Rey awoke late the next morning to find Ben lying beside her in bed. She was conscious of that scratchy irritation in her brain, the gentle soothing rush as it turned into something like happiness but the sight of a black clad leg at very close range still came as something of a shock.

She scrambled backwards quickly, hanging off the end of the mattress while clutching the covers to her chin. Given his position propped up against the headboard, ankles crossed, a scatter of holopads in his lap, he must be in his own bed, or leaning somewhere he was confident he wouldn't be disturbed. He didn't look over at the movement, fingers still skimming the technology in his hands.

'You get up very late.' The disapproval was evident.

'Not always. I've been very tired recently.'

He flashed a sharp look at her and she pulled the fabric closer. 'Could you close your eyes while I get out of bed?'

His sigh was both impatient and long suffering and she waited until his fingers stilled before dashing out of bed in the direction of a robe. There was a knock on the door immediately afterwards and she was conscious of his eyes tracking her as she went to answer it.

Poe stood on the other side, bearing a small bag and a beaming grin. 'Missed you at breakfast. I've come to say goodbye.'

'Now isn't a good time. He's in here.' She inclined her head with a significant look and Poe's expression darkened.

He put a foot across the threshold, barged her backwards as he came in. 'Where is he?'

She kept her voice to a whisper, hoping that whatever the man on the bed was reading it was keeping him completely engrossed. 'Over there.'

'He's in bed with you?' Poe's voice was incredulous. 'You let him in bed with you?'

'Of course not.' She forgot to whisper. 'I haven't invited him. He was there when I woke up.'

'And what's he doing?'

She shrugged. 'Reading, by the look of it.'

Poe squinted. 'I can't see him.' He reached for the blaster at his hip. 'But that's not a problem.'

He fired off several shots, punching holes in the bed and setting part of the mattress on fire.

'Who are you talking to?' Ben was only mildly interested, rather than seriously injured.

'Poe Dameron. I think you two have met. He just tried to kill you.'

He raised an eyebrow, maintaining his position suspended in mid-air although Rey's bed had just collapsed onto the metal floor of her bedroom and continued to smoulder. 'He does know that I'm not actually here?'

'He knows,' she confirmed. 'But he'd like to kill you anyway.'

'Are you having a conversation with him?' Poe was getting more annoyed by the minute. 'Are you treating him like he's a normal person?'

'It's hard not to. He's here all the time. He rarely leaves me alone for a whole day anymore.'

'I could say the same about you. It's only sixteen hours and forty-seven minutes since I saw you last.'

'How do you know that?'

'I'm counting.' He returned to his reading.

Poe stepped closer. 'I have a theory about that. Just go with me for a minute.'

The he stepped very close, put her arms around his neck, tilted her chin and kissed her, holding her waist tightly enough that it took some effort and her palms braced against his chest to get him to back off. A lightsaber blade had appeared in close proximity to his neck, although he couldn't see it. The man wielding it didn't waste words, simply probed the air for a target.

'What's he doing?' hissed Poe.

Still reeling at the unwanted encounter Rey wiped her lips on the back of her hand. 'Trying to kill you. What was that all about?'

Poe stabbed a finger at her. 'This is personal. If not for you, then for him. He appears in your bedroom, in your bed and he makes conversation. It shouldn't matter to him who you kiss, but his first reaction when someone does is to try to kill them. Doesn't that worry you? I know Leia thinks this is all some big battle between the dark and the light, but she doesn't see what's in front of her face. Kylo Ren is here for you. You mean something to him personally. You're in danger as long as he keeps visiting. You need to find a way to make it stop.'

'What's he saying?' Ben demanded. The humming blade was steady, and Rey had no doubt that Poe would already be dead if this was any more than a hallucination.

'He says I need to find a way to make you stop visiting me.'

The weapon was extinguished. 'I agree with him. What did you find in those Jedi books?'

Rey ignored him. 'Are you leaving then?' she asked Poe.

'I'll be gone for a few days. I just wanted to tell you to take care of yourself while I'm gone. I know you don't like being stuck on the ship but as soon as I find us a base you'll have a bit more freedom, as long as you can get rid of him.' He jerked a thumb in the wrong direction.

'I'll try,' she promised. 'And good luck.' The door shut behind him.

'Poe is gone,' she confirmed, in response to the unspoken enquiry.

'Does he force himself on you a lot?' The question had a threat behind it, and it wasn't aimed at her.

She shook her head. 'He's never kissed me before. He was trying to prove a point.'

'That you're easy to take advantage of when you're tired?'

'No. That I mean something to you, personally.'

He shrugged. 'Maybe once. But you turned me down and I never ask twice. Shall we look at those books?'

She was shaken by that admission, and the casual way in which he uttered it. It appeared she'd lost something she wasn't aware of having and she picked up the book she'd been reading with numb fingers, holding it out. 'I stole them from Ahch-To when Luke wouldn't teach me. I decided to teach myself.' The book passed straight through his hand.

'Open it, and I'll look over your shoulder.'

She sank to the floor, cross-legged and he leaned over peering at the random pages she flicked through with close attention. Despite the fact that he wasn't actually in the room, or in fully physical form anyway, her back tingled with the warmth of his chest so close against it, and she was conscious of her heart speeding up a notch.

She flipped a page and attempted to concentrate. 'I can't read much of what it says, can you?'

'No, but I'm willing to spend quite a lot of time trying. There's always been a question in my mind about the Jedi, which Luke was never able to answer. Where are all the really powerful ones? As far as I can tell the Force isn't finite – there isn't so much power for the dark side and so much for the light – so how come individual Sith lords are so much more powerful than individual Jedi? Snoke was the most powerful Force user I've ever seen, much stronger than Luke and my grandfather was responsible for hunting down and destroying most of the Jedi, he beat them all. Why aren't the Jedi as strong as the Sith? Maybe there's a secret here that the Jedi never unlocked, maybe I could add it to what I already know. If I could harness both sides of the Force I'd be unbeatable.'

She let that sink in for a minute. 'Or I could just show you this interesting section on weapons I read. I need to rebuild my lightsaber, but this book doesn't say where you get kyber crystals from. Do you have any ideas?'

'Can I see the damage?'

She picked up the broken weapon, turned the pieces over carefully in both hands, giving him a good look.

He shook his head. 'That was a family heirloom. You should have been more careful with it. It never belonged to you.'

'You're the one who broke it. How do I fix it?'

'You'll need a new crystal. The caves on Ilum would be a good place to start. Get a new crystal and I'll help you make a new lightsaber.'

'And why would you do that?'

She glanced over her shoulder for an answer, found he was in the process of leaving.

At least she had something to do now, something else to focus on apart from her daily visits, a task to accomplish that had nothing to do with him.

But when she tried to get up from the floor her legs buckled underneath her and she fell.

He heaved himself off the floor, rested his head against the wall behind his bed and searched the ceiling for answers. He had been in bed before she arrived, for the simple reason that it hurt too much to get out of it. The dull, aching throb in his muscles that had bothered him the previous day had intensified into a deep thrumming pain that had spread into his bones. He'd woken to it earlier, after barely a few snatched hours of sleep, fraught with nightmares, and lain there in the dark understanding instinctively what was happening.

He was in pain, and pain meant Snoke.

For years and years pain had been part of his daily life, physical pain mostly, although Snoke hadn't stinted on the emotional and psychological torture either, and it was inconceivable that the wracking spasms shooting through his nerve endings barely a week after Snoke's death wouldn't have the same cause. This was Snoke's bond at work, punishing him from beyond the grave for defying the will of his master. Snoke had wanted Rey and he'd humiliated Kylo to get to her, consciously breaking his spirit so that she'd see his weakness and come running. This was the same thing, Kylo's suffering a lure to draw her in, and an incentive to his apprentice to seek her out.

He breathed through it, knowing from long experience that the only way forward was one step at a time, one breath at a time, slow and steady. Focus. Concentration. Never giving in.

He'd had no choice but to set the trap. The pain was only going to get worse until they were together, which meant he had to draw her out, one way or another. She'd mentioned her broken lightsaber and he'd seen his chance. The First Order could get to the caves of Ilum before her, would be waiting when she arrived and once she was captured he'd bring her on board his flagship and the pain would go away. Then he could concentrate on smashing Snoke's mental handcuffs and get on with his life.

She'd come for the crystal because she trusted him, and she trusted him because she loved him. He hadn't missed the flicker in her eyes when he'd deliberately suggested that he'd cared for her once, but not anymore – she'd been hurt, wounded by that. Nor had he missed the increased rate of her heartbeat when he'd sat too close, the shallowness of her respiration, the slight flush on her cheeks.

The pain arced across deeply buried receptors, sparking a trail of agony that burned as it passed. He'd managed to get up and dressed and started working before she'd appeared but it was going to take a significant effort of will to get through the day.

Focus. Concentration. Breathing through it.

He pressed a button on the commlink beside his bed. 'I want Destroyers in a holding pattern around Ilum as soon as possible. Ground troops saturating the planet. Special forces in the caves. It's a target acquisition mission, you are to capture Rey of the Jedi and bring her to me, unharmed.'

'Understood, Supreme Leader.'

But he wasn't finished. 'I also want a trace put on a Resistance fighter called Poe Dameron. His biometric data is in the archive, send it out to all units and anyone locating it has orders to shoot on sight. I want him dead.'

'Right away, Supreme Leader.'

He leaned his head against the wall again, closed his eyes and the memory crept into his mind, an unwelcome visitor.

Crouching on the floor in a puddle of his own blood, the bowcaster shot to his side dripping freely, the slash to his face raw and burning, his head bowed, his mind open. Snoke's prying fingers rifling through his brain. There was no medical attention until his master allowed it, no release from the pain of failure, just more humiliation. At that point he'd had no other wish than to be dead.

'And what did you do then, my apprentice?' There was no need for the question, Snoke already knew.

'I killed my father.' The words cost him, made it real.

'And yet you are weaker than ever. Bested by an untrained girl. How have you fallen so far?'

He didn't answer, kept his head down.

The creature penetrated his mind, thrust its consciousness into the secret places inside which should have stayed private. 'The girl. She intrigues you. She attracts you.' The thing hissed, more monster than man. 'You desire her.'

He looked up then, aware that tears were streaking his face, half hoping that Snoke would strike him down for showing such weakness. 'I killed my father, Supreme Leader.'

Snoke stretched out a clawed hand. 'Well done, my apprentice.'

That same memory had assailed him in the throne room, watching Rey have her mind forced open in the same way that Snoke had done to him, many times. The cruellest stroke. Snoke had used the phrase and it had sailed straight over Rey's head and hit its intended target. Kylo had understood then what Snoke was going to ask him to do.

The cruellest stroke was the one that killed the thing you loved.

Snoke knew about the feelings that had leapt into life the first time he'd met Rey, confused and indistinct, but strong, strong enough to throw him off during the battle in the forest, preventing him from pressing his advantage and allowing her to find the light and fight back. Feelings that had sharpened and become more defined every time the Force connected their minds, until he found himself counting the minutes since he'd seen her last. Feelings that had culminated in one desperate plea in which he'd wanted her to share his throne and his life and she'd thrown it all back in his face and rejected him, just like everyone else.

Now he felt nothing, except that flare of jealousy when he'd seen her kissed by another man.

He sighed, the pain flashed across this body, and he tightened his lips to suppress a gasp. It was going to be a very long day. He gritted his teeth and got up.