CHAPTER TWO

Leia was tearing through the ship, screaming for Kai to prep them for hyperspace. She ran into the room where Luke was, and found Kai calmly taking notes on Luke's vitals.

"The i Executor /i is here!"

The insectoid nodded absently.

"Vader is on that ship!"

"It's Xil's call. You're yelling at the wrong guy."

Leia whipped around to go back to find Xil, but stopped when she found him right behind her, leaning against the doorframe.

"Doctor! We have to go now!"

Xil crossed his arms over his chest, "Then he will die," he said, nodding towards Luke.

"He'll die anyway! That's Vader! He's been hunting Luke!"

Xil nodded, "Did you ever consider why?"

Leia stood stark still and stared at the Omwati in confusion, "He blew up the Death Star... he's training to be a Jedi..." She trailed off as Xil shook his head.

"Luke Skywalker never gave a statement about what occurred on Bespin..."

"He lost his hand! Vader tried to kill him!"

"If that were the case, he'd have no problem sharing that information."

Leia's jaw dropped, she took a threatening step forward, "What exactly are you insinuating, doctor?"

The ship shook as it was caught in a tractorbeam.

"I'm simply saying that the mysterious circumstances of Bespin, combined with the fact that a message sent out to a parent-match of Luke's blood sample is answered by Vader's flagship, are too much evidence to deny."

The small medical shuttle jerked again. They were in the i Executor /i 's hangar bay.

Leia's eyes were wide with fear, but her face was flushed in anger. "You'd better be right about this, Xil, but you realize, even if you are—we're all dead."

oOo

Vader stood in the landing bay, Admiral Piett and his Chief Medical Tech stood with him; they watched as the small shuttle was surrounded by stormtroopers. Thus far, the ship and its occupants had offered no resistance. He assumed that the friend who had sent the message was the princess, considering the current state of Solo, the lack of resistance from her meant that Luke must be in grave danger. He was about to order the ship to be forcibly opened when the ramp began to extend towards the floor.

At the top of the ramp stood a slim figure with wispy silver hair and pale blue skin, which Vader recognized immediately as being an Omwati. The Omwati was dressed in the crisp white uniform of a medical tech, he strode halfway down the ramp and caught sight of Vader and the doctor next to him. He waved them towards the ship.

"Quickly," he said softly, as if he weren't trapped in the flagship of his enemies' second-in-command, "There is not much time."

Vader nodded to his Chief Medical Tech who immediately jogged to the ship and up the ramp, vanishing with the Omwati. Vader then followed at a more dignified pace, concealing his anxiety and desire to sprint onto the shuttle and find his son.

And it was Luke onboard that shuttle. He could feel his son's nightmare-ridden consciousness screaming out through the Force. He moved up the ramp and ducked into the compact shuttle. He immediately turned towards the rear of the small craft, where he could clearly feel the presences of every being onboard. He didn't enter the small room when he reached it; he stayed in the corridor watching like a guardian angel.

The Omwati doctor was saying how fortunate it was that the i Executor /i medical team had already synthesized the anti-venom cocktail. The three-man motley medical team was surrounding his son's prone form on the cot. Vader watched as they injected the cocktail into Luke's forearm. Princess Leia was standing in the corner of the tiny room, her arms cradled against her chest. She paced nervously as the two doctors and assistant began checking all of Luke's vitals again and again, searching for any change.

Vader observed unnoticed from the doorway.

Several minutes went by with no change. The three continued to monitor their patient, taking the same vitals again and again, looking for any sign. They'd done all they could, it was now up to Luke to pull through.

"How long since he was exposed to the venom?" Pe'kcha, the i Executor /i Chief Medical Tech, asked.

The Omwati didn't even pause, "15 hours."

Pe'kcha turned his face towards the wall, but Vader still caught the small curse he uttered. Things were not looking good for his son. He stepped into the room, eliciting gasps from the Verpine and the princess.

"Transfer him to the i Executor /i 's medbay so that he may be monitored more carefully," he said softly, it was more of an offer than an order.

The Omwati and Pe'kcha immediately began prepping the patient for transport, while the Verpine and princess just stood and watched, stunned.

oOo

No one had moved from the room since Luke had been transferred there from the small shuttle. Leia hadn't even noticed when the ship's admiral entered and Vader ordered him to bring the i Executor /i back to the fleet. Vader had since been introduced to the Rebel medical techs, Xil Qualar and his assistant Kai. The Verpine seemed very nervous being aboard an Imperial ship, but Xil was cool, calm, and professional.

"When will he awaken?" Vader asked the Omwati doctor.

Xil pressed his pale lips together, "There is really no set timeframe, Lord Vader. It depends on many independent factors. I am inclined to expect Luke to be comatose for weeks due to the length of exposure he had to the venom before an antidote was administered, however, I am not familiar with how his Force sensitivity will affect his healing."

Vader nodded, relived that his son had a professional, to-the-point caretaker. He was fairly certain he'd kill anyone who tried to withhold information from him.

"The nightmares," Vader ventured, "when will they cease?"

The Omwati looked at Vader curiously for a moment, "Forgive me, Milord, but I don't recall mentioning anything about nightmares."

Vader wasn't looking at the doctor, his mask was turned towards the bed, "He's plagued by them," Vader divulged softly, "his mind has been screaming." Vader turned his eyes back to Xil, "Incoherent ramblings, of course, but he's terrified."

"You can...?"

"The Force, and our blood relation, enables easy communication."

Xil's eyes widened slightly, Vader could distinctly see a flicker of fascination. "Is this communication... can you...?"

"Am I able to speak to him?" Vader supplied.

Xil nodded.

"Normally, yes, but it seems that I am the product of many of his nightmares and he doesn't recognize me as separate of them."

The Omwati pressed his pale lips together, "Can you force your way in? Can you shake him out of it?"

Vader tilted his head slightly and gave the doctor an unseen frown, "I fear that would damage him further."

"And I fear the nightmares will permanently rob him of his sanity, whereas being jolted out of a nightmare can be healed."

"Can it?"

"I believe so."

Vader's posture seemed to take on a threatening stance, "I know that we have not discussed the fact openly, doctor, but it would do you well to remember that this boy is my son. My heir. And you are at my mercy. If you are going to put forth such dangerous suggestions, I advise you to consider Luke's survival on par with your own. You will need more conviction than 'believing so'."

"I consider my patient's survival and full recovery my top priority, Lord Vader." Xil said softly, not at all intimidated by Vader's threat. "I made my suggestion that you communicate with your son because I believe it critical that he realize his dreams are just that—dreams. Only when he realizes that he's dreaming can he wake. No matter how much that frightens him."

Vader was silent for a moment, torn between relief that the idea might work and burning annoyance with the Omwati for daring to contradict him. He glared at Xil as if to say, 'I'm not finished with you' and moved to sit in the chair at Luke's bedside. Leia, who was pacing nervously on the other side of the bed, frowned at Vader's close proximity to Luke.

Vader ignored her. He leaned back in the chair and stretched his thoughts towards the chaos-ridden mind of the boy lying before him. He probed around the edges of Luke's nightmares and then pushed into them.

Had he been able, he would have gasped. He felt as if he'd been dowsed in freezing water and then set upon the wastelands of Hoth. Vader felt his consciousness being pushed at, as if by a gale wind, as he moved forward across the desolate imaginary landscape of his son's mind. He could hear screaming, a throaty, raw sound, much like the sound of his son's denial on that gantry at Bespin.

i What a disaster that had been, /i Vader thought, plowing forward through the mindscape, i If only I had let go of my Master's obsessive absolutes: join us or die? I should have just dragged him from that gantry kicking and screaming. And if I had, he'd not be on the verge of insanity and death now. /i

Vader passed pillars of ice that seemed to stab at the churning sky above. Clouds of black hung there, spiraling as if they might break into a storm at any moment. The Sith glanced at the pillars, noting that one contained Solo, resembling the chunk of carbonite that the smuggler was currently encased within. Further on, yet another pillar contained Princess Leia, her mouth wide in a frozen scream. And the next... Vader stopped so suddenly that his mind was almost jerked back into his own body.

In the pillar that towered before him, he stared up as his own form encased in the ice. The mask concealed any horrified expression that might have been etched into his features, making his double seem almost serene; like the pillar were a coffin and he was being laid to rest.

Vader stood stock still. Not shocked by the image of himself in death, but by the fact that it was there at all. Why was he frozen alongside those whom his son held dear?

"I was confused by it at first, too."

Vader started at the sudden sound, and turned to find the form of his son standing behind him.

"Luke..."

"I... are you a dream?" Luke's lower lip trembled slightly, like a child crawling into his parents' arms in the dead of night to escape the monsters under his bed.

Vader shook his head, "I am not, but this," he swept his hand at the landscape around them, "is. You need to come out. You need to wake up."

Luke merely blinked at him. Then looked up at the pillar behind Vader. "I did that, you know," he spoke softly; he let his eyes wander to the pillar encasing Han, "First, I fell into your trap at Bespin, and Han ended up like that."

Vader shook his head, "That wasn't your fault..."

Luke continued as if Vader had never spoken, "And Leia, she came back to help me, and..."

Vader understood completely now. Luke had been reliving Bespin, and had even been coming up with possibilities of how the fiasco could have gone even worse.

"And then you..." he gazed up at the frozen pillar, "I... I would not join you and the Emperor killed you." Luke's voice was soft, wistful, but then he looked at Vader and hatred seemed to burn behind his eyes, "You wouldn't fight back! You just let him destroy you! Just before you died you looked at me! You looked at me, and I knew that it was because of me that you wouldn't fight back, that you wouldn't save yourself! You were so disappointed... so ashamed of how weak I was, that you didn't want to live."

"Luke..."

"NO!" Luke stepped away from the advancing form of his father, "I won't! I won't watch it again!"

"Watch what, Luke?" Vader's voice wafted across the landscape with unnatural clarity.

Luke's eyes fluttered, as if some part of his brain noticed that the soft voice spoke directly into his thoughts, "I... I won't watch you reject me again. I won't watch you die of disappointment."

Vader scoffed. "Is this what all this is, boy?" he snarled. "You're wallowing in self pity while your princess paces at your bedside, sick with worry, and I stand in constant watch over you?"

Luke shook his head, gripping it between his hands, "What are you talking about?"

"Focus, child!" Vader roared, "You were on a mission and somehow got yourself infused with a deadly dose of Quilar venom!"

"I... huh?"

"You've been comatose for approximately twenty hours. Save for Solo's situation, all of this," he swept his hand around again, "Is a product of your imagination."

Luke just stared at him, blinking occasionally.

Vader snarled, stalked up to the pillar that encased the phantom of himself, and drove his fist into it. Shards of ice flew in spirals around father and son like shards of glass. Vader turned just in time to see Luke vanish, and he felt his breath freeze in his throat.

oOo

Vader gasped as he careened back into his own consciousness. He was on his feet without thinking, his fists clenched. His disorientation quickly dispelled when he heard another deep gasp coming from the bed in front of him.

Luke had awoken. His mouth and eyes were wide. He tilted his neck back so that its top was pressed into the pillow. His wrists and heels were pressed into the mattress, as he arched his back, pulling his entire body off from the medbay cot. And then his voice began to work. A raw scream poured out of the young man's throat, and he began to thrash wildly, knocking instruments in every direction.

Xil and Kai were upon him at once, Pe'kcha was checking as many vitals as he could without getting knocked out.

"His blood pressure and heart rate are too high," he said calmly, as if those facts were not obvious to any observer in the room. "We need to calm him down or sedate him."

"He just woke up!" Leia protested, trying to push her way past Kai to get to her friend. The Verpine pushed her back with one of his oddly jointed legs.

Vader was having better luck than the princess; he had gotten up next to Xil and was pressing down upon Luke's shoulders, forcing the young man to look up at him.

Suddenly, Luke stopped moving.

"You're alive?" he whispered.

Vader nodded, "As is Princess Leia."

At this, Kai allowed Leia to step up next to the bed and look down on him.

"And Han?"

Leia shook her head, "Gone. Taken to Jabba."

Luke's lower lip began to shake, as it had in the dream state. Vader grasped his shoulders tighter, least he lose him again. "He can be recovered," Vader said, "And his capture was not your fault."

Vader ignored Leia as she brought her eyes away from Luke to stare at him.

"Luke, I need you to breathe. Remain calm. You are safe. Everything will be all right."

With every assurance, Luke's tense muscles seemed to relax. His wild eyes focused and he looked around the room.

"Where... where am I?"

Leia pressed her lips together, weary of starting another panic from her friend, but Xil saved her the trouble.

"Medbay," he said.

Luke blinked, and looked up at where Vader had been, but Vader had moved out of his line of sight. Luke frowned to himself, and then settled against the pillows stacked behind him. Leia felt a spike of guilt shoot through her: in his unstable condition, he had forgotten that Vader was there.