Chapter 1: The Fall from grace: Mettle and Resolutions

"Your naivety will get the best of you, Rey"
"But Finn ..."
She should have expected the backlash she would get after telling him what had happened on the Island, on starbase and everything in between and maybe she was as naive as he said.
"Listen Rey, how do you know he hasnot been playing you all along, I mean he is a masterclass force user, a manipulator, he is a chamleon and probably could swipe back and forth between masks: Kylo ren ... Ben or whatever"
"Finn, he killed Snoke. he sliced him in half instead of killing me, he didn't."
"It doesnot prove anything, he did it to usurp him"
"He didn't try to kill me afterwards"
"Maybe at that point, he thought you would join him. I highly doubt he'd do this now"
His reasoning was weak, but hers was even weaker.
Her mind was a real mess like the nebulas above.
Maybe Finn has a point, the rational part of herself argued , that all she did was buy an act but what she feels .. what she felt, he wasn't playing anything or bending it on his part. He was real, every single thing he said .. he says is real and it scares her enough, his last thoughts as the falcon's door was shut.

'I will break you'

'You are too arrogant for your own good'

'Gently, though'


He is supreme leader.

He is supreme leader and it feels foreign, heavy. He does not sleep, not that he used to but between reshuffling the New Order, curbing Hux's ambitions and ensuring everything is under control, he has become acutely aware of it.
Yet, she still chases him in the forest, closing in on him every time his mind strays adrift. She is there when he is alone, when he gives orders, when his thoughts align or scatter around one thing, which is always her.
She is there with him, she strains him and consumes him and he knows he is not with her, she could not be thinking about him, she would not allow it.
Out of the two, she is the one with the stronger mind, despite wearing her inner self on her sleeve; maybe that is the very same reason why her mind is more in control than his, it takes less toll on one's mind to be open, less toll but more risk.
it aggravates him, riles him up even more like a skewer of red iron searing through his mind.

She betrayed him. She drew the light saber first and she abandoned him, and he does not know which is worse having let her in on himself or her leaving him behind with such resolve, burnt forever in his mind, shutting the doors between them the way she did.
She manipulated him. She hurt him and he will never let her again.


Rey thinks about him late at night, those drowsy moments when her mind is off guard, unfilled, unconsumed with thoughts about the resistance, about Finn and lately about Poe.
He chases her in the vast deserts of Jakku. He chases away sleep as it comes and sometimes, he chases the remenants of loneliness in her heart.
Afterall, They both have a lonely streak, creeping under their skin, meshed within their bones. They have lived with it for so long that they feel incomplete, listless without it and it doesnot fade away, it never does.
Except for once, in a stormy night, on an island nowhere and it didnot feel absurd then.
How is he doing? what if Finn was right? what if he has been manipulating her , luring her in to the darkside, to him. After all he let her down. She thought he changed but he didn't and it broke her heart.
What is this between them? this connection, the way it ebbs and falls linking them together with such fine line. It has been dormant for a while now, ever since crait and she doubts, Maybe Snoke was right, Maybe he created this bond and Maybe he was using them both to his advantage

'And Maybe he knew of it, maybe he willingly took part in this'
Yet, Why did he look at her as though she plunged the saber into his heart?
Sometimes in their world, it is hard to define who manipulated whom.

The questions come unbidden between the moment a Hurricane rips everything apart in its wake then dies, and their minds, their hearts were no less unbound, no less destructive or vicious than Hurricanes, than solar storms.

One thing for sure however: It irks her; the stagnant draw between them and she laments. She laments shutting him off the way she did.

How many a time she tried to prod him, to ask for answers, she lost count.
She tries to reach him those times when she feels the anguish washing over her, flooding her.

It is those moments she knows he is losing control, those moments she anticipates the worst in battle, those moments she knocks harder on the steel wall he erected around his mind, those moments she feels like she wants to contain him, to drown his rage, cleanse him in those famous waters of Naboo she has heard so much about from Leia.
Yet, he shuns her, pushes her away with such might he possesses, with such leaden resolve.
It saddens her, him having such resolve in all the wrong ways.


Sometimes, on frozen nights like this, when he is on hoth, nights when he remembers Han, when her remembers Luke, nights when against his will, he longs for her companionship, that pain becomes too much to hold and handle and the walls around his mind are cracked and breached.
"I knew you would come around, eventually" she quips

"I don't need your presence here, scavenger"
"I can feel your pain you know, your spite and everything and I doubt you don't need me here tonight" he can feel challenging him, the edge in her voice and today he is determined not to lose to her again.
He gathers the helms of himself, breathes in and prepares to lunge, to prey on her giddiness and her doubts, to break her and reduce her to nothing

'You are nothing, Rey'

"What if it was just a trap? what if I was simply toying with you? What if I can't feel anything? what if I control what you feel and perceive? Sense Rey, Try to feel me know through the force, Do you feel anything? Do you register anything?"
Nothing, a void and an abyss. An emptiness in his place.
"Then tell me if it was real, Tell me if you were lying to me" she took him by the hems of his dress, it was easier for her to physically act on her frayness than mentally handle It.
"Everything, everything you felt those times, over and over, Everything was just a ruse, Rey. A well crafted lie to lure you in and you believed it, you gave up on Han, on everything, for some false hope of redemption" he calmly spit back "I bet with the right push, the right amount of pressure, you will eventually give up on the resistance as well"
Rey knew by now that Kylo Ren knows how to hurt well, how to cut deep and leave one speechless

'But not like this. Never like this' his words, they burn. this was worse than their interrogation, their first encounter,worst than what Snoke could ever do

'Did I give up on Han? Did he take me for such a fool?' she found herself questioning

Her eyes sting, but no, she wouldnot give him the satisfaction, No.
Before she could recompose, raise up the shields around herself , he bolted in lightspeed, taking her by surprise, cornering her against a wall, in a world they neither made nor knew how to hold or unbuild.
"Or perhaps, you yearn for something more" he mocks her, he sniggeres as he leans towards her, reminding her how imposing his physicality was against hers.
"Stay away from me" she hisses

"Oh, Rey, scared are you? that the Jedi teachings wouldnot protect you from me or from yourself, that the consecrated texts will fail you. Don't worry, Rey, I'll be gentle. I will break you gently" he roars in her face

She turned her face from him, her chin lifted in indignation

"Don't Say another word" she whispered "Do not say another damn word"
Then, He laughed hard, mirthless and bitter as she sniffled her unshed tears

'Your resolve' he thought 'is magnificent, frightening in its strength'
However, she surprised him when she joined in his laughter, it was an empty unmusical sound

"Nothing breaks gently as you think"

She tilted her head back towards him, chin lifted still, before taking his head in her hands, angling and lowering it to her, never looking away from his eyes.
The resolve in her eyes, it broke him as she locked lips with him.
'Perhaps, it is you who is yearning for more Kylo Ren' She mutely spat 'Perhaps, it is your resolve that is pathetically weak' she continued to taunt 'and perhaps this, this connection as twisted and sick as it is, as tainted as you made it through your lies and manipulation was your only chance, your last salvage from the Loneliness that is eating you alive'
And as gentle as she was with him, He was hurting under her touch, against his resolve never to ... he couldn't muster himself, yet he couldnot pull away from her, either And no, he didn't want to.

'And perhaps, I was your only chance' her mind faltered just a little bit at that.

Before he knew it, she thrust him away from her, repelling him as far away from her as possible in their virtual realm.
'I am stronger than I look' she smiled as she broke away their connection

'And I am weaker than you will ever expect' he resigned knowing fully well that he lost. It was a sunken battle from the start, he realised now.
The bond closed in on them, suffocated them in an eerie deep Blue. What is left of them, of their bond is a pinhole, a point that shimmers weakly, like a faraway star one can hardly see from vantage point.