a/n: The way of the Sith is supposedly that the apprentice takes up the mantle after the master is dead. Sidious, obviously, did not want to go with that route. Being that he is a Sith and so it might've (I am so totally emphasizing "might" right now) been natural in his character to want to encourage Vader to take his place, I'm going to try to go with that.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust

First installment

"We were two and had but one heart." – Francois Villon

The carriage that carried Padmé Amidala's body was brought to an abrupt halt by the squad of armed clone troopers in the middle of the street. The people of Naboo were shouldered to the side and a long, tense moment was drawn out where the citizens began to protest the clones' presence – the Empire's presence – at the ceremonial committal of the once great champion of the rule of democracy and against dictatorship, against war. The clone troopers simply held their arms and ordered for silence and obedience. A brave Nabooian cried, "Warmongers! Here, where the daughter of the Republic lies dead!" from the audience watching tensely as the troopers began to trap the carriage from all sides.

A single shot fired into the air silenced any other complaints.

Jobal Naberrie, near the body of her daughter, inhaled swiftly and wondered, in her grieving mind, if the Empire was there to take her daughter, degrade her body –

Perhaps carry her corpse through the streets, dragging her on the ground and delivering her back to Naboo broken and marred and still dead.

Jobal wrenched her hand from Ruwee and came closer to the carriage, to her youngest child of her flesh and curled an aged hand around the cold chill of her daughter's arm. Her long brown hair, beautiful in death, flared out dryly with white flowers. She was beautiful as a stone statue.

"Jobal, get back here," Ruwee hissed between clenched teeth while she tried to pry his wife from their youngest but Jobal slapped him away. "Jobal!"

"No," she snarled. "No. They will not take her."

Her fingers clutched at the hard, rigid arm of her daughter. There was nothing left to protect of her little girl but her body. There was nothing to kill or destroy but cold flesh. But they wouldn't take her, and Jobal was still Padmé's mother whether or not she was –

"Move aside ma'am." The closest clone to Jobal ordered. The white mask of his face caused Jobal to stiffen her spine.

"We are in – in the middle of a funeral procession! What is the meaning of this?" Jobal felt a quiver of fear that was overridden with motherly pain and suffering – and righteous anger.

"Ma'am, we're under orders to confiscate the body –"

"Confiscate?" Jobal rasped and felt her husband try to pull her away, though at the clone's statement, he too stopped. "You…you want to take her – take her from here? From her home? Hasn't enough been done to Naboo? To her family?"

"Ma'am," the clone tried again but a ripple of noise covered whatever he might have said.

Someone from the Nabooian spectators of the funeral screamed, others began to back away as if sharing one body. The crowd condensed before everyone exploded into a strange hybrid of fraught, excited and yet forced unhurried movement.

Death parted through the vast numbers of funeral attendants and He swept past the clones to stand before the carriage.

The first hiss that entered Vader's subconscious was Darth Sidious murmuring to him, bent over him on the examination table and telling him Padmé was – that she was, was –

"I felt her! She was alive."

"She didn't die through your machinations, Lord Vader."

"How –" the realization came powerfully enough that even as Vader forced himself to stand on painful prosthetic legs he imagined his knees buckling. "The child."

"The records show she didn't deliver a living child…" Sidious paused and savored the flavor of Vader's ache, the grief wrought with rage and self-hatred. "She lost too much blood in delivering the child. Medical records," Sidious paused long enough to sidle up next to Vader and lower his voice respectfully, hushing his tone with empathy and pity. "Show that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck. It was dead before it fully exited her womb."

Lord Vader's connection to the Force was an undertow of supreme power brought upon by power emotion. The raw power behind the outburst destroyed medical equipment, droids and the area and even as Sidious withstood its power with aged joints that creaked with the effort, he smiled.

"Nooooo!" Jobal shrieked. She tore at her husband's arm even as he clamped her securely to him. Death was coming to take her – a dark figure swathed in black clothes. Her heart palpitated in her chest with an inborn fear she never thought she had.

Ruwee gripped his wife's head and forced her to face his chest. He watched the figure come closer and heard the horrible noise of breathing through an apparatus. The continuous, even stomp of heavy boots came closer and Ruwee, upon looking at the horrible mask felt his heart clench in fear.

For a moment, just a mere glance, the mask turned to he and his wife even as the man (Ruwee couldn't tell what was beneath the armor) approached his dead daughter.

What happened next was not shown in official Naboo records. The media that had been covering Padmé Amidala's funeral had been forcibly shunted out of the area and the report was suddenly canceled due to technical errors. The people of Naboo, when interviewed about their former Queen and Senator, only spoke of how she lived.

The stormtroopers' sudden coup didn't exist and the man in the black armor had never set foot on Naboo before.

Amidala's body, on official documents, was classified as cremated. Her tomb was erected and her urn remained in there, in the dark underground. The urn, unofficially, was empty and had never been filled.

The galaxy didn't notice the abnormalities.

"It was – it, all of this was for her." Vader stood still and though he could not physically communicate what he felt, for there was not much of his flesh left, and his face was hidden, his pain seemed half-hearted to an outsider. To Sidious, who felt his apprentice's anguish through the Force and through their bond, it was all consuming, and the Sith master admitted to himself, could be cause for concern.

"Everything I did. All of this, all of it, was for her so she wouldn't – wouldn't, and the baby is gone, there's no one –" Vader's sentences were disjointed and disturbed.

Sidious frowned slightly, but only slightly. He could see his apprentice breaking at the seams. While having a mindless, obedient and powerful tool would be entirely useful to the Empire, the Sith cultivated Sith masters to continue the line.

He would lose his heir if he didn't take steps to rectify it.

"My friend," he murmured, drawing closer to the cyborg, "There is a way to change fate."

Lord Vader stopped his disgusting simpering – the babbling words of a child lost in the dark without a light. In that single measure, when Sidious had Vader's complete focus, he hated and praised Amidala for securing such devotion. Perhaps not all of his loyalty, but all of his devotion.

And the apprentice looked to his master for detail on the matter.

"There is a way to bring back the dead, Lord Vader." The coils in the Force, tightened seemed to buzz with energy and wish to spring apart. Sidious was irritated but pleased nonetheless that his apprentice seemed to be waking from his dream. "You can bring her back."