Crux
Leia ignited the lightsaber and the carbon-freezing chamber burst into life. Stepping back carefully, she found a stance that sat heavily on the ball of her back foot. Classic engagement pose: easily defensible and just as easily converted to attack. Child's play.
Luke remained near the ramp, ready with open hands outstretched. He was the base of their power, and he knew it. A wroshyr tree did not grow tall without enormous, subterranean roots, and there was no way either one of them could succeed if they went into this confrontation with anything less than wroshyr-level grounding.
Following suit, Vader ignited his own lightsaber and loomed large from his upper platform. For one quiet moment, they all stood silent, a much more still scene than the one on Hoth, but no less dangerous.
And then he brought his opening attack.
"Without Commander Solo here to rescue you, I wonder how you will fare?"
Luke caught Leia's sharp inhale out of the corner of his eye, but didn't turn to look at her. Calm, he urged, even as he felt a flare of his own anger rise. He couldn't sense Han anywhere. Chewie was on the move, heading to the Falcon, he assumed, but no matter how far he stretched his senses…
"He's not dead," Leia muttered.
Luke nodded grimly. He had felt the torture, helping Leia through the worst of the session, though he was fuzzy on the details. And Han's absence was … powerfully felt.
Lean into me, he told her.
With a lightning-quick push of energy, a guardrail tore loose from its bolts and flew at Luke's head, and just as swiftly, Luke brushed it aside with a hand. It clattered to the floor in a heap.
Leia admired the smoothness of the hand, the control Luke had just displayed, and sank deeper into her stance, ready.
Ominously, the platform below her began to rumble, descending even as a pane of transparisteel swept into Leia's space. Neatly, efficiently, she cut through the transparisteel with the lightsaber, swept the shards away with a harsh exhale and a push from the Force, and then leapt onto the safer plating next to Luke.
Wow, he sent her. She nodded, but didn't say anything else. That first comment about Han sat heavily on her shoulders, teasing a rage that, if unleashed, might ruin them all.
"You have learned much, young ones."
A quick jump from the observation deck, and there stood Vader in front of Luke and Leia: armor, cape and respirator. Luke had known that this was the likely result of leaving Dagobah, abandoning the safety of Yoda's instruction earlier than the master had intended, and still the sight was intimidating. A frisson of fear ripped through his tranquility and echoed to Leia.
They were stronger, yes. Were they strong enough to survive this? He wasn't at all confident.
You can do this, Leia blurrily sent him.
He blinked, turned to look at his sister. We can do this, he amended. Together.
She pursed her lips, didn't reply, and shrugged. Luke was used to this kind of flippancy from Han, but Leia … Leia was a wreck of tightly-controlled emotions and seemed to be expressing none of them for fear of letting go of the one Yoda had expressly warned her of.
Blocked from expressing her anger, there didn't seem to be anything else she felt capable of feeling.
Leia, he tried again. Go find Chewie. I'll catch up. You aren't in the right headspace.
But while she heard him, she didn't listen. Waiting for no one, as Leia never would, she launched into a light assault, lightsaber striking Vader's so quickly that Luke had trouble keeping an eye on it. Like a naat-fly, she taunted again, jumping into strike positions and out of them without a second to think. All intuition, all training, and no opportunity to second-guess or examine motivations.
Safer, she sent, and that was a workaround Luke hadn't expected, but okay.
Vader easily parried each attack, hardly moving at all, simple cross-guards to prevent any bodily harm, and without a sense of danger at all. It was more dance than fight, looking like the competitive fencing bouts Leia had recounted for him on those endless days of sword training. Polite. Conditional.
"Your destiny lies with me."
Leia grit her teeth and didn't respond, and so Luke did instead. "No."
"Obi-Wan knew," Vader returned, narrowly blocking a more aggressive attack from Leia that would have split his torso open. "He knew what you could become."
Vader pivoted into a similar overhead slash as Leia's, but he was much, much stronger. Luke stepped to the side, gave Leia room to backpedal, and pushed against Vader's armor with the Force.
The Dark Lord slid but three meters, and turned his considerable attention to Luke. The next he knew, the young Jedi was across the platform, twelve meters from his sister. Pressing the advantage, Vader lunged for Leia's legs. She quickly sidestepped, and immediately thrust into his side, a strike that would have been fatal had it connected. It hadn't.
How? She thought, but didn't dwell on the question. Luke ran toward her, jumping the length of the platform entirely with assistance from the Force, and ripped a piece of plating from the decking with an audible grunt of effort. Catching on to his intention, she feigned left and then rolled to her right. The plating nicked Vader's armor but was easily brushed aside.
Vader seemed to dismiss Leia. "All too easy," he said, pushing her sidewise with barely a flick of his gloved hand. "Perhaps you are not as strong as the Emperor thought."
Luke felt her anger, felt her deep rage at being summarily dismissed, but couldn't do anything to help her. Vader's focus fell to him, and now Luke struggled to pull up pieces of durasteel to take the brunt of the assault, a kind of hovering body armor.
Fine, Leia thought, and with an enormous push of energy, the lightsaber flew into Luke's hand. I'll give you cover.
With a snap-hiss, Luke ignited the lightsaber and brought it to parry Vader's vicious blow as it tore through the durasteel plating in front of him. He staggered back from the force of the attack as Vader struck again.
Surroundings! Leia sent him, an often enough refrain from their fencing training, but Luke was swallowed by Vader's enormous bulk and power and didn't understand what she meant until he lost his footing and plummeted into the open pit. It took him barely a second to comprehend that the platform Leia had been standing on when he had entered was descending and—
Leia watched Vader's hand move the controls on the carbon-freezing apparatus. Her own hand outstretched, she flipped it back, disengaging the controls with a deep exhale. When she looked up next, Vader was staring at her and then turned his attention to Luke, who was furtively climbing the hosing above the platform.
Vader's voice again, with an element of surprise. "Impressive. Most impressive."
Are you okay? Luke heard, and he sent a wave of affirmation back to her. You're stronger, she complimented, standing up to face Vader.
You too, he replied.
Leia half-shrugged, with a twisted smile on her lips. I found … alternative training methods.
Jumping down onto the deck-plating, Luke called the lightsaber back into his hand and held it open for her to take. Side-by-side, the twins waited for the Dark Lord's next attack, breathing deeply.
"Obi-Wan has taught you well," he finally said. Complimentary in the oddest of ways, and Leia found dull humor in the remark. Obi-Wan, who? I never met the man. "You have controlled your fear. Now release your anger."
Luke and Leia both heard the silent Your Highness that Vader added to the end of his directive, and the scene shifted for them both. Now it was humid, and dark and an endlessly green swamp instead of … What is this place? Luke asked, interrupting the shared thought. Where are we right now?
"Carbon-freezing chamber," his sister supplied.
The words were not spoken so much as bitten, and Luke reached out to feel his sister's pain, her sorrow, her rage and grief as she fought to control it.
Han? he asked again, hoping for the answer where it hadn't come before.
Swallowing, Leia looked down and adjusted the hilt of the lightsaber in her hand, but her feelings were so apparent to him that it was answer enough. Licks of red appeared at her hands, and Luke was again tempted to take on this confrontation alone.
Absolutely not, she returned. "We do this together."
"Together," Vader mocked.
Luke answered him with typical grace. "You wanted us both. Here we are. Together."
Their enemy shifted, and Leia felt that same psychic voice from before. In the end, everyone is alone, Princess.
Luke didn't hear what Vader said, but he could tell there was a silent conversation happening, and could feel the ripples of Leia's grief.
He's targeting you on purpose, Leia, he sent.
They caught eyes, and in that moment, she felt a wave of comfort so strong that it nearly bowled her over. Luke's heart—and his strength, and his control—was so much better prepared than hers was. She was the liability here. She was the target.
For the second time in her life, this monster had destroyed her world. The stakes were so much higher this time, though, because if she gave in, Luke would be compromised, too.
She had lost Han. She would not lose Luke, too.
"It does not matter if you fight me together when you are so very, very angry," Vader tried again, but the reprieve had been long enough to regain some of her equilibrium.
Control it, Luke urged. He wants you to lose control.
"I have a right to my anger," she answered, echoing something Han had once said and watching Vader's dark mask above the striking red of his blade.
Leia, no.
"You do," Vader agreed, even as she sent a wave of cooling energy to Luke, assuring him of her lucidity.
She hefted the hilt of the lightsaber in her hand and played with the switch at its base. "Killing you would do a great service to the galaxy."
"From a certain point of view, yes."
Luke jerked in surprise at the nearly verbatim comment to his dead mentor's, but Leia ignored him. She trembled and fought, and overcame the wave of debilitating emotion that looked exactly like the explosion of Alderaan and the green-gold of Han's eyes. Focus on me, Luke sent, and she leaned so heavily into his inner stability that he exhaled in exertion, hefting the psychic load with all his characteristic lightness.
Then, with a slight smile, Luke looked at her and nodded.
She brought her shields up again, and they were strong. Very strong. Strong enough that Luke could just barely hear her in his head and could see no color at all.
"Fascinating," Vader said softly.
Reigniting the lightsaber, Leia set up a feigned defensive pose as Luke sprung forward, pushing against Vader's swordhand with the Force so hard that the saber swung wildly to the left. Simultaneously, Leia pressed the attack on his exposed right flank, only missing his shoulder because of the lightning-fast and somewhat desperate block Vader brought to bear. Off-balance, he attempted a pivot, but before he could move far enough, Luke pushed him again, and the Dark Lord fell out of sight in the mess of wires and circuitry off the side of the platform.
The twins waited a moment, and then looked at each other, assessing. Luke felt weak between the ferocity of his exertions through the Force, but also the gravity of Leia's emotional tumult.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I'm trying, but I just—"
He shook his head. "Stop. It won't help."
"I've never felt so…"
"I know," he said as she trailed off. "Leia, I know."
He absolutely did know. He could feel it, the immobilizing pain, the vicious anger. The fear that slashed through everything. After days of anxiety, after hours of torture and after what he now assumed was Han's confinement in carbonite, it was only the tenacity of her will that kept her from being completely overrun by emotion.
Pursing her lips, she looked about ready to reprimand him for his silent compliment, but he forestalled her. "We have a job to do, and then we're going to save Han. It's a mission. Just a job. Got it?"
He felt her reach for the Force, felt her take an enormous cleansing breath, felt a thin calm slide through her and flow into her veins like blood.
"Got it," she said, and they followed Vader's lead into a barren tunnel.
Chewbacca ran. He ran so fast that his hair flew behind him and his paws made a loud brumth-brumth-brumth as they hit the clean marble of the Cloud City corridors. The crowds had been scrambled, citizens darting here and there in confused panic, names screamed out in an unidentifiable din that hurt his sensitive ears.
"Go!" Lando Calrissian said from behind him.
When Chewbacca turned to glance behind him, the Wookiee realized the administrator was not speaking to him. Rather he was urging a frantic mother and cub off to the north platform, where a transport was arriving any minute now.
He did not pause but continued to race toward what he hoped would be Cub's rescue. He worried for Little Princess, but understood implicitly that the best way to help her now would be to secure his own Life Debtee.
He would find her later. He would load her into the Falcon and his cubs would be safe.
Vader's breathing was the only indication that he had not left the reactor control room as the twins walked in. Cavernous, the only notable feature in the room—a large human-sized window into the reactor core itself—could only provide so much light, and the effect was haunting.
Leia led them in, the lightsaber bright in front of her. Luke followed, hands at the ready, wishing that he had asked Yoda how to make a second weapon. Telekinesis was fine, but it wasn't enough right now.
And then Vader spoke, sliding through the night like a wraith.
"Only your hatred can destroy me," Vader announced.
"Hatred is a strong word," Luke said. "It might be more like pity."
Speak for yourself, Leia sent.
Luke closed his eyes, reaching into the Force for awareness. With a breath, he felt it: Vader's grip on a blocky piece of ancient machinery. Easily manipulating Vader's makeshift projectile, Luke backstepped and watched as Leia darted forward, efficient and ruthless. The sabers hissed as they connected and Luke reached for a quick, invisible grip on Vader's lightsaber hilt.
The Dark Lord jerked, and then threw a hand out, breaking Luke's hold, but it was long enough for Leia to push forward in a more aggressive attack, quickly thrusting her saber into the armor at Vader's hip. A sizzle, but no reaction.
"Again!" Leia said, and Luke complied, targeting Vader's weapon hand.
For a split second, he thought he might have managed it. The hilt of the red lightsaber left the dark gloved hand, and drifted centimeters toward Luke. Leia pressed her advantage, pivoting on her left foot and bringing the lightsaber down on her enemy's knee. Vader grunted, but the knee simply collapsed, putting him in a vulnerable bow position.
Luke tried to maintain his hold on Vader's lightsaber as Leia lunged with a kill strike to the mask, but he was knocked aside by an errant voice-receiver box that struck his head. Dazed, he felt the sting on his shoulder but tried to focus. With the speed of light, Vader had regained control of his lightsaber and had parried Leia's kill strike, pushing her away. Luke ran in to assist but was distracted by another Force-missile knocking a reactor screen through the window. Luke felt the danger just a second too late and summarily flew out the window, landing hard on the platform in the reactor core itself.
Leia might have said his name, but she couldn't be sure. In the moment, she reached out for her brother, felt him safely whole on the gantry, and then turned to face Vader as he blocked the broken window.
"It is useless to resist," he said.
She shook her head. "All I know is resistance."
Chewbacca burst through the corridor and onto the east platform with a roar of rage. Encircled by Imperial stormtroopers, Boba Fett's ship was nearly ready to launch. Chewbacca fired a blaster rifle he had stolen from a fallen trooper in the hallway, aiming for the armored shape of Fett. The bounty hunter ducked and hit the boarding ramp at a run as the troopers opened fire.
"No!" Lando Calrissian yelled into the chaos. "Chewbacca, no!"
But the Wookiee was not listening. On that ship was his cub, and it did not matter to him if he was wounded in service to his family. A great honor it would be, he thought, to be injured saving Cub.
Lando Calrissian was not of the same mind. "If you die here, you won't save him!"
Chewbacca did not care. He widened his stance and returned fire. One trooper fell, then a second, and the thrill of victory was upon him. He would tear down the guard and then board the ship and kill Boba Fett with his bare paws, rip the bounty hunter limb from limb.
For a fleeting second, the haze of battle was stronger than his cerebral cortex, and he felt victorious in his will to vanquish his enemy. But then he registered the hum of thermal fire, smelled the thick stench of burning fuel, and before he could do anything, Slave I was lifting off the platform.
A human hand pulled on his elbow, and Chewbacca let Lando Calrissian pull him away, his heart growing heavier and heavier as Cub's fate left his influence entirely.
I am sorry, he thought to the speck that streaked away from him. I am so sorry, Cub.
With a quick exhale, Leia reengaged her bout with Vader, distracting him enough for Luke to gather himself. Guard, crossguard, parry, thrust. Neat, biting little attacks that were easily answered by Vader, quicker and stronger than her by half. She gritted her teeth, suddenly backstepping away from part of the broken window-frame as it came whirling at her head. And then Vader was there again, closer, and she had to throw all her energy into a crossbody guard that trembled inches from her torso.
She blinked, and he was gone, flying backwards and through the same window as Luke. She followed, hopping through the frame just in time to see Vader land on his feet before an enormous gantry, spanning the width of the entire reactor core. The air whipped her hair into a frenzy, and for a moment it obscured her brother's form as they stood side-by-side on the platform between the window and Vader on the gantry.
When he came back into focus, Luke looked exhausted, doubled-over with exertion after wrenching Vader away from her on such quick notice.
"Are you—?"
I'm fine, he answered her silently, ignoring the wobble in his left knee. Sometime you need to remind me to tell you about the X-Wing on Dagobah .
Compared to that particular exercise with Yoda, pulling a six-and-a-half foot nemesis out a window to save his sister's life was hardly worth mentioning. It did, however, wind him a little bit, and he took a second to brace himself.
"Do not allow yourselves to be destroyed as Obi-Wan did," Vader taunted.
Leia dropped her chin, eyed the narrow gangway upon which Vader stood, and flipped through strategic options. It occurred to her then that Vader was not even fighting with his full ability. It would mean nothing to him to have tossed Luke into the reactor pit, to have slashed through Leia's crossguard and killed her a minute ago.
Yoda was right, Luke thought.
Grimacing, she tried several different responses to her brother's very honest assessment, inspirational and strong and full of hope. But it was clear, viciously clear, that this was not an even match for the Dark Lord. Everything they tried—every gambit, every feint, every blow and use of the Force—was handily answered immediately and then returned ten-fold.
He's playing with us, she sent, but it was obvious to them both. She hadn't needed to say it at all; they were both well aware.
It was Luke who decided to end the game.
"What do you want with us?" he asked, coming to his full height.
And that was the question, the real crux of the matter. For months, Darth Vader had hunted them both. Within the Force, outside of it. How many times had Luke and Leia survived by such a narrow margin that it was laughable to think that it would happen again, only for the same turn of events to occur? Again and again and again. He attacked, they fought and escaped, and he followed after them.
If he has been this strong the whole time, Luke thought, then why didn't he kill us on Hoth?
Or on Home One, for that matter, Leia added.
Time and time again, Vader had cornered them, and some fortuitous happenstance had occurred to keep them out of his clutches. Salla on Nar Shaddaa, Han on Home One, Han again on Hoth.
But as it was apparent to them both after the strenuous nature of this confrontation, Darth Vader was fully capable of snuffing them out without batting an eye. She had witnessed him choke Han in the dining room here on Cloud City without laying a hand on him.
"You do not yet realize your importance."
Leia narrowed her eyes. "What importance?"
Dropping his chin to look directly in her eyes, Vader's mask was so breathlessly terrifying that she had to fight herself not to step back in horror.
"You have only begun to discover your power," he boomed. "Join me and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy."
"We'll never join you."
Luke's voice in stereo, in her head and in her ear, so wholly seconded by her that it was like he spoke in binary. What a laughable suggestion. This? This was why he had stalked them across the galaxy? Why he had killed so many people? Why he had tortured Han…?
No, Luke whispered through the Force. Don't.
"You," she breathed. "You think we would ever, could ever, join you? After what you've done?"
After Han? After Alderaan?
"If you only knew the power of the Dark Side."
Leia.
But she was incredulous. Incensed. "Power? You think we want power?"
"We want peace," Luke seconded.
"Perhaps you do," Vader replied to Luke, then turned his gaze back to Leia. "But your sister wants vengeance."
She fought against the wave of anger so hard, struggled to find control over her rage, her helplessness, her overconfidence, but it quickly became a losing battle.
Vengeance?
Yes. That was exactly what she wanted. For everyone this nightmare-man had destroyed in his quest for the power he offered them now. For her family, and her people, and the man she loved.
And then she felt sorrow so deep that it shook the blade in her hand. Chewie. Alive but despairing. An image of a ship racing into the clouds, higher and higher out of reach, into a dark abyss he had no hope of tracking as he stood looking from a platform. A hand on his forearm, rushing him into a narrow corridor filled with nervous people, back toward the Falcon's berth.
Luke put a hand on her shoulder, but she hardly reacted. We'll find him, but you need to focus.
She was erupting in red, the flame rising from her skin with a steady, roaring anger, and Luke was powerless to stop it.
No, Leia.
"Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father."
Leia's eyes locked on Vader's mask as he spoke, and Luke felt a twinge of foreboding. A shift in the fabric of the universe, but he didn't understand the universe yet.
Struggling to keep his center, he answered: "He told me enough. He told me you killed him."
Luke, help me, Leia sent, desperate. Help me, I can't—
She felt it, too, this great reckoning.
Luke reached out, grabbed her hand, pulled her toward him and confiscated the lightsaber in his swordhand. The Force ebbed and flowed around him, and something whispered take the weapon.
Please, Leia begged.
"No," Vader responded, and it was like everything stopped as the bass rumbled across the three meters that separated them all. "I am your father."
Author's Note: Damn it all to hell, there it is. Remind me again to never write another lightsaber fight. The next chapter of Specter will be posted on Thursday, June 1st. Or as close to it as I can make happen. Thank you! - KR