She folds her arms and waits as he steps towards the surface of the cenote, wondering how long it will take for him to realise. The catch of his trousers is undone and his toes have hit the water before he stops, shakes his head and looks back. 'I will take off my clothes and jump into the lake?' he blinks. 'What is that – mind control?'

'Yes. But it only works on a certain kind of person.'

He looks down at his loosened trousers. 'What kind of person?'

'An idiot.'

He backs out of the lake quickly and tries to kick off the worst of the damage but it is pointless. He is soaked through and so is she and they are going to have to walk back to camp together to dry off. 'Can you read minds as well as control them?' he asks as she leads the way.

'Absolutely. I could get into your mind right now if I wanted to, I could take whatever I wanted and you wouldn't be able to stop me.' That might be easier, she thinks, conscious that she is dripping all over the forest. She could just read his mind and let him learn whatever he wants from her training rather than going to these extreme lengths to get him to recover his memories on his own. She has half a mind to try before she notices he is hanging back.

'Have you read my mind already?' he asks, in a way that indicates he doesn't like this idea. 'Is that why you're helping me? Do I know things that might be valuable to the Resistance?'

She hasn't considered that before but he is probably right. The First Order has not been completely destroyed and there are probably secrets inside his head which could be useful in a galaxy in which the Resistance is still at war. Presumably this is the sort of information that Poe was intending to weasel out of him during a trial, or maybe barter out of him beforehand in exchange for leniency.

'What do you know of secret First Order weapons?' she asks out of interest.

'I know that the planet of Ilum has been transformed into a superweapon known as Starkiller Base, and I know that there is a fleet of Xyston-class Star Destroyers in the dockyards of Exegol.'

'You don't know anything that might be valuable to the Resistance,' she confirms. 'And no, I haven't read your mind without permission. Only a monster would do that.'

Back at the campsite, she disappears inside the tent to retrieve a couple of blankets, throwing one out to him and then she strips off and puts her pyjamas back on as both her changes of clothes are now wet. When she exits the tent, she finds that he has hung his clothes out to dry. He is wearing only a blanket round his waist and is looking quite uncomfortable about it.

'How do you know all this anyway, about planets and weapons and transports?' Some of his information is detailed, but it has not skipped her notice that some of it – such as Luke's location and the ultimate fate of Ilum - appears to be a year or so out of date.

He clamps his arms to his blanket, sits carefully on one of the chairs and then rearranges the folds of the cloth to ensure it isn't revealing anything. 'It's just in my head. I don't remember reading anything, or being taught – I just know.' He pulls a face. 'It's the same for you, isn't it? That's why you're such a bad teacher. You didn't learn any of the things you can do with the Force formally, you just know.'

She shakes her head. 'You can't expect to pick it up all at once. I had to learn, the same as everyone else. I had a teacher, and I read the Jedi texts and...'

'Stop,' he cuts in, his eyes shining. 'There are books? You have books on this? Where are they?'

'In the tent.'

He bends forward and his hand streaks out, sealing itself over the top of hers as he closes his eyes and focuses. The ancient tomes come careering out of the tent so fast and so randomly she has to duck her head to avoid being injured.

'You need more practice,' she says as he catches the works in his hands and opens the first with reverence.

There is a light in his eyes she has never seen before, an enthusiasm unlike anything he showed on the battlefield as he turns the page, and while she watches she loses him. There is no other description. He gives his attention to the book and forgets everything else. She asks him questions he doesn't answer, she offers him water he doesn't drink, she takes out her lightsaber and goes through a drill but he shows no interest. All he does is read. Pages that she herself has struggled with for days, arcane passages she had to spell out are treated with a fond smile and an indulgent shake of the head, and the only time he seems to remember her presence is when he asks her for paper.

'Paper?' she repeats incredulously. 'Who has paper?'

'Or a datapad, or a holocron, or any kind of storage device. I need to make notes.'

She runs through the inventory of everything she threw together in the two minutes she had for packing and comes up blank. 'No holocrons here. There's probably a datapad with the technical manual for the speeder somewhere in the glovebox but you'd have to wipe it before you could use it and there won't be a lot of capacity.'

He levels her with a sharp stare. 'There's a technical manual for the speeder that explains how it works?'

'Of course.'

'Get it for me – right now,' he orders as if she has done something wrong and he has remembered that he used to rule the galaxy.

She fetches it with some ill concealed muttering about the ungrateful nature of the man and he snatches it away, spending the next two hours reading it instead of deleting the content. Once he has finished, he turns back to the books, tapping away as he makes notes.

She has only had a rudimentary education, she learned everything she knows through practical application or simulation and she probably hasn't studied as much of the ancient Jedi knowledge as she should have done since she stole the books from Luke. But here is someone who learns in a different way, and by the rapt attention he is giving the source material and his complete lack of any animosity or frustration towards something she knows is particularly complex, she divines that she is looking at a scholar. She may well also be looking at someone who is more intelligent than she is and she finds this thought mildly irritating.

He may be enjoying himself, but she is not, it is very boring just watching him slake his thirst for knowledge so she goes for a walk, identifies the nearest settlement and the best route to get there on the navcomp, then goes fishing for dinner and prepares a meal that he roundly ignores. When she is tired of occupying herself she goes to bed, and is only dimly aware of him joining her sometime later.

She wakes in his arms. It feels like a deliberate act because his left arm is under her head, her cheek is resting in the hollow of his shoulder and his right arm is attached to her hip but before she can start wondering how this happened, she realises he is awake. His chest rises and falls, taking her face with it, but there is no sound of snoring.

'Look down,' he says, and the brightness of his tone suggests he is expecting her to be impressed.

She attempts to peer over the massive hill of his chest but it is her proximity to the top of the mosquito net covering the door that really gives it away. They are floating in mid-air above the sleeping pads and Rey is certain that it is not her power which is being used to achieve this, but that is the least impressive part of this scenario.

There is no warning as her body wakes up, going from a state of slumber to a state of physical arousal in about as much time as it would take to sigh his name. He hasn't bothered to put on any clothes apart from his underwear and she is wearing shorts and a thin top with straps so there is quite a lot of her skin which is now touching his. Everywhere she touches him she tingles. Her fingers come alive, telling her that they are resting on his right nipple, that perfectly round, pert little button he flashed at her once when she was on Ahch-To and she can't stop them moving slightly, just to feel how smooth his skin is there, how it resists the pad of her finger. Her heart thuds in her chest, her face heats with a sudden glow and there is a rush of something low in her stomach and getting lower. She becomes conscious that her leg is flung over his thigh, she is half spread across his body and an image fills her head of how he might spread her further, how she might be stretched. Before she can stop it, the gusset of her shorts is damp, and he is going to feel it and wonder what it means so she wriggles to get free and prevent any further embarrassment. She does not want him thinking she wants to sleep with him when she has explicitly told him that she doesn't – his ego would be unbearable.

He feels the movement but his control of his power is not certain and he grapples for her even as his concentration slips and they fall the two or three feet back onto the sleeping mats. Rey's breath explodes from her chest as he lands heavily on top of her but it doesn't matter because his mouth is mere inches from hers, that expressive, mobile mouth with those lips he uses to signal all his emotions and the urge to kiss him is almost irresistible. She gazes into his eyes and she is sure that he is in there, looking back – her Ben, the man she redeemed from his past and held in the ruins of Exegol, the man she lost.

He rolls off her, scrambling away until he is crouched in the opposite corner of the tent and he runs an anxious hand through his hair. 'I'm sorry,' he says. 'I didn't mean to do that.'

She wraps her arms around her knees, pulling them to her chest and hoping that the flush on her cheeks will fade before he sees the impression he has made on her. 'Were you practising?' Her voice sounds shaky.

'Yes – I learnt that from the books. The core principle of Jedi teaching – control. Levitation through mediation. It's quite a simple technique but I found achieving the right breathing pattern quite tricky. Then I realised that you were doing it in your sleep so I thought that if I synchronised my breathing rhythm with yours I might be able to use it as a trigger and it worked. If I touch you I can use the Force more easily without getting angry, like yesterday when we jumped off the cliff and when I called the texts. I didn't think you'd mind me touching you.'

She pulls herself together. He is far more focused on learning than he is on her, she perceives, and it still doesn't appear that he remembers who he is. 'I don't mind you touching me,' she says, which is the understatement of the year. 'But a bit more notice might be nice.'

'Understood.' He stands, stretches, and then he gives her another smile, just a small one this time, the younger, more timid cousin of the big beaming grin she got yesterday but her heart flutters in her chest just the same. 'I think I'm ready for a lightsaber,' he says.

She considers what to do while she bathes, dresses and munches on the breakfast he has made – some kind of smoked fish omelette constructed from her catch of the previous evening and the result of his efforts foraging in the woods while she visited the cenote. She isn't sure if his ability to cook is something he found in the small print of the Jedi texts, or part of the knowledge bank he stores at the back of his mind. He tidies away with an energy and a fastidious attention to detail that suggests he is anxious to please and when she disappears off to the tent and returns with something held behind her back he can barely stand in the same spot without fidgeting.

She hands him a weapon and he stares at it, his shoulders falling. 'This is a stick, not a lightsaber.'

'It takes more than reading a few books to learn how to fight,' she states. 'Show me what you know of the Jedi forms.'

He doesn't even get the opening stance right and she is forced to take him, slowly and repetitively through the most basic of lightsaber techniques, correcting his footwork, showing him where his weight should be and where it should not, pushing his elbows down and his stomach in and by the time she is ready for lunch she is feeling quite pleased with herself. Books are useful, but there is really no substitute for experience, she tells herself. In contrast, Ben appears to be sulking, with his bottom lip stuck so far out it is nearly big enough to trip over.

After lunch she teaches him the second form and he does little better with that.

'Shoulders down,' she yells for the fortieth time. 'If you lift your arms on the turn you leave yourself open to a parry from below.'

'That's not what it says in the book,' he grits out as he tries again.

'I don't care about the book. I'm teaching you how to fight.'

'This isn't fighting. This is swinging a stick. A child could do this.'

'A child could do better,' she calls, and she sees the temper rising in his eyes.

'I'm not a child. Stop treating me like one.' He abandons the form and spins to face her, slinging his stick about in a one handed slash which was impressive when he still wielded the red lightsaber, but fails to intimidate her now.

'Then stop behaving like one.' She takes the opportunity to demonstrate her point, whirling as if she is going to strike him while he raises his hands in a defensive pose which is too high, and she hits him on the leg instead.

He winces, but his face tightens and he comes at her with a flurry of blows which are drawn from the pages of Jedi myths and legends, all fancy bladework and complex manoeuvres. Before she realises what is happening she has responded in kind, except that the two handed grip on the saber she usually favours has been jettisoned in favour of single, backhanded swipes which carry far more power, but are riskier than her usual style. He grits his teeth and the campsite is full of the sound of wood on wood as they duel amongst the trees. Their weapons clash, locking together and she struggles to match his physicality, he is too strong for her unless she uses the Force to bolster her body, so she throws restraint away and her next strike includes a blow from the Force delivered by her free hand.

He staggers, slips, but sheer anger drives him back to his feet and he fights back, flinging out his hand and launching her across the forest. At one time in her life the use of such a Force push would have had her crashing into a trunk and knocking herself out but she has got better at fighting since Starkiller Base and now she comes somersaulting back out of the trees, chopping at his head with a one handed strike. He simply stands there with his eyes closed, his stick held horizontally under his chin in a pose she recognises from the books as 'centre of being' and her blow deflects harmlessly. She swings again but he has deployed Force speed and he is no longer standing where he should be, or in fact, anywhere she can find him at all and she is obliged to hunt him around the clearing before he drops the Force stealth shield he is using and she can once again run to the attack.

Even though they are fighting with sticks in a training match she feels like she is losing, like the last time she lost to him, on the wreckage of the Death Star when the only way she could find to win was to stab him with his own sword while he was distracted. She will not allow herself to lose now, and a red rage fills her vision, narrowing her focus as her strokes become harder, aiming at the head, the legs, the groin, anywhere that this enemy may be vulnerable. She will not lose. Anger roars in her veins as she swings, parries, pokes holes in his defences until he finally makes a mistake and her stick lands hard on his knuckles, forcing him to drop his blade.

She comes in for the final blow, hurtling her weapon at his head hard enough to take it off but he looks into her eyes and there is shock on his face. 'Rey!'

She manages to turn her strike into the floor at the last minute but he is still standing there with his eyes wide, unable to disguise his surprise. 'We are still training, aren't we?' he asks and a rush of shame fills her, because he sounds so innocent and bloodlust is still powering through her veins.

She knows in that moment that she has lost control and she steps back, shaken.

He sucks his knuckles, still watching her warily. 'What this stick needs,' he says, giving it a kick. 'Is a crossguard.'