The trio travels through the city, Luke has a very traumatic experience in the sewers, and Vader figures out the truth.
It seemed Luke had barely closed his eyes when he was awoken by the sound of the door opening.
"We need to move," said Vader, voice painfully loud in the room. Then he slammed the door shut, and Luke could hear his footsteps retreating in the distance.
Leia sat up with a groan, rubbing her eyes, braids more askew than ever. Luke wiped his face - he had slept in his old clothes, the ones he had been wearing for days now, and he felt disgusting, like there was a layer of sand all over his skin. The best he could do was carefully use some water from one of the bottles to wash his face, and when Leia wordlessly held out her hands for some, he shared it with her too. He tried not to wince as she splashed droplets carelessly, wastefully, all over the floor and blankets.
She glanced over at Luke, and he hurriedly looked away, feeling guilty. She was a princess, she was probably used to having water wherever she went. Had she noticed that he was judging her? "Did you sleep okay?" she asked.
Oh good, he thought with relief, she hadn't noticed. "Yeah, I guess."
Leia smiled a little. "That's good. I had some weird dreams."
He had too, he just hadn't wanted to say. "Me too. I kept dreaming of the - the monsters outside." They were unclear, but he knew they had been in his dreams all night.
"They're not monsters," said Leia, suddenly angry. "Or things. They're infected. They're sick."
"Yeah, I know." The previous night's conversation still weighed on him. "But they are, um, trying to kill us." He thought of mentioning that Darth Vader was right about that, but one look at Leia's face told him that would be a bad idea.
"So? They still need help."
"Yeah, but how? What are we supposed to do?" He didn't want to seem mean; he felt bad for them, too, but there were probably a million of them and they were just two children.
Leia lifted her chin. "When I get home, I'll tell my father. He's always talking in the Senate about helping people and going on missions. He'll know what to do."
The Senate? Missions? Leia must be really, really important if she had parents who were not just royals but also senators, even though his uncle always said politicians never did anything good. But it made him feel incredibly useless - he was just a boy on a farm, he couldn't do anything. He subsided into quiet, and Leia, noticing that, didn't push him anymore.
Having washed up, they emerged from the room, Luke pulling out two more meal packets to prepare. Vader was outside, closing the hood on the speeder, and Luke had to resist the sudden, odd urge to protest, You finished without me?
Vader's head glanced towards him and Luke had a terrifying moment where he was sure Vader had heard his thoughts, but instead he only indicated Luke's pack, then one of the boxes. "Take as much from that box as you can carry. Supplies may be limited the further we go on."
He waved his hand, and from one of the open boxes, a bunch of glow rods floated over to him. Luke stared at them in awe, almost not wanting to touch them.
"Take those," said Vader again, impatience coloring his tone. Luke quickly grabbed them. "Power has been cut from the city grid. We will need those if we travel during the night."
Traveling during the night? And as many meals as he could carry? How long were they going to be traveling for?
"We cannot rely on the speeder; it is possible parts of the journey will be on foot," Vader continued, again making Luke think he was reading his mind. "You will need as much food as possible."
Luke turned on the condenser unit as Leia ripped open two new packets, then grabbed a water bottle to activate the polystarch. Finally, he burst out with a question that had been bugging him for some time. "What about you? Don't you need anything to eat?"
Vader's stare was intense, like a live wire going through him. Leia, meanwhile, just kept making their meal like she already knew the answer.
After one hair-raising moment, he finally said, "No, young one. I acquire my nutrients in… other ways." On that enigmatic statement, he turned and went around to the speeder, out of view.
Leia exchanged a look with him, then picked up the puff of bread and handed it to him. The green meat slices were crackling and he slipped two onto Leia's plate, then dived into his meal.
They took a little time after eating to gather supplies, but Vader was clearly impatient for them to go, his dark presence waiting by the speeder. Luke heaved his pack into the speeder seat, now quite bulky with meal packs and boxes and ration bars, and hurried after Leia as Vader climbed into the front of the speeder. He had a feeling that if he didn't get in fast enough, Vader was going to start it and drive off without him. At least the speeder had a back so they wouldn't have to be sitting right next to him. Luke didn't think he could stomach that; it was scary enough when Vader was several feet away from him.
"What about the people outside?" Leia asked as she settled into her seat.
Spurred by her question, and by the sight of the garage doors ahead of them that had no electricity to open them, Luke added, "And how are we going to… get out?" The words died as Vader turned towards them both. Why did he keep opening his stupid mouth? He resolved to be silent for the rest of the way.
Vader's response was to turn back around and extend his hand towards the wall.
With a blast that sent both children diving towards their seats, the garage door in front of the speeder exploded outwards as if blown up by a bomb. Vader gunned the engine and pushed the handles forward.
The speeder shot through the gap, straight for a downed cargo freighter.
Luke yelled - then yelled again, both sounds lost over the buzz of the speeder as it made a hairpin turn to the left, just dodging the obstruction and sending him and Leia sliding across the seats. As they both scrambled for the seatbelts, he saw several of the monsters - or were they people? - scattered about the lot. There were several directly in front of them.
They accelerated so fast, Luke was tossed back into his seat, losing his grip on the belt. The wind whipped against his eyes, bringing tears, but even through blurred vision he could see them speeding straight for one of the monsters -
Thud.
Something screeched, the sound fading as fast as it had come. Luke felt the entire speeder waver as whatever that something - the monster, he realized, the infected - was knocked aside.
Wham.
Another was thrown out of the way by the speeder's momentum, falling out of sight. Luke hoped it had not gone underneath the repulsors. That seemed an awful way to die.
Bump.
A third smacked into the front and was hurled several feet ahead to crash into a bunch of containers. The speeder jolted heavily as it collided with it. Leia exclaimed something in protest, but the hum of the repulsors and the wind whistling past them drowned out her words. The monsters, things, infected, whatever they were, had spread themselves out over the parking lot during the night. Luke could see their heads turning to follow their path, but they were too slow and too far to catch up with them. There was a dent in the shiny brightness of the chrome metal and a small crack along the polished edge where it had smacked an infected, with a smear of something wet and dripping. Part of him wanted to cry at seeing the shiny new speeder getting broken up already. The other part was growing increasingly frightened: the speeder was strong but he could see the bridge up ahead, with a fallen transport that had shattered it in two - Leia's hand gripped his
Vader cranked a gear and the speeder shot upward.
Luke was hurtled back into the seat. The wind rushed into his eyes and blew across his ears. All he could see was the open sky, cloudless and blue, and his only thought was to be grateful that he had finally managed to belt himself in - he hoped Leia had as well -
Then with a swoop in his stomach they went down, nose pointing towards the earth. They could not have been aloft for more than a few seconds - all that the speeder could do - but to Luke it had felt like forever. Like flying.
With a jerk that threw Luke back, the speeder straightened. Luke gasped. He could see Leia panting for breath as well. He glanced back and saw with awe that they - or rather, Vader - had shifted gears so that the speeder had landed gently on the other side, without smashing its bottom against the ground. They had left the warehouse, and the lot full of monsters (infected), behind them, trapped on the other side of the bridge. Looking forward, they were cruising down a blessedly empty street, buildings shooting by.
He laughed, a joyful burst of sound. "That was totally wizard! " he exclaimed, forgetting his earlier promise to stay quiet.
Vader's head tilted back towards him, and Luke immediately went quiet. This was Darth Vader, and he didn't need Luke cheering him on. It was stupid of him to even say anything and draw attention to himself. He sat in silence the rest of the trip, drawing a look from Leia that was half sympathetic and half offended on his behalf. He really hoped she didn't try to say something again in an attempt to defend him. He didn't need more attention like that.
Still, he didn't know Vader could drive a speeder like that, and he told himself that as soon as he got home, he was going to get behind the wheel of Uncle Owen's speeder and try out the same trick.
They zoomed along the streets for a bit, Vader nimbly dodging smoking wreckage or taking a side street if he saw some obstacle he did not want to navigate. Luke had no idea how he knew where they were going - once they went down an alley so twisty he completely lost track of where they were - but Vader seemed completely confident in his navigational skills, and Luke certainly wasn't going to question him.
But after about half an hour of this, Vader brought the speeder to a halt, shoved open the door, and exited, without a word of explanation. Luke sat up, curious despite himself. Vader seemed to be looking at something, head tilted upwards, and Luke tried to follow his gaze.
At first he couldn't see anything. But as he focused harder, he saw it: a shimmering bubble that ran from the ground all the way up to the top of the building. Squinting and craning his head back as far as possible, he realized that the air above them was wavy, like the desert sands during the hottest part of the day, and that this waviness curved over and behind them to meet the ground once more… like a bubble. Or a dome.
Leia was already unbuckling herself and coming out of the speeder. She hopped the length - tall for them - from floating speeder to ground, stumbling slightly, then walked forward. But she wasn't looking at the shield, she was going straight for Vader, and Luke, guessing her intentions, tried to grab her only to miss. How did someone who was shorter than him walk that fast?
"You shouldn't have done that," she said to Vader, all fury, and Luke saw Vader jerk as if in surprise. "You ran them over. You might've killed them! They're sick, they need help!"
Vader turned slowly towards her - again, Luke thought he seemed more shocked if anything that Leia was standing there, arguing with him, when there was a giant bubble containing them. "Do not presume to lecture me, child. They were in the way and so I did what I had to."
Luke wanted to hide somewhere. He did not want to watch them argue; it felt intrusive, frightening.
But Leia refused to see her danger. "You could have flown around them!"
"They were all around us. Had I done that, I would only have hit another. Unless," said with deep sarcasm that somehow carried over the vocoder, "you are suggesting that some beings are more valuable than others? How unbecoming of you."
Luke deeply considered diving under the speeder; that sounded like it would be preferable to watching Leia inevitably die when she angered Darth Vader past the point of patience.
"You can use the Force!"
The Force? What was that? Luke, looking between them, wondered if that was the name for thing that let Vader move stuff and read minds and fly so cool.
"So now you want me to use it?" Vader said.
Leia crossed her arms.
"I will not waste my time or energy saving those that cannot be saved," he continued. He stood directly over her, a massive, black-caped figure. "Do not argue with me again, Princess, or I will change my mind about aiding you." With a deliberately aimed look at Luke, " Both of you."
Luke flushed, horribly aware of being drawn into the argument, of being used. And Leia knew it too, and he recognized the look on her face: she was on the verge of completely blowing up. At Darth Vader! There was only one way to salvage the situation.
He grabbed Leia's arm and pointed up frantically. "Hey, look at that! Do you see that?"
Distracted, she tried to pull away from Luke, clearly still angry, until she saw Luke's panicked look, his attempt to tell her to stop dragging me into this. Frowning, she shook her head, but it seemed to calm her slightly. She craned her head upward exactly as Luke had to look at the wavering air. Luke joined her, heart beating wildly. It didn't calm until he heard Vader turn away and continue… whatever he was doing. In the distance, Luke could hear some of the monsters, infected people, whichever, but the sounds were faint, carried by the breeze. The only other noise was a low but distinct humming, detectable only when he was very close to the edge of the bubble.
"Is that a… wall?" Leia asked, crinkling her forehead.
"I think it's a shield," Luke volunteered.
"A ray shield," said Vader shortly, from behind them. "They are quarantining the city." His helmeted head was tilted as if he was listening for something besides the hum and the distant call of the infected.
Leia turned to glare at him. "So what now?"
A pause, and Luke braced himself for Vader to do something about Leia's attitude. For a moment the air almost seemed to crackle with their shared anger.
But then he felt it slide away. Leia seemed to sense it as well, and he saw her brow furrow in confusion. "Its energy source would likely be some distance from here," replied Vader, and Luke breathed out. Maybe he had decided to ignore Leia. "We will not be able to reach it from here and we cannot pass through the shield."
"So we're stuck?" Luke ventured to ask.
"No." He sounded irritable, and Luke once again regretted ever opening his mouth. "The shield does not extend underground." Vader reached out with his hand. On the other end of the street, a door to one of the many buildings lining the street, banged open. "Most of these buildings will have some kind of basement facility. Almost all of these will have access to the waste dispersal systems. We will pass beneath the shield and emerge on the other side." A pause. "Most beings avoid these systems, so there should be little infected down there. We can bypass the majority of them." Without another word, he strode off.
Leia blinked. Luke just stared. Bypass, avoid… was he saying that they wouldn't encounter more of the… sick people? Had Vader… given in to Leia's arguments? It was bizarre, and when he looked at Leia, he could tell she was equally bewildered - but also looked just a bit happier.
Then the rest of Vader's words caught up to him. Waste dispersal? Luke did not like the sound of that. He shared a nervous look with Leia, but Vader was already heading for the door and they had little choice but to follow.
They left the speeder on the street, with Vader enigmatically saying that it still has further use but offering no other explanation. The building was some kind of office, or perhaps a bank - they started in a lobby, burnt out and emptied, furniture tangled amongst one another, and along one side Luke could see a long row of counters, with glass barriers and dozens of computer consoles. He caught sight of dark splatters on some of them and quickly averted his eyes.
"We will need to reach the bottom," said Vader. He was heading for a small, nondescript door, marked as only for employees towards the back of the building. "Come quickly. It may be a long way down and the waste systems will not be easy to navigate."
Leia, however, had spotted something else. "Wait, we can use the turbolift!" She darted forward towards an open door.
Vader whirled around. "Princess!"
Leia, however, dodged around him and went to the opening - then yelped, teetering on her toes like she was on a balance beam.
In a flash, Vader was at her side, grabbing her by the shoulder and dragging her back. Luke ran forward just in enough to see and swallowed hard. There was no lift, just an open and completely dark shaft which plummeted straight down. He didn't even dare poke his head in for fear he would tip over and fall all the way to the bottom.
Vader whirled Leia around, and for a second Luke was sure he was going to kill her this time. Wasn't that what Darth Vader did to people who didn't listen to him? Kill them?
"Do not go running off!" he shouted. Luke took a step back, feeling the lashing waves of his anger. "Are you so defiant as to try and kill yourself just to spite me? When I tell you what to do, do it. "
Leia tilted her chin up defiantly. "I thought we could use it! I don't want to go down all those steps!"
Vader clenched his fists and his presence somehow darkened even further. "All power to the city has been shut off. I have told you that. None of the lifts would work even if they were operational!"
A look crossed Leia's face, a brief realization that Vader was right, but then she crossed her arms. Luke wanted to cover up his eyes, sure he was about to watch her die. "I was trying to help!"
"You are not helping, " and somehow Vader managed to convey his absolute displeasure with his mechanical voice. "You are putting yourself in danger and inconveniencing me . "
Leia just stood there, and Luke knew, could feel, that she was stewing in her own anger. It felt almost as strong as Vader's, and he was struck again with the urge to go and hide behind something rather than stay here. The whole conversation felt weird, private, like watching his aunt and uncle argue. He took a step back and tried to look elsewhere.
She caught his movement though, glaring at him, but Luke knew that it wasn't him she was angry at. In fact, seeing him made her little body deflate slightly. After a while, the tension started to ease. Leia dropped her arms and her stare to gaze somewhere around Vader's belt. "I just wanted to see," she muttered. "And you said we had to hurry. It'd be faster."
Luke saw Vader tilt his head up, like he was resisting the urge to further yell at her. After a moment, he spoke, in a slightly calmer voice. "Curb your curiosity then." His tone seemed to grow softer. "It is a… laudable trait, but it is dangerous in this place."
Luke blinked, looking between the two as it dawned on him that Leia was not about to die horribly. If anything, Vader almost sounded a bit nicer around her.
As if embarrassed, Vader straightened abruptly, then turned and headed for the door. "We will make our way down. It isn't far but once we reach the dispersal system, the way will be more difficult. You must save your energy." He turned to stare at them both. "Stay behind me."
Leia gazed after him, her face looking surprised, suspicious, and just a little bit pleased. Finally feeling like the two were past the danger point, Luke joined her at the beginning of the steps. They exchanged looks once more.
Without a word, they began following.
It was, as Vader said, quite a ways down, with multiple flights of stairs each of which extended many feet below and had very steep steps, mere slabs of plastcrete set against the wall, with nothing behind them to keep their feet from slipping. The railings were jagged and dirty and Luke soon found himself wishing that the turbolifts had worked. At least there were landings at regular intervals - except that at the first one, Vader told them to stop and wait there while he went to investigate it. He left the door open, allowing them to see the beginning of a hallway that led into total darkness. Vader's breathing soon faded from hearing.
Neither knew exactly what was going on - but when they saw flashes of red light from within, they guessed. Leia turned away, and Luke stared at the floor. But there were no screeches of the infected or the hiss of a lightsaber against flesh, and after less than a minute, Vader reemerged and continued down the stairs without a word.
Safe. Or so Luke hoped.
Down and down they went, and it seemed like at every floor they had to stop and wait for Vader to check the rooms and corridors that connected to the landings. He never told them what he found, never explained what he had done, nor did he douse his saber. He just kept moving, fast enough that Luke's legs were soon aching, though never so fast that he left them entirely behind. There were no windows and no working lights, and soon Luke found another reason to go more slowly: the darkness. The small square of light from the entrance was soon gone, replaced only by the bright beam of the lightsaber and - after Vader reminded him impatiently - a glow rod he dug out from his pack.
Even then, the light did not penetrate the darkness more than a few feet in any direction, and Luke had to take each step more carefully, nervous about tripping and tumbling all the way to the bottom. Between his pack and holding the rod, he felt really off-balance. Leia had to do the same, keeping close to Luke so she was within the light. Only Vader seemed fully confident where he was going. Luke wondered if the mask he wore all the time had something to do with it, but another reason was probably because he was the one holding the lightsaber. It created a red cast that made the shadows look long and frightening. Sometimes it would combine weirdly with the yellow light from the glow rod, turning the shadows into distorted doubles of themselves. The only upside was that it made Vader easy to follow - they just looked for the red glow.
Luke thought they were nearly at the bottom - the echoing sound of their footsteps was sounding more muffled - when he stopped, nerves jangling. "Wait."
Vader kept going - or rather, the red glow of his lightsaber got further and further away - but Leia paused. "What?"
Luke strained his ears, trying to penetrate the darkness all around him. There it was again. "I hear something."
Leia listened. Vader had nearly reached the bottom; he was just the faintest bit of red. "I don't hear anything."
He waited. There it was again, like a strangled cough. "There, did you hear that?"
The other girl looked unsure. "I think so?" They both struggled to listen. It sounded quite clear to Luke. Leia frowned. "I think… I do hear it. What is it?"
"I don't know." Luke looked nervously down the stairs, towards the darkness that Vader had disappeared into, before glancing back up, pointing the glow rod as far as he could reach. If there was any light still coming from the doorway they had entered through, it was completely lost in the yellow light. "What should we do?"
Leia squared her shoulders. "We should tell him."
Luke blanched. That was the worst idea he had heard all day. And besides, why would anyone want to talk to Darth Vader, ever? Did Leia like talking to Darth Vader? Was that why she kept picking fights with him? "I'm not telling him!"
"But you said you heard something."
"Then you tell him!" He picked at his belt. "He… likes you better."
Leia jerked back, or Luke assumed she did, judging by the rustling of her clothes. "He doesn't like me."
"Yes he does. Or more than me." Personally Luke didn't think Vader liked anyone, but if there was anyone he had shown a preference for, it was Leia, not Luke. "He stopped yelling at you."
Her voice was indignant. "All he does is yell at me. And he…" She didn't finish the sentence. "You worked on the speeder together."
"So? That doesn't-" Luke saw the red glow growing rapidly brighter and gulped. From the bottom of stairs approached Vader's form, coalescing into the shape of him, the blinking lights on his chest panel, the way the light illuminated the hard edges of his mask.
Luke flinched, barely resisting the urge to hide behind Leia. Who Vader did like better, no matter what she said.
Vader glanced between the two of them. "Is there a reason you two have stopped walking?"
Luke heard the impatience lacing his words and wondered if Leia did too as she said, far too chirpily, "Luke said he heard something."
"Did he?" Vader turned his full attention on Luke, and oh stars, he really could feel the ominous doom behind his words now. "And what did you hear, young one?"
He was beginning to regret ever saying something. It was probably all in his head too, just like Uncle Owen said. Daydreaming and not keeping his mind on the present. "I - I heard - a - a noise-"
"Speak more clearly, boy ," Vader hissed. He drew nearer and it was like he was part of the darkness itself, wielding the shadows surrounding him like a weapon. "Or I will have to force it from you."
He was going to die. His grip on the rod was slippery with sweat. "I heard a noise! It sounded like - like - like someone was - was sick or… or something?" His voice pitched high and uncertain on the last word.
"This entire city is sick, child," said Vader, and his voice, mechanical as it was, had gone dangerously low. "Do not delay us again, or-"
"Wait," Leia interrupted him. "I hear it too."
A pause. Because of course Vader listened to her.
He put out a hand to stop them as they started to go up the steps, holding his lightsaber ready. Luke craned his head up, backing up against the wall in an attempt to see through the steps. It had come from somewhere above them, he was sure of it, and he searched in vain for a shadow, a movement against the faint light. Beside him, Leia took the opposite tack. The stairs went up in a square spiral, with railings to prevent them from falling down the vertical shaft to the bottom. She clambered atop that railing now, leaning her head over it to look up.
Something slurped, and Luke had just one second of horrible foreboding.
Vader's lightsaber went up. "Princess-" he started to say.
A very long and very thick thing came straight for Leia, dropping down the shaft like a rope being tossed down. But this was no rope - under the red light, Luke could see that it was huge and sticky and bulging like a massive tentacle from a sarlacc - and like one of those horrific monsters, it wrapped itself around Leia's waist and pulled up.
She screamed, clawing at it as she was jerked over the railing.
"Leia!" Luke shouted, before proceeding to do something extraordinarily stupid: he dropped the glow rod and threw himself forward and grabbed her around the middle. He buried his hands in the tentacle and he pulled back as hard as he could.
To his horror the tentacle swelled , ballooning where his hands grabbed it to form massive, translucent bubbles filled with swirling ooze. The rest of it tightened around Leia's body, making her choke. It was strangling her -
Luke, panicking, yelled incoherently and pulled again. The tentacle was dripping, wet and sticky - and then, horribly, he saw the tentacle stretch, the bubbles pull apart to form smaller and smaller pulsating pimples that dotted the entire length. He wanted to throw up at the sight, afraid it was going to burst and spread pus all over him - but he couldn't let it take Leia! And he dragged at the horrid wet mass and he had a wild moment of hope that he might just win this sudden game of tug-of-war.
Until something slurped again.
Luke had that moment of total fear and a sensation telling him to let go NOW - but it was too late. From the same place he saw another giant thing - a tongue, it's a tongue, like a gorg catching a sand fly , he thought crazily - and then it too wrapped itself around Leia and jerked -
His feet left the ground as he was pulled up along with Leia. Two tongues - he was not strong enough to pull against two of them - he still had tight hold of Leia but it was no use against two of them - and then all thoughts ceased as his body slid and crashed into the railing and then over it.
Luke's vision went white from the sudden collision. Pain stabbed his entire chest. His ribs felt broken; his arms and legs were raw and stinging where the rough metal had scraped off his skin - but the relief when it ended was gone when he looked down.
They were no longer on the stairs. They were in the stairwell, feet dangling over the massive dark hole beneath and only the flashing red light of Vader beneath them . That lasted only a second when Luke felt another jerk - and then he was being dragged up so quickly the air was hissing past their ears. His arms were burning from hanging on to Leia, his shoulders screaming from the pain, but he dared not let go - he did not think he could let go, thought he was stuck against that sticky, oozing tongue. It was a long, long way up - he could see the light growing and the shadow of a creature leaning over, dragging them to it, about to eat them - and below was only endless darkness, he could not even see the ground anymore, his and Leia's screams were echoing in the stairwell because there was only death either way -
Red flashed across his vision, soaring upwards faster than they were moving. Something that was not him or Leia screeched in pain and fury. And then, in that brief flash of light, he heard a splat and saw one of the red tongue things, still bulging horribly, suddenly split apart and drop - caught a glimpse of one end of it smoking and burnt. Another splat and the red light went spinning back down and he heard it's whirring hum pass inches by his ear -
And then they both dropped as well.
If he had thought being pulled up was fast before, this was nothing - he was plummeting, clinging onto Leia, both of them screaming - she still had one of those horrible tongues around her but Luke clung on regardless, slime coating his hand and getting between his fingers and pulsating under his grip like it was alive -
Then the fall ended into a short, sudden stop.
Not because they had hit something - they were floating.
Luke looked down and saw blinking lights. He blinked himself, trying to see. The glow was brightest there, bright enough to illuminate Vader standing near the bottom, hand outstretched.
He was doing this.
They began to move once more, but it was a slow drift down to where Vader was, then over the railing, his hand following them - guiding them - the entire way. It was his power, Luke thought wildly; that weird magical power that let him move things and read minds.
Inches from the floor and perhaps a foot away from him, Vader let his hand drop. So did they, stumbling as their feet connected sharply with the ground. Immediately, Leia peeled frantically at the tongue until it was off, then kicked it into a corner, looking disgusted. Luke wiped sticky palms on his robe. There was more of that ooze all over him and he really wanted to wash it off.
"Are you hurt?"
Vader. Luke started to answer, but Vader was only looking at Leia. She shook her head, face still wrinkled in disgust. Not fear; she was not afraid. Just grossed out. "No." Then, very deliberately, she turned to Luke and said, "Thank you, Luke, for trying to save me."
Luke really wished she hadn't done that. It just made Vader stare at him very hard. He dropped his gaze to the ground and mumbled, "You're welcome."
"And you heard it too, before any of us," said Leia irrepressibly. "You tried to warn us."
He really wanted her to shut up and stop drawing attention to him.
There was a tense silence. "Indeed," said Vader at last.
Leia looked almost smug, until she looked at her filthy, slimy gown. Disgust filled her face once more. "What was that?"
"An infected, but it appears to have… changed. Mutated," Vader replied. He examined the discarded tongue by the light of his saber. "Do you see? It resembles a head-tail of some kind." Luke, looking at it, could see that, for all of its bulging length and still pulsing bubbles, it was not exactly a tongue. It was much thicker at one side and ended at a point at the other. Vader continued, "It was possibly a Twi'lek. These resemble its lekku."
Twi'leks. Luke had thought he'd seen some of them around. Togruta too; they had lekku as well. But not like this…
Vader turned from Luke to Leia. "Do you have any objections to how I handled it?"
Under the glow of his lightsaber, Luke could see stubbornness cross Leia's face. "You didn't kill it, did you?"
"I heard it fleeing after I tore its lekku off."
She tilted her chin up. "Then I guess it's fine." She brushed at herself. "And… it's fine that you used the Force… like that."
"I am glad to meet your approval." His tone could cut durasteel. "Come. We are nearing the bottom."
Luke picked up his glow rod - miraculously it had not been lost or kicked to the bottom during the struggle - and they followed Vader to the end of the stairwell.
There was a door that opened into a cavernous basement, large enough that Luke's light could not see the far walls. He jumped in fright as he swept it around and saw huge shapes leap out at him, but they were just piles of unused computer consoles and some other furniture, stacked haphazardly around them. Vader, meanwhile, was not interested in any of that. He was busy searching the floor, and stopped when he saw a round metal cover to what he had called the "waste dispersal system".
Which, it turned out, was his word for the sewers.
"We're going in there?" Leia shared Luke's horror.
Vader hurled the cover aside without touching it, just moving his hand. The Force, Luke thought, remembering that word that Leia had used. What a scary power. He swore he could even feel something, like a vibration just below hearing level, when Vader threw the cover aside. Having found an opening, Vader leaped into the hole with a grace that Luke had not expected. There was a splash as he hit the bottom, and Luke aimed the rod downwards in an attempt to see through the darkness. But he didn't need light to guess what was down there: water.
"Get in," said Vader seconds later, his voice echoing up to them. Wherever he was, it was long and empty.
Leia stiffened, but Luke could see that by-now-familiar look of mulishness on her face - she refused to be scared, or at least to show that she was. She lowered herself to her knees and clambered to the edge of the hole, legs hanging over it. With a push, she hopped in - but it seemed to take an awfully long time for her to land, and when she did, it was only the lightest of splashes.
Then he figured it out. Of course Vader had probably slowed her fall. He doubted he'd do the same for Luke.
After a second, he heard her voice with the same echoing quality. "It's okay, Luke. Come on down."
But it wasn't okay. There was water down there.
And Luke could not swim.
He must have only hesitated a second, but it was a second too long for Vader. "Young one, you will join us down here or we will leave you behind."
Luke poked his head nervously over the hole, poking the rod as far down as he could reach. With that light and Vader's lightsaber, he could just make out the dark water below. It kept shimmering and it took a moment for him to figure out that it was moving, lapping against Leia and Vader in small waves. The tunnel was quite large, wide and tall enough to fit Vader and still have a foot of space between the ceiling and his helmet.
"How deep is it?" he asked nervously.
"Not deep, see?" Leia waved, the light barely catching her movement. "Just up to my waist."
That was far too deep for him.
He tried to think of something else. "Are there… monsters… um, infected down there?"
"No," said Leia at the same time that Vader said, "Undoubtedly." He had his lightsaber out. "They will have found their way through the connecting pipes."
"You said they wouldn't be here!" Luke heard Leia exclaim.
"That was before I realized that these connect to all the basements and the maintenance pipes."
"What if they find us?" Luke exclaimed even as his heart leapt. Maybe they wouldn't have to go down there…
Vader tilted his head up at him. "If you doubt my methods, you can stay up there." He moved away from the hole, out of Luke's line of vision. "Princess, come," he said, voice already further away, mixing with the lapping of the water.
Leia stayed though, waiting for Luke. "Come on, Luke."
His stomach was all a roil. I can't do this, he thought frantically. I can't …
Until he heard a faint shriek from the stairwell, traveling all the way down to them.
Leia jerked in fright, then stared up at Luke, face white even under the yellow flare of the glow rod. "Luke, come on! Jump down!"
Jump or be eaten, he heard in his head, sounding awfully like Vader - and that spurred him to swing his legs over the side and leap in before he could think about it.
He fell like a rock and landed on his back with a crush of water that knocked the breath from his lungs and totally disoriented him. The wave that his fall had created splashed over his body, over his head, knocking his pack askew and the glow rod from his hand. The light - the light was gone, bobbing and hurling up and down in the water until he was completely confused. When he tried to find his footing, all he felt was more water, pressing against his heels. TWhenever his feet caught on a surface, it would slip off before he could get any purchase. He flailed, trying to grasp onto the walls, kicking to find the bottom, but he couldn't, he couldn't do it - everything was black and endless, and when he screamed but no sound came out, only a stream of bubbles. He was sinking, his empty lungs about to burst -
But then someone - Leia - grabbed ahold of him under his arms and tugged hard. It felt like the water did not want to give him up, was sucking at him, pulling him further in its depths, but at last he surfaced, spluttering, spitting out water. His soaked robes dragged at his body, heavier than they had ever been before, floating around him like rags. Droplets streamed over his hair, getting into his eyes, blinding him; there was water in his nose, his mouth, choking him, and he kept gasping, wheeling his arms.
"Stop it, Luke!" Leia yelled. She was holding the glow rod in her hands, the yellow light illuminating her half-scared, half-angry face eerily. "It's just water!"
"I can't swim!" he screamed. "I can't swim!"
"It's okay, look! Just put your feet down, you can walk!"
I can't, I can't, I can't - his feet kept kicking, he felt so slow underwater, but he realized that they were hitting a hard, unyielding surface. Instinctively he pressed down on it, tried to stand. The water continued to pull at him, like it was trying to tip him over, but Leia was there, holding onto him.
"See?" she said reassuringly, still holding the rod above the water. "Not so bad, right?"
His attempt at a nod just made more water get into his eyes. He wiped at them, blinking more drops away. He saw Leia at his side, her own dress drifting around her waist. Vader was making his way down the other end, little more than a dark shape, his lightsaber still lit and emitting a red light that reflected off the wet arch of the sewer pipes.
Leia waited until Luke had regained his bearings. It was hard just to stand, the water felt… alive, not still. It wasn't even like the sand dunes, because at least those were more solid. If they started sliding, it at least went in one direction. These waves and the tugging seemed to go in every way, he didn't know how to balance.
"Wow, you really can't swim," she said bemusedly, sticking the glow rod closer to him as if he was a particularly funny animal she was examining.
Luke rubbed water out of one ear. "Yeah," he mumbled. "'Cause I live in a desert. There's no water there for me to-"
He was interrupted by a skitter, somewhere along the walls. He and Leia turned as one, staring.
Something moved, small and quick, and the two flinched back at first - but then it came into view of their light: a large rodent with a long, spiked tail and a squashed nose emitting two tusks. Its four long legs had several claws, all of them digging into the ferrocrete tunnel. It stared at them fixedly from its vantage point along the ceiling.
"A borrat," intoned Vader from all the way down at the end, voice loud in the narrow tunnel. "They are common on Coruscant." He added musingly, "They look fierce but are harmless if left alone."
Luke nodded. Okay, that was fine. It didn't look too different from a womp rat, if he was being honest, and those weren't scary, just annoying. He tried to focus back on the water and the slippery ground beneath his feet.
More skittering.
He started to turn again, but stopped. There was a borrat just a few feet from him, clutching onto the walls. Its eyes were gray and dead looking, its jaws opening wide like it was trying to breathe him in. There was another above it, and a third one behind it, and he could spot more moving shapes around them, coming into the glow of their light. Dozens, hundreds of little clawed feet gripping at the tunnel surface, shadows mirroring endlessly back into the darkness.
Leia was breathing harshly. Her grip on the glow rod trembled, making the light waver. He could hear even more scratching, increasing in volume, and it was above him, around him, behind him, the sound of thousands of nails digging into the wall, climbing, following them. In the darkness beyond he saw a blinking light as Vader, too, turned back towards them.
And their eyes. He could feel the force of thousands of eyes, all on them.
"Princess," said Vader, and even with the vocoder, Luke could hear the tension in his voice. "Come here. Now."
Leia grabbed his hand. She was breathing fast, forcing herself not to look around as he had. "Come on, Luke."
But he could not move.
"Luke, we have to go!" she exclaimed, pulling him forward so hard his foot almost slipped once again on the watery ground, and every part of his body seized up. He had almost fallen, if he fell he might not get up, he might drown, he could not take a step forward, he couldn't -
"Move!" Vader shouted from ahead.
"I'm trying!" Leia said angrily. "He can't swim!"
"Then leave him," snapped Vader contemptuously, and Luke could feel Vader's disdain, feel his look go right past him, as if he was nothing. Just a stupid farm boy who couldn't do anything and who shouldn't be anywhere near Darth Vader or a princess of Alderaan - and now he was going to get them killed -
"I'm not leaving him! He's coming too!" Leia said furiously. The light swung around her as she turned from Vader and back to Luke. "Luke, I'll hold your hand, I'll help you!"
Help him? He was going to be stuck here and get her eaten too, or else drag her down with him…
Movement, of a thousand bodies moving in a mass, like nothing Luke had ever seen; he had never seen before so many animals everywhere, on the walls and the ceiling - the only place they weren't entering was the water, the only thing keeping them at bay - the water he was terrified of -
"Come on!" She managed to pull him forward a few inches, the water pushing at him. It was so cold, his chest was seizing up, legs growing numb. "You have to keep going, Luke! Just - just-"
Her panicked eyes darted upwards and widened, and Luke did not want to see what she saw. His own breathing was a sharp pain in his chest.
Leia shook her head and focused on him. "Just keep walking! Okay, see?" She tried to show him.
It's too hard!
"See, don't think about it! Just move with the water! Don't worry about slipping!"
He tried. He tried so hard, stepping forward. His boots found a grip here, there, but he was so slow and he could feel the hungry stares of the borrats weighing him down - down and down to sink into the water and never get up -
"No, don't think about that! Think about - no, talk to me! Tell me something!"
What?
"I don't know! Anything! You can't swim, right? How come you can't swim?"
Desert planet…
"Well you live on a farm, right? Doesn't your farm have any water?"
He could see Vader's form moving towards them, lightsaber lit and oh stars, he was going to kill him for holding them up -
"No he's not!" Leia's voice broke in, furious. "Luke, tell me what you do on the farm!" Her voice rose to a squeak on the last word.
Nothing. Nothing interesting at all. Cleaning and fixing and cleaning some more…
"Then tell me about your family! You didn't finish telling me about your family!"
Family? He opened his mouth and managed to make one tiny noise.
Leia's face swam in front of his. "That was - good! Come on!" She tugged at his sleeve, moving him about a foot forward. "Okay, keep going! Come on, Luke!" Another, and another. They had almost reached Vader, whose lightsaber was lit, pointed at the ceiling, the light showing -
Tusks and claws and tails but above all, eyes, all of them gray like something dead, but they were alive, they followed him, and their teeth were bared and their jaws slavering -
"Don't look at them!" Leia shouted angrily. "Just look at me! It's just a bunch of stupid borrats! They're not going to hurt you!"
"They are infected," said Vader dispassionately. His lightsaber hummed, red glow reflecting off the thousands of eyes. "Any suggestions, Princess? Perhaps you want to talk them down from attacking us?"
Attacking us? The very air was trapped in Luke's throat. The borrats? All of them?
Something seemed to flare up in Leia as she sensed his terror. "Stop it! Stop scaring him!" she practically screamed. "Why do you have to be so mean all the time?"
In the stunned silence that followed, Luke could hear her voice bouncing up and down the walls and echoing back to them. He had never heard anyone talk like that to Darth Vader and he almost backed away at the boiling emotions that filled the tunnel.
Vader's next words were low and dangerous. "Very well. If he is so important to you, then stay behind." And he dropped his lightsaber, no longer illuminating the rats and somehow that was worse because Luke knew they were there but now he couldn't see them -
Leia grabbed Luke so hard his arm went numb, her face furious - and determined. In a rage, she screamed at him, "Hurry up, Luke, we have to move! Tell me who you live with! You don't have any parents, so who do you live with?"
It sounded so much like a command that it unstuck something in Luke's throat. "I - m-my Uncle Owen and - and Aunt Beru?"
"Okay." She nodded encouragingly, still pulling him along. "Anyone else?"
He shook his head.
"No one else?" she demanded, and gave his hand a tug.
He managed to gasp out. "They - they're all dead." He scooted forward another inch as the shrieks came louder. Vader, for all that he had said he was leaving them behind, had stopped somewhere ahead, so they were gradually gaining on him.
"Well, tell me about them anyway! Your mother, your father-"
"Don't remember my mother." He'd said this before. "My father - navigator. Spice freighter."
"What about grandparents?" She grasped his arm, walking onwards with him.
He started to shake his head, then gulped in air. It was so, so cold, the water. "They're - they're buried - buried on the farm."
"What were their names?"
"Cliegg… Lars." He sucked in more air. "And… Shmi Skywalker." His head was whirling with fear and the cold and the water… and something else… a weird hum in the air…
"Skywalker? Just like you, right?" Leia was nodding along, still pulling him further.
They had almost reached Vader, who was just standing there. Leia's hand slipped suddenly, but he grabbed at it in a fit of desperation, not wanting to lose his only lifeline. The sound was increasing to a tight buzz, though he had no idea what it was or where it was coming from. It was more than whirling, there was a storm around him, darkness howling in his ears. He wanted to shout except that he was sure it was all in his mind. "Right. Yeah - like - like my father too."
One more tug. They were almost level with Vader, who was still standing in the same spot, like he was frozen, feet from them. Had he really walked that far?
"What was your father's name?" she called. Could she hear the storm too? "Your mother's?"
He shook his head. "I don't know! I didn't know - I didn't know my - my mother!" He was repeating himself, hadn't he just said that? The buzzing was intense, a burning in his head. "My father - my father-" Was the world around him screaming? It had turned into a storm and him at the very center of it. "My father - my father was called… his name was - Anakin." He gulped, barely able to hear his own voice over the storm. "Anakin Skywalker."
The tempest went abruptly silent.
And then exploded into an inferno.
At first Luke thought the screaming was still in his head. It pressed so painfully at his ears and rang inside his skull that he released Leia's hand and hunched down, covering his ears. It was only when that actually muffled the sound did he realize it was coming from all around them.
He twisted his head around and saw the borrats, all of them, broken from their trance and flooding towards them. There were so many they were just a mass of thousands of moving bodies swallowing each other up, tails darting. They came down the ceiling, down the walls, along the narrow walkway before diving into the water, bodies swimming and jaws open to pierce their flesh -
A dark shadow swooped over them both.
With a heavy thud, Vader landed behind Luke, blocking the way to them. He flung out his hand.
Luke felt the water level drop and the band of coldness that had been around his torso and legs and feet disappear, leaving him feeling strangely light and free - but then forgot all about that as he saw the water move away from him. It was sweeping back, back towards Vader, then away from him as well -
It rose - a wall of water from floor to ceiling -
Vader thrust his hand out.
The water swept back like a wave, washing the borrats away with them, the rodents screaming piercingly in a fury as they smashed against the walls or hit the top, bodies tumbling helplessly away. There was an echoing crash as the water came back down somewhere far from them, the very end of the tunnel perhaps. Then a trickling sound, and Luke, squinting ahead, could see the reflection of water beneath the lights, slowly returning to them.
And he knew that the wave was only temporary. The water was returning to fill up the tunnel - and with it, the rats.
As if on cue with his realization, he heard a distant, maddened squeaking.
Luke grabbed hold of Leia and ran down the suddenly dry tunnel.
They ran all the way down, shoes squelching along the damp ground. Luke didn't know where he was going, but there were only two directions, and only one of them led away from danger. Water was trickling back fast - in the time that they had run, it was already streaming along their shoes, filling in the crevices and moving against the edges of the tunnel. He could see the wavering flash of red light and hear the rapid cycling of a respirator and knew that Vader was somewhere behind them, following.
And the enraged squeaking was getting louder.
Water gushed towards them, up to his ankles; he and Leia were pulling their feet up and out of it to try and move faster. There was a stitch in his side but the two children forced themselves forward even as the water rose up to their shins.
Because they could see a small circle of light up ahead, where there was a tiny metal covering that would let them emerge back onto the surface. The water was past their calves - flowing up to their knees - and the skittering sound was all around them again and if the rats reached them, if they covered the light that was their only way out, then all hope was lost -
A bang, and the circle of light became a spotlight.
A black form passed them by and shot out of the hole. Vader.
And they were left alone as water continued to fill the sewer and the skittering grew closer, and closer, and Luke could only think with a sense of overwhelming devastation that they had been abandoned, both of them, were being a hindrance, to be left behind to be gnawed to death -
Until he saw the flash of red light above, and heard the screeching that came not from the rats, but from whatever was waiting outside of the pipes.
Infected. More of them above them.
Luke craned his head above, saw Leia doing the same, but they could not see anything through that hole except the blue sky and the briefest flicker of movement - perhaps Vader's black cape whirling over the hole. The sweeping arc of his lightsaber. A hand or an arm grasping at the air, a foot against the edge - and once, the slice of the saber that cut off a limb which fell straight through the hole with a splash. Luke yelped, narrowly dodging the smoking thing.
It felt like it took an age, but it must only have been a few seconds - but in those few seconds, the water reached their waist - and the borrats came with them. They were scurrying towards them in a giant mass - they were feet away from them - then only half a foot - were mere inches from reaching them, their dead eyes and glittering teeth stark against the spotlight above -
His entire body jerked upward.
And then they were launched into the air.
Luke closed his eyes as they flew up the opening above - not floating, but shot upward as if out of a cannon to get flung onto a surface that was not wet or roiling or cold. Luke stumbled, falling to his knees and dragging Leia with him, and the two rolled onto their sides, gasping. There was a clatter and Luke saw vaguely that Leia had finally dropped the glow rod, letting it roll away from them. The light burned at his eyes and he rubbed at them frantically, thinking in a panic that there might still be more infected around them.
They were out.
When his vision cleared, he saw that they had emerged onto a was a massive circle of slaughtered infected, scorch marks and burns along their limbs, their necks, their bisected bodies. There was an array of crashed speeders and crumbled buildings. Beside him was Leia, looking sick and gripping his hand for dear life, and behind them was the ray shield - and finally the tunnel, the opening a gaping black hole from which he could still hear feral screeching -
And beyond all of that was Vader, his hand stretched towards them.
But then he let his hand drop, and Luke felt that strange gripping feeling on his body release itself. Vader was not done yet, however; wheeling about in a great circle, he waved his hand once more. The metal covering came sliding across the ground to fall with a thud on the hole they had just exited. Just like that, it cut off the animal squeaking beneath.
Out. They had made it out.
Luke wanted to collapse against the ground, but there were so many dead bodies around that it made him shiver. Leia had headed towards an emptier stretch of sidewalk to lean against a building, and he followed, still panting from their previous exertion. At last, he stretched out along the ground. He just wanted to lie there, stare at the sky, enjoy not being in the water. There was a rustle of cloth and he turned to see Leia slide down beside him, breathing coming in faint gasps. She reached over, seemingly without even thinking about it, to grab his hand and squeeze reassuringly. He could barely feel her, his own limbs had gone so numb, and for a few moments the two just stayed where they were, trying to gather themselves.
Finally, the shaking stopped, replaced by a funny prickling along his forehead. He rubbed at it, wondering if he had gotten dirt on himself, sitting up. Did they have to move? Leia yelling at him down in the tunnel and the fear of the last few days had gotten into his head, so all he could think was that maybe they shouldn't be just hanging about out here, they were so out in the open that it meant that anything might find and catch them -
Vader was staring at him.
Luke jerked, then looked around him. Were there more infected coming? But the streets were empty, and he turned back around.
Vader was still staring at him.
Not at Leia. Not at some infected being behind him. At him, at Luke.
It was like being directly under a laser beam. Luke stood up and tried to back away, it felt so intense, but he'd forgotten he was already leaning against a wall and his spine smacked into it. Leia sat up too, her eyes darting between him and Vader. He shot her a terrified look, wanting her help because she seemed to understand Vader a bit better than him, but she looked just as bewildered, and maybe even a bit intimidated too by the intensity of Vader's gaze.
What was it? Had he done something wrong?
Well, Luke could actually think of several things he had done wrong in the last hour. He started with the biggest. "I…" His voice came out in a whisper. He tried again, feeling a different kind of panic beginning to form. "I - I'm sorry that I… got scared. Down in the - in the tunnel." He swallowed. "It was the water."
No response whatsoever from Vader. He just kept looking at him.
What else? "I - and I shouldn't have gotten caught by the… tongue things. Tentacle things." He had been trying to help Leia, but still.
Vader took one step closer.
Luke, forgetting he was already up against the wall, tried to back up again and managed to bang his head against it this time.
Vader took another step. And another. He was still carrying his lightsaber, his lit lightsaber, and Luke shot a frantic look at Leia. She scrambled to her feet and pressed nearer to him, but for once, Vader seemed completely unaware of her. He didn't even spare her a glance. All of his attention was on Luke.
Was he going to die now? Was Vader finally going to kill him for getting in the way?
Vader came closer, and closer, until he was standing directly in front of Luke. His respirator seemed to be working overtime, the cycles much faster than usual. He was so close Luke had to tilt his head all the way up to look him in the eyes, or where he assumed his eyes were, which only resulted in him knocking his head against the wall once more.
The lightsaber turned off with a snap. Luke watched dazedly as Vader clipped it back to his belt.
With a creak of leather, he knelt down in front of Luke.
Luke had never been so confused in his entire life.
Another long moment followed of Vader simply staring at him some more. Luke wanted to shift around, to move away, to do something to get away from his gaze, but there was nowhere to go. He was sure he had done something wrong, Vader was just refusing to tell him.
"Tell me your name," said Vader.
His name? Luke was even more befuddled than ever. Was there something wrong with his name? "Luke," he said, trying to stop his voice from shaking. Vader remained where he was, waiting, and Luke knew he wanted more. "Luke Skywalker."
The silence that followed was endless.
Carefully, Vader reached out and held Luke by the chin, tilting his head up. Luke's breath hitched; he felt like that time he saw a Tusken Raider from afar, thinking only to himself, don't move, don't move, if you move it'll see you and then you're dead. But Vader only held him gently, and looked at him, and Luke could get no hint of his thoughts, could only see his own puzzled reflection in Vader's eye plates.
Finally, Vader released him, but he did not get up, stayed kneeling before him. Then, slowly, he turned his masked face to look at Leia, who met his gaze head on even though Luke knew she was as baffled as he was. Then back to Luke. And Luke had the strangest idea that Vader was figuring something out, but he had no idea what.
At last he straightened, still gazing down at Luke. He was silent another moment; he seemed to be thinking. There was a tingling feeling crawling up Luke's skin, almost burning.
Several feet away, one of the light poles abruptly fell over, crashing into the pavement.
Luke flinched, just managing to hold back a yelp. Leia was gripping his hand like a vise. Only Vader took no notice. In the distance, another pole was torn from where it stood to smash to the ground. Then a third. A fourth.
And Vader remained absolutely still, staring at them.
At last, it stopped, as did the tingling in Luke's nerves. He let out a small breath, not sure what had happened, what was going on, only that somehow, Vader was the cause.
Darth Vader. Who had finally moved to stare upwards at the shield.
He turned in one abrupt motion.
"The base is further outside the city," he said, and the normality of those words briefly shocked Luke. "If we hurry, we can reach it on the speeder before dark tomorrow."
Luke crept away from the wall. On his other side, he looked at Leia with questioning eyes. She shot him a troubled glance, but walked after him. Luke stayed where he was. He sensed the most dangerous moment was over, but… Vader didn't really mean to let Luke still go along with them, did he? After all the trouble he had been?
Vader turned and caught sight of him, still hiding against the wall. "You as well, young one."
Luke blinked, not sure if he believed what he was hearing. Hadn't Vader just told Leia to leave him? Hadn't he been trying all this time to dump him somewhere in the city?
But Vader was waiting, and looking at him. Actually looking.
Luke dashed forward, still in disbelief but not wanting to question his luck. Him too. Vader wanted him as well.
Vader stayed where he was until Luke had caught up to him - he really, actually waited for him - and then they continued their way through the city.
Okay I probably could have dragged the "Vader doesn't know Luke is his son" thing longer, but honestly, I don't think Luke would have survived more than one chapter unless Vader knows the truth lol.
In the Left 4 Dead games, there are the normal infected and then there are the "special" infected that have various gimmicks to their attacks to make the gameplay more interesting, and the Twi'lek with the mutated lekku was based off of that. (More specifically the Smoker, which has a long tongue it uses to grab players, so I adapted it to the Twi'lek lekku, which probably makes no biological sense BUT YOU KNOW WHAT)