PSL: Naboo

[hisfathersimage]

Luke ignored Vader for the rest of the trip.

For a moment, he had almost forgotten who and what he was dealing with. A totally self centred, self absorbed creature of darkness, boiled in rage and suffering who wanted him to convert to his way of thinking and start up a second reign of terror and horror after killing Palpatine.

And in aid of doing that, they were going... to Naboo?

He wasn't really sure why they were on their way there. It was his mother's home world. It was Palpatine's home world. It was a paradise of water and greenery that had produced something so rotten and evil that the galaxy heaved to try and dislodge it from itself.

He stands in the cockpit's doorway, nursing his stump in his left hand and watching hyperspace, preparing for the shock of dropping back out again.

Comments

[hisfathersimage]

"How about I only take one... bunch? I might not even like them."

[nouskaiananki]

"Then go try them." That Luke hasn't had them before doesn't surprise him, but his reluctance does.

[hisfathersimage]

Right. Of course.

Luke heads off to the vineyard. He has a vague memory of Han commenting that booze fruit and eating fruit tasted different, but it's not like he'll be able to tell the difference until he finds eating grapes.

He carefully removes a single grape to bite into. Firm skin, splinter like seeds, a splash of incredibly sweet juice.

He's really not sure. It's very sweet.

He comes back without grapes. "It's really, really sweet."

[nouskaiananki]

"They are yes." Cold tended to blunt the sweetness, but he hadn't thought about that.

But if Luke doesn't like these, it's not like he's going to force him to eat them.

Instead he motions to the waiting ship. "Time to board."

[hisfathersimage]

Of course it is.

"Where to next?"

[nouskaiananki]

"A final stop on Naboo, then a rendezvous with my personal ship." The shuttle was more secure, less for Luke attempt to escape with, but less suited to someone with biological needs.

[hisfathersimage]

"Your personal ship, or your 'personal' ship, the flagship of the Empire?" Because they're not the same thing. If nothing else, the Executor gave him a much broader scope for escape or internal sabotage.

[nouskaiananki]

"My personal ship." He pauses for a moment. "The Emperor has spies among my staff aboard the Exector, and even a few in my primary home, some openly spying, some attempting to conceal themselves. My butler Vaneé can deal with the ones in latter location easily enough. I will not reveal to him I have you." Vader pats Luke lightly on the cheek. He can't have you, he means.

[hisfathersimage]

Oh, this is really getting messy.

Vader's serious about keeping him secret and that means he's probably serious about 'join me and rule the galaxy'. And that pat on the cheek, that's an attempt at physical affection from something that doesn't really remember what affection is, but it making the attempt.

"Right. And then we'll just... fly around?"

[nouskaiananki]

It was messy the moment Vader found out Luke was his son. Taking him from Bespin had been impulsive. Bringing him here had been spiteful, risky, and sentimental. Traveling to Padmé's tomb was entirely for Vader's benefit.

But the Force is whispering, something exists beyond this, a chance at something, less a message and more a driving need to continue crawling forward towards something Vader couldn't understand, could barely catch a sense of. But keeping Luke from Palpatine was right, he could feel that.

"We will go were the Force leads."

[hisfathersimage]

That's not a plan.

That's barely a thought of a plan.

"... okay." What the hell. He's chased worse ideas for less reason. "We follow the Force."

[nouskaiananki]

It worked out pretty well for Vader, and when it didn't, he still managed to claw something from it.

Save once.

Except Luke lived.

"Do you not feel it? In motion, something building, loke a gathering storm." Vader questions while ushering Luke up the ramp, the brown suitcase following along, Vader using his foot to press it against a wall out of the way.

[hisfathersimage]

"I can't feel much past you."

Yes. He felt it. Like a pressure building in his chest as he drew closer and closer to that moment on Bespin.

"There's a moment coming." Yes, he knows it. "A series of moments. Decisions. Bespin was one."

[nouskaiananki]

"We will work on that." Because he would need to. He has to want to, right?

"Yes. Though the Force is our path forward." Not whatever superweapon the Empire, and Palpatine, favored.

[hisfathersimage]

And it's their path, for now at least.

"I won't help put you on his throne," is what he ends up saying.

[nouskaiananki]

"I never planned to sit upon it." Help rule? Yes - but that's what he does (is supposed to do) now. Not be punished to serve under Moffs who may be a monster of Vader's own making but who he far far outranks. And who care for power first, peace and security second.

[hisfathersimage]

"I won't support the Empire. It's corrupt to the core. Evil. No one person should have power over everyone else. Not him. Not you." It takes and takes and gives nothing back but suffering.

[nouskaiananki]

"Come." Vader beckons Luke while he sits in the cockpit, beginning lift off procedures.

"What would put in it's place? The Emperor is dead. Now what do you do?"

[hisfathersimage]

"I don't know." And he's comfortable saying that. "I'm a farmboy from Tatooine and a pilot. I don't know what I don't know. I would want to back people I can trust to make those decisions. People who understand different cultures and economies and all that sort of thing. I grew up with the political system of 'Hutt controlled territory'."

[nouskaiananki]

"The Republic was rotting." He continues ushering Luke, into the copilot seat. "Your mother lived it, when they told her to tell her people to accept invasion and occupation by the Banking Clan, for months or longer. Weeks left then repairing the damage for the entirety of her term as queen." He stops, remembering. "Four years and beyond, to repair an invasion which lasted mere weeks."

He takes his seat. "You grew up under a muzzled Hutt system, I did not. And the Republic allowed it to continue, because they needed to access their hyperspace lanes. Care to guess who they sent to treat for that, despite multiple attempts at abduction?"

[hisfathersimage]

"I didn't say we should put back the system we had, did I?" He knows there were problems in the Republic, listening to Leia talk and rant and only half understanding her. "But the Empire is morally bankrupt, corrupt, cruel and designed mostly to spread misery and perpetuate suffering. It's the system of a Sith to empower himself. It can't stay."

[nouskaiananki]

"It doesn't need to be. This is not what I intended it to be." And he knew how much the Rebels idolized the late Republic, ignoring the massive problems with. "He wants it that way, but it needn't be."

[hisfathersimage]

"Dictatorships don't work." Leia had said that one often enough.

[nouskaiananki]

"You sound like your mother."

Vader's hands stay light on the controls. They don't always - there's marring on the right especially - but they are now.

"There was no difference in who ran the government the minute Palpatine declared himself Emperor or with the hour before. There was little difference two days before that, only slightly more six months before. The Republic was dying, hastened along by the machinations of Darth Plagius and Palpatine." Someday, someday Luke may come to understand how much a slight that was. "Yes, he and I delivered the death blow. But someone will have to take over once he is dead, or you will have your Rebellion and it's splinter groups, a hundred moffs, at least a few of the ISB, and countless warlords all fighting for the corpse."

[hisfathersimage]

Luke can hear what Vader's saying, but he can't believe that Palpatine's trampling of the galaxy and institutionalised cruelty is the better option. People who better understanding than him have plans for what will happen and no, he doesn't know them, doesn't understand them and he's okay with that.

"There's worse people to sound like."