Chapter 8
It was raining again, a solid downpour that turned every patch of dry ground to soupy muck and every tree into a veritable waterfall. Luke was beyond feeling the deluge, however. Truth be told, he wasn't at all sure what to feel. He'd run the entire gamut of emotions from depression to outright fury over the past half-hour and was almost numb with exhaustion.
He sat on a boulder deep in the forest, water running through his hair and down his neck and back. He knew Vader and Yoda were probably concerned about his disappearance, but he didn't bother going back to the hut. At the moment, he didn't want to see anyone, much less those two.
Heavy footsteps squelched behind him. "Luke?"
He didn't turn to acknowledge Vader's presence.
"Come back to the shelter," Vader encouraged gently. "You're going to catch a cold out here."
He didn't move.
"Luke," Vader pressed, "talk to me." A gloved hand squeezed his shoulder. "This shouldn't change the fact that we're friends."
He closed his eyes against the pain. "Where were you when I needed you?" he demanded.
A long, painful silence. "You know I can't answer that, Luke."
Tears slid out from underneath his eyelids. "I've thought my father was dead for so long… but you've been right next to me all this time…"
"Oh Luke," Vader murmured, sitting next to him and taking him in his arms, "I'm so sorry."
"Why didn't Ben tell me?" he whispered through a tight throat, and despite himself he began sobbing again.
Vader held him gently, allowing him to cry against his chest. Luke clung to him and vented his emotion, releasing the anger and depression he'd kept locked up for so long. The last time he'd cried like this… stang, it had been three years ago, when he'd still been a Second Commander and Vader a mechanic, when he'd accused him of murdering his father…
/My father/ he realized. /My father's holding me. My father's right here, trying to comfort me. Just as I've wanted him to do all along./
"F-father…" he choked.
"Son," Vader breathed.
"You were there all this time," he said, voice thick with emotion. "All this time and you were right there. I wanted a father to show me the way and guide me, and the whole time you were there guarding my back and offering advice, even standing up to Ghede to protect me…"
"I've always felt close to you, Luke," Vader replied. "Ever since you cut me free from my TIE fighter on Yavin I've felt somehow bonded to you, something far more than simply being indebted to you for saving my life. Now that I know the truth…" He chuckled. "Stars, you've been my superior for three years. I've thought of you as an equal, if not an authority. Now that the roles are reversed, I don't know what to think."
Again they were silent. Luke just wanted to remain there, in his father's arms, listening to his deep breathing and heartbeat. He wanted to ask so many questions about his father's past, to hear all his father's stories, even the deadly dull ones that most kids complained about. Then he remembered the amnesia and cursed fate for being so cruel. But then, if he hadn't suffered that blow, he'd still be a Sith Lord. Stars, he couldn't win either way!
"When I was a kid," Luke said at last, "I used to ask my aunt and uncle questions about my father. They would never answer them. Uncle Owen would just tell me to forget about it. Aunt Beru just changed the subject. They never even spoke about him – about you, except once in awhile when Beru would tell me I looked just like you. All I ever got out of them was that you were a navigator on a spice freighter."
Vader gave a little snort; Luke couldn't tell whether it was a smothered laugh or an expression of disdain. "Navigator… I'd like to see myself stay out of the pilot's seat of any ship."
Luke managed a smile. "I can't picture you as a navigator somehow."
"So you've been lied to all these years," Vader went on slowly. "First by your caretakers, then by Obi-wan. Though now that I think about it, they had due reason, I suppose."
Luke pulled away, not wanting to hear that out of his father. "Don't play devil's advocate. How do you or anyone else know that I would have ran straight to Imperial Center and gone Sith had I known you were my father?"
"Luke, how do we know you wouldn't have joined me? I've known you for three years, Luke, and I know a father is what you've always longed for. All you knew was a handed-down lightsaber and a cock-and-bull story of betrayal and murder. Knowing who and where your father was, could you have resisted going to find me even knowing full well I was the Emperor's right-hand man?"
He didn't answer, but deep down he knew Vader was right. If Obi-wan had answered his question truthfully that fateful day in his hovel, Luke may very well have thrown his destiny aside and stopped at nothing to find his way to Vader's palace, never minding the consequences.
"But you're not a Sith anymore," Luke countered. "You're a Rebel and a Jedi. And above all, you're my father." He gave an awkward sort of smile. "I suppose I'd better get used to this hotshot cyborg pilot being my dad."
"And I suppose I'd better get used to my smart-mouth accident-prone Commander being my son," Vader replied, a smile in his voice.
For a long time they simply stared at each other, not talking, but no longer unaccepting of Yoda's revelation. Now that they'd had a little time to absorb this information and recover from the shock, it no longer repulsed them. If anything, it only further explained their unlikely closeness. Ties of blood strengthened the ties of friendship, forging a bond that nothing could sever.
"I'm sorry I don't have any fatherly 'when-I-was-your-age' stories to put you to sleep with," Vader said, half-jokingly but with a sort of wistful air. "An unfortunate side effect of the accident that precipitated all this."
"That's okay," Luke assured him. "I understand. But I expect to hear all the details any time you happen to regain a memory, no matter how trivial it seems."
"It's a deal," Vader promised, and they clasped hands.
"Now for the biggest question – what do I call you?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Well, you have two names now – Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. Three if you count Father. Which one do I use?"
"Hmm," mused Vader. "There's the trick. If the Rebels hear you calling me Father, it will probably raise some awkward questions. And I'm not really used to the whole Anakin thing yet. So I suppose, until I regain a little more of my memory, you should continue to call me Vader."
"Sounds logical."
They stood and began to walk back to the clearing. Suddenly having a brainstorm, Luke reached down and unclipped the lightsaber at his belt.
"Here," he told him. "You might want this back. It's rightfully yours."
Vader shook his head. "You keep it. Call it a gift from your father."
Luke's smile came more easily now. "Thank you, Father."
"You're most welcome, Son." He draped an arm around Luke's shoulders. "Now back to the shelter. You're absolutely soaked."
---------
Yoda was waiting for them near his hut, and he smiled upon seeing his apprentices walking together, recovered from the shock of the news. "Ah, damaged your friendship this has not, I see."
"It'll take some getting used to," Luke admitted. "But I think it'll be worth it in the end."
"Very good," Yoda replied with a nod. "Late it is. Rest you should. Resume in the morning lessons do."
"No getting out of them on account of family matters, eh?" quipped Vader, and the three of them shared the first laugh they'd had all day.
As the two men strolled to their shelter, talking easily, Yoda ambled back into his house. Plucking a slender green snake off his table, he returned to preparing his supper. He was rather relieved that they were taking this so well after the initial blow of revelation and the ensuing feelings of betrayal. Vader especially – he'd felt he'd been betrayed by Obi-wan once before, and that had produced disastrous consequences.
He shouldn't have been the one to break the news in the first place, though. Obi-wan should have revealed it back at Yavin, when it had first become apparent that Vader was in no danger of turning back to his dark past.
/And what would Vader have done with that knowledge had he regained his memory and decided to go back to the Emperor after all?/ inquired Obi-wan.
Yoda scowled. /Always having to speak your piece, aren't you?/ he demanded.
/Don't make me out as the villain, Master Yoda. The last thing either of those two needs is another enemy. Kain and Palpatine are quite enough to handle without adding a third foe, however dead and gone he may be, to the mix./
"Master?"
Yoda knew who that voice belonged to, but he feigned surprise all the same. He whipped his cane around like a lightsaber and thrust it out the window. There came a startled shout as it clanged against a metal helmet.
"Stang, master, if I weren't masked you would have taken my eye out!" exclaimed Vader.
"Come sneaking around my home in the dead of night you should not," scolded Yoda.
"My apologies, master." Vader's head reappeared in the window, his arm resting on the sill.
"Accepted." He returned to chopping up roots. "Speak to me you wish to?"
"Yes." A pause. "Why did the Jedi Order forbid love?"
Yoda sighed. Of all the questions he could have asked about the Jedi Order or his past, he had to ask the most difficult one.
/Shouldn't you have known this would come up sooner or later?/ came Obi-wan's wry comment.
/Quiet, you/ ordered Yoda. "Many reasons."
Vader shrugged. "I have all night."
Yoda scooped up the chopped roots and dumped them in the bubbling stewpot. "A Jedi focused must be on the task before him. Have outside loyalties he cannot. Devoted to the Order he must be. If married to an outsider he is, interfere it can with his mission of keeping peace."
"But what if he wed a fellow Jedi?" countered Vader. "His loyalties would still be to the Order."
"Not to the Order," Yoda corrected. "To a person they would be. And if disintegrate that relationship does, by death or by other means, dangerous it can become. Arouse dark and dangerous feelings it can."
"What feelings?"
"Anger. Possessiveness. Lust. Jealousy. Despair. Vengeance. Attempted many Jedi have to keep secret unions, and fallen prey to these emotions they have."
"Many, but not all, I presume?"
"Early in the Order, marry many Jedi did. Rare Force-strongs were, and ensure more Padawans to take on the mantle of Knighthood it did. But fall to the dark side many Jedi did, and for the safety of the Order banned any further unions were. By then Jedi blood in many families existed, and easier to find new apprentices it was. But seen for its dangers love was, and avoided at all costs it is now."
"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Vader, "that whenever a Jedi has departed the Order, it's been because of love?"
Yoda considered that a moment. "Yes. In one form or another, yes. Love something other than a person one can. Power, wealth, revenge, addiction. Qui-gon Jinn's first apprentice, Xanatos, loved power and revenge, and sought both of these he did after killed by his master his father was. In the end, destroy him his power did. My Padawan, Dooku, a Sith became because loved his birth title of Count and the promise of the power of the dark side he did. But crushed and thrown aside he was by the dark side. And your fall… began it did when died your mother did, and hastened it was when married Padme Amidala you did."
"But love can produce so much good!" Vader argued. "I love Luke as a comrade, a friend, and now as a son. We work together as a team through that love. And would we be as willing to serve and protect each other if there were no positive emotion between us?"
"True," Yoda relented. "But an added risk you take. For if killed Luke were, take you anger and sorrow would. Fall to the dark side you may."
Vader was silent a few minutes, pondering those words. Then, in an even voice, he gave his reply.
"If that were the case, Master Yoda, a Jedi would turn to the dark side every time a master or apprentice were killed. After all, you can't tell me there's no affection or bond between a teacher and a student. You're like a father to me, and I know you must care about us or you'd have chucked us off-planet long ago.
"Perhaps one must risk being preyed on by the darker emotions to truly experience the positive ones. To me, it's an acceptable gamble. But if, as you make it out, Jedi aren't allowed to experience feelings at all and must become insensitive hulks, I'm not sure I want to be one."
Yoda listened quietly, only the very tips of his ears moving, and then only slightly.
"Maybe that's why the galaxy stood by and did nothing when the Empire destroyed the Jedi," he concluded. "Because they had nothing in common with the Order anymore."
He withdrew from the window, and damp footsteps marked his retreat to the shelter.
Yoda sighed gustily and addressed the empty window. "Right you are, Vader. Right you are. But bury your feelings deep I hope you do. Do you credit they do, but made to serve the Emperor they could be."
He turned back to the stewpot and stirred the contents, Vader's cutting observation still heavy on his mind.
-------
Emperor Palpatine opened his eyes, emerging from meditation within the raw energies of the dark side. So they knew now. That disgusting fossil of a Jedi had finally deemed it fit to tell the Skywalkers they were blood. It was about time, too. He was beginning to think the Jedi would keep those two completely ignorant for the rest of their lives.
Frankly, he was surprised Yoda was divulging this at all. The accursed Jedi held family relations in low regard, almost all being plucked from their homes or out of the adoption system at very young ages. They couldn't understand such concepts as love, family ties, and parenthood.
Not that those were traits the Sith Order encouraged or appreciated. On the contrary, the only value he saw in such relations was their exploitation value. It was remarkable, if not pathetic, that even the strongest non-Sith in the galaxy could be made to do anything if his loved ones were threatened.
Thin, bloodless lips pulled taut over rotted teeth in a feral smile. Oh, this was going to be fun. The revelation that Luke and Vader were father and son created another strand in the web he was weaving to ensnare them.
All was in place now. Forenze was in Kain's clutches, being treated to some of the Sith's brand of manipulation. Han and Leia were on their way to Bespin, blissfully unaware that they were soon to be pawns in his game. Kain would soon join him here to set the plan in motion. Very soon, the Skywalkers would become his prisoners… and eventually his servants.
All that was required now was patience – which Palpatine had in spades.
But then again, a little nudge in the right direction wouldn't hurt, would it?
A dark ripple of the Force shot through the depths of space. Any Force-sensitive would be able to sense it – but only those with the proper training, such as the Skywalkers, would know its meaning.
That completed, he returned to meditation.
--------
Luke was drifting, floating through space, unfettered by corporeal form. Across the stars he glided, past the raw blinding energies of a flaring supernova, through the cosmic mists of a nebula, acutely aware of the ripples in the Force created by manned starships and life-bearing satellites.
A vast red orb filled his vision, a sphere of dense mists studded with metallic flecks that carried life. He recognized the planet – Bespin, the gas giant. One fleck practically glittered with life forms, and he approached it curiously.
Cradled in the swirling clouds and mists of this planet was a magnificent city, a jeweled ivory crown floating through the skies. He drifted through the spires, bathed in the life forces of the beings who lived here, experiencing their joys and pains, their emotions his for a brief moment.
Then searing, ripping pain closed its black claws over him. A spasm of agony laid his mind bare, and awful screams filled him.
But the worst of it was that those screams – and the powers causing them – were familiar…
He shot upright, dripping sweat and gasping for breath. Han! Leia! Chewie! They were suffering, perhaps dying…
"Han! Forenze!"
He turned to see Vader jolt out of an uneasy sleep, his breathing more labored than usual.
"Luke," he gasped. "I had the worst nightmare…"
"Of a red planet?" he asked.
Vader stared at him. "A city in the clouds."
"Han and Leia."
"Yes. Forenze and Chewbacca, too."
"Kain and the Emperor?"
"Most likely."
They scrambled to their feet. If they'd seen and felt the exact same thing, it couldn't be a mere nightmare. It had to be a vision of some sort… a warning.
"We'd better get to Bespin fast!" Luke exclaimed.
"I'm with you," Vader replied.
It was raining again, a solid downpour that turned every patch of dry ground to soupy muck and every tree into a veritable waterfall. Luke was beyond feeling the deluge, however. Truth be told, he wasn't at all sure what to feel. He'd run the entire gamut of emotions from depression to outright fury over the past half-hour and was almost numb with exhaustion.
He sat on a boulder deep in the forest, water running through his hair and down his neck and back. He knew Vader and Yoda were probably concerned about his disappearance, but he didn't bother going back to the hut. At the moment, he didn't want to see anyone, much less those two.
Heavy footsteps squelched behind him. "Luke?"
He didn't turn to acknowledge Vader's presence.
"Come back to the shelter," Vader encouraged gently. "You're going to catch a cold out here."
He didn't move.
"Luke," Vader pressed, "talk to me." A gloved hand squeezed his shoulder. "This shouldn't change the fact that we're friends."
He closed his eyes against the pain. "Where were you when I needed you?" he demanded.
A long, painful silence. "You know I can't answer that, Luke."
Tears slid out from underneath his eyelids. "I've thought my father was dead for so long… but you've been right next to me all this time…"
"Oh Luke," Vader murmured, sitting next to him and taking him in his arms, "I'm so sorry."
"Why didn't Ben tell me?" he whispered through a tight throat, and despite himself he began sobbing again.
Vader held him gently, allowing him to cry against his chest. Luke clung to him and vented his emotion, releasing the anger and depression he'd kept locked up for so long. The last time he'd cried like this… stang, it had been three years ago, when he'd still been a Second Commander and Vader a mechanic, when he'd accused him of murdering his father…
/My father/ he realized. /My father's holding me. My father's right here, trying to comfort me. Just as I've wanted him to do all along./
"F-father…" he choked.
"Son," Vader breathed.
"You were there all this time," he said, voice thick with emotion. "All this time and you were right there. I wanted a father to show me the way and guide me, and the whole time you were there guarding my back and offering advice, even standing up to Ghede to protect me…"
"I've always felt close to you, Luke," Vader replied. "Ever since you cut me free from my TIE fighter on Yavin I've felt somehow bonded to you, something far more than simply being indebted to you for saving my life. Now that I know the truth…" He chuckled. "Stars, you've been my superior for three years. I've thought of you as an equal, if not an authority. Now that the roles are reversed, I don't know what to think."
Again they were silent. Luke just wanted to remain there, in his father's arms, listening to his deep breathing and heartbeat. He wanted to ask so many questions about his father's past, to hear all his father's stories, even the deadly dull ones that most kids complained about. Then he remembered the amnesia and cursed fate for being so cruel. But then, if he hadn't suffered that blow, he'd still be a Sith Lord. Stars, he couldn't win either way!
"When I was a kid," Luke said at last, "I used to ask my aunt and uncle questions about my father. They would never answer them. Uncle Owen would just tell me to forget about it. Aunt Beru just changed the subject. They never even spoke about him – about you, except once in awhile when Beru would tell me I looked just like you. All I ever got out of them was that you were a navigator on a spice freighter."
Vader gave a little snort; Luke couldn't tell whether it was a smothered laugh or an expression of disdain. "Navigator… I'd like to see myself stay out of the pilot's seat of any ship."
Luke managed a smile. "I can't picture you as a navigator somehow."
"So you've been lied to all these years," Vader went on slowly. "First by your caretakers, then by Obi-wan. Though now that I think about it, they had due reason, I suppose."
Luke pulled away, not wanting to hear that out of his father. "Don't play devil's advocate. How do you or anyone else know that I would have ran straight to Imperial Center and gone Sith had I known you were my father?"
"Luke, how do we know you wouldn't have joined me? I've known you for three years, Luke, and I know a father is what you've always longed for. All you knew was a handed-down lightsaber and a cock-and-bull story of betrayal and murder. Knowing who and where your father was, could you have resisted going to find me even knowing full well I was the Emperor's right-hand man?"
He didn't answer, but deep down he knew Vader was right. If Obi-wan had answered his question truthfully that fateful day in his hovel, Luke may very well have thrown his destiny aside and stopped at nothing to find his way to Vader's palace, never minding the consequences.
"But you're not a Sith anymore," Luke countered. "You're a Rebel and a Jedi. And above all, you're my father." He gave an awkward sort of smile. "I suppose I'd better get used to this hotshot cyborg pilot being my dad."
"And I suppose I'd better get used to my smart-mouth accident-prone Commander being my son," Vader replied, a smile in his voice.
For a long time they simply stared at each other, not talking, but no longer unaccepting of Yoda's revelation. Now that they'd had a little time to absorb this information and recover from the shock, it no longer repulsed them. If anything, it only further explained their unlikely closeness. Ties of blood strengthened the ties of friendship, forging a bond that nothing could sever.
"I'm sorry I don't have any fatherly 'when-I-was-your-age' stories to put you to sleep with," Vader said, half-jokingly but with a sort of wistful air. "An unfortunate side effect of the accident that precipitated all this."
"That's okay," Luke assured him. "I understand. But I expect to hear all the details any time you happen to regain a memory, no matter how trivial it seems."
"It's a deal," Vader promised, and they clasped hands.
"Now for the biggest question – what do I call you?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Well, you have two names now – Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. Three if you count Father. Which one do I use?"
"Hmm," mused Vader. "There's the trick. If the Rebels hear you calling me Father, it will probably raise some awkward questions. And I'm not really used to the whole Anakin thing yet. So I suppose, until I regain a little more of my memory, you should continue to call me Vader."
"Sounds logical."
They stood and began to walk back to the clearing. Suddenly having a brainstorm, Luke reached down and unclipped the lightsaber at his belt.
"Here," he told him. "You might want this back. It's rightfully yours."
Vader shook his head. "You keep it. Call it a gift from your father."
Luke's smile came more easily now. "Thank you, Father."
"You're most welcome, Son." He draped an arm around Luke's shoulders. "Now back to the shelter. You're absolutely soaked."
---------
Yoda was waiting for them near his hut, and he smiled upon seeing his apprentices walking together, recovered from the shock of the news. "Ah, damaged your friendship this has not, I see."
"It'll take some getting used to," Luke admitted. "But I think it'll be worth it in the end."
"Very good," Yoda replied with a nod. "Late it is. Rest you should. Resume in the morning lessons do."
"No getting out of them on account of family matters, eh?" quipped Vader, and the three of them shared the first laugh they'd had all day.
As the two men strolled to their shelter, talking easily, Yoda ambled back into his house. Plucking a slender green snake off his table, he returned to preparing his supper. He was rather relieved that they were taking this so well after the initial blow of revelation and the ensuing feelings of betrayal. Vader especially – he'd felt he'd been betrayed by Obi-wan once before, and that had produced disastrous consequences.
He shouldn't have been the one to break the news in the first place, though. Obi-wan should have revealed it back at Yavin, when it had first become apparent that Vader was in no danger of turning back to his dark past.
/And what would Vader have done with that knowledge had he regained his memory and decided to go back to the Emperor after all?/ inquired Obi-wan.
Yoda scowled. /Always having to speak your piece, aren't you?/ he demanded.
/Don't make me out as the villain, Master Yoda. The last thing either of those two needs is another enemy. Kain and Palpatine are quite enough to handle without adding a third foe, however dead and gone he may be, to the mix./
"Master?"
Yoda knew who that voice belonged to, but he feigned surprise all the same. He whipped his cane around like a lightsaber and thrust it out the window. There came a startled shout as it clanged against a metal helmet.
"Stang, master, if I weren't masked you would have taken my eye out!" exclaimed Vader.
"Come sneaking around my home in the dead of night you should not," scolded Yoda.
"My apologies, master." Vader's head reappeared in the window, his arm resting on the sill.
"Accepted." He returned to chopping up roots. "Speak to me you wish to?"
"Yes." A pause. "Why did the Jedi Order forbid love?"
Yoda sighed. Of all the questions he could have asked about the Jedi Order or his past, he had to ask the most difficult one.
/Shouldn't you have known this would come up sooner or later?/ came Obi-wan's wry comment.
/Quiet, you/ ordered Yoda. "Many reasons."
Vader shrugged. "I have all night."
Yoda scooped up the chopped roots and dumped them in the bubbling stewpot. "A Jedi focused must be on the task before him. Have outside loyalties he cannot. Devoted to the Order he must be. If married to an outsider he is, interfere it can with his mission of keeping peace."
"But what if he wed a fellow Jedi?" countered Vader. "His loyalties would still be to the Order."
"Not to the Order," Yoda corrected. "To a person they would be. And if disintegrate that relationship does, by death or by other means, dangerous it can become. Arouse dark and dangerous feelings it can."
"What feelings?"
"Anger. Possessiveness. Lust. Jealousy. Despair. Vengeance. Attempted many Jedi have to keep secret unions, and fallen prey to these emotions they have."
"Many, but not all, I presume?"
"Early in the Order, marry many Jedi did. Rare Force-strongs were, and ensure more Padawans to take on the mantle of Knighthood it did. But fall to the dark side many Jedi did, and for the safety of the Order banned any further unions were. By then Jedi blood in many families existed, and easier to find new apprentices it was. But seen for its dangers love was, and avoided at all costs it is now."
"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Vader, "that whenever a Jedi has departed the Order, it's been because of love?"
Yoda considered that a moment. "Yes. In one form or another, yes. Love something other than a person one can. Power, wealth, revenge, addiction. Qui-gon Jinn's first apprentice, Xanatos, loved power and revenge, and sought both of these he did after killed by his master his father was. In the end, destroy him his power did. My Padawan, Dooku, a Sith became because loved his birth title of Count and the promise of the power of the dark side he did. But crushed and thrown aside he was by the dark side. And your fall… began it did when died your mother did, and hastened it was when married Padme Amidala you did."
"But love can produce so much good!" Vader argued. "I love Luke as a comrade, a friend, and now as a son. We work together as a team through that love. And would we be as willing to serve and protect each other if there were no positive emotion between us?"
"True," Yoda relented. "But an added risk you take. For if killed Luke were, take you anger and sorrow would. Fall to the dark side you may."
Vader was silent a few minutes, pondering those words. Then, in an even voice, he gave his reply.
"If that were the case, Master Yoda, a Jedi would turn to the dark side every time a master or apprentice were killed. After all, you can't tell me there's no affection or bond between a teacher and a student. You're like a father to me, and I know you must care about us or you'd have chucked us off-planet long ago.
"Perhaps one must risk being preyed on by the darker emotions to truly experience the positive ones. To me, it's an acceptable gamble. But if, as you make it out, Jedi aren't allowed to experience feelings at all and must become insensitive hulks, I'm not sure I want to be one."
Yoda listened quietly, only the very tips of his ears moving, and then only slightly.
"Maybe that's why the galaxy stood by and did nothing when the Empire destroyed the Jedi," he concluded. "Because they had nothing in common with the Order anymore."
He withdrew from the window, and damp footsteps marked his retreat to the shelter.
Yoda sighed gustily and addressed the empty window. "Right you are, Vader. Right you are. But bury your feelings deep I hope you do. Do you credit they do, but made to serve the Emperor they could be."
He turned back to the stewpot and stirred the contents, Vader's cutting observation still heavy on his mind.
-------
Emperor Palpatine opened his eyes, emerging from meditation within the raw energies of the dark side. So they knew now. That disgusting fossil of a Jedi had finally deemed it fit to tell the Skywalkers they were blood. It was about time, too. He was beginning to think the Jedi would keep those two completely ignorant for the rest of their lives.
Frankly, he was surprised Yoda was divulging this at all. The accursed Jedi held family relations in low regard, almost all being plucked from their homes or out of the adoption system at very young ages. They couldn't understand such concepts as love, family ties, and parenthood.
Not that those were traits the Sith Order encouraged or appreciated. On the contrary, the only value he saw in such relations was their exploitation value. It was remarkable, if not pathetic, that even the strongest non-Sith in the galaxy could be made to do anything if his loved ones were threatened.
Thin, bloodless lips pulled taut over rotted teeth in a feral smile. Oh, this was going to be fun. The revelation that Luke and Vader were father and son created another strand in the web he was weaving to ensnare them.
All was in place now. Forenze was in Kain's clutches, being treated to some of the Sith's brand of manipulation. Han and Leia were on their way to Bespin, blissfully unaware that they were soon to be pawns in his game. Kain would soon join him here to set the plan in motion. Very soon, the Skywalkers would become his prisoners… and eventually his servants.
All that was required now was patience – which Palpatine had in spades.
But then again, a little nudge in the right direction wouldn't hurt, would it?
A dark ripple of the Force shot through the depths of space. Any Force-sensitive would be able to sense it – but only those with the proper training, such as the Skywalkers, would know its meaning.
That completed, he returned to meditation.
--------
Luke was drifting, floating through space, unfettered by corporeal form. Across the stars he glided, past the raw blinding energies of a flaring supernova, through the cosmic mists of a nebula, acutely aware of the ripples in the Force created by manned starships and life-bearing satellites.
A vast red orb filled his vision, a sphere of dense mists studded with metallic flecks that carried life. He recognized the planet – Bespin, the gas giant. One fleck practically glittered with life forms, and he approached it curiously.
Cradled in the swirling clouds and mists of this planet was a magnificent city, a jeweled ivory crown floating through the skies. He drifted through the spires, bathed in the life forces of the beings who lived here, experiencing their joys and pains, their emotions his for a brief moment.
Then searing, ripping pain closed its black claws over him. A spasm of agony laid his mind bare, and awful screams filled him.
But the worst of it was that those screams – and the powers causing them – were familiar…
He shot upright, dripping sweat and gasping for breath. Han! Leia! Chewie! They were suffering, perhaps dying…
"Han! Forenze!"
He turned to see Vader jolt out of an uneasy sleep, his breathing more labored than usual.
"Luke," he gasped. "I had the worst nightmare…"
"Of a red planet?" he asked.
Vader stared at him. "A city in the clouds."
"Han and Leia."
"Yes. Forenze and Chewbacca, too."
"Kain and the Emperor?"
"Most likely."
They scrambled to their feet. If they'd seen and felt the exact same thing, it couldn't be a mere nightmare. It had to be a vision of some sort… a warning.
"We'd better get to Bespin fast!" Luke exclaimed.
"I'm with you," Vader replied.