#*wfohitbp

At night , desperate to sleep ....

She’d grown use to the soft chirping of porgs , the lull of the sea where it met the rocky shore -- even the Thala-Siren’s discordant songs that welcomed the sunrise, would be preferential to this .... quiet. It’s too similar to the world’s zeroing in that precedes the opening of her connection to Kylo Ren, and Rey’s found it nearly impossible to fall asleep with that looming in the back of her mind.

Her first few nights on this base are spent tossing, and turning in the thin cot that she’d been provided with . Restless , she’s usually up before the rising sun , a bloody bloom that filters through a lilac sky . It was beautiful, truly, and Rey channels the calm that’s afforded to her by the still-slumbering world around her, into meditation . Something she had not tried since leaving Ahch-to .

There’s fear first -- would doing so invite him into her mind ? , and apprehension next. Her stomach knotting in on itself wasn’t conducive to this tranquility she’s sought , not even when the trill of some bright blue bird is warped by the coming breeze - it is soft, and reminds her briefly of the quiet autumn mornings before the sun stripped away all peace. The desert had made a hard girl out of her , she wonders what this planet and its people ( her people, she reminds herself ) , would leave her with.

How much of herself belonged to her, anymore ?

Rey finds an undistributed break in the trees to the west of the compound, and at its center, a smooth, flat stone. It’s just large enough for her to sit on with her legs crossed, knees hanging over the edges a bit but it’d serve her purposes well enough. A triumphant little grin at that, as if it’d come about by fate and not chance ( never a pious child.. this harmony with the force around her has planted the seeds of .. something ) , it grants her clarity. Her eyes shut, and she breathes .

Reach out, Luke had said, not with your body but with your mind - let it touch the thousand sparks that pepper this limitless sky . Its a network of beating hearts, of thoughts, and feelings nameless to her unless she chooses to zero in on one ; feels their hand touching an interstellar map, words draw into focus and its something about capturing a non-allegiant fueling station one system over, and using it to replenish their stores here. They’d been lucky enough , rebel ships that were mostly functional filled the long-abandoned hangers of their base.

Rey draws out of this , letting their tactical plan be theirs ( what could Kylo see of her mind , when she’s weak and wanting ? and what would he do with anything he’s found ? ) . This was dangerous territory, but ever reckless, bullheaded and needing absolution of some sort, Rey lets the wavering edges of her resolve buckle, and her mind is an open plane that overlaps the force itself, feeling the outline of his signature within it.

He wasn’t as well defended as she’s usually found , the litany of defenses erected ( relics , they’d existed long before their bond ... ) , were weakened, and she feels temptation flutter, to rush headlong into it and see what he’d been hiding the night before . No , she manages to hold thinly onto her self-restraint, it could very well be a trap and she’d fall into it, drowning in whatever lie beyond . Something in the force shudders , a beast chilled to its cosmic bone -- she knows that their distance, physical and emotional , strained it , having only found that perfect balance when they stood together against everything, and everyone else.

Dammit, Ben. . She wants to hate him for it. For letting her in, for showing her that desolate star within his chest that shown all the more beautifully for the darkness around it . It was crushing to have that future, something solid and known and outline by hope -- only for it to be stripped away by his unwillingness to let go of what he was, as he’d claimed her to be guilty of the same. There’s a flicker . His attention is on her, her thoughts and feelings and for once Rey does not hide them. She lets them lay bare under his cold scrutiny. 

Let him know what he’s done. Let him feel her pain .

He does. It was blinding .

He’s , mercifully, alone in an observation deck when he feels her . Not the bond, no , something else . ( She’s grown stronger since I last felt her ) . He’s undecided on rage, or hate , fear at her strength or .... pride. The last bit sits under his ribs and try as he might to crush it, he can’t. She’s one half of this unholy , four legged beast they make up, and no matter what he does, how far he recoils from the curious tendrils of her thought, he’s drawn back into her. A moth to flame. But what a way to burn.

Kylo staggers a bit , it was winding to have so much unloaded on his mind at once. Memories, yes . First they come as a little girl curled around an old rebel alliance helmet ... asleep, but scared . He’d seen that one before, the womb of this connection birthed that night his world had been torn asunder. In the interrogation room. You , a Scavenger .. . No , she, the last jedi. Rey .

Whether he’s said it aloud , or through this tenuous link of thoughts, feelings ... no words had been exchanged and yet he’s certain she heard it. Felt it. Knew that he was aching and had nothing to do with all of  this , his pain . She wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt. He hadn’t left her . She , left him . She chose a path that she had to have known would only lead to the death of everyone around her . He might have had mercy, if she’d joined, might have let the surviving members of the resistance live out their days as his prisoners ... No. She’d secured their fate. They would all die. He would kill her, and them , and all of it. ...

But he can’t. Her arrogant doubt in his resolve shows in a white hot flash of memory . She’s angry that he’d grown mad at what she shows him -- next, is something he never expected to see .

There’s rain , he can feel it , cold and the wind rips up off the shoreline .. it tastes of salt and damp and ... its the sea. The island . Kylo’s eyes read a scene unfolding before him, unseeing , and yet offered in his mind with vivid clarity.

is that Rey ? Kylo shudders, she’s feral , a beauty illuminated by the glow of the legacy saber -- everything is tilted, off-kilter but he can see her standing above a cowering Skywalker ( that image itself sends a ripple through the force , he’s pleased ) , her words pierce him -- She’s ... She’s defending him ? Him. Ben Solo . No . Kylo Ren . His confusion is evident, as the memory fades into a grey-blue haze ... That she’d decided then and there, that he was worth saving, when a lifetime that’d show the contrary laid behind him , stirs a part of him that’d lain dormant for the better part of his adulthood . 

Why did you show me this ? He demands, indignant, but all he finds at her end of this long, red thread , is a light and love so brilliant his knees go weak , and he holds himself up by two gloved hands slamming against transparisteel, nearly shattering it with the force. He doesn’t. He’s unable to locate the rage it’d take to do so - to rip through this barrier and be sucked into the vacuum of space... Death, a neighbor , a friend . Kylo’s sullen features are bathed in blue light before she withdraws, and all he feels is as though he’s lost half of himself. He dismisses the guards in the throne room, and stands at its center, unmoving, for hours to come .

Rey comes back into herself gasping , sweat on her brow -- the sun was higher now, and the warm, thick air made her clothing stick to her skin uncomfortably. She was going to head back to her room , to use the sonic until she felt human again , but the growl of her stomach was louder than her annoyance, and so, begrudged to meet the basic need , she gathers her belongings and trudges off towards the make-shift mess-hall .

Of course, breakfast was just being served -- and whenever she entered ( or exited ) a room , she found all eyes turn to her . After living an isolated life, this was more bothersome than she’d ever admit , she hates that they see her as the second coming of Luke . Luke , who’d defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor , they see that same salvation in her , the Last Jedi . Rey swallows some of the annoyance that bubbles up into her throat, nodding at the people they’d accrued in passing , and draws a tray of food to herself via the force , unwilling to stand in a line of onlookers as they whisper about her, about her power, about Kylo Ren .

The news of her slaying Snoke echoed over the holonet, Kylo certainly had designed this lie to save his skin , but it only emboldened the resistance. Leia, alone, knew the truth, as Rey had told her of it through bracketing sobs, the only time before last night, that she’d cried. Rey’s picking at some colorless mess of vegetables, when she’s joined by Finn on one side , and Poe, on the other. They’re , arguably , the only people she felt comfortable being near at length, and mostly because they tried not to be so obvious in their worry for her. Everyone else frowned, patted her on the back, and offered sympathies for the loss of her Master .

As if her pain , and suffering , was by death , and not something worse. Death, was final , dying ended questioning and gave its answer . It was the end of something. What was worse, was this . Living in its middle. Not knowing if tomorrow would bring about a beginning, or close this too-short chapter of her life.

Rey smiles at them both , “ Any particular reason you’re caging me in ?” Harsher than she’d intended, but if they noticed, they didn’t show it, Finn’s smile is dashing between open-mouthed bites of bread,

“ Yeah. So you can’t run away.” He laughs, and Poe’s echoes his , “ You’re always off on your own . We missed you .” We . Her stomach flutters, and Poe bunts his shoulder against her ,

“ C’mon . I’ve been around the general all my life , not all force sensitives are required to be hermits . Or was that your take away from training with Luke ?” Her blink of surprise has him back peddling, seeing the pilot nervous was .. sweet, almost, that he’s worried he’d said, or done something wrong. He lifts a hand in defense , “ I only meant that -- Finn’s right. We missed you. Don’t be a stranger. I promise I won’t ask dumb questions about the force.”

Rey’s quick to shake her head , persistent in returning their respective smiles so that they wouldn’t assume the worst. The last thing she wants, was more people walking on egg-shells around her . Rey wasn’t fragile . Weakness had been burned out of her . Smothered by a life that had yet to show signs of relenting. Death. Death. Death. Luke . Han . Half the resistance. Even Leia’s force signature was weakening ... and Rey draws in a broken sigh , “ No . I’m sorry . I’ve just had a lot on my mind .” The understatement of a lifetime, but she cracks a smile again, and steals a bit of Finn’s water . Being playful , even pretend, came easily to her , a practiced skillset when she’d been forced to play to her strengths as a pretty little girl on a backwater world.

“ I promise I’ll be around more. The jedi texts I took are in some language I can’t understand, at any rate. No good in reading them. “ She shrugs. It seems to be enough for her friends, they all eat in amicable silence for a while . This was unsustainable. Living a half life. And Rey knows it , she already feels control slipping, easier and easier , was it to lean into anger -- but she’s got a thready grasp of it , and she would work harder, be better, and become the beacon of hope the resistance already made out of her. That thought has a dark, booming laugh through the back of her mind . Not Be--- Kylo’s . Snoke.

The resistance set a course for the outer rim , to a planet with a rebel base that only Bail Organa himself had been aware of, and passed that knowledge to Leia. Rey’d since handed off the falcon ( temporarily ) to Poe, much to the surprise of everyone around her . She’d been tethered to the flight console since they departed Crait , and when prompted, the simple explanation of exhaustion , and how being a force-sensitive , her mind wasn’t safe to the specifics of their destination , was offered to keep their questioning at bay. The planet itself , ( Horox III ) , was nondescript upon landing :  a temperate environment that twisted between the warm humid days, and nights cold enough to blur frost over the transparisteel that ran the length of most rooms. Built with observational intent running north, to south, they had floor to ceiling windows, and on that first night, Rey learned why.

Everything here, from the rocks, to the barren, tuft covered trees, was bio-luminescent , the birds whose songs sounded like the sea crashing against the rocky shore of ahch to, built a nest in one such tree near Rey’s bunk , and leave her feeling wont for a home that had not been hers, a place she’d been only briefly, and yet it’d turned something inside of her brighter.  It had left her changed. Whether for the better, remained to be seen . 

She’d requested her room be set up away from the main compound , and so she’d gathered her things in the patchwork satchel over her shoulder, setting out to the room that was hers now. It’d been , at some point , a repair center for battle mechs , with decommissioned machinery lying in disarray. Its an oddly peaceful scene for the once and always scavenger, who already saw the value in the bits and pieces of a past they’d returned to. A rebel base, now home to the resistance that remained. Sure, not a wildfire any longer, not like it had been during Vader’s rule, she’s certain , but they are a spark all the same.  

Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to .

A haunting memory that has her staring at the remnants of a bygone era with the small , gasping hope that they could come to replicate it. If not in size, than spirit, Rey would stand by the resistance even if she could never rise within it.  She was a piece of them , as this scattered mess spoke to that long aching part of her that sought to belong . After the scene on Crait , she felt their eyes boring hols into her , felt their reverence, their fear , their fury . She was as much a liability being who she was, the last jedi , as an asset . Leia, of course, had been quick to stamp down talks of this but their words burned in Rey’s ears. 

The fog of memory has her sitting against the wall adjacent to the display of nightly creatures scurrying about, wind sifting through trees that bare prisms in their branches - it was more beautiful than anything a desert rat could have ever imagined she’d come to see in her life, and it is this that moves her to tears she’d dare not shed before. Not for Luke. Not for Leia. and most certainly not for Ben. They’re falling faster than she can blink , and at some point in the middle of it, where her shoulders fall forward against her knees, she no longer tries to stop them. Knows it’d be useless to, regardless.  

In truth , she hadn’t let herself feel much of anything , unwilling or unable to , she hasn’t parsed beyond being too busy to stop and process, that the resistance nearly died in that cavern , had been too dire to ignore. And Rey, escapist extraordinaire, had allowed that adrenaline high to persist, sublimating thoughts with memories , feelings ,with actions , and processing any of this , twisted into a selfish act. She’d been damnably methodical in keeping it locked away. 

Now though, in the quiet dark of her new home , she’s faced with absolutely everything she’d hidden beneath a protective bastion before. The walls around her mind waver , and she can, for the first time in weeks, sense his wounded curiosity. It causes a chain reaction , an attempt at refuting this , while knowing the world around her quieted further , teeming with an unseen, overabundant tension that crackles, the force amplified the sound of her heart beat, and then its twin in his, where he sits in some blurred space across from her, it appears he’s propped up on the edge of a bed . In his room . She surmises, wariness and weariness war, and immediately her mind seeks to call her saber, omitting the memory that it was broken in halves , carefully wrapped in the satchel beside her.  It then flicks to wondering , was he in his old one , the one she’d seen in fleeting dreams that’d been shared unwillingly as they slept --- or, had he taken over the likely gaudy chambers Snoke had inhabited.  She shakes her head, aware that he had noticed her only in the tense set of his shoulders, but he’d made no motion to greet, scream at, or otherwise acknowledge Rey, content in acting like she was not there, red-faced with tear stained eyes.

“ Get out.” a hiss , backed with the baleful knowing that -- however much joy he might have taken from her , the fiery spit of hope that she was , had crumbled under the weight of everything she wasn’t --- his sorrow was not just a projection of her own. Rey resents the empathy budding in her chest , and quickly gets a handle on it, “ Even if you can’t . Even if this impossible thing refuses to take the hint -- you might as well be able to. Get up. Walk out of whatever room you’re in, and leave me be .”  

He doesn’t move , only the inward flinch of his already defeated posturing tells her he could even hear. Good . Someplace dark inside her keens, grateful for this echo across the universe that tells her he’s as broken as she’d left him. That she’d caused his ruination . But she balks at it, moved to fear, instead -- and before she can cap it, she knows he can sense the cruel, and sinister thread . She looks back up to find his eyes, not, as she’d expected, marked by recent tears ( not like hers, she remembers , ducking her head enough she hopes the undulating shadows of the room around her would mask them : they didn’t ).  He looks ... hurt, yes , but mostly --- resigned ? Evidently being the supreme leader of the first order hadn’t chased away the last bits of the sad boy she’d seen in shared memory, and it sends a shiver running up her spine . His gloved hands twitch in his lap when he sees it .

“ You know I can’t .” Comes his belated reply, less than a whisper and still it swallows the world around her in his deep, raspy timber, and she has to bite back something wanting , something bitter, too . Compassion was the weakness of the darkness and the strength of the light --- so how was she , the last beacon of the Jedi order, meant to reconcile feeling wholly opposite ? That the vision she’d seen of her future alongside Ben’s ... was a hope she still clung to , as foolish as she’d been as that girl waiting on Jakku. 

Rey , who knew all about waiting, wasn’t going to waste a moment, waiting for him. 

“ Fine .” A bit of her own resignation lies in how coarse the syllable comes past her lips -- were they damned to this fate, forever ? “ I though this was over with.”  She gestures between them , and the bond shudders in recognition -- forcing Rey to set her teeth, it’d only ever been calm when they fought in perfect harmony, or when there hands had touched on that lonely night, what felt like a lifetime ago . Now, it is tempestuous , raging against these two sullen , desolate halves and urging them together, trying, and failing, to make something whole out of the broken places they’d become . Kylo shakes his head , its .. a boyish gesture, not like the contempt she’d seen him filled with , “ Force bonds are for life.” Flatly, “ You or I, have to die , it is the only way to break it.” 

She inhales sharply, aware that he’d hear it, maybe even feel the flood of bile that accompanies her surprise ( or was it fear ? something flashes across hazel eyes that are more green under the duo-moon lit night around her , ) “ Oh .” Not an emotive response, she knows , but she’s not particularly of the mind to give him an inch of what she’s feeling , especially as she cannot glimpse any piece of him that’s not explicitly spelled out through the bond itself. He’s closed his heart, and mind off from her, and despite everything that’s happened, it is that that makes her bitterness spike, and has her teeth catch on the next words she manages , 

“ You told me before to kill my past,” vile. monster. murderous snake . she reminds herself in mantra, not meditative like the Jedi but hot, white rage, “ If you aren’t willing to let go of yours to be a part of my future, I guess we know what I will do with all old things.” the jedi, the sith, the first order, the resistance, “ If you aren’t with me, Ben .” His name stings, she hadn’t meant to use it, and the look of pain blooming in his eyes almost makes it worth swallowing the fire that navigates through her ribs and airways, “ Then you are against me. You are my enemy. My friends enemy. And the enemy of the resistance.” 

the bond ends. displeased with the radiant energies. but just before it does, his iron-clad grip on a singular feeling renews something Rey thought he’d buried.