Wet Work

“You need to shower more. And you scratch your...equipment...when you think no one's looking.”

OK, so yeah, he was getting a little bit ripe, and yeah, if you don't shower for long enough, your “equipment” is going to start to itch. He should wait until he had an audience to scratch? Whatever, fine, message received, loud and clear. Atton dug around under his bunk, looking for his soap and towel.

Truth be told, Atton didn't like taking showers. Hated them in fact. Not like Mical who would probably spend forty-five minutes every day up to his nose in a bubble-bath, given the option. Probably finish it up with a pedicure.

Let's just get this over then, just get in, soap, rinse, get out. Make it fast. At least no one could bitch at him for using up all the hot water.

He flipped on the water and flinched at the hissing splat of the spray hitting the wall. It was still warm, too, which made his stomach roll over just a little bit. Pala – she was the one who used up all the hot water and nobody said a thing. Jedi princess. He didn't care, she could have it, all of it, boil herself alive if it made her happy. He twisted the lever to all the way to Cold, took a deep breath, and stepped in.

Atton and the new guy wheeled the Jedi into the shower room on a gurney. She was bound and gagged with a bite block that held her mouth open but didn't let her talk, which was a nasty little twist. The guy he worked with before liked to spit into it.

No blindfold for her, though. Let her see what was coming.

“You ever try this technique?” Atton asked. “It's been around pretty much forever.”

“Nah, I heard it's real nasty, though.”

“It is. Whoever thought it up must have been one sick twitch.” Training a new assistant was always a pain in the ass, but this guy seemed to catch on quick, and if the previous one had been stupid enough to walk face-first into a blaster turret, Atton wasn't going to cry for him.

“Okay, so you lower the gurney here—no, no, just the head end, you keep the feet up.” The new guy lifted his end back into place while Atton lowered the front down a notch and positioned the Jedi under the nozzle. “Now you take your rag--” pretty soon the Jedi would piss herself every time she saw that rag, she didn't know it yet, but she would, “--and just lay it over the face like this. The rag makes the water go in easier. Most people will cover the whole face, but you don't have to, just the nose and mouth. I like to leave the eyes uncovered.”

“Like not blindfolding 'em?”

“Exactly. And then you just turn on the water.” Atton flipped on the water, and the new guy jumped back with a yelp.

“Dammit! That's cold!”

“Hang on, hang on...” He adjusted the water so it was comfortably warm. “That better?”

“Yeah, but why we gotta do this in here like this?” This guy had better not turn out to be a whiner. How did he expect to break a Jedi when he was crying like a punk over a getting a little wet? Interrogation was wet work and a little warm water in your face was the best of it.

“Because she's a Jedi. Some ordinary Republic grunt, you just pour a pitcher of water over their face, it fills up their mouth and nose, done deal. The reflex hits, they panic and suck it all in, right into the lungs. But Jedi have all these tricks, see, so you gotta keep the water going until they wear out.” Atton resisted the urge to look down at her. Had they ever told her about this one back at the Academy? Trained her against it? Well, guess we'll find out.

“Tricks?” OK, so maybe the new guy didn't catch on that fast after all.

“Yeah, they can use the Force to kind of keep the water out,” Atton explained, “or sometimes just use muscle control, but they can only do that for so long. And they can hold their breath a real long time. So I just started bringing them in here. Got tired of screwing around with pitcher after pitcher of water, and a hose in the interrogation room is a bad idea with some of the droids. They're supposed to be waterproof, but a lot of things are supposed to be a lot of things around here, right? Also, when it's time to bust out the electricals, she's already soaked.”

The new guy stared at the Jedi in fascination, but Atton didn't look. You didn't look at them, looking was for people and they weren't people. You didn't look at them until they were almost broken, and then when you did, they were so damn grateful to have another human being look them in the eye, it was just pathetic. He could feel the vibration of her trembling through the frame of the gurney, which told him all he needed to know. Her nose, mouth, throat, sinuses, everything was full of water and she was fighting it and she was going to lose.

“How long can they hold their breath?” the new guy asked.

“Ten, fifteen minutes, easy.” Atton started organizing his equipment for the next round. The other nice thing about the shower room was that it made clean-up a breeze. Just wash it all down the drain.

“Fifteen minutes? No way!”

“Oh yeah. Tell you what—I bet you two hundred credits that she goes more than fifteen minutes before she has to take a breath.”

“You're on!”

“It's a deal, then. Sixteen gets me two hundred. I'll tell you what, just to show you what a gracious winner I am, I'll buy you a shot of juma with your own money when we're done.” He held out his hand and the guy took it. Sucker.

“Hey, did you know,” Atton added, “that people drown faster in hot water than they do in cold? True fact.”

“Good to know,” said the new guy with a laugh, “I'll be sure to take cold showers from now on.”

When Atton turned off the water and stepped out of the stall, there was still soap in his hair, his teeth were chattering hard enough to break his jaw, and his fingernails were going blue. But he'd gone almost five minutes before he'd had to take a breath.