Tumblr crosspost (9 December 2020)

[anghraine]

heckofabecca said:

Give me a 6 :)

I replied:

6. What’s your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year?

Heh, I wrote a lot of dialogue. It’s definitely going to come from The Jedi and the Sith Lord … okay, it’s kind of cheating, but my favorite dialogue-heavy moment was very predictably:

“Everything I’ve done has been to save the galaxy!”

“Good job,” said Lucy.

“If it weren’t for your pathetic Rebellion—”

She gave a scornful laugh. “You didn’t think it was pathetic when we blew up the Death Star and shot you out of the sky!”

“When you blew up the Death Star,” said Vader. “The Rebellion is little more than an irritant without you.”

It would be insufferably arrogant to think so. But sometimes—well, she worried about what might happen without her there, without an agent of the Force on their side, while the Empire had Vader, however ambivalent he might be. Lucy set her teeth.

“You can flatter me all you want,” she said. “Do you think it’s ever going to make a difference? If you’re waiting for that, you can just kill me already.”

“That is not your destiny,” said Vader.

She could nearly have beaten her head against the bars on his window.

“As if you don’t take destiny into your own hands all the time,” she said. “Did you call it destiny when you killed Anakin Skywalker?”

Vader’s hand unclenched.

“What?” he said.

“Oh, you thought I’d forget my father if you treated me nicely enough?” said Lucy, her voice rising. “I haven’t!”

His mask turned towards the window, as if searching for some answer in its sickly light, then turned back to her. For a moment, he simply appeared to examine her.

“No,” he said at last. “I am your father.”

For something lighter that leans less on canon … I’m fond of this, from later in the fic:

Finally, her arm went completely numb and Vader knocked the lightsaber right out of her hand. It clattered somewhere on the floor beneath them, while the red lightsaber hummed at her throat.

Lucy looked at the lightsaber, and then at Vader’s unreadable mask.

“Damn it,” she said.

He seemed—she concentrated—something like amused, or at least entertained. Lucy scowled.

“A worthy effort,” said her father.

“For a failure?”

“Yes,” he said, which wasn’t exactly encouraging. “Consider it instructive.”

“Thanks,” said Lucy.

“Do you acknowledge your defeat?”

She nearly wrinkled her nose. “I guess.”

He waited, the lightsaber still inches from her skin. It was, though not frightening, certainly unsettling.

“Yes,” she grumbled. “I have fallen before your mighty skills, Lord Vader. Can I get down now?