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Fluorescent lights powered on, buzzing faintly, when Kylo Ren entered his personal quarters. The door glided shut behind him, and the locking mechanism engaged with a hiss . His eyes raked the space and its contents: an armchair with a reading lamp beside it; a desk with a computer terminal which doubled as a dining table; beyond that, a bed and dresser. With his ascendancy to the position of Supreme Leader, he could have upgraded to more expansive chambers, if he'd been so inclined--which he hadn't. That this vexed Hux, who no doubt felt the privileges of the rank were wasted on Kylo, made him even less inclined toward unnecessary change.
He shrugged his cape off his shoulders and folded it over the back of the armchair. He unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, then unbuckled the belt and laid it and the saber on top of his cloak. He tugged his first glove off, leather creaking as he worked his fingers free, then started to remove the second one.
At the brush of his own bare skin against skin, a memory rushed at him, her fingertips touching his. Kylo dropped onto the chair as if to dodge it, her, but this was no mere memory. This was now, his mind opening and reaching across the galaxy to another, open and reaching back to his.
She sat, too, on the edge of something low--a bench or a bunk--bent over with fingers grasping the laces of her boots. Putting them on, or taking them off? Ending her day, like him, or just beginning?
Rey had gone utterly still at the moment of the bond opening, eyes wide. They flicked up, not to Kylo's face, but to his hands. One gloved, one not. Without him giving them leave, his bare fingers unfurled toward her, the warm touch of the Light. Her eyes remained fixed on the other hand for a moment before dropping again to her boots. She resumed lacing them, steadfastly ignoring the promises of the Dark.
With a growl, Kylo pushed to his feet, towering over her as he shoved his hand back into the glove, then turned and strode back out of the room.
"Trouble, Supreme Leader?" came the modulated voice of the masked Knight standing guard in the hall.
Kylo's fingers flexed around the hilt of the saber he hadn't realized he picked up on his way out. His thumb itched to flick the ignition switch and engage the weapon…To wreck light panels and doors…or the Knight whose voice contained the same insolence as Hux's. He resisted. Crait had not been a good start to his rule; he must be more measured.
And she might see.
A service droid rolled around the corner, bearing a food tray. "You're late," Kylo snapped, though its timing was impeccable, and it beeped an apology.
Shooting a glower at his impassive Knight--who wisely passed no further comment--Kylo palmed the door open and stalked through again. As he lingered in the entryway, staring at the empty black wall where he'd seen Rey on her bunk, the droid rolled past to deposit his evening meal on the desk. She was gone.
Why is the Force connecting us? he asked, far from the first time he'd done so.
The droid beeped in concern that all was not to the Supreme Leader's liking. Had Kylo spoken aloud? He still held his lightsaber, which had sent a number of other droids to the trash compactor.
"Everything is adequate," he told it. "I require nothing further."
When the droid had left, Kylo seated himself at the desk to take his solitary dinner. While he ate, he scrolled through reports on his datapad and scoured the HoloNet for any news of the Resistance and Skywalker that managed to avoid being expunged by the propaganda ministers. Distracting himself from this latest encounter with Rey proved impossible with her face repeatedly appearing as Galaxy's Most Wanted for the murder of former Supreme Leader Snoke.
That was the answer, wasn't it? Supreme Leader. The most powerful person in the Galaxy. This was why the Force connected them. Their connection gave him this.
"No!" Kylo leapt to his feet, toppling the chair, and launched the datapad at the light panel on the opposite wall.
Nothing, no one gave him this. He took it. Took Snoke's life. I can take whatever I want, he'd told her, when he reached into her mind the first time.
She’d reached back, into his. They forged their connection themselves. Such was their power.
Kylo's hands fisted as he stared down at the datapad that lay at his feet. The impact had cracked the screen, but otherwise it appeared functional. He stooped to pick it up.
Rey's eyes stared back at him. Narrowed slightly, hardened with hate--the image came from footage of her interrogation on Starkiller. What he took most note of was the long curling lashes that framed them. The jagged scar of broken LCD that slashed diagonally across her face. Like the one she'd etched permanently on his.
His match, his equal.
She might have shared the galaxy with him.
His grip constricted on the datapad, teeth bared and bearing down, and he drew on the Force to crush the device. He tossed the useless thing into the bin.
"Such a waste," he spoke aloud into the silence of his quarters. But of course Rey was no longer there to hear his indictment of her choice. If that was even what he'd meant.
The destruction of the datapad brought enough physical relief for his frustration that he was able to focus for several hours at his computer terminal and then meditate. By the time he retired to bed, however, the unanswered question circled his mind like a scavenger on the scent of carrion.
If the Force linked their minds so they would stand together against Snoke, why was it still connecting them after his death? It must have some other purpose. The future is always in motion, Skywalker had liked to say, warning his students against visions. A shame he hadn’t practiced what he preached. It seemed he hadn't imparted this lesson to Rey.
Kylo closed his eyes, but he saw his hand, pale as death against the dark bed sheets, stretched out toward her, as if to reach into her mind, though the bond didn't take him to her this time. Even so, he saw an ocean; from it a green island rose. Up, up, his feet carried him, over ancient steps of crumbling rock set into the island's steep hillside, until he came to a stone hut. A hermit's hovel. He raised his hand to push the durasteel door open, but at the last moment he curled his fingers into a fist and knocked.
The door creaked ajar. He stepped inside, beckoned by the warmth of a fire. He hadn't realized until he saw it how cold and wet he'd become during his climb, for a steady rain fell. Beside the fire, Rey sat on a low stool, clutching a blanket to herself which left her shoulders bare, except for her hair, falling loose over them. It appeared to be damp, too.
"Are you going to stand there dripping on the floor?" she asked.
"Are you going to share your fire so I can dry off?"
In answer, she held out her hand. Kylo wasted no time crossing the hut to sit before her. When he met her touch, fingertip to fingertip, palm to palm, skin so warm, she slid her fingers between his and curled them over his hand.
~*~
Although the officers and troopers likely found nothing out of the ordinary in the way Supreme Leader Ren stormed through the Finalizer 's corridors the next morning, the reason for it was far from agitation as usual.
He'd dreamed of her.
Kylo halted in front of the turbolift, flexing his fingers as he waited for it. Seeing Rey through their bond, being subject to the whims of the Force, was one thing. For his own subconscious to conjure her up and twist reality was nothing short of betrayal.
Weak. Foolish.
Leather creaked. Nothing would feel better than to put the indentation of his fist in the lift door. Before Kylo could act on the impulse, it arrived and opened, mercifully empty of passengers.
As he boarded, his mind went to a time when it was not. He saw Rey--not in the bond or a dream--although he supposed it must be a daydream--but as she had been: back to the door, wrists bound in front. She didn't struggle against the restraints, didn't shrink from him . She moved close. Close enough that he could smell her, rain and rich soil, smoke from the campfire beside which they'd touched hands.
So close that the slightest movement of his head would bring his lips to hers.
The turbolift pulled to a stop. Kylo jerked upright as the door opened, shame sizzling through him that he'd actually leaned in. As though Rey were really there, face turned up to his, lips parted and tempting. As though he were a teenager with nothing in his head but puerile fantasies, not Supreme Leader of the galaxy.
A child in a mask.
Say, kid…you ever kiss a girl? Play, I dunno, spin the lightsaber?
The lift door slid open. "Ah, Supreme Lead--"
A twitch of his fingers slammed it closed in the officer's face before Kylo even identified which black-uniformed boot-licker addressed him.
Apart from a few fumbling attempts as an adolescent with a fellow student, he hadn't kissed anyone. Could a mere child possess the strength of will to abstain from physical and emotional distractions, as he had?
One night spent dreaming of hands joined, fingers intertwined, warm flesh against his, wrecked all of that. Kylo stood in the lift, his waking mind supplying an alternate reality just as readily, guided by those remembered scents of life and light.
With a single thought, he unlocked the binders; they hit the floor at their feet with a reverberant clunk as he captured her wrists in the circle of his fingers instead. He felt the indentations where the cuffs dug into her skin. He pulled her hands upward until her fingertips touched his mouth and rubbed their rough calluses over his lips. Rey's pulse pounded against the pads of his thumbs. Tightening his grasp, he tugged her against him so he could feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest against him, too. He kissed her fingers, slid his mouth down over her palms to taste the salt there, tend flesh torn and mended time and again by the grip of quarterstaff and saber, before finally moving on to her chafed wrists. Her fingers writhed like flames along his scar, his brow, tangling and twisting in his hair.
"Ben…"
The breathless utterance brought him crashing back to the reality of being alone on the turbolift.
You're not alone, he'd told her, and she'd replied, Neither are you.
Liar.
Kylo blasted the door open, sending a pair of junior officers and a droid diving out of the way of the Supreme Leader as he barrelled through.
Why would he fantasize about her calling him that name? True, she had when they were on the lift together. Why hadn't he corrected her? Defiance, perhaps. A small act of rebellion, allowing her to use the name Snoke forbade.
She'd used it after he killed Snoke, too.
This point remained the barycenter of Kylo's swirling thoughts throughout the day, the orbit inescapable when he lingered in the throne room after his final audience. Not identical to the one on Supremacy, but near enough, should Snoke have deigned to come aboard the Finalizer. The first time Kylo entered the room and approached the throne without dropping to one knee before it, he'd ripped the blood red draperies from the rods that still hung, skeletal, above the viewports. What was the point of ruling the Galaxy if you couldn't see the billions of stars under your command?
Perhaps all of this was happening because his surroundings were too similar. Change might not be so wholly unnecessary as he'd thought. Let the past die.
"Leave me," he ordered the Knights of Ren.
For a moment the faceless wretches stared back at him from behind the visors of their masks; then, one by one, they complied. The hiss of the door behind them made Kylo think of being sealed in a tomb.
Gripping the armrests of the throne, he pushed to his feet. He wasn't dead.
Rey had watched him cleave his Master in two and strike down eight Praetorian Guards, yet she believed he could still be Ben Solo. Don't do this, Ben…Please don't go this way. Had he believed it? Some small part of him, the part that responded to the call of the Light, no matter what he did to stifle it…to kill it? Was that why he hadn't told her not to call him by that name?
He stood at the top of the dais and pictured the gold-robed giant's body broken at the bottom where it fell, surrounded by the red guards who'd proved so useless to their master. Across from him, as if on the opposite shoreline of a river of blood, Rey stood huffing. Kylo felt an upward tug at the corner of his mouth. For all her righteousness, she didn't seem to mind that he killed at all. It only mattered who. If he killed the people she believed should be. She'd killed them, too, with the same relish as he. The Force had sung with it, as audibly as he'd heard the hum of the lightsabers and the duet of their grunts and groans of exertion.
All the times Kylo led the Knights of Ren into battle, he'd never felt anything like fighting back-to-back with Rey, each of their bodies an extension of the other, minds one. Even afterward they were mirror images, with sweat dampening their hair and rolling down their faces. They panted in sync, chests heaving as screaming lungs dragged in air.
He should have kissed her.
It hit him like Force lightning. The instant their eyes locked across the throne room, he should have stepped over the bodies that littered the floor and stopped her from going to the viewport to watch what remained of the Resistance fleet. Should have taken her slender frame in his arms and turned her to face him, silenced her protests and pleas with his mouth on hers. Kylo had never been good with words, he harbored no delusions about that. Nevertheless, his lips and tongue could have proved persuasive.
Oh, but Rey would have responded in kind. The girl gave as good as she got, and would never merely submit to him. Nor, if Kylo was honest, would he want her to. His fingers went up to the scar she'd seared across his face, heat radiating out from the edges of it as he imagined the pressure of her mouth against his, the curl of her tongue and the nip of her teeth. Kisses that left him bloodied and bruised and begging for more. Would she have bent him to her will, then? Bested him in love as she had in war?
He sank down, onto his throne, tugged at his hair from the roots.
Somehow, it seemed she already had.
~*~
Rey's fingers looked so small woven between Kylo's; they scarcely reached past his knuckles as she curled them over the back of his hand. He scrutinized her short nails, trimmed or torn or chewed, some dark underneath with grime. Engine grease, probably, the Falcon in constant need of repair. A strange detail to notice in a dream, but far from the strangest one he'd had.
His own fingers spanned almost the breadth of her hand. He traced the taut ridges of the tendons. In the flickering firelight, he could just make out river-like blue veins beneath her skin. He trailed his thumb downward to find where they converged at the pulse point. Her wrist bones jutted, a testament to the long, lean years on Jakku. Although he could circle both wrists in one hand, he knew what strength her thinness belied.
His equal.
His better.
Rain drummed down on the roof of the hut. Kylo had lost track of how long they'd been sitting here holding hands in silence. Long enough that his clothes and hair had mostly dried, though he didn't feel warm. Rey didn't feel warm. Or real. Which she wasn't, since this was a dream.
He lifted his eyes to her face, but she kept hers trained on their joined hands.
"Do you feel more alone than you were before?" he asked.
Rey's eyes flicked up, the flame reflected in their darkness. "Before what?"
You're not alone.
Neither are you.
Kylo swallowed, his throat a knot. "Before we weren't."
He heard her sharp intake of breath, saw her eyes widen before they narrowed on him. "We didn't have to be."
The fire spat, and the blame in her tone made Kylo's temper flare. "That's not true." His grip tightened on her hand when he felt her begin to pull it away. "You couldn't stay with me. I couldn't go with you."
Rey opened her mouth in argument, but none came. Her shoulders slumped, as if beneath the weight of the truth.
"Those couldn't have been the only two options," she said, at length, voice pinched. "Surely there was something more…"
"Balanced?" Kylo suggested.
"Are you making fun of me?" Her eyes slitted again, fixing a little lower than his gaze. On his mouth. He realized he'd smiled. Slightly. It felt odd on his facial muscles, like an old memory.
"Teasing, maybe."
"Teasing?" Rey's eyebrows went up. So did the corner of her lips. He wanted to feel the curve of it beneath his own lips. It was a dream. He could. "Kylo Ren? Supreme Leader? Teasing ?"
Why would he dream about her calling him that name?
He didn't think very hard about it, because he'd drawn her closer, and he'd leaned in toward her so he could smell the rain in her damp hair, the smoke, the earth, the Falcon. He could see each of the freckles scattered across her shoulders, and count them, if he wished. Like counting the stars. Could he wish on them, too?
His lips uttered one against her skin, silently, and then another, until his nose brushed the edge of the woven blanket Rey clutched around her shoulders. Her grip tightened on it, Kylo watched her knuckles flex and whiten. He still held her other hand. Now, he moved it alongside the one with the bunched blanket, stretching his hand around both of them, against her heart. Its pounding rhythm throbbed in the Force around them.
"I love you," he said.
Rey blinked. "I didn't know. "
Kylo had expected her to balk at the confession. But this…this was…unexpected. How could she not know?
"You told me I was nothing," she said, as if in answer to the unspoken question.
Not to me! he tried to protest, but Rey, the fire, the hut, were gone. He lay in bed in his own quarters, his hand empty atop the sheet.
Awake.
Alone.
For several moments he stared at the dark wall across the room, trying to clear his mind of the dream, or to cling to its fading vestiges, until the lights timed on, indicating the Supreme Leader must rise. Kylo did, stretching his limbs, taking a sip of water from the cup on the bedside table, then scuffing across the cold tile to the refresher. His morning routine was much like the evening one. He perused communiqués and the news channels at his computer terminal over the simple breakfast that had been brought in by a droid while he showered. When he finished, he clipped his lightsaber to his belt, unfolded his cape from the back of the armchair and draped it over his shoulders, put on his gloves.
As he worked his fingers into the second one, leather creaking, he felt the tug of the bond opening. Rey appeared to sit at the edge of his bed, bent to pull off her boots. She yawned. Ending her day, as his began.
Would she dream of him?
Would she even acknowledge him, now? She'd gone still, as she had the last time this happened.
"Why is the Force still connecting us?"
Rey didn't look at him, so Kylo didn't register immediately that she'd spoken. Perhaps because he'd asked himself the same question.
He took a lurching step toward her. "There's something I need to tell you."
Her head snapped up. "There's nothing you can say to me that I need to hear."
"Do you want to know why the Force is connecting us, or not?" It came out more harshly than Kylo meant for it to, especially in the context of what he wanted to tell her, but she really did try his patience.
In any case, she wasn't intimidated. She sneered at him, then flopped onto her back, pulling her legs up to stretch out on her bunk on the Falcon or whatever base she was living on. "The Force told you, did it?" she snorted.
Kylo's fingers flexed in his gloves as he debated whether to dignify that with a response.
"Well ?" she demanded, craning her neck toward him.
"I want to say it to you in person." He almost couldn't hear himself for the pounding of blood in his ears.
Or her, when she replied, "Okay."
Kylo had hardly been more surprised when his grandfather's lightsaber flew into her hand. "Okay?" he echoed.
"Okay," Rey said again with a single nod. She held out her hand.
He took it.
The End