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The scavenger girl from Jakku, still restrained in the interrogation cell, finally opened her eyes. Through the Force, Kylo Ren could feel waves of shock and confusion emanating from her. She was afraid, but that was to be expected. This wasn’t his first time torturing information out of someone, and it would probably not be his last.
Upon discovering she had seen the map to Luke Skywalker and that he no longer needed the droid, he had knocked her out and carried her back to his ship to be questioned. He would soon make quick work of probing this girl’s mind and would leave her behind for more pressing matters. Skywalker was within reach now; all he needed was to see what this girl had seen.
“Where am I?” the girl asked, startled to find that she was not alone in the room.
Kylo Ren paused, examining her face. All in all, she seemed rather ordinary, so why did she prove to be so crucial to his plans? “You’re my guest.”
“Where are the others?”
He wanted to laugh at this. Why did she care about that sad collection of Resistance lackeys? Better yet, why did she seem to think he would have captured them too? They were of no use to him. “You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends? You’ll be relieved to hear that I have no idea.”
He continued to stare her down, studying her feelings. The fear was still there, but he began to sense something else… curiosity. She wanted to know more about him. She would be left disappointed, then, as he had no plans of revealing anything about himself or the First Order to her. He just needed to get that map out of her pathetic little brain.
Just then, a hint of her anger bubbled to the surface. He could feel her hatred, directed at him. She wished him dead. So, she wanted to fight back? Interesting. He could see a hint of determination in her expression now. She was a fighter, then. She hadn’t seemed like the type to give him any trouble. Not that it mattered – she couldn’t possibly stop him now, couldn’t possibly put up any sort of meaningful struggle, as small as she was. Besides, he still had her shackled to the table.
“You still want to kill me,” he observed, privately amused at her misguided tenacity.
“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask,” she spat at him in response.
Kylo Ren was many things, but a creature was not one of them. He was a man, just like anyone else, and he refused to be treated like some inferior species. This was not the first time such an insult had been thrown at him. Without thinking, he found himself reaching up to unlatch his helmet, setting it aside. Let her say that to his face.
He stared at the girl with his own eyes now, daring her to call him a creature again. She seemed shocked at his appearance, as if she had truly expected to find the face of a monster behind his mask, only to discover he was an ordinary young man.
“Tell me about the droid,” he demanded, growing impatient with the situation and unsettled by the girl’s unusually courageous behavior.
“…He’s a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan indicator-“
She was trying to distract him with technical details. He had no time for her games and quickly cut her off. “He’s carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from archives of the Empire. We need the last piece. And, somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you.” The girl looked away, as if she could keep him from further probing her mind that way.
“You. A scavenger.”
She looked back up at him, her fear again taking dominance. She wondered how he knew any of this. He could tell that she was finally starting to realize the gravity of her situation. Smart girl. He would confirm her suspicions. “You know I can take whatever I want.”
He moved closer to her, reaching out a gloved hand as if to stroke her face or hair. She recoiled from him, but it did her no good. There was nowhere for her to go. He stopped his hand inches away from her cheek, reaching into her mind with the Force. He was only able to scratch the surface, seeing things he already knew about the girl – her home world, her occupation – and this time, a quick flash of her name, Rey. Then there was a burst of something strange between them, and he was instantly pushed out of her mind. It was as if a great light had blinded his telepathic senses for a moment. Unsettled, he looked into her eyes and knew that she felt it too, whatever it was. He had never felt anything like it before.
Regaining his composure, he pushed back into her mind just as she strained to keep him out. It was more difficult with her than it had been with anyone else, and the effort caused some pain, which he ignored.
He saw more images this time. The girl was remembering her childhood, trying to keep him from seeing her more recent memories. She counted every day on Jakku, marked their passage with tallies on the wall of her salvaged dwelling. She looked up at the sky, watching, waiting for something. She traded scrap metal for basic, pitiful portions of food. She fought for survival amongst the sand and the oppressive heat. Still, she didn’t want to leave that barren planet. She was afraid to leave, afraid that she would miss whatever it was she was waiting for. Her family. She appeared to have no one.
“You’re so lonely,” he observed, “so afraid to leave.” He smiled slightly at this. Images of an ocean then filled his mind. He understood these to be her dreams, since Jakku was all desert. He could feel her longing. She dreamt of this ocean often, and it offered her some level of comfort. “At night, desperate to sleep… you imagine an ocean. I see it – I see the island.”
Tears began streaming down her face as she found him uncovering her deepest feelings. She tried to push him out again, but he was much stronger. Now, more images, this time of… his father? Han Solo was there amongst the images now, offering the girl a job as his co-pilot. Unable to control his anger over the surprise affront, Kylo Ren snarled, “And Han Solo. You feel like he’s the father you never had.”
Truly, he wasn’t prepared to be confronted with his father’s face at a moment like this, and he couldn’t control his reaction. “He would’ve disappointed you,” he spat.
That was apparently the last straw for the girl as well. “Get out of my head!”
Not to be swayed, he leaned in even closer to her. “I know you’ve seen the map. It’s in there… and now you’ll give it to me.” He quickly pushed past the girl’s memories of Han Solo and began to dig deeper. Despite her best efforts, she was not going to distract him with any more images of his father.
The feeling of being blinded by a great light began to come back, but he knew what to expect now, and he pushed back at it. He could now sense that she felt it too, stronger this time, and he suspected it was the reason she fought back so hard. Neither of them had a name or any frame of reference for this sensation. “Don’t be afraid,” he said in a low voice, as if to comfort her. “I feel it too.”
“I’m not giving you anything,” she insisted.
“We’ll see,” he countered, still certain he could push through the strange connection between them.
The girl was now pushing back with a strength Kylo Ren had never encountered before, as if she suddenly built a wall between them. He could still see bits and pieces, a burst of color here and there. She looked into his eyes with an unexpected intensity, and suddenly he could no longer scale the wall at all.
He was pushed completely out then, sensing nothing but her continued presence in the room for a moment. Then, another unfamiliar sensation, as if there was a great darkness clawing through his mind, and he knew at once that the girl had somehow flipped the script and was now probing him.
Taken aback, it took him a moment to begin to push her out. Just enough time for her to see far, far too much.
“You,” she began, amazed at her newfound power, “you’re afraid… that you will never be as strong as… Darth Vader!”
Just as suddenly, she released her hold on his mind, breathing heavily.
He backed out of the room, rattled. He realized he was empty-handed, but he couldn’t bear to let the girl see any more of his mind. There was too much at stake. He would have to admit his temporary defeat to Snoke and seek his guidance. The Supreme Leader would know what to do.
Who was this girl, this Rey? How was an orphaned scavenger from nowhere able to not only push back against the probe, but to turn it around on him? It had never been done before. And what was that strange burst of light in the Force he kept encountering in her mind? He had to know more.
Kylo Ren had a feeling this was only the beginning of his battle with Rey of Jakku.