In the previous chapter: Rey senses an Awakening and, eager to prove herself in the wake of her failed mission on Tehanne, travels to the Force user's planet alone. There she encounters Kylo Ren, and must take refuge on his ship from a colossal storm.

Chapter 5

All of a sudden, Ren's ship shook underneath my feet and metal groaned around us in warning.

I glanced down. "Was that…" My question cut off in a harsh gasp as the ship shook again, this time lurching sideways.

Ren swore and we both bolted up the short flight of steps to the cockpit, dropping into the pilot chairs. The holoscreen showed only endless waves of sand and dirt, punctuated by sporadic blooms of lightning.

"Activate holistic overlay," Ren barked. Shapes and lines begin to appear on the screen, revealing the landscape of the rocky desert around us through a special sensor. Representations of plateaus and cliffs flickered into view. However, there was an outline ahead of us that shouldn't have been there, as if someone had dropped a massive column into the ground without us noticing. I stared closer and realized the outline was moving, and its identity hit me right as it engulfed the viewscreen.

"It's a tornado," I whispered, dread building and twisting deep in my gut.

The ship heaved underneath us as the raw strength of the tornado's winds yanked it around like a toy. The entire ship lifted clear off the ground. My stomach floated in the brief weightlessness before we slammed back down again.

"Your ship won't survive this," I told Ren. "We need to go!"

Ren's face was pale as he brought the ship's core systems online at a furious pace. Though I had never piloted a ship with a twin ion engine, I spotted the controls for the repulsorlifts and started to activate them. The ship lurched again as the tornado loomed over us and my hands collided with Ren's.

"What are you doing?" he snarled, shoving at my hands.

"I'm co-piloting," I snapped back, "or else we'll die. You work on the ion engines, I'll do this!"

"Co-pilots don't give orders," he growled, but his focus had already turned back to his side of the console.

The cockpit jerked forward so fast I almost smacked my face against the console. The storm lifted the shuttle like a toy and tilted it nearly perpendicular to the planet's surface. The holistic overlay blurred on the holoscreen as it struggled to paint the outline of the ground racing toward us. I smacked a glowing orange button on the console. An instant later the repulsor coils sparked and my hands were already on the controls, lifting the nose of the ship so it merely scraped the ground instead of crushing us headfirst into stone.

I navigated the trembling spacecraft through the twisting air currents of the storm, piloting recklessly like I used to when pushing the limits of my flight simulator on Jakku. I punched Force power outside of the cockpit, feeling the shape of the storm's powerful energy and trying to put distance between us and the tornado. I barely dodged a rock formation as the destructive winds stripped away my tenuous control over the ship.

"The ion engines are ready!" Ren yelled. "I'm extending the stabilizers."

"No, don't! The wind will shear them off. Help me get higher!"

"By doing what?"

"Use the Force, you blistering idiot!"

Ren growled, furious at my insult, and the cockpit actually dimmed from the mammoth amount of power that surged toward us. It manifested in the air around him like black gauze, sinuously twisting around his head and arms. It shrouded my own power, but instead of sparking or repelling as I expected, our energy soaked together seamlessly and formed a focused sphere of power with us at the dead center.

I started to glance over at Ren, unnerved by what he was doing, but a split-second later his consciousness overlapped my own and an intoxicating wave of energy enveloped my mind. I was momentarily awed by the sheer scope of power he had so effortlessly drawn from the Force. I smelled the scent of the soap I used from across the cockpit, felt the tactile shape of buttons and switches on the console underneath his hands, and perceived his mind molding energy around the ship as he sealed it in a tight shield.

Then his eyes glanced at the holoscreen and through his vision I saw a flickering outline of a plateau directly in front of us. Words formed in my mind before he'd even opened his mouth to yell. "UP, Rey!"

I yanked on the controls, but an oppressive gale of wind from the storm pushed back just as hard. The ship wouldn't clear the top of the plateau unless – "Push!" I yelled. I siphoned energy from the wind current and twisted it around to press up against the bottom of the ship.

Ren swept through my mind and sensed how I was using the Force, then immediately matched my strength with his own. The ship groaned, caught between the natural power of the storm pressing down and the dual masses of Force power pushing back. For a moment, we hung in mid-air as the cliff shot toward us. Then the current of wind broke and the ship slingshot forward and up at an ungovernable pace.

We skimmed the edge of the plateau's cliff and hurtled onward, barreling through the mass of writhing stormclouds. The broiling wind strove to knock us out of the sky as if we were a bothersome knat.

The ship tilted alarmingly to one side as alarms dinged. The repulsorlifts were failing. Ren heard my thought and reacted instantly. The twin ion engines boomed in unison, propelling the ship higher through the clouds, but we veered left and then sagged right. I wrestled against the wind, getting a feel for the more twitchy controls of the ion drive.

Ren dipped into my thoughts. "You've never piloted an ion engine before?" His irritation sparked against my mind. "I'm taking over the controls."

"Back off! I've flown them in simulators. It's just harder without stabilizers." Another enormous gust of wind slammed into the ship and I banked sharply to pull away from it. But the twisting outline of the tornado came into view and the storm pushed us straight toward it. Despite my firm grip on the controls, the ship jerked and twisted like a steelpecker with its head cut off, and I knew that death was imminent unless we figured out a way to safely navigate out of the storm.

I gathered my Force power, which was wrapped around the ship like a second durasteel skin. Acting on raw instincts I shifted the power outward to create a buffer between the ship and the tumultuous storm winds. For a split second, the ship flew calm and smooth in the midst of the maelstrom. Ren leapt into my mind to figure out how I had manipulated the ship.

'Not the ship, the air,' I thought to him, but at that instant a crackling bolt of lightning pierced my fragile shield of Force power and it collapsed. Wind ripped into the pocket of artificially still air and scattered my energy in all directions.

I breathed deep and attempted to expand my mental reach like a proper Jedi, but it was like timidly requesting attention in a room full of Rathtars. I only summoned a fraction of the energy needed to remake the buffer around the ship.

'Forget the Jedi code!' Ren yelled in my head. 'Use the Force however you want. I have no objections to not dying!'

I cursed and scowled, knowing deep down that Ren was right, and abandoned my attempts to remain calm and emotionless. Instead, I drilled down into my head and incited a mental riot, then flung my focus outward once more. The wild desperation fueling my second attempt expanded my reach twice as far. I yanked at the Force web over and over again to draw energy toward us.

Then Ren's mental grip closed around my own, and everything changed.

I'd always imagined the Force like a piece of fabric floating on the wind, and harnessing its power was akin to catching a corner of it with my fingertips and guiding it toward me. Ren's method was… far different. He seized the web in an iron fist and hauled it in a direction that didn't fully exist: sort of a down, inward motion that sunk us to the center of an enormous gravity well.

The Force rushed down toward us as if the storm didn't exist. It hit my brain like an avalanche and I gasped out loud as the power flooded my body. It rippled through my mind, tingled through my arms and turned my fingertips numb.

Ren wasted no time directing the power outward around the ship, and I followed his example. Suddenly, we were jointly controlling the Force in a way I had never, ever experienced before. We pushed and shoved and molded the energy to remake the shield. It was denser and stronger this time, the only thing protecting Ren's ship from being torn apart by the storm. The air calmed inside the buffer and the ship's erratic path smoothed out once more. I drew back a bit from the dizzying amount of power and refocused on the controls in front of me.

'Going up!' I told Ren wordlessly, not bothering to speak aloud since he was already completely immersed in my head.

'I've got the shield,' he replied.

We blasted through the storm, and for a minute we were so closely attuned we ceased to even speak in full sentences. It was faster to think my senses at Ren as I spotted weak spots in the sphere and dodged lightning bolts and pushed the ship faster and higher and wondered if this damn storm would ever, ever end –

And then, we broke free.

The ship sailed through smooth, harmless, marvelously empty space. The sudden silence shocked my ears after the roaring thunder and wind. Ren groaned and slumped back in his chair. I became conscious of my own harsh breathing in the small, stuffy cockpit.

We drifted aimlessly through space for several quiet minutes as our heartbeats slowed to a normal pace. Our minds, which had been so intricately interwoven during our escape from the storm, gently drifted apart as the Force energy we had summoned dissipated back into the web. I was reluctant to let the energy go, for reasons too complicated to dwell on.

"Have you ever used the Force like that before?" Ren asked a moment later. He pushed a memory into my head: a flash of us jointly summoning and manipulating the Force together.

I shook my head, seeing no reason to lie. "I didn't know it was possible."

"Neither did I." He studied my face, eyes dark and intense. "It made us powerful."

At first I had no retort because he was right, but I dug deep and grounded myself. "Power is not my goal. That is something a Sith desires, and I am no Sith."

"Nor am I. Like I told you earlier, I want your help exploring the powers of the Force. I don't want to sway you to the dark side."

"That doesn't mean I'll help you. Using or supporting the dark side goes against the teachings of the Jedi. Besides, the dark and light side have always been on opposite sides of the Force. They can't be joined."

"Not true." His shoulders straightened, and he lifted his head as his eyes glittered with excitement. "We've been taught that the Force is split into the light and dark sides, with a clear line between the two. But I was researching the archives and came across… a different interpretation. It's an ancient belief that the light and dark side don't exist. You can use the Force's power however you want, and good and evil only manifests in the intent of your actions. Its followers called it Potentium. I want to study it further."

My heartbeat sped up a few paces. It was the perfect answer to my personal struggles with the Force that had arisen since I started Jedi training. But I tempered my reaction with a sharp reminder that this idea was coming from Kylo Ren, the most notorious dark Force user in the galaxy, apprentice to Snoke and grandson of Darth Vader. A trap was surely hidden in his words.

I forced out a stony frown and arched my eyebrow. "Potentium obviously wasn't a good idea if its followers aren't around today."

I was immediately sorry for shutting down the fragile spark of light that had bloomed in his eyes. He sat back in his chair, jaw locked in a stubborn scowl as he contemplated a different tactic.

"Skywalker has convinced you it's wrong to draw strength from your instincts. Made you boring."

My frown deepened because his words stung, even though his opinion should have been as worthless as a handful of wet sand.

"You were fascinating on Starkiller," he continued, his voice twisting softly within the confines of the cockpit. "A scrappy, half-feral thing. Strong in the Force despite formal training. A blank slate. Your potential will be wasted as Skywalker's apprentice. You know I'm right."

My knuckles ground white against my skin. "And what are my alternatives? Abandon my Jedi training, and the Resistance as well? Join the First Order? I have no idea where my family is, or if they're even alive. Snoke would be disappointed to have no leverage over me."

Ren bared his teeth in a snarl and reached for his lightsaber, forgetting that he had locked it in the compartment below and given me the only key.

At that moment, a voice crackled through the cockpit. "Lord Ren, we've detected your shuttle is damaged. Shall we send assistance?"

Ren glared at me, his hatred blazing against my mind. I reached for my lightsaber, sure that he was about to betray me to the Order. Instead, he visibly struggled to reign in his anger and the rage drained away from his face.

A tense second later he snapped, "No, that isn't necessary."

"Affirmative, sir."

I moved my hand away from my belt, suspiciously curious about Ren's motives for keeping my presence aboard his ship a secret.

Ren traced the tip of his scar where it curved down his neck. "I know you will not ally yourself with the Order any sooner than I would join the Resistance. But that doesn't mean we can't work together, on our own terms."

Our gazes locked for a long, careful moment.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Kylo Ren," I murmured.

Though I meant my words to be offensive, his eyes gleamed in satisfaction because I hadn't said 'no' either.

–

–

–

An hour passed as we silently drifted in orbit, waiting for the storm to dissipate down on the surface.

It hit me, very belatedly, that I had been on this ship before. After falling unconscious on Takodana, I'd had flashes of being carried – a bizarre sensation I hadn't experienced since I was a child on Jakku – and laying on the thinly padded benches in the outer room. The realization made me shift uncomfortably, but I was stuck here for the time being.

By now Luke would have realized I was missing. I wondered what he thought had happened to me. I hoped the Force user who had Awoken earlier today had saved its mother, and then wondered if my parents would be proud of me, if they were still alive. I dismissed the sad thought and practiced lightsaber battles in my head against imaginary foes who all conveniently wore helmets.

While I could have serenely sat there for the rest of the day, Ren started to fidget. He drummed his fingertips in undulating patterns against the armrest of his chair. Then he began to twitch the toes of his boots off the floor and gradually lower them back down. Finally, he snapped, "How can you sit there so calmly?"

With nearly anyone else in the galaxy, I'd prefer sitting in silence over talking about myself. But tenuous conversation with Kylo seemed safer than his brooding silence.

"Sandstorms on Jakku could last for days. I'm used to boredom."

"What did you do to pass the time?" A mocking smirk curled onto his lips. "Were the other scavengers good company?"

I stared at him, not rising to his bait. "I lived by myself. There were no others."

Ren blinked, astounded. Heat colored my cheeks.

"You saw my memories. You knew how my life was."

"I thought that was a recent change, not… You were alone on Jakku? All those years?"

"Most of them. It wasn't uncommon," I bit out defensively. While I was not ashamed of my past, the utter futility of my life seemed ludicrous looking back at it. I could only liken it to being dehydrated – when you were literally dying for water, not much else seemed important besides finding a drink. And on Jakku, I had always been thirsty.

"It explains a lot about you," Ren said with a small shrug.

I pinned him with a hostile gaze, though it was mostly driven by ire directed at myself. I wanted to know exactly what mysteries about me it solved, and detested my curiosity for planting the impulse to ask.

"You never told me," he said a moment later, "what you did to pass the time during storms like this."

I debated not responding, but perhaps sharing something about myself meant he would do the same. Or even better, he might reveal information I could use to help the Resistance.

"I built things. Then took them apart, and rebuilt them a different way. I salvaged a computer from a starfighter that ran flight simulations, and it helped me study languages. And you?" I asked, stretching my legs out in front me. "What do you do in your spare time?"

"Train," he replied in a dull tone. "Repair my lightsaber, or the Knights."

"The Knights of Ren? Why would you repair them?"

Ren bit his tongue, clearly sorry he had ever opened his mouth, and restlessly bounced his heel against the metal floor.

"They're not human," I guessed. Ren's tapping sped up. "I'm right, aren't I?"

"Half," he conceded.

"Half right?"

"They're half human. Augmented with mechanical parts that I've designed."

"They're cyborgs." Like Darth Vader, and even Luke to a degree, though I didn't share this thought out loud. "They didn't look like cyborgs."

"When have you ever seen a Knight of Ren?"

"In my vision. You were standing with them in a field while it rained."

"Your… oh." He stopped short, silent for an awkward second. "I forgot I saw that."

"I didn't."

He avoided my eyes and turned his attention to the holoscreen. "The storm should be gone. I'm returning to the surface."

Night had fallen by the time we landed on Gryl near the Force user's cliffside village. Ren lowered the ramp and we gratefully left the confines of his ship. A cool, damp breeze washed across my face, the fresh air a welcome relief from hours of recycled oxygen.

"How should we handle the Force user?" I asked Ren.

He shrugged in dismissal, the movement darkly elegant. "Simple. We'll duel for rights to him. Lightsabers only, no using the Force. My saber is still locked inside my ship. Give me the key."

I ignored him and unhooked my saber from my belt. "Do you want it to be symmetrical?"

Ren looked perplexed by my question.

"Your new scar," I explained, gesturing at his face. "You want it on the opposite cheek? Or make it cross over the first one I gave you?"

Livid anger dawned in his eyes. And then Ren cheated.

Inky blackness bled from his hands, and the air shivered like we were standing inside a mirage. My saber vanished from my palm as if it had never existed, and though Ren had been standing several feet away, he was now directly in front of me, his hand around my neck.

He buried my shields under an immobile anchor of Force power. I struggled to claw them out while thrashing against his grip, until Ren pressed his forehead against my own in a horrible mockery of intimacy. I froze at the completely foreign sensation of having someone's face so close to my own.

"You are infuriating, scavenger," he whispered, our mingled breath the only thing separating our lips.

I wrapped my hands around his wrist and swallowed my nerves, ready to rip out his eyes if necessary. "Earlier you called me boring. Make up your mind."

He briefly squeezed my throat. I felt grim satisfaction that I could manipulate him so easily through his anger, though underneath it lurked a twisted fascination at the intensity burning in his mind.

His eyes darkened in hunger, and an unbidden heat coursed through me as his thoughts took a very different turn.

Ren's hand moved up my neck to roughly cup my chin, and his face tilted to one side. A dangerous, primal thrill coursed down my spine. He was thinking about kissing me and for a delirious second I wanted him to because no one had ever made my heart race so fast in my entire life. However, the desire soured into exquisite mortification as my brain caught up with my uncontrolled senses.

I inhaled to give life to an enraged shout, pushing air out of my lungs along with a powerful blast of the Force, and just like that Ren's grip vanished. He reappeared several feet away as if he had never moved, the air shivering around him.

My lightsaber was once again in my palm. I instantly ignited it and brandished it in front of me, confusion paramount as I regrouped my shattered concentration. Ren had somehow overtaken my mind and created that entire vision.

"You asshole!" I accused as my cheeks flamed in hot embarrassment. Though the vision had been completely fabricated, my heated response to it had been anything but fake.

There was a smug gleam in Ren's eyes. But worse… far worse, I sensed a new undercurrent of curiosity emanating from him, his mind dying to delve into mine again and replay that scene with a very different ending.

"Don't look at me like that," I seethed. "That did not just happen. It was not real."

"We could make it real." He wouldn't stop looking at my lips.

"No. I want nothing to do with you. I'm not dueling you. Get in your ship and leave," I snarled. I pulled the crystal key from my vest pocket and sheared it in half across the plasma blade of my lightsaber.

"I concede," Ren said with a growing smirk. "But we both know what you really wanted, and I promise I won't ever let you forget it."

"Get – out – of my – sight."

I swung my lightsaber in front of me, chasing him back a few steps. Ren turned and strode up the ramp into his ship. Moments later it rose into the air and vanished out of sight in the night sky.

I began the trek toward the Force user's cliffside village, dimly realizing that I would finally achieve my original goal of bringing a new Jedi recruit back to the Resistance. But my hands trembled the entire way, because I felt like I was one step closer to losing everything.

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