Chapter Five: Awake

Rey woke slowly, immediately regretting it. She was covered in gelled bacta patches, and a fuzzed detachment—the kind that comes from blocked-off pain receptors in the brain—numbed her entire frame. Two, bulbous, black droids hovered over her, their spindly limbs extended in prodding inspection. She could see a holographic bio-file opened in mid-air beside them; its luminous face claimed she had sustained second degree burns to 40% of her body.

Her first thought was that the Falcon had come for her, but one sweeping look of her surroundings doused such hopeful naivety. She was prostrate on polished tile aboard a First Order shuttle, one big enough for a two-bed med-bay, and the realization brought her memories crashing back in an array of booming flames and ricocheting metals.

I need to get up, her mind urged from its drugged fog. Right now.

Feebly batting away the droids, Rey tried to fold herself into a sit. The room spun wildly as her neck left the floor. Dots spotted her vision, coalescing until she saw nothing but dark blur, and the emptiness in her stomach churned in protest, surging sickening waves of nausea into her nose. She sank back, breathing in labored pants, swallowing down heaves contracting in dogged reprisal.

Moving was unwise. So noted.

The whoosh of an opened door barely registered, but her disoriented landscape stilled, becoming grounded in a crouched form all in black.

"N-No," Rey gurgled, feeling bile well in her throat. Forcing herself to her elbows, a feat that made her vertigo surge, she tried focusing on her visitor. Kylo Ren was an indistinct shape, but the silver rimming the visor of his mask glinted in the harsh, medical lighting.

He's going to kill me now, she realized. Right here. On the floor.

His hood was up, and his long cloak was spread out around him, making him more shadow than man as he fixed his attention on her.

Though she kept her face brave, her thoughts betrayed her.

I don't want to die like this.

"Alone and forgotten?" Kylo finished, stealing her private plea. He roamed her frame in idle inspection, letting his gloved hands dangle as he rested his wrists on his knees. His lightsaber hung at his belt, a beacon of danger amid his robes, but he seemed content merely to taunt. For now.

Rey curved her spine up to protect her exposed torso through sheer force of will. She shot what she intended to be a baleful, defiant glare, but as the med-bay swam anew, guessed it came out more as a red-rimmed, woozy blink.

The mask tilted as Kylo watched emotions war across her face. Confusion. Alarm. Hatred. The concoction the droids had dosed her with had obviously muddled her faculties considerably.

He could glean whatever he desired.

And he began with demanding to know why she wasn't listed in any intercepted communiques.

"How long have you been with the Resistance?" He asked.

The words matriculated slowly, decidedly void of 'map' or 'Skywalker'. Rey's brow crimped as she sluggishly tried formulating a lie. "Forever."

A scoff sounded from his helmet's confines. "No."

"You've seeninto… myhead," she slurred. "You already know."

But Kylo had glimpsed nothing of the Resistance. He'd caught the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo, the BB unit that had started this whole debacle – but no missions. Nothing of General Organa.

The scavenger couldn't be powerful enough to have hid them. She couldn't.

"How did you know where to place those charges?" He demanded. "We found no communicator on you."

Had she allowed herself to be captured outside Maz Kanata's palace on purpose? A part of an elaborate plan to grant her access to the oscillators? Impossible.

The concentration left Rey's eyes as she struggled to comprehend. "The whispers told me," she mumbled. "The ones floating in the air."

Kylo went still. He could sense the truth in her words. The Force had stopped guiding him in such a direct way, replaced by his master's chilling commands, and he had to compel it for counsel now. A covetous spike of bitterness stabbed through him. "What do they say of me?" He ground out.

Rey blinked, staring at a point in the wall over his shoulder. "You?…," she trailed off with a frown.

Kylo craned forward on his toes, resisting the urge to rip the bacta patch from her neck only because he wanted her answer more. "Tell me."

She shook her head. "They say you're… broken… lost," confusion clouded her gaze. "That I can…," she didn't have to utter the last of her sentence, he heard it clearly in her mind.

Save you.

Kylo's features contorted in an ugly, vicious snarl behind his mask. His arm rocketed from his knees, shoving her back, sending her head connecting with a smacking thud against the hard tile.

"They spew deceit, as always," he snapped. "As if I—or anything in the galaxy—would need a scavenged scrap like you."

The medical droids swarmed over the girl, bleeping in as scathing a reproach as their programming allowed, and he spotted a lurid band of red text fill her bio-file, warning of a possible concussion.

Rey glanced up at the ceiling, struggling to keep her eyes from rolling back in her head. "No," the refute was breathy as black edged her vision. "They say you've forgotten how to listen."