Chapter 11
Rey would be lying if she didn't replay the conversation with Kylo repeatedly in her head. She was still flummoxed by the fact that he had opened himself up to her. Even though they could feel flashes of each other's emotions and more when they dreamed, Rey would have never known anything he told her from that alone. She tried to justify why he had done it, a reason that went beyond her being owed something. It was her heart before her head that answered that question for her and Rey fought against it with everything she had.
Her thoughts followed her to her training and she practically made it a test in which she tried to justify his words with every strike of her Lightsaber. Luke took the successive parries happily, thinking her mind was clear and that's why she could fight so efficiently.
'Master?' Rey started, wiping sweat from her brow and Force absorbing a blaster bolt.
Luke nodded, gritting his teeth as he manoeuvred another jumping slash at Rey. She narrowly avoided the blade and felt her master's Lightsaber singe a hole through the loose pants of her training outfit.
'What is the Jedi sentiment on trust?' she questioned.
Their eyes met briefly before they continued fighting. 'Well the Jedi were trained to trust the Force.'
'I mean trusting others, especially non-Jedi. Is there not some fear that you could be led down the wrong path because you followed someone you thought you could trust?'
Luke considered her with his eyes, though did not stop his onslaught of attacks. 'There is no specific teaching on trust. It is up to you, your belief in that person and your faith that the Force will show you the truth if you seek it.'
'To trust everyone until proven otherwise?' she questioned.
He shook his head and defended Rey's slash. 'I believe in trust through experience. You can believe that everyone you meet is ultimately good, but to bestow the gift of trust on someone, the reason must be deep within you.'
Rey felt her heart constrain, thinking of her own abandonment on Jakku. Trust for her had been inconstant. She had trusted that whoever had left her on Jakku would come back, but after being thrown into everything that had occurred over the last few months of her life, she had been led to believe that it was a foolish dream. To just trust and wait would lead her nowhere. Rey had found herself trusting in so many; Finn, Leia, Chewie, Luke; that she could convince herself that she would never be betrayed again. She hadn't even considered whether they trusted her, whether their belief in her was just based off hope and not trust.
Luke knew betrayal, however and Rey knew that. It was why he had come to Ahch-To wracked with grief and uncertainty in his own path and ability. Whatever he said came from a place of experience and his own sense of heartbreak. When Rey looked to her master, she knew she trusted him with her very being. In him she found the love of a father and the kindness of a teacher; both things she didn't remember having. The thought distracted her briefly, not enough to get injured by Luke's blade, but enough that she felt her sadness burn through her heart to the remembered loneliness and anguish that came with her less than ideal childhood.
She felt him then. Pressing warmly against her in the recesses of her mind; calling out to her. Rey tried to push Kylo away, not seeking his input into her own angst, but she couldn't. He would repay the favour, she realised. Even if she wished to not think about him, think about what she had thought and done in her illusion, it was inevitable. She felt something for him and whether it was real or another illusion created by this connection, it wasn't going to go away any time soon.
'Rey.'
Her eyes met Luke's and he had changed forms so that she could do the same. Rey did not, however and she stood in front of him with her training Lightsaber still held in a Form II stance.
'Do you trust me Master?' she asked, suddenly desperate to know the answer.
Luke stopped then, his hand halting the droid and he looked at Rey carefully.
'I do,' he responded with a curt nod. 'Because you are my padawan and I believe you have goodness in you.'
Rey swallowed and dropped her Lightsaber to her side. 'Did you trust Ben?'
Luke sighed, sadness descending on him. 'I did. I had faith that he would do good and I trusted him as not just my student, but as my kin. Perhaps that's why he didn't kill me on that day. He knew he had broken my trust as both student and nephew.'
'Do you think he still has the capacity to be trusted?' she asked carefully.
'I don't know.' Luke looked to the sky momentarily, his eyes closing and it seemed as if he were reaching with the Force. 'Perhaps his master keeps him safely guarded, never truly sure of whether he will once again betray a teacher. Even though he killed his father for him, Ben had such an imbalanced mind for so long before…before Snoke, that I want to believe that anything is possible for him. If he changes, perhaps this will all change too.'
Rey remained silent in thought. Had she changed him? A part of her believed she had, but then nothing had changed around them. Kylo-Ben might have told her something in confidence, in a sense trusting her with his heart, but it didn't mean he trusted her or that she should trust him. As she had thought before, it could all be a ploy to confuse her path, to distract her from what was truly important.
'What I should say is,' Luke spoke up again, lifting his Lightsaber in front of him. 'Believe in your path and trust in your choices and your heart. You are good, Rey. You are of the light and if you trust that, the darkness can try and sway you, but your own beliefs will lead you back onto the correct path.'
The young woman smiled and nodded, raising her blade again.
She felt the light then. Warm and good, filling her with sunshine and filling her with surety. Luke could feel it too. He could see it reflected in her eyes, in her utilisation of the Force and how she moved when they began to parry again. Rey fought him off again and deflected a bolt which hit Luke's shoulder. He stumbled back, but found his stance again after a few moments. The action made him smile and Rey found herself replicating the expression.
XxX
Rey could feel him niggling away inside her head. Kylo had not let up since she had become sad during her earlier conversation with Luke. It wasn't that she could know what he was thinking, or perhaps even what he wanted to say to her, but he was there. It surprised her that he could be so constant in his approach and even as Rey was eating supper with her master, his presence remained, unusually calm and almost empathetic.
When she finally went to bed after bathing, Rey looked at the ceiling, wondering if it would ever get to the point in their connection where they could understand each other. That it would be more than just colours of sensation and they could have some sense of a conversation. It wasn't that she wanted that, but she wanted to be prepared if that were to be the case.
She waited to close her eyes until she was calm and clear. Her mind was still a jumbled mess because of the last few days and Rey knew she had to swallow her thoughts because if he ended up in her dreams, he would feel what she felt: the repercussions of the illusion, the strange yearning that threatened to become a part of her and her inconstancy in sticking to her word.
Feeling that she could sleep with a free mind, she closed her eyes and let sleep take her.
It was quiet when she opened her eyes to the small clearing. The house stood in silence and so did the great oak tree that Kylo had leant against the night before. Night had clearly fallen here too and stars sparkled above Rey. If she hadn't known any better, she would have considered this place beautiful.
There was movement from behind her and she turned back to the house and she could hear shuffling. After a few moments, Kylo stepped out from behind the house. He wasn't wearing his usual clothing, or at least what he had been wearing in his own dreams. In hers, he would come out in full black; with his hooded cowl and leather Lightsaber belt. When in his dreams, he was stripped down to just his ribbed-sleeved black tunic. Right now, however, it seemed he was wearing his training gear which was comprised of a sleeveless zipped-closed black tunic without a belt or Lightsaber and Rey wondered why.
'Your clothes…' Rey murmured, her words drifting away in the slight wind.
Kylo looked up at her and she saw his jaw tighten, his irritation clear.
Rey carefully approached him, seeing that his bare hands were covered in dirt and specks of red, which must have been blood.
'What have you been doing?' she questioned.
He stood straighter and dusted his hands off. 'I plan on destroying this place.'
Her brows furrowed and she walked past him to where he had come from, seeing that behind the house he had begun to tear at the wooden walls. She considered that he could have just burned the place down, but he seemed to want to destroy it one wooden plank at a time.
'Are you sure that this is the way?' she asked. When she turned, he was standing behind her and Rey took several steps away from him, wary of his proximity and the fact that this was the least clothing she had ever seen him in.
'It has given me nothing, why should I let it stay here?' Kylo responded. His hands were in fists now and Rey could see the tension in his arm muscles tighten.
Rey looked at him and took a moment to feel his emotions and she immediately sobered feeling that his irritation wasn't anger but ultimately sadness and it was her fault. Just like he had affected her in the early days of their connection, she had done the same to him.
She shook her head. 'This place is more than that and you know it.'
'How would you know that?'
Rey sighed. 'Because you told me that yesterday. I was in there; I saw that little boy. If he's in there, if anything like that is in there, then you can't. You'll only be hurting yourself.'
Kylo pushed past her then to get back to the pulled boards, but Rey grabbed his shoulder, halting him and shaking him. He turned swiftly, fast enough that Rey fought he would hit her, but he just looked at her with furrowed brows.
'I'm sorry,' she murmured. 'I didn't mean to…I was just.' She frowned, not able to get the words out properly. 'I didn't think you would still be affected by my moods. It's hard on me and it doesn't seem right to subject you to it too. No matter what this is now.'
His expression relaxed then and they both took a moment; neither saying anything, their eyes just meeting. Rey could feel the tension leave Kylo and the air seemed to lighten as he concentrated on her rather than on the house. Kylo shook his head lightly. 'Don't apologise.' He frowned and his expression became one of compassion. 'I think I just got swept away with it…I hadn't realised it was you more than myself. You just felt so sad and then I…I don't know what I felt.'
Rey closed her eyes. She was embarrassed and felt as if she didn't have a good reason to be sad anymore, that it was a part of the past now and that projecting that onto Kylo made her feel and seem so weak.
Kylo watched her carefully, still reeling from the emotional overload of the past ten hours and realising that he hadn't let himself feel so upset in a long time. He knew that they shared that, he had said it before. They were more alike than Rey wanted to admit, but Kylo felt that similarity so easily that he wondered why she tried to deny it, especially when she looked it with him with something far from contempt.
He reached to his shoulder, taking her hand from it and he held it, watching her carefully. Rey opened her eyes and stopped herself from reacting; from skipping a breath, from blinking too fast, and she took her hand back, holding it in the other.
'You don't have to push me away with such force.'
'That's not what I'm doing,' Rey responded taking another step away. 'I'm making sure we aren't close to start with.'
Kylo watched her walk away, his eyes glancing at her tightly squeezed fists and the tension in her back. Rey tried her most to remain impassive and to convince herself that there was no charged atmosphere, that she could hide even in his dreams. The thought that she was denying the inevitable made her want to scream.
Thanks for reading ;)
