I must acknowledge that Padme's best speech in this chapter is taken almost word for word from the live journal of a very wise friend of mine called 'Banzai'. He managed to articulate very clearly some half-formed thoughts in the back of my head on Anakin's character. I simply couldn't think of any better way to put it than he already had. Thanks for the clarity, Banzai.

I must also acknowledge the helpful and constructive criticism that many of my lovely reviewers have offered to me. As a very new member of the Star Wars fandom and never having written in the Sci-Fi genre before, I am aware that I am likely to make canonical and other errors. I am also writing this fan fic very quickly (averaging 1 chapter per day), so mistakes are more likely to creep in. Anyone who is kind enough to take the time to point errors out is very much appreciated and I promise that these will be fixed (as is already the case).

CHAPTER NINE

"When everything is made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am"

- Iris, Goo Goo Dolls

Anakin made sure Padme was safe and comfortable in his small transport. They would be attempting hyperjump within three days and he didn't want her injured if there were problems. He knew he would have to keep her drugged for the full journey. There were precautions he had to put in place once on the Command Ship and he knew Padme would not co-operate with them. He had to ensure that she was unconscious until everything was done and she was unable to escape. He had brought along a medical droid to monitor her condition and as soon as the ship was on course, he switched it on.

He spent lengthy periods on that week long trip simply watching Padme as she slept peacefully under the care of the medical droid. He would take off one of his gloves and gently place his hand on her arm to feel her warmth. The new skin layer over his mechanical arm was an amazing piece of medical innovation. It had a blood supply, nerve endings and even fingernails. It enabled him to feel her steady, strong pulse under his fingertips as they rested on her wrist. He was very still when he sat with her like this. He did not know when he would next have the opportunity to touch her. Once she was awake on the Command Ship, there was every chance she would want nothing to do with him ever again. Particularly once she realized what his plans were and what it would mean to her freedoms.

His gaze lingered on her face and hair. She was thirty now but she still looked very much the same to him as she had when they first met on Tatooine when she was fourteen. With a shock, he realized that it was almost literally half a lifetime ago. It did not feel that long. They had had so little time together, really. Their happiness had been so brief. In his heart of hearts, we was not sure it could ever be found again but just having her with him was better than her being another Galaxy away. Anything was better than that.

- - -

Once back on the Command Ship, Anakin had her taken to the suite of room she had occupied previously for such a short time. Was it only two years ago, he wondered? Sometimes it felt like ten years and other times it seemed only a few days ago.

He looked at Padme lying in the medical niche he had set up for her when she had been brought in injured last time. What he was about to do would forever alter their relationship. She would have to forgive him quite a lot if they were ever to be reconciled and live in peace. Behind his mask, Anakin bit his lip. One part of him screamed not to do it – that she would never forgive him and he'd regret it forever. Another part of him was literally sweating in terror of her escaping again if he didn't. In the end (and perhaps, as always) the fear won. He nodded to the medical droid holding large hollow needle. Carefully, the droid inserted the needle into the large vein of her inner arm near the elbow. It was done in a matter of seconds.

There was one more operation that was far more ghastly. A small titanium disk was inserted near Padme's spine at the base of her neck. It was not the operation itself that bothered Anakin because it was not very intrusive. It was the idea of putting a slave device into his wife's neck that made him feel sick. Without realizing it, his hand crept to the back of his own neck. The disk that Gardulla the Hutt had inserted into his neck was still there. He remembered vividly how much he had hated it. It had been deactivated when Gardulla lost his mother and himself to Watto in a card game.

Well, it was done now, Anakin thought with a sigh. It brought some relief to his mind. With a tiny tracking device circulating endlessly in her bloodstream (almost impossible to extract) and a slave device that would paralyze her muscles if she ventured beyond either his or her suite of rooms, even if Obi Wan and Yoda tried to rescue her again it would not work. Even if they managed to deactivate the perimeter that set off her slave device, he would be able to find her wherever she went in any of the known charted Galaxies with that tracking device. It would not take long to bring her back to the Command Ship with that knowledge always to hand.

- - -

Padme woke up within a day of being on the Command Ship. She felt a slight pain in the back of her neck, like it had an irritating scratch but other than that she was fine. She was groggy from the drugs so it took her a few minutes to realize where she was. At first, she thought she was having a bad dream. She had dreamt of the Command Ship a few times in the past couple of years but not so much recently.

When she realized it was not a dream, she caught her breath sharply and tried to sit up. The drugs she had been given were strong, however and she found it hard to lever herself upright.

"You shouldn't be doing that so soon," a hideously familiar, mechanical voice said close by.

"Anakin!" she said, a sickening feeling flooding her veins. She was a prisoner again.

She looked around the room and found he was standing unnervingly close to one side of her head. She jerked her head away and there was a small, sharp pain in the back of her neck. She reached one hand back and felt there was a very small wound there. "What happened?" she demanded, feeling confused. "I don't remember anything. The last I knew, I was at the island in the lake after a swim."

"Don't worry, the wound is not serious. I will explain everything later. For now, you need to rest some more. You're not strong enough to get up yet," said the disembodied voice.

Padme glanced at him again. She had forgotten how utterly terrifying he now looked. In person, he was far more threatening than in her memories of her last visit.

It did not deter her, however. Padme sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "I said, I want to know what happened!" she said angrily glaring at him and slid off the bed. The minute she tried to stand, her knees buckled. Before she could hurt herself, Anakin had caught her. "How did you move so fast?" she asked querulously, allowing him to lift her back onto the bed.

"I know your stubbornness," Anakin said wryly but his mask merely made him sound flat.

Padme merely pressed her full lips together and turned her face away from him. She didn't want to talk to this stranger who was supposed to be her husband but looked and sounded like a monster. Whoever Darth Vader was, she didn't want to know him. Obstinately closing her eyes, she allowed herself to drift back into sleep.

- - -

Padme waited until she couldn't hear that irritating breathing before opening her eyes. She knew Anakin was close because she could feel him somewhere within their adjoined suite of rooms but she just wanted a few minutes by herself before he showed up again with his frightening, silent presence. She carefully sat up and peering around the room, she slipped off the medical bed she had been placed on. This time her legs held up easily. She had been changed out of her waterproofs into a very pretty nightgown that she vaguely remembered was provided for her during her last imprisonment.

Silently she padded over to the bathroom area of her suite (she remembered it very well) and looked in the mirror. Her hair had been taken care of and she was perfectly clean. There had been a medical droid hanging round so she supposed it had been taking care of her. The wound at the back of her neck was bothering her. She picked up a small hand mirror and turned around. Lifting her heavy curls with one hand, she examined the wound in the reflection. It was quite small but she had no idea how it had come about.

A small pinprick of pain in the inner elbow of the arm holding up her hair made her examine the skin area. There was a tiny mark as though from a thick needle. She puzzled over this and suddenly the answer was as clear as day. These were not injuries, they were deliberately inflicted. Anakin had done something to her. Something had been injected (and not just the drugs because she vaguely remembered someone grabbing her arm and pricking the skin before she fell unconscious) and someone had cut her skin dangerously near her spinal column.

Well, she would get to the bottom of this.

Stalking back into her room, she grabbed some proper clothes out of the wardrobe she had used previously and quickly got dressed in the bathroom. She pulled her hair back into a tight bun (out of pure spite, she knew Anakin preferred her long hair loose) and washed her face and brushed her teeth. Feeling more like herself, she marched back out into her suite and nearly walked smack into Darth Vader's armour.

"You're awake," he said - rather unnecessarily, Padme thought viciously.

"Yes! And now that I'm awake perhaps you would care to explain to me what you have been injecting into my arm and why I have a surgical wound in the back of my neck!" she spat.

Anakin actually took a step back. He had rarely seen Padme angry.

"Come and sit down," he invited after a pause. He could feel his blood pounding in his ears. He knew the next ten minutes was going to be very difficult.

"No! I don't want to sit down. I want an explanation!" she insisted angrily.

"Padme, I learnt from my mistakes last time," he said, his deep monotone sounding harsh to Padme's ears. "I didn't want to lose you again. I took some measures…"

"What measures?" Padme interrupted, a dangerous glint in her large brown eyes.

Anakin took a deep breath. "I put a tracking device into your bloodstream and inserted a slave device at the base of your neck," he said. The tension emanating from his dominant figure crackled across the room like electricity.

Padme sat down suddenly on the couch to one side of her. She was limp with disbelief. She thought that she would be angry and she suspected the anger would come later but for now, she was simply stunned. Padme had suspected that he would do all sorts of dreadful things to her the first time he had captured her but he had done none of those things. She had stop believing he would ever do so, even if he captured her again. Now in her mind, he was back to being the monster she had originally feared he had become. She actually felt grief and terrible disappointment. She wanted to cry, not so much for the sake of her own imprisonment but for what Anakin had really become.

She shook her head. "You really are lost to me," she murmured and stared blankly ahead of her. It was a grief too great for even tears.

- - -

Anakin had imagined all sorts of reactions from her to the measures he had taken. He had anticipated rage, he had anticipated a refusal to speak to him or even look at him. He had never expected the blank, grief-stricken stare. He had not expected her to tell him he was lost to her when he was standing alive and well right in front of her. He had not expected her to emotionally withdraw from him so completely that he suddenly felt alone in the room even standing right next to her. He could have coped with the anger and accusations and sulks. He did not know what to do with the grief and withdrawal. He could not fight those things.

- - -

She did not talk for days. It was as though some part of her just shut down. She wasn't eating properly and it worried him. Every attempt he had to talk to her was met with a blank stare and then she would look away as though he wasn't there. She acted as though he had died.

At first he was bewildered, he had no idea what to do or say. After a few days, he tried pleading with her.

"Padme, please don't ignore me. We've been apart for two years and it's like we still are," he said, his distorted voice making his plea sound more like a command.

After several days, he got angry at her refusal to speak to him. "Padme! This is childish. I am still alive whether you like it or not! Stop ignoring me."

She raised her large eyes to his masked face. "My Ani is gone," she said quietly. "He's not coming back." She looked away from him. "My beautiful Ani," she said in such a low voice that Anakin barely heard.

Anakin wanted to yell, "I'm still here!" but something in her misery touched him.

Suddenly Padme shook her head suddenly as though coming out of a daydream and she looked at the dark figure full in the face for the first time in over a week. "If Anakin is dead and I believe he is, then I must learn to live with Darth Vader even though we are enemies," she said with so much of her old firmness and common sense that Anakin felt taken aback after her days of withdrawn depression. It was obvious she was thinking out loud but for his benefit. "So that is where we stand," she concluded, looking him in the eye.

"Anakin is not dead," he replied forcefully and with one step closed the distance between them. "I am still alive and well. I still love you," he said, taking hold of her slender arms in a gentle but firm grip.

"Anakin would never have made a slave out of me," she said, flatly contradicting him.

"You are not my slave, you are my wife. I just can't trust you not to leave me, that's all! I know the poison Obi Wan has planted in your mind about me. I don't ask anything of you except to stay with me, to be with me," he said, his impassioned speech robbed of its ardour by the mask.

"By being here with you, I'm betraying not only my old friends but everything I believe in and have worked for all my life. You are asking me to give up everything that I am for you. What have you given up for me, Anakin?" she asked bitterly.

Anakin stared at her disbelievingly. Did she still not understand after all this time? Didn't she know all he had sacrificed to try and save her life? He had given up his Jedi ties, sold his soul into the slavery of his Sith Lord and given up all of his old life.

"I gave my life, my destiny and my soul into the hands of the Sith Lord to save your life!" he hissed.

"You gave your life, your destiny and your soul into the hands of the Sith Lord to increase your own power, Anakin. You loved power more than you ever loved me," she said unequivocally.

"I can't believe you said that!" he muttered, his voice through his mask sounding like a growl. His hands tightened compulsively on her arms. "That's not true!"

"Anakin, you're hurting me!" she complained, struggling against his grip. "Let me go, now!" she ordered.

He obeyed immediately. "I can't believe you really think that!" he reiterated.

"Anakin, when I disagreed with what you had done, you turned on me and physically attacked me. You may appear to love me passionately but what you truly love is the feeling of being loved, the promise and delivery of comfort from me. It becomes easier and easier for you to deceive because the truth is less important than holding on to what you want. This is what you call 'love' but pushed to the wall it turns, just as you turned on me when I confronted you rather than comforted you for once. Anything that doesn't give you what you want is a betrayal to you," she said with icy precision.

Anakin backed away slowly from her. He could literally feel the blood draining from his face. Is that what she really thought? Is that how she really saw him, as selfish and power hungry and deceptive? She was accusing him of not really loving her but rather, only loving what she could do for him and how she used to make him feel. That's why she thought he wouldn't let her go - because he was selfish, not because he couldn't bear life without her.

He wanted to say something; to tell her she was wrong but no words would come. Instead, he turned on his heel and stalked back to his own suite with his cape flapping behind him. He sealed the door between their rooms which he had never done before. He needed some time alone to digest everything she had said. He felt like she had struck him across the face. He supposed she had felt just as shocked when he had attacked her on Mustafar in his jealous rage.

She thought he was a terrible person, he realized. It was not just their differing political affiliations or personal loyalties that had kept her away from him, he realized. It was not just that they were on different sides; she really deeply believed that he was a monstrous person who only felt passionately about her for selfish reasons – because she made him feel good.

Well, he didn't feel good right now. He felt devastated. He felt completely gutted. His hands were shaking and he felt a bit light-headed. He paced his rooms, trying to both understand why she would feel that way and also try and push it out of his mind. He went to his own medical suite and robotically removed his helmet and mask. He glanced briefly in the mirror and was relieved, as always, to see his old face looking back at him rather than the scarred fiend who had been there before.

He got up and went back to pacing. Surely he had misunderstood and she hadn't really said all that? It was lodged in his brain like a brand, however. He could not escape it. Tears began to run down the fresh, new skin of his cheeks. It seemed like the only thing Padme brought into his life these days was agony. He had spent the better part of four years tormented over their separation and now that she was back, her words pierced his emotional armour like a light sabre and rendered him helpless with confusion and pain.

- - -

In her own rooms, Padme curled up on a couch. Her eyes were dry. She knew her words had hurt Anakin but that didn't make them any less true. It was quite awful, she thought, how often the truth was a very unpleasant thing. There would be some people who would criticize her for being unnecessarily harsh but just because somebody did not want to hear the truth did not mean that they shouldn't. Just because the truth was harsh, didn't mean the person who delivered it wanted to be cruel or brutal. Padme didn't believe in polite lies. She had been forced to use them in diplomatic life but politics was politics and her private life was another matter entirely.

Padme felt the back of her neck again where the slave device had been implanted. It made her feel deeply humiliated, like cattle of some kind. She felt branded like a commodity. Her freedom was now completely stolen from her. It was deeply degrading to be controlled like a puppet by her husband, to have all her movements restricted. She didn't even feel like a person. She wondered if this was how Anakin had felt as a young boy when he was sold into slavery. Did he grow through his most formative years feeling like a nonperson? Vaguely she remembered her first conversation with him when he was a boy of ten. He had been angry when she had asked him if he was a slave. "I'm a person!" he had said with wounded pride. She hadn't understood. Slavery was not something she had been exposed to in her life. Looking back, it embarrassed her that she had been involved in 'winning' Anakin from Watto in a bet on the Podraces. She had seen it as giving him his freedom but she supposed that they had treated him like a commodity too and had taken him away from his one source of love – his mother.

Then he had joined the Jedi and spent ten years going, "yes Master, no Master". He probably felt it was little different from life with Watto except maybe with even less real freedom. Perhaps his break from the Jedi was actually a break for freedom except he had chosen the wrong method. Instead of being truly free, he enslaved himself to an even more demanding master – the Sith Lord. Padme suspected that Anakin had gotten 'power' and 'freedom' mixed up in his mind. He still didn't seem to understand that power hadn't brought freedom to his life. He was now imprisoned in the Dark Side. He seemed incapable of even comprehending what freedom was and so, kept running back to the known evil of having a Master.

Padme had always been free. Her family had let her choose her own path. Her education was demanding but they were given the chance to express their individuality and think for themselves. As Queen, she had responsibilities but she could have laid them down at any time if she wished. It was the same as a Senator. She had never had to say, "yes Master, no Master" to anybody. Well, she wasn't about to begin to now with her own husband, she thought grimly.

She glanced at the shut door between them. She had a feeling it would stay that way for a long time.