Work Text:
In the time between Vader's visits, in the long stretches of silence and terror-boredom, a woman comes to visit Leia, too.
She's imagining things, of course. Most likely it's whatever Vader is using on her -- mere pain wouldn't be effective enough for a prisoner such as herself. They know that by now; there are too many stories of men and women of the Rebellion who've simply died when it's pain alone. There will be psychotropic drugs mixed in, something to leave her confused, irrational, more likely to let things slip --
The woman smiles, and sits down, and Leia knows that it's her mother.
No, Breha Organa was her mother, was the woman who held her when she cried and the first woman who smiled at her, even if she's not the woman who bore her.
This woman's eyes are large and dark, and when she smiles it's the most lovely thing in the universe, wide and strong. She doesn't speak, and she glitters at the edges, but they know each other.
You're so strong, my darling girl, my baby, Leia dreams, and wakes up to an empty room.
There's hardly room to turn around in the cell, but Leia manages to pace all the same, remembering stretches and breathing exercises, or half-remembering them; she's neglected them since she joined the Senate. Sometimes she's too weak to do them properly; starvation, of course, is a basic technique.
Leia dreams the woman when she can't move anymore. She walks long halls and holds a baby, and shakes her head when Leia asks if that's -- and so it's not, the eyes aren't Leia's, and the hair is too light. The woman is more real in dreams than in the hallucinations (what else could they be, after all). Her voice is beautiful there, though Leia can't remember the sound of it when she wakes.
She flickers there, between the screaming, and Leia gasps, unaware by now of what she does. Dimly, she sees that Vader turns, and then everything's silent again. Sleep is upon her too quickly for her to consider this, and by the time a commotion outside wakes her and a stormtrooper in ill-fitting armor flails through the door, she's forgotten it altogether.