WHUMPTOBER No. 6 PROOF OF LIFE
Ransom Video | "I've got a pulse" | Screams from Across the Hall
"You lied to us." Tarkin was oddly good at sneering for someone who'd been made a fool out of. "Where are the Rebellion?"
Leia didn't bother looking at him: just stared at the wall of her cell, her breathing still ragged from the sobs she'd sobbed. "On Dantooine."
"No longer. Which you certainly knew when you gave us that planet."
"There is nothing you can do to make me tell you anything," she said, still not deigning to look at him. Alderaan, in the throes of its fiery death, had been branded into her retinas. "I will kill you."
She could imagine the smirk on his face. "Doubtful, Princess Leia. You are being presented with your execution."
She flicked her gaze to the door. Vader wasn't with Tarkin, which she was at least grateful for—the man who'd watched her sobbing and screaming in defiance wouldn't also see her end—but two guards were, the interrogation droid hovering between them. It was probably loaded with a lethal shot this time, instead of the chemical meant to make her obedient. She swallowed.
"As a Rebel, you have no rights under Imperial law, but as you are the last Princess of Alderaan, I would be happy to record your last words."
She couldn't move. Rage coursed through her bones, but fear froze her in place. That needle, that silver spike that had injected her with so much pain, was about to end it all. Send her to where Alderaan was—and would that be a bad thing? To see her parents and beg their forgiveness, as she never could in life? She pushed the thought down. There, she could never rain justice down upon them for what they had done.
"I'll kill you," she promised. "That's my last promise."
He smiled thinly. "Charming to the last," he said, and the droid buzzed forwards.
The needle found her neck quickly and easily. She almost bared it for them, spite and vomit mingling in her stomach at how the black sphere leered beside her. Fire seared through her veins, followed by a crushing quiet. Her heart stammered to a halt; her back slouched; her fingers drooped. Her brain stilled, for the first time in her life, apathetic.
There was nothing, and then there was everything again.
A finger thumbed her neck. "She had no pulse, sir," a loud voice said.
"What do you mean had?"
"It's back."
She opened her eyes, saw that the guard checking her pulse had taken off his helmet, and punched him in the face.
Another pair of hands grabbed her biceps, pulling her back and shoving her onto the bunk at the back of the cell. She screamed, bucking in their grip, screamed loud enough to let all the prisoners around her know that a murder was taking place, had taken place.
"You killed Alderaan!" she shrieked. "You— you—"
A hand came down on her mouth. She bit it, but let it shove her back. Her hand banged against the wall. She saw bright, burning debris.
Tarkin studied her, amused and mostly unperturbed, as the droid buzzed closer again.
"Do it properly this time," she spat at him. Her muscles ached. Her eyes ached from crying. Was this his next cruelty? To keep her from death?
"With pleasure," he said, replacing the needle on the droid himself. She welcomed its piercing bite and chilling venom, tilting her head back as it ran through her veins, her cells cowering away from it in a wave of corpse-like cold that swept through her. The cold reached her eyes and finally bade her to shut them.
She opened them again, and nothing had changed.
Tarkin had his back to her, every line of his body smug and satisfied. His troopers escorted him out. They weren't vigilant enough to stop her from tackling him, wrapping her hands around his throat and dragging him to the ground. He shouted hoarsely, throat and lips purpling as she squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
"I hate you!" she hissed.
He stared up at her with bulging eyes that made his thin face even more severe. "Why won't you die with the rest of them?" he hissed out.
"Why won't you kill me!?"
Hands, again, dragging her away from her victim, this time with a blaster pressed to her jaw. She snarled at Tarkin as the stormtrooper she'd punched earlier helped him to his feet; while they were distracted, she made a dive for the open door, down the corridor, and—
Fire, searing pain, darkness. A shot punched through her skull.
She opened her eyes to see her own bloodless face reflected in the dark, polished floor. Her cheek and hair were wet. She was lying on a cushion of blood and brains.
"Sir, are you alright?"
"I am quite well," Tarkin clipped out. The sound of hands against trousers—he was dusting himself off. "Now that that's taken care of, we can return to the issue of the missing plans. With no lead on the Rebellion—"
"Sir," a stormtrooper interrupted Tarkin, his voice full of terror at what punishment he'd receive for his impertinence. "She's breathing again."
Tarkin paused. "Impossible."
Leia kicked up, knocking the nearest trooper's blaster from his grip and seized it. She levelled it at Tarkin, aimed, and fired. The trooper next to him threw himself in front of him, taking three blaster bolts to the chest.
Tarkin pulled a tiny blaster out of his pocket and calmly shot her three times in the chest as well.
She fell back. The bolts cauterised the edge of the wounds but burned right through: her breathing rattled like she had a punctured lung; her heart stopped altogether. She felt her limbs freeze, her brain go dim…
"You just had to do it yourself," she spat. "I'm surprised you had the courage to."
She fell, head hitting the floor. But she was not entirely surprised when she woke up in her cell again, her heart thumping heartily in her chest. She just screamed again.
Her fists pummelled the walls until they were bloody, her throat shrieking until it went raw. She could cough and splutter, she could spit, she could flex her hands and watch the blood run down them. And then, before her eyes, they healed.
Her heart was an ocean. It always had been, deep and still with calming depths. A wonderful childhood, doting parents, a comfortable lifestyle for as long as she'd lived. Currents ran through her, certainly, dragging antagonists and cruel Imperials to untimely deaths, eroding the empire of sand where they could. But Alderaan had no moons and no tides. The ocean in her heart was still.
Alderaan had had no moons until the Death Star had orbited it.
She imagined the gravity heaving through Alderaan's internal structure, imagined mirror-smooth waters turned rough and deadly in fear, anguish, the desperation to escape. The ocean in her heart had started heaving the moment she saw her planet out of that vast viewport, and it had not stopped. Death poured oil on the troubled waters. The glowing remains of Alderaan set it on fire.
There was no dying. There was nothing she could do with this bottomless pit in her chest, this power and sense of self that refused to let her go. She could fight and fight and fight, and she would keep coming back. She could never go home.
This was hell, then. She had died already, died with all the people she loved, and her punishment for what she had done was to live forever without them.
She screamed again, fingernails raking down her cheeks. Blood speckled her fingers. The cuts, like red tear tracks, healed. She would always heal.
Alderaan would not.
Footsteps. She heard them, even if she couldn't have, they were too soft, and the door was too thick. She threw herself to her feet and at the intruder when they came, hoping to find a sword to fall on. There was a blaster instead.
This one was explosive. Blue plasma, not the lower quality red stuff. It blew her head off for a whole ten minutes, if her estimation of timing was correct.
The moment her windpipe stitched itself back together, like a membrane expanding to fill its holes, she sucked in breath through a snarl and glared at Tarkin through the fall of sweaty, bloody hair. Her buns had long since collapsed. Another disrespect to all Alderaan held dear.
"This is a strange situation," Tarkin mused. She glared at him, the ocean of fire in her chest roiling. There was no water left; it had evaporated. Her monarchy was gone, and there was no point pretending to be a calm princess anymore. "Imperial medics would fight for the chance to study you, I'm sure. My officers have offered theories of advanced cellular growth, scientific advancements hoarded by Alderaan and used to keep their royal family alive instead of being shared with the wider Empire. It would explain why your mother always showed off those horrid scars of hers. Boasting, was it?"
Leia lunged at him. A tiny, wicked penknife embedded itself in her stomach, tore up through her organs, to be yanked out just below her rib cage. Gutted like a fish.
When they healed, Leia let herself stand tall. Her hair a gory mess, her skin riddled with pink, recently healed wounds, still shaking in grief. She said, "You can't kill me. I will kill you."
He caught her wrist before she could seize his knife. "I can kill you," he corrected, "because I think I know what this is. Obi-Wan Kenobi is on the Death Star." The air fled her healing lungs like someone had stabbed them several more times; her eyes blew wide. "Indeed. Come to rescue you, I believe. I knew that Jedi healing was unusual, but this seems excessive. It will no doubt be a prize when Lord Vader kills Kenobi, and you follow swiftly. A glorious day for the Empire, all around."
"You cannot kill Kenobi," she said, but the inferno in her chest shivered.
"Lord Vader can."
"But Lord Vader cannot kill me."
This was her blessing. This was her curse. She would live—alone.
Tarkin tightened his grip on her wrist, finger by finger. "We shall see," he said, and dragged her out.
When the door to the cell slid open, and they stood glaring at each other, they heard blasterfire.
"What?" Tarkin snapped, turning away. He pulled her down to the control room of that detention level, the noise echoing, thundering, growing deafening with every step. The lightshow was as bright as Alderaan's death had been: holocams shattered in blue and white sparks, crimson and green bolts cascaded around the room. White-shelled stormtroopers both fell and fell over themselves, an apathetic darkness sweeping in to occupy the armour instead of them.
Three figures, a Wookiee and two human men, careened around the place. One of them was yelling. Leia gave him a look, then saw the other man—a blond boy Leia's age—spot Leia.
The fire in her chest calmed. The cacophony clearly running on a carousel in his head calmed as well, as he lowered his blaster momentarily. The adrenaline-fuelled anger in his heart echoed her own.
His gaze moved to Tarkin, whose hand was still fastened around her wrist. He raised his blaster, aimed at him; her heart skipped in hope—
Tarkin shot him.
The boy was slammed back, a black hole in his chest the size of Leia's fist. The rest of the galaxy rushed in to fill it, the boy's body a sudden, painful vacuum. That connection, familial connection, the type she'd thought she'd never feel again, vanished with whatever had been inside him.
Leia lashed out. Tarkin started; she twisted her caught hand out of his grip and brought her knee up to connect with his groin. The fires roared between them, seizing the blaster out of his hand and sending it, spinning, into hers.
When he staggered back, she gave him just enough time to recover, to look back up at her and at the blaster levelled between his eyes, before she fired.
All had gone quiet.
A sigh puttered out of her. She swallowed, looked at Tarkin's corpse. Checked for a kriffing pulse.
There was none.
Then she looked up at the still, lightless room. The Wookiee and the other man were staring at her—but they were mostly staring at the boy. Hardly daring to approach, she took one step, then another, towards him. He had hair the colour of sand, his rough clothes a shade paler. There was no reason he should be so familiar to her.
Then his chest rose. And fell. And the man shouted in surprise, and a little horror, and the Wookiee howled his relief, and the boy who had died sat up to meet Leia's gaze.