The expression on Rey's face shifted from shock, to anger, to fear, and then to something Kylo had no possible way of quantifying. There were elements there that combined all of her previous expressions, but there was something… more.

"Kylo?" she queried sharply, powering down her lightsaber as she rushed towards him, barring any sort of hesitation. She kept a grip on her 'saber, however, and he could feel a distant part of himself approving at her caution. "What are you doing here? It's the middle of the night!" She stopped directly in front of him, and her fingers reached up towards his cheek hesitantly, though they never made contact. Her features had finally settled on a mix of disgruntlement and confusion. "What's wrong?"

Everything.

Kylo choked on the word, unable to speak it aloud.

Unable to admit to the truth of his reality falling apart around him.

That didn't make it any less true.

Everything was wrong. His entire view of the galaxy had shifted within him and he had no kriffing clue of how to deal with it. Not even the events on Starkiller had caused him to question his path as much as… this.

The room was poorly lit, but he could see Rey looking closely at him, studying his features as best she could in the darkness. She didn't turn the lights on, for which he was grateful, even though he knew that it would be easier for her to see if she did so.

He wanted her to see, but he also… didn't.

Both. Neither. One or the other. He didn't know which.

He noted distantly that the disconnect he felt—the absolute inability to process even the simplest of thoughts—was a sign that he was going into shock, but…

Force, he didn't care.

"Kylo?" her voice broke through his thoughts again, and he startled slightly before he found her eyes in the gloom again. She sounded… concerned. His eyes flitted away from hers, and then back again. He had expected understanding—had hoped for it—but concern was… He breathed in deeply—an attempt to settle himself, to regain control over his body—and then let his shoulders slump as he closed his eyes, tilting his head slightly to the side to relieve the tension strumming through his neck and the rest of his body.

There was silence from her—one beat, two beats, more—and then suddenly he felt her smaller hand wrapping around his left and she was tugging him across the room. He went, incapable of much reaction in his numb state, pulled towards the large bed where they had—

He cut off the thought before it could fully form.

He did not have the strength nor the will to dive into that pool of confusing feelings.

He was pushed down onto his rear on the edge of the bed, and suddenly Rey was slightly taller than him. It was an unsettling feeling to be shorter than her—than anyone—for once. It was still dark within the room, but he could see the way her thin linen shift moved around her body, clinging in some places, and fluttering in others when the breeze from an open window blew against them.

She was beautiful.

And she was alive.

The realization broke him, shoulders hunching inward as he collapsed in on himself, head bowing as he desperately tried to control the sobs that were suddenly forcing their way up, as grief tore at his lungs in a desperate need to be let loose.

He hadn't known where else to go.

Not with the thoughts swirling around inside his head. They were too dangerous, too treacherous, too… nobody, not even his second, would have been able to understand what he was feeling right now. The pull he was feeling between the Light and the Dark, between past and future, between one set of ideals and another…

He did not think anyone could understand being torn between the lure of the Dark Side and the warmth—safety—of the Light.

He knew she would understand, with what her life had become, as soon as he thought of her not even a day ago when, when—

"He killed him," he whispered.

He could feel Rey freeze above him, and then suddenly her fingers were on his chin, tilting his gaze up to meet hers. She must have opened some of the curtains while he wasn't paying attention because he could see her eyes widen as she took in his face. "You have blood on you," she whispered, shocked. "Let me… let me help you with that."

And before he could stop her, she was racing off.

Barely a minute had passed—far too little time for his disconnected mind to process she had left the room—before she was back with a bowl filled with steaming water and a soft washcloth. She dunked the cloth in the water and wrung it out and then lifted it towards his face, asking softly, "May I?" before proceeding at his barely there nod.

Kylo closed his eyes, focusing on the feel of her fingers against his skin as she tilted his face from side to side, and the feel of the slightly rough terry cloth as she dabbed it over his cheeks, forehead, nose, neck…

It was a grounding, soothing feeling.

His mind settled slightly, and for the first time in hours—days, months—he did not feel as though he were a lone man standing in the middle of a storm, screaming his lungs out as he waited for someone to finally hear him.

He was breaking, and she was there for him.

Finally, she stepped back and set the bowl to the floor with a clunk. He opened his eyes, thinking she was done, but instead he saw her drop to her knees in front of him, reaching for one of his hands as she did so. Rey picked up the cloth once more, squeezed it out with one hand, and then started to clean his hands.

He stared, horrified, at his hands as she scrubbed at them. The blood… he would never be washed clean of the blood. Even if it could no longer be seen, it was his fault, and he could never get rid of it. He would never forget. It was… it was…

It was his fault.

He would never be free.

And he shouldn't be.

"Who killed who?" she asked after a few moments of silent concentration. She didn't look up at him; instead her eyes remained focused on the task before her.

Him.

He knew she would understand, at least somewhat, what had happened, what he was feeling, but he hadn't ever imagined he would be treated like… like this.

It had been so long since he had been treated with simple kindness.

It was beyond his ability to process at the moment, and so he set aside the thought for the moment. It was all he could do to control his thoughts to that extent.

Perhaps if—

"Kylo?" she asked again, drawing him out of the unpleasant fog of his mind.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, blinking his eyes rapidly in an attempt to focus on her. He struggled to remember the question, and then he stilled when he did. She looked up at him expectantly from her spot on the floor in front of him, cloth and bowl set to the side, hands in her lap.

He must have lost time again.

She tilted her head at him, as if unsure of how to reply to his apology. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. You must be tired—you could sleep and then we could talk about it? If you want?"

"No!" he bit out, fear coursing through him. Sleep was—it wasn't—He'd tried that earlier, and the images had plagued him even worse than his waking mind.

Rey looked as if she understood, and… perhaps she did.

The thought spurred him to speak, finally, his words coming out in fits and starts, haltingly making their way through what had happened.

She could help. She would know what to do. She would understand.

"I… Snoke killed Naseer." Rey flinched at the name, but let him continue. "One of my Knights. One of the first of my Knights, and one of three I truly trust. He was—"

He breathed in deeply through his nose, fluttering his eyes shut and keeping them that way. "Snoke killed him in front of me, because… because he followed one of my orders and not… not his. One of my orders that countermanded his. I… I hadn't meant it to, I swear." A slight note of hysteria snuck into his voice, and only Rey's hand on his reminded him of where he was.

Safe.

He was, for now at least, safe.

"But… but I don't think… it mattered—not really," he admitted grudgingly. "It's happened before, in the past, where something one of my Knights did on my orders contra… contradicted something he wanted of them. And whether they followed his orders or not, there were reper—repercussions, but nothing like… like this." His voice cracked on the last, a sob welling up in his throat. "I've known Naseer for over seven years, and he… he was so…"

He clenched his eyes shut tighter, breathing deeply in an effort to control himself.

"He was my friend," he choked, fingers curling into a tight fist as the words fell from his lips. "And it was almost like… like Sno—he wanted me to suffer. It was… it was more than Naseer's disobedience. Actually, it was like it had nothing to do with it at all. Beyond the first mention of… of it, he… he never brought it up again. Just made me… made me watch. Made me watch as he took him apart, piece by piece, in—in—"

His eyes snapped open, but it was less to see the woman in front of him than to not see the scene playing out on the backs of his eyelids. "He left when… when there was nothing I could do. Nothing. All I could do was hold him and make sure he knew—knew… knew that there was someone who cared for him. Someone who would be there to speak the rites over him. Someone who would tell his—his sister what had happened to him, and that he had died with dignity."

Naseer had not needed words to tell him that was what he needed to hear. Kylo had known Naseer and Anath for years, and he knew that the only thing Naseer wanted to know before becoming one with the Force was that his sister would be taken care of.

That they would ascertain she would attempt to live on, despite the loss of her Bond mate.

"All I could do was promise him I would look after his sister but—but she—Anath—she hates me now. She… she… we were friends, the twins and Savat and I altogether, like the siblings I never—" He cleared his throat and dug the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other.

"She blames me for his death. She should. She… she didn't want to come with me, and the only way I could get her to come was by… by bringing her brother's body with us, Rey. She's hurting from the destruction of her bond and I just dragged her along with me because I threatened to take her brother's body away from her. And she won't even let me talk to her or be near her—Savat has to tend to her now. How is that caring for her? How is that keeping my promise to Naseer? How can I not blame myself, when she told me it was my fault, and when Snoke said that—that—" He swallowed. "When he said that I would be good to forego attachment to those who could be taken from me so easily. How can I not blame myself when it was all to teach me a lesson?"

He fell silent except for the sounds of his deep breaths in and out, in and out, in and all he could see was Naseer's bloodied face and the mangled remains of his body and—

"You're not at fault," Rey spoke against his ear as she pushed herself onto her knees and reached up to pull him down towards her. "You're not; I promise you're not." She kept whispering it over and over again as he let himself bury his head in her neck and shoulder, her loose hair tickling at his skin, though he paid it no mind.

He couldn't.

He couldn't find it in himself to care about anything other than the feel of her against him, the feel of her stomach pressed against his knees, and the words she was whispering in a never-ending pattern.

"He wants to kill you, too."

The words burst out from past his lips, and he'd had no idea they were true until that moment. But they were—they were true. "He doesn't care about any alliance, doesn't care about Itamar. He thinks he can control it one way or another, but it's just better to control it with willing participants. All he cares about is controlling me, and he's been taking everything I care about, one by one, slowly, so slowly, to the point I almost wanted it—and I did for a while there."

The shame he felt at the admission burned through him, and nausea curdled deep in the pit of his stomach, but he could not stop the words from falling from his lips because he needed her to understand.

"I thought it was what was needed, to achieve what needed to happen in the galaxy. To get rid of all the corruption, and greed, and slavery, and all the injustice that was happening. Everything that my mother was fighting but couldn't fix, everything that my uncle refused to stand up against out of some stupid adherence to the old Jedi Code, thinking that 'all things would happen in their own time'—"

He sneered. "I thought that if I could sacrifice who I was… Sacrifices need to be made for the greater good, I knew that, and he—he made me believe that there would be casualties and other sacrifices so that I would have the power to fix the bigger things, but he… I was wrong. He was wrong. How could I not have seen it?"

And here, tears finally did begin to fall.

And once they began, nothing could stop them. They coursed down his cheeks, into her hair, in an unrelenting stream. She said nothing, just held him tighter and let him cry. Let him cry out his own disappointment in himself, let him cry out his own failures, let him cry out his own hatred.

"How could I not see it?" he sobbed. "He may be a single being, but he holds more corruption than the entirety of the Senate, both new and old. He hid it with the mission statement of the First Order. Hid it when I was young."

And here Rey's breath hitched, and he knew she had caught the meaning of his statement. "Hid it when I first joined him. But now… what he did to Naseer… he showed his true colors, and I believe he'd always planned to. He doesn't want what's best for the galaxy—he wants control. He doesn't want balance—he wants to own it all. And it took me losing Naseer and the thought of losing you to see it. How can I not have seen it when he demanded of me the Academy? My fa—father," he choked out, overwhelming guilt washing through him for the first time.

No matter how bad of a father Han Solo had been—no matter how abusive—he was still his father. And… and he saw that now. Too late. "But it was so easy, to let go of the things that I had grown to despise. But—but Naseer. And you—"

He couldn't continue.

He just couldn't. He stopped, no more words forming within the kaleidoscope of memories his mind had become.

He remembered the bad—but he remembered the good, as well. The camaraderie he'd felt immediately upon his first meeting with the twins; the way that they shared secret smiles and finished each other's sentences; the pranks they had pulled on him and his second, Savat; the teasing and sass that all three of them had given Savat when she had tirelessly attempted to teach them gymnastics; the way that Naseer would imitate Hux behind his back and Kylo had to control his laughter beneath his mask, even if not his expressions; and the fact that the brother constantly bemoaned Anath's curiosity of the general.

Now… now one was gone, and the other was broken, and his best friend was likely lost to him as well.

He was barely aware of his boots being unlaced and pulled from his feet, set just to the side. He was barely aware of being pulled to his feet, standing there as if he were a statue as his cloak was undone and his jacket unbuttoned, then removed from his frame to be brought who-knew-where. He simply stood there as she returned, quietly murmuring to herself as she loosened his collar and pulled off his belt.

It was only as he was being pushed back onto the bed that he came back to himself—though just enough to pull his feet up onto the mattress when she started to lift his legs for him, and to protest with, "No, I'll get blood—"

She shushed him easily, pulling the covers up over both of them as she climbed into bed by crawling over him, and then placing a hand on his chest as she looked down at him. "I won't have it," she said quietly, keeping her hand in place as she lowered herself fully onto her side. She curled her body against his, wrapping herself around him, her mind blooming against his—whether consciously or not—in a way that was almost warmer and more comforting than her body pressed tight to his side, one leg flung over his thighs, her hand still held firmly against his heart.

One of his last thoughts were, "What now?" but she simply hummed and shushed him again, murmuring "We'll figure that out," as she pulled his tumultuous mind into the quietness that was hers.

Her mind helped to push all the thoughts away; all the thoughts consuming him, and even the numbness. His thoughts were gone for a long time as he just breathed, slowly and evenly, thinking of nothing at all as he descended into slumber, except for one final half-formed thought.

Peace.

He had forgotten what it felt like.

Note: Thank you everyone for the wonderful response I've been getting on this fic as I finally continue it! I know my posting dates are a bit haphazard but I suppose that's the price I pay for actually being able to write and living with my mother (who loves to drag me around everywhere haha).

This chapter was going to have more scenes, but it just... it seemed too important to distract from, and I wanted to give it as much space as necessary. I want this to be a turning point, and not just another chapter. Because that's how I intend it. Y'know, this wasn't even going to happen. I totally changed course from my original thread-the-needle and balancing act plans for the rest of this story. I mean, it'll still be a complicated song and dance to write, but it will make other things much more satisfying and, in some ways, easier.

Myself and my lovely beta, Annaelle, much prefer this course to the previous one, though that one wasn't bad either!

I blame Kylo and his 'look' from last chapter. I was wondering what exactly his look should be, as I hadn't had it entirely decided even when I wrote it, and I'm like "hmmm... smut? hm... sadness? hmm... anger? what is it!?" and while I was rereading Codega I was like "oh I should do this for the ending" and then it transferred to Mitz, and it transferred into... this. Not that anything in Co does or will resemble Mitz. Just the way my brain works. ;)

ANYWHO. Strap in for a ride, reylo fam.

Much love! xoxo