Title: "Between Salvation and Damnation"
Author(s): vaderincarnate
Timeframe: ESB
Characters: Vader, Luke
Genre: drama, vignette
Summary: In his eyes you see something -- a hint of heaven, a glimmer of hell, a flicker of gold and hatred and dying, and you know that you will make it yours.
Notes: Why does Elli like writing in the second person so much? Because she finds the verb tenses a lot easier to work with. Why does she speak of herself in the third person? She has no idea.
You know what it means to be damned, corrupt beyond all hope of salvation.
You have lived a half-life for years, not-alive and not-dead but caught somewhere between in this prison of durasteel. Hell can hold no greater torment than this, and you are not nearly enough of a fool to believe that something as mundane as death can heal your twisted soul enough for a chance at redemption.
But your son looks like his mother. And that resurrects hopes you thought long dead, dreams you thought long banished, and looking into his pale blue eyes, eyes that speak of a purity and innocence you lost long ago ... looking at him, you almost regret what he will become. Almost regret what you will make him become.
Almost.
There is darkness in all men. You who were once called Anakin Skywalker, the Hero Without Fear, know this better than most -- how insidious the darkness is, the way it crawls and slithers and flourishes in the deepest depths of the human psyche. How the brightest light will hide the greatest dark.
Darkness lies in wait for all, careful and patient and seductive, luring even the most virtuous of men away from the taste of sunlight. Even your son, this innocent, wide-eyed youth who dares to defy an Empire.
He hides it well, your son. The essence of a boy hero, all golden hair and shining blue eyes. The hero of the Rebellion, their last hope for victory after all these long decades in a futile struggle against an implacable enemy. He inspires them, as you once inspired a galaxy.
But the darkness is there, behind those bright blue eyes, though he has yet to acknowledge the power that is his inheritance. He plays at using the Force without truly knowing what it means -- what it means to have a sea of dark power at your hand, to steer and control and direct to whatever end you choose. What it means to surrender to the dark.
He would be a power to be reckoned with, at your side. Will be a power to be reckoned with. He inherited your anger along with your eyes, and much of his potential has yet to be tapped, a potent darkness waiting to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting galaxy. He is not yet lost to the weaker side of the Force, your son, or the clutches of your corrupt and decaying Emperor; he can still be molded, clay in your hands waiting to be shaped.
You offer him power beyond comprehension. An ocean of dark power simply waiting to be harnessed. Enough power that the stars themselves would bow down in fear. A place at your side, ruling this galaxy as is his birthright.
And yet when you offer it to him, when you put the galaxy itself within his reach... he refuses. Chooses to fall to what may well be his death rather than accept you as his father, take his place by your side.
Yet, before he falls, you see something in his eyes -- a hint of heaven, a glimmer of hell, a flicker of gold and hatred and dying, and you know that you will make it yours.
There is darkness there. And anger and hatred and fear, hiding behind pale blue eyes that remind you of a man long dead. And you hate that, perhaps more than anything: that he has the power to remind you of what you once were, what you might have been. What you might have become, had you chosen a different path.
He walks the line between salvation and damnation, now, and you will guide him towards the dark, lead him away from the path of sunlight until he has grabbed hold of the dark power that lies waiting his command. And with him, you will overthrow the emperor and seize control of this galaxy. As father and son, as is your destiny. His destiny.
Because he will come to you on Endor. And there you will take him and remake him, expunge his fragile purity and replace it with something harder, colder, more enduring. Break him into a thousand crystal pieces and rebuild him into something more and something less -- destroy this fragile innocence you thought had been lost to the galaxy altogether and can never be replaced.
And after you take him as your own, have him as your golden-eyed apprentice and overthrow the Emperor to rule this Force-forsaken galaxy with your son at your side ...
... after that, you won't miss this child who looks at you with innocent, pale blue eyes the color of an unattainable salvation just beyond reach.
You won't.
End.