Hey guys,

I am completely new to this, so it would be great if some of you could read and review my story. Of course I hope you all enjoy it.

I also have to admit that I am no native English speaker, let alone writer, so any corrections on grammar, vocabulary, idioms etc. are most welcome! I am trying to learn, so don't spare me any criticism. Thanks to all of you!

Enjoy!

5. The Sith lord

The room was not only plain, it was bare. Absolutely empty. A cell, she concluded. I am in a prison. Maybe on Coruscant. Maybe on a starcruiser.

Hissing, her cell door swished open. Darth Vader, she remembered with a shudder, I recall him being shorter. He is even more imposing than the last time I saw him.

"Nyé Murano." His mechanical voice made icy shudders run down her spine.

"Vader." She forced herself to answer his greeting that was none as calmly as possible.

Then she stared just back at him. Why was she here? What had happened?

The memories twitched through her like flashlights. The arrest. The process. A white room. Glowing carbonite…

Frozen alive. The Sith lord's mask stared down at her steadfastly.

"You have made a mistake, Vader," she stated coldly. "Freezing humans alive is illegal. Even in the galactic imperium there are laws you have to follow."

"Since you lost your conscience a great deal of time has passed." Vader's mechanical voice stayed conventional. "The imperator changed the laws as you are soon going to discover. He has broken the resistance and eliminated his enemies."

Something in her face froze.

Vader continued without emotion: "Oh yes, all of his enemies, his enemies and their families."

This stroke almost left her unconscious. The resistance broken. Her friends dead, their families eliminated… families that had been as innocent as infants. Dead. All of them. She had abandoned them.

When she finally looked back up, her voice was as bitter and cold as the hard carbonite that had kept her all that time and stopped her from doing her duty. "But then he has to have eliminated all the life in the Galaxy. What is his aim? Ruling a world of corpses?"

Vader stepped towards her, his mask staring into her eyes. Her throat became tight, unbelievably tight… Vader moved a finger – the force took her and darted her off the table she had been lying on. She still could not breathe… then the choking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. A warning, no more.

She managed to get her breath back to normal, and since he had not spoken yet, she could not stop provoking him further.

"You know, Vader, you ought to know better. After destroying everything I ever cared about – do you honestly believe that you will be able to frighten me with pain or threads to my life? You can never again hurt me as much as you just did." Her laughter was as bitter as she felt. She could taste blood on her lip, she had probably bitten herself… it tasted sweet and salty at the same time. Was it mixed up with tears? So she was crying, without feeling the tears running down her cheeks. The freezing process and the shock obviously had battered her even more than she had dared to fear.

Carefully she stood up, her legs trembling. Slowly she stepped towards him who was still watching her without a word, laid her head back until she could stare right up into the unfeeling, plain, sinister mask.

All her longing was to hurt him as much as he had hurt her, but she did not know how to. And then she knew what to ask him in order to make him suffer. Especially since the answer to that question was of deepest interest to herself.

"So, have you found any trace of Padmé? Or have you stopped searching for her after condemning me for her death?"

This time, Vader grabbed her neck physically, dashing her off with a scream of hatred and then towering up over her barely alive body.

"Padmé is dead, because you killed her, Nyé! It has been proven!"

He turned and rushed out of the door before she could find the strength to a teasing reply.

As he already had left, Nyé sat up and looked at the closed door through which he had vanished. "If she really is dead, Anakin, she died because you broke her heart. You betrayed all your ideals and, even worse, you betrayed her love!"