"Shall I call them now...or shall we talk, my friend?" Palpatine asked.
Luke hesitated, wishing to delay the inevitable, knowing this was a pointless act, but unable to do otherwise.
"Talk," he finally conceded, the whispered word escaping him in a resigned sigh.
"And what shall we discuss today?" Palpatine asked indulgently, hand still resting against Luke's chest.
Luke shook his head slightly against the hard floor, too tired to play these games any more.
"Answer me when I speak to you." There was a biting demand in the words as the voice dropping lower.
"I don't care," Luke whispered.
"Hmm. Perhaps they will come in now," Palpatine reproached. "Yes, that would be for the best."
Luke only curled up and turned away from the door. He was past arguing--it did no good.
He heard again the rustle of cloth against the hard floor, felt the cloak brush against his shoulder, even that a knife-sharp scrape against bruised and broken skin, making him jerk away, lighting a shock of pain in tense, burning muscles.
The door opened with its familiar double-grind of reinforced plasteel and he braced as they came forward in meaningful steps, force-pikes activating, their grating buzz cutting through the air...
They gathered about him...and attacked.
.
.
"Stop," Palpatine said quietly, and the world fell to silence.
Luke let out a gasp--the first noise he had made since the assault had begun--he didn't shout out anymore.
"Leave," the Sith ordered, and they stalked from the room in a silent pack, no trace of guilt, no hint of compassion. Only blind obedience.
The hush lay heavy when the door finally ground closed, Palpatine remaining very still, so that all Luke could hear was his own heart pounding, slow and irregular, his breath ragged in his lungs as he lay still to wait for the blinding pain to subside, even a little.
Eventually that whisper of heavy cloth sounded, making Luke's breath hitch in his throat. But all he could do was remain curled up on the cold blood-stained floor, drifting somewhere between pain and unconsciousness.
Palpatine crouched beside him, taking Luke's shoulder and turning him about so that they were facing, breathtaking spasms of pain wracking his body at this.
"Shall we talk, my friend?" he asked again.
"What do you want?" Luke gasped, desperate and despairing. Whatever it was, in that bleak moment if he could have done it, he would have.
Palpatine's voice was calm and reasonable, completely unmoved by the pain wrought at his command without any true provocation--he no longer bothered to wait for reasons or excuses, they were beyond that now.
"Nothing. I have everything I want," the Sith said, a knowing echo of his words in their very first meeting. "What do you want?"
Hope. The word, the need, came desperately to mind, though he didn't say it out loud.
"I can give it to you...if only you'd stop fighting me," Palpatine said, and Luke knew he'd been listening to his thoughts--had expected no less. Cool fingers gently pushed matted hair back from his eyes, the action as near to genuine compassion as Luke had ever known from the Sith. "You are lost, child...but I believe in you. In what you can be. You will be my greatest apprentice."
Luke didn't bother replying, remaining on his side, eyes half-closed. What was left to say?
.
.
Palpatine settled contentedly beside his Jedi, admiring again that willful mindset, even as he sought to break it. He tilted his head to one side, unmoved by the boy's agony and exhaustion and desolate despair, radiating out into the Force unchecked. "I know what a hard thing I am asking of you."
The boy's gaze came up at that, his right eye cast blood-red, where a blow had come too close, and Palpatine smiled indulgently. "I've told you, I understand you. You are so very much like your father."
His Jedi blinked slowly, beyond bothering to contradict.
"But this fight is long lost, my friend. You know that. It was lost the moment you came here. It was lost the moment you first touched the Force, the moment you left Tatooine, the moment you were born. The moment your father knelt before me, he condemned you too."
The boy let out a low sigh, eyes unfocused, but Palpatine knew he was listening.
"Hemade you everything that you are. Because of him, you will serve me...and you know it." Palpatine paused expectantly, though his Jedi only closed his eyes. "But I understand you. I know why you do this, even if you don't understand yourself."
Pale eyes opened and Palpatine gazed into them, so listless and grey now, dark with bruises. They would burn again, Palpatine knew, as bright and as cold as ever. But his Jedi was afraid now, afraid to touch the Force--afraid of the Darkness which answered when he did.
So close now...
"You're fighting because it's what you were born for, child. You're fighting because it's in your blood. You're fighting because you don't know how to stop." Palpatine shook his head gently, his tone indulgent. "But you have nothing left to fight for, my friend--so you're fighting against. Because that's all that is left to you."
He took the boy's chin, lifting that numb gaze up to his own. "Let me give you something worth fighting for. Something worth any price...worth any risk."
"What?" How weary and wary that voice.
"Power," the Sith whispered, eyes lighting at the mere word.
"I don't want that power," the boy refused, voice desperately weak.
"You already have it, child. It's already loose. You could no more choose not to use it than you could choose not to breathe."
"I could choose...to stop. To end this now,"
Palpatine only shook his head. "You know I would never let you, my friend. You're worth far too much to me."
With studied care, Palpatine wiped the blood from a deep, oozing split above the boy's eye with his sleeve; he didn't flinch, no longer seemed to notice at all. "You could never let yourself. I told you--you were born to fight, one way or another."
He smiled as he held his pallid, scarlet-stained hand before those lost blue eyes. "It's in your blood."
.
.
Luke didn't move as Palpatine let his hand fall away; didn't speak, all fight gone.
Yes, he felt it. Baying, howling with raw, primal power greater than any storm, calling to be used, wrapping about him like a heavy cloak, empowering and stifling both.
All hope was gone in this forsaken place, his mind and his soul surrendering to the shadows. Deserted and desolate for too long, alone against the onslaught, it had simply become too hard to keep it alight within himself and slowly, gradually, in subtle, guileful increments or tearing, fury-driven outbursts, Palpatine had bled it away, until only the shadows remained.
It was his now, this Darkness which enclosed him. There by his making.
And the Emperor knew it.
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They were all around her, Leia knew--all around her and closing in. The hunting bay of the pack in the darkness. She never saw them, only heard them, heard their breath as they ran to either side of her, animal grunts in the pitch black of the night, glints of eyes in the shadows.
And then she came to the canyon, as she had time and again, feet slipping, digging up gouges in the soft sand which sprayed over the precipice into the bottomless gulley beyond.
And the pack closed in, panting in the darkness as she turned, her heels to that terrifying drop...
.
Leia's body jerked from sleep so violently that Han scrambled upright, fumbling for the blaster he kept under the pillow as he shouted out.
"What the...?!"
Leia let out a half-sob beside him.
"Hey, you alright?" Han murmured gently, reaching out to embrace her.