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Kylo Ren seemed disturbingly familiar with Temple Island, and it dawned on Rey that he had landed before she and Poe had even entered Ahch-To’s atmosphere. He must have used the time to case the island and its ruins, for he led her straight to the Jedi sanctuary. There she found the makings of a simple meal, two square chairs and a pile of sleeping furs. The mosaic pool, she saw with annoyance, was empty of water and now filled with firewood.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
Kylo Ren’s face was unreadable as he shrugged off his cowl. He twitched his head to the side, and the wood burst into flames so intense that Rey felt the heat through her clothes. Started, she took a retreating step.
“Where did you learn that?” she demanded. “How is it possible to make fire?”
“I didn’t make fire,” he said patiently, beckoning her over to the chairs. “I simply organized all of the conditions. It’s all about applying the Force to each element with perfect synchronicity. The fuel, the oxygen, the spark.”
Rey couldn’t help herself. “Teach me.”
“No,” he said, licking his lips, his dark eyes shining with the firelight. “If you really are the prodigy that the Jedi have said that you are, you won’t need instruction, only practice.”
Frowning, she followed him over and sat down, turning her eyes to the flames.
“Tell me what you know of the Force,” he said softly. She looked at him, startled by his choice of words. Had he plucked Luke’s same words from her mind?
She took a deep breath. “The Force is energy. It is life, and death, and cyclical. It is light and dark, love and hate, chaos and balance.”
“I can see why you might think so,” he said, again that ghost of a smile. “The truth is far simpler, and yet more complex. The Force is a consciousness that is generated by all living beings. It does not govern, nor does it concern itself with our petty morality. What it does is covet.”
She frowned deeply. “What do you mean, it covets?”
“It covets us. It covets and envies conscious beings made of matter. It is especially attracted to individuals sensitive to its presence. It wants, above all, our attention.”
That didn't seem right to her at all, but the instant he said it, she realized it was undeniable. Was this the thing Luke had been trying to tell her?
“Why did it create this bond between us?”
“I do not know precisely,” he admitted. “I believe it is because we two are the most Force- receptive beings in the galaxy. Perhaps there are others on worlds we have yet to discover who also share these bonds, but for all we know the Force has generated so strong a bond between the two of us because it has no other conduit.”
“So you don’t believe in balance,” she murmured. “You don’t believe any of it. Then why align yourself with the darkness?”
“The concept is just a simplification,” he said dismissively. “The Force is neither light, nor dark, nor is it concerned with our conventions. The Darkness is just a philosophy that states all things are permissible in pursuit of an objective. If the goal is worthy, the means are not important.”
“That is an absurd contradiction,” she snapped. “You know it.”
He grinned. “Of course it is. But the Dark Side endows its followers with more than the trappings of power. There is...a heritage that rewards ambition, discipline, order, focus.”
She felt a little sick. “Ruthlessness, destruction, hate.”
He didn’t seem troubled. “It looks like that to you. The side of the Light is endowed with heritage also, the Jedi order, fabricator of the virtuous balance. It’s a very convenient mandate for an order who advocate harm in defense of it. The Jedi are hypocrites.”
“Are you saying the Force is just chaos?”
“The Force is, I believe, childlike. It feeds on our attention, and in so doing reveals itself to the perceptive, allowing us to use it to telekinetically and psychically manipulate the physical. The more we follow its base intention, the greater access we then have to its potential.”
She rose from her chair, hand going unconsciously to her holster. “That’s why you’re pursuing this bond between us. You think it will enhance your power.”
He did not rise, but looked up at her in that intense, unblinking way. “You agreed to submit to my tutelage in pursuit of the very same object.”
“Unwillingly.”
Kylo Ren looked up at her, frowning slightly — then she felt it, like a feather across the back of her neck. He’d sifted her thoughts as easily as though she had spoken them.
“Get out of my head!” she snarled, more frightened than before. Why was it so easy for him? She’d fought him off in the past without any training whatever.
“To answer your questions- I believe the bond has linked us telepathically to a far greater degree. I haven’t overtly threatened you, so your guard is down.”
“Don’t do that again,” she warned, shaken.
“As for your other concern, the one you bury deep beside the anger at your parents for abandoning you, and the fear that you will fail and disappoint all of your new friends…”
“Stop,” she demanded, backing away, her voice almost a sob.
He rose, and stood before her, a shadow punched out of the flickering light. “That deep down, you are hurt that my pursuit of you is, you believe, the action of a selfish desire to consolidate my power, and not the result any personal concern. Is that correct?”
“Call your ship,” she said, pointing in the vague direction where it had been. “I want you to leave.”
He ignored that, and approached, closing the distance between them. His height was imposing, and his closeness confused her, distracted her. He reached out and touched her face, just the merest stroke of his fingertips. She stood shaking, wanting to attack him, wanting to...wanting to…
“Raise your hand like so,” he instructed. “It’s not strictly necessary but it helps to channel the Force.”
Trembling, she did as she was bid, and reached for his face without quite touching it. The flow of his thoughts suddenly washed over her, far more easily than when she’d pried his fears from him weeks ago. It was indistinct at first, flashes of his family, his mother and father arguing.
He scares the other kids. Leia, I have to be honest with you, he scares me.
What do you want me to do? He’s only a boy.
Then another fragment, this one more distinct.
You don’t want to teach me anything! I have all of this power, but you tell me I’m not allowed to use it. I can read minds, but you say that it’s bad-
We’ve been over this, Ben.
What if I learn something important? What if somebody did something wrong and I’m the only one who can find out for sure?
It’s not in keeping with the Force. There are things you can’t control, and you must learn to accept that.
Then:
Your people have been following me for days. What do you want with me?
Skywalker is holding you back. Suppressing your potential. I can teach you all that you wish to know. I can show you the truth about Darth Vader.
Now she wanted to stop. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to see. He wrapped a hand around her wrist and held her in place, giving her more.
Will you help me?
Anything.
Atone, father. For trying to reduce me, shame me and control me. For sending me away for repairs. For fearing me more than you ever loved me.
“Stop,” she whispered. “Ben.”
His grip on her wrist tightened. His expression turned, his eyes closing, his brow furrowing. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. She too was sweating, shivering with the chill breeze that cut across the fire.
She is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. She is so desperate to please, so anxious to be of use. Her raw power rivals my own.
It is almost as though you feel for this girl, Kylo Ren.
I am merely stating a-
She is a threat. She has defeated you twice, both times with the Force. You must bring her to heel, or put an end to her. There is no middle way.
Yes, master.
Suddenly she was shocked by a series of unintelligible emotions. Rejection, aspiration, rage, longing, desire. Loneliness. Desperate loneliness. No partner, nor friend to take counsel or protect his back.
Yes. You can’t know what an unworthy prize this command is with no one to share it.
He released her hand, and she drew back, panting, breast heaving. She wanted to throw his words back in his face, but something about his raw emotion was impossible to scorn. She saw his tragedy, and saw the impossibility of his dilemma.
“To love you,” he said calmly, thumbing away his own tears before they fell. “Is to admit defeat. I am a killer who murders my closest kin so that I may stay pure and undistracted. So that my pristine mind will give me the deepest possible connection with the Force. I can only ever achieve that by destroying my need for love and connection.”
“Why is that defeat?” she demanded, wiping her own tears away. “Why don’t you kill me now, if it’s so-”
“Because the Force connects us, strengthens us. Together we are far more powerful than we are apart.”
“Then put an end to this vicious cycle,” she said firmly. “I can help you.”
“Can you?” his voice was full of beseeching anger. “Will you absolve me of all I’ve done? You are the only woman living I can have any regard for at all without compromising my potential.”
She shook her head. “Even if I wanted to, it’s not up to me to absolve you.”
He brushed her off with a wave of his hand, stalked around the fire pit, and collapsed into his chair, pulling his collar open to vent his overheated throat.
“This impasse is a danger to both of us," he told her. "Either you submit to my wishes, join me in my world- or I put my neck in your noose, and die to redeem myself.”
“I won’t.” She swallowed. “I won’t execute you. Your mother-”
“My mother,” he laughed. “Will try to comfort me from outside my cage. Even she won’t try to prevent her followers from revenging themselves on me.”
“If I answer for you,” she said desperately. “They will respect whatever I decide.”
He looked straight at her, and laughed. It was weak, and full of sadness. “Rey, you join me, or you die. I join you, or I die- if I join you I may die anyway, whether I am murdered in my sleep or shot down in front of a wall.”
“I would never let that happen.” She didn’t know what else to say. That she wanted to rescue him, but could never love a murderer?
“No. It won’t.” He brushed sweat away from his forehead and flung it into the fire, where it sizzled. “Because I will die before I give up what I have built.”
She stared at him, at a loss for words. She wanted to say yes, I will, I’ll protect you and I’ll give myself to you if you just let go, but she knew that for a false promise. But as that realization settled heavily over, she also felt him silently pleading for him to end his agony. And it was also true that every part of that need was Ben Solo, the boy, the poor deluded young man who wanted to be great, convinced himself he did not need anyone’s love because he truly believed that his mother and father sent him away because he was unworthy of it.
She saw then the path through his darkness. She resolved to walk it, trusting herself to find the way and not get lost in his web.
In three quick steps Rey closed in on him, and before he could speak or stand, she took his face in her hands and tilted his head back, crushing her mouth to his. In his shock, he pulled back from her, looking up with wide brown eyes that were equal parts hope, suspicion, anger. Then he pulled her down for another kiss, only there was violence in his, the promise of brutality and pain.
She wanted it, she realized. In admitting her power to hurt him, she saw the distant but approaching possibility that his invitation might prove too tempting. Because she too felt hate, and she could feel its power. He knew it. He knew how to alchemize those things into corruption. Hate was of the Darkness, and the Darkness was inside her anger. The sadness was not enough to temper it. Still, she had to take the risk.
As his tongue slid up into her mouth, and his hands travelled her back, it occurred to her that this realization was a confluence of thoughts. She hadn’t considered how intimate it would be, to see the facets of his reasoning, to feel him perusing her fears. It was both incredibly uncomfortable, yet strangely intoxicating.
He pulled her closer, those long, strong hands running down her flanks to her hips. She straddled him, her hands resting on his chest. She focused, feeling a little cord of tension behind her eyes, and used the Force to pull apart the stays of his doublet. He looked on in approval, and shrugged out of it, taking her hands and placing them on his bare skin.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispered as she traced the lines of his musculature, fingers finding the scarred, gnarled dent where the Chewie had blasted him, moving up to the scar on his arm. With her other hand, she drew her thumb along the scar on his face.
We should. I can feel the hollowness inside of you. I can give you what you need.
She didn’t answer. Suddenly he surged up, his mouth full on hers, devouring at hers as his hands made short work of her vest, her tunic. Her breasts tumbled out, and he filled his hands with them, gentle at first. He caught one nipple between his fore and middle finger, applying enough pressure to make her hiss in breath. Then he lifted her, capturing the other breast in his mouth.
He sucked at it, tongue swirling around it, teeth teasing it. He sucked the whole areola into his mouth, then bit down hard enough to inflict an angry red mark. She cried out, but felt herself becoming more aroused every second. She could feel his cock through his black breaches. He arched up to grind his hips against hers, moving his painful kisses to the inside of her breast where the curve was fullest. He marked her there as well, sinking his teeth in so deeply it was just shy of breaking the skin. She could feel from him that he didn’t care if he did break the skin. The desire to scar her, to mark her permanently, quivered inside him. But he held back.
Let me in. End my suffering, my isolation.
She did not know if the thought was his, or her own. His hands slid under her own careworn suede pants, one hand cupping her ass, the other sliding between her legs, running smoothly on the slick wetness that was threatening to overflow from her. He used two fingertips to test her, to tease open the folds of her cunt. Then, agonizingly slowly, he slid them inside of her. Her involuntary moan was swallowed as his mouth caught hers. Her interior muscles, so delicate and yet so strong, gripped his fingers as he moved them slowly up into her.
She rocked against his hand, his other hand moving down to her ass, stabilizing her. She balanced herself by holding his shoulders. She wanted to unsheath his cock and ride it, but she didn’t want him to stop doing what he was doing with his fingers. Sensing this, he closed his eyes and focused. She felt it, felt tiny disturbances, separations, and realized what he was doing. He was using the Force to expand the distance between the molecules that made up her sturdy suede pants. In a second, they slipped off her body and fell to the floor, leaving her bare for his attentions. More sweat appeared on his upper lip, but his expression was satisfaction.
She reached down and pulled open the laces of his breeches, tugging them down and freeing his cock. He groaned, unable to stop himself, unable to do more than obey the needs of his body. He withdrew his fingers from her, put both hands on her ass and pulled her down on to him.
“Kylo,” she gasped as he slid into her, his girth pushing her tensed muscles apart, penetrating her so deeply that she felt pressure deep in her belly. His wide eyes stared up at her, lips parted. All of his control, his carefully mortared discipline was gone from him. He stood, lifting her with him, never breaking the penetration, and tumbled them both down on to the furs.
“Tell me what you need, Rey,” he hissed in her ear, biting it and then kissing it.
She shuddered, barely able to force out the words. “Don’t hold back.”
He seized both her hands and pinned them above her head. His mouth turned into a snarl as he undulated his hips, using his core muscles to drive harder and faster into her. She wanted to scream, but his mouth covered hers, tongue filling it and preventing her from making any sound but crushed whimpers. She wrapped her legs around him, arching to take him better, deeper.
So close, Rey. I want you to come for me. Do it now.
Her body obeyed the command of his mind, and she came with a harsh scream that echoed up inside the sanctuary. She felt him coming with her, felt what he felt as he came, experiencing the almost painfully good sensation in his balls as he let go inside of her. He in turn, she knew, could feel her release, the thundering waves of now tensing, now slackening of the muscles inside of her, in her belly and thighs, even down to her toes. And then the wash of everything from her mind but the far distant thought that he might kill her, and how delicious it would be to die in the purity of this emptiness.
He did not kill her. For an infinitesimal second he was tempted, but it subsided almost at once, and he kissed her mouth, her face, her throat.
“If you ask it of me, I will give you my protection,” he promised in his soft as silk voice, the one he had used in the interrogation chamber when he had tried and failed to coax her mind into giving up its secrets. The one that promised the most intimate of tortures.
I know better than to believe you, she thought, not entirely to herself. He did not reply, but subsided into exhaustion. She remained awake for a long time, drifting off only when the storm clouds broke open over their island, and cleansed the dense air with sheets of grey rain.