Chapter Text
“I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness… I wanted him to find no good in me and he didn’t. There is none. But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I don’t know; it came to me like a thief in the night, and now I love her so much my heart is bursting with it. All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that the love was no bigger than a mustard seed in the shadow of them, and I wished I’d committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still…”
—The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Luke’s face was apparently an artist’s nightmare. Sheev hadn’t expected it, but with the number of unsatisfactory family portraits he’d received over the years where the boy’s face was a shapeless mass rather than a pleasant likeness, he was forced to acknowledge it.
That did not mean accept it, of course. Many portrait artists had died for this.
It had got to the point once that he’d considered switching the annual family portrait to holograms instead. But… It was a tradition on Naboo for them to be done in oils. Holograms were cheap, easy, although professionals were still needed to make them look suitably impressive. Oil painting was an expensive rarity.
Nonetheless, it was expensive in patience as well as in credits. As Sheev watched this painter frown over the blob of Luke’s face, scenting panic in the Force like blood in the water, he privately thought that all those decades in politics had actually been training for this. The Sith waited. It was all they had done for years. But the Sith had won, now, and Sheev was tired of waiting.
Even if he recognised that in some cases, it was necessary.
As they walked out of the artist’s studio, still wearing all their velvet finery, Sheev glanced sideways at his grandson. Luke looked deep in thought, his brow puckered, his lips drawn in a tight line. His hands gripped his cane tightly, pulling Sheev’s gaze up the length of his frame, to the stiff back, the trembling fingers, the tense shoulders.
Vader was ahead, holding the automatic door open for the both of them. He had eyes only for his son, of course. Sheev blocked his view of him, stepping in front of Luke to put out a hand and place it on Luke’s atop his cane. Sheev’s own cane felt heavy in his left hand as he did.
“How goes your work with the magnates?” Sheev asked.
Luke glanced up at him, blue eyes cold and still as the undisturbed mountain lake beside the Sheev estate on Naboo, long since cleared of fish and wildlife. Pain pinched his cheeks—constant pain, wrought by his old injury, Sheev knew. But he did not dwell on it.
“Well,” Luke said. “But none of them want to listen to me.”
“Then make them listen to you.”
“I’m trying.” Luke’s tone was not amused.
Sheev wasn’t either. He disliked the feeling in his chest and set it aside, like he always had on his path to greatness. Feelings fade. Power remains. “Try harder. You have enormous resources at your disposal. Use them, and they dare not argue with you.”
It wasn’t that Sheev had any intention of dying. The aim of the Sith was immortality. He was the greatest Sith of all time—he did not delude himself with humility—and knew he was fast on the path of discovering that secret for himself. That Luke was the Imperial Prince, and his nominal heir, therefore meant nothing; if Sheev was indeed around for the rest of eternity, there would be no need for Luke to learn how to deal with the pettiness of politics for himself.
But he needed to learn anyway. Sheev was a Sith. He did not protect anyone, so Luke would have to learn to protect himself.
That started with figuring out how to bend a handful of petty magnates to his will. Once he had accomplished that, and acquired the doonium they needed from their mines, Sheev would introduce Luke to what they would use it for. The Imperial Academy, with its emphasis on military rigours, had taught Luke the traditional methods of Imperial enforcement. The Death Star was the future of it.
Luke was not ready yet. But he would be.
He’d averted his gaze, though. Sheev wondered how much his back was hurting him. He’d been forced to stand for two hours for that portrait, but his shields were blast doors, and no whisper of pain slipped out to stain the Force. If nothing else, Luke was resilient, for a nineteen-year-old.
Sheev put on a grandfatherly sigh to set him at ease. He would get nothing from him if he were this tense. “Try again,” he advised, trying to set his tone kindlier. “How goes your training?”
Luke glanced at his father over Sheev’s shoulder. “Poorly.”
Sheev gritted his teeth. “Try again there, then. A Sith does not relent.”
“No,” Luke agreed. He sidestepped his grandfather and kept walking. Sheev turned to watch him go.
Such disobedience. Sometimes, Sheev doubted Luke’s usefulness at all. Especially with how Vader now watched Sheev, ready to turn to violence if he thought it necessary. It should be exhilarating, having an apprentice so ready to betray him, but there was no finesse to it. It, like everything else in his victory, was boring.
Behind them, Sheev heard the artist curse. No doubt he was painting over Luke’s face, again and again, trying to get the shapes right.
He could live for now. They’d had him for five years, and he was the one who did the best job, unfortunately, even if it came slowly and painfully. But still, Sheev hesitated when he walked back to his throne room, red guards following him like bloody shadows, and paused in front of the previous year’s portrait.
Himself, clad in his usual black robe, seated regally on a throne. Vader, loomed behind him, almost impossible to pick out at first glance against the dark drapery behind them. And Luke, his scarlet jacket a blood smear on black velvet, his hair the burnished gold trim. His face was pale and tight. Every year, his face was pale and tight.
Every year, in every painting, Luke looked unhappier.
Artists were pathetic. By now, they should have Luke’s face burned on the inside of their eyelids, but still this was the best they could do.
“Lord Vader,” Sheev said patiently. “What is this… pet?”
He had wondered at the sudden blossoming of Vader’s presence in the Force, here on Mustafar. He had not anticipated the child.
It looked up at him, a sloppy head of golden hair falling around its eyes, so Sheev wasn’t entirely sure where to look to invoke the maximum effect of intimidating it. Whatever it was, and wherever it was looking exactly, its sticky fingers were entangled in the soft fabric of his dark trousers. He feared there would be a sugar trail left behind later.
Vader was still paralysed in the entrance door. Had he truly not expected that his master would sense this swelling of fate? Had he expected peace for him and this… thing?
“Master,” he said. The vocoder had never sounded so desperate. Sheev wanted to laugh, but then the thing tried to bite his shin, and laughter fled with its tail between its legs. “I can explain.”
“I am counting on it.”
Vader did not explain. He just continued to stare, gormless, as his pet started to chew idly on the edge of Sheev’s robe.
Sheev sighed. “Where did you find it?” he pushed. That was as good a starter question as any.
He made to kick the child away, as hard as possible, but before his foot could make purchase with its soft, stupidly unprotected head, he found it stiffened in midair. Vader’s hand was outstretched.
“Do not,” Vader said, “touch him.”
That was the closest thing to rebellion Sheev had ever heard in him. He was so invigorated by it that he let the gross offence of Vader speaking to him like that pass without comment.
For now.
“Then answer my questions. Where did you find it?”
“With Kenobi.” Vader had finally taken the hint and scurried up to lean down—it wasn’t in a bow, but Sheev took it as a grovel anyway—to pick up the thing and hoist it into his arms. The child laughed and reached out to touch his mask.
His relief at being freed from the sticky, nosy, many-fingered beast meant he almost overlooked what had been said. But after a moment in which he rearranged his robes, it struck him. “Kenobi? He lives?”
“No longer.”
There was that, at least.
“And this is his apprentice, then?” He hadn’t been bowled over by the child’s Force-sensitivity, but that made sense. Children tended to be better at shielding, and they rarely showed their potential unless they were actively using the Force anyway. Sheev’s lips curled back from his teeth in a smile. “So young? I suppose that is what the Jedi are reduced to, now—the child kidnappers they always were.”
“Kidnappers indeed,” Vader thundered.
“And you are to seek revenge even after Kenobi’s death? Torment his would-be apprentice—”
“Luke is my son.”
Sheev pinched his lips together to prevent him from saying something he would have to fry out of Vader’s memory later.
“Oh?” That did explain why the child was so annoying, at least. “Your child survived? How…”
Sheev eyed the boy—Luke—being bounced in his father’s arms. The boy was smiling.
“…wonderful.”
“He will live with me,” Vader announced, like a child who rushed to impose their will before being ordered otherwise. “I am his father. I will raise him.”
Sheev fixed a bland smile to his face. “I would not hear anything to the contrary, Lord Vader.”
Vader looked suspicious. Good. He wasn’t a total fool, then. “I will train him, too.”
Could he push harder on this one? Possibly. He left the door open for later down the line. It may be that the boy ended up as useless as his mother; Sheev would hardly want to waste time with him then.
“We will revisit the topic of his training when he is capable of walking on his own.” He reconsidered. “Even that may be too soon.”
“He will be a prince of the Empire!” This was Vader’s last demand. And his most desperate one, judging by the edge to his vocoded voice. “The Imperial Prince. A title worthy of him. It is him, my son, I have worked so hard for, after all.”
Prince of the Sith Empire, a tiny, squalling babe like this? He was pathetic. He was so soft and squishable. That was hardly the aura of fear and menace they wanted to project.
Then again…
He was, as many journalists, pundits, and vapid courtiers would later cluck and coo, adorable. Sheev could use adorable while he ground the galaxy beneath the boot of the Sith.
“As he deserves,” Sheev agreed.
Vader was staring at him, shocked to his core. Sheev secretly revelled in the confusion he’d sown. Vader had struggled, shifting to their new Sith master-apprentice relationship after so many years of viewing Sheev as a mentor who would never so much as disagree with him. The violence of it had undermined all he knew about their relationship, even as it was the only thing in the galaxy he had left. It was always useful to keep one’s apprentice off-balance. This would confuse him even more.
“Shall we plan a formal introduction for him?” Sheev asked. “Our subjects will adore him.”
Bouncing on Vader’s hip, Luke hiccupped and turned a bright, beaming smile on Sheev. He pointed at him, hand grasping.
Disgusting.
His fake smile pushed across his face with difficulty, like stretching old, dried-out leather. “Almost as much as I do.”
Luke’s lightspear darted across the air, leaving a pink trail in its wake. Sheev slashed his own saber up to counter it before it burnt his knee, and he was surprised at the effort it took. Luke grinned at him a little wildly.
Sheev stepped to the side and tried to attack again, past the plasma blade at the end of the spear. Luke shortened up and blocked it with the body of his cane instead. It was threaded with cortosis, and Sheev’s lightsaber immediately shorted out on impact.
He retreated before Luke could press the advantage, hitting the ignition on his lightsaber furiously to get it up again. Finally it sputtered back to life and he swung—and Luke met him mid-swing with the end of his spear, well out of lightsaber range, and twisted.
The point of the lightsaber stung Sheev’s wrist. He hissed and dropped his saber, letting it fizzle out. If they hadn’t been fighting on training saber settings, that would have taken off his hand.
Luke’s grin widened as the tip of his spear hovered at Sheev’s throat. “Got you, Grandfather.”
Sheev took a moment to look at him.
Luke’s hair was getting longer, falling in his eyes in dark blond fronds, damp with sweat. The training clothes, too, clung to his slim frame—too slim, perhaps, but Sheev dismissed the worry. His stance was bold but careful, and Sheev with a flicker of unease wondered how much these training sessions hurt his back. But his hands were firm on the base and shaft of his cane, practiced and strong, and Sheev knew that if he pushed, it would not be Luke that gave way.
Sheev gently pushed the shaft of Luke’s lightspear down. Luke took the hint and twisted the handle, so it collapsed back into a spear.
“So you did,” he said, unconscious of the smile on his face.
“This child,” Sheev said, kneeling on the carpet with his rich robes dragging in the dust around him, “is demonspawn.”
Luke continued to cry. Sheev didn’t know why he’d ever brought him to Naboo on this diplomatic trip. Certainly, he was a useful tool for laundering his image, but what price had he paid? He was an emperor. He should not have to deal with this.
“Indeed, sir,” Mas Amedda said, peering down into the cradle. Luke continued to kick his tiny feet and wail.
“Do not stop! Keep looking! I have no idea where he could have secreted it.”
Sheev crouched down, his old bones protesting, to peer under the sofa. The Queen of Naboo had given them such nice quarters in the palace for their stay. There was so much exquisite furniture for a baby’s dummy to conceal itself within.
“I will have Vader send the child away,” he decided. “No future apprentice is worth this trouble.” Maul had never cried like this—and Sheev hadn’t even raised him, most of the time.
“Of course, sir.” Mas Amedda carefully lifted several pillows to look underneath them.
“I cannot understand—oh.” Sheev’s gaze alighted on the baby blue dummy lying on the carpet right next to Luke’s cradle. The carpet was a pattern inspired by waterfalls, so it had blended in well. “There.”
He picked it up and wiped it off as best he could. Ah, well. When he stuck it in Luke’s mouth, at least he stopped crying.
Instead, the boy gazed up at him with big blue eyes. He might have been smiling.
“Perhaps he can stay,” Sheev concluded.
Mas Amedda’s voice was utterly flat. “Perhaps, sir.”
“Have you been paying attention in your politics lessons, Luke?” Sheev asked, bending his head to the side slightly so his words were for Luke’s ears alone.
Luke straightened a little at his side, hands tightening on his cane. He really should see about getting Luke his own throne to sit at for Imperial functions like these, Sheev thought, then waved it aside. Later.
“I have,” Luke said, scanning the crowd. “Is there something here I should be noticing?”
Thanks to the dais that separated them from the rest of the hall, no sycophantic courtiers were swarming them just yet. But they were considering it. Anyone with eyes could tell that, and Luke had far more to rely on than just his eyes.
“Who wants something from us?”
A slight smile raised the corners of Luke’s lips. “Matrod feels he deserves more credit for the recent output of his sector. He might come to complain.” He added, “As subtly as possible, of course.”
“Should we give him that credit?”
“It was his daughter that did all the leadership and administrative work.”
Sheev laughed. “Very good. Let’s quietly demote him in a few weeks. If he complains to us here, demote him on the spot.”
Luke nodded, still scanning the crowd. “We need to make it clear that competence is rewarded.”
“Precisely.”
After a moment’s more consideration, Luke said, “Sol is also glancing our way. Possibly because she’s worried we’ll support Cavesta’s claim to the Circarpous system over hers.”
“Should we?”
“No. Cavesta isn’t as effective as she is.”
“Good.” Sheev let himself look out over the collection of peacocks he called his court, and something like pride crept into him. “I would propose a bet with you.”
“Oh?” Luke tilted his head to look at his grandfather, his smile widening.
“I do not think any of them will approach us today,” he said. “They won’t even approach you, when you go out to do the rounds. This function is their gossip gathering event. They will use next week’s gathering to formally make their demands.”
Luke hummed. “I’ll take that bet,” he said. “With confidence.”
“Confidence?”
Luke nodded, then with a flourish of his cane, he strode forward, off the dais, to begin to mingle with the crowd. Good. He’d deduced exactly what Sheev had wanted from him.
Sheev smiled to himself. Luke spoke to Sol animatedly, asking how she was—the moment she decided to voice her concern early was obvious on her face. When Luke turned on his well-studied charm, it was hard to deny him.
And this way, none of this resentment would foster. Luke would turn this on everyone who came. No one who sought to surprise them with well-prepared demands later would be able to resist being caught off guard.
Luke would win the bet, of course.
He always did.
Luke’s body lay in the hospital bed, pale and thin. His eyes, tightly closed, were dark craters in his face. Tubes ran in and out of his body.
In the Force, he could feel Luke, wavering like a candle against the inexorable night.
The head medic entered the room like a stubborn bug. After standing in the entryway for a few minutes, she cleared her throat. “Your Majesty,” she said.
Sheev did not acknowledge her.
“We wanted to ask your permission to operate on him. We have identified the problem, and there is the possibility—”
“The possibility?” Sheev asked dangerously.
She fidgeted. “He could die even with rapid treatment,” she said carefully. “Such are his injuries.” An awkward pause. “What are your orders?”
He knew why she had to ask, of course.
This was not the first time she’d had to operate on someone who she suspected might be the intentional target of his assassinations.
“Do whatever you can,” he said.
She blinked. “Sir?”
“You understood me.” He stood from the chair, gripping his cane, hating how his legs trembled. “I care not for cost. I care not for excuses. Save his life, or yours is forfeit.”
In the past, when he had offered the services of his personal medics to a courtier who’d been the target of an assassination attempt, all he had to do was say that he understood the risks for the doctors to know to let the target die.
He wanted no such doubts, here.
“Save him,” he ordered. “I want him to wake up.”
She nodded, throat bobbing. “Yes, my lord.”
After his accident, Luke was in constant pain. The surgery might have enabled him to walk again, but as the head medic in the palace had informed Sheev personally, all the surgery in the galaxy couldn’t have prevented him the pain he would live in for the rest of his days. That made no difference to the man’s fate. Sheev executed him anyway.
In quiet. Behind locked doors. Luke didn’t need to know about that.
They had suggested painkillers. There were other options too—brain implants, nerve dampening—that could let Luke control how much pain he felt at any given moment. Sheev had said he would consider it.
He wondered what Vader would prefer.
No. He knew what Vader would prefer.
The Sith thrived on pain. Vader knew that more than anyone. While he had been left disabled by his own fatal idiocy against Kenobi, it had left him stronger, with an endless well of his own suffering to draw on. It was part of what made Vader so useful to Sheev. And it was, he knew, exactly why Vader would insist they spare no expense in treating Luke.
Vader was weak. He was Sith because he wanted to inflict suffering on others to prevent his beloved son from suffering. Perhaps, had he found Luke later in life, he would have understood better just how beneficial pain and suffering was to expanding one’s power. He would have embraced the chance to teach Luke what he had learnt, and in doing so made the boy the most powerful Sith in the galaxy.
But he had raised that boy from infancy. Sheev saw it in him: love, pure and unfiltered, untouched by the cruelty the Sith had to teach to make their students strong. He would not hurt Luke. His own failures in training Luke in the dark side had proven that.
He would not make Luke hate him.
Would Sheev?
Luke still lay unconscious from the surgery as he mulled it over. Sheev had ordered that Vader not be told about this. It was a power he usually enjoyed—over life and death; over joy and misery; over his apprentice, and the one thing Vader lived for—but his own pleasure was muted, tonight.
He had said that he would do what he must. And he had—in the worst way, he had. Luke made them both weak. Would Sheev exacerbate that? He had the chance to make them all strong. No painkillers. No technology. Only the Force, and what little relief the dark side could bring.
He’d thought that it would only be one decision. That was all he had foretold, perhaps blinded by his own passions. But he had to keep making them, over and over. It was always the way. Loyalty to the Sith required constant devotion—constant tests. But Sheev had long since killed his Sith Master. He had not been tested in a long time.
Hatred would make Luke strong. It was taught—and if Sheev truly wanted a good future for Luke, he should teach him. Even if it was hatred of his grandfather.
Luke was lucky to be alive as it was. Whatever it was that had saved him—the Force? Luck? That fortunately placed beam, that broke his fall but broke his spine while it did so?—was a miracle. It was a miracle that Sheev was even making this decision in the first place. He should seize it and run. He should make sure that next time, Luke would be able to save himself. Too long had they argued over training, over the dark side, over strength and power. Now was the time to push.
Luke had nearly fallen to his death. It should be so easy to push him again, to watch him fall, in a far more glorious way.
Sheev sat with Luke for several hours one night, watching his eyes move under his eyelids, listening to the beat of his heart on the monitor. Vader sat watching him too—never taking his eyes off his son, but closely watching his master in the Force, nonetheless. He didn’t trust him. He likely suspected that Sheev had something to do with this.
When Sheev left the room, he sought the new head medic, freshly appointed. Luke was to be given the implants and the pain suppression technology—credits were of no issue. Whatever painkillers needed would be procured.
The first time Luke met Mara Jade, Sheev had not intended it. She had come to make her report to him on a mission he had sent her on to test her—her first. At twelve years old, she was an adept poisoner, if not quite able to defeat a trained stormtrooper in combat yet, so he had sent her to rid him of some minor, annoying senator. If she had failed, it would not matter overmuch; if she had succeeded, it would be convenient for him.
Of course, she had succeeded.
When she arrived in his throne room for her debrief, Luke was standing beside his throne, talking to him about his training regimen. He was better with the lightsaber every day, but it was still so heavy, and Djem So just didn’t seem the right form for him—
The moment he spotted Mara, he trailed off.
Sheev noted. “Ah, yes.”
For a moment, he considered if he should ask Luke to step outside. He still kept some business a secret from Luke, for sensitivity reasons. And the knowledge that a child about his age was going around murdering senators might distress him…
But he decided against it. Mara was here for Luke’s security, as much as anything else. He was allowed to appreciate her.
“Luke, this is Mara, one of my Hands-in-training,” he said. He nodded to her as she bowed to him. After a moment’s hesitation, she saw his irritable hand flick, and she bowed to Luke as well.
“Your Highness,” she said, at little bitterly.
Sheev’s hand was on Luke’s shoulder. She was watching that closely. Ah. She was jealous of the affection he held for Luke, then.
As she should be. That would only be useful for him.
Luke was watching her. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said politely, but his gaze was a little more intense than that.
Mara made her report on the successful mission, shooting glances at Luke the whole time. To Sheev’s surprise, the boy didn’t react much to the revelation that a senator had been murdered. He accepted the explanation that he had been a danger to the Empire easily enough.
When Mara left, he asked, “Is she a princess?”
She could be, Sheev thought, judging by Luke’s besotted expression. And that wouldn’t be totally amiss. Once fully trained, she would be a powerful asset to have at Luke’s side, protecting him.
“No,” Sheev said. “She is just a girl.”
Luke didn’t seem to hear it.
“Are you sure that’s what you want to wear to the gala?” Vader asked Luke, glancing sideways at Sheev.
Luke looked up at them both, grinning. He seemed to be drowning in black fabric. “Yes!”
Sheev licked his lips, hesitated. “A little more colour would be becoming,” he suggested. “You would draw more attention. You need to—”
“He is not your political pawn,” Vader warned.
“—stand out,” Sheev finished, ignoring him.
Luke, as it was, did the opposite of stand out. He was struggling to stand up. The cape was far too long for him, let alone the robe.
“I like this,” Luke insisted. “I look like you two!”
Sheev stiffened; he sensed Vader do the same. They looked at each other, each took in each other’s dark garb, the cape and robes, and the utter, unrelenting black.
“I see,” they said in unison. Sheev, at least, tried to keep his tone steady.
Vader did not. Vader swept Luke into his arms in a sudden burst of affection, and they walked away together, no more consultation needed. Sheev followed a little more awkwardly.
Luke did look like him, he mused. He tried to ignore what he felt about that.
Most beings, sentient or otherwise, Force-sensitive or not, flinched when Darth Sidious walked into a room. The same was true of Darth Vader. Even without laying eyes on them, a shiver would run over any being’s arm at their mere presence in the vicinity. That was the power of the dark side. That was the power of the Sith.
The whole galaxy knew to fear them.
Luke, when he caught a metaphorical glimpse of that dark, foreboding presence they carried with them like a shroud, ran after them as fast as possible, shouting for either his father or his grandfather.
He did not flinch at the darkness. He stared into it, wide-eyed with wonder, and waiting for it to extend its hand.
Despite a not-insignificant amount of self-loathing informing him that this was beneath him, and against all his teachings, Sheev always did.
Luke’s love of the dark’s embrace was problematic, sometimes. The Imperial Palace had formerly been the Jedi Temple. And the Jedi Temple had once been built on an old Sith shrine, presumably so the Jedi could study their ancient enemy without any busybody on Coruscant wondering what they were doing. Even the faint echoes of the Jedi’s light had been twisted into darkness by the tragedy Sheev had manufactured here—the shrine was steeped in the stuff.
Even Sheev felt it, on those visits he made when he wanted to revel in his victory. The weight of history bore down on him, reminding him of his responsibility. He was the Sith Master. His was Bane’s legacy, maintained for generations; his victory was the culmination of it all. And he must not let go.
It would have been a good place, in later years, to take Luke to teach him about the Sith. To indoctrinate him into the mysteries—into the long project, the legacy he was a part of—to impress upon him the significance of his power. It would have, if the shrine didn’t seem so intent on killing Luke.
The shrine was not sentient. But its hatred felt personal. And when Luke got too close, when he was looking for them, when he was bored—when he sensed the whiff of darkness and went running toward it looking for his family, Sheev or Vader had to get there first.
He threatens everything, voices hissed to Sheev as he ushered Luke away, one time. Do you not see it? You, with your vaunted foresight! Can you not detect the ruin he will bring to the Empire of the Sith? Strike him down before he destroys all we have built!
After securing Luke in a turbolift back to the surface with a handful of guards, Sheev had looked over his shoulder. The entrance to the shrine he’d constructed, an easy route from his own quarters, beckoned to him. The door was open; the way was cloaked in shadows.
“This is my empire,” he said. “My grandson will not destroy all I have built.”
Despite the horror he felt from them, it was their laughter that unnerved him more. It was a cackle—humourless and dissatisfied, more schadenfreude than actual mirth. The sound followed him all the way up to the surface.
You are blind, they mocked.
“Are you alright?” Luke asked him later, coming to him in his throne room. Sheev sitting in his throne and staring at a map of his empire, an unbecoming worry creasing his brow.
But he smoothed his brow when he saw Luke. Smiled at him. Beckoned, and Luke climbed into his lap to look at the Empire with him.
This is my empire, he thought. And Luke is my heir. I have nothing to fear from him.
It was true, in the end. Sheev had nothing to fear from Luke. He never would.
The Sith, however, were right to tremble.
One hour left.
Sheev sat in his throne and steepled his fingers. He wore no chrono, nor did he allow one in his throne room, but he felt the seconds tick by in his muscles and bones, nonetheless. Beyond the windows of his throne room, in the distance, Coruscant continued to move, heedless of what was about to happen.
It always did. No matter the ups and downs of politics, of the Jedi, of the war, Coruscant carried on. In part, it was what made this such an easy planet to rule, as the capital of the galaxy. So few of its denizens cared who sat in the fabled halls on the sunlit surface. They had work to do—mouths to feed, rent to pay, and the darkness of the deep to ward off with what light, drugs, or entertainment they could. Sunlight was a myth to them, let alone the age-old conflict of Jedi and Sith. Why rebel? Why object? Were the taxes any greater burden than last year?
This, though, he refused to accept their apathy on. What was about to happen would shake the stars.
At least—it would shake his. The constellations he had guided himself by for years would be rearranged. They would glow all the brighter for it, but they would never be the same again.
All would be well, for him. Sheev knew what he was doing. He was the greatest Sith Lord there had ever been.
So why were his hands trembling?
And why was he so afraid?
Fear was a hateful emotion. He did not care for it, and he had felt far too much of it of late. That was the problem. He could not allow this to continue.
And so he waited. The hour turned into half an hour. Twenty minutes. Ten minutes. Five.
His hands did not stop trembling.
Fear leads to anger, he told himself—a mantra that had become so intrinsic a part of him that he had not needed the words for a long, long time. Yet he needed them now. The last piece of scaffolding to hold the weakened parts of his being together, until he had finished repairs.
Fear leads to anger. He took in a deep breath. He was a Lord of the Sith. This fear was unbecoming of him. He raged at the one who had inflicted it upon him.
Anger leads to hate. It did. As he took his anger, fed it through the telescope of certainty, it focused into one searing point. He hated the galaxy for this. He hated himself for allowing it. But, most of all, he hated him.
Hate leads to suffering.
It had better, he told himself. It had better.
And it had better be brief.
The minutes disappeared like sand between his fingers. Before he knew it, it was time, and there was no space left for doubts.