He closed his eyes tightly as he walked away from the blank slate that he had wiped cleaned just moments ago.
He flexed his fingers and balled his hands into fists as he tried to mentally obliterate his intricately mapped memories of her face and her smile.
He angrily wiped at his damp cheeks, forcing himself to muster up the strength to let her go.
He had to keep her safe.
Kylo Ren had saved Rey Kenobi.
He had wiped away her memories the night before the destruction of Skywalker's fledgling padawans and deposited her on a shoddy, irrelevant planet. A planet so dismal that he was confident she would not be found.
Her memories of him were gone. Her knowledge of her Force-sensitivity had vanished.
He wrote a new life story for her, filling her mind with lonely and insignificant memories. It was difficult, but he had to keep her off the radar. She could not be found.
Kylo Ren had dedicated every ounce of his being to keeping Rey safe from the moment that Snoke began to seek him out. When Snoke's enticing words and dark promises flooded his mind, he knew that Rey would surely be the next victim. But he would never let the Dark side prey on her, not while he was still alive.
His heart had anxiously leapt the first time he fantasized about escaping with Rey, hiding in some off-the-map outer rim system where they could train and laugh and live out their lives peacefully. However, it would never work. Snoke had embedded a vice grip deep within Kylo Ren's soul, cracking his defenses against the unstable darkness within him. The energy that he put forth into carefully hiding the girl, unbeknownst to his Master, was truly his undoing. He could not save both her and himself, and he knew it.
He sacrificed himself to the Dark side to ensure that Rey would forever remain a beacon of the Light.
Anticipation seeped through his bones as he felt the soft tendrils of her dormant Force gently whisping against the outer currents of his mind. It had been a very long time since he had felt such a stark physical reminder of her existence. It was a dangerous feeling, one that could drag him toward her like an anchor to the bottom of the sea. This was precisely why he had avoided the desert planet at all costs after his initial departure.
He could not risk revealing her.
Kylo silently cursed the irony of the First Order landing on Jakku. The insignificant dump that should have never required a personal First Order visit, despite the importance of the matter at hand.
He nearly choked with relief as he discerned that her relative coordinates were not within the unfortunate village that was on the brink of a massacre.