To the Reader:
This is the chapter that I have been waiting to write for months, along with the one that comes after it. Everything in this entire "Spawn of the Emperor" section has lead up to this point. THESE CHAPTERS ARE THE REASON THIS STORY HAS THE RATING THAT IT DOES, though I don't want to spoil why. It has proven difficult with the alternating perspectives, and the intensity, and everything that is going on at once. I'm sorry the updates have not been as frequent as they used to be, but I am simultaneously working on a revised version of this entire story that doesn't start out quite so cheesy, and that actually fills in gaps between the movies. If all goes well Tess' story will never end, from one-shot fillers to extending the canon universe years past the movies. I have an idea of a conclusion, but even if we eventually hit it, there are still stories that I would love to go back and tell! Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Luke Skywalker peeked out from the refresher he was hiding in. He had hoped the disruption he caused on the stage would bring all of the guards away from the room, but they left one. He knew Tess was behind that door. He couldn't feel her like he normally could, but she was there for sure. Possibly sedated. That would explain the weak Force presence.
Maybe a mind trick would work? He had not used one of those in a while.
Before Luke could even make up his mind, he heard voices approaching from down the hall.
"Oh, she's going to regret this...Todrin, get her out of there!"
It was Zkab. The purple hair was a dead giveaway. He waited impatiently as one guard—Todrin, Luke assumed—padded open the door for Zkab. The purple-haired sadist went in and dragged Tess out by her cuffed hands. Luke almost didn't recognize her, so anesthetized and weak, and wearing a black dress she would never pick out. They must have made her change; as if a different outfit could assure the audience that she truly was the late Emperor's daughter.
Luke watched Zkab grab Tess by the throat with both hands and push her hard up against the wall. The girls' eyes popped open wide. She gasped for air. The Jedi was seconds away from Force-choking Zkab, but all he could see in his mind was Darth Vader doing the same.
"You think that was clever?" Zkab hissed. "Well, just watch. Get ready, Miss Palpatine. I have the—"
Suddenly, as Tess was trying to pry Zkab's hands off her neck, a tiny bit of silver lightening came from her fingers. It was enough for Zkab to jump back, dropping the coughing and wheezing fifteen-year-old to the floor.
"Inject her again," Zkab ordered Todrin.
"But sir, you've already—"
"It still won't knock her out, right? Not after that other chemical to keep her conscious?" Zkab interjected.
"No, she will stay conscious, but you've already—"
"Then give her another dose."
Todrin compliantly pulled a needle from his belt and injected a liquid into Tess' arm. She only flinched a little, and within seconds, her gaze was a million miles away. Her legs shook when Zkab tried to yank her to a stand. The celebrity took her chin.
"If you want to see Captain Solo alive again, get up," he sneered.
Tess' face contorted into an angry glower.
"You killed him."
"Or did I?" Zkab asked her. "Come on." He gave her arm a jerk.
Zkab and his men started back down the hall with Tess. When it was safe, Luke followed.
Leia sat at the back corner of the blackroom, trying not to think about the cell on the Death Star that it reminded her of. There was no light besides the small window at the top of the door, so the term "blackroom" was definitely suitable.
She knew Luke was here—she could feel it—and that was the only comfort right now. The hope that he will get to Tess before anything happens to her. Leia could wait if it meant Tess would be safer, but her claustrophobia had other ideas.
Leia tried to ignore the feeling of the walls moving closer together. The shortness of breath. The—was that a hissing noise…? It was coming from above her.
Leia stood, her eyes on the ceiling. As soon as she did so, she broke into a fit of coughs.
Oh no…
The princess stumbled to the door, banging her fists on it and screaming to be let out.
Luke was almost near the stage when he suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Leia…
He waited for some sort of response. When she heard him, he somehow knew she did. But there was nothing. Silence. He looked at the stage, trying to make up his mind, wishing he could run to save both of his sisters.
And then, Luke Skywalker felt something he had never felt before. As if someone had a hold of his heart, trying to squeeze the organ into stillness.
Luke had never ran so fast in his life.
His feet carried him down two empty halls and through a door that lead to another five. He plowed into the first one, padding it to open.
"Initiating air purification cycle," said the system. He knew what that meant. Ridding the room of poisonous gas.
After the longest ten-second countdown of Luke's life, the door finally opened and he dragged a lifeless Leia out of it. He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the other side of the room, furthest away from any remnants of poisonous gas that might sneak out of the room. He didn't trust the purification system—he could still smell it.
"Leia!" he called out to his sister. Her face was white. "Come on, Leia…"
Luke put an ear to her chest, then a finger to the side of her neck. Nothing.
"No… No, Leia, come on!"
He got on his knees, brought his hands together and started chest compressions. Then he tilted her head back, opened her mouth, and filled her lungs with air. He didn't know how many times he had repeated this process before he just took her by the shoulders, shaking her and screaming her name.
Tears stung Luke's eyes. He pulled his sister's limp body into his lap, rocking back and forth, staring at her face and willing her eyes to open.
"Leia…please, you can't…" the Jedi sobbed.
With one last shred of hope, Luke closed his eyes, reaching out to the Force. He imagined himself pressing on it rhythmically, like the chest compressions from before but using the Force, and reaching straight for the heart instead of having to work from above the ribs. He pictured his sister's still heart and willed it to beat again. First extremely slow, then climbing to a normal pace. Again, Luke brought an ear to his sister's chest. He stopped trying to assist her heart and listened for it to work on its own.
Suddenly, Leia jolted with a deep gasp, pulling oxygen in to fill her thirsty lungs. Her brown eyes darted around the room with confusion. Then they met her brother's. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but couldn't find the words.
The farm boy laughed aloud with relief, watching the color return to his sister's face.
"I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you."
Pulled off the stage by two of Zkab's guards, Han Solo looked around for Zkab himself.
"Does anyone know what's going on?" he muttered aloud.
As if on cue, Zkab rounded the corner with Tess in tow. It looked like he had his entire staff behind him.
"Han!" Tess cried with relief as soon as she saw her friend. "You're alive!" The Corellian gave her a reassuring nod. He should have been relieved to see her, but whatever Zkab had in mind for the both of them together could not be good.
Zkab removed the binders from the youngest prisoner and shoved her in Han's direction. Tess almost fell forward, but Han caught her. Zkab motioned for the two guards behind Han and Tess to watch them, while he took the rest of the guards further down the hall.
"What did they do to you?" Han asked, half hugging and half supporting the kid.
"They just…kept injecting me with something…" she whispered weakly.
"Kid, you're barely five feet, what made you think you could take these guys?"
"I wasn't fighting back." Under better circumstances, Tess would have insisted that she could indeed take on Zkab's men if she had to. "They were trying to stop the lightening. But it just keeps flaring up, I can't help it."
"Listen…" Han said gravely, looking at her hands. The burns were the worst he'd ever seen them. The unspoken words caught in the back of his throat. Things along the lines of 'Whatever happens on that stage' and 'It's gonna be alright' just got swallowed back down into his stomach like a sour medicine. He wasn't a man of words. Quickly-delivered insults and impressive strings of expletives, sure, but comfort? Sometimes he wondered if he was even capable of offering it to anyone but Leia, with whom it was unsaid but understood.
"You have no one to blame for this but Lady Palpatine," Zkab assured them on his way back over, taking Tess' chin. "Your little friend here decided to shove herself into the afternoon show with her little magic trick instead of waiting her turn. But I'm flexible. I'll accommodate."
At that, Zkab made his way back onto the stage. Han and Tess exchanged glances.
"I'm terrified," Tess admitted to Han in a whisper. He looked at the twenty or more of Zkab's men heading in their direction.
So am I, came to Han's mind. A variation of the confession came out instead.
"You ain't the only one, kid..."
Zkab's stage seemed smaller, now that Tess was actually standing on it. And the audience was four times as big as Tess would have imagined. The sound of their cheering clawed into her ears and pounded on her eardrums, giving her a splitting headache like she had never felt before. The sudden yank on her hair did not help.
Tess felt her hair fastener break and snap against her scalp. Zkab dragged her to the very front of the stage, her armpit-length curls falling loose around her shoulders.
"Citizens of Turos Noth," Zkab pronounced. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the greatest city in Teyr, I present to you: The Spawn of the Emperor!"
Zkab flung Tess to the floor in front of him. The audience mostly cheered, but there were some gasps of shock woven into the excitement. The purple-haired celebrity seemed to notice churlishly.
"Oh, don't be fooled by her beauty and youth," Zkab warned them, kneeling beside the girl and brushing her hair out of her face.
Suddenly, Zkab shoved a stun baton into Tess' side, sending an electric jolt throughout her entire body. Her hands became engulfed with involuntary Force lightening—more silver in color than usual—that spurted up into the air. Her fingers burned and throbbed. The crowd released a collective gasp.
"There are whispers that the Emperor himself had otherworldly powers," Zkab began elusively. "You know you've heard them." He pulled Tess to her feet by her wrists, displaying her singed palms for all to see. "That he could send bolts of lightening from his fingertips into the very veins of the people who crossed him!"
He took a beat, and the audience's hunger for every word he spoke was practically tangible.
"She has been heavily sedated for your own protection. Based on what you just witnessed, who knows what she would do if she was completely lucid?"
The front of the crowd nervously moved several paces back.
"Get away from her!" Han said from the other side of the stage. Tess could barely hear him over the murmurs of the audience.
Ignoring Han, Zkab restrained Tess' hands into a set of cold durasteel binders. He then opened a hatch in the stage floor, pressing a control underneath it. A long, thick pole with a chain attached to it ascended a little over two metres upwards. Zkab raised Tess' restrained hands over her head and clipped them to the end of the chain. He then took a moment to look at the young brunette, as if he were admiring a well-earned prize. His fingers stroked her damp brow, parting the hairs that fell over it.
The sedatives swirled through Tess' veins, but with the other drug that was keeping her conscious, it was as if she was sleepwalking through a vivid nightmare. She hoped this was all just a nightmare. She wished it more than anything. But as the binders dug into her electricity-scorched wrists, the beads of cold sweat pooled on her forehead, and the midday sun stung her eyes and skin, it was hard to ignore reality.
"Well," Zkab continued with the show. "Now that you have met both Officer Karlo and the late Emperor's bastard, I bet you're wondering what brings these two together on this stage."
The psychopath took a moment to deliver a grin—first in Han's direction, then Tess'. Only then did Tess see that Han had been strung up to binders on a pole as well. The brunette struggled to meet her friend's glance through her dizzily sedated haze, if only for the small comfort of eye contact.
Zkab went on to tell sickeningly convincing lies about how the fictional Officer Karlo—Han—had been Tess' protector since she was very young. How he had caused the deaths of innocents all over the galaxy who might have discovered who Tess was.
"A loyal servant," Zkab said of Karlo, crossing the stage to give Han an unwelcome pat on the shoulder. "But this afternoon, how about we break that Imperial loyalty?"
The audience cheered in approval. Tess watched Han yell at them the Zkab was a liar, but it was no use. Only Zkab had a microphone, so only Zkab could be heard past the stage's edge.
A knowing grin on his face, the celebrity gestured towards most of his men that joined him on stage.
"Here I have thirty-one members of my staff," Zkab explained. He held up the black stick in his hand and switched off the electricity. "This is a Merr-Sonn stun baton. Enough to immobilize when engaged, but effective in blunt force when disengaged." To prove his point, Zkab clubbed Han in the back with the baton. The Corellian bit back a shout of pain.
"Stop!" Tess cried out. "Stop it!"
"Sorry, my lady," Zkab feigned sincerity. "But only your protector here can tell me or any of my men to stop. One by one the baton will get passed, and one by one his loyalty will be tested as each man deals him a blow beneath the neck. And the moment he tells them to stop, or passes out… the men that have not gotten a chance to strike him get to have their way with you."