"Stop it." Palpatine's voice was indifferent and dismissive as he walked into the room, the door closing behind him with a hermetic hiss. He crossed casually without pausing or looking to Luke, "You damage nothing but yourself."
Luke lurched up, incensed, but the action made his head spin and he staggered back a step, shouting out his frustration. Palpatine paused at that, finally turning to face him, sulfurous yellow eyes staring out intently from the dark shadows of the heavy crimson cowl he wore, disapproval and demand hardening them. But the boy wouldn't yield.
"You can't hold me here! Not any more!"
Palpatine said nothing, merely stood with his back to the ruined wall and watched patronizingly, as a father would watch a child's tantrum.
"This won't hold me! It can't hold me and you know it!"
Skywalker stumbled back another step, the venom in his voice fed by Palpatine's composed distain.
"You're right." The Sith Master allowed, "But then we both know that this cage is more than walls and bars."
Luke fell silent, his train of thought broken, though Palpatine knew from his wild eyes and his tense stance that he didn't yet have control of his Wolf.
"This is a far stronger cage, and you build it about yourself." The Emperor shook his head, gesturing to the sealed door, "There is the door- open it."
Skywalker wheeled about, still unsteady on his feet but no less determined. He lifted his hand...
"But know that if you do, it will cost the lives of everyone you know here- everyone. Right now. The order is already in place; I need only activate it with a word."
The boy faltered fractionally beneath the threat, knowing it was real- and even though his back was to the Emperor, Palpatine grinned, knowing he had him, his voice mocking now.
"See? Already the price is too high." He shook his head, disdainful and derisive, "You're contemptibly weak. Pitifully easy to manipulate."
"You don't have nearly as much control as you think."
There was fire in his voice as the boy turned, eyes and sense boiling with barely-controlled fury, and Palpatine knew it was the truth. This would not be the easy victory it had been before; there were fewer chains of self-restraint which held his Wolf in check now, and barely enough control yet to bind him- but there was sufficient, if he managed it with care.
"Then walk out of the door"
"And then what Master?" the boy said, "What have you left to hang over my head if they were dead?"
"I have other means." the Sith assured, "I would not relinquish my Wolf so easily."
The boy remained silent, chest still heaving from his exertion, sense wildly volatile.
Palpatine stood his ground, unmoved. "You think you can escape- that you can run. You think you can hide from me? Don't be naïve. The galaxy isn't big enough anymore. You'll never again be beyond my reach because I know exactly what you are willing to pay for your freedom and I know what cost you would consider too high. That is your weakness; you can be bought like anybody else- not with money or power, but with the lives of others. Beings you don't even know. That is how weak you are."
Palpatine stepped in close. "I have no such weakness. I would track you down a step at a time and I would leave death and destruction in my wake, because I know that you would react- that you cannot help but do otherwise. Every being that you've touched, spoken to, dealt with. Every planet, every system- everyone. At what point would the death toll be too high? At what point would your resolve snap?But it wasn't the easy victory it would once have been; he wheeled about, realizing the emperors triumph and incensed by it"
"And if I were dead?"
The Emperor narrowed cold yellow eyes, gaze hardening at his Jedi's words. It was a genuine ultimatum, the threat implicit- and it was to be stamped out decisively. "That would not stay my hand in the slightest, Jedi; I would still take my revenge.
"I would take it from the hide of every creature you had ever known. I would make it my mission to see them scream so pitifully that you would hear them from the pit of hell and know that it was you who had brought this upon them- your actions which condemned them; you who turned my wrath upon them. And their kin and their species and their planet. My revenge would span systems... it would be a long time before my anger was satiated, I promise you that."
The boy held silent before the vehemence of this relentless, heartfelt tirade, jaw clenching, eyes filled with impotent fury at the unreserved threat he had brought down on everyone he had ever known. He had little of his old life left- Palpatine had long since ripped it to tatters in an effort to control him- but what still remained was precious to him, even when the memory and the reality were galaxies apart. And Palpatine knew it.
"You're weak." The Sith accused again, as Skywalker turned his gaze down, struggling to hold focus beneath the drag of the drugs now that his adrenaline was waning. "I've told you before- if you hold a weakness then those about you will always use it against you."
Skywalker said nothing, remained silent, eyes burning with indignation as he looked back up to his tormentor.
"Say it." Palpatine invited tritely, the slightest of sardonic smiles on his bloodless lips, knowing that the boy would speak. That this interaction, no matter what the circumstances, had been established the first day Vader had brought him here- long before his Jedi had first been confined to this cell.
"Compassion isn't a..."
"Compassion is the most pathetic vulnerability- it was always the weakness of the Jedi." Palpatine's words cut into him, laced with disgust, "Ask any of them- but of course you cannot."
Skywalker's sense wavered just slightly and that was enough for Palpatine to lash out, knowing he'd won.
"Do you think it was compassion that gave you the strength to face down your father- do you think it was compassion that gifted you the power to bring him low? Do you think that those whom you humble yourself to protect would show the same compassion to you- have they ever? They used you and the fault is yours because you allowed yourself to be used- to be manipulated. There is no room for such atrocious, glaring flaws here. When you cure yourself of it, every door will be open to you but until then someone will always control you- you will always be in a prison of your own making."
As he spoke, Palpatine's voice calmed, so that by the end of his tirade, it was more frustration than anger which drove it. He stepped in close to the boy, yellow-flecked eyes searching palest blue; "Do you want to be controlled your whole life? Do you want to be no more than your father?"
Skywalker's chin lifted at that though he didn't speak, so Palpatine delivered his final caveat.
"A true Sith has no weakness. Cure yourself of this failing or I will do it for you- in the most conclusive way possible."
He held the boy's eyes for several moments longer, the threat clear, then turned and walked to the exit of the cell, the heavy doors hissing open as he reached them, guards lining the corridor beyond, weapons trained.
"I will return tomorrow and we will talk further."
He walked out before the boy had time to react to the realization that he was to remain confined. The inner door slid shut behind him, the outer one closing with the hiss of a hermetic seal.
The power which slammed against it a second later was considerable, but only a fraction of that which his Jedi was capable of; little more than a burst of frustration at the comprehension of his ever-contracting options.
Chapter 26
Hallin breathed a sigh of relief as he made his way past the staged blast doors close to the Destroyer's bridge, glad to be free of the Emperor's close scrutiny, though quite obviously the fact was that he couldn't have been farther from the Emperor's thoughts. Still, he wondered again how Luke could stand to be the subject of the Emperor's close and critical scrutiny day after day. Why he stayed at all.