A/N: The following is an AU, set roughly prior to the events of ANH. Vader and Amidala are husband and wife in the coldest sense of the bond. The marriage is seemingly childless. Flashbacks are employed liberally throughout the story, as through this device a picture of their past twenty year together is developed. The POV is limited to and biased by Vader.
Rating: Without hesitation I give this an "R" rating. Violence and allusions to intercourse aside, there is an underlying theme that is offensive and Oedipal in nature. You are forewarned.
On that happy note: Enjoy:)
SIGHTLESS IN THE DARK
By: Jay Stellar
Chapter One
"Now, now, Master, before you go in there please remember that none of this is my fault."
The brass protocol droid was backing away from him with quick, fearful steps, his photo-receptors alight with amber-alert terror in the gloom of the hallway.
"Threepio, I'm quite certain of that. Now, let me through."
"If you'll remember, Master, it was she who turned off the security system. Not me—I'm not to blame for any of this. Artoo and I warned her, but, but…"
"Move—or I shall make you move."
"Oh...Ah...my mistake, Master. Go right ahead." The frantic droid stilled and fell to the side, letting his master stride pass, down the darkened corridor to his wife's rooms. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. He's not going to be at all pleased," he heard Threepio titter solemnly.
Darth Vader had returned this evening to find an unusual party of Nubian officers, Coruscant constables, and Imperial clerks squabbling amongst themselves in the common salon. More accurately it was his wife's salon, and more accurately still, the salon of his wife's residence. This piece of property, one of a hundred million steel-tiered columns that pierced the high clouds of Coruscant, was no more home to him than the orbiting star destroyer he had just disembarked. It just happened to house a hyperbaric chamber and the woman he had the misfortune of being married to.
The going-ons of the salon had scarcely ever held any interest to Vader. Amidala used it mostly for entertaining the other governors of the galaxy and anyone else she considered useful. However, tonight's collection of middlemen officers was such a bizarre arrangement that he did a double take. Some shouted fiercely, some red in the face. An equally irate-looking paramedic team stood off to the side. Stranger still was the absence of his wife.
In the heat of their arguments, they failed to notice that they were under the dark lord's observation.
"May I remind you, Governess Amidala was formerly Queen Amidala of Naboo. Article 13.4-5 of the Nubian Constitution states that all former heads of state must be--"
"This is Coruscant! Nubian laws don't count for squat here. This investigation is under my jurisdiction!"
"The hell it is! Governess Amidala is presently a member of the Imperial Court. I'm heading this case."
One of the paramedics finally spoke up. "You know, it's not like we're getting paid by the hour here!"
"Enough!" cried Lt. Typho, the head of the Nubian officers, the sole individual Vader recognized. A sullen, terse silence came at his command. He continued on calmly. "Fine, you want to do the investigation, well then you can be the on to tell Lord Vader that his--"
Typho paused, Vader himself standing cross-armed in the entranceway. "Lord Vader!" The aged black man covered his surprise with a rigid smile and dipped his head in a curt bow.
"Tell me what, Lieutenant?" he asked softly, stepping down into the room..
"That would be Imperial Officer Whidbey responsibility to tell--" started one of the Coruscant constables smartly, finding his next breath prevented by an invisible hand squeezing down on his throat. All watched as the constable's body was flung against far a sofa, toppling it over.
"Now, again: what exactly is going on here?"
Once more his question went unanswered for at that moment Amidala's two eccentric droids wandered upon the scene. Malfunctioning and archaic See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo, were the troublesome, robotic pair Amidala still found oddly amusing and had kept around all these years.
"Oh, Master Vader, you've returned!" It wasn't so much a greeting but a declaration of horror.
Vader's patience was quickly coming to an end as no explanation was in sight. "Threepio, where is Governess Amidala?"
"Well, that happens to be a most complicated matter, Sir. I'm afraid Artoo and I have terrible news…Artoo! Come back here you miserable little contraption! You promised me we'd tell him together."
The little astromech had beeped in alarm and promptly rolled away upon laying sight on Vader, disappearing down the hall somewhere to safety.
As Vader strode past Threepio and his profuse apologies, he could only distractedly wonder what was wrong with Amidala. He had sensed nothing out of the ordinary tonight; it could not be serious whatever it was.
It seemed Artoo had not fled after all. The smaller droid was waiting patiently for Vader at the doors to Amidala's chambers. He cooed a rueful condolence at his approach.
"She's in there?" Vader now keenly felt an intangible flutter of something maybe amiss. Artoo bobbed forward, a silent, solemn affirmative.
In most marriages one would not feel a certain sense of absurdity in entering his or her partner's living space. However, Vader's union with Amidala had so long been a mere formality that they possessed the intimacy of mutual strangers off the street. His hand hovered uncertainly over the door release. It felt like an unnatural intrusion; they worked so hard at maintaining the professional distance of their marriage. He had been in her rooms rarely over the years, each separate occasion a particularly unhappy episode. By the same token Amidala had rarely been so bold as to wander into his territory. Vader should just walk on by, continue about his evening's business and leave her to hers.
But then there was that inexplicable gathering of investigators and paramedics in his living room. Even more disquieting was the elusive nagging now urging him to check in on his wife.
After twenty-three years he owed her this much, didn't he?
The double doors hissed open.
"Amidala?"
Her office den was dark and empty, lit only by the city lights and the warm glow from her bedroom slanting in across the carpet floor. Peering into the bedroom he saw the Governess curled up in her bed, partly covered by silken sheets.
He found it curious afterwards that he did not immediately realize she was dead. Half a lifetime ago he would have felt her life languish from the other end of the galaxy, his heart stopping with hers all the way past the Outer Rim. He would have streaked homeward, sweating in his flightsuit, choking on the numb futility rising in his throat.
At this moment in time however, Vader was still mostly convinced she was, at worst, ill.
"Amidala?" said Vader again, stepping around her large bed. Her face was set with neutral, nebulous determination and was bare of the elaborate, Nubian paints. Years of regal glowering had lined the skin about her eyes and mouth: imprints of an expression, tattoos of her displeasure with the galaxy. She was thinner than he remembered her. Stripped from her immense ceremonial gowns she was truly his opposite; a short, small waif of a woman totally eclipsed by his bulk and height. He could crush her if he came too near.
"Amidala?"
Still no response. He hesitated to touch her, unwilling to get too involved in this drama he saw unfolding. Vader had made it his business to avoid drama over the past decades, believing to have gotten his life's share of personal suffering over with in his formative years. He didn't need this. "Amidala!" He was furious now, grasping and shaking her violently. Her head lolled lifelessly and her mouth parted as if in silent protest to his brutality. Released, she slumped back down onto her pillows and Vader, wearily, opened his mind to her presence.
It was not there. He hadn't expected to be. Only fading tracks of her last moments lingered about her body. Despair, horror—she hadn't wanted to die.
Artoo had since joined him at the side of the bed and gave him a consolatory nudge at the knee. Vader refused to acknowledge the gesture, wondering distantly if Artoo was the one more distraught over this turn of events. It had always been Vader's firm suspicion that the droid was a great deal more human than he.
"Threepio said Amidala shut down the security system?"
Artoo beeped a "yes."
"And I suppose she gave her aides the night off?"
Right again.
"And she locked you and your other half in a storage closet as if to insure that you two have no idea about what transpired here tonight, other than the fact that you found her dead in her bed?"
He was on a roll.
Vader sighed and rose from the bed. "Watch her, while I go take care of the circus in the living room." As if she's going anywhere, he thought moodily, striding down the hallway back to the collection of officers grouped between the sofas and lounging chairs.
They all watched Vader carefully, bracing themselves for the worst.
"Your services will not be required here tonight, therefore I suggest that you all depart immediately. I will decide who conducts the investigation into Governor Amidala's death, regardless of whatever stipulations your jurisdictions may have. You medics, however, shall return in the morning for the body. That is all."
He had hoped one of them would protest. An excuse to throttle any one of them would have been welcome. Vader didn't murder the innocent, but easily found the guilty. He only needed one, offhanded reason…
But they all filed out of the room in respectful silence, the medics guiding the body of the strangled officer on a suspended gurney up the steps and out of sight. Not one misplaced, over-the-shoulder look of sympathy. Typho came the closest to death, catching Vader's eye and nodding respectively.
And then Vader was alone. Alone with his dead wife. It was a sinking feeling, reinforced by the realization that he and Amidala had been dead to each other long before this black night.
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