Royal Chambers

"This is my garden. I picked the roses. You'd say they were fitting if you could see them. There are Black Baccaras and Black Velvet roses, and lavender mingled in as it enhances the scent of them. Over there are peonies. And hydrangeas. There are some green plants around and some bushes. Stuff that looks pretty with the flowers. The gardener just puts in whatever he wants. I just want the smell of the flowers."

She laid down perpendicular to him, her head on his stomach. She reached over and plucked a couple of berries out of the basket, biting into one. It was juicy and ripe, and she watched the pinpricks of light zoom across the skies that were certainly ships streaking through the orbit over their heads. The ring of the driveyards obscured some of view of the night sky but the effect was rather striking.

"Humans have a very strong tie between memories and scents. Scents can trigger some of the most vivid flashbacks of our past to be as sharp as if they just happened. Lavender and roses reminds me of what I have lost. It reminds me of why I do what I do. The lessons I had to learn the hard way."

She offered him a strawberry as she popped a small piece of dark chocolate in her mouth. The bitter candy accentuated the sweet berries, causing her cheeks to pucker from the tart reaction of her taste buds.

"There is a nature preserve outside of Pesktda on Garqi. There's this grove on a mountain. When it's clear, I swear you can see forever."

"Mmm, yes. It is."

She moved to lay alongside of him, her head on his shoulder and his arm tucked around her, hugging her close to his body. She was relaxed with him, the scent of the summer night swimming around them as they lay watching the world spin around them. She started to doze off, tucked in the crook of his arm, her deep rhythmic breathing barely registering over the chirps and whines of crickets in the surrounding garden. She couldn't have been out more than a couple minutes when she woke with a sharp inhale of breath. She stretched as she pushed up from the hard ground, looking around in the darkness. She smiled at him, watching the twirling stars and crawled over him until she was nose to nose with him, her hands and knees keeping her lifted up off his chest. Her hair hung down in stingy brown strands, brushing light across his skin from the slight breeze that barely moved the bushes in the garden.

"Have I redeemed myself?"

She dipped her head and kissed him softly, but firmly, ending with a playful nibble on his bottom lip. The pitch black gardens and curtain of her dark locks gave no light to her face, but if his night vision was any good, he would see the predatory look in her eyes. There were illicit things on her mind and she was ready to quit the rose garden for the night. Her lips swept across his cheek and she growled some suggestions in his ear before she pulled away from him to collect the basket.

The rose garden vacated and locked again, they barely made it in the door of the estate as everything was dropped in the entryway to be put away by the silent and unobtrusive staff. She found herself swept up in his arms again, and they left a trail of clothes on the floor of her bedchamber to the huge king canopy bed. Except her boots, this time, those stayed on.

After exhaustion and mutual pleasures had left them contented and resting, Sin lay on her stomach, arms tucked up under her pillows and hair pushed off to one side. The soft light from the nightstand cast a warm glow over the raised welts and glossy tattoos on her back, visible through the open back of the silken night gown she had slipped on. Her eyes looking at him for answers on his quietness, as she murmured.

"What are you thinking about?"

"This isn't heaven. I remember heaven. It was fleeting, a glimpse of what I had thrown away before my soul was thrown down into chaos where it belonged. There is so much hatred in the Nether. And so many old friends."

She sighed a deep breath and buried her face in the pillow, almost wanting to hide from the thoughts and memories of those who haunted her. She shook off the emotion, and answered him with an even tone, none of it belying the grim satisfaction she felt for surviving as long as she had.

"I was thinking of my brothers, the ones of both blood and battle, and how I have watched them all perish, seen all their glories fade to nothing while I am as constant as the Core. I have passed them all in titles, soon I will pass them all in power. I was the unlikely one, the one who played the long game. And I am the victor for it. The Whill said I am never satisfied. And he's right. I never am but that is the price of power."

"You sir, are learning well. Flattery will get you everywhere with me."

She pulled the covers back and crawled into them, curling into his arms. She closed her eyes as she listened to his heart beating, his breath filling his lungs and pushing back out again. She continued, although she did not open her eyes or move from her chosen spot.

"I wonder if that works for me. I for the life of me can't figure out how a timeless being of infinite power ever managed to find an old cougar appealing. Humanity is rubbing off you, you've gone native."

She opened her eyes and cocked her head at him strangely.

"So is it the body that is attracted to mine? The human vessel that finds me fair? Or is some of this driven by the regimented soul of the Shard? Would the robot ninja be so enamored were he not destroyed?"

"Pathological tendencies, joy in the suffering of others, and a penchant for murder on large scales. I also leave wet towels on the floor."

She smiled, nuzzled into his warmth, thinking about the laundry list of charges that the Republic could try her for. Not one of them even remotely qualified as a regret in her book. No, regrets were for other people, people with piddly little lives that never amounted to much. They giggled at her silliness and flaws, because they were his too. Well, apart from the joy in the suffering of others. But then again, Eralam hadn't attended boarding school with a bunch of mean, rich girls. There was no faster way to learn to enjoy watching someone get a comeuppance than that.

The lights were extinguished, the lovers fell asleep and nothing disturbed them until morning dawned behind the heavy brocade draperies that shrouded the room from the world outside.

Champagne is for celebrations and special occasions and it took her half a minute to realize that he wanted to mark the occasion of his new beginning as normal guy. Who happened to once be a god. And a robot. Who fell in love with a Sith Lord. No matter how many times she thought about it, it never seemed like a likely scenario to Sinistra. She looked up from the datapad in her lap, curled in a ball on her massive bed with a mountain of pillows behind her. She was dressed for bed, hair up in a messy ponytail, no makeup and worn out old red silk pajamas that were faded and missing a button at the top. She put the datapad down and slipped off the side of the bed, heading for the sidebar to retrieve a pair of glasses.

"I see you're in a good mood. Make it back to Dressel ok?"

Glasses acquired, she met him at the foot of her bed, waiting to see which he wanted to make use of first; the oil or the champagne.

"You're the one who brought the champagne, I should be asking you that."

She handed him a glass, her head cocked to the side while she thought about it a moment.

There were many things they could be celebrating. The success of the Empire. The start of a new life for him as a mortal. The blossoming romance between two good friends. Any of them would be a worthy use of a fine bottle of the bubbly stuff. She pondered it as she chose for him, gently clinking her glass against his as she spoke.

"Here's to us. To Inky being an idiot and you summoning me out of thin air to prove a point. To your rooms on Tython bringing you a distraction when you needed one and a friend after that. To wearing a Shard and not knowing it so that when you needed a drink and a shoulder, you had it. To bringing me a hangover cure and a gun. To poker and whiskey and falling in love with your best friend. Cheers."

She took a sip of the dry sparkling wine, the bubbles tickling her tongue as she savored the taste of it. It was good, definitely an expensive bottle, and she wondered how long he must have been saving it. There was so much about him that had changed in the last couple of years. To watch the addition of emotions into his decisions and actions was like nothing she could have imagined. She could have told you when they first became friends exactly how he would have responded in any situation. There was something solid and true about his processes and instincts but now? She couldn't tell you from one day to the next what he would do. It was a whole new galaxy to him.

The first time they really hung out and talked, he had bemoaned the pull of emotions and their mudding of the Force. He had argued that sentient species needed to learn to detach themselves from their emotions and they would find themselves much more able to focus and channel the Force through them. He couldn't' quite grasp that emotions were not so easily ignored. Now, barely a couple years later and he was caught in the swirling tide of his own feelings, tossing him about. Right out of the gate, he discovered love, betrayal, hate, anger, fear, sorrow and joy. It was a carnival ride of unending ups and downs. For the most part, he dealt with them well. But there were times that his naivete clearly showed.

He was wise and ancient and still, in matters of the heart, he was new and green. He made her feel so young again, a rare feat for a being that was thousands of years old. Maybe it was that newness in him that made her wish for a younger body, for more time to spend with him. There were so many things they did not know about each other, so many things that had shaped them into the ones they were today. She was sure he would be curious at some point just as she would start asking him things as they grew more comfortable with new dynamics of their coupling.

She didn't want to think about where it was going, that was always a hellish exercise in masochism. Instead, she would focus on the now. Two people, standing in the middle of a sea of others, hidden from prying eye so that for at least a little while, they could be with each other without distraction, without judgment.

"Well that doesn't make us sound like drunks at all."

She pulled the glass out of his hand, and slid off the bed to set them with the champagne bottle on a nearby table. She turned back to him, stopping just in front of him, one of his knees on each side of her hips. She took his hands and rested them on the curves of her body, where her waist met those hips, her fingers curled around his forearms.

"You have the Emperor, the most powerful woman in the galaxy all to yourself, to do whatever you wish with. You greeted me with such gusto this afternoon and now you seem to be quiet and uncertain of yourself."

She moves in closer, her hands sliding up his arms and around his neck as she looks up at him with sultry eyes, full of fire and determination. She wanted him to take her, to make her beg, to plead for sweet release. She wanted to gasp in pain and ask for another. She wanted to feel his hands on her, holding her down, pulling her close and everything in between.

She closed the difference to his lips and kissed him hard, with a need and urgency that he had shown her earlier in the day. Perhaps she could ignite that within him again.