A/N: This is about a month or two after the Knights of Ren have met Snoke for the first time, which is shown in Knights of Ruin. It is six years before the events of The Force Awakens. Backstory for the Happily Ever After chapter 'Snoke Tonesetter'.

Major Armitage Hux had been called from his duties without explanation, told to report to the Eclipse for an interview with the recently elevated head of the First Order, a being called Snoke. His assumed title, 'Leader', was an odd one. The generic First Order rank for a leader was 'commander', used freely as a sign of moderate respect to anyone you had reason to believe was higher-ranked than yourself, but for some reason you didn't want to use their actual rank (or more likely, didn't know it and couldn't see their uniform, such as communication through audio transmission).

'Leader' was a component of the Army's 'squad leader' rank and the Navy had their own equivalent among TIE pilots. The technicians had project leaders, whose importance varied with the scale of the project. But no one had a 'leader' rank by itself. It was a lowly rank for one of his status to use. Why not grand admiral? Or even emperor, since that seemed more along the lines of what he'd been styling himself as in what little of the news and gossip Hux had cared to listen to about the matter.

But his opinions on the titles assumed by his betters were of no interest to anyone. Hux kept them to himself, arrived when and where he'd been told to go, and presented himself before Leader Snoke in dress uniform, on bent knee. Since he was not a direct report to the 'leader', he need not render a full and formal oath. Snoke, on the other hand, was not in uniform, dress or not. He seemed to be in loungewear. Hux managed not to so much as blink at that, but he certainly wondered about it.

"Sir," Hux said.

Snoke stared at him where he knelt for some long seconds before speaking. "Rise," he said finally. Hux stood. Without any other preamble, Snoke said, "Grand Admiral Rae Sloane informed me that you were the last legacy holder of the emperor's will, personally charged with carrying out his Contingency Plan by Gallius Rax, acting as the direct agent of Sheev Palpatine." He paused. "Is this true?"

"Grand Admiral Sloane was similarly charged with that duty."

"She is no longer with us." Snoke made a dismissive gesture with one clawed hand.

Now Hux blinked. "Sir, you speak of her as though she is dead." This unsettled him. He'd known Rae Sloane since he was a child. She'd stood up for him against his father – the first and only one to ever do such a thing. She'd won him surcease from his father's physical abuse for a few precious years of his youth. Even after, it had been Armitage's impression that Brendol had held back out of fear word would get to her that he'd returned to his ways. She'd been Armitage's protector and when he was older, his mentor. She'd told him who he could trust. Together with Thrawn, they'd carried the burden of the Emperor's last wishes. Hux had known she had left suddenly on a mission a few months prior, but that was all.

"I speak of her as though the operation of the First Order has been left in our hands. And so it has." Snoke looked away, eyes on the wall to Hux's left. While a brief glance would not have been notable, this one continued for several seconds. Hux followed the gaze, wondering if there was something there he was supposed to look at. Snoke turned back to him. "Do I bore you, Major Hux?"

"No sir." He made a last glance around the room, brows slightly furrowed as he tried to work out why Snoke would think he was bored. He was concerned. Shaken by the possibility Rae was gone forever and by Snoke's lack of a meaningful answer in that regard. But there was no way he wasn't attentive as required.

"Then do not let your attention … stray."

Hux turned his eyes forward, chin raised. So that was it – he had broken formation, let his leader's conduct and unexpected implication lure him into incorrect posture. But his leader's conduct was none of his business, as was, technically, Sloane's fate. If Snoke wanted him to look at the wall, he would have said something. Hux felt the irritating bite of unwarranted humiliation at being called on it, as though he was unable to perform the basic task of standing at attention. It was insulting.

He could, and did, correct the physical side. But the mental was harder. Gears were furiously turning in his head at the blatant hypocrisy. It was Snoke who appeared bored by him, or at least distracted. But Snoke gave no explanation for the obvious contradiction. And it wasn't, really, a contradiction. Snoke was in charge. He could act as he wished. Hux's job was to obey. It was always to obey – not to question, not to think for himself. That was what his father had said over and over: just carry out the tasks given to him. Snoke was clearly aware of this. The question was, why wasn't Hux?

(Or rather, why hadn't he done it? Was he being intentionally insubordinate?)

Without an explanation, Hux was left trying to work out his superior's motivations. Was this a test? Was it a physical disability of Snoke's? (If so, was he weak? Had Hux just signaled disrespect by calling attention to it?) Were the rumors about Snoke's powers with the Force true? Had he seen something over there? Or was it just some quirk and it was rude to bring it up?

Now Hux was committing the very sin he had been accused of. He was thinking of things he was not allowed to think of. At least, not here or now. This was, truly, insubordination. With an effort, he drew his full attention to Snoke as much as he would have to one of his father's lectures. Snoke was saying nothing, just staring at him with a patient, accusing expression. Maybe a little disgusted and disappointed. Wishing to deflect from his obvious lapse, Hux asked solicitously, "How may I be of assistance, Leader Snoke?"

"You may start by not speaking out of turn."

That stung with a new wash of white-hot shame. He had, indeed, spoken out of turn. He was reminded that he had no authority, permission, or familiarity that allowed him to address one such as Snoke. Hux was there to be addressed, to answer direct questions, and perform as directed at the pleasure of his commanding officer. It reminded him a great deal of his father.

Snoke asked, "I had been told you were well trained …?"

Another stab of insecurity. His early training in particular had been haphazard, as had been clear to his instructors when he was finally enrolled in formal education at the age of fourteen or perhaps fifteen. Until then, his education had been whatever his father chose to pass on and whatever he'd been able to sneak past the ogre.

Brendol considered most education to be useless busy work compiled by those too indolent or cowardly to actually act. On ships, it had been easier for Hux to steal time on simulation units and in the archives, learning the things his father told him were irrelevant. But then his father had moved them planetside as he set up the academy that would oversee the organized training of officers, and the different schools the First Order required for workers and troopers.

Still not a teenager, Hux was put in charge of groups of students, supposed to be a role model for them while he still had large gaps in his own knowledge. The next ten years was a fury of cramming as he sought to be as good as he was required to be, as he was supposed to be. Yet the others had always known, finding the chinks in his armor with uncanny precision, laughing at him not knowing common things that every school-child was taught.

Or maybe Snoke was criticizing his military discipline. Perhaps he'd gone soft lately. Since Brendol had died, Armitage had been in charge of the educational programs. Surrounded by children, subadults, and teachers, he still worked hard to present an exemplary appearance, something for the younger ones to strive for. But had he lost discipline in the process? Was he what his father had always accused him of – soft, useless, oversensitive? Had he failed in his duty without his father present to bring him to heel?

It was galling to be seen through so easily. His flaws must be apparent for all. No wonder he'd been forgotten downworld, excluded from the rest of the Order and getting the attention only of a few.

Snoke went on after a long enough pause for Hux to consider his failings. "I have also been told that you have spent considerable time on a hobby interest outside of your assigned duties."

Hux did his best to look politely interested. He was dying inside.

"Thrawn told me about the megaweapon."

It was still not a question. So Hux could explain nothing. There was no defense to proffer in any case. Yes, he'd spent time on research that had nothing to do with his assignment. How was this different from the rest of his life, with nearly all of it spent in contravention of one rule or another? He'd used Order resources, which meant by definition that he had mis-used them. He'd even taken the time and attention of some of the top people in the organization to tell them about his ideas. It sounded so childish in Snoke's mouth, as though 'megaweapon' was some euphemism for 'toy'.

"Perhaps if you had not distracted them, they would still be with us."

Hux almost blurted out a question about what had happened to Thrawn, but he managed to swallow it down before it left his lips. Sloane was gone. Thrawn was gone. His two primary allies. Two powerful people who had given him advice, hope, a role in the Order. In their absence, 'Leader' Snoke had somehow deposed the High Command. All the rumors Hux had turned a deaf ear to came storming back to his awareness. He should have listened. But even if he had, what would he have done? What could he do … still? He looked at Snoke with an impertinent glare.

"On your knees."

Hux hesitated, torn between propriety (he'd always said he'd die rather than be at anyone's mercy like that), a desire to ask for clarification (surely Snoke hadn't asked him to disgrace himself in such a manner), and the need to obey. He had, after all, shown the proper respect immediately upon entering the room. Why shame him like this, with no one else in the room witness it? Somewhere in his soul, there was a bit of bitter, snarling defiance. Because of it, he intentionally misunderstood the order and went to one knee. That was when he found out what Force lightning was like.

Beyond the hot, coursing electricity was a deep, spiritual enervation, like his body was being shot through with poison alongside the pain. He didn't know how he ended up on the floor, but he was there when he became sensible. How long had he been out? His extremities were twitching. His gut was tight. Every sense strained in alertness. Snoke was closer than he had been before, peering down at him with an amused expression.

"Am I done with you, Major Hux?" His voice sounded sweet and pleased. He raised one hand languidly, the same way he had before. Primal instinct made Hux flinch.

He swallowed back bile and rage. He knew what that question meant – just how far did his disobedience run? Was he unwilling to follow orders intelligently? If that was the case, then yes, Snoke was done with him and Hux was done with himself. He'd be gone. Dead. With no more than a batting of Snoke's eye and maybe a slight jab forward with that extended hand. Hux pulled himself up to both knees as he'd been directed. A pregnant pause filled the air until Hux's rattled brain realized he'd been asked a direct question. "No sir."

"Your acquiescence proves you are aware of your deficiency. For your sake, let us hope this is a correctable problem." Snoke swayed forward a few more steps until he towered over Hux, as gigantic in comparison as Brendol ever was. Hux felt his heart rate increase and his breathing shallow out. He hated this reaction. Intellectually, he knew it was unhelpful. Also intellectually, he knew a half dozen better responses – fighting back, relaxing and letting it happen, staying calm, saying something placating or politic. But his body didn't care what his rational side had to say. His jaw ached.

Snoke inhaled slowly and raised his head, eyes heavy-lidded. Hux felt something slither through him, across his skin, playing the range of tastes and smells like keys of a piano, a weird, crisply modulating sound. He saw stars. He made a strangled, choked noise to find something, someone, in his body just as simple as that. Snoke stood apart from him, yet Hux was no longer his own. The expression on Snoke's face left no doubt of how he experienced the violation.

"Hands and knees," Snoke whispered. But it sounded too loud, like it should be echoing, like his eardrums should ache from the sound of it. It was inside his head, he realized. He went to all fours reluctantly, unable to see anything but Snoke's slippers from here. "Shut your eyes. You don't need them."

They shut as though of their own volition. A part of Hux wanted to scream. His body was not performing as he directed it and for once it wasn't an unthinking instinct or a nervous tremor. He couldn't get his eyes to open. It was like a nightmare, like he'd somehow, waking, wandered into a nightmare. His throat made another choked noise.

Something wormed its way into his mind, parting his thoughts and sliding its slimy form up against him in a palpable way. His face hidden from Snoke, Hux bared his teeth and tried to fight it off. Pressure bloomed across the front of his skull like a migraine. You cannot resist me. It was Snoke's voice. Inside him. He recoiled from it. That intellectual part of him noted that actually, he could resist Snoke. It might be ineffective, but it was possible. And obviously, it annoyed Snoke. Snoke hit him again for the insubordination. For even thinking about being insubordinate. The pain was so staggering that his arms shook and his eyeballs hurt. He gagged on the sound he wanted to make.

A switch flipped inside his head. When he could focus again, when he could put together enough thoughts to count as really thinking, he knew he was okay. In pain? Yes. Responding to that pain? Yes. But it was like an autonomous system was managing that reaction and the tiny, thinking part of himself had separated itself for protection. It hunkered down, unharmed, unchanged, letting the pain and violation and Snoke's slippers exist elsewhere. Armitage Hux, himself, was fine. That was kind of surprising.

He wasn't sure what Snoke felt about it. He couldn't see the creature's face, and despite feeling like most of his brain was blotted out by a foreign presence, he had no sense of what Snoke was actually doing or thinking. He just knew what Snoke did and that was to plunder every part of Hux's memory, his senses, and his bodily awareness.

It was systematic, harrowing, and brutally uncaring, alternately numb and agonizing. It was all Hux could do to not crumple entirely to the floor. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to be doing other than enduring this, so enduring it was what he did. Snoke tugged things out of his being like interesting items out of drawers, showing them to him before tossing them aside dismissively.

Pettiness, vanity, diligence, contempt, resentment, intelligence, bravery, dedication, idealism, cunning, ambition, obstinance, determination, ruthlessness, callousness, sadism … Snoke showed him pettiness again.

You see this?

Yes, I saw that. Sir. He had no idea how to properly show respect to someone who was tearing your mind apart, or if that was even required. He had not been allowed to show disrespect to his father even while being beaten by him, so he supposed deference was the correct behavior.

Snoke went back to it. He was taking an inventory, Hux realized.

Egotistical, inflexible, fanatical. Vicious. Ambition – Snoke showed this to Hux for a second time as well. Hux acknowledged it, as before, but made no other response. Merciless. … Bastard.

Mongrel of poor breeding, Snoke told him. A defect in your father's choice of copulation partners. Cast-off genetic trash.

Some part of Hux wondered why Snoke cared about human bloodlines. But then again, his father cared about the lineage of his lycabirds. Others obsessed about the breeding of dogs or fathiers or even slaves. Perhaps that was it and he was no more than a failed prize animal contaminating the gene pool that Snoke was toying with.

Hux wasn't hiding, exactly, during this. He could not, after all. But he was subdued, both in the sense of being genuinely unable to retaliate effectively and, due to that, in the sense of staying quiet and trying not to draw attention to himself. Although that sense of his self did not change during Snoke's examination, it was still galling and humiliating to go through it. It was like being summarily stripped naked, put through one's paces on command, making an involuntary confession, and being quizzed on your greatest failings.

Snoke pulled up Hux's memory of standing outside his father's bacta tank on the Absolution, watching the man die. Hux's breath caught in his throat. He lifted one hand, thinking to physically recoil, but he had not been ordered to move. He had no permission. His secrets were spilling out of him like water, into the hands of an alien commander. Hux had never had a sense so strong of not belonging to himself. He wasn't choosing to do this; it was just happening. This was the commanding officer of the entire First Order. He put his hand back down.

post/173625508855/the-effects-of-the-bite-of-a-parnassos-beetle-so

Snoke drew up detail after detail of that memory, and Hux had plenty of them. It had made a deep impression. He had told the med techs that his father was a 'survival of the fittest' person who believed in personal strength and not in artificial aids. It was true enough, but Brendol would have never meant for that philosophy to be applied to himself. Armitage stayed with him the whole time to make sure Brendol didn't receive any but the most basic treatment. It felt like putting his boot across Brendol's throat and slowly watching the life drain out of him.

He'd stood there in a welter of emotions as his father stared at him from inside the tank, barely conscious. Hux had been aware for the first time in long, numb years that he had emotions and was not some mechanical thing that followed his father's orders and exhibited erratic, malfunctional misbehavior with alarming frequency.

Snoke paused in the process of intensifying the memory of Brendol's death and instead dug into what Hux perceived as misbehavior. It was those unexplained moments when he'd disobeyed. His deviations were things like reading books, telling a well-placed lie to get a boy in trouble whom his father had favored too much, smashing his own datapad into pieces, and licking his own blood. They were deeply personal. Shameful. And now, known.

Then cavalierly discarded as unimportant. He could feel Snoke's disdain, both for the aberrance and Hux's childish guilt about it. It was irrelevant. Snoke's disregard left Hux feeling hollowed out – the things he'd hidden for years being seen as so trivial. Not even worth an eye-roll or a snort of disgust.

Snoke's attention went back to Brendol's death. Then Phasma's involvement. He methodically ran down every trace of criminal culpability, forced Hux to recall the evening he'd sat in the star room with a steaming cup of tea, watching them twinkle as he mentally catalogued the various laws and rules he was breaking in his father's undoing. Having worked out the consequences, Armitage had weighed them carefully and decided it was worth it. Snoke seemed to dwell on that.

Then it was on to other things. His father throwing a cupcake someone had given Armitage onto the floor and ordering him to eat it if he was such a baby as to still crave sweets. Beating him so hard Armitage soiled himself involuntarily, then rubbing his face in it. Breaking his door down to get to him, and then his furniture that he tried to hide behind, and telling Armitage to learn to fix things if he didn't want it to stay that way. Backhanding him time after time after he came back from the mission to Lothal, his nose bloodied, and his father wiping his hand off on the arm of Hux's uniform when it was dirtied by blood and snot. Something about that last – being so casually used as a cleaning rag, had gone all through him in a way that being told to stand and accept his punishment had not.

Vanity, Snoke showed him. He'd killed his father because he was vain and prideful. Full of himself. Falsely thinking he was his own man now that he'd seen proper military action and actually, for the first time in his life, had something legitimate in his past. Hux could not deny it. It seemed so trivial, so … petty. He was false all the way through and he'd murdered his father because of it, because deep down he was small and mean. Snoke showed him vanity again for a third time, this time with a sneer.

It is as I am, Hux thought sourly. He was not proud, but neither could he find it within himself to feel sorry for it. He'd been born this way or made this way, but either way – no one had asked him his opinion, nor did he feel he'd had any free will in the process. For anyone to criticize him meant they hadn't understood him in the least. He was merely an instrument. He'd always been only an instrument. All except those stupid outbursts that Snoke had already ruled as unworthy of attention. And, of course, deciding he was done with his father, which Snoke seemed to think had been done for laughable reasons.

Snoke rifled through the events of Lothal. Hux had killed two people, quietly, in the night. Then to his school days. He'd blinded a boy who'd lost a fight with Hux and two companions and then promised to tell on them. He'd helped kill three other children a few years earlier who had threatened and attempted to sexually assault him. He'd only been personally responsible for one of the deaths. He'd carved on that one after death, but found it unsatisfying. The bodies were never found, lost into the shallow seas of Lanson, the ones that teamed with predatory fish.

Snoke went further back, painfully yanking out memories that were equally painful to remember – beating a girl's face in, being sat on by a larger boy until he passed out from lack of oxygen, biting a man's hand, kicking someone (he didn't even remember who or why) in the ribs and feeling them break, blood on his hands, brains on his shirt, ozone and the vacuum of space and the whiff of engine grease and behind it all, the burning, suffocating dusty sands of Jakku and the sodden, chemical odor of the rebreathers they had to wear.

It was exhausting to remember. It felt like he'd been fighting all his life, for as long as he could remember. Sometimes he won, sometimes he did not. His earliest opponent had been his father. And his last. The six years or so following his death had not featured a single murder or even serious assault. Hux had had a few disagreements with deans on the Down planets and some tense confrontations with high-ranked parents over their children's standings, but it had been different without Brendol in his life. Calmer. Quieter. Enough time to pry into the secrets of the Jedi and try to find a way to bring ultimate victory to the Order.

I see now, Snoke told him. Your fascination with this pet project of yours stems from awareness of your inability to prevent the deaths of your fellows at the hands of the Rebel guerillas on Lothal. You are vain and prideful to a laughable degree if you think you can single-handedly develop a weapon capable of wiping out all of your enemies in a single blow. This is no more than petty, vengeful overcompensation for your own acknowledged weakness and deficiency.

Snoke withdrew his mental presence with a shake. He gave an uninterested grunt and shuffled back over to his seat, reclining on it heavily. If he said anything, Hux did not hear it. He was hoisted off the floor by someone he hadn't even known was in the room. How long had that grueling session gone on? Had he passed out? Who was this person ferrying him out of the leader's presence? Was he being taken to be killed?

"Wait." It was Snoke's voice. Hux was pivoted by the person holding him. He got his feet under him and his chin up, regaining his bearings somewhat. He would stand unassisted if this oaf would let go of him. Snoke said, "Your duties at the academy are hereby terminated."

Hux swallowed. He felt a cold sweat break out across his skin and he pressed his lips together. His fists curled until his nails bit into his palms. The only position he'd held as an adult, the only adult job where he'd contributed and been productive to society aside from his single, brief deployment to Lothal, was over in the span of a few words from a creature he didn't know and had never met before today. Was he to be terminated as well? Demoted? Reprogrammed somehow? Would he even be allowed to return to his rooms and gather his things? The possibility of immediate death flitted through his mind again. Deficient. Weak.

"You have two days to submit to me a report showing the feasibility of your idea." Snoke's next words were indecipherable in tone – were they sarcastic? Genuine? Bored? Mocking? Amused? "I am very interested in it. You are dismissed."

And that was it. No option to speak, to ask questions, to know anything. What was he to do for the next two days? Where would he sleep? What tools was he allowed to access to prepare this report? What would happen if he failed?

The door whisked open and he stumbled as it shut behind him. The cessation of Snoke's oppressive presence was so palpable that he staggered and caught himself on the opposite wall. At the end of the hall, two officers saw him. They stopped, looked at each other, and walked away silently. Hux collected himself and his hat, then brushed himself off slowly. It seemed wrong that his body was untouched after all those memories of blood.

He felt broken and delicate. He had two days.