Ben helped Rey limp back to the bunker, acting as a human crutch, her arm draped over his shoulders to support her.

"I feel funny," Rey mumbled just loud enough for him to hear.

She quivered with energy, a white-hot sensation whirring through her whole body, as though a hyperdrive had been built into her. Her legs still weren't strong enough to hold her up for longer than a few seconds, yet she felt so light that if she wasn't holding on to Ben, she thought she might float away.

At the same time, every bit of gravity the planet could generate seemed to want to pull her straight down to it's core. Either way, Ben was her only tether to the surface, and she found herself trusting him infinitely.

Ben was too drained to even laugh at the hopeless understatement of how she felt. He could feel everything through the bond, vibrating like the power core of a star destroyer one minute, purring peacefully as a loth cat the next. It took more out of him than he was aware of, but still he refused to let Rey fall.

Stumbling over the threshold, not even bothering to shut the door, Ben carried Rey to the living room and lowered her gently onto the sofa. After making sure that she was comfortable, he stood wobbling on his feet for a moment, then descended to the floor, sprawling himself out to release the tension that had secreted into his body.

As his joints and muscles unraveled, the blur that hung over his mind began to disperse, and he took mental stock of what had just transpired.

The powerful energy that clung to those stones had somehow focused itself onto Rey, overriding all her systems instantaneously, at once punching the life out of her and breathing new strength into her.

But if that was the case, then why, he wondered, had the same thing not happened to him? They'd been in the same place at the same time, so why hadn't the rocks affected him too?

While Ben carefully turned over each unanswerable question that appeared in his mind, Rey's migraine reverberated throughout her body, pulsating with the rapid flicker of her heartbeat and breath. Nothing and everything around her was real. She wondered if this was what it was like to be in a spice-induced trance.

She didn't notice when she drifted off to sleep, nor when she started to mumble aloud as though she were carrying on a conversation with someone only she could see.

Everything was happening at once, in overlapping fast and slow motion. She had a sense of being both inside and outside her body; seeing the world through her own eyes, while also standing apart, surveying the whole scene as though it were frozen in time; looking down at Ben, dozing just below her, and at her own unconscious form, rolled out over the sofa like a ragged quilt, shivering at the slightest movement of air that touched her.

The longer she lay there, the more actively her brain seemed to take on information she didn't know she was capable of holding. Soon her head felt as though it might split itself apart, allowing everything that had been steadily accumulating within to come gushing out.

Rolling herself over, Rey reached down to to brush at Ben's sleeping face.

Though he seemed peaceful, she knew that he was exhausted; she could feel it, the ever-growing weight over his eyelids as he slid deeper into sleep.

"Ben," she whispered, nudging his cheek. She wished she didn't have to wake him, but certain things were on her mind that refused to sit still and remain silent. When he only grunted softly, she said louder, "Ben!"

Ben's eyes snapped open, and he was momentarily taken aback upon seeing Rey hanging over the edge of the sofa, her face so close to his.

"Are you okay?" he asked sincerely. His dark eyes had taken on that light shade of worried that clutched so earnestly at Rey's soul. They were the kind of eyes she could never hope to resist, no matter how strong she was.

"I'm fine," she said hesitantly, "I think. My head's spinning. My vision keeps alternating between sharp and blurry. And now I feel like I need to…"

The next instant, Rey was off the sofa and out of the living room. Bolting towards the nearest bathroom, she threw open the door, slammed it shut behind her, and soon after began retching into the toilet until she felt she couldn't possibly have anything left inside besides her guts, which quivered violently after each heave.

Ben had gotten up almost as quickly as she had, and now stood at the bathroom door, wincing internally each time the agonizing sounds of Rey's stomach emptying itself against her will pushed through the cracks.

When the vomiting had at last subsided, Rey spent at least ten minutes washing out her dry mouth in the sink. Straightening up again, she observed her pink reflection in the mirror, wondering how anyone could look so healthy, and yet feel like they might implode at any minute.

Ben knocked, softly at first, then more rapidly when Rey didn't respond. She had unconsciously tuned out the whole world around her for a moment that lasted as long as an eternity. The deep sound of Ben's voice coming from the other side of the door woke her from her world of blurred edges and crushing feelings of silent fear.

"Rey?" he said.

"Could you come in here please, Ben?" Her voice refused to come out clearly, sputtering and cracking like a bad transmission signal. Rey had to cough several times in order to clear out the cluttered residues of vomit still lodged in her throat.

"I can't," said Ben.

"Why not?"

"You locked the door."

Rey realized that in her haste to get to the toilet, she'd unconsciously hit the locking mechanism on the door panel. Moving away from the sink, she unlocked the door and let Ben's large frame quietly enter her small realm. She was no longer intimidated by his imposing size. It was an unfathomable comfort now, more than that of any family she could have imagined in her days as a scavenger in the wastes of Jakku.

Ben pushed the rancid stench of Rey's sickness that filled the small room to the back of his mind when he saw the ethereal glow of her face. How had he never noticed before how unfathomably beautiful she was? Was it purely the effects of the shock of energy that had been injected into her body? Or had he simply been as blind as always?

He took a step forward. She stood still, held back by a barrier neither of them could see. They both felt the bond begin to close, and panic spread from Ben's chest like an untameable, internal wildfire. For the first time in almost a year, he wanted to break things, to crush, mangle, destroy. Blinding anger sparked in his fingertips, twitching desperately at his side, starving for the heat of his old weapon beneath his hand.

Neither of them noticed the bathroom lights growing steadily brighter and hotter, the energy powering them whirring louder as they stood there. Nothing else existed beyond the fraying line connecting them, until, one by one, the bulbs cracked and exploded.

The sudden burst startled both Rey and Ben out of their trance of fury. Shards of glass had shattered into smaller fragments on the bathroom floor. Rey had been cut on her shoulder and the side of her face by the falling pieces, and small, silent drops of her blood soon joined the crystalline wreckage strewn about her feet.

Rey's eyes burned, framed by rims of red skin like she'd been crying.

Neither of them had moved an inch, and her heart screamed in her chest. She didn't know that she'd been holding her breath until she released it at that moment, and everything around them faded back into focus.

At last, they both looked down slowly and saw the destruction that littered the floor around them. Rey looked bemusedly at her surroundings as though she'd just been pulled sharply from a deep dream.

Ben was the first to breach the silence. "Don't move," he said, "I'll get something to clean this up." He paused briefly to gaze over the gashes in Rey's rosey flesh, his eyes falling once more into that deep set worry and genuine concern, before dashing to the kitchen.

Once he was gone, Rey turned her to look into the mirror again. The longer she looked, watching the lonely tears rolling down her hot face, the more she wondered how much more of this she could truly take.

The edge of her vision blurred and shook so fiercely she thought she might throw up again. The distant sounds of splitting glass fibers echoed in her body. A fire had been lit, fed by the oxygen she ravenously inhaled. Burning and cold. Dark and light. Flickering, fragmenting shadows creeping in from the farthest edges of her vision.

Crack.

Silence.

Crack.

Silence.

Crack.

Burst.

The mirror was the next thing to shatter.

Kylo Ren had never been the one to clean up broken glass. Whether or not he'd been the one to break it. The little men in light gray suits came and went, and the shards would be gone, the scattered remains of his anger swept away like the crumbling, ashen bodies he left in his wake.

Ben Solo would be the one to clear the mess made by whatever power had overridden Rey's will. Not out of any sense of duty to a faceless regime that could crush him on the slightest whim; not because he'd be thrown under the spinning wheels of the war machine that he himself had helped to lead if he didn't do it.

He would do it because he knew that Rey couldn't do it on her own, not now.

And because, more than anything else, and against the hateful urges of the monster still breathing inside him, he cared for her, much more deeply than he'd cared for anyone in his life.

By the time he returned, carrying a filthy nettle duster and a grimy pail, the mirror has also been decimated, and Rey had already left.

Why had he expected her to stay put just because he told her to? Ben scowled as he crouched down to begin sweeping up the broken glass.

The longer he knew her, the easier it was for her to tempt the rage of Kylo Ren. The longer he knew her, the more he knew that she would never submit to his oppressive will. No, she was too strong for that. Nor did he have any desire to bind her to his lingering, furious inner darkness. He'd learned that lesson the hard way the first time they'd spoken to one another. He wouldn't be making that mistake again.

A fresh realization crept into him: not only did Rey's tendency towards resistance anger Kylo Ren, making him weak with nameless passions, it also awoke something stronger in the heart of Ben Solo. It made him want to stand for something, to stand for her like she'd stood for him.

He'd begun to crave Rey's titanium defiance; that secret element of fire that never burned her the way it had decimated him, that gathered him closer to her every day. The same element that both repelled them from one another and bound them ever-tighter together. It had driven him to stay alive when they first met, just as it urged him to stay awake now.

The whole bathroom was nearly clear of all evidence of destruction by the time Rey crept back around the corner. She still shivered with the electric remnants of unwanted heat. Tears streaked her pink face, tears that stung like stiff pine needles dragged across cold flesh. She felt like drink whole bottles of wine faster than she could swallow them. She wanted to shatter every window and mirror in sight and set fire to all her clothes. She wanted to tear apart every piece of machinery she could get her hands on and then put it back together again. The urge to destroy and to rebuild surged within her, strong as a scream that could make a mountain crumble.

More than anything, more than ever, she wanted, needed to be held. She needed it to be him. The urge to run to him then filled her entire being, crushing her bones with the weight of its presence within her.

But she didn't run to him. Nor did he drop the cleaning tools and sweep her up into his arms. For whatever reason, it didn't feel right for either of them in that moment. And neither of them knew why.

"Ben," Rey's voice echoed flatly in the dim hallway. Ben looked sidelong at her from his position in the bathroom doorway. She was outwardly radiant, glowing with subtle adrenaline, a whispering energy coursing through her veins. But he could feel the lingering fragments of her inner chaos as strongly as if it was his own.

And in a way, he supposed, it was. They shared it, one and the same.

"What is it?" Ben said, taking a step closer to her.

She wasn't trembling as noticeably now, but she couldn't keep completely still. She shifted from foot to foot, her fingers fidgeting furiously as though overcome with a nervousness he couldn't identify. She seemed more like a little girl than he'd ever seen her before and he was momentarily moved by her rare display of childlike innocence.

Looking up straight past his eyes and into his soul, she said, "I don't know."

Ben's eyes gravitated once more towards the still-open cuts on Rey's face and shoulder. They stood in silence again for a fraction of an instant that seemed to draw itself out for miles in all directions. Though no longer charged by the heat of unspoken fire, charred and burned like so much rubble after a battle, the silence couldn't be called peaceful either.

Whatever wild species of silence had settled in the space around them, something had to be said for the fact that no more glass had exploded anywhere near them.

Ben reached up to touch her face, his fingers lingering around the edges of the red gash that stretched from the edge of her cheekbone to the corner of her lip. They both flinched when he hit a spot where the sting of the ragged wound was particularly keen.

"Sorry," Ben said, slowly withdrawing his hand.

"It's okay," said Rey, a feeble smile softening her hardened face.

"We should get that fixed up." The echo of a glimmer, the shadow of something more in his eyes was enough to numb Rey's throat, leaving her speechless.

She let him lead her back into the living room, gently sitting her down on the sofa, then dashing off to search for medicine amongst their supplies.

Rey could still feel his touch, glancing though it was, imprinted boldly on her cheek and shoulder, soothing the sting of the blood more than any amount of bacta he could apply. His tenderness had been enough to mock the madness and chaos within her, the lingering grasp of his eyes on her body and soul calming the inner blaze.

She couldn't sit back or relax long enough for her knotted muscles to unwind. But that familiar sense of ease had begun to wrap itself around her, cloaking the tightness in her stomach with a low, purring frequency that soothed her aching mind. She still felt as though she could fall straight through the ground at that moment and drag the entire bunker down with her. But the more she forced herself to breathe, clear her mind, dwelling on nothing but the residue left by Ben's fingers and eyes, calmly crystallizing into the cuts, the more the blood in her veins gradually slowed, almost seeming to freeze altoger.

The smart of the wounds had faded away completely by the time Ben returned, bacta and washcloth in hand, and now only simmering like the dying glow of a fire's embers.

Ben paused at the edge of the room. Something had changed again, he could feel it, a murmur he could barely hear tickling his ears, tapping faintly at his chest, asking to be let in. He let it in, blinking once to clear his vision.

Seeing Rey again had sparked something into motion, revving and roaring silently in the air around them. He blinked again, not quite sure what he was seeing.

What had changed about her now, he thought.

She'd stopped shaking, but he already knew that, having sensed it through the Bond several rooms away. Her aura was still disheveled, her face still tight and red.

But her cuts, which had been been bright and bleeding mere minutes ago, had now all but vanished from the surface of her skin.

Ben saw clearly the look of pure confusion on his face reflected in Rey's eyes as she sat watching him intently, waiting for him to move closer to her, to do or say something, anything. He seemed to have momentarily forgotten how to articulate words.

He couldn't say for certain. But one thing he was absolutely sure of was that the cuts on Rey's arm and face could no longer be called cuts as much as fiery scabs burning angrily at him through her pale flesh.

"I've missed something, haven't I?" Ben said, finally remembering how to move his lips.

Rey smiled, and a sublime ache bloomed in her facial muscles, shivering down into her core as though she hadn't done it in years. She would've let herself go then and there if Ben weren't standing in front of her.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

He gestured to the spots where her scabs had begun to fade into thin scars. Rey looked down at her arm then brought her fingers to her cheek. Ben felt the shock of bewilderment that shot through her body as much as he saw it flash across her face. The scars, they both realized at once, had all but healed.

Pushing out a breath that could have been a feeble attempt at laughter or yet another piece of herself escaping her steadily caving body, Rey blinked her eyes inquisitively at Ben. The Bond, suddenly tuned to its highest frequency of stillness, punctured his chest, flooding his senses with all the thousands of questions running through her mind at that moment.

"What does it mean?" she managed to work into words.

Ben looked at her. "It means you won't be needing the bacta now."

Over the next few weeks, the pain that vibrated through Rey's body dwindled, but never fully left. At times in the middle of the night, she'd be woken from her fragile sleep by the bone-crushing ache in her jaw, her teeth chattering so viciously she could have shred her way through a steel wall, overthrown by waves of nausea that threatened to drag her away from any control over her body she still clung to.

The dreams they shared were still vivid, but increasingly muddled, often so turbulent as to cause either or both of them to wake up dragging breath or running to the toilet faster than either of them could blink.

In dreams Rey felt the beating heart of Laris beneath her feet each time they hit the half-frozen ground. It continued to pound in her head as she crossed the threshold between sleep and consciousness, that same steady rhythm, throbbing like the muffled ticks of a bomb counting down the seconds until certain implosion. She felt it lean against her in the day like shadow made body. A shiver spreading its long fingers along her spine.

At night, in the silence cutting into her from all corners of her mind, in those dreams that sang through her like memories or curses she couldn't let herself forget, he had always been the one sure thing standing among the chaos, the light that guided her through the darkest parts of herself. Now, ever since that day when the Force had struck her down, he had begun to fade, clinging desperately to the fringes of her soul, always nearly falling apart completely, just beginning to unravel as she woke up.

She told herself that she wouldn't let that happen in the world outside her mind, that she'd sooner drown herself in the lake or lose herself in the deepest heart of the forest before she allowed him to slip away from her. He was all she had, after all, the only thing in the universe she knew better than herself.

But what if it wasn't her decision to make?