A/N: thanks to everyone who's read this so far! Hopefully everyone will like where it's going :)

She'd never felt like that before.

She was floating, gliding, through the air.

She could remember being on that planet — so hot and dusty and lifeless — and then she had hidden behind that container, and there had been blaster fire, and there had been Stormtroopers. And lots of corridors.

She blinked, cleared her throat, threw her head back, and realised her ears were ringing.

"Tell me what you know."

Someone was talking to her, talking at her. She wasn't sure which.

She blinked once more, and then she could focus, and she saw the interrogation droid. It hovered, warbled something, lights blinking and flashing.

"Tell me what you know."

Louder this time. Desperate, even.

An eternity passed and things were calmer now. She told herself what she knew. She'd been on a planet, and then perhaps she'd been shot. She'd definitely been captured — by the Empire, judging by the interrogation droid. And she recognised the voice: cruel, arrogant. Yes, he was confident. Confident in his abilities, in his knowledge, in his position. But there was uncertainty.

"Let's start with an easy one then," came that same voice again. "Your name?"

He spoke as if even asking a question was a trial, and she decided to repay him the same courtesy.

"My name?" she repeated, slowly, her tongue heavy in her dry mouth. She swallowed.

"Your name."

"What do you want my name for?" She swallowed again.

"I don't particularly want your name. I need your name."

At last, the probe droid drifted away, whirring. As it did, she cast her gaze over at a little table in the corner of the brightly lit room. On it was a tray, and in that tray, she could see syringes and other implements. She now knew something else: she'd been given a truth serum.

And it would be painful to fight against it. And futile.

"My name is Ophelia Lacemaker." She lifted her head up from the frame on which she was lying; she caught his eye. "And your name is Krennic."

He twitched, apparently disgusted that she had spoken his name. But he seemed like an arrogant man — anyone who walked about wearing a cape had to be — and Ophelia realised he also relished knowing that she had heard of him. That his name was either celebrated — or feared — he didn't mind which. As long as it was one of the two.

He retrieved a data pad. "Ah, your name does appear several times in the Imperial database." He stroked his chin with a gloved finger. "Quite impressive."

"Thanks." She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. "And thanks for the truth serum. You know, I probably would've told you anyway. I'm not a Rebel."

"Well, you're not Imperial either."

"And so what does that make me?"

"You are not the one asking the questions."

I am, she thought. She didn't dare say it.

"Regardless, your name is a start. I'm sure there are many degenerates across the galaxy who'd respond keenly if a bounty were put on your head. So don't think about escaping."

She snorted. "Escape?" She rolled her eyes. "How exactly would I get out of here? I'm strapped to this frame. There's a droid in here. And I've been drugged up so much I doubt I could walk in a straight line." Then she did something she didn't think she could do: she laughed. It was uncontrolled, uncontrollable, a side effect of the truth serum.

And that feeling she'd had earlier — that sense of being weightless, senseless — returned.

A sneer contorted his face; evidently, he didn't find it amusing. His gaze flickered over to the interrogation droid that still hovered silently, menacingly. He waved it over, and it approached her once more. It was holding something out, towards her, and when her eyes refocused she saw it was some kind of an electric charge.

"What's this?" she asked, gesturing to the droid.

"Since you seem to be in such good spirits," he returned simply, already making for the door. "I'm sure the interrogation droid will be able to bring you down a peg or two."

The electric current was like a needle breaking her skin, piercing and insidious, and she had to bite her tongue to hold back the scream. Tears clogged her eyes, clouded her vision, and she could do nothing but breathe and breathe and breathe. Short, measured breaths. In and out.

She felt pain — and yet she felt numb. The current continued to pulse through her, the blue zigzags arching around her. She was consumed. Enveloped.

She was not overwhelmed.

He sighed, as if he couldn't be bothered, as if being here was a mere inconvenience for him. "It'll only get worse. The serum works well."

Well? She snorted, blinking back the tears, and she could finally allow herself to breathe. "I am not a Rebel."

"I believe you," he said shortly. "But you must be something."

Or even someone, she thought. "If I'm not part of the Rebellion, why don't you let me go?"

"If you're not part of the Rebellion, why don't you tell me who you are?"

No, it didn't look like that tactic was working. She frowned. "I had a deal with — I suppose you would call them pirates."

"Probably because they are pirates."

"As I was saying, I had — or thought I had — a deal with them. A settlement. I was meant to meet them somewhere on Tatooine, and then we'd do an exchange."

He caught her gaze and then came back from the door — evidently, he was interested now — and he sat down opposite her. Dramatically, he crossed his legs and stroked his chin with a gloved hand. "An exchange?"

"I don't know what of, if that's what you're asking," she said quickly, looking over at him. "I had a, uh, data pad with some information on it."

"And they had…?"

"I said I didn't know."

Krennic sighed, leant forwards in the chair, elbows on his knees. "What did they have?"

She looked away, focused on those blank, featureless walls, and she found nothing to help her. When she looked back, the droid was once again floating in front of her, electric charge crackling. It came closer, closer, and the room — the cell — seemed smaller, smaller.

The blue current was an inch away from her, and she was sweating, before she gave a sigh of resignation. "Okay."

He grinned. "That's more like it."

"Weapons."

"Weapons?"

"You know, blasters, grenades. That kind of thing."

"That kind of thing?"

"Nothing too big. Not ships or anything like that."

"And who were these weapons for?"

"They were for — some people I know."

"People on Tatooine?"

"Yes."

"And they were to be used against the Empire? Against its soldiers and officers?"

"No."

"I will not ask you again."

"You do realise slavery still exists on Tatooine? Or perhaps you've ignored that for the glory of the Empire?"

"Every planet — and every person — has a duty to the Emperor."

"As do you?"

"More than you could ever understand."

She didn't want to understand. She wanted to get out of there. "The weapons were for me to deliver to an underground cell in Mos Eisley. It's a small spaceport on Tatooine. Not too pleasant. But it's home to some of these people. These slaves. It's home to me."

He wrinkled his nose. "I can imagine."

"Then I won't bore you with the details."

He was on his feet, waking towards her. The droid chirped but he waved it back. When he stopped, perhaps a foot away from her, his cape settled and the air was still.

"What was on the data pad?"

"I don't know. I didn't look at it. It had something these… pirates needed on it. I took it. I don't know what's on it."

His eyes narrowed, he studied her. One hand forever remained on his blaster but still he studied her.

But she was studying him too. And he seemed concerned, uncertain. Perhaps even scared.

And she should've felt scared too. She was lying, motionless, powerless, strapped to a metal frame. The cold metal pressed into her back, burnt her shoulder blades, and her bones were aching. All she could see was the ceiling: white, blank, unforgiving. She knew they were in space, for she knew they were on a star destroyer, and yet that was all she knew.

As the ship's engines hummed and her body continued to ache, he had taken the time to step closer. The droid was nowhere to be seen.

His cape settled gently around his feet as he leant down to catch her eye.

"I have not finished with you."

She blinked, focused, refocused, pretended that she could see nothing but that blank, white, unforgiving ceiling. But it was no use pretending. It was no use lying.

A frown settled on her brow, and her lips were parted. "And I have so much more to tell."

"I'll tell you once again," was the first thing she said to him when he re-entered the cell. She hadn't been alone — she'd had the interrogation droid for company.

As he listened, stroking his chin, no longer sitting leisurely in the chair but now standing, he could hear that sense of fear in her voice.

"I have no reason to overthrow the Empire." She narrowed her eyes. "Where would I even start? Assassinating the Emperor?"

He looked scandalised, and she scoffed.

"Really?" Lowering her raised eyebrow, she sighed. "I suppose I'll have to work my way up to that. Definitely not Tarkin — I've heard of him; some people say he's worse than the other Imperials." She saw Krennic twitch at the mention of Tarkin's name, and she continued. "How about killing off one of those lower, less important, menial officers? Like… I don't know, you?"

With that, he stormed towards the door, finger hovering over the panel. But then he turned back, cape hardly moving in the still, artificial air.

"I don't think you'd want to do that."

"I don't think you should give me the satisfaction of listening to me." She stole a glance at the interrogation droid.

"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

Before he had the time to open his mouth in shock, before he had the time to reach for his holstered blaster, before he had the time to key anything into the door panel, she was free.

She sat up from the metal frame, rubbing the small of her back, feeling the preeminent bruise there. The handcuffs hung over the side of the metal frame. She bit her lower lip, realised it was cracked and parched.

"How did you free yourself?"

"Wasn't difficult."

"I'll listen," he said with a sigh. He still hadn't retrieved his blaster. Perhaps he didn't think he needed it. He would be quicker next time. If there was a next time.

Ophelia looked down at her hands, rubbed her fingertips over the callouses on her wrists, tried to hold back a wince. "You left me alone with that droid, didn't you?" She gestured to the probe droid, which had since turned itself off and was sitting motionless in a corner.

"Yes, to extract information."

"Well, you were successful with that."

"I was, Ophelia," he said with emphasis.

"I waited until it was close enough, and then I grabbed one of its legs. It wasn't too difficult to get it to redirect the electrical charge from me and onto my shackles."

"You've been untied this whole time?"

"Yes."

"And yet you didn't think to make a run for doe it earlier?"

"How successful do you think I'd have been?"

"Not very."

"I have no wish to die, Director Krennic. I'm sure you can appreciate that."

He nodded, his expression sitting somewhere between confused and interested.

"But I am infuriated. I'm annoyed, I'm irritated. The fact you could capture me, imprison me, with no proof of any reason why. You have no grounds on which to hold me here. As I said, I'm infuriated."

She hated feeling vulnerable, lying prone on that table as if she were something to be dissected. Now it was his time, she thought, to squirm, to feel uncomfortable, and she knew that Imperials were used to looking over their shoulder.

"And so you wished to make a point?"

Ophelia sighed, stretched over-dramatically. She ran a hand through her hair, took to twirling a stray tendril around her fingers. She caught his gaze, fierce. "You catch on quickly."

"And it's a point well made."

Then he reached her, picked up the shackles, and she was handcuffed once more. He had leant over her, had put himself in such a vulnerable position. He was brave or arrogant or stupid.

But she'd made a point. And that was all she'd wanted to do. Prove that she wasn't some random escaped slave from a backwater planet like Tatooine. Prove that she wasn't some gullible girl captured by the Empire. Prove that she was capable and intelligent and not to be underestimated.

And nor was he.