Chapter Sixteen

Rey didn't know where she was when she awoke. She was lying on the ground in a strange room that she had never seen before. There were no windows, the only light came from the ceiling far above her. The lights cast a dull illumination over everything. Not that there was much to see. No furniture or objects filled the room. She was utterly alone. The ground and all the walls were made of the same material. It was a dull black in color and had a slight give, kind of like a training mat. Rey could not detect a single seam anywhere.

Unlike Starkiller base and the multitude of ships discarded on Jakku, there was nothing mechanical for her to tinker with. Whatever relay systems that the room held were inaccessible to her. She walked around the edge of the room in frustration.

Rey kept her nails purposefully short. Long nails were a hinderance when scavenging. She still shuddered at the memory of having nails pulled back as she fiddled with the mechanics of a downed Star Destroyer. But now she wished that she had allowed them to grow.

Using the thumb nail on her right hand, she tried to cut through a piece of the strange material on the wall. After considerable effort, she was able to make a shallow incision. To her dismay, it closed almost immediately. The material was solid and seemed capable of correcting any damage she inflicted on it.

Sighing, Rey walked away from the wall and sat down in the middle of the room. There had to be a way out of here, she thought. Hell, she had gotten in somehow. She knew that there was a door hidden somewhere behind one of these walls. She just needed to be patient and when someone came for her, she would learn its location.

She tried not to think about who that person most likely was.

As if conjured by her thoughts, the door appeared with Kylo Ren blocking her escape. They stared at each other in silence for several moments before he spoke.

"How do you like your accommodations?" He gestured around the room as he spoke. His tone was exactly like when they were together in the interrogation room and he told her that she was "his guest."

Rey snorted in derision. "Oh, it is just lovely. May I inquire as to how long my stay will be?"

Rey tried to match his tone but fell short. Her impatience and anger bled into her tone. She needed to get out of here. Finn and Rose needed her. Not to mention Chewie. He would be beside himself when she didn't return.

"Indefinitely," he replied in a nonchalant tone.

"That isn't going to work for me."

Rey rose from the ground as she spoke. Anger radiated through her entire being, making her muscles tense.

"Then fight me for your freedom."

He took two steps closer to her. The door behind him remained open. Rey could spy a long hallway behind him.

"What?"

"I'm serious. If you fight me and win, you can go free. I will even give you a ship."

Rey was taken aback. He sounded so sincere. But none of this made any sense. Why go to all the trouble of capturing her, just to let her go?

Rey shifted her stance as she considered him. His appeared relaxed and self-assured. He was dressed in the same way as he had aboard the Supremacy. Black boots, black pants and black tunic. Everything precise and immaculate except for his hair. His hair had grown since she had last seen him. The dark curls now brushing the tops of his shoulders in disarray. Like he had only run his fingers through them when he woke up in the morning and said, "good enough."

The only part of him that didn't look relaxed were his eyes. His eyes were laser focused on her registering every subtle movement of her body.

"And do I have your assurance that when I leave, you will not come after me again?"

The hint of a smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. Rey hated how distracting his mouth was. Those full lips, so soft and sensual. Pity they belonged to someone she despised.

"Of course. Shall we begin?"

Kylo barely had the chance to finish his sentence before Rey launched herself at him. Her flurry of kicks and hits blocked with practiced ease. It was infuriating how calm he remained. He didn't even strike back, just blocked her attack. He wasn't even breathing hard for star's sake.

It was infuriating. He was infuriating. She didn't have time for whatever game he was playing. Her friends needed her. Changing tactics, she looped one leg behind his and grabbed onto the front of his shirt. Then she dropped her body weight and allowed the momentum to carry them both to the ground. His grunt of surprise was satisfying in the extreme.

The move seemed to convince him to treat this seriously and Rey was not sure that was a good thing. While they grappled on the ground, it because clear that she was not going to win this. Still she couldn't give up.

Rolling on top of him, she delivered a viscous blow to his mouth. She split his lip. The pain radiating down her hand told her that she had cut her knuckle open as well. The action seemed to trigger something in him. He wrapped his long legs around her torso and used them to like a lever to pull her down. She couldn't overpower him. He was too strong. When her back it the ground, he released her from his legs. She tried to roll away, but he was too fast. His chest slammed down onto her. His entire body settled over her and she could feel every hard inch of him.

He trapped her hands above her head. The only part of her that she could move was her head. She growled in frustration and struggled in his hold. Rey couldn't say how long they stayed locked together like that. He let her struggle until she had exhausted herself. Finally conceding defeat, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the ground.

She expected something to happen, or at least for him to say something. Opening her eyes, she saw him gazing down at her. The smirk on his face stretched his cut lip. A little rivulet of blood ran down his chin. Rey focused on that and not the triumph she saw in his eyes. He was clearly pleased.

"This means nothing," she stated, annoyed at how petulant she sounded.

His smirk deepened into a full smile. It was the first time that Rey had ever seen him actually smile. Not a smirk, not a quirk of the lips, a full honest to goodness smile. His teeth were straight and white. Rey hated it, hated the way she reacted to it. Something clenched low and tight in her belly. She was suddenly aware of how close they were. Of how disturbingly good his weight felt upon her.

Latching on to her anger as her only defense, Rey hissed out "I will get out of here."

"Fight me all you like little scavenger, but you are not going anywhere."

The confidence in his tone grated on her nerves. She hated the smug superiority in his demeanor. But what she hated the most was that there was nothing she could do. At least, not right now and she despised how that made her feel.

Slowly, deliberately, so that there could be no mistake that he was letting her up, did Kylo Ren rise. He strode out of the room without so much as a backward glance. The door sealed itself shut behind him. Rey sat up and let out a huff of frustration. Her head jerked up when the door opened again and in Kylo returned.

He was holding a small bowl and a few other items. He sat down next to her and lifted her injured hand. Rey sat incredulous.

"What are you doing?"

She was so shocked that she didn't even fight him. Just watched as he lifted her hand closer to his face to inspect the damage before dipping the rag into the bowl of water and cleaning the cut.

It stung, but Rey barely registered it. This didn't make sense. He kidnapped her, locked her in a room and defeated her in a fight and now he was taking care of her. She didn't understand any of this and she just wanted everything to stop so that she could be left alone to think.

With that in mind, she tried to pull her hand away. He griped her hand tightly, refusing to let go. When she continued to struggle, he applied more pressure until pain erupted in her fingers.

"You aren't going to make it better if you break all my fingers."

"Then stop struggling." His gaze was hard again. His eyes like little chips of flint as he glared at her. He released the pressure on her fingers and continued to methodically clean her wound.

They remained in silence until he finished. When he did, he rose to leave without speaking to her. He paused when she asked, "What now?"

Kylo seemed to ponder the question, almost as if he was asking himself the same thing. Then he strode out the door, without answering. Leaving Rey to wonder again about this strange situation.

…

Kylo handed the bowl and other supplies to an attendant before entering his room. Rey's last question echoing in his ears. What now indeed?

He didn't know what possessed him to treat her wounds after their fight. He wanted to demonstrate the futility of her resistance to him. To show, once and for all, that her previous triumph over him had been a fluke. Nothing more.

Then what had possessed him to take care of her? The abrasion was hardly worth noticing. He had sustained far worse in his training, but he had immediately treated her. He could have summoned someone else to do it, but he couldn't stand the thought.

He wanted to believe that it was because he didn't want someone else to fall victim to her Force suggestions but that was a lie. The idea of anyone else touching her filled him with rage. She was his, to do with as he pleased. If it pleased him to treat her then so be it. He did it because he wanted to and for no other reason.

Stripping off his tunic, he went straight to his fresher. Looking in the mirror, he examined the cut on his lip. She had marked him again. The little scavenger was leaving quite a collection of marks on him. First the lightsaber scar, then the bite on his neck and now the cut on his lip.

Kylo knew that bacta cream would erase any trace of the marks on his neck or lip. However, he felt himself strangely reluctant to do so. He liked that he bore her marks.

Stopping that line of thinking, Kylo refocused on the original question. What was he going to do with her now? He wanted to hurt her, yes. He wanted to punish her, but he didn't want to break her.

What he wanted the most was to bind her to him. To make the ties between them so strong that she would never think to leave him again. That she would never chose another over him again.

Lucky for him, the First Order, Galactic Empire and even the Sith before them had plenty of teachings about emotional manipulation. He had already isolated her, and she would remain without anyone except him. He would become her entire world. It only served her right for how much she infected him.

Everything good and bad in her life would now be because of him. A dark smiled graced his face, once again opening the cut on his lip.