Warning: some dark themes mentioned regarding Rey's back story here.

Shadows of the Past

Sunlight beamed through the sheer white curtains and onto Rey of Jakku's sleeping form. She blinked lazily, eyes heavy after the first hours of dreamless, peaceful sleep that she had enjoyed in a long time. The light speared in beneath her lashes and she felt the warmth of the sun touching her arms and face.

Slowly, the shapes of the room took form. The frame of the window, the ornate leather armchair, and the outline for a man sitting in it, his long legs stretched out in front of him on the coffee table, looking out over the busy street below.

She smiled at the sight of him, two strongly defined dimples appearing on her cheeks.

"Morning!" she said cheerily.

Kylo startled at her voice, turning around to face her. In one hand he held a small knife, and in the other, a blood-red apple that he was carefully cutting in perfect mathematical fractions.

"Good morning," he replied, with the slightest smile.

He had brushed his hair since last night, the tumultuous waves now tamed and neat. His face was freshly shaven and she could smell hints of shaving cream and moisturiser. It made him appear younger with such a clean cut and she wondered if his skin would feel as soft as it looked now.

She did a cat-like stretch, taking a deep yawn and threading her fingers as she raised them over her head. God, it felt good to have a solid couple of hours sleep.

"Thanks for letting me lie in. What time is it?"

"Five past nine," he answered frankly, although he didn't seem to have a watch.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Rey shrieked and leaped out of bed. "I'm going to be so late."

She ran around manically, collecting her clothes, shimming into her jeans, pulling her work top on—

"Where are my shoes?" she cried. "Can you help me find my shoes? Quick! I need to catch the 78 bus to be at work by ten."

She dashed around the room, flinging things out of her way. But Kylo merely watched the streetscape below, distantly slicing and eating his apple.

"Hey!" Rey called out to him sharply. "A little help?"

He watched her; those dark eyes burrowing into her thoughtfully, as though a great weight was on his mind, but not enough to move him.

Rey heaved a sigh of exasperation and continued rampaging through the bedroom.

"It's not your first time, is it?" His words were carefully measured, as though he struggled to control them into something unfeeling.

She really didn't have time for this. "What are you talking about?"

"Sex work," he said surely, and Rey froze in place. "I did some research."

She was falling, or at least it felt like she was, her insides turning to mush as a wave of nausea churned in her stomach.

How could he know? She reached out for something to lean against; the floor below seemed distant and unstable, as though she were standing on the ocean's rolling swell.

"Where did you find that out?" she asked, her voice raspy and quiet. It had suddenly become very difficult to swallow.

"I did some research on you last night."

Oh God, why wouldn't the sickness in her gut ease?

"Don't worry, it's not easy to find unless you know where to look—" he paused—"Kira."

Her heart stopped at the name and her body felt clammy.

Screw the shoes. She would catch the bus home barefoot if she had to.

"I need to go." She gathered up the last of her belongings, stuffing them into her bag. She needed to get out of there. She wasn't ready for this, to face truths long buried.

The door! She had to get to the door.

"Your parents didn't want you, did they?" His voice carried after her, just as her fingers reached for the handle.

Her world was shattering, layers of lies cracking like the crust of the earth being upheaved. She held onto the last strands of hope. The promises she had rehearsed night after night.

"My parents were good people," she whispered.

"They were fucking meth addicts who borrowed too much money to support their habit." His words were vicious, striking at her like a whip.

A sob caught in her throat, and the air deflated from her body, leaving her feeling very small. He walked towards her, his steady, unchanging steps coming closer with purpose.

"Please don't do this."

"They sent you away." The words were soft, but it didn't remove their sting.

"I was a burden to them."

A single tear dropped down her cheek and onto the floor. She hated to cry in front of him, so she held the others back.

"You jumped around from home to home, until you went under the care of an old scrap dealer named Unkar Plutt."

A chill ran up her spine at his name; the air in the room changed, stinking of cigarettes and gin, the smoke so thick it stung her eyes. There were flies in the kitchen, the low murmur of their wings buzzing noisily as they feasted on forgotten food scraps. And there he was at the table, knife in one hand, fork in the other, waiting for her to feed him. That pathetic excuse of a man, with his huge forearms and a broken nose. She hated him.

Don't take me back to this place, her mind pleaded. Not to those memories, to that home. But it was too late, she was falling into them, unable to see the light. Kylo's hands closed around her arms gently, the warmth of them travelling down the length of her arms, pulling her back to the present.

He was standing behind her now; she could feel the heat of his breath on her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut, crushing her tears, hiding them from him, from the world.

"Rey," he whispered. "I know he sold you to that fucked-up website where they auction a girl's virginity. You didn't even know about it until the deal had closed."

"It was just sex," she said stoically. "You above all people should know that's just a commodity."

"Is it?" He turned her around to face him, dipping his face down low to meet her hollow eyes.

"It was good money."

"And you got none of it."

She turned away. It was bad enough that Plutt had created a profile for her and sold her off. He hadn't even told her what to expect of sex, when the foreign businessman showed up at their door. She was 16, unpractised, untouched, and even though the man had been gentle, the experience was still painful. She had watched as he pulled his trousers up at the end, discarding the used condom and straightening his tie. It wasn't hard: all she needed to do was lie there and be broken.

Her eyes stared past Kylo's broad chest, past the walls, and the building, and the present, to that young girl, weeping, naked, on her blood-stained bed.

Her chest was collapsing. She couldn't hold the wave of emotion back for much longer.

Kylo paced, balling his hands into fists. "You were a fucking child and he sold you to the highest bidder!"

"I need to sit down." She moved back to the bed, legs weak and trembling with every step as Kylo continued pacing the room like a caged tiger.

Once on the bed, she steadied her palms by her side and calmed her breathing.

"I thought I could help them. I knew my parents had gotten in over their heads with debt and someone was after them. I thought if I could just pay it off for them, they would be able to break free of their habit, and then—and then they would want me back."

She took a few more solid breaths, trying to stay strong. "After it happened, Plutt gave me a couple of towels to clean myself up and threw me a 20-dollar-note for my 'services'. Then he was gone, taking the rest of the money for himself. I left that afternoon. I would rather be living on the street than living as a slave."

"Where is he now?"

"I don't know," she lied. She didn't trust the timbre of Kylo's voice, low and menacing, crazed, as though he might do anything.

"If I find—"

"It's done. It's in the past. Anyway, I'm being paid now, aren't I?" she added a little bitterly.

Kylo flinched, his back straightening.

"Sorry," she said quietly, dropping her head. "That was—"

"Don't be." He sat beside her. The bed sunk with his weight, and Rey felt her body shift closer to him, their arms brushing next to each other. The hair on her arms raised as their bodies touched. For a moment, they just stared ahead in waiting silence.

"It's not your fault, Rey."

His voice was too soft. She had not expected sympathy from him. He was her dickhead client. That was something she could understand. This man who sat beside her: light and darkness, coldness and warmth. He was paying to use her body. That was all.

She looked at him. The silence had lingered too long between them. He, too, seemed lost in thought, only breaking from his meditation when her eyes rested on him. Suddenly she felt very aware of her red-rimmed eyes and stuffy nose, she didn't want him to see her like this.

"After that, I lived on the street for a while, scavenging what I could. I tried to find my parents and went as far as finding my old house in a run-down part of Jakku. But I wasn't the only one looking for them."

Kylo tensed beside her; pointedly looking away.

"They had died a few years earlier. Overdose, apparently. They owed a lot of money in the end, even more than before I left. At least a hundred grand. And I found out the hard way that the debt had fallen to me."

She let her words fall away. He had stopped asking questions now, in fact, he wasn't even looking at her. But she continued, secretly happy to speak of these things with another person.

"Six years ago, when I was squatting there, a gang of masked men came to collect. They were going to break my arms. I don't know how, but they knew who I was and that I had earned all that money. They demanded payment to settle the debt. When I told them that I didn't have it, it got nasty. I managed to escape. Then I changed my name and for the next six years I thought I was finally free of it all."

She sighed, remembering the black envelope, no address, no postage stamp, unsealed. She pulled out a letter, typed in capitals. "Kira. First installment by the 15th of next month or we will finish what was started."

She took a loud breath through tapered lips, trying to keep her composure.

"I have no idea how I'm going to pay that debt, Kylo. That's why I am doing this, I need to get as much money as I can."

Kylo was very still beside her, staring off into the distance. She wasn't even sure he was still listening to her.

"Do you have any idea who your debt is to?" He asked, distantly, jaw clenched.

She shook her head. "I just have an account number."

Then something stirred in her, a possibility. "Do you know?"

He stood up, walking over to the fireplace and grabbed his keys from the gilded ashtray.

"Do you know who is after me?"

He put them in his pocket, running his fingers through his hair. Why was his face so pale?

"Kylo?" Rey jumped to her feet and he stilled, looking down at her with half-lidded eyes. She came before him and her hand pushed against his chest, stopping the momentum of his movement. He stilled, studying the small hand pressed into his chest, following it back to her body, to her eyes.

He stepped closer, pushing his weight against her palm. For a moment his dark eyes were menacing, and wanting. He dipped his head, tilting it as he moved his face closer to hers.

"Why aren't you answering me?" She barely managed the get the words out. The way he was looking at her, the pressure of his body pushing towards her. What was he doing?

"Because," he whispered, bringing his lips to her ears and she felt a million spine-tingling shivers dropping to her toes. He looked around, as if as if searching for the answer, until his eyes paused on the digital clock by the bed.

"I think you just missed your bus."

"Shit!" Rey almost shouted, running to the window just in time to see the red tail-lights of the seventy-eight bus turning right down the hill. "No, no, no! Peavey's going to kill me!"

Kylo tossed his keys in the air, catching them again in one swoop of his hands. "Come on."

"You're going to drive me to work?" she asked incredulously. "But it's halfway across town."

"I'm going that way."

"Liar."

He smirked. "Well, now I'm going that way."

"You don't need to do this." Rey flushed, looking anywhere but at him. This "arrangement" was safely compartmentalised in the walls of this room; she wasn't ready to let it out into the real world. Somehow, it felt like crossing a line.

"It's no problem," he said frankly and opened the door, glancing back at her slyly. "I'm sure you can find a way to pay me back tonight."

Rey folded her arms in mock mutiny. "Why do I get the impression this lift has more strings attached than a marionette?"

He laughed. The first time she had seen him do it, and the sound brought a smile to her heart.

"No strings. Just a lift and the pleasure of your company, Rey."

She snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure."

He disappeared down the hallway and left Rey alone, gnawing her lip, considering his proposal.

This was a very bad idea.

A terrible idea.

But—

"Wait, I'm coming!"

Thank you! I know I've tortured you :) Sorry about that.