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Feb. 11th, 2020 07:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghrainetitle: The Jedi and the Sith Lord (20/?)
verse: Lucy Skywalker: my f!Luke AU, following from The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker and The Imperial Menace
characters: Luke/Lucy Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker; LX-3, Izahay
stuff that happens: Lucy makes an unwise choice and tries to figure out healing.
previous sections: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
CHAPTER TWENTY
Vader had just stepped out of his ventilation pod when he found LX-3, of all people, waiting for him. Already annoyed with his foggy visions while in the pod, he glowered at her through his lenses.
“What are you doing here?”
Doctor Izahay, who had assisted him through today’s time in the tank, glanced from droid to cyborg, plainly perplexed.
“I came to report on an unexpected occurrence,” Ellex said, and turned her head to stare at Izahay.
“Return to the medical bay, doctor,” said Vader.
“Yes, sir,” Izahay said, with another suspicious glance at Ellex. She gave her a wide berth as she exited the room. Izahay was efficient and loyal, but not one to hide her judgment of any given situation.
Vader returned his gaze to Ellex. “What is it?”
“It concerns Miss Skywalker,” said Ellex.
Some small part of Vader felt a flare of satisfaction at the name, as he did always did. His name, no matter what Palpatine might pretend, even if it had lost all meaning for him personally. Someone, somewhere, had wanted her to know whose daughter she was. Owen and Beru Lars, he was inclined to think, and rather regretted that they had—obliviously—stood in the way of the Empire.
A larger part of him was already alarmed.
“What about her?” he demanded.
Ellex said, “She requested that I harm her.”
“What?”
Anakin Skywalker had, despite his long-ago nickname, felt many moments of fear, dread, horror. But this nearly surpassed them all. Lucy had seemed relatively content for weeks, eager if impulsive in her training, no more than annoyed at the worst of times. That was the reason he’d lowered the guard on her. Was she trying to escape, after all, in a different way? Was it—
Recovering some fragment of his composure, Vader said, “In what way?”
“She said that it did not matter,” replied Ellex.
Vader considered that. He didn’t know whether to take it as a good sign or an even more terrible one. Only Lucy, he thought, could answer that question.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I preferred to keep my processor and circuits intact,” Ellex said. “I did not suppose that you would tolerate such an action, sir.”
“No,” said Vader tightly. “I would not have.”
He found that he could extract no further information out of her, so he dismissed her, and headed towards the training room. It was only a little before Lucy’s appointed arrival, and sure enough, she showed up shortly thereafter, her omnipresent book tucked under her arm. She seemed hurried but no worse.
“What’s on the schedule for today?” she asked.
For a moment, even that seemed unanswerable. He simply looked at her, trying to think of some way to introduce the subject. Nothing came to mind.
“LX-3 told me you asked her to hurt you,” he said.
At that, Lucy actually wrinkled her nose.
“I should have known she’d tell.”
“Yes,” said Vader. “You should have. What possessed you to request such a thing?”
“I need to practice healing,” she said artlessly.
Behind his mask, he blinked. “What?”
“It’s not like there’s a lot of wildlife around here,” said Lucy. “I’ve tried to read the book and figure out the diagrams, but I don’t think I’ll be able to really understand unless I try to do it. But I couldn’t think of anyone I could try it on, except myself.”
His dread dwindled; he couldn’t sense any deceit from her directly, or in the Force. She’d actually concocted this asinine plan.
“You thought you could sacrifice your life force to yourself?”
Surprise radiated through her. Then she looked sheepish.
“I suppose that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“No,” said Vader, “it does not.”
“I just didn’t think it through that far,” she admitted.
“Clearly.”
“I wasn’t going to have her really hurt me,” she said. “I just needed some scratches. Well, I thought I did. Now, I can’t see any way to try at all.”
She withdrew into a brooding silence, frowning at the floor as her mind jumped from thought to thought faster than he could follow it. For himself, Vader once again had no idea what to say. He had a vague idea that she should be disciplined for such idiocy—and for the alarm she’d given him—but he couldn’t see how. He didn’t want to alienate her just when he’d started making progress, and he could think of nothing but tightening the restrictions on her again. But what would that do? It was Ellex she’d gone to in the first place, and in any case, she was something like an adult.
“Show me what is confusing you,” he said at last.
Lucy brightened and pulled out the book, opening to an early page. On one side, he saw a diagram of a human or humanoid body with lines that might be veins tracing through it. On the other was a long block of text, which he scanned quickly. The lacuna must be adumbrated in concept prior to any supplementary action.
What? No wonder she’d wanted to try a direct effort, even if the method she’d attempted was incredibly foolish.
“Now you see the Jedi Order in practice,” said Vader.
“Oh?”
“Clarity was often not their strong suit,” he said.
She heaved a sigh—sometimes he wished he could still do that—and closed the book.
“I guess not.” Then she looked up at him. “So I can’t heal myself with the Force, ever? It has to be others?”
“As far as I understand,” said Vader. “At least, if you use the Light Side. I have … heard that some measure is possible with the Dark Side, but I don’t know the details.”
“Hm,” said Lucy. “Can you heal?”
“No,” he said.
If he had any affinity for the power that kept Palpatine upright, he’d have used it on himself long ago. And if something happened to Lucy, saving her would likewise be beyond his powers, however great they might be otherwise.
He asked, “Did you never considering going to the medical bay?”
“The med-bay?” For a moment, she seemed baffled. Then her eyes widened. “For practice, you mean?”
“You should have seen other patients when you were there,” he said. All the more after the battle, however quickly it had occurred.
“I was a little preoccupied,” said Lucy. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought that Doctor Izahay would let me.”
“Doctor Izahay,” Vader said, “will do whatever I tell her to do.”
“Right.” She dropped her eyes to the cover of the book. “You’ll tell her, then?”
“That depends on you,” he said.
-
To Lucy’s surprise, her—admittedly foolish—misstep of the morning seemed to pass without consequence. The dread Darth Vader, who was also the fierce hero Anakin Skywalker, just looked at her, then walked over to the table.
“Put down the book,” he said, and picked up a long wire before turning back to face Lucy. “Focus on this.”
She raised her brows. Moving a wire around didn’t seem particularly challenging, but he usually had some other end in mind, obscure to her as so much was. Even though they were psychically linked or whatnot, which seemed unfair. She listened to him in the Force, but felt nothing other than methodical purpose above the subterranean anger and pain. She didn’t think he was angry at her, though, just … always angry to some extent or another. Maybe because of the pain, or some Dark Side thing.
“I am waiting,” said Anakin, a familiar impatience touching his tone.
Dutifully, Lucy focused on the wire. She could feel it clearly in her mind, the length and narrow breadth and metallic sheen. Okay.
“Now,” he said, “bend it.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Bend it? How?”
“You can move the whole, can you not?” he said. “Why not just half?”
But it was harder, like the precision work. Minutes ticked by, the wire vibrating in his grip as she tried to move it without moving the whole thing. The grip of his mind was even stronger than that of his hand, and certainly stronger than hers; the wire wasn’t going anywhere. And when she finally succeeded, only a generous person could call it success at all; the wire snapped right in half.
Lucy stared at the pieces.
“Uh,” she said.
“Interesting,” said Anakin. “I had not intended that yet.”
“Yet?”
“I did intend you to learn to crush and break items from a distance,” he said, which sounded a little horrifying. “If you were, for instance, trapped in a cell—”
“A cell?” she said. “How exactly is that supposed to happen?”
“—then bending and snapping metal would be useful,” he went on, unperturbed. “But control is important. Bend this half”—he floated one of the pieces back into the air—“without damaging it further.”
All in all, she spent an hour that day trying to figure out how to move various parts of things without moving the whole, bending and stretching and crumpling them or hitting switches and pulling levers. It was at all points difficult, but she could see the why more easily than most of what she did, even if she couldn’t see the opportunity to use most of it here. By the time it ended, she felt wrung dry, but she still beamed when he handed his lightsaber over.
It got a little easier over the next few days, though not by much. She thought it would always take more of an effort than most things. Her progress must have adequately satisfied her father, however, because on the fourth day, he took her to the medical bay.
Doctor Izahay glanced up as he entered, her expression shifting from preoccupied professionalism to alarm. Immediately, she hurried over, her gaze briefly flicking from Anakin to Lucy before returning to him.
“What has she done now?” she asked. “Or is it you, sir?”
“Nobody has done anything, doctor,” said Anakin. “Yet.”
Izahay frowned. “Then—”
“Miss Skywalker,” he said, slightly emphasizing the name (our name, Lucy thought), “is my apprentice.”
Izahay looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“She may, perhaps, have found a technique that can aid you,” he went on. “You are to give her full access to the patients.”
“Full access, my lord?” Izahay was already shaking her head. “But what if—is the technique validated by—”
“That is an order, doctor,” said Anakin.
Privately, Lucy insisted on thinking of him by his true name. But she acknowledged to herself that his tone sounded very much Vader in that moment.
Izahay swallowed. “Very well. But she will need to follow all hygiene procedures and limit interference to this … technique.”
“I’m right here,” Lucy said.
Izahay deigned to look at her again. “I see that. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” said Lucy. “I don’t want to harm anyone.”
“See that you don’t,” Izahay replied, then sent a slightly nervous glance in Anakin’s direction. “When should I expect these visits?”
“They will start tomorrow,” he told her, and that was that.
By the time Lucy arrived at the med-bay the next day, she was a little tired from an early morning training with her father, but mostly eager to try to do something, and something on her own, at that. She ignored Izahay’s obvious reluctance, submitted to a change from Padmé’s clothes to white medical get-up, coiled her hair into a net, and washed her hands with something that turned them red and stinging. Then Izahay gestured towards a line of patient beds.
“Take your pick,” she said.
Lucy scanned the beds; the patients were nearly all humans, and about half of them asleep, or at least unconscious. She didn’t really feel up to talking to anyone, with so much unspeakable, so she walked towards the furthest of the unconscious soldiers. She couldn’t deny that it seemed strange to be thinking about helping Imperial soldiers, but—well, she had to try to figure this out. And she’d rather not experiment on Rebels, even if it were possible.
She pulled a nearby stool over and studied one of the boards hanging on the wall, which listed each soldier’s injuries with scrupulous exactness. Okay, this man had only been shot in the shoulder—it looked just that bit too deep for bacta to reach.
Feeling a little silly, Lucy reached a hand out and held it above the man’s shoulder. But her theory that it might simply come out of her if the situation called for it was immediately proven false; nothing happened. Conscious of Izahay’s glower, she closed her eyes. How did you just go about giving up part of your life force?
It’d help if she could feel it. She tried to meditate, ignoring the sharp medical scents around her, straining to feel the energy behind her breaths and pumping blood. But she didn’t feel anything except the Force, and for once, that wasn’t what she wanted—not wholly, at least. She had to give something up. How, though?
After an hour of nothing, Izahay showed up to shoo her away.
“But—”
“Lord Vader gave me clear instructions,” said Izahay. “You are not to spend above an hour here, and at any sign of weakness your technique is to be immediately halted.”
Lucy nearly wrinkled her nose again. She didn’t see how much progress she’d make in an hour each day. But considering the whole death-if-you-do-it-wrong angle, she could understand why he’d be careful. She was probably lucky he’d allowed this much.
“All right,” Lucy said. “If he says so.”
“He does.” Izahay glanced down at the patient, someone called Lan Grenath. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” said Lucy.
The next day yielded no better when she tried to push some part of her spirit into Grenath. The Force swirled about her, easy to grasp at the moment, but it didn’t help her do anything. After that, Lucy tried reading the book again, focusing on the sections on the life force itself rather than healing, which she’d previously been more interested in. As far as she could tell, she needed to withdraw into her body (?) to attune herself to the energies within her (???), which she could then manipulate. At least, she thought it meant that.
The following day, she didn’t even try to heal Grenath or any of the others, instead just folding her hands in her lap and trying to meditate deeply enough to banish everything beyond the limits of her own body. She even had to do her best to block her sense of her father, though she could still feel that he was out there, somewhere. And the day after that, Lucy managed to narrow the world down to her body, tuning out everything else and feeling something beat away within her, beyond the thump of her heart. Was that it?
The sensation quickly faded. But Lucy practiced it even after Izahay kicked her out, and between her training sessions with her father, determined to hang onto it. Yes, controlling objects from a distance and defending herself from blaster bolts were important, but this felt more important still, if she could only get it right.
On her fifth day in the med-bay, Lucy managed to retreat into herself in the way she’d practiced, this strange other reality enclosing her in a comfortable pulsing darkness. Half-dazed, she reached her hand out again, not quite touching Grenath, and strained to find some way of passing that energy on. She couldn’t push it; she’d tried. But this form of healing used the Light Side, didn’t it? The Light Side didn’t like being pushed.
Lucy hung onto the energy within her and reached for the Force, struggling to let both flow through her. For a moment, she just felt dizzy and confused, her mind tugging against itself—and in the next moment, it felt like something swung around, everything pouring through her body as if she were nothing but a vessel of the Force. As quickly as it had happened, the sensation stopped.
She looked down at his shoulder. The discolouration of his skin was gone. The tear left by the blaster was gone without so much as a mark left behind. Even an old scar several inches away was gone.
Lucy didn’t dare risk Izahay’s ire by raising her voice, so she strangled the impulse and instead pulled her hand back. Walking over to Tisix, she quietly asked the droid to evaluate the injury to Grenath’s shoulder.
Tisix grumbled but complied, stalking after her and then stopping at the man’s side and giving a low whirr.
“There is no injury,” Tisix announced. “Is that quite all?”
Lucy smiled at nothing in particular. “Yes. I think it is.”
-
She raced into the training room that day, heedless of anything but not tripping over her own boots. Inside, she found Anakin methodically chopping a pipe into segments for no apparent reason, the red lightsaber flashing.
“Father,” she said breathlessly. “I did it!”
He extinguished the lightsaber before turning to look at her. “You did what?”
“I healed someone! One of the soldiers in the bay!”
She felt his attention sharpen, narrowing in on her.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “A little tired, but that’s all.”
“Good,” said Anakin. She wasn’t exactly sure which statement he was responding to, but felt too ecstatic to bother trying to figure it out.
“I did it, though! There’s not even a scar now.”
“Very impressive,” he said.
Lucy grinned.
“All the more,” he said, “as you required no training in it.”
She thought about that. “It felt like I did, but I guess not. It didn’t come as naturally as some other things, though. I can’t wait to go back tomorrow—”
“Absolutely not,” said Anakin. “You’ll need to take several days to recover and replenish your life force.”
“But I don’t feel like—”
The mask seemed particularly relentless. She exhaled, but couldn’t feel too much disappointment in this moment. Instead, she smoothly transitioned from an explanation of how she’d finally managed to heal to her training of the day—which was mostly the same as the previous few days, except that Anakin had Ellex shoot her with two blasters at once, from varying directions. That way, she didn’t do nearly as well as usual at deflecting them, even with the Force flowing through her, though she was never completely stunned. As usual, however, she improved over the next several days, and Anakin let her return to the med-bay.
Now, Lucy tried a patient with a more severe injury, one that had perforated his lungs. She wouldn’t be able to get her hand as near the injury as before, though she didn’t know if that actually mattered or just helped her direct the energies. It took multiple tries, but on the fifth, he seemed to breathe more easily, his features smoothing over, and on the seventh, a machine beside the bed started beeping. Izahay came running over.
“What did you do?”
“You’ll see,” said Lucy.
Izahay scanned the readings, her brow furrowing. “That’s impossible!”
Lucy, perched on her stool, just swung her legs back and forth, smiling as Izahay turned to her.
“What did you do?”
“You’ll have to ask Lord Vader about that,” Lucy told her. She did feel a little light-headed this time, but no worse than that.
Izahay evidently did ask Anakin about what had happened, because he quietly congratulated Lucy again when she showed up for her formal training that day. She’d taken a nap and felt fine again, thankfully. She managed to deflect the blaster bolts from all directions and when he set the blue lightsaber on the table and told her to activate it without touching it, she managed it after several tries—it seemed to resist the tug of her mind somehow, but not indefinitely.
Anakin took the lightsaber and turned it over in his hands, seeming almost lost in thought.
“The time has come,” he said.
Lucy blinked up at him. “The time for what? Are you going to teach me something else?”
“Not at the moment,” said Anakin. He slung the lightsaber back on his belt. “I have seen the location of Jerjerrod’s and Varti’s private fleet. It isn't far from here. Meanwhile, Jerjerrod is preoccupied with the Emperor’s project. Varti has returned to Naboo.”
Something in him recoiled from the mention of that particular planet, though Lucy didn’t know why.
“Oh,” she said. “So it’s a good time to check things out?”
“Precisely,” he replied. “However, if I were to appear there in person, it would immediately raise alarms. I go nowhere unnoticed.”
“True,” said Lucy. “Well, you’ll have to send an agent.”
“Yes, I will,” he said slowly. “In a matter of this much importance, it would have to be an agent of extraordinary capabilities and dedication. One who could communicate their observations and actions without any possibility of detection, and respond to my thoughts and plans in an instant.”
She drew a sharp breath.
Back in the Rebellion, quite a few people had dismissed Lucy as a skilled soldier but not much else—good at flying and shooting, not thinking and plans. But she was by no means a stupid woman.
Lucy met his gaze as directly as she could.
“You’re talking about me,” she said.
verse: Lucy Skywalker: my f!Luke AU, following from The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker and The Imperial Menace
characters: Luke/Lucy Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker; LX-3, Izahay
stuff that happens: Lucy makes an unwise choice and tries to figure out healing.
previous sections: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
CHAPTER TWENTY
Vader had just stepped out of his ventilation pod when he found LX-3, of all people, waiting for him. Already annoyed with his foggy visions while in the pod, he glowered at her through his lenses.
“What are you doing here?”
Doctor Izahay, who had assisted him through today’s time in the tank, glanced from droid to cyborg, plainly perplexed.
“I came to report on an unexpected occurrence,” Ellex said, and turned her head to stare at Izahay.
“Return to the medical bay, doctor,” said Vader.
“Yes, sir,” Izahay said, with another suspicious glance at Ellex. She gave her a wide berth as she exited the room. Izahay was efficient and loyal, but not one to hide her judgment of any given situation.
Vader returned his gaze to Ellex. “What is it?”
“It concerns Miss Skywalker,” said Ellex.
Some small part of Vader felt a flare of satisfaction at the name, as he did always did. His name, no matter what Palpatine might pretend, even if it had lost all meaning for him personally. Someone, somewhere, had wanted her to know whose daughter she was. Owen and Beru Lars, he was inclined to think, and rather regretted that they had—obliviously—stood in the way of the Empire.
A larger part of him was already alarmed.
“What about her?” he demanded.
Ellex said, “She requested that I harm her.”
“What?”
Anakin Skywalker had, despite his long-ago nickname, felt many moments of fear, dread, horror. But this nearly surpassed them all. Lucy had seemed relatively content for weeks, eager if impulsive in her training, no more than annoyed at the worst of times. That was the reason he’d lowered the guard on her. Was she trying to escape, after all, in a different way? Was it—
Recovering some fragment of his composure, Vader said, “In what way?”
“She said that it did not matter,” replied Ellex.
Vader considered that. He didn’t know whether to take it as a good sign or an even more terrible one. Only Lucy, he thought, could answer that question.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I preferred to keep my processor and circuits intact,” Ellex said. “I did not suppose that you would tolerate such an action, sir.”
“No,” said Vader tightly. “I would not have.”
He found that he could extract no further information out of her, so he dismissed her, and headed towards the training room. It was only a little before Lucy’s appointed arrival, and sure enough, she showed up shortly thereafter, her omnipresent book tucked under her arm. She seemed hurried but no worse.
“What’s on the schedule for today?” she asked.
For a moment, even that seemed unanswerable. He simply looked at her, trying to think of some way to introduce the subject. Nothing came to mind.
“LX-3 told me you asked her to hurt you,” he said.
At that, Lucy actually wrinkled her nose.
“I should have known she’d tell.”
“Yes,” said Vader. “You should have. What possessed you to request such a thing?”
“I need to practice healing,” she said artlessly.
Behind his mask, he blinked. “What?”
“It’s not like there’s a lot of wildlife around here,” said Lucy. “I’ve tried to read the book and figure out the diagrams, but I don’t think I’ll be able to really understand unless I try to do it. But I couldn’t think of anyone I could try it on, except myself.”
His dread dwindled; he couldn’t sense any deceit from her directly, or in the Force. She’d actually concocted this asinine plan.
“You thought you could sacrifice your life force to yourself?”
Surprise radiated through her. Then she looked sheepish.
“I suppose that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“No,” said Vader, “it does not.”
“I just didn’t think it through that far,” she admitted.
“Clearly.”
“I wasn’t going to have her really hurt me,” she said. “I just needed some scratches. Well, I thought I did. Now, I can’t see any way to try at all.”
She withdrew into a brooding silence, frowning at the floor as her mind jumped from thought to thought faster than he could follow it. For himself, Vader once again had no idea what to say. He had a vague idea that she should be disciplined for such idiocy—and for the alarm she’d given him—but he couldn’t see how. He didn’t want to alienate her just when he’d started making progress, and he could think of nothing but tightening the restrictions on her again. But what would that do? It was Ellex she’d gone to in the first place, and in any case, she was something like an adult.
“Show me what is confusing you,” he said at last.
Lucy brightened and pulled out the book, opening to an early page. On one side, he saw a diagram of a human or humanoid body with lines that might be veins tracing through it. On the other was a long block of text, which he scanned quickly. The lacuna must be adumbrated in concept prior to any supplementary action.
What? No wonder she’d wanted to try a direct effort, even if the method she’d attempted was incredibly foolish.
“Now you see the Jedi Order in practice,” said Vader.
“Oh?”
“Clarity was often not their strong suit,” he said.
She heaved a sigh—sometimes he wished he could still do that—and closed the book.
“I guess not.” Then she looked up at him. “So I can’t heal myself with the Force, ever? It has to be others?”
“As far as I understand,” said Vader. “At least, if you use the Light Side. I have … heard that some measure is possible with the Dark Side, but I don’t know the details.”
“Hm,” said Lucy. “Can you heal?”
“No,” he said.
If he had any affinity for the power that kept Palpatine upright, he’d have used it on himself long ago. And if something happened to Lucy, saving her would likewise be beyond his powers, however great they might be otherwise.
He asked, “Did you never considering going to the medical bay?”
“The med-bay?” For a moment, she seemed baffled. Then her eyes widened. “For practice, you mean?”
“You should have seen other patients when you were there,” he said. All the more after the battle, however quickly it had occurred.
“I was a little preoccupied,” said Lucy. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought that Doctor Izahay would let me.”
“Doctor Izahay,” Vader said, “will do whatever I tell her to do.”
“Right.” She dropped her eyes to the cover of the book. “You’ll tell her, then?”
“That depends on you,” he said.
-
To Lucy’s surprise, her—admittedly foolish—misstep of the morning seemed to pass without consequence. The dread Darth Vader, who was also the fierce hero Anakin Skywalker, just looked at her, then walked over to the table.
“Put down the book,” he said, and picked up a long wire before turning back to face Lucy. “Focus on this.”
She raised her brows. Moving a wire around didn’t seem particularly challenging, but he usually had some other end in mind, obscure to her as so much was. Even though they were psychically linked or whatnot, which seemed unfair. She listened to him in the Force, but felt nothing other than methodical purpose above the subterranean anger and pain. She didn’t think he was angry at her, though, just … always angry to some extent or another. Maybe because of the pain, or some Dark Side thing.
“I am waiting,” said Anakin, a familiar impatience touching his tone.
Dutifully, Lucy focused on the wire. She could feel it clearly in her mind, the length and narrow breadth and metallic sheen. Okay.
“Now,” he said, “bend it.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Bend it? How?”
“You can move the whole, can you not?” he said. “Why not just half?”
But it was harder, like the precision work. Minutes ticked by, the wire vibrating in his grip as she tried to move it without moving the whole thing. The grip of his mind was even stronger than that of his hand, and certainly stronger than hers; the wire wasn’t going anywhere. And when she finally succeeded, only a generous person could call it success at all; the wire snapped right in half.
Lucy stared at the pieces.
“Uh,” she said.
“Interesting,” said Anakin. “I had not intended that yet.”
“Yet?”
“I did intend you to learn to crush and break items from a distance,” he said, which sounded a little horrifying. “If you were, for instance, trapped in a cell—”
“A cell?” she said. “How exactly is that supposed to happen?”
“—then bending and snapping metal would be useful,” he went on, unperturbed. “But control is important. Bend this half”—he floated one of the pieces back into the air—“without damaging it further.”
All in all, she spent an hour that day trying to figure out how to move various parts of things without moving the whole, bending and stretching and crumpling them or hitting switches and pulling levers. It was at all points difficult, but she could see the why more easily than most of what she did, even if she couldn’t see the opportunity to use most of it here. By the time it ended, she felt wrung dry, but she still beamed when he handed his lightsaber over.
It got a little easier over the next few days, though not by much. She thought it would always take more of an effort than most things. Her progress must have adequately satisfied her father, however, because on the fourth day, he took her to the medical bay.
Doctor Izahay glanced up as he entered, her expression shifting from preoccupied professionalism to alarm. Immediately, she hurried over, her gaze briefly flicking from Anakin to Lucy before returning to him.
“What has she done now?” she asked. “Or is it you, sir?”
“Nobody has done anything, doctor,” said Anakin. “Yet.”
Izahay frowned. “Then—”
“Miss Skywalker,” he said, slightly emphasizing the name (our name, Lucy thought), “is my apprentice.”
Izahay looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“She may, perhaps, have found a technique that can aid you,” he went on. “You are to give her full access to the patients.”
“Full access, my lord?” Izahay was already shaking her head. “But what if—is the technique validated by—”
“That is an order, doctor,” said Anakin.
Privately, Lucy insisted on thinking of him by his true name. But she acknowledged to herself that his tone sounded very much Vader in that moment.
Izahay swallowed. “Very well. But she will need to follow all hygiene procedures and limit interference to this … technique.”
“I’m right here,” Lucy said.
Izahay deigned to look at her again. “I see that. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” said Lucy. “I don’t want to harm anyone.”
“See that you don’t,” Izahay replied, then sent a slightly nervous glance in Anakin’s direction. “When should I expect these visits?”
“They will start tomorrow,” he told her, and that was that.
By the time Lucy arrived at the med-bay the next day, she was a little tired from an early morning training with her father, but mostly eager to try to do something, and something on her own, at that. She ignored Izahay’s obvious reluctance, submitted to a change from Padmé’s clothes to white medical get-up, coiled her hair into a net, and washed her hands with something that turned them red and stinging. Then Izahay gestured towards a line of patient beds.
“Take your pick,” she said.
Lucy scanned the beds; the patients were nearly all humans, and about half of them asleep, or at least unconscious. She didn’t really feel up to talking to anyone, with so much unspeakable, so she walked towards the furthest of the unconscious soldiers. She couldn’t deny that it seemed strange to be thinking about helping Imperial soldiers, but—well, she had to try to figure this out. And she’d rather not experiment on Rebels, even if it were possible.
She pulled a nearby stool over and studied one of the boards hanging on the wall, which listed each soldier’s injuries with scrupulous exactness. Okay, this man had only been shot in the shoulder—it looked just that bit too deep for bacta to reach.
Feeling a little silly, Lucy reached a hand out and held it above the man’s shoulder. But her theory that it might simply come out of her if the situation called for it was immediately proven false; nothing happened. Conscious of Izahay’s glower, she closed her eyes. How did you just go about giving up part of your life force?
It’d help if she could feel it. She tried to meditate, ignoring the sharp medical scents around her, straining to feel the energy behind her breaths and pumping blood. But she didn’t feel anything except the Force, and for once, that wasn’t what she wanted—not wholly, at least. She had to give something up. How, though?
After an hour of nothing, Izahay showed up to shoo her away.
“But—”
“Lord Vader gave me clear instructions,” said Izahay. “You are not to spend above an hour here, and at any sign of weakness your technique is to be immediately halted.”
Lucy nearly wrinkled her nose again. She didn’t see how much progress she’d make in an hour each day. But considering the whole death-if-you-do-it-wrong angle, she could understand why he’d be careful. She was probably lucky he’d allowed this much.
“All right,” Lucy said. “If he says so.”
“He does.” Izahay glanced down at the patient, someone called Lan Grenath. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” said Lucy.
The next day yielded no better when she tried to push some part of her spirit into Grenath. The Force swirled about her, easy to grasp at the moment, but it didn’t help her do anything. After that, Lucy tried reading the book again, focusing on the sections on the life force itself rather than healing, which she’d previously been more interested in. As far as she could tell, she needed to withdraw into her body (?) to attune herself to the energies within her (???), which she could then manipulate. At least, she thought it meant that.
The following day, she didn’t even try to heal Grenath or any of the others, instead just folding her hands in her lap and trying to meditate deeply enough to banish everything beyond the limits of her own body. She even had to do her best to block her sense of her father, though she could still feel that he was out there, somewhere. And the day after that, Lucy managed to narrow the world down to her body, tuning out everything else and feeling something beat away within her, beyond the thump of her heart. Was that it?
The sensation quickly faded. But Lucy practiced it even after Izahay kicked her out, and between her training sessions with her father, determined to hang onto it. Yes, controlling objects from a distance and defending herself from blaster bolts were important, but this felt more important still, if she could only get it right.
On her fifth day in the med-bay, Lucy managed to retreat into herself in the way she’d practiced, this strange other reality enclosing her in a comfortable pulsing darkness. Half-dazed, she reached her hand out again, not quite touching Grenath, and strained to find some way of passing that energy on. She couldn’t push it; she’d tried. But this form of healing used the Light Side, didn’t it? The Light Side didn’t like being pushed.
Lucy hung onto the energy within her and reached for the Force, struggling to let both flow through her. For a moment, she just felt dizzy and confused, her mind tugging against itself—and in the next moment, it felt like something swung around, everything pouring through her body as if she were nothing but a vessel of the Force. As quickly as it had happened, the sensation stopped.
She looked down at his shoulder. The discolouration of his skin was gone. The tear left by the blaster was gone without so much as a mark left behind. Even an old scar several inches away was gone.
Lucy didn’t dare risk Izahay’s ire by raising her voice, so she strangled the impulse and instead pulled her hand back. Walking over to Tisix, she quietly asked the droid to evaluate the injury to Grenath’s shoulder.
Tisix grumbled but complied, stalking after her and then stopping at the man’s side and giving a low whirr.
“There is no injury,” Tisix announced. “Is that quite all?”
Lucy smiled at nothing in particular. “Yes. I think it is.”
-
She raced into the training room that day, heedless of anything but not tripping over her own boots. Inside, she found Anakin methodically chopping a pipe into segments for no apparent reason, the red lightsaber flashing.
“Father,” she said breathlessly. “I did it!”
He extinguished the lightsaber before turning to look at her. “You did what?”
“I healed someone! One of the soldiers in the bay!”
She felt his attention sharpen, narrowing in on her.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “A little tired, but that’s all.”
“Good,” said Anakin. She wasn’t exactly sure which statement he was responding to, but felt too ecstatic to bother trying to figure it out.
“I did it, though! There’s not even a scar now.”
“Very impressive,” he said.
Lucy grinned.
“All the more,” he said, “as you required no training in it.”
She thought about that. “It felt like I did, but I guess not. It didn’t come as naturally as some other things, though. I can’t wait to go back tomorrow—”
“Absolutely not,” said Anakin. “You’ll need to take several days to recover and replenish your life force.”
“But I don’t feel like—”
The mask seemed particularly relentless. She exhaled, but couldn’t feel too much disappointment in this moment. Instead, she smoothly transitioned from an explanation of how she’d finally managed to heal to her training of the day—which was mostly the same as the previous few days, except that Anakin had Ellex shoot her with two blasters at once, from varying directions. That way, she didn’t do nearly as well as usual at deflecting them, even with the Force flowing through her, though she was never completely stunned. As usual, however, she improved over the next several days, and Anakin let her return to the med-bay.
Now, Lucy tried a patient with a more severe injury, one that had perforated his lungs. She wouldn’t be able to get her hand as near the injury as before, though she didn’t know if that actually mattered or just helped her direct the energies. It took multiple tries, but on the fifth, he seemed to breathe more easily, his features smoothing over, and on the seventh, a machine beside the bed started beeping. Izahay came running over.
“What did you do?”
“You’ll see,” said Lucy.
Izahay scanned the readings, her brow furrowing. “That’s impossible!”
Lucy, perched on her stool, just swung her legs back and forth, smiling as Izahay turned to her.
“What did you do?”
“You’ll have to ask Lord Vader about that,” Lucy told her. She did feel a little light-headed this time, but no worse than that.
Izahay evidently did ask Anakin about what had happened, because he quietly congratulated Lucy again when she showed up for her formal training that day. She’d taken a nap and felt fine again, thankfully. She managed to deflect the blaster bolts from all directions and when he set the blue lightsaber on the table and told her to activate it without touching it, she managed it after several tries—it seemed to resist the tug of her mind somehow, but not indefinitely.
Anakin took the lightsaber and turned it over in his hands, seeming almost lost in thought.
“The time has come,” he said.
Lucy blinked up at him. “The time for what? Are you going to teach me something else?”
“Not at the moment,” said Anakin. He slung the lightsaber back on his belt. “I have seen the location of Jerjerrod’s and Varti’s private fleet. It isn't far from here. Meanwhile, Jerjerrod is preoccupied with the Emperor’s project. Varti has returned to Naboo.”
Something in him recoiled from the mention of that particular planet, though Lucy didn’t know why.
“Oh,” she said. “So it’s a good time to check things out?”
“Precisely,” he replied. “However, if I were to appear there in person, it would immediately raise alarms. I go nowhere unnoticed.”
“True,” said Lucy. “Well, you’ll have to send an agent.”
“Yes, I will,” he said slowly. “In a matter of this much importance, it would have to be an agent of extraordinary capabilities and dedication. One who could communicate their observations and actions without any possibility of detection, and respond to my thoughts and plans in an instant.”
She drew a sharp breath.
Back in the Rebellion, quite a few people had dismissed Lucy as a skilled soldier but not much else—good at flying and shooting, not thinking and plans. But she was by no means a stupid woman.
Lucy met his gaze as directly as she could.
“You’re talking about me,” she said.
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on 2020-02-12 05:52 am (UTC)I actually blurted, "She's YOUR daughter, Anakin!" at that one! <33333333333
*screaming in delight* Yes, this!
I love Lucy getting training with her father.
Also, oh, man, but I have theories and feelings about canon!Luke's (and more to the point his nephew's) relationship to healing powers. (As briefly as I can, because FEELINGS: I think canon!Luke had no grasp of healing, but it was the thing that actually came easiest to Ben Solo when he used the Light side of the Force, whereas Ben could only do the things that Luke thinks of as Luke's own strengths, namely fighting, when he was essentially on the Dark side--- Ben needed to be angry or scared to use the Force to hurt people. And I think all the time he spent with one or the other of his Force mentors pushing him to do violence is why his healing abilities weren't developed enough that he had to die to save Rey--- if he'd been allowed to practice that, he'd have been more efficient with it, as your Lucy seems to be here, and he'd have had enough left over to make it off Exegol alive.)
OMG, Lucy as Vader's agent! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG *hearteyes*
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on 2020-02-12 09:51 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's very definitely not true, lol.
I actually blurted, "She's YOUR daughter, Anakin!" at that one! <33333333333
Haha, yes. Most of everything she does is cosmic justice catching up with him. :P
I love Lucy getting training with her father.
Thanks! It's one of those things where I'm like ... okay, is this too much? But also, I want to set up what comes after and show their relationship developing, so.
Also, oh, man, but I have theories and feelings about canon!Luke's (and more to the point his nephew's) relationship to healing powers.
Hmm, interesting. We can't know from canon, of course, but my personal headcanon is that the various Force subtypes aren't really ... discrete abilities? They're ways that people can direct the Force and most Force-sensitives can do most things to lesser or greater extents, varying by their temperament/aptitudes/overall strength in the Force.
That's definitely the operating assumption of this fic. Lucy struggles more with healing than Rey because her natural gifts tend more to the straightforward and aggressive, but she can manage it to an extent once she finds the proper state of mind (but trying to heal Anakin the way that Rey healed Ben would probably kill her). Anakin's belief that he intrinsically has no healing abilities is mistaken.
OMG, Lucy as Vader's agent! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG *hearteyes*
It's been in the cards for a longggg time :D
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on 2020-02-13 05:35 am (UTC)It's magnificent!
Yeah, with me it's a temperament thing too, except that some people's temperaments really limit their facility with certain uses of the Force. Also their life experiences--- somewhere over at my journal I talked about how Luke has been doing stuff like bullseying womp-rats--- which was presumably an unconscious use of the Force--- long before he started formal training, i.e. a lot of the stuff he gravitates toward is combat-oriented. And he doesn't have--- really, any training at all in anything else (in one of the tie-ins, the graphic novel for TLJ, he talks about how he was trained to kill his father, pretty much) so he just doesn't have a framework for it. And then when Ben turns up just the opposite (and I have reasons for that, too) Luke just doesn't know how to work with the kid. And I can see how Anakin would struggle as a healer, too!
And, yep, still love Lucy as Vader's agent.