Story Title: Here in the Darkness

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, just putting my own twist on it.

Summary: What if Anakin's best friend wasn't Obi-wan? Will she save him or will he drag her down into the darkness when a new Jedi threat emerges? AU, set three years after the events of RotS.

Author Notes: Thanks for reading, any feedback you care to give would be appreciated

Update as of 1/23/2014 - I'm trying to update the story, looking back at it, I made some plot mistakes. I'll try to update the old chapters once a month. New content will still be uploaded every two weeks

Prologue

The void of hyperspace swirled around the Star Destroyer, its ethereal light was said to drive people mad if they stared too long at the hypnotizing blueness, but there was no one to see it as the ship sailed on towards a distant star. It was the night cycle; only a skeleton crew was awake, moving around the ghostly quiet ship. Most were asleep, the Admiral too. Behind a heavy durasteel door, even the Dark Lord of the Sith slept. Unlike the Admiral, Darth Vader wasn't sleeping in a bed. He sat, cross legged in a dark sphere that was as tall as three men. It was closed now, protecting its master as he sat inside of it. Outside the sphere, there was no sound, no light, but inside there was the slow hiss of mechanized breathing that was deafening in the stillness. There was light too, faint and white that illuminated the terrifying mask that hid the man who lay within.

Darth Vader was dreaming, it was a strange dream, blurry and unclear, all in shades of grey. It felt as though a mist had fallen over the scene. He saw a small girl with long dark hair dancing through the fog; she turned towards him, eyes that he knew to be bright blue fixing on his. She walked towards him, her feet sounding unnaturally loud on stone floor. The girl smiled as she came, holding out a hand towards him. With a deafening rumble, the ground began to open up beneath her, her smile dissolved into fear as she fell. He ran towards her, falling on his knees by the crevice, looking down to see her small hands clutching a rock jutting out from a wall. She looked up at him, trust glowing in her eyes. He began to lift her with the Force, pulling her back up and into his arms. But before he had gotten her to safety, she was falling again, falling into blackness, falling away from him, as she fell, she screamed, "ANAKIN!"

He awoke with a start, the faint light in the chamber blinding him for a moment. Her scream resounded in his head, replaying over and over. She had been a real girl once, a girl that reminded him of stories in the dark, of laughter and light, of a small hand that would hold his no matter what. She had been gone a long time now, cast out from the Order, taken far away from him. He tried to push her aside and make himself forget about her. Vader tried and failed to push away the memories, this was not his life. He was not the one who had laughed with her, that was a man now dead. But the memories persisted in floating through his mind. He had tried oh so hard to forget, forget what they had shared, no, what Anakin had shared with her. Tried to forget about a time when she had been a part of him, a part so engrained he had believed that it would never be cut out of him. How wrong he had been.

Suddenly, everything was different; a mind was connected to his once more, thoughts and feelings flowing free. Pain that was not his own raced through his mind and nerves causing him to gasp as the sensation flowed through his body. Images of a place he had never been raced through his mind, a dark room, all cold and unfeeling furrocrete, the burning sting of durasteel around wrists, ankles, and neck. The floor felt like ice and was even less comfortable, it was a chill that seeped into his bones and he shivered. He felt something moving towards him, a blaster shoved roughly into his temple, causing him to twist his head and feel the bite of the multitude of bruises that covered him. A needle was jabbed into his neck with cruel and ignorant force and he was thrust back into his own body.

For several long moments Darth Vader did nothing, wondering if the sensation would return but as time passed and nothing happened, he looked back at what had just occurred. She was alive. She was the only person in the galaxy who had the ability to make him forget who and where he was. He looked back on the scene, analyzing the information she had in her head, and that he now had in his. A location was all that he needed, and it was there. He could rescue her. He could save someone. For the first time in three years, he finally felt something either than rage, he felt hope.

On a far off world at the edge of the Outer Rim, a girl awoke. There was no pillow under her head or a blanket to stave off the chill of a stone floor. The chains on her wrists and ankles refused to take in the warmth from her body, instead gnawing at the open wounds that lay underneath the durasteel links. She slowly rearranged herself up, ignoring the myriad aches and pains that seemed to radiate from her back across her whole body, managing not to rattle the chains that lay heavily not only around her limbs, but her neck as well. With the ease of long practice, she settled back down onto the ground, but it brought with it no comfort, the permacrete as unyielding as ever. As she lay there, temple pressed to the cool floor, she listened to the sounds of the room, the quite breathing of the other dancers, the snores from the guards, the hum of generators a long way off. She froze suddenly, reaching deep inside her own mind. The generators were very far away indeed, too far for any human ear to hear. She smiled; face lighting up with hope as she recognized the feeling of the Force once more.

Never had any sensation felt so sweet, the drug they kept her under was wearing off, her power was returning to her, like a long overdue tide finally rolling in. Her mind swelled with emotions that were foreign to her, and yet achingly familiar. It was a ray of sunlight after an eternity of nights, a drop of water to a man dying of thirst. It felt like home, like safe arms wrapped around her, like shackles falling from bound wrists. Then in the silence rang an alarm and her heart beat with wild desperation. In the darkness she felt someone coming towards her, heavy boots nearly tripped over her, gaining her a bruise on her stomach to add to the others. This was her only chance she knew, and she began to struggle, to use her powers to escape, but then she felt the cool metal of a blaster pressed against her forehead and she froze, unwilling to die in that moment. She hissed quietly as a needle was stabbed inexpertly into the veins of her neck, and with a fading rush, the Force was gone before it had ever really returned.

She was empty once more, she was alone. Sorrow filled her soul, she hadn't even reached out to him, she hadn't even tried, and now she never would. The Force had been taken from her, her senses where muted, her mind trapped inside of her, unable to escape the increasingly self-destructive thoughts within. This was agony, this was torture, to be given such a gift and have it ripped away. She cried out in sorrow and rage and pain, garnering her a slap in the face. She reached out, determined to try and throttle the man that had locked her back up into a box, but the chains weren't long enough, her efforts only dug them deeper into her wrists. With a shaking breath that was almost a sob, she curled back into a ball on the ground, for that moment ignoring the rattling that her chains made. She had been whole for the first time in six years, six long years. She had nearly forgotten what a joy it was to feel the Force, to experience life more vividly than anyone in room could possibly imagine. Now she wondered if it would have been better if that hadn't happened. Sure, she remembered how it felt to be alive, but now she was dead once more, a return to blindness was so much worse once one had seen the light of day. Now she was alone once more, alone on a far off world where no one could ever find her.