The room was warm and softly lit when Rey next awakened. A strange and sweet scent reached her nostrils, something she didn't recognize, but quite liked. She was laid down softly into her own bed and tucked in gently with the blankets pulled up to her nose. She let out a breath as she opened her eyes to the comfy surroundings. This whole scene-waking up in bed after passing out- was becoming much too familiar for her taste.

Rising up into a sitting position Rey first looked down at her body and saw that she had been changed out of her previous training clothes, and put into a long, white cotton nightgown. She became perplexed as she looked up around the room for anyone around who might have done this; her eyes locating Kylo, sitting in a chair at the end of her bed.

A foul bile began to rise in her throat at the sight of him, but was pushed down.

"Why are you here?" She asked in a rude tone. She was met with silence for several heart beats as he simply continued to look at her.

"I wanted to make sure that you were fine. I often use my technique too harshly and cause unintentional damage." He finally replied in a much more collected tone, his eyes softening when he saw her eye him cautiously. Seeming to predict her question before she voiced it, he laid her worries to rest. "I carried you here, but Mashra was the one to change you, and I was not present for that."

Rey visibly relaxed at his words and let out a breath of relief. At least she still has her dignity against him, something that has not bound her by chains.

The air became tense as the conversation ceased with neither of them speaking a single word. Rey would prefer it if he left her alone all together; but she had questions, ones she could not answer herself, and ones Mashra would not understand. Kylo Ren was the only one who has been in her place before, he's the only other slave fighter here. However, her pride and prejudice against him stepped in the way of her inquiry. She didn't want to turn to a beast like him for questions on humanity. Yet she could feel herself being eaten alive by the words spoken to her by Phasma. She shuddered at the thought of the countless numbers of slaves whom she thought she was protecting in a way, who she thought she liberated, had died at her hands from a misguided belief. Her stomach clenched when she imagined their begging faces that she reluctantly ignored.

Rey felt herself falling into a pit of despair, deeper than it had ever been before. She's lost the one thing she ever believed in, the only right she could ever see in her despicable life had been turned into a wrong. With that she had lost her footing; the only thing that had kept her away from madness was now gone.

She needed answers, something to tell her that she wasn't what she feared she was becoming, or had been all along. That she was no better than the man in front of her.

"How could you do it?" She finally brought herself to ask, her voice small and almost inaudible; yet somehow booming between them.

"Do what?" He responded purposefully for reasons she wasn't quite sure. Rey knew that he understood her question, but she didn't repeat or elaborated it.

"Say it. How could I do what?" He echoed himself, finally breaking her.

Rey felt the tears she had been holding in fall from her eyes in an unceremonious fashion, her voice hiccuping when she finally restated her question more thoroughly.

"How... how could you kill your opponents without second thought or remorse?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Rey."

"I'm not like you!" Rey refuted. "I regretted my action after every fight. How can you go on killing other without feeling pain? What made you into a monster?"

"It's all about perspective. You thought you were saving them from a tortured death, I'm saving them from a tortured life." Rey blinked as him, at a loss for words and slightly astonished by his words. Kylo, seeing her confusion and surprise, reiterated himself. "Surely you must feel it, we all do. A desire for death, to be put out of our misery, but at the same time a fear of death and a dim hope for liberation that will never come."

Rey became quiet for a moment.

"You don't know that."

"Be serious Rey, no one is coming for any of us. We're never leaving this life unless through death."

"Then why didn't you 'liberate' me?" She then spat, searching for some reason to hold onto her hatred. If he truly was just trying to free other slaves from their torture by ending their misery, then why hadn't done the same to her?

Kylo, however, refused to reply, and continued on to act like she never asked. He stood from his chair and made his way for the door, abruptly cutting off their conversation. Although, before he left, he turned back to her and said. "Reconsider what it is you have here. This is the closest you'll ever have to a peaceful life as a slave."

"So you admit you're a slave too?" She challenged. A wry smile that didn't meet his eyes spread onto his face at her words.

"More like a prisoner."

With those last words said, Kylo opened the door and walked out, his black cape fluttering behind him was the last thing she saw before she was left alone; the sound of the closing door echoing through the large room.

Rey didn't stay in her place for long, not wanting to be confined the bed, so she stood up, reached a hand into her pillow case, and pulled out the bread knife she had swiped. Moving over to the large window curtains Rey started on the furthest end that was the most out of sight as to not fall under suspicion. Seating herself down on her legs she fell into the mundane routine she had recently picked up every evening of ever so slowly cutting a line out of the horizontal bottom. The process was extremely tedious since butter knives were not sharp and had a rounded point that would not allow her to cut easily. It took no time at all, happening almost immediately, that Rey thought back to her conversation with Kylo Ren.

His claim to kill to liberate didn't seem to fit right with his character. Everything about him pointed in the other direction, it made no sense to her that a creature like him would have any soul for others. Even if he did, his mindset was most certainly not that of a righteous liberator. What he was doing was not liberation, it was murder, the only thing he was saving was his reputation.

Rey felt her thoughts shift to Ivano for the first time in a while.

When she watched Kylo behead Ivano, there was no salvation in what she saw. The way Kylo heavily brought down the sword with much force spoke nothing to someone who thought themselves as a savior. She could see the anger and aggression in Kylo's eyes the entire fight from her spot behind the gates in the tunnel. Rey even took note to how he seemed to relax once he killed Ivano, like he was happy he was gone.

He was not a liberator, freedom through death was not his goal; if it was then why didn't he kill Rey, or himself for that matter? He himself said that he wasn't not a slave, but a prisoner, as if he was allowed limited will. Kylo then chose to kill those people, it was his own decision, not because his status called for it.

Then what goal could he possibly have in doing what he does? Is it only to fuel his madness? Is he truly a monster after all?

At that, Rey's memory then brought her back to her own fight with Kylo, and their meetings before and afterwards.

Kylo never seemed to go too far when he was with her, almost as if she were a delicate rose that he was holding in his hands; being gentle in order to protect the petals, while being cautious of the thorns at the same time. Could there possibly be another side to Kylo that she has failed to recognize in him yet, or was she being over speculative? Rey hasn't spent enough time around him to tell, he always appears to be so cold to those around him, constantly wearing a mask of indifference. It was only in rare occurrences between the two of them that she was able to see something that seemed more humane. Yet she still couldn't decipher what he's thinking or feeling. At times, oh so scarce those times were, he looked lost, and maybe a little scared.

Perhaps he didn't fully believe in what he was doing either. Maybe he was blinding himself with the idea that he was right to try to help live with the guilt. Like she was.

But Rey thought back again to Ivano, and all sympathy she could have possibly felt dissipated in an instance. Someone so close to her, who had treated her like a little sister, the only family she had ever known; his life was ended horribly at the hands of the man who now kept her prisoner in this luscious cage. Any fighter with a sense of honor or heart would let two comrades fall together so one would not have to live in agony over the other, but no, he let that happen.

Her inner thoughts told her that she may have very well done the same thing to one or more of her opponents unknowingly, but she pushed those thoughts down.

If Kylo though that he was her saving grace then he is deadly mistaken. Simply because she was put into the hands of a more wealthy and more privileged master did not mean that she was granted freedom, she was still less than a prisoner, less than a human.

A slave who let themselves be consumed and clouded by pretty surrounding and a comfy bed, ignoring the bars on the window and the locks on the doors, was a delusional child who could not face the fact that they had no free will.

That's was he was, Rey finally concluded as she finished up a foot long length of rope-her hands bruised and calloused from the strain of force in which she held the handle to cut. Kylo was a coward, too afraid of his surroundings to acknowledge them, and too afraid of himself to see the blood trailing behind him.

Rey wasn't like him, she was different. She knew what she was, and she was scared of what she had become, but embraced it in order to find some sort of ground beneath her feet. She killed for twisted morals, but it were those twisted morals that kept her floating in her ocean of despair.

Although they killed for similar reasons, their opinions differed. Kylo thought that this was the only way for them to find freedom, she believed it was the only way to find peace.

Can't receive what was never yours. In this world, slave or not, you're never truly free.

A knock on the door and the sound of Mashra's voice then notified Rey that Mashra had arrived with her dinner. Rey quickly moved an armchair over to hide her work, and swiftly hid the knife under the cushion.

"Come in." Rey replied and made her way over to the small dining table. Mashra was let in by the guard, and their nightly routine commenced.

...

Kylo was sitting by his lonesome when he was summoned by Snoke's messenger. He wasted away his time sitting by the fireplace, watching how the colorful flames seemed to dance around in their place, his mind wandering to another spitfire who perpetually clouded his thoughts.

When he had walked in to the training room earlier that day, he was awestruck for a multitude of reasons, dozens of thoughts reaching him when he saw Rey in her disheveled state. Looking at her relentlessly pound on Phasma was a sight to behold in its own right, but once he got a glance of the brokenness she felt in that moment, something came over him and he rushed to her side, the need to protect her rushing through his veins.

Kylo knew she was stubborn by nature, it was one of her qualities that both irked and intrigued him. But he also knew that it was that one quality that still held her together. Too stubborn to let go of hope, and too stubborn to recognize what she really is. Just like him.

After years and years of it being just him, surrounded by servants who loathed him for his privilege and workers like Hux who despised him for his title despite what he was, there was someone else. Kylo felt so alone before, no one else was like him; until he met Rey. Someone else who was above the other fighters and servants, but still treated like trash, haunted by her life as he was. Despite her obvious hatred for him, Kylo began to feel a bond with her.

However she wasn't as broken as him, ignorantly clouded in denial; Kylo wanted to break her furthur, so he won't feel so alone anymore.

But… when he saw her shattered and destroyed when he walked in, he didn't want that for her, he wanted her to keep her childish hope and not become a monster like him.

Not what Snoke made him into.

Arriving at the door to Snoke's throne-room like, giant office, the two guards nodded at him and allowed entry. Kylo walked in and took a knee before his master.

"You summoned me, my master?"

"Yes." Snoke responded and turned to face him in his tall chair, previously facing away and staring out the window. "I heard Phasma has been sent to the medical unit due to injuries sustained by her student- the girl -Rey.

"That is correct." Kylo said.

"How unfortunate to have my captain and head trainer out of commission. I do believe I ordered to have you teach her." Snoke said, his voice getting more menacing with every word, his figure slowly sneaking towards Kylo. "Now because of your insubordination she has been allowed to train under someone inferior to her, and has consequently sent them to the medics."

"She refused my teaching."

"You've grown soft!" Snoke howled at him. "How can a teacher lead a student if they do not establish themselves as the superior? Your lack of conviction is what has caused this."

Kylo felt himself shrink down inside, but forced himself to remain outwardly impassive.

"Master, I do not see the point in training her any further, she has already proved-"

Snoke slapped him across the face, Kylo fell back by the force of the strike across his cheek.

"You are becoming soft, and a coward." Snoke seethed in a growl. "You saw yourself her lack of technique and rough moves. She lost to you which means she has much to learn, and only the one who bested her can do that." Snoke made his way back to his seat. "Unless you want me to teacher her as I taught you."

Cold fear spread through Kylo's body at those words. Knowing what it meant. If Rey is taught by Snoke then she'll certainly lose herself completely to insanity, as he did.

"I will teach her!" Kylo told his master, trying- but failing -not to sound desperate.

Smoked smirked at him.

"Good, go. Don't disobey me again, one more slip up and you're going back to the chair." The older deformed man said threateningly.

Kylo bowed and got up, turning his back to leave his master's quarters, missing the cruel grin Snoke was sending his way.

Back in his own room, Kylo was left once again to unwanted solitude, something he always loathed. The silence only served to remind him of his circumstances, a prisoner. Years ago he learned to play the part of a confident fighter who's only goal was to bring glory to his master, but that wasn't so. All he felt was hatred for his master, contempt and insecurity. But most of all, fear. His master had the power to throw him away, so he made himself indispensable out of instinct to survive.

His thoughts once again trailed back to Rey.

She didn't know this, unaware of just exactly what Snoke was capable of. Her reckless and stubborn insubordination could very well have her sent through the horrors he was subjected to, mentally and physically.

Yet, he knew that she wasn't being reckless against Snoke, he saw for himself how subjected she was to her former master, Unklar Plutt. Rey was refusing him, and so refusing Snoke. So far Snoke has put the blame for her doing so solely on him, which protected her from his wrath, but Kylo didn't know how long it would last. He needed to make sure Rey didn't become a victim of Snoke's abuse, even if it meant he took the beatings.

A knock and the announcement of the arrival of Mashra pulled Kylo away from his previous dreadful thoughts. He signaled for her to come in. She did and only took a few steps in, keeping her distance from him.

"Report." He commanded from his armchair by the fireplace, not bothering to face her to listen.

"Lady Rey is struggling to get a grasp on what transpired earlier today, she's become shaken." The lower level slave told him, her voice showing no sympathy. "She stayed away from the topic, but I could see it's effect."

"Anything else?"

"Lady Rey mentioned you quite a bit." Marsha responded, catching Ren's attention. "She appeared to be especially annoyed today."

Kylo hadn't expected much, he was well aware that Rey did not hold a good impression of him, but he still felt a small sting of disappointment.

"Very well, is that all?"

"She is coming far in her mathematics, but she is still having troubles with her literacy, and I'm afraid that I am not educated enough to keep teaching her."

Kylo thought this over, dismissing Mashra. She had refused him before, but now he could no longer offer her the freedom of choice. It was time for both of them to realize the invisible chains bounding them.

Neither of them had the liberty to decide their fate.

That's what made them so similar.

.

.

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In this chapter we look at how conflicted Rey is. Right now she's at the border of falling apart, but in order to hold onto that crumbling ledge she searches for logic (no matter how wrong) wherever she can find it. She begins to see a small likeness between herself and Kylo, but she refuses to acknowledge it, for fear she's become a monster as well. Yet at the same time she already knows that she's a monster, but is still heavily in denial.

Hope y'all liked the chapter, I. Am. SO SORRY! This took so much longer to get out then I thought it would be. I'll try not to go over a month next time!

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