Before he wakes

Part one

The silence of hyperspace was the only place where she could feel distance from him. Since the battle on the salt planet she thought that the force bond between them would fade. Instead, it only strengthaned. The only way that Rey could handle the closeness between her and Ben Solo was to simply ignore him, no matter how hard it was.

The window between them would open randomly, and sometimes in the most awkward times. Just as she fell asleep, or while she was in mid-sentence in conversation with Finn or Poe, he would materialize just our of the corner of her eye. If that wasn't bad enough, she was starting to feel what he felt as well.

Rey felt his hunger. Ben was hungry most of the time. Not for the lack of food, but for the lack of feeding himself. Rey had to wonder if he starved himself purposefully, as a way of self harm. But this wasn't the most disturbing aspect of their connection. What disturbed Ray the most was that Ben Solo could possibly be connected to her in the same way. Ben could possibly be feeling her hunger, her loneliness, and the emptiness she felt as she gazed at other families. Finn was an orphan in certain ways, just as she, yet he had found Rose. Now Rose filled that empty spot for Finn that Rey still felt gaping within herself.

There was a longing Rey had always felt when she saw other people and their chosen companions. It was a small chink in her armor, and she knew that Ben probably saw it. Nobody was perfect, and this was her one weakness that he had already tried to exploit. She remembered how Ben had so easily ripped her heart from her chest, and offered a place by his side in exchange. He had destroyed all the faith she had ever had in him at that moment.

Now, sitting in her quarters while the fleet traveled through hyperspace, she felt the silence and let herself relax. Leaning against the bed in her room, she let the mental walls she had built around herself fall...and exhaled.

"Rey?" She heard his voice in her head just as clear as if he was sitting next to her.

She jumped, trying not to let him feel her surprise. "Why can't you leave me be?" Rey asked, feeling anger in her voice.

"Do you really think I'm controlling this?" Ben answered.

"How could you not be."

"I'm not." The answer was stoic, and without any emotion.

"I want it to end." Rey whispered.

"As do I."

Turning her attention to him, she felt his anger, mixed with a dark sadness that could only be described as a ever rolling thundercloud across her mind. He was the darkest cloud in the sky, angry and beautiful in his own tragic way.

He met her gaze for the first time since she had left him behind on the salt planet. He was wearing the familiar black garb she now found familiar. Ben's dark eyes stared at her and she recognized the same loneliness that she felt within him. Despite herself, she saw once again that she and the man she despised were simular in the aspect of crippling loneliness. But she tried to stay on task.

"How do we end it?" Ray asked.

"I don't know," Ben muttered, his pale features glancing around her, obviously being able to see her surroundings. "I could kill you. That would end it."

His harshness made her frown. He was her enemy, and she was his. He was angry. And she was angry at him as well. Turning away, she began to build the mental wall between them again.

"Rey, wait!"

She hesitated, turning over her shoulder in her mind's eye. "What do you want?"

Ben's lips parted ever so slightly, and his dark eyes looked human for a moment. "Why?"

"Why, what?" Rey asked.

"I offered you the universe," Ben's voice turned low, almost a growl. "Why didn't you take it?"

Rey looked away again, "If you don't know that, than you really are a monster." With that, she closed the connection between them. However, as she did, she heard him screaming at her. Calling her names, cursing it, and cursing the Force. So angry, like a storm blowing against the brick wall in her mind.

Later, Rey tried to forget about him as she drifted off into her sleep. She tried to forget his dark eyes, and the way she had fought so coherently side by side with the man she was now was convinced was a monster. She tried to forget the way he had listened to her in her loneliness, and that he felt the same loneliness within him when they spoke.

It was after she finally drifted away in sleep, that she felt him again. But his voice was different, and calling to her weakly in the dark.

"Rey? Rey can you hear me?" Quiet and distant, he sounded far weaker than she had ever heard him before.

Rey knew she was dreaming when she opened her eyes to a white room around her. This was not the gray walls of her bedroom aboard the alliance cruiser. She was still asleep. But Ben was here?

"Ben?" She asked, hesitantly. After their last conversation, Rey was a little afraid of speaking to him again. Getting up, Rey stepped slowly away from her bed and to the door in the white wall. Opening the door, she peered down an endless white hallway.

There, crumpled against the floor and the wall, lay a man. With a dark head of hair falling into his face, he propped himself up on his side against the wall in a half sitting position. He wore ragged tan clothes that were ripped and torn, and he was covered in filth.

Out of instinct, Rey ran up to him. This person needed help, she should help him. Kneeling next to him, she placed her hand on his shoulder and tried to peer into his face. "Are you alright? What's wrong?"

When he looked up at her, Rey felt the breath leave her chest as she instantly recognized the man who had haunted her every moment for the past three months. "Ben?"

To be continued!