Work Text:
Luke Skywalker looked irritably at his comlink as Imperial orders squawked out at an awful frequency, complete with fuzzy interference and absolutely no manners.
“Inquisitor Temple, rebels have infiltrated the ship and are attempting to rescue the prisoner in Detention Block AA-23. Address the problem immediately,” General Lida Maris ordered. Her voice was snappish and brisk, and Luke felt the urge to strangle her through the comm system, an indication that this was an ordinary day.
But alas, as powerful as he was in the Force, he was not near dedicated enough to cause a death from such a distance without use of a starfighter or a blaster.
Luke instead rubbed his temples, sighed, and spoke back into the comm. “Consider it taken care of,” he replied emotionlessly, and felt a pang of satisfaction when he felt Maris’s unease from the other side of the Death Star.
“Inqui-” Maris tried, but he cut her off.
“I said, I will take care of it,” he said icily, and, for good measure, switched his comlink off in a flourish. Then he glanced at the plain chrono on his wall, gave himself forty seconds to search the space station using the Force, and closed his eyes.
So, the rebels were trying to rescue Princess Leia of Alderaan. Not a woman he had met personally, but Grand-Moff Tarkin had commented sourly on her behaviour.
“As unpleasant and rude as her father,” he’d said with a scowl, “and as foolish and naive as a Jedi.”
When Luke had asked what she’d said to offend him so, Tarkin had glared at him coldly and informed him that he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. Tarkin was an idiot, quite honestly. Admittedly, he was clever, manipulative, and ruthless, but he ignored the power of the Force for the feeble power of men and women. Human men and women, all of whom Luke knew to be weak.
Quite honestly, Luke found it surprising the Empire was run by humans. It made far more sense for a more powerful, cleverer species to be in charge, but somehow the human race had shoehorned its way into power.
And the ideas about power. That humans were somehow better? It was ridiculous, to put it mildly. Togruta were humanoid, but they had far more strength, and their sense of smell and their mild sense of echolocation from their montrals showed them to be obviously a better enhanced species. Hutts were dangerous, large, with long life-spans and were near impossible to kill without having to get up nice and close.
Although times were changing, were they not?
When the Death Star had been completed and used upon the planet Alderaan, Luke had not been present on the bridge, where Tarkin had forced Princess Leia to watch her planet burn. He felt her internal scream though, and he nearly doubled over and vomited from her grief and the burning pain of those on the planet below.
He had not seen what had happened, but he had known. An old, lower rank officer had grasped his shoulder when he nearly collapsed, and guided him back to his quarters, with a murmured- something, he couldn’t even remember- and a light pat on the back.
The memory, despite the pain that came with it, made him smile. Tarkin couldn’t stand him, the superior officers feared him, and the others- well, they liked him, and he liked them, and he was glad for it. They did what he told them, and weren’t afraid to tell the truth. Details were always a little fudged when a story was recounted to Tarkin, but Luke received only the whole truth.
“INQUISITOR,” Maris’s voice screeched from the overhead comm.
Luke squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “I am coming,” he said dangerously, and strode out. The corridor was empty, and he could feel a hot blaze somewhere down where the detention blocks were.
They were there.
Luke didn’t have to rush; he was a Sith, and yet he found himself walking faster and faster, until he was almost running.
A group of off-duty troopers lunged for their helmets as he passed, but he waved their ‘sirs’ away and claimed an elevator. Time seemed like it had slowed down; the doors slid closed painfully slowly, and he could hear his heartbeat echoing in his ears like-
Luke had the strangest image of a beautiful planet, and a kind-looking woman with dark hair, a pristine face, holding his own with soft and gentle hands.
His mother. Or, at least, the woman he’d invented in his head to play that role.
“You’re almost there,” she said, her smile pulling her eyes sparkling slits in her beautiful face. “You’re almost there. You’ve just got to reach a little further, my love-”
Somewhere distant, a drum boomed, and her face dissolved into teardrops and ash.
Luke stumbled against the wall of the elevator, breathless. He rubbed a clammy hand across his face, and steeled himself. That dream couldn’t repeat itself now. Not now, this was important.
Dead, imaginary men and women could not aid him where he was.
By the time the elevator opened on the detention level, Luke was composed and ready. It took him barely a second to locate the fugitives, and the Force sprint he initiated had them in his physical sights in less than a minute.
A Wookie, a princess, and a false trooper. Luke had to smile. What a motley crew.
It must have been so easy to sneak into the detention level in armour, pretending to escort a Wookie. Troopers weren’t trained for insidious threats; they were trained for battle, where both sides were clearly defined. One stormtrooper and a handcuffed Wookie were, to troopers, not the threat they appeared to be for Luke and other high-ranking officers.
Anyway. This little incursion had come to an end for the princess-
“Please don’t, my love,” saidthe woman with the soft face, “you do not yet understand-”
“Don’t move,” Luke hissed dangerously at the trooper’s back, cutting out the woman speaking in his brain. The man froze instantly, and to a ordinary soul, appeared as though he had given up, but Luke could see his thought process. “And don’t even think about going for that blaster.”
The princess, the ‘trooper’, and the Wookie turned slowly to face him.
“Now, toss me the blaster,” Luke ordered.
The trooper snorted. “Not exactly any incentive to do that, kid. You’re unarmed.”
“That’s what you believe,” Luke replied frostily. “And I’m going to give you the option of surrender. I’m sure your executions will be far less painful if you make this easy.”
“How delightful,” Princess Leia snarled, but the man shushed her.
“Let me do the talking, sweetheart,” he said, and the princess looked like she would love nothing more than to punch his face. And Luke would have allowed her.
Strange I could sense her, Luke thought. It wasn’t ordinary for a normal being’s emotions to be broadcasted so clearly to a Force-sensitive. Emotions from those not trained in the Force were easy to see, but blurred and wavery, as though they were underwater. The emperor’s rage was ice cold, sharp and jagged, not soft.
“The princess is a member of the galactic senate,” Luke said coldly. “I understand she would be far more qualified to-”
“Was a member,” the princess interrupted harshly, “but thank you for your unwanted input.”
Luke narrowed his eyes, and turned his direction back to the man. “Surrender now. Give me the blasters.”
The trooper had struck Luke as the kind of person who wouldn’t fall for a Force suggestion, the princess even more so, and he was proven correct.
“Y’know, I don’t think so,” the man in stormtrooper armour said conversationally. “Kid, I could take you out, from here, without a weapon.”
Princess Leia gave the man the most disgusted look Luke had ever seen in his life, and he had to physically restrain himself from laughing.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Luke said with a curdled smile. “I doubt you could take me out with an army behind you.”
Princess Leia’s eyes widened, and Luke felt her realise who he was. Finally.
The princess dropped her blaster and made to kick it to him, but the man lunged for it before her foot could make contact.
Thank you, Luke thought to the man. Though her gesture had seemed submissive, Luke knew what a kind of person she was, and had no doubt by the time it reached him it would have somehow caused a diversion, presumably by shooting him in the face or the foot. It wouldn’t have succeeded, but the inconvenience of it…
“What in the nine hells, lady?” The trooper demanded, now armed with two blasters. “We could have taken him!”
“Has your arrogance no bounds?” The princess asked him curtly. “Do you have any idea who this is?”
“Nope. Just a kid,” the trooper said.
The Wookie bellowed do not underestimate the cub, and the man frowned.
“Nah, he’s a kid.”
You were a child once.
“If I’m correct, that’s Inquisitor Temple.” Ah, and there, the growing smirk dropped from the man’s face.
“Well, how was I supposed to know that?!”
Luke’s frosty expression further hardened to a glare. “I’m wasting my time,” he said, and stretched out a hand.
“What are you-?”
The blaster flew across the corridor and landed neatly into Luke’s waiting palm.
“I was going to give you the option to surrender,” he said darkly, “but you just-”
As the words left his mouth, the princess stared him directly in the eye, and he suddenly forgot everything.
He knew her.
He did.
Those eyes and the fury and the anger in them was recognisable and familiar, like she was somebody he had seen or met as a child, but had forgotten long ago, the only memory the faint taste of their presence in the air.
Who was she?
She was not the woman in his dreams; she was warm and soft where the princess was blazing and sharp; the eyes were the same, that was true, but there was something in Princess Leia’s eyes that was different. Cooler and hotter, sharper and blunter, tautological and contradictory, all crammed together into one soul.
He had met Bail Organa before, a man from whom he had gotten the strangest impression that the viceroy felt sorry for him; he could see it all in his eyes.
Breha Organa, before her death, had been a woman he had glimpsed only from HoloNet, but she too, was soft and gentle like the woman of his nightmares. The ones Sidious tried to blot out.
Luke’s first memory of the emperor’s wrath over his- memories? Dreams?- took place when he was four years old. Before that, it was just fuzzy bits and pieces, crackles of blue electricity and his own fear, stinking and suffocating.
His crime?
“I keep seeing two grown-ups in my dreams.” Sidious had stared at him, blank and hateful eyes staring into him.
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know,” Luke had replied. “The man is very tall and has a big cut on his eye. The lady’s not very tall, but she’s kind.”
Luke could not quite remember what happened after that, but he never spoke of them again.
They stayed with him.
Princess Leia, now that he could see into her eyes and into her, was not, could not be their- the Organa’s- daughter. She was paler than the pleasant tan of her ‘parents’, and her eyes were far hotter and angrier than any he had ever seen, save one perhaps.
(The man’s eyes were fire and water.)
The way of the emperor, and by extension the way of Luke and the Sith, was chill and ice. He knew only distantly, from whispers and the occasional dropped hint that his own father had been all blazing anger, with far, far too much love to ever succeed.
“You are weak, like he was,” Sidious had hissed amongst crackles of lightning and his own writhing. “You love too strongly. Do not disappoint me.” And Luke, distant and dizzy and curling in on himself, had agreed.
Ice was the only way. His father, or so his master had told him, had been raised a Sith from birth, fighting against the selfish Jedi from the day he first picked up a lightsaber to the last, when a Jedi knight named Obi-Wan Kenobi had turned it on him.
Was Princess Leia a Jedi?
He had never known hot anger.
Cold anger was what he was taught.
The princess had anger like fires sizzling away at flesh.
Jedi?
But no, Lord Sidious had told him of all the ways Jedi, beings who turned their own lives to misery and were as useless to others as they were to themselves. Chilled, distant beings, like the Sith were too.
Leia Organa, if that were truly her name, was burning.
Like my father was.
And like herself, too. That was somehow more special, more personal.
And Luke found himself saying something he would never have considered, thought, or believed himself to be capable of saying.
“Go,” he told them, and lowered the blaster.
The trooped blinked. “What?”
“I said go,” he said forcefully. “Before I change my mind and come to my senses.”
Both the princess and the trooper narrowed their eyes at him. And Luke saw everything. They didn’t believe he would let them go, they would do something stupid, some ridiculous plan that would get them caught and killed.
They were so stupid, couldn’t they see he was letting them go; why were non-Force-users so karking stupid-
And then the Wookie rumbled, trust him.
“Why?” Luke asked, and found he was asking at the same time as the trooper.
The Wookie looked at him, steadfast. I know who you are.
Luke laughed aloud, and dropped the blaster. For a few seconds, the three looked surprised, as if they hadn’t expected him to let it go.
They were correct.
Luke drew his lightsaber from his belt and ignited it. The three rebels flinched, red light reflecting in their eyes.
“See? A Sith,” Princess Leia said savagely. “Think you can take him now, flyboy?”
“For krething-” began the trooper, but the Wookie ignored them both.
“I am Inquisitor Temple,” Luke announced to the Wookie, glaring, just daring him to say anything different.
“No one knows, boy,” Sidious told him. “You are alone.”
I know who you are, the Wookie said.
“And how in the galaxy would you know that? I am Inquisitor Temple, and that is the only name I am known by,” he snarled, the burning blade pointed directly at the Wookie. “My true name is known by only two. Myself, and the emperor. Now go, before I kill you myself.”
No one knew him, no one knew his name or his past or his family, all they knew was that the emperor had trained him, and that was all they ever would.
I never said I knew your name. I recognise your face. Or one like it, from the Clone Wars.
“Liar,” Luke said, and was annoyed and alarmed to see his hand quiver. Inside, something chilled him. The last day of the Clone Wars was the day of two births, his own and the empire’s.
“Chewie?” the man asked anxiously, still clutching the princess’s gun. The princess looked like she wanted nothing more than to rip it from his hands and take control of the situation.
That is how I know.
Luke took a step backwards, his shoulder-blades ramming into the closed blast doors behind him. He stared at the Wookie. And he stared back.
That is how I know, the Wookie repeated.
“Go,” Luke hissed again, lowering his blade fractionally, but leaving it lit.
We can trust this cub to keep his word, the Wookie informed the two humans he flanked, and they disappeared so quickly that an ordinary man would never have seen where they had gone.
Luke slid slowly to the floor, hardly remembering to deactivate his lightsaber before it nearly stabbed him in the thigh.
“Kriffing-” he said to himself, before he trailed off.
Was this good or bad?
Was it hours or minutes later when two troopers burst through from the elevator? Luke couldn’t tell anymore, but that didn’t matter.
“Inquisitor Temple! Sir!” The woman gasped, pulling her helmet off. Her dark cheeks were flushed from what seemed to be a sprint. Luke internally approved of her close-cropped hair; any longer would have to be extremely uncomfortable in the helmet. “I understand that-”
She stopped in her tracks, the words dying on her lips as she saw Luke’s deranged smile. Her companion, a shorter man, pulled out his blaster and spun, surveying the rest of the corridor for the fugitives.
“Sir?” she tried again. “Are you alright? You look a little-”
“Uneasy,” the man suggested, confident that the hallway was free from rebels.
Luke’s cheeks hurt from his grin. “Not at all,” he said unconvincingly.
Changing the subject, she asked, “Sir, did the prisoners escape?” She stretched out an armoured arm to him.
“What? Oh, yes they did,” Luke replied, accepting the proffered hand, pulling himself up. He noted with some displeasure, when he was back on his feet, that she was taller than him.
Now, where were the rebels headed? It looked as if they were heading for the lower hangar bay. “I think they’re heading for the upper hanger bay,” Luke lied, pointing the opposite direction they had run. He switched the comlink on his wrist back on. “The fugitives are likely headed to the upper hangar bay,” he barked into the comm. “Prepare to meet them. Have weapons on stun, not kill.” Then he turned to the two awaiting his order anxiously. The woman had stuffed her helmet back on her head.
“Yes sir?”
“I need you both to report to General Maris. Tell her that the rebels are all disguised as troopers. If you encounter a group on the way to the bridge, ask for identification.”
“Yessir.” Two quick salutes later, and those two had disappeared as well.
Luke stood coldly in the detention level, alone, numb, yet somehow… euphoric.
At the back of his mind, he understood that Inquisitor Jade was probably going to try to pull his bowels out of his throat at the emperor’s command, but he didn’t particularly care.
He had just committed treason against the empire, for a rebel princess, a smuggler, and a Wookie.
And it felt surprisingly good.