yet another 'finally'!
Feb. 5th, 2020 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineAll I'll say is that a) I've been planning this one for an extremely long time and b) we're still closer to ESB than ROTJ and that's reflected in Certain Things.
:D
title: The Jedi and the Sith Lord (16/?)
verse: Lucy Skywalker: my f!Luke AU, following from The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker and The Imperial Menace
characters: Luke/Lucy Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker; Ellex (LX-3)
stuff that happens: Vader makes a decision about Lucy—and Lucy makes one about him.
previous sections: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
To Lucy’s inexpressible relief, her father returned within an hour from her deflection practice.
She knew better than to run up and demand to know what had happened, even had Ellex permitted it. Instead, she waited until the droid saw fit to lead her to Vader’s receiving chamber, and stared at him until he relegated Ellex to her usual position guarding the door from the outside.
“What happened?” she said.
Behind the mask and suit, he seemed weary but not discouraged.
“The Emperor found my invitation to Varti curious,” said Vader. “And he wished for information about your training in the Dark Side.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “It is, however, the condition of your continued survival as far as Palpatine is concerned. I told him that your training is progressing.”
She hesitated, wondering if it were altogether a lie. She certainly hadn’t turned to the Dark Side—but just as certainly, he was training her for something.
“Did he believe you?”
“Let us hope so,” said Vader. “It is difficult to know what he is thinking at any given moment. He has not come this far by betraying himself.”
Lucy could believe that. She could believe, too, that she was slated for death at some time or another, if she could not be turned to the Emperor’s purposes. And she had scarcely a choice in refusing that. She’d do anything rather than help the Empire.
“What about Admiral Varti?” she asked.
“I explained that I wished to consult with him over the attack on Castle Bast,” Vader said, “and the Emperor reminded me of his value. He seemed … entertained.”
“You felt that in the Force?”
“No,” he said, and now he sounded-felt puzzled. “It is one thing to sense someone’s presence; it is quite another to pick up on their thoughts and feelings. That skill is quite rare.”
Lucy considered, then said, “I can sense yours. A little, that is—I don’t know what you’re thinking and planning, but I can tell when you’re angry or things like that.”
“As can I, with you,” he said, startling her. She couldn’t have said whether the surprise was unpleasant or not. “That is only natural, however.”
“Why?”
“You are my daughter,” he said simply. “As for Palpatine, I guessed from his expressions, such as they are. It may have been a performance, of course.”
“Did you tell him it wasn’t a Rebel attack?”
Vader inclined his head. “I told him that I suspected as much. Some measure of truth is important. He thought either was possible, or said so.”
Lucy had to repress a burst of frustration; she might not like to face certain things head-on, but she definitely preferred it to uncertainty and machinations. Damn the Emperor, anyway. Maybe his arteries would do the Force’s work and he’d just drop dead at some point. Not that she expected it—he was the sort of monster who lived forever.
“Did he say anything else?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Vader, but he didn’t elaborate. “Did you practice with Ellex?”
Altogether, it made for something of an anticlimax after her terrible fear. Yet, for all she knew, it might be worse than it seemed; the Emperor might have gleaned something Vader didn’t realize, or preferred not to see. Could he read minds? He might know what Lucy was doing and not doing, he might know that Anakin had risked himself for her, he might know—oh, anything.
“Yes,” Lucy said absently. “Until half her blasters ran out of charges.”
“How did you do?”
She jerked her thoughts back to the matter at hand. “Pretty well, I think. I didn’t get stunned, anyway, though she got in a few hits.”
“Hm,” he said. “Keep on practicing. In battle, the blasters won’t be set to stun.”
Did he expect her to be in battle at some point? Against who?
Rebels? That wouldn’t happen, no matter what. But the possibility of freedom still raised her spirits a little.
-
Vader felt decidedly suspicious.
The Emperor had not sent for him. He had not seemed particularly concerned with the length of Lucy’s training—perhaps because he remembered how long it had taken him with Vader himself, but that seemed improbably understanding, given his initial impatience with the idea of training Lucy at all. He hadn’t even seemed deeply concerned with the “Rebel” attack on Bast Castle, insisting he trusted—trusted, ha!—Vader to deal with the situation. In fact, the only thing he seemed to much care about at all was Varti’s continued good health.
Vader had not meant to do anything so asinine as murder the Emperor’s favourite under his own roof, so that posed no particular difficulty, either.
Maybe it did all come down to the new project taking up Palpatine’s attention, but he’d never been a single-minded man. And what was his foresight telling him? Vader constantly shifted his plans or deliberately refused to pin down their details to avoid it, but he couldn’t be sure of that working.
Well, nothing could be done further right now. He retired to his ventilation pod to meditate, flitting through information and feelings. The Force felt weaker, somehow—and yet he saw more clearly than in a very long time. Strange. Strange, too, that the Emperor had not mentioned it. Had he even felt it?
You can’t trust him! Lucy had exclaimed, anxious enough that he’d had to put it out of his thoughts altogether to face Palpatine with a clear mind. He knew that he couldn’t trust the Emperor, of course, but it was worthwhile to remember all the same.
It was worthwhile to remember, too, that his daughter cared whether he lived or died.
Once he felt Lucy drop off to sleep, he waited for his helmet to descend and insulate him, then emerged from his pod and sent for LX-3.
“Lucy thought the practice went well,” he said. “Did it?”
“As well as might be expected,” said Ellex. “She failed to deflect five blaster bolts.”
“Over what period of time?”
“Two hours,” she said. “The bolts in question struck non-essential areas of her body.”
“What was the speed?”
“Moderate to quick,” said Ellex.
Not bad, he decided, for that length of time. Rather good, in fact, considering that any similar exercises she’d done must have taken place over two years ago. Still, she must improve further. She might well have cause to use her skills in a short while—if he could trust her that far.
Ellex seemed to recall the lightsaber hanging from her belt, and extended it to him.
“I assume you would prefer to retain this.”
He accepted it, then said, “Did you have to take it from her?”
“No,” she replied. “I implied that she should keep it, as you requested, Lord Vader. She said that you had not given it to her and insisted on returning it.”
Interesting. And hopeful, perhaps—perhaps.
Yes, he decided. It was.
-
Lucy’s practices for the next several days included the old exercises, the increasingly familiar combat training, and now, deflection practice. Even in that short while, she found herself getting better at the latter—maybe because she’d practiced the forms so much already.
On the fourth day, Ellex shifted her speed so high that Lucy couldn’t even track the blaster bolts. Not with her eyes, anyway. But the Force was with her, and she knew exactly where to block them, anyway. When they went flying away from her, she felt both her father’s approval and her own satisfaction, and laughed out of sheer enjoyment.
“Well done,” said Vader. “That is enough for today. You need to see something.”
Lucy looked at him inquiringly.
“You had better go change,” he added. “Make sure you wash your hands.”
“All right,” she said, entirely baffled. “C’mon, Ellex.”
She headed off without even stopping to see if the droid was following her—though of course she was. All the while, Lucy tried to think of anything she hadn’t seen yet and why he would want her to. With clean hands, no less!
She was pretty gross at that point, so Lucy peeled herself out of the stained and sweaty tunic and pulled the first thing out of the wardrobe her hand touched: a flowered yellow dress she hadn’t worn before. It was faded, but still pretty, and Lucy liked yellow almost as well as black. She shrugged, then showered, pulled back her hair, managed to get herself into the yellow dress without tearing any of the gauzy material—more difficult than it looked—and made a point of washing her hands several times. Then she headed out, her mood still high.
By the time she and Ellex returned to the training room, she found Vader himself practicing, going through unfamiliar forms with each of his lightsabers in hand, slashing them both at truly alarming speeds.
“Impressive,” said Lucy, refusing to feel the merest flicker of fear. “What did you want to show me?”
He deactivated his lightsabers and returned them to his belt, then turned. Unmistakably, she felt shock from him at the sight of her, and then some pain she couldn’t understand. She looked the same as usual, didn’t she? Maybe it was the dress, but all her clothes were Padmé’s, anyway. When he had last seen her in it?
Now she wondered for the first time: when had he last seen Padmé at all?
Without a word, Vader walked past her, gesturing at her to follow him. All three walked in silence, Lucy realizing all over again just how big the castle was. If Vader’s prosthetics helped him, she didn’t know, but her ordinary legs ached by the time they’d walked far enough that the lighting faded. Was he taking her to the room with the tank? She couldn’t understand why he would.
“I can’t see!” Lucy exclaimed, flashing back to her first days here. Instinctively, she reached out, and felt a rough cloth under her fingers.
Her father’s cape, she realized; she was grasping it like a child. Lucy pulled her hand back.
Just as silently, Vader handed her something—his lightsaber. She switched it on and peered into the blue light it cast, just as her father lifted the red lightsaber. There was nothing much to see beyond the stone floor and walls, but the twin lights still came as a comfort.
Finally, the hall they walked began to broaden, enough that all three of them could walk side-by-side, and culminated in a wide set of double doors. They had handles and everything; this must be one of the oldest sections of the castle.
“Wait here,” Vader said, and moved forward, opening and closing the doors so quickly that Lucy could only tell that the room beyond must be dark. After a few moments, the doors creaked open again, apparently of their own accord.
“Enter,” he called out.
Lucy lifted the lightsaber higher and walked forwards, through the doors. As soon as she did so, light filled the room, revealing a high, domed ceiling and walls lined with shelves upon shelves of … books? There were so many, in fact, that the room had been split into multiple levels, each accessible by a curved staircase. Most of the books gleamed faintly under the light—they must be databooks—but here and there, the old-fashioned paper kind were interspersed among them. And some rows, she saw now, didn’t have books at all, but cubes of some kind and a few polyhedrons of about the same size, each probably small enough to fit in her hand.
She’d never seen so much information gathered into one place in her life. Lucy took a startled step forwards, her gaze drifting from the staircases to the books to the polyhedrons to the curved ceiling, and back again.
“What is this place?” she breathed.
It felt almost sacred. She would never have imagined it could exist here.
“The Emperor,” said Vader, “whatever his other failings, values knowledge.”
His voice came from just to her left. Lucy turned to stare at him just as his hand lowered from a panel on the wall.
“This is his library?”
“After a manner of speaking,” her father replied. “When I seized the Jedi Temple on Coruscant”—Lucy repressed a wince—“he ordered the information in its archives preserved in a secure location. While some things were … unavoidably lost, I salvaged what I could and placed it beyond the reach of any Jedi but myself.”
She swallowed. “Oh.”
“Until now,” he said. “It recently occurred to me that some of the information here might be valuable for your—education.”
With that, she understood.
“My training,” she said.
Anakin paused, then said, “Yes.”
Almost in a daze, Lucy moved forwards. She felt more breathless than during their last duel.
“But this is a Jedi library,” she said.
“Yes,” he said again. “The Emperor keeps artifacts of … other traditions under his own control. Even I have no idea where they are. I imagine he thought these were safe with me, since I had already been trained.”
“You know everything in all this?” said Lucy, still trying to take it all in.
“No. I doubt even Grandmaster Yoda did,” Vader said. She held herself very still, clearing her mind as much as she could and summoning every scrap of calm she had, before returning her attention to the library.
“Then—”
“I have had other matters to occupy me, in general,” he told her. “I still do. But as I said, I thought it might be useful to you, as you advance in your training.”
“As a Jedi,” she said again, trying to understand.
“As a Jedi,” he agreed. “Follow me.”
He led her up the first staircase on the right, right to one of the cases full of cubes and polyhedrons. Now she could see that they seemed faintly iridescent, or at least some of them. Vader reached for a cube on a shelf well above Lucy’s head and set it in her hand.
“This,” he said, “is a Jedi holocron. Each contains information that was, in some way, of value to the Order, even if very basic.”
She couldn’t imagine that such a device was actually fragile, but it felt like it. Carefully, she kept her grasp on it light, lifting it up to look more closely. The outer casing seemed to contain another shape inside it, from which the shifting colours actually came. She couldn’t see any latches or buttons or switches.
“How do I open it?” she asked.
“You don’t,” said Vader. “Only a Jedi can access it.”
Lucy closed her eyes, searching her feelings before he could tell her to do it. That felt true. It all did.
He rested one gloved hand just above the surface of the holocron. She seriously doubted that anything would happen, but then, a sharply-defined hologram about a foot tall flared into life above it. The figure in the hologram looked like a middle-aged Twi’lek woman, wearing a short, belted robe and trousers tucked into boots. Abruptly, a lightsaber appeared in her hands, and she ran through a series of moves so quickly that Lucy could only watch, fascinated. The next series was slower, and the next slower still, enough that she could recognize the woman’s motions as the six forms that she herself knew.
“Oh!” said Lucy. “That’s amazing!”
Vader passed his hand over the holocron, and the woman vanished.
“I was a Jedi Knight,” he said. “I am a Jedi Knight. If Obi-Wan told you otherwise, it was one more lie.”
The holocron was shaking. No, her hand was, just a little. A young Jedi named Darth Vader—
“He didn’t,” said Lucy, steadying her grip. “He said you were a student of his, until you turned to … to the Dark Side.”
“That is true,” Vader said. He sounded surprised, as she supposed well he might be. “True enough, in any case. He was no longer my teacher by the time that he betrayed me and left me to die.”
She gazed at the holocron, then lifted her eyes to her father. “What do you mean, betrayed?”
“We were supposed to serve the Force and the galaxy,” said Vader. “But the Jedi Order turned us into enforcers of the Senate, without a word of protest. The Republic was corrupt to its core, Lucy, whatever the Rebellion may have told you. And the Order was corrupted with it. Obi-Wan couldn’t see that. When I saw the truth at last and acted, he snuck onto your mother’s ship in order to assassinate me. He simply lacked the nerve to go through with it.”
Lucy, despite her reservations about Ben’s veracity, felt certain that his version of the story would be quite different.
“It must have been then,” said Vader, “that he hatched his plan for you to do the dirty work that he couldn’t. If Owen Lars had not kept him at bay—”
“I don’t know what he would have done,” she admitted. “He was always kind to me, even when I was small.”
“He would have made himself your master,” Vader said.
Lucy, freeborn though she was, flinched.
“Instead, you are to be my master?” she asked.
“No,” said Vader. “I am your father. You will never call anyone master.”
She looked at the holocron again, trying to get everything clear in her head. But it all seemed so muddled, tangled up like the Light Side and the Dark. With Obi-Wan’s and Yoda’s betrayal, she thought she’d all but given up on a future as a Jedi. If Anakin was still a Jedi—if—was it possible?—but if they’d had their own plans for her, so did he.
“Good,” she said. “Would you still want me to turn to the Dark Side?”
“Yes,” said Vader.
Well, at least he was straightforward.
“I would hope that you could see the necessity,” he told her. “And if you cannot—”
Lucy waited, feeling very small, overshadowed by her father and by the remnants of the Order. But she couldn’t give in to the failings of either.
Vader still hadn’t finished the sentence. Maybe she didn’t want to know.
“Yes?” she said.
He seemed to be thinking, almost as if he hadn’t considered it before. Honestly, Lucy could believe that he hadn’t.
“If you do not turn,” he said, “the Emperor will command your death. You must understand that. If you are to live—”
She shrugged, trying to appear more indifferent than she felt. He’d know the difference anyway, but it was worth trying.
“I’ll die first.”
“As a fully-trained Jedi, you will be far better equipped to defend your life, and any lives that depend on yours,” said Vader.
Lucy frowned. “We were talking about what would happen if I don’t agree.”
“I am considering a … compromise,” her father said.
“I didn’t think you did compromises.”
“Not usually,” said Vader, “but I am not usually negotiating with my daughter. Listen to me. Even if you refuse the Dark Side, you will be at more of an advantage as a weak Jedi than as no Jedi at all. It is worth my while to give you the training that any Jedi apprentice would receive.”
She was immediately suspicious.
“And what do you want in return?”
“Your assistance,” he said.
“I won’t help you fight the Rebellion!” said Lucy.
“I had no expectation that you would,” Vader replied. “But I have many enemies.”
Understanding—hopefully the right understanding—crept over her.
“Like Varti and Jerjerrod?” she asked. “You want me to help you against them?”
“Them and their like.”
It sounded exceptionally vague to her.
“Is there something else you want?” said Lucy.
He looked at her a moment. Then he said,
“Your instincts are good, but they cannot command every decision that you make. Promise me that you will think about the paths ahead of you before you go down one.”
“You mean the Dark Side?” she said.
“I mean everything,” said Vader.
Suitably enough, Lucy stopped to think. The easy thing to do would be to just follow her suspicions and refuse, on the chance that his training would sway her to the Dark Side against her better judgment. But could someone be swayed to the Dark Side against their own will? She didn’t think so.
Of course, the other easy thing would be to take the offer at face value and accept, trusting in her own strength and purity. But she wasn’t pure; she’d always had a bad temper and gotten impatient with things and sometimes gave up too easily. Even if she hadn’t realized that, the cave on Dagobah had warned her of the fate that might lie ahead. She’d seen herself as her father—and somehow, she was still considering being trained by him!
But there was no escaping the fact that, as circumstances stood now, this opportunity would never come again. At the very possibility of receiving proper training without the constant fear of the Dark Side, her heart raced with pure excitement. And she could feel the good in him. She could. Did this come from that, from a genuine desire to see his daughter as fully equipped for survival as possible, or from some deeper plot? What would happen when the Emperor called for her death at last? Could she influence him as he hoped to influence her?
If she refused, Lucy thought, there would be no Jedi left in the galaxy except Vader and Yoda. They would be the very last. Did the Force flow in her from blood alone, or was she meant for more? She’d always felt she was. In the last weeks, she’d felt that she was meant for exactly this.
“You would train me the way that Jedi used to be trained,” she said slowly. “That is, without immediately trying to turn me to the Dark Side. I would help you … somehow … against your enemies in the Empire, and try to be more cautious. Is that it?”
“That is it,” he said, and held out his hand.
She stared at the glove with wide eyes, her pulse pounding in her throat and ears. The very galaxy, it seemed, turned on this moment.
Lucy took his hand.
:D
title: The Jedi and the Sith Lord (16/?)
verse: Lucy Skywalker: my f!Luke AU, following from The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker and The Imperial Menace
characters: Luke/Lucy Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker; Ellex (LX-3)
stuff that happens: Vader makes a decision about Lucy—and Lucy makes one about him.
previous sections: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
To Lucy’s inexpressible relief, her father returned within an hour from her deflection practice.
She knew better than to run up and demand to know what had happened, even had Ellex permitted it. Instead, she waited until the droid saw fit to lead her to Vader’s receiving chamber, and stared at him until he relegated Ellex to her usual position guarding the door from the outside.
“What happened?” she said.
Behind the mask and suit, he seemed weary but not discouraged.
“The Emperor found my invitation to Varti curious,” said Vader. “And he wished for information about your training in the Dark Side.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “It is, however, the condition of your continued survival as far as Palpatine is concerned. I told him that your training is progressing.”
She hesitated, wondering if it were altogether a lie. She certainly hadn’t turned to the Dark Side—but just as certainly, he was training her for something.
“Did he believe you?”
“Let us hope so,” said Vader. “It is difficult to know what he is thinking at any given moment. He has not come this far by betraying himself.”
Lucy could believe that. She could believe, too, that she was slated for death at some time or another, if she could not be turned to the Emperor’s purposes. And she had scarcely a choice in refusing that. She’d do anything rather than help the Empire.
“What about Admiral Varti?” she asked.
“I explained that I wished to consult with him over the attack on Castle Bast,” Vader said, “and the Emperor reminded me of his value. He seemed … entertained.”
“You felt that in the Force?”
“No,” he said, and now he sounded-felt puzzled. “It is one thing to sense someone’s presence; it is quite another to pick up on their thoughts and feelings. That skill is quite rare.”
Lucy considered, then said, “I can sense yours. A little, that is—I don’t know what you’re thinking and planning, but I can tell when you’re angry or things like that.”
“As can I, with you,” he said, startling her. She couldn’t have said whether the surprise was unpleasant or not. “That is only natural, however.”
“Why?”
“You are my daughter,” he said simply. “As for Palpatine, I guessed from his expressions, such as they are. It may have been a performance, of course.”
“Did you tell him it wasn’t a Rebel attack?”
Vader inclined his head. “I told him that I suspected as much. Some measure of truth is important. He thought either was possible, or said so.”
Lucy had to repress a burst of frustration; she might not like to face certain things head-on, but she definitely preferred it to uncertainty and machinations. Damn the Emperor, anyway. Maybe his arteries would do the Force’s work and he’d just drop dead at some point. Not that she expected it—he was the sort of monster who lived forever.
“Did he say anything else?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Vader, but he didn’t elaborate. “Did you practice with Ellex?”
Altogether, it made for something of an anticlimax after her terrible fear. Yet, for all she knew, it might be worse than it seemed; the Emperor might have gleaned something Vader didn’t realize, or preferred not to see. Could he read minds? He might know what Lucy was doing and not doing, he might know that Anakin had risked himself for her, he might know—oh, anything.
“Yes,” Lucy said absently. “Until half her blasters ran out of charges.”
“How did you do?”
She jerked her thoughts back to the matter at hand. “Pretty well, I think. I didn’t get stunned, anyway, though she got in a few hits.”
“Hm,” he said. “Keep on practicing. In battle, the blasters won’t be set to stun.”
Did he expect her to be in battle at some point? Against who?
Rebels? That wouldn’t happen, no matter what. But the possibility of freedom still raised her spirits a little.
-
Vader felt decidedly suspicious.
The Emperor had not sent for him. He had not seemed particularly concerned with the length of Lucy’s training—perhaps because he remembered how long it had taken him with Vader himself, but that seemed improbably understanding, given his initial impatience with the idea of training Lucy at all. He hadn’t even seemed deeply concerned with the “Rebel” attack on Bast Castle, insisting he trusted—trusted, ha!—Vader to deal with the situation. In fact, the only thing he seemed to much care about at all was Varti’s continued good health.
Vader had not meant to do anything so asinine as murder the Emperor’s favourite under his own roof, so that posed no particular difficulty, either.
Maybe it did all come down to the new project taking up Palpatine’s attention, but he’d never been a single-minded man. And what was his foresight telling him? Vader constantly shifted his plans or deliberately refused to pin down their details to avoid it, but he couldn’t be sure of that working.
Well, nothing could be done further right now. He retired to his ventilation pod to meditate, flitting through information and feelings. The Force felt weaker, somehow—and yet he saw more clearly than in a very long time. Strange. Strange, too, that the Emperor had not mentioned it. Had he even felt it?
You can’t trust him! Lucy had exclaimed, anxious enough that he’d had to put it out of his thoughts altogether to face Palpatine with a clear mind. He knew that he couldn’t trust the Emperor, of course, but it was worthwhile to remember all the same.
It was worthwhile to remember, too, that his daughter cared whether he lived or died.
Once he felt Lucy drop off to sleep, he waited for his helmet to descend and insulate him, then emerged from his pod and sent for LX-3.
“Lucy thought the practice went well,” he said. “Did it?”
“As well as might be expected,” said Ellex. “She failed to deflect five blaster bolts.”
“Over what period of time?”
“Two hours,” she said. “The bolts in question struck non-essential areas of her body.”
“What was the speed?”
“Moderate to quick,” said Ellex.
Not bad, he decided, for that length of time. Rather good, in fact, considering that any similar exercises she’d done must have taken place over two years ago. Still, she must improve further. She might well have cause to use her skills in a short while—if he could trust her that far.
Ellex seemed to recall the lightsaber hanging from her belt, and extended it to him.
“I assume you would prefer to retain this.”
He accepted it, then said, “Did you have to take it from her?”
“No,” she replied. “I implied that she should keep it, as you requested, Lord Vader. She said that you had not given it to her and insisted on returning it.”
Interesting. And hopeful, perhaps—perhaps.
Yes, he decided. It was.
-
Lucy’s practices for the next several days included the old exercises, the increasingly familiar combat training, and now, deflection practice. Even in that short while, she found herself getting better at the latter—maybe because she’d practiced the forms so much already.
On the fourth day, Ellex shifted her speed so high that Lucy couldn’t even track the blaster bolts. Not with her eyes, anyway. But the Force was with her, and she knew exactly where to block them, anyway. When they went flying away from her, she felt both her father’s approval and her own satisfaction, and laughed out of sheer enjoyment.
“Well done,” said Vader. “That is enough for today. You need to see something.”
Lucy looked at him inquiringly.
“You had better go change,” he added. “Make sure you wash your hands.”
“All right,” she said, entirely baffled. “C’mon, Ellex.”
She headed off without even stopping to see if the droid was following her—though of course she was. All the while, Lucy tried to think of anything she hadn’t seen yet and why he would want her to. With clean hands, no less!
She was pretty gross at that point, so Lucy peeled herself out of the stained and sweaty tunic and pulled the first thing out of the wardrobe her hand touched: a flowered yellow dress she hadn’t worn before. It was faded, but still pretty, and Lucy liked yellow almost as well as black. She shrugged, then showered, pulled back her hair, managed to get herself into the yellow dress without tearing any of the gauzy material—more difficult than it looked—and made a point of washing her hands several times. Then she headed out, her mood still high.
By the time she and Ellex returned to the training room, she found Vader himself practicing, going through unfamiliar forms with each of his lightsabers in hand, slashing them both at truly alarming speeds.
“Impressive,” said Lucy, refusing to feel the merest flicker of fear. “What did you want to show me?”
He deactivated his lightsabers and returned them to his belt, then turned. Unmistakably, she felt shock from him at the sight of her, and then some pain she couldn’t understand. She looked the same as usual, didn’t she? Maybe it was the dress, but all her clothes were Padmé’s, anyway. When he had last seen her in it?
Now she wondered for the first time: when had he last seen Padmé at all?
Without a word, Vader walked past her, gesturing at her to follow him. All three walked in silence, Lucy realizing all over again just how big the castle was. If Vader’s prosthetics helped him, she didn’t know, but her ordinary legs ached by the time they’d walked far enough that the lighting faded. Was he taking her to the room with the tank? She couldn’t understand why he would.
“I can’t see!” Lucy exclaimed, flashing back to her first days here. Instinctively, she reached out, and felt a rough cloth under her fingers.
Her father’s cape, she realized; she was grasping it like a child. Lucy pulled her hand back.
Just as silently, Vader handed her something—his lightsaber. She switched it on and peered into the blue light it cast, just as her father lifted the red lightsaber. There was nothing much to see beyond the stone floor and walls, but the twin lights still came as a comfort.
Finally, the hall they walked began to broaden, enough that all three of them could walk side-by-side, and culminated in a wide set of double doors. They had handles and everything; this must be one of the oldest sections of the castle.
“Wait here,” Vader said, and moved forward, opening and closing the doors so quickly that Lucy could only tell that the room beyond must be dark. After a few moments, the doors creaked open again, apparently of their own accord.
“Enter,” he called out.
Lucy lifted the lightsaber higher and walked forwards, through the doors. As soon as she did so, light filled the room, revealing a high, domed ceiling and walls lined with shelves upon shelves of … books? There were so many, in fact, that the room had been split into multiple levels, each accessible by a curved staircase. Most of the books gleamed faintly under the light—they must be databooks—but here and there, the old-fashioned paper kind were interspersed among them. And some rows, she saw now, didn’t have books at all, but cubes of some kind and a few polyhedrons of about the same size, each probably small enough to fit in her hand.
She’d never seen so much information gathered into one place in her life. Lucy took a startled step forwards, her gaze drifting from the staircases to the books to the polyhedrons to the curved ceiling, and back again.
“What is this place?” she breathed.
It felt almost sacred. She would never have imagined it could exist here.
“The Emperor,” said Vader, “whatever his other failings, values knowledge.”
His voice came from just to her left. Lucy turned to stare at him just as his hand lowered from a panel on the wall.
“This is his library?”
“After a manner of speaking,” her father replied. “When I seized the Jedi Temple on Coruscant”—Lucy repressed a wince—“he ordered the information in its archives preserved in a secure location. While some things were … unavoidably lost, I salvaged what I could and placed it beyond the reach of any Jedi but myself.”
She swallowed. “Oh.”
“Until now,” he said. “It recently occurred to me that some of the information here might be valuable for your—education.”
With that, she understood.
“My training,” she said.
Anakin paused, then said, “Yes.”
Almost in a daze, Lucy moved forwards. She felt more breathless than during their last duel.
“But this is a Jedi library,” she said.
“Yes,” he said again. “The Emperor keeps artifacts of … other traditions under his own control. Even I have no idea where they are. I imagine he thought these were safe with me, since I had already been trained.”
“You know everything in all this?” said Lucy, still trying to take it all in.
“No. I doubt even Grandmaster Yoda did,” Vader said. She held herself very still, clearing her mind as much as she could and summoning every scrap of calm she had, before returning her attention to the library.
“Then—”
“I have had other matters to occupy me, in general,” he told her. “I still do. But as I said, I thought it might be useful to you, as you advance in your training.”
“As a Jedi,” she said again, trying to understand.
“As a Jedi,” he agreed. “Follow me.”
He led her up the first staircase on the right, right to one of the cases full of cubes and polyhedrons. Now she could see that they seemed faintly iridescent, or at least some of them. Vader reached for a cube on a shelf well above Lucy’s head and set it in her hand.
“This,” he said, “is a Jedi holocron. Each contains information that was, in some way, of value to the Order, even if very basic.”
She couldn’t imagine that such a device was actually fragile, but it felt like it. Carefully, she kept her grasp on it light, lifting it up to look more closely. The outer casing seemed to contain another shape inside it, from which the shifting colours actually came. She couldn’t see any latches or buttons or switches.
“How do I open it?” she asked.
“You don’t,” said Vader. “Only a Jedi can access it.”
Lucy closed her eyes, searching her feelings before he could tell her to do it. That felt true. It all did.
He rested one gloved hand just above the surface of the holocron. She seriously doubted that anything would happen, but then, a sharply-defined hologram about a foot tall flared into life above it. The figure in the hologram looked like a middle-aged Twi’lek woman, wearing a short, belted robe and trousers tucked into boots. Abruptly, a lightsaber appeared in her hands, and she ran through a series of moves so quickly that Lucy could only watch, fascinated. The next series was slower, and the next slower still, enough that she could recognize the woman’s motions as the six forms that she herself knew.
“Oh!” said Lucy. “That’s amazing!”
Vader passed his hand over the holocron, and the woman vanished.
“I was a Jedi Knight,” he said. “I am a Jedi Knight. If Obi-Wan told you otherwise, it was one more lie.”
The holocron was shaking. No, her hand was, just a little. A young Jedi named Darth Vader—
“He didn’t,” said Lucy, steadying her grip. “He said you were a student of his, until you turned to … to the Dark Side.”
“That is true,” Vader said. He sounded surprised, as she supposed well he might be. “True enough, in any case. He was no longer my teacher by the time that he betrayed me and left me to die.”
She gazed at the holocron, then lifted her eyes to her father. “What do you mean, betrayed?”
“We were supposed to serve the Force and the galaxy,” said Vader. “But the Jedi Order turned us into enforcers of the Senate, without a word of protest. The Republic was corrupt to its core, Lucy, whatever the Rebellion may have told you. And the Order was corrupted with it. Obi-Wan couldn’t see that. When I saw the truth at last and acted, he snuck onto your mother’s ship in order to assassinate me. He simply lacked the nerve to go through with it.”
Lucy, despite her reservations about Ben’s veracity, felt certain that his version of the story would be quite different.
“It must have been then,” said Vader, “that he hatched his plan for you to do the dirty work that he couldn’t. If Owen Lars had not kept him at bay—”
“I don’t know what he would have done,” she admitted. “He was always kind to me, even when I was small.”
“He would have made himself your master,” Vader said.
Lucy, freeborn though she was, flinched.
“Instead, you are to be my master?” she asked.
“No,” said Vader. “I am your father. You will never call anyone master.”
She looked at the holocron again, trying to get everything clear in her head. But it all seemed so muddled, tangled up like the Light Side and the Dark. With Obi-Wan’s and Yoda’s betrayal, she thought she’d all but given up on a future as a Jedi. If Anakin was still a Jedi—if—was it possible?—but if they’d had their own plans for her, so did he.
“Good,” she said. “Would you still want me to turn to the Dark Side?”
“Yes,” said Vader.
Well, at least he was straightforward.
“I would hope that you could see the necessity,” he told her. “And if you cannot—”
Lucy waited, feeling very small, overshadowed by her father and by the remnants of the Order. But she couldn’t give in to the failings of either.
Vader still hadn’t finished the sentence. Maybe she didn’t want to know.
“Yes?” she said.
He seemed to be thinking, almost as if he hadn’t considered it before. Honestly, Lucy could believe that he hadn’t.
“If you do not turn,” he said, “the Emperor will command your death. You must understand that. If you are to live—”
She shrugged, trying to appear more indifferent than she felt. He’d know the difference anyway, but it was worth trying.
“I’ll die first.”
“As a fully-trained Jedi, you will be far better equipped to defend your life, and any lives that depend on yours,” said Vader.
Lucy frowned. “We were talking about what would happen if I don’t agree.”
“I am considering a … compromise,” her father said.
“I didn’t think you did compromises.”
“Not usually,” said Vader, “but I am not usually negotiating with my daughter. Listen to me. Even if you refuse the Dark Side, you will be at more of an advantage as a weak Jedi than as no Jedi at all. It is worth my while to give you the training that any Jedi apprentice would receive.”
She was immediately suspicious.
“And what do you want in return?”
“Your assistance,” he said.
“I won’t help you fight the Rebellion!” said Lucy.
“I had no expectation that you would,” Vader replied. “But I have many enemies.”
Understanding—hopefully the right understanding—crept over her.
“Like Varti and Jerjerrod?” she asked. “You want me to help you against them?”
“Them and their like.”
It sounded exceptionally vague to her.
“Is there something else you want?” said Lucy.
He looked at her a moment. Then he said,
“Your instincts are good, but they cannot command every decision that you make. Promise me that you will think about the paths ahead of you before you go down one.”
“You mean the Dark Side?” she said.
“I mean everything,” said Vader.
Suitably enough, Lucy stopped to think. The easy thing to do would be to just follow her suspicions and refuse, on the chance that his training would sway her to the Dark Side against her better judgment. But could someone be swayed to the Dark Side against their own will? She didn’t think so.
Of course, the other easy thing would be to take the offer at face value and accept, trusting in her own strength and purity. But she wasn’t pure; she’d always had a bad temper and gotten impatient with things and sometimes gave up too easily. Even if she hadn’t realized that, the cave on Dagobah had warned her of the fate that might lie ahead. She’d seen herself as her father—and somehow, she was still considering being trained by him!
But there was no escaping the fact that, as circumstances stood now, this opportunity would never come again. At the very possibility of receiving proper training without the constant fear of the Dark Side, her heart raced with pure excitement. And she could feel the good in him. She could. Did this come from that, from a genuine desire to see his daughter as fully equipped for survival as possible, or from some deeper plot? What would happen when the Emperor called for her death at last? Could she influence him as he hoped to influence her?
If she refused, Lucy thought, there would be no Jedi left in the galaxy except Vader and Yoda. They would be the very last. Did the Force flow in her from blood alone, or was she meant for more? She’d always felt she was. In the last weeks, she’d felt that she was meant for exactly this.
“You would train me the way that Jedi used to be trained,” she said slowly. “That is, without immediately trying to turn me to the Dark Side. I would help you … somehow … against your enemies in the Empire, and try to be more cautious. Is that it?”
“That is it,” he said, and held out his hand.
She stared at the glove with wide eyes, her pulse pounding in her throat and ears. The very galaxy, it seemed, turned on this moment.
Lucy took his hand.
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on 2020-02-07 05:46 am (UTC)was the most wonderful paragraph I had ever seen in a Star Wars fic, by which I mean this is completely my headcanon about how the GFFA broke in the PT in one paragraph.
But then I got to this:
Which so perfectly summarizes how I think the Jedi broke Anakin, because a kid who has been a slave knows that someone who makes you call them "master" does not have your best interests at heart, no matter what the say. Or more to the point there was always going to be that leftover connotation for him of what master meant, that it didn't mean "wise teacher" but rather "owner of you as property". OMG, this is wonderful!
no subject
on 2020-02-07 02:29 pm (UTC)Thank you very much! Republic politics pretty definitely seem to range between incompetent and corrupt in the PT, and we know Anakin is frustrated with that. And the Jedi become so deeply complicit in Republic politics that it works for me as a sort of connecting fiber to Anakin's frustration with the Order, culminating in his ultimate "the Jedi are evil!" position (which otherwise seems a little out of nowhere, but imo is pretty necessary to square with his characterization as Vader). He's definitely leaving things out (like "I killed a bunch of children") and his view is hardly impartial, but I did want it to make sense with what we see in the PT.
because a kid who has been a slave knows that someone who makes you call them "master" does not have your best interests at heart, no matter what the say. Or more to the point there was always going to be that leftover connotation for him of what master meant, that it didn't mean "wise teacher" but rather "owner of you as property". OMG, this is wonderful!
Thanks again! Yeah, it's hard not to think of that with ... I mean, there is literally no point in his life where he is not calling someone master until he's on the point of death. And I think the use of 'master' with Palpatine, which is ostensibly a mentor thing but clearly a subjection thing, blurs the lines between those usages in a way that they're blurred for Anakin himself.
It makes it all the more tragic that he goes from actively scheming against Palpatine in ESB (ie resistance) to apathy and resignation in ROTJ, and consequently from 'we can take him down together!' to 'he is your master now' (which is all kinds of yikes). This Vader is much closer in time and character to ESB!Vader ofc, which is where I imagine that active 'HELL NO' is coming from.