Rey paced back and forth, her mind a seething pit of rage.
'The nerve of that man!' She thought furiously. Her fists clenching spasmodically as she paced. 'After what he did to me!'
A tiny voice echoed from the distant recesses of her mind, 'He saved you.'
'He didn't kill me, that's not the same as saving me!' She thought towards it, angrily.
The voice grew stronger. 'You love him.'
'I loved Ben, but Ben wasn't real!' She argued. 'Kylo Ren only pretended to be him because he wanted me as an apprentice!'
'There is no distinction between Ben Solo and Kylo Ren.' It said, sounding as loud and strong as if it were talking to her from across the room. She was startled to realize it was a man's voice. She could feel his presence slip into her mind. 'He is an impulsive fool but your love can save him.'
'I already tried that! It didn't work.' She thought bitterly.
'Try again.' The voice suggested.
'Who are you?' She knew that he wasn't a figment of her imagination.
'Who I am is not important.' He replied and she could feel him trying to wave the question out of her mind.
'It's important to me.' She insisted stubbornly, refusing to let him dismiss her curiousity.
He stopped trying to manipulate her mind and said almost gently. 'Knowing my name would only disturb you further.'
She could feel his presence in her mind so strongly that it made her neck hairs stand on end.
'Why would knowing who you are disturb me?' She said coaxingly. 'It's not like you're Darth Vader or anything.'
The voice made no reply but she could feel his amusement as it washed over. 'Are you?' Even her mind voice came out as a squeak.
'Not anymore.' He answered after a tense moment of silence and then she felt him leave her mind.
His sudden withdraw left her dizzy and nauseated, she stumbled over to her cot and sat down heavily. The room spun like the images in a kaliedescope and she was pretty sure she was about to faint for the first time in her life. It took her a moment to realize that she was hyperventilating, but once she did she concentrated on controlling her breathing.
Darth Vader had been inside her mind! She could barely believe it. That fact both shocked and terrified her.
When the shock began to wear off she noticed a wide path of bloody footprints across the center of her room. She gasped and looked at her hands. They were bleeding profusely.
Knowing that she needed medical attention Rey put on a robe and padded barefoot to the base infirmary. The bright lights inside hurt her eyes after the dimness of both her room and the corridor. She scanned the room, looking for a med-tech. Not finding one she reached out with her feelings. She could feel that she wasn't alone in the cavern, so she called out. "Anybody here? I need assistance."
An elderly mon calamarian stepped out from behind a privacy screen where Rey could feel the faint signature of a nearly dead bith.
"I'm sorry to intrude." She apologized. "I need help with these." She held her hands up, knuckle side out
"My goodness!" The apparently female alien said jovially. "That looks painfull!"
Rey wondered about her good mood but decided not to ask. "More annoying than painful." She grimaced. "Can you make it so I can get back to practicing my hand to hand?"
"I can make it so you aren't dripping blood everywhere, but only time and bacta will heal those injuries." The reddish brown fishlike creature clucked it's tongue disapprovingly. "You should use hand protection anytime you're going to strike something. Human hands are delicate things." It scolded her.
"I will from now on." Rey promised.
The mon calamari took a jar of pink liquid from a shelf and motioned her to sit next to a low table. "Stick your hands in here and keep them there until you can move your fingers without pain." It said, removing the lid and sitting the jar on the table. "It will take a while."
The liquid stung like fire at first, but Rey was grateful for the pain and for the company of the chipper med-tech who's name she learned, was Krystil.
"Beg pardon, I'm not an expert in humans," Krystil said after a little while. "Are your eyes supposed to change color like that? Or do you need a thorough exam?"
"What do you mean?" Rey asked, confused. Her eyes had always been light brown.
"They were yellow until a moment ago and now they're brown." Krystil tilted her head inquiringly.
"It must be the lighting, my eyes have always been brown." Rey shrugged dismissively.
"Hmm, the lighting… perhaps." Came the dubious reply. After that Krystil busied herself with the nearly dead bith.
Rey dismissed the doubt in the med-tech's voice. She'd met alot of people in her life but none with yellow eyes. It had to be the lighting.
Two hours later, Rey flexed her hands in the viscous liquid. "The pain is gone." She called out.
"Good, good. Just keep your hands in there while I get some bandages." Krystil instructed briskly as she stepped out from behind the screen at the bith's bedside.
Krystil bustled over with a bagfull of gauzey bandages in one hand and a big tube of ointment in the other.
"Pull your hands out straight up and keep them over the jar until they stop dripping. Every drop of this stuff is precious." Krystil instructed as she laid out the bandages in organized little stacks.
Rey was startled. "You're going to reuse this after I had my bloody hands in it?"
Krystil made a squishing sound that might have been a laugh. "It will be filtered and sterilized."
"Oh!" Rey relaxed a bit. "That's a relief."
Rey watched in silence as Krystil smeared a thick cream on her raw knuckles and bandaged her hands with professional efficiency.
"Don't hit anything for at least a few days." Krystil admonished. "Come back for a bandage change tomorrow."
"Thank you." Rey said with heartfelt gratitude, then returned to her room.
The night was mostly wasted, her hands out of commission, her mind too preoccupied to even attempt translating so she paced and she thought back over her midnight visitors and all that they had said to her.
Kylo Ren, she refused to think of him as Ben, had sounded so sincere when he'd declared that he loved her that she began to doubt her own doubts about him… especially in light of his grandfather nearly immediately contacting her from beyond the grave.
She paced and she pondered, pondered and paced.
Why would Darth Vader care if she loved or hated Kylo Ren? What was it to him? Why bother coming to her at all unless he too was trying to manipulate her? But why would a ghost want to manipulate anybody?
She had so many questions about tonight and not a single answer to them, only frustration.
