Padme ducked into the dimly lit club, pushing her way through the throng of sweaty bodies, already wishing that she could turn around and book it back out the front door. She didn't have a problem with the crowd, necessarily, she just…didn't like the way people looked at her as she passed.

She had practically turned her room into a tornado of clothes looking for an outfit that was appropriate for a night out. She had finally settled on a low-back white dress with black pumps. She had pulled her curls up into a casual bun at the nape of her neck with a few strands falling around her face. It wasn't anything special, and most certainly not her best outfit, but as men eyed her hungrily, women shot her glares.

Why didn't I grab a ride with Mindy? She thought as she fought to keep a grimace from her face. She was just here to hang out with her friend. Not make new friends. Not make enemies.

The music pulsed louder as she made her way to the dance floor where she knew Mindy would already be. Mindy was always social—the only time Padme was sure that she wasn't was when she was sleeping, and even then Padme suspected she socialized in her dreams. As much as Padme groaned about the escapades Mindy dragged her on, she secretly recognized that without Mindy, she wouldn't have gotten out of her comfort zone as much as she had.

Padme scanned the crowd and spotted her friend dancing in the midst of some of their other friends from school. Smiling, Padme moved to join them.

A pair of hands grabbed her waist. "Hey baby, wanna dance?" a male voice slurred in her ear, obviously drunk.

Padme easily slid out of his grasp. "Not tonight." She said firmly, her voice leaving no room for argument. Still, his hands grasped for her.

"Aw come on, don't be like that baby," Padme bit back a growl. The man, though handsome, was not her type—and not just because he was drunk. With his pants sagging so that she could clearly see his checkered boxers and a cap twisted sideways on his head, and a gold chain dangling from his neck, he screamed trying-too-hard.

"I said not tonight!" Padme slapped at his hands, and before he could move towards her again, she slipped past a pair of dancers and lost herself in the crowd.

"What was that about?" Mindy shouted over the music when Padme reached her. The adrenaline from the encounter was already wearing off, and Padme smiled wearily.

"Nothing I couldn't handle. Come on, let's dance!" She grabbed her friend's hands and led her further onto the dance floor until they were completely surrounded by writhing, sweaty bodies. Throwing their hands in the air, the two began to dance their way into the night.


Anakin slammed onto wet pavement, struggling to gasp for breath as he tried to lift himself from the ground. Spots of darkness danced before his eyes, making it difficult to tell where he was, and he managed to roll over onto his back to face the sky, cold rain drops falling onto his skin. He drew in deep breaths, feeling oxygen fill his lungs freely. Despite the pain in his ribs from the fall, it felt good to draw breath without the help of a cursed suit…

Wait. He was Darth Vader. Where was his suit?

As his vision cleared, he lifted his hands in front of his face to find…not metal limbs, but his own, tanned hands, free of scars and wrinkles.

Confusion clouded his mind and he panicked, sitting up so fast that his ribs protested. He barely noticed. His head was scrambling to remember what had happened.

He had been Darth Vader. But then…he'd killed Sidious….and he'd turned to the Light and died in his son's arms….then he'd agreed to a second chance…

Was this his second chance?

He reached up with shaking hands and touched his smooth face. No scars. No wrinkles. No molted skin. He ran his fingers up his face into a full head of tangled curls. He stared forward, and he could see—feel—his legs. Real, fleshy, legs. He wasn't part machine. He didn't have a mirror, but he suspected that when he looked into one, he would see the face of the man he had discarded twenty four years ago.

It couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. Traveling back in time—it just wasn't possible. Wasn't it? Besides, he was dead.

But the dead couldn't feel pain. The bruised ribs protesting with each of his movements were telling him otherwise. And the cool air kissing his skin…his lungs filling with air….

He wasn't Darth Vader. He was Anakin Skywalker, and somehow, he was alive and young again.

Shaking, he stood, pressing himself against a brick wall, trying to get his bearings. He was in an alley of some sort. Trash littered the pavement, and the alley opened out into a dimly lit street. Where was he? He wondered groggily: was he in Coruscant? He looked up into the darkened sky, squinting against the rain drops. He briefly wondered at how cold and yet wonderful the rain felt against his bare skin, a sensation he thought he would never feel again.

There weren't any speeders in the sky. Or other ships entering the atmosphere. In fact, though he could hear plenty of city noises, he couldn't hear the zooms of any ships. Perhaps he was on another planet then. But which one?

He looked down at himself again. By now he was soaked to the bone, but when he took another look at what he was wearing, that didn't matter to him.

What am I wearing?

He wore some sort of….tight black under garment, but there was no tunic covering it. And his legs…they weren't covered by the breeches he was used to wearing, but rather a coarse dark blue material he hadn't seen before. Instead of boots, he wore…well he wasn't sure how to describe the flimsy material he wore on his feet.

Anakin looked back up at the street at the far end of the alley, his breathing picking up as he panicked more and more. Where in the galaxy had the Force taken him to?!

He reached inside of himself, calling on the Force, trying to use it to help him gauge just what he had been thrown into….

Nothing happened.

He tried again. He felt the Force within him, but when he tried to use it, it was as though the Force was blocked by some invisible barrier, and try as hard as he might, nothing could push it through into reality.

Oh Force, Anakin thought as he entered full-on panic mode (something that he was NOT at all used to anymore): where HAD the Force thrown him?! Was this some sort of Force-immune world? Just his luck. Maybe his 'second chance' was a life without those he loved in a world where the Force didn't exist. He hadn't believed that was possible, but if this was actually his punishment like he was increasingly suspecting it was, he supposed anything was possible.

No. Squaring his shoulders, he turned and strode towards the street. He had spent twenty four years as the most feared man in the galaxy. He may have decided to turn towards the Light Side, but he wasn't going to turn into a whimpering boy and lose his cool. He would figure this out. He always did. He was Darth….Anakin Skywalker.

He stopped at the mouth of the alley, looking around. Again, he couldn't tell where he was. There were no giant skyscrapers stretching high into the sky. He stood in a rundown street with lamps flickering on top of metal poles. Vehicles of some sort were parked on the curbs of the sidewalks, empty. Lights poured from draped windows in the crumbling brick buildings around him. He appeared to be alone.

First things first, he thought as he began to walk—find someone, find answers, then form a plan.

He would master his fear. Even if this had been a trick of the Force to punish him, he would master it. He was in charge of his own destiny this time. He would make sure of that.


Padme felt drops of sweat dripping down the back of her dress. She was sure her makeup was smearing, and her hair had begun to fall out of its bun. She breathed deep as she danced, feeling the exhilaration of the pulsing music thrumming through her veins down into her bones. If only she could spend every night like this… it felt good to let her guard down, to let loose and really be herself.

But as the song came to a close and she took a moment to pull out her phone and glance at the time, she realized that her night of fun was coming to an end. She had a house to pack before the craziness of school hit her. She couldn't be out all night.

She gripped Mindy's arm. "I need to get home!" she shouted over the next song as it began to play, "Did you have anything to drink tonight?" She didn't recall seeing her friend with any alcohol, but then again Mindy had come to the club before she had.

"No mother!" Mindy rolled her eyes. "Come on, stay out longer!"

Padme was already shaking her head, more hair falling out of the bun. "I really have to go. I'll see you at home—if you decide to drink, call a cab. Your car can wait in the parking garage."

Mindy waved her off, already ready to get back to the party. Padme hesitated, but eventually she pulled away from her friend and began to make her way out of the club, already making mental plans of what she was going to do when she got home.


Finding out where he had been taken to was much harder than he anticipated. After turning down twisting, empty residential streets, he had finally come across a busier street with people walking down the sidewalks and those….flightless vehicles whooshing past him. One of them had splattered a muddy puddle all over him, making him growl in frustration and anger. They wouldn't have dared do that to him if he'd still been Darth Vader.

But he wasn't. So he quickly forced himself to swallow his anger.

Trying to engage people in conversation didn't go in his favor either. Most people he approached quickly hurried the opposite direction, as though they could still sense the Dark Side in him—perhaps they could. He wasn't sure what the rules of this world were.

But it was the people he managed to briefly talk to that really caused anger to simmer in his blood. "What star system are we in?" He asked the first man he'd come across.

"Screw you." Came the gruff reply as the man shoved past him. Anakin resisted the urge to follow after him and attempt to Force-choke the answer out of him and moved on. Surely there were more helpful people on this planet.

"What planet is this?" He asked another couple as they walked down the street.

They laughed at the question. "A little too much to drink buddy?" The man asked. Anakin frowned, but shook his head. "Riiiiight." They walked by without another word, laughing as though Anakin had made some joke.

"Are there any Jedi on this planet?" He asked one elderly woman as she hobbled out of her vehicle.

She threw him a nasty glare and held up some odd cross and thrust it in his face. "Begone, Satan worshiper!" He wasn't sure what that was, but he was pretty sure she regarded Satan worshipers the same way that Jedi regarded Sith.

On and on he approached people, trying to figure out where he was, but everyone he approached assumed that he was crazy or drunk. It was as though they had never heard of space travel, or Jedi, or the Force, or anything that was familiar to him. More and more he grew frustrated, until finally he raised his hand to Force choke a hooded man. Of course nothing happened no matter how hard he concentrated, and the man scoffed. "Go home man. You're drunk." And stalked off.

Finally he gave up trying to talk to people, and instead wandered the streets aimlessly, looking for something that might give him some clue as to where he had ended up. So far, he continued to find rundown buildings and closed stores—although there were a bunch of signs hanging in windows that said "Go Lakers!" But that didn't help him much.

He turned yet another corner, wondering just how big this city was, when he finally saw an open store, light streaming out into an empty parking lot. Maybe there was someone….or rather, something that would help him figure out where he was.

He stepped out into the street, eyes on his prize, anticipating whatever he would discover there, when suddenly out of nowhere beams of light filled his vision. There was a screech of tires, and the next thing he knew one of those metal vehicles was barreling towards him faster than his reflexes could take, and although it screeched to an almost halt by the time it got to him, the bumper still slammed into him, sending him sprawling towards the black pavement.

For the second time that night Anakin hit the ground, this time smacking his head against the blacktop, and the next thing he knew he was fading into darkness, a female voice crying out in alarm in the distance…


So I'm going to admit, the old lady shoving the cross into Anakin's face and calling him a Satan worshiper made me laugh for much longer than it should have... I can just imagine his face... HAHA!

Well, what did you think? I'm updating pretty fast, but if you're reading, write a quick review! I'd love to have some support!

Either way, I've missed writing fanfiction... so I'll keep updating. Idk how often though...

~Sarah