immunetolight | 001 you're the antidote to everything except to me

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psl,
rey

001 you're the antidote to everything except to me

Snoke is dead. In order to complete his training, to become his master, he had to defeat his master. Still, it's becoming rapidly clear that the more time he spends with Rey that the master he has to defeat isn't Snoke, it isn't his uncle and it's not even the entire Rebellion. He can crush them all under his bootheel without so much as a thought. They aren't his weakness.

She is his weakness. She's agreed to come with him and had taken his hand but convincing Rey to do anything she doesn't want to do is next to impossible. Even though Snoke had claimed their bond had been his doing it still hasn't been undone with his death and there are times when he gets flashes of her mind, glimpses of intimate moments he shouldn't have. He wonders what she gets from him.

He'd taken a fighter off the deck of the flagship and Rey had come along. He hadn't had a destination in mind, exactly, and settles for a moon a short distance away from the Rebel Base on Crait. It's not ideal but it is isolated and a place where they can make camp and remain for a little while.

He's fairly good in forested areas like this moon which is for the best; Rey is from Jakku where there's nothing but desert.

"We need to make camp and decide what we're doing."

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"A cave is better. We can use the moss and leaves to make something that passes for bedding and it won't get wet in the event of rain or snow. I think this moon has an autumn cycle and we're in it," Ren says. It's mundane but he has to focus on the task for a moment to regain control, to regain balance.

He starts up the hill, his strides long and loping, and he intentionally shortens them so he doesn't leave Rey behind. He's quiet for a long while before speaking again. "It's not my intention to be cruel to you."

He moves so much faster. It's graceful, even, the way he goes up the hill in front of her and she hustles to keep up in a way that it catches her off guard when he slows. She adjusts again, this time matching her walk to his, just slightly behind and to the right, so that she can both watch him and be out of his way.

When he speaks, it's words she's not expecting given their current condition and the battles they've engaged in in the past. She doesn't respond right away, concentrating on keeping her breathing steady until they're outside the cave. Only then does she stop and look at him again fully.

He's tall, dressed in black, and she takes it all in; it's meant to be intimidating and though she's never going to admit it out loud, it works. It's a contrast to his words and she can feel the Force between them, practically vibrating now that they're so close. She has to tilt her head to look up at him, the words he spoke still tumbling around in her head and she has to ask.

"What are your intentions?"

She's quiet, though it's not the breathless she would have been had she asked during their walk.

"My intentions? At the moment, to find us shelter before it gets too cold for us to comfortably sleep."

He knows she means further than that, beyond the moment, but Jedi always teach the moment and the importance of it. He hasn't abandoned all of that teaching in spite of rejecting everything to do with the Jedi.

"I don't intend to harm you. Have I ever truly been able to harm you? You've always resisted me, Rey."

"We have the shelter," she tells him motioning to the cave behind her. Still slightly suspicious, she eyes him. "Remember, I'm the better pilot. If you try to hurt me, I will take that fighter and leave you here."

Stopping there, Rey ponders the wisdom of threatening the man who's been stalking both her dreams and her waking moments.

"I'll get bedding."

It's an easy way to put space between them for the moment, and she sets her pack down next to the entrance of the cave before stalking off in a direction that is opposite from wherever he is.

Edited 2017-12-22 08:16 (UTC)

You can't run from me, Rey.

Ren hasn't been in her head since landing on this planet but now he slips in as easily as he slips into his own self-appointed uniform. He's a part of her, now, just as much as she's a part of him. He's irrevocably changed by her and he thinks it may be the same on her end.

I'm here in your mind, in your inner thoughts and feelings. You have to face me at some point.

She's out of sight, all of fifty feet away, when he steps into her mind like he belongs there. She stops walking, not all that disturbed or surprised that he's done it. She's more surprised that it took him so long.

I'm not running. I'm ensuring you don't have to sleep on hard rock.

She takes several steps then sits down on a very large log.

Are you bored of your own company after thirty seconds?

Rey's internal tone has turned gently teasing. He'll be unpleasantly surprised with how well and how long she can ignore the serious talk he obviously wants to have.

I happen to like my own company. Force users are often trained to meditate for hours on end. I was made to do it during my Jedi training.

Ren had been terribly impatient and found it difficult to focus on the Unifying Force during his meditations, though, much to the chagrin of his Uncle Luke. He shakes off that thought, nearly bodily. Luke Skywalker is dead to him. Luke Skywalker is part of a dead and forgotten life.

He has been reborn.

You need to learn to meditate, focus your skill.

Rey sees him, standing outside their cave, and she can't resist another not-so-gentle nudge.

Is that what he taught you? To focus and meditate? She watches him for a moment, then begins to pick moss, though she doesn't see how it's going to make sufficient bedding for the two of them. Am I supposed to accept that you're going to teach me the ways of the Force? I won't join you.

It's defiant, like she always is.

Even if you refuse to join me, you need a teacher. You have a great power inside you, Rey. It's idiotic to ignore that power and not develop it.

Her power rivals his own, possibly exceeds it, and Ren cannot understand why she runs from it. He would never run from such raw strength and would, instead, draw from that well until every threat was eliminated. He should view her as a threat and yet he does not. He sees her as something of a wary ally, more than anything else, and he doesn't like to probe to see how she thinks of him.

Let me teach you. Let me complete your training.

It dawns on Rey that he didn't start this conversation until she was out of his sight, but not even that far away. She wonders if that's because he's not capable of talking to her like this when she's standing in front of him or because he just hadn't wanted to and she breathes through his offer while thinking about it.

How do I know I can trust you?

You can see my mind, can't you? Seek the answers you want to assuage your fears.

This is a slippery slope. While part of it is out of the desire to get her to see that he means her no harm, part of it is because he's rapidly becoming obsessed with this bond and how it feels to have Rey in his head. She slips past shields he's had in place for years and he doesn't even mind it; she's woven in with himself now, something that seems like it's always belonged.

Snoke thought he could see your mind.

It's a reminder that he needs as much as she does; they're on shaky ground, but she feels a tug, more than a simple attraction. It's a sense of need, to be there in his mind, to have him in hers. She calms her breathing, stills her own mind, closes her eyes and focuses as she reaches out.

Entering his mind shouldn't be easy, and it's not, but Rey feels like he wants her there and so the doors are wider and more open than usual. And what she feels from him is not any desire to cause her pain. It's... something else.

The intimacy of having someone in his mind is almost more than he can bear. Being this intimate with someone, this open, is something he's never really done before. He cannot keep her out because he craves it too much.

He only saw what I wanted him to see. He was weak. You're strong, Rey. Stronger than you know. See it. Feel it. Find what you want to see.

He's not far from where she's currently sitting, but the way she's bonded to him in that moment, it's as if she's not just standing next to him, but very much in his personal space in front of the cave. He's an intimidating presence in his size, but not like this. Not when he's holding her in his every thought, letting her explore without barriers. As close as she is, physically and psychically, Rey wonders if she can initiate another light touch and places her hand on his upper arm.

Looking up into his eyes, she does as he says and looks. She's not sure what she wants to see, or if he wants her to see something in particular, so she takes a moment to admire the constant calm on his face. It's a contrast from before and he gets a smile.

I see... patience. Humanity. Your true self.

Patience? You must be looking in the wrong place, he teases. That is not something he's known for, honestly, but he isn't offended that she sees that in him. His true self - that is something he's kept locked away for a long, long time.

You see what I've kept hidden, what I've locked away from everyone to keep myself safe. You seem to like it. You're smiling.

You're letting me look, showing me those things you've kept hidden for so long from so many people. That's patience.

Then he says that she seems to like it, that she's smiling, and it makes her falter and lose focus for the briefest of moments. Was she smiling? Does she like it? She hadn't thought him capable of teasing, and yet he had, proving her correct in the humanity guess as well.

She refocuses and he gets a nod. Your true self is the light that will save the galaxy, Ben.

Ren scoffs lightly at that. It's not a rebuff, though, simply a small huff of disagreement. He's too dark to be light and he has no desire to seek the path of the Jedi when the Jedi had betrayed him so utterly.

His path is different. He doesn't think he'll ever be as dark as his grandfather. He's failed in that path, even if he's fulfilled the ancient Sith code of murdering his master and taking an apprentice. He's not like the others. He's something different, an amalgam of dark and light.

Not exactly. That's more you, not me.

We could do it together. I can help you.

Despite her words, Rey would argue that she's not his apprentice. She would say that they were in this together, now that they're linked.

First, we have to decide if we're going to defect to the Resistance or not. I'm likely to be imprisoned for war crimes without a trial.

His mother may not kill him but she cannot control what the other leaders will want to do with him and he feels she will concede to his imprisonment if he defects. He has no intention of defecting.

"The Order is no longer an option."

I still believe in you.

Giving up on her quest for finding something to sleep on, she stands and heads back in the general direction of the cave that they found.

As she approaches, and he tells her that the First Order is no longer an option, she tilts her head at him.

"That was never an option for me." Empty-handed, she looks at him. "What do we do now? We can't stay on this moon for ever."

"I'm aware of that. I just know that my own options for personal freedom are limited if we end up in a Resistance-aligned system."

Ren isn't looking forward to being picked up by some Resistance pilot looking to make a hero of themselves. He isn't some prize to be presented to his mother in exchange for battle honors.

"We can't stay here forever but I don't want to leave until you've had some training."

"I wouldn't let anything happen to you."

It comes out before she thinks about the consequences of what she's saying. That she's aligning herself with him, despite what he's done. She also doesn't believe that his mother would necessarily call down the hellfire on him once she saw him, either, if his intentions are good ones.

"Where does my training begin?"

Ren laughs softly at the idea that Rey would put herself between the Resistance and him. It's not a clever move, really, and it isn't the kind of self-serving that the Sith way professes. It's not even truly Jedi, in that the Jedi had long turned their backs on someone like him. It's unique to her.

"We'll see what happens. They may not give you the opportunity to defend me. As to your training, we'll have to begin as soon as possible. I want to get as much done as we can before we're discovered. We can do it here on this moon."

As Rey doesn't consider herself a Jedi, neither would she ever become a Sith Lord(?), she simply believes that the two of them could simply, once again, escape a situation that didn't work in their favor. She thinks of it as a 'them' situation, especially if she's the one putting him in it. Dragging, even.

"Master Skywalker gave me two lessons," she points out helpfully. And she moved some rocks, how about that. "What kind of training did you have? Before, I mean."

"More than two lessons. I don't know that it did much good, though, since I still failed my training," Ren says. Luke had made it perfectly evident that he'd failed miserably at being a Jedi and that he'd been a threat to be eliminated.

"I can teach you the fighting forms, the ways to use your mind to keep others out, to push against threats."

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