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Mon had considered many, many times how it would end. In more than a few of those endings, she was exactly where she was now: an ISB cell without windows, the air sharp with antiseptic, the artificial light hollowing out her eyesight, and nothing before her but the promise of pain.
What else could be expected, after the speech she’d made in the Senate, and the failure of her escape? After the laserfire took down her escort, who, despite his friends everywhere, had not survived the ruthlessness of the ISB? Her last memory of him was a stone-eyed corpse on the ground as they whisked her away into darkness with a sedative pressed to her throat.
Here she had remained for what she could only guess was a week, though the piercing light above her turned on and off at intervals of four hours or so. She did not know if a week had truly passed. Her grasp on things–not only time, but everything, it seemed–was loosening.
Aside from the pain surely to come, she was certain of very little—except what had been whispered in her ear before everything went so terribly wrong. Jedha, kyber, Erso. She was hunched on the hard pallet that passed for a bed when the door snapped open, her arms wrapped around her knees. She took in the identity of her visitor without a word, without allowing herself to register surprise.
Did it matter, when the end would all be the same?
He was dressed in Imperial white–that was no shock. He wore a black cap, a full cape, and–stars help her–it was him. Mon held herself very still.
The door slid closed behind him and he took her in, his gaze accounting for every inch of her, as if he was beginning a calculation that began and ended with her. She had not been at the mercy of that gaze for a long, long time.
“Tarkin wants you,” said Orson, finally. Krennic, she corrected herself. He stood at the entryway of her cell, leaning a shoulder casually against the metal casing, looking for all the world like he was making polite conversation at a dinner party. He tugged each black finger of his glove loose and tucked the gloves under his arm, as if he were a gentleman preparing to retire for the evening. “We can’t have that, can we?”
Mon dared to lift her eyes to meet his, blazing cold blue under the brim of his cap. “I’m surprised I haven’t been executed sooner,” she said.
Krennic smiled a sunless smile. “A summary execution would be a blessing compared to what Tarkin would do with you.”
Mon did not dissent, knowing what she knew about the grand moff.
“Have I any choices?” she said, the question more rhetorical than real. Her voice sounded thin and tired to her own ears. She leaned her head against the wall of the cell.
He walked slowly towards her. He seemed to seriously consider her question. Mon assumed it was an act. She knew what the ending to all this must be, and so did he.
“No,” he answered at last, with a rueful shake of his head. “An example must be made, after all.”
He extended a bare hand to her. She stared at it.
“Take my hand,” he ordered softly. She recognized the rigid undercurrent of command in his voice. It was familiar to her now, as it had been all those years ago, before she had learned what obedience could cost.
For a moment, Mon did not move, though she knew she must. There was nothing tender in his command, nothing generous; she knew what kind of creature he was. She had spent nearly two decades trying and failing to forget.
At last, she uncurled one arm from around her knees.
His fingers closed around hers before she had fully decided to give them, as though he had been waiting years for the gesture and had never doubted it would come. He pulled her to her feet. She took a single unsteady step. He gripped her elbow with his other hand, with the proprietary steadiness of a man taking possession of something valuable.
“Careful,” he murmured. She hated him for saying it.
“What do you want?” she asked, her lips now inches from his ear.
“An example must be made,” he said simply, guiding her toward the door. “I’m very sorry, my darling.”