Rey can feel their bond stretched across the galaxy, pulled taut to the point of snapping. She'll see him sometimes, a flash of dark eyes and darker hair and a soft mouth that she's either going to punch or kiss given the opportunity.

They don't speak, don't even make eye contact if they can help it, but he's doing a poorer job of disguising how hurt he is. Even when he marches by her, probably flanked by stormtroopers in whatever location he's in, Rey can feel his visceral reaction to seeing her. Often a more brooding expression than usual passes over his face. She hopes she manages to keep up her facade better than he does without the assistance of his mask.

The bond shows him half-drowned one night and Rey can't stop herself from crying out his name-his real name-in shock. He sits up. He's exposed to her much more than she ever thought he would be, pale and wet and shaking. The logical part of Rey's brain catches up and she realizes he must be curled up at the bottom of a 'fresher. His eyes are puffy and red and his voice creaks when he says her name.

Rey wants to scream at him for making her care but she runs instead. It's on this night that she decides she has to tell someone or else risk going insane. She thinks that confessing will make everything better. It doesn't.

"Well, can't you just turn it off? Flip a switch in your brain or something?"

Rey sets her teeth, immediately regretting allowing Poe to have an audience alongside Finn. Confessing to being psychically bonded to the Resistance's biggest enemy was hard enough without him butting in. They're all squished into one of the secret storage compartments of the Falcon, one of the few places they can get any privacy. There's a porg mother nesting with her babies in here on a shelf, making soft cheeps every once in a while. Rey has her arm cradled around the nest to keep it from being jostled around by the ship's flightpath or any of the humans in the compartment.

"No," she says. "It doesn't work like that."

"Can you destroy it?"

"No." She refrains from adding that she wouldn't even if she could, that she'd sooner rip out her own throat.

Finn is strangely quiet.

"Finn?"

He looks up, then away. "How long has this been going on? Since Starkiller?"

A tremor goes through her. Had it started back then? She hadn't been able to see Kylo manifested in front of her when they were apart, but she felt… something… the moment he read her mind. Destiny, the Force whispers.

Was it? Was what she felt for her enemy predetermined? That might make it a little easier to stop heaping so much blame on herself for having compassion for him.

Despite that realization, Rey explains about how it had started one morning on Ahch-To. She leaves out the details about trying to blast him and then actually deigning to speak with him, albeit angrily. And she certainly doesn't describe how her hatred had melted over time. About how soft his voice could get. About what his hand on her hand felt like.

She trails off, tightening her grip on the porg nest so that the mother's little head is against her hip. Her explanation doesn't seem to reassure Finn.

"Is he doing some sort of weird mind control thing to you? You're being way too calm about this."

"What? No! He couldn't—Ben wouldn't—"

It slips. She doesn't think about it. It doesn't even occur to her that she has made a mistake until she looks at Poe and Finn's horrified expressions.

Poe holds his hands up, shuts his eyes, and shakes his head. "Wait, wait, we're calling him Ben now? That's a bit too chummy for me."

"Rey, are you serious?" Finn asks.

Telling them was a bad idea.

"I meant Ren," she says.

It's a really weak excuse but it's all she has.

"You've got to know that guy, Kylo Ren, is bad news," Poe says. "He tortured me for information and from what I've heard he did the same to you!"

The porglings start cheeping anxiously. Poe looks like he's ready to start pacing in what little floor space the cramped compartment offers, but Finn is very still. Her friend looks sick with worry and Rey hates that she's the cause of it. Well, her and Ben.

"Don't you remember what he did to you? To me?" Finn's voice lowers. "To Han?"

She doesn't know what to say to convince him. That they fought side by side? That he'd killed Snoke to save her? Or maybe the more unbelievable thing, that she had been the one to extend her hand to him first in a show of trust. Anything she could say will sound crazy, crazier than when she'd withheld telling Finn that she had the Force back on Starkiller.

"Finn, you have to understand, it's different now." Rey isn't sure she even believes herself at this point.

"Yeah, it's different, now he's ruling the galaxy!"

"That's not what I—"

"Wait," Poe cuts in, eyes going wide. "He could find the Resistance through you."

"No. We can't see the other's surroundings."

That had been evident even as far back as their first meeting. Tracking the Resistance through Rey could only be accomplished if he convinced her to outright tell him where they were, and that was never going to happen.

"How do we know you're not lying to protect him?" Poe asks. "And yourself."

"Who's this 'we' person? I trust Rey," Finn says, shifting to put himself between Poe and Rey.

"She could be under mind control, buddy, remember?"

"I'm not!"

"That sounds exactly like what someone under mind control would say," Poe says, pointing.

Rey looks down at the porg mother and pets her head, trying to calm down. The soft feathers and the porg's gentle cooing does help some.

The fact of the matter is that she's not under mind control, she's in love, and that's so much worse.