Home Fiction Adult Fiction Art Mail List Staff Links

Title: The Sith Lord and the Scientist section ‘B’
Author: Maia (maia@bastcastle.org)
Rating: mostly PG-13 with some NC-17 here and there.
Characters: Vader, OFC, a few other OC’s, and familiar faces.
Category: AU, Adventure, Romance, some Angst.

Disclaimer: I am not making any money from this, and he doesn’t belong to me. Darn.

Summary: Back in the Empire, Vader finds that deceptions eventually do catch up to you. To complicate matters, he quickly discovers that having a woman in his life is not as easy as he thought it would be.

The Executor, Fondor, Fondor System. Year 0, Month 4.

DAY 35

***

The familiar kaleidoscope of hyperspace disappears, replaced by stars and my new flagship hanging in space above Fondor.

Home. I have made it back.

I shift Maia a little in my arms. Holding her for two days has produced a few cramps and it will be a relief to have her off of my lap. She is still deep in the trance I put her into and doesn’t stir when I touch her face then brush my hand down to rest over our son. He’s considerably harder to find now, his presence swamped and concealed by the Force flowing around us.

Good.

I don’t want anyone to know of his existence until I can protect them both.

And I especially don’t want my master to learn about him.

Not yet.

Not until he has accepted Maia as my wife.

Not until I am sure I can persuade him to give my son to me.

I trace Maia’s cheekbone with a finger. My little goddess. Living with me will not be easy for you to adapt to. You won’t be free to do as you wish any longer. I can’t let you defy or disobey me in public. And breaking you of your stubbornness and impertinence, necessary as it is, is going to be unpleasant for both of us.

Her hair spills down over my chest as I move her again. A flashing light has told me the sentry beacons have picked up the identification signal from my fighter. Griff will be hailing me soon and I need access to the comm-panel.

‘Lord Vader?’ Griff asks, right on time.

‘Yes, Admiral,’ I acknowledge.

‘My Lord, we feared you were lost,’ he admits.

I doubt Griff was overly concerned because his ambitions are to replace me. His only worry would be what the Emperor might do upon hearing of my disappearance.

‘Not lost, merely detoured for a while,’ I calmly state.

‘Then we are grateful for your return,’ he offers.

More insincere interest in my welfare. I wonder how much of his time he spent maneuvering for political position instead of overseeing the construction of my ship.

I look down at my wife. Griff is a notorious womanizer who cannot be trusted. It would be wisest to hide her from him until I have settled her status with my master.

‘I will use the small hangar,’ I decide. ‘Your presence is not necessary, Admiral, and I would strongly suggest you use your time to prepare a full report on your progress or lack thereof while I have been away.’

That ought to keep him occupied and out of my way.

‘Commander Thirsk will meet me instead,’ I order, then turn off the comm.

My old friend can be trusted.

I fly into the smallest completed hangar and guide my TIE to the storage rack. Thirsk is already waiting, I note as I shut the engines down. With a gesture, I release the hatch, and swing the cockpit door open.

Now to get Maia out.

‘Commander,’ I call.

Thirsk promptly peers in to see what the problem is. He can’t hide his surprise at what he finds.

‘My Lord?’ he asks, staring at my wife and I.

‘Help me get her out, Thirsk,’ I order.

He reaches in to grab Maia under the arms while I lift her up. My cramped thigh muscles start screaming at me the moment her weight is off of them. I wait until she is safely out of my way, then try to pull myself upright. The pain gets worse. I ignore it and somehow drag myself from my ship onto the access walkway. For a moment I sway a bit drunkenly. Hopefully I can walk this off.

Thirsk is cradling Maia in his arms, but he hands her over the instant I have recovered my balance. I can see him speculating, measuring the situation, deciding if he should say something about it or not.

‘Permission to speak freely, Commander,’ I allow, wanting to hear what he is thinking.

‘Your bondmate she is,’ he rather astutely observes in his usual blunt manner.

I stare at him. This is one secret I don’t want out.

‘Thirsk,’ I growl in warning, letting a bit of menace creep into my voice.

He ignores it and bestows one of his rare smiles on me instead.

‘It’s about time, my Lord,’ Thirsk tells me. ‘You need an heir or two and she looks to be a good match for you.’

Speechless at his unexpected impudence, I push past him to cover my astonishment and begin to head to the Medical wing. Maia needs to be looked after properly.

‘You will be silent about this, Commander Thirsk,’ I warn as we walk to the turbolift I need. ‘Your oath to me requires it.’

‘I swore I would protect you and yours on Talasea long ago, my Lord,’ he reminds me. ‘I haven’t forgotten that day.’

I nod in answer. Thirsk has always been completely unshakeable in his loyalty.

‘She will need to be guarded when you are away. I will keep her safe,’ he offers, ‘you won’t have to worry about that.’

I let myself smile a little. Maia will be safe under his watch. Only my Noghri have ever been able to get the better of him.

The ‘lift door opens. We are here.

‘I will speak with you about this later, Commander,’ I dismiss him with a nod.

‘Doctor Trever,’ I call, drawing the Chief Medical Officer from his office. ‘I have a patient for you.’

That earns me an irritated look which is quickly concealed. Doctors, I think with a bit of contempt. A necessary evil. At least Trever is one of the best and he will do as ordered. I don’t give him a chance to defer Maia’s treatment to one of the 2-1B’s.

‘She’s unconscious and has been in that state for two days,’ I tell him. ‘You will need to treat her for that and repair her eyes. I suspect she has no immunity to any of the common diseases, so see that she is protected against them all.’

He looks surprised at that last bit. Then again, it’s rare to come across a world which has been without any outside contact.

‘I will do a complete work-up, then, my Lord,’ Trever confirms my orders.

‘I will call you when she is ready,’ I decide.

He returns to his office and whatever task he had been busy with.

I carry Maia into one of the treatment rooms and lay her down on the bed. With a curt command, the medical droid backs away.

I could let the ‘droid see to her, but no one but myself is ever going to undress my wife. The buttons are quickly undone, the laces loosened in back. Her dress comes off with a few strategic tugs. For a moment I struggle with folding her gown, then give up and shove it at the ‘droid.

‘Look after this and have it sent to my quarters,’ I order.

The ‘droid has no trouble dealing with the meters of cloth, I note, as I take a soft robe out of one of the storage compartments set in the wall. Wrapping Maia in the robe is far easier than fighting with her gown was. I remove her jewelry next, tucking the necklace and earrings in with our marriage contract.

I quickly plait her hair, remembering how I used to do this for Padme with each twist. There is a twinge in my chest with those memories which I quickly banish.

I settle her comfortably on the bed, covering her with a warm blanket as I do, and brush my fingers down her face before I leave.

Maia is my wife, my Lady. Padme is gone.

And Maia will be the one who replaces the child I lost with her.

***

Month 5.

DAY 1

My awareness returns to me slowly. First sound, then smell. I can hear my own breathing, the sound of my pulse in my ear and the beeping of monitors, but little else. The place I am in smells sharply of antiseptics, and soaps, the usual hospital odors. It is too bright in here so I don’t bother to open my eyes yet. Someone has twisted my hair into a tight braid from the tension on my scalp and the weight of the hair pulling on my skin. My dress has been removed and I am wrapped in some sort of simple robe. I know this because I can no longer feel the sleeves tightly buttoned against my arms. One arm is covered in tape and tubes, and I guess an i.v. drip is hooked up from the sensation of cold liquid running into a vein. Somebody must have been monitoring me because I hear a door open and footsteps approach the bed. No point in playing at being unconscious then, so I open my eyes and to my amazement can see perfectly without my glasses. Well, maybe your contacts are still in, I remind myself. The man I see is obviously a doctor, from his coat and demeanor. Time for the obvious questions.

‘Who are you?’ I ask.

‘Dr. Evan Trever, the Chief Physician,’ he replies, ‘I have been looking after you ever since you were brought in.’

I give him an odd look. Brought in from where? The observatory? My last memory is of saying goodbye to a certain Sith Lord before he was supposed to leave my planet. We were standing on the scaffolding beside his fighter and then what? I work away at the memory. I had turned away to think and then he had done what? Pulled me into his arms, held me a moment, and I had admitted my love for him, no doubt sounding like a cliché in a bad movie. If I hadn’t known he was leaving I would never have had the courage or nerve to say it. There was something slapped against my neck and all I remember after that is blackness. Obviously I had been deliberately knocked out. Well, I suppose it could be worse. At least the authorities should assume that what I have been up to during the last four days was done under duress.

I pose the next obvious question, ‘Where am I? Valley Central or Regional?’ I need to know which hospital I am in.

The doctor is reluctant to answer me, and deflects the question, offering, ‘Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’

I shake my head in a negative and have a look about what appears to be a typical hospital room. No obvious information there on where I am. The doctor is middle-aged, with grey hair and soft brown eyes. He is watching me closely, and I don’t like the scrutiny.

‘All right. No more evasions. I want to know where I am,’ I say firmly, hoping I sound more confident than I feel.

‘You are in neither of the locations you just mentioned and it is not my place to tell you anything more about it,’ Trever admits.

Perfect. I am probably in some military hospital and in way over my head. Great. I don’t think my uncle Sam can get me out of this one either. He is probably fuming about the meteorite impact story I concocted to cover up Vader’s emergency landing.

‘All right, then,’ I continue to push, ‘what can you tell me?’

‘You have been unconscious for over two days and are mildly dehydrated. I am going to boost your immune system since you have been exposed to pathogens it doesn’t recognize.’ The doctor is precise and to the point, no wasted words here. He attaches a drip bag full of a straw colored fluid to the stand and replaces the other empty one with another of clear liquid. ‘I will be back in fifteen minutes to see how you are doing.’

The minutes tick away. I am bored of just looking at the walls, and decide to examine my arm and the drip bags. Two different i.v. taps have been expertly put into my veins and the tubes taped in place. I watch, fascinated, as the clear and slightly yellow fluids run down through the lines and into my arm. The bags I give a glance at, and then snap my eyes back to examine them in more detail. Something is not right here and it takes me a few seconds to figure it out. The labels are not in English or any language from Earth. They are written in Aurabesh, the script of the Empire. I stare at the bags in shock. What is going on here? I know there should not be enough room or air in a TIE fighter’s cockpit to transport two people. Unless, my brain’s logic circuit kicks in, he held you in his arms the entire trip and put you into some sort of hibernation trance to conserve oxygen. I close my eyes. This is not happening to me. This is not happening. I take another look at the labels. Nope, they are still in Aurabesh. I let out a reluctant sigh and half-heartedly accept the fact that I am no longer on Earth. Question is, where am I?

When the doctor returns, I pounce. ‘I am on board the Executor, aren’t I, and a certain Sith Lord is responsible, is he not?’

Trever stares at me, then removes the two needles from my arm. He doesn’t say a word, just bandages the bruised areas and leaves.

I hug my knees to my chest and wait. Sooner or later I suspect I will have a visitor and I have no idea what I am going to say to him. Somehow I know there is no point in demanding to be taken home. Vader has some reason for going to the trouble he did to get me here. I wonder what he expects a thirty-something astrophysicist and planetary geologist from an obviously isolated, backwater planet to do. My training must be hopelessly outdated compared to anything available in the Empire, so my scientific expertise can’t be it. While I am a mathematical savant, I will still need to learn their notation system to convey anything I discover. I can’t read their script, have no idea how their society really functions, and the only person I know is a cranky Sith Lord. Surely his choice to bring me here is not based solely on my love for him? The more I think about my situation, the more homesick and miserable I feel. I don’t belong here and I know it.

The door slides open. It is the doctor again, only this time he is carrying a bundle of clothes. I raise an eyebrow, but make no comment. Trever sets his burden down on the foot of the bed and says to me, ‘Put these on. I have orders to take you elsewhere. You have ten minutes.’

I wait until he has left before examining what he has brought me. There is a simple white underdress, ankle-length black dress, boots and belt, and assorted underclothes. Anything is better than the robe, so I quickly change and duck into what is their equivalent of a bathroom to wash my face and attend to my other needs. The doctor is true to his word, and returns on time. He walks me through the medical wing and down what appears to be a main corridor. After several turns and rides in transport tubes I am completely lost. We have been moving steadily up in the ship though, and I wonder where we are going. Trever has not said a word along our journey and I doubt he will tell me anything even if I ask. Finally we stop in front of a door, and when it opens, he waves me in and steps back. The door slides closed between us.

‘Maia,’ a rich baritone voice calls my name.

The room is dark and my eyes take a moment to adjust before I see him standing by a window with his back to me. I let my mind briefly wander over the possible approaches I might use, knowing he cannot sense my thoughts, a fact which greatly irritates the Sith Lord. In the end, I remain silent and simply walk over to stand beside him. He has been watching the various ships and construction vehicles moving about, I guess, as I look out at the scene in front of me. I rest my hand against the cold transparisteel and finally accept where I am. The question still remains as to what I am going to do about it.

I am determined that I am not going to make this easy for him and refuse to be the one who speaks first. He moves closer and I stubbornly keep my eyes fixed on the nearest ship. If his Lordship expects that he can take me away from everything I have ever known without asking me first, and get away with it, he had best think again.

‘You are an exceedingly stubborn woman,’ Vader finally acknowledges, ‘stubborn to a fault, in fact.’

When I give no response, he pulls me around to face him. I try to keep my eyes downcast, but he tips my chin up with his hand and forces me to look up.

‘Stop that,’ he warns, ‘I will not put up with any childish sulking from you. You are more than old enough to know better.’

‘You should have told me what you were going to do!’ I snap at him. My temper is going to get me into trouble, so I quickly rein it in.

‘You gave me permission to take you with me and I could not risk your refusal at the last minute, ‘the Sith Lord calmly tells me. ‘Regardless, you have sacrificed your career and probably your life on your home world in helping me. What would be left for you there?’ He pauses, then continues, his tone more serious, as he reminds me, ‘Maia, don’t ever forget that you swore yourself to me. You are mine. I will hold you to your pledge, your vow, and act on it as you asked me to tomorrow, when you have fully recovered. If you cannot accept this, then consider what I will do as payment of the debt I owe you.’

I yank myself away and glare at him, hurt to the quick. Somehow I keep my own voice level and firm, ‘I do not keep a balance book for debts owed by my friends. I would have helped you regardless of the price or reward, oath or no. I wanted nothing from you then and want nothing now.’

I spin away from him. The only thing I had hoped for was friendship and perhaps love or marriage since he appeared willing to offer it, but that seems to be impossible now. What a fool I have been. Tears threaten and I dig my nails into my palms. I will not let myself weep, not here, not now.

He stands behind me, motionless. The only sound is his regulated breathing. I wait, growing more dizzy and shaky with each passing moment. Something is wrong with me and I don’t know what it is. My entire body burns with a feeling of electricity and I am only half aware that he has started speaking again.

***

She doesn’t know or understand.

I wait a moment, hoping for some sort of realization on her part, but she simply stands there, back to me, shivering with shock and trying her best not to cry.

Lying to her about her oath was a terrible mistake. One I am now paying the price for.

‘It seems,’ I finally explain, ‘that you do not understand the situation at all or what your oath really means. Maia, you are my ...’

I break off mid-sentence as I see her legs give way. She slips to the floor, landing hard on her right hip and breaking her fall with her right arm. Her entire body is trembling violently in reaction to something. I move quickly to her side and drop to one knee in front of her. A hand stretches pleadingly towards me so I catch it in my own as I watch her try to ask for help before she slides into unconsciousness once again.

My wife needs medical attention right now.

‘Trever,’ I call, activating the comm as I pick Maia up off the floor, ‘something’s wrong. She’s collapsed on me.’

‘Your quarters are closer to both our positions than main Medical, my Lord,’ he tells me, ‘I’ll meet you there.’

He must be part way back to his office, then. If I need to I can always take Maia there later. I leave the meeting room, wife in arms and quickly cover the short distance to my quarters.

Trever is waiting for me when I arrive. I don’t give him a chance to ask what happened and start speaking the second the door closes behind us.

‘She was fine one moment, shivering the next, and then unconscious on the floor,’ I tell him.

The doctor follows me into my sleeping quarters where I set Maia down on the bed. She doesn’t show any signs of being aware at all - her body is completely limp. Trever waves me aside, sets about checking Maia’s vital signs, and draws a blood sample. He frowns at the results on the screen, looks a touch puzzled, then shakes his head.

‘Nothing appears to be wrong with her physically,’ he reports. ‘The readings are all normal. It’s probably just a delayed stress reaction, my Lord. I could rouse her for you with an adrenaline shot, but it would be better to just leave her alone. She’ll sleep for a while and wake when she’s ready to.’

I doubt the explanation is as simple as the one he just gave me, but the doctor seems satisfied that all will be well.

‘Good,’ I decide, then dismiss him. ‘You can go.’

Maia can sleep in my bed until I am certain I know what I am going to do with her. I make her comfortable, then retrieve a stack of reports from my office to read. In the days I had been away, these have been piling up and I need to finish going through them all. Settling myself at the small table with a datapad, I start working.

For a moment I pause, look longingly over at the bed. Last night I spent working, catching up on everything that I need to know about. I haven’t slept properly in almost two weeks and the lack of sleep has taken its toll on me. Tonight, I decide, once the hyperdrive engines have been tested, I will make sure I have a long uninterrupted rest. And, I add with a smile, have an enjoyable evening with my wife, once she is awake and I have asked her to marry me.

I force my attention back onto the report in my hand. The sooner I get through all of them, the better.

***

I do not know how long I was in that dark place before I woke, but now that I am conscious, I cannot figure out where I am. This is not a room in the medical wing, since the walls are a uniform gray color, not white, and seem to have a large number of closed compartments set into them. A complicated looking control panel is set into one wall but there are no hints as to what its functions are. There are two open doors facing one another and in the walls that run parallel to the large bed I have been securely tucked into. The only other furniture is a chair and table covered with plastic printouts in one corner of the room. Looking around reveals no obvious ways to identify where I have been taken, so I give up and take stock of how I feel. The dizziness and trembling are gone as is that peculiar, horrid burning sensation, and I am both tired and hungry. I am wearing only the light underdress, yet the temperature is warm enough that I am not cold.

I am starting to get bored, so I begin to muse. If I had wanted to make a fool of myself, I have certainly done an exceptionally good job of it this time. I should have somehow stayed on my feet until he finished what he was going to say before fainting on him. There is a part of me which knows that he will never complete the sentence he started before I blacked out. Another part of my mind wonders where the Dark Lord is.

As if in answer to my thoughts, the Sith Lord steps into the room through the door in the right hand wall. He glances at me, then walks over to the chair and gracefully seats himself before setting down the datapad in his hand. I idly wonder if he practices moving so that his robes and cloak fall into neat folds.

‘No, I don’t,’ he replies, ‘it’s a property of the fabric.’

I somehow know he is amused at my speculation though there is no hint of that emotion in his voice. The same idea must have occurred to both of us at the same time because I find myself gazing dumbstruck at him while he returns the stare. I had not spoken my musings aloud, only thought them to myself.

‘What,’ he asks me, curious, ‘did you just do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit, ‘just thought up an impertinent question.’

I am starting to feel nervous. How can I pick up on his emotions? I am no Force-sensitive, and he has never been able to sense anything from me before now, yet alone read a complete thought.

He rises from the chair and makes his way to where I have propped myself up. I watch him with a bit of trepidation, not sure what he is going to do. When he sits beside me on the bed, it is all I can do not to try and bolt, even though I sense no threat or menace in him, only intense curiosity. Vader leans over me and his hand touches my face. I can feel flickerings around my mind as he peers into my thoughts.

Once he has seen enough, he sits back and begins to speculate aloud, ‘You were an anomaly in the Force, a blind spot, and now you are not. So, what has changed in the last few hours?’

The Dark Lord leaves my side and begins to pace the floor.

***

This does not make any sense.

On her homeworld, she was completely closed off to me and now she is broadcasting her thoughts and emotions as clearly as if she is shouting them aloud.

I wish she would stop that.

My steps take me around the room again. Maia is watching me, a slightly worried look on her face.

I pause and look at her a moment.

She said she didn’t have midichlorians. No midichlorians, no Force potential, no way for me to sense her – all of that is perfectly logical.

But now?

I resume my path again.

I really don’t like puzzles that I can’t figure out.

Midichlorians…

Everyone here is born with them. Only a few have enough to effectively use the Force.

I wonder…

***

He stops dead in his tracks a second time, then picks up a comlink from the table.

‘Lieutenant Keol, patch me through to Trever in medical,’ he orders.

The doctor’s voice is clear through the link, ‘Yes, my Lord. What can I do for you?’

‘I need to know exactly what you did in treating Maia,’ the Sith Lord orders. ‘Don’t leave anything out even if it seems trivial.’

Trever begins a long litany of various things, ranging from vaccinations for the diseases common in the Empire to a complete scan for broken bones. He even repaired the retinas and lenses in my eyes so I no longer need those cursed glasses. Most of his inventory of procedures sounds pretty mundane to me, but when he nears the end of the list, Vader stops him and asks for clarification, ‘So doctor, you used an antibody serum. Whose?’

‘Yours, my Lord,’ the doctor admits, ‘of the thousands in storage, only you were a close enough match, to be more precise, you were a perfect match. There would have been an incompatibility reaction if I had used anyone else’s.’

The Sith Lord is silent and I can only stare at him in surprise.

Finally he dismisses Trever, ‘Thank you, doctor, that will be all,’ and sets the comlink back on the table.

His blood cells are racing around in me?

‘No, it’s the midichlorians which are important, not the blood cells, and in the blood they are concentrated in the serum,’ he clarifies, easily hearing my thought. ‘Trever has inadvertently added enough of them to your system to have them effectively colonize your body. I think a test is in order.’

I watch him vanish into whatever room adjoins this one on the right. When he comes back, the Dark Lord takes my hand and stabs the back of it with a needle, drawing blood which he smears on a glass plate. I gently rub the wound once my hand is free. He disappears into the other room again, and when he returns, he stands at the foot of the bed, his hands resting on his hips. I can sense him speculating.

‘So,’ I ask, ‘what’s the result of your test?’

‘You definitely have my midichlorians,’ he confirms, ‘and at a fairly respectable level, too.’

‘Oh,’ is all I manage to say. “Respectable,” I wonder what he means by that.

‘You don’t need to know what the number is,’ he scolds. ‘Don’t question me further about this.’

I find myself becoming confused. How am I to keep out of trouble if he insists on replying to or answering every question that pops into my head? At least I don’t hear any of what goes on in his mind.

‘You need to control your thoughts and emotions and stop projecting them so loudly. I will start training you in the techniques you need to know tomorrow.’ He anticipates my next question and answers it as well, his voice calm and absolutely deadly, ‘No, you don’t have any choice in this. Your midichlorian level is high enough that I can never let you go. The Emperor would have me hunt you down as a potential threat if I did. Be grateful you are already bound to me in a way he can never break otherwise I would be forced to give you to him.’

‘You aren’t seriously considering training me to be a Sith are you?’ I ask incredulously. I won’t let myself become one, I decide, and I don’t care what he does about it.

The amusement is apparent in his voice. ‘No, you are far too old for the amount of work which would be required and I do not have the time to spare to fully train you, even if I chose to do so. I have something else in mind for you.’ He changes the topic completely now, noting, ‘You need to eat something and get some sleep.’

Once again, he disappears into the other room. I am beginning to wonder exactly whose quarters I am in.

‘Mine,’ his voice calls from the other room, ‘and you must be exhausted if you haven’t figured that out by now,’ he adds as he steps through the entry. He sets a glass with some sort of drink in my hand. I eye it suspiciously. ‘It’s the same thing I have several times a day.’ His tone brooks no argument, so I do as he wishes and drink it. It is surprisingly sweet, I discover.

Before I can ask what it is, he takes the glass from me and states, ‘You’ve had your quota of impertinent questions answered for today. Go to sleep,’ and I find that I can’t stay awake even if I fight to. After a minute, I give up and let myself slip into slumber.

In what seems to be only a few minutes later, I am thrown from the bed and onto the floor when the ship lurches suddenly down and to the left. Glancing towards the table where Vader had been working reveals that he too has been sent flying and is quickly picking himself up. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulls me to my feet and pushes me backwards so that I am forced to sit on the edge of the bed. Seconds later a man’s voice is audible over the comm. The Sith Lord silences me by placing a finger across my lips and listens to the officer.

‘My Lord, there has been an explosion in the hyperdrive engine room during the first set of system tests,’ he reports, ‘The extent of the damage is unknown because secondary explosions are making it impossible for crews to get anywhere near where the problem is.’

‘Shut down the active sublight engines, Admiral, in case there is a further cascade effect, and switch to auxiliary power,’ Vader orders, ‘I will be there momentarily.’

Turning his attention to me once the comm-channel is closed, the Sith Lord advises, ‘I need to make sure that you are secure in case there are any further explosions.’ He moves to the other side of the room and pulls open a compartment. After rummaging around a bit, he selects a belt from its contents, shuts the drawer and returns to where I am seated.

‘This is a gravity belt,’ he instructs, as he cinches it around my waist and adjusts a dial beside the buckle, ‘it will keep you from being thrown about again, and out of mischief until I return.’

‘The only time in my life I have ever gotten myself into serious trouble has been in the last week, and that mostly because of you,’ I can’t help but retort.

‘Even so,’ he says with amusement, ‘I would prefer not to have you injured if it can be prevented.’

‘And I would prefer to be mobile instead of pinned in place like an insect on display,’ I protest to him, ‘What happens if I have to get out of here in a hurry?’

Despite my wishes, I find myself being tucked in once again, now anchored in place at the waist. He does not reply, but calls the comlink to his hand from where it had fallen to the floor. A quick adjustment or two and the Dark Lord puts it in my hand.

‘I have set it to my personal frequency,’ he tells me, ‘and added an override to it so that you will interrupt any signal except the Emperor’s. If you need me, call, but be sure it is important or I will be most annoyed with you.’ As he reaches the door, he adds, ‘I really I should send you to sleep again, but if something does happen, you will need to be alert.’

Right, I think to myself, alert and bored to death waiting for another explosion.

‘You could always try meditating,’ Vader suggests, his voice growing fainter as he walks away from me through his quarters, ‘you will be spending a fair amount of time doing that in the next weeks, so it would be a good idea for you to start practicing.’

I roll my eyes. Meditation. Just like my crazy aunt who went to India to study under the Maharishi. She used to insist that I spend several hours at it whenever I visited her. I usually picked some obscure mathematical problem and set my brain to working away at it instead. Letting out a sigh, I toss the covers aside and try to push myself up so I can sit cross-legged. It’s a good thing I am a stubborn person because I have to fight the gravity belt to pull my ankles and knees into position and stay upright. After a few minutes, I manage to strike a balance where I won’t tip over. I close my eyes then and set to emptying my mind the way I do before beginning a complicated spatial analysis. Everything drops away, and my concentration focuses on just being, feeling, rather than on what is going on around me.

When I finally decide to try looking outwards, I nearly fall over in surprise. All around me there is the sensation of energy. It moves around me, through me, whispers against my skin. Can this be the Force, I wonder? Well, if the stories are accurate, I should be able to manipulate it. I reach out with a thought and give one of the larger force swirls a nudge; it moves with my will. As I start to retreat back inside myself to consider what to do next, I notice a strong outward pull. I feel drawn elsewhere. Rather than fight the sensation, I allow myself to be directed.

The warm energy falls away from me as my senses move farther away from my body, and I begin to feel cold. There is someone dark nearby, I guess, and then realize that the Sith Lord is attempting to draw me to him. My obstinate nature takes over now. I refuse to be pulled any closer, and decide to see what he will do about it. It is not long before I sense him reaching out towards me, and I wait, warily, for his approach. His powerful, strongly shielded presence is unmistakable, but I feel no threat from him, only iron-clad control and a touch of amusement. Time does not seem to exist in this place, so I cannot tell if it is a few seconds or minutes before he is there with me. Like a siren’s call, the cold darkness around him beckons to me, tempts me, but I still refuse to budge or be intimidated.

Finally, he touches my mind with a thought, I see that lessons on meditation will not be necessary. You are, without a doubt, the most stubborn person I have ever met.

I don’t like being manipulated, I think back at him, I have put up with far too much of that in my life from people who figured they knew what was best for me or wanted something from me.

From his silence, he is obviously considering my stance, and I wonder if I have perhaps been a bit too blunt for my own good. But, dammit all, I am tired of being told what to do. How to manipulate someone? I can write books on the subject having experienced it first hand from family, teachers, and colleagues for a large chunk of my life.

So much pain in one so young, the Dark Lord observes. You must accept that you cannot change the past and let it go, or you will destroy yourself from within.

Jedi wisdom from a Sith Lord? I sarcastically send to him, letting my own anger get the better of me. I had forgotten he could pick up my thoughts, and realize he knows everything which has just run through my mind.

No, he quietly comments, from a friend who has been there. He is distracted a moment, then adds, I must go, there are matters requiring my attention.

His presence fades but I get a slight sense of regret from him despite his shielding. Immediately I begin to rue my hasty words. How stupid could I be? I want, need his friendship and love, and when it is obviously being offered freely, I strike out at him. Indecision paralyzes me for only a moment, then I am off after him, trying to follow before I lose track of his unique Force signature. When I finally find him again, he has retreated back into his mind, and his defenses are such that I can read nothing from him. Not sure what to do now, I hover about, reach out once to touch his shields, then yank myself away.

Pulling myself back to put some distance between us, I settle in to wait and see if the Sith Lord notices that I am nearby. Time to think about things, too, since he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to me. First the easy admission to myself: I have considered him a friend before now, and he has just shown me that he is willing to offer the same on his part. There is no problem with this as I would prefer to have a teacher whom I can get along with on some level, and he is determined to fill that role whether I like it or not. Now the hard part - what do I want in the long term? I really don’t want to face my own feelings, but I may not have another opportunity for a while to sort myself out without having my thoughts eavesdropped on.

I let out a mental sigh. Well, I scold myself, you already told him you love him and want him. Remember that scene beside his ship, just before he knocked you out? And then there is that oath you swore to him, a pledge which is very important to him, though I do not really understand why. No way to take any of those words back, and, I slowly realize, I don’t want to either.

I begin to consider my situation with ruthless logic. This is Darth Vader, one part of my brain nags, you know what that means, who and what he is, and you are in his universe now, not back on Earth where he exists only in a galaxy far away and long ago. You will be playing with fire here and the results could be deadly. But, I argue back, there is a noble and honorable soul hidden under all that darkness, and that’s the man I love, the one who has teased and looked after me, not the Sith Lord, the persona he shows everyone else. He was trapped on your world with only you to help get him out of there, my logic circuit kicks in, so of course he would behave in a way to ensure you would do whatever needed to be done.

My mind begins to run in circles, so I abandon the logical approach and ask myself what I feel. This only makes matters worse. I have always been able to relate to his complicated character, perhaps because we are similar in so many ways. Both of us are gifted, isolated from those surrounding us by our talents, and tend to intimidate or scare people, though in my case it is not intentional. We are definitely lonely, solitary souls. So, I admit to myself, as an abstract being, you identified with and have always been rather fond of him, and most people would find that odd to say the very least. Now, what about the man you spent four days with? For a start, he’s just as stubborn as I am and has the same slightly warped, sarcastic sense of humor. He treats me like a normal person, and I cannot but like the Dark Lord if for no other reason than that. And, I prompt myself, what else? I don’t want to go where my thoughts are leading me, but if I am going to be ruthlessly honest, then I have to admit that I am hopelessly in love with him and told him as much. Or have I? He could not sense me or read my thoughts at that point, and may not have believed what he was hearing. Question is, what am I going to do about it, if anything?

I know that at the very least I need to apologize for my careless remark, but I am going to have to get his attention somehow in order to do so or wait for him to return to his quarters. If I delay, I know I will probably lose my nerve. Studying his mental shields, I realize that I have no idea how to politely let him know I need to talk to him. Simply wandering up and knocking, so to speak, seems a bit rude. I run a few possibilities through my mind, and decide to try communicating at the emotional level. It should be less distracting to him if he is busy and if he doesn’t notice, well, I can give up or try something else. Which emotion then? Nothing negative, I determine quickly, so a positive one then, something he will understand can only be coming from me. Love would be far too strong and I don’t want to go there yet, so I settle on affection which I hope is more neutral.

The dark side around the Sith Lord’s mind still exerts a pull, so I allow it to draw me closer to him. I let my own presence brush against his shields, and before my courage starts to disappear, send a strong burst of affection through to him. His reaction is instantaneous, and I sense surprise followed in rapid succession by a touch of amazement and then intense irritation, all brought quickly under control. Well, I have most certainly got his attention now. I feel him reach out towards me and only manage to catch from him, Maia? What are you doing ... then I am torn away and thrown back into my own body.

I find myself sprawled across the bed, still held in place by the blasted gravity belt. My head feels like someone has dropped a ton or two of bricks on it. The comlink is beeping like mad and is back on the floor, well out of my reach, despite several desperate tries to drag myself off the bed to where I can grab it. After a minute of struggling to move, I simply give up and lay there, exhausted by my efforts. Why doesn’t he just use the comm in his quarters to contact me?

As if in answer to my thought, Vader’s voice fills the room, ‘Maia, I have remotely activated the comm-channel to my quarters. Have you been injured?’

‘No,’ I tell him, ‘but my head is pounding and the comlink is out of reach. What happened?’

‘The back-up hyperdrive just went during a preliminary test.’ He does not sound at all pleased with the situation. I can just imagine what he will do to whoever is responsible for this disaster.

‘Isn’t this supposed to be the latest, greatest ship in the fleet?’

‘Yes,’ he curtly acknowledges, ‘and it is still in the shipyards under construction. It will be at least another two months before we leave Fondor for the shake-down cruise.’

Something is nagging at the back of my mind about this. I keep a tight guard over my thoughts and consider quickly what I know about this ship. The Emperor gave him the Executor for his flagship a few months after the Battle of Yavin. Well, at least I know when I am in the timeline now - he was telling the truth about that at the party. No wonder Dr. Trever gave me that weird look in medical. I should not have known the name of the ship I was on.

To buy myself more time to think, I ask, ‘Where are you?’

‘Briefing room off the command deck. Admiral Griff does not know about you and I would prefer to keep it that way for the moment,’ is his prompt response, but it has given me the chance to dredge my memory for the information I need.

‘I have a hunch you will find that some idiot in the shipyards has installed the hyperdrive’s energy dampers in reverse,’ I volunteer. Somehow I had filed away this obscure fact away in my brain. There is silence, except for his regulated breathing. Have I said too much, I wonder?

‘That would fit with the pattern and timing of the explosions,’ he admits. ‘I am curious, though, how you arrived at this conclusion.’

Oops. Time to equivocate a bit. ‘I told you my father is an engineer,’ I remind him, ‘and I just remembered a story he once told me about several boilers that blew up. When the investigations were over, they had found that one of the assembly line workers had managed to put several critical components necessary for controlling air and steam pressures in backwards and no one caught on to the problem until it was too late. Call my suggestion an educated guess.’

I cross my fingers and pray that he doesn’t press me any further. My knowledge of events in his future is going to get me into trouble and I had better lock away the memories of what I do know pretty soon.

‘A hyperdrive is hardly comparable to a steam boiler, but your intuition may prove to be correct,’ the Sith Lord states flatly, though I know he is amused nonetheless.

I hear the Admiral’s voice over the comm and I guess that he has entered the briefing room, ‘My Lord, there is sufficient power to maintain most functions in the short term, but it will take at least twelve hours to bring the sublight engines on-line again.’

‘Then do so, Admiral,’ Vader orders, ‘and have Engineering check the orientation of the energy dampers in both hyperdrives. Quickly, if you don’t mind.’ He emphasizes the last, and I can imagine the officer making a hasty retreat.

‘Maia, you will have to manage on your own for a while longer until I am sure that there will be no further surprises,’ the Dark Lord tells me. In thought, he coldly adds, And there are some issues I need to discuss with you. In private.

His mental comment freezes me in place, but he has closed the comm-channel so I cannot respond to it. I shut my eyes for a moment to help bring the headache under control. Part of me knows that I have no choice now but to hide my knowledge of the future from him because if he ever realizes how accurate it is, he will rip it from me and ruin everything. There is also the very real possibility that I will slip up and inadvertently make a mess of things because he can tell what I am thinking.

I am too tired to try and sit up, so I just lay there and start to plan out what I need to do. First thing is to conceal what I am up to. I don’t know how to use the Force to shield my mind, so I will have to hide my actions and intentions another way. Mentally partitioning off a section of my brain, I start it working away at Fermat’s last theorem, a favorite distraction of mine, and set the calculations running at the surface of my mind. Hopefully if the Sith Lord decides to see what I am up to, he will get a sense of how my mathematical talent works and nothing more.

So far, so good. Next I review what I know from the movies and books. Anything about his past and other earlier events that I shouldn’t know about and everything post-Yavin after this point in time I will need to bury deep in my mind where he won’t find them. I will also have to conceal the fact that his universe is considered to be purely fictional on my world. This should not be too difficult as I have often hidden away painful memories where they will not easily be retrieved. Part of me accepts that I shouldn’t tamper with his destiny, but I really don’t think I am capable of standing back and watching him get killed over Endor. It will be critical for me to be in the right place at the right time to prevent this and still have events run close to how they should. I could set up a warning system of sorts, and have something trigger the information required to save him when I need it. There is a technique I use for remembering appointments that should work - I just have to decide which events will trip the alarms. It takes almost an hour to mentally set up what I am going to do to myself. When I am finished, I hesitate. I am going to lose so much, and I don’t know what effect it is going to have on me.

Before I can reconsider, I activate what I have decided to do and chunks of my memory rearrange themselves and vanish. It is the most disconcerting thing I have ever felt. In a few minutes, the process has run its course, and while I can sense there is something I should know about the future, other than one specific event, it is impossible for me to say exactly what it is. There seems to be no other obvious effects. Perfect, I think happily to myself. Now, I hope he is unable to detect what I have just done to myself. Since I have no idea how long it will be before the Dark Lord returns, I chose to lose myself in and completely concentrate on the mathematical problem I had selected until he does so.

I don’t know when Vader finally returned to his quarters, but I now find myself being gently shaken out of the induced trance I had put myself into.

‘Maia,’ I hear him call, ‘you must wake up.’

I manage to prop myself up, resting much of my weight on one arm, and quickly note that the gravity belt is gone. And good riddance I think to myself. The second thing I realize is that I am shivering. The temperature has plunged and I feel frozen.

‘Why is it so cold in here?’ I ask, trying not to let any shake get into my voice.

In an attempt to warm up, I pull my knees into my chest and wrap my arms around them.

‘There is only enough power to maintain minimal life support,’ he tells me, ‘and it will stay that way until the sub-light engines which serve as the ship’s power plants are back on-line.’ Some annoyance creeps into his tone, now, ‘I tried to contact you, to warn you, but you were busy with some arcane mental puzzle and would not respond. It was impossible for me to leave the bridge any sooner, so now you are chilled and I am going to have to warm you up.’ He does not add, ‘yet again,’ but I somehow know that’s the thought appended to the end of the sentence.

With that he unhooks his cloak and wraps it around me. He straightens the sheets and cover with a couple of strategic tugs, and tosses a heavy blanket from one of the drawers set in the wall onto the bed. I watch his every move with growing curiosity. Apparently satisfied with his arrangements, he retrieves his cloak despite my attempt to hang onto it, and I find myself being tucked back under the covers yet again. This is quickly becoming a habit of his, but this time I don’t raise any protests. The Sith Lord waves a hand towards the door and I hear it slide shut and lock. His lightsaber is tossed towards me and lands neatly on a shelf above my head. I resist the urge to have a closer look at it than the one I had at the party.

He picks up my thought and gives his permission to satisfy my curiosity. ‘Go right ahead and have a look, just don’t turn it on or change the settings, and put it back when you are finished.’

I push myself into a sitting position and very carefully retrieve the lightsaber, making sure I have the blade end pointed away from me. It is a bit heavier than I remember, and far too large for my small hands. Turning it about reveals several knobs for making adjustments, but I know better than to play around with them. I place my hands in an experimental grip, and note that the balance is towards the blade end. This is just too cool, so I smile happily to myself.

‘Your grip is incorrect,’ Vader notes. ‘You cannot hold a lightsaber the way you do your chosen weapon.’ He comes over and sits beside me on the bed. Reaching behind me, he wraps his arms around me and sets his hands on top of mine. As he adjusts where I have put my hands, he coaches me along. ‘Here, like this. If you hold it the way you were, you could get your wrists broken. It is also much easier to control if your hands are farther apart, and you need to avoid putting pressure on the blade controls.’

To make his point, he moves the saber’s hilt to show how the position he has set my hands in will allow me to easily control the weapon. Keeping his hands over mine, he ignites the blade and I can’t stop myself from flinching in surprise. His amused chuckle quickly follows. ‘You can’t be afraid of it if I am going to teach you how to use it.’

There is no weight to the blade and I watch the spark of photons along its edge. He lets me move the weapon back and forth into a few high, experimental parries, still leaving his hands over mine. After a minute or so, he shuts the lightsaber off and takes it from me, returning it to its spot on the shelf.

The Sith Lord stays where he is beside me, leaving one arm around my waist while waving his other hand at the control panel on the wall. I hear the hiss of air and feel the change in pressure against my skin. A sharp smell of antiseptics and medication permeates the atmosphere, and the oxygen content climbs drastically. Finally a light on the panel turns green and only then does he rise and head towards the table in the corner of the room. I retreat back under the sheets, watching his every step. He is not moving as easily or steadily as he normally would.

‘You are completely exhausted, aren’t you?’ I scold, ‘When was the last time you had any sleep? The day we left my home world?’ I throw back the covers on the other side of the bed and order, ‘Get in here right now. You need to lie down before you fall down.’

He turns to look at me, surprise leaking through his shields.

‘What?’ is all he manages to say.

‘You heard me, your Lordship. If you won’t look after yourself, then maybe I should.’

His response is to kill the lights in the room.

Well, fine, have it your way then, I think hard at him, just remember I am not strong enough to pick you up and drag you into bed if you do fall over.

I pull the sheets up to my chin and listen intently to try and figure out what Vader is up to. A wall compartment is opened then various pieces of his armor are being removed and stowed in it from the noises he is making. Then I hear the sound of air seals breaking and I know that he is taking off his helmet. The movement of fabric follows and I guess that his tunic has come off. The creak of leather next and a snap and several clicks, but I have no idea what they may represent. With the soft sound of cloth being wrapped around a body, the compartment is closed. Finally, he pads on bare feet over to the bed.

‘I trust your offer is still open?’ he asks, in his unamplified, but still distinct baritone voice.

‘Of course,’ I confirm, ‘You need to sleep and it is your bed after all.’

His weight shifts on the bed and I feel the sheets and blankets being pulled over him. A moment later he has moved closer to me, and his hand gently touches my cheek.

‘You are still quite chilled,’ he observes, then orders, ‘Come here.’

When I simply stare in his direction, he reaches over, wraps an arm around my waist, and drags me backwards into his chest. I am far too surprised to do anything other than stay there. I feel his breath above my ear when he speaks.

‘I have no reason to spend the night using the Force to keep myself warm when you are here,’ the Sith Lord decides. ‘You are also quite aware that this is the fastest way to raise your body temperature, so behave yourself. None of that foolishness you tried earlier, either. I won’t put up with it.’

Foolishness? What on Earth is he talking about?

‘You know very well what I mean,’ he coldly states. ‘I did not appreciate having my mind flooded with your misplaced feelings for me.’

I retreat into myself at his words. Cruel, oh he is so very cruel.

‘And I won’t let you run away from this discussion like a spoilt child, either.’ He slips into my mind and easily blocks my path, yanking me back out to awareness. ‘So out with it. All of it,’ he orders. ‘I can’t teach someone who keeps secrets from me and refuses to be honest with me about their emotions.’

Cruel and merciless, I note.

‘Yes, I can be,’ he admits, the annoyance becoming audible, ‘and I am rapidly losing my patience with you.’

‘And what do you want to hear? That I love you? Would die for you if you asked it of me?’ I confess, and as I continue, I let him hear my distress in my voice, ‘Is that so very hard for you to believe? This is the only secret of any importance that I have now.’

I dig my nails into my palm, opening some of the almost healed cactus wounds and causing blood to flow. There is absolutely no way I will let him drive me to tears.

I sense him measuring my words, weighing them. He invades my mind then, and rifles through my thoughts and emotions from the previous days. In response I pull away from him, curl into a small ball, and make no show of resistance. It would be foolish and futile anyway, I quickly realize, for I have no defense against his actions. Tears slide down my face and I give up on trying to stop them.

‘What have you done to your mind, child?’ he asks in dismay, gently brushing the tears from my face, and pulling me back into his arms. ‘There are huge bleeding holes everywhere in your psyche.’

‘I knew things,’ I manage to get out somehow, ‘things which would be dangerous to you, so I removed them.’

His shock is palpable to me. Finally he comments quietly to himself, ‘Without any training at all and you did an exceptionally good job of it, too. I can find no trace of anything which you have ripped out.’ To me he directs, ‘The damage you have done to yourself must be repaired, and quickly.’

‘You aren’t angry with me?’ My voice is barely audible, yet he still hears me.

‘What would be the point?’ he asks, again sounding annoyed with me. ‘The damage is done and there is no way to retrieve any of what you once knew. I cannot train someone whose mind is in tatters.’

He still wants to train me? After this?

‘Even so. As for your feelings for me,’ he pauses, and I wait, dreading what he is going to say. ‘I am a Sith Lord, Maia. Love is forbidden to me; it is a poison to the dark side of the Force as surely as anger is to the light.’ Part of me wants to die at his words, yet he continues, with some humor, ‘My friendship, such as it is, is yours. It is rather flattering to know you still love and want me, but I must admit that I can never promise that I will ever love you in return. If you feel you must pursue me, go right ahead.’ His voice becomes fierce as he finishes, ‘Passion and possession I am allowed, but if you do catch me, be aware that you will be mine and mine alone, bound to me tighter than with any oath. I am a jealous man, Maia, and will tolerate no rivals of any sort in your thoughts or heart.’

He pulls me over, onto my back as he says this, and to my astonishment, sets his lips hard against mine. I gasp in surprise and he exploits it, forces my lips apart, tastes my mouth, possesses me entirely in a few brief seconds with only his kiss. When he pulls away, I keep my lips on his, trying to follow him as he moves. I sense his amusement at my reaction, and as he breaks away, he gently pushes me back onto the pillows.

Not bad, I suppose, considering I have never been kissed before except by him in my dreams.

‘I find that rather hard to believe,’ he quickly counters.

‘Believe it, because it’s true, Sith Lord.’ I can sense him starting to speculate on other things so I decide to pull the same trick on him that he does with me and answer the yet to be asked question. ‘And I haven’t done anything other than what I have just done with you, and especially not what you are thinking right now. You will need to be my husband to do that.’ Ah, it must have been a good guess for what he was wondering, judging from the startled reaction I just picked up on.

‘You may have set yourself an impossible goal then,’ he warns, ‘I had intended to have you recognized as my wife, my consort, tomorrow, but marriage requires my master’s permission now that you are attuned to the Force and that will not be easy to obtain.’

The third question, I remember, the one he never had the chance to ask. Well, being married doesn’t matter to me if I can still have him without it. I smile wickedly at him, knowing he can use the Force to see my expressions if he wants to.

‘Worried, are you?’ I tease. When he doesn’t answer, I add, ‘You should be because I have every intention of getting exactly what I want, and I want you.’

As I speak, I carefully shift my position and ready my playful attack. Before he can stop me, it is my lips which are brushing against his in a light kiss and I have him loosely held down on the bed with my hands pressing against his shoulders. The Dark Lord must be truly exhausted for me to get away with this. I know he can still toss me aside easily if he wants to, but I am pulled into his arms instead and he rolls us both over. I am now securely pinned beneath him. He rests most of his weight on one elbow and looks down at me.

‘So eager are you to experience my passions?’ he flatly asks.

I can’t tell if he is teasing me or not, but I am afraid to answer him because I have no idea what he is planning to do. This is definitely not the reaction I had intended to get. His response to my silence is another kiss, deeper, longer, and more demanding than his first. I can feel the intensity of his desire now, his consuming need to possess me, to make me entirely his, and it frightens me. Finishing the kiss on my mouth, his lips trail down my throat, stopping partway down, where he lightly bites me before resuming his progress downwards. This is not the way he behaved in my dreams at all. He was gentle with me then, not aggressive like this. Think, Maia, I scold myself, what should you do here?

‘My Lord?’ I question, hoping to distract him.

He pauses in his journey, returns to look into my face judging from where I feel his breath on my skin. Now what, I wonder. Not sure what else to do, I lift one of my hands to touch his face, only to have it caught and firmly held down on the bed.

‘Don’t,’ he warns me, ‘you do not have my permission to touch my face.’

My hand is released and I set it back on my stomach. The Sith Lord runs his fingers over my face for a moment, then returns his lips to my neck. I flinch when he bites me again, much harder this time, and I know that one will have left a mark. Well, Maia, that didn’t help much, now did it? Kicking my logic circuits into gear, I start running possibilities through my mind. Nothing I can come up with will allow me to avoid the inevitable direction this is going to go in. I have two options: try to control how he goes about it or let him do as he wants.

I decide to try the first one.

‘Kiss me, please,’ I ask him. ‘Teach me how to do it properly.’

I can sense his amusement at my request. His lips lightly brush mine in answer, then he pauses, waiting. It takes me a moment to realize he expects me to repeat what he has done to me, to him. A few minutes later the kisses are no longer chaste ones. My shy nature now wars against what he expects me to do, and when he finally forces my mouth open, tastes it, explores it with his tongue, I know I can never do the same in return. As he pulls back from this kiss, I shake my head in a negative to let him know I will not return it.

A light laugh is his response to my refusal, and he slides his hands down from my face, under the sheets to my chest. I can feel the Dark Lord’s annoyance now, but it is not directed at me. He grabs the neckline of the underdress I am wearing, and gives a sharp tug using the Force. The seams split and the fabric rips away from my body. Too shocked to do anything, I stay frozen in place wondering what he will do next. Without a thought, he throws back the sheets and tosses the destroyed garment and the underclothes that came off with it onto the floor. Impediments removed, his kisses slip across my breasts and I gasp involuntarily as they do.

Knowing I had better try something else, when he returns his attention to my face again, I move my hands to touch him. He makes no attempt to stop me, so I slip them underneath the robe he has wrapped himself in. Following the muscles of his chest, my fingertips bump against a small box attached to it. Curious, I trace the edges.

‘Remote primarily for controlling my diaphragm and pacemaker,’ the Sith Lord tells me, ‘I can’t breathe or survive without it. Serves the same functions as the control panel on my armor, but is more compact, and it only works in here.’

I let my fingers travel further, down and across his stomach, around to his back, tracing various scars as I do so. Just as in my dream, he is heavily muscled. He must work out quite a lot to stay in as good a shape as he is. My thought produces a touch of amusement from him, but he makes no comment, simply pulls my hands away and kisses me on the mouth, deepening it until I become uncomfortable and try to get away from him.

Stopping his kisses for the moment, he runs his hands over my face and chest instead. His touch is light, just his fingertips, and it leaves goose bumps everywhere he goes. This feels good, I admit to myself; hopefully he will just do this for a while. When he moves his hands to touch my waist, I shiver a bit. It’s cold in the room and my bare exposed skin is becoming chilled. Reaching to my side, I try to yank the covers protectively over myself.

***

I stop her attempt to cover herself by pulling the sheets out of her hands. Maia’s childish game of playing coy has got to end.

‘Stop that,’ I order. ‘I want to touch you.’

‘But I’m cold,’ she protests, hoping I will relent and let her hide under the sheets.

‘You won’t be in a few minutes,’ I comment, amused. When she wonders if that’s a promise or a threat, I reply to her thought, ‘Both.’

I want her. Now. Tonight. No more waiting or games.

I slide my hand from her waist to between her thighs. Maia has spent all of her time resisting and isn’t ready for me yet, so I will hasten the process with a few minutes of gentle caresses. She stiffens against my touch, then tries to pull away as I begin to run my fingers over her.

I hold her firmly in place and continue stroking her. There is no escape for you, my wife.

‘Relax,’ I insist, ‘you are mine, Maia, and I want to enjoy you.’

She continues to struggle against my hold, but it makes no difference. Whether she wants it or not, Maia is ready for me. Now if she will only co-operate.

‘Must I do this the hard way?’ I ask, stopping my caresses.

She stubbornly shakes her head. I can tell she doesn’t want this at all. Very well, wife, one more chance then I will use the Force on you.

I move, settle myself near the center of the bed. Maia stays silent and I can feel the fear starting to build in her. Ignoring that, I shift her knees up, apart, positioning both of us so that I will hurt her the least. She was so small, so very tight that first time that this might still be painful for her. It takes little time to line myself up, lean over her, press my lips hard against hers, readying myself for my first gentle push into her.

I taste salty tears on her face.

Tears?

When this is what she wanted?

Don’t, please don’t, she thinks at me, pleading, I am afraid and I don’t want you to do this to me, not now, not yet. Please.

I abruptly sit back and consider what I should do. Maia was shy at first, then welcoming, passionate and eager that night on her homeworld, but this fear is no act on her part. She really is afraid. Perhaps I need to remind her of her situation.

‘Listen to me, Maia. If you are to be my wife and bear my children, you will have to let me touch you in this way,’ I lecture her like a child, but am unyielding in my tone.

There is a burst of fear in response to my words, so I move to sit beside her and gently caress her face. She’s afraid I am going to hurt her. That what I plan to do is going to be as painful as that first time. It won’t be, but I can’t let on that we have made love before this. Not now. Not ever. She will never trust me again if I do.

Now that I know what the problem is, I speak softly to her for a moment, to reassure her, 'I know you are frightened because you have never done this before, so I will be gentle with you, hurt you as little as I possibly can, but some pain is unavoidable.’

I will be very gentle with her, as I should have done before, but I am not going to let her refuse me any longer.

I harden my voice again, ‘If you continue to refuse me, I will use the Force to compel you in this. You willingly, freely offered yourself to me when you swore your oath, and you have just told me that you want me. I want you now, tonight, so stop resisting.’

She lies beside me, trembling, while I wait patiently for her decision. Stop acting like a frightened child, Maia, I think, and behave like an adult. You told me you loved me, wanted me, and you need to learn that you can’t say those things and then refuse to yield at the last minute when I decide to act on your words.

I sense her burying her fears deep down inside her mind, hiding them from me. Her body stops shivering with her determined efforts.

Good. She’s calmed herself, for the moment, and decided to yield without further resistance, but her fear is still there, waiting to reemerge at a later date.

I do not want my wife to fear me.

I want her to burn for me, desire me, crave my touch.

Maia won’t if I force her - she will dread it instead. And every time I go to make love to her it will be a battle.

She reaches her arms to me, letting me know she is ready. I allow her to pull me in close, but I won’t take advantage of her compliance. Not tonight. Not until she yields to me of her own free will.

‘Much better,’ I tell her. ‘It will be far more enjoyable for both of us with you as a willing participant. Now, let me check on you before I go any further.’

I want to see how my son is. And I will use my action to support my excuse for letting tonight go.

Her stomach is warm under my hand. I send my senses within, locate our child and spin shields around him, hiding him from his mother. Explaining her pregnancy to her if she happens to find him could be difficult. Now for a bit of acting. With a frustrated sigh, I pull my hand away and toss the covers over top of us.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asks.

I can sense her relief.

‘If I were to continue, I would be a father early next year,’ I lie to her, saying whatever comes to mind as a good excuse. ‘It would be a daughter, a girl with my Force potential and your analytical mind, too formidable a combination for my master to let us keep her. He would simply take her as he has done with other potentially useful children in the past. It would not matter that she was my daughter, and I would not be able to stop him, either. Would you want our child to become one of his puppets?’

***

Oh, this is hard, so very hard, for I would dearly love that child, but there is only one choice here.

‘No,’ I whisper sadly.

I am surprised when he takes me into his arms and just holds me steady.

‘There will be other times, other opportunities,’ he softly tells me, and promises, ‘If you are determined to have a child, I will give you one, after I meditate in the Force and work out when would be best to have one with little or no Force potential at all. And without enough to be useful to him, my master will have no interest in it.’

He kisses me on the forehead then, before turning me onto my side and pulling me back into his chest once again.

Child? He would willingly give me a child? The one thing I have always wanted but never thought I would ever have?

‘I just promised you I would, so stop fussing about this,’ he tells me, sounding a bit irked at my disbelief.

‘I have caught you, haven’t I?’ I tease him playfully, knowing that he has just given me the reward I had asked for minutes before he knocked me out.

The Dark Lord allows himself a short laugh and admits, ‘So you have, but I will never love you as you do me and I can never promise that you will be my wife.’

I feel his lips graze the back of my neck, down my throat to my shoulder, stopping once to lightly bite me for a third time close to the same spot. He must be trying to leave a mark on me for some reason. Well, I don’t care at the moment. With a sigh, I move in closer to him. His arms are warm and strong around me and I no longer feel cold, but safe, protected, and content. Mine, I think happily to myself, mine, he is all mine and he will give me the child I have always wanted.

So I am, and yes, I will, and tonight, now even, regardless of the consequences, if you don’t stop bothering me about this, he half threatens, half scolds in a thought.

I am too happy to let his crankiness affect my mood, so I tell him instead, One heart’s desire granted a night is enough, my love. I have you all to myself and that is plenty for me.

He does not reply, just pulls me tighter into his chest, nips me again and kisses the back of my neck. I gradually begin to doze, but after about half an hour, Vader turns me onto my back and gives me a shake.

‘What?’ I ask sleepily.

‘You have warmed up sufficiently. I need to repair the damage in your mind and put you into a healing trance,’ he advises.

‘Can’t it wait,’ I grumble.

‘No,’ the Sith Lord is unflinching, ‘now turn over and face me so I can get started. You are not the only one here who needs sleep and the sooner I am finished, the longer I can rest.’

I give up protesting since it is not going to work and roll over to face him. His hands cup my face; his forehead rests against mine.

‘Settle your mind. I am not going to hurt you. I need you to pull me in since the worst of the damage is at a level which I can’t get at any other way without a great deal of difficulty and time.’ When I obviously don’t understand what he wants me to do, he sighs in exasperation and explains, ‘The simplest way to do this is with emotions. You love me, don’t you? Project that feeling outwards and when you feel it connect with me, pull my presence back to you. You tried and almost succeeded in doing exactly that earlier today, when I was in the middle of a meeting, much to my annoyance.’

‘That was not what I meant to do!’ I admit. ‘I just wanted to let you know I was there, so I could apologize for being rude to you.’

‘There will be no more experimenting with the Force without my supervision, since you obviously have no idea what you are toying with!’ His rebuke is stinging and I can hear the anger close to the surface. ‘I won’t have you creating any more messes for me to clean up either. Promise me this, Maia. No more playing about. I could easily bind you with a compulsion, but I will trust your word if you give it.’

I feel thoroughly miserable at his scolding. I’m sorry, I didn’t know, is my anguished answer, I won’t ever do that again.

I will take that as your promise then. Now shall we begin?

Hesitating for a moment I reach out towards him with my feelings and wait for his approach. When I know his presence is beside my own, I step backwards into my mind, pulling him along with me. I wish I could help him in some way since this mess is my own creation.

Very good, he tells me, now I am going to drop you into a healing trance so I can work without fighting your conscious mind. No, you can’t help, and it will go faster without an audience.

Before I can protest, I am in darkness once more.

***

I roll Maia onto her side and carefully pull her into my arms.

I won’t vent my anger at her, but I am furious with what she has done.

I knew she was keeping secrets from me – I could sense it when she told me what caused the explosions - but I would never have guessed what they were.

She knew about my eldest son, the child I thought dead with Padme. The son whose existence that fool on her homeworld revealed, though I refused to believe it was true at the time.

She knew my past history and what the future held in store for me, and never admitted to that knowledge.

I brush a finger across her temple. The traces of that knowledge are still there, in wisps, in snippets, in faintly echoing memories - none of which I could pin down, all of which faded the instant I tried to trace them. Perhaps careful questioning will pull some of that from her mind, but I suspect much of her unsettling past- and fore-knowledge is gone forever.

Shifting my hand to her waist, I settle her close beside me. The room is cold and even with her next to me I will need to use the Force to keep us both warm.

While I wait for sleep to claim me, I ponder what to do about two far more pressing issues.

I want her to be my mate willingly, so I will test her again tomorrow, see how she reacts. And if I must, I will give her what time I can afford to. I can’t wait too long for her to decide to yield to me on her own. Even with my restrictions on her use of the Force, eventually she will sense him and her pregnancy will become impossible to conceal from her.

And I will have to ask my master to give her to me.

***

DAY 2

When I wake, I find myself safely wrapped in the Sith Lord’s arms, held tight to his chest. From the sound of his slowed, but still regulated, breathing next to my ear, and the stillness I sense in his mind, he must be deeply asleep. I am careful to lie motionless beside him. Pulling my senses inward, I mull over the events of the previous day. Reluctantly, I admit to myself that most of my troubles were self-inflicted. I would never claim to be qualified to teach a course in molecular biology, an area outside my realm of expertise, so where did I get the stupid idea that I knew how to mess about with the Force? There are threads in my memories related to this, to knowledge I once had, but every one of them leads to a blank spot in my mind. These were some of the things I had deliberately removed, I realize. Curious about what I might have known, I push at the emptiness, but find nothing and eventually give up. Well, I have someone to teach me and I have absolutely no interest in making him angry, so I vow to behave myself, obey him from now on, and do as I am told, stubbornness be damned.

‘It’s about time you acquired some common sense,’ a half-awake baritone voice notes.

‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ I softly apologize.

‘No matter,’ he admits, and the hand he has wrapped around my waist caresses me across my stomach. There is that odd sensation of him looking, checking on something within me. His lips brush against my ear as he tells me, ‘I still want you, Maia, and there will be no child to worry about if I take you for my own now.’

I freeze in his arms, but am careful to not let any of my panicked thoughts get out. No way am I going to repeat that horrid scene from last night again.

The Sith Lord, seemingly oblivious to my emotional and physical responses to his words, continues speaking, ‘But I need to be on my feet shortly to sort out the repair schedule and there is no time to indulge myself now. Tonight, perhaps, if all goes well today.’

He shifts me in his arms so that I am facing him, using the one under my head to hold me in place by folding it across my back. I know he is watching me to see how I will react to his next statements.

‘You were right about where the explosions originated,’ the Dark Lord confirms, ‘though the exact memory of how you knew that is gone from your mind, and I did look most carefully for that particular piece of information.’

‘How long... ?’ I begin to ask but he interrupts.

‘To fix your handiwork? About two point four hours. You did a most thorough job on yourself and the memory triggers you attempted to put in made matters worse. Most of my time was spent stripping them out, and I doubt I found all of them. What were you trying to do?’

No, oh no, he didn’t. I shut my eyes tight. This is the one thing I made sure I would remember.

‘Maia?’ the Sith Lord prompts and I know he won’t relent until he gets an answer. He is a most ruthlessly efficient and effective interrogator.

‘I knew when, where, and how you would be killed, who would be involved, all the circumstances surrounding it,’ I reveal, ‘so I tried to key particular events to trigger those memories when I might be able to do something to prevent it from happening.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he scoffs a little, ‘The future is always in motion. Even I can’t see with that sort of clarity what will happen. No one can.’

‘I didn’t see it in a vision, I knew,’ I try to let him hear from my tone of voice that this was different.

‘What do you mean?’ he snaps impatiently.

Vader lets go of me now, and pushes himself upright to sit with his back leaning against the wall. His arms are across his chest and I can feel his eyes boring into me.

I can tell he is getting annoyed with me, so I give up in frustration. ‘I have no idea how or why, but I had access to accurate information on this, and that’s all I can remember about it.’

‘We will discuss this further, later, and,’ he orders coldly, ‘if you ever recall any of it, you will tell me immediately.’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ I accede in a whisper.

I feel his hand gently run down the side of my face and into my hair.

‘That,’ he states, his tone softening, ‘is not necessary in private.’ His voice becomes cold again as he warns me, ‘In public, yes, you will address me as such, and I will not tolerate any impertinence or indiscretion from you. This is not your homeworld, Maia, where I could let you behave as you pleased. I will not have you undermining my authority with foolish statements or inappropriate actions. You will act appropriately towards me in public. If you cannot or will not do so, I will discipline you and lock you in here until you will. You will not be overly familiar with me. Do you understand this?’

I flinch at his words. This is not going to be easy to abide by and I know that I will slip up sooner or later because of my innate tendency to get myself into trouble.

I promise I will do my best to behave myself, I think at him. Can I talk to you this way if I need to?

If it keeps you out of trouble, then yes, the Sith Lord concedes, but I will not put up with any distracting or unnecessary comments from you.

Relieved that he will let me use telepathy in public, I start to wonder what I am supposed to call him in private. Darth doesn’t sound right, and it’s just the Sith word for Lord anyway.

‘If you don’t want me to use the formal address in private, then what am I supposed to call you?’ I ask.

He is silent for a moment, thinking, then makes a decision. ‘Here, in my private quarters, you may address me as Anakin or Ani, if you prefer, but only here and only when we are alone.’

‘Yes,’ I hesitate, then add, ‘Ani.’

His mood quickly lightens and he drops a short kiss on my lips. When I try to extend it, he pins me to the bed, kisses me hard on the mouth, deepens it for a minute or two, then pulls away from me.

‘Maybe I should stay in bed with you after all,’ he teases, ‘but if I don’t make an appearance at some point, Admiral Griff will contact me over the comm, and I cannot neglect my duties just for personal pleasure.’

Vader runs a finger across my face, over my lips, down my throat, and I shiver at his touch. That feels good. He chuckles as he picks up on my reaction.

‘Tonight, then,’ he promises, ‘and I will ensure that there is no possible way we can be interrupted.’ Shoving himself into a sitting position, he tells me, ‘Stay in bed where it’s warm for a few minutes. Once I have myself sorted out, I can arrange a hot bath for you.’

I hunker down under the covers and listen to the Dark Lord clatter around the pitch-black room. The ‘fresher is off to the left side and he disappears into it for about twenty minutes before returning to put his armor back on. The hiss of seals on his helmet tells me he is completely suited up. He gradually brings up the lights so I am not blinded and leaves them at a low level. A wave of the hand, and the medicinal smell quickly dissipates, the air pressure drops.

‘Out of bed with you, now, lazy,’ he calls to me.

In response I pull the sheets closer around me. I am not getting up without something to cover myself with. He tugs on the blankets from the foot of the bed and when I refuse to let go, comes around to stand, hands on hips, beside where I am laying. I watch his every move, wary of what he is going to do.

‘You’re awfully shy,’ the Sith Lord observes with amusement, ‘for someone who invited me to bed last night and then willing offered herself to me. I know what every bit of your body looks like, so there is no point in hiding it from me.’

When I still refuse to budge, he whips the sheets out of my hands and off of me. While I am still in shock deciding what to do about his actions, he picks me up and carries me into the ‘fresher, setting me on the edge of the bath, letting my feet fall into the hot water. I quickly realize that he must have run the water and heated it with the Force earlier. The warmth feels heavenly against my skin compared to the coolness of the air.

Thank you, Ani, I mentally whisper to him.

You’re welcome, he answers.

With a touch he opens one of the small compartments in the wall.

‘Everything you might need is in here. Help yourself to what you want,’ he tells me, then he turns back to me, and pulls the fabric tie off the end of my braid before loosening my hair. ‘Don’t spend too much time in here soaking. I have much to do today and I need to get your training program set up. Not all of your lessons will be with me and it may take some time to organize your other teachers.’

***

I leave her in the bath, knowing that in my dawdling and playing about with her I am only trying to delay the inevitable.

I don’t have any reason to look forward to what I have to do next.

The entrance to my living quarters slides shut and locks behind me. I don’t want Maia to accidentally overhear this conversation. Stepping onto the Holonet pad, I kneel and wait patiently for the transmission to go through.

‘Rise my friend,’ I hear the Emperor say.

I comply, but keep my helmet tipped down, only looking up with my eyes.

‘I heard you were lost, Lord Vader. Obviously those reports were incorrect,’ he notes.

‘An unexpected detour, nothing more,’ I admit.

‘And a productive one,’ he slyly states.

I freeze. He knows. Despite how careful I was, he already knows about her.

‘It had its rewards,’ I warily venture.

How long will we dance around the issue? Which one of us will broach the topic first? Palpatine is far more adept at games with words than I am.

‘Ah, yes, and I have not yet given you one for disposing of the Dark Woman, have I?’

I hesitate. That was months ago. And I require no compensation for killing one of the few remaining Jedi. It was my duty, nothing more.

‘Your choice?’ he prompts when I remain silent. ‘What do you want me to give you, Lord Vader?’

I tip my head up and look my master’s hologram in the face. He expects I will ask for Maia now. For a moment I debate my options. If I wait, he will decide what to do about her without any input from me. Very well, I will be bold then and play on his fears.

‘There is no one left who would make a worthy heir for either of us,’ I calmly state.

I see my master stiffen at that. Good. I was right, then. He suspects I will ask permission to take Maia as my apprentice and won’t be anticipating what I will say next.

‘I have found a woman who would be a suitable consort for me,’ I say, watching for his reaction. ‘She should give me an appropriate heir. I want her as my reward.’

Silence.

Then mocking laughter.

I start seething. If it were anyone else...

‘A wife?’ he asks, obviously amused by my request. ‘Surely you jest, Lord Vader.’

‘No, my master, this is no joke,’ I admit, gritting my teeth to bite back what I really want to say.

He knows how difficult it is for me to ask for this, so why is he going out of his way to make it that much worse?

‘Tell me, my apprentice, is she beautiful? Accomplished? Brilliant? A daughter from some royal house?’ my master begins to try extracting information from me. ‘Is she as well versed in the arts of the bedroom as my Roganda? Does she scream your name when you make love to her?’

Furious with his prying, I snap, ‘She’s as plain as a moisture farmer’s daughter, stubborn as a bantha, and has the voice of a Toydarian banshee. She refuses to obey me, and all she does is argue and fight with me.’

That should end any interest he has in taking Maia for himself.

He merely chuckles in response.

‘But she is also Force sensitive,’ he shrewdly guesses. ‘You would not have sought my permission if she were not.’

His laughter resumes while I silently fume. She’s mine, I rage to myself. How dare he consider taking her from me.

‘She appears to be an eminently suitable match for you, my equally stubborn apprentice,’ he finally comments.

What?

‘You may have her,’ Palpatine decides, ‘but as a concubine, not as your consort.’

‘She is my wife by tradition and ritual,’ I start to protest. ‘She swore herself to me ...’

‘And she will be your concubine by my decree. Do not defy me in this, my apprentice, or I will take her away from you,’ he warns.

I bow my head in acceptance. There is no point in pressing the issue. Maia is now mine regardless of her title.

‘You may have her as your concubine,’ he repeats, ‘but with one condition. I will have my choice of any children you have with her.’

No, I think, shocked at his words. He can’t know about my son. Not yet.

‘See to it that your heir arrives without delay,’ he orders.

‘Yes, my master,’ I automatically answer.

I don’t let my relief show. He doesn’t know. And I will have some time to plan.

There are no further words from him as the transmission ends.

Maia is mine.

But am I really willing to pay the price my master has set for her?

***

I refrain from comment, and once my hair is free, he leaves me to my own devices. Several bottles are on the edge of the bath, and a quick check reveals that they contain different soaps. Selecting the ones I like the smell of best, I give my hair and body a good scrub. I can find no mirror anywhere in the room, but by using one of the polished fixtures, I can see that he has noticeably bruised my lips with his kisses and left several very obvious bite marks on my neck. Damn. Anyone who sees me is going to know exactly what we were up to last night. Those bites are going to take days to fade, and they are in a location where I can’t hide them either.

Annoyed with the Sith Lord, I pull myself out of the water. There are towels at hand so I wrap my hair in one and myself in the other before checking out the drawer he opened earlier. A rummage through the contents produces a toothbrush, toothpaste or its equivalent, a brush and a comb. I look after what needs I can before wandering back into the bedroom. My next concern is clothing. What was given to me by the doctor has either disappeared or been ripped up, but my wants have been anticipated and there are clothes laid out on the bed for me.

Black, I note, why does that not surprise me? Well, at least it isn’t yellow which I look totally hideous in. I give each garment a shake. The fabric is soft and should be warm. The shirt is more like a short tunic, with a high-collar and long-sleeves. It fastens closed on a slight angle with the fabric overlapping across my chest. I slip on the loose pants and pull on the high boots, tucking the spare fabric from the trousers into their tops. He’s given me an Imperial uniform to wear, but in black and with the top slightly longer in length. Wrapping the belt around my waist, I run the leather through the buckle and wonder what I am supposed to do next. My hair will take another hour to dry, so I leave it down and tuck the only hair tie I have in a pocket. I can braid or twist my hair out of the way later.

I notice that the bedroom door is open and my curiosity gets the better of me. Peering around the corner reveals what I guess is a kitchen area with cupboards and counter space. A jug and glass have been left beside the sink so I wander over for a closer look. Judging from the color and smell, it must be the same drink I had the other day. My stomach chooses that instant to growl and I pour myself some; it is just as sweet as I remember. Two doors lead off from the kitchen in addition to the one to the bedroom. One is shut, and the other opens into a den of sorts with a couple of chairs, a low table, and a large screen on one wall. The door opposite the one I am standing in, looking into the den, is also shut. I decide that exploring further might not be prudent and wander back to the bedroom to tidy things up. The papers which are scattered on the floor take a few minutes to gather up, and I stack them back on the table using the datapad as a paperweight. Next is the bed and I just finish making it up when the Sith Lord reappears.

‘Good, you are dressed and have been into the kitchen,’ he observes. Without waiting for my response, he tosses a cloak, which had been draped over his arm, around my shoulders, hooks it in place, and adds, ‘It will be a while before the temperature is back to normal so you need to keep warm.’

The fabric of the cloak falls neatly about me. I pull my hair out from under it and let it ripple down my back. Cool, I think, and give the material a tug.

‘You have a peculiar fascination with cloaks,’ Vader comments, ‘and mine in particular.’

‘I like the way the fabric flows,’ I confess, ‘though, in your case, I think it has more to do with the way you move.’

To cover the embarrassment I feel after admitting this, I turn away and break my hair into three parts to braid it. Before I can start twisting it together, he catches my hand.

‘Leave it loose. I prefer it that way,’ he instructs, ‘Now come along with me. I have work to do in my office and you need to learn how to read Aurabesh script.’

The Dark Lord pulls me after him, through the kitchen and den and out into a larger room dominated by a spherical, toothed chamber. Meditation pod my brain prompts from somewhere. We walk around the pod, past a raised circular dais on the floor that I recognize as a Holonet transmission point, and into another room. The furnishings are sparse but functional, a desk with a monitor and data station, several chairs, and shelves with books, paper files, and the odd small box neatly stacked on them. My hand is released once we are standing near the desk. Vader moves to sit behind it, and I am waved into a chair next to him.

‘I know you have some background in linguistics from the lecture you gave those students at the party, so I will rely on your knowledge to help you figure out the best way for you to learn Aurabesh.’

‘Yes,’ I admit, ‘three of my university degrees are in ancient studies, and I became competent in a number of scripts and languages in order to earn them.’

Propping my chin on one hand, I start running the different languages I know through my head. The first step in learning the ones which do not use the Roman alphabet was to memorize the different symbols, their equivalent phonetic values, and English analogs. Grammar and word order came next, then acquiring vocabulary. Well, the grammar and vocabulary will be the same as English, so I will just need to learn the sound values and practice how to read and write. I know the Sith Lord is waiting for me to get started on my studies before tending to his own work, so I had better get going on this.

‘You wouldn’t happen to have some paper or what passes for it and something to write with?’ I ask.

After opening a desk drawer, the Dark Lord puts both in my hands. It takes me a few tries to figure out how to use the stylus, but once I have, I draw three columns down the first page, label the first Aurabesh, the next IPA for International Phonetic Alphabet, and the last English.

‘I think I can pick up the script fairly quickly,’ I tell him, ‘but I will need your help for a few minutes.’ Pushing the stylus and paper I have just written on over to him, I point to the first column and ask, ‘Would you please list all the Aurabesh symbols here? Include everything, even rarely used ones, because I don’t want to find myself in a situation where that information could prove critical and I don’t know it.’

‘And the other columns?’ Vader enquires.

‘I’ll fill those in once you’ve finished.’

I can tell he is wondering what I am up to, but instead of asking, he picks up the stylus and lists the Aurabesh characters as requested. His handwriting is as neat, bold, and rather military in character as I remember. No wasted pen strokes or flourishes here, I note. Once he is finished, I take the paper and stylus from him. Now for step two.

‘I need to know the phonetic values for each symbol so I can work out its equivalent in the Roman alphabet.’ When I sense he is puzzled by my statement, I add, ‘I should have given you a better explanation than that. You will have to read each character to me, and tell me if there are any exceptions to when that pronunciation or value is used. I can then figure out what the equivalent letter is in English.’

There is a flash of understanding from him now, and he quickly complies with my request. I fill the two remaining columns and discover, to my dismay that there are biliteral consonants and vowels to deal with. When I reach the bottom of the page and we have finished with the last Aurabesh symbol, I store the data on the sheet in front of me in my memory and realize that I have a few more critical questions to ask.

‘Is Aurabesh purely phonetic in nature, with a contextual component, or are there systematic variations in spelling?’ Please let it be similar to English in this respect, I hope.

‘Differences in spelling? I don’t know what you mean by this.’

‘It should be simple enough to find out.’ I pull a blank sheet from the stack and hand it and the stylus back to the Sith Lord. ‘If you are willing to write out a few sentences, I should have my answer.’ It takes a few seconds to think up something appropriate. ‘Try this one “They’re taking their son over there.”’ He writes quickly and hands the page back to me. The same word occurs three times in the sentence. ‘It’s phonetic and contextual,’ I announce, ‘this is not going to be as easy or straightforward as I had hoped.’

‘I still don’t understand what the problem is,’ Vader admits.

‘In English,’ I tell him, underlining the three phonetically equivalent words as I do so, 'each of these has a different spelling to distinguish it from the others.’ To emphasize my point, I write the sentence in English under the Aurabesh. ‘You use context in Aurabesh to determine which of the three meanings is meant, but with written English you never have to do this. The habit of relying on spelling is so ingrained in my mind that it could be a problem.’ I let out a sigh, and confess, ‘I will just have to spend more time on my reading skills than I thought I would.’

‘Is there anything else you would like me to do?’ he offers.

There is nothing in his voice to tell me that he is growing impatient, but I know he has more important things to do than listen to me babble.

‘Something to read, please?’ I quietly request.

‘You are not going on about nothing, and if there is the possibility that you will have problems with Aurabesh, I would prefer to know it now, rather than later, so I can adjust your lesson schedule accordingly.’ The Dark Lord catches me under the chin with his hand and turns my face towards him. ‘Maia, don’t ever try to conceal a weakness from me. I would prefer to spend the extra time correcting it now, rather than have you get injured or killed later because you were afraid to be honest with me.’ Withdrawing his hand, he turns his attention away from me. ‘Now, you wanted something to read.’

He turns on his data station, types quickly for minute or so, and then rapidly flips through a number of what I assume are file directories. Finally he settles on something and hands me a print out of it.

‘This should keep you busy for a while. I plan to ask you some questions about what is in it so make sure you read it carefully.’

I answer with a nod and set to it.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, I realize that I need to take notes to follow the twists and turns in the trade dispute I am reading about. Selecting a sheet of paper, I begin to sketch out lists of the places and people involved. Then the Sith Lord notices what I am up to, and when my attention is back on the text, he picks up the sheet, looks at it briefly and tosses it out of my reach. I glare at him, but he returns to his own work without a word. Annoyed now, I pull out another sheet and pick up the stylus.

This time, he grabs my wrist and chastises me with, ‘If you must take notes, they will be in Aurabesh. Resorting to your own script will only lengthen the time required for you to become competent in it.’

Point made, my arm is released and he again ignores me to concentrate on the screen in front of him. Irked, though I know he is correct, I decide to do the same and set my mind to the text I am working on, shutting him out as much as I can.

We both work on our respective assignments for another two hours. When I finally reach the end of the print out, I rest my chin on my hands and start reviewing what I have read. There is something not right with how the events described in it unfolded, but I can’t put my finger on it. Well, I could set the logical part of my mind to worrying away at it and see what falls out. I shut my eyes, drop all the information I have into the appropriate spots in my brain and set to work. The solution which pops out ten minutes later surprises me, yet somehow I know that it must be the correct one.

‘Your mind looks quite different when you do that,’ Vader comments, ‘a wall of logic and convoluted calculations. So, what can you tell me about the trade dispute?’

‘The planet’s own senator was behind it,’ I conclude, ‘but I don’t have enough information to determine why.’

He is rather surprised that I figured that out, judging from his silence. Or did I miss something and get it wrong?

‘No, you are correct,’ the Sith Lord affirms, ‘and have done very well. It took me several days to determine the same. Now, ask me something, anything you want to know, and if I can give you an answer, I will.’

I wonder where that offer came from? My curiosity is endless, but there is really only one thing which is worrying me at the moment and I suspect that is what he wants me to ask about. So I do.

‘How are you going to explain my presence on your ship?’

‘I’m not,’ he states, ‘the reason why will be obvious to anyone who bothers to look.’

The Dark Lord rises to his feet and walks over to the shelves. It is apparent that he is searching for something, and when he finds it, he returns to his seat behind the desk, setting the small box he has taken from the bookcase in front of him as he does so.

‘Take off your tunic,’ he orders next.

What is he up to? I wonder, but quickly comply, remembering my vow to obey. I wrap my cloak around myself to keep from becoming chilled and he raises no objection when I do so. He opens the box, and takes four gold armbands from it. Each is inscribed with what I know is his personal sigil in the Sith cursive script. The Sith Lord places one band on each of my wrists and the third above the elbow of my right arm; the fourth is returned to the box. When each is closed around my arm, I feel a slight sensation of heat and see the seams seal themselves. An experimental tug on one of the bracelets reveals that I can’t remove it.

‘You can’t take them off, so stop trying,’ Vader warns, ‘I am the only one who is able do so now.’

Permanent jewelry? Why? I can sense that he wants me to sort out what his reasons are. So, I consider the few facts I have and compare them with traditions from Earth. The presence of his sigil implies ownership of some sort, but surely he doesn’t expect me to act like a slave girl?

‘Don’t ever think such a thing again,’ he rebukes me. ‘Slavery is an abomination and while some in the Empire tolerate and even encourage it, I am not one of them.’

I have inadvertently hit a raw nerve without intending to, but I can’t come up with an alternate explanation.

Well, I give up, then, I think at him.

‘Surely you have ranks among the women who are partners of the nobility on your planet?’ When I shake my head no, he explains, ‘By Sith tradition, which some in the Imperial court have adopted, it’s one bracelet for a mistress, two for a concubine, three for the most favored of those, four for the consort. I have just made you the second highest ranked woman, after the Emperor’s current Favorite, in the Empire. Be careful how you use it.’

Too shocked to say anything, I just stare at him, speechless and unthinking.

My reaction must have amused him, because the Sith Lord teases, ‘That is the first time I haven’t had to block your emotions or thoughts out. I should surprise you like that more often.’

My mind finally realizes just what he has done and I start to wonder about it. Does this mean we are married or the equivalent? What exactly am I to him? Is he my Lord, now, or what?

Vader watches me for a moment, then perceives that I don’t understand the situation.

‘Being a concubine is not the same as being a consort,’ he explains, ‘Only my consort, if I had one, would be my wife and titled as Lady Vader. I can have as many concubines as the Emperor will allow, but you will be quite enough for me. Out of courtesy, you will be addressed as “my lady,” and any children you have will be my heirs unless I acquire a wife whose offspring would take precedence. When there are several concubines it is typical for one to be selected and elevated above the rest, hence the title of Favorite. Since I only have you, this designation is yours by my choice.’

His tone becomes more serious as he continues, ‘As my Favorite, no one can question your presence on any ship I am on, but I am not going to flaunt you in front of the officers or crew. You will stay in my quarters unless I take you elsewhere or your lessons require you to be in another part of the ship. No wandering around unescorted. I do not want to lock you in my rooms, but I will if I must. Now, get dressed. I still have work to do and you can spend the next few hours in meditation where I can keep an eye on you.’

I quickly do as I am told and settle myself on the floor beside him. Repeating the process I used the previous day, I find myself again surrounded by the Force in that odd timeless place, but I am not sure what I am allowed to do.

My uncertainty draws Vader’s attention, and he instructs, Try looking around a bit and just sensing the Force. You can also try moving the Force about with your will. Let yourself sense its direction and see if you can change it. I will teach you control this afternoon, but for now, just use your senses to explore a little. If you do something you shouldn’t I will let you know. Immediately. With that he leaves me to do as I please, and I completely lose track of the passage of time.

The Force swirls around me and I happily snatch at it, pulling different threads together, examining them, and then letting them go. It is easy to send the Force into what are in my mind’s eye, little whirlwinds. Growing tired of this game, I simply look around for a while, watching how the Force moves near me and then comparing that to how it surrounds the Sith Lord. I am perfectly content to stay near his presence.

Deciding to try something different, I wonder how much of the Force I can collect. I reach out and grab onto a bit, then add more to it. With each addition it becomes harder to hang onto what I already have. My stubbornness kicks in and I refuse to let go.

Then I hear Vader’s warning, Maia, don’t, and I instantly release the Force I have been struggling to keep a hold of. Go have a look farther afield, my Lord orders, and no more attempts at manipulation. I want you to just watch and feel. Now off with you. He gives me a firm mental push with the last bit and I don’t resist it.

Where to now? I wander away, noting how the Force moves with my passage. I stay very still now, watching the area around me intently. There are other weak presences here. Curious, I home in on one to have a closer look. My approach produces no reaction, but I am careful not to get too close. Is this what an ordinary person looks like, I ask myself. If so, their Force signature is a match compared to the Dark Lord’s sun. I examine a few others and conclude that each looks and affects the Force around them, differently. Satisfied with what I have determined, I let myself drift farther, still being careful to observe the Force around me because I expect I will be asked about what I find. When nothing else catches my attention, I decide to return to the Sith Lord for more instructions.

As I make my way back, I begin to feel uneasy. Something has changed and I don’t know what it is. I pause, touch the Force around me in an attempt to settle myself and reach out carefully with my senses. A moment later, I yank them back. There is someone out there, a dark presence, and it isn’t Vader. I take a few figurative steps backwards, then flee as fast as I can towards my Sith Lord. Whoever I detected follows in rapid pursuit. In a panic now, but close to my goal, I throw myself at my Lord’s shields.

Maia? he questions, startled, then adds, Ah, I see what the problem is.

He instantly pulls me inside his defenses, wrapping me in a mental and, as I snap out of my meditative trance, I discover, physical embrace. I must have thrown myself bodily at him without knowing what I was doing. Still shaking from my close call, I rest my cheek on his chest and tightly hang on to his robes. Vader says nothing, his mind is occupied elsewhere, but he does hold me in his arms while I try to sort myself out.

A few minutes later, I hear an officer announce over the comm, ‘Lord Vader, High Inquisitor Tremayne has arrived in system and wishes to speak with you in person.’

‘Tell the Inquisitor I will be available in an hour and allow his shuttle to dock,’ he orders in reply. Turning his attention to me, the Sith Lord gently pulls my hair back and brushes his fingers down the side of my face. ‘You have had a rather unfortunate encounter, Maia, one which is entirely my fault. I should have called you back as soon as I sensed Tremayne’s presence. Now, I need you to calm yourself so I can introduce you to him.’

Meet this Inquisitor? I would rather be on the other side of the galaxy from him, but I know that I will be allowed no choice in this. Using an old technique which works well for me, I slow my breathing to quiet my nerves. Once I am sure that I am steady, I let go of the Dark Lord’s tunic, get up off his lap, and step back from him. I sense him studying me with a critical eye.

‘Good, you have managed to bring your fear under control,’ he observes, obviously pleased. ‘You need to wear something more appropriate for a social occasion than what you have on. The storage compartments in the bedroom which are nearest to the kitchen door contain clothes for you. Go put on one of the sleeveless gowns which are there.’

I hurry back to the bedroom and open the compartments I have been directed to. The top one contains various underclothes and garments like the ones I have on. Pulling the next one open produces an assortment of accessories, metal belts, scarves and so forth, and half a dozen different dresses, all in black like the clothing in the drawer above. I let out a snort. Basic black is going to become very tedious after a while. Two of the gowns are sleeveless, I discover, so I pick the less revealing of the two and quickly put it on. It is similar in style to those from ancient Greece, pinned at the shoulders, with the fabric falling in graceful folds in front and back, and the skirts brushing the floor. One of the scarves I found goes around my neck to hide the bite marks from last night. I select a belt made of simple gold links, pull on a pair of flat black slippers from the lowest drawer, toss my cloak around my shoulders, and race back to where Vader is waiting for me.

The Sith Lord looks at me carefully, then reaches over and pulls the scarf from my neck. I glare at him and try to snatch it back, but he drops it on the floor.

‘I marked you for a reason, Maia. Don’t defy me by trying to hide it,’ he warns.

I open my mouth to protest, but then think better of it and close it again. After his warnings about proper behavior and the consequences if I misbehave, I see no reason to get him angry over this. Best to simply obey him. A few days of embarrassment is something I will just have to live with.

When he sees that I will comply without a fight, Vader explains, ‘You are mine, Maia, and the sooner my officers and crew learn this, the better. None of them will dare approach you if they know I have been intimate with you.’

After telling me this, he wastes no more time, but heads out of his quarters immediately, with me at his side. Rather than have me run to keep up or trail along behind, he adjusts his pace so that I can match it. I note the various turns that we take, but after a while, I have to admit that it would be difficult to find my way back on my own. My Lord is silent along our journey, so I amuse myself by surreptitiously watching the reactions of the officers and crew members we encounter. The double takes and quick realizations of what I am to the Sith Lord are priceless, but I manage to keep my expression as neutral as I can despite the strong temptation on several occasions to start laughing. The Dark Lord simply ignores them. I now know why he insisted on the sleeveless gown - he wanted to make a point in the most blatant way possible other than announcing it over the ship’s comm-system.

Of course I chose your gown deliberately, just as I marked you on purpose, he sends in a thought, and I can tell he is a bit irked at me. Why would I make a public announcement about my private affairs?

Aren’t you worried, I reply, about what the Emperor might think of my sudden appearance in your life?

I dealt with that issue this morning while you were busy soaking in the bath, my Lord responds, sounding satisfied with himself. I asked for you as my reward for eliminating a fugitive Jedi some time ago. My master was rather surprised by my request, but he is pleased that you are permanently bound to me by oath, and that I will be able to train you somewhat. He would not let me have you as my wife, Maia; instead, he gave me permission to take you as a concubine.

Rather surprised? Somehow I know he is severely understating Palpatine’s reaction. I can just imagine that scene between master and apprentice, but I know that I will not get any further details about it, even if I ask. Instead, I venture, You had this planned all along, didn’t you?

He looks over at me, and I know that I am about to hear more than I want to.

I wanted you from the moment you first fell asleep in my arms; I realized then that you truly did not fear me. That you have a deep emotional attachment to me, are pleasing to look at, and are gifted in so many other ways made it an easy choice. It was just a matter of testing you, repeatedly, to ensure my choice was the correct one. Your acquisition of Force sensitivity was an accident. I did not plan or anticipate that.

Some of your tests were cruel, Ani. I quietly tell him, realizing that some of the apparent crises I had to deal with were nothing more than staged trials for me to pass. That scene when I first met him on the Executor, was that merely another test to him? And last night? I wonder. I have been manipulated by a true master of the art.

Were they? They were necessary. In my position, I cannot afford to make a mistake in the selection of my mate. Do not presume to judge me in this.

There is no way I can respond to him so I continue our journey in silence.

I am curious about where we are going as we have been moving up rather than down towards where, I assume, the docking bays are. Finally, we take a short ride in a turbolift and when we step out, I realize we are in a domed observation room with large transparisteel windows giving a panoramic view from the top of the ship. Wandering over to one of the windows, I watch several supply ships shuttling back and forth between the port and another large vessel.

The Sith Lord joins me and identifies the ship, ‘Tremayne’s personal Star Destroyer, the Interrogator. He is here for emergency repairs and resupply.’

‘And your ship’s repairs?’ I ask, wondering how long the damaged hyperdrives will take to fix.

‘Several days, and that with crews working constantly,’ he reveals. ‘The technician responsible for the installation of the energy dampers has disappeared, but I will find him, sooner or later.’

Part of me feels some sympathy for that faceless tech. Vader’s displeasure tends to be shown in a rather lethal manner. I venture, ‘He must have fled once he knew his mistake caused the damage.’

‘If it was a mistake and not deliberate,’ the Sith Lord counters. ‘Maia, I cannot afford to give anyone the benefit of doubt. This could have been a sabotage attempt by the Rebellion.’

There is nothing I can say to this, so I nod in agreement, and continue to watch the activity in the shipyard. I am quickly becoming chilled due to my bare arms and pull my cloak across my chest to cover them and help conserve body heat. The observation room is colder than the rest of the ship, probably due to the large number of windows in it. My plight has been noticed though, and my Lord steps closer, pulling me into his arms and letting his own cloak fall around me. I give a contented sigh, wrap my arms around his waist, and rest my head on his shoulder, happy to stay exactly where I am for as long as he will permit it.

I can afford to indulge you once in a while, is his amused telepathic comment, and I do not want you to become cold again. That is, unless you want to spend the afternoon in bed with me?

My thoughts screech to a halt. He isn’t serious, is he? What can I say to his offer? I have no idea how to respond to this and my mind is in turmoil.

‘Maia, you must decide what it is you feel and what you want from me,’ he insists. ‘I cannot do that for you. You have no fear of me personally, and even I, a Sith Lord, can feel the depth of your love for me. I know you want me, you have said so yourself, and I can feel your need for me, so what is it that has you so terrified whenever I express my desire for you?’

Why does he ask me this now? I don’t want to deal with this, I want to run away from it.

‘Conflicting emotions are extremely dangerous to one as sensitive to the Force as you are,’ the Sith Lord reveals. ‘Even now, you have the potential to reach almost half my strength and that will grow rapidly with training. I know you do not want to follow the dark path, but your fear will lead you there. You must deal with this, now, not later, and running away from it will only make matters worse. I cannot teach you unless you face your fear.’

I start shaking in his arms and feel him tighten them around me. At this moment I am far too shy, nervous and afraid to tell him what he wants to know.

‘There is nothing you can say which will upset me,’ he reassures me, ‘just be honest.’

I bite my lip. He will persist until he has an answer out of me, sooner or later. So, what is it that has me so frightened? It isn’t the Sith Lord himself. I have never been afraid of him, much to his amazement, and I love him. At this thought I instinctively increase my grip around his waist, and he runs his fingers through my hair in response. Maia, I scold myself, be honest here, you know what the problem is. He will understand so best to be out with it.

Too shy and embarrassed to tell him aloud, I bury my face in his robes and think at him, I have never been in love with anyone but you, so I have no idea what to expect when you touch me. I am afraid of being hurt.

‘I know this,’ he admits, ‘but it was necessary for you to tell me this yourself to help you deal with your fear.’

The Sith Lord is quiet a moment, then pulls me in tighter to his chest and tells me something I would not have expected to hear from him. ‘Giving in to my desires last night, imposing my will on you, and frightening you as a result was a mistake, one I will not repeat. In the future I will be careful to not move our relationship faster than what you are ready for. I will not rush you in this; the choice of when you are ready to give yourself to me will be yours entirely.’

His generosity astounds me.

‘How did you know I needed to hear that?’ I ask.

There is gentle amusement in his answer. ‘Simple. You are afraid of what you have never experienced, and going from your self-imposed isolation to being my Favorite and lover is a large step to take all at once. You just need more time to adjust to your new situation, to know me, to gain some confidence in yourself. Once you do, you will be fine. Just don’t take too long to make your decision. I have waited almost two decades for you already and I am not known for my patience.’

Wisdom and understanding from him, and the last, he had told me this once before. I reach my senses out towards him and find that the Dark Lord has dropped most of his mental defenses. His feelings towards me are complicated, fondness and friendship mixed up with some regret, deep passion and desire, a touch of irritation, intense possessiveness, and, to my astonishment, deeply buried, strongly felt love and the faintest hint of heartbreak.

He has let me see into his soul, showing me a level of trust he would never allow anyone else. I can only respond in kind. Throwing my own mind wide open to him, I wait for his light mental touch and tell him, Hold me, Ani, just hold me. Love me even, if you desire it, for I am yours. I love you and will never, ever leave you.

His response to me is pre-empted by the sound of the turbolift door opening. I feel the Dark Lord’s presence quickly retreat from my mind and his mental shields instantly slam back into place.

‘Inquisitor Tremayne, you are ten minutes early, and your timing, as usual, is appalling,’ Vader states, irritation bordering on cold anger coloring his voice.

The Sith Lord must be addressing whoever just arrived. I turn myself in his arms to have a look at our visitor. Tremayne is tall, slightly built, and wearing a black cloak and robes. A lightsaber hangs from his belt. He has short dark hair and the right side of his face is partially covered by metal, his temple and eye replaced with cybernetic parts, giving him a terrifying countenance. At the moment the Inquisitor is staring at the two of us with a look of astonishment on his face. Well, I guess, it isn’t every day that someone walks in on Darth Vader and finds him with a woman in his arms.

No, Maia, this is the first time it has ever happened, and having him see us like this is dangerous for both of us. You must not say a word to him, stay completely silent unless I tell you otherwise. I was going to put some shields around your mind to protect your thoughts before Tremayne arrived, but there is no time for that now. I have to be in physical contact to keep my own defenses around you, so when I let you out of my embrace, keep a hold of my hand.

I feel his arms loosen, and let go of my grip around his waist, being careful to run my left hand along his right arm until my hand is in his.

Switch hands, he prompts, I want my right free.

You don’t trust him, do you? I ask as I comply with his request and move to stand at his left side.

I have no reason to. He would have persisted in pursuing you this morning, even after I warned him off, if I had not taken swift action against him. To Tremayne you are a valuable prize to hunt down, break to his will, and give to the Emperor.

Our telepathic conversation has taken mere seconds, but in that time the Inquisitor has managed bring his surprise under wraps and acquire a neutral expression. There is a flash of realization on his face when he looks at my arms and I can almost hear his mind counting the three gold bands. He stares at my throat a moment, looking at the bite marks, and an amused smile plays across his lips. I decide then that I don’t like this man one bit.

‘Lord Vader,’ Tremayne begins politely, ‘I see congratulations are in order, but taking a Jedi for your Favorite, is that really wise?’

What? I am no Jedi. Where did he get that idea from?

‘The Emperor himself has sanctioned the match. It is not your place to question it,’ the Sith Lord coldly addresses Tremayne.

Your Force signature is of the light side and comparable to that of an average Jedi. There is no other conclusion he can make.

So that’s what you meant by a “respectable” midichlorian count.

Yes.

‘A rare prize, then, and a beautiful one at that, one you have obviously enjoyed thoroughly. What a pity I didn’t catch her for myself.’

The Inquisitor shows no sign in his calm voice that my Lord’s rebuke has affected him. I don’t like what he is implying, though, and probably thinking. To reassure myself, I tighten my grip on Vader’s hand.

What a total creep.

You do have the most peculiar expressions.

‘Maìá, this is the High Inquisitor, Lord Tremayne, a former student of mine. His duties tend to keep him in the Outer Rim Territories,’ my Lord formally introduces me, using the Sith version of my name. He deliberately ignores Tremayne’s last verbal foray, though the Inquisitor probably intended it to be a compliment on the Sith Lord’s prowess at capturing Jedi.

He expects you to offer him your hand, Maia.

I acknowledge the Inquisitor with a tip of my head, and extend my free hand to him. He kisses the back of my hand, holds it a lingering moment before releasing it, and sketches a polite bow in response. The man tried to read my thoughts when he had my hand in his, I realize, and couldn’t get through the defenses the Sith Lord had extended around my mind.

Of course he can’t get through. I can flatten him with a thought if I want.

‘A Jedi with the name of a Sith goddess, who is of the light yet shields herself with the dark,’ Tremayne muses aloud. ‘A mystery to unravel.’

Why are you using this version of my name?

Because it is easier than changing it entirely, which is what would normally be done. You may not be a Sith, but you are mine and require an appropriate name.

‘Which is none of your concern, Lord Tremayne,’ the Dark Lord warns. ‘Now, what business do you have with me? I have other pressing matters to deal with.’

‘Your Favorite is not the only strong Force sensitive I have detected lately, Lord Vader,’ the Inquisitor reveals, ‘There is another one out there whose presence I do not recognize. Whoever it is, is with the Rebellion, and was recently at Ord Mantell, if I am not mistaken.’

I knew something about this, knew something critically important, yet I can’t remember it, and have no idea why or how I am aware that I once had this information. Rifling through my memories produces nothing but blanks. In frustration I push at the empty spots, trying to force something, anything to come back to me.

Stop that, Maia, my Lord warns me, it will either come to you naturally or not at all, and I will be angry with you if I have to spend any more time repairing self-inflicted damage.

‘I am well aware of the Rebels’ Jedi. You will turn over any information you have concerning him to me,’ Vader orders, ‘and inform me immediately if you encounter him again. Lord Tremayne, he is mine to deal with, not yours, and I will not tolerate any interference from you in this matter.’ He emphasizes this last command by pointing a finger at the Inquisitor and waving it at him.

‘As you wish, Lord Vader. I have no further business here, so I will bid you good day. My lady, I look forward to meeting you again sometime.’ With a quick tip of his head, Tremayne takes his leave and disappears into the turbolift. Meet him again? I would rather toss him out of the nearest airlock.

‘Tremayne is a useful, if dangerous, tool and he knows the consequences of crossing me. There will be no more trouble from him on your account,’ Vader reassures me.

Once I am sure the Inquisitor is gone, I start to release the Sith Lord’s hand, but he increases his hold and pulls me back into his arms.

‘I believe we were in the middle of something,’ he tells me, ‘before being so rudely interrupted.’ With a nod of his head, I hear the turbolift lock. ‘It is safe now to stay here a few minutes longer, or we could return to my quarters if you prefer.’

I press myself against him and rest my chin on the armor above his breastplate, gazing up towards his mask. Vader meets my eyes and looks down at me. The moment we had been caught in earlier is gone, but I still want to lose myself in his embrace for a little while. He picks up on my wish and I am once again wrapped in his cloak, his arms secure about me.

‘If this is all you want from me,’ he comments, amused, ‘you will prove to be a most undemanding mate.’

‘How about some clothes which aren’t black?’ I venture.

‘The color goes with your rank, Maia. As the mate of a Sith Lord, you are stuck with black in public,’ he tells me. ‘The only exceptions are your formal presentation to the Emperor and high court or formal functions if I give you permission to wear something else.’

Well, it was worth a try, I guess.

I wryly grumble a little, ‘At least I will never have to worry about co-ordinating and matching colors or my wardrobe going out of style.’

‘Ever the practical optimist, aren’t you?’ he teases. ‘You will, of course, always have my permission to wear what you want unless I have reasons for you to do otherwise. Maia, we should not linger here too much longer. I still need to teach you control and sort out your training schedule.’

‘Ani,’ I ask, curious, ‘why is it so easy for me to speak with you this way? On my world telepathy is considered a magic trick or hoax.’

The Sith Lord is silent, thinking, then replies, ‘My midichlorians, I suspect. They have created a strong permanent bond between us, one that cannot be broken except by death. I will always be able to hear you if called, and I doubt I can ever block you out completely. With training, you will be able to limit what you send out to me, which is why I need to teach you control. Having a constant sense of your emotions and thoughts in the back of my mind is distracting to say the least.’

With his last comment, he releases his hold on me and pulls himself free of my arms. Keeping one hand on my back, he steers me to the turbolift.

‘So, come along now. It is time to get something to eat and you still have a lot to learn.’

Our walk back to his quarters is uneventful. There are no further odd reactions to my presence from the crew, and I assume that word has spread rapidly through the ship. Once we reach our destination, I pick up the discarded scarf and wander into the bedroom, intending to change out of the dress and back into the more practical clothes I had on earlier. Before I can do more than shake out what I have selected to put on, I am joined by my Lord. He is carrying the jug which I had found on the counter earlier and two glasses. Obviously he intends to have ‘lunch’ with me. The door slides closed and locks behind him, and I can hear the room pressurizing. Curious about what he will do next, I sit down at the foot of the bed and watch his every move.

‘Normally I would spend the next hour alone in my meditation pod, but I prefer your company instead,’ he admits. ‘The environmental controls are better in here as well, and we are less likely to be disturbed. Now, come over here, my Favorite. I hope you never need to use this knowledge, but I am going to teach you how to remove my helmet and face mask.’

The Dark Lord seats himself in the chair and sets the jug and glasses on the table. I obey his command without hesitating, and wait, standing in front of him, for further instructions. He pulls off his gauntlets and drops them on the table. Taking my hands in his, he directs my touch to where the helmet meets the mask, on the sides of his neck.

‘There are two pressure seals here which you need to open.’

I find the spots with my fingers and push down where indicated. Air hisses as the seals break open.

‘Lift the helmet up and back, away from my head.’

I quickly comply, setting it on the table. His bare scalp, marred by a terrible scar, is pale against the black armor.

‘The mask is anchored in several places, but you can slide it out from those if you are careful. Rotate the top slightly, push the bottom back to detach it from the vocoder, and then lift it up. Carefully.’

Taking my time, I study how the mask and vocoder are attached, then gently do as asked. The mask joins the helmet on the table.

When I turn back to him, my eyes are met by his piercing blue ones. Vader watches me carefully, waiting for my reaction to his appearance. I have somehow always known what he looks like under the mask, so there are no surprises for me here. The only emotions he will find are my love and concern for him. An eyebrow is raised now and a small smile appears, and I know he has just realized that how he looks has no effect on what I feel for him.

The soul is what is important to me, my love, I reassure him, and yours is that of a noble warrior.

Understanding flashes across his face, and he swiftly removes the vocoder, setting it down beside the mask. He catches my hands in his and raises one to his lips, kissing me on the wrist before releasing it.

‘You are a rare prize indeed,’ he says to me, possessively, ‘one I intend to keep entirely for myself.’

With a gesture he calls one of the glasses to his hand. Taking the hint, I fill his first then pour one for myself. There is only one chair, so I kneel on the floor beside him, sitting back on my heels, the only position the dress will allow me to get into under these circumstances. I make a mental note to try and swipe another chair for the bedroom from his office.

The drink is a different flavor now, more tart than sweet, but I like it nonetheless. After I have drained my glass, I reach to pour another.

The Sith Lord stops me, noting, ‘One glass of the supplement is enough for your body weight. Once I know what your physical training will require, you can have more. In the meantime I will see that some other plain juices are stored in the kitchen for you since you like it so much.’

He fills his own glass again and sips it slowly.

Content to simply stay where I am, I lean my head against his side and close my eyes. A few seconds later I feel his hand running through my hair. That feels good, I think as I let myself relax. He can do that whenever he wants to.

Vader looks down at me and chuckles. ‘For someone who has spent most of her life deliberately isolated, you certainly like it when I touch you.’

‘It’s not the touch so much as who is doing it,’ I admit, blushing as I do so.

Stop it Maia, I tell myself, you are acting like a silly teenager dealing with her first crush again. You had better be careful what you say and do or he is going to believe Nigel’s stupid comment from the other day.

‘You may say or do what you like in this room. If it is inappropriate, I will let you know,’ the Sith Lord tells me. After a moment’s thought, he admits, ‘Perhaps I over-indulged you with the amount of physical contact I permitted on your homeworld. I can never allow that in public here. No matter, I expect your emotions will settle down and your impulses will be easier to control in a couple weeks. There is no reason for me to be away before then and it will be simple to stay in my quarters most of that time. You can work the silliness out of your system in here.’

Why can’t he just stay out of my head when I have embarrassing thoughts? Hearing that last bit from him was even worse.

If you don’t want a response, then you had best learn control so you can keep your thoughts from reaching me.

I make no reply to his comment since he has already promised to teach me this today. Curious to see just what he can and can’t pick up from my mind, I carefully start my old stand-by, Fermat’s last theorem, running in the back of my mind. My Lord’s hand stops moving through my hair, and I know he has just realized I am up to something. With a quick yank, I move the calculations to the surface of my mind and wait to see what he does. A moment later, I feel his mental touch running over the outside of the mathematical barrier I have put up. Time now to see if he can pick up my thoughts through it.

How embarrassed do I want to be? Well, I would like to touch his face which is not too scandalous. There was that fantasy I used to have about being stranded somewhere with him, but I have already lived that more or less. The two of us in a place where we might get caught? I roll this idea around. So far, he has given no indication that he can pick up anything from me through my impromptu shield. Emboldened by my success, I start wondering just what it would be like to make love with him in his armor. Awkward, I bet and probably not very comfortable. Plus I wouldn’t be able to touch him. No fun, I decide. Much better here in his quarters where he can take it off.

Looking up at him, I discover that he is obviously trying to keep a smile off of his face. Narrowing my eyes, I decide to see if what I suspect is true. I want you right now, Sith Lord, I think, so out of your armor and into bed with you! Sure enough, he starts laughing at me. Frustrated, I try to get to my feet only to be tripped by the fabric of the gown’s skirt. I end up sprawled across the floor in front of him. That was real talented, Maia, now wasn’t it, throw yourself at his feet. Not sure what to do next, I prop myself up on an elbow, stay where I am, and wait to see what he will do instead.

‘That is a very clever way to keep me out, Maia, but you used it once before so I know how to get around it now,’ he tells me. ‘You can’t block me if I decide I want in anyway, so don’t waste your time trying.’

Rats. That’s not fair. I would like to have a few private thoughts once in a while. Gazing up at the Dark Lord, I decide to try once again to get up. I want to see if what I used to do for my brother will have the same effect on Vader, and he did say I could do what I want in here. This time, I make sure the skirt is out of the way before standing up. The Sith Lord watches me, and I know he has no idea what I am planning to do.

Worried, are you? I tease him. You should be.

An eyebrow goes up at my words, but he makes no other response, just sits patiently waiting for me to make my move. I consider where I should position myself, then step so that I am in front of him and to one side. This should be manageable. I reach over to his face with my fingertips. Keeping my touch feather-light, I trace his eyebrows first, then his cheekbones, his jaw line, back up to his temples. When I run a finger down his nose, he shuts his eyes and I can see that he is beginning to relax.

An odd thought occurs to me. Maybe I should try and see if the empathy I had with Michael works here too. Contentment and relaxation are what I choose to send through my fingers. He responds by relaxing further at my touch. Good. There will be days, I am sure, when he will really appreciate that I can do this for him.

Like that, do you? I ask.

He doesn’t answer, but I do sense that he is perfectly content for the moment. I continue to trace his features with my fingers, easing what little tension remains in his body. Suspecting he is sensitive about the scars on his face and scalp, I am careful to keep my touch as light as possible over them. When I know I can do no more to soothe him, I decide to do something a bit foolhardy. Leaning over, my hands resting on his shoulders, I set my lips on his and kiss him. My intention is to keep it a short, chaste one, but the Sith Lord has other ideas. He is instantly aware again and catches my face in his hands. I am held firmly in place while he tries to get me to open my mouth to him. After I resist for only a few seconds, I yield, not wanting to anger him.

As I part my lips to him, he touches my mind, does something to it, and I can feel how he is affected by our kiss. The passion, desire he feels seeps into my mind, along with an overwhelming need for me. I shiver a bit in response. Having his emotions in my head like this feels good but also quite odd. When I try to send my love to him in answer, his hands leave my face and pull me onto his lap. I slip my arms from his shoulders to around his neck as he does this, keeping my lips hard against his own. This is one kiss I am enjoying thoroughly. Finally the Dark Lord moves his lips from my mouth down my neck and gives another sharp nip to me.

Stop that, I think at him, You’ve made your point with the crew and I don’t like looking like a teenager with a rabid boyfriend.

This has nothing to do with the crew. You are mine and I choose to mark you as such.

He waits for a response and I debate whether or not to put up a fight. Is this worth arguing about? I decide no, but I also know that I have not won a single battle with him. He’s winning the war by inches, how clever. Better watch out Sith Lord, I think to myself, knowing he will probably hear me anyway, you have no idea how stubborn I can be if pushed too hard.

On the contrary, I know exactly how stubborn you can be. Now kiss me again before I replace my helmet. I have an errand to run and when I return you will learn control.

I set my lips to his again, but he keeps it short and chaste. He must be in a hurry to go. Rats. Deciding to be a bit stubborn, I give him a peck on the forehead, rest my cheek against it and hold him to me. Not so fast, you, I think, I want a proper kiss. My Lord hesitates, and I suspect that he is debating whether to shove me aside or give in to my request. A moment later I am being kissed and he makes no attempt to stop his emotions flooding into my mind. This is just too much to bear, so I pull away from him hoping to try and sort myself out. There is no escape, though, as he continues to let me feel what he chooses to send. Once he decides it has been enough, he stops, and I let my head fall onto his shoulder.

Don’t defy me, Maia. Even in here, I will put up with only so much before I do something about it.

Am I going to say or do anything more? Not a chance. I push myself off his lap and retrieve the garments I had selected earlier. The tunic is a bit wrinkled, so I sit on the bed and smooth it out with my hands, completely ignoring him as I do so. The Sith Lord watches me, and once it is obvious I am not going to show any more defiance or fight, he replaces his helmet and leaves without saying another word to me.

***

I turn my back on Maia and leave her sitting on the bed. She pushed me, tried to see exactly where the boundaries are for what I will put up with. In return, I gave her a mild reprimand, warned her not to defy me, and what did she do? Threw a childish sulk.

I shake my head as I start for the briefing room and my meeting with Griff and Chief Engineer Tosack. There is an investigation into yesterday’s mishaps to deal with.

Maia can stay where she is and think about her situation for a while. She has to learn that I won’t put up with any defiance from her.

While I wait for the turbolift, I consider what to do. Perhaps it is best to get this contest of wills out of the way immediately. If I wait, and have to punish her later, the risk to my son is that much greater.

Very well, concubine, I decide. No more warnings, no more mild reprimands. I will let you be stubborn, let you try to get your own way, and your punishment will be designed to break you.

***

As soon as it is apparent he has left his quarters I change into the tunic and pants, careful to not think of anything at all except what I am doing. I wait ten minutes or so more to make sure he is gone and at some distance, then curl up on the bed and have a good cry. That was mean and cruel of him, I decide. I just wanted a little kiss. It would have done no harm for him to let me have that.

With a start, my stubborn streak kicks in at full power. He’s trying to train me into being a nice, obedient little concubine, I quickly realize. I will not be treated like a child or forced into doing as he wants, no way. If he thinks that being mean and cruel will work, he had better think twice. Years of dealing with that from classmates has given me a very thick hide. There will be no more crying spells from me if he does this again.

Narrowing my eyes, I wonder if I can keep him out of my mind with another tactic. Chaos theory should be much harder for him to get through. No nice repeating patterns like the equations I was using earlier and much more complicated in terms of variables if I set it up right. I carefully partition my mind. This will take some planning. Ten minutes later I am satisfied with what I have. No repetitions at all. Nice and convoluted. Multiple layers. Perfect.

Knowing I need to disguise what I am up to, I walk through his quarters into his office. The stack of paper and stylus are where I left them, so I pick them up and hurry back to the bedroom. I settle myself in the chair, start the first set of calculations in my mind and begin writing out the random solutions as they come to me. Five minutes later there is a nice pile of impressive looking notes on the table. Good. He will think I have been busy with some problem or another to pass the time.

I start the next five layers of equations. Two I set at the surface of my mind, the others at deeper levels. He said he had some way of getting in regardless and I am going to try and block that if I can. The solutions are now multiply embedded six-dimensional matrices, far too complex to write out with standard notation, so I switch to the system my mentor and I developed to work with my mathematical gift. It looks very much like complicated computer code and I wonder what the Sith Lord will make of it. Shortly after I fill the second page with this coding, he reappears.

Staying completely calm, I look up at him a moment before returning my attention to the page. I can’t let myself get too distracted or I will lose track of what I need to write down. His senses run around the outside of my mind, trying to see what I have been up to. Vader is obviously curious about what I have done. He watches me carefully next, then picks up the first set of notes. As he looks through them he runs a finger along, trying to follow what I have done, I guess.

That won’t get you anywhere, I think at him, it works in tandem now with everything else I am doing.

Replacing that stack of paper, he pulls the completed sheets filled with my own notation system from under the one I am writing on. I just ignore him and continue to work. I can sense his puzzlement now. So, you can’t figure it out, can you?

And that won’t help you either, I tease, there’s only one other person who understands how that notation system works.

I feel him push against my mind, looking for a way in. With this I set the stylus down and wait patiently. After a few long minutes, he manages to circumvent the first two layers. When I know that he is about to get in, I yank the next two sets of calculations from where I set them and throw them in his path. He stops, startled, then tries to get through these as well.

I can keep that up for hours, Sith Lord. You can’t get in now unless I let you.

It’s an empty boast since I have only two more layers in reserve, but he backs off immediately, annoyed at me. A quick minute of work, and I have another batch of calculations going and set in place. Time now to let him have it for his earlier behavior.

I won’t be treated like a child. I won’t be trained into being some compliant little concubine who jumps when you snap your fingers. And I won’t put up with being harshly disciplined when it is uncalled for.

He takes a surprised step backwards. I bet that’s the first time he’s done that in years. Good. Now I hope he is going to react in a reasonable manner. The Dark Lord stares at me without saying a word and I continue to stay in the chair, calmly waiting for his response. I can sense that his mood has shifted from one of annoyance to anger. Finally, he spins and walks from the room, taking the jug and glasses with him. The door slides shut and locks after him.

***

You have been warned, Maia. I will leave you in there until you cease your defiance and childish behavior, and are ready to obey me, I tell her telepathically. When you are willing to apologize, call me and I will let you out.

With a smile, I set the jug and glasses down on the counter. I knew she would do something to provoke me right away. Now, I just have to wait until she realizes it is better to give in, behave in an appropriate manner, and obey me.

I turn and look at the door I just locked. There’s nothing to eat in there that Maia can get at, and if I cut the drinking water supply with something vile tasting, she won’t be able to hold out for more than a few days, at most.

Chuckling to myself at how easy she is to predict and manipulate, I go to my office and switch on the comm. I will listen in on what she is up to while I work.

***

The old isolation tactic. Well, that won’t work on me either. As for apologizing, well he can just forget about that. Leaving the calculations running in my mind, I take stock of the situation. There is nothing to eat in here, but water is available in the ‘fresher. I can manage for a number of days as long as I can get something to drink. Better see what containers I can fill just in case he gets the bright idea to cut that off.

A quick trip to the ‘fresher and rummage through the cabinet produces several bowls which I quickly fill and set aside. I also fill the sink. Time to see what else is in the bedroom’s compartments. There is nothing in the ones with my clothes which might be of use, and I quickly discover that there is some sort of lock on all of the others. Guess he doesn’t want me going through his stuff. No matter, the bowls and sink contain enough water to last several days if I need to use them.

How to spend my time? I will have to leave the chaos equations running to keep him out, but I can do that automatically without having to think about it. He did suggest I practice my singing so why not? Breathing exercises first, I scold, do it properly, then warm-up. Half an hour later, I am ready to try a piece or two. What would be appropriate I wonder? Something that fits with being locked up, I decide. Almirena’s aria, definitely. A long think produces a number of others. Starting with the simplest one first, I spend an hour or so working my way through a dozen songs.

‘Let’s try something harder,’ I decide, aloud. ‘Broschi. Maybe the hardest piece of all, Farinelli’s battle aria? Haven’t tried that in many years so it should be interesting.’

For my first attempt at it, I leave off all the ornaments, runs, and arpeggios. I can just hit the low notes in the baritone range and the soprano ones at the top if I keep the volume low. Second try, I toss in everything I omitted with my first go. I manage reasonably well until the cadenza with those blasted arpeggios. My voice breaks through all of the five top notes but I keep going and finish up anyway.

‘That was horrible,’ I scold myself aloud. ‘Better work on that.’

Until I get sick of it, I work through the cadenza at slow speed, trying to get my voice to do what I want and sing those five pesky notes. No success. It keeps breaking, so I give up. I haven’t been able to hit them in years anyway. Not sure what to do next, I flop down on the bed and let my eyes wander about the room. There’s a light blinking on the control panel and I hadn’t noticed it before now. Curious, I get up and wander over to have a look. Sure enough, my suspicions prove to be correct.

‘You’ve been listening, haven’t you,’ I tell Vader over the comm. ‘Maybe I should sing some truly awful stuff in German for you.’

With a wicked grin, I start on one of Wagner’s lesser known, least popular pieces. The comm is left on, but I can just imagine what he is thinking about it. What next?

‘You liked Handel’s Italian pieces, didn’t you?’ I ask, though I know he won’t answer. Feeling belligerent, I admit, ‘I won’t sing those for you.’ I consider for a moment, then tease, ‘Something else then. How about music closer to what you were complaining about? Verdi should do it, or maybe some of Puccini. Ah, I have it. Mozart and I know just the two pieces too.’

With that I launch into the two arias for the Queen of the Night. Nice, high, showy, and loud. Definitely nowhere near the Baroque style. Somehow my voice doesn’t break on the F’s. Cool. I have never managed to get through both before without that happening. The comm light promptly goes off as I finish, and I start laughing hysterically. That was just too funny.

***

I slam my hand down on the comm panel to close the channel before she can start another piece. A Toydarian banshee? That was a most charitable description.

Didn’t like that at all, did you, she teases in thought. Pity. Both of those are considered virtuoso pieces and very few can sing them properly.

I refrain from responding to that and return to reading the latest batch of intelligence reports. A number of Fleet Admirals have been complaining about my influence with the Emperor. Perhaps it is time for me to do something about them.

***

There is, of course, no reply to my teasing.

It is getting close to the time when I should be eating my evening meal and my stomach growls at me. I am used to skipping meals so I ignore it, and get a drink for myself from the tap in the bath. Instantly I spit it out. So, he decided to do something about the water after all. Rats. Now I will have to ration myself. Good thing I prepared for this. With a sigh, I carefully restrict the number of swallows from one of the bowls. If I am very stringent with myself, I should be able to manage four or five days before I run out and three or four days more after that. Maybe by that time he will relent and let me out. Don’t kid yourself, Maia, I tell myself, he is going to try and break you with this, and he has far more experience in doing that to someone than you do in resisting it. Well, I will just have to find some way to out-stubborn him.

Bored now, I decide to see exactly what clothes he has put in my compartments. The top one contains five tunic and pant sets identical to the one I have on, and various underclothes. I dig about a bit in it and find a box with what I guess are the Empire’s equivalent to pads. My face goes red. Well, at least he thought of that so I don’t have to ask about it when I will need them in a couple of weeks. I freeze at this thought. Didn’t you bleed a bit a few days ago? You should still be having your monthly unless that was some weird anomaly. Must have been just that. No point in worrying about it since it is not a problem now. Moving the tunics reveals a couple plain, long white nightgowns in a soft fabric. Oh. He must have had those made to match what I wore at home. When he is acting reasonably again I will have to thank him for that. The next drawer has the dresses. Curious to see what they might look like, I try them on, not bothering with the one I had already worn. Two of them I won’t wear, I decide. Both are cut too low for my modest tastes. The bottom bin contains an assortment of shoes, boots, and socks.

My explorations finished, I take one of the nightgowns and change into it. The clothes I wore today go back in the top bin and my cloak in the bottom one since I have no idea how laundry is handled. Since I can think of nothing else to do, I climb into bed and curl up under the covers. I guess the Sith Lord is going to stay away and leave me alone in here. He had promised this morning to make love to me tonight, but later on told me it would be my choice for when he would do that. Which statement should I believe? Either, both, none? I wonder.

Well, he can’t get at my mind so now is a good time to think about it. I love him, I think, feeling rather miserable as I do so. I love him and need him, but I am scared of what he wants from me and how it will hurt when he does that to me.

‘You are not a child, Maia, but an adult, and you need to get over this fear of yours.’

I give a start. Where did that come from? Looking about in my mind, I can see no evidence that the Sith Lord has got through the barriers I have up. Peering deeper shows nothing out of place either. Weird. Miss one meal and I am already hearing things. Maybe this is my conscience speaking to me.

Feeling a bit silly, I ask whatever or whoever this is, ‘What am I supposed to do to get out of this mess? I am not going to let him manipulate me and I refuse to be some sort of tame pet. There is no way I am going to give in. None. I’ll starve myself first.’

Silence as an answer. Must have been hearing things after all. Time to go to sleep, I decide, and feeling a touch hungry and thoroughly miserable, I do so.

***

Maia’s finally gone to sleep for the night, so I get up and go to my meditation pod. I have spent far more nights in here than in my sleeping quarters. The pod seals over me and I remove my helmet as quickly as I can.

I reach out, touch the life-bond we share to gauge her mood. Even in her sleep she’s lonely, miserable and scared. My giving her a prod in the right direction hasn’t helped at all. With a sigh, I consider what to do.

I took her from her home, from friends, from family, from everything she ever knew.

She’s homesick.

The only thing she has left which is familiar to her is me. Her instincts are to cling onto me as tightly as she can - to try and hang on for dear life in case I disappear on her, too. She wants me to reassure her I won’t leave her alone. Desperately needs me to become the new anchor point in her life.

I won’t ever have to worry about her leaving me.

Small consolation, that.

I brush against her mind again.

How isolated and alone she feels. How very close to despair. I will have to be vigilant, monitor her emotions and mental state closely.

Maia is not as strong as she acts, as she likes to think she is. And without her familiar support network of friends and family around her, she could become unstable if I am not careful.

She has had no choice, no say in anything which has happened to her, so it is understandable that she wants to regain some control over her life. But I can’t let her win this battle. If I do, she will never bend to my will.

And the price if she refuses to behave appropriately is one neither of us can afford to pay.

Little goddess, I am sorry. I don’t want to do this to you, but you will just have to give in and yield to me.

***

Part 2

Home Fiction Adult Fiction Art Mail List Staff Links