A/N: I didn't realize how short this chapter was until I went back an edited it. Meh.


Chapter Four

"You know, this is not exactly how I envisioned my evening," he told Amidala's corpse furiously.

Except it wasn't evening. The Chronometer blinked two. It was technically morning, just as it was technically his responsibility to be here, as Amidala was technically his wife. The medics would be back in several hours for the body.

For a man who was the force, rather Force-choke, behind so many deaths, the irony of his inexperience with all things funeral related was not lost on him. Death, for the majority of the later part of his life, had been too common place for significance. When was the last time death had truly affected him?

The image of another older, dark-haired woman swam in his vision momentarily, her desert-weathered features under-lit by the low, oil-lamps of Tusken Raider's tent as she blew her last breath through cracked, bloody lips. He quickly suppressed the image only to be assaulted by another bleak moment of his past. A younger, dark-haired woman, her tragedy-stricken features eerily lit by the cold, overhead lights of the surgery room, told him his child was dead with grim, pitiless eyes.

Vader knew a great deal about murder. His murdered were a long list of faceless Imperial officers who bowed clutching their necks to the ship floor without distinction from the next captain or general. Then there were the Rebels and the Jedi, so fevered in the passion of their cause that the spilt blood seemed to steam with their fierce ardor. Vader had never hid a murder; Vader had never been sneaky in all his two lives (well, except the time when he hid the fact he was married and an expecting father from Obi Wan and the entire Jedi Order). But he could imagine what and ill-concealed murder looked like and what it looked like was what lay before him now…

First it was the wine uncorked on Amidala's bedside table. Such is the common, romantic notion that lonely ladies kill themselves with a lethal combination of wine and spice. Set next to the bottle and elegant glass as expected was a tray of glittering contraband, set at an angle that would suggest she set it down in a comprised state. If the murderer had been truly gifted at his or her craft, he or she would have dusted a bit of the drug spice about the tip of her nose for realism. Vader had a firm suspicion that this had been individual's first killing.

Suicide by wine and spice was such a romantic notion because it was widely believed that one passed away pleasantly in their sleep after ingesting the combination. In most cases, nothing was further from the truth. Vader had once been witness one of these painful incidents. He remembered clearly an episode where a blundering member of the Imperial aristocracy, whom Vader had been ordered to execute, caught wind of his immanent termination. Apparently he preferred a clean suicide to the horror and humiliation of being Force-choked for incompetence and had consumed both substances. Vader had arrived at the man's chambers, flexing his right hand ominously only to find the General suffering a death more painful than Vader could have ever hoped to administer. He stood and watched as the man hollered and convulsed in his blood-soaked sheets. Vader could not muster the mercy to end it for him early.

But Amidala seemed to have been in at least in physical peace as she passed away. She would have known better than to kill herself in this manner.

Vader stepped towards the bed and bent over her. "Mind if I sit?" he murmured, smoothing the sheets next to her side. Half-expecting her corpse to start awake, Vader sat hesitantly with all the ease of an over-sized bird perched on a wire. His great weight suppressed the mattress unevenly and the body slumped toward him. Vader gave a small, startled jerk.

"Let's talk. We never talk anymore, don't you find?" The dead woman's lips remained pursed. "You feel the exact same way?" he exclaimed mockingly, sounding particularly absurd in his deep rumble . This was the most pleasant conversation they had had in years.

Emboldened, he cupped her face in one large hand, smoothing back the dark curls of her hair. "Now tell me, my Lady, why in the galaxy would you send the staff from the property and turn off the security system? Were you asking to get yourself killed? Hmmm? And I doubt it was you who did the killing. It is not your character. You were a lot of things, but never a coward.

"So, who was it? Who did you trust enough to let in to the house so unprotected? I know of a great many who wanted you dead. Tarkin, Xizor, every member of the Rebel Alliance, Queen Jarvis-Delahaye, oh, and the Emperor especially…but I would be here all night if I continue naming names. Let us see how they did it. Permit me…"

Lifting Amidala, her limbs now locked with death, he felt around for any wounds. Again, he marveled at the wasted state of her body and was beginning to wonder if perhaps it had been illness that took her life when he found a slight, swollen discoloration on her back. Murder, officially. Dead by a poisonous dart.

The myriad of possible assassins and motives that flooded his mind all at once exhausted him. He rose, feeling the iron weight of every metal bolt and wire of his body, and stumbled backwards into one of her squashy, corner chair, asleep in minutes.

The dusty disarray of Watto's junkshop was so much more cramped and darkened than he remembered it. His Master buzzed around the shop, irritated as always, swamped by an influx of customers. Watto had him rushing haphazardly from one project to the next, barely finished tightening the rivets of one engine before he was rewiring the circuitry of a GONK-unit. Sour and overwhelming, the smell of hyperdrive fluid was making him lightheaded as he pushed between the towering bodies of customers.

Sweating, relief came to him as a fresh breath of air blew through the sweltering shop. A moist, morning lake breeze. He saw a group of familiar strangers browsing through the racks. J-327 Nubian, murmured one. Between the two, tall, powerful figures of the Gungan and the Jedi, stood a girl half their size. Bathed in an unworldly glow, she had a wonderful way of never meeting his eye even as he struggled towards her, crying out her name. The sea of bodies refused to part and she refused to look his way.

"Come here, son. Let me show you something."

An adult caught him by the shoulder and dragged him away. Tarkin had a job for him to do. The aged man placed a cold, grey sphere in his tiny child's hands. Promising to fix it for Tarkin, he attempted to make his was back to the girl, the dull ball swelling in his grip. Its circumference widening at an alarming rate, he strove vainly to keep it in his weak grasp. He was forced to balance it on his bent back, reaching around to grip it awkwardly. The weight bent him lower and lower, and on trembling, newborn legs he stumbled to the girl. Only as the great, grey globe sank him to his knees, did she spare him a glance, large brown eyes widening as it rolled from his hold, across the gritty floor, knocking finally against the wall.

It detonated in a brilliant flash and…

Vader was awake in the next instant.