S
Specter
They walked in a single-file line up a long ramp.
Destination unknown, their steps were heavy. Full of dread. They echoed off the thin durasteel plates as the trudge continued toward an upper chamber that was lit in strange extremes. Blue and red, from what Leia could see, and wasn't that overly dramatic, as Darth Vader was wont to do?
She wanted to laugh.
Something was about to happen. She could feel it in the air, in the spark of danger that ignited like electricity on her skin. Her fingers twitched with it, the intense desire to break free and cause damage.
Unholy. This anticipation led to darkness, no matter which way she turned.
The ramp seemed unforgivably long: kilometers long, like a slow, nightmarish chase by a monster. Seconds were hours and meters were eternal.
This reveal was going to kill.
Yes, that was what this reminded her of. An execution. Marching prisoners toward death in assembly-line efficiency. She had always wondered what the last person in line felt as they waited for their end in the documentaries of ancient cultures that had so fascinated her as a child. Pure dread, probably: that was what she had always assumed. The last breath of existence, held over the course of minutes, maybe hours, as the others met their maker. One after the other, one end, and then another, and then another.
She had assumed the waiting would be miserably full of regret and anxious paralysis. It had seemed obvious.
Their end was quite assured, she knew. Surrounded by garrisons, with faces that everyone knew? Utterly inescapable.
Her assumptions about public executions weren't prescient at all. She didn't feel dread. Instead in her chest burned a deep, loosely-leashed anger.
Leia Organa looked at the assembled row of prisoners and knew she was probably not going to die today. Soon, yes. Probably. Most likely at the same time her brother did. Vader had played his hand well, defeated them so easily that a part of her commended his menacing sophistication. Admirable were the dark machinations that had led to this moment.
Han was the lynchpin. Based on singular experience, Vader had known her only real weakness was in her connection to others. And he had seen in stark detail their burgeoning relationship, when Han had been injured and she had defended him with fledgling powers she herself had not understood.
When thwarted, Vader had pulled away and tried a different tack. Phantom limbs guiding brother and sister to a mysterious gravity cloud, where they should have been easily captured by beta-blasts. But, no, that approach had also failed, largely due to their fierce defender and his loyal copilot.
A change in tactic again, a switch in the game. The twins were apart now? Simple solution: force one to call the other, and as it so happened, there was a perfect amplification tool right there in stubborn, proud Han Solo, so adored by them both.
Brilliant.
Horrifying.
And vulnerable to her seething, rushing, festering fury, the power that crackled in her suddenly-quite capable hands at the utter tragedy her life had become. She could bring it all down on their heads. She felt it in the throbbing twitch at her fingertips, the unearthly confidence, the dark certainty. Her power could end them all in startling, hideous fashion. She could bring the ceiling down on their heads. She could toss their guard off the ramp without breaking a sweat. She could do it, she knew, and it wasn't a matter of focus or control or training.
It was pure rage.
So the last prisoner in this fateful line was not dreading her end. She was hellbent on saving her family. She would fight until her last breath, if she had any say in the matter. She would bring this execution scene down to a deathly close, if she had to. Resolve sat heavy in her stomach, fury the fortifying river below, gushing and frothing and gnashing with an insatiable kinetic appetite.
They would escape or they would all die trying. Simple as that.
Simple as … Why did it suddenly smell like burning?
An acidic bite to the throat and a flaring of sinuses. It wasn't quite like burning hair, not as fierce, but the stinging in her eyes was a familiar response. Where was it coming from? She wasn't sure.
They were still walking up the ramp. Mere seconds had passed.
She refocused on the broad line of shoulders in front of her, how the white shirt stretched over Han's body perfectly, as if it were somehow tailored. In her cynic's fatalistic delirium, she imagined laughing at the idea of Han Solo visiting a tailor, what he might say or do to someone whose entire life was dedicated to the careful preservation and perfection of clothing.
He would look good in a tailored suit, she thought.
His shoulders rolled forward dangerously, ready to strike. He must feel as she did, that an end was upon them, that the burning smell signified some fresh horror ahead. They hadn't spoken of it, of any of it, choosing instead to memorize details of the present in the event of their inevitable, timely demise.
In solidarity with his careful coil of muscle, she stood taller, her back straight, her chin held high. Let Vader try his worst. There was nothing more dangerous than doomed prey in their last moments. She took comfort in that; either way, the worst would be over. Her fire burned bright, ready to catch on the timber of the situation, and the bastard would get more than he bargained for. She would make it so unbearable that his only option would be to eliminate them all.
I will rain hell on you, she thought.
Will you?
Her steps faltered for three hours, or maybe three milliseconds, she couldn't be sure. Time was an illusion. The voice that slithered into her head was an invader. Not hers, not the intransigent pragmatist that questioned all motives and plans. It hadn't developed from Bail Organa's careful instruction. Not a product of hard-won skepticism or years as a spy or a leader of a political insurgency.
It was in her head, but it wasn't born of it.
You can't run.
She recognized it. The voice from her dreams. Dreams that woke her in torrents of abject fear. The voice she did not recognize, but knew all the same. The warm baritone that froze her blood into rivulets of ice and paralyzed her with fear. I'm coming, it had whispered in her dreams as she fell through a darkened sky, through what she was suddenly, viscerally sure was the atmosphere of … of Bespin.
What are you?
But it only repeated: you can't run.
Was this the realization of her dream, then? The premonition of her end coming true? She had thought so literally of it, a chase to find those she loved, screaming their names through a hallway that would never end.
But no. The Force could hardly be so useful.
Perhaps the voice was not an enemy at all. Perhaps the voice was just some presentation of the Force, meant to warn her. And she had … she had done nothing to heed it. Had allowed them to confidently stroll directly into the trap.
Utter confusion. Her thoughts whirled around her like a hurricane, based entirely on trauma and fear and the burning anger that eclipsed everything else.
She felt the furious river in her chest run dry, felt the inevitability of the present moment so tangibly that her eyes ticked around mercilessly, looking for any clue of a plan. None presented itself.
The broad line of shoulders reached the lip of the ramp and … and time ran out. She had been properly distracted, and for that, she felt hollow. Used.
What are you? Desperate now, she reached for understanding but it easily evaded her.
The ramp opened into a … was it a theater? The platform was circular, an overhanging mess of wires and hoses rising above their heads. Ugnauts milled busily about: turning knobs, fixing conductors, unworried about the goings-on. Warm lighting illuminated their faces as they rose to stand on the deck-plating, one by one by one.
Her body shook as she took in the scene, tremors quaking through parted lips, breath hard to come by. Han was the only one restrained. Han was … it was so sickening, this scene, this play that Vader had staged. Han was costumed and the rest of them weren't. Accoutrement by way of confinement, regalia for the man whose pain was only a means to an end.
His screams still rang through her ears, the pain he had felt in her stead so sharp that it cut her heart like a vibroknife.
What do you want?
If this was some masterpiece execution with Vader as director, then it did not make sense to only costume the one. She and Chewie were stark in their freedom, both held captive by the thought of reciprocation. Biding their time.
And Luke. They had to divert him. How far was he from Bespin, could they meet him somewhere above Cloud City or would they have to fight their way to him?
She could still try an escape. She could still...
It won't work, the voice said.
The platform encircled a small, unmarked piece of plating. Not the usual plating, with horizontal tracks connected by braces no more than a few centimeters wide. No, this plating was smooth and whole. Unblemished, as far as she could see.
A shiver ran down her spine. She had to make a plan, now. There were scant few opportunities at this point, and she was squandering them by fighting with disembodied voices. And her fury rose again, even as she tried to organize the frazzled fragments of her thoughts. But the emotion, and the situation, and the … the … Han.
He was shackled. The only one. The reasoning for that hit her with devastating impact.
Who are you?
"What's going on, buddy?"
Han's voice was like venom, poisonous: hard and flat on the endearment, like he could suddenly kill Lando with his own brand of invisible power.
"You're being put into carbon freeze," was the reply, and though the words were spoken at a low decibel, it felt like a sound device amplified it to every crevice of the space.
Not killed?
What fresh pain would this bring? Vader had already tortured him, had already distressed her so badly that she had reached for Luke for help. He must know Luke was on his way. To what end would … had he said carbon freeze? Like … like stasis?
A hostage, then. To ensure her capitulation, her cooperation.
No.
She clenched her fist and the stormtrooper holding Han by the arm cried out in pain, holding his ruined hand. Her eyes trained on another stormtrooper and he was on the other side of the theater with little more than a sweep of her fingers, effortless, really, when she thought about it. It had never been so easy.
But this wasn't the root of the situation at hand, was it? These insignificant underlings had no power here.
Turning narrow eyes to the Dark Lord, she flexed her hand in front of her, ready to decimate. Ready to destroy. Furious and ferocious and fatally cornered.
You will cooperate or he will die.
She froze. The breath in her lungs turned cold and the warmth in her fingertips died, and she struggled to keep her hand upraised.
I will snap his neck, the voice continued, intimately silent inside the safe harbor of her mind. I will kill him, and then the Wookiee, and then your brother, right in front of you.
Her eyes widened and then shot to her companions. Han was glaring at Lando with heat and vitriol and Chewie was still scanning the scene, looking for escapes with desperate eyes. No one was looking at her.
"Do you hear—?" she started to say, but her voice was too quiet, too frail, for anyone to hear over the din of machinery and the technicians' shouts to each other.
Don't test me, Your Highness.
And with a painful jerk the obvious hit her like a ten-ton durasteel weight.
You, she thought, because suddenly that was the only word she knew.
You.
For one horrifying moment, she stared at Vader, at the black mask, devoid of humanity, devoid of any kind of goodness whatsoever, until, with one quick movement, he nodded.
Her fingers twitched in front of her and she slowly, so slowly, lowered her hand.
The voice was not a function of the Force. Not a manifestation. Not a bodiless warning. I have them, it had said these past few months, and that … that was literally true.
Her hand reached her side and relaxed from its vice grip.
The specter that had haunted her for nearly a year had a name, had a form, and had hunted her like a predator stalking their prey. What had she thought only minutes before? Nothing is more dangerous than doomed prey?
That was hardly true. An apex predator would, in the end, always win. Here was the evidence.
The voice she had come to associate with him, the Dark Lord of the Sith, the murderer, the willing party to genocide as he calmly held her shoulder down in a sickening parody of paternalism, the being who had tortured Han to within a centim of his life…
… that voice was filtered through a modulator.
You thought you knew my voice, Princess.
She wanted to retch, the bile rising high in her throat. She should have known, she should have sensed—
"You," she spat
Me.
Han glanced at her sharp intake of breath, her voice, the sudden weight of her shoulders, but he could not move to help.
Eyes finding the mask once more, she enunciated her words carefully, bitter acid dripping in her tone. "Get. Out."
"Leia?" she heard, but Han's voice was a million klicks away from her now. She was alone with the master of her nightmares, the demon himself, in a war she was so ill-equipped to fight that it was like she was a child playing an adult game.
He was inside her head, and had been for months.
Her anguish was a pressure valve and the power at her fingertips sizzled into energy. A bracket near Vader creaked ominously. If she allowed herself to fall into blind emotion, she could snap the braces in half and cut him in two. She could feel it. The raw strength beneath the pads of her fingers, itching to just let go, let him feel the same utter annihilation she was experiencing …
I can kill him with a thought, Vader said, in his eerie, human voice, so unlike the bass she associated with him. Behave.
Deep, ugly, crazy laughter bubbled to her throat. "Or what?" she taunted. "You'll kill us?"
They will only die if you resist.
"Forgive me if I don't believe you," she muttered.
Han's confused voice broke through her trance, and she blinked to see his face bent to hers. "—the hell is happening? Leia?"
I do not give my word lightly, Vader said. No permanent harm will come to them if you do not act on your … childish impulses.
Han's eyes were dark in the moment, and panicked, and disbelieving. Without his heartbreaking pain and the seclusion of her sensory-free confinement, the clarity into his mind wasn't there for her to peruse, but even so, his bewilderment was apparent. It pulled her from Vader's voice like a physical jolt.
"The voice from my dream," she whispered. "It was him. This whole time."
Brow furrowing, it took him a moment to understand what she was saying. When understanding came, it was with a fleeting feeling of superiority so strong that she almost smiled.
I told you, he mouthed to her.
He had. And she had disregarded him, and the feeling of mixed pride and resentment was so strong that she had to draw her hand into a fist again.
"Put him in."
The stage, the actors, the false reality settled and Leia grasped for a handhold on the moment. Carbon-freeze? She had no idea what that meant.
Don't, she thought wildly, a feral thing, unconscionable weakness, but she couldn't … she couldn't stand here and let—
The galaxy spun out of her control.
Han turned to her with a look that seared her to the bone, and all she could think was no harm will come to them, no harm will come to them...
Did she believe Vader? No. Was she about to watch Han's death and not try to save him, to stand here empty-brained and let this happen?
And Han, this extraordinary man so full of contradictions and brilliance, tore into her soul with three words, spoken with such urgency that it took whatever breath she had left.
"Don't give up," he murmured.
She was struck mute by the courage of his words, by the look of strength in his eyes.
Do not move, Vader said, and she obeyed, revolted that his voice was in her head as she looked at the man she loved, tried to memorize his features, just in case, just in case—
Han shoved his shoulder against his guard and she craned her neck and his lips were on hers before she had time to think. The kiss was brutal, desperate, powerful in its pure agony. The pain of their time together, and the absolute divinity, too … it all slipped through her and she realized with a pang that everything they had put themselves through—the secrecy and the lies and the pain and the anger—had all been a precursor to this, to losing him, but not losing faith.
Because he was worth it. They were worth it.
A strange calm broke through as he was wrenched from her, as the kiss was broken, as Han was backed onto the dais. Something was happening, something was flooding through her, and she thought... She thought maybe the Force was assuring her of a fundamental truth.
Breathe. Focus. As Luke had told her. As she had survived yesterday's torture.
But the pain, the pain was overwhelming: wave upon wave of intensity that dashed her against the rocks. She flitted between the two extremes of hope and surrender, swinging from one to the other in the span of heartbeats, those that rumbled in her ears as she watched, as she experienced, what could only be described as an execution.
Han looked at her with a similar expression, and it was sad, yes, but it was knowing, too. And a million things came to mind to say to him.
I'll find you.
I'm sorry.
I love you.
And the focus came, clarity in the simplicity of the moment. If she gave into the wild thrashing of her anger and her fear, it wouldn't help Han. This moment … there was a time after this moment, and that was the time she would harvest this pain and bring it raging down on Vader's head.
But Han…
Han didn't deserve that emotion now.
She remembered his decision to try to hide from his own fear after Ord Mantell, and the destruction it had wrought on them both, the useless torment. What would it do to him to rage against the situation? Nothing.
What Han needed from her now was confidence, and certainty, and the utmost resolve to bring them though this together. And so she fought the tempest, she folded it and stored it beneath layers of failsafes and vanguards. She imagined the time after.
They had learned this together, and she would use it.
She would find him. And she was sorry for their predicament. And she was grateful, so grateful, for him and who he was, and his mistakes and his faith.
There was only one thing that encapsulated it all, one overarching, glaring truth that he would understand. And so she took a steadying breath and said, in a calm, confident voice.
"It was worth it."
And Han, strong, brilliant, infuriating Han, spoke his own truth. It was obvious that he loved her, he didn't need to say that to her. He'd whispered it into her ear, and laughed it against her lips, and spit it out in moments of fury.
The truer reply was what he chose instead.
"It always was."
And it was just like the feeling in her dreams, the falling, as she watched him lowered into the space beneath their feet, and as he reappeared encased in carbonite. As Lando stepped forward and told them all that he was alive. And as Vader took her shoulder and marched her out of the theater, she imagined the moment after, the time to come, when she would rip Vader limb from limb in all her blistering, disgusting, terrifying fury.
Calm! Yoda had preached. Surrender!
She felt a dark smile break across her lips.
No, Master, she thought. I don't think I will.
Author's Note: The next chapter of Specter will be posted on Tuesday, November 1st. I'm thinking January of 2023 will bring us the conclusion to this tale. There is something delicious about the inevitability of it all, isn't there? You secretly knew it would end like this, but you had hope until this exact moment, when you realize I'm a canon bitch at heart.
Special thanks to HoldoutTrout for her read-through and general vibe checks. You're the best, babe.
Thank you, everyone, for your kind words. These past few chapters have been awful to write, and while this writing business is for my benefit alone, I do love any and all reviews. I'm so grateful. -KR
