Joined


Luke Skywalker broke through Bespin's cumulus-scaped atmosphere and was welcomed by a short-wave comm hail from a frantic, frazzled, and very familiar protocol droid.

"Master Luke!" Threepio's voice sounded tinny and overwhelmed with nervous energy as it poured from the X-Wing's speakers. "Master Luke, I am so relieved to see you safely within the system! Mistress Leia thought you—"

"Where are you?" he interrupted as kindly as he could. He didn't feel any animosity toward Threepio, but the Force was absolutely brimming with darkness. He had never felt such clear indications of evil in his life, a swarm of anger and desperation surrounding and invading one small place.

He had to get to Leia and Han, before something horrible happened.

"I am alone aboard the Millennium Falcon, docked at A-34b6. Please help!"

Artoo tweedled a question, and Luke nodded, wondering the same thing. "Why are you alone? Where is Chewie?"

"Imperial troops escorted Chewbacca away twenty hours and thirteen standard minutes ago," Threepio said. "He believed we had fixed the hyperdrive but I cannot do any diagnostics alone!"

Luke considered his options quickly, and came to the same conclusion Artoo already had.

"We'll be there in three minutes. Do not lower the ramp for anyone else."


Leia waited. She listened, numb, as the Dark Lord received a droid-like comm call. An Alliance-issued X-Wing had landed on the north platform. She heard pleasure in Vader's voice.

"Let him come to me," he ordered. "Do not show yourselves."

And she knew, without asking, that Luke needed her to control her emotions. Numb was not enough.

She needed control. Total control.

She decided against saying anything into the silence. What was there to say? The odds were not currently in her favor. With Chewie and the Falcon vulnerable, she couldn't begin a confrontation alone. Her plan, threadbare as it might be, depended on Luke's assistance.

Threadbare? She thought with a soft snort of derision. This plan is nothing but scraps and you know it.

There was one being in the known galaxy who would have had the skills, the creativity, and the downright stubborn refusal to die to make this plan a success. But Han wasn't …

Pain. Again. She stopped herself before she could get too far. She was dangerously close to a line she knew she could not cross, and the only thing she could do now was remain impenetrable to Vader's traps.

Cold. Blistering. Hollow, with an icy wrath.

So she waited, keeping careful tabs on the warm, lingering light of Chewie's presence as it walked with Lando Calrissian to some hallway, awaiting transportation with Boba Fett.

The Force didn't speak in words per se, but she felt calm about Lando's intentions. Chewie would not be given to the bounty hunter. She didn't know how she knew it, but she was certain; he was safer than Luke was, surely, and he would be every bit as keen to find Fett as she was. Han had a much better chance of rescue if Chewie and Lando worked together, apart from her. They only had minutes, she guessed.

The thought of the kind, paternal Wookiee threatened to careen her headfirst into memories that brokered no iciness at all, no cool indifference, and she immediately abolished them. She couldn't worry about Chewie and keep Han out of her head and keep both Luke and herself alive at the same time.

Focus.

Vader had said little to her since they had found themselves alone and awaiting Luke, but his intention was absolutely clear. His presence was streaked with darkness, crimson through glittering black, and she didn't know what that meant, couldn't interpret her brother's colors as readily as he could. The only thing she knew was that she could not—would not—give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

Any reaction. Any at all. Control.

"Your brother will be joining us shortly."

His voice was the same bass of her memories, and it was something of a relief. The other voice was not welcome in her mind, and he seemed to understand.

So courteous.

"I don't have a brother."

Flimsy, she knew, but she wasn't sure what else to do. He obviously knew. Clearly, word had spread beyond the Alliance ranks.

"Don't lie to me, Your Highness," he returned. "I can feel your … connection."

Bail Organa had trained her to school her features, and he had been a very good teacher. Nothing was emanating from her, of that she was sure.

Liar., she thought. Out loud, she said, "You are far too interested in other people's relationships, Lord Vader."

"Relationships are weaknesses."

The strangest feeling washed over her, a kind of simmering beneath her skin, and she fought to conceal it. No, she commanded herself. No emotion. Not now.

Pursing her lips, she turned her eyes away. "As one who has none would say."

Awkward silence descended, but was that the correct word? Awkward? One would have to be human to feel such a way—a biological creature, at the very least—and sometimes she wondered if Vader was even truly alive. A genocidal, egomaniacal sociopath: absolutely. He breathed, yes, but something was missing from this monster, some inherent living spark. She could feel his presence in the Force. Shifting. Untenable. Unstable. The crimson streak remained, twisting and threading through the starry expanse like the last throes of a dying thing.

Alive, but not living. A cold shell of what surely had been sentience in some distant past.

"It takes great love to create great loss, and great loss to create great resolve."

Later, Leia Organa would consider those words carefully, arranging and rearranging them into coherent clues of truth and history. In the moment, however, she interpreted them to mean her love, her loss, her resolve, and that was a bitter truth, as well.

"Congratulations, then," she said. "You've indeed created a great resolve."

The air in the small space quieted and Leia focused on breathing, ignoring the torpid heat that awaited in her chest. Yoda's teachings came to mind, yes: his warnings and his premonitions. The fierce reprimand about her anger, her intention, even his subtle disregard of the very relationship Vader had just mentioned.

Liar, he had called her.

But it wasn't Yoda that she used as her lens to the world. It wasn't Yoda, or the pedantic so-called Jedi Code, or even her father's clear-eyed political acumen.

It was Luke.

And Luke was coming.


Lando Calrissian was fucked. Plan and simple.

There was no other way to spin it. Darth Vader here, here, in Cloud City, making deals left and right that he had no intention of honoring. His aim? To capture Han Solo of all people, who kicked them all back a decade and somehow was still fighting with the Hutts and bounty hunters, even though, the last Lando had heard, he had been a big hero and had helped destroy the Death Star a few years ago.

What an absolute idiot.

Lando was a fair man. While the Empire called Han and the other rebels dangerous insurrectionists—terrorists, even—he knew what government propaganda looked like. He had not had the kindest of childhoods, and that unkindness had included the brutality of the birthing pains of the Empire. He knew. He knew what it was to live under such a totalitarian regime. He read the signs as clearly as anyone could.

He had recognized Leia Organa the second he had seen her on that platform.

But he was a goddamned legitimate businessman, now, responsible for the health and safety and livelihoods of the citizens of Cloud City. He had had to play the part of submissive underling to Vader just long enough to make it look good. And it hadn't mattered that Lando sometimes saw the Alliance's point—when alone and drunk and listening to the pricking of his conscience when it wasn't bowled over by administrative bureaucracy—all that mattered was that the people of Cloud City were safe for the time being. Taken care of. The way he had never been.

But they weren't safe anymore. Everything had gone to shit.

He had to leave. Somehow. But before that, he needed to do his job. He picked up his comm, turned it to a universal emergency frequency and prayed to every god he didn't believe in that whoever this Luke Skywalker was, he had a good plan out of this mess.

"Attention. This is Lando Calrissian. The Empire has taken control of the city. I advise everyone to leave before more Imperial troops arrive."

Chewbacca, stun-cuffed beside him, cocked his head as Lando switched off his comm and upholstered his hold-out blaster, nicely concealed under his Venzi collared shirt.

"Don't kill me," he warned, before releasing the cuffs. "There's still a chance to save Han."

The Wookiee looked at Lando for ten seconds with a scrutiny that made him reconsider the bare-ass plans he had made. Chewbacca could kill him here and now, and it wouldn't matter what anyone else did today.

And then with a nod, Han's copilot turned away from Lando, leaving the administrator to shout to his lumbering form, "The east platform!" before running to catch up.

Keep them safe, he asked that same, old Socorrian god. Keep my people safe.


See-Threepio was ready for Artoo the millisecond the astromech rolled onto the platform with Master Luke. Lowering the ramp, the protocol droid greeted his guests with a voluminous welcome.

"Master Luke! Artoo! I am so glad you are safe!"

Artoo tweedled a half-hearted reply and then inquired as to the status of the ship.

"The Millennium Falcon has been repaired adequately, as per the instructions of Commander Solo and Lando Calrissian, the colony's administrator. Chewbacca simply requested a diagnostics check to be performed by you."

Artoo beeped and then rolled toward the navigator's station, plugging in to double-check the feed and start the warm-up cycle. As he did so, Master Luke clapped a hand onto Threepio's shoulder.

"Do you know what has happened to Han?"

Threepio noted the concern in Master Luke's body language, the exhaustion in his eyes, the way his shoulders rolled forward at a very slight eight percent angle, and his anxiety, such as it was, compounded.

"Oh, my! I am not sure," Threepio said. "I have not spoken with him or Mistress Leia in quite some time. Has something happened?"

"Just a feeling."

Threepio could not be sure if Master Luke had intended to sound so resigned, but before he could inquire further, the young man had already begun running down the ramp and into the clear air outside.

And Threepio felt a stirring of what he would interpret as dread slide through his motivators.


Princess Leia was a statue on a platform she had watched turn a living man into a solid block of carbonite not twenty minutes before.

She waited, controlling every single nerve she had, pinned tightly into herself like her mother used to pin her hair. She did not think about her mother, or her father, or Han: all taken away by Vader. She thought about calm seas, unbroken lines of energy, expansive skies. She thought about Luke, his goodness, his natural ease within this quagmire of motivation and temptation.

What she wanted to do would not help Luke. She wanted to kill. She wanted to squeeze the life out of Vader with a fist. He had done it. Why couldn't she?

No. She had to wait. Vengeance was secondary to survival.

Looming far above her on the observation platform, Vader skulked and whispered silent commands and threats. You will listen to me. You will obey. Or I will kill him.

She did not react. She shielded herself so tightly that it was like she was wrapped in durasteel armor.

I will kill him.

Nothing. She was nothing.

Closer, he whispered. Closer.

Unblinking, she watched with a detached calm that was completely foreign to her as a silhouette of her twin brother walked cautiously up the interminable ramp, a luminous presence in the Force. He caught her eye, took in her iciness, her durasteel plating, and holstered his blaster.

"Leia?"

His voice was questioning, simplified to the easiest of questions. Are you injured? What is happening? Where is everyone?

She shook her head, nearly vibrating from the effort it took her to remain in control. Her eyes welled with tears and she fought, she fought so hard, to mirror Luke's patience, his contentment, the light underlying his fear for their safety.

If either of them felt any surprise at the clarity of this unvoiced communication, newly discovered but completely organic, they did not mention it. It was, as all things had been of late, simply born into existence by the mysterious circumstances of their birth and separation and reunion.

Han?

She didn't answer his silent question, but he felt her tension, lying just below the surface, tightly-strung and ready to snap.

"It's a trap," she whispered, unable to communicate such a complex thought with his natural ease.

He inhaled, his chest rising as his chin tilted up, and she felt his presence brush over her, lending her a fraction of the deep well of calm that flowed inside him.

Seeming to properly comprehend the situation, he unhooked a latch on his belt. "You better take this," he said to her, and opened his palm to reveal the handle of their father's lightsaber. Without so much as a twitch of muscle, he sent the hilt streaking into her hand with breakneck speed and a sharp thwack. Against her palm

And then a boom, resonating in their ears like a drumbeat summoning them to war.

"The Force is strong with you, young Skywalkers," Darth Vader said, "but you are not Jedi yet."


Author's Note: Trust me, no one is more relieved to see this chapter than I was to finally finish it. Forgive me. Life gets in the way sometimes.

The next chapter of Specter will be posted sometime in May. I'm aiming for the first, but let's assume grace will need to be extended once again.

Thank you for your patience - KR