Chapter Eighteen: Potential

The shipyard had once been responsible for manufacturing destroyer-class vessels, building the first of their fleet, and Kylo began rethinking his planet selection as they made their way to its command bunker.

He'd been so much younger the last time he had traversed its interior, probably the same age as the girl shivering at his side. The absence of his mask and her restraints had done more than ease her misgivings; Rey had matched his strides under her own power, no longer needing to be pulled along. She had examined him at length during the trek, and he'd fought the strange urge to straighten under her scrutiny. He had nothing to prove. Let her make assumptions. She was Jakku trash.

Her furtive looks had endured, triggering unwilling self-consciousness anyway, and he'd railed against the noxious, nauseating sensation he hadn't experienced since being renamed. When probed, she had snapped at him about—of all things—walking too close to her.

They had argued, and somehow, all he'd felt was frustration. No outrage. No howling fury. Kyo wasn't blind; he could see what was happening. The anger he had never been able to control was growing controllable.

He continued on in pensive silence until they reached the metal edge of the yard, an empty, snow-dusted expanse void of tracks or footprints. Sensing their solitude among its ice-crusted columns and blocky, uniform lines, he cast the light back to Rey, beckoning her over. She advanced with a glare, and they broke onto its unblemished surface, stopping once they reached the bunker's unassuming entrance. It's wide, gray doors were beginning to rust at the bottom, and an air of neglect saturated its threshold.

Brushing off a utilitarian access terminal standing apart in the snow, Kylo was pleased to find it still functioned. Practicality had once won out over glossy ostentation in the First Order—it had had much less pageantry before Armitage Hux. As he keyed in a master code, he ruminated on its other shifts.

He had been so ardent when first joining Snoke and giving in to the Dark's duplicitous pledges. The ruins of the Empire, rallying into a new faction, seemed a perfect stage to remake himself. Shedding Ben Solo and donning the mask of Kylo Ren had been horribly easy at first.

Kylo's thoughts darkened as he remembered Snoke's later teachings, a regiment of relentless torture that left his insides mangled and his throat raw from screams. The bunker's double doors slid open, and he could almost hear their echoes in its shadowed halls.

From his side, Rey peeked over. "I won't let you do that to me," she said softly. "Just so you know."

Of course she'd picked out his memories. Nosy, little junk-rat.

"I'm more humane than my master," he said, traipsing forward. "And you have far less promise than I did. There won't be the same impetus to elevate you to greatness."

Rey followed, cupping her hands and blowing into them as the doors closed behind her. She squinted in the shadows, roaming over old machinery, while Kylo tapped a nearby panel. Studying it briefly, he switched on the emergency power. A rattling, reluctant whir rose up as dim lights along the floor and ceiling activated.

In the resulting haze, he noticed her fingers were bright red, stinging and shaking from the harsh temperature. The state of her ribs came to mind, and Kylo wondered how upset the medical droids would be at his lack of foresight and precaution.

Clearing his throat, he said, "We'll see what supplies are left, decide which emptied hangar will make a suitable training space, and then return to the ship." He pointed down the wide passage that had once served as a main thoroughfare. "Follow me."

With lips he could see going blue, Rey nodded. "C-Can we maybe find a jacket as well?"

"I said humane, not soft."

"I'll probably need all my fingers," she countered. "With my many deficiencies and lack of promise, think how much worse I'll be if I lose them to the cold."

Kylo felt his mouth twitch, before he remembered the expression was no longer obscured. Quelling it quickly, he shot her a stern look. "You're a scavenger," he said. "Do what you do best."