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Characters: Rey and Kylo Ren
Date: Late August
Location: Healer's guild, Kylo's room
Situation: Rey pays a visit to an unlikely patient
Warnings/Rating: None yet

Kylo Ren had thought there was little that could be worse than being seriously injured in battle by someone who didn't even have the Force, even if he had won the battle in the most final way possible.

When he looked up from the notebook in which he was practising kedan writing to check on the person who had just opened the door, he was proven wrong.

Here he caught sight of his impending doom and had to correct himself: there was probably little that was worse, and he had just discovered one of the things that were.

Kylo cleared his throat audibly to keep the scavenger from taking a too close look at the hospital room, or pay attention at all attention to the fact that he was in a hospital. As if it wasn't far too late for that.

He didn't have any personal touches here, as he still refused to consider that he might be here for a longer stay, and but there were several notebooks stacked by the bed. Studying material both for his studies in the artes, and the kedanese language, and thoughts about Force training, if he ever got to teach any of the Force sensitive kedan Galen Marek had discovered.

"What are you doing here?" he asked tightly, his face showing his displeasure at being caught in a moment of weakness. "Have you come to gloat or simply to finish the job?"

All of a sudden he felt more keenly aware than he had in a while that he was wholly without allies on Tu Vishan. If he was lucky Rey believed Hux and Phasma were still around, just laying low, but that was if he was lucky...

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As she came into his room, she was struck by a number of things — mainly first and foremost how easy the decision to come here, to Kylo Ren's hospital room in the Healer's Guild, had been. She'd done it without much thought when she'd felt the pull across the Force bond they shared, the sharp sensation of pain and agony too blinding to ignore.

Part of her compelling insistence to come, to see his injury for herself, had been selfishness; Ren was hers to kill if cause necessitated it, just as he'd proven the same on his part with his actions when she'd first arrived in Keeliai, redirecting Hux's blaster bolt. But another conflicted, confused part of her was genuinely concerned, not in the least because she'd seen some very different — but no less compelling — sides to him in the last couple of months, while living on the turtle.

Their recent escapade only a few days earlier with the multi-colored Lucid crystals, in the privacy of his home, was another matter entirely. Cursed with vivid remembrance of every single detail of that afternoon, she wasn't about to forget what had transpired on his couch. The excessive hair-petting had been the least mortifying recollection.

So as she stepped further into the room, the door closing slowly behind her with a soft click, Rey frowned at his bristling welcome.

"I came to see you, to see how serious it is." His injury, she meant, and her eyes roved over him curiously before meeting his once more. "And I didn't come here to do either of those things." Her frown deepened. "To be honest, I'm surprised you would suggest such a thing. I don't kick people when they're down."

(...Welll, okay, there was that one time in the snowy forest...)

"Don't you?" he asked archly, "since when?" It was petty of course to blame her for something she had every right to do, especially when the only true fault he could blame her for was not going through with the killing blow. But he was weakened now, humbled, and if it took being petty to regain some measure of control over the situation - over her - then he would do whatever it took.

Nevertheless he forced himself to sit up in the hospital bed as well as he could. He would not face her looking any weaker than he absolutely had to. He refused.

"If you say you didn't come to check if you can easily take me out while I'm weakened, then I'll be disappointed." He smiled rather bitterly. "You would be showing common sense if you did that... don't say you have any lingering sentiment."

And as soon as the words were out Kylo wished he could take them back. Bringing up what they had done under the influence of the Lucid was the last thing he wanted. It was downright stupid. Even if he had been unable to keep from thinking about it, stuck here in his hospital bed with no distractions.

She gave him a dark look, fixing her brows even more sternly as Ren sat up in his bed with some struggle. He was hurting, she knew well through the emotive bond — but more than that, he was lashing out at her to cover the fact that he was vulnerable like this.

Rey let her spine go rigid as she looked at him, as he spat the word sentiment distastefully, her dark eyes growing just as hard in anger. "Is that what you'd prefer, then? That I'd come here to find your weak spot, and exploit it? That I'd end you while you lay here, injured and helpless?" She shook her head slowly as she approached his bedside, stopping so close to him that she could reach out with her arm and touch him.

"Maybe I should," she sneered, her voice soft despite the anger he could likely feel coursing through her. "Maybe ending you right here, right now, would end this sentiment I feel, that you seem to scorn so much."

She stood beside his bed, silently daring him to take back his words. If he was going to bring up what they'd done in his residence that day on his couch, basking in one another's raw feeling and sensation, shared and multiplied in a feedback loop between them — then she was going to make kriffing sure she knew whether what they'd done had affected him as much as it had her. No more lies, no more evasions.

Edited 2016-09-07 07:10 (UTC)

Her anger was still beautiful. Not for the first time Kylo Ren found himself first stunned, then enchanted by the sight of the rage hardening her eyes, and the tension held in her deceptive frame. She may have been short and slender compared to his own heavy build, but he had learned more than once that she had no problem keeping up. And Kylo could still recall the feeling of her body under his hands, when the Lucid had awoken thoroughly impossible desires and the courage to act on them.

Right now, she looked like she was closer to punching him - and he knew it would hurt.

Any reasonable injured man would seek to appease her.

A reasonable man would not have been thinking of wanting his enemy.

"Maybe you should," he snarled, "that would save us both from this..." He waved a hand angrily, gesturing first at her and then at himself. He had no names for it, none he was willing to give it anyway. "You're in my head," Kylo growled, "every hour of the day you're in there, I can feel you. Do you think you can infect me with your Light?!" Another snarl, teeth bared, eyes narrowed, he did look, and feel, very much like a cornered animal that had chosen to fight. "You'll Fall. The Dark Side's in you already. Give in. Attack me. Give in to your anger and free yourself."

And then, if she had fallen, there was that traitorous little whisper at the back of his mind, he would be allowed to want her...

Rey felt her stoic outer resolve weakening, when she saw his distress and frustration — she'd wanted to come to him with a sense of calm, with that tranquility she'd found at the turtle's head, but Ren was so very adept at pushing her buttons.

We influence one another, she realized; as part of the bond they shared, no doubt, but also because of their recent experiences. Ren was no less susceptible to her influence than she was of his.

"Part of me is already of the Dark side, yes," she admitted. It was hard to ignore that fact, when she'd given in to it so easily already, so many times; on Starkiller, in Keeliai when she'd seen him at the Midnight Hotel, and again that fateful day she'd acquired the Lucid crystals from the Cultists. "I can't deny it; I won't run from it."

She leaned down into his personal space, hovering over his bedside, to deliver her next words more quietly although no less firm. "But you are still entrenched in the Light." Her dark eyes blazed with truth. "You know it, and I know it. You were already infected with it before you came here, you'd already felt its pull, but it's only gotten stronger.

"And both of us now are straddling that line, between the Light side and the Dark, together."

That was the bare truth of it; here in Keeliai, away from external influences — Master Luke, Supreme Leader Snoke, the Jedi and the Sith and the Resistance and the First Order — they were untethered, they were unchained. They didn't have to choose a permanent path, right or wrong.

It was the truth, but it was a truth Kylo Ren didn't want to see. From the day he had turned his back on the Light and his Uncle's teachings he had been struggling against the pull of the Light, and yes, it had only gotten stronger with time as doubts grew in him, and then even stronger when she stumbled into his life and made a mess of everything he took for granted.

But he didn't want to see it. He didn't want to hear it. He wanted to pretend it wasn't true until his own reality became the truth.

Pain replaced the anger in his eyes as he met her gaze - she was so close he could have simply leaned forward and kissed her. Again.

"But it is an infection," he insisted, his tone beseeching now, pleading for understanding though he didn't expect to find any with Rey. Tempted by the Dark she may be, but how could she understand why he clung to it so? She wouldn't, of course, not if he stuck to yelling at her, and didn't even try to explain.

His shoulders slumped. He reached out, hand going for hers, though he pulled back before his fingers could touch hers. "I've got to keep running. I sacrificed too much." He heaved a heavy sigh, gaze downcast. "It's too late for me, Rey. It can't have been for naught... he can't have died for naught."

Rey watched the warring emotions in his gaze, the disbelief and the pain, as well as the way he reached for her hand and then withdrew it before his fingers could touch hers.

"He didn't," she assured him, her voice gentling despite her frustration with him, "he didn't die for naught...because you still feel the pull of the Light." If Han Solo's death had been in vain, Ren would have fully fallen to the Dark side — but he hadn't. This time he'd spent on the turtle was proof of it.

"It's not too late," she went on, shaking her head, her eyes never leaving his, and she reached her hand tentatively forward to grasp his fingers in her own, holding onto them in the event he tried to withdraw once more. "It's never too late. You don't have to be fully on the side of the Light — just as you don't have to be completely on the side of the Dark.

"You can be inbetween." With me, was unspoken, but he could read it in her thoughts if he tried to.

Edited 2016-09-14 23:52 (UTC)

The moment her fingers touched his he jerked, but he didn't pull away. He just looked down at their hands, joined together now. She was holding on to him. Or permitting him to hold on to her, for she knew he wouldn't have the strength to reach out first? Maybe a little bit of both.

Maybe it was always a little bit of both with them.

Inbetween. He looked up, reaching for her mind for the answers just in time to hear the whisper of with me humming along their bond.

Suddenly that day in his house was alive around them again, kisses and touches and a need that had been fueled by Lucid - but not caused by it, just intensified too much to deny it any longer.

"I don't know if I... if we..." He licked his lips. He'd never been cowardly before. He knew what he wanted and took it, or at least sacrificed everything for the pursuit. Except with this... "Could we do that?" he asked. "Together? After everything...? Do you think you could try to trust me with this, if I try to trust you?" Middle ground. Or a them.

Maybe the answer for that was "both", too.

She felt him jerk against the connection, against where her hand gripped his, but Rey held onto him fast. She was determined to show him that he wasn't trapped by circumstance, here — that while in Keeliai and on the turtle at least, there were opportunities afforded to him. That he did have somewhere to turn, other than to chase Supreme Leader Snoke's ghost down that deep chasm into endless Dark.

Through the tenuous link between them she registered surprise at her tenacity, confusion...and then the barest sliver of something that felt to her senses like hope.

And then Rey sucked in her breath, experiencing with him the fleeting touches of that day, on his couch — how they'd given in to craving, fueled by the little crystals they'd partaken of. How demanding yet gentle his hands had been, the warmth and wet of his mouth against hers. She swayed on her feet, slightly unsteady with the force of the recollection, glassed-over eyes suddenly heavily-lidded.

She was aware, still, that Ren was licking his lips as he spoke; it was supremely distracting.

"...We could try, yes," she encouraged him quietly, her voice soft with the heaviness of memory. "If you believe yourself to be ready to."

His hand was still tightly clutched in hers, as she leaned into his space standing over his bedside; the draw to him was strong, the pull more potent in close proximity like this, and Rey didn't have the will to deny it.

"You once offered to teach me, before, but...perhaps we could learn from each other."

He had fantasized about it so often and in so many different ways - the day when she would come to him, admitting that she should have taken him up on his offer, when she would come and ask for his teachings, when she would demand it or even when she would just Fall and leave him to pluck his prize.

Reality was nothing like it. He didn't feel smug, not even triumphant. His heart raced, no, fluttered with how impossibly close she was all of a sudden both in body and in her presence through their bond. Her heat, her smell, and she was still holding on to his hand.

It wouldn't be defeating her, but then, could it ever have been? He'd once liked to think so, for he only thought in terms of victory and defeat, but now as they were so close that he could make out every darker fleck in her eyes Kylo realized that it could have never been like that with them.

"Together," he echoed solemnly. He raised his free hand, it hovered over her cheek uncertainly before his fingertips brushed over her hair, then back to her temple. So close. He ached to pull her closer. Taste her lips again. And Kylo felt through the bond that she drawn to him as he was to her, yet... If he pushed too fast, too far again, it would all shatter like a soap bubble.

He squeezed her hand. "We could do great things together, Rey." His lips curled into a smile. "You can be so much more than a scavenger and I..." His smile widened. "You can keep an eye on me."

When his fingers lifted to touch her hair, tentative and gentle, she was overcome by the strength of her emotional reaction to it. There was a wave of tenderness, both somehow solemn and playful, something sacred she'd never experienced before — at least not counting the stolen Lucid-fueled moments between them. Tenderness, Rey thought, was something she'd probably experienced in her childhood and had been long forgotten.

This close to him, leaning over him in such a way, it felt natural to sit beside him on his bed; she angled her backside to sit just on the edge so that she could lean further into his touch.

Which she took full advantage of, hovering now with her face just inches from his. "An 'eye on you'?" she chided quietly, something like a smirk threatening the corners of her lips as she looked down on him. "Am I to be your keeper, Ren?"

And now this was definitely something that he shouldn't be smiling about. Anything but. But she was still so close, and he was still overcome by the tender intimacy of Rey sitting at his bedside like this... such normalcy, like a little glimpse into a life which he had never thought possible for himself, and least of all for them.

"If that's what you want to be..." He arched his brows slightly, just a hint of mischief sparked in his dark eyes. "If I must have a keeper I couldn't ask for a lovelier one." His voice was kept carefully light, as if it were a joke, or even a hint of mockery, and yet it didn't feel like one at all. There was too much truth, too calmness, acceptance even that she might become a part of his life. Maybe tomorrow he would be fighting again to cling to the Dark Side, but for now he was at peace, and she would be able to sense it if she listened for it.

If anyone were to stand at his side, and indeed keep an eye on him, then it felt right for it to be Rey, the Light to his Dark. "Or can you think of anyone else capable of matching me step for step?"

This did feel to her as well like a glimpse of another life, an alternate reality to what they'd known before. Neither of them had grown to maturity with the sort of nearness they sought from each other now; both had been kept at arms' length and further from those they'd cared about, forcing them to withdraw themselves, to build impenetrable walls that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Not for them, two who were so very sensitive to the Force and to the connections forged between the living, that they felt everything much too deeply — every instance of scathing neglect, intentional or otherwise; every disappointed look, every instance of having been shunned.

To Rey in particular, who couldn't even remember if she'd known this sort of closeness even as a child, the thought of being his keeper and of not being alone was a draw she couldn't resist. The peace and comfort she felt emanating from him cinched it.

"I don't want to think of anyone else filling that role," she answered quietly, honestly. She should have been surprised with how easily she could speak the contents of her thoughts, how little effort it took, but she wasn't.

No more than she could have predicted how she leaned further into him and lowered her mouth to brush it against his, something unidentifiable burgeoning inside her chest as she did that felt a little like possession.

Edited 2016-09-21 17:32 (UTC)

It had always been obvious to Kylo Ren that romance would play no part in his life. Maybe things would have been different if he had never heard a voice whispering to him of powers only the Dark could give him, but the moment Snoke chose him the chance of a normal life had been lost. Even if he could have, as a Jedi, he had been far too caught up in the battle between Light and Dark warred within, not even he would have been selfish enough to pull a lover into the downward spiral of his life when he couldn't even fathom the worst he was capable of.

When he had his answer there was only Snoke, and the Dark Side, and chipping away at everything within him that didn't fit the picture of the dark warrior he sought to become.

And then there had been Starkiller. There had been Rey. Between her and his father, everything he thought he had known about himself was torn down, and at the same time she had shown him a different path.

Now here, far away from Snoke, from the First Order and Resistance, Jedi and Knights of Ren, and everything else that stood between them, it was only that path, that connection, which remained.

Just her closing in for a featherlight kiss that made his heart skitter. He reached out, placing a slightly shaky hand against the buns at the back of her head. His lips parted, tongue snaking out to lap at her bottom lip.

They shouldn't be kissing. She was the enemy. But it was so very hard to remember that when kissing her just felt right.

She wasn't sure just how long she was going to let it go on, this gentle meeting of their lips, something sacred and pure, something she'd yearned for — but when Ren's trembling hand cupped her head, attempting to hold her in place as she felt his tongue, Rey was suddenly aware that she was losing control of the situation.

Because in that moment, she didn't want it to end. She had a brief thought of parting her mouth further against his, as she'd done under Lucid's spell — licking the inside of his mouth, tasting him fully, and her visceral reaction was so physically powerful that she had to wrench her mouth away.

" — I just — " she stammered, backing away now uncertainly, " — wanted to see how you felt. Wanted to check on you." Her throat moved in a heavy swallow. "And now I have...I hope your recovery will be swift."

And then with another pull away from him, out from under his guiding hand that would have guided her closer into his embrace, perhaps, Rey rose to her feet and let her steps take her quickly out of his room.

It was only after she'd fled the Healer's Guild that she allowed herself to touch her lips with her fingertips, her mouth tingling where it'd met his and where she'd felt his tongue.

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