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The corridor drowned in a cacophony of alarms blaring as Leia made her way down the hall. Her eyes methodically scanned the cells she was passing as she kept running senseless deeper into the maze of the bounty hunter’s hideout. Behind her, echoes of fast and numerous footsteps could be heard, on her tail.
The rebel general cursed under her breath, before focusing all her thoughts on Luke. She would find him, and together, they would figure a way out. He would figure it out, she was positive. All that mattered was finding him before they would catch her. Force, if only she and Han hadn’t been separated in the mission, they would have already got to the Jedi by now!
Her legs came to a halt as she identified a familiar mop of blonde hair through the bars of the cell next to her. Breathing a sigh of relief, she rummaged under her small white cape to pull out a blaster. Without a second thought, she shot the lock down and stepped inside the detention room.
“Come on, we have to get out of here!” She gestured towards the other end of the corridor.
Only when he didn’t follow her, didn’t move an inch actually, did she really look at him. Luke stood there with his hands cuffed behind his back, but there was something odd in his gaze. Before she could ask what was wrong since there was nothing impeding him from speaking or moving, parts of the walls behind him slid open to reveal four armed sentients who came out into the room to position themselves around the two rebels.
“And where did you think you were taking our hardly earned little prize, Princess?” One of them, a rodian, spoke.
Behind her, she didn’t need to turn around to know she would face her pursuers gathered around the cell’s door. She was effectively trapped. Two of the bounty hunters who came out of the walls, a Twi’lek and a human, approached her and took hold of her weapons, cuffing her wrists and forcing her on her knees.
Before her, Luke stood still, and it took Leia a thorough look at the back of his head to make out the characteristic red laser of a sniper blaster aiming at him.
“I hadn’t intended to do this before a public, but I will make sure the spectacle is worth the effort of your intrusion.”
Multiple things happened simultaneously. The first was that the aim of the laser disappeared, and Leia feared the enemy had shot and she would witness the boy she saw like a brother die before her. The second was a powerful strike that was delivered into Luke’s jaw by the rodian. The rebel general let out a gasp as she watched Luke collapse into the floor with the impact of the blow. Blood shot out onto the dirty, white tiles of the cell in a crimson, death-promising rain.
Before her mind gathered itself and processed what had just happened, Luke’s rib-cage was hit by another forceful kick of the criminal. The sound of bones cracking sent nausea waves up the Princess’s throat as she gagged. For all the ruthlessness of the treatment, the boy had yet to let out a single sound.
For several minutes that felt like an eternity, the four bounty hunters took turns inflicting blows of various intensity and gravity as Leia screamed repeatedly, begging for them to stop, asking them why they were doing this, asking them to hit her instead although she knew there was no way she could take half of the injuries Luke was receiving, much less without a single cry like he was.
When the criminals decided to take a break, the brunette shuffled closer to the boy laying limply on the floor, almost unrecognizable with his face swollen, bruised and draped in a crimson curtain of blood. His breathing was labored, but he had yet to say anything. General Organa, however, let her tears run free on her own, pale cheeks, hiccuping occasionally. These bastards hadn’t even asked them anything. They had just brutalized the boy times and again, for the fun of it.
After the events of Bespin, where the two of them had communicated in Leia’s mind, the Jedi had started to train her, although her progress was slow, almost non-existent, and she often found herself wishing she could be at least half as powerful as Luke was. This instant, however, as she assessed the amount of injuries they had inflicted on her friend, she found herself grateful she didn’t own such power, because she felt like doing something unspeakable.
Suddenly, Luke shifted in his trance. His unfocused pupils dilated in a second, and his chest started to heave faster than before, as if he was out of the sudden terrified of something she couldn’t see. The adrenaline must’ve been wearing off, and the pain was more likely beginning to wake. At the same time, a commotion made its way to her ears upstairs, and among the muffled clang of glass shattering and shouts, she was sure she could hear a sound that made shivers travel down her spine.
The bounty hunters in the room too, seemed to have made out the exact infamous sound that often was associated with death itself, and were becoming agitated. Behind her, the human and the Twi’lek were half whispering their intentions of leaving the place, but the rodian, who was apparently their leader, insisted on receiving the bounty.
Leia swallowed a wry snort at the memory of the mention “alive and unharmed” under Luke’s bounty and felt a misplaced impatience to witness the reception of said bounty, although she wasn’t even sure she would be alive to witness it by then.
Before her, Luke kept stirring, whimpers turned into clear, hurt sobs, and soon, in what Leia identified as a delirious episode, began to call for his father and beg him to help. A rush of empathy passed in her mind as she recalled the faithful events of that day in the Death Star, the sting of the interrogation droid, and…
Darth Vader entered the cell. Soon enough, Luke’s whimpers were subdued by the rise of numerous screams of pain. Disgusted, Leia heard Vader break every single of the bounty hunter’s bones more than she saw it. Their bodies fell down with a thump, and when the sith lord took a step towards her, she prepared her mind for a quick, and last prayer to the Force like her friend had taught her.
Except the Princess was not the black-clad behemoth’s next destination. Luke’s side was. When the cruel man that once took everything from her and tortured her years ago knelt in the still-forming flake of blood at the boy’s side, she started to doubt her sanity.
But when the sith lord sat on the ground and carefully handled Luke’s upper body atop of his crossed legs, she definitely wondered if she was the one being delirious. Wordlessly, she watched as the sith lord placed a hand on the boy’s forehead. Just as speechless, she watched as Luke’s whimpers stopped, and as a somewhat serene expression relaxed his eyebrows.
Without a warning, the cuffs on her wrists behind her back opened and fell to the floor. Before she had the chance to wonder why she was being offered the leniency of freedom, the sith lord beat her to it, batting away her delusions.
“Hand me a piece of the garment you are wearing.” The deep baritone left no place for hesitation, yet the Princess was far too confused to process the simple demand.
“What?” She croaked unceremoniously.
A mix of anger, impatience and fear flared within her in a second, although before she realized these feelings weren’t her own, they were locked someplace else as if they hadn’t invaded her mind mere seconds ago. A weird sound emanated from the vocoder before she felt some pressure tearing a part of her cape apart.
Dumbfounded, Leia watched as the piece of clothing flew its way into Vader’s hand like an obedient little trooper, and as the black-clad behemoth bandaged the blonde’s head with the gentleness of one carefully handling a precious artifact. A groan suddenly escaped Luke who curled on his side, in pain.
Free from the restraints of the bounty hunters, the girl ran next to him and knelt, shooting a hand towards his arm to stabilize him, when a tight, almost bone-crushing grip closed on her wrist.
“Do not touch him.”
There was venom in his words contrasting with the soft movements that were tending to the boy’s wounds. The way the monster’s hands were efficiently, yet gently working their way onto Luke’s bruises brought her a misplaced reminder of her father tending to her scrapes when she would fall down her tree back on Alderaan. A father she would never see again, because of him. All of her wanted to kill him this instant, shooting her blaster right between those insufferable insectoid lenses and putting an end to this.
And yet, watching Luke relax in the sith lord’s grip as he lifted him into his arms, she felt reluctant to deprive him of this rare moment of solace.