He stilled, said carefully, 'Why?'

'You said last night that you didn't know which side of the Force I was on. I go straight to the dark you said, I don't fight it. I want you to show me how to fight it.'

'I'm the strongest dark side user in the galaxy and you want me to show you how to fight it?' There was a disbelieving edge to his words. 'Surely my life story suggests I'm the last person you should ask about resisting the dark side.'

'You won't tell me your life story, remember? And you're not a dark side user any more. You've turned back to the light. You're the only person I know who's changed their mind like that.'

'I changed my mind?' The disbelief had escalated. 'You think it's as easy as 'I changed my mind'?'

'Why did you turn to the dark?'

'I had reasons.'

'And why did you come back to the light?'

'I had other reasons.'

'Sounds like a personal choice to me.'

He gaped at her. 'You have no idea what it's like – the power of it. It consumes you, controls you, turns you into its slave.'

She folded her arms. 'You don't let it control you any more though, do you? That's what you told me when you held my Sith saber. You control it, it doesn't control you. You're nobody's slave anymore.'

'I don't let it control me,' he repeated, although for a second he sounded like he was thinking about something else entirely. 'I'm nobody's slave.'

'Exactly. You can hear the dark side but you don't let it tell you what to do. I hear it too, but I'm terrible at not listening. Teach me how you do it, how you find your own strength.'

'My own strength?'

She was obviously going a bit too fast for him. 'I use the light, but I hear the dark and when I do it takes over. You use the dark, but you hear the light and you've found a way to combine the two so that neither controls you – you've found your own strength. Teach me how. Unless, of course, you haven't really turned to the light at all and this is some kind of elaborate dark side ploy to get me to do what you want.'

He shook his head. 'What exactly did you have in mind?'

'I want another try with the Sith lightsaber.'

'Absolutely not. You could have killed me last time.'

'Yes, but this time we're going to tackle it together. What was it your grandfather told you? The power we wield together is greater than either may call on alone? Together, you and I are more powerful than the dark side, or the light. If we're together, the dark side can't tell us what to do.'

'It can't, can it?' he said, but she had the sense his thoughts were elsewhere again and he was very quiet on the way back to the command shuttle.

He didn't snap out of his reverie until she'd landed back on Dorumaa and exited the shuttle, antique saberstaff in hand.

'Just wait.' He held out a hand, searching the beach where she'd landed for something. 'Don't open it until I'm ready.' He strode in the direction of a large palm tree, shucked off his cloak, spread it as a blanket and sat with his back planted firmly against the trunk. Then he spread his legs, patting the space between them. 'Come here.'

She gave him a dubious look.

'We need physical contact,' he explained in an overly patient tone, as if he were going too fast for her. 'And I need to have my hands on that saber in case you start trying to chop off my head again.'

She seated herself cautiously in the gap he'd indicated, nervous of the contact it would create between her backside and his groin but he wrapped an arm around her waist with a grunt of impatience and yanked her flush against his chest. Her brain took that opportunity to remind her that he'd seen her topless and she blushed, although in this position, he couldn't see her face. Still looped around her stomach, his arm relaxed and in that moment, she felt it too, the warmth of the connection between them establishing itself like an old friendship, comfortable and secure. It enveloped her with the promise of power, should she need it, but this time it also brought familiarity and companionship and she rested against his chest for a moment, listening to his breathing, feeling the thud of his heartbeat.

Then she lifted both hands out in front of her, bringing the saber up horizontally and he matched the position, his knuckles on either side of hers.

He blew a strand of hair away from her ear, sending a reflexive shiver down her spine. 'Remember who you are,' he said.

She flipped the blade open, turned it on. 'I remember who I am,' she replied with a grin. 'I am Rey from nowhere. My parents were nobody. I come from nothing. I'm nothing. I have no place.'

'None of that is true,' he countered, but his words came from a long way away. 'You are the last Jedi. You have a place with the Resistance. Everyone loves you – my uncle, my mother. You have friends who will defend you at the cost of their own lives. You are special.'

'I am special.' She wanted to move the weapon but it was fixed in place for some reason. 'The dark side makes me special. It is the only friend I need, the only family I have. It offers me power and with it I can take whatever I want.' She attempted to wrest the blade from its binding but it was stuck fast.

'And what do you want?'

'You,' she answered with a throaty chuckle. 'Just you, dressed all in black, sitting next to me on a throne and happy to be there. The darkness will give you to me.'

There was a long silence from the man behind her. 'It won't,' he said.

'It will.' She wrenched the saber into a spin and it came free for a second before stopping again.

'The Force doesn't have that kind of power,' he replied slowly. 'It can't make me love you, and it can't make you love me.'

'Oh, but it can,' she laughed. 'It can. The Force can destroy everything you have, your home, your family, your happiness and it will, it will if I let it. It will if you do not do as I say.'

'The darkness has already taken my life.' The deep voice behind her was quiet, and there was sadness in it. 'I have no home; no family and I'm chasing the only happiness I've felt in years. But even if that weren't the case I still wouldn't love you. A relationship forged with the edge of a blade, in fear, is no relationship at all. It's not real. I don't know why I didn't see that before.'

The restriction on her weapon fell away and she bounded to her feet, spinning the red beams in satisfaction. The Force oozed through her veins, rich and powerful; she could do anything she wanted with no fear, no recrimination and she could make him do anything she wanted too.

Two arms around her waist and the weight of a flying shoulder tackled her to the ground and she clung to the saber, wrestling for control until both her hands were above her head, flat on the sand, pinned down roughly by the man's hands on the handle. The weight of his body crushed her into the earth.

'This isn't you.' His mouth was somewhere near her ear. 'This isn't who you are.'

'This is who you want me to be,' she hissed back. 'I sense it.'

'I don't want you like this,' he said firmly. 'I'm going to give you one last chance to fight this off, and then I'm going to kiss you.'

She was running out of air; her chest was heaving for breath and that was a problem for which the dark side had only one answer. With an effort, she separated her legs and his hips slid into the space in between, tilting the burden of his body off her lungs as she wrapped her thighs around his waist and began to rock.

'You want me like this,' she crooned, yanking at the pinioned blade. 'On my back beneath you, while you put your children in my belly.'

The world went black.

When she awoke she had the sense that some time had passed. She was curled up against a familiar soft surface, black fabric against her cheek that smelt of burning and blood. Long legs sprawled on either side of her body and while one of his arms kept her propped in place, the other was moving through her hair, accompanied by a light tingling sensation. She groaned at the pain in her back of her skull, closed her eyes to make the nauseous doubling of her vision go away.

'What happened?' she mumbled through thick lips and a tongue like a giant pillow in her mouth.

'I hit you with a rock. Harder than I meant to. I think you have a concussion. Is this doing any good? I can't tell.'

Strong fingers probed at something sore and she winced, realising belatedly that he must be trying to heal her – trying, and failing. She attempted to reach backwards to explore the sore spot but her co-ordination was off and she poked him in the eye instead.

Flinching, he removed his fingers and wrapped both arms around her, tucking the top of her head under his chin. 'Don't move, it'll pass.'

She didn't want to move, it felt so good just to be held. His heart rate slowed, and his chest rose and fell gently under her cheek.

'You need medical attention. I should get you back to the Resistance,' he murmured after a while.

'I don't want to go back,' she whispered, trying not to disturb anything about this single, perfect moment.

'Why not?'

She exhaled a long, peaceful breath. 'I can't get this back there.'

'You can't get hit on the head and nearly brain damaged? I should hope not.'

She squeezed his arm. 'This. I can't get this from anyone else.'

'Hmmmm.' The rumble shook his chest. 'I doubt that. I imagine there are Resistance fighters queuing up to get this close to you.'

She cracked open her eyes, levered herself off his torso. 'I've never slept with Poe, if that's who you mean.'

His hand came up and pressed her cheek back into his tunic again, then settled itself on her upper arm where his thumb drew complicated patterns onto the fabric. 'I know,' he said. 'You've never slept with anyone.'

'Is it really that obvious?'

'It's really that obvious.'

'Then why did you accuse me of all those horrible things?'

'I was angry. And stupid.'

'Hmmmm.' She made an attempt to sound casual through the awful spinning in her head. 'How many people have you slept with?'

His thumb stopped moving. 'Some.'

'Some repeatedly or some just once?'

There was a noise beneath her ear that might have been a chuckle, although she wasn't sure he was capable of humour. 'I find your jealousy rather gratifying.'

She shifted in indignation. 'I'm not jealous.'

'Of course not,' he replied, holding her a little more tightly. 'And that item you stole from my quarters the last time you were there, you don't need to worry about its owner. It belonged to my mother. I would like it back at some stage.'

She grimaced, remembering the flash of bright shards as she'd thrown the perfume bottle he was referring to at the wall, and decided not to reply.

The soft wash of the sea filled the space their words had left and Rey relaxed, feeling long held tension seep from her muscles, carried away on the ocean spray.

'Why are you here with me?' he asked at length.

She burrowed a little closer into his body. 'Because you hit me on the head with a rock?'

'Aside from that. I understand that today is another distraction, and you're keeping me occupied while Dameron destroys the Imperial fleet, but you don't have to go this far.' She felt both his arms twitch around her in emphasis. 'Unless there's something I've missed?'

He wanted to be contradicted. There was a quality in his voice, a hesitation that wasn't usual, a kind of badly suppressed hope that called to something inside her.

'I can't get this from anyone else,' she repeated, rubbing her cheek against his chest.

'I'm keeping you still while you recover. This is a medical necessity, that's all.' His voice sounded stiff, uncomfortable and she smiled to herself.

'You're cuddling me.'

'I am not.'

She reached out, patted his arm, and left her hand there. 'You give me something that no one else can. Over the last year, when we were apart, I missed you. I trained a lot, and I was always busy, and there were always people around me but...'

'You were lonely.'

'Yes.'

'In crowds.'

'Yes, especially in crowds, especially when I was with my friends.'

'They don't understand you.'

'They want me to be something I'm not.'

He inhaled sharply. 'They want you to be pure. You're supposed to be good, to be under control always. They hold you to a higher standard than anyone else because of who you are and you're never allowed to make a mistake. It makes you angry but you can't show anyone so you bottle it up, you hold all the anger inside you until you can feel it all the time.'

She gave his arm another squeeze, sensing that it was no longer just her experiences he was describing. 'They're my friends. I can't fight them. I can train but I can't test myself. There's no challenge.'

'They can't match you. No one can.'

'They care about me, but they don't trust me, not all of them. I'm frustrated, and it makes me angry and there's nowhere to let it out. Sometimes I just want to hit something. I want to hit you.'

'You miss the fight. That's why you were so keen to train this morning. You miss having an equal. And there are things inside you you can't explore alone.'

'The darkness,' she nodded. 'Luke said I go straight to the darkness and I never knew why. There was no one to help me find out.'

'Until I let you talk me into it this afternoon. You need me.'

'People keep telling me they know me. No one does.'

'But I do. I'm the only one who can. You will never have friends or family, you're too different. Eventually they will turn on you, they will abandon you, they will cast you out.'

'Is that what happened to you?' she asked in a small voice.

'I assume Luke never told you what happened after that night he tried to kill me. Maybe he was too busy hiding to find out. I pulled the hut down and he was buried underneath and all the other students thought I'd killed their master. They turned on me. They had always been hostile. I see that now, but at the time I thought they were my friends. I didn't want to hurt them, I tried to explain but they came for me together, and it was self-defence. I ran. I didn't want to hurt the rest but I had nowhere to go. I couldn't go home. And they wouldn't stop hunting me. I went to Snoke for help. There was no one else.' He swallowed back something hard in this throat. 'The same will happen to you. You think you're part of something now but you don't really fit in. You'll always be alone.'

She snuggled closer. 'I don't feel like I'm alone. Do you?'

'No. Not right now.'

It might have been the intangible mystical bond between them that created the sense of completion filling her chest but it felt as solid as flesh and bone, a connection created by the physical contact of body on body, something she could reach out and touch.

'It's getting dark,' he noted after a while. 'Are you fit to travel? We should get back. I'll call a transport from the hotel.'

Wobbly, she braced herself on his shoulders and used him as a prop to climb upright. Her head still hurt but she was able to retain enough focus to heal it, at least partially. She held out her hand, calling the discarded saberstaff and clipping it to her belt next to her usual weapon. The lowering of his brows told her he didn't approve but she ignored him, placed a hand on his sleeve.

'My room?'

His expression lifted at that and she made the journey back to the hotel smoothly enough, only staggering into the wall a few times when she tried to reach the bed. The minute they arrived he commandeered her comms relay, sending out a flurry of commands that resulted in the appearance of a medical droid not long after, which fussed over her long enough to administer a swift acting analgesic. Behind its back she had glimpses of the extent to which Ben was making himself at home.

He'd opened the balcony door and was in the process of levitating dining room furniture outside and then, when an army of service droids turned up bearing more dishes than she'd ever seen, he supervised the setting of the table.

She followed him outside curiously. 'Are we having dinner?'

The lights inside the apartment dimmed, leaving only the red flush of the sky and a couple of candles by which to see. He hovered next to a chair, pulled the one near her out remotely and waved for her to sit down.

'I didn't know what you'd like, so based on breakfast this morning I ordered everything.'

There was cutlery she didn't recognise on the table and crockery for which the purpose was not immediately clear but she was game to try anything culinary related so she sat down and began lifting the tops off the various creations on offer. For a while there was nothing but the sound of eating, as Rey's stomach remembered she'd skipped lunch and her dining companion made up for the fact that he'd barely had any breakfast either. It was still an odd, slightly jarring sensation to watch him manipulate his knife and fork as if he were a normal person but his presence was growing on her. He no longer seemed as out of place in her life as he'd been that morning.

He noticed she was watching him. 'What do you want to do tomorrow?' he asked, delicately dabbing at his lips with a napkin.

'I think we should take advantage of Dorumaa's greatest tourist attraction. How do you feel about turtles?'

He sat back in his chair.

'I can see it now,' she continued, with a slight twitch of her lips as a smile tried to escape. 'Your hair rippling in the wind, your lightsaber glinting on your hip, an enigmatic smile on your face as you skim across the waves on a giant flipper.'

He frowned. 'No.'

'Or you could come to the Resistance base with me and pick out your new home.'

He exchanged his frown for a scowl. 'No.'

'Or we could go sunbathing.' She was really enjoying teasing him.

His scowl escalated into a glower. 'Or you could try ruling the Empire with me for a day. You'd get on well with Hux. He's only slightly less annoying than you are.'

Deliberately she stretched across to his side of the table, extended her fork and stabbed a vegetable off his plate. 'I'll rule with you, on condition that we let the past die and start a new order together.' She shot him a grin and popped his food in her mouth.

He replaced his cutlery on his plate and pushed the whole thing across the table at her. 'You bailed out on that. I had to make other arrangements.'

'What other arrangements?'

'I put your throne back into storage.' He was meeting her gaze steadily and his demeanour was so serious she couldn't work out if he was joking or not. 'Two questions. One – why would I need a new home when we're going into exile? And two – why would I want to live on Kijimi anyway?'

She narrowed her eyes at him. He cleared the dirty dishes from the main course with a few flicks of his hand and delivered dessert with a few more.

'Did you think I wasn't tracking you? I've spent the last year following everything you've done. All those fund-raising events, your little meet the Jedi sessions, the public displays of power – did you think I wasn't watching?'

'You missed me. In an odd, creepy, dark side way, you missed me.'

'Of course I missed you. I can't get this level of abuse from anyone else.'

She lifted the lid off every plate, sent them winging back onto the serving trolley with a loud clatter, and then piled a large bowl with a piece of every sweet Dorumaa could supply. She jabbed two spoons into the middle of the mess and pushed the whole thing into the centre of the table.

'I'm not going into exile with you,' she stated, helping herself to an enormous dollop of cream.

Sitting forward, he ignored the spoon, selected a dessert fork from the array on offer, cut off a piece of cake with precise strokes and examined it from all angles. 'Exile is a poor choice of word. I meant I'm going travelling.'

Some of the cream came down her nose as she snorted. 'Where can you go that you won't be recognised? Everyone in the galaxy knows what you look like. Unless you're going to change your appearance. Your nose is quite distinctive, I should start with that.'

She smooshed the rest of the cake, shovelled some onto her spoon and jammed it into her mouth.

'We can go anywhere we like, but there's no challenge in staying with what you know. I'd rather explore wild space, or the Unknown Regions or even parts of the Outer Rim. I want to fight whatever's out there and see if I can beat it.' He made a deep incision in an unsuspecting pie and chewed it thoughtfully. 'You should try that, I prefer it to the cake.'

She did as he suggested. 'Me too. But you can't just wander off to slaughter the rest of the galaxy. What about the First Order? I thought you wanted to bring it down?'

'That's easy. Hux and Pryde hate each other. When I disappear, there will be civil war. The Resistance can wait until it's over and pick up the pieces, by which time we'll be long gone.' He coaxed some ice cream onto a clean spoon and leaned forward, holding it out for her to try. His knee brushed hers under the table.

She opened her mouth obediently.

'Well?'

'Horrible.' She stuck out her tongue in emphasis. 'How about that pink stuff?'

Obligingly, he hacked off a chunk of something that resembled spun sugar and when he offered it across the table this time, his leg stretched out and his calf came to rest against hers and stayed there. She didn't move away, but suddenly she didn't feel comfortable with the contact. There was something about the possessive nature of his gaze as he watched her lips part, the deliberate way he slid the spoon into her mouth so that the sugar confection slithered onto her tongue, something in the tilt of his head as he watched her swallow, that made her uneasy.

'What do you mean 'when I disappear'? You're not disappearing. You agreed to stand trial.'

'I'm not standing trial. You're going to help me escape. Without my leadership the Order will fall apart and the Resistance can take charge, the galaxy will be safe and you and I can fly off into the sunset.' He spooned up something gelatinous, held it out with an inquiring look.

She leaned back a little, trying to re-establish some control. She hadn't missed the fact that he had gone back on his earlier promises, and was now including her in his vision of the future on a routine basis, and that implied she'd said yes to a question she hadn't yet been asked.

'You don't need to feed me.'

'I know. I find I quite enjoy it.'

She removed herself from tasting distance and tucked her legs under her chair. 'What are you flying off into the sunset in? And what will you do for money when you've got wherever it is you're going? Will you travel around forever fighting everything you meet? That doesn't sound like much of a life.'

He licked at the jelly gloop himself, his tongue appearing in a brief flash of pink and she forced herself to look away.

'You won't have to worry about money,' he promised. 'I have more credits than I know what to do with. Banks don't care which side of the Force you're on, and neither do inheritance laws. But you're right, I will need a new ship. We're going to have to leave in a hurry and it won't be safe to come back for some time.'

She was shaking her head before he'd finished speaking. 'I can't do this. I just can't. I'm not ready.'

His eyebrows raised.

'This morning we were barely on speaking terms and now you're planning a whole life together. What changed?' she asked.

'Everything,' he said. 'And nothing. I want you by my side, I've made no secret of it. But I'm not putting any pressure on you, I want you to come to me when you're ready.'

'No pressure?' her voice was around an octave above where it should have been. 'We're having a romantic dinner together. You're feeding me ice cream and promising to take me travelling. I can't do this with you. I can't leave my friends and throw my life away for someone I barely know.' She pushed her chair back from the table. 'This isn't going to work.'

His hand shot out faster than she could move. 'Barely know? You know me better than anyone else alive, and I'm the only person who can understand you. I thought we established that.'

His dark eyes searched hers but she snatched back her fingers and stood as calmly as she could manage. 'One day doesn't make a relationship. Relationships are based on friendship, years of shared experiences, mutual trust and - and having the same opinions about things and…enjoying each other's company.'

She was aware she was flailing but she felt like she was standing on the edge of a precipice and trying not to fall in. The more aware of her surroundings she became, the harder her stomach clenched, the sweatier her palms. The table was set for seduction, she was at the end of a day which had involved excitement, self-exploration, shared confidences and plenty of hugging and now there was a bedroom at her back and a future mapped out in front in front of her and all she had to do was acquiesce. The man across the table had shown her what he wanted from her and she'd sleepwalked herself into a situation in which he was about to get it. She took a pace away.

He rose smoothly to his feet, his face inscrutable and moved to within touching distance. 'Relationships are based on connection, and we have that. I know you feel it. It's in the way you kiss me, the way you look at me sometimes. It's why you're jealous. You suggested this truce because you wanted to explore the bond between us, to see where it would lead. Well, I know where we're going now. Don't you?'

'There is no 'us',' she demurred. 'And the bond is just the Force. It means nothing.'

'It's alright to be afraid,' he said softly.

Her chin came up. 'I'm not afraid. I just don't want what you're offering.'

His shoulders hunched, as if he were either going to start shouting or hit something, and his eyes darkened under lowering brows. Then the moment passed and his face was calm again, his voice level as he took a step back.

'I apologise for making you feel under pressure and I appreciate your honesty. I should go now. Good night.'

He made to move around her and she blinked in surprise. 'Wait – that's it? You're going to let me go just like that?'

He didn't hesitate, stepping across the threshold and starting across the apartment in the direction of the door. 'Of course. I can't make you love me if you don't want to.'

'But...' she stammered. 'Aren't you even going to try?'

Thumbing the door panel he turned back, just for a moment. 'I've been trying all day,' he said.