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LOCATION: TRAINING ROOM R6: STARKILLER BASE

STARDATE: 15/09/1843

"Focus," Ren hissed at me through gritted teeth, and I let out a huff of air, concentrating all of my attention on the thick black helmet that he had removed from his head and placed in the middle of the floor. I had never been in one of the training areas, so the sheer size of it surprised me. The floor was completely covered in blue plastic mats, to offer a small amount of protection should I fall, and it wasn't an exaggeration to say that literally hundreds of weapons lined the walls. Blasters and lightsabers and even staffs and swords were all lined up, ready for practice.

Ren had ignored every single one of them, however. He wasn't interested in teaching me how to fight, he was interested in teaching me how to move that bloody helmet.

I took a step backwards, breath coming fast, beads of sweat beginning to form on my forehead at the exertion. I didn't know how long we had been trying this. It could have been minutes, could very easily have been hours, but every muscle in my body felt as if it were on fire. I had removed my white chef's jacket, leaving me in just a white tank top and blue pants, through which patches of sweat were beginning to show.

"I told you to focus, Robin."

He sounded annoyed, and for a second I couldn't tell whether his voice was spoken out loud into the empty training room or inside my head. I looked up at him from underneath damp eyelashes. He was stood still, tall and straight as a tree, his face irritatingly passive. He hadn't even broken a sweat.

"I'm trying,"

"Well, you're not trying hard enough."

I rolled my eyes at his response and looked back up at the mask. It sat, irritatingly resolute in the centre of the floor. It hadn't moved an inch.

"It's too heavy," I said, in the hope of a decent excuse. In honesty, I doubted that I could have lifted even a feather off the ground with my mind. I had no idea what I was doing. The last three or so hours had consisted entirely of me just looking really hard at it in the hope that it would somehow spontaneously float off the ground.

No wonder the bloody thing hadn't moved.

He raised an eyebrow and brought his glove-clad left hand up, flicking his two fingers. The helmet zoomed from its place on the floor and came flying towards my head. I ducked just in time before it crashed into the wall behind me, falling to the floor with a loud bang. My heart was in my chest.

"What the hell?" I nearly yelled, "You could have decapitated me!"

"It's not too heavy, you're just too weak." He explained, completely ignoring my outburst. The helmet floated from behind me and came to rest once again on the floor, where it had spent the last three hours.

"Try again,"

I licked my lips, biting back an annoyed retort. The guy may have been pissing me off, but that didn't mean that I was stupid enough to try to irritate him in response. He was stood with his hands behind his back, his brooding eyes looking at me almost too intensely.

I'll show you too weak.

I raised my hand in front of me, not for any reason other than the fact that Ren had done the same action only a few seconds before and it had seemed to work. There was an anger inside of me at his obvious dismissal of my abilities, and it burned up through my gut. I stared at the mask, putting all of my hatred and all of my furiousity into the cold metal, looking at it so intently that my eyes began to water.

The mask shifted a centimetre away from me.

I put my hand down, breathing heavily, my shirt damp from the exertion. I'd done it. I'd bloody done it!

I looked up at Ren, a smug smile on my face at my achievement, but his expression was as stony as ever.

"I moved your mask," I said incredulously, "I just moved it!" I even pointed to the ground.

"You shifted it. There's a difference." He replied, his voice monotonous. Despite that, I could have sworn that the corner of his full lip quirked up into something that couldn't quite be described as a smile, but was definitely something.

"I moved it. That counts." I deadpanned back.

He raised an eyebrow at the defiance in my voice.

"Watch your tone, little bird. I'm here to teach you, not to be your friend."

A shiver of ice ran down my back at his words. I couldn't help but hear the truth in them. This was a man who could kill someone in seconds, it would be in my interest not to rile him.

"I have an idea, Robin." He said, removing his hands from behind his back and walking up to me, stepping over the mask as he did so. He stood in front of me, a vision in black, his pale face the only thing about him that didn't absorb light. I took a step backwards, and he raised a brow at me but made no comment.

"This morning your force-wielding was controlled by your emotions. You were scared of what I would do if the plate dropped, and that fear manifested itself into an expression of force."

"Alright..." I said, not quite sure that I liked the idea of where this train of thought was headed.

"I'm going to make you emotional, and you're going to move that helmet."

I bit my lip and nodded. It made sense, I guessed.

"We'll start with irritation. I'm going to annoy you." He spun on his heel and walked back to his original place, the helmet on the floor between us.

It's a bit fucking late for that.

A small pain suddenly shot up the back of my head, almost like someone had flicked me with their finger. I raised my hand to my skull, confused.

"What the-"

The pain came again, slightly more pronounced this time. And again, and again. I looked up at Ren, who's head was tilted sideways, curious as to how I would respond.

"Is that you?" I asked, wincing as another flick came, this one to my left ear.

"Move the mask," he said in response. Another flick, and another.

"Stop it," I said, uncomfortable with the feeling.

"Move the mask."

I gritted my teeth in irritation, flick after flick hitting the back of my head, my neck, my ears. A small smile graced Ren's face as he took in my annoyance. I looked at the mask, holding my hand out again, trying not to get distracted by the pain of the flicks. I focused all of my energy on the object, looking at it through a haze of red.

"Move the goddamn mask, Robin."

"GAH!" I breathed out a grunt and the mask toppled slightly in its place and fell over. The flicking stopped.

"Not good enough."

I rolled my eyes.

"I'm trying, Sir," I explained, my face red, sweat dripping down my cheeks.

"Don't call me Sir." He looked at me with those impossibly dark eyes, "Ren will suffice."

"I'm trying, Ren." I emphasised the last word slightly too sassily for safety. I was pissed off. I'd only found out that I was capable of force-wielding that morning, and he was somehow expecting me to be able to fly helmets around the room on a whim?

He said nothing in response to my disrespectful tone, just stared at the mask, which was still rocking slightly with the momentum of its fall. The room was silent, echoing our shared breathing. I was wrong to have spoken to him like that. He was powerful, much more so than me, I should watch my mouth around him.

"I'm sorr-" I began to say, but as soon as I opened my mouth, his eyes flashed upwards and his hand outstretched towards me. I felt myself lifted up, a tight vice around my throat.

I began to panic, my feet dangling a few inches above the ground, the invisible hand around my neck constricting around my oesophagus, cutting off my air supply. I looked up at Ren in shock. His face was impassive, watching expressionlessly as I struggled in vain for air.

"Let me go-" I managed to choke out, the words sounding more like a whine than an order.

He smiled.

"Make me."

My eyebrows raised in shock at his words, as black spots began to cover my vision.I panicked, my legs kicking into open space, my throat now completely closed. My heart rate increased to such a rate that I could hear it in my ears rather than feel it. Through all of this, Ren remained motionless.

I brought my hand up in front of me, almost without thinking, and suddenly, the pressure was gone. I fell to the ground with a resounding crash, gulping in lungfuls of much-needed oxygen raspily, holding my throat with my hands.

I brought my eyes up to see Ren spreadeagled on the floor, a small dent in the wall behind him that definitely hadn't been there before. I'd thrown him against the wall with such velocity that he'd literally dented it? He choked out a cough.

"Fear."

I looked up confused, as Ren pulled himself up. There was a small cut on his forehead, leaking bright red blood, the only sign of colour on his white face. He was smiling.

"Fear is your power, Robin." He was out of breath, but there was a grin that stretched the whole way across his face. It looked almost... wrong.

He held out his hand to me, and I looked up at it confused for a second, before reaching up my own, wrapping my fingers around his much longer leather-clad ones. He pulled me up and let me dust myself down slightly, before taking a step back and looking at me pensively.

"All we need to do now is teach you how to control your fear and turn it into something productive."

I nodded, still trying to catch my breath, my hand tingling slightly from the feeling of the warmth of his fingers underneath his leather glove.

"I think you're done for the day." He said to me, grabbing his helmet from the floor and placing it on his head.

"Make sure you get some sleep tonight, you have a big day tomorrow, Robin."


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