12. Chapter 12

He doesn’t remember of the specifics of the dream when he wakes up, except he thinks that it was a rare good one. Not a nightmare of things past or yet to come, no hissing red lights or inescapable pains. No terrifying alien eyes watching him sleep, jerking him to his senses unnaturally early.

He wakes and the moment passes, the last remnants of dream fading and Kylo rolls out from under the blanket into the crisp air. Still rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he makes it one and a half steps before his shin collides with something hard and soft and he falls. The obstacle lying in the middle of his floor lets out a pained yelp and he just manages to catch himself on his hands as he goes down, injured shoulder protesting at the strain. He blinks, forces  his eyes open to fulfil their proper purpose and stares at the single visible eye in a crack of tanned skin. “What, exactly, are you doing in the middle of the floor?”

There’s a twitch of dark wool.  A second eye and a swollen nose mottled with bruises pokes out. “Sleeping; get off!” With great deliberation, the eyes snap shut again and the cloth jerks back into place as beneath him the bony pile of wool squirms.

“In the middle of the floor?” He’s not nearly awake enough to deal with this.

Rey’s voice is indistinct under the heavy material of his coat, but he’s pretty sure that she mumbles something about metal walls and heat loss.

“And the center of the floor is that much better?” Carefully, Kylo eases back onto his knees and scrubs a hand through his hair.

“It’s perfectly fine.” The girl seems to give up on sleeping, for the rest of her head emerges in a halo of brown tangles framing  bleary eyes. “You should try it some time.”

“I think I’ll pass.” Still, her sleepy taunting sows the seed of an amusing idea in his mind and he files the thought away for future consideration to revisit  once he’s fully awake and slightly more in control of his senses. He stands, more carefully this time,  mindful of the pull of sore muscles from the previous day’s  exertions, steps over the huddled girl, and heads towards the ‘fresher. The girl doesn’t deign to reply and, after yesterday’s insanity, that’s probably for the best.

The hot water of the shower is bliss; it wakes him up, eases some of the tension in his back, and only stings a little where it flows over the burns and abrasions sustained in combat. The patter of water tile helps him think, filling his senses as simple background noise that frees his thoughts to wander back to the events of the night before.

It had not gone as he expected, not at all.

He’s used to odd conversations with his master; it would be suicide to refer to the Sith Lord as peculiar out loud, but sometimes it’s the only word that applies. Especially when it comes to some of his more unusual projects, like this one. But the girl, her reactions…  Well, he would have thought she’d exhibit a little more compunction about rattling through his mind like that. Whatever Lord Snoke had done, she had felt the effects deeply and responded as such. Not with any skill or artistry.  

It hadn’t been an act of calculation or recovery. She hadn’t known how to really throw the levers that would elicit the reaction he assumed she was looking for. That had not made the experience  any more pleasant; he could  acknowledge it might have been a mistake to make no attempt at  defense or counterattack. A lesson to bear in mind going forward, then, and paid rather cheaply, by his reckoning. Still, it had been something to see her face as she lunged at him, to see her crack along the seams and fall apart afterwards. There was passion there, and darkness, far closer to the surface than he had originally thought.

There had been a moment of vulnerability, too, where he had felt her heart in the palm of his hand; power enough to bring the girl to her knees before him, where her shock gave him opportunity to press his agenda. He could have done anything when her morals caught up to her actions, when she felt small and weak and evil, and she probably would have taken it as her due. Yet he had done none of those things, nothing that would bind her more tightly to him. There were a hundred excuses he could make for why he hadn’t seized the moment before opening his big mouth, when she had tripped over her own feet trying to avoid him. But they were simply  excuses, and he cannot pretend otherwise.

It’s not as though anything has been permanently ruined, either. There had been interest there. He was  quite sure she had reacted positively to his inane ramblings. It had been a weak sensation, but he had felt a sort of reluctant interest. Perhaps... Yes, that’s better than any appeals to the more physical avenues available. There’s less chance of rejection, to start with, and if Master Snoke is correct in his predictions, the girl will be looking to accumulate power to help with her escape. He’s an obvious source for instruction, so it’s just a question of maneuvering Rey into a position to maximize the factors so that she’ll give voice to the want. Then again, Kylo revises, the girl is stubborn enough that they could both easily die of old age before she lowered herself to ask for help. It would be more prudent to take the initiative himself.  

The hot water goes cold abruptly, and Kylo shivers as he cuts the spray and dries quickly, seeking refuge from the chill under layers of clothing before re-emerging into the room. The girl has moved from her position in the middle of the floor to a slightly safer spot on the edge of the room, meditating once again. Her mind is unquiet when he reaches into their connection; her thoughts heavy with melancholy and flashes of his old master’s face. Perhaps she, too, is reflecting on what transpired between them, craving guidance from the only source she knows. Too bad for her. He lets his curiosity go and crosses over until he looms over her. “I need that back now.”  

The girl flicks her eyes up at him and tightens her grip on the material and for an instant there’s fight sparking across her synapses, then she relaxes, lets the material go, and steps out of the covering, boots squeaking against the floor as she shuffles in an unhappy attempt to get the blood flowing again. “Is it always so cold here?” She huddles deeper into her borrowed shirt and huffs on her hands, rubs red fingers together and directs a covetous look at the heavy wool garment as he takes it back from the floor.

“Not always,” Kylo shakes the robe out, tosses it over his shoulders and is, for an instant, engulfed by Rey’s scent. The material is still warm from her body and he forces himself not to dwell on that. She’s not wrong; it is really damn cold in here. He should do something about that or they’ll both be freezing tonight.  “Ash storm is rolling in from the West. It will pass.”

“Are those normal, here?” Rey shivers and scrubs her hands through her hair, combing the snarls out with her fingers and knotting it back up on her head as he finishes dressing.

“Sometimes,” Kylo shrugs the question off, entirely disinclined towards a conversation as dull as the weather, and takes the protections off the door. This time he can feel her interest, feel her observing with all her senses the way the Force responds to his commands. He preens, just a little, at the attention and holds his peace. If the girl was anything like a normal human being, he would have felt confident in offering instruction at this stage. Instead, because she is a vile little contrarian, determined to hold out long past the point of good sense, he lets it go. That he has her interest is enough for the moment. There will be a better time in the future to argue his case for her instruction. Next time she will not deny him.

He can feel her roll her eyes at his back as she follows him out into the hall. “Shockingly helpful, coming from you.”

Kylo tries not to rise to her mocking and fails spectacularly. “Did you expect me to give you a full report on Moraband’s surface conditions? Maybe a list of craft currently docked in the hangar? I know you’re trying to plan an escape, girl.”

“I’m not planning an escape.” Rey mutters, which really just proves his point about the contrarianism.

She thinks he’s stupid and that is intolerable.

Kylo stops short and turns so suddenly that Rey bumps against his chest. He slaps his hands on her shoulders, bearing down with his weight and height over her. “Do you know you have a tell when you lie?”

“I do not. What is it?” Rey straightens under the pressure and glares up at him, her hands balling into fists at her side.

“You open your mouth.”

Her indignation and fury tingles where their minds touch, tension radiating up through his hands. Kylo smirks at her response to the provocation. He loosens his grip on her and is mildly surprised when she doesn’t try to shake him off. “Now, we have two options. We can either continue this mindless escalation until one of us does something regrettable, or you can let this drop and we can get something to eat.”

Rey stretches on her toes, an amusing attempt to close the distance between their heights, and slits her eyes at him. For a wild moment, he’s certain she’s going to take a swing at him, sympathetic connection or not, and then she deflates, shrugging out of his hands and crossing her arms over her chest. “Breakfast.”

Her begrudging acquiescence gives him a moment of pause, then Kylo nods, turns and resumes walking. The refectory is fuller than he’d like, so he leaves her in the hall and grabs an assortment of bread rolls and fruit, a luxury that won’t last if the storm persists, and returns to where Rey waits in the hall. She takes the roll he offers and eats steadily as they walk further down the hall.

“Not going to eat with your friends?” She inhales the bread and takes another without breaking her stride.

“They’re the Knights of Ren, not friends, and no.” Kylo sorts through the assortment of options and takes an apple for himself. “I told you to stay away from them, remember?

“No love lost there, huh? I guess that wasn’t exactly a friendly match. ” Rey shrugs and pinches apart the roll, savoring the second piece of bread.  

“They are followers, they do as they’re told. Friendship doesn’t come into it.” Kylo scowls at the tile beneath his feet.

Rey snorts at that, spraying crumbs and then brushing her tunic clean. “I’m sure you make it real easy for them.” She changes the subject before he can formulate a response to that, “Where are we going?”

Kylo munches on the apple and considers how best to answer the question. Somehow he doesn’t think the whole ‘Lord Snoke asked me to show you around’ thing is going to be particularly well received, and that’s ignoring the all of the context behind the order. “You don’t have to stay locked in the room all day. The parts of the complex that belong to the Knights are off limits, but there are other areas you could explore. Unless you want to go back to the room?”

The flash of expression, he doesn’t try to name it this time, shows he hit closer to home than he had originally thought.  It’s gone as soon as it appears and Rey manages to look more or less indifferent. “I thought you were concerned that I was thinking of escaping.”

“I’m not concerned ,” Every time she opens her mouth he wants to stop and bang his head against the stone wall for several minutes. That it would hurt her only makes it more tempting in moments like these. “I know you’re thinking of escaping, and I have no intention of letting it happen. That doesn’t have to entail keeping you in a cell unless you decide that’s what you want.”

“It would be more honest,” Rey grunts. “I’m a prisoner. You  keep prisoners in cells.”

“Perhaps, but it would not be more honest to claim that you want that existence.” He knows she’s restless, or will be so soon; there’s nothing about the girl’s character that lends itself to idleness. Rey does not argue the point, and Kylo takes it as a reluctant sort of assent. “This way.” He turns down a hall where clean white tiled steps  abruptly give way to a worn grey cobble stone hall.