A/N: I don't own any of this. Disney lets me peep in on Han and Leia and gosh, whaddayah know, I blushed. ALOT. Disney lets me share the story with you as long as we don't get paid for it. So let's keep our voices hushed and enjoy the show.
Warning: There is implied rape/non-con, swarming in this chapter. It is not graphic, but does contains triggers. There is also a fair bit of blood and violence, a bit beyond what might be present in the canon.
Remember- Comments make baby Wookiees smile
I don't make excuses for a tardy fanfic chapter, but yes - This one is late (sorry!). It has changed quite a bit in tone, especially since Carrie Fisher's passing. It took me some time to work up the strength to look at it after that, and I'm glad I waited. It's much kinder and less dark than it was before the holidays. Though I should warn you, it heads into some pretty nasty territory. Which is, as before, based on some real world difficulties that affect unfortunate members of humanity across our globe.
Timeline: Core story is Star Wars rebellion era. pre-ESB Hoth. Force visions in this chapter run from post-Republic era to A New Hope.
Grasping Perception
Chapter Five
As the nightmare (dreams, visions, memories?) faded into a pinpoint in the black, soundless void; Princess Leia's consciousness seemed to float in zero gravity. What precious few sensations she detected were muted, muffled, and chilled her. The darkness she had fought and railed against, pressed in on her, enveloping her in its tendrils, nearly suffocating her.
A tiny red glow appeared before her eyes. Small, unassuming and steady, she was inexorably drawn toward it. She no longer struggled, choosing to ride the crest of the wave that carried her subdued form to the light. It expanded until it seemed to hover directly before her eyes. Not bright at all, it was the only source of illumination in her unconscious purgatory. When she knew she was within touching distance, it proceeded to pulse with the steady rhythm of a slowed heartbeat, brightening and dimming. Above it was the barely perceptible glow of a similar sized rectangular green diode. The familiar placement and shape sent a shiver of dread through her.
She knew those lights – knew the chromed control plastron – recognized the surrounding buttons and inputs. Her breathing and anger quickened as she recognized the black plasteel breastplate that lay behind the square electronic panel. Emerging from one nightmare into another, she gathered that furious energy that drove her, into scowling up – way up – at the skull-like masked visage.
No–,
Lips pulled back into a smiling grimace that a barely tolerant parent would concede a naughty child, she addressed the cybernetic horror before her.
"I am a member of the Imperial senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan," she stared boldly into the obsidian lenses, defiant, resolute.
"You are a part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Take her away!" the dark lord snarled at the diminutive senator standing defiantly before him.
Princess Leia's lips curled back in an aborted attempt at a retort. Darth Vader's black gloved finger stabbed the air between them, his other arm shot out, indicating the direction the Stormtroopers were to lead her. One soldier at the back of group shoved her roughly from behind, and the one at her right heel leaned in close with a lewd suggestion. Leia just shook her head at them as they marched down the corridor of Leia's diplomatically assigned vessel to the breach in the docking hatch the Imperials had stormed through when they had taken her ship.
Shivering, Leia felt the slight drop in temperature as they marched into the hangar, it was miniscule, but enough to send a tremor through her. A silken senatorial robe of a semi translucent white fell gracefully over her shoulders. It was demure, yet tantalized with the sheer fabric hinting at the pale pink flesh of the young woman beneath. From the neck, a thin white hood hung down the back. It was a fashion statement on Coruscant; here it was a flimsy shift amongst the stiff uniforms, plasteel armor and durasteel weapons – offering no protection, no warmth, and no rank. The looming bulk of the encompassing mile long warship pressed in on her. The Princess squared her shoulders and straightened her back as much as possible despite her wrists being bound in front of her. Leia could feel the eyes of the Imperials around her, their probing, judging gazes. She suppressed a shiver, perhaps only one female officer passed her line of sight. Another chill crept up her spine as she passed by a squad of troopers that were forming up, one slow taunting whistle trailing her.
They marched her from level to level, passing through hectic intersections, along bustling corridors wide enough to fly her captured ship through. Everywhere she felt the burn of curious eyes following her. The troopers walked her into common recreational areas, past the barracks before halting before a set of wide doors. The walk seemed unnecessary, it was as if she was being paraded through heavily trafficked areas of the ship. Perp walk, she thought. One trooper emerged to stop short in front of the group that held Leia. His helmet was under his arm and he looked Leia up and down. Beyond, was the rattle and clatter of a busy mess hall. A steady hum of male voices filtered from behind the entrance.
"He's coming, wants first cut, plus a percentage of the first takers." The trooper from the mess informed Leia's guard detail. She had no idea what he meant. Percentage? Of what? The doors slid open again, revealing the wiry form of a middle aged mustachioed Imperial officer. On his shoulder badge she recognized the insignia for the Imperial corrections division brig warden. The officer grabbed her roughly by the chin, Leia jerked her head back out of his bruising grip, hissing.
"Let go."
"This really her?" The warden officer leaned in, the smell of kaffe and a rancid cologne permeating the air. The princess challenged him directly with an icy glare. The warden officer's laughter rasped at her ear, slithering closer, he inhaled deep through his nostrils. "Mmmm. Yes, expensive… Alderaanii twilight rose," not touching her with his lips, but only a hair's breadth away, he whispered in a lascivious hiss, "We've never had a princess before, never a lady so fine, barely ripe enough to eat." Leia struggled to retreat from the officer, the stormtroopers closed in with their armored torsos, caging her. She merely raised her chin higher, shrugging at the restraining hands on her shoulders.
"I am an elected member of the Imperial senate and have been detained on false charges. The diplom– " she gasped when her waist and biceps were seized by armored gloves. The warden officer loomed over her, Leia retreated, bumping her head on a pair of white chest plastrons. The smell of sweat and want surrounded her. Heart racing, she became faint, nauseous, terrified. She swallowed a viscous ball of fear in her throat. This was not something the teenaged senator from Alderaan was prepared for. Leia was subliminally aware of such abuses but had always held fast to the ideal that her diplomatic status would protect her and that the Emperor's soldiers were above such things.
She was beginning to sense she had been sorely mistaken.
He laughed loud and low. Stepping back, the officer raised his arm and motioned grandly. "Bring her in," quietly again, he sneered, " your Highness, I will enjoy seeing what you fetch on the first round."
"You can't do this," Leia protested. The door slid open and she was dragged through it. Unsuccessfully attempting to break free, she pushed at the troopers surrounding her. They sniggered behind their masks, forcing her ahead in to the mess.
A hush fell over the hall at her entry. Nothing was said initially, she was merely marched in, struggling and spitting threats. Her voice died in her throat when hundreds of eyes swiveled in her direction. Leia froze, terrified, her eyes enormous. A lengthy hush was followed by a mass shuffling of chairs and tables. A cluster of various ranks of personnel formed a few metres away in a circle around her. Murmured comments brought rushes of foreboding, dark promises stabbed at her. Leia centered herself, summoning an inner strength, she shut her eyes, searching for some light amidst the growing hunger and darkness surrounding her. She was jerked out of her focus when a rough set of hands lifted her struggling form to stand on a table. Around her were catcalls and whistles. And yet…
Across the mess hall she saw them. Middle-aged troopers, remarkably similar, were cleaning up and vacating the hall, their expressions a strained attempt at neutrality. Clones, Leia realized. The baser human urges were engineered out of them, though not some emotions evidently. She noted that the overwhelming majority of the Imperials present chose not to participate directly in the mistreatment of the prisoner. Most were pointedly removing themselves from the situation.
A steel featured female trooper made brief eye contact with Leia. The princess pleaded with the other young woman silently. The female stormtrooper's answer was a sympathetic look of angry guilt, followed by her rising, shoving her helmet over her shaven head and vacating the mess. As she left, a small handful of what Leia realized were other female troopers followed her out. Outnumbered and fuming, their mutual outrage was palpable.
Most of the mess hall's occupants either evacuated the area, or stood back, mutely observing. Leia's eyes closed momentarily as she was held upright and a raucous bidding began. As the price climbed, hands would reach out clawing for her. She struggled at first, kicking at paws that groped her ankles. A near riot started after she hit home, the vibration of the glancing contact enough to make the front arch of her foot numb. Encouraged, she snarled in a fury. Reaching deep within her, she summoned forth an inner strength, lashing out with the clenched pair of her bound fists. The wrenching crack of the broken jaw of the trooper on her right sent an abrupt hush through the mob. The stormtrooper stumbled, toppling off the table and into the clumsy arms of his comrades.
Bidding forgotten, a howl of outrage sounded from behind her and she was dragged down. Bruising hands tugged at her small frame, she spat and kicked at her foes, yelling back at them in rage. Every ounce of her strength went into her struggle, the slightest man was nearly twice her mass, and yet she managed to hold them off for long frenzied moments. Her own visceral terror giving her angry fire fuel.
It was when they had pinned her feet and shoulders, that she felt that well of strength leave her. Siphoned away from her in a rush, the pain in her beaten body now burned through her. Leia's head fell to the side, her mind became distant to the abuse and she locked eyes with an attacker. The moment extended and froze, and the man's voracious eyes became confused. He gasped, piggish nose turned up as he struggled for breath. He wheezed and his eyes rolled back, blood streaming from the edges. The trooper rose and twitched, suspended in mid-air by some invisible hand. He gurgled, reaching out to Leia, pleading. The surrounding soldiers who had been held in place by shock or perhaps the same force that suspended the choking man, began to clear away from him. In the distance, a steady mechanical rasp echoed forebodingly in the stone silence of the hall.
Rolling onto her hip, Leia pushed herself up from prone position, sniffling. Her flesh burned and her insides had turned to lava. Despite her agony, her attention turned to that awful breathing noise. She pushed back the mess of her hair and rearranged the cloth of her gown carefully. She dragged her body to the edge of the table, wiping at her tears and mouth with the back of her hand. Beyond the gathered soldiers came the sound of heavy footfalls, steady and strident.
In front of her, the crowd of soldiers parted smoothly to reveal the imposing silhouette of Darth Vader. The menacing black figure towered over the tallest trooper, he steadily strode toward Leia, halting a couple of meters short of where she crouched on the table. Thumbs inserted in his belt, his expressionless mask scanned the group of assaulters, all the while his mechanical breathing steady. He said nothing, occasionally halting his gaze to pause on an individual, his head cocking as if listening. Then he turned to Leia, his breathing hitching, before he began.
"Your Highness," his voice, devoid of sympathy or apology – of anything that could be construed as emotion really. Thus, Leia was not prepared for happened next.
Vader's right hand rose and his fingers extended as if clutching a large orb, then his fist clenched, the black leather squeaking. Around her, five troopers made fluttering grabs for their throats. The men gasped and wheezed, each turning pale, then purple. Blood streamed like tears out of the rims and corners of their eyes as the blood vessels burst. One pitched backwards, two slid to their knees, one slumped sideways into the arms of a comrade, the last emitted a strangled shriek and fell face first onto the mess table, crimson rivulets running from his eyes, lips and nose to pool beneath his cheek. Leia gasped, retreating from the dying man with a shuffle of her feet.
Vader's mechanically assisted breathing was the solitary sound for a few stunned long moments. The fear flowed like a sickly ichor around him. With a clang, the double doors at the end of the hall opened to admit four helmeted and fully armed stormtroopers, who marched to stand at attention behind the towering Dark Lord. He calmly addressed the recent arrivals.
"Take the Princess to the detention medical, then to her cell." Vader's mask rotated to take in the assemblage of attackers," this level of treatment for the prisoner was not authorized."
Two of the new troopers removed her binders, they grabbed Leia roughly by the upper arms, lifting her off the table, she groaned and stumbled against the guard on her left. In response, they hoisted her upright, draping her arms over their shoulders and carrying her slack form between them. She distantly realized her boots were no longer touching the deck as they hauled her up. She faded into half-consciousness, barely registering the stark gleaming floors through her swollen eyes. None of the accompanying four stormtroopers said a word to her. They did not seem bent on to be parading her through the ship, rather adhering to their assigned duty.
Leia clenched her eyes shut as the glare of a brightly lit med center appeared behind the layered heavy door sets of a secured facility. The troopers dragged, no – carried her tiny frame forward to drop her unceremoniously into a rigid backed plasteel chair. In front of them was a clear partition with a waist-high receiving desk, and a bored human medical technician with the rank of a captain on his breast. One stormtrooper stepped forward, saluting crisply.
"Prisoner requires medical attention by command of Lord Vader." The digitized low alto of a female stormtrooper's voice informed the med-tech. Leia's head rose in surprise, had they–?
The man's eyes looked sharply from the troopers to Leia and back again. He removed a datapad from the desk, stepped through a sliding barrier with a multi armed medical droid following him. He approached Leia, absently flipping through screens on his datapad. He crouched in front of her, tilting her chin up with a vinyl gloved hand.
"Mm. Subjected to the hospitality of some of our comrades I see." He moved her head from side to side, assessing her. It was gentle, professional but the similarity of the range of motion was a reminder of how she had been man-handled earlier. Leia flinched involuntarily, nearly swaying sideways out of her chair. The med-tech tsked, pulling out a handheld antiseptic field generator, passing it over her limp form as the droid approached her with a hypospray. Leia's arm twitched as the fluids entered her system. Her vision narrowed into that too familiar aperture, once again. And then it went black.
She heard a voice, desperate, distant and dim.
"Leia!"
Still fighting against the inky darkness, she suddenly felt the cold slap of metal against her cheek. Leia snapped open her eyes to see the looming form of Vader, the ebon and chrome sphere of an IT-O interrogator droid. A primitive plunger-type syringe extended from its carapace and servo-repulsors humming, it drifted in to view from behind the towering Dark Lord.
"And now, your highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base,"
She cringed in horror as it approached, scrambling to retreat. Vader extended his hand languidly, and an icy grip seized her limbs. Leia struggled to move, and Vader merely clenched his fingers inward and the invisible hold on her body tightened. The inky hovering sphere of the IT-O injected its vile potion into her thigh. She screamed as the liquid fire burned its way into her system, her mind and senses' defenses weakening.
Then Vader sank his talons into her mind, clawing, scrabbling, tearing at her mental walls. Leia reeled, his violation of her mind as keen as that of the soldiers upon her physical body; with scars that could not be seen, yet never faded.
"Leia!" the distressed cry of a warm voice tugged her out of the nightmare's grasp. There was a brief sensation of vertigo and she was thrust into another terrible incident from her imprisonment on the Death Star.
Leia was in the same cell again, mind and body numb from being sleep-deprived, drugged and strung-out on stress from torture. The cell door slid up and a trio of stormtroopers peered in.
"This one?" one trooper queried.
"Yeah, scheduled for termination," another affirmed.
She could hear the lascivious sneer from behind the third stormtrooper's helmet's vocoder.
"Well then, let's have at her."
Her memory blacked again as she yet again heard the voice. "Godsdammit Princess," it pleaded. The tone was gruff, commanding, it yanked her back out of the cell. And then some dark force overtook her again and swept her onto the bridge of the Death Star.
"You may fire when ready," Tarkin ordered the gunnery officers in the chill tones of his core-world accent.
"WHAT!?" Leia had nearly shrieked, betrayed. Tarkin mocked her trust and chided her.
"Dantooine is too remote to provide an effective demonstration. But don't worry, we will deal with your rebel friends soon enough." Tarkin waggled a scolding finger at her, clucking, his gaunt features impassive.
Leia struggled and protested, the durasteel grip of Vader's hands pinning her to his front. She gasped as the eight green beams of the superweapon's lasers met at an apex, combining their energies to pierce the kyber-strong heart of her homeworld Alderaan. The emerald and sapphire jewel of her homeworld bursting from within into a trillion pinpoints of light and snuffed lives. A nauseating wave of external mass terror and grief drowned her senses and she felt Vader intake a harsh mechanical breath as she stumbled against him. The Princess could have sworn Vader stumbled as well.
"-wake up!" the gruff voice of comfort outside of her onslaught of memories begged. And another different voice joined it.
"Child," the newer second voice addressed her. It was distinctly female; gravelly, ancient, wise and kind. "Child, you must awaken."
Yet, Leia's unconscious continued to assail her.
Leia tumbled into another memory, this one so far and so distant; that it was more feeling than distinct recollection. The med-center room was antiseptic, white, with shutters that hinted at a starfield beyond. Leia's adopted father Bail stood at a short distance away, alongside a small wizened green being. Both watching solemnly the handsome ginger-haired Jedi that cradled Leia in his arms. The Jedi leaned in close to a woman - whose beauty was angelic, beautiful, exquisite and pure. Leia reached up a chubby hand toward that dark-haired angel, to soothe the woman as she gasped in denial, pain and grief.
"Obi-Wan," the woman addressed the Jedi, her chest heaving, "there is good in him. I know. I know this."
And though the woman's chocolate-colored eyes closed and her breath left her ever so slowly upon the cusp of her last word, Leia felt the great sundering of something within her infant self. She thrashed her infant limbs and cried out, wailing for her lost mother.
"Noooo!" Leia screamed. She was unaware whether her waking form had screamed as well, but the sound and pain thundered out of her in all dimensions. She was thrust out of the sterile confines of the med-center, avoiding being sucked in yet again in to the current of visions and memories that swept by her at ever increasing velocity. The colors of their passing becoming a muddy blur, then streaming by so fast the blur became white – intense white all around her, limitless, blinding.
Gravity seized Leia, pulling her down to the horizontal plane in that blinding whiteness. She knelt on its pristine surface, its contours indistinguishable from the walls or ceiling. She sobbed into her hands, the fingers pressing against her closed lids, vainly attempting to stem the flow of tears. The agony of her losses pressed down on her, threatening to grind her soul into the millennias' layers of ice that lay beneath her corporeal body.
"Child, your eyes have seen almost too much. So much pain, " the gravelly female's speech was tangible, close. Leia rotated on her knees to confront the source.
A small orange-skinned female biped being with luminous eyes housed behind thick goggles stood before Leia. Her clothes and cap were homespun, tribal and earthy. A significant wealth of bangles and chains decorated her wrists and torso. The old woman peered intently at Leia, adjusting the focus on her thick lenses. She smiled kindly at the Princess, her pinched and wrinkled features both serene and wry.
"What healing you seek, child, cannot be found in memory. It can only come from an open heart."
