She requests to sleep in the ship, and he allows this. She isn't sure where his quarters are, but they must be far away. There is only a dull, almost satisfying, pulsation at the root of her head now – it feels as though she has accidently looked directly into the sun. Her eyes are full of silent, colourful pain.
She sighs turns in the cot, the woven blanket flapping against her shoulder. Sleep will not come. The little red light winks at her, almost flirtatious, almost mocking – Hyperdrive Compromised. She grinds her teeth. Whilst she does not wish, for even one moment, to escape, she does wish she had the option. She thinks of Luke Skywalker, with his magical hopeful eyes, and somehow in this dark little ship in this darker hangar, she hates him. She hates Luke Skywalker. He has ruined everything. He has abandoned her, abandoned everyone. There is no Light – his words fill her head, ring out like a ritual, a curse, they are somehow becoming a mantra. She is angry, left again nothing but a child, deaf and blind, struggling to survive, completely alone.
The more she considers Kylo Ren, and his offer, and his teachings, the less fear and guilt she feels. This is what she wants, she realises. She wants to be strong and powerful. The Force beckons her to it, after all, binds her and beckons her, and it becomes her.
It is almost morning, Scavenger. Sleep.
She gasps a little and jolts up to sit, blinking into the darkness, his voice apparently sliding directly into her through her ear. But there is no movement. She lies back down, swallowing a sour taste in her gullet, pushing her initial terror into her stomach.
I am cold, she pushes out. It is difficult to focus on placing language and meaning into his head now that he is not close. But she reaches for the ache, for the pain, and feels the source, the warm place where it begins – it is not in the ship, but somewhere above her. It feels like grazing her fingers over a wound, breaking soil to feel the roots of a tree – it's numinous and powerful. She knows where he is, now, she feels where he is.
I offered you living quarters.
If you want to sleep, then stop talking to me, she bites at him.
You are projecting. Incessantly. It sounds like constant babbling in my ear.
She is unsure how to retaliate.
We will work on that first thing, he tells her. Rey huffs, and her breath clouds ghostly white in the air around her. She taps her fingers against her drawn up knee and gazes at the ceiling. She used to imagine an ocean, at this point – but the gravity pulling those waves is no longer the comfort of sleep. Now, it is the confusion of Kylo Ren. Her alternative method, during those sleepless nights on Jakku, something to soothe and exhaust her body and mind, had been very different, because she imagined more than just an ocean. She imagined –
Suddenly she feels an awful, punishing numbness, it's blank but painful and it cripples her thoughts – it feels like pins and needles inside of her mind. She hisses and rubs her temples immediately, sitting up on the bed, breathing through her teeth.
He pushes a thought into her.
Don't.
"What?" she asks the empty, black ship that she lies in. Strangely, he can apparently understand her.
Don't do that.
"Do what?" She snaps. She does not quite have the ability to focus to project her thoughts to him, this feeling is white noise.
What you were considering a moment ago.
She makes a squeaking noise when she realises he has heard her thinking about those hot, exhausted nights – about touching herself on those nights, about keening and writhing and finally sating herself and drifting into a thick sleep. She realises further that she may never be able to do such a thing and be truly alone. She wonders if it will be the same for him – will she know if he – why is she thinking along these lines?
She clutches her head and groans. He lifts the strange sensation out of her head, and she exhales gratefully.
I apologise, she sends to him, and she does mean it – this situation is far too intimate, intimidating, incomprehensible, as it is. This will do nothing but exacerbate the problem.
Yes, he responds finally. Then he slips into her, if you need help sleeping, I can put you to sleep.
I don't want any medical –
No, he interjects her very thought, and the feeling feels as though, for a moment, a thread in her soul as been cut and her teeth have fallen out and her tongue has fallen down her throat. She is completely immobilised. It feels as though looking straight ahead, stood on foggy train tracks. He says, I can place you into sleep. If you don't resist it's quite simple. I need sleep. It's mutually beneficial.
She nods to the empty room, and then pushes the tiny round button to turn on the lights in the cockpit. They are sweet and orangey-coloured, old. She blinks at adjust her eyes, and then she sends to him, Yes, alright then.
Rey can feel him getting closer. She knows when he is in the hangar. A sensation fills her, like cool water washing over a burn. She shakes her head at it, exhausted but now completely stimulated by his presence. It's not pleasure that she's feeling, it's simplistic relief – she tips her head back and stares at the ceiling for a moment, grinding her nails against the skin of her knees. She is completely confounded by it all. But now she is far too tired to fight.
She has turned off the ship's locking mechanism ready for him, and so he walks inside. Something about this feels very secret, almost nice. She has never had a person come to her when she cannot sleep, someone to soothe her, or sing, the way Mother's did during sandstorms on Jakku. Sometimes, during those storms, she had longed to brave the crazed, dark swirling outside of the metal belly she slept in to crawl into one of the tents, where there was a Mother, where there would be some comfort to sink in through the strange freezing heat, where she might be kissed, where she might be cared for – Jakku was so empty, but the face of a child with a Mother seemed so full.
When he enters the ship she clears her throat and dips her head to look at her knees.
The first thing he realises is that the tips of her hair are still singed, and black. It floats above her knees. She is barely clothed. A piece of beige material lies over her shoulders, just covering her body to the upper thigh. Her kneecaps are scaly, and rough, her feet coarse and flaky and reddened. She has a scar running across the top of her calf, in a strange 'L' shape. Scavenging has made her hard, and tough, and abrasive, and brittle – and that, he assumes, is deeper than just to the touch. He is curious. He pushes forward through the Bond. She's thinking about children on Jakku, children unable to sleep, or waking from nightmares.
He knows these feelings too well. He realises he has never done this for someone before, however. But he affirms this is because he needs to sleep, because this serves him well.
"Thank you," she says quickly, and then looks him directly in the eye. He steps closer to her. She is hairy, he notices. Not grotesquely so – it almost looks like prepubescent hair, and he realises this is because she has likely never shaved it, any of it, and therefore it has never regrown. The hair on her legs and arms is somewhat long, but very, very fine and golden. It looks soft. He watches as a few hairs on her arms curl upward towards the sky in anticipation, like thousands of tiny insect antennae.
"I need to sleep," he says, nonchalant.
"I know," she says quietly. "Do you want to sit down?" She swings her legs off the bed and makes room for him.
"No," he says quickly. He wants as little time with her as possible – the greater expanse of her skin being exposed is making this become more than intimate. It's becoming – ah – he can feel certain lines beginning to blur before his very eyes – he wants to touch it – "I'm doing this because I need to rest and you are becoming irksome," he says, almost to remind himself.
She nods and lies flat on the cot, and he walks to her and kneels down beside her. She needs to bathe. There is black rind beneath her nails, and the creases in her hands and between her toes are smudged darkly, some sort of dirt or soil or soot. He can smell her sweat drying in the little hollow connecting her neck and shoulder.
He hovers his hand, palm down, over her forehead. She flutters her eyelashes, and her feet wiggle anxiously.
"Don't fight," he says.
"You think this is what I look like fighting?"
He almost smiles at her.
"Will you teach me how to do this to myself?" she asks suddenly. "Just so I don't have to bother you again."
"I don't know if it's possible," he says, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. Her brow is smooth with perspiration. Though they are both yearning for sleep, this near physical touch makes his head swim, he's full of freezing cold water, exciting and painful and unpleasantly invigorating. He really does despise whatever it is that causes this, he wishes he could slow the Force down, somehow make it easier to comprehend and take in. He feels genuinely bewildered each time she is within eyesight.
He hasn't felt like this before.
"We should test it," she suggests, "it would help me."
He nods. "Close your eyes," he tells her. She closes them. Her lashes lie, long and slightly curved and brown, against her cheeks, which are bitten and mottled from sunlight. She sounds and looks and thinks and feels nothing but Light. He can't stand it.
He does it quickly, feels for sleep – but this is warm, milky, wholesome sleep, not the painful kind, he gives her the kind she desires, that she will go to willingly.
She begins breathing the steady, even rhythm of sleep in an instant. He turns and leaves as fast as he can. He does not look back. He can't. He has never looked back, he won't start to now.
Short update this time. I'm so sorry it's late. Life is cruel.
Lots of love to y'all and please let me know what you think!