Author's Note: I want to thank you all dear reviewers for your support and encouragement. I'm too obsessive and too personally involved to see my own work objectively, but your warm welcome and your lovely reviews fill my heart with hope that perhaps this isn't as off the mark as it seems to me.
Still, I'm crossing my fingers. Every time I post a new chapter I grow some more white hairs.
Thank you for your time. I'm always honoured.
"Take this," Dr. Senna offered Leia the bevereage she had prepared.
Pulling herself out of her spinning thoughts, Leia accepted the warm cup and brought it to her lips with shaking hands. She took a small sip and tasted it before swallowing. It had a bittersweet flavour, but not an unpleasant one. She brought the cup down to her lap and stared blankly at the floor.
"I don't know what happened in there, but you did an outstanding job," Senna took a seat right in front of the Princess and gave her a tremulous smile.
Leia felt numb. Dazed. As if something had died inside her. She couldn't bring herself to say a word.
"It is my hope that he will begin to heal now."
Leia's eyes fell closed for a moment.
"I pray you're right, Dr. Senna," she murmured brokenly. "I pray you're right. But I don't know. I just..." a lone tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away hastily. "I just don't know."
"Call me Auren," the older woman whispered kindly. "The hardest part is getting to the root of the problem. It should be easier from this point on."
"It should, Doctor... Auren," Leia said, looking into Dr. Senna's eyes for the first time. "But you can't... You can't possibly know what he's going through, what he's dealing with." Her hands tightened on the cup until her fingers went white. "I don't think I could..."
"Don't underestimate his inner strength. You're also dealing with a great personal trauma, and you managed to use it to help you both," Auren pointed out delicately.
"Did you hear what we said in there?" sheer panic appeared on Leia's already ashen features.
Dr. Senna's eyes opened wide in surprise.
"No, but I could hear your voices when you started shouting. That's when I knew you had finally gotten through to him. I knew what would happen when the walls crumbled, so I went looking for a sedative and walked right in."
Leia heaved a small sigh of relief.
"I'm sorry, Auren, but what transpired between Luke and..." she let out a hissing sound, "...and Vader could be of the utmost importance to the Alliance," she lied as she went along, "so the less people who know about it the better."
"I understand." Dr. Senna suspected there was more to it than Leia let on, but she didn't press the issue. The scene she had come across had been hard enough already. The Princess seemed to have aged decades in the last few minutes, and her heart went out to the two youths. The war was taking an immeasurable toll and it would leave permanent scars in both of them.
So much loss, so much horror!
Leia took the final sip of her cup. Her hands were trembling harder now and her laboured breathing told the older woman that she was seconds away from breaking down. She changed seats and wrapped her arm around the quivering shoulders.
"Get some rest now. He will sleep through the night. Tomorrow will be another day."
Leia nodded dejectedly and leaned on the older woman's strength.
It was then, looking down at her hands holding the empty cup and feeling Dr. Senna's comforting arm around her, that she remembered what had struck her about Luke earlier.
"His hand!" she exclaimed, straightening up in a flash.
"What?" Auren asked, removing her arm from Leia's shoulders.
"He's not using his right hand!" Leia's mind quickly travelled back in time, trying to remember the things she had seen Luke do and manipulate since the day after he got his new hand less than a month ago. Incredibly, none of them had involved his right hand.
"He's not?" Dr. Senna's eyes bulged, wondering how could that extremely important detail have gone unnoticed by her. All right, she'd only been seeing him for short periods of time and he hadn't done anything with his hands other than keeping them on his lap or at his sides. But now that she thought about it... the right one had always been out of sight. Inconspicuously, but... He had been keeping his hand subtly hidden from view!
Sweet heavens, what kind of doctor was she? How could she overlook such a thing?
"I bet he's been using that blasted Force to distract us so we wouldn't notice," Leia shook her head, fury tainting her voice.
"He's in denial," Auren had switched instantly into doctor mode. "He's rejecting his hand because it symbolizes his failure to protect himself. Vader defiled him, and his new hand is a constant reminder of what he did to him. Even worse, a reward for his personal desecration."
A keening wail brought Dr. Senna back. Leia had covered her face with her hands and was crying like a small child whose world had ended.
Berating herself for her unthinking callousness, Auren wrapped her arms around the Princess, full of compassion.
"Don't worry. Now that we know what's happening to him, we can truly start helping him. He will recover, you have my word. I won't give up until he's standing on his feet again," she hugged her fiercely. "I promise!"
'Ani, I want to have our baby back home on Naboo. We can go to the Lake Country where no one will know. Where we can be safe.'
'I came to see if you and the baby are safe.'
'He will join us or die, master.'
'Don't make me destroy you.'
'Luke.'
'Father!'
'He will need time to recover from... your sweet fatherly attentions.'
'Congratulations. You killed him.'
'You killed him! YOU KILLED HIM!'
Vader woke up in his pod once more feeling sicker than he'd ever felt. He was sweating profusely and trembling all over. He panted for breath for half a minute until he found a semblance of control. But he couldn't shake off the horrible feeling that got worse with every passing second.
Something was very very wrong with young Skywalker.
With his son.
"Luke..."
The sound of that name on his lips shook him to the core, evoking something he hadn't felt in over twenty years.
No. NO! No attachments! No feelings! He felt nothing for the boy! NOTHING!
'Father...'
'Father!'
NEVER AGAIN! The child would be his apprentice and together they would destroy the Emperor. Theirs would be a bond of mutual convenience, as it was the way of the Sith.
'This is a happy moment. The happiest moment of my life.'
"NO! I WILL NOT SUCCUMB TO THAT PATHETIC WEAKNESS!"
The Dark Side was peace, and quiet, and silence; not a tumult of terrifying emotions that drowned him in fear. He had only one ambition, and that was to overthrow Palpatine and take his place. How much easier his life had been since his baptism of Fire and Darkness! Learning to let go had been a blessing.
'Ani, I'm pregnant.'
'Tha-that's... T-that's wonderful!'
'Come away with me. Help me raise our child!'
'Father.'
'FATHER!'
"NOOOOOOO!"
Leia woke up in her bed feeling exhausted, bone-tired. Her sleep had been anything but restful. Nightmares had plagued her all night - Luke getting sicker and sicker until nothing could be done to save him; Darth Vader taking him away as the young man cried out to her, begging her to help him...
It had been the worst night of her life.
She washed up, got dressed and left her quarters for the mess hall with a growing feeling of foreboding that wouldn't go away and seemed to grow with every step she took.
Abruptly, just as the mess' doors appeared before her, an unknown instinct made her turn about and head for Luke's quarters at a run. When she arrived and the door opened, she was greeted by an empty bed.
Her heart missed a beat.
"Luke, where are you?!" she called, looking around.
The bathroom light was on, and right before she walked inside, just like that, she knew.
There, lying senseless face down on the floor, with his short white robe untied and open, was Luke.
"Oh, no. No! Please, no!" Leia whimpered, dropping to her knees and turning him upon his back.
His skin was grey and drenched in sweat. His lips were cracked and blue, his ribcage stuck out almost obscenely, and to add to the horror, she realized that she could count his ribs one by one.
It was the vivid colour of the fingertips peeking out of the right sleeve that made her reach out and pull the sleeve back. She jerked back with a scream.
Luke's right hand was purple. The skin was all stretched and about to burst. The entire thing was a swollen mess, and when she touched his face she realized he was burning up with fever.
The next thing she knew she was out of the door, shouting down the corridor and making everybody jump.
"Someone call a doctor! PLEASE. PLEASE! I NEED A DOCTOR RIGHT NOW!"
Darth Vader walked into the bridge of the Executor like the living embodiment of the angel of death.
On seeing him, Piett's legs wobbled under him and he knew he wouldn't make it alive to the end of the shift.
"Admiral Piett," the voice sounded as cold as an iceberg, as deadly as a blaster shot through the skull.
"Yes, milord," Piett would always wonder how he could sound so composed and calm.
Vader raised a gloved finger and pointed it at him. But instead of a Force-choke, something else happened.
"I want you to bring here every specialist in decryption in the Fleet. I want them all listening to every signal in the galaxy for Skywalker's whereabouts. And someone better come up with something or I will have a new bridge crew by the end of the week. Is that clear, Admiral?"
"Yes, Lord Vader," Piett nodded once and started issuing orders, trying not to think about the black figure who followed his every movement with slight turns of his helmeted head, as if daring him to give him a reason to reconsider his reprieve.
"It can't be. It just can't be!" Dr. Vilk shook his white-haired head, looking down at his young patient in his small isolation module, with an expression of utter disbelief. "I am seeing it and I still cannot believe it."
Biting her lips, Leia stood at Luke's bedside, sick with worry.
"What's happening to him, doctor?" she asked, looking at 2-1B out of the corner of her eye, as the droid carefully manipulated the doses of saline solution, antibiotics, antipyretics and all the other medicines that were being injected into Luke's bloodstream.
"Something that hasn't happened in centuries - the rejection of an implant," the doctor took the purple, swollen hand in his and manipulated it gently - fingers, palm, wrist. "I'll do my best to save it, but if the infection spreads..."
"You'll have to remove it," Leia finished for him.
The doctor sighed and nodded.
"He's in very bad shape already. Extreme weight loss, PTS, depression... Any of those problems is arguably easy to deal with separately; but together it's..."
"Problematic?" Leia offered.
The doctor looked down at her and met her eyes.
"You could say that," he said at last.
It was a potentially lethal combination and they both knew it. Leia's euphemism didn't fool anyone.
"Double his dose of immunosupressants," Dr. Vilk told 2-1B. "I don't want to take any chances."
Leia's heart skipped a beat.
"But if you do that, won't you be leaving his immune system more vulnerable to infections?"
"Yes," the doctor didn't try to embellish the truth. "But I think we can afford that, if only for a few hours, and see if the swelling starts to go down."
Leia held Dr. Vilk's gaze for a long moment, and ended up nodding in acquiescence. Then, she reached out quietly and took Luke's left hand in her own.
"Don't do this to me, Luke," she said, sitting on the narrow bed beside the fragile body. "Please, you've got to..." she choke on her words. "Don't let him win. Don't let him win!"
The Princess lost track of time. She spent the following hours whispering encouraging words and making promises of a better, kinder future for them all once they rescued Han and defeated the Empire. She promised they would be the family he deserved and that Luke would never feel alone.
She had just started to doze off when she felt something that shook her out of her light slumber. She opened her eyes and focused them on the young man next to her.
Luke's entire body was shaking from head to foot. His hair was plastered to his scalp and rivulets of sweat rolled down his nose and forehead. She reached out and touched his flushed face with her palm.
His skin radiated heat as if it had been set afire.
"Doctor. Doctor!" she cried out in panic.
Dr. Vilk entered the patient ward in a rush. He checked the pulse on Luke's neck and then checked his eyes, that were beginning to roll back. Right then, Luke's soft tremors increased.
"A febrile seizure," he diagnosed. "I need a nurse here fast!"
The doors opened and two robot nurses quickly rolled into the room.
"Bring here some ice packs. And more electrolites! NOW!" he looked at Leia with a compassionate look. "Let us do our job. I'll inform you when we got him stabilized."
Leia felt as if something was being torn apart inside her as she left the ward.
Vader was thrown out of his meditative state by a sudden chill that ran down his body.
"What the...?!" he muttered. Next, a vicious onset of chills left him shaken.
He jumped to his feet and started pacing the room like a caged animal, until he had to fumble for the wall and lean on it for support. His breathing was fast and shallow, his heart was racing; even his eyesight and hearing were off.
'Luke!' his mind cried out.
No reply. He couldn't even feel the boy's presence into the Force.
'Luke! Answer me!' he yelled in helpless frustration.
And then... something. Muffled, faraway words, like hearing something underwater.
'Ice! I need more ice!'
'The infection is spreading.'
'Hold on, young man. Come on!'
Vader shook himself out of his involuntary trance, gasping for breath.
His son... His son was gravelly ill.
Luke... Luke...
His hand reached out blindly, looking for something to hold on to. When it did, his fingers closed around it and he squeezed. And squeezed, and squeezed... until he heard a loud cracking sound.
Leia paced back and forth, twisting her hands. She knew there was nothing she could do, and she would be of no help to Luke if she exhausted herself unnecessarily, but she couldn't help it.
Dr. Senna watched her with a look of profound sympathy. She deeply regretted not being able to help the young woman; but above all, she hated the gut feeling that her diagnosis had come too late to be of any use.
Before she could go any further in her thoughts, the doors opened and Dr. Vilk came out. Leia rushed to him with a pleading look.
"He's stable... for the moment," he said in an attempt to bring some peace to the distraught Princess.
Leia breathed a short sigh of relief, preparing herself for what was coming. For she knew that what was coming wouldn't be good.
"The infection is spreading," the doctor confirmed with a sad look.
"Then, the immunosupressants you prescribed didn't work."
"Quite the contrary, they did their job," Dr. Vilk amended her words. "But as a result, his immune system is so debilitated that it can no longer maintain its function of controlling infections."
Leia shook her head. This was worse than her worst nightmare.
"The infection is moving down his wrist now. When it reaches full organic tissue..."
Leia closed her eyes and nodded in understanding.
"A hand is always replaceable," Vilk soothed her.
"But how could he reject his hand in the first place, doctor?" Leia needed answers desperately.
It was Dr. Vilk's turn to sigh despairingly.
"I wish I knew. It's a medical impossibility, pure and simple. The inner prosthesis and microgears are made of titanium and biodegradable materials, so there is zero possibility of rejection," he explained passionately. "The outermost layers are made of skin and keratin that are cultured and harvested from the patient's own skin and fingernails. His hand should be as much a part of him as the rest of his arm by now," he looked at Leia in complete bewilderment. "Nothing of what's happening to him makes any sense."
Leia remained silent for a minute, her gaze lost into the distance.
"Mind over matter," she murmured too low for anyone to hear.
"I beg your pardon?" Dr. Vilk asked.
"It's all right," Leia straightened up. "What now?"
"I prescribed antibiotics of broad spectrum. I'm afraid we can only wait and see," Dr. Vilk already knew that levelling with the Princess was the only way to go, for she would accept no less than the truth, as ugly as it was, and he admired her for that.
There was a lot to admire in that petite young woman.
"I want to be with him," Leia's determination was unshakeable.
"I'll have the nurses get everything ready," Vilk made a pause. "You do know it will take days at the very least, don't you?"
The weary, heartbroken brown eyes met his with an unfathomable look.
"For as long as it takes, doctor. For as long as it takes," her unwavering resolve left no room for discussion.
Properly sterilized once more, Leia sat at Luke's bedside. Reaching out cautiously, she took the good, lifeless hand in her own and began to stroke it endlessly. Her tearing eyes studied the thin, frail body, seeing the pain and the struggle in the cadaverous features.
"Fight, Luke. Fight! Think about all the people who love you. None of us care about who you are and where you come from," she reminded him sincerely. "We're not defined by our ancestry, we're defined by our values and our actions," she bit her lower lip and looked down. "I wish... I wish I could get inside your head and make you understand."
She placed the palm of one hand on his heart.
"You're always talking about Destiny, about meeting your true Destiny and fulfilling it. Well, I happen to *know* that you have a great Destiny to fulfil, and it's not dying here, you hear me?"
She waited a minute for her words to sink in, and smiled in fond remembrance.
"Remember when we first met?" she straightened her back exuberantly. "'I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you!'" she shook her head in amusement. "Such innocence, such idealism!" she looked down and squeezed the hand in her own. "I didn't know it at the time but... since that day, you really became my knight in white armour - relieving me of the burden of command and the stress of being responsible for so many lives. You always made me laugh, you were always there for me with your caring blue eyes and your understanding smile."
All of a sudden, she found herself in a state of introspection she'd never reached before; and for the first time she faced the emotions that had been a mass of confusion until then.
"For years, I couldn't make up my mind about my feelings for you. You're so beautiful, so sweet and kind… and I definitely had a crush on you. It was so natural for me to love you... almost as if I had no choice. And yet, something wasn't quite right," she smiled to herself. "I loved Han too because he's your polar opposite in so many ways. All right, yes, you also have a lot in common – your commitment, your fierce sense of loyalty... It took me a while to admit it to myself. Han cared, Han loved; but his cynical, harsh exterior put me off. And I guess I was afraid to give myself to this... passion. To any passion, actually, because our life is hard enough already." She made a pause, examining her feelings more deeply. "My love for Han could be potentially dangerous and disruptive, but my love for you... it brought me so much peace..."
Tears started to show in her eyes.
"My knight in shining armour. My rescuer," she blinked them back. "Did I ever thank you for it? You are... You're a part of my soul, Luke. You're in my blood," she cocked her head to one side at that, as if listening to some inner voice. "Maybe that's how I knew where to find you on Bespin? Maybe that's why I seem to know what's going on inside you? Even see through your eyes?"
Something in her exploded.
"I love you! Don't leave me, Luke! Please, don't leave me!" she sobbed, pressing her forehead to the back of his hand.
A bright, hot desert landscape. Two suns. And a blond, blue-eyed little boy staring at the sunset with tears streaming down his angelic, perfect face.
'Daddy, where are you? I need you. I need you so much!'
Leia woke up with a start. She had fallen asleep on Luke's bed, holding onto his hand. She sat up slowly, trying to shake off the powerful feelings her short dream had stirred.
On the other side of Luke's bed, Dr. Vilk was finishing his examination with a look of utter defeat on his face.
"What?" she asked, raising her eyes to him, dreading – but also knowing – what he was going to say.
Dr. Vilk took Luke's right hand in his own and showed it to Leia.
The hand was twice its normal size, dark purple in colour, and what was worse, the swelling had spread past the wrist.
"Necrosis," the word sounded like a physical blow to the guts. "We have to amputate."
Leia covered her eyes with her hand. The time had come.
Maybe it would be for the best - she rationalized, trying to look for a glimmer of hope. Maybe once his hand was gone, Luke would begin to recover psychologically. Maybe one day he'd feel strong enough to accept a new hand and she would have her beautiful, smiling white knight back.
Taking a deep breath, she nodded in silence.
Two days. Two more days had passed and still no sightings, no transmissions, nothing.
Vader stood by the huge windows like a stone carved statue, staring into space, reaching for The Presence, calling out, and receiving no reply.
The boy wasn't dead. He didn't know how he knew it, he just did. He was unconscious, holding on to life by a thread, but he was alive. He figured that if the child was gone, something would feel different. He would feel different. After all, Luke Skywalker was a part of him. A part of her. The sum of both of them. Small, strong and brave like his mother, and extraordinarily strong in the Force... like his father.
'Son, come with me.'
'I'll never join you!'
'It is the only way.'
'Father.'
'Luke.'
Bootsteps approached him from behind. How strange – he mused – that just by the sound he could tell to whom they belonged.
"Admiral," he said neutrally.
"Nothing today either, milord," was the answer to his unvoiced question.
"Keep looking," he ordered in the same monotone.
"Yes, sir," the bootsteps began to retreat.
"Admiral Piett."
"Yes, Lord Vader?"
"Only three days remain. Remember that," the cold, dispassionate statement of a fact.
He felt the change in the air surrounding them. The acrid, disgusting stench of fear.
"Yes, milord," was the slightly quivering reply, almost like a croak.
And the bootsteps retreated again.
Vader's eyes turned anew to the blackness of the vast universe before him.
TO BE CONTINUED...
