A/N: Woot! Figured out how to make accents. Snrk.
This chapter gets into some fun episode three stuff. Thanks be to Master Frodo Baggins, who read this massive story because I told him I needed recent reviews.
There was a room in the Destroyer Darth Vader rode where the walls were painted black, and on the floor there was a ring of staggered light, a hologram projector that could produce an image with dimensions measured in meters. Vader stood before this and waited, returning his thoughts to the image of his son, a man, looking at him with the eyes of two worlds.
His son. That had been the feeling then, the sudden convergence of time and the Force when above the new-formed Death Star the last X-wing shredded into fire. That one that now rested, in the deepest holding cell of the Gryphon, had been hidden with Padmé...
No, that was going too far. The present --
The present was that Darth Vader had killed his son. And that now, in an improbability among improbabilities, this Luke had returned. Had become existent, so that Vader would have to kill him again, this time feeling everything without ignorance, without the anger and self-righteousness that had sustained him on Mustafar.
The holoprojector activated, and crackle became a stooped human form, a man clothed in gray and leaning on a shining black staff. This was the Emperor of the known galaxy, and Darth Vader bowed to him, one knee on the floor and his black cape falling around him like a pool. He could not feel the edges of material touch his cyborg arms.
'Lord Vader." The emperor crisply spoke. "Your arrival should be imminent."
"Yes, my master." And no secrets could be kept from Palpatine. "One of their...Jedi is with them. He is my son."
The emperor laughed; reedy, low, penetrating sounds. His mouth twisted into an ugly half smile. "Everything is falling into place. The machines in the alternate reality acted precisely as predicted."
Vader knew some of these plans, but truly did not care. For what would the Empire want with other universes...there was something disturbing to him about the emperor with his aspirations being closer to another reality than to the far-away galaxies around them in this one. More reason to destroy the emperor when his chance came...an opportunity he had been waiting for so long...
Palpatine continued. "Allowing this young Jedi to move from his universe was unavoidable. Now he may be used as an asset;if not as an ally than as an example." He spoke the last words with somewhat of a slow relish.
Always manipulating, thought Darth Vader. Many an analogy had been made to call the emperor a dejarik master, with the board the galaxy.
The universe?
Vader himself knew the events clearly. Luke Skywalker was his son--his life destroyed Padmé's life--and lived for her when she was long dead from weakness and...he did not wish to kill his son, not if the dark side could save him.
"Yes, my master." said Darth Vader. His breathing hissed out and in, uncontrollable despite the place where Anakin Skywalker felt once his lungs, and perhaps his heart, had been.