Title: My Memory
Author: Kate
Rating: PG-13 (just to be safe)
Summary: what if Amidala lost her memory after Anakin turned to the dark side? This story deals with her getting her memory back.

I do NOT own star wars or any of the characters (unfortunately Lucas does), and if you actually thought I did you really need help.

This is the first chapter/prologue in hopefully a longer story. However of the twenty stories I've started I have finished only 3 so the chances of me actually finishing this isn't great. :(

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I'm not entirely sure why they started, the horrible nightmares that consume my sleep. Sometimes I can fool myself into thinking that they're the product of an over active imagination, the lack of sleep, or maybe even the fact that every minute of every day I'm under extreme pressure and stress. But that's what I signed up for. I wanted the responsibility and the meaning in my life. Not everyone can say that they are doing something that they love and believe in with their whole heart, soul, and being. However when I can't trick myself into believing those excuses I can link my nightmares back to one day, the day I saw his face.

Or maybe it was the lack of his real face that started it. A cold black mask covered his head. His filtered voice was so cold and menacing, able to scare any imperial into submission and complete obedience with one simple order or word. I had heard of him from some of my friends in the rebellion. They were rather startled that I had never heard of such an evil and widely feared man. So later that day one of them produced a data chip.

Sirani, one of my closest friends, held it up and then put in into one of the computers. Before she played the clip she said, " This is Darth Vader, the most evil and heartless man alive, except for the Emperor of course." And then a projection of him came to life in front of me. He was tall and covered in black from head to toe, literally. A black cape flowed down behind him. The clip contained him giving several orders to his men. Each time he spoke I cringed, every time he moved even slightly I shrank back, and when he breathed I felt something inside of me, which I hadn't known existed, die.

Since that day I've had those horrible dreams. Actually they can't be classified as dreams more like the nightmares of entire world combined in one. They all start the same way, a young man stands in front of me, but it's not me or at least the person I see in the mirror everyday. In the dreams I'm younger, prettier, and more joyful then I can ever remember being. We are in a large sunlit garden and from the way we talk and carry on I know we must be in love or something close to it. Suddenly I'm chasing him in a playful manner. I keep coming close to catching him, but every time I miss. Then finally when I do, his face changes, it becomes dark and evil. Suddenly he grabs my arm, crushing it and my heart, and then in a flash of light he changes again, this time into Vader and the garden melts into a piece of land surrounded by fire and death.

It's at that point I wake up, usually screaming and covered in sweat. My sheets are almost always torn and mangled around my body. If I take the dream literally that would mean I had loved Vader, but that was impossible because he had always been evil hadn't he? That meant that there was some type of deep symbolism in the dream. But no matter how hard I tried I could never make the symbols make sense. I finally just told myself that it was simply about how a lover had jilted me. But I couldn't know for sure, because I didn't know if I had ever had a lover, let alone if he had jilted me. Because you see I don't remember my past.

For the last several years I've lived my life without knowing my name. For three years I haven't known my family or even if I had one. All that I do know is that one-day I woke up in a small village without my memory. I spent a year in that small community, too tiny too even be called a town. I learned to love the people there and the land it rested upon. I paid my way taking small odd jobs here and there. And for once in a long time my life was in peace, or at least is how it felt. However no matter how hard I tried I was never content.

Then one day a man came into the small village. He stayed like every other traveler that passed through town at the local tavern, the only building with more than two bedrooms. But that was the only thing normal thing about him. He wore what many locals called "strange" garments. Also his accent and hair were also foreign to the people. However for all the little things that made him "different" to the people of the community it made him more familiar to me, like I had seen many people of his kind. He talked passionately about a rebellion he was involved in. He said if this emperor was not removed from power that he and his henchmen would demolish all we cared for. He told us that the rebellion needed people willing to fight, willing to give their lives to give the galaxy freedom.

I still have no idea what got into me that day, for suddenly I had agreed to go with him and fight for a cause I knew hardly anything about. So two days later I was followed him out of town towards a new future, a future I had never dreamed of.