001 you're the antidote to everything except to me

[immunetolight]

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."

Comments

[immunetolight]

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."

[fromnowhere]

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."

[immunetolight]

"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."

[fromnowhere]

"I've pushed against you," she points out, again very helpfully. "And I've fought you."

It's probably not very wise to mention these victories when it's just the two of them, hidden away, but she'd consider herself a natural in some ways and perhaps conventional lessons aren't necessarily the way to go. Besides, the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that she doesn't simply want an instructor in the ways of the Force.

"If you failed your training, should you teach others?" Is she... teasing him?

[immunetolight]

“Fine,” he says out loud, swiftly severing the connection between them. “Figure it out yourself, then. I just thought you would want to learn how to harness your power from someone who has had the training.”

Ren wants to pretend he doesn’t care what she does but it’s a lie. He cares entirely too much, honestly, and that’s the problem he finds himself in currently.

[fromnowhere]

So much for teasing.

"The training didn't do you much good," she says with a motion to him. "Look where you are, look what you've become."

She doesn't add that she was able to resist him, fight him, best him, and even fight by his side against the Praetorian guards. She has a feeling he's on his way out and that's fine. This wasn't every going to be a good idea for them, she knows that now.

"Why did you even come?"

[immunetolight]

“I wanted to teach you to better yourself,” Ren snaps. “Clearly you know better than I do since you’ve bested me - and felt the need to point it out.”

His voice is clipped but unlike the cold, removed creature he wants to be it is hot with passion and tension.

“Why did you come with me? To turn me? To make me see the good in me?”

[fromnowhere]

Rey stares at him, takes a deep breath, and waits until he's done.

"Do you want to see the good in you?"

She can tell that he's feeling something, but she's not sure where to place that passion and tension. Stepping closer, she has to lift her head to look at him. "It's there, Ben. All you have to do is want it." A pause. "I do."

[immunetolight]

“This isn’t about me,” he says darkly. “If you don’t want to be trained, I’ll drop you off at the Resistance base and find some place to hide. I’m not going to turn myself in to be executed.”

Deep down, he doesn’t think his mother would have him killed. He thinks she’d spare him, even if she’d leave him imprisoned for his crimes. Still, it’s not something he wants to risk.

[fromnowhere]

"Then why did you ask?"

Now her frustration shows; with him, with their situation, with all of it. She steps back and shakes her head, crossing her arms over her chest as she looks at their surroundings. "You want to train me so you can say you had a hand in it. I can feel you." Wait. "It. I know what you want, Ben."

Looking over her shoulder at him, she shakes her head, unwiling to give up easily and wondering if that's what she should do.

[immunetolight]

“What I want? Nobody knows what I want. That’s been the problem all along.”

Snoke certainly hadn’t known and Luke Skywalker thought he had but had been wrong. How can some girl from nowhere know what he wants when half the time he doesn’t even know himself?

“What do you think I want? To take credit for your training, to call you my apprentice? If that’s the case, you don’t know me at all.”

[fromnowhere]

"Then tell me."

She stands there, ever defiant. Somehow, it's easier to feel a closeness when they're not talking face to face and she wonders if she wanders a hundred feet into the forest if their conversation will shift. She'll be able to feel his emotions, see deeper into his mind that way, but she wants the words.

She wants to know if he'll tell her the truth.

[immunetolight]

There's a turmoil of emotions in him, honestly, and he knows that it isn't the Jedi way to carry this much raw emotion around at any given point. The Sith espouse a freer rein on emotions, yes, but not the ones he carries. It isn't all hate and fear. There's love, there's compassion, there's concern.

"I don't want anything to happen to you. You've survived on luck so far. You need to be trained."

[fromnowhere]

Her own emotions are racing and she has to physically calm herself down; she knows he doesn't want to hurt her, she knows he doesn't want anything to happen to her, she knows she's been surviving on luck. He's not lying to her, which means she can - for the moment - trust him.

It's difficult.

She wants to tell him again: I won't join you, but the words won't come. She's so desperate to have someone, to be part of something, that she stands there, staring at him, before she nods once.

"Fine."

[immunetolight]

"Let me train you here and then you can make your own decisions about where you want to go next." Ren doesn't want to admit that he does want her to join him, to be with him, because he knows she'll reject it. She's made it clear to him she has no desire to be on his side in anything. They're always at one another's throats, it seems, even if sometimes they seem to work in concert with one another.

"It will take a stronger fighter than exists currently to take you down once you've been trained."

[fromnowhere]

It's an admission that he's not as strong as she is and she hears it plain as day.

"I said fine," she says again, nodding this time as if it'll help him understand. "Where do we start?"

Her bravado is false, he can probably see through it, but everything she's done has been hotheaded and rash: rushing Snoke, rushing Luke, coming here... basically, she's just as much a mess as he is and her moral high ground is going to be very shaky after this.

[immunetolight]

"Combat training, for one. I can imagine my uncle didn't give you much in the way of that, did he?"

Ren has seen it in the way her strokes are powerful but not elegant. They get the job done, certainly, but there is no finesse in how she moves and only raw power. It needs to be honed so she can harness it as a true weapon.

"The strength and endurance you come by naturally. Using a saber is more than just hacking away at something until it dies, though."

[fromnowhere]

As if he has a lot of room to criticize another person simply hacking away at something until it dies. Numerous consoles on the Finalizer likely collapsed in laughter - if they could laugh - at his simple, straightfaced statement. Nevertheless, she watches him with a focused gaze, aware that there is truth in what he's telling her.

"I've seen the way you use yours," she admits. "Aren't you afraid that we'll simply end up in another standoff if you teach me what you know?"

[immunetolight]

"I'm not going to teach you what I know," Ren says quietly, almost scoffing. "Because that style is not going to be suitable for you. I developed it on my own. I'm going to teach you the basics, what I learned from my uncle, and let you develop your own way of doing it."

He pauses for a moment. "Every Jedi, every Sith, every Force-sensitive with a lightsaber has their own unique style. It's like a fingerprint. No two are alike."

[fromnowhere]

Even teaching her what he learned seems like they'll end up in a standoff, but he's asked her here for a reason and she's going to do a little bit of listening, even if it's going to kill her.

Rey nods rapidy, then asks, "So. Where do we begin?"

It suddenly dawns on her that they're going to actually be there a while and she didn't finish getting anything to sleep on for the cave. His little mind-talk prevented it, which means that, come nightfall, they're going to be sleeping uncomfortably on the ship they brought or uncomfortably in the cave they found.

[immunetolight]

"We'll start with the basic forms. We probably don't have much light left today," he says, glancing up at the sky. It appears this system is in a late autumn or winter cycle and the available light is less than it might be during a summer cycle. That's not good - it means there's more time for them to be alone with their thoughts.

"Part of learning to fight is learning how to use the saber as an extension of yourself. That's why every Jedi is different - everyone feels the Force differently."

[fromnowhere]

Alone with their thoughts and, really, with each other. Rey isn't sure she's prepared for that, so she focuses on his teaching instead. Listening to the words he says, she nods along, then clears her throat.

"It's true then, that you made your own."

She's curious, because hers was inherited. Luke had inherited his. Kylo had apparently made his and it was slightly unstable.

[immunetolight]

"It's part of the training, to make your own," Ren explains. "When you reach a certain point as an apprentice, you make your own lightsaber and begin to fight with it. Before that point, you use someone else's or use sticks."

He laughs a little, the memory almost fond for once. "My uncle was very fond of the sticks."

[fromnowhere]

"I've used sticks my whole life. For defense."

And she's good with them, too, just ask Finn. She eyes his for a moment, then has to ask. "Yours isn't the same as a regular lightsaber. It's--" She searches for the word. "Unstable? Unsteady. Also, the handle is different. Why?"

[immunetolight]

"Unstable," Ren confirms. "The crystal is cracked. I had to add vents along the sides there in order to compensate for the overload of energy. It's a crude design, to some, but it serves a purpose."

There's no other lightsaber in the galaxy that looks like his, after all. "I have to be careful with it. The crossguard adds additional risk."