[ At first, she assumes he means to ask if the Resistance will protect him. It's only a moment later, after her lips have parted, that it strikes Rey that he means to know if she will protect him from the Resistance's wrath as well as Snoke's. On that note, she falters, jarred by the suggestion as much as by the slow creeping realization that he's right to wonder it.
Leia and Luke are forgiving, and even Rey would readily set bygones aside. But Poe suffered torture at Kylo Ren's hands, torture that he had not forgotten, that he had recounted to Rey while she'd been searching for answers on the subject of her own Force sensitivity back at the Resistance base later. Finn had lost his childhood to the First Order and watched Kylo Ren sic attack dogs on him after he'd escaped, been hunted across the galaxy, chased by the threat of further enslavement. Every Resistance member seems to have their own horror story of the First Order, a list as long as it is sordid, and Kylo Ren has made himself their poster child and general.
So the question bears consideration, and Rey slowly presses her mouth closed as she debates it in turn, steeling her nerves and trying to shut out any indicator that she acknowledges the potential brutality of the soldiers Snoke and his First Order have made of them. Truthfully, her plans ended well before rehabilitation of any kind, let alone consequences, for she had only thought as far as persuading him to want to remain among them, leaving everything else for later as mere fine print. ]
Those answers depend on you. [ A cop-out, perhaps, but an accurate one. ] I—nor anyone else—can protect you from the choices that you make. But if you choose a different path, I've brought you here so that you can have the help you'd need to take it. Snoke is powerful, and he would not suffer the loss lightly, but we have power of our own, and there is a reason why he seeks yours.
[ It's a surprisingly keen insight for someone who, before, had been so uneducated in the ways of war and the Force. Were Snoke as all-powerful as they all believed him to be, though, he would have no need to take advantage of the power that Kylo Ren offered him. To Rey, that meant that Kylo Ren would offer a real threat to him, if he were on the 'wrong' side of this fight. ]
Together, I believe we can stave off his reach. The rest comes after.
no subject
Leia and Luke are forgiving, and even Rey would readily set bygones aside. But Poe suffered torture at Kylo Ren's hands, torture that he had not forgotten, that he had recounted to Rey while she'd been searching for answers on the subject of her own Force sensitivity back at the Resistance base later. Finn had lost his childhood to the First Order and watched Kylo Ren sic attack dogs on him after he'd escaped, been hunted across the galaxy, chased by the threat of further enslavement. Every Resistance member seems to have their own horror story of the First Order, a list as long as it is sordid, and Kylo Ren has made himself their poster child and general.
So the question bears consideration, and Rey slowly presses her mouth closed as she debates it in turn, steeling her nerves and trying to shut out any indicator that she acknowledges the potential brutality of the soldiers Snoke and his First Order have made of them. Truthfully, her plans ended well before rehabilitation of any kind, let alone consequences, for she had only thought as far as persuading him to want to remain among them, leaving everything else for later as mere fine print. ]
Those answers depend on you. [ A cop-out, perhaps, but an accurate one. ] I—nor anyone else—can protect you from the choices that you make. But if you choose a different path, I've brought you here so that you can have the help you'd need to take it. Snoke is powerful, and he would not suffer the loss lightly, but we have power of our own, and there is a reason why he seeks yours.
[ It's a surprisingly keen insight for someone who, before, had been so uneducated in the ways of war and the Force. Were Snoke as all-powerful as they all believed him to be, though, he would have no need to take advantage of the power that Kylo Ren offered him. To Rey, that meant that Kylo Ren would offer a real threat to him, if he were on the 'wrong' side of this fight. ]
Together, I believe we can stave off his reach. The rest comes after.