"That first night, when I fell asleep holding you…" He raked a shaking hand through his hair and let the memory speak for itself.
Rey felt her stomach roil as the swirling colors of the dream, the throbbing sound of a heartbeat, the rancid odor of decay all hit her at once.
A voice, low and menacing, hissed through the swirl of putrid air. At first the words weren't clear, but as the thrum of heartbeats grew faster the voice grew louder.
"Come to me." It said in a low purring growl.
Rey heard Ben's terrified voice call into the dizzying swirl, "Who are you?"
"Closer, child." The voice purred menacingly.
Despite his fear Ben shouted, "Who are you?" His voice echoed, growing louder as it reverberated in time with the throbbing beat of his heart.
A face formed for the briefest of glimpses then faded back into the swirl of colors. It was a hideous face, deformed and swollen… Snoke's face, Rey realized with a gasp.
"Yesss." The voice hissed. "I ssssee you now." There was a triumph in that hiss that made Rey's skin crawl. "Blood of Ssskywalker..."
A scream jerked Ben awake. She was lying half on his chest and half on the narrow cot that he had meant to sneak out of once she was asleep. She jerked awake and turned her head to peer at him in the near darkness. "Reyso scared." Her voice trembled.
"I'm scared, too." He whispered and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
"Go back to sleep, little one." He said softly as the trembling subsided.
"Bad man." She whispered. "Bad man get Reyso."
"I wont ever let him get you." Ben swore. "I promise."
"My Ben." She said dreamily and settled back into sleep.
"I stayed awake the rest of the night, too afraid to go back to sleep." Ben said raggedly.
She frowned. "Was that the first time you ever dreamed of him?"
He nodded, staring at his hands. "After that he came to me in my dreams whenever I was alone." He looked at her and his eyes were swimming in pain. "At first he acted sympathetic toward me. He was angry at my parents for sending me away. Angry at Luke for leaving me behind while he scoured the Galaxy for more students. Angry that I wasn't good enough for Luke to accept as his only apprentice. I didn't know he was just reading my thoughts and using them against me." He started picking at his fingers, clearly agitated. "By the time I figured that out it was way too late for me."
"After a while I started to agree with him. My parents would not have sent me away if they had loved me. My uncle was only using me to help teach his school while he was off galavanting around the galaxy looking for a worthy apprentice."
He stopped picking his hands and looked at her. "He could never convince me that you were a burden, though. I liked teaching you and taking care of you. You looked at me like I was the greatest thing in the galaxy. You made me feel loved even while he worked to convince me that nobody cared about me."
He looked back down at his hands. "You never gave me a moment's peace. You were always following me around, asking me questions. I think you learned to talk as fast as you did just so you could talk my ears off." The affection he still held for the little girl she had been washed over Rey and she understood how much he had loved being around her, especially when she was driving him half mad with her antics.
"More often than not, you'd sneak into my room in the middle of the night. I only ever slept well when I had you to hold onto." He added with a sad smile. "I guess some things never change."
Reaching out, he took a lock of her hair between his fingers and rubbed it thoughtfully. "I remember the first day I tried teaching you to lift things with the force. You were five, I think, it was windy and hot and you were getting so mad because your hair kept blowing into your eyes. You wanted to cut it all off, short like mine." He mocked a horrified look. "I tried tying it up for you but it hurt your head to have it all in one tie." He smiled warmly at the memory. "We wound up wasting most of the afternoon tying your hair up. I must of tied it a dozen different ways before I found a style you liked." He gave her a lopsided grin. "You were still wearing it like that on Takodona."
"I always wore it like that. I thought…" She swallowed hard. "I thought it would help my parents find me."
He sighed and continued sadly. "That was the night that Snoke figured out how much you meant to me. He saw that memory and he was enraged by it." His eyes clouded over. "I had to get some distance from you, he threatened to visit you in your dreams to see what it was that made you so special to me. So, I stopped letting you crawl into bed with me, stopped letting you follow me around all day. It hurt. I could sense how confused and hurt you were but I had to protect you from him. I couldn't risk him coming after you. You were too precious." She could feel that he wanted to say more but he forged ahead.
His face hardened and she felt revulsion coming off of him. "Then one night, about a year later, he told me that I had to kill you. He spent months working up to that, filling my head with images of whole planets on fire. You would cause that, he told me, and it would all be my fault, all my fault if I didn't kill you right then, that night. 'Wake up!' He told me, 'Kill the girl before it's too late! Kill her, kill Skywalker, kill them all!'" He swallowed a sob. "I woke up and found Luke standing over me with his light saber blazing. I knew then that Snoke was right about everything. Luke feared and hated me. My parents were afraid and ashamed of me…"
"You didn't kill me." She squeezed his hand.
"I couldn't kill you." He said harshly. "I was in such a rage when I walked into your room that night, but when you saw me you lit up like you couldn't be more happy that I was there. The way you looked at me brought me back to myself." He was panting now. "I killed so many people that night." He swallowed down the bitter taste in his mouth. "Kids, grown ups, it didn't make a difference. I killed them all. I made a few of the older boys help me burn the bodies of the littlest ones. I told them I'd let them live if they did as I said. I killed them though, before I reached Snoke's ship." His guts twisted at the memory of his betrayal of those boys. "I had to do it, they knew."
"What did they know?" She prompted when he fell into a morose silence. She hated what he was saying, what he was feeling, but he needed to say it and she needed to hear it.
"That I hadn't killed you, that I couldn't. They knew where I left you, what I did to protect you." He said grimly. "They knew too much."
"Why don't I remember even a tiny bit of this?" She asked, frowning.
He took a shaky breath. "You don't remember any of this because I destroyed those memories. I entered your mind and I wiped away everything you had ever known. I left you on Jakku with no memories at all. I killed those boys and then I wiped away all of my memories of you." He scowled, "Snoke was always in my mind, reading my thoughts, sifting through my memories. I couldn't even let the thought of you enter my mind. The truth of who you are was the only thing I ever managed to keep hidden from him." He looked at her then with terror emanating off of him. "That's why I had to wipe you out of my memory... If he had discovered who you really are…" He trailed off in a whisper.