notes: so my ao3 readers came through - like really came through - so I'm uploading the chapter today! Thank you so much to those of you who reviewed last chapter - you really brightened my day.

Huge thanks, as always, to my fantastic betas absynthe-minded and princess-sansa-of-ithilien. They're awesome, and this story wouldn't be what it is without them.

TW: torture


CHAPTER 5

Leia dripped slowly back to consciousness. Her head hurt, her mouth felt like cotton, and it seemed to her that there was iron in her blood, weighing her down and binding her hands and feet fast.

It took another minute—a long, painful minute—for her to realize that it wasn't iron in her blood that was binding her, but electrocuffs. She tried to shift her feet beneath her, only to be zapped by a painful amount of electricity, causing her to squeak in shock and pain. The sound came out muffled—and Leia realized, with a start and a jolt, that she was gagged.

She was laying on a duracrete floor. When Leia turned her head, it was to see a soaring duracrete ceiling lined with metal beams, from which hung brightly gleaming lights. The air smelled hot and heavy with the scent of gasoline and engine grease. Just as the realization dawned on her that she was in a hangar, she heard the sound of a speeder coming toward them, slow, then stop.

Footsteps, then someone knelt beside her. She looked up to see a burly, brutish man with long dark hair and thick stubble darkening his jaw leaning over her.

"Oh, hang on," the man said, voice gruff. "She's awake. Hal, get the next dose of sedative."

More footsteps, and then a second man knelt by Leia's side. He was tall and thin, with shortly cropped blond hair and shocking green eyes. "Here," he said, and handed something that glinted in the harsh lights to the first man.

Leia felt a prick in her neck—and then the hangar and the men and the smell of gasoline and the sound of the idling engine faded away into nothing.

~oOo~

When Leia woke again it was to the rumble of a speeder beneath her. When she tried to turn her head, she found that her cheek was pressed against metal, warm from her skin and her breath, and that it was difficult to move. It felt like there was tar coating her skin and her bones, making any movement a grueling effort.

The first thing she did was reach for Luke, in desperate need for reassurance. She found the cord of their bond quickly and easily enough, but no matter how hard she pressed, just like always, she couldn't seem to sink into it. All she could do was whisper his name entreatingly, hoping against hope that he would answer.

There was only silence.

Leia groaned, the sound swallowed by the gag still binding her mouth, and she tried to roll over. Her shoulder burned and her hip ached, and Leia wondered how long she had been lying there. Her movements were slow and stiff, and she had only made it halfway over when a boot came to rest on her chest, pushing her flat on her back.

"Well would you look at that," said a man's voice. "The little bitch is awake."

Three men leaned over her from seats bolted to the speeder walls. They were all thick-jawed and bright-eyed, with rippling muscles that spoke of hours spent working out. All three wore identical black uniforms with high collars and shining boots. The one who had spoken had a scar cutting through his right eyebrow and a crooked nose, as if it had been broken and poorly healed.

"So, girl," the second man said, "what'd ya do?" He had a tattoo curling up the sides of his neck, reaching for his ears and temples.

The third man was smaller than the rest, though no less muscled. He was the only one of the three to sport a beard, though it was trimmed close against his jaw. "Come on," he said, "don't be shy. We don't bite."

The other two laughed.

Leia remained silent, looking up at them with wide, frightened eyes. She did not like the look of them, with their muscles and their square jaws and their bright eyes. They scared her in a deep, primal way—in a way she did not quite understand. All she knew was that her mind and heart screamed danger!

"Come on, girl," Scar said. "Answer us."

Leia did not have an answer for them—and even if she did, her mouth was gagged. She mumbled that, trying to show them the error in their logic. In response, Tattoo delivered a sharp kick to her side.

The three of them laughed.

"So?" said Tattoo. "What'd ya do?"

Leia tried to speak again—and this time Beard kicked her in the ribs, hard.

"Must've been pretty bad," he mused, as Leia coughed and gasped and tried to drag in a breath through her nose, "to land you with us. Especially at your age."

More laughter.

"Come on, answer us!" Scar said. When Leia did not speak, he kicked her as well.

Leia closed her eyes and silently begged them to leave her alone. She didn't know what they wanted. When she talked, they kicked her. When she didn't talk, they kicked her. Was there any way for her to avoid being kicked?

"I guess we'll just have to wait and see," Tattoo said, delivering one final, cruel kick to Leia's abused side. "It'll surface eventually."

Still laughing, the three sat back into their seats, leaving Leia alone.

Once again Leia tried to reach out for Luke. She found their bond—found it shining brilliantly amid her thoughts, above the shields protecting the Force—but she heard nothing from it but echoes of her own pleas.

They traveled for what felt like forever to Leia, but was probably only an hour. At last, however, the engine whined down from its rapid hum, and the floor of the speeder shuddered as it slowed. Leia looked up just in time to see a great shadow engulf the bright light streaming in through the windows.

The speeder came to a halt, and the three men rose and opened the door at the back of the vehicle. Once all three were out, they turned back and Scar and Beard reached for her, grabbed her by the arms, and dragged her out.

They were in a massive hangar made of durasteel-reinforced duracrete. Black lines marked parking spaces, while orange, yellow, and red lines marched along the floor and walls toward the large double doors leading out of the hangar. Leia wondered what they meant.

Scar and Beard dragged her toward the double doors, Tattoo following behind. The doors slid open soundlessly at their approach, revealing more red, orange, and red-lined duracrete. A guard station stood off to the left, a metal barrier stretching across the hallway.

"IDs," the man behind the station intoned, sounding bored.

The three men scanned their badges, attached to their belts with sliding cords. "The girl's a new inmate," Tattoo told the guard. "ID number..." He pulled out a small, handheld pad from his pocket. "8511920." The guard nodded, and they pushed Leia through the metal barrier.

They escorted her down the hall to a small room at the end. A metal examination table sat off to the left, counters and racks of plasti bins lining the walls. To the right was a shower stall with a hose and nozzle.

Scar stepped forward and keyed open the electrocuffs. "Strip," he ordered.

Leia looked at the other two, who stared back with hard eyes, then back at Scar. Her legs shook beneath her, barely supporting her weight.

"Please," she said, pulling the gag from her mouth, "I just had a shower—"

"Strip," Scar said again.

Leia weighed her options. She could either strip herself, or she could risk them stripping her. It would be better to do it herself—wouldn't it?

Trembling, Leia pulled the white shirt over her head, the slid the white pants off of her hips. She dropped the shirt on the floor, and allowed the pants to pool around her feet, stepping out of them and wrapping her arms around her chest as she shivered. The three guards stared at her, gazes lingering between her legs and on her barely formed breasts, before drifting to her face.

Tattoo pointed at the shower. "Stand in there," he ordered, as Beard stepped over and grabbed the shower nozzle.

Leia obeyed reluctantly. She didn't want them touching her—not when naked—and so didn't want to put up too much of a fight. Not so much of a fight that they would be tempted to hoist her into the shower themselves. She moved slowly and deliberately, forcing one shaking foot in front of the other. When she stepped into the shower she sank to the ground, gathering her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her shins.

The water was cold, as Leia had expected it to be, and smelled faintly of antiseptic. Leia reached back to grab her hair to hold it away from the spray—only to remember, with a jolt of her stomach, that her hair was gone.

They made her stand again, and kept her there for a minute while they hosed her down from head to toe. Only then did they let her out of the shower stall, dripping and shivering from the cold.

"Here," Tattoo said, tossing her towel.

It was rough and scratchy and small, but Leia dried herself off as quickly as she could, trying all the while to hide her body from the sight of the three men. Their gazes made her uncomfortable—made her feel even more naked than she was.

Once she was dry, they half-led, half-carried her over to the examination table. "Get on," Scar ordered, and Leia complied, not wanting them to touch her any more than they already had, albeit slowly.

They waited for a few minutes before a short, squat man with muddy eyes and paunchy lips appeared in the back doorway. He wore a lab coat over his black uniform, with a pad stylus tucked behind one ear.

"Ah, prisoner 851," he said. "Let's see what we have to do to you today." He pulled a pad out of one of his pockets and skimmed over it, pulling the stylus from behind his ear to flick down the screen. "General health checkup, immunizations, tracker implant… All right," he said with a humorless smile, looking back up at Leia.

He listened to her lungs and to her heart, ordering her to breathe deeply and to sit up straight. Then he looked into her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and tested the reflexes of both knees. He nodded in satisfaction, ran a thermometer over her forehead, and took her pulse and blood pressure, recording all of the numbers down on his pad.

Then he turned to one of the counters and, opening a drawer, drew out a hypo. A small cooling unit sat in the corner underneath the counters, and it was to that that he turned his steps next. He crouched down in front of the cooling unit, opening the door and sifting through the bottles lined and stacked neatly therein. After a moment he withdrew two, one with a yellow top, one with a blue and green top.

Loading the yellow-topped bottle into the hypo, the doctor came over to Leia's side and ordered, "Hold still."

Leia tensed, fighting not to pull away as the doctor pressed the hypo to her arm and depressed the button. The hypo gave a small snick, and Leia felt the cold rush of solution slide into her arm. It pricked, but did not hurt as much as Leia remembered hypos hurting. A second later and the second hypo had been filled and sent into Leia's opposite arm.

"Lay down," the doctor ordered Leia, turning away and going to another of the counters. Leia heard him open a drawer, then heard the beep of something electronic coming online. She lay down, keeping her attention on the doctor as he turned back around, pad in one hand and a little ball in the other.

Leia caught a glimpse of the pad's screen. It flashed green, the word Connected appearing in white at the top of it—and then the pad disappeared back into his pocket.

"Hold her down," the doctor ordered, looking at the three guards still lounging by the door.

They came forward. Scar and Beard grabbed Leia's legs and pinned them to the table, while Tattoo grabbed onto her shoulders and forced them flat. Leia shuddered at their touch and tensed, every instinct in her screaming to fight their hold.

She gave into that instinct.

A shriek rising in her throat, Leia threw her body against the guards' tight grip. Scar grunted, so surprised he almost lost a hold of Leia's left leg. But then his hands tightened around her ankle and he pressed her leg flat against the table. The other two tightened their grips as well, leaning down to pin her.

Beard laughed at Scar. "Little bitch almost got away from you," he said, lifting his head and glancing at Tattoo who was laughing as well.

"No she didn't," Scar groused, and in reply to their rising laughter he gripped Leia's ankle painfully tight, holding her still as she tried to kick again, his fingers merciless against her skin and bones.

The doctor reappeared at Leia's side carrying a strange device. It was short and round and made of metal, one side oddly scooped out. "Hold her tight," he said, holding the device against the shape of her hip bone and pressing a button.

For a second, there was only the whine of the device charging. Then Leia screamed, her skin tearing and her hip cracking, as something small and foreign buried itself into the bone.

The doctor left for a moment, then returned with a sterile wipe. He cleaned the blood from the small hole in Leia's hip, then pressed a bacta patch over it. "Good as new," he said, and patted Leia on the hip. Leia cried out in pain and fought not to cy.

"Anything else, doc?" Tattoo asked from above Leia's head.

"No," the doctor said. "My work is done. Out of curiosity, though," he said, turning back, "what did this girl do to land her here?"

"Dunno," Tattoo said. "It's not in her file, and she wouldn't tell us."

"All we know is that the order came from the Emperor himself," Scar added, "and that she's going straight to iso."

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Must have been something pretty big then," he said, clearly shocked. He looked at Leia, and shook his head. "It's always the innocent-looking ones that're the worst."

"Ain't that the truth," Beard said.

With that, the doctor turned and left through the door he had appeared out of, leaving Leia alone with the three guards.

They let her up. Leia sat, drawing her knees to her chest and hugging them, trying to curl into as small of a ball as she could. Her hip hurt fiercely, and tears of pain dripped down her cheeks, but maybe then they would stop tormenting her—maybe they would forget she was there and leave her be.

It was a foolish notion, Leia knew—one for babies and the stupid—but she couldn't fight the feeling all the same. Anything that could make her less of a target, that could maybe make them think less of her, the better.

Beard went to the plasti tubs. From them he pulled a pair of grey pants, a grey shirt, underwear, and a pair of slip-on shoes with no laces. Turning, he dumped the pile at Leia's feet.

"Get dressed," he ordered.

That order Leia gladly obeyed.

The clothes were too big for her. The underwear fell over her hips to pool around her ankles, followed by the pants. The shirt hung to her mid-thighs and fell off one shoulder; it was more like a dress than a shirt. The shoes engulfed her feet, and if she had tried to take even one step she would have walked right out of them.

"Hm," Beard said looking at her. "We don't normally get kids—especially not kids as small as you." He looked to his companions. "What do we do?"

"Just let her keep the shirt," Scar suggested. "It covers her well enough."

Tattoo gathered up the rest of the clothes, folding them with Beard's help. Then they put the pants, underwear, and shoes back in the bins, leaving Leia with only the shirt.

"You get two of these," Scar said, as Beard pulled a second shirt out of the bin. "So take good care of it. Understand?"

Leia nodded, and Beard shoved the extra shirt into her arms.

They led dragged her back out the door they had come through, then on down the hall to the lift. They rode down in silence, Leia trapped between Beard and Tattoo, Scar standing behind her. When the door opened, it was to more durasteel-reinforced duracrete, though this time the only color on the floor was red.

Down the hall they marched her, still trapped between Beard and Tattoo. They halted at a durasteel door near the end of it, Tattoo stepping forward to slide his ID against the blinking card reader beside it. The door clicked open.

Scar shoved Leia through the doorway. She stumbled, staggering to keep from falling, and turned just in time to see Scar grin and wave at her before closing the door.

The cell Leia found herself standing in was small and bare, but for a cot bolted a foot above the floor in the corner, opposite a toilet. There were no blankets or sheets on the cot, there was no sink, and two cameras blinked at her from opposing corners, leaving no edge of the room unseen. Even so, it was more decor than Leia had had in a long time.

She sat down on the cot, still hugging the spare shirt to her chest, and surveyed her new abode. There was a stain on the floor in front of the door, and a crack in the duracrete above the toilet. Otherwise it was very drab and very uniform.

Leia lay down and stares at the wall beside her. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, then spilled down her cheeks.

What did I do to deserve this? she wondered. She was afraid—of the men and their stares, of her new and cold surroundings, of the unknown threat looming before her—and she felt sick with anxiety. She longed for the comforting, familiar darkness of her previous cell.

She also longed for Luke. He still hadn't appeared, and his last words echoed now in the silence surrounding her. "I love you so much," he had said. "I wanted to share my life with you."

Yet now he was gone.

What did that mean? Had he lied in an attempt to make her death a little easier to bear? Had he wanted to show her one last kindness before Vader killed her, but now that she had survived didn't want anything to do with her? Had he abandoned her, lied to her about loving her, just like Mon and Carlist had?

Not wanting to think about it, Leia curled into a ball and drifted off to sleep, taking comfort in the softness of the spare shirt cradled in her arms and the softness of the thin mattress beneath her.

~oOo~

The next few days passed in a haze of boredom for Leia. She slept for most of it, and what she did not spend asleep she spent practicing walking around the confines of her cell, memorizing each divet and pockmark in the ceiling, floor, and walls.

Luke still did not contact her. Leia pretended that she was not hurt by that—that it did not affect her, that she had been expecting it—but the truth was that, with each passing day that she did not hear from him, she grew angrier and sadder. It was a frightful mix, the anger and the sadness, one that made her want to scream and want to burst into tears all at once.

Feeling those things only made it worse, however. I should have been expecting it, Leia told herself, over and over again, and You're worthless, just like the Grand Inquisitor said. No one wants you. That she was feeling anger and sorrow over a loss that she knew now she should have been expecting made her all the angrier and all the sadder.

Twice, when she was on the cusp of sleep, Leia thought she heard him—heard a flicker of a heartbeat, heard the far-distant echo of her name being called. But each time, when she tried to grab onto those things—each time she thought it happened—the feeling slid away before it was fully-formed, leaving her more angry and hurt than before.

They seemed to her to be the dying throes of that which was lost—the final threads of their connection wavering and ending, severed and forgotten by Luke. She had, after all, been cast away—hadn't she?

She was fed twice a day, and a small bottle of water sat on each tray that slid through the slot at the bottom of the door. She drank and ate greedily, careless of the sour, metallic taste that chased down both water and food. It was better food—and more of it—than she had been given for months, and she did not want to question the small blessing it seemed to be.

She threw up the first day, her body not taking the sudden influx of food well. She spent over an hour crouched over the toilet, miserably vomiting chunks of bread and thin gruel, crying softly. When she was done she wished she had water to rinse her mouth—but there was none, the only water left in the cell the thin film of water in the toilet.

As the days stretched on, and Leia grew more and more accustomed to her new surroundings, she lost her fear of them. She began to daydream of how she should have responded to the guards that brought her in—imagined denying them, defying them, disrespecting them. Even in her daydreams always ended with her being beaten, but that would have been worth it. Wouldn't it?

She wasn't just some weak, whimpering child. She had stood up to the Grand Inquisitor, to Ninth Brother, Thirteenth Sister, Danyil, Cora. They had hurt her, but that hadn't changed Leia's attitude; if anything, their blows and their barbs had strengthened Leia's resolve as well as strengthened her Force shields.

If anyone comes in again, Leia promised herself as she lay in bed the fifth night, snuggling the spare shirt to her chest, I'll stand up to them.

Then, on the first day of the second week—Leia had been keeping careful track ever since it had become clear to her that Luke was not coming back—Leia got her chance. She was just finishing eating breakfast when she heard the keypad on the other side of the wall beep, and then her door clicked open.

It was a guard Leia had never seen before, big and burly with bushy eyebrows and a curling sneer. He wore a stun gun and an electrobaton on his belt, opposite a pair of cuffs, and his boots were so shiny Leia thought she could see her reflection in them if she looked.

"On your feet, 851," Big Burly ordered.

Leia frowned. "And why should I do that?" she asked churlishly.

"Because I said so," Big Burly said.

"No."

Big Burly frowned. It was a ghastly sight. "Get on your feet now," he snapped.

"No," Leia repeated, gratified to see surprise and confusion play across his face. It was clear he hadn't been expecting her to refuse.

"Get up, or I'll come in and get you," Big Burly warned.

Leia crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

Again, this was not what Big Burly had expected. But he had threatened himself into a corner—now he had to come in and get her, or he would look weak and like a fool. He started forward, drawing his baton and flicking on the electricity with a spark and sizz. Leia remained where she sat, though she eyed the baton with growing panic. It was going to hurt to be touched by that thing, she knew; as Big Burly neared, lifting the baton to strike, Leia wondered if she had been an idiot. But it was too late now.

Big Burly struck her across the shoulder with it, and the electricity sparked and sizzled into Leia, sharp and hot. She reeled from the blow, muscles tensing from the shock, teeth and bones hurting, vision blurring, breath freezing in her lungs. Then she gasped, eyesight returning, body relaxing as the electric current vanished.

"Get up," Big Burly ordered again. "Or do I have to give you another dose?"

Leia got up shakily. In the end, she knew he would win, no matter how obstinate she was—and she had now proven, to herself if not to Big Burly, that she could resist.

"Take off your shirt," Big Burly ordered.

Leia frowned and shook her head. "No," she said, indignant.

"Take it off," Big Burly growled, clearly irritated, "or I will take it off for you. And I just might accidentally rip it."

Glaring, Leia reached for the hem of the shirt and pulled it up and over her head. It wasn't worth it to risk one of her two earthly possessions to be ruined, no matter the indignation or embarrassment that might follow.

Big Burly grabbed Leia's shoulder and shoved her forward, planting his stun baton in the small of her back. "One wrong move," he warned, "and I turn this on. Got it?"

Leia nodded.

"Good. Now let's go."

Already shivering and shaking from the exertion of standing, Leia followed Big Burly's directions, turning left out of her cell and walking down the hall toward the lift door. Big Burly hit the "down" button, and they waited in silence for the lift to open for them. They rode downwards, Leia watching the numbers slide higher, higher, higher until the green lettering read Bsmt, the only sound that of their breath and the soft hum of the motors.

The door opened with a chime, and Big Burly shoved Leia forward and out into the waiting hall. It was short, with only two doors—staggered unevenly—on either side, made of duracrete and durasteel. There were no colored lines on the floor, however.

Big Burly pushed Leia forward, guiding her down the hall to the nearest door on the right. He swiped his ID, and the door clicked open.

Leia expected to see another cell on the other side, and so was surprised to see a large, open room with a metal table at the center, and cabinets and counters, filled with medical equipment, lining the walls. Restraints—cuffs for the hands and for the feet, and three leather belts—hung from the table's edge, swinging gently in the air filtering from the vent overhead. Bright lights were mounted into recesses in the ceiling, shedding white-gold light over the room, giving it a sterile, metallic sheen only aided by the smell of antiseptic and bleach in the air. A chain and pair of cuffs hung from the ceiling to the right, and to the left was a metal chair that, like the table, sported restraints.

A tall and thin woman was standing by the counters at the back of the room, but when Leia and Big Burly entered, she turned. "There you are," she said, her voice high and cold—high and cold to match the ice of her eyes and the ice of her pale blonde hair. "What took you so long?"

"The little bitch didn't wanna get up," Big Burly said.

"You have 200 pounds on her," Ice Eyes said, voice dripping with condescension. "Her 'not wanting to get up' shouldn't have meant a damn thing."

Big Burly bristled. Leia could feel it in the way the baton dug into the small of her back, and in the way tension thickened in the air. She took a step forward, away from the baton and the likelihood of Big Burly accidentally—or not accidentally—hitting the button that would send the electric current coursing through her.

"Never mind," the woman said, and turned her attention on Leia. "My name is Valiria Vrosha, but you may call me 'ma'am'. Understood?"

"Yes," Leia said.

"Yes what?"

Leia stuck her chin out obstinately and crossed her arms.

Vrosha arched one pale eyebrow. "Well, 851?"

Leia remained silent, and fought to stay upright. Her legs were shaking and threatened to give out beneath her.

Vrosha nodded at Big Burly.

The current came unexpectedly. Leia fell to her knees, then to her stomach, Big Burly following her with the baton. When at last he was done, her entire body ached.

"Well, 851?" Vrosha asked again. "Do you have something to say to me?"

"Yes ma'am," Leia spat She forced her arms under her, and pushed herself upright.

"That's a good girl," Vrosha said. Then, "Well, Melbar? Get her on the table."

Big Burly sheathed his baton and, before Leia could even begin to protest, picked her up. He carried her to the table, where he laid her down on her stomach. The metal was cold against her skin and Leia shivered. He had fastened the ankle cuffs before Leia could process what was happening, holding her still while he moved to fasten her left hand, then circled to her right.

"Thank you, Melbar," Vrosha said. Leia turned her head in time to see the woman approach the table, smiling. "That will be all for an hour—unless you'd like to stay and watch?"

Big Burly shook his head. "I can't stomach you damn ISB agents, or what you do to people."

Vrosha shrugged. "So be it. Be back here in an hour."

Big Burly snorted, but nodded. Then, turning on his heel, he stalked out of the room.

For just an instant, in the moment of silence that followed in which Vrosha circled the table on which Leia was cuffed, Leia thought she felt a flutter of thought and emotion not from her. She tried to grab onto it—to seize it and hold it and examine it—but it was gone almost before it had fully formed.

It had felt like Luke. In that instant of contact, Leia had thought she glimpsed Luke's bright blue sky and desert sand—but that was impossible, wasn't it? He had abandoned her.

"Well now, 851," Vrosha said, shattering the moment and bringing Leia back to the present, "or should I call you Leia—whatever should we do today?" She drifted toward the counters at the back of the room, running one thin, long-fingered hand over the instruments arrayed atop them.

Leia watched her awkwardly, propping her chin up on the table to be able to see her.

"You've already had a taste of electricity, so I think that's out of the equation. But...hmm, how about this?" She selected a long, thin device from the countertop, its end flattened into a disc. "Yes," Vrosha said, flicking a switch on the side. "I think this will do nicely."

Within seconds the disc was glowing white-hot. Vrosha carried it carefully over to Leia, hesitating by her face for a moment. "You poor child," she murmured, stroking Leia's cheek. Leia tried—and failed—to jerk away. "If only you hadn't caught the Emperor's favor, you might have been spared this pain."

No, Leia wanted to to say. I'm worthless. That's why this is happening.

But, before she could speak, and without warning, Vrosha brought the gleaming device up and pressed it to Leia's back.

Leia screamed.

~oOo~

Leia lay on her stomach on her cot—still naked, clutching her spare shirt in her hands above her head—and tried not to cry. Her entire body hurt, though the pain radiated out from her back—her back, which burned and ached and stung all at once. It hurt to move, it hurt to be still, it hurt even to breathe, the movement of her expanding lungs pulling at the burns arrayed across her back.

"You're lucky," Vrosha had said, patting Leia on the backside halfway through the hour-long session. "I'm feeling particularly nice today. I'll only brand your back this time—but don't expect me to be this nice always. I just feel bad for you, being a little girl and all."

Leia didn't feel lucky, though. She hurt—hurt so bad she wanted to scream, and keep on screaming and never stop. But that would hurt too, and would give her a headache on top of the pain in her back. Not worth it, Leia decided, closing her eyes tightly shut and gripping her spare shirt in even tighter fists.

"Don't worry," Vrosha had said, once Leia had stopped screaming the first time, "these burns are only skin-deep. We don't want you getting off easy with nerve damage, after all."

Wordless spite soured her throat even as it tightened, and Leia had to bite her tongue to keep from crying.

With a groan and a whimper Leia rolled up onto her right side. The movement pulled at the burns, but it was growing more and more difficult to breathe—which was hurting her in another way. Maybe, she hoped, if I can get comfortable and not move, it'll be better on my side.

She settled down and snuggled the spare shirt close against her chest, curling her arms protectively around it. Breathing still hurt, the movement of her lungs pulling at the skin of her back—but no longer was her breathing belaboured. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless, and Leia latched onto it with fierce relief.

It's going to be okay, she told herself. You can make it through this.

After a few moments of pained breathing, Leia closed her eyes. Maybe sleep will help, she hoped.

Sleep, however, was elusive. No matter what Leia tried—counting to a hundred, a thousand, backwards from twice that; imagining and counting thrantas; picturing herself in the Palace of Alderaan's gardens—she could not drift off to sleep. Every time she drew close, the pain in her back would spike, driving it away again.

Finally, frustrated and once more close to tears, Leia gave up. Instead she simply lay there, in pain and fighting back sobs—from pain, from disappointment, from a deep-seated fear that she had not yet even acknowledged—trying to keep her breathing even and steady for the sake of her back.

Slowly, without even realizing what was happening, Leia slid into a stupor. The world blurred around her, turning to incense and daydream, and she drifted through consciousness in a daze of pain and exhaustion.

There, shining before her, was the cord binding her to Luke. It glowed through the haze of her stupor, burning away the mist and the daydream and the exhaustion, leaving her with only herself, alone, but for the cord and its brilliant golden glow.

But even as she looked, it seemed to Leia as if the far end of the cord coiled, coalesced, shifted, and changed, turning from a cord to an ember buried and burning as Luke himself in his entirety: body, heart, mind, and soul.

Looking to her end of the cord, Leia saw that the same was happening to her—that she herself was turning to a fire-lit ember burning with an inner light. It was her—was all of her: thoughts and dreams and feelings and aspirations. It was every bit of pain, every bit of hope, every bit of despair she felt in that instant; it was every shred and fragment of her that had ever existed, existing all at once in every second of being.

The cord was no more. The connection was there—but instead of being a distinct link binding them together, they simply were: were one, were the other, were both together.

Leia reached for the ember that was Luke. She touched it—touched him through her, as if by touching the ember that was her she was touching the ember that was him—and for just an instant, Leia could hear him: his thoughts, his heart, his laughter.

And then it was gone.


end notes: Okay, so the next chapter is already written (though the next is not, so this may be the last time we do this for a bit), and since this has worked so well these last two times, why not go for a third? 10 reviews by Friday and I'll upload then, or 15 by Sunday and I'll upload Saturday. Otherwise I'll upload sometime next week. Deal?

Most importantly though, I hope you enjoyed!