It always begins with lightsaber practice.
Rey is ready to learn the ways of the Force, the means to wield the weapon of a Jedi. She doesn't have a laser sword of her own right now but General Organa says that's not as big a problem as it could be. Rey has the crystal from the heart of the broken lightsaber. From that, another can be forged. She'd be expected to make her own one day, and that day can come as soon as they make contact with one of Organa's old friends. "Not a Jedi," she already has warned Rey, whose heart leapt. "Not any longer, and never again. Don't try what you did with Luke."
The General knows a lot about lightsabers.
"Did you ever build your own?" Rey asked her once when they were alone in the Falcon's cockpit. Her face was a fracture of memories, and Rey was desperate to pull her into a more pleasant past.
"I didn't. I collected the pieces to make one, then decided against it. Luke wanted me to train with him. He never understood why I said no. I can use the Force at need. That's enough."
That was six days ago, and Rey has been practicing with her staff as much as she can, hiding here inside the ship while the rest of the remnants of the Resistance fill out this latest base. Even the little birds have wandered out, preferring to nest in the rocks around them than here in the ship. Rey spends every free hour she can find in between the building, walking through moves that felt natural with the lightsaber in her hand. The Force flowed through her on Ahch-To. The Force flowed through her in the throne room, for one moment in perfect balance with her equal.
She's told herself she doesn't need that second feeling back, only the perfection of the energy flow through her limbs.
She tells him the same thing when he says, "You're dropping your arm."
"Go away."
"It's the staff. The center of mass is different. You're too used to how a solid object moves. Your arm is dropping to compensate for the weight." He's lecturing, setting himself as her superior. Rey ignores him, changing her stance and moving through the motions.
"You dropped your arm again, right there."
"Shut up."
She can sense him walking around her as she moves, and she slashes out at where he stands. It startled him back on the island when she shot him. Now they know there's little either can do to the other's physical form without agreement. Whatever Snoke planted in their heads, it has left them tethered but almost entirely incorporeal to one another. Almost.
The staff passes through him. Kylo glances down at the wood sticking through his body. It is Kylo now, again, not the Ben she met inside their talks and tried to save. He is treacherous. She must be wary.
Rey always tells herself this, each time he appears.
"Show me," she says, as she always does when his impudence has drilled through to her deep desire to learn. She needs a teacher. Everyone knows that. If this teacher currently occupies a puppet throne, ordering their enemies at his whim, then she can at minimum learn how he fights. When the time comes for them to raise their blades against each other, she will know his techniques.
She also told herself the lie that her parents were coming back for her someday. Rey can make herself believe any justification, she knows. Jakku taught her survival.
"Follow my steps," he says, as he always does, and they settled into mirrored positions. His blade is lit, the humming red sword she wielded for a moment. She knows its power in her hands. She lifts her staff to mimic, imagining the hilt of the red saber against her palm again.
It's a graceful dance, with motions too fast for eyes to follow. He's advancing her lessons each day, and the primary lesson is speed with power. Thrust, parry, dodge, move, these are the elementary motions of swordplay dialed up to a speed others could not hope to match. Kylo plays at being her superior. She spent a brief, heartbreaking time hoping Ben would be her equal. She doesn't have room for that hope, only the hope that she can bring herself to destroy him when the time comes.
He watches her face. They can speak to each other, and they can speak without speaking.
He is teaching her how to kill him.
"I am teaching you to be an interesting opponent," he corrects her, and lunges at her. She blocks the blow that could never connect, and he holds himself as if she is successful. She can sense his pleasure at her improvement day by day.
"We could train together this way for real. You can take the ship and come to me."
Rey goes into an attack, flying at him with speed, and forcing herself to stop as he easily blocks the blows. They spar, turning and stepping, her feet making similar moves to his. She has to adjust over and over. Kylo is taller, and he carries his mass differently than she does. Rey must remember this when they fight for real.
She meets him in the middle of one blow, and the lightsaber passes through her staff easily as they fail to connect. He isn't here. This isn't real. That she is standing centimeters from him, watching his eyes, is immaterial and impossible. Kylo is light years away, plotting her destruction, not next to her, staring at her as though there is nothing else in the galaxy he'd rather be looking at, no other sight he'd rather see than her face.
She doesn't remember dropping her staff. She hears it clatter.
For six days, she's practiced with him this way, alone here on the ship. For six days, they have ended their sessions this close. She can't feel his breath against her, but she can feel the hungry touch of his mouth on hers. She can't hold him, but she can move in a second dance against him hands, ghosting over each other with the threat of touch, the sensation of connection. The deck plating of this ship is hard. She has already practiced the lie to Chewie and General Organa and anyone who asks that the mat she found and stows here is for training. It helps her take falls.
She is not falling, Rey tells herself, unable to taste his lips, only feel their brush as they settle to the floor. She can explain the mat. She can't explain why she removes enough of her clothes for the feel of a hand that isn't in the room to stroke her breast, enough for another hand to dip into the warmth beneath her trousers. However Snoke bound them, they can touch if both are willing to touch, even after his death. She hates Kylo, but she thinks she might have enjoyed kissing Ben this way, and she can't prevent her deep sigh as his fingers find the place she wants him. Her own hands skate over him, the skin he's revealed as his own clothes have been discarded. Is he alone like Rey is? Is he giving a heedless show to his underlings?
"You think I make them watch?" His laugh rumbles. "That's an idea."
"I lock the door."
"And you think the Wookiee can't override it?"
She kisses him again. She can still hear his thoughts but these jumble with abrupt attention as her hands take hold of him, already hard for her in his pants. She begins a smooth, steady stroke. His fingers pick up their pace, rubbing in a firm rhythm between her wet labia.
Almost real, she thinks, as he withdraws his hand and licks the fingertips, wherever he is far away. His eyes flash with pleasure, and she knows he's tasting her before he pushes his hand back into her trousers for more. Kylo offers her the mental picture of all her clothes gone, and his mouth lapping between her thighs in abandon. "Come to me here, and we can do this every day."
"We have been doing this every day."
The images shift inside his mind as Rey's strokes grow faster. Now he's pictured them sprawled and tumbling, naked and pleased as the Rey in his mind pushes him onto his back, her body sinking onto his with a groan he's starting to learn well. "We could do that, too." His thoughts are disjointed, and his fingers stutter in their work, no longer steady against her clit. She can sense his peak building inside him, sense how good her own hand feels on him.
Rey feels the slick in her hand as he's leaking, ready. She doesn't want to believe they can touch so much, but the flick of her tongue on her own palm gives her the salty taste of his need before she wipes the dampness off against his chest.
Kylo's hand pulls away from her to wrap around his own prick. Rey's hand slides between her legs, a route it knows very well. They lie together, separated by parsecs, watching each other and taking the swiftest, sweetest kisses as they each work towards their finish. His mind is a broken mirror of her own, all splinters, but she is learning that at the edge of things, he can see with perfect clarity. Her fingers work herself in the best way, firmly rubbing before backing off, and rubbing again, her eyes never leaving his, letting him see her.
She wants to say she'll never join him. She wants to say she can never forgive him. She wants him to come join her, join the Resistance, and together, they can free the galaxy. Her mouth presses hard against his as she whispers, "Come," and he accepts the easier order, moaning into the kiss as he spills all over himself in his own ship.
Rey is close, so close. She expects him to kiss her. Instead, he cradles her cheek in his hand. "You should see what I do." He gives her the image he holds of her in his orgasm-addled mind: next to him, spread in fine sheets, beautiful, and surrounded by an emotion he will never admit in words.
She lets her peak take her, rushing through her with warmth and light, and the thing she won't admit is what they both plainly know, that it's Ben in her mind as she comes and him that she would fall for. She can't join Kylo. She can only wish he'd join her and love her this way for real, her body quaking against his while they hold each other.
They don't speak, not after, not ever. It isn't as though she can ask him to spend the night. It isn't as though if they did see one another in the flesh that she wouldn't have to kill him. Not speaking is better. It allows them both to pretend for a while that this won't end with a lightsaber driven through the other's heart, and doesn't let either ask if the wielder will survive the blow. Bonds like this are rare, say the books she'll continue to read when he's gone from her mind, and they usually result in the deaths of both parties after the fatal wounding of one.
He sees that information inside her mind now as she dresses, uncomfortably aware that Chewbacca might board the ship at any moment.
"I suspected as much. A binding this powerful can't be broken."
"We'll see what happens after I lop off your head." She stands.
He makes a noise that's half a laugh, and he's gone. The mat is still there under her feet, unstained from today but bearing a few disturbing traces of yesterday and the day before. Her legs shaky, Rey goes to the compartment where Luke's books of lore are safely stored, and she chooses her study material for the evening. She sits down to read but the words dance in front of her eyes.
Her staff still lies where it fell. Her gaze keeps being drawn to it, to the memory of movement and power. She has so much to learn if she is to defend herself, and the book is very dull.
Rey stands, picking up her staff. The feel of it in her hand is solid, comforting, and real. She sets her feet, and she begins to practice again.
end