He had remained with his Jedi for almost an hour, taunting and provoking, spurring and inciting him until the boy was too weary and too drained and too numb to even try to listen or retaliate any more. Then the guards had entered, as they always did, and beaten from him what little awareness he'd had left.
In a few hours, before the boy had been able to rest, Palpatine would return and begin again, with the guards awaiting their cue. Then perhaps once more tonight--or in the early hours of the morning. Or perhaps he would simply tell the boy that he would return tonight, and leave him hanging...
Skywalker's perceptive accusations, hurled out every day now with such vindictive, bitter malice against that which injured and tormented him, had left Palpatine both gratified and uneasy. As they began to sharpen, the boy's aggrieved, persecuted threats became ever more biting and barbed, aimed with cold precision and hostile animosity. No longer momentary outbursts, but genuine, serious threats.
Again, the Sith Master was aware that he must walk a fine line; he must control his Jedi without stifling this raging wrath, but he could not have it aimed at himself; he must remain forever beyond such notions. So with Vader gone, it had fallen to Palpatine's Royal Guard to become the unknowing brunt of the boy's frustration, and feed all that outrage and passion and fire; to concentrate it on that single source.
Because soon now, it would boil over into fury...
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Something was changing.
Within the Palace, all about him--he could sense it. Sitting huddled in the freezing darkness of his cell, deep in the bowels of the huge, hulking Palace, removed from anything which was real or of any substance, he still sensed it.
Everything was becoming surreal; unreal. He wasn't sure when he was unconscious and when he was awake, anymore. The only thing which separated reality from nightmares was that reality was hard to remember--twisted nightmares came to mind far too easily.
The Darkness which had been snapping in silence at his heels for so long, now howled in the dead of night. It warped perceptions and contorted the shadows about him, twisting his thoughts and his dreams. It fired his anger and fed his outrage; fuelled his fear every time he heard the hiss of the cell door opening and the whispering drag of cloth against cold, hard floors as his tormentor returned.
Driven by something stronger than exhaustion and weakness and broken bones, he paced his cell like a captive animal, like a caged wolf in the dead of night--or was that a dream? Because something Dark and hard and terribly powerful stood at his shoulder in fevered nightmares, shrouded in his shadow just beyond awareness. Pushing down, pressing in, suffocating. Closing inexorably about him, waiting for its moment, always waiting...waiting for something to happen.
A pivotal moment--a fracture point.
He would not turn...or had he already?
He knew the power which coursed about him, the power which the Emperor goaded him into calling close. He knew that it was Darkness. And each time, as it came so easily to answer his anger and resentment, it left a shallow imprint on his soul, a mark which no light could burn away, a moment lost to Darkness. So many moments lost... Too many--too many to register. And each time it became harder to push it back. They fused into one as the Darkness blurred into a single, hulking mass in his shadow, calling him on, howling in the oppressive silence of his prison. Amid all his confusion, like the calm eye at the center of the darkest storm, it beckoned. He pushed it away, denied it...but in those bleak, wild moments it felt so right--absolute clarity amid raging chaos.
He'd stood so long against the tempest...was one moment of calm worth his mind? Worth his life? His soul? Because he would give them willingly, without hesitation, if the Darkness offered even one moment of peaceful oblivion.
Was he lost already?
Something was changing.
He was very much afraid that it was him.
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Absolute bone-deep heat. It wrapped about Luke like a blanket, its comforting familiarity promising release and refuge, its reassuring warmth soothing taut, aching muscles into heavy, weary release.
He was lying on his back in the desert looking up at the stars, the familiar sounds of the homestead murmuring at the edges of his perception. Vaporators humming, coolant pipes grumbling, the perimeter shields hissing quiet static. Someone crossed the courtyard below, clothes rustling, sand whispering as it was brushed aside.
He blinked slowly, completely at peace, staring serenely up to those scattered points of glistening light in the velvet darkness, distant suns heating distant worlds. The sand was still warm against his back, soft and yielding, surrendering the heat of the day. The air, baked dry by twin suns, cooled now in the night's creeping embrace.
A door rasped open, the grinding grate of plasteel against plasteel unfamiliar here, the whisper of heavy cloth against permacrete shivering through him, tearing into the warm memories to rip away the heat of the desert and the comfort of home and leaving only the cold, hard floor at his back, body aching, every breath a knife-stab in battered muscles and broken bones. The weight of reality pressed in about him, pulling tired, gritty eyelids open. He blinked several times, but blood-cast eyes couldn't focus on the dark shadow that crouched over him now, sense intent on his own.
But then, he didn't need sight to know...
"How are you this evening, my friend?" The Emperor's voice grated with empty, mocking compassion as he knelt beside Luke. "You look tired."
Luke didn't bother to answer, blinking slowly then letting his bruise-rimmed eyes fall closed, his awareness drifting in a haze of hunger and thirst and pain and exhaustion.
He felt Palpatine rest the flat of his palm against his chest in warning and tensed in anticipation of a violent shock.
"Answer me when I speak to you," Palpatine said without malice.
"You know the answer," Luke murmured, voice broken by his parched throat.
His tormentor smiled at that. "I wish to hear you say it."
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Palpatine watched the boy's lips tighten in a momentary flare of stubbornness. He faltered at the very edge now, mentally and physically, body a mass of bruised and grazed skin, dozens of cuts left to bleed dry unheeded. His eyes--those wonderful ice-blue eyes--were dull now, shot through with blood, one so badly that no white was visible at all. His ankle had been re-broken at some point, the massive bruise stretching down over the sole of his foot. Not that he could have stood anyway.
He watched without feeling as the boy's eyes fluttered and he began to drift, prompting Palpatine to press the flat of his palm harder against his Jedi's chest, calling the Darkness to him.
The boy's eyes snapped open, muscles tensed against the implied threat.
"How are you this evening?" Palpatine repeated easily.
He tried to remain silent, Palpatine knew, but the investment of twelve long weeks in his rooms in the palace above, had established the precedent that no matter what, they spoke. So even now, in this dire, aggrieved situation, that ingrained practice held sway as his Jedi sighed lightly, all fight gone.
"I'm tired," he said at last, defeated. "Very tired." Unable to stop himself, he glanced to the door.
"Yes, they are there, waiting," Palpatine said, knowing what the boy was thinking, sensing his anxious apprehension in a scarlet spike of fear.
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Luke's stomach twisted, his chest burning in despair as he closed his eyes against the knowledge, for all the good it did him. It wouldn't stop them--nothing did. His mind numbed against that knowledge, unable to deal with the reality of imminent torment.