Saga - OT Inversion [dark Luke, Leia, Vader RotJ AU]

Title: "Inversion"
Author(s): vader_incarnate
Timeframe: RotJ AU
Characters: Luke, Leia, Vader
Genre: Drama. Gen. An extended exercise in dramatic irony.

Summary: There wasn't anyone Leia could just ask about why a Jedi's eyes might one day shift from pure sky blue to sunlit gold. Or maybe - just one person.

Notes: I just love the idea of Rebel! Dark Luke.

Edit: aww heck, I forgot to tag the thread title with the appropriate keywords. Sorry y'all, it's late. [dark Luke, Leia, Vader RotJ AU]


inversion : a reversal of position, order, form, or relationship


It was Han who said something about it first. After the rescue from Tatooine, his eyes had been fresher than theirs - in more ways than one.

"Hey Kid," he said, chuckling, and ruffling Luke's hair in a way that immediately sent a ripple of unease up Leia's spine, even though he was just teasing Luke as he had always teased him before, "what's wrong with your eyes?"

The air left the room.

No one talked about Luke's eyes. No one mentioned how in the year since Bespin, they'd started - slowly at first, but faster and faster once it had begun - not being ... the same anymore. But so little about him was the same; it might have been the most noticeable thing, but it wasn’t the most important.

It had started with an almost imperceptible golden corona. The first few times, Leia thought it was a trick of the light. He seemed to get angry more quickly, but that was only understandable after everything that had happened. He was hurting, and a lot of the Rebellion's soldiers got angry. It wasn’t abnormal - stars knew Leia Organa should be the last person pointing fingers about having a temper.

They brushed it off until there was an altercation in the mess hall. It had happened so fast - just some lighthearted ribbing, fighter pilots teasing and boasting - but then Jansen had nearly died. Luke had choked him, with the Force. He narrowly escaped a court martial, but no one teased him after that.

But the golden ring kept growing, and then became permanent. He’d acquired a new lightsaber by then, but it wasn’t blue like his last one. It was red.

Leia wasn’t involved in battle assignments, but there had been a point when he’d been transferred to the ground forces. Maybe to get him away from the rest of the Rogues, who had become visibly uncomfortable around him. But Leia didn’t realize until she started hearing the whispers: just like the Jedi Generals of the Clone Wars, they said. Dozens of stormtroopers, hardly breaking a sweat.

But when she watched the holos afterwards, it wasn’t like the old footage of the Clone Wars that she’d watched with her father - not really. Bail Organa had secreted the footage away, hiding the evidence of the Jedi Order that the Emperor had tried to eradicate. His collection had disappeared with him, and with Alderaan. But Leia remembered the Hero Without Fear, running into battle with a smile on his lips.

Luke's expression was like that. But something niggled at the back of her mind - the Separatists armies were battle droids, not sentients.

No, the way Luke fought didn't remind her of the Clone Wars, or Anakin Skywalker, or the Hero Without Fear.

It reminded her of Vader.

He wielded the lightsaber like a scythe, cutting through ranks of stormtroopers as if they were grain to be harvested. He pulled AT-AT walkers down like they were toys. And nothing touched him. He'd taken to wearing a cloak, and it swirled with him as he moved, blood red blade spinning faster than the eye could see. The faint smile never left his lips.

The rest of High Command didn't care. Maybe Mon understood that something had changed; she remembered the days of the Republic, might have known that the way their Jedi was acting was somehow off. But Madine and the generals were simply resplendent in their joy in having this new tool in their arsenal. A one man army.

There wasn't anyone she could just ask about why a Jedi's eyes might one day shift from pure sky blue to sunlit gold.

But even with all that, Leia didn't notice how differently everyone treated Luke now - not until Han came back. Han, to whom the last year had never happened, was still acting like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

Han hadn't seen the bruises in Wes' throat, left by an invisible hand. He hadn't seen Luke's eyes flash gold as he passionately argued for bombing a nonmilitary target. He hadn't listened to the Imperial captives screaming in the interrogation rooms.

He hadn't been at the Fondor shipyards when Luke ripped the Star Destroyer from the sky.

Leia had been there, and she could still hardly believe it. And she'd asked other witnesses afterwards about it, but no one else had felt the sudden chill that she had, as if the air around their Jedi had turned to ice. She'd half expected the ground to have frozen over. But more than that - there had been an aura of wrongness that she couldn't find the words to describe.

There had been tens of thousands of casualties.

Luke was on their side.

But Han ruffled Luke's hair, and Leia's heart stopped. He clapped him on the shoulder, and her stomach jumped into her throat.

But somehow it was fine. Luke didn't laugh, but he smiled, and it was warmer than any expression she'd seen from him since Bespin. "It's good to have you back, Han," Luke said. "Just like the good ol' days."

Han chuckled. "Sure Kid, but don't dodge the question - what's wrong with your eyes?"

"Must not be getting enough sleep," Luke responded lightly, and somehow Han had the sense to drop it there.

"And why's your lightsaber red?" he asked instead, and Leia mentally slapped him. "What happened to the blue one?"

Luke's lips twitched. "It's a very long story."

She told him on the trip to Endor, watched as his face sank with every whispered story, every whispered rumor. But even though his face was grave, Han didn't see the problem, not really.

"So he's killing Imps, but he's doing it too angry?" Han asked, bewildered. "He's single handedly winning this war, but he's doing it the wrong way?"

Leia wanted to shake him. But she knew that she couldn't describe it properly, and knew that Han wouldn't understand either.

There was only one person who could.

So on Endor, Leia turned herself in, so she could speak with him directly about the problem.

"Lord Vader. I believe that your son, Luke Skywalker, has turned to the Dark Side. And I need your help to save him."

 

Elllllliiiiiiii what even

Also, I've done the title thing. Mira fixed it for me. She'd do it for you too

I mean, if anyone could push someone to that point... But still, Wes! Bad Luke!

Okay, this is just so, so sad, that the Rogues wouldn't want to be around Luke

Vi's going to be beside herself with the Leia-Anakin connection So perfectly in character for Bail to have done this. Luke and Leia's adoptive parents deserve so much more love than they've gotten. Hopefully the Obi-Wan show has helped that along.

I love this, that Leia notices via the Force, even though she doesn't know that's what's happening

Elli, if this is a one-shot, I shall be very cross

 

Oh wow! Fascinating! I love how you have the transition happening almost imperceptibly, but Leia is keyed in on it more than the rest.
and about the Rogues, who in most fics are best buds with Luke
Han seems to be the only one who can get the 'old' Luke back even if just for a moment.

The ending... awesomeness! Eagerly awaiting more. Hoping there is.

 

In my defense, it was a very very insistent plot bunny. The idea was just: "If Luke did fall in the aftermath of Bespin, who would even notice? Leia, I guess." And then it snowballed from there.

One of those things that just fell into place as the author was steepling her fingers evilly and looking wildly around the ranks of the Rebellion to find baby dark! Luke's first accidental casualty.

I had the idea that everyone would be vaguely creeped out by him, even without the Force, even if they couldn't understand why. And Luke being Luke craves these connections but senses their fear instead withdraws even further into Darkness.

I've put a lot more than 1k words thought into this I even have textual support for the red lightsaber he picks up - he picks up a haunted Sith lightsaber in Star Wars Annual 4, where my boy also accidentally enters a podrace.

AND THEN concurrently to Luke's withdrawal, Leia is also withdrawing because she doesn't have the knowledge or words to describe her concerns to anyone else in the Alliance. But no one else notices, with the end result of Leia feeling gaslighted by her own feelings and which leads her to the only person who might be able to understand, even though it's a long shot

Title was from when the plot bunny was a bit chubbier, and I had imagined RotJ inverted: with Vader redeeming Luke. But then I got stuck.

I imagine a twofer Skywalker redemption is the best possible scenario, but I have no idea how I'm going to get them there I started typing Vader's perspective, but the tonal and stylistic shift is jarringly painful, and I love him, but Vader is astonishingly bad with feelings. He'd have to be hit on the helmet with a hammer before -

Oh, I suddenly have an idea. I'm going to hit him with the hammer.

So it's a one shot for now?

Leia's Force sensitivity needs more screen and page time honestly.

Han was a very convenient "the every man" lens who doesn't really believe in Force stuff in the first place and then canonically had a very good reason to not notice and understand the gradual changes in the last year because you know, he was stuck in carbonite.

 

I just wanna say I love this, and I hope you can manage to write some more, because I want to know what happens next.

 

In which Leia and Vader stage an unlikely familial intervention, and the author hits the Chosen One across the helmet with so many parallels even he is forced to take notice.

Or: welcome to my 15-page treatise on dramatic irony!

==

The girl was terrified, but she hid it well under natural shields that sprang more from instinct and will than deliberate training. She stood proud and straight and defiant - as if he had come to beg her for aid, rather than the other way around. It reminded him of someone.

The Force had been shifting since Bespin. Before, after the debacle at Yavin, there had been a slowly dawning light, like the first sliver of sun peering over the horizon to herald a new day. But that had changed in the last year, and the light had begun to retreat.

But no, not so much a retreat as an inversion: a sun corrupted, a harbinger for a coming night.

Vader wasn’t so blind that it escaped his notice that the change corresponded with the increase in the Rebellion’s efficiency, their sudden ruthlessness, their new willingness to torture captives. He had read the reports about the battle at Fondor. Afterwards, he tried to reach out - sent tendrils across the galaxy seeking the boy's presence. He had been rebuffed, as he'd expected, but he was nevertheless surprised by the intensity: the wall of sheer hatred he met, the strength with which the door was slammed shut.

It was true, then, that his son had abandoned the weaker side of the Force. Just as Vader himself had.

He felt no conflict from this development. This was the power he had offered the boy on Bespin: the reins to the Darkness that was his inheritance. That the boy used his new skills to the advantage of the Rebellion and not the Empire was of little concern; Vader would put it to right.

So the princess' presence, though unexpected, confirmed for him nothing he didn’t already know - about Luke. But her bravery in the face of her fear, her desperation in reaching out for help where there could be none: that stirred something like curiosity inside him, and a memory long buried.

There had been another woman, once. Another woman who in her bravery and foolishness had tried to save a doomed man from a destiny that neither of them understood.

Anakin, my Anakin. I’ve been so frightened …

“Are you his lover?” Vader asked finally.

Her eyes widened first with instinctive shock, which quickly morphed into outrage. “No! What - why would you even ask that? He’s - he’s like a brother to me! He -”

The princess cut herself off, hands flying to her mouth in horror as she stumbled upon the realization. "He’s more than that. He … he is my brother," she whispered, so softly that even his augmented hearing implants almost didn’t catch the words. "Luke is my brother."

The Force rang with the truth of her statement, clear as a bell, both of them knowing and believing and realizing: if Luke was her brother, that meant -

"I will help you," Vader said at last. "Take me to him."

==

When Leia asked him to meet her in the woods outside of the Ewok village, his own feelings surprised him. He was happy, of course; it had been so long since he’d spoken to Leia, really spoken to her. Not since the Falcon had come for him as he hung beneath Cloud City. Not since -

No, he wasn’t going to think about that.

But of course he was happy. It was what he should feel. He wanted to be happy.

Luke tried to bury the resentment that simmered under the surface, turned reflexively away from the question: why now? Why did Leia want to talk to him now, when she had withdrawn from him so much in the last year? He had seen the wariness that had developed between them since Bespin, when in his anguish he’d told her -

No.

Leia was the only one who knew. And he trusted her enough to believe that she wouldn’t have told anyone else. But everyone treated him differently now. Like he was fragile. Or tainted. Or dangerous. Since Fondor. But maybe before that - maybe since Wes. Maybe even before that; he didn’t remember.

Worse, he could feel their uneasiness. It followed him everywhere he went, and he could hear quiet conversations stop and then start again as he walked by - and when he lingered, he could taste the way their fear made the Force thick and rich like congealing blood.

Worse still, he craved it. It fed something inside of him he didn’t want to put a name to, made his pupils itch and burn with something he didn’t want to admit.

They feared him, and he hated it, and he craved it, and he hated that he craved it, and all of those things together fueled him to feats he had never known were possible. But afterwards Luke didn’t feel at peace, like he should, like he once had. He only felt a gaping chasm within himself: dark, empty, painful. And the chasm was growing. Consuming him from the inside out.

It was startling when they rescued Han that the old smuggler still treated Luke like the farm boy he’d picked up from Mos Eisley long ago. Han didn’t fear him, didn’t treat him like everyone else did. He still treated him like Luke, and Luke hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that.

But that changed, too, and Luke could only watch with mounting dismay as Han, too, drew away. The casual physical contact he hadn’t realized he’d been missing - backslaps, hair ruffling, spontaneous hugs - gradually diminished in the space between Tatooine and Endor, until Han was discreetly avoiding him just as everyone else had learned to do.

It was for the better, Luke told himself. They should pull away. He didn’t deserve them. Not now that -

No. He flinched away from that thought, that admission, that truth, and banished it to the furthest corner of his mind.

The battle would be tomorrow. And though he wouldn’t be flying this time, had been transferred to the ground forces - he would use his new skills against the Empire. It didn't matter how he had acquired them. Surely.

There was a part of him that still struggled, he knew. That rejected the path he had chosen, that resisted and screamed and pushed back upon the encroaching night. But Luke would dim that flame - crush it, strangle it, suffocate it - for the sake of this cause: the extinction of the Empire, by whatever means necessary.

It was the least he could do, to even begin to atone for his father's crimes.

He had killed over a million people on the first Death Star with a single shot. How had he ever believed he could have avoided any of this - the fear of his friends, the yawning abyss in his soul - when his journey to knowing the Force had started with so much death?

And if the destruction of the first Death Star had been in service of Light, this second might be its inverse - but he would still do what needed to be done.

==

Leia’s message said simply that she wanted to talk to him away from the village, and in Luke’s reply he said that he was happy to get the chance to talk to her again after so long - but as Leia waited she already found herself wracked with guilt for summoning him under false pretenses.

The realization that he was her brother brought with it the revelation that this was the Force she was feeling - that the cold and wrongness she’d felt from him weren’t just products of her imagination, but real and proof of what her intuition had been trying to tell her for months. The confirmation of her feelings, the knowledge that she wasn’t actually going insane, was enough of a distraction from the other revelations. For now.

Leia closed her eyes and sent out an experimental probe. She didn’t know how, not really, but allowed instinct to guide her and sent out a questing, clumsy tendril. She found her brother easily: in the Force, his aura called to her like a magnet. She brushed him briefly, and his presence was cool to the touch of her mental fingers.

He felt disconcertingly like Vader. Like his - like their father.

To her dismay, Leia felt a query coming from Luke as he approached - in response to her probe?

The guilt she’d been feeling. Could he feel that?

Panicked, she tried to wipe it from her mind, pushed it back as far as it could go, and instead tried to throw at him an urgent thread of - she clawed for another emotion, a truthful emotion she could send instead - relief. Relief, that she had found someone to help him.

And to her utmost surprise, he responded with a resounding "whoop!" that reverberated through the forest, and he ran straight for her, hugging her and spinning her and twirling her in the air like they were back on Yavin.

"You can use the Force, Leia," he shouted, and radiated such joy that it was infectious, and despite everything, she found herself laughing with him. "Leia, oh stars Leia, I had no idea, I’m just so glad - you can feel it too! You can - you’re like me! We can learn together, we can -"

His eyes shone blue. Clear, pure blue, bright as a summer’s day.

Leia didn’t hear all of the rest, but the words tumbled out of his mouth with reckless abandon: plans and hopes and dreams, and joy that she hadn’t felt from Luke since Bespin, and it was as if his uncomplicated happiness had displaced the pain, the anger, the last year entirely. He glowed with warmth, his body radiating heat, and she hadn’t realized how cold he had been until she felt the heat of his joy in contrast.

But eventually he fell silent, his words having run dry. He smiled, and it was his old smile, the Hero of the Rebellion smile, and it broke her heart.

The silence was shattered by the sound of the respirator.

==

The boy instinctively pushed his sister away, stepped in front of her protectively, and ignited a lightsaber with a familiar snap-hiss.

"Go," he urged her, his eyes on Vader and his lightsaber held ready in a two handed grip. "I'll hold him off."

Vader's optical scanners worked well in the darkness, but he had little sense of color. Even so, he could see the change in the boy as he pulled the Darkness into himself, the swirl in his eyes and the contrast as they shifted.

In the Force, the flame of his presence was wreathed with smoke, and as Luke called upon the Darkness the haze became deeper, darker, suffocating. Until the light was hardly visible at all, and his son was enveloped, and entombed.

“I feel the conflict within you," Vader said, and knew the truth of it. That the boy’s fire still burned within him, strong and stubborn, even against his own will. It was a struggle Vader had been intimately familiar with, once.

Luke’s presence flared, but the smoke - hardened. Froze over, and instead became a nigh impenetrable wall of black ice. His jawline tightened with resolve, as his mother's once had, and he shifted his hands on the lightsaber.

"No. There is no conflict." As if he could compel it simply by saying so.

"You take strength from your hate,” Vader observed. He kept his own hand away from the saber at his belt, not yet willing to engage. "At last, you know the power of the Dark Side."

The boy was gifted, and his shields were strong, but his face was an unencrypted transmission. His emotions flickered clearly across his face: furious denial, resigned acceptance, and finally defiant resolve. Again, he adjusted his grip and shifted his feet, circling carefully to cover the girl. "That may be the case. But I won’t let you hurt her."

"I have no intention of hurting her."

The boy paused, and cocked his head to the side as if listening. Vader sensed his probe and allowed it - lowering his shields slightly and letting the boy see, if that was what he wished.

Luke's touch recoiled, and the boy stumbled back like he'd been burned. His mind, Vader reflected grimly, was a landscape spiked with searing pain and shattered glass - not an especially pleasant place to visit.

"I did it," Leia called out, and the boy turned to her, surprised. He kept the lightsaber raised in a defensive position, pointed at Vader. "I brought him here, to -"

"You're with him?" Luke asked, in disbelief. But the shock morphed quickly into rage, and his expression clouded.

"You brought him here," he repeated darkly, and around him a black miasma suddenly coalesced, a stormcloud filled with ominously crackling sparks. “You betrayed me. You brought him here to kill me.”

“No, I -”

The fury tore through him like wildfire, so strong it was almost physical, and Leia, untrained and unguarded, lurched back in surprise. But Vader had felt it before - felt it, and recognized it, and knew with a bone deep certainty what would happen next.

It was the echo of Mustafar. A twisted echo of the nightmare that had haunted his sleepless nights for decades, acted out once again by Padmé’s daughter and Padmé’s son.

Vader was frozen in place, powerless to do anything but watch as the past unfolded before him once again.

Luke stretched his hand towards his sister, and the Darkness surged eagerly at his command -

But - here, an error.

Not a repetition of the past, of the nightmare of Mustafar. But a new nightmare, terrible in new ways.

Luke stretched his hand towards his sister, and the Darkness surged eagerly at his command.

And was unleashed in a cascade of lightning.

==

There was a technique, in one of the star systems neighboring Naboo, of repairing shattered pottery with precious metal to make it whole again.

Sometimes as he lay in his bunk unable to sleep, Luke thought about that - about how he had shattered in the aftermath of Bespin. But he had no precious metal with which to bind himself back together, only his own fear and anger and hate. And maybe that's what he was now: a broken vessel slowly pieced back together, with Darkness as mortar and glue.

Leia's betrayal shattered him anew.

And the ravenous Darkness flowed into the cracks, filled him to bursting until he could no longer contain it, and he instinctively grasped the pain and rage and gave them form and sent them shooting out his fingertips, straight back at her, because she betrayed him, she deserved it -

Vader was there to catch the lightning on a crimson lightsaber, stepping in front of Leia faster than should have been possible.

The inversion was enough to give him pause, to make him stop. A moment ago, hadn't he been standing between Leia and Vader, ready to protect her?

That Vader would protect Leia from him -

That he had attacked Leia -

It was almost enough to shatter him all over again.

"Shockingly, it seems your fears had merit, Your Highness," Vader intoned. And Luke -

Luke laughed. And he knew it was a little unhinged and a little too wild, but this newest, utterly surreal revelation that Vader had a terrible sense of humor and was willing to deploy electrical puns against lightning -

Well, that was enough to make anyone question their sanity, wasn't it?

"You did this," he cried, still laughing in agonized despair. He didn't know who he was screaming at. Vader, or the Darkness inside himself. It seemed for a moment like Vader was the Darkness inside himself, given form and made corporeal like his vision in the dark cave on Dagobah.

He raised his lightsaber, pointed it at Vader like an accusatory finger. "You turned her against me!"

Vader said nothing, but he didn't have to. Deep down, Luke already knew. I did this myself.

Distantly, he registered that Vader's stance was foreign. Not new, but seemingly ill suited to the armor clad giant. Luke had been introduced to the lightsaber forms on Dagobah, but it took a few moments before he was able to recognize this one in this context - Vader had settled into a defensive Soresu stance.

==

Leia stepped out of Vader's shadow and into the eerily illuminated ring of the lightsabers - and almost into her brother's weapon. Even in his frenzied turmoil, he withdrew immediately and lowered his hand.

She flinched as twinned sets of golden eyes fixed on her, and twinned protective waves rose in both brother and father. They would kill each other, each to stop the other from killing her. If she let them. She raised a hand to each of them, feeling like nothing so much as a rancor tamer.

"Luke, stop!" she demanded, with a voice that had silenced the Senate and been fine tuned to carry through starfighter hangars. "He wants to help you."

It occurred to her suddenly that she hadn’t spoken to him like this since Bespin. That once, she had been comfortable with him, casual enough to scold or reprimand or berate without a second thought. She’d been afraid, perhaps, of how he would react - that he would react with violence, give vent to the simmering rage she’d been subconsciously sensing under the surface.

But he deflated. Melted, really. The anger dissipated with quicksilver velocity and left in its wake a well of lonely grief.

He disengaged his lightsaber, and the plasma retreated, leaving them standing in a shrunken circle, lit only by Vader's blade.

"You left me," Luke said, simply and quietly. "I needed you, and you left me."

The quiet despair radiating from him broke her. The certainty that he was alone, and abandoned, and unworthy.

And though a thousand justifications sprang to her lips - she was hurting, too, she was confused, she didn't know what was wrong or what he needed - she let them die there, without giving them voice. "I'm so sorry, Luke," she said instead.

"You -" his voice choked off with a sob. He shook his head quickly, to clear it, or in denial. "I told you about him -" and here he jerked his head towards Vader, "and you pulled away. I could feel it."

He laughed, a little too wildly, running a hand through his hair. "I should have expected that, I know that now. Why would you want to be anywhere near me anymore, Vader's son? After everything he's done, and everything he's done to you and -"

A fierce denial rose in her throat, but she caught it, realizing for the first time how her withdrawal must have seemed, to him. "Luke, no," she said, as gently as she could. "Not because of him."

"Then why?" he demanded, anguished. "Why did you leave me?"

Because he was hurting, and she could feel it, and being too close to him made her hurt, too, and she could feel herself getting cut upon the shattered edges of his psyche without knowing how or why.

Because he was falling, and she knew, but she didn't know how, and all she could sense was the wrongness of it, and she thought the wrongness was him and not something external.

Because she was afraid. Afraid of him, and what she didn't know.

"I'm so sorry, Luke," she whispered again. An apology that she knew wasn’t enough to breach the hurt left by her abandonment. "You're my brother, Luke. I love you."

The revelation reverberated through the air, the truth of it thrumming too insistently to be denied, but Luke recoiled from it, physically stepped back and away, looking sharply between Leia and Vader as the implications became clear. “Sister?” he asked, incredulous. “You- he’s our-”

Leia stepped forward, grabbed his arm, and pulled him into a tight hug. He reflexively pulled back, but she held on - and pulled him in with her burgeoning Force ability, enveloping him in warmth and Light.

She sent a tendril reaching out to him, imbuing it with her apology, filling the gaps with regret and sorrow, that she left him when he needed her, that she hadn’t realized sooner, that she pulled away rather than offering support. And then another thread, this time a promise - that she would never do it again, and that whatever they encountered going forward, they would defeat together.

He stopped pulling away and relaxed into her embrace, clumsily reached back to grasp her Force presence, and sent his own - wonder, surprise, joy. And she realized this was the first time she had hugged him, since Bespin.

But then, to her horror, she felt something - shift.

The warmth dissipated, and she felt the flame of Luke’s presence dim, swallowed in a thick haze. She could see her breath crystallizing in front of her, the vapor condensing and freezing in the suddenly chill air, as Luke drew upon the Dark Side.

“Luke, no, don’t do this,” she demanded urgently. “You’re a good person, don’t do this.”

He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He had eyes only for Vader, and the fire in them had reignited, gleaming with a new, predatory intensity. She felt the hatred swelling in him, surging towards a tumultuous crescendo. “No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m not a good person, and I haven’t been for a long time. But neither is he, and the smallest thing I can do now is to destroy him - him, his master, and their Empire.”

“Don’t give in to your anger, Luke,” she pleaded, desperate. “There is good in you, I feel it-”

“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupted, and pushed her out of his way. “My feelings are clear.”

He ignited his blade, and leapt toward their father.

Twin blades crashed, scarlet on scarlet.

==

The boy was a serviceable duelist, but overeager. He had honed his abilities on opponents that had neither the weapons nor capacity to resist, and it showed in his broad, sweeping swings: too wild, overreaching, with little regard for defense or counter attack.

He had trained in Djem So, but he had neither the reach nor the height for it, especially against an opponent of Vader’s size, but he tried to make up for the lack with pure power, drawing deeply from his well of fury to feed his strength.

In normal circumstances, it would not have been enough.

But Vader, too, found himself in a novel combat situation, and found that he had miscalculated. He had never dueled without a desire to kill his opponent, without the desire to simply overwhelm with unyielding force, and the defensive strikes of Soresu were alien and clumsy to him. Kenobi had taught him well, but Vader was a Jedi no longer, and it was a form he had not practiced for decades.

The boy scored the first hit, a glancing blow against his helmet, and Vader smothered a reflexive flare of irritation, instead redirecting the blade in an embarrassingly ungainly parry.

“Your thoughts betray you, father,” the boy taunted, springing away and circling to gauge the best opening for his next attack. “You couldn’t bring yourself to destroy me before, and you won’t be able to destroy me now.”

Vader said nothing, because the boy was more right than he knew.

Luke, his son, seethed with hate - well earned hate, Vader knew. He was not ignorant of his crimes, either against the galaxy writ large or against the boy himself. Vader knew himself to be damned, corrupt beyond all hope of salvation.

But Luke was not. Not yet.

The boy had tapped into the Dark Side, instinctively reached for it to soothe a pain inside himself - but he was not yet lost to it. Vader could sense the boy trying to smother his own light, summoning more and more of a Darkness that came eagerly to his call. But the part of the boy that resisted was stubborn, and refused to die.

And to his shock, he recognized an answering flame, within himself. Feeble, and neglected, and forgotten - but burning.

If this was an echo of Mustafar, he knew what role he must play: and if Luke was Anakin, then so must Vader be Kenobi, and consign his son, Padmé's son, to the constant torment of a life half-lived in the shadow of insatiable Darkness.

He would not. He could not.

He had wanted to, before Bespin. Had wanted to secure the boy's loyalty, to bind Luke to himself and rule the Empire with his son at his side - but confronted now with this reality, Vader found that his priorities had been inverted.

Not corrupting the boy for Vader's own plans and ambitions. But redeeming him.

Vader had never known how to fight without also intending to destroy. And this, he was not willing to destroy.

So he chose for the first time in his life - not to fight.

He shut off his lightsaber, and surrendered: truly surrendered, without intent to renege or resist.

Vader surrendered to the will of the Force.

He faced his son, and left himself open. "I will not fight you."

==

And Luke - faltered.

He paused, hesitating, the Darkness within him raging in a storm he could scarcely contain, but he clawed through it, fought to clear away the shadows until he could see and understand.

Vader, unguarded. Vader, leaving himself open.

His father, inviting his own death.

It should have been welcome. It should have been easy. But Luke faltered.

Deep inside himself, from the flickering flame that fought to hold the Darkness at bay, Luke sensed an irrefutable truth: despite his pain, despite his brokenness, despite the gaping chasm ever growing in his soul, he would not kill an unarmed opponent.

“You are unwise to lower your defenses,” Luke warned, and raised the blade to eye level, an open challenge that he waited for Vader to take.

“Perhaps,” Vader intoned simply. “But I will not fight you.”

"Then you will die," Luke promised, and compelled himself to mean it.

"You will do what you must," Vader said, with something akin to humor suffusing his voice.

Luke growled, frustrated. He paced closer to his father - and swung his lightsaber out, a decapitating strike if not blocked -

Vader didn't flinch.

But Luke did, and stopped the blade shy of his father's armored neck.

He lowered the blade, frustrated but defeated.

But Vader's surrender was more than physical, he realized - Vader had lowered his mental shields, and Luke could feel himself being beckoned inside. A gesture that said, Let me show you.

Unsure what else to do, Luke followed.

Vader's presence guided him through his mind, a broken and shattered landscape of phantom pain and eternal burning. He seemingly had a destination in mind, but Luke caught peeks of other things, of what had shaped his father. He saw flashes of his slavery on Tatooine, flickers of his Jedi training, a pang at the loss of his mother, pieces of the Clone Wars. Not enough to understand fully, but glimpses and emotions.

He lingered on Padmé, his mother, and Vader allowed him to briefly drink her in - before urging him onwards.

They arrived at a chasm. A chasm, Luke realized, that matched his own - but so much deeper, so much wider. And full, to the brim, with a roiling river of rage. Rage that flowed into the chasm, fed by -

By Mustafar. By pain. By betrayal. From a thousand sources in Vader's past, converging and connecting and combining to give rise to this seemingly unending source of anguish.

He watched, transfixed, as Vader regarded the chasm within himself and - in a landscape shaped by Vader's mind and will, a metaphor for a larger truth - drained it.

Vader redirected the river, turned it back upon itself, and sent the tributaries back upstream. Sent the pain and the anger and hate back to their sources, and the memories associated with them and - let go. Accepted them, as part of himself.

Luke watched as Vader let go of his hatred.

He watched as Vader rejected the Darkness.

His father turned to him, as if to say, See? Like that.

And what could he do, but follow his example?

==

After staring down their father for seemingly an eternity, Luke deactivated his blade, and Leia breathed a sigh of relief.

Until Vader raised his lightsaber suddenly, reigniting it so quickly her eye could scarcely follow, and the red blade plunged down. Leia’s heart stopped, and she yelled, “No-”

But he was deflecting a blaster bolt, and Leia realized suddenly that in the pandamonium of the duel, she hadn’t noticed that they had been surrounded by a forest of blaster rifles.

Luke looked over to her, bright blue eyes wide and shocked.

"Han!" she shouted in irritation, "I told you to keep everyone away!"

Han's reply was indignant, as he and Chewie ducked out of the cover of a nearby bush. He had, evidently, continued his tradition of greeting Vader with a blaster shot, and his weapon was still smoking. "Well Your Highnessness, that was before Artoo came bleeping into the camp screaming about how Luke was malfunctioning identically to Master Skywalker in his memory banks, and he required immediate assistance to abort the malware program-"

Threepio interrupted, "Oh, Mistress Leia, I must apologize for my counterpart, I don't know what is wrong with him. Why-"

"I didn't have time to consult a committee, but it's not really possible to contain a secret meeting with Darth kriffin' Vader when there's a lightsaber battle and dozens of curious fuzzy-"

It all devolved into chaos from there. Further chaos.

But despite the commotion, Leia realized that Vader hadn't spoken. Vader stood transfixed, looking not at Han but at a bearded man behind him.

Leia grasped for the name of the old soldier who had greeted them when they arrived on Endor. Hewas one of Luke's comrades in the ground forces, one of the few generals who fought on the front line, and in the holos she had watched of past battles he had followed Commander Skywalker like a shadow, if a shadow could provide cover fire with twin blaster pistols -

"General Sant?" asked Leia in confusion.

"Rex?" asked Vader at the same time.

A pause. Then a spike of surprise through the Force, sharp and poignant and lanced with grief, like a stiletto through the heart.

"General Skywalker?"

==

It transpired that General Nik Sant was the senior commanding officer of the Alliance forces on the Endor moon, so that solved the problem of what to do with the Sith Lord in the room - for now at least.

And when Solo asked what that meant for the plan the next morning, the attack on the shield generator, even those who couldn't feel the Force could feel Vader's deafening aura of condescension. "Solo. I am the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy. They will not attack until I give the order."

That the timeline for until I give the order was an open question was an uncomfortable truth that Vader didn't know how to approach.

Predictably, it was Solo who voiced the question. "So are we still planning a battle? Or are we planning a coup?"

And Vader didn't know. He had once harbored an ambition of ruling the Empire, but he thought that had died with Padmé. Later, it had been rekindled when he found out that his son had lived - but the events of the last day had snuffed that dream, with a finality of a casket slamming shut.

"I will destroy the Emperor," Vader said, at last. "After that, I will leave it to others to decide."

They all digested this, until the smuggler, again, spoke. "So you're going to take the Executor to Coruscant and what, glass the Imperial Palace from space with your turbolasers, or … ?"

"The Emperor is here. On the battlestation."

The accompanying aural bombardment was too much for his helmet’s augmented hearing sensors to process, and Vader quashed the reflexive urge to strangle them all. Or at least the smuggler.

"I'll go with you," Luke said quietly, close enough that Vader could process it above the din.

"No," Vader objected immediately. The boy was too fragile, too recently recovered from his brush with Darkness. Sidious would sense it immediately and exploit it, drawing him away from the Light he had rediscovered.

Before he could voice his arguments, Luke's face twisted, and through the Force, Vader felt his resignation. The boy already knew his weaknesses, but wanted to challenge the Emperor anyway? Why?

He sent a query, and Luke responded immediately, lowering his shields and shepherding Vader's probe through the host of his reasons and emotions: to atone, to correct, to reclaim himself as he had been before touching the Darkness.

It was like gazing into a mirror.

And before Vader could speak, Leia volunteered, too. "I will go, too. To help, however I can."

To save Luke again, if necessary. To be his connection and his touchstone, and his tether to come back to the Light.

She didn't say it aloud, but the Force beamed with her intention, and neither father nor brother could deny her.

The hastily concocted plan was breathtakingly foolhardy, though Rex reminded him sternly that he had no room for judgment after all his stunts in the Clone Wars. It was irritating to be reminded of that, to have someone nearby who remembered his past life - but not entirely unpleasant.

Vader would take his children to the Emperor, masquerading as prisoners. And Rex would accompany them, in commandeered stormtrooper armor, posing as a member of Vader's guard division.

"Aren't you a little old to be a stormtrooper?" Luke asked skeptically, and when Rex glanced at Vader, sending him such a weary, familiar look -

If his respirator permitted it, Vader would have laughed.

And it was nearly enough.

Overconfidence had always been the Emperor's weakness, and in his hubris he didn't question Vader's intent or loyalty until it was too late. And though Luke was tempted to anger, the Emperor's taunts rekindling the fury that had been banked but not extinguished in his heart, Leia's presence was the reminder he needed to stay off the Dark path.

But Vader’s life support had always been built with a specific weakness to lightning. And though Rex’s blasters had cut off the Emperor’s attack before he could truly harm the children, the damage had been done, and was irreversible.

It was nearly enough, but Vader knew beyond certainty that this had been preordained: the Emperor’s defeat, his son’s redemption, his own death.

It was unavoidable; it was his destiny.

“Let me see you,” Vader whispered, his vocoder malfunctioning, and the baritone giving way to Anakin Skywalker’s voice in his last moments. “Just once, let me look on my children with my own eyes.”

==

End.

 

Dang, if only all my requests were granted so swiftly I'll be back once I have time to fully digest your treatise

 

Omg Gabri, the bunny wouldn't let go, it was ravenous.

 

Wow. Beautiful.

 

I'm so behind

Such pretty writing

I really love this twist, and it's entirely plausible. Probably at any point, if Leia had thought and felt and said these exact words, she would have realized the greater truth of them. After all, she didn't argue in RotJ when Luke said it, even though it was complete nonsense on its face. And the Obi-Wan series adds weight to the idea that Leia's own Force talents lean toward piercing insight. And in this reality, when she's spent a year gradually becoming aware of and attuned to Luke's own Force-sensitivity, it only makes sense that her own would become closer to the surface, as it were.

Welp, that would have been an awkward moment

This is so gross and so amazing all at once, Elli, I love it

Aw, this is just heartbreaking

That was a heck of a weight Luke was carrying alone after Bespin, wasn't it? It seems well within in the realm of possibility that Luke could have gone just this way under the pressure.

That's...a pretty fair point

I really like this description

I saw some bit of meta - fanfic, really; the non-fanficcers don't realize that their speculation often becomes bite-sized fanfic - from Tumblr or something about how Luke felt the emptiness in the galaxy like a hole in his heart, because none of the life he could sense ever reached back, and Jedi aren't meant to be alone, and that really resonated with me. I think it's probably very accurate, and that Luke would indeed react like this, to not be alone any longer.

It's a trap! (On your part, not Luke's )

I love these descriptions of the perceptions within the Force

Heh, I love it

Kintsugi, I love it so much

Also, perfect metaphor is perfect

What hath Rogue One wrought

SORESU

Just break my heart, why don't you

The Skywalker twins are the best

Gotta love these moments where Vader finally realizes that he wants better for his children. It tends to take him a while, but usually he gets there

This is delightful

I love it, this is all most excellent

Yaaaaasssssss

lol, of course Leia is irritated rather than frightened, she's the best

That's our Artoo

*KERMIT FLAIL*

You tell 'im, Vader

They wouldn't get very far if they tried

LOL, Rex speaks absolute truth

Rex has put up with a lot

...this might be my headcanon now. Because really, why wouldn't Palpatine do this?

I love it, Elli

 

Thank you!

My friend, I am ten years behind.

This entire thing is an exercise in hitting Vader in the helmet, so I didn't want to belabor the point even more, but I was tempted to make explicit the homophone of "a sun corrupted" vs. "a son corrupted" but couldn't figure out a way to do that without making it Too Much. Go save your boy, Vader!

I feel like I shortchanged Leia in this story by not giving her space to reflect on this more? And also that the OT shortchanged her in that regard as well.

All my Leia POV parts of this story are very Luke-or-plot focused, which feels ... unfair. And while I can sort of justify that by how focused on Luke's pain she was in ANH after Ben died, I don't really like that either.

Anyway, I don't think I have a strong enough Leia voice to write her yet, but I need to do better by Leia.

Would you believe it if I said I have a Google Doc full of weird and sorta gross metaphors that I pick and choose from to give to characters who are in a Weird Mental State right now?

It's an absolute lie, I have no such thing, but it absolutely sounds like something I would do, maybe I should actually do it. I only have a mental list.

What I love about Luke and what kills me about ST Luke is that ... he's not actually a fluffy cinnamon roll? He's a guerilla fighter and space revolutionary who has Done Some Shavit, but he's just such an optimist anyway.

And damnit Rian Johnson, I totally understand the urge to put your favorite character through exquisite agony that destroys part of their fundamental self, but how could you do this to me I mean him how could you do this to him -

Ahem.

I love that, and specifically in relation to Luke, who is just so lovable and draws friends and family to him like a little magnetic ball of sunshine. He's not meant to be alone.

And part of the way I justify him falling here is just ... taking away his support system: Leia and the Rogues and even his X-Wing. Luke is at his best when surrounded by family, and at his lowest when he's alone.

(And it kills me that Rian Johnson saw that, and did that, too.)

We're only like halfway through the fic, can't be that easy.

You found it! I need to credit Yubs with that wording.

I love it, and I'm probably going to overuse it now.

Vader loves Dad jokes, it's canon.

They are, I love them so.

Honestly my FAVORITE part of every dark! Luke and Vader story. The part where Vader realizes:

This was SO FUN to write even though I'm like, "Would Luke really say 'you are unwise to lower your defenses,' though? That's just such a quintessentially Vader syntax."

We're just going to go with "dramatic Skywalkers being dramatic Skywalkers" as justification.

He GOT IT, the HAMMER WORKED

I originally gave him an extended monologue, but it was too much

He does, he's had two Skywalker generations he's had to keep out of trouble in warzones in this universe! Rex Ex Machina.

I ... can't keep track of what's actually canon and what's my headcanon with this particular bit. But welcome to my headcanon, if it's not actually canon!

Thanks for the lovely feedback, Gabri!

 

Breathtakingly wonderful as we see the interplay between Luke and Leia, Leia and Vader, and Vader and Luke. The ending was especially poignant as we see that Luke was brought back from the precipice. Vader too seems to have been reclaimed.