Power Lust Part 10

Power Lust
Part 10: The Truth
By SJ and Tatiana 09-05-00/13-04-01
Suggested and co-written with Tatiana (aa354105@econophone.ch)

_____________________________
Disclaimers: None of those characters belong to me. See my
front page for more details. (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/3702)

Note about the story's copyrights: All the rights related to the basic idea of
Mon Mothma's scheme and the ensuing alliance between Luke and Vader belong to
Tatiana, and so do Vader's personality and the Sathed history. The rest of the
story is a fusing of our imaginations since we've passed the story back and
forth between ourselves :)

Also, special thanks to my shy, secret beta-reader and best friend, Adrianne,
for her help with the final editing of my new stories. I appreciate :)
_________________________________

Throughout the following month, the rebels lived with Vader. While Han didn't
leave Leia's observation room, Luke spent most of his time with books, or with
his father to speak about his books.

Never before had he had so much knowledge laid before him. To the farmboy that
he had always been up to now, it was intoxicating, overwhelming. It was like
finding a water hole in the desert. The moment that he had some spare time, he
retreated to the library to select a new book to devour.

Meanwhile, Leia's condition improved slowly at first, then more quickly when she
stopped resisting her father's help.

In short, almost everything was as fine as it could be... except for Han.

Luke knew that something was bothering his suspicious friend --- and that this
thing was his relationship with the dark lord. More and more, the looks that he
gave him seemed to scream: "What the heck is going on here???"

The young Jedi knew that someday, probably sooner than later, the looks wouldn't
be enough and he would have to tell the truth to his friend.

He tried to prepare himself for this moment.

He was still surprised when it arrived.

That day, he was sitting in a chair that was by the observation window, reading.
Since Leia's condition was improving, he himself could concentrate on the other
main 'concern' of his situation: his studies.

Thus, he completely forgot about Han's presence, but was reminded of it rather
rudely.

"Kid!" Solo clipped.

"Umm?" Luke slowly raised his head.

"Are you here?"

"Um.. Yes, Han. What is troubling you?"

Luke wasn't aware of it, but the way that he said those words was purely like
his father's. Han noticed it; his eyes narrowed in mistrust.

"I have some questions and you're going to answer them," he stated, leaving no
room for argumentation. "I'm not blind, you know."

"What are you talking about?" the youth frowned. He was naturally aware of what
this was about but he preferred to let his friend bring up the subject.
Perhaps, he reflected, he would even drop it once again.

"Perhaps 'you' are blind, Kid," the older man commented sarcastically.

"Me?" Luke asked, puzzled.

"Okay," Han sighed, raising his hands to the ceiling in annoyance before he
locked his hazel gaze with his blue one. "I'll go straight to the point here.
What's wrong with you and his lordship?"

"What do you mean what's wrong?" Luke scowled.

"Now, now, Kid," Solo sneered vehemently. "I'm really not as stupid as you
think I am."

"I've never said---" Luke began defensively.

"But you think it, huh? I may not be gifted with your mumbo-jumbo, but I have
eyes. What's going on, Luke?" his friend asked him seriously. "What 'really'
is going on here?"

Luke eyes went from his friend, who was standing in front of him, to the Wookiee
who was sitting a few chairs away. He refocused on his friend.

"You'll never give up, will you, Han?" Luke commented in a slightly playful
voice.

"Don't lead me astray, Kid," Solo warned him grimly. "What's going on in
Vader's dark mind nowadays? Which nut has burst away?"

"Nothing has---"

"Then what's wrong with you, Skywalker??" Han asked, changing angle in his
approach.

"Me?? Nothing's---"

Solo lost his patience at this. "Damn it, Kid," he thundered angrily. "You're
acting as if he is your best friend! You read his books, go in his personal
rooms; you speak with him every time that you can. Is he messing with your mind
or what?"

Luke shook his head as he straightened his composure. "No, Han, he's not.
Really , there's nothing..."

"Enough," Solo cut in, obviously on the edge of losing what remained of his
temper.

"What?"

"Enough white lies, Luke. I want the truth; no persuasions, no manipulations,
just the truth."

"The truth," Luke repeated seriously.

"Yes."

He sighed warily. It was too early ; his friend was not prepared for this. What
if Han didn't accept it?, he wondered uneasily... Perhaps he could invent
something until later on...

No!, he objected with himself. His friend trusted him to tell him the truth, so
the truth it would be. "OK," he nodded, "the truth." He took a deep breath.
Force be with him. "He's our father."

Han gaped at him in disbelief. "Wha---?!"

"Vader. Is . Our. Father," Luke repeated very seriously, straining every word in
his sentence.

"Your father?.." Solo whispered, unable to spit a smart remark at this.

Chewie, who had been watching the ongoing exchange with wariness, was also
dumbfounded.

Luke sighed in acceptance, then bent his head to gaze at the floor. He had a
pretty good idea how his friend was feeling at the moment. "I found out on
Bespin, and discovered the truth about Leia a few months later..." he
explained warily. "I know that it sounds horrible, Han... Believe when I tell
you that this hasn't been easy for me to accept..."

"But you've accepted it," Solo pointed out.

Luke raised his head to meet his gaze once more. "Of course I've accepted it.
He's my father, Han, and he hasn't hurt me for the past two years."

"Sure, but he tormented you to no end before those quiet years," his friend
reminded him caustically.

Luke shook his head in exasperation and stood up. "He's changed, Han. You've
felt it yourself; he cares about us. Leia and I are his children and he doesn't
want to hurt us anymore."

"So?" Solo demanded with a barely concealed sneer.

"So," Luke stated, planting his fists on his hips in defiance "we can trust him,
at least this far. Besides, we are presently in one of the rare places where
we're completely safe," he reminded him.

"Yeah, or totally vulnerable," Solo snarled sarcastically.

"Han---" Luke began warningly.

"Kid, don't ask me to trust him like you do, okay. He is not my family, and I
haven't been craving for a father like you have."

"I haven't been craving for a father, and certainly not Vader!" Luke defended
himself, his temper rising out of control now.

Solo grabbed his arm and forced him to meet his stare. "Oh yeah? Then how do
you explain that you've bonded with him so easily?"

"I--"

Han dropped Luke's arm to jab his finger on his chest, right where his heart
was. "Your heart is playing tricks on you, Kid, and Vader will milk it for all
its worth. Oh, he might not hurt you physically, but you said it yourself: he
isn't a good guy," he reminded him meanly. "He is a monster and I bet that he
knows it as well as I do. In the end, he will take advantage of you, one way or
another," Han finished very seriously.

Luke was stung by Han's words. "No, you're wrong," he finally defended as he
stepped away from him, putting some distance between himself and his friend.

Chewie was still watching him from his sitting position. Like usual, he seemed
to side with his captain.

"The Force is guiding me," Luke tried to argue. "not my heart. Father won't do
any of that; I know it."

Solo shook his head in annoyance. "Luke, listen how you're referring to him
already. He isn't a god, nor a hero; he's a vicious darksider who merely
happens to have participated to your creation."

"Shut up!" Luke spat all of a sudden before turning away from his friends.

Enough was enough; he didn't want to hear what he himself had been thinking
until up to a few months ago.

"Fine," Han shrugged and took a step backward. "Look at yourself though, Kid.
You've even begun to talk like him."

That simple example cooled down Luke's anger... Han was right about that. He
turned back toward him.

Solo spoke up again, his tone friendlier than a few minutes before. "I only
told you what I thought, Kid. If you don't want to hear what I have to say,
then it's your choice. You'll deal with the consequences yourself though."

The two friends looked at each other, then Luke realized that Han was only
trying to protect him. Well, he didn't need his protection, and certainly not
in this matter. Solo was an orphan, a loner. He didn't know anything about
families, nor Jedi relatives for that matter.

"There won't be any consequences," he reassured him and himself yet again.
"I know that you're trying to protect me, but I'm not a little brother,
Han. I can take care of myself, and I know that I'm safe here; we all are. I
understand you though; I used to feel exactly the same way..." He expelled a
breath in frustration. "You wanted to know, Han, now you know, and now you too
have to deal with the weight of such knowledge."

"This isn't knowledge..." Solo grumbled.

*More like fate," Chewie commented.

Luke shook his head in annoyance at their reactions, then forced himself to calm
down. Getting angry wouldn't help him in any way, nor would it help Han deal
with his father when the time would come... and thinking of which.

"I understand why you don't approve of my father, Han, but you will have to talk
with him as soon as possible."

Han's eyebrows arched up in surprise. "Why? I'm not going to--"

"He doesn't approve of you either. He thinks Leia has made a wrong choice," he
explained.

The outburst came, as expected. "She's got nothing to do with him!"

"Han, I said that he was 'our' father," he reminded him seriously. "Not only
mine. He's Leia's father too."

"That doesn't matter. She still has nothing to do with him," Han argued
vehemently. "Blood is not important. 'She' has nothing to do with him; he has
no right over her."

Luke was practically gaping at him now.

'Blood is not important,' his father had said.

"He agrees with you," he heard himself say. "Blood is not important for the
definition of one's self."

"Oh?" Han asked. "Well... good. It's the first time that I agree with his
darkness."

"However, he isn't happy about you and Leia," Luke reminded him.

"Well, it's mutual; you can tell him that too," Han smirked smugly at this.

"I will."

"Good."

Everything was said then, and it was time to deal with the facts. Despite his
unexpected wisdom, Luke conceded that Han just didn't seem to understand all the
implications of what had been said. Luke decided that it would be a good time
to leave his friends alone and let them ponder what he had just told them.

He headed for the door.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Han asked him in genuine surprise.

"I'll leave you alone to sort this all out, Han," he explained. "I don't think
that my presence here would help you. I'll come back when you'll be ready to
speak about it, or simply when you'll be ready to see me again."

"I'm... well," the pilot fumbled. "I don't know if I'll want to talk about it
or not, Kid... That's some revelation... but I'm not angry at you, just at how
you seem to be falling for a trap," he told him earnestly.

Luke sighed. "I know, Han, I know, but you'll have to trust me in this
matter."

"It looks like I don't have any other choice," Han agreed.

Luke turned away to leave.

"Say, how will you know when I'll want to speak to you if you're not here?" the
smuggler asked him.

"I will feel it," Luke smiled wistfully, then was gone.

Han and Chewie exchanged a dubious/bemused look.

"Vader's son all right, uh, Chewie?" Solo finally commented.

*Like yet so unlike his father," the wise Wookiee crooned.

******

In the library, Luke sat heavily in favorite chair and thought.

No, Han was wrong, he tried to reassure himself. He 'had' to be. He hadn't
felt any deceit in his father, he argued with himself and him, thus he knew that
the other wasn't manipulating him.

He also knew his heart well enough to know when it was playing tricks on
him. Sure, he admitted that he had always wanted a father, but, he thought in
slight frustration, Han 'didn't' know the horror and utter defeat that he had
felt when he had first heard of his father's true identity. He didn't know
that he had wanted to die because he had been utterly ashamed of his true
origins...

He didn't know that it had taken him a long, long while to come to grips with
the fact that the dark lord had indeed played a part in his life, although an
absent one.

Once he had dealt with that fact though, he hadn't looked for Vader, hadn't
sought him for a Father...

And Vader hadn't looked for him... until Leia's disappearance.

No, he reminded himself, Han didn't know any of those details which gave him
undeniable proof that right now, he could trust Vader and himself, that he
wasn't drawn to him like a blind orphan, nor that the other was playing tricks
on him.

Instead... it was the Force, he slowly understood as he analyzed the events of
the past months. At first, he had really thought that he had been left with no
option to help his sister, but more and more, he could detect subtle stirrings
in the Force whenever his family was growing closer.

His calling on his father's help hadn't been a coincidence, he finally
Accepted, then wanted to tell his friend. It had been the Force... and that was
why Leia would be completely restored to normal, thanks again to the Force.

It had taken a desperate situation to bring them all together, he realized, a
situation which would allow them to 'know' each other, not just fight and make
assumptions, and here they were, brought together through the will of the Force.

Sure, he conceded, Vader wasn't the exact picture of what he wanted in a
father, but he cared for him and he respected his choices, as long as he himself
returned the favor toward his father. Anyway, he shrugged to himself, he
couldn't judge Vader yet. He had barely begun to piece together the puzzle that
was Darth Vader...

And truth be told, he was even almost looking forward to completing the picture
now. Of course, he knew that his father wanted to do the same thing with him,
but what surprised him most about this was that he didn't mind.

Not anymore, and as long as things would go as well as they did now, but if they
ever changed, he decided with finality, he would flee away and accept that his
father was dead.

His dream-father had never been, leaving him with the very opposite of what he
had hoped to find.

Or was it the opposite of his dreams? Perhaps not completely..., he carefully
admitted to himself.

He would see in time.

He let his mind wander along those thoughts for some more time before his
eyes rested on a book that was resting on a table near him. He picked it up and
began to read some more about the old Jedi Order.

******

Three hours later, he was still in the library.

*Luke,* his father called in his mind--- but from right beside him.

*Huh?* he looked up and stared blankly at the black figure, unable to understand
how he could be beside him when he was with Leia at the moment.

After a moment though, his mind seemed to synchronize with the present and he
was able to reassert himself in his actual situation. Time had passed and his
father had left Leia's side to rejoin him in the library.

"Sorry, I was a little lost in the book," he admitted with a blush of
foolishness.

"So I saw," Vader commented as he sat down near his son. "You're disturbed. What
is it?" he asked pointedly.

"I've told Han everything," he admitted truthfully in a small voice. "It wasn't
pleasant."

"I see. How did he take it?" his father asked, a note of gentleness tainting his
normally cool voice.

"Well... He's in shock, even if he's refusing to admit that fact. But he's
accepted the truth itself."

"Good," Vader nodded before turning somber once again. "Luke, I must talk about
something with you."

"Yes?" the young Jedi asked, his sad mood turning to worry in the space
of a few heartbeats. There was something in his father's senses...

"I want to wake up Leia," his father explained simply.

"What?!" Luke gaped. "But she's not completely healed! It would be too pain---"

"She is almost healed," Vader countered reassuringly. "Her scars look more
painful than they truly are and her body can function without the help of the
monitors," the dark lord explained seriously. "Only the esthetic of her face is
left now. Besides, she might even wake up on her own now: she's perfectly
stable."

"But she'll be in pain!" Luke reminded him with animosity, unable to bear the
thought of his sister in more pain.

"Yes, and that's why I want to do it," the dark lord nodded coldly.

Luke's mind seemed to make a one-hundred-eighty degree turn upon hearing those
words. His mouth went dry. "W-What-- why?" he finally managed to ask in
uncertainty.

"Don't worry, son. I shall not do it without your consent. Just let me explain."

"Yes, please do," Luke nodded, unable to hide his distraught state anymore.

"How did she feel to you when you last helped me?"

"Well...," Luke thought seriously, "passive. Accepting. Calm. Why?" he frowned
next.

"She's allowing herself to die," his father stated somberly. "She doesn't see
any necessity to struggle."

Luke eyes bulged in surprise this time. "What? but that's ridiculous, Father!
Leia would never do this. She's a fighter. Besides, you just said that she was
in good condition! She can't die!" he stated, as much to deny his father's
opinion as to reassure himself.

No, he pleaded the Force, he couldn't loose his sister... not now that he had
found her.

"She can," the wise dark lord told him. "She is physically well, but she's
mentally dying."

"And this is why you want to wake her up?" Luke summarized for him.

"Yes. The necessity to heal will wake up her personality. She's a warrior, Son,
you said so yourself. Her need to overcome both her physical and mental pain
will make her stronger."

"What mental pain?" Luke asked him, getting worried once again.

"Her subconscious knows the truth about us," the dark lord paused briefly, "but
her consciousness does not... yet. When she will wake up, she will become aware
of the truth about our family."

"Oh no..." he breathed in horror. Not again... "I-I thought that she was done
with it."

"Unfortunately not."

So not only would Leia have to deal with her physical pains, he summarized, but
she would have to process her dark secret as well... It was Bespin all over
again, he sighed forlornly. It was the very thing that he had tried to protect
her from.

"She is not you nor me, Father," Luke told him, hoping against hope that his
father would understand that Leia wasn't always strong.

"Fortunately. But, she is much more like me that you are allowing yourself to
see," his father slightly rebuked him. "Luke, I know what I'm talking about. It
will help her."

Up to now, Luke reminded himself, his father's advice had always been sound...
Perhaps he should also trust him in this matter, he thought hesitatingly.

"Perhaps..." he agreed, gazing down at his hands, then something occurred to him
and he raised his head to meet his father's gaze once again. "Are you asking me
to decide?" he asked him in slight disbelief.

"Yes. Take your time," he counseled him as he stood up. "When you will have made
your decision, you know where find me."

"Father!" Luke said, taking hold of his father's forearm to keep him from
leaving already.

"Yes?"

"If..." he began hesitantly, suddenly aware of what he had just done, namely
deliberately keeping the dark lord from leaving him... "If I say no," he tried
again, "will you respect my decision? Will you let her wake up 'all by
herself'?"

An electronically-altered laugh. "You know me well, Luke, but you can trust me.
I will respect your decision, don't worry. Now think well, consult the Force
if you 'really' need to," he finished in mild sarcasm.

The Dark Lord then left him alone to his pondering.

TBC in part 11: Awakening

Note: Fanfiction.net is upgrading for Internet Explorer 6, or Netscape 7... and I for one only have a Windows 95 Pentium 2 with 'no' possibilities or upgrading it whatsoever. So, it's possible that I might not be able to post here anymore. However, you can continue to find all my stories at either my humble website (see above), or more often at http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=9157615&page=10 (Jedi Council), or at Jade-Skywalker yahoo group (more info on my webpage too). I cross my fingers to be able to continue to have access here, but if not, hope to see you again where the story will continue :) Love SJ

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