A Love That Turned Evil
Chapter One
Changing Feelings
Padme stood on the balcony of her Naboo home. A lock of her brown hair had escaped its net and hung near her face. There was a glint of gold out of the corner of her eye.
"Ani." She whispered and turned toward him.
Then Padme realized in a flash that she was a married woman, forever attached to this man that she loved more deeply than she had ever loved anyone.
But right now she wanted to be alone.
"Oh Ani, I want to be alone right now!" She blurted out.
A look of hurt crossed his face. "But Padme-" He slipped his arms around her thin waist and rocked her gently from side to side. Padme began to cry silently, and Anakin stiffened. The gold droid fingers of his arm clenched in a fist, but then he relaxed.
"Padme, what's wrong?" He whispered in her ear.
Padme turned toward him. Ani held her away from him as she reached to embrace him and looked deep into her eyes.
"I love you Ani, but I just have to get used to it, being married. I love you as strongly as I ever did, but I just have to be alone for a moment. I'll come in, in a minute. "
His eyes flashed a cold light, as brief as a stroke of lightning, and then he said "Alright Padme." Then he turned and walked off.
Padme turned back toward the lake, the lake she had grown up swimming in. Even now, as a grown woman, she longed to dive in the water and splash around like a child.
But instead of going for a swim, she turned and went back inside to make her husband breakfast.
"I sense a disturbance in the Force, Master." Mace Windu sat cross-legged next to his master, the wisest Jedi in the galaxy, who even in his old age could handle a lightsaber against a grown man, Dooku.
Yoda did not reply right away. "Sense it I do."
Mace's eyes narrowed and he studied his old master. Yoda was very old, short, and green. Mace wondered how much time Yoda had left- surely he would not be with them for much longer.
Anakin Skywalker strode off the balcony and up the sprawling stairs of the house he shared with Padme. He went to look out the window at his wife.
She stood below him, unaware that he was watching her. Anger stirred inside him, and a little jealousy. Even the fact that Padme wanted to be alone, away from him a mere day after their marriage, worried him.
Ani let the curtain drop on his wife and walked away, slamming the door behind him. He went and stood in the kitchen, not knowing what to do with himself. He was obviously not wanted on the balcony, which was the only place he wanted to be, so he took his speeder and zoomed towards the horizon.
He rode the speeder through the woods for a long, long time. The sun was on the verge of setting when he returned.
As soon as he neared the house Padme came bursting through the door and came running toward him.
Oh, so you want me now, Ani though nastily, but then his angry feelings melted and he felt only love and compassion for the woman that ran toward him now.
Padme almost ran into him, embracing him with such fervor that this might have been the last time they ever saw each other. "Oh Anakin, oh Ani, oh Ani! I was so worried I didn't know where you were! I thought that-" Padme buried her head into Anakin's strong chest and murmured, "I thought you had died."
"Oh Padme, I'm so sorry. I just had to clear my mind, just like you."
She looked up into his eyes and he looked into hers, and their lips met in a kiss that was even sweeter than the ones that they had shared last night…
Padme spread her hands over Anakin's chest and rested her head on him. He was so strong, so warm, so powerful. "I love you Ani, I love you so much."
Anakin raised his hand and intertwined his fingers and her curls. His droid hand laid dead and cold at his side.
He wrapped his arm around Padme's back, pressing her closer to him. He felt badly about the way he had acted that morning- not even telling Padme that he was leaving.
Then as he laid there in the dark with Padme falling asleep beside him, he began to feel afraid. He was afraid that he would lose Padme, the woman he had loved for ten long years. And there in the dark he swore to become the most powerful Jedi the galaxy had ever seen, to protect the people he loved.
But it was already too late for that.
The two burning suns of Tatooine illuminated the grains of sand that flew across the desert. He carried his mother, the person who meant the most to him out of the entire world, in his arms.
She was dead. The sand people had killed her.
Padme had been there. His stepfather and half brother were there, and his half brother's girlfriend.
He laid his mother on the ground and went inside the rounded dome that was supposed to be a house. Padme followed him.
"I killed them, Padme. I didn't just kill the men. I killed the women and the children too."