"What happened to Thena?"
Ana's hands absently smoothed the wrinkles from Ren's cloak, where it sat folded on the only chair in his quarters. He was sitting on the bed, staring at the melted mask of Darth Vader with a glass of brandy—initially, this had given her the heebie-jeebies. The mask was representative of something cruel and evil, and to be in the same room with it gave her the feeling of spiders crawling up and down her arms. Seeing Ren stare at it, talk to it, had scared her beyond words. She expected the mask to start breathing and answer back. A week of this had made the action familiar to her, and now it was hardly bothersome. The longer she thought about it, past the initial shock of hearing Ren call the mask Grandfather, the more sense it made. It even explained Ren's own, marvelously pointless mask.
Sometimes she would even make snide comments at Vader, both to hide her discomfort and to attempt to ease her fears—It's just a mask—when Ren was out of the room, of course. Vader needed both sides of his grandson, and if Ana needed to be the one to provide that outsider's opinion—
"Who?"
Ana gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to kick his boots where she'd put them neatly on the floor. "The Mirialan who was with me on Coruscant. The one you used to threaten me."
Ren's dark eyes were glued to Vader's mask. He took a single, slow sip. She wished she'd had the forethought or means to poison the drink. Folding his clothes, pouring his brandy—between this and her progressing sessions with the ever-skeptical Phasma, Ana was starting to wish he'd just space her.
"I have no idea." His eyes flicked to her. "I was preoccupied with retrieving the data chip. That was my top priority." He set the glass down, dressed once again in his regulation pants and nothing else. When Ana was feeling particularly spiteful, she'd count the scars on his chest and back and imagine giving him more. "You should be more concerned about yourself. Phasma has barely progressed in the last week, and unless you show that you have knowledge of the other aspects of Teräs Käsi, you'll be disposed of soon."
"Yeah, yeah," she dismissed with a mutter. "You threaten that almost every day. It's starting to lose its punch."
Ren glared at her for a moment and then stood, and she winced on instinct. His grin showed that her reaction appealed to him, but then he strode past her to his doorway.
"Come with me," he said.
He led her down the hallways, each looking the same as the next—honestly, she'd gotten lost three times before just on her way from her quarters to Ren's—and Ren stopped before a new door which raised on its own, revealing a spacious room with a padded floor.
"Training room," he explained briefly.
"And we're here because…?" She grinned, short and quick, and watched him warily as he stepped into the room. "Don't tell me you're finally going to use me as target practice?"
Ren grunted and when she didn't follow him in, he returned to her side and gave her a shove. She stumbled on the cushioned floor. "We're going to fight, stupid girl."
Ana almost laughed. "That's not training, that's slaughter. I can't challenge you physically, Ren, and you're calling me stupid, hoo boy..."
"Teräs Käsi is not taught half-heartedly," he said. "It is not taught in parts. To know as much as you know about the meditation and the mind-blocking techniques, you have to know the fighting style."
"Don't you think," she said slowly, "that I would remember if I was some kind of combat master? Don't you think that's something that would have come in handy on the lower levels, that I would have taken advantage of that skill?"
"Perhaps your instinct will remember." He began to circle her, like a predator stalking its prey, and Ana followed him with her gaze.
"There's nothing to remember," she insisted. "Why would I lie? Wouldn't I want to seem as useful as possible to stay alive? Why would I hold back something that could keep me from getting spaced?"
He lunged at her and she leapt backward to avoid him. Surprise flickered across his features and then disappeared. "You're a quick little thing."
"Thief," she reminded him. "You're slow, you're dead."
He circled again and then struck at her—she batted his arm away. "Stop toying with me," she snapped.
Ren said nothing, advancing on her again. He threw his arm in a wide, swinging blow, and she just managed to crouch away from it, dropping to one knee as her own arm pushed his up and away. He staggered a bit and she somersaulted to his left.
"Stop it!" she said.
"You claim to know nothing else of steel hands," he murmured. He was smiling, which was quite unnerving for her. "And yet you've just done a perfect defensive stance."
"That wasn't—" She stopped. "I just dodged, it wasn't anything—"
He ignited his lightsaber at his side and the familiar, clawing fear crawled up her throat. "Think about it," he said. "Think of your grandmother's training. It wasn't just to strengthen your mind, was it?"
"I don't know, stop it—"
He came at her with the lightsaber and she tried to run, but the traitorous automatic door remained stubbornly closed. She ducked as he swung for her head, contacting with metal and sending sparks flying.
"Think carefully," he shouted at her. "What else did she teach you?"
He was poking into her mind, searching again, and he twirled the lightsaber in his grip before swinging it down on her once more, and if she wasn't so scared, if he wasn't so close, she might have thought he was graceful in that moment.
Again, again, again. He was still pushing at her mind, trying to shake something loose, and she couldn't put her walls up like this, not with the heat of his lightsaber kissing her face—
Everything slowed.
Ana fell outside of herself, watching a fair-haired slip of a girl deflect Kylo Ren's lightsaber arm with a well placed strike to his elbow. The girl then grabbed a hold of his left arm, pulled it tight behind his back, kicked in the back of one of his knees to off-balance him, and then her thin arm was locked tight around his throat. There was the rush of wind in her ears and then Ana was inside herself again, looking down at the kneeling, vulnerable man in her grip and hearing herself whisper, "Yield."
When she realized what had happened, her grip slackened and Ren pulled her over his shoulder and threw her to the ground. He pinned her there, his lightsaber hovering beside her throat, and he looked triumphant.
"You see," he said, "I told you that you knew more than you were letting on."
"What was that?" Her volume was high, mind racing; she barely noticed when he stashed his lightsaber at his hip and stood off of her. "What did you do to me? What did I just do?"
"From what I've studied," he said, sounding positively thrilled with himself. "You performed a Death Weave. A bit weak, granted, but the technique is there, I'm sure your strength will return to you."
"I don't remember learning that," she said. Her hands were shaking. "I don't remember knowing that."
"You might want to recall quickly," he said, frowning. "You'll need to teach it to Phasma. Now that we know—" His frown deepened as he watched her roll onto her side with a groan, her hands covering her face. "You could show a bit more gratitude. I'm helping you."
"Helping me?" she gasped. "You're exploiting me."
"Stupid girl," he called her again. "I'm the only reason you're alive."
She dreamed of darkness and water. There was a hand holding her beneath the surface, and the water was coldly prying apart her lips and flooding her throat. She was calm as her vision blackened at the edges, motionless as her life faded away, after all she was already dead—
The blue-veined hand vanished from the top of her head, and suddenly she was pulled from the water, from the cold, into a sweltering heat. Something thumped against her chest, something warm and soft pressed to her mouth, and she spasmed with the force of her cough. She knew this dream well, just when the air was coming back to her she'd be forced under again and again…
"She tortured you."
That wasn't a part of the dream, that voice didn't belong in her dream.
Her vision snapped into focus, revealing the dark, helmetless form of Kylo Ren, his brown eyes scrutinizing her. She was waterlogged and desperate and so angry and she surged forward with a roar.
"GET OUT!"
Then she was awake, panting, alone in her cramped room. She flung herself out of the bed, slamming her palm on the pad beside the door. He wasn't in the room, he wasn't in the hall. He had done this, reached into her dream, from his own room. She closed the door again, opening her shield to project her rage at him.
"How dare he," she growled, pacing. "Who does he think he is, prying into my dream, peeping like a little boy at a girl's slumber party, I hope you can hear me you pathetic bastard."
Then he was in her doorway like he had been there all along, grabbing her by the arm like he always did and pulling her down the hallway while she hissed curses at him. She hated that he wasn't wearing the mask, that he could look so much like a normal man while he thundered into her deepest most vulnerable places. She hated the look in his eyes, like she was low, hated the way he sized her up, hated that the only emotions he ever tapped into were rage and scorn.
"You hate many things, don't you, little bird?" he said, and another spike of anger shot through her core that he could see into her hazy mind even when she only wanted to stew within herself. "Upset because I clipped your wings?"
"I hate you," she said.
He stopped so suddenly that she stumbled into his broad back. A door in front of him opened and she recognized the padded floor. No, no, no…
"Good," he said simply. "Use that." And he threw her into the training room like a rag doll, a dangerous ease to his strength. "You have to hate me. You have to hate everyone like me."
"I'm not fighting," she said, shaking her head as he stalked into the room after her. She made a sprint for the door before it closed, slamming her fists against the metal when she didn't make it. "I don't know anything, why can't you let it go?"
"Because it's clear that you do." His black night clothes were loose and casual, and he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as he spoke. "I've seen the torture, your grandmother's...training methods, so perhaps the information is a bit repressed. But it's there."
"I won't be able to teach it," she tried next, pressing her back flat to the door as if it would provide some sort of protection. "I don't know how I did it and I am not torturing Phasma or your soldiers—"
"Even if you can't teach it, your knowledge of it is useful." The edges of his mouth curved up in what could almost have been a smile if it were any other man. "You're proving to be an even better attendant than I could have imagined. A bit of finessing and you might even be able to keep the scavenger off my back."
Scavenger?
"I'll discuss it with the Supreme Leader in the morning," he said. "If you prove yourself, you may even be granted some comforts around here."
"Comforts," she repeated numbly.
"A nicer room…" He was walking toward her, his moves predatory, and she felt along the wall trying to equalize the distance between them. "A warmer bed. Maybe even some authority over those Stormtroopers you seem to loathe." How had she let him get so close to her? He grasped her chin in his hand, jerking her gaze up to meet his. "You must never cease to hate me. Hate something. Hatred is power."
"I am not a Sith," she said, and his grip bruised her face.
"No," he relented. "But you recognize the words. They are no less true just because you are not Force-sensitive." He let go of her face and dragged his fingers lightly along her jawline, dropping down to her collarbone. His touch sent revulsion, quick and hot, through her. "Think on this seriously, girl. You want to survive, don't you?"
That's what it always came down to, didn't it? Everything she did was to survive. Adapt or die. Hadn't that always been true?
"I hate you," she whispered again.
He grinned then like he knew he'd won, and he leaned close to her ear until his heat was stifling. "Good girl."
A/N: Unfortunately there is little concrete "canon" information about the steel hands fighting style. I did manage to find a "fanon" database (a forum connected to a role-playing guild), with extremely detailed fan-information about the fighting style, so I wrote my description of the Death Weave based on information from Miriya Starwind on The Assassin's Holocron. I will attempt to give the link to the Holocron for you all to read if you're interested. I am using it for inspiration, not direct quotes from the forum, but I wanted to give credit nonetheless.
Link: mobile/forum/viewthread/m/10567466/id/5530108-assassins-holocron
