Work Text:
One step forward, two steps back.
Slipping away in the night, dancing away at his approach. As much of a ghost as the spectra that haunted him as a child. As much of an unknown as the day she’d proceeded down the aisle of the Temple towards him almost a year ago now, as much of a stranger as she had been as she had taken his hand in hers.
His Veiled Bride.
Though he memorizes it immediately, the Emperor’s paranoia means he doesn’t learn his betrothed’s name until the officiant pronounces it as they stand before the altar to pledge their irrevocable pledge under the gloating gaze of He Who Must Be Obeyed: ‘Rey’.
‘Rey,’ he learns; his wife’s name is ‘Rey’.
As time passes, he learns not that much more.
Her lovely, delicately boned face reveals little more bare than it had covered - he might even say less. She reveals nothing more than she must, and speaks, when she can bring herself to address him, in quiet, even tones, discussing with him in slightly accented tones only of impersonal subjects and political agendas.
Calls him ‘Ren’ when she has no choice other than to do so; refers to ‘My Lord Husband’ in public, if pressed.
Only if pressed.
Those nights she steals into his bed and he breaks every sworn oath to earn a breathless sigh from lips he tastes only by moonlight - those nights, she says nothing at all.
‘Ben,’ he imagines her saying sometimes (always) though, as he wishes, dreams of a whisper in the night he can all but hear in her voice – ‘Ben’.
She’s always gone by the breaking of the dawn those nights; her touch always denied him during daylight, and he attempts in vain to make her crave his in return, or, for that matter, him. Still, the contract signed stipulating his nuptials with the Emperor’s heir – it is fulfilled to the letter.
Increasingly, he craves her company; increasingly, he seeks for her to crave his.
Yet Palpatines, it seems, are made of firmer stuff, even those members of the family left long ago to moulder on long-forgotten worlds, even those left to harden into diamonds – sharp, blinding – as they grew to adulthood under the fire of Jakku’s sun.
It haunts him, how little his Bride chooses to need him.
She walks alone, though he moves at her side; standing next to him, there remains always a space for the fates left between their persons. She accepts not his help to rise, nor even his arm upon which to rest a dainty hand as they proceed. He takes solace only in observing that she accepts neither a hand of a servant to step from their vehicle, nor even the support of furniture beyond that which is necessary.
It’s impossible not to wonder if her actions result from how she dares not show weakness – it’s become increasingly apparent to him this year how much she detests being held here at Court. It’s impossible not for him to see her reasons for it; she’s but a pretty pawn for the Emperor to move about the board, her desires as little taken into consideration as are those of her grandfather’s many clones.
Yet, it is that she stays – in her grandfather’s domain and to stand at his side.
Though he is forbidden to ask by the remoteness of her stunning hazel gaze, not even she can prevent him from pondering her heart – and ponder he does.
Increasingly, it is all that he does.
He learns to watch her without seeming to, learns to hold his gaze aloof from hers and yet focused on her – and learns all he can. It bears dividends he finds, for had he not been watching her every move, he would have missed it.
The dangerous, duplicitous game of betrayal she plays.
The tiny, almost insignificant fragments of information and insider knowledge, passed by sleight of hand to a seemingly nondescript stormtrooper, done by movement so quick that even the omnipresent Imperial spies employed by her grandfather miss it.
Treason – once seen, it cannot be unseen.
Her transmission of valuable intelligence - obviously of interest to the nascent Rebellion - and the subtle ways in which she works to undermine the Emperor’s agenda, the agenda of her family (and thus implicitly her agenda), in the Imperial Senate when she rises to speak.
The conclusions are obvious – it is treason – it yet takes him by surprise.
Why would she risk it?
It has him perched on a knife’s edge of indecision, for he should insist she confess to her kin; he should and he knows the steps he should take well, knows them with a certainty that he’s known few other times in his life.
He knows it – and yet he delays.
If only his Bride didn’t look at him sometimes – all too often – with something suspiciously like expectation in his eyes. As though she was always watching, waiting, for him to disappoint her in new ways – something he finds increasingly difficult to accept the necessity of doing.
So it is that he finds excuses and delays.
He can’t comprehend it, this hesitation, this refusal to do what he must, this wavering from his path as he looks into the face of the remote, relentless woman who is his wife. It must be weakness, what he feels in her presence; there is no other explanation possible.
She makes him weak, for he has no other explanation for his action.
Since the day the Emperor had disposed of his puppet, set aside Snoke in a very public and brutal way, had reclaimed his rightful place of power, revealing his presence and his true purpose to an awestruck galaxy, he’d seen all moving towards that which he’d always dreamed.
Ever since the Emperor had revealed himself as the voice that had always been in his head, camouflaged in the voice of his lost kin, since he’d held out his hand, invited him to take a place at his side, he has everything of which he’d once dreamed – it had all fallen into place seamlessly.
The Galaxy is ordered, at peace – as is his role in it.
His role as Master’s Hand, his being centred in the dark, the galaxy at order, serene, regimented – all is as it should be, even this, especially this, this perfect, arranged alliance, this marriage.
Even his future, secured by the hand of His Majesty’s heir.
Yet ironically, it is she, her, this girl of potential he’d heard so much about, who may prove to be his undoing. Increasingly, he misses his mask, that he might hide his thoughts from her insightful gaze; she seems to read too well the emotions his traitorous face reveals.
For she has him questioning things.
He should resent her for that alone; he should avoid her, report her to his Emperor. He should condemn her, not long for her presence and the ghosting imprint of her touch. But, as his Emperor reminds him, he is weak, like his father, uncertain and too easily overcome. He is weak, and long for her – his elusive wife, this Veiled Bride who slips away from him like sand through his fingers – he does.
Increasingly, she has him wondering at the intoxicating pleasure that might be brought by disrupting his perfectly arranged life. Watching her, she has him wondering if she’d like to join him in burning it all down.
Watching her, she has him wondering if he’d had it wrong all along.
-
Unfortunate, Rey often thinks, how handsome is her new husband.
She catches a hint of who he might’ve been from time to time, of the man he might have grown into if it hadn’t been for the shadow of her grandfather’s influence. She gets a taste of it as he looks at her, that expressive face so long hidden behind his mask, seemingly untrained, or inept, in hiding his true thoughts from her eyes.
If only the truth of him matched the packaging; if only she could trust him.
But then she can trust nothing and no one any more than she has been able to do so since her earliest days.
For Rey had been born in a nest of scorpions and vipers – and lives each moment with the sensation of venom as it whispers poisoned fire through her veins.
Betrayal: it is her birthright.
Indeed, the one person she trusts less than her erstwhile husband is the man who is her only other living kin. He is called by many names – ‘Tyrant’, ‘Monster’, ‘Murderous Snake’, even, on the part of many, those being too scared to call him anything at all, ‘He Who Must Be Obeyed’.
The Emperor Palpatine.
He whom she addresses, when address him she must, as ‘Grandfather’, knowing as she does full well how perfectly those other monikers suit him, match him in word and deed.
And Rey knows well that while the gods may be long dead, the fates unyielding and the Force and its wielders beyond reaching — monsters yet live.
For now, at least.
Feeling the change in the air, the sense of challenge to all that is and that which has been decreed, she yet has hope.
She wonders sometimes, even if it was impossible, even if it makes no matter or no difference, if her husband feels it too.
The way he looks at her at times – those dark eyes of his burning – she wonders.