Palpatine smiled, gratified. "Obi-Wan may be long gone, but I knew him well, and I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that he cared nothing for you. He blindly fed his cause and sacrificed anything to it without hesitation. Yet he cowered in the desert rather than face me himself. That is the truth of the man whose memory you so honor.
"The Jedi Council to which he belonged hid their true intent behind high morals and lofty ideals which perhaps they once represented, generations past. But they had become far removed from this. The Council which Master Yoda so skillfully commanded craved ever greater influence. They controlled everything--politics, trade, planetary protection--manipulated events on a galactic scale."
"And you don't?" Luke's voice was quiet and even, but still held a challenge.
Palpatine smiled; it was a small rebuke and a long time coming, lacking the venom he had expected, though as quietly resolute as ever.
"I command my Empire," he said without contrition. "I do what is necessary and hide nothing. I have told you, I do not lie. I do not cloak my goals. The Jedi Council sought nothing more spiritual than power. The Republic was crumbling. They fought me for control...and they lost. In you, Master Yoda saw a way to regain his forfeited status. It was a gamble, but it was one which he readily took because he had nothing to lose. He did not himself challenge my power--he has fought me before...he knew he could not win. No; instead he found another, an outsider, a dispensable commodity in his eyes. He was quite content to hide in the shadows and send you to the slaughter, another innocent condemned for his cause. Send you to do what he knew he could not. Sacrifice you and those about you without the slightest--"
"I think we have finished speaking," Luke said simply, his head turning away, words quiet but firm.
"Don't EVER interrupt me!" Palpatine shouted his rebuke, hand banging down on the boy's shoulder, a shock of Dark power jolting through his frame.
.
.
Luke's heart pounded against his ribs at the fierce reproach, body tensing, hands tightening into fists at the provocation. But he wouldn't give.
"I think we have finished speaking now." He heard the clipped tone of his own voice as eh repeated his words, heard the frustration and the hostility, but in that moment was past caring. He was sick and tired of being led around. Of honoring a deal which he shouldn't have had to make in the first place, of fighting when nobody gave a damn anymore, of holding back when he knew what he was capable of.
"No, we are not finished talking, Jedi--we have only just begun."
"Then I've finished listening." Voice cut through with barely controlled anger, Luke stood, walking away to return to his quarters.
The huge double-doors to the drawing room swung shut in his face, resonating as the multiple bolts slammed home. "Sit down."
"Open the doors," Luke ordered, his voice cold fury now.
"Sit down," Palpatine hissed, his tone unmistakable.
Still Luke would not turn from the doors. He heard the heavy rustle of cloth as the Emperor turned behind him, and in that moment the Force rushed unbidden to his mind, giving a perfect image of the table behind him, every knife on it practically vibrating with the energy about them.
Answering his call--not Palpatine's--he had thought that. And in that moment, he knew how easy it would be.
The reverberating bang of Palpatine's fists on the table made him flinch just slightly, and his jaw tightened further in anger at himself for doing so.
"SIT!"
Still Luke stared forward in silence.
"The doors will not open simply because you stare at them," Palpatine spit out.
The derisive tone in the Emperor's voice lit a fire in Luke's stomach, searing away all other considerations. Narrowing his eyes, he looked to the huge, heavy doors--
And called the Force...
An inrush of energy, like a change in pressure, like surfacing from deep water and drawing that first breath. Like the oxygen he breathed; natural, life-giving, potent...
The sheet of intense energy immersed Luke, an unfamiliar twist of raw power tangled through, so that nothing could be hidden, even the smallest increments visible to this flawless perception. It coalesced and defined, diffuse potential converging, frustration and blind fury channeling it as never before.
He pulled this huge well of power in and willed it into crystal-sharp focus, channeled it with absolute precision. Gave it direction, defined his intent and permitted it control in the same instant. Allowed it everything it needed.
Gave himself over to it completely...
It blazed through him, his muscles twitching as he strived to confine and control this profound inrush of blazing power--and he saw the doors. Truly saw them for the first time, every fine grain of wood which faced them, every striation in the dense slabs of interlinked polymer alloys hidden beneath, rows of heavy bolts embedded into organic steel keeps, bound and inlaid with perennium cables from floor to ceiling, all set into a cage of massive girders behind innocuous plaster walls. Every conceivable strength carefully compounded to hold against him.
.
And it was nothing--nothing at all.
.
He hurled the Force at them, a wall of dense, unstoppable energy, and the heavy wood paneling which covered the true nature of the doors simply collapsed beneath it. The fine carving compressed inwards, its mass reduced to nothing as he kept on pushing, disintegrating to dust against the might of this single, sustained blow.
And still he pushed forward--
The metal hidden within began to creak; groan beneath the power thrown against it, compression heating it to red hot so that the remnants of wood began to smolder and blacken.
Luke tilted his head, leaning in to the task, indiscriminate fury giving him purpose, all his frustration thrown forward against that which stood in his way.
With a shock of movement the doors wrenched back several inches, masonry from the walls about them exploding outwards in fine powder as the heavy inset bolts began to fail, the keeps pushed back through plasteel block, dragging heavy girders and strung cables with them.
Another jolting inch in a screech of tortured metal, the doors completely black now as the wood covering had scorched to cinders. Flaws began to rip through the internal structure as the metal failed under massive, sustained pressure...
Only now did Luke throw both hands up, palms out to the doors.
The surrounding wall exploded back under the invisible blow, the massive doors torn away as if they were matchwood, to bounce against the walls in the room beyond, dragging huge scars into the plaster to reveal the cabled plasteel structure beneath, before finally coming to rest in a mangled crush against the far wall, leaving deep gouges hewn into the polished marble floor as they tumbled in a flurry of dust and debris...
.
.
Moments passed unchecked, the silence ringing in Palpatine's ears after the cacophony of noise, both mental and physical.
Skywalker remained perfectly still as the dust rolled back and billowed about him to settle in a fine white haze on the black marble floors. He did not turn as he spoke, staring straight ahead at the huge, gaping hole ripped into the feet-thick walls where the heavy blast doors had stood, thick cable and dense alloys sheared off about it.
"Apparently they will," he said at last.
.
He walked calmly into the drawing room beyond, passing the destruction he had metered out without a single glance and continuing on into the adjoining chamber, its own huge doors closing in restrained silence behind him.
Alone now, Palpatine's face turned slowly to a broad, insidious smile as he looked appreciatively at the incredible destruction his Jedi had wrought.