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Bring her to me.
Kylo rises. The ghastly echo of Snoke’s voice claws at his skull. Sleep, peace, won’t come.
Snoke meant to kill her in those moments, Kylo knows. Tens of days have past since he brought Rey to Snoke, since he heard the Supreme Leader laugh for the first time, a sound that reminds Kylo of the cracking of a whip. He tenses his hands, feels the blisters. That was then. This—is now.
“I cannot destroy her,” Snoke said then, and Kylo couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at her face. “She is indeed strong with the Force, and she takes her strength from you.”
His powers feed into her, and hers into his. The dark and the light, mixing, unable to be torn apart from each other.
“Turn her to the Dark Side,” Snoke ordered him. “If you ever want to complete your training.”
They left hours before the Starkiller Base was blown apart, and Kylo could feel it then—her gladness. And he knew that there was hope in that moment, because she, too, had a desire for revenge.
A desire he’s been tasked with cultivating, and he’s failing. Kylo’s fists tighten to the point where they throb.
Because that stubborn girl has both the light and the dark inside her, too. Just like him.
He drops back into his bed and tries to sleep. Nightmares claim him instead.
When morning comes, he releases the girl from her cell. Because, given the spare chance, she’ll try to run. She’s scrappy, and the fact that she hasn’t tried to run in the past five days tells Kylo that she’s working on some kind of master plan, and if he’s honest, Kylo’s not sure he can stop it.
“Well?” Rey asks. Shadows mar her face.
“You didn’t sleep.”
“Neither did you,” she points out.
Something sizzles, in the bond connecting them. Kylo snaps. “You read my thoughts!”
Rey’s jaw drops. “If they come unbidden—”
“My n-dreams?” he ekes out.
“Apparently we share them. I assure you I’d do anything to be rid of all images of the screaming people you’ve murdered, you coward.”
Murderer. Traitor. Thief.
You call them friends?
Kylo gulps. His mind tries to grapple with the dreams he had that night—Father.
She knows, Kylo realizes, watching Rey’s hazel eyes glow. She knows Snoke wants me to kill my own father.
She knows I tried to stop them from killing my mother.
She knows about the Light!
But in the quiver at the corner of her lips, Kylo sees it: his chance. The darkness lurking inside her, an angry child still scratching tallies on a metal wall, desperate for her parents to return. “Come back!”
Loneliness strangles, but it also enrages.
Kylo hears his saber snap and crack. He aims it at her as she fumbles for her own. He can feel her fear through their bond, racing with her wildly beating heart.
She strikes first, red against red, spark flying and singing his cowl. Kylo parries—he doesn’t want to hurt her.
Make her afraid. The voice sounds an awful lot like Snoke’s.
She strikes back and scrambles away, until she’s pinned against the wall of this metal hull, sabers crossed. “Feel it,” Kylo encourages. “The dark—”
Rey’s breath comes in quick gasps. Her eyes snap, and Kylo’s arm burns. He gasps. His shoulder—what—he swings, but—
And his face explodes in agony. Kylo collapses, the floor cold, but how can he feel anything besides this pain?
Rey stands over him, glaring with utter hatred. You want to kill Han Solo. You want to kill Finn.
I can hear your thoughts, Kylo thinks, gasping. How ironic, in this moment—
“The darkness will steal your life,” Luke once told him.
And as Kylo gazes up into her face, he can’t help but realize that, about this maybe, his uncle might have been right.
Rey drops the saber. “I need a medic!” she shouts.
What—you can’t—Snoke will—
…
He wakes up with his face stinging. Appropriately, since it’s been slashed with a lightsaber.
Rey.
His fingers brush against the wound, but the burning intensifies, as if his skin is dissolving itself. Breath jumps into his lungs, unbidden. Bacta should have taken care of this.
“You’re awake,” comes her voice from above him. Kylo flinches. His shoulder throbs.
Only a faint light glimmers in the corner. Shadows fall from the ceiling, concealing her face as she rises.
“Unfortunately for you,” he grouses.
“Is that a threat?”
“You can always look in my mind and find out.”
“No,” she says, as she turns her back to him. “I don’t want to.”
This can’t be happening. Still—still, she hadn’t turned. “Rey—”
She turns to face him, and he catches the brief glint of her eyes, shining as if wet. Regret?
He knows the feeling, the ghosts that tear at him every night. “What do you want, then? To die? To—”
“I want—” Her voice catches. “To go back to Jakku. To—”
“No, you don’t,” he snaps. “You want to—” He stops. Wait.
He’s not probing her mind.
The bond, he realizes with a sinking heart. He can feel her emotions anyways.
You want to be with someone who cares about you.
Finn’s face fills his mind. Not Finn, FN-2187—the traitor.
Is he not entitled a name? Kylo remembers all the fights with Hux, where they tossed blistering words at each other, Hux touting the beauty of a human army and Kylo expressing how dangerous it was, but danger wasn’t the only thing he was afraid of. He found the practices of brainwashing a child disgusting.
I was raised to do one thing. He hears the traitor’s voice for the first time, through their bond.
So was I, Kylo thinks. And then I turned, too.
“For the worse,” Rey snaps. “For you.”
“The Dark—”
“What has it gotten you? An edict to kill your father? A scarred face? A—”
“The scarred face was your doing,” Kylo snarls, forcing himself to sit up. His head spins. The room shouldn’t feel this cold. Darth Vader was scarred, he reminds himself. “Now I look like the monster you think I am.”
“That you don’t think you are?”
Kylo’s heart seizes. He can’t breath. I—His father fills his mind, his mother, his uncle. “Be good! Make us proud.” They never asked what would make him feel good, what he really wanted to do.
“I had no family at all,” Rey says bitterly, the bond tattling on him like a vengeful General Hux.
He sees Finn again. “He’s like your family, isn’t he?”
“He cared about me.”
“He’s still looking for you,” Kylo says. He squeezes his fists together until the knuckles pop. Why did I say that?
“But he left!”
“He came back, because you were in danger,” Kylo tells her. He can’t see her face, but he can hear her heart beating, feel the Force shuddering inside of her.
I matter? she wonders.
You still hope, he thinks. You still hope in your parents, despite the fact that they’ve never given you a reason to hope. You have hope in me, or hope in yourself, not to kill me. How?
“Why?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe you and him are alike—both without families—”
“No, why are you telling me this?” Rey demands.
Kylo can only shake his head, but he knows the answer just as well as Rey does. The Light.
You bring it out in me.
“My entire life was spent struggling to stay alive,” Rey says. A blowfish-like creature fills her mind, and Kylo cringes. Did he actually harass Rey like that? What a— “You,” Rey continues. “You take life for granted.”
“I most certainly don’t, especially when you’re armed with a lightsaber.” Kylo snorts. “I have no pleasure in taking lives.”
“But you still do it.” There’s reproach in her tone.
“Are you better than me?” Kylo demands. “I saw your mind. You’ve killed—”
“To stay alive!”
“So you have your ideals and I have mine.”
Life has no value unless you have something to live for. He’s not sure which one of them thinks it.
“You aren’t more important just because you have the Force or have a famous mother or father or uncle or grandfather,” Rey snaps.
But people think I am. Or thought I was. Luke, his fellow padawans—when they found out who his grandfather was—Kylo cringes.
“I never had time to care about what others think of me,” Rey says. “Only my family, and they’re never coming back.”
“I think if they could see you,” Kylo muses. “They’d be proud.”
Rey stiffens.
“The opposite of me,” Kylo tries to joke. He closes his eyes, because this warmth surging through him—he knows what it is.
The Light.
…
To kill the Light, he has to kill the girl.
But it’s too late. Kylo knows that he can never hurt her. He curls up tighter, his mind tormented by images of his mother, his father.
This is what you chose. This sterile room. Rey, turning to the Dark Side. It’s what you want.
Is it? Because she—she understands him. In a way that no one ever has, not the other Force-sensitive followers Luke was trying to train, the ones that turned on him, saw him not as the friend they laughed with over stew and ale but as the grandson of a monster, not his uncle, who refused to listen to Ben’s concerns, who discouraged his questions because they weren’t the right kind of questions.
Now Kylo knows Luke was worried about the Dark Side capability inside of him. I was always a potential monster to you, wasn’t I?
Do you want to be a monster? The thought comes from Rey, wherever she is.
Monsters don’t change. He thinks of the village on Jakku, Hosnian Prime. Despair claws at him. It’s too late.
His mother, always putting her job before him, would certainly want him executed. His father—he wouldn’t even deign to look at his son, even though Han Solo was no better.
You despise him because you’re like him. Arrogant and gruff and unlikeable at first.
At first? he answers her.
The door slides open, and she enters. “Jedi mind trick,” she tells him, nodding at the stormtrooper. Kylo can’t help but smirk.
She settles on the edge of his bed, fear still in her hazel eyes. She’s still afraid of him. “This is what you want?”
“I—” Kylo licks his lips. “I am being torn apart.”
There it is. The truth, naked and unashamed.
“It’s not what I want,” Rey tells him, her voice cracking, but there’s still fire in her tone. “All I ever had was my freedom. I can’t live in the world you want. I can’t—I don’t want to make people afraid. I spent so many years afraid. I just want—I want—”
He reaches out to catch her shoulders. She glares at him, and all he can see is her mouth, small and open in surprise.
“I can’t—let you do this,” Kylo says. The truth, again.
It’s Rey.
He cups his hand around her shoulder, expecting her to slap him away. She doesn't. Something new seeps into her normal glare--a spark of hope, and passion.
You make me want to be a better person.
And you'll never give up.
And I--I make you want to be a bad person, he realizes, watching as that spark dissolves into fury once again, as she looks around his cage with a desperation he's only seen in animals that know they're about to be slaughtered.
He catches sight of the dark mask of Vader in the corner, watching him, and a chill rakes down his spine. “Come with me.”
…
“You can fly this thing, can’t you?” he asks as he opens his shuttle. “Stay out,” he orders the stormtroopers.
“But, sir—”
“Are you questioning me?” he demands.
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
“You’re letting me go?”
“On one condition.” Kylo clutches his lightsaber. “Get to the rebel base. Tell my mother—my father—all that you’ve learned here.”
“And you’re staying?” She gapes at him.
“I have to.”
“You don’t. You’re staying because you’re a coward.” Even now, she wants to hurt him. But this time with the truth, not lies.
The accusation hits him in the stomach.
“You don’t want to be here, but you can’t acknowledge it to yourself, because you’re afraid of letting some dead grandfather down even though I’ve seen your thoughts. He changed in his last moments. I think it’s more likely that if you stay here, you’ll let him down.”
Her words peck and peck at him, reducing him to bone.
Rey turns away from him, heading towards the control panels.
“What would I do?” he asks, voice strangled. “They’d never—”
“I don’t know,” Rey says, her voice catching as she turns to stare at him. “I don’t know what you’d do. I’m just a—”
“You’re about to be the best hope the Resistance has,” Kylo cuts in. Not just a scavenger.
Rey’s face softens. A strand of dark hair dangles down from the three buns she has coiled at the back of her head. “I’m about to fly out of here.”
Kylo’s feet feel rooted to the floor. What can I do?
You’re a coward.
I am.
Right now, it’s braver to run.
“Take off,” he tells her.
She shuts the door, her eyes gleaming as if—as if she’s proud of him? You must have very low standards.
“Help,” Rey says as she starts to fly them. “They’ll chase us, won’t they?”
“We’ll be too fast.” Kylo scrambles forward. What have I done?
Rey gives him a small smile, and Kylo’s heart leaps.
“Lasers!” Rey shouts. Kylo scrambles to shoot back as Rey dives the ship, and then surges up. He trips, almost falling.
“We can do this,” Rey breathes.
“Maybe.”
“Shut up.”
You can, he thinks, and she twists just right so he can blast one of the TIE fighters away.
When everything’s quieted down and they’re en route to Resistance territory, Kylo starts to shake. He drops onto the padded bench.
“Kylo?” she asks.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?": Trying to convert you to the Dark Side?
“You were right," she says. "I'm angry. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t, but I'm angry--" Her fists clench. "You changed—you made the right decision, and that’s—all I ever wanted to see that people could do. People like you, and Finn too—”
He cranes his neck to see her standing over him. “I’m so sorry,” he tells her. You could have become this. Me.
It’s not worth it.
Her fingers brush his scar, and that spark reappears in her eyes. Her jaw sets. “So am I.”
You don’t break, Kylo thinks. I admire you for it. You held out; you’re strong in ways that I’m not. If you are the Light, then maybe the Light does have strengths. Unlike my uncle, you’re still compassionate. You survived a childhood that would have killed me, and you don’t think you’re special for it, but you are.
I think I need you to be my teacher.
“What happened with your uncle?” Rey asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He half expects to feel the tendrils of her probing his mind, but no. “Rey?”
She arches an eyebrow.
She feels it, too, Kylo can tell. This bond through the force, knitting them together, separate but able to understand. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” he admits, voice shaking.
“You should be,” Rey affirms. She pauses, and she’s choosing to stay with him, choosing to share herself with him of her own volition. “Ben,” she says.
He flinches.
“I won’t call you by that bogus—”
“It’s not—”
“Yes it is.” Her eyes snap, defiant as ever.
He shrugs and leans forward. Her breath warms his face. Her cheeks are covered in a galaxy of freckles, and her mouth trembles.
Her lips close over his, and Kylo kisses her back—he doesn’t understand why, she doesn’t entirely either, but there’s a part of him she admires, too, and oh Force, he wants to live up to it. Her hands rove down his back and his hands dig through her hair; he drinks the Light and she presses against him, heart hammering, a passion he's always thought was the Dark coursing through her, except it doesn't feel destructive except to barriers that he long held up and now tumble down--destruction itself mingles with hope, and somewhere, in-between, they breathe.