Ben rolled his shoulder, it still bothered him though the injury was fully healed during his and Rey's nearly month long convalescence on Kessel. He tapped away thoughtfully at the colorful keys displayed on the surface of the small steel desk in the horrendously uncomfortable yet spacious -for an Admiral's Quarters on a dreadnaught- room he and Rey shared aboard the Revenant.

Rey frowned at the display hanging in the air in front of her, reading the history of the Halcyon, she was halfway through her second book, reclining on a stack of thin hard pillows piled high at her back.

The terminal interface lenses they had been gifted, along with the matching computer terminal, might make it appear to anyone else as if the pair belonged in a padded cell, but they had increased both Jedi's productivity remarkably.

By the middle of the first chapter of the first translation Rey and Ben were both startled to find that their connection had strengthened to the point that he knew everything she read, and she knew everything he found as they worked together in utter silence. She read from the lengthy translations to broaden their understanding of the Halcyon even while he sifted through the com-net for every addition scrap of data he could find in the various communication databases spread across hundreds of millions of parsecs of space.

Neither had spent much time outside of their chamber since returning to the ship from Aaronia nearly two weeks ago. Intrigue bordering on obsession consumed them both. They felt an identical thirst for knowledge that could have been coming from either or both of them. The bond had grown so strong lately that even when they weren't actively sharing a conciousness they intensely felt the other's nuanced emotional and physical turmoils and pains.

Rey blinked rapidly to clear her display and looked over at her husband when she felt a swift change in his emotions. He was looking at her in a way that made her insides flutter.

She reached out to join her mind to his and slipped in easily. 'You look tired." He said gently into her mind.

'I am tired.' She responded.

'Your hip hurts.' He stated.

'As does your shoulder.' She replied.

'Hot shower?' He suggested.

'Might help.' She stood and crossed to the refresher, dropping her top in his lap as she passed.

The warmth and heady scent of her blouse worked to undermine his good intentions. He stood and dropped her shirt into his chair, adding his own there a moment later. He followed after her, kicking her britches out of the doorway to the shower stall and then tossing his own ontop of them.

He stepped into the spray of hot water and into the embrace of her arms and lips at the same time. His hand sought the pain her hip and kneaded it gently even as her's found his pain and did the same. Power threaded lazily through their scars, easing the pain until it was lost beneath other, much more pleasurable, sensations.

Rey called a squirt of Ben's soap into her palm and massaged it into his aching shoulder with firm rhythmic strokes as she caressed his tongue with hers. His soapy fingers dug at the pain her hip, soothing it even as the pain spiked and ebbed with each hard clench of his strong fingers.

The pain quickly receeded as their bodies responded hungrily to each other's touch.

She broke off their kiss and locked eyes with him as she sank to her knees. She called another glob of soap from the dispenser and began to massage the pain from his thigh. Her eyes drifted from his, slowly down his battle scarred torso. She frowned over the fact that she'd given him some of those scars herself. She placed her hands on his hips and tore her eyes from the puckered scar running across his collarbone to meet his eyes as she dipped her face to rub her cheek against the tip of his erection. Slowly, smoothly, she rubbed herself against it down to her neck, then her collarbone, tracing the path of the scar she had left on him. When she reached the spot above her right breast where his scar ended she shifted her body so that she trailed that sensitive bit of his flesh between her breasts, down her belly until she stood facing him, the proof of his desire for her throbbing against her belly.

Her erotic apology was not lost on her husband. She could feel as his heart swelled with sentiments he hadn't experienced in a long time. Gratitude. Humility. And something like a mix between pride and religious fervor that she knew was all about her.

She kissed the scar, licking warm water from it with each brush of her lips as she made her way along that reddened line from his chest to his brow, one kiss at a time. She didn't have to instruct him to bend down, he felt her wants and needs as if they were his own.

What she needed most at this point was to show him how grateful she was to have him. How much she loved and desired him. How much she cherished him. How incredibley thrilled she was to be the center of his universe. She reached out with her mind and turned off the steaming water.

Moments after the first time they had been together, he had covered her body in sweet, loving kisses and made her feel the capacity for tenderness that he possessed. Now, months later, she covered his body in hot little kisses, each featuring a darting flick of her tongue, making him feel every bit as loved and wanted as he had made her feel that long ago day.

He watched her intently as she worked her way down his torso, licking the drops of water from his skin, paying extra attention to his scars, and driving him half mad with that nimble little tongue of hers. She reached his hip bones and he felt her desire to have him to turn around.

She trailed her tongue along his side and lower back as he followed her wordless instruction, then kissed and licked her way to the nape of his neck, her hands roaming freely across his belly and chest.

He turned back toward her and leaned down to receive her feather light kisses on his face. She didn't use her tongue here, only her lips, as she kissed each feature of his beloved face, saving his full, sensual lips for last.

He didn't try to deepen the kiss, he could feel that she wasn't done yet.

She started back down his body, her hands roaming across his shoulders and back while she kissed, licked and nibbled her way down his front, sending tendrils of fire shooting through his veins as she drew nearer and nearer to her goal.

His breath caught in his throat with a strangled sound as she dug her fingers into his backside and slid her tongue boldly across the head of his engorged phallus. She sucked it into her mouth and stroked it again with her tongue, tasting the bead of salty smooth creaminess that proved his organ's appreciation for her attention. Holding him loosely between her lips she rotated her head, swirling her tongue, top, bottom and sides around the pulsing member as he burrowed his fingers into her wet hair. Her hands stroked down the backs of his thighs then up the front of them. She took his length in one hand and gently massaged his aching gonads with the other, all while she suckled and licked at his turgid manhood.

She could feel how close he was to climax and with a loud, squishy, sucking sound she removed her mouth from him and ducked her chin to lick across the surface of his sack. Once. Twice. Three strokes of her tongue before she ever-so-gently took one firm ball into her mouth and rolled her tongue around it before doing the same to it's twin.

He labored to breathe as she worshiped his gentitals with her mouth. Nearly every one of his harshly indrawn breaths was exhaled on a shuddering moan when she returned her mouth to his shaft. He knew she was keeping him on the brink of both climax and insanity on purpose, and he both wanted it to end immediately and to go on forever.

His legs threatened to give out on him so the pair shifted fluidly to allow him to lean back into the icy cold shower wall.

Their bodies and hair were nearly dry by the time she was ready to give him the release his mouth, mind, and body were shouting, and begging, for.

He had no strength left to stand so he slid down the wall as soon as she'd sucked the last drops of seed from his body. He could feel her unsatiated desire even over the force of her own tantric orgasm. He reached out and stroked her sweltering arousal with a tendril of Force energy.

He eyes shot open wide and he enlarged the tendril slipping it into her depths.

They'd never used their power so directly for such things, a part of her wanted to protest, but that and every other thought fled from her as he flexed and pulsed the tendril inside of her. Their eyes locked and she rocked back on her heels, the intensity in his deep brown eyes was nearly a mirror of the intensity of sensations pulsing throughout her feminine core.

He ratcheted up the power of his Force strokes and sent her writhing mindlessly on the floor, moaning and panting, begging and shouting, orgasming over and over until at last he could feel that her desire was fully spent, her hunger completely sated. He gathered her onto his lap and snuggled her close, their minds, bodies and energies entwined in an embrace so intimate that neither wanted to ever let go of this moment.

"Oh my Force!" Rey gasped and reread the passage on the digital page for a second time.

It had been days since they'd soothed each other's wounds with soapy Force enhanced massages, and Rey was working her way through the third and final Halcyon history translation that had been gifted to her and Ben by Ko'da the Aaronian. "Ben!" She gasped, commanding his full attention. "Read these three paragraphs."

He read the paragraphs and did a doubletake. "I… don't understand." He felt a bit dizzy. "How could that be…? We didn't perform any ritual."

"Snoke said he bridged our minds…" She insisted. "If he wasn't lying, then he probably did this."

Ben's mind was racing too fast to capture a thought. "Why? If he could do that he had to have known it was permanant."

"Is there any other possibility?" She asked rhetorically. "How did he get ahold of a piece of me though?" She mused.

Ben blanched.

"What?" Her head jerked slightly.

"Your hair…" His face reddened.

Her eyes narrowed. "You kept some of my hair?"

"You've felt what it was like for me to be near you." He mumbled, reddening further. "I… I was desperate to have something, anything, of you to hold onto."

"You showed me all of the time we were together, how did you not show me that?" She was confused.

"I did…" He finally looked at her. "Sort of." He played back the part of his memory where he'd strapped her to the interogation table on Star Killer. "There." He said. "Do you see it?"

In her minds eye she saw herself lying limply on the still horizontal table while his gloved hands smoothed her hair where it had rubbed loose against him while he'd carried her. "I see you fixing my hair…"

"It was messy." He shrugged. "I couldn't abide chaos unless I was the one causing it…"

"Ok, but, I don't see you stealing my hair." She frowned.

"I didn't steal it." He frowned. "I found it." He showed her the memory of coming back to find her gone.

His rage was overwhelming as his eyes fell on the empty table in that empty room. She had somehow managed to slip through his fingers.

How could he let this happen? How could he let this scavanger, this nobody from nowhere, out manuever him? His lightsaber lept into his hand and he attacked the offensively empty table with all of his boiling anger, disappointment, shame and fear.

He sliced the table into glowing slag with stroke after angry stroke as he mentally berated himself for being unable to hold onto such a valuable prisoner.

His master had sent him to fetch her, but there was no 'her' to fetch!

He would suffer for this!

His terror at the prospect of facing Snoke empty-handed had urged him on into destroying the entire room. When at last not a surface had been left in tact he stood panting amidst the destruction. He'd suffer for this too, he knew, but it was worth it to unleash his rage before confessing his failure.

The last time he had lost his temper during one of Snoke's verbal tirades had landed him in medbay with several broken ribs and a punctured lung from being Force crushed by the dark lord. He dreaded what this failure would cost him.

He crumpled to the floor, shaking. He had to find her. She couldn't have gone far, he'd only left her twenty minutes ago.

His eyes caught an odd golden glimmer against the polished black floor. He reached out and lifted a solitary strand of hair from amidst a jumble of still smoldering debris. The hair was dark, shot through with shimmering golden highlights, definitely not a strand of his black hair and far too long to belong to anyone else on the base… it had to be hers. He searched almost frantically around the rubble and found five more shimmering strands.

He didn't know why but something inside him needed for him to hold onto these tiny fragments of her. Carefully, almost tenderly, he smoothed the strands together, folded them, tied them into a tiny figure 8 and tucked them into his glove. He could almost feel her nearby as he rose to his feet and set off to look for her.

Rey's eyes were leaking long before the memory ended. "I didn't know he hurt you like that…" Her heart thumped painfully in her chest and she wrapped her arms around him, laying her head against his chest. "I'm so sorry that happened to you."

"I'm not." He held her tightly. "I wouldn't be standing here if my life had been different in any way." He kissed the top of her head. "Every bit of it was worth going through to wind up here," His voice bacame a caress, "With you."