Beyond - Legends Saga Certain Dark Things | Kessel Run Challenge 2023

Title: Lucky
Author(s): still me
Timeframe: still DE
Characters: Lieutenant "Lucky" Sam Dannel (OC), Luke Skywalker
Genre: I honestly don’t know how to define this.

Summary: "Lucky" Sam Dannel is luckier than he knows.

• Write a story between 500 and 1,000 words in which you make up a new OC (original character). Your OC must interact with at least one EC (established character), and your story must include the following line of dialogue: "Something was bound to go right sometime today."
• Word limit = 500-1,000 words

---

Lieutenant "Lucky" Sam Dannel hated his life. Hated it with the white hot fury of a thousand suns.

He studiously tried not to think about the last time he'd been in this particular position - though, as always, trying very hard not to think of something made the task impossible. Especially when the experience had shaped so much of his life afterwards. He'd acquired his nickname years ago, after all, for being the only person aboard the Executor who'd managed to deliver bad news to their terrifying cyborg overlord and live to tell the tale.

This particular assignment, which found him somehow standing and waiting and counting down the likely minutes remaining in his lifespan as he prepared to give the Emperor's new favorite bad news again carried with it a distinct flavor of deja vu.

Not for the first time, he fervently tried to remember why he hadn't just cashed his chips in last time and bid an unfond farewell to the Navy altogether. And not for the first time, he twisted the engagement ring hiding under his glove and reflected that his fiancé would never ever forgive him.

Kriff you, Logan, Sam thought peevishly. It's a lot easier to be pro-Empire when you have a desk job away from the Emperor's murderous apprentices, and -

The meditation pod started to slowly crack open, and Sam drew himself up to a stiffer attention as the top and bottom slowly separated from each other, and the chair within it spun smoothly around to face him.

"Why are you even here? You don't actually want to be here," Skywalker remarked eventually, breaking the long, uncomfortable silence.

Sam sputtered for a moment before managing to recalibrate himself. "My lord? I mean - my lord! I have news about the World Devastators -"

Skywalker silenced him by waving a dismissive hand. "I know, I know. Tampering with the Master Control Signal, and Naval Intelligence has concluded that it was done by someone within the High Command. You've told me - I think this is the third time?"

He blinked. "I- I- my lord?"

"You forget every time, of course, but that's not your fault - and not my point. I just want to say: Lieutenant Dannel, you think very loudly, and it's getting to be quite tiresome to overhear these same thoughts every time you're standing there waiting to deliver your news, and without you willing to take any action to address your situation."

Sam was past the point of speech by this time, even the habitual, my lord? that had been ingrained in his reflexes, and could only stand in gaping, bewildered silence.

Skywalker - Lord Skywalker, the Supreme Commander of Imperial Forces - sighed irritably and abruptly stood up from the chair, his night black cloak swirling lightly as he stalked out of the pod.

Sam reflexively recoiled - and Skywalker paused midstride, cocking his head slightly to the side as if he could hear the sound of Sam's racing heartbeat. Sam unconsciously flexed his sweating hands again.

The Sith's eyes were shadowed, but it seemed for a moment like something flickered in them, something hungry. "Life is so cheap here," Skywalker remarked softly, and Sam didn't know if he imagined the hand brushing across his throat. "You're absolutely terrified that I'm going to kill you - for what? Delivering bad news? That ought to be patently ridiculous. But -" here Skywalker raised his hand, his fingers loosely curled like he was gripping something, "- even a cheap wine can be intoxicating, can't it?"

There was something against his throat he wasn't imagining it this time -

- but it was also gone in an instant, and Sam gasped when it did, his breath his own again. And, still, he didn't dare take his eyes off the Supreme Commander as Skywalker quickly retreated again to the shadows of the meditation pod, shaking his head as if in fierce denial. "I'm so sorry. I'm not myself."

Skywalker collapsed bonelessly back into the chair, though the pod didn't close. "You will not report this to the Emperor, or to anyone else," he said eventually.

"I will not report this to the Emperor, or to anyone else," Sam agreed, suddenly relieved.

Skywalker's fingers drummed against his armrest. "You will erase evidence of the tampering."

"I will erase evidence of the tampering," repeated Sam, as though anything so obvious really needed to be said. Why should he waste the Supreme Commander's time with such minutia?

"You will send anyone else who knows of this to me," said Skywalker, still drumming his fingers.

"I will send anyone else who knows of this to you," said Sam, surprised at his willingness to inform the Supreme Commander of such mundanities. Truly the Supreme Commander’s patience was inexhaustible, if he was willing to listen to such prattle.

"You will go home and rethink your life - and you will forget any of this ever happened."

"I will go home and rethink my life, and I will forget any of this ever happened," Sam said, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Dismissed."

When he found himself outside the hallway to the Supreme Commander's quarters a few moments later, Sam had a brief moment of disorientation, something like deja vu. But he shook himself quickly, started briskly walking down towards his quarters - and asked himself for the first time in a very long time, what the kriff am I even doing here? I hate my life here with the white hot fury of a thousand suns.

He supported the Empire - but did he support the Empire and all its brutal actions because he believed in them, truly, or did he support the Empire because he loved Logan and knew it would be hard to convince his fiancé that they should find themselves a way out?

Well. He'd never know how hard it'd be to convince Logan if he never gathered the courage to actually try, would he?

"Something was bound to go right sometime today," Lieutenant "Lucky" Sam Dannel murmured to himself, and changed direction, aiming for Logan’s quarters instead. He absently flexed his fingers, and fervently willed himself to believe it.

They called him "Lucky" for a reason, after all.


End.

 

Staying alive, staying alive. That's Lucky. I like his intereaction with Skywalker. And I hope he can convince Logan to lead a different life.

 

Ah, I've caught up on two great entries!

Oh, the hubris!

It's called intuition, Luke! Run!
I love how this imagery of predation and overwhelming force conveys that what Luke is pursuing is going to devour him. So surreal and nightmarish.

Ooh, this is neat! I've always had trouble really relating to why Jedi fall dark and what the experience is like. You use such a lovely image to convey that the dark side draws people toward it by using the illusion of hope as bait. It finds someone who is lost and lures them further away from safety... I love it!

Ah, more hubris, to believe that staying on the path and trying to retain a sense of self mean that he's in control.

I love this; Luke is not an ambitious, power hungry person, but he has an innate curiosity that is enough for the dark side to weaponize against him.

Well, he came here for knowledge and just learned something important, so that's pretty cool, right?

OH MY GOD THE FORCE IS A PUPPY

You've made the Force cry, Luke!

Such a lovely illustration of his inner resilience, and how it can give him hope of escaping by allowing him to see things as they truly are, with no one else controlling it.

It's a great story, and a skilled use of introspection. You also make the 2nd person POV narration seem natural, which I think is very challenging.


I really enjoyed this next story, too.

I classify this as humour-angst, personally.

What a great opener! I already like this OC.

This is some very efficient and entertaining exposition-- another thing that's hard to pull off.

Oh, poor guy.

Dude's got a point. But I also like that bit of foreshadowing about not being able to remember why he had made the decision that he did... it suggests that something is messing with his memory.

Huh. Luke is so wholesome that he'll think of others' career satisfaction and happiness even after he has become a Dark Lord of the Sith.

This... this is a dark!Luke that I buy completely! I love this!

Is it weird that between the cloak and irritability, I'm getting serious Jareth the Goblin King vibes from this guy?

Well now you've got me imagining dark!Luke chilling in the throne room, taking swigs of Baby Duck from a comically oversized bottle like my parents did back in the day.

Aw man, even Sith!Luke is... nice? His aunt and uncle's lessons in manners really stuck, didn't they.

Okay, I love this detail of Sam's thought process, in which he automatically and unconsciously comes up with justifications for these thoughts that Luke is putting in his mind. It works just like intrusive anxious/depressive thoughts before you learn to identify them with psychotherapy; it's not really the weak-minded who are vulnerable, but those who aren't practising mindfulness and lack the metacognitive skill of observing and identifying one's thoughts as they happen. If you're not questioning where these thoughts are coming from, your brain will treat it as any other thought, and your sense of reality becomes increasingly distorted over time. When you think about it, the Jedi Mind Trick is a terrifying amount of control to have over someone.

I'm learning so much about evil from you!

So, dark!Luke is holding onto his core self, hoping to sabotage the Empire from within. I think it's fun that this thought would never occur to Sam, and he figures his boss must be a real micromanager or something. Sam's innocence here is just delightful.

Ah, I love this callback, and the sense that Sam's been gifted the chance to start over, in a way.

I love how naturally this course of action occurs to him, and that it just took a little push from Luke to make him do the thinking necessary to make a wise decision. Such a great use of the prompt phrase, too.

Looking forward to reading more!

 

Now that's a great opening

I sincerely want to believe that at least some people on the Executor secretly referred to Vader as "our terrifying cyborg overlord"

The contrast here is hilarious, Luke's so bored

Grow a backbone, Sam! Or at least think more quietly Side note: I absolutely love the "you think very loudly" concept and have used it multiple times in my own writing and will continue to do so because it's just great, seriously, imagine a Jedi (or a Sith) telling you to keep your thoughts down, please. No wonder Mara told Luke to stay out of her head

Well yikes there's a thought

ACK THERE HE IS, you sure do write a creepy/conflicted Luke when you want to, Elli

As funny as this whole thing is, there's this serious undercurrent where you can really see Luke's menace and ennui and conflict and it's masterful and I love it [dark] [/dark]

And this - it's still funny, but suddenly you see the bookend effect and it's just so well done

And the question now is, has he tried before, or did Luke finally get fed up with the loud thinking and threw in the "you will go home and rethink your life" for the first time and maybe Sam will finally escape his fate of delivering bad news to Sith Lords

 

I'll be back to respond more fully to replies but:

Oh em geeeeee Gabri I had never actually considered the possiblity that Sam had been sent home to rethink his life before, and something something death of authorial intent, but: imagine Logan's reaction if his fiancé comes suddenly into his quarters three times in like a week or so, with the same, "so funny story, but I found myself outside the Sith Apprentice's quarters and realized we should defect."

What do you do with that?! The first time, you're like, okay fine, let's talk about it and maybe you table it for later - but then it happens again. And again.

(1) What the hell is wrong with Sam, is he broken??
(2) Is this some sadistic loyalty test?! Sith are supposed to be sadistic psychopaths, it's on the label.

And what are the long term side effects of Jedi mind tricks anyway? Are there any more acute side effects to multiple mind tricks within a short duration? Brains are weird and fragile, is Sam's memory all holey like Swiss cheese now?

Gah, I have so many thoughts about mind trick ethics. And like - there must be an element of interpretation to it, right? So the mind trickee might execute differently than the mind tricker intended? What if they go too far, and you get a guy going home to rethink his life and descending into an existential crisis he can't be roused from and then he dies of dehydration?

The problems of a soft magic system, I guess.

 

Precious, precious reading time today - *dives into fics*

I've not read DE since first publication, but I'm so intrigued by this series! *reads on, happily*

It's sickmaking how sadistic this tu- er, guy is.

Anakin, to a tee ...

That is it, he wants to have the Dark Side and eat it, too ... or something like that.

Sad but true.

Try, try hard!

 

@earlybird-obi-wan

Thanks! I believe in these two, I think they're gonna be okay.

@UltramassiveUbersue

Normal!Luke is cocky and confident but deserves it based on his skills. Dark!Luke with Palpatine whispering poisoned promises in his ear takes it a little further and tips into hubris.

I had a few thoughts swimming vaguely in my head while writing this: the first being Orpheus and Eurydice, and the importance of not looking back as you're walking through hell. And the second was the will-o'-the-wisp, the creatures that lure travelers into dark swamps with illusions of light.

It is, yeah. He's going to get what he came for.

I had not pictured a puppy, but a puppy is perfect??

Thank you! I write in second person a lot - English wasn't my first language, and I just find the verb tenses easier to work with? Sometimes I write in second person, read it and decide it needs to change to third person, and then go back and edit it into third person. Like I did with this week 4 scene that I'm about to post.

Yeah, that's probably a good name for it. I honestly didn't mean to make it so funny.

Thank you! It broke my heart that I ended up having to cut a (completely superfluous) paragraph about how Sam hates the feeling of his sweaty leather gloves - I love those little bits of scene-setting. But alas, word count.

I had the idea that he's talking a bit to himself here, too. He doesn't want to be here either, and yet can't quite summon up the courage and will to leave.

Not my intention, but I'll take it. Any Jareth the Goblin King vibes are good in my book.

Aaaaaa also not my intent, but I love your interpretation so much more?! I had absolutely not thought about it that way, but that's a really cool way to look at it. This whole thing started when I had the thought that - wow, Jedi mindtricks are really really ethically questionable. What even is the limit, and how would you ethically test that as a Jedi training at the Temple or whatever? And clearly there's no cultural taboo against using what's essentially mind control, but somehow coded as a light side power because Obi-Wan does it. I have so many thoughts about this - but the idea that it's like intrusive thoughts, and the idea of the "weak-minded" (what a vague concept) are susceptible because they don't have that skill of metacognition? I love that.

Let's hypothesize about the nature of evil together. Evil group project.

So in the comic, it's presented as Luke giving into Palpatine and agreeing to learn about the Dark side to defeat it from within. And I hate it a little. I like the concept of Dark!Luke (clearly) but didn't like the Dark Empire execution. But yeah, this chain of mind tricks is pulled pretty directly from the comic - except for the implication that this has happened before, I made that part up.

He certainly is lucky.

I think I got the verb tense wrong - but it was the closest I could get. Thanks for the lovely comments!

@Mira_Jade

The set before is really the problem, the one after is mostly sorta happy. With a very broad interpretation of happy.

Oh oh, I know this - the scene with the drunken elephants from Dumbo!

I love him so much Mira; he's terrible, and he's having so much fun being terrible, and I love him.

Even weirder is that - you know how your week 2 is Songverse!Leia dreaming of Alderaan? A few weeks ago, I was playing with ChatGPT and gave it the prompt of "a young Princess Leia dreams of Alderaan's destruction." Clearly we have a Force bond.

Always. These Skywalker boys.

I really do love evil one-liners.

I started writing this with the thought of, You know, it was played for humor, but it was kinda paternalistic and presumptuous of Obi-Wan to make that suggestion in the first place. And you know who wouldn't really care about ethical concerns about Jedi mind tricks at this point in the timeline? That guy.

@Gabri_Jade

It is absolutely my headcanon. They must have.

I typed this before reading the concept executed over on Reclamation - and what a flexible and fun concept, it can be so so fluffy or so so creepy.

It took me an unreasonably long time to figure out that that was Superman and not Homelander from The Boys.

Little known fact - I always want to.

I have already typed my overthinking on this issue at you, but aaaaa

@Findswoman

Thank you! Vader's secretary is going to be so fun once I write her - the idea originated as a character for the cat!Vader 'verse, in which Luke tries to find a catsitter for Father when he's away doing Jedi things and just interviews dozens and dozens of candidates that Father rejects before they land on Alphaenea, and Luke has to dig her backstory out of a reluctant Sith cat.

@pronker

I am deliriously behind on reading. So many things to read!

I have written a lot about DE - I'm linking my previous stories in the notes of the next story, but they are literally ... very long stories. But the DE I write from differs slightly from the comic? Not enough that I'd call it an AU but like ... another version of the same story.

He is, isn't he.

true! These are not his best moments.

I believe in them! Thanks for the comments.

 

Title: Heretic [Working title: "Unresolved Vader Issues"]
Author(s): still me
Timeframe: still DE
Characters: Lady Lumiya, Luke Skywalker
Genre: angsty action? is that a thing? it is now.

Spoiler: Notes

Note: Don’t mind me, I’m just indulging my special interest by writing Luke Skywalker as a horror movie villain. Did this happen? Not officially, but this time period of the Legends canon is such a mess, who knows if it did or not? There are starfighters piloted by the zombie brains of Imperial pilots and brought to life through Sith alchemy in this time period, this wouldn't be the weirdest thing.

And also, canon is a choice. And this particular canon is the one from my "Dark Empire but make it L/M and also better" story 'verse (it's literally a long story; actually, two long stories so far: Black Pawn and Black Knight) so if you're wondering why this DE!Luke has Vader’s weapon, the answer is, "because I said so" - and secondly, "because it's cool."

---

• Write a story between 100 and 1,000 words that is predominantly action. You can have as many characters interacting as you want, and you can include introspection as long as it doesn't outweigh the action.
• Word limit = 100-1,000 words

---

Lumiya’s lightwhip had not been made for defense, so she could only dodge when Vader’s blade followed by Vader’s son came hurtling unexpectedly out of the darkness - the crimson beam illuminating that once-familiar face in a bloody glow that set his once-blue eyes aflame.

Skywalker didn’t stop but immediately swung the blade back around: high, this time, and sure - and she couldn’t dodge but was forced to make an ungainly parry with the beskar hilt of her weapon. It was too short; far too short, but serviceable enough to save her from that quick decapitation. Plasma glanced haltingly off of metal, and Lumiya grit her teeth against the strain.

It was that blow more than anything else that shocked her: that he had attempted a decapitating strike at all. But it seemed he had fallen a long way since she had seen him last.

"Hello, Shira," Skywalker said simply - and grinned. And in the dark night of Korriban, illuminated only by the blade’s gleam, his teeth, too, were bloody scarlet; a trick of light and shadow made them seem somehow sharpened, predatory, hungry. "I didn’t expect to find you here."

And then he abruptly shut off the blade and plunged them again into blackness.

She spared a moment to murmur a curse - and then quickly cast her awareness out to seek him. The metallic sheen of her life-supporting armor put her at a distinct disadvantage in low light, and even the faint light of the distant stars made her body glimmer in the darkness: a beacon. Skywalker, in contrast, was cloaked in black and had made the shadows his ally in more ways than one.

"I never expected you to fill Lord Vader's boots quite so eagerly, lover," Lumiya sneered into the near opacity of the moonless night - and was rewarded with a low chuckle that came somehow from everywhere: the sound echoing and bouncing impossibly across the flat grasslands of the Sith homeworld.

He'd found a way to cast his voice, and though she knew it was a trick - whether through the Force or conventional acoustics, it didn’t matter - she couldn't quite suppress the reflexive prickle of unease that shot up her spine. She ignored it, continuing, "Or to find you quite so eager to take his place as the Emperor's lap dog."

A bright flare of anger through the Force, immediately tamped down - but not so fast that Lumiya didn't pinpoint its source, whirling quickly to send the tendrils of her lightwhip arcing across the distance to tangle with his swiftly summoned blade. He tried to jerk it away, but she pulled on the handle of the whip, tightening the coils and keeping his weapon ensnared. "But you have come a long way, haven't you, lover? A long way down."

Skywalker bared his teeth, a rictus grin that was more a snarl than a smile. "I'm not here for you, Shira. I didn't even know you'd be here. But," he shrugged, "why pass up this golden opportunity to - clear the air between us?"

And again, he disengaged his saber, the sudden disappearance of the plasma beam freeing him to sprint - not away, but towards her. As soon as his blade was free, he reignited it, still charging; he was trying to close the distance, bringing her again into the close quarters combat where her lightwhip would be a disadvantage.

But this time, Lumiya was expecting it, and she dodged neatly under the two-handed blow that would have cleaved her chest cleanly in two had she still been standing there - and having ducked instead into his defenses, in closer quarters than he could defend against with the long blade, she jabbed the hilt of her whip sharply into his ribcage and dropped to the ground to sweep his feet.

Skywalker grunted as the hilt made contact but managed to dodge her leg, dancing a few quick steps back to gain the distance he needed to use his lightsaber to its full advantage.

She didn't let him, staying close to harry him instead with short, quick strikes of the beskar hilt of her whip - high, and left, then quickly switching the handle to her right hand to strike again towards his ribcage where she had struck earlier, a flurry of strikes as she searched for a weak point in his defense.

He blocked each of her blows - though at this close distance the angle of the blade was awkward and difficult, and Lumiya snarled, sensing the cusp of victory.

She harnessed her frustration and fury, and sped up her attack - but to her surprise, Skywalker shot out a rapid hand and grabbed her wrist, twisting it mercilessly back until she dropped the whip with a startled cry of pain.

He kept twisting, forcing her unwillingly to her knees, and Lumiya could only growl in vicious, wordless hatred as he impassively met her gaze, his golden eyes glowing now with triumph as he held the scarlet blade unflinchingly at her neck.

And, distantly, Lumiya thought, And maybe this is how it should end: at my Master's blade. No matter who wields it.

"The sentence for heresy among the Sith is death, isn’t it?" Skywalker asked softly. "For a rogue Sith Lady, who disregards the Rule of Two and challenges the successors to the line of Bane?"

"Just kill me and be done with it," Lumiya snapped.

"Vader never cared about you, Shira. You were always just a tool intended to drive a wedge between Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance. As expendable a tool as any other. Vader never even planned for you to succeed - much less survive. He always meant -"

Lumiya lunged, her enhanced cybernetic legs giving her a final burst of strength, the heat of her rage making the hovering promise of the Vader's red blade suddenly irrelevant in her urgent need to rend this pretender, Vader's heir simply through an accident of birth -

The hilt of the lightsaber, not its blade, crashed into her temple - and she collapsed.


End.

 

I'm back!

Lucky: This was such an entertaining and smart story. Sam doesn't even know how lucky he truly is, as he forgets it each time Here's hoping that the addition of "go home and rethink your life" means that he won't need that kind of luck again. Meanwhile, Luke is so deliciously creepy and yet so Luke throughout. You can almost see the little angel and the little devil sitting on his shoulders and whispering in his ear.

This was a great new OC, wonderfully fleshed out with economy of words. I still want to read about the secretary though.

The action story (still untitled as if this post): for someone who claimed they don't write action, you did a mighty fine job here; there was (IMHO at least) quite enough detail to picture the duel blow-by-blow, but little enough that it wasn't tiresome. Again, Luke was deliciously creepy in this, with his teeth reflecting the red light (yikes!), his voice coming from everywhere and his going back and forth between trying to decapitate her/cut her in two and choosing to disarm her/knocking her senseless. You clearly gave a lot of thought to the psychology of DE Luke, and it really comes through in these stories

 

WOW dark Luke again and ending the fight with a blow (keeping her alive?)

 

Fine action scene with Lumiya basically dueling most of the time with only the hilt of a weapon.

Right from the get-go.

Oooh, the real name, you know it's serious when Real Names come out.

I'm enjoying her skills, amply displayed.

Something happened here ... I'm unsure what ... could not be mercy, nah ...

 

Quite riveting action! And you kept up the action through most of the story. Well done. Sounds like Lumiya will have a terrible headache when she wakes up. Tylenol?

 

Wow! in the midst of everything, I'd missed your week 3 entry. Sorry, but it was well worth the wait. Dark Skywalker (mmm, like a new flavor of dark chocolate, perhaps? ) mind tricking this poor, innocent Imperial lackey, lol, I loved it.

 

Canon is what we say it is

Just look at this lovely rushing opening sentence, like a wave breaking over the reader's head

Yes, I should think that would be a shocking development [dark][/dark]

AAAHHHHHH

Actual tactics that make sense with a lightsaber!

Come on, now, Shira, you gotta upgrade to a matte finish

I really love the idea of people thinking of Vader as the Emperor's lap dog, especially when those same people would be afraid of both Vader and the Emperor themselves. Like, who exactly ever stands up to Palpatine? And Vader could do away with pretty much anyone else he likes at any time. But people are full of contradictions and sometimes hypocritical and also in a place like the Emperor's Court (or in the mindset of Sith in general) weakness of any sort would be something to zero in on and hold in contempt, even if it wasn't a weakness you personally could take advantage of. And yes, I know Lumiya's deliberately taunting Luke here, but I still just really like this for itself too.

Yes, good, that's an excellent use of Force-sensitivity tactics

Ahhh, so much good action writing, I love it

This feels like an extremely Lumiya thing to think :lumiya:

I just love this. I can't even figure out how to articulate why I love it, but I do. So atmospheric and creepy coming from Luke and irritating to Lumiya and also pragmatically accurate and it's just a whole bunch of good things at once, okay

Ahhhh and this, it's so good Elli

 

@Chyntuck

You are! I hope the children are better. Mine got me sick.

Jedi mind tricks seem like such an ethical gray area - it's essentially mind control? And I had the thought that now of all times, Luke doesn't really care about the fuzzy ethics of mind control. Sam is so much luckier than he knows, and I think he and Logan are going to be okay.

Eeee that's a great visual, yeah. These aren't his finest moments - but he's still Luke Skywalker.

Usually the title comes to me right away, but not this time. Working title was "Unresolved Vader Issues," but that didn't really match the tone. I'm open to suggestions.

Thank you! I do write action sometimes; it's just not my particular strength (I think I do introspection and dialogue better), and I very very seldom feel called upon to do it because I'm usually more interested in different character dynamics? But GFFA fight mechanics are fascinating, I love banter, and I love cyborg Sith with complicated relationships with Luke Skywalker, so this worked out fine.

It's just really really fun to write him as a horror movie villain. He's clever and capable and so damn dramatic - he'd be so good at it. My boy.

But based on the later Legends books? A dead Lumiya at this point in the timeline could have saved everyone a lot of grief. But I have spent a lot of time thinking about Luke's mental state in his goth phase ... and it didn't feel right, to have Luke ever kill an unarmed opponent like this. Even now. Even though he kills an unarmed Lumiya later in Legends.

I have a cracky headcanon that Luke is a really good voice actor, like Mark Hamill. And I'm utterly tickled by this situation that I put him in, in which he apparently took his hypothetical party trick of ventriloquism and used it tactically - and creepily.


@earlybird-obi-wan

Dark Luke almost always! I know my strengths. And yes - Lumiya canonically survives until far later in the timeline, to everyone's chagrin. I think I created a pretty opportunity for angsty self-recrimination for future Master Luke, in the universe where this fight actually happened.


@pronker

This story basically wrote itself while I tried to think of the ways these two would try to best each other, given the various advantages but also limitations of Lumiya's weapon.

I like to get started quick. And figured one of the best ways to try to defeat someone with a lightwhip would be to try to take them up close and by surprise.

I am oddly enamored with the idea of Sith just casually dead-naming each other as an insult.

They're both skilled combatants and I don't want to undersell either of them; I don't think Luke canonically beats Lumiya without dual wielding with a shoto until 30 years after this point in the timeline, so this was mostly an exercise in setting up a fight where they fought for the relative advantage of ideal distance for their particular weapons

He already murdered her with words by telling her Vader never cared about her. So who knows.


@Vek Talis

Thank you! I can write pretty good action when I'm called to, it's just not my favorite. And yes, get that lady a space! Tylenol

We were just talking about Luke food metaphors on the last page. I do like the chocolate, but I also like Gabri's toast proposal.


@Findswoman

I have so many complicated thoughts about Lumiya and gave myself so many random Lumiya feelings I have to find a way to process now, just from skimming her Wook page for this story. She has a weird mix of Vader's and Mara's backstories, both of whom rank high in my list of favorite characters, and I didn't know how badly I wanted to explore that. She also has a fascinating relationship with multiple generations of Skywalkers; towards the end of the Legends timeline, the authors bring her back and she becomes Jacen's Sith Master.

Her story ends in Legends when Luke kills her in LotF: Sacrifice. By which time she's a lot calmer and more mature, as is Luke. But she caused a lot of chaos along the way, and in a universe where this fight happens, Master Luke probably regrets this mercy granted by his younger self.

At this point in the timeline, I feel like Luke's moral lines in the sand are shifting, and he sees it and he knows it and he hates it. But one of the bright red lines that remains is this: Luke Skywalker doesn't kill unarmed opponents. So maybe the mercy isn't about saving Lumiya so much as saving whatever remains of himself.


@Gabri_Jade

The boy's fighting to win.

I just love writing him like a horror movie villain. He's so dramatic.

Tactical use of your surroundings, lighting, and weapon; good job [dark][/dark]. *hands a small trophy*

I have so many questions about her character design and about the extent of her injuries. I was ranting about the extent of her injuries to someone else who said, "Well, Vader burned in lava, but Lumiya just exploded in a starfighter." And like, what? What do you mean just exploded in a starfighter? I'll grant that she wouldn't have burned as long as Vader, but she definitely burned, it definitely hurt, and there's some extensive life support needs that should have taken precedent over preserving her feminine shape. And why is she shiny? Who knows, but it made for a fun thing to work into the fic.

Yay, thank you! The Force is such a fun "magic" system, and I appreciate that it's soft enough for me to handwave.

You know, I checked out LotF: Exile from the library to "research" this, because I figured I couldn't be too disappointed if I just skimmed it for this scene and since Allston was writing it, and there's really not a lot of description for that Luke/Lumiya duel. The other Luke/Lumiya fight in LotF: Sacrifice I couldn't stand to read again, and the rest seem to be mostly in comics, so I just made it up. But that whip? Such a cool weapon to imagine, and also with the obvious disadvantage for close-range combat.

I love writing the messed up relationships Sith have with their masters that's on the one hand hateful and on the other hand worshipful. They're so toxic.

I think it's just so fun to put actual Sith rhetoric and language and rules or whatever into his dialogue, because it feels like - like look, he's dabbling in the Dark, we know that, Veitch told us so. But here's a moment where he self identifies as a successor to the line of Bane, and that seems to say: hey, maybe he's not just dabbling. Also, I like the description of the crime as "heresy" because I think that frames the Sith as both a religious institution and also a murder cult.

He's being so mean, I love him. And you know what, Sam's just some schmuck in the wrong place at the wrong time - but he can casually eviscerate Lumiya with words, I'll allow it.

 

Title: The Seduction
Author(s): still me
Timeframe: purposefully ambiguous?
Characters: you and the Dark side
Genre: philosophy? political manifesto?

Summary: In which the Sith Code is reinterpreted as a revolutionary call to action.

• Write a set of 3 double drabbles with the following prompts: juggernaut, shepherd, undertaker
• Each double drabble must be exactly 200 words, for a total of 600 words

---

1. Shepherd

Listen.

The Jedi promise peace, but what does that mean? An order of soldiers and peacekeepers - but what is peace, truly, if it can only be maintained at the edge of a blade?

What right do the Jedi have to speak of peace when in their willful blindness they enabled the predictable corruption of the Republics, both Old and New, and the myriad cumulative evils that the galactic government tolerates and even fosters?

What peace can there be in a galaxy where a child of the Force grows up enslaved by the Hutts?

Peace is a lie. A pretty promise that bears no true meaning in the face of reality, in the face of the real suffering of real people - and the peace promised and idealized and conceptualized by the Jedi Code is peace only for the elite. The downtrodden slaves of Tatooine, the marginalized of Ryloth, the underclass that never sees the sun of Coruscant: what use do they have for peace?

Do not believe this basest of hypocrisies: that people who are crying and dying for action and passion and change - that they merely need peace.

No. They need power - and a shepherd to guide them into it.


2. Undertaker

This will not be an easy task to undertake.

The corruption runs deep, into the very heart of the Order, the very heart of the Republic; so deep that the answer may not be to tear out its roots at all - but instead to burn it down and rebuild on the ashes.

And if this seems extreme, when has revolution ever been anything less?

This system was not built to change. It is a pyramid: built to benefit and uplift those lucky few at the top, built on the backs and blood and labor of the downtrodden beneath. A pyramid cannot be inverted and remain upright; nor can we carefully disassemble this system to rebuild it in any meaningful way.

It must be razed. It can only be razed.

But it will resist - and you must drag it kicking and screaming onto the pyre, and use your passion to light the quick-burning flame that consumes it, no matter how much it protests.

Even if it screams with the voices of children.

Think instead of the children in the slave hovels of Tatooine, the child born in the depths of Coruscant who will never see the sun.

They will thank you.


3. Juggernaut

And now that you’ve burned it all - what now?

You know the answer. You’ve always known the answer. Don’t you dare pretend otherwise.

Now - you rule.

You rule over this pile of ashes, atop all the corpses of those who stood in your way.

But you’ve known all along this was the outcome, haven’t you? Deep down, you’ve wanted this all along; it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Hypocrisy that rivals that of all those dead Jedi murdered at your hand.

What exactly did you expect to happen? Revolution has a price.

And if that price is your conscience, your dreamless nights of peaceful sleep - can you still deny that it was worth it?

Even if you now wake in the night every night to the screams of murdered children. Even if when you wake you find your hands covered in pitch black blood. Even if to your horror you’ve come to learn that at midnight blood is black and not red at all -

Even if all that were true.

Forget all that.

None of that matters. Revolution has a price, power has a price - and now that you stand astride the narrow world, what will you choose to do?

 

Political manifesto, I read this entry - good idea to bring the conscience into the picture because someone's got to pay the revolution's price, and willingly. Lovely, lovely angst, thanks for writing this!

 

angst. a certain political leader based on RL speaking to his minion with words, arguments no one can resist. Resistance is futile

 

Excellent Machiavellian overtones in this piece. The Dark Side really lays on the rationalizations for dealing out their harsh brutalities, don't they?

Of course the slave kids on Tatooine would thank their liberators... if those liberators didn't turn right around and enslave them again in the same or some similar way. That's what seems to happen though, time and time again throughout all the cycles of people.

This piece really made me think, @vader_incarnate - and now my brain hurts. Thanks a lot.

 

@pronker

I had the idea, vaguely, that the Sith code works really well as a leftist call to action. Power itself isn't bad, right? Thank you!

@earlybird-obi-wan

Thank you!

@Findswoman

Thank you! I love the idea of this seduction through all these very true things; the slaves of Tatooine are disempowered, is power and change really such an evil thing to the downtrodden?

@Vek Talis

Sorry about your brain hurt. It still bothers me that Tatooine seemingly still has slaves; you'd think someone somewhere in the vast GFFA would fix that either in the new or Legends canon. But no, they're just still ... there.

 

Title: "Resolute"
Author(s): still me
Timeframe: ANH
Characters: Darth Vader, Padmé Amidala
Genre: angst, past-tense romance, more angst
Summary: On the Death Star, Vader is on his way to execute a Rebel princess when a ghost intervenes.

Notes: Naturally, the easiest and most natural thing for me to do for this week's challenge would be to write a dark!Luke like I do almost every week. Naturally, I couldn't do that. But I also really wanted to play with the operational definitions of protagonist/antagonist.

• Write a story of at least 500 words in which one of your favorite protagonists/heroic characters is the antagonist/villain. This can be an AU, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.

---

She blurred in his vision, white and pink through his lenses, and she bore the bold, dark bruises of her strangulation around her throat and along her collarbones like a fine necklace.

Vader’s mind was no longer capable of conjuring colors beyond shades of russet blood, not even for the ghost of Padmé Amidala; not even for her, not even then. And he knew better than to acknowledge his hallucinations; he could never know if they came from his addled health, infection or fever or a bad mix of medications, or if they were products of the Dark side itself.

If the power was not sated, it gnawed on the edges of his mind and remnants of his sanity until it found its due in agony. The Dark side was restless, and in its capriciousness, it would turn on him if he did not pass its torments along; he knew this. Vader had once been a Jedi and he knew the touch of the Light as well as he now knew the touch of the Dark, and the Dark demanded things of the soul that the Light did not. It gave its users power incomparable, corrupt and arcane, but it demanded sacrifice: every day and every hour, and it would not tolerate failure for long. So the Dark would take these images and memories from his fractured mind and breathe life into them: make them ghosts, make them hungry.

And yet - seldom would he see visions of his beloved. The Dark did not feed on listless misery; it needed frenzy and fervor, and Vader knw that in her presence he became cold and unfeeling instead. Dead, where the Dark needed him wild.

"What do you want?" Vader rasped, and the words hurt his throat. But then - speaking always hurt his throat, ruined as it was: the words shearing through his ravaged vocal cords like glass. And he knew that feeling well, remembered well the obsidian glass of Mustafar on that volcanic beach, slicing through his flesh.

"You don’t think I’m real," Padmé said, and she laughed.

Her laugh - he would always remember that sound, because Padmé’s laugh had been infectious. Her smile had been nearly silly, in its broadness and depth and the sincerity of how deeply and genuinely she felt it; he had always known that aesthetically she was a beautiful woman, like he knew something intellectually, like someone would know an observable fact - like how someone would know the speed of an engine or someone would measure wind speed and direction - but it was her smile and the way that her joy flowered in the Force that made it truly real to him. There had been cold nights on Praesitlyn and Columex and Rattatak and everywhere in between that Anakin Skwyalker had spent thinking of nothing other than his wife’s smile.

But this new laugh was not like his memory. This new laugh was cold and bitter - much more like he himself now. And maybe this ghost of his wife was cold and bitter now, too; and if Anakin had once tried to trigger that laugh and experience that secondhand joy, the feelings were so alien now to Vader that he could only remember the faintest, faintest memory. It was too thoroughly of the past.

"I won't let you kill her, Lord Vader."

"Don't call me that,” Vader snapped.

A smile this time, and not like the old ones that had once fueled Anakin Skywalker through the Clone Wars, but - had he heard seen it on anyone else, he might have called it cruel. "That's what most people you strangle call you, isn't it?" she asked. "But, I suppose, then, if you're so angry about it - you would prefer I called you Ani? Dear, sweet, pathetic Ani, who was so desperate for anyone to love him more than he hated himself that he'd follow evil right into - "

Vader turned on his heel, looming high over her, the blot on his vision. She was scowling - that, he could sense. He could feel what she felt in the Force; he was either hallucinating more realistically than he knew himself to do, or the Dark Side wanted from him, and wanted dearly. "You will be silent," he said, dangerously. "Or I will find ways to make you silent."

"You can't kill a ghost, Ani," she said, acidly. And again she smiled, with an edge of maliciousness to it that he realized he recognized: not from something so distant as the Clone Wars - but from his Master. The smile of someone who knew they didn't need a physical weapon to eviscerate him.

The tight, too-warm skin over Vader's face prickled with annoyance. Around his brow and mouth the skin cracked, the skin there having long ago lost its elasticity; the cracks in his face were deep and years old and bled constantly, a hot trickle now rolling down his neck.

But she was there. She was there, and he was not alone, in the cold and dark. She was there.

He could not entertain any further doubts as to her reality; her presence was too powerful, too able to affect him, too able to make him feel, and too real in and of itself, not merely a conjuring of what he would like to hear or what the Dark would like him to hear, but a mouth and heart that were her own. That steel-whet spine he had seen in her still holding fast, even after death. That magnetism that drew him to her endlessly, as surely as the waves crashing to the shore, held him in its grip, and that was how he knew it was her - that force irresistible like gravity. He wanted to look at her and never stop looking, and that was how Vader knew it was his wife.

"I may not be able to kill a ghost," Vader allowed, finally. "But I can certainly kill a Rebel princess. And what business is such to you, beloved, that you would leave the peace of the ever-beyond to beg for her life?"

He imagined he could see her eyes flashing with outrage at the thought of begging for anything. His eyesight was poor, and even his imagination only conjured smears of an idea - but she cut her eyes at him, and he remembered the motion. The memory was well-worn in his mind, whenever she was irate with him. That much he could see; the memory. "I won't let you murder Bail Organa's daughter, Lord Vader."

"Organa's parentage has little bearing on her crimes. And in this instance her parentage is all the more compelling evidence for her crimes." And here - here, for some reason, Padmé flinched like she’d been struck; Vader knew precisely what that looked like. He continued as if he hadn't noticed, "The entire galaxy knows of the Alderaanian royal family's funding and sheltering of the Rebel Alliance. But what could you possibly offer me, beloved, for the girl's life?"

Padmé, beside him, tossed her skirts back and forth; she'd done that when she was nervous, always fiddling with the dresses that she wore, dresses that had been more expensive than the price he and his mother's bodies could have fetched on Tatooine. But Padmé had been a senator and a queen; she rarely begged. He remembered the sole time he'd seen it, this proud queen falling to her knees before the Gungan forces on Naboo. Padmé would beg, but only as a last resort; before that, she bargained - and threatened. "Spare her, or I'll haunt you. I'll drive you mad, Lord Vader."

"You would not be the first or the only ghost to haunt me. And did we not once swear ourselves to one another forever?" Vader asked, amused. "Welcome to your forever, beloved."

Padmé’s eyes, to his optical sensors dark like dried and blackened blood, narrowed shrewdly. "Spare her - or I'll leave."

Vader could not flinch. He was bolted into armor far too heavy to move much involuntarily. But if he could flinch, if he could have enacted any of the physical responses to alleviate hurt - panted or flinched or sweat or pressed on the wound or sighed or writhed - he would have, and he would have never stopped, because after nineteen years of being separated from the instinctive motions that made up sentience, he was exhausted of simply standing square and taking a hit. He wanted to flinch. But he could not. There would be no relief, and there would be no relief until there was nothing left.

But she was there. She was there, and he was not alone, in the cold and dark. She was there.

"That," Vader admitted, "would be more difficult to bear. But you have left me alone in the Dark for all these years - and only now have you materialized to demand mercy. So I will ask you: what is this girl to you?"

Padmé didn't answer - but her hands on her skirts abruptly stilled, as if she'd made a decision. "Spare her, and I'll stay - and I'll bring you Obi-Wan Kenobi."

End.