A Certain Point of View

Chapter 11: Sensitive Discussions

"And now, your Highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base."

The floating droid, an IT-O Interrogator, was a relic from Wilhuff Tarkin's personal collection. Private ownership of the Security Bureau's most effective espionage devices was not, strictly speaking, legal—not even for the highest officers of the Empire. But Tarkin's sheer effectiveness had earned him certain privileges. It was the Emperor's design, no doubt, that the Grand Moff should own the droid—and that Vader, fresh from his twin failures at Scarif and Tatooine, should have to humble himself to ask for it. The Death Star itself might have been—should have been—his to command. But with each of these subtle slights, the Emperor handed more and more executive power to the Grand Moff.

She cried out as the needle went in, but her strength faded quickly. Vader waited impatiently as the toxins took effect. Truly, he did not resent the busywork of the battle station being taken out of his hands. He had thought for too long like a military man, in terms of capital ships, manoeuvres, naval strategy. Now his brush with Obi-Wan occupied his every thought; always his mind returned to the Force, and he grew increasingly short-tempered with those who questioned his business with it.

Even now, he was sure he could sense the stink of Obi-Wan's influence on her. He had missed it, somehow, over Tatooine where he was distracted and his grip on the Dark Side was weak. But here, even he could not deny that the young woman's strength in the Force was very pronounced indeed. She had nakedly resisted his attempts to probe her with the Force alone—something even seasoned Jedi had failed to do—and even now, wailing in cries of steadily rising horror, there was an inner serenity to her, a peace and patience that could not be breached. He felt Kenobi's presence keenly in her—wondered, even, if the old master had trained her to resist these interrogations so well. But he would know soon enough.

The truth serum took effect, as intended, nearly an hour before the torture toxins did. With all the menace tuned out of his mechanical voice, with all the guile and craft he could muster, he reached out as a friend to the troubled princess, whispered of escape, promised to return her to the Alliance.

"Help us, Leia," he probed. "What happened to those tapes?"

"I can't," she moaned.

"You must. It's your duty. Your obligation to Alderaan and to your father. Your father commands you to tell us."

She whimpered helplessly at his mechanical feet, but did not give in.

With gentle words, probing her fears of failure, her sense of duty, the doubts he felt she had about her family, Vader coaxed what information he could from her. But she had found in herself some kind of centre, something to hold to even as the room swam and the drugs coursed through her mind. Her mental resistance was uncanny, and Vader was exhausted. After a hellish two days of failure and embarrassment, his rage took him and he could no longer deceive her. As the torture toxins began to take hold, he shifted his focus, turning the frustrations of his last two cycles into a weapon of torment.

"You are now in great pain," he barked. "Your world is nothing but pain!"
"No," she wailed, brought back to herself by the sudden agony as the suggestion took hold. As the hour grew desperate, Vader turned to the power that was not denied to him, the power of the Dark Side, and focused his own agony on her like a spear.

"Where are the plans?!"

"I can't tell!" she screamed. Even forming the words was a struggle.

The toxins would break most prisoners with simple suggestions; now, in his mind's eye, he conjured the most horrific agonies he could muster. Far beyond even his near-constant feeling of suffocation, the terror he projected onto others when he gripped them by the throat, there was a worse fear, a worse pain. It was a place Vader was afraid to go. But frustrated, afraid beyond all else of failing the Emperor, he opened himself to it.

"Your skin is afire!" he suggested, and suddenly it was. But so was his own, as he reached back into a memory of terror even he still could not face fully. "You're burning! Your nerve endings are in flames! Your flesh is being torn apart!"

"Please!" she begged him. He could feel her suffering so closely, so keenly. It was his own suffering. Anakin's suffering.

"Where are the Death Star plans?" he shouted. "Where is the Rebel fortress?" Beneath the distorting speaker of his mechanical voice, the hollow rasp of his furious shout whistled softly in his burned throat. His flesh, too, was burning. He called up the pain from places he had buried it. She was sensitive, he knew. It would only magnify her suffering. And she was a girl unused to agony. Agony was all he had known. He would outlast her.

How long they remained like that, locked in excruciating torment, he could not say. He reeled from his own broken memories, nearly drowned now in madness, betrayal, hatred. For with his memories of that fire, of the magma that consumed him—no, consumed Anakin, he reminded himself—came deeper hurts. The betrayal of his closest friend, his last friend. The betrayal of the woman he loved—

Vader came back to himself just in time. Lost in his haze, in that terrible moment, he had gone somewhere altogether different. He felt, for the first time in nearly twenty years, the reckless power of a Force choke delivered from hot rage rather than cold cruelty. As he fought to return to himself, he found Leia off the bench, her tongue lolling weirdly to one side as he crushed the life from her throat with his mind. The sounds she made in the throes of death were nearly the same as Padmé's—and to his surprise, they horrified him.

"Stop!" he ordered, as much to himself as to her. With all the strength that remained to him, he pushed the darkness from his mind, pushed the horrifying memories back into the mechanical hole whence he had drawn them. He relaxed his hold on the Force and the Princess tumbled in a heap to the durasteel slab, barely breathing.

"You are no longer dying," he ordered, nearly begging her. "No longer in pain." After a tense moment, forced to life only by the suggestive power of the toxins, her body took a ragged breath. Then another. She looked so much like... no...

The cell door slid open behind him. He had exhausted their time. It must have been hours, in the end. Her breathing steadied.

"Your mind is a blank," he said. "You float without a thought or concern."

"Lord Vader, is anything wrong?"

His reverie broken, he turned to the officer in a fury.

"No!" he roared. "Get out!" The officer, unused to hearing Vader himself on the edge of losing control, was only too quick to comply. Vader had to call after him.

"Wait," said the Dark Lord. He fought to bring his mind back.

The officer turned expectantly. Inwardly, he shook with the same fear as all the others.

"Have a medical tech see to the prisoner," he said. "Make sure she's suffered no serious damage."

At Vader's compassion, the officer looked as confused as Vader felt.

"Have her fortified so she can take another round of interrogation," he finished, as if to justify his compassion with cruelty.

"Yes, Lord Vader."

He did not know if he could endure another round himself.