When Rey jolted awake for the second time, she wasn't sure about a lot of things. Where was she now? What had happened? Wincing, she gingerly lifter her hand and caressed the raw red strip imprinted on her neck. She let out a throaty cough, the painful memory of being choked flooding back. Confusion soon followed after she got over the fact some unknown man that was somehow affiliated to her father had captured her.

Like any other child of a wealthy businessman, she only had a faint idea of what her father actually did. She assumed it was something to do with finances, not entirely sure but never interesting enough for Rey to formally make an inquiry. She was always sheltered due to her father. The last thing she wanted was to get involved in any of his business.

Letting her thoughts wonder, she surveyed the room she had been dumped in. It was a stark difference from the dark, cold, unforgiving basement she was held in before. The white walls and sparse furniture hurt her eyes, the sheer amount of space available in the large room distracting her from not letting her mind dart to worst case scenarios. With the bright walls and the grey scratchy carpet beneath her feet, there was only a single bed against the wall with a small bedside table next to it.

She settled on the firm mattress and opened the drawers of the table. As she suspected, there it was barren, a thin layer of dust as its contents. Rey ran a finger over the fluff, the uneven bumpiness of the brittle wood catching her attention. She swiped her palm in the drawer, brushing aside the dust and revealing small thin lines etched into the timber, tallies of five covering every available bit of surface. Falling back onto the mattress harshly, the bedsheets came undone from the sudden movement. As Rey moved the tuck it back into the bed, a force of habit, she noticed a slightly discolouration of the mattress the sheet was hiding.

With determination, she ripped the sheets off and gagged at the sight, her scratchy throat burning in protest at the dry retches she wished to heave. Time had done its job and made the stains on the bed nothing more than faded red blotches, the color now a sick brown, but Rey knew what the stains were. Blood. Hands shaking and genuine fear creeping into the corners of her mind, she backed into a corner, trying to distance herself from the minimal contents of the room. Now she was intimately close to the wall, she could see matching patterns of tallies written on the walls, smudged as if the writer wanted to hide them at short notice.

Unable to unsee it, she saw the walls covered with the marks, the pattern taunting her as if it was a calendar of her impending imprisonment. She sprung to her feet and ran for the door, ignoring the pain that shot through her body, her limbs weak despite being unconscious for so long. Gripping the doorknob in her hand, she pulled and threw her weight into it, a small glimmer of hope that maybe her captor had forgotten to lock her door. It was too good to be true but that didn't stop Rey from frantically clawing the door.

Desperation bled into her voice as she thumped her clenched fists on the locked door, blood screaming in her ears. Hysteria had taken over her mind. She knew someone had been locked inside that very room, years ago from the looks of it. The markings on the wall indicated a horrifyingly long time the occupant had been trapped, useless to do anything.

Changing her strategy, she dragged the bedside table towards the small cut out in the wall that served as a makeshift window, and climbed on top, uncaring for the weathering wood. She had to strain on the tips of her toes to peak outside. Bars of rusted iron grazed against her fingertips, her eyes only being able to see the endlessness of water. She listened to the crashing of waves on what she guessed to be rocks below and let out a shaky sigh.

She dropped down from the table and settled back in the corner. She didn't want to go anywhere near that bed, the blood stains already exposed fuelling her paranoia of what was to come.


She didn't know how much time passed. The sun had started to set, bathing the room in a soft glow that Rey would have found pleasant if not for the circumstances she was in. Her eyes darted to the unmistakable sound of keys rattling in the lock, watching as the door swung open with a heavy slam against the wall. The same man from before sauntered in, his face looking even more frightful in the light.

No comments were made as he surveyed the exposed mattress stains and moved furniture, or even the girl who curled up in a ball in the corner. "Hmm, you're a lot less violent than my previous subject. That's a given."

Rey regarded him warily at his nonchalant attitude to, essentially, a prison cell. "What do you want?" she asked weakly.

Goosebumps formed on her arm as the man scooped up the discarded sheets and brought them to his nose. The loud inhalation only made Rey's heart beat faster. "If I imagine hard enough, I can almost smell him."

"Who?" She was afraid her squeak of a voice would draw his unwanted attention.

A chill filled the room and soaked into her bones when a painfully wide smile stretched over the wrinkly old face. "Why, my apprentice Ben of course." He chuckled at the confusion that painted Rey's face. "Ah, I'm not surprised you don't know. You were far too young when he was still with me, if even alive!" She flinched at the laughter that mixed with the last word. "This was his room and I feel it's quite fitting for you now. A sort of poetic symmetry, if you will."

Rey tried to scurry further back into the corner when the man beared down on her. "No one can compare to him. Not even Hux." He spat the last word. "He was my protégé. He was special. I made him who he is today and your father took it all away. Well, revenge is a dish best served cold. I have his precious daughter now. His protégé."

She gasped at the pain of her hair being pulled roughly. "And you're far from Ben's standard for me to even treat you nicely."

Her feet kicked wildly as she was dragged out of the room, the rough carpet burning her back. She was sure they would leave marks, adding them to her rapidly expanding list of wounds she was getting from this psycho. She tried to even her breathing, the maniacal man's monologue solidifying her need to get out. The man's frailness was frighteningly deceptive as he was the polar opposite of weak, his unexpected strength pulling her through the long corridors with ease.

Rey was dumped unceremoniously into another room, the walls of this more harsh and bright than her own prison cell. She didn't have time to take in the room's contents when she was forced into a cold metal chair with leather straps wrapping her wrist snuggly, as if to seal her fate.

The man busied himself with syringe, a latex gloved finger flicking at the plastic as he ignored the clear fluid that dripped out of the sharp tip. "He was able to tolerate anything I gave him and he was only ten. Let's hope you can at least meet his quota."

"No!" choked out Rey as she struggled, using all her strength to get out of the restraints. She winced in pain at the piercing of her skin and let her head flop back in defeat. "What…is that?"

Rey watched him with suspicion as he loosened her restraints and backed away, taunting her with a smirk. "Hallucinogens. I've made a lovely cocktail that'll make you see…things…making them very real. I've also added a few bits and pieces that will prepare you for what else I have in stall for you. Consider this a test, if you will."

She felt a surge of adrenaline and jolted out of the chair. With wild eyes, she growled at the man who was borderline laughing at the jittering movements that wracked her body. The door was close and probably unlocked. She was closer than he was and she knew she was fast. If she could just get out of this room, she could get out of this hell of a house. She could escape.

Without a further thought, she darted from the room, energy pulsing her veins as she almost ripped the door from its hinges along the way. She threw a look behind her and saw him stand by the door, the light from the room illuminating him, smiling at her antics. She didn't care if this was part of his stupid plan. She will get out.

The drug started to affect her, harsh whispers echoing her mind and down the corridors. She spun around wildly, trying to decipher from reality and hallucination. She could just make the outline of her captor slowly following her, strolling through the hallways with a relaxed gait. He took out a fob watch from his pocket and glanced at it. "Oh, this is where the fun starts."

Backing from him, Rey resumed her panicked running, her legs carrying through the maze that seemed to form before her eyes. She saw a black figure from the corner of her eye and almost shrieked as she tripped on a knot in the carpet. The figure loomed over her, his face covered by the shadow that fell from the hood of his long trench-coat. Despite not seeing his face, Rey recognised the height and posture. "Kylo?"

Before relief could flood her face, the old man stepped through her apparition, destroying the small glimmer of hope that had almost sparked. "It's quite an interesting bodyguard you have, don't you think?"

Her legs propelled her from the old man, her backside rubbing against the carpet as she tried to get to her feet. She stumbled away, her ankle throbbing in pain from tripping earlier, and vaguely listened to the sneers.

"Kylo Ren, isn't it? A very interesting name."

Her hands flew at every doorknob in sight, her wrist twisting with futility at the knobs that would not budge.

"Who would name their child such a name?"

She found a flight of stairs and almost tumbled down the steps, her heart pounding in her ears and ankle starting to affect her movements.

"Such an unusual name."

She saw another black cloaked figure waiting at the bottom of the stairs but didn't pay any attention to it, too focused on trying to get away from the echoing laughter.

"You grew up with him, didn't you? Well, no, he was already grown."

There was a door that seemed different from the rest, more aged than the rest of the others she had tried.

"He's very good at his job, don't you think?"

She was within a few feet from it, her hand outstretched.

"Well apart from getting you in this mess, he protects you very well."

With victory surging through her body, her hand grasped the door knob.

"Kylo Ren. A rather lazy name, don't you think?"

She twisted the knob.

"If he wanted the erase his past, he should have changed it to something more different."

Rey pushed the door open and fell through the doorway, not paying attention to the words. Her knees hit the ground from the force she inadvertently applied to open the door.

"I mean, Kylo Ren is so similar…"

She braced herself with her hands and looked up to survey the room she fell into.

"…to Ben, don't you think?"

Photos on photos lined the walls, not an inch of wall exposed. Once her eyes adjusted, Rey squinted and was able to make out the same boy in all the photos.

"Who do you think made him the great man he is today?"

Rey's eyes widened in horror, the wheels in her mind working and connecting the dots. The room. The blood. The scratches. His awkwardness. His methodical and strict demeanour. His almost absent emotion whenever he killed for her.

"I'll leave you to take this new information in."

She ignored the soft click of the door behind her and the fading cackling, her eyes fixated on the sheer amount of photos in front of her, the moonlight that shone through the iron-barred window giving her the light she needed to analyse the photos better. With shaking hands, she lifted herself up and shuffled closer to the images. Each of them had the same small boy in them, no smiles gracing his face. Her eyes wondered across the walls, seeing the boy in varying degrees of age.

One that she guessed was the earliest to be taken, as indicated by how young he looked, had Kylo – no, Ben – looking at the camera gloomily, his cheek red from a slap that Rey assumed that had come from his captor. As she was able to piece photos together in her head and arrange them in chronological order, her stomach twisted at the varying degrees of pain that was documented.

Bruises marring his face at different points of his life. His hair haphazardly chopped off, as if his black hair was yanked painfully and sliced off suddenly. His eyes hardening and becoming deader with each photo. The stiffness of his clenched jaw gracing more photos than she liked. Ben donning blood-soaked clothes, Rey sure of who the blood belonged to until she came across an area of the wall that gave her significant doubt.

Ben standing over bleeding bodies. Ben looming over another boy with ginger hair, his hand wrapped around the ginger's forearm in a way that Rey had to turn away from the implication of Ben breaking the boy's arm.

Rey had to back away from that wall, lest she got sick from the graphic images. She settled in front of a section that made her not want to violently throw up, photos of Ben standing with his back straight and rigid, a black military styled suit upon his body. This must have been one of the last images taken of him, Rey noted as she didn't see any of him looking older.

Years. He was kept here for years.

And so will you

The deep voice whispered in her ears, the voice that belonged to her bodyguard. She felt a solid hand on her shoulder, causing her to look behind her. Her exhausted mind just registered Kylo Ren towering over her with the same black suit that she just saw in the photo, his eyes piercing her soul with such intensity that it almost made her cry. She collapsed in a bundle, unable to meet his eyes and held her palms over her ears, trying to tune out the deep murmurs of the hallucination.


Morning came sooner than she expected. As she squinted at the sunlight that streamed into the room, she noticed a few of the bars looked crooked against its straight copies. The spectre of her bodyguard continued to loom in the corner, not saying a word as she moved towards the window. She wasn't sure how much longer the drugs would be in her system, not wanting to find out what else the crazy old man had for her.

When she stood in front of the window, she saw sharp grey branches of dead trees almost covering the window. Looking down, she guessed that she was on the second level of this place, not knowing how many floors there were. She gripped one of the bars and wriggled it experimentally, the iron wobbling from its position.

Before the sun could rise anymore, she set to work at breaking out. She tried jiggling the bars a few more times but was unsuccessful. With desperation ebbing into her mind, she used everything, from the palm of her hand to her forearm, to bash her way through the bars. The rust started to cut through her epidermis, blood smearing against the parts of her non broken skin. She ignored the stinging flesh and continued her attacks, more and more grazes blossoming on her arm.

With a final angry burst of energy, two bars twisted and fell from its place, the objects loudly hitting the cobblestones of the house as they went down. Paranoid that the noise would cause her captor to come back, Rey hoisted herself up to the windowsill and squeezed through the small hole. She grabbed a nearby branch, hoping to pull herself onto a tree and climb down safely. She underestimated the stability of the tree, accidentally applying her full weight onto a trunk only for it to crack and send her plummeting to the ground.

She fell with a soft thud, the overgrown grass barely breaking her fall. She groaned in pain and coughed, trying to breath in the air that was temporarily knocked from her lungs. The dead trees seemed to be encasing the castle she was locked in, the old trees growing in all directions as if to act as a barrier from the outside world. As she tried to find a path away from the castle, the sharp branches cut into her face and arms. She cut her way through the makeshift forest with her arms, finally finding a clearing in front of the castle.

Just as she stepped from of the twisted trees, the front door opened. With fear caught in her throat, she bolted for the front gates, not looking back and hoping that her feet would outrun whoever opened the door.