-IV-

Our next force bond didn't begin in privacy. It happened while I was training some of the Jedi recruits.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded of me, as if he could demand anything of me.

I didn't spare him a glance and instead moved on.

"You're training new Jedi," he spat with derision. "Hasn't the past taught you anything? Hasn't it taught anyone anything?"

After that, I did spare him a glance, and I suppose it might have been lined with vitriol.

"Again," I called to my students, "Line up."

"You're making the same mistakes every Jedi has made before you," he seethed, following me with his eyes and body, despising my actions yet seeming unable to ignore them. "The Jedi have always been so sodden with hubris they believe they have the right to teach the force to whomever they choose."

"Go," I commanded to the recruits, ignoring Ben, and observing their attempts.

He fell silent, brooding, but he watched. I knew there would be nothing lost on him, though his opposition was no longer vocalized.

Today I was teaching them to use the force to anticipate their opponent's swings. The recruits, almost a dozen of varying ages and types, were parrying with wooden staves, since I supposed that was the combat with which I was most accomplished and qualified to instruct.

The sound of clacking staves to varying degrees of success broke through the air, while sounds of greater, more intense Resistance combat echoed in the distance.

"You must feel it, using the Force as another sense," I said, "It is more important than sight, or touch, or sound."

"They're not anywhere near ready for combat, are they?" inquired Ben, knowing I had to ignore him in front of my recruits.

"Line up again," I called, gesturing with my staff, and they moved.

"Are you ready to accept the burden of their deaths when you let them fight?" he asked me.

I gave him a hard glance.

"Because that's what is going to happen," he said. "Where did you get them? Farms? Are they all farmhands?"

I ignored him as best I could. He was goading me, and I knew it. I felt my cheeks burn with irritation, regardless, and I tried to watch and observe the use of the force among my padwans.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to stop, could I?" he inquired.

"No," I said to him, before realizing I'd spoken out loud.

"Am I doing it wrong?" asked the nearest recruit, pausing her actions at my outburst.

"No, no," I replied, gesturing for her to continue, "You're fine; keep going. I was just… thinking about something else."

Ben gave me a tiny smirk, as if he'd won something. It was infuriating.

"Maybe if I distract you enough," he said, having turned into something else entirely from the outrage he'd expressed earlier, "you'll give up."

"Halt," I called, and the recruits stopped, turning their gazes upon me. "Line up and start again, this time focus on the Force for a count of three before you begin to move."

Kylo Ren moved closer to me, the salient aura of his Force pressing against and through mine.

"Do you think," he said, his voice closer, lower, "you can perceive what those lightweights are doing with the Force while I'm so near you?"

I couldn't at all, to be truthful. I was so Force-blinded by his brightness in my periphery that I had no idea what my students may or may not be doing with the Force. I certainly wasn't going to tell him that, though.

"Can you feel anything," he asked, near, too near, "but me?"

I tried to hide my shaking breath, and I wasn't sure if I succeeded, but he fell blessedly silent at that moment.

"Ready?" I called, and then: "Begin!"

The clacking of staves broke the tension which had built in the Force between us. I tried to feel what my students were doing, but Ben's proximity stubbornly filled my senses.

"Rey," he whispered, and I moved away, putting space between us. I glanced at him, chiding him visibly for changing tack; for moving from fury to whatever specious seduction this was. For this, I would make him suffer, but later.

I paced around my ground of recruits, watching their movements, and gauging success by foretelling their opponents' attacks. Kylo Ren followed me as his irritation mingled with curiosity.

"Stop!" I called, and they halted with expectation on their faces. "Break for fifteen minutes and then we will begin again."

I smiled at them, though I didn't feel like smiling as I strode towards the nearest woode with a dark shadow by my side that only I could see.

When I broke into the forest proper, I leaned against a tree and slid to a seat, a sigh escaping me with my burden of stress. I closed my eyes and ignored Kylo Ren, who was still nearby. I could feel him and didn't know why he remained silent. It annoyed me.

"When did it become your mission to irritate me?" I mused, keeping my eyes closed.

"Perhaps it has always been so," he replied.

I allowed my eyes to crack open to observe Ben, who had seated himself before me and was watching me in an entirely guileless way, without shame or self-consciousness. His dark clothing pooled around him, made of the best materials, perhaps by the best tailors, and I wondered upon what surface he sat. I had to chortle.

"You've replaced your glove," I said, noticing his hands.

"Can I have my other one back?" he asked.

"It's in my room," I replied.

"Will you go get it?" he inquired.

"No," I said, closing my eyes again.

I felt his energy shift, irritation soaking into it, and I felt pleasure as a result.

"You need to stop training new Jedi," he said, falling back into old wounds.

"I'll train new Jedi if I want," I replied, not caring.

"Rey," he said.

I ignored him.

"Rey," he said again, more insistent.

I opened my eyes out of pity.

"What is it?" I asked, seeing in his face that he was serious.

"Rey," he said, vocalizing my name a third time. It affected me, somehow, the more he did it. "It's all wrong. The Jedi code, it isn't right."

"Who are you to say?" I asked.

He glanced away, his mind clearly at work. There was something about this, something of which he cared about deeply, that he was trying to express, so I decided to give him the time he needed to pull it out and place it on the table.

Drawing a breath, he let it out and spoke fervently:

"I don't have proof of all this, Rey, not yet. I only know a little of what there is to be known, I'm aware of my naiveté, but… the Jedi… I don't think they were originally meant to be what they became. I think over time the philosophy got changed and warped in ways that were, well, wrong. Ways that caused the downfall and near entire destruction of the Jedi," he said.

"Do you propose that the Sith are right?" I asked incredulously.

"No," he countered immediately, giving me pause. "Neither. They're both wrong."

I watched his face. I liked it when his face was open, like this. When he was thinking deeply about something and telling it to me like it was a secret he'd held, warmed, clutched to his breast for longer than he could remember. At times like this I liked Ben Solo and wanted to know more.

His musings intrigued me, though I had my own opinions on the matter.

"What would you propose, if I don't train these recruits to be Jedi?" I asked.

"I would propose you train them to use the Force," he said.

"But that would be training them to be Jedi," I said.

"Not necessarily," he said.

"I'm certainly not going to train them to be Sith!" I objected.

"Of course not," he replied.

"Then what?" I asked. "What do you think I should do?"

"A balance," he said, meaning it to his bones. I felt his desire for exactly this, this balance running all through the Force between us, like a longing that fueled the fabric of his subatomic thrall. Yet, the concept baffled me.

I shook my head and leaned back against the tree.

"I cannot begin to know what you propose," I said. "I'll not teach dark side use to anyone. You cannot convince me, Kylo Ren."

He leaned toward me, his weight resting on a gloved hand.

"I can teach you," he said, the possible implications of his proposal hanging, shimmering in the air.

I looked up at him, his dark head haloed by the bloom of sunlight through verdant boughs.

"Ben," I said, calling his name softly. He waited for what I would say next; I felt his anticipation, his curiosity, and the full weight of his attention upon me. "I can teach you."

He exhaled sharply and leaned away, turning his attention another way, like the blinding beam of a lighthouse gone, shining elsewhere distant. Something in me mourned its loss a little.

"I cannot believe you," he muttered in exasperation, his hand in his hair.

"That's your choice to make," I said with a shrug, washing my hands of his decisions.

"It was a rhetorical statement," he said, glancing sharply at me, with frustration like acid at his seams. "You… you're being ridiculous."

"Am I?" I inquired.

At that moment it was as if he snapped, as if he'd been holding everything in and finally let it loose upon me. He stiffened and turned the full force of his attention upon me.

"I am the one who was formally trained on both sides; I am the one who was taught… for years… by a Jedi master and then an equally powerful dark force user. I am the one who learned to worship both in a Jedi temple and in the rage and fire of battlefields, who built my own lightsaber and then modified it to be a saber of my own choosing and desires. I am the one who has all the knowledge, and you?"

He paused, his gaze falling across me, at once both derisive and pensive, and a small part lost.

"You're just a scavenger," he said. "Everything you know, you took from me."

"That isn't true!" I objected.

"Isn't it?" he countered at once, leaning in like a snake poised to strike, his words dripping with venom. "How did you know how to fight back at my mind when I interrogated you? How did you know how to manipulate the storm troopers who were guarding you? How did you know how to call a light saber to your hand, or better yet, how did you know how to wield it in battle?"

I opened my mouth to retort, but he cut me off.

"I've seen you fight," he seethed, his voice thin, close, just for me, but not kind. "You fight like me. I don't know how you did it, but you've scavenged my knowledge from me, like a parasite. "

I'd had enough of his insults, of his calling me names as if I were the smallest, most insignificant trash in the galaxy. I reached through the lightyears that separated us and contacted his dark-clad shoulder with the palm of my hand, pushing him away, out of my space and back into his own.

He was startled by the touch, as rough as it was; he hadn't expected it. It took him a moment to recover, and it was enough time for me to get a word in.

"You pretend as if you know everything, but I know you," I said, and I saw self-doubt spring into his eyes at my words, and I watched him try to hide it. "You're right, I'm not formally trained, except by Luke Skywalker-"

"But that was after you'd already-," he interjected.

"I know," I said, holding up a hand, and he held his peace for the moment. "I can't begin to claim that I know what is happening between us, Ben, but Luke helped me to make a little bit more sense of all this."

His shoulders settled in a small movement and I could sense he waited for me to go on.

"And you're right," I said, "I did, somehow, gain from you the instinct for many things with the Force. I don't know how it happened. I didn't mean for it to happen. I didn't even want it to happen; of course I didn't. You… you've been nothing but trouble."

I felt his feathers starting to ruffle and I went on quickly.

"But what I choose to do with the same knowledge you possess is completely different from the choices you've made," I said.

"I feel like you don't know enough," he said, "Or your choices would be different."

"Oh?" I asked, bemused. "Would they be the same as yours?"

"Perhaps," he said, clearly thinking that yes, they would.

I rolled my eyes at his gall.

"And perhaps it is the case that your choices would be different if you possessed all of my knowledge," I replied.

He gazed silently at me.

"Do you think that it's possible that at the moment I gained knowledge from you, that perhaps you also gained knowledge from me?" I asked.

He glanced away.

"Have you felt any different since we first met?" I asked.

"Of course I have," he chided, as if that was the stupidest question in the world.

"How?" I asked.

He seemed uncomfortable with this line of questioning.

I allowed my shoulders to relax back into the tree upon which I leaned, and I watched him, finding his reactions particularly interesting.

"Ben?" I prompted.

He gave me a sideways glance.

Drawing a breath, perhaps to steady himself, he began.

"I cannot," he said, each word seeming to be forced from his lips, "stop thinking about you."

Avoiding eye contact, he sat, perhaps waiting for the interrogation to be over, and I noticed an interesting feeling hung suspended in the air between us, like a dense aura waiting to be resolved.

Allowing my hand to fall to the side, I touched his knee with two of my fingertips. He startled at the contact, and his gaze turned to me.

"Is that all?" I asked at last.

Lifting his chin slightly, he seemed to be gauging how much to tell.

"I… feel the pull to the light more strongly," he admitted. "The struggle pains me… constantly."

I found that extremely interesting.

"Why do you resist?" I asked.

"Why do you resist the dark?" he countered, sharp, as if his words were weaponized. I was unsettled by him at once and pulled away from his proximity.

"Because," I said, finding myself defensive, "it's wrong."

"How foolish you are!" he exclaimed, and then his voice fell at once thin and seething, "How naïve."

"Naïve is what we both are," I objected.

He paused. Perhaps he found truth in what I'd said. It was a parley, of sorts, to admit we both had no idea what we were doing.

Glancing over me, he said: "I would ask you to refrain from making morality judgments about things which you don't fully understand."

"Fair enough," I ceded. "Though, you must admit that causing others pain and misfortune isn't a good thing to do."

He shifted.

"Perhaps," he said, having his turn to cede. "But you must admit that the dark side doesn't entirely consist of causing others pain and misfortune."

"Just mostly," I said.

I felt him grow agitated, so I touched his knee again.

"I was only joking," I assured him.

He calmed at once.

"Mostly," I said.

He squinted at me.

"Really, Ben, think about what Snoke made the First Order do," I said, spreading my hands before me.

He seemed more disappointed I'd taken my hand from his knee than by what I'd said.

"What Snoke made the First Order do," he replied, "were his choices, not something mandated by the dark side of the Force."

That's something I hadn't considered before. I, like everyone I knew, had just assumed the dark side of the Force was synonymous with murder and pillage.

"He was not a Sith Lord," said Ben. "And he understood how power works. He orchestrated the destruction of the Republic due to his dissatisfaction with it, but he also arranged for an adequate power source to take its place in the galaxy."

"And you find that perfectly reasonable?" I asked, feeling disbelief.

"It is what it is," he said, averting his gaze for a moment.

After a while his gaze came back to mine, something vulnerable within it.

"You don't," I said, reading him, and fascinated by what I saw. "You don't find it reasonable."

He tried to shutter his gaze, to hide himself from me.

"The destruction of the Republic… you didn't like how Snoke did it, did you?" I pried.

"Why are you asking me this?" he seethed, his patience thinning.

I let my weight shift against the trunk and observed him, aglow in the sunlight of mid-afternoon as it filtered through the forest's roof. At once I wondered if he saw the sunlight like I did. He was so dark, dressed in the emptiest blacks the galaxy could produce, yet at his edges I watched the sunlight brighten his hair and scatter across his pale face, and outline the profile of his shoulders with a golden, rich glow.

I felt the shifting agitation of his expectant question lose velocity as the seconds passed between us, as I felt him also become aware of the moment. I wondered what I looked like to him in the depths of space. Was the sun upon me where he sat, or was I lit by the harsh illumination of a ship's artificial light? Could he feel the sunshine upon his shoulders?

Did he have any idea how beautiful he looked with the sun shining upon him?

I caught my breath and looked away, irritated at myself for thinking such a thing, despite the truth to it.

He'd grown still, his previous question forgotten. I felt curiosity drift from him in delicate waves.

A moment passed filled with expectation, and then another. I heard him draw a slow breath.

"Rey," he said, and I looked at him at once. He held out his hand. "Give me your hand."

I knew what he wanted, what he was going to do, and yet I gave him my hand willingly, anyway.

He held my hand before him in his with an unexpected delicacy.

"I have my reasons for abandoning the Jedi Order," he told me, sincerity pulsing from him in waves.

"What are they?" I asked, noticing my voice had gone soft.

"I could not abide by their teachings," he replied.

"In what way?" I asked.

"I…," he began, faltering, and then he glanced around us. "I don't know if I'll have time to tell you properly. I don't know how much longer this will last."

"When will you tell me?" I asked.

His eye fell to my hand, studying it within the confines of his own.

"Soon," he said, and he began to lift my hand to his mouth. I felt expectation grip me, but he paused. "Perhaps next time."

"I hope next time," I said, wondering when I had begun to anticipate a 'next time' with him.

He gazed at me, and suddenly I felt what he was doing; he was sensing me through the Force, and the act of nearly touching his lips to the back of my hand felt more intimate than it had any right to be. I felt the anticipation, and I felt his sensing of it; I felt his waiting, his intention, and then his breath brushed against my skin.

I felt goosebumps raise across my arm, and I shivered before I could stop myself.

His fingers tightened around my hand, just enough for me to feel it, and the distance between his mouth and my hand felt too far, but I knew he was stretching me; he was teasing me.

"Ben," I said, my voice coming out both soft and chiding, and I moved to pull my hand from his grasp, but he stopped me.

His kiss fell on my hand at last, and lingered, desperate to have me, but delicate like the back of a rose petal. I felt at once captured by the sea of sunlight playing across his hair, brightening the edges of blackest raven with warm sable tones. Like his eyes.

"Ben," I said again, but it was nearly a whisper, and it meant nothing, neither did I know why I said it, exactly.

When his gaze returned to mine, he looked lost.

This was fortunate, because so was I.

I touched his face at once, across the light years.

I think he might have said my name, but my senses were misfiring on all cylinders. So awash was I in the overload of the moment that I missed everything else but the awareness that my fingertips were on the curve of his jaw, and the awareness we shared was so overwhelming that I almost didn't hear the student calling my name.

"Master Rey?"

Ben and I pulled back from each other with a start, as if we'd done something wrong, as if we were two children caught in the act of stealing candy. He drew back like a pool of shadow, distant and silent, and I did the best I could to appear responsible and mature and… whatever else a Jedi Master should be. I was distantly aware I was pretty much failing at all those things on a continual basis.

"Yes?" I called, allowing the padwan to find me.

"Master Rey," said the student, relieved. "It's been nearly half an hour since our break, we were worried you'd left us."

I laughed at the idea, and the student smiled.

"I apologize," I said, sheepish. "I came to sit in the forest and must have fallen asleep. Too many late nights."

I stole a glance at Ben, who gave me a dark, silent smile that forced me to suppress a shiver.

The student helped me up and I brushed myself off.

"Let's get back to work, shall we?" I asked the student.

"Yes, Master," said the student, compliant and eager.

Ben wouldn't like that, I knew, but when I looked back to find him, he had faded.

I felt a loss at his absence.

-O-O-O-O-