#m*3

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 class that cost her ... Fuck, a lot of zeroes .

Rey thinks in numbers , and , while her friends mock her for it , left brain crap makes more sense to her than just about anything else -- maybe if her wake up call was in binary, she'd actually have woken up .  

She huffs, as if by sheer an abject defiance, she can will time to turn back, and give her the strength to power down to a lecture that had absolutely nothing to do with aerospace design , but was a weird sidelined requirement in the engineering part of her degree .  Whatever . Rose took that class, Rose , whose notes were a verbatim recount of what their fossilized professor would have spewed over the last two hours. Rey smiles to herself , realizing that she'd never actually made it off the ground. 

I'm too young for this , bitterly, as her joints pop and crackle , a protest of her having moved at all -- least, when she's stretching towards the stucco ceiling that's got a concerning number of tac-mark holes in it , and she's never looked up long enough to notice them until  now .  She'd add it to her to-do list, buy some Spackle . 

Stumbling , Rey's arms only come down when she yawns, and nearly trips over herself on the way to the kitchen - the smell of coffee was , to the bleary eyed college student, a siren's song for which she'd brave the storm of her housemates . All of whom , have been up for hours . 

" Rey , no offense , but you look like crap . " Poe , who is currently side-eyeing Finn's choice in late-morning beverage ( something green and thick -- couldn't he have the common decency to pour it into something that wasn't transparent ? )  , was always the one for honesty , except , apparently , when it came to his partner's dietary habits. He simply raises his brows, and resumes drinking his coffee , " You okay ?" After a moment has passed and Rey, usually quick on her wit, hadn't said a word.

" Huh ? Yeah of course ! I'm just peachy ." Deadpanned , she's still glaring at Finn who has made a point to read a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal. Rey's half inclined to pour his kale-something-or-other all over it, she doesn't, and fishes around for a clean mug while grumbling , " I overslept. Missed my only class for the day, and with Spring Break around the corner i'm running out of things to do . Too much free time ." 

" You're the only person in the world who is mad that classes are out for two weeks , " Finn , finally choosing to speak , levels at her. They've mastered the art of copacetic trash talking and it unnerved anyone who didn't understand just how much these two cared for each other. ( its a lot , a lot a lot , and if he wasn't with Poe , people might have thought it was puppy love ). 

He's not wrong , but that doesn't mean Rey's any less annoyed with him for saying it . " Hey . " A snap , " Us scholarship kids have to pull our weight around here. Idle hands are the devil's play things , or however the adage goes ." She's slowly lost any heat to her words, lulled into a caffeine-induced complacency as she nurses her first of many cups of coffee . It was the only way she could balance her usual routine, but , with classes winding down, and her almost done with her degree three years in advance ( how it'd back fired, overlaying as many credits as she had ) , its bringing too much to light. Like the things she doesn't have, or what she never does .

Poe, who has an apparent death wish,( alongside psychic abilities )  quips , " If your hands had something to play with maybe you wouldn't be so tightly wound ." Finn chokes on his drink, and Rose, who'd just come in with a smile, frowns .

" You know Rey." Her voice is happy. How is she literally always happy ? The arch of Rey's brow , normally wilting, isn't even enough to stop her now , " He's got a point. You never even go out with us . You visit skeevy bars , but never take anyone home --- " Finn clearing his throat is a saving grace that's got Rey forgiving the panflutes from earlier in a heart beat . Rose concludes quickly , " It just might do you some good to have some er --- human contact ! Not that the engine of a 747 doesn't get you plenty hot ." 

Its a bad joke. The group collectively groans . 

" I date ." She corrects, but when all eyes turn on her , the burn of her cheeks is telling , " -- I mean, its not that I haven't been asked. I'm just not interested in ... college boys." Yes, that's believable . Let them think you're into older men, or something .  Rey's internal dialogue is more convincing than her outer one, as they continue to stare at her in growing disbelief , " Get off my case ." Is all she can manage through the thicket of their laughter . Her blush recedes, and she's left with a certain begrudged fondness for the ragtag group of people that were her friends . 

Its only two p.m , and Rey's run out of things to do . It's stupid , really, how a friendly jibe could unearth so many truths that she'd worked hard to keep at bay. There's a reason she focuses on numbers instead of letters , on equations instead of poetry . Math and physics didn't call on that certain romantic quality that always, always found its way into any art she'd dared be interested in . Romance is crap. All of it is just ... crap.

Or maybe it isn't.

Crap. 

She knows herself well enough that this nagging thought wont go away on its own . Its not that Rey's a virgin , or that she'd silently sworn herself to celibacy . More or less .. her feelings were baseless . She'd never known intimacy in a way that made her seek it out . It felt forced, uncomfortable , too-tight and too .. much . Rey knows Dr. Kanata and her had worked through a lot of her ' intimacy issues ' but that didn't make it an overnight fix ( A decade of therapy didn't qualify, evidently ). She' had boyfriends, but nothing that she could make sick .  Ninety percent of the time , Rey got tired of them , bored with the compulsory tenderness and saying shit that she did not , in earnest , feel. It was all to fit in , and placate herself more than anyone else . 

Crap.

Her legs are bouncing with nervous energy, sitting on the edge of her bed with her beat up phone in her lap - Rey frowns at the screen like it'd insulted her . She still can't believe that her own two fingers , in a flurry of doubt and defiance ( that'll prove them wrong is never sound reasoning ) have pulled up the app store , and typed in six letters , in that specific sequence , no less.

The only things she'd had downloaded to her phone besides the generic , standard set were : uber , youtube , a scientific calculator ( have you seen how expensive those things are ? this was free ) ,  a moon tracking bit , and something meant to organize her routine . 

Now , this garish gradient of pink and orange is sitting dead-center on her home page . She hadn't dragged it into a group , yet , but it certainly didn't belong with any pre-existing thing . The whole ordeal is stressing her out when it was meant to provide the exact opposite.  She nearly deletes. Nearly. but Poe's voice of all thing echoes , and then Rose's ... They'd sounded so ... pitying . Rey hates pity. And its with that intent -- to never see them look at her like that again, that she lets it download in full.

Her phone pings , and a groan runs through her at the sight of the notification that , really, only further cemented the fact that Rey at only twenty one years of age, was desperate to get laid. Tinder had downloaded successfully. 

Turns out, Rey's got a fascination with setting up profiles .  

She'd spent nearly two hours filling out the respective boxes , her interests , while minimal , had been gone into great detail - though , if this was solely for finding a quick lay, she can't imagine anyone would get past her profile picture ( a rather flattering one ) -- Rey'd never been any good with selfies, but Poe snapped a candid when they'd all gone out for a boozy brunch . Her smile takes up too much of her face, but her freckles glimmer under the nascent sun , a filter provided by the oversized red umbrella that kept their table in the shade , highlights her tan ( long lost to the unforgiving winter ) beautifully. All in all , with her hair in its standard ' space buns ', as Finn called them, ( the first astronaut with style , Rose had amended ) , she could call herself an attractive girl. Attractive enough to warrant a swipe , god , that felt silly, even just to think.

She smiles . Its been a long time since she'd felt this way. 

Unfortunately , she forgot about her pending beaus within the hour , busying herself with repairing the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. Despite having warned her friends to stop shoving all their leftovers down its gullet, it was broken after only a two week lapse since she'd last fixed it.  More than once , she'd threatened to charge them for her services, but they all knew that Rey took mundane delight in doing things like this , her hands and mind preoccupied was just the way she liked it . She's smiling to herself , almost absurdly , as she hums along with the music trickling out from her phone's warped speaker -- the music's interrupted by a sound she doesn't recognize -- everything , every app , every reminder had been set to a certain Morse notification , this one was shrill and annoying and gave her a brief flashback to this morning's unfortunate Celtic incident. 

She cleans her hands off with a dish towel, and pulls it out of her coverall's front pocket .  ' congratulations ! you have a match ! ' bloody hell . Funneling embarrassment, and regret, she slides her phone open -- expecting a frat boy with a Ralph Lauren polo , or maybe some older 'gentleman' whose picture looked like a grayed big toe. 

Her assumptions had been ( mercifully ) wrong . 

'Ben Solo' , a name that was vaguely familiar , but in that sort of way you half-remember a dream, she shrugs it off - Ben wasn't uncommon , and being ' solo ' had become something of a plague .  She shouldn't chuckle at her own pun that was at the expense of a man that, apparently, thought she was someone he'd sleep with . 

He's handsome. Startlingly so . But not at all in any traditional fashion . Rey finds herself flipping through his pictures over and over, smiling when he did , which was only in one of the ten images he'd uploaded. Its enough , she's sold , her hearts beating frantically and her stomachs probably in her shoes, but she's riding the high that came with being .. wanted. However impersonally, through an app she'd trashed for months now , no less. 

' Hi !'    Crap  . is that too impersonal? She adds a smiley face emoji a minute later , feeling out of practice and , quite frankly , ridiculous for having been so eager to message him - she'd only gotten the notif moments before. What if he thinks she's some girlish little waif who has been waiting, tragically , by her phone for him to match with her ? 

' Hello .'   Oh . He's formal too, Rey worries her lip a bit before replying, 

' I'm Rey !'  ... that's spelled out for him above, dummy. She'd already hit send though, no going back. Typing bubbles appear before she can ad to that. 

' I see that . '  Was he being rude ? Or playful ? For whatever reason, she feels like he smiled to himself when he sent it. Her toes curl a little. 

She takes a deep breath -- better to be honest with it , if he didn't like her forward nature, this wouldn't work to begin with. 

' ive never done this  I mean  you can see that too I figure I'm not sure ... the protocol for these things . er .'  a.k.a How do I ask for casual sex even if that's the primary directive here ? 

He's kind, when he answers , about ten minutes after -- The whole time Rey's spent , still crouched under the kitchen sink , using the light of her phone to go by, but not accomplishing any actual work while she waits.

' Ah. I'm new to this , too .'  He's being oddly formal. Punctuation ,  capitalization -- Rey's immediately aware that she hadn't checked his age, she'd been so enticed by his images and the prospect of scratching a newly - woken itch . She scrolls back over to his profile, and sighs with relief. He's only thirty. Which is only nine years her elder . Her friends had dated professors twice that age -- oh , a new message.

' To be frank , I'm finding it hard to believe you're real . It isn't often a woman of your caliber resorts to using a dating app . Not that I myself have extensive familiarity with them. '   Okay .. He wasn't actually getting anywhere with this , and its edging dangerously close to a real conversation . Usually, now's when Rey's attention would be thrown sharply and wholly into whatever she'd been doing before -- but she can't seem to stop herself when she replies, 

' A woman of my caliber ?' Rey adopts his cadence , its easier to feel less like a messy child by comparison . 

' Yes. You're beautiful, and educated . Did you run out of characters in your bio ? I felt that it ended abruptly. ' She had, but that he'd noticed makes her blush furiously. Its so hard to confine a person to two thousand words or less -- she'd had that same issue in her papers , enough so that her teachers have given her a page limit in contrast to her classmate's minimum . 

' I did.'  She pauses.  ' I didn't think people payed that much attention to the girls they're trying to sleep with . '  Its crass, and she hopes it wouldn't chase him off. He's typing for a long while , a long ... long while ... oh no is he going to lecture her ? 

' You're not just any girl, though. Are you ?'  All that time an that's what he said ? He must've deleted and re-written that message a half dozen times ; she wonders at his first drafts of it , and then she's wondering at her wondering, and .... 

' I would like to take you out to a nice place. We can take an uber, so you're not trapped in my car with me, a public setting. Nothing too intimate or personal . But I think you are someone I'd rather like to hear speak before commencing in other activities.'    did he just make hooking up sound eloquent ?  Damn . Damn . Damn. Crap. 

Rey smiles again, for the fiftieth fucking time , in the half hour she'd been messaging him - he had a way with words, that's how she justifies this conductive energy spiraling through her limbs .

' Tonight ? I'm free around seven .' Which gave her ... two and a half hours to fashion herself into a human being . 

' Absolutely. I'll message you the address , one moment.'  

She did it . She had a date -- or whatever this qualified as. 

Wait. Rey had a date. Crap . 

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.

        Dragonstone’s keep was cavernous , and hollow. With the Targaryen Queen only recently occupying it, it still held the haunting remnants of the army that’d called it home before . Stannis’ , Jon had thought him to be a good man , good enough at aiding those who he’d later call upon : lording his generosity over anyone and everyone that he could . It stuck with him , that sour feeling that he’d ever trusted a man who could, and would , later burn his own child at the stake. He shivers at the memory ; sorting through the stone labyrinth around in with some small hope that he’d stumble upon his room sooner rather than later, or at the very least, a room with a fresh fire burning. 

       His footfall is muted , he thinks its by whispers --- who could manage to carry such authority in a hushed tone ? The Queen,  he stops , like he’d already been caught at eavesdropping , he doubted they’d believe his intentions to be anything but , wandering this part of the castle, at this time of night . Truth be told , it wasn’t deliberate, but now that he was here , and she sounds quite unlike the woman he’d watched return from battle, the one who’d asked him to bend the knee  --- Jon , much begrudged by his moral compass , leaned against the wall adjacent to the open door . 

       “ Are you adjusting to the Westerosi way of life, your grace ?” Tyrion’s voice was slick ; like wine eased the passing of his words , a wetstone to a blade . He hadn’t given it much thought himself, that she , risen from the east , would rest in the west ; perhaps she wasn’t so simple a monarch like all the ones he’d known in vying for the iron throne. He quiets his thoughts, and listens. 

       “ I suppose. ” the silence thereafter is doubt , but Daenerys sounded sad : even if he didn’t know her well enough to gauge its absolution, “ This is not my home .” He hears her jewelry shift , metal hitting stone . Hadn’t she been born here ? That didn’t define anything , he supposes , considering he himself had not one clue as to where he drew his first breath. 

         “ I had hoped that coming here , to the place of my birth would complete some part of me .” She confesses , he can almost feel how Tyrion would lean in , always reassuring his Queen ; he was a good man, despite his family’s name. “ Though I always knew it was the Capitol I would come to live in .. I was raised in Esos  , after my mother died , and it always felt like I was living someone else’s life , like i had borrowed their tragedy to build my strength and I would rise up and be greater than anyone else with my blood . But the tragedy was my own, in a great many ways it did harden me ; fortified what would be parts of a Queen , some day .” 

         Her wistful sorrow strikes a chord in his heart ; he’d always believed Winterfell to be his home , but in reclaiming it he didn’t feel as though all of him came back to it . Be it a byproduct of his resurrection , or the realization that his being a bastard would mean a sense of impermanence wherever he tread, he does not know . All he knows for certain , is that the Queen was more human than she’d let on , and he feels a pang of guilt in doubting whether or not that heart of hers pumped blood, and not fire. 

        He lets them have their peace , now realizing he was outside the Queen’s chambers , he used that as guidance until he reached his own room, and sat on the edge of his bed in thoughtful silence 

          The night prior he had made himself a solemn promise : he would show Daenerys Targaryen a kindness he’d thought un-affordable , given the dire nature of their gathering . 

           He passes by her room come morning , after eating what was offered in such a haste he cannot recall the flavor, or consistency of his breakfast ; it makes him smile , feeling eager to do much of anything was a rarity for the King in the North, these days. A nod to her unsullied guards , and he raps his knuckles on her door three times, overthinking it a bit , he leaves a pause between the first and the second : why am i nervous ‘bout talkin’ to my captor ? A self-deprecating thought, he means to shake it off, but then the door opens and he’s face to face with the frightening reason why : because i don’t want to leave. 

         “ Your grace .” A polite incline of his head; he would not bow , would not kneel -- though the look on her face suggests she already knows that ; its a calm patience she carries , though not unlike how a sheath hides a sword. “ I was hopin’ that i could walk with you , got some things that need sayin’ .”  Jon’s trying to smile , but when he does it makes it impossible to look her in the eyes : it’s like she’s got more to say in them than any other single person he’s ever met, it would be disconcerting that the grand oratory would be silent, but that she accepts his offer in motion is more than he’d have expected at all. 

         “ What did you want to speak about ?” Caution therein lie , she never spoke so slowly as to when she was being careful about what she says, and how she says it . Jon clears his throat, a brow raised by the onset of wind, hitting them with all the cold and unrelenting force that winter had always promised, he squints, looking down at her . “ I know you’re aimin’ for Kings Landing, rightful Queen and all --” He stops, she’s giving him a look that could only be perceived as a warning, so he nods, and continues with a lighter tone, gesturing with his chin that they should walk to the battlements : the side of the keep would slow the wind there. 

       “ -- but i wanted you to know that the North would always welcome you , my people might be distrustin’ of a Southern Queen but i know you got a good heart -- whether or not it comes to me bendin’ the knee, they’ll respect you for fightin’ the true enemy nonetheless.” He’s trying to remove himself from the implication of acceptance ; as if it were an airy notion of Northern kindness and not an immediate and direct invitation to his halls ( even if , in some small way, it was ).

     “ Winterfell was my home , but when you’ve been north of the wall , seen what i’ve seen ...” He shakes his head, grateful now that he’d been right ; the wind skirted around the stone wall, and let them speak softer than its howl. “ it gives you perspective on what really matters. banners and names are nothin’ compared to family . most of mine is dead .” He didn’t mean to laugh , but its a sad sound no less, he rubs at the back of his neck : nerves settling in  . “ ‘m offerin’ you a welcome to Winterfell , whenever you’d want it, or need it; you’d have a place in the North, my Queen.”