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[doitnow]

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A million years later, I settled on Imperial!AU Luke.

[faithfulson]

Luke hated being in Imperial Center.

He didn't end up here all that often; being the Commander in charge of maintaining and flying (at least when his father wasn't joining them) Black Squadron kept him busy enough on its own, but then, of course, he had his other missions. Those other missions were off the record for the most part, taking him all around the galaxy in his quest to find more and more proof outside of his father's word that the Emperor had manipulated both sides of the Clone Wars. Not to mention the other tasks he would take responsibility for, discreetly passing information from his father on to certain individuals within the Rebellion...

It all left him with so very little time to himself. And when he did have that rare moment where he actually wasn't doing anything and he could finally relax... he received a summons from the Emperor. Of course. He knew the elderly man was doing this deliberately as well, and Luke had only himself to blame; he had been the one to be cheeky, to throw in the old man's face that he was "just a fighter pilot" and did not have time for political games when the Emperor tried to ensnare him in his web. He was fairly certain the only reason he was still alive was because his actions just moments before had made him an instant hero among the Imperial ranks, not to mention his father being just a few feet away. There was little question the bond they had would cause him to lash out if the Emperor tried to harm him, never mind how poorly it would end for both of them. It was, essentially, his own damn fault he had to deal with this, and while he probably should have told his father what was going on, it only made sense that he handle things like this himself.

After all, he wasn't ignorant. Luke did know what his father wanted for him, even if he never said as much.

He kept his head held high as he made his way through the Imperial Palace, checked in, and waited for his turn before their glorious Emperor. Somehow he managed to remain calm, keeping up his guard and his presence in the Force tapered down as he always did, until he was motioned into the throne room. As always, that darkness that was the Emperor's presence hit him in the face as soon as he entered, and Luke managed to keep the grimace off his face as he continued forward until he was at the base of the throne, bowing respectfully.

"You summoned me, Your Excellency?" he asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

yesss good

[doitnow]

The Emperor could feel the grimace in the Force even before the young Skywalker entered the throne room. Mas Amedda stood just in front of him, doing his best to keep audiences from going too long. Imperial officers and moffs loved to talk, if they were allowed to they often would stumble over their words for what seemed like an eternity. He had time but the last thing he wanted to do was spend it listening to petty grievances and catfighting among officials and officers.

Today the Emperor barely had his attention on the officers before him, his mind focused on the younger Skywalker who was waiting his turn. Patient but disgruntled. He had long known that the Skywalkers posed a threat to him. United they could attempt to overthrow him. If he was the one to raise his hand to one, the other would strike. No, he had to be more careful. It had taken him years to cultivate and sway Anakin Skywalker, applying pressure at just the right points before he broke just right. But Vader was older now, his power in the Force was significant but he could sense it waning no matter how much Vader tried to deny it to himself and to his master.

As soon as Luke came forward, he smiled warmly despite the disturbance in the Force rippling out around Luke. "You wish to be elsewhere," he stated before turning to Mas Amedda. A few words and his councilor cleared the room despite a few muted mutterings from officers who had waited to be seen all day but were not being ushered out. Only the red guards remained, standing motionless behind the throne. "Your dedication does you credit, young Skywalker but that is not why I summoned you here today."

He stood up slowly, summoning his cane to him as he leads Luke towards a side door which swung open for them silently. The Jedi Temple had been transformed into the Imperial Palace but he had kept some of the areas almost untouched-this was an area that was only for him to meditate on the Force, uninterrupted. "It is time that you learn your strength in the Force. You have the potential to be more than you are."

[faithfulson]

Luke flinched at being called out in front of the officers; no one would ever question his dedication and, of course, he cared about as much for their pettiness as his father did, but it was taking far longer than any of them wanted to weed out the ones that were actually dedicated to protecting the galaxy from the ones that were just in it for the prestige. Piett had been the best find they had so far; it was a shame Ozzel was currently the one in command of the Executor, as the admiral was his polar opposite. Any moment now, Ozzel would screw up to the point where he would have to go, but they needed to be patient, something his father needed to remind him of every time Ozzel attempted to give him an infraction for some inane reason.

Luke stayed rooted to the spot as the room filled out, stepping up and following the Emperor at his bidding like a good little Imperial. Mention of the Force very nearly had him stiffening on the spot, and he didn't need it to know Palpatine had heard the record scratch going off in his mind. No, nope, this was bad; he should have told his father what was going on. Anything involving the Emperor and the Force usually led to bad things; the last time he had been lightyears away from him, but that didn't keep him from his slimy presence oiling its way into his mind. He had very nearly killed that damn smuggler as a result, something that would have definitely caused problems down the line.

"I was under the impression you were content with my father teaching me at his own pace, Excellency. Has something changed?"

Stall. Deflect. Think of some way to get out of this. He could handle this.

[doitnow]

"You and I both know that your father has only so much he could teach you. And he is still my apprentice," he pointed out as the entered the dark room. A room that had once been used by members of the Jedi Council, it was now heavy with the presence of the Dark Side.

"Sit." It wasn't a suggestion. He sat on one of the seats used by a former Jedi master, leaning his cane against the cushion. He didn't need the Force to sense Luke's uneasiness. He was loyal to his father but Anakin Skywalker was ending the time of his usefulness. Luke would have to take his place soon enough.

"You can be greater than he ever was. You have sensed this." Another statement- they both knew the truth. It would be no easy task to turn Luke fully to the darkness. But he would in time, it would just take patience. "I will teach you the true nature of the Dark Side."

[faithfulson]

There was a retort on the tip of his tongue, a reminder that apprentices were supposed to overthrow their masters according to Sith ideology, but he knew that would have gotten him hurt for certain, so he held his tongue. Instead he let his hand slip to his pocket, grabbing for his comlink. Maybe he could send an SOS to Tanbris and have him call him, give him an excuse to be summoned away for some important emergency. Something felt wrong, though, and he dared a quick look... to see his comlink was completely dead. Either he had walked through something that fried it, or someone crushed the insides of the unit.

Luke narrowed his eyes at the old man's back as he entered the room. Stars, he hated him.

There was very clearly absolutely no way out of this, so Luke took a deep breath, holding onto it and letting it out slow as he entered the room. If the throne was dark, this was near pitch black; but worse than that there was a sense of solemnity that clung to the room, like if he looked just so, he would be able to see the ghosts of long gone Jedi Masters, mourning that had been betrayed and killed because of this wrinkled old corpse's machinations. It was unsettling and a little sickening, but he forced it back, letting it sit to the side for him to pick apart later so he could focus on the more immediate threat to his health and sanity.

Luke didn't dare presume Palpatine expected him to take one of the actual seats, so he sat on his knees in the center of the circle of chairs, his legs tucked under him as comfortably as he could manage in such a position. He refused to rise to the bait that he was dangling in front of him as far as his father was concerned; Vader's health was a thing, a niggling worry that forever lingered in the back of his mind, especially after Cylo had turned him off. It didn't matter how short of a time it was, Luke had seriously thought he was dead, just from the flick of a button. It had been a stark reminder of just how fragile he was, never mind all his strength and power; if anything else tried to go for him in such a manner...

Luke took a breath, shoving the thoughts aside for now. No, don't think about it, don't let it bother you, don't show it bothered you; he was better than this and he would prove it.

"Yes, Excellency," he managed to get out, trying to keep himself alert for whatever was to come.

[doitnow]

Sidious smiled to himself, feeling the hate roll off from the young Skywalker. Yes, he could use that. It only made the darkness stronger. It made him stronger and he could feel it wash over him in refreshing waves. It was the same hatred he felt radiating from Vader despite his apprentice's efforts to hide it.

But Vader was weakening. Every day he could feel that strength faltering. Perhaps it wasn't entirely because of the state of his health but also because of the presence of his son. Vader was becoming weak in the Dark Side with such a pull towards the Light once more. Palpatine would have to nip that in the bud sooner rather than later before Vader decided to move against him in any way.

"Your father has told me what he has taught you so we will not have to start over entirely." But of course, Vader would have taught his son more than what he would tell his Master. "I will push you during your training- we will see what you are capable of," he said with a nod. "That is why, effective immediately, you are being transferred to the Imperial Court. You have served well in the field but we both know you are capable of more."

He closed his eyes with a smile, letting the Dark Side surround him. Soon the ghosts of the long-dead Jedi Masters would be entirely wiped out by the corruption of darkness- this was no longer a place of Light.

"Close your eyes, young Skywalker. Reach out in the Force, feel the Dark Side. Tell me what you feel as you surrender to it," he said softly. He was going to show Luke a glimpse of what awaited him if he was just willing to reach out a little bit to grasp it.

[faithfulson]

Luke tried -- and entirely failed -- to hide his surprise at the news. Transfer?! No, he couldn't transfer to Imperial Center, to the court itself; it would limit what he would be able to do to for his father and the Rebellion, if not destroy his ability to help entirely. This really, really couldn't get any worse right now; he couldn't even find it in him to stomach replying and he really just wanted to punch a wall.

He slowly forced out a breath, trying to calm himself, but he was only marginally successful. Where he was and who he was with definitely served as a detriment to calm, so he just took a deep breath, counting off in his head as he let it out slow, before he closed his eyes and focused on the Force.

He hadn't really consciously focused on the Dark Side before; his father was content with him just making use of the Force, and letting him decide what he wanted to do with it. He knew Luke was strong, that he as an adult capable of making his own choices on what to do with that strength. Focusing just on one side while trying to hide that strength was proving far more difficult than he would have liked, especially in present company. It felt like forever before he finally managed something, letting out a shuddering breath.

"I feel... cold," he murmured softly, trying to hide his distress at it. "I feel the death that happened here, like it's happening now."

[doitnow]

"Can you hear them?" The smile on Palpatine's face was cruel but satisfied. He had felt the deaths of each of the Jedi Masters. All except one but that one was only a matter of time- one Jedi Master could not take on the entire might of the Empire. The Inquisitors were wiping out the remains of the Jedi Order so Yoda was alone. He would make sure that little green traitor would not get his shriveled hands on his new apprentice.

"Go deeper, feel it surround you," he said quietly. "Do you feel what is under the foundations of the temple? This was once a sacred shrine of the Sith before the Jedi took it by force. Reach deeper and you'll feel the ancient power flowing through you."

[faithfulson]

Oh, he heard them all right. Luke had no illusions about the kind of person he father was, the things he had done; he knew he had been personally responsible for much of the death here. If it weren't for the Emperor, he would have offered those hurt voices something, some apology, some words of comfort, but he couldn't, not without being heard.

As it was, he didn't want to sink deeper; it felt gross, like he needed to take a million sonic showers, and it still wouldn't be enough to get him clean. But at the same time, he couldn't help but be curious; this was built on top of a Sith shrine? Who thought that was a good idea? He fought back a grimace, hesitantly reaching out and trying to feel out this shrine, but it was beyond his grasp, at least as things were at the moment. There was no way he could keep his presence in the Force tapered down, to hide his power, and try to reach for that distant, ancient dark.

Luke blew out a breath, half tempted to give up, admit weakness, but at the same time...

He grimaced in annoyance, more at his own curiosity than at Palpatine's goading, and allowed his control over himself to slip a little. His own light steadily grew brighter as he reached out for the dark, a metaphorical hand reaching out to touch it as his real hands clenched against his knees.

Somewhere deep in the palace, something rumbled.

I DID NOT FORGET THIS

[jadus]

He had read the signs, seen the inevitable diminution. Could he rule such a galaxy? Perhaps. But it would break him to try, and he would not permit this. Remaining in the shadows too would be pointless. Instead, he would travel to a most secluded vault, hidden on a planet deep within the Stygian Caldera, the dense and treacherous nebula that had once protected the Sith Empire. Deep in the dead rock of a barren world, he would find his seclusion.

He left final gifts to his most faithful, and then sealed himself in, alone. His armor joined with the machines within. Cold, stinging fumes hissed into his mask, and every breath came slower. His heart beat twenty times in a minute.

Twelve.

Two.

None.

His mind persisted. It was almost free of his body, almost what it should be, but the cold still touched it as well, slowing his thoughts to the scale of decades. The galaxy seemed to roil with life and pain and fear, shimmering with ceaseless change. At first, it was overwhelming.

But there were patterns. He could not yet describe their form nor predict their course. They were intriguing. And he had so much time to study them.

He was oblivious to the smaller, briefer things around him. He stared unblinking through brief decades. His presence in the Force seemed to almost have melded with the land itself, his presence had so thoroughly tainted it over the centuries. But he remained at its center, deathly still yet somehow living.

No one had entered the vault since his servants had departed. Those few unlucky creatures that sought refuge amongst the rocks were gone too fast for him to become aware of them, starving as their minds unpeeled or returning to the galaxy as mad prophets. When more came, the vault stole their voices and whispered to them, and to their foes, bringing conflict and ruin to the bare rock above. And so undisturbed, his meditation could persist for eons more.

In this century, a new speck of nothingness swallowed the foundations of Light and Dark alike, returning them to primordial flux. He watched the remains, but there were few stirrings in the darkness to explain it. An event in passing. But it slowed his thoughts with consideration. He had seen something in the brief flash.

In this decade, he watched the formless Light rise in brittle spires, rot through, and suddenly shatter. A mass of Dark spilled forth, a wave crashing over the galaxy, and he waited for it to draw back. Against it, he could see faint outlines.

In this year, something died. It did not collapse into void, it did not let out the long cry of grinding, cruel downfall. It flashed, its scream so brief he only heard its echoes. The Dark around it fed mindlessly on it, but there was no will to shape it further. He was now so vast and uncaring, but even he could reach out with slow sieving grasp and catch those echoes, draw them out into filaments of pure, glimmering fire. In its glimmering, he saw the shape of great and terrible things, a form stretched across ages.

In this month, the shock of seeing had been too much to sustain. He reeled back into cold, into something forgotten.

And in these lengthening days, he grew to dim awareness: something crawled along his surfaces.

He was in a single point. He had a singular presence. Something was there beside him.

[doitnow]

"Yes, embrace the darkness. Feel it."

The Jedi and all that they stood for, all that they once protected, was gone. It was time for what was left to be wiped away and who better to do it than Luke? The hope of the Force, the hope of the Light Side, would be the greatest weapon of the darkness now.

Anakin had been limited in his ability with the Dark Side. He was powerful but something of the Jedi still remained no matter how much he had tried. But Luke was practically a blank slate. He smirked as he felt Luke reach deeper as the palace started to rumble. Something deep in the foundations, deeper than the Jedi had dared to go

<3

[doitnow]

He had not felt a presence like this since his old Master. It was powerful, yes, and though he felt the darkness, it was also something he had not felt before.

The Death Star had been destroyed but the Empire had still made an example out of Alderaan. There would be retaliation, of course. They would wipe out what remained of the Rebel Alliance and restore peace to the galaxy once more. That part of his plans did not concern him. He sent Vader off to deal with the rebels- this was something that he wanted to do alone.

He would summon this presence to him- a command through the Dark Side to join him. If he had to seek this mysterious being, he would not be so generous.

[jadus]

The galaxy no longer seethed as if boiling, it had frozen into this instant. All was still, save for his heart. It beat so loudly to his deprived ears, a repulsive sound that he could not stop.

His mind turned to the interloper, grasping, diffuse, re-learning focus. What was it? Where? He could not yet see, for he had blissfully forgotten how.

[dorkvader]

Vader knelt before the imperial throne; pointedly ignoring everyone else in the room. Especially that jerk Mas Amedda... smugness practically oozes off him as he mistakes devotion for prostration. Fooling himself into thinking he has more dignity than Vader for not being made to kneel. As if a Sith would ever prostrate before anyone or anything. Not that it matters, the only thing that matters is Palpatine. But one day he'll be more than happy to show Mas the truth of his situation.

“You summoned me, my Master...”

The question is why. It’s obviously something important or else he could have spared him this trip. He really doesn't like coming back to Coruscant unless he has to. It's probably important. Hopefully it’s important... Of course it’s not up to him to decide what his Master thinks is important. Once he had to come back to make an appearance at one of Krennic's dreadful parties. Palpatine had insisted that a token appearance was important politically and as a lesson in patience. But privately he suspects that Tarkin just didn’t want to be stuck with Krennic on his own and Palpatine found sending him along amusing.

Vader waits patiently. He's pretty sure he hasn't messed anything up... killing someone that should have been interrogated is just a minor oops. If his true plans had been unraveled then he would have felt his master's rage from orbit. Walking into here would have been like walking into a maelstrom. His token attempts at betrayal usually met with more amusement than anger. They weren't all that good and honestly he really wasn't all that interested in killing his master. Not until he learned about Luke.

It's amazing what the right motivation will do. Part of him had always needed Palpatine, his approval and guidance... even as he hated him. Palpatine was all he had left. But no more, for the first time since Mustafar he has a flicker of hope. He's had twenty years to learn to control his emotions and bury the ones he doesn't want Sideous to find. So he ignores his plots in his master's presence and focuses on his curiosity in the moment and the hate he has for Amedda. If he has been found out there's no point in worrying about it now. Just maybe he'll get lucky and there will have been a report of a Jedi he can hunt down. It feels like ages since he was able to hunt a Jedi down.

[doitnow]

"Lord Vader." Palpatine turned his attention to his apprentice. He was quiet for a moment as he felt the Force around him, looking for any disturbances but found nothing but Vader's faint curiosity about what he was called here for. Palpatine always had a reason for when he sent for Vader, even if that reason wasn't always apparent at the time.

"Leave us," he said with a dismissive wave at Mas Amedda who couldn't help but look slightly surprised. Normally he was present during any audience but he bowed and Palpatine waited for him to leave the room before speaking once more.

"Rise, Lord Vader," he said in a raspy voice as he leaned back on his throne. "I have a task of the utmost importance for you which will require you use all I have taught you," he said seriously. And this time, he wasn't talking about keeping Krennic occupied so he didn't have to deal with him.

[faithfulson]

Luke grimaced, dimly aware of Palpatine's words, but not really hearing them. The Emperor and everything in the room they were in felt like it was light years away, and his voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. He couldn't really see anything either, and felt his sense of self drifting blindly into the dark.

It was cold, so impossibly cold, to the point that his breath coming from his physical body was fogged.

"I can't see," he murmured, but he couldn't really even hear his own words.

[doitnow]

"Yes, you can. You know not to depend on your vision but to reach out with the Force," Palpatine said as he walked around to face Luke. He could see Luke's frozen breath, knowing he was going deeper.

"The Force will guide you where you need to go," he said softly, reaching out himself to guide Luke along this dark path. He had guided Anakin down this path before, Luke would find his way as well.

[faithfulson]

Luke managed somehow to not recoil when he felt the Emperor come up behind him. Being physically before the man was bad enough, but in this... space, whatever it was, was somehow worse. Still, it was helpful, as much as he hated to admit that; something familiar, something he knew the shape of, brought what he was supposed to be looking at to clearer focus.

He wished it hadn't. He really wished he'd failed to see what the Emperor was trying to show him.

It was like a cacophony of atrocities, anger and fear and regret and something warped and twisted to the point where he was pretty sure his mind couldn't even process what he was looking at. He shuddered, hugging his arms to himself, wanting nothing to do with any of this but finding it difficult to look away at the same time.

[doitnow]

"Don't be afraid. This power, this unlimited power, is yours to take if you dare to reach out," Palpatine murmured quietly. He knew what Luke was seeing, he had seen the same thing when he had first started down the path to the Dark Side. He saw the unlimited potential in that moment and he had done everything to hold onto it.

Now he would use this power to shape his apprentice. Where Vader had failed to fully grasp and understand the full potential of the Dark Side, his son still had the opportunity. "This is the heart of the Dark Side. This is what makes all things possible, things that you could not hope to accomplish without it."