Chapter Text
“Run,” Luke whispered to himself. Han couldn’t hear him. The blast doors had already slammed shut, the airlock disengaged, and the Falcon was off. But it kept him steady. It reminded him why he was still here, while they were gone.
They hadn’t left him behind. They hadn’t forsaken him. Luke had told them to go. Somebody had to save Leia.
Luke had to face the person he had forsaken, himself.
The rapid, pounding footsteps slowed, replaced by a more cautious gait. He took a deep breath. His father knew he had stopped running, just as surely as he must know that the Falcon had already jumped to lightspeed and was out of his reach. For now.
After a moment, those footsteps sped up again. Longer, more determined strides. Anger built like the tide behind a dam that was finally about to give way. Luke felt the ground of the Force tremble around him with the strength of those tides, felt narrow jets of fury spurt out with enough pressure to carve someone’s eye out, and he felt every inch of him cringe away from the feeling. He knew what was coming.
Selfishly, he wished Leia was here.
They had left together. They had agreed as a team that Palpatine was too great a threat to ignore, that their father wasn’t listening to them, and they had to get out for their own safety. If this day were to come—and they had always known it would—they would have faced it together. They had planned to face it together.
But Palpatine’s Inquisitors had captured Leia, half the galaxy away. The only mission they were apart, and it had all gone wrong. Han had to save her. And Luke…
Luke had to stay behind.
The blast doors between them were shut, the corridor locked down tight. Luke had locked them himself, sabotaged the mechanism with his new green lightsaber, to try and slow his father’s advance, to keep him from stopping Han from escaping. That didn’t stop his father for long, though. He shoved his own lightsaber through the metal and carved through it. It wasn’t quick. It didn’t need to be.
Luke wasn’t going anywhere.
His heart thundered. His every muscle tensed to flee. But he stayed there, lightsaber loose at his side, and waited.
His father’s lightsaber came full circle. The chunk of door he’d cut came flying out, inexorable, brutal. It flew towards Luke.
Luke didn’t move.
It flung him to the ground. Before it shattered his bones, all its momentum seemed to vanish, yanked back a moment before flattening him to the floor. Luke lay on his back, winded, gaze sparking with loose wires and molten metal. He heard rather than saw his father leap through the hole to land with a thud.
That was a good sign. His father didn’t want him dead as much as he purported to, at least.
Lungs still empty of air, Luke shoved himself upright, his arms trembling with fear and anticipation more than pain. His father hadn’t come any closer than the door he’d mangled. He stood five metres away from Luke, lightsaber still lit at his side. After a moment, he reached out a hand and Luke’s lightsaber flew into it as well. Luke hadn’t even noticed that he’d lost it in the fall.
Vader’s helmet turned down to inspect it. “You have built your own,” he observed, though he must have known that already. Luke and Leia had left three years ago. He lit it, made an offended noise through his vocoder at the green blade, then extinguished it again, letting it rest in his glove.
“It’s been a while,” Luke agreed. He hadn’t realised how dry his throat was until he spoke.
“It will be no longer.”
Luke swallowed, then he nodded. That was the price he’d known he would have to pay. That was why he’d chosen to stay behind. “I need your help.”
The temperature plummeted.
Vader’s hand constricted around Luke’s lightsaber, as if it was Luke’s neck. The image took him back to the evening they’d decided to leave, when Vader’s fury had been like a noose and Luke’s legs had kicked like a dancing droid’s—but that image would only bring fear, now.
His father had nearly killed him once, yes. But he needed his father to save him now.
“And here I had thought you stayed behind to allow your smuggler friend a chance to escape,” Vader hissed.
Luke tried for a shrug. “That’s what Han thinks, too. He thinks he’s gonna do it all by himself. But he can’t. I know we need your help.”
“Do what?” Vader threw Luke’s lightsaber to the side so hard that it cracked against the wall. It didn’t break; Luke was a good craftsman. But he winced at the sound. It clattered to the floor and rolled, stopping just behind Vader. “You and your sister forsook me a long time ago. And now you only return when you need something?”
Luke wished that they did not share the bond they did. Vader’s hurt, rage, and betrayal snarled inside him like a roll of barbed wire, tearing through his heart and lungs, the hot blood of defensiveness springing up within him in response. His father’s emotions had always been about him. Had this all been a mistake?
No. No matter his father’s faults, this was not a mistake. There was no getting out of this without him.
“Palpatine has Leia,” Luke got out. Vader, infinitesimally, stiffened. Luke babbled on: “The Inquisitors captured her on Garel. I only got her distress call through our bond before I assume they put Force-null cuffs on her. Either that or…” No. He wouldn’t tolerate the concept she might be dead.
“Good.”
Luke’s shoulders sank. “Father—”
Vader stepped forwards. “Now, we will have the both of you.”
Luke matched his father’s step forwards with a step back. “Palpatine won’t give you Leia. Not until she’s changed or…” He swallowed. He wouldn’t tolerate the concept she might die.
“You are Rebels. You both need to change.”
“She’s your daughter!” Luke snapped.
“And you were my son. But you both betrayed me. You both abandoned the Sith.” Vader turned to look at Luke’s lightsaber again, which had the nerve to be green, instead of red.
“So that’s it?” Luke backed away a little more, sick to his stomach. He’d been wrong. He and Han should’ve just mounted their rescue attempt and tried to do it themselves rather than taking this gamble— “We’re not your children anymore?”
And despite everything—despite the years of tears, blood, and anguish—something in Luke shattered when Vader said, “No.”
Luke flung out his hand. His lightsaber jerked and leapt into the air. It soared towards him in a flashing arc—
—and Vader snatched it out of midair.
“But you could be again,” he said.
Luke’s hand lowered to his side, fingers still flexing. His lightsaber hilt twitched, but it didn’t leave Vader’s hand. “What?”
“You know what I am asking.” But, just to make sure it was inexorably clear, Vader spelt it out: “Return to me, Luke. It was Palpatine that caused you to leave? We are Sith. We can overthrow the Master together. And then we can rule this empire as the family we once were.”
Sith, as Palpatine taught it, and family were antonyms. That was why Luke and Leia had left.
But his father’s golden gaze was heavy on his soul.
“Return to me,” Vader coaxed, “and we will kill him. Leia will be free.”
None of them would be free.
Luke took a deep, shuddering breath. He closed his eyes. The Falcon was far away, slicing through hyperspace, and Leia… he could feel nothing from her. It was a state of being so alien to him that nausea roiled in his gut.
“Alright,” he said.
Vader didn’t give him a chance to second guess it. He threw Luke his lightsaber. Luke caught it with ease and made to step forwards, but his father’s hand stopped him.
“You are going to pledge yourself to the Sith once more?”
Luke’s throat was dry again. “Yeah,” he said, unable to finish the s of Yes.
“Then prove it.” Vader gestured to Luke’s lightsaber.
He had taken such offence at that lightsaber, hadn’t he?
Luke took a deep breath, then bowed his head in contrition. “Yes,” he said, “Father.”
Satisfaction washed over him, but it was dark and clammy, sticking to him like an oil spill in cerulean seas. He wrapped his hands around the hilt of his lightsaber. The kyber crystal within it—his kyber crystal, tracked down and discovered by his own hands, bound to his soul—sang to him.
For Leia, he told it, he told himself. His crystal would understand. Surely? It was so close to Luke’s heart. It must understand.
He had avoided the dark side for so long, but the moment he reached out again, it flooded in. Tears slipped out from his closed eyes. His own agony spiralled in exponential amounts, until it was a sea of pain that pressed down on the serenity of his crystal, the peace he and Leia had found, these past few years.
Han would not be able to save her. Luke and Vader would have to.
The crystal stopped singing. It started screaming.
The screams rent through him. Luke sobbed, now, his breathing coming in heavy, heaving gulps, his tears a torrent instead of a trickle. The darkness was enticing. It buzzed through his veins, full of power, and he felt awful. Misery was his bosom companion. Fear led him along like he wore a chain around his neck. But the unnatural strength that horrible state lent him was very, very real.
His kyber crystal cracked. Luke fell to his knees, his hand clutching his heart, and bent his head.
He didn’t know how long he spent there, kneeling on the floor of a nondescript corridor of a nondescript Imperial ship, sobbing. His heart was a smashed mirror. It could only tell him what it reflected: the galaxy was broken, and it could never be fixed.
But he could have Leia. They could save Leia.
A hand landed on his shoulder. Luke looked up and saw his father standing over him. He was a focus for all that pain and fear. The fury that filled Luke made him choke.
He was why Luke had suffered so badly. He was why Luke felt like this.
He was the reason the galaxy was broken.
Vader plucked Luke’s lightsaber out of his hands and switched it on. The humming crimson blade sounded hungrier than it had before. Vader lifted it and touched Luke on the head, the left shoulder, the right. It wasn’t a quick touch. He pressed the blade down, until hair and cloth and skin burned. The pain dripped down through the cracks in the mirror and into the bottomless well of darkness Luke had let back into his soul.
“I accept your return,” Vader said, “my apprentice.”
Luke’s head tilted back up to look at him. His eyes itched, but not from tears. When he looked at himself in the warped reflection in Vader’s mask, they glowed gold as two newborn stars.
Vader dropped his lightsaber. Luke caught it. When Vader turned and walked away, Luke rose to his feet to follow, still shaking from the pain of it all.
“Father,” Luke said. He hadn’t had a promise yet. “Leia. What about Leia?”
Vader didn’t look back over his shoulder. “I have plans to take care of Palpatine forthwith.” It wasn’t a reassurance. “Do not fear. We will rescue your sister from her own delusions of the light, soon enough.”