anghraine

Vacation is awesome! I have to go crawling to the psychology department about financial aid, though. Ugh.

title: The Imperial Menace (3/8)
verse: Lucy

CHAPTER THREE: VADER

Six weeks later, Darth Vader landed on Imperial Center. The first two of those weeks had been deeply unpleasant, and it was only thanks to his suit that he'd survived at all. He'd eventually reached an Imperial station, spent another three weeks in recovery, then commandeered a hardier vessel. The advanced TIE fighter had served him well, but it had never been intended to survive the blow it had—somehow—taken, and certainly not deep space.

He spent the journey contacting his admirals to assure them of his continued survival, receiving preliminary reports, and preparing for the inevitable interview with the Emperor. It was, however, surprisingly painless; Palpatine had received the same reports Vader had, and concluded that Vader's conduct in the matter had been irreproachable. Presumably he'd inflicted his initial rage on someone else, and was now in a calmer frame of mind.

“You are certain that this pilot was sensitive to the Force?” Palpatine said.

“Yes, my master,” said Vader, for once grateful for his artificial knees. He, or what was left of him, was in excellent condition by any standards, much less those that would ordinarily apply to a forty-year-old human male—but the obeisance that Palpatine very amiably required would have grown painful. He didn't dare raise his eyes.

Palpatine mulled it over. They both knew that nearly all possible Force-sensitives within the Empire had been killed at birth, and the only exceptions made had been for Palpatine's own servants.

“You will discover his identity and destroy him.”

Vader bowed his head.

As it happened, his own intentions coincided with Palpatine's. Intrigued as he was by the possibility of a remotely challenging foe, he was not about to risk the Empire's welfare, or his own, over it. It was enough that his distaste for Tarkin's monstrosity was now seen to be entirely justified. The pilot had served his purpose and now, for the good of the galaxy, he must die.

Between his other duties, Vader meditated fiercely, furious but unsurprised when nothing but unwelcome fragments of memory appeared before him. The Force had been unclear of late, as it had not been since the last days of the Republic.

That must be the reason, or perhaps some remote Naboo involvement—there could be no actual connection to Padmé. In a sort of twisted penance, he'd always kept a close watch on her relations, simultaneously sheltering his oblivious in-laws from danger and remaining alert to any treason from the always political Naberries. Rather to his relief, the latter had never materialized. Even Padmé's younger niece, a former member of the Imperial Senate, had no association with the Rebellion beyond a distant friendship with Leia Organa. Whatever Pooja's private sympathies, she was far too sensible to act on them.

He approved. He approved of both sisters, in fact; he'd diverted what opportunities he could in their direction, and in their different ways, both had taken full advantage of them. Even now, Pooja was considering an offer from Naboo's regional governor. Ryoo lived in Theed, an acclaimed architect and, as far as he knew, competent mother to his twin great-niece and great-nephew. Something nudged at him there; he reached for the Force, and simply saw-heard his wife again, this time pointing to one of the few non-professional pictures hanging about her room.

Anakin obediently looked at the picture, where a young Padmé, younger even than Amidala, hugged a slim, dark-eyed boy. He might have been jealous if the boy had not resembled her quite so closely.

“I didn't know you had a brother.”

Padmé grinned. “I don't. That's my cousin Tainu. We used to do everything together—we're almost exactly the same age. His older sister is Sola's age, too. It's like Mom and Aunt Sairé can't help but do everything in sync. My grandmother always said so, anyway, even though they're only fraternal.”

Anakin was puzzled for a moment. “Oh, they're twins?”

“Mm-hmm.” Padmé straightened the picture. “They run in our family.”

Vader shook himself out of it. Yara and Tainu Naberrie had already been accounted for—they were both lawyers here in Imperial City. The memory was irrelevant. Vader firmly forgot about it.

Sola had scarcely left Varykino since her husband's death. Ruwee and Jobal lived quietly in Theed, not far from their elder daughter. No, there could be no possible connection to the Naberries. Neither the Force nor his agents brought up any suspicious activity on Naboo itself, either. No surprise there; Palpatine kept a tight grip on his homeworld.

The Rebellion's grip on their internal affairs was, if anything, even more absolute. All the efforts of the Empire only unearthed the identity of the occasional prominent member. Nobody knew the extent of their resources, their membership, or their secret allies. Spies were almost never successful, and the few Rebels that allowed themselves to be caught rarely had any valuable information. Had Tarkin not been so foolish, Princess Leia would have been worth considerably more than her weight in any currency.

It was six months before they managed to capture a live Rebel. Vader considered the sweating, struggling man before him. An unimpressive specimen, to be sure, and unlikely to carry what the Rebels would consider vital secrets. Fortunately, Vader was nearly certain that the pilot who destroyed the Death Star would be acclaimed as a hero within the Rebellion. To the Rebels, his identity was unlikely to be a secret at all.

The man evinced very little resistance to the mind probe—nothing like Princess Leia. At least it was not some trick the Rebels had developed, but simply the princess' own capacities. Vader had suspected for years that she was slightly Force-sensitive, if not enough to have been euthanized as an infant.

“Who is he?” Vader demanded, growing impatient. He focused his attention on the Rebel's mind again, altering the phantom agonies he'd already instilled there.

The man screamed again, his body arching. He gasped something, his voice too indistinct for Vader's sensors to pick up.

One of the officers standing behind their prisoner cleared his throat. “I think he said she, sir.”

“The pilot is a woman?” Vader asked swiftly. He was mildly startled; as far as he knew, there were even fewer women in the Rebellion's ranks than in the Imperial Starfleet's. Still, he was no more than startled; he had fought beside hundreds of female Jedi, and personally killed at least a dozen of them. He had no reason to believe that the Force distinguished by humanoid genders—that was Palpatine's foolishness.

The Rebel moaned. His eyes closed.

“Wake him up,” Vader ordered the interrogation droid. The drugs were about the only use the droid had for him, beyond simple fear. Once the Rebel jerked back into alertness, he repeated the question.

“Y-yes,” he stammered, cringing away from Vader.

“What is her name and rank?”

The Rebel gulped, his gaze darting between Vader and the droid. His mind pulsed with terror. “I—I don't . . . I'm not . . . I don't know her. I don't know anything!”

Vader didn't even need the Force to sense the lie. The officers eyed the Rebel skeptically.

“Every Rebel alive must know her name. Who is she?”

The Rebel stared blindly at the droid. When one of the officers shifted, Vader held up his hand, waiting. Their prisoner slumped back in his chair.

“Skywalker,” he mumbled. “Lieutenant Skywalker. That's all I know.”

His neck snapped.

In that first instant, Vader scarcely noticed the jerk of his hand, or even the stunned expressions of his subordinates. It was only with a conscious effort that he dropped his hand and ordered them to remove the body in as disinterested a tone as his vocoder could produce.

Lieutenant Skywalker.

Skywalker.

It was possible, of course, that there could be other Skywalkers in the galaxy, even now. His mother had rarely spoken of her years with the Hutts, but he knew she'd had siblings, cousins. He supposed some of those could have survived to adulthood. Had that been the meaning in his visions? The Force had not been prodding him to search among Padmé's relations, but his own? Some distant cousin would mean nothing, and there was no reason to assume a nearer connection. No reason except the pilot blazing in the Force as he—she—spun through the trench.

She, she—that was important, he had seen something important, seen—her? When could he have—the Death Star, something about the Death Star. The Rebel agent's “prisoners” had been a Wookiee and a girl. The Wookiee had been identified as the criminal Chewbacca, a known associate of the equally-criminal Han Solo, who was himself the last known owner of the ship that had fled to the Rebellion. No information on the girl, however, had been forthcoming: not even a name.

So that was the pilot. Vader had scarcely noticed her at the time. The girl had screamed when he killed Obi-Wan, he remembered that. He'd caught a glimpse of the Rebels before one of her wild shots blew out the control panel. Princess Leia. A man perhaps ten years younger than himself—Solo, presumably. The Wookiee. Two droids, an astromech and protocol. And yes, a girl in white. He thought she'd been fair-haired; the Force offered nothing else.

Had Obi-Wan been teaching her? How had he even discovered her? Even Vader had sensed nothing until she reached for the Force—unless—she'd been surprisingly strong in the Force, raw, but stronger than most fully-trained Jedi—was it possible . . . ?

He felt panic building in his chest, straining his machinery. No, he told himself. No. Padmé had been pregnant when she died. He'd seen her body. He had killed her. Killed her and the child. It was impossible, except if—it was impossible. The Force must have been strong in his family already. His mother had never said it wasn't. This girl could only be a remote relation who had slipped under the Empire's radar in some distant corner of the galaxy. Perhaps even Tatooine. It was the only explanation.

But now he had a name. That, with her rank and general description, was enough to narrow the search. He sent his agents to gather every possible scrap of information, and within a few months, the best of them had compiled their findings and personally delivered the file. Vader dismissed him, pausing over the datapad in his hands. He felt neither anticipation nor dread but a curious mixture of both, which he promptly disregarded as sentimental weakness.

This girl was nothing more than a Rebel terrorist. Vader's interest in her sprang solely from the fact that she was a threat—a small threat—to the Empire's stability. It was his duty to find her and his duty to destroy her. He flipped open the datapad, and looked at the name at the top of the file.

Skywalker, Lucy Amidala.

Vader's respirator hitched, then returned to its regular cycles, already compensating for his accelerated pulse and breath. He read the name again, and then another time, his fingers gripping the datapad hard enough to dent it.

Lucy Amidala. Padmé's daughter? No, no, it must be coincidence. Padmé had been famous around the galaxy, a hero, an icon. There was nothing to prevent another woman from giving her daughter Padmé's name. And his? Well, they'd always been linked in the public eye. Perhaps it would be natural to associate the names together—or perhaps Obi-Wan had inflicted it upon her for some inexplicable reason of his own.

I killed my wife. That knowledge had driven his final steps into despair, prodded him to Palpatine's side and kept him there for eighteen years. Palpatine himself had told him what he'd done. Padmé had died and the child had died and though it mattered less, the Republic had died, and Vader and the Empire had risen out of their deaths. That was the truth. If it were not, the Force would have shown him—something would have shown him. He would have known.

He finally managed to read beyond the name, to Lucy Skywalker's date of birth. Empire Day, eighteen years ago. The first Empire Day: this powerfully Force-sensitive girl with his name and his wife's name and his master's shadow over her had been born with the Empire. A last coincidence, and too much for any of it to be coincidence.

Padmé had died that day; he still had no doubt about that. But she had not died there, on Mustafar. She had not died then. She must have been alive when Vader was screaming through surgery. She must have died as he'd foreseen—not by his hand at all. And she had lived to bear her child. This child. This girl who had shown the supremacy of the Force in the most spectacular fashion possible.

He had not, after all, been proven right by some Force-sensitive pilot out of nowhere, but his own offspring. Skywalker. That was the name by which the Rebel prisoner had known her, by which they all must know her. She bore his name and lived as his daughter.

His daughter.

So. His wife was dead, but not murdered, and his daughter was alive, if estranged by eighteen years and very evidently misguided. He saw Obi-Wan's hand in that, but she was young enough to be educated into a proper way of thinking.

And Palpatine had betrayed him, even more deeply than Vader had ever imagined. Whatever lingering loyalty he might have felt was gone. Vader's previous plots against his master were mere trifles; now he would be satisfied with nothing less than Palpatine's complete overthrow, and now that had become possible. He had only to find Lucy and turn her, and then—

Then, they would rule the galaxy as father and daughter.