5. Chapter 5

It’s something of a mystery how she manages to drop into sleep so quickly after the sort of day she’s had. The sound of Kylo Ren’s harsh breathing evens out and then dark water is closing over her head, warm and safe and comforting. They sit on a rock overlooking the islet’s bay, sky wide and dark and endless; a warm body propped against her shoulder. Silence and a peace so deep it’s a physical ache; a sense of divinity that brings a tear to her eye. Pressure on her shoulder guides her to a solid wall of rough spun cotton, embracing and surrounding her, the press of lips against her hair. She resists, the comfort, the care, it’s not quite real; not a replacement for what’s been lost.

What’s been lost.

The wall of strength and warmth holding her up wavers, becomes insubstantial and she falls through it with a silent cry that echoes in her head. A blinding light and she hits sand, shielding her eyes and scrambling to her feet. It burns bare toes, shifts treacherously. Turning, an AT-AT looms over her, not sand-scoured and half-rotted, but very much functional. The ground shudders and shakes, she has to scramble to avoid being ground into the sand under its incalculable weight. The transport fades to a blot on the horizon quickly, far too quickly, before she can properly debate the merits of trying to board the thing, see where it goes. Then it disappears and Rey is overcome with a sense of loss. Something’s not here that ought to be, something, someone unfathomably precious just… gone. Heart hammering in her mouth, she tries, will and body straining to feel through the Force where her lost person might be. The Force is gone. She is alone, and seized by panic, begins to dig in the sand at her feet. The odds are beyond impossible, the gesture futile, helpless, but she won’t, or possibly can’t stop, even as the harsh grit wears away the skin on her fingers, gums the bloody abrasions, trickles endlessly back into the hole as she scrapes and suffers under the crimson sun.

The moment stretches into infinity and then a shadow falls over her, a tall masked figure blotting out the sky.

Rey wakes with a crick in her neck and a tailbone sore from being pressed into a hard metal floor. It takes a moment for the dreamscape to fade, to place the smooth grey walls as her new prison instead of the old AT-AT where she had slept back on Jakku. Perhaps she should be surprised that she woke up at all, but apparently there’s something to what Kylo Ren said about keeping the door sealed. Muscles protest as she picks her head up from her arms and black cloth pools around her waist as she shifts. Heavy soft wool, it carries a faint, complex smell that she can’t place right away.

The air is cold where it hits her exposed skin and Rey clambers to her feet, shaking the covering out until it takes the apparent form of a long hooded robe. She glares at the material, weighing the emotional desire to discard it on principle versus the more practical desire not to be cold.

Practicality wins, it always does, so she lets the fabric hang over her shoulders and stands. The hem drags on the ground behind her, the sound is soft but still incredibly distracting. The water in the washbasin is bitter cold and has a strong chemical taste when she washes the feeling of sleep from her mouth. Feeling slightly more human, she casts around for the other occupant of the room and finds him sitting quietly in a corner on the floor, long limbs folded in the familiar lotus position Master Luke was, is so fond of when meditating.

Cautious, Rey curls up a safe distance away, or as safe as anything is right now, and regards her captor sharply. She had been distraught last night, though she thinks that’s excusable, and hadn’t really taken him in. Kylo Ren looks older, more haggard, less kemp, the scar from their first battle a faint stripe of off-colored skin slashed against his face.

“You’re staring.” His eyes are closed, breathing even, as calm and controlled as she’s ever seen him.

She scowls at him, a habit in the making for every time he opens his stupid mouth and doesn’t deign to respond. If Kylo Ren has a problem with being stared at, he can damn well put her on a ship back home.

A faint curl of smirk appears on his wide mouth, “Who said anything about a problem? It’s flattering, if anything.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Rey struggles not to rise to such obvious bait and then fails profoundly. “And stay out of my head!” Taking a deep breath, she tries to focus on the ebb and flow of the Force. It teases her, just on the edge of reach, and she can feel sweat break out on her forehead as she struggles to achieve that position of balance. The disdain and amusement she feels from the other mind in the room is a distraction which keeps her chained to the physical plane.

“How long do you think that’s going to work?” Kylo Ren sounds like he’s making casual conversation, but it’s her turn to feel the full weight of his attention settle on her even as her eyes shut him out.

“It has so far,” Rey grumbles, exhaling her frustration and opening her eyes in surrender to the current impossibility. It’s the scent on the blanket, she decides, it’s irritating, tickling her nose, distracting. Her skin prickles as she shoves the material off and scoots away, using the toe of her boot to nudge it closer to its owner. Better to be discomforted and free, as much as the word applies, than have some implied debt hanging over her head.

Dark eyes glint as Kylo Ren smooths the material over his knees. “And you’re going to continue relying on Master Snoke’s sweet nature to respect your privacy? It’s your choice, I suppose.”

She reciprocates his sneer with one of her own and lets her head thud back against the solid wall. Anger flutters in her chest like a caged bird, knocking against her ribs in pursuit of flight. “I suppose you think I should be begging you to teach me to keep him out?” Finally she finds the cool calm she’d been seeking, the strength to quiet her umbrage.

“An interesting suggestion,” Kylo Ren’s eyes crinkle and his thoughts flash, just for an instant, to an explicit mental picture of what that might entail.

Rey shies away from the image and tries not to let her discomfort manifest as a blush. “You’re disgusting.”

“Who’s peeking in whose head, now, hm?” If anything, he seems even more entertained. “You don’t have to try to fool me,” The levity slips away from his tone and once again they’re conversing, more or less, as equals. “I couldn’t teach you how to keep Lord Snoke out, anyway.”

Rey is pretty sure she’s projecting the rueful tone on his words and bats the thought away to some distant part of her mind where it won’t distract her, won’t build to false hopes. Kylo Ren is an obedient slave, she’s not doing a bit of good by pretending otherwise. “I wasn’t peeking,” She snaps, because that comes easily. “Keep your perverted thoughts to yourself.”

The amused disinterest is back; Kylo Ren stands in a smooth motion and slips the robe over his shoulders, smooths it over his hips. “I could say the same to you. Your dreams are distracting.”

Rey doesn’t have half his elegance as she scrambles to her feet after him, a rare flash of self-consciousness that she does her upmost to ignore. “My dreams aren’t perverted! How dare you? What gives you the right?” Her temper is up and there’s no going back now.

Kylo Ren is quiet as he draws his boots back on, dons his belt and stares at the black slit of his mask. “It was all going so well; I didn’t ask for you to come mess with my head.”

The loathing in his voice draws Rey up short, it washes through her veins like the ocean’s tides and for a dizzying moment she isn’t sure who she is, who she hates, whether it’s Kylo Ren or Snoke, herself or Master Luke. “You brought me here,” She knocks the mask out of his hand with a Force-heavy wave of her hand, stretching on her toes to get in his face.

“Because literally being on the other end of the galaxy wasn’t far enough to block you out!” Kylo Ren snarls, inches away from her face and, turning with a dancer’s grace, slams his fist into the duracrete wall. Pain tingles up and down her arm from the impact as he shakes his fist out. Something shift slightly in her awareness of him as he retrieves his mask from where it fell and seals it over his face, for an instant it seems as though the timbre of his voice behind the scrambler changes subtly. “Come. Breakfast is being served in the refectory.” The door opens at his casual wave and he strides out of the cell.

Rey rubs her thumb over the knuckles of her hand and trots to keep up, mulling over this new bit of insight. “Can I ask a question?”

“No,” Kylo Ren cuts her off curtly and gives the slightest nod to a small panel running along the high wall. “I am not here to satisfy your curiosity.”

It’s just enough of a cue that he’s not merely being an asshole, so Rey shuts her mouth and tries to put her curiosity to a better use than needling the knight of Ren. The complex is truly enormous, she decides, after what feels like miles of trotting after his sweeping black robe and there’s no indication that they’re getting closer to Kylo Ren’s destination. It’s faulty logic, she recognizes it, but it feels like that.

The Force around him twists, and Kylo Ren stops short, reaching back and halting her with a black-gloved hand against her sternum. “Lord Snoke wishes to see us now.”

Rey thinks she feels a brief pang at the sudden contact, but maybe that’s just her stomach talking. She’s gotten too used to regular meals. She knocks his hand away and steels herself. “What does he want with… us?” Her mind rebels against the conjoining of her and Kylo Ren as a unit; there is no possible interpretation for them being considered two parts of a single unit.

Kylo Ren grabs her again, strong fingers boring into her shoulders as he towers over her. “You have to stop asking that question.” The black and chrome mask descends until it fills her entire field of vision, distorted reflections of her wide eyes skittering like sand-striders. “If you cannot figure it out for yourself, you must wait for Lord Snoke to show you.” For a two long heartbeats he’s close enough that her breath fogs the cold metal and his fear nibbles on the edges of her awareness.

Then, just as abruptly, he’s gone, striding away so as to make his robe billow behind him. Annoyance flutters up, chasing the moment away. She wonders instead if he’s practiced that walk in front of a mirror, and jogs to catch up.

The obsidian door is shut when they arrive and Kylo Ren seems absolutely fine with that. Rey runs fingers through her slightly matted hair and tries to stretch her cramping calves. It’s not a question of being in bad shape, she tells herself, it’s that everything here is different, the mismatching height of the steps, the ramps that seem to lead up and down for no purpose what so ever; all seems engineered to be intentionally unpleasant. Perhaps it is. Then a rasp and the door opens with a faint breeze that makes her skin crawl, the fine hairs on her neck stand on end.

Kylo Ren straightens from where he leans against the carved stone wall. “It is time.”

The smartass response dies on her tongue; Rey can feel something singularly awful emanating from the entrance. Kylo Ren is just behind her shoulder, and this time he doesn’t propel her through the high arch of stone, simply stands close enough that she can feel the heat from his body through her thin tunic, that same odd spicy smell that clung to his robe this morning. He’s at the edge of her internal awareness, though the Force and the bond they share and damn him, he’s trying to be comforting. Maybe he feels the pressure, instinct screaming to stay away, too. Maybe he understands, or understood, once, and remembers.

She thinks that’s damned unlikely and gives up the thoughts, burying them under a glacier of stubborn pride. Rey steps into the cavern with her head held high, attention fixed on the alien figure sitting silently on the raised platform.

Snoke meets her eyes, and maybe she ought to, but she won’t look away, won’t bow before this fear that runs to ice in her veins. She is stronger than that, she thinks, she will persevere. The darkness he floods her mind with, the memory of twenty billion lives extinguished in five fingers of glistening red fire and the cool indifference that accompanies it sends her reeling, hands and knees scraping the stone as she stumbles.

“Do not test me, little child. I am not having a particularly pleasant day.” His voice is low and cold, the sound of tombstones grinding together. “Now come, show your respects.”

Rey is scrap metal caught between the revolting hesitation that is Kylo Ren and the despicable creature sitting on the throne before her. Scrambling to her feet, she smears blood on her trousers where she wipes her hands. Jelly legs shake as she approaches the white light before the throne, a fight that she loses against a physical manifestation of Snoke’s power. Her knees fold and pressure bows her forward until all she can see is the shadow of her body on the stone beneath her. Kylo Ren takes a knee beside her without any such melodrama and Rey breathes deeply. Everything can be fought, it’s just a question of learning how. She can learn that; she’s good at fighting.

“Kylo Ren,” Snoke’s words are quiet, tone light, almost conversational.

“Yes, my lord?” Kylo Ren turns his face up towards the alien, motionless like a viper, watching them.

“The girl is disgusting. She will obey the hygienic standards set for all members of the First Order while in my presence. Bring her here clean, next time, or do not bring her at all.”

“Yes, my lord,” Kylo Ren repeats himself like a holo-vid stuck looping and in her peripheral vision she can see him incline his head, obedient, respectful, a good pet for his master.

The insult holds no water with Rey; what does she care for this monster’s discomfort with her presence? It’s a familiar control mechanism, an appeal to her lackluster vanity, a lever twisting towards compliance. Certainly, the overseers have tried it on her before, trying to taunt her into selling things that weren’t to be sold for a little extra water ration, a little bit of scented soap. She knows how to refuse men like that; Snoke is no different. The pressure on the back of her neck abates and as much as she hates her response, Rey lifts her head as it yields so she can, if she strains her neck, look up at the sundered face of her antagonist. Her hands remain pinioned to the ground, despite all her exertions to move them.

If Snoke cares a bit for her helpless rage, he gives no outward indication. “I find myself curious about the bond between you two.” He intones after a moment of pensive quiet. “It spans an insurmountable distance, pierces through impenetrable defenses. And neither of you, little apprentices, understand the magnitude of your actions and use it for the basest exchange of physical desires. How utterly… human of you both.”

It does not sound the least bit complementary. Rey scowls up at the soliloquizing figure. “Maybe you’re just wrong. Maybe your defenses aren’t as good; maybe you’re not as strong as you think you are.”

Snoke sighs and a poisonous sort of joy floods her mind. It almost doesn’t matter when she’s flung face first back to the stone. Blood coats her teeth and she can’t think but for the savage superiority grinding against her will, a scrub brush scouring at her gritty disobedience. “Let me assure you, my little star, I am exactly that good.” Distantly, she’s aware of his intention as she fights, hands and feet scrambling against the stone for purchase, for the strength to push herself up. Only when she’s exhausted herself, perspiration trickling into her eyes, does he turn to the motionless black figure beside her. “Kylo Ren.”

“My lord,” The modulated voice is careful, controlled and Rey can feel the significant effort Kylo Ren expends to ignore her completely.

“Have you noticed any alterations in this connection of yours, since bringing the girl here?”

Kylo Ren is quiet for a moment, considering. “I do not believe so, Master.”

“You are not certain,” Snoke observes and Rey feels her perception of Kylo Ren warp as the master touches the apprentice’s mind, examining the thoughts unspoken. “I see. You feel change, yes, but desire not to ascribe causality to it? A mere change of circumstance, perhaps? Time will tell with that one, my Padawan, but we will continue to monitor it.” The giant lounges back in his chair, fingering the deep groove carved across his face in thought. “I believe, yes, let’s start small today. There is no rush. Open the bond you two share, Kylo Ren. Reach out to the girl, feel her, the Force in her body, the strength in her will. Speak aloud: how does it feel?”

Snoke’s voice rises and falls, a hypnotic melody and she feels the connection between them bloom, can feel Kylo Ren obey as he whispers against her mind, flows through her veins, twines through her awareness; diffusing, spreading.

“It feels,” The Knight of Ren pauses and then bows his head. “I am overwhelmed, my lord. Please, it is more than I can endure.”

“Remove your glove,” Snoke gives the command in that same velvet tone. “Place your hand on the girl. Is it the same thing, you feel?”

The glove seems to echo in Rey’s head as it drops beside her on the stone and she swallows tightly, unable to shy an inch as the masked figure stretches towards her, pale fingers brushing over her wrist. Through the contact, his pulse beats against her skin.

“No,” Kylo Ren forces the syllable out as though it costs him dearly. “It is different, now. I, I think, I can bear this.”

Snoke frowns, “Remove your hand and correct your uniform, Kylo Ren.” The place where skin meets skin burns, a spark of electricity that sends Kylo Ren reeling backward and the sensation pinning Rey down vanishes with the absence of his touch. “You are wrong, boy, grossly misled by your false overconfidence. You will atone for your arrogance in the training yards this afternoon. Bring the girl to me, before you go.”

Her body responds clumsily and Rey stands, wiping a red smear from her mouth. “I am nobody’s toy.” She feels, more than sees, Kylo Ren go for her hand and twists away from him. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

“We’ll see.” Snoke chuckles and the door behind them opens once more. “Goodbye, little starlight child. Don’t forget to wash behind your ears.”