A/N: For the RFFA Valentine's Day "More Than Love" event
For misszeldasayre
I decided to tackle your second prompt as a treat. Hope you enjoy~
Prompt 2: A series of vignettes exploring Rey and Kylo Ren's Force connection post-TLJ.
No Way Back
A knife's edge is all that separates them. Kylo Ren can sense Rey, their bond refusing to release either of them from its grasp. She's there when he leaves Crait and retakes the Supremacy as the new flagship. Not in person, of course, but close enough. He wakes to see her standing in his room, disgust twisting her face.
She won't leave him alone. He's not sure that he wants her to. If he were more tactically minded he might have tried to close her off or to use their brief moments of communication to discern what the Resistance is up to. Instead he repeats their argument ad nauseum.
Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.
He can't let her go. The irony isn't lost on him.
Kylo quarrels with Hux, the insufferable git. The Order needs to seize this opportunity, this void in the Resistance's grip on the remaining rebelling systems. Kylo dances on the precipice of greatness without stepping forward into the unknown. The destruction he craved on Crait hadn't satisfied him, no matter how many kilotons of firepower he focused on the abandoned base.
The Falcon wasn't there any longer. He still wanted to blast away any remnant of his father's presence. Hux had finally called off the assault for him, narrowed eyes regarding Kylo in a way he'd never looked at Snoke.
Rey doesn't see those skirmishes when she appears, doesn't appreciate how Kylo had clung to his seized power by tooth and claw. She berates him for walking away from her. He! Walking away from her! Doesn't she recall how she left the chamber first? His path isn't clear to her; she's still certain it had been before.
Sometimes she says nothing at all, her attention locked onto the mid-space in front of her. Piloting his father's ship. Paying attention to a conversation that Kylo cannot hear. In those moments he approaches her, even chances touching her. There is no connection - not physically - in the Force. His hand passes through her like a knife in butter. The only indication that she pays attention to him then is how her eyes narrow as she concentrates harder on ignoring their inconvenient link.
He's too aware of her. The sliver of Force that separates them infuriates Kylo. There's a clear answer, one path that will eliminate this torment. To take it would be to admit she was right: he didn't need to annihilate his past to be freed from it. She's firmly entrenched within it now surely to spite him.
Come with me.
Kylo paces the stretch of polished ground in front of the seat of the supreme leader. It's his seat. He's earned it, seized the prize. Throwing it aside would be foolish, even if it was for the girl now approaching him.
Sighing, Kylo regards Rey once again. Haven't they had enough of this dance? This back and forth that refuses to end? She's running though and her attention is again locked past him.
She's not fast enough, though, as Hux appears from Kylo's blind spot. He's clutching something small by the hilt and snarls viciously as he brandishes it. A knife's edge is all that separates them.
How could he be so blind? Kylo Ren is a fool, that much Rey knows. But a fool with potential for more if he could only see past his own thoughts. Rey has to believe that there's more to him, that she's not here on the Supremacy to watch him die by his cohort's hand.
Rey relies on her instincts and sucker punches the redhead rather than play games with the Force. He's planned enough to anticipate Kylo's moves, to foresee his blindness. The blade falls. Kylo finally spurs to action though he's still bewildered. Rey would smirk if she wasn't in the process of disarming the man who had tried to kill his own Supreme Leader.
Somehow it's that, the sight of Rey pulling the blade that had threatened him, which convinces Kylo. Not the weeks of arguments and impassioned pleas. The simple action of saving him from his own ignorance spurs Kylo to follow her out the doors, beyond the unconscious guard to Rey's escape route.
Come with me, she doesn't have to say.
He balks at her destination, the firmly Resistance planet where she's parked the Falcon. It's too much, too soon. But it has to be done. Rey can't cavort around in a stolen First Order shuttle until Kylo realizes that he's finally, genuinely moved on. She allows him an hour to recover, plotting a circuitous hyperspace course and telling him it's to avoid patrols.
Of course this gives them an hour. Without interruption. Without the conversation fizzling in a haze of fading Force connection. Rey doesn't speak first; she shouldn't have to when she was the one to rescue him from his own shortsightedness.
There's no apology given. Rey hadn't expected one. Hoped, perhaps, but not required it. Her mission had been one part fear for General Organa's son's life and one part fear for her own sanity. If their bond shattered there would be nothing out there for her in the void of space. Her belonging rested hand in hand with this silent, tumultuous man.
There is thanks. Appreciation shown in tight squeezes of fingers around one another and heavy exhales of relief. Each minute away from the Supremacy is another mile added to Kylo Ren's path through the universe.
She has killed the past, dragged him into his own future.
The blinding everything and nothingness of hyperspace has to end at some point. Kylo pulls his fingers out from Rey's hand and there is a mask that settles once again upon his face. Rey doesn't have time to puzzle out just what he is thinking; they've been hailed from the surface of the planet and her focus has to be on responding.
She pauses, just long enough to press her leg against his. He thinks he has to hide his pain, has to feign strength in his departure rather than admit he needed her final nudge. How could he be so blind?