
The utter silence of the chamber was equal parts maddening and a relief. Roshia could not bear to hear the ambient sounds of suffering around her any longer, but the silence left her imprisoned within her thoughts. This time, she did not have the comforts of a bacta tank to lull her into a more dream-like state, where there was neither suffering nor pleasure.
Time was meaningless. Roshia had given up even attempting to speculate on how much time had already passed. It did not matter anymore; nothing would change even if she knew. Many things dominated her thoughts, and few, if any, did her any good. She thought of her Jedi master, she thought of her Jedi peers, she thought of how to escape, she wished to wake from this neverending nightmare. Going over every moment she could have done differently, how she could have changed the course of everything, and the regret of not doing so, even if it wasn’t even realistically feasible.
She paced around the sanctum, circling the tree for who knows how long. She wished she had her lightsabers to destroy it and tear it apart as she would the Dark Lord who forced her there. She cursed him and his followers in every way she could, in rage and weeping sadness. Roshia knew his name, and she’d had more than enough time to think back on her lessons and readings at the Jedi Temple she called home. Part of those thoughts was even attempting to find ways to escape from the sanctum and, hopefully, the ship itself. Nothing worked; not even her force powers could pry anything apart, and there were no wires or significant loose parts.
Unfortunately for Roshia, her rogue thoughts were not her only battle there.
The operation done to her left deep scars that not even Roshia herself realized the full extent of. Submersion within the bacta tank had helped heal the physical wounds so well that it took The Dark Lord pressing his spiked saber hilt against her now artificial rib cage to realize what had been done to her. Yet, it took a much slower realization for Roshia to figure out that her left lung was too gone and replaced.
Her body had not fully adjusted to it. Her breathing felt imbalanced, painful even, and her remaining lung felt heavily strained. Roshia couldn’t maintain a proper rhythm to her breathing, and each breath often felt insufficient. She wondered if it had something to do with slightly different near-human anatomy or the quality of the prosthetic itself, likely a combination of both.
When she had exhausted herself enough that she’d lay down in an attempt to sleep, she’d jolt awake as her breath stopped mid-slumber. If it weren’t for that, then reliving her operation would stir her awake. Fragmented memories of the experience manifesting as night terrors, she’d feel the sawing of her damaged ribs, the coldness of her chest, and the indescribable feeling of her very insides being manipulated, a deep, crushing pressure within her chest that Roshia couldn’t comprehend the cause of. The sight of bloody, gloved hands over her and the tools they used. Moments she wished to forget forcibly resurfaced in her mind.
Sometimes, even if she were awake, she’d still feel it all. It came and went with no set intervals or time, and every time it happened, Roshia could do nothing but weep and beg for it to all end.
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