Interference Lines
In which the side effects of Rey’s battle meditation are revealed, and Kylo and Rey revert to their familiar coping mechanisms.
We did it, Kylo thought. The Precursor. The Raptor. Now the Relentless. He glanced out at the cruiser and the other star destroyer visible beyond the Relentless’ viewports and thought with fierce triumph, Mine.
Rey walked beside him—exactly where she belonged. All she’d done since the confrontation with the Nightfolk… She was growing into her power, becoming everything he knew she could be. When she’d demonstrated the power of the Force in the Raptor’s debriefing room, she’d been positively incandescent.
He’d have to find her something to wear besides an officer’s uniform. Something that would convey her true worth.
Two officers approached along the corridor. They glanced at Rey, at him, then studiously away.
“You shouldn’t trust him,” Rey muttered when they passed. “That captain.”
“I don’t,” Kylo said. “That’s why we’re here, and not on the Raptor.”
She frowned. “I don’t like it.”
Her instincts were telling her to run.
“You aren’t powerless, Rey,” he said quietly.
“I know. That doesn’t mean I want to be in a ripper-raptor’s nest.”
He didn’t know what a ripper-raptor was, but the name was descriptive enough.
They walked in silence, discomfort and a spinning eddy of thoughts spreading outward from her like a wake.
“Was that true, what you said about the Force? After Starkiller?”
“Any Force-sensitive would feel it,” Kylo said. “Even Luke must’ve been able to, as far as he was.”
Rey shook her head. “He’d shut himself off from the Force. He didn’t know what happened until I told him.”
Kylo turned his head to stare at her. “He was that afraid of me?”
She blinked. “I…guess so.” Her expression darkened. “He sure wanted me gone once he knew I was talking to you. Wanted me gone worse,” she corrected.
He didn’t want to think about Luke. He returned to her question, instead. “The Hosnian system was destroyed just before I arrived on Takodana. You told me you were in the woods because you were running from the visions you saw. It wasn’t only the visions that panicked you, Rey. You were reacting to the terror and death on Hosnian Prime, even if you didn’t know what you were feeling.”
She stopped, swallowed hard. “You said…the Force would try to balance itself…”
It was suddenly hard to breathe. “And I found you,” he said. “I was drawn to you.”
She just stared at him. Pain flared through the bond. She tore her gaze away and started walking again.
“Rey?”
His sense of her was a roiling churn of pain and anger and something like shame. Something like he’d felt from her on Starkiller, when he’d mocked her for being a scavenger.
He reached for her. “Rey—”
A squadron of stormtroopers came around the corner. Kylo felt their attention sharpen on her, rippling from the troopers in front, back through the ranks as she came into view of those in the rear. He stiffened and reached for the Force, ready to stop an attack.
No blasters were drawn, no aggressive moves made. Suspicion prickled up his neck. Moving closer to Rey, he dipped into the troopers’ minds and met—
Not hostility. No intention of harm. No, the threat he felt from them was very different.
Appreciation. Admiration. Affection. Attraction.
Anger flared in his chest, quick and hot. He clenched his jaw, shutting the bond.
The troopers passed in a clatter of armor and a thump of boots on decking. He felt their stares on Rey, stares they believed he wouldn’t perceive through their helmets.
He reached out as he strode the corridors beside her, raking the mind of every trooper and tech, officer and cadet who passed. It was the same with each one. Even the women were taken with her, gazing at her with open warmth and affection the instant before they registered Kylo’s presence.
He thought he’d quashed the problem back on the Precursor. Apparently not. Apparently every time she used her power to turn an enemy, he’d be forced to fight the same battle all over again—but with tens of thousands of crew, instead of only hundreds.
No. This couldn’t be allowed to continue.
They continued in silence to the deck that housed the officers’ quarters. He found the one he’d selected for her, pulled off a glove and pressed his palm to the entry panel. Wordlessly, he took her hand and pressed it to the panel until it blinked blue, registering her credentials. The door slid open.
Rey stepped in and Kylo followed. The door closed behind them, but she didn’t turn. She seemed…drawn in on herself somehow, as if she felt threatened, or diminished. He wondered if she, too, felt the attention on her—
Or he might not have himself shielded as well as he thought.
He pushed out a breath and with it, the anger, the snarling need to defend what was his.
She just stood looking around the room. He crossed to the small desk all officers’ quarters held. Perching on the edge so he wouldn’t loom, he waited.
Her gaze finally landed on him, wary in a way he hadn’t seen in a while. “Now that you have your ships, what happens?”
“Hux is planning a coronation on Coruscant. Much of the fleet will be there. Not all—a few ships are in orbit above Corellia. After the destruction of the Supremacy, the Fulminator, and so many star destroyers, the fleet will need to be rebuilt. Hux intends to take Corellia, for its shipyards.”
“And you’ll take the ships there while he’s busy with his coronation?”
“We’ll take the ships there.”
Rey folded her arms. “How will that work? We took these ships one at a time. You’ll have to get the Nightfolk aboard the ships at Corellia all at once.”
“We won’t use the Nightfolk this time.”
“How, then?”
Kylo leaned forward. “The way you stopped the Relentless’ TIE squadrons from attacking.”
She eyed him. He didn’t need the bond to sense her unhappiness. What, exactly, made her unhappy was another question. He folded his own arms and waited.
“So these new ships will just…” She gave a vague wave of the hand. “…give up?”
“They won’t have the will to fight. Then we’ll take them.”
“What’s to keep them from deciding to fight later?”
Irritation coiled in his middle. He concentrated on calming it. “I’ll make sure the command is willing to accept my orders.”
She abruptly turned her head, gazing across the room. After a moment, she turned back. “Kylo, these people joined us because we promised them something better.” She spoke quietly. “What you’re describing is no different than what they had.”
His heart rate picked up and the faint, metallic tang of anger bloomed on his tongue. “It is different. It will be different. Do you think I’ll rule the way Hux does? The way Snoke did?”
Something flashed in her eyes. He wanted to open the bond to sense her better but didn’t dare allow her to sense him in his current state.
“This isn’t about ruling,” she said. “It’s about what we’re doing now.”
He pushed off the desk, straightening. “What do you object to?”
“I object to tricking people.” Her voice rose. “Making them think they’re getting something they should never should’ve hoped for to begin with.”
“By removing Hux?”
“Do you think Hux will just let himself be removed?”
“No,” he said flatly. “That’s why I need more ships.”
“So I’ll help you get the ships at Corellia. You’ll take those, and I’ll do the same to more, until you have enough to fight him.”
Something in him relaxed. “Yes. Hux will lose ship after ship, and never know why.”
She looked away again, her brows drawn and lips tight. He wondered what she was thinking. She knew ships inside and out, but he doubted she knew much battle strategy, if any. He’d explain en route to Corellia.
Finally, she turned back. “No.”
Everything in him shuddered to a stop. “No,” he repeated, disbelieving. “What do you mean, ‘no?’”
“I mean, no, I’m not going to make people believe in…in…” She waved a hand. “…things they’ve spent their whole lives longing for, dreams that kept them alive, and then stomp them into the dust.” She clenched her fists and leaned forward as if bracing herself. “I won’t do it.”
Anger blazed, as sharp and hot as in the corridor. “You’d rather let them fight and die?”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
He’d never been so angry with her. Not when she’d slashed his face, not when she’d shot at and cursed him. He hadn’t believed it was possible to be this angry with her.
“Not me.” His voice had that strained edge to it. “We’re going to Corellia. We’ll see what you do when we get there.”
Kylo brushed past her, too angry to even look at her. It was all he could do to keep from punching the door out its frame with the Force as he strode out of the room.
* * *
Rey stared, unseeing, at the closed door for a long time. Too long.
Move, she told herself. Now. You don’t have time for this.
She opened herself enough to feel for Kylo’s presence in the Force—he was still moving away. Quickly. His anger licked like fire.
She was shaking—with fury, with disappointment and pain. It was Snoke’s throne room all over again. Ruling, that was all he cared about. Not people’s lives.
Certainly not her.
She should’ve known. Verrannallu had even tried to warn her, but she hadn’t wanted to listen.
The door whispered open at her touch and she stepped through. She moved quickly along the corridors, but not too fast. Still, too many people seemed to notice her. She reached for the Force to push their attention away—
—And remembered the flight control deck on the Finalizer. How she’d opened the door to find Kylo standing right outside, knowing she was there, knowing she’d done something.
Not this time.
She raised her mental shields, shutting herself off from the bond, from the Force. Let the people she passed look at her. So what? By the time anyone thought to say anything, it would be too late.
She knew exactly where to go—hadn’t she been crawling around in ships like this since she was old enough to hold a hydrospanner? She pushed aside guilt when the officers she passed smiled and nodded at her. They wouldn’t be smiling much soon, no matter what she did.
Finally, a hatch opened on the Relentless’ flag hangar, where they’d docked the shuttle when they arrived. It wasn’t as large as the primary hangars, intended for command shuttles and the private craft of visiting dignitaries.
On one hand, it would be the most obvious place for her to go. On the other, it’d be quieter, and a departing shuttle wouldn’t be questioned as closely. She hoped. Personnel must still be shuttling in from the Precursor, or they’d already be in hyperspace.
Rey stepped through the hatch, scanning the hangar. A group of Nighfolk glided across the shining black deck. She felt them graze her shields, not trying to breach them, but probably wondering why they were in place. She kept walking, not flinching under their scrutiny, but not letting them in, either. If they thought she was shielding herself from them, so much the better.
Without a backward glance, she walked up the shuttle’s ramp. The cabin was empty. The pilot and copilot were still aboard, their voices drifting back from the cockpit.
“Hello,” Rey called.
The pilot turned as she stepped into the cockpit. It was the same woman who’d piloted when Rey and Kylo arrived.
The pilot dipped her chin in a respectful nod. “Ma’am. Can I help you?”
“Are you returning to the Raptor?” Rey was used to this, showing just the right combination of confidence and friendliness. I’m not a problem, her attitude said. I’m not a pushover, either.
“No, ma’am,” the pilot said. “This was our last run before we go to lightspeed.”
Rey didn’t need the Force to sense the woman’s curiosity and caution—Rey might be Kylo Ren’s partner and wear a First Order uniform, but she’d bet just about everyone knew she wasn’t First Order.
“Oh.” Rey feigned disappointment. “Well, I guess I’ll have to wait until we get to Corellia.”
At the mention of Corellia, the caution disappeared from the pilot’s face. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rey turned back to the cabin, and the pilot and copilot resumed their shutdown sequence.
She made a point of making noise as she descended the ramp. She also made sure she was absolutely silent returning up it. Taking advantage of the pilot and copilot’s distraction, she slipped into the shuttle’s ‘fresher. She pulled the door closed and quietly opened the access panel under the sink.
* * *
Kylo stormed through the corridors. How could Rey so casually refuse him? She hadn’t made even the slightest attempt to understand what he was trying to do, to see how rational his plan was. He thought they were past that. He thought she trusted him better than that.
He clenched a fist, breathing hard. Obviously, he’d been wrong.
He stepped onto the Relentless’ bridge, the familiar quiet bustle of officers going about their duties in the pit, the watchfulness of the stormtroopers assigned there, the whirr of messenger droids moving across the deck. A thread of vague uneasiness twisted through him. He glanced at the four Nightfolk who stood to one side of the bridge.
What troubles you, brother? they asked.
Have you heard anything of concern? he thought back.
One of them turned toward Vach. The leader has no loyalty to you.
No, he agreed. Watch him.
The Bright-one? She has given you pain.
Pain. Pain wasn’t what she’d given him.
A disagreement, he assured them. I’ll deal with her.
Kylo reached out with the Force for the minds around him, scenting for any trace of treachery. He sensed Captain Vach’s skepticism and calculation, but the rest of the bridge crew was focused on simply doing their tasks.
Vach turned to Kylo as he approached and gave him a cool glance. “We’ll need to discuss your plans. I hold you to your assurance—we won’t be fighting our own.”
“It’s not in my interest to fight our own,” Kylo said. “Only to destroy Hux.”
Still, the uneasiness grew, creeping up the back of his neck. He reached out farther, beyond the bridge, questing through the ship.
The sensation reminded him of Snoke, the way he was always aware of his prying, his whispers. His stomach twisted and he shuddered. No. There was no whisper, no sickening, gut-crawling sense of violation. Snoke was dead. He was dead. He’d killed him, cut him in half. The whispers in his mind were silent.
His mind was silent.
The bond was silent.
Kylo stiffened, his heart suddenly thundering. It wasn’t a presence that bothered him, but an absence—the absence of the bond’s constant, comforting hum.
He reached out through it, through the Force and met only blankness where Rey should be. Cold fire shot through his veins. He turned, panic whiting out his mind. The voices of captain and crew became a meaningless buzz in his ears.
“Sir. We have an unsanctioned departure from Hangar One.”
The bridge snapped back into focus. “What?” Kylo said.
“The Raptor’s command shuttle, sir,” the security officer said from the pit.
Rage burned away the panic. Kylo suddenly knew exactly why Rey had disappeared from his perception. “Lock out the controls. Tractor it in. Now.”
Whatever was in his voice made alarm spike through every crewmember on the bridge. Men and women visibly jumped.
“Sir, shall I hail—” the communications officer began.
“No hail,” Kylo snapped.
“Get a security team down there,” Vach ordered. “If they don’t surrender, use appropriate force—”
“No,” Kylo broke in. “I’ll deal with it. Don’t bring in that shuttle until I’m there.”
He remembered hunting her on Starkiller Base, her powers barely emerged, as she slipped like a ghost through an unfamiliar facility. If she got off that shuttle now and went to ground in something as familiar as a star destroyer, he’d never find her before she escaped.
Vach watched him with a cool, evaluating stare. “This is a problem you’re aware of?”
“None that concerns you. Keep everyone out of my way,” Kylo snarled
He turned, a black storm, and swept off the bridge.
In the corridors, people pressed themselves to bulkheads as he passed. If he could’ve forced the lift into freefall without killing himself when it hit bottom, he would have. Bright flashes burst at the corners of his vision by the time the lift doors opened.
He stepped out. The hanger was deserted, the shuttle hovering just beyond the pressurizing field. As he watched, it drifted through the field and set down gently, its engines already powered down by the systems lock-out.
Kylo stormed across the deck. The shuttle’s boarding ramp remained up. A sweep of his hand and it clicked, whined downward. He jumped onto it before it fully descended and strode inside.
The cabin was clearly empty. He used the Force to drag the boarding ramp up again, ignited his lightsaber and jabbed it into the controls. Sparks sprayed. Metal melted and sagged. She wouldn’t slip out behind him now.
He continued forward, to the cockpit, his steps ringing on the metal deck. Facing the closed door, he found his fists clenched. He held his lightsaber ready in case she tried to shoot him.
“Rey,” he ground out. “Open the door.”
Nothing. No sound but his harsh breaths and the spit and crackle of his lightsaber. He didn’t bother with the control panel. Just thrust one hand to the side. The door wrenched open.
He caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. His hand snapped up, caught the descending end of Rey’s staff before he even saw her stepping out from where she’d pressed against the bulkhead. Wheeling, he threw her off balance, dropped his weapon and grabbed the staff with his other hand. Her feet scrabbled for purchase on the slick deck as he drove her backwards. He didn’t need to use the Force—mass and strength were enough.
He thrust her back into a chair then held her pinned with the staff across her collarbone, her hands curled and trapped behind it.
“Where,” he growled, his face inches from hers, “are you going?”
“I won’t be your weapon,” she spat back at him. “You want to go rampaging across the galaxy? You’ll do it without me. I’m not your tool. You aren’t going to use me.”
She might’ve slapped him. “Use you. Is that what you think I’m doing?”
Her eyes shined with the suspicion of tears. “What would you call it, when the only reason I’m here is because of the Force?”
His stomach clenched. “Who said that?”
“You did! The Force drew you to me. The Force.” She spat the word as if she hated it.
“You don’t understand—”
She overrode him. “No, you don’t understand! I won’t be your little scavenger, crawling in the dirt and the dark to do what you can’t.”
He jerked back, releasing her. She snapped forward, her hands falling to fist on her knees.
“What do you want from me?” she shouted. “Tell me what you want!”
“You know what I want.”
“What? What you said before? Something new? To rule? Because if you want to rule, that’s nothing new. So what is it?”
He couldn’t believe she could be so oblivious, or so willfully blind. “Together,” he said. “With you.”
“Because of the Force,” she sneered.
“No, Rey. No. Not because of the Force.”
“And what if I don’t want to rule?”
Kylo was struck speechless. Memories turned in his mind, fitting together into new shapes.
He remembered the look on her face in the throne room, the tears streaking her cheeks. The agonizing seconds of silence as he held out his hand to her. His growing dread that it was all going wrong, but he didn’t know why. He was offering her everything. All the times he’d wondered, if disaster hadn’t intervened at that precise moment, what would she have done?
Would she have done this—tried to escape him again?
Fear clenched in his chest. He found himself shaking, suddenly certain the rest of his life would hinge on his answer now. Dropping her staff, he knelt by her and opened himself—the bond, his mind, his heart.
“Reylo” by Szikee
“Rey.” His voice was low, harsh, but only because he struggled to keep it from breaking. “Don’t run away. Please. I’ll let you go if it ever comes to that. I swear it. But don’t run away. I can’t—” His voice did break.
He struggled for control, willing her to understand how much she meant to him. How vulnerable she made him—and how strong. How when she was by him, the storm inside him calmed. He could think beyond the urges of the darkness that lived in him. How everything made sense. Anything was possible.
He realized he gripped her hand tightly, holding the fist she’d made closed. He loosened his hold and her hand softened in his.
Her other hand rose, touched his scarred cheek. “What do you want, Ben?” she whispered.
You. Since I saw you, you’re all I’ve ever wanted.
He knew she read that—how could she help but?
She made a face and gave an annoyed jerk of the chin. “No, what do you want for you? What do you want for your life?”
Pain took his breath away. How could she reject—
He stopped, forced himself to back up. To listen. To feel.
This wasn’t rejection. This was a gift. She was offering him what no one ever had. She was telling him, Don’t sell yourself for me. Don’t cut off parts of yourself for my sake.
He looked up at her, marveling. Her own fierce independence wouldn’t let her take his freedom. He might have to pay for his choices, but she wouldn’t take them from him.
It was hard, digging down into the darkness to find what he’d spent his life struggling for—against—just struggling and never knowing why. Even thinking about it woke the violence, the rage. He tried to push what he felt through the bond
“No, Ben. Say it.” Her hand on his face gave him a little shake. “Say it.”
A broken huff of a laugh escaped him. Oh, she was ruthless, this abandoned scavenger girl. Anything he showed her, she gave him right back. But she did manage to break him free of the whirlpool that threatened to drag him down again.
“I want to just live. I don’t want anyone—forcing—things on me. Doing things to me. Taking what’s mine. I want to be who I am.” His voice had that mad edge despite him. “I want—I want—”
She put her hands on his shoulders, quieting him. “That’s what everyone wants. It’s what I want. To be able to just live without being afraid someone will come and take away everything that matters. Without waiting for someone to try to humiliate you or hurt you or crush you. To be safe. Don’t you see, Ben? That’s why I don’t ever want to rule. Because ruling means taking away from someone else. I know what it’s like. To have nothing. To be nothing. To be nobody. I can’t do that to anyone else.”
“You’re not nothing,” he said fiercely. It was what he should’ve told her in the throne room, but it had come out all wrong.
Her gaze slid away, pain twisting through the bond. He didn’t try to read her thoughts, but their direction was clear enough.
He gripped her hands hard. “You—are—not—nothing. I’m not here because of the Force, Rey. I’m here because of you.”
She shook her head, her eyes wide and lost. “But why?” The tears spilled over, gleaming tracks down her cheeks. “No one wanted me. They left me alone in the desert.”
He’d never seen her so vulnerable. Not when he captured her, not even when she told him about the cave on Ahch-To. With a shock, he realized how deeply she’d been wounded, believing she was only an instrument, a thing that had no value to him beyond its usefulness. He vowed he’d never allow her to feel that way again.
“You aren’t alone in the desert anymore,” he said willing her to listen, to believe him. “You’re with me. I want you.”
He saw in her face, felt through the bond that it was exactly what she needed. And he saw—
Against darkness, a web of light spun outward through the Force, the two of them at its center. He watched it spread, enveloping system after system, planet after planet, threading through every life it touched. Balance.
As quickly as it had come, the vision faded, leaving him with simple certainty. It wasn’t only what she gave him. He gave in return. Where one was weak and uncertain, the other was strong. What one lacked, the other possessed. It was an ever-changing balance like a perfect dance of swords, rise and swing and parry, but it was still balance.
She just gazed at him, fragile hope blooming on her face.
He wiped her tears with his thumb. “I’m with you as long as you want me,” he promised her.
Closing her eyes, she leaned into his hand a moment. She sniffled, cleared her throat. “What do we do now?”
He stood, pulling her up with him. “We talk.”
* * *
I want you.
How could simple words make her feel so warm and valued and relieved? Except it was more than just the words. It was everything he did. No matter how hard she fought him or how much they argued, Kylo had never turned away from her. He didn’t abandon her. He wasn’t using her.
Part of her didn’t want to accept it. It was easier, safer to believe she was only useful, that sooner or later, she’d just be discarded again when she wasn’t anymore. But what she’d felt through the bond—his intensity of feeling, his soul-deep longing—wouldn’t let her deny it.
The bond was still open—he hadn’t shut himself off as he often did. Even now, Rey felt the worry and uncertainty that rippled through him, the undercurrent of fear that he’d lose her.
Memory replayed through her mind: that moment before everything had blown up on the Supremacy, Kylo’s hand outstretched as she’d hung balanced on the edge of rejection.
Cold realization flooded her, stopping her breath.
She’d come within a heartbeat of destroying him. After promising that he wasn’t alone, she’d been ready to give up on him at the first real test. To let anger and fear rule her…
Just like Luke had.
She hugged herself, overcome by shame.
“Rey?” he said.
She looked at him where he sat beside her on her bed, watching her anxiously. She could only imagine what he sensed through the bond, certain it couldn’t be reassuring.
She took his big hand in both hers, held it tight. “I’m sorry, Kylo,” she blurted. “I should’ve tried harder to talk to you.”
His head jerked in dismissal. “You did. I wouldn’t listen.”
He thought she was talking about this time. She couldn’t tell him what she meant, not now, when things were still so raw. “I don’t know how to do this. How…how…to fix things when they go wrong.”
“Yeah, me neither,” he said.
She couldn’t help the twitch of her lips, remembering the last time he’d said that. How casually resigned he’d sounded, just before she turned to see him in all his unclothed glory.
“Maybe it’s like the Force,” she said. “Maybe we just have to decide to fix them.”
“I want to,” he said. “Whatever it takes.”
Her heart squeezed. He meant it.
She ran her thumb back and forth across the supple leather of his glove. “We can’t start by betraying people.”
He gave her one of his intense looks. She fought an impulse to squirm under it.
“Dreams that kept them alive,” he said. “I know what dream kept you alive, Rey. I saw it.”
That someone loved me. That they’d been looking for me all this time and sooner or later, they’d find me. She broke from his gaze, suddenly feeling horribly exposed.
His hand turned, enclosing hers. “I will never betray it.”
Her throat was suddenly too tight to swallow. “Ben…” she choked out, then set her jaw and said fiercely, “I won’t betray yours.”
He drew her to him, held her tight, his face pressed to her neck. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him just as tightly.
It was a place to begin. The sure, solid anchor for your rope before you began to climb into some dark and unknown place.
At last, he pulled back. “Tell me what you want to do.”
She took a breath. “You need to think like a scavenger. First, we have to survive. If we don’t, none of this,” she gestured to indicate the ships, “makes any difference.”
She didn’t need the bond to tell he didn’t like it. “Go on,” he said.
“A scavenger is always looking for what’s useful. You have to find out what people want, then figure out how to make it work with what you want.”
“I know what Hux wants. It’s incompatible with what I want.”
“How will Hux get what he wants?” she said.
“He’ll simply take it,” he said then added with a growl, “The way he already has.”
“What if people don’t want to give it?”
Kylo gave her a look like, Really?
“I’m serious,” she said. “Find those people, find out what they want. Then you have something to work with. A way to start bargaining.”
“You mean ‘we.’”
She savored the statement, then agreed softly, “We.”
He thought a moment. “You need a lightsaber.”
Rey blinked, knocked sideways. “I— What?”
“It will remind you what you are. Your place in all this.”
“But you said I—” You have no place in this story.
“I don’t say things the way I should,” he broke in, anger flaring over the bond. She had the impression it was at himself, though, not her. “And you don’t need me to tell you,” he went on. “You know. You can feel it, the same as I do.”
Again and again, he surprised her. Offering to teach her. Killing Snoke for her. Calling the lightsaber to her hand after he did. Drawing her into her power. Now this—adding to her strength, building her up when her whole life had been a struggle against everything that had tried to grind her into nothing.
The feeling that swelled through her was almost painful in its intensity, like nothing she’d ever felt before. She thought she might burst with it.
She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face to his shoulder, tears silently sliding down her cheeks. His hand came up to cradle her head.
What she felt from him was like being wrapped in the warmest, softest blanket when you’d been left outside to shiver in a cold, lonely night. As she savored the feel of his arms and emotions enfolding her, her tears slowly ebbed.
When she finally calmed, he said, “The difficulty won’t be building the weapon, but in finding a kyber crystal.”
Rey smiled in spite of herself. He was so focused on this, she could tell it meant more than it seemed.
“The Empire looted planets for their kybers when the Death Stars were built,” he went on. “You can still find them on Cristophsis, or Jedha. Christophsis is dangerous. On Jedha, the surface crystals were stripped.” He thought a moment. “We could try Jedha. You’re strong. A lost crystal might call to you.”
“Call?”
He pulled off his glove and held out a hand. “I’ll show you.”
Rey took his hand and slipped into a memory.
A young Ben Solo, all long legs and hands and feet he had yet to grow into, stood in a crystal cave glowing with its own light. Eerie music sounded in an atmosphere that throbbed with interconnected awarenesses. He wandered, his fingers brushing the gleaming walls. Crystals quivered under his touch, singing eager songs that somehow sounded like Me! Me! Pick me! He drifted on, drawn by one song sweeter and more harmonious than any other—
Rey gasped and gripped his hand hard, blinking back into her quarters aboard the Relentless. “I have one!”
Kylo’s grip tightened, too. “What? How?”
“I found it, when I was scavenging in the Ravager. I was…oh, I don’t know. Maybe ten? Not long after I found my AT-AT. I thought I heard music coming from somewhere in the dark. I kept following it, deeper and deeper. I finally ended up in the cargo hold, which I thought had to be a complete waste of time since everything good had been taken since before I was born.”
Kylo listened silently and intently, the way he had when she’d told him about the cave on Ahch-To.
“There was a crushed box gutted open, full of sparkly sand,” she went on. “I dug through it—I don’t know why. It’s not like Jakku isn’t nothing but sand. But this…tingled…like it was dancing on my skin. That music was in my head, singing to me. I felt like those times I just knew I was on to a good piece of salvage, one that would get me enough portions to last weeks.”
He didn’t speak, but the bond quivered with a strange combination pain and excitement.
“I finally felt something, something warm that buzzed against my fingers. I pulled it out. It was just a clear piece of rock. I thought I should be disappointed, because I wouldn’t get anything for a chunk of rock, but looking at it, I felt so happy. It didn’t make sense. Then it started to glow, a spark of green in the middle, at first. The green spread, and soon the whole crystal was glowing.”
They still held hands. She let him see what she told him, the crystal illuminating a child’s thin, dirty hands, the green glow glittering on the sand that dusted her skin.
But where Ben had walked through a luminous cave, she’d crept through a black cavern. While the air around him was filled with the songs of many voices, the vast hush around her was broken by only a single, lonely call.
Kylo’s eyes gleamed with eagerness and amazement. “Rey,” he said, very low, like he was struggling to control himself. “What happened to it?”
“I kept it. It’s in my shelter. On Jakku.”
Image credit: “Reylo” by Szikee on DeviantArt
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