A/N: I have discovered recently that the galactic standard for a cycle (a day) is four six-hour shifts. I have all along divided up the First Order's time into three eight-hour shifts. I'll be sticking with that as an unintended difference. Shift one starts at galactic standard time of eight AM. Shift two at four PM. Shift three at midnight. The usual work schedule is that you have a work shift, an off shift, and then a sleep shift. Emergency protocols and active combat puts everyone automatically to double work shifts with an allocation of stims.

Working two shifts on a regular basis is considered bizarre behavior. Usually no one will stop you, but even in the First Order, they can't require you to do it outside of emergency or combat. Those who willingly work two shifts do so because they have no life, they're workaholics, are especially driven, or all three. Other than the Starkiller project, no one in the First Order was ever able to keep entire teams on that schedule (and still be productive at it) for long periods of time.

"Who did this?" Snoke's voice was soft, but Hux had heard that tone too often not to know what it meant. Even if he'd heard it from Brendol, not Snoke, not until now. It was not good. He was looking for a target, winding himself up. There was a beating coming and Hux knew it.

What was he even asking, though? "Wh- I- I did." Hux had a moment's hesitation before changing his mind about what to say. It didn't matter what Snoke meant. He didn't want the creature's attention on anyone but himself. His team – Hux's engineering team – had been hastily assembled for Snoke's unscheduled visit to Starkiller. If that meant Hux had to wave a flag a flag in front of the rancor's face to keep him distracted from them, then he would.

"You did not," Snoke told him in an unimpressed aside. He looked past him at the score or so of assembled engineers, most of whom looked concerned and perplexed. A few were worried. Cheskar looked terrified, because he was the only one among them who'd witnessed Snoke's temper before. The others had been told, but it was a thing that was difficult to understand until you were directly effected by it. Snoke asked, "Who removed these crystals from in situ? Who contaminated them with their essence? Who touched them with their bare hands?" Snoke's voice raised with each question.

They all had. Hux knew this, too. Both of the surface teams had gone down to the cave when it was clear how large a void the excavator had broken into. They'd explored it with lights, laughing at the novelty of it as a break from months of tedium. It was a dry cave and the ground was safe enough to traverse. There was a little falling and sliding involved but after being trapped in a hab module working two shifts a day for months, no one cared. They'd gone a little stir-crazy. It was understandable. The smattering of crystals they'd found had been a treasure passed from hand to hand as they admired them and speculated about what they might fetch in the Republic.

No one had ever told them (or Hux) that you shouldn't just pick kyber up and look at it. It was extraordinarily stable. They already knew there was nothing toxic in the cave unless you started eating the porous stone laced with mineral deposits. There was no reason to wear protective gear or even gloves. There was something appealing about touching the crystals – Hux had felt it – enough to make him understand why Jedi insisted the stones were psychically active.

It hadn't occurred to him that Snoke believed in that idiocy. It should have. He knew that was a mistake now.

"Anything they did was at my command," Hux said strongly, raising his voice right back at Snoke. "I am in charge. I take full responsibility. Anything you'd do to them should fall on me!"

If a nerf broke free from the pen – you didn't shoot the nerf and panic the rest of the herd. You didn't shoot it at all. You just drove it back in the pen. You fixed the fence. And you went on your way. He would get no useful work out of his team if they were too frightened to make a move. They were working tirelessly for Hux. They were effective. Efficient. He was protecting his assets. He was acting selfishly, as always, because that was the only language and frame of reference he had for explaining what he was doing by putting himself physically between Snoke and his team.

The look Snoke gave him was highly amused. "You offer yourself in their place? Why not the guilty party?"

"Because I am the guilty party!" Snoke raised a disbelieving brow at him, but Hux was gratified he had at least distracted Snoke from the rest. Hux said, "They can't work for the Order if you kill them."

"And without you?"

He knew what the question meant – without Hux, if Snoke killed him for the misstep of his subordinates, then would the Order prosper? Would they continue? Would they win? Hux had thought, from the beginning of his memory, that he'd lead the Order to victory. Or at least play a pivotal role in it. His father had said as much. It was believed the emperor had thought so and thus Gallius Rax had singled out Armitage to come with his father.

Armitage had believed it himself. Maybe this was the role he got to play – giving his life so the engineering team would continue. It was pivotal enough, he supposed, even if it wasn't what he'd imagined in his childish fantasies. He lifted his chin. "The project is progressing well, Leader Snoke."

"You think I can do without you? Hm. Maybe so."

He supposed that was the end, then. It hurt more than he had expected it to. Hux had no words or ability to convey just how much what Snoke did to him hurt in the way of sheer pain. It was like Snoke activated every nerve cell Hux had and directed them all to tell him they were experiencing the worst agony they'd ever felt. Where he had more nerves – his privates, his face, his hands, his feet – the effect was equivalently more pronounced. There was a deep aching within him as well, what he imagined a gut wound or maybe even rape to feel like – a dull, huge, interior feeling. It wasn't as sharp as the rest, but his brain categorized it as more important, more visceral. He dissociated immediately. Everything glazed over.

He noted, clinically, that he wasn't experiencing more pain that his body was capable of experiencing. There was no supernatural aspect to this (other than the Force itself). He supposed this meant Snoke couldn't hurt him worse. At least, not this way. He knew there were other routes – emotional, self-inflicted, soul-wrenching. But he didn't feel very bad about his choice at the moment, despite knowing that if he was granted so much as a sliver of relief, a tiny crack of opportunity, he (or at least his body – he felt distant from it at the moment) would beg, plead, and humiliate himself. He decided he was lucky Snoke wasn't allowing that.

His body wasn't doing anything too obnoxious, either. He wasn't screaming, but he'd had to breathe. It came out in a rattle and in as a gasp. He'd collapsed and he felt that was ignominious but understandable. Maybe it conveyed what was happening better to the witnesses than if he'd kept his feet. He couldn't imagine that it looked like much of anything from their point of view. Maybe they just thought he was being choked. 'Armitage Hux, choked to death for being selfish and stupid.' Well. He couldn't see or hear them. He felt like he was floating. Somewhere along the line, Snoke had taken his senses.

Then he was falling. Or it felt like he was. He hit the floor. His head hit it, too – a hard, solid clobbering that put him back in his body more abruptly than he would have liked. His senses were back. He was shivering. And making an undignified noise. It took him longer than he wanted to figure out how to stop that.

He lifted his head, still too dazed to make anything out. Every shift of his clothing against his skin set off a cascade of pins and needles. He felt like his body was buzzing with paresthesia. He focused on his breathing – trying to control just that one thing. Blood dripped from somewhere, plinking on the shiny floor to his right. He supposed it was his.

"Take more care in future," Snoke said somewhere above and to his left, "or I will choose a new director from within your number." Snoke wasn't speaking to him. Also, he wasn't a director, although it would be an appropriate title for any technician advanced to lead the project so in that respect it made sense. (Wanting to quibble about titles being the first thing his mind managed to put together coherently.) It occurred to him finally that he didn't seem to be dead.

There was the shuffling of feet. A moment later, Snoke said simply, "No." More shuffling mixed with two sets of strong, heavy treads approaching him.

He was lifted under the arms by real, live human beings. Or probably human. The red-clad guards dragged him to the door and dumped him in the hallway. The guards disappeared. His team joined him. By then, Hux was starting to get some control over his twitching limbs.

He was helped to his feet by hands he didn't want on him. Their very touch made him nauseous. "I'm fine." He staggered. He was dizzy. He didn't want to be touched. At all. Ever. Every over-excited nerve ending still had a lot to say about the abuse they'd just gone through, or so his brain was telling him. Hux tried to tell himself he hadn't felt anything in a real way. It was an illusion. Jedi were notorious for their mind tricks. That's all this was – a farce. But it was a stubborn one.

Cheskar had hold of him – an arm around his waist and the other on Hux's forearm. The rest of the group was crowded around, talking over each other. The sounds blended into the background for Hux.

"Don't touch me! I'm fine!" he insisted, tearing his arm away from Cheskar.

"You can't stand. You're bleeding," Cheskar said. Lanlisa was on Hux's other side, trying to hold his arm. He wrested it away from her as well.

"I'm fine, I said!" His breathing was getting short. His stomach was churning. He shook both of them off with renewed effort. He had to get free of them. He couldn't stand the contact. He wasn't all that happy about the feel of his own clothes, but they would stay for now. He shoved the two away more rudely than was strictly called for. He wavered, but stood unassisted. "See? Fine."

"Okay," Cheskar said quietly. They waved at the rest. Everyone quieted. "You're bleeding."

Hux looked at himself and spotted it. He traced the trail to his cheek, then temple, then into his hair. He looked at his hand uncertainly. "It's alright." He tasted it, realized he probably shouldn't have done that in front of people, and straightened, trying to act like he'd done nothing odd. The whole engineering team was looking at him. "It's alright," he said again.

Allcasa said, "We should get him to the medbay on the Finalizer."

"No!" Hux said. "There's nothing wrong with me!" He turned carefully and sized up where he was – in the hallway outside the main conference room. Snoke was inside that room.

"I'm not sure he's accurately self-assessing," Allcasa said. Cheskar shook their head decisively.

Hux gave them both a brief, scathing look. "I'll go to my quarters and clean up. Someone needs to see if Leader Snoke needs assistance in my absence."

There was a beat of silence. Saycor murmured, "He just threw you out. He's on his own, right?"

"A commanding officer's misbehavior does not absolve underlings of the duty to obey. Not that Snoke misbehaved. He may … do as he wishes." Hux wasn't even sure if use of the Force constituted an assault. Other than a knock on the head, what had happened to him hadn't left a mark, so what could he say of it? He wasn't sure how to put this into reasonable words.

Cheskar saved him from needing to by volunteering, "I'll do it."

"Thank you." Hux looked at his blood again. He was having a hard time orienting, but the most important thing seemed to be getting away from all these people – from questions he didn't know how to answer and contact that was difficult to avoid. They were still worryingly close to him. He picked a direction and began to walk that way, hoping it was the right one for his quarters. After a hurried exchange, a couple of the team began to trail after him. He turned, unholstered his blaster, and pointed it at them. Both Fabica and Jarkame jumped back, hands up. "Do not follow me," Hux told them flatly. "Leave me alone."

Jarkame nodded. "Yes, yes. Will do. Sir." He took Fabica's arm and pulled her backward with him.

Hux holstered his weapon and continued on. His room on the base was the same as everyone else's, except it was his alone. He still had the stacked beds so two could conceivably bunk here. He found a towel he'd used to clean his boots with (bootblacking droids weren't available on-planet) and pressed it to his head. The rest was a blur.

There was a chime at his door. Hux jerked his fingers out of his mouth. When had they gotten there? "Yes?" Had he been sitting here on his bunk daydreaming the whole time? How much time was that?

"Cheskar, sir."

"Um … Open." It wasn't just Cheskar. Jarkame loitered in the background. Hux looked at him suspiciously.

Cheskar waved Jarkame off. "Yeah, it's okay." Jarkame nodded and walked away. Cheskar came in and sat down with their back against the wall opposite of where Hux was on the bunk. Their knees were drawn up in front of them. To Hux, they said, "I thought maybe we'd be hauling you off to medbay."

"I'm fine." Hux looked at the towel in his hands. There was less blood on it than he thought typical for a scalp wound. He supposed he might have been pressing the towel to the wrong spot. "What happened?"

"Not much. I went back in. He was, uh, polite? Obviously I'm alive and stuff."

"He vented his spleen. That's what they really want."

"What's that? Who's 'they'? I thought he was male."

"He is, as far as I know. I meant people like Snoke. Powerful people. They get angry. Want to express it. Hurt someone. I saw it coming. Once they're done, they're happy for a while." He wiped his fingers on the towel and touched around on his head. "It's a pattern."

Cheskar gripped uneasily on their knees. "Did you know he wouldn't kill you?"

"No. I thought he would." He found the gob of sticky blood in his hair that marked the small scalp laceration. "I thought he had."

"What did he do to you?"

"Nothing."

More uneasy knee-gripping from Cheskar. "Well. Okay. He told me how to handle the crystals in future. Basically, um, any we're going to sell, we can do whatever we want to. But the one's we're keeping for weapons need to be scooped out mechanically with the material they're in and then sealed and isolated. No touching. No … essence contamination. I'm not sure I understand what he was trying to tell me. Some of it wasn't … understandable."

Hux smiled at Cheskar ruefully. "I can imagine."

"He did it … mentally."

"Mentally?"

"Yeah. In my head. Like … telepathically. That's the Force, right? Or can his species do that?"

"I have no idea. I was reprimanded for letting my thoughts wander to his slippers. I'm not about to consider something more personal about him. Or anything of strategic significance."

"Oh." Cheskar was silent for a moment. "Are you trying to say something … right now?"

They were smart. Hux gave another rueful smile. "No. I can't. Neither can you. Don't go down that path, Cheskar. I would prefer you to remain alive."

"Oh. Because he's been in my head? Can he read our minds here?"

"I believe so. I have had evidence of it. I know his attention wanders often during my meetings with him." Hux swallowed. "If he's not paying attention to me, then he's paying attention to others. Elsewhere. If he does that routinely, then he could be looking and listening anywhere, at any time. But it also indicates he has limits on how much he can pay attention to."

In a quieter voice, Hux said, "He is my commanding officer and I will do my duty in good faith. As should you." Hux stood. "I need to get cleaned up."

Cheskar stood as well. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Keep the project on track."