Luke glowered at the assembled members of the Rebellion's High Command on the other side of the blaster-proof transparisteel viewing window. It wasn't the entirety of High Command; they weren't stupid enough to gather all in one place, even considering that they had finally managed to capture the Emperor's son. Or maybe especially because they had.

His expression was less intimidating than he'd like, if his pale reflection in the window was any indication. The large bruise on his left cheek certainly didn't help, nor did the rather fancier than he'd like dress clothes he was wearing. He was mildly impressed with their gall, kidnapping him from his own birthday gala in front of all of Imperial Center's gathered elite, but they were oh so very foolish to have done so.

Luke worried his wrists in the Force-suppressing binders at his back and met the former Senator Mothma's eyes levelly.

He leaned forward in his chair slightly, as far as his bonds would allow. "How long do you think you will be able to hold me?" he asked.

"As long as we need to," she replied, her voice slightly muffled by the transparisteel between them. "Despite his best efforts, your father still hasn't managed to find our base."

Luke grinned. "He has now. By bringing me here, you've led him straight to you."

"You're bluffing," said one of the men standing near Mothma. Rieekan, if Luke remembered his briefings correctly. But both he and Mothma looked shaken.

Luke shrugged. "I guess we'll find out. If you have any questions for me, you'd better ask them quickly. I'd say you're already running out of time. And maybe evacuate your people. I can guarantee that my father will not be happy when he gets here." He gave them another hour, max, before Vader arrived with a contingent of the 501st to storm the base.

"You're not here for an interrogation, Skywalker. We know you would never betray your father, willingly or not, and we would never stoop to the levels your side has to acquire information."

Luke tilted his head. "I would say that's a smart decision, but you still kidnapped me. I think that proves you incapable of making intelligent decisions."

None of them responded to the barb, and Luke relaxed back into the chair, trying for an air of ease and calm. He was calm, assured that the Rebellion wouldn't harm him and that his father wasn't far away, but the ease was harder. The chair he was chained to was all hard edges and cold metal, and he was still mildly sore from the stun blast they'd knocked him out with earlier. The worst, though, was his current isolation from the Force.

He'd been kidnapped more than his fair share of times, an occupational hazard of being the Crown Prince of all the known Galaxy, and several of the more prepared kidnappers had thought to use some form of Force suppression on him. But previous experience never made it any easier. A fundamental part of him was missing, and he always felt a little lost, floundering in his own mind without it.

"So if I'm not here for an interrogation, why am I here?" Luke asked, keeping his voice as casual as he could. They wouldn't get anything out of him, but perhaps he could learn something of their motives. It wouldn't change the outcome of this situation, his father would never negotiate with kidnappers, but having some idea of what they wanted could prove useful.

"Ransom," Mothma said plainly. "The Empire is holding several political prisoners we want released."

Luke scoffed. "Or what? You would never kill me. Besides, you have to know that my father has never entertained the demands of my kidnappers. Everyone who has tried to hold me hostage has died." Often publicly, usually painfully. His father had tried his best to dissuade future attempts by displaying the severity of the punishment, yet somehow, every subsequent kidnapper seemed to think they would succeed where all their predecessors had failed. It had been a while since someone had tried, most likely due to Luke's increasing ability to defend himself and the fact that he had personally killed the last two groups during their attempts.

"We will not kill you, Skywalker, no. Not in cold blood, but be warned that if you attempt an escape, we will not hesitate to stop you with deadly force, if necessary."

Luke bit back his first instinctual response of "I'd like to see you try." His father had chided him concerning his reckless mouth on more than one occasion. But they were avoiding the question.

"You have no leverage. You won't kill me. You know this, I know this, my father knows this. And even if I'm bluffing, it will still not be long before my father finds me. You cannot hold me hostage and barter my return. I never thought the Rebellion was smart, but I didn't think you were this stupid."

Mothma opened her mouth to respond but never got the chance. She was interrupted by the shrill blaring of the base's alarms. Luke smirked. He had overestimated the time it would take his father to reach him. Of course, he had no way of knowing how long he'd been unconscious.

"You're out of time," he told a very pale Mothma. Rieekan was already barking orders into a comlink. Luke caught fragments of an evacuation order and commands for a standard computer systems wipe.

Luke sat back on the chair and watched the Rebellion's High Command scramble. He had to admit that despite the chaos of the evacuation, at least the contained version he was witnessing from his holding cell, they moved with surprising efficiency. The product of experience from dozens of prior sudden evacuations, most likely. Most of the personnel aside from Mothma and a few Luke didn't recognize had scattered within moments, dispatched to whatever jobs they were in charge of for these situations.

Sooner even than Luke had expected, the door to the waiting area outside his cell burst open. Vader stalked in, hood pulled low over his face and lightsaber lit but held down at his side, and the Rebels turned to flee. Vader flung his other arm out, hand outstretched, and they all froze. Luke was still quietly in awe of his father's ability to hold so many people in place at once. He could do it, but it took concentration. Vader made it look effortless.

Stormtroopers filed into the room behind Vader as he turned his lightsaber off.

"Stun them all except Mothma."

The static hum of stun shots sent a slight shiver through Luke, a phantom crackle of remembered electricity. He shook it off as his father turned his head to look at him through the transparisteel. His hard eyes softened slightly as he met Luke's gaze.

Leaving the new prisoners to his troops, Vader released the lock on the cell door with a negligent wave of his hand. Luke smiled at him as he approached.

"You took your time, Father," he teased.

"Next time you decide to allow yourself to be kidnapped, do me the courtesy of warning me," he growled, but there was no anger in it.

"It was a last second decision. I thought it might be a good opportunity to help you find a Rebel base, once I realized who they were." Luke shrugged. "I knew you'd find me."

Vader just looked at him for a long moment, then shook his head and sighed. He walked around Luke and crouched behind him to release the binders. He fiddled with them for a few seconds before his hands stilled.

"I am not invincible, Luke. No matter what you may think." There was heavy sadness in his father's voice, and Luke craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of his father's face, but his head was down. "You know that I cannot bear to lose you."

Vader's fingers brushed against Luke's, and Luke closed his hand around them.

"You won't," Luke said.

"You cannot promise me that." Vader pulled his hand out of Luke's grip and resumed working on the binders. Luke frowned but knew his father was technically correct.

It didn't take Vader long to release the binders. The moment they snapped open, Luke leaned forward in the chair. He groaned as the Force flooded back in with an almost painful intensity, and his father caught him by the shoulders, steadying him.

"Thank you, Father," Luke said, once the Galaxy settled to rightness around him and he could think beyond the dizzying press of the Force against his mind.

Vader held his hand out to Luke and helped him stand. Luke stumbled into him, his legs still shaky from not being able to move after waking from the stun shot. Vader caught him, wrapping an arm around his waist and holding him close for a brief moment.

"Did they hurt you?" Vader asked after he released Luke. He swiped his thumb gently across the bruise on his cheek, not hard enough to hurt. Luke could feel his father's presence coiling around him, searching for more serious injuries. It was comforting, and he leaned against their bond. Losing the normally constant contact with his father was perhaps the worst part of being cut off from the Force.

Luke shook his head. "They didn't dare to. They planned on holding me to ransom."

Vader growled, and Luke made a calming gesture. "I'm fine, Father. And this got you a Rebel base and Senator Mothma. Not bad, right?" Luke grinned.

Vader glared at him. "None of this would be worth even a drop of your blood," he snarled.

"I haven't lost any." Luke held his hands up. "There aren't even restraint marks."

"Your self-sacrificing antics will be your undoing someday."

Luke huffed, not wanting to rehash the old argument. "Don't you have new prisoners to interrogate instead of me?"

His father sighed, the look in his eyes telling Luke that the conversation was far from over. "I thought I would wait until they are secure on Coruscant. For now I will see if they missed anything in their system wipe. Watch Mothma and see if you can make her slip anything while she's still surprised." Vader turned to leave the holding cell, then paused and faced Luke again. He brushed a gentle hand against Luke's face, sweeping his bangs away from his eyes. Luke was startled. It was rare for his father to show that much affection with an audience.

Especially an enemy audience, Luke thought as he caught Mothma staring at them through the transparisteel. This must have truly scared his father, and Luke felt a stirring of guilt for his rash decision, even though it had ended well for them.

"I'm sorry, Father," he said. "I should have stopped them at the gala rather than let them take me."

Vader smiled softly at him, and Luke knew he was forgiven. "It was reckless. I was angry. But it is something I would have done at your age, so I cannot judge you too harshly, though I do not condone it." He rested his hand against Luke's cheek for a moment longer before turning away again.

Luke trailed after him, glad to leave the confines of the holding cell, even if the small observation room beyond wasn't much more spacious. Most of the stormtroopers had already left with their stunned prisoners, and the few that remained stood at attention at the perimeter of the room. He watched his father stalk over to one of the computer terminals before turning his attention on Mothma, stun cuffs on her wrists and guarded by two stormtroopers. Luke waved them away as he approached her.

"I told you you would not be able to hold me for long."

The Rebel leader eyed him carefully. She was doing a good job of hiding the fear on her face and in her eyes but not in the Force. She knew this was a significant blow against the Rebellion, perhaps one of the final hits they could take before crumbling. Luke could not bring himself to feel sorry for her. The Rebellion had done nothing but continue to destabilize the Galaxy and tie up Imperial resources, preventing them from being used to actually implement the changes his father was trying to bring about. They still had a long way to go to undo all the damage done by Palpatine's Empire, short-lived though it had been.

"You were obviously not bluffing," Mothma said drily.

"No." Luke held up the binders, swinging them gently in Mothma's face. "These do a wonderful job of blocking my access to the Force, which is very disorienting, I might add. But they certainly don't prevent anyone else from sensing my signature and following it." He contemplated her wide eyes for a moment, then added, "I also have a tracker in my belt that you failed to find."

"We scanned you!" she protested.

"And found one, the one you were meant to find," Luke agreed.

"Vader has you chipped like a pet tooka," Mothma said, something like pity in her face.

Luke's eyes hardened. "Never suggest that again." He glanced over at his father, busy stripping the nearby computer console of all its data, glad that he hadn't been close enough to hear that. "No matter how desperate he is to protect me, he would never go so far as to use an implant." He suppressed a shiver, remembering the feel of his father's scar under his fingers, where Vader had dug the transmitter out of himself as a newly-freed child. The Jedi had refused to remove it, claiming the surgery would be more invasive than it was worth. The transmitter was inert, deactivated, no longer a threat, so the fact that it was still buried in his father's side should not have mattered. Perhaps they had paid for that, dying at the hands of their own men, controlled by chips in their heads meant to make them obedient. A morbid piece of irony, and Luke did not feel sorry for the Jedi either.

His father had had the chips removed from any surviving clones after he had killed Palpatine. Luke had had the opportunity to study the insidious coding imbedding into them, and the thought of having a chip in him, even if it was nothing more than a locator and not a mind-controlling device or a bomb, made his skin crawl.

"My father is not my master. I am not a slave."

"Yet you do what he tells you blindly," Mothma challenged.

Luke growled. "He tells me everything. I know why he does everything he does. We are trying to make a better Galaxy. If you would stop fighting us and let us fix things, you would see that." Luke sighed. "You and your Republic broke the Galaxy. You were so mired in bureaucracy and corruption that you couldn't even see the Sith in your midst. You couldn't see the clone army for what it was, couldn't realize you were orchestrating your own downfall."

Luke took a step back, opening his arms to gesture at the observation room. "As you did here. So caught up in your own hubris that you didn't stop to think whether capturing me as easily as you did was a trap. You refused to listen to me when I told you I was being tracked.

"You have never given my father a chance to prove that he's different from Palpatine. You just look at his title and think he's the same. The Empire is not inherently bad. What we're trying to create? It's better than the corruption and useless dithering of your Republic. For all you held up the value of freedom, you did nothing to help the slaves in the Outer Rim. In fact, you bargained with the Hutts. You condoned the slavery of the clones and supported the creation of more, letting them fight and die in a war to prevent the more disenfranchised worlds from leaving your rule, commanded in part by Jedi children. Children stolen from their families and indoctrinated without the option to leave, told that wanting family was a weakness that needed to be purged."

Mothma's eyes widened as Luke spoke, and for a moment he thought he had her convinced. Then she shook her head.

"You weren't there. You've only heard your father's twisted side of the story -"

"I don't need to hear more," Luke snarled. He advanced on her, and she took a startled step back. "The Republic failed the Galaxy. It failed my father when it left him in slavery for the first nine years of his life, when it allowed the Jedi to take him from his mother, when it allowed a Sith to rise to power at the center of it and never noticed how he was manipulating -"

Luke jumped at the touch of his father's mind against his, beckoning Luke back to him. He turned and nodded at Vader, standing across the room watching him, before looking back at Mothma.

"Think about it. And then maybe you'll reconsider those peace talks we've tried to initiate."

Luke turned his back to her before he could see her reaction to his last parting jab and crossed the room to his father.