On Rey's hierarchy of things that could possibly happen to her, landing herself in a First Order interrogation chamber ranked even lower than stealing the Millennium Falcon and learning Luke Skywalker wasn't a myth and having a creepy force vision. But, as Rey noticed, anything was possible.
Kylo Ren was sitting across from where she was strapped into her chair. He sat more casually than Rey could expect from someone who went on a mad hunt through a forest before pulling a strange bit of Jedi magic (which Rey counted as cheating in any sort of fight) and then kidnapping her. Though, he didn't know where the rebels were, he hadn't found BB8, and Rey noticed she wasn't entirely injured, so she felt a tiny bit of relief in spite of her predicament.
Her relief became irrelevant, though, as she slowly became more infuriated Kylo Ren. His causality was maddening, like this interrogation fit into his regular routine. He gave nothing away, no annoyance, no anger, no edge. All of her life, Rey had picked up on people's tics and facial expressions, and she had used that to gain edges in under-the-table trades and barters. All that she could see was his mask, dark and frightening. She hated not knowing what was behind it—she loathed not knowing if Kylo Ren was even a man.
And that made anger glow within her, unbidden, taking some of the space where the fear occupied her mind.
"You still want to kill me." Not a question, but a statement. He sounded too calm, though that might have had to do with the helmet. The helmet distorted his voice, turning his voice into something inhuman.
"That's what happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask," Rey said, because she just wanted that thing off. She wanted that terrible mask off before she could even begin to get interrogated. She wanted to see his face before he tortured her, to see exactly who could do such terrible things.
Remarkably, he reached up to his head after a brief moment of pause, and he pushed a button, and he pulled the helmet off.
When Kylo Ren looked at Rey, dark eyes meeting light, the world warped.
It stunned Rey so badly that for a moment she forgot she where she sat and who was staring at her and all she could do was look at Kylo Ren, almost fascinated by the new perspective in her world. She blinked a few times. Everything was so vibrant.
Even he was vibrant.
The face she had imagined was that of a monster, of a scarred man, burnt to a crisp. Of a devil from the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Rey didn't expect a young face or eyes that seemed to analyze Rey's every move and tell her that he, too, was uneasy. It all startled Rey, as his face didn't even imply 'villain'. No, he looked like anything but. She also didn't expect the strange intrigue she felt when she looked at him and tried to focus on the changes in her sight, trying to remember if skin and eyes and hair had ever looked like that.
She realized that she must be seeing color.
Something in her gut, a strange tugging, brought up memories of old scavengers talking about how colors changed the whole world and they couldn't even describe how wonderful they all looked. And Rey had to agree. Though she was fully aware of where she was, and who stared her down so intently, Rey felt wonder, and a rush of exhilaration. Color. She could see color. Her heart sped up, and for a half a second she questioned how it happened, but she threw the question away, because she didn't care at the moment. She still stared at Kylo Ren, still processing the changes in her world through analyzing his entire face.
Kylo Ren, though, was done staring and moved closer. The moment of excitement, of childlike glee, was gone. The tugging in her stomach changed into a cold stone, to pure dread.
The interrogation resumed.
x
"You aren't very good at this, you know," Luke Skywalker said from Rey's right. She opened her eyes and sighed. "I understand that meditation isn't the easiest thing to learn, but your mind is on the other end of the galaxy today."
"Sorry," Rey mumbled. She'd been training with Luke (she once tried to call him 'Master Luke' and she could have sworn he was going to hurt himself laughing) for a month now, and though she was mastering the physical aspects of the Force quickly, her mental skills and meditation were no better than on the day training began.
She couldn't stop thinking about that interrogation, and how she had first seen colors. They were still novel to her, but she had grown used to staring up into a sky that was no longer gray, but rather something else entirely. The color of the sky became a comforting color to her, and she wanted to put a name to it someday.
Rey also hadn't worked up the courage to ask Luke about the colors. Really, she also had bigger things to worry about. Such as training to stop an intergalactic war and stop Kylo Ren and restore the Force to balance.
Still, she spent every morning watching the sun climb the sky and asking herself why she could see this way. After two weeks of training, she began to write it off as a Jedi gift, though she doubted that. She wanted to know, but she wanted to wait for a good time.
Luke hummed and stood, and Rey followed suit. In his many years of exile, Luke Skywalker had aged drastically. Most of his hair ran grey now, his face carried wrinkles and scares, and his eyes held a look that Rey knew from her own experience as loneliness.
However, Rey would be wrong to say that aging had taken Luke's strength. In the early morning, he would always run the perimeter of the island with Rey, coming close to matching her speed when we didn't sprint; he climbed up sheer faces of cliffs faster than several men Rey had spent all of her life watching; when Luke explained to Rey how the Force could manipulate the whole world surrounding them, he went into a handstand with only little effort. And then he lifted one hand up, and even then Rey only saw the slightest of grimaces on his face to indicate that it pained him.
"It doesn't surprise me that meditation is the hardest part of your training," Luke said. "You've never really had a time to just sit still and let yourself relax."
Unlike most people Rey had met, adults especially, Luke always made eye contact with her. She had noticed that his eyes matched the color of the sky above on a bright afternoon—the same color as his family lightsaber.
"Is there something you can do to help?" Rey asked.
"No, relaxing is something you need to learn on your own," Luke said. "But to try and do it, you first need to clear whatever is on your mind." He looked at Rey, expecting her to speak.
That was the moment, Rey realized. She could ask him right there and he would tell her everything. He'd tell her why she could see this way and what it meant. He could tell her every color in the world. It would be one less thing to worry about.
But as she tried to find the words to ask him, Rey found herself wanting to say nothing. She didn't want to think about the interrogation more than she already did. Which was often. The memory came back to her over breakfast and lunch and dinner, during her meditations and fights, even in her dreams every night. She thought of being trapped in that room, forced into that metal chair, with Kylo Ren invading her mind.
Rey also thought of Kylo Ren often. That monster. After leaving him bloody and defeated in the snow, she never once wondered if he was alive or if he had perished in that forest. A strange feeling in her chest told her that he was alive, and Rey cursed the damned thing. She blamed the feeling or connection or whatever it was on his invading her mind, trying to go deep into her thoughts on Starkiller Base, though she also suspected it was equally her fault for pushing back and going into his.
Either way, the whole thing took up too much time on her mind, and she really didn't want to speak to Luke about an incident that happened over a month ago with his nephew. Luke let her know on the first night that he knew what Kylo Ren had done to his father, and he was silent for a long time before he asked Rey not to mention it for a while. He told her that he had felt it, the moment Han Solo died. He told her it felt like a punch to the gut, and Rey heard his voice break.
She hadn't brought it up since.
"I'd rather not," Rey said. "At least not right now." Luke's eyes flicked to the horizon for a moment and he nodded.
"Then tomorrow you'll try again," Luke said. Rey clenched her fists and nodded.
"I'll do it, I swear I will," Rey said. Luke looked at Rey again, and a small twinkle came to his eyes, as it sometimes did when he thought of something profound.
"The world isn't about doing or not doing, it's okay to try," Luke said. Not for the first time, Rey remembered that she was speaking to Luke Skywalker, a living legend, and that he had seen and done much more than Rey knew. His wisdom was cryptic, like everything he said came those long gone and forgotten.
Rey set her jaw and nodded to his advice, and resolved that by the next morning, she would rid her mind of the interrogation and Kylo Ren and finally, finally meditate.
x
After meditation, Luke asked Rey to perform mind tricks.
The first thing she mentioned to Luke when he asked her if she had used the Force before was how she had tricked the Stormtrooper to let her out of her cell, and Luke smiled in a way that Rey knew was only to himself. She thought of telling Luke about invading Kylo Ren's mind, but she wasn't sure she was ready to describe what she had felt, or to learn about what happened to her after the incident.
The mind tricks didn't affect Luke. He would cross his arms and raise a brow when Rey put all of her effort into ordering Luke to retrieve his lightsaber for Rey. Luke would never frown at her, but Rey could tell he expected more from her by the way, every day, he patiently let her give orders to him for an hour, each time seeming to grow a little more tired.
Rey wanted to show him that there was more to her than a lucky trick or a one-time miracle. When she manipulated that Stormtrooper, she felt a power run through her body, and since then it slept in her veins, but she could feel it. If only she could wake it up.
"We've done this before," Luke said, adjusting his robe. "You know what to do. Make me go get the lightsaber." He smiled warmly, encouragingly. Rey knew that he had the smile of a father, and she also knew that if Luke Skywalker had fathered a child instead of following the Jedi code he explained to her, his child would have been loved beyond compare.
Perhaps because of Rey's failed meditation that morning, or because of her thoughts about how she would have been trapped on Starkiller base if she wasn't capable of mind tricks, or maybe because this morning she awoke to a sunrise the same color as Kylo Ren's lightsaber, but something stirred inside of her when she focused on the trick.
She first imagined Luke going to get the lightsaber. She had to make it a real thing she could see him doing. Once she had the image, she needed to direct the Force to put the thought into Luke's mind and make him listen to her. Today, the image was clearer than ever, and when she met Luke's eyes, a power within her seemed to break loose and rush though her.
"You will give me your father's lightsaber," Rey said, practically feeling the Force bend around her. As she said it, she saw Luke take a single, instant step in the lightsaber's direction.
"I will give…" Luke began, but he trailed off and smiled. He looked much younger when he smiled, more like Leia, and Rey was jubilant.
"Well done!" Luke exclaimed, and Rey couldn't do anything aside from jumping and hollering. "Mind tricks are near impossible to perform on other Jedi, Rey. Making me take that single step requires more effort than manipulating multiple Stormtroopers. That was incredible."
For the rest of the day, Rey glowed. Through every exercise she thought of Luke's step to the lightsaber and how she had made him take it. The power in her veins, lying in wait, was alive once more.
During her final task of the day, sparring with Luke, Rey looked to the sky and ocean around the island, and to the lightsaber she held in her hands, and she decided that whatever color those three things were, it was by far her favorite.
A/N: Hello all! Get ready for a super brutal slow burn Reylo. I normally don't like soulmate AUs, but with this one I couldn't pass it up. A huge thank you to Kat for helping me develop the plot and the rules about the AU. I really can't write this without you. (PS, I'm also publishing this on AO3 under the same title, so feel free to read it on there if you want!)