apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

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[ 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. ]

( 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.

Edited 2016-01-18 23:48 (UTC)

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?

( 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.

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.

( 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.

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. ) ]

( 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. )

[ 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. ]

( Kylo feels her anger, peckish and whipcrack quick, thrum through the bond like an electric charge, and he feels her try to tamp it back down, smothering it under stone and boot heel, no doubt a product of her tutelage under Skywalker. He gives the barest hint of a suggestion, a slight blow on the embers of the rage she feels, encouragement to embrace it and use it the way that he knows that she can, but doesn't let thought become well-formed in any capacity. This close to the Supreme Leader's seat, the last thing Kylo wants is some echo of his nudging her in that way apparent in the screen of his mind, available for Snoke to pick through and determine what this is before he has the chance to do so himself, to be ordered what to do with it before he can arrive at that conclusion on his own.

So he tempers the urge to encourage her down into a tiny flicker of amusement. It's easily disguised and easily cast off once his attention turns back to the task at hand: a steady balance of the pieces of his saber spread across from him and the intrusion of her in his mind, which tips more in her favor when she opens her mouth across the channel again and catches him cold. The tool in his hand skips over a ridge in his saber and something catches and pulls, springs free and rolls onto the floor and under the table. Kylo calls it back to him with no amount of gentleness, with such force that the little piece smacks into his hand with more speed than necessary. He fumes, to say the least. )

Making hollow threats like that is pointless. It's only a matter of time before we all cross paths again, and we are actually on opposite sides.

( In the case of FN-2187, Kylo intends to right the wrong he was unable to last time. Treason isn't something tolerated in any branch of the First Order, and given what his betrayal had cost the Order, had cost the Supreme Leader, had cost Kylo, he has every intention of seeing the proper amount of retaliation carried out. Her calmness, in the meantime, that neutral state she slips back into as if willing herself there purposefully under the banner of that heavy threat of 'or else,' unnerves him, especially when imposed upon him in such a way that he can't shake free.

He sets his teeth against the inside of his cheek and focuses on reassembling his saber, reluctant to believe that his quick reconstruction is at all due to her presence and the half-hearted attempts at guidance she affords him without either of them being acutely aware of it. He's quiet for a long time until finally the last piece clicks back into place and he busies himself with the task of replacing the tools into the pouch. It isn't until he's beyond the viewport and tucking the tool kit back into the drawer that he casts out for her again with a certain amount of directness. )

What do you want?

And I'd prefer if you dealt with me, not them. [ Still wary but in obvious control of her own emotions for the moment, Rey catches that flicker of revenge licking across their connection— not honed in on herself, in particular, but a side swapping stormtrooper. It puzzles her privately, unable to fathom why the loss of one good soldier irks him so, and she's starting to seriously consider what kind of stock Kylo Ren puts on loyalty. More than she'd initially understood. He's too easy to read and an enigma all at once and now that she's in his head and he's in hers, Rey sometimes finds it difficult not to try and parse him, even from star systems away, typically resisting the urge to feel out across their strange bond, but not always.

And so, she's quiet as he meticulously reassembles his lightsaber, careful as he puts his tools back in their proper places, his mind oddly quiet until she can feel that invisible nudge, a firm question with far less bite yet still demanding an answer. It gives her pause, blinking up at the starless ceiling above her, still jarring to wake some nights with a proper roof over her head. ]

I'm not sure. [ It doesn't bother her to admit, the voice in his mind muted and quiet, contemplative. ] You're just... here. It's easy. [ —to talk like this, a habit Rey fully realized and accepts is bother risky and dangerous, a novice brand of confidence keeping her from being too frightened by the prospect of slipping over to his side. Curiously, she shifts the very same question back to him, momentarily stunned by the broad expanse of endless space when he approaches the viewport once more. It isn't to retrieve any hidden information for the Resistance, or for his mother, but rather something she's wanted to know since this all began, a hooded, menacing terror in her vision, come to life in a shrouded wood. ]

What do you want? You don't really seem the type for galactic domination. You seem to have your own agenda. Including me in it also doesn't seem out of the question for you yet.

( That control is an advantage that he doesn't have, although he gets the distinct impression that it's something that will definitely come up during his tenuous stay on Snoke's base of operations. The whole ship is nervous. It beats like a separate, physical heart. Despite their dedication and loyalty to the Order, the troopers and even the upper-echelon figures aboard the Finalizer always get tense when they're this close to the Supreme Leader's seat, even if they are only making a drop-off, so to speak, depositing Kylo and a few other Knights on the home world so that Kylo can finish what was started. The troopers are the worst of them all, he can feel it, possibly in the wake of FN-2187's desertion, his betrayal, as if they all might be punished for his misdeeds.

He hardly concerns himself with any of it, sticking to his quarters the way he typically does on long journeys, emerging only to see that Hux hasn't ruined something else in an effort to get them all disciplined. The silence he's granted affords him time to recollect following his disasters on Starkiller and Jakku, in dealing with Rey and losing the droid, to reevaluate all of his mistakes and failures so that they do not happen again. He uses the time away from the bridge to gather to him what he might say to the Supreme Leader, what reasons he might give for the choices that he made. Hux had warned him not to let his personal interests interfere with orders, but he had, and he knows that. It's a crime that he will absolutely be punished for, even if he was attempting to kill two birds with one stone without knowing it. Retrieve the map and bring Snoke a girl with more Force-sensitivity than he had ever encountered.

He'd neglected to do both, and now he has her in his head, flitting around like a bird, keeping him awake through the night cycle and peppering him with questions, offering guidance and suggestions in mechanics. He presses his mouth into a thin line, and the door to the cabinet slams. )

My suggestion is that you find a way to make me not here, unless you're interested in what happens as a result. ( She's right, of course. Not in so many ways but in the ones that matter. His interests and Snoke's interests coincide with the First Order's in a nice way, a handshake between the two of them, but more importantly her inclusion in that reality isn't an impossibility. He knows that even as the cabinet's doors settling into the idle hold of their hinges, as the room grows quiet following the slight manifestation of his emotions. He tries to will himself into a calmer focus. It doesn't entirely work. ) You've made it abundantly clear that you aren't interested in accepting my offer to teach you. Including you seems like a moot point.

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