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remix_reduxTitle: The Choices We Make [Son of Man Remix]
Author: Angel![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
valarltd
Summary: Obi-Wan never told Luke the truth, but he never told Anakin either.
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG for violence
Disclaimer: All rights belong to Lucas.
Warnings: dark
Original story: The choices we make, by Rynn
http://rynne.decemberproject.net/fanfiction/sw-fics/choices.htm
Notes: Some of this does not follow the movies, but rather comes from the novelizations.
He was aware of the three humans, two droids and the wookiee charging for the captured space ship. He knew the tractor beam was out. But these were unimportant as he faced the blue of his old master’s saber in the ancient dance of Jedi and Sith.
Obi-Wan was gone when he sliced through the robe, a Jedi trick he’d seen several times. He turned, and saw the youth had stopped at the foot of the ship’s ramp. The spacer and the princess were urging him on, but an odd look was on his face.
Slowly, heedless of the stormtroopers blazing away at him, the youth stepped away from the ramp and ignited a blue lightsaber.
“Luke, no!” he heard the Princess yell.
“Stand down,” he commanded the troopers and strode forward to where the boy stood. He could see the young man tremble at his approach, but the defiance on his face remained tempered with curiosity and–it took Vader a moment to recognize the emotion–longing.
"Are you going to fight me?" Vader asked. "You can’t be even as well-trained as Kenobi was. Don’t be a fool, boy."
He saw the boy swallow. “I’m not going to fight you." The boy’s voice remained steady and his blue eyes were calm. He ignored the urging of the spacer to run and snapped off the lightsaber. After a moment, he held it out. “Do you know whose lightsaber this is?”
Vader took the hilt and turned it over in his gloved hands. He remembered it well, every line of the case, every decorative feature, the high, curved back-piece where the blade came into being. He stiffened. Another of Obi-Wan’s tricks. He jabbed at the boy with his own saber.
“This is my former saber," he growled, the mechanically amplified voice resonating even through the deckplates. "Did Kenobi give it to you to taunt me?"
The boy took a deep breath. “No.” He paused, the moment hanging between them heavy with meaning. “He told me that it was my father’s old lightsaber." He straightened to his full height, looking up at Vader showing no fear, and said, "My name is Luke Skywalker. I’m your son."
The silence filled the docking bay, broken only by Vader’s respirator, the pilot’s filthy oath and the soft thud of the princess as she fainted to the deck. Vader stared at the boy, long and hard, the cybernetics of his eyes measuring everything about the slight youth.
His voice was steady as he ordered, “Come with me,” and strode off, not believing young Skywalker would do other than follow.
He heard Luke tell his friends to go while they could, and gave the signal for the troopers to clear the bay as well. The door of the docking bay hissed shut and he sensed the raw talent of the boy coming up behind him.
He didn’t trust himself to say anything. His master had lied. At least one of his children lived. He dared not ask if his wife, his beloved Padme, whom he had so grievously harmed, still lived as well. He knew Luke’s clothes, and he knew from whence the freighter had come. Tatooine. Miserable little dust-ball on the rim. Of course, Obi-Wan would have hidden there, knowing it was the one place in the galaxy, short of Geonosis or Sullust, that he never wanted to visit again.
He could sense Luke’s nervous anticipation, and curiosity as to his silence. And under it all, the yearning, deep refrain of “Father, father, father, father I have a father, father, father.” Finally, they reached the medbay.
The doctor bowed to them. “Lord Vader. To what do we owe the honor of your visit?” The man’s fear colored his words, but Vader ignored it. He shoved Luke forward.
"You have a sample of my blood on file, do you not?" Vader rumbled. The doctor nodded. "Take a sample of the boy’s, and compare it to mine."
Luke sat down quietly and let the doctor draw his blood. Vader was pleased to see he was obedient at least. The analyzer did its work in moments and the doctor paled.
Vader let the respirator breathe for him. Even if Obi-Wan had lied to this boy, he was still a Force sensitive. He would keep young Luke and train him. The law of the Sith said only Master and Apprentice, but he knew of the Emperor’s Hand and the Sith Witches and all the other exceptions to that law. The sheer raw power of Skywalker needed control.
He observed the boy, seeing Obi-Wan’s blue eyes, Obi-Wan’s facial structure, even the cleft chin. Now that would be true revenge, turning Obi-Wan’s own son against him, if it was that Luke was not his.
“Well?” he demanded. His son or Obi-Wan’s. It did not matter.
"Ah..." The doctor swallowed, and then collected himself, with a deep breath. "Congratulations, Lord Vader. You have a son."
Vader stood for a moment and then swept out, knowing Luke would follow. He had no other recourse. The ship was gone, and there was nothing else for him on the station. He led Luke back to his quarters, thinking.
He gestured the boy–his son–into the room and took a seat. “You’re twenty.” It wasn’t a question but Luke nodded anyway. “I was told your mother died before you were born and that neither of you children could be saved.”
“Neither?” Luke asked.
“My wife...” The words came hard. Vader had not said them in twenty years. “My wife was carrying twins.”
Luke shook his head. “I grew up on Tatooine, with my Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. I don’t have any siblings.” He looked puzzled.
Vader rose and moved close. He peeled off his black gloves, and watched Luke cringe at the pallor of his flesh hand and the smooth syntheflesh of his mechanical one. “I can access your infant memories if you allow it. But, I must touch you. They are buried deep in your unconscious.”
Luke steeled himself and nodded. “Yes, please.” He didn’t shudder at the touch of the clammy flesh on his temple, or the feeling of the Sith Lord in his mind.
Vader withdrew, and pulled his gloves back on hastily. “She lives. That is all I will say. How do you come to me today?”
Luke poured out the story, much condensed. “Uncle Owen bought the droids with the Death Star plans, though we didn’t know that at the time. Artoo--Artoo Detoo, that is, the astromech--had a message from Princess Leia to Ben Kenobi, and went looking for him. I went after them, and while I was gone...stormtroopers traced the droids to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and killed them." Luke took a deep breath and composed himself before continuing. Vader could feel his loss even across the room. “Ben asked me to go to Alderaan with him and train as a Jedi. I thought maybe I could finally make something of my life, maybe even find you, so I agreed. We commissioned Han and the Falcon to take us there, but then we were tractored onto the Death Star. Han and I went to rescue Leia while Ben went to turn off the tractor beam, and, well, you know the rest."
Vader gave a small nod. “Indeed. So you are untrained in the ways of the Force? Obi-Wan did not begin your training before you left Tatooine?” The anger had begun to rise in his voice.
“I only found out a couple days ago that he was a Jedi.” Luke cringed a moment, and then sat up straight to face the anger.
Vader breathed slowly, calming himself. His anger at Obi-Wan did not need to be heaped upon his son. His son... His life was much more complicated now than it had been this morning, when the freighter had been tractored into the docking bay. He paced the room, and, as he turned, he caught the reflection of Luke stifling a yawn.
“You are tired. Come. I will show you to a place to sleep."
When the door hissed shut, Vader flooded the compartment with sleeping gas. He had much to do, and very little time to do it. He would have both of his children and if Tarkin opposed him, there would soon be a new commander of the Death Star. Tarkin and his whispering, plotting Motti and the doubting Tagge, all would go and he would control this fearsome toy of the Emperor’s.
***
Weeks later, Vader stood before the Emperor. The day could no longer be delayed. He had worked and fought his way to this day, and all he could hope was that his children would play their parts.
Leia had been the more difficult. Luke’s all-consuming father-need had brought the boy along nicely, and in the end it was Luke’s love for his sister that persuaded her as well.
Now, they stood before the Emperor himself, Leia starkly beautiful in the black, Luke fair in his matching clothes. Vader did not hold his breath. The respirator would not allow it. They advanced, their minds guarded from Palpatine.
Vader could feel their fear, and he watched withered old monster feed upon it. The Dark slid through the room, heavy, oily. He saw Leia moisten her lips, almost feeding on the cloying sweet poison of it. Luke still had much of the light in him, but she would walk into the darkness and draw her brother along by the very willing hand.
“Your children, Lord Vader?” Palpatine’s voice wass shrill and gleeful.
“Yes, my master.”
“And you know, do you not, that a single apprentice would violate our ways, and two is unheard of?” Palpatine caressed the hilt of Luke’s lightsaber which lay on the arm of his throne. “But there is a way out.” He beckoned Luke forward.
Luke bowed and kept his mind closed. Palpatine handed him the saber.
“Whoever survives is most fit to stand at my side,” he announced, as Vader had known he would.
The supreme confidence on Luke’s face was a testament to his training as he ignited the blue beam. Vader pressed the power stud on his own. Leia stepped back, leaving them a clear field.
Luke’s weeks of training had been thorough, and Vader pressed him hard, not wanting the Emperor to suspect any weakness or leniency. As they fought up and down the steps of the dais, Vader’s mechanical legs creaking from the strain, Leia sent the warning.
“No!” she cried, stepping near the fight. “Lord Vader, no!” Seeing she would get nowhere, she flung herself at the Emperor’s feet. “Please, Your Highness.” The desperation rolled off of her, and Vader hid his own thoughts. “Is it not enough to take my father, my world, my very identity? Must I watch as he destroys my brother, too?”
Both duelists turned on the Emperor while she distracted him. The red beam pinned him to the throne and the blue sent his head tumbling. Leia made herself as small as possible to not impede them.
The Emperor’s body exploded in a ball of Force lightening, knocking all three back from the throne. Vader, his cybernetics overloaded with the electromagnetic pulse, could only watch as Luke dragged himself to where Leia lay. He could see his handsome son was scarred now, one side of his face burnt. Luke helped Leia to sit, and took her in his arms.
He did not turn up the audio to hear what they whispered. But they both turned to him, and looks he had never expected to see on either of their faces greeted him: love and admiration from Luke and gratitude from Leia. He heard them summoning the medical team.
His children, his magnificent, powerful children, the last of his Padme, had saved the galaxy, and him as well. The thought followed him into the darkness of the anesthesia as the team began their work.
Author: Angel
valarltdSummary: Obi-Wan never told Luke the truth, but he never told Anakin either.
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG for violence
Disclaimer: All rights belong to Lucas.
Warnings: dark
Original story: The choices we make, by Rynn
http://rynne.decemberproject.net/fanfiction/sw-fics/choices.htm
Notes: Some of this does not follow the movies, but rather comes from the novelizations.
He was aware of the three humans, two droids and the wookiee charging for the captured space ship. He knew the tractor beam was out. But these were unimportant as he faced the blue of his old master’s saber in the ancient dance of Jedi and Sith.
Obi-Wan was gone when he sliced through the robe, a Jedi trick he’d seen several times. He turned, and saw the youth had stopped at the foot of the ship’s ramp. The spacer and the princess were urging him on, but an odd look was on his face.
Slowly, heedless of the stormtroopers blazing away at him, the youth stepped away from the ramp and ignited a blue lightsaber.
“Luke, no!” he heard the Princess yell.
“Stand down,” he commanded the troopers and strode forward to where the boy stood. He could see the young man tremble at his approach, but the defiance on his face remained tempered with curiosity and–it took Vader a moment to recognize the emotion–longing.
"Are you going to fight me?" Vader asked. "You can’t be even as well-trained as Kenobi was. Don’t be a fool, boy."
He saw the boy swallow. “I’m not going to fight you." The boy’s voice remained steady and his blue eyes were calm. He ignored the urging of the spacer to run and snapped off the lightsaber. After a moment, he held it out. “Do you know whose lightsaber this is?”
Vader took the hilt and turned it over in his gloved hands. He remembered it well, every line of the case, every decorative feature, the high, curved back-piece where the blade came into being. He stiffened. Another of Obi-Wan’s tricks. He jabbed at the boy with his own saber.
“This is my former saber," he growled, the mechanically amplified voice resonating even through the deckplates. "Did Kenobi give it to you to taunt me?"
The boy took a deep breath. “No.” He paused, the moment hanging between them heavy with meaning. “He told me that it was my father’s old lightsaber." He straightened to his full height, looking up at Vader showing no fear, and said, "My name is Luke Skywalker. I’m your son."
The silence filled the docking bay, broken only by Vader’s respirator, the pilot’s filthy oath and the soft thud of the princess as she fainted to the deck. Vader stared at the boy, long and hard, the cybernetics of his eyes measuring everything about the slight youth.
His voice was steady as he ordered, “Come with me,” and strode off, not believing young Skywalker would do other than follow.
He heard Luke tell his friends to go while they could, and gave the signal for the troopers to clear the bay as well. The door of the docking bay hissed shut and he sensed the raw talent of the boy coming up behind him.
He didn’t trust himself to say anything. His master had lied. At least one of his children lived. He dared not ask if his wife, his beloved Padme, whom he had so grievously harmed, still lived as well. He knew Luke’s clothes, and he knew from whence the freighter had come. Tatooine. Miserable little dust-ball on the rim. Of course, Obi-Wan would have hidden there, knowing it was the one place in the galaxy, short of Geonosis or Sullust, that he never wanted to visit again.
He could sense Luke’s nervous anticipation, and curiosity as to his silence. And under it all, the yearning, deep refrain of “Father, father, father, father I have a father, father, father.” Finally, they reached the medbay.
The doctor bowed to them. “Lord Vader. To what do we owe the honor of your visit?” The man’s fear colored his words, but Vader ignored it. He shoved Luke forward.
"You have a sample of my blood on file, do you not?" Vader rumbled. The doctor nodded. "Take a sample of the boy’s, and compare it to mine."
Luke sat down quietly and let the doctor draw his blood. Vader was pleased to see he was obedient at least. The analyzer did its work in moments and the doctor paled.
Vader let the respirator breathe for him. Even if Obi-Wan had lied to this boy, he was still a Force sensitive. He would keep young Luke and train him. The law of the Sith said only Master and Apprentice, but he knew of the Emperor’s Hand and the Sith Witches and all the other exceptions to that law. The sheer raw power of Skywalker needed control.
He observed the boy, seeing Obi-Wan’s blue eyes, Obi-Wan’s facial structure, even the cleft chin. Now that would be true revenge, turning Obi-Wan’s own son against him, if it was that Luke was not his.
“Well?” he demanded. His son or Obi-Wan’s. It did not matter.
"Ah..." The doctor swallowed, and then collected himself, with a deep breath. "Congratulations, Lord Vader. You have a son."
Vader stood for a moment and then swept out, knowing Luke would follow. He had no other recourse. The ship was gone, and there was nothing else for him on the station. He led Luke back to his quarters, thinking.
He gestured the boy–his son–into the room and took a seat. “You’re twenty.” It wasn’t a question but Luke nodded anyway. “I was told your mother died before you were born and that neither of you children could be saved.”
“Neither?” Luke asked.
“My wife...” The words came hard. Vader had not said them in twenty years. “My wife was carrying twins.”
Luke shook his head. “I grew up on Tatooine, with my Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. I don’t have any siblings.” He looked puzzled.
Vader rose and moved close. He peeled off his black gloves, and watched Luke cringe at the pallor of his flesh hand and the smooth syntheflesh of his mechanical one. “I can access your infant memories if you allow it. But, I must touch you. They are buried deep in your unconscious.”
Luke steeled himself and nodded. “Yes, please.” He didn’t shudder at the touch of the clammy flesh on his temple, or the feeling of the Sith Lord in his mind.
Vader withdrew, and pulled his gloves back on hastily. “She lives. That is all I will say. How do you come to me today?”
Luke poured out the story, much condensed. “Uncle Owen bought the droids with the Death Star plans, though we didn’t know that at the time. Artoo--Artoo Detoo, that is, the astromech--had a message from Princess Leia to Ben Kenobi, and went looking for him. I went after them, and while I was gone...stormtroopers traced the droids to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and killed them." Luke took a deep breath and composed himself before continuing. Vader could feel his loss even across the room. “Ben asked me to go to Alderaan with him and train as a Jedi. I thought maybe I could finally make something of my life, maybe even find you, so I agreed. We commissioned Han and the Falcon to take us there, but then we were tractored onto the Death Star. Han and I went to rescue Leia while Ben went to turn off the tractor beam, and, well, you know the rest."
Vader gave a small nod. “Indeed. So you are untrained in the ways of the Force? Obi-Wan did not begin your training before you left Tatooine?” The anger had begun to rise in his voice.
“I only found out a couple days ago that he was a Jedi.” Luke cringed a moment, and then sat up straight to face the anger.
Vader breathed slowly, calming himself. His anger at Obi-Wan did not need to be heaped upon his son. His son... His life was much more complicated now than it had been this morning, when the freighter had been tractored into the docking bay. He paced the room, and, as he turned, he caught the reflection of Luke stifling a yawn.
“You are tired. Come. I will show you to a place to sleep."
When the door hissed shut, Vader flooded the compartment with sleeping gas. He had much to do, and very little time to do it. He would have both of his children and if Tarkin opposed him, there would soon be a new commander of the Death Star. Tarkin and his whispering, plotting Motti and the doubting Tagge, all would go and he would control this fearsome toy of the Emperor’s.
***
Weeks later, Vader stood before the Emperor. The day could no longer be delayed. He had worked and fought his way to this day, and all he could hope was that his children would play their parts.
Leia had been the more difficult. Luke’s all-consuming father-need had brought the boy along nicely, and in the end it was Luke’s love for his sister that persuaded her as well.
Now, they stood before the Emperor himself, Leia starkly beautiful in the black, Luke fair in his matching clothes. Vader did not hold his breath. The respirator would not allow it. They advanced, their minds guarded from Palpatine.
Vader could feel their fear, and he watched withered old monster feed upon it. The Dark slid through the room, heavy, oily. He saw Leia moisten her lips, almost feeding on the cloying sweet poison of it. Luke still had much of the light in him, but she would walk into the darkness and draw her brother along by the very willing hand.
“Your children, Lord Vader?” Palpatine’s voice wass shrill and gleeful.
“Yes, my master.”
“And you know, do you not, that a single apprentice would violate our ways, and two is unheard of?” Palpatine caressed the hilt of Luke’s lightsaber which lay on the arm of his throne. “But there is a way out.” He beckoned Luke forward.
Luke bowed and kept his mind closed. Palpatine handed him the saber.
“Whoever survives is most fit to stand at my side,” he announced, as Vader had known he would.
The supreme confidence on Luke’s face was a testament to his training as he ignited the blue beam. Vader pressed the power stud on his own. Leia stepped back, leaving them a clear field.
Luke’s weeks of training had been thorough, and Vader pressed him hard, not wanting the Emperor to suspect any weakness or leniency. As they fought up and down the steps of the dais, Vader’s mechanical legs creaking from the strain, Leia sent the warning.
“No!” she cried, stepping near the fight. “Lord Vader, no!” Seeing she would get nowhere, she flung herself at the Emperor’s feet. “Please, Your Highness.” The desperation rolled off of her, and Vader hid his own thoughts. “Is it not enough to take my father, my world, my very identity? Must I watch as he destroys my brother, too?”
Both duelists turned on the Emperor while she distracted him. The red beam pinned him to the throne and the blue sent his head tumbling. Leia made herself as small as possible to not impede them.
The Emperor’s body exploded in a ball of Force lightening, knocking all three back from the throne. Vader, his cybernetics overloaded with the electromagnetic pulse, could only watch as Luke dragged himself to where Leia lay. He could see his handsome son was scarred now, one side of his face burnt. Luke helped Leia to sit, and took her in his arms.
He did not turn up the audio to hear what they whispered. But they both turned to him, and looks he had never expected to see on either of their faces greeted him: love and admiration from Luke and gratitude from Leia. He heard them summoning the medical team.
His children, his magnificent, powerful children, the last of his Padme, had saved the galaxy, and him as well. The thought followed him into the darkness of the anesthesia as the team began their work.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-22 08:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-26 02:30 pm (UTC)And remixer, great job! I liked this remix. Seeing Vader's perspective was cool, and the twist of how things changed with more time going by and with Leia being there was interesting. Well done!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-29 06:34 pm (UTC)