He removed the light saber from his belt and clasped it firmly with both hands behind his back as he stepped close enough to see every detail of the patterning in her light brown eyes. Taking a comfortable stance he settled in for a long wait.
Rey eyed him warily, he had his weapon in hand, she knew, and could strike her down at any moment but after several minutes of his unwavering, barely blinking stare she could take it no more and snapped at him angrily, "What? What do you want?"
He didn't answer, or even seem to consider answering, his only response was a brief narrowing of his eyes.
The way he was eying her made her feel like the subject of some cruel experiment. His gaze was nearly as uncomfortable to her as the pain of having her mind ripped open and her body squeezed until her bones nearly cracked by his former master. After another two minutes of this odd torture she demanded, "Say something."
Refusing to look at those unsettling eyes of his she reached out with the Force to unfasten the bindings that held her to the upright table. They didn't budge. She tried again then said accusingly "You're holding the binders closed."
His eyes narrowed momentarily before relaxing back to normal.
Determined to not give him the satisfaction of getting her to submit to whatever twisted game he was playing she forced herself to calm down and say as lightly as she could manage, "Fine, I didn't get much sleep last night so why don't you just wake me up when you're ready to talk." She relaxed back into the table and turned her head to the side as if she no longer cared that he was staring at her.
He couldn't allow her to hide from him so easily so he broke his self imposed silence. "I do want to talk." He said the moment her eyes closed. "But first, I want to listen."
She jerked to attention and glared at him. "What does that even mean?"
He eyed her impassively.
Realizing he had no intention of answering she growled in frustration.
"You want to listen? Fine, then you listen." Her voice was vibrating with rage. "You may have come from a great family but you're nothing!" She hurled his insult back at him viciously. "You care about nothing! And that's all you'll ever be!" She liked the taste of cruelty on her tongue as she spat, "Nothing!"
His face had lost most of it's impassivity, she could see him struggling to try to recover it so she hammered at him that much harder.
"Nothing but an overgrown child with a lust for power!" She scoffed cruelly and saw her words crack open more chinks in his facade. Enjoying every drop of his pain she went in for the kill. "How satisfying is all that power? Huh?" She taunted. "Does it care about you? Does it fight for you? Does it comfort you when you're hurting? Does it tell you the things you need to hear?"
Dissapointment washed through her as he regained control and closed himself off again.
She switched tactics, "Does it whisper in your ear that you're worth more than the power you wield?" She asked in a soft seductive voice. "That you have it in you to be greater than the rest of your family combined? That you are destined to surpass them all?"
A muscle twitched in his jaw but aside from that her words appeared to bounce harmlessly off of him.
"Because if it has said any of that it was lying!" She snarled. Frustrated at his lack of reaction she tried striking the locking mechanism on the binders with a sudden burst of Force energy. It didn't work.
He tilted his head ever so slightly but remained blank-faced.
"Maybe you could have been a force for good in the galaxy, once upon a time." She tried wriggling her wrists free, that didn't work either. "But now the only way you could improve anything is by impaling yourself on that ugly red blade of yours!"
He may as well have been carved in stone for how unflinchingly he stared at her.
Giving up on trying to rile him she shouted, "What? What do you want from me?" Pulling away from the table to lean out and bring her face within inches of his she growled, "Why are you doing this?"
He'd never imagined she could be so cruel. Her vicious words hurt so much that for a time he'd been on the verge of completely failing in his odious task. Patience had never been a virtue of his, and never would be, but somehow, knowing what was at stake, he'd managed to recover his implacable facade. He wore it now as he watched her struggle against the bindings and listened to her growls and shouts.
He hated every second of what he was doing to her as much as he hated every cruel word that she'd hurled at him but his only hope was resting on his ability to stand here and take it all with a straight face. While he admired her strength, he wished it would fail quickly.
"Let me out of these restrains!" She snarled then, letting her rage and hatred take control, screeched, "When I get out of these things, I'm going to plunge your own light saber straight through your black heart!"
He stepped closer, dropped his light saber back into it's place on his belt, grabbed the back of her head in his left hand and Force pulled a small, wickedly sharp looking silver blade out of his boot with his right.
She roared as the blade flashed toward her face.
He thrust the knife in front of her eyes. "Look!" He demanded, struggling to hold her head still and in line with the flat of his blade. "Look at your eyes, Rey!" His fist closed around a handful of her hair in an attempt to stop her thrashing. "Do you see? Do you see what you're becoming?"
"Let me go!" She continued to struggle despite the pain in her scalp.
"Look!" He shouted and pinned her to the table with his whole body.
"Get off me!" She caught a glimpse of her eyes in the shining silver blade. Except, they weren't her eyes. Two glowing yellow irises rimmed in red stared back at her from the flat of the blade.
She stopped struggling and blinked at herself in the polished surface. "Why are my eyes like that?" She asked after a stunned moment.
He eased away from her cautiously and let go of her hair. Taking a calming breath he tucked the dagger back into his boot and straightened up to face her.
"Because you hate me." He said matter-of-factly.
She gawked at him as if he'd just just spoken the words in astromech speak.
"Hate is the driving force of the dark side." He explained, thankful to his voice for remaining calm. "Pure and perfect hate is all that is required to unlock it's most powerful resources... and if your hatred is strong enough you get those eyes."
"The dark side?" She breathed.
"Your hatred has seduced you to the dark side." His traitorous voice cracked despite his best efforts to remain stoic. "What Snoke couldn't do to me in over a decade, I've done to you in under a year."
"You really are a monster!" She spat.
He found it difficult to look at her with those eyes, but he forced himself to. When he spoke his voice was a rough, raw sound, "Maybe I am," He fought the stinging in his eyes with several moist blinks. "But you're not."
"Monster!" She snarled.
"Rey," Her name was a plea in and of itself.
"Let me go!" She growled like a feral beast.
"Please, don't do this." He said softly. "It isn't too late for you." A tear spilled out of his right eye and sluiced down the channel in his cheek where her light saber had sliced his face. "I can feel the conflict within you, it's tearing you apart." She stilled and watched as more tears slid down both sides of his face. "I can help you." He ended in a raged whisper.
She recognized those words, she had said exactly that, and more, to him while desperately attempting to sway him back into the light. She'd been trying to save him then… save him, turn him, love him… She stretched her feelings out towards his, looking for signs of anything devious or nefarious. She found nothing so she decided to give reading his mind a try.
Feeling her mind probe at his he dropped his defenses, opening his mind to her and inviting her fully inside. He didn't bother trying to talk, he knew he'd only fail if he tried. Instead he simply stood there, watching as those yellow eyes searched his soul.
He'd never been so exposed, so vulnerable, or so terrified in his entire life.
