This chapter is on the shorter side, but I just wanted to top toss it out here anyway. While I've been working on the ending of this story, I started cranking out chapters of an entirely different AU tale of Luke and Mara, called Old Friends. Check it out. Thanks for all of your follows and thoughtful reviews and comments.
A note about my take on Vader: he is fundamentally emotionally flawed. He is obsessed with Luke because Luke is his son and "belongs" to him in some way. To me, that doesn't translate into "love" the way fanfic writers often portray him: indulgent, affectionate. That doesn't compute to me.
Anyways, I love to hear your thoughts and why you do or don't agree. Enjoy the story!
-T.
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It was a dark, inky blackness, spreading out in a toxic bloom, icy tentacles grasping at him, choking off the air, pulling him back in against his will. He scrambled to flee, to make himself small - invisible - and then when that failed, to swing with all his strength, to strike back at the cloying, suffocating darkness, all the while realizing he was drowning in its depths, the cold like a black, frigid lake, infinitely deep, pulling him under -
Luke gasped to wakefulness with a half-shout of fear, jolting upright in the dark, the icy terror cold against his skin, the nexus of malevolent power reaching for him -
- and he caught his breath, though he had already lurched out of bed to his feet, halfway across the darkened room, the sliver of light from the room beyond the only thing his frantic eyes could see.
And he remembered, all of it tumbling down on him in a jumble of mental snapshots: the escape from the Star Destroyer, crashing the fighter; Han and Chewie in the sub-levels; Leia's worried frown as she ordered him to rest.
He was safe. He was with friends. Safe.
Slowly, willing his heartbeat to stop thudding in his ears, he sank back down onto the narrow pallet, cold sweat on his face. He'd gone into a healing trance. He remembered: the blinding headache - gone now - and the pain in his ankle and ribs.
He moved his foot cautiously. The pain was gone. Taking another steadying breath, he felt for the bandages on his shoulder. A dull ache remained, like he'd overused the muscles, but nothing like the grinding pain of the original wound.
Luke glanced up toward the door again, his eyes adjusting to the darkness enough to make out vague shapes. He'd told Leia to wake him in an hour. He didn't have a chrono and didn't know what time it was. Cautiously, he reached out with the Force. The presences of Han and Leia were close by. They seemed tense, grim. He drew back suddenly as that dark knot of power from his dream seemed to pull at him again.
Vader and Palpatine.
Taking a steadying breath, Luke pulled his mental shields around him like a cloak, obscuring his presence from the grasping darkness, and rolled to his feet.
He managed to turn on the lights, wincing as the bright glare flooded the space. His boots were set on the floor near the cot and a gray shirt was folded neatly on the chair. He put the shirt on carefully, gingerly moving his injured arm, sitting on the bed again to pull on his boots. The blaster he'd brought with him was nowhere to be seen. He wished briefly for his lightsaber, but brushed the thought aside. His saber was with Vader. He would simply have to adjust to getting along without it.
There were footsteps in the corridor, urgent, coming in his direction. Tensing, he reached out with a tendril of the Force...
"Luke?" her voice was soft, on edge. The door slid open and she stood, booted feet planted, the dark brown of her fitted tunic matching the color of her eyes. Luke rose to his feet as she stepped past the threshold.
"Something's wrong." He felt it, in his bones, the same dark foreboding that had grasped at him in his dream.
She drew back, studied him for a minute. Then Luke saw: She already knew.
"How long was I out? What time is it?" He was looking toward the corridor beyond, fresh worry sending a cold chill down his spine. Were the others…? "How long - " he began again.
"Six hours," she answered frankly. Her hand was gripping the sleeve of his tunic. "We tried to wake you, Luke, but you wouldn't wake up. By then, we had sent the others ahead to another ship - and Cam was with them and we worried something was wrong with you - "
"Six hours?" he repeated in disbelief, pushing past her to the corridor. No. Too much time. The Emperor would know. They were too close to the palace. He would have honed in on their location by now... "Where's Han? Chewie?"
"Chewie's gone on Telfor's freighter with Artoo and the rest of the team," she answered, following close behind him. Luke had no idea where he was headed. "They made it off-planet. Han is - "
"We have to leave here, right now," Luke insisted, without turning. "Han - "
"Right here, kid," Solo appeared at the junction of the corridor, forehead creased with concern. "You feeling okay?"
"Luke, there's a problem - we can't leave right now." Leia's voice turned him around, cold dread knotting in his gut.
"What?" He looked from Han to Leia. Was it Daz? Had the soldier still not been found? Did they no longer have a ship? "Why not?"
"Come see for yourself, kid," Han offered, looking resigned as he turned and led them down the corridor to an open lounge/kitchenette, unlit and empty. A wide bank of tinted windows, looking out to the blackness beyond the building confirmed the dread: It was most certainly past nightfall. Worse still, six hours put them closer to the coming dawn, where they would no longer have the luxury of the cover of darkness.
Han gestured. "Down there, on the surface." He waved his hand vaguely. "Or up there, in the sky. Take your pick."
Cautiously, Luke approached the window and looked out. He saw...nothing. No speeder traffic criss-crossing multiple lanes, or the lights of landing ships. He shook his head, turning back to them, that same knot of sick dread tightening a fist in his stomach. "I - I don't understand."
"The Emperor has issued a planet-wide curfew, in effect for the next seventy-two hours." Leia's voice was very quiet. "Anyone caught on the streets will be arrested or shot. No ships may leave the planet."
"More disturbing," Han added, "is your mug is on every screen, datapad, transport…Whatever. Wanted criminal. Extremely dangerous."
Luke backstepped, a chill sweeping down his spine. The entire planet on lockdown? Because of him? He glanced back at the window, at the empty sky, the dark shadows of skyscrapers pin-pricked with hundreds of tiny lights. "Can he do that?" he whispered.
"He did," Han pointed out grimly. "Five hours ago. Barely thirty minutes after we sent the team on to the ship."
"And Daz?" Luke asked, pushing aside for a moment the self-loathing that told him this was all his fault. He should have listened to his gut instinct and insisted they leave immediately, and not gone into a healing trance. "Daz has been found?"
Han dropped his gaze. "No, kid. We searched until the lockdown forced us back. No sign of him."
Luke sank weakly down into the low sofa, his eyes on the black pane of the window. At best, Daz was dead. At worst, their location could be compromised.
"We have to leave here," he said in a low voice, grateful now for the darkness of the room. Even if their location was not known, Palpatine could search with robotic drones at windows, scanning for life-forms, use facial-recognition technology….
He turned from the window. The darkness of the room was not enough, of course. "We need to get out of here," he said again. He had doomed everyone by not leaving for the ship immediately. "This is all my fault - "
"No, Luke, it's not," Leia interrupted sternly. "We had no idea he would crack down like this. We couldn't have left then without leaving five men behind. You were injured, which could have compromised everyone's cover. And anyway," she seemed determined not to let him regret the past. "Deciding who to blame will not help us get out of this situation."
Luke expelled a frustrated sigh. In spite of all his effort, here he was, a danger to his friends. "Then you should leave me. The Empire doesn't know you're here. They're just looking for me. If we separate - "
The expression in Leia's eyes was suddenly wild; afraid. "We're not abandoning you," she snapped, sounding angry now. "We've come this far to bring you back safely. We're not leaving you to the Emperor's mercy. Besides," she gestured to the dark window. "We can't go anywhere either. We're stuck here for the time being."
Every nerve in his body told Luke they could not stay here a moment longer. He shook his head. But where could they go? "What about the speeder in the sublevels?" he asked Han.
Solo pursed his lips. "The Empire's in the sublevels right now," he answered. "I've never seen them care past level two, but there were stormtroopers milling around five."
"Then we go deeper."
The smuggler laughed humorlessly. "At some point, kid, you should be more afraid of what lurks in the sublevels than you should of the Imperials."
Luke pressed his palm into his forehead, racking his brain. "Do you have smuggler contacts - someone who could get us out of here….or passage off-planet?"
Han considered for a moment, biting down on the inside of his cheek. "I don't think we could come up with that kind of hazard pay," he said slowly. "Not anyone I can think of would be willing to go up against Vader or the Emperor. Especially not when turning you in would be infinitely more profitable."
"Or we can stay calm and stay put," Leia offered. "It's been six hours already. If they haven't found us yet, this could be the safest place for us."
"And if Daz has been compromised?" Luke shot back with more fire than he'd intended. "Then we're sitting in a death trap."
Leia clamped her mouth shut.
Luke turned back to the window, his mind churning. They could not leave, but his sense in the Force told him they could not stay.
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"It seems we have had an intruder." Palpatine's words cracked in the dry silence of the great hall, the glowing red of hot coals stirred in the open hearth the only light in the vast room. The Emperor sat almost casually upon the ornate chair before the fire, his back to Vader, gaze fixed once again on the skyline and the darkness beyond. "A Rebel soldier managed to infiltrate the palace in the guise of an ISB agent."
Palpatine stood, turning to Vader now, the sleeve of his rich velvet cloak hiding the hand that held his cane, yellow eyes peering balefully at the Sith Lord. "Presumably with the intention of freeing Skywalker from his imprisonment."
A dark anger settled on Vader, a dual sense of infringed possession, committed both by the Rebels and by Palpatine. When had this occurred? Why had he not been told? He'd spent most of the night tearing through Coruscant in a futile search for his son, all the while the Emperor played his little power games back at the palace...
He swallowed back the indignation with great effort, knowing, if Palpatine were to see this weakness, he would seize upon it immediately and torment Vader further with the waiting.
He wisely chose not to answer.
The Emperor continued, perhaps sensing the dark lord's internal conflict and basking in the control he wielded. "He has, of course, been taken into custody." He paused dramatically. "And was good enough to tell us, before he died last hour, everything we wanted to know."
Vader carefully reigned in his anger. Had he known of this Rebel infiltrator, he would have interrogated him himself, rather than rely on the information carefully dispensed through Palpatine. It was another way for the despot to enact his control over the dark lord. And the Emperor reveled in it.
"Did this person act alone or with accomplices?" he asked finally.
Palpatine chuckled. "Oh, with accomplices. Unfortunately," his pale lips drew back to show his ghastly smile in the half-darkness, "it appears some of them have already fled the system before the curfew was enacted."
Vader clenched his fist against the sound of the despot's throaty chuckle. If he was too late - if the boy slipped from his fingers now -
"Oh, calm yourself, Vader," Palpatine clucked, his smile disappearing. "You and I both know that boy hasn't left the planet. He is still here and we will find him. Very soon."
Vader knew he was being led, but took the bait regardless. "You have a location." It was not a question.
Palpatine inclined his head, gracious enough to allow this. "It appears the Rebel Alliance can spread its infestation within mere kilometers of our stronghold here." His face hardened. "A problem I intend to rectify swiftly."
Vader waited as Palpatine turned his face again to the glowing coals of the fire. "The Telfor Fruit-Packing plant. Destroy it. And bring the boy to me."