Weeks crawl by at a painstaking pace and Rey's training has barely gotten anywhere. Each day ends with her being swept to the ground, too spent to move but far too stubborn to learn. She grits her teeth when he taunts her, spurring her on to fuel her anger, but she'd rather lose than stoop to his level.
Rey frustrates Kylo to no end. She refuses to eat more than is necessary to keep her standing, and hardly any words pass between the two. She stays in her quarters, listless and detached, and he paces through his, distress lining his eyes. Meditation is what they need, he decides, and he leads her down to an empty room in a detached section of the base.
With her mind racing, clear-minded meditation is an unattainable goal for Rey. "Center yourself," Ren says to her as he stands tall, casting his shadow onto her. "Breathe in, and gather up all distractions, breathe out and let them fall away."
But there is something about his presence that puts her off, and calm is elusive. She shakes her head, wiping her hands onto her tunic, and pushes herself off the ground.
Ren does not speak. His eyes roll over her, taking in the way her hands clench when she looks at him, and the way her jaw tightens when she recognizes his stare. She holds so much grit under the surface that she is in no shape to meditate, a waste of time and energy. Instead, he gestures her forward with the wave of a hand and Stormtroopers fall into step behind her.
"Where are you taking me?" No response, but soon the aroma of fresh herbs fills her nose. Blast doors slide open to a small room, hardly large enough for Rey, Ren, and the 'troopers.
Squeezing past them, Rey's eyes fall onto a black tray, smooth as stone, stacked high with some of the most beautiful food Rey had ever seen in her life. Sufar greens, so vibrant and fragrant that Rey nearly forgets they are trapped underground. And dru'un slices, baked to a golden brown tinge and slathered in a savory fish sauce. She's hardly eaten for weeks on end, and despite her determination to cooperate as little as possible, the sight is too sweet to ignore. It takes all of Rey's restraint not to immediately ravage it all.
"This a rather grand reception for a prisoner," Rey says as she slides into a seat. She feels strange sitting there while Ren remained standing, and he begrudgingly takes a seat on the opposite end of the table, as far from Rey as possible. The agitation in his eyes is not hidden.
"Do you wish to eat or not? Because I could have all of this packed up and you could go sit in your cell hungry, if that's what you want."
Rey's eyes widen, shovelling a spoonful of greens into her mouth hastily. "I'm eating. But if you think you're going to coax me into joining you with a little bit of food, you are far more foolish than I thought.
"Eat."
"Fine." With every bite, Rey stuffs more and more into her mouth, as if the food will all disappear the moment she stops moving. The napkin beside her remains unused, despite the grime gathering on her fingers. In no time, she has given up on the fork and knife, using her hands instead to soak the dru'un slices in as much sauce as she can manage. It is as if she'd never actually touched a utensil in her entire life.
"You eat like a savage," Ren say as he sits, merely watching, food untouched and a mixture of amusement and disgust painted onto his features. He's mocking her and Rey knows it, but that doesn't stop her from continuing on just the same.
Rey scoffs with indignation. "Well, I didn't exactly grow up with a golden platter of jogan fruit falling into my lap, so excuse me if my manners don't match your standards."
Ren stays silent for a while, and Rey is content at having shut him up. She ignores him and finishes the last of her food, doing her best not to lick the plate as she would have unashamedly done on Jakku. When she lifts her head, Ren's brow is furrowed, staring on at her with his face scrunched in what looks like pity.
The very thought of a being as sorry as he pitying her makes something twist in her gut. As if in some pathetic way, deep down, they are the same. Rey shakes the thought away and glares at him, determined to get him to avert his gaze, as if that would change anything.
"Why are you-" He interrupts her abruptly, as if he needed her voice as an invitation to speak.
"What it was like on Jakku?" His question throws her off, and for a moment, Rey doesn't know what to say. It couldn't, shouldn't matter to him what her life was like before they met. All that matters now is that they are two opposing forces, on opposite sides of the war. Still, hardly anyone had ever asked her before.
"As if you'd care. I was left there, and I scavenged to stay alive, just barely. I wasn't lucky enough to have parents or siblings or friends to turn to, unlike you."
A violent flare passes his eyes and Rey feels herself flinch away involuntarily. "You think you know so much about me, do you, Rey? You think you're the only one who was ever left behind, who was left to fight for yourself? You know nothing about me."
"I know about your mother, and your fathe-"
"Enough!" Ren snaps, whipping away from her with such force that Rey can feel the power emanating from him in roiling waves. "Take the girl to her quarters, now." His voice is unsettlingly low and controlled, like a growl, and the 'troopers rush up to follow his orders.
They yank Rey back toward the door as Kylo storms away, but she wrestles herself from their grip just enough to shout out to him."Your parents love y-" she tries to call out, but two hands clasp around her mouth as Kylo stops dead in his tracks, hand clenched so tightly that the seams of his gloves strain to stay together.
Without warning, he whips his hand out in a violent swing. His plate flies across the table and shatters against the wall, spraying shards in all directions, and then a silence falls over the room like a sheet of ice.
I know, I know they do . A foreign thought once again, and there's a trembling in the voice, so clear behind her ears that she feels exposed suddenly.
He's in her head again, but Rey doesn't want to push away. Instead, she holds fast to his vulnerability and clutches it close as Kylo Ren disappears into the labyrinth of halls, heavy footfalls fading fast. He is gone, but Rey can still sense him seething and falling apart all at once, and she follows that feeling like a thread leading to him.
"Hey, where do you think you're going?" a 'trooper shouts from behind her as a hand closes around her arm.
"To find Kylo Ren. Now let me go." There's no more reason or explanation beside the inkling of the feeling that she should go to him, and she pushes any apprehension away from her thoughts.
The Stormtrooper's grip tightens as he struggles to pull her along with him. "We have direct orders from Lord Ren to return you to your quarters."
Rey straightens her back and turns slowly toward the two 'troopers with a measured lowness to her voice, looking them dead in the eye. "Your leader Snoke gave orders for Ren to train me, and that can't happen if he is nowhere to be found." She calls on the Force to flow through voice, enough to make persuasiveness drip from her words. "You will let me find Kylo Ren, or you will face the consequences of going against your leader's wishes."
As the words spill from her lips, the 'troopers stumble backward into the wall, snapping into place behind her as she strides away. They follow Rey quietly as she threads through the ghostly halls, until she comes to a stop in front of the meditation chamber. She can feel the rise and fall of his presence behind the door, which is jammed shut by an unnatural force, but Rey clicks it open with ease. The Stormtroopers fall away as the blast door slides away to reveal Ren, back turned to face them and shoulders heaving with immense effort to control breathing.
The door clicks shut and there's a silence so imposing that Rey wants to say something, anything , to get it to stop. Instead, she can hardly pull away as her hand is drawn to his shoulder. They both jolt at the contact, Kylo flinching away from her but Rey is far too quick. She grabs his arm, this man who she's only ever known as a monster, and he turns toward her with heavy-lidded eyes glazed with unshed emotion.
With this touch his presence is overwhelming, and Rey feels herself being flooded with the sense of him. She feels the bitter taste of his anger and the sharp pressure of panging guilt, but most of all she feels the helplessness, a tiny little spare thread tucked away in an untouched section of his mind. It strains against its bonds toward her until finally she reaches out toward it.
She shudders at the sudden chill that washes over her as she tugs at the string, and Kylo cries out in a choked shout. She pulls away from his mind entirely in an instant to find him left reeling, eyes shot with fear but he shakes his head decidedly. He looks so broken like this, so cracked up and exposed, and suddenly Rey feels a wave of disgust for herself wash over her, for bringing him to this point.
But he looks up at her once again, all red-rimmed eyes and clenched teeth and tenseness, and he doesn't need to speak but he does. "Go ahead," he tells her, voice rough and gravelly and low, but she hears him, and that's all she needs to continue.
She pulls at the string until it breaks free, and suddenly everything is hurtling toward her in every direction.
There's a young boy curled up in a tiny bed, red ears and beaklike nose much too large for his small frame. Whispers float over like white noise from the next room over, but the boy is covering his ears, caging himself away from the voices. Sleep avoids the boy like a plague until he feels a slippery sensation at the back of his mind, and he knows that he is not alone any more.
This is a different voice than the ones from the other room, farther away and yet so clear in his mind and so measured. They're arguing about you again , the voice purrs into his ear, and the boy is racked with a feeling of guilt. They want to send you away, to your uncle, as if that fool ever even cared. He hasn't seen or talked to you in years.
Betrayal is what he feels next, but he doesn't want to believe it. His parents love him, they always have, but not enough to soothe him at times like these. Not enough for his father to miss an exciting adventure aboard his ship. Not enough for his mother to cancel a meeting with an important leader of the New Republic. There are always more important things to them, far more important than a child who cries at night. They've never loved him enough.
But the new voice with the slick words comes to him during the night and watches over him, more than his parents ever had. He helped the boy to feel wanted, to be more than the forgotten child of heroes. The voice tells him stories of importance, tells him tales of the greatness at his fingertips, gives him a new and greater name. Ben Solo was alone, weak, forgotten. Kylo Ren is remembered, strong, but somehow, Rey feels that he never stopped being alone.
She rips herself away from the memory but the scene is still fresh in her mind, raw like an open wound. Ren is still as stone, as if he's forgotten how to breathe, but Rey stands, reeling. She comes closer, almost close enough to touch but she still feels the rawness radiating from him like an open wire.
Instead, she sits down and crosses her legs, palms upturned and eyes fluttered shut, and she hums. It's a tune she used to sing to herself when she was younger, when all she had for comfort was sand and scrap metal. Jakku was harsh and bitter, and when blistering days became restless nights, Rey would hum. With each melancholic note that echoed through her makeshift home, Rey imagined a gentle hand ghosting through her hair and a palm rubbing her back. Each lonely song seemed to become a harmony in her head and she imagined an ocean, the rise and fall coming to meet her, and for a night, the walls of the fallen AT-AT didn't seem so empty.
And so she hums as Kylo Ren stares on at her, his breaths slowing to match hers as the song fills the room. Her eyes close as she centers herself, letting all but this room fall away and suddenly she's no longer trapped on a strange planet with the wrong people with cruel intentions. She's home, shielded from anything that could hurt her, but this time, Kylo Ren is with her too. And she is not afraid.