#false step

chapter four: TORQUE

FALSE STEP, part two of THREE TWO ONE BOOM

4/5 chapters, 16667 words, in progress. // Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi

Many a false step has been made by standing still. (Luke has nothing else to do but stand still.)

or: Luke Lars is now Darth Vader’s mechanic. And, maybe, something else.

SWEET , thou hast trod on a heart. Pass; there 's a world full of men; And women as fair as thou art Must do such things now and then.

Thou hast only stepped unaware, — Malice, not one can impute; And why should a heart have been there In the way of a fair woman's foot?

It was not a stone that could trip, Nor was it a thorn that could rend: Put up thy proud under-lip! 'T was merely the heart of a friend.

And yet peradventure one day Thou, sitting alone at the glass, Remarking the bloom gone away, Where the smile in its dimplement was,

And seeking around thee in vain From hundreds who flattered before, Such a word as " Oh, not in the main Do I hold thee less precious, but more!" . . .

Thou 'lt sigh, very like, on thy part, " Of all I have known or can know, I wish I had only that Heart I trod upon ages ago!"

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A False Step

Elizabeth Barrett Browning  1806-1861

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Since Han worked for Jabba and you said they will have moments together I suppose there is a chance they have met before...maybe Luke even fixed the Falcon

Another thing I adore is how Luke still shows his kindness through actions. He saves Vader despite being a complete stranger, is willing to give him his ship (even though that was more a way of getting rid of Vader), is horrified when Alderaan is blown and he pushes Maberust aside when Fett attacks.

thank you so much for this ask!!! 😘 i'm having so much fun with luke's backstory, (though obviously it's very tragic) and slowly unwinding it across the stories. other characters, like obi-wan, can contribute to the timeline and give u a pretty good idea of what happened, but as for luke himself explaining his own story and pov, i don't think that will happen until the very final installment. this whole fic is really dedicated to vader and luke helping each other heal, and it takes a long time for luke to come to terms with his own past.

but this isn't a spoiler at all! there are two main reasons. the first, which we'll get into later, is that luke does have a few reasons not to leave. the second, which we've seen already (and also much more practical), is that luke, in many ways, simply can't. his trauma so viscerally impacts him in ways that he himself frequently doesn't even realize. luke has never felt safe enough (yet) to actually consider what might be best for him in the long run; he's trapped in a subsistence or survival cycle, and really needs some sort of outside force to break out of it. if luke had any friends or family, it could've been them, in this case, it's vader. this is aided by the fact that luke realizes he's in immediate and mortal danger.

as for han…we'll see more of him (and luke), promise! 😜

omg, i'm so happy you noticed that! yeah, luke's got a way to go in order to internalize actively helping people––he's been dead set in the idea of "minimizing cruelty and pain" for a long time. taking a step out of that is gonna take a while.

How intelligent will Vader feel once he realizes he had stumbled into his own son, knew his name is Lars, found out his son grew up in 'his mother's last home' and still had to go back to the dustball named Tatooine to figure it out?

anon, this is absolutely the best compliment i’ve ever received and you are a genius, oH MY GOD!!!!!  😂😂😂

luke fits somewhere in the mold of vader’s other servicemen/henchmen, like dr. aphra (or, if you remember wrenga “jix” jixton from legends, he was great, omg!) who are fearless enough to earn vader’s respect and competent enough to survive his ire. vader’s ironically pretty decent at tolerating outlandish behavior if you’re good enough at your job.

vader finds lars’s paranoia, recalcitrance, and general antipathy annoying which is ironic because. uh. hello, sir kettle. this is mr pot speaking. but lars’s work is  good enough for vader’s standards, with the added benefit of lars being able to improve the suit. that alone put lars in the “too valuable to live, too valuable to die” category right off the bat. the additional reason why vader puts up with lars is that vader feels a sort of righteous idignation/injustice on lars’s behalf, which is an added layer of protection for lars against vader’s wrath. vader picks up fast that lars was enslaved in six hours, but it’s easier for vader to be angry than admit to having any sort of sympathy or empathy for lars. vader, my sweetest angriest refrigerator, would rather die than have any vaguely positive feelings.

anon, this is an AMAZING ask because you are totally one hundred percent right. luke genuinely has no idea who vader is. luke's been rather, uh, incommunicado the past many years, even after he escaped. luke figured that, between the nice TIE Advanced and the crazy suit, he was dealing with an important imperial. ironically, if luke had even slightest idea of who vader actually was or what he'd done, there's about a fifty-fifty chance that luke would've left vader to die in the desert and actually taken vader's ship instead. whew, good for vader, huh? i'm so glad you picked up on it because i loved writing how ridiculous it was, and how even vader can't believe that lars doesn't know who he is.

hey anon!! no, i absolutely love your questions!!! thanks so much for writing :)

no worries! it’s not a spoiler :) so, obi-wan knows that luke is hiding himself in the force only by virtue of the fact obi-wan previously knew that luke was force-sensitive.

vader, who has no reason to suspect luke has any force-sensitivity, takes what he’s sensing in the force at face value: that while the force is muted around him, it’s the force responding to luke’s personality (as it responds to the personality of any being).

obi-wan, however sees luke as [subconsciously] manipulating the force to hide himself. that being said, even after obi-wan correctly identifies lars as luke, he only does it because he’s staring straight at him––no force necessary. he still can’t actually reach or sense luke through the force, he only intellectually knows that luke is standing there.

truth be told, it’s a bit of both “personality” and “intention.” luke has unintentionally hidden himself in the force by essentially reflecting the force signatures of everything around him. however, he’s really only subconsciously able to do that because the force is responding to luke’s emotional state––which is “hide.”

luke will definitely interact with leia and han. it will come much, much later in the story and in a later installment, but yes! luke will probably get more screentime with han than leia, to be honest, but we’re going full skywalker family drama, for sure.

as for what inspired the story, i’ve always really wanted a “dark luke” fic, but not a “dark side luke” fic. the thing about vader is that he is not actually willing to subject his son to any of the torments he himself went through to actually get luke on the dark side.

i know this is sort of controversial––and it’s not denying that vader absolutely did lop off luke’s arm––but vader is really fundamentally unwilling to hurt his son. and so, playing off that: if vader found his son and found his son was hurting, he would absolutely without a doubt do anything in his power to heal him. the problem, of course, lies in the fact that vader can deal with luke’s physical wounds. vader cannot deal with luke’s mental wounds, not as vader is as he is now.

or, working in reverse: luke has always been the main nurturing and healing force towards vader. and i was really interested in seeing a vader that was forced to be a nurturing and healing force for luke. but for that to happen, that demands vader actually deal with himself, first. which is very dangerous for vader, because vader has got to believe that everything he did for the empire was right––if he doesn’t, he finally admits to himself that he actually betrayed the jedi, he really cannot live with himself anymore…which is pretty much what happens in ROTJ.

vader’s character, pre-Lukening, is so fascinating because he lacks almost any sort of internal drive at all and he most certainly has no will to improve himself or his quality of life. but once vader actually has a reason, he’s almost completely unstoppable. so i thought it would be really fun to write a vader whose drive to seek out luke ironically turns into a drive to actually better himself (for luke’s sake, only).

chapter three: FORCE

FALSE STEP, part two of THREE TWO ONE BOOM

3/5 chapters, 11931 words, in progress. // Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi

Many a false step has been made by standing still. (Luke has nothing else to do but stand still.)

or: Luke Lars is now Darth Vader’s mechanic. And, maybe, something else.