6. Chapter 6: Lost

6. Lost

It was so long before it happened again that Rey almost thought the bond was gone, or that Kylo had found a way to control it. But then one day, in the middle of dinner in the mess hall with Finn and Poe (it was really a chore to get Finn away from Rose - she was slow to recover and he felt responsible for her injuries), the familiar quiet came over her and she saw Kylo seated motionless on the floor. He completely ignored her, or seemed to. She wanted to back away because there was hatred and anger burning like an explosion, like his unstable saber, and she knew if she got too close she'd burn herself.

How he was able to ignore the connection so effectively, she wasn't sure, but he didn't move and didn't speak, even when she got up from her seat and moved around him so she could see his face. If she didn't know better, she would say he was meditating.

"This is a little passive aggressive, isn't it?" she asked. Somehow, she was disappointed. It wasn't like she really expected him to keep talking to her after last time, but this was a bit much.

He closed his eyes but otherwise didn't react. She scowled and crossed her arms, glaring at him. "Honestly, Ben, this is stupid."

He glanced at her, then with a grimace reached for his lightsaber. Rey acted on instinct - she didn't want to see him burn himself again and she didn't much want to feel it either. She smacked his hand out of the way, grabbed the saber, and tucked it into her belt.

"Give that back," he snarled, pushing himself to his feet, and Rey steeled herself, meeting his eyes defiantly.

"Or what? Come on, Ben, or what? I don't fancy you hurting yourself again - it hurts me too."

He glared down at her, lip curled in half a sneer, but he didn't actually seem to know what to do. His anger pulsed red and deadly, but it didn't have anywhere to go. That was dangerous, but Rey understood anger. She'd forced him into a choice: either he followed through with an unspoken threat or he didn't. And which he chose would be very telling.

She wondered if he knew that.

"I said, give it back," he said, lower, softer.

Rey suddenly wanted to laugh. He was looming over her like an oncoming storm, but she held all the power - she was the master of herself, but he was an emotional mess.

"I said no," she said archly, coolly. "We're stuck with this bond and I won't have you mutilating yourself every time it happens just so you don't have to deal with your feelings."

He practically growled at her but turned and stalked away, standing a short distance from her and staring out at something she couldn't see. He looked hard, but brittle, like glass.

She followed him a little. She was disappointed and she was angry, and she wasn't sure what she wanted to communicate to him but it hurt, somehow, that he was doing this. "Why is it so important to you to be cut off from everyone?" she asked. She didn't understand that about him. They'd shared a lot through the bond, and when Snoke told them he'd created it, Rey had feared that maybe none of it was real. Now she knew it was, and yet something was still different.

"Not everyone," he said. "Just you." His emotions were tumbling over each other in a mess but she thought she sensed regret under it all.

"Why? You weren't before."

He shook his head, laughing a little. "I was weak before."

Rey frowned. "You told me I wasn't alone."

"Yes, and that got you to come, didn't it? Are you really this stupid? It was all just a trick," he said bitterly. But something about his feelings tipped Rey off, something she didn't expect, and she carefully walked around to stand next to him, staring at his stony face.

"No, it wasn't," she said, feeling certain. "Snoke surprised you just as much as me. We both thought the bond was just ours."

He snorted disdainfully, but his emotions told her something else.

"Is that what changed? You thought I didn't really care? That we were both just manipulating each other and Snoke had made it all seem real?"

"What does it matter?" he asked her, turning. He shook his head. "You care more about some antiquated idea of goodness than you do about…" He stopped. "About people."

"And you care more about getting to feel justified for hating everyone than you do about being happy," she snapped. "You could have come with me."

"Oh yes, and been locked up and eventually executed for my crimes again the Resistance. What a wonderful future that would have been for me."

"And what, I'm expected to go with you, leave behind everything I care about and believe in just because you beckon? I was as scared as you were that it was all a trick. I thought you'd been lying to me. I care about you, Ben, but not enough to let my friends die, especially when I thought you didn't really care about me. And not enough to go with you to fight for something I hate."

"Hate?" He laughed humorlessly. "Isn't that a dirty word? You can't claim some moral superiority and then not even keep the tenants of your own code."

"I… I don't know," Rey said. She hated to admit it, but she did anyway, looking down. "I don't understand the code."

He laughed at her, disbelieving. "You're following something you don't understand? Don't you see how ridiculous that is?"

"I… It doesn't make sense. I don't know how to not have emotions. But… it seems better than what you're doing."

"Does it?" he hissed. "When it made my own uncle want to kill me?"

She flinched. She didn't want to think about that. Luke Skywalker had been one of her heroes as a child. The Light side of the Force was supposed to be right. That was what she'd always learned. "I don't know. I just… The Jedi seem to have caused less pain to the rest of the galaxy than the Sith Order."

"Nice way of looking at things." He was looking at her as if she'd let him down somehow. "Let me know how it works out for you."

"Clearly better than your mindset is working out for you," she said snarkily.

He didn't respond, which she figured was wise of him because she was fully prepared to tell him how stupid it was that he was clinging to an ideology that made it seem reasonable to him to hurt himself and cut himself off from people and wallow in misery just to get a little more power than everyone else.

She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. She'd confided in him, and he in her, and he acted as if that was something to be ashamed of. That hurt. And it hurt that he'd called her nothing, and it hurt that he wouldn't just be honest with her.

And she was still a little afraid that everything he'd said to her was a lie, and he didn't care about her, and he only kept talking to her to try to exploit her weaknesses. But she realized now that he might be afraid of the same thing, for all that he tried to seem like he didn't care.

"I want my saber back," he said, after a few minutes. "I think if you have it when the connection ends, it'll stay with you."

"Oh." She held it out to him, but when he wrapped his hand around the hilt next to hers, she didn't let go. He glared at her.

"Would you just stop?"

"You have to promise you're not going to stab yourself or something."

"Why?" Kylo suddenly turned to face her directly, stepping in closer to her. His eyes were intense, fixed on her, and she realized this was important to him for some reason. "Why does that matter to you?"

She thought about saying it was because it hurt her too, but that wasn't the main reason and she knew it. She met his eyes and took a step towards him herself. She tried to push all the sincerity she could manage into what she said. "Because I don't want to see you in pain."

His eyes flicked across her face, burning brown with those stray flecks of yellow. "I don't want to see you in pain, either." It felt honest – in fact, it felt, somehow, like the promise she wanted. She let go of the saber and he turned away quickly.

"Ben-" she began, but she saw him shift away and realized that she'd pushed him as far as she could today. She had so much she wanted to say, and ask, but instead she walked a little ways away and sat down cross-legged to meditate until she became aware of Finn and Poe standing on either side of her. She stood up, shakily, embarrassed. The cafeteria was still buzzing, but people were looking at her.

"Rey? Rey, are you okay?" Finn whispered urgently. "Stupid Poe here would tell me anything except that you were fine."

"Well, he was right, I am," Rey said, rubbing her face.

"I think we better go talk to General Organa." Poe waved a hand at Finn as he started to say something else. "That was a long time."

Rey nodded. "Don't worry, Finn, I'll explain," she said, because her friend looked like he was going to explode with frustration.

"You better," he grumbled as they started out of the cafeteria. "I worry about you enough as it is."

Rey couldn't help but smile – it was still such a novel thing, having Finn say things like that so casually. Having someone care about her without being ashamed.

"Thanks, Finn."

"For what?" he asked.

She just chuckled. "For being you."

A/N: So I actually posted this chapter earlier and I've reposted because I had a big realization about Rey's character and where she has to go in her arc and wow. I'm a Christian, so I can tend to have a more black and white view of morality than most people, and because of that lens I've obviously been assuming that in the Star Wars universe, Light is Good and Dark is Bad. But I juat figured out that isn't really the case with the Force, but Rey, too, thinks it is.

So I finally know what Rey's point of conflict is and I'm so thrilled! I can actually write her better now! Sorry for the mini-meta.

I ended this chapter with Poe and Finn because I kind of wanted to show how she has this great support system and friends, so she's not really alone, while Kylo has made decisions that are cutting him off from everyone - even her, if he isn't careful.

Seriously, I love how thoughtful and kind your reviews have been. Thank you all!