#silvereddaye

Happy May the Fourth!

Did you know I'm not the only artist who makes a fanfic comic about Luke and Leia as kids? I'd recommend checking out @silvereddaye's comic, The Tinies. I tried my best to emulate the Tinies' style. It was an interesting challenge! The ultimate result feels like a strange mixture of my style and Silver's, but i tried my best!

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Read The Entire Series on AO3.

En Espanol.

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Aghhhh this is hard. Hmmm.

@25centsoda of course, and I’m currently obsessed with your Invitation AU you’re working on with KingBeer, whose tumblr i unfortunately do not know.

@silvereddaye you come up with so many interesting AUs and I love them, but my fave has to be Runaway.

@starr234 your fics are always so satisfying and I love them so much, but Lines of Communication always struck me as especially skilful.

send me things !!

Luke's com crackled. "Luke, we've got two options. both of which you're not going to like."

Over the com, Han’s voice remained steady, but Luke had been on enough missions with him to recognize when there was an edge of panic to it. Chewie’s reaction was enough to confirm as much. 

Great.  

“Let me hear ‘em,” he replied, stifling a groan. No sense in delaying the inevitable.

The mission had already gone belly-up when their contact had found a buyer that would net them a bigger profit than the Alliance could offer. They would have been forced to walk out of there empty-handed if not for some quick thinking from Han, who’d created a distraction so Luke and Chewie could swipe the supplies and they could get out of there. Doing things the honest way hadn’t worked out, so they would have to settle for doing things the smuggler’s way.

Unfortunately, it seemed, that wasn’t going to work, either. “Well, ‘m not sure if you and Chewie have made it to the warehouse yet, but you might wanna head back to The Falcon. Turns out these sleemo have some, uhh… indentured workers,” Han paused, not wanting to say slaves, “that they’re willing to sacrifice if we take any of their goods. So we either take the meds and let these people die, or we leave, and…”

Let their own people die. Blast.

“No, you’re right,” Luke said, grimacing, “I don’t like either of those options.” Their people needed that medicine, quite badly in fact, but could he really accept it at the expense of so many innocents? “What are our chances of getting those people out of here?”

The com was silent, for a moment, and Luke could almost feel Han’s disbelief. “Look, kid, I know you’ve got some kinda hero complex and all, but –”

“Please!,” he shouted, desperation finding its way into his voice. “Han, please, just – just humour me, here. These are –” his voice stuck in his throat, for a moment, before he pressed on, “these are slaves we’re talking about, here. If we can’t help them then… I get it. But… if we’ve got any chance to help…”

More silence. This time, it felt decidedly… reluctant. Chewie let out a soft, sympathetic growl. “Alright, kid, fine.” Han’s grumble through the com was grudging, but it was clear he wouldn’t have said no – didn’t want to protest in the first place. If there was one criminal activity Han refused to engage in, it was slavery. “We got ten minutes, max. I’ll keep distracting these goons as best as I can. Chewie can load up the supplies while you handle the people. But we run outta time… we gotta get the hell outta here, got it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I do, yeah.”

Luke hated it. What was meant to be a simple supply run had turned into a desperate game of life and death, where he had to gamble with the lives of people he’d sworn to protect. He would do all he could, though.

He would see this through.

***

What their contact had neglected to mention was that the higher bidder was The Empire. 

It was a scam they’d been running for some months now, drawing in some folks who were wanted by the Imps or some other crime lords, offering them these medical supplies at a price they could not refuse, then selling them out to the highest bidder. It had worked countless times before, and they’d managed to make it this far without being caught, so when they’d been contacted by Rebels – one, in particular, matching an especially high bounty – they’d taken advantage of that fact and contacted Darth Vader himself, the Imperial Enforcer.

Vader was making his way to collect these alleged rebels, and these criminals would walk away richer than ever. Little did any of them know what was to come next.

“Happy Life Day!” 

Leia is not amused. 

. -- . -- .

The inquisitor grabbed Luke's chin and forced him to look at her and said to him, "If you won’t obey me, I am sure Lord Vader will teach you obedience." 

He’d been glaring up at her, in spite of the stun cuffs encircling his wrists and the broken leg that was complicating his possibility of escape, but try as he might to maintain that reistance, it faltered at the mention of Vader. Ice ran through his veins and anger flashed hot in his chest. Facing his father’s murderer had always been an inevitability, but he was nowhere near ready for that yet -- hell, he wasn’t even ready to face this inquisitor.

There was no way he was going down without a fight, though. Mustering up his resolve once more, he set his expression into another truculent glare. Sharp nails bit into his skin as the inquisitor tightened her grip and brought her face right up to his. “Do not think you can fool me with this defiant act. I can taste your fear.”

“Go to hell.”

Pain blossomed across his cheek as she retaliated with a backhand, and Luke cried out as he stumbled onto his bad leg. Grabbing his hair, the woman dragged him back into an upright kneeling position and shot a venomous glare at him. “He’ll have to teach you some manners, as well.”

“He won’t be teaching me anything,” Luke ground out, gritting his teeth against the throbbing ache in his leg.

“You speak as though you have a choice in the matter, boy.”

The inquisitor’s expression morphed into a sharp-toothed grin, and she released her grip on his hair, stepping asid. Luke slumped down, barely registering the weight he was putting on his fractured leg again and doing all he could to keep the fear out of his eyes.

“His lightsaber, My Lord.” Luke let out a choked noise of protest as the inquisitor placed his father’s lightsaber into the hands of his father’s killer, but neither of his captors noticed. “I’m sure you’ll have fun breaking this one. He’s willful and stubborn, but they all break in the end.” She paused. Her grin widened. “Or they die.”

Vader wasn’t paying attention, though; he was too busy examining the hilt he’d been handed. “Where did you get this lightsaber?”

Faltering slightly at the dissonance between the heat in those words and the chill that permeated the air, Luke found his voice caught in his throat. A voice in the back of his mind -- distant yet insistent -- urged him not to answer. Unfortunately, it was drowned out by the very real boom of Vader’s vocoder. “Answer me!”

“It was my father’s!” The words tumbled out of his mouth unbidden, and his eyes blew wide at the pressure that descended upon him at the revelation. 

In an instant, Vader was in front of him, closing an iron grip over his chin. Luke would grumble at having his face grasped again if he wasn’t so focused on biting back the gasp at just how suffocating the Dark Lord’s presence was.

“What is your name?“ The words rumbled through the air, vibrating through his very soul.

Once again, that same voice from before urged Luke not to answer, all but begging him to remain silent, insisting that revealing the truth would only put him in danger. Once again, he could not stop the words from spilling forth. “My name is Luke Skywalker.”

Vader froze, tightening his grip on Luke’s chin so much that he was sure it would leave bruises. From a few feet to his right, the inquisitor made a noise almost like a scoff, but any disparaging comment that may have followed it was cut short by a brief gagging sound and the thump of her body falling to the ground. Vader’s grip shifted to rest below his chin, tilting Luke’s head up and fixing his masked gaze on him as though he were searching for something in his features. Though the hold on him had relaxed, Luke was far too stunned -- both from the inquisitor’s sudden death and Vader’s abrupt shift in attitude -- to pull away.

“You and I,” Vader said, tone softer, more careful, “have much to discuss, young one.”

The ground vibrated beneath him as he landed with a thud, and he scrambled backwards as the lightsaber hovered before his face. His cheeks grew hot as the flickering saber bathed his face and the floor room around him in a bright violet glow. Sucking in a breath, he flicked his blue eyes to meet the triumphant brown gazing down on him, and he scowled as he met the victorious glint behind them. “I let you win.”

His indignation was really only half-hearted, though, and the grin that broke out over his sister’s features was entirely worth the defeat. Disengaging the lightsaber, Leia snorted and rolled her eyes while offering her hand to Luke. “Oh come on, farmboy,” she teased as he took the offered hand and she hauled him to his feet. “I’m pretty sure not even you believe that.”

The scowl on his face shifted to an expression akin to a pout -- not that he would ever admit as much -- and his nostrils flared as his breath blew out in a sharp exhale. “I’ve been off the farm for almost seven years, now. Is that really the best you can come up with?”

She raised a brow at him, he grin shifting instead to a smirk, and her eyes took on a mischievous gleam. “Well, I say it’s still fitting. I mean, you sure fight like a farmboy.”

“Hey, between fending off the sand people and Jabba’s thugs, the farmers were some of the best fighters on Tatooine,” Luke protested, planting his hands on his hips.

“Oh?” Leia’s tone had grown overly dulcet, an exaggerated curiosity echoing in it. “Is that so? Pity they couldn’t teach you anything while they had the chance.”

“Hey! I’m a crack shot with a blaster, you know,” he retorted, the barest hint of a juvenile whine seeping into his voice.

“Yes, we all know about the womp rats already. Very impressive,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Too bad that doesn’t translate very well into a lightsaber duel.” Her smirk softened into a more genuine smile, a gentle, radiant expression that rarely crossed her features. It was a look reserved for a privileged few in the most privileged of moments, and Luke cherished it every time he saw it. Leia walked over to him and draped an arm around his shoulders. “Really, though, it’s because I have a good teacher.”

Snaking his arm across her back and resting his hand on her shoulder, Luke returned Leia’s smile with one of his own. While smiles came easier to him than to his sister, this one in particular had its own brand of rarity. This smile contained fondness, it radiated love and burned with affection, and it was reserved exclusively for his family -- for his sister, for Han, for Chewie, for Lando... and for his father, on the rare occasion he appeared from the Beyond through the Force . 

There was something else in this smile, though, something unique and exclusive to this moment. Pride. “You’ve come so far, Leia. I really am proud of how strong you’ve become. You’re going to be -- you are -- a great Jedi. I mean it.”

Her hand slid off his shoulders and began to rub idly at his back, tracing abstract patterns and indistinct shapes. The warmth of her skin was soothing and gentle, and Luke returned the gesture with a gentle squeeze of her shoulder. “Thank you, Luke. I really... I’m glad you agreed to train me. I have this power, and I want to use it to benefit the galaxy. So thank you, for helping me do that.”

“You know I’m happy to, Leia,” Luke said, his voice lowering just a touch. There was more he wanted to say, but words escaped him all of a sudden. He’d never been particularly good with them anyways, his lack of eloquence failing him on more than one occasion. But he knew, in that moment -- in every moment -- Leia knew precisely what he wanted to express, and she expressed it back in the same way.