When Rey wakes up, her head is throbbing and her throat feels parched. Gasping, she jumps to her feet inside what looks like a small bedchamber, metallic and dark. A single light glows rom the ceiling. She throws off a blanket woven of uneven dull grey fibers.
Kylo Ren.
I'm on his ship.
And Luke… her mother… Rey crumbles back onto the bed, trying not to cry. She notices a pitcher of water on the floor and glugs it down.
The door slides open, and Kylo Ren enters, concealed under that black mask meant to intimidate. Rey glares at him.
The first thing Kylo Ren does is remove his mask, setting it down on one of the shelves built into the wall. Rey notes, not without satisfaction, the scar marring his face.
"Why?" she demands. "Why me?"
He glances away from her, at the metal wall and their images reflected there. "The Supreme Leader requested I bring you to him. For the second time, if you count the time on Starkiller Base."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"To torture and kill me?" she ventures.
Now, Kylo Ren meets her eyes. "No. He will want you to join him. You need a teacher."
Rey laughs. Her head pounds. Probably because this idiot banged it against the door or something. "I have one." Have, not had. "And when I refuse, then he'll torture and kill me."
"No, he won't," Kylo insists, in an almost reassuring tone. When Rey glares up at him, he adopts a blank look. "I suggest you don't try to escape. The ship is small, and there are no escape pods."
Rey gapes at him. "You have that much faith in this ship, then, huh?"
He almost smiles. "Are you comfortable? Do you need anything? Food, more water?"
The notion of food nauseates her. Rey shakes her head and regrets it. Everything spins, and her brain feels like it's knocking against her skull. "You bumped my head," she accuses.
"I did not."
She scowls, her skin prickling. Why is it so cold? "Well, then, why does it hurt?"
His gaze darts all around, like a little child trying to remember what he's accused of now. "I—I tried to be careful—"
Rey rubs her shoulder.
"Your shoulder hurts, too?" he asks.
"No doubt thanks to your freezing me," she snaps. She wants to grab the threadbare blanket, but she can't. She won't show any more weakness in front of him.
"I've never heard of—"
"Do you make a habit of asking your prisoners how your Force tricks make them feel?" Disgust and rage well up within her. This is the man who almost killed Finn. Who killed Han Solo.
"You want to kill me still?"
She says nothing, but glances away. I am a terrible Jedi. "No," she answers, meeting his eyes once again. "My teacher wouldn't want me to."
He swallows.
Rey rubs her forehead. "If you're going to ask me where Luke Skywalker is, I won't tell you. We both know that."
"I've had more training since then."
"So have I."
He shrugs as if to acknowledge her point and turns towards the door. "If you need anything, just knock. If I am busy, one of the stormtroopers will be happy to help you."
She's almost shivering. The cold feels like a snake coiling and uncoiling on her skin and inside her. Oh, to hell with it. "There is one thing," she calls.
He pauses, his hand hovering over his mask.
"Can you make it warmer in here? Or bring another blanket?"
The hand drops away from the mask as Kylo Ren steps closer to her. "You're cold?"
Rey backs away as he comes closer still.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he hisses, kneeling in front of her and pulling off a black glove. Rey recoils as his hand reaches for her head.
"Last time—"
But he's not using the Force. Instead, his hand presses against her forehead, and when he withdraws it, Kylo's face is pale. "You have a fever."
Rey's stomach roils. If she's sick, how can she escape?
"Lie down," he tells her, pulling the cover over her as she glares at him. "I'll get you more blankets—and some more water—"
The drum inside her head pulls Rey down. She shuts her eyes, feigning sleep, pretending she's back on Ahch-To with Luke, back on Jakku with her doll, left to her by the mother she still doesn't know, a mother who would certainly force her to drink water when sick, and cover her with more blankets…
But her mother's dead, and someone else is covering her and forcing the water down her throat and placing icy compresses on her head, telling her in a far gentler tone: "You're going to be fine. You'll see. Don't be afraid."
"Sir, are you sure diverting from the planned course is a good idea?" asks the stormtrooper.
Why can't Supreme Leader see the benefits of clones? Kylo asks himself for the umpteenth time. "She needs medicine."
It's been three days, and Rey's still drifting in and out of fever-induced dreams, unable to eat any of the food that they have on board, at times calling out what sounds like a memory Kylo knows he caused: "Don't leave me! Come back!"
Snoke would be furious if she dies, Kylo tells himself. Beyond that, he also knows that he doesn't want her to die. Because she feels like, maybe, his last link to something he craves. He doesn't even know what that something is—a partner in the Force? A friend? Never, never compassion for an enemy of the First Order—but he feels it and he wants whatever it is this girl has.
"What have you got?" Kylo asks the trooper, who reports that they are about an hour away from the nearest planet with a decent town.
"But sir, it's notorious for being an unsavory place—lots of criminals, a maniacal king—I doubt the First Order will be terribly welcome."
"I'm sure you'll do your duty and keep us all safe," Kylo says.
The stormtrooper capitulates under the subtle threat. "Yes, sir."
"Hadn't we better inform General Hux?" asks another stormtrooper.
"No," Kylo says shortly. "None of you will mention this." Because as enraged as Snoke would be if Kylo fails to deliver Rey alive, Snoke would be even more enraged to discover that compassion still lurks within his apprentice.
I can't let her die.
Kylo ducks back inside the cramped room. Rey's kicked all her blankets off and lies on her side, muttering.
"Rey?"
"Can I go back?" she rasps, turning her face against the bed and hacking. It sounds as if glue is stuck to her lungs. "Please will you let me go?"
Hands shaking, Kylo pours her some water. He remembers pleading with his uncle when he was ill and, as a padawan, his mother was not allowed to visit. I want to go home.
But Rey doesn't have a home. And that's his fault.
"Here's some water," Kylo offers, crouching beside her and helping her sit up to drink it.
She leans back against his arm, water dribbling down her chin, eyes glassy, hair plastered to her temples. "What happened to you?"
Kylo blinks. "What?"
"You. What happened? Weren't you—weren't you supposed to be better than this?"
Kylo can't breathe. He wants to take his lightsaber to the entire building, because in her words he hears Luke, he hears his mother, he hears his father and Lor San Tekka and everyone, all the people he's let down. He hears Snoke, and Hux with the derision slicing through his voice, the stormtroopers.
They all know how weak you are.
You're afraid that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader!
Kylo lowers Rey back onto the bed and rushes out of the room. He powers up his lightsaber—not Rey's, because it's better than his and more stable and she's more deserving and he hates himself so much he considers stabbing it through himself. But then Rey will die. And he can't slash the computers—they're all they have. And the stormtroopers, who cower away…
Furious, Kylo storms into another private room and does the only thing he can: he tears off his mask and punches himself, again and again, over the scar from Chewie's bowcaster. But label still cackles in his head: Failure. Failure, failure, failure!
Kylo drops to the ground. Pressing his face against his knees, he cries.
"Sir?" An unlucky stormtrooper bangs on the door. "Sir, we've arrived."
"Good." Kylo stands and replaces his helmet. "Let's go. And if anything happens to her while I'm gone…"
"Nothing will happen, sir," squeaks the stormtrooper.
I'm not weak. Hux is weak, Kylo consoles himself. Look at the troops he creates.
Hux isn't deviating from the mission for compassion, though, is he?
Rey wakes up to Kylo Ren again, coaxing her into drinking some pungent yellow liquid. She gags and sputters.
"I know, it tastes terrible," she hears him say soothingly. "It will make you feel better, Rey, I promise."
And it does. Three treatments in, and the fog in Rey's head starts to clear, and she starts to sweat—a key sign of a fever breaking.
As far as she can tell, they're still on whatever planet Kylo bought the medicine. A planet, no doubt, with ships she can steal… if she can just get off of this one. Rey pulls the blankets above her head, hoping to still feel feverish whenever he comes.
"Any better?" she hears him asking anxiously. As if he cares.
She moans. "My chest hurts." And it does. Rey coughs so hard she sees stars, little white dots, exploding in front of her eyes.
"I have more medicine." It's not a request.
Rey's certainly strong enough to drink it on her own, but if she's going to escape, he has to still believe her an invalid. She rolls over and peeks out from under the cocoon of blankets.
"Here." He holds out a vial of the sludge. Rey grimaces.
"I bought some honey to go with it," he offers.
She squints at him. "Honey?"
"It's sweet," he explains. "My mother used to give it to me, when I needed medicine…"
"The General?" Rey watches his nostrils flare. It was strange, imagining Kylo Ren before he became Kylo Ren, as Ben, a child needing his mother.
He could still use one, Rey thinks. "Are you planning to kill her too?"
Kylo shoves the vial at her. She drinks—it is sweet—but watches him, noticing the tremble in his jaw and the disturbance riddling his face.
It's too late, she remembers him telling Han before stabbing the man. Han Solo can't save you, he told her and Finn in the snowy forest.
Was he talking to us or to himself?
"I'm sorry," she mumbles.
His jaw drops. "For what?"
"Wanting to kill you." Her voice sounds slurred. She needs to lie down. And he needs to distract himself doing whatever he does so she can get out of here.
Kylo shakes his head, fear blooming in his eyes. He backs away from her, as if she's the monster.
The Light.
It pulsates within him. He can't stop it.
And that's what Rey is. The Light.
He doesn't want the Light. He needs to extinguish it, in himself, in Rey. But he likes the way helping her feels. He likes seeing her improve, even slightly, even if she still hates him.
And to quench the Light in her… Kylo fears that would destroy her, smother the very essence of what made her Rey.
It will make her more powerful. As Snoke's made you more powerful. It will help her become whom she's meant to be…
He laughs, because the words bang and clang, hollow and futile.
If this is what you're meant to be, do you want to be this?
Could I even become anything else? he wonders.
It's too late.
It wasn't then.
But it is now. There can be no going back. Not when he slaughtered the man who tried to offer him redemption, lured him out on the bridge, teetering back and forth in his own mind, with the Light urging him to hand over the lightsaber, fall into his father's arms and weep, and the Dark urging him to get as close as he could to the Light and rip it all away, use what he thought of as his weakness to accomplish the Dark's purposes.
Kylo remembers the vacuum of horror that opened up within him as Han fell. There was no Light, and there was no Dark. There was nothing.
Murderer.
After the Knights of Ren attacked Luke's Jedi academy, Snoke told him that his father had gone back to smuggling, and Kylo knew that the only way his father would leave his mother was if he thought there was no hope. Kylo knew his father had given him up for dead, probably wished he were actually dead instead of serving Snoke.
And when his father called out to him on that bridge, Kylo couldn't believe it.
I've been waiting for this day for a long time.
Snoke had been waiting, with one end in mind. Ben had been waiting, not even daring to hope for that day, with another end in mind.
My son is alive.
We miss you.
It wasn't a lie, Kylo realizes. At the time, the Light told him to believe, to trust his father, and the Dark screamed and warned him not to fall for it. And when he listened to the Dark and stabbed his father, he saw that Han had been telling the truth all along.
Kylo clutches his face, the same place Han had touched. He did miss you. He loved you.
"Sir?" The stormtrooper bangs on the door again.
"What?"
"The girl! She's—she's gone!"
Kylo grasps his lightsaber. He needs to find her, or fail forever in Snoke's eyes.
As he stalks off the ship to search for her, something stirs within him. Shame. The feeling that he's failing in a far more significant way.