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"Don't touch me," Luke snarled as Vader took his chin gently and tilted it up, examining the bruise on his face. He tried to yank his chin away, but his father's grip was firm.
"Use that anger," Vader told him. The weight of his regard in the Force was heavy, like the twin suns were beating all their heat down on one person, but his triumph and happiness were heavier. Luke had felt him use the Force at Bespin, sensed those shadows snatch at his legs and fling items at him until he was thrown out the window, but they definitely clung tighter, now. There were more of them, and they curled around his legs, shoulders, until it felt like wading through water. "It will serve you well, my son."
Serve, serve, serve, he thought he heard, and wanted to be sick at the cold breeze that snaked around his neck.
Luke bared his teeth as his snarl grew more pronounced. That satisfaction only grew stronger.
Vader turned to the Imperial who'd delivered him here, onto this awful planet, and nodded. "Good work, Admiral Piett. Return to the Executor and report to the Emperor that my sojourn is not yet finished."
"Yes, milord." Piett straightened up, nodded, and—without another glance at Luke—returned to the shuttle. It lifted off smoothly a few minutes later, hot air ruffling Luke's hair.
Luke watched it go jealously. He'd watched out the window as they descended, staring at the black islands of jagged rock and the seas of roiling lava, and unless this spired castle they were standing outside held unexpected treasures, he didn't think there was another ship on the planet.
And he desperately needed there to be. He needed to get away. This was an old, old place, the malice here set into the planet's very bones. Of course his father had set up base here. It was perfect for someone as dark and horrifying as him.
"Come," Vader ordered. Come, come, come. "I will show you to your quarters."
Luke tried to dig his heels in, but that was impossible. The dark side tugged him forwards—Vader didn't even have to lift his finger to get it to obey his will—and he wasn't strong enough to resist. He kept a stilted gait next to his father, staggering along like a marionette on shadowy strings.
"Why am I here," Luke demanded.
Vader didn't pause. "You are my son. You belong here with me."
You belong here.
"I belong with my friends."
His father stopped in the middle of the landing pad, his cape whirling more than it probably should, to jab a finger at him. "Your friends and Jedi Masters stole you from me. They hide you from your destiny. We are father and son. You belong here."
"Destiny?" Luke scoffed. He thought he heard it repeated back, but shook off the voices like floaters. His brain was still wrapping itself around his father's irrational ideas, trying to repeat it until it found logic in the illogical.
"I am the most powerful Force-user to ever have lived. You are just as strong, my son. We will overthrow Sidious, then rule the galaxy together, as is our birthright."
"Sidious?" Luke asked. "You mean the Emperor?"
"A Sith Lord should not be underestimated."
Luke snorted. "I learned that from you."
"You are a fast learner," Vader agreed, and his voice was almost warm. Luke hated how much he liked it. Guilt pooled in his stomach, but when Vader kept talking he lifted his chin to look at him, aching to hear more. "You cannot have trained for more than a handful of months, and still you fought so valiantly on Bespin. I am proud of you."
Proud! Proud, proud, proud!
Luke was prepared for hostilities. Threats. Perhaps more lost hands.
He hadn't expected his father to be a father.
Vader seemed taken aback by Luke's shock. "My son," he said, "Luke. You are everything to me. Soon you will see how I want only the best for you."
It was true: Luke could sense it. This castle seemed to amplify each of his father's emotions, and now it amplified affection, protectiveness, even love. A warmth wrapped around him, the shadows nestling him in a tight embrace
He didn't know how to respond to that. So he didn't. When they started walking again, his movements were no longer jerky; he was walking on his own, not getting pulled.
"What is this place?" he asked as they crested some stairs and entered a vast, black corridor. The ceiling was extremely high. "It feels…" He paused. "Like you."
"It is my home," Vader confirmed. "Mustafar is a nexus of the dark side—it feeds my power, as it will feed yours. And the darkness will hide your presence for now; Palpatine will not sense you are here."
Luke wondered if that was why Yoda had chosen to hide on Dagobah, next to that awful cave, but said nothing. He wasn't going to betray anything.
But… Mustafar…
"This is where Jedi go to die," he said, "isn't it?"
Vader inclined his head. "This was the base for the Inquisitorius program, when it was still running."
Luke stopped. "Inquisitors?"
"Yes." Vader watched him, wondering why he'd stopped. "They—"
"Is that what you're going to do to me?" Luke snapped out. "I heard the horror stories about them"—General Syndulla, the moment she heard there was a Jedi in the Rebellion again, had told him everything she knew—"and what happened to make them. Are you going to torture me too?"
"No."
"I— what?"
"No. You are my son. I… hope you will listen and realise to join me of your own accord," he added, "but you are safe here. Palpatine cannot sense you. We do not have the time limit we had on Bespin."
"…oh." Luke let himself reach out to sense him, and his father and the shadows caught his questing metaphysical hand. He felt affection, still—child, my child, safe—and all the pride Vader had mentioned earlier. "Oh."
He fumbled out, clumsily, and tried to send… something back. It was muddled, it was still afraid, but he felt his father's joy, and it warmed him too.
Obi-Wan and Yoda had been wrong about him, he realised. They… they were so sure there wasn't good in him. But if he loved Luke—and wasn't that all Luke had ever wanted? A father to love him?—then he could not be lost.
They kept walking, through corridors unadorned with decorations, just sheer obsidian walls shooting for the high ceilings. Luke wrinkled his nose at them.
"You do not like my décor?" Vader asked, amused.
"It's less than inspiring," Luke said drily.
Vader chuckled—was that a laugh? He thought that was a laugh—and conceded the point. "Perhaps I can change that for you."
"Import some decorations from off-world? Won't that look suspicious?" Luke was wondering, but then he glanced up and the wall was reforming in front of his eyes. Great carvings—of battles, twisted beasts, but also starships, flowers, mountains, beauty—started to emerge.
"I didn't know the Force could do that."
"Largely Jedi cannot," Vader agreed. Luke shot him a look for slandering Jedi, but he continued, "and nor can the Sith. But we are children of the Force. And Mustafar is my domain."
Children of the Force. Ours. Ours.
That was why the dark side wasn't just strong here, Luke thought. It was Vader. He had spent so long here, talking to the abyss, that it had begun to speak back.
Luke couldn't pretend that what it spoke of wasn't… nice.
And he was curious.
Without asking if he could try—he knew he didn't need permission—he lifted his hand and reached for the Force himself, feeling it slink through him, cool and clearer than he'd ever felt it. The stones in front of him were putty in his hands, the universe was putty in his hands, and for a moment he stared at it all in shock. There was so much. There was so much he could do, that they hadn't taught him (yes, yes, they did not teach you this…)
He opened his eyes. The imprints of two suns, stylised rays fanning out from them, stared back at him accusingly.
"What do you mean, we're children of the Force? Aren't all living beings children of the Force?"
Vader squeezed his shoulder. "That was an excellent first try," he said. "And yes. But we are something greater."
The shadows purred around him. Something about all this felt wrong, his training and the last thread between him and Ben trembling with fury and fear, but the clarity and sense of impossibility was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He could do anything. He could finally help the Rebellion, instead of abandoning them for months to train, only for that training to be next to useless against a foe who wasn't even trying to kill him.
This could help him.
This could be the way forwards.
Ben had always told him to trust his feelings. The Force did not lie.
He wouldn't turn to the dark side, he wouldn't join Vader, but… he could try to stay open-minded about it.
"Tell me," he said.
They talked for much of the walk to Luke's quarters, conflict and curiosity reigning at different points of the conversation. Luke could feel his father's frustration every time Luke said no, he wasn't doing that; no, he didn't want to rule; no, the dark side was evil. Even with the shadows' affection and warmth, their anger made him feel chilled and ill. But he was patient about it. There… there was good in him.
And Luke's rooms spoke of a great deal of love, even if the shadows, which had held him in their embrace this whole time, hadn't been enough. They were carefully furnished, light where the rest of the castle was dark, the bed extremely comfortable and the decorations in all the colours he'd liked on Tatooine. He was extremely touched—especially when he noticed the model of a T-16 Skyhopper on the mantelpiece, intricately carved and gleaming.
When he touched it, it felt… it felt like his father.
He seemed to have carved it himself.
They ate together, then Luke retired to his room for the night. For someone who had been captured, who knew he needed to find a way to let his friends know he was alright, he was… calm. Safe. Drunk on the feeling of being important to someone, of feeling loved so much that the castle itself reverberated it back at him.
Love.
Love you.
Ours.
My son—ours. Ours. Not to be hurt. Not to lose.
Here. Stay here. Belong here.
Belonging still felt like a far-off concept, but the more he reached for the Force here, brushing his hands through its cold, clear, almost crystalline currents, the more he could see what his father was talking about. It made him giddy, almost. They had so much power—they could do anything. They could depose of the Emperor. They could dismantle the Empire. They could bring order to the galaxy.
Could! Could! Powerful. Our son, so powerful…
But not yet. He had to speak to his Jedi Masters, and try to convince them of what he'd learned; Yoda had been right about Bespin, after all, and he was still wiser than Luke. He would do that. He just… wanted to bask a little longer in the sun with his father, for now.
That night he slept, but did not sleep.
The voices were louder at night. Our son, ours, here! Powerful, calm, with us, here! Here! Here! It was an obsession that would not let up, that did not sleep, that encompassed him so fiercely that he opened his eyes at one point to find himself hovering, a good metre above the bedclothes, the shadows wrapped so tightly around him he couldn't move.
Whether he was awake or not was irrelevant. His eyes saw in shades of black and red, the shadows outlined in gold—and they wound about him, snakes, hissing when he made to brush them off. Ours.
Ours.
He does not understand.
Come.
The son must understand.
Come.
Understand. Stay with us. Belong here.
Come, come, come…
He came.
They didn't lower him back to the bed, but it didn't take so much as a flicker of thought for him to soar over it and onto the floor anyway. They squirmed excitedly and fled out the door, down the corridor; they didn't give him a chance to put shoes on and he didn't require it. His mind was thick with fog, but he knew with absolute certainty to follow them without delay.
Come…
Come…
Come…
One of us.
Ours.
Come learn to use us, reach us, the Master's son and our new Master, ours…
He wandered the empty corridors, all free of dust no matter how ancient or unused they were. The shadows were thick everywhere: the plain black obsidian was shot with vivid streaks of gold that purred when he touched them, rippled through his skin and caught him in a web that sent a chill through him. They went through him, shivering between his cells, wrapping around his heart and cooing at whatever they saw there. He smiled. They were his, and he was theirs.
They were growing agitated in impatience and before he knew it, his legs were moving again, walking forwards, until there loomed a great door in front of him. It opened silently upon his approach. He was glad of their cool touch, on him and in him, then, as the lava burned the oxygen from the air and the hair from his skin.
Ours, they insisted fiercely, defending him from the planet and the galaxy. Ours. Do not touch. Do not hurt. Ours to love, ours to protect, our new Sith Emperor to bring us out of the corners where we might walk again…
They purified the air in his lungs so he could breathe—or perhaps he need not breathe at all, walking through this waking dreamscape, perhaps the Force was all one needed to survive. Perhaps, since his father had told him he was only three-quarters human, he could not die at all, so long as he had this power.
The harsh volcanic rocks cut into his feet and hurt, leaving his footprints bloody behind him, but the pain did not faze him. It bolstered him, bleeding into his veins like ichor, as gold as the shadows around him, and it gave him the strength to run.
Come.
Come see.
Come understand.
When he reached a ridge, and a black, ashy beach beneath it, he saw.
Screaming.
Hatred.
Burning.
I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.
Understand, see us, understand us. We are here, we are yours, you are ours, understand…
Jedi hatred! Jedi lies!
Jedi say we killed us, we killed Master. The Jedi killed us, left Master to die. Took her, killed her, Master's Master said we killed her but no, Jedi let her die.
Let her die.
Let her die.
Let her die.
Took you—
—took ours—
—lied to you, unloved you, used you, controlled you…
It all spun in his head, fast enough he could only catch glimpses of image. Obi-Wan, Padmé, Sidious, Obi-Wan, Padmé, Sidious, Obi-Wan—
Her…
Empress.
Empress!
Should have been…
Her son.
Our son.
Emperor.
Do good.
Bring order.
Help us.
Free us.
Slaves to the Master's Master.
Bring order.
Finish the conflict, finish the fighting…
No more war, only peace…
There is no peace, there is passion…
Passion and what is ours, what we protect…
What do you protect?
His father. That was what came to his mind first, of course. His father, his family, his friends…
Liars! Traitors! Terrorists!
Protected ours… Protected Luke…
Hate them…
Help them…
They are his and he is ours…
They will serve.
We will serve.
Rule.
Rule.
Rule the galaxy as…
Father and son.
Rule the galaxy as one.
Rule…
He protected his father, his family, his friends. And he was a Rebel.
No longer! Emperor now, our lord, ours, no rebellion against ours goes unpunished and he cannot be punished…
He had a duty to the galaxy. He had to save the galaxy. Which meant they had to get rid of Palpatine.
Kill him!
Destroy him!
Pretender to the Sith…
Vile man…
Wicked Master's Master…
Restore the Sith.
Restore Masters' ours.
He stared out at the fields of lava. Years of fear, and horror, and war rushed through him. All those deaths. All those funeral pyres—whether handmade or improvised when a crash left a ship burning with its pilot still inside. All that pain.
End pain…
Use pain…
We are the Sith…
Luke had never heard of the Sith before. Obi-Wan and Yoda had not mentioned it. But as he reached for the Force, and trusted the feelings so acute at his core that he shook with them, he knew they were his. He was theirs.
Ours!
Our prince.
Our Emperor.
Our lord.
Serve.
Rule.
Use!
Reach for the Force…
Your anger, hatred, pain, love…
We are here.
They were. They were here, they had been for eons.
Ever since his pain and betrayal at Bespin. Ever since his lost comrades at Hoth. Ever since the deaths on his failed missions. Ever since the Death Star—light! Bright! Powerful ours—and the prices it had demanded. Ever since he watched his aunt and uncle burning in the sands.
Before that. Lies from Ben. Years of loss, of being stolen from Father. Of separation from his power.
Ever since she'd died here, in agony and betrayal, the shadows wrapping around her and him still in her womb, cooing, before Jedi had ripped him away from their arms.
Ours.
We are here.
You are here.
Finally.
Years.
Years!
We have waited…
Growing stronger… in pain…
Master needs you.
You need Master.
Ours and his and yours.
We are yours.
Finally.
Make things right, Luke…
End this destructive conflict.
Luke took a deep breath of toxins, sparks and ash. It should have killed him three times over in moments. It did not scratch him.
He was invincible.
What is your command?
He awoke the next morning, got dressed, and went to find Vader.
He knew he looked sharp and neat in the Imperial uniform picked out for him: clad in black, like his father, with more rank bars than he could count and gold trim lining at the collar, sleeves and hems. His shadows attended him as he did up the buttons, and joined him enthusiastically as he left the room.
His feet were barren of shoes, again, and they still bled. The bottom of his bed was thick with red, and he left a trail of blood where he stepped, but the pain trickled through the Force like glimmering threads and sewed itself through him, bolstering his movements. With every knife-sharp step, he knew: he was doing the right thing.
Vader was in a large, unfurnished room, the floor gleaming black marble and the wall a great transparisteel window looking out over the lava fields. He turned when he heard Luke, and paused as he took in his regalia. Perhaps he even saw his shadows curled around him—no longer shining gold, but shimmering, still there when he sank into the Force and regarded them.
"Luke," Vader said. "It suits you."
Luke glanced down at the uniform and smiled. "It does."
Vader's gaze fell on the blood tracks, but said nothing. Luke said everything, as he came to join him at the window, looking out over the planet that was their home.
"I have considered everything you said on Bespin, in light of what has been said since then," he said. And before Vader could know the agony of hope, he finished, "I will join you, Father. I want you to train me."
Triumph erupted around them and Luke grinned too with the elation of it, how it fed his certainty that it was right.
"I would be honoured, my son." Vader took his hand in his.
My son, my son, my son.
"The Jedi took me, taught me to be less than I was, lied to me…" All of that was truth, but something rang false, enough that Luke faltered, his confident tone falling into doubt. The Force… listening to the Force…
The dark side of the Force was coiling around him, and it was more than pleased with this turn of events.
"We will undo the damage these Jedi have wrought," Vader promised, and brushed Luke's hair out of his eyes. "You will be the greatest Sith ever known."
"Yoda is the only one still alive. He is to be found on Dagobah." Again, that moment of hesitation, but Vader's fury and the castle's answering wave drowned it out. His Master did not deserve his protection.
Master, Master, Master…
"It was Yoda who sank his claws in you?" He nodded. "I am sorry, Luke. He is the worst of all of them."
"It's alright." Luke's voice was soft, like his mother's had been in the vision. He noticed Vader noticing it, and noticed his spike of pride. "I'm with you, now."
"And you will never leave," Vader swore.
Luke nodded. "We'll end this war together?"
"This war, and all of them. We will change the galaxy."
And this…
This, Luke thought, holding his father's hand and enjoying his adoration and pride, with the promise that he would be able to change the galaxy for the better, for him and his friends… This was all he had ever wanted.
The lava sprayed up outside the window, shedding yellow and red light into the room, gleaming on the bloody steps Luke had taken to walk here. But that was not why his eyes twinkled gold.