i found something in the woods somewhere.

[apparare]

open post. ▬ action ▬ prompts ▬ continuing threads ▬ force shenanigans

Comments

[reygun]

[ she starts from an unplaceable dream one night ( —dark colors, swirling, her vision obscured by a low lying mist, the path before her tenuous and uncertain ) and she's in near agony, the skin on her face stretched and raw and overwarm, a diagonal cut, a low, simmering pulse of throbbing pain in her side above her left hip. Rey lingers in a few terrified moments of confusion before it abates and she realizes these sudden wounds are not her own, the healing remnants of a saber cut, a purposefully missed blaster shot.

Drenched in sweat in her cramped little bunk on base, the small of her back damp, she lifts a hand to touch her own face, smooth and unmarred, a phantom pain that eases the longer she's conscious until it's only a memory— a memory that isn't truly her own to begin with. Knees bent, her elbows sling across them, head bowed between them as she reigns in her focus, dredges up that infinite well of calm deep within in.

It finds her and her pulse evens out. She can hear Finn's endearing snoring a room away, grateful someone is having a peaceful night's sleep, BB-8 on lower power mode at the foot of her bed while Poe's away doing secret reconnaissance for the Resistence, a sincere promise to keep the faithful little droid by her side in his absence. They keep her grounded, her unexpected trio, a family she'd never anticipated finding, hodgepodge and mismatched but fitting together just the same, and stronger for it.

Her attention shifts back to the present and Rey closes her eyes again, inhaling slowly through her nose, exhaling out through her mouth and she inches up that carefully constructed wall damming her mind shut, a tentative prod across the bond to him, ghosting at the back of his neck, the curve of one wrist. Unbarred, the connection is as strong as ever, the channel between them open and obvious even as she shields the most important places in her mind from him.

Are you there? And of course he is. ]

[apparare]

( He recoils from the glass as soon as he can see the lines in her hand pressed flush against it, not a harsh, jagged stumble back but the slow slouch of gently withdrawing, as if physical distance might impede the surge he feels within him. His eyes remain momentarily on the splay of her fingers, the width of her palm, and then raise to look at her directly. He searches her face for any signs of betrayal and after a moment of finding nothing but quiet, earnest determination, lowers the fortified walls in his mind that he has built brick by brick through the Force alone to check for cracks in her armor that way. It's a brief moment, but it is enough, not only to assure himself that she isn't lying but to also be flooded with the warmth of her acknowledging what's left of the light in him. Kylo feels her anticipation, her apprehension, her hardwired determination and moral righteousness. Compassion. Worry. Morality. Fear.

Whatever happens, now or ever, there will always be a line that splits them, from each other and from everyone else. Deep down, he knows that whatever she manages in her attempts to walk the hills and valleys of his mind, the fundamental aspects of him will not change. Her concerns regarding his rewiring are not so realized within his own thoughts. He's known since he was a child the kind of person that he was, even without Snoke's steady, unbroken stream of manipulations and promises and dark secrets there to guide him in the right direction. He's known without having to stumble upon the hidden image in his mind of the two of them turning to face Snoke that he would one day raise his hand against his master the way that the Sith who came before even Darth Vader had done. Kylo Ren may not be Sith, but the verse repeats all the same.

Her argument is compelling, even if she argues for reasons that do not necessarily resonate within him. He hasn't been able to remember silence since before he was five-years-old, that hazy point in childhood where memories could be memories or imagined realities designed to substitute them.

Kylo does not move for a very long time, stretching into the territory of minutes with the two of them simply standing and staring at one another. He reassembles his defenses brick by brick, piece by piece, not to keep Rey out necessarily but to delay the inevitability of Snoke's arrival for one minute longer than it might take otherwise, and then presses the bare flat of his hand against the glass where her palm has been placed. The surface is cool and solid, and the burn threaded into his skin grins back at him lopsidedly. )

Why?

( It's a question he had not anticipated asking, and it's raw in its genuine honesty. She could have killed him, back in the woods. She could have killed him on Starkiller Base. She doesn't want to exert power over him, doesn't want to control him or utilize his abilities for her means to an end. The reward of navigating his framework to cut Snoke's cord is directly proportional to the risk. She must realize the potential for this to go disastrously wrong in so many ways regardless of what they - she and Organa and Skywalker - hope to gain, and yet she remains. )

[forcevisions]

[ The steady lift of his hand to match hers is genuine enough to surprise her, eyelashes fluttering as she glances briefly down, then back up to search him. Rey's heart aches with the weight of his question—that he feels like he must ask it, that he cannot trust good will, that he is so damnably cautious with taking hold of the life raft she offers him now—because she knows what it means. That question is one more of the many scars he bears from years of manipulation and cruelty, isolating him from the only people who could help him.

It leaves her short of breath, not only because it's overwhelming to conceptualize, but because she understands it too clearly. Her stoicism tapers off into the thick tone of eager, swelling hope, twisting her expression into one that almost pleads with him to allow her that. ]

I want to help you.

[ It doesn't fully answer his question, though, in that it doesn't adequately express why she feels so driven to offer him this hand up, a question she's avoided asking herself since it began. His insistent disbelief compels her to turn inward now and pinpoint that moment in the vision he'd shown her of the two of them, side-by-side in battle, playing off one another with seamless ease into a more devastating threat for the light or the dark than either could be on their own.

And it affords her a simple sense of clarity.

Even when he's beside her, training her, Luke Skywalker feels miles away, a relic of another time, lost long ago and returned only as a learning tool and a guide, not a companion. And among the Resistance, there are no others with the skill or sensitivity to be Jedi, to take up the mantle and use the Force for the light. The responsibility has fallen to Rey and left her, in the wake of Han's death, even armed with Finn's friendship, precisely where she started. Alone.

It's like she never left that desert in Jakku, why even the calm and focused corners of her mind that she reaches out to silence the loneliness as she suffers insomnia are an island, silent for its isolation, not its peace. For as long as she can remember, Rey has been alone, and now she's seen a glimpse of what it could be like if she weren't. The cool serenity of understanding settles over her features, drawing the intensity of her passion out like a sieve.

Killing Kylo Ren would mean killing the one person who understands her experience and how she perceives the world thanks to the lens of Force sensitivity, and shutting herself off forever from anyone who could offer that specific empathy to her, which is sadly impossible for Finn or Poe, and he has expressed the same interest himself in his desire to teach her, to groom her. She knows, based on Han's stories, that Kylo Ren is the one responsible for ripping away any other opportunity to meet students of the Jedi way. It is his fault that she feels this fear. And yet …

The lure is not enough to draw her from the light, but that selfish desire is enough to make her desperate to pull him free from the darkness.

Some mixture of shame, surprise, and resignation strike her features and she breaks Kylo Ren's gaze with this realization, dropping her eyes to the spot where his hand touches the glass. She doesn't recoil, not fully, but her eyes tell the full story—she knows why, now, and she cannot pretend at ignorance any longer. ]

I refuse to believe that our fate lies in destroying each other.

[apparare]

( Nausea wakes him from a restless, spotty sleep, a tightly coiled knot of dread congealing in his stomach and sinking like a stone. He's on his side in the dark of his quarters aboard the Finalizer, the room a muted, gutted wash of blackness in the thick vacuum of space. They make for the Supreme Leader's seat deep in the Unknown Regions at his master's request. Following their gathering on the dusty planet in the Outer Rim - and his personal encounter with Rey - Hux and Kylo had stood at attention under the holographic projection of the Supreme Leader and received instruction for the better part of twenty minutes to cut out the fleet's limping journey across the systems and return to him promptly. The jump to lightspeed had come so quickly that half the fleet had been unprepared for it but they had made it all the same, bottoming out in deep space, far beyond the reach of Resistance reconnaissance and within three days' reach of Snoke himself.

Nausea wakes him, but the pain across his face is what keeps him awake, a deep ache spanning the diagonal slash and radiating outward like a blast radius. At the risk of bleeding out, the shot to his abdomen had been taken care of almost immediately following his return to the Finalizer after Hux had retrieved him from the snow on Starkiller, and the bruising he had sustained from beating the gaping hole raw with his own fist had faded, but the cut to his face still looked angry whenever he was without the helm. The med droids and officers had insisted that he let them knit and graft it but he had refused - violently - on more than one occasion, despite the pain. The worst of it had faded with the rawness of the injury itself, once new skin began to form and scar tissue puckered his flesh, but it hadn't dissipated entirely.

Mindful fingers trace the ridges and bumps of the scar in the darkness, mapping the constellations and systems native to the way in which it gaps the hollow of his eye and skips down his cheekbone, thinning out as it traces the ridge of his forehead and almost disappears into his hairline. He runs a hand through his hair and sits up in the cold, consuming silence of space. Alone in the dark without even the distant sounds of the night cycle's rounds to disturb him this far down the corridor of the officer's row, he's struck by how easy it is to anticipate her incoming. Her restlessness spans galaxies and stars, dodges planets and satellites. His feet hit the floor and he lets himself into the 'fresher to run water down the back of his throat, to pool in the cup of his palms so that he can scrub it over his face. Kylo gets the feeling that nausea he tastes in the back of his mouth is hers and is unsurprised when she nudges him a moment later, his reflection in the mirror over the sink his only real company. )

Of course I am. ( He manages to both feel and sound annoyed inside his own head. ) You've kept me awake for the better part of the night cycle.

[reygun]

Did I? [ Undeterred by his ever present irritation with her, she sits still in her bunk, narrowing in on her focus on him and likewise, leaving herself open enough to let something pass through their link without her notice— I hadn't meant to. Her nightmares, she realizes, must have inadvertently shifted between them, just as the echo of his fading wounds transposed to her. The force bond is a strange anomaly Rey continues to try and parse through privately and publicly keep at bay; General Organa will give her a passing glance every now and then, a flicker of a different sort of recognition passing over her lovely face, gone an instant later, an afterthought. It truly leaves Rey wondering if she can feel the nudge of her son's presence, lingering quiet in the back of her mind.

She touches her face again, fingertips creeping up a non-existent slice up her cheek, pausing at her brow bone, mirroring his own actions just before she'd heard his voice in her head. She can see him— standing at the mirror, cool water at the back of his tongue, muscles only vaguely tense with a few degrees less annoyance than usual. His hair is ruffled from sleep, or lack thereof, curling around a sharp jawline, and not for the first time does Rey wonder why he's kept the scar she's given him ( she doubts it has anything to do with being sentimental. ]

Not to nitpick the details, but this is really your fault. Maybe you'll think twice the next time you feel like rifling through someone's head without their permission. [ That, she also remembers with a startlingly uncomfortable clarity, an unexplainable pressure at the base of her skull, waves of something dark and suffocating rolling over her, memories clawed out of her mind at force— until she'd shoved him handily out and ricocheted back into his mind.

She's quiet for a moment, balancing the warring sensations of her warm cot, her hair spilling over her shoulders undone, Finn still snoring away on the otherside of the wall versus the chill of cold black tile beneath his feet, his large hands gripping the sink, how dark his eyes pool as he looks back at his own reflection and sees her, too, the faintest crease between her eyes. The nausea settles some. This shouldn't feel so normal. ]

Could you see what I was dreaming?

[apparare]

( Her initial response is not the answer he is looking for, regardless of the sincerity in both her tone and the look she fixes him with. Rather than retaliating immediately, Kylo quiets the swell of annoyed, knee-jerk anger - he does not want her pity - and waits. It isn't easy. Patience has never been a strong card in the hand he works with, but he has the impression that what she grapples with internally is legitimate enough that he doesn't want to miss it by slamming the heel of his hand against the plane between them in an effort to shatter it. The thought does cross his mind, and he feels the keen absence of his saber as if it were a physical ache deep in the bones and muscles in his hands and arms, but he quiets it.

Instead of pulling back and then surging forward, his hand remains on the glass, watching conscious thought flicker across her face and behind her eyes like a series of candles being lit, one after another, after another. He doesn't need the Force to pick them out one by one, gathering them together like the pebbles he had cupped in his palm in the forest, but before he can assign them any real value or merit in his own mind, she looks away from him, cuts her eyes to where their hands might be pressed together if not for the paneling separating skin from skin, tendon from tendon, bone from bone. The slight bow of her head as she focuses the point of her perception toward the five-point star of his left hand is enough of a response in and of itself, and before she can open her mouth, Kylo has the distinct impression that he has an idea of what she's going to say in the same moment she does. It still isn't what he's expecting.

He watches the bow of her lips form syllables and speak but the weight and story in her eyes paint a clear enough picture for him without her words to solidify it. He holds very still where he stands, something in him shifting and settling into place. The image, the idea, of them, half-remembered, that he had shown her what feels like lifetimes and galaxies away, now, burns his retinas as if it's a reality. Darkness in him wells and sings, a chorus of echoes and whispers and chants, then quiets, dims, falls silent as he remembers laughter, tastes salt, smells the tang of the ocean and wet grass, thick moss, smooth stone beneath his palms, damp biting at his knee through his pant leg. Kylo thinks he can feel the warmth from her hand spilling through the glass and seeping into his own, and he pulls away so that the cool, filtered air of the downed shuttle can chill his skin where his palm has begun to sweat. )

I don't believe that either.

( It's a lot. When he speaks, it's with the careful, guarded quality of someone who does everything alone, who shares nothing of himself or his agenda with anyone unless specifically ordered to do so. Even Hux, who so frequently operates on a wavelength in tandem with his own, has no such advantage. None of his Knights. Captain Phasma. No one. The totality of his loneliness has not been so precise and crushing as Rey's - Rey, who spent decades on a desert planet, who sung herself to sleep on her shoreline dreams, still alone in her self-isolation even when she could imagine comfort anywhere, still alone in the bracket of arms she has fallen into. Rey: the island - but it has been present, it has been constant. It rests in the darkness within him and thrives. For her to reach for him with that sort of statement, to present it honestly and plainly with the promise of her intentions in what she plans to do, the look on her face wrought with the weight of it - it digs fingers into him and hooks, no matter how deftly he attempts resistance. )

I don't know the precise length of his reach or how Skywalker's presence might be problematic in his attempts to establish contact. Or yours. But if he were able to do anything other than reach out toward me, as you suggested, it wouldn't be the first time that the Supreme Leader's ire manifested itself in a physical way. ( He finally admits it after ignoring the question long enough for them to arrive at this bend in the conversation. With everything else that's on the table between them, it seems pointless to withhold information from her that will only assist him in the end. His tone is still reluctant, however, as if confessing a sin he's been holding onto for twenty years. ) His reaction depends largely upon what Hux tells him, and my absence, both from the Finalizer and from his perception of the Force. I haven't felt him try to reach out yet, but I'm hardly searching for him or opening the channel up to welcome him to look around. I doubt he would appreciate what he finds there. He will, though, eventually, recognize that something isn't quite as it should be.

( On Starkiller Base, he had screamed traitor at FN-2187's back so roughly that his throat had felt hoarse after. A voice inside of him shouts with the same intensity, and it resounds throughout him, all the way down to the soles of his boots. )

[forcevisions]

[ Hope thrums like sparks flying off a steel mill, bright and fevered. For a moment, she believes she's misunderstood, but he keeps going, explains with candor the depths of his experience with Snoke's power and its extent, and Rey realizes that his reply means precisely what she thinks it does. Trepidation stutters her heartbeat and shortens her breath, chest expanding with the light feeling of elation that is so foreign she hardly recognizes it, mistakes it briefly for anxiety and panic. ]

Then we haven't got much time.

[ The task is neither quick nor simple, and if Snoke goes probing once they're both in Kylo Ren's mind, it may well damn them both. Without ever stopping to consider that the reply may be a ruse because it validates and bids goodbye to something she's feared for so long that she can't imagine letting go of the possibility. And she, perhaps boldly, accepts that confession as assent to her offered plan.

The last hints of tension ease out of her muscles and shoulders, showing her weariness for what it is, and the airlock hisses with release—her mistrust and Luke Skywalker's suggestion had kept the airlock sealed with the strength of her control over the Force as much as the basic locking mechanism, which she moves immediately to release with a series of button presses at the panel just out of Kylo Ren's view from within.

It takes a few moments, leaving him to his thoughts without an indication that she's still nearby but for her presence in the living Force until finally the airlock clicks and rotates like an clunky, rusted dial, creaking as it dilates and opens the glass casing. ]

[apparare]

( Doubtful, he thinks, in response to her childish suggestion that he might rethink methods and tactics of interrogation based on this anomaly alone. He makes no attempt to snip that thought from the dialogue between them, letting another burst of cold water wash the scratching taste of bile down the back of his throat. The tap he leaves running, drowning out the non-existence of silence coupled with the resounding lilt of her accent in his head with the rush of the spigot. It's like slipping in and out of a hallucination, the image of her face superimposed upon the spartan environment of the 'fresher an odd contradiction in and of itself. The sound of water pooling steadily into the drain does nothing to alleviate the sort of warped vertigo it inspires, so Kylo cuts the tap off and stands in dark silence again.

He doesn't dignify her question with an immediate response but instead examines the conditions of their connection with alarming awareness. He feels and doesn't feel the warm, scratchy fibers of the blanket that tangles her legs together, smells but doesn't smell the lingering scent of sweat and motor oil. Kylo would bet a pocketful of credits that if he looked he would find the stuff caked under her fingernails or smeared into the creases and wrinkles of her clothing. He doesn't look. He turns his attention outward, which provides him the benefit of shuttering himself away from her to some degree. At least he thinks. The room is small and dark, but there is a low glow from the foot of the cot where the BB unit stands guard, he assumes, even in low power. A fleeting thought that he might be able to influence her in some way through this bond to show him the contents of the map comes and is just as quickly shuffled away, though likely not before she's had a chance to glimpse his intentions.

It seems a pointless thread to follow at this point, when they're so close to touching down with Snoke and she and the Resistance have both made it to Skywalker by now. Kylo makes sure to disguise that reality from her as much as he can, still unsure of the breadth and depth of what's unfurling between them. Their ability to communicate so soundly and with such startling clarity even at this distance is surprising. It had made more sense when they had feet on the same planet as opposed to standing light years apart. )

I was hardly looking. ( It's a non-answer, though he hadn't actually seen the contents of her head until she opened the channel and flooded into him. He leaves the small box of the 'fresher and pads through the larger space of his bedroom, calling his saber to him automatically as he trades one room for another and lets himself into the common area. It's barely furnished, but there's no need for comfort or convenience when he spends little time doing anything resembling either of those two options when he's here. A lamp glows to life at his command: there's no point in trying to regain unconsciousness when she's clearly not going anywhere. Undeterred, indeed. His tone remains dry and sarcastic. ) I assume that's why you felt it was necessary to keep me awake.

[apparare]

( As Rey disappears around a corner, he steps away from the glass, retrieving his gloves from the bench behind him and curling them into one fist. His palms are still damp with perspiration, as is the back of his neck, and when he runs the bare flat of his hand over the skin there, it comes back with the flaking pieces of mud that Organa had missed when she bent over him and peered into his face. It's unclear to him whether or not it's a physical manifestation of the effort he is still expanding to keep his thoughts to himself or something else entirely. Whatever it is seems to work itself into a stone that drops into his gut, reaches up to pry at his ribcage with long, spindly fingers, not pulling him apart but hanging on with a desperate grip.

The airlock hissing open affords him the luxury of not having time to think about it in too much detail and with the rush of fresh air that greets him, sweeping in and bringing with it all of Corellia. Rain on the dirt. The heavy discharge of smoke and blaster fire still hot in the atmosphere. Flames. Smoke. He can't see her but knows instinctively that she's still there, and he waits for the airlock to slide back into place completely before stepping out of the makeshift containment cell, his footfalls heavy on the durasteel flooring of the command shuttle. Kylo looks up and down the length of the ship, beyond the immediate area to the cabin where he has piloted a shuttle not unlike this one himself, back down to the ramp that waits to spit him back out into enemy territory.

Rey materializes in his peripheral and then his complete view at the control panel, and he sizes her up now that nothing separates them, the gears that permitted him entry back to the outside world settling in place once the machinery tends toward idle. He could escape, now. He could slam her against the wall of the shuttle the same way he had thrown her like a rag doll into the dead branches of that tall tree on Starkiller. A voice purrs at him to do it. He doesn't. )

After you.

( Regardless of what's transpired here, no one here is going to let him walk out of a prison block ahead of Rey. )

[forcevisions]

[ Even being the one to open it, there's something startling about watching him walk out of the cell at his full height. Second nature, probably, to feel the stomach dropping sensation of shock when confronted by him, but it morphs quickly into a flicker of a relieved smile. He's on board. That's what matters. Her nod seems to be as much to confirm her resolve as to hearten him in stepping out of the shuttle with her, then she's at his side and guiding just a step ahead down the ramp into the Resistance camp.

If Kylo Ren had any illusions of the size of the Resistance after he devastated the Republic's fleet, they were corrected immediately. The camp spanned no more than a mile, pitched in tents stretched off of shuttles and X-wings and the scarce carrier or metal hut designed for encampment. Altogether, it gave the impression that they had accidentally staggered their way into this rebellion rather than premeditated it.

The fighters that strode past, most of them in flight jumpsuits with or without the vests that specified them as pilots rather than mechanics, were starkly disparate to the First Order's facilities in another way, though. They traveled in groups, none patrolling, but all earnestly hurrying around in a hush of concern or laughing and reuniting over a drink from shared canteens. But for Rey herself, not a single Resistance fighter stood alone in the camp.

They truck through mud, only drawing attention once they've crossed a handful of lopsided structures—less than a hundred feet off the shuttle, soldiers made their way from inside the tents to stand outside of them, humor dying off like they brought an airborne plague with them that spread through the encampment with each heavy step. Finn and Poe were among them, clearly resisting the instinctively sour expressions, and Rey avoided allowing their expressions to wound her by turning her head up towards Ren to say, ] Don't let it bother you. There weren't many here who expected that you'd take a way out if we offered it.

[ But she did. And Leia did. And in some ways, maybe she's reassuring herself that despite their judgment, she's making the right call, but she decides not to reflect too extensively on that, instead cutting a direct path for the largest and only reasonably sized structure among the camp, the only one that could rightfully earn the title of building.

Oval in shape, the squat metal dome housed the General and a war room for her to plot in. A number of other high-ranking officials had used it for their base on the ground as well, though most of them preferred remote operation. This battle was far from a sure bet for any of the Resistance, but General Organa had always been the sort to die with her people rather than remain in her ivory tower. ]

Tied up in your mind, your consciousness and mine won't be as tethered to our bodies as they usually are because of the meditative state we have to reach. Master Luke and General Organa will watch over us while we're there.

[reygun]

I told you, it wasn't intentional. I was sleeping. I'm not always thinking of you. [ She scoffs inwardly and hopes he catches it, only minutely annoyed by his sarcasm, a brand of dry humor she appreciates despite herself; maybe more, were it resulting from anyone but him ( or perhaps not— he's still an enigma she cannot bring herself to hate, despite the long list of crimes against him, number one being Han Solo. ) Those thoughts, she shakes out and conceals in her mind, instead following his slow assessment of her current location, only the most basic, her bed and the quiet, dim light of the room she's in, illuminated by an alien moon and the dull light of BB-8.

—and she catches the most briefest of inquiries in his direction, defaulted, questions not actually posed and Rey is grateful for it, Luke Skywalker's location meticulously tucked away in the untraceable corners of her mind, out of reach. The Resistence gratefully hadn't fully grasped the dangerous weapon she could become, Kylo Ren swimming around her head, all the information he could ever need at her fingertips.

Luke Skywalker knows and he trusts her and that's all she requires. For now.

She lays back in bed, an elbow pillowed beneath her head as she stares at the ceiling and sees so much more: she thinks she can smell him, something unplaceable and spicy, brow creased not with tension but thought. Rey knows she might be smarter to find herself more afraid of this unyielding connection between herself and Kylo Ren and yet she only finds herself more intrigued, drawn in further. This is between them and no one else. ]

It sounds like you weren't sleeping, anyways.

[apparare]

( It becomes very, very weird very, very fast to be walking across the Resistance camp with her undetained, unshackled, and conscious.

In a way, their hodgepodge set up surprises him even as it doesn't. The Resistance, while Republic-backed, is still a small sect with an alarming number of competent fighters. General Organa is their heart and backbone, and while it's true that their size does continue to grow as it recruits new supporters just as it has the Corellians, it's a well-maintained and gossiped about topic among First Order squints and higher-ups alike that Organa could keep the whole thing running and pushing ahead on her own merit, a universal belief that has always annoyed him. Kylo very seriously doubts the Resistance's ability to overpower the First Order without Corellian support and the element of surprise, but the fact remains that they had both today, and now Kylo is following this scrap of a girl through their barracks with a target from every pair of eyes painted on his back.

His boots leave deep impressions in the mud, and he has to shorten his strides so that he doesn't outpace her and pull ahead. The scene that unfolds before him is as jarring as it is unfamiliar, and the rising pitch and swell of laughter that breaks out in peals in different corners of their campsite registers as strange. There is no such debriefing following First Order victories. A breech in protocol of that degree would not be tolerated under any superior officer. Their jovial celebrations and loud, whooping calls to one another warm no part of him, don't take root or dislodge the cloying feeling that still latches somewhere beneath his lungs, and he makes no effort to look a single one of them in the eye as they stride past until a ripple in the Force turns his attention away from their destination.

Poe Dameron and that traitor stormtrooper are watching him as he and Rey pass by the tent where they are stationed. An electrically charged hush falls throughout the gathering of hastily assembled lean-tos and a droid whistles disdainfully somewhere in the thick of things. Dameron in particular looks like he isn't entirely sure what to do with his face as Kylo meets his eye across the muddy yard that spans the distance between them. Without his helmet, there is no question as to whether or not the creature that exists beneath the armor is human or not, even if the truth of his parentage isn't necessarily common knowledge. Ben Solo died so long ago that he could exist as much as Luke Skywalker did before Rey brought him back from exile, a myth. The last time he saw Poe Dameron without a mask, he was barely ten-years-old, to tall for his own body, awkward and burdened with darkness that spilled out into every unfavorable reaction and childish whim. Kylo looks at him now and wonders if Dameron even recognizes him as the boy who used to poke his head into starships with the kind of curiosity that might one day lend him to being a halfway decent pilot.

The extended olive branch of Rey's voice draws his attention away from that particular memory and he clips his words short to emphasize their meaning. )

I'll try not to lose sleep over it. ( He follows her abrupt change in direction without a falter in his step, almost as if expecting it. ) Although maybe I'm the one who should be saying that to you.

( Rey leads him another hundred yards or so toward the squat, gray building and he feels a surge in the Force roll over him like a wave. Their combined presence had been a hard pill to swallow when he was a child, but it had been a source of warmth and reassurance for him then. Particularly Organa. Now, the two of them together overwhelm him and drag him down in their currents. Even without seeing them, he's aware of their proximity the way he is aware of a planet's gravitational pull. This is more tangible even than that. It saturates his mind and all his senses like being submerged in bacta. He's unwilling to let his steps falter, unwilling to show weakness in front of her and in front of them. He follows her inside the command station and focuses on the pain in his hands, a single point of stability against the backdrop of calamity. A flash of gold catches the light from the ceiling and Kylo can hear something that sounds suspiciously like I'm terribly sorry, captain. I've been telling the general for decades that his wiring's no better than scrap metal, but - )

There's the very real chance that the Supreme Leader will intervene once he's aware of what's happening, which I anticipate won't take long once I stop focusing solely on cloaking myself from him. You are running the risk of bringing him down on you as well as everyone else in the base. ( He pauses to let that sink in for a moment, though he assumes that it's a thought that's already crossed her mind, and continues pointedly ignoring everyone who looks at him twice. The back of his neck is still damp. ) I hope your faith in Skywalker and Organa's abilities as babysitters isn't misplaced.

[forcevisions]

Yes, thank you, I gathered.

[ The clipped edge of her tone strikes as familiar in how it rebuffs him—she doesn't bother with schooling her countenance to calm and controlled, but instead lets herself snap back in a show of nerves.

If she fails, Kylo Ren or Leader Snoke or both will run the base into the ground.

If she fails, Luke Skywalker and General Organa will die, and the Resistance with them.

Worst of all, she will not die with them. The guilt will be hers to carry for as long as it takes for Kylo Ren and Snoke to give up the hope of converting her to their ways, or for Snoke to view her as more threat to his control over Ren than potential to add to his strength. It is a hard thing, for a survivor to imagine a fate worse than death, this potential outcome manages to plague every corner of her mind with nightmarish flashes. ]

With their combined strength, it shouldn't be impossible for them to mask your presence here for a short while longer.

[ Unfortunately, 'should' and 'short while' are both insufficient reassurances, but by the time Rey can think up more, they've stopped inside the inner sanctum of the Resistance's war room where Luke and Leia wait, talking in hushed but passionate whispers. It sounds like a disagreement, resignation written across Luke's features that doesn't inspire faith in Rey.

Still, she turns to Ren and nods for him to join her in approaching them, lifting her chin in a way that offers the impression not of professionalism and merit, but rather of a child putting on airs and playing at soldier. ]

He's agreed, and confirmed the concerns we had regarding Snoke's involvement. The sooner we begin, the better.

[ Organa doesn't seem to hear her, sorrowful dark eyes fixed on the face of her son, studying the terrain of his face as if she had to memorize it, searching out every difference, the scar left by Rey, the hard set of his gaze that was so different from how he'd looked as a child, where it was curiosity lighting them, not the fires of rage. ]

Do you have a space ready?

[ In a snap, Leia nods, and with only a passing comment that It's good to see you back on your feet to Ren, leads the way to a back room beyond the circular war room. Luke wears the same cautious but mournful gaze that Rey had first seen on him, fixing it unerringly on Kylo Ren's, guilt thick in the furrow of his brow and the tug of his lips. This is a mess that he made, and he does not immediately speak for that reason alone, solemn in accepting his part in it. ]

[apparare]

( It's hard to miss anything when she's so firmly rooted there, and he catches the intention behind her reaction as much as he hears it transposing from her mind to his. He places his lightsaber on the low table in front of him, and the quillons catch the light from the lamp, reflect a dull, amber glow up at the ceiling. )

I might have been able to if you weren't making such a fuss.

( Space swallows the world beyond the glass paneling of the common area's window, star systems winking in and out of life, and he approaches the viewport with a somewhat distorted sense of reality as the universe stretches infinitely out in front of him, a distortion that he's more than happy to let bleed through the bond as if to bolster the accusation that he levels at her. The cabinet next to the window comes open under his touch, and he opens one drawer and then the other to retrieve a small set of tools not unlike lock picks, tucked inside a pouch. The black leather is soft under his hands as he carries it back across the threshold and takes a seat in a chair next to the lamp. His saber returns to him when beckoned, and Kylo begins the careful process of dismantling his blade so that he can clean the plasma emitters and rework a bit of wiring.

He has never been particularly skilled at taking things apart and putting them back together in this manner. Snoke had informed him of this after seeing the lightsaber that Kylo had constructed, but he hadn't needed to be told that by his master to know that it was true. The blade still vibrated wildly with energy every time he tripped the ignition switch, but it wasn't a characteristic that he disliked despite making it a more difficult weapon to control. With no intention of altering the design at least until his training is well on its way to completion, he works open the handgrip with a sharp jab under the metal to lift the face and expose the wiring underneath. Metal clinks against metal and is the only sound to fill the room, save for their breathing: his in reality and hers somewhere in between. )

I'll hazard a guess. Nightmare.

[apparare]

( He suffocates. Sweat rolls down the back of his neck and bleeds into his collar under the careful, scrutinizing gaze that Skywalker and Organa fix him with from across the room. They are a unified front despite the quiet argument preceding Rey's arrival with him in tow. He hangs back a moment, and Rey takes point as she has the entire duration of their hike across the mile long stretch of Resistance territory in leading him to them. No amount of uncertainty paralyzes him, and he realizes after Rey has taken exactly three steps in the general and her master's direction that what he's been carrying with him, tucked up behind his ribs and hiding in behind the solid wall of his sternum, is fear.

He's carried his gloves this far in the large span of one hand, and he crumples them tighter under the pressure of his fingers as he strides forward after her.

Kylo can't decide if he should choose one of them and maintain eye contact or look at neither of them to show that he isn't intimidated, that they hold no sway over his decision to see this through. In the end he settles for staring Luke Skywalker down with all the weight of what has transpired between them trapped within a short distance of ten feet or so. He cannot and will not look at the general, even if he feels her staring at him so intently that he's sure she wouldn't notice if Rey broke down the act of a dutiful soldier that she's putting on and stood on her head. He does not even entertain the notion of trying to slip into either of their minds and see what's going on inside of them, but he does let loose some of the latent frustration he feels at being this close to the man he had hunted across the galaxy only to lose because of the girl at his elbow.

Organa retreats to lead them away from the main area with a clipped platitude in his direction that he does not return, following them all while still refusing to meet the general's eye even as she very overtly and resolutely continues to commit the angles and lines of his face to memory, tries to reconcile them with the image that she must have of him locked in her head from years ago. Han Solo had worn the same expression for a moment, and recalling that he had summons the image of him speared through the middle with a burst of red light. Skywalker turns his face in Kylo's direction abruptly, and he feels oddly speared himself to be on the receiving end of that gaze, rife with sentiment that he can't read and doesn't want to. So he ignores it, maneuvering through a set of elbows and stepping around a small command post where a couple of officers pour over traffic reports while sipping on something that he can smell even from his distance.

As Organa shows them into the room they have set aside for whatever is to happen next, Kylo gets the distinct impression that he is living in a dream, for all the absurdity of the situation. She approaches him, and he can see the word Ben on her mouth before it even has a chance to be fully formed. Don't, is all that he says, finding his tone less cruel for all its brevity than he had anticipated. It strikes him how small she is next to him. Ironic, given how large she looms in the eyes of the Resistance and the Order, not to mention his memories. Despite her unquestionable strength of character and conviction, Organa does not plunge recklessly ahead by completing the thought he had quelled before it had a chance to be finalized. The risk she takes is greater, reaching a surprisingly smooth hand up to catch the scar tissue running nearly the length of his face with the tip of her thumb. Kylo smells powder, oil, rainwater and something else, something new. )

Rey. ( He pulls away from the general's questing touch and moves toward her, keeping Skywalker in his peripheral like he's waiting for an attack to come from any angle. With no saber at his belt - Kylo suspects that it's with Skywalker, though he can't be positive - he feels naked and exposed, doubly so without the helm, leaving his expressions bare for the world to see. Finally, he turns to his uncle and says with no affection - ) Your move.

[reygun]

Something like that. [ She's still somewhere back at conquering the vague vertigo he'd pressed upon both of them at the viewport, space a vacuous mass that leaves her spinning in her own bunk, quelling the brief dizzy spell in favor of focusing on Kylo's voice in her head, even and far from friendly but conversational just the same. She's there when he pulls his lightsaber to him from across the room, watches with the oddest sense of both presence and distance, not sitting beside him but there just the same. Watching him dismantle his chaotic saber is fascinating, and Rey is a quick study, honing in on the minute details, piece by piece, nudging the back of his wrist when she notices something peculiar. ]

Why haven't you improved your lightsaber? I know you could. It's too unpredictable. [ Like you are. Like I am. Footnotes to her curious but well meant question, Rey unintentionally shifts a few scattered images across at him, like pressing a handful of photographs across an empty table, a small change here, tightening a bolt here, a little re-wiring there. Luke Skywalker has shown her how to construct a lightsaber, only one demonstration being enough for Rey to catch on, remembering the subdued swell of surprised pleasure in the Jedi's mood at her success. Her suggestions lack force or superiority, a mechanic simply offering their input to make something more successful, despite the irony of potentially giving an enemy the upper hand on her in a fight.

Only— Rey realizes with a private start that she hasn't considered Kylo Ren the enemy in weeks. Even this conversation, the both of them restless and awake but civil, leaves her quietly reeling, tucking away this gentle ebb of surprise somewhere he can't quite see. Just because she's not actively loathing him doesn't mean she trusts him at all, too connected, too deeply woven into the First Order for any kind of comfort ( still— she's under the impression that isn't his first priority. And neither is hunting her down. ) ]

[forcevisions]

[ As surprised as she is to hear her name spoken as if he were reaching out for a lifeline, it is dwarfed by the ripples left by his step towards her as flinches from his mother's touch, overwhelmed by the warmth of her hand. The embrace offered to her by General Organa when they returned from Starkiller Base victorious remains the first and only memory that Rey possesses of maternal care and attention, and the realization that Kylo Ren could so adeptly refuse it staggers her as surely as watching him drive a sword through his father's chest had.

Her eyes flutter through a series of stumped blinks, and she raises a hand as if to reach out for him, either to support his arm or nudge his back like she were coaxing a cautious deer forward—whatever the intent, her hand never reaches him, dropping when he finally confronts Luke.

Master Skywalker's age belies the strength of his conviction, and he does not hesitate to answer Kylo Ren's antagonism, but neither does he meet it with similar standoffish aggression. Instead, he keeps his tone level and informative, painfully patient if anything. He starts by calmly asking if Rey has told him everything, and she quickly cuts her head in with enough suddenness to make discourage him from speaking further. Luke considers it a moment, something unreadable but still understanding in his eyes, mournful in how it urges her towards something.

Instead of carrying that thread through, he explains that he and Leia will attempt to use the Force to block Snoke from sensing Ben—for he will not call him anything other than Ben, regardless of how his nephew has rejected Leia—themselves until such a time that Rey and Ren are able to complete their own task within his mental landscape.

He steps further into the room as he speaks, leading Ben and Rey around to a flat and functional sitting area where steel chairs, bare of any cushions or padding, sit just off the floor, squat and broad enough to serve as a bunk; they sit parallel to one another, but several feet apart in the cramped space, as if they were once part of a soldier's barracks.

Rey touches Kylo Ren's elbow as she passes him and sits on one, stripping off muddied boots to fold bare feet beneath her. Her palms rest on her thighs, but she lifts one to gesture for Ren to mirror her position. ]

The mind-walk is achieved through deep meditation, pushing both of our minds beyond the physical world and into the deepest shadows of your own. [ Her eyes flicker briefly up to where Luke stands off to the side, and quickly avoid fixing on him for any extended period, instead darting back to Ren as she warns him, ] I can't tell you what it will look like there, or how long it will take us to return. [ The tightness in her shoulders and her jaw betray that there is more still to be said on the subject, but she does not offer it. ]

[apparare]

( Skywalker's lack of aggression bothers him. Borderline unnerved, Kylo keeps his chin tipped down and his gaze level, taller than literally everyone in the room but hunkering down within himself as if expecting an attack. He can't stop staring at his uncle, and it's neither with kindness nor disdain, a sort of in-between state of antagonized wonder. For all his efforts, for how far he had extended his reach, had pushed the Order, the Knights, and their resources to find this man, this shell of a human who had stood so tall in so many varying ways when Kylo was so young, for him to be standing here so plainly in front of him, brought back from nowhere by the jagged will and determination of a girl who reaches out for his elbow at the frustrating betrayal of his own voice inquiring after her - it's enraging.

For all intents and purposes, he may as well be pouting, but seeing as he's nearly thirty and that sort of behavior is beneath him, his face schools itself into a mask of fierce and rapt attention, the hungry cast of his gaze darkly directed at the floor when Skywalker looks pointedly at him. The storm that rattles around inside him beats itself into a frenzy every time the old Jedi drops a name that has been systematically wiped from databases and banned from being spoken aloud. Han Solo had been the last person to say it at any decibel, and hearing it forcefully repeated as if to drive home a point is enough to turn his grip white-knuckled. No matter what happens, there's no hope for that name carrying any meaning once this is all over. He can feel it deep down on a molecular level, where the Force swirls and rises and drowns everything beneath it.

Arguing the point seems moot, especially so when Skywalker pins him so deflty under that sharp blue, beseeching look that dares Kylo to disagree. He lets down the first line of defense in retaliation, a crack in the glass of his expression appearing and splintering the heavy cast of his countenance into something that vaguely resembles poorly suppressed anger and something like hubris, chin moving from its position pointed toward the floor to settle at an angle. The line of his jaw tightens with each staccato presentation of that word - Ben. - as it accentuates the details of their plan and his role in it, molars digging into one another as he suppresses the very real desire to fight someone. That desire is quelled almost instantly by the cleansing fire of his own amused skepticism regarding his mother and his uncle's ability to keep Snoke from seeing what's happening, a borderline-imperceptible twist at the corner of his mouth and the slightest exhale through his nose.

Rey's palm is warm against the barely-damp fabric covering his elbow, the weight of her hand present through the layers of his armor and the flightsuit underneath. It's the second time that she's touched him today and the third time - to his knowledge - that anyone has. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, and his arm tenses all the way up to the shoulder, suspicious, on edge, ready for an altercation, and he watches her sit down and tug off her boots without deflating, consciously aware of the other two people in the room and the position that he finds himself in. Kylo spares one backward glance at a family from another time and then glances once more at Rey again before ultimately sitting down, folding into himself with no amount of grace or comfort.

In motion, he is solid but fluid lines and angles; in repose, he betrays bits and pieces of the awkward Padawan that he used to be. But he does sit. Refusing to strip out of his boots the way that she has, Kylo Ren folds long legs into a traditional meditation position and does not feel at ease. He considers divulging his difficulties with meditation - how he finds it useless, how he lacks the ability to focus so completely the same way he lacked the ability to divest himself of all emotion while training as a Jedi - but something in the set of Rey's shoulders, the look on her face, snags his attention before he can begin considering how to bring it up. )

Something you're not telling me?

( Kylo ignores the other two figures in the room, zeroing in on Rey and letting the world blur at the edges as he tries to decipher whether or not she is hiding anything of import. )

[apparare]

( He ignores her for a moment, annoyed with her question more than he finds himself annoyed at her for asking it. Kylo pulls the metallic framework of his saber apart piece by piece, some of the components hovering next to his head in midair while others he sets on the table in front of him. It isn't long before he has a small spread before him. When he reaches the crystal, split nearly in half very similar to the way his face has been, he removes it with careful precision and the sort of delicate attention that he gives to little else in the known universe. In his hand, the unstable power of the small thing feels warm and heavy. It clunks lightly against the tabletop when he sets it down, and his thumb ghosts over the activation lever until the metal warms beneath his fingerprint. Dismantled, nothing happens, and a part of him naturally reaches out to ensure that the door to his private suite is well and truly locked, held fast with a small blockade of focus. )

Define improve.

( The innards so exposed, he switches tools to begin working on cleaning the crossguard vent, worried that the damage she had done in cutting the damn thing nearly in two on Starkiller might have affected the quillon that hadn't taken the brute force of her momentary ferocity. The memory is not so distant that he can't recall it in acute detail now, the tight set of her shoulders and the blue, jagged beam of his grandfather's saber in her hand washing her in bright light as he lay in the snow. The self-loathing and anger directed both inward and outward had come later, had wrecked medbay and killed a deck officer.

He's a touch calmer in the days and weeks since, that much more so when concentrating on the task at hand: a tricky balance with her in his mind as if she's always been there. That thought in itself is disconcerting, as are the implications behind it. Kylo pops a bit of grit out of the crossguard vent and blows sharply into the apparatus to clear it of any remaining detritus. )

It's served me just fine in place of the lightsaber that you stole from me. ( He gets the impression both from her and instinctively that she would be good at this, catching flits of images of her hands, small and stained, fitting pieces together with ease, a mechanic's intuition that affords her a measure of superiority that he never had, obvious in the instability of the blade he carries now. When he pops the shroud back on in a way that doesn't compromise the internal wiring the way it had after he'd repaired it, Kylo only stops to consider the possible source as Rey for no longer than it takes to be rid of it. He swallows and starts on the other emitter, annoyed and angry. ) It worked fine when that friend of yours got in my way, at least.

( The opposite emitter shroud pops off with a loud click! in the silence of the room. )

[forcevisions]

[ For a moment, she's struck by the jarring and deceptive familiarity of the situation. Kylo Ren cannot look intimidating sitting across from her with no clear idea of what to do with his gangly limbs, and he fails in playing the part of the villain from this angle. In fact, it's all she can do not to allow a smile to bubble up—for a moment, anyway. She finds a great deal more ease in it after he points out her own discomfort. ]

There are a great many things I'm not telling you.

[ Her favorite color. How they plan to celebrate Finn's birthday, or give him one at all. The date of her last menstrual cycle. Biting sarcasm waits on her tongue in multitude, ready to lash, but Rey catches sight of Luke out of the corner of her eye and his paternal disapproval tamps down her upstart urges.

The flick of her eyes to the opposite corner betrays how begrudgingly her explanation is made, but she makes it all the same. ] Only one that matters to the task at hand.

[ Some of the fight drains out of her, starvation dwindling the flame of her disobedience, and her eyes fix reluctantly on Kylo Ren—gentle, but firmly guarded. Her stubbornness in holding out has not fully relented to necessity, it would seem, in great part because she knows it will have to. ]

There's a good reason I'm the one walking you through this process, and it's not for your comfort. [ The truth draws out of her a little at a time, facing resistance as her lips drag it from the depths of her chest where she tries to lock it away. Though her voice remains a steady pulse, tension sticks in her throat and twists her words to side-step her own inextricable involvement. ] Master Luke believes that the reason you and I have been able to reach one another across such great distance is due to a bond, one that could be strengthened and used to force Snoke out.

[ For weeks, she has kept her mind clamped down like a vault, sealed and inhospitable to him, desperate to isolate her mind and make it her own again, training herself to be the one who rules the terms of such a connection under Luke's tutelage. Now she speaks of plunging back into it and counting on that unnerving link to solve the one problem Han Solo could not talk his way out of.

If they were wrong, or if either of them were to get bogged down in resisting or holding out, it would fail—unquestionably. Asking him to be willing to show her everything was not a simple request, but a requirement; they would slough through the catacombs of his mind in tandem with the hope that exposing her to the truth of him would shine the light into dark places and leave no room for Snoke's shadow to prey upon him as it once had. The solution was Leia's, even if the knowledge was Luke's. ]

You will have peace in your mind, I promise you. [ The rush of her words, an afterthought, seems to bear her hope that she can say the same for herself. ]

[apparare]

( His gloves, Kylo realizes, are still caught up in the fierce strength of his grip, and by degrees he releases the pressure in his hand to let blood pound back into his fingertips, tossing leather to the side and smoothing his hands over the rounded points of his knees. The bite of his burns is less extreme, tempered by adrenaline and distraction - and, he suspects but doesn't examine, some sort of influence that Organa does not even realize she is exerting - and they become less twin focal points of razor-fine, precise rage and more throbbing reminders of the failure that he has suffered today. They're reminders of the inevitable: that Snoke is not far beyond the veil that he uses to mask himself, that beyond the fortress of this room, this base, the Supreme Leader waits for him with cold patience. )

So he's using you.

( His voice is calm, conversational, and Kylo says it mostly to needle her for her previous backlash against him - he could look for what her favorite color was and dig it out of her head if he really wanted to - and although he can feel Skywalker looking at him, the conversation is his and Rey's alone.

Kylo might say it just to grate on her nerves, but the fact remains that it could easily be construed as truthful. She might not see it the way that he does, but at the end of the day that's what she is as much as he has been: a tool, a cog in the machine, an extension of her master's arm to reach the depths that he cannot. It doesn't matter whether or not her goals work in tandem with Skywalker's, just as it doesn't matter whether or not Kylo's ambitions meet Snoke's goals stride for stride. That Skywalker recognizes the connection that has formed between them - long suspected and now made concrete by the admission of a man more knowledgeable than Kylo himself, he can admit that much - says enough on its own merit. Their bond is exploitable, malleable, and he sees it plainly for what it is in their eyes, the same way that he could distinguish it in Snoke's. And his own. It's not so different from what they were able to show each other on Yaga Minor, but it has a different flavor and cadence from what he tasted and felt thrumming through his veins and down the back of his throat.

He cuts the head from any whiplash anger she might snap out with at the suggestion he makes by leaning forward toward her somewhat, voice low between them but hardly low enough to discourage or prohibit anyone from hearing him. Kylo knows that isn't a luxury just as much as the luxury of having time to make a decision regarding this whole endeavor wasn't back on the command shuttle. )

Two sides, same coin. I told you before I understood the workings of a bond. ( He does not meet her eyes when he inclines toward her but looks instead at the shadows of mud still worked into the creases of her hands. The weight of the risk that she is actively and voluntarily taking catches him off guard somewhat in that moment. Opening herself to him and vice versa in order to eradicate Snoke leaves her open to him potentially without an expiration date, to having something monstrous in her head. He looks up, meeting brown eyes in the sea of her face, and holds. ) Why else would I let you try?

( The fact remains that he would not allow any of the other Force capable individuals in the room close enough to even consider it. It's a damning and frustrating actualization but no less true for all the contempt it inspires. He exhales slowly, through his nose, and leans back away from her, already feeling the beginning disintegration of the defenses he has constructed in his own mind in an effort to keep himself walled away, whether by Skywalker and Organa's shouldering of the burden or his own exhaustion finding root and digging in. Kylo flexes his hands on his knees and sits up straight. )

You should be aware, meditation is not my strongest card. ( His voice becomes somewhat mocking. ) I've been told I lack adequate focus.

[forcevisions]

[ His words and the weight they carry threaten her, sticking in her throat and threatening to close it with thick dread, all of her energy shrinking to withdraw into her gut as if to shrink away from the darkness intrinsic in the force of his belief. To accept that Luke is using her for her power is logical, and in this case, their only option, not like the consuming manipulation that Snoke exerts over Kylo, but it seems a slippery slope.

Through sheer force of wheel, she draws a breath and forces herself to open to him despite all her reservations and fears, sundering them to preserve her certainty. What she does here, she must do, no matter what dangers she feels it poses to open herself to his mind as much as he opens himself to hers.

It only occurs to her as he leans forward that he could just as easily be seeking to spread the influence of Snoke's way to the corners of her mind in doing this.

Her eyes shift then to Luke, searching for some form of comfort in him, but he extends nothing to her; in that moment, she finds herself missing Han Solo's brief but sympathetic glances, even if when he offered them, she bristled against what she then perceived as pity.

She swallows thickly and nods. His insufficient calm for meditation only aggravates the threat that he poses to her, a pot ready to boil over and scald her, bursting at the seams with untempered power fed by fury and hurt, but she does not let it show beyond the flicker of her eyes to his hands, examining the burns he is no longer working. Her eyes lift to level on his, and the space between them swells, then crumbles. All at once, even the several feet between them feels like too intimate a closeness, and her breath falls from parted lips in time with his. ]

I can guide you. [ Rey, for her part, excels in meditation, though she would not brag on it in answer to his jape. Clearing her mind and finding a calm center comes as easily to her now as it did on Jakku, when those open spaces and her own company were all that she had for more than a decade. Even the harsh grit of the desert soothes her now, rolls over her skin without buffeting it, and it's the desert that she finds when her eyes drift shut. ] Focus on my voice.

[apparare]

( For all the time it takes Rey to submerge herself in the practice, it takes Kylo twice as long. He can't divorce himself from the world around him as easily as she can, finding little comfort or security in the duo who stand watch over them, casting a wide net around Rey and him to shield them from view, likewise in the structure itself, so vulnerable to attack should the right bombardment fall, should the Order return to finish what the Resistance started. Fear clouds the path to peace, the calamity of his mind not quieting even as he actively works to dismantle his previous guards against the Supreme Leader in order to leave him open to the possibility of submerging himself.

It's a laborious process, focusing on his exhales, on her inhales, the distance that expands and contracts between them like a living, breathing organ. He knows that he has to commit but even in knowing that, it's difficult to disengage from the world around him. Kylo has spent full hours trying to achieve the sort of focus necessary for meditative tasks less substantial than this and found it taxing and difficult, borderline impossible for the tempest of his thoughts. It rankles him now, getting the sense that this comes as naturally to her as anything, which in turn distances him from detaching the way he needs to, rooting him firmly in this weakness and frustration. He stares at the wall behind her in an attempt to ground himself, the slight curl of her hair around the heightened point of her forehead, the slope of her neck, and then settles for the bridge of her nose before meeting the cut of her eyes across the distance between them.

The world grows to insurmountable extremes, too large to be contained within the walls of this room, universes spanning the space between fingers and stretching into infinity between them, mountains and plains and the roll of the ocean, before collapsing like a supernova.

He does not close his eyes but keeps them fixed on hers. Kylo is unsure of how long he sits like this, hands on his knees, watching the words form on her mouth and then not at all, the vaguely Imperial lilt of her accent clear in his head and then again in the atmosphere as it changes over time. The room is still the room but it's not, crowded with sand, the desert stretching before them under a cloudless night, pockmarked with stars and twin moons. One is the deep harvest red of the Corellian season; the other is so startlingly white that it looks carved from bone. He gets the sense that they are on Jakku, dunes rolling the sandstone plains like waves transfixed in time, stuck out of place like the scuttled Star Destroyer notoriously grounded during the planet's big battle. Wind touches the sweat on the back of his neck, even under the high fabric of his armor, and chills his skin while the moons cast odd shadows on the ground. His is long and lean as it stretches out behind him. Rey is twenty paces or less from him, and when he takes a step in her direction the ground supports him like solid stone even as he expects it to swallow him whole. )

Rey. ( Her name out of his mouth again. His own voice is clear and unobstructed, a direct channel between them. He finds her easily there, in the dark. ) Is this my mind, or yours?

[reygun]

[ There's a very long moment where she's almost pleased, where they are so in sync with each other that Kylo automatically does exactly what she's thinking, fitting a piece of his saber back into place just as she would have done and unintentionally suggests he do– before he ruins it, he brings up Finn, and she prickles, bristles physically and across the tightly knit bond between them that only seems to strengthen daily, dual hackles raising as she grits her teeth and makes some feeble attempt to quell her own anger, Master Skywalker's even keeled voice in her head.

It duels viciously with the reverberating memory of Finn's hollow screams through a snowy wood, ripping her back to consciousness only to watch him be sliced up the spine cleanly in one fell swoop, seeing red in her vision, the primal, instinctual drive to stand and call that lightsaber to her hand. ]

Be. Careful, Ren. I didn't steal anything. If memory serves, this saber came to me, not you. And if you touch any of them again...

[ Her voice is a low growl knocking about his head, less angry and threatening as it is a promise. Too many long nights she'd spent, cheek pillowed across the bow of her own arm at his bedside, willing him to stir, to heal faster, to open his dark eyes and look at her and smile stupidly, BB-8 at her heels, Poe often on the other side of the bed, sleeping just as fitfully, impatient.

Poe doesn't so much speak about his time spent so very hospitably aboard the Finalizer, but there are glimpses she catches from him, shoulder to shoulder in the mess hall, or when his palm fits comfortably over the backs of her knuckles, and she knows. This bond between them will not make her less forgiving.

Still, even as she grumbles irritably around his head, her presence is an even, calm entity, nearly beside him, as if she's in her sleeping clothes and slumped across the table from him, giving him half hearted cranky little directions. ]

[forcevisions]

[ This time, her name sounds familiar on his tongue, firming a connection that she had waited for. Turning her head, she looks away from the starlight to fix her penetrating gaze on him, expression a perfect conflict between the levity of relief and the dread of uncertainty. Ultimately, though, it's a ghost of a smile that settles on her lips. ]

Mine. [ Weariness sags at the edges of her mind, ready to collapse it, but she staves it off to secure their position as she approaches him. ] Only for a little while. [ The musical warmth of her voice tries to reassure him, but it's an alien sound in an impossible circumstance. ] You're not very good at clearing yours.

[ The playfulness takes a turn for something direct enough to expose what she's doing like live wire, deflecting from her discomfort with something not quite manufactured, but certainly exaggerated. ]

This is where I come to draw focus and eliminate distractions. [ The island is a place of peace, of retreat, and will not do for centering herself in preparation for battle or drawing power from. Jakku reminds her of her isolation, the cost of failure, but also of her ability to survive it.

Strangely, now that she is free of it, the rolling hills offer her security. She cannot fall farther than what she has already withstood. Time never seems to pass on Jakku, and it makes it a sturdy constant for her to return to in her heart when she needs to remember how she learned what has brought her this far. ] You have a lot of them.