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

[fromnowhere]

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.

[immunetolight]

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.

[fromnowhere]

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.

[immunetolight]

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."

[fromnowhere]

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."

[immunetolight]

"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."

[fromnowhere]

"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?"

[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?"