Into the Storm

Chapter 2

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CHAPTER TWO

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The prisoner lay very still on the medi-bay scanner, his breathing slow and shallow, his face covered in innumerable grazes and fine cuts, others slicing deeper into the fabric of his ragged jacket and the flesh of his shoulder and arm. His eyes were closed and his mouth slightly open, jaw relaxed in unconsciousness.

"Well?" Vader prompted curtly.

The medic, Nathan Hallin, glanced up at Lord Vader nervously, unsure of why the unconscious man was here anyway, and not in the dedicated but rather more limited medi-bay within the detention level, where all the others had been taken. He'd been summoned with a small trauma team to the docking bay as a dilapidated freighter had been taken aboard and forcibly grounded, given no further explanation as a deafening firefight blazed about him then, after agonizing moments of absolute silence, called into the ship to treat what was clearly a Rebel, judging from his uniform.

Hallin had been on Vader's personal staff for less than a season, chosen by Vader to replace an existing member whose skills he exceeded, and wasn't yet well-versed with the finer points of his promotion. But he was a fast learner.

"Aside from...the obvious--" Hallin hesitated, then said it anyway, "the loss of his hand--he has contusions, several deeper lacerations and concussion. More seriously, some acute nerve damage to his upper thoracic spine; compression and displacement of discs and vertebrae consistent with an impact or a fall. Nothing irreparable, if it's treated immediately."

"He collapsed because of?" Vader prompted curtly.

"The nerve damage. It's significant enough to bring anyone down. I understand he'd just received several...severe blows to the head, which probably aggravated the upper spinal injury. His system probably just couldn't process any more damage and simply shut down." Intensely aware of the brooding silence from the huge figure to his side, the slim, slight medic began to back-pedal. "To be honest, I'm surprised he was standing anyway, considering the damage. Plus, he is concussed. Taking into account all of his...injuries..."

Hallin trailed off, aware that he was simply digging a deeper and deeper hole.

Finally, unable to stand the silence any longer, he tried, "We should...begin treatment to relieve pressure on the nerves along T-four to T-eight on his spine. That's a time-critical injury, My Lord. The hand less so, though the sooner we wet-wire AR nerves into biological ones the easier it is to integrate them, and for the patient to adapt."

It occurred belatedly to Hallin that neither of these procedures may be an option since the patient was clearly a prisoner, judging from the amount of troopers staged in and about his medi-bay. It would be far more in keeping with Hallin's still-limited experience with Lord Vader for him to simply wish to know what was wrong, rather than what could be done to repair it. If the young man was a Rebel as Hallin guessed, then he was facing the death penalty anyway, which made it rather a waste of everyone's time and of Hallin's considerable ability...

"Treat him. Whatever is necessary," Vader said, bringing Hallin's head round in surprise.

"Yes, My Lord," Hallin acknowledged, trying to hide his shock.

Vader almost made to leave before a further thought occurred. "Are any complications possible?"

"Complications?" Hallin hesitated, unsure what Vader was getting at; it surely wasn't concern. He turned back to the prisoner, considering. "The neural procedures to the spine carry a risk in terms of possible secondary nerve damage and the length of time under anesthetic, but the droids who perform the procedure are very competent. The limb replacement is only a local anesthetic and so carries no risks, though it's a long procedure. If we use a more basic replacement..."

"No. Use the best available. Do you have everything necessary here?"

A thought occurred to Hallin now--a reason for the man's being here rather than in the Detention Level, and for Lord Vader's apparent concern--perhaps this was an Imperial spy? A trooper from the 501st even, Lord Vader's own battalion. Would that warrant this level of concern? If so, then Hallin would be expected to display the same.

"Of course, My Lord. Should I use..." He stumbled, uncertain how to ask, "standard medical staff?"

"Are there others more competent?"

"There are several specialists in your own team who are presently onboard, if you wish to ensure an exemplary job."

"Use them. Whatever you need." Vader turned his wide bulk to Hallin, stepping in to tower over the slender medic. "I assign his health to you, Hallin. I expect no mistakes... I shall be displeased with any misstep."

"Yes, Lord Vader." Unlike everything else, that was crystal clear. "Should I...does he have a name? How would you like him referred to in the log?" Hallin felt certain now that the badly-injured man was some kind of agent in Vader's employ, which left him unsure what Vader would wish entered into the ship's medical log.

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Vader paused for a long time, considering, his gaze on the unconscious youth. "His name is Luke. He is my son."

The medic's eyes widened in shock, though to his credit he made no other move. Vader could almost see that fast mind working through the facts though, changing gear accordingly.

"I understand, Lord Vader. I understand completely," Hallin reassured quickly.

Feeling he had now made the repercussions very clear, Vader left Hallin to his work.

Striding from the medi-bay, Vader considered his actions. It had been a momentous act to him, to acknowledge his son as his son. He felt...what? Uneasy emotions conflicted, long-lost whispers at the edge of his thoughts; at his son's rejection of him, at dim memories of a distant past. Awareness of his Master's plans, of the boy's inevitable part in them. Of what it would demand of his son--what it would take from him.

Some deeper feeling welled, fed by the boy's presence...

He had, of course, known of his son for almost a year now, as soon as the Emperor's spies had tracked down the name of the pilot who had destroyed the Death Star. The rarity of the name, the nebulous feelings Vader had sensed when chasing down that X-Wing above the Death Star, the simple fact that the anonymous pilot had made that impossible shot...it hadn't been hard to come to the obvious conclusion.

Over the past year, Vader had alternately felt so sure that this was somehow the son he had believed lost with his mother on her death, then wracked with doubt that it could possibly be true, that such things were occasionally allowed by fate.

Terrified, both that it would be a lie or that it would be true.

And then Luke had come to Cloud City, his presence in the Force shining out, and Vader had known in a way deeper than any facts his spies could bring him.

This was his son. His child--his legacy.

And to say that--to speak it out loud for the first time--felt...good. Though it did nothing to interpret deeper, wildly warring feelings on the matter.

What it did clarify however, beyond question for those around him, was the level of commitment he expected of them in this. That was his intention in saying it, he reasoned, stepping easily back from the momentary burst of rare sentiment. That, and nothing else. And if it turned out that it was not the Emperor's wish to have this information disseminated...well then, nobody was indispensable.

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It was early in the morning when the man began to come round from the anesthetic, the scanners which surrounded him registering changes in brain activity and sounding out a tone.

Hallin stepped quickly into the room. He was deathly tired but hadn't slept yet, wanting to wait until the man had come round to make sure that all was well before he dare retire. Now he checked the IV feeds, glancing nervously at the condition readouts above the scanner, which remained worryingly erratic after the protracted surgery time, and reaching out a hand to one of the 4-OneBee droid as it approached with a small hand-held scanner as a second droid removed the oxygen feed.

Surprisingly, as Hallin was resting the scanner to the man's temples he brought his left arm up and wrapped his hand weakly about the medic's, attempting to push it away.

"Luke, can you hear me? My name is Hallin, I'm a medic. You've just had a surgical procedure and you need to try to remain very still. Do you understand?"

The man's eyes fluttered open briefly as he pawed clumsily at the IV feed in his arm, but he gave no other sign of genuine awareness. Hallin turned to the medical droid. "Do you have an EM scanner?"

"No, sir. I'll go and..."

"No, I have one in my office. I'll just be a moment."

When he returned less than a minute later it was to a scene of mystifying confusion, though for a moment he didn't realize, his tired brain struggling to register the unthinkable. The 4-OneBee stood exactly where he had left it, but it was now inactive, the lights in its eyes dark, motionless head still bent in regard of its patient...who was no longer there. Panicking, Hallin rushed up to the scanner bed whose white cloth was stained by several drops of blood surrounding the removed IV feeds. For long seconds Hallin just stared, eyes moving repeatedly between the deactivated droid and the empty bed...

Two blaster shots from the corridor beyond made his heart skip a beat and finally brought movement to immobile limbs. Dashing headlong into the brightly-lit corridor, he saw his patient leaning heavily against the wall to his left, barely upright, with a gaggle of stormtroopers about him in the corridor raising their blasters as they backed up.

"NO!" he shouted, running forward. "Don't shoot!"

By the time he reached him, the half-awake man had taken several faltering steps down the corridor whilst the troopers held to a wide semi-circle round him, blasters ready.

"Don't hurt him! He's coming round from surgery. He's just..."

"You have one minute to get him back in the bay, medic. Then we bring him down our way." The commanding stormtrooper's voice was clipped through his mask comm, but lost none of its threat.

"Fine... Fine, just stay back." Hallin stepped forward as another three medics appeared from the medi-bay, drawn by the commotion.

"Sir, three of the medical droids are..." one of them began, before finally realizing what was going on around him and trailing to silence.

"Fetch me a hypo, load it with a dose of Sinorin. Quickly!" Hallin hissed into the shocked medic's face.

Hallin hesitated at his next order...but the stormtroopers were a law unto themselves and this was turning very quickly into a situation he knew he couldn't control--and Lord Vader had made him directly responsible for the man. He turned to the second medic, his voice tinged with urgency.

"Contact Lord Vader directly. Use the comlink in my office. Tell him what's happening."

The white-faced man nodded, backing up to dash back into the medi-bay.

The patient had taken several more faltering steps down the hallway now, ignoring the troopers who kept a constant, set distance around him. His bare feet dragged as he paused, leaning his shoulder against the wall to leave a scarlet smear as he started forward again, his bruised and battered torso bare, a pair of white drawstring sleep-trousers his only clothing.

How was he doing this!

Uncertain, having never seen anyone recover this quickly from a full anesthetic, Hallin stepped toward him, his eyes drawn uneasily to the long, fresh scar running down the man's bare back just above his shoulder blades. This type of surgery was very delicate, not meant to have any stress put on it so soon.

How is the man standing...how is he awake at all?!

Level with him now, terrified that he would collapse at any moment causing further damage, Hallin placed his hand gently on the man's shoulder. "Please stop. You're injuring yourself--you have to stop."

The man slowed at this though he didn't turn, still resting his weight on his shoulder against the wall, his injured, bandaged arm clutched to his heaving chest, his shoulders dropping.

The troops about him all closed in slightly, and his head snapped up again, eyes focused dangerously on them. As one they brought their guns to bear, incredibly wary considering the state of the man they surrounded.

Glancing at them, open hand out to restrain them, Hallin realized for the first time that there were four troopers on the floor against the far wall, blasters scattered about them. Had this man done that? Surely not--how could he possibly...? Memory of the blaster-shots whirled back into Hallin's thoughts...

A medic came running from the bay behind him, holding out the hypo. Finally! Hallin grabbed it and turned quickly back to the man, thumb on the release...

And something inexplicable happened.

Somehow...somehow as he turned, he... His arm twisted back as if pushed, so that he ended up with the hypo pressed against his own body--and released the tranquilizer's full dose. He managed to turn to the other medic and whisper, "Antidote..." before his knees gave way.

When he came to, he was leaning awkwardly up with his back against the wall, the other two medics knelt about him, one repeating his name as the other gently tapped at his face.

"I'm...give me..." he managed, still struggling against the effects of the Sinorin, though the antidote was beginning to work through his system now.

He dragged his head around to see the stormtroopers still gathered at a wary distance about the injured man, who had pushed away from the wall, swaying, unable to go any further.

"Don't let them fire...keep them..." He managed to half-lift a hand to point, and one of the medics realized and set forward.

"Don't let him fall..." Hallin's voice was small and breathless and he tried again, struggling to stand. "Don't let him..."

Then the turbolift door at the edge of his vision slid open and a huge black form emerged to step into the bright white of the Star Destroyer's corridor. Lord Vader took everything in with a single glance, and in that moment was completely in control.

"STOP!" His voice was loud and low and gave no room for misunderstanding. Everyone in the corridor was immediately reduced to a frozen silence.

"MOVE BACK!" he barked--and the stormtroopers immediately withdrew, lowering their guns.

Hallin turned at the sound of a low sigh, half-exhaustion, half frustration, to see the injured man collapse to his knees in the still silence, slumping back to sit on his heels, head low, swaying unsteadily.

Lord Vader strode down the corridor, passing the downed troopers without a sideways glance, passing Hallin as he finally struggled to his feet, passing the silent and nervous medics and the armed stormtroopers who shied away from their imposing superior. When he reached the hunched man he crouched to one knee before him and studied him in silence for a long time, his huge, wide bulk dwarfing the smaller man. Chest and feet bare, battered and bruised and sutured, he seemed incredibly vulnerable beneath the black-armored austerity of his captor.

"Where are you going?" Vader finally asked, his quiet reproach tempered yet completely emotionless in the face of the willful, struggling man's obvious pain.

The man lifted his head with difficulty, the effort of staying even this upright clearly draining him, his frailty becoming more and more obvious, every reserve now spent.

Strangely, though Hallin didn't hear him speak, Lord Vader replied as if he had. "They are unharmed. You would do better to worry about yourself."

This time Hallin heard a word, little more than a sigh.

"...Han...?"

Again Lord Vader was silent for a long time, head slightly to one side. Then, the tone of his voice indicating some concession being made, he allowed, "I will retrieve him."

He reached forward to the slumped man whose breathing was becoming ever-more ragged. "And you will rest."

It wasn't so much the offer of a deal as a statement of the way things would be.

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Luke's head was sagging, his whole body trembling with fatigue.

Still, he leaned back, trying without success to lift his arm against the overbearing ebony shadow which stretched out to him, though all consideration of resistance was gone now, all strength sapped. The lights split in his vision and everything began a slow, deliberate turn, as if gravity were momentarily disengaged. His head swam, the walls spun, everything twisted every direction at once.

Focus! Stop this! He called to himself the one thing he could always trust.

The Force was a cool burst of fleeting clarity, but he sensed the Darkness at its edges, pressing in, reaching out.

Reaching out...

He tried to lift his head to focus on the dark, hulking figure before him but even that was beyond him now. His breathing shallowed as he became aware that he was struggling for air, then he toppled forward, unable to stop himself, reality spiraling about him as the floor rushed up toward him.

Strong arms caught him then lifted him from the floor as if he were a child, the action lighting a trail of fire down his spine, though in that moment he was past caring. Everything churned in his hazy vision, no up, no down, waves of awareness between blank, black voids. Voices raised in concern, though he couldn't seem to process the words, nothing reaching through the thick, dull haze which enveloped him and pressed down, stealing any thought save that of simply breathing, and even that faltering. All sound reduced to a single tone which sang in his head as his pounding heart shook his whole body with every labored beat. Too hard to breathe now, too hard to try, the exertion of lifting his chest unthinkable.

Each gasp came a little shallower until he could do nothing but descend into the still, crimson-tinged darkness, unwilling to fight anymore.

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Hallin leaned in to support the man's head as Vader lowered him onto the scanner-bed, adrenaline forcing the medic wide awake as medi-droids closed in, activating readout fields so that the information began to appear as a streaming display at the end of the bed. He glanced up, all business, checking the readouts as he took the offered IV from the droid to insert the needle.

Lord Vader ignored him completely, his hand resting on the unconscious man's chest.

Hallin turned back to the medical readouts as a warning sounded. "He's going into shock."

The IV feed filled with fluid and Luke's eyelids fluttered momentarily--

"NO!" Vader reached out and folded the tube closed. "Take it out!"

Hallin physically jumped at the ferocity of his outburst. "What?"

"Take it out. No drugs--it will interfere with his connection to the Force."

Hallin's eyes widened as he shrank back, but afraid as he was, some basic commitment cut in and he spoke out against Vader. "He...the surgery, My Lord; he shouldn't have moved, he's going into shock. His condition is very serious..."

As if to back him up, the medi-bay began again to sound its low alarm tone. Hallin glanced back at the display, then at Lord Vader's gloved hand still holding the IV tube folded, and spoke the hard truth. "His blood pressure's dropping dangerously low. The drugs will stabilize him until his body can...."

"No. He is a Jedi. He will drop into a trance, heal himself...if you don't interfere."

Hallin frowned; he was a medical man and simply didn't have time for this--

"Do as I say," Vader rumbled, the threat evident in his tone.

Hallin hesitated; as far as he was concerned, the Force was a myth, an entertainment for those too gullible to see the truth. He knew, of course, what people who were close to them said of Lord Vader and of the Emperor, but he had seen nothing in the two months that he'd been on Lord Vader's staff to merit any re-evaluation of his own beliefs. But he was a military medic and Lord Vader's subordinate. If Vader wished to test some theory, then it was within his rights to do so--certainly nobody here was about to stop him.

So why did Hallin remain frozen in place?

The medical alarm rose a pitch, demanding resolution. Wasn't this Vader's son? Why would he risk this? How could he?

That black mask turned on him, the voice from within broaching no argument. "Take it out."

"Of course," Hallin finally acknowledged, his voice flat, laced with defeat. "You understand...he will go deeper into shock, probably cardiac arrest without some form of intervention to stabilize him..."

As he spoke he slid out the IV, keeping his eyes on the readouts, awaiting the inevitable.

Vader didn't turn, didn't look to the display at all. He simply stared at the failing man.

They didn't have to wait long... The scanner changed to a constant tone and readouts began to flash red.

"He's gone below prescribed levels..." Hallin said flatly, his own heart beating fast in his chest. It was against everything he'd been taught, everything he'd ever believed, to stand by and simply watch when he could so easily prevent this.

"...His heart's going into fibrillation..." Seconds away now...

Vader's voice was low and quiet, barely a whisper, but Hallin heard it anyway, the raw emotion hidden by the mask all too audible in the hoarse words which drew Hallin's eyes to Lord Vader as he hissed down at the dying man, "Fight!"

Still the scanners registered the failing vital signs of the youth, and Hallin felt his own head shake as he looked back to the man. Unable to help himself, he reached out his hand to place it lightly on his patient's forehead, knowing it would offer no help but somehow needing, in those final moments, to offer some kind of succor.

Finally Vader relented, stepping back and turning quickly to Hallin. "Help him!"

He didn't need telling twice. Galvanized into action he stepped forward, arm out to the medi-droid. "Adrenaline--240 in a DR needle! Now!"

He stretched his hand out over the man's chest, automatically feeling for the spot between his ribs, hoping it wasn't too late, fearing it was. As he took the needle, a change in the scanner tone made him turn...

Two of the readouts had risen from critical back toward normal limits. Frowning, he stared at the display in blank confusion. How...?

A third climbed back within limits as the man's vital signs began to stabilize.

Vader reached his arm out to gently push Hallin back from the patient, whose irregular breathing was beginning to even. The medic frowned, speechless as he looked down to the man on the bed, whose blue lips were beginning to redden, color returning to waxen skin.

What the hell was happening?

It took less than a minute for the readouts to stabilize--not even nearly to normal; the man remained in a serious condition--but to climb from critical. To step back, quite miraculously, from the edge.

Some signs remained incredibly elevated though--brain activity and oxygen levels were exceptionally high...

Was this.... Hallin hardly dare even consider it.

Lord Vader turned to him, bass voice perfectly even now, distant and emotionless. "Learn and adapt, if you are to serve him. He is a Jedi...all previous knowledge and boundaries are gone. You were right to contact me, however. Do so earlier, next time."

With that he turned and left. Hallin watched him, a dark silhouette against the bright light of the corridor beyond. Then he was left alone, to look back down in mute wonderment at the Jedi.

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Luke was woken from a fitful, disturbed sleep by the realization of who was near.

He'd spent the night in a detention cell, pretty much dragged there by Vader when he'd made his third attempt to leave the medi-center only a day after the first.

By the time Vader had arrived he'd already been forced to stop, stormtroopers ahead of and behind him, but this time he'd gotten much further into the ship. Still slow and breathless, still frail, but awake this time; aware enough to find his bearings, clarify where exactly he was in relation to where he needed to get to...and more importantly, how to get there. Next time.

Vader had arrived seething, simply striding up to Luke as he had leaned weakly against the wall for support, grabbing him by the arm, turning him about and dragging him down the corridor. Luke hadn't even had the strength left to fight; to shout out or struggle as he was half-dragged, half-marched through the Destroyer, Vader's grip unyielding, the sound of many stormtroopers' boots behind them. All of his energy had gone into simply staying upright.

Still in medi-center whites, feet bare, he had been deposited--practically thrown--into an empty cell whose roof curved down to the floor in a concave dome, and whose only notable feature was a huge, thick pillar in the centre of the room. Half-collapsing in exhaustion at the forced march, vision tunneling, chest heaving, he'd been only vaguely aware of the techs who had gathered about him as he'd collapsed against the pillar, struggling to find the strength to stand again.

"If you act like you are a prisoner here, you will be treated as one," Vader had finally accused, frustration and irritation clipping his words.

Cryptically as far as Luke was concerned; what did Vader think he was?

He was a Rebel soldier being held captive by the Empire and he would take any opportunity presented to escape--or at the very least cause havoc. A sting of pain had drawn Luke's eyes to his ankle, where the techs were using some kind of hand-held device to seal two fine metallic cables about each, the other ends of which were already looped around the thick pillar.

"They are unbreakable," Vader had said needlessly. "You could, of course, use the Force to bring down the pillar, but since the roof rests upon it, I would not advise it."

He stared in silence for a long time at Luke--waiting for what Luke hadn't known. Unable to summon the strength to even speak yet, he could only glare back, open animosity in his eyes, his chest heaving as he'd still struggled for breath.

Finally Vader had turned and left. The hiss of a hermetic seal had sounded as the heavy door pulled closed, to be followed seconds later by the sound of a second outer door doing the same with a solid, impenetrable finality.

Vader--nothing else; no connection, not his... Luke still couldn't even begin to think of the man in those terms...and it was becoming easier to just ignore it now. He knew who Vader was; what he was. And he knew exactly his relationship to him: enemy to soldier, Imperial to Rebel. He neither wanted nor needed those perceptions altering.

So now, as he recognized that grudgingly familiar sense approaching outside his cell, his eyes opened then narrowed though he didn't move otherwise, remaining on the hard floor where he had slept, laid on his side to favor the sutures down his back, facing away from the entrance.

The outer door grated open, followed a few seconds later by the inner one. Heavy footsteps walked forward then halted.

Silence, in which Luke forced his breathing to even, jaw tightening.

"I know that you are awake," Vader said at last, his tone quiet and calm, but still blunt and unyielding.

"Leave," Luke said, not even turning.

"I wish to speak with you," Vader rumbled, as if that were reason enough to comply.

"I don't wish to speak with you."

"Then you will listen," Vader said curtly.

With little real choice, Luke pushed himself painfully up to lean a shoulder against the thick post, the cables twisting about his ankles as he did so. The scathing, derisive fury in his voice when he spoke surprised even himself. "Fine...go ahead."

He had the momentary gratification of seeing Vader pause, uncertain. "Go ahead," he invited again through tight lips. "You want me to listen--I'm listening."

"You are not listening," Vader said, shaking his head slightly. "You do not intend to listen to anything I say."

"Have you finished?"

Vader said nothing, merely stared.

"Good. Then leave."

"You are judging me without knowing the facts."

"No, I'm judging you on the facts," Luke bit out. "I'm in a detention cell being taken against my will to Imperial Center. The person who put me in here has injured my friends for no other reason than to get my attention, and is now intending to deliver me and them to a man who will surely kill us all when I won't do as he asks. The person who put me in here knows this as well as I do, and yet still that door remains locked. That is the man I'm judging."

"You are so stubborn," Vader said at last, shaking his head in frustration.

"And you're blind," Luke accused angrily. "Willfully so. Because I don't believe you can't see what will happen."

"The choice of what will happen is yours."

"I've made my choices. I made them years ago. None of this..." even now, he couldn't bring himself to say it, "changes them."

"Your choices were made without the facts."

Luke only looked away. "I had the ones that mattered."

"Only to them."

"And I suppose you'll give me the truth?" His words were laced with caustic disbelief.

"Why do you believe me any less capable of that than Obi-Wan?"

"Because I'm here," Luke replied, incredulous that Vader could even ask. "Like this. Because my friends are here..."

"You would do well to forget them. They are an unnecessary weakness."

Luke shot him a disbelieving, outraged stare, but he continued with relentless logic.

"The Emperor will use them to control you. That is why they are here."

"Then let them go." It was half-request, half-challenge. It was the first time he looked to his father's eyes.

"I cannot."

Luke turned away, unsurprised. "Do you do everything he tells you?"

"You do not know him." The tone of Vader's voice revealed little but for a moment--just an instant--Luke's temper softened to something more compassionate. Then he blinked and turned away, rubbing tiredly at his temples.

"Well, I'm about to," he said, exhausted, the frustrated implication in his words clear.

"It does not have to be this way. The offer I made on Bespin remains--will always remain." He declared this as if he were offering some kind of gift, not condemning Luke to Darkness. "I can teach you, show you a power that will make you invulnerable. Luke, you have the ability to destroy him."

"How would you possibly know?" Luke's voice was tired and dismissive.

"Because I know who you are. I know what you are--the truth. They have shown you only a fragment of that which you are capable of, by their own choice. I know your aptitude...your capability. They could only ever teach you competence, because that is all they know. I can show you mastery."

"To do what? Fulfill your ambitions?" Luke challenged.

"Fulfill your own potential," Vader countered.

"As it suits you."

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Vader fell silent, unaccustomed to this--all of it. If the boy would relent, just a little, if he would just open his mind to the possibility that Kenobi was wrong and Vader right. How could he explain, how could he make the boy understand?

"Luke... you are not like them. We are not like them." The boy remained unmoved, face stubbornly turned away. "Understand what you are--know what you are capable of. Your lineage, your bloodline. I can give you that knowledge, make you realize your inherent potential."

"Why?"

That one word, spoken so quietly and without any trace of animosity, stopped Vader dead.

"Do you not wish to know who you are?" Vader was incredulous, genuinely confused.

This, surely, was what the boy wanted. Every truth that had been so deliberately kept from him, every fact. Having been confronted with a glimpse of reality after years of lies, how could he not want it all? But the boy shook his head in resigned refusal.

"I've lived this long without your 'truth'. I'll be dead soon anyway. What does it matter?" The boy was genuinely dismissive, anger waning now to be replaced with an empty bitterness, a knowing, weary acceptance that he would never know the real truth--not as long as those about him sought to control him.

"You should know who you are. Your heritage, your birthright."

Vader held his son's searching gaze as Luke turned to him, pale blue eyes so much like his own. Haunted and lost, deeply dispirited. So much like his own... Was this the price of power? Was this the true legacy of the Skywalkers--were they all cursed to a life of misery and grief?

"I really don't care," Luke whispered, his quiet, defeated tone more damning than any previous anger. "Please leave."

And that was it--against that resolute, determined denial, what more was there to be said? Vader turned to leave, but paused at the heavy door. Turning back, he dropped the small palm-held holo-projector he'd held to the ground at his feet. It clattered across the hard floor, rolling to a halt.

Neither looked at it.

"Your mother," Vader said simply, then turned and left without further comment.

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Alone, Luke stared at the small device laid on its side on the floor. Seconds turned to minutes as he stared at it, until its dark color against the white walls had burned an imprint into his mind so that it remained even when he closed his eyes.

But the truth he'd craved his whole life had become too hard, too damning. Especially now, from this source. He didn't want any more--couldn't take any more. He was tired and battered, body and soul both.

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From the main observation console in the ops room, Vader watched the image of the cell as Luke stared mutely at the device for a long, long time.

Willing him to pick it up...

Finally the boy leaned back his head, eyes closed. And Vader could sense the tangle of conflicting emotions which pulled him every direction at once. Loyalty to his friends, his cause. Fear that his hidden past would be a weakness, a method of control.

The desperate desire to see his mother's face, just once...

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Luke willed himself to remain still for a long time, but every single fiber of his being was attuned to the small, abandoned holo-projector that lay on its side just ten paces away. It had been a cruel thing, to leave it here...a cunning thing.

He opened his eyes and stretched out his left hand, and the projector skittered momentarily over the bare floor then launched across the cell to land neatly in his palm. He held it for long seconds, struggling against inner demons--the longing, the need to know despite his words, the resentment and bitterness which had driven him to rebuff even this.

He gazed at the device in his hand, aware that he was being watched, but uncaring, the relevance of this moment too great to disregard.

His mother. His past. Twenty-one years of forsaken abandonment compressed into this instant. A lifetime of craving, of yearning, of searching for any connection, no matter how faint...

And now, finally, the truth was being offered...at a price. Acceptance.

Of what he was...of what he could become.

Sighing deeply, he held onto this possibility--the potential to see her--for just a few seconds more...

But the price was just too high.

He twisted it onto its side in his palm, so that the three fine veins which projected the image faced his thumb. Without visible emotion he broke each of them off, rendering the projector useless, then let it fall from his hand.

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To be continued...

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