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Chapter Six

Battle of Wills

"For almost a minute the two of us were locked in a battle of wills that had no possible winner, only a different order of losing."

- Mira Grant, Parasite

Leia brought me to a room late at night, well after the altercation with Kylo. We had sat and talked for hours, occasionally joined for a few moments by someone who needed a decision or something from the Resistance General. She was such a kind, sad old woman that it made my heart ache. She loved her son so much, and missed him. I wondered how long it had been since she'd seen him. I didn't have the strength to ask.

"Stay here for the night. We should have the rest of the planet under control by mid-day tomorrow," Leia led me into the room. It was large, probably used by travelling diplomats to the tiny planet. It looked like it hadn't been used in ages.

"And then I can go back to Hallaport?"

When I turned to the General, her shoulders had sunken, "I know Poe has talked to you about this already, however-"

"This isn't my fight," I couldn't look at her sadness, and turned away, "Both my parents believed in different sides, joined, and it killed them. If I help you - if I join the Resistance - that could be me. I won't be able to go where I want, do what I want... explore the Force like I want."

"You make it sound like you would be a mindless slave. No better than a stormtrooper," Leia said, "But I know that you know that's not true. No one in my command is forced to undertake any mission. Everyone is allowed the volunteer, or refuse."

"People died today," I looked out the window. It was dark out, "Did you feel it too?"

"Yes."

"But you still do it. You still order more life taken."

"Yes."

"How does that make you better than the First Order?" I looked over my shoulder at her.

"Because if we don't, then the First Order will keep taking systems. Keeping taking planets. Keep forcing their ideals down the throats of every system, every species," Leia shook her head, "Everyone who gives their lives in the Resistance knows that we are fighting to keep ourselves free. You say you just want to be free, Iliana. The First Order isn't freedom. It's conformity, and it's the dark side."

"Dark doesn't mean evil, General."

"It's doesn't mean good, either."

"Good point," Back to the star-filled sky. I sighed, leaning against the windowsill, "... I'll think about it."

I could hear her smile, "That's all I ask. And yes, if tomorrow you want to go back to Hallaport, I'll have Poe escort you."

"Yasmyn too, if it's okay. I'd want to say goodbye."

"Of course."

The door closed, signaling the Generals departure. The room they gave me was sparse; evidently it was used by visiting First Order officials. I sat on the wide windowsill, looking out over the retaken city. There were moody, dark clouds in the sky and I wondered if the smoke from before led to their color. It didn't smell like rain, not yet.

"We have to stop meeting like this," I didn't turn to look at him this time. My eyes were for the clouds.

"We are nothing to the will of the Force, it seems."

"Mmm."

Neither of us spoke. He was standing nearby, mere inches behind my left shoulder, but I didn't want to break the strange calm that settled over the room. I could feel him through the Force, fingers touching at the edges of my mine. Not prying, not attacking... just curious. He wanted to know more about me, and I ignored how that made my heart swell. I knew about all the terrible things Kylo Ren has done. The stories filtered down to the mooks at the outpost in different ways, depending on whether it was the Resistance or First Order in charge.

He broke the silence, "You're not afraid of me."

"Well, you're not here," I shrugged, "And I said it before; it's not like you can cause me pain, anyway."

"I bruised you," His voice was thick, with a strange and almost regretful timbre to it, "When you were talking to the Resistance General."

"When I was talking to your mother," I looked to the side just enough to raise my sleeve. Only one of the finger-shaped bruises showed until I did that. Now, a near complete hand print was shown off for him. His breath shuddered, "But it'll be gone in a few days."

He said nothing, but I felt how the Force within him enveloped me with feelings of regret. Not sadness per se, just regret. He wanted to apologize, but I got the feeling that Kylo Ren wasn't the sort of man to say he was sorry. He did step closer, edges of his cloak just brushing my jacket, and rested a hand on my bruised shoulder. And I could feel him. It was a more ghost of a touch than anything, since without any interruptions I could focus on the feeling. It wasn't Kylo Ren's physical touch, merely a manifestation of his Force that my body couldn't distinguish. But my mind and soul still comprehended that his touch wasn't 'real'. I wondered what his real touch would feel like.

"Y-you..." His hand was trembling, voice shocked. I hadn't realized just how much of my mental defenses his soft probing got through. Then, after a moment of utter silence, he stilled and I felt him caressing the edges of my mind again, "You can."

I chuckled. I couldn't help it; did he think I was that stupid? That naive? I brushed his hand off, wrapped my arms around my knees as I brought them to my chest, then finally looked at him, "You won't manipulate me, Kylo Ren, you-"

His expression was dark and intense, but not angry. As if he stared into my very soul, looking for something neither of us knew the answer to. Kylo trapped me on the windowsill, one hand above my head on the window jamb while the other rested on the sill itself, by my feet. When he spoke, it was slow, methodical, and low-voiced. Like every word was chosen with care and weight, "You want to explore the Force. Explore... whatever this connection growing between us. Well know that I feel it too, Iliana." His eyes - so intense as they held mine like a vice - only grew darker and swam with more emotion when he added, "That's the only reason I have come up with for this. I was sent to find the Force sensitive in Hallaport. And I was... intrigued, when I knew it was you. Someone I saw only a handful of times before. And you feel..." The fingers at my brain prodded, just enough that I sucked in a sharp breath and threw his presence right out. He paused a moment, moving back an inch that gave me the much needed distance to breathe again.

"I don't need to see your mind to know how you feel," Kylo pushed off the window and backed up. I wondered for a moment how I looked to him; was I perched on a window of the Finalizer in his eyes? "You want to study why the Force bonds us. You are curious about me. If you were so against me, you would shut me out just as readily as you just threw me out of your mind."

"I-I don't know how to stop this," I looked out at the city again, unable to hold that intense gaze any longer.

"You're lying."

"You don't know me."

"I know enough."

"You can't-"

"I know because I feel it too," There it was again; the powerful, deep tone and slow word choice, "Our mutual curiosity and raw... raw power. The Force isn't doesn't act on its own. It acts when we, consciously or not, manipulate it to act."

"What are you saying?" Don't answer, I pleaded in my mind. I knew what his answer was already.

When I next heard his voice, it was right at my ear, his warm breath fanning across my cheek. My whole body tensed, like a elastic band pulled taut to near snapping, "I want to know you, Iliana. Who you are now, who you were. Why you are so... powerful with the Force. I want to know you, and you want to know me."

"I-I don't." I did, I did, I did.

"We are doing this to ourselves," He spoke his honeyed words again. Now it was my turn to tremble, "And if this... intensity... if it exists like this when there is lightyears between us then, Iliana... how would it be in person?"

I thought my heart would burst out of my chest, it was thumping so hard. I was flush and his fingers again were at my mind. Touching, caressing, never pushing further than I allowed but I was finding myself allowing him in deeper than I ever had because he was right and-

And I threw him out. I shored up the walls of my mind and pushed. The Force bent to my will and when I looked at the black-haired man again, he was picking himself up off the floor on the other side of the room.

"Get out. Get out," I jumped off the sill and shouted, "Get OUT!"

He vanished, leaving behind only hurt and anger that speared my chest. It was like a thread connecting us and through it I felt his rage at my forcing him out. Kylo Ren was right. I did know how to stop his appearing before me like this - at least when he was so far away. I would not be his puppet, I wouldn't be manipulated by him or anyone else. Not matter how his intensity stirred a fluttering in my stomach and warm thoughts in my mind.

I stormed from the room just as Yasmyn rushed in. I sensed her alarm; probably from my scream, "Are you okay? We- I heard shouting."

I froze in the hall only long enough to say, "I need to talk to General Organa."

The next day I was moved to the Resistance flagshoip, the Raddus. Leia was pleased with my decision - Poe and Yasmyn were ecstatic. I was conflicted, and insisted against the large personal room Leia wanted to give me. It was my stipulation for agreeing to do anything for the Resistance. No special treatment. I wasn't here to fight for them; all I wanted was a place a bit safer to hide than on a planet that flip-flopped between the Resistance and the First Order every few years. I also wouldn't put it passed Kylo to send covert operations after me as well, even if the planet was under Resistance control.

Yasmyn suggested I do data analysis and intelligence. Poe wanted to teach me to fight, maybe pilot for them. Everyone wanted me to use the Force to aid the Resistance. Leia was the only one who left the decision up to me, which was how I ended up in the mess hall of the Raddus cantina as a cook. A job that didn't help their goals at all, except keeping people fed.

To my shock, a few days later when my duties were to begin, I found both Nunes and Petra among the crew in the cantina.

Petra made a beeline, squealing as she threw her arms around me, "You're alive!"

"Uhm," I stuttered a bit, smiling as she pulled away, "Petra? Nunes? What... What are you...?"

"We both signed up for the Resistance first chance once they got to Hallaport," Nunes said, a smile if his own telling me he was glad to see me, "After their little interrogations, the choice wasn't hard."

Petra finally let me go, "I'm gonna train to be a pilot, and Nunes here is gonna work as a mechanic when he's not helping out in the kitchens."

"Wow; a pilot Petra?" I said, "That's... That's big."

"They said I had a knack for it-"

"She high-jacked a TIE during the capture of Hallaport and blew up an escaping First Order transport."

My jaw dropped and I was sure the blood drained from my face, "You did what?!"

Petra's face turned scarlet, "It was nothing."

"What about um... Everyone else?"

"About half volunteered with us," Nunes said, "The rest either stayed or left."

That didn't answer my true question, "And... and Malia?"

The two exchanged a long glance.

That night, I laid in my bunk, unable to sleep. Malia was gone. They didn't know where or with who, but with her family in the First Order, it wasn't hard to guess. I was worried for two reasons, both selfish and unselfish. I hoped she got off planet with the First Order alright. Maybe she was with her parents. The other, entirely selfish, was that if Kylo found out I knew and was close friends with someone in First Order custody...

I bit back a cry and threw Kylo's presence from my mind. Did my thinking of him summon the man now?

"I come in peace, Iliana."

He was sitting on the side of my bunk. It didn't sag with his weight, another reminder that he wasn't really here. I looked around, cautious before doing a little digging of my own to project thoughts into his head, 'I can't talk here. There's people around.'

"Is there?" He seemed... Surprised, "General Organa gave you a room on your own, I assumed."

'She tried. I turned her down. I'm just the kitchen help.'

"You're joking," He was incredulous, maybe amused.

'Not even a little.' I rolled over, my blanket-covered knees lightly knocking against his hip. He sat maybe at the level of my stomach.

"You would have your own room, if you were on the Finalizer," Kylo looked down at me, sort of sideways and through his lashes, "Decorated however you want. Your own kitchen, where you could make Chandrilan grappaberry pancakes whenever you want."

'That's specific,' I propped my head up by the elbow, cheek in hand. Chandrilan grappaberry pancakes were my favorite food; mother made them for me when the Resistance controlled Turshaval, 'How did you know that?'

"I was born on Chandrila," His fingers - long and ungloved - picked at something on his end, then smoothed it out again, "And I've been in your head as much as you've been in mind."

I started a bit, scooting back maybe an inch. The thought of him, in my head enough to have pulled something like that out without me knowing was... unsettling, 'What else do you know?'

"You never really had to deal with someone trying to pull information from your head," He said. I couldn't see his face now, but felt a strange sort of mirth from him, "Your mental defenses are... extrodinary, for anything you actively don't want me to know. Anything else... only a push-" It felt like fingers slowly combing through the back of my hair, down the scalp to the hairline. Soft, caressing... amazing, "-gives me."

I sucked in a sharp breath and threw him out, glaring. He wasn't there now, I was sure of it, 'You could ask those things. You don't need to rip everything out.'

"It's easier to just take what I want," He shrugged, "I have the ability, and there is no reason why I shouldn't use it."

'If you're trying to convert me, make me join you, it sure doesn't help."

"You're angry at me."

I sat up, glaring at him, 'You're goddamn right I am! I didn't say you could go into my mind like that!'

"But you're doing the same thing, right now, to me," Kylo turned, slowly, and fixed me with an intense blank-yet-emotional stare as the shadows cast from the bunk above me obscured his face just a bit, "I didn't say you could just put your thoughts, your words, in my head to make it easier for you since there's people around you right now."

My jaw dropped. I couldn't look at him and whipped away, curling up on the bed with my back facing him. It was childish and it wasn't like me, but I couldn't face him because Kylo Ren was right. I hadn't asked; I'd just projected my thoughts into his head without asking. I wanted to project again, tell him that it wasn't like pulling out information - if anything I was putting it in - but the comparison was there and it was valid.

"I feel you," His heat was at my back. I could feel it through the threadbare blankets, "You're conflicted. The two things aren't the same, not completely, but they're close enough. And I didn't say I minded, Iliana."

I shivered when he said my name, and curled in the blankets tighter.

"It's easier in this instance to merely put what you want to say into my head as thought," A warm hand rested on my shoulder. His emotions washed over me; calm, collected, not as wrathful and angry as I knew him to be, "Just like it's easier for me to simply pluck the little minutiae from your mind. We get to skip the boring 'what's your favorite color' stage, at least."

There was logic, but still. It was a violation. A violation he didn't mind in this instance... but at his own words, he couldn't just pull anything important from my mind. Not without concerted effort, and I could just throw him out then, at least with all this distance between us. I wanted to speak, to say something to him, but that would mean either speaking out loud and risking waking someone up and them overhearing, or projecting my thoughts into his mind again. With the comparison leaving a dark stain on the latter and the former not a real option, I was left torn.

"I don't need to poke around to know you don't want to project your thoughts now, not with what I said," The bed still didn't sag when he leaned over me, in the darkness of the Raddus barracks. I wanted to look up at him, but at the same time... I didn't. I was frightened. Not of him, but of this feeling he caused in my chest. The tightness, the pull in a dozen different directions because my stomach flipped when he used that low tone. Yet he was the darkest of men, dark with but a spark of light, and would pull me down a path I didn't want to go.

"I'm not asking anything right now," Kylo's breath puffed over the shell of my ear, warming it. My whole body shivered, "Like you, I'm just exploring this Force bond that's developing."

He was light years away. He wasn't here. I could just throw him out again and sleep. I should throw him out and sleep-

"You don't want to," Kylo rested two fingers on my temple with the light touch of a feather. He trailed it down, down, down my cheek, off my jaw and down my neck to rest, all five fingers now splayed out, on my collarbone. One of his fingers dipped, just by a hair, passed the hem of my collar. I felt his shudder through those fingers, "And neither do I."

I rolled over onto my back, looking up at him with wonder. This man, this not-Sith Knight of Ren, was stirring such feelings in me that I hadn't felt before. It might just be the Force. Maybe it was only his presence, his animal magnetism. Or something else altogether, but...

He was smiling. Actually smiling, though it was just a curve at the edges of his mouth. That mouth, just a bit on the large side with lips parted a hair, that I found myself staring at as heat rose up my cheeks.

Kylo Ren drew close, so close that his breath fanned across my cheeks and unsettled a few strands of my hair. He swept those aside with a hand, one whose fingers threaded through the hair by my ear. His eyes were not searching, not asking, but locked on mine.

"Wha..." I spoke, gulping because my throat was desert-parched. I bit my lip to stop myself. I couldn't risk speaking here.

His eyes - already black in the shadows - seemed to somehow darken still, "Don't do that."

I blinked, tilting my head a bit and was about to ask why before I tasted the copper. Right. Of course.

Kylo's hand left my hair to brace himself and the other traced my bottom lip. His voice was dark as his eyes and thick and gravelly, "You bleed so easily but by the Force when you bite your lip..."

"Kylo..." My own voice was unrecognizable. Breathless, almost keening, and so quiet.

He froze above me, the pressure of his finger on my bottom lip parting it from the top. Then Kylo's eyes flashed, and he pressed against me, lips so close I could really feel the feather-like touch-

"Iliana? You okay?" A head of the Resistance member above me - I think his name was Jax? - poked over the edge of his bunk, "Thought I heard you talking in your sleep."

Kylo Ren had already vanished.

"... I'm fine."

Over the next week, I was torn between reaching out to Kylo and keeping him away. I didn't know what to think about all this anymore. The only thing I was sure of was that the burgeoning intensity of our connection frightened me. He was there, always, in the corners of my vision as sure as he was in the corners of my mind. Glimpses of black in my vision, flowing robes and piercing eyes. Like my own personal phantom.

Petra noticed the shift first, but I brushed off her worry. Veins of stress rooted through me like a tree whose bower was lightyears away.

I'd been in Kylo Ren's mind more than I wanted to admit. I had seen things; the little things, like his caressing non-questions coaxed out of me. His favorite color, contrary to popular belief, wasn't black. It was forest green. His favorite food was actually a meal; whipped potatoes and gravy with a medium rare Tauntaun steak, salad with creamy dressing, and side of garlic bread. He hated tomatoes, but loved tomato-based spicy pasta sauces. I was sure he put these things in my head, because even though I yearned to learn more about one of the most feared men in the galaxy, I wasn't out searching.

A month passed when, as I helped fill some buffet sections (unlike the First Order, most mess halls in the Resistance were entirely buffet, versus the tiered system of who gets what), Yasmyn walked in with a deep-set frown.

"Leia sent me to get you."

I set the serving fork in a pile of mashed potatoes, "Me? But I said-"

"I know, I know, but the General wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

I bristled, but then my shoulders sagged when I saw the pleading look in her eyes. She wasn't telling me to do whatever Leia wanted; she just wanted me to hear the General out.

Leia stood at one end of a long, oblong table in what looked like a meeting chamber on the Raddus. A few others were there; a tall fishy-looking man she introduced as Admiral Akbar, a purple-haired woman, and a few others. She dismissed them as soon as Yasmyn and I entered, then dismissed my... friend... as well. Was Yasmyn my friend, as Malia and Petra? I'd like to think so.

"I need to ask you to do something," Leia held up a hand to silence me before I even spoke, "I know what I said. That we wouldn't force you into anything. It's your choice; and I won't turn you out if you refuse. You can walk out that door and go back to the mess hall whenever you want."

Leia sat in one of the larger chairs furthest from the entry, gesturing to another closest to her. I eyed it for a moment, swallowing my weariness, before sitting. Yasmyn was right; Leia was honorable, and wasn't the type to force me to help them. I might as well hear them out.

"Do you remember my brother, Luke?" She smiled a bit when I shook my head, "I didn't think so. He came to Turshaval only once, about a month or so before Han and I sent Ben to him. He was checking up on my son, to make sure his formal training was really... necessary." Her eyes went downcast for a moment, "He's been gone for about six years now, ever since Ben... did what he did."

She could barely see the bodies through her watery, tear stricken eyes. Leia hadn't known what to expect when Luke contacted her through the Force and told her, and when the nearest Republic outpost confirmed it. It was a massacre, yes, one of fire and horror, but the worst was the efficiency of it. Blood flowed through the cracked and broken cobble streets, and the odd wall was marked with charred blaster shots, but the bodies... they were... perfect. Ruthlessly gunned down with precise shots. No prisoners taken, no quarter given. She came expecting a battlefield. What Leia saw was the remains of an execution field, half disguised in the remains of the fire. Even those taken by her son's blade were done with a cold yet angry sort of efficiency. Desiring of death and bloodshed, but preferring it done cleanly and with the least pain to the recipient.

With the exception of a few. A few rooms, where death hung strongest, were splattered. These few suffered. These few, she knew, deserved it in the mind of their murderer. In the mind of her son.

"Luke was the Jedi who taught Ben," Leia looked at me, everything in her screaming both of her tiredness and honesty, "I should tell you that we need him back because only the Jedi can defeat what my son has become, but that's not the truth. I want him back because he is my brother and in all these years - though I know he's alive - I haven't felt him. I just want my family back."

And then I saw her for what she was. Not a General or a Senator or a Princess. Leia Organa was a sad, old woman. One who loved, had lost those she loved, but never allowed them to leave her thoughts and her heart. Not for the light or the dark, but merely because she couldn't let them go.

"I don't get what this has to do with me?" I said, eyebrows raised, "I... I can't find your brother."

"But you can help," Leia pressed some buttons on a table, and a stellar map of sorts with lots of text appeared in the air above it, "Luke didn't mean to be found, ever. He didn't leave any intentional map behind; no coordinates, nothing. But I do know what he went searching for - the first Jedi temple - and believe that, if we find his research, that is the map I need."

"His research... is a map?"

She nodded, "I have all Luke's old books and manuscripts that weren't destroyed with his temple. I have R2D2, our old astromech droid, but it's been deactivated since Luke left. I think he disabled it to stop his research from getting out. And my brother is a genius; in all this time, we haven't figured out how to restart Artoo."

"Can I look at the droid? Maybe I could-"

"That's not what I need your help with, Iliana," Leia shook her head, "Artoo is... special, to a lot of us. And I know that whatever decryption and mechanical and electronic methods Luke used, it's keyed to a specific activation frequency. He was brilliant, tying the lock to his research to the research itself. It can't be unlocked-"

"Unless you already know something of what's inside," I finished for her, eyes widening, "So you... need a key. A key for a key."

"And I believe that key is in part of the location of the original Jedi temple," Leia nodded, "Like part of a map - well, it is a map really, if I'm right and Luke found the Jedi temple - that will only activate if I can find the rest."

"... I still don't get why you need me."

"Luke started his search before Ben's betrayal, and vanished soon after. I figure that, if I can find whatever he found then that finished his starchart to the temple, it will help us access Artoo to get the rest," Leia pushed another button and the map zoomed in onto a planet, "About a month after Ben betrayed us, Luke went to speak to one of his research contacts on Coruscant, Umila Tekka. He never came back from that trip, so I assume whatever he found from her is what I need to find my brother."

"Please, just... tell me why you need me," I stifled a groan.

"Because Umila was one of Luke's apprentices, years before Ben, who left the Jedi life for another. She's Force-sensitive and, when Yasmyn found her on Tatooine, she asked for you by name."

I started, eyes wide, "Me?" The whispers floated in the air, telling me the truth of Leia's words. She wasn't tricking me. This woman I'd never heard of before apparently knew me, somehow, "But... but I've never heard of her before."

"I thought so," Leia's shoulders sank, "But that doesn't change the fact that she asked for you. Umila won't tell anyone what she told Luke unless you're in the party meeting her on Coruscant."

"... so you need me to go with the Resistance to meet her."

Leia nodded, "... I had great respect for your mother. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

"But you know..." I started to bit my lip before remembering that it was still scabbed from mine and Kylo's... altercation, "I-I don't... I mean, I agree with a lot of the freedom and democracy that the Republic and the Resistance stand for, but... but I also agree with the need for order like the First Order like my father did and and I... I uh..."

"Please, Iliana," Leia leaned forward and took both my hands in her own, "I can see you're struggling so much with what to do, where you stand. All you want is to be free to do what you feel is right. Well, all I want is my family back. Peace is my ultimate wish, but... if I was to admit it... a part of me wants my family back more."

And I could see in, deep in her expressive eyes. She was a woman who lost so much, then gained, then lost everything again. Leia Organa wanted to capture something again. Happier years, a short period of time between the great war of the Rebellion and that of the Resistance. While most of the General was duty to her Republic and the ideals of democracy, there was a kernel there. A bit of not exactly darkness in the unyielding light of her, but just a parental longing. I was sure Leia Organa would never have true darkness within her.

"I'll do it."

Author's note: Don't be mad but I've had like... two and a half chapters done for about a month and a half. Just, life happened yo.