Chapter Eight
Kylo Ren was officially, completely disturbed. He rarely dreamt at night, and when he did, they were trivial dreams, dreams he would imagine were broad and happened to any other commoner. But as he watched the young woman cry out, he knew this was no ordinary dream.
"You're going down a path I can't follow." She would say, same words over and over again. A path she couldn't follow. He saw the pain very clearly in her eyes, yet neither his young grandfather nor his grandmother had any regard for Kylo Ren, their scene playing in his mind as if he was not there, merely witnessing it.
"A path I can't follow." The girl's voice echoed in his mind as the dream began to fade away and darkness overtake his mind. "Anny."
"Ren." Another voice breathed, still feminine, but deeper, a bit rougher, and definitely someone he knew.
"I'm pregnant." Padme's voice echoed.
"A path I can't follow…" the ever familiar voice whispered and he felt his mind shut down in a cold sweat.
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"And how did you sleep?" Luke immediately asked as soon as Rey stepped into one of the rooms that was designated for taking meals in. Rey saw Leia's eyes trained on her as well, waiting for an answer. Poe and Finn had passed her in the hall on the way to breakfast, telling her they were heading out to fix a leak in Finn's ship and that they'd be back in a soon as they could to catch up more with her. She had mumbled a groggy reply, not being much of a morning person.
"I did not have the dream." Rey announced firmly and went to the place that had been set for her at the table. Of course she had had the dream! Same as always, she still felt her stomach tightening and unclenching from the sheer prophecy of it all. Luke nodded and sat down to eat, but Leia stayed standing a bit longer, eyes gently following Rey as she spread her napkin over her lap and picked up the eating utensils as Luke had been teaching her to do.
"Well, good." Leia said finally, the silence that was broken startled all of them and Leia sat down and they were left in an awkward transition of climax back to everyday life and what they intended to do at the base.
"Your mind is alert?" Luke suddenly asked, tone earnest and tight. He looked across the table at Rey. "You must not let him in." Rey glanced quickly at Leia and Luke watched her glance and nodded. "I explained to her my suspicions of the bond between you two."
"An alert mind is always important when you are trying to keep information out of a Force bond." Leia added quietly, eyes on her food. Rey nodded slightly, suddenly incredibly homesick for Jakku where she didn't have to worry about people prying in her thoughts and living on a base with a bunch of people she didn't want to have to talk to. She wanted everyone to just leave her alone. She wanted a full night's sleep without a stupid dream interrupting her peace. She wanted freedom!
"Rey," Leia broke into Rey's thoughts and knocked Rey's mind back to the table and the base. "You are excused." Rey's eyes shot up and stared at Leia in confusion, then saw the knowing behind the woman's eyes. Luke looked at Rey in concern as Rey stood up quietly and excused herself, nodding slightly to Leia as she let herself back into the hallway and looked for the nearest exit.
"…starving." She heard Finn's voice coming from a hall off to her right. Her chest tightened. No. Not more people. She needed to just get away. Too much. It was all too much. She needed to meditate. She refocused her thoughts on how the Force could help her, thinking like a Jedi would. She turned to the left and took off running down the hall, turning to her right at the end of that hall and tearing past a droid that looked after her in confusion. She burst through a meditation room and was back out into the early light of the day before she could take a breath. She kept running, her eyes set on the trees that stood a ways away from the base. She wanted to be completely alone and relish in her solitude. By the time she was shrouded in the forest and vines, she had slowed to a quick walk. She took deep breaths, decided not to think and just looked at the nature around her, appreciating the foliage and letting the fresh air fill her lungs. The Resistance had picked another good planet for their base. She congratulated them on that. She discovered a variety of different trails, each a new sort of calming adventure to breathe in more of a life of simplicity.
"I had the dream again." She suddenly spoke aloud, startling herself as the words just naturally slipped from her lips, the breeze circling the sentence around her. She stopped as the trees cleared out onto a smoothed out stone cliff that provided a good view of the base, just from a higher point. She decided she would meditate here and sat down near the edge.
"I had it too." She heard the words infiltrate her mind, aware that she had not imagined them. But she could do her best to convince herself she had imagined them. She cleared her mind and tried to connect with the Force around her in the beautiful place. She remembered the joy she had experienced when she had discovered she could lift things, finally a controlled amount of concentration.
"Concentrate." She whispered to herself.
"Usually thinking of something calming, safe is a good start." Luke's voice rang in her head from one of the first things he had ever taught her. So now she thought back to when she had felt safe. There had not been very many situations, growing up alone and fending for herself. And then she remembered the feeling of falling, losing control of her body, losing herself to the control of…him. He caught her, her consciousness fading, his arms handling her delicately, the gentle, rocking motion of the way he carried her. She still could not believe he possessed that amount of gentleness. Slowly she became aware of the warm, tingly feeling that was spreading throughout her body, radiating from her midsection.
"Look." His deep voice spoke again and she snapped her eyes open. In front of her, six small pebbles floated in unison, slowly rotating in different patterns. And this time they didn't fall when she looked. They sped up with the beating of her heart. She relished in the pride she felt at mastering the art again, a second time. Until she remembered how she had mastered it. And immediately the rocks fell to the ground, the light she had seen in the world slowly fading back to normal.
"You can't think of him to master this!" she scolded herself. "It's dangerous!"
"You think of me when you think 'safe'." She heard his smug voice slowly creeping farther into her mind. "Of course I'm not surprised."
"Get out!" she snapped to him, finally admitting that yes, he was here and now she had to get him out before he learned anything important. Like the location of the base.
"You brought me in!" he retorted. "Stop thinking about me if you don't want me in."
"Well when you show up everywhere, it's hard to not think of you." She hissed and pushed her wind-whipped hair out of her face in a manner of exasperation. The day was warming up and the air was becoming slightly humid. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she should be going back, but she didn't want to move, and for some reason, she hoped he would say something else.
"You like my voice." He read her mind and she mentally cursed herself ten times over for letting him in like that. "And my long fingers intrigue you." He continued. She felt her barriers slowly slipping as his words pressed harder.
"You didn't have to carry me." She pressed back, trying in desperation to knock him off guard and get him out before it was too late. "But you did. You carried me all the way back to that ship. You like the way I felt in your arms."
"That's merely a hypothesis based on faulty information." She could hear the snap in his voice. Was he getting defensive? She had made that statement up, hoping to fluster him with her lie, but he was acting like it was…true.
"You had the dream too." Rey suddenly remembered his word in her mind when she had first arrived at the viewpoint, like a flood wave.
"It was similar." Kylo admitted and Rey's heart sped up again. "I understand your frustrations now. If I had that dream every night, I'd be grumpy and probably look like that too." She immediately looked down at herself.
"Excuse me?" she raised her eyebrows at no one.
"That wasn't supposed to be out loud." He muttered and she rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips.
"Sorry, for a second I thought you were joking. If I could hide behind a mask everyday I would, but I prefer not to be a fake." She growled, suddenly irritated. Her lack of sleep, his annoying persistence, the horrible feeling she got in her heart when he was in her mind, and his fresh insult weighed on her back as she felt her anger flaring up. "Just leave me alone! I'm trying to do my job and all you do is distract me!"
"You think it's just you?! How selfish can you possibly be?" he cried, and she could hear his anger matching hers, his normal cool, nonchalant attitude slowly falling to pieces, the shattering fragments ringing in her ears. "Everywhere I look, it's you!" he continued. "You plague me in every waking, and now sleeping, hour! And you yell at me like I purposely do this to annoy you! Well guess what! It works both ways, Padawan." He snarled. She absorbed his words in shock.
"Everywhere I look, it's you!" his words rang in her mind. Her stomach began to turn. She felt something. And it wasn't good. She hadn't felt this before. And it was…awful. Her heart was beating the fastest it ever had as she began to recognize what was happening. Something…something was happening between them. And she wasn't going to let it. No.
"You understand why I have to kill you." He whispered. Her head shot up. "We can't keep on like this, you are obviously a weakness for me, a stumbling block and I can't stumble if I want to finish what my grandfather started. Thank you for talking to me today. You have given me what I wanted." And with that she felt his presence retreat. And she fell down on the ground, her legs weak and her anger burning, raging, a blazing furnace in her heart. No! She had let him in! He had seen! She stood up, her anger out of control and she ignited her lightsaber and stabbed it into the ground with so much force, the stone split in two and she yanked it back out, sweat dripping down her face. She felt the evil churning in the wind. He had meant it. He would kill her, her being a hindrance. And he had seen the base, or at least a way to breach it or something that weakened her. He wasn't bluffing that. She knew how weak her mind had been a few moments ago. He just…did that to her. Her mind…froze. Like she was sinking in cotton candy.
"Rey?" she heard Luke's voice ring through the forest. Oh no. She had to tell them now. Tell him her failure. Tell him that for all she knew, Kylo Ren and the First Order could be on their way to destroy the base. She tore off into the forest to intercept Luke and plead for forgiveness. Maybe she really wasn't cut out to be a Jedi.
"We can't keep on like this, you are obviously a weakness to me…" he had said. He just didn't understand what a weakness he was to her.
