The first day back out in space is fairly uneventful. Han takes Kylo off to what passes for a medical bay on the Falcon to get some bacta patches on the burns from where she hit him with the lightsaber. She'd feel guilty, but she still feels so angry at him for going after Luke in such a way.

She's not even sure why she feels so protective of the master Jedi. But he's hope for a group of people that need it more than anything, and so she will protect him with her life. Whatever that might mean for them all.

Kylo disappears after he's patched up. Han shrugs and tells her maybe it's for the best. He needs time to himself or some such thing. He only reappears a handful of times, grabbing some rations and retreating to his quarters without speaking to anyone. Han and Luke confer in whispers after those moments, and there's a tension there that she noticed started after the reveal that Kylo was with them.

Luke remains stubbornly tight-lipped on what exactly happened with his nephew. She's gleaned some small bits. Destruction, death, but there's more and she finds herself frustrated at the lack of knowledge. "What happened with your academy?" she asks late in the first day of travel back to the base.

Luke watches her for a moment and shakes his head. "I don't think that's my story to tell…"

"Then whose is it?" she explodes with. "It was your academy…"

"And my nephew. Yes I know." He glances down at the lightsaber that is still secured to his belt. She wonders if he'll sleep with it. It seems so much a part of him that she's not sure he would ever be able to part with it. "Kylo grew strong with the dark side of the force," he murmurs.

"Yes I know that."

He says nothing then and Rey lets out a huff of frustration. "Then perhaps I'll have to ask Kylo…"

"You would believe him?" Luke asks, and she's not quite sure if she hears surprise there or derision.

"I may have no choice," she shoots back with, standing. She doesn't want to go in search of Kylo, not exactly, but this drive to know, this need to hear what happened from someone is pushing at her. And sometimes she wonders if it's her thoughts…or someone else's.

"How is it you have no knowledge of your Force abilities?" The change of subject is jarring and Rey sits back down.

"I…" she starts to say, but she doesn't know how to answer that, how to tell him that she's a nobody dumped on a backwater planet with no knowledge of the Force outside of what she once thought was myth and legend.

"Did no one where you're from recognize it?" He seems kindly in that moment, fatherly almost, and she shivers.

"I come from nowhere." The words are flat.

"No one's from nowhere," Luke points out and there's a small half-smile on his face with the words.

"She's from Jakku," Han points out as he ducks his head back into the cockpit.

Luke glances at his friend for a moment and then back to her. "Well, then," he starts to say. And then – "I guess you are from nowhere." He looks pensive at the thought and for a moment, Rey almost feels defensive of the place.

You called it nowhere.

It is nowhere.

A nowhere place and a nothing girl…

"How did you end up there?" Luke asks and her eyebrows rise.

"How did you…"

"No one is from Jakku," Han says and there's a kindness in the words that makes her shut her eyes for a moment in both sadness and relief. "It's a dumping ground, kid. Surely you know that."

"Better than anyone." Her voice is tight. With anger, with tears, she's not sure. She's not even sure it matters anymore. Her feelings about Jakku are…mixed…at best. Sometimes she still thinks she should have remained there instead of flying off to the unknown with myths and legends who are crumbling to dust before her very eyes. Before getting trapped into the Force, into whatever this thing is that seems to be connecting her and Kylo Ren.

"You don't need to talk about it," Han says and Luke almost looks like he's going to contradict him. But then he looks at her and she's pretty sure for the first time, he really sees her.

"Get some rest," Luke says and stands. "We can talk more about the Force later."

Rey looks from him to Han. Han shrugs. "You do kind of look like hell."

"Not as bad as Kylo does," she says, a small note of pride in her voice. She'd beaten him. Granted, it was clear he wasn't trying to hurt her, going out of his way to do nothing more than block her blows. She got lucky, hitting him in the shoulder before blasting him back with this power that seems to be even more insistently flowing through her than before.

Han laughs and Luke just shakes his head. "Go on then," Luke says and Rey obeys. Now that they mention it, sleep does sounds good. She's feeling muscles she doesn't usually feel and she groans a bit as she gets up and exits the cockpit. Bone deep weariness hits her almost as soon as she's into her quarters and she falls into the bunk still fully clothed.

He can't sleep.

Not that this is the first time that happened.

In fact, if he was wont to admit it, sleep never came easily for him. First it was the fights, Han and Leia trying to keep quiet, but the sound of it always filtered through the room their young son was attempting to sleep in. Then it was the whispers in the night, dark and frightening and then soothing, an old friend who was there to comfort him when his own parents couldn't. The push and pull of the light and the dark inside him plagued him all through his time with Snoke. Snoke, of course, knew that, and did his best to wipe out the light as thoroughly as he could.

But there was that spark.

And now that spark is the other room, her rage and pain as she rushed at him both beautiful and terrible. She's a force to be reckoned with. He's known this, known it since he first laid eyes on her. When she was just the girl, the scavenger who had the map to his uncle. He had been able to feel her, before he'd even laid eyes on her, tracking her through the woods by the feel of her alone.

And so sleep? With her so close?

She doesn't know.

He keeps coming back to that. His father doesn't know. His mother doesn't know. His uncle is out there right now with his father and he could tell them, but he knows he won't. When he faced him in that clearing near the Falcon, he could feel both the righteous anger and the embarrassment.

Embarrassment.

He had almost killed him, had stood over him with his lightsaber raised and hate in his eyes and come so close to taking the life of his own sister's son.

He never trusted you, says the whisper. He'll never trust you, never again, not after…

"Stop!" Kylo whispers into the darkness of his quarters.

I am part of you.

You can't escape me.

That raspy voice, the dark laughter, it skitters across his skin and lodges deep within him. Always there, always a presence, it was alternately comforting and terrifying.

You couldn't kill your father.

You'll never be a true Dark Side warrior.

You'll never be as strong as Darth Vader.

He's never known much about his grandfather and talking to his mask, a burned-out husk of a thing that he found his uncle had buried among his personal effects at the academy never revealed anything. He's always hoped he's appear, has heard about Force ghosts, but he's never shown himself.

Sith can't be Force ghosts, his uncle had said once, but there was something there behind the statement, something in his eyes, that spoke to another story.

"Grandfather," he whispers.

He still doesn't know him.

"What if I've been wrong?"

"Wrong?" The voice comes like a nightmare in the middle of his frantic reaching out in the Force. "You are wrong. You are an abomination."

He feels the tendrils creeping around him, wrapping around his arms, his legs, his throat.

"Kylo Ren." His name, his other name, comes on a rasp of air. "Always had too much of your father in you."

"No," he hears himself say as he falls to his knees. "No, I killed him…"

The laughter comes from all around, nails scraping the inside of his mind. "You did nothing of the sort, young Solo."

It rises up inside him, lightning tracing along his veins, wrapping around his throat, his heart, wrapping tight around him as he writhes beneath its ministrations.

A memory.

He doesn't know.

Fear and terror and the feeling of his own erratic heartbeat in his ears.

And then silence. "I'm coming for you, Kylo Ren…."

He sits up with a gasp. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but he's slumped in one of the chairs, sweat beading his brow.

Snoke.

And then he's rushing from the room. He needs to warn them. They're not safe. Snoke will hunt them to the far reaches of the galaxy. He will find them no matter where they hide.

He almost runs into Rey when he steps outside his cabin. It's becoming almost habit now, finding each other frantic and terrified in the middle of the night. "Snoke's coming for us," he gasps out before he can stop himself. His hands clench in the air, trying to reach for something, hold onto something.

Anything.

"He can't…"

"He can," Kylo cuts her off with. "And he will." His hands start to drop to his side, clench into fists. Rey grabs him by his forearms.

Sands closing in.

A face, alien and strange.

Laughter, high-pitched.

"You can't hide her from me."

White-hot Force lightning.

The feeling of ants crawling through the nerves of his mind, livewires touching each other.

He sees the moment it all goes from him to her and he can't stop it, can't pull it back into himself. Whatever bond there is between them flies open and Snoke gets through, clawing his way out of Kylo's mind and into hers, following the same conduits he had built when he tore into her mind and she fought back during the interrogation.

"Kylo –" she starts to say and then her eyes roll back in her head and her knees buckle. He does it without thinking, dropping an arm below her and catching her before she can hit the floor.

The laughter fades to nothing and the walls solidify around him.

He's left standing in the middle of the hall of the Falcon, clasping Rey tightly to his chest.

"What did you do to her?" The words come from behind him and he whirls. Her head rolls against his chest and he gathers her just a little bit closer.

"I –" He shakes his head before any words can come out, turning and walking to her cabin. He can sense his uncle trailing behind him and he'd sigh if he weren't so on edge. He's connected to her and he has no idea how or why or what the kriffing hell to do about it.

He sets her down on the bed in her quarters, perhaps more gently than one might expect. Certainly more gently than he had planned to. She's frustrating, alternately curious and cross with him. His shoulder still smarts from where she hit him with his own grandfather's kriffing lightsaber.

When he turns back to the door, Luke is standing there, his father somewhere behind him in the hallway. "I'm going to meditate," Kylo mutters and tries to shove past the two of them.

Luke stops him with a hand on his shoulder and it takes every ounce of patience Kylo has to not punch him. His hand certainly clenches into a fist and his eyes narrow on him. "Not yet you aren't." And there's that Master Jedi voice, the one that he heard so often at the Academy. "What did you do to her?"

He cringes, memories just below the surface. Freeing his shoulder from Luke's light grasp, he does finally move past him, using his height and stronger body to his advantage. Luke lets him go this time and he gets a few feet away before he spins to face him.

"I don't know," he says, throwing his arms wide. "I don't know what I did." And there's the truth of it. His voice quavers slightly on the end and he clenches his jaw, narrows his eyes. With one stride he's back facing his uncle. "I interrogated her."

Luke says nothing, just crosses his arms over his chest, and waits. He's always so kriffing good at waiting. That's something that always managed to just get right under Kylo's skin. He's impatient, wants answers now, and his uncle just waits. He was never able to learn that sort of patience.

"You don't know what they're like," he mutters. "What the First Order is like. What Snoke is like."

"I know what Snoke is like." The words are soft.

"Do you?" There's a sneer behind Kylo's words. "Do you really? I don't think you do. You can't imagine the horrors he inflicts on people."

"You were protecting her," Luke says, his head cocked slightly to the side.

"I…" Was he? Maybe he was, taking her to the ship himself, making sure no one touched her before he could do the interrogation himself. "Maybe?" he finally concedes.

Luke says nothing to that.

Han finally intercedes. "Maybe we should all go sit down?"

Kylo meets Luke's eyes for just a moment and then finally nods. They retreat to the lounge area and Kylo sits, staring at the blank holoboard where he'd played so many games of Dejarik against Chewbacca when he was younger. Before…well, before everything.

"So care to elaborate?" Luke finally says. His father stays blessedly silent, but he can see the way his face looks just a little bit ashen. He's never been comfortable with the Force, preferring to let his mother or uncle deal with his wayward son with the abilities he could never understand.

"Have you ever…" Kylo takes a deep breath. Talking about the dark side of the Force with his uncle is not something he wants to do. But he also doesn't know who else to go to. There's no one. And while he'd rather toss his uncle out the nearest airlock, he knows that if he's going to understand this, he needs to talk to him. It's not easy and he crosses his arms over his chest, crosses and uncrosses his too long legs, and finally just sighs. "Have you ever gotten into someone's head? Accessed their memories?"

"Of course not," Luke says quickly. Too quickly, really.

"It's not the worst thing," Kylo shoots back with. "You've used mind control before."

"I have."

"Then…"

"How is it different? Do you really have to ask that?"

"I knew you wouldn't understand!" Kylo explodes with and then cringes. Kriffing Luke Skywalker.

Luke shakes his head and he deflates a little at the sad look in his faded eyes. "If you really need me to tell you the difference, then you learned nothing from me."

"I didn't learn anything from you, except –" Here he cuts off, glancing at his father for a moment. He doesn't know why he stays quiet, why he keeps this from everyone. He should feel vindicated, should want to tell them all how the great Luke Skywalker almost murdered him in his sleep. But something holds him back. "We were looking for you," he says instead. "There was a map and she'd seen it. We needed it…"

"Snoke needed it, you mean," Luke interrupts with, and Kylo feels himself flush a little. Nothing he ever did was of his own accord, not his whole life. The first decision he felt he'd really made on his own had brought him here. And so he nods.

Snoke wanted it.

He wanted Skywalker wiped from the galaxy, dead and buried on some remote backwater planet. People without hope are easy to manipulate, my apprentice. Take it all away and they'll give you anything they want, just to get by.

"I went as gentle as I could. I didn't want to hurt her." He adds the last as if it would make up for any of his myriad of misdeeds. He thinks of Rey standing over him, fire in her eyes and a lightsaber she'd never used before raised high above her. She was…glorious…for wont of a better word.

"Yet you did."

"No," he says quickly. "It wasn't…" He runs his hands through his hair, feels one of his eyes twitch. "It wasn't like that." He takes a couple breaths. He's not even sure he wants to tell them anything much less what happened there. He still feels the embarrassment of going to Snoke with it and worse…the embarrassment of knowing he'd let her escape. "Something went wrong. It never had before. Not with Poe…" His uncle raises and eyebrow and Kylo shrugs. He doesn't much care one way or another about the likes of Poe Dameron. "She pushed back. And then she was there. She ripped through my mind with a fury I'd never felt before, and she got right to…" His voice trails off.

He doesn't know what to say.

She laid all his fears bare, right there in front of them, pulled them out and threw them back at him. You're afraid…that you'll never be as strong as Darth Vader.

Kylo shakes his head, trying to bring himself back to the present. His emotions are still such a jumble and he's not sure what he feels…for his father, for his uncle, for her. "She found out my greatest fear. And she threw it back in my face."

His uncle contemplates that for a moment and then levels troubled eyes on him. "You didn't know she had the Force."

"How could I have?" The words sound bitter, coming from him. There had been something there, some sense of her right from the beginning. He should have recognized it for what it was, but he'd been so blinded by Snoke and hatred for his uncle that he hadn't looked closer at just who that scavenger was.

The Force.

It's so obvious now.

His uncle says nothing and he supposes there's small mercies in that. "There's more," Kylo finally manages to get out.

"Now we're getting to the crux of it," Luke responds with.

"I hear her thoughts. Not always," he says quickly and raises a hand. "But sometimes, when her emotions are strong. And I seem to be able to communicate with her. Somehow."

Luke leans forward at this and his eyebrows are drawn low. "Go on…"

"The first night we were on base, I needed to escape. I ended up on a hill a good distance from the base where I could practice forms. Yes uncle," he says, and he can't stop a bit of wry amusement from creeping into his voice. "I still practice forms. I was alone. Everyone was asleep. But then she was there. I almost hit her with my lightsaber as I swung it around. We talked. For just a moment. And when I blinked, she was gone again."

Luke watches him for another moment and then leans back in his seat. "She was there," he says.

"Yes. And she can't have been a Force projection…"

"That could have killed her," Luke finishes with.

"Yes." He's heard of it, knows it's possible.

"She's strong with the Force," Kylo says and hears himself say the same thing to Snoke in a memory, an echo somewhere deep inside his mind. "She needs to be trained."

Luke cocks his head slightly to the side. "And you think you should teach her."

"You won't," Kylo fires back with.

Luke crosses his arms over his chest and then finally stands. "I need to do research."

"Do you know what this is?" Kylo hates the way he sounds almost desperate. He wants her out of his head, wants to be out of her head. This connection between them cannot be a good thing. If only she hadn't pushed back. If she had just been like everyone else this wouldn't have happened. The heat of his rage starts to bubble up inside him.

"I may," Luke hedges, and Kylo turns and hits a wall.

Luke regards him calmly. There is no passion, there is serenity. He never did learn that particular tenet. "I'm going to check on Rey and then I need to do some research." He raises a hand before Kylo can explode with anything else. "All in good time, my errant nephew."

And then he's gone, and Kylo is left alone with his father. Han is watching him with the same rueful grin he's seen on his face so many times before. "You really stepped in it this time, didn't you son?"

Kylo feels himself deflate. "I…may have," he concedes.

"You just be careful with her. She's a good kid." He turns and walks away then and Ben almost says something. But what can he say?

I was a good kid once, too.

Any of us can fall.

And Rey has anger and passion in spades. She's closer to falling than any of them would like to admit.