Power Lust Part 12

Power Lust
Part 12: Family
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 :)
_________________________________

Han entered Leia's room almost timidly, as if afraid to wake her up, then sat by
her bed. "Hello, sunshine," he told her in a very soft, almost never-heard-
before register of voice.

"Hi." Her voice was small too. "Han, I..." she began hesitantly. "Luke told
me..."

Solo leaned closer and delicately touched her right hand in reassurance. "Yes,
I know, he also told me everything. No need to worry, Princess," he smiled
gently.

"Don't you care?" she asked, her voice slightly rising.

Han raised an eyebrow. "That you have a much-less-then-ideal parent?" he
queried.

Leia's nod was barely perceptible.

Han shook his head. "That doesn't matter, Leia. Not for me." He smooched her
knuckles with his lips, rendering her speechless.

"I... Thank you," she barely managed to whisper.

They gazed at each other for a few moments.

"How are you feeling?" Han asked her solicitously.

"Like.. being walked on by a kraat," she told him, her tiredness now creeping
back into her voice.

"That has got to be uncomfortable," Han tried to joke.

Leia barely creased her lips in a ghost of a smile. "Yes, it is," she agreed.
"Han?" she asked next.

"Yes, dear?"

"Am I... ugly?" she queried, the shadow of fear slowly reappearing in her
restored eyes.

Her beautiful eyes.

Han looked at her ruined face and smiled. "Well... You're slightly in need of
some makeup, but beside that.. Everything will be all right."

"Really?"

Han nodded in assurance. "We've been solemnly promised by the medics here that
you won't see the difference once the treatments are finished," he reassured
her.

"Oh... And where is 'here' ?" she asked him although she already knew the
answer.

"Coruscant... in Vader's castle," he answered, then, when he noticed that she
was beginning to panic once again, hastened to add: "It's a long story but
everything is okay."

"Okay? Aren't we--- prisoners?" she asked in confusion.

"No," Han shook his head. "Vader insisted that we would be his guests; that's
why we accepted. Don't worry, things are going very smoothly for the moment.
Besides, you are in the best medical center in the Empire, or so it seems. Luke
knew that things would turn out this way, and we simply couldn't let this
occasion pass by, could we?" he finished in a lighter tone.

Leia smiled slightly. "I missed you so much..." she whispered faintly.

"I badly missed you too, my love," Han told her, gently squeezing her right
hand, the only part of her body that seemed to be healed enough to be touched
and held. "Don't worry, Leia, everything will be all right. I promise," he
reassured her, kissing the back of her hand once more.

"Thank you..." she said sleepily, her head slightly lulling sideways to rest
deeper against the pillow.

She fought to stay awake ; Han noticed it. "Sleep, Leia. I'm not going
anywhere," he promised her.

"You'll stay with me?"

"For the rest of our lives if you want, my princess," he answered with all his
love.

"I'm tempted to say 'yes'" she smiled sleepily.

"Then say it," he smiled gently, his voice and heart filled with love for this
unique woman who meant the universe to him.

"Yes.." she answered, finally feeling at peace with herself since... since the
last time that she had been with her lover and brother.

A minute later, she was deeply asleep.

******

Two levels down, Luke searched for his father.

He hadn't meant to kick him out of his sister's room, but he had had no other
choice even though he himself knew that deep under Vader's armor, way past the
dark figure of their arch enemy, lay a being who still felt emotions.

He cared about his children, he wanted to help his daughter... And he probably
resented being expulsed from her room---

*Not really,* the dark voice commented in his mind.

Luke whirled around, surprised while pleased that his father would finally
reveal his whereabouts to him. He walked closer to the door nearest to him,
then stepped inside as it opened.

He stopped in his tracks when he saw where his father had found refuge.

It was a dark room where an holo of the whole galaxy and more was lighting the
whole room. It was hard to miss the dark shape of his father as he stood in
front of the awe-inspiring, Three-D holo.

"How is she?" his father asked him coolly.

"Huh... she's okay. Han is with her at the moment."

"Good. Has she aggravated her injuries before you calmed her down?" he inquired
diligently.

"No. She's come to accept the truth without raging over it, but I doubt that
she will truly become comfortable with it," he told him as diplomatically as he
could while he stepped closer to the mesmerizing holo.

"That wouldn't surprise me, Luke," his father retorted wisely, turning his
imposing silhouette toward him. "The opposite would, though."

"Father,---" Luke began.

"Son, be realistic for once," he suddenly 'almost' snapped at him. "No matter
what happens, Leia will never accept me. I've hurt her and her friend--- her
brother, even worse than anybody ever has... I am responsible for the death of
too many people to be forgiven, especially by her who has sworn to fight me to
her last breath."

"Father," Luke interrupted earnestly, "I too once made that promise, and I
changed my mind. I can see that there is more to you than a Dark Lord of the
Sith."

Vader whirled back toward him at that, as if greatly angered by his statement.

Luke bravely continued, not allowing himself to be unsettled by his father's
now-familiar intimidating attitudes. "There is within you a human being who is
willing to help others the way he can. If this doesn't warrant redemption or at
least forgiveness, then nothing does."

For long minutes, father and son sized each other up, then the dark lord turned
away, chuckling slightly as he did so.

"You truly are naive, Son," he commented in mild reproach. "If I were as evil
as the Emperor were, you wouldn't have resisted me for long. You're too easy to
manipulate."

Luke flushed red at that.

"Human beings are not black or white, pure good or pure evil, Son. Our souls
are a perpetually shifting pattern of grays. It's a price for the absolute
liberty of choice. Even you have some darkness in you, my dear son of
the Light."

"I know," Luke admitted. He remembered fits of anger that he had pulled
sometimes, and how he had killed other beings... No matter if they had been
enemies or not, they had been living before he had pulled the trigger or pushed
a button...

His father continued to speak. "Because I am of the darkness, Leia will not
accept me." Luke meant to argue; Vader silenced him with a warning finger.
"Even 'you' can't change anything to this, Son. I will always be apart from
everybody else... that is as it is... A price for power. Perhaps, it was meant
to be," he finished more wistfully.

"What do you mean, meant to be?" the young Jedi suddenly frowned.

"The prophecy of the Balance," his father shrugged slightly. "Have you heard of
it?"

"Well, I've read about it," Luke shrugged slightly. "It's about a Chosen one
that must come to bring balance to the Force, which is disturbed by Great Wars,
right?"

"I am the Chosen one," Vader answered simply.

It was Luke's turn to gape at his father. "What??"

"For years, I didn't care about the prophecy, the rumors; I simply followed my
guts... right into Palpatine's hands. Thankfully, the Circle found me then. If
not for it, I would have been consumed by him. The Chosen one," he continued
more seriously, "was conceived by the Force to bring back stability in our
world... Once the Sathed had been eliminated, and the Jedi order shone, the Jedi
began to," he hesitated visibly on his next word, "to alter the ways of the
Force, to corrupt it... and it was up to the Chosen One to restore the
balance... It was up to me..."

Luke couldn't believe his own ears. "But they were fighting for goodness!" he
interjected in astonishment.

"Yes, they were," his father agreed coolly, "but their ways were also dangerous,
too set in false beliefs and made-up traditions that led to the unalterable
instability that ensued. 'That' is why they were destroyed."

"The Jedi Purges?"

"Yes. It was quite an ironic shift of destiny that the prophecy that had been
made by the Jedi implied the destruction of the Jedi Order, not that of the
Sith..."

"But," Luke objected reflexively, "it was Palpatine who ordered you to begin the
purges, wasn't he?" he asked, still trying to make sense of this strange
accounting of the past.

"No," Vader shook his head. "He liked the idea, but the beginning was mine."

"What?! But," he choked on his own disbelief, "that was inhuman!" Luke accused
him despite himself.

"Yes," his father agreed, "but it was necessary."

"You decided that it was!" he shot back angrily. "How could you---"

"No," Vader interrupted warningly, taking a step closer to him; Luke understood
the implicit, serious threat and quickly subsided. Whether his father cared for
him or not, he was suddenly wary of him once again. "The Force itself decided,
Son. It was not my delusions. Ask it," he instructed him. "It will tell you
the truth."

"but the Force can't..." Luke's voice died as he felt that his father was, once
again, telling him the truth.

The death of the Jedi Order had been the way of the Force.

"But it was..." he half-whispered in horror.

"Inhuman. Evil. Necessary. I don't think that it can be forgiven- at least here,
and by our kind."

"But how can the Force..?" he wondered again, still unable to process what
he knew and what he had just been told.

"The Force is not good nor evil, Luke," his father calmly explained, having
recovered his own coolness as well. "It's neutral. 'I' accepted to do it's
bidding. I, and only I, did the evil, by my choice," he finished neutrally.

"But if it was your destiny, that it seemed inevitable, couldn't you refuse
it?" he inquired, this time in hope.

"I don't know," his father shrugged. "I didn't try. But now that I look back in
time, yes I think that I could have. Nothing can take away one's liberty of
decision. It was purely my choice to obey the will of the Force. Now try to
remember it," he sternly advised him, "while searching for the good in me."

Luke was silent for some time.

"I want to restore the Jedi Order" he finally said seriously.

"I know," his father nodded.

Luke swallowed hard before asking his next question. All of a sudden, he was
'really' worried about his father's goals once again. "Will you... eliminate me
too?"

A tensed moment ensued his query, the silence of the Dark Lord worrying him more
than any word that he might have answered him at the moment.

Finally, his father spoke up again. "No," he stated with finality. "Not you,"
he reassured him, "Your eventual students...perhaps, but not you.

"My students?" Luke frowned, feeling both reassured and unsettled once again.
He would not train new Jedi if his father were to exterm---

"Only if they restart the old path, Luke," Vader commented, having once again
read right through his mind. "Otherwise, if they follow your new path, I will
not intervene in their destinies."

"I see." Luke nodded shortly. He did not like what was hinted at in their
conversation, nor how easily his father could still read his mind despite the
training that he had given to him. If he could do that, then he probably also
knew how suddenly afraid to fail he was, how uncertain he felt about his
project, and duty, to restore the Jedi Order.

"That's why you're learning," his father commented in the silence, "It is your
destiny to find a new way to use the Force while not blindly trust the ways of
necessity and 'traditions'," he finished with a sneer. "When you will leave,
you will be ready for this new beginning."

Or else his students would be killed someday, he pursed his lips in anxiety.
Unless, he then reflected, he asked his father to not let him leave until---

Suddenly aware of the word that his father had used, Luke paused to think about,
then became aware that with this last comment, his father was wordlessly telling
him something that he hadn't noticed earlier. "Father?" he queried.

"Yes?"

"Why are you trying to push me away from you?"

Vader turned toward him, looked at him for some time, then said in a calm
voice: "Because I don't want you to suffer even more than you already have."

"I will not suffer," Luke assured him.

His father sighed wearily. "I can't give you what you desire, Son. I can't give
you the lighthearted father that you dream about and are trying to find in me."

"I'm not trying to find anybody in you!" Luke defended, his temper rising once
again.

"Really?" his father surly challenged him. "Then why don't you accept that I
'am' the Dark Lord of the Sith? A Sith by choice, and not a lost and manipulated
Jedi Knight?" Luke was speechless for a moment; Vader continued. "Why can't
you accept that Anakin Skywalker is dead?"

"I understand all this," he finally answered. "I accept it!"

"Really?"

Luke wanted to say "Yes", but somehow he couldn't.

It was not true. The man before him had nothing to do with the father that he
dreamt about.

Nothing 'at all'.

He looked at Vader as if for the first time.

Did he really accept him? he asked himself. Did he really care for him?
Could he really ... see in him something that he could care for? But then, how
could he care for the inhuman monster who was the Dark Lord of the Sith?

The darksider didn't even regret his horrible actions. He accepted that he was
evil, that he was a monster. It was, he realized, as if it were just a fact for
him.

Just a choice.

A choice to damn his soul, he seethed as he finally began to come to grips with
the choices that his father had made for himself. A choice to kill millions of
people just because it was needed. Just because somebody had said that it was
necessary. Somebody that he had blindly trusted.

Just like he himself had.

He gazed once again at his father, with new eyes.

"Yes," he answered steadily. "Yes, father. I really accept it... Now, and I" he
swallowed " I'm sorry, for trying to judge you. I have no right. I'm a monster
too," he finished humbly.

His father whirling on him was the last reaction that he had expected from the
stoic giant, let alone him resting his large hand on his two shoulders in
obvious care.

"No, Luke!" he scolded him warmly. "You are not a monster. You are gifted with
true Light, something that I don't have and will never have. It is a most
precious gift," he continued in a gentler tone. "Don't loose it. Make it your
guidance in the ways of the Force."

Luke was at a loss for words.

"I--- I'll try..." he whispered, unsure as to how he should take his father's
words.

Down to a T, or figuratively speaking only? And what did he mean exactly? "So..
do 'you' care about me?" he asked him instead.

"Of course."

"And for Leia?"

"Yes."

This puzzling answer brought him back to the beginning of their argument. "Then
why do you keep your distances with us?" he asked again.

His father let go of his shoulders, then took a step away and began to pace the
room. "I'm a loner, Luke. Always was, always will be," he began. "I'm too
dangerous for anyone to be around me."

Luke shook his head. "You aren't alone now, Father. I'm here."

"For the moment, Luke, but once this will be over, you will return to your life,
and I to mine," his father said matter-of-factly.

Luke couldn't answer to this. True, he hadn't exactly entertained the idea of
staying with his father afterward, but at the same time, he wasn't exactly
opposed to it either.

"I don't know that yet, Father, so neither can you," he retorted as lightly as
he could.

Vader remained silent.

"Leia asked me to be present in the room when you'll speak to her," he informed
him next in the heavy silence.

Still no answer.

"She is at least willing to speak with you," he lightly rebuked his father's
pouting attitude.

"When she does speak with me," Vader answered seriously, "it will be when she
will ask for me," he finished, then swiftly exited the room, leaving his bemused
son in his wake.

On his way to his private chambers, Vader reconsidered the last minutes of his
conversation with his son.

Long ago, he had promised himself to never let feelings invade his heart ever
again. He had always held true to this promise, even since he had forged an
alliance with Luke and his friends... but today...

His boy had challenged that promise.

He had tried, he had really tried to keep his icy barriers up around his heart,
but the boy's suggestion that things might be different afterward had begun to
make them melt under his warmth.

No, he couldn't hope for anything, he rebuked himself, couldn't even imagine
what it would be like to finally have his children home... because he knew that
it would never happen.

There were too many things between the three of them to ever close the gap.

Luke was naive, that was all, he was still daydreaming instead of facing reality
as it was.

Leia would always hate him, yet he did hope that she would let him help her.

Luke would always try to save the whole galaxy and make his delusions come true.

He... would always be a dark lord of the Sith... a loner with a dark soul,
without any God but the Past, and without any light, except for his love for
these children of his cursed blood.

Children that would always be strangers to him.

That was it.

And now he had some work to do. He headed for his office where stacks of
reports on the rebels were waiting for him.

******

Four days passed during which Leia's status improved.

Luke often visited her while Han stayed with her almost all day. She also made
acquaintance with her medics and accepted the treatment that they proposed, but
she didn't see even the shadow of Vader.

For the first two days, she didn't complain about this fact, but on the third
day, she began to wonder what he was waiting for.

On the fourth day, she breached the subject with her brother.

"He is waiting for you to make the first move, Sis," he told her simply.

His answer stumped her. Since when did Vader wait for anybody's convenience,
let alone interest to see him before he barged in whichever place he wished?

"He will wait forever then," she growled, "I will never ask him to come."

"Are you sure?" Luke queried seriously.

"Of course I'm sure," she told him earnestly. "I'm not going to tolerate his
presence around me like you do, Luke. I am not interested at all to be friend
wiht him."

Luke's eyes became slightly hurt. "I am not friend with him," he defended. "I
am just taking advantage of what he's offering me."

"That's exactly what I mean, brother. You've claimed your place as his son."

"I have not."

"Yes, you have," Leia argued with a little more strength than before. "If you
hadn't, we wouldn't be here."

"And you wouldn't be with us," he defended with some animosity. "Don't you
understand, Leia?" he continued more earnestly. "Without him, we would have
lost you. I had no choice but to contact him, to go along with him, but I don't
intend to become Vader's son."

"Then why don't we leave now?" she asked him seriously.

"Because you aren't completely healed yet. We still need his help."

"No. I will not let him---" Leia stated adamantly.

"Only he can restore you to your former health and beauty, Leia..." Luke sadly
pointed out. "Do you really want us to leave this soon, to perhaps fall into
Mothma's trap once again?.."

No, she didn't want that, but she didn't want to be within a thousand yards of
the dark lord either.

"Leia," Luke said, taking her right hand in his own, "we need his help if we
want to be safe once again. Why not take what he has to offer for the moment?"

Because it would be like betraying Alderaan, she wanted to tell him. But then,
she remembered the data that she had found that had proved that the selection of
Alderaan as the Death Star's target had been the Emperor direct order. The
Emperor's doing, not Vader's... not her father's...

And her capture by him had been due to Mon's betrayal, Mon's subtle
manipulation... because Mon had known what would happen to her... except that
she hadn't counted on a reckless farmboy and a dare-devil pilot to ruin her
perfect plan to take control of the Rebellion...

Vader had merely been a tool... A tool which could hurt... or heal...

She knew that she wasn't healed yet, and yes, she wanted to recover her former
attributes.

She sighed in resignation. "All right, tell him that I'm ready," she informed
her now smiling brother, "but you have to be present with me when he will come."
she reminded him.

"I will be with you, don't worry," he promised her. "Now get some rest, sweet
sister. There's no need to fight for the moment."

As if lulled by his words, she almost instantly fell asleep.

TBC in part 13: Daughter and Father