So, first true attempt at a Star Wars fanfic. Please read and review. So this will be an OC/character(to be revealed) fanfic, so I hope that's alright. The fanfic overall should be a rewrite of part of Attack of the Clones and some time afterwards. This is almost entirely off the movies, with a little help from Wookiepedia. I will be rewriting the later movies if people are interested in this.

Prologue:

57 BBY

Shmi Palpatine panted for breath, the sweat plastering her hair to her face as she saw her baby daughter for the first time. She smiled slightly, glancing between her husband, Palpatine, and her daughter. "Aishling," she whispered, tears of joy shining in her eyes, "Aishling, your name is."

Shmi gestured for her husband to join her, and with a smile, he stepped forth towards his girl of a wife. It was then that his smile grew more sinister, and Shmi's eyes grew wider. She trembled as Palpatine walked towards her and took the baby from her arms.

Palpatine's "brother" glanced at Palpatine as if awaiting orders. Shmi's tears turned to tears of fear and betrayal as Palpatine motioned for his "brother" to grab her. "Take her away," Palpatine growled, still cradling his daughter in his arms. "Sell her to the highest bidder." The baby Aishling in his arms began to cry.

49 BBY

The Emperor had captured another Jedi, Aishling had noticed. She grimaced and covered her eyes, backing away from the doors to her rooms. Shuddering, she peeked through her fingers. At last, there was a knock on her door.

Aishling skittered backwards, trying to hide behind her bed. The other child her father was raising, a boy by the name of Maul, appeared in the doorway. "Ling, come on! Master is going to torture some Jedi knight!" Maul's tone was excited, and Aishling shook her head, tears rolling down her cheek.

"Have pity, Maul! Please, I'm not in the mood for it," Aishling protested to the boy who was three years younger than she. She hugged herself, and Maul walked into the room and grabbed her elbow. Aishling tried to break free of his grip, but she failed.

A few minutes later, all she could hear were the bone-chilling, teeth-rattling screams of a Jedi padawan's being tortured to death, and that night, when she close her eyes, all she could see was his charred flesh, his grotesque injuries, his agony. She sobbed herself to sleep that night, occasionally punching her pillow or hugging it. Eight years old, and she had been forced to watch hundreds die that way.

41 BBY

Aishling could hear the shouts coming from down the hall, and she backed into the corner. Her father, the Emperor, refused to give her a lightsaber, and that was probably for the better, as she was scared of almost everything, and she would more likely kill herself with it than any foes.

Her door opened, and an unfamiliar boy slipped into her room. He closed the door behind himself, panting slightly. Aishling could see his lightsaber, and she almost gasped at the color of it: blue. The boy was a Jedi, and he was clearly quite skilled if he had yet to be captured in her father's lair.

Trembling, Aishling stepped out of the shadows and whispered, "Hello". The boy jumped, clearly as surprised to see someone else in the chambers as Aishling was. Aishling was dressed in entirely black robes, and she feared that the boy would mistake her for a Sith Apprentice like the monster Maul had become. "Don't worry, please! I won't hurt you, honestly!"

"Greetings," the boy replied. "Do you have a name, miss?" He turned off his lightsaber and stuck out his hand to shake it.

"Aishling. You have to go, or my father will catch you! He'll torture you if he catches you; please, I'll help you get out of here!" Aishling's hands hadn't stopped shaking, and she was almost to the point where she would curl up in a ball, but she knew she couldn't do that today. She had someone she could protect from what she feared would happen.

"I am fully aware of the need to leave. My master, Qui-Gon Jin, escaped, but we got separated. My name is Obi-Wan, by the way, Obi-Wan Kenobi." Aishling shook the hand he had stretched out to her, before motioning to her cabinet, which then moved to the side to reveal a door.

"I found this years back, but I don't have what I'd need to escape through it like you do. Go! Farewell!" Aishling cried, pushing Obi-Wan towards the door.

Obi-Wan stopped in the doorframe and smiled at Aishling in gratitude. "You could come; the Jedi Order would take you. And thank you for helping me."

"You're welcome, now go! I sense someone's coming!" Aishling used the Force to quickly close the door behind Obi-Wan and set the cabinet back in front of her. She had just sunk down into the crack between her bed and the wall when her door was kicked open by Maul.

Aishling stood up despite the shaking of her legs and offered Darth Maul a smile. "Hello, younger brother." She sucked in a deep breath. Biting her lip, she added, "Tell my father that I am ready to listen to his teachings and obey." Inwardly, she was cringing, but after having met one of those her father and foster brother would have tortured to death, she made a choice. She would do what she could to keep their would be victims from torture. . . .But if she became a Sith Apprentice, letting them escape wouldn't be an option. She'd have to kill them to save them.

32 BBY

Darth Maul was dead, and Aishling wasn't sure whether to be overjoyed or terrified. At twenty-five, she was one of the two Sith Apprentices. She acted the part, at least, and her heart wasn't in it. For her, it was good that Maul had gotten more missions than she. She wasn't sure she could truly stand it. She'd killed, now, and she was more broken by it than she had been by watching torture. Every night, she cried herself to sleep, punched her pillow. In some ways, she was still the terrified eight-year-old she had once been.

Fear coursed through her veins as the true significance of her foster brother's death hit her, and her eyes blazed with some sort of power. Waves of fear exploded from her, and she fell unconscious.

আ

Palpatine strode down the corridor, a small smile forming on his lips. He could feel the fear radiate off of his daughter. Relief flooded through him; he knew he had done well in sending Maul after the Queen, the Jedi, and Anakin. He knew that he had lost his less powerful apprentice, and he could bend Aishling to his will, or, at least, have her perform tasks he knew would break her, and with her spirit broken, he assumed he could control her.

One day, he knew, she would have enough of this, but she wouldn't fit anywhere. She would become a Sith on her own terms then, he decided. She would join the Jedi, only to be ostracized because of what she knew. She would know he was the puppet master behind everything the second she saw him in the Senate.

26 BBY

Aishling felt the tears well in her eyes, and she did the best she could not to glower at her father. She succeeded, but only just. She had to keep up this charade. . . .She was helping, she knew, and that was what kept her going.

Except now, her father had ordered her to invade a Jedi base in order to find a man called Dooku. She, of course, was aware that he was a servant of her father, and as such, she had no qualms about either handing him over to her father or killing him. Indeed, it was the other part of the orders given to her that she hated. She was to kill every Jedi she came by or bring them back.

She would only be able to help a few escape, if she could help any at all. More than maybe ten, and her father would be suspicious. She unsheathed her lightsaber, and she frowned at its color, just as she always did.

Walking into the Jedi base, she couldn't help but look at all the innocent (or not so innocent, from a certain point of view) faces that stared back at her in fear. She hated that, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Some Jedi unsheathed their lightsabers, and some fled. She used the Force to send the ones with lightsabers flying backwards so that they broke their necks upon impacts. And she fought with some of them. Her fighting was not what it could have been, though. To some extent, she wanted to be taken prisoner or killed. She honestly felt that that would be better than this existence.

She survived, and most of the Jedi lay slaughtered. Others would take the news back to the Jedi Council. She herself brought Dooku back to her father's base, and she received shining praise from him. She didn't want it.

When she went to sleep that night, she was crying, and she secretly hoped she wouldn't wake up the next morning.

22 BBY

There was a woman with dark hair, and she was languishing in a tent made of skin. She felt familiar, and love radiated off her in waves. In her sleep, Aishling smiled and hugged her chest. It was at this point in her recurring nightmare that she was her happiest. And then it all turned to hell as the dream continued.

A figure walked in, its face covers in rags with some metal bits sticking out instead of facial features. It held a club, and with the club, it beat the woman on the back until she bled. The woman cried out in pain, tears flooding down her cheeks on top of the trail of old ones. As the woman came close to unconsciousness, her shouts of pain turned to mere grunts.

Aishling's eyes flew open, and tears fell down her cheeks. A wave of anguish flew from her, and she fell back against her cot, barely conscious. The woman seemed familiar to Aishling, but she didn't know why.

What she did know was that she was going to find this woman. Later, she would request leave from her father to go to the planet in the dream: Tatooine.

আ

It was a few hours later that Aishling was readying up her ship for flight. She grimaced. She had never been a huge fan of flying; usually, it meant she was about to perform some terrible task. Maybe though, she could grow to like it without the negative connotations.

She continued making the calculations before going to lightspeed when her ship shook as her hand became slightly unsteady. Maybe she would never have liked flying.

So, how did I do?

Please read and review. You have my friend (who had never watched any Star Wars up until the other day when I rewatched the original trilogy with her) to thank for this.

~~Elf