ADMIRAL PIETT
There was no point in blindfolding him; he knew where he was going, but all the same, he would rather not see it when he got there. After he had had to sit helplessly as Vader ordered that Motti be repetitively drowned and then shot with electricity before being strangled, he had feared that Motti had died from lack of oxygen to his brain, but the troopers confirmed that he was still alive. A transport arrived to airlift them to a safer extraction site and then prepped for their final destination: the Death Star. During the entire process, no one spoke to Piett to even give an order as he was forced to comply with their actions and not words. Made to sit, to stand, to kneel, to do so on a bad ankle and with a pounding in his head, Piett found no kindness anywhere apart from one petty officer who must have recognized him and gave a brief pause to consider why Piett was being taken back to the Death Star in chains donning rebel garb.
Had Piett had any known strong connection with the Force, he knew he would have been able to feel any Sith's presence as he was dragged to the detention block, but all he could do now was wonder when and if either Vader or the Emperor would oversee the interrogation to follow. From what he knew of the Sith's dealings, they worked quickly, and so at least he knew he would not be waiting too terribly long before meeting his demise, and what a comforting thought that was.
Though he had never personally had any reason to visit a cellblock, he knew they served their purpose well and had been designed to lower a prisoner's guard by giving them interaction with one another. Piett was shoved into one side of the cell and then watched two troopers drop Motti on the floor of the other side where he lay motionless and unresponsive. Cells were built to have two separate pods, but a dual force field wall. Prisoners sharing in a crime could see each other but not interact more than speaking and seeing one another. It was a special kind of torture to be able to see but not reach someone who was in pain, and Piett was dreading the thought of the hours, days, or even weeks to come where he might be in that very situation. There was no questioning or denying the fact that Motti was the greater target here and in catching the Sith's attention, he was inviting more harm to be done to him, meaning that he was more likely to be the one subjected to pain while Piett had to watch.
It was difficult enough now seeing Motti laying there unconscious and being unable to do anything for him as Piett observed more bruising already present around Motti's neck and several other places from where he had been beaten with stormtrooper blaster rifles. No medic or medical droid had been in to see him, so any grievous injuries had not yet been attended to, and Piett worried for Motti's head upon waking, as it was possible that he had a concussion or something worse. Piett himself could have a concussion and might not know it since he had been knocked unconscious after being captured and could still feel the bloody lump on his temple.
He had no way to guess the time, but he knew it had been at least four hours since the transport had returned them to the Death Star. They had not been seen by anyone, but that could only be a good thing since the people Piett expected for company were not ones he wanted to ever lay eyes on again. Vader had not returned on the transport with them, nor had Veers, and Piett was certain that one of them would either be escorting them to the Emperor or present when they were brought before the Emperor.
If he were not on the verge of passing out from extreme fatigue, he would have been worried enough to urinate on himself in fear of the torture he was about to be put through. His brain had not yet caught up to the reality that he was a man marked for death. From the moment the snare rifle had fired and trapped him in the netting, his only instinct had been to keep breathing, remain calm, and pray to whatever higher powers existed that Jerjerrod and Motti were not taken prisoner. When he discovered that Motti's fate was not to escape, but to die right alongside him, he had resigned himself for facing a punishment worse than death and having one hell of a time getting there, for by having someone he cared about in the same situation as him, it meant that he was emotionally compromised and that it would be that much more difficult to resist the methods of torture to not divulge anything to spare more harm coming to Motti. Even if he knew both of them were going to die regardless of what either of them said, Piett would have to bite his tongue and let the Sith do unspeakable things to Motti because Piett could not save him, but he could still protect Jerjerrod and the rebels by not saying a word.
Motti would be Piett's breaking point, there was no question about it, but Piett had to try and perfect his deceptive skills to make the Sith buy any lie he told. He would hold out for as long as he could, but when he could no longer stand to see Motti undergo questioning, he would have to pretend to give in with false information that the Sith had to believe. He had never been especially gifted at lying, but he was exceedingly talented in showing little emotion, as was expected and demanded for a man of his station. If he could keep his face passive and unresponsive, he could make the Sith question his every word, provided that they didn't sense how utterly terrified he was. He was not as adept at this game as Motti was.
In the neighboring cell, Motti's body gave a violent twitch and he came awake with a pained gasp, clutching at his throat as he sat up in alarm.
"You're alright," Piett told him, though it was far from the truth, and Motti seemed to be of the same mind, for he rolled onto his side and tried to swallow with some apparent pain. A quick glance around his cell and then he asked with a raise of his eyebrows what he had missed, what their situation was, and most importantly, where Vader was. "Nothing's happened besides us being moved here. No one's spoken a word to me and I haven't seen anyone of consequence. The hours before death are dull and dreary."
Motti scoffed with no appreciation for Piett's dry humor and pushed himself onto his knees. "I suppose," he began in a raw and guttural voice, "that we should discuss what's about to happen and our methods for preparing for it."
Piett tried to keep the accusation out of his voice, but he was at the very least vexed and at the most incensed that he could not even choose his own manner of demise because of another man's decisions. "I had planned to be taken alone; all they could do was torture me if I was the only one they had access to. But you've complicated things because now, they'll use us against each other."
"I won't spill secrets when they start pulling your fingernails, if that's what you're afraid of."
"I'm afraid of what you'll do when they start hacking off limbs, actually. And by the same token, I'm afraid of what I might do when I can't listen to you screaming anymore. Though I've tried not to, I'm afraid that I've grown rather fond of you over the course of my lifetime, and it's going to be exceedingly difficult to watch and listen to the Sith strip you of your last shred of sanity before you or I give in. I will make a promise to try my damndest to hold out, but at my core, I am loyal to my people before any cause. I will break before I let them push you beyond the point of recall."
"As irritating as you undoubtedly find me at most times, I am glad that you care enough to not want to watch me suffer for too long. I also have grown some strange protection over you."
"That's called friendly affection. I believe it's a human emotion," said Piett dryly.
"It's what got us into this mess."
"No, your dedication to your friends is not why you're about to die. You're here because you fought back and refused to be trampled on. You, out of all of us, are and always have been the warrior. It was never your fate to die by any other means but fighting. It's a noble way to die."
"And here I was hoping for a painless death. It would have been a boring death, but swift and clean was always my preference."
"You do not have the luxury of preference now. We do not get to decide how we die, only what we do right before the end."
"You ought to have been a scholar or a poet by quoting that sort of drivel at me."
"I might have considered it once, but the wages for being an enlisted officer were substantially better than that of a teacher or author of any sort. Perhaps in another lifetime."
There would always be the question of what if, of what might have been if Piett had pursued his other childhood interests instead of entering the Academy as a means to send a measly sum of money home to his family. As much as he longed to have entered into some other career, he couldn't imagine himself having done anything else, so fast-paced, exhilarating, and dangerous was the life of an Imperial officer. Anything he might have enjoyed pursuing as a child had been stamped out of him both in interest and memory, for he could not recall having any individual hobbies or interests. He had been brainwashed into remembered aught but drills and discipline.
Not like Jerjerrod who had always had a love for building and creating and who had made a name for himself in building the very station Piett was now a prisoner of. Not like Needa who had had a keen fascination with animals. Not like Motti who had come to the Academy as an unruly boy with an appetite for debate and had matured into a man with an untamable tongue. Not like Veers who had enlisted to prove his greatness to his family and then pursued greater lengths as a formidable officer as a memoir to that family.
No one could have guessed that Needa would then die by hands of an animal, that Jerjerrod would throw away his achievements for his friends, that Motti would invoke the ire and personal attention of the Sith for his talent for argument, or that Piett would land himself here in this cellblock awaiting his doom. Anyone and everyone could have come to the conclusion that Veers would remain the stalwart soldier he was, even at the cost of giving up his friends.
Besides fear, the irrevocable hatred Piett had felt since watching Veers uncover his stolen comlink on Endor had been his sole source of fuel. Betrayal could only exist where trust had once been, which made the wound cut deeper and hurt longer. Though it would be a foolish thing to do, he vowed that his last mission in life would be to make Veers regret the day he was born. To occupy his thoughts with something other than imagining what sort of torture was in store for them, Piett instead plotted how he might get his hands on Veers in any scenario. Veers had every advantage over Piett except for speed, and that would have to do.
In this place where it was impossible to keep track of time, Piett could not say how long it was that he sat there in silence, deliberating in his head until he noticed his stomach starting to gurgle uncomfortably and his tongue tasting like sand in his mouth. They had not been given provisions of any sort, which meant that Piett and Motti were not even to be treated as human. They had no basin to relieve themselves, no elevated platform to rest on, nothing in their cells apart from three walls, a ceiling, a floor, and a force field.
As an already malnourished-looking individual, Piett did not require as much sustenance as the standard man, but Motti–despite having lost considerable weight in recent years, months, and weeks due to stress, fear, and whatever else plagued him–would need at the very least some water to keep him conscious and compliant. However evil the Sith were, they needed their prisoners alive and could not deny them the basic human needs for long.
Hours or perhaps days later, Piett knew he was starting to hallucinate when he saw three men walking about in Motti's cell and all of them had his face. He would have drummed the heel of his hand against his temple to knock some sense back into himself, but his head still ached from the hit it had taken and so he had to rub at his eyes, blink a few times, and then bring the other side of the room into better focus to see that three men had become two, one laying down with Motti's face and one standing in the doorway with the face of Veers.
He was on his feet in an instant and Motti would have been as well if not for the weapon Veers had pointed at him. It was a standard blaster with a stun feature, though Piett wouldn't put it past Veers to not have set the blaster to stun. Having it trained on Motti meant that Veers expected Motti to react with hostility and was telling him outright that he had no problem putting Motti down like a rabid animal if he so much as raised himself one inch off of the floor. In response, Motti was regarding Veers with a look of utmost detestation.
"You have no right to look at me like that when you always knew that this was how things were going to end. I made it clear that I was an Imperial through and through," Veers told Motti.
"Get out of my cell," snapped Motti who was sitting up on his forearms but looking prepared to fly at Veers.
"You'll want to hear what I have to say," Veers assured him. "But if you insist on acting like a child, I'll appeal to your fellow prisoner." He addressed Piett who had not missed the sarcastic inflection on the word "prisoner".
Approaching the force field until he was close enough to feel his own breath reflecting back on him, Piett gave Veers his undivided attention as he said with no uncertain terms, "I wasted enough of my life on you and I'll not waste one second more when my time left in this universe is limited. I have nothing left to say to you."
"You're such a disappointment, Firmus."
"And you can go fuck off," Motti snarled.
"I have come to offer you clemency just this once."
"You can shove that clemency so far up your ass that you spit it out of your mouth and then swallow it again as the steaming pile of shit that it is. I'd rather be struck dead right now than accept anything you have to offer."
"That can be arranged if you don't cooperate. Lord Vader has extended this offer in respect of your years of service to the Empire."
"You're going to have to do better than that," said Motti, though there was a fiendish grin on his face as he did. "Vader doesn't suddenly give a shit about our years of service, especially since those years meant nothing when he ordered our shuttle be taken out of commission. He doesn't care, this isn't by his authority and you don't have permission to offer us anything, so what are you really after?"
It was a rare thing to see Veers caught out, but Veers's face paled for a second as he tried to recover. "By my own authority, you are being given a chance to reveal all you know to ensure a quick death."
"Oh, in that case, fuck all the way off."
"What do you have to gain in protecting the rebels? You know death is inevitable, yet you still refuse to cooperate if only to save yourselves a great deal of pain. Help me to understand this logic–or lack thereof." He sounded genuinely curious, but Piett had tried time and again to explain his logic and Veers had shot him down and rebuked him every time.
"In order to understand our reasoning, you would have to understand loyalty, so I'm afraid that the explanation would be lost on you since loyalty is something you know nothing about," said Piett savagely. Questioning Veers's honor was to strike the lowest of blows.
"You dare to tell me that I don't understand loyalty?" Veers thundered.
"I believe you knew what it meant once, but that you've lost yourself as well as your purpose. You began this vengeful killing spree in the name of the innocents who were killed as a result of a rebellion, including your father and brother, but how many innocents have died because of the Empire? How many have you killed? You can't tell me that you truly believe that your family would have wanted this to happen with this justification done under their name? They wouldn't recognize you any more than your son would. The legacy you are leaving for him is of a mindless being doing only what he's told and having no individual thought. Your story began as a son and a brother trying to avenge his family and right how he was wronged, but what you've become is less than a man and you became that when you stopped caring about who you hurt or how many you killed, so long as you could continue killing. You're more machine than even Vader now."
Veers stepped in close to the force field, glaring down at Piett with no warmth or familiarity to be found behind those unfeeling eyes. "Treachery has made you bold to say such things."
"If not for this force field between us, you would have seen how bold I am when I punched you right in your fucking nose," said Piett.
"You would never land a blow," said Veers scornfully. "You are useless without a uniform and a plaque to protect you. Small, weak, timid, cowardly, and a poor excuse for a man in any form of the word–"
Veers's human leg was kicked out from under him as Motti–who had remained on the floor with his own legs outstretched until Veers had turned his attention away–side swept him and as Veers went crashing to the floor, Motti was on him in an instant. Piett was torn between encouraging Motti to beat Veers within an inch of his life or to calling for him to back off, as any harm done to Veers would surely result in worse being done to Motti and Piett in retribution. On this side of the cell, though, he could do little more than stand and watch the scene unfold.
Motti knocked Veers's blaster aside, brought his hands together to form one giant fist, and brought it smashing down on Veers's face. They were evenly matched in terms of height with Veers boasting more strength and experience, but Motti having motive and whether he liked it or not, the power of the Force behind his anger. The past few weeks had seen Veers deteriorate from blood loss and injury while Motti had been building muscle and learning how to emerge victorious in this very sort of battle. As much as Veers tried to employ his hand-to-hand combat techniques, he did not know where Motti's advantage was coming from, and the frustration only added to his poor attempts at protecting himself against Motti's attack. Where before Piett had watched Motti attack Jerjerrod in training, this was all too real and intentional, and despite his heart telling him that Veers was fully deserving of such brutality, it wounded him to see two men who had once been friends now fighting tooth and nail against each other as if their lives depended upon it.
Commander Skywalker had taught Motti how to fight with grace, poise, and honor, but that didn't mean that Motti was required to adhere to a Jedi's rules of engagement. He could have fought fair, but his opponent was not likely to do the same.
The only known weak spot that Veers could see was Motti's several-times-broken nose and he went to jam his palm up into the bone to blind Motti again with his own pain and blood in what would have been a dirty move if he had succeeded. Motti dug his elbow into Veers's throat and then backhanded him with a flat hand. His takedown method had been learned from the Jedi, but these attacks were strictly the teachings of the Empire. Gagging, Veers cast out a hand to blindly beat Motti away as he heaved to draw in what sounded like an extremely painful breath.
Motti kneed Veers hard in the groin and then while Veers was nursing both of his injuries, he leaped to his feet and stomped down several times on Veers's mechanical leg until it snapped at the knee in the wrong direction. Never before had Piett heard Veers make such human noises as the yelps of pain coming from him now. It was nauseating to see Veers's knee bend the incorrect way and coupled with Veers sounding so humbled in his pain, it made this giant of a man seem so small before them.
Motti kicked him twice for good measure before going to where the blaster had landed on the other side of the cell. With a slow, methodical walk to come and stand over Veers, Motti checked the blaster for the lethality of its setting and tinkered with it for a second, undoubtedly switching to the kill shot rather than stun. This was to be his darkest moment, where he decided to intentionally kill his friend-turned-enemy or to let Veers live solely for the purpose of protecting his own conscience. Commander Skywalker might have called it a test: a call to the dark side to give in and right how Motti had been wronged. Motti was fully capable of committing murder right here, but because it would have to be Veers's life that he took, Piett did not want it to happen. Had it been anyone else, Piett would have had no opinion on the matter, but he could not watch one friend cut another down in cold blood.
"Conan, hold," Piett urged. "Do not fire that blaster. Don't let yourself be tempted like this."
"Still caring too much for someone not worth caring about," Veers taunted, and though Piett thought that to be rather big of him to be so self-condescending that he did not believe he deserved Piett's pity, he realized Veers meant Motti. In his eyes, Motti was not worth saving, which was a far cry coming from this man who had quite literally given his life for Motti.
"If you're so adamant about not being influenced by something other than yourself, you're going to prove yourself wrong if you shoot," Piett reasoned. He could not say outright what he meant, for their every word was being recorded and Piett was determined to keep up the charade that Motti was not Force-sensitive for however long he needed to. "This was what you were afraid of."
"I'm afraid of one thing, and it's not what'll happen to my soul on account of him," said Motti, and pulled the trigger.
Piett hollered and covered his eyes, but his brain informed him that he had heard Veers cry out in pain and that five seconds later, he was still moaning, and despite having no desire to see Veers's final moments wriggling around in anguish and bleeding out, he peeked through his fingers to see Veers clutching his left shoulder and cursing Motti to hell, still very much alive.
"Shut up, or I'll shoot you in your other arm," Motti warned.
"You risk your friend's peril if you do," said a deep mechanical voice that made every individual hair on Piett's neck stand up as the door to his left opened and Lord Vader ducked into the room with four stormtroopers at his back, blasters all held on Piett and certainly not set for stun.
"Lower your weapon and toss it aside," said the foremost stormtrooper to Motti as the tip of his blaster rifle barrel tickled the side of Piett's head just under his ear. "This is your only warning."
The speed with which Motti threw down his blaster was actually impressive since Piett had expected him to put up some sort of fight in the form of arguing, but he must have recognized that there was nothing to be gained in keeping hold of the weapon. Even more impressive for a man who had had three previous interactions with Vader and come away from all three with a bruised neck was the fact that Motti stared unblinkingly and unafraid at Vader's mask.
The Sith did not grant him the courtesy of acknowledgment as he directed his attention to where Veers lay bleeding on the floor. "Unexpected, I assume, General?" he asked Veers.
"After a fashion," said Veers. "I was led to believe that he was not in a position to fight back."
Piett could have laughed, but he was actually horrified that Vader seemed to have predicted that Motti would go after Veers and had offered up Veers as a sacrifice to challenge Motti's connection with the Force. Even now after Veers had proven that he would cast aside everything for the Empire, Vader had tossed his most valuable general into harm's way to see what Motti would do if given the tools to kill the man he deemed responsible for his capture. And Veers was still blind to that fact, unaware he had been used as bait.
"Not taking that shot was a costly mistake, Admiral, though you are the most incompetent officer to ever disgrace the Imperial fleet and mistakes come easily and often to you," Vader told Motti.
"It would only have proven that I'm just as mindless as the rest of you. If humanity and independent thought are mistakes, I've no regrets about that."
"You will shortly."
Piett's door opened again and a massive, round, black hovering droid entered with menacing slowness. If he had anything left in his stomach, Piett would have vomited it back up. If he had anything in his bowels or intestines, he would have released all the contents of both, but the only bodily functions that were currently working were the temperature sensationd as his body went cold at the sight of the IT-0 droid coming to begin interrogation with him.
This was obviously not how questioning was supposed to begin in Motti's mind, for his skin went sallow at the sight of the droid. "Wait, you can't–"
"I would suggest preparing yourself for what is about to unfold. The process can take several hours," said Vader, gesturing that the troopers should file out. The troopers reappeared at Motti's door and ordered him to back against the far wall as two moved in to drag Veers out backward since he no longer had full use of his artificial leg. A bloody streak followed Veers out and Veers was shooting him a glare that wished him humiliation and agony, but it was also filled with disbelief that Motti had attacked him so vehemently and dared to shoot him. Motti would not even look at him, so focused was he on the droid that had now extended an attachment with a four inch needle toward Piett.
"Resist for as long as you can, Admiral," said Vader, though his words were meant for both Piett and Motti. He stood on the threshold to Piett's cell, waiting for Motti to make some sort of admittance, but none was forthcoming.
"You have your own methods of getting the information you need from unwilling prisoners, so why go to the trouble of using the droid?" asked Motti to stall for time.
"My time is valuable and I do not wish to waste it on you when you have not even begun to be broken," said Vader ominously. "As unpredictable as you have proven yourself to be in many ways, in one thing you are predictable, and that is your dislike of having the situation be out of your control. You are powerless to stop what is happening on this side of the cell, and I will observe just how far you must be pushed to get the answers I need."
"If you're hoping to see me fold because of what you do to Firmus, you're still underestimating me. I know you've been waiting for your chance to have a go at me since you discovered that I survived the crash that you initiated. Even your perceptive powers of the Force couldn't tell you that I hadn't died like you intended."
Piett could reprimand Motti for all of eternity for antagonizing the Sith, but as it had the first ten times he had said it, his words would fall on deaf ears, for it seemed to be one of Motti's greatest pleasures in calling the Sith's mightiness out to be folly.
Vader's anger was held in check, as he did not sound even remotely upset by Motti's challenge, but his words were chosen carefully when he pressed Motti for information. "Yes, like a cockroach, you refused to die the first several times I attempted to have you killed, but the way General Veers tells it, your survival was owed to the rebels who presented you with the decision to join with them or die."
Motti made his report as if he stood on duty still under Vader's command. It was devoid of feeling, but truthful, and Vader would be disappointed to find no lies there. "They didn't give us an ultimatum. We were to join them or we were to be held prisoner. Those who refused to join were held, as promised, and treated fairly and the general was no expectation. Never once did they threaten him or any survivors. Those of us who defected were watched closely and only allowed to enter battle once we had proven ourselves."
"And how quickly you defected, I hear," Vader pressed, to which Piett inwardly groaned, for Motti would be quick to correct him in a way that would be telling and not at all helpful to his and Piett's agreement to say nothing more than simple fact.
"I defected because my commanding officer did the same and I trusted his judgment more than I ever trusted Tarkin's. Commander Jerjerrod led the survivors of that crash in the days following and made decisions to ensure the highest preservation of human life. When we were leaderless after the man we served ordered our execution, the commander took it upon himself to inspire resilience in us. When we were captured by the rebels, he spoke for me when no one else would and put himself at risk for me. Tarkin only stopped you from strangling me because it would have been an inconvenience to replace me. I trusted the commander, that man you find so threatening despite what he is, and I know what he is. He told me."
"You know what he is, and you hate him for it," Vader surmised.
"I do not," said Motti quickly.
"After he used the Force against you, after he lied to you, after he led you to believe that it was a power he never desired and yet he benefited from it, you think none the less of him for it? You cannot lie to me, Admiral."
"I have several times and you don't always know it. You're not as clever as you think you are. You feel my hatred toward you and assume that everything I tell you is a lie told out of spite, but I can hide the truth in that hatred."
"You flatter yourself by boasting powers that you do not have."
"Don't I?" Motti challenged, and it was the first admittance Piett had seen or heard from him that he possessed some extra part of the Force. "Or am I an unextraordinary individual with an excessive amount of hate that's wasted on being purely human?"
Vader sounded bitter as he admitted, "I had taken your hatred for that and nothing more, but the Emperor deduced that the Force was dormant within you and our last interaction aboard this battle station proved his theory correct. Unchecked, your hatred had the makings of a promising pupil of the dark side if you were to recognize it for what it was, but after the Force had twice been used against you, you still denied the existence of it and were less likely to discover it within you if you rejected it, as you do now, while the commander was beginning to question his abilities. He made himself into a threat while you continued to be a hindrance."
"You made him into a threat by insisting he was one. You made your own enemies by sowing doubt where there didn't need to be any. If you had let the commander think there was nothing remarkable about him, he wouldn't have known how to use his powers and he wouldn't have made the decisions that led you to have us shot down. He was loyal to the Empire, as were we all, until you showed us what our loyalty was worth. You created a problem where there wasn't one."
"A problem that is soon to be remedied," said Vader derisively. "Hatred fueled by the Force does not make you immune to the sufferings of others, especially those who you dare to care for, as you will soon learn. So stew and dwell in your hatred, Conan Motti, and see how well it serves you."
The IT-0 droid moved in on Piett who backed himself into the far wall even though he knew he had nowhere to go. "Say nothing, Conan," said Piett hurriedly. "Whatever you see or hear, say nothing."
Motti's eyes told Piett that as agreed upon, he would try, but a vow of this sort could only go so far. This would end in screams and broken promises.
"Admirable your resolve is, you are not the first to hope to outlast this interrogation method, Admiral, and you won't be the last," said Vader, and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.
The IT-0 droid was infamous for its ability to administer a chemical that enhanced pain receptors and decreased an individual's pain threshold and targeted the most sensitive areas of the body. The prisoner was kept fully conscious, but was also prone to hallucinations and skewed reality, all while being subjected to mental, physical, and emotional pain. So effective was the droid's methods that prisoners often caved well before questioning began once they caught sight of the droid whose reputation preceded it. The condemned would rather betray their own morals than have to endure through hours of torture at the hands of this mechanical monstrosity.
Trapped, cornered like a wounded animal, Piett turned his face against the wall to not have to watch the injection he knew was coming. Another attachment from the droid closed a metallic set of claws around his head and held him in place with the strength of a Wookie but a warning that he had best not move, or it would crush his skull. The syringe entered his skin at the back of his neck, pointed downward, and his entire body tensed at the invasion. The entry point burned and the needle went in slowly to inject the torture chemical.
The effects were almost immediate. As the claw released him, Piett tried to cover himself from a nonexistent chill that sent cold sweat down his spine. His vision was narrowing, tunneling, making him focus only on the droid as his ears filled with a high-pitched shrieking that he wasn't entirely sure wasn't coming from him. His eyes could still see movement on the other side of the force field and his mind struggled to bring Motti into focus as he stood there making wildly overexaggerated movements to get Piett's attention.
"Firmus, look at me!" he hollered, though his voice was far away and distorted. "Get up, come to me now!"
Piett wondered why, for moving right now would expose himself to the droid by leaving his back unguarded, but the part of his brain that was still capable of logical thought told him that Motti wanted him close to try and talk him through the inquisition. Motti hoped that his presence and the sight of him would be enough for Piett to latch onto since neither of them could reach each other.
While he still had control over his motor abilities, Piett wriggled past the droid, but already his legs were wobbling and his coordination suffering, and so he went to his knees to prevent himself from breaking a leg and pulled himself across the glossy black floor to where Motti was waiting for him. Even now being just inches from Motti, he could not hear the words coming from Motti's mouth even though he could see his lips moving. When Motti realized this, he set his forehead against the force field and one hand to the spot where it would have made contact with Piett if he had been able to touch him.
"How many rebels have made landing on the forest moon?"
It took a few seconds to process that the droid had asked the question and those moments were taken for hesitation, unwillingness to answer, so the chemical running throughout his bloodstream attacked his brain with thoughts of terror during his most frightening moments: when the rebel freighter ship escaped and he believed Vader would execute him on the spot, when he saw the bridge collapse on Endor, when he heard the warning sirens of his shuttle going down, when the condor dragon dive-bombed him, when he saw Needa foaming at the mouth…
"Who leads the rebels? Is Luke Skywalker among them?"
Piett held his silence even though he knew what was coming, but this time the droid brought forth a new attachment in the form of an incendiary device that was pressed to his cheek, burning into his skin. His legs would not obey him to move away; he was imprisoned in his own body. The only command he could give was to yelp and shriek.
Dozens of questions, just as many consequences for having no answers to those questions, a heightened sense of pain, the inability to do anything but scream and wish for it to be over. The droid prodded, injected, burned, electrocuted, stabbed, cut, sliced–or so it felt, and Piett had no way of knowing because he had lost sight of everything. Only the droid existed, the droid and his own aching, battered, dying body.
When the questions began to repeat, he began to give answers, anything he could think of that wasn't the truth, but even for complying, he was punished. His every action ended in pain until he was begging to pass out, to leave his body and exist anywhere else. Finally, finally after hours of no respite, the fog in Piett's mind lightened and lessened as his eyesight opened back up.
He found Motti curled into the fetal position in the corner of his side of the cell with his hands clenched tightly over his ears, his eyes screwed shut, and his teeth gnashing to block out every sensation that would have allowed him to feel Piett's pain. As adaptable a man he was, he could not watch what had been done to Piett because as a human, it hurt him to see his friend go through such torture and be unable to help.
Every negative thought Piett had ever felt directed at Motti for being seemingly uninterested in friendship and uninvolved in their struggles, he now took them back, for it endeared him to Motti to know that it was all for show. Motti relied upon his connection with his friends just as they relied upon him, and now he had finally shown it.
His throat was raw from screaming, and so Piett could not call out to Motti, but he raised a shaking arm and the sound of his hand coming to rest against the shimmering but impenetrable wall made Motti open his eyes and take in the sight of Piett laying against the force field. Motti crawled to the divider with his head cast down in shame that he had not been able to remain nearby as a source of comfort for Piett. His eyes apologized, but there was nothing to forgive.
Piett tapped the force field again and rubbed his thumb back and forth in a soothing gesture and a message of pride that despite what had gone on in his side of the cell, Motti had not broken.
Piett had not caved under interrogation and Motti had not given in to make the questioning stop. They were holding firm, but if the droid's methods were any indication of what was still to come, they knew that they would not be able to hold out for much longer.