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Chapter Text

Ilum hung before her; a great pale spectre in the infinite black of space. Across its surface of rock and glacier Rey could see the remnants of the days during which the Galactic Empire had pillaged and brutalized the once sacred place for the precious crystals it produced. Kyber crystals; the same crystals that had been ripped prematurely from Ilum’s veins and been party to the destruction of Alderaan, Leia’s home world, Ben’s rightful inheritance; blown to oblivion.

Rey couldn’t help but wonder, even as she broke atmo in an unprecedented, emergency landing, if there were any crystals left. As her vision tinted red and the glass of her x-wing warped with the heat and force of her fall she still saw the deep, unnatural craters marred into the planet’s skin, scabbed over with dark, volcanic rock only recently belched from the molten core. There might be nothing left for her to procure; that was if she survived her current predicament, of course.

The brittle crust of Ilum was fast approaching, blurring in her vision as the G-Force of her violent entry thrust her back flush against her seat. Rey couldn’t look back to see if she was still being pursued; or if he had peeled off and back to some mothership that had evaded her detection. She grit her teeth as she yanked up harshly on the controls with white knuckled hands, bracing herself for a rocky landing.

The initial impact between the hull of her x-wing and the jagged ice below was one of metallic shrieking and earth splitting. Rey could both hear and feel the layers of aerodynamic durasteel being scraped away like fingernails run again and again over delicate skin. The ship skipped three times, leaving a dashed line of skid and debris before it slammed nose first into a wall of ice and drifted snow.

Rey shouted as the glass was pierced and shattered by a spike of blue-white steel, sending a cascade of crystalline knives hurtling towards her, leaving superficial lacerations marred into her tanned skin in their destructive wake.

Rey shuddered as everything became still. An eerie silence permeated the air around her; like fresh fallen snow, the world waited, frozen, for her to move and make it speak. Her vision wavered as she released her harness and shoved herself into an upright position. The hatch was jammed, the canopy locked in place with a combination of frost and twisted steel.

Rey hissed as she climbed out the shattered front. Her palms, despite being wrapped in black thermal gauze, split as she pulled herself from the wreckage, catching on glass and jagged durasteel.

“Kriff!” She tumbled clumsily into the snow and yelped at the sudden onset of the cold. She was wearing thermals, but it wasn’t enough to shield her from the bitterness of Ilum’s open air.

Even after coming out of hyperspace, she hadn’t thought to dress herself preemptively, She had been lulled into a false sense of security in the compressed, climate controlled environment of her cockpit. With hundreds of thousands of light years between herself and the inner rim— the seat of The First Order’s power— she had thought it unnecessary.

How wrong the last Jedi had been.

After she snatched her pack from the cockpit—nothing seemed damaged beyond repair— and tugged on her heavy coat, snow goggles, and boots, she assessed the damage her fighter had been dealt.

The skeleton of her ship groaned, complaining as the bitter cold affected its still warm structure; bending and warping it into a twisted shell of its former self.

Rey groaned. Two of the four ion engines spat and smoked, the shield generator was damaged, and she knew from the brief moment during which she had tried to fight back that her weapons system had malfunctioned. Sabotage.

The fighter had been in perfect working order less than a week previous. She and Poe had run thorough diagnostics and checked the craft twice over for mechanical integrity. Nothing had been out of place, everything had been in order for a long, dangerous journey without the assistance of an astro-droid. There must’ve been a plant in the Resistance, someone who knew about her confidential plan and had prepped her x-wing to fail her during an ambush over Ilum. If they knew of her trip then The First Order also knew that the Resistance was on Naboo. She needed to get a message to Leia, to anyone really, immediately.

As if to communicate illness, or utter defiance, her ruined com system sparked. The only connection she had to the Resistance was the cloaked beacon she kept tied tightly to the inside of her left wrist. It would provide her location, coordinates for them to trace, but no indication as to her general well-being… and she had asked that they allow her a week. A week to track down the crystal cave, a week to construct the complicated schematics— scrounged from the depths of a Coruscanti library— with the remnants of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber.

Finn had insisted; only a week. She hadn’t thought it long enough, not enough time to find the entrance to the cave described in the cryptic writings of Ashoka Tano. They were incomplete, full of poorly sketched maps, written in code Rey couldn’t dream of deciphering in the scant time she had. It made sense that a survivor of Order Sixty-Six would be so cautious, anal-retentive in her studies as to spare herself from the scrutinizing gaze of the now defunct empire; but the lack of clarity vexed Rey nonetheless.

A week had seemed so brief.

Now it might as well have been an eternity. Not only was she stranded on a world of ice and crystal, with no companions save the rusted corpses of imperial mining equipment abandoned decades previous; the threat of Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader himself, still hung overhead. He was surely hunting her from the skies.

Rey gathered herself and pulled a small, hand bound journal from her coat pocket. A collection of her own research; handwritten. Data pads could be hacked, monitored from anywhere in the galaxy, by anyone, paper on the other hand…

Flipping to the back she scowled at one of her many carefully drawn maps. She was too low to get a grasp of her geographic location, in the basin of one of the many unnatural pockmarks drilled deep into Ilum’s crust in the Empire’s heyday. They, like her, had been hunting for crystals of kyber.

They had been successful; though the distant glitter of Alderaan in the night sky of Naboo and Ilum, and so many other distant worlds falsely belied this.

Whether or not Rey would share in that morbid success was yet to be seen. She would need to scale the steep wall of ice and metamorphic rock that composed the rim of this artificial valley. But rising to a higher elevation posed her with a new set of problems.

Namely the ebon wraith that still prowled the skies in pursuit of her from the heated cockpit of his Silencer.

The skies were clear overhead, it wouldn’t be long before he or one of his wingmen spotted the column of thick, black smoke that billowed up into the atmosphere from the wreckage of the downed fighter. In the distance, eastward, at the opposite end of the crater she could see the deep grey front of a snow storm. Cover. As treacherous as the weather could be, The Supreme Leader was far, far worse. She could contend with frozen water, could fend off frostbite with wit and supplies. Kylo Ren was nigh unstoppable now, no combination of words could sway him from his chosen path, and a solitary Rey hardly possessed the military might necessary to vanquish such a tyrant.

Rey moved east, staying close to the cobalt shelf of jagged stone, allowing the natural barrier to cast her in its shadow, helping to mask her arduous trek towards the looming storm.

She was sweating beneath her thermals from the effort of trudging through a foot of standing snow and balancing precariously on sheets of ice where the bitter winds had blown the ground sheer. Perspiration was another dangerous thing; for now it signified that she was warm and alive; but once she settled in and took shelter, cold would surely cut through her layers like a knife of frozen steel and crystallize her own sweat against her skin.

Rey needed to find a place where a fire could be maintained; a cave. Preferably one full of crystals, but in this moment of animal fear, any would do. She couldn’t die here. The last, low burning coal of the Jedi order couldn’t be quenched, not when she was so close to rebuilding what was lost.

Have you learned nothing?

Rey stilled, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat. Over the past months she had become proficient at blocking him out, her mental walls were formidable. But not when he was this close, apparently.

Did you hear a word Luke said in your time with him?

It was neither volatile nor accusatory. Just a simple question, intended to make her think, to turn her from her chosen path, damn him.

“Shut up.” She grit out through clenched teeth, struggling up and over a high bank of drifted snow and into the ever worsening wind. Rey wouldn’t turn, she wouldn’t look behind her to see him standing there, a projection in the snow. Looking— and touching— frustratingly intensified their bond. Small allowances of intimacy made for serious ramifications. She could give away her location with a measly glance if she weren’t careful.

Why won’t you look at me, Rey? She wished he were feigning the hurt in his voice. It echoed through the vacuum of sound that always accompanied these unbidden moments. They were alone in the galaxy in this infinitesimally infinite second. Just the two of them. Rey nobody and Ben Solo.

She wanted to hate him for it; but the isolation they shared in only made her heart ache.

Tell me where you are. He entreated. He sounded… concerned. There’s a storm rolling in, Rey. You’ll freeze to death down there.

“And who’s fault is that!” The venom that dripped from her words made him cringe, she didn’t need to look at him to know. She could feel it as he recoiled from her in the bond. Rey smirked vindictively, taking small victories where she could find them. “If you hadn’t shot me out of the kriffing sky I wouldn’t be in this situation!”

The force chose that moment to separate them, severing their connection arbitrarily like it always seemed to. But Rey was certain that she’d be met with a very willful explanation once they were connected again. Proximity was a pain, and so was Kylo Ren.

For now she would forage ahead into the cold heart of bitter winter; more accepting of its icy embrace than she would be of Kylo Ren— Ben Solo— ever again.

The cold set in more quickly than Rey had expected; seeping in through her layers like frigid water; sapping the warmth from her blood and bone. It seated itself deep; the sort of chill she remembered from those rare nights on Jakku, when she had stayed out long after dark spelunking through the skeletons of fallen titans. It had been a deceptively cold desert by night, and frostbite could kill just as readily as sun stroke.

Walking headlong into a snowstorm certainly didn’t help. The wind cut further and further into her with each enfeebled step. Visibility was no more than a scant few feet in any direction, even through her visor it felt as though the chill was freezing her eyes to their lids.

She needed to find shelter, kyber crystals be damned. Rey couldn’t die here, she was the seed of the Jedi Order. The spark— Poe would’ve said.

She reached out with the Force, letting the flow of existence around her whisper in her ear. A thousand sexless, wordless voices all speaking on the shriek of the wind.

There was a cave; a divot in the ice some hundred feet above her head. It faced towards the wailing winds, but further in, set back into the stone core of the soaring peak; an alcove.

Rey panted as she wrestled her pack from her shoulders, struggling to free her ice picks from the elastic banding. They snapped from the cold and her struggle, but she paid them little mind; gripping the picks tightly in shaking hands and slamming them into the shimmering face of the ice wall.

Up, and up, and upward still. She climbed until her lungs burned with bitter cold and her muscles cramped under her layers. It would be so easy to just let go, to give up on finding adequate footholds, to forget about the cave, and the Jedi, and the Resistance. In that moment death seemed preferable to scaling any further. Rey couldn’t do it.

Stop. Ben’s voice, he sounded panicked. Rey hated how he still cared for her. Keep climbing, Rey. I’ll find you soon enough, I’ll bring a blanket. You’ll be warm.

He might as well have been a frustrated child for all his words meant to her. A blanket? She didn’t want his kriffing blanket. And what would a paltry slip of fabric do to bring the life back into her hands, her fingertips, her purpling toes?

In her vexation she missed a foothold, and she cried out as she was abruptly suspended by her hands where they clung desperately to the icepicks. She gasped, wide eyes watching as a cascade of ice splintered from where her foot had been; falling away, disappearing into the snow haze.

“Kriff!” She cursed and scrambled for another, safer bet. Her foot caught for a moment, then slipped again.

Rey—

“Fuck you!” Rey seethed, her left foot finally finding purchase on a small outcropping. And in that moment she decided that she would keep climbing. If only to spite Kylo Ren when he inevitably reached her; blanket or no, she wouldn’t be swayed to join him.

Please Rey. It’s less than twenty feet up. Don’t fall.

How did he know about the cave? She hadn’t projected her plan, had she? No, it was their proximity; being so close blurred that tentative line that Rey had etched between their minds. It was difficult to say where Rey’s thoughts ended, and Kylo’s perversions began.

When the Force flooded her with sudden strength, reinforcing her muscles and bones with a rush of energetic determination; she pretended it was of her own doing. That she had called on it subconsciously and it had come to her aid. She ignored the way it bubbled against her skin and in her chest, viscous and black and tender in a way she cared not to consider.

It felt too easy— the Force steeling her so perfectly— to leap from purchase to purchase, her picks hardly serving any purpose when her gloves fingers gripped so expertly.

At least Ben had the sense not to gloat.

And then there it was, blurred by the wind and the frost that clung to her visor; a glacial lip hung overhead. The entrance to her cave.

Rey grit her teeth and made the final few, daring leaps. And once she had landed—the tips her toes still dangling precariously out in the open air— the force fled her body and she was cold again, her muscles twitched and throbbed from the arduous climb, and she could feel where her sweat stuck her thermals to her body.

Rey crawled on her belly, using her forearms to drag herself along the floor of ice and grit, until she found it; a small alcove bored from ice to stone. It was set back into the heart of the unnatural mountain, sheltered from the wind that still whipped viciously against her.

Rey grunted, baring her teeth and dragging herself the final few lengths, scrambling towards the respite the stone offered. Once the wind no longer howled in her ears and ice no longer pelted to exposed skin of her face, Rey collapsed. Rolling onto her back and tossing her pack to the side, she allowed herself a moment to breathe.

Rey.

Never a moment’s peace, it seemed. At least not here.

“I’m safe,” she relented, “Leave me be.”

He didn’t speak again; though he remained latched onto the back of her mind like a persistent leech; watching through her eyes as she fumbled her pack open, then swore at what she found.

“Kriff!”

Rey felt more than heard his sigh of exasperation, and rolled her eyes at the melodrama.

She hadn’t sealed it properly after retrieving her winter clothing. Her fire starters were ruined; coated in ice. If she tried to light them they would only dampen and die.

What the fuck was she supposed to do now?

“This is all your fault, Ren!” She shouted into the open air, hissing his name like a curse; he wasn’t Ben. Ben was dead. Ben wouldn’t have shot her out of the sky and marooned her on this Force forsaken rock. “Are you really so desperate that you would sentence me to freeze to death?! All I wanted was a kriffing lightsaber!”

A beat of tense silence. If Rey hadn’t been wiser she would have taken his sudden muteness as guilt.

I didn’t shoot you down to kill you, Rey.

“Really? That’s usually what dogfights end in, Kylo. Death.” Incredulity dripped from her spiteful tongue. “And not only did you shoot me out of the fucking sky, but you planned it in advance! You sabotaged my x-wing… how did you even know I was coming here?”

Another beat of silence; this one loaded with Ren’s own discomfort. She could feel the twitch of the muscle in his jaw, the way he ground his teeth, how he puffed his cheeks in uncertainty.

I’m coming to you.

“No—”

Yes. He was determined if nothing else; but, as always, his intensity was misplaced. You’ll die in the cold.

“I don’t need your help. I don’t even want to look at you.” That hurt him in the tiny place where Ben still lived on. An image flashed behind her eyes; one of childhood embarrassment. Another boy pushing him to the ground, pulling at his ears, calling him ugly.

“Wait… I—”

I’ll be there soon enough Rey. The storm will give way in a matter of hours. I can see the whole of it from my cockpit. He tried to mask the dejection behind his taciturn facade. I’ll give you the answers you want once I find you. And you’ll provide for me in return.

He slammed up his own walls while simultaneously sealing their bond shut behind a door of black adamant like Rey has never felt before, and her stomach dropped into her gut, as a terrible realization dawned on her.

She’d never once cut off their connection like that; she hadn’t felt this alone in her own mind since before there bond was opened. Ren had unlimited access to her mind, her thoughts, her eyes and ears, and it was her own fault; because she was untrained, because she had hyper focused on rebuilding an Order from ashes, because she had cared more for her own future than that of the Resistance. She had never truly cut him off; he was always there, lurking and listening and learning.

Rey had led him directly to her, to Ilum, to the Resistance.

She had no one to blame but herself.

Chapter Text

He found her before sunset, once the snow haze had lifted. She felt the earth around her quake as his TIE Silencer landed overhead, rattling loose pebbles and shards of ice from the cracked ceiling of the cave.

Rey shuddered, but not from the cold that had long since set deep into her bones. His proximity was jarring, he had allowed the bond to ease open again while he waited for the storm to wane. They hadn’t been this physically close since the day they had dispatched Snoke, the day Kylo had made his fatal decision to ascend and take up the mantle of Supreme Leader. The day Kylo Ren— Ben Solo— had taken a path Rey couldn’t follow, and damned them both to existences of continued, blisteringly agonizing isolation.

She was facing away from him when he entered her small hideaway, clutching herself while her teeth chattered noisily in the otherwise silent space. Cold did that, sucked the sound from the air. At night Jakku had been much the same; still, quiet in a way that belied its danger. Or perhaps it had punctuated the danger, and little Rey hadn’t realized because she was so accustomed to the utter deprivation of social interaction.

Rey curled in on herself further; cursing her body for how it betrayed her, how her muscles seemed to pulse with need to go to him now that he had sat himself mere feet away from her.

“Rey…” The sound of his voice— always so emotional, always so close to tears— caused her body to jerk. She bit down hard on her lower lip, drawing the metallic flavor of blood onto her palate, determined, desperate, to ignore him. Like if she refused to speak to him he would just leave, like he couldn’t feel her every volatile emotion and thought rising off her body like steam from boiling water.

“Rey, please, look at me.”

Join me.

She remembered the throne room, and this whole scenario felt much the same. Only this time she wasn’t so sure she would be able to reject him, not when he was so close, not when she longed for him so readily.

Rey rolled to gaze upon him despite herself; compelled by something buried deep in her chest that begged, implored, that she face him.

He was dressed similar to her, only his ensemble of heavy winter gear was black as night, clearly custom tailored for The Supreme Leader, while hers was a mismatched collection of Leia’s hand-me-downs. She wondered if he knew that they had belonged to his mother, if he had even seen them before.

“I do, and I have.” He pushed his visor off of his face, and it bunched against the fabric of his hood.

He hadn’t changed. Rey didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t for him to look just as melancholic as he had that day in the throne room, still so much the lost boy. Not a brutal dictator hell-bent on annihilating all opposition.

“Get out of my head!” She snarled, managing to wriggle onto her rear, “None of that is for you!”

Ren sighed and pushed his hood back, then tentatively removed his winter hat, running long, pale fingers through his hair to right it. “I wish I could, Rey. But you’re so loud, even when I try to ignore the noise, I can still hear you.”

“Then why don’t you just…” Rey scrambled for the words, straining haplessly for a way to turn this back onto him, to deflect the blame and curb her own gnawing guilt. “Why don’t you just do what you did before? Why don’t you lock me out?”

His hands stilled where they had been tugging at the straps of his own supply pack, and he locked his sable gaze with her own. His eyes were filled with fiery emotion that Rey could not— or cared not to— name.

“I don’t like it when I can’t feel you, Rey.” He whispered, eyes sparking in the dimming light, “And,” his tone shifted, taking on a chord of ironic cynicism, “Being a constant passenger in your mind provides unfettered access to the world around you. Your friends. Your plans…”

His full lips, slightly chapped from the cold, tugged up into a mocking smirk. Rey would have lunged for him if it weren’t for the way her muscles screeched like frozen steel in ardent protest of any movement that wasn’t violent shivering.

Rey gave a pained gasp and all traces of mocking cruelty dropped from Kylo’s face.

“Your lips are blue.”

Rey rolled her eyes, “Yes, Ren. My lips are blue. Your mother thinks cerulean looks good on me, brings out my eyes. What do you think?” Her teeth chattered, ruining any chance of her words biting.

Ren ignored her quip, instead delivering his own snide remark as he shuffled around in his pack. “Strip.”

Rey snorted, but he didn’t look up from his current endeavor.

Force, he wasn’t kidding.

“What?!”

He produced a fire starter from his bag. “I think I was clear. Take your clothes off. Right now all of those layers are just holding the frozen sweat to your skin, they aren’t providing any insulation.”

Rey grit her teeth and huffed. He was right, of course. But she wasn’t willing to relent quite so easily. He wouldn’t see her naked. Ever.

He tossed a thermal blanket at her, cocking an eyebrow at the thoughts he had overheard. “Not all of it, just the snow gear and your thermals will suffice.”

“So, you don’t want me naked, just in my underwear?” Rey groaned, fingering the metallic outer portion of the blanket forlornly. It would do very little for her when she wore so much; Ben was right.

“I don’t want you to be anything,” He quipped as he struck flint over one of the firestarters, “I’m just offering up alternatives to your original plan; which was… freezing to death, correct?”

“Shut up.” Rey mumbled, insolent.

The spark of the kindling fire was enough to compel her to comply. She wanted to feel its warmth on her fingers, rub its glow into her skin so she might carry it with her out of this forsaken cave.

Rey removed her gloves and began with her boots, fumbling clumsily with the laces as she struggled against the chill that slowed the nerve endings her fingers. Ben was there too quickly, gloves and outer coat already shed, racing to help her with a task so menial; it irked her.

As he tugged her feet free from the confines of her boots she tried not to think about why he was losing layers in tandem with her. Everything that was transpiring made sense on a basic, logical level; but the emotion that was levied behind each of his instructions was perturbing.

They were supposed to hate one another. Rey hated him. He was her enemy, a megalomaniacal, raving lunatic convinced that his vision for the future of the galaxy was the correct one.

“Are you so different?” He offered, “Aren’t you just as resolute in your worldview as I am in mine?”

“Shut up.” Rey shivered as she shucked off her coat and snow pants, drawing nearer to where the fire blazed. “I don’t want to argue morality with you, Kylo.”

He scowled, but nodded. Allowing her a moment of blissful silence during which she flustered herself with ambivalence towards her own body. Rey knew little of sex; she wasn’t sure of the mechanics of it, or how it produced… infants. But she had been eyed and blustered at by enough smugglers and skin traders on Jakku to know that her relative nakedness would do something to Ren. He was a man after all.

Not that kind, He projected onto her; and she swore that in the orange, flickering light of the cavern Ben Solo was blushing. True to his word, he kept his eyes averted while she undressed.

Finally down to her breast band and a pair of thin capri pants, Rey gathered the blanket around herself and stared listlessly into the licking flames. She wasn’t close enough to benefit from their full radiance, but she didn’t dare draw any closer, not while Ren sat opposite her, watching her intensely from over the tongues of dancing fire.

The scene was reminiscent of that night on Ahch-to, and Rey recoiled from the memory with near violence. Resigning herself to keep her head pressed firmly into her knees and shiver, biding her time until Ren gave up and left.

Last time she had opened herself up to him, bridged the impossible distance between them by reaching over treacherous flame, she had ultimately been spurned. She had seen a future, bright and uncertain, and put every ounce of her delicate faith in it. Foolishly thinking that it would inevitably come to fruition, that the Force always hinted at truths.

She had stood at his side, clutched his hand tightly in her own, and they had looked at each other with such burning reverence…

She sniffed; caught off guard by the unbidden tears that streamed over her frozen cheeks, thawing her skin with their warmth.

Ben… Kylo... she didn’t know what to call him anymore; she couldn’t perceive where the lost boy ended and the tyrant began.

He swallowed hard, and spoke, “Rey, please just… come here.” He patted the ground next to him, and his mouth puffed in that infuriating way that indicated—

No. She wasn’t doing this. She wouldn’t give in to him, wouldn’t allow him anymore leeway in this unfortunate situation. Rey inched closer to the fire, just enough to be encompassed in its heat, then dropped to her side, rolling to face away from him.

She shut her tired eyes and tried to sleep. It came easier than expected, and she pretended it wasn’t due to the soothing balm of Ben’s presence in the Force, that she didn't find restful sleep because she was suddenly much less alone.

Chapter Text

Rey woke to a dark cavern; the once blazing fire was left a bed of dim coals, providing little in the way of warmth or lighting. And yet she wasn’t cold. Icy fingers of brutal chill hadn’t crept into her tiny reprieve and killed her in the night, hadn’t cut her throat with a dagger of ice and fury.

She blinked the sleep from her eyes, slowly adjusting to the darkness. Her damp clothes had been laid out in a neat circle around the fire; presumably to dry. Kylo… Ben was nowhere to be seen. His own clothing was tossed into a haphazard pile in a corner; coat, boots and all— save for his pants. He couldn’t have gone far, dressed down like he apparently was.

Rey shut her eyes and ran a wistful finger along the edge of her beacon; hoping that sleep might take her again, might whisk her away and bring her one day closer to rescue.

No such luck.

Hot breath stirred the hair at the nape of her neck. Rey was thrust headfirst into full wakefulness at the realization that Ben was directly behind her. The tendrils of delicate warmth that she had thought the remnants of the dying fire were actually thick, corded arms curved around her waist. Not clutching, but cradling her, like she were a fragile thing that would shatter at the slightest provocation or misplaced touch.

Rey hissed in repugnance and shoved away from him, out from under the thermal blanket and into the sharp chill of the night air. She turned on Ren like a cornered animal, crouching defensively as he roused slowly, lazily like a lumbering beast. He rubbed his eyes and smacked his lips to clear the sour taste of sleep and ration bar from his mouth.

Finally, after a tense moment of waiting with her hackles raised, Kylo looked at her; locking her in place with a smoldering glare; his eyes mirroring the spark of the dying coals, capturing her, enrapturing her in a way that prevented any defiance. Holding her in place as he rose onto his knees and reached for her, catching her bare biceps in his calloused hands and yanking her towards him.

He crushed his mouth to her own in a sloppy, scathing kiss, and Rey reeled from the force and shock of it. He hummed against her and for a moment she was taken by the warmth of his large body pressed to hers, the sharp scent of him assaulting her nostrils. Ren seemed to usurp her every sense with his presence, numbing her mind— his physical form a balm to her frayed nerves.

Just as his tongue, clumsy and probing, began to pry open her lips, Rey gasped and gave him a poignant shove as her senses rushed back to her; filling her with incredulous outrage and paradoxical longing. He hardly budged, only just breaking the kiss. His eyes sparked behind shadowy lashes and his breathing was labored.

“You can’t just fuck me to the dark side, Ren!” Rey punctuated her point by slapping her palm harshly across her face, her nails catching over his scar and tearing at his pale skin. “Get away from me.”

“No.” The bluntness of the statement tinted her vision crimson; but she was denied the chance to act on her righteous fury when Ren lunged for her again. This time his mouth made contact with the delicate skin at the base of her throat as she attempted— and failed— to scramble backwards and out of his reach.

His teeth caught on her collarbone and she hissed. Tangling deft fingers into his dark waves, Rey yanked. The seal of his lips on her flesh was broken and he gasped in muted pleasure at the pain that lanced over his scalp.

Rey shook her head violently, loathing how his thoughts— such raw, visceral emotion— bled into her own mind; clouding her thoughts with lusty reverence.

“You want this,” Kylo whispered, arousal glittering behind his dark irises. “We both do.”

“No I don’t. I don’t want anything from you,” Rey’s lip twitched in revulsion. She released his hair and gave him a brutal shove to put distance between the two of them, it would never be enough. If hundreds of thousands of lightyears failed to dampen his ceaseless hounding, then a scant few feet meant nothing.

He rose up onto his hands on the wrinkled blanket they had shared— non consensually— and looked at her like she had hung the very stars; “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Rey. I feel it too. You’re drawn to me, you sympathize with me. And as much as I loathe your pity, it’s preferable to your hatred.”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” he chuckled, and leaned towards her again. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. He could see into her mind, knew the truth that her utterance of hatred belied. Rey couldn’t dredge up the resolve to pull away a second time; he was so warm and the air was so cold. “You’re an open book, Rey. You may be volatile and dubious in your sentiment towards the choices I have made, hesitant to accept my vision for the galaxy—”

That’s quite the understatement, she spat directly into his mind.

He ignored her slight and continued, voice rumbling low and persuasive in his broad bare chest, “But you don’t hate me. I don’t think you ever could, not after what we experienced together; not with the way the force connects us now.”

Rey’s breaths came in staggered puffs, catching in her sternum as Ren pressed a plethora of vivid images into her mind; letting her see the whole of their encounter on The Supremacy through his eyes, letting her experience his perverted perception of each event.

Only they weren’t so twisted as she had lead herself to believe. There was a thirst for power that twisted low in her— his— belly as he ignited the saber to plunge through the skull of the final Praetorian, as his eyes briefly beheld the throne and corpse of the creature that had brutalized his mind with such nonchalance for so many years. But beyond that subtle vindication there was sincerity; a legitimate want to help, to right the galaxy where its people had been so terribly wronged time and time again; just like he had been.

The Jedi had failed, the Sith had failed, the Republic and the Empire had both failed. Ben knew the history; he had read the texts, watched the holos religiously, studied each one and again and again found the same faults; democracy failed, totalitarianism only lead to the rise of brutal tyrants and ultimately fell to democracy, which in turn was swallowed whole by dictatorial regime once again. The Jedi were always too involved, or too distant, weighed down by law and tradition. The Sith too power hungry, too eager to destroy and take. A spinning wheel, a self-consuming snake. A veritable ouroboros, cycling and snuffing out countless lives as it went on and on and on.

And then there she was, Rey. Young and untrained, but so immensely powerful; his opposite, his equal. Untainted by the politics of the galaxy at large— or so he had thought. He had misjudged the depth of her loyalty towards the Resistance. The people she had known for a few short days at most.

And it had hurt him when she had denied him, when he had awoken from unconsciousness to find her gone.

Rey pushed him out of her mind with renewed ferocity. “You think it didn’t fucking hurt me? You think it didn’t kill me to watch you make that choice? You made me care about you, and then you left me.” She was crying, and in the dim light provided by the last weakly burning coals, she could see that he was too.

“I didn’t— you’re the one who left,” he accused, but it carried little weight, not when he wouldn’t hold her gaze any longer.

“Physically, maybe,” her voice withered, and they were resorted into silence, both at a sudden loss for what to say.

It had been infuriating and enlightening to have such a clear window into Kylo’s mind in those dire moments, so critical to the current state of the galaxy. He thought he was doing the right thing. But didn’t most villains?

Maybe he was right? The traitorous thought bubbled up in her mind like a poison, taking hold and gestating. Kylo had sounded so much like Luke in his cynicism. The Jedi failed. What would keep them from failing again? What would prevent her new order from repeating the same mistakes? What would separate the Resistance’s republic from those that had preceded it; rife with corruption and fraud; the impoverished worlds of the mid and outer rim left to languish in squalor.

What difference could anyone make?

He preempted her critique of his own plan, “My empire wouldn’t be dynastic. Not by blood nor by the rule of two. My successor would be chosen by merit.”

“Does it really matter, Kylo…” he had referred to himself as Ben when he had entered her mind, “...Ben.”

There isn’t a difference between the two. He supplied.

He was drawing near to her again; Rey couldn’t bring herself to care. She didn’t protest as he draped the thermal blanket over her shoulders, nor when his breath ghosted her skin as he slid beneath it to join her.

“You have to understand Rey, why I’ve made the decisions I have. Why the Resistance will ultimately fail, one way or another.”

Either they fell to The First Order, or they crumbled beneath the weight of their own creation: a new republic, one plagued by the same faults that every one before it had borne.

“How many have there been?” She breathed, eyes trained on the ground, unseeing as she weighed the options being presented to her, considered the cruel truths being lain so brutally bare.

“How many what?” His lips brushed the shell of her ear, and had she not been wrought with such turmoil she would have shuddered with pleasure at the contact and then grimaced away from him. For now she let him touch her, taking odd comfort in the contact.

“Republics. How many have there been? How many have failed?”

Ben paused, considering the question for a moment before he answered carefully, “Two in the past century, Rey. And before that, countless others. Some cycles last longer, some republics are stronger; but they always buckle beneath their own weight eventually…”

The pregnant pause between them gave voice to his caution; he was uncertain how she might react to what he intended to say next. “And republics always let some fall through the cracks, people I mean. Like you and me. I won’t let that happen Rey, I won’t let children grow up under the yoke of slavery.”

So few people called it that; slavery. That’s what it had been, what the brutal fists of Unkar Plutt had constituted; slavery. Everyday was a slog of sand and twisted metal, all for the fickle promise of food. She had been stunted, left small and wiry by the years of starvation and malnutrition—

“Beautiful still,” Ben murmured, and coaxed her to look towards him, catching the underside of her jaw with two guiding fingers.

He slanted his lips downwards and brushed them over her own; sighing as his hands cupped her hips. This time Rey kissed him back; it felt good— right even— to be so near to him. Proximity had made her a fool, it seemed.

Rey discovered, as their teeth clacked together and she dipped hesitantly into the back of his mind, that Ben was just as inexperienced as she; save for a few rushed kisses shared with another teenager under Luke’s tutelage nearly a decade previous. Neither of them knew what they were doing, but that didn’t dissuade her companion. He dragged eager fingers over the exposed plane of her stomach and pressed them past her breast band, tentatively teasing and then—

“Hey!” He squeezed too roughly. Rey groused at him, shoving his gawky hand away, “Careful, those are sensitive.”

“Sorry,” his sheepishness quickly gave way to more heated, sloppy kisses; pressing her backwards onto the dusty cave floor so he could loom over her.

Rey couldn’t help but wonder, as Ben shoved her breast band out of the way, and unzipped his trousers, why she was letting this transpire? Why, when she loathed him so deeply, was she letting him touch her, kiss her, do whatever this was to her, with her?

Why was she reciprocating?

“Because we belong together, Rey.” He gasped against her cheek as he shifted her capris down her knees and pushed the crotch of her underwear to the side.

He was right.

Rey choked on a sob when Ben pressed two fingers into her, knuckle deep. It hurt. She’d never had anything inside of her before, and it stretched her damp flesh in a way that caused muscle tensing discomfort. He twisted and curled his digits experimentally, head cocked to the side as he studied her wetness and gauged the pained expression on her face until he found a place to press his bunted fingertips that earned him the briefest flash of pleasure.

It felt natural, when he finally slipped his fingers free and fumbled to expose his… his thing. It was a natural progression of what had taken place between the two of them twice—no, three times before. On Starkiller, on Ahch-to, and in that forsaken throne room. Each instance was meant to culminate in this, a physical congress, a metaphorical marriage of the dark and the light.

And then Rey understood why Ben so desperately wanted her to join him, to rule beside him as his equal, his empress. Where he was so dark, roiling with passion and twisted temperament; Rey was light. Compassionate, caring, she was a perfect counterbalance to his own impulsivity, his own penchant for cruelty.

What he wanted to create was a different sort of empire; one that would resist the wear of time through its connection to the raw, untainted Force. If dark and light could cohabitate, work in tandem to maintain true, unadulterated balance, then maybe the galaxy could find unending peace.

So, when Ben leant over her, and whispered apologetically in her ear, “This might hurt.” Rey nodded and allowed him to press into her without any complaint or physical retaliation, curiosity outweighing her apprehension.

She winced at the intrusion; throwing her head to the side and biting her lip to refrain from whimpering. The sting was sharp, dissolving what little pleasure his fingers had given her. He stilled above her, a drop of sweat dripped from his forehead to her breast, and she hissed as she shifted her hips, trying and failing to adjust to his girth and length.

“Just— just do it, Ben.” Rey pleaded, a few tears escaping down her face. It hurt.

“Are you sure?” His whole body shook with the effort of restraining himself, sweat collected in the divot of his clavicle, on his shoulders and cheeks.

Rey bit her lip and nodded, thrusting her hips upwards towards him, onto him, to encourage him to just… just finish this.

They both needed it; the release this would provide them.

As he worked over her, huffing, and doing that thing he did with his lips when he was vexed, or confused, or experiencing any multitude of emotions— pursing them and them puffing them out with harsh breaths. Rey jerked her head up to kiss him, overcome by the need to be even closer. It didn’t hurt so terribly anymore and with each paired ingress and egress something was building at the base of her spine, in the burn between her needy thighs. It was no longer just the blood of her maidenhead that eased his passage, but something slick and heady that her body produced in response to him, to his need, to the way her plundered her and growled over her.

“Rey,” He choked, face flushed red, pupils blown so wide only a ring of his dark irises were visible, “I—”

He was cut off by a shuddering gasp, choking as something warm spilled inside of her, soothing the sting even more. Overwhelmed by the urgent need to experience that same catharsis, Rey thrust an eager hand between her legs, pressing just above the place where they were still joined, and circled furiously.

Rey whimpered wantonly, and when Ben’s senses finally returned to him he pushed her hand away from her… whatever it was.

Clit. He supplied meekly, and then his own large, rough fingers were stroking and circling it, her clit, swiping wetly against her swollen skin as his erection softened inside of her.

“Please don’t take it out yet,” she sobbed into his shoulder, clutching at his back as her walls began to contract around him. It filled her so perfectly, “Just wait— wait!”

She shouted as she came, squeezing her eyes shut and keening into his sweat damp skin. The release flashed behind her eyes, crashed over her in heady waves, and made her insides twitch and constrict around him. He huffed, ducking his head into her shoulder as her walls worked his oversensitive flesh.

“Kriff…” She moaned as it finally began to wane and Ben slid himself from within her, collapsing onto the blanket beside her with a pleased grunt.

Rey laid her hands over her stomach, fingers laced, as she stared at the cracked ceiling in total befuddlement. This… this should have changed nothing— an exchange of bodily fluids, an unromantic romp over ice and stone— but, somehow—

“This changes everything,” Ban had rolled to face her, eyes still alight with his own twisted brand of love and misplaced hope, “Leave here with me, Rey. Join me.”

Please.

The memory of the throne room, painted crimson in a cascade of fire rain and scented with the aroma of blood and gore, flooded the empty space between them.

“Come with me,” he rose up onto his knees, leaning over her so their foreheads nearly touched, and Rey shut her eyes to deny him the privilege of her gaze. “We would change everything. The Resistance is doomed to repeat the same mistakes every rebellion before it has.”

“They’re my friends,” Rey riposted and Ben shirked away from her, “I won’t let you hurt them, no matter how right you think you might be.”

No matter how right he was. And he was right, but his methods were less than desirable. Crushing all opposition beneath his fist or rending it in two with his saber wasn’t conducive to stable leadership. Rey could counter that, his rashness and impulsivity, were she to choose to go with him.

She was being presented with the unique opportunity to reshape the galaxy to her liking. To liberate Jakku from its junk lords, to eliminate the corrupt bureaucracy that plagued the worlds of the inner rim. To chase each and every skin trader to the edge of the unknown regions and blow them out of the sky.

And then there was this— the bond between them that only strengthened with each passing day, that was emboldened by each glance, fortified by every tentative touch. There was no way to destroy it, to extinguish the flame it lit under her heel to propel her at ever increasing velocity towards him. He was right, they were meant to be.

“I’ll come with you, Ben—” He gathered her into his arms abruptly and enthusiastically drawing a sharp yelp from her lips as he crushed his mouth to her throat, sucking her delicate skin between his teeth so that he might mark her.

She planted her firm hand squarely on his forehead and pushed him away, hissing as his teeth dragged against her skin, “It’s conditional.”

She struggled free from his grasp and sat, crossing her legs. She willed her still damp shirt to come to her and caught it in her hand, tugging it over her shoulders, eager to spare herself from his still hungry gaze.

“You’re giving me... an ultimatum?” He sounded incredulous, and his eyes echoed an astounding hurt. He knew what she was going to ask, beg of him.

Rey gulped and nodded, picking nervously at the hem of her thin tunic, “Yes.”

“Tell me, then.”

“Leia Organa, Poe Dameron, Rose Tico, Finn, Chewbacca, the whole of the Resistance— you will not harm them. You will let me send a transmission to them once we’ve boarded your flagship, so that I can explain to them what I have done, and why. Only if they reciprocate with violence will we return fire, and even then you don’t give the order. I do.”

Ben considered it for a long moment, and Rey watched him, scrutinizing the way his expression slowly shifted from incredulity to reluctant acceptance.

Finally, he spoke, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

The ever shifting paradigm of the galaxy shuddered once more. For the better this time, Rey hoped.