Should have, but she didn't. This fact is noted too by the Inquisitor in their report.

When the authorization to bring Leia Organa in for questioning is granted, therefore, it's two Inquisitors, not just one, that show up at her office in the Senate. They have a squad of troopers and full access to the security systems, and two more Inquisitors with their own troopers covering exit routes.

The Alderaan Senator's office door is not so much "knocked on" as it is "knocked off its hinges".

The Empire would know if she wasn't there, of course. Would almost certainly notice a convincing body double - there's reasons to send Inquisitors beyond countering Force powers. Would likely notice clever manipulation of video feeds. 

So Senator Leia Organa sits behind her desk like nothing is wrong, her staff having already gone home for the day while she works as late as usual. She stands when the door flies in, expression stern. "What is the meaning of this?" she demands. 

The Inquisitors' uniforms are designed to obfuscate the body as much as possible and the masks are blank and faceless. It might then be difficult to tell which one of one of them says, voice harsh and buzzing through the filters, "Leia Organa, you are being detained under suspicion of treason. Place your hands on your head and turn to face the wall."

She does as ordered, demanding still - "What exact accusations do I face?"

"We don't have to tell you that, your highness." That's definitely mocking sarcasm. Also the sound of shockcuffs warming up.

"I have rights as a sitting Senator."

She doesn't move. 

Snrk. "That's adorable." Leia's arms are roughly pulled down and cuffed behind her back. "Come on, princess, let's go."

She keeps her chin high as they march her out, her stride stately and unhurried, like they're simply escorting her. "The body of the Senate will not stand for such treatment of one of their own," she warns, sternly. 

"And maybe if we answered to the Senate, that'd be worrying."

She goes quiet.

Yeah, that's right. Not so tough once the illusion of your flimsiplast 'laws' is stripped away, huh? They'll soon see how she faces up to real power.

She remembers to complain, with oddly well-tailored comments, whenever they're in earshot of anyone else. (Especially anyone else who might discover an uncomfortable rebel sentiment at witnessing this.)

Her guards are doing their best to scare off anyone inclined to stop and observe. And there are enough of them that most people don't get very close.

She can protest her innocence both very loudly and very efficiently! 

News of her arrest will make the gossip circles then, at least, even if it's likely to get the usually ruthless suppression treatment with the actual news media.

The gossip circles are her goal right now - the Senators wondering who would stand for them if they're led off on trumped up charges. The Senators who will try to lodge a performative objection, and get nowhere or worse, who will question how much power they really have. The Senators who will look at the erosion of the few rights they cling to as elites, they alone in a galaxy stripped of all dignity, and will wonder if, maybe, just maybe, they've made a mistake in collaborating with the Empire. 

The aides Leia has carefully cultivated fond and admiring impressions with. Any who remember what Alderaan stands for.

Any who might weaken for just a moment, just long enough for treasonous sentiment to drip into their ear. 

That doesn't show in her face, pisture, or muted presence in the Force as she's led to whatever awaits accused traitors. 

In this case, that would be a speeder to the Inquisitorial headquarters. The ride doesn't take long; that building, like the Imperial palace, are in the same district as the Senate tower. Before she's let out of the speeder, a bag is thrown over her head, blocking her view. As she's bundled along, she may infer that her final destination is fairly deeply nested- the route involves two separate turbolifts.

The bag doesn't do much to her ability to walk confidently, with measured steps (nor to track where she's going).

Then maybe she'll be able to find her way back out when they reach their destination and the bag is removed from her head. Said destination being a small cell, into which she is summarily shoved after the cuffs are removed as well.

The door slams shut behind her.

She surveys her cell like a queen surveying her castle, then turns, and sits on the bench, and waits.

The cell contains:
-A bench set into the wall that has a slightly softer surface than the rest of the floor and walls
-An overhead light which buzzes quietly to itself in an irregular pattern and flickers twice in the first thirty seconds of her occupancy
-A pop-out toilet
-And that's it

They seem content to let her sit and stew for the next six hours.

After hour five she gets up to knock on the door.

This has no discernible effect beyond making a little noise.

She frowns at it, then settles back again to wait. 

Six hours, thirty-seven minutes, and eighteen seconds after she was locked in the cell, the door opens again. Two Inquisitors (maybe the same ones?) recuff her hands, rebag her head, and escort her to an interrogation room. Leia is sat down into a heavy steel chair that's bolted to the floor and her cuffs are attached to a table of similar construction in front of her. The wall she faces is mirrored silver, and she can examine her own reflection if she pleases. On the table is a steaming bowl of what smells uncannily like her favorite soup, with a spoon already in it. The Inquisitors leave the room, shutting the door behind them.

She doesn't suppose she can reach the spoon (or her mouth), can she? 

She has enough slack that she can raise her hands easily to her mouth. Getting the spoon, well, if she stretches as far as she can, straining the chains and her arms to their utmost length-

She can just barely not reach the bowl, fingers swiping through the air without brushing the sides.

She measures that, carefully, then methodically tests the rest of her range of motion. 

(She wouldn't eat the soup anyways. If she could reach it, it'd probably be poisoned. But, useful information to know about what game they're playing.)

After it becomes clear that she's not going to try to get the soup closer to her, the Inquisitors return. They take turns between being the one standing in front of her asking questions and the one pacing around the room behind her. Their questions are a mix of things about her public record as Senator, her personal history, her travels and "charitable outreach organizations" and odd bits of trivia or galactic history or philosophy just to keep her on her toes.

Her answers are wholly appropriate for a well-educated Senator from a Core world, who sincerely believes she's here inappropriately, who's patient at times and hot-headed at others, convinced in the rightness of her laws and naively believing in the protection offered to her by her place of privilege. A Senator with small things to hide, but nothing worse than some petty skimming off this or that budget for personal reasons - far more restrained than many of her colleagues, just a minor weakness for expensive jewelry and pretty artwork. Someone with a genuine desire to help others, who would have been rare in the Republic Senate, and is rarer yet in the Imperial Senate - but whose definition of help isn't too divorced from the party line. Close enough she can and often does swallow her disagreements out of practicality. And Alderaan has a tradition of charitable firebrands for Senators - she's honestly relatively restrained.

A Senator whose patience, being only human, is starting to fray with the inane questions. 

Perhaps she's getting hungry. Maybe she'd like some soup.

She would prefer to be released. 

Not going to happen. The questioning continues for another hour and a half.

When she's returned to her cell, there's ration bar waiting for her on the floor, already unwrapped.

She ignores it, instead stretching out on the bench and quickly falling asleep.

(Her shields may be very good, but Inquisitor HQ isn't exactly the most serene environment. Her dreams will be... troubled, at the least.)

She'd somehow rolled onto her front at some point, which is... Good. 

It helps hide the tears she wakes up with, though her eyes are still damnably red, and her cheeks still a little wet when she lifts her face. 

She will want to hide that weakness quickly, as today's agenda is... less subtle than yesterday's. Involving less subtle aggravation and temptations and a lot more pain.

By the time anyone comes to get her - she's calm and collected, like this is nothing more than a minor inconvenience. No less routine than a traffic stop.

And she doesn't break character once through the torture. Doesn't reach for the Force, even to comfort herself. Even to sustain herself. She's strong, and doesn't break easily - but she still acts wholly normal. 

An impressive level of composure.

But the Inquisitor who initially noticed something off about her is still convinced that Leia is Force-sensitive, even though that haven't been able to squeeze out any proof. They're sure enough, in fact, to escalate this.

The Emperor's time is valuable, but so is this target. They'll take the punishment if they turn out to be wrong.

Not, of course, that any of this is communicated to Leia.

And pretty soon after the Emperor confirms -

Senator Organa looks up, gaze distant and nervous, and then she stands - paces briefly in the room - 

And then turns to the door, flexes her wrists - and shoves -

The door tears free from the wall with a metal screech and goes flying down the hallway. She's out immediately after it, running with enhanced - albeit clumsy - speed for the exit. 

The guards on this level are droids. Droids have the advantage of faster reflex times than organic beings, not needing to press a physical button to trigger the alarm, blaster rifles and other weaponry integrated into their chassis, not getting bored of guard duty, and not being vulnerable to mind tricks. One can also, if one is willing to budget in the charging stations, keep more droids at the ready than are actually "on-duty".

Disadvantages of droids include: it is much easier to telekinetically toss a droid around than an organic being of equivalent size.

Much easier to slam them into walls hard enough they break. 

She keeps moving, blasting through any doors - or on two occasions walls - in her way -

But not for the exit. Instead, Leia's feet take her nearly unerringly to the generator and the small reactor core freeing the headquarters and prison from the tenuous unreliability of Coruscant's power grid. 

'You sure about this?'

'It will work,' whispers that soft voice in her head. 'You've already been noticed. You need to make the problem bigger than you.'

Unhappy frown as she blasts her way into a turbolift shaft and jumps down. (This is... Not something she's very practiced at. She slightly runs into the wall.) 'And we can't spare more resources.'

'No. Maybe once you're out, if the disruption is big enough...'

Ugh. 'Got it.'

She punches her way into a lower hallway, sprints down that - and reaches the generator room. 

A flash of insight prompts her to jerk back right before she can blast this door open too, and a humming blood-red blur flashes across the space where her arm would have been.

The Inquisitor the lightsaber belongs to arrives very quickly after that, lightsabers being effective tools for removing walls as well as arms, and the blade snaps back into their hand. They level it menacingly at Leia.

...Force shove? 

Slapped aside by a gesture with their free hand, then they begin advancing on her, blade slashing with lethal intent.

- Yeah nope she's got nothing. 'A little help?'

She gets a vague sense of something warm enveloping her -

- And then a tight fist wraps around the Inquisitor's throat, cutting off all blood flow to the brain. 

There's a palpable burst of shock through the Force and the barrage of attacks hitches-

-then stops entirely as the Inquisitor falls, insensate.

Her grip in the Force doesn't let up.

And Leia goes back to getting through the door. (Quickly. There were other Inquisitors chasing her - she was pretty barely keeping ahead of them at points.)

Urgency is definitely warranted. The longer she takes, the more time they have to catch up.

She'd prepared on her way down, as much as she could - collected parts from droids, mentally planned things out. The biggest problem honestly is going to be not blowing herself up, too, but... She can see the shape of this, how the force of the blast should travel up and out...

She isn't fast enough to avoid the next enemy catching up, but, well. She has Fulcrum, even beyond the dying body of their comrade potentially giving them pause. 

She works quickly to jerry-rig a delayed ignition, then stands and spins and hopes Fulcrum has kept her way clear -

Fulcrum has kept her way clear, but from the way the second body is draped right over the first, it doesn't look like they stopped at all before they were forced to.

Not her problem anymore - she's too busy rushing to the nearest turbolift. A quick gesture blasts the wall open just enough she can jump through, free falling down into the depths of the headquarters as the world above her rips itself apart.

Hopefully she has a plan for the turbolift car rising rapidly up the shaft to meet her.

- Is it occupied?

Seems to be!

She slows herself down enough and gets her feet under her so she lands on it with a minor jolt, instead of slamming into it, and starts trying to figure out a way off it.

Well, she could try blasting through the wall, that's a good trick. Problem is she's moving too fast to then get out through the hole...

Her problem with the hole she came in through. 

Meanwhile - a certain ghost is reaching out with the Force to find out who's in that turbolift.

Maybe an Inquisitor? Or, no, as she gets closer...

Someone more familiar than that.

- Fuck - 

She moves to Leia's side. 'That's - ' she catches herself for a stuttering moment - 'the Empress. Get clear. I can't - '

Fuck is right.

'I love you,' she sends, immediately, because she's learned already that sometimes people don't come back from missions, and you can't leave things unsaid. 'I'll do my best.'

Right now...

She crouches - her relative motion is currently that of the turbolift - and launches herself up with the Force, aiming to leap into the broken levels above, closer to the grey sky she can see a growing glimpse of. 

Her ascent is aided by the roof of the car exploding beneath her. Fortunately for Leia, this gives her just enough of a boost to stick the landing on the roof before the turbolift's erstwhile passenger appears.

She's trying not to broadcast this to Leia because she doesn't want to be a distraction - she needs to help Leia survive this, she needs to focus - 

She needs to try - 

'Elesse STOP,' rips into the Force around her once-teacher, a wounded howl. 'Please stop - haven't you destroyed enough of what I love - '

Leia wastes no time in fleeing for the edge of the roof! 

The Emperor stands where she lands, rather than pursuing. A Force push, much more targeted than what Leia's efforts can produce, trips her up.

"Stand to face me, girl."

She stands. "Somehow I doubt you'll let me go if I do."

"One's death should be faced with dignity nonetheless, don't you think?"

"There is no dignity in death; any dignity we may have is in our choices in life."