Rey would never forget the day she was given her mask for the first time. Suspicious, always suspicious, she had to ask why. They had told her that, as Kylo Ren's most brilliant student, she was worthy of the title "Ren," and ownership over the mask.
But Rey didn't feel worthy at all. Despite everything that had changed and distorted in her life, she still felt like Rey the Scavenger and nothing else. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to be anything more.
But Rey liked the mask well enough, despite. It was cold and black and smooth to touch.
On a hunch, Rey decided to keep it.
Many months later, Rey picked up the mask again, after so many months of disuse. She decided it was time to start wearing it again, now that the storm called War was thundering so close.
She picked it up and held it to her face. The mask was cold and black. It made her feel empty. It made her feel free. Different.
Rey started wearing the mask, but only on occasions, when she felt like it. But as her connection with the Dark Side grew, so did her affinity with the mask, and soon Rey was wearing it every day. She hardly even took it off anymore.
Rey developed a strange kind of comfort in the cold, black metal pressed to her skin. Her mask had become her new face, her identity.
It was all she was, really. A cold, colorless being, no longer with a soul.
Behind her mask, Rey could cry as much as she wanted. Hide behind it and disappear, turn into ice.
Rey hadn't seen her reflection in a long time. She had broken her mirror a long time ago, when she still found the color black repulsive on her— if it even counted as a color.
It doesn't seem right, she had told herself over and over again like a defective recording machine.
It feels so wrong to wear the color of the enemy… But they're not my enemy anymore, are they? But I still don't like it, though. Or do I?
... Maybe black just isn't my color.
In the end Rey had just smashed the mirror against the wall and left it at that.
She had expected Kylo to inquire about the missing mirror, or at least the tender cuts on her hands that kept on reopening and bleeding, but he didn't.
Rey was thankful for that.
With the mirror long gone, Rey rarely saw herself anymore. She used to occasionally catch a glimpse of her face on windows or polished metal, and hated that. Wearing the mask solved that problem.
Deep down, Rey was afraid of what she would find in her reflection, now. Would her face be distorted and twisted beyond comparison? Pale and all ghost-like? Eyes hollowed out, dead from too much crying?
Maybe Rey wouldn't have a face at all. That thought scared her more than anything.
At night, when Rey took off her mask to sleep, she touched her face, softly, to see if it still was there.
Her cheeks were damp from tears.