Hello! Welcome to the first of six of my Whumpcember fics.
Trying to keep up with uni work alone in the last few weeks has burned me out thoroughly, and I've been craving writing but every time I sat down to actually write the tank was empty. But with the semester finished, I'm hoping to edge back into regular writing fairly gently, slowly enough that burnout won't catch up with me again. So: Whumpcember.
Whumpcember is a relatively new event I stumbled onto on tumblr! I was going to do a ficlet for each day, but then saw that the prompt for Day 4 was literally "Shortness of Breath". Since that's one of my stress symptoms atm, I felt very called out. XD So, instead I'm combining all the prompts into six short oneshots across the month. Working on this one already has me writing a lot faster, so I'm hopeful it'll help!
This oneshot covers the prompts for Days 1 through 5:
1. Hypothermia
3. Avalanche
3. Storm
4. Shortness of Breath
5. "I hate you!"
Note: this is a very particular characterisation of Luke, where he's knee-deep in despair, post-ESB, and angry. I don't actually think Luke thinks these things about Ben and everyone else under normal circumstances when he's not about to die in the snow. Also, the whole stress-giving-Luke-breathing-troubles thing in this is deeeefinitely me projecting, lmao. As is the cold - I typed half of this in gloves because my flat has whatever the opposite of good insulation is. But I'm very happy with how this came out!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
"—anything, Luke?"
Luke sucked in a breath as best he could. His chest was tied in a knot; air rattled in and out only slowly, ice crystals melting on his tongue. Why had they sent him back to Hoth, of all places? Why had he let them?
"See much—anything—"
Luke thumbed his comlink again and slapped his speeder while he was at it. It groaned and whirred, the metal hot enough under his fingertips to melt some of the snow blizzarding against its surface, but not enough. The storm had sunk its teeth into the snow field almost as soon as Luke took off in the speeder, the X-wings he and Wedge had flown here abandoned closer to the gutted remains of Echo Base. All he had left of his friend was the crackling repeat of his last message on the comlink, breaking up in new places as snowflakes fingered their way into circuits Luke hadn't even known his devices—and his new hand—possessed.
"—much of anything—"
They hadn't expected this storm; he hadn't been equipped for it. Why had they even come out? Some stupid intel they were worried they had left at Hoth, that they wanted the pilots to scout out, just in case the Imperials had somehow left it behind to let them know they'd seen it. That was no excuse to come back to a hellish wasteland like this…
When they'd first come, Luke had thought snow was surreal, magical. Leia had tossed a snowball at him, and he'd become a changed man, standing stock still at the cold that rocketed through him, the shudders that trickled down his spine. It was a clean, sharp, vivid sort of cold—not just a lack of heat but something more. It had been a dream.
Dreams always shattered. The first snowstorm he'd seen had done that. Having to spend a night out in a tent with Han after a brush with a wampa had consolidated it. He remembered Leia smiling at him as she told him where they were going for their new base, how she'd commented that she hoped he'd like the snow, since he'd never seen it and had said he desperately wanted to when it came up in conversation… She hadn't told him the truth of it. She'd only ever reminisced about sledging on Mount Appenza on Alderaan—she never mentioned that her mother had nearly frozen to death there.
"—anything, Luke?"
His heart skipped again; he cursed again. Every time he heard Wedge's voice, his disappointment was sorer for his hope. It was still the same broken message. No one was coming to save him, this time. None of his friends could hear him.
Another kick of the speeder didn't help. It burped heat and smoke, whipped away by the wind and driving snow, but didn't move. The snowbank that had avalanched under him had done it so suddenly; the wave of white had consumed him. When he woke up moments later, lips numb and blue, his hands shaking, the valiant speeder was buried. Engine working or not, it wouldn't move.
He didn't know what to do.
Perhaps this time, he would actually die out here. That thought hadn't crossed his mind before—between Ben appearing to him with the last dregs of his strength, and Han riding to his rescue like a knight in white snow gear, he hadn't had the chance to despair. He'd had such faith in everything the Alliance told him, everything Ben had told him. The path of destiny was open; no snowstorm would stop him from walking it.
He closed his eyes. His voice cracked. "A lot of help you were, Ben."
There was no reply. He hadn't even bothered climbing out of his ruined speeder.
His breathing came shorter and tighter by the minute. He'd already had trouble breathing these few weeks since Bespin—the medics had listened to his chest and told him he was fine, it was just a symptom of stress—but it got so much worse when he got worked up. When he thought about…
He sucked in a deep breath again, but he still couldn't breathe deep enough. He blinked back tears; he didn't want them freezing on his cheeks.
"I needed help!" he shouted to the wind. It was a pathetic sort of shout. His voice was raw and rough; he didn't have enough air. "I was freezing in the snow, and you told me to go to Dagobah, and that training wasn't even enough, it didn't even make a difference!" Vader had soundly disarmed, deconstructed, and destroyed him anyway.
There was no response beyond that of the howling wind. A deep, disappointed darkness wrapped around his mind and heart, chilling him further. His shivering was starting to subside. He knew that was a bad sign but couldn't bring himself to care.
Ben hadn't spoken to him since he'd left for Bespin. Even before then, he'd barely spoken to him at all. Luke remembered his death on the Death Star, how he'd not even lifted his lightsaber to defend himself from Vader's swing, how he'd looked and smiled at Luke when he did it. He had trained Luke for mere hours. He had been all Luke had left—the last mentor figure he trusted—and he had abandoned him.
"And you lied to me," Luke choked out. "Are you going to appear now, Ben? Are you going to give me another impossible quest without telling me the details? When are you going to actually help me!?"
The cold darkness tightened its grip. As his shivering slowed further, eyes slipping shut, it shook him. His shivering started again.
"When were you going to tell me that the man you wanted me to kill was my father?" he murmured. The father Ben had spun all those stories about. The father Luke had dreamt about for years, gathering information from every Rebel who'd known him, wishing and longing.
The howling of the winds and storms gave way to a slow, steady crunching of snow underfoot.
"I hate you," Luke muttered to himself. Tears slipped free from his eyes now, unbidden and unwanted. They slashed his cheeks with shocks of heat before chilling into icicles that hung from his lashes. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—"
The crunching stopped. Luke looked up. The darkness around him tightened in greeting, and he knew who was there before he'd even registered it.
"I hate you more," Luke spat at his father. He stood, stark black against the white blizzard. A rift in the landscape.
Vader held out a hand to him. "I am here for you."
"Yeah, I got that—"
"You will die here. Your speeder is non-functional. Come with me."
He shook his head weakly. "I won't," he rasped, gasping for air. "I hate you, I hate you—"
His chest got even tighter; he choked on the words. Having the source of that stress, the sire of everything dark inside him, standing in front of him in the freezing cold, his presence chilling it even further, was too much.
Vader lifted his outstretched hand. Luke closed his eyes, sure that this was it, he would be choked and disposed of like all of Vader's officers, but he found his airways began to clear. Cold, clean air—air as pure as the first trickle of snowmelt he'd ever touched—swept into his lungs, burning away the detritus.
"I will not allow you to die like your mother," Vader informed him. The situation was desperate, but his tone wasn't. It was as cold and barren as the galaxy around them. "Come with me."
"No. You—" He bit his lip, knowing how foolish and delusional his longing was. "I want my father!"
Vader didn't say the truth again, thankfully. "Your dreams and delusions will kill you if you continue to chase them. They cannot save you now." Vader lifted his gaze, briefly, to the harsh reality of snow around them, and Luke wondered how much of his thoughts Vader had heard. "I have never lied to you. I never will."
Luke looked around as well. His eyes were stinging, failing him already. There was a massive white blur and Vader, black, before him: the first stroke of ink in a story about to be written.
"See much of anything, Luke?"
Wedge's voice crackled. His heart didn't leap, this time. He knew it was false hope. He switched off the comlink with trembling hands, knowing that in the dead cold, he would likely never be able to turn it on again.
When Luke took it, Vader's hand was frigid enough to burn, even through the leather of his glove. But it was something solid to hold onto. As was Vader himself, as he took Luke's arm and helped him limp out of the storm.