I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters.

AUTHOR'S NOTE- I respect Star Wars too much to change it. There is no alternate universe here, nor time travel. This story of an off-screen, background character takes place between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, and ties in similar to the way Rogue One works. I read somewhere that Darth Vader had around 30 minutes of screen time in the original trilogy, and of course Palpatine had even less. I've tried to further flesh out the personalities in a way that rings true, without completely ruining their mystique. Please leave feedback- so little means so much.

PROLOGUE

The pain was beyond horrific. She wailed in shock and tried to remain focused, but she had to glance down where the blaster and her hand used to be. The Sentinels all seemed to enclose a step, oversized goons with eyes that glowed red in the dim of the lab, brandishing humming vibro-axes. Then she raised her left hand, in which she wielded an exceeding rare object. The crimson radiance mesmerized. Considering the threat which she was intending to hold at bay, the weapon was brazen with irony: the Emperor's very own lightsaber. This was the absolute worst of days…

But in it, she recalled the very best of days - the brief moment when she was not accounted for, fallen off the face of the galaxy. Vader knew what she wanted of him. He would reward her with part of it. For four days at his fortress castle, he had become human. He let someone in.

"I have this reputation…some of it deserved I suppose, from the things I did in early on… that I routinely dispose of assets or my own troops for petty failures, when in fact death is doled out purely on strategic value… That my emotions consist of impatience, anger, and little more… That there is more machine incased in this armor, than man… But you already know otherwise… 'Sith' is not a defining construct. It is a means to an end."

But even in rare respite, Vader would still have important things to attended to; insurrections to crush, Rebel cells to track, paperwork. And when he was indisposed, he let her work out with the sparing droids in the Dojo.

"How much did all this equipment cost, that I destroyed?" she wanted to apologize.

Ever the accountant, Vader mused to himself. He offered one bit of advice, "Why don't you practice with your left hand for a while?"

"Ha!" she smiled. "When will I ever be fighting with a lightsaber, much less a saber and only one hand?"

Another day, a long time before…

No backup would arrive that frigid clear day, and the Rebels were horribly outmatched and outgunned. Roughly half of those present at Echo Base would not survive.

She held at bay, the disturbing feeling of wanting no part in it, when she actually had everything to do with it. Just two weeks she had been there, and she was lost in the snow packed passageways again. Just two weeks, and an intense, Imperial invasion was in in full onslaught. Another female's voice, firm and urgent, drifted from the opening to Hanger 7, "…When you've gotten past the energy shield, proceed directly to the rendezvous point. Understood? Good luck."

Leia, that's her. It was the first time their paths had come close to crossing. A booming male voice directly in front of her shook her thoughts from General Leia's, "Noncombat personnel get to your transport!"

But how to be captured alive was her single burning thought while hurrying through icy bays. She'd briefly stepped outside, perhaps to escape the doomed base overland. But it was clearly a foolhardy effort in the middle of those fireworks. A smattering of freed tauntauns were scattering amid the chaos.

Oh-my-goodness oh-my-goodness! And she would have thought it overly dramatic to imagine one could feel the vibration of the step of a behemoth Walker, until they were right beyond the walls. Outside they fired down on the easy, underequipped and overexposed prey. The trenches had become a deathtrap for the soldiers manning them. Firefights erupted in the corridors, echoing across the crumbling base. She squatted down, back against the wall, and watched the snow sprinkling down from the ceiling with each AT-AT footfall.

For the previous two years, she'd been a threat to be reckoned with, strong-willed and coolheaded - focused. And now? It was the first time in a long while no one would see if she did nothing. She faltered, reverted back to her true self - a nothing… a trivial, ordinary citizen, forced into the most ambitious of expectation.

In stillness she awaited. The intercom cracked out a last message, "Imperial troops have entered the base! Imperial troops have ent—"

Hours later she sat isolated in a Imperial holding cell, while elsewhere aboard the Executor, in a control room with heighted security, her image was pulled up among the numerous captured Rebels.

"Here she is. Go retrieve her, and leave a message for Lord Vader."

CHAPTER 1 The Epic: FIRST SIGHT

She contacted the bridge, to ask Admiral Ozzel why the ship was in an asteroid field, but she was told there was no Admiral Ozzel anymore. While the fires were still smoldering from the assault on Hoth, the Imperials moved her to officer's quarters. A female anomaly in civilian clothes, she could leave the suite to wander the immense ship Executor, but she was no better than a prisoner, just as the first time she stepped aboard Imperial quadanium steel. She had nothing to do. She slept in. She drank. She took spice (it's a big ship - you can find anything if you know where to look) and thought about Hoth, the three other minor bases which suffered simultaneous assault, and her part in it as an Imperial spy.

The officers aboard gloated. They told her how many rebels were captured alive and what leads had been tortured out of them. They were considerably more humble when Luke Skywalker escaped. She had to suppress a smile.

Once a message came from Vader himself. He advised her to look out the viewport at the planet below, that the battle raging was another rebel outpost in its final moments. The tip to the location was gleaned from one of the Hoth prisoners.

She already had the shield wall open and was watching. From her vantage point the scene was nothing more than a few distant sparks. Only moments later, the lack of them was deafening.

There hadn't been a debriefing, but why would there be? Vader knew everything. One officer had mentioned to her in passing, that Lord Vader hadn't even acknowledged her infiltration to the bridge crew, and that a Viber probe droid had been sent to Hoth to ensure her cover wasn't blown. Did they have a next mission for her? The Rebels were so crippled…

And then word came.

A medal? An award personally bestowed by the Emperor himself? For Vader's part certainly, but she felt falsely exalted for reasons beyond her. It seemed wholly inappropriate that she would be receiving the same accolade for her respective part in the Echo Base finale. And then she began to wonder; was the Emperor manipulating Darth Vader or vice versa?

Her quarters were expansive and even more of the suite had been closed off as unnecessary. Sleek, although cold, furnishings- were built in or bolted to the floor. One space housed something between a tub and a small pool. If it was a tub, it was obscenely decadent. She'd run the water as hot as it came, soak the frozen Hoth away, and drown the memory of those familiar. There was a list somewhere; the names of the captured and the deceased. "Luke…"

The coldest of days, the brightest of light. The white glaring off the snow could literally burn your eyes after a time. And yet, there was something more brilliant still. But he was a hero. She was no one. Look away…

There was her mission to consider. "Skywalker taunts you with his purity," Vader would tell her more than once.

Why did she help destroy them, and given a second chance, would she have done it again? She pushed the thought to the back of her head.

'In two days, I'll be in the same room with the most powerful person in the universe.'

And that day had finally arrived. The rust orb of Coruscant loomed outside the docking bay shield, and the Imperial shuttle for the quick trip over sat ready. A squadron of stormtroopers stood in formation for heightened ceremony. Darth Vader was already there, a red sash draped over his shoulder and crowded with earlier medals. A good third of them were of seemingly no consequence, and hidden up under his cape. She was so used to his voice, the rasps of breathing, but not the presence. It was at once exhilarating and unnerving.

But he was staring at her attire. Where did she get that garb? Her shoulders were wrapped in a wide band of the most intricate bronze filigree trim. Silver fabric draped down tight to the waist then full below and in the back, formed something like a train. He was annoyed with the haughty formality. But again, her clothing was perfectly appropriate for an audience with the Emperor ( if one had no official rank or uniform ). And were they not her strong points, her ability to ascertain and manipulate? Her resourcefulness?

The outfit wasn't part of the cargo dumped in her quarters- the meager personal collection from two years earlier that had been stored and returned to her. That clothing was now ill-fitting from her thinness caused by stress. She hadn't a reference point, but nothing in the lot seemed worthy of the impending occasion.

So she had made her way to one of the service sectors and found a cadre of droids tasked with repairing officer's attire. No one had thought to instill them with protocol to weigh authority, so the droids took directive from the live human who was actually there. Uniforms were constructed elsewhere and rarely completely fabricated on board. But the droids were able to assemble a gown for her with patterns in their archives. She had looked at hundreds and chose carefully. The materials on hand were limited, but they pulled out a ceremonial cloak from storage. Dusty and fragile with age, it had been brought to them to identify and left having no other purpose. She studied the robe, having never seen something so elaborate in person before- heavy fabric with a multitude of complex folds, the opulent trim of time intensive handmade metallic knots and twisted threads. It hinted of worlds and ways of life so very distant from the oily innards of Imperial service facilities. In the process of identification, the files for the construction of a thousand costumes downloaded for their research, were left in the data banks. But the droids had no memory of the individual who had worn the royal garb, or what happened to him. She turned the garment over in her hands. The knife holes and accompanying dark stains were a relevant clue. 'Nothoiin,' the droids had concluded. The trimmings were promptly removed.

The new fabric available was wholly predictable. Black, grey, green grey…more black. But the grey sheets on the bed of her high end quarters had a subtle sheen. The housekeeping droid took no notice of their absence and simply replaced them.

When Vader boarded the shuttle she followed and sat near to him. "The Emperor…" he began, his voice low though the pilots were beyond earshot, "…you're aware, I'm sure. He has suffered physically. He has battle scars…

"Eva… the award is not simply a medal. It is advancement."

"Why can't I just take a reward and be done? Go home?"

" 'Home?' " he mused.

She understood it wasn't a question. He was mocking her place of origin. She hadn't come from a world particularly awful. It just wasn't much of anything.

You think this is over? "Why weren't you on one of the transports evacuating Hoth, so you could remain intrenched with the Rebels?" The way he spat at her, it was clear the ire had been smoldering.

"The game was up," she offered meekly.

"Captain Leahmour was left behind, buried in snow. You were in the clear."

No…no, she was done. The Rebels surely knew about her. The evacuation began right after. She was unaware of the probe droid then.

And hadn't she accomplished enough? She'd led the Empire to Hoth. All the things she had gotten right and he was fixated on the wrong. It was so… so… Vader. "You were blowing Rebel transports out of the sky!"

The impertinent sass! Vader glared at her. But no matter the mask's interference in manifesting his displeasure, all he was seeing was the back of her head. Eva had turned away, wishing shuttles had windows she could pretend to look out.

But Vader was willing to go before the Emperor with the story that his spy was compromised, rather than flawed, because he was tired of Palpatine's flak. The Emperor had already made well clear his disappointment with the lack of finality to the Alliance to Restore the Republic, despite their single worst battlefield defeat.

Yet the bulk of the Rebel forces got away, along with the Rebellion leaders. The Empire obtained little useful intel from Echo Base, and they still had no idea where the Rebel fleet was. Vader had slammed his fist down upon them, only to have them flung out in all directions.

Worse, Palpatine had seen right through the 'missteps' that preempted simple, indiscriminate destruction of Echo Base from space: Vader coaching Admiral Ozzel into a strategy that would ultimately lead to an arduous ground assault with higher casualties. Then Vader had choked Ozzel to death before he could refute blame, and Ozzel was left a patsy for failure. All so Vader could personally tear Echo Base apart in hopes of netting Skywalker alive.

Palpatine's anger was clearly focused on the half of the Rebellion that got away, than the 500 Imperial troops and Star Destroyer that were lost.

So Vader would go along with this charade that was an award ceremony, as in part it buttressed the Empire's claim to a solid victory (although General Veers' accommodation would be bestowed in earnest. He was unable to personally attend due to his injuries).

And now Eva was allowing him as much as her profile. Vader gnarled to himself and looked away. She too, was under the common misconception that he was the enforcer, and the rewards came from Palpatine. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.

Eva lowered her voice further. "When will the device be removed?"

Vader's massive helmet turned back towards her. "It's inactive. Can't you tell? Do you want to go under the knife again? Forget that it's there."

'In ten minutes, I'll be in the same room as the most powerful person in the universe.'

A courtier, in stiff purple robes with red trim, greeted them within the Supplicants Waiting Hall of the Imperial Palace, and followed into the turbolift. He eyed her approvingly then began, "It is an immense privilege to have an audience with our Emperor. The subsequent deference will be expected." The courtier directed his protocols at Eva. Vader knew the routine.

"You will not address our Emperor unless he addresses you. Do not make eye contact with our Emperor. You will not approach our Emperor within four arm's length..." There was more, but she was distracted. The turbolift had become noticeably colder. Little did she know, that not too distant she'd be wearing purple and reciting the courtier's lines.

The doors parted and a cold blast of air was sucked into the turbolift. Eva was disconcerted. Why weren't the lights on? Vader, without hesitation, glided into the massive chamber and waited for her. As her eyes adjusted to the dim, she could make out the far end where extensive glass let in the evening lights of Galactic City. There was a seated figure, several scarlet Royal Guards, a few more standing silhouettes – Courtiers, Imperial Advisers and an Imperial Ruling Councilor, mostly in dark purple.

The very air felt different- charged as with static, thick and acidic. A droning of the ancient former Jedi Temple seem to resonate in that chamber alone. Vader ascended a set of steps nearer to the group and knelt down. The courtier in the turbolift had left out that deference; it was a given. Eva followed Vader's example, but she did not lower her head. She was too distant to make eye contact. The seated figure was the Emperor. Only the lower third of his face was visible under the shadow of his dark hood.

One of the courtiers on the dais began to speak. "Our Emperor bids you welcome. Thank you for your service and the sacrifices you have made for the Empire. Today we reflect on the true meaning of courage, service and selflessness, and honor those persons who embodied them…" Off in the distance something loud clanked. The courier went on without missing a beat. The sound continued, leading Eva to believe her very senses were distorted. Her temples ached. She felt like she was going to throw up.

When the courtier was silent, Palpatine slowly stood and nodded. He moved like the aged. He held his lower arms out in a stiff and odd manner. Vader rose to approach the dais elevated by four additional steps, and stopped far closer to the Palpatine than four arm's length. Another courtier stepped forward to hand the Emperor a sash with medallion. Vader again bowed so that it could be draped over his head.

Palpatine turned and nodded to her. Eva lowered her eyes and approached four arm's distance to sink to her knees. The Emperor had the second medallion in hand, but there was deafening silence and stillness. Finally, Palpatine inched forward to close the distance. Eva decided the courtier's dictation in the turbolift was just tooling with her. She lifted her eyes to look at Palpatine directly. He seemed to tilt his head back ever so slightly to allow her full view. His eyes caught the light in surreal manner. The gold color was luminous. She was startled that the scathed, fissured face belonged to a living being.

He stared back without admonishment. If any emotion, it was curiosity. When he lowered the sash, he momentarily rested a hand on her shoulder. A tremor shot through her entire body. 'He touched me!' And as he eased away, his face again shrouded in shadow, he spoke, just briefly. She could distinctly hear the way his voice sounded, but she could not take in the words. The resonance of his speech- it would never go away. She would carry it with her from then on. But what had he said ? The three words. It felt as though half of her mind was no longer there- as if it belonged to someone else. The words were hanging, coming through haze. He didn't repeat them, but eventually they became clear, "Deceased Nothoiin nobleman."

"He was in my head! How damn invasive is that?" She was practically shouting at Vader in the turbolift. Something she immediately regretted even if they were alone.

"You could tell?" Vader was somewhat amused. "But surely you more than anyone are used to that. Interesting, considering your sensitivity to the Force is nonexistent."

Her mind reeled. What did the Emperor know? About the Hoth mission's abrupt and early conclusion? Did he know it was all Vader's doing and her strings were pulled as surely she was a puppet? About her slaying her objective in a fit of rage? Did Palpatine sense her repulsion to his face? No… he wouldn't care about that.

Her voice quieted as she was half speaking to herself "He was unnatural. How did get that way? How did he hide it from the Naboo?"

But Vader didn't ponder the Emperor's past anonymity. He had sensed Palpatine's curiosity with her. Pointless, if he hadn't felt something - potential of some sort. But what? When Vader first laid eyes on Eva nearly two years previous, he had not sensed that she would give him Luke – not just his location, but antidotes and images too. Vader's will had crafted the opportunity from what was put before him.

Perhaps Eva could still be of use. He turned to her with intentions of amity, but his presence in the tight confines of a turbolift was anything but. With all the sincerity he could muster, he murmured, "I would have known which Rebel transport you were aboard. Do you believe I'd would blast you out of the sky?"