Chapter Text
Rey was kneeling beside Snoke, like a captive princess beside an enthroned Hutt.
The only difference was that she was being held there purely by the Force, with Snoke having apparently tightened his grip on her body to the point that he could keep her locked rigid in position while he focused on another distraction - in this case General Hux, who'd showed up accompanied by a straight-backed engineering officer named Major Vize, to brief their master on something called the hyperwave array.
"We still don't know exactly what the damage is, or where," Vize frowned. She suspected Hux had brought him along in the hope he would distract his master's anger. "The array is forty miles long, Supreme Leader. The maintenance droids can only detect malfunctions that they know to look for, and the internal hardware might not be giving accurate readouts."
She saw Ben watching her. She was pleased she could still turn her eyes and look at him, pleased he was looking back.
She dipped her eyes. She understood now. Snoke was too powerful to confront directly. All either of them could do was roll with the punches.
Shortly before Hux's arrival, she'd gathered all her strength and will, and only managed to squirm helplessly in Snoke's grip. And she was starting to suspect that even that had been because he'd let her. In response, he'd given a flicker of amusement - and slammed her off the floor three more times. She couldn't even shout, now he'd worked out how to clench her jaw shut.
She supposed the reason she didn't feel so bad about it was because Snoke's anger meant good things had happened. The rebels had escaped, his plans had been set back.
Or perhaps she just liked being taken control of by powerful Force-users.
But she looked back at Ben, and somehow they were both smiling.
"How long will repairs take?" Snoke snarled.
"A week. At least. Maybe several months, if there are multiple points involved."
"The array doesn't just let us track rebel ships in hyperspace," Ben explained quietly. She wrinkled a frown, and realised he was communicating in a way Snoke and the others couldn't see. She smiled at that. "But it's also the only safe way we can navigate in and out of the First Order's stronghold in the Unknown Regions."
She understood that, vaguely. The Unknown Regions beyond the Outer Rim were full of shifting hyperspace anomalies that made them impossible to navigate reliably using pre-programmed jumps - a sensor that could detect hyperspace movement at long range could probably also allow them to see the shifts as they happened, and navigate around them.
But Hux was marching away. Snoke's attention was turning fully back to them.
"Get to your ship, Lord Ren. Pursue the rebels. Hunt them down. Meanwhile, I will amuse myself with the domestication of my new pet...."
"Yes, Leader," Ben nodded. But there was a new bounce to him as he straightened up from his bow, and Rey knew exactly why. She grinned, or tried to, and didn't care that the monster who now owned her knew.
"Interesting," Snoke purred. "So it appears that you might be a new way to motivate the boy."
The grip on her throat slackened. "Yes master," she gasped. She didn't care what he did to her, she decided. Elated by the crazy realisation that Snoke couldn't do anything to her that would remove her usefulness as a motivation for Ben - and that meant she would be there for him when he came back.