After the loss of Starkiller Base, Phasma permitted her troopers some liberties, and she permitted herself to silently gloat.
She oversaw formations and checked in on the hanger, switching some shifts where she saw troopers tiring and spurring others to greater discipline. When things were arranged to her liking, she found herself in a hall just outside the hanger, under the racks of TIE fighters, looking at the black docking cords and seething.
It wasn't much to gloat about survival when she tore through a trash compactor to do it, but she did, with the help of the quakes and bombing. She supposed she should thank the Resistance, too, for undoing their own man's work. Hux was disappointed, and that was why Phasma felt a bubble of happiness in her throat. She should have an edge now, in their quiet war of priorities. Her troops would have other things to do than prepare a weapon, even if it was an effective weapon and had destroyed Hux's other favorite enemy, the Senate.
The First Order had been demoralized, but not destroyed; not by a long shot. Hux's strategy had failed, and she and Ren had failed in their own ways, but she didn't dwell on that.
Ren would, though.
Phasma kept marching. She would do another round, check on her hardware. The Resistance threw the strangest things at people - hotshot pilots with more than their share of luck, the girl with the sword, the perfect traitor.
The thought of the fight made her think of Ren, though. Most of the blood had been cleaned off of him by the time she caught a glimpse of him in the medical bay. She had heard some yelling, something about no bacta.
There had been something complicated between them, once: what had been Hux and Ren and Phasma became a tetchy game of Phasma and Ren one day at a formal dinner, a pastiche of the Empire's grandiosity. Hux had been flush with his ideas to go around, go through, go mad toward the treaty, and Phasma was bored and curious.
She didn't quite remember the details. She remembered Ren was irritable, and she clamped both of his arms against his body with the thought of just sending him a message, and then the anger didn't fade but there was something else in the way he didn't move away. They found their way to the more comfortable halls near the crew quarters, bickering and staring, and they found their way to her room.
The first kiss was ugly and slack, surprisingly emotionless. She drew away while his eyes widened, his hands hesitating on her shoulders.
She said, "You have done this before, have you?"
He looked so crestfallen that she made an attempt to comfort him with a chaste pat on the head, but he leaned into it and her fingers tangled in his hair, and there was nothing else to do but try to teach him.
By the time he was adequate enough to regain some semblance of a mood his lips were puffed and sore, but the whole process had become something less scientific and more pleasantly desperate. It was past the peak of the night, and she shoved him toward her bed. He met her eyes, an unexpectedly firm stare after how slack his movements had been.
"I don't necessarily want more than this," she said, and he quickly shook his head in agreement.
This surprised her so much that she drew back. "I was never interested in that," she said as an emphasis, and he began to look bored. Kissed her on the forehead, which she could have taken as infuriatingly patronizing if gray tears - of relief, or just overwhelming emotion - hadn't actually started to track down his face.
After that he slept badly, and she clamped down on flailing arms again and forced him still.
She wondered whether he was alright, after that fight. She wondered who the girl had been. She had already identified the two people who had been with FN-2187; Han Solo and Chewbacca, heroes of the Rebellion, newcomers to the Resistance. Her plans for them were already forming, set just aside of the larger plans she had for troop movements.
Ren was waiting for her at her door, unmasked, miserable. Both his presence and the scar made her draw back. His shoulders were shaking, and the scar was a livid river of whorled and bubbled skin from the back of his jaw to his hairline.
She had dealt with a particular sort of grief in war before. Ren would be concerned about his face, but there would be more, too, and the idea of more with him made her hesitate. She was confident, not stupid, and he still had the lightsaber.
"You saw the Resistance fighters," he said, as cold and level as if he was under the mask.
"I presumed that you would be able to defend the base, even without the shield," she said. She let the words hang, but he knew he was being mocked as well as being told the truth, and withdrew slightly before rallying and edging toward her door.
Was it possible the kriffing crazy sorcerer was looking for comfort?
She palmed the door open, followed him inside. Took her helmet off just as the door closed, because she had been going to in the hall anyway, if their conversation had gone that way. Her face was a secret to most of her troops because most of them, if they got a burn as bad as Ren's, had died.
She let him look at her scars for a short time, reminding him. He hadn't reacted the last time, and didn't this time either, except for maybe a glance at the floor and a scowl that wrinkled the corners of his mouth.
"It wasn't my fault," he hissed. Looked up again, pointed a finger at her in a gesture that could rip out her throat, but she was used to being threatened.
Instead of letting herself be forced back she reached forward, traced her armored fingers across his neck instead. He flinched and shut his eyes, seem to come to some sort of decision - although she couldn't tell if it was in pleasure or if it was some slight, comfortable twitch away because of her proximity to the scar.
You left your sector weak," she said. "You left yourself open."
"No!" He shouted, and opened his eyes, and there was certainly some force pressing in on her, some claustrophobic sense that her muscles had almost been frozen. It faded as he kept looking at her, as he moved her hand away from him in a twist that threatened her wrist ever so slightly, and kneaded the heel. "I knew exactly what I needed to do. I finished the work."
"But you still don't have control." She was goading him, but she had begun to see how serious this was to him. He was dangerous when he was trying to repress something. She slipped her hand out of his grip.
"I thought that I did," he said thickly. "She surprised me. And I thought that she would see …"
He touched her hip. Phasma spun him, slammed him against the door by his shoulders, felt the slightest brush of that freezing, electric immobility.
"I have everything I need," he roared suddenly, then bared his teeth at her. She went to kiss the side of his lips and found him wresting control back from her, nicking her bottom lip with his teeth. That kiss was deeper, more coordinated at least than their first, although his skin was feverish and must hurt him.
He worked her away from the door until she slammed him back and went for his throat. He hooked his elbow around the back of her neck, so that her cheek pressed against his wiry arm, and she felt his whole body move as she pressed him against the metal.
As it turned out, he had been honest with her about what he did and did not want: they didn't even undress completely after that, although his collar was torn and his bare hands kneaded her stomach under her combat mesh shirt by the time she was looking down at him on her bed, the blankets bunched and tangled. He already told her that he took a painkiller for the burn scar, but parts of it had opened, leaving flecks of blood and clear, yellow beads of plasma on his face.
"I will be greater now," he said after he had calmed down and wiped the tears off blotchy, blushing, broken skin, while she nuzzled against his neck, tracking the soft beats in the veins under her teeth. With a quickness that almost burned her, he slipped one hand onto her back and twisted it into a fist. She could feel the knuckles, and the tension in his chest, and pushed her forehead against his jaw in a half-hearted effort to get him to lay back and relax. She had become bored by his resistance, wanted to sleep, wanted to turn off the very white strip lights.
He said, "I have been shown new abilities." His touch flattened out; he returned to stroking her back with his fingertips, and she lay her head on his shoulder as a reward for her comfort. She didn't care about his mysteries, had already been briefed and seen firsthand the range of the Force. Best to set attack dogs on Force-users - vornskrs or troopers either - and bring the big guns in after, while the wizards were distracted with theatricality.
Ren liked to hear himself talk, so she leaned up and away from him instead, and he followed like a good attack dog - clutched at her shoulder and almost sent both of them leaning off the edge of the narrow bed, until they rolled over and he tucked his legs in around hers and slammed her head back with a kiss she supposed he thought was impressively aggressive. It wasn't, but he had figured out a bit more of what he was doing, and when she clutched at the back of his head and sighed it wasn't entirely planned either.
"Go turn the lights off," she said through the sigh, through the kiss, and the room went dark.