Luke did it. He made the impossible. He still halfly can't believe it. But it focused, he reached out, he used the Force as he was told, and fired the shot that brought them victory. Now it was time to fly away to safety, before the mechanical abomination plaguing the galaxy will meet it's end and be destroyed for good. The loud, rappid beeping sound rings and Luke realize something is terribly wrong. His x-wing starts rapidly losing it's speed. It had to be damaged. How did it even happen without him noticing? When? The others already turned into small dots, rapidly vanishing. This is bad. Very bad.
He presses the controls harder, his heart racing rapidly, but without any effect. His ship stubbornly continues slowing down until it stops, too close to the dreaded space station which is counting it's last minutes, and Luke knows he might never make it away at all. But they won. He did it. The others are safe.
Above him, the Death Star explodes in a miliard pieces, and the Force around him as well as in himself shakes violently, cracking and crumbling and it feels like the invisible claws were tearing through his very being, taking the parts of it away.
Luke expects the wave of heat and pressure crush him, sending him into oblivion, when the fiery brighness swallows everything, but instead, he is hit by wave of death and agony and pierced by many voices, endless screams of people, the living, breathing people. Soldiers, hidden beneath their white armors, yet each of them still unique. Each of them still a person. Scientists and engineers. Pilots. Prisoners. Even civilians. Their fear and panic is vibrating through him as they are meeting their fiery deaths. Tears blurring his vision, his mouth opened in the silent scream. It's too much, too unbearable. How could he become the cause of this? No, no No! He can't...
Luke has no idea how long his damaged ship was floating between ruins and debris of the destroyed Death Star before someone found him and took him to the base. Apparently he managed to get far enough not to be crushed into oblivion and nothingness. Somehow, he miraculously survived. He didn't remember much of what happened after he stayed behind. And for some reason, the very thought of remembering anything fills him with dread. What should be there to remember anyway - except the obvious? He still feels terrible drained and exhausted and the medics tell him to rest more. He does...
In following days and weeks life continues on and everything is as it was before. Unless it's not. Luke started to notice that whenewer he is touching the Force, or he atempts to. Since he woke up in the medical room after the day of their greatest victory - was it victory at all? Why it doesn't feel like it? - the Force was somehow different. He can still feel it everywhere around him, but it became somehow... distant, slipping between his mental fingers whenever he reaches out, it's calm warm flow still surounding him, yet not filling and guiding him like it used to. Like there was some invisible crack, a bleeding wound in his soul. Maybe he is just still shaken from the explosion. Maybe he just needs time to heal and adjust. He wishes he could talk to someone who would make him understand, but Ben is dead and he doesn't know about anyone else...
In the silence of the night, he would often swear he hears whispers. Not like Ben's voice, which guided his mind and his hand back then when he needed it he most. These don't feel like the sentient presence. It feels more like...echoes. Like the place where he rests was filled with echoes of murmuring voices of the dead, wanished by his hand, sticking to him and haunting him. Telling him things he refuses to admit. Reminding him the true extend of his action. He forgets most of it by the morning...
The strange sickness started to spread through the rebel base. Noone knows what caused it, but one by one, they started feel weak, exhausted. Then, they started collapsing. They tried to find the cause, but couldn't find anything. Like their life energy just was fading. The most unnerwing thing was, that after some time even the nature itself around their base started whittering away, though most of them thought it was just a coincidence.
Fortunately, none of Luke's closest friends were affected so far. Nor was he himself, though both Leia and Han point out that he doesn't look good and that he should rest, but he just can't. There are not many of them capable of fight right now and they need every hand.
Their next battle turned out to be complete dissaster. Luke was desperately watching as his allies were falling down as they, weakened by same strange sickness which was plaguing their base, were hit by their enemies. He was reaching out to the Force, trying to be faster, trying to save as much as he could. Then the strangest thing happened. Some of the imperial fighters hesitated, the others started rapidly spiraling out of their course, like they just got a hit... or their pilots suddenly fainted. The battle raged and when it ended, only one pilot returned from it alive. Luke. When he exited his fighter and Leia, Han, Chewie and others rushed towards him, they noticed how unnaturaly pale he was. He did not seem physicaly injured, yet something was definitely wrong with him. He was immidiately relieved of all his duties and ordered to medical room, to rest and heal until he gets better, while others will cover his missions.
When he has a vision of his friends being in danger though, nothing will stop him from rushing to their aid. Some tiny part of him warns him that he might just doom them all, but he doesn't listen. He couldn't let them die. He had to do something.
It was just a bait, set by Darth Vader, to lure him out, of course it was.
They weren't his true goal. Luke was. The duel which followed was something surprising both of them, since when he managed to fight like that? It more resembled the dance of two black holes circling each other while their immerse gravity slowing and crumbling the world around them. Deep voice echoing through his ears, but he refusing the ofter of joining the man who murdered his father. The revelation which follows hits him hard.
His father didn't die. His faher is right here, in front of him.
The most feared man in the galaxy.
The one who caused much suffering and killed thousands of people.
But... He is not much different, is he? He tried to deny it. He tried to forget. He tried to pretend that nothing has changed, that all that happened before were just terrible coincidents. He can't, not anymore.
He can now constantly feel the echoes of terror and suffering he caused, hear the silent cries of more then two milions of souls wanishing in the depths of the Force by his single shot. The echoes of their last memories, last thoughts in their dying moments still lingering on the edge of his mind. He thought he will die with them, when his fighter was damaged, and maybe he should. But he did not. Or did he?
He tried to tell himself it was nescesary. He tried to revel in their victory. To feel the same oblivious joy as his friends and allies. To be like he was before.
Yet he knew that something cracked in him. The Force was never the same for Luke. Or maybe just he was not. And it scared him far more than facing any enemy he could ever imagine.
He later tried to ignore the gnawing huner slowly consumming everything around him whenewer he tried to reach out and find something, someone, anything to fill the black hole in him, taking, consumming, draining.
When his companions were starting to fall sick around him, he didn't dare to think about connecting it with his uncouscious atempts to fill the black hole he carved into his soul by destroying the Death Star.
When they started failing their battle because others around him were fainting like something invisible was sucking their lives away, he was blind. They all were. Or wanted to be. The truth was too terrible for him to accept. He tried to deny it, even now, he tried. But deep in his soul, or what's left of it, he knew the true. In the end of the day, he resembled his father more as he was now, tall, unstopable, death incarnate, than the mysterious heroic figure of his childhood dreams.
In a way, he might be even worse. His father might kill thousands of people but he, he killed millions. His father's presence sets chill and fear into those close to him, but his own is draining life from all living things around him even if he does not want it. His father reeks of hatred and pain and he of void and hunger.
He can no longer pretend.
The hand outscretchs towards him and with it, a promise of power, of family... of belonging...
His now burning eyes stay focused on the tall black form of the dark lord, of his father.
Maybe his wound, this black hole leaking of pain and agony dwelling in him since that fateful day cannot be closed, yet his aching loneliness can still be eased by the closeness of another black hole, another tormented soul. Someone who could understand. Someone who could teach him how to deal with this. Someone who would not shy away nor would be destroyed by his tainted presence. Someone who could be his home.
Shakily, Luke reaches with his own hand, pale, almost translucent skin covering darkened veins, looking like the fraigle shell of it's former self. The solid black armored hand reaches farther and Luke firmly catches it, letting himself being pulled into the comforting embrace of darkness and for the first time since his destruction of Death Star, he feels like he is truly not alone.
