Ya'll. This is the first time I finished I longfic in a long damn time. I am terrible at endings. I will write and rewrite and rewrite and still hate what I've finished. Then some damn catastrophe happens, and I lose the draft and I move onto my next WIP because I'm too frustrated to rewrite what took months or even years to finish. So here. Let's break that cycle. Throwing this into the internet void and closing the chapters on this fic. Enjoy.
Luke didn't talk to Leia that night. Mother had done her hair, and she had snuck into his bed again, but he didn't feel like hearing her say "I told you so." He felt betrayed enough. He didn't need to hear it from the person he considered his only friend too.
She cried, then she fell asleep, and her warm body breathing lulled him to sleep.
He woke up when he felt the heat.
It wasn't a physical sensation, but it was a familiar one. It felt like falling asleep in the shade and waking up to the sensation of the noon-time sun in full force. It was overwhelming.
His eyes flew open and he rolled towards Leia, shoving her off the bed and crawling underneath it. He covered her mouth to stifle her gasp and held his breath. Leia couldn't shield, but her presence was already ghost-like, Luke had to worry about himself.
The Code mantra couldn't help; he was too afraid. He counted down and up and sideways, struggling to remember the numerology Breha had desperately tried to pound into his head.
What was his father doing here, in the dark of the night? He was locked up— or he was supposed to be.
Luke heard voices, and he knew Leia did too because she froze in his arms. Her terror was cold and stark; only one thing in the galaxy scared her so deeply. Fearless Leia, brave Leia— the sight of their biological father could stop her in her tracks.
He strained his ears to listen, but only caught a few words—and only heard Padme.
"Annie, please, you can't be here— you have to go, run—"
Then she was silent.
Where was the security team? How had his Father even got up to the top levels of the hotel? For that matter, how did he even know where they stayed?
It was pitch black under the rich linens of the bed. He couldn't meet Leia's eyes, but discerned her intentions and let her go. She crawled over and slammed the panic button underneath the night stand. Dread closed up his throat. Neither alarms rang.
He had disabled the security system, and probably the team with it.
The presence drew closer, the heat was engulfing everything, clouding Luke's juvenile, untrained senses. Luke withdrew, deeper and deeper into his senses, hoping that he wouldn't be found, because the only escape out of the grand hotel room was blocked. They didn't have windows or a rotunda to restrict entrances, but now they were sitting ducks.
Heavy footsteps muffled by the plush carpet. Luke couldn't hear his mother anymore.
Padme had kept the blaster in her room because they had only just started shooting lessons. Luke hadn't thought to regret that before. She didn't even get to shoot.
Would she shoot him? Or would she let him kill her again?
Luke flinched when the steps abruptly stopped. He wished he could poke his head out, see the shadow of tall black boots in the doorway…
He is standing by his mother in a ship unlike any of the ships he's traveled in before. They are in dead space, by a sun, or maybe that is just Anakin. The world is out of focus, stretching into his vision like black, wriggling fingers. She lays on her bunk, luxurious for a ship of this caliber, a blanket pulled up to her chin, her hair, her only vanity, mussed, undone, sweat soaked and clinging to clammy gray skin.
"Leia?" she wheezed, "Leia, baby? Come back."
She has been calling for his sister for hours. It's not the first time Leia has run away, desperately trying to get back home to Alderaan. Luke has begged her before, begged her to wait for him, that together they could escape, but she is impulsive. She sees the opportunity and runs. That's why Father is gone, out searching for her, again.
"Leia?"
Padme's voice distorts, echoes, fades as her life vanishes and suddenly Luke's vision is sunspots and holocom buzz, and sensation— the vivid feeling of terror, nausea, and rage, and echo of some torture Luke's young mind cannot understand.
He opened his eyes. He didn't realize he had closed them. Cold sweat beaded on his hairline, and R2-D2 whirred and beeped in frantic concern. Luke hurriedly shushed the droid; the noise would bring Mother to investigate, and Luke couldn't have that.
Anakin Skywalker had made a threat, and Luke had seen the future consequences. He had to do something.
"Artoo," Luke asked, "Pull up the map to the Jedi Temple."
Once Anakin could have tolerated the cell. He could have sat for hours and meditated on the Force, feeling the mundane fears and emotions of the citizens of Coruscant that crawled over the dead husk of the planet. He could have calmed himself enough to dream of children and Padme. Those were the thoughts that consumed most of his empty existence.
That was impossible now.
Padme had hired a lawyer for him, but the meeting had been completely unproductive. He would've killed the worthless guard where he stood if the counselor hadn't talked him down. People had confused Sabe and Padme before— it was why she served as her body double back in her Queen Amidala days— but Anakin had always been able to easily tell them apart.
Nevertheless, the sight of a small woman dressed in the Naboo fashion storming in stopped him in his tracks for a split second. That second was all she had needed to fly in and shoo away the battle-hungry Padawan.
Anakin wouldn't sit, and wouldn't be calmed. He could feel his children in the Force, clear enough to pick up individual thoughts and feelings. It felt as if they were standing beside him and not fleeing…down the street. To Padme. From Padme? There was anger and regret, a lot of it, and the chaos of the street confounded his sense. More Jedi were on their way from a bar strategically situated a level below. Anakin could take them— Padawan Nuyeda and three, no four Masters and Knights would be taken down with a minor challenge. Even if one of them was Aayla Secura.
He karking knew Nuyeda was her learner.
"Skywalker, relax," Sabe had pushed the mentally shaking but outwardly steady Padawan out of the way with no fanfare, "You go after them now, then you'll really be a criminal!"
"You say that as if I'm not now!" he had screamed right into her face, "What are they going to do, execute me? They can't keep me here unless I let them. I'll finish the job the Clones started, and they can't capture me if I run."
"Maybe, maybe not," she had sighed, "but don't say that aloud in front of the fucking Jedi."
There were words— a lot of them. Governmental red tape and the kind of poodoo he'd never had the patience for, the disdain he'd inherited from Obi-Wan for governmental process as strong as it had ever been. No judge could declare him worthy or unworthy of raising his children. And he certainly wouldn't pay for someone else to have custody of this. He'd never agreed to give them up in the first place. He'd already missed so much doing what he thought was the right thing.
"I'll file the acquittal appeal today, Skywalker," Sabe had sounded exhausted, "Hopefully we can get you moved to a halfway house within the month. But to turn over your sentence, that can take years. I'll need you to cooperate with me."
He'd allowed himself to be escorted back to his cell. In moments like this, he was reminded starkly of the difference between the sarlacc in the pit and the krayt in the sands. A favorite idiom of his mother when faced with the more lascivious of spacers.
"A sarlacc in the pit thinks it is a krayt in the sands," she would sneer after Anakin successfully distracted, and on a few occasions, threatened away spacers who sought to buy her company for the night from Watto, or take her against her will.
Two dangerous creatures that lurked under the sand, both man-eating, carnivorous, status symbols of power. The krayt roamed free, and made canyons, and the sarlacc stayed tame, fraught with starvation, delighted at the scraps the masters fed them. Slaves feared the sarlacc. Free men feared the krayt.
He felt like that disgusting animal, the sarlacc.
Gardulla had acquired one, and he remembered how warriors and dancers who failed to entertain were fed to it. The fear hung heavy in the air like foul sap, but Anakin had never been afraid of the creature. It was young, and Gardulla had been a brute that loved blood and money more than sex, so the young sarlacc had been fat and well-fed.
He remembered feeling sorry for the creature, because he knew its own knowledge of its existence was skewed and incomplete. It thought itself a peak predator, and feared nothing, not knowing it was a pet to the lowest scum of the galaxy. It was an overseer; not something to be feared but pitied.
Its presence in the Force was so different from the krayt he remembered encountering in his youth. He and another slave, a Bothan, had been sent out as bait to attract the mother while Gardulla's hired crew of bounty hunters ventured into the nest to seize an egg.
It had been awesome in size, its bulk and shadow blocking out the sun. It had uncountable legs, and long, spiked arms. A single tooth was longer than Anakin was tall, and more than anything, he could feel its rage at their violation. It made the hunger of the sarlacc feel like nothing. It burned and swirled and stirred up the environment, like a miniature sandstorm.
Only the reflexes of the Force saved Anakin that day. The bothan and three of the four bounty hunters had been killed. Anakin had trotted back with the last one standing, nearly losing his footing in the granular sand of the Dune Sea. Desperation had pushed him forward; his detonator had been given over for a small fee and if he fell behind he would have exploded.
The depth and simplicity of the sheer emotion radiating from the beast was the most powerful thing in the Force Anakin had ever felt, until the day he felt Darth Maul and the Dark Side. Until he left the dustball behind and for the first time felt a star in space. The Force had boiled within him, everchurning, simple and complex and all consuming, like that krayt; it had felt as if the trappings of the Jedi were a poor Master to tame the dragon in his heart.
Somewhere along the line, he had become the sarlacc. Afraid and content with unsatisfactory scraps of news and 'visitation' from the Masters, content to simply believe and not ensure that his children, the only good left in the galaxy, were well. He knew better. He'd seen it before.
He was maybe seven, and returning from scrapping a ship wreck in the Dune Sea with his friend Kitster when all of the slave quarters were in an uproar. A tholothian prostitute— a rare creature, and a favorite pet of Jabba's favored hunter Yulora Ancori was screaming as she was dragged through the streets onto a speeder. No one in the quarters knew her well, as she was mostly kept in her Master's home and was never sold or rented out. Anakin didn't even know her name.
"Her mother's come and bought her freedom," Kitster's sister, who also worked in the whorehose, had said, voice sad and tight, when the two had asked "but she doesn't want to go."
The girl had cried bloody murder all through the night. Several times she tried to escape back to her master. His mother had gone out frequently that night to help restrain her. Eventually, together the quarters had come together, concocted a sleeping potion and drugged her. Her mother took her off-planet.
It had never occurred to Anakin that some people might not want to be free.
"Every person desires freedom," Shmi had said sadly, "but some people are too afraid of change to accept the blessings in their life. The poor girl didn't understand the difference between a master and a lover. Her mother was a stranger to her. Better the pain you know than the pain you don't."
Anakin had chosen pain. He'd chosen to send his children away and abandoned his wife because he was afraid of hurting them. But in doing so, he'd chosen cowardice. He had hurt them so badly they couldn't even see the truth. He was weak, so weak, as he always was, never strong enough to make the right choice.
He should have killed the Jedi, then killed Palpatine, then taken his wife and children and run far, far away from the Republic. There were places in the Rim, or Wild Space he could have gone. Maybe he should have exterminated the Senate and all their courts to be sure they wouldn't be followed. He should have known that Padme, trusting Padme, was too dutiful and good to do what needed to be done. He'd ruined her and left this mess in her hands to fix, and she was too weak—
"I promise I won't die in childbirth," she'd said, and he'd pulled her close, "No, I promise."
When had he become a sarlacc and not a krayt, bowing his head pathetically to the whims of others? She'd asked him to go away, to submit to the justice of her new republic, and he'd stifled his every instinct and waited for a sign from the Force on when to act. The Force had shown him endless visions of suffering, and still he'd doubted.
His visions always came true.
Palpatine hadn't expected him. Anakin had left a sea of Red Guards behind him as he single-handedly stormed into the building— slaughtered, killed thoughtlessly like the inconvenience they were.
His old friend was cackling in the Senate chambers, laughing loudly, as the delegates began to gather, and the sound of it coming from his strange, deformed face enraged Anakin. What the fuck was so funny? Padme was dead, or would soon be, stolen away in a Senate speeder— he knew the kind. Why would Palpatine send his cronies to steal his wife? Why did he send him to the Temple, then kill the Clones when he had a thousand Jedi and that traitor Obi-Wan at his back? Palpatine had abandoned the plan and left him to rot after Anakin had won him his war. He'd used and disposed of him the way he had Maul, Ventress, and Dooku.
"You've betrayed me!" he roared, storming into the Chancellor's rotunda. The guards and his retinue raised their weapons or turned to run, but Anakin lifted a single hand and Force-choked them all, snapping their necks with such surliness their heads twisted nearly all the way around.
"Darth Vader, my boy, what's this all about?" Palpatine performed for the holorecorders, but Anakin was insane with anger.
"You left me for the Jedi to kill!" he hissed, "Where's Padme? Where did you take her? What have you done with her?!"
"I know nothing of this conspiracy—urgh!" Anakin wouldn't make the same mistake twice. Obi-Wan had bested him by holding him off until the Clones were exterminated, either by the Kaminoans or Shaak Ti he didn't know nor care. Now someone in touch with the Senate had stolen the only one he had left, and Palpatine was the Senate.
"Where. Is. She?" he tightened his grip and the man who had seemed so wise and powerful seemed only pathetic. Palpatine scrambled in his sleeve, but Anakin pulled his lightsaber from where he knew it was hidden. It felt cold and disgusting, unnaturally vile. His anger grew, and burned away the lingering touch of his master's power.
"You've taken her," he growled, "taken her and my children! You…wanted them. You wanted her…to die? You were never going to help me save her, were you?"
Lightning twitched from Palpatine's fingers and struck Anakin clear in the chest, but the thought of his children dead, Padme dead, this yellow-eyed ghoul he'd bent the knee to the reason for their death, gave him strength enough to stand. His heart pounded out of time in his heaving chest.
"You're a fool, Darth Vader," Palpatine's voice was raw as he backed away fluidly towards the edge of the balcony, "You do not yet know the power of the Dark Side!"
He raised his wrinkly old hands, but Anakin would not be quelled. His lightsaber, anointed with the blood of the Knights and Padawans he'd slew to escape the Temple, turned not to defend himself, but to strike. Even as Palpatine raised his hands to discharge Force Lightning, Anakin slew him, cutting him asymmetrically to pieces. His lungs were still intact. He would talk or he would die, and if he died, Anakin would make him die slowly.
"Where is she?"
"What have you done to her?"
"Where is Padme?"
Palpatine, disarmed and knowing it, only laughed as Anakin cut off his hands to stop the fucking lightning, cut off his remaining leg through the hip, and at last, his head.
"You've failed," trickled across their bond. Or maybe the Force spoke in Palpatine's voice to torment him, as he lifted the corpse of his Master and pulverized it with a scream of anger. Lightsaber wounds were clean. Annihilation was not, and blood and viscera splattered across the closest pods and his face.
His lightsaber went out as the lightning finally took its toll. Time slowed down, and he slipped into unconsciousness, the declaration echoing in a thousand voices between his ears like bells.
You've failed.
The time to act was now.
Obi-Wan had turned his back on him in this cell for the last time.
Anakin had turned his back on those he loved for the last time.
Leia is prepared for this. She is an agent of the Republic, and her duty is to serve. She can handle this mission.
The Republic assigns her to investigate the governor of the Doldur Sector, who is under suspicion for sapient trafficking along the galaxy's major hyperspace lane, the Corellian Run. It's well-known that the governor had a weakness for girls, the younger the better, and so Leia, who is a prodigy in her Junior Legislative Investigation and Ethical Oversight Committee, volunteers.
The governor is known to haunt an upscale nightclub on the six hundredth level of Coruscant. He is an easy mark; Leia spots the Falleen right away on the third level of the club. He's in a room dark with purple light. Smoke wafts out from between the curtains. It reeks like spice.
Leia, dressed in uniform, passes a credit chip to the Mirialan girl who'd given up her identity for Leia to assume for this mission. She hopes the girl hops on the first ship off this Sith hell. She hates Galactic City, and the monster that haunted her childhood that slept in its depths.
Her long hair wrapped up in the headdress of a Marial devotee, the goddess of the Mirialans, her clothes hypocritically skin tight and sheer, she plays hard to get, too abrasive by nature to be any sweeter. The chase seems to arouse the filthy man more, and he talks— well brags about his crimes. The more unimpressed, the harder he tries.
Finally, the recorder in her nipple pasty warms; there is nothing more she can gain tonight. The hours are small on the chrono, and the club is closing for the night. He is wrapped around her finger.
Or so she thought. Men like him don't take no for an answer.
She begins to feel faint. Her stomach turns and her head spins even as her pants begin to grow wet. Something is wrong, and Leia grabs the dresser in an attempt to reach her emergency comm. She didn't drink a drop all night, but someone must have drugged her.
The door opens with a hiss, and Leia scrambles for the vibroblade strapped to her garter belt.
But the feeling increases tenfold. It's too late.
The pleading words of the lawyer, the threats of the courts, the betrayal of every Master he'd ever had— it meant nothing to him. He had to save them from a fate worse than death. He had to ensure they lived long protected, free from the weight of duty, free to achieve the destiny he'd foreseen. Padme wouldn't (couldn't) and he had trusted her (he had broken her).
Luke crawls out the window of the manor, dropping down four floors to the garden effortlessly. Armed to the teeth, he creeps through the tall reeds. He is older, but hardly a man. He clutches in his hand a talisman of japor and a key made of khyber. His face is dark and angry. His mother is dead, heartbroken, and his twin sister is missing, a galaxy away.
Bail and Breha mourn, but Luke knows he can't rest yet.
Leia's still alive.
He can feel it.
The Force would give him the power he needed to have his family back, and if it didn't he would take it.
"We welcome the nineteenth incoming cohort of the junior armed forces of the Galactic Alliance of the Republic! Rise, soldiers, and take your stance!"
Leia is instantly recognizable, being nearly a foot shorter than almost every other recruit, a great halo of brown hair twisted and twisted and twisted upon itself to meet the conformity rules. The force was all human, being an officer academy for the mostly-human Core Worlds.
"Learners, step forward to receive your training assignments."
The ray shields he had burnt himself on so many times were easy enough to disable. He had seen his guards enable them often enough to know that the controls were just outside the barred door. Ray shields generally could prevent most uses of the Force— energy to disrupt energy, physical barricades to stop the flesh.
He focused directly beneath him, into the floor where the conductors fed energy into the focal crystals that generated the shields. The solid plastisteel curled like flimsiplast on fire, buckling up sharply. He jerked them up, then the pipes, then the foundation, until he reached the ray shield beneath the floor. It pushed out to a point, a single crystal bright with energy where all the powerlines met.
Let it not be said that the Jedi were complete fools. The system was designed to be self-sustaining, so that should the Temple be damaged or conquered in some way, Anakin would be trapped, surely left to rot.
It was not enough to out-maneuver Anakin's mechanical know-how.
The energy lines vibrated, sparking with latent power, and he reconnected them in parallel, much the way he would lightsaber parts around the passive energy output of the khyber core. But ray shield crystals were not khyber, and their capacitance was much, much lower.
They exploded, along with everything on that sublevel.
Anakin never had been very subtle.
"Amidala? Don't even bother!" the senator of Carides laughed at the new legal clerk. He had the starstruck look a lot of people wore after meeting the famous Chair of Reconciliation. "She's not in the market for a man."
"Ah, I'm not looking for love either, but surely she wouldn't turn down a bit of fun? Especially dressed like that…"
"The woman has a Jedi hound guarding that pussy," the senator leaned back and chugged their champagne as if it were beer. "If you want to die at the end of the Hero with No Fear's saber, be my guest. Just resign first. Skywalker holds grudges."
The suspended debris fell to the floor and he walked over them, unarmed but not worried. Any minute now, the Jedi would arrive.
Luke wakes up in a metal cage, large enough for a Devoranian, therefore with ample space for him. Around his neck an electric collar buzzes. His hands are bound. The only sound that breaks the silence are the weeping of other children.
"No," he whispers, "No, no, no!"
He knows these binds well. He sees them in his dreams around the Princess. All this time desperately tracking her, for nothing.
He is captured by the Black Sun.
If he ran into Obi-Wan, he decided as he called a long beam, perfect for clobbering if nothing else, he would kill him. Karking Kenobi was a wild card, and the only person who could maybe predict Anakin's movements well enough that he would know where to look if he ran.
But revenge wasn't the important thing, he thought as he moved up into total darkness, getting his children was. Anakin spread his Force-presence out so that it blended into the mess of life he was ascending into; it was too distinct to be successfully suppressed. It helped that it gave him a general awareness of everything that moved on the lower levels of the Temple. No Jedi knew his prison as well as he did.
Moving up through the paths he knew as a young Padawan came almost like a second thought. He collapsed the hallways behind him to turn away pursuit; no one would ever access these ways again. Turning right there would take him to a dump he'd favored. Turning left there would lead him to a waste-funnel that would take him to a hyperlane that led to the other side of Coruscant. Climbing up that pipe would take him to the side entrance of the Temple, where the library opened to.
Only one way would take him up to the red-light Republicana district, ten levels below the wealthiest district of the planet. Ten levels below where he instinctively knew Padme had a hotel room booked.
Ten levels below where he could feel the ghost-like presence of his daughter and the bright presence of his son.
Or was it?
Anakin stopped abruptly. Something was wrong. Perhaps wrong wasn't the right word for it. He could feel a gaze on him, unlike the familiar observation of the Jedi watchtower. A child too young to properly shield, but wise enough to reflexively hide.
"Reveal yourself," he said gravely into the empty, abandoned stone corridor. "I know you're there!"
The presence flinched and seemed to press into itself, a shield hastily pulled up. But it was too late. Anakin would know him anywhere.
"You have the Force, my son," Anakin smiled at him across the table. "Tell me, what do you know of your gift?"
He used the Force to pull a panel from the ceiling and pulled down his son.
Luke shot him with a blaster as he floated in the air, but though his son was fast, Anakin was faster. He dodged the shot— it would have been a headshot, he was impressed— and pulled the blaster from his son's hands, crushing it thoughtlessly.
"And how did you get here?" he mused, suspending the boy just close enough that he could touch his smooth face, but far enough that Luke's kicks didn't land.
"Put me down!" Luke thrashed as if he could dislodge Anakin's psychic hold like hands.
Anakin was almost tempted to retort "Or what?" but relented instead and put the boy down. Luke was tiny, barely passing his hip. Was he really nine? Had ten years really passed so quickly?
The boy was not fazed; he immediately pulled out a vibroblade and leveled it at Anakin. His grip was terrible, and so was his form. It worried him, to see his son defend himself so poorly. He had failed him. When Anakin stepped forward, Luke stepped back.
"Stay away," Luke shouted. His voice was too loud in the quiet of the hallway. "I know how to use this!"
"Do you?" Anakin was amused. "You don't look like you do. And besides, you're the one who found me."
"I found you to tell you to stay away," he was undaunted. "We don't need you, and you're— you're not my father!"
"I sense conflict in you," Anakin's approach was inexorable. He stepped forward, and Luke stepped back, but Luke was short and Anakin was tall and every step brought Anakin closer than Luke could retreat. "You don't believe that."
"I do!"
"You don't," Anakin grabbed Luke's wrist and took the vibroblade gently. "You know I am your father. Don't hate yourself for something you cannot help."
"I saw you," Luke spat, "I saw what you did."
"Luke, what happened between your mother and I—"
"Not that! I saw what you did to the Jedi! The Force showed me the truth. I saw everything. You would have killed them all."
"But I didn't," Anakin laid his hands on his son's shoulders and forced him to look into his eyes. "I didn't kill them all. I killed anyone who got in the way of me killing my master."
"Master Kenobi?"
"Him too. But no. I killed my Sith Master, the Chancellor Palpatine. He killed the Clones and abandoned me to die as he had his other apprentices. I thought I should run with your mother, but she was gone."
Luke searched his face. What he was looking for, Anakin didn't know, but he drank in the sight of his son. His eyelids were puffy like he'd been crying, face pale with exhaustion. His fine clothes were covered with the grime of the city, and ripped.
"Why?" Luke whispered. "I don't understand how you can be like this and do what you've done."
"It's because I love you," Anakin wiped away the tears that welled up. "and I loved your mother. I wouldn't let her go, and I would do anything for you guys. The Republic and the Jedi didn't matter more than your survival."
"...I've had visions," Luke sighed, "since I began meditating again."
On their fourth visitation, they had spoken almost exclusively of the Force. The Jedi began training before most younglings could talk, and Luke had tried to make sense of what he'd learned in the scattered early years within the Order. Anakin had done his best to teach his son to listen to the Force in the short scattered times they had. With Anakin hesitant to speak of his past, it dominated much of their conversation.
"Destiny is absolute," Anakin murmured, "Trust what the Force shows you."
Danger niggled at his senses, and he straightened. "We have to move."
He strode off at what he thought was a slow pace, but Luke was nearly running, so he stopped and picked him up, slinging him on his hip as he broke out into a dead run. Giddily, realized it was the first time holding his baby, and even the urgency of escaping Coruscant couldn't crush the happiness that welled up.
"Don't worry," he reassured the boy when Luke squealed as he Force-leapt over a ginormous gorge, wrecking the passageway they'd come from with a Force push, "I've got you. How'd you cross that, anyhow?"
He could feel Luke's incredulous eyes on him. "I didn't? I went through the Temple and pretended I was a Padawan before using one of your maps and sneaking down through the archives."
"Clever. So you've still got Artoo, do you?" he slung his son from his hip to his back, and Luke dutifully clung like a monkey. Luke was still terrified of him, but the exhilaration of moving at such a speed had numbed his protests.
"Yeah." Luke replied curtly.
"You know, your mother gave him to me as a wedding present," and so it went. Luke was reluctant to talk at first, painfully more reserved than Anakin had been at the same age. It felt stilted like their first visitation, and Anakin resented that.
They breached the Old Temple walls within the hour, a thankfully bloodless escape. But he knew the Jedi were looking for him. He had to ditch the prison robes.
"Come," he could feel the hesitation, the intent to run. Where? They were on a mostly deserted service platform on the lowest levels of Coruscant. "Don't run. I'll catch you, and you won't like what happens next."
"What? You'll choke me?"
"Don't tempt me," he joked. Luke paled, and Anakin laughed, "Don't worry, I don't need to choke you to put you to sleep."
"That's not any better!" Luke followed him into a service lift, looking around nervously as the ancient mechanism grinded to life brought them to the first level above the ruined surface of the planet. The dead Force dialed louder and louder, until once more they were a drop in an ocean of life.
"But it is; it hurts less," Anakin scanned the level and scoped out a Twi-leki abode. In general they were taller than humans, and there was a higher chance that he would fit into their male's clothing than the run of the mill human. He grabbed Luke's shoulder and navigated them towards the small tenement yard. People looked, saw his robes, and looked away. "Besides, I don't want to do that. A conscious child is less suspicious than an unconscious one. I would prefer that you cooperate, since you've brought yourself to me. But I'm prepared if you don't. What did you think would happen? That you would tell me to go and I would just stay away? Were you going to shoot me point blank with your little blaster? Were you going to kill your own father?"
"I had to do something to stop you," Luke bit out.
"Stop me from what, exactly?" Anakin pushed Luke behind him, nonchalantly picked the lock with the Force and pried open the door.
A slug flew past where Anakin's head had been. The slugthrower was in his hand and unloaded in the next second.
"Sleep," he Force-suggested the old Twi-lek, who sure enough, was a man a little taller than Anakin. His probe of the tenement showed he lived alone, and he pulled his son in through the door. "Stay here."
The room was humble in the same way the Temple quarters were, without the shuttered windows. There was no light on the first level of Galactic City. Anakin changed quickly, shedding the grey prisoner robes.
Of course Luke didn't stay put.
The cooking blade flew from his son's hands into his own through the flung open door.
"Nice try. You're certainly persistent."
Luke scowled and bolted towards the door, which didn't budge under his hands.
"It would be wise for you to stop, Luke," Anakin said. "You won't escape. What did you think you would achieve with this foolishness? Sneaking away from your mother? She's probably worried sick."
"I'll stop you from kidnapping my mother and sister," Luke growled. "I've seen what you'll do to us."
"Tell me what you've seen, because I don't think you understand," Anakin took the knife and cut one of the Twi'Lek's cloaks in half lengthwise. "Put this on."
Luke pouted petulantly and slapped the cloak away. "Mother dies when Leia vanishes. And Leia would only ever run away from you."
"Be wary of your feelings," Anakin knew exactly what Luke had to have seen. But Anakin had seen so much more. "You are not wrong. I have seen your Mother and sister die—"
"Leia's doesn't die," at Anakin's quizzical look, Luke curled in on himself and glared at the floor. "She's hurt, and suffering, but she's not dead. And I can't shake the feeling that you have something to do with it. We're not on Alderaan or Naboo when it happens."
"You're fortunate to receive a portent so soon," Anakin busied himself, "You have the ability to circumvent destiny. And yet, despite all my actions, my visions are always true. Is it action or inaction that causes the vision?"
Luke frowned. "Inaction, I guess. You kidnap us from Alderaan. You take us somewhere…cold. If I stop you taking us it won't happen."
"Wrong," Anakin said, "it's weakness. It's fear. The Jedi will teach you to discard it. The Sith say transform it. Both are wrong. Fear is the Force screaming at us to listen for our survival. The Force-sensitive can have the power to save the ones they love, if they are strong enough." He picked up the cloak from the floor. "Now, put on the cloak."
Luke stared up at him with big eopie eyes. He took the cloak, but did not put it on.
"Feel your fear, young one. How will you act on it? It cannot be vanquished, and anger is a mask. You can put on the cloak, or you can refuse. But you cannot do nothing."
His son put on the cloak, and angrily pulled the hood over his head, hiding his face completely.
"Good choice," Anakin laced up the boots. "Let's get out of here."
Luke had given up on arguing and instead chose stoic silence. Acquiring a speeder had been easy enough, and he drove recklessly through traffic and illegally jumped the tolled hyperlanes that kept the destitute in the underbelly of the city, never once seeing the sun.
By the time they arrived at the middle levels, where the density of construction decreased enough that hyperlanes and the night sky were visible, the Coruscant Security were searching for them. Amber Droids roamed the streets en masse, the area just civilized enough that it would be difficult to disappear.
"Let us go," Luke begged him, pulling at his hand. "Please, you have to let us go. It's the only thing that'll stop what I've seen."
"My visions are always true," Anakin said as he dragged the recalcitrant boy through the masses, pulling his hood over his head and concealing his face. "I lose you because I leave you."
"So what is it then?" Luke demanded. "Are we both wrong? It's different from what you say you saw in your letters…"
"Did you read them, then?" Anakin asked. They ducked into a bar just as an Amber Droid whistled past, scanning the crowd and beeping aggressively.
"Only some," Luke admitted.
"A blind judge and a blinding light," Anakin smiled. "I saw your present and future often. This vision is just a warning. I told myself I wouldn't use the Force again until it was time and that time is now."
"Well, I've seen the future too," they entered the hyperlane that would take them to the upper levels. Luke's fear was cold in the Force, like ice water down Anakin's spine. When he laid his hands on his son's shoulders, Luke shrugged him off vehemently.
They traveled in tense silence. Ominously
"I'm doing this for you," Anakin couldn't stand the cold shoulder. Luke wasn't exactly talkative, but he was like Padme, he was never emotionally frigid. Always gentle, always refreshing, and never painful. But now, Anakin realized the boy was shielding when he never had before.
"No you're not," Luke said. "You're doing this because you're selfish, because you hate. You could just wait, do it right, like Mother did—"
"And leave you for years again?" Anakin sneered. "Wait for someone else to turn you against me? More than you already have? More than your sister has?"
"I don't love you now," Luke sniffled, his lips tight. "It's different. You're different. You have to stop."
Anakin wouldn't. He wouldn't be the slave mother, come to free her child and having to drug her to remove her from bondage. He was their father, he was Padme's husband, and his family was his right. He would not wait years for an entity that had turned a blind eye to evil for so long to decide if he was worthy of raising the children who were his. Padme had wanted him to act. The Force sent him a vision.
No more public visitation. No more arguing in court. Anakin Skywalker would take what he wanted, and he wanted his family back.
The hotel loomed above them, across the street. It was crawling with CorSec and Jedi, temporary ray shields blocking the bottom entrances and exits. The press holorecorders were much sleeker than Anakin remembered them. Reporters spoke quietly outside, Alderaani private security giving a statement.
Anakin supposed the son of a king was a high-profile target.
"You said it was fear that causes what we see in the visions," Luke asked, "So what are you afraid of? Are you afraid they'll see you for the killer you are?"
"All Jedi are killers," he snapped, "That's why the Republic wanted us to lead their armies. Even the scum of the galaxy have children. Why are you trying to antagonize me? Think you'll annoy me into giving up?"
"Hoping maybe I'll distract you enough that you get caught."
"Keep dreaming, my son," he spotted the black, armored speeder in the bay squeezed into the alley beneath the hotel. They wouldn't be fooling the holorecorders, but Anakin didn't need that much time anyway. He tousled his long dark hair and assumed a grave expression. "Stand up straight and be silent. If you say anything I'll put you out."
Luke did the opposite, but quieted when Anakin squeezed his shoulder in warning.
They approached the security guard in the garage entrance.
"This area is off-limits," the guard was a droll, tired looking young man. He froze when he recognized the Hero with No Fear. Ten years had passed, but then he supposed being accused of treason and murdering the Chancellor on holorecorder would lead to lasting infamy.
"We're the Jedi come to investigate the missing youngling," he said, voice heavy with Force-suggestion. "You will let us through."
The man was stiff, with suspicious eyes only somewhat dulled. The second stretched long and tense.
"Of course, Master Jedi," he stepped aside, glassy eyes carefully averted.
They stepped into the hotel speeder dock unaccosted. Anakin disabled the surveillance and looked down at his unimpressed son.
"You didn't mind trick that guy," Luke huffed. "Some security."
"Hush you. You're beginning to remind me of my Padawan."
The memory of the Ahsoka stung, and Anakin was overcome with a wave of regret. He had failed her as a master. The Council had transferred their distrust of him onto her, and turned her over to a corrupt court system as a sacrifice. When she had turned her back on him, and walked away, Anakin had let her.
She abandoned the Jedi, he reminded himself, not me.
Padme had turned on him. Obi-Wan betrayed him. Leia repudiated him.
But Luke was still here, whatever he said, Anakin could sense the truth of his feelings.
In time, he would have it all.
Hijacking the speeder was easy. The driver was expecting a Jedi, and though the robes weren't exactly Jedi robes the bearing was half of a Jedi presence, and Anakin had the bearing. The driver was weaker willed than the guard had been, was easily tricked, and Anakin, after a token struggle, strapped Luke into the passenger seat.
"Get ready," and then he kicked the speeder into gear, pulling out of the landing bay with a screaming whistle.
They drove in silence. The comm buzzed frantically; Anakin shut it off. At first he could hear the scrambling of the passengers— R2-D2's whistle was especially distinct— but then they quieted. Prepared. He would have a fight on his hand when he landed, but he didn't expect anything less from the love of his life and his daughter.
"This isn't going to help," Luke said. "I'm sorry, okay? Just turn yourself in and I'll come to visitation. I'll even make Leia come. If you do this they'll never stop fighting you."
"Will they?"
"I'll never stop fighting you. This isn't right. You can't just kidnap us—"
"It's not kidnapping if you're already mine," Anakin argued, but he felt less certain than he had the entire time.
He speeds recklessly through the Coruscant hyperlanes, and arrives at his destination; a small chop shop on the mid-levels of Galactic City on the other side of the planet from the temple. The moyn who runs the shops grumbles at him, tries to bargain, but Anakin isn't one to be trifled with. Unfortunately for the moyn, the bargain devolves into aggressive negotiations, and the moyn soundly loses his life and all his credits.
He can feel Padme's storm of composed anger and fear. She's ready to attack; she doesn't realize who it is who's hijacked the transport. Her only thought is of protecting her daughter, the only child she has left. He regrets scaring her so horribly, but he had to.
He opens the door with the Force and lets it flow through him completely, dodging the first three blaster strikes and catching her wrist as she strikes out. The long vibroblade in her hand nearly slices his ear off. Blood pours down his neck. She gasps, completely surprised.
"Annie?"
"Miss me, Angel?"
"You have to let us go and do this the right way." Luke's voice snaps him out of the vision just as the chop shop arrives on the horizon. "
"I won't let you go," Anakin said, "this is the right way. I won't beg and grovel for the chance to see my children. I won't pay the people who took you away from me. Padme asked me to fix this, so I will."
Anakin saw disaster when he left them all; Luke saw disaster in the opposite scenario.
Both Force visions were true.
Anakin knew what he had to do.
He pulled smoothly into the bay of the chop shop. Luke eyed the handle of the doorknob, but stopped when he realized he was caught. It was a shame Luke had forgotten he was in a security vehicle, because Anakin had been hoping he wouldn't have to cuff him to the door.
The boy put up a fight, and it was all Anakin could do not to wince when Luke landed a strong, hard kick to his sternum.
"Stay here," he pointed needlessly. Luke spat at him, and Anakin grimaced and didn't bother to wipe it off the robes he would be discarding as soon as possible anyway.
The negotiations with the moyn went as he foresaw, and his heart pounded in his chest. He could feel them— Padme and Leia. All he had to do was slide open the armored door, and he could see them, touch them, without the barriers of distance or the law. He could take them now, steal another ship, and finally, finally have his family.
He opened the door.
"Annie?"
"Miss me, Angel?"
Padme dropped the bloody blade, falling backwards, chest heaving in her humble gown. They'd been evacuated in a hurry. Leia's back was pressed to the far corner of the Van, C-3P0 blocking her almost entirely from sight, the red tip of her blaster steadily leveled between his eyes.
"Annie, what are you doing? You're putting everything at risk! No, this isn't happening, this can't be happening. They'll never let me see them again, they'll think I had something to do with this!" She cringed back when he offered his hand to help her out of the transport.
"They won't," Anakin promised, "because 'they' will no longer have any say in who raises my— our— children. 'They' won't even find us."
"We're not doing this, Anakin," her voice trembled, "Leia's the Princess of Alderaan! The galaxy won't stop looking for her just because you say so!"
"We'll vanish," Anakin wanted to touch her, but he could now sense the nuance in the riot of feelings she emitted that he hadn't been able to sense through the holocom. Love, so much love, but also fear in an almost equal measure. It made him sick. She didn't desire his touch anymore. Terror reigned that he would hurt someone— not her. "Listen, if you come with me right now, no more courts. No more lying Jedi or visitation, or dealing with the Organas. No more child support and psychological evaluations. It'll be me and you, and our children. A perfect family."
"A perfect family can't include you when you do things like this!" Padme yelled. "I love you, Anakin— and I hate myself for that. What kind of woman does that make me? I was so stupid. I still see the good in you, but you have to change. You can't keep doing whatever you want. If they find you, they'll kill you, and then who will be there for us? You were my last hope, Annie."
"You told me to fix this! What else was I supposed to do?"
"Don't you dare put this on me," Padme snapped, "You earn visitation Anakin. I got you a lawyer. You had one job: be one more person the twins could go to— be there for them where I couldn't. They're your children, and I'm not Force Sensitive!"
Their arguing was interrupted with the wailing of sirens the level above them.
"Look Angel, I don't have much time."
"Anakin, you better be turning yourself in."
"No, I don't think I will be, not when you've given me such a lovely new scar to disguise myself with," he ran his hand through the blood running down his face, which completely soaked the top of his stolen cloak. He grimaced. He forgot how much head wounds bleed. "I just thought you should say goodbye to Luke."
"Annie?" Padme backed away.
"NO!" Leia fired, and though Anakin dodged the first shot the following onslaught grazed the top of his head, neck and shoulder. She was certainly a better shot than Luke.
"It's not forever," Anakin spoke quickly at Padme as the girl shoved her way past the droids, firing wildly until she emptied the plasma clip. "I'll meet you on Alderaan. I'll make a home for us all somewhere safe. Padme, you can decide if you still want to be my wife. And Leia," he snatched the gun from her hands as Padme pulled her back. "You'll decide if you want to be Leia Organa. Or if you'll be Luke's sister and my daughter. Because to be one is to be the other. We're not strangers any more."
"You're. Not. My. Father," Leia bit out, "You're a murderer and a kidnapper and I swear one day I'll kill you."
"And I'll have your kingdom ready, my conqueror," Anakin was weary of the fight. "It won't be the last you'll see of me Angel. I'll be there when you need me too."
"Annie, stop and think—"
He pressed a hand to her head and put her to sleep. His flesh palm tingled with the sensation of skin on his, the first touch he'd shared with his beloved in ten years. She sank down into unconsciousness, and Anakin cradled her limp body in his arms; the embrace he cherished in that moment, she couldn't tolerate while awake. He laid her on the chair. The parting was bittersweet.
"You'll see your brother again on Alderaan," Leia's dark brown eyes were wide, and her stiff upper lip trembled. "If you come quietly now, I'll let you say goodbye first."
She nodded silently.
The speeder was too tall for her to exit gracefully, but she ignored his offer of a bare mechanical hand. Without guidance she ran to the front seat, then hesitated at the door. Luke was pounding on the door with his feet, Anakin knew, since he had tied his hands together behind his back. His muffled hollering was barely audible through the reinforced plastisteel window.
He opened the door. Luke was cuffed and strapped in, yelling obscenities, but he quieted immediately at the sight of his twin.
"Leia?"
"Luke?"
They drank in the sight of each other, then nodded. Anakin wondered what such easy intimacy was like. He had spent his whole life screaming to be understood and was still a mystery to everyone who loved him, if there was anyone left who did. He hadn't done much to deserve anything otherwise.
Lifting the wriggling Luke was like picking up a small child. He looked down at his even tinier daughter.
"Get back in the speeder," he pointed, and for a split second he could sense her desire to rebel, though she settled for sniffing haughtily and climbing ungracefully up beside her mother. She ran her hands through her mother's hair, refusing to look at Anakin. He didn't take his eyes off her as he shut the armored door.
The comm blinked, unread messages flicking across the dash in scrolling aurebesh. Soon CorSec would be here. Luke being Force-sensitive ensured the attention of the Jedi. Obi-Wan was surely already on his trail.
He walked into the shop and put Luke down. "You pick the ship," Anakin said. To his surprise, Luke moved without question, settling beside a sleek Mon Cala cruiser, illegally outfitted with serious guns. This was a getaway vehicle, built for speed in a high-resistance atmosphere and prepared to annihilate pursuit.
Anakin uncuffed Luke and went to search for the jump code as the sirens grew closer and louder. When he found it and boarded again, he found Luke tearing out the astronavigation wires. They couldn't be tracked by slicer, but they would be flying blind. Anakin wasn't worried. The Force was with them.
"You are ready," Anakin said. It wasn't a question, though Luke nodded. "So you understand why I had to do this?"
"You didn't have to do this," Luke's voice was quiet. "You could've left me with Leia."
"With a man that didn't love you? A woman that detested you? And you weren't allowed to be at your mother's. She wouldn't break her own laws to take you away from there."
Luke winced, pulling his knees up on the chair and staring out the window. Anakin started the engines, the blue lights of CorSec and the yellow lights of the Jedi just around the corner.
"I love you, Luke," he pulled out the opposite entrance, lights off as CorSec flooded onto the level and seized the vehicle, liberating Leia, Padme, and the droids. "Because I love you, I'll bring the ones you love back to you. I promise you."
They flew into the flood of traffic, another no-notice junk vehicle in the neon lights of hyperspace.
Anakin had his son. And when the time was right, the Force would lead his wife and his daughter back to him.
Dear Luke,
Do you fly, my son? I dreamed of you just now. You wore a child-size flight suit, well-fitted and loose around bird-like limbs, on a water-speeder, alone. I could feel the joy radiating from you. The perfect control of your hands on the device, the twists and turns through the falls. The gift of flight draws the Force-sensitive; it is one of the few things that allows the untrained to touch the Force effortlessly. The desire to live will trump ignorance, it brings up secret instinct and knowledge of the future. When I was young I would have short visions, and time would slow and I would see all the dangers ahead laid before me like a maze, and choosing victory felt like a stroll in the sky, my enemies small and impotent before me.
Are you a Skywalker in this way, son? Other accounts are merely reflexive, pulling away a hand from a hot burner. The movement comes before feeling pain. Pure action dictated by the Force.
You must follow the Force, my son. I have seen your destiny. You are a warrior, like your father before you, but you must not allow yourself to be guided. You must not bow your head to a Master.
My son, you must act.
All my love,
Your father
And that's it. That's the end. Thanks everyone who sat through this hot mess of melodrama. I don't claim to be an expert on any of this shit. I just wrote it in my feels, to get my feels out.
Ending 1 I felt was too dark, I don't know? Anakin has the vision alluded to in this chapter, kidnapped all three of them and it ended on an open but dark ending.
Ending 2 felt out of character for what I'd characterized so far. Both Anakin and Padme have a lot of resentment for the court that took their children from them; I couldn't see Anakin respecting their decisions. It ended, again on an open ending, with the discussion for what it would take for Anakin to sue for custody.
It felt ooc for him to not respect Padme and Leia's desire to stay away; he's still Anakin and not Vader. But then, it also felt ooc for him not to storm in there and take Luke if he felt it was the right thing to do. Luke and Leia are both 9 and don't yet have the sneaky escape artist support from Han. Padme wouldn't fight him *that* much because she resents the Organas. I wrote myself into a hole fam.
In no scenario is there reconciliation between Anakin and Leia. And because this man love burning his bridges, my evil ass put antipathy between Padme and him too.
I wrote this while watching television and listening to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West; specifically, these lines from All of the Lights:
"Public visitation, we met at Borders [an old American bookstore chain like Barnes and Noble]
Told her she take me back, I'll be more supportive,
I'm headed home
I'm almost there
I'm on my way, headed up the stair
To my surprise a [] replacing me
I had to take him to that ghetto university"
Thanks for reading,
YellowWomanontheBrink
04/06/2022
5:34PM
