Author's Note
The genesis of this story was the desire to take the framework of Anakin and Padme's love story and turn it into something that both felt like a love story and refuted the idea that romantic love must inevitably lead to the Dark Side.
I also wanted to explore the question: Why would Obi-Wan let Anakin's romance take place without trying to stop it? The answer, which I hope can be inferred from these pages, is that he had been in love himself once, and he didn't want to deny his best friend that same experience. Especially not when Anakin had personally witnessed that relationship, and so would have seen any sanctions against him as the height of hypocrisy.
And what of the Endless Gem? It has always been my intention that the gem found its way into Vader's suit. Why? Well, because we know that after his death Anakin became a Force ghost, but this ability is not inherent to just any Jedi. It was a technique that had to be learned. Qui-Gon Jinn learned it from the Ysanna, and during the Clone Wars he appeared to Yoda as a Force ghost and passed along his knowledge. Yoda taught it to Obi-Wan. But there was no record of him having passed it to Anakin during the Clone Wars, and once he became Vader, there was no longer an opportunity for the knowledge to reach him. If, however, he had long been in possession of a Sith artifact that could assist in the creation of a Force ghost, it could move his spirit. And being different from the techniques employed by Yoda and Obi-Wan, it would also explain why they discorporated and he did not.
However, I never found a way to fit this into the story itself.
If you had not guessed, the Sith responsible for killing Aylee and stealing the gem is Asajj Ventress. She returns the gem to Dooku, who passes it to Sidious for future use. She was also the shadowy force behind the civil war on Besk—an early experiment in the strategies that would eventually give rise to the Separatists and the Clone War.