She spent some time inside the First Order's control systems, having rightly suspected that no one would dare displease a Supreme Leader by removing their ability to log in. She set up an automatic disable command with a timer for all the Destroyers' long range weapons and removed the hyperspace tracking capability for the same amount of time.
Then she thought about where to hide. According to the bunker schematics, there was a large space on the lowest level that might contain a lightsaber battle without endangering the main infrastructure. So she turned off all the lights and headed down the stairs.
He was in her head the minute he arrived on the planet, looming dark and powerful and extremely angry in the forefront of her mind. Of course he had come, and he'd come alone because he loved an old-fashioned duel more than anyone she'd ever met.
She thought very hard about hiding in a cupboard on the ground level to the right of the entrance and when she felt him take the bait and move in that direction, continued her journey downwards, sniggering to herself about just how little training in disguising her thoughts she actually needed. She found it hard to take the whole thing seriously. He was bound to be angry, and he'd probably try the full Kylo Ren routine on her, but she was pretty sure she could cope with whatever he chose to throw at her, as long as it wasn't too heavy.
A hand came out of the darkness and pinned her to the wall. 'Don't be so sure.'
Her lungs reached for a deep breath in surprise and didn't find it, because her throat was being compressed hard enough to leave a mark. She blasted him away with a concussive shot from the Force, heard him connect with the back wall and bent over, coughing. 'A Force choke? Really?'
'You left.' His lightsaber ignited, a jagged slash across the darkness and in its baleful glare she watched him stalk her, backwards and forwards, tracking her movements.
'I was kidnapped.'
'You were rescued, you mean.'
'That isn't how I saw it.'
'That's exactly how you saw it.'
He came for her with an overhead lunge, a flailing chop at her neck when she parried the first blow, dodged the second. She frowned, no longer finding this quite so amusing.
'I saw the recording of you on Duuk. I heard it. You met him. Your pretty deserter, the one I should have tried harder to kill in the forest. You held his hand and you asked him how long it would be before you could escape.'
He came at her again, smashing into her defences with a flurry of badly coordinated blows that pushed her into a corner. She caught the last on her blade, and he pressed the advantage.
'I changed my mind,' she told him, but the words bounced off the mask. 'I didn't want to leave you.'
He backed off, tossing his helmet away. 'If I hadn't found you, you'd still be with him. Every time I turn my back, you go running off to him. Where's your loyalty now, Rey? Where's your devotion?' He spat the questions at her.
'I thought you only wanted fear.'
'Not from you.' His face was red and twisted. But despite the volume, and the aggression, she thought he sounded sad. 'From everyone else, but never from you.'
She kept her guard up. 'I did want to escape at first. I thought you were trying to control me. I thought I was a prisoner. But I changed my mind. I'd already told the Resistance I wasn't staying with them before you arrived.'
He shook his head. 'Liar. You've lied to me from the beginning. I thought you agreed to stay because you … But you've been working for them all along, haven't you?'
His jaw set, and he let fly with a volley of heavy strokes, striking as hard and as fast as he could.
She slipped, skidded backwards, held up a hand. 'Because I what?'
He saw her weakness, came running in but she kept her hand up, refusing to defend herself. He paused.
'Because I what?' she pressed. 'Say it.' Recovering her footing she took a pace forward. 'Go on. Say it.'
He stopped dead, and his throat worked but no words came out. In the flickering red and blue light, his eyes had disappeared into gaping pits of shadow.
In the end, she had to say it for him. 'You thought I agreed to stay because I was in love with you. That's it, isn't it? That's why you're so angry. Because you thought I loved you, and now you think I don't.'
She extinguished her sword, cast it to the floor, stepped forward, and kissed him, properly this time. Her arms slid from chest to shoulders and wrapped around his neck. She stretched up on tiptoes, pressing herself against his body. She put her lips to his mouth once. Then, to prove that she really meant it, Rey repeated the action until she felt him begin to soften and relax into her kiss.
'Does that answer the question?' she asked.
The fire of his lightsaber died, and the room plunged into black. His hands were on her in the darkness, skimming over her waist, and settling on her back. Large hands, capable hands, strong and reassuring.
He said, 'No.' And then, he tipped her face up to his and kissed her back.
She had forgotten about the visions. They flashed through her brain with the power of a quite explicit hurricane, hundreds of images of the two of them, doing things to each other she'd never imagined, in a range of positions she'd never seen, in a variety of seemingly unsuitable locations. She was aware that some other part of her was supposed to be doing something else, but her mind had no room for anything but sex.
He noticed eventually that she wasn't kissing him back. 'What?' There was defensiveness in his tone, a hint of embarrassment.
'Don't you see it? Us? Don't you see the visions in your head?'
He put his hands on her waist instead. 'I don't think they're visions. I don't think we've ever seen visions of the future when we touch each other. I think we just see what we want to happen, what we want to see.'
'But I don't want to see that. The one with me naked in the interrogation chair? Who would want to see that?'
'I would,' he said without shame. 'Don't tell me you've never thought about it.'
'I haven't.' She pushed away and called for her lightsaber, wondering why she'd considered it a good idea to disable all the power and get herself stuck in a basement. 'I've never thought about any of that.'
'What? Never?'
'No, never.'
He was silent for a minute, and then came back with, 'Does that mean that you've never …?'
'No,' she snapped. 'Never.' She was silent for a minute. 'Does that mean you've thought about me naked in the interrogation chair?'
'Let's get out of here,' he said.
She led the way upstairs, using her overqualified torch, kept slightly off balance by the fact that he insisted on holding her hand as if he didn't quite trust her not to run off if he let go. Coming out into bright sunshine in the middle of an abandoned city she squinted, looking around for the shuttle he'd arrived in. At that point, he did release her hand, gesturing for her to precede him up the ramp.
She gave him a look, and he shrugged. 'I think it's better that no one else knows about our … relationship.'
She rolled her eyes. 'Everyone knows, Ben. Everyone.'
General Hux was in the hangar bay when the shuttle docked. Ben breezed past him without a word, but Rey stopped, noting the red marks around his neck, the harried look in his eyes, and the hair unusually out of place.
'Welcome back, Supreme Leader.' He added a low bow, a fake smile, and then proceeded to follow so close behind her down the corridor his boots nearly tripped her over.
'General, can you send the fleet back to what they were doing before I was so rudely abducted?' She reached out and touched his arm. 'I'm back now, and I'm not going anywhere.'
His face sagged with relief, and as he hurried away, she snapped in her head at Ben. 'Leave him alone. He's good at his job and we need him.'
'He failed me.'
'Then demote him. Make him clean the toilets or give him a posting in the middle of nowhere where he's only in charge of carrots. But stop throttling him every time you get bored.'
Ben dismissed this with a silent wave, and she stalked past him into her old rooms.
'I'm having a shower first,' she announced. 'Somebody threw me in the garbage.'
The ruined dress became a crumpled heap on the floor, to be followed by a crumped heap in the bin. She jumped under the hot tap gratefully, washing the stink of fish from her hair.
It was some time before she realised he was watching her., But there he was, leaning against the doorframe casually watching her naked. She rushed to cover herself up, cheeks flaming, but he continued to watch, his gaze steady, his face calm, making no threatening moves—for once.
She glanced down at her partially covered chest, the hand protecting her groin and told herself sternly that she was being ridiculous. Slowly, she straightened, dropping her protection and lifting her chin, clad only in water.
It was instant, this thing between them, instant and powerful and brutally honest, and she had no need to hide anything from him, not anymore. Clearly, he took this as some sort of sign. He raised both hands to his collar, released the first button and the next and the next, until his tunic hung open and he shrugged it off. She'd seen him in this state of undress before, but that time it had been an embarrassment and this time it was something quite different. She could feel a desire to touch him tingling her fingertips, to explore the expanse of his chest, to touch him and taste him and hear him groan.
Her face grew hot and hotter still as he caught her eye and the corner of his mouth curled into a lazy smile. His hands moved to his waistband and undid the fastening. The fabric slid languorously over his thighs, grazed his calves, and ended in a tumbled pool at his feet. He'd already taken off his boots, and he stepped out of the trousers, his eyes waiting for her reaction.
She was having a reaction to watching him strip, and it manifested itself in accelerated breathing, a tightening in her stomach, and her inability to remove her eyes from his crotch.
He smiled again, turned slowly enough that she had a clear view from all sides. Then, he strode out of the room, dressed only in his underwear which, in a completely unexpected move, was black.
Rey rubbed her face hard, switched off the water, and roughly towelled her hair. She tried to remember how to breathe. Her heart raced beneath her skin, flushing it red with exertion as she glanced at herself briefly in the mirror over the sink and she licked dry lips.
Taking a fortifying breath, she tossed the towel away and walked into the bedroom after him. He hadn't made it very far, standing beside the bed with a hand that stretched out when he saw her.
'Join me' he said, and that was so close to what she'd heard back in the throne room that she reached out and took it.
My thanks to Miso for editing services. All remaining mistakes are my own.