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updating Lucy!
I forgot to post Ch 2 nearly two years ago, and just finished writing Ch 3!
title: The Jedi and the Sith Lord (2/?)
verse: Lucy Skywalker: my f!Luke AU, following from The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker and The Imperial Menace
characters: Luke/Lucy Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker; also, droid OCs—Tuvié (F-2VA), Tisix (T6-X), and Ellex (LX-3)
stuff that happens: Lucy faces Darth Vader.
previous sections: one
CHAPTER TWO
She was a Jedi, Lucy reminded herself. She was a Jedi. She was a Jedi.
Sort of.
She would be. She was apprentice to Obi-Wan Kenobi, and to Yoda, the greatest Jedi of them all. She was the daughter of Anakin Skywalker, a hero without fear … he wouldn’t want her to hesitate.
She centered herself as well as she could manage, mind catching flickers of movement that her eyes did not. Determined not to falter before the droids, Vader, anyone, she stepped out of whatever chamber she’d been relegated to.
Lucy yelped, flinching from the cold floor. Until that moment, she’d noticed neither the plush carpet of the chamber nor her own bare feet. But this was not only cold as hyperspace but rough, not like metal—not a starship. Well, she knew that, or she should have. But this could be a Hutt palace or a fortress or … anything. She didn’t know.
Shivering and frightened, Lucy stumbled on, guided by Tuvié.
“Oh dear, Miss Lucy, oh dear,” she muttered almost as soon as the door closed. “Have you developed some new malfunction already? I can’t think what the Maker will say.”
Lucy recovered her initial resolve, straightening her back and repressing her instinctive wince at each icy step.
“No,” she said. “It’s only a little cold.”
“Humanoid sensors cannot compare with ours,” said Tisix, “but at the extremities, they do contain large numbers of them, rendering both hands and feet highly sensitive to temperature.”
“Temperature?” repeated Tuvié, bewildered at first. Then she gave a small cry. “Oh, no! I meant to search for foot coverings, but of course there was no need while you were non-operational, and I quite forgot! The Maker—”
“You can bring my boots next time,” Lucy said, and could not help but add silently: if I live that long. She focused as much of her attention as she could on the numbing soles of her feet, trying to at least identify the floor beneath her. “Where are they? My things?”
“Burnt,” said Tuvié tragically. “All, all burnt! It wasn’t my idea, Miss Lucy, but … well, everything was stained and ripped and wrecked as it was, and the boots falling apart. I’ll find you something to muffle your sensors, I promise.”
The thought cut into her mind: I’m going to die without any shoes on.
Mounting dread clutched at Lucy’s throat. Not the boots, or anything else, just—she might die. In a matter of minutes. Wherever they were, it couldn’t be that long before they brought her before Vader. She had no lightsaber, and the Force slipped and heaved whenever she tried to grasp at it, she—
Something else. Something else. They’d tossed her last belongings into the incinerator. Last but for her father’s lightsaber—Vader might have taken it from her on Bespin, but it must be around somewhere, and it was hers. The rest, though, the very clothes on her back …
Tuvié had said something about cleaning her up. She must have bathed her, dumped her into whatever Lucy was wearing now. What was she wearing, anyway? She could feel skirts, the stiff material brushing her ankles with each step. Good fabric, she thought, never able to quite prevent herself from calculating prices and values. Some sort of rough-woven silk; that’d be twenty barrels at least. And she wasn’t tripping over anything, which never happened except with clothes that she or Aunt Beru made, or Leia’s things—she was as short as Lucy.
Leia. Lucy stumbled, nearly fell.
“Mind your step, Miss Lucy,” Tuvié said. “The halls are a bit rough. I’ll find the mufflers as soon as I can.”
Lucy swallowed and kept going. Skirts, she thought wildly. Rough silk skirts, not quite floor length—on her. Even, as far as she could tell, not dragging on the floor or baring her calves in the back. Pleated, and loose rather than close.
The shirt—bodice?—was close. Not too close, though, nor baggy anywhere. Somehow fitted neatly to her shape, from the low waist to the shoulders to a collar nearly at her jaw. Velvet? And wide gauzy sleeves, until they caught at her wrists in long, tight cuffs.
Cuffs, just like the Death Star. She nearly shrieked with laughter. But no Han, all snide asides and daring and cracking shell of self-interest. No Leia snarling and shooting and that bit more sensible, but fearlessly trusting in the strength of a woman barely over five feet. No Chewie, no Artoo and Threepio, scraps for all she knew. Or memory-wiped, even worse.
She hadn’t cried for herself, hadn’t even thought of it. But at that, tears pricked her eyes. No, they wouldn’t be. It just, it couldn’t happen. Vader had a high tolerance for droid eccentricity, to go by these. Well, he was the next thing to a droid himself. They’d be themselves, somewhere. They would.
Lucy felt sick. Trying to steady herself, she pressed her free hand against her stomach, and felt not the heavy softness of the collar, but delicate lines of thread. Some sort of embroidered panel. Fancy, she thought. Very, very fancy.
It didn’t make her any less queasy. Why on earth …? She felt like a bantha trussed for a banquet, or she would, if she thought Vader could possibly care about fashion.
It wasn’t like she had anything to lose.
“Why am I wearing this?” said Lucy.
She meant to address herself to Tuvié, plainly the responsible party, but she had no clear idea of where the droid’s head was. It probably made no difference to her, but the unrelenting darkness didn’t seem quite so terrible if Lucy didn’t try to look at anything. But it was Tisix who answered her.
“Your skin is inadequate.”
Ellex made a sound that Lucy couldn’t identify. Probably some sort of metal snicker.
“A typical failing in humanoid construction,” Tisix said.
“Were you coded by Tuskens?” said Tuvié. “Really, you don’t have to be rude.”
“Accurate,” Tisix corrected.
“Don’t mind them, Miss Lucy. It’s just that—well, we had to put you in something. I found what I could.”
Lucy tried to imagine what conceivable reason Darth Vader could have for keeping small gowns in opulent high fashion lying around some fortress of death. Nothing came to mind.
“It’s just lucky that Senator Amidala’s clothes fit you,” Tuvié was saying.
“Amidala!” exclaimed Lucy. She knew little of her namesake; once she’d known still less, not even her name or the fact that she’d been a senator at all. It was Leia who told her about Padmé Amidala, Palpatine’s protégée turned enemy. She’d been friends with Lucy’s father, and Leia’s father too, working with Senators Organa and Mothma to found the Rebellion—a peculiar nexus of all their histories. Lucy would have liked to know more, but she never had the time or the resources, so she still had no idea why she carried a long-dead senator’s name. Amidala, Leia said, died with the Republic.
It might be nothing more than the tie to Anakin. Perhaps she’d been something like a valìkhariya on Tatooine, a companion so honoured and beloved that they would be admitted into the family as guide and protector. Among Lucy’s people, anyway, it had been custom for children to bear the name, in some form, of their appointed valìkhariya. Perhaps Anakin had even named Amidala as Lucy’s.
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said Tisix.
Not that it mattered now. Padmé Amidala was long gone, and Lucy a blinded captive marched to her fate in a dead woman’s gown. Amidala’s, Lucy Amidala in Amidala’s clothes—she almost laughed again. Coincidence. It had to be coincidence. Could it be coincidence?
“Quiet,” snapped Ellex, stomping some distance ahead.
“I referred to the labour of Denine,” Tisix said. “It made the adjustments to allow for her musculature.”
“Only a few,” replied Tuvié. “It couldn’t have managed them if Miss Lucy’s construction were not so near to the senator’s.”
Ellex’s stomps grated against the rock floor. “I said quiet.”
Lucy, only half-hearing any of this, wondered how Amidala had died. But she dared not press Ellex further. She didn’t mean to be a coward, but testing the patience of a super battle droid was—well, courage didn’t have to mean stupidity.
Eventually, the air lightened, and the floor beneath Lucy’s feet gentled to something smoother and warmer. Tuvié’s grip very slightly lightened as doors closed behind them.
“Here we are!” she cried out, her usual anxious cheer brighter than usual. “You should be more comfortable now, Miss Lucy.”
Right. Waiting for Vader.
Ellex stomped in some direction away from Lucy, the clatter of her tread fading. Tisix didn’t move, but Tuvié gently prodded Lucy over to the side, and pressed on her shoulder. “You can sit down.”
She would much rather have faced Vader on her feet. But she supposed it didn’t make much difference; she couldn’t even be sure of facing him at all. With the Force slithering away every time she reached for it, a distant fog at the furthest edge of her awareness, she had no direction. Lucy fumbled at the back of the chair, making out its dimensions before she let Tuvié sit her down.
It was pointless in the end. The moment that she heard Vader’s heavy step and heavier breaths, Lucy sprang up, hands clenched at her sides and terror in her throat. To face him with a lightsaber and urgency was one thing; to do it like this, with no weapon and no escape, not even her own clothes, was another. Adrenaline trickled through her veins, but not enough to drive off raw fear.
For a moment, she heard nothing but his machinery and her pulse in her ears. Then, presumably at some silent command, the droids retreated. Lucy had to repress the impulse to grasp at Tuvié.
Slowly, Darth Vader said, “Lucy Skywalker.”
Somehow, he managed to make her own name one of the most menacing things she’d ever heard.
Lucy straightened to the furthest millimeter of her height. “I won’t give you anything.”
“We shall see,” said Vader.
And that sounded less menacing, almost conversational. She clenched her teeth, grateful in an odd sense. As ever, anger blotted out fear.
“Never!”
After a pause, he went on, “You are comfortable?”
She stared at him, or in his general vicinity, tracking his steady mechanized breaths as well as she could. He didn’t seem to be moving any nearer.
“What?”
His vocoder made a sound that sounded very much like a sigh. “There is no need to make this more unpleasant than it has to be. Your accommodations. Are they comfortable?”
Scarcely less incredulous, Lucy said, “Maybe if you hadn’t blinded me.”
She didn’t need to see him wave this aside. “A byproduct of the carbon-freeze. It will pass.”
Carbon-freeze. Han.
“Where are my friends?” she demanded. “Leia and Han and C-3PO and R2-D2?”
A moment of absolute silence passed, second eating up second. Even Vader’s breathing mechanism stilled. Then he said,
“C-3PO and R2-D2? These are your droids?”
“My friends,” Lucy snapped. “Did you wipe them?”
The respirator took up again. With a distinct note of contempt, he replied, “I am not one of your corrupt Jedi and politicians. I do not have a habit of destroying the minds of sentient beings.”
What on—
Her mind flashed to Obi-Wan back in Mos Eisley, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Did he mean that? But it wasn’t the same, at all. Vader was just—just—maybe he did excuse himself that way. Who cared? A man (maybe? cyborg, anyway) who oversaw atrocity after atrocity didn’t get to judge anyone, even if he had a soft spot (maybe?) for droids.
She crumpled the priceless material of Amidala’s skirt in her fists. “Then where are they? You said you were keeping them as hostages. As—”
“Regrettably,” said Vader, “they all escaped. No doubt Artoo had some part in it.”
At first, relief swam through her. She could endure anything with only her own welfare in the balance. But Leia, Han, the droids: even Lucy didn’t know what she might do for them. Now he had nothing to hold over her.
Except, why would Vader himself tell her so? He might have just let her believe that others would pay the price for defiance. Lucy scowled.
“Why should I believe that?”
“Search your feelings,” said Vader, and through everything, the words fell into the same cadence as Obi-Wan’s, Yoda’s. Any Jedi’s, she guessed, and nearly shivered. Was he a Jedi, still? “The Force will tell you it is true.”
“The Force!” Lucy nearly screamed with laughter. “I don’t feel anything! You—you’ve cut me off from the Force, you’re—”
“You are a Skywalker,” Vader said sharply. “Nothing can block the Force from you.”
What the hell?
Fear altogether swallowed up in incredulity, she said, “That’s why you hunted me down? It’s not the Death Star, it’s—my name?”
Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father. But apparently that wasn’t enough, though she could scarcely believe it.
“You’ve done all this because I’m Anakin Skywalker’s daughter?”
Another one of his long, unpleasant silences slipped past. More than ever, Lucy resented the blackness around her, the vacuity of every other sense. She refused to break it, though, betray weakness to an enemy. Even if she hadn’t known better, Leia always warned her against that, and in his way, Han, too.
“Yes,” he said at last.
“Why?”
“We have a … common enemy,” said Vader, which—
What the—
All right, she’d thought her capacity for shock exhausted, but clearly not.
“With the power of the Dark Side,” he persisted, “we will have the strength for victory. If you turn and join me—”
She did laugh, then. “You? I’ll never join you. And I’ll never turn to the Dark Side.”
“You think that now,” said Vader, almost indifferently.
“It won’t change,” Lucy retorted. “You’ll be waiting for a long time if you expect anything different.”
Now he sounded almost amused. “Fortunately, I have plenty of time.”
The familiar clinks and patters of droids filled her ears. He must have summoned them in some way or other.
Vader told her, “And so do you, young Skywalker.”
-
As Lucy followed Tuvié back to her rooms, she almost welcomed the touch of the prosthetic hand. It was warm, at least, and kind in its way. Within a few steps, Lucy managed to shove her scattered thoughts into some kind of order.
Leia, Han, and the droids had made it out—good.
Vader seemed intent on keeping her in what passed for comfort here, rather than torment—good. Maybe.
He apparently meant to hold her here indefinitely (forever?), unless she gave in—not good.
He also apparently meant to place her under the constant supervision of his servants or himself at every moment of every day—definitely not good.
She couldn’t use the Force. She couldn’t hide. She couldn’t help the Rebellion. She couldn’t choose her own clothes. She couldn’t see.
Lucy shuddered.
“Oh, are you cold again?” said Tuvié, brimming with sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” Lucy replied, though she was. She just couldn’t—she—she could endure Vader’s menace, the battle droid’s threats. Kindness was harder.
Her thoughts flickered back. He didn’t want to subvert her purely because of her strength in the Force, or her triumph above Yavin. He called her young Skywalker (or Lucy, which was worse). He’d brought her here on Anakin’s account. Anakin, whom he’d killed. A grudge, maybe, but Vader had been the one to betray her father, not the other way around, and he wasn’t trying to kill her anyway. Even as icy vengeance, it didn’t make sense. And a shared enemy … did he mean the Emperor? Since when was the Emperor Vader’s enemy?
Her head throbbed. Only when Tuvié led her into her quarters—her padded cell, more like—did Lucy feel her muscles finally relax, the pulsing pressure in her head and chest and gut subsiding.
Tuvié settled her in a soft chair near the barred window, which did little to diminish the impression of an ornate cell. Lucy settled for catching her breath and tilting her face up to the light.
“I can guide you elsewhere, Miss Lucy,” Tuvié told her, in more fretful tones than usual. “I am permitted to take you almost anywhere in the castle, you know. This must be very dull.”
“I’ve had enough excitement for awhile,” said Lucy. “Maybe you could find me some boots? I’d look, but …”
Several pieces of metal clattered. “Oh! yes, yes, of course.”
Given the synthetic arm, she must be quite the patchwork droid. Lucy rather liked her better for it, as far as she could like any minion of Vader’s.
She exhaled. As Tuvié’s steps receded into a faint scritching sound, Lucy closed her eyes. This time, she didn’t grasp at the Force, cold and slippery as it seemed. The Dark Side was strong here, of course, stronger than she’d ever sensed it, but the Force was never the Dark Side alone. Two halves, always, if rarely in balance. Yoda had said so, anyway.
“Please,” she whispered to it. “Help me.”
“What was that, Miss Lucy?” called Tuvié. “Do you need something else?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Lucy said, too exhausted to much mind her tone.
“Oh.” Tuvié went uncharacteristically quiet. “I see. I’ll … go find the coverings. Boots.”
Though Lucy couldn’t see her, the memory of Threepio and Artoo flared in her. She bit her lip.
“Sorry!” she called out, and Force, now she was apologizing to Vader’s droid.
“Sorry?” said Tuvié, with every indication of bewilderment. “I’m the one who destroyed your … boots? Yes, boots. And your other coverings. And the cloth in your hair, it was hopelessly tangled, and—”
“It’s all right, Tuvié,” Lucy said hastily. “If you could just find some kind of shoes, that’d be good. I—I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ll do my best,” Tuvié promised, and at last, left her in peace.
title: The Jedi and the Sith Lord (2/?)
verse: Lucy Skywalker: my f!Luke AU, following from The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker and The Imperial Menace
characters: Luke/Lucy Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker; also, droid OCs—Tuvié (F-2VA), Tisix (T6-X), and Ellex (LX-3)
stuff that happens: Lucy faces Darth Vader.
previous sections: one
CHAPTER TWO
She was a Jedi, Lucy reminded herself. She was a Jedi. She was a Jedi.
Sort of.
She would be. She was apprentice to Obi-Wan Kenobi, and to Yoda, the greatest Jedi of them all. She was the daughter of Anakin Skywalker, a hero without fear … he wouldn’t want her to hesitate.
She centered herself as well as she could manage, mind catching flickers of movement that her eyes did not. Determined not to falter before the droids, Vader, anyone, she stepped out of whatever chamber she’d been relegated to.
Lucy yelped, flinching from the cold floor. Until that moment, she’d noticed neither the plush carpet of the chamber nor her own bare feet. But this was not only cold as hyperspace but rough, not like metal—not a starship. Well, she knew that, or she should have. But this could be a Hutt palace or a fortress or … anything. She didn’t know.
Shivering and frightened, Lucy stumbled on, guided by Tuvié.
“Oh dear, Miss Lucy, oh dear,” she muttered almost as soon as the door closed. “Have you developed some new malfunction already? I can’t think what the Maker will say.”
Lucy recovered her initial resolve, straightening her back and repressing her instinctive wince at each icy step.
“No,” she said. “It’s only a little cold.”
“Humanoid sensors cannot compare with ours,” said Tisix, “but at the extremities, they do contain large numbers of them, rendering both hands and feet highly sensitive to temperature.”
“Temperature?” repeated Tuvié, bewildered at first. Then she gave a small cry. “Oh, no! I meant to search for foot coverings, but of course there was no need while you were non-operational, and I quite forgot! The Maker—”
“You can bring my boots next time,” Lucy said, and could not help but add silently: if I live that long. She focused as much of her attention as she could on the numbing soles of her feet, trying to at least identify the floor beneath her. “Where are they? My things?”
“Burnt,” said Tuvié tragically. “All, all burnt! It wasn’t my idea, Miss Lucy, but … well, everything was stained and ripped and wrecked as it was, and the boots falling apart. I’ll find you something to muffle your sensors, I promise.”
The thought cut into her mind: I’m going to die without any shoes on.
Mounting dread clutched at Lucy’s throat. Not the boots, or anything else, just—she might die. In a matter of minutes. Wherever they were, it couldn’t be that long before they brought her before Vader. She had no lightsaber, and the Force slipped and heaved whenever she tried to grasp at it, she—
Something else. Something else. They’d tossed her last belongings into the incinerator. Last but for her father’s lightsaber—Vader might have taken it from her on Bespin, but it must be around somewhere, and it was hers. The rest, though, the very clothes on her back …
Tuvié had said something about cleaning her up. She must have bathed her, dumped her into whatever Lucy was wearing now. What was she wearing, anyway? She could feel skirts, the stiff material brushing her ankles with each step. Good fabric, she thought, never able to quite prevent herself from calculating prices and values. Some sort of rough-woven silk; that’d be twenty barrels at least. And she wasn’t tripping over anything, which never happened except with clothes that she or Aunt Beru made, or Leia’s things—she was as short as Lucy.
Leia. Lucy stumbled, nearly fell.
“Mind your step, Miss Lucy,” Tuvié said. “The halls are a bit rough. I’ll find the mufflers as soon as I can.”
Lucy swallowed and kept going. Skirts, she thought wildly. Rough silk skirts, not quite floor length—on her. Even, as far as she could tell, not dragging on the floor or baring her calves in the back. Pleated, and loose rather than close.
The shirt—bodice?—was close. Not too close, though, nor baggy anywhere. Somehow fitted neatly to her shape, from the low waist to the shoulders to a collar nearly at her jaw. Velvet? And wide gauzy sleeves, until they caught at her wrists in long, tight cuffs.
Cuffs, just like the Death Star. She nearly shrieked with laughter. But no Han, all snide asides and daring and cracking shell of self-interest. No Leia snarling and shooting and that bit more sensible, but fearlessly trusting in the strength of a woman barely over five feet. No Chewie, no Artoo and Threepio, scraps for all she knew. Or memory-wiped, even worse.
She hadn’t cried for herself, hadn’t even thought of it. But at that, tears pricked her eyes. No, they wouldn’t be. It just, it couldn’t happen. Vader had a high tolerance for droid eccentricity, to go by these. Well, he was the next thing to a droid himself. They’d be themselves, somewhere. They would.
Lucy felt sick. Trying to steady herself, she pressed her free hand against her stomach, and felt not the heavy softness of the collar, but delicate lines of thread. Some sort of embroidered panel. Fancy, she thought. Very, very fancy.
It didn’t make her any less queasy. Why on earth …? She felt like a bantha trussed for a banquet, or she would, if she thought Vader could possibly care about fashion.
It wasn’t like she had anything to lose.
“Why am I wearing this?” said Lucy.
She meant to address herself to Tuvié, plainly the responsible party, but she had no clear idea of where the droid’s head was. It probably made no difference to her, but the unrelenting darkness didn’t seem quite so terrible if Lucy didn’t try to look at anything. But it was Tisix who answered her.
“Your skin is inadequate.”
Ellex made a sound that Lucy couldn’t identify. Probably some sort of metal snicker.
“A typical failing in humanoid construction,” Tisix said.
“Were you coded by Tuskens?” said Tuvié. “Really, you don’t have to be rude.”
“Accurate,” Tisix corrected.
“Don’t mind them, Miss Lucy. It’s just that—well, we had to put you in something. I found what I could.”
Lucy tried to imagine what conceivable reason Darth Vader could have for keeping small gowns in opulent high fashion lying around some fortress of death. Nothing came to mind.
“It’s just lucky that Senator Amidala’s clothes fit you,” Tuvié was saying.
“Amidala!” exclaimed Lucy. She knew little of her namesake; once she’d known still less, not even her name or the fact that she’d been a senator at all. It was Leia who told her about Padmé Amidala, Palpatine’s protégée turned enemy. She’d been friends with Lucy’s father, and Leia’s father too, working with Senators Organa and Mothma to found the Rebellion—a peculiar nexus of all their histories. Lucy would have liked to know more, but she never had the time or the resources, so she still had no idea why she carried a long-dead senator’s name. Amidala, Leia said, died with the Republic.
It might be nothing more than the tie to Anakin. Perhaps she’d been something like a valìkhariya on Tatooine, a companion so honoured and beloved that they would be admitted into the family as guide and protector. Among Lucy’s people, anyway, it had been custom for children to bear the name, in some form, of their appointed valìkhariya. Perhaps Anakin had even named Amidala as Lucy’s.
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said Tisix.
Not that it mattered now. Padmé Amidala was long gone, and Lucy a blinded captive marched to her fate in a dead woman’s gown. Amidala’s, Lucy Amidala in Amidala’s clothes—she almost laughed again. Coincidence. It had to be coincidence. Could it be coincidence?
“Quiet,” snapped Ellex, stomping some distance ahead.
“I referred to the labour of Denine,” Tisix said. “It made the adjustments to allow for her musculature.”
“Only a few,” replied Tuvié. “It couldn’t have managed them if Miss Lucy’s construction were not so near to the senator’s.”
Ellex’s stomps grated against the rock floor. “I said quiet.”
Lucy, only half-hearing any of this, wondered how Amidala had died. But she dared not press Ellex further. She didn’t mean to be a coward, but testing the patience of a super battle droid was—well, courage didn’t have to mean stupidity.
Eventually, the air lightened, and the floor beneath Lucy’s feet gentled to something smoother and warmer. Tuvié’s grip very slightly lightened as doors closed behind them.
“Here we are!” she cried out, her usual anxious cheer brighter than usual. “You should be more comfortable now, Miss Lucy.”
Right. Waiting for Vader.
Ellex stomped in some direction away from Lucy, the clatter of her tread fading. Tisix didn’t move, but Tuvié gently prodded Lucy over to the side, and pressed on her shoulder. “You can sit down.”
She would much rather have faced Vader on her feet. But she supposed it didn’t make much difference; she couldn’t even be sure of facing him at all. With the Force slithering away every time she reached for it, a distant fog at the furthest edge of her awareness, she had no direction. Lucy fumbled at the back of the chair, making out its dimensions before she let Tuvié sit her down.
It was pointless in the end. The moment that she heard Vader’s heavy step and heavier breaths, Lucy sprang up, hands clenched at her sides and terror in her throat. To face him with a lightsaber and urgency was one thing; to do it like this, with no weapon and no escape, not even her own clothes, was another. Adrenaline trickled through her veins, but not enough to drive off raw fear.
For a moment, she heard nothing but his machinery and her pulse in her ears. Then, presumably at some silent command, the droids retreated. Lucy had to repress the impulse to grasp at Tuvié.
Slowly, Darth Vader said, “Lucy Skywalker.”
Somehow, he managed to make her own name one of the most menacing things she’d ever heard.
Lucy straightened to the furthest millimeter of her height. “I won’t give you anything.”
“We shall see,” said Vader.
And that sounded less menacing, almost conversational. She clenched her teeth, grateful in an odd sense. As ever, anger blotted out fear.
“Never!”
After a pause, he went on, “You are comfortable?”
She stared at him, or in his general vicinity, tracking his steady mechanized breaths as well as she could. He didn’t seem to be moving any nearer.
“What?”
His vocoder made a sound that sounded very much like a sigh. “There is no need to make this more unpleasant than it has to be. Your accommodations. Are they comfortable?”
Scarcely less incredulous, Lucy said, “Maybe if you hadn’t blinded me.”
She didn’t need to see him wave this aside. “A byproduct of the carbon-freeze. It will pass.”
Carbon-freeze. Han.
“Where are my friends?” she demanded. “Leia and Han and C-3PO and R2-D2?”
A moment of absolute silence passed, second eating up second. Even Vader’s breathing mechanism stilled. Then he said,
“C-3PO and R2-D2? These are your droids?”
“My friends,” Lucy snapped. “Did you wipe them?”
The respirator took up again. With a distinct note of contempt, he replied, “I am not one of your corrupt Jedi and politicians. I do not have a habit of destroying the minds of sentient beings.”
What on—
Her mind flashed to Obi-Wan back in Mos Eisley, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Did he mean that? But it wasn’t the same, at all. Vader was just—just—maybe he did excuse himself that way. Who cared? A man (maybe? cyborg, anyway) who oversaw atrocity after atrocity didn’t get to judge anyone, even if he had a soft spot (maybe?) for droids.
She crumpled the priceless material of Amidala’s skirt in her fists. “Then where are they? You said you were keeping them as hostages. As—”
“Regrettably,” said Vader, “they all escaped. No doubt Artoo had some part in it.”
At first, relief swam through her. She could endure anything with only her own welfare in the balance. But Leia, Han, the droids: even Lucy didn’t know what she might do for them. Now he had nothing to hold over her.
Except, why would Vader himself tell her so? He might have just let her believe that others would pay the price for defiance. Lucy scowled.
“Why should I believe that?”
“Search your feelings,” said Vader, and through everything, the words fell into the same cadence as Obi-Wan’s, Yoda’s. Any Jedi’s, she guessed, and nearly shivered. Was he a Jedi, still? “The Force will tell you it is true.”
“The Force!” Lucy nearly screamed with laughter. “I don’t feel anything! You—you’ve cut me off from the Force, you’re—”
“You are a Skywalker,” Vader said sharply. “Nothing can block the Force from you.”
What the hell?
Fear altogether swallowed up in incredulity, she said, “That’s why you hunted me down? It’s not the Death Star, it’s—my name?”
Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father. But apparently that wasn’t enough, though she could scarcely believe it.
“You’ve done all this because I’m Anakin Skywalker’s daughter?”
Another one of his long, unpleasant silences slipped past. More than ever, Lucy resented the blackness around her, the vacuity of every other sense. She refused to break it, though, betray weakness to an enemy. Even if she hadn’t known better, Leia always warned her against that, and in his way, Han, too.
“Yes,” he said at last.
“Why?”
“We have a … common enemy,” said Vader, which—
What the—
All right, she’d thought her capacity for shock exhausted, but clearly not.
“With the power of the Dark Side,” he persisted, “we will have the strength for victory. If you turn and join me—”
She did laugh, then. “You? I’ll never join you. And I’ll never turn to the Dark Side.”
“You think that now,” said Vader, almost indifferently.
“It won’t change,” Lucy retorted. “You’ll be waiting for a long time if you expect anything different.”
Now he sounded almost amused. “Fortunately, I have plenty of time.”
The familiar clinks and patters of droids filled her ears. He must have summoned them in some way or other.
Vader told her, “And so do you, young Skywalker.”
-
As Lucy followed Tuvié back to her rooms, she almost welcomed the touch of the prosthetic hand. It was warm, at least, and kind in its way. Within a few steps, Lucy managed to shove her scattered thoughts into some kind of order.
Leia, Han, and the droids had made it out—good.
Vader seemed intent on keeping her in what passed for comfort here, rather than torment—good. Maybe.
He apparently meant to hold her here indefinitely (forever?), unless she gave in—not good.
He also apparently meant to place her under the constant supervision of his servants or himself at every moment of every day—definitely not good.
She couldn’t use the Force. She couldn’t hide. She couldn’t help the Rebellion. She couldn’t choose her own clothes. She couldn’t see.
Lucy shuddered.
“Oh, are you cold again?” said Tuvié, brimming with sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” Lucy replied, though she was. She just couldn’t—she—she could endure Vader’s menace, the battle droid’s threats. Kindness was harder.
Her thoughts flickered back. He didn’t want to subvert her purely because of her strength in the Force, or her triumph above Yavin. He called her young Skywalker (or Lucy, which was worse). He’d brought her here on Anakin’s account. Anakin, whom he’d killed. A grudge, maybe, but Vader had been the one to betray her father, not the other way around, and he wasn’t trying to kill her anyway. Even as icy vengeance, it didn’t make sense. And a shared enemy … did he mean the Emperor? Since when was the Emperor Vader’s enemy?
Her head throbbed. Only when Tuvié led her into her quarters—her padded cell, more like—did Lucy feel her muscles finally relax, the pulsing pressure in her head and chest and gut subsiding.
Tuvié settled her in a soft chair near the barred window, which did little to diminish the impression of an ornate cell. Lucy settled for catching her breath and tilting her face up to the light.
“I can guide you elsewhere, Miss Lucy,” Tuvié told her, in more fretful tones than usual. “I am permitted to take you almost anywhere in the castle, you know. This must be very dull.”
“I’ve had enough excitement for awhile,” said Lucy. “Maybe you could find me some boots? I’d look, but …”
Several pieces of metal clattered. “Oh! yes, yes, of course.”
Given the synthetic arm, she must be quite the patchwork droid. Lucy rather liked her better for it, as far as she could like any minion of Vader’s.
She exhaled. As Tuvié’s steps receded into a faint scritching sound, Lucy closed her eyes. This time, she didn’t grasp at the Force, cold and slippery as it seemed. The Dark Side was strong here, of course, stronger than she’d ever sensed it, but the Force was never the Dark Side alone. Two halves, always, if rarely in balance. Yoda had said so, anyway.
“Please,” she whispered to it. “Help me.”
“What was that, Miss Lucy?” called Tuvié. “Do you need something else?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Lucy said, too exhausted to much mind her tone.
“Oh.” Tuvié went uncharacteristically quiet. “I see. I’ll … go find the coverings. Boots.”
Though Lucy couldn’t see her, the memory of Threepio and Artoo flared in her. She bit her lip.
“Sorry!” she called out, and Force, now she was apologizing to Vader’s droid.
“Sorry?” said Tuvié, with every indication of bewilderment. “I’m the one who destroyed your … boots? Yes, boots. And your other coverings. And the cloth in your hair, it was hopelessly tangled, and—”
“It’s all right, Tuvié,” Lucy said hastily. “If you could just find some kind of shoes, that’d be good. I—I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ll do my best,” Tuvié promised, and at last, left her in peace.