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Luke took a step back, steeling his resolve, and threw his lightsaber away.
“Never! I’ll never turn to the dark side. You’ve failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”
He longed to glance at his father, turn his attention in the Force to the man, but the Emperor’s glee only rose at his proclamation, and Luke’s stomach sank.
“I have broken many Jedi, young Skywalker. You will be no different.”
There was only time for his eyes to widen in sudden fear at the shift in the air, a crackle that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, before wicked blue electricity shot out of the Emperor’s hands and pummeled him with all the force of the Dark Side.
It curled through his veins like thousands of knives, slicing through all his defenses. His limbs locked up and his mouth was caught open in a scream that couldn’t make it past his throat, just twisted his face in agony. In the corner of his mind he felt his limbs twitch and jerk uncontrollably, slamming against the cold durasteel floor again and again.
Darkness overwhelmed his vision. Emotions, not his own, poured through him in a torrent; anger hotter than any day under the suns of Tatooine, rage more violent than any battle he’d been in, an oily satisfaction at his pain twisting each knife deeper. They pressed against his mind like gravity, stealing the air from his lungs.
He barely noticed when it stopped, collapsing to the floor. Smoke rose from his body and laughter echoed in his ears, the Dark Side crooning as it wove through every cell. His chest stuttered along with his heart, rising and falling unevenly.
A scream finally tore through his throat at the next volley.
Desperately, he pulled the Force towards him. It came in trickles, interspersed with the Dark and flickering in and out of his grasp.
“Father, please...help me,” he managed. His head was thrown back with the next jerk of his limbs, and his jaw slammed shut hard enough to ache. Spots dotted his vision, making it almost impossible to see the dark, still form of his father, standing beside the nexus of Luke’s pain.
His father had to...had to help him...Luke knew there was good in him...he knew it…
So why wasn’t his father moving?
The pain and Dark rose like the winds of a sandstorm, high and shrill, and he was swept under, drowning in the Emperor’s laughter.
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Luke shot awake, gasping, then gasped again, face twisting in pain, as he pulled some injury. Panting, he tried to calm his racing heart.
The walls were durasteel, the floor grates; he lay on a durasteel slab, and the lights were entirely too bright, piercing his eyes. Definitely an Imperial cell. The Force flitted away from his reach and cold metal sucked the warmth from his wrists - Force-suppressant binders. He’d dealt with those before; the best-supplied Imperial outposts seemed to have them on hand more and more as the war dragged on.
Where was he? He remembered a big mission, some sort of stealth operation, but not where…
He gasped again as the memories ricocheted through him like lightning.
His father. The second Death Star. The Emperor, laughing, cackling, as he shocked Luke again and again, his father deaf to his pleas.
He shivered at the memory of the Emperor’s cold, oil-slick Force presence. It was worse than his father’s; it wasn’t nearly as heavy, but it was twice as suffocating, and it felt like it stuck to his skin, seeking out any cracks or soft spots in his shields. At least the binders kept him from having to actually feel that right now.
He looked around the cell again. The unadorned walls gave away nothing.
Surely if he had met the Emperor, the Sith wouldn’t have allowed him to live. Vader certainly seemed to think so, anyway. It had to have been another nightmare, brought on by the looming mission to Endor. He felt no pain, other than the headache and slight dizziness from being severed from the Force.
He sighed, and leaned back against the wall.
Kriffing hells. What a nightmare. Honestly, he couldn’t wait for the Endor mission; he was getting tired of dreaming every night of his father and the Emperor. The sooner he faced them both and got it over with, the better.
The door hissed open, and he sat up, then gasped, a strangled sound. His heart beat against his ribs as if trying to escape, and his hands began to shake.
Emperor Palpatine.
Not a nightmare.
“Good, good; you’re finally awake, my new apprentice.” The Sith’s face twisted into a smile that made Luke want to gag. “Now we can begin your training in earnest.”