Incapable of Pity

The heavy blast door sealed behind Darth Vader with a hydraulic thud that echoed through the sterile chamber. Princess Leia Organa remained seated exactly where the guards had left her, her wrists still secured behind her back, the bruises around her throat now darkening beneath the harsh white lights.

She lifted her chin as the Dark Lord approached, refusing to acknowledge the lingering pain that accompanied every breath. The two Imperial naval officers took positions near the doorway with datapads in hand, while a glossy black interrogation droid floated silently into the room behind Vader. He stopped beside her, a monolith of shadow and threat.

He didn't look at the officers; they simply saluted, their boots clicking on the floor, and marched out. The door hissed shut, sealing them in. It was just her, naked and bound, and him. Leia remained silent, fixing her gaze on the reflections in the polished dome of a nearby console. She would not give him the satisfaction of a reply.

"Senator Organa," he began, the vocoder's modulation grinding her name to dust. "Or should I say, Princess. Your titles mean nothing here. So defiant," Vader mused. "A trait you share with your father. But every mind has its breaking point. Every will has its price."

He gestured, and a new drone floated into her limited field of vision. It was an IT-O Interrogator, a spherical droid of malevolent design, bristling with a syringe-tipped appendage and, more ominously, a jointed, multi-tipped manipulator arm that ended in a series of gleaming, needle-fine probes.

"You will tell me the location of the hidden Rebel fortress," Vader stated, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. "You will tell me about the stolen technical readouts of this battle station. The droid will help you remember."

Its polished spherical body unfolded with soft mechanical clicks, extending delicate manipulator arms fitted with scanners, injectors, and sensory probes that glinted beneath the lights. Far beyond the ordinary flow of time, Darth Tempus observed everything through the crimson portal suspended above the chronomantic dais.

The chamber beyond appeared close enough to touch, yet it remained separated by an immeasurable gulf of centuries and possibility. He stood motionless, his crimson eyes fixed upon Leia while ancient clocks and impossible gears continued their eternal motion around him.

Every word, every hesitation, every flicker of emotion became another piece in the puzzle he had crossed history to solve. Vader regarded his prisoner in silence before speaking with measured certainty. He demanded once more that Leia reveal the location of the hidden Rebel base and explain the stolen technical plans recovered from the Tantive IV.

His voice remained calm, stripped of the anger that had nearly consumed him aboard the corvette. Whatever darkness had momentarily unsettled him there had been forced back beneath layers of discipline, leaving behind the cold, methodical interrogator feared throughout the Empire.

Leia answered with the same unwavering resolve she had displayed since her capture. Her voice carried the strain of her injuries, yet neither pain nor exhaustion softened her defiance. She denied possessing the information Vader sought and challenged the legitimacy of the Empire's actions with remarkable composure.

Every response was calculated to reveal nothing of value while projecting absolute confidence, even though she knew the odds against her had become overwhelming. The interrogation droid drifted closer. Its central optic focused upon Leia while articulated arms extended farther from its chassis.

Each ended in unfamiliar instruments whose purposes were obvious without explanation. Tiny reservoirs of translucent fluids rotated into position as diagnostic emitters washed over her in pale blue light. The machine moved without haste, its precise motions somehow more unsettling than open violence.

Leia instinctively recoiled. She pressed herself backward against the chair until there was nowhere left to retreat, her shoulders tightening as the droid hovered within arm's reach. Her breathing quickened despite every effort to master it.

She had faced blaster fire, Imperial boarding parties, and Darth Vader himself without surrendering her composure, but the silent machine before her represented something different. It possessed neither anger nor hatred. It would simply perform its function with perfect mechanical indifference.

Tempus watched the subtle change with quiet fascination. It was not surrender, nor was it panic. Leia Organa remained every bit as determined as the histories described, but for the first time since her capture he saw something profoundly human beneath the defiance.

Faced with a machine incapable of pity, negotiation, or restraint, her instincts betrayed her with the slightest retreat. She understood that courage alone could not bargain with a device built solely to inflict suffering, and that fleeting recognition interested Tempus far more than any display of fearless heroism ever could.

The portal reflected every minute expression crossing Leia's face as she measured the approaching droid, searching instinctively for weakness where none appeared to exist. Even now, surrounded by enemies and confronted with instruments designed to break prisoners more resilient than herself, she refused to abandon the hope that somewhere, somehow, an opportunity would present itself.

Tempus folded his arms across his chest. History remembered the questions. History remembered the droid. What interested him now was everything the histories had failed to record between those moments, where her pain threshold would be tested, where fear would take root, and Princess Leia Organa would begin to fracture in ways no chronicler would ever record.