The next time he captures her she is older. That is about the only thing about her that has changed.

She blinks into consciousness hanging by raw wrists, surrounded by steel and chrome and blinding surfaces. Migraine, uneven breaks in her memory and barbed, artificial scents. Guts roiling.

"You remain untaught."

His voice comes from behind her, and she is in too much pain to try her bonds. Instead she breathes, and she rages. But in a whisper. Inside.

She knows enough not to give him munition and easy access to her mind.

"Yes," she says, and loathes how dry and breathless and weak her voice is. She should be strong. She should know what to do. She should be able to focus and aim the power that coils wild and unfettered within her.

She can't.

"He refused to instruct you then. Your….my uncle."

She does not miss his strange stumble but she is too overwhelmed to grasp it tightly enough to examine. Not now. Maybe later. If she lives.

"Yes," she says again, hissing now, rejection still worrying at the cut within her that will never entirely scab over and heal.

"I knew him to be a fool, but I had thought him better than a coward." Slow steps, pacing behind her. Back and forth. Back and forth. "No matter."

His voice is not modulated by a machine, she realises. Unmasked, then.

She would much rather face the indifferent, cold lines of his helm than what is in his eyes.

"Where am I?" she asks and fights the vertigo of déjà vu.

He doesn't answer but finally moves round her to face her. He stands before her, calm and still, studies her with tilted head and something that could be mistaken for indifference. The reluctance to do so is almost physical in its intensity, but she forces herself to meet his eyes.

"You still look the same," he says.

"You do not."

And he doesn't. There is nothing soft or ambiguous about him now. She might cut herself on the lines of his face. He is no longer the frayed, raging man she once defeated in a wintery forest, the one she left behind with snowflakes and blood in his hair. The fury and the darkness and the fervor, it's still present, that is true, but tightly leashed and channelled into immense focus and power. He's a warped mosaic made manifest in mercurial eyes and the angry, ragged rent she'd slashed into his face.

She'd split it into two.

She can feel the power of him pressing languidly against her mind with almost insane force and he's not even trying and she knows it will take everything she's got to keep him out. This time, this time she won't escape so easy. He won't let her. He's come far since she saw him last, so far.

And she, she has just been standing still.

She breathes. "What do you people want with me?'

"No one knows you are here. No one. Not your side. Nor mine."

That gets her attention. "What do you…."

He interrupts. "I have a proposition for you, girl."

Some of her inherent ardor pushes to the fore then, finally, and she bares her teeth at him.

"Are you offering to teach me again? Because I made it pretty clear, with some finality, what I thought of that offer last time." Venomously she drags her eyes across his face, lingers on the disfigurement.

Oh and then – yes there! - she sees him, sees the terrifying furnace of his mind ignite and erupt, sees his eyes spitting fury and his scar go dark with blood. She braces herself for pain and shattered bones and a broken mind, and she is almost glad that he's not that strong after all, that his control isn't forged iron.

That he is still exists.

But just as quickly he grabs control of himself again and he's not even to trying to violate her mind but he is just so terrifyingly still. She has never been more viscerally afraid.

All of him, his entire being, has been reborn. Forged and hammered and shaped in the fire of patricide, darkness merged seamlessly with pain and inherent volatility and passion, creating something… something other.

He reeks of puissance.

He smiles at her. Impassive. "You can relax, scavenger. I've no intention of entering your mind uninvited. I will only do so with your leave."

She laughs and surprises even herself with how hard and broken it sounds. So jagged and sharp. "As if I'd ever! You're a….."

"Monster?" he finishes for her. "Yes, well."

He jerks his chin in her direction and her bonds break open and she is free. She is unprepared and tumbles to the ground with a jolt that reverberates up into her jaw and temples. She resents being prostate on her knees before him and she grinds her teeth and she stands to face him.

He is still looking down on her.

"We'll talk when you're more…amenable. Make yourself as comfortable as you are able. I'll be back."

"I'm a prisoner."

"For the time being" he answers easily.

He turns his back on her, uncaring, so infuriatingly sure, but then moves to face her again.

Hits her eyes with his so hard it hurts.

"Oh and just one more thing, scavenger."

"I have a name!"

A sudden flash of red, sparks, manic crackling and insane pain oozing across her face, into her eyes and mouth.

A wound to mirror his scar.

"Fair is fair, Rey, don't you think?"

Fair is fair, indeed.