A/N: I decided to make this a multi-chapter fic. And it got really dark on me. So if dark sith-covered romance isn't your cup of tea, please do not read. However, if you like your romance on the dark side, please continue. Thank you for reviewing, and I hope you enjoy this little trip. :)

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Please do not sue. This is purely for fun.


He was gone.

She stared at his side of the bed in quite shock.

Sat. And stared. Until dawn gave birth to true day, and that day slowly waned towards evening. Moonlight replaced the sun, the stars twinkling through the double doors of the bedroom that lead out to her garden, casting shadows across the paving stones. They twirled like silent dancers in the soft breeze, echoes of a past still too real to be memory.

But it was memory now. Nothing but memory…

He was gone.

He had left her behind.

And she was utterly alone.

The dawn would rise again before she stirred from those tangled sheets, before she lifted her head from the pillow that still bore his scent. Standing was an exercise in torment, her body ripped and bruised from the force of their final act. Yet she pushed herself upright on her own two feet, staggering naked into her living room. Falling to her knees at the sight of the emptiness.

He had taken all his equipment, all the scanners and map tables and displays. The racks that had gouged her walls when his stormtroopers tossed their weapons upon them carelessly. Holes gaped like wounds in the drywall where mounting brackets had been installed and removed, where her own fist had made impressions in her sheer frustration at her treatment. Where his anger had lashed out at her, instead flinging something heavy with his strange powers into the wall with a satisfying crunch rather than harm her.

Where her heels had drummed against the wall the first time he had taken her.

There was nothing left but wreckage. She didn't have to check every room in the mammoth house to find more evidence of the same.

He was gone.

He had left her behind.

And she was utterly alone.

The broken discarded length of pipe found its way into her hands, a surge of anger and adrenaline deadening her body to the pain of her skin. A new pain that had nothing to do with the physical had taken over, blunting all other in its wake. She swung the pipe like a club, smashing everything. Screaming. Shattering. Screaming. Swinging. Screaming. Screaming. Screaming…

A week she spent in that house, taking a leave of absence from her duties. She called interior decorators to replace everything, citing vandalism as the cause for the destruction. Police came. Took pictures. Took her statement. Filed the charges. Promised they would find the culprit. News media splashed around the story of how someone had dared rob Senator Padme Amidala. Outrage from her political party followed on the television, finger pointing began as this lobbyist or that Senator tried to turn her personal horror into a platform to get his or her agenda heard.

The President assigned her a personal bodyguard as a show of respect and concern.

It was all a political move. But she accepted the guards nonetheless.

When he did not return, she sold the house. Returned to her family for a time in Connecticut. Stayed at the family lake house like when she was a little girl. And cried herself to sleep every night, just like a little girl.

He was gone.

He had left her behind.

And she was utterly pissed.

She bought a new home a month later that was the opposite of her previous one, a flashy penthouse apartment in a towering skyscraper that overlooked the world, it seemed. What did it matter. She came from money, had more cash flow than this country had debt. She changed the décor, removed all the heavy wood furnishings, the rich fabrics. Everything was modern now, edged in steel, sharp angles and hardened stone. Unbreakable. Indomitable. Unyielding.

She cut her hair. Changed her clothing style.

Modern. Edgy. Tough.

Her critics in the public eye raked her over the coals for her switch. Her allies praised the hard political stance she had taken to go with her new clothing style, her new outlook on life. It won her more support than she lost, more than she could have ever dreamed. And she threw that support behind the military in secret, all the while continuing to follow the wishes of those people who elected her, those people that she represented.

But the military had to come first. He had taught her that.

Just as it was his fault that she had become like this. He that had ripped the innocence off her with his departure and abandonment, showed her that the world was dark and small and infinitely full of disappointments. And how she had planned to repay him! Her support, her money, tossed into a mighty Military Creation Act, a defense grid that would sit in orbit around her planet, waiting for the day he would return. It didn't matter if it was eight months or eighty years until that moment, at least her planet would be ready to face him this time.

He was gone.

He had left her behind.

But she would leave a calling card of her own, a legacy to make him sit up and take notice. A planet safe from his meddling.

The Military Creation Act passed in the Senate eventually, and she was hailed for her foresight in its creation. Re-elected to serve twice as a result. Three years it had taken for the funding to come into place, two more years before construction was complete. Five years total since he'd left her to die alone on a tiny backwater planet. To wander the streets in search of that which could never be found. Not from lack of trying on her part, however.

Lovers came and went, men that became faceless blurs in an endless parade of years. None measuring up to her desires. Once, she had thought she had found someone to at least partially satisfy her needs. The marriage had barely lasted two years, long enough to have her military act passed through Congress. And then it had fallen apart. He had no idea what he'd done wrong, had honestly loved her. Would have done anything for her if she would have let him. Which, in the end, was why she left him.

She did not challenge him in the divorce. Gave him everything he asked for, including half her money. It was the least she could do. And having half of more money than she could ever spend in her lifetime was still more than enough to sustain her needs. The media praised her for her generosity, touted her tenderness for the man that had tried to be her everything.

She'd heard that he'd remarried a year after the divorce, that he had a daughter now. She was happy for him. And every night she returned to her penthouse, accessing that hidden room she'd had built into the place. In it sat only a bed—their bed—with the hooks in the headboard and footboard. With the pillow that no longer smelled of his scent, but she still slept with anyway. Hidden away, like her memories of him. Her secret.

Because he was gone.

He had left her behind.

And she was utterly alone.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()


Five years had passed since he'd walked the primitive streets of that backwater planet. Five years spent in wars, in conquering the galaxy in the name of his Emperor, in glorying in his growing power. Five years of having the populace of thousands of star systems bowing when he passed their way, of men offering to fight and die for his whim. Of establishing an Empire of peace, security, and order. And still, it wasn't enough. It was never enough.

And still he thought of her.

And the ache in his chest.

Because he had left her behind.

It had been easy at first, or so he admitted to himself, to find reasons to hate her. Even that last night together, as she lay nearly broken on the sheets, he had told himself that she was weak and useless. That she would never keep up with him and his demands on her body. She was pathetic, weeping in her sleep, trembling with fear. Unworthy of him in every way, this barbaric woman from her puny little planet. No single woman could have ever been enough for him. Not since the death of his wife, of the gentle Beru he had stolen from the sands of Tantooine.

He repeated that lie over and over. Laughed as he boarded his flagship, gave the orders to head towards their next destination. The hunt for Obi-Wan was still afoot, the clues obtained from this "Planet Earth" enough to set things in motion. He gazed down at the ball of blue and green and white from the viewports of his ship, and told himself the anger he felt was due to Obi-Wan somehow escaping once again.

It had nothing to do with the woman still asleep in her bed, and his decision to leave her behind.

Padme. Her name was Padme Amidala. A Senator for her district… or State, as they called it down there on her world. A world that still fought amongst itself. Absurdly divided its societies based on the color of one's skin and how much wealth one could acquire in a lifetime. Woefully beneath notice. And yet it had produced at least one woman that had taken the sting from his existence for a time, had banked his anger into simmering coals.

He thought of her as the stars turned into lines and the lines became the hypnotic swirling of hyperspace.

He thought of the ache in his chest.

And his anger at leaving her behind.

He sought other ways to forget her in the intervening years. There was always a rebellion to crush, an uppity system that needed to be taught its place in the great war machine that was his Empire. And always there was a girl that bore her face, or her hair, or even a glib word that reminded him of her fire. He would collect them, take them to his bed and eventually break them.

Always it failed. And within days, a body would be removed from his chambers.

They never measured up. They never fought as long as she had, resisted as passionately as she had. They always broke too soon. And when they did, he couldn't stand to look at them any longer. They died screaming, or they died in silence, their minds already shattered by his will. Either way, they died and were forgotten before their bodies cooled.

For a time he put a halt to that pattern, went back to collecting the blonde innocent ones that reminded him of Beru and her sun-bleached hair. They failed him just the same, never living up to her gentleness, her innocence. Beru, the woman that had held him when his mother had died on that forsaken planet. The woman he had claimed as wife after slaying his stepbrother. The only woman he had thought would ever understand him and what he had experienced.

Of course, he had had to tame her, too. She had resisted, called him a monster for killing her husband. But in time she had come to the correct conclusions. She became what he needed at the time, yielding and understanding, giving him a son. He had given her the galaxy on a chain in return, every wish and desire fulfilled. She had never used it, though, never asked for anything. Never really challenged him, he had come to understand, on anything at all.

And as the last innocent girl's body, the one bearing a striking resemblance to the young Beru, was taken from his chambers, he realized that, perhaps, Beru had not been the one for him after all. That perhaps she had broken as quickly as all the others. And that maybe, possibly, in his youth he had misinterpreted her kindness on the eve of his mother's death as something more than just compassion. But Padme… she had understood him. Understood him all too well without having to know what he had suffered.

For the next year he thought of her.

And the ache in his chest.

And his anger at his own foolishness for leaving her behind.

But now… now he was back, walking the paths of memory and reality alike. He knew where she lived now, having stolen it from the minds of the elderly couple that had dared to live in her former house. It now lay in ruins, the fire he had set consuming everything including the bodies, much like the fire that had consumed the Lars homestead after he had abducted Beru. His thoughts were much the same as they had been back then.

No one would live where she had lived, where they had made memories together.

He approved of her new home, of the new style as the building manager let him in. A twist of the Force had the old man forgetting the entire encounter, leaving him to explore her personal items. She wasn't home, of course, the Senate still in session for the day. It was as he had planned. He needed the time to go through her things, to learn if she had changed at all in the time they were apart. To learn how much effort it would take to change her back if that was the case.

A frown creased his forehead as he realized nothing remained of her previous home, of their previous time together. Not even her clothing. Nothing he recognized, nothing he had touched. As if she had tried to wipe every trace of him from her life. She would pay for that. He would punish her for the brazenness of her actions; taste her screams again and again and again. And if she had truly forgotten him, if it had been a mistake to come here again…

When he found the hidden room and the treasure contained within it, he learned the truth of all his mistakes. He stared at the shrine to their affair, touched to his core that she had kept it.

The ache in his chest finally eased.

Because he knew, more than ever, that he should not have left her behind.

And this time, he would not make that mistake again.

The bed had a new mattress, new sheets. But the hooks remained, the pillows the same. Her scent clung to the material, fresh as if she had slept there just hours ago. Did she sleep there every night, he wondered, waiting for him? Remembering him? His eyes closed, his tongue darting over his lips, remembering hers. Soon, he told himself. She would be home soon, and he would have the woman that should have been at his side the entire time. The woman that should have mothered his son.

The woman that challenged him in every way, with every breath and bat of an eye, with every word and deed and thought.

She had challenged him—no, damn well dared him—to strike at her planet with the installation of that whimsical defense grid. The gall of the woman, to so flaunt her planet's limited technology. As if the pitiful nuclear devices and explosive missiles would so much as scratch the paint of his warships. But she had dared. She had DARED! And he could not back away.

She would learn the truth of that that soon enough.

He lay back on the bed, ran his hand across the cold empty space that would soon hold her body, and smiled.