lourdes

Kylo Ren would always remember the very first time he met Clarra Lumero. 

Mostly because Kylo Ren had decided, within the first nine seconds of meeting her, that she was going to be a problem.

It had not been some elaborate or fated introduction, like he had expected. There had been no tremor in the hull. No shift in the Force sharp enough to make him turn. No omen, no vision, no flare of power running down the dark walls of the interrogation block. 

He had been standing in Interrogation Three with his gloves half-fastened, shoulders squared, mind elsewhere. The prisoner was already strapped to the chair. A minor Resistance courier. No rank worth remembering, no spine worth respecting, no information worth taking gently. 

Hux was standing near the door, rigid and thin and irritatingly pleased with himself, which usually meant he had brought Kylo something unpleasant and expected thanks. He was talking, droning on and on about efficiency and proper protocol, but Kylo wasn’t listening. He was adjusting the seal of his gloves with condescending slowness.

“... Doctor Lumero.” Hux continued. “She will be assisting you during high-value interrogations from this point forward.”

Kylo shifted his helmet a fraction toward him at that, but only because it was a stupid sentence.

Hux, to his credit or stupidity, continued in the same clipped voice. “Doctor Lumero specializes in psychiatric medicine. She will monitor the subjects remotely and advise when continued pressure is likely to damage information rather than retrieve it.”

The word made Kylo’s hand stop. “I don’t require assistance,” he finally said, his voice terse and soaked with irritation.

“Marvelous. Tell that to the last three prisoners whose memories you rendered functionally unuseless.” Hux replied. “Ren, you require supervision.”

Kylo turned his head with a slow, exaggerated disinterest, intending to dismiss whoever Hux had dragged down to the detention block. He had almost looked away before he saw her.

Kylo had expected someone older. Someone pale and severe and dead-eyed from years of First Order service. Someone who smelled of recycled air and regulation and fear.

Instead, a woman stepped around the General’s frame. 

Her.

She was tall, wearing practical black cargo trousers and the light blue wrap shirt of the medical wing. She was young—too young for a senior medical post—with heavy shadows beneath a pair of stormy blue eyes, and sleek blonde hair falling loose around her shoulders. 

Kylo froze, the leather of his gloves creaking slightly under the sudden, unconscious tightening of his fists. Behind the dark, red-tinted visor of his mask, the breath stopped in his chest.

She didn't look like a Jedi. She didn't look like a queen. She looked ordinary. Thoroughly, wonderfully ordinary.

Striking, perhaps, in that inconvenient way certain things were striking before one understood what had drawn the eye. A clean line of jaw. A tired softness beneath the eyes. A mouth that seemed made for either kindness or too much trouble, and in hindsight, Kylo would consider it a grave injustice that he had not been warned which one of the two she preferred.

Kylo had just stared at her, the mechanical vocoder amplifying a breath that had caught slightly in his throat.

The woman looked back at him. She did not flinch beneath the dark, imposing stare of his visor. She looked up. Not very far up, which was annoying. She was tall enough that the full effect of his usually massive height was diminished in a way he found personally offensive. 

And Kylo remembered, with perfect, almost agonizing clarity, that the very first thing Clarra Lumero ever said to him was, “That helmet is silly.”

Hux had stiffened visibly, shooting her a sharp, warning glance. And Clarra’s hands had tightened on her pockets. Her courage, Kylo had decided, was probably accidental. 

"If the goal is to extract reliable information, it’s counterproductive," she continued nonetheless, pulling one hand from her pocket to gesture vaguely at his head. "It triggers primal panic. You’re not making them compliant, you’re just making them stupid with fear. You'd get better results if they could see your face."

Kylo had stood perfectly still. No one spoke to him like that. No one.

Beneath the mask, Kylo’s jaw tightened. He didn't say a word. It took him half a second too long to look away. He simply turned his back on her, hitting the door release for the interrogation cell with far more force than necessary.

Three years later, the helmet was off, and he was still making them stupid with fear.

“REN!”

Kylo heard her the first time.

He heard her because everyone heard Doctor Lumero when she was angry, and she was angry often enough that whole sections of the Finalizer had become fluent in the particular cadence of her rage. It started sharp, then climbed. It had a Coruscanti polish to it when she was being professional, which she had not been in his presence since approximately six days after they met, Kylo had counted.

"REN! You petulant, overgrown child, stop walking!"

He did not have to walk faster. His legs were long enough that keeping ahead of her required very little effort, which was fortunate, because effort would have implied concern, and he had none. 

None. At. All. 

But he knew she was right behind him, he could recognise the rapid, slightly frantic squeak of her boots running after him. Or power-walking, rather. Not running, not yet. The distinction mattered a great deal, apparently, because Clarra had once yelled at him for “forcing an officer of the medical wing into an undignified jog,” and so Kylo Ren had discovered that forcing Doctor Lumero into an undignified jog was one of the few great diversions available aboard the Finalizer.

“Commander Ren, I must insist that you slow down,” R-6P0 called from somewhere behind Clarra. “Doctor Lumero’s current cardiovascular output suggests that such sustained shouting while pursuing an agitated superior officer may lead to dizziness, professional embarrassment, or disciplinary action.”

“I am not dizzy,” Clarra snapped at the droid, not breaking her stride.

“That is excellent news, Doctor. But given your current state, the other two possibilities remain highly concerning.”

Kylo did not need to turn around to know exactly what her current state looked like. Hair loose and coming out of whatever half-hearted attempt she had made that morning to keep it tidy. Face bright with anger. Datapad clutched in one hand. Probably pointing at him with the other, because Doctor Lumero considered pointing to be an essential component of medicine, psychiatry, and any interaction with him.

"I said stop!" Clarra yelled, her voice echoing off the walls, as a pair of passing officers very wisely so flattened themselves against the wall. “You permanently damaged temporal recall,” she said, closer now. “Again.”

The word again carried beautifully. It bounced off the corridor walls and followed them past a row of stormtroopers pretending not to have ears.

Kylo’s jaw shifted.

“He knew the route,” she insisted. “He knew it. He was maybe thirty seconds away from giving us the waypoint, and then you shoved your way through his head with all the grace and restraint of a rancor in a surgery suite.”

That was true, he had absolutely fried the subject's brain, he knew he had. It had been a delicate extraction, a Resistance sympathizer with hyperspace routes buried deep in his short-term memory, and Clarra had been in his ear the entire time through the comm-link. His heart rate is spiking, Ren. Pull back. You’re going to cause a hemorrhage, Ren. Back off. REN!

He hadn't backed off —of course he hadn’t. He had pushed, irritated by her constant, nagging presence in his head, and the subject’s mind had snapped like a dry twig before the coordinates could fully form.

"I know you can hear me!" Clarra accused him, persistent and furious; an entirely too aggravating and mundane existence with the only purpose of infuriating him, Kylo was sure of it. She was relentless when angry. This had become, over three years, one of the more constant phenomena of his daily life. Other medical officers filed reports. Other consultants complained to Hux. Other specialists folded under the weight of his impatience and decided survival mattered more than accuracy.

Clarra instead chased him through military corridors and called him a reckless moron in front of lieutenants.

Kylo should have found it intolerable, which he did, he did find it intolerable. But he also slowed by a fraction whenever he heard her stumble over a half-docked cleaning unit, then hated himself for doing it.

"I’ve read your medical records, Ren, you aren’t deaf!"

He clenched his teeth. He was going to throttle her. Or throw her out of an airlock. He would decide which once he reached his quarters, but for now, his primary objective was to ensure she at the very least suffered the indignity of chasing him across the ship.

He took a blunt, sharp right turn into a narrow maintenance corridor to finally lose her, disappearing from her sight entirely, and slapping the release panel for a small supply room. 

Clarra made an outraged noise that was, either regrettably or amusingly, Kylo still had to decide which, one of the most reliable sounds aboard the Finalizer. He could pick it out over engines, alarms, marching boots, Hux talking, weapons fire, probably a decompression siren if necessary.

The heavy blast door slid open. Kylo stepped inside the dim, cramped space, already taking pleasure in imagining her tiring herself out yelling at a reinforced wall. 

The door automatically began hissing shut behind him, and for half a second, he had peace.

Then Clarra shoved herself sideways through the narrowing gap.

Kylo swore underneath his breath, his heart suddenly leaping into his throat. He threw a hand against the sliding metal, violently stopping the mechanism before it could crush her entirely. For half a second, all he could see was her hand there, small fingers spread against the dark edge of the frame, recklessly placed exactly where a pressure seal could have fractured bone. His pulse kicked hard in his throat, hot and stupid.

Clarra stumbled blindly into the small closet, shoving her shoulder right into his chest as she fought past the heavy door. Kylo stood over her, his chest heaving, his dark eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and absolute outrage. He ripped his hand away from the door panel as it hissed shut, plunging the tiny room into dim emergency lighting.

"Are you completely out of your mind?!" Kylo demanded, his voice a big, furious rasp. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. He was staring at her hand, the one that had nearly been crushed into a bloody pulp.  

Clarra caught her balance, her chest heaving beneath her blue shirt, her eyes blazing with stormy, absolute fury. "No, actually, you haven’t managed to turn me entirely crazy just yet, but you sure are making spectacular progress!"

Kylo took an angry step toward her.

“I got what we needed!” He spat through gritted teeth.

“You got Jakku, a forest, and something about a droid. That is not intelligence, Ren. That is a child’s drawing!”

"I extracted the primary coordinates. The mission is moving forward.” He was rushing his words now, stumbling slightly over his own anger. "I didn't have time to sit there and wait for your little psychological metrics to line up with the—with the completely arbitrary timeline you decided was safe!"

"It wasn't an arbitrary timeline, it was basic neuroscience!" Clarra yelled, stepping forward. The rational part of her brain, the part with a medical degree and an actual survival instinct, had apparently retired entirely. Clarra threw her hand up, placing an accusing, furious finger right into the center of his chest. "You gave him a stroke, you absolute brute! You destroyed half the intelligence he was carrying because you have the patience of a teething toddler!"

Kylo stared down at her hand. If anyone else aboard the ship had touched him like that, the conversation would have ended with a medical team and a mop. 

Clarra was infuriating. Loud. Reckless. Too sure of herself by half. She had a habit of stepping straight into danger and then looking offended when danger failed to move out of her way. Half the time she made him want to throw furniture through durasteel. The other half, she made him feel as if he had missed a step in the dark.

But hurting her did not exist anywhere within that spectrum.

He raised his hand and swatted her finger away like one swats a particularly persistent, annoying insect.

Clarra gasped, a sharp intake of theatrically offended air. "You are a child!" She yelled, her voice bouncing painfully off the cramped metal walls. "An impulsive, dramatic child who throws a tantrum the second someone doesn't immediately hand over what he wants!"

"And you are an invasive, irritating nuisance who has absolutely no idea how the Force works," Kylo shot back, his volume rising to match hers, the words pouring out of him in an angry, uneven cadence. "If you ever interfere in my interrogation room again, I will have you thrown out an airlock."

Clarra didn't flinch, she didn't do as much as blink at his threats. "Oh, please. You'd have to figure out how to operate the airlock first, and we both know you'd just hit the panel with your lightsaber."

"He was resisting," Kylo snapped. He leaned forward, looming over her, though he hated that she was tall enough that he barely had to bend his neck. "I don't have the luxury of coddling prisoners for hours just so you can write a neat little behavioral report for Hux."

“You really think this is about paperwork,” Clarra lifted both hands, then dropped them against her sides in a condescending fashion that Kylo found profoundly insulting. “You really think I chase you down corridors because I enjoy clerical inconvenience.”

Kylo scoffed. “I assume very little about what you enjoy.” That should not have sounded like that. He cleared his throat. "I don't answer to you, Doctor."

"Well, you don't seem to answer to reason, either!" Clarra yelled, sliding her hands down her face. She felt hot, overwhelmed, and intensely reactive. "It is wasteful, it is stupid, and it completely undermines my job. You seriously need to get your temper in check."

Kylo let out a short, incredulous jeer. He glared down at her, his chest rising and falling heavily. "And what exactly," he mocked, his tone dripping with petty, childish condescension, "would you have me do? Hm? What is the brilliant, prescribed solution from the great Doctor Lumero?" He stepped closer, invading her space until she could feel the heat radiating off his clothes. "Should I take a spa retreat?” His tone was so mocking, and petulant, and so profoundly arrogant Clarra had a hard time deciding whether to hit him in the throat or rip her very own ears off. “Or— or better yet, should I ask for a consultation within your terribly busy schedule? Sit down on a couch, stare at the ceiling, and tell you about my feelings?"

"Bah!" Clarra dismissed him with an insulting, entirely frustrated click of her tongue. "You just need to get laid!"

It was right at that moment that time bypassed every single law known to physics, stopping altogether. Silence fell upon the room so heavily, a rock could ripple through its surface. Clarra absolutely could not back down now, she would not—

Their eyes locked. She couldn’t help it.

There. That quick little sign of regret across her face again. She had gone too far and knew it. She always knew a second too late.

Kylo should have enjoyed that. Most of the time, he did. The little pause after she said something reckless, the way she realized where she was and who he was and how much easier life would be if her mouth obeyed a single chain of command. It was spectacularly entertaining, or at least it usually was. For some reason Kylo didn’t feel like doing a victory lap this time around. 

Clarra stiffly crossed her arms in an idle attempt at regaining some control.

It was a terrible choice in the small room. It drew his eyes down to the tight wrap of her shirt, the knot at her waist, the line of her forearms. She looked tired. There was a faint shadow under one eye. She had ink on the side of her thumb. Her hair was still caught near her mouth.

He stared at her, blinking once, twice. A dark, ugly flush of embarrassment crawled up his neck. Then, his expression fractured into disbelief, twisting quickly into petty, defensive annoyance. 

"Oh, really, is that it?" he mocked, his voice dropping into a dangerous, cruel register as the room kept shrinking against them. "Is that all your big, supposedly expert brain can come up with? Ten whole years of studying to arrive at such basic, trivial conclusions? You should ask those idiots at Coruscant for your money back."

His face was so absurdly close to hers that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin against her lips. He was breathing through his nose. Hair falling too close to his eyes. Mouth pressed flat with anger. A small mark along one cheekbone where the helmet had sat too long. The scarred line of old irritation between his brows. The shadow of stubble along his jaw that had no relevance to anything and therefore absolutely should not have caught her attention. Clarra was beginning to suspect that proximity had measurable effects on judgment, because hers appeared to be leaking out through the soles of her boots.

She lifted a hand, perhaps to shove him, perhaps to point again, perhaps because her body had as little sense as her mouth, which was proving to be a terribly dangerous thing.

She suddenly reached up, and grabbed the heavy, rigid collar of his tunic with both hands. 

Kylo went completely still. Her hands were on him. Both of them. Small, warm, tense fists twisting in the black fabric at his throat.

Clarra looked at her own hands as if they had betrayed her.

Kylo looked at them too. Then at her. “What are you doing?” he asked. It came out much less threatening than intended.

Clarra blinked, as if she had no idea. “I— I—”

“Are you having an aneurysm?”

Was she? She hadn’t gotten a sudden, thunderclap headache, nor was she feeling dizzy, though her heart was beating too fast. Her heart was beating entirely too fast, her breath was coming in short, and her voice was apparently nowhere to be found. 

There were many excellent reasons to stop. Professional reasons. Ethical reasons. Survival reasons. Reasons involving Hux, reports, brain-damaged prisoners, ship gossip, droids with terrible timing, her family, her contract, the war, the fact that Kylo Ren was very possibly the worst man in the entire galaxy to make a rash physical decision about.

Clarra considered all of these reasons with the clarity and maturity of a woman who had cornered herself in a storage room and insulted a dark side commander into silence.

And then she went up on her toes, and yanked him down towards her lips.

***************

a/n: please humor me, I just watched the Star Wars sequels again, and was reminded of how much I actually adore Kylo Ren as a character. I hope you guys understand I just had to write this, it was an impulse very much stronger than me.

Also, apparently I have a thing for ofcs with names that start with the letter "C", for morally questionable characters, and for relationships with an inherently bickering and hostile nature.