Rey is not going to let herself become weak.
As soon as she is able to, she starts exercising her body and her mind. Sure, meditation is a little more difficult when she can be snapped out of it at any moment by the wailing shriek of an infant, but she just has to adjust.
It feels good to be able to move again, without feeling weighted down by her pregnant stomach.
She thinks about Kylo Ren, and she thinks about the way he looked at their daughter. She thinks about it too often. At first Rey thinks that he is clouding her judgement, disturbing her connection to the Force, leading her the wrong way. The more she meditates on it, though, the more she realizes that part of Kylo Ren that draws her is the part still bound to the light- and that part is growing. She can feel it.
If I can feel it, she worries. Who else can?
He does come, sometimes. It's almost always late at night, when Rey is half-asleep. She wants to ignore him out of principle, but it is impossible, because he is someone to speak to and she thinks that she is starting to go strange in the head from not talking to anyone. She talks out loud to Ash all day, but she is running out of things to say and an infant never answers back. Besides, she wants to encourage that part of him that wants to see her halfway through the night, that vulnerable boy who holds a baby with impossible gentleness.
Kylo doesn't try to stay with her anymore. He does offer to let her sleep, though, and after a while, Rey is tired enough to grow comfortable with the idea of letting him watch Ash while she slumbers. The first few times she wakes up with that same desperate feeling that the baby will be gone, but she's always there. Sometimes Kylo is just looking at her, and sometimes he's holding her and pacing the room.
"What are you your plans?" she asks him one night, the moment he enters the room. "Just keep me here indefinitely? What are you accomplishing by keeping us caged up?"
'She doesn't receive an answer, but Rey feels like there is more to that than maliciously ignoring her. She has come to think that Kylo Ren doesn't have aplan. He is just stalling until he figures something out. She senses he is almost as tired of this situation as she is when he sits beside her and puts his head in his hands, long fingers threaded through black hair. He seems stressed beyond what he has been in the past, a man at his breaking point.
"There is somewhere I can take you," Kylo says. "But I don't think you will like it. I have been putting it off, but I don't think I can do that any longer."
Anywhere is better than here, at least, that is what Rey thought a few minutes before. Now she doubts that, though, doubts it by the gravity in his voice and the evident pain on his face that he tries to hide.
"My Leader wishes me to bring you to him," Kylo says. "I had wanted to wait until you were stronger with the dark side of the Force, but as it seems we are at an impasse. Maybe he can better expediate that. I sometimes feel that I am far too weak to handle you myself. You cause something wrong in me." His eyes are wide when he turns to her and for the millionth time Rey wonders why she had invited someone so incredibly broken into her life. Did it mean she is broken, too?
"What does he want?"
"Besides the obvious, I cannot say. You are strong in the Force and he wants you to join us instead of clinging blindly to the light."
"I would think you should all realize how pointless that is by now," Rey says, squeezing the bridge of her nose between two fingertips. It is tiresome, this constant back and forth struggle that, when pared down, amounts to no more than yes-no-yes-no-yes-no-yes-no.
"You're the one who doesn't realize what is pointless," Kylo says, lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling as if it holds all the answers he seeks. Rey knows that she can probably disable him right now, as he lies on her bed all dreamy and almost relaxed. His lightsaber is by the door. He forgets she is his prisoner. She could concievably fight her way out with it, but then again, not with a child in her arms, blasters firing at her from every direction. Instead, she lies down next to him, not touching him, but looking up at the same ceiling, wishing that she also had answers.
The next day, they land on a planet, which one Rey isn't sure, but she is let out of her room. She is given new clothes, nicer than the simple ones she normally wore, but dark robes not to her taste. She has a sling that she puts the baby in, and she wears it across her chest. Kylo meets her at her door, and walks her out.
"Don't bother trying to run away," Kylo says, keeping a brisk pace in front of her. "You'll find no friends here." He pauses, waiting a moment for her to catch up, and looks down at her. "No unarmed spacecrafts for you to commandeer." Rey knows he is smiling, she hears it in his voice.
It is a small base, and leads out into a small town, looking as if it sprung up just along with the military occupancy. At the end of a street, there is a restaurant. When Rey asks why they are stopping there, he doesn't answer, he just walks through the crowd to the back doors. He is trying to be nice, she realizes. Guilt for where is is taking her after this.
The inside is full of soldiers, but the patio is empty because of the rain, despite being covered. They take a seat out there, the only ones, and it overlooks the edge of a cliff. Below are thick forests, and there's a heavy fog that hovers just above the trees. Rey sticks her hand out from under the awning and lets thick droplets hit her palm. She still loves rain, no matter how many times she sees it.
She wipes her wet hand off on her pants and looks back across the table. Kylo is holding Ash in a sitting position on the edge of the table, and she is staring at him, two chubby hands pushing on the black metal of his mask. It's an absolutely ridiculous picture, and it almost makes Rey want to laugh.
"Take that thing off," she says.
"Not here," Kylo responds. "Not in front of all of...these people. Besides, she doesn't mind it."
Even through his voice modulator, there is a softness to his tone. It feels wrong. It makes Rey feel a strange kind of warmth, which is wrong, too. He is not incorrect, though; the baby doesn't seem to mind the mask that would inspire fear in so many others. She just claps her hands on the sides of it and, out of nowhere, she laughs.
A giant smile spreads across Rey's face. "She's never laughed before." And she reaches across the table and picks up her daughter, bringing her up to her face and peppering kisses all over her nose and cheeks. She does not gift her with another laugh, but she does give a a big, toothless smile. So happy, all of the time. Rey darts a quick glance over the baby's head and she can tell that, even with his covered face, that Kylo is watching them intently.
"When you go before him," he says after a long moment of quiet. "Please, just- say as little as possible. Keep your mind clear. Don't provoke anything."
"You sound like you don't want this," Rey says, situating Ash back into the sling so she could have her hands free to eat. "I thought you wanted me to meet him. I thought you wanted him to persuade me. Which, I probably don't have to say again, isn't going to-"
"I know." And it is the first time Rey has ever heard Kylo admit that he does not believe she can be persuaded the dark side. He had so often repeated that she will come around, she'll see his line of thinking- and now he says the opposite, and he sounds angry, like he wants to crush the table beneath his hands. It reminds her of right before their first time, when he had begged her to join him. At the time she had taken join me or you will be killed to be a threat, but now she realizes that it was just a warning. "I just don't want you to go in unprepared."
Join me, or you will be killed.
Please, this is the only way I know to save you.
It isn't the only way, though. Rey knows there was another way. He just will not choose it.
He isn't going to go in with her.
Kylo tries to argue with her on the matter, but Rey is insistent. "You're not my keeper," she says as she puts the baby and the sling into his arms. "I don't need someone to hold my hand, I'm fine." It is a lot of bravado, because honestly, Rey is feeling quite terrified. Sometimes, she can pretend her situation is not as bad as it is; that is a skill that was woven deep inside of her over years and years and years. She can deny loneliness, depression, danger- but she cannot deny what she feels as she steps into the darkened room. His presence is overwhelming to her senses. The anger and hate that radiates off of him is like nothing she has ever felt.
Clear your mind.
"We finally meet," Snoke says. "Kylo Ren's little scavenger."
She wants to say is not Kylo Ren's, she is not anyone's little anything. Rey knows better than to start a fight- she's not a hothead. She just wants to get through this and get back to Ash.
"He said you wanted to see me," Rey says. "Here I am."
As he stares at her, Rey feels like one of the salvaged items she would bring to the Niima Outpost on Jakku, turned over and inspected. It makes her feel violated- he is not even reaching into her mind, yet she feels bared. She stands up a little straighter, swallowing the knot in her throat. If only he would speak, maybe they could get this over with.
When he finally does speak, it isn't what Rey expects him to say. Power. He says that she has great power over Kylo Ren. What can be further from the truth? Powerless is all Rey has felt for a long time, and it had started to seep through her body, breeding hopelessness that she tried desperately to expel. She knew that if she let that take her over, that would be her end. If I had any power over him, I wouldn't be here, Rey thinks.
"You're wrong," Snoke answers her passing thought, and Rey feels him in her mind, searching, scavenging for something. Rey closes her eyes, imagining herself repelling down the rope in the darkness, feeling for something, anything so that she can eat. She feels so hungry it is like her insides are twisting together, so tired that it feels like her arms are going to give way any moment.
Her mind feels like it's moving very quickly, like someone is flipping through a book. She sees herself the moment she watched Kylo push the lightsaber through Han, the first time she had truly felt the urge to kill another person course through her. For that moment anger had wiped out her vision and she had felt nothing but rage.
She sees Ash's face the first night Rey slept next to her in the medical bay, when she most the most precious and frightening thing Rey had ever seen. She feels the sobs she had pushed down, alone in her bed that night, wondering what she was going to do, what could she do...
And then, her minds turns to another image of Kylo. He holds her without strain as they kiss, needy, and warm, moving against each other. He drops her on the bed and then just surveys her, bruised lips, parted legs. "I'm going to enjoy this," he says, moving a slow hand up her leg. "Not like before. I am going to take my time with you tonight." He drops to his knees and begins to suckle a spot on her inner thigh. Rey writhes into the feeling, this feeling is everything, this feeling is-
"Stop it!" She clutches her head, trying to push him away, but her surprise, he withdraws willingly. Her mind feels a mess now, and it takes her a moment to stand upright, to look at him again.
"You have much in you," Snoke says. "So much anger and fear. Passion."
"We all do," Rey says, trying to keep her voice even, remembering this is a man who can kill her with a small movement of his hand, and would. It disgusted her to hear him speak about her emotions, as he could really know her by flipping through her mind like a picture book. "That isn't all there is to me."
Rey isn't just the loneliness and fear and anger in a few choice memories. She's also green grass beneath her feet, the freedom of flight, Finn's hand in hers under the stars, raindrops on skin, Ash's laugh. She will not try to deny her emotions, but she also won't divide them, won't choose to embrace just some as if they are opposing sides. She isn't broken, she is human. You can't have me, she thinks. You never will.
She expects to be killed, or worse, but instead she is dismissed. Rey feels as if she has been in there for hours, but when she finally comes out, she realizes it has actually only been a few minutes. Kylo stands nearby. He has removed his mask, and his face is pale with anxiety. Ash is whimpering in his arms, and he bounces her slightly, but doesn't look down at her. He looks far away.
"He wants to see you," Rey says, touching his shoulder and breaking him from his trance. His head jerks toward her, and it takes him a moment before he really processes what she says.
"Yes. Yes, here." He deposits Ash into her arms, barely looking at Rey. She had thought he would ask her how it had gone, he had been so invested in it before, but perhaps he already knows. Perhaps her just walking out of there was all he was waiting for. He puts his mask back on, straightens his robes. Rey can see him pause right before he goes through the door.
"Don't go anywhere," he says, not even turning around as he speaks. "The other door is locked, anyway, so you can't. It doesn't matter." She sees him breathe, consciously, and Rey hopes that he is better at keeping Snoke out of mind that she was. Not that it is really even necessary. Everything can be read on him by just looking.
