From a Certain Point of View
Han tried to wake himself but his body refused to yield to his demands. His eyelids felt as heavy as a pregnant bantha and his head hung down so low that his chin was resting on his chest. Sitting upright, he thought he must have fallen asleep in his pilot's seat and he waited for a big Wookiee paw to knock him upside his head and snap him back to reality. But the painful memories of recent events slowly clicked into place and he realized that he was not on his ship and Chewbacca wasn't here to wake him and he didn't have much to wake up to anyway.
Unable to open his eyes, he took a silent inventory of his situation. There were voices flitting around him; female voices chatting incessantly like protocol droids at a Hutt conference. He was barefoot and his ankles were bound to the chair in which he sat.
There was a stench all around him as he lifted his head and turned it from side to side, trying to find a pocket of fresh air that just wasn't there. As his head lolled back down towards his chest, he realized the foulest of the odors was radiating off of his own body.
The back of his head throbbed with the beat of his heart and he recognized the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. His wrists were bound to the armrests of the chair in which he sat. He had no shirt.
"Nah!" A voice screamed and the echo pierced through Han's skull causing his eyelids to flitter. "He-"
"Comes to! And so-"
"He must!"
There was a silence and Han pried his eyes open. The room was dark, his vision was speckled with stars and he stared down at his legs and tried to focus. Blinking a few times, he recognized his torn trousers, their shredded edges darkened crimson and his torn flesh peaking through. As he raised his head two hazy figures were standing in front of him.
"Hit him again and he may-"
"Die. That won't-"
"Do."
There was a hazy sheen covering one of his eyes but the other was furiously working to focus. Han recognized the two hags that he had seen before and he watched them as they eyed him with an insane eagerness. The room surrounding him had irregular walls and a curved ceiling and seemed almost cave like. There were no furnishings or windows. He couldn't even find a door.
"We should-"
"Begin."
They walked towards him, each holding a tiny mallet and Han's stomach lurched at the new smell they introduced to the medley of foul odors that he had been fighting to become accustomed to. The hags came to stand at each of his hands.
"You will meet a-"
"New definition of pain."
Han felt each woman take one of his forefingers and begin to press a tiny shard of metal under his fingernail. As they lodged the objects further into his nail bed, the experience became slightly more than uncomfortable, but Han held in any signs of anguish. And then suddenly they stopped, and he thought they might be finished. The glint of one of the miniature anvils caught his eye right before they began to hammer.
He screamed through the first three fingers, his body writhing in agony. By the time they were finished with his hands, he no longer had a voice or the strength to attempt to fight.
As they knelt down and began to work on his toes, they began to speak – completing each other's thoughts and sentences in an odd way.
"She calls out to you, but you-"
"Cannot hear it. She will come to us-"
"To find you. She is-"
"The chosen one. She will-"
"Fulfill the prophecy."
Han wavered in and out of unconsciousness as they tortured him and rambled on in this way.
After they finished with his hands and feet they stepped back and disappeared.
Dozing off or passing out, Han had no idea how long they had left him there. Upon hearing their voices he brought his head up and prepared himself for whatever they might have in store for him next. He realized that they were using his pain as bait and he was determined to suppress his emotions and his reactions to their savagery. He had become numb to the pain anyway.
Each heavy blink of his eyelids brought the two women into focus. Four mad eyes peered down at him, two sickly grins taunted him. Each held a jar against her chest. In one jar there sloshed some sort of liquid, clear and oily. In the other, there was a black, solid substance that somehow appeared to move and separate. The hag holding the jar with the liquid cackled and grinned wickedly and Han stared at her in anticipation. He didn't even see the other open the lid and throw the contents of her jar at him.
At first it felt as if a cool blanket had been thrown over his body. Then the blanket began to move against his skin and then his entire body exploded with pain. They were everywhere, small black insects of some kind and they were biting him, each tiny organism stinging and ripping at his flesh. He screamed in spite of himself and his every muscle tensed, fingers and toes flared reignited the pain that had subsided there. Until, thankfully, he passed out.
When he came to the tiny bugs had ended their feast, either because they were engorged with his blood or he had no remaining skin left to bite. The other hag began to unscrew the lid on her container, still full of an oily liquid.
"We do not wish-"
"You to die. This will-"
"Stave off the infection."
At the end of their speech, the hag slung the contents of the jar at Han and a sheet of liquid crashed over him and covered his body. There was a moment of relief from the stinging pain of the bites and then the liquid began to burn like fire. Every single nerve ending flared with the heat of three suns. Han screamed but nothing came out.
If he had been there mere days or endless weeks, Han had no idea as he lost track of not only time but of the numerous ways that the pair continued to torture him. He only knew that each new technique brought his battle to a whole new level. They used extreme heat and extreme cold; they broke bones and reset them. The onset of every new, painful ordeal somehow started as a relief from the pain that had preceded it, until the new misery became the next measuring stick. Finally, the comfort of death became his only goal and seemed would be his only salvation.
Han had always prided himself on his high tolerance of pain. He had popped dislocated fingers back in their sockets, dressed his own wounds with a sip and a splash of low-grade whiskey. He had never spent a minute in a bacta tank. None of that seemed like a badge of courage now, as he prayed for a stimshot or a vat of bacta to swim in, anything to ease the pain that engulfed him. He had been beaten to the edge of his life and if he made it through this, he knew he would never return to the person that he had been - in more ways than one.
It was a different sensation that woke him early one morning. There was a light touch on his cheek that felt like needles dancing on his skin. He wondered if his body would recognize anything but the dull ache of agony that shrouded him now. His hands fell free and hung listlessly by his sides, their sudden range of movement another shot of pain. There was a movement near his ankles and his body jerked in reaction.
He felt his body lifting and heard a foreign voice whisper in his ear. For a moment he thought he was dying, but as his body convulsed and the throbbing ache increased he gave up on that hope.
"Easy."
It was the first word that he was able to decipher and the soft, husky voice caused a wave of relief to wash over him, dragging a tortuous ache behind it in its wake. The rush of blood awakened frazzled, latent nerve-endings and caused his entire body to shudder.
The next few words were harsh curses mumbled under the newcomer's breath. Han recognized them as Alderaanian and his hope and relief surged yet again, bringing with it another wave of agonizing pain. And then his world went black.
When Han awoke his body was slumped against a rough wall of the cave that had been his prison cell. A small figure was crouched in front of him and as soon as his hazel eyes met her brown ones, his lips turned up in a relieved smile – and even that hurt.
"We've got company. Stay right here," Leia whispered to him as he blinked his eyes into focus.
He nodded his head in affirmation, finding it easy to comply to her wishes as he tried to move his legs but found that he couldn't.
Han watched what followed through the hazy vision of one eye. Leia fought the two hags, each of the three women wielding lightsabers. The entire battle was a blur of greens and reds. There were flashes of lightning and half the time Han thought that he might still be dreaming. Leia, the hope of a rescue and this entire battle a mere hallucination created by his weakened mind; a mental escape, a mirage.
But the sounds of the hissing blades as they swung furiously through the air and crashed together with sputtering sparks made it all seem so real. He remembered Luke practicing with his lightsaber in the lounge of the Falcon and the sounds and the smells were the same, encouraging him to believe that it was more than mere fantasy.
Han watched as Leia fought impressively against the two hags. He could hear her grunt with exertion as she heaved her blade in a mixture of lunges and parries. As the battle wore on, he could see the sag in her shoulders as the glowing blade seemed to become heavier and heavier in her grasp.
The two hags began to circle her, taking advantage of her weariness. Leia held her ground, barely able to hold up her blade in defense as they began to speak.
"You will not defeat us, just as you will never defeat-"
"Your destiny. You are ignorant to-"
"Your own destiny. The old man, the hermit, he did not-"
"Tell you everything. You know that now-"
"To be true."
Han watched as Leia swung her lightsaber around and lunged at one of the hags, seemingly drawing strength from their words.
"Yes! You found that out-"
"Yourself! Don't you wonder what else has been hidden-"
"From you?"
This time Leia let out a deep growl as she spun around and slashed her lightsaber at one of the women, coming close enough to her head to singe the hag's hair with her blade.
"Yes, yes you do. It burns inside of you. The-"
"Unknown. But we know."
"Yes…we have no need to-"
"Destroy you. We had only the need to-"
"Plant the seed. And now it is done."
"Now all we have to do is-"
"Watch it grow."
Han watched as Leia straightened herself up and stood with her feet spread wide below her. Her chest heaved in and out with her shallow breaths and she looked from one old woman to another. Leia flipped off her lightsaber and hung it from her belt. With a shriek of warning, Leia held both of her hands out, palms facing each hag and threw them against either wall of the cave with an invisible force that Han felt pulsate through the entire room.
When the hags hit either wall, their lightsabers fell from their hands and fizzled out and each woman slumped over in a heap.
Leia stood in the middle of the room for a moment before she turned and walked slowly towards Han.
"Let's get you out of here."
Han moved his lips but no sound would come out, even the useless vibration of his vocal cords made him wince in pain. He felt Leia crouch next to him, pull one of his arms over her shoulder and lift him as if he had repulsors.
He walked alongside of her, trying to move his legs, if only just for show. As they approached her starship he attempted to speak again.
"Falcon?"
"There's nothing else here."
Han felt his heart sink down into his stomach.
She placed him in a medical bunk and strapped him in. Taking a finger, she brushed his hair out of his eyes and said, "I'm going to get us headed home. Don't go anywhere."
"Where would I go?" Han mumbled and tried to smile as his face contorted in pain.
Han heard the whine of the hyperdrive engaging and waited for Leia to reappear. When she returned he felt her standing over him for a moment and he turned his head to see her. She was studying him, her eyes flitting across his body and he realized she was probably trying to determine where to begin.
He heard her fumbling through some compartments and then he felt a cool wetness on the skin of his neck and he flinched and then his body shuddered in reaction.
"This will help with the pain and let you rest."
Han didn't even try to respond and then he felt the sharp pang of the hypo shot in his neck and then there was nothing.
When he awoke, he had the bizarre feeling that his mind was somehow free of his tattered body, as if his brain sat suspended in a specimen jar while the rest of him got crumpled up and thrown away. For the first time in days, weeks or however long it had been, nothing hurt. Blinking his eyes, the ceiling above him came slowly came into focus and the familiar hum of the engines let him know he was still on a ship tearing through space at lightspeed. He couldn't lift his head to survey what was going on with the body he still could not feel.
A soft wisp of air tickled the hair in his ears and he strained to turn his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he could barely see a blurry face lying next to him on the medical bunk. Biting his lip he struggled to turn his head just a little more, revealing the peaceful, sleeping face of Princess Leia. She sat next to his bunk in a chair, her head resting alongside his, her delicate features relaxed in sleep.
An alarm on the ship sounded and she opened her eyes to meet his. Her mouth opened in surprise and she sat up quickly, wiping the side of her mouth with the back of her hand. Their eyes locked again for a moment and then at the sound of another alarm, she stood up and mumbled, "We must be coming up on Coruscant. Sit tight."
As he watched her disappear from his line of sight and listened as her footsteps disappeared down the corridor, Han wondered to himself again, Where would I go?