How had the girl gotten out of her tower room?
That question had been pricking at the back of Kylo's mind all evening long. His guest, the one who very soon would need a name, had been on relatively good behavior. She had sat in her corner of his library and eaten her food quietly. Her seventh or eight dinner of the night. It must have made her sleepy because nextshe had curled up, rested her head on the bend of her arm, and watched him in silence.
She didn't seem like a human. She didn't seem like a mermaid. She was something else. And her quietude only perturbed him more.
Kylo had waited until he was reasonably certain she was asleep before ascending to the top room where he had first placed her. It was more or less not in complete disarray. A scattering ob objects hinting at places where she had been learning to stand and then fell and caught herself on a piece of furniture. Nothing suspicious. Nothing she could have used to somehow bash or maneuver the locked door open.
It was a mystery. Kylo had gone down then, counting each one of the steps she must have awkwardly, dangerously descended on her own. When he gets back to the library the girl is there just like she was except now the empty pie plate is laying on the center of the floor and she's watching him with an almost expectant look on her face.
"You're not hungry," he tells her, "you can't possibly be hungry. Did you leave this here for me to do something with?"
Silence. Of course. The girl doesn't talk. He's not sure if she can talk, or simply doesn't know how. But an odd feeling pushes at Kylo's mind. A sort of nudge. No… a sort of suggestion.
Kylo blinks. The girl's gimlet-eyed stare doesn't waver. The feeling continues and he closes his eyes to focus on it.
She's trying to tell him something. Somehow, she's trying to tell him something. Trying to push into his mind a message just like he had done to her on several occasions.
A… it's another fish pie. That's what he sees. Visualizes it as if it was through her own eyes. Feels the leaden weight pushing at his stomach. Uncomfortably full. Almost nauseating so, but still tempered with a sharp sense of longing.
Oh, and sweets, too. She's thinking of the jam. No, she's telling him about it. Good memories and high hopes for the future.
Kylo's eyes snap open. The girl squares her jaw defiantly.
"A sense of entitlement is a most uncharming quality, m'lady. I'm under no obligation to ever feed you again, you do know that?"
He picks up the plate and her eyes widen. When he kneels next to her she doesn't immediately scurry to the other side of the room like she did only half a day before.
"Do you know what you are?"
His other hand reaches out, nearly touching her forehead but thinking better of it when she growls lowly in her throat and shrinks away.
"I think that maybe I was looking for answers in the wrong places. Maybe I should have been going to the source rather than old fairy tales."
His palm wraps around her head, covering her eyes, and she whines. Her feet kick and hands flail but he ignores that. Holds her tighter as she pushes away harder, an edge of confusion and fear rising through from her mind into his.
Kylo focuses. This doesn't have to be an unpleasant business and he doesn't mean for it to be. Just a few answers. A soft and harmless skimming over the surface of her memories.
Tightness. Restriction. She remembers that. Recently too. She had been tied up. Confined somewhere very small. She'd still had a tail then and she had been locked up in some place far too small for her to stretch out like she had been desperate for.
The feelings strike him. Hazy, uncertain. Very confusing. Experiencing her captivity through her mind but it wasn't familiar. She had still very much been an animal then. Kylo couldn't see anything, but he could feel.
Oh. Wait. He could see, but just a little. A crack of light. She had been kept in a box somewhere. The hold of a ship? No. Maybe. She was underwater. Kylo could feel the saltwater filling her lungs. Very stale and moldy. Whoever had done this hadn't tried to kill her, but that had tried to keep her.
A man's voice, then. More than one. They were talking, but the sounds were distorted by the water.
Then the hatch opens and the vision fills with blinding light.
The girl's hand strikes Kylo hard on the fleshy part of his cheek right below his eyes. She's slapped him almost, and now their brief mental connection has been brought to an abrupt end. She kicks at him, striking him squarely in his chest as she tries to get away.
There's that look of fear in her eyes again. She's upset with him. Angry and frightened that he's made her re-live that.
Something about that look of pure betrayal cuts Kylo deep. He catches her wrist and doesn't think about it as he hauls her into him, wrapping his arms around her and sinking his fingers into her hair just as he sinks his will back into her mind.
Sleep," he commands.
And she does.
The girl slumps, falling the rest of the way into his arms. Kylo doesn't waste any time, knowing from before how quickly she seems able to break his spell on her. He picks her up then, the empty pie plate clattering to the floor with a tinny ring, and he sweeps her out of the room and takes her back upstairs.
He had been pretending to be asleep.
Kylo felt her when she woke. It didn't take her very long at all. She seemed to becoming more immune to his efforts over her, and that was a rather disturbing and enigmatic new development.
Oh yes, she was angry. Very. She knew what he'd done and she'd woken up rather cross with him.
There had been a tantrum when she'd found the tower door locked. She'd thrown things, everything small enough for her to lift by the sounds of it. He could hear her voice huffing and puffing and making angry, feral sharp sounds that for all the world seemed like she was cursing him out.
The door had shook. Kylo reached out with the force, trying to see exactly what she was doing. The more he connects his mind to hers, the easier it becomes. She's throwing herself at the heavy iron-reinforced wood, trying to bash it down with her shoulder, and he feels a sympathetic was of hot pain flow across his own body from the impact.
Then she sinks down, frustration roiling through her. Tears burn against his cheeks. Infuriated. Humiliated.
Determined.
She's doing something. Trying to do something. Not just crying and giving up and accepting her confinement, but she's trying to accomplish something.
The Force shifts. She's pulling on it, trying to manipulate it. It's ugly and beyond fumbling. She has not a single idea how to do what she's doing, but she's doing it anyhow.
Kylo can hear the door lock snap open even all the way from downstairs.
It's met with a eave of pure, unbridled enthusiasm. I did it! I did it! So much excitement that Kylo has to pull away and break his voyeurism.
So she can use the Force, then? What a terribly dangerous precedent. Not for the first time he wonders if he should have killed her when he had the chance. Her kind, the merfolk that she must still be despite appearances, were magical. They all had the Force within them, but it was part of their supernatural lifeblood, not their power to command at will.
What Kylo knows he should do and what he's capable of are now two very different things. Another very dangerous development. There were so few things in the world that Kylo knows he could trust but up until meeting this aberrant girl his faith in himself had been implicit.
A soft female grunt comes from somewhere at the top of the flight of the stairs. Kylo had been lurking in the nighttime shadows of the central room, lost in his thoughts and his concentration of her. She's coming down the stairs now. Slowly, painfully, and not without a healthy amount of fear. She's afraid of falling, as she well should be, and instead is half sliding half crawling backwards on her hands and feet, taking each step one at a time.
Kylo silently returns back to the library where she had last seen him to be. He lays down on the padded bench, pretending to be asleep again, and even kicks off his shoes and draws a blanket over himself for good effect. He can track her well enough with the Force and, should she slip and fall on the spiral staircase, then it would be by her own foolishness and a greatly difficult decision would be taken off his hands and out of his conscience.
When the girl gets to the bottom landing she stands and grows still. Listening, probably. It's late, the evening had been a long one, and Kylo wonders if she can hear the crashing of the waves along the shore outside.
The only sign of her entry into the room with him is a slight shift in the currents of the air. With every step she takes she seems to become more adapt at the next. Clever little thing. Between her opening the door with her mind and now walking with all the subtlety of a cat slinking through the shadows of the night, Kylo can't help but feel a little humbled. He has underestimated her clearly. A mistake he will have to learn from and quickly.
He pokes at her mind to suss out her goal but her presence is evasive to him. This time Kylo doesn't press too hard, not wanting to give his wakefulness away and spook her before she reveals her intention.
Instead he opens his eyes a sliver. Just enough to see the shape of her as she creeps about. He'd left the grate of the fire open, hoping that the light and warmth of it would bring her here so he could observe her better.
The girl slinks. Slowly. Cautiously. She's watching him, and Kylo can see the deep suspicion in her eyes as she approaches.
When she gets to his bedside she stops. Kylo keeps his eyes slitted nearly closed, drawing his breath in steadily. The girl watches him, her full lips pressing together into a tight line and oh what he would give to be able to read her thoughts right now.
The notion that somehow she had been sent by his many enemies to kill him was not an impossible one. Here she was, this strange and unique creature, and now she think she has him at a disadvantage.
If she's going to do it, do anything to him, she'll need to be very quick. He can summon his saber into his hand in an instant. His fingertips prickle, readying themselves to rise and do exactly that as the girl's hand reaches out.
But quick she isn't. In fact she's the exact opposite. Her hand floats out through the firelit air, reaching for him. His neck, perhaps? Is that her plan?
No, it isn't. She's reaching for his feet instead.
Oh so carefully she catches the swollen blanket he had draped over him. Pinches it and glances up. Kylo keeps his face placid even as his curiosity piques.
Then she lifts it, exposing his lower legs to the air.
And she leans in close. Close enough that he can feel her breath ghosting over his feet. She regards them with a look of pure intensity. Then her head shifts and she looks down at her own lower body before going back to his.
A finger points and extends. She touches the big tow of the foot closest to her with a barely detectable press. Kylo wiggles it just a little. The girl blinks rapidly. She touches it again, this time tracing the edge of the toenail from one corner to the other. He wiggles his toe again and this time she recoils slightly. Her hand retracts but her gaze only grows in focus. She stares at his feet, turning her head from one side to the other as if contemplating the appendage from a new angle is the secret to understanding how they work.
Her nose twitches and Kylo's eyes begin to slide open wider. She pays no attention to him or anywhere except his closest foot. Her chin lifts and she bites on her lower lip, her top teeth baring themselves in her concentration, and all at once Kylo's patience snaps competently.
"Are you bloody well thinking about eating my toes? You are, aren't you?!"
The girl hisses at his voice, her eyes going wide as she pushes away. Kylo grabs her wrist, leaping to his feet, and oh how she yowls. He towers over her easily as she hunches, growling and trying to jerk herself free.
"M'lady-" he starts to shake a chiding finger at her before reconsidering the move as too risky -"I do believe you were planning on biting me. That's terrible unkind of you."
Planning or perhaps at least considering it. She looks up at him and there's both fear and a very pouty sort of guilt to her expression that answers his question for her.
"I see," he lets go of her and she shrinks backwards, grabbing the empty pie plate and holding it up almost like a shield. "I suppose the only mystery here is whether you would have actually gone through it or not."
He glares down at her, projecting an image of all the food he had brought for her into her mind. And the guilt in her eyes only grows, apparently bloodthirsty mermaids were in fact capable of feeling remorse.
Kylo sighs and reaches out, offering her an olive branch in the form of trusting his hand to be close enough to her to help her up to her feet. The girl bolts then, awkwardly dashing around him and out of the room as fast as her unsteady limbs will let her. Kylo lets her go, listening and waiting for the thunderous sounds of her retreating back up the stairs to her room. Instead her steps go the other way, rounding the corner of the hall to a different part of-
"Oh are you going to the pantry? Is that it?"
The door slams shuts before Kylo can reach it. Adding insult to injury he next hears her dragging something heavy across her side of it, probably one of the pantry shelves.
Then silence falls. Kylo can sense her anticipation. She expects him to bash down the door and he has half a mind to do just that in the wake of her brush with her cannibalistic former nature.
The other half of him wins out, though. Wins out and makes him sigh deep and soul weary, his eyes rolling up and around as the full effect of what his life has become over this last days hits him in full.
"Fine then, m'lady," he calls out loudly, "stay in there if you must. At least I'll know where you are for once."
He leaves then, returning to the library only to put another log on the fire before going to his proper bedroom. This time he locks the door and drags his own dresser in front of it as well. Then, just for good measure, he goes to his closet and pulls out his heaviest, firmest pair or leather boots and puts them on before finally retiring to sleep.
Only then does he hear the pantry door scrape open. It's a short lived noise, not enough to have made a gap for the girl to have crept through, but soon the night resonates with a tinny ringing sound.
The pie plate. She had unbarricaded herself just enough to toss the empty pie plate out, and then the door closes again.
"A goodnight message for me, m'lady?" he asks to no one.
Subtle. He should have to try and teach her manners, but first would have to be the very basics of civilized conduct. Until then, it would seem that another trip to the bakery in town would be in order tomorrow.
author's note:
What? Rey's only been a human for like a day tops! She started off just wanting to see if Kylo has the same strange things at the end of his legs like she does and then all that toe wiggling… it was too enticing to resist. #thegirlcanthelpit
And as always, find me on tumblr at lost-inthesunlight or on twitter (for this chapter's GORGEOUS gifted artwork) at Ava_Avdal
comment replies:
Guest: I'm gad you liked this update! I hope you check out ch8 too. Thanks so much for commenting!
jhsbradford: Thanks for commenting! I think this version of Reylo is so very different from anything I've done before it makes for some really interesting chances at their characterizations. I'm having a lot of fun with it!