Hello! Thank you for your interest in Beyond the Glass, Through the Rain. A few notes before we begin:

1. As you all know, I do not own Star Wars. This is a work of fanfiction.

2. The characters in this story are going to seem OOC for the first few chapters; however, this is a conscious decision I made for plot purposes, and I promise everything will make sense later on! After we get past the preliminary chapters, they will become their canonical selves again, especially Ahsoka.

3. I do not condone the words and actions of characters such as Anakin/Vader and Erosik. Though it should be pretty self-explanatory while reading, they are intended as clear examples of what not to do.

4. If you enjoy symbol-hunting while reading, then yes, the title is symbolic. If you don't enjoy symbol-hunting, you don't need to pay attention to the symbolism in order to understand the plot. ;)

I hope you enjoy the story! :)


Rain, because of weather control, was rare on Coruscant, but hardship still beat down upon the people with the same merciless intensity. Every day on the city planet had become a sort of solemn dance—go here, keep your eyes down, go there, don't talk to others because you could be conspiring, get your work done, stay quiet, remain unremarkable. Such was the case for almost every citizen of the Galactic Empire—including the Imperial princess.

She watched this dismal scene every morning with no idea whatsoever that it was dismal. From her window, the entire city appeared pleasant, harmonious, like functioning clockwork. One of her handmaidens stood behind her, wrapping a diamond headpiece around her montrals. Another applied something shimmery to her lips. The princess hardly noticed either of them.

The door swung open from behind her, and both of the handmaidens whipped around. Instantly, they collapsed to their knees with two distinct thuds. The princess knew what this meant. She climbed out of her chair and slid onto her knees as well, touching her forehead to the floor.

A long moment passed. Then the click of boots sounded against the hardwood floor. The clicks grew louder, stopped again. "Get up, Ahsoka."

The princess remembered her name was Ahsoka. She got up. Emperor Vader—no, he had told her to call him Anakin—was staring at her with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. "Come on, then," he said impatiently, gesturing for her to follow him.

She did. He sat on her bed and she did, too. Then he withdrew a needle from the case he was holding. She stiffened. The very presence of the needle was a silent order. Ahsoka knew what he wanted. She sat obediently as Anakin injected the needle into her upper arm, biting her lip to keep herself from flinching. She had learned how to do that out of necessity.

At last, he yanked it from the muscle and tugged her to her feet. "Come on, then." He said that a lot, Ahsoka knew. It was one of the only things he ever said to her.

She followed him out of her chambers, into the turbolift that rang with off-key chimes, through an extravagant hallway still painted with early-morning darkness. As usual, she felt the eeriness of the Imperial Palace rattle her bones, pristine and silent. A hush had settled over the entire building, like the quiet that rings in the air after a prolonged scream.

On their way to the dining hall, she and Anakin passed an oil painting, and Ahsoka paused. She knew and liked this oil painting, because Anakin had talked to her about it before.


"That was your father," he had said, standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders. At the time, it had only been a few days since her awakening, so this was new information. The painting depicted two middle-aged strangers, a Togrutan man and a human woman draped in velvet and precious gemstones. "Our father. He used to rule this Empire, before…"

Anakin's voice thickened with sorrow, and he looked to the ground in what Ahsoka interpreted as near despair. "Before what?" she prompted. This, of course, was before she learned to just let him talk, to refrain from asking too many questions.

He met her eyes anyway. "They were killed in the same attack in which you lost your memory."

"Oh," Ahsoka said.

They lapsed into silence for a moment. Finally, Anakin spoke. "You remind me sometimes of our mother. Obviously, you took after your father in appearance, but you always shared a personality with Shmi. She was quiet, demure. You're like that, too. I like that about you."


Anakin and Ahsoka entered the dining hall, where only one other person was waiting. Both that other person and Ahsoka had to stand until Anakin had seated himself, as though some invisible eye were present to observe the formalities. But Anakin and Ahsoka's father had always found those formalities important. So it was imperative that they hold true to them.

Ahsoka sat down at the same time as the Empress Padmé. She did not know much about the Empress Padmé, other than the fact that she should always call her "Empress Padmé" and never just "Padmé", at the insistence of Anakin. She was rather mysterious, Ahsoka supposed; on occasion she caught the empress watching her, but always from afar. She never seemed to want to associate with her. That was okay, of course. That was the empress's right. Besides, she had given Ahsoka an adorable niece and nephew, Princess Leia and Prince Luke, so she really couldn't begrudge the Empress Padmé her secrecy.

It was rare for them to talk to each other while eating. Anakin had to be the one to start the conversation, and he was usually just focused of shovelling food into his mouth and moving on to whatever very-important-thing he had to do next. But today, he clicked his spoon against his glass and announced peremptorily, "I'm going to arrange a marriage for Ahsoka."

Ahsoka's heart lurched in surprise, but she did not react. Empress Padmé, on the other hand, dropped her fork. It clattered against her porcelain plate noisily. "Anakin, no," she said. She was the only one who was allowed to talk back to the emperor. "She's only seventeen."

"Eighteen soon," Anakin declared.

"She shouldn't have to get married at age eighteen."

"Why not? I married you at nineteen."

Empress Padmé narrowed her dark eyes. When she picked up her fork, Ahsoka noticed that her hand was trembling. "That was a choice we made together. Not something we were forced into."

"'Forced into'?" Anakin scoffed. "Come on, Padmé. This is going to make her happy. Right, Ahsoka?"

Ahsoka nodded, but she wasn't particularly focused on Anakin and Empress Padmé's conversation. Her lips tingled now because of the shimmery gloss the handmaiden had applied to them. She glanced up at her water glass and, from across the table, accidentally met the eyes of the empress. Her gaze was like hot glue. Ahsoka feared she wouldn't be able to rip away her own until she exerted the right amount of energy.

At last, she managed. At the same time, Anakin stood and strode toward the doors, his cape sweeping out behind him. "Where are you going?" asked the Empress Padmé. Anakin replied that he had more important things to be doing right now and left the girls alone.

Ahsoka watched him as he left. A cylindrical object bounced comfortably against his hip. Not for the first time, she wondered what it was.


Ahsoka had inquired about that cylindrical object before. Anakin had told her not to ask too many questions.


Hey, everyone! Thanks for reading the first chapter! You may be here if you've already read Discovery. I have actually decided to edit that story so that the entire work is set in the SW galaxy, with brief flashbacks to Earth. (Please see my profile for more information.) Therefore, I will be taking a break from posting chapters for that story for the next little while so that I can work on editing it. But I will leave up the old version on the site until I post the new one.

That being said, I have decided to post this story in the meantime to give you all something else to read. This idea has been bouncing around in my head for awhile, so I hope you like it. :)

Unfortunately, I do not have a strict posting schedule for this story yet. Editing Discovery is my main priority right now, so updates may be slightly irregular, especially once school starts up again. But if you liked this first chapter or are at least intrigued, reviews may or may not motivate me to write faster...

-Isabelle ;)