Chapter Nine: Novice

Rey blinked herself awake and realized several changes to her status. She had been moved to a medi-bed, a long sheet pulled up to her chin, and the fuzzing in her brain had cleared. Her body ached, but no longer felt like it was on fire.

There was a steaming bowl of soup on a trayed table nearby.

And Kylo Ren stood at her feet, scrutinizing her as he had in the interrogation cell of Starkiller Base. She assumed behind his mask she'd see cold calculation, which was why she almost choked on her own tongue when a gloved hand gestured to the table.

"Eat," he ordered.

Rey didn't give the offering a glance as she scooted upright. "No, thanks."

He flicked his wrist, bringing her hovering bio-file flying to her bedside. She flushed as she scanned its new contents, angry her most private details were on full display.

Tissue wastage indeed, she seethed. I was climbing around their precious stronghold JUST fine.

"Your friends seemed to care after your wellbeing as well as they planned and executed your rescue," he taunted, watching her read.

Rey wasn't going to answer. Really. No need to give this masked horror any fodder. Her mouth opened before she could stop herself. "They didn't do this to me."

Kylo straightened slightly. "Ah, yes. The harshness of Jakku. And…," he paused. "Unkar Plutt?"

She drew in a sharp breath, widening her eyes. How had he gotten so much from their brief encounter? He knew about Niima Outpost?

Resolutely staying mute this time, she cast her gaze about the room, alighting on an array of valuable instruments the droids were dittering over, beeping to each other.

"There are no weapons you could use against me," Kylo stated, catching her inspection. "Except perhaps your paltry, Force fumblings."

Rey recognized the challenge as an obvious bid to see if she could repeat her efforts from the cockpit, but decided to indulge anyway. She'd take any opportunity to increase his wariness of her.

Closing her eyes, she called up an image of her captor to mind, envisioning herself yanking the end of his pretentious cloak and sending him sprawling. Rey beckoned the warm, invisible ripples lapping against her to rise to waves, but her entreaty was timid. Testing. They swelled gently, aimless and without purpose, unable to do more than roll around her

Smirk filled Kylo's voice. "You grope for it like a child too short to reach a high shelf," he said. "Awkward and inexperienced."

He can feel my efforts? Rey jolted in her seat. I'm not imagining the ripples?

Encouraged, she concentrated, fueled by a fervent desire to prove him wrong. She barely knew what he was talking about; Maz had only mentioned the dormant power now awake in the vaguest of terms, but Rey had seen her effect when she'd pushed back against his mental assault. And when she'd convinced her guard to release her.

She heard cloth flutter, like a sudden draft had breezed through, and squeezed her closed eyes tighter, imagining Kylo Ren upended on his back.

The flutter intensified to an erratic flapping before a surprised snarl broke from his mask.

With a creak of glove leather, her summoned waves dissipated instantly. Rey opened her eyes to a glower she could feel through the layers of helmet between them.

"You are clumsy," Kylo clipped out. "More of a bungling amateur than I'd originally assumed," he folded his arms across his broad chest. "You aren't part of the Resistance at all, are you?"

Rey's face betrayed her, heating in a bright blush that gave all the answer he needed.

Kylo mulled his own words, turning them over for a long moment as his obscured chin dropped down. "Yet you were able to enact their plan without any knowledge of it," he murmured, snapping attention back to her. "Those are powerful whispers you hear."

Rey made a big show of smoothing the sheets around her, trying to seem composed as she leveled their creases with flat palms. "The shelves don't seem too high to me," she managed crisply.

An exhale that could be mistaken for a chuckle on someone else left him. "With a teacher, you'd reach them effortlessly."

Her hands stuttered as her eyes narrowed. "Careful," she said. "I'd send them crashing down over your head if that were true."