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The first time you’d taken the walk, you’d assumed it to be a death march of the most sinister nature.
Surely he meant to punish you for some mistake you’d made when he’d been under your care in the med bay, some insignificant oversight that had been just offensive enough to keep your incompetence alive and kicking in the back of his mind.
Those times you’d persevered through the debilitating force of his gaze, day after day, refusing to compromise your bedside manner even for the most powerful man in the galaxy, insisting on babbling on about little things pertaining to your day, how his wounds were healing exceptionally despite their severity, and was the room warm enough for him, or should you have someone up the temperature to something a little more comforting? That had gone on for weeks, his being held captive in the med bay, unwilling victim to your useless, senseless, pointless prattling.
Or maybe that time you’d been the one to service the changing of his bandages, peeling the medical tape too quickly from his skin and winning a scorn filled hiss and an under the breath muttered swear. You’d almost been sure he’d meant to strike you across the face, but some higher power intervened to spare you that day. He’d simply grit his teeth against the pain and commanded you to get on with your job.
There was also that time he’d destroyed the mend bot just after it had finished perfecting the stitches on his face, and you’d been forced to take over on the scar trailing down his chest by hand, sticking him with the needle in one mistake too many.
Whichever incident this was about, there could be no way it would end in anything but your death.
You’d been escorted to his chambers silently, not a word breathed by you, the two troopers at your flank, or anyone you passed in the hallway. Upon reaching Kylo Ren’s chambers, the door slid open, you were thrust inside, and your fate was effectively sealed.
Though he reclined in a plush white arm chair, shrouded in the black of his cowl and helmet, his posture remained poised for a fight, his aura heavy and not a drop less domineering. You could feel his eyes, eyes you knew to be beautiful and impossibly glimmering, settling on you from behind his mask, and you instantly sensed that, not only did he recognize you, but he remembered every single instance of interaction he’d had with you during his recovery.
When he was still simply Commander Ren, instead of Supreme Leader.
Wordlessly, he gestured toward an armchair directly across from him, twin to his own. Though silent, the command was clear: sit .
You made sure to waste no time, not daring to breathe a word.
Once you were settled, he regarded you silently, fingers steepled in his consideration. You were in the middle of pondering what sort of sick mind game he was playing with you, positive that he was trying to decide which of your limbs to separate from your body first, when he carefully reached up and unlocked his helmet, pulling it from his head and unmasking the strong expanse of his jaw, the plane of his nose, those obscenely high cheek bones. And there were those eyes, just as mind bogglingly beautiful as you remembered.
It didn’t seem fair, that one so imposing could also be horrendously breathtaking, yet here the contradiction existed.
“Are...” You coughed immediately, fear overtaking your senses, before swallowing hard and persisting on. “Are you going to kill me?”
If he heard your question, he offered no acknowledgement. He only continued staring, scanning you from head to toe, and leaving your senses lit aflame with the inescapable dread of impending danger. This was too much, too heavy; you wouldn’t survive this, couldn’t possibly find the will to. Whatever psychological torture he had planned, there was no way you were strong enough to participate.
He knew this; he had to.
Eternity passed in your labored breathing, seconds moving more slowly than eons. Kylo Ren remained still, silently rummaging through you with no more care than he would take with scrap metal. You could feel the force of him in your mind, the potential pain waiting for you at even the slightest hint of resistance, and so you made no attempt. Simply staring death in the face was punishment enough; you didn’t need to dump salt in the wound as well.
And then he opened his mouth, no doubt to personally deliver what you were sure would be the harsh, final blow of an official death sentence. You couldn’t bare to listen, but you forced yourself to, keeping your chin held high and your fingers balled into fists beneath your knees, braced for any nature of cruel words Kylo Ren hurled your way.
“Are you hungry?”
Okay.
So maybe braced for everything except... that.
“You’re far away today,” he stated, folding his hands down in his lap. Eight weeks ago you might’ve assumed his cool, even tone was a precursor to violent physical punishment. Now, you knew his mannerisms well enough to know that if he were angry or had any intention to harm you, there wouldn’t be reason to doubt it. “What’s troubling you?”
The same thing that was always simple seconds away from springing out of your mouth. You might’ve bothered to give it a voice, if you actually thought Kylo Ren would put his pride aside long enough to answer. Unfortunately, the only one who seemed entitled to expect answers during your little... appointments , for lack of a better descriptor, was him.
“Humor me,” he prompted, expression professionally schooled into one of neutrality, “and perhaps I’ll humor you.”
Yeah, right .
“I’m not...” Your voice trailed off and died, hesitation eating at your skin like a ferocious beast. “I guess I don’t entirely see the reason for why we... do this. What’s the purpose?”
Because this was the fifty sixth day in a row that you found yourself in Kylo Ren’s chambers, sitting across from him as he asked you questions about his own trivial, personal matters, and complained about his day if the pilots, troopers, or Hux had thoroughly displeased him. The fifty sixth day that he asked if you needed anything acquired and sent to your quarters, if your room offered a nice enough view of the passing galaxies, if you had any sort of favorite treat or meal that he could have prepared for you.
The fifty sixth day that his eyes lit up upon your arrival, something which would have been imperceptible to anyone that hadn’t spent as much uninterrupted time with him as you had.
“It pleases me,” Kylo offered by way of answer. “What other purpose would there be?”
“You know I’m not, like, a therapist, right?”
You cringed at your own readiness to disrespect him, swallowing your misguided bravery in an attempt to redirect it. “I mean, everyone knows... anyone can access my posting, find out I’m just some med attendant. They’re going to start wondering why I’m here. In your room. Um, all the time.”
Kylo squinted, his curiosity the most refreshingly humanizing thing about him. “You make a good point,” he admitted. “Does it bother you? That they’ll wonder?”
Did it? You weren’t actually sure, and now your mind was more preoccupied with why he’d want to know of any discomfort you had about it in the first place. You didn’t think it would bother you, couldn’t find any tangible reason why it should. Truth be told, two months in, you sort of looked forward to the time you spent on him, in part because you knew he spent the same amount of time on you.
“No,” you answered honestly, leave long his gaze with your own. “I don’t think it does.”
He nodded, tilting his head. “Then, what?”
You could see no reason to keep the truth from him. He’d only steal it from your mind if you tried to, in any case.
“Why me?” you whispered, searching for any hint of an answer he was willing to give. “I was just some... annoying, obnoxious med attendant that wouldn’t shut up. You said so yourself.”
Amazingly, he hesitated. “I don’t... remember saying—“
“You don’t have to,” you deadpanned. “I remember. You did.” It had only been the most mortifying moment of your life in the First Order. No surprise that it had been little more than a footnote to him. “So why? Why me?”
Kylo blinked, shrugging a shoulder like the answer was the least complicated thing in the world. “Because I could hear you,” he told you, forgoing an elaboration. “I could hear you then, in the same way I can hear you now, and I know. You’re like me.”
You’re like me .
You shook your head, failing to comprehend his meaning. “I’m sorry, Kylo, I don’t think I know what you mean.”
“One day you will,” he offered, tone making it clear that he was done with this topic of discussion. “That’s all that matters.”
You stomped your way down the hall and barged past the on duty storm troopers straight into his chambers, mentally cussing him out the entire journey. His wide, hazel eyes peered up at you in amusement from where he lounged, waiting for you with one leg crossed over the other and his chin resting on his fist, propped up by an elbow balanced atop his thigh, just as you knew he would be. Any accusations you’d been ready to hurl his way died at your lips immediately; this was a man proud of what he’d done, one that would never compromise his joy by admitting guilt and offering up an apology.
“Something on your mind?” he prompted, poorly feigned innocence barely managing to conceal his delight.
“Is this your idea of a prank?” you spat through grit teeth, not quite able to keep from raising your voice at him. Most other people would do so at a penalty of losing a limb to a lightsaber tantrum, but most other people also weren’t six months in to being his... whatever you were. In any case, your angry demeanor only seemed to further encourage Kylo Ren’s mirth. “You’re fucking joking me, right?”
His resulting smirk was entirely too calm and collected for your taste. “Not at all. The assignment scroll sent to your quarters was quite official.”
You’d been wondering why everyone you’d passed had been staring at you all morning. Captains, mechanics, medics, troopers, their eyes ogling you with no care for whether or not you noticed. Job postings were public knowledge in the First Order, as were reassignments; it was simply easier to find someone to perform specific tasks that way, and allowed for an uptick in efficiency. News of reassignments spread quickly for that same reason.
No one had ever been reassigned as Kylo Ren’s personal concubine, though, which had the rumor mill churning at about eighty times its usual speed.
Kylo Ren’s toy.
Kylo Ren’s sex slave.
Kylo Ren’s.
He blinked, sudden understanding dawning on his face. “You’re not worried about what they’ll say.” It wasn’t a question. “You’re worried this means I’m going to force you.”
He wasn’t wrong— of course he wasn’t wrong. The heavy weight of strangers’ eyes had done quite the number on your self defenses, weakening them swiftly and easily. You’d only caught whispers of the rumors being unabashedly spread in your presence, only the tiniest bits and pieces of information, but it had been enough. By the time you’d returned to your quarters, never able to escape the sensation of being watched, the silk ribboned reassignment scroll taunting you proudly from your nightstand could be nothing but the last straw.
Or so you’d thought. Working up the courage to touch the thing and look it over only to find that, officially, your paycheck now existed as a byproduct of being Kylo Ren’s whore was infinitely more sickening.
“Yes,” you admitted, suddenly unable to train your gaze on anything but the floor. “I am.”
He’d made no mention of reassigning you, and certainly no attempts at romantic or physical advances. At least, not that you could remember, though you got the feeling you’d have known if that were the case. Direct a man as Kylo was, you were sure he’d have simply told you if you were the object of his affections.
If he even had those.
Kylo raised himself slowly to his feet, tall, imposing, commanding , considering you in a way you were sure no other man ever had before. His eyes raked your body up and down, and each step he took forward was another breath of air lost to your lungs. By the time he was close enough to reach out, to brush the curve of your jaw with the gentlest of leather clad fingers, the drum of your heartbeat was in your ears, disorienting and desensitizing you to anything and everything that didn’t strictly pertain to him.
“Why would I do that,” he murmured in your ear, heat of his breath on your skin coaxing out only the most obscene thoughts, “when it would be far simpler to make you beg?”
Those fingers of his reached up, caressing the arc of your cheekbone along the way to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear before falling to rest at your neck, leather curling gently into flesh. Despite yourself, you leaned into his touch, unaware of where this sudden hunger he’d awakened inside of you had previously been hiding.
You’d let him have you, if that was what he wanted. Before you’d been blind to it, but now you were privy to the simple, unadulterated truth. It didn’t matter, what those other people thought of you, of this arrangement. It didn’t matter if your name was cursed beneath the breaths of a thousand resistance rebels for now existing as the woman Kylo Ren officially claimed, in spite of the fact that he’d never so much as touched you before now. All of it was irrelevant, and the only thing, the only thing you wanted now was to allow it to happen, to let him do whatever—
Kylo dropped his hand and pulled away, snicker only half contained as he tried — and failed — to suppress a satisfied smirk. The weight of his presence retreating so suddenly from your mind was akin to an electric shock of the highest voltage, zapping your senses into acute awareness, as if you were being made to stare head on at the brilliance of a thousand suns, and only now were your lungs remembering just how to function.
“It’s only a cover,” he told you, retreating back to his chair and comfortably reclining once more, that touch of amusement still proudly worn on his face. The way he looked up at you was simple, but no less disarming. Never mind the fact that, mere moments ago, he’d been casually scavenging through your mind as little more than a joke, unrooting desires you hadn’t even known were there in the first place. “To keep you safe. There are a lot of people who would torture you, to learn the things I’ve told you about myself. This is easier.”
Easier.
To let the universe think you were his plaything. To allow everyone to think, in spite of your training, your education, your capability as an asset to the First Order, the only use Kylo Ren had for you was of a primal, sexual nature. To admit to each and every one of them that this was all you could contribute.
“Fuck you,” you spat, ignoring the heat of fresh tears threatening to spill onto your cheeks. “You couldn’t have taken the hit to your pride, right? Is that it? People find out you actually have a fucking friend and suddenly they know you’re human? That you have feelings?”
His eyes were unreadable, as was so often the case, but when he looked at you, it was in the absence of anger. He understood, you knew, and not simply because he could hear the tidal roar of fury pulsing through your entire being. “Is that what you want to be? My friend?”
You swallowed, lip trembling, effectively disarmed. He had no use for your anger, and you knew it was unlikely to change anything. Yelling and screaming might have lent you some dangerous form of catharsis, but that was all you’d get from them. Accepting your fate, you trudged through bitter defeat to take your seat across from him, as you had done most days for the last six months. “I don’t know what I want.”
“Ah,” he breathed, voice steady. “Then it would appear we’re on the same page.”
The two of you fell into silence, as was liable to happen when you no longer had the energy to needle Kylo’s thoughts out of him, and you could feel the smothering weight of his eyes relentlessly bearing down upon you. Had he stopped to think it through, before blasting a monstrous hole through your reputation? Had he considered how it might effect you, emotionally, even for a split second?
No. This was Kylo Ren, you had to remember. In spite of whatever information the two of you shared with one another, no matter how comfortable you became, whatever he thought was best was what went. Once his mind was made up — and, you gathered, his mind had been made up on this particular subject for quite some time — there could be no stopping the execution. From the moment claiming you as his own had appeared a good idea to him, you’d been damned.
When you next spoke, it was with tepid resignation. “Did you have to go with concubine?”
“It offends you?” he chuckled, eyes searching in the distance as they always did when he probed your thoughts, pink lips arching up in the faintest ghost of a smile. “The implication of being mine?”
“Of being owned,” you corrected him, unable to help letting out an annoyed sigh. “There are rumors about the other women, you know. Your conquests. The ones that aren’t around once you’re finished with them, to tell their side of the story.”
Many a time, before all of this, you’d wondered what had become of that ever growing list of names. Women whose beauty had prompted Kylo Ren to take an unfortunate liking to them, plucking them from whichever desert trap of a planet he’d first discovered them on. Horror stories of boredom fueled torture, one sided experiments, the whispers of a pretty young thing tossed off the ship with no helmet or protective gear simply to satisfy Kylo Ren’s curiosity of whether her beauty, solidified in death, would hold up against the backdrop of space and its trillions of glittering stars.
You still wondered, but knew you would never be near brave enough to ask.
“There were no other women,” Kylo said simply, answering your unspoken question. “There’s never been.”
That was news to you, considering many of those rumors originated from as high up in the First Order as General Hux himself. The stories twisted as they trickled down the chain of command, warping and turning that much more sinister, but everyone regarded the root of them as truth.
“Those rumors,” he went on, wholly and totally unbothered by your complete lack of grace, “were by my design. The only things people think about me are exactly what I want them to. Much like yourself, now.”
“I...” You bit your lip, blinking hard against the rate at which your thoughts flew. “Forgive me. I was under a different impression.”
Kylo only arched an eyebrow, that unwavering force still casting his features in amusement. “Bit hypocritical, don’t you think? To judge me for something that never happened, and then to worry that others will do the same to you?”
Well. He had a point.
Your palms were sweaty, and no matter how hard you tried to rub the sensation off on your knees, it was to no avail. “So, you’re not going to...?”
“Did you want me to?”
A simple enough question, one you hated for the fact that all it did was launch a torpedo of indecision through your body.
“Like I told you before,” you sighed. “I don’t know what I want.”
Kylo nodded. “Well, for now, at least on paper, you belong to me.” The ghost of a joke danced in his eyes, and he paused only a moment before saying, “If anyone has anything... untoward to say about it, let me know. They’ll be dealt with.”
You didn’t doubt it.
You gasped for air but could find none, lungs screeching with the burning absence of oxygen. Your fingers, your hands, your arms, all of them were trembling, but you couldn’t say one way or the other whether that was due to the thrum of the saber enclosed in your fists or the slick horror icing its way through your veins.
He’d come out of nowhere, a plethora of biting, profane insults hurled at you like the sharpest of daggers, and as he pulled the helmet of his stormtrooper uniform off his head, revealing wild eyes and unkempt hair that surely went against regulations, you realized it wasn’t a member of the First Order standing before you, but someone who didn’t belong here. This was a resistance soldier, or a third party radical.
Someone with a bone to pick.
Someone with pain to cause.
He’d rushed you with no warning outside of a feral scream, cursing and damning Kylo Ren to hell, along with the girl whose morals were twisted and traitorous enough to sleep with him. Any defense you made, any effort to tell the truth, would fall upon deaf ears, simply be regarded as a lie. Kylo had solidified that when he’d decided it would be in his reputation’s best interest to fool the entire galaxy into thinking you were nothing more than an object he liked to play with, regardless of his initial intention.
It was nothing more than pure instinct that drove you to do it. This man meant to kill you; it was clear as day, and didn’t take any in depth observation. Unfortunately for him, a voice in your head, one suspiciously similar to Kylo Ren’s and heavily devoted to ensuring your survival, refused to let your death come to pass. Its will was so polarizing, so unshakably strong, that you were grabbing Kylo’s lightsaber off the table from where he’d left it after needing to step out on you for a moment, powering it on, and ramming it through your attacker’s chest before you realized just exactly what you were doing.
The stranger’s face was frozen in an awful eternity of hatred, the remnants of pure, putrid malice crystallized in his glassy green irises, illuminated by the sinister red glow of the lightsaber shoved through his body. His mouth was open, the sounds of the awful cruelties he’d been hurling at you still ringing in your ears, and crimson rivers of blood flowed down his chin, dripping onto the floor and running towards you at a sinister pace.
You’d never seen him before, but if his last facial expression was anything to go by, he’d had nothing but all the scorn in the galaxy for you.
Distantly, in some unconscious part of your mind, you heard the chamber door slide open, a single set of footsteps beelining your way, but you were physically incapable of turning around, of looking back, of doing anything that wasn’t marveling in pure disgust at what you’d just done. Hands shrouded in black covered your own, prying them from the humming saber before turning it off and sliding it across the floor to join a discarded black helmet, but you couldn’t look to see whose. Those same hands gripped your wrists, dragging you away from the body and urging you up to your feet with strong arms, but still, there was no tearing your stare away from that dead man’s lifeless hatred, shooting through you like plasma bolts. Even when you blinked, in those split seconds, that face was all you could see in the darkness.
It was only when Kylo Ren gripped your shoulders with squeezing fingers and shook you hard enough to cut off a scream you hadn’t even known you’d been in the middle of that you could even consider looking anywhere else, and even then, you were only trading one man’s face for another.
But Kylo’s face wasn’t marred by hatred, or malice, or really any sort of cruelty that you had the skill to interpret. For once, the plush bow of his mouth wasn’t downturned, and there was no ancient glimmer of vengeance or infuriated desperation in those wide, shimmering — always shimmering — hazel eyes, but there was the slightest expression of concern. Even in your current state, rattled by the attempt on your life and mind racing faster than comprehension allowed for with the sticky euphoria of adrenaline, the enormity of that fact wasn’t lost on you.
“Are you hurt?” His voice was quiet, impossibly gentle, but the words weighed on your shoulders like a thousand tons.
“I killed him,” was all you could manage to choke out.
Kylo only blinked, scanning your body for any missed wounds or injuries. It wouldn’t do him much good; the things wrong with you in this moment weren’t anything visible. “You didn’t want to.” Another pause as he assessed your thoughts, your unspeakable terror, and then, “You’d have spared him, if you could have. I can tell.”
It was meant as a comfort, in his own unique way, which you knew because this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to offer you some awkward hint of reassurance. Part of you wished you could simply accept it and leave it at that; the other part, the part that could still tell right from wrong and feel the pure shame of murder crawling over your skin, knew that would never happen.
“I’m...” You swallowed thickly, screwing your eyes shut as you fought to suck down another sufficient breath. His hands squeezing your shoulders, the blood stream washing over the floor, the impossibly lifeless eyes of a man who’d been damning you to hell just seconds before you’d permanently silenced him, it was all entirely, painfully, mercilessly too much. “No, I’m not sure I would have.”
Kylo arched an eyebrow, scanning and searching relentlessly. You could feel him there in your thoughts, the bittersweet pinprick of a presence you had neither the courage or will to fight blanketing you in its oppressive, perversely comforting shadow. Funny; to hear the few survivors of Kylo Ren’s mind invasion tell it, the experience was nothing but bleak, depressively cold violation. Not once had you ever heard mention of how warm it could be.
“You don’t need to do that.” As if by granting you permission which wasn’t even his to grant, you would simply be able to turn off the torrential downpour of emotion within you. As if he could merely take it away from you. As if he’d actually be willing to. “You don’t need to feel badly. If not him, it would have been you, and then—“
“And then who would you talk to about your feelings?” you spat, trembling in his grasp. Bile was caught in your throat, acidic and burning with the heat of disgust. “This wouldn’t have— this wouldn’t have happened if you’d been able to swallow your pride! Do you get that? If you’d just been able to admit that even you need to talk your feelings out with someone! But you can’t let anyone think you’re human, right Supreme Leader? You let them all think that I’m your plaything, your fuck toy, that you only keep me around as something to do! Newsflash, asshole, even if you are just trying to save your reputation, they’ll still think I mean something to you! That I count!”
He was still inside your mind — you could feel him, like a heavy cloak. You knew he didn’t need to ask; he knew that you knew, in fact, but that didn’t stop him. “Count as what?”
“A weakness! ” Your breath grew ever more shallow, and the edges of your vision began to blur. Awful knots wound up your insides, constricting and writhing in a sinister mass. The more you shouted, the harsher you were sure to be punished after the fact, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Too much had happened; too much was still happening. “You didn’t think that broadcasting your fake sex life to the ends of the fucking galaxy would have consequences? You didn’t think someone might try to pay you back, kill someone you care about for murdering someone they loved?”
If your profanity or clear lack of respect bothered him, he made no effort to show it. Instead, he only continued to skip through your thoughts, picking and pulling, gathering as much information as he needed to make sense of whatever direction his mind ran in. “You were scared,” he murmured, trying to provide an answer to the issue he knew that, beneath all your anger and bolster, truly bothered you. “It was a perfectly normal reflex.”
“That’s not true!” you cried, eyes stinging and lip trembling. “You don’t understand—“
“Don’t I?” One of his hands loosened its grip on your shoulder to slowly snake its way up to your face, palm cupping your cheek in an impossibly perfect fit. His gaze commanded your focus, urged you to ease your breathing. A moment or two later, your vision began returning to normal, but the dense ball of dread in the back of your throat was still preventing you from properly swallowing. “Me, of all people? You don’t think I know what that tastes like?”
He was going to make you admit it.
That deep, primal urge that had taken you when the attacker had run at you with that dull, rusted knife hidden beneath his stolen uniform. The insidious relief when Kylo’s eerie red saber had powered to life, guiding your hand and practically goading you to drive it into the man’s chest, the sickly singed scent of human flesh your massively fucked up reward for following impulse. The intoxication of the dark satisfaction that entwined your soul when you watched the light of life leave his eyes, flitting off some place you’d been dangerously close to visiting yourself.
The fact that, beneath your tears and shock, shrouded by your terror and agony, at the disturbing realization that you’d so easily plucked someone’s soul out of their body, you found that some part of you, deep and parasitic and poisonous, some part of you had liked it.
You’d killed, it felt good, and now he was going to make you admit it.
“That’s not what I want,” Kylo whispered, closing his eyes. Slowly, carefully, he tilted his face down, the warmth of his skin leeching into yours as he touched your foreheads together. “Please don’t misunderstand. The only reason I’m relieved is because now... I know you’ll finally be able to see.”
“I killed him,” you whispered, unable to form any other cohesive response. “I killed him.”
Kylo’s eyes slowly fluttered open, eyelashes shyly skimming your cheekbones. “You did.”
Your lip trembled, a fresh round of tears spilling over the brim of your eyes. “I... liked it.”
His hazel eyes glittered, scanning each and every available inch of your face. “I know.”
You hiccuped, trembling in place as the ice in your veins circulated your entire body. “I’m a monster.”
“No,” came his immediate reply, “you’re not.” He hesitated just long enough for you to notice, something only a person who’d spent months of personal time with him would be able to pick up. “You’re like me.”
You’re like me.
He’d spoken those words to you months ago, soft in tone and honeyed by the rich timbre of his voice. He’d meant them to be an answer to a question, the same one that always whirled through your thoughts each and every time you found yourself across from him, but they’d presented as more of a thinly veiled threat than anything else. Not on purpose, and you couldn’t hold it against him; even the kindest words would roll off his tongue like hellfire.
And those words had haunted you way back then, had stained their way into your sleep until Kylo Ren’s was the only face you were capable of dreaming. You’d wondered obsessively after their meaning, made hundreds of guesses about the implications of such a statement from a man like him. Now you saw that his keeping the answer from you hadn’t been out of spite, as you’d originally assumed.
Kylo Ren had been doing you a kindness.
“It’s a good thing,” he promised, uncharacteristically hopeful as he spoke. “It means we aren’t alone, you and I.”
He seemed so sure. Determined to convince you that he was right, that there was reason and truth to what he said. And if it meant that what he spoke was the truth, if it meant that you weren’t a monster but rather someone capable of defending herself against those who intended her harm, could what he was saying really be wrong?
“You... never told me being lonely was something you worried about,” you whispered, lips close enough to just brush the feather soft curve of his. When had he become so close? When had you started to want him to be?
“Because it isn’t.” Kylo’s hands shifted, the one at your shoulder ghosting south to curl at your waist, and the one at your cheek moving down to your chin, leather clad fingers cradling it like your bones were made of crystal. “Because I have you. I told you then, months ago, and I’m telling you now. You’re like me.”
And maybe you were like him. Not in the way that he was sensitive to the Force, and not in the way that he had some Atlas sized weight on his shoulders, coupled with life’s heaviest crown. Not in the terrible agony he felt for each and every mistake he’d ever made, the ones which had led him to become the very man he was today, standing above you, mere moments away from capturing you in the kiss of a lifetime.
But maybe in the way that you knew he would understand, if you detailed the dark, pulsating being within you, hidden in shadow, feeding you with the numbing justification of self preservation. Maybe in the fact that he knew killing that man had only been satisfying because it meant you got to live another day, and you now had proof that you’d worked for it.
Maybe in the way you knew Kylo ached to kiss you, had for about a year now, in much the same way you longed to kiss him, though you’d both been ignoring the budding impulse.
“No more of that,” he told you, pupils dilated with pure, unadulterated desire. “If there’s something you want, you’ll need to take it.”
“By force?” you hummed, eyes half lidded. How heavy that gaze of his was; heavy enough to level an entire planet of its own accord.
“Whatever it takes,” Kylo murmured, surging forth and finally, finally letting his lips gently work and meld against your own.
You’re like me.
And as you lost yourself within him, as he scooped you up and covered you in himself and rained down upon you like hellfire, you suddenly came to the realization that, perhaps, that wasn’t such a bad thing after all.