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He was still shaking, retching up everything he didn't have in his stomach. It went into the same corner of his cell he'd been forced to use for urination and excretion, where the grate was. Every tour of Imperial facilities he'd ever been on, as a prince of a Core world and a member of the Senate, had prided themselves on their 'sterile' detention cells, their uniform security. But it was only sterile so long as it was unoccupied. As soon as someone was in there, they were left to rot in their own indignities.
Tarkin had hoped that would be enough to break the pampered Prince Organa on its own. But people didn't break like weapons or machines did, with all the secrets inside them spilling out the moment the shell was cracked, and Luke hadn't broken either. He'd just been beaten and terribly bruised.
The appointment with the ITO droid, likewise. That… that…
His skin burned. It crawled, like it had transfigured itself into a thousand beetles, like each of his cells were slugs. He wasn't safe in the Empire, he wasn't safe on the Death Star, and he couldn't even be safe here, in his own skin. His muscles and organs trembled, like they were waiting for him to burst free.
He wasn't going to burst free. He was trapped here, just like he was trapped on the Death Star. Just like they were all trapped in the Empire that wanted them to submit.
The door hissed open when he was still bent over, and the trooper delivering the food laughed when he saw Luke, bile dripping down his chin. "You alright there, Your Highness?" he mocked. "Your pretty white robes are a bit stained—want a change of clothes?"
"No, thank you," he rasped out, cuttingly polite. His parents had taught him the rules of etiquette, and he'd been an unruly enough child that even now he wouldn't let himself break them—but there was plenty of space for expression between them. "I'm not interested in wearing an Imperial uniform."
The trooper looked like he rolled his eyes behind the helmet. "Unpatriotic Rebel scum," he muttered. "I'm sure you'll sing soon enough. I heard Vader's coming at you next." And with that, and what was no doubt a nasty grin hidden behind his helmet, the trooper tossed the terrible rations bars into the cell and shut the door with a slam. The bars skittered around the floor to land in the pool of vomit—some even slipped through the grate.
Luke wasn't going to touch them anyway. He watched them for a minute, then wrinkled his nose and staggered to his feet.
Vader was coming.
Vader.
Fulcrum had warned him about Vader. He had training against that sort of interrogation, the sort of training not many people had. But that would only make the experience more agonising. That would only raise questions of where he had got it, and possibly paint his parents as Jedi conspirators as well as Rebels…
Vader was coming. He already wasn't safe in his own skin, and soon he wouldn't even be safe in his own mind.
He lay down on the surface that served as a bed and stared up at the ceiling—the four fish-eye cameras in each corner, staring at him acutely. If Vader was coming he'd need sleep, he'd need to recover from the last round, but every time he closed his eyes he saw the droid, and every time his chest rose and fell he remembered the inferno in his lungs, his snakes in his hair, the nails pressing into every inch of his skin…
And he was hungry, he supposed. He'd been on a hunger strike since he got there. The last trooper, not quite as vicious as this one, had scoffed about fancy princes expecting better nutrition.
He didn't want to demean himself to eat their food, which had fallen down the grate and been coated in vomit. But weakening himself was a poor idea, so he crawled over to get it anyway.
There were three bars, each cylindrical. He unwrapped the first one and shoved it in his mouth, scowling at the poor taste. His stomach gurgled at the anticipation of food.
He tried to eat slowly, so he didn't vomit again, but he was reaching for the next before he could think. Only, when he unwrapped it, it wasn't a bar.
It was a code cylinder.
A high-ranking officer's code cylinder, if he wasn't wrong.
He stared at it for a moment, chewing the remains of the awful dry stuff before swallowing it—and gagging a bit—and mulling over what the hell this meant. This wasn't a mistake. This…
This must be a rescue.
Or an attempt to help him rescue himself.
Well, if Vader was coming, he wasn't going to waste another moment on it. He glanced at the holocams again—he knew it looked shifty, but he couldn't help it, and the person on duty was probably too bored to notice anyway—and went for the door.
It opened the moment he waved the cylinder near to the pad. It opened from both sides, presumably so that interrogators could get out after an hours-long interrogation, and before he knew it he was racing down the corridor, trying to be as quiet as possible. There was no commotion yet, so he crept closer towards the end of the corridor—from what he remembered, the way out was past the checkpoint and the officers manning it—and peered around the corner…
Sure enough, the officers weren't paying attention to the monitors. They were gambling with dessert rations.
"Sabacc," one of them—a tall lieutenant-commander with dark hair—said. He reached out to take the rations and drawled, "Thank you."
Luke snuck around while he was counting the rations and the other guy was bemoaning his luck, hiding in front of the desk. Under their noses.
"Aw, kriff off, I was on a streak," the pale lieutenant said next to him. "Alright, I'm dealing this time." He picked up the cards, glanced up at the monitors…
Luke's robes were almost the same colour as the pristinely polished floor. He imagined he had been quite difficult to spot on the monitors even when he was in there. So it was a few precious moments he had before the lieutenant said, "What—"
He made a dash for it in those moments, diving into the turbolift and jamming the doors shut. That was when the alarms started blaring.
"Prisoner escaped! Prisoner escaped!"
He jabbed the number of a floor, any floor, slid the code cylinder into his sleeve, and his stomach lurched more violently than the lift did as they went down. But the moment the door opened—
"There he is!"
He tried to bolt under the arm of the troopers waiting there, and did make it a few metres before one of them shoved him over and he went sprawling, his soiled white robes settling around him. His head smacked the floor and it hurt, ringing, even as troopers yanked him up by the neck and fixed binders around his wrists.
"We've got him," the trooper said. "Inform the detention level—"
"What," boomed a voice that had Luke shaking, "is this?"
His legs nearly gave out. Thankfully they didn't, because he might have just died of embarrassment there and then in front of the troopers if they'd had to catch him, but his face definitely went whiter than Appenza Peak as he watched Vader stalk towards them, cape flaring behind him.
"My lord," the troopers snapped to attention immediately, "this prisoner was escaping from the detention cells."
"Is that so?" Vader rumbled, turning to look at Luke. Luke lifted his chin and met his gaze, but his heart was racing. He wanted to combust. He wanted to die. Now he wanted to burst from the prison of his muscles and mind and be anywhere but here.
"Yes, my lord. We will return him to the cells immediately—"
"Give him to me." Luke bit his tongue to keep from screaming. Vader seized his shoulder in a crushing grip. "I am due to interrogate him. Seeing as he is so eager to escape imprisonment, I see no reason to delay. My personal interrogation chamber will be suitably secure."
The troopers snickered at Luke's face. "Yes, my lord."
"Dismissed."
Luke barely noticed them leaving, as Vader hauled him along. He tripped over his own robes and the man didn't stop, just nearly dislocated his arm from the force of his pull, and Luke was forced to stumble along and keep up. The code cylinder would have dislodged itself from his sleeves if it weren't for the binders; he wasn't sure if they were more curse or blessing.
It wasn't like he would have been able to escape Vader, even if his hands were free. It wasn't like he could avoid his interrogation, and…
He nearly threw up again, there and then in the corridor. Vader shoved him into a turbolift and Luke composed himself in the half a minute they had before storming out onto the next floor, towards quarters that seemed more and more restricted.
Where was Vader taking him? Why would Vader have a personal interrogation chamber? Was it next to his chambers? Did he just like the sound of screaming innocents to help him drift off to sleep? It was probably better equipped for his unique brand of questioning than the standard ones. Luke had no clue what to expect and found his mind running wild, like his fear was put into an echo chamber and amplified back at him threefold…
But when Vader shoved him through a door and Luke's gaze caught on the wall lined with lightsabers—trophies—he understood.
This personal interrogation chamber was not for Rebels.
This was for Jedi.
Did he… Could he know about Fulcrum…?
The door locked behind them, and Vader pushed Luke into the next room. It was empty, save for a large white pod. The next room looked more like an aide's bedroom and closet, if Vader had had an aide, and was stuffed with uniforms.
Vader let go of him, then. Luke did not relax, ceasing his gawking at his surroundings to stare up at Vader, wide-eyed.
Vader waved his hands and the binders fell away. The code cylinder clattered to the floor with them. After a moment, it soared into Vader's hand.
"I am glad to see that you received this," he said simply.
What.
"I…" Luke looked around. All that oration training, all that fame for his eloquence, and all he could think of to say was, "This isn't an interrogation chamber."
"No, Your Highness," Vader agreed. "It is not."
"Then— what am I—"
"You are a Rebel, are you not?"
Luke flinched. "The evidence for that, Lord Vader, as I have stated multiple times, is purely circumstantial—"
"Have no fear. You are not being punished for it."
"It certainly feels like I am."
Vader said, "Perhaps."
But then he wandered over to the closet and pulled out one of those aide's uniforms. It was plain, but neat, and had a cap included. It was just Luke's size.
Vader handed it to him and gestured to the refresher attached. "Put it on."
"Why?" This was the strangest interrogation Luke had ever been a part of.
"Because your current clothes are stained and disgusting, and likely a biohazard. They will be washed and returned to you at the earliest possible convenience, but until then it is safer for you to wear clean clothes."
Luke took the uniforms. "What," he asked, then unleashed the language he'd learnt from Rebels, "the kriff?"
"Get changed, Your Highness."
Luke got changed. The moment he stepped out of the fresher again, feeling Vader's gaze on him almost melancholily, he demanded, "Now explain yourself."
"What is there to explain?"
"You're the Empire's fist. You're an interrogator. You hate Rebels," he hastened to add, "and I've been accused of rebellion. Why are you doing this?"
"Because your adoptive father contacted me the moment he learned your ship was destroyed over Tatooine," Vader said.
Luke was confused, sleep deprived, starving, and his head really hurt, but he still had the sharpness of mind to notice one unusual word: adoptive.
A strange detail to pick up on.
"And?"
"He appears to value your life more than the secrets he keeps." A pause. "And now, so do I."
Luke, fixating so much on the first half of that ground-breaking sentence that he forgot to process the other, felt sick. "He sold himself out to save me?" The Alliance… all their plans… for Luke?
"No. Though I have ample evidence that he is a Rebel, and could easily have him executed. Tarkin already wishes to use Alderaan as a target for the Death Star's first public demonstration. I do not need to lift a finger and you will all get the Imperial punishment your actions deserve."
Luke stumbled over to the bed and sat down on it. He didn't trust his legs to hold him. "Don't attack us," he whispered. "Our citizens… they are innocent."
"I have no intention of allowing that to happen."
Luke snapped his gaze back up to Vader, then. "And why? Why not? What did my father give you in return for my survival?"
"The knowledge that you are far too valuable to lose," came the cryptic reply, "simply because you have inherited your mother's stubbornness."
"What does that mean?"
"Tarkin is in control on this station. I am subordinate to him. But you can make your escape, Your Highness, go wherever you wish with the ship you will steal, and I will take the fall."
"Why?"
Vader hesitated. "Do you know the names of your birth parents?"
Luke swallowed. He was banned from saying them—especially to Imperials. "I know my birth mother's name, yes."
"Then know that Padmé Amidala was my wife"—Luke gaped—"and I do not intend to see my son die when he has only now been returned to me."
There was… nothing he could say to that. Absolutely nothing at all. His head spun, he was glad he was sitting down because otherwise he would fall, and…
And Vader was his father. Bail had told him that, to save Luke.
What?
"Stay here," his birth father ordered him. "My interrogations frequently last hours, and no one will miss you in that time." Luke flinched at the reminder. "You are safe to hide here, until then; when the time comes I will smuggle you to the hangar."
"I assume that the ship will be tracked, in case I go to the Rebel base?" Luke said bitterly.
Vader was candid enough to reveal, "I cannot promise it will not be."
"It's a good thing I'm not going to the base, then. I'm going back to Alderaan." He lifted his chin. "If you want me to live, you're going to find a way to stop Tarkin from obliterating my planet."
To his surprise, Vader ruffled his hair. It was an instinctive, affectionate motion that had both of them freezing and backing away.
"You are every bit the politician your mother was." It didn't sound like a compliment, but the tone was fond. "I will find a way to save you."
Luke swallowed. "Thank you. Father." He tried the word on his tongue—it was strange applying it to anyone but Bail, but not unpleasant.
Vader straightened up the moment he heard it.
"I will find a way," he reiterated—like an oath he was swearing to himself. "And you will be safe, my son. By any means necessary."