apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

open post.
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( How helpful, he thinks, and only belatedly realizes that he's thought in a way that's broadcasted itself across the open line of their channel, like blaring an access code across the holonet. Kylo scowls, annoyed with her and annoyed with himself and not in the least bit sorry that he's projected something acerbic and pithy at her, only that he didn't say it aloud in the first place. He straightens up, both of his knees cracking as he does so, and gives Rey space to work without running the risk of being bitten by her in the off-chance that she decides to revert back to feral desert rat.

When she begins barking into the comm at Chewbacca - whose voice makes him feel uneasy in a hundred different ways and his flank pulse with remembered pain - before turning around to bark orders at him, Kylo decides that he's had enough. It's either orbit around her like a moon as he gets more and more frustrated with her and with his predicament until he or something on the ship explodes, or remove himself from the situation entirely and retreat somewhere far enough away from her that they won't affect one another's presence. There's little that he can offer as far as contribution to keeping the ship hurtling through hyperspace goes, as much as it pains his pride to admit it, and he is out of things to say to her that don't involve insulting her or goading her into an argument just for the sake of fighting with her.

So Rey brushes by him crankily and grabs her tools with probably more force than is required, and Kylo spends an appropriate amount of time trying to burn holes in her back with the weight of his scowl alone before resolving to not only do as she's requested but also make himself useful in other ways. )

Alert me when we're in Roche space.

( He says it on his way out the door, long, heavy strides carrying him out of the secondary hold before Rey has the chance to either argue with him - likely - or apologize - extremely unlikely. The layout of the ship is as familiar as the back of his hand at this point, after having the winding corridors refreshed over a collection of hours. Even so, it's a very short trip to the main hold, which is thankfully empty. It's also uncomfortably close to the cockpit, where he assumes the Wookie is, but there's little to be done about that. The ship is large but not so large that he's going to go the entire journey without literally running into walking carpet. Kylo assumes that Chewbacca is going out of his way to avoid him entirely, too, and he's just fine with that.

He ignores the low sofa curving around the Dejarik board and settles on the cold floor next to the control terminal, back against the wall, eyes on the door. If Rey is so intent to stretch herself thin despite his warnings about the Knights - logically, it's their only option, but annoyed as he is with her, he's not going to give her that much in the security of his own frustrated anger - then he's at least going to try and repair the fractured crack of his mind as best he can. And if he can't sleep, then meditation is the next best thing he can do, both for himself and for the other individuals currently aboard the ship. And for the ship itself, if his encounter with the heating unit is anything to go by.

The Millennium Falcon hums around Kylo as it continues hurtling through hyperspace, and he tries to focus on stripping away all the lacquer coating and coloring his anger, melting it away until he should be able to concentrate on the purest part of the emotion in itself, an exposed, pulsing vein of power. Should be.

He's terrible at meditation. )

[ In the back of her mind, she keeps hold of her awareness of him, more like a gentle brush of elbows than digging her fingers into his brain precisely. But she knows this much: he can't calm herself. As much as she wants to blame him for that, she knows her desire to criticize him is born out of her own tired mind demanding the same of her. It's a survival tactic in every sense of the word, keeping her alert so she doesn't pass out beside the wiring and get them all killed.

So she doesn't seek out the calm center of peace in the back of her mind, doesn't reach for the island or Jakku, but focuses on the heat pouring off the wiring as she checks it where it courses throughout the ship. By the look of it, the worst is the link between the heating unit and the central control, with a few of the other connectors fried — or potentially functional themselves, were the control panel itself functional. She tries to temper her hope for an easy fix without giving up on it entirely.

There's not much in the way of wiring and spare connectors on the Falcon—every part it has is hanging on for dear life, rummaged from a waste bin at one point or another when it should have been retired, and some key bolts are even missing, deemed optional by its previous pilot. It takes long enough to diagnose the problem that she's entirely sure she wouldn't have much time to start replacing parts anyway before they neared Roche.

But there is something else she can work on fixing while she's absently tracing wires and tensing her jaw. Reaching out with her mind and the help of the Force, she breathes an air of calm into him, which fans out and blankets the fire of his restlessness soothingly. It's not a perfect technique, but she'll at least make the offer of it. Just because she can't put herself at ease doesn't mean he can't, if he's able. ]

( It feels like hours that he's at it. Trying to be at it, at least. When the stripping down of all base emotion to get to the pure part of his seething, perfect rage does not work, Kylo tries emptying his mind in the traditional sense, falling back on practicums that had been drilled into him over and over and over again by Skywalker in his ramshackle fortress serving as an academy. He had been unable to sit still then as much as he's unable to now, which has always struck him as somewhat odd given the amount of patience he can display when it comes to interrogation or intimidation. Although that in itself is somewhat different: a waiting game rather than an exercise in focused silence. A task with a purpose.

Meditation seldom feels like it has purpose, and he's halfway to resignation and cramming his shoulders into the bunk that had been assigned to him or on the bracket of the main hold's sofa in an attempt to take a nap - like a toddler - when a wave washes over him and quiets some of the storm that his mind is tangled up in. The headache that has surfaced shifts from needlepoint to wider stitches in the wake of it, and Kylo finds that the rumble of the ship around him is less extreme underneath the gentle lapping of these waves. There is nothing but the sound of the careful back and forth of the tide in this place. Even the vibration of the hyperdrive and the Falcon's response to its ignition falls away, and he floats, navigating nothing in a search to rest his mind.

This goes on for several minutes, although it could be hours in the crisp gray nothing of nowhere, until a single thought pierces his trance and shakes him out of the meditative state that he's slipped into. The glare of sunlight as it scorches the sand. A smell not unlike ozone and the earth, sweat and oil. The imagined lilt of her accent warped over the comm system in the Falcon, the buzz of her saber's ignition. Blood in mouth his again, dirty snow on his lips. The weight of her hand on his shoulder, in his own.

Rey.

His eyes crack open in the main hold, just in time to see Chewbacca step in, start to say something to him, and then think better of it before turning on his heel and backing out of the area. )

Stay out of my head. ( A lot of the anger has burned out of his tone. He's left sounding impatient and anti-social. ) Find some way to recharge your own batteries.

I'm only trying to help.

[ Her defense would be more feeble if he hadn't explicitly confessed himself poorly disposed to meditation not so long ago. In the edge of his perception, she picks up on Chewie, so by the time the wookiee reaches her, she's already looking up and expecting him.

He makes disgruntled sounds blaming the choice to bring Kylo aboard as she explains to him the damage, then rises to her feet, ready to help him bring them out of hyperspace. She towels the grease off her hands, though the cracking edges of her knuckles hold onto it persistently, softening them and giving them a weathered look at the same time.

She doesn't blame Chewie for his distaste, and patiently waits out his persistent complaints as they walk towards the cockpit: it makes sense. The wookiee, by his own account, had owed Han Solo a life debt. It must have felt so wrong for him to go on when Han was dead, and now to be forced to cohabitate with the murderer. It was a lot to ask, but she looked him in the eyes, soft and resolute, and asked it of him anyway. He reluctantly nodded his affirmation, then for her to enter the cockpit ahead of him. Rey did so smiling. ]

How are you feeling? We're about to switch to manual at the edge of Roche space. [ She doesn't tell him to cast a net for Knights or hints of the First Order through the Force, but the thought does occur to her that it would be a useful application of his skills were he feeling up to it. Unfortunately, he hasn't seen fit to share the extent of what the Supreme Leader did to him; she can only tell that it took a considerable toll. Beyond that, she refuses to push, and she knows he is unlikely to offer: still, somewhere buried under all that exhaustion, frustration, and keen focus, concern for him nags at the edges of her mind. After all, whatever consequences he suffered were inflicted for the sake of her goals, her plan, her request. ]

( He can accept her statement for what it is and still dislike it for its existence all the same, which he does, with bells on. Although he doesn't necessarily project concrete thoughts with words attached toward her, he lets the sour taste of his foul mood flood her perceptions as a method of childish retaliation, brought on by exhaustion and the tasks she has assigned to him. The longer he sits on the floor, the more uncomfortable he grows, and the more uncomfortable he grows, the surlier he becomes.

He knows that he could actually stand and act like an actual human being in approaching the cockpit or at least stop attempting to avoid the Wookie, but both of those thoughts are about as appealing as coupling with a rancor, so Kylo neglects to entertain them for long. )

Fine. ( He answers her regardless of the internal, mild tantrum that he is projecting toward her, annoyed with her and with Chewbacca and with himself and with Snoke and anyone else whose name pops into his head. The thought of navigating through Roche and being one step closer to their destination tempers the flare of irritation, though, so he tries to focus on that in an effort to be more useful to her in the interest of not distracting her with his persisting foul mood so that she doesn't crash them into an asteroid. ) What's the estimated time remaining between Roche and Hapes?

( Kylo unfolds himself from the floor and stands, bones and muscles popping as he does. Deliberate steps carry him from the corner of the room he has holed up in over to the curved sofa, which is just as stiff and uncomfortable as he remembers it being from childhood. When he sits on it, it does little to buffer the trembling of the ship around him, and he listens and casts his senses out for the moment that Rey kills the hyperdrive and drops them into manual control. Moving this quickly, he can't be of as much use as he would like to be in feeling out First Order lackeys or Knights through the Force, and even though Rey hasn't indicated that searching for them is something he should be doing, Kylo gets the impression all the same. He can't fix the ship or stand to be in the cockpit long enough to attempt to fly it, but he can alert them if something is about to get the drop on them.

Even if he can't pinpoint a specific location or trace signature when they're crossing so much space in such a compressed amount of time, Kylo tries to listen to his own intuitions and tap into his own perceptions of the Force as they hurtle through hyperspace. The prevalence of a bad feeling is hard to rely on as a substantial intuition, though, as he hasn't stopped having a bad feeling about the state of things since he was five. )

That depends on how quickly I lose whoever's followed us through hyperspace.

[ She gives him the honest answer first, though she isn't sure that it's at all likely to defang him to have ambiguity to chew over while she settles herself into the pilot's seat. As hard as she tries to cast a net of calm out through the tendrils of the Force that persist through this corner of the universe, she finds she cannot see as far forward as she'd like to, the black of interminable dread setting in without informing her if it is or isn't well-anchored in reality versus paranoia.

As reticent as she remains to use Jakku as her reference point, Rey finds herself doing it once again when she reaches back to recall that she had never had to deal with anyone so intractable as Kylo Ren when she was in her isolation there. In fact, dealing with people at all was mostly optional, aside from the utterly repulsive slime of a lifeform, Unkar Plutt, who all but ruled Niima Outpost with his relative wealth. She now knew that in the grand scheme of the galaxy, he was but a poor trader and a salvager himself, but on Jakku, he was tantamount to royalty, and still Kylo seemed often more entitled in his behavior by comparison.

She flexed her hands on the yoke and, with Chewie, dropped the ship out of hyperspace, welcoming the swath of black out the view screen as it replaced the streaking stars. The ship lurched, the metal paneling on the outside rattling while the bones that kept it from collapsing under the pressure of hyperspace sighed with age. The whole ship had been stripped down and reconstructed with spare parts at least twice over since Han first acquired her, but the skeleton was still original, and more than thirty years of service wore on it in ways that led the Dejarik board to flicker ominously. ]

It should only take an hour to navigate Roche and be on our way. Three more and we'll be touching down on Hapes. Best case scenario.

[ Rey knew not to anticipate best case scenario as true. Ever. In the time since she met BB-8, she could not truly count any events as best case, for even the more fortuitous outcomes were reached only after hitting rock bottom, often courtesy of Kylo.

Sure enough, though the ships were still too far out to be visible, scanners picked up on nearby vessels that were likely First Order ships approaching after dropping out of hyperspace some lightyears back, pursuing with haste only because the TIE fighters possessed superior speed capabilities beside a simple freighter. Rey cursed and pushed the wheezing engines to guide her more quickly towards the minefield of asteroids. ]

( What begins as a viable option still resting somewhat on skepticism's shoulders bottoms out in a full fledged impression of pursuit. Initially, Kylo is more than willing to bet credits on the existence of his pervasive feeling of wrongness as a result of the groaning and lurching of the ship's integrity and second and third generation mechanical successes and failures. For all Rey's posturing about the ship being good and solid - despite a mound of evidence to suggest the contrary - the Millennium Falcon itself seems to shudder violently in retaliation as Rey and Chewbacca coax it out of hyerspace. One of the lights above the control terminal across from him actually flickers upon deceleration, goes out for a moment, and then blooms back into artificial, yellow light.

Once they disengage the hyperdrive, Kylo can no longer blame the ship itself and its many structural problems for the surge of intuition that rises in him. It fuses with Rey's voice in his head and sits squarely on his shoulders, breathing dark breath and thinking heavy thoughts. He casts his senses out, beyond the skeleton of Han Solo's freighter and out across the cold vacuum of space. The galaxy is huge, but Kylo can feel the blips in the radar signifying First Order fighters like spreading his hand over a black cloth peppered with broken glass. He isn't dissatisfied, in a way, recognizing the achievement inherent in the goal that they had set out in hoping to draw the fleet away, but he can't deny the bitter tang of contempt and conflict that sours his tongue at the notion of being tailed by pilots who operate under First Order command. His command, in a roundabout sense.

Two days ago, he could have given the order for them to desist, could have given the order for them to fire, take prisoners, take no prisoners. Now he is a command on the other end of that order, a target to be sought out by the twin cannons that will hurtle after them as they break for the Roche asteroids. In the main hold, where no one can see, Kylo scrubs his hands through his hair and stands, reaching out in every direction in an attempt to get an estimate. He feels Rey on the other end of their connection, and speaks before she has a chance to tell him what's going on. )

How many follow? How far to Roche?

( If they can make it to Roche before First Order TIE fighters have a chance to track them and hone in on their exact location, then they have a better chance of escaping the area without engaging in any sort of dogfight. Rey has escaped from the updated models in the past, but with the advancement of a significant chunk of the fleet behind their pursuit, Kylo has little interest in drawing the confrontation out. This is precisely why he prefers fighting on the ground, with a saber, with the Force. Every scar earned and injury scored is an opportunity for growth, and despite its warbled construction, his lightsaber is still less likely to fall apart under his hands than the Falcon is. )

[ His questions don't pester her quite as much as the insistent nagging of intrusion that she feels pressing into her awareness, impatient and neurotic. Rey doesn't waste energy rebuffing him, knowing that it would be a vain effort in her current condition and draw her focus away from shaking the TIE fighters in the rapidly condensing field of asteroids that they descend into.

Still, she doesn't offer him an answer immediately, in part due to spite but in part due to genuine distraction. The ship heaves to the side in a turn too quick and sharp for a freighter of the Falcon's size, navigating around a cluster of space rocks as they edge nearer to Roche. The edges of the system are a mostly harmless belt of debris and rock, making it a poor navigational route to begin with, but none of the airspace is so bad as the dense center, where even TIE fighters would find the fit tight—assuming Rey could keep them spaceworthy in that minefield in the Falcon.

Cargo slides with a sharp sound of grating metal in time with the turn. Only then does Rey answer him. ] You're not helping. [ The ship lurches upward very suddenly to pop over a small cluster of asteroids beat into powder by some of its neighboring rocks, giving everyone onboard the acute sensation of weightlessness for a moment, like a theme park ride. ] We're an hour from the primary colonized asteroids. I should be able to lose them long before that in here, but not if you insist on pestering me.

[ Green lasers collided with asteroids just above their starboard flank, and Rey banked to avoid the explosive debris, narrowly avoiding a necessary roll of the freighter. A wookiee yowl of challenge echoed through the metal hallways and the turrets whipped around to fix on the TIE fighters while Chewie began to hone in to pick them off. ]

( It would be more practical and prudent to stay seated, to strap himself down to the sofa or the game board with no small amount of cables and the Force in an effort to stop himself from being flung bodily across the ship as Rey throws the Falcon into a maneuver that makes the damn thing groan. Kylo, of course, does not do this, taking her silence on the other end of their open channel as an indication that he is going to get no answer in light of recent events. So he gets up, spending a long moment hanging in the doorway between corridor and main hold before pressing his palm hard into the wall and leaning with and against the gravity of the ship as Rey tries to outmaneuver First Order fighters and probably the whole damn navy at once.

He is tossed backward a few steps in his pursuit as Rey throws the freighter into an upside-down dive, fingernails scrabbling against the paneling and catching himself by rocking backward on his heels and using the Force to keep him upright. His stomach rolls and then drops before settling again, and he uses the brief inertia of equilibrium and the innate ability to determine up from down to swing forward and barrel down the corridor to the cockpit with the stride of someone with a mind made up.

Regardless, he isn't prepared for the physical lurch that setting foot in the cockpit hits him with, bombarded with the back of the Wookie's head and the old seat that Han Solo once sat him in as he looked out over the lush green forestry of Yavin IV. It smells like sweat and field rations in the box that houses the pilot and co-pilot seats, as well as the two chairs that functionally serve as passenger seats. Kylo curls his fingers into the metal that separates the safety and seclusion of the corridor from the graveyard of the cockpit and then trades the sensation of metal scraping underneath his nails for the sensation of old leather and lumpy cushioning scraping underneath his nails as he steps inside, not saying a word, barely breathing, staring at the back of Chewbacca's head and trying to remain as invisible as possible.

It won't work, of course: he's a dark blot in the wake of their flurry of movement. Rather than be discovered out of the corner of Rey's eye or by the merit of Chewbacca's sense of smell - which Kylo is sure picked him up the moment he stepped out of the hold - he announces his presence in a fashion not atypical for him, plowing right in with heavy footfalls and an obnoxiously entitled demeanor. He does not say, you fly this thing like you're trying to kill everyone on board at the last minute and chooses instead to go with something a little more diplomatic, in the interest of retaining his arms, if the brief look that Chewbacca levels him with over one hairy shoulder is anything to go by. )

No sign of the Finalizer? ( It's a rhetorical question and aimed more at the co-pilot than at Rey, who he can recognize should be focused on not slamming them into the side of a rock as opposed to indulging his questions. Kylo tries to cast out in an attempt to find Hux's little cloud of red smog in order to answer his own question but draws a blank, which could be good or bad, depending on who it is that manages to tail them. ) The Star Destroyers may not have been able to follow immediately, but they'll arrive once the TIE fighters are able to relay the intel.

( It isn't a thinly veiled criticism, just a fact. He doesn't want to admit it, but hiding in Roche may not have been the worst idea anyone has had today. )

[ By no accident, the howl that Chewbacca answers with—an abrupt confirmation that the Finalizer is nowhere to be found, that only TIE fighters have caught up to them—sounds a great deal like a hissed accusation. It stabs itself between Kylo’s ribs and names him a traitor, for while Rey can look past his crime for the betterment of the galaxy, she did not owe a life debt to the man he’d cut down, did not lose her raison d’être in Han Solo’s murder.

For that reason, Rey passes no comment on the interaction, instead keeping her focus thrown rigidly ahead out the front window while she bites down on the inside of her lip and sheets of sweat pour down the sides of her face. The urgent grasping movements she makes to jerk the freighter through the narrow, hairpin-wide gaps of the asteroids to jostle the faster, more agile TIE fighters by mere warrant of their pilots being less skilled take the same toll on her that they take on the ship, and Han Solo’s ghost may as well have his hand settled on her shoulder for all the wild, unconscionable risks she takes in trying to shake them.

For Chewbacca, a wild flurry of fireworks emitting from the gunner position is a more familiar setting, and though Rey cautions him in a hush that laser canisters aren’t free, and he of all people should know that with how many he’s smuggled, the wookiee insists on laying suppressive fire like a blanket over the pursuing fighters. He takes one of them down, and it explodes into sparks against the side of a ferric asteroid; only then does he half-turn to Kylo and explain in a low, relenting grumble that they dropped out of hyperspace too close to the asteroid belt for the Star Destroyers to pursue. It was the kind of insanity that left no question why Chewie settled himself into the co-pilot seat beside Rey, the kind befitting his best friend, but that, Chewbacca left unsaid. ]

If you’re going to criticize my flight paths, the least you could do is leave until I’m not sitting right beside you. [ Rey spits it out of the corner of her mouth, too distracted by her efforts to keep them alive in this firefight to do anything but snap back at them. ] You’ll be grateful when none of us are dead.

( Kylo doesn't miss the stab of allegation that rumbles from the Wookie's chest and spikes something low and hot and painful in the pit of his stomach, fanning out like wildfire underneath the shadow of the bowcaster injury that he had taken to the flank, rapidly turning to a twisted mound of scar tissue under the pale, freckled skin still shiny and red with remembered agony. He has no ground to stand on, literally and figuratively, so rather than risking both Chewbacca and Rey ganging up on him in a skirmish that would likely end with the cockpit blown clean off the Falcon's nose, he keeps his mouth shut for once and sits down in the passenger chair directly behind Rey. He thinks that he might be faster than Rey should she take it upon herself to turn on him and keeping Chewbacca at a careful distance more or less seems par for the course, as does keeping one eye on him at all times.

Her flying gets his blood pumping and his adrenaline up, as much as it makes his stomach flop over and his intestines crawl into his throat. He's pleased that Hux has not followed them as much as he is disappointed and disturbed at the fact. For as much as he would like a chance to wipe any vestiges of smug smiles and the arrogant weight in the general's gaze as it scans space beyond the viewport of the Finalizer's bridge as his pilots attempt to shoot them down from retreat, he can't deny that it's beneficial for the Resurgent-class destroyer to be lagging behind. Of course, it also opens up the possibility that Hux has not been discharged by Snoke's order to pursue as he pleases, which opens up another myriad of avenues of potential problems for them to encounter further down the road.

It also opens up the possibility that some of his Knights have already been dispatched following his capture and betrayal on Corellia, that they are spinning into a trap the harder Rey pushes them into Roche space, but that possibility does not sit well with him, knowing that neither he nor his Knights have time or inclination for aerial dogfights or other branches of First Order business unless their goals directly coincide. His capture, Rey's capture, they coincide with the Knights' ambitions well enough, but not enough to be part of the envoy that tails them now. More than that, none of the Knights would cram themselves into TIE fighters when better shuttles are available for their use.

By this estimation, Kylo allows his fingers to slacken somewhat where he curls them into the seat of the chair he tries not to get thrown out of. Rey sends the ship into a roll as Chewbacca barks at him out of the corner of his mouth, and Kylo tries not to look too taken aback at being addressed a second time by a creature he knows operates with the implicit understanding that Kylo Ren is a grain of sand who should be crushed under the weight of all that he has done and Chewbacca's grief and anger alone. Not for the first time and he knows not for the last, Kylo is reminded of the shot that tore straight through skin and muscle and burned a hole that oozed dark red blood into the snow.

It was a wide shot. )

Exactly none of us have to be dead in order for us to be grateful in the first place. ( His tone makes no guarantees, and he knows that he shouldn't bait her when she's sweating buckets over the controls. From this vantage point, Kylo can see the way her hair sticks to the back of her neck in wisps that coil like loaded springs. Perspiration soaks through the upper-middle of her tunic despite the chill of space, and he makes an active point to divert his attention out the front of the viewport and casts his senses out into the bleak maw of Roche space. Bigger asteroids begin blotting out the stars, the glowing yellow sun, Roche itself, obscured. A sharp pull tugs his attention to the starboard side, and he opens his mouth before he actively realizes what he's doing. ) One - no, two, coming up starboard.

[ Reluctantly, Rey exchanges a look with Chewbacca that signals her acknowledgment of Kylo's assistance, one that speaks of her surprise at the presence of the TIE fighters and the usefulness of Kylo's own Force-based sensory radar in the minefield of magnetic interference that makes up the Roche cluster. She responds accordingly and promptly, pushing hard on the stick to bank hard right and cut them off, collapsing into a group of mid-sized asteroids that threaten and loom, periodically blotting out the light that filters through the vacuum of space entirely and just as periodically preventing Chewbacca's gunner station from making any headway shaking these ships.

An unexpectedly large asteroid appears in front of them almost instantaneously as she hurdles over another, and Rey cuts into a starboard roll to avoid it. The two TIE fighters of which Kylo had warned them double back to regroup with another three, but one of them jags against the same asteroid Rey had narrowly avoided, and it occurs to her then that the asteroids themselves are presently their best weapon against pursuit.

She dives into the thick of them with that in mind.

The Falcon wheezes at its joints, too old for the way she zips in and out of the belt of space rock, but she knows it better than any other ship, and the yoke feels like an extension of her arm. She doesn't realize that she's stopped relying on the instrumentation in front of her until it starts to blare a proximity warning, red lighting up across the instrument panel. Dropping her gaze, she searches out the warnings and groans. Ahead of them, a cluster of asteroids drift in their pattern to a near-interlocking position, blocking their flight path, and the Falcon's systems screeched with the impossibility of it.

Diving into an area with smaller, more loosely packed asteroids would likely save the ship the irreparable damage of a collision, but it would allow the TIE fighters hot on their heels to overtake them. A voice echoed in the back of her mind—Luke, while he was training her on Yaga Minor, carrying her out by shuttle into the dark of the woodlands and telling her that the Force would guide her back, if she let it. Senses and tracking, none of it could compare to the tug of the Force, and she'd followed that very pull to Luke where he waited for her, leagues from the Resistance base.

Adjusting her grip on the yoke, Rey quietly steadies herself and hopes the same success can be granted to them by the Force now: she does not believe its will is to see them scattered on the side of an asteroid. So Rey keeps the course, barreling forward. ]

Hold on. [ She warns the others in the cockpit, pushes the yoke, and goes hard at the nearest asteroid, carrying with her the heavy winds of the Force and feeling them as they crash against the solid wall of asteroids. Time and distance tick down, hurtling them towards an impending collision until with seconds remaining, the Force feels its way through, and Rey swerves. She rolled the Falcon, top down, and pulled heard to find her way between the whisper of a passage between the asteroids, ferrous rock clanging against the starboard shields with a terrible internal grinding sound, but that sound puts up no contest against the flashbang of the TIE fighters that slam full-speed into the same asteroid that the Falcon hugged.

Only then does Rey breathe, settling back into her seat and tipping her head back. Quietly, red blips fade from the radar. Three at once, then another, and another. Reaching one hand out, she claps it over Chewie's furred paw, squeezing with all the relief of survival, then she lolls her head to the side and glances back at Kylo to ask, ] Can you feel any others? I don't know about you, but I'd like to get out of here.

( He is reminded, somewhat bitterly, of both his father and his uncle in every risk that Rey takes and every bank that she pushes the Falcon into. And - distantly, reverently - of his grandfather. Best pilot in the galaxy in his day. The same could be said of all of them, though less of him, given the location of his own interests. Kylo has to admit that Rey's style leaves both something to be desired for the state of his insides as they splatter against the bones and muscles and miles of skin designed to keep internal organs from getting on the outside as well as something to be admired. He's impressed, in a way, though more frustrated with the fact that he has to stretch a leg out and brace it against the floor and then the chair opposite to keep from sprawling, long-limbed, in the center aisle, and feels further vindicated in his choice to seek her out as an ally rather than something to be destroyed.

Never mind the circumstances, the details of their thrown together truce shaky at best when held up against the bright flame of his previous intentions.

Chewbacca, he knows from stories and legends that he was told as a child - inflated by the Wookie himself and then downplayed by Han Solo - holds his own in a dogfight, which leaves Kylo to pick up the slack where he can. It's not a responsibility that he's used to, and he's uncomfortable enough with the submissive position he is backed into to seriously doubt the validity of his decision to board the ship at all, but he knows inherently that this is childish posturing, a boy unused to not getting his way.

Still, he casts out with the Force in his own right, determined to avoid the scrape of TIE fighter cannon discharge damaging the ship and sending them careening into the asteroid belt in the way that Rey tricks and deceives the fighters into bright bursts of light against rocky surfaces. An interesting choice, to be certain, but there's no accounting for dividing lines when life or death is on the line in such a way, and philosophy has no place in these stars. At the ends of his outstretched fingers, Kylo can feel the massive structures orbiting the Roche star like shapes on a child's mobile, suspended in space, bustling with life on the larger rocks that rise up ahead of them like planets in their own right. Rey hurtles toward one, barks a command out of the corner of her mouth, accent rough and aggressive as she urges the Falcon down and down and down, rockface rising to meet them, swimming into claustrophobic sight through the viewport until -

She pulls up, sends them shivering through asteroids as if passing by them in hair's breadth as a jumble of TIE fighters fail to make the same maneuver and smash into the rock in a tangle of explosive gas and space junk. He's hit with a strange sensation of vertigo, but Kylo recognizes that the breath he holds has nothing to do with anticipation of their survival or adrenaline raised as a result of Rey's choice in avoidance tactics and everything to do with how much of himself he's pouring into determining whether or not they have been followed, by a Knight or TIE fighter. Or something worse. In a place where anyone else might expect to find panic or relief or stress given Rey's choice of piloting technique, Kylo finds the slightly rippled surface of a calm lake.

The Force. Her mastery of it here and now. Her confidence despite extreme odds. The echo of it through the connection that continues to shrink and expand between them. He exhales. )

No. ( Gloved hands push the hair back from his face where it has fallen forward with the stress of their movements. It sticks up slightly with static electricity. ) You're an insane person. ( There's little malice in his tone, as if he's simply stating a fact, but in the plainness of his response exists the truth behind his lie: he's quite impressed with her, the same way that he had been on Starkiller despite that impression being dwarfed by his consuming, bruising anger. He leans back into the chair, debating whether or not he should retreat back into the objective space found in the main hold. ) Get us the hell out of here before more of them show up.

( Somewhere in the afterlife, Han Solo is probably proud. Of someone, at last. )

[ This far into the cluster, they have to rely on manual piloting for a while, evading the persistent barrage of asteroids that aimlessly float in a cloud around them, as if some giant creature had kicked up dust a thousand years ago and it hadn't quite settled. But there is ease in how Rey takes up the yoke now, assurance against their pursuit, and the great expanse of space out the front window puts her at ease, a cold calming presence to war with the inferno of conflict and muddy gray area that occupies the seat behind her.

The arrow of his assessment strikes her, but shatters on impact, falling away without ever penetrating the wall of relief she builds around herself. She doesn't need to remind him that this insane person just saved his skin; she's too busy being grateful that she and Chewie had managed to save their own to properly lord it over Kylo Ren, and she doesn't want his gratitude. She just wants to collapse onto her bunk and curl into a ball and pretend the world outside doesn't exist for a few hours.

Twenty minutes bring them out of the maze of Roche's asteroid field, and Rey works with Chewie to set the hyperdrive for the central planet of the Hapes cluster before she ever rises from the seat in the cockpit. Chewie remains, though it's impossible to say if he does because he's firmly at home in the seat or simply because he doesn't want to turn around and engage Kylo.

Rey, in a study of contrasts, claps a hand on Kylo's shoulder as she moves past him, through the corridors of the ship and into the main hold. There, she begins to sift through cargo containers for vacuum-sealed food. It's not terrible—better than the portions she'd survived off of (which is a generous estimation of the word survived) on Jakku, and it keeps her busy in the hours that separate them from Hapes. ]

( Kylo bristles under the weight of her hand on his shoulder, a thin line of tension running from the back of his neck and down into his spine. He isn't expecting it and is looking for it even less, so it's a welcome relief when Rey brushes by him and leads herself into the main corridor in the winding layout of the Falcon's internal structure. For all his discomfort, for the aggrieved chasm that stretches between them, rife with uncomfortable silence filled with too much context to pick through without the proper tools and necessary distance, Kylo does not immediately follow Rey out of the cockpit and instead spends one moment too long catty-corner and behind her co-pilot, staring at the pilot's seat as if expecting a ghost to turn around and say to him, You know, when I was your age, I pulled this baby through a couple tight corners myself.

He leaves, striding long and heavy and purposeful into the corridor, with one backward glance out the viewport and no word at all to Chewbacca, though he expects that the Wookiee will mind less than he would if Kylo had remained in his personal space. Rey is in the main hold - he can hear her banging around in that direction without having to search her out remotely - and seeing as she's the only one on board out of the three of them who isn't overly confused about his presence on the ship, he takes it upon himself to follow her in there. Physical proximity has no effect on the bone-deep exhaustion that he feels rolling off of her in waves - he'd be able to sense, note, and catalog it from any part of the ship at this point, it's staring him so proudly in the face through the link they have managed to cultivate - but seeing it etched plainly into the hollows underneath her eyes makes it that much more realized. )

What are you doing? ( Is a terrible way to strike up a conversation when it's plainly obvious what she's doing, but Kylo finds himself caring less and less about coming off as imposing when they're on more solid footing, now that he's getting used to her hanging around in his head and in his peripheral and, sometimes, in his direct line of sight. It's the latter of those options in play when he stalks across the main hold, boots clunking heavily against the floor, to snatch the rations from the tight clutch of her hand. ) You look like you're about to drop dead.

Edited (literally just realized i've been spelling wookiee wrong for like 10 years) 2016-02-25 17:52 (UTC)

[ His voice carries through the hold in a way that makes it impossible to ignore the way it crashes against the rocky shore of her back. Rey takes a moment to rally herself for the interaction, sure from his flat and somehow persistently critical tone that she won't enjoy it, but even that is a moment too long, and he's already stolen her food. Instinct drives Rey to swipe at him and grab it back with all the force of her not inconsiderable strength, shoving him back with one well-placed palm at his center of gravity. ]

Get off! [ She barks, teeth bared with the sharp demand like a cornered animal. Years suffered in the barren wasteland of Jakku made her defensive of meals, and it was impossible for one who'd spent so much formative time scrounging for food, on the brink of starvation, to really accept in her bones that she didn't have to worry about where her next meal wold come from. Realizing with some small shame the severity of her reaction, she schools calm into the tension of her jaw, though she still holds the chalky ration bar to her ribs with all the lingering possessiveness.

The wariness of her gaze is only exacerbated when she realizes what he'd said to her while he was taking it, escalating to suspicion in the way her eyes narrow. ] That's what I'm trying to fix.

[ It's not the first time she's gone so long without sleep; at least this time, she'd had food while she waited for Kylo to wake up in his makeshift cell. She could remember drifting in and out of consciousness for a lack of both while she was working on that ship she'd worked on with Devi and Strunk. Fleetingly, perhaps in demonstration of her exhaustion, she wondered where they were now—if they were safe and happy as they'd dreamed they'd be once they left Jakku, or if the First Order had simply scooped them up a few outposts down. ]

( Kylo stumbles back under the abruptness of her assault. Hardly far enough away to give the impression of actually being moved by her inferior physical strength but enough for the cloud of his expression to be visible to her. For a moment, he looks primed for a fight, meeting violence with violence and expounding upon the restless, relentless energy that he has had since boarding the ship, a caged animal. But it doesn't persist. He lets it leak out of him as if through a pinhole, tension in his shoulders visibly draining until the moment he realizes that she's the one enforcing it, letting it fill and permeate the main hold.

Shoulders raise and tighten again, as if operating under a childish urge to simply defy her, but he doesn't lash out. Instead, Kylo crosses his arms, eyes skipping from the hostility that haunts her gaze to the desperate way in which she holds the ration bar close to her body. She's fed and lean but there's a hunger that still lingers around the corners of her mouth and eyes, in the hollows of her cheeks, drawn sharp by the drought of exhaustion. It's a spine forged and made steel by decades of hunger and loneliness, a world he has glimpsed in her mind before, cold desert starlight and sand in every crevice, in water and portion packs of stale bread. Kylo stares at her for a moment, brown eyes meeting hazel across the threshold, and something in him relaxes. )

You aren't going to fix it on dried out rations and letting your mind wander. You should actually sleep. ( Wandering is betrayal enough in its own right. Kylo can remember sitting upright and trying not to fall asleep while meditating by thinking in images to things that had already happened, memories and imagined realities and words that he would have said to his parents when they told him they were going off-world without him again, intricate ploys to rewrite the past. Skywalker always caught him looking and always reprimanded him for it, and he recognizes that slide into nostalgia - if it could be called that - in Rey's own head, two names standing out as if she's blared them from a loudspeaker. Devi and Strunk. He regards her curiously, leaning back against a bulkhead. ) Who are they?

None of your business. [ She can't close her mind off from him properly, not like this, but she does darken the shades of it to give the distinct telepathic impression that he is not welcome there. Strunk and Devi are the tack of sweat on her brow, drenching through the linen of her back, the fresh surge of excitement at her first run through a refresher in too long—even if the ship was bone dry. But mostly, they're one more pair of people gone. She breaks off a piece of the dried nutrient bar and stuffs it between her teeth, chewing it against her cheek and stuffing the rest back into the cabinet, as if it might make her look less reactive, less flustered. ]

I'll sleep when we reach Hapes.

[ Until they see the journey through, get the ship into the hands of those who can begin its repairs, she doesn't feel as though she has permission to sleep. The job isn't done yet, and Kylo could feasibly hijack the whole thing and chance their course, carry them straight into the arms of the First Order. She realizes that such paranoia is a child of her weariness a moment later, but she doesn't scrub it from her mind entirely for she knows the reason General Organa affirmed this mission in the first place was not her blind faith in her son, but her understanding that Rey would run supervision in the less restrictive environment of the Falcon. It went without saying that it was the same reason Luke allowed it. ]

( Kylo watches her shove the nutrient bar down her throat, tearing at it with bright, flashing teeth and chewing it in swell of one cheek, mouth halfway open. He feels his lip curl a little in retaliation, one eyebrow descending to look at her with a perplexed expression as she turns and puts the rest of it back where she got it in the first place. Uncivilized. Barbaric. Rough and unpolished around the edges. Jakku bleeds into her in overarching crescendos and progressions from one measure to the next but also blooms unexpectedly in small ways that might be easy to miss were he not paying such close attention.

It doesn't make him feel sorry for her, not precisely, but it does continue to cultivate the little seed of understanding that has sprouted as a result of their prolonged exposure to one another. What it will grow into, he can't be certain, but he makes a show of hiding it away under the scowl that settles back into position over his dark features. )

Have it your way. ( Kylo begins pulling his gloves off, stuffing them into his back pocket and stretching his fingers out to examine the burns. No worse for wear, but inflamed and bright red. His mouth presses into a thin line and he brushes by her to open the cabinet that she had just closed, fishing out her ration bar and tossing it to her over his shoulder. ) If you aren't going to sleep then you might as well finish it.

( He can't begrudge her the desire to keep one eye trained on him at all times, whether the eye is one of her actual, physical eyes or the way in which she can see and sense what he's doing through the Force. Were their positions reversed, he would do the same. He would probably restrain her in some way. Rey's exhaustion does little to help his cause, though, and the way that Kylo sees it, if they're attacked as soon as they touch down on Hapes, she will be of little value to him and even less assistance if she's not operating at full capacity. But he can't knock her out the way he had on Takodana, and his options run dry save for frogmarching her back into her bunk and glowering at her until she passes out from boredom, and he's not about to sacrifice the dignity he has left in order for that to be an actual, viable possibility.

It's better to find an alternative way of passing the time, and he considers her lightsaber strapped to her belt and his where it lays flat against his hip. First, though, his hands. )

Is there some semblance of first aid on this ship?

[ Rey's eyes fall to the burns, angry welts slashed across his palms with black lines coursing through where leather melted into skin. It's a war wound, grown worse for being untreated, but she doesn't get the chance to feel the flash of guilt before he's brushing past her to return the ration bar to her hands in a gesture that is paradoxically defensive and helpful.

The furrow of her brow accuses it of that very thing, but it doesn't hold, lost to the turn of her head as she crouches to rifle through crates. It's here somewhere, she's sure, but Unkar Plutt had made a mess of the ship that Han Solo had never been able to properly remedy before his death, and she's never sure if she should be considering where to find key components from the mindset of a hoarder like Plutt or a smuggler like Han. She stuffs the ration bar between her teeth while she searches, an excuse to keep quiet on the subject of his interrogation as much as on his injury, but she finds the kit readily enough and slides its tin casing over the floor to him. ]

It's old. [ She warns him one the bar is pulled from her mouth, still chewing while she speaks. ] But it should have whatever you need. [ For a moment, she wavers on starting that particular philosophical debate—she knows she doesn't have the energy for it, evidenced by the fact that she sits on one of the unopened crates in the hold—but she can't help herself. ] You know, Luke found records predating the empire in the temple where I found him. They indicated that the Jedi had found meditation an effective tool to channel the Force to even heal one's self.

( While she searches one of the many cargo canisters that fill the ship, Kylo rummages around in the cabinets that he has just produced the nutrient bar from, sticking his head into one and glancing the length of the others before bending to check the lower compartments. He doesn't turn around until he hears the scrape of tin over the metal of the floor and turns in time to catch the kit coming his way with the arch of his foot, trapping it between boot and flooring. Snatching it up, he sits down on one of the cargo canisters low enough to the ground that he can stack his knees at right angles but high enough that his feet don't crowd over themselves the way that they do sometimes, a poor bad habit maintained from youth as a result of being too tall to fit in most chairs. )

It'll do. ( Kylo makes short work of the lid, popping it open and fishing out some ointment specifically designed to treat burns and a few long strips of gauze with tape. There are bacta patches nestled inside, but he's loathe to use them in the event they really need them or in case they've expired. He's unraveling a long spool of yellowed gauze when Rey speaks again, and Kylo looks over at her from under the heavy weight of his brow, snorting without mirth. ) I thought we'd come to the conclusion that meditation was not my forte when training as a Jedi.

( There's latent resentment in his tone but no real bite or sting. An old wound, scar tissue made fresh when in the right company. Strangely, he feels he can talk openly with Rey in this way without the deep black well inside of him opening up the way that it does when he's spoken to Skywalker or Organa. He doesn't waste time contemplating why but elaborates somewhat further in ways that are more current and true to who he's become. )

Pain is instructive. ( Gauze unwinds, and before beginning to wrap his hands, Kylo smears a little of the blue-white ointment onto his skin and makes a face as the skin sizzles and burns. No wince twisted with pain, just a passing acknowledgment of something unpleasant. ) It shows you where there's a weakness and how it might be exploited. You either correct the weakness or suffer the resulting consequences.

[ In her current state, it is easy to patiently weather his dry answers and the explanations that come with them, however particularly convoluted those rationalizations may seem to her. Rey mulled his response over by chewing slowly while she considered, her furrowed brow the only glimpse of a reaction before she had the chance to fully examine it.

Ultimately, it was the same way in which she was taught by the harsh environment of Jakku, and she could not ignore the truth in that: to some extent, it must be effective, because she had found success since leaving the desert. The more scavengers attempted to rob her of her finds for their own sake, the more quickly she learned to defend herself against them, to conceal what she had, to scour for the higher quality parts and trick them into stripping her of the useless junk. She had adapted to survive just as much as luggabeast to the unforgiving conditions, and pain had instructed her to hide her weaknesses, to stop others from exploiting them.

On the other hand, had she listened to those cutthroat lessons instead of her gut, guided by the Force, she would have sold BB-8 for food, would have abandoned the mission to run away with Finn and pretend the war between the Dark Side and the Light was someone else's problem, would have dismissed the Resistance as a few radicals trapped in an old age unable to embrace the change and certainty promised by the First Order. Those hard-fought lessons of pain taught her only survival, at any cost, and to do the right thing has meant opening up her weaknesses, making herself vulnerable, and accepting that sometimes strength comes in weathering the pain or taking it on for someone else, not avoiding it. ]

Avoiding pain seems like a very narrow understanding of the world to me. It doesn't leave much room for anything in between. [ Not everything, she understands now, is strength or weakness, life or death. Some things just are. And more importantly, survival at any cost is not always the right answer; some things cannot be corrected or saved with pure strength. ]

( He works in silence for a few moments, watching her out of the corner of his eye with the sort of understanding that they will probably always regard one another in such a way. Sleep with one eye open or forgo sleep altogether in the interest of not waking up with a saber held to their own throat, tend to their wounds with their backs to the wall, mindful of what could come through the door. Kylo doesn't have the luxury of time to consider what could have been and what still might be given their situation - what might have been different had she listened to him on Starkiller and come with him; what might be different now, in the future, that he followed her down into the depths of his own head on Corellia - as Rey eventually picks up the thread of conversation much the same way Kylo picks up the long pieces of gauze once the ointment has stopped scorching his skin to begin wrapping his hands. )

It is a very narrow understanding of the world. ( His agreement with her statement is non-debatable, even if he hadn't spent years and years as a student under a teacher who believed wholeheartedly that pain as punishment and pain as tutelage were mutually exclusive concepts, even if her own perception of pain and what it means and what it's good for might ultimately be different from his own. He wraps and wraps, and when his right hand - dominant - is done, Kylo lets the gauze hang and scrounges around in the tin for a small pair of scissors, cutting the off-white piece without flourish and taping it down before moving onto his left hand. ) Pain is a teacher in its own right. To have never experienced it is to have never had any reason to grow or learn.

( The roll of gauze bounces off of his knee and pools on the ground at his feet, but Kylo calls it back to him without thinking, using the Force to lift it from the floor so that he can catch it in the palm of his hand and continue with the task at hand. They are both children of pain, though he would hazard a guess in saying that it has shaped them as two completely different people. His bloodline is a bloodline of pain, and without knowing decisively as to Rey's parentage, he would still feel confident in assuming that whoever they are or were, whatever they did or will have done, their lives were full of pain as well, if the hurts were great enough to leave a child behind to feast on sand and drink dirty water for the majority of her life were any indication. Ben Solo was born into a life that should have been free of pain, made to want for nothing, and the wound that he has carved and that has been carved in him in turn has done immeasurable hurt to an incalculable amount of people. The list continues to grow. )

It's inescapable, besides. ( He snips the final piece of gauze and tapes it down, flexing his fingers and stretching his hands to test the give of the material. They'll hold but he'll need to get a better, more permanent solution - maybe on Hapes - or risk some sort of infection. For now it will have to do. ) You either control it or let it control you, like anger.

( He's gotten marginally better at the latter though not entirely, as a result of the Supreme Leader's final stages of his training, ultimately incomplete but still instructive in their own right. Pain is something that he's always been able to use to his advantage, pushing him further, harder, longer, than he might be able to go otherwise, a burst of dark black blood in the bright white snow summoning a monster from the deep well of anger that ripples beneath his surface. Kylo has no place for any of it now, so despite the conversation, it doesn't manifest. Instead, he slips from the cargo container with the closed kit in his hands and shoves it across the floor back toward Rey as he settles down, cross-legged, and unclips his saber in the interest of taking it apart to clean off the mud and grime that has seeped into it as a result of the Corellian weather. )

I don't think that's true. [ To a degree, this is the most conversational Rey has been with him aside from the mockery of it she'd made by sharing BB-8's specs with him in the restraints of a torture rack he called the First Order's guest quarters. She chews it over some more before speaking on the subject further—she can't place her finger on the exact point of disagreement, but something in his assessment sits poorly with her. ]

I think anger is like pain, you're right about that, but not in such black and white terms. It's like any other feeling: it demands to be acknowledged and understood before you can find a way to let it go.

[ Inescapable. She taps her fingers on the wrapping of the ration bar and settles on it: that's the word that she can't swallow of his assessment. The absolutes that he uses to define his experiences—weak, not weak; controller or controlled—those, she can rationalize as the necessary adaptations to make sense of the world he's lived in for so long, but to call any emotion inescapable is to deny control over one's self, and she's grown in a world where she can control nothing but herself. ]

You're entitled to your opinion. ( He says it with no small amount of disagreement, though the fact that he doesn't see things the same way that she does has little to do with whether or not he means what he says. They mirror each other in a number of ways, so why should this perspective be any different? She had the opportunity to give in, to yield, to take what he was offering her in the snow on Starkiller, and could have buckled and relented under the punishing internal gaze of Snoke as he broke the line of defense surrounding them to call out to her on Corellia, and she hadn't. He might not agree with her perspective, but he can't fault her for it, and he certainly can see why she takes the position that she does. ) Although Skywalker might disagree with you on your approach to the black and white of it.

( Kylo doesn't mean any harm in the statement, and he's conscious enough of his position on Skywalker's teachings in the past and Rey's position as his uncle's apprentice to keep any disdain out of his tone, remaining neutral. It helps that he's experienced a bit of a culture shock over the last year or so, despite the twisted dark of further training under Snoke's hand. )

Do you remember - ( He pauses for a moment to work his lip between his teeth as he goes about the careful business of shifting the wire running the length of his poorly assembled blade. Mud is caked underneath and around, turning red a dull shade of patchy brown in places. He also wants to make sure that Skywalker had not done anything to tamper with its assembly or construction; temperamental as it already is, he can't run the risk of the blade exploding in his hand the next time he ignites it. ) - on Starkiller, when I - ( He grits his teeth and blows sharply into the hilt of the saber, a few flakes of dried mud drifting to the floor, then moves onto the plasma emitters. ) - struck the injury from the Wookiee's bowcaster? ( Kylo expects her not to have forgotten it, given how weird it probably seemed. The surge of power that he had felt as a result of those endorphins, that pain, buzzes like intoxication now. Still, it hadn't been enough. ) Anger and pain are useful in their own right. Sometimes it's worth it not to let it go, if you can manipulate it to serve you better, but there's a difference between manipulating it and using it and letting it manipulate and use you.

( Something metal pops under his attention, and he presses his mouth into a thin line. It's a heavy statement to fill such a small compartment, and he isn't sure whether or not it's a result of what he's learned through training in the last year or through other avenues, fresh, gaping wounds. She is right, in a way: none of it is really so black and white. But he thinks that he has a right to use the word inescapable as much as the next person, for all that pain and suffering and anger and hatred has taught him. They will always be there, waiting and lurking and ready to twist. )

If I ask you something, will you try not to get offended by it?

( Kylo isn't positive what provokes him to ask rather than just barrel right ahead, nor does it really readily occur to him what prompts his curiosity in the first place. Her tone is conversational, however, and after living in and out of one another's head for the better part of twenty-four hours, after what she'd done for him in severing Snoke's direct link to his mind with no guarantee that he would keep his word and not find some way to use it to his immediate advantage, Kylo supposes he owes her that much. He'd taken before and the response hadn't been favorable. He's not interested in history repeating itself now. )

more valuable skillsets for the real world

um it's super valuable ok you can write baby naming books and win staring contests

omg an untapped goldmine awaits!!!!!

now you're thinking like a murrican

drinking my miller light and eating my corn dogs

waves an american flag

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