Work Text:
And when I wrestle you down
Something blooms in the dark
So far back in me
I couldn't live with your hands on my mouth
Watching ice growing over the waterfall
While the window crazes with heat
And as those fiery wheels spin and burst in the air
The light is so bright, the dark is so dark
And I dislike what I need
And I get lost in the dark
With such a violence in me
"Prime" by Shearwater
Exhilarating peace. That’s what it should have felt like. Instead he was trapped--bound in a distorted, artificial space, the liquid lapping at his jaw as the light from above blinded his view. His breath appeared in mirrored bubbles from the respirator, disturbing the blue liquid of the tank. The pain was there, beyond the veil--so far removed it may as well have been a satellite crossing the sky. He wanted to be closer to it, bury himself in it. This was the path he’d chosen. They knew better than to sedate him.
The alien shapes of the medical droids beyond the transparisteel were silent company. The others would not leave him in peace. Their thoughts flitted across his consciousness, sparks rising up and snuffing out. If he focused on them through the medicated haze he could make out their unspoken allegations. Wounded. Failure. Dismissal. Amateur.
The words did not prick at him as much as his imprisonment. The monitors responded to the fury held within him, their telltale tempos gaining as he fought to pull himself up and out of unconsciousness. There was a distant pop as some part of the tank cracked but did not break. Numbness crept into his arm at the line embedded in the soft tissue. The dark closed in on him as quickly as a leap through hyperspace.
When he opened his eyes again he was lying in the snow, his breath twisting in the red exterior lighting of the shuttlecraft. The ground was unmoving beneath him this time, as it had every time since he had left it.
This was a cold and empty version of that night, missing any hope of day. But it was his. In this dream he could kill her over and over again. This was a test, he surmised--one in which he could relive his mistakes with the opportunity to undo them. It was one he’d begun to fail with alarming regularity. He knew when the time came, it would fall to him to extinguish that light a thousandth time. But he could feel his obedience to that drive waning.
The snow fell, or was it ash? It didn’t matter--it wasn’t real. He had never stopped long enough to examine it. He knew from experience that if he made his way to the empty shuttle it would take him up into the endless space as easily as breathing. He could watch from a distance as Starkiller broke apart in standstill. But he could not leave it’s gravity. Inevitably the medication’s power would ebb and he would wake again to the bacta tank.
This was the lesson: face your weakness, and destroy it.
So he dragged himself up and through the frozen forest--no longer trailing blood and cinders but just as broken. He gripped the severed remains of his saber as if he could will the darkened kyber crystal back to life. She had taken that from him too.
The oscillator was a flaming beacon in the distance. The last five iterations she’d been there, hidden amidst the venting conduits and pillars like some kind of vermin. There were ways to flush her out--ways to make her scream. But she’d foiled them all by returning to the catwalk and its memories. This was a vulnerability he could not tolerate, one which he could not admit to. He had to end this once and for all.
+++
Rey dreamt it again. She was back above the metal void, looking down into the cold red light of the energy core from the upper levels of the oscillator. Her heart sank in her chest, but she fought to keep its rate steady.
“You have to be like a stone on the shore. Let the Force wash over and around you. Feel yourself within that current but do not resist,” Master Luke had told her. “When you are at your most rigid and unyielding is when you can be broken.”
Master’s lecture on stoicism the day before hadn’t staved off the dream. The first few days she hadn’t slept, only to be plunged back into it during a failed attempt at meditation. She had tried a soporific tea, but that had only prolonged her time asleep, much to her Master’s displeasure. Her exhaustion and frustration were beginning to prove his reluctance in training her.
She’d followed his instruction as best she could but could not speak of what she faced nightly. The times when rage had darkened Skywalker’s features had struck her wordless. If just uttering his name could blacken her master’s mood, what would he think of the fact that he had become her personal nightmare?
Long after the fire in her hut had been reduced to embers she had remained awake in the dark, eyes open and limbs twisting in the sheets. She forced herself to get up, donning her roughspun gray robes to brave the chill of the howling winds that scoured the island. It was as she sat huddled on the steps, listening to the roar of the ocean below, that she must have nodded off again.
Every instinct told her to run, but she stayed where she was. She’d played the game of Loth-cat and rat every night before. Although she’d gotten better at catching him unawares, he seemed to have a sense of her position, forcing her to defend and evade.
At least she was good at that. An otherwise insignificant life had taught her how to hide well, how to pick away at the bones of dead megaliths like a metal-beak dissembling trash. She could re-wire a panel to electrocute at a stray touch, or a gas conduit to blow with the right combination of patience and plasma.
The lightsaber in her hand was her most useful ally--but even with it the unarmed Knight had bested her more times than not. She’d learned quickly there were other ways to kill with the Force. All ways which Master Luke had cautioned against. These were of the Dark. She was nowhere near being able to dance on the knife’s edge of the two sides of the Force, unlike her enemy.
Rey made her way down into the interior of the oscillator, to the level where a catwalk spanned the wide void. She had to hurry.
+++
The girl had marked him three times, but never so badly as the first. That unintentional and invisible wound had gone deeper than the ones on his face and body. Even deeper than the hole in his side.
He’d felt her the moment he’d stepped on to the seared earth of the battlefield on Takodona. Almost under compulsion he’d ran to find her. He told himself he’d been avoiding having to deal with her meddlesome company. But the prize had been that much sweeter when the first wave of her terror had washed over him--the hot lash of it searing his mind. It was much too easy to follow in the relative peace of the forest.
Where they met, she did not hesitate to fire at him. He moved automatically to deflect her scattered shots as she backed away from him. These were simple drills that came to him as easily as breathing. It was only after he had followed her a few too many paces that he realized the idiocy of his pursuit. His hand rose as he made the decision to freeze her in place. It was that simple.
“The girl I’ve heard so much about.”
She’d strained against his hold like a trapped animal, the whites of her eyes showing beneath a red reflection. He’d seen himself there, twisted by a deep and instinctual hatred. It mollified him, allowed him to reach even deeper into her fluttering thoughts and pluck the simplest out.
“You would kill me. Knowing nothing about me.”
Despite her protestations against the First Order he sensed she knew nothing of them, nor anything of the fight she had been so unceremoniously swept into. He had found himself mesmerized by the defiance that steeled her jaw and shook her frame despite this. He’d kept her still beneath his hand as he’d shuffled through her thoughts.
That she was a scavenger was certain, but there was something more. She had traveled all the way here in a familiar ship, had witnessed the navigational charts, had participated in the end of a story that had begun long before her birth. And he knew her, but could not place it.
When they’d told him of the Resistance’s intrusion into the fray he’d forgotten everything but the will to take her. A simple push on her mind and she’d collapsed to the ground.
He did not hesitate to catch and take her into his arms amidst the green. She weighed next to nothing--as if she were hollow. She smelled of ozone and the bright smell of fear, but beneath it the hint of sweet fruit on her breath. Her face when she slept was that of a child, eyelids flickering and lips parted to reveal white teeth.
He shouldn’t have taken her. He shouldn’t have let her see beneath the mask. These were moments of weakness that had tipped the scales against him. Just as his father had forced a confrontation, sealing both their fates. Much worse, when he had touched her mind, she had touched his back. Deeply. The intrusion had left a mark--and he hadn’t been alone since. Her constant presence at the back of his mind was maddening. He’d needed to erase it again and again just to find solace in this medicated sleep.
He didn’t bother with silence as he made his way into the oscillator through the narrow service corridors. He kept his mind open for any signs or traces of her that might betray one of her many inelegant traps. Although there was no pain to accompany his losses, their tally was enough of an injury.
There was a low-frequency hum to the structure. He paused to note a wall comm that had been torn into, but he could not sense any incendiaries when he raised his hand to it. He moved on, following the thread of light that had sprouted between them, the one that tugged incessantly at his consciousness.
Where the room opened up, the catwalk scored the open pit of the oscillator. He had avoided coming down to this level before--so much so that he was only slightly puzzled by the sight of his mask at rest upon the steps. It took a few moments to realize that she had moved it.
He paused warily, looking around for her. Her presence was close--but not such that he could tell exactly where she was. After a moment’s consideration he dropped to a knee, feeling for any hidden triggers or devices before lifting the helmet with both hands.
It had it’s comfortable weight and shape but there was something different about it. It wasn’t apparent until it spoke of its own accord.
“Listen to me.” Rey’s voice was distorted by the modulator, but obviously hers. “You have to stop.”
He resisted the urge to fling the damned thing away from him and into the pit. Instead he held it up and studied her handiwork. He didn’t want to even begin to speculate how she had made it work. It didn’t matter in the dream.
“You attacked me first, if you remember.” He replied, careful to keep his voice down lest he miss hearing her approach behind him.
“I didn’t have a choice. You were terrorizing me,” she said. He’d noticed her Coruscanti accent become more pronounced when irritated, but in this instance she sounded fatigued. “It’s pointless. This dream doesn’t change.”
“But it is a dream. You’re not real.” Kylo answered, realizing the absurdity of it. There was silence and then an even more unusual sound, her laugh filtered through the helmet. He cocked his head to the side, hoping to hear it’s real source emanating from somewhere in the chamber. It was obvious she was no longer there.
“I’m as real as you think you are,” she answered wryly. “This is my nightmare, not yours.”
He stood in place, unease keeping him frozen.
“If that’s true, how would you prove it?” He asked.
“Ask me something you wouldn’t know.”
He considered it for a moment before shaking his head slightly--embarrassed at his own foolishness.
“No. I won’t play a child’s game.”
“You need to get back to the one you seem so fixated upon?” Her voice was mocking. “I’m running out of ways to kill you. And even if I do, I’ll just wake up. And we’ll be back here again tomorrow.”
“Where are you?” He asked, fighting to keep his tone even.
“So you can come and--”
“No. Where are you. If you are dreaming, as you say.”
The silence that hung between them was heavy as she seemed to consider her next words carefully.
“The island,” she said. “It was here all along. I just didn’t know I was looking for it.”
A pang of realization struck him, but was quickly assuaged again by doubt.
“Not good enough,” he began to pace the ramp ways, holding his mask in front of him at arm’s length despite its significant weight. He didn’t trust her enough to try putting it on. “You’ve given me that before.”
“The last time I saw your mother was on D’Qar. I promised her that I wouldn’t end up like you. Your uncle seems to think otherwise. It took days to convince him to train me. He’s been showing me Ma--.”
“Not good enough,” Kylo seethed. “He was my master, too.”
The anger strengthened his connection to the Force even within the dream. Just as quickly, he knew she was no longer in the building. She had circled back to the forest, probably quite some time ago. His boots clunked against the metal grates as he headed back outside again. He knew where she was.
+++
Rey sat in the command seat of the shuttle, finger poised above the comm. The sleek interior of the ship was empty but for Kylo’s disembodied voice and the errant sounds of his movement across the open channel.
“Then tell me something I couldn’t know,” she snapped. “You’re just as much a figment of my imagination.”
“Snoke wanted me to bring you to him, and I failed. I’m being punished for not killing you instead.” He sounded as if he were explaining this as a fact to himself, as if she didn’t exist. The words seemed out of place.
“Snoke knows about me?”
There was a long enough pause that Rey thought her question might have been too quiet to register.
“This is a test. If you are on the path to becoming a Jedi, I have to either kill you or bring you to my Master,” he explained. “I can’t afford to show you the same leniency again.”
“Leniency?” Rey’s voice fluctuated with disbelief. “That’s what you call--”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you before. You gave me more than enough chances to do so if I’d wished it.”
She laughed again, too fixated on the irony of it to consider what he had said.
“This is ridicu--”
She was cut off by the rumble of the shuttle ramp lowering from behind her, echoed in the feedback of the comm. She cursed to herself at neglecting to fuse the damned thing shut--he’d obviously been able to override the exterior controls. She stood up and dropped into a defensive stance immediately.
“Stop,” she yelled.
He was already there, ascending the ramp. Even from across the shuttle she felt as if he loomed over her like some kind of imaginary beast. His physical presence was terrifying. She held fast against the instinct to run.
Kylo’s face was ghastly in the brilliant white light, crossed by the angry red mark she’d given him. His skin was white smeared with the cinders where she’d scored his flesh but the wound appeared to be partially healed. She’d caught glimpses of him before but hadn’t seen him as close or as distinctly as now. The sight was unsettling.
He dropped his helmet, which hit the floor with a resounding thunk. Before she knew it he’d raised his left hand in a familiar gesture.
Rey stood her ground and crossed her arms around her torso as she was buffeted by the Force. She remembered her Master’s words and let it wash over her, around her. Her feet remained planted on the shuttle floor, and the stricture she had felt before evaporated from her body just as easily.
“You’re learning fast,” he marveled, his mouth quirking into a shape she would have never called a smile. “As I thought.”
She raised the lightsaber but did not ignite it. She could see the bewilderment begin to tug at the edges of his deadly expression.
“I’m not going to fight you,” she declared. “Not anymore.”
She held up the lightsaber as an offering in her open palm, letting one end drop to the floor.
“What?” His expression flickered between confusion and mistrust as he looked between her face and the weapon that threatened to slip from her grasp.
“I don’t want to fight you,” She repeated between clenched teeth. “Killing you over and over again doesn’t feel half as good as I’d hoped it would.” She choked on her next words, feeling a tightness in her throat. “Killing you doesn’t bring back the dead.”
For an instant his face was frozen in what she could only assume was the anger lurking just below the surface. It was replaced by disgust.
“Fight me!” He snarled, extending his arm again and with it another slow crush of the Force. This time she was thrown backwards against the navigation console. She kept the lightsaber between them as she struggled to keep on her feet.
“I know it was yours. Take it,” she said.
“Fight me.” Even before the words came out she knew he was compelling her--she could feel him taking up all of the space inside her head, like a dark fog settling over a shore.
“No!” She felt her face twist into a matching expression of desperation. “You can’t control me. This is my dream.”
Her words cut whatever shred of control remained holding him. He stalked towards her and grabbed her wrist with a black gloved hand, pulling her forward and pressing his chest against the deadly end of the lightsaber. His other hand enveloped her own, holding her much smaller fingers tight against the activation button.
“Do it.” He ordered.
She fought against his grasp as he lowered his face to within inches of hers. She could feel a physical heat rolling off of his body in waves. Unable to meet his lifeless stare, she kept her eyes fixed on his mouth and on the way his jaw clenched beneath his tattered skin.
“No,” she answered, shrugging even as she twisted away from his hold. “We’ll just be back here again. Maybe we can call a truce long enough that I can get some sleep.”
He shuddered and let go of her suddenly. She watched his hands grasp at the air as he raised them to her face. Rey turned her face away, involuntarily, but the fingers never tightened around her throat.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” He asked with the manner of one in excruciating pain. His shaking hands were poised around her face like a cage. She winced, and he pulled them away just as quickly.
“I never wanted to see you again.” It sickened her to realize she was trapped between his looming body and the console behind her--the sharpness of it digging into her lower back.
“Rey.” Something about the way he’d said her name startled her. It sounded familiar. It didn’t take her long to realize that it was the first time he’d spoken it. His hands dropped to his sides, clenching and unclenching. He turned away from her, gaze on the console to their right. “This is still a test. I’ll kill you if I see you again.”
“Then I’ll have to kill you. But this isn’t . . .”Her words trailed off as she realized he’d turned back towards her, eyes resting on her neck, resisting meeting her own. She’d seen that look mirrored in her own face and the faces of so many others so many times before.
Starvation.
Without a thought she raised her free left hand to his right cheek, crisscrossing his scar. The moment skin met skin she felt it as if she’d touched a shorted circuit.
I’m here. I can’t be free of you. Why won’t you leave me? She heard his words unspoken just as she actually did feel him. It was a pure, unadulterated need. The world seemed to disintegrate around her as she was swallowed by those dark waves.
+++
Kylo found himself leaning forward into her touch, more her will than his, as her pupils dilated and flickered with something otherworldly. She was not fighting him mentally--he knew he could slip through those cracks in her mind just as easily as if they were doorways. But he held himself back, pinned by the change in her expression.
Entwined as they were it was difficult to say whose intention was in charge. But he knew it was Rey who pulled him down towards her face, just by the pressure of her fingers on his skin and the will that was rolling off of her in waves.
At first he did not know what to do--they were both too lost within each other’s minds to separate themselves from the act. His mouth was poised inches from hers, and her eyes flickered half-lidded as she stepped into the space between them.
“No,” he said weakly. He found the strength to raise his gloved hands to her narrow, beautiful face, cradling it as he pulled away. The disappointment written there made him feel as if his legs would give out beneath him. But he stepped back.
“You are here.” She said it in the same tone she had told him once that he was afraid. She twisted out of his grasp. “You’re really in my head.”
“Yes, Rey.” He let her go, and forced his hands to fall to his side, forming into fists. “I told you I’d never lie to you. You are with me even when I’m awake.”
She shook her head in shock, which quickly bloomed into anger. Her emotion almost had a taste to it--metallic and bitter. It was as familiar as the sound of her heartbeat in his ears, driving his own to a quicker tempo.
Just as before, she willed him to die. This time he didn’t fight.
He let her ignite the lightsaber and sweep it towards him. He did not flinch as she brought it down on his head like a curse. The last thing he remembered seeing was her livid face lit by the blue glow as the darkness enveloped them both.
+++
Rey sat up with a jolt, hands clenched so tight her nails were digging into her palms. She had been outside long enough for the mist to collect on the exposed parts of her face and soak her robe. She hurried inside with stiff limbs, laying out the damp fabric to dry on a stack of crates before wrapping herself in her bedding. She dropped beside the remains of the fire, willing warmth into her body.
She could still feel him, like a splinter buried deep. The way it had felt in the dream wasn’t fading. The hazy recognition that it had been there all along surfaced in her thoughts, but she buried it just as quickly.
When she bit her fist to silence the urge to cry, the bones and skin felt solid beneath her teeth. She knew she wouldn’t be able to face sleep again tonight--but that it was inevitable it would find her again.No amount of meditation was going to make this go away.
She resolved to tell Luke in the morning even as she slipped back into exhaustion.
+++
It was night in the desert, and the sky was a sea of stars. The familiar outline of her speeder beneath its cover, the hulking dome of the AT-AT--these forms were known to her. She felt a leap in her chest with the realization that the dream had changed.
Just as quickly, she knew she was not alone. A few steps away a shadow broke the deep blue of the night sky and absorbed the light of the stars. He turned to look at her and by doing so she realized he had been looking up at the sky.
“You came.” He said. It took a few moments for her to realize that the words had been distorted by the mask he wore once again.
Rey backed into the entrance to her home, groping in the dark for the familiar weight of her staff propped against the side of the fallen mechanical beast. Immediately the space around them was illuminated by red-and-yellow light. The deadly weapon in his hand threw flickering shadows across the sand and glimmers of light across the luminescent silver of his mask.
“I don’t want to--” Kylo said, but Rey would not hear it. She darted for the door of her enclave only to twist and break towards her cloaked speeder. He was caught off guard enough not to respond to these movements until she’d already mounted the thing and had urged it to life.
It was too slow--he arced the lightsaber around such that it cut through the metal front of the vehicle with an explosion of broken circuitry. Bits of molten material were extinguished in the sand as he tore through the structure. Just as quickly as the hover mechanism was disabled she was thrown to the sand, one leg trapped beneath the smoking wreck.
He stood over her--boots sinking into the dune--his saber held over her as if to execute the same blow on her prone form. But instead he gestured at the fizzling wreck with a snap of his hand. She felt the pressure disappear immediately as the useless metal junk was thrown to the dunes.
He knelt beside her and offered his left hand. The lightsaber disappeared as it was inactivated just as quickly.
“You don’t have to trust me. You just have to listen.”
Rey lay motionless, looking between the shadow of his hand and the cross-shape of the saber in his hand. After a moment she lifted herself up from the sand, flinching when he gestured as if to grab and steady her.
“Don’t touch me.” She snarled.
He stood up and took a step back, almost respectfully, letting her move past him and into the dimly-lit belly of the Imperial walker.
+++
She turned in the doorway, shadowed, glancing back at him with obvious distaste but jerking her head inwards before closing the flap behind her. He took his chances in following her.
Inside was a meager dwelling lined with shelves and the ephemera of dead machinary: a scavenger’s lair. A few small and warm lights further supported the illusion that this was a home. His eyes settled on the tiny cook stove and tattered hammock that had served as her only comfort on so many cold and bitter nights.
“I’ll listen only if you take that fool thing off,” Rey said, gesturing at his face even as she settled into the unfamiliar gestures of clearing room for a second person in the cramped space. She settled at last beside the heating unit and a small table that appeared to be her workstation, littered with the remains of tech and a jar of neglected flowers.
He was frozen, watching her from behind the comforting distance of the mask. He finally found himself long enough to kneel at her feet on the sand floor, placing the lightsaber hilt at her feet, and then his helmet beside it. He didn’t dare look up at her long after he had removed his helm.
“I’m sorry.”
“And what exactly are you sorry for?” She asked, voice tinged with disdain. “Attacking me?
“Everything.”
“For kill--?”
“Not that.” He dared to look up at her, his gloved hand rising to cut her short. “You know nothing about that. Don’t speak of it.”
Her eyes were full of hatred but he did not look away, just as they had met in the battle in the snow. As with before, he felt the anger leached from him to pool at their feet. In its absence there was only pain.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said, quietly.
Even as he said it he realized his thoughtlessness. The walls behind her were scored with several thousand lines, one for every day she had survived in this hell.
He bowed his head again, hands clenching against his sides.
“Why are you here? Why are you stuck to me?” She asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know. I think it may have happened when you . . . when you went into my mind.”
“Or when you went into mine?” Rey countered.
“No.” He shook his head. “That’s never happened to me before. I have never heard of such a thing happening, except . . .”
“Except what?”
“Except between a master and an apprentice.” He finished, choosing to stare at her feet. To her credit, she did not laugh.
“Can it be broken?”
“I don’t even know how the bo--the connection--is formed,” he admitted. “But from what I know, not easily.”
Rey made a choking noise before sinking to the ground to a ripped-up seat, one that would have better served a spaceship. Her hand was over her mouth, eyes glittering with unshed tears. She brought her head gently against the wall behind her, as if to be remind herself it was still there.
“What if I kill you?” She asked, face stony beneath the streaks of tears.
Kylo opened his mouth to respond, but then thought better of it it. He shook his head even as he sat back upon his heels, giving her room. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“What do you mean?” Her accent and pitch rose with her disbelief.
“Those with strong connections are just as likely to die as the other.”
“You’re lying.”
“No,” he sighed, gesturing at the floor between them. “I prefer to be honest with you. I have no reason to lie to you. If I kill you, I’ll die too.”
Her slender fingers wrapped around the hilt of his saber--lifting it up as if it were a venomous sandworm, ready to strike out at any moment. She grew more confident as she found its weight and function. When she ignited the blade the tiny space was illuminated by it’s crackling glow. She pointed directly at him, the blade hovering over his left shoulder. It was poised to end his words if it pleased her.
“I’m not afraid of dying,” she said after a moment.
“Neither am I.” He felt the heat beside him but didn’t turn towards it. He fought to hold her eyes, the red glow turning her face into a mask of aggression. “But I don’t want you to die, Rey.”
“I want you to,” she whispered back.
“You should have killed me on Starkiller, then.” Again, he could not lie.
Rey shook her head, grimacing. “I’m not like you.”
“But you are, Rey. When was the last time anyone showed you kindness on this godforsaken speck?”
He watched her carefully, but she did not answer. Her face glittered with the memory of tears, but her eyes were almost reflection-less.
“What made you stay waiting when you knew deep down they were never coming back?”
“You know nothing about me,” she seethed, the blade wobbling dangerously closer to his skin.
He reached out slowly and carefully, mirroring her gesture sans weapon, fingers open towards her.
“But I do,” he admitted. “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
Shock danced across her expression, her anger dissipating as she realized he was speaking to her in earnest.
“What do you know?”
Reluctantly, she extinguished the saber and dropped it beside her.
“The Force showed me your face long before we met. In a vision.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?” But there was little conviction in her tone. She seemed to recall something, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if to remind her they were there.
“I saw you, too,” she finally answered. “In Maz’s--when I touched . . . when I touched your lightsaber.”
“Do you know who that belonged to?” He asked, sitting forward almost eagerly. She flinched, but he ignored it. “Before it was mine?”
Rey shook her head. “Luke said he’d lost it once. On Bespin.”
“It belonged to Anakin Skywalker. The man who would become Darth Vader. Luke’s father, and my grandfather.”
“Luke told me . . . some of it. That he died saving him. That he brought balance to the Force.“
“No.” Kylo turned his head away from her as he was wont to do--her gaze felt like a beam that penetrated his skin. “If Luke would have joined him on Bespin, they would have succeeded in that task. They could have restored order to the galaxy, and protected it from any threat lurking just beyond the next star cluster.”
He glanced at her, noting her incredulity. She was just a girl--one who’d lived most of her life in isolation. There would come a time when she would understand, but he couldn’t rush such things. And, he knew, she had not yet revealed all her secrets. In time, he thought, she would.
“The lightsaber chose you, Rey. It is yours--and your right to use it against me. But understand that there are always others who will try to use your light. You must never forget the dark. You will need to be taught both.”
+++
The sand underneath her fingertips was familiar, and strangely warm. She watched him carefully, as one would watch the sky for the haze that preceded a storm.
There it was again--the tiny flickers in his expression that belied emotion. It was like watching motes of dust dance in a shaft of light, they came and went as they pleased. She had always found it difficult to understand people’s reactions. Their emotions were almost always too much for her. His were barely visible but appeared at random, like a droid with a broken protocol.
“Luke--” she began, but stopped short when he looked up at her. His dark eyes were haunted.
“What Luke did was not enough,” Kylo said. There was bitterness in his voice, but not enmity. “You cannot fight what you don’t know.”
“And you can?” Rey sat back, crossing her arms. She made every effort to conceal herself in the moment.
“Yes,” he said. “Let me teach you, Rey. Here. Where it’s safe.”
He looked almost earnest as he awaited her answer. She wondered if he had forgotten the last time he had proposed such a thing. She fought the urge to pick up his lightsaber and repeat her answer.
“What will you teach me?”
“What I wasn’t taught until . . . until it was too late. How to close your mind. How to keep your thoughts and emotions secret from those who would use them against you. How to find power in them, and how to use it against your enemies. Even against me.”
“Why?”
The question stopped him as none of the others had. She was good at waiting. The flicker happened again as he seemed to right himself, pull himself up into a proud bearing.
“Because I want to protect you.”
“I can protect myself.”
He simply nodded. “You can. But not against what you do not know. Let me protect you.”
Where their eyes met again her heart skipped a beat before plunking down into her belly. There was no malice there, no evasion. It was utterly unfamiliar.
“Why?” She asked again.
This time he did not answer with words. He leaned forward, hand rising to her face. Rey held herself against the urge to flinch--or perhaps, for once, she didn’t want to. She let the black glove brush against her face and imagined it’s smoothness. It wasn’t physical but the connection flared between them again.
Because I want . . . you.
She shuddered as she felt it, realizing with strange delight that the words were accompanied by a warm pull in his direction. It was his need again--but this time it was not darkness that enveloped them. It was light.
Instinctively, she bowed into it, her eyes closed. She was drawn forward until she imagined her breath against his lips, her hand upon his knee as she steadied herself against the tide. But in a moment she realized he had stopped them again, his hands once again cradling her jaw but also firmly holding her in place.
What are you afraid of? Her thoughts echoed between them. His eyes were on her lips but she felt his intention all the same.
I won’t be able to stop myself. I won’t be able to save you. That I am wrong. Images flooded in--flames, and rain, dark beastly figures limned with blue. Her hands rose to hold his, her fingers small and inconsequential compared to the vise that held her.
“Don’t be afraid.” She said, aloud. "I feel it, too."
+++
Rey’s eyes were dark again--all pupil, no reflection. She resisted him as his arms shook and gave in, and he could not help but let her mouth meet his. The contact was overwhelming--lips against lips, breath against breath. Beneath it all was the surge of emotion that she kept beneath a relaxed facade--the pain, the hope, the loneliness.
His hands lowered without his volition to her neck, suddenly greedy for any contact with her body he could have. Again he found her bird-boned and slender--but beneath the skin she was just as strong as he had known her to be. She was very strong. Her small fingers sunk into his hair to grip his skull. She positioned him just so, exploring his lips with her mouth. Heat radiated off of her in waves and the brush of her curves against his hardness invoked a holy fire underneath his skin.
She planted small, gentle kisses on the corner of his mouth, then on his cheek and chin and back to his lips again--exploring. Any notion of stopping her had long escaped him. He hesitated, but she sensed it. She pushed herself against his knees in the sand, letting him hold her upright.
“Rey,” Kylo breathed--unsure of what to do now that this barrier had been scaled. She didn’t answer except to rake her fingernails across his scalp, pulling his chin up so she could bury herself in his neck between the high collar of his robes and his jawline.
Teach me. She nuzzled into his skin, concluding the gesture with soft, fluttering kisses. He held her still against him, long enough to know that they were both shaking.
“I can’t,” he answered, pulling back to meet her eyes. I’m sorry.
Rey looked up, first in alarm--then in embarrassment. She lowered her face but he pulled it back up, wishing his hands were bare. He noted the tinges of green in her irises. There was fear and anger there, but it was just a reflection. It was his turn to look away in shame.
“I can’t teach you what I don’t know, ” he admitted.
She pulled him back to her, again. An invitation embraced him. Then we can learn together.
She crushed her swollen lips to his, and he bowed beneath her resolve--feeding her his will even as the last vestiges of his control crumbled into nothing. The light inside her had devoured them both.