"Where am I?"
The resentful question tumbles out of the scavenger before her eyes fully focus, making Kylo Ren's lips twitch at the corners. She's like a trapped manka cat, tugging at her restraints.
He had let her sleep, choosing to wait out her slumber a few feet away in a crouch. Kylo had intended to wake her and dig in the moment he got her aboard his ship. He knew he could pry a map out from the murky waters of her unconscious thoughts - though it would be easier to bring it up to the surface and snatch it then - but a sweep of her mind as he took her hostage revealed the bone aching exhaustion that was so similar to his own: Lonely, restless, sleepless nights. So he'd let her sleep.
He almost wants to demand her gratitude for the gesture, but he isn't here to try and banter with the girl, he has a job to do. Not to mention the fact that she's feeling murderous. He doesn't need to use the Force to see what's clearly painted on her face. No need to goad a caged, feral creature more than he has to. Still…
"You're my guest," he replies.
The look on her face tells him exactly where she thinks he could shove his hospitality. Kylo smirks under the mask.
"Where are the others?" the scavenger asks, staring at his visor as though she'd be able to see through it if only she looks hard enough. He gives her an answer to soothe her - for what reason, he doesn't know - and keeps his crouch. Despite his skills as a ruthless interrogator, something keeps him rooted to his lower vantage point. He tells himself it isn't because he'd had a perfect view of her sleeping face that way: calm and soft under those full lashes. No, he makes himself smaller so that she talks faster. She's not talking, though.
"You still want to kill me," Kylo probes.
He knows he shouldn't be toying with her like a cat playing with a mouse, except he doesn't believe there to be much of a mouse in her by the way she squares her shoulders, and when she calls him a creature in a mask something in him burns to prove her wrong. He could have intimidated her then. He could have stomped over to where she stood and loomed over her tiny frame with all of the advantages his much larger one could have on her psyche. He could have spoken through his modulator, a mechanical voice devoid of life, and forced her to hand over what he needed. Instead Kylo Ren pauses, considers her, and with a few clicks and a tug, his helmet decompresses and his face is bared to her, raven curls tumbling around his ears.
The look of complete confusion that flashes across her face alone is worth it to him. Her eyes rove over him as though she can't quite reconcile the monster from a minute ago with the man in front of her now. Good, he thinks, standing before her. She refuses to meet his eyes.
And so they return to their game of cat and mouse when he forces the topic of the droid, needles her with her past, tries to make her give over anything useful. He leans close and he can smell the scent of sunshine and sand on her skin, his hand merely a breath away from her cheek. Somewhere in his mind an unbidden voice remarks that her skin looks soft, and he mutes the voice the same way he would gag a prisoner. He taunts her with memories he knows he has no right to, and bristles at the thoughts of his father being worshipped in her mind.
She fights his control in a way that makes him frown. A barrier slams down and effectively blocks her thoughts from him, so he presses harder. She's obstinate in her defiance and he delights in having a challenge. Until it turns on him, that is.
Suddenly she's pressing against his awareness and his cocky determination wavers.
The Force stretches and thrums in the edges of his mind as he pulls on one end and she tugs on the other, then it snaps into place like a rubber band stretched too far, unwilling to be further manipulated.
"You're afraid," she hisses and uncertainty ripples quickly through him. He recoils.
That flick of uncertainty creates a crack just wide enough for her to shove in. In a split second she's throwing his deepest fears back into his face. He feels her in all corners of his mind, watching helplessly as memories are ripped out from the neat little boxes he had catalogued them in, stored away under lock and key in the deepest depths of his consciousness, roughly extracted under her careless wading.
Kylo Ren rips at the connection and throws up his defenses with the same alarming speed with which he bolts out of the interrogation room like a wounded animal.
The ground shakes beneath his boots as he and the scavenger parry angry blows, snow sizzling off their sabers amongst the raging sparks that fly from plasma meeting plasma. Kylo Ren's side where Chewie shot him hurts the way he imagines a blazing hell's worth of demons digging in their talons would feel, but he uses the pain to fuel him instead against the raging girl flying at him with all the ferocity of a Jakku sand storm. Kylo has no intention of killing her. Not yet. Not until she leaves him absolutely no choice. So he fends off her irregular, unplanned, desperate blows.
One swipe comes too close to his leg for comfort. He pushes her to the brink while the planet starts splitting in two, advancing with all the strength his much larger body allows him, pinning her in place between the edges of certain death from his saber and a fall into the abyss.
"You need a teacher!" he bellows. "I can show you the ways of the Force!"
She has so much promise.
And just like that, recognition flickers across her eyes as if a switch had been turned on and she could suddenly see all of space. She closes her eyes and he marvels at the way tiny snowflakes pillow themselves on her brow, on her lashes. How they melt on her lips. Then he feels a push against his mind that is starting to become familiar. Kylo thinks of putting up his defenses then stalls. He had just offered to teach her, after all.
So he'd let her look. Her first unsolicited lesson. In fact, he offered up his own thoughts to her like a cake on a silver platter, giving her just enough to fight him once more in a way that sends a thrill down his spine. She's a quick study. Until his stupid, hopeful, weak moment of lack of judgement lands him on his back with an open wound on his shoulder and an angry, bleeding gash from brow to collarbone.
The rumble of earth tearing itself apart between them deafens the pounding of his pulse to his own ears and he sees the distance between them grow. He is weak and wounded but he isn't powerless, and he could pull her to his side to continue their fight with a pull of the Force, but instead he simply watches her standing there, wild strands of hair whipping around, her chest heaving. Then the desert rat turns and scurries away and he's left to bleed on the snow. He lets her go.
Kylo Ren paces his quarters while the Finalizer leaves the mess of the collapsing Starkiller Base behind. He has avoided the med bay, having instead chosen to dress his wounds himself after snatching a handful of bacta patches from the trembling hands of a terrified ship nurse and storming away. These scars he would keep. Not because she marked him, he reminds himself, but because it would be a permanent reminder of his mission. He strips down to his undergarments and sets about his work.
Somewhere in the back of his mind the unwelcome feeling of a second set of thoughts brush against him, an echo of his own pain reflected back to him in an infinite loop. He knows who it is, even if he doesn't know what it is that allows for the feedback. He grinds down all his mental walls and shoves his pain through that loop, imbuing it with all his frustration and rage. He senses a recoil and Kylo wraps his determination around their link like a dying man holding onto a lifeline, yanking her back in place. He lets himself drink in the pain of his wounds, refusing to mute it with the Force. He feeds her that pain as he tears pieces of debris from sizzling, flaming hot skin; as he wipes the oozing blood more roughly than necessary, as he delays the healing properties of the bacta patch. The echo of the pain intensifies through the loop. Good, he thinks, satisfied, even if he knows he's being petty. He lets her feel all of it.
He continues this until exhaustion takes over him. He sighs, letting his grip on her mind go and putting up his own walls as the bacta patches start to ease the searing discomfort and falls asleep despite his unwillingness to. His body demands to be healed and shuts him down. The last thought on his mind is how much he hates being a weak human.
Well, the second to last thought. His eyes close and the image of a girl standing in the snow is burned against the back of his eyelids when his struggle fades into oblivion and sleep takes him.
The weeks pass and it's the second time he has her within his grasp and the second time he acts like a fool.
The First Order intercepts a Resistance missive. Supplies will be dropped off to Maz Kanata in Takodana, to help rebuild the mess of rubble he left behind during his last visit. It is meant to be a quiet operation, and he learns that Rey of Jakku will be doing the drop off with Chewie while on her way to Luke Skywalker.
Kylo Ren bullies his way into interjecting the freighter rather than letting some lesser idiot do it. He can't let them - her - escape again: Kylo has specific orders by Supreme Leader Snoke to bring her in, alive, kicking and screaming if need be. He doubts she would come any other way. He promises to repay Chewie his kindness as he curls his knuckles into the still tender flesh on his side. He'll get Skywalker's location, revenge on his furry uncle, and the scavenger all in one fell swoop. Win win for everyone on his side of the war.
They meet in the forest. This time it's because he chases her there. Chewie's busy defending the locals against a gaggle of storm troopers, and he uses the opportunity to divide and conquer. So into the woods they go. They've been circling each other and exchanging blows for the better part of a half hour before she finally speaks.
"We have got to stop meeting this way," she huffs as she shoves his saber aside and climbs up a rock to gain the upper hand. She's almost as tall as he is while standing on that rock. Almost.
"You will come with me," he demands through the modulator, climbing on the rock with her. She climbs another large stone and he follows, until he's pushing her back against a wall of dirt and rough stone, crowding her on all sides. "I will teach you," he murmurs, grabbing her blade wrist to keep her from impaling him.
"In your dreams, darksider," she snarls.
If you only knew about my dreams, desert rat. He thinks with wry amusement, further crowding her in until she's forced to turn off her blade before she impales herself. Her brow furrows and she looks at him with confused amusement.
"I want nothing to do with your filthy dreams," she spits back.
He nearly trips on his next step. He can hear his breath stop short through his own modulator, and suddenly he gets the very distinct feeling that she's gloating.
His pause is all she needs. She grabs a low lying branch above her head, hoisting herself up like a little monkey. His brain only has a breath's moment to process what's happening as she places her small, booted feet on his large chest and shoves. Suddenly he's tumbling down several feet to the ground and if not for his helmet to cushion the blows, he'd probably split his skull open. From the pain on his sides he's sure he's cracked a couple of ribs on the way down.
She bolts. He doesn't follow, too stupefied by what had just transpired, lying on the forest floor like a stupid rug. Had she read his mind? Up until this point he could feel her moods: fear, anger, frustration... sometimes there were even bouts of happiness, contentment, warmth. But never words. Not like this.
By the time he manages to pry himself from where he lies, little sticks and leaves clinging to the rough fabric of his cloak, The Falcon is zooming up and burning atmosphere. He watches her slip away from his fingers one more time.
Snoke lets him feel his dissatisfaction by making him keel over in writhing pain as his mind is assaulted over and over for the better part of two days. He had returned empty handed, too wrapped up in his own vendetta to obtain the girl or the location to Skywalker. By the time he's allowed to breathe again he's forgotten how his lungs and throat are supposed to operate normally from the screaming.
Once The Supreme Leader is satisfied that he's suffered adequately, having emptied Kylo Ren of everything he had to give, including all the meals he didn't know he could vomit from the pain, he is forced to kneel and look up at the twenty foot tall hologram lording its malevolent presence over him.
"You failed. Again." Snoke drawls, his gaze spearing into Kylo's own.
Kylo croaks out his admission of failure through cracked, bloodied lips, his tongue feeling like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth.
"What can I do, Supreme Leader, to make it up to you?" Kylo's voice is raw, his words lilting to a begging whine.
Snoke remains quiet for a long time. Kylo bites the inside of his cheek until he draws blood, keeping himself from even twitching, knowing the answer could be that only Kylo's death could appease the Supreme Leader for his shortcomings. Then Snoke leans in and caresses him through the Force with a gentleness that make his knees liquify. He feels his elbows buckle under him where he had knelt.
"The connection in your mind," Snoke begins, and a tendril of panic rises along with the bile burning into his throat, but he manages to stamp it down.
"There is no need to conceal it," Snoke says with impatience, "I have seen it. Felt it."
The Supreme leader caresses Kylo Ren's thoughts once more and Kylo is torn between giving into the caress like a needy child or hiding from it once the words that come next reach his ears.
"And now, I will use it."
Kylo expects the world to explode in agony once more, but nothing happens.
"How?" he whispers, knowing that he does not need to speak loudly to be heard. The creature that controls his life and destiny has had unfettered access to his thoughts for twenty years now.
"I will use it through you…"Snoke continues, his voice taking on a weirdly irritated tone, "You will lull her with thoughts of safety, caress her with thoughts of passion, seduce her with thoughts of power... and you will turn her to our cause."
Kylo masks his surprise quickly. Snoke is still talking about his grand plans and daydreams for this new Force-Sensitive, his plans for dominance of the known universe, and Kylo turns the words in his brain. A thought occurs to him then. Snoke cannot access the connection, or he would do it himself. He grinds his molars at the indignity of sounding ignorant, but pushes the indignation away because his needs for answers outweigh his need to maintain an intellectual high ground.
"What is this connection?" he asks.
He'd let her in. That night after the torture that was his audience with Snoke, Kylo Ren had nearly crawled to his quarters and struggled to punch in the access key. He had been thankful, then, that nobody was around to see him. He had collapsed on his bed, fully dressed and bleeding, letting the leftover ache bathe over him like a balm that had, if nothing else, promised him that he'd survive to see another day.
Now, after hours, he waits for darkness to envelop him, welcoming it with an open embrace, when he feels a soft brush against his awareness.
Are you there?
He freezes. Perhaps it is his imagination, his obsession having taken its own agency while he bled under Snoke, but the thought that isn't his has the scavenger's voice. It comes quietly, a hesitant whisper against his mind, like the soft touch of the wind.
Yes.
Kylo lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding while he waited for her to reply after what feels like years. It was only a heartbeat.
Do you still hurt? she asks and he flinches involuntarily. He had once reveled in making her feel his pain, but this time around he hadn't been coherent enough to realize that he had left the floodgates open.
Did... did you feel it, too? he asks, hesitantly, his eyes glued to the high ceiling of his quarters. Snoke had explained what he himself had not understood. What he shared with the girl was a Force bond, forged in the mental battle on Starkiller Base, honed by his petty need to make her feel what he felt, strengthened by their touch on Takodana. It would only grow stronger, Snoke had said, delighting in being able to use Kylo as yet another tool for his mind tricks.
A shy, quivering thought presses into his mind and suddenly he feels not the thin mattress under him, but the soft, messy bunch of blankets on a much softer surface. He frowns. Slowly, carefully, he feels an echo of a deep ache in legs that are not his own - shorter, lithe and far more graceful - and it laces up from tiny toes all the way to slender fingers on small hands.
A flash of irritation burns through the bond before he can stop it. She's the reason he endured two days' worth of torture. He feels what must surely be a flinch and he stomps his stream of frustrations down.
I'm sorry, he offers, because he does not intend this for her. Not even if she is his enemy. Also because he has orders. He is careful to hide Snoke's demands from the bond, setting the thought apart from the rest.
Suddenly, quietly, the sensation coming from the bond changes from scared to soothing, so fast he almost gets whiplash. Kylo's vague awareness of her limbs shifts as he feels hands, not his hands, running through his scalp. He tenses, then sighs as the administrations continue. And along with this warm new sensation comes something so close to pity he wants the ship to open up and space to swallow him. He's about to fight it, to fight her, to snarl through their mutual bond that he does not need it, and is reminded that this connection goes both ways because he's suddenly being shown consistent images of comfort, not pity. He stops then, dumbfounded that his enemy would spare an inch of good grace for him, and the true weight of his exhaustion crashes on him.
He won't fight her. Not today. He doesn't have the strength. Right in this moment all he feels is the ghost of a soft touch and the soothing of a mind far away, and it's nothing at all and everything he hasn't had in decades, and tonight he'll take what he can get.
Goodnight, Darksider. She whispers into his psyche.
Likewise, scavenger. His lids feel heavy.
Rey, she asserts, and he gets the distinct impression that she doesn't enjoy the reminder. My name is Rey.
"Rey," he repeats quietly, tasting the simple name in his thoughts and on his tongue.
He lets her in and allows her to lull him into deep sleep.
The months go by and their bond becomes stronger, though he can only see what she allows him. It's not enough information to pinpoint where she is, but he catches flashes of greenery and blue sky whenever she lets her guard down, and he can feel her in the distance like a never-flickering point of light amongst the darkness of his mind. She's training with Skywalker and he tries to not let his jealousy feed into her thoughts. Kylo knows it's not because of who is teaching her, but because of who isn't. He isn't. It chafes him. So much potential, wasted.
He has no need to find Skywalker just yet, though he'd make sure to relish his chance to kill the Jedi once he does. His master's plans have changed and his main charge is turning this slip of a girl to the dark side. So he allows himself to befriend her.
He gets more time alone to probe at the bond and coax her into interaction.
It starts out slow. A helpful hint with training if she falters, a small word of encouragement - so unlike his nature - when she struggles, a well deserved word of praise when she thrives under his instruction. She seeks him out with more frequency the more Skywalker refuses to expand her training. He's just fine with that. If Kylo gets lucky enough, the old crotchety man could fall and break his neck and not instruct her further. A twisted sense of satisfaction fills him the day she manages to freeze a small, non-sentient creature slinking around the island.
Soon, their shared quips turn into shared conversations in the dark of the night as she lies on her small, comfortable cot and he on his hard military-issued mattress. He lets himself get lost in her bubbles of laughter and wide-eyed daydreaming during those days when Skywalker leaves her to her own devices and she wanders around the island. He listens with rapt attention while she regales him with her escapades beating thugs on the sands of Jakku. She never asks him for his own escapades. Kylo Ren is sure she's had a chance to speak with his mother, but is thankful nonetheless when the conversations turn to something else other than his childhood or his father.
He loses his temper with her, twice, and she blocks him out for a good two weeks every time. Kylo lies to himself in those stretches of silence, reassuring himself that he doesn't miss her at all, yet his sleep is restless and he paces anxiously. He explodes at every small thing and has the storm troopers so cowed they won't come within twenty feet of him. The last time he had been met with a two-week stretch of silence, he had terrorized the people onboard the star destroyer spacecraft until Hux had tersely informed him that if he kept it up Hux himself would oversee his spacing and the party afterwards. Even Phasma, one of the few officers Kylo holds in his esteem, nodded at this.
He lets Rey have her silence, though, knowing that he'd destroy much of his progress if he pushes.
When she comes back to him he feels weak with relief.
The days aboard the Finalizer start bleeding into each other with only dark space surrounding him. He starts keeping count of the days in his mind the same way Rey kept count inside the AT-AT corpse of her childhood. That night he feels trapped, caged. The ship is large but it is a cage nonetheless. Snoke has not called an audience with him for months and he has a suspicion that the Supreme Leader's been lurking in the depths Kylo's mind. He makes extra sure to guard his thoughts, the few he can, and hides his anxiety as he paces up and down the confines of his quarters. He had made a promise to himself to let Rey come to him, to never intrude on her uninvited, but this night was pushing him to the edge.
Kylo lowers himself to a sitting position on the edge of his bed, elbows resting on his knees, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window that swallows up his room's outer wall and opens to the vastness of space like a gaping mouth. He can see distant constellations and wonders where Rey would be. No. She will come to me.
Then, against his own promise, he lets his mind brush gently against hers. The bond hums, suddenly shining bright as her attention turns to him.
Tell me about Jakku again. He asks, and he is sure that he sounds like a pleading idiot, but he doesn't care this time.
He senses amusement from her, and his gloved fingers twitch at the ghostly sensation of long locks of hair brushing against his fingertips.
There is nothing special about Jakku, Kylo. Rey sends back, and he knows by her fingers' movements that she's braiding her hair up for the night.
Rey… He knows he sounds like a begging child. He doesn't care.
After a moment of silence her voice comes through to him in a sing song.
Kylo flops back on the bed, not bothering to remove his robes and tunics, and listens to her stories, senses the calm stillness of long dead ships, feels the harsh sun beat on his face, and smiles at the few bits of excitement Rey encountered there until he falls asleep.
He lets her choose. They meet on an off planet full of valleys covered in nothing but purple little flowers. When Snoke finally calls an audience and demands progress, Kylo Ren allows him to see warped versions of his true interactions with Rey. He tucks the real, gentler, kinder ones far away in a fortress built and walled by the Force Bond. There, Snoke cannot penetrate. The Supreme Leader seems pleased by the memories he cannot tell are lies, and pushes Kylo Ren to speed up in his task. He is to find a way to meet Rey and bring her back.
Kylo kneels in front of Snoke and nods, holding his breath until he is well away from the creature's reach. Then he breathes in deeply and sags against a wall, hands turning to fists. A couple of star troopers turn the corner and, upon seeing him, slowly retreat when Kylo turns his masked face to them, an infinitesimal twist of his head. He reaches to her, then, convinces her to leave her master for a few days while he is absent, and smiles to himself when she feeds him coordinates to the little moon.
When they finally meet on a field of tiny purple flowers his breath hitches and his hand trembles as they both cross the distance between them, meeting in the middle. He had nearly forgotten her face in the months prior to this and suddenly the beauty of her came slamming into him like a brick being dropped on his consciousness, and he tries to take it all in at the same time. This girl - no, woman - who stands in front of him knocks the wind out of his lungs with her mere presence, her hair framed by a halo of sunlight, her freckles dancing on her skin, her eyes warm and sparkling and inviting.
"I didn't think you'd come," he admits, finally, trying to regain some form of composure over himself. He had been, after all, only but a monster in her dreams for a long time.
She approaches tentatively, and suddenly he sees himself the way she sees him, all angular edges, glossy black hair and jagged scar cutting his face. He had been no more than a companionable voice in her head for months now, just as she had been for him, yet here stood the man in flesh and bone. Her hand slowly reaches and Kylo doesn't dare twitch a muscle, doesn't dare breathe, doesn't dare blink.
She traces the scar she gave him with soft fingertips and frowns, pain crossing her eyes, but he sends the soft caress she administers back to her through the bond and she smiles.
"I had to know…" she responds and the cryptical answer is forgotten to him when she moves from his scar to his mouth, the pad of her thumb grazing his cupid's bow and his lower lip. He feels tiny shocks everywhere she touches and his brain doesn't seem to be able to keep up with this level of stimulation. For a second he thinks he might just make it out of this alive, though perhaps this would be a good way to die, except she leans up and gives him the most tentative of kisses, careful and hesitant, and his mind short circuits.
"What w—.." He croaks out, his voice suddenly low and husky and thick, and he can't seem to utter the rest of his sentence.
She withdraws as he feels sense flood back into her brain, apologies tumbling out of her until he cuts her off with one swooping, intense kiss. Kylo Ren could die like this. He'd be happy to go like this after twenty years of no meaningful physical contact. He holds this moment in his mind, wraps it in lace and builds the strongest walls he can in his mind to protect it. He forgets his instructions from Snoke, selfishly ignores them. He can delay a little longer, he tells himself, and watches her with longing as she walks away and boards her ship. This moment belongs to them alone.
The weeks that follow go in a blur. She returns to her master and he returns to his and through it all they spend their nights with their minds wrapped around each other's awareness as little birds do when huddled in their nests, seeking warmth. They try and fail to return to the dynamic of their interactions prior to that little purple-flowered valley. The way she daydreams of his lips is the way he longs for her touch and soon enough the nights are spent between drowsy wakefulness and fiery heat as she bites down a moan somewhere far away and he grunts her name to his empty ceiling like a prayer. Kylo feels like he's been living through a teenager's wet dream; he smiles to himself in the middle of reconnaissance meetings, thankful for his helmet, and even Hux has noticed that he doesn't seem as grizzly as usual. Every night he lets her drive him over the precipice that is their shared pleasure, their Force Bond intensifying it, looping it until his chest aches and her legs tremble. Where she leads, he follows, and Kylo would not have it any other way.
They meet again on small, secluded planets, and sometimes the love making is so sweet he'd swear his name to the Light just for another taste, and sometimes they simply lie there as he hums her to sleep, and sometimes it's war so brutal he returns to the ship with his robes in tatters. She's stronger now than that first bout on Takodana, and has taken it upon herself to try and make him change his ways, but he's too deep in now. Yet their dance of pleasure and destruction continues for weeks until he's once more summoned to Snoke.
For failing to perform his task quickly he is subjected to pain beyond imagination, and when the gentle caress from the monstrous creature sitting on the hologram throne comes, he feels nothing but repulsion. Snoke has dug so deep this time that Kylo Ren feels hollow. It only gets worse.
"YOU DARE LIE TO ME?!"
Snoke's discovered his little stash of happy memories and torn through them, twisting them, turning them into ugly, decaying, monstrous things. He paints a bleak future inside Kylo's head in which Rey is no longer standing at Kylo's side as Snoke's apprentice but above him claiming his life, tethered to Snoke's lap by a long chain of jewels. Snoke's sick sense of ownership over Rey grates on his psyche like nails down a chalkboard.
"Enough of these games, Kylo Ren," Snoke snarls. "You can no longer hide behind your grandfather's legacy," He twists until Kylo's spine feels ready to snap. "You will bring me her head, or I will have yours."
He is thrown from the room with so much force his visor cracks. Phasma, unknowing of the happenings at Snoke's dais, takes pity on him and has a medical team haul him back to his quarters. That night, he breaks. He spends the night hyperventilating alone as he bears open every trace of truth he can offer to Rey. Her feelings shift from confusion to rage to sobs and he lies helplessly in his bed, covered in bruises and crusted in blood, wishing he could be there wiping her tears away. Whenever a warped memory rears its ugly head, Rey feeds him her version of the true events, pure and clean. Each warped memory tears at her heart and each clean one slowly heals his soul. They continue this until they're both spent, having no more tears to give, no more apologies left to whisper.
So will you do it? she asks after a long time, anxiety tinging her thoughts red.
He doesn't answer, and perhaps that is all the answer she needs.
He reassures himself that this is right, that this has all been some twisted experiment and that her death would be as destiny declared for it to be. She was never meant to infiltrate his every waking thought anyway. She had never meant to forge a bond and he had never meant to allow it to grow. Yet every affirmation, every lie, only makes his heart constrict until he doesn't think he can pump blood to his veins anymore. But he knows she won't let herself die easy and he knows she won't let herself become a slave, and he takes refuge in knowing she will fight him. It gives him a measure of peace. Then along with her resignation to their eternal battle she sends him the three words that seal his fate.
I love you.
Just like that, she takes the reins of his willpower and his heart and sends his fealty to his cause crashing through an abyss deeper than that of Starkiller Base's last moments. He's powerless to change it and he closes his eyes, and lets her guide him to sleep one last time.
He would let her take his life.
When Rey and Luke Skywalker burst through the doors of the amphitheater where Kylo Ren has lured Supreme Leader Snoke to, they find him barely conscious. He's standing like a dog at guard in front of his master's throne, except Snoke's head is lying face first somewhere across the room while Kylo stands in the pool of blood blooming on the floor like a rose. Snoke's blood.
Kylo's shoulders are hunched, an animal with its hackles up, his dark hair obscuring his face, his breathing coming in short puffs while he clutches his active lightsaber in a deadly single handed grip. His other arm ends on a stump above the wrist, smoking from where Snoke took his hand. A hand for a head seems like a fitting exchange to him.
You came, he manages. It's all he can manage.
His vision blurs and for a second there are two of his little scavenger. He wonders in a moment of delusion if this is his prize for killing the monster. He gets to have her in double doses. It's been well over a year's worth of scheming and waiting. He had leaked information to the Resistance through their Force Bond, having Rey believe all along that he was unaware. He had quietly moved her and every one else into place like pieces on a chessboard, encouraging her to hate him so she could turn her pristine morals aside and exploit the information he spoon fed her. He'd walked the path of the Sith and ended his master, taking the throne for himself.
Then Rey walks in and he can only think of a valley full of purple flowers. He regains some focus, then, and slowly stumbles his way towards his salvation. The Skywalker has ignited his saber, ready to end the nephew he believes is too far gone to redeem, until Rey holds up a hand. Luke holds - just barely.
Kylo's saber drops from his hand and he doesn't know where it falls nor does he care. His single goal is to make it to Rey of Jakku, one foot in front of the other as darkness threatens to engulf his vision. Finally he stands in front of her, a supplicant to church. She's tense, she wants to run, to scream, to cry, to hug him and kiss him and slice him in half and end it. And so he lets her.
He grabs her saber arm and slowly, gently, guides it until the mouth of her unlit weapon rests under his chin, just above his adam's apple. One push of her finger to activate the lightsaber and a plasma blast would ram through his brain and end it all.
Do it, he pleads.
His hand drops from her wrist once he's sure she'll hold the weapon in place, and his fingers find her waist, her hips, and squeeze. He keeps his bloody stump away. He won't sully her with his blood.
There's a flash of light and he smiles before darkness takes him. In that second, his mind's eye focuses on warm hazel eyes, on tiny freckles, on a halo of sunlight. He's gone.
Then he wakes. For an absurd moment he wonders if the Force doesn't allow killers to join with it once they die. He wonders if there is a hell for people like him, and doesn't begrudge the galaxy if there is.
Except hell shouldn't smell this nice, or feel this warm, or this soft. He turns his head, afraid to hope at the sudden weight he feels against his body, and nearly weeps when it turns out his hell is nothing short of heaven.
He's in a med bay, he's tethered to a bed by what feels like a million restraints, he's blinded by clinical, harsh white lights and his skin tingles at the cold air where the tiny patient's robe fails to cover him. His insides hurt and his stomach aches and his head throbs and he's surely on a ship to meet his certain death. He smiles.
Rey wakes. She does not explain how she's allowed to nuzzle up to a killer, or why she would to begin with. She doesn't explain where they're going. She simply buries her head in the crook of his neck and sends him sleepy thoughts through their bond.
We'll figure out a way.
He lets her cauterize his anguish. He lets her take over his soul.
He's a damned man, and he'd let her lead him all the way to hell on his knees if she so wished.
He'd let her do just about anything.
For now, he lets her soothe him back to sleep.
What did you think? Please review!
Author's note: This was my very first offering to the reylo shrine and still holds a special place in my heart. Figured it was time to share it. Thank you for reading!