Aftermath
by SJ 07-00/01-2003 (skyjade@globetrotter.net)
___________________________________________________
Disclaimers: Nothing in the Star Wars Universe belong to me; everything belongs
to George Lucas. Naturally, everything related to events of Dark Empire also
belong to Tom Veitch.
Please don't sue me, it's only for fun; I'm not making any money out of this.
See my home page for more details.
Http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/3702
Special thanks to Adrianne for her help with beta-reading. Thank you for
giving me some of your precious time, my friend; I appreciate.
____________________________________________________
A few days after Dark Empire 1:
The black-enshrouded figure walked silently in the crowded corridors of Pinnacle
Base, drawing a fare share of worried, even distrustful looks as he headed
toward his destination.
The young man did his best to ignore them.
He finally reached his quarters, locked the door behind himself, then leaned
back against it to gather his composure.
Tried as he might though, Luke Skywalker, ex-not-quite-dark lord of the Sith in
the Imperial forces, couldn't keep his heart from shattering under the
meaningful looks that he had gotten while on his way from the command center.
They had been exactly like those that he had gotten whenever he had gone out of
his rooms ever since he had returned.
His true comrade in arms did not trust him anymore.
Well, he sneered to himself, since he couldn't trust himself anymore, he
understood them quite well. Whenever he looked at himself in a mirror now, the
only image that he could see was his father, even when he himself was not
wearing his black uniform.
He had been so close, he whimpered inwardly, so close to becoming a second
Vader... to destroying everything that he had fought for. He shamefully hung
his head until he felt the tips of the high collar of his cape touch his cheeks.
If he had enough strength of will left, he reflected glumly, he would rip that
horrible cloak away from himself and shred it to pieces with his lightsaber.
Should he do this though, he would then fall to the Dark Side... and he didn't
want 'that' to happen again.
In fact, he admitted sadly, he couldn't show any emotions anymore, couldn't
allow himself to feel anything anymore because he could not ascertain in any way
that his emotions, whether positive or negative, would not be tainted by the
darkness. Then, if it were the case, his feelings would then slowly twist him
back into the Dark Side's claws--- and the nightmare would resume itself for the
whole galaxy.
The Emperor might be dead, he thought glumly, but the danger was still present,
and the battle was still raging in his heart and soul.
He should have died, he then whined forlornly, desperately... He should have
died, then he admitted that he should, in fact, die...
Slowly, as if obeying his will, his strengths ebbed away from his body until he
couldn't stand anymore. He slumped to the floor, unconsciously refusing to
fight the despair that firmly settled within his soul.
He didn't have any right to fight anyway, he then reminded himself glumly.
Instead, 'it' had every right to inhabit his mind, to fill him with regret and
sorrow.
How many had he killed on Calamari without feeling such feelings? he then asked
himself mercilessly. How many poor souls had he sacrificed in his absolutely
foolish bid to destroy the Emperor by himself? By... giving into the Dark
Side?, he sobbed inwardly.
Too many, was his answer.
Yes, he nodded to himself, it was only fair that those souls came back to haunt
him that way. However, he wished that they would also pound on him both
physically and psychologically until he would really die instead of feeling like
a living shell.
Back aboard the Emperor's super Star Destroyer Eclipse, he had told Leia that he
had wanted to know their father... Well, he sneered humorlessly, now he truly
did.
He felt just about as empty as Vader had felt for more than twenty years---
Sith, he suddenly cursed mentally in despair. Why hadn't he heeded his father's
words? Why had he underestimated the power of what had destroyed his very own,
very strong father?..
Because he had underestimated Palpatine, he reminded himself, mentally whipping
himself over and over with that foolish thought. Despite what he had known
about the tyrant from both his father and his best friend, he had deluded
himself into thinking that he would defeat him.
In the end, the only one that he had destroyed had been himself...
He leaned his head against the cool steel of his door and shut his eyes.
'Fool. Fool. Idiot. Stupid,' he berated himself vehemently and ceaselessly.
He gave himself the worst attributes he could think of, not caring one single
iota about what he was doing to his psyche at the moment. He had once managed
to keep the Emperor from destroying him by freeing his new friend from her bonds
of slavery, and for what? Only to throw himself in the Emperor's arms and open
his mind to his destructive intents.
All of a sudden, it took him all his will-power to not activate his lightsaber
and drive it through his own heart.
In fact, the only thing that kept him from doing so was the thought that
Palpatine would really win if he killed himself. But he would never let him
win, he resolved. He still wanted to die though...
As he had when the Emperor had tried to poison him with his darkness...
******
He had tried to kill the Emperor before killing all his clones.
He had failed.
Now he was paying the price, the painful price...
Focusing all his might on retaining his Light, protecting it against the
relentless assault of Palpatine's veil of darkness, Luke barely listened to the
Emperor as he crowed at him, his beaten Jedi opponent.
"But not Jedi for much longer," the other sneered at his dangling, half-clothed
form before adding his lighting bolts to the punishment.
Unable to retain his scream of agony as the bolts touched his bare chest before
they sought to bury themselves in it, Luke forced himself to not turn his focus
away from the mental fight that was going on between himself and the Emperor's
first and ongoing attack of darkness.
Unlike his lightning bolts, the Veil of Darkness was made of biting bolts that
were generating pain in his body while fighting their way in to the core of his
Jedi soul.
The combination of both attacks was horrendous... worse than anything he could
remember from any other pain he had ever born...
And it pleased the Emperor...
Especially when he begged for mercy and surrendered---
******
Luke gasped awake. No!, he frantically begged in despair. Not again!
He worriedly looked around himself--- and sighed in relief when he identified
the surroundings of his rebel quarters on Da Soocha. He was even still sitting
against the door where he had slumped earlier that day.
Another nightmare, he thought as he wiped his forehead with his hand, drying it
from sticky sweat. It had only been another nightmare, he sighed in relief,
then paused on his feeling.
It had also been real, he reminded himself as he noticed his new mechanical
hand as well as the padded glove that was covering it. It was bearing the
imperial seal on the inside of his wrist. Shivering anew at the thought of how
close he had come to being lost forever to the Dark Side, Luke thanked the Force
that the Emperor had not used his Dark Side veil on him when they'd met at
Endor. At that time, he would have been done for...
Even now, he then conceded worriedly, he'd barely been able to save his Light.
In fact, he still wondered how he'd managed to remain a Light Jedi. When he had
given up, when the Emperor had told him to stop fighting to prove him his true
devotion to him... He had been convinced that he had been destroyed by the Dark
Side... That he would never be a Jedi ever again, as the Emperor had told him
would happen.
The pain of that moment had certainly been enough to inform him that something
in him 'had' died that day.
Something had died, he reflected again, but... what?..
He broke a cold sweat at that and resolved to study the question very carefully.
They had beaten the Emperor, but that didn't mean that he himself was over his
bad experiences and dark emotions. He'd have to be extremely careful... and
wary, he added. He might just be a dormant trap that would reveal itself, but
too late for him and his friends to save either him or his loved ones from
himself.
Unable to go back to sleep, he shifted his head slightly around and looked out
his bay window. For a long, long while, he studied the flying Ixlls as they
soared up and down while searching for food in the crevasses of Pinnacle Base.
Somehow, he reflected unpleasantly, they reminded him of the Emperor, or even of
the Dark Side, looking for victims. He forced himself to study them further to
perhaps uncover an element of answer to what had been done to him.
The predators didn't give him any answer to his unspoken question.
******
------Ignoring the curious/worried gazes that she collected on her way to her
brother's room, Leia hastened her pace.
They had not seen Luke for breakfast, and he had not shown up at all at their
tactical meeting. While Han had had to check the new recruits for the E-Wings,
she herself had shrugged off everything else that had been on her schedule in
order to check on her brother.
While he had not mentioned, since his return, any peculiar feelings to either
herself or Han, or any of their friends, she had noticed early on the lack of
life in his eyes.
In fact, ever since he had returned with her, she had sensed that something had
been greatly bothering her brother. He had been taking part to anything that
she offered to him, but he hadn't spoken much, nor had he ever smiled.
While the return of the Emperor marked very dark times indeed, she remembered
having seen her brother smile even when he had been getting a new hand after
learning the truth about both their father and her love for Han. Considering
how unpleasant a time that had been for him, she reasoned that he would now be
able to smile a little despite the circumstances, and especially after returning
from a dangerously close brush with the Dark Side.
Thus, his unusual mood combined with her still edgy feeling about him were
enough to worry her once again about him. While she still didn't understand how
she had been able to summon all the Force that she had used to first find, then
fight her brother and the Emperor, she understood that she could now trust
herself in Force matters.
And her brother was such a matter, a most important one too.
She finally reached his quarters. Fighting down her urge to just storm in the
room, she first knocked. When no answer came, she knocked and called him.
"Luke, are you there?"
No answer.
She keyed the opening mechanism. The door remained closed. She understood that
he had locked it from the inside. "Luke, I know you're in there," she reminded
him, then switched to Force-talking when she became aware that people could hear
her at the moment. *Don't be childish, brother. Let me in.*
Although he didn't answer her, didn't allow her 'in' either physically nor
mentally, she heard a shuffling noise come from behind the door, then it finally
opened. She stepped in. The room was empty, his bunk was undone. She dimly
noticed that her brother's lightsaber was resting on the deck, as if it had been
somehow thrown there. What?, she frowned slightly.
The door slid closed behind her; she reflexively turned around--- and gaped when
she spotted her brother's presence on the floor.
"What do you want?" he asked her without looking up at her.
For a long, very long moment, Leia didn't know how to react to the current
situation. There was her brother, looking even more under the Dark Side's
influence than when she had gone aboard the Eclipse. He was sitting on the
floor, one knee bent so that he could prop his left hand on it, which he did.
He was still wearing his ominous cloak and padded uniform.
In short, he currently looked more forlorn and glum than ever.
If not for his face, she would have even thought that he had given in once
again, but as she studied his half-hidden features, she recognized an expression
of defeat that she had only seen once on her brother.
When he had wanted to die when aboard the Millenium Falcon after they had
rescued him from his first meeting ever with Vader.
"Luke," she began soothingly even as she knelt in front of him. "What's
troubling you?"
Her brother snickered meanly at this, a sound that seemed completely foreign to
the gentle person that her brother had once been. It unsettled her further.
"What's troubling me," he repeated sarcastically. "Gee, Leia, I'd think that it
would be obvious."
Aware that it was his way of avoiding what was deeply hurting his soul, the ex-
princess of Alderaan pressed onward. "I can indeed see the obvious, brother,
but I think that you are thinking about the less obvious. How about letting me
in?"
"Why?" he retorted instantly, locking his impressive blue eyes on her. "So that
you too can suffer from it? I don't think so."
Even though she had seen her brother's eyes before, she couldn't help but gasp
in shock and worry as she noticed the storm that was currently raging in the
normally quiescent blue oceans of kindness. All of a sudden, her brother seemed
to be the recipient of a barely contained power that was desperately searching
for a way to escape his control. Her brother averted eye contact once again.
"Luke," she tried again once she had recovered her composure, "look at me."
Slowly, as if hesitant, he obeyed her request, but only half-way through. "I
can't be trusted anymore, Leia," he told her honestly, his voice now broken by
his obvious feeling of defeat. "You just saw it yourself," he then confirmed
what she had seen in his eyes. "I'm a disaster waiting for the right, or wrong,
moment to happen."
"What did the Emperor did to you?" she asked him hoarsely while she reflexively
shook her head in denial of his statement as she did so. She was aware that she
was not coherent, nor diplomatic at the moment, but she did not care. Her
brother's actual status was distressing her more and more with each passing
moment.
Especially when whatever opening she had managed to open in her brother's new-
yet-firmly-established armor was gone and that he resumed his brooding posture
once again. He remained silent once again.
"You can't let him hurt you like this, Luke," she tried to rouse him from his
listless state while shaking herself out of her torpor. "You defeated him," she
tried earnestly as the thought of her brother in pain galvanized her desire to
pull him completely free from the Emperor's claws. "We both defeated him," she
reminded him, "But now, we need your help to complete the job. Please, Luke?"
she beseeched him as she had once addressed an unknown, legendary Jedi Knight.
This time, her plea went unanswered.
For the first time since she had met her brother, all those years ago, she
couldn't break through to him.
What had the Emperor done to him??, she wondered in horror as she watched this
young man who was, yet wasn't, her dear brother. The last time that she had
seen him before he had left for that mission for Coruscant, he had been a
caring, gentle and friendly young Jedi Master, and all of a sudden, he was
brooding, cold, and avoiding even her. And he was worrying her.
What could she do?, she wondered as she silently watched him, giving him a
chance to speak with her once again. What was she supposed to do now?
"Would you prefer to talk to Han?" she offered him, wondering if what was
troubling her brother was only concerning men.
"He wouldn't understand either," Luke mumbled with a brief shake of his head.
"Then who would?" she asked him next in growing despair.
Only silence answered her once again.
Suddenly sighing in frustration, Leia stood up and headed for the exit. "If you
don't want to cooperate, Luke, then I'm locking you in here until you get
better. Pull yourself together, brother. With or without my help, I don't
care, but we need you."
And with that, she was gone, locking her brother, their legendary Jedi Knight,
in his rooms for the time being.
"Pull yourself together," Luke mimicked his sister. "Yeah, sure, if I knew what
was missing," he retorted sarcastically.
He didn't take any notice of the fact that she was locking him in. For one
thing, he had chosen to lock himself in the first place, and second, he could
free himself whenever he wished.
What he had to decide though was what he would do once away from the ones he
cared about.
******
The officers' new meeting had long taken end, but Leia was still seated in her
chair. As she had throughout the reunion, she was still pondering her meeting
with her brother. Who would understand him if not herself nor Han?, she
wondered for the hundredth time since leaving him to his glum thoughts.
Lando was out question, she reflected seriously; the two men had very little in
common. As for Wedge, he might be a good friend, but he knew even less about
Jedi matters than Han did.
"Leia?" Mon Mothma's voice inquired softly from her side.
The beautiful young woman looked up from her fixated glance and met the
matriarch's kind gaze.
"Is something the matter?" she asked her gently yet seriously.
Aware that the older woman was the first in command of the Rebel Alliance as
well as her superior in the Republic, Leia instantly understood that she
suspected that something was going on about her brother, thus was implicitly
asking her to tell her the truth about him.
Not exactly thrilled about this prospect, Leia sighed heavily, then leaned back
in her chair and shrugged. "I think that the Emperor has hurt Luke worse than
we first thought," she admitted glumly. "When we checked him up at the
medcenter, we did not detect physical injuries except for some healing burns.
Even those though did not compare to what he had born after his first encounter
with him, or after his attack from C'Boath on Wayland."
Mon Mothma perched an elegant eyebrow at this, silently waiting for her to
continue.
"I'm afraid that the darksider hurt him on a different level this time," the
young woman finally admitted truthfully.
"You mean like a brainwash?" the other commented while she took a seat beside
her.
"No," Leia shook her head in instant denial. "No, but I think that he convinced
Luke that he will never escape the Dark Side now that he's come so close to it,
and Luke believes it."
"do you?" the other inquired seriously, almost worriedly.
"No," she shook her head confidently. "Our father came back after 'years' of
darkness, and Mara Jade..."
Even as she pronounced the name of the young woman, Leia felt a shiver of
foreknowledge run from her neck to her toes. There was her elusive answer! She
instantly jumped to her feet and quickly gathered her datacards. "I'm sorry,
Mon Mothma. I have to go!"
"Leia?"
"I'll explain later," she answered, then was running out of the meeting room and
toward the Falcon's landing berth.
******
Mara Jade was fixing her new ship in Karrde's new base when her friend/boss came
up in her inverted field of vision. She pulled herself out of the landed ship.
"Judging from your face," she commented, "someone has contacted us with news
about the war."
"Actually," the older man corrected while he handed her a clean towel,
"Skywalker's sister is waiting for you, Mara. She says that it's important."
Forgetting whatever she was about to say, the red-head dropped her towel and ran
toward the entrance of the ysalamiri-blanketed base, then turned the corner and
rushed inside the main communication room of the complex. As she walked closer
to the turned-on holonet, she indeed recognized Leia Organa-Solo's features in
the communication field. Unlike the last time that she had contacted her
though, her eyes were not blazing with anger and distrust.
Instead, they were shining with what seemed like hope to Mara.
"Councilor," she greeted formally, "to what do I owe this call? I warned your
brother to not involve me with the war---"
"It's about Luke, Mara," the ex-princess from Alderaan explained without any
polite detour. "I don't know if you are aware of it, but," she visibly
hesitated on her next words. "Well, to summarize the past months, Luke was
captured by the reborn Emperor and willingly turned to the Dark Side to destroy
him from within. I managed to save him, then we killed the Emperor, but Luke is
not completely free from him yet."
Although Mara had kind of expected the Emperor to have cloned himself, as she
had told Luke before going into hiding, Leia's confirmation still came as a
shock to her.
Then, the news that her friend had tried to become a monster in order to destroy
a monster affected her so much that she completely lost her cool composure and
gaped openly at the relatively familiar young woman.
"Wait a minute," she finally managed to comment once her ideas were back in a
more normal order, "the Emperor was truly alive and Skywalker didn't warn me?"
"He couldn't," Leia reassured her seriously. "He didn't know before he was
taken to Byss, and I didn't know about it until I went to Byss to save Luke."
"You?" she gaped anew, this time in disbelief as she tried to understand how the
petite, untrained woman had been able to survive the Emperor's wrath.
"It's a long story," the other nodded slowly. "What matters is that back then,
Luke had not 'completely' given into the Dark Side. He tried to destroy the
Emperor by killing all his clones, and lost. When I saw him next, he was
completely subdued to the Emperor. I managed to break through to him while we
were aboard the Emperor's flagship, then we joined together to defeat Palpatine,
but now..." she hesitated sadly, "I can't break through to him anymore, and I
think that it is because of what happened between Byss and our final face-off."
When the Emperor crushed his mind and soul, Mara nodded in understanding even as
memories of her own 'shaping' came back to her. In her case, it had happened
slowly, and at a fairly young age so that it had easily passed as disciplining.
However, she suspected that the same degrading and destructive principles had
been applied on Luke, although much faster...
And since he had had a few challenges before----
"Oh no!" she suddenly exclaimed out loud even as she understood what had 'truly'
happened to Luke before they had parted company. That vile, fiendish----
"What?" both Leia and Karrde inquired simultaneously.
Surprised by the other's presence in the room, she first turned toward him to
silently ask him why he was there, understood that he too had worried about the
young Jedi, then turned around to face the ex-princess once again.
"I'll be right there, Leia," she reassured the petite brunette. "Where's
Skywalker right now?"
"I locked him in his quarters," she answered seriously.
Locks that would not keep him in place for long, she calculated. "I'm a few
hours away from you. Station Short Stuff in front of his door to add to the
security until I get there, okay?"
"Short Stuff?" Leia frowned.
"Skywalker's astro-mech," she explained quickly. "Tell him that I am asking him
to guard Skywalker until I get there. He'll understand."
If Luke's sister wasn't sure about what was going on between herself, her
brother and his droid, she did not argue with her. "I'll do it, Mara. Come
quickly please."
"I'm on my way! Jade out," she finished, then put an end to the communication.
"What do you think happened to Skywalker?" Karrde inquired seriously the moment
that they were between themselves.
"The straw that broke the Dewback's back," she answered, using one of her
farmboy's favorite expression to illustrate that he had reached his limit.
And with an evil genius like her former master to strategically pile up the
straws on her friend's back until the exact moment when he wanted him, needed
him to break, she understood that her friend was going down the dumps faster
than anybody could catch him...
Except, perhaps, herself.
As she ran toward her ship, she dimly reminded herself that by going to the
Rebel base, she was exposing herself to the Emperor's new clone, which he
probably had if Luke had truly failed to kill them all, but, she heartened
herself, Luke needed her.
His sake was more important than hers.
TBC in part 2: Catharsis
'Copyright' 2003, Skyjade (skyjade@globetrotter.net)
by SJ 07-00/01-2003 (skyjade@globetrotter.net)
___________________________________________________
Disclaimers: Nothing in the Star Wars Universe belong to me; everything belongs
to George Lucas. Naturally, everything related to events of Dark Empire also
belong to Tom Veitch.
Please don't sue me, it's only for fun; I'm not making any money out of this.
See my home page for more details.
Http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/3702
Special thanks to Adrianne for her help with beta-reading. Thank you for
giving me some of your precious time, my friend; I appreciate.
____________________________________________________
A few days after Dark Empire 1:
The black-enshrouded figure walked silently in the crowded corridors of Pinnacle
Base, drawing a fare share of worried, even distrustful looks as he headed
toward his destination.
The young man did his best to ignore them.
He finally reached his quarters, locked the door behind himself, then leaned
back against it to gather his composure.
Tried as he might though, Luke Skywalker, ex-not-quite-dark lord of the Sith in
the Imperial forces, couldn't keep his heart from shattering under the
meaningful looks that he had gotten while on his way from the command center.
They had been exactly like those that he had gotten whenever he had gone out of
his rooms ever since he had returned.
His true comrade in arms did not trust him anymore.
Well, he sneered to himself, since he couldn't trust himself anymore, he
understood them quite well. Whenever he looked at himself in a mirror now, the
only image that he could see was his father, even when he himself was not
wearing his black uniform.
He had been so close, he whimpered inwardly, so close to becoming a second
Vader... to destroying everything that he had fought for. He shamefully hung
his head until he felt the tips of the high collar of his cape touch his cheeks.
If he had enough strength of will left, he reflected glumly, he would rip that
horrible cloak away from himself and shred it to pieces with his lightsaber.
Should he do this though, he would then fall to the Dark Side... and he didn't
want 'that' to happen again.
In fact, he admitted sadly, he couldn't show any emotions anymore, couldn't
allow himself to feel anything anymore because he could not ascertain in any way
that his emotions, whether positive or negative, would not be tainted by the
darkness. Then, if it were the case, his feelings would then slowly twist him
back into the Dark Side's claws--- and the nightmare would resume itself for the
whole galaxy.
The Emperor might be dead, he thought glumly, but the danger was still present,
and the battle was still raging in his heart and soul.
He should have died, he then whined forlornly, desperately... He should have
died, then he admitted that he should, in fact, die...
Slowly, as if obeying his will, his strengths ebbed away from his body until he
couldn't stand anymore. He slumped to the floor, unconsciously refusing to
fight the despair that firmly settled within his soul.
He didn't have any right to fight anyway, he then reminded himself glumly.
Instead, 'it' had every right to inhabit his mind, to fill him with regret and
sorrow.
How many had he killed on Calamari without feeling such feelings? he then asked
himself mercilessly. How many poor souls had he sacrificed in his absolutely
foolish bid to destroy the Emperor by himself? By... giving into the Dark
Side?, he sobbed inwardly.
Too many, was his answer.
Yes, he nodded to himself, it was only fair that those souls came back to haunt
him that way. However, he wished that they would also pound on him both
physically and psychologically until he would really die instead of feeling like
a living shell.
Back aboard the Emperor's super Star Destroyer Eclipse, he had told Leia that he
had wanted to know their father... Well, he sneered humorlessly, now he truly
did.
He felt just about as empty as Vader had felt for more than twenty years---
Sith, he suddenly cursed mentally in despair. Why hadn't he heeded his father's
words? Why had he underestimated the power of what had destroyed his very own,
very strong father?..
Because he had underestimated Palpatine, he reminded himself, mentally whipping
himself over and over with that foolish thought. Despite what he had known
about the tyrant from both his father and his best friend, he had deluded
himself into thinking that he would defeat him.
In the end, the only one that he had destroyed had been himself...
He leaned his head against the cool steel of his door and shut his eyes.
'Fool. Fool. Idiot. Stupid,' he berated himself vehemently and ceaselessly.
He gave himself the worst attributes he could think of, not caring one single
iota about what he was doing to his psyche at the moment. He had once managed
to keep the Emperor from destroying him by freeing his new friend from her bonds
of slavery, and for what? Only to throw himself in the Emperor's arms and open
his mind to his destructive intents.
All of a sudden, it took him all his will-power to not activate his lightsaber
and drive it through his own heart.
In fact, the only thing that kept him from doing so was the thought that
Palpatine would really win if he killed himself. But he would never let him
win, he resolved. He still wanted to die though...
As he had when the Emperor had tried to poison him with his darkness...
******
He had tried to kill the Emperor before killing all his clones.
He had failed.
Now he was paying the price, the painful price...
Focusing all his might on retaining his Light, protecting it against the
relentless assault of Palpatine's veil of darkness, Luke barely listened to the
Emperor as he crowed at him, his beaten Jedi opponent.
"But not Jedi for much longer," the other sneered at his dangling, half-clothed
form before adding his lighting bolts to the punishment.
Unable to retain his scream of agony as the bolts touched his bare chest before
they sought to bury themselves in it, Luke forced himself to not turn his focus
away from the mental fight that was going on between himself and the Emperor's
first and ongoing attack of darkness.
Unlike his lightning bolts, the Veil of Darkness was made of biting bolts that
were generating pain in his body while fighting their way in to the core of his
Jedi soul.
The combination of both attacks was horrendous... worse than anything he could
remember from any other pain he had ever born...
And it pleased the Emperor...
Especially when he begged for mercy and surrendered---
******
Luke gasped awake. No!, he frantically begged in despair. Not again!
He worriedly looked around himself--- and sighed in relief when he identified
the surroundings of his rebel quarters on Da Soocha. He was even still sitting
against the door where he had slumped earlier that day.
Another nightmare, he thought as he wiped his forehead with his hand, drying it
from sticky sweat. It had only been another nightmare, he sighed in relief,
then paused on his feeling.
It had also been real, he reminded himself as he noticed his new mechanical
hand as well as the padded glove that was covering it. It was bearing the
imperial seal on the inside of his wrist. Shivering anew at the thought of how
close he had come to being lost forever to the Dark Side, Luke thanked the Force
that the Emperor had not used his Dark Side veil on him when they'd met at
Endor. At that time, he would have been done for...
Even now, he then conceded worriedly, he'd barely been able to save his Light.
In fact, he still wondered how he'd managed to remain a Light Jedi. When he had
given up, when the Emperor had told him to stop fighting to prove him his true
devotion to him... He had been convinced that he had been destroyed by the Dark
Side... That he would never be a Jedi ever again, as the Emperor had told him
would happen.
The pain of that moment had certainly been enough to inform him that something
in him 'had' died that day.
Something had died, he reflected again, but... what?..
He broke a cold sweat at that and resolved to study the question very carefully.
They had beaten the Emperor, but that didn't mean that he himself was over his
bad experiences and dark emotions. He'd have to be extremely careful... and
wary, he added. He might just be a dormant trap that would reveal itself, but
too late for him and his friends to save either him or his loved ones from
himself.
Unable to go back to sleep, he shifted his head slightly around and looked out
his bay window. For a long, long while, he studied the flying Ixlls as they
soared up and down while searching for food in the crevasses of Pinnacle Base.
Somehow, he reflected unpleasantly, they reminded him of the Emperor, or even of
the Dark Side, looking for victims. He forced himself to study them further to
perhaps uncover an element of answer to what had been done to him.
The predators didn't give him any answer to his unspoken question.
******
------Ignoring the curious/worried gazes that she collected on her way to her
brother's room, Leia hastened her pace.
They had not seen Luke for breakfast, and he had not shown up at all at their
tactical meeting. While Han had had to check the new recruits for the E-Wings,
she herself had shrugged off everything else that had been on her schedule in
order to check on her brother.
While he had not mentioned, since his return, any peculiar feelings to either
herself or Han, or any of their friends, she had noticed early on the lack of
life in his eyes.
In fact, ever since he had returned with her, she had sensed that something had
been greatly bothering her brother. He had been taking part to anything that
she offered to him, but he hadn't spoken much, nor had he ever smiled.
While the return of the Emperor marked very dark times indeed, she remembered
having seen her brother smile even when he had been getting a new hand after
learning the truth about both their father and her love for Han. Considering
how unpleasant a time that had been for him, she reasoned that he would now be
able to smile a little despite the circumstances, and especially after returning
from a dangerously close brush with the Dark Side.
Thus, his unusual mood combined with her still edgy feeling about him were
enough to worry her once again about him. While she still didn't understand how
she had been able to summon all the Force that she had used to first find, then
fight her brother and the Emperor, she understood that she could now trust
herself in Force matters.
And her brother was such a matter, a most important one too.
She finally reached his quarters. Fighting down her urge to just storm in the
room, she first knocked. When no answer came, she knocked and called him.
"Luke, are you there?"
No answer.
She keyed the opening mechanism. The door remained closed. She understood that
he had locked it from the inside. "Luke, I know you're in there," she reminded
him, then switched to Force-talking when she became aware that people could hear
her at the moment. *Don't be childish, brother. Let me in.*
Although he didn't answer her, didn't allow her 'in' either physically nor
mentally, she heard a shuffling noise come from behind the door, then it finally
opened. She stepped in. The room was empty, his bunk was undone. She dimly
noticed that her brother's lightsaber was resting on the deck, as if it had been
somehow thrown there. What?, she frowned slightly.
The door slid closed behind her; she reflexively turned around--- and gaped when
she spotted her brother's presence on the floor.
"What do you want?" he asked her without looking up at her.
For a long, very long moment, Leia didn't know how to react to the current
situation. There was her brother, looking even more under the Dark Side's
influence than when she had gone aboard the Eclipse. He was sitting on the
floor, one knee bent so that he could prop his left hand on it, which he did.
He was still wearing his ominous cloak and padded uniform.
In short, he currently looked more forlorn and glum than ever.
If not for his face, she would have even thought that he had given in once
again, but as she studied his half-hidden features, she recognized an expression
of defeat that she had only seen once on her brother.
When he had wanted to die when aboard the Millenium Falcon after they had
rescued him from his first meeting ever with Vader.
"Luke," she began soothingly even as she knelt in front of him. "What's
troubling you?"
Her brother snickered meanly at this, a sound that seemed completely foreign to
the gentle person that her brother had once been. It unsettled her further.
"What's troubling me," he repeated sarcastically. "Gee, Leia, I'd think that it
would be obvious."
Aware that it was his way of avoiding what was deeply hurting his soul, the ex-
princess of Alderaan pressed onward. "I can indeed see the obvious, brother,
but I think that you are thinking about the less obvious. How about letting me
in?"
"Why?" he retorted instantly, locking his impressive blue eyes on her. "So that
you too can suffer from it? I don't think so."
Even though she had seen her brother's eyes before, she couldn't help but gasp
in shock and worry as she noticed the storm that was currently raging in the
normally quiescent blue oceans of kindness. All of a sudden, her brother seemed
to be the recipient of a barely contained power that was desperately searching
for a way to escape his control. Her brother averted eye contact once again.
"Luke," she tried again once she had recovered her composure, "look at me."
Slowly, as if hesitant, he obeyed her request, but only half-way through. "I
can't be trusted anymore, Leia," he told her honestly, his voice now broken by
his obvious feeling of defeat. "You just saw it yourself," he then confirmed
what she had seen in his eyes. "I'm a disaster waiting for the right, or wrong,
moment to happen."
"What did the Emperor did to you?" she asked him hoarsely while she reflexively
shook her head in denial of his statement as she did so. She was aware that she
was not coherent, nor diplomatic at the moment, but she did not care. Her
brother's actual status was distressing her more and more with each passing
moment.
Especially when whatever opening she had managed to open in her brother's new-
yet-firmly-established armor was gone and that he resumed his brooding posture
once again. He remained silent once again.
"You can't let him hurt you like this, Luke," she tried to rouse him from his
listless state while shaking herself out of her torpor. "You defeated him," she
tried earnestly as the thought of her brother in pain galvanized her desire to
pull him completely free from the Emperor's claws. "We both defeated him," she
reminded him, "But now, we need your help to complete the job. Please, Luke?"
she beseeched him as she had once addressed an unknown, legendary Jedi Knight.
This time, her plea went unanswered.
For the first time since she had met her brother, all those years ago, she
couldn't break through to him.
What had the Emperor done to him??, she wondered in horror as she watched this
young man who was, yet wasn't, her dear brother. The last time that she had
seen him before he had left for that mission for Coruscant, he had been a
caring, gentle and friendly young Jedi Master, and all of a sudden, he was
brooding, cold, and avoiding even her. And he was worrying her.
What could she do?, she wondered as she silently watched him, giving him a
chance to speak with her once again. What was she supposed to do now?
"Would you prefer to talk to Han?" she offered him, wondering if what was
troubling her brother was only concerning men.
"He wouldn't understand either," Luke mumbled with a brief shake of his head.
"Then who would?" she asked him next in growing despair.
Only silence answered her once again.
Suddenly sighing in frustration, Leia stood up and headed for the exit. "If you
don't want to cooperate, Luke, then I'm locking you in here until you get
better. Pull yourself together, brother. With or without my help, I don't
care, but we need you."
And with that, she was gone, locking her brother, their legendary Jedi Knight,
in his rooms for the time being.
"Pull yourself together," Luke mimicked his sister. "Yeah, sure, if I knew what
was missing," he retorted sarcastically.
He didn't take any notice of the fact that she was locking him in. For one
thing, he had chosen to lock himself in the first place, and second, he could
free himself whenever he wished.
What he had to decide though was what he would do once away from the ones he
cared about.
******
The officers' new meeting had long taken end, but Leia was still seated in her
chair. As she had throughout the reunion, she was still pondering her meeting
with her brother. Who would understand him if not herself nor Han?, she
wondered for the hundredth time since leaving him to his glum thoughts.
Lando was out question, she reflected seriously; the two men had very little in
common. As for Wedge, he might be a good friend, but he knew even less about
Jedi matters than Han did.
"Leia?" Mon Mothma's voice inquired softly from her side.
The beautiful young woman looked up from her fixated glance and met the
matriarch's kind gaze.
"Is something the matter?" she asked her gently yet seriously.
Aware that the older woman was the first in command of the Rebel Alliance as
well as her superior in the Republic, Leia instantly understood that she
suspected that something was going on about her brother, thus was implicitly
asking her to tell her the truth about him.
Not exactly thrilled about this prospect, Leia sighed heavily, then leaned back
in her chair and shrugged. "I think that the Emperor has hurt Luke worse than
we first thought," she admitted glumly. "When we checked him up at the
medcenter, we did not detect physical injuries except for some healing burns.
Even those though did not compare to what he had born after his first encounter
with him, or after his attack from C'Boath on Wayland."
Mon Mothma perched an elegant eyebrow at this, silently waiting for her to
continue.
"I'm afraid that the darksider hurt him on a different level this time," the
young woman finally admitted truthfully.
"You mean like a brainwash?" the other commented while she took a seat beside
her.
"No," Leia shook her head in instant denial. "No, but I think that he convinced
Luke that he will never escape the Dark Side now that he's come so close to it,
and Luke believes it."
"do you?" the other inquired seriously, almost worriedly.
"No," she shook her head confidently. "Our father came back after 'years' of
darkness, and Mara Jade..."
Even as she pronounced the name of the young woman, Leia felt a shiver of
foreknowledge run from her neck to her toes. There was her elusive answer! She
instantly jumped to her feet and quickly gathered her datacards. "I'm sorry,
Mon Mothma. I have to go!"
"Leia?"
"I'll explain later," she answered, then was running out of the meeting room and
toward the Falcon's landing berth.
******
Mara Jade was fixing her new ship in Karrde's new base when her friend/boss came
up in her inverted field of vision. She pulled herself out of the landed ship.
"Judging from your face," she commented, "someone has contacted us with news
about the war."
"Actually," the older man corrected while he handed her a clean towel,
"Skywalker's sister is waiting for you, Mara. She says that it's important."
Forgetting whatever she was about to say, the red-head dropped her towel and ran
toward the entrance of the ysalamiri-blanketed base, then turned the corner and
rushed inside the main communication room of the complex. As she walked closer
to the turned-on holonet, she indeed recognized Leia Organa-Solo's features in
the communication field. Unlike the last time that she had contacted her
though, her eyes were not blazing with anger and distrust.
Instead, they were shining with what seemed like hope to Mara.
"Councilor," she greeted formally, "to what do I owe this call? I warned your
brother to not involve me with the war---"
"It's about Luke, Mara," the ex-princess from Alderaan explained without any
polite detour. "I don't know if you are aware of it, but," she visibly
hesitated on her next words. "Well, to summarize the past months, Luke was
captured by the reborn Emperor and willingly turned to the Dark Side to destroy
him from within. I managed to save him, then we killed the Emperor, but Luke is
not completely free from him yet."
Although Mara had kind of expected the Emperor to have cloned himself, as she
had told Luke before going into hiding, Leia's confirmation still came as a
shock to her.
Then, the news that her friend had tried to become a monster in order to destroy
a monster affected her so much that she completely lost her cool composure and
gaped openly at the relatively familiar young woman.
"Wait a minute," she finally managed to comment once her ideas were back in a
more normal order, "the Emperor was truly alive and Skywalker didn't warn me?"
"He couldn't," Leia reassured her seriously. "He didn't know before he was
taken to Byss, and I didn't know about it until I went to Byss to save Luke."
"You?" she gaped anew, this time in disbelief as she tried to understand how the
petite, untrained woman had been able to survive the Emperor's wrath.
"It's a long story," the other nodded slowly. "What matters is that back then,
Luke had not 'completely' given into the Dark Side. He tried to destroy the
Emperor by killing all his clones, and lost. When I saw him next, he was
completely subdued to the Emperor. I managed to break through to him while we
were aboard the Emperor's flagship, then we joined together to defeat Palpatine,
but now..." she hesitated sadly, "I can't break through to him anymore, and I
think that it is because of what happened between Byss and our final face-off."
When the Emperor crushed his mind and soul, Mara nodded in understanding even as
memories of her own 'shaping' came back to her. In her case, it had happened
slowly, and at a fairly young age so that it had easily passed as disciplining.
However, she suspected that the same degrading and destructive principles had
been applied on Luke, although much faster...
And since he had had a few challenges before----
"Oh no!" she suddenly exclaimed out loud even as she understood what had 'truly'
happened to Luke before they had parted company. That vile, fiendish----
"What?" both Leia and Karrde inquired simultaneously.
Surprised by the other's presence in the room, she first turned toward him to
silently ask him why he was there, understood that he too had worried about the
young Jedi, then turned around to face the ex-princess once again.
"I'll be right there, Leia," she reassured the petite brunette. "Where's
Skywalker right now?"
"I locked him in his quarters," she answered seriously.
Locks that would not keep him in place for long, she calculated. "I'm a few
hours away from you. Station Short Stuff in front of his door to add to the
security until I get there, okay?"
"Short Stuff?" Leia frowned.
"Skywalker's astro-mech," she explained quickly. "Tell him that I am asking him
to guard Skywalker until I get there. He'll understand."
If Luke's sister wasn't sure about what was going on between herself, her
brother and his droid, she did not argue with her. "I'll do it, Mara. Come
quickly please."
"I'm on my way! Jade out," she finished, then put an end to the communication.
"What do you think happened to Skywalker?" Karrde inquired seriously the moment
that they were between themselves.
"The straw that broke the Dewback's back," she answered, using one of her
farmboy's favorite expression to illustrate that he had reached his limit.
And with an evil genius like her former master to strategically pile up the
straws on her friend's back until the exact moment when he wanted him, needed
him to break, she understood that her friend was going down the dumps faster
than anybody could catch him...
Except, perhaps, herself.
As she ran toward her ship, she dimly reminded herself that by going to the
Rebel base, she was exposing herself to the Emperor's new clone, which he
probably had if Luke had truly failed to kill them all, but, she heartened
herself, Luke needed her.
His sake was more important than hers.
TBC in part 2: Catharsis
'Copyright' 2003, Skyjade (skyjade@globetrotter.net)