He's discovered the trickling well of darkness inside her now, ruthless explorer that he is, and he refuses to leave it alone. It seems she can always sense him in there, carefully circumventing her light and forever seeking out that inky pool, kneeling beside it, lifting cupped hands of dark water to his mouth. He wants to dig it deeper, wider, turn the well into a lake, burst the dams and laugh in exaltation at the wild, oncoming rush. She can feel it.
She can feel it all.
She doesn't know how to stop him. She doesn't know how to stop it. But she threads carefully, hides intentions inside secrets left in plain sight, keeps fragments of calm surrounded by paralysing fear, and she hopes that he won't look through all the pieces of her too closely, that she can walk away from this intact. She can. She won't be seduced by the monstrous beauty he has shown her, she won't be swallowed and crushed in the oncoming flood. She won't. She won't fall like he once did. She won't let it happen. She won't.
She will help her side to victory; she will further peace and stability. She will remain true to the light.
…but it occurs to her that she might still lose the game
It makes her laugh hysterically when she thinks he can't hear.
For the first time in eons or maybe only months she is among people again. He has taken her to a planet in the furthest backwater of the galaxy and then further still, filled with criminals, scum and criminal scum. He's slammed her into a heaving cesspool of alien humanity, just like that, and she struggles to keep her nose above the surface. For the first time since they started down this deplorable road she is among people again, and her sensitised mind struggles to cope. The noise, the smells.
The minds.
He refuses to tell her what they are doing here, and she follows him through the throngs of bodies, through the whispered shouts and murky intentions. Dark skies, narrow streets and artificial lights. Pouring, filthy rain. Muffled screams, plunder and silent murders in the shadows. Smoke. Suddenly she longs for the desert again. She longs to be far away and free (she suspects she will never be entirely free again how did it come to this she only wanted knowledge she only wanted peace she only wanted what was right she only wanted to win). She is in over her head, she is too weak, and never has she felt smaller than she does now.
And then she is alone. He has disappeared from her side, right between two seconds, and she stands still in the darkness with rain slicking her hair to her forehead and the drip drops of water cutting through her brain with a nauseating echo. He must mean something by this but she is too busy trying to quiet the white noise in her head to think on it and anyway he has shuttered his mind to her. There is a silent void where he should be and she begins to walk, aimless, unsure if she's trying to find him or lose him even more. She hates this place. The suffocating claustrophobia of the freighter is preferable to this.
They come silently at her from alleyways, and by the time the force of their intentions penetrates her distraction she is surrounded. They are dirty and leering, just as everything else on this forsaken pit of a planet, and they are many. Five? Ten? More. They draw closer and closer, they hem her in, and the nearer they get the sharper the images of what they intend to do to her slashes through her mind. It is repulsive and violent and degrading, and a faraway part of her indifferently takes note of the overwhelming strength of her rage.
How dare they?
Then suddenly she sees him behind them all, wrapped in shadows, still and focused. Not lifting a finger to help her, eyes blazing, curled mouth. Impatient.
End them.
It's the first time he's whispered words directly into her mind and it is heady. Intoxicating.
And so she crushes their hearts inside their bodies, pulverises their skulls with a thought and a gesture. She sees how blood seep from their mouths and eyes and ears and she can taste it on her tongue. Swirls it around her mouth and savours it.
A tang of iron. Lungfuls of death. Power.
She can feel his pride swelling inside her head, and abruptly she vomits bile all over her own feet.
She did this.
She snuffed lives. It was easy. Oh, and how she enjoyed it.
And he, he engineered it. Of course he did. Her twisted, terrible mentor. Her enemy. Her pitch black light.
She has passed the test she didn't know she was taking and she sobs hysterically as he wraps his arms about her and half pushes, half carries her back to the freighter. He shoves her in front of a mirror, grasps her chin hard and makes her look at herself and him, forces her to meet her own eyes and his and see.
He stands there behind her and they look so grotesquely alike in the glass, with their dark hair and dark eyes, sharp bones and fires and mirror scars.
A vague, fluttering sliver of unease darts lightning fast through her mind (grotesquely alike too alike) but its wings are obliterated in the terrifying magma of his gaze and she forgets.
When he's sure she will stay put he lets his hands slide down her neck, brushes her shoulders lightly. This is the most she's been touched in her entire life.
Her skin is too tight for her body.
"Oh but you are formidable, aren't you? Just look at what I've wrought. Look at you, crawling in the ashes of your own rebirth. You are so much stronger than I could have ever imagined."
You are my army, he murmurs in her head.
She does not know the look in his eyes; it is not familiar to her, yet she can name it. Can taste the word on her lips, the power of it.
Can feel him feeling it.
Desire.
He lifts a large hand to her throat, holds her still with his grip and with his eyes meeting hers in the mirror. She can breathe, but only just. His thumb strokes her pulse, taps her heartbeats, and this is him being as gentle as he can be.
"Do not deny me this," he says. Please, he does not say.
Of course she can't. The lust she feels is alien but it doesn't matter anymore, does it? Not when they are so intrinsically intertwined that she can't tell anything of his from hers any longer.
So when he turns her she lets him. When he lifts her chin she meets his eyes. Then he hesitates and something slips through, something unintended, something he is keeping hidden among those secret chasms in his mind. Faint words stirring, I shouldn't. Wrong. She's…but then his lips meets hers and she loses her grasp on the vague thread of his consciousness and she doesn't care anymore because this is too much, this burns too hot and there will be nothing left of her.
She is slammed into a wall and she scratches at his arms. More. She must have more. They are trying to drink each other empty, take each inside the other. Can bones meld? They must. She can't bear it otherwise, without him inside her and her inside him always. She pulls his hair too hard and he's got blood on his lips, she thinks it might be hers. The rasp of teeth over a collarbone, a breast in the palm of a hand. Breaths mingling , then him ripping hers away. He pants rage and violence and unhinged passion into her lungs in its place, a twisted kiss of life, and she opens herself up for it, capitulates completely.
There is not other choice. The power of life and death proves too potent and she doesn't want to fight darkness anymore, not when it feels and tastes like this.
She never knew something could hurt so exquisitely. How can she return from this?
She doesn't think she can.
You belong to me now, he whispers in her mind as he moves deep inside her and she digs her nails into his shoulders to urge him deeper still. No one else can have you. You are mine.
Yes, she whispers back, and is careful to hide the hint of deceit
Afterwards she lies wrapped in black and watches him watch the stars, sees how his eyes swallow and absorb their light, how his ragged darkness devour them whole, and she knows.
She knows it as surely as she knows that she herself is irrevocably lost: no matter how much she might wish for it now, there can never be redemption for Kylo Ren.
He will never have absolution.
He doesn't want it anyway.