11 The Epic: THE EMPEROR GIVES A PEP TALK

Aloo had called her into the conference room for a private discussion.

"Why do think he favours you, Eva?" His thin lips and sunken blue eyes gave away no expression. The spider veins in his face seemed more prominent for the matching purple and red of his velvet robes and scarlet shirt.

Eva was silent for a long moment. She so wished for Aloo's insight and for him to answer for her. Amusement with head games? A slight to Vader? "I don't know."

Aloo wasn't going to voice a theory. For whatever grand scheme her appointment was a part, he'd just have to make things work as he was given. Mercifully, she was actually good at the position. "Keep your emotions and your opinions in check. Don't get over familiar with the Emperor." Never a more exquisitely able exploiter of weakness. Who do you think you are, Eva? Shrewder than prey? The entire galaxy has been duped.

She had never heard Aloo fail to use 'our.' He was signaling to listen closely. "He's getting 'familiar' with me." Eva cast under her breath.

"Don't succumb. Stay on task and keep your distance. You wouldn't like what you'd see. Courtiers are not complicit."

Eva considered the remark. Maybe you don't already have blood on your hands…

Everything undone. Scarlett everywhere. The robes of his Royal Guards had billowed aloft and covered the walls. And then the red ran downwards, long threads descending the abyss. It's not cloth - it's blood. My blood.

Cescily was leaning over him. Almost crying. Frozen, unable to move.

The premonitions had worsened- haunting the one who was used to terrorizing others. Something had changed since Naboo. His teeth clenched tight. You judge me? I made the ultimate sacrifice for this regime. My…own…family.

Cescily seemed defeated, and for Palpatine, he hated the fact that he had to placate and fix her impression of him- that she wouldn't just do her duty without weighing the gravity, like 99% of the personnel outside the door. And yet somehow he sensed, if she was that 99%, she'd be no use to him at all. She was problematic, but potentially valuable in a way he could not tell with clarity- an impression that Vader's weakness for her could somehow be his own salvation. He had premonitions of a day when she'd be left to pick up the pieces. He could not have known literally. If you don't let anyone in, who's going to be on your side?

Palpatine frowned at the state of his Coruscant garden, though Eva thought it looked lovely in the late afternoon's fiery peach glow. The day's audience had just concluded in the adoring throne room with ideal timing. "Tell the Grand Vizier to have a caretaker sent to my son's home, until he turns up. And let him know to go forward with the statement, the one in response to the messages of concern sent by the Imperial Perfects," the Emperor told her.

Eva nodded. Aloo had informed the Greater Courtiers that he believed the Emperor's son and his family had gone into hiding.

"...And ask Weather Control to hold back on the rain for the next week."

Eva had handed the Emperor the clips. He would typically fuss over removing the spent flowers, but today he slowly and deliberately cut perfect long stemmed blossoms.

He continued with his earlier conversational thread, before the Vizier had attempted to interrupt on a commlink. "…The Courtiers asked me 'do you really want an hot headed assassin within your own personal quarters?' I told them I wanted exactly that." Five blossoms were handed to her to hold, then ten. "I'd like to hear about the incident that earned your nickname- Tell me about the Rebel Captain Leahmour and what happened those last days on Hoth."

Eva stared back. "He was nothing. Barely useful. Besides, what matter his demise? We should have all been dead soon. The Imperial attack was imminent."

"Yet you managed to make it more imminent still." He paused and looked to her, in that way that he would scantly offer, without as much as his body turned and the hood of the cloak obscuring half of his face.

Eva was used to it now—the sight of him in broad daylight. Only vague similarity to the Chancellor's visage confirmed they were one in the same. But she could not for the life of her, understand how his blue eyes had changed color.

He went on, "Failure one- lack of preparation. And then…Lord Vader ordered a strategic section of the base spared from bombardment, because of your proximity."

Eva caught the thinnest breath and held it as Palpatine took in her dismay. She clearly had no inkling. She was grappling with the significance, as well as the revelation that Palpatine had been shadowing the motives of his most devoted.

"I would say you put Captain Leahmour to use," his lips twisted into a slight curl of contempt. "You put on a charade of your feelings for him for over two standard years, until he had you stationed at the main rebel base. One extreme, when you felt exactly the other. Something you won't be able to manage with me, I'm afraid." he cackled. "You want to know...so dearly..." he teased wistfully, "…how far I can see through you."

"Tell me. Tell me what you see now. I welcome you." She was beyond caring.

He smiled, his slight sort of the kind, and took in a long breath. How simple and gratifying it was to have her exactly where he wished. And so he took the cue and reached in her mind. "I sense hatred." ( Why was it, that everyone around him seemed to be overflowing with anger and hatred? ) "For Captain Leahmour, for the rebels and for all of us too. It's not an acute hatred that I can use. It's a constant, dragging kind of loathing that gnaws at your insides like a cancer. You're still able to hide it, feigned pleasantries. You've become so very good at keeping everything inside. But there's one…isn't there? Who's escaped your disdain?" He set the shears down on the planter ledge and with two fingers he reached out to lightly touch her hand.

"Not Mag Doum for whom all of this was embarked upon." It was as though Palpatine was sorting the cast of her lifetime through his mind. "Luke Skywalker," he pronounced. "But it's not affection for him either. It's just… reverence."

Her arms were overflowing with flowers and Palpatine stopped adding to the pile. "Take those with you." He moved to the railing in pretense of the sunset view. The temperature was perfect and a gentle breeze stirred the cloth of his black robes. "When you left Arda-2 years ago you were very different person. All you wanted was for someone to watch over you. And instead, you were put out to fend for your very life. But you're far more self-reliant and interesting because of it. You have no idea, do you?"

Eva could feel her emotions start to tighten her throat. He was shifting through ancient history, which was nowhere near his direct experience and barely within her own consciousness- touching the depths of her soul.

"You wonder, if it was the Empire that built your hatred, then why hasn't it dispelled with the rewards you now reap? Was it that I abruptly called you from your standing as Captain and placed you here in a position of subservience?" He touched her hand again. "No... that's not it. You were very proud of your ship, but see the advantages to this. Is it Vader? As he won't acquiesce? Or perhaps, this is simply who've you become? Of all those you disdain, it's yourself you hate the most."

Tears were forming and she quickly looked away until she could get them under control.

"Think….think back to when you arrived."

She hadn't looked back. Not something she dwelled upon- the Cescily that first set foot aboard Imperial durasteel.

"Do you remember what you were like then? You won't let your family know where you are now, because you're ashamed of what you've done. But you don't want to be Cescily again. You wouldn't even recognize yourself."

He was right. 'Cescily' was as far away as anyone could be, but if he could help her see back there, a little window as if she'd picked up a journal written in her own hand -And how tiny and timid the writing would be. She was weak. She had been vain. She had been materialistic... and she was short sighted. Or maybe she was simply normal- but she was so far beyond that now. She was much more capable.

"Like me…you are alone. We've both lived double lives. Kept more secrets than truths." His voice trailed off. For a moment he watched the traffic of the few transports permitted in the secure airspace near the palace.

She moved alongside and encased his hand under her own. She was still fighting back emotion. "If I let my guard down, Don't use it to hurt me. I have no ill will towards you." If you don't let anyone in, who's going to be on your side?

He practically whispered, "Don't you see? How the hatred, your suffering, has made you alive?"

"I'll give you your way, with the Nemoidian grubs. I'll have mine with consistent rule," Palpatine told her as they left the garden for dinner.

The Lesser and Greater Courtiers were beginning to file into the dining hall, each pausing to set their headdress on the long table by the entrance. Even the sight of that casual procession made her smile. That night Eva sparkled, practically giddy from the day's events.

He listened to me! The tiniest crumb of Palpatine's power was a gift of intoxicating importance. Thousands of Nemoidian lives hung in a balance she had tipped to her will. She would receive no credit and that was fine. Any mention would impede future concessions.

As they sat down to an eight course meal which they appreciated, but not in equal regards to the input of effort, a little girl on a desert planet was embarking on a life of opposite extreme- the most monotonous sustenance possible. Her mind would be left to grow in a wasteland as vivid as the place she actually inhabited. It would be more ironic still, for her intimate connection with the banquet's most prominent attendee, himself a beneficiary of life long aristocratic privilege.