CHAPTER FIVE
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Kylo sits alone in his cot, waiting for some certainty to hush the noise of his doubts. He wants resolve, for the light to finally settle over the dark. He needs to ease the burden of his grief and regret, to help him forget the sight of his father falling from that bridge.
Kylo waits for peace, for absolution. But most of all, he waits for Rey.
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The base is alive with speculation about Ben's release. People wondering what information he gave up, how long he'll be under house arrest, and if General Organa pulled strings to ensure that he wouldn't be executed anyway. The popular opinion is that he should be.
Rey knows where Ben's room is thanks to Leia: modest quarters on one of the middling basement levels, far away from the general populace of the Resistance, for his own safety as much as theirs. She wants to go to him, to hold and kiss him again. Maybe even spend the night, if she feels ready. She's still ashamed of what he saw, the truth of that night on Jakku and how it damaged her, but she can forgive it. She could forgive nearly anything now because he chose to live.
First she goes to Finn's room and throws her arms around him. "Thank you," she says. "I don't know what you said to him, but it worked. It worked, and he's going to live because of you."
Rey lets go of him and steps back, her face hot. That was more than she'd meant to say.
"I don't think it was just me," Finn says, grinning, "but I'll take the credit anyway."
"I know it couldn't have been easy, after everything he's done to both of us, and Poe too."
Finn's smile disappears, his expression sober now, but he says, "It was the right thing to do, for you and for the Resistance, so I don't regret it."
Rey nods, then says, "I should go. I haven't seen him yet, and I—do you think I should give him space?"
Finn laughs so roughly that it's almost rude. "Only if you want to torture him. Which I'm not opposed to, but I don't think that's what you want."
Rey shakes her head. "I know you don't understand. I barely understand myself, but I don't think the terrible things he's done are all that should define him. There's good in Ben. I've seen it, and I can feel it."
"I don't have to understand," Finn says. "I'm not the one who's in love with him."
"I'm not…"
The denial falls quiet on her tongue. It's hard to say that she doesn't love Ben. Too hard to mean nothing.
Finn claps her on the shoulder. "Yeah. That's what I thought."
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She comes to him in the middle of the day, when the sun outside would be at its highest. Not that Kylo can see it in this windowless room, three floors below ground level. He'll take it, though; he'll take anything over that colorless cell with its relentless overhead lights.
Rey lingers by the closed door, her presence in the Force a warm glow, somehow delicate and blazing at once. She's here for him, and he's more grateful for her forgiveness than he is to have his crimes pardoned.
"Come here," he says.
Rey climbs into bed with him, settles by his side, and takes his hand in her own. She has such contradictory hands, elegant but strong, and he'll never tire of touching them.
"Will you kiss me?" Rey asks, her voice small, like she thinks there's a chance he'll say no.
Kylo pulls her closer and presses his lips to hers. He keeps things innocent, as patient as he can bear to be, until Rey opens to him. They can stay this way, giving, tasting each other, for as long she needs.
They don't tire of kissing for a long while, even though Rey's touch made him hard and aching within minutes. When she finally lays a hand on his thigh, he shudders and gasps her name.
Rey freezes. Only for a moment, but he feels it.
"We don't have to…" Kylo grabs her wrist, holds her still because he can't quite take her touch right now. Not if he wants to say what needs to be said. "I can wait."
Rey buries her face against his chest. "I hate this. I want you so badly, but I'm afraid. Not of you, just of—of having it done to me."
Kylo thinks of that man he'd seen in her memory, the one who stole so much from her, and wonders if he's still on Jakku. Finding out would be easy, and if that old scavenger is there, it would only take a moment to kill him. Although Kylo thinks it would be much more satisfying to take his time.
"Stop it." Rey kisses his throat, rocks against him. "I'm fine, really, just nervous. You don't have to do anything like that."
Kylo would know she's lying even if he couldn't feel her fear creeping across their connection, sliding from Rey to him like a bead along a thread.
That's twice that she's tried to persuade him with sex. First in his cell, when she begged him to live, and now, trying to keep him from falling straight back to the darkness. He can hardly hold it against her, all things considered.
"Let's just sleep," Kylo says. "I'm exhausted, and I want to hold you."
He feels Rey's relief as if it's his own, hears it ripe in her voice when she says, "Thank you, Ben."
Kylo doesn't feel ready to reclaim his old name, and maybe he never will. But he can only be thankful that Rey believes in his light enough to think of him as Ben Solo. To see a man where once she only feared a monster.
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They take things slow. Days, then weeks, of tender embraces and mostly chaste kissing. She learns Ben's body in a series of patient lessons. The kinds of touches that relax him, or draw needy noises from his throat, or make him hard.
Rey wants to try again, but every time she thinks she's ready, the fear takes over. And she doesn't think she could bear the shame of sharing her body only to have to stop halfway through. Again.
She tells Finn about it, and he gives her the kind of warm hug that never fails to lift her spirits, at least a bit.
Still, Rey pulls away, not quite wanting to be touched anymore. "I just feel so stupid. Like I threw away something that I can't get back."
"That's not true," Finn says. "You didn't do anything wrong, all right? None of this is your fault."
Then why did I give it up for eight portions?
She knows better than to say that. Finn will just try to reassure her more, and Rey doesn't want that. She wants someone to agree with her, justify this fault she feels, so she can shoulder it and carry on.
"I should go. I was supposed to start training with Ben ten minutes ago. Catch you later?"
Finn's smile is painfully tender. "Yeah, peanut. Later."
Her spar with Ben helps. Rey pushes herself hard, holding back nothing, as if the man before her is still Kylo Ren, a ruthless creature in a mask.
After she's burned Ben twice, once on the shoulder and again across his ribs, he holds up his hands, training lightsaber extinguished, and asks, "Did I do something?"
Rey shakes her head. "No. I just need to work out some frustration."
Ben smirks, that almost-smile she's come to love, never mind that she first saw it while trapped in an interrogation chair.
"Well try not to kill me while you're at it. I only just escaped a hangman's noose a few weeks ago."
That isn't remotely funny, but Rey says, "Don't be ridiculous. It would have been a blaster shot to the head."
Ben makes a low, rough noise. That's as close to a laugh as he ever offers.
"So what's frustrating you?" he asks. Lightly, as if he doesn't already know the answer to his question.
Rey puts away her own training saber, its weak light snuffed out. "Not being able to—you know."
Ben's gaze flickers over her, suddenly warm in a way that it makes her shiver. This would be much easier if she didn't want him so badly, but her body's needs are as violently present as the anxiety she can't seem to shake.
Then he looks away, chewing the inside of his lower lip the way he does when he's unsure. Or hungry to get between her legs.
"It's all right. Even if we never…" He swallows, the apple of his throat bobbing. "It wouldn't make me love you any less. That isn't what I want you for."
Love. He's never said that before, not out loud. Rey has felt it from him, a truth that crept up on them both over the last few weeks, but hearing him voice it is different. It shows faith in what he feels, certainty and courage.
Rey rushes to him, grabs the collar of his tunic, and tugs him down for a kiss. There's nothing chaste about this, nor anything that makes her afraid, and it gives her hope. Maybe things will change. Maybe she isn't broken beyond fixing.
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Kylo takes missions for the Resistance now. Cutting down soldiers that he once worked alongside, stealing weapons plans and destroying labs, blasting TIE fighters out of the sky. It's work that tugs at the darkness inside him. Killing is killing, and there's no light in it, no matter which side he's on.
He slips back into it more comfortably than he'd like Rey to know.
His master has heard about his betrayal, and now the First Order has put a bounty on his head that would've made his father blush. It's only a matter of time before he has to face Snoke, but that's a worry for another day.
Right now he's picnicking with Rey. Norell is a temperate planet, one covered in fields of wildflowers and verdant woods. They've found themselves a grove of pom-pear trees to sit beneath, shielding them from most of the bright afternoon sunlight. Some still sneaks through the leaves, casting dappled shadows across them.
Rey eats her fruit with great thoroughness and licks the juice from her fingers afterward. They share a bottle of goldenberry wine, and although Kylo doesn't have enough to get remotely drunk, the world softens around him. Rey smiles more, even giggles at one of his dark jokes, and stretches out across the blanket that his mother gave them. It's going to be horribly grass-stained after this, but Kylo doesn't particularly care. Not when Rey is so beautiful, eyes closed and lithe little body resting peacefully.
Then she sits up and slowly pulls off her shirt. She holds it in front of her breasts, but she's bare beneath it, offering herself with a smile on her lips. She seems sure, ready in a way that he's never seen before.
"We don't have to—"
"If you say that one more time I'm going to hit you with my quarterstaff," she declares. "I know we don't have to, but I want to try."
They strip out of the rest of their clothes, fully naked together for the first time. Kylo pulls her on top of him, so that she's freer to move away if she needs to, and sits up to kiss her. She tastes like white melon and wine, and her body responds to every touch. He can feel her growing wet, and when he bows to take a nipple into his mouth, it peaks against his tongue. Rey sighs prettily, a quiet, girlish sound that reminds him how new she is to this. Apart from their quickly abandoned sex in his cell, she's only ever known violence, and he wants to change that, to give her pleasure that she can cherish.
Kylo gets Rey onto her back, then kisses her collarbone, her breast, the sharp crest of her rib cage.
"Can I go down on you?" he asks.
He saw enough of what happened to her on Jakku to know that she hasn't done that before, and he hopes that trying something new will keep her present, grounded and focused on what feels good.
Rey tilts her head back, but she says, "Please."
Kylo licks her hip bone and spreads her legs. "Been thinking about it?"
She shifts under his hands, opening wider for him. "Only half the time you kiss me."
He smiles when he nips the inside of her thigh, pleased to know how he's been winding her up. But once Kylo puts his mouth on her, he can't think of anything besides Rey's taste, her scent, and the lovely mewling noises she's making.
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This is different, worlds away from what she's known before. Ben's mouth is soft on her, eager and so very gentle. He licks her slowly at first, then faster, attending to the place where she most needs his touch. Her body feels liquid, tightening between her legs but loosening everywhere else. It feels almost too good to be real, like the dreams she sometimes has of Ben taking her, but immeasurably better and far more vivid.
Rey grips the blanket beneath her, panting with every stroke of his tongue, until she's close, so close. She's rarely worked herself to this point, too afraid of what intimate touches could make her think of, but in this moment she's only here, tied to Ben and the bliss he's giving her.
It's not quite enough, though. Too tender, and almost too sweet.
"More," she whimpers. "I need more if I'm going to…"
She can't say it. Just thinking it makes her hot all over.
Ben pulls away and wipes his mouth, so wet from her that it strikes something sharp and selfish low in her belly. Rey knows that whenever she ever tells this strong man to get on his knees for her, he'll do it without hesitation. That's how badly Ben wants her, wants to please her.
It makes her feel powerful when he gets on top of her, his cock between her legs, nearly where she needs him.
"Is this all right?" he asks. "We can do it differently if this is—"
"Please, like this." Rey grasps his shoulders. "When I get on my back from now on, I only want to think of you."
Something dark crosses his face, and she feels a spark of possessiveness pass between them.
She sucks at his throat, tasting the salty sweat on his skin, and asks, "You like hearing that?"
He nods as he pushes inside her, and her whole body goes rigid. It doesn't hurt anymore, but that familiar stretch makes her feel torn all over again. No. That's all she can think is, no, no. She doesn't want her pleasure to fade, doesn't want to have to stop, like last time—
Ben kisses her forehead, holding himself still inside her.
"It's me," he says. "You're with me, sweetheart."
That tension remains, but Rey knows where she is. She can see that it's Ben on top of her, inside her, and it feels like starting over. He might as well be her first, because he's the only one she's ever chosen, the only one to make her feel this safe.
It's as much for herself as it is for him when she says, "I'm yours. Just yours."
They make love hesitantly, but when she feels her pleasure building again, Rey begs him to take her harder. Ben thrusts into her so roughly that she knows he's been holding back, gentling his needs until she was ready for more, and that only makes it better.
"Feel good?" he asks.
Rey can't find her words, so she only says, "Uh huh," and rocks up to meet him.
She reaches between them to touch herself, and then she's there, toppling over the edge and bringing Ben along with her.
It takes a moment for her to drift back to her body, to feel Ben on top of her again, his weight heavy but perfect.
"Thank you," she says. "That was…"
She's still too undone to voice the way she feels, but Ben will know anyway.
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When he and Rey return that night, they hurry to her room. They'd made love twice more, and he knows that they must look like the new lovers they are, flushed and love bitten with rumpled hair. Rey's wobbly steps don't help, and the sooner they're alone the better. Rumors fly like X-wings across this damn base, as bad as a secondary school.
Once they're alone again, he picks her up and carries her to bed.
"Surely you can't go again," she says, laughing. "I think you've had me every way there is."
Kylo settles under the covers beside her, bites her shoulder, and says, "Not even close, sweetheart, but there's time for that later."
They sleep, a dreamless darkness for Kylo that's somehow as warm as the light, and in the morning he feels new. Like loving Rey could wipe the red out of his past. He knows it can't, but now he belongs to her, and in this moment nothing else matters.
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Rey has the dream again, but tonight it's different. The ground beneath her is still hard and unforgiving, the night air cold, stars prying on this intimate moment. But the man on top of her is loving, his body moving over her, inside her, gently. She clings to Ben, looking up at his beautiful face, softened with pleasure. His eyes are warm as he says her name, again and again, keeping her tethered to the moment.
She's bound to Ben, but when she wakes in the dawn light, she's never felt freer.
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fin