Black Gloves, Orange Soup

by Solia

While the dwindling Rebellion starves, awaiting their chance to attack a First Order supply vessel, Rey is trying to keep busy repairing the lightsaber. As luck would have it, her Force-bonded rival Kylo Ren is knowledgeable on the subject and keen to help, but he is also very... distracting. Written as a gift for KKetura for the Reylo Valentine's Exchange on AO3. UST, slow burn.

Fandom: Star Wars: post The Last Jedi

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters or settings. Disney owns all that and pretty much everything else these days.

Author's note: This fic was inspired by KKetura's Force-bond/grey-Jedi/Kylo-redeemed-but-not-a-saint/Kylo-and-Rey-working-toward-a-common-goal prompt for the Reylo Valentine's Exchange. Thank you for such a flexible yet substantial prompt! I saw some of the vague ones and some of the lockstep ones in there and felt immensely grateful that I got you! I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it :) I write to music, and I like to provide the main songs to which I write particular pieces in case anyone wants to recreate the same atmosphere while reading. I choose songs that inspire the shape of the writing with both their sound and their lyrics. The 'soundtrack' for Black Gloves, Orange Soup would be in this order, with the ebb and flow of the tension and the feeling:

* E.T. by Katy Perry: jolty, bassy, disconnected but overwhelmed with misplaced admiration. 'You're so hypnotising/Could you be the devil, could you be an angel?/Your touch magnetising/Feels like I'm floating, leaves my body glowing/They say be afraid/You're not like the others, futuristic lovers/Different DNA, they don't understand you/You're from a whole other world...'

* Astral Boy, by Killing Heidi: soft, rhythmic, gentle. 'Astral boy you're so high/Will you ever come down?/Soaring over everyone/You're bigger than the stars/Astral boy you're so hot/Will you ever melt?/Flying so close to the sun/Now you know how I felt...'

* ...Ready for it? by Taylor Swift: heavy again, playful but then serious and sensual. 'Knew he was a killer first time that I saw him/Wonder how many girls he had loved and left haunted/I see how this is gon' go/Touch me and you'll never be alone/Island breeze and lights down low/No one has to know/In the middle of the night, in my dreams/You should see the things we do, baby...'

* Made of Stars, by Hovi Star: melodic and a little sad, longing. 'A language I don't understand/You speak, I listen, I'm your friend/You hypnotise me… Take my hand/We are made of stars/Searching for that secret promise/Made of stars... You heal me, you fill me/Ignite a flame within me/Hypnotise me...'

/

/

Alone, after another hungry day's arduous work of setting up this new base, after the shouted announcement that the generator powering the lighting would be turned off, after being plunged into blackness and silence, after flicking on her small overhead battery-fuelled work lamp and sitting down at the small stone bench in the corner of her new alien quarters – finally, Rey could get to work. She unravelled the flimsy rag she'd wrapped the pieces in, and lay the two halves of the broken Skywalker lightsaber out before her on top of the open books she'd stolen from Luke's Jedi hideout.

Now what?

The same question, every night.

She pedantically unpacked the microtools she'd borrowed from the Falcon and the scraps of metal and wire she'd squirreled away from refuse piles around the new base in the hopes that one would feel right and inspire her next move, but it never did, not in weeks of following this ritual. In truth, she hadn't the first idea of how a lightsaber worked or was put together, let alone how to fix one broken by the contradictory will of its two hopeful heirs. She had the ancient Jedi texts from Luke's island, and two of them depicted lightsaber hilts and their components, or lightsabers being used in combat, but none of the illustrations were clear enough to make sense of without the prose and labelling around them. Which, naturally: she could not read.

So, again:

"Now what?" she queried with deliberately crafted sarcasm, sensing the distortion in the fabric of the world around her as her awareness of the Force was taken from her and channelled into one immense connection. Her organs twisted inside her, or so they felt. She turned in her seat, inhaling what could be her final breath, knowing he must have heard her, and he was there, tall and terrifying and dangerous and beautiful even with that scar she'd cut down his face –

"Now I'm eating," Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, the Jedi Killer, and murderer of his own father, responded darkly, looking at her in irritation from a bowl he held in his hand as he determinedly sat down… presumably at a table, though she couldn't see it, and the shadows of her room eliminated the need for the Force to simulate a chair or bench for her perception, "which I'd like to do in peace, if you wouldn't mind."

Among all the beings in the universe, he was the one possessed of the unique ability to inspire in Rey the overwhelming conflict between wanting to flee him – even now, her legs tensed for flight and her hands trembled, afraid – fight him – her trembly fingers itched to snatch up the saber, and she hated that it was broken – and run to him. That last one was a little difficult to pin down and examine, mostly because she refused to. He was magnetic, somehow, and almost more than anything she wanted to be near him, and almost more than anything, she felt oddly comforted by his occasional appearances in her alone times.

Only almost, though. Her desire to be near him and to connect with him and to understand him was directly proportional to her desire to run screaming from him so that everybody on the base would know what she was dealing with and help cut this stupid bond before things could get out of hand, and her desire to run screaming at him to claw his pretty soulful eyes out and beat his broad hard chest with her fists.

Most of these choices would probably not end well for her.

If she dared examine her feelings more closely, she might have been forced to acknowledge the intense sexual tension that kept her breathless in his sort-of-presence and the almost-good tingle of fear that ran up her spine when she heard his voice, rich and low across the bond forged by the Force. But she didn't dare, so she didn't have to, and as the three instincts warred, simultaneously urging her away and at him and against him, she could either choose to explode with impossible indecision or choose what she usually chose. Indifference.

"Don't let me stop you," she muttered, carefully careless, and turned back to her work. A huge risk every time. Breath in… breath out… breath in… and no consequence. Rey tried not to exhale that breath all at once in relief when Kylo didn't respond or move. Indifference disguised all forms of passion, she had realised from the first time she used it against him. It hid her fear of him, she hoped, and buried her anger and certainly threw any other wayward feelings to the side. She liked to think it had helped her survive up to this point, because he was thrust into her awareness at least once a week since Luke's death and she knew he could strangle her with minimal effort through the bond if the whim struck him.

So far, it hadn't.

Trying to ignore but painfully aware of him only metres behind her, she lifted a small pair of tweezers from the array of tools in one hand and the radiviewer in the other. The latter she ran over the shaft of the lower half of the broken lightsaber, flicking through the settings to enable its sensors to penetrate the metallic casing so she could see what was inside it. A bluish holo appeared projected above the tool, true to life in size and dimension but only able to show the coin-sized area the radiviewer hovered over at the depth she specified. She couldn't see it all at once, everything that was inside it, and that frustrated her. Her brain worked in systems. She could fix anything if she knew how the whole machine worked, but seeing little elements in isolation and without context like this was hopeless. Other than wires and fuses, so few of the saber's components were familiar to her. If only she knew what each of them did, she would be able to piece the entire system together in her head and start understanding how power moved around its specially sequenced network.

It would also be easier to concentrate if she were properly fed. The first food stores had gone quickly, and now the second, which she herself had smuggled in on the Falcon with Chewie when things were looking dire, had dwindled dangerously low, restricted to strict rations that did not satisfy anybody. Today she'd followed Finn's quiet lead and forgone her portion – the hunger ate at her insides, but she'd suffered much, much worse, and felt a different sort of satisfaction when she followed her friend out of the makeshift refectory, united in a longer term goal of keeping this rebellion alive as long as possible. They only had to wait until tomorrow, after all. They'd received intelligence of a First Order supply ship passing through a nearby system and an intercept plan had been hatched. The enemy would unknowingly provide for the Resistance, and they wouldn't even know what hit them.

"Your tools." The simultaneous urges sprung up inside her at the intonation of his voice, and with effort she stayed absolutely still – didn't flinch, didn't glance back, didn't bolt. She just froze, switching the radiviewer off, hyperaware of his gaze on her, like a hot laser pointed at the back of her head. Extremely glad he couldn't see inside it and pick out the plans she was privy to. "I can see them."

Rey had been thinking of Kylo as an unpredictable, wildly angry creature, but lately she'd changed her opinion on that. As much as he was a warrior of fire, so too was he an insatiably curious intellectual, intensely fascinated apparently with the workings of the Force bond that had been forged between them, and when she found him struck by a curious mood, there was little she could do to stir him back to anger.

It didn't stop her from trying, trying to get him angry so she could be angry, because indulging his curiosity meant relinquishing her hatred and came at the risk of mistaking him for someone reasonable. She'd made that error once before, to disastrous consequences, and she was determined not to let him that close again.

"So?" she asked, as rudely as she could manage, and his footsteps echoed in her ears like drumbeats though in fact they were soft, and she sensed his approach – hands trembling, muscles twitching, heart skipping – "Don't come near me." – and saw the dark shadow of him in her peripheral vision as he ignored her firm instruction.

"Too late." Faintly sarcastic, he stopped beside her. She didn't do any of the things she wanted to, and focused on glaring down at her tweezers. His presence, so close, too close, was massive, overwhelming her every sense. She was sure she could smell the leather of his gloves, and was determined not to notice whether she could smell him, too. She breathed shallower to ensure it. But mostly because she was scared, scared of him and of him working out how to reach through the bond. The Skywalker saber was right there. "I can never see any of your surroundings," he said, leaning down slightly, and she finally gave in to her three instincts and looked at him, agreeing with the terrified voice in her head that screamed it would be prudent to keep her eyes on him at this distance in case he snapped. He was right at her side, leaning over her shoulder, still holding his bowl. He'd lost interest in her and was staring with too much interest at the tweezers, examining them from different angles and clearly thinking very hard. She could see it in his eyes, the rounder, more innocent shape they took when he wasn't concentrating on destroying something or getting his own way but rather trying to figure out a puzzle, and in his face, the younger, boyish look of someone riveted.

It was dangerous to think this way about him, but this was Rey's preferred mode of Kylo Ren. This, she thought, was the window into the boy Ben Solo, locked up tight inside the monster created by Snoke's insidious influence and Luke Skywalker's failures.

"Maybe the bond is finally breaking down," she suggested coolly, putting down the radiviewer where she'd placed it before, and watching the look of intense interest dance in his dark eyes. He seemed not to even notice how close he stood to his rival – definitely, she was much more aware of him than he was of her. "I won't pretend to be disappointed by that prospect."

He shook his head, unaffected by her attempts to derail the discussion, and reached his free hand over her shoulder.

"I don't think so," he replied, reaching for her table. Breath touching her cheek like a private summer breeze. Irritably, she shoved his hand away, forgetting that he was a superpowered former Jedi who wanted her dead. His wrist, which her palm hit only very briefly, was perfectly solid and real to the touch, and her pulse faltered, realising that as far as her experience of the bond was concerned, his being here was real. She had a killer in her bedroom, leaning over her shoulder. The momentary contact seemed to abruptly remind him that she was even there, and he looked back to her in surprise, arm still poised over her, other arm behind her.

He could close his arms and capture her in one move. Kill her in two. And she'd just denied him something.

Kylo's big eyes didn't narrow with anger, though. He withdrew enough to bring his other arm into her line of vision. "Can you see what I'm holding?"

"A bowl?" She shrugged as carelessly as possible, painfully careful not to let her shoulder brush his chest or arm. She intended to leave it there, but she caught a view of a fiery orange liquid inside the bowl, and a waft of something warm and spicy-sweet and totally unfamiliar. Her stomach woke up. "What is that?"

"Hmm?" He'd gone back to eyeing her workbench, but glanced briefly, disinterestedly at his meal. "Kuafa soup. Can you put the tweezers down, too?"

"I'm working," she retorted, trying to maintain her irritation despite his perfectly innocent desire to experiment with the boundaries of the Force bond and despite the really distractingly delicious scent of the soup she'd never heard of before. It masked the scent of his clothes and skin, all of it much too close. "Would you just go away?"

He wasn't put off. He straightened and half-turned away to put his bowl down. Somewhere. As soon as it was out of his gloved hand, it ceased to exist to her eyes. He looked down at her expectantly.

"Can you see it now?"

"No." The scent was gone, too. Sadly. He picked it back up, and there it was, metallic and small-looking in his huge hand. "Yes. I'm not part of your experiment!" she snapped suddenly, realising she was playing along. She turned back to the saber angrily.

"Just one more thing," Kylo implored, fully absorbed by his hypothesis and determined to see it out, able, apparently, to set aside all they weren't to each other and pretend they had the sort of working relationship where he could simply be in her personal space. Ignoring the negativity she was sure she was emanating like heat, he knelt down beside her stone seat and set his bowl down on the floor at her feet.

It was impossible to miss that he unconsciously grasped the corner of her seat to aid his balance, his fingers a hair's breadth from her hip; easier to miss was the disappearing bowl of bright orange, because her attention instead went to the soft tumble of wavy dark hair that fell forward as he knelt. He was so tall, the crown of his head was not a view of him she usually got.

Some stupid tactile node of her brain desperately desired to know whether his hair was as soft as it looked.

He looked up, the same view of him she'd gotten as she left Crait, the same breathtaking view of huge hopeful eyes full of a soul only she still believed in, only this time up close, too close. She tightened her grip on her tweezers and made the other hand into a fist, stone-still, afraid of what she'd do with her hands if they didn't have something to do.

She was too distracted to be properly impolite.

"Gone."

"Your radiviewer did the same thing for me when you put it down. Kick the bowl," he encouraged, gesturing to where it was when she didn't move. She recovered some of her annoyance at that ridiculous request.

"I don't even know what it is. How do I know it isn't some kind of… I don't know, acid, that will eat through my floor?"

He blinked. "It's Kuafa soup. I was just eating it. The worst it'll do is make a big obnoxiously orange stain on the floor – but if I'm right," he said now, not quite excited but something kind of close, "that won't happen, and neither of us will need to clean anything up." He waited; she didn't move, though secretly she was mildly amused by his forethought about the mess and the clean-up, and she got the first indication of his inner impatience when he sighed, a little more forcibly than necessary. "Would you just kick it? Please?"

Rey kicked out at the place where she'd seen the bowl disappear so he wouldn't see her swallowing. He had no right to know what that word did to her in that voice, and right on cue, he looked down at the sudden movement of her foot. Nothing happened at her end – she felt no resistance, no bump or crash of knocking a bowl over.

"Huh." Kylo stared down at whatever he was seeing at his end, wherever he was. Rey settled her foot back on the ground and realised, with some irritation directed at herself, that she was twisted in her seat by almost a full quarter, sitting on the edge of the short stone bench seat, facing him instead of her workbench. She annoyed herself more by noticing that his hand hadn't moved, now almost touching her thigh, and by asking, "What?" like she was interested. She was not. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, looking criminally good doing so, good enough that she should knock him unconscious with a shock from one of these tools she'd abandoned on her bench, except she was trapped in place, watching him, watching his thick, shapely lips as he answered her. "Your foot went straight through it. You can only perceive it when I am physically interacting with it. Holding it. As soon as I return the bowl to my surroundings, you lose track of it. I wonder…" He picked the bowl up once again and brought his gaze back to hers.

Before he put lightsabers through people for sport, did he melt hearts with those eyes? She needed to try harder not to meet them – every time she did, she found herself captive, locked into their tractor beam, trapped. He probably would like the idea of that, predator to her prey.

"You and I can interact across the bond," he explained his thinking. Her heart skipped a beat, remembering the electricity of touching his skin. "We can't see or interact with one another's surroundings, but it's possible we can interact with things across the bond, provided the other is interacting with it, too. Here." He offered her the soup bowl, the contents still slightly steaming, smelling utterly delicious. He offered it to her from his knelt position, holding it up, looking up, still tall beside her even when on his knees, and she felt her heart warm and steady itself with compassion for him, to see him deferent and humble and… what were the right words? Her brain got stuck. He appeared, in this moment, peaceful, kind.

He was neither. But she kept forgetting.

"Go away, Kylo," she made herself say, forcefully breaking eye contact and beginning to turn in her seat, but a completely unwelcome and unacceptable and uncontrollably thrilling touch to her knee – his hand was right there on the edge of her seat all this time, why hadn't she shoved it away or asked him to remove it from her personal space or just gotten up and moved away of her own accord?! – made her freeze up and go still. Now, she should shove it away or ask him to remove it from her personal space, or better yet, simply get up and move away from him of her own accord.

But she didn't do a thing, and he didn't wait for her, anyway.

"I'm surprised by your lack of interest in what can and can't be done across the bond," he confessed to her, voice thick, voice rich and rolling like a self-contained echo, like it was inside her own head instead of outside it. Part of her. "Finding its limits is advantageous to us both."

"It could be disadvantageous to us both, too," Rey shot back, and he removed his hand. It went away like a weight being lifted off; not entirely a good sensation. She didn't elaborate on her words. She knew he understood them from the way he stared back at her, still down on one knee before her holding a bowl of something orange and amazingly scented. The more they knew about this bond, the more they could do to exploit it. To exploit each other, and their warring factions.

"A risk, yes," he agreed reluctantly, dropping his attention back to his meal, stirring the spoon in it idly to release more of the enticing scent. She inhaled it slowly, hoping it wasn't obvious. Kylo's dark eyes angled back up at her through heavy lashes, suddenly sly. "But surely you would prefer to know whether or not I can take that lightsaber from in front of you."

Rey flinched as though shocked with static and dropped her tweezers. She glanced quickly at the broken pieces of the saber hilt – still there, unmoved. How did he know? Could he see it? He'd said he couldn't see her surroundings unless she held something, and she wasn't holding any part of the lightsaber – hadn't touched it at all since he arrived.

"How can you see it?" she demanded as he pushed off his knee to stand, looking triumphant. He towered over her again, his black suited form unfolding into his full immensity, and she withdrew from him hurriedly, sliding herself back along her stone bench seat, thoughts in overdrive. Could he read her mind, even across the bond? None of their other abilities with the Force worked on each other here, so she had assumed she was safe from that.

She should never have assumed anything with Kylo Ren.

"It's not important," he said dismissively, making no move to snatch for the saber or to hurt her. "It's only important that we know what measure of ability I have to take it, or what ability you have to take something from my location." He looked around, seeing – she assumed, again, perhaps unwisely – a totally different place. Perhaps he could perceive both simultaneously. His skill with and knowledge of the Force far surpassed her own. He turned back to her, seizing her in his dark stare. He offered his soup once again. "Take the bowl, Rey."

Her name out of his mouth sent a tiny tingle down her spine, as always. She broke their eye contact and stared at the offered bowl, trying not to shake – wanting to run, wanting to throw the hot soup in his face, wanting to devour that soup. Her voice shook for her. "And prove to you that we can take things from each other across the bond? So you can take my lightsaber?"

His eyebrow quirked very slightly. "I would argue that its ownership is still up for debate." He stepped forward, knee on the seat beside her; in an ashen panic, she tried to slide further away, all three of her warring instincts agreeing that it would be best to move, but she reached the end of the seat and had to grab the edge of it behind her to stop from falling off. He leaned toward her, over her, above an eye level now instead of looking up – dangerous now, powerful now, filling her vision, overwhelming her. He held the bowl out once more. "Take. The. Bowl."

His words and physicality, all so close, too close, left no room for debate.

"You already know," she said, a little shakily. Damn it, she hated for him to know that he scared her. "You're kneeling on my seat."

So he had to know that he could interact with things in her location. But he hesitated, a little awkwardly, she thought, and the power between them seemed to shift just the slightest bit.

"Actually, you're sitting on the edge of my bed," he confessed, looking like he'd rather not, "and I'm kneeling on that."

Oh.

Hand quivering, Rey shifted her weight to one arm and brought the other before her. The silvery crockery waited in his big gloved hand, right under her nose yet also a million million lightyears away somewhere. When she reached for it, either she would touch it, as they both expected… or her hand would go straight through and touch only him, the only thing she had touched through the bond before now. She wasn't sure which she hoped for as she extended her fingers and breathed staggered, terrified breaths. It was just a bowl, but the implications were tremendous. If she could touch and take his bowl, the lightsaber was only the first of what he could potentially take from her.

A micron away from contact, she paused. The bowl steamed, and at this distance, she felt its heat, radiating from the metal. It was much, much less distinct than the way Kylo himself radiated, a kind of aura or gravity well for her attention long before they were close enough in proximity to touch, but it was still so… real. She realised she'd been able to smell it ever since he brought it over, which meant for all intents and purposes, it had been real to her all this time. Real and really here. She closed the gap and her fingers brushed metal. Warm, even metal. She ran her fingertips along the smooth, curved surface until her palm enclosed the base, and Kylo withdrew his hand from it before they could touch. They both stared at the soup.

For them, it had passed from one hand to another. Physically, universally speaking, that bowl had just teleported across a galaxy and remained perfectly intact. It was so completely beyond Rey's narrow life experience that she let out a startled laugh, sitting forward enough that she could reclaim her other arm and cradle the intergalactically travelling bowl in both hands, soaking in its impossible warmth.

"It worked," Kylo commented, sounding intrigued again, Han and Leia's studious, curious son once more. He'd dropped his hand down to the seat between them, the edge of his bed apparently, and now sat back on his heel, giving her back some space. "This is incredible."

"This smells incredible," she corrected, lifting the bowl to her nose and breathing deep. She'd never imagined, let alone tasted, anything similar, yet it made her mouth water. Was this one of the culinary treasures awaiting plunder on the First Order's supply runner? She didn't mean to but she murmured, "I'm starving."

He'd been gazing at the bowl, obviously thinking hard about all the mechanics of this exchange, but her words distracted him. "When was the last time you ate?"

The mesmerising smell of spicy sweet soup and the illusion of peace generated by the lack of violence from Kylo Ren made her loose-tongued. "I don't remember. Yesterday?"

He frowned. Thinking. Too smart for his own good, or at least, too smart for hers. "There's no way you'd go unfed for a day under my mother's leadership unless there was nothing to go around."

Her stomach twisted, a pain beyond her hunger, to realise what she'd just let on to her enemy's leader. That the Resistance was weak and desperate and at the end of their rope was not for him to know, nor that it might tempt them to go after supplies. She frowned as well, angry now, and pushed the bowl back at him.

"I'm not discussing your mother's leadership or anything else to do with the Rebellion with you. Take this and leave."

"No," he stated, a refusal to both requests. He nodded at the bowl. "You eat that. You look like you need it."

"I don't need anything from you," she insisted, but she felt weakened by his unthinking generosity. This was the person buried inside him, the person she could have liked or even loved, in another life or timeline where he wasn't a power-hungry psychopath and a murderer. She swallowed; her throat was dry. "It's… it's probably poison anyway."

He sighed, impatient with her, and pushed off his heel to shift his weight onto his knee so he could reach her again. She made herself remain perfectly still, with effort. He didn't take the bowl, but he did take the spoon, disturbing the fiery orange contents and releasing another delicious waft. He scooped some of the soup into the spoon – it was thicker than Rey expected, and flecked with small greenish-brown particles that had to be some kind of seasoning. He brought it to his mouth, through lips that took up too much of her attention and which she stared at now with too much intensity, and closed it inside. The silver handle of the spoon protruded from his ridiculously close, ridiculously luscious lips, strangely erotic. When he slid the spoon back out, again through shapely, full lips she hadn't stopped watching, it was clean, and he swallowed.

"Satisfied?"

Never. His words broke her trance and she made herself breathe, startled by her own light-headedness. He dropped the spoon back into the bowl and she flicked her gaze from his mouth to his eyes, and realised by their intensity that they had never left hers. He'd watched her while he ate, watched her watching him eating. Her cheeks burned, the intimacy of that tiny act suddenly seeming starkly apparent.

Not to mention embarrassing. And it only got worse. Unable to think of any further excuses not to eat – it wasn't draining on the Rebellion's stores, after all – she looked down at the gift in her hands. It was a gift. He didn't have to give it to her, could have beaten her to death with his fists instead if he'd pleased; but as soon as they'd established that they could share matter across the Force bond, he had given her sustenance, unasked. And now he was waiting, eyes as hungry as she felt, poised before her, waiting for her to accept his offering.

She didn't know what it would mean to him if she did, but she lacked the necessary resolve to deny him, and she tried to be delicate as she took up his spoon. Was it weird to share a spoon? On Jakku she would never have thought twice if she'd found herself eating with another with one utensil between them, but here with the Rebellion she'd noticed that everyone took their own plates and their own utensils for use at a meal, and after every use, utensils were thoroughly cleansed before being returned to the collection. It couldn't be that weird to share, she reasoned as she uncertainly scooped the thick gloopy substance onto her spoon, because Kylo had put this spoon back into the bowl, so he intended for her to use it. Or maybe he wasn't the best model on which to gauge 'normal' and 'weird' behaviours, but currently she didn't have any others.

She got the spoonful to her mouth and closed her eyes and lips to contain the helpless "Mmm…" that followed the warm buzz through her body as the exotic flavours excited her tastebuds. The soup was not quite hot, just right, and even more spicy-sweet than the smell could have conveyed. Incredible. Her tongue moved it around her mouth, warming her, finding layers of flavours beyond what she noticed at first – fruits? Spices, definitely. Something creamy for the base, something earthy and fragrant and dry at the end. She reluctantly swallowed only because there was more in her hands that she could taste over and over until it was done. She pulled the spoon free of her mouth, licking it clean as she did, realising headily that this same spoon was just moments ago in Kylo Ren's mouth and wondering if it would feel this good to kiss him, and whether that's what she was technically doing now anyway as she dragged traces of his saliva over her lips.

She opened her eyes, and he was close enough that she could find out if she wanted to. His eyes were on her mouth, his gaze heavy and his breathing deep, through his nose. Her cheeks flamed again, not even sure why except that his attention was intense, and he lifted his open, predatorial gaze to hers.

She felt the unreasonable urge to throw the bowl aside, forgo eating altogether, and find out for certain whether he tasted as good as Kuafa soup.

"Maybe I shouldn't have shared," he said finally, voice even, and she pulled the bowl in fractionally closer, possessive, and she knew she wasn't going to trade this taste experience for an ill-advised kiss. He watched her scoop another spoonful and eat that, too, managing to contain the auditory reaction to the taste explosion this time, and a sort of spasm crossed his expression. Pain? Discomfort? Rey couldn't tell. "You make what I thought was commonplace Kuafa soup look… quite exceptional."

Rey swished the deliciousness around her mouth indulgently before swallowing, her stomach growling its demand. Surprisingly, it cost her nothing to spare him a tiny smile as she went for her next scoop, though it felt like it cost her to take pains to scoop politely with the spoon and raise it to her mouth at a pace appropriate for company. She sipped, acting, she hoped, like she wasn't just a greedy child desperate for satiation.

"No need to stand on ceremony on my account," he said knowingly, noticing her efforts to be delicate. "If you're hungry, eat."

"Oh," Rey had to say, to cover how immensely grateful she felt for his words as she dug in with a total lack of ceremony, even finishing her sentence through half a mouthful of delicious soup, "I do very little on your account."

The corner of Kylo's equally delicious-looking mouth quirked in response, and for a moment he chewed on the other edge of his lower lip, seemingly deliberating something. Always watching her, watching her eat, which she did with more vigour as he finally pushed away, back onto his feet before immediately sweeping himself gracefully in between the bench seat and work table to sit down beside her.

In front of the saber they'd broken together.

Now what?

"It's here, isn't it?" he asked, nodding at the arrangement before him with an unfocused gaze. His hands on his knees, not on the lightsaber. Rey swallowed her next mouthful too quickly, taken aback, and had to clear her throat so it wasn't caught in the wrong pipe. She turned a surprised frown on him, understanding too slowly.

He couldn't see it. Had never seen it.

"You tricked me," she accused, though she couldn't summon any degree of venom, not after he'd fed her. His meal still warmed her hands and her stomach, and she had plenty to go. He scoffed, almost a laugh, and shot her a superior glance.

"Dark side," he reminded her, cocking his head slightly in amusement at her gullibility. "I took an educated guess. What else would you be working on?"

She shrugged, going back to her – his – meal, feeling increasingly at ease with having the First Order's new Supreme Leader immediately beside her in her sleeping quarters. In his sleeping quarters. "Maybe something on the Falcon."

"Oh, please, don't make me laugh." He rolled his eyes and plucked the spoon from her hand as soon as it came out of her mouth. Through her full mouthful of delicious soup, she made an unconscious noise of tight-lipped protest, more concerned about not being able to finish than about the amazing feat of the Force that enabled Kylo to take a spoon from another place in the galaxy. "That rust bucket needs more than a pair of tweezers and a tiny radiviewer before it would pass any standard compliance assessment, even in the most uncivilised systems." He dipped their spoon into the bowl she held and popped it into his mouth. He was quicker this time, quicker to eat and put the spoon back into the bowl for her, and he did so carelessly, but she couldn't help the way her pulse quickened at the sheer sensuality of him when he ate. It was so, so ridiculously appealing, and she was so, so ridiculously ridiculous for thinking so. His throat tightened and bobbed, and she tried her best not to imagine either her hands or her mouth on the skin of his throat next time he swallowed. "I think you're overselling. I've tasted better. This is just standard-issue First Order mess soup-of-the-day."

"Aha," Rey said with another small smile, reclaiming the spoon. Quelling the temptation to ask how it was spelled out on the supply crates so she'd know which boxes to steal tomorrow. "The real reason you defected."

She meant it lightly, but as soon as the words came out, she knew they were too heavy. She paused with the next spoonful halfway to her mouth, feeling the sudden tension in the body beside her. She'd failed to acknowledge actually how close he was sitting to her, not touching but only just.

He could still hurt her whenever he wanted. He was probably creative enough to work out a way to do it with the bowl and spoon, now that they'd established it could be used in both places at once.

They sat side by side, not looking at each other. The atmosphere between them seemed to falter in the dull silence, shifting from playful intensity to something more serious, and Kylo's unshakable intellectual curiosity loosened its grip on him, his emotions stirring beneath. His anger and his hurt, probably. Rey felt the threat of that keenly.

At the first twitch of him, the first signal he was going to move – and she never knew whether he meant to withdraw or lash out – she reacted without thought, guided either by instinct or by the Force or perhaps by both. She grabbed the back of his wrist with her free hand, effectively stilling him all over. He froze in place, easily as tense and rock-solid as if he really were made of ice. Except he was far from cold.

"Don't," she pleaded softly, still not looking at him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I don't want to have that conversation. Please…" She swallowed, and thought she heard him do the same, though she couldn't look, in case he was frowning, in case he was boiling over with hate. If he was going to snap and kill her, there wasn't a lot she could do from his position to stop him, and she didn't want to see it on his face. "Can we just pretend I never said it?"

The silence wasn't long, but it seemed to stretch immeasurably, the Force throbbing unevenly with wary potential in between them and around them. Eventually, after about two seconds, she felt a subtle motion from him, or saw one in her peripheral, and knew that he'd tilted his face to look at her hand on his wrist.

The Force-simulated atmosphere between them suddenly found its rhythm, and her next breath felt clearer, less tight, even before Kylo half-shrugged his shoulder and agreed, "Sure. Forgotten." She turned her eyes to him in relief and found his waiting for her, and they were unexpectedly soft. He wasn't mad. Unsure, maybe, but he looked like he'd found solid ground again with her apology. He was an enigma she couldn't hope to ever understand. He turned again to the lightsaber he couldn't see and she took her hand back so she could keep eating. "Tell me where you're at with repairing the lightsaber."

Rey eyed him suspiciously, but knew that despite how proximal he appeared from her perspective, he was very, very far away and they had proven together that he could not take it without her help. Still, telling him how broken her weapon was didn't seem to have any strategic advantage, so she dropped her eyes to her food, shrugged delicately and said, "Fine. I'm nearly done."

He snorted lightly, even smiling or something close in incredulity. "Not with a radiviewer you're not. Try again."

"I'm…" Rey hesitated, wondering how he'd gleaned that. He was perceptive, much too clever. The radiviewer penetrated solid matter to view what lay beneath, usually the internals of handheld devices for diagnostic analysis. Alright, so if she was nearly done, she wouldn't be trying to look inside the newly repaired hilt. She'd left herself open for that one. "I'm working on it."

"Yeah, what part? Where are you up to?"

"I'm…"

"Alright, what's broken?"

"The… the, uh…"

"You've got no idea, do you?"

Rey sighed and slouched, feeling defeated. She gestured at the unhelpful schematics in the old texts, wordless, and though he followed her hand with his eyes, he could of course see nothing, and offered only a clueless look in return that probably mirrored her own. Her cheeks prickled again with heat. How was she meant to tell him that she couldn't read anything but familiar words and phrases in isolation, words on screens like 'loading' and 'open' and 'systems' and 'active', and none of these qualified? The script was in a font she'd never seen, making the letters and symbols look twisted and alien.

"I'm not stupid," she muttered, avoiding his eyes, glaring at the books. At the stupid words, at the stupid labels.

"I know that," Kylo answered, waving a hand experimentally through her work bench. It really did seem to blur straight through, not touching a thing. "What's the problem?"

She picked at her fingernails in her lap, purposefully not examining her own reaction to his immediate response. He didn't think she was stupid, but that was before she admitted that she couldn't read. Much. She couldn't read much.

She couldn't do much with the lightsaber as things stood, and there didn't seem to be much use in pretending otherwise at this point. "I… I don't know where to start."

He seemed to take pity on her.

"Here," he relented, opening the hand closest to her, "let me have a look at what you've got."

It was Rey's turn to scoff. "Nice try. Like I'm going to hand the lightsaber over to you, Kylo."

He raised an eyebrow, miraculously still not taking offence. This had to be some kind of record. "So don't give it to me. Just pick it up so I can see."

"And make it possible for you to take it!" Rey finished, pointing at him with her spoon. "I told you I'm not stupid."

"No, just extremely suspicious."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I fed you," he said, gesturing at the bowl. "That has to count toward some good faith."

"It doesn't change that you've always wanted the lightsaber," Rey countered. "The last time I saw you, you tried to steal it from me-"

"Oh, no," he warned, his deep tone threatening enough to make her three warring instincts split back apart in opinion again and start internally screaming for her to run from him, claw at him, throw herself at him, until he undermined his seriousness by snatching at the spoon. She was only just quick enough to pull it away, and he made another unsuccessful grab. "The last time you saw me, you had given me the lightsaber, and then you were stealing it back. Get your facts straight."

Smartass. She liked it, though, his sense of humour, and tried to hide her appreciative smirk as she cradled her bowl against her chest and whipped the spoon back and forth, sliding incrementally away from him, trying to keep it out of her companion's grasp when he made calculated grabs.

"Fine, you had it but you weren't going to give it back," she shot back. "You want it. You even joked about taking it before."

"So?" He grabbed again, his gloved grip slipping on her wrist when she twisted out and reached her hand as high and as far back as she could. Hopeless. His reach wasn't something she could beat, she realised as his mesmerising eyes zeroed in on the spoon's new position above her head.

"So I'm well within my rights to be suspicious," she claimed, suppressing a giggle or a squeal of giddy delight when he flashed into motion toward her, grasping her wrist with one hand and wrenching the spoon free with the other. The momentum of their playful struggle pushed her to the very edge of the seat, and a jolt of weightless panic seized her as she realised, too late, she was going to fall off.

Kylo must have been holding back in the spoon game, because he was lightning-quick now. He seized her, too, taking the spoon and scooping his arm around behind her in the one fluid movement, his Jedi reflexes kicking in. His elbow locked her against him, bowl wedged between his chest and hers, and she felt the spoon in his fist between her shoulder blades, and she did not fall anywhere.

She did not fall off the seat, at least. To say she didn't fall anywhere was less accurate.

When she inhaled next, it was a toxic, frightfully delicious breath that gave her the shakes all over, and she was absolutely certain he felt that. The air she drew in was a heady mix of Kuafa and him, his leather and his skin and the steam rising from between them, and the warmth of both the soup and of his heavy exhalations, straight from his lungs, straight from his heart, straight from his blood. Black gloves, orange soup. She knew when she looked back on this moment those would be the only elements she'd remember with any clarity. Everything else was blurred, mixed, overwhelming. His arm around her was solid, supportive, locking their upper bodies close, but his other hand still gripped her wrist high above her head, a hostage. A dance partner. And if his hands hadn't held her, his gaze would have, unreservedly wanting, unashamedly seductive.

He inhaled slowly, eyes roaming her face, close enough to kiss or lick or bite if she just leaned forward, and somehow she knew he was breathing her in, too. The thought made her feel heated all over, all through. She tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry.

"And now you've taken my spoon," she half-whispered, voice failing her, hoping she didn't explode or pass out. She was well out of her depth. "Thief."

He didn't look away from her as he leaned in, bypassing her lips even when she turned her head to watch where he went, and when she lost eye contact she felt another erotic shiver grip her as his rich, low voice brushed her ear. "I guess you can't trust me after all."

Oh, that much she knew, even as she closed her eyes and all but melted into his hold on her, super-heated by the fire of his breath on her ear, in her hair, on her neck. She bit her lips tightly shut to withhold her gasp at the electric shock she felt when his nose brushed her earlobe, skin on skin, and again when his rough cheek grazed hers, so very slightly as to be reasonably called an accident. Her ears pounded with the over-loud sound of his breathing, sure they would pop at these pressures.

This was a hundred times more intense than the conflicted feelings that had surfaced for the first time amid her fear in the interrogation room on Starkiller Base. This was… what drowning must feel like, only… she didn't want it to stop, she'd rather just keep sinking.

She was compromised, well and truly. The real reason she couldn't tell anyone in the Resistance about this connection. She'd be relabelled traitor so fast.

Kylo pulled away far enough to look her in the eyes, and she struggled to focus, so swept up in him, blinking hard to bring herself back. It was useless, especially when his hand on her wrist, dangling above their heads, loosened, and he began to slide it down her arm. Slowly. The leather of his glove dragged a little, sensual and warm, and thank heavens it wasn't his skin or she might lose it to touch him again. He was thinking on the same lines, apparently, because his voice was ragged when he murmured over her mouth, "I wish I wasn't wearing these gloves."

As his hand dragged down her arm, she let it fall, and the most natural place for it to settle was across his broad shoulders. He was right there, poised over her, his words and his breath falling straight between her lips and inside her, tainting her, and from here it would be just a tilt of her chin to close the space and throw away everything she'd believed about herself.

That she was strong.

That she was disciplined.

That she was principled.

Her three warring instincts were still screaming, still trying to help her find her way back to those naïve assumptions, but only one voice was getting through, and it was telling her to give in. To let herself find out what not just his hands felt like, but his kiss, his face, his hair, which looked so incredibly soft.

So she said back, "Me too."

The tremor in his brow was slight, the faintest hint of a confronted expression, and his eyes took another tour of her face, lingering on her lips. He looked for a very long moment, clearly indecisive, evidently torn. Do it, she screamed, but no words left her breathless throat.

"Actually," he said finally, bringing his hand between them and touching leather-tipped fingers to her lips, eliciting that gasp after all, breathing it in, "I wouldn't waste my wish on gloves." He caught her lower lip with his index fingertip and lightly tugged it down, biting his own lip again, eyes wide and tortured, no secrets between them anymore about what either of them wanted. Her lip naturally rolled free of his fingertip and she immediately missed his touch, though he traced it over the rest of her face without touching. Along her jaw, leaving a trail of heat where he made zero contact, up to her cheekbone. "I thought it would be a lot harder than this." He frowned again, more obviously this time, and his gaze on her changed. Became… sharp. "You're thinner. Pale. You really have been starving." He looked down; she was sure he heard her heartbeat, erratic and heavy in contrast with her shallow breaths. He quite clearly hesitated, worried about something, but then said, more evenly, "You should finish that. Before you pass out."

And the moment broke in two, much more cleanly than the lightsaber had. He withdrew, pulling out of kissing range, and kindly used his arm around her and hers around him to pull her back onto the bench seat. He released her completely and she breathed again, but it wasn't what she wanted. He offered her back the spoon. Tentatively, disappointedly, she took it from his open glove.

The Kuafa soup tempted her less now.

"That was… uncomfortably gentlemanly of you," she noted, deciding against pretending nothing had just transpired, though she suspected that was probably the more socially correct thing to do. She moodily dug into her soup, which tasted no less amazing but which had lost its sparkle.

"Uncomfortably gentlemanly," he repeated. "I've been called worse. Better that than what they'd call me if it got out I took advantage of hungry scavengers I find in my bed willing to sell themselves in exchange for food."

Rey knew she'd been bold to keep it in conversation rather than let it drop, but his response was even bolder and she choked on her mouthful. She glanced at him beside her, horror-struck with embarrassment, but his eyes were on her, light and playful. She hadn't thought it was even close to funny, their situation, but the shock value of his comment qualified it somehow, and she couldn't help cracking a smile, and she returned to eating with less bitterness. The food tasted better for it.

"If you won't show me the lightsaber, can you describe it to me?" Kylo asked when the moment passed. He looked at it without seeing. "The damage we did to it? I saw it break in half after…" He hesitated. That was somewhere he still didn't want to go with her, she understood immediately, and she made an effort not to look ashamed or upset or really to react in any way at all that indicated she'd noticed his struggle. "Before I lost consciousness. But if the crystal chamber was unaffected, you might be in luck – it could be just a matter of reattaching it to either the power cell compartment or the field energisers, depending on where the break is."

Rey stared at him with a slight frown, hearing the terminology roll off his tongue and beginning to connect it in her mind with what she'd viewed inside the pieces with the little radiviewer. Field energisers. Yes, she'd seen those, and now had a name for them, not that she'd be able to read it in the texts.

But he misread her thoughtful stare for suspicion. He sighed, frustrated. "You know I built one of these, don't you? I can help you. And I'm stuck here anyway-"

"It's in two pieces," she confirmed, pulling her legs up onto the bench to cross them. It hadn't occurred to her how handy it would to be Force-bonded with someone with experience in lightsaber construction. Come to think of it, he could probably read, too, the son of a princess. "I think the field energisers are in one end, and the power source, some kind of battery, is down in the other. I haven't seen any crystals."

"Let's both hope you're just unobservant," he advised, calm again. Content, happy to be involved. "The crystals are the most important part."

Rey winced, leaning forward on her base of crossed legs to examine the broken lightsaber with just her eyes. Both pieces were hollow at their broken end. It didn't fill her with hope. She reported her observations to Kylo, who swore in a language she hadn't heard before.

"Sorry – Uncle Luke taught me that, he knew my mother didn't speak any old languages so he must have thought he'd get away with it. But you need to find those crystals," he reiterated seriously. He nodded at the table he couldn't see. "Get out your radiviewer and see if they're stuck in there somewhere. Kyber crystals are incredibly, incredibly rare now. You won't find a replacement."

But Rey's attention had caught on something else he'd said. "Luke Skywalker spoke other languages?"

"Not like Threepio, not fluently," Kylo said dismissively. He clicked his fingers impatiently. "Radiviewer, now." She automatically handed it to him. He gave her an exasperated look – he could do nothing with it without the lightsaber. She returned the look, waiting for him to continue the story. He relented. "He just taught himself what he needed to know to read the old Jedi texts and understand some of the holo records that were left behind by the ancient masters."

The old Jedi texts were in another language. She wasn't just hopelessly illiterate after all – she'd actually had no hope whatsoever of deciphering them. It made her feel a whole lot better, and renewed her hope as an idea struck her.

"He taught himself whole languages," she repeated, lowering her spoon and marvelling at the immensity of life and talent Master Skywalker had lived. How little she'd known of him. She gazed at the words she couldn't read spread out before her. "He taught you."

"Some," her companion agreed cautiously as, gingerly, she settled the soup bowl in her lap to free her hands, then carefully jostled the least unhelpful of the Jedi texts out from under the tools and broken saber pieces to offer it to Kylo. His eyebrows raised and he put the radiviewer on his knee. "Well, this is old."

"Can you read it?" she urged, only half as anxious as she should have been to hand over a priceless Jedi treasure to Skywalker's hateful nephew. His hands closed on it and he took it, already reading, eyes focused – the academic once again.

The academic was painfully attractive.

"Some," he said again, slower. "Where did you get this?" He might have been curious for her response but when she didn't give one, he didn't let it bother him. His eyes raced across the pages she'd had it open to, and his fingers flicked the page corners gently, idly. She could see he was a reader, a lover of knowledge and words. She wondered if that love of knowledge had helped pull him to the Dark side, with a promise of more. "This is an incredible find. This must be… well, I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of standard revolutions, but old. Look at this noun-verb order. This particular dialect hasn't been active since…" He trailed off and glanced at her. "You don't care." He flipped through a few other pages of the text to see what else it contained, but then brought it closer to her and ran his finger over the illustration she'd found of the open lightsaber. Teacher mode. "This is an older style than what I modelled mine on, and it was outdated even when Vader built your one, but, with the exception of creative changes, this is basically what any lightsaber looks like inside. Power cell, focusing crystals, then the channel for the blade – which is also where the majority of circuitry fits – and then the modulator, then the outlet. Externals are all individual, don't worry about those." He tapped the ancient paper with his gloved fingertip. "Where's it broken?"

"About here." More confident in her choice now, Rey pointed to the point just off-centre where it had split, and he used that curse word again. She would need to learn that. "It's not a clean break, either."

"That's the crystal chamber," he confirmed grimly. "I have a bad feeling that that's what you and I were pulling on when we fought over it. The forces we put on the crystals – even just one of them – were pretty intense. Kyber has potent qualities. It's possible we caused them to overcharge and detonate. It would explain the explosion."

Rey looked back at the miserable shards of what was the Skywalker lightsaber. She'd known it was bad when she saw it break and when she picked up the pieces, and she'd known it was as much her fault as it was Kylo's and she'd known they were responsible, but it still saddened her to hear it aloud, put so sensibly, and to hear it was even worse than she'd thought – they'd actually managed to blow up the lightsaber, not just tear it apart. They'd managed, in fact, to blow up the most important part, which might be irreplaceable.

"Do you think it can be fixed?" she asked in a small voice, feeling immensely guilty. She'd hoped when she collected the parts that there would be a chance, but maybe she was wrong.

Kylo was still reading, fascinated by the book. "Maybe. Of course, I'm just theorising, since I'm not allowed to look at it," here he spared her a mildly exasperated glance up from his page, "but if we're right, then all that's missing is the crystals."

"Because they're blown up," she finished gloomily, "and you said they're irreplaceable."

"No," he corrected, turning the page elegantly. "I said you won't find a replacement. You can't even find food, how are you going to find Kyber?"

She perked up even though she was sure there was an insult, or at the very least some condescension, in there somewhere. "So they are out there?"

"Everything is out there, for a price, if you know where to look. Which I do, and you don't. Damn it, Rey," he snapped suddenly, shoving the book back at her, and she fumbled with her spoon to take the book and lower it to lay across her knee and his, which were so close to be almost touching. He extended an impatient open hand. "You were going to let me kiss you, ill-advised as that would have been. Are you really not going to trust me to even look at half a broken lightsaber when I'm trying to help you?"

She swallowed, struck by his forthrightness, luckily too surprised to blush. Somewhat shellshocked, she turned back to the workbench and picked up the first half of the broken hilt. She saw his eyes light up with interest and surprise, even more so when she offered it to him to take, placing it in his palm.

"One condition," she added, lifting it clear of his hand when his fingers began to close. "You don't repeat to anyone that you think I might have let you kiss me, because I wouldn't have." His mouth quirked in a half-smile tragically reminiscent of his roguishly handsome father, and she lowered the piece and let him have it. "And, obviously, don't steal it."

"That's two," he noted, apparently allergic to forgoing an easy tease or a last word. Another Solo trait? He took the short silver and black cylinder and gave her a short glance and a theatrical bow of his head. "But I accept your conditions. And, for the record, you put up a better fight with a lightsaber than you do with your body. Don't be a pushover next time."

Next time, she thought, thrilled. Because she was pathetic. But he'd already lost interest in her.

She wondered if his mother had expected him to become a researcher, or some kind of scholar, because when she watched him with new and interesting things, she found him as captivating as he found the artefact or puzzle. He turned the broken hilt in his fingers, probing fissures in the metal she hadn't noticed, peering inside the hollow of the snarled, charred, broken end with observant eyes that knew what to look for.

"What do you think?" Rey asked after a while. He shook his head.

"I think this is a piece of history, here in my hands," he said, duly humbled. "This weapon served my uncle, and with it he began his path as a Jedi Knight who reinstated the Jedi Order and brought change to the galaxy. But first it served my grandfather, Anakin Skywalker. Darth Vader." Kylo Ren stared at it, seeming to see less of its mechanical issues now as he lost himself in the magic and memory of the device. Rey felt uneasy about it. "He brought down the Jedi Order with this weapon. He used it to kill hundreds of Jedi. He built it. He built it with his hands…"

He started to tug off his glove by the fingers, wanting to touch it, but Rey plucked the saber from his hand.

"And now it belongs to me," she reminded him primly, breaking the spell it had on him, "and you wouldn't take your gloves off for me."

He stopped, surprised, and pressed the fingers of the glove back on.

"Fair point. Perhaps next time I'll rethink the gloves, though I leave blade ownership for later debate. Please?" He waited for the saber back, and she returned it. Heart fluttering with totally unnecessary warmth at that simple word.

"So what do you think?" she asked again. "Can it be fixed?"

He felt on his leg and knee but there was only the book, which he shifted.

"I think my abilities with the Force are weaker here with you than I like to admit, and I may have to actually use your radiviewer to sense inside this thing," he said, retrieving the tool with obvious reluctance from the thin air between his leg and her bent knee. It had fallen, and apparently landed on his side of the bond. She would have to be careful of that, and not let him put anything down or be the last to touch anything she wanted to keep, such as the lightsaber. He ran the viewer along the shaft momentarily, producing a holo of a few wires plugging into a thin tube-shaped battery, then switched it off and dropped it onto the book. "We need to get it open."

"I haven't been able to open it," Rey confessed, though she'd assumed it must be possible. She scraped some of the last of the Kuafa soup out of the bowl.

"You've been too gentle with it," he intuited. "We already blew it up, a bit of poking and prodding isn't going to do it any harm now." He referred back to the book on their knees, precariously balanced, gently pushing the radiviewer aside when it covered the text he was reading. She watched his lips move silently as he translated. "It's incredible how old this thing is… But the seam should still be…" He twisted the broken artefact in his hands slowly, looking for something on its curved surface. He brought it closer to her, pointing out the join line between the hand grip and the rest of the silvery shaft. "Can you get your fingernail in there?"

Obediently Rey wedged her thumbnail into the non-existent gap while he held the hilt steady. Naturally nothing happened, but at an expectant look from Kylo, she pushed harder, feeling enough pressure that her nail might snap or splinter, and just before it could, they heard a soft click, and the broken cylinder came apart in his hands. By unspoken agreement they got rid of the radiviewer and spread the components of the saber over the pages of the book that balanced between them, the only neutral surface on which they could work and both see. The internals were not a perfect match to the diagram in the ancient text but it was clear that the basic design had been followed. The parts and systems Kylo had described were all in place, though the sizes were different.

"Emphasis on power," she noted, understanding the lightsaber as a workable system now that she could see some of the parts and had had its internals described to her. This one had been built to customised specifications, evidently, because the battery cell was bigger than shown in the image, as was the space for crystals, while the mechanisms at the top in the other half, intended to control and moderate the blade, had been left little remaining space.

"Unsurprising, considering who made it," Kylo said as he pored over the parts. He picked up the battery compartment, eyeing it closely. "I wonder what he'd think if he knew you and I would end up with it, stuck in a Force bond, two generations later."

He being Darth Vader, Luke and Leia's Jedi traitor father, Rey gathered. "I doubt he'd approve of me having it."

"No less than he'd approve of me murdering Snoke with it." His hands faltered in their motions minutely, and she knew he still hadn't come to terms with that act. As if blaming her for it hadn't been the first clue. She said nothing of it, and he continued. "I don't know. You have a lot in common. Nobodies from desert planets, found by accident, unexpectedly gifted in the Force. No offence intended," he added hastily, noticing her icy gaze. Nobody. Nice. "I should rephrase that to unknowns." He waited for her to thaw; when she didn't, he said, more gently, "They still say he was an incredible pilot. The best in the galaxy."

"I'm sure your father had something to say about that," she responded, not caring if the comment stung. She could tell it did, but his reaction was unexpected. He smiled wistfully.

"Oh, he did. He liked to tell the story of how he knocked Vader's TIE fighter out of the sky so he and Uncle Luke could destroy the first Death Star. I assure you the retelling became more decorated and colourful each time."

He went back to picking at a small hole in the battery compartment, and Rey allowed the companionable silence that followed to stretch comfortably. If she'd upset him, it was a nostalgic, peaceful sadness she'd set off, and he wasn't rejecting it. Maybe it was good for him. When she offered him the tool she thought most appropriate, he accepted it without a word. She ate the last of the soup, scraping the bowl for every last drop, and popped the spoon into her mouth to free her other hand. She picked up the second half of the lightsaber to look inside its charred hollow. She hadn't intended on handling this half while Kylo held the other, knowing that he could simply take this one from her and then be in possession of the whole thing, but she was finding him increasingly less frightening, and falling victim to her deep, childish desire to trust him. He was the only other person like herself that she knew of anywhere in the galaxy. She so badly wanted him to be good deep down, and would play along if it might help trick him into staying like this. She liked him like this. She trusted him like this.

This could change in a heartbeat, she knew. He was still dangerous.

He rewarded her faith for now by only glancing at the second piece in her hand, not taking it or making any other sudden move. He was focused on clamping down on the broken wire inside the next compartment of the broken lightsaber.

They worked in immersive silence for untold minutes. She couldn't find the other end of the wire that his one used to connect to and gathered it had been blown away in the explosion, but digging through the tools and scraps she'd collected for this task she found a short length of wire that she could rig in between. When that was done, she arranged her half with the torn-open crystal compartment on the old book. Kylo put his piece at the other end – not claiming it, not hiding it in his environment where she couldn't take it back – and she nudged the wires to almost meet in the middle.

Perfect.

He looked up at her, eyes melting her. He was perfect, in so many ways to oppose all the ways he was perfectly imperfect, and she sucked on the spoon to distract herself from all the thoughts that flooded back.

It distracted him, too, pulling his gaze back to her lips. Whoops. But though she liked focused scholar Ren and didn't want to risk losing him to passionate, reckless Kylo and all the danger that entailed, there was a certain allure to playing with fire.

He dropped the micropliers and instead took the handle of the spoon. He lightly tugged it free of her mouth. Defence lost. She felt the metal slide over her lips and wished it was his tongue instead.

"I think the soup's finished," he commented remorsefully, watching the spoon come free of her mouth. He put it down in the bowl in her lap with a dull clank as he scooped his palm around the bowl. Her breath snagged and a shiver gripped her as the back of his glove brushed her inner thigh, and she wished it wasn't just to take the empty soup bowl. "A pity for us both. Next time I'll bring you something better than common Kuafa. I can't wait to see your reaction to Preed steak." He put it down on his other side, and it disappeared from her view.

"Surely it's not in your interest to keep me fed," she said airily as, careful not to disturb any of the pieces, he shifted the book onto his knee only and held it steady while she pivoted on the bench to face him. She fingered through the tools on the desk and chose one – she would have called it a pick, but she was sure it had a proper name she just hadn't heard before – and turned to the delicate task of reconnecting the wire.

"Neither is helping you fix the weapon you undoubtedly plan to kill me with–"

"Oww!" She whipped her hand back from the shock that lashed out at the first touch of the metal pick to the wire, which was apparently live, and interrupted his dry retort with a pained hiss. Not that he seemed offended. Face twisted with concern, he deftly yanked the little pick out of her hand and tossed it aside, then clasped her stinging hand quickly between his.

"You're alright," he assured her when she continued to breathe out the pain through gritted teeth. His gloves were reasonably soft, and his warmth permeated the leather, soothing the sting. He leaned forward, seemingly through the desk, and rummaged for something at his feet. Never releasing her hand, absorbing the pain. "I must have bumped the battery and reconnected the circuit after I drew out the wire. I swear I turned it away by forty-five – there shouldn't have been a charge." He straightened with a metallic cannister, and opened his hand to look at hers. She cringed to see why it hurt so much: an angry welt already up the side of her index finger.

"Not your fault," she muttered. Damn, it hurt. "I should have thought…"

"That I'd let you electrocute yourself?" he asked rhetorically, and used his teeth to remove the bottlecap. His teeth. Was there anything he could do with any part of himself that was not intensely erotic to her? He spat it aside.

"You've done worse," she reminded him. She exhaled slowly, her smarting blister beginning to throb. "No, I should have checked. I…"

She trailed off when he withdrew his hand from hers and brought it to his mouth; again with his teeth, he caught the fingertip of his glove and pulled. His bare hand came free and he laid it back on her stinging hand.

The shock of that touch certainly took her mind off the electrical burn, but wasn't enough to distract her from entirely traitorous thoughts about what else she wanted him to do with his teeth and hands, on her mouth, on her neck, on her ear… His still-gloved hand released her next and tugged the empty glove from his mouth, dropping it on the book with the broken lightsaber. All of that forgotten.

"I never did master healing," he apologised, gently rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb, her fingers enclosed tightly in his. He pulled it off to the side, over her desk that he could not sense, slowly tipping the cannister toward her. She flinched when cool water poured out in a thin stream onto the burn. Soothing. "My mother used to tell me that of all the incredible advances of medicine across this galaxy, they're yet to discover a more effective immediate treatment for burns than cool running water," he said, words lagging as he concentrated on keeping the stream focused. "The simplest thing." He looked up at her, dark eyes questioning. "Is it helping?"

"Yes. Thank you," she murmured, watching the water run off her skin and fall toward the floor, where it disappeared, presumably puddling on his side of the bond. A few droplets skittered off their fingers and flecked onto the sacred book they were at serious risk of damaging, but she felt nothing for the ancient text, nothing for the lightsaber laid out in pieces across its pages. All she felt was the cool of his water on her burnt skin, the bitter throb of it already fading, and the firmness of his hand closed around hers, holding her steady – why, was she shaking somewhat, with him so close again? – and unsteadying her pulse.

"I'll finish rigging that wire and that will provide a charge to the rest of the saber," he said, back to business, watching the water until he let the bottle run dry. He tossed it away but kept hold of her hand, both of their fingers slick and wet. "It'll be nearly functional again."

"It won't matter if I can't find replacement crystals," she commented, feeling strangely charged, like the jolt from the battery had not yet left her. The air around her, the very atmosphere of her sleeping room, felt staticky. The Force was… intensifying. "Do you…?"

"I told you, you're not going to find replacement crystals," he reminded her, ignoring or not hearing her. He leaned in closer to examine the burn on her hand, his hair falling across his scar as his face dipped past hers. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, seemingly without thought. "But lucky for you, you know someone who knows someone who might know someone in the trade."

It shouldn't have happened and she definitely did know better, but his thoughtlessly playful words coupled with his kind, possibly affectionate touch struck something inside her, and almost unconsciously she lifted her free hand to his face. He flinched at her unexpected touch and looked up at her, eyes burning. She didn't pull away, though he made the air in her chest feel like lead filters she couldn't breathe through, though the mere touch of her skin on his was more electrifying than the two-generations-old Skywalker saber power cell or the strange current in the air around them. She felt afraid but not of him, whatever the voices in her head screamed. Gently she hooked her fingers around the soft curtain of his hair and pushed it away out of his eyes. She'd seen so many things in those eyes – his parents, his anger, his ambition, his desire – but now she saw his confusion, because he sensed she was crossing a threshold but he didn't know why.

He didn't see what she saw. He didn't see his own generosity and kindness, else he would have stamped them out already. He didn't recognise what it was to help somebody with an insurmountable task, to find something unfindable and valuable just because you can and they can't, to read for them what they can't, to give a starving rival the food from his own plate. To tend to someone's injury with the care and attention of a parent or a friend.

He just did it without a thought.

For every power he had over her – resources, knowledge, strength, even sustenance – he had deferred to her tonight, let her control and guide their interactions. He probably didn't even realise.

Maybe he just didn't care.

"Lucky for me," she breathed, tucking his hair behind his ear and laying her hand carefully on his cheek. His skin was hot; his scar was knotted and bumpy through smooth skin when she ran her fingertips over it. She'd done that. Done that to him. Burnt him, and never poured her own water on it to soothe the sting. He'd not complained, nor did he truly have the grounds to, but she wondered if he resented her for it. If he did, he was even more beautiful than he could know, because he'd shown her kindness tonight regardless. With effort she pulled her gaze from his, igniting her from the inside out, but her eyes only caught on his lips, tightly closed, gorgeously shaped.

The harmonious thrum of the Force between and around them felt louder, heavier, as she tried to tell herself that closed meant no, and she should leave it at that.

She didn't want to leave it at that. She was the worst, a pushover as he'd put it, a traitor as she would. She was supposed to be a Jedi, Resistance hero, strong and principled and disciplined and trustworthy and light and basically all the things she was not, as evidenced by the events of this night. She was a failure, just as Master Skywalker must have predicted, but in this moment she was alright with that.

"Don't," he advised thickly, and she froze, not even realising she'd leaned forward. He was a magnet, didn't he understand? Her eyes returned to his, and they were pained, tormented, and with a shock she came to understand that it was because of her. "We both know you're too good for this, so don't torture me pretending otherwise."

His unexpectedly deep, wounded words might have cut her if she were any further back but at this distance, already lost in him, she didn't feel them, only felt them as he felt them, connected with him completely through the Force, one and the same.

"Are you going to stop me?" she asked finally, curling her burnt and wet fingers around his, twisting their hands together. The automatic cooperation of his hand answered her before his words did.

"No." He punctuated his anticipated response by threading his gloved hand into her hair and cupping her face, sending a dark thrill of expectation through her whole nervous system. If he'd pulled her in then there would have been no saving her from incineration. "But you should. I don't deserve this."

It was the last thing she'd expected to hear from him, and it stilled that rising passion in her. Tempered her with reality. I don't deserve this. He believed that. Facts outside of this insulated interaction returned to her reluctantly. Kylo Ren hunting her in the forest. Kylo Ren piercing her mind. Kylo Ren putting his blade through Han Solo's chest and casting him into a doomed planet's core. Kylo Ren slicing through Finn's back and going in for the kill. Kylo Ren taking her before Snoke and allowing her to be tortured. Kylo Ren blaming her for the execution of that slimy monster and setting the galaxy on her so that now she couldn't show her face outside of this base without being hunted – half the reason the Rebels were starving, since her ship was their only ship and everyone was on the lookout for the Millennium Falcon. Even tomorrow's plan was risky, but a risk they had to take.

He really was a terrible person, and she had fallen into her own trap of wanting desperately to believe he was otherwise. Even he didn't believe otherwise. How had she let herself get into this mindset? How had she sat here with him for so long tonight without trying to send him away? How had she ended up with her hand entwined with his and her other hand on his face?

Because he had read to her from a book she couldn't decipher and had passed no judgement.

Because he had tended to her burn without a second thought.

Because he had helped her fix his ancestral weapon even though he wanted it for himself.

Because he had passed up multiple chances to kiss her despite making it clear he wanted to.

Because he had given her his own meal rather than see her hungry.

As good and beautiful as she wanted him to be and as brutal and terrible as he wanted himself to be, he was never going to be either, not completely. This, before her, one glove on and one off, caught between his bed chamber on a First Order starship and hers on the Rebel base, his power with the Force all but absent – she felt that this was the realest version of Kylo Ren she could possibly know.

He was imperfect. Like she was, wanting him dead and wanting him away and wanting him close all at once, dark and light and grey simultaneously.

Overwhelmed with compassion for him, she leaned forward onto her knees briefly to reach him, hearing the screams in her ears of those three instinctual voices, wanting her to hurt him, wanting her to flee him, wanting her to ravish him.

She listened to none, and pressed her lips chastely beside his mouth. "You do," she whispered against his skin, wishing he could see that, wishing he could believe that. She would have to wait to know if he tasted as good as Kuafa soup, but the scent and texture of him at such an intimate proximity was an intoxicating indicator. She pulled away enough to look him in the eyes. "Thank you."

For giving her the chance to prove to herself that she was strong.

That she was disciplined.

That she was principled.

He stared at her with eyes deep and vulnerable, truly the most conflicted soul she had ever known. "Rey…" He swallowed several times, struggling with something. He released her hand to clutch her face with both hands. "The First Order… we know the new Rebel base is somewhere along the Odari band."

He could have slapped her and gotten less of an emotional reaction. Instantly repulsed, immediately afraid, she wrenched backward, but his gloved hand tightened in her hair and his bare long fingers slid around behind her neck and pulled her back in.

"Let go of me," she ordered, hurt and angry and rightfully terrified. "You've been in my head, you…"

"No." Much too strong for her, even when she pushed on his chest, he drew her forcibly close, pressing his forehead to hers. "No. Rey. We already knew. Listen to me," he demanded softly, and she did, though she writhed unsuccessfully in his grip. "The supply runner is a fake. It's a trap, designed to lure you out."

She froze with both hands on his collarbone, arms tense, as she finally heard him. His eyes were locked onto hers, both appealing and self-loathing. Betraying his whole order. For her. His fingertips, some gloved, some not, still held her tightly, but she no longer fought. She listened.

"We don't have your position. That's why we leaked the intel about the supply ship. But it's only carrying stormtroopers and fighter squadrons. Your resourcing was estimated to run dangerously low by now."

"An educated guess," Rey voiced, dropping her gaze and her arms. She let her hands slide down him, dimly aware of the sensuality of it but too struck with defeat to stop herself. The enemy had won. Without those supplies… But they didn't exist, never had. "You knew we'd be desperate."

"Don't let my mother send you or anyone else after that runner," he said seriously. She closed her eyes, hoping she didn't cry. The darkness of her closed lids drew her attention to the warmth of his skin on hers. His hands on the sides of her head, through her hair. His forehead against hers. Even the warmth of his body through his clothing, under her hands. "Can you wait four days?"

She brought her gaze back up to his, molten-warm and worried and soulful. "Four days?"

"That's when the Carmody receives its supplies," he explained. "They're stationed well away from your position, in an asteroid field orbiting Thea Prime. The debris scatters the sensors. You could easily get the Falcon in and out of there before you were detected-"

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, insane plans and possibilities already erupting in her head. She had to work to slow them down and ground herself in reality. "Is this the real trap?"

His brow furrowed so slightly it might have gone unnoticed, but she was the closest she'd ever been. "How much longer will you survive without the supplies?"

He'd always been honest with her, and she was exhausted with the dance of lying to him. "I don't know. A week, two? I've been hungrier."

"But then you'll die." Just a statement without feeling. She replied in kind.

"Yes. That seems to be the consensus."

"And we won't finish fixing this lightsaber," he added, flicking his eyes down at the book in his lap just below her hands, which had settled on his stomach. She half-shrugged.

"I don't suppose I'll need it."

"And I won't get to face you again in combat."

"That's probably for the best," she advised. He wasn't finished.

"And I won't get to find out what you taste like," he went on, staring into her like he was pulling out her thoughts and claiming them as his own. "I won't get to earn the right to a real kiss."

She breathed slowly. "No. I'll be dead."

"No." He shook his head lightly, maintaining contact between his forehead and hers, maintaining eye contact. "You won't, because you'll intercept Carmody's supply runner. You'll eat Kuafa soup and get strong and have this saber ready for the crystals, and then, next time-"

He wrenched away from her suddenly, distracted by something at his end, and stood up. The ancient Jedi text fell from his lap onto hers, pages sprawling and the bits and pieces of the lightsaber falling over her along with the tools they'd laid out. His mouth opened to say something angrily at someone.

But she didn't hear it, because the connection between them finally broke, and she was alone, face still warm where his hands were just on her, her own hands dropping away from where they were just resting on his body.

A knock came at her door, trying to tempt her back to reality. "Rey?" The voice, Finn's voice, felt distant and thin. She stared at her empty hands. Next time… but now what?

Stay alive, obviously. Come up with a convincing argument against General Organa's plan to attack the fake supply runner. Kylo had given her what she needed to survive. He might have saved the Rebellion tonight, in the name of saving just her.

Because he wanted to earn her. Like something worthy or valuable. The worst person she knew had just said the very nicest thing.

"Rey? You awake?"

She inhaled deeply, feeling like she hadn't breathed properly for the last half hour. "Yes. Come in." She shifted the battered Jedi text from her lap to the desk as the door slid open and Finn entered. He took immediate note of her flushed appearance despite the dimness of the room.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, closing the door quietly behind him. Her best friend, her whole family all wrapped up in one single person, yet despite her longing to do so she couldn't share with him the experience she'd just had or the connection she couldn't shake. Not yet, anyway. To implicate him with such knowledge would be so unfair. Awkwardly she got up, picking up the pieces of dismantled lightsaber from the cavern floor and putting them back onto the desk.

"I'm fine. I just had..." She hesitated as he knelt opposite her to assist in the clean-up, automatically helpful. A trait she liked, apparently. How could she lie to him? "Let's call it a vision. From the Force."

He froze and sat back on his heels, impressed and awed as always. "For real?"

She nodded and summarised what Kylo had told her about the supply runner and the Carmody's location, feeling a little guilty for omitting so much detail but fairly certain it was for the best, for Finn at least. She had more guilt surrounding Kylo Ren than she needed.

"I need you to help me dissuade General Organa from the current plan," she reiterated diligently as she finished tidying the lightsaber's parts off the floor and stood, dusting herself off. The radiviewer was gone, not that she needed it so much now that she had the saber open, but in its place she had something much harder to explain in her quarters.

"You know I will," Finn said immediately, reaching underneath her bench seat to retrieve something. "You know I believe you and whatever vision the Force sends you. Here." He straightened, offering her whatever he'd found. She hesitated at the slight emphasis in his voice on the one false word and searched his face in the dim lighting for a clue as to what he suspected or knew. "You dropped this, too."

Sensing no judgement or threat from her friend greater than that already contained within her, she closed her hand around a black leather glove taken off for her half a galaxy away. Faintly it smelled of the two most intoxicating scents she'd yet encountered – Kylo Ren, and his orange soup.