Chapter Text
Chapter One
It was the most beautiful place in the galaxy. It was just a shame it didn’t actually exist.
Rey stood in the middle of a half-moon shaped meadow, surrounded by a tapestry of flowers in every hue imaginable amid the knee-high emerald green grass. Before her, a great river rushed past, fed by the wall of waterfalls cascading over the border of the vale, their thundering cadence filling her ears. Above her, the flawless blue sky was crisscrossed by hazy rainbows born from the mists that rose from the waterfalls, occasionally broken by a passing bird or insect. The warmth of the early summer sun kissed her cheeks and eyelids and caused the minute water droplets that bejeweled her eyelashes and hair to sparkle like crystals. She inhaled deeply, the sweet perfume of the flowers and richness of the earth filling her lungs and bestowing upon her a sense of peace she rarely felt anymore.
Yet even in this place of beauty and tranquility, with its prism of colors and healing waters, the darkness always found her.
Rey knew exactly what - or, more accurately, who - stood behind her without ever needing to turn around, his presence a burning brand against her back. Emotions roiled off him like a miasma, disrupting the serenity of the valley with their potency. Sometimes he seethed with resentment or the sting of betrayal; other times melancholy enveloped him like a dense fog. Most of the time he was just exhausted, and that’s when she worried about him the most, even after everything that happened.
But not hatred; never hatred, not directed at her in any case, though she thought she’d prefer it to what stood in its place. Every time he came to her, his presence was underscored by a gnawing hollowness that eroded the edges of whatever soul he still possessed. It felt uncomfortably like longing, an ache that felt far too much like the starvation she was well too familiar with. It was for that reason she could never bear to face him, because she knew that if she looked into his eyes, she would doubtlessly surrender herself without a second thought. If there was one thing Rey had come to learn about Kylo Ren, it was he could never hide his emotions from her.
Lucky for her, she was good enough at hiding her emotions for the both of them.
During most of their encounters Rey chose to ignore him, and instead stared out at the cascade of the great waterfalls, or counted the number of different kinds of flowers crowding around her legs. Occasionally she spoke, asking him the same frigid questions, as if this time would yield answers. But in the end, she was only ever met with silence, his Force signature gradually facing until it disappeared all together.
It was only then at Rey allowed herself to admit that the moisture on her cheeks was more than the mists of the vale.