Breakfast I

The Last Jedi and the Supreme Leader have surprisingly similar schedules.

In the morning, they each wake with they sun (when there is a sun to be woken to). Neither make their beds. Ren, because he has servants to do this for him. Rey, because she has never once in her life cared enough to make a bed.

And also never really had one before.

Both stretch. Both nurse leftover wounds in the quiet serenity of the morning. Ren goes straight to training, but Rey enjoys a cup of coffee first.

They both wait to take their first meal until they are ravenous and feel they have earned it. Ren eats like an animal, with huge portions meant to fill his body with strength. Rey eats a smaller meal - partly out of necessity, but also because she is light and fast. But she does it with very little decorum.

The first time they connect during breakfast, Rey has a large bite of toast in her mouth. One moment she is alone in the galley of the Millennium Falcon, and the next Kylo Ren is sitting across from her with steak and eggs in front of him and a fork held nimbly in his fingers.

Rey jerked visibly, choking a bit on her toast as she swallows it a little too quickly. Ren is able to mask his surprise, as he felt the familiar chill which usually preempted her appearance. To him she sits across the cold metal table in a relatively empty dining hall. She takes a large sip of coffee, and when she's calmed herself enough she looks at his breakfast and a look of annoyance appears on her face.

"You have steak? For breakfast?"

Ren looked down at his plate and then back at the girl, unsurely. "Yes?" He did not understand the look of displeasure on her face.

Rey sighed, sat back, and propped a foot up onto the edge of the table. "Life must be pretty cushy as the 'Supreme Leader' of the First Order." She added finger-quotes for emphasis.

"I need it for my strength," he answered matter-of-factly. "You could have eaten like this too, if you had accepted your true potential."

The fact that Ren did not understand why these statements were ludicrous was frustrating to Rey. She looked at her sad little serving of oatmeal and toast, and her black coffee, and she said, "While the rest of the galaxy starves?"

Ren returned to eating, steak and egg yoke delicious on the end of his fork. "People starve regardless of who is in charge. Do you think the resistance would do any better for a poor farmer on some back-water planet?" And then suddenly he felt very annoyed by her self-righteous words. "Do you actually believe things would really change? For ninety-nine percent of the universe, life would be exactly the same if you were somehow to defeat me. There is only so much power in the world, and only so many people who can wield it. If I don't have it then you do, but they never will. Life isn't fair. That's the true balance." He took a bite and glared right into Rey's eyes.

Rey nibbled at her toast quietly until he disappeared, feeling in an uncomfortable place that she couldn't really disagree with him.