In the previous chapter: Rey, dismayed that she failed her mission on Tehanne, starts to put up walls against her fellow Resistance members. That night, Kylo Ren mentally asks her for help testing his new theory of the Force. Though intrigued by the idea, she refuses.

Chapter 4

I was training with Fariya a week later when I felt another Awakening.

An image of piercing blue sky filled my vision, stretching to a horizon of cracked earth that had baked in the sun for millennia. Thorny bracken clutched to the side of a steep ravine that was practically a cliff. Slender reptilian creatures, which I recognized as the Grylix race, delicately plucked fruit from the plants with their prehensile tails. But one of the Grylix lost its footing and fell, starting a dangerous tumble almost straight down to the cracked earth far below. A young Grylix screeched a desperate plea in its language – "Momma!" – and stretched out its webbed hand as if trying to reverse gravity itself.

The vision cut off when Fariya whacked me in the stomach with her training saber. I let out a surprised wheeze and fell oafishly to the floor, my own saber automatically deactivating when I dropped it. Though the images from the Force user were gone, I could still sense the tickling pulse of its brand-new energy rippling through the Force web.

Fariya deactivated her saber and helped me to my feet. Her gloating smirk was unbearable.

"Stop looking so smug. You got a lucky hit because I was distracted."

"You've been distracted all week," she complained. "What's wrong this time?"

The lie bubbled up out of my chest before I could stop it. "A disturbance, somewhere in the Force. It's giving me a headache." A plan was starting to unfold. Like a memory I could never unsee, it festered and grew rampant in size and scope, nearly impossible to ignore.

"I don't feel anything," Fariya replied, slightly miffed.

"You may not be able to sense it, just like Luke can't sense Awakenings."

She tilted her head and opened her mouth, ready to argue, or unleash a barrage of questions, or generally act like a nuisance. I knew she was curious, not suspicious, but I was short with her regardless.

"I need to go lie down. We'll continue our session tomorrow, alright?"

"I'll stay and keep practicing," she chirped, no doubt happy at the blow she had scored against me, however falsely earned.

I left the training room and walked down the hall to the nearest four-way intersection. The corridor to my right led directly to the base's living quarters where Luke and I had private rooms, whereas the fastest path to the hangar was to the left. I wavered and then walked straight ahead, down a corridor that ventured in a neutral direction between the two and afforded me some time to think.

With previous Awakenings, I had always needed someone's help to identify the exact planet where the Force user's signals were coming from. This Awakening was different. I knew exactly where it was: a desert planet called Gryl only a few systems away from Jakku. Its sentient reptilian race, the Grylix, had often requested supplies from Niima Outpost. I would not need Luke's help to get there.

And with that knowledge, a plan had started to form.

I could surprise everyone and recruit a brand new Force user, someone who would be inspired to join the Resistance and eager to serve its cause. It would make up for the embarrassing failure of my first solo mission. Luke would be mad that I'd left Emmett II without telling him, but I'd learned that Luke was always sort of mad. I was also realizing that his gruffness often had little to do with my training. And besides, Luke was not my father. I was an adult and had spent years alone on Jakku coming and going as I wished.

An intersection loomed ahead of me, and with it, a very complicated choice.

My feet slowed to a crawl, and then dragged to a complete stop. If I turned right, I'd go find Luke in his room and tell him of the Awakening. He would frown at me, despite the good news, and order me to fetch Fariya and meet him at the hangar. It would be a straightforward, successful, and somewhat tedious mission.

But if I turned left…

Turning left meant an opportunity to prove, both to myself and others at the base, that I could handle important missions on my own. And lurking at the edge of my thoughts, too upsetting to fully acknowledge, was the desire to scrape back some of that fierce independence that had leaked away since I'd left Jakku. Rehone an edge that had gone slightly dull.

And if Kylo Ren is there? What then? my mind whispered.

I frowned, because the thought excited me the tiniest bit. He hadn't reappeared in my head after I'd kicked him out a week prior. Originally, I'd planned to deal with Ren the same way I had dealt with enemies on Jakku: outsmarted them, beat them with my staff if necessary, and earned their respect so they'd leave me alone. But he and I had evolved into more than mere enemies – we were rivals, and that made the stakes higher. I wanted the chance to fight him again and win. To rub it in his face that I was bringing a new Force user back to the Resistance.

Well, my mind was already made up, wasn't it? Now I was simply delaying the inevitable. I took a deep breath, and my feet started to move.

–

–

–

I flew the transport closer to Gryl, following the Force user's mental beacon, and groaned at the sight that greeted me: a massive dust storm crawling across the surface of the arid planet.

I wanted to bang my head against the ship console. Even if everything went perfectly – landing my transport, asking the Force user to join the Resistance, convincing its family to let it go – even then, it would still be a close call, and I'd be departing the planet with an angry, tantrum-throwing storm breathing down my neck.

But I couldn't go back to Emmett II empty-handed a second time. I would never live down the embarrassment, especially since Luke was unaware I'd taken the transport off-base in the first place.

I nudged the thruster lever forward an inch and the rocky earth sped past underneath me. A moment later, the Force user's village appeared ahead on the horizon. I realized with another mental groan that it was a cave system carved into the side of a plateau. I would have to land the transport at its base and find a way up on foot. At least I was the only ship in the area. Right now, my biggest concern was the fast encroaching sandstorm.

I circled the area twice, looking for a spot flat enough to land my bulky transport, and touched down at least half a mile away from the base of the plateau. I glanced over my shoulder uneasily as I stepped outside. My planned walk toward the cliffside village turned into an uneasy jog. The wall of dust in the distance was steadily marching closer, and tendrils of deceivingly gentle air brushed against the back of my neck. I conceded that it would be futile to attempt to make it off the planet before the storm hit. I could speak some of the Grylix's language and was optimistic that I'd be able to negotiate an overnight stay in their village.

I was shaken from my thoughts by a sound that made my stomach bottom out in my gut: the unmistakable whine of twin ion engines. I spotted the sleek black silhouette of Kylo Ren's command shuttle gliding across the plateau from the east.

Dammit.

My jog turned into a flat-out run, breaking into a sweat that wasn't completely triggered by the heat. If Ren reached the Force user before I did, I feared it would be a repeat of Tehanne.

The pilot was keen to avoid the turbulence of the dust storm bearing down from the west. The ship set down out of sight on the far side of a butte that lay between me and the village, its slim footprint able to find a closer landing spot than my own ship. But as I rounded the butte a minute later, I was stunned to see Ren waiting for me, standing alone several hundred yards away from his shuttle. Despite the heat, he wore his standard black outfit, complete with the hood of his cloak pulled low over his helmet.

I slowed to a walk and approached him, determined not to arrive gasping for air like I had on Tehanne.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Acquiring a new apprentice for Snoke," he replied as if I were the biggest idiot in the galaxy.

"I meant, why are you standing there? Waiting for me?"

"I was going to tell you that you're wasting your time. This Force user is mine."

"No, it's not, you bastard."

The air around us darkened, but I sensed it wasn't from Ren calling on the dark side of the Force. I blinked and looked at the arid landscape to the west, where the sandstorm now towered high enough to blot out the afternoon sun. The clouds gurgled with thunder and spat out shards of lightning that spiked violently into the earth.

I had experienced storms like this on Jakku: great beasts of sand, wind and thunder that stalked the desert and could shut down Niima Outpost for days. I had less than ten minutes until the storm hit, and would not survive if caught without shelter. My closest refuge was my ship. My other option was to reach the Force user in the village, and wait out the storm with them. But my biggest problem was still...

A gloved hand waved in front of my face and I jerked away. Ren had been talking to me, I realized, and expected some sort of answer. However, I didn't want to give away how inattentive I'd been in his presence, so I kept my mouth shut.

He folded his arms in disapproval. "It's just a storm," he said, though I sensed a trace of uncertainty in his tone.

I was tempted to agree and just leave him there, because a desert storm of this magnitude could take care of my lingering Kylo Ren problem permanently. Instead, I sighed at myself as I shook my head.

"I've lived through these storms, and know many people who haven't. Scavenger, remember? The only thing to do is take cover and wait."

He was silent, but from the slight tilt of his helmet I could tell his eyes were moving between me and the horizon.

"We'll take shelter on my ship," he decided out loud.

"No, we will not. I'm going back to mine and we'll call a truce till the storm has passed."

Black energy bloomed around my head – shockingly cold in the arid heat – as Ren hunted for a trace of deception. He hadn't attacked me like this since Starkiller. Though my shields had grown much stronger since then, he mentally struck me right between the eyes and twisted and tugged until my plans scraped free from my mind.

"Liar," he growled. "You would go straight for the Force user."

"You expect me to wait out the storm on board your ship, surrounded by Stormtroopers? We need to find a neutral area. We can go to the village together."

"The Grylix hate outsiders. They might take in one of us, but not both. And there's no one else here with me. I traveled alone."

I pushed a considerable amount of power toward his ship, probing for heat signatures that would indicate someone was on board, but Ren appeared to be telling the truth. He was clearly serious about waiting out the storm together, and he must have sensed I was considering his proposal.

"My ship has rations and a refresher. It's the safest and most fair solution to both of us and you know it."

My hand drifted toward the hilt of my lightsaber and I took a few careful steps sideways, testing a dozen scenarios in my head where I'd be able to overpower Ren and continue to the village. If I defeated him and spared his life, I was sure he'd find a way to summon the full might of the First Order to the planet. The only way to make sure that didn't happen would be to… but I shied away from that thought immediately. I never, ever wanted the burden of having to tell Leia I had ended the life of her only son. Provoking a fight didn't seem like the appropriate solution for a Jedi-in-training, in any case. And then, of course, was the possibility that I'd lose, but I uneasily shut down that line of thinking, too.

Thunder crackled in the approaching dustclouds and the wind ripped at our clothes. The storm had continued to swell in strength during our spat, and my mouth fell open at the tempest bearing down on us. It would be impossible to reach the safety of my ship now, but a frustrated Kylo Ren still blocked my route to the Grylix village in the plateau.

Then, in a move that surprised me and him equally, I dropped my hand away from my lightsaber.

"You will shut down all of the comm systems. You won't contact the Order at all. Your ship will not depart the planet. We will wait out the storm on the surface," I said, setting clear ground rules. If we made it to orbit, lightspeed was only a console touch away and I feared the temptation would prove too strong for Ren to resist.

"Fine," he grudgingly spat after a moment's silence. "But you're cleaning the sand out of the ion engines."

We moved in a dead run toward his ship. Even with the wings retracted, the shuttle's silhouette looked predatory in the rapidly darkening air. We staggered up the loading ramp and through a door, which sealed behind us as soon as we made it inside.

We stood in a large, empty room that seemed to be a multipurpose staging area. We were alone, as Ren had promised. Several displays were embedded in the far wall, along with a variety of handles that would open storage compartments if pulled. Twin benches lined the walls to my left and right – the only seating available for passengers. The interior was unfinished and industrial, with pipes and lightcables roping across the ceiling. The ship was clearly not intended as a personal luxury vehicle, but its utilitarian appearance matched Ren himself: unpolished and tough.

Ren ripped off his helmet and tossed it on one of the benches. As I followed him through a short hallway that sloped sharply up into the cockpit, I noticed how his hair curled against the back of his neck, damp with sweat. After that, I studied the floor very carefully to make sure I didn't trip while entering the cockpit.

Ren dropped into the pilot's chair and I landed in the co-pilot's chair next to him, realizing a fraction of a second too late how cramped the cockpit was. There was barely a foot of space between us, and though Ren and I weren't currently at each other's throats, I didn't trust it to stay that way. My hand casually laid in my lap, ready to snatch my saber if needed.

It was impossible to see anything out of the front windows besides sand. It howled past us as if flung out of an enormous bucket moving at lightspeed. But that didn't make sense, I realized, because Ren's ship didn't have any windows. I looked closer and realized that one continuous, curved holoscreen spanned the entire wall and displayed the landscape outside the ship.

Ren checked displays and issued voice-commands to insulate the ship from the worst effects of the storm. I watched his movements to make sure he didn't touch the communications panel and alert the First Order that he had me on board, but it was hard to drag my eyes away from the profile of his face. With his strong nose, perturbed expression, and hands intently working on the console spread before him, for a moment he looked heartbreakingly like Han.

Well, except for the scar.

I recalled how I'd split his face open on Starkiller, and was so absorbed in the memory that it took me a moment to register that I was no longer staring at his scar. He had turned his head and was looking right at me, dark eyes flashing in ire. I tightened my mental shields, sure he was going to try to pry into my thoughts, but he did something else entirely.

A black cord of Force energy erupted from midair and wrapped around my wrist, jerking it into his outstretched hand. I barely fought back a shriek of surprise as he leaned closer while pulling me across the armrest of my chair. Force power instinctively flooded my body and crackled down my spine, but he simply pressed my hand against the scar on his face and said, "Get it over with. I hate when people stare."

I froze, absolutely bewildered. We didn't move for a long, torturous moment, our gazes and skin locked together in a way that felt forbidden and surreal. I hoped he would just give up, let the moment pass and release my hand, but his eyes burned in a silent challenge and I realized he was not backing down.

He was acknowledging my triumph over him at Starkiller, so why was I the one who felt vulnerable?

I flexed my fingers and Ren slowly released my hand. My fingertips drifted down the marred river of flesh on his face. The scar tissue was ridged and coarse, and I couldn't help but ask, "Why didn't it heal… differently?" Even a field medic would have had tools to cauterize and smooth the skin instead of leaving behind such a scarred mess.

Ren's gaze was firmly fixed on a point to the left of my face. "Supreme Leader ordered it. He congratulated me on being nearly as ugly as Vader." His voice rumbled as it emanated up from his chest, rolling through my fingertips. I understood the words he was not saying out loud: Snoke had wanted the scar left as a raw and gruesome reminder of his weakness.

My fingers started to trail over his jaw, but a sudden shiver passed through his body and I snatched my hand away as if burned.

"Satisfied?" he asked. I stared at the curved holoscreen showing sand endlessly blowing by outside and didn't answer.

The storm groaned and howled around the ship, relentlessly whipping gritty earth against the hull. The turbulent particles outside reminded me of something eerily sentient, and were almost mesmerizing in their frenzy. We sat in tense silence for several minutes, waiting for the other to break the fragile truce which had sprang up so suddenly. More long minutes passed, and though the agitated sand outside the ship reflected the thoughts hurtling around my head, we maintained the peace between us.

Then, Ren turned to look at me and a familiar cold finger trailed upwards along my spine. I rolled my shoulders and shot him an irritated look.

"You're loud. It's hard not to listen." He stood up from his chair. My hand shot to my lightsaber handle, but he simply brushed past me and left the cockpit.

I glared at his retreating back and bolted out of my own chair to follow him. "Luke says my mental shields are excellent during training. Yet you claim to be able to hear me."

"I can't sense exactly what you're thinking," he explained over his shoulder. "It's like white noise, but it gets louder when you're obsessing over something."

"I was not obsessing–"

"You're easy to tune out," he interrupted, "but you need to learn how to block it from escaping."

"Or you should just stop listening."

"Snoke would not stop listening."

I frowned, for hadn't I said something similar to Fariya just last week? We entered the main room of the ship and he turned to face me. The sight of his dark eyes and black clothing made me stop short. It really struck me, in that exact moment, how bizarre it was that we were standing here having a relatively civil conversation about the Force.

"It's not hard to do," he said, his small frown matching my own. He reached out and tapped at the air right in front of the bridge of my nose. I flinched a bit even though I saw his hand coming. "Your shields are weak here, between your eyes. It's common for humans due to where our eyes sit in our heads. Move some extra power there."

I did as he instructed, briefly going crosseyed as I tugged some power from the air and funneled it to the weak spot he had pointed out. My eyes flicked back to Ren when I was finished. He nodded and scratched the inside of his ear at the supposed sudden absence of sound.

"I suppose you want the grand tour."

I felt bold enough to roll my eyes at him. Ren pointed toward a hallway in the corner, next to the exterior door. "That hallway leads to storage, and the refresher is through there, too."

He crossed the room to open a compartment in the far wall and pulled out a handful of rations. He held several out to me, but I didn't move to take any and he mistook my silence for snobbery. "Sorry that dinner is not up to your standards," he sneered, tossing them onto the nearby bench instead.

A smirk danced across my lips, and I let out a sound that stopped just short of being a laugh. The packages of rations would have been a feast on Jakku. "You don't know the first thing about me."

I walked around the room where we were stuck with each other for the foreseeable future, inspecting the variety of displays. Ren leaned against the durasteel wall and ate a ration with his fingers.

Ren was unpredictable when he was angry, so I cast about for a neutral topic of conversation. "I didn't know these types of shuttles had hyperdrives."

"They don't. I had one installed."

Of course the First Order would have the means to install hyperdrives in their command shuttles at will. Meanwhile, I flew through space in a transport that looked like it had come from Unkar Plutt's junkyard.

"Why did you come out here by yourself?"

He shrugged, eyes flicking toward me and then focusing back on his meal. "It seems you chose to do the same."

I ground my teeth at his vague response. "You could have shown up with an armada of ships and Stormtroopers. Knocked me out and hauled me back to the Order's flagship. You've done it before. Yet here we are."

"Here we are," he agreed.

I folded my arms, increasingly annoyed. But perhaps I already had my answer. Ren didn't seem to view me strictly as an enemy, though I wasn't sure what the hell our alternatives were. I thought of the strange connection that bound us together, his proposal of combining the light and dark sides of the Force, and the shared sense that we didn't quite fit in with the grand scheme of things. Did he want someone around who understood how he felt? Did he value that over the reward for turning me in to Snoke? What exactly wasthe difference between being enemies and rivals?

"What do you want from me?" I demanded, frightened by the pattern of my thoughts. "Why are you being so…" Nice wasn't the right word. "Not evil?"

He unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and held it up. I tensed and took a step back.

He sneered at me. "I'm not even – oh." I had sent him a clear memory of his false surrender to Han, ending with the red blade plunged through his father's chest.

Ren studied me with an unreadable expression, and then pulled open a compartment in the wall and deposited the saber inside. He closed it with a firm push and pulled a glowing, cylindrical object out of a slot in the wall. I recognized it as a crystal key.

"This is the only way you can unlock that compartment," he explained, tossing the key on the bench closest to me. "Do whatever you want with it. I just need it back before I leave the planet."

I glared at him, though I picked up the key and grudgingly rolled it between my fingers.

"I know you don't trust me," Ren said, moving toward the opposite bench. "This is the best assurance I can give you that I mean you no harm."

"You didn't need a saber when you tortured me."

Ren whirled to face me, anger hardening his features. My hand shot to my saber. "Those were my orders. Finding Luke was just as important to me as it was for the Resistance. You had what I wanted. You still do."

I narrowed my eyes at his phrasing.

His eyes flicked away, unable to meet my stare. "The map," he clarified. "You found Skywalker. And I sought your help last week, to better understand the Force, but you refused to give me that, too."

"I told you my reasons and they haven't changed. Get help from the other Force users you've enslaved to the Order."

"They're untrained. You're stronger than all of them combined." He brushed his hair back from his face, frustrated by my stubbornness. "I don't want to force you into helping me, Rey. I want you willing."

More than one meaning lurked in his words, and my breath caught in my throat at the faint heat in his eyes that had not been there moments before.

I swallowed hard and lofted my chin, haughtily countering, "And if I'm not?"

He gave me a deep, measuring stare.

"Then I'll wait for the Resistance to fall, and I'll take whatever I want."

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