Rey's staff clattered to the floor again as Ren's wooden pole took her in the side. Dropping into a roll, she deftly moved out of the way of another hit, wincing as she heard how hard the stick rebounded off the training room floor.

"You're fast," Kylo Ren said, turning in a tight circle as she crouched and rolled around him, evading the staff.

"I am," she responded, sneering at him.

"But I'm bigger…and stronger." It was true. He had almost a foot on her and he used it to his full advantage as he slammed the staff towards her again. She ducked and it missed her narrowly. Seeing her chance as he recovered, she shot out her foot and kicked his ankles. As he fell to the floor she grabbed her staff from the ground and knocked his away. She placed the sharper edge at his throat, staring down at him as his chest heaved.

"You surrender, then?"

He scowled at her. "That was dirty, inelegant. What I'd expect from a filthy Jakku scavenger."

She raised an eyebrow, put a little weight on the point.

"Surrender," she insisted.

Suddenly he grew still beneath her, the fight going out of his eyes as the scowl wore off his face. She hesitated, continuing to hold the staff to his throat as he simply lay there on the training mat, his lean muscles white against the black floor.

"We've been here before," he said, his voice sounding strange; lower, careful. She blinked at him, trying and failing to discern his meaning.

"Y-yes," she stuttered, haltingly. "We've been training in this room for almost two weeks now. Stop stalling, Solo, and surrender."

She had used his proper last name purposefully to get a rise out of him, but her ploy failed as he continued to gaze up at her. His eyes were dark, unreadable.

"No, on Starkiller base. I was down, and wounded; you could have killed me. Why didn't you, Rey?"

She felt a shiver move through her as he said her name. She didn't like the intimacy it implied; she prefered it when he called her simply "Scavenger". She swallowed roughly, her eyes clouding over with the memory of that strange snow-filled forest.

"The darkness-I felt it," she admitted. She didn't want to tell him this, but she was desperate to confess it to anyone. She was ashamed to tell Master Luke, worried he would deem her unworthy and send her away. "It told me to kill you but-I was afraid. Of what I would become."

The memory caused her to falter in her hold on the staff, and Ren took advantage, reaching up with his muscled arm to grab the pole and wrench it free from her grasp. Before she knew it, he had kicked her own legs out from under her, and she hit the mat hard. He threw the staff, and she heard it hit the wall and clatter to the floor as she struggled to regain her breath. Before she could, he had rolled on top of her, and was straddling her torso, pinning her shoulders to the ground with cool hands.

"No," he said, those dark eyes smug and triumphant now. "It wasn't your fear that made you fail,Scavenger. It was your pathetic weakness, this adherence to the light. You will never be able to defeat me as long as you hold onto that ridiculous sentiment." He sneered the last word, leaning down close to her .

She struggled against him, her smaller size and lesser strength clear now. But he was too strong, and she felt her cheeks grow red with humiliation as his ability to dominate her in this way was made apparent.

Finally, with a small cry she turned her head to the side and ceased her struggle. She lay limp, her mortification complete. Tears leaked from her shut eyes and pooled on the training room floor.

"Why-why are you crying?" She didn't expect his voice to be soft in the way it was, and she looked up at him with surprise and suspicion. His face looked the same as it had when he has interrogated her on the Star Destroyer- sensitive, almost fearful, as if she was capable of maiming him when she was the strapped to the chair, a captive being tortured.

She shook her head angrily. "Because you're hurting me. Humiliating me. Baiting me, like I'm some kind of toy."

Ren continued gazing down at her with the almost-blank look on his face, not understanding. Finally, she near-shouted, "You're meant to be training me. I–I didn't think it would be like this. " She turned her head away again, refusing to meet his uncomprehending look.

Suddenly Ren was off her, and he crossed to the low bench at the far side of the room. He slipped into a dark tunic and turned to face her. His expression was different now-softer, maybe slightly ashamed. He watched her as she slowly brought herself to a sitting position, still reluctant to meet his gaze. But what he said next caused her eyes to fly to his face in shock.

"I'm sorry." His voice was quiet, soft, his eyes cast down at the floor. "It's–It's easy to forget, you know. How the Jedi training should be." His eyes closed now, and he lifted his hands to his face, covering it for a moment as he hunched his shoulders and shuddered. "There's just…been so much pain since I…took up other training methods."

Rey could think of nothing to say. His intimacy startled her, and her cheeks flushed red again. He dropped his hands from his face and his eyes were on her now. Their gaze met, and this time it was not Rey who reached into his mind but he into hers.

She knew that he was holding back, and that the pain he was showing her was only a sampling of what he had experienced, been subjected to at the hands of Snoke. It was enough to make her gasp and withdraw sharply, clutching the ground around her with trembling fingers.

She raised her gaze to where he had been standing, so many questions flooding her mind - Why did you stay? Why did you go in the first place?- but he was already gone, a retreating figure clad in black with his arms wrapped around himself tightly.

—-

She had been furious with Luke Skywalker when he announced that Kylo Ren would be in charge of her training. It had taken her a long time to truly understand the brilliance of his plan to continue Ren's training, but once she understood what Skywalker was up to, she agreed with it. She saw that allowing Ren to spend time with the Master Jedi could help resolve the issues that had led to his decision to commit atrocious acts, and that the repair of this relationship could turn him towards the light again. She understood that. Really, she did.

But she didn't see why this meant she needed to be vulnerable to him, in any way, ever again.

"He needs to care about something again," Skywalker had said to her after she angrily confronted him. "He needs to feel trusted-by me and by you."

She had whirled on him, furious. "But I don't trust him-I could never! He murdered people-he murdered his father-he almost killed Finn!" Her voice trembled at the memory.

Skywalker had been patient with her, but insistent. "I believed till the end that my father had good in him. I was right, and it was this belief that gave us the opportunity to bring down the Emperor. We must believe in Ben. We must give him the opportunity to show us that there is light in him. "

In the end, she had agreed to allow Kylo Ren to oversee her training. The past two weeks they had quietly met in the afternoons after Ren had his lessons with Master Luke. So far the training had been purely physical–unarmed combat training drills, staff sparring, lightsaber basics, stamina training. She knew that Ren was avoiding bringing up the Force; no doubt he was fearful that it would result in the same unwanted intimacy that they had experienced twice now. Until today's training session they had barely spoken. Their interaction had been limited to instruction on his part and reluctant questions or request for clarification on her part.

Why had today been different? She wondered this as she gathered with Skywalker for their evening meal. Ren generally ate alone in his quarters, preferring solitude to the quiet conversations and company that Rey and Luke offered. Rey was dragging a hunk of the thick bread they baked on the island through her stew when Luke spoke.

"I told him today that he must begin your Force training tomorrow. I know he's been avoiding it. I know he's afraid."

Rey struggled to get down the bite of bread and stew over the lump of surprise that rose in her throat. Luke's wise eyes examined her.

"Are you afraid?" he asked, gently.

She cast her eyes downward, not feeling ashamed exactly but-well, sad perhaps. Sad for this man and his failure - his sulking, black clad failure that had caused so much pain and was likely to cause so much more.

"Yes," she admitted. "I am afraid."

He nodded, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You are wise to be."