"You had everything I didn't have. You had everything I ever remembered wanting to have as a child. You had what I still want today. So why? Why would you give that up?"
He looked at her, expressionless. His gloved hand that had been stretched out towards her sunk to his side.
She waited for his answer. After a few moments she persevered.
"You cannot even say anything. Do you even know why?"
Tears burned in her eyes. Her throat fluctuated between feeling too tight, then too loose. Her breath started to hitch and she bit her tongue to try to stop the sounds escaping her throat.
"They loved you..." She hissed out, "And you betrayed them! You killed your own father and left your mother alone to mourn her husband and her son!"
He still watched her intensely. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly at the mention of his mother, but his face remained expressionless.
The tears flowed down her face, she couldn't stop them. She felt furious and confused. Han was the closest thing to a father she had ever had. She observed the man seated in a throne in front her with disgust. The force continued to connect them as if to remind her of her loss of both Han and Ben. She had felt so sure after they fought the Praetorian guards that he would turn to the light, and turn to her. She felt true understanding with him before his proposition, then her hope diminished exponentially. How could she have ever thought them to be similar?
"You speak to me as if I know nothing."
His voice sounded sharp and cold.
"Everyone has spoken to me like that. As if they know more about me and my life than I do. As if they know what choices will benefit me more than I can know what to choose. My mother, sensing the force inside me, thinking she knew what my life would turn into, thinking she was some fortune teller who could predict my future. I knew she didn't trust me. She couldn't trust me. Han Solo couldn't trust me either. From the moment I was born I was following the same hokey religion as his lover. One that separated him from her, and separated him and I."
Rey felt frozen, she couldn't tear herself away from his gaze. She felt an ache beginning in her stomach that rose to meet her anger.
"Even with parents I felt alone. I could feel their distrust, but I was too young to understand it. They didn't look at me like a son. I was a ticking bomb in their wake."
He stopped for a moment and looked down at his gloved hands. Rey thought she could see his mouth twitching again.
"When they told me I was leaving to study the ways of the Jedi with Luke, I felt elated. I hoped he would look at me differently. I hoped I would meet fellow students who experienced a similar connection to the force that I had, so I wouldn't feel so alone.
"At the same time, I also knew that beneath the illusion of jedi camp they wanted to be rid of me. They were afraid of my raw talent. They wanted to control me, so I wouldn't turn away from the light. They tried so hard to control their vision of my future they convinced themselves I would fall into. They tiptoed around me. Nothing was explained. They feared what I could become so severely, that they failed to see who I actually was in that moment."
He turned away from her. His voice had progressively become softer and softer as he continued to speak, and at the end he seemed surprised to have shared so much. His hands had clenched into fists on his lap.
Her thoughts broke free before she could stifle them. A boy looking for acceptance and love from his mother and father.
If he had heard her thoughts he did not seem to react to them, though Rey noticed the slightest flush on his cheeks.
"... Ben-"
His head whipped up at her utterance of that syllable. His eyes hot again.
"Don't call me that. Don't ever call me that again. He has died, along with his parents."
Rey felt twinges of shame at her earlier assumptions, sadness for his past, and a strange compassion that simmered beneath it all. But she still had reservations.
"I don't believe that," she said sternly, "Ben is still alive in there. No matter how hard you try to push him out."
She remembered what Luke had told her about Ben's past with Leia and Han, the comments he made seemed to fall in line with what Kylo had just told her.
"Are you fact checking my past with what my uncle said about me?" He had stood up from the throne and strode over to her with an agile swiftness and speed. "You're putting your trust into a man who lied to your face, who lied to himself so he wouldn't have to deal with the pain of his regret. A man who assumed he already knew everything about me, no better than my parents."
He loomed over her, only an arms length separated them. Rey refused to feel intimidated, but couldn't stop her hands from trembling. She forced herself to stand up straighter and met his gaze with equal intensity.
"He made a mistake." She said fiercely.
Kylo grimaced further. "So all is forgiven then?" He shook his head and smirked lightly, mocking her. "Is that it? You think it is that easy? I just need to forgive and forget then my soul will finally be saved? All of a sudden their actions have no ramifications? I was the insolent one all along?"
His voice grew louder and louder with each question. He sounded as though he could spit from his fury. Rey felt herself begin to shake, but she didn't step back from him.
He leaned down towards her, their faces a foot apart. She heard something hit the ground but she didn't dare break her gaze from his face. His voice rang in her head.
I will show you.
They connected. Kylo gloveless hand had grabbed hers tightly. Rey could see everything. She saw in great detail Luke menacingly crouched over her, the green glow that illuminated his face seemed to turn him into an entirely different creature. In his eyes she saw fear, hatred, betrayal, but above all else, certainty. She realized with terror that she was looking through Ben's eyes, she was in his body, experiencing his own emotions of betrayal, shock and rejection.
Then the environment shifted and she found herself standing outside the Falcon in one of the many forests on Takodana. She felt significantly shorter as she tumbled around in the grass. She ran around to the other side of the ship and smashed into Han who was bent over an opened section of the Falcon with a wrench. She felt delighted to see Han again, so excited to see his face turn and look at her with that same stoical expression. The look of hesitation that crossed his features when their eyes met left her empty. She watched as Han emotionlessly looked up and down Ben's small body and then brought his hand that held the wrench up and gave it a small wave. "Go on kid, I'm busy right now."
Again she was transported into a new memory aboard the Raddus. She had a plate with an untouched piece of bread on it in front of her, with a glass of green milk next to it. She sat at a table in the command room alone. How long had she been sitting here? Her back ached when she shifted in the chair. Then Leia emerged suddenly, her mind clearly occupied. She checked for any new transmissions and collected several maps before walking over to the table. "Ben, sweetie, you need to eat! You haven't eaten all day!" Leia crouched down to be at eye level with her son and took the sides of his face in her hands. Rey felt the warmth from her touch seep into her small body. She leaned into it, it comforted her deeply.
"Honey unfortunately I need to attend to something with Admiral Ackbar, it's very important." She looked at him lovingly but also, cautiously, as if choosing her words carefully. "I will be back as soon as I can. Please eat."
She stood up and turned to walk away but then spun around on her heel, remembering something.
"I almost forgot! I have a surprise for you."
She pulled a book out from in between the maps in her arms and set it down on the table. The cover had worn out completely, the title illegible. But Rey knew instantly what this book was.
"A sacred Jedi text Benny! Your uncle Luke brought this for you. He knows how much you love reading."
Rey felt a twinge of excitement and watched her small hands pull the book towards her.
"Be good honey, I will see you soon."
Rey watched her leave. The disappointment she felt threatened to crush her.
The Jedi text faded from her hands and she was thrust into a training room in Luke's Jedi temple. She looked with wonder at the padawans surrounding her and felt relief for a moment until she really looked at them. They all looked at her with a different feeling: scorn, fear, hatred, distrust, jealousy. She noticed a couple of them whispering to one another, their eyes narrowed towards her. It was clear she had no friend among them. Still so very much alone. She stormed out of the training room, only to be intercepted by Luke himself—
Suddenly, Rey found herself on the ground of the throne room. Her and Kylo's hands had separated. She looked around and the edges of the throne room started to fade away into the opaqueness of the Falcon. Kylo had disappeared.
A little over a month had passed since the battle on Crait, all that remained of the Resistance lived in cramped quarters on the Falcon. Rey busied herself with general maintenance work, she had quite the list to attend to for all the years Han and Chewie had patched parts together haphazardly. General maintenance also served as a legitimate excuse to spend some time alone to reflect on her thoughts. And if he decided to show up, her fellow resistance members wouldn't have a chance to see her speaking into thin air.
The Force seemed to respect distance for a couple weeks after the door of the Falcon swallowed his face inch by inch from her gaze. But too soon she felt the familiar shift in her surroundings, the earth seemed to suck in a huge breath and held it tight so all she could hear was white noise as she turned to face him.
They had connected three times since their encounter on Crait. The first time they could only stare at one another, unable to speak. She saw the pain of her rejection in his tensed features, but a small glimmer of hope in his eyes. She tried her best to appear defiant, but most likely just looked resigned. The second time, they still had said nothing. The more time Rey spent on the Falcon, the more she remembered Han, the more furious she became. She only glanced at him, sadness bloomed quickly in her throat and she knew holding his gaze would lead to tears. Just before the connection faded she noticed in her peripheral vision that his gloved hand had stretched out towards her as it did on the Supremacy.
The third time, had just happened hours previously. She couldn't hold back her emotions any longer. She hated how he looked with his hand outstretched towards her. He had offered it again as soon as the bond had opened. She could see Han in his face, the resemblance shook her up. She missed him every moment she spent on the Falcon. Forgoing her better judgement and overtaken with anger, questions flew from her mouth. He could never know what it felt like to grow up alone with no encouragement, no warmth, no home to call his own. He seemed so selfish to her in that moment.
She hadn't expected Kylo's response, made even more vivid by the touch of their hands. The memories he had shown her devastated her. Her tears flowed freely once the connection had faded completely. She felt extreme loneliness, loneliness quite identical to what she felt for so many days and nights on Jakku. She had never imagined she would feel loneliness like this surrounded by the people who had brought her so much hope.