A/N: Thanks again to all the lovely reviews y'all have left me! I appreciate them all! steffles24, Sithspawned, JadeAlmasy, AgiVega, and Jedi Knight Revan, thanks so much. There is only ONE CHAPTER left after this one! happy face
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The torrents of Force-generated electricity pouring over Luke had weakened him almost to the point where he could no longer move. He closed his eyes, unwilling to face the Emperor in the tyrant's moment of triumph and his own colossal failure. Unable to save his father, unable to save his newly-discovered sister, he surrendered to his fate. As he felt unconsciousness begin to take him, he spared one thought to ask them for forgiveness.
His lips had barely begun to mumble the words, when the ordeal abruptly stopped and an unholy shrieking filled the room. Startled, he raised his head from the floor, automatically checking on Leia first. She was lying very still, but he could hear her moaning in a low voice and prayed that meant she was all right. He turned his head towards the noise and gasped with shock.
His father held Palpatine high over his head, the Force-lightning that had been torturing Luke and Leia now coursing through the black armor of Darth Vader. Luke could see his father's skeletal structure as the lightning intensified with Palpatine's panic. Even with only one hand, Vader had a firm grip on the Sith Master and he was not letting go. His strides were sure and strong, despite what Luke knew had to be tremendous pain, as he walked to the edge of the reactor shaft and threw the demon to his doom. Palpatine's shrill scream of anger and terror rapidly diminished, followed by an intense explosion within the Force.
Only then did Vader stagger, falling to his knees and starting to follow his Master's descent into the depths of the Death Star. Somehow Luke found the strength to rise to his feet and stumble over to him, grabbing his father by the edge of his cloak, attempting to pull him backwards to safety. Another pair of hands was suddenly joining his own, and Luke looked over at Leia with relief. Together, the two of them hauled their father away from the edge.
His respirator wheezing desperately now, Anakin collapsed onto his back, Luke and Leia on either side of him. He reached up with his left hand, touching first Luke's face, then Leia's with the back of his fingers.
"My…children…" he said, as he labored to breathe.
Luke swallowed a huge lump in his throat, wanting to say so many things at once, that he didn't know where to start. Unfortunately, the Death Star rumbled menacingly at that moment, and alarms started going off all around them. Luke's gaze met his sister's in shock.
"The Alliance. Their attack on the shield generator must have been successful after all. We have to get off this thing," Luke said, not breathing too easily himself.
"Yes," Leia murmured, but she had turned to stare at their father, a sort of stunned recognition in her eyes.
"Leia," Luke called to her. He reached across Anakin's prone form and shook her shoulder. "Leia, we have to go now," he said insistently.
Anakin was struggling to breathe and seemed unable to answer either one of them at the moment. Leia looked back at Luke with a dazed expression, just as another ominous rumble shook the massive battle station.
"We can take the Emperor's private shuttle. There's a hidden passage over that way," Leia said, some of her confusion seeming to clear as she nodded her head towards the throne area.
Somehow, the two of them supporting the bulky form of Anakin Skywalker between them, they managed to make it to the shuttle that Palpatine kept for his personal use. They'd passed a few people running back and forth once they had emerged from the concealed tunnel, but no one seemed to pay them any more heed than a curious, panicked glance or two. Perhaps it was because they were with Darth Vader that no one even attempted to stop them.
Luke didn't care, he just wanted to get off this death trap with his family as soon as he possibly could. Family... Despite the dangerous situation they were in, the word sent a warm glow through his heart. He had loved Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. He loved Mara with every fiber of his being. Han, Wedge, and Chewbacca had basically adopted him. But Anakin and Leia, they were his blood. Just being with Leia again after what was essentially a lifetime apart was making him near giddy with joy.
His impossible dream started to crumble as Anakin slumped to the floor at the foot of the shuttle ramp. Leia and Luke were both gasping with the effort of having half-carried him this far. He started to reach out to help his father to his feet once again, but Anakin forestalled him with a lifted hand.
"Luke...Leia...help me...take this mask off."
Luke shot Leia a horrified glance before looking back down at the black mask obscuring his father's face. He shook his head in a motion of denial.
"But you'll die."
"Nothing...can stop that now. Just once...let me look on you both...with my own eyes."
He started to protest once again, when he felt a gentle touch on his arm and Leia's quiet voice in his mind.
Luke, don't deny him this.
Feeling the fantasy of a relationship with the father he'd longed for as a child slipping from his grasp, Luke wanted to scream his frustration at the Force, but he also acknowledged the truth of Leia's words. If this moment was to be all he would have, he would not waste it arguing with Anakin.
His expression grim, Luke reached around the back of Anakin's mask and unhooked latches, the sound of oxygen escaping seeming loud even in the chaos around them. The helmet lifted off and Luke placed it beside him on the floor. The intricate faceplate followed and then Luke was looking at his father's true face for the first time in his life.
Luke's face softened to a little smile as he gazed into blue eyes so like his own. His father returned the smile before shifting his eyes to bestow an equally affectionate glance on his daughter.
"Now, go, my children...leave me," Anakin said, the strain evident in his voice.
"No, I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you," Luke said, unwilling to give up his dream just yet.
"You already have, Luke...you already have," Anakin gasped. "Both your sister and myself...you saved us both."
Leia's hand slipped into Luke's where it rested on the chest of their father's armor and he gripped it tightly. It was not fair! To find them both and have to lose one of them so soon. It wasn't fair.
"Father, please," Luke choked out. "Don't go..."
"The Force...wills it, Luke," Anakin said, and his smile was understanding and regretful at once. "Take care of one another...my beautiful son...and daughter.
With those words, his body relaxed backwards, his eyes sliding closed as a serene look crossed his scarred face. Luke felt it as Anakin's life essence slipped away from the damaged body it had been forced to endure for the last two decades, and with her shiver, he knew that Leia felt it as well.
Leia lifted one slim hand and caressed the curve of Anakin's cheek, murmuring softly, "May you find the peace you've been seeking for so long, Father."
Luke bowed his head over his father's body, his hot tears falling onto Anakin's chest as his shoulders shook with silent sobs. He clenched the cloak of his father's suit in his fist, as if doing so would hold him here just one more second.
"Luke, we have to go," Leia's voice seemed to come from far away. She was shaking his shoulder, much as he'd done to her only a few minutes ago, but Luke was overwhelmed by his grief, not even noticing that the tremors of the Death Star were getting worse.
"Luke, he died so that we could live! Don't let it have been for nothing," Leia said sharply, her fingers grasping his chin and forcing him to look at her.
He glared at her, wondering how she could be so heartless when their father had just died, and then he saw the unshed tears shimmering in her eyes. Glancing around, he realized how precarious their situation was becoming, as the walls of the hangar they were in began to crack and an ominous roaring noise grew steadily louder.
Take care of one another, their father had said, and Luke knew that he had to make sure that Leia got off this killing machine before the Alliance destroyed it. He nodded and consciously dried his tears. There would be time enough for grief when they were safely off the Death Star.
Several minutes later, when Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian fired the shots that caused the Emperor's weapon of mass destruction to explode in a fiery mass, a small shuttle bearing the last of the Skywalker family skirted the edge of the flames before hurtling down to the forest moon of Endor.
It took them the better part of half a day to build the funeral pyre. They worked well together, silently for the most part, speaking quiet instructions only when they needed to. Far in the distance, they could hear the muted sounds of the Alliance celebration, and Luke half-worried that someone would have seen the shuttle landing and come to investigate, but so far, they'd sensed no one.
As if in ceremony, they both held the torch as they touched it to the edge of the wooden bier that held their father's body. They dropped the torch into the beginning flames and stepped back far enough so that they would not be overwhelmed by the heat. Luke and Leia stood solemnly and watched as the flames began to lick upwards, consuming the black armor that had been Darth Vader.
Luke reached out to take Leia's hand, her presence like a balm to his wounded soul. He had already contacted Mara over their bond, letting her know that he was okay, while gently brushing aside the many questions she had, at least for the moment. As much as he longed to see her, Luke knew that he needed this time with his sister to mourn the father neither of them had really had the chance to know.
The flames had burned down to embers some time later as Luke and Leia sat on the ground, facing one another. They had been talking for a long while about everything, from what they remembered of their mother, their lives growing up, and Luke's training experiences on Dagobah. It saddened Luke to think about what a joyless existence Leia had been forced to endure as the Emperor's pawn, and he vowed to make it up to her from this moment on.
"Don't do that," she said quietly.
"What?" he asked, even though he knew what she was talking about. The bond made it difficult for them to keep much from each other.
"Don't feel sorry for me. It wasn't a completely terrible life. There were moments here and there that made it worthwhile."
"But you must have been so lonely."
"At times. But I did have...acquaintances. There was the daughter of one of the Regional Governors. She was probably the closest thing I had to a best friend, and I'd see her two or three times a year when I was younger," Leia said with a fond smile of remembrance.
"Do you know what happened to her?"
"I saw her the last time when I was fourteen, so I'm not sure what eventually became of her. Her father displeased Palpatine in some way and got sent to some outer rim world as punishment.
"Hey, don't say 'outer rim' with that tone," Luke protested with a smile.
"Oh, yes, how could I forget that you grew up on Tatooine," Leia said as she wrinkled her nose in disgust. "I'll take Coruscant any day."
"It wasn't too bad. Hotter than anything you could imagine, but the suns setting are beautiful. I'd love for you to see it someday."
"Maybe. If you can catch me when I'm delusional enough to agree," she said wryly.
Luke laughed, relishing her sharp sense of humor. It actually reminded him of Mara. He sighed as he lingered on thoughts of his wonderful redhead.
"And that's something we need to discuss!" Leia said, and Luke was surprised to see that she was blushing.
"What do we need to discuss?"
"You need to work on your shielding, buster, especially when you and Red are, uh, getting romantic," Leia snorted.
For just a second, Luke didn't understand what she was talking about, and when it hit him, his face went as red as hers. "You mean, you felt that? Over the bond, when Mara and I...ah, when we..."
"Yes!" Leia said succinctly. "Do you think I would have slept with Solo if I'd been in my right mind?"
Immediately, she looked horrified to have let that piece of information slip.
Luke's face fell into a fierce glower. "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna have to kill Han for taking advantage of my sister."
"I don't need a big brother watching out for me, Luke. I am a trained assassin, if you remember," Leia bristled.
Grudgingly, Luke muttered that he knew very well she could take care of herself, but couldn't she give him a little while to adjust? He was puzzled, however, over her choice of phrasing.
"What does me and Mara sleeping together have to do with you and Han?"
"Our bond is powerful, Luke. Very powerful, apparently. When you feel something very strongly, I feel it, too. I nearly passed out the day you came back from Bespin."
At the word Bespin, Luke's eyes dropped to the ground and his entire body tensed. Leia gave a little sigh as she reached out to take his hands in hers.
"Is it still that difficult for you to think about?" she asked softly.
"Yes. Even though I know he turned back to the Light at the end, that day...well, a lot of my dreams were shattered that day."
Leia reached out to cover his hand with her own, giving it a little squeeze, and Luke looked back up at her gratefully, so deeply appreciative of her presence in his life once again that he simply didn't have the words for it. But there were still so many things he wanted to know. There was one burning question he could no longer keep to himself.
"What was he like?" he whispered. "Our father...what was it like to grow up with him?"
Leia gave him a slightly tolerant look at the obvious longing of a little boy in his voice. She sighed, pondering how best to answer him.
"It's not as though he were reading me bedtime stories and tucking me in at night."
"I know that. But you were there, with him. Even if you didn't know who he was, you have shared memories, years of memories, and I have...well, two, neither of them very pleasant ones."
"We weren't friends at all, Luke. The Emperor played us against one another, probably to prevent the possibility of us joining forces against him. I...I almost hated him at times," she said quietly, somehow ashamed to have had such feelings, even if she hadn't known it was her father she was hating.
"I understand that, Leia. I hated him as well. Obi-Wan told me that Darth Vader had killed my father, and I wanted revenge, so badly. Even once I found out the truth, I still hated the things that he'd done. I just...I just want to know who he was, because all I ever saw was the Dark Lord of the Sith, until that last moment."
She was silent for so long that he thought she wasn't going to answer him, and Luke resigned himself to the fact that he might never know any more of who Anakin Skywalker had been other than what he'd seen in the visions and the last few minutes of his father's life. But then she began to speak quietly.
"He was strong. Not just in the Force, but in personality. When he walked into a room, you could feel his power and his strength. I never heard him laugh, but there were moments when he would make a sarcastic comment that would make me smile. When I was younger, before Palpatine began manipulating our emotions against one another, I was in awe of him. To a child, he seemed impossibly tall."
She paused a moment in her recollections, a semi-guilty smile on her face.
"When I was about six or seven, I used to follow him around the Imperial Palace, because I was insatiably curious to know what he looked like under the mask. I thought for sure that if I trailed him long enough, I'd catch him without it on. I didn't realize he needed it to survive until I was much older."
Luke was listening in rapt attention to her words, and when she paused again, he was nearly breathless with anticipation. "Did he ever catch you?"
"Oh, he knew the entire time what I was doing. I suppose he thought that I'd grow tired of the chase and give up eventually, but apparently, I inherited the Skywalker stubbornness right along with you," Leia said with a sardonic grin.
Luke smiled widely at her, thrilled again at the knowledge of their connection. "So what happened?"
"This went on for about a month, I think, before he finally confronted me. 'Lady Duvessa!' he said as he spun around in a hallway where I was sneaking along behind him."
Luke grinned as she imitated Darth Vader's deep tones on her own name.
"I was petrified, because even at that young age, I knew what he was capable of. But I was still stubborn and determined not to let him know that he scared me witless. I said something like, 'Yeah, your Vaderness?'," she said with a somewhat abashed smile.
Luke laughed out loud at that, unable to help himself. "Your Vaderness?" he gasped.
"Hey, I was young and impetuous, all right? Anyway, he stalked up to me and I remember looking up and up at him. He asked me what I was doing following him, and I denied doing so, of course. He replied that he knew that was not the truth and asked again, in a quite intimidating manner. I finally mumbled something about wanting to see him without the helmet on, and..."
Leia's words trailed off and she got a faraway look in her eyes. Luke's smile faded as he tilted his head to one side, waiting for her to continue.
"And then I sensed this rush of sadness in him," she said in a small voice. "It was tinged with anger, but overwhelmingly, I felt this quiet despair. He must've realized I was sensing his emotions because they suddenly stopped. I think I gasped because it was so abrupt. He stared down at me for the longest moment, before he said 'Little girls should know their place, young one.' Then, he reached his hand up and tapped me twice on the nose with his finger. I winced because I'd thought he was going to strike me."
She shrugged one shoulder gracefully, coming back to their present surroundings then, pulling away from the memory that seemed so poignant now that she knew the truth.
"Then he turned and walked away to his quarters," she finished the tale with a somber voice.
Luke sat quietly for a moment, digesting her words and all the subtle meanings behind the encounter between an unknown father and daughter.
"That goodness in him was there all along. The Emperor never drove it fully from him," he said softly.
"If it was there, it was buried deeply. And I think only you could have brought it out, Luke." She hesitated and her next words, though heartfelt, seemed reluctant, as if even now, she had difficulty opening up to even him. "It was the truth, you know, what he said before he died. You saved me as much as you saved him."
Luke smiled tenderly at her, and reached up a hand to caress the curve of her cheek. She flinched, but only barely, before lifting her own hand to cover his.
"What do we do now?" she asked quietly.
Luke sighed as their hands dropped back into their own laps and gave her a rueful look. "Well, after I go explain my rather long absence to a certain redhead and the Alliance leaders, I'd like to take both you and Mara away someplace, where we can work on Jedi training."
Leia frowned at him uncertainly. "I'm not sure I'm worthy to be trained as a Jedi."
"What? Of course you are. What makes you say that?"
She threw him an exasperated glance. "Luke, I'm an Imperial assassin. I killed people at my Master's command. Not exactly Jedi behavior."
"You were an Imperial assassin. That's in your past. Do you think that I've never done things that I've regretted?"
"I highly doubt that anything you've done in any way compares to my sins," she retorted.
"I regret never letting Owen and Beru know how much they meant to me. I regret that I didn't truly appreciate Ben Kenobi and his teachings until he was taken from me. I regret that I didn't listen to my Jedi Masters and rushed into a situation I wasn't ready for at Bespin. But mostly..." his voice dropped to a whisper in front of Leia's sympathetic gaze. "Mostly, I regret that I know the number one million, two hundred five thousand, one hundred and nine by heart."
She looked blank for just a moment, before realization dawned in her eyes. "The first Death Star," she said softly.
He nodded slowly. "In one instant, I was responsible for more deaths than you could ever hope to cause. In a way, it doesn't matter that it was justified, that the Death Star was a weapon that would only have wreaked more death and destruction as it did to Alderaan. I, and I alone, was responsible for those lives, those deaths."
"But it wasn't-" she tried to protest, but he knew what she was going to say and interrupted her.
"Yes, it was the same. Death is death, Leia, whether it comes face to face, or from an anonymous proton torpedo fired in the depths of space."
He took hold of her hands, pinning her with an earnest gaze that she could not look away from.
"But it's in the past. I acknowledge it, but I don't dwell on it. The only things that matter are the things I do today, and the things I will do tomorrow. Do you see this? Do you understand?"
"I do understand, Luke," Leia said as she returned his intense gaze. "But I want you to understand that I don't think I'm ready for Jedi training right now. That might change in the future, but it's not going to happen at this point."
He opened his mouth to argue further with her, and then he noted the stubborn tilt of her head and the determined gleam in her eyes. No, pushing her to do something that she wasn't ready for would gain him nothing but her resentment, and that was one thing Luke definitely did not want. He smiled at her as he gave her a nod.
"But you will tell me when you are ready, won't you?"
She gave him the closest thing to an indulgent smile that a former Imperial assassin could and said, "You'll be the first to know, I promise."
Luke sighed and their conversation paused for the first time in about two hours. He glanced down at his wrist chrono and grimaced.
"We should probably be getting back to the Alliance, or Mara and Han are really going to start to worry."
"Do I have to go with you?" Leia said, only half-joking. Luke had the feeling she really wasn't looking forward to facing Han Solo again.
"Everything will be all right, I promise, Leia. I won't let anyone ever hurt you again."
"I'm not sure that's a promise you can make, Luke," Leia said.
"Well, I'll do my best to prevent it. After all, the Force is with us," he said with a grin.
"Indeed it is, young Skywalkers."
Luke and Leia turned around in surprise at the unexpected voice and saw the ghostly form of Obi-Wan Kenobi smiling warmly at them.