Before - Legends A Monster - An Old Young Palpy Fic I found...

Going through old floppy disks, I found this fic I started to write in high school. I don't think I'll ever finish it, but here's the beginning...

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[blockquote][b]1[/b]

She made sure her hair covered her bruised, blackened eye as she set the knife to the dinner vegetables, chopping deliberately, making sure the pieces were perfect, slowly crafting them, concentrating on making each slice just right ? she needed to distract herself from the pain in her face and in her arms, the pain that throbbed with every heartbeat. She always sought to distract herself from it. Every time it happened. This time she cooked her family?s favorite dinner as her husband sat in another room, asleep in his chair.

The house was small and nestled in the green countryside. A window in the kitchen overlooked the back of the house, where a bright green garden grew, fenced in to keep out pests. Behind the house, beyond the garden, were deep woods. In front of the house lay a dirt road, a meadow full of small yellow flowers, and a stream. The woman?s son would play by the water or by the woods, doing gods-know-what, but contenting himself and coming home smiling. He rarely played with the other children, and this sometimes worried the mother, but his happiness reassured her.

Her husband worked in the plasma mines. He was a very large man, balding, with a thick brown beard and arms like small tree trunks. Droids could not mine plasma, as the material would short their circuitry, so the woman?s husband toiled long days beneath the planet?s surface, a pick in hand, his muscles as strong as anything a droidsmith could muster. He would return home tired and dirty, often smelling of ale. Sometimes he would eat dinner. Other times he would fall into a stupor and then a deep sleep in his chair. Still other days ?

She didn?t like to think about the other days.

And it was because of that and because of the pain that she chopped the vegetables so delicately, so finely, so perfectly before dumping them into the pot.

The shriek made her drop the knife with a loud bang that caused her husband to snort and blink his eyes in his chair. It was a child?s voice. She ran from the kitchen and passed her husband in his chair, who called after her. She was out the door and around the house and bounding towards the woods behind the garden. She found her son crying in the woods, his arm held rigidly in front of him, pointing. At first all she could see was the boy, and she passed her eyes over his body swiftly checking for injury. A thousand possibilities crossed her mind?s eye: [i]a tuskcat, a fangbird, a sprained ankle, a broken arm, a roving band of Gungans come up from the South?[/i]

But then she followed his finger, his terrified stare. Before him, lying on the ground, was a nuna, a small one, disemboweled. Its innards poked out from a ragged hole gouged in its belly, and the fallen leaves surrounding its corpse were damp and dark. An insect crawled over its eyeball and began to feed.

The mother gasped and, reacting quickly as only a distressed mother could, lifted her boy, all ten standard years of him, and carried him out of the woods to the safety of the clearing, where she set him down outside the garden fence. She knelt and held him close, rocking him gently where he stood as she felt his lip quiver against her neck.

?Shh,? she cooed, ?don?t worry about it, baby. It was just a dead bird. Some animal must have gotten to it. Shh, baby, it?s okay. It must have been some little critter?s dinner. It?s okay. It?s okay.?

The boy?s sobs calmed to whimpers, and with a big sniff he unburied his face from his mother?s shoulder. Red faced, with wet cheeks, he looked at his mother, who smiled at him. He saw her bruised eye. Another, smaller bruise, less dark, was on her cheek. He sniffed again. ?He hurt you, again, Mama.? It was not a question.

?No, baby, he didn?t touch me. I just had an accident while I was doing chores.? She smiled even bigger now, to show him that it didn?t hurt. It was hard to do because her cheek was

 

This is a nice piece! I liked the look at the family and childhood of the person who I presume will eventually become Emperor Palpatine. I can see that even as a child and not yet acquainted with the Sith, there are still hints of the future Darth Sidious in Tenil--his dreams, his fascination with politics, his desire to prove himself superior to others. I also enjoyed the detail you put into Tenil's family and background. If my assumptions are correct, Seelya's hopes for her son to become important will be fulfilled somewhat differently than she likely anticipates.

It would be great if you decided to continue this, but if you don't, then thank you for sharing at least this part with us.

 

Thank you so much! I think what initially drew me to the idea was talk on the Lit forum that Palpatine's background should never be explored, because it would inevitably make him sympathetic and less evil. I didn't feel that was necessarily true.

 

A narcissist even at that age. How unsurprising.

Definitely interesting. Thanks for posting.

I do think Palpatine's background shouldn't be explored - in the official EU, that is. That's what fanfiction is for.

 

I think you're absolutely right. Nobody is born evil. This is a nice piece. Sometimes it's easy to forget that there are millions of ordinary people living their day to day lives in this universe and it's nice to get a glimpse into their lives. Thanks for posting!

Conor