"And what if the light just isn't there? What if we get to the end of this tunnel and find only night?"- Obi-Wan Kenobi
"Faith we must have. Trust in the will of the Force. What other choice is there?" – Yoda
Revenge of the Sith, by Matt Stover
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PART IV – Clawing for Higher Ground
Night on Endor was heralded by the calls of night creatures coming out to forage. The forest was inky black and the air crisp and cool. The sounds of nature did not reach Darth Vader as he left the shuttle to meet the AT-AT walker that was supposed to be bearing his son. The helmet had long ago dulled any natural sounding noise to indistinct; an audible sensor relayed any sound that was not being directly spoken to him. Nor was he affected by the temperature, he felt nothing through the encasement surrounding him.
He could, however, sense Luke's presence close by and was uncharacteristically surprised. A moment of doubt had assailed him when the Emperor told him that Luke would come to him, offering himself up to the father he never knew. He did not know his son that well, but his innate stubbornness was something he could perceive even with limited knowledge of the boy. Then as quickly as his presence had manifested, it was gone.
Ah. Perhaps the Emperor was not as perceptive as he had alleged. It would not surprise him to greet a party of Imperial officers bearing the news that their quarry had escaped them…yet again. In fact, he expected it.
To Lord Vader's astonishment the lift doors opened and his son stood in binders, surrounded by the receiving party. So the Emperor had been correct.
He turned his eyes down to the slight figure of his son and thanked the guards.
Luke stepped forward to face him without pause. Vader had grown accustomed to men of power and stature trembling in his presence, yet this young man, barely more than a youth, stood unwavering before him.
The Force hummed around them, identical poles of a magnetic field that would never touch.
"The Emperor has been expecting you," he offered to Luke, reaching for some kind of straightforwardness in dealing with the boy. Vader noted that his son fell in step with him naturally, as if they had been walking together side by side forever.
His son's power and presence brought distinct feelings of familiarity with them. Luke was much like he had been at this age, but calmer and at peace with the Force, more like he himself had wanted to be in the days before he had accepted the truth of where his destiny would take him. Vader could not help but notice the maturity that now surrounded his son, his mind clear as a bell and his focus determined. He seemed wise well beyond his age.
As Luke conceded to him the idiom "father", something caught inside of Vader. However physiological it might be, his breath had stopped…for one minute millisecond the dragon cowered simpering and something long dormant in him flailed in its attempt grasp at Luke's presence. All in the space of less than a second, yet reaching all the way to eternity.
As he uttered his acknowledgment of Luke's accepting truth, his chest constricted and pain blossomed there. The name he had so long reviled reared its head, flailing no more.
It was out there, spoken by his son. It was as if the man he was clawed up from the sand bank of his own making and rose to mock him. Its ghost rose from its grave given new strength simply by having been spoken…Anakin Skywalker.
Even as he denied it fiercely to Luke, the ghost smirked in his face. He struggled violently with its memory and the dragon's hackles rose. It knew the danger this posed as Luke pressed on, brutally reminding him that he had been another man in another life, pleading with the specter to step out of its hiding place.
Vader watched as his son turned his back on him and spoke of his confidence in this man that he presumed to know, Anakin Skywalker. Deep inside the longing inside surfaced again and he put all of his strength into fighting down whatever vestiges remained of the person Luke erroneously thought he perceived. He turned away from what he saw in his son's face, the desperation in his eyes.
"Indeed you are powerful as the Emperor has foreseen."
He acknowledged Luke's power, there was nothing else he could say. They were being moved by something larger than the both of them now, if only Luke could be made to see.
He stood with his back to Luke and felt more than heard his son's appeal. A plea born of idealistic naiveté, "Come with me."
…Come away with me…Help me raise our child…leave everything else behind while we still can!
He felt sick, the burning rising up from the place where time was frozen and his dragon lay guarding it. Always with him, plunging cold, venomous fangs into his fear…but it had never been able to expunge this memory. He could not think her name. He could not tell Luke that another had once believed as he did and perished. Perished for her faith in him. Bitterness and hatred at the man that had once loved this woman, yet killed her, welled inside and he darkly used it. He stood and waited for the stillness the dark side would bring, as the dragon seethed. As he buried her voice inside. Luke must be made to see that others had tried, but he would not say her name.
He could convey another failure, though: "Obi-Wan once thought as you do…
You don't know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master."
"I will not turn, and you'll be forced to kill me." Luke's calm, even resolve brought them to an impasse and he felt the cold apathy settling back inside. Good. He needed this composure, he had revealed too much and Luke was unbending.
"If that is your destiny," he said numbly. Briefly, it occurred to him that he could not determine if he believed this himself.
As his son begged him to let go of the hatred that had sustained him for years, he found himself back on Mustafar, on another catwalk, as he looked into another light. That sunset, that tiny pinpoint of light in the dark red skies had represented much. He remembered he had cried then, the last glimpse of his old life was washed away with tears of despair and hopelessness. In that moment, those tears had washed away Anakin Skywalker. Forever.
"It is too late for me, son."
There was nothing else to say to the boy. It was too late.
Once again, he found himself willing Luke to understand that they did not have to run away. And there was nowhere to go if they did.
"The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now."
Luke stared in disbelief. For a moment, he had felt – he had seen - the dark cloud in his father's soul shift, revealing the tiniest ember of what could have been light from the cold, detached remains of what had been life. And then it was gone, almost as soon as it appeared, snuffed out reflexively at his father's behest.
The dark creature reared and rose triumphant, leering at Luke, laying claim once again to its domain.
Something inside him crumpled, and he nodded in numb comprehension.
"Then my father is truly dead."
Luke blinked and turned away, forbidding tears. Despair washed over him in icy waves and receded, dispersing his childish hope of reconciliation in its wake.
Had Obi-Wan been right all along? Was his own grasp of the Force so inept that he had staked his life on a fantasy? The master who had trained and fought with his father had not been able to penetrate the darkness, what made Luke think that he could?
Luke struggled for composure as he was led away onto the Imperial shuttle. In the growing distance between them, he felt the connection with his father linger and wane like the mist now evaporating from Endor's forest at sunrise.
Resting his head against the sterile shuttle interior, Luke relaxed into the Force, releasing his pain and frustration. In the distance, he felt a coldness, like the cave on Dagobah but darker, pulsing, predatory.
Yoda's voice echoed on the fringes of his mind.
Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor.
But how am I to know the good from the bad?
You will know when you are calm...at peace...
Luke closed his eyes in meditation, steeling himself for the confrontation ahead. The Force answered his call, surrounding and filling him with a quiet strength.
The desolation Vader felt in his son as he was being led away normally would have fed something terrible and dark inside, but this time was different. It stayed with him, but he could not use it. It went somewhere else, to a new and different place within. This place felt like a small star smoldering to embers in space, having burned for centuries.
When he was with Luke he could almost feel that place that had burned out, flare up again. He could almost touch something that had been elusive for so long, he had forgotten it. In his weakest moments, when his bond with Luke sang through the Force, he could almost shield the small flame and let the small withering light blossom, let the specter step from behind the shadows.
Almost.
Although the Emperor had foreseen it, he still could not fathom why Luke had turned himself in, much less wanted Vader to come with away him. Luke's wish for him to accompany him could not possibly be out of affection, as the boy would have no reason to feel anything for him. The misguided devotion to an ideal that he could never be must be eradicated from his son's perception. Luke was not the first to find this out.
Whatever useless feeling Luke might possess, one thing was for certain: Darth Vader could not bear to lose him, to have that bond torn away again. He could not bear to have that light - that small star - however dim it may be, ripped from his precarious grasp again. He would do whatever it took to keep Luke at his side. He must make him see they could be together. The boy must turn.
to be continued...
