Still in medi-center whites, feet bare, he had been deposited--practically thrown--into an empty cell whose roof curved down to the floor in a concave dome, and whose only notable feature was a huge, thick pillar in the centre of the room. Half-collapsing in exhaustion at the forced march, vision tunneling, chest heaving, he'd been only vaguely aware of the techs who had gathered about him as he'd collapsed against the pillar, struggling to find the strength to stand again.
"If you act like you are a prisoner here, you will be treated as one," Vader had finally accused, frustration and irritation clipping his words.
Cryptically as far as Luke was concerned; what did Vader think he was?
He was a Rebel soldier being held captive by the Empire and he would take any opportunity presented to escape--or at the very least cause havoc. A sting of pain had drawn Luke's eyes to his ankle, where the techs were using some kind of hand-held device to seal two fine metallic cables about each, the other ends of which were already looped around the thick pillar.
"They are unbreakable," Vader had said needlessly. "You could, of course, use the Force to bring down the pillar, but since the roof rests upon it, I would not advise it."
He stared in silence for a long time at Luke--waiting for what Luke hadn't known. Unable to summon the strength to even speak yet, he could only glare back, open animosity in his eyes, his chest heaving as he'd still struggled for breath.
Finally Vader had turned and left. The hiss of a hermetic seal had sounded as the heavy door pulled closed, to be followed seconds later by the sound of a second outer door doing the same with a solid, impenetrable finality.
Vader--nothing else; no connection, not his... Luke still couldn't even begin to think of the man in those terms...and it was becoming easier to just ignore it now. He knew who Vader was; what he was. And he knew exactly his relationship to him: enemy to soldier, Imperial to Rebel. He neither wanted nor needed those perceptions altering.
So now, as he recognized that grudgingly familiar sense approaching outside his cell, his eyes opened then narrowed though he didn't move otherwise, remaining on the hard floor where he had slept, laid on his side to favor the sutures down his back, facing away from the entrance.
The outer door grated open, followed a few seconds later by the inner one. Heavy footsteps walked forward then halted.
Silence, in which Luke forced his breathing to even, jaw tightening.
"I know that you are awake," Vader said at last, his tone quiet and calm, but still blunt and unyielding.
"Leave," Luke said, not even turning.
"I wish to speak with you," Vader rumbled, as if that were reason enough to comply.
"I don't wish to speak with you."
"Then you will listen," Vader said curtly.
With little real choice, Luke pushed himself painfully up to lean a shoulder against the thick post, the cables twisting about his ankles as he did so. The scathing, derisive fury in his voice when he spoke surprised even himself. "Fine...go ahead."
He had the momentary gratification of seeing Vader pause, uncertain. "Go ahead," he invited again through tight lips. "You want me to listen--I'm listening."
"You are not listening," Vader said, shaking his head slightly. "You do not intend to listen to anything I say."
"Have you finished?"
Vader said nothing, merely stared.
"Good. Then leave."
"You are judging me without knowing the facts."
"No, I'm judging you on the facts," Luke bit out. "I'm in a detention cell being taken against my will to Imperial Center. The person who put me in here has injured my friends for no other reason than to get my attention, and is now intending to deliver me and them to a man who will surely kill us all when I won't do as he asks. The person who put me in here knows this as well as I do, and yet still that door remains locked. That is the man I'm judging."
"You are so stubborn," Vader said at last, shaking his head in frustration.
"And you're blind," Luke accused angrily. "Willfully so. Because I don't believe you can't see what will happen."
"The choice of what will happen is yours."
"I've made my choices. I made them years ago. None of this..." even now, he couldn't bring himself to say it, "changes them."
"Your choices were made without the facts."
Luke only looked away. "I had the ones that mattered."
"Only to them."
"And I suppose you'll give me the truth?" His words were laced with caustic disbelief.
"Why do you believe me any less capable of that than Obi-Wan?"
"Because I'm here," Luke replied, incredulous that Vader could even ask. "Like this. Because my friends are here..."
"You would do well to forget them. They are an unnecessary weakness."
Luke shot him a disbelieving, outraged stare, but he continued with relentless logic.
"The Emperor will use them to control you. That is why they are here."
"Then let them go." It was half-request, half-challenge. It was the first time he looked to his father's eyes.
"I cannot."
Luke turned away, unsurprised. "Do you do everything he tells you?"
"You do not know him." The tone of Vader's voice revealed little but for a moment--just an instant--Luke's temper softened to something more compassionate. Then he blinked and turned away, rubbing tiredly at his temples.
"Well, I'm about to," he said, exhausted, the frustrated implication in his words clear.
"It does not have to be this way. The offer I made on Bespin remains--will always remain." He declared this as if he were offering some kind of gift, not condemning Luke to Darkness. "I can teach you, show you a power that will make you invulnerable. Luke, you have the ability to destroy him."
"How would you possibly know?" Luke's voice was tired and dismissive.
"Because I know who you are. I know what you are--the truth. They have shown you only a fragment of that which you are capable of, by their own choice. I know your aptitude...your capability. They could only ever teach you competence, because that is all they know. I can show you mastery."
"To do what? Fulfill your ambitions?" Luke challenged.
"Fulfill your own potential," Vader countered.
"As it suits you."
.
.
Vader fell silent, unaccustomed to this--all of it. If the boy would relent, just a little, if he would just open his mind to the possibility that Kenobi was wrong and Vader right. How could he explain, how could he make the boy understand?
"Luke... you are not like them. We are not like them." The boy remained unmoved, face stubbornly turned away. "Understand what you are--know what you are capable of. Your lineage, your bloodline. I can give you that knowledge, make you realize your inherent potential."
"Why?"
That one word, spoken so quietly and without any trace of animosity, stopped Vader dead.
"Do you not wish to know who you are?" Vader was incredulous, genuinely confused.
This, surely, was what the boy wanted. Every truth that had been so deliberately kept from him, every fact. Having been confronted with a glimpse of reality after years of lies, how could he not want it all? But the boy shook his head in resigned refusal.
"I've lived this long without your 'truth'. I'll be dead soon anyway. What does it matter?" The boy was genuinely dismissive, anger waning now to be replaced with an empty bitterness, a knowing, weary acceptance that he would never know the real truth--not as long as those about him sought to control him.
"You should know who you are. Your heritage, your birthright."
Vader held his son's searching gaze as Luke turned to him, pale blue eyes so much like his own. Haunted and lost, deeply dispirited. So much like his own... Was this the price of power? Was this the true legacy of the Skywalkers--were they all cursed to a life of misery and grief?