(Let me know if the jumps between flashback and present time are getting confusing. Love you guys :) Thanks for coming back, veterans!)
Once Chewbacca was bandaged and safely hidden in the Falcon's smuggling compartment, Han Solo dressed his own less serious blaster wound and armed himself with as much as he could carry. That amounted to Leia's DL-44 blaster, his own, an E-11 blaster rifle with some grenades that were probably older than he was, and a battle vest. Not much, but with his injury, it was all he could manage without stumbling through every step.
Finally, Han descended the Falcon's ramp, only to have twenty of Zkab's men surrounding the ship, armed and waiting for him.
"Restrain her," one of the head Imperials ordered—an admiral, by the look of his uniform. Leia let them cuff her hands with a pair of binders and sit her in a chair beside the kitchen table. Only six rogues were in the Dantooine cottage, but Leia felt that they were not alone. She only hoped that Tess would sense the danger and get as far away from here as possible.
Run… the princess repeated over and over in her head, hoping her sister could hear. Find Han and get out of here. It was the only way all of them would stay alive.
Leia knew this drill. Find someone close to the target and torture them into divulging their location. If that doesn't work, use them as bait. But if they were to get their hands on Tess, the princess would be of no use anymore. They would kill her. She had talked to Tess about this sometime after their escape at Cloud City. Han, too. Normal couples talk about what each wanted one to do in the event of the other's death—Han and Leia talked about what each wanted one to do in the event of the other's capture by the Empire. It all came down to odds. If, for example, trying to save one person would likely get all of them killed, they just had to trust that the one captured would not reveal a thing while the others get to safety.
Refreshingly, Leia for once found herself as the one captured. No tough decisions there. And she was good at it, too. She could be a hell of an actress when she needed to be. This was the kind of stuff she prepared for on a nightly basis.
Leia allowed an Imperial officer to wrap a cord around her chest and the back of the chair, while another bound her ankles to the chair's legs. If these guys had done their research at all, they would know that she was impenetrable, even when tortured. Her run with the IT-O Interrogator was no secret. No amount of torture would get her to divulge information about her friends. All they had here was bait. Bait that, with any luck, Han and Tess would not fall for.
"Alright, princess," the admiral began. He removed his hat and planted himself in a chair in front of Leia. "You know who we're looking for. Where is she?"
"She's gone."
"I can see that," the admiral retorted. "But she was here. There are three sets of wardrobe in this house. I'd imagine they are yours, Han Solo's, and hers. The girl you call Tess Naberrie. The Emperor's daughter."
"Captain Solo died on Teyr," Leia choked through fake emotions. "I just kept his clothes… Tess was severely injured. I took her back here, where she remained in a coma for two weeks before passing away. Almost two months ago." She raised her teary dark eyes to the admiral. "And it's your fault," she hissed. "They died running from people like you!"
"Why did you keep his clothes?" asked a younger officer guarding the door.
"Because they were lovers," the admiral interrupted. "But she's lying through her teeth. Aren't you, Princess Leia?"
"It's the truth," she assured him. She had worked up a few tears by now.
Leia was almost having fun. At the expense of sounding like a masochist, being the captured, interrogated, or tortured one did not even come close to how strong she had to be when watching her friends do the same.
"Citizens of Turos Noth. This. Is. Zkab!"
An eruption of cheers and applause answered the celebrity. Leia watched the top-down-view holoprojection of the stage. She buried her anxiety, breathing evenly to ease her rising dread.
The princess knew what this meant. She would be forced to watch.
On Alderaan, Bail knew what kind of world they lived in. He knew what people like himself and his daughter were to the Empire. And come to think of it, on top of all that, Bail knew who she was biologically. He prepared her to take on mind probes, to resist interrogation, and to pull through torture. He would never put his daughter in any pain, though—this was all psychological training that she learned from professionals throughout the galaxy.
She could expertly shield her mind from probes—sometimes even from Force intrusions when her siblings would try to read her thoughts. She could turn the tables in an interrogation so that the interrogator himself felt he himself to be the victim. She could withstand the most physical pain imaginable—and had done so on the Death Star—with the only comfort being that her death without confession would save lives much more important than her own.
But this—watching—being witness instead of victim—no one prepared her for this. In her mind, she knew that giving in and letting them destroy her by torturing her friends would spot on everything they fought for. But in her heart, she just wanted to do anything in her power to prevent their pain.
Leia Organa had literally watched the only world she had ever known disappear in a single moment. Billions of voices—she could hear them in her nightmares—suffocating on their own screams. Every second Leia saw her friends in danger, those screams would start creeping up her legs, reaching her knees, forcing them to buckle, then surging up to her neck as if she would vomit them out. Then to her head. They would get inside and each individual one would try to force itself out of her skull—sharp, like knives inside her head—still screaming…fighting their way out… But they would never get out. The screaming would just get louder and the pain would get worse until she couldn't hear anything but them—couldn't see anything but every person she had ever loved on Alderaan with singed, burning, and bleeding bodies, crying out for her help.
And then, finally, they would stop. Just stop. Instantaneously. But with that silence Leia could felt the loss of every single soul in the part of her heart that was destroyed that day along with Alderaan—a part she thought was long gone, until moments like this where it would reemerge like a phantom limb.
Zkab's applause finally died down, and two men brought out someone in Imperial uniform. Leia watched them bring the man to the center of the stage. She felt bad about it, but she was incredibly relieved that it wasn't Tess out there. The prisoner trudged along, tripping on his way, as if they had been knocking him around before the show. The princess turned her head away, only to have one of Zkab's men take hold of her head and turn her back in the right direction.
"Watch," he demanded. Leia obeyed.
The holoprojected Zkab went over to the prisoner.
"Meet Officer Karlo," he presented. He knocked the cap off of the officer's head and Leia's heart jumped into her throat.
It was Han.
"No…" Leia murmured.
"Watch!" the guard demanded again.
"No!" Leia rushed frantically. "No, that man isn't an Imperial! I know him! That's General Han Solo, he—"
The guard to her right smacked her hard on the ear, then once again grabbed either side of her head so he could force her to look at the projection. The one on the left jabbed something into her side that sent an electric jolt throughout her entire body.
With no other choice, Leia watched as Zkab listed heinous crimes that the fictional Officer Karlo had committed with the Empire.
"And now," Zkab continued with a sadistic smile. "Citizens of Turos Noth, you will tell me what he deserves. You will decide Officer Karlo's fate!"
With a sweep of his hand, the screen behind Zkab illuminated. Flashed. Zkab looked expectantly at it, then stumbled backwards as a loud screech of microphone feedback startled everyone. The screen flashed again, then turned off.
It couldn't have been the plan. The guards around the room were too confused by the malfunction. Leia watched Han look around with just the slightest smile, as if appreciating the brief luck.
Zkab angrily stomped to the back corner of the stage and pulled something out of his pocket. The sound of his voice coming from the guard's belt was enough to conclude that it was a com.
"If you let the bitch get away, I swear to the gods—"
"No, sir!" the guard replied quickly. "She hasn't left the room! She's right here! She hasn't even gotten out of the chair!"
"Take her to a blackroom. I don't have time for this," Zkab ordered.
The two guards immediately forced Leia to a stand and guided her out of the dining area. They took her down the hall and into a room with five doors inside, each with a small window at the top and each about a metre apart from the next. The guards opened the first one and shoved Leia inside, slamming the door behind her.
And then, Leia felt something. A familiarity. A warmth. Two words.
"I'm coming."
Leia could have wept with joy.
It was Luke.