Hello! Thank you for your interest in Beyond the Glass, Through the Rain. A few notes before we begin:

1. As you all know, I do not own Star Wars. This is a work of fanfiction.

2. The characters in this story are going to seem OOC for the first few chapters; however, this is a conscious decision I made for plot purposes, and I promise everything will make sense later on! After we get past the preliminary chapters, they will become their canonical selves again, especially Ahsoka.

3. I do not condone the words and actions of characters such as Anakin/Vader and Erosik. Though it should be pretty self-explanatory while reading, they are intended as clear examples of what not to do.

4. If you enjoy symbol-hunting while reading, then yes, the title is symbolic. If you don't enjoy symbol-hunting, you don't need to pay attention to the symbolism in order to understand the plot. ;)

I hope you enjoy the story! :)

Rain, because of weather control, was rare on Coruscant, but the spattering of grey below always left her with that same insipid pang. Speeders trundled along pre-determined skylanes, overshadowed by steel skyscrapers and an omnipresent veil of smog. She had watched this view every morning for as long as she could remember, and each time the repetition hollowed her out all over again. The princess let her eyes flutter closed, and behind her, a handmaiden wrapped diamond jewellery around her lekku. Another applied cosmetics to her lips, a liner, a matte, and then a gloss; she had quickly learned how to tell them apart by texture.

Time, magnified by the waiting and the silence, stretched on. Without thinking, the princess smoothed her sweaty hands over the silk of her skirts. A handmaiden noticed and immediately snatched her wrists—did she know how much this fabric had cost? The princess flinched at the woman's tone and mumbled an apology, hurriedly returning her hands to the armrests.

And then, finally, it came—the whine of opening doors. She bolted upright in her chair, her heart thudding dutifully against her ribcage. Her handmaidens had already whipped around and, judging by the two distinct thuds, collapsed to their knees. The princess knew what this meant. She rose from the chair and sank to her knees with practiced grace. Folds of lavender silk fanned about her in the shape of a flower. She touched her forehead to the floor, though not directly against the hardwood; the spread of silk and petticoats served as a cushion.

A long moment passed, swollen with spotless silence, and she feared her heart would erupt from her chest. All of these weeks…why was she still nervous? The click of boots thundered against the hardwood floor. The clicks grew louder, stopped again. "Get up, Ahsoka."

The princess remembered her name was Ahsoka. She got up. Emperor Vader—no, he had told her to call him Anakin—was already scrutinizing her with a furrowed brow. "I take it you've finished preparing her for me?" He met Ahsoka's eyes mid-sentence, but this no longer fooled her; he was in fact addressing her handmaidens, the same way he did every morning.

Next came the inevitable, albeit muffled, response: "Yes, Your Majesty." No one would dare rise from a bow without the emperor's permission, and the handmaidens were no exception. Neither, for that matter, was the Imperial princess, who stood in wait of her brother's next line.

"Come on, then," Anakin barked, gesturing for her to follow him. And there it was, her cue. She followed him to the opposite end of her chambers, where he stopped beside her canopy bed. So did she. He sat on the mattress and she did, too. Then he swung a sleek case onto his lap, flipped open the lid, and deftly withdrew the needle. She stiffened. The needle's very presence was as good as any spoken order. He yanked her satin strap up onto her shoulder, smeared rubbing alcohol across a swath of skin, and injected the needle into her upper arm.

Ahsoka bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut. Sometimes clenching her hands in her lap kept her from flinching, so she did that, too. She had learned these tricks out of necessity.

At long last, Anakin pulled the needle from the muscle and tugged her to her feet. "Come on, then." He said that a lot, Ahsoka knew. It was one of the only things he ever said to her.

She followed him out of her bedchamber, into the turbolift that rang with off-key chimes, through an extravagant hallway still painted with early-morning darkness. As usual, she felt the eeriness of the Imperial Palace rattle her bones, pristine and silent and dangerous. A hush had settled over the entire building, like the quiet that rings in the air after a prolonged scream.

Something brushed her upper arm and she snapped her head around. It was only one of her handmaidens, fixing the off-the-shoulder strap that Anakin had improperly drawn up to her shoulder. Ahsoka paused to let the woman adjust it, but then Anakin demanded to know why she had stopped, so she shook off the handmaiden's grasp and fell back into step behind her brother. The handmaiden dissolved into a trailing entourage of Imperial bodyguards.

Anakin swerved around a corner and Ahsoka followed, skirts in hand. An old-fashioned oil painting slid into view, bordered by a gilded frame that instantly caught the eye. Ahsoka couldn't help the flicker of warmth that coursed through her, spurred by familiarity and fondness. She knew and liked this oil painting, for it was her closest connection to her late parents.

"That was your father," Anakin had said, standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders. At the time, it had only been a few days since her awakening, so this was new information. The painting depicted two middle-aged strangers, a Togrutan man and a human woman draped in velvet and precious gemstones. "Our father. He used to rule this Empire, before…"

Anakin's voice had thickened with sorrow, and he'd looked to the ground in what Ahsoka had interpreted as near despair. "Before what?" she had prompted breathlessly. This, of course, was before she had learned to just let him talk, to refrain from asking too many questions.

He'd met her eyes anyway. "They died in the same attack that led to your memory loss."

"Oh," Ahsoka had said.

Then silence, the passing of an uncomfortable lapse of time. Ahsoka had grimaced and rubbed at her wrist, a wordless reminder that it was Anakin's turn to speak. "You remind me of our mother sometimes," he'd said at last, as if he were musing over something that had just come to his attention. "Obviously, you took after your father in appearance, but you always shared a personality with Shmi. She was quiet, demure. You are, too. I like that about you."

As on every other morning before this one, Anakin and Ahsoka arrived in the private dining hall. A beautiful, dark-haired woman was already waiting for them, though she had not yet taken a seat. Both she and Ahsoka were obliged to stand until Anakin had seated himself, as if some invisible eye were present to observe the formalities. But Anakin and Ahsoka's father had always found formalities important. So it was imperative that they hold true to them.

Ahsoka sat down in unison with the Empress Padmé. She still did not know much about the Empress Padmé, besides the fact that she should always call her "Empress Padmé" and never just "Padmé", at Anakin's insistence. Ahsoka had heard whispers of the empress's mysterious air, and that, at least, was something she could attest to. On occasion she had caught Empress Padmé studying her, but only ever from afar. That was okay, of course; if the empress didn't care to associate with her, then that was her right. Besides, she was the reason Ahsoka's adorable niece and nephew—Princess Leia and the heir apparent, Prince Luke—had been brought into the galaxy, so Ahsoka really couldn't begrudge the empress her secrecy.

It was rare that they talked to one another over a meal. Anakin had to be the one to start the conversation, and he was usually focused on shovelling food into his mouth and moving on to whatever very-important-thing he had to do next. But today, he clicked his spoon against his glass and made a peremptory announcement: "I'm arranging a marriage for Ahsoka."

Ahsoka's heart lurched in surprise, but she managed not to openly react. As if in contrast, Empress Padmé's fork slipped from her hand and clattered angrily against her porcelain plate. "Anakin, no," she hissed. She was the only person who was allowed to talk back to the emperor, or at least the only one who was willing to take the risk. "She's only seventeen! I thought we already had this conversation on Kessel. You—you promised me that we would wait."

"I didn't promise you anything, Padmé. I was the one who didn't like King Yaruba's majordomo. So we left." A frown crossed Ahsoka's lips at Anakin's words. Before they had left for Kessel a few weeks back, her tutors had told her that her brother was working to secure shipments of rare medicine for his troops. No one had bothered to mention that he had also been seeking a marriage contract—let alone her marriage contract. Though now that she thought about it, Anakin hardly ever took her off-planet on diplomatic missions, and he had repeatedly nudged her toward the king. But Yaruba was decades her senior, and he lived so far away…

She shuddered, now overwhelmingly grateful for the king's majordomo—Kinash Lock, if she was remembering correctly. They had departed Kessel—and, apparently, abandoned a possible marriage proposal—because Lock had been staring almost ceaselessly at Ahsoka, and Anakin had decided that he must have "inappropriate intentions" toward her. Ahsoka knew better than to argue with her brother, but she really didn't think that was it. As far as remote observations went, Lock's creased brow and pursed frown had reminded her more of Empress Padmé than a lustful stranger. It was as if he had recognized her, but couldn't quite tell from where…

"Would you just listen for once, Padmé?" Ahsoka jolted out of her trance, cutting a startled glance toward her brother. A group of servants had begun to arrange a spread of fruits and bread on the table. Anakin ignored them, adamant on laying out his argument for his wife. "She'll be eighteen soon. We could use a powerful alliance. See the connection?"

"Oh, I see the connection all right. Playing politics, are we?"

"And that's such a bad thing? I thought you of all people would understand."

"She shouldn't have to get married at age eighteen."

"Why not? I married you at nineteen."

Something wasn't sitting quite right with Ahsoka, but it didn't come to her until she had finished smoothing her napkin across her lap. If her instincts were correct, why had Lock struggled to remember how he knew her? She was the Imperial princess, so shouldn't their connection have been self-explanatory? To make matters more confusing, Ahsoka's history tutor had told her of Kessel's long-standing alignment with the Empire. This meant that, as the previous emperor's daughter, Ahsoka would have interacted with Yaruba and his majordomo long before her brother's ascension—probably since she was a little girl. In that case, Lock's expression couldn't have been one of hesitant familiarity, not if they had known each other for so long.

Maybe her brother was right after all. Maybe, now that she was almost grown up, the majordomo had found himself newly attracted to her. A flush of shame burned beneath Ahsoka's cheeks. Why had she believed it acceptable to question her brother in the first place?

Ahsoka tentatively tugged her gaze from her lap. Somehow, Anakin would blaze past her defences and seize on her egregiously disloyal moment of doubt, so easily and assuredly that it could have been scrawled across her forehead. To her relief, though, she found him watching not her, but Empress Padmé. The empress had retrieved her fork from where it had fallen against her plate, and Ahsoka couldn't help but notice that her hand was trembling.

Empress Padmé levelled the fork with narrowed, dark eyes, as if she could still its teetering motion by sheer force of willpower. "Our marriage," she muttered to the table, almost darkly, "was a choice that we made together, Anakin. Not something we were forced into."

"'Forced into'? Come on, Padmé. This'll make her happy. Right, Ahsoka?"

Ahsoka nodded, but it wasn't as if there were any other option, and anyway, she didn't want to think about this right now. She focused instead on how her lips had started to tingle because of the gloss the handmaiden had applied to them. Harmless thought. Good. Harmless thoughts were good. Good, good, good—everything was good—until she glanced up and accidentally met the empress's eyes. Dark and intense, those eyes, burning with a truth that Ahsoka couldn't bring herself to confront. She shook her head sharply and wrenched away her gaze.

Anakin stood and strode toward the doors, his cape sweeping out behind him. Empress Padmé sprang to her feet as well. He still didn't turn around. "Anakin, where are you going?"

"There are more important tasks awaiting my attention," he replied curtly. Then he left. Ahsoka watched as her brother's form disappeared down the hallway, a cylindrical object bouncing comfortably against his hip. Not for the first time, she wondered what it might be.

Ahsoka had inquired about that cylindrical object before.

Anakin had told her not to ask too many questions.

Update May 1, 2020: I have been editing a few of the earlier chapters with a more polished writing style and new backstory, some of which draws on the new season of TCW. There is no need to re-read earlier chapters if you are not interested, but since I am currently working on the story's final arc, I wanted to ensure that the entire story is at its best before it comes to its close. However, like I said earlier, I have not made any significant changes to previously established plot points; I am only adding backstory that emphasizes the overall themes of the story and deepens the lore.