WHUMPTOBER No. 15 EMOTIONAL DAMAGE
Lies | New Scars | Breathing through the Pain


"You have failed me, Lord Vader."

The lightning was predictable. It lanced out from Palpatine's hand; he didn't even bother lifting his arm from his throne. He just flicked his fingers, and it struck Vader; he embraced it. The crackling coursed through him, cooking what remained of his flesh limbs inside their durasteel prison; the box on his chest sputtered for a moment, knifing him with pain, before it got back to keeping him alive. Dying for even a short while was agony.

But Vader had been dying a little every day since he learnt the truth. He pictured Padmé, in the arena on Geonosis, shaping the words I love you with her lips; he imagined her son, and wondered how much like her he looked. He'd only caught a glimpse of him on the Death Star before meeting him in a starfighter, and it left a galaxy of possibilities open to him.

The lightning stopped. Vader's respirator started up again, pumping air into his lungs steadily, despite how much it hurt. His muscles, compelled by electrical signals from a machine designed to keep him alive, did not care how much it hurt. They kept moving.

"The loss of Governor Tarkin is staggering in itself," Palpatine continued, standing from his throne and staring out of the window of his throne room. "But to lose my Death Star at the same time is catastrophic. You were assigned to the both of them to defend them, Lord Vader. What bested you so thoroughly?"

A Force-signature, blooming in the dark of space. A ship that loved that signature, diving out of nowhere, shooting him down, because he was too distracted by the familiarity of that call. That miracle boy who had taken the shot even as Vader spiralled out of control in the middle of deep space, until he had felt such a massive loss of life and known that the technological terror was dead.

"The Rebels were small in number but dogged in their pursuit. One swooped towards me at the last moment."

"And you were so distracted as to allow him to shoot you off course? Your attention should have been on defending—"

"The pilot was about to make that shot. I prioritised him over any other oncoming vessels."

"A shot that should have been impossible. Even with the warning we received that there may have been a weakness, that weakness would have been miniscule. No ordinary Rebel pilot would have been able to exploit it."

No. No ordinary pilot had.

Vader reached deep inside him for that connection—the connection that had always been there, but he hadn't noticed until now. Luke pulsed at the other end of it. Too weak to tell what he was feeling, where he was, what he was doing, but strong enough that Vader knew the truth was the truth. His child had lived.

Palpatine had lied to him.

His silence cost him. Another barrage of lightning came. He felt new scars rise on his shoulders, his biceps, the chalky-white skin of his torso. The power of Force lightning didn't even come from the energy. The strength of hatred and darkness that struck him was incomprehensible as well; it left his soul gasping for light, even as he tried to draw strength from his pain.

But not when he was clutching Luke. That faint, tremulous connection to his son.

He must be lightyears away. It was unfathomable that he could feel him even like this, without ever having met him. Having only spoken his name once. It was like they were as close again as when Skywalker had pressed his ear to his wife's protruding belly and murmured promises to their child: You will be safe. I will protect you. The galaxy will be yours for the taking.

Luke would be safe. Vader would certainly protect him.

And he would make sure the galaxy was his.

He would be well-suited to the role. The power that Vader had felt over the Death Star—untapped and raw, instinctive—was nothing compared to what he felt now, reaching out to him. Luke was a supernova. Once he was trained, and had fully ascended to Sith Emperor, Luke's power over the galaxy would be as absolute as the black hole it revolved around. Vader himself was long past his event horizon and would never break free. He would never want to.

"You are not listening to me, are you, Lord Vader?"

He had hardly noticed that the lightning had stopped.

Palpatine glared at him. His yellow eyes, always a mark of his power, suddenly seemed comic and garish. His tendency to jump to flashy lightning shows as petty, cruel, unimaginative. He was a shadow of what an emperor should be. Vader had never yearned so much to be rid of him.

"Something distracts you," Palpatine surmised. "Tell me. We can resolve this."

There were his attempts to placate Vader. For years, he had manipulated him, even under the Jedi's noses; for many more years, he had tortured him and called it affection. But he fed off of pain—and Vader's in particular. When Vader grew too boring for him, he would resort to torture yet again.

Vader said nothing.

He would not speak of the Force-sensitive pilot, not draw attention to his son. He would not give his master the satisfaction. It was such a petty rebellion, but it was the only one he had bothered with in twenty years.

It meant nothing. Palpatine scoffed at his silence. There was nothing he could do to stop him from diving into his mind, the spider's web of their master and apprentice bond taking him right through. He rummaged through Vader's memories, scrutinised Vader's feelings—anger, betrayal, deception, hope; he was very interested in that last one—but when he dove deeper, to find their source, Vader blocked him.

It wasn't an intentional act. Vader had never been able to block out his master. His enormous potential had vanished after Mustafar, and his master was simply too strong. But the part of him that was still Anakin Skywalker, standing in front of his wife and feeling joy balloon in his chest at the realisation that there would be a human being with pieces of the both of them inside him, stepped up to do what he could not.

"No," he said.

Palpatine backed away. "Lord Vader?" he said, faux concerned. "Are you well?"

He had not been well in twenty years.

Palpatine tried again—mustered all his strength and punched the shell Vader's had built around his mind. He smiled as he watched it creak and strain, but the smile dropped when it did not break.

"What is this?" Palpatine asked. "You do not have the power to keep me out. Not since—" He cut himself off. "You made yourself weak."

Palpatine would not be allowed to know about Luke. He would not be allowed near him, or to hurt him, or even think his name. He deserved nothing of Padmé's; perhaps, he deserved nothing of Vader's, either.

More lightning. It was abrupt, desperate. It came out of nowhere. Vader brushed it off.

He stood.

"Lord Vader?" Palpatine demanded again, keeping an ironclad calm in his voice. "What is the meaning of this?" He stopped, softened his voice again. "If you have found a way to expand your potential, I congratulate you—"

"You lied," Vader said.

"My friend—"

Palpatine had lied about Padmé. If Luke lived, then Vader could not have killed her. But he had also lied about Vader.

He had held the galaxy in the palm of his hand, once. Obi-Wan had been woken, in those early days on Coruscant, by young Anakin Skywalker screaming because a woman had been mugged forty levels below them. He could feel his son from millions of parsecs away; he could trace the source of his son's immense, worlds-shattering power back to himself; most importantly, when Palpatine dared to dirty his image with his mental fingers, Vader hardly had to struggle to keep him out.

He had lost none of his power. Palpatine had lied.

Palpatine always lied.

In the end, killing his master was a simple thing. He was not an omnipotent emperor. No matter what Vader had been led to believe. But his son would be.

When Vader sat on the throne, he consoled himself with that image. And the first thing he did was put a bounty on Luke Skywalker for the largest sum of credits any bounty hunter would ever see.

There was no going back now. Soon, gravity would bring him to his son. And Vader, unlike any false fathers or mentors he might have had, would not lie to him when it did.