"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity."

― Gilda Radner

"It's the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it."
― Frank Warren

The first time they met after Starkiller was a draw—as much as one could call either of them barely surviving a draw.

Half a year had passed. Kylo Ren had completed his training, and Rey had barely begun hers, yet the knowledge she had drawn from his mind on that first, fateful meeting had made her more than his match. Had they looked a little harder within their minds, they would have noticed a consciousness within themselves that lasted beyond Starkiller, that influenced them minutely from day to day. Yet they did not, and the whisperings in their minds as they drew closer and closer together were shunted aside and ignored in favor of single-mindedly attempting to destroy the other.

If one had been watching, they would have seen the same forms, the same styles, the same flow to the blows they rained down upon each other. One would have thought they were watching the students of a single Master sparring.

Except it was no sparring match.

Rey had barely escaped into her spacecraft, holding her nearly-detached arm to her side with the other, and then passing out promptly once she'd hit hyperspace. She'd almost not woken in time to hear the hails from her Resistance friends.

Kylo Ren had only just made it to his shuttle as well, hands clutching at the parts of his insides that wanted to fall out.

He snarled—though one would have been half-tempted to say there was an edge of a manic grin to it—and returned to his main starship for treatment.

The second time they met, lightsabers flaring against each other, was at the edge of a battle, their minds clashing violently, even as their sabers came into contact with the other. They parried, blocked, struck, tripped, and slashed at each other for hours as the Resistance and First Order fought on the ground of a Mid-Rim planet.

The war was spreading further and further across the galaxy as both sides gained allies or conquered worlds as resource hubs. It had only been a bare three months since their last meeting, yet the war had erupted again like wildfire.

Everyone had expected years of rebuilding, yet here they were.

Today, the Resistance was losing the battle—though certainly not the war.

Rey struggled to her feet, her movements as slow as the First Knight's were, and was about to make another sluggish go at him when she heard her name called.

She reached her hand up just in time to be hauled onto the ramp of a shuttle as the Resistance retreated from the planet's surface.

Kylo Ren's body slumped, panting, but he kept his masked face turned up towards the sky as he tracked the ship the little padawan had escaped on. Even when she was out of his sight, he could still track her through his mind's eye. He could feel exactly where she was within space. He tracked her until he himself was called away, though at that point whatever was linking them had weakened into nothing more than a thin speck, barely discernible.

But Kylo Ren now knew that it was there.

The third time they met was a complete accident. It wasn't as if either of them was actively seeking each other out. Rey had her lessons, and Kylo Ren had his missions, and they had both become suspicious enough to tighten their mental barriers.

Yet, on a resupply trip two years after she'd joined the war, Rey heard the crackle of a lightsaber coming to life as she haggled with a merchant.

She slowly turned around, her hand reaching to her hip for her own lightsaber as she stared across the space station at the man who had declared himself her enemy from the very start. He was hooded and cloaked in different clothes than his normal robes, but there was no mistaking the gleam of his eyes as they peered out at her from deep within the cowl.

He wanted to fight.

So did she.

Yet she asked anyway, as she thumbed her lightsaber on and deposited her bag gently on the counter behind her. "You really wish to do this here?"

Kylo Ren waited until every last human and alien had streamed from the large room that served as a market before lowering his cowl from his head and replying, "Absolutely."

His grin was feral, yet there was something about it that drew Rey in… Coupled with her first glimpse of his face in two years—the scar had healed jaggedly but was rather faded—she very nearly missed bringing her saber up to block his mid-level thrust in time.

They clashed, back and forth across the room, knocking stalls over, burning holes in metal, incinerating boxes of goods, and generally making a mess of the entire place.

Part of Rey despaired at the livelihoods they were bringing ruin to.

But another part of her gloried in the fight.

She craved these encounters.

She shouldn't wish to clash with him; to fight with him; to lock sabers together in an effort to dominate the other.

But she did.

She wanted to fight him—dominate him, and show him she was much more than the little scavenger he thought she was—but she also just wanted to see him. There was something about him, something that had been between them since the very first encounter, traumatizing though it might have been on her end, which drew her to him.

She knew he felt the same way. She could feel it pulsating in his mind, through that odd connection she barely ever opened—the connection she wasn't quite sure what to make of, but had her closing her mind off constantly... just in case.

Kylo Ren always had an air of anticipation surrounding him when they met. He was ruthless, and calculating, and he never held back. He never offered to teach her again, but… he was curious.

Curious to see what she'd learned, perhaps.

Curious to see how she matched up to him.

Curious to see if one or the other would win for once.

Clothes torn on both of them, flesh singed and new wounds cauterized by their sabers—and others bleeding profusely from where they'd cut themselves on the twisted metal remains of stalls—Rey was finally pinned beneath Kylo Ren.

That hadn't happened before.

He had used the echoing sounds of a corner wall to throw her off, catching her off guard and knocking her saber out of her hand before she could do more than let out the beginnings of a shriek.

He took her down, struggling the whole way, and pinned her hands beside her head while his lower body pinned hers to the floor. It was cold beneath her overheated body… but Kylo Ren pressed his body against her and Rey could feel how he burned even hotter than she.

Rey froze as her startled eyes met his face. He was as frozen as she was, but his eyes were trained down, staring at where their bodies were pressed against each other, beginning from the stomach down.

He was not looking at her.

In fact, he was entirely distracted.

Kylo Ren's saber had fallen from the nerveless fingers of the hand that had previously been holding both it and her own wrist—and was now just resting on her, limply.

Rey could have gotten free if she needed to.

But the way he was frozen above her—the absolute confusion and rage that was flowing in the Force around him—held her in place as surely as if he'd used the Force to freeze her there himself.

Too late.

Kylo's hands tightened around her wrists once more and he looked up at her with an expression of pure anger on his face—she could feel it pulsating against her mind. His eyes pierced hers and Rey felt as if the temperature around them had suddenly plummeted.

"You were supposed to be mine!" Kylo snarled. He pushed his hips against Rey's in a way that left no room for interpretation of what he meant.

He had never done that before—as though he felt he had the right to—he… what?

Rey was completely confused but she reacted instinctively, bucking her hips against his in an attempt to throw him off, snarling right back at him. "What are you talking about? I am not yours!"

Kylo Ren pulled her hands together over her head, pinning both wrists beneath one wide grip and then bringing his now-free hand to the bottom of her shirt. He lifted it quickly with a fiercely impatient tug and then splayed his fingers across her lower abdomen, right below her belly button. His fingers were gentle, completely contrary to the rest of his body, and Rey felt as if she could do nothing but watch.

She stopped struggling even as she felt the Force pool against her stomach, pushed against her by the man above her. The Force was telling her to be quiet, and she had learned to listen to it over the past two years.

It had been one of her first lessons, and had saved her countless times.

Kylo's eyes never left hers even as his fingers moved, skimming her flesh gently. "These were supposed to be mine," he snarled again, but softer this time.

Rey couldn't keep quiet any longer, her confusion only growing stronger with every passing moment. "What? What was supposed to be yours?" she gasped out, startled slightly by a particularly odd sensation that his fingers were sparking in her; that his mind was sparking in hers as it rubbed against her.

"These children," he glared at her. "Who is the father? Who is it?! The traitor? The pilot? No matter, I will kill him with my bare hands! You were supposed to be mine," he repeated, more softly, seemingly to himself. His eyes continued to bore into hers.

Rey laughed in his face, happy at the startled and hurt look that flashed across his features and the pain that flared through their connection. "You must be going completely mad now, Kylo Ren. I always knew you were crazy, but this? Hah! You're imagining things that don't exist; seeing things that aren't there; deluding yourself into thinking I could ever be yours"

Kylo simply held her gaze for a moment before leaning down and whispering in her ear, his hand still pressed between them—though now his own abdomen was pushing it more firmly against her bare skin. "Who fucked you before I did, Rey? Whose children are these?"

The animosity was nearly gone from his tone, but Rey could sense he was barely controlling himself; barely reining himself in so that he could be sure to hear her response. For some reason she felt compelled to answer him truthfully—if only to prove to Kylo Ren that he was delusional and that he needed help.

"No one has fucked me, Kylo Ren. And you never will. There is no way I am pregnant. I may have raised myself on a desert planet, nearly alone, but there are certain truths about the human body that even I know, and I know that I have not performed the necessary actions in order to conceive a child, let alone more than one. So," she finished primly, her nose tilting up arrogantly, "You're wrong. Hate to break it to you."

Kylo Ren drew back but only until he was less than an inch from touching his nose to hers. Rey went nearly cross-eyed trying to meet his gaze before settling on staring at his forehead. His hand was still pressed between them, his hips still pinning hers to the ground with an odd hardness trapped against the tender juncture of her thighs—yet Rey tried to ignore every last bit of that. She began to think of ways to get out of the situation—Force or no Force, if necessary.

"You're telling me you're a virgin?" he asked softly, projecting deadly calm at her through the Force. It was very reminiscent of the way he'd spoken to her in the interrogation chair. That, coupled with the absolute rudeness of the question, had Rey shoving him off of her and darting backwards, away from him, her hand calling her saber to her and igniting it at the offense.

But she wasn't able to escape without his fingers skimming over her most private of areas—a touch that she almost thought she imagined except for the pulse of the Force coursing lightly through her from the point of contact.

"Huh. I guess you are," he said quietly, musingly, mostly to himself as he got slowly to his feet.

He looked so distracted—he didn't even call his lightsaber to his hand. That, coupled with the absolutely disturbed but contemplative look on his face and the complete calm that had settled over his mind, had Rey powering down her saber and running for her shuttle.

She knew she should have struck him down while she had the chance.

She knew it would have saved the galaxy a lot of trouble, and a lot of lives.

But she had never seen him so… vulnerable.

It was even worse than when she'd left him on Starkiller.

Rey's mind dismissed every word he'd said, however. She was absolutely convinced that inside of him was a raging lunatic, completely out of touch with reality.

She almost felt sorry for him.

Note: Disclaimed, of course! Thank you so much for reading this (again)! Welcome back if you are here a second time, and simply welcome, and thank you for joining us, if you are reading this a first time. :)

This work was originally published on July 6th, 2016. In January of 2017 I was hacked and someone removed my works without my consent. It took me a while to heal but now I am back! Thank you to my husband and my betas Annaelle/Cuthian and Perry_Downing (check out both their works!) and my other wonderful friends for being so supportive.

If you're joining me from reading Codega, thank you! I'll continue posting that every other day. I will start posting Mitzvah and Gradations soon as well! Also, I am working on a new story, an AU where Jakku becomes a member world of the New Republic, and guess who gets involved... ;D

xoxo