The floor is metal but it's not solid. It's a grate, so that blood and vomit and everything else can just roll through it and keep the floor looking Imperial clean. The metal is cold and it's pressing into my cheek. My cheek is going to have red lines across it from that damned grate. And that's really the least of my problems right now, because I can hear His rhythmic breathing again. He's here. His foot is on my back, pushing me down further into the cold steel floor.
"I'm a friend of your father," he cajoles. "He needs you to tell me where the Rebel base is. He wants me to know. Don't you want to please your father?"
"Father wouldn't," I moan. This is a lie. He's lying to me. My father would not be friends with a…man? alien?...who puts his foot on my back and sticks needles in me.
"Tell me where the base is, Leia," he says encouragingly. Nobody calls me Leia. Nobody except my parents, my aunts, Luke and Han. And He is none of these people. Where are those people?
"I want my mother," I whimper. One of the stormtroopers in the cell snickers, looking at his colleague in white. I'm also in white. Seems we're all wearing white to this party, except for Him. Han called the Death Star a "party" during our escape. It was funny at the time, though I didn't smile then. It's still pretty funny.
"Let me in," Vader says. He's pressing on my brain. Not with his foot; with his mind. I push back.
"Get out of my head," I say, trying to sound as haughty as a princess. He cannot invade me like this.
"She's shielded," he says to himself. He sounds surprised. I'm also surprised by this. But I can feel a titanium wall around my body. The door slams shut with a satisfying thud, locking him out. I imagine the wall. Impenetrable. Thick. Steel. Gray, like this cell, like Imperial uniforms. I can feel his hands running along the wall, looking for a way in, trying to open the door. I keep the wall up, the door locked.
He flips me over. Now I'm looking up at the ceiling. The soulless black droid is floating above me. I try to find its eyes. It has none, so I focus on its long needle protruding towards me. Vader lifts me up, one gloved hand under my back. The droid tilts forward, needle aimed at my chest.
Not again. Not twice in an hour. "No, nonono," I cry, thrashing my body as hard as I can. He keeps one hand on my back, and presses his other forearm under my neck, from shoulder to shoulder. The needle pokes my chest at an angle. The droid beeps once, some sort of apology beep, then withdraws and re-aims. It sticks me off center again. I jerk hard away from the droid, and the needle comes out. Blood is trickling down my chest in two spots now.
"Hold still," Vader growls at me. "It'll be easier on you if you hold still."
There is nothing easy about this experience. I'm thrashing around as hard as I can, though I'm getting so tired of moving. I can feel his clenching arms, his frustration. The droid keeps poking me with the needle.
"Sweetheart, it's okay, please wake up."
He's lying again. He can't call me 'sweetheart' any more than he can call me Leia. Vader pulls me tightly against him—his skin is warm, I would never have thought that—allowing the droid to finally plunge the needle into my heart. I shriek. I can feel the serum spreading through the core of my body.
"Princess?" Vader rumbles in that deep bass. "Listen carefully to me now. Your foot is on fire. You're now in great pain. Excruciating pain." I smell the burning flesh before I feel the agony of it. It smells almost pleasant, like some new meat dish Cook might have tried for us. But then my brain registers the piercing feeling in my foot. I am not on Alderaan. Cook is not here. My left foot is burning with fire, my heart is burning with poison, and Vader is still gripping me. I scream again, writhing, a small bird caught in his iron arms.
"Leia, wake up, baby, wake up."
"I am not your baby!" I shout at him. He laughs. How dare he laugh at my agony? My eyes open, wide enough to glare at him. But it's not Vader. It's Han Solo.
