Rey woke suddenly the next morning, conscious of impending danger, with a flashing ripple of adrenalin washing through her body. Her eyes blinked open and she realised she'd nodded off while propped up against the pillows, reading one of the heavier Jedi texts. She couldn't move. She had slipped downwards on the bed; the text book was now jammed against her throat and she couldn't raise her head or lift her chest to push it off. The edge of the book was pressing against her windpipe, restricting her breathing and the air rattled in her chest as she struggled to inhale enough oxygen to keep her heart beating. She attempted to inflate her chest enough to shift the weight of the book, but it was wedged into the mattress and it was going nowhere. She took a few, shallower breaths, tried with all her might to move any muscle in her body, anything at all, ending up blinking in frustration, with tears dripping unchecked from her eyes.

It was at that point she realised she was going to die.

Her body was still slipping down the bed, sliding over the pillows in infinitesimal stages, pressing her throat closer and closer against the book. She was going to be choked to death by the Jedi, who would succeed in killing her where the Sith had failed.

She attempted to call out in her mind for Leia, for Luke, for anyone who might be listening, but she had no idea what she was doing and she soon gave up. She reached out for Ben, not caring about where help came from, as long as it came, but the bond had never opened at any convenient time and he didn't appear. She was going to die here, alone in her bed, unable to do anything to prevent it. She had never been more terrified in her life.

Then the door opened, and the General's worried face appeared, a face that became even more worried as she grasped what was happening. The book was yanked away from underneath Rey's chin and she sucked in a cool, lifegiving breath as Leia lifted her upright and pushed her back against the pillows.

'This can't go on, Rey,' she said firmly.

Rey attempted to open her mouth, but it wouldn't move, and she realised with a sickening punch to the stomach that she'd lost her ability to speak. Leia waited for a few moments before she grasped the problem with a deep frown. 'Blink twice for yes, once for no. Do you understand?'

Rey blinked twice.

'I've spoken to the doctors you saw, and they can't help. Luke is gone, and there are no other Jedi around to ask. I take it you've found nothing in those books my brother gave you?'

Rey blinked once.

'Then I think you should go to Ben.' She sat on the end of the bed, took Rey's hand in hers. 'I don't suggest that lightly. I think there's a significant risk involved. You'll be taken prisoner by the First Order. You may be tortured. You may even be killed. My guess is he'll keep you alive while he tries to turn you to the dark side, or interrogates you for information, which will give you a chance to break the connection between you and escape, but I may be wrong. He may shoot first and ask questions later. But you have a choice between taking that risk and staying here with us, where you will most certainly die, flat on your back, here in bed. It's up to you. I will respect your decision either way.'

Rey thought about it for a second, but the terror was still sloshing around her veins and her desire to escape the slow, helpless death of which she'd just had a taste overrode any other fears.

'Do you want to stay with the Resistance?' asked the General.

Rey blinked once.

'Do you want me to contact the First Order?'

She blinked twice.

Leia reached out for a pad immediately, typing in a complex pattern without a pause. 'So many years and I still remember,' she mused, before glancing over with an explanation. 'I'm calling Ben's personal code with mine, if he doesn't answer we'll use the formal route.'

There was silence on the line for some time, and then the click of connection although there was no picture, just a black screen.

Leia said confidently into the quiet. 'Rey is dying, Ben. She needs you.'

The delay was long enough that Rey thought he wasn't going to answer but finally his voice grated, hostile and harsh, 'I don't care.'

Leia tutted. 'Never let your feelings cloud your judgement. I taught you better than that. Rey is a tactical asset.'

'She isn't an asset to me.' His voice was low, hoarse almost, as if he was dragging the words out over knife blades, ripping them on the way.

'She's a member of the Resistance leadership. She's privy to all our secrets.'

'The Resistance are an irrelevance to me.' The effort behind his words was palpable.

'She would turn to the dark side if she were approached in the right way. She has almost no defence against it, you must have felt that.' Without looking, the older woman reached behind her and gripped Rey's hand, giving the lie to her words.

'She will not turn.' His voice was starting to hurt Rey's ears, such was the torment in it.

'She needs a teacher.'

'I don't want her.'

If she could have spoken Rey would have told him just how mutual that feeling was, but Leia had other ideas.

'Very well, then she will die. Take care.' Rey couldn't tell if the last words were a request or a threat.

The General reached out to disconnect the call, but before it was ended he blurted, 'I want the books. I'll take the girl if I must, but I want the Jedi books. And the lightsaber, I want that too.'

Rey blinked once for no, but Leia wasn't listening. 'Very well. I will leave them all in a suitable location and send you the co-ordinates.'

She cut the connection and then faced Rey, grinning. 'He never was any good at negotiation. If he really didn't want you he'd have walked away, not come back for a better deal. Let's pack, shall we?'

Watching the older woman poke around in her belongings selecting what to take and what to leave without consultation, Rey felt a little uneasy. Leia seemed to be enjoying this too much, smiling as she prepared to send Rey off to almost certain death.

Rose and Finn were called and together, the two of them manhandled Rey into the hover chair, which had been fitted with a harness to keep her upright. Before Rey was ready the Falcon had landed on a sparsely forested moon, and she was deposited on a track in the middle of a field, surrounded by scrubby bush, saying goodbye to the only family she could remember. Finn gave her a hug, said something indistinct into her shoulder and then moved away, wiping his eyes. Rose patted her hand and wished her luck.

Leia grasped her shoulders, looked deep into her eyes. 'Don't trust him,' she said. 'Love him if you must, but don't trust him.'

The ship took off and they were gone, leaving Rey alone, incapacitated, at the mercy of the elements, or the First Order, whichever should attack her first. Her heart, still unconstrained by the paralysis that had crippled the rest of her body raced away in her chest. Her breathing was unsteady, and she tried to slow it down, attempting to master the fear that swirled through her guts. She was dependent on a man who had said he didn't want her and had threatened her life on more than one occasion; whatever he chose to do to her, she wouldn't be able to stop him.

The shrill scream of a ship entering the atmosphere and decelerating far too fast split the wasteland morning, but it landed behind her, and Rey couldn't turn her head to see. She waited for the paralysis to lift, readied herself to fight with feet and hands, elbows, teeth and whatever else might be available as the regular tramp of feet got closer and then stopped, just out of her eyeline.

There was a long silence, then the unmistakeable click of a trigger and the world went black.

Flat on his back in sickbay, he felt her presence the minute her transport touched down in the hangar. The smile which had stretched his cheeks since he'd cut the call with his mother relaxed from a rictus grin into something more genuine. He'd played the old woman beautifully – Hux had not yet managed to break Poe Dameron, but in the end his capitulation had been unnecessary, because Leia had called him up out of nowhere and offered him the one thing he wanted on a plate. Or in a hover chair, if the reports from his shiny new Admiral were to be believed. He'd even got the books and the lightsaber, and all the while his mother had thought she was manipulating him.

He was off the bed and out of the door as quickly as his new, fully operational, pain free body would move, striding down the corridor to his bedroom flanked by the Praetorian Guard, unconcerned by his sorry state of dress. He was back, and now things were going to change. He cleaned himself up in the fresher, donned a new set of clothes and headed for the interrogation suite.

He joined Hux, who was impassively staring through a two-way screen which blocked out the noise of Dameron's screams. The man's resistance really was quite impressive and Kylo could tell from the records shown down the right-hand side of the display that Hux had tried nearly all of the most common torture techniques. It was extracted fingernails and the iron maiden up next – Hux was very conservative about this sort of thing.

Kylo folded his arms, still finding it impossible to wipe the smirk off his face. 'Would you like me to show you how it's done?' he asked kindly.

Hux shrugged. 'Feeling better, Supreme Leader?'

'I'm fighting fit, General.' He patted Hux on the shoulder because he simply couldn't resist it.

Dameron straightened the minute Kylo entered the room, recovering enough composure to spit on the floor. 'I'll never tell you where Rey is,' he hissed. 'Torture me all you want, I won't tell you.'

Kylo heard himself humming as he prepared to pulverise Dameron's mind. 'I know exactly where she is,' he replied. 'Two cells down on the right. Now I want the rest of the Resistance.' He held out a hand. 'Where are the rebels right now?'

Dameron didn't stand a chance and he knew it, but he kept talking anyway. 'I know what you're after and you're sick. She doesn't want you, she turned you down. You can't kidnap and torture her into loving you. Take no for an answer.'

Kylo pursed his lips, digging for around for a little more detail. 'You misunderstand. I'm not going to torture her. I'm just going to kill her.' He turned back to Hux, still listening through the screen. 'The rebels are on Chandrila.'

Hux's voice crackled through the speaker. 'Again? Are you sure?'

Kylo shrugged. 'They think that since we've searched there already we won't bother going back. Send someone to Chandrila to wipe them out, General.'

'And him?' Hux asked.

Kylo considered the man sagging in the interrogation chair. 'He was supposed to find a new base for the Resistance, and he failed. He was supposed to bring back new ships and weapons and he couldn't do that either. He's no use to anyone. Kill him.'

Dameron stilled, a strange kind of bravery squaring his chin, and his eyes flashed defiance. 'If you kill me, she'll never forgive you.'

Kylo nodded, as if convinced. 'You have a point. I should keep you alive. She likes you. I might be able to use you against her. What do you think she'll do for me if I promise to stop you screaming? Kneel down? Open her mouth? Swallow?'

Dameron made a commendable effort to break his bonds, but Kylo leaned very close and whispered directly into his ear so no one else could hear. 'You shouldn't have kissed her.' He turned on his heel.

'You're a monster,' Dameron yelled at him.

He dismissed that with a wave. 'I know.'

Torture didn't have to be physical, Kylo thought, breezing past Hux and heading into the corridor. That was where so many people got it wrong. For a man like Dameron, with a certain tolerance for physical torment, a far more effective strategy was to let him believe that one of his friends would be punished in his place. Kylo was willing to bet that if left alone for a few days, the next time the Resistance fighter saw anyone approaching him threatening pain he'd be so keen to save Rey from being hurt in his stead that he'd spill his guts. There was nothing that Kylo wanted from him, but it gave him a warm feeling of satisfaction to know he'd broken the other man, not for any reason, but just because he could. That thought put a slight downer on his mood – he sounded just like Snoke.

Two cells down on the right he forgot all about his old master, and Hux, Dameron and the Resistance, the First Order and the Sith because there was Rey, in the same room as him for the first time since they'd fought side by side and he'd asked her to share his life.

She was snoring.

She'd been strapped into a hover chair, a neck brace holding her head upright and a patch on her arm feeding the sedatives which were keeping her unconscious into her bloodstream. Seeing her made him giddy, and he could already taste the sweet pleasure of the revenge he was going to take on his tongue – she would regret the day she'd turned him down.

A string of drool stretched down her chin, splashes marking her top. Briefly, he considered keeping her in this state, taking time out of every day to come down here and stare at her drugged vulnerability, but he knew that was only a hopeless dream. If the Force bond was going to go the way he was expecting, it would become quite inconvenient to drag around an unconscious woman in a chair – far better that she was docile and compliant and walking by herself.

She was in love with him, and he had some very detailed plans about how exactly to use that against her.

As a first step, she was going to have to come out of that chair, and deciding against letting anyone else touch her, he released the straps around her neck, her waist and the one stretching just above her breasts that held her back rigid. She sagged forward and he caught her, cradling her limp body against his chest as he laid her out on the low platform that was the only furniture in the room. There was hair all over her face and he smoothed it away gently, brushing her cheek in the process.

Her eyes fluttered open at his touch, warm, deep brown eyes that smiled a welcome at him. Her lips formed a single word - 'Kylo' - and her hand lifted, covering his and pressing his palm to her cheek.

'I love you,' she murmured, her voice a soft whisper and the sudden sound of his heartbeat thudding in his ears drowned it out. The expression in her eyes changed, she caught her lower lip between her teeth, still staring up at him. Her fingers latched around his hand and, with a gentle pressure, she pulled it down, sliding his palm over her chin, running it over the smooth column of her throat, over her shoulder, the bump of her collarbone, pausing there for a second and she said, 'Touch me, Kylo.'

Her hand tugged his downwards until he had her breast in his fingers and he fell forward onto his knees with a thump, losing himself in her eyes as his grasp tightened on the soft mound beneath the fabric of her top. He stopped breathing, heard the whimper she made when he thumbed her nipple, taut and proud. His body was hot for her, his trousers too tight around the swelling flesh.

She broke his gaze and her free hand snaked out, fingertips searching for the sudden bulge of his erection. When she said, 'Touch me, Kylo,' again, her voice was low and husky, and the pull of her fingers dragging his hand over her stomach was more insistent.

He couldn't stop watching it, the joined jumble of hands that pressed between her legs and began to rock. She was warm down there, warm and damp and her palm pushed his fingers tight against her cunt and she wriggled, crying out with the friction. He could feel himself hard and he thrust his groin against the press of her free hand, reached down to open his fly.

Then stopped, smacked himself in the middle of his forehead with one hand and jerked away.

Rey snored on, regardless, eyes closed, unconscious of the man lusting over her defenceless form. Kylo cursed Snoke, and the bond, and himself and most of all Rey, for being drugged and having such an effect on him that he was fantasising about her being awake. He was going to have to control this.

The attraction he felt was Snoke's doing – left alone he had no residual feelings for her whatsoever, but the minute he got too close his body developed a will of its own. He stood, breathed deeply a few times, let the tension in his loins fade, the heat of his face dissipate and then he went back outside and visited the guard station at the entrance to the prison block.

'I want her in a cage,' he demanded. 'The new prisoner - she needs to be in a cage. With bars. And no door. No one goes in or out. No one touches her. She only speaks to me. See to it.'

The lieutenant in charge looked at him for a little too long. 'Bars sir? I'm not sure we have any bars.'

'Then go to Level 16 and get someone to make you a proper prison.'

He stomped away, cursing the incompetence of his staff. If she was behind bars she wouldn't be close enough to reach him, and he wouldn't be tempted to touch her. For now, anyway. He'd worry about tomorrow when it came.