Author's Notes: Thank you everyone for taking the time to leave feedback. Also, I wanted to point out that theVaderproclaiming "to bring her home" doesn'tentirelymean he was literally going to bring her home. It's more of an implication that he was going to take her some placeshe feels safe.This chapterwill clear up where Vader intends her to go.

Chapter 9: Unfamiliar Territory

With Vader's ability to wield the force, he was able to grant them passage into a small transport freighter in route to a neighboring system, from there, she'll be able to find transport to where ever she wished to go.

"It's really happening," she said softly.

Padme turned to face the man, who is by law, her husband. "Why are you doing this?" She still couldn't quite grasp that he was going to let her go free.

He opened his mouth, "I…" but he didn't know what to say. "I don't really know," he admits much to his chagrin.

She stared at him with a dumbfounded expression.

"Is it because of your mother?"

Confusion stirred inside him that included feelings he couldn't quite utter into words. He didn't know how to answer without sounding inept. His own lack of understanding of what's been happening to him these last several months weighed on him with such gravity that he almost couldn't breathe. While thoughts and memories of his mother occupied heavily in his mind, he knew somethng else had to be done.

"I don't know," he answered faintly.

She studied him carefully, trying to find out even the tiniest bit of information revealed on his face that could tell her what was happening to him. His demeanor in the last few hours could almost pass that of a child learning to walk for the first time.

"What do you plan to do?" she asked, deftly curious.

He looked up at her, every time their eyes meet, the walls they both have built around to protect themselves thawed a little bit more.

"I must confront my Master," he said, eerily calm. "It's best that you stay as far away from us when I do."

As he said this, Padme was surprised to learn that her own thoughts and emotions didn't want him to subject himself to the Dark Lord's deadly grasp.

"If you defy him, he'll kill you," she remarked unexpectedly.

A glimmer of surprise and vulnerability escaped Vader's often straight face. He sat in front of her privately against the prying ears of the beings that surrounded them. He was at a loss as to what to do or say next with her.

"My mother is alive when I was told without question that she was dead," he said. "I need to know – "

"Know what?" she argued in a whisper. "Your Master is an evil man who's done nothing but harm people."

"So have I," he returned.

Padme tried to keep her composure and anger at bay at his ignorance without attracting unnecessary attention. It is true that Vader, too, has killed without remorse, but a part of her hoped that he was different.

"You're not like him!" she said with conviction that surely shocked them both. But she continued. "You don't laugh or smile or make a mockery at those you kill."

Vader tilted his head sensing her emotions far more intimately than ever before.

"You're making excuses for me," he observed.

Padme sighed, clearly exasperated. She needed to slow down and take back everything she just said, but she knew it was too late. The words hung in the air between them for a few minutes that it was clear that she couldn't take it back even if she tried.

He now knew that she truly cared for him.

"Palpatine wouldn't have kept me alive for this long if it hadn't been for you," she said, both reminding and thanking him.

He shook his head with a calmness that continued to unnerve her.

"I've sensed that he wanted you alive for a reason." And for the moment, he kept that reason to himself until she inevitably asked.

"But you kept me safe," she reminded him.

"I did what I had to do."

But inevitability didn't last long.

"When he hurt you, why did he do it?"

She didn't know why she even bothered asking all these questions when her freedom was so near, but it was becoming hard for her to separate the many faces she has grown to know of this man:

Dark Sith. Protector. Anakin….

Husband.

Just thinking about it all confused her.

With the stress and revelations of the last few days, weeks and months even, it was becoming harder and harder for her to keep her emotions in check.

"He had ordered me to do something I did not want to do," he answered with a deep sense of hesitancy in his voice. He was prepared for this, but it doesn't mean that he liked it.

"What didn't you want to do?"

His eyes fell away from her, and it took away whatever comfort level she had having this discussion with him. It appeared that he didn't want to share but she had to know.

"Vader," she said, calling his attention.

With his eyes now focused on something else, he finally answered.

"Rape you."

Padme stirred restlessly on her cot, the talk she and Vader had earlier continued to replay in her head. The thought that he could've taken her body over and over again without guilt scared her. But in the end, he didn't, and that has to count for something.

Finally, she decided to ask him a question that would no doubt be sensitive to them both.

"Why didn't you?"

Vader opened one eye from where he sat near her, cross-legged, meditating.

"What?"

Then he opened both.

"Why didn't you do what your Master said? Isn't that the whole reason why you even call him your master, so you can do whatever he says?"

"Would you rather I have?"

"No," she assured. "But that doesn't answer my question. Why didn't you?"

"I just… couldn't," he answered with more emotion than she was used to seeing. It was like being back down on Tatooine again when she witnessed a wholly different Vader talk in front of Shmi Lars. Like she was talking to the man he could've been if he had never been taken to the Dark Side…

Anakin.

Had I really just thought of them as two different people? Padme thought to herself.

"The more I refused," he continued. "… the angrier he got. And in his anger, he revealed his plans. I'm not as weak as he often assumes. If anything, My Master's greatest weakness is his overconfidence."

Padme was amazed by his openness.

"What did you learn?"

For a moment, he thought about lying to her or not telling her anything at all, but in the end, neither options sufficed.

"He wanted an heir."

A wave of uneasiness enveloped the former queen.

"An heir?"

"Specifically, our heir," he confirmed matter-of-factly.

"Our?"

Padme breathed in a lungful of air. She has always had a soft spot for children, and had dreams of one day having her own, but she's never once entertained the idea that she would ever bear a child with Vader.

Noting her distaste over what he revealed, he offered her an assuring smile.

"I meant what I said before, I won't harm you, in any way, I promise," he said, sounding so unlike Vader and very much like something Anakin would say, not that she really knew the difference. She just couldn't imagine him taking Palpatine's orders under the name Anakin.

"What is your whole name?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"It isn't like we have anything better to do," she defended, but then relaxed when she saw the slight grin come across his face. She grabbed a hand cloth by the side of her cot and tossed it in his direction.

To her surprise, he made no move to deflect it, and instead, it hit him straight in the face, and she was rewarded with not only a smile, but a chuckle as well.

"You're making fun of me," she said in an friendly yet playful tone.

"No, no. I'd be much too frightened to tease a Senator," he replied with an equally playful tone.

She laughed and just as she realized what was happening, she quickly silenced herself. This was the first time they let their guard down and it left her uncomfortable.

"I'm going to go back to sleep," she said, half wanting to continue their conversation and the other half wanting to quit entirely.

He nodded.

She raised her eyebrows, a recent memory came out in her mind.

"I forgot that you don't sleep," she recalled. "How come?"

"I'm your enemy and yet you continue to ask me questions that to anybody else, is irrelevant."

She shrugged. "I don't know who you are, that's the problem," she admits truthfully. "But you're a human being," she said followed by a pause. "In spite of your faults," she added with a slight hint of sarcasm. It left him amused.

Vader waited a long time before finally giving in.

"When I sleep, I dream, and they aren't very pleasant." Padme remembered the first night he slept and the way he shook unconsciously without waking. He continued. "With modern science and with the force to my advantage, I've learned to remain awake for days at a time, then weeks, only requiring little sleep in between. It's become an unbreakable habit... until that night."

His explaination had been more than enough for her. "I'm… going back to sleep now," she said, slightly fumbling with her words.

He bowed his head to her. "Yes, I know."

"Right," she responded awkwardly, adjusting herself in her cot. She lifted the one thin blanket she had and wrapped herself in it.

Many aggravated minutes later, she finally fell asleep.

Vader let out a slow, deep breath while watching her sleep in silent awe. He moved closer to her before reaching out to lightly remove a lose strand of hair from her face, and thought of how he's never met anyone quite like her. She should be terrified of him but she displayed no such emotion. For so long he's held no regard to anyone or anything. Life, whether his or his Master's held no true meaning to him until the moments he found himself watching over her.

As he continued to remain at her side, she began to shiver against the cold. The ship that carried them wasn't the luxurious kind, so he stood up and approached another wayward traveler covered in a warmer blanket.

He waved his hand in front of the unsuspecting passenger and uttered an influence through the force.

"You have no use for that."

"I have no use for this," thepassenger said.

"You'd like me to have it."

He holds up the warm covering to him. "I'd like you to have it."

Without further attempt, Vader took hold of it and led it back to Padme's sleeping form.

Carefully, he draped it on her, making sure she's warm and comfortable. "My name is... Anakin Skywalker," he said in a whisper before he went back to his space in front of her. Content, he sat there with her back towards him watching over her for the remainder of their journey.

Unbeknownst to him, a small smile crept up in her face as the mere gesture and answer to her earlier question left her confounded yetastonished at the same time.

She thought of his true name, Anakin Skywalker one last time before she let that one name roll her off to dreamland.

And for once, she wasn't afraid.

To be Continued…