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CHAPTER EIGHT

Vader's penchant for unannounced visits was becoming unsettling. Or at least it would have been, if not for Padme's unexplained enjoyment of them. She waited in anticipation each day, growing a little more excited as the sun sloped lower in the sky and the end of the workday grew near. Lord Vader seemed to possess an uncanny ability to discern when Bail's office was deserted – except for one assistant.

Padme tapped away at her console, eventually losing all track of time as she struggled to master the mountain of tasks she needed to complete. The sun had set, and Coruscant's skyline was filled with the glow of evening traffic when she was finally roused from her trance of concentration by the sound of the door. She knew who had entered without looking. She swallowed and forced herself not to look up from her work. She couldn't quite help her smile.

"Padme," came the expected voice as Lord Vader swept across the room and deposited himself in a chair opposite her. "You're still working."

"As you can see..." she began, finally looking up at him. "...Anakin," she added belatedly when she saw the pained look on his face. He insisted that she call him by his name whenever they were alone. Which, lately, had become a frequent occurrence. She ignored her flash of joy when he smiled in response. She turned away from the almost gravitational pull of the work calling to her from her desk console. It had been a long day and exhaustion made her bold.

"Can I help you?" she began, lifting a teasing eyebrow. "If you need to make an appointment with the senator, I would be happy to assist. Otherwise, I'm afraid that you really aren't supposed to be here and I'll have to have security throw you out." She returned to typing, forcing back a ridiculous smile, her lips twitching with the effort.

She felt Vader's (Anakin's) grin before she saw it. "My dear Padme, you wound me. Senator Organa left some time ago according to his office hours. I came to see you."

"Whatever for, Lord Vader?"

"Anakin," he corrected lightly, still smiling at her.

"Anakin," she agreed.

"I don't quite know," he started, seeming sincere, but the devilish gleam returned as quickly as it had disappeared. "I was here late, you were here late. You're not annoying. Why not?"

Blunt and irritating. Typical.

Nevertheless, Padme had to pull herself away from the sudden and alarming contemplation of his eyes into which she had inexplicably fallen.

She tried staring at her computer screen again, attempting unsuccessfully to derive some meaning from the text onscreen. The effort gave her an air of distraction which helped to lessen her extreme embarrassment. In spite of her efforts, Padme still felt a blush creeping into her cheeks as she planned her reply.

Not annoying? If only I could say as much for you…

"You're not thinking nice things, Padme."

His voice cut into her thoughts, abruptly silencing their rude drift. Her eyes snapped up, a trickle of worry in the back of her mind that he might have misinterpreted her silence, but he was smiling. She smiled back - until a sudden thought drove it from her face.

"Can you – can you read my thoughts?" She cringed at her stutter, and tried to appear unfazed. Vader laughed.

"No. Not with any precision, anyway. But I could definitely feel their overarching…," he gestured broadly, "…disdain, I think."

Padme didn't even try to contain her laugh. Vader grinned.

"Yes, disdain is definitely the word." He leaned back in his chair, and Padme could feel his intense perusal of her face as she again turned to her console. Her typing filled the companionable silence.

"What do you want, Padme?"

She flicked her eyes to his for a moment. "What?"

"Out of life," he clarified. "If you could have anything, accomplish anything, what would it be?"

The question had appeared out of nowhere and caught Padme completely off guard. She scrambled for an answer, flustered as always by Vader's penetrating gaze and his abrupt manner. But this incident was complicated by the fact that she honestly did not have an answer to his question.

She grasped for the best approach… and settled on honesty, as she always seemed to in his presence.

"I don't know," she said quietly, not looking up from her work.

He snorted. "You must have some idea," he pressed, seeming truly interested in her answer.

Padme looked at him again, holding his gaze a bit longer this time before dropping her eyes to her console once more. "Why in the stars would you be interested in the answer to that question?" She filled her tone with what she hoped was playful indignance and hoped that he would sense her discomfort and let it go.

"Why indeed," he muttered darkly, but he ignored his own interjection and continued his attack. Padme felt a little like a blockaded planet. "I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know."

"I used to want to be a senator." But that had been a different life and she had been a different person. Drop it, she thought desperately.

But, as always, Vader pressed ahead when he encountered resistance. "And now?" he prodded.

Padme tapped her nails against the desk and pretended to study her console's screen. Lord Vader continued to study her face intensely, as if trying to pluck the answer from her thoughts. She was sincerely glad that he couldn't.

"I said I don't know."

"You mean you don't want to know."

That got her attention. "What?" she demanded, finally looking him in the eye. She could see he was pleased at having provoked her into engaging in the conversation. How very typical. He seemed unaware of her discomfort with the topic and studied her eyes as he always did. She tried valiantly to shutter them.

"You don't have any dreams, do you, Padme? And you seem the dreaming type too… you had dreams, so what happened to them?"

They were quickly moving into an area that Padme had no desire to go. This was ground she was not at all eager to tread, not even with him, her strange and unexpected friend. But who else had ever asked her, she thought quietly. Who else had ever cared?

"They died," she whispered bluntly, "with my family."

She couldn't look at him after saying it, but suddenly, in that way which was so common when she was in his presence, the very air around her seemed to come alive with electricity. If she concentrated, she could almost make out what emotion of his had just filled the air… she felt… anguish.

His pain had just filled the room and was nearly suffocating in its intensity. She dared a glance at him and saw him studying her with a tightly clenched jaw and blazing eyes. In a flash of intuition she realized something almost spontaneously.

He understood.

The expression in his eyes was one of raw grief, the sort that couldn't be acquired through empathy. She would have doubted that he was capable of empathy, or capable of feeling much of anything if she had put any stock in the stories of Lord Vader that circulated like a poisonous fog around the Senate. She'd seen him angry, but this was different. She saw love - and the grief that came with losing it. He had loved somebody… and lost them. The revelation was shocking and she dropped her eyes to her hands, too overwhelmed by his grief and hers to pretend to work. The tingling, electric feeling in the air receded a little and she finally worked up both the control over her own feelings and the courage she required to ask him the question that immediately intruded upon her thoughts.

Still examining her hands, she whispered, "Did you lose someone too?"

She resisted the urge to flinch when she felt rather than observed his anger. But when she finally raised her eyes again, she was just in time to witness the flame of anger die away into the ashes of weariness and grief. "Yes," he muttered without elaboration. His eyes, normally the most animated part of his face, always blazing with some powerful emotion - usually anger - were strangely and unnaturally dull. For the first time in many years, Padme felt a surge of full-hearted empathy. And with it came a realization that almost took her breath away.

She was not alone in her grief, she was not the only one who had ever had the legs knocked out from under them and been swept away into the crushing depths of despair. For the first time in so long, she stepped completely out of herself and felt… free.

She acted on emotion then, whole-heartedly ignoring what she knew was best, and slowly wrapped her slender fingers around one of the hands that he had rested on the desk. I understand, she thought, somehow feeling as though she were whispering even in the confines of her mind. Vader gave a start when her skin touched his. It was almost as though he wasn't used to being touched. But that wasn't possible… was it?

He stared at her hand, then lifted his eyes and stared at her. He seemed… lost. She smiled weakly at him. It was a smile hemmed in by sorrow, but suddenly he seemed to gain some traction on whatever mental ground he had been traversing. He returned her grip lightly and a bit of life returned to his eyes. His eyes, she reflected (not for the first time that night), were beautiful when they weren't clouded with anger.

"We're a sorry pair," he grunted after a few moments of silence. Padme couldn't help but laugh. And after the surge of grief she had just experienced, it felt wonderful to fill the aching void it left behind with a surge of joy. Vader grinned at her, starting to laugh himself.

They laughed together, their hands remaining clasped. Vader refused to release her hand even when his eyes started streaming. He utilized his other hand, remaining tightly clamped onto her hand during the process. Padme noticed, but said nothing. She liked the feeling of his hand in hers. It had been so long since she had felt near anyone. And then, all at once, it had happened. He emerged, and suddenly she found herself with a companion on the lonely road of grief. A friend, even.

Vader remained a little longer, talking about more pleasant things and succeeding utterly in prying Padme away from her work. When he finally left, Padme had a smile on her face.

She continued to look forward to his unannounced visits.

Goodbye, Anakin. The words were still ringing pleasantly in his ears as he made his way through the deserted corridors of the Senate and towards his landing pad. He had spent another pleasant evening with Padme, and nothing could dampen his spirits.

His private comm chimed. Given the lateness of the hour, it was likely a call from the Emperor himself. Well, he thought coldly, almost nothing. He held the comm in his palm, and pressed the accept button. One of the Emperor's assistants, a tall, owlish man who seemed more ghost than substance, appeared in flickering, holographic miniature before him.

"Lord Vader," he began with a small bow. "The Emperor has requested your presence at the Imperial Palace. Immediately."

"I will be there without delay." Another tiny bow and the image evaporated, leaving no trace except the fear coiling in his stomach. A direct summons was never a good thing. The Emperor usually communicated via message even for emergencies, because it was always the fastest method. Summoning him for an audience meant that there was time to spare, and that a personal touch was needed for whatever he had in mind. Vader swallowed, feeling the warmth and calm that always sprouted in Padme's presence suddenly wither and grow cold. He steeled himself inwardly and arranged his face into a blank canvas. Palpatine must not get any whiff of his plans to overthrow him. He began to wall off his mind so that he might appear loyal and calm... and unreadable.

He also tucked away all thoughts of Padme Naberrie.

"Rise, Lord Vader." Palpatine coldly regarded his wayward apprentice as he stood. It was the first occasion in several months in which Palpatine had seen Vader in person. He reached out toward Vader in the Force, lightly testing his presence; he needed to be absolutely sure that he had been emotionally compromised before he implemented his strategy.

He felt Vader's general confusion about why he had been summoned to appear before his master, as well as a vague aura of unease. He was nervous about being in his master's presence and he wasn't hiding it well. Vader was usually capable of projecting an almost impenetrable wall that masked his thoughts and feelings; his failure now indicated a lack of concentration and an unusual level of distraction. Something was occupying far too much of his apprentice's mind. Palpatine was almost certain that he knew the source of Vader's distraction. He briefly considered foregoing a deeper examination, but he decided that a lesson was in order for his young apprentice. He smiled slowly.

"It has been quite some time since our last meeting, my young apprentice," he began sedately, allowing none of his hostile intent into his tone. Vader swallowed. "Yes, my Master. What do you require of me?"

Palpatine felt Vader's eagerness to leave seeping through the cracks in his shield like warm air escaping through a door that wasn't quite shut. "I merely wish to hear of your activities in my absence. Have you enjoyed your new responsibilities in the Senate? I hear you made quite an impression on your first day." He left his voice ambiguous, delighting in Vader's mental squirming as he tried to determine whether Palpatine was pleased by this account.

"I hope so, my Master," he finally responded neutrally.

Palpatine cackled lightly, and moved in for his final assault. "And what of your friendship with young Padme Naberrie?" He flung the question at Vader quickly, like a blow designed to throw him off balance. It worked perfectly. Vader had only just registered the question and Palpatine felt the first spike of fear snaking through his apprentice's shields when he thrust his mental fingers into the cracks and pried viciously.

Vader's response was lost in a shriek of sudden pain as he fell to his knees, clutching his head. Palpatine's smile had twisted into a sneer. They struggled momentarily, but Palpatine had managed to get the upper hand early by exploiting Vader's distraction. He won quickly and proceeded to rummage through Vader's thoughts, taking care to cause as much pain as possible.

Filtering out Vader's screams, he searched for his apprentice's thoughts about Naberrie. He soon found precisely what he had expected. He withdrew from Vader's mind suddenly, leaving his unfortunate second-in-command gasping on the ground in shock.

"So," he began quietly, as though he had not just violated his apprentice's mind and stolen his closely-guarded thoughts, "it's true then." He turned to face Vader, who was struggling to get to his feet. "You have formed an emotional attachment to this girl."

Vader, still sweating and breathing raggedly from the pain he had just experienced, simply looked at his master. Palpatine continued. "I ought to have her eliminated."

"No!" Vader's outburst echoed loudly in the empty throne room. His desperate face was broadcasting his fear just as loudly. Palpatine's sneer returned. "You should have been honest with me, Lord Vader. You would have saved yourself so much pain." He relished the sensation of Vader's fear tingling in the air before he spoke again. "But," he began, cruelly pausing to seat himself comfortably on his throne. "I have decided to overlook your lapse of judgment."

Now the air tingled with Vader's relief. He looked ill after the mental abuse he had just suffered, and Palpatine decided to cut the conversation short. He didn't want to provoke Vader. At least not until he had utterly secured his hold over him. "You may see this girl," - he ignored Vader's expression of slack-jawed astonishment - "Provided that it does not interfere in any way with your duties. Particularly your absolute obedience to me. If there is a hint of insubordination, Lord Vader, I will punish the girl and only then will I move on to you."

Vader had recovered the power of speech by the time Palpatine finished. "Yes, my Master," he replied in a voice roughened from screaming. Palpatine dismissed him quickly then, studying his apprentice's back as he swept out of the room, trailing an inky black cloak behind him. His aura of confusion trailed behind him as well, dissipating as his distance increased.

He smiled and cackled again, allowing himself a brief moment of private triumph. He had singlehandedly backed Lord Vader into a corner. There would be no coup now. He leaned back in his throne and steepled his fingers, turning to regard the passing traffic.

There would be no coup ever.