#sith luke

and yet he's so much more terrifying.

master luke glances at you. his soft cornflower blue eyes are hugged with a deep vacancy, almost like he's looking past you when he's staring right into your soul. your fellow handmaid's spread rumors about what superiors have done when burdened with clumsy slaves like you. step on a creaky floorboard and be met with a swift whipping that'll leave big ugly welts for weeks.

when you're assigned to set a conference room for the empire's most important associates, you find master luke sitting alone, eyes blase as ever. you set the table, heart racing as you place silverwear at the surrounding placemats. when you reach master luke's side, you pray the rumors aren't true that siths can hear your heartbeat and smell the fear on you.

just as you're setting his place, you drop a knife.

you have never, ever felt so much fear in your life. immediately, an apology crawls its pathetic way out of your lips. your eyes stick to the ground, you can practically feel his gaze burning a hole into your forehead. you bend down to reach for the knife but---

luke beats you to it.

he reaches down and lifts the knife up to you. the softest smile you've ever seen in your life is on his face---his devastatingly handsome, certainly sadistic, evil face---and before he can notice your hands shaking, you take the knife from his hand, place it on the table, and leave faster than the speed of light.

the next day you find you've been assigned to be master luke's personal handmaid.

BUT LISTEN

The comics were a lot of Force woo and superweapons but it makes so much more sense as an existential threat to the New Republic if you add just a pinch of tactical grit.

The existing set up places the Reborn Emperor's sanctuary planet of Byss in the Deep Core, which is completely inaccessible unless you have secret hyperspace routes (which the NR at the time did not).

But you know what tactics work really really well if you have an inaccessible sanctuary to retreat to?

That's right, guerilla hit and run tactics.

You take your Imperial Navy, organize them into fast, hard-hitting task forces that run decapitation strikes on critical NR infrastructure from Deep Core hyperspace routes, and then you vanish back to Byss where the NR can't follow.

The vast majority of the imperial command structure isn't trained to think like that! Conventional Imperial military doctrine is numerical superiority: throw more bodies and more Star Destroyers at the problem.

But you who knows that playbook really really well, and who Palpatine elevated to Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet at that time? And who incidentally has both the authority and lack of moral guardrails during this storyline to Force choke the imperial command structure into bending?

Luke kriffing Skywalker, of course.

(And yeah, he got the job through shameless nepotism, but it's a good fit.)

You show this guy Byss and he thinks, "holy shit the hidden Rebel base of my dreams AND industrial manufacturing capacity??"

And now suddenly the storyline isn't just "Palpatine came back and now he has a new superweapon that's incidentally shaped like a penis, and also Luke fell and that's sad," it's "Luke Skywalker is running the playbook that won us the Galactic Civil War, now with overwhelming resources and a complete lack of moral guardrails."

𝐢𝐢𝐢. 

A standard week and four rotations had passed since Luke departed aboard the Star Destroyer. He returned during the zero one forty-eighth hour, long after the flagship had surrendered itself to the quiet rhythms of its artificial night.

The Residence lay almost entirely in darkness. Obsidian furnishings dissolved into one another beneath the sparse ambient lighting while polished steel reflected little more than pale streaks from the stars drifting beyond the transparisteel windows. From floor to ceiling, the vast panes overlooked an endless sea of space where distant constellations shimmered against the blackness, their cold brilliance undisturbed by the passage of the Star Destroyer. It was a view Cereia had admired countless times over the years, one that had once inspired wonder during her first months aboard the flagship. Tonight, however, it failed to hold her attention. The stars were as beautiful as they had always been, yet beauty alone could not dispel the strange unease that had settled over the Residence in Luke's absence.

She had attempted to ignore it for days. At first she blamed the altered rhythm of the ship. Then the lingering fatigue from late evenings spent studying. At one point she even wondered whether one of the meals prepared by the kitchen droids simply had not agreed with her. Each explanation was easier to accept than the truth quietly waiting beneath them all.

The Residence no longer felt complete without its master.

The realization disturbed her enough that she refused to linger upon it. Even allowing the thought to form in the privacy of her own mind felt dangerously close to impropriety. She was his steward. His attendant. It was only natural, she insisted, that the household itself should feel different whenever he departed on campaign. Her responsibilities changed in his absence, the routines shifted, and the silence naturally became more noticeable.

That was all it was and nothing more. She repeated the reassurance often enough that, eventually, she almost believed it.

Unable to settle, she had abandoned any hope of sleep and instead found herself reclining upon the chaise positioned before the immense transparisteel windows overlooking space. Only a handful of recessed lights remained active throughout the common room, bathing the Residence in a muted blue-white glow that kept the darkness from swallowing the chamber whole. The residence droids had long since entered their nightly recharge cycles, leaving the vast quarters quieter than she could ever remember them. Even the low hum of the flagship's engines seemed more distant tonight, as though the silence itself had expanded to occupy every empty corner.

She rested against the cushions in a posture intended for comfort, yet her body betrayed her. Her shoulders remained drawn inward despite repeated attempts to relax, and every few minutes she found herself shifting position without understanding why none of them felt quite right. Rest refused to come. The stillness surrounding her seemed only to magnify the restless energy lingering beneath her skin.

Earlier that evening she had dismissed her attendant droids before they could prepare her for the night. The elaborate coiffures expected of an Imperial Overseer demanded patience she no longer possessed, and so her silver-white hair had been left untouched, cascading freely down her back and spilling across the chaise in loose waves. Bathed in the soft illumination filtering through the Residence, the pale strands shimmered almost like fresh snowfall beneath the first light of morning.

The observation drew an unexpected memory from the quiet. She could almost hear the familiar voice of her attendant droid commenting, with mechanical admiration, upon the remarkable length of her hair and the endless variety of styles it permitted. The droid had often insisted it was one of her most distinguishing features, perfectly suited to the dignified image expected of the Emperor's political ward. Cereia had always accepted the compliments with polite indifference, yet tonight they carried her thoughts somewhere she rarely allowed them to wander.

Rhen Var.

Long before the Empire claimed her future, she had belonged to a world where men and women alike wore their hair long as protection against the planet's relentless cold. It had been practical before it had ever become tradition, passed from one generation to the next until custom rendered the distinction irrelevant.

She remembered that much and little else remained. A faint crease settled between her brows as she searched for memories that refused to return with any clarity. Faces dissolved before she could name them. Streets blurred together. Buildings existed only as impressions buried beneath years of Imperial education. Even the voices of those who had once known her had faded into something so indistinct that she sometimes questioned whether she truly remembered them at all, or whether she merely remembered that they had existed.

She wondered, not for the first time, who she might have become had the Empire never intervened. The thought lingered only briefly before she dismissed it. It was a pointless indulgence. There was no value in mourning lives that had never come to pass.

So thoroughly had she disappeared into those distant memories that she failed to notice the familiar presence approaching through the corridors outside. Ordinarily she sensed him long before his arrival, the peculiar awareness that had become so commonplace over the past year announcing his return with quiet certainty before any door ever opened. Tonight, distracted by thoughts she rarely permitted herself, that instinct remained strangely absent until the blast doors parted with their familiar hydraulic hiss.

Her head lifted immediately.

She knew only one person capable of entering the Residence at such an hour. The moment she saw him standing in the doorway, every lingering thought of Rhen Var vanished as completely as though it had never existed.

She rose so quickly that the lightweight fabric of her nightgown fluttered around her legs, her bare feet meeting the cold durasteel floor with barely enough awareness to register the chill racing through them. Instinct carried her forward before conscious thought could intervene, closing the distance between them with hurried steps that stopped only a pace short of propriety. Only then did she truly look at him.

Her gaze moved over him with an urgency she neither recognized nor attempted to conceal, searching him from head to foot with the quiet desperation of someone verifying something they had not realized they feared losing. She searched for injuries hidden beneath black robes, for exhaustion lingering around his eyes, for blood that might not be his own, for any subtle indication that the campaign had taken more from him than victory alone. She found none.

He stood before her exactly as he had when he departed, whole and alive. The tension that had quietly coiled within her for days loosened so suddenly that she scarcely recognized the relief passing through her. She did not realize that she had smiled.

 But Luke did. The breath she released was deeper than she intended, escaping slowly as though she had been unconsciously holding it since the moment he departed. She had not realized how tightly the tension had settled within her until it unraveled all at once beneath the simple certainty that he had returned safely. Relief softened the drawn lines of her posture, and something bright stirred behind the grey of her eyes before she could conceal it. The change was subtle, little more than a quiet light returning to her expression, but it was enough that Luke noticed it immediately.

"Welcome back, Master," she greeted, her voice carrying a warmth that had not been present when she spoke to anyone else aboard the flagship.

She stepped aside to clear his path without waiting for instruction. Judging by the hour alone, she could safely assume the campaign had demanded more than anticipated. Luke rarely returned so late unless unforeseen complications had delayed the fleet, and while she found herself wondering what had transpired beyond the stars, she knew better than to ask. If he wished her to know, he would tell her. Until then, speculation served no purpose.

He crossed the Residence without ceremony, shedding the rigid composure expected of the Crown Prince almost the moment the blast doors sealed behind him. There was no audience here to observe him, no officers awaiting orders, no father measuring every decision he made. The weight of command did not disappear, but it eased enough that he no longer carried himself with deliberate formality.

Cereia followed several measured steps behind him, falling effortlessly into the familiar rhythm they had established over the past standard year. She no longer needed to think about what came next. Her body anticipated the routine before her mind ever caught up with it. As Luke slowed, her hands reached naturally toward the fastening beneath his collar, careful not to disturb him as slender fingers worked the clasp free. The heavy cloak slipped from his shoulders without resistance, and she gathered the dark fabric neatly across her arms before setting it aside with the same meticulous care she devoted to every task involving him.

Luke lowered himself onto the sectional in the common room with a quiet exhale, allowing his body to sink deeper into the cushions than propriety would ever permit outside these private quarters. The campaign had demanded much of him. Every muscle carried the lingering weight of combat, strategy, and constant vigilance, yet none of that occupied his thoughts for long once he crossed the threshold of the Residence.

His attention drifted toward Cereia.

She moved through the room with practiced familiarity, restoring order to the small traces of disorder left in his wake without ever appearing hurried. There was comfort in watching her. Not because she performed her duties well—though she always had—but because her presence completed something within the Residence that had remained incomplete throughout the campaign. Luke had never cared much for silence, yet the silence surrounding him beyond these walls had been different. It had been empty and now it was not.

The Force answered that quiet realization before he consciously acknowledged it. It flowed outward almost of its own accord, brushing against her awareness with the same instinctive ease as breathing. There was none of the violence with which he bent it in battle, none of the relentless domination demanded during training beneath Vader. Here, it coiled around her with surprising restraint, winding gently through the recesses of her mind before settling there with familiar certainty.

Luke had never questioned why the Force behaved differently around her. Everything else in his life required conquest. The Force resisted him. His enemies resisted him, even his own body resisted the immense power he demanded of it. Only here did something yield without struggle. The realization pleased him more than he cared to examine. Combat still remained the purest release for the fury the Dark Side demanded he cultivate, but campaigns always left something unfinished inside him, passions still smoldering beneath carefully maintained discipline. Somehow, simply returning to the Residence and finding Cereia exactly where he had left her quieted that restlessness more effectively than meditation ever could. It was as though another piece of the world had returned to its proper place.

"Cereia."

Her name left his lips more quietly than commands usually did. The lateness of the hour had stripped away the harder edge from his voice, leaving something calmer beneath the authority that never truly disappeared.

"Yes, Master?"

She answered from behind the sectional as she leaned slightly over its back, resting her forearms lightly against the upholstery so she could look down at him. The eagerness with which she responded had long since ceased feeling remarkable. She had become attentive to the smallest shift in his voice, the slightest movement that suggested he required something, often before he spoke at all.

Luke regarded her for a long moment.

"No."  The single syllable escaped with an amused breath through his nose.

He did not need the Force to picture the expression that undoubtedly crossed her face. He knew her well enough by now to imagine the faint crease forming between her brows as she searched for whatever mistake she believed she had made. The thought entertained him more than it probably should have.

"When we're alone," he said, settling deeper against the cushions as he tipped his head backward until it rested comfortably along the back of the sectional, "call me Luke."

The request lingered in the air between them.

From where she stood behind the sofa, their faces were unexpectedly close despite the difference in height. Looking down at him from that angle, Cereia caught a glimpse of someone she rarely had the opportunity to see. Without the weight of command pressing visibly upon him, the relentless discipline softening beneath the privacy of the Residence, Luke appeared remarkably young. It struck her then that they were separated by only a handful of months, a fact almost impossible to remember beneath the immense shadow cast by the titles he carried. Outside these walls he was the Crown Prince of the Empire, Lord Vader's apprentice, heir to a legacy that demanded greatness from every breath he took. Within the quiet of the Residence, for the briefest of moments, he looked simply like a young man exhausted by burdens no one his age should have been expected to bear. Her gaze lingered upon the striking yellow of his eyes before uncertainty quietly settled over her features.

Everything TC-40 had taught her insisted such familiarity was improper. Protocol existed for a reason. Titles reinforced order, and order reinforced the hierarchy upon which the Empire rested. Addressing one's superior by name alone crossed boundaries she had spent years learning never to approach.

Yet Luke's instruction stood in direct opposition to everything her education had instilled. He had given her an order. She had never learned how to refuse one. In truth, she doubted she possessed either the language or the inclination to deny him anything. Luke watched the silent conflict unfold across her expression with growing amusement. Her hesitation, earnest and entirely predictable, drew another quiet huff of laughter from him. It was not mocking. If anything, he found something strangely endearing in the way she searched so diligently for the correct answer when, in his mind, he had already given it to her. He had never understood why she believed protocol still held authority over his word. Within these walls, his wishes alone established the rules, and he fully expected the Residence and everyone within it to shape themselves accordingly. "Yes... Luke." She spoke the name carefully, almost experimentally, as though testing whether the unfamiliar syllable truly belonged between them. 

It lingered on her tongue for only a moment before she looked at him with quiet uncertainty, searching his expression for some indication that she had overstepped. Years of protocol insisted she had. Every lesson drilled into her since childhood declared such familiarity improper, and yet the order had come from him. That alone was enough to outweigh every rule she had ever been taught.

Luke answered the hesitation with the faintest smile. It was neither broad nor triumphant, merely the subtle upward pull at one corner of his mouth that betrayed quiet satisfaction. Without speaking again, he began peeling away the black gloves from his hands, one finger at a time, until the leather slipped free and landed carelessly upon the cushions beside him.

Then he extended one hand toward her, turning his palm upward in a gesture so natural that it carried the quiet expectation of obedience rather than a request. He offered neither explanation nor encouragement, making no effort to bridge the remaining distance himself. He simply watched her with patient certainty, as though the outcome had already been decided long before the moment arrived. 

Cereia hesitated only long enough to understand what he wanted. Her hand slipped into his almost instinctively and the contact startled her more than she expected.

It was not the first time they had touched. Over the course of the past standard year she had fastened his cloak countless times, adjusted the collar of his tunic before official functions, tended to the occasional wound sustained during training, and accepted objects he placed into her hands without a second thought. Those fleeting moments of contact had always existed in service of a task.

This was different. There was no practical reason for it. There was no duty requiring it.He simply wanted her hand and it was only now did she truly notice his.

His palm bore the unmistakable marks of relentless discipline. Thickened calluses stretched across the base of his fingers where years of gripping a lightsaber had hardened the skin beyond softness, while pale scars threaded over the back of his hand and disappeared beneath the sleeve of his tunic in branching patterns left behind by Force lightning. She knew enough of Sith training to recognize them immediately. Lord Vader's instruction had not been merciful.

They should have felt rough against her own instead, they felt warm and steady. His grip never tightened enough to command. It did not need to.

With the smallest pull of his wrist, Luke guided her around the sectional until she stood directly before him and her knees landed on the cushion. The movement was effortless, almost absent-minded, yet something about it unsettled her. She had spent the past year circling him, always remaining a respectful distance away, forever occupying the careful orbit dictated by Imperial etiquette.

Now she stood inside it, so close enough that protocol ceased to exist. Instinctively her hands came to rest against the back of the sectional on either side of him, more to steady herself than from any conscious decision. Their faces were separated by only a narrow distance, and in the stillness of the Residence she became acutely aware of every small detail she wished she could ignore. She could feel the warmth of his breath. She feared he could hear the frantic rhythm of her heartbeat, each pulse echoing so loudly within her chest that she wondered if it had become audible.

Their faces were separated by scarcely more than a breath. Every quiet exhale that left Luke's lips drifted across her skin, warm against the coolness of the chamber, and she was painfully aware that he had to feel the frantic rhythm of her heart as clearly as she felt his nearness. The realization only made her pulse race harder. It became impossible to meet his eyes for long, impossible to steady herself beneath the weight of his attention when he stood so close that even the smallest shift threatened to erase what little distance remained between them. 

A quiet laugh escaped Luke, low and unmistakably genuine, carrying with it a satisfaction that only deepened her embarrassment. There was no ridicule within it, nor any intention to humiliate her. If anything, he sounded quietly pleased, as though he had been waiting a very long time to witness precisely this moment. Since taking residence aboard his father's flagship, he had observed Cereia assume countless roles. She had been the poised Imperial overseer before senators, the impeccably mannered steward before officers, and the disciplined political ward whose every movement reflected years of relentless instruction. Every smile had been measured, every word carefully weighed, every emotion disciplined before it ever reached the surface. She had become so adept at presenting precisely what the Empire required that even Lord Vader seldom saw beyond that immaculate façade.

Luke, however, had.

Over the course of the past standard year, beneath the privacy afforded by the Residence and the quiet routines they had unconsciously built together, he had begun catching fleeting moments that belonged to no one else. The hesitant furrow between her brows whenever he surprised her. The barely perceptible brightening of her eyes when he returned from campaign. The uncertainty she never permitted herself to reveal before another living soul those moments were never rehearsed. They escaped her before training could bury them again, and because of that, they fascinated him.

The Dark Side answered that fascination with eager approval. Its whispers no longer arrived as temptations to be resisted. They had become inseparable from his own thoughts, patiently nurturing instincts already present until they grew into convictions he scarcely questioned. Responsibility had become attachment. Attachment had become possession. Somewhere along that gradual transformation, the distinction had ceased to matter.

His father had entrusted Cereia to him. He had protected her. He had guided her. He had shaped the rhythm of her days until every routine within the Residence unconsciously revolved around his own.

Now, standing before him with every carefully constructed defense momentarily lowered, she revealed something no one else in the galaxy was permitted to see. The sincerity in her expression belonged to him alone. Her uncertainty belonged to him. The trust that softened her gaze whenever she looked at him had never been offered to another. Even the relief that had illuminated her face the moment he returned from campaign had been instinctive, untouched by political necessity or Imperial expectation.

The realization settled deep within him with unsettling certainty. She had become something private. Something singular. Something that existed apart from the Empire.

Luke's gaze traveled over her with quiet deliberation, not lingering upon her as a man admiring beauty, but as someone committing every detail to memory. He noted the slight tremor she struggled to suppress, the way her breathing grew shallower whenever she met his eyes, the subtle tension held across her shoulders despite every effort to remain composed. Even the smallest shifts in her expression fascinated him because they were unguarded. They were honest.

They were his.

The thought pleased him more than victory ever had.

"Cereia." His voice had lost the trace of amusement lingering there only moments before. It emerged calm, measured, carrying the effortless authority that never required raising itself to be obeyed.

"Look at me."

She responded before conscious thought could intervene. Her chin lifted obediently until her grey eyes met the brilliant amber of his own. In the dim lighting of the Residence they seemed almost incandescent, burning with an intensity that made looking away feel strangely impossible. Holding his gaze was like standing before the heart of a star; overwhelming, inescapable, and possessed of a gravity that quietly drew everything toward itself.

She searched his face without fear. Perhaps she should have feared him, others certainly did. The officers aboard the flagship lowered their eyes when he entered a room. Stormtroopers stiffened beneath the weight of his presence. Even seasoned commanders measured every word spoken before the Crown Prince of the Empire.

Yet none of that lived within Cereia. What she felt instead was something far more complicated.

Luke had never spoken to her with the detached contempt so common among Imperial nobility. He had shown her patience where others offered only expectation, conversation where silence would have sufficed, and mercy on the day that could easily have ended with her death. Over time those moments had accumulated quietly until they became the foundation upon which her understanding of him rested. She respected him without reservation. She trusted him more readily than she realized. Somewhere beneath all of that, hidden so deeply she had never examined it directly, was a profound devotion that had taken root without her permission.

Luke recognized it before she ever could.

"You're mine." He spoke the words with complete simplicity, as though he were stating an immutable law rather than making a declaration. 

There was no triumph in his voice, no challenge, no expectation that she should argue. In his mind, there existed nothing to debate. A possession did not become his because he desired it. It became his because he had accepted responsibility for it, because he alone had shaped it, guarded it, and claimed ownership over it. The Empire itself would one day answer to him. Against the scale of a galaxy waiting to be inherited, acknowledging Cereia as his own felt less like conquest than simple recognition of a truth that had already existed for months. His thumb moved once across the back of her hand before growing still again.

"Say it." The command was quieter than before, but it carried a weight that settled gently over the space between them. Cereia remained silent for only a heartbeat.

She looked into his eyes and, little by little, he watched understanding emerge across her expression. There was no visible struggle, no defiance wrestling against acceptance. Instead, it resembled someone arriving at the inevitable conclusion of a journey they had been walking for so long that they had forgotten where it began. She thought of the year that had passed within these walls, of every conversation shared in the quiet hours of the night, of every lesson, every kindness, every command she had obeyed without question, and every moment she had found herself instinctively seeking him before anyone else.

The words left her almost reverently.

"I'm yours." 

They scarcely rose above a whisper, spoken softly enough that they seemed intended only for the two of them. Yet to Luke they echoed louder than any oath sworn before a senate chamber or military tribunal. Hearing her give voice to what he had long believed filled him with a satisfaction so profound that even the restless hunger cultivated by the Dark Side receded for the briefest of moments.

"Again."

This time there was something almost impatient beneath his composure, as though hearing the words once had only sharpened his need to hear them again. His breathing had grown subtly heavier, not from exertion but from the quiet certainty that repetition would anchor the moment more deeply into reality.

Cereia searched his face only briefly before answering. The second declaration carried greater conviction than the first. There was no uncertainty left within her voice, only quiet acceptance. Neither of them fully understood what had changed in that instant, yet both sensed that something had shifted irrevocably beneath the silence of the Residence. 

No ceremony marked it, no witness stood to acknowledge it, but the bond that had gradually formed over the course of a standard year had quietly crossed a threshold from which neither of them would ever truly return. To Cereia, the words felt like an affirmation of where she believed she belonged. 

To Luke, they sounded like confirmation that what the Dark Side had whispered to him all along had finally been spoken aloud by the only voice that mattered. 

Here is a white!Vader vs Sith!Luke role reversal AU, as gift for lectricecurieuse for l’échange de Pâques

i recently watched star wars and now all i can think about is what would happen if luke was raised by vader and this is the result...i drew him way too pretty here

i imagine he'd be very calculating, a bit of stepford smiler, and has a habit of getting a bit too excited over things like BLOOD and MURDER because in my brain if someone was imbedded with the dark side for their entire life they'd probably have more then a few screws loose. he's pretty much everyone's first edgy deviantart OC Do Not Steal™.

i also imagine as things go on he gets more and more unhinged until he ends up at complete insanity. by the end of things he's basically azula from avatar or dilandau from escaflowne.

pretty much everyone who's not vader or palpatine thinks he's super unsettling to be around.

i don't know how to end this post.

Luke: I would kill for you. Please ask me to kill for you.