fic: Dark Offering (adult content) Fandom: Star Wars (set post-RotJ) Title: Dark Offering Author:elke_tanzer on IJ and JF Rating: adult content Summary: A master-less apprentice and long, restless nights of intense dreams and confused desires. Warnings: Pain/pleasure confusion and a naked Jedi. Disclaimer: If I were George Lucas, these movies would have been quite different, but sadly, I own nothing. No copyright infringement or offense intended. Critiques: Only if the spirit really moves you, since this was already published in the Con*Strict 2007 zine. It's timed out now, so I can post it on the web. Feedback is always welcome, of course!
Notes: This story stemmed from the ideas that Luke is a sub without a dom, a padawan without a master, and that from one very, very intense experience, he might extrapolate incorrectly that physical/mental intensity is closely associated with the dark side only, exiled from the light. Alas for the master-less apprentice.
Thanks to my wonderfully helpful betas JKB, Gloriana, Laura and Lori, and to all the Con*Strict Jedi, Dark and Light.
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Dark Offering
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He tastes pain: oily, inky metallic of the white-blue lightning's fire, and fresh flowing red where he's bitten his tongue.
Another arc of lightning sends him into an arching spasm, every muscle in his body tensing in a futile attempt to escape the stimulus. His skin crawls with the power of it.
He doesn't want to let the screams out, but they're being wrung from him regardless, throaty groans and gasping shrieks, and he's nearly reached his limit, nearly admitted that he must give up trying to entreat some empathy, some goodness, from the shadow which is his father.
That shadow stands, watching.
The other malevolent presence, the one causing all of this pain, is more than a shadow. The dark figure is the absence of light, swallowing light, pulling light into darkness to fuel the Force-lightning. And such lightning... Luke has never known the feel of such raw hatred, such rage. Every fiber of his body writhes in agony, overwhelmed by off-key clamoring disharmony where there should be the thrum of life. His teeth clatter together, grinding as sparks find every nerve ending and sear it into flame. He wants to close his eyes, to try to distance himself from this, but he knows his only chance of survival is showing himself, opening himself to it, because there is good in his father. There must be. Somewhere deeply buried, hidden in the darkness, a tiny ray diminished and held captive under despair, cowed into obedience to every horrible thing embodied by that dark figure... there must be good in his father yet.
The master ignores the shadow, confident in its ownership. Instead the master focuses on him, wills him to retreat, to give up, to yield to the pain and the hopelessness. The master does not yet will him to die... there is a twisted joy in that sepulchered face, possessiveness in those hands as pale as death itself. No, he does not want him to die just yet. He wants him to suffer.
And he does.
Needles and knives are so clumsy, blunt by comparison. Electricity is simply power, but these bolts of blue-tinged lightning are more than that. They are the Force, gnarled and twisted in on itself and perverted into that dark will to become mental as well as physical attack. Irresistible, inescapable, crushingly brutal pain crackles and sizzles through his body, shatters through his psyche.
The rasping, terrible voice resonates deeply into the shards of his mind. 'This is what you did not know of the Force, you fool. This is the power you thought you could resist. This is the will you thought you could face. This is infinite strength and you are helpless, utterly helpless before it. You were mine before I ever saw you... your only choice was between my service and you suffering. You, my boy, chose suffering.'
His spine twists, muscles in his back cramping as he spasms and knocks his skull against the floor in agony. Yet still, he looks to his father. He tells himself that everything would be worth its cost, just to know that Anakin Skywalker still existed, that there was redemption for him, that there could be redemption for both father and son, even if his own life became forfeit in the process. For what was his life, if he was nothing but the son of Vader?
'But you are my son,' the shadow whispers into his mind. There is a gentle sadness to that voice, its pale remorse a soft contrast to the storm of agony everywhere else.
His eyes widen, even as another bolt of flaring blue-white energy surges through him. That was not Vader's usual tone, precisely... it was slightly... "Father!"
'You know his will, my son. You feel his corruption, his desire. It is useless to resist it, you feel it echoing within yourself.'
Desire?
He closes his eyes, focuses on the pain dancing over his skin, through his muscles and sinews... oh. Oh. It was desire. Soul-deep ownership and dominance and power and pain and...
It did echo. Why did it echo? There was a resonance, an answering call, coiled deep around his spine, clutching in his gut, a thin web like mesh around his lungs, making him gasp for air, to keep trying to breathe, to prolong his life, to prolong the pain, to feel it in every part of his being, to lose himself in the sheer intensity of it...
No... he wrenches himself away, mind and body, recoiling, retreating, denying the undeniable... the litany of no, no, no in his mind turning into an incoherent drawn out moan...
His eyes flutter wide to silent darkness as he startles awake. The bedclothes are clammy, clinging to him like tentacle-vine as he struggles to sit up. Little muscle twitches chase each other under his skin, as though blue-white lightning still embraced him. He sucks in air like he's been drowning underwater, and perhaps, in a way, he has. He's gasped himself out of the dreams, once again.
And once again, he is painfully hard.
He's tried everything he can think of to will this away. To meditate, to find his center, to find the calm and the tendrils of healing Force that he can sometimes barely reach, he gets so distracted and unbalanced from these dreams. And they have not only been coming to him in his sleep, lately...
He wishes he could ask Master Yoda, or Ben, for advice. But how would he even phrase the question?
How could he admit to them what he has trouble admitting to himself? That the darkness, that the pain, the intensity... that it seems so... that he craves... that he...
No.
He tosses the covers away, and kneels in the center of his bed. He tosses his damp sleepshirt away, and the air chills his skin to shivers. He puts his palms on his thighs, and takes a few deep breaths. He has done this before. It hasn't worked.
He pauses, just breathing. Stills, seeks his center. Instead realizes he can very nearly feel inflexible manacles at his wrists, biting ungently into skin. Feels the heated rush of blood into flesh at the anticipation of intensity, of overwhelming stimulation.
He bows his head.
He's tried everything else he can think of, for more longer than he wants to admit. He's avoided this for as long as he can; he needs restful sleep and is out of ideas and time. The New Republic needs the last of the Jedi, not a stumbling husk exhausted from dreamvisions of torture and unwitting desire.
He gathers what threads of Force will come to him, weaving them loosely around the roil of confusion and denial which crests within him. He lifts one palm from his thigh, trailing his fingers up his leg as his hand trembles slightly, then finding that aching hardness and stroking... once, twice, and again with more surety.
The dark accepts his offering.
His nerves are afire with it. He closes his eyes, stroking hard and long and knowing that the pain is coming. Yes... it comes, like static along his muscles and skin crackling to spark with unforgotten power. It surges slightly, and he nearly cries out against the scent of it in the air, the taste on his tongue. Acrid. Inky oily. Bright bitter. White blue black, shadows sucking the light. Pain surrounds him, consumes the Force woven through him, envelops him, owns him, takes him. His center is echoing with it, reverberating with it, causing little tremors, dark and light rippling around him and he opens his eyes.
The room is no longer dark. Shadows and lightning dance in the slight space above his skin, and his hands caress and stroke across a sheen of sweat that glistens, reflects blue and white and black. The dark power is within him, remembered, called up and outwards to coalesce around him by his own will. And his center is not light alone, nor is its harmony all the sweetness of life. He lets his head fall back, allows one moment of despair, a quiet, gasping whisper...
"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't any of you tell me?"
...and then he yields, a solitary student without a master to guide the way through the light and the dark with care and understanding.
His hands are now strong, sure, and the room flashes bright as power crackles and lightning twists into being around him. He smiles, finally crying out as the searing lightning of his own making ensnares itself strongly around him, lashing into him from skin to core. This fiery, icy storm sweeping across his mind and body is what he has been craving. His muscles tense, his spine arching into the pain as he finds his release.