you," he retorted. But they both knew that in a war of attrition, the Empire that owned the galaxy would always win.
"Give in to the dark side. You need not lose your mind and your independence."
"I don't think your emperor is big on my independence anyway, considering I used it to blow up his pet project."
"And I am proud of you for it. But this is pointless pain you are inflicting upon yourself. You do not even use your suffering." Vader pulled at his cape and knelt down beside Luke. He wiped his nose. Luke hadn't realised it was bleeding again.
It was a horribly paternal gesture. Luke despised him. And himself, for the pathetic, "You're proud of me?" that slipped out of his lips.
"Naturally."
Nothing about this situation was natural.
"You pretend to care," he said, "and still you do this?"
"You refuse to be trained."
"I tried! I said yes, once, remember! But you swore you wouldn't use the dark side. You lied." He still felt dirty, with how he'd wordlessly followed Vader's instructions to draw on his frustration, before he'd realised what was happening. What little shields he could summon were due to that failed lesson, and he hated it.
"There is no point in teaching you without the dark side." Vader almost sounded like he was pleading. "Your stubbornness is pointless, Luke. You would squander your potential, ruin your mind, out of some misplaced loyalty to a man who kidnapped and lied to you?"
Luke pushed himself off the floor. It was so grey. It had had so much colour a few minutes ago.
"Leave me alone," he repeated and kept walking away.
Vader followed. "Do not think to give me orders."
"You don't care!" Luke snapped. "If you did, you wouldn't do this! You can't say you're proud of me and then turn around and let this happen!" He pointed at his bloody nose. The dripping was deafening. The blood he shared with Vader touched his lips and baptised his tongue. "Is my power all that you want? Am I useless to you like this, without the dark side to maximise power with no regard for any other cost?"
"How dare you presume—"
"You want the powerful son you think you're owed," Luke said. "You don't want me."
He walked away.
Vader's shock bought him several seconds. His outrage bought him several more. By the time Vader thought to follow, Luke was running, running, racing through the corridors of the Palace he despised so much. As Coruscant lurched in on him again, the walls he threw up shattering into bricks and mortar with every step, he swerved, crashed into people, nearly impaled himself on red guards' staffs. But he kept running.
Somewhere, somehow, he found a balcony. The air on this side of the Palace was thick with smog—he was right above the kitchens. With Coruscant vast and screaming and beautiful in his awareness, he let that acrid smog fill his lungs. It pulled him downwards: out of the atmosphere, past the kitchens, into the dark, cramped, polluted depths below.
His father was coming. Luke did not have much time. He took a deep breath, clung to the railing of the balcony, and let his mind be ruined.
After a point of familiarity, screaming turns to music. His knees buckled underneath him; he lay sprawled on the floor, staring into nothing, and tried to parse the vast universe that beat at Coruscant's heart. The myriads of lives swept in to carry Luke away, and he was gone.
No Rebel secrets in his mind.
No incriminating evidence. Nothing for Palpatine to use.
No Luke left behind.
Like so many Rebels before him, Luke dived into Coruscant and disappeared.
He saw everything. The sun, miles away on the other side of Coruscant, rising on a squalid neighbour many standard hours behind Imperial City. The rats scuttling over scaffolding between housing development projects, infestation new flats before they were even built. The thieves that stalked through the lower levels. The thousands of people who just wanted to get by.
He knew all of them. He loved them. This was what it was like to be the Force.
And, tragically, he loved his father as well. He saw him and could not look away: he saw him catch up with the body of his son on that balcony, heard him call Luke? Luke? Luke? Saw him fall to his knees. Felt him cradle his son's body to his chest, with a heart that forgot how to beat without the mind it maintained. Heard his own words run on a vicious loop in his heart as if Vader's own shields were butter, and Luke could slip right through.
want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want me you don't want
Lord Vader. I sensed your distress. What has occurred?
Luke is gone.
Palpatine's dark-robed presence was a black hole. Luke struggled not to get sucked into it.
Gone?
His mind is lost.
Perhaps this is for the best.
The best?
He was not the son you deserved, Lord Vader. You know that minds can be rebuilt—perhaps from scratch. With his body, you can make a new son. One who will not disappoint you.
Disappoint me?
Of course, if that would be too complex, we have excellent cloning facilities. I understand your grief. But can you understand my pragmatism?
Luke could understand what it felt like for black holes to die. He was unleashed from its orbit, spinning through the atmosphere. Oh, a pregnant mother was having an ultrasound for the first time. Her joy spilled into him, until he felt light as air. She imagined her child, what she would call them, and Vader mourned his.
Vader gathered his son's corpse in his arms. His shoulders heaved.
"I do not accept this."
He heard it with eardrums that vibrated under the booming words.
"This is unacceptable."
Vader's head snapped up. He scanned the Coruscanti skyline as intently as that new mother was staring at the ultrasound of her child.
"I want you," he said. And— "I see you." In the Force, he reached for him. Dissipated, chaotic, spread in a thousand pieces into a thousand levels of a stuffed world or not, the tendrils of Vader's Force presence reached for him. One by one they cradled tiny sparks and pulled them inwards jealously. "You can't leave me. I can see you." The sparks coalesced. Luke was pulled back towards him, and now he could feel the dent his father's chest box was leaving in his forehead, the hard, durasteel grip on his insensible arms. "I want you back."
But so many pieces of him were already gone.
Luke opened eyes that seemed to glow, his voice breathy. When he looked at his father, he saw right through him: the faulty suit, the faulty history, the faulty man at the core of it all. He was a pathetic excuse for a villain, a Force-user, and a father. He was trying so hard.
"Then do better," he ordered. There was a glow to his words, one that seemed more commanding than he had every been in his life. His pulse thrummed faster than the human body should be able to bear, in time with the racing heart of the city planet. "You can't keep Coruscant quiet." He pronounced it wrong.
His father stared at him in awe. Luke wondered what he saw: the pockmarked, patchwork soul of a city too large to truly live, except through him?
"Evidently," he said.
