rynne | [fic] Feet on the Ground (Star Wars, PG-13, 1/8)

Now for chapter one of this fic I'm really proud of. :)

Title: Feet on the Ground
Author: Rynne
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Luke Skywalker has grown up his father's apprentice, and can't imagine anything but serving the Emperor. But after one mission, Luke's illusions begin to shatter, and Luke and his father begin to plan for the future--their future. Primarily a Luke-Vader story, with eventual Luke/Mara.
Author's notes: This is the first sequel to my fic Walking the Sky. I highly suggest you read that before reading this, though the basics are that Vader found Luke on Tatooine when Luke was nine, killing Obi-Wan and another Jedi, and leaving Owen and Beru alive.

This fic is written in its entirety, and is eight chapters long, plus a prologue. The only delay in posting chapters is when I get them back from my betas and make corrections, so I should be updating fairly frequently.

There are characters and concepts from the Star Wars Extended Universe in here, but very few. The biggest one is Mara Jade, who plays a large role, and who will be an important part of the plot, and not just as a love interest. I hope that I've provided enough background on Mara so that those of you who have seen Star Wars but not read any of the EU books would still be able to follow the story, if you want to read it--just think of her as an original character (which she is, though created by Timothy Zahn and not me).

Enormous thanks must go to

krabapple and kayladie for betaing. You both made this fic much better than it would have been on its own. Thank you!

Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight

--

1

More than anything else that had happened in his life thus far, Luke hated being a Sith.

The trials of farm life on a desert planet--rising with the first sun, coaxing power out of old and tired machinery, protecting the homestead from Tusken raiders--were nothing compared to learning how to torture and kill people and raid their minds for information.

Luke hated the way people screamed and whimpered and cried and begged when their minds were being invaded or their bodies tormented. He shielded himself against their pain and closed his ears to their cries, but the knowledge of their hurt stayed within his mind and wouldn't leave.

He hated the politics and the politicians and how they would surround themselves with lies, wrapping themselves in a cocoon of them to gain more power. After discovering how many lies had shaped his early life, he hated them, and hated even more that they were sometimes necessary.

He hated the wrinkled and withered old man he was forced to call Master, hated taking orders from someone who delighted in pain and fear and control. He never let the Emperor know how much he hated him--Luke's shields were the best he'd been taught to make by his powerful father--but he couldn't stop the hatred from flowing hot and strong through his blood.

But the thing that Luke hated most about being a Sith was how much he loved it.

The first time he'd killed someone, two years ago when he was fourteen and being introduced to prisoner interrogation, he'd stood there and stared at the body, amazed that he had some power over life and death, that he could take a life prematurely. And something had whispered to him, deep inside his mind, that he did have that power, and that it would come when he called, whenever he called.

And then he'd stared at the body and realized that he'd just killed that person, that that man would never laugh or cry or smile or speak again, and it was because of him. He was responsible for someone's death. It couldn't be undone. He'd killed someone, and the man was dead, and it was final. No going back. He looked at the body as those thoughts ran through his mind, and then he threw up on it, uncomfortably aware of what he'd done.

But when the Force rushed through him, it was all he was aware of, and all he wanted to be aware of. His father had told him at the beginning that it was his to control once he learned how to do it, and he had been an eager student. He had known that he would eventually kill someone--his father had strongly implied it when he'd started training him--but it had seemed far in the future, not something that needed to be worried about, and possibly something that could be avoided.

But then the time had come, and the Force was running through him, and he'd killed almost before he'd even thought about it. And after his father had lectured him about how he shouldn't have thrown up and that death was a natural part of life, not something to be sick over or worry about...after that, his father had praised him, and told him that he was proud of his son, who could use his power so efficiently.

Luke could still remember it: the taste of bile in his mouth and his father's hand on his shoulder, and that deep voice proudly saying, "You have done well, despite your weakness afterwards. But do not trouble yourself about it--it shall become easier with time, until you can be strong through anything."

And the Force made him strong, stronger than everyone except his father and the Emperor, and at the least equal to their strength. The Force made killing an easy task, and gaining information, and so many other things. And too, the Force had made it an easy task to forget his reservations and concerns, his fear and compassion, his deep-seated feeling that being a Sith and doing what a Sith did just wasn't right.

The Force made things so easy...

--

"Master."

Luke knelt on the floor in front of the throne with his head bowed, waiting for the Emperor to tell him what was required of him.

"Rise, young Lord," the Emperor said, and Luke gritted his teeth but kept his expression schooled. He suspected that Palpatine knew how much he disliked being called "young" anything--he was a fully-fledged Sith Lord, and the least that Palpatine could do would be respect him for that alone--and called him that just to annoy him.

Luke stood, and kept his eyes on the feet of the Emperor. He hated looking at him, at the slumping skin and hard yellow eyes; the Emperor always reminded him of an animated corpse, held together solely by sheer force of will and the power of the Dark Side. Luke's father, although with a different plight, was hardly in better physical condition. Sometimes, in his darker moments, Luke wondered what being a wielder of the Dark Side would eventually do to his body.

"Come forward, Hand," Palpatine said, and Luke's gaze snapped to a deeper shadow in the darkness behind the throne, one that he'd noticed upon entering but dismissed as unimportant when he couldn't feel a Force-signature. A mistake, and one he would not make again. The shadow was a person, and one who apparently knew how to shield his presence from other Force-users.

Her presence. As the shadow stepped into the light, Luke could see that the figure was a girl, perhaps his own age, dressed in a dark gray jumpsuit. Luke's eyes narrowed; Palpatine was a known misogynist, and rare was the woman who made it to a high position in his Empire. Who was this girl?

Keeping one eye on Palpatine, Luke surreptitiously surveyed the girl now standing beside him. She was short, standing an inch or two beneath his own below-average height, and had bright red-gold hair that ran in a tight braid down her back--briefly Luke wondered how he could have missed that in the shadows--and cool green eyes that looked to be studying him as much as he was studying her. He wondered, for a moment, what she saw.

"This is Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand," Palpatine said into the silence, and Luke's full attention snapped back to him. "Mara Jade, this is Lord Umber, Lord Vader's apprentice--and son."

"I did not know that Lord Vader had a son," the girl--Mara Jade--said, her eyes narrowed and focused on the Emperor. Luke wanted to roll his eyes--of course she didn't know. No one did, except for himself and his father and Palpatine, Aunt Beru, Uncle Owen, and Biggs. Six people in the entire galaxy. Who was this Emperor's Hand, that she was now being brought into the secret?

"Now you do," Palpatine said dismissively, without apology. Behind strong shields, Luke hid his resentment at this stranger's inclusion in his secret, and decided that the Emperor's Hand had to be both important and trustworthy for Palpatine to have told her this. He also decided to ask his father about her later, and about why Palpatine told her. His father was much more accepting of questions than was the Emperor.

"You will be working together on your next mission," Palpatine continued, after a pause. "You will receive details regarding this mission shortly. You are both dismissed."

Both Luke and Mara Jade bowed deeply to the Emperor, then turned and swiftly left the room. Luke could feel Palpatine's gaze burning into his back, and, once the great doors had closed behind him, shivered.

There was no one in the hall outside the throne room, not even the red-clothed Imperial Guard. There never was, when Luke had his audiences with the Emperor--no one there meant no one to wonder why he was there, who he was to have such solitary audiences with the Emperor of the entire galaxy, this boy who looked short and young even for his sixteen years. He had his cloak and hood, of course, but neither he nor Palpatine trusted it to preserve his identity among people who lived their lives undermining others and ferreting out secrets, and so they resorted to banning people from the hall.

No one saw Darth Umber in Luke. Sandy-blond hair, light skin, blue eyes, not even a fully grown adult--he knew he didn't look like a Sith Lord, and he could feel Mara Jade thinking the same thing, even though she carefully kept her face expressionless. Her shields were good, very good, but incredulity and doubt leaked through, and it was obvious that he was not whomever she had pictured when thinking of Lord Umber, the infamous Shadow Sith.

He wanted to ask what the Emperor's Hand was, what she did, but he didn't want to betray his ignorance, so he kept silent. She was obviously Force-sensitive, though; she couldn't have such strong mental shields otherwise.

They stood there for a moment in the empty corridor, silent, waiting, neither making a move to leave. Finally she broke the silence herself.

"You're Lord Vader's son," she said; not asking a question, but seeking confirmation anyway.

"Yes," Luke replied, and wondered at how easy that had been to say. He'd only told one person before, just Biggs, who was his friend and whom he knew would take the secret to his grave if Luke wanted him to. He'd never imagined anyone else knowing before; it was part of his identity, who he was, and he was the Sith who struck from the shadows. He existed to be the unpredictable element that no one could see coming, the counterpart to his father Darth Vader, who was obvious in his darkness.

Only his father and the Emperor knew that he was both Vader's son and Darth Umber. Not even his aunt and uncle and Biggs, who knew about his father, knew about his training in the Dark Side. And now there was another person who knew both, and that was...disconcerting.

She looked at him, and he looked back at her, a girl gawky yet graceful, like a trained dancer or fighter who hadn't finished growing yet and was trying to compensate. If not for her brilliantly colored eyes and hair, Luke would think her plain--she even had a very light dusting of freckles across her nose.

Silence surrounded them, and he could tell that there was more she wanted to ask him, but she didn't say anything more, and the beginning of conversation between them stalled and died, almost before it had been born.

Luke caught her eye once more, and then he turned and left without a goodbye. These games I have to play, he thought sadly, because even though she was the first Imperial his own age he'd really met, he was a Dark Lord of the Sith and the second in line for the Imperial throne, after his father. He couldn't talk to her like a friend, and he had to always, always maintain distance and dignity.

At least he'd see her again.

--

Vader always enjoyed sparring with his son.

Luke was fire and grace with a lightsaber in his hand, blocking and parrying and cutting with effortless accuracy and precision, engaging and pulling back with a speed that couldn't be found in Vader's dueling droids. He was a joy to teach and a wonder to watch, but most of all, he was a challenge, and Vader would have valued him for that alone.

In the beginning, Vader had won easily, of course. And when Luke had first started growing into his adult body, when he'd been trying to deal with adolescent clumsiness, it had been more easy than not to flick the hilt of the saber out of Luke's hands and so end the match. But then Luke had started improving at a phenomenal rate, as if trying to prove that his puberty-stricken body couldn't stop him, and, just weeks before he killed his first person, he disarmed Vader for the first time.

But it wasn't the last. Luke, who was younger and more physically fit, unburdened with prosthetics and helmet and synthetic respiratory system, won about half their practice matches, and Vader knew that later, when Luke had more experience and greater attunement with the Force, his defeat in a duel would be rare.

Luke came at him in a rush, blue eyes set in his face, both hands wrapped around the hilt of his saber as he swung it at Vader's thigh--and then immediately pivoted and came around for a strike at Vader's shoulder. Vader, who had anticipated such a feint, merely sidestepped and brought his blade up to block the shoulder cut, absorbing the slight jar as Luke's blade crashed into his own.

Instantly, Luke was striking elsewhere, and even as he blocked, Vader noted approvingly the speed of Luke's comeback. It had taken him months, in the beginning of their sparring, to train Luke to keep attacking if one strike failed, rather than just stepping back and letting the other have a chance to attack. Always bring the fight to your opponents, Vader had told him endlessly, the ten-year-old red-faced with effort, but hanging on his every word. You don't win by hanging back and letting them strike. Attack, and keep attacking. Don't let them have time to think and recover. Be the attacker, not the defender, and you have a much better chance of being the one alive at the end.

Vader had lived and won by that philosophy--and won again as he expertly took the offensive and pushed Luke back, attacking again and again until his bright red blade was hovering an inch away from his son's throat. Luke turned off his own red saber, acknowledging the defeat, and waited until Vader took the blade away before stepping back and bowing.

"You were distracted, at the end," Vader observed, as Luke took a long draught from his water bottle. "You must not let distractions trouble you when dueling; it can mean the difference between life and death."

Luke nodded. "I know, Father," he said simply, and took another drink. "It won't happen again."

It probably would--even the best warriors sometimes got distracted, and neither Vader nor Luke was an exception--but Vader knew that Luke would try his best not to let himself get so distracted that he lost a fight because of it. He couldn't ask for more.

"Now," Vader said, gesturing with his saber hilt to the bench past the boundaries of their practice circle, "tell me what distracted you."

Luke nodded and walked over to the bench, slumping down on it and waiting until Vader joined him before speaking.

"I have a new mission," he began, then threw a sideways glance at Vader. "Has the Emperor told you of it?"

"He has not," Vader replied, but this did not trouble him. His son was a fully trained Sith Lord now, capable of going on missions without his father's permission. Of course, he still had the undeniable urge to protect Luke, hold him back and keep him safe and away from things that might take him away from Vader, but Luke didn't need that protection anymore, and always returned. Vader would have to trust in his son's skills this time, as he always had since he had first declared Luke fit to take up the name Darth Umber. "Since he has not, are you sure you should tell me?"

Luke stared at his hands. "I don't know," he said, "but it does not depend on secrecy--not any more than normal, at any rate, and it's not like you would betray it. And there are some things I would like your...advice on."

Vader waited, with the patience than no one but Luke and the Emperor got from him. Luke would tell him eventually.

Finally, Luke continued. "I am being sent after a Jedi, recently discovered on Ord Mantell." That would have been enough to distract him; Vader knew that Luke had not been sent after Jedi before. There were few enough of them now, and their disposal had usually been Vader's job. He didn't mind this now falling to Luke--maybe finally killing a Jedi himself would rid the boy of that lingering admiration for them, despite Vader's efforts to break him of it--but he sensed that there was more.

"I...have a partner," Luke went on. "A girl around my age. The Emperor called her the Emperor's Hand, then introduced me to her and told her of my relation to you. She's Force-sensitive, and has strong mental shields, but I don't know about her training beyond that. I was wondering if you knew anything about this Emperor's Hand."

"I have met the girl," Vader replied slowly, thinking, "but only briefly. Mara Jade...the Emperor raised her from a young child to be his personal assassin, spy, saboteur, and courier."

"Sounds like me," Luke commented lightly, though with an undertone of...something. Vader couldn't sense anything directly--Luke's shields were the strongest Vader had taught him to make, and he always had them up--but he thought it might be bitterness, with maybe a trace of fear. Fear of what? For his position?

"You are a Dark Lord of the Sith," Vader told Luke firmly, "not an assassin, or a spy, or a saboteur, or a courier."

"What's the difference, between what I am and what she is?" Luke asked softly, still looking at his hands. "No one knows who I am. I'm just in the shadows all the time, and nearly everyone who's seen my face and known me for a Sith I've killed. He's got you to be the overt power, the hammer that he wields. If he's got this Hand of his for the covert things...what does he need me for?"

He doesn't need you, and he didn't want you, Vader thought, safely behind his own shields. I am the one who insisted on your training; that you would make yourself useful ended up being one of the conditions for that training.

But Vader didn't say that. That wasn't likely to boost his son's flagging confidence. "To turn it around," he said instead, "what does he need her for, if he has you?"

Luke finally looked at him, and blinked. "What?"

Vader suppressed a sigh. "You are a fully trained Sith Lord," he reminded his son. "Moreover, you are one with a great deal of power; certainly more than this Mara Jade has. Why would he use her if he has you?"

Luke closed his eyes. "Because...because there are enough problems that need to be taken care of by those like me and her that there needs to be more than one person taking care of them?" Luke guessed.

It was perhaps an overly simplistic answer, and not what Luke was really thinking--Luke's shields were up, so Vader could not tell--but it might as well be the truth. It was probably one that Luke would take better than being told that Palpatine feared him, and that was why he kept Luke to the smaller assignments, rather than letting him take a place by Vader's side on the wider galactic stage.

He doubted Luke knew that Palpatine feared him, anyway. But Vader knew his master very well, and could find the telltale signs of such a fear: his initial reluctance to let Vader train Luke, his constant requests for reports on Luke's progress all throughout the boy's training, his decision that Luke Skywalker be erased from any official records, and his insistence that Luke operate solely from the shadows, so that very few even knew what Darth Umber looked like without the black cloak and hood he always wore on missions.

Palpatine didn't want Luke to get ideas of greater power than that which he currently had. Vader suspected that the introduction of Mara Jade had gone exactly as Palpatine had hoped, causing him to question his value to the Emperor, and realize that he was expendable.

Well, he might have been expendable to Palpatine, but he wasn't to Vader. And so Vader would nurture his son's confidence, and remind the boy that he did have value, and that he was a powerful person in his own right.

Vader stood. "Do you have any further questions, my son?" he asked. He had a meeting of his own soon, a debriefing of a Star Destroyer captain who had just returned to Coruscant, but he could delay it another several minutes.

Luke stood as well, then hesitated. "Not about the Emperor's Hand," he said. "But Father, you've fought Jedi before, and I haven't. What is it like?"

Vader considered the question for a moment. "Not all Jedi are alike, of course," he replied, "but they are all taught to not draw on anger and other aggressive feelings during a fight. That gives you an advantage; remember that your anger and aggression gives you extra power, power that the Jedi scorn using. Use that to give you an edge. Be mindful of your training, and the Jedi should fall easily."

Luke nodded, then bowed to his father. Vader inclined his head in return, and then turned swiftly, dark cape billowing behind him.