Showered and dried, Padme changed into her black sweats and maroon Stanford t-shirt before maneuvering herself out to her living room where she had pulled out her laptop. Settling into the corner of the couch (the only cushion not stacked with boxes), she began to open up her email to check for emails from her professors, listening to the rain pound against the window, when the front door opened. "Hey," she called absent-mindedly, not looking up from her computer.

"Um. Hi." Padme's fingers stilled on the keyboard. She didn't like the tone of Mindy's voice—distant, cautious, worried. If Mindy sounded like that….Padme almost didn't want to know. "Could you, uh, give me a hand here?"

"With wha—who is that?" Padme had finally looked up to find her friend struggling under the weight of an unconscious man, both of them soaking wet from the rain pattering outside. "Don't tell me you're already bringing guys over. Couldn't you have waited for us to finish unpacking?" She tried to laugh, but it came out nervous. From the uncharacteristic serious look on Mindy's face, something told Padme that this was no ordinary guy.

"I wasn't. It's not like that. Just move the boxes." Padme quickly placed the laptop on the coffee table and began moving boxes. Briefly she shuddered at the thought of Mindy placing a soaking stranger on her brand new couch, but she quickly pushed that thought away. It wasn't like she spent that much on it.

Mindy dragged the man over to the couch and dropped him onto the cushions with a grunt. The man almost slid off, but both Padme and Mindy caught him and pushed him back up, rolling him onto his back so they could get a better look at him.

Padme's breath caught in her throat. The man was young, maybe about her age. He had curly hair that barely reached his shoulders, and a thin scar on his left eye, and tan skin that suggested he'd spent long hours out under the sun. His black t-shirt, wet, clung to his skin, doing nothing to hide the rock hard abs underneath.

He was handsome.

"Who is he?" Padme breathed, slowly straightening as her heart raced.

"I, uh, don't know." Mindy said hesitantly.

Padme forced herself to look away from the handsome unconscious man on her couch, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean, you don't know? You brought home some random unconscious stranger?"

"Kind of," Mindy blushed, looking down at her now ruined outfit. "I, um, hit him."

Padme blinked. "Like, you punched him?"

"No." Mindy cleared her throat, not daring to look at Padme. "With my car."

"You did WHAT?!" Padme shouted, instantly worried for the man on her couch and angry with her friend at the same time. "Did you take him to the hospital?!"

"Uh, no…"

"WHY?!" This couldn't be happening. Mindy had pulled some dumb stunts before, but this? Padme resisted the urge to grab her shoulders and shake sense into her. "Please don't tell me you were drinking…"Mindy remained silent, answering Padme's question. "I told you to take a cab home!"

"It was only two martinis!" Mindy protested, "I'm not even dizzy. It was raining though, and dark, and he just came out of nowhere. I mean he's not exactly dressed to stand out at night."

"It doesn't matter, you HIT HIM WITH YOUR CAR." Padme looked back at the unconscious man, looking for any injuries. She kneeled down beside him, lifting his shirt to check his torso. There were a few bruises, but nothing looked serious. That didn't mean anything though. He could have been bleeding internally, or he could have broken ribs. She was almost afraid to touch him now. "And instead of doing the right thing and taking him to a hospital, regardless of your consequences, you KIDNAPPED him and might have made his injuries worse by moving him! If he wakes up and decides to sue you or press charges, he totally could! I don't need to be a future lawyer to predict that!"

"I didn't hit him that hard," Mindy protested, but it was half-hearted. "I mostly stopped before I hit him. It was really just a bump, but he fell and hit his head…"

"Oh great, so he just has a concussion probably." Padme sarcastically snapped, glaring back up at her. "We need to take him to a hospital. Now."

"But they're going to want to know what happened, and then they'll want to do a breathalyzer test and I'm totally going to fail that!" Mindy groaned. "I'll be lucky if they just suspend my license…"

"Maybe next time you should listen to me…" Padme trailed off as the man began to stir, groaning. She stood back up, wanting to give him space, but her hands itched to do something productive. Still, he was a stranger, and she didn't think he'd take too kindly to waking up to find his kidnapper's friend touching him all over.

"See? He's waking up. He's fine."

"Shut up, Mindy." Growled Padme as she watched the man's eyes flutter open to reveal crystal clear blue eyes that made her heart stop.


Anakin was first aware of the splitting headache pounding through his head. He hadn't had his body back for more than a few hours, and already he was injuring himself. It was his own fault. He should have paid more attention to his surroundings. But he had always been impulsive—Darth Vader had not changed that about him.

The next thing he was aware of was voices. Female. Talking about him. One of them was defensive but miserable, while the other one was filled with anger and worry. The worried voice pricked something in his memory—it sounded so familiar, but with the splitting headache, it was impossible for him to place.

He furrowed his brows against the pain, groaning as he struggled to open his eyes against the light in the room he was in. "See? He's waking up. He's fine."

"Shut up, Mindy." Finally Anakin opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings. He was on a white couch in a room filled with labeled boxes. He instinctively tried to use the Force to gauge just what exactly he was facing, but again the Force was blocked and he was unable to use it.

Frustrated, Anakin turned his head himself, identifying the owners of the voices. The first woman he saw was his age. She was soaked like he was, with dark, short hair dripping onto the carpet below her, wearing white pants and a black top that barely covered her body. Anakin quickly looked away from her, his eyes meeting with…

He froze. The world stopped, and he couldn't breathe. Twenty four years. He had imagined seeing her again for twenty four years. Every time he had fallen asleep, he had dreamed about her. Over and over again, he had replayed the awful night on Mustafar in his mind. Their last conversation. How she had begged him to run away with her, to raise their child, to turn away from the Dark Side. He had lashed out at her, hurt her, put his unborn children in danger…

And here she stood. Alive.

His Padme. His angel…

"Um. Sir?" The other girl was saying, but he barely heard her. He just stared at Padme, unable to function. For the first time, he was speechless. He didn't know what to do with himself. He wanted to reach out and touch her, pull her to him and kiss her passionately like he had longed to do for twenty four, long, horrible years. But guilt stopped him, guilt at how he had hurt her.

And from the look on her face, she didn't know him. Not in this world. She looked worried for him, but it was the worry one would have for a stranger.

He was a stranger to her. Twenty four years of wanting to make things right again, and she didn't even know him. How could he put things right if she didn't know who he was?

His head pounded even harder from the confusion, the guilt, the longing….

"Are you alright sir? Do you remember what happened?" The other girl was asking. Anakin opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. What could he say to her? What should he say? He sought answers from the Force, but yet again it was frustratingly silent.

So he said the first thing that popped into his head. "Are you an angel?"

Bewilderment flashed across Padme's face, just as it had the first time. "What?" Her response to him was the same. He wondered if he explained the exact same way he had the first time, if she would smile and tell him he was a funny…well, man now. Still, he had only blurted it out this time not just because she was even more beautiful than she had been in his memories, but because he still wasn't sure what sort of world this was.

"He thinks he's dead," the other girl whispered.

Padme frowned. "No, you're not dead. Do you feel like you're going to die?"

Anakin couldn't help but snort at that. He had already died. He felt like crap, but this wasn't anywhere close to dying. "No."

She seemed to relax a little. "Good. My friend here hit you with her car. She should have taken you to a hospital, but she brought you here to our house instead. I can take you to a hospital if you want…in fact, I highly suggest it."

Anakin was already forcing himself upright so that he was sitting up, his eyes never leaving her face. Force, she was beautiful… he didn't deserve her. Just being in her presence, he kept replaying the image of the betrayal in her eyes as he had choked her. How would she look at him if he told her what he'd done after she had died?

But even though he knew that he didn't deserve her, knew that he should get up and leave and never see her again, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Even though he was wracked with guilt, her presence was still soothing, and more importantly…

He still loved her, with every fiber of his being.

"What's your name?" She asked him when he said nothing for a long time.

"Da….Anakin Skywalker." He needed to get used to his old name. He would never again be Darth Vader, especially in her presence. If he was going to stay, and he still wasn't sure if he would, he would make sure that he did not screw this up. He would not hurt her again.

"Do you want to go to a hospital?" Again, that open concern. Force, even in this world she was always looking out for others. She may not remember him, but she was still the pure soul he had fallen in love with.

"No," Anakin had always hated doctors, and the last time he had been seen by doctors…well, it was not an experience he ever wanted to relive.

Padme hesitated though, obviously debating on pressing the subject. "Okay, well where do you live? Is there someone we can call to help you?"

Anakin paused. Yet again, he had no idea where he was. He wasn't sure how to respond, remembering the rather hostile behavior of the people he had questioned earlier that night. He didn't know what would be an appropriate response though, so he decided to go with a half-truth. "I don't know."

Padme looked puzzled. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

Anakin raced to figure out a response, but yet again he came up with nothing. It didn't help that he was still distracted by her. If she would let him, he would have been content to stare at her forever. Not creepy at all, he thought sarcastically.

"I mean," he said slowly, debating each word carefully, "I don't know where I live in this world. I'm not even sure what planet I'm on."

Padme's worry melted into full on panic, and she whirled on the other girl in the room. "He has AMNESIA! I TOLD you he needed a hospital!" The other girl looked pretty panicked too, and instantly Anakin regretted his words. Obviously he had just made their fears a reality. "You need to go to the hospital. Now!"

"No," Anakin quickly said, holding up his hands in an effort to somehow show that he was…well, okay enough not to go to a hospital. "I was, um, having issues before I was hit." That didn't seem to alleviate Padme's panic, but the other girl seemed to calm a little more. Force, he wished he could use the Force to guide him through this conversation…

"So you should have gone to a doctor before this then." Padme continued, "How long have you been wandering around out there?"

"A few hours, maybe? I haven't been out long. Look, I'm fine. I'll be fine. I just need some answers and I'll figure out a plan." Anakin winced—he didn't sound convincing, even to himself. But Padme, although clearly skeptical, relented a little.

"Okay fine. What do you want to know?" She seemed apprehensive, as though she felt she would regret that question later.

How are you alive? Could you ever forgive me? Would you ever love me again? Those were just the tip of the planet of questions he wanted to ask her, but he knew he couldn't. Even if she did remember, he knew those questions still would have been a struggle for him to ask.

"What planet are we on?" Is what he settled for. Simple. To the point. And from the look on her face, probably not the first question she expected him to ask.

"Well, we're on the planet Earth," Earth? He'd never heard of it before. So developing a plan based on prior knowledge was out of the question. "Specifically, we live in the United States of America, one of the largest countries on the planet. And even more specifically, we live in California, which is one of America's states. Is any of this ringing a bell?"

Anakin hesitated, wanting to lie to calm her, but he couldn't. No more lies. "No."

Her face fell. "Oh. Okay, what else?"

"What star system is this planet in?" Again, not a question she expected. She looked at her friend in concern.

Her friend shrugged. "Maybe he's one of those Star Trek nerds and he was here for a convention or something and now that he can't remember much he's relying on that?"

"I don't know what Star Trek is." Anakin grumbled, increasingly becoming more frustrated. Maybe it was a good thing he didn't have the use of the Force right now, because for the past twenty four years whenever he was frustrated or angry he tended to lash out. He did not want to risk that happening right now, as much as he sort of wanted to.

You are no longer Darth Vader, he repeated to himself. Anakin. Anakin Skywalker. It was the only thing he had to cling to in this craziness.

"Don't worry about that," Padme said, but she looked like she was considering her friend's words seriously. "I'm not sure what you mean by 'star system,' but our star is the Sun if that helps." Anakin shook his head. "Okay, well we live in the Milky Way Galaxy."

Milky Way Galaxy? He hadn't even heard of it. One thing was for certain though…

He wasn't even in the same galaxy.

What had he gotten himself into?

"Look, I really think you should at least see a doctor at the very least. My family has a good doctor that we can go to tomorrow morning. He's trustworthy, I promise. And if you're concerned about money, don't worry about it. My friend hit you with a car," She shot a glare at her friend who blushed. "It's the least that I can do."

Anakin hesitated, still wary of doctors, but it was obvious that Padme wasn't going to let it go. "Will it put you at ease if we go to this doctor?"

"Yes." Her response was firm, and he saw the pleading in her beautiful, dark eyes. His eyes traveled to her lips, and again he had the urge to close the distance between them and kiss her and never let go.

But he didn't. Instead he sighed, running a hand over his face. "Fine," He said, looking back up at her. "But only to calm you down."

She let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping, and for the first time it occurred to Anakin just how late it was. She was probably exhausted. More guilt hit him—he always seemed to cause her worry and stress, even when she didn't remember who he was to her. "Good." She said. "By the way. My name is Padme."

"And I'm Mindy," said the other girl, "And, uh, sorry for hitting you with my car."

"I should have been looking where I was going," Anakin mumbled, and he saw Mindy shoot Padme an "I-told-you-so" look. "It's nice to meet both of you. Thank you for your help. I'm sorry that I've placed this burden on your shoulders…" The apology felt funny in his mouth—he was certainly sorry for the stress he was obviously causing, but he hadn't uttered an apology in years. Still, he couldn't help but feel a little lighter after saying it.

"Don't worry about that, worry about yourself right now." Padme chided, "Now, let's see about finding you something dry to wear, shall we?"


Okay so I really enjoyed writing that chapter. Anakin obviously has some inner demons that he still has to deal with, but that's expected for a former Sith Lord. And poor Padme is just going out of her mind with stress, but she's never been one to turn away someone in need, so we'll explore that some as well. And don't worry, Anakin will start to be able to use the Force again, but like he said in this chapter, if he had it right now, he probably would have done something regrettable by now.

I'm so happy because I got some followers and favorites for this story! Those notification emails always make my day. Reviews make me squeal inwardly, but follows and favorites make me happy too. I love all of you and the support you give. You are all awesome, and if anyone tells you differently, they're wrong.

Review! 3

~Sarah