No. 21 FAMOUS LAST WORDS
Coughing up Blood | "You're safe now." | "Take me instead."
Here's the second and final chapter! Hope you enjoy.
Meditating while levitating rocks was all well and good until pain shattered your face. Luke flinched bodily, his legs and torso folding like origami, and then he was on the ground again, dirt all over his hands and face—which made it hurt even more—and rocks plummeting towards him. They struck his shoulders, legs, back; not hard enough to injure, thankfully, but certainly enough to hurt. His eyes stung with tears.
Yoda frowned, waddling over. "Pain, you are in?"
"Yeah— agh!" He gasped for breath as his throat closed in on itself, then shuddered. Strained pain bloomed in his wrists, his tendons; his elbow groaned like he'd used it to break down a door. "What is this?"
"Sense your pain, I do," Yoda said. "Strange, this is."
"No kidding—"
"Come from, where does this? Injured, you are not."
"No, I'm not—" His head snapped sideways, his cheek burning. "That's like I got slapped." Slapped by someone with a chainsaw for a hand, maybe. He scurried backwards at the flurry of assaults on his torso, his ribs—one that winded him, one that definitely cracked something in his chest, jagged and harsh, another that was just mocking. His nose was still pumping blood. His face felt like it had been put through a meat grinder.
He coughed. Red spouted into his hand.
"What is this?" he asked weakly, almost croaking. Yoda was staring at him, now. "Who—" He rocketed to his feet when he reached back, and immediately realised who this was. "Leia!"
His arm cracked.
He woke up in Yoda's hut.
"Fainted, you did," Yoda said, holding up a mug of absolutely rank soup to Luke's lips. He gulped it down in one. "Overwhelming, can this kind of connection be."
"Connection?"
"Much to tell you about Princess Leia, have I." Luke had seen Yoda look exasperated, frustrated, creepy, reluctant, and even melancholy. But he'd never seen him afraid before. "Much about your father, too."
"Luke!" Han went to clap him on the shoulder, but Luke ducked past him before he could. Yoda had bound his broken arm in a sling that looked to be made of tree bark, however that was made, and he didn't want him jostling it. Or, in general, hurting Luke. It already hurt to talk. "What happened to your face?"
"Where's Leia?" he demanded instead.
"Captured by Vader."
Luke closed his eyes. "He wants to trade me for her."
"What? How'd you know that?" Han studied him. "Seriously, what happened to your face?"
"Vader," Luke said.
"But he—"
"He's beating up Leia. I… sensed it. According to Master Yoda. I got hit as well. We're bound."
"According to who? What?"
"I need to tell Vader to take me instead."
"Kid." Han grabbed Luke's unbroken arm and got him to look at him, guiding him through the corridors of the Falcon until he was sitting down at the dejarik table. "You need to tell me what's happening."
"You need to fly me to Vader. I'll exchange myself for Leia."
"Hell no. There's a better way than that."
"He won't hurt me. He'll hurt Leia more."
"I still don't see the logic in this."
"I'll explain everything to you," Luke promised. "But first: set course for Cloud City. Now."
Luke used his good hand to hold his lightsaber to his head the entire time the exchange was going on. He met Vader's gaze on the holocall, stared at him when they walked across the surface of the abandoned mining asteroid they used for the exchange, and watched him flinch with every twitch of Luke's finger on the ignition. Hesitantly, horribly hesitantly, he shoved Leia forwards.
He clearly didn't want to. But Luke had anticipated that. At the risk of losing his prize before he got his hands on him at all, he let her go.
She looked too out of it to process what was going on, which made Luke's heart hurt. He could see it in Han's face as well; at least he could rely on him to take care of her, once they were out of here, and Luke was lost.
"Now drop your lightsaber, Skywalker," Vader snapped. Luke watched the Falcon disappear into lightspeed beyond the asteroid's thin atmosphere.
He dropped his lightsaber. Vader summoned it to his hand immediately, clipping it to his belt. Luke was shuffled into Vader's shuttle—Vader had come alone, as instructed; the Executor wasn't even anywhere in this system—and sat down with a hard thump into the co-pilot's seat. Luke grimaced.
Vader did not take off. He stared at Luke. "They have injured you."
"Who?"
"The Rebels." Vader's voice boomed. His anger was something sudden and cruel. "These are new injuries, are they not? I can hardly recognise you."
"If you're talking about the face," Luke bit out, ignoring the stinging skin, "that got rearranged by a wampa on Hoth anyway."
"You are hardly on your feet!"
"What do you care?"
Vader froze up, staring at him. He seemed hesitant, but something was swelling in him, something he'd been preparing for years. Luke was so, so sick of all this. Yoda's words were still running on a loop in his head. He hadn't, amidst the haze of pain, minimal jungle treatment, worry, and negotiating, had the chance to fully process them yet.
"You are safe now," Vader tried.
The galaxy was reshaping itself into a truly hellish place, all of a sudden. At least Leia was out of the devil's hands.
Luke pushed, "So? What do you care? You're gonna torture and kill me, anyway, aren't you?"
"I am not." The strength seemed to flood back into Vader. "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father, young Skywalker."
"He didn't tell me enough," Luke agreed. "But I've learned a lot since I got beaten to a pulp."
That disrupted Vader's thought process. He stared at him. "Who?" he demanded. "Who did this?"
"You did."
He let the words fall into the silence between them. Vader's silence was gratifying, if disturbing. He wondered how much he'd actually told Leia about why he was torturing her.
"I did not," Vader said. "If someone undertook my image, or a convincing illusion—"
"My arm is broken. I have two broken ribs, one of which pierced my lung. That took some Jedi healing to take care of. I hope you gave Leia the same treatment."
"Princess Leia's ordeal is irrelevant to this."
"It's exactly relevant!" Luke's voice was rising. "My arm is broken. I have two broken ribs and a pierced lung. I was struck across the face twice, my cheekbones are both shattered, my nose in a split, and I have bruising around my throat!"
Vader stared at him.
"Leia is my best friend in the entire galaxy. You hurt her. You could have killed her." Luke gestured to his arm in its sling. "You wanted to do it because we were connected? Here! We're connected! Enough that you nearly killed me."
"Impossible," Vader said. "I could not have injured you."
Luke scoffed. "You think my issue here is that I'm injured? I'm angry because you nearly killed my sister!"
Despite the silence that followed, he couldn't bring himself to regret that slip. Vader deserved to know exactly what he had done, exactly how terrible its consequences were, and if the only way to make him understand, and suffer from that understanding, was to tell him the truth, then—
No. Luke did regret letting it slip. He didn't want to increase Vader suffering by making Leia's worse. She would wake up to Han's ministrations, dazed and pained, and he would have to tell her not only that Luke was gone, but that the man who had tortured her was her biological sire. Unless he offloaded that part onto Yoda, which Luke wouldn't blame him for.
He didn't want to hurt Leia more than she already had at their father's hands. But he supposed it was too late, now.
The cockpit, so still against the gentle rotation of the asteroid among the stars beyond the viewport, seemed to be chock full of ice.
"You have no sister," Vader said.
"If you want to call her back, I'm sure if you beat me up some more, it'll work both ways. She might be drawn back here. If you want the proof." His tone dripped sarcasm.
"You have no sister, Luke. I know, because—"
"I almost didn't. But I do. I have a twin sister." He lifted his chin. "You nearly killed her, Father. Many, many times. You nearly killed us both."
Vader looked like Luke had sabotaged his suit. For a moment, even the unending rasp of his respirator stopped.
"I am fortunate you each had the other to rescue you," he said.
Luke glowered. "What's that supposed to mean?"
But Vader just turned towards the controls. Fired up the engines. The shuttle took off in one smooth leap, and then they were soaring through hyperspace.
"I will heal you," Vader said. "Perhaps that will heal her as well."
Luke hoped so.
Vader paused for an agonisingly long time. Luke had never seen someone so uncertain, so lost. But he took a petty satisfaction in it. This was his father, and they had upended his galaxy.
They would do it again. That was a promise.
Vader shook his head, trailing off weakly. "We will have much to discuss."
What else was there to say?