A/N: I've abandoned this story again, I'm a horrible person! Oh, well. 'Least I'm not a Sith.

Disclaimer: George Lucas', not mine.

My father used to say that we write our own stories. The problems come, though, when your story disagrees with someone else's, someone you've written into your story, someone who has written you into theirs. Then the stories complicate, merge, are edited, take on lives of their own and expel themselves, finally, into the world, so far altered from the story we originally planned as to be unrecognizable.

I've allowed Anakin and Palpatine to edit my story for far too long.

I walked down the antiseptic white hallway, leaving whispered rumors in my wake. Stars, I hate this place! Not only its sterility, its denial of humanity's existence, denial of the fact that – here, I smirked inwardly- their precious Emperor shits too, and it smells just as bad- but also, I hate the 'people.'

The officers, the ones that aren't clones, the butcher scumbags that chose this fascist killing and destruction of liberty and dignity without any embryonic coaxing or implanted predilection to it, but of their own free will.

They chose, of their free will, to destroy everyone else's.

I hate them! And in my mind I scream it with antipathy equal in volatility to what Anakin felt for the Tusken Raiders that killed his mother-for the Jedi for the younglings for Obi-Wan for me-

The officers look after me whenever I wander about my spacious prison, wondering.

Most of them weren't involved enough in politics to know who I was. Those who did know must understand it even less. Why, after all, would a Dark Lord of the Sith marry, if indeed he was going to marry, a Senator who had been one of the most outspoken critics of every tactic his leader supplied, during the later part of the war?

They don't understand why I am kept here, I and the twins (despite the secret love I still harbor for the spark of Anakin buried in Vader -that's why I still call him Anakin, even though he hates me for it-, if I had the chance, oh! I would be gone, and Luke and Leia with me, like thieves in the night, far far away from here!)

The lesser officers complain quietly amongst themselves; their wives and children aren't allowed here!

The others, I know, question my presence less than they do my loyalties. They know me, the higher-level officers, they were high-level officers of the Republic, when I was Queen, journeying to Coruscant for the first time.

I remember their faces, the skeptics. They didn't believe in a fourteen year old girl's ability to rule, to finesse, to delicately maneuver her way through the minefield of politics. They were proven wrong, then, they watched me oust a Chancellor- and now they watch me slip silently through the halls, a living ghost, never speaking above a murmur.

Mustn't they wonder what has changed?

…

I returned from my act of sedition to ready myself to eat with the Emperor. Well, to dine with. I'd eat afterwards, really; I knew I'd never be able to force food down my throat in front of that bastard.

It wasn't his horribly disfigured face, in fact I preferred that face, perversely, to his old one, the face of he man who'd pretended friendship, counsellorship, who'd been like a second father to me when I was younger- who had then betrayed me, like so many others.

Anakin was still pacing when I came back. I set my features into a meaningless smile, unchanging; but his look of relief at my return did not escape me. I still had some measure of- power, was that what it had come to?- in this relationship. The thought did little to lift my spirits.

He came over and kissed me, for obscure reasons. I stood, passive; this scene I could not act.

"Padmé," he whispered, "what's wrong?"

I made my eyes wide, my face worried.

"I'm frightened of what the Emperor wants," I said, in a scared, small voice, the girl's voice that I'd used as Queen and Senator when faced with skeptics, in a sarcastic way, though. Quite unlike now.

But I fooled Anakin.

"Don't worry, angel," he said. "It's nothing bad- not for us." Does that mean it's bad for someone else? I thought, but I didn't say it. I let him hold me, limp and doll-like.

Is this what they mean when they say a woman sacrifices herself for her family?

Somehow, I sincerely doubt it.