Saché could feel her heartbeat in her stomach.
First, breathe deeply. Breathe slowly.
The twelve-year-old handmaiden had felt off since waking up that morning. Chills wracked her body in strange places—down her back, near her kidneys, and along her neck—as she lay in bed curled shivering into Yané's side.
Control your breathing, and use that to control your reactions in turn.
Saché had been trying to control her breathing since that morning in bed. But it wasn't coming easily, no matter how often she mentally repeated Sabé's lessons from so many months ago on repeat as the handmaidens rose in their apartments and convened in the queen's dressing room to prepare for the day. The echo of Sabé's voice teaching them all the conservatory breathing exercises was calm and certain as in her memory in Saché's mind, but it did little to settle the quell of panicked emotions that swelled in her chest and throat every time she let her mind wander from the mindless tasks of pinning Amidala's braids or fastening the other handmaidens' brooches with ribbons made of the concussive-absorbing fabric Eirtaé had designed for the queen's dresses. It would hardly do much against blaster fire, but Saché's hands shook at the thought of her closest friends going about their days even now without some form of protection at their throats.
Makeup was the hardest part, but also the one Saché was least able to function without. It meant taking the special blend and application Rabé had designed with Saché in mind as the younger girl sat in front of a mirror to face the reflection of a stranger, one with a wild look in her eyes that could not seem to relax into the steadfastness of a handmaiden despite the fact that Saché knew she was safe. She was safe. The occupation was over, the battle was over, the torture was–
Panic scrambled her thoughts as her hand stilled on her makeup brush, staring into the mirror at red scars of deliberate, cauterized lines across her face that hadn't been there the week before.
("If you would simply tell me", the droid had said, so calmly, in a horrible facsimile of politeness, "who gave you the fabric ties you carried. Your suffering would end.")
Saché's breath was shuddery and her hands shook as she tried to remember how Rabé had swept the makeup over Saché's face that first morning after they woke up in the palace again. Rabé hadn't slept near enough since the start of the Trade Federation's blockade but she had sacrificed another few hours the night before to blend the compounds together that would fit Saché's complexion best to hide the scars, if Saché wasn't ready to walk around inviting horrified stares from everyone that didn't know or didn't know enough of how the youngest handmaiden's internment in the camps had gone.
Control your breathing. Breathing. Control. Breathing. Use that to control—use that to–
("No one is stepping forward in admission, even though it would save you," the droid had said diplomatically, while Saché gasped for air, shaking and convulsing and coughing wetly in the seconds of reprieve from torture.
Her mechanical interrogator was so calmly convincing, in those precious moments between fits of screaming that tore Saché's throat to bleed. When the blades cut her very existence into fire after every plea that begged ignorance of the messages Yané had woven into the fabric scraps Saché had carried across camp to the resistance leaders in their own tents until she was caught.
The moments the droid spoke to her were the moments it wasn't searing her skin apart and Saché clung to the moments it deigned to speak with her with almost reverent desperation, wanting so badly to nod her head in agreement to what it said, knowing its words made sense, wishing it would just keep talking to her moments longer before she had to refuse its next request to betray her friends.
"Clearly, they care more for the secrecy of the encoded message than your well-being," the droid said, and it was the truth. That was the point. "Therefore, it follows that you should have no reason to care about the secrecy of the encoded message more than their well-being.")
A hundred logical arguments. A hundred scars across her face and arms and neck and stomach and legs, and, and everywhere; and Saché realized she'd smeared her makeup on too thick at her chin so she carefully used a cloth to wipe away the excess. She was nearly done, her face smooth and her skin even and full with a flawless blend of concealer and toner to mask the scars that Saché couldn't yet put into words for Padmé or Eirtaé or even Rabé, who had given Saché the makeup blend to hide the marks unprompted and unasked.
The sight of them gone should have been a comfort. But Saché still couldn't breathe, only found herself coughing hard into the crook of her elbow when she tried. She tasted blood in her mouth and her vision swam.
Controlling your reactions will let you control your expressions. Control how you show your breathing as much as your breathing itself. Breathe deeply. Breathe slowly.
Saché breathed slowly.
Yané asked twice if the younger girl was all right. Rabé asked once. Padmé asked once.
Saché gave affirmative responses to all of them. She was not in danger. There were no more droids. She was out of the interrogation chamber and back in her home, with her dearest friends and companions, and she was safe.
She was safe.
Chills wracked her body in her lower back, over her stomach where the scars burned with phantom lacerations of fire. Saché swallowed the irrational sickness in her heartbeat that she couldn't seem to ignore and carried on with her duties as usual, accompanying the other handmaidens in the queen's company as they breakfasted and then sat in the throne room to begin discussion of the day's events.
The morning passed in a haze.
—
It was a shamefully short length of time spent in the session of the queen's restructuring commission before Saché realized that she needed to leave, now.
With a quiet murmur to the agricultural minister on her right, Saché stood and her face burned somewhere far away beneath her mounting panic as she felt the stares of the assembled persons converge on her retreating form. She made for the hallway, barely reaching the other side of the closed doors before she leaned her full weight into the wall and began to shake bodily, eyes wide and pupils blown unseeing.
Saché had never experienced a panic attack before, and all she knew was that her heartbeat was wrong, her organs wracked with tremors, and she might be dying. The droids that had tortured her must have done more than superficial damage with their searing blades that scored her body with lacerations; Saché was well and truly dying and she didn't know what to do or who to tell. She'd known it wouldn't do to make a scene in the middle of the restructuring commission's efforts, and so she had taken her leave, though even that had not been as invisible an exit as she would have longed for. Queen Amidala's eyes questioning as Saché had left burned into her memory and Saché wondered what she could even say, wondered if she ought to go to the infirmary straight away or even if her legs would support her all the way there. They felt fit to collapse, she was dying…!
She heard a voice of someone concerned and familiar, as though from far away. Saché blinked through fog and tried to muster the strength to turn around, but then, a pair of bracing hands placed themselves upon her shoulders—ostensibly to provide support—and Saché's mind fled her entirely as a scream tore from her lips.
"Saché? Saché!"
Saché couldn't hear anyone calling her. Metal hands gripped her shoulders tightly enough to bruise as she was dragged from her chair. Saché didn't even try to walk and the iron grip of the droid alone held her up as she was forcibly escorted out of the market office across the stretch of camp to the makeshift interrogation chamber. Terror clawed its way up her throat and drowned her body in a wave of hot-then-ice as she saw the flat metal surface of the table laid out with restraints meant to hold her arms and legs in place. Make sure she couldn't do more than writhe and scream, while the droid's blades sliced line after burning line through Saché's flesh so that she could smell her own skin smoldering as the knife neatly cauterized the wounds in the same motion as it created them…
"Saché!"
Yané. That was Yané's voice. Saché dragged her eyes away from the wall to meet her lover's gaze, seeing Yané's dark eyes filled with tears.
Oh. She was crying, Saché worked out fuzzily, because Yané had seen what the droid did to Saché in the interrogation chamber. She and Yané were still in the camp, weren't they, because Yané had been there to tie Saché's wounds once she was finally released.
And Saché had to be strong for her, for all of them, but it was so hard just to keep her legs beneath her. Voices swirled about and the younger girl found herself sliding down to the carpeted (carpeted?) floor of the…the encampment tent. Saché sat huddled with her back to the same cot where Yané had hidden the tied silk pieces that carried the coded messages that needed to be carried to the Royal Security Forces.
Her eyes were telling her a different story. Even though she was in the middle of the Neimoidians' camp, a distant part of Saché's brain registered dumbly the sensory input her eyes gave, namely that of Theed Royal Palace's central hallway, the one that lay directly outside the royal reception room.
She also saw Mariek Panaka, saying something in concerned—no, outright worried tones. Her arms were at her sides but kept twitching, like she wanted to reach for Saché and Yané where the two were huddled together on the floor, but the older woman was compelled to restrain herself.
Saché blinked, realizing there were tears on her face. Oh. That would ruin her makeup, and her scars would show. She wasn't sure if she was ready for that.
She shivered in terror, wishing that they were out of this camp. Wishing that the queen's rescue party would come, like Yané was so certain they would.
Footsteps pounded against the carpet of the palace hallway and Saché gasped, chest heaving with fright. She could feel Yané clinging to her and frantically saying something, but Saché couldn't listen. Had they been discovered by the droids? Were they found out?
Her fear was overcome with dumbfounded surprise when a familiar, scrawny form skidded before her in the hallway—in the tent—in the hallway, standing protectively in front of Saché as though such a slight frame would keep any determined parties from getting to the two handmaidens huddled together on the floor.
"Get away from her! Get away!" the boy shrieked, anger and panic clouding his voice. Saché wondered briefly what was the matter, and why he was staring at Mariek with such fear and loathing.
"Ani, what–" Padmé's familiar voice cut through the din, and Saché's head snapped toward the sound. Padmé was here? Did that mean they were saved?
Another voice boomed out, also familiar but far less intimately so. "Anakin!" the Jedi called, reproachful but with a touch of fear in his tone as well, trying to grab at the boy standing in front of Saché and Yané.
Why was he standing in front of them, anyway? Why was Saché in the hallway of the palace in the first place?
"They're torturing her!" It was little Anakin Skywalker that was shrieking out, the boy pulling away in vain from his Master's hands as the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi attempted to extricate him from the hallway. "They're hurting her! We have to stop them…!"
Saché's blood froze at this forthright proclamation. Yané knew, and Mariek and Tonra knew, and the handmaidens had seen the scars beneath her makeup. But no one since the event itself had ever said the truth aloud so brazenly in Saché's presence.
And it was such an ugly thing to hear spoken, like a resounding slap to her fuzzy, disoriented mind state.
Torture. They had…the Neimoidian and her droid had tortured Saché. For hours, in that awful camp where Yané and Saché had been held while the remaining handmaidens accompanied Queen Amidala to Coruscant. They'd tortured her, a twelve-year-old girl, without remorse.
The memories swam in the present, in the past, turning the hallway into a dingy tent and back again as Saché's mind warred for control over her surroundings. The droid in that room tried everything to make Saché give up the names of the conspirators among the guards and the Royal Security Force members that had been coordinating a plan of resistance in Queen Amidala's absence. Saché had been carrying messages for them across the camp for days and her behavior had been flagged by the security droids.
She'd been hauled before the overseer and then dragged bodily away to an interrogation room where a droid cut and burned and lacerated her and Saché had screamed and begged that she didn't know anything until they finally believed her.
And Anakin Skywalker knew this. Was throwing himself in her path like a human shield. But for what? Mariek and Obi-Wan were the only ones in front of them.
And then Saché suddenly remembered the voice she'd heard, when she felt hands grabbing her shoulders, and something clicked.
"It's not…" she tried, and had to stop, coughing violently into her arm. The sound of her brought everyone in the hallway to attention, maybe half a dozen concerned faces watching Saché struggle for air and the attention made her face burn in a way it usually would not. "I'm, I don't understand what…I'm sorry. I thought that M-Mariek was someth—someone else. She would never hurt me."
A host of confused looks greeted her statement, but young Anakin Skywalker turned to face her, his arms wavering from their defensive stance splayed out as if to block Mariek Panaka from reaching Yané and Saché on the floor behind him at any cost.
Anakin's eyes were confused, but hesitantly trusting. He gulped back tears of something like empathy that made Saché both embarrassed and also oddly gratified, that he'd been so worried. Worried for her.
"It wasn't her?" Anakin asked Saché, voice cracking a little on the words. "She didn't…she wasn't hurting you? Saché?"
Saché tried to open her mouth to reply, but found herself belied by a coughing fit once more. Yané made a distressed noise in Saché's ear, but the younger girl forced herself to speak.
"It wasn't her," Saché said hoarsely but firmly, nodding to Anakin with the weight of a promise. Shame curled in her gut and she blinked back tears, or tried to, but some fell down her cheeks anyway.
"I don't know what happened. It was like I blinked a-and I was somewhere else…"
Mariek let out a sharp exhale.
"Battle flashes," the woman said with a hard, wounded sort of understanding, her words drawing the eyes in the hallway to herself. The captain's wife shook her head in sorrow at them all. "Twelve-year-old girl, having battle flashes like a kriffing soldier…what has this galaxy come to?"
Anakin, sensing his protection was no longer needed, if it had ever been, slumped. He finally let himself be pulled away from Mariek by Obi-Wan's insistent tugging.
Still, the boy's worried eyes lingered on Saché as his Master dragged him from the scene. "Will you be okay?" he called out to Saché tearfully, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. "I could feel it. They were hurting you so bad. I…I won't l-let anyone hurt Padmé's friends like that. I won't!"
Yané's grip on Saché tightened, almost unconsciously. The younger handmaiden found there was a lump in her throat at the expression of pure, sympathetic misery and yet also determination in young Anakin's gaze.
Saché focused heavily on her breathing for a moment before she could answer.
"No one will hurt me here," she croaked, dimly aware that the palace's doctor had arrived at some point and was kneeling in front of her. But the boy deserved an answer for his kindness, however his strange Jedi powers had alerted him to Saché's distress. "No one…no one will hurt us here, Anakin. It's safe. We're all safe."
The doctor's hands were on Saché's arms, gentle and examining. But it was Padmé's gaze Saché sought out now as the young queen knelt down beside Yané and Saché against the palace wall, taking Saché's hands in her own.
"No one will hurt you here," Queen Amidala repeated back to her firmly, as the fuzziness in Saché's mind threatened to overwhelm her again. The youngest of the handmaidens tucked her head into the crook of Yané's neck and let her exhausted mind slip away into nothingness, trusting that neither of them would come to harm.
