WHAT IS REAL

IX

Padme sat in her cell, allowing tears to slide down her cheek unbidden. It seemed she did nothing but cry. Sometimes she cried from pain, sometimes because she was locked away. But mostly she cried because she lost the love of her life. Everything had been stripped from her. Her power had easily been stripped when she had "died", but that hardly bothered her. When she had woken up, she had no children. 

She remembered vaguely giving birth to a boy and girl, but they were nowhere to be found when she woke up. She guessed because she had woken up in the morgue that the children were sent somewhere to live. She could only hope it is somewhere kind. She longed for them but knew that would never happen. The hardest and most heartbreaking though was losing her husband. 

He had been her heartbeat for three years. Her love. Her life, her breath, even her completeness. Now she was half a person. She even wondered if you could call it half a person. She really felt like pieces scattered in the wind. Palpatine was determined to destroy every single piece that was left of her.

He first destroyed her trust in him when she had woken up. She had opened her eyes to a very harsh bright and unforgiving light shining straight in her eyes. She could not see anything. She tested the movement of her hand to find they were tied to the table. She remembered nothing at that moment of what had happened to her in the hanger on Naboo. The bright light and the fact that she could not move her hands scared her so she had called out,

"Anakin! Anybody! Can you help me!"

A harsh yet very familiar voice answered, "My dear Senator what is troubling you?"

"Chancellor, where are you?"

"Over here my dear. Now why are you hollering so loudly?"

"Chancellor why am I tied here? Where am I?"

"You are in my private med center. I had your hands tied down. You were out cold for two days. I could not risk you hurting yourself.

Please call me Emperor. I am no longer the Chancellor." No longer the chancellor? Emperor? Why and when did this happen? She puzzled.

"I can see you don't remember allow me to refresh your memory," he said as he played a holo of the last day of the Republic and the first day of the Empire. All things came back to her in an instant. Panic seized her and she tried scrambling away from the figure that seemed way too close. She saw his leering face and saw the evil cold eyes that smiled so eerily at her. Palpatine licked his lips and she could not tell if it was to actually provide them with moisture or to emphasize the fact that he was very happy with her in this position. She shuttered visibly and Palpatine laughed.