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Chapter Text

Tatooine is even bleaker and more desolate than Luke’s few fragmented early memories of the place, but somehow less vast now than it had seemed. The heat is almost unbearable after so many years on mournful, acid-soaked, strangely atmospheric Vjun and stately, mountain-fringed Carida, and Luke is hard-pressed to conceal how it wears on him. The boy he would have been would have lived out all his days on Tatooine, he reminds himself every time he starts to flag, and he must not betray himself.

All the same, it is hard to live every day playing out the role of moisture farmer’s nephew. The heat is one thing, but the poverty quite another, for all that the Lars’ are considered fairly prosperous by Tatooine standards. Darth Vader might not have had any use for luxury himself, but he had spared no expense in the bringing up of his son. Tutors, books, holos, speeders...Luke had had the best of everything growing up, and though his years at the Imperial Officer Academy and later on active duty had been enough to wean him off the opulence of his childhood it is still startling how hard life on the Rim really is. More wearing than the labour, though, is the powerlessness of his situation. At nineteen, Luke has been serving aboard Imperial vessels for two years but here he’s still ‘the Lars’ boy’. He supposes he should be grateful, as this easy dismissal means that the work of the Force on these rustics’ minds has gone unnoticed, but he can’t help but miss the uniform and the respect it brought him, the Stormtroopers he commanded and those private sessions with his father during his year aboard the Executor.

He had been furious when his father told him of his next assignment. To waste years of his life on a barren rock light years from anything resembling civilisation was the last thing Luke had wanted, and for so little as rumours of a wizard out in the Sand Wastes that might turn out to be a Jedi. He’d said as much to his father’s face and that had led to the worst row they’d had in years. His father had won in the end, pointing out the impossibility of leaving a Jedi alive, if Jedi the old man was. So Luke had gone to Tatooine and buried his shuttle in the wastes before making his way to the Lars’ farm.

Memory was fallible and easily influenced, that was the first thing Luke had learnt when he started to use the Force. Remove the memory of Vader’s reclamation of his son and implant a suggestion – not even a particularly strong one – that the boy had remained with them and people started making up memories of him on their own. It worked on everyone, even the Jedi, whose mind was so tightly shielded from foreign insight but so poorly guarded if one approached it just right. He had wanted to believe that he had not failed, that Vader had not bested him in every way. And so Luke had constructed a trap for him and this Ben Kenobi had backed himself right into it, protesting ignorance all the while.

After that it had been so simple that it was downright tedious. After years of near-constant action, every waking moment spent fighting, studying or fulfilling his duties aboard ship, it feels strange to be without purpose. Beggar’s Canyon is every bit as exhilarating to fly as his father always said it was, and a couple of the local kids are all right, but Luke cannot help his guilt that he is sitting safe on a backwater planet racing landspeeders with a gang of teenagers when the men he should be commanding are risking life and limb against the Rebels every day. He tries to steer them towards the Imperial Academy as best he can, but that’s about as much as he can do from his current position. They’re good kids, the Empire could do with more like them. Then again, there are a great many things the Empire could do with right now, and most of them involve a change in leadership.

When Father is Emperor, things will be different. Luke has repeated those words to himself a thousand times by now. When Father is Emperor, things will be different. They need a united empire, and they can’t build one now. One only has to look at Senior Captain Thrawn to see how much talent current policy has lost the Empire, and how much of that talent has migrated over to the Rebellion for lack of any other options? Luke still remembers the first time he attended one of Thrawn’s lectures at the Academy. Just fourteen years old and so desperate to please, sitting towards the back of the lecture theatre and watching the charismatic blue-skinned figure on the stage in mute wonder. He had attended every lecture the Captain gave after that, sometimes slipping away from his lessons to sit at the back of a crowded theatre and just soak it all in. It was transcendent. Luke’s father hadn’t been best pleased, of course, for all his amusement at Luke’s desperate attempts to achieve some of Thrawn’s elegant, inscrutable authority, but there is little enough in the universe that pleases Luke’s father.

No-one on Tatooine has even heard of the Captain, of course, and there’s no place for elegance or inscrutability in the persona Luke is obliged to adopt. Most of Luke’s usual pastimes are quite beyond his reach and, but for his monthly reports back to his father, he has no contact with the rest of the universe. For a man used to having the run of a whole galaxy, it is like having both hands tied behind his back.

More galling still is the suspicion that Luke’s alleged mission out here in the hinterlands isn’t as important as his father insisted it was. The idea that Luke has been sent away for safekeeping, packed off to some nice remote world to keep him out of the way while his father got on with the real work is unendurable and, like all such ideas, distressingly persistent once it has occurred to him. What makes it worse is that that’s just the sort of thing Luke’s father would do. Vader has always been overprotective, to the point of having Luke transferred onto his flagship despite being far too young to serve on such a vessel just to keep Luke under his eye, and so the thought niggles and festers like a sore in the back of his mind, painful and yet irresistible, and he lingers over it like a child tonguing at the gap left by a lost tooth.

Darklighter leaves for the Imperial Academy before Luke’s been on Tatooine a year. Not the same Academy as Luke attended, the Officer Academy on Carida where he saw the true potential of the Empire for the first time, but the lesser one on Prefsbelt IV. He is disappointed that Luke could not come with him, talks about a hundred plans they never made, a hundred daydreams they never shared. Luke just smiles and counts it a victory. Life gets a lot duller after that, though. None of the others can pose much of a challenge to Luke while racing, good as they are for backwoods kids with no formal training, and even his many chores are not enough to keep him from stagnating.

Two years on Tatooine and Luke misses Bast Castle more than he ever did aboard ship. It was hard to miss home when he had been so fired with enthusiasm as he had been during his years of active service, so desperate to prove that it wasn’t just nepotism that had earned him his lieutenant’s tabs. Not that anyone but he and his father had even suspected nepotism, but Luke had known and the sting of it had lingered. Now he cannot help but long for the acid rains of Vjun, the gloomy splendour of the castle in which he had grown up, the exhilaration of riding his swoop bike back home or the sight of Besin clan Kim’bar, his father’s Noghri housekeeper, who had been Luke’s nanny and bodyguard from the age of four. Now he cannot help but compare everything on Tatooine to its equivalent at home and find it lacking. The heat, the thirst, the thrice-accursed sand stretching away bare and level as far as the eye could see. He understands now a little of why his father so hates the planet of his birth. Luke is twenty-one now, an adult in the eyes of the Empire, and he’s stranded on a barren rock far from home and friends and family, carrying out a mission that feels more pointless with every passing day. Kenobi is an old done man, a man who has failed in all his endeavours. He will be dead soon enough, Luke is sure of it, and maybe then Luke will be allowed to return to his father’s service.

And then the droids arrive and everything changes. He doesn’t know how important they are until he and Owen Lars have got them back to the farm and Luke is working on the R2 unit. After that, things change. Luke has never seen his mother in the flesh, but he knows her face. How could he fail to? Padme Naberrie’s portrait dominates his father’s study at Bast Castle, though Vader speaks of her only very rarely, and Luke has seen her face on a thousand old holos from before he was born. And, for some reason, this girl begging a Jedi traitor for help is her spit and image.

He goes to Kenobi, plays the innocent and watches as Kenobi plays right into his hands. It was almost a disappointment, when he arrived here, to see how much the old Jedi’s skill had deteriorated in his exile, but now Luke cannot help but be grateful for it. He has heard his father’s stories of what a Jedi at full strength can do, and Luke would not want to face one of them. Better to win by deception, to hide his true purpose and strike only when he is sure of victory. He just barely manages to suppress his fury at the lies Kenobi tries to feed him, wondering what he would have made of all this if he had truly been the innocent farm-boy he has pretended to be for so long. The girl, Luke can deduce easily enough from the message, is Bail Organa’s daughter, one of Luke’s father’s more infuriating political rivals. Except that isn’t right. Why would some spoilt Alderaani noblewoman bear such a resemblance to the mother Luke never knew? Why does everything in him feel a pull towards this girl unlike anything he has felt before, like to like?

He does regret the Lars’ deaths. They should never have been involved in this and, anti-Imperial sentiments aside, they weren’t bad people. They would probably have gladly handed the droids over if only they had been asked, gone on with their lives in peace. This is typical of the old way of thinking, the wanton destructiveness, the waste. Luke can’t abide it, never could, has had a thousand arguments with his father on the subject.

Still, it lends a certain verisimilitude to Luke’s claims that there is nothing for him on Tatooine, and it is less than a day before he and Kenobi are safely ensconced in the back of a smuggling ship bound for Alderaan, Luke bubbling over with excitement behind the innocent mask. If he does this right, if he can uncover a whole cell of rebels on Alderaan and hand over Kenobi as well-

Then he feels it, the death cry of a whole world echoing between his ears, and it is all he can do to mask the pain and fear and confusion of it. He comes out of it only seconds before Kenobi, and that is all that saves him. It’s already suspicious how little emotion Luke remembered to show in the shock of the massacre at the Lars’ homestead, anything more might lead Kenobi to probe too deeply into the recesses of his own mind and that is something Luke cannot afford.

Then, of course, they get caught up in the tractor beam of the Emperor’s latest fancy world-destroying toy, the one his father had been so annoyed about when it had finally got the funding it needed. The Empire has too many such weapons, so far as Luke is concerned, all of them paid for at great public expense. It seems a bit excessive, to be honest. But the Emperor likes them and that is enough for them to be commissioned and built on its own, or so it often seems. When Father is Emperor, things will be different, Luke promises himself, and hopes desperately that he’ll be able to pass on a message before things go too far.

Of course, it isn’t that simple.

Getting into the cells is, and that really needs to be looked at, if three such obvious infiltrators can walk through the corridors of the Emperor’s new battle station and not attract so much as a second glance. Once they’ve got into the cellblock, however, things take a turn for the worst and that is how Luke ends up fleeing his own father and the service that has been his only goal and ambition for so much of his life in a broken-down smuggling ship with a half-mad Corellian smuggler, a remarkably undiplomatic Alderaani politician and Chewbacca, who is probably the most sensible person on the whole ship, with the Jedi Luke was supposed to be monitoring dead at Luke’s father’s hand. At least he’ll be able to return home as soon as he’s detangled himself from this mess, he thinks, and realises almost immediately that he has just destroyed all chance of a triumphant return to Vjun before his next posting. He’s in trouble.

Worse than that, though, is the realisation that crashes into him the moment he slips away from the crowd of people around Princess Leia and reaches out to her with the Force. And reels. And reels. Because he knows this feeling, has felt it once before, years ago, when an armoured giant arrived on Tatooine and told Luke he was his father. This bone-deep, instinctive familiarity is not new to Luke, but coming from Leia Organa – Leia Organa, darling of the Rebel Alliance, tireless opponent of all that Luke and his father have worked for – it is almost enough to knock Luke off his feet.

He reports back to his father almost immediately – family or no, Vader is still his superior officer and there will be hell to pay for this – and sits through the inevitable lecture with ill-concealed impatience. The moment he is given leave, the words spill out of Luke in a flood. Tatooine, Kenobi, the droids, the princess, the awful knowledge that he had a sister and she had been taken from them and given over to their enemies, just as Luke had been, and Vader had never found out.

He is half-expecting the orders he receives: stay there, stay close, earn their trust. It doesn’t make them any less infuriating. Luke has spent two years pretending, playing games and hiding from sight. He would cheerfully kill to be on the Death Star right now, carrying out his duties as an officer and not skulking around in the shadows on Yavin. But orders are orders, even if they come from one’s father, and there is only so far an order can be bent.

He only finds out the Rebels’ plan just before it is put into effect, and by then it is too late to send a message to his father, who will no doubt be preparing already for battle. He sends one anyway, prays it gets through. He doesn’t want to think how many men that battlestation will hold, how many civilian staff there must be to keep a vessel that size running.

Things get complicated when Darklighter turns up. Luke pretends happiness, and under any other circumstances it wouldn’t have been a pretence, because he did genuinely like Biggs Darklighter, for what that was worth. But for Darklighter- for Biggs to be here…He’s a traitor, just like all the others, and must be punished accordingly. Still, what a waste! What a Force-damned waste. For the thousandth time, Luke curses the Rebellion, and Palpatine with it. His mother, his sister, that group of talented kids from the Outer Rim…was there anything these rebels would not take?

In space it is easier, easier to block the others’ signals, to lure them into range of his father’s ships and dispose of them one by one. By the end there are almost two of them left, and for a moment Luke thinks it will work, that this will be a victory in truth. And then the other pilot fires off one improbably perfect shot and Luke tries to intercept, to shoot the other ship down and save his fellow-officers. Luke is fast, but the other ship is faster. Biggs Darklighter dies with the Death Star, and Luke’s head explodes with screaming.

His ship veers crazily as he soars away, and he can but hope the other pilots miss it in their jubilation. Luke’s mind is too full of death and screaming and the terrible, terrible fear that has dogged him since his father first returned home to Vjun after a mission injured. It is relief beyond words to hear the first communication after the Death Star, no matter his father’s fury at Luke’s failure.

He is to remain with the Rebels for the time being, to learn their plans and become vital to their leadership. Biggs’ death, regrettable as it may have been, left Luke in an ideal position to take credit for the Death Star’s destruction, and he would be a fool not to take advantage of that. And besides, there is his sister to think of. His sister, Leia Organa. She must be brought to their side, in that father and son are united in certainty. Vader should have found her long ago, she should have been raised on Vjun alongside her brother, but he hadn’t. He failed in his duty then, but neither he nor Luke will do so now. And so the plan is formed.

Chapter Text

There’s something very strange about Lieutenant Naberrie. It’s not just that he’s Lord Vader’s favourite, although that’s pretty weird in and of itself because Vader doesn’t have favourites. Vader hates everyone and everyone hates Vader. Well, except the men, but they don’t really count. He doesn’t go around butchering them. Hell, some of them even quite like him. Hard, but fair, they call him, which is enough to have any officer who’s served under the Emperor’s second-in-command even for a couple of hours laughing maniacally and with not a little bitterness in their laughter. Fair. Force, what a joke! Vader doesn’t have favourites. But Naberrie, it seems, is one of them.

Force alone knows why, though. It’s not that the lad isn’t intelligent, though they have got brighter in the service and Vader was never like this with any of them, but Naberrie’s far too young to be serving aboard a ship like the Executor anyway, was transferred here (or so the rumour mill claims) after having narrowly escaped a court-martial under Captain Ozzel for directly disobeying orders mid-battle. The action was a success, in part because of Naberrie’s actions, but all the same Ozzel had wanted rid of the boy and so had sent him off to Vader, safe in the assumption that Naberrie would be dead within weeks. Eight months on and the boy is still alive.

There are a hundred theories about why Naberrie enjoys such favour. The most popular one at first is that Lord Vader’s tastes run differently to those of other men and that Naberrie is simply canny enough to take advantage of the fact. That particular rumour lasts about three weeks before it comes to Lord Vader’s ears. That is a bad day. They lose five of the bridge officers before Vader calms down and the rest of them unanimously decide to never mention that rumour again. Others soon supplant it, the most prevalent amongst them being that Naberrie is simply too well-connected to kill or else one of the Emperor’s special operatives assigned to the Executor to keep an eye on the Emperor’s mad dog. Those rumours last no longer than their predecessors, however, because Naberrie’s loyalty to Vader borders on the slavish and when it comes out that Naberrie is an orphan born and raised on Vjun the former rumour also becomes impossible to sustain.

Lieutenant Whistler swears blind she once heard Vader and Naberrie arguing when she was sent to Lord Vader’s quarters to deliver a message. Something about Naberrie’s infatuation with Senior Captain Thrawn, she said, and that is almost – almost – enough to reignite those early rumours about just why Vader was taking such an interest in his young lieutenant until everyone remembers what that led to. Vader doesn’t argue with anyone either, and anyone fool enough to try it rarely lasts long.

But even aside from how much Vader seems to favour him, Naberrie is odd. It’s not the tendency to answer questions before they’re asked, to respond so fast in a combat situation that it’s downright uncanny, though both of those are enough to make you wonder. No, the really unsettling thing about Naberrie is that nothing ever seems to cow him. Lord Vader in a fury is the one thing that can get Naberrie to show any sign of contrition and even then his behaviour is entirely free of the blind terror that any sane man would feel in the face of the Supreme Commander’s rages. He’s deferential enough to the higher-ups, despite the subtle impression – nothing you could ever put your finger on – of only humouring his superiors that he seems incapable of turning off. Even then, though, he cannot help but stand out. Somehow the boy never seems quite connected to the same universe as the rest of them, and so very sure of himself. It’s enough to put anyone off, even those who might otherwise have taken pity on a young officer thrust suddenly into the vicious backbiting that is so common aboard the Executor.

It doesn’t help that he’s the youngest officer aboard ship by a significant margin, only twenty-one years old according to his files, and he looks younger. Even Vader’s stubborn refusal to promote the boy cannot save him from the understandable resentment of every officer on the Executor, and half the crew are waiting with bated breath for the day that Naberrie’s favour finally runs out. It doesn’t.

Naberrie makes mistakes. Of course he does. He makes mistakes the rest of the crew might well have covered up for had it been another young officer, mistakes others in his position would have died for and yet he lives.

He does not get away entirely free – a public dressing-down from Vader is not an enjoyable experience even if no-one dies at the end of it – but the fact remains that Naberrie is still alive when anyone else would be nothing but a cooling corpse to be cleared off the bridge floor.

It would almost have been easier to bear if the boy were difficult to deal with ordinarily, if he showed the least sign of letting Vader’s obvious favouritism go to his head. It doesn’t. Naberrie is a good-natured youth, awkward and enthusiastic about everything in the way of young officers raised on tales of Imperial glory, and seems almost embarrassed by his own good fortune. Commander Pellaeon of the Chimaera is probably the only one who can stand the boy, and even he isn’t what you’d call friendly.

Still, one can’t deny his effectiveness, and the men’s respect for him is almost as intense and as irrational as their respect for Vader. It’s always the strange ones, Lieutenant Whistler opines to anyone who will listen, and for the most part the officers of the Executor agree with her.

No-one really mourns when Naberrie is transferred off ship, though no-one is precisely throwing a party either because without Naberrie around Vader’s temper is worse than ever before. They lose three bridge officers over increasingly petty mistakes in the course of as many days before Vader calms down, and he remains in what can only be described as a sulk for the next fortnight after. To the crew of the Executor, that’s just one more thing to curse Naberrie for, before putting him from their minds altogether.

Chapter Text

One thing to say for the Imperials, Han conceded reluctantly, at least they learned from their mistakes. Not that he was in much of a position to appreciate it. He growled. It just figured, didn’t it? More than a decade of being a smuggler and deserter and no-one batted an eyelid. A few years with the Rebel Alliance and suddenly he was the man every Imperial was after, which was how he ended up here, in this brig, on the Executor, waiting for Vader or one of his lackeys to come down and commence interrogation. Oh, joy. Chewie still hadn’t come to – whatever drug the Imperials had used on him must be stronger than the one they’d used on Han – and there hadn’t been any sign of Leia since they were separated on Bespin. Han had already scoured his cell for anything that might provide a way out and found nothing.

Great. Wonderful. Brilliant. Marvellous. He was, quite definitely, going to die. And all because he’d been fool enough to trust Lando Calrissian to do anything but what was necessary to save his own skin. Idiot. Force-forsaken bloody fool. He’d chosen to trust Lando despite everything, and where had it landed him? In the brig of the Executor, waiting for Vader to come and deal with him. Han still remembered the noises Greelanx had made when Vader killed him. What must that feel like, to choke slowly with Vader standing over you, staring at you from behind that black mask? Well, Han would be finding out soon enough. He squared his shoulders, and tried not to shudder. He wouldn’t give the bastards that satisfaction.

Nearby Chewie stirred weakly and let out a low howl.

“Chewie!”  Han exhaled, relief winning out over terror. “You all right?”

A low, moaning growl.

“Can’t move? C’mon, Chewie, you haven’t even tried yet!”

Another bout of feeble stirring, another long, low sound, not even a growl now. Han stared up at the cell door. There was no way he could get the guards in here, and even if he could, they’d probably just kill Chewie then and there. Not that there would be any point. There was no hope of escape with Chewie in this state. Which meant they were stuck. Great.

The door hissed open and Han looked up, expecting to see the great, dark shape of the Dark Lord standing in the doorway and relaxing as he realised who it was.

“Luke! Kid, what’re you doing here? How’d you find out-” he broke off.

It was Luke all right, but he’d never known the kid was that good of an actor. Flanked by Stormtroopers, Luke looked the very image of a young Imperial, that unruly mop of hair clipped back into a military crop, the uniform of a senior lieutenant sitting on his frame as though he had been made for it, his stance parade-ground perfect. Where had the kid learnt that? The stance, the coolly impassive expression, the way his hands were clasped behind his back, the tabs that looked brand-new, not like they’d been taken off whichever Imperial it was that Luke had stolen the uniform from.

The Stormtrooper at Luke’s shoulder’s helmeted head tipped slightly to one side, and Han froze, running through every curse in every language he knew and hoping he hadn’t just blown their only hope of escape sky-high.

“Thank you, Trooper. That will be all,” Luke said firmly, all traces of backwater accent gone from his voice.

“Sir,” the Stormtrooper replied, clicking his heels. “We’ll be in the hall, then, sir.”

Luke nodded assent and turned cool blue eyes on Han as the Stormtroopers filed out. Han watched him carefully, waiting for the moment when the door would hiss closed and Luke would drop the act and become himself again. The door slid shut as the last of the Stormtroopers left, but Luke did not drop the military affectations.

“Not that I’m complaining, kid,” Han said cautiously, “But just how did you know where to find us?”

Luke smiled thinly, and it was nothing like the old farm-boy grin. “The ship’s records said you were in this cell. Lord Vader wanted to interrogate you himself, but I was able to convince him that I might have more success.”

“Vader- You were able to convince Vader- Luke, what in the galaxy is going on?”

Luke’s smile widened. “I’ve been reading your records,” he said conversationally. “You weren’t lying to LaRone and his friends, were you? Lieutenant Han Solo, graduated top of your class at Carida, court-martialled and dishonourably discharged for insubordination and assault on a superior officer.”

“’Superior’ might be pushing it, kid, and I told you, I’d have left sooner or later anyway. Can we just focus for a second, here?” There’s something very wrong about all this, Han can feel it. He just hasn’t worked out what yet.

“But I am focused,” Luke said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Are you really telling me you haven’t worked it out yet?”

Han stared at him, taking in the ramrod-straight back, the close-cropped hair, the sudden coldness in Luke’s blue eyes, the uniform, with the tabs of a senior lieutenant on the chest.

“Luke,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Whatever Vader’s done, whatever he’s made you believe-”

“Made me-?” Luke laughed at that. It wasn’t an unpleasant laugh. low and rolling and seemingly genuinely mirthful and that was what scared Han most. “No-one is making me believe anything, Captain Solo.”

“You’ve been brainwashed, kid, face facts! Vader killed your father, for Force sakes, doesn’t that-?” he broke off at the look on Luke’s face. The kid actually looked amused, of all things.

“Who told you that, Han?” he asked, a smile tugging at his lip.

“You know damn well-” Han cut himself off, staring up at Luke. Luke stared back, still smiling coldly, and suddenly he did not look anything like the farm-boy who had boarded the Falcon with Kenobi three years before.

“I’m not brainwashed, Han,” Luke said levelly. “The word you are looking for, I think, is ‘spy’.”

Chewie let out a low noise somewhere between a snarl and a howl and jerked, trying desperately to pull himself upright even as his body betrayed him. Luke looked at him and for a moment there was a flash of something recognisable in the cold eyes.

“Lie down,” he said in a low voice, “You will damage that leg even more.” Chewie growled at him, and Luke raised a hand. “I’m not here to pick fights,” he said, his voice strangely earnest.

“Then what are you here for?” Han said shortly, still reeling. Luke, an Imperial? Luke, Vader’s agent? It couldn’t be true. And yet, there the evidence stood, as picture-perfect an Imperial officer as ever appeared on Academy recruitment posters.

Luke smiled thinly. “I have a proposition for you.”

That brought Han up short. “What?”

“What would you say,” Luke said coolly, “If I could offer you your old commission back? You’d be permitted to keep the Falcon, of course, the Empire has uses for a man of your particular skills. Chewbacca will be more difficult, but I am quite sure Lord Vader will see the sense in offering a similar bargain. Your people’s freedom, say, in exchange for your service.”

Chewie’s head snapped up and Luke’s smile widened. “He has never approved of slavery,” he said in a low voice, “You have my word on that.”

“Right,” Han said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable, “And what’s in this for you, kid? A captaincy? Your own command? Getting the hell away from Vader? I can’t blame you, that psychotic-”

Luke’s hand came down so fast Han didn’t even see it before it impacted with his cheek. “Mind your tongue,” Luke hissed, “If I hear a word against my lord from you again, smuggler, it will be the last thing you ever say.”

Han froze. Vader inspired many things, he knew, but…but that was real, steely-eyed devotion on Luke’s face and for the life of him, Han couldn’t understand what Vader could have done to win that from Luke – Luke, who had always hated Vader with so much more fire than the rest of them, who would have been the last person Han expected to turn traitor on them.

Except- Except that Luke hadn’t, if he was telling the truth, if Vader hadn’t really warped his mind to make him say all of this. If Han were to take the kid at his word then Luke had never been that boy at all.

But how could he? How could he believe this, having known Luke, having trusted him…Force, when had things come to this.

“Luke,” he said carefully, “Whatever Vader’s told you, whatever you might think…”

Luke raised his eyebrows. “You don’t give up, do you, Solo? Your faith in my character is touching, if misplaced.”

“C’mon, kid, I know you. The Luke Skywalker I met three years ago wasn’t an Imperial,”

“The Luke Skywalker you met three years ago never existed,” Luke said harshly, “My name is Naberrie. Senior Lieutenant Naberrie of the 501^st Legion.” He raised an eyebrow. “Did you really never suspect how easily we always got out of trouble? The way it was always my unit who saw the most desperate actions, and how I remained free so long with the full might of the Empire after me? I realise you don’t think much of us, Captain Solo, but really…”

Han stared at him, taking in all the little details he hadn’t noticed before, every damning touch that made it clear that this was no trick. The uniform fit too well to be stolen, it had the tailored look of a uniform that had been worn day in and day out for far too long and moulded itself to its wearer’s body. The blaster at Luke’s side was standard-issue, lovingly maintained where Luke had always treated his blaster with a degree of indifference, tending to it only when he had no other choice. The way he stood now, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders squared, a stance that looked far, far too natural on him for Han’s liking. The eyes were the worst of it, though, ice blue and colder than the depths of space. There was no light, no mercy in those eyes.

“You lying bastard,” Han gritted out.

Luke smiled thinly. “Half right.”

Chapter Text

Luke had been humming with excitement ever since they reached Bespin. Leia watched him out of the corner of her eye, not quite sure what had brought this on. The thrill of their recent escapes, maybe, or else just sheer smug pleasure at having outwitted the Empire once again. She couldn’t fault him there – she, too, was beginning to feel quite distinctly pleased with herself on that score. Maybe Luke found Lando Calrissian every bit as exciting as he did Han, who would know? It was odd how little of that Han noticed, when to Leia it was as obvious as if Luke had been running about the place with his usual puppyish enthusiasm, rather than trying so transparently to hide it.

“I’m telling you, the kid seemed normal to me,” Han was saying, “Bit wound up about the Dagobah System, maybe – and what it was that was so important about going there when the whole place is under lockdown and half the planets bombarded into oblivion I’ll never know – but mostly fine.”

“Is he?” Leia demanded, “You can’t have missed the way he’s been these last few days. He’s on edge, anyone could see it!”

“Well, I can’t!”

Leia sighed in exasperation. “I don’t know what it is that’s got him in this sort of a state, but I just hope he recovers before we get back to the Alliance. We need him now, more than ever.”

“If you say so, princess,” Han replied, now sounding distinctly dubious. Leia couldn’t blame him – she could scarce believe it herself – but Luke had value beyond his own skills now. The pilot who destroyed the Death Star was essential to their morale. If they lost him, the effects would be astronomical, and how many species would go crawling back to the Empire without that one shining symbol that the Alliance might actually stand a chance at victory? If nothing else, Luke had been at the heart of so much of the Alliance’s…she would not call it ‘propaganda’, but she was hard-pressed to find another word for it…that his loss would cause them more trouble than even he knew. And even without that…she’d grown fond of him. He’d been a good friend to her these last few years, even if their paths would never have crossed under happier circumstances. It was probably for the best – Luke had no head for politics, no understanding of the long game, of the deceptions inherent in leadership. It annoyed her about as much as it endeared him to her, the novelty of having someone so guileless at her side.

She was about to snap something ill-considered and biting back at Han when the far door slid open, revealing Chewie, who was carrying-

C3PO, in pieces, his eye-lights out and looking quite thoroughly mauled. Calrissian’s work? No, what could be the point? But for it to have taken this long to find him…Leia shook her head. She was letting Luke get to her. He’d been so tense these last few weeks, before this new excitement of his had set in, no wonder she was nervous.

“What happened?” she demanded, rising to her feet and staring down at the wreckage of her oldest companion. Chewie gave a low, mournful how.

“Where?” Han asked. Another howl. “He found him in a junk pile.”

Leia’s mind whirled. In a junk pile. This- Calrissian had dared throw one of her people- droids- people away like trash and expected her not to notice? C3PO, the last reminder of her birth-mother she had left to her, and he had-

She bit down hard on that thought, turning her snarl into a sigh. “Ah, what a mess. Chewie, do you think you can repair him?”

Chewie howled again, holding up Threepio’s severed arms. That, Leia assumed, meant ‘yes’.

“Lando’s got people who can fix him,” Han offered.

“No thanks.” There was something fishy about Calrissian, whatever Luke said. And even if Luke and his Force powers said he could be trusted, Leia had been a politician long enough to be suspicious of Lando’s smooth manners and unruffled façade. There was something very wrong on this planet, and the sooner they were all well away from it, the better.

Footsteps sounded behind her, two sets of them, and she turned to see Lando Calrissian himself, still in that ridiculous blue cloak, with Luke walking beside him. Not so very odd in itself, as Luke had been spending more and more time with Calrissian lately, won over by the glib charm and the panache, no doubt. She just hoped he wasn’t getting suckered too badly.

“Sorry, am I interrupting anything?” Calrissian asked, his eyes flicking to Luke almost nervously. It was hard to see why, but then, people tended to be nervous of Luke once they’d seen all he was capable of.

“Not really,” Leia replied, straightening. “Why, what’s happening?”

Lando gave her a quick once-over and his smile widened. “You look absolutely beautiful,” he said, stepping forwards, “You truly belong here with us among the clouds.”

Luke gave a short, sharp cough from behind him, and all at once Lando’s smile went tight. Leia tried and failed to restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

“Come on,” Luke said, when Lando didn’t continue, “Lunch. We can talk there.”

“What about?” Han asked, shooting a nasty look at Calrissian which, bizarrely, didn’t seem to have nearly so violent an effect as that one cough of Luke’s. Leia could have laughed at how strange a picture that made.

“Nothing- What happened to Threepio?”

“No idea,” Han replied, shrugging. “Lando, you going to stand there all day?”

Lando didn’t seem quite so enthusiastic about making conversation as he had been on the walk from the rooms they’d been offered, though he did make a token effort at explaining his operation and its position in the galaxy. Still he seemed considerably more nervous and Leia swore she spotted a deep purple bruise blossoming on his wrist.

“Lando was just telling me,” Luke said just as they reached the dining-room door, an odd sort of half-smile playing about his lips, “About the deal he’s just made to keep the Empire out of here forever.”

In hindsight, she really should have known.

Then three things happened in rapid succession: first, the door slid open, revealing long glass table in a white room with Darth Vader sitting at its head; second, Chewie howled and third, Luke went straight for the blaster Leia hadn’t even noticed he was wearing – how could she not have noticed – and stunned both Han and Chewie with two neat, precise shots to the back of the head. They crumpled like puppets whose strings had been cut, and the Stormtroopers that had sprung out of the woodwork just a few seconds earlier dragged them away.

Vader, meanwhile, turned the blank visors of his helmet on Luke. “Excellent work, Lieutenant,” he said.

Leia looked around her, desperately hoping for some sign that this wasn’t happening. But all she could see was Luke, still smiling coolly, and Lando Calrissian’s guilty, worried face as the door slid shut behind her. She breathed in deeply, fury and confusion and grief tangled together in her mind so closely it was difficult to tell them apart, and then she rounded on Luke.

“You! You sold us out!”

“No,” Luke replied, and Leia took a sharp step back, because that wasn’t Luke’s voice. The inflections were wrong, too clipped, too polished. He held himself differently now, all of a sudden, straight-backed and poised, and Vader’s words flashed again through Leia’s memory.

“You…you’re one of them?” she asked, “How-”

Luke smiled at her. It wasn’t quite the old puppyish grin, crooked and slightly sly, but it seemed more genuine than she would have expected.

“We have a lot to talk about,” he said, voice soft and strangely urgent. “Please, sit down. We won’t harm you.”

Leia didn’t take the offered seat, looking from Luke to Vader and back again in consternation. “I don’t understand.”

“No,” Vader said, and for a moment he sounded almost sad. “I did not expect that you would.”

Leia’s mind whirled. She had no means of attack, the only weapons in the room were Luke’s blaster and lightsaber and the other such saber at Vader’s hip, and she didn’t think much of her ability to take either one without their noticing. And besides, where could she run to? The Falcon’s hyperdrive was still inactive, so that was out, and she didn’t think much of her chances of hiding for long in Cloud City with Vader on her trail. Wait and see what happened, then, what opportunities they gave her. She’d escaped from Vader before, after all. She tried to ignore the part where her rescuer was sitting across from her now, cool-eyed and composed at the side of the murderer of her people.

“Leia,” Luke said, catching her eye. “You trust me, don’t you?”

How was it, Leia wondered vaguely, that he could be at once so brilliant an actor as to so totally deceive her, Han and the entire governing body of the Alliance and still be this dense?

“I did,” she admitted coldly, “Once.”

Luke flinched. “Don’t- It’s not like that.”

“You mean you weren’t lying to me from the moment we first saw each other?”

Luke paused for a few moments. “No,” he admitted, “That much of it is true. Just- Just let us explain, all right?”

Vader made an odd, almost amused noise at that, his mechanised voice-box giving it an edge like gears grinding together. It was that, oddly enough, that made Leia’s mind up. Whoever Luke really was, Vader trusted him enough to show open amusement in his presence, to speak with a note of pride in his computerised voice. That could be useful yet. Let them give their explanations, then, let them tell her everything they wanted her to know, and then…then she could find a way to make it work against them.

She took the offered seat, helped herself to fruit from the table. “I’m listening.”