Consequences

Coruscant.

Somewhere deep within the Imperial Palace...

At the centre of a dimly lit room, a figure hung suspended in the pale blue light of a containment field. While the magnetic cuffs that encircled their wrists and ankles gave them the appearance of standing to attention, their head hung forward, bowed either in exhaustion or from lack of consciousness. Sanya Tagge didn’t care which. At the touch of a button, she sent a near lethal surge of electricity into the prisoner’s cuffs.

“Wake up, you wretch.”

She awoke to every nerve on fire, to a pain that seemed to overtake her very self and drowned out her existence until only the agony remained. Charlotte screamed. Raw, primal, and unrestrained.

It was only as the pain subsided, leaving her with the grotesque after tingle of the electricity coursing through her that the rebel regained enough sense of self to wonder if she should be ashamed of the sound that had left her, and just as quickly decided that she wasn't. She wasn't supposed to be alive, after all. She was already dead. All that was left was a shell clinging to life because it hadn't the good sense to realize that its purpose was never going to be fulfilled, that while it wasn't an utter and complete failure, the hard stop had come far too short of the intended destination.

As much as she'd given up, cashed in all debts and chits, and gone for broke - she'd survived when all she had wanted was a gruesome end. Which means Charlotte Tur'enne was somehow, despite everything, still very much herself. And yet... Not if her fiery gaze that slowly focused on the women who had demanded her consciousness was anything to go by.

"Wretch?" She croaked out from chapped lips and bloodied teeth. "That's all you got? For your brother's killer?"

The stifled laugh turned into a cough far too quickly. "Kriff... That's sad."

"You rebels... always love the sound of your own voices."

Electric light flickered across Sanya’s emotionless expression as she pressed the button again and watched Charlotte’s body reflexively stiffen and shudder. When the air began to smell of something burning, she relented.

Charlotte wished it was possible to laugh and scream at all the same time, to successfully allow her pain to taunt her captor. She only managed the latter, though. Her lips parted in wheezing gasps for air when the immediate pain stopped but the lingering agony afterwards drew on. The rebel had experienced hell at the hands of captors before, survived through it even when she believed her spirit broken. Now though? Charlotte didn't want to survive. Each time her body was pushed to the brink she willed it to tip over the edge into the nothingness beyond.

Was that her goal then? To antagonize the Imperial into making this all end? It was inevitable, after all. They wouldn't let her live, not after what she had done, what she had tried to do. She'd scanned the room as best as she could when they had hauled her in, searching for signs that her torture was going to be broadcast to the edges of the galaxy as a warning to any others who refused to accept the peace between Alliance and Empire. It had been too rushed, though, pain coming far too fast and the cursed containment field cast far too bright a light to see properly beyond. If Charlotte had made the decision, though, she would have kept this secreted away. No need to make new and accidental martyrs to a cause that was supposed to be over.

Her eyes cracked open and looked back at the Imperial woman. No. They wouldn't make that mistake. Again. She wanted to reach out with her curse to see if the other was just as cold to her core as Charlotte was. At least then she'd know how much trouble she was really in for and how slow of a death she had to look forward to.

"Y-" her voice failed her. She forced a swallow that came dry and made the bitter taste in her mouth all the worse. "Yep."

There was the laugh. Or at least it sounded in her head, the effect in reality was more a strangled ragged sound.

"N-not a-as much as we l-like fraking with you guys, though."

It took too much effort and her head fell forward again as her body shook with the broken laughter again.