Don't You Dare
Trigger warning: torture.
"Concentrate. Feel the Force flow."
It was simpler now, Luke had to admit. Weeks with Yoda had sharpened his perceptions, clarified his connection to the Force, and gave him a visceral sense of the colors he had always seen. It was like the colors had shape now, and nuance, and texture.
Concentration wasn't really the problem anymore.
"Yes. Good. Calm, yes."
Texture and depth. Three dimensions instead of two. Complexity. He found it endlessly fascinating, this new perception of his. The way the Force called him, whispering intuition and wisdom when he bothered to listen.
Leia had once mentioned that movement gave her peace, a thoughtless reprieve. Perhaps this was what she had meant.
"Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future. The past. Old friends long gone."
The idea was intriguing. He knew enough now to know he couldn't call a spirit to him; the Force never worked so directly. But to have an opportunity one day to talk with Ben or his father … that was a dream he could hardly fathom. He still had so much to learn, and all his possible teachers were gone long before their time.
What other veins of the Force's power had been lost with them? The breadth and scope of the Jedi extinction was becoming overwhelming when he considered such things. Yoda said there had been counselors and warriors and teachers. Medics. Engineers. An entire society of Force-users, operating under the banner of…
A trickle of sweat into his eyes. He ignored it.
… of history and teachings of millennia of Jedi. An entire way of life…
A faint twinge of heat in his chest, just below the pounding insistence of his heart. His thoughts dripped to a hazy stop, slowly at first but then finally a concerned void where his inner voice usually lived.
He saw Han in pain. Screaming. Red-faced and breathing hard, voice hoarse and words broken, indistinguishable in bitten-off outrage and violence.
He saw Chewie. Paws over his head, the fine bones in his ears vibrating at excruciating tempos. Words were possible but what good would they do? He was alone, worry for his cubs paramount beneath the endless torment of the slicing, piercing, insanity-inducing fervor of the sound.
And he saw Leia.
Face drawn. Sallow. Eyes sunken. Clutching her Hoth whites with small hands that shook, in such psychic distress that it bowled him over in its completeness. Physically, she was fine. Mentally, she was utterly fractured, a deep severing that she couldn't control and it blasted over him like waves.
Did he say their names? He didn't know. He couldn't feel his hands and he had lost his breath entirely. Leia! he screamed into the void.
She didn't respond.
"Control, control. You must learn control."
Control over what? There was nothing here but the brutal, horrifying images in his head, ceaseless echos of torture flipping from sister to friends and back again.
"I see a city in the clouds," he gasped.
Yoda's voice was soft. "Yes."
"My sister, my friends. They were in pain."
Ripples of electricity flew through his hands. His heart slammed against his ribcage in a tortured tattoo.
And he was helpless. Without any sense of cause or purpose.
Yoda was silent and for the first time, Luke felt the fleeting sense of sorrow coming from his master. Inevitable heartache. An ancient knowledge that preceded the city in the clouds and Luke and Leia's training, and perhaps even their birth. Decades-old, maybe centuries-old.
Loss.
"Will they die?"
"Difficult to see," Yoda answered. "Always in motion is the future."
No. An unacceptable accounting of the situation. Luke's anger boiled to the surface, a product of Leia's righteous fury, he knew. She colored everything about his perceptions of Yoda: his deceit, his half-truths, his pedagogy. Luke had sworn to himself that he would try to learn as much as he could from the master and teach it to Leia when they reunited, but the intention died swiftly now in the face of her pain.
But he was as helpless to stop that as he was to ease her pain here on Dagobah.
"We've got to go help them."
The obvious solution, he thought. Leia was in pain, and he would help her. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the foe, he could help. He had learned so much, had come so far in his training, of course his assistance was needed.
"Decide you must how to serve them best."
"What kind of answer is that?" he demanded. "They've been captured and are being tortured, Master. We must go."
He could feel her even now, even in the quiet bubble of Dagobah. It was like he had awoken from a dream; it lingered, it festered. The tenor of her pain, so strong and so familiar. It felt like an avalanche of what she had felt on Hoth at the end.
Han. Of course. The only way to really hurt Leia at this point was to hurt Han.
"If you leave now, help them you could, but you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered."
"It's Chewie, too," he said, desperation clawing through his ribs. "You would let your friend die?"
The sorrow was profound as it rolled from the master, bright green. Was this the truest sense he had ever gotten from Yoda? Luke couldn't remember.
"Respect Chewbacca's sacrifice, I must."
Sacrifice.
So that was it, then. Yoda had discarded Leia as surely as he had Han and Chewie.
"And what if it is Vader?"
His last effort to draw Yoda to his senses, to garner any hint of the stubborn Jedi empathy that was so famous in the galaxy. This jaded, darkened soul would allow such pain when there was a possibility, even a remote one, that he could help them?
"Then she is already lost."
No. He refused to believe that.
He left Dagobah's atmosphere thirty minutes later.
The ethereal white was gone: the flowing architecture, the rivulets of cream and beige that ran through the spotlessness, the comfort and privilege and … and the facade of it all. The curtain had dropped and now Leia could see, in infinite, horrifying detail, what Cloud City truly was.
Surrounded by deep durasteel-gray walls, the nearly subterranean darkness permeating the room to which she had been brought was so complete she couldn't see her hand as it waved in front of her face. She wasn't sure, but she estimated the room to be no more than a few meters square, without windows or any sort of lighting fixture. A closet, maybe, or a storage container. Unless Cloud City had technology that somehow made her unable to detect movement, the room wasn't on hoverjets. She wasn't being carted off to the Executor, not yet.
Alone, she stared into the dark. Alone, she despaired for Han and Chewie. Alone, she dropped the net of her protection, the shield to which she had clung so hard the past few hours, and reached out blindly for Han.
She couldn't find him at first, and that was a painful twist of the vibroblade in her chest. The last words he had spoken before they had been forcibly separated and removed from the dining room sprang to mind, and her throat tightened.
Don't give up, he had yelled to her. Don't you dare.
And then she had been taken here, the last images she had of him flitting behind her eyelids, and she held onto her sanity with trembling hands.
Before, when she had been tortured on the Death Star, she had been alone. Rather, she had thought she had been alone, until she had been summoned to the observation deck to discover the real meaning of the word. The torture after the destruction of Alderaan had been easier to bear. Everyone called her a hero, but Leia knew the truth.
After Alderaan had been destroyed, she had given up.
There hadn't been anything left to protect. The Alliance? Laughably unable to fight against a planet-killing space station. That was her role in history, then: the heights to which she would be lifted. A martyr for justice. A symbol. The pressure was off, there was nothing left to fight for. She had done her job, played her part.
Nothing else had mattered.
And then a sandy-haired moisture farmer had opened her cell hatch and changed everything. Her role had not diminished; it had exploded into galaxy-wide fame and fervor. She would single-handedly make sure the Alliance would survive, and she would gladly die doing it. The thread of her own mortality would be short, of course, but at least there was purpose.
She felt the same way now. She still had something to fight for. She had to protect her brother. and she needed to find Han.
Breathe in, breathe out. Focus. She could find him, she knew she could. There was no tangible difference between the power Luke and she shared; if he could do it, she could, too. Colors and telekinesis and intense shielding and swordsmanship … it was all part and parcel of whatever legacy the Skywalker genes had bestowed upon them. She had to reconcile the two spheres into one, or she would never be able to hold her own against the likes of Vader.
And that's exactly what she was going to do. The bastard would not win.
Don't give up. Don't you dare.
Slowly, she found Han, a pinprick of light amongst the dark. A bright star in a dim constellation. Nearby, she thought. So close that she could feel his skin, the outward manifestation of his personality. Like she could touch the scar on his chin, but couldn't penetrate any deeper. There were no colors to see; there was no light. But when she focused, really, really tried, she could see him, brash bravado and a lopsided grin and green eyes that shamelessly commanded attention. Charisma and gumption and stubbornness, and then beneath all of that, a soul that was perfectly flawed but perfectly-wrought, too.
I'm here, she tried to say. I'm right here, with you.
He didn't hear her. His lips were moving, but she couldn't hear what he said. And he was strapped down, she suddenly realized, and the sardonic grin slipped, betraying absolute terror as
Bloody red pain, hot, insurmountable and unending pain, rippled through him and he gasped. Fuck, he'd heard of scan grids, had eyed this one with alarm klaxons ringing in his ears, but hadn't realized until this very moment how much pain they actually caused. Every nerve, every fucking one, fired, and though he tried to keep his mouth shut, the screams escaped.
and Leia felt her indefatigable life's purpose fade as she experienced Han's pain for the first time.
Luke felt it, too.
"Artoo, we have to hurry," he muttered, but there was nothing faster than light and he was already going that fast.
Han had never asked in-depth questions about Leia's torture at the hands of this sadist, and right now he kind of wished he had. The scan grid was powered down for the moment, the first session done, and he could tell the damn thing operated on a timer. A timer. Of all the awful things about being tortured by Darth Vader, somehow that stuck in his mind as the most ludicrious.
Don't want me dying on you, yet, huh?
They were taking biometrics, they would know if he was getting close to cardiac arrest. How nice of them to make sure he didn't kick it on the first of what he was sure would be several rounds.
Lifting his head, he glared at Vader, standing so tall and imposing on the other end of the small room. He wasn't enormous, Han realized, and the thought was funny. How many times had he encountered this monster and had never really looked at him? He was just the fucking nightmare in the black suit, not a being with muscle mass and a height in calculable meters.
"You gonna ask me a question now?" Han asked.
Vader just stared at him, the helmet unmoving, the cape a vicious ornament behind him.
"Nice," Han spat. "Normally on a first date, you ask questions."
(Leia couldn't hear the words, but she felt the humor in them. She could also feel the blood on his teeth where he'd bit his lip so hard it had bled, could taste metal on her own tongue.)
Vader seemed unfazed by the remark, but now it was a matter of being as much a pain in the ass as Han could be, which happened to be a specialty of his. If Vader was here, he wasn't with Leia, and that was a small victory. He was okay with that.
"She's watching."
(Leia heard those words, loud and clear.)
Han tried not to respond, but the notion hit him squarely in the solar plexus. The she in question was absolutely not allowed to see any of this. This was his torture and she could handle her own but not … not his.
The horror dawned on them both simultaneously. That she knew, and that he knew she knew.
"You are nothing, Commander Solo," Vader said once it was obvious his audience of two understood. "I don't need information from you."
Han sucked in a breath through bruised ribs and a heart that would stop if the bastard confirmed what he thought he would.
"You should have known better than to associate with Jedi."
(Displaced anger, Leia thought, through tremors that started to shake her body. Her political acumen thrummed to life like a flame in the dark. This rage isn't only pointed at us.)
The scan grid suddenly clicked back to life, and Han tried to suck in a few weak breaths as the table tilted down. Don't give up, don't give up, don't give up he thought toward her, toward himself, such a desperate mantra that he wasn't sure she could hear, but he was powerless to do anything more for her than that.
(And Leia closed her eyes in the dark and reached instinctively for the only hope she had left, the only person who could save them now.)
(Luke, she thought. Luke.)
The torture went on. And on. And on.
Without question or comment, the sinister mask just watched the pain on open display, as if he were watching an orchestra play a concerto. And Han struggled, and cursed, and blacked out and then came to. There would be breaks to ensure his survival, he knew, but that was about all he knew, because the pain was insurmountable and whole and ruthless.
Leia cried in the dark, gripping the sleeves of her Hoth whites to try to find any kind of stability. Without any sort of sensory input, her mind was so keenly attuned to Han that she felt everything, saw everything, experienced everything.
She hadn't been this close to despair since the Death Star, and the pain felt cumulative all of a sudden. Like the strides she had taken to find peace within herself, to cope with the madness of genocide, had only dammed back the onslaught, and like an avenging river, the dam had burst.
Lost at sea, Leia reached for anything that could help.
And Luke felt it, too, this unending horror, in the waves of despair that rolled off Leia like an ocean tide as he got closer and closer to Bespin. As he traveled he could feel her more clearly; she crystalized in his head. He couldn't see where she was, but her pain … her pain was loud and clear.
Slipping into meditation, he reached for her. Calm, he urged. Breathe. Follow me.
She didn't respond in words, but he felt her grasp onto his voice like he was oxygen itself, and he was still so far away and yet she was brighter, stronger than she had ever felt.
They were stronger than they had ever been. The power amazed and humbled him.
And so he urged her to cast away the nightmare and open herself to the Force. She was radiating Han's pain like a supernova and surely that wouldn't do anything for him.
He doesn't need your pain, Leia, he tried to tell her, though the sentiment was vague. He needs your hope.
Tears running down her face, she struggled to take deep breaths, struggled to find anything in the galaxy that could center her. Where is my hope? she wondered, and it was not too difficult an answer to give. Her hope lay in peacetime, in justice, in a future she had never dared to anticipate.
But that was abstract. Peace? What did peace mean in a moment like this? She would feel this pain if Han's torture happened in peacetime, too. Her brain could come up with hundreds of synonyms, of large concepts of fairness and equality, but nothing mattered now when she couldn't stand, couldn't stand, the moment she was experiencing now.
What was there beyond justice?
An image coalesced in her mind, but she quickly tucked that away. Selfish, girlish dreams had no place here. That was ridiculous, that was juvenile, that was self-serving and helped no one.
Feeling the pushback, Luke zeroed in. What was that? he asked her. The flicker had been so brief he hadn't been sure. Privacy be damned, he thought, and pushed his sister to go back. She half-heartedly resisted at first, but then the waters stilled and they could both see
Quiet.
A family, perhaps. In an end to bloody wars that took and took and took everything away, there was an inkling, a very remote possibility, that such a future could exist.
Nothing is ever hopeless, Luke said.
She fought for deep breaths, swallowing down her rapid-fire heartbeat and the knot of guilt that sat very much at the center of her chest, and tried to envision it, this hope that she had never dared to have before. Selfish thoughts that she didn't acknowledge.
Soft and cool, the air rippled through the open window, rustling the curtains with a sea-salt breeze and the glimmer of golden light through a breaking sunrise. Sheets draped over limbs softened by sleep, over-full pillows supported heads turned toward one another. A cascade of loose brunette waves trickled down on such a pillow, and in the dawning light, he could see glints of silver winding through the rich rivulet.
He? Han?
"Missing the sunrise," he said, nodding to the window behind her.
Breathing deeply before she opened her eyes, she tasted salt in the air and could hear the quiet sound of ocean waves against rocks. The skin of his legs was warm against hers, and the sight of his wry smile made her chest explode into heat and adoration. Handsome as always, but with soft lines at the corner of his eyes and a kind of lived-in comfort she remembered from her father. His hair seemed lighter: bleached by the sun? They had been here for a few days now and his hair did that every time they wound up on a beach somewhere.
"That's okay," she murmured, and settled against him, kissing his throat sleepily. "It won't be the last one we see."
Leia could see it, could feel it, could experience it so vividly that she was tempted to be lost in it. The desire was so strong that she wavered, but just as quickly took herself back. Whatever this was, a manifestation of the Force, a glimpse into her deepest desires, maybe… Whatever it was, she knew she risked everything if she stayed there.
There, where they grew old together. There, where there was no alarm, or catastrophe, or demand on their time. No torture, no Dark Lord of the Sith. There, where they were safe and comfortable and together.
She shouldn't stay there, in that happy, quiet little dream, the hope she hadn't realized she had secretly harbored. It was too much to think that it was a vision; surely a life with Han would never be so quiet, so tranquil. How would they even navigate such a life? He was a pilot, he needed to fly to parts unknown sometimes, and she … she had an Alliance to run...
It was so peaceful. Maybe they had won the war?
Yes, Leia, Luke said, feeling her back away from the edge, feeling her embrace whatever vision the Force had given her. Stay there. Help Han.
Leia swallowed and opened herself to the Force, filling her lungs with the dark, stale air in her little prison, imagining sea-salt on her tongue and the heat of sun-kissed skin against her palms.
She couldn't stay there, no; the risk was too great. She had to stay sane and present, to try to embrace the pain of the moment while still keeping that small hope alive.
She couldn't stay there, but she could damn well use it.
Burning, Han's skin split into painful sores and he hissed with every succeeding, phantom jolt that ran through his body. The after-effects of the scan grid were irregular and he couldn't predict when one would hit him. He would be blissfully limp, hanging between stormtroopers as they marched him down a long, dark corridor, when the pain would resurface long enough for him to curse through his teeth at the fire in his legs, the burned skin of his abdomen, the nerve endings that re-fired those painful signals over and over again.
And then it would be gone, and he would settle back into his boneless journey through the bowels of Cloud City.
He felt dumb and blind and exhausted and stupid. Without even a sense of humor. Dried up. Broken. He wanted Leia and Chewie, just wanted to see them, to see that they were okay. Leia had … Leia had been watching. He'd put up a strong fight but goddamn, Vader had been merciless. He'd lost count of the number of rounds he'd gone through the scan grid. And he had tried so hard to stay strong, stay ahead of the moment, to think of something else, something better.
Sometimes he had thought of an ocean, but that had come and gone and only left a vague impression of stillness. He had thought he was going insane, but, hell, anything was better than the scan grid.
They came to an unmarked hatch, only noticeable by the seam demarcating its edges, and he was unceremoniously thrown face-first into a dimly-lit cell. He didn't have the presence of mind to examine his surroundings; he landed squarely on the burns on his chest and stomach and that was enough to black him out for a second.
When he came to, large Wookiee arms were picking him up off the ground and only then did Han notice Chewie.
"I feel terrible," he muttered.
The understatement of the century, but who the fuck cared at this point? Chewie helped him to the nearest platform. A bed? No. But a horizontal surface long enough for him to lie on. He groaned and tried to relax protesting muscles and nerves.
Cub! Chewie growled urgently. Cub, are you in pain? What has happened to you?
Han was too exhausted to explain in depth, but he spit out scan grid through clenched teeth. Chewbacca whispered something that sounded suspiciously like ancestors help us but Han didn't register it clearly.
"Good to see you, pal," he croaked.
He hadn't anticipated a reunion. One small pocket drumming with concern seemed to be sewn up tight at the realization. At least he got to see Chewie again.
I do not understand the purpose of it, the Wookiee growled. Little Princess was right, it makes far more sense...
"They didn't ask me any questions," he interrupted.
Why?
Han grimaced. "He said Leia was watching."
Chewie fell silent, and Han thought that was probably the right response for the situation.
Leia. Where was she now? Were they taking her away? Had Han done Vader's job for him, broken her as she saw his torture? There was nothing worse than that, he imagined. For someone like Leia, whose guilt complex rivaled her ferocity, causing someone she loved to be hurt had to have been her own form of torture.
His chest ached as he considered the likelihood of Vader's plan being so cruel that Han's last contact with Leia would be the knowledge that she was aware of his torture but couldn't stop it.
Motherfucker.
A hiss. He painfully turned his head to see Leia being thrown into the cell in a similar manner as he had been, though she didn't fall on her face. His relief to see her temporarily overran the pain, and he exhaled in a rush when it came swooping back, the ever-present burning.
"Leia," he muttered, and even then it was like he could suddenly take a deep breath. Chewie and Leia, here with him: that was the last thing he would have anticipated.
She's alive, and she's here.
Leia kneeled beside the platform and swept sweat-soaked hair off his forehead with trembling fingers.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry..."
He grit his teeth against a sharp pull of muscle, and then refocused on her. She didn't look injured, but the pain in her eyes was deep, blistering, horrible. There wasn't much he could say, he knew, but he tried.
"Not your fault."
He could almost hear her scowl bitterly at him. "That is blatantly untrue."
"Don't give him that satisfaction, Sweetheart. You and I both know what game he's playing."
The cell fell silent, until she broke it with the obvious question.
"How do you feel?"
"Never better."
She huffed a laugh against the back of her hand, disturbed and amused, and he turned his head to look at her. Compared to his litany of bruises and burns, she looked perfect and unharmed, hair slightly frazzled and eyes shadowed, but without the telltale markings of physical torture. And Chewie behind her, pressing his paws to his right ear, but without the whimpers of pain Han knew from experience.
So he was the only one getting it. Nice.
"He said you saw," he said.
She was quiet, and he blinked to break up the crust of blood and sweat around his eyes.
"Every second," she whispered.
He'd known, but … "Fuck."
Those royal fingers slipping over his forehead felt like the only thing tethering him to his body, and so he tried to relax into the sensation as Chewie warbled painful empathies.
He will die, Chewie vowed.
Han wanted to laugh at the eager, intent look Leia gave the Wookiee, but was stopped when she lightly brushed a hand over his collarbone.
"He's using your pain to get me to reach out to Luke," she whispered.
Stillness in response to that awful thought, because it … it felt hatefully correct, absolutely the kind of strategy a scourge on the face of the galaxy might use for Jedi. And how horrifying that thought was, that Leia's sensitivities to the Force, so mired in action, could be used as a lure for her brother.
And then the real shocker dawned on him. Bringing Luke here would mean Vader would have them both.
No.
Did it work? Chewie asked.
The silence around him had weight and shape in a way it hadn't a few seconds ago. Uncomfortable, he turned his head to the side to see her more clearly.
"Leia?"
She wasn't looking at him. She was focused inward, under the layer of reality in which he existed, seeing into a world he couldn't see and a war in which there was no side for him. When she spoke, her voice was brittle. Low.
Defeated.
"Watching that, watching you… Han, he knew exactly what to do to set the trap. He knows how to set it, he knows how to spring it, and he knows we have no advantages left."
Her words were haunting. The resigned horror behind them was worse.
All of it was worse.
Luke.
"We're the bait," she murmured. "And he's on his way now."
Chewbacca remembered Yoda's emphatic command on Dagobah to keep the twins away from Darth Vader. He remembered how unimportant, how inscrutable, the idea had been. Of course he would protect his Honor Family. Anything else would be unacceptable.
But now, on the cusp of the second failing of his promise, he realized he should have heeded it better.
"What were you gonna do if we had won the war?"
Leia shifted on the uncomfortable cot, careful not to touch him anywhere that would cause further pain. That was a difficult endeavor on its own; so many sessions with the scan grid was unfathomable. She had watched him fade away, cycle after cycle after cycle, her anguish so loud in the Force that she hadn't needed to scream, only to see his eyes open again and the pain began anew.
She felt as broken as he looked. There was nothing left.
"Do?" she asked.
"If we had won. If you killed him, you and Luke could take down the Empire. What would you do?"
If we had won was such a foreign possibility, so remote now, that no answer came to mind. It was as brittle as his phrasing, the way he meandered between inevitable defeat and slices of hope.
"I don't know."
She had once dreamed of a New Republic. She had imagined freed slaves, and democracy returning to lost infrastructure and elections and fair representation, where the needs of the whole always overrode the desires of the few. Where systems weren't held in check by the power of a planet-destroying space station.
Mon Mothma as a chief elected officer. Carlist retired from the military, finding his own peace in the quiet of civilian life.
And Luke's dream of a new Jedi Order, supporting and defending the rebuilding of a galaxy.
And meeting Malla on Kashyyyk. Leia had very much wanted to do that.
"What would you have done?" she asked.
His gaze flickered away to the ceiling and he was quiet for a few moments. If she didn't know what she would have done, then surely Han, the erstwhile vagabond, wouldn't have a clue, either.
"Go legit," he croaked. "Still hauling freight, but on my own terms, my own contracts. Legal."
She smiled and wiped a trickle of blood from the open, weeping burn on his chest. "Of course."
"Have to admit, I don't remember much what it's like to live planetside, but we would have figured it out."
We. The implication was clear and her heart utterly shattered with the now-hopeless future.
She swallowed around a suddenly-dry throat, thinking of ocean mornings and soft sheets.
"Yes," she whispered. "We would have."
Author's Note: You see why I am struggling? This shit is hell to write. Despite what might seem like authorial glee in torturing these characters, I hate it so much. I need something lighter, good Lord above.
I will do everything in my power to post the carbon-freezing scene on Saturday, Oct 1st, but your patience is most appreciated. It feels like sacrilege to not do it as best as I can. I'll try!
Thanks as always, friends, and happy fall! - KR
