It's nearly New Year for me, so I'm posting the end of this short fic here and once again wishing everyone happy holidays, and all the best that 2020 can bring!

4.

He was lying in bed, he thought. No: a sofa. He was lying on a sofa, warm and comfortable, but his head felt like it had been smacked with a dictionary.

"Ah, young Skywalker. Or young Organa, if you prefer. So glad to see you finally awake."

How? How did he know that? He wasn't awake, he was uncomfortably close to consciousness and now he'd heard that charming voice he just wanted to fall back into that blissful—

"I am glad you think my voice is charming, young man, but I do believe it's rude to ignore your host that way."

Host...?

"Yes. What else would I be?"

The pieces fell together in a horrifying picture, and Luke dragged himself upright, peeled his eyelids up, and openly cringed at the sight of the face in front of him.

Palpatine chuckled. "Now, my boy, you know it's rude to focus on scars like that as well. Your own father has them much, much worse than I do."

Luke didn't deign to respond. He just glanced around the room, a very familiar backroom, with a small office for finances in the corner but mainly a ratty old sofa in the middle where he was lying now, and amidst the screaming thought of how surreal it was to see the twisted villain from all his childhood stories sitting quietly on the chair his grandmother used to read to him in, all he could think was: "You took me to... the bookshop?"

"Of course. Isn't it fitting that you die where your mother and her family spent so much of their lives?"

Wait.

Die?

Luke made a split second decision to—

There was a gun pointed at him before he'd even made to open his mouth.

It looked wrong, the look of Palpatine's hand wrapped around the grip. Luke's throat bobbed.

"If you even think about screaming, boy," he said mildly. "I think it's very clear what I'll do."

Luke shook his head. "Stop reading my mind."

"Oh, my apologies. I suppose that isn't polite. But it's not something I can stop, you know; once one's power grows, as yours inevitably would, it will become as natural as breathing to instantly know where you stand in other people's worlds, and to restrain oneself would be akin to—"

Luke followed his father's advice.

He watched the boundaries of his mind grow slick and impassable with a hard stone of satisfaction deep in his gut; he watched Palpatine's sudden snarl with the same.

But the snarl was gone in a moment, and Palpatine just leaned forward to take one of Luke's hands, sitting limply on his knee. Cold spread up his fingers like gnawing frostbite.

"Akin to wearing gloves constantly," Palpatine said with pity, as Luke desperately tried to shove that coldness out. "Even when you're so warm you're..." He bared his teeth in a grin. "...practically on fire."

Luke shook off the hand and, with the contact severed, that horrible, horrible feeling vanished. "What do you want with me?" he asked weakly.

"A great many things, child—and I think you know exactly what they might be—but first I'd like to investigate this gift of yours that has apparently been left to decay so terribly," Palpatine's lips twisted, "if you cannot totally shut this out," he brushed his fingers lightly over the back of Luke's hand; Luke shuddered, "at your age."

"My father is teaching me," Luke shot back mutinously.

"I thought you said your father was dead? The gifted father, that was."

Luke froze. Had he not...?

"Oh, I knew." Palpatine had got his confusion from his face, not his mind; his defences were still strong. Luke was pretty sure. "But I wasn't aware that you did. You know, I've been keeping an eye on you since I returned to Anchorhead"—since the shop, Luke was pretty sure that actually meant—"so I know one thing was sure: Vader has not visited you in days. And weren't you supposed to be heading along the coast soon?"

Luke shivered. Palpatine smiled.

"If you're leaving, and he's so intent on teaching you, why hasn't he started already?"

It... was true.

Vader hadn't returned after that one, intimate conversation they'd had.

But. Still.

"I trust him," Luke said simply. "I trust he has his reasons. But I imagine that's an utterly alien concept to you."

Palpatine stared.

Then he threw back his head and laughed.

"You're funny, child," he said. "But utterly misguided."

All he had was— "You're the misguided one." He cringed the moment he said it.

"So eloquent for a politician's son," Palpatine mocked. "But I'll graciously ignore your lack of finesse and gratitude, and just deliver you a brief lesson before you die, right here.

"Let's see how good your defences are."

Luke screamed.

He— he was far away from here, in a body that ached with a face that twinged with every twitch of the jaw, every worried frown that creased his brow. Palpatine's coldness wasn't as noticeable here, because everything was cold, and lonely, and dark—

—except there was a light of warmth and love and hope in the corner, and it was screaming.

It had been silent for hours now, painfully silent once Bail had contacted him with the terrible news, and now terror knotted his chest at that silence cracked and words bloomed out of it—

You know who this is, Anakin.

He—Luke, Vader?—offered no response through that bond, unwilling to hurt him—Vader, Luke?—any more than this, but fear needed no voice.

Would you like to come and save him?

You couldn't save his mother, but perhaps you can save him.

You'd better come quick, Anakin. You know what will happen otherwise. And you know exactly where I am.

Luke only knew that his head hurt, and now that other mind was gently pushing him back into his own with the quietest whisper...

Shove us down the hill.

...that caused an avalanche.

Palpatine was thrown out of Luke's mind like a slingshot recoil, so hard it actually took him several moments to recover. Not that Luke could take advantage of that—he himself needed far longer—but it was gratifying to see.

"I said," Luke gasped, "get out of my head."

"So your father taught you something," he sneered. "But everything your father knows comes from me anyway, and don't you know what the best teacher is?"

Luke narrowed his eyes. "What?"

Palpatine smiled. "Practise.

"And practise comes hand in hand with pain."

He trailed a finger down Luke's jaw.

"And I intend to hurt you as much as I possibly can, for as long as your father is here to watch."

And then he shoved at Luke's shields again.

And again.

And again.

"Look how much you're already improving!" he said cheerily.

"Fuck you," Luke said, and then it came again.

His hills remained standing, the passes between them worn smoother and smoother by Palpatine's continuous assault and continuous slides. He... was getting better at these defences.

When Palpatine failed to get purchase for the fifth time in a row, and Luke was able to patch up the way in before he could exploit it, he just narrowed his eyes.

Then he lunged forward to wrap his arms around Luke's throat.

The skin-on-skin contact stunned him momentarily and his defences waned with his vision; he gasped for air, desperately trying to get something into his dizzied mind and Palpatine slipped in again, like a scalding finger trailing along inside his head—

He shoved him out again, but it burned and hurt.

He shoved him out, shoved the effects of the contact out. For goodness' sake, his father had taught him how to handle this, he should know how to handle this—

But he—

He was so scared.

Palpatine— Palpatine had already... he didn't know, but he'd done something and there was a fire ravaging his mind because of it.

"What—" he panted, gasping for air again—not because there was still a clammy grip on his throat, but because that fire in his mind was only picking up heat, and it was spreading, under his skin, racing down his arms... "What... is that—"

"A memory," Palpatine said. He revelled in the words. "When your father lit up the warehouse I was in, can you imagine the agony that caused me? Can you imagine how brightly my vengeance burned when I crawled out with flesh that boiled on my bones? I have waited sixteen years for this.

"Now, your father already felt that pain when the town hall burned; he was already indifferent to it, and I imagine he would run through that inferno again and again if it meant he actually managed to reach his precious wife in time.

"But you..." He leaned it. "When you burn, he will feel every inch of your suffering, as well as his own. He will lose everything again—and the Organas, for the hindrance their political manoeuvring has been to my operations, and the Naberries, for their role in what your dear departed mother did to me, all those years ago."

He stood up, and Luke automatically slumped back in shock, mind whirling as he processed everything...

...then the processing period was up, and his mind latched onto the important thing: Palpatine was going to kill him.

He threw himself to his feet, darting for the door; if he could just get to the front of the shop—

A bullet punched through his calf and he went down in a spray of blood, choking on his own tongue. His head hit the doorframe, hard; he saw bright starbursts.

"Please don't run," Palpatine said, still brandishing the gun. "It would make all of this so much more complicated."

His— his limbs were starting to seize up, his mind still shrieking in that vortex of heat Palpatine had infected it with, his breathing ragged—

He scrambled to his feet again and there was another shot, in the same place. He screamed.

Blood stained Jobal's beautiful jewel-blue carpet.

Palpatine turned away from the boy he'd left in a crimson pool on the floor, towards one of the boxes of books to be organised, priced and displayed out the front. He pulled one out and flicked through it, snorting.

It was a language dictionary of some sort, though Luke's vision was too blurry for him to make out the words. It looked like a Huttese script, but it could have been Shyriiwook, Ryl, Rodian...

Palpatine snorted. "Teenagers write such crude things, don't they? Especially in books they don't own.

"But despite that, I must say: I've always liked books. Every type of book."

He drew a lighter from deep within his sleeve.

Luke made a quiet noise of horror.

"They all burn so well."

Within moments it had caught, pages curling and crumbling into blackened husks. Palpatine tossed it at the bookshelf and watched the whole thing blaze.

"Are—" Luke panted. "Are you insane?"

Yes.

Yes he was.

"Now that's just rude," Palpatine tutted.

"So is leaving someone trapped in a burning bookshop."

"Oh, I haven't left you." Palpatine swept right up to him, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that his long, robe-like coat was trailing embers. "Not yet."

Not yet.

Palpatine was going to lock him in and leave him to burn, letting his father watch and sense it. But he wasn't going to be in here when that happened.

He had every intention of seeing the aftermath.

If he could help it, that was.

Luke eyed the door, saw Palpatine watch him eyeing the door... then moved.

Another shot rang out, but in the wrong direction. Luke feinted left, then dived straight at Palpatine while his arm was still out. He wrenched it back, as hard as he could; he wasn't sure what the crack he heard was but Palpatine howled. He shoved, and shoved, but he couldn't push back.

He was an old, injured man, after all.

Luke... temporarily went insane.

He reached down, into that box of burning books, and grabbed the dictionary. His head was spinning, the billowing smoke scratching his lungs; he coughed, hard, and then his fingers latched around that book.

It was the feeling he got from it that snapped him back to reality.

Usually he got excitement from adventure books, adoration from romance novels, curiosity from mysteries... and from the dictionary he got nothing but a faint stress that barely made a ripple in what was already a pretty stressful situation and, most importantly, boredom.

That boredom calmed him enough, for one moment, to ignore the adrenaline thundering through his veins and realise that holding onto something that was on fire hurt.

He chucked it at Palpatine. It smacked him around the head, hard; he howled again.

His good arm, the arm not being clutched to his chest while his face contorted in a rictus of pain, scrabbled for the gun. Luke kicked it away—under the cabinet.

Where were Palpatine's henchmen? Why was he alone?

Arrogance? Self-preservation?

He didn't know. This was all the better for him.

The hem of his trousers had caught fire. Much of the carpet had caught fire, in fact.

Stop, drop and roll, Luke thought, a little hysterically.

That... would be a supremely bad idea.

So he just tried to pinch it out and stumbled out of the room, slamming the door behind him—there was no glaring side that read Fire Door; Keep Shut on the door like there so often were at school, but he understood the principle—and staggered forward. Into the front room, dark with the December evening.

He did roll then, just to get rid of the heat eating at his trouser leg and adding to the scorching pain that flared every time he stepped on the leg that'd been shot. But then he crawled, staggered, forwards, trailing blood, until he reached the entrance, the door with the shiny (and now a little sooty) bell above it, and he reached for the handle—

It was locked.

He jiggled it. Again and again and again and screamed his frustration, but it was locked.

He stared at the windows. They were always locked, and he knew Jobal had always, to his eternal bafflement, invested in ridiculously tough windows—though he thought he knew exactly who she'd been defending against now, not that it had ever done any good—but he threw himself at them anyway.

His shoulder wrenched the wrong way, and that hurt too, but he just heard a thunk.

No shatter.

Not even a splinter—

He tried again. Nothing.

He tried again. Nothing.

—a frantic mind touched his, Luke, where are you, what—

Laughter.

A wheezing cackling behind him.

He spun on his good foot to see that Palpatine had dragged himself upright and was grinning at him, his bad arm hanging limp at his side.

"There's no escape, young Skywalker," he said.

"For you either," Luke shot back. He didn't seem to hear him.

He was insane.

He must have had a plan.

He'd had every intention of leaving, Luke still locked in, so—

He had to have been able to get them both in here, even long in the evening after Vader would have locked up, so—

That meant—

"Where's the key!?"

A spark, crackle; the wooden door caught fire, left wide open behind Palpatine, and Luke watched with horrified eyes as it jumped from bookcase to bookcase like they were a trail lit in oil.

Palpatine's laughter was getting hoarser; even Luke, with his young lungs, was starting to feel the strain. Smoke choked the room.

"Where—" he croaked, loudly, although it shredded his poor throat. "Where's the key!?"

He could sense that other, benevolent touch on his mind again, frantic, looking for him; people called his name.

He turned towards the windows.

His parents were across the street, bailing out of a car; Breha was on the phone, lips moving faster than he'd ever seen her speak before, serene speechmaker that she was. Bail's tan face had drained of colour; he made to sprint across the street without even looking before he crossed, and Vader—

Vader was right at the window, staring at Luke in sheer, unparalleled horror.

He was desperately rooting through his pockets, his bag. Then he gave up and shouted, his panicked sense expanding to cradle Luke's like a father cradled his newborn sixteen years too late, and Luke's head spun even more.

Not again.

It wasn't his thought, but it beat against his mind like a wave against the shore, like the winds against the hills.

Not again.

No. Not again.

He couldn't let Palpatine hurt his father like this again.

He couldn't let him have his revenge.

So Luke's gaze turned, to squarely rest on Palpatine.

His father had no key.

Palpatine must have had one, in order to get in.

The logic was obvious and natural: Palpatine had his father's key.

He reflexively took another step back, towards the door, eyeing the flames. His father's voice beat against his mind—

—Luke, no, what are you doing—

—and he shoved it down the hill as he ran.

Flames caught onto him, searing light and heat and pain, exploding across his sense and an answering, remembered pain from his father than only exacerbated it—

But then he had reached Palpatine and the man was thrown to the floor.

"Where's the key." He almost didn't recognise his own voice, cold and implacable as it was. It was the only cold thing about this situation and he clung to it as he stared Palpatine down, the flames reflecting in both their eyes, turning the blue to a shining gold.

Palpatine rasped a laugh and croaked, "There... is no escape... boy."

Luke crouched down in front of him, feeling the fire near this nook behind the counter they'd barricaded themselves in, closer and closer—

He seized the front of his clothes and screamed, loud enough that it shredded it smoke-ravaged throat, "Where is it!?"

Palpatine only laughed again, but that laugh was petering out further now, replaced with coughs. Luke could feel his own voice deteriorating, failing; he just shook his head and let go of him, stumbling back.

He was going to die in here.

Luke—

He was going to die in here.

—the fire brigade are on their way, son, you have to—

Every other thought drowned amidst that flooding realisation, and the instinctive kick of the thought, like the instinctive kick of lungs to draw air after too long underwater, that suddenly defined his entire being:

He did not want to die here.

But he needed the key to avoid death. Only Palpatine knew where it was. Luke could search him, but it would take too long; he could question him, but he clearly wouldn't talk; how else could he possibly find that precious little key?

He couldn't exactly take the information from him by force...

...except he could.

Luke stared at his hands for a moment, knowing that he was wasting precious seconds but needing the time to calm, to decide, to—

To steel himself.

His hills encased his mind still, impassable. But he didn't want to keep anyone out. He wanted to—

He wanted to get in.

Father? he asked. How do I—

A spark, the beam across the door to the backroom collapsing, broke his attention. He flinched.

There was a cold touch against his mind; he glared at Palpatine, who even now tried to pry open his bond with his father, to hurt them both—

And dived.

Palpatine's shields loomed like a thick, stone wall. But in that moment he'd tried to get into Luke's mind, he'd had to leave his own open.

And Luke took the opportunity with vigour.

Images flashed to mind. Padmé Amidala's funeral, and the bag of mirth, fury, vindictiveness that accompanied it; walking into a bookshop to see the ghost of a child who should be dead, and the glee that came with realising Vader knew nothing; the fire and the heat and the rage and the knowledge that he barely cared if he died here, he knew his precious Imperials would never regain their status and he hated Vader and Padmé and the Organas for their part in that, so he would make them pay—

Luke had never wanted to understand evil so thoroughly.

But he had to, to understand exactly why Palpatine had hidden the key behind the handwritten, cursive sign for the Science Fiction & Fantasy bookshelf.

The card was high enough, close enough to the front windows—so that it gleams and taunts when the rest of the shop is ablaze—that it hadn't caught fire yet. His gaze found it instantly and he ran, ignoring his father's shouting in his head, ignoring the sirens that blared—the brigade were here. None of that mattered.

He cried out. It hurt, it hurt so much, but he shoved the pain away. He brushed his hand through the rain of charred scraps of paper that used to be books people had read and loved, letting every emotion from every reader flood through him and flood out again, like a flood scourging the riverbed dry.

He picked up the sign and there it was. Conveniently near to the door, for Palpatine's escape, and Luke fumbled for the key immediately, limping over to the door...

The fires continued to rage...

His head spun. Smoke still choked him, choked the room; the faster he moved, the harder he found it to breathe; his vision was dark and he wasn't sure if it was the hit to his head or the smoke or his eyes, death getting a head start on him—

The third try. The fifth try. The ninth.

The key slid home and he turned it, grasping for the doorknob. He—couldn't—pull—

He collapsed, the fire licking at his heels, just as the door shattered inwards and scarred arms caught him as he fell.

Waking hurt.

It came in brief flashes, the smell of disinfectant and... cleanliness... and hands reached for him, frantic voices and calm voices and steady hands washing away in the sound of the sirens overhead. He thought he saw water spray, heard fires hiss, but then his mum's face eclipsed the evening sky and she smiled at him weakly.

"It's alright, Luke," she said. He distantly realised that his connection to Vader was cut off tightly, as tightly as could be. "You'll be alright."

Then he slipped away again.

He didn't remember much after that. Bits and pieces, jumbled together, snatched away before he could really know what they meant.

The emergency operations. A breathing mask on his face and the steady rasp of air into his lungs. People in white coats swarming—

Bright lights. White, painful to look at, but infinitely preferable to the amber glow of a flame.

When he came to, it was in a bed in what he tentatively identified, after a brief, dazed inspection, as a hospital room.

He hurt.

He must have drifted off again, because when he came to again there was a nurse checking in on him, and she smiled slightly when she realised he was awake.

"W— where..." he croaked, and she shook her head.

"Your dads are waiting outside, you might want them to explain instead," she said gently. "If you want them to come in?"

Luke tried to nod, realised that hurt—why wasn't he surprised?—and made to say instead, "Ye—es."

She left, and a moment later Bail and Vader filed in.

There was only one chair next to the bed; after a heavy look between them, Bail took the seat and Vader loomed above them, so tall Luke almost had to crane his neck to meet his eye.

He could see both their gazes, one brown and one blue, flicker over him. Bail was far too... politicky... to ever express alarm at the sight of him, but Vader was not so savvy. The horror that twisted his face at the sight of Luke's injuries was...

"You look like shit yourself, you know," Luke told him. He did. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week.

Bail cringed. Vader laughed. "Not quite a week, little one," he said softly. "But I have not slept in a day or two, no."

Luke grimaced. The pain that shot through him at every little twitch was starting to get repetitive, now. "When—"

"It's been approximately forty hours since I got back to the house to find you gone, Luke," Bail said tightly. He was sat forward on the chair, hands laced together over his knees. Every inch of his body was taut. "You were not with Palpatine for long."

Luke croaked, "I'm sorry."

"What? No! No, it's not your fault you were kidnapped, it's just—" He shook his head. For the first time, Luke realised that his dad looked like shit as well.

His voice broke. "God, Luke. I was terrified. I was out for twenty minutes then I got back and you were gone." He choked again. "I should've been there."

"We all should've," Vader added. "If we'd been there to protect you, instead of out pooling everything we knew about Palpatine to add to the case—"

"The case that got Luke through the enquiry and made it clear that he was not responsible for arson, Vader," Bail cut him off. "It— it would've been worthwhile to do, anyway—"

"But Luke was kidnapped, shot and nearly died because we were away. In my own shop."

Bail flinched. "Yes," he said, a little shakily. "Yes. But it had some uses."

"Dad," Luke said softly. He let it be ambiguous as to who he was addressing; to be frank, he meant both of them. "It's alright."

Vader snorted. "Look at yourself in the mirror," he said thickly, "and tell me again that it will be alright."

"The doctor said Luke just needs a few more operations, then he ought to heal well enough," Bail reminded him. "It wasn't as bad as it could've been. Luke is right. We'll all be fine."

"Well, fine is a stretch," Luke added. "Jobal is going to murder me when she finds out what happened to her shop."

Vader, despite himself, barked a laugh at that.

"Where's Mum?" Luke asked, glancing at Bail. "Please tell me she's—"

"—verbally eviscerating the bloodthirsty swarm of reporters and tying up all the loose ends with the Palpatine investigation?" Bail smiled. "Oh, definitely."

Luke sank back against the pillow slightly, smiling into it.

And...

He was almost afraid to ask. "Palpatine?"

"Died in the fire." Vader's lips twisted into a slight snarl. "Good riddance."

Bail opened his mouth as if to chastise him, tilted his head, then closed it again with a vindictive nod. "Good riddance. But we're just settling the legalities. And the details. He's been causing trouble for a long time."

Luke swallowed. Glanced at Vader.

"I know."

His father was watching him sadly.

Bail reached for his shoulder, hesitated, then patted the bed instead. Luke was grateful; he didn't think he'd be able to take being touched right now. "I'll go call your mum," he said, "and get her on the phone."

Luke smiled and nodded. Bail reached for his phone and walked out.

Vader slid into the empty seat.

"I..." Luke began, then trailed off. "I... broke into Palpatine's mind, then, to find the key."

Vader was quiet for a moment. "I know you did."

"Was— was that—" He swallowed. "Was that wrong?"

"It... no doubt contributed to the fact that he perished. Was unable to think up a way to escape."

Luke glanced down at his hands and was ashamed to see tears streak down his sore face, splatter onto the white sheets. "Did I kill him?"

"No, Luke. He was killed by a fire of his own making."

Luke closed his eyes and felt his face crumple. "Okay. Thank you."

"Anything, son."

Still with his eyes closed, Luke ran his fingers over each other. The still-healing burns twinged—oh yeah. He'd chucked a burning book at Palpatine's face.

He opened his eyes. "What is this?" he asked, gesturing to his hands, expanding his mind to brush against Vader's. "What— what— why do I have it?"

"It's a gift." Vader met his gaze steadily. Calmly. "It's a difficult gift, sometimes, and I know you have not had an easy time dealing with it, but I can show you how." He stage-whispered: "It's very good for winning card games."

Luke laughed. "I think my mum would kill me if she caught me at a casino."

"Young man," Vader puffed himself up and Luke laughed again, "I never said anything about a casino."

"Why are we talking about casinos?" Bail walked back in, phone in his hand, looking faintly amused. He handed the phone—Luke's phone—to him.

"Luke! Are you alright?"

Vader murmured a promise: "I'll be around to show you how to deal with it. I'm not leaving again."

Luke dipped his head. "Thank you, Father."

"Luke?"

He held the phone up to his ear. "Hey, Mum."

"Your dad tells me you're feeling better?"

"I am." Luke exchanged a humorous look with his dad, with his father, and said, "You know, I'm feeling well enough that, once I'm out of the hospital, maybe... we can still go to Jobal's for the holidays? All of us. You, Dad, Vader. You know what the Naberrie Christmas celebrations are like."

Breha laughed. "I'm sure Jobal will be delighted to have the whole family there. Should I get her on the phone now?"

"Yeah," he said, though Vader laughed at his cringe.

"I'll call you back in a second." She clicked off. Luke smiled; she'd never been one to overstate her affection.

Vader smiled. "That sounds... wonderful." Then the melancholy tone receded. "Padmé always told me Jobal makes excellent Christmas cookies."

"She does," Luke agreed. His phone buzzed; he glanced down at it, heart skipping slightly when he saw who it was from. "And Sola and Ryoo have an ongoing competition of who can decorate the tree better..."

He grinned to himself as he read Biggs's message. I know you were sick when I asked before, but I wanted to ask if maybe when you were feeling better you might be interested in...

He grinned wider, and—painstakingly slowly, careful not to make his hands hurt too much—typed out his reply and sent it.

A response pinged back within moments. His cheeks genuinely hurt from grinning.

"By the way, you're the one who has to tell them all what happened to her shop."

Vader's eyes blew wide. "Now, there's no need to—"

"And..." Luke tilted his head, gave a tiny little laugh. Bail was watching him with an exasperated fondness. "By any chance, for a few days—before or after Christmas, any time, really..."

"Luke," Bail said.

"...Biggs could come visit?"

Vader laughed. Winter winds blasted the window, and Luke's phone buzzed again.

His own laughter faded into a smile when his grandmother's warm voice sounded in his ear.

.

The End

.

Happy New Year!