Inner Strength

Title Inner Strength
Rating PG-13

It was the silence she couldn't cope with. The silence which sent her screaming into the corner of the tiny cell trying to blot it out with noise - any noise. She was vaguely aware there were cams watching her every move but she couldn't bring herself to care about that rightnow. The only thing she cared about was the fact that, for the first time she could remember, she was alone inside her head.

That sheer isolation was what kept her prisoner, this cell could never otherwise have held her and in her more lucid moments she wondered if Iceheart knew that. Probably not she reasoned, that woman was too institutionalised, too entrenched in the belief that the universe was a strictly regimented place, to accept the possibility that there were some things outwith her control or understanding. Some things that even Ysanne Isard could not explain.

Mara was one of those things. An anomaly. As far as Iceheart was concerned Mara was nothing more than a favoured courtier who needed to be shut away from the corridors of power before she could produce any hitherto unknown ‘heir'. Not that she ever could or would. Palpatine had been a father to her - she laughed bitterly as she realized that, if anything *she* was logically next in line of succession - but of course, she was always a secret, a weapon hidden in plain sight. She knew that was the sole reason she had not been interrogated yet - and she knew that was just as well. The barriers she had in place against interrogation were strong, but without the Emperor there... she didn't know just how strong.

Given her reaction right now she doubted she would last long, her strength had always come from him - without him she didn't even know who she was inside, let alone what she was capable of.

Without him to encourage, order and berate her she had no sense of the world outside. All she wanted to do was curl up and cling to the memories she held deep within herself but even those were inaccessible to her now. Every time she reached for them all she could sense were empty spaces. Yawning caverns of nothing. Silence. Her screams filled the air.