May the Fourth be with you!
This fic was written for the Father-Son Bonding Time May 4th Celebration, wherein we took one of the ideas tossed about in the prompts channel of that server and wrote a fic for it. I'm gifting this fic to Libby, since it was originally her idea (and also she's amazing and I love her), but naturally I've added my own spin to it. I'd also like to give a massive shoutout to everyone else in that conversation, you all had BRILLIANT ideas and it was a glorious thing to wake up to and read.
WARNINGS: This fic contains surgery, a little body horror, but most prominently hallucinations/madness, manipulation, and Palpatine being extremely creepy. Please take care of yourselves.
I had a lot of fun with this! I hope you have fun reading.
"I have another gift for you, Luke."
Vader hovers in the doorway of Luke's quarters as he always does, the thick shadows that snake around him making him seem almost small. Luke surreptitiously triangulates Vader's height with the height of the doorframe, as usual: no, he still has to bend to enter, he hasn't grown any smaller. It just looks like he has.
"Come in," Luke says. His eyes flicker and burn as they land on the small box in Vader's hand. He knows what's in there. It pulses, calling to him like a dark star.
Vader walks like the atmosphere is thick, soupy, but when Luke lifts a hand to gesture for him to approach, he feels light and fluid. His father kneels in front of the sofa he is reclining on and offers up the small black box in his hands.
"Another one?" the Seventh Sister scoffs. She's the one who lifts it. Vader doesn't flinch as the box in his hands is swept up by a cold, invisible force and deposited into Luke's hand.
Luke accepts the box from her. "Thank you," he says with a small smile. Her cutting sneer at Vader transforms into a wicked smile at him, and she lays cold fingers on his shoulder. Her crystal warms against his forehead.
Vader is still kneeling. "There is no need to thank me, Luke—"
"I know, Father. I know what these gifts are for." His tone is flat and measured. His father shivers, insofar as a body of metal can shiver. Luke can hear his joints clattering together like scaffolding in a storm. "I wasn't thanking you."
Vader nods. "Of… course." He glances around. They are the only two people in the room. Luke doesn't even allow royal guards into his quarters, anymore. For their own safety, and for his. He has enough people's thoughts inside him while he sleeps without listening to those of the guards.
Luke opens the box. It is exactly what he expected it to be: a ring, with an oblong crystal embedded into it. He slips it onto the middle finger of his right hand to match the identical ring on his left. A gasp catches in his throat.
"Is this your handiwork?" he murmurs. "Or Palpatine's?"
"This cannot be Sidious's," another Inquisitor, the Fifth Brother, snarls. "He is too—"
"Uncompromising," Luke agrees.
"Luke?"
"Is it yours or Palpatine's?"
Vader bows his head again. His unease spreads out from him to stain the Force like an oil spill. The shadows back off in disgust. "Mine, Luke."
Luke cups his left hand around the crystal, until its frigid surface sucks the heat from his palm. This is his sixty-sixth crystal adorning him, from the twisted growths and shattered pieces that make up his crown, to the necklace that clatters around his neck, to his earrings, to his rings, and to the crystal embedded in the hollow of his collarbone, which thrums with the rhythms of his heart. He shivers and looks at his father.
"There's a Jedi in the Palace," a Jedi tells him, her voice hoarse from screaming. "That's her crystal." Luke knows that already.
"I worked on this myself, Luke," Vader repeats. "For you."
"Everything I have done," Anakin tells Luke, "is for you and your mother. This is no exception."
Luke knows that, too.
Luke leaps to his feet, breathing heavily, fists clenched. Palpatine looks sideways at him with a sickly smile at the rage crashing through Luke, but he takes deep breaths and ignores the way the royal red guards leap to action at his sudden movement, ready to subdue him.
"You can't do that!" he says.
Governor Tarkin looks at him in disgust. He looks at Palpatine in exasperation, then looks back at Luke, and drawls, "Your Highness, you are inexperienced enough in the realm of warfare that you cannot know—"
"I know enough!"
Palpatine drops a hand on his shoulder, his fingernails curling into his silk skirts and indenting the flesh underneath. Luke bites his tongue before he can protest further. He does know enough. It has been years on the run: the scorched surface of Lothal, war torn Mimban, and a Naboo that smiles prettily through its transparent gag. But the new prince of the Empire is a child—Vader's child, raised in isolation and luxury in the obsidian towers of Vader's hellish domain. That is what Tarkin knows. Luke is sixteen, a Jedi padawan, and Palpatine has made it clear what pain being those things will bring upon him if he doesn't tread carefully.
That is why he quells his tongue. Not because of his darkness, he tells himself. He is silent because he needs to survive, if he wants to do good later.
Still—"What good will bombing the city do?" he asks. "You will only turn the people against…" He trails off as Palpatine's grip tightens. His fingernails are sharp, and dig into his flesh, but the black silk does not break. Even as they puncture skin, they do not puncture his shirt: he bleeds underneath, invisible for observers to see.
Even his father, who stiffened when Palpatine took Luke's shoulder in his hand, does not move to help him.
"You will only turn the people against the Empire," he finishes. Cruelty is illogical, alongside its many other faults. "It will be counterproductive—"
"It will be the fastest way to victory, Your Highness." The words lash like a whip. "And victory is all that matters."
That doesn't make any sense. Luke thought that they loved the Empire, not victory. "Why—"
"Lord Vader," Palpatine says. "Come here."
Vader doesn't hesitate to approach now, with Luke's shoulder already aching and crusted with blood. He climbs the steps of the dais and kneels in front of them—angled slightly more towards Luke, which Palpatine doesn't react to at first. But his mouth switches.
"Show your son your lightsaber," he decides. "He is too young to contribute to such complex discussions, but it is evident that my expectation that he can still learn from them is likewise too ambitious."
Vader nods, despite the utter insanity of that request. He is kneeling at Luke's feet and handing Luke, his estranged enemy son, his weapon. Luke takes it in shaking hands.
Of course, he tries to light it. He jumps to his feet with it the moment his fingers touch the rubber grip. His thumb finds the ignition. It roars to life.
Something in his hands screams.
Luke gasps and drops the lightsaber. It clatters on the floor and rolls down the steps of the dais, one by one. Tarkin is still speaking, eyeing it disdainfully, and Palpatine only shoots Luke a lazy smile as he nods along, listening.
But, even though he staggers back into his seat and the cold marble hits his thighs, even though his father's metal hands close around his wrists, even though Tarkin's lips are moving in more pompous, self-aggrandizing words, sentences, speeches—he can't hear a thing.
The screaming bursts through the membranes of his mind. He kicks fruitlessly. The chair is too high for his gangly teenage legs to touch the floor.
"Which Jedi?" the Jedi speaking to Luke asks again. He frowns, glancing sideways at her. She's Mirialan, with a dark blue hooded cloak that fades into the curtains drifting beside the window seat, and her voice is soft and refined.
Luke flexes his hand once, twice, three times. His father is watching him anxiously, and that anxiety just adds to the dizzying whirl. He feels like an ant trapped in the desert with a thousand magnifying glasses trained on him.
"Not anyone you know," he tells the Mirialan.
"Luke!" Vader's voice is sharp and ragged. "Luke, look at me—"
Luke looks at him. Vader takes a step back.
"This is for you," he repeats. "You are a prince. And you will be the most powerful of emperors, you will rule the galaxy—"
"They've told me what you want and why, Father. You don't need to tell me again."
Something seems to snap, then. Vader marches forwards, despite the burning in Luke's eyes and the way his vision tints red and gold with it. It lends the image of Vader towering over him an ethereal air: his father is a courtier come to play tribute, not a warden who shepherded him into this gilded cage.
"Who?" Vader demands. "You— you haven't taken off the jewellery in weeks. Months. Take it off for me."
"It won't do anything." Luke's hand comes to rest on the lump at his throat, the ring on his finger sparkling dangerously. "You know that."
"It will help. I am concerned for you."
"Why?" Luke asks.
Vader falters. "You were a Jedi," he says, and for once the word is not filled with venom. "You fought me."
"You keep giving me gifts. You don't want me to fight you."
"Not like this."
"Why?" Luke asks.
At his shoulder, the Seventh Sister murmurs, "There is no use in fighting."
"Not like this, Luke," Vader repeats, and Luke wonders what he is remembering. The nightmares that fill the Force with storms but don't even wake Luke screaming anymore? The way Luke's eyes twinkle in the mirror when Palpatine bids he use the Force? Or was it the lightning Luke spat at him when last he visited?
It must be. Luke understands more than his father could fathom, and he understands what he wants.
"You are my son," Anakin says through gritted teeth. He stands behind Vader, and the eyes he looks at Luke with are suns through a sandstorm. "He is making you wither away. I should not have brought you here."
"You shouldn't," Luke agrees. Vader snaps his head up again, glancing behind him. Luke's necklace, his first necklace, is burning him. "But it's too late."
The Seventh Sister nods her agreement. "It's too late, little Jedi. You cannot come back."
"It's not," says a new voice.
Luke jerks his gaze down to stare at the ring winking on his finger. He sees his own two eyes reflected back at him, gleaming. A flash of white light in the corner of his vision shimmers, a familiar figure. He gives himself whiplash following her, the way she darts out of sight. Her voice is a ray of buttery sunlight through icy trees.
"I came back for you," she says.
His mouth drops open. "You can't have."
"I did." He can hear her scoff.
"You need to go."
"I can't."
"You have to."
"Luke?" Vader asks.
Luke blinks, and the mirage is gone. He glowers at his father and points at the door.
"You need to go," he orders, voice rough.
"Luke—"
"Get out!"
Fear is such a familiar, jagged emotion. It takes Luke a moment to realise that the fear sawing into the fragile meat of his heart is Vader's, and not his own.
"You know you are not supposed to speak unless spoken to," Palpatine chides him that evening as he visits Luke in his chambers, but he is still smiling.
Luke grips one of the sofa cushions with his left hand to resist the urge to claw Palpatine's face with it. "I had to—"
"That includes now."
Luke glowers. "You're speaking to me now."
"I would prefer to speak at you."
"Why would you prefer to do that?"
Palpatine sits beside him on the sofa, his robes pooling around him like ink. He reaches into them and draws something out—thin, slender, and glistening, hanging on a string.
"I have no use for upstart Jedi children. I only have use for you."
"I already knew that." But Luke eyes the string, and whatever it is in Palpatine's hand peeks through his fingers with soft, crimson light. "You won't—"
Before Luke can react, Palpatine slips his neck through the string like a hanged man's through a noose and draws it tight—tight enough that for a moment, he can't breathe. Luke's mouth drops open, before his body catches up with the assault his mind cannot comprehend.
Palpatine opens his fist. A kyber crystal drops out, bleeding desperation into the Force.
"Someone with your immense inheritance must feel this very deeply," he observes. Luke's eyes widen. The screaming from earlier had faded, eventually, but now it returns in full force, and this is worse, because he thinks he recognises the voices. "Of course, Lord Vader's lightsaber was bad enough."
Luke reaches up to grasp the necklace, but Palpatine wraps his hand in both of his and leans in to press dry, wrinkled lips against his cheek and whisper in his ear.
"The Jedi once considered your father inviolable as well. So if you look at him now, you know what I will do to you," he promises. His breath is hot and sticky against Luke's neck. "This necklace is his first gift to you. It comes from the lightsaber he built shortly after he married your mother, imbued with his love for and desire to protect her. You are familiar with it, I know. You carried it for years."
Luke chokes. Palpatine grips him more tightly and lets him sag against his shoulder.
"But I corrupted your father. And now, I have corrupted his crystal." He moves back then up, to kiss Luke's forehead again, long and invasively intimate. He rakes his fingers through Luke's hair, smoothing it down. "I wonder how long it will take to corrupt you?" His fingers pause, then withdraw. He stands, leaving Luke slumped on the sofa. "What will be left behind thereafter?"
"Why?" Luke gets out.
Why does it hurt so much?
Why did his father ever want this?
And why would anyone ever want to do this to someone else?
"Because I can." Palpatine smiles at him again. "You will soon understand."
"I won't," Luke whispers hoarsely as the door closes behind him. The mantra keeps him sane. It is louder, momentarily, than the screaming. "I won't, I won't, I won't."
Someone walks towards him, though he hasn't noticed the door opening again. The sofa doesn't sink beside him, but someone sits there, nonetheless, and a cold, shivering touch on his chin turns his head to face them.
A man with burnished curls sits beside him. His face shape and demeanour remind him of Leia. Luke sees himself, perhaps, in the eyes, but as he watches bags grow below them like shadows crammed into a trunk and the irises shift to gold.
Luke jerks back when fire erupts at the roots of his hair, his skin, and feasts on them. The hair is gobbled up in seconds, the skin left white, scarred, and barren. His laughter, gentle and calming before, wheezes sinisterly.
"You will," Anakin Skywalker assures him sadly. "We are both his."
Pain is something one grows accustomed to. Luke knows this: he has known war, and struggle, and oppression since the hour he was born a Jedi in the aftermath of the Purges. Master Obi-Wan could not protect him from everything. So, Luke accustoms himself to pain, and suffering, and the screaming it manifests as, and he still finds it in himself to question.
When he asks Grand Admiral Thrawn why he felt the need to kill more civilians than Rebels in his campaign, Palpatine designs a new crown for him. Luke vomits before it even makes it into the same room as him.
"No," he begs, backing away. "I'll sit through the next meeting, I won't cause trouble—"
"You certainly won't cause trouble," Palpatine says kindly. Luke runs into a black bulk, his father's hands fastening around his shoulders. Anakin looms at his elbow, watching dispassionately.
"Father. Father, please—" Bile surges into his throat again, and Luke twists around to retch onto Vader's cape, through Anakin. It splatters at his feet, leaving him untouched, but he takes Luke's chin in his fingers.
"Be still, Luke," Vader orders.
Anakin strokes his cheek. "If this is what is necessary to retrieve my son," he says, "so be it."
"I'm already your son," Luke sobs, "I can't change that, this isn't—"
"You would do well to remember that, Luke," Palpatine agrees. A frigid force wraps around Luke's skull and twists his head to look at him straight on. It's not Palpatine doing that; Luke can escape and has escaped his grip before. It's Vader. Luke can't even move his jaw to protest, so he whimpers instead. "You cannot change who you are. You belong here, in the darkness."
The crown settles on Luke's head.
He collapses. His father carries him back to the throne room like a small child late at night, depositing him comfortably in his throne beside Palpatine.
Luke stares as the figures file in. He recognises Pellaeon. Pryce. Sloane. Other members of the Imperial brass whom he knows, but he can't recall, it's hard to think over the churning.
But others flicker into being at the corner of his vision, as well. He tilts his head to look at them, but they're nothing but striped shadows through the windows of the throne room, eerily three-dimensional patterns on the floor. Palpatine reaches out and, yanking his ear, makes him look straight ahead. One of the Imperials—Sloane, he thinks—steps forwards to start speaking.
He can see the figures more clearly if he doesn't focus. There are several Inquisitors—he would know them anywhere. Jedi. Several Mirialans, a few Togrutas, and numerous humans.
One of the older Togruta women speaks up. "Poor child," she says. Her lekku reach almost to the floor, and a smouldering hole gapes in her chest. Luke looks at her expression and sees enough peace to calm him—but then it is gone. Her lips contort in a snarl identical to one he's seen on Palpatine, showing her fangs. "He is a traitor. He is lost."
"I am lost," he confirms. "Help me—"
Palpatine's hand lands on his, on the arm of his chair. He is speaking to him. He laughs to his officers and bids Sloane continue.
Jedi Master Shaak-Ti was killed by his father during Order 66. Luke knows this: he sees it happen, over and over, as he stares at Sloane in her crisp white uniform. He sees her slump to the floor, her lightsaber rolling away, and one of the crystals in his crown burns his forehead. His eyelids droop closed, then open again.
"—the prince well?" Sloane is looking at him. Concern cuts through the confusion, her brow drawn.
"Why?" he asks her. Her mind unfolds in front of him, his fear and anger a scalpel that peels back the layers in his sudden need to know. "Why do you do this?"
A shock runs through his arm, from where Palpatine is holding it. It shakes every nerve in his body and slams him back against the throne.
She only looks a little bit fazed. "This is my duty, Your Highness. It is an honour."
Honour? Glory? Is that what she—what he—has found?
Kyber crystals power lightsabers, he thinks to himself. He starts chuckling in the middle of the quiet, reverent throne room. That's pointless. There's no need. Kyber crystals are clearly a weapon in their own right.
With his father gone, Luke leaves the remains of his pulverised heart and stares at the crystal again, hardly daring to breathe.
"Leia?" he whispers. He doesn't need to ask. He can feel her fingerprints on the crystal's facets, the way he can the fingerprints she left on his soul.
There's a Jedi here. There is only one reason that a Jedi would be here, instead of Palpatine having them executed on the spot where they were captured. The Inquisitorius programme is gone, disbanded; few Jedi have useful tactical information anymore due to their symbolic rather than practical worth to the Rebellion; and his father does not know that he has another child he could be hunting. Which means, if there is a Jedi here, and if his father has given Luke a new piece of jewellery from Leia's lightsaber, Leia has been captured.
"Why are you here?" he asks.
The crystal hums under his fingers. His father corrupted it—Luke can sense that. Leia isn't appearing to him as she should; her reflection is cracked and warped, fragmented through the prism of his father's rage.
"You are mine," Anakin whispers in his ear. "And we are Palpatine's. She has no claim on you or your loyalty. None of the Jedi do. She cannot march into the palace and expect to kidnap you again, right under our noses—"
But Luke silences his father's voice. His heart pounds. "Why are you here?" he repeats. "It's stupid."
"I'm here to save you."
Her voice is faint, but it sounds just like she does in the Force. Luke shivers.
"It's too late," he whispers. "You know that—Jedi can't come back from the dark side. Ben taught us that." He hoped he was wrong for so long. When Palpatine put that crown on his head, he cried and tried so hard. He worked with every crystal that dripped off his body, peering through the fractures and the facets, trying to understand—trying to retrace their collective footsteps. They all took the path of darkness. Surely he could walk back?
His hand drifts towards his collarbone again.
He was wrong.
"Why did you come for me?" he demanded. "Leia, you shouldn't—" He chokes before he can finish his sentence. He knows he is shouting at echoes, memories, ghosts. The Jedi gathered around him watch mockingly; even the Inquisitors, who understand this struggle, are unimpressed.
How much of this is a true echo of that person? How much of this is the blurred and twisted representation of them through their crystal, corrupted either by them or after their death?
Why is this all that is left?
He gets out, "Leia, you're going to die for nothing. I can't come back."
"You're my brother. You'll find your way back to me."
He closes his eyes.
He opens them again when a cold presence brushes his shoulder. The Seventh Sister grins at him, gold eyes flashing. There's so much malice in her smile. He recognises a distant pain, but he doesn't know where he knows it from.
"We've walked this path before, little Jedi," she croons. "You failed then. Are you going to fail now, when your sister's on the line?"
"You were a Jedi youngling once," Luke says. "I remember. You started to enjoy cruelty when you realised it was the only thing that would help you survive Inquisitor training, and you forgot you didn't used to be like this."
She tilts her head. "Does that matter?" she mocks.
It matters a lot. He tried before.
He can try again.
For Leia, he can try again.
He touches the crystal embedded at his collarbone. Palpatine's presence screams at him, wraps around him, all-consuming.
It doesn't matter. He pushes past it and reaches up, feeling through the crystals he wears. The Seventh Sister takes a step back, shuddering, as he focuses on that: she was a Jedi, once. She loved. She lost. And she became this, but stars.
Luke loves as well.
When she turns back towards him, grin dropped and face serene, her eyes are brown.
The barrage that the crown pumps into his mind at all times of the day is unyielding, but after a night of sleep, when he puts it on again, he is ready for it. The servant who helps him dress watches him physically buckle under its weight but doesn't move to help him. Instead, Luke crawls back to his feet, and adjusts the crown so it sits straight.
"Look at him—" a Nautolan Jedi says.
Luke snaps, "Don't look at me."
The servant averts his gaze, but the Jedi doesn't. They study him for a moment.
"You are a child," they say gently, "one of the last J—" They pause, the muscles in their face shifting under their green skin. There's a flash of red, then they're glaring at Luke. "You have betrayed us. The Jedi are dead. Do not return."
The sudden shift makes Luke pause. He runs his hands along the tips of the crown, hard enough to scrape and scratch. Each one bears the stench of either Palpatine's or Vader's unique brand of darkness, their hatred simmering in a circlet around his head. Mostly Palpatine's. Vader's is singular, and it smothers Luke in particular with its force.
"I'm sorry for what they did to you," Luke murmurs. He is talking to the mirror. For the poor serving boy, he could be speaking to him, to no one, or to his own reflection. "I don't suppose there's any way to fix—"
"We are broken beyond repair," another Jedi says. A human one, this time, her dark hair tied behind her head. "And you are as lost as we are, to darkness instead of death. There is no escape."
But this is what Palpatine wants him to think. And these crystals were bent to Palpatine's will.
He turns his head, so that he is viewing the Jedi out of the corner of his eye. Now, they shimmer white, instead of red.
But the shift means that he can see the door as well, and he abruptly realises his father is standing there, staring. The servant is gone.
Luke whirls around. "Father."
"Luke." Vader steps forwards and takes Luke's hand. "Are you… well?"
"Father?" His tone is distant, he knows, and that might be the cause of the concern he can feel radiating through the Force, but he is still human enough to feel confusion.
Vader bends down until their faces are close together, taking Luke's hand in his own.
"You look ill," Anakin says at Vader's back. Luke gazes at Vader's black bulk, wondering when that mask became so transparent. He thinks he might know. "Pale. Sickly. And you have responded poorly—"
"I hope you are well," is all Vader can say.
It is all he has the time to say, anyway. Footsteps clatter at the door, and they both turn to see Palpatine entering with his posse of red guards. His lips crack into a smile when he catching sight of them, holding hands.
"I am pleased to see you getting along again," he crows. "Here—I have another gift."
Luke's stomach swoops. He is hyperaware of the Jedi's echoes, watching him intently in the corners of his eyes. But Vader steps in front of him.
"I believe that Luke has more than enough jewellery, master," he intones. "More would seem… gaudy."
Palpatine simply tilts his head. "His mother was the most fashionable woman on Naboo," he points out, chuckling. "And this jewellery enhances his power to ever greater heights. Would you deny him his heritage, Lord Vader?"
"What is the cost?" Anakin asks, leaning to peer into the box in Palpatine's hands.
"Master—" Vader says, but he is too late. Palpatine opens the box and loops the necklace around Luke's neck. Luke's knees buckle, and Vader catches him.
The hard, cold crystals drum into his chest, their darkness drilling down until it finds the cavity that guards his heart. This necklace drapes around him, complex loops and chains all decorated and spun with crystals that range from the size of a pearl to the size of his middle finger. It lands on his shoulders like a cast, weighted net.
"Look at him." Palpatine clucks his tongue. "He looks wonderful."
"Master, this is too much." Luke is not so out of it that he cannot hear his father's protests. "This is needless suffering. I cannot train him like this."
"You cannot train him at all if he clings to the light like a child. These will expediate the process, I assure you. Once he has embraced their influence and the power they give him, rather than fighting it, your concerns will prove petty."
Vader holds Luke tightly in his arms and says nothing.
Palpatine is going to keep doing this, Luke thinks distantly, staring at his own reflection in the mirror, the Emperor behind him. The echoes fill his mind. Luke can resist all he likes. He has adapted to the crown as much as he can. He may be able to adapt to these extra stimuli. It may be a long time before Palpatine finds a limit that Luke cannot adapt past.
But Palpatine will find that limit.
He will not stop until Luke is his dark side pawn.
"I am a Jedi," he gets out hoarsely.
Palpatine pats his cheek. "Not anymore, my boy."
And a new figure, an Utapauan, looms at him in the mirror. The Grand Inquisitor, Luke recognises distantly. He died in conflict with the Spectres over Mustafar.
"We were all Jedi once," the Grand Inquisitor mocks, his reflection rippling as if the surface of the mirror is the surface of a lake.
"Yes," Luke says. "You were."
"Are you ready for the day?" Palpatine chides.
Luke is not. Vader carries him to his throne and deposits him there, where Luke is silent and distant all day, despite the looks shot to him by the many dignitaries who come into his presence. If he asks too many questions, Palpatine will want to stop him all the sooner.
That night, when he takes off the jewellery and the crown to sleep, he pauses at the dressing table. Pauses, and wraps his hand around a random crystal in the new necklace he's been given. A small one, right at the edge, where it's difficult to see.
He closes his eyes and focuses on everything he loves, about the galaxy, about the Jedi, about the Force. Flying. Sparring, and feeling the burn in his muscles that comes from hard work. The peace of meditating. The joy of laughing with loved ones.
Ben. Ezra, Cal, Ahsoka, and all the other Force users in the Rebellion.
Leia.
When he opens his eyes, the crystal gleams white. He looks up when a hand rests on his shoulder.
He does not recognise the woman: a blue-skinned Twi'lek Jedi with a severe but smiling face. She nods at him.
"Thank you," she says. And: "May the Force be with you, young Skywalker."
She blinks out of his vision. Luke glances down at the white crystal in his hands. For the first time since he arrived in the palace, he smiles.
"Ah! Luke," Palpatine greets. Luke was not surprised to receive his summons soon after Vader gave him his new gift. He bought as much time as he could, with his crystals and his hope, but he had to leave at one point and now sits in his throne with little complaint, the new ring glinting on his finger as he rests his hands on the armrests. "Thank you for joining us. I have someone I am dearly excited for you to meet."
Luke glances around. There are dozens of people in the room, and his stomach swoops in horror. Imperial officers—all of the top brass, all the ones on Coruscant whom Palpatine is proud of and wants Luke to establish working relationships with. Royal red guards. Servants. Courtiers.
"Who?" he asks innocently, as if he doesn't know she isn't even in the room yet.
"You shall see, my boy," Palpatine promises. "But first…" He leans in conspiratorially. "Do you think you are ready?"
Luke blinks. He knows he has been acting distant, dark, moody for weeks now, but… "Master?"
The title seems to do the trick. Palpatine smiles. "Are you ready?" he asks again.
Luke's hand drifts up to the crystal at his collarbone. "Are you truly mine yet?" it hisses. "Or need I torture you further?"
Palpatine's gaze lands on the crystal, and his smile widens. "You are," he decides. "I know you are."
"I am, master," Luke confirms. His heart pounds, tender and fragile with hope. He threads that hope through and around him, hoping that Palpatine doesn't notice. He might not be ready. That doesn't matter. He has to be.
"Then I would like you to meet my guest," Palpatine says magnanimously. "A newly captured Jedi."
And two red guards drag Leia through the doors.
It's difficult, healing the crystals. It takes a long, long time. Luke comes to treasure the nights he has, free from the cacophony of pain. They strengthen him for the day of battle ahead.
He stops speaking, almost altogether. There is nothing to say to Vader and Palpatine anyway. Instead, he focuses on what precious memories he has, all the light Ben taught him, to ward off the darkness: flying, drinking hot chocolate, cooking with Ben, sparring with Leia, teasing Ezra…
After a while, Palpatine notices.
He doesn't seem to realise exactly what Luke is doing. That shouldn't be as surprising as it is: the concept of redemption is no doubt utterly alien to him. When he has power over something, he does not expect it to slip his grasp without his noticing. But Palpatine does notice that the thick stench of darkness that clings to Luke like oil fades slightly, repatriated into something gentler.
And that won't do.
When Palpatine steps into his quarters with his guards again, Luke barely looks up. "Another gift, Your Majesty?"
"A gift indeed, Luke," he replies, smiling in a way that peels his lips back from his yellow teeth. "Of sorts."
That is when the red guards seize him.
He struggles, of course. It does nothing. His own father comes into the room to try to calm him, but even his order, through words and the Force, of "Sleep," cannot calm his terror, so Luke is dragged with great effort to the surgery room that Palpatine has had prepared for him.
Just lying on the table makes him want to throw up. He can feel… something… happening here, some great horror. The medic who steps into the room removes his jewellery and his clothes one item at a time, but they remove the original necklace, of his father's former kyber crystal, last. Anakin crouches beside him the whole time, stroking back his hair. Vader stands over him.
But his father also lies on the table right beside him, sixteen years past, and Luke can hear him screaming.
"This is where I was remade," Anakin confirms.
Vader stands silent, watching like a sentinel, as Palpatine produces a lightsaber from his sleeve and cracks it open with the Force. The harsh lights of the operating room stream through the crimson crystal that hovers at the heart of it, until it resembles nothing more than a slitted, bloodshot pupil.
Anakin whispers: "You will be too. You will join us. It is your destiny."
The cold bite of a needle makes Anakin, and the rest of the galaxy, evaporate. When he wakes up, it is in his own bed. His brow is light, his neck and fingers unburdened. But his heart is not.
He lies there for an age, bowled over by the forces using his soul as a battering ram.
His hand, when it finds the strength, crawls up his sternum until he hits something cold, hard, and foreign. Bile flood his throat. He throws himself out of bed and into the refresher, staring at himself in the mirror.
Implanted under his skin, at the hollow of his collarbone, is a rounded crystal. It pulses as red as a sore.
He opens his mouth, but no cry escapes him. His hand lands on the crystal, his palm, his nails—but he cannot tear it out, even as he gouges bloody scratches into his skin. It is there, hovering above his heart, crowding into the back of his mind, constant, constant, constant.
"Do you like your gift?" Palpatine says.
Luke whips around. He didn't sense Palpatine in the doorway, but he is standing there, staring with glee.
"It suits you well," he adds.
"You—" Luke chokes. "You can't—"
Palpatine steps forwards and taps the crystal in Luke's chest with one of his fingers. "This was my own," he muses. "This seems to be a better use for it, don't you think? I haven't had to use my lightsaber since the Jedi coup. It seemed only natural to give it up to help you achieve your full potential."
Of course it's Palpatine's. He can feel that. His presence is all over it, wrapping around Luke constantly, and is this what is feels like, to be inside his head? Is this what constitutes his soul?
There is no shadow of Palpatine to explain this to him. Luke's mind can't even order this input into that sort of delusion. There is only endless, unmitigated evil.
Palpatine catches Luke's chin in his hand. "You are mine," he says lovingly. "With this gift, will you finally accept that?"
Luke cannot fight this.
His dreams saturate with monsters even more twisted than the ones he faces in the day. His memories fracture every time he puts on the crown, and at night he cannot pull himself or them back together. Palpatine has put a piece of himself into Luke's body, and Luke cannot escape this. He cannot take this jewel off. He cannot fight this.
He tries, anyway.
He fails.
Weeks whip past. His father tries to speak to him, to train him. Luke sits, motionless, nodding when Palpatine and Vader want him to but barely lifting his lightsaber.
One day, Vader takes him back the shoulders and shakes him. Luke cannot hear the words he is pleading with.
That… is wrong. That concerns him, slightly, and he remembers what he was doing. Making eye contact with his father, aware how his eyes are burning yellow, he reaches up to touch his crown.
Nothing happens, but the shadow crowd around him tighter, slick on his skin as oil. He cannot do this. He will try again, and he will fail again.
So, eventually, he stops trying.
But Leia is here now, and a red guard shoves her to her knees in front of the dais. Luke stays stock still on the throne, but he can feel Palpatine's gaze on him, enjoying his horror. Testing how far he can push.
"Another Jedi," he purrs. "Thank you for your work, Lord Vader."
The eyes of the room move to Luke's father, but he is only looking at Luke. At the ring on Luke's finger, the kyber crystal perched upon it.
Anakin stands over Leia and looks up at Luke. "What will this do to you?" he asks him.
Luke swallows, his mouth very dry. Leia is staring at him, Palpatine is staring at him, everyone is back to staring at him now, and he is looking at Anakin, standing in the centre of the room in his black robes.
"Luke?" Palpatine's voice is quiet, gentle. The epitome of a kind emperor trying to do right by his loyal servant's lost son. "You can look at her. We won't let her hurt you."
Luke's jaw clenches. He trusts that Leia can see it. Her crystal thrums and assures him, under the blanketing hatred of his father's work, that she does.
But he can't look at her. He…
He addresses Anakin, pleading. "What if I told you…" His voice trails off. He's kept this secret for this long. "What if—"
"Don't, Luke."
He has to look at Leia now, even as a red guard strikes her.
He's on his feet in an instant. Luke knows he is young, but his sister is even smaller than him, and her Rebel fatigues are stained with blood. Looking at her straight on makes anger swell in his chest; his legs start shaking. But he has a job to do. He resolved he would do it—because otherwise, she has no hope.
Or, she has one hope. But voicing the truth and making Leia go through this alongside him is no hope at all.
"Leave her alone," he snaps at the guards. They ignore him, of course. He makes eye contact with Leia, sure that his terror is naked on his face, his lower lip trembling.
She gives him a small, grim smile. Blood trickles out of the side of her mouth. "You look pretty, Luke," she says with what little breath is left in her after that hit. "Beautiful hair."
Luke snorts a laugh, despite himself. He has not removed this crown for weeks, months. His father is concerned. His hair has grown long and wild, limp and greasy, curling in knots and nests around the crystals.
But it's the first time he's smiled in weeks.
Palpatine's hand curls around his shoulder and banishes that smile. "I know she is one of the Jedi who brainwashed you," he says. "Which is why we wanted to give you this opportunity."
"What?"
Palpatine waves his other hand, and Vader bows his head, climbing the dais to stand beside them. Luke stares when he reaches out and offers Luke his lightsaber.
"You can kill her," Palpatine says.
"What?"
"Or your father can, if you do not feel ready for this."
This isn't a test of loyalty, then. This is just a test to see how lost he will react.
"The tests of loyalty will come later," Anakin tells him. "They will never stop." He hesitates. "It's why I gave you to Palpatine in the first place."
Luke stares at Leia. She's afraid, he knows. No one else could tell: her shields are tight, even with Luke's all-seeing kyber mind; her face is blank; her breathing is measured. But he recognises that steely look in her eye. The twitch of her lips.
She came here to save him. And time is running out.
Luke takes his father's lightsaber.
"Are you sure?" Anakin asks—no.
Vader asks it, murmured as quietly as he can into Luke's ear as he hands the saber to him.
"You are my son," he tells him. "I do not want to— I do not want to lose you."
Palpatine smiles to hide his frown. "Lord Vader, you are such a supportive father," he announces to the wider crowd. The crowd nod along—that's all they do, that's all they've ever done while they stand there, basking in their emperor's glory. "Helping your son through his time of struggle."
Vader nods at Luke and steps aside.
The lightsaber is heavy in his hands. When Luke first took hold of it, months and months ago, the sheer pain of the kyber crystal overwhelmed him. He still doesn't know whether that was intentional or a lucky find on Palpatine's part. But now, that song is just one of many. So many have suffered. So many have died. As a Jedi, he has no choice but to accept this.
There is nothing but the Force.
The Jedi crowd around him. They have always been there, even before he donned the crown, watching. Of course they have. And now, everything they left behind has been twisted into pain and suffering. This palace was their temple. This crown was their strength. These spirits were their hopes and dreams, corrupted by the dark into something that was the opposite of what Luke needed to hear.
But he can save Leia. He can save them. And—maybe—he can save his father too.
He wraps his fingers around Vader too large lightsaber hilt, clumsily, like a child's. Leia smirks at him as he approaches.
"How're you gonna get us out of this one?" she asks, but she lets fear shake her voice, for the benefits of those watching. They are meant to be watching a great betrayal, an enemy become one of them.
None of these people have ever done anything to try to save Luke. None of them have ever tried to save anybody. The Jedi tried to save everybody—and they died for it.
Luke looks over his shoulder. Palpatine nods at him, smiling. Vader nods at him as well and touches his mind—and for a moment, Luke knows that his father can see right through him.
"You are my son," Anakin tells him. "You are infinite. I will follow you wherever you go, if it means you will be well."
He blinks tears out of his eyes. Leia spots it—spots another change, in his eyes—and even she cannot feign fear when a grin passes over her face.
That grin is what he needs. He knows it like his knows the ridges of his lightsaber, the sound of her laughter on the wind. The way he knows the warming touch of the Force's light; the peace of meditation; the satisfaction of burning muscles after a long day's training. The relief and grief of a family saved from death, embedded into his soul along with every other life they ever saved. The victory of protecting another soul from Imperial persecution. Triumph, joy, loss, terror, connection, pain, the tingling of healing, exhaustion, boredom, righteousness, anger, and a kaleidoscope of others that he cannot name, cannot recall, but have formed the multi-faceted jewel that he himself has become.
And, above all, peace.
He will do what he must. Because he knows that he can—and he knows that he has to.
The feelings churn and bubble inside him, a cauldron about to boil over. He looks up and looks around the room, watching the shadows and lights of dozens of dead souls scatter into the Force, peace and the semblance of a smile wafting around him, surrounding him in lazy spirals as they go. His body is too small to contain all of this, just as his mind was too small to contain the darkness it encountered. But it always has been.
He is luminous. He can walk through the heart of darkness, understand it, and emerge against into the harsh, unrelenting light of suns.
Luke leans down and hands Leia the lightsaber.
She starts, pressing it between her hands, frowning. Does she realise what he's done? Does—
"Luke?" Palpatine asks. It's the closest to nervousness Luke has ever heard from him. "Are you—"
Leia lights the saber. It gleams every colour at once. It gleams white.
A red guard runs at her. A flash of light incinerates him where he stands. Leia stops, stares, then twists back at Luke.
Luke tilts his head. "Everyone who wishes to leave can do so now." He speaks loudly, but clearly. "Otherwise, this is it."
"Luke…"
"Not you, Father." He's still looking at Anakin, the last vision, standing beside Leia and watching her carry the white blade like a knight. His eyes are blue. "I know what you want."
No one leaves. Luke didn't expect them to.
Kyber crystals power lightsabers. They bend and concentrate energy in just the right way that it scorches and burns away the darkness. But Luke has known for a long time now that kybers, in whatever form, do not need a hilt to be dangerous. Not in the face of enough hatred—or love.
When he lifts his hand, he burns through a row of Imperial admirals like laser fire.
His jewellery glows hot against his skin. The light that pumps out of his crown, the sheer, concentrated power of it, blinds even him, but he doesn't need to see to know where everyone is. He can feel their imprints in the Force like footsteps in the sands, like womprats swarming on the horizon. When he lifts a hand, a stray sunbeam catches on Leia's kyber on his finger and fractures. It strikes his enemy down.
The screaming is cacophonous. But Luke's mind is quieter than it has been in months. This screaming cuts out quickly.
"Boy!" Palpatine roars. "Lord Vader, control—"
Leia has already cut through three red guards and is making short work of two more. She doesn't need Luke's help here. He turns away and lets the halo around his knotted, twisted head dim enough that he can see Palpatine staring at him in horror—and maybe a little awe.
The awe chills him. Palpatine wants this power too.
A guard runs to intercept Luke before he can reach Palpatine. A beam of light materialises behind them and neatly shears their body in two. But another one comes, and another one, and they avoid the light as effectively as they avoid guilt for what they've done over the years—and Vader steps forwards.
He has no lightsaber, so he uses the Force as a battering ram. It throws them across the room. Their necks snap, loud and sickly, echoing alongside the screams.
"Go, Luke," he urges.
Luke marches forwards, up the dais, past his father, and—
Palpatine unleashes a thunderstorm of lightning on him. None of it hits. It careens towards each kyber crystal on his body and sinks deep into them instead. They hum with power against his skin. Palpatine stares, mouth open, as the last lick vanishes into the one that glows in the hollow of Luke's collarbone.
"Impossible," he breathes, staring at his own kyber crystal, white as daylight.
"I don't know why you are the way that you are," Luke snarls. He reaches out to seize Palpatine by the throat. He's smaller than him, thin and gangly, but the light wraps around them both and yanks Palpatine out of his throne, to hover in front of Luke. "But I know you, of all people, will never come back."
Palpatine pulls back one arm. Before he can channel more lightning, Luke unleashes the full power of his crystals.
So much lightning, so white it's almost yellow, pumps into Palpatine's frail frame that his veins glow white. Then they blacken, as they crisp beneath his skin. His eyes roll back in their sockets. When his fingers writhe and spit sparks, Luke sends that back at him as well.
"Jedi do not seek revenge," he whispers, "but for what you have done to us, this is your reckoning."
When Palpatine explodes, dark energy radiating off of him like the remains of a bomb, it does not escape Luke's cage of light.
Luke lets go of him and steps back. His legs are shaking. He sighs.
He looks at his father. Anakin is gone.
"Luke," Vader breathes.
Luke turns away and reaches up to feel for his crown. That's the first thing to go: it bounces along the throne room floor, then down the steps of the dais. Then the heavy necklaces, dumped in the lap of Palpatine's charred remains. Then the rings. The earrings. And—
He hesitates when he looks at Leia's ring. He will have to return that. He hopes she will accept his gift.
"Luke," Vader repeats.
Luke spins around to look at him. He doesn't get a chance to speak. Vader wraps him in his arms tightly, as if that will stop the thoughts spilling out of his mind like the Force has ripped gaping holes in it.
"I thought you were lost," Vader rumbles. "You have been so…"
"You did this," Luke says, trying for an accusatory tone.
"I am sorry."
His voice cracks. "I know that." He blinks. "I hate you!"
"I know," Vader soothes. Luke clings to him a little longer and wishes, bitterly, that he had not had to do this. That his father could have saved him.
But his father could not save himself, and the Jedi died for it. How could he have saved Luke? All he could do is try to help him save himself—and perhaps he can make up for the rest.
"Get off of him!" a rough voice orders. Luke barely has the time to extricate himself from Vader's grip before Leia has her arms around him and squeezes him, as tightly as she can. "You kriffing idiot. You nerfherder. You—" She punches him on the back. "I thought you were gone."
"Thank you for trusting me," he whispers.
"I didn't trust you," she retorts. "I just… wasn't gonna give up." She glowers at Vader over his shoulder. "I'm taking him. I don't care if you're our father, you will stay away from my brother—"
"Leia—"
But Vader has apparently had most of his capacity to feel scorched out of him by the last ten minutes, at least temporarily. He stares at Leia, then at Luke, then back at Leia. His vocoder makes a small huff.
"Are you coming with us?" Luke asks. He knows it's a superfluous question.
"He isn't invited."
"He is."
Leia lets go of Luke to jab her finger in his chest. "That little stunt you pulled doesn't mean you can give orders now."
"We need him, Leia," he whispers. "We need everyone we can get."
"Ben has always said that no one can come back from the dark side."
Luke's gaze is caught by something—some flickering spark—dancing across the ceiling. He follows it. He doesn't recognise it. But he remembers the feeling of all those spirits, all those memories. The Seventh Sister. The Togruta Jedi. The Mirialan Jedi. The Grand Inquisitor. Anakin.
What is the Force? It swirls around in his mind, still. The kyber crystals have torn apart the thin walls around him and shoved him into its eddying depths. He cannot swim out. He wonders if he ever will be able to.
He wonders what is lurking below him.
"Then perhaps we should stop saying that," he says.