Fugue
A gift fic for evendia
You're not alone.
That's what Master Luke tells her the day she almost drowns when a dugong capsizes her boat. After a lifetime on a desert world, Rey can't swim any more than she can fly, and the ocean closes overhead with the heavy finality of a coffin. Luke feels her distress and hauls her from the sea, holding her while she coughs and wheezes through the salt-burn in her lungs.
"You're not alone anymore, Rey," he says, stroking her back. Though her link to the Force is still tenuous, even she can feel his desperation. If she had died...
His pain at the thought is breathtaking, no matter how quickly he suppresses it. Rey weeps, clinging to Luke's rough-spun sleeve as she shakes with her terror and his. After the fear passes, what remains is the almost equally terrifying truth that she truly isn't alone anymore.
Four thousand, eight hundred, ninety-two days. That was how long she'd been left on Jakku. Nearly five thousand days of scrambling every moment for food, for safety, for shelter. Five thousand days of keeping her own spirits up, of finding things to be glad for, of beating away the dread that choked her at the thought of another five thousand days, and another, and another. Five thousand days of sweat and sand, of bruises and scrapes, of her hands aching so badly she cried.
Now, there are so many people willing to share life's burdens that Rey feels overwhelmed at times. A secure comlink means she can chat with Finn, newly-awake and recovering still on D'Qar. Poe joins him often, smiling easily at her—a stranger—and somehow managing always to find things to talk about that they can all enjoy.
Rey laughs so much and smiles so broad that her face hurts with it. The joy in her heart swells until she can barely breathe. Often she finds herself blinking back tears simply because the happiness has no other vent.
General Organa herself takes a mothering interest, teasing her brother gently when she calls to check up on Rey's progress. Rey can see—even if she can't sense—Leia's deep grief over Han, over Luke...over her lost son.
Rey doesn't understand it. She has only been on Ahch-To for six weeks, but she cannot imagine returning to her barren existence on Jakku. Not when she could stay with these people, talk, laugh...feel herself loving and loved.
Yet somehow, Kylo Ren had turned his back on all this. He had exiled himself to snow and shadow, strife and war. He had murdered—
It's a thought she finds herself dwelling on whenever she and Master Luke meditate on the walls overlooking the ocean. It haunts her when she punts out over the waves, hunting for dinner. It nags at her just before she settles to sleep.
Sometimes, it follows her into her dreams.
You didn't have to be alone, she thinks as her eyelids drop heavy, shutting out the world, why would you choose to be?
()()()
You're not alone.
They tell him that all the time. All the nannies, tutors, assistants, hangers-on...they tell him how lucky he is to have a mother like his. Princess Leia: the hope of the galaxy. The shining beacon that will lead the way back to the peace and order of the Republic.
But Ben—when he had been Ben—always knew better. His mother was no mother at all, no more than a marble statue or a golden idol could be. Even now, through the smokescreen of rage that stains all memories of the past in ebony and scarlet, even now Kylo sees that he ought never have been born. His mother belonged, and still belongs, to her futile dream of Republican order. His father never deserved her, thief, liar, degenerate as he was; what Kylo did to him was a justice long overdue.
No, Kylo knows well that his birth was the product of foolish passion and poor foresight.
That is why Snoke's offer to kill the boy Ben and rise in power and glory as Kylo Ren—wanted, needed, valued in the First Order's quest for dominance—sounded of destiny's call. Under Snoke, Kylo was beaten, molded, abused, yes...but never had he been ignored. The Supreme Leader made sure Ren knew, even in the midst of correction, how much Snoke needed his powers, his promise.
Kylo still does not—must not—doubt this, despite Han Solo's feeble, dying attempt to shake his faith. Solo's last words were as futile as his whole purposeless existence.
However, even Kylo's certainty of his value is shaken during Snoke's reprimands after the catastrophe on Starkiller Base. Ostensibly, his current sufferings are all in the name of completing his training, to make Ren a Force user as fearsome as Snoke himself.
But Kylo's scars had not even set before the other Knights of Ren had dragged him from the bacta tank and set on him in force. It was a mixture of exhausted skill and blind luck that allowed him to fend off the first onslaught and flee the facility, stumbling half-blind through swampy jungle, where vines and sinkholes threatened to trap and drown him at every step.
After his escape, Kylo lives no more evolved than an animal. The Knights hunt him without respite, Snoke withholds his guidance, his ceaseless current of instruction. For the first time since allowing the Supreme Leader into his mind, Kylo's thoughts are his own.
Yet in the sudden absence of Snoke's voice, he does not feel as he used to, shunted aside by his parents and left to the empty nothings of servants. There is still someone there, someone he feels calling him with every breath, every beat of his over-taxed heart:
The scavenger.
Rey.
When he scrabbles back into his cave at the end of the day and puts out the last embers of the tiny fire that steams the rock-hard roots he subsists on, there is nothing else to do but sink into meditation. As he does, he feels her. Every night, without fail, her mind—faint and unpracticed in the Force—meets him without prompting.
And Kylo is not alone.
Bonding with the girl was an accident, an error in the same vein as his birth. But Kylo has come to believe that the Force makes no mistakes. His desperation to penetrate her mind has fused them together—but in the long, dark nights Kylo knows it is all to their good.
The scavenger's thoughts are a distraction, a balm, and more. From the first instant his consciousness brushed hers, he sensed a soul that knew the same bitter suffering as his own. Abandonment. Despair. Helplessness. Loneliness. Their only difference comes in her not yet understanding that the chance acquaintances of life are not the ones to banish those feelings.
Only a true match—a match in purpose, ambition, passion, and power can do that.
Rey is flush now with flimsy joy; she does not know enough yet to doubt it will last.
Kylo will show her the truth. When he does, neither of them need ever be lonely again.
()()()
Sunset on Ahch-To is unspeakably beautiful. The sun descends along its golden sea-path, the ocean afire with flashes of light more radiant than precious jewels.
Not that Rey has ever seen any such jewels. But she reads about them and sees pictures in the holo-novels the boys send her. She imagines wearing such gems, imagines being a Princess as they say General Organa once was. The thought is beguiling, but Rey knows she would not exchange a single instant of the sunset here for the most valuable stone in the Outer Reach.
As the sun sinks into the ocean and the air cools with approaching twilight, she settles into position, hands lightly on knees, and clears her mind for reflection.
Meditation is a tool of self-knowledge and control, Master Luke says. It is a time to address your fears in honesty and then put them aside. Controlling fear while at peace is the first step to controlling it in combat.
Tonight she feels no particular concerns to address. She allows her mind to drift aimlessly, dwelling with heart-happy ease on Finn's smile, Poe's eyes, the glitter-splash of sea foam on the rocks below.
Then something takes hold of her consciousness, dragging her away, away, away, and she can't stop herself, can't pull her mind away from what holds her—
She knows who it is before he lifts his head.
"You," she snarls. "I have nothing to say to you."
"You have a great deal to say to me," he has the gall to smirk, "so why hold back? Surely my old Master has taught you how to overcome such petty emotions as rage."
"Petty?" she snaps, nearly launching to her feet with the strength of her fury. But his words restrain her; not just his words, his feelings. She can sense him, she knows...he's baiting her.
She won't rise to it. Not until the sun drowns in the sea.
()()()
The little scavenger girl's reaction is just as delightful as he anticipated; she's shocked, furious, and just the tiniest bit frightened. Whatever she thought of the odd presence in her mind, she had not guessed it was him.
Kylo hugs the warmth of her anger to himself and tries to ignore the grinding ache in his foot. Tripping that trap was an amateur mistake; he deserves the agony of a snapped metatarsal. Besides, the pain is what gives him the strength for such a sustained conversation, and he is so curious to see how it plays out.
"Come now, scavenger," he taunts, relishing the way her disdain washes through their connection, "Have six weeks with my uncle damped your spirit? Where is the woman who took on a whole squadron of stormtroopers to avenge her fallen friend?"
The poisonous dig at Han does the trick.
"You monster," she spits back, "How dare you talk about him? He was helpless, he made no move to defend himself, and you..." now sorrow takes over.
Her voice breaks on a sob. "I may never know who my father was. Or my mother. So how could you?"
Sorrow and pity are not what he needs. He wants her fire, wants her heat. He is cold to his marrow tonight, unable to deny the seeping chills of fear and pain.
At least he can mask it from her.
"Shall I tell you stories of the wondrous Han Solo? Perhaps I can shed some new light on the legend you so fervently revere," he can hear the bitterness in his tone, the petulance of a child long ignored, but he cannot keep it away, "Shall I tell you what sort of father he was?"
"I don't want to hear anything from you," is her rejoinder, and now he can feel her pushing at him with her untrained mind. She is strong, true, but Kylo is stronger. And he has had weeks to think of just how she overpowered him.
He is not off-guard this time.
"Shall I tell you of how often he left his wife and child, and why? He was a smuggler, after all, and those habits die hard. Perhaps," he sneers, "perhaps you admire that, though. Your own life has been worthless, after all. Just as his was."
"Stop it!" She's trying to pull away now, trying with all her feeble might; Kylo bears down on his broken bone and grins wide as the searing pain gives him enough power to bind her thoughts back to his.
"Would you have praised him even as he ridiculed your gift with the Force?" he presses on, ignoring her distress. If he held a saber, it would be alight and crackling, poised to lash out and give vent to his seething heart. "Would you have adored him even as he sent you away, feared you, wanted you tamed?"
He cannot breathe, the words spilling so fast from his trembling lips that there is no room for air. "He would never have understood the truth of what you are, Rey. Not as I can. Not as I do."
When his rage banks, he fears at first that she has somehow managed to break their link. But after a few moments of forced, uneasy calm, he can still sense her, stunned and silent, listening to every word.
"Answer me, scavenger."
He expects his scorn to make her flare again, but there from the other end of the galaxy he only feels that same unresponsive coolness.
Finally, she replies:
"Don't lie to me. Not when I can feel you doing it."