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Luke’s shoulders were already burning when his cell door opened again. He knew who would step through. It was difficult to use the Force when the cuffs electrocuted him every time he moved, but he could still passively sense every soul on the station around him.
His father stood in front of him, hooking his thumbs into his belt. “I trust you are comfortable,” he said.
“I’ve been in a stress position for five hours.” He grimaced. “You know, they’re classified as a form of torture. I wrote a paper about it at the academy—”
“Yes,” Vader said, “which is why you are currently in one.”
There was an undercurrent to his tone. Luke had to fight not to close his eyes and accept the fury that was about to come this way. It wouldn’t just roll over him this time: this time, he was the target.
“Where are the Death Star plans?” Vader asked. His tone had shifted to the business end of murder.
Luke tried to stand up straighter, but his back spasmed; he had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. When he shifted, the cuffs triggered again. He did cry out when electricity lanced through him. His vision flashed white. His heart stuttered in an echo of his agony. He could smell burning hair.
“I would suggest that you do not move.”
“I got that four hours and fifty minutes ago.”
“You should not have taken ten minutes to reach that conclusion.”
“What can I say, I’m stubborn.”
They stared at each other again. Luke’s throat was dry. This was the moment he’d been dreading, and in the end he hadn’t even had the chance to choose when it happened.
He was supposed to be the one who told his father he was defecting. If nothing else, he was supposed to face it. His father hadn’t been meant to find out like… this.
“Not too stubborn, I hope. Thought I doubt it.” Vader stepped forwards. Luke, for the first time in his life, flinched back. He got another shot of electricity for his troubles. It was like Palpatine was in the room with them now.
He was, though. Palpatine was the reason his father who he was. He was the reason the Empire had risen at all. And he was the reason for everything that had happened since.
“Where are the Death Star plans?” Vader repeated.
“With the Rebels. Where else?”
“I tolerated your insolence when you were my son. I will not tolerate it now—”
“Oh?” Luke asked, heart pounding. “Am I not your son anymore?”
His father, halfway through his rant, stopped. He looked at Luke. Luke looked back.
They were always going to end like this. It had been an open secret between them for a long time. Luke had been banned from public appearances as Vader’s son for years because of his opinions, and Palpatine and his father had worked very hard to keep his influence at a minimum. Something had to break.
It was either Luke, or his willingness to stay with the Empire.
“Where is the Rebel base, then?” Vader asked.
Luke shrugged—then screamed. The charge threw his head back so fast that whiplash snapped up his neck, and he smacked his head against the cell wall. He swore.
“As I said: your insolence will not be tolerated now,” Vader repeated. “Where is the Rebel base?”
Tears slipped down Luke’s cheeks. Was his father just going to stand there? Was he just going to say nothing? “Is this how you behaved when Tarkin destroyed Alderaan?”
Taken aback, his father responded before he could get a hold of himself. “What?”
“You hate the Death Star. You hate Tarkin. Did you stand there anyway? An entire planet destroyed, endless suffering, and you just did nothing?” It still made Luke sick. He’d had a quick glimpse of the space station while they escorted him onto it, when they brought him here to his cell, and the mental image made him shrivel up with shame.
“I had my orders.”
“Yeah.” He scoffed a laugh. “You’ve been ordered to torture me as well, right? That why you’re standing here and doing it.”
Vader’s hand curled into a fist at his side. “Do not push me, Luke. Where is the Rebel base?”
“Do all Rebels get the mercy you’re granting me?”
“No.” At least his father didn’t lie about it. “So do not take it for granted. Where is the Rebel base?”
“That’s not the question you want me to answer.”
“To whom did you pass the Death Star plans? What other spies does the Rebellion have on Coruscant?”
“I couldn’t do it anymore, Father,” Luke said. “I hate Palpatine. I hate the Empire. You’ve always known that. And no matter what you say about keeping our family safe first, I couldn’t stand by and watch the galaxy burn.”
“Answer my questions,” Vader ordered.
“I did.”
Vader lunged forwards and seized Luke by the throat. The slight movement—slamming Luke against the wall—sent another shudder of electricity through him; he gasped from pain. “Answer my questions,” Vader repeated, quieter and rawer this time. Luke could feel the air from his respirator huffing over his forehead in even puffs, like the wind over the meadows of Naboo. “And you can come back.”
“I don’t want to come back,” Luke whispered. “The galaxy is more than just you and me.”
Something shattered. In Vader, certainly—Luke felt it in the Force, the glass tank of grief that Luke just took a hammer too—but also in Luke’s face. Vader’s other fist flashed around and smashed his nose to smithereens.
Luke screamed. Blood flooded his nose, his sinuses, his throat. For a heart stopping moment, he couldn’t breathe. He was choking on blood, choking, and he could hardly see through the white pain of the electricity crackling through him again.
Breathe. Just breathe.
“You promised,” Luke said weakly. “You told me you’d never hurt me.”
“You told me you’d never leave me,” Vader shot back.
“I didn’t!” He coughed again and spat a gooey glob of blood onto the blood. “Why do you think I become a spy? Subtlety isn’t my strength. I wanted to be a Rebel pilot”—he felt Vader’s spike of terror at that, the realisation that one day he might have faced Luke in battle, nose guns to nose guns—“but I wanted to stay with you.”
“So you betrayed me.”
Luke closed his eyes. “You didn’t know it was coming?” he asked weakly. He’d been so obvious. He had never stood silent. Palpatine could no longer tolerate the sight of him.
“I should have anticipated it,” Vader agreed, but there was a dark edge to his voice.
“I want to do good, Father. The Death Star—the Empire—” He choked. “I can’t follow that path.”
When he stopped breathing again, he thought it was because of his blood. It took him too long to realise it wasn’t.
His father’s hand was out. Luke’s feet were drifting up from the ground. His throat burned.
“Father…” Luke wheezed. His eyes blew wide. “Father, please—”
He reached a hand up to his throat. Electricity seared his skeleton. He slumped where he floated, half-conscious from pain, from lack of oxygen, from…
“You are so much,” Vader got out, “like your mother.”
He used to say that a lot. But he’d never said it like that before.
“Where is the Rebel base?” Vader hissed, one last time. But he had perfect timing.
The room shook. The whole Death Star shook, and bright red lights started flashing. The shrill alarms sent spikes into Luke’s head; tears flooded his cheeks, until he couldn’t see straight ahead of him.
Vader dropped him, releasing his grip on his throat, but it didn’t matter; through the warped muscles and the blood, Luke struggled to breathe anyway. “What is this?”
“I think—you’re too—late.” Luke coughed. “They’re—already here. And—they’re going to—destroy this—station.”
“You would value the safety of the galaxy over the safety of our family,” Vader said.
He strode forwards. When he seized Luke by the front of his shirt, the electricity sent his eyes rolling back in his head. Luke shuddered and struggled to hold onto consciousness. To pay attention.
“Would you revel in dying with the station?” Vader hissed.
Luke tried to open his mouth to answer—to answer what, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to die. Not now. But if it was what was necessary, so be it.
It didn’t matter. Vader didn’t give him a choice.
He shook him, hard. The electricity pumped Luke’s muscles full of power until they all overloaded at once. Stars exploded behind his eyes. The stench of hair and burning flesh plugged his nose. His head lolled to the side, and his eyes closed.
Stars exploded in the darkness there, too. Then all was quiet.
He didn’t expect to wake up again. When he did, to an identical cell, he didn’t know what to feel about it at all.