WARNING: THIS CHAPTER INCLUDES INTENSE DEPICTIONS OF TORTURE

Leia didn't know where Han and Chewbacca were brought. The three were split up the moment they were hauled outside the breakfast room, and the troopers gave no verbal indication of where any of them were being taken, herself included.

After being forced through a maze of hallways, she was shoved onto a lift and transported down into the bowels of the settlement, where she was eventually deposited alone in a large room.

She knew next to nothing about the municipality of Cloud City but assumed the outpost wasn't built with imprisonment in mind. Still, any settlement of their size would require a detention area. She appeared to currently be in theirs, a mass holding cell — she would guess this block held several — where offenders were kept temporarily before being transported elsewhere for trial and long-term incarceration.

The moment the troopers left, locking her in, Leia took a survey of the room. The difference between life and death often came down to the smallest of details; it was essential she take note of any potential weaknesses in the room from which she could begin to launch an escape plan. The first thing she noticed were the several durasteel benches and slide-out cots along the walls, indicating her speculation had been correct and this setup was, in fact, for multiple convicts. While the room was nicer and certainly larger, it was similar enough to her Death Star cell to be extremely unsettling. The same hard, flat metal slabs doubling as beds; the same grated ceiling for guards to keep a periodic eye on prisoners from above. The resemblance was so strong that Leia braced herself for the onset of traumatic flashbacks.

But before fear had a chance to take hold, the door to the holding cell slid open and Lando walked through. For a desperate moment, Leia considered simply making a run for it, but the door closed as soon as he cleared it, dashing those thoughts.

Adrenaline gave over to disappointment, and she turned away from him back toward the center of the room, anywhere but to look into the face of the man responsible for their current state.

"Princess," Lando softly called when it became clear she had no intention of acknowledging him on her own. "What can I do?" He approached her tentatively. "Tell me what I can do to make it better."

"Better?" she repeated incredulously. "There is no better. Not after what you've done."

She heard him sigh behind her, a sound part frustration and part guilt, and for the first time Leia considered the possibility that the baron wasn't as embroiled in Vader's plan as she'd originally believed. She got the sense he had very little control over what was unfolding. Even so, that was just too bad for him. He'd made his bed; she had zero sympathy for a betrayer who found himself, in turn, betrayed.

"There must be something I can do." Lando grasped at straws and one occurred to him. "Perhaps something I can bring you to make you more comfortable?"

Comfort was Leia's farthest concern at the moment, but her thoughts returned to the remote possibility of escape. If any opportunity presented itself, no matter how small, she needed to be prepared. Of course, she knew better than to ask for a weapon, but she had to be ready to run and fight. Her current outfit, with its movement restrictive bodice and loose cloak that could easily become caught-up on objects, wasn't fit for either.

"My clothing," she answered. "I'd like my clothing back. The snowsuit I came in." Lest he find that request suspicious, she added, "I don't want anything you're even tangentially responsible for touching my skin."

Leia couldn't see him hang his head momentarily, but she could hear the shame in Lando's voice as he quietly uttered, "Princess, I never meant for—" His words abruptly halted when she whirled around on him.

"And it's just supposed to be acceptable because you didn't mean for this to happen in exactly this way?" she rebuffed with scorn. "Do you even know what you've done? What you've condemned us to?"

"It won't be as bad as you're thinking," he reassured her. "They're not going to hurt you. Either of you."

She gave him a long, measuring look. "If you truly believe that, then you're as big a fool as you are a traitor."

Leia turned her back to him, finished with the conversation. A few moments later, she heard him quietly depart.

She was genuinely surprised when Lando actually kept his word and returned with the clothing she had requested. Leia was even more surprised that she had the time to change into it. She estimated she'd been in her cell for close to two hours, maybe three, and no one had yet interrogated her — or harmed her, or approached her in any way at all, other than Calrissian's two brief appearances.

As maddening as it was, there was nothing for her to do but sit on one of the benches and wait.

By the time a group of four stormtroopers and a security officer finally came to collect her, Leia had settled into a curious mixture of dread and resignment. After all, this time she knew exactly what was coming as she was directed out of her current room and down a maroon hallway. The corridor was fitted on both sides with evenly spaced doors. Since this was obviously the detention block, she assumed those doors led into further prisoner cells, one of which she was being brought to now for her interrogation.

However, when she was stopped before a door near the middle of the hallway and led inside, it wasn't a cell at all but some sort of smaller, outer chamber. Everything inside this new space was white and sterile in appearance. At first glance, it brought to mind a medical room, triggering further trepidation over what kind of horrendous tortures she was about to endure.

When Darth Vader walked in, that impression was sealed. This was it, then. She was about to be tormented at his hand for a second time.

For a lengthy spell that was its own brand of mental terrorism, there was nothing but the harsh sound of his breathing as the Dark Lord stood silently assessing her, picking up one of her stray thoughts so tinged with emotion she was practically broadcasting it.

Yes, this is it, Princess, Vader crowed to himself with pleasure. It was time to lay the bait for his son's trap.

He had already given the orders to begin the sonic auditory torture of the Wookiee, a seemingly mild infliction but not for a species with such sensitive hearing. Moreover, he had intentionally dragged his feet on bringing the princess in, leaving the captain to stew in fear, panic, and affliction wondering what they were doing to her now that they'd taken her away — now that he couldn't stop them; now that he was powerless to protect her, now that he couldn't even know what atrocities she was enduring, though he didn't doubt Solo's mind would effectively supply numerous possibilities. That level of psychological distress had surely called to his son, as would the physical pain that Solo was set to soon suffer.

The princess was an infinitely more difficult one to crack. She had withstood an immense, near impossible degree of physical pain back on the Death Star. She was a zealot and a martyr, fully willing to die for her cause. Physical pain would never be her breaking point. It may not even prove sufficient to send a cry out into the Force. But Princess Leia had a weakness, to be sure, and he would mercilessly lean on it now until her suffering was so extreme that Luke would hear it even galaxies away.

He already knew his son had a special connection with the young woman. There were almost as many rumors about the two of them as there were about the princess and the captain. Most of the rumors seemed to suggest that Luke was in love with her. Judging by what Vader had seen of Solo's memories, if that were the case, it was an unrequited feeling on his son's part. Either way, Luke's bond with her would make her pain call out to him all the more. Vader could already sense the anxiety rolling off her, though she tried to hide it.

"I understand your affinity for torturing the innocent, watching any and all beings suffer simply for your own enjoyment," Leia stated with contempt, "but I assume there is some greater point behind this particular interrogation. You've gone to too much trouble. You could have executed us already and been done with it if that was your goal."

Vader regarded her a moment before speaking. "Your level of perception has always been a credit to you, Your Highness," he finally allowed. "But do not make the mistake of thinking you have the advantage here. I have all the high ground. It will do you well to recognize that."

"I recognize more than enough," Leia returned. "The thing I fail to understand is what you could possibly want from us. You've destroyed our base on Hoth, forced us to flee without preparation. I do not — he does not—" she interjected, her thoughts still consumed with Han, "—know the location of a new one. We had not yet planned a new one. You took us by surprise, just as you wished. You already have the upper hand."

The Sith Lord had no interest in debating her assertion since he wasn't looking for the Rebel base, or even the Rebels as a whole, at the moment. Vader wanted his son — and even for that, he need not go looking; Luke would come to him. But he wasn't beyond snidely pointing out, "You made the same false promises about Dantooine."

"We did have a base on Dantooine," Leia upheld. "That wasn't a lie."

"A long-abandoned base."

"And yet, it still was the truth. In any case, whatever new plans the Alliance may or may not have made, Captain Solo and I aren't privy to them. The Falcon's hyperdrive was broken," she explained, though at this point she was certain he already knew. "We were stuck in sublight ever since the battle on Hoth, where our comms were also damaged in the melee of escape. We've been without secure communications for weeks. We've had no contact with the outside galaxy. If the Alliance has managed to secure a replacement base in that time, we would have no way of knowing it. Simply put, we cannot tell you if, or where, a new base might exist. For that matter, we don't know where the Rebel fleet is, either. The Imperial Security Bureau likely knows far more than we do on that score. We have no new information, nothing to give you."

"You will give me what I seek before this day is through," Vader guaranteed, making certain to add the most effective of taunts, "Collectively, you both will."

"Why 'both'?" Leia persisted. "Your quarrel is with me; that's been established. We've been here before, you and I. This time, you want a different outcome. So go ahead," she proclaimed combatively, "do your worst."

When he didn't immediately respond to her challenge, she turned her head in a purposeful sweep of the empty room. "Shouldn't you be sending for someone? A trooper, a security officer, an IT-O? It isn't like you to be so hands-on with the dirty work. I thought it was beneath your dignity."

"You know nothing about how very hands-on I can be," Vader ruthlessly threatened. He had, after all, personally slaughtered a roomful of Jedi younglings, a vicious feat beyond anything even Palpatine had done.

Outrage followed immediately on the heels of that thought. He assiduously endeavored to never recall that incident. But something about this young woman had always gotten under his skin in a way that made him feel…exposed. Judged. Shamed. Volatile emotions like the very ones that had caused him to lash out through the Force and close his fingers around his beloved's throat.

Vader immediately swept that distressing memory away. It was of no use to him — and that man, too, was dead and gone now.

He started to move toward Leia, and she flinched. It was a kneejerk reaction, but one she hated. She had already said 'please' to this monster once today, a fact that made her cringe down to her very soul, though she still couldn't regret it. He had been hurting Han and she couldn't bear that, would have done anything to make it stop.

"You've no need to worry, Your Highness," Vader assured in a placating tone she knew was meant to mock her. "I am not going to touch you. No interrogation droids are necessary, either. Nor do I require serums, mind probes, or any other devices. Everything necessary for you to give me exactly what I want is right in the next room."

With the flick of his wrist, through the Force, he pressed a switch on the wall that activated the two-way mirror, revealing the space on the other side. Leia was aware she was being baited, that he meant for her to be aghast at whatever was beyond, and she steeled herself for what she was about to behold.

The area beside theirs was another cell of some type with the grated observational ceiling above that was present in all detention centers. She could see now that the room they were in was an outer chamber and this on the other side was the inner one. It was surrounded by rooms similar to hers, all outfitted with two-way mirrors that allowed their occupants to see inside without being seen themselves. Perhaps Cloud City was more prepared for interrogations than she'd originally thought. Or the Imperials had made quick work of existing infrastructure the night before while she and Han had dined, loved and slept, blissfully unaware.

In the center of the inner chamber beyond, Leia spied it…and her heart dropped along with her stomach, bitter bile abruptly rising in the back of her throat.

A Scan Grid.

She'd heard rumors of their existence, of course — everyone in Rebel circles had — but she'd never witnessed one for herself, until now.

These grids were initially created as specialized mining equipment, to aid in analyzing metals, but it hadn't taken the Empire long to figure out a way to warp the technology to their twisted and evil purpose, specifically modifying the grids to inflict maximum amounts of pain on living beings.

From what she could see, the Imps had done a thorough job, effectively arming the Grid with all the standard torture equipment: vibroblades and scalpels for stabbing and cutting; therma-coils to burn victims; chemical injectors for pain enhancement and inducing forced consciousness to keep victims awake; naturally outfitted electrical charge emitters meant to be applied to metals now used for electroshocking prisoners.

"Oh gods." The words slipped out without her permission, so deep and instinctive was Leia's dismay, and she felt delight rolling off the Sith in waves.

"So you've never before seen a Scan Grid," Vader surmised with relish. "Now you will experience one in all its glory."

Leia forced her lips to be sealed, forced her expression to remain impassive; she would give him no further fuel for his triumph. She had made it through before, she could fortify herself to do so again. No matter how bad it was, nothing could be worse than the pain she'd survived in the aftermath of the Disaster.

"You can strap me to that — that…thing," she spat contemptuously, "you can do with me whatever you will, but it will gain you nothing. I'll tell you nothing."

"Did I leave you with the impression that the Grid was for you, Your Highness?" he taunted. "No, I have a much more efficacious subject in mind. You will never break for yourself, for your own suffering and pain. You think I do not understand you, but I understand better than you know, Princess."

He was well familiar with the horror of seeing your beloved racked with pain, fathomed more than most the lengths to which it would drive you. "What will afflict and torment, conquer and destroy you, is to helplessly watch the suffering of a loved one."

With that ominous promise, Vader left the room.

Leia was brought up to the next floor and unceremoniously shoved out to the edge of the grated ceiling, where two officers bodily held her in place lest she try to escape. In horrorstruck despair, she watched as a group of stormtroopers dragged Han out and strapped him into the Scan Grid, followed by none other than Vader himself, come to personally oversee Han's torture.

The Dark Lord stood menacingly close to Han, aiming to add intimidation to everything else he was about to suffer, as the mechanism was switched on and an eerie red light illuminated its inner workings, heating the therma-coils.

Han didn't say a word, didn't persuade or plead. Leia knew that he wouldn't, but his stoic acceptance somehow made it all the more horrendous to her. An ominous buzzing click began emitting from the grid like some kind of malevolent incubus insect, and as he was slowly lowered down toward the torture instruments, Leia caught a glimpse of Han's face. His expression read deep terror — and Vader was right; that broke her more than anything they could have done to her.

The burning began first, hot enough to singe him before it even touched his skin. Then the shocks commenced, electrocuting him even as the hot metal burned his flesh.

Han's screams of excruciating pain were worse than even her most horrific nightmares. They penetrated through to her very soul.

"No! NO! Stop!" she yelled, struggling to wrench herself from the officers' grasp. "Stop hurting him!"

For Leia, this was intended to be a mental and emotional torture. And yet, it was somehow physical, too. There were moments, hitting her in flashes like crashing waves, where she could literally feel Han's pain.

"STOP!"

Leia's gut-wrenching cry was dynamic and pervading; it seemed to rattle the entire room. Several of the officers looked around, under the assumption Cloud City was undergoing some kind of sky quake, but Vader knew it was all the princess.

A moment more and her desperation for Han tapped into something deep within that armored Leia with the strength necessary to break free from her captors.

The nearest stormtrooper switched his blaster to stun — he knew better than to harm Lord Vader's prize if he wished to survive the day — and aimed, but it wasn't necessary. The princess did not try to flee.

Instead, she stepped off the overbridge and dropped to her knees, shoving her small hands through the grating and stretching out, urgently reaching — frantically attempting to get to Han, as if she could somehow claw her way through or singlehandedly pull back the durasteel. Mentally, through the Force, Vader was astonished to feel her trying. Then the troopers seized Leia, hauling her to her feet and slapping binders over her wrists.

Vader signaled to them to have her taken back to the other room. He would imminently join her and make certain the psychological torture she was clearly experiencing was sufficient to signal his son. Of the two, her distress seemed the most assured to alert Luke.

Leaving the captain to the officers who would continue to supervise his turn on the Grid, Vader ducked through a doorway more adequate for an Ugnaught than a man of his stature, and was immediately approached by Calrissian.

"Lord Vader—"

Vader ignored him, sweeping past to address the bounty hunter who was also waiting. "You may take Captain Solo to Jabba the Hutt after I have Skywalker."

"He's no good to me dead," Fett protested, following after him on his way to the lift.

"He will not be permanently damaged."

Despite this assertion, Han's torture continued in the interior room. His brutalized howls of pain carried through the hallway, spurring Lando on.

"Lord Vader," Lando called more insistently now, unwilling to be disregarded this time. What was happening left a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was nothing like what he'd agreed to. It was well outside the bounds of what he'd been promised would — and would not — happen. "What about Leia and the Wookiee?"

Vader coolly turned, more to face the front of the lift than the baron. "They must never again leave this city."

Lando lunged forward. His every instinct was to wring his hands around Vader's throat; if it had been anyone else, he would have.

Lando stopped himself at the last moment from what would have been a vastly unwise move, potentially his final one, though he made no effort to keep the resentment from his voice as he raged, "That was never a condition of our agreement, nor was giving Han to this bounty hunter!"

Vader leaned forward just enough to be threatening. His entire goal in torturing them was to utilize their suffering to call to Luke through the Force. But afterwards, he never had any intention of letting the princess and the Wookiee go. The fact that Calrissian had actually and readily believed that illustrated what a naïve fool he was, certainly outwitted and outmaneuvered in this.

Solo was always going to be turned over to the Hutt, who would do the job of disposing of him. In time, the Wookiee too must be executed for his crimes against the Empire. But the princess…she would be kept alive indefinitely. She was far too valuable a piece of collateral, in more ways than one. She was the face of the Rebel Alliance. Capturing her would be crushing to morale, as well as an effective bargaining chip. And as long as he held her, he could ensure Luke's submission.

All was going exactly according to his plan, and Vader wasn't about to be delayed by the nuisance the baron was swiftly becoming. "Perhaps you think you're being treated unfairly?"

He watched Calrissian predictably shrink back. "No," Lando uttered quietly.

"Good. It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here."

Leia had no idea how long the torture went on.

After a stretch that could have been minutes or hours — it felt to her like an eternity of agony — Han's screams finally stopped. She was just regaining the ability to take in a full breath when Vader appeared back in the room.

He walked over to where she kept sentry at the two-way mirror. With her hands now bound, the princess was unable to again try clawing her way through, but she stood with her nose pressed to the transparisteel, making it evident that's what she would be doing had it not been for the binders.

Beneath his helmet, Vader sneered in satisfaction at his sure victory. He had no doubt Luke would be here as quickly as hyperspace could bring him.

Pushing the button manually in order to allow the princess to see and know what he was doing, Vader opened up comms to the other room — all the better for her to hear the pained wails of her lover. "Another round," he ordered.

"No!" Leia cried. "No, no, no!"

But it started up all over again.

Han's renewed suffering unleashed an amalgam of mental, emotional, and physiological torment that engulfed her senses. It was overwhelming anguish, made all the more unbearable by knowing her beloved was experiencing it even more sharply.

"Make it stop! Please, make it stop!" Leia's knees weakened, sending her to the floor. She didn't even try getting back up, long past the point of maintaining an impenetrable facade in front of Vader. "I'll do anything — just stop hurting him!"

Vader glanced down at the vanquished young woman coiled in on herself, her eyes tightly closed in horror because they could no longer bear what they were seeing, and he took no pity. Mercilessly doubling down, he fed her mind the images of Han in pain that she refused to look upon herself.

Through the Force, he began to hear her consciousness screaming. A relentless, inexorable scream of torment, sorrow, and vengeance united as one into a cry so sharp, penetrating, and powerful that it reverberated in Vader's own mind like a kind of intense psychic migraine. Her distress built and built until it became so intense it erupted into the outside world in audible cries.

And then the words come aloud.

"I beg you! Is that what you want to hear?! I am BEGGING you to stop hurting him!"

When her words went unheeded, a piercing scream sounded from her throat but was generated from some place much deeper inside and held enough strength and force that the transparisteel between the rooms cracked and then shattered, raining down in zagged pieces. The opening now left was low enough that she likely could have vaulted through, but the primal shriek that finally managed to smash the barrier between her and Han had tapped the last of her strength.

Mentally and emotionally drained, the extreme psychological torment combined with her unwitting use of the Force left Leia physically depleted as well, and her body gave out. Unable to catch herself with her hands, she slumped over onto her side, curled into the fetal position. "I'm begging," she managed to faintly get out. "I'm begging."

"Your begging with do you no good," Vader answered with stony indifference.

But as he gazed down upon her prone figure — tightly plaited dark hair, eyes fallen closed, expression locked in distress, petite body motionless and defeated — what he heard instead of the captain's continued screams or the princess's quiet tears was a different, exceedingly more troubling set of voices.

Where is Padme? Is she safe? Is she alright?

It seems, in your anger, you killed her.

I? I couldn't have…Noooooo!

But he had.

Unintentionally, he had become the thing that destroyed his Padme, and nearly killed his unborn son along with her.

The vision that had terrified him for months, that sent him looking for any avenue to avoid that fate, that had eventually led him into the darkness from which now he could never escape — all along, he was to be the very cause of that dreaded outcome.

The remembered pain, the current pain, was strong enough to cause Vader to stumble a step as he walked away from Leia.

She had been wrong about him; he did feel.

And that had tormented him for two decades.

Vader spared another look back at the overcome princess, and the tiny piece of humanity still left in him offered a small comfort. "It is almost over now."