A/N: Yep over a year :/ Sorry about that. I have not been idle but 1) my writer brain is taking its sweet time convalescing from grad school and 2) my sisters can't stop won't stop having babies so a lot of my evenings have been spent frantically crocheting baby toys and 3) I have been gnawing for awhile on whether to keep or cut this chapter. It needed a lot of chewing the cud to reach the form of it that felt right.
Compared to what I usually write, this chapter has fairly graphic violence in a couple of paragraphs. Your mileage may vary. If you do find it disturbing, I'm afraid that's exactly what I was aiming for.
Also: I have not read the Darth Plagueis novel. I gleaned what I could from Wookieepedia and played my artistic license card from there :)
CANTO IX
"Remember," he replied, "O perjured one!
The horse remember, that did teem with death;
And all the world be witness to thy guilt.'"
- Dante's Inferno, Canto XXX
Today he is taking a little field trip. It has put his personal guards and most of his advisors into an extraordinary dither. None of them can fathom why, with an entire fleet of the galaxy's finest culinary artists on his payroll and a palace equipped with every conceivable luxury and amenity, he should put himself to the trouble of traveling out of Imperial City for the wholly inferior pleasure of taking a private lunch at a mid-level Nubian brasserie located obnoxiously close to a public spaceport. Amedda and Pestage, recollecting days of yore when the much younger Senator Palpatine of the Chommel Sector had occasionally hosted dinners in this establishment, have put it down to elderly nostalgia. They are, as usual, wrong.
He leaves the guards in the main dining room, little to their liking, and enters the private suite alone.
The interior is nearly unchanged from his first recollection of it many decades ago. Some of the artwork is new, a piece of furniture here or there, but otherwise he might be arriving from his internship as a junior assistant to Senate Aide Vidar Kim for the twice-monthly meal with his dotard father. Oversized gauze drapes on the windows, floor-length tablecloths dragging long golden tassels over the bright scarlet carpets, no straight edges where a curlicue could possibly be forced: the place is a monument to Naboo's worst aesthetic sins. There had of course been no end of better, more convenient restaurants in the Senate district; but rather than patronize any of these Cosinga Palpatine, dyed-in-the-wool Naboo isolationist, had insisted his teenage son spend an hour each way on public lifts across two megadistricts so he could excoriate him in the comfort of a more homelike atmosphere. That, and he'd liked the way the staff bent over backward to cater to his every whim.
He pauses at the overladen and overfestooned table to select a spherical, seed-studded motchour from the tray of leedu. Naboo's traditional hors d'oeuvre, and one of the things this place has always done well. Like Cosinga, this restaurant had ultimately served his purposes despite its…inferiorities. As Senator for Naboo, he'd found it an effective setting for wooing prospective high-value assets — Amedda, Pestage, Tarkin, even the young Anakin Skywalker once or twice. Informal, unfashionable, sentimental; a place where he could give his guests the impression of meeting the "real" Senator Palpatine, a little more homesick and a little less cosmopolitan than he presented himself in public. Not that he's set foot here since — oh, before the Clone Wars, surely. The logistics of such a homely place don't lend themselves to the needs of Supreme Chancellors, much less Emperors.
But today is a special occasion. Today, this very hour, marks the seventieth anniversary of his first taste of genuine, life-and-death power. A day for revisiting scenes of old humiliation and labor, the better to taste again the sweetness of early conquests — and whet his appetite for greater ones to come.
Taking a waiting wine glass from the table and swirling it in the light, he consults memory for the last time he was here…not Anakin, that had been in the first few months of the boy's arrival on Coruscant, and he distinctly remembers discussing the finer points of his plans for Outbound Flight's destruction with Doriana over kaf and a rather good shuura flambee years after that. Was that it, or...
"I asked you to lunch."
There — just discernible in the dancing gauze drapes and shafts of light pouring through the bank of windows, wearing a smile that is ghostly even for her. She gestures, renewing the old invitation.
"Ah, yes." Once more, he condescends to accept, settling himself at the head of the table where he had sat on that previous occasion. "A private affair then too, was it not, my dear? Just after you'd arrived to take up your seat in the Senate."
"An occasion for thanking old mentors."
He lifts his hand a centimeter or two from the armrest, the slightest gesture of imperial clemency. "The gratification of seeing one's proteges attain new success is reward enough."
She tips an eyebrow, eyes glinting a distinct challenge, and he glimpses again the bold, ambitious little minx she was at twenty-three. "I'm glad you think so, considering how little use I was to you after that."
"Ah, yes. The Finance Committee. I confess I had forgotten that offer I made. A body of considerable importance…at the time."
"With jurisdiction over the Trade Federation no less." The arch look still dances in her eyes. "A little heavy-handed, I must say."
She'll smart for that. Not least for being right. He'd misjudged the young Senator Amidala that day. Seats on the Finance Committee had been a plum prize in the last decades of the Republic, the kind of political capital Supreme Chancellors would not usually dream of wasting on a brand-new junior delegate who'd yet to sit a full general session. But the events of the Naboo invasion had demonstrated her potential, and he'd wanted that potential under his thumb, and had never previously (nor ever since) met a twenty-three-year-old human canny enough to resist being offered her enemies' heads on a golden platter. Thank you, Chancellor, but I must decline.
"Credit where credit is due, my lady; you did know how to spot a trap." She inclines her head. "Let us hope young Skywalker is similarly gifted. I understand his doting father has set a trap for him also. Some backwater world by the name of Bespin, is it not? Baited with a selection of his closest friends? How refreshing to see Lord Vader approaching a problem with his mind for once."
"Heavy-handed," she says, and the sly lift of one corner of her mouth says: like teacher, like student.
"If one wishes a Skywalker to understand a thing, one must beat it into them." He curls his fingers leisurely over the carven flowing ends of the armrests — any seat is a throne that he chooses to use — and shakes his head sorrowfully. "Lord Vader has found parenthood a sore trial these past three years. Wayward children can test the patience of a saint, after all, and Lord Vader…well, I scarcely need remind you of all people, my lady, he hasn't much self-control to begin with. I fear young Skywalker is in for a most memorable lesson. If he survives it, that is."
"Luke is not his father."
"He's cleverer, I grant you, but cleverness only goes so far."
"Usually it goes too far," she says — insolence that has gotten worthier enemies than Padmé Amidala killed, but he's enjoying it so far. Nobody still living dares to spar with him these days.
"A fine point. After all, the boy has health and vigor on his side. Perhaps he'll win the day after all. Would that be to your liking, my lady?"
She steps out from the midst of the curtains, the soft flowing gown falling still as the planet's manufactured breeze fails. Her head tilts a degree to one side. "Would it be to yours, Your Excellency?"
"Exceedingly. Patricide is such an empowering experience."
He bares every tooth in his most malicious smile, but she doesn't flinch. Perhaps haunting him for over two decades has thickened her delicate skin at last. "Why lie, Your Excellency?"
"Oh, I assure you it is the pure unvarnished truth."
She raises an eyebrow, coming closer to him. "You want power for no one but yourself. If killing his father would truly make Luke powerful, it would be the last thing you would want him to do."
She is standing almost over him now; he leans back a little further, lets his smile widen into lewdness. "My dear. I only said it was an empowering experience. For whom is another matter."
"Exactly." She bends down shockingly close, for all the galaxy like a mother scolding a misbehaving child. "Tell me, then. Who became powerfulon the Arjun seventy years ago?"
Red fills his vision. The rage is total, instantaneous, he can feel it swell through him from the core out into his fingertips, can feel the fire shrieking to pour out with a power beyond even his usual measure, a power that he instinctively knows would reduce any living target to ash in a matter of minutes —
— a power utterly useless against Padmé Amidala.
With a pain like inhaling liquid, he sucks it all back inward. If it cannot be used on the object of his wrath, it must not be used at all. Certainly not in her presence. He assembles the smile again, slowly, deliberately. "If you know that name, you know the answer too, don't you? Or would you like me to describe it to you?"
He nods past her at the long bank of windows. "The dining lounge on the Arjun had a bank of full-height viewports, just like those. I took him by the back of the neck and smashed his face into the frame between the two left-most windows. Seventeen times. He was dead long before that, of course, but it was so fascinating to see his nasal structure flattening into his skull, until it all became level. I found fragments of his teeth lodged in my bootsoles the next day. I kept those boots. I wore them when I swore the oath of the Chancellor, and for my coronation too naturally. Does that answer your question?"
She straightens, passing back toward the windows and curtains, her form dissipating in the midday light — but her voice turns back, suddenly sharp and incisive, the side of her he tends to forget after two decades of her phantasmic handwringing. "You came here today to remember. Then remember it all."
He considers throwing the wineglass at her. No. No, he won't give her the satisfaction of knowing she's drawn blood for once. He'll have his vengeance in due time, real vengeance, with teeth that sink down and crack her ghost's bones to the marrow. He knows how to wait for it. He learned that lesson in this very room as a boy of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, swallowing Cosinga's condescension and contempt and substandard domestic wines, sustaining himself with two certainties — that his father would die someday, and that the leedu would be good.
He chooses a sembaal from the platter and sinks his teeth in, letting the soft, slightly gummy texture and floral fragrance resurrect memory into flesh-and-blood keenness. With his eyes closed he's in the dining lounge on the Arjun, the table set according to Cosinga's inviolable rules with the traditional first course — six platters of leedu, six different kinds, the same as he always ordered at the restaurant. His mother had decorated them with pearl sugar and honey. His father had redecorated them with sprinkles of blood. He can just recall the heady metallic notes cutting through the sweetness, that delicious first taste of true power — power Amidala doesn't begin to comprehend, whatever she thinks — the pulsing giddy vitality of panting over the cooling corpse of the despot that had tried to possess him and dictate his future for seventeen years, blood and honey equally sweet on his tongue…seven decades later and he's yet to equal the euphoria of that moment, except maybe for Alderaan.
And that was the only reason to come here at all — to evoke the memory as strongly as possible. Certainly not to inflict inferior provincial cuisine on his palate. He glances contemptuously at the table, set with a dozen untouched courses over which the current owners of this place no doubt agonized for weeks in advance, and stands to leave. His boot slips suddenly — he stumbles, catches himself at the edge of the table, looks down to see —
— a long skinny braid. Bright reddish-gold hair mired in blood, slick and rolling beneath his foot. It's trailing out from beneath the table. Reemu's hair. She crawled under to hide from the monster like six-year-old girls do, Sheeshu, I won't tell on you, I promise, but she would have told somebody someday, the same as Ruek and Cos and Father's golden favorite Arjun, the same as his gibbering threadbare doormat of a mother, so he'd had to, hadn't he, he'd had no choice, that was the price, that was what it cost for the pleasure of ending his father his stupid stupid father this is all his father's fault everything is his father's fault he deserved what he got he wishes he could kill him again for making him do all this, for making him step on her, on her little skinny braid, right on top of the ryoo flower she'd threaded into the end of it with her clever little fingers, even though she knew Father would cuff her for putting weeds in her hair like some peasant girl, because she loved flowers more than she was scared of Father, she was so brave right up until — until he — and now he doesn't remember his name, he doesn't remember why he was so angry, remember, remember it all Sheev Palpatine remember, remember that Reemu hates to have her hair messy so he sits her on his knees to fix the braid and does it wrong because she won't sit up straight and tries again and again and tells her it's alright, really, he didn't mean it like that, but she's got to sit up and sit still or he'll never get this fixed even if he tries again and again and again and —
You needn't remember all that, purrs a voice. It sounds like his Master, strong, wise — but of course not wise enough in the end. These little messes happen. Young man, you've started to realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. No, no, no one else will know about this, it'll be our secret. I'll make the arrangements, I know how to handle these things, I'll teach you. Join me and I will complete your training. I will never tell anyone what happened to your father. — that you killed him — I have foreseen your destiny — join me and together we will rule the galaxy — come with me…I'm proud of you, my boy.
He blinks. He is in the restaurant where he used to come with his father when he was a boy. His attention must have wandered for a moment; despite his best efforts and extensive study and relentless experimentation, he is not yet wholly immune to the creeping effects of old age. But when his Death Star is ready again, when he can use it to generate sufficient amplitudes of power, then, perhaps —
A feeling of pressure below his foot draws his gaze down. The tassel of the tablecloth is lying beneath his boot, bright gold on the blood-red carpet. Something about it feels distantly familiar, but even as he tries to catch it the feeling dissipates.
No matter. If he's forgotten, it obviously wasn't important.
tbc