11. Chapter 11

The floor is hard and cold under her cheek and the gritty itchy feeling under her skin is back. Something hard prods Rey back to consciousness and she reacts the same was she always has when something startles her awake. It feels like the floor is falling away from under her boots as her fingers touch air before the black stone cavern registers properly. She glances between the two other occupants: Snoke already distracted by something she can’t see and Kylo, well he seems even more scrambled than normal, swishing out of the room with barely a look in her direction. They’re dismissed, then?

It would seem so, neither male indicates otherwise as she stumbles out after the retreating black robe. How long has she been asleep? Her muscles are stiff, perhaps from lying hours on the stone floor of the temple, and she feels too hot and too cold and wrong, wrong, wrong. The sensation builds on the trek back until it’s a relief to be back in the room and able to give voice to her agitation. “What happened? What did you and your master do to me?” Releasing all the anxiety, all the toxicity, into that question helps, if only a little bit.

Kylo Ren glances up at her as he works the belt off slowly, and this time she meets his gaze steadily with no such compunction to help him. Rey decides she owes him nothing; let him struggle. Perhaps he senses something of this, for her gives her a faint humorless smirk, the slightest lift of an eyebrow, stretching out her discomfort like rubber hosing, before deigning to answer. “Lord Snoke was curious about how our connection worked in sleep.” He masters the belt and tosses it down, shakes himself free of the outer robe.

She can’t help but notice the freedom of movement that is returning to him and hates herself a little bit for that observation. “That doesn’t mean anything. What did you do to me?” She snarls, tenses as he sits back on the bed and eases out of his boots. Adding to the rapidly expanding list of things she hates is watching Kylo Ren undress, it gives him an unforgivable veneer of humanity. How can he be a monster from nightmares when she can see there’s a hole in his sock?

“I’m not talking to you until you calm down,” Kylo Ren grits out very, very carefully, as though he’s worried the words are going to twist on his tongue to something other than what he intends to say. “It would be unproductive.”

“You want me to calm down?” Rey laughs at that, the sheer insanity of such a statement, as though Kylo Ren has the right to demand anything of her, as though she could possibly give in to this one if she wanted to. “I think a little agitation is perfectly reasonable when I’m being held prisoner by two monsters who keep messing around with my brain!” There’s a savage sort of satisfaction in feeling the tiny flinch she feels through their connection, though she would have preferred to see it on his face. There’s a little voice in the back of her head protesting this; she ignores it. “Perhaps I should take it out of your head, Kylo Ren.”

He responds with rage at the suggestion, she can feel it licking along her nerves and fanning the heat of her ire, fingers of flame shooting into the night sky, a bonfire doused in accelerant. “If you think you can,” He taunts her, straightening where he sits and gripping the bed on either side of his thighs until his knuckles whiten.

Her hand shoots out of its own accord and she doesn't question the wisdom, the morality behind this particular action, just throws her mind, all her killing intent, all her focus, all her will, through the connection to the being on the other side. There’s no resistance, not even a shadow where there should have been some sort of barrier. A conscious choice perhaps? The lack of defense is, for a moment, disorienting, then Rey pushes on. Kylo Ren’s mind is a field of broken glass and razor wire, infernal heat that absorbs her fury, flares in recognition to her presence, sparks at her poison satisfaction, and helps propel her inwards. The light fades as she progresses, a claustrophobic darkness, the flash of a twisted melted mask, but the heat is still there and she gathers it around herself like a mantle, arms herself with the fierce joy that Lord Snoke touched her mind with, the desire to see, to taste all the suffering this sick twisted killer has to offer. He deserves it, she knows he does, and a faint echo coming from everywhere and nowhere agrees.

Within the darkness is desire, a ravenous hunger that would devour the world. It gorges itself on her rage, luxuriates under her sadism, craves her false memories of pain and blood, crowding against her with a familiar endless want. In the moment, she’s happy to feed into it, channel the frustrations of self-denial, the indignity of her confinement, all the poison in this place she’s been forced to swallow into the feedback loop painted with the imagery Lord Snoke had seared into her brain: the slippery heat of tortured flesh under her hands, the taste of blood smeared lips, pained gasps and shaky cries. He absorbs it, all of it, and the thirst slakes, the rapacious pressure fades, changes to a familiar longing that makes Rey ache, strips away her defenses, and that should terrify her, here in the center-most ring of this internalized hell. It’s the same feeling that crawls under her own skin when she awakes from dreams, the restless need that drove her from the safety of Master Luke’s planet, the phantom sensation of hands on skin, a tantalizing proximity that refuses to bear fruit. Endless denial. Endless want.

A gaping, empty expanse of desert with curling dunes of black sand, a perfect and terrible isolation, and a single distant star in the sky.

Something pops her out of the vision, sets her gently back into her own skin with shaking hands and damp eyes, fingers hovering over the raw burn striping Kylo Ren’s throat under his Adam’s apple. She wants to scream, turn tail, run and never stop running. This isn’t her, she doesn’t act like that, doesn’t do these things or think these thoughts. The Light is withdrawn, shrinking away when she reaches for it; she cannot feel the stars in her head. Limp, her hand drops back to her side and she’s held, rooted in place, by endless black eyes.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Kylo Ren’s voice is quiet, without rancor or judgment. Only his hands tremble ever so slightly as he folds them over his knee.

“No,” The tear down her cheek is scalding in the icy room. The sudden need to apologize is absurd; words won’t undo her actions, her willingness to descend into depths that shouldn’t be, hers. She drops her eyes from his face, to the blurred grey duracrete beneath her boots. “Please, tell me.”

“It would be better if I showed you.”

Rey stumbles back as his hand moves towards her, jerking herself safely out of touching range. It probably won’t stop him if he decides to push the issue, but contact seems to only make it stronger, and she will deny him that option with all her strength. “No,” She wraps her arms around herself and rocks back on her heels. “Tell me. With words.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Not at all,” The delicate touch of sardonic amusement in his question makes her feel just a little bit better, like finding solid ground under her boots after navigating over quick sand.

“Then there’s no point,” Kylo Ren shrugs, relaxing by the smallest degree as she retreats. “Not if you’ll just think I’m lying anyway.”

“You could lie in your thoughts.”

He shakes his head at that and swats a stray curl out of his eyes. “It doesn’t work like that; you’d be able to sense the intent.”

“You could be lying about that, too.” Rey observes and tries not to squirm under the raking look he gives her.

“Don’t try to be cute; it doesn’t suit you.” Kylo rolls his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose and Rey flat out refuses to unpack that statement and the faint fizz of emotion that flickers across her awareness of him. “Fine, you want to know what happened? Master Snoke knocked you out and told me to go into your dreams. So I did.” He glares at her like this is all somehow Rey’s fault. “You were having a nightmare, I think, so I changed it. That’s all. Do you remember any of it?”

“You changed my dreams?” The nerve of that statement boggles her mind. “You can’t just do that!”

“Obviously I can,” Kylo Ren doesn’t sound quite as smug as she had expected. Almost the opposite, in fact. “It wasn’t my idea. Lord Snoke gave me the objective.”

“Is that supposed to make it better?” Rey narrows her eyes at him, it certainly sounds like he’s trying to excuse his actions and she really, sincerely distrusts that. “You still did it.”

Kylo Ren takes offense at that, shoulders hunching with tension. “I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t ordered it.” Something dangerous flashes behind his eyes when he adds, “Or would you have done what you did without a push from him?”

That draws her up short, mind rebelling against the comparison, against the implication of hypocrisy. She’s nothing like him, the very idea of any similarity linking them is repulsive and yet there does seem to be a brutal bit of truth to that statement that cannot be denied. “I hate you,” Rey grumbles, backing up until she feels the unyielding steel wall cold against her shoulders and slides to the floor, pulling her knees snug against her chest.

“I know,” Kylo Ren doesn’t seem particularly surprised or upset by the confession. “Someday, I’d like you to tell me why.”

“What, you’re not going to just wiggle your fingers at me and grab it out of my head?” The taunt only echoes in the emptiness she feels, everything good and bad just drained away to the void. Rey stifles a yawn and props her chin on her arms.

Kylo Ren sniffs at that, “Physical gestures enhance and focus the application of the Force. There is no finger wiggling involved.” He thinks about it for a moment, train of thought derailed. “Unless maybe you’re trying to make the Force do something wiggly? Then it might apply.” With a violent shake of his head that makes Rey’s neck hurt to watch he brings himself back to the discussion at hand. “And no, obviously not. It will mean more when you tell me, yourself. So do you?”

“Do I what?” Rey grunts at that, contemplating the way Kylo Ren’s entire manner, his very being, seemed to have shifted as he lectures her on what had been meant as a passing bit of rudeness. He almost looked, well happy wasn’t the right word for it, but alive, almost excited by the contemplation. She doesn’t want to think about that right now, certainly doesn’t want to give him any more ammunition to use against her, if he thought she was interested, well it’s not worth thinking about. And yet… And yet she needs to learn the trick to the door, unless she intends to sleep on the floor indefinitely; learn whatever she can to help in her evolving escape plan. Kylo Ren might be easier to fool than Snoke, and had, historically, extended her an offer of instruction. She had rejected it immediately, his was a path to darkness. It still is, nothing’s changed. Except her circumstance, of course, and those carried some pretty serious weight in the present moment. She sighs and very, very gingerly touches the swollen skin around her eyes and nose. Pain flares and endorphins tingle in response. It’s not like she has to decide on anything tonight, after all.

“Remember your dream.” Kylo Ren elaborates with a trace of impatience.

“Are you going to tell Snoke?” Rey scowls at him.

“No,” Kylo Ren grimaces, “You know what? Forget I asked.”

There’s probably no other selection of words he could have uttered to make her fixate on the recollection, and Rey wonders for a moment if he phrased it that way on purpose. It tickles on the edge of her mind, now; horror and misery giving way to plummeting through space. A change, some foundational shift in the nature of reality and she’s caught, swung out of that free fall, set down by strong arms that linger, warm, against her skin, leave her wishing for their return in their absence. “I guess a little. What was it supposed to be?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Conversation over, Kylo Ren rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling.

“Liar,” Rey keeps her tone equable and refuses to let him dismiss her so easily. “You brought it up twice. It matters.”

Kylo drapes an arm over his eyes and for a single ridiculous moment Rey wonders if he’s embarrassed. She wouldn’t even know what such an expression might look like those saturnine features. “Did the nightmare end?”

“I guess so.” It seems like a reasonable interpretation of the abrupt cessation of terror, the end of the fall.

“That’s all I wanted to know.” He laces his fingers over his stomach and stares at the ceiling for several long minutes before breaking the stretch of silence. “You don’t have to sleep on the floor, you know.”

Rey jerks her head up at that, voice pulling her rudely from the precipice of sleep that she had been creeping towards. “There’s one bed.”

“Yes, I know that.” Kylo Ren doesn’t look at her, almost appears perfectly relaxed by the discussion except where his hands tighten around each other.

“I’m not sharing a bed with you.” Sometimes Kylo Ren is even more alien than actual aliens. She can’t begin to imagine what game he’s playing at now. It sounds a little bit like a proposition, but that doesn’t mesh with the faint, undefined feeling coming from his mind and the very visible exhaustion that radiates off him.

The corner of his mouth twitches, for just a moment, at that. “Suit yourself. Don’t freeze tonight.” He rolls over with his back to her and she waits until she’s absolutely positive that he’s asleep before inching over to where his woolen outer robe lies discarded on the floor and cocooning herself in that. Then she sleeps, too, and her dreams are quiet.