Chapter Text
The Supreme Leader doesn’t mind sand. Deserts are usually silent, calm, and meditative places, qualities that he’d come to appreciate during his experience as a Jedi padawan, living under his uncle’s fickle thumb. His heavy boots crunch, step after step, on the regolith-covered surface of the planet Abafar, a forgotten world in the Outer Rim, abandoned after the only mining facility of its system closed decades ago.
His destination is a small, dilapidated market located in an artificial depression on the surface of the planet; a wound in the barren earth where strange and unusual objects have a habit of turning up. Kylo Ren keeps walking, his face hidden behind his old mask, a new hooded cape covering his whole body from prying eyes. The total absence of shadows on the ground almost unsettles him; the regolith reflects the dull, orange light of the sky and the dark shapes of his feet as they slowly carry him towards what he came to Abafar for: a Sith holocron.
He’s doing it for her. He abandoned the Supremacy for a few days, uncaring of the sycophants on board–sycophants led by Armitage Hux–who are surely already plotting a coup to overthrow him at the earliest opportunity. Someone told someone that told someone else that someone on this planet, someone at the local market, between its stands made of sticks and rags, had a Sith holocron. He needs the object to show Rey what happened with her parents, to finally make her accept the truth she still refuses to acknowledge. Maybe, with help from the visions provided by the cursed object, she’ll finally believe him.
Kylo Ren doesn’t know the name of the person he’s looking for, and to be fair, he doesn’t even know if they’re human or not: a simple stroll through the miserable exhibition of stolen goods is more than enough to be able to peek into any mind he comes across, discovering who’s hiding the holocron amongst their junk. And he can roam their simple minds undetected; here, on this forsaken planet, no one has ever seen a Force-sensitive being, let alone faced mind-probing abilities as honed as his own.
Kylo eventually finds him in a secluded corner: a scanty looking Em'liy man, scarves and rags covering his face, protecting his eyes from the eerie orange light. There is a dirty sheet at his feet, sheltering the meager merchandise from the dusty regolith, and Kylo immediately notices the holocron. Unactivated, it’s just a dark grey, anonymous pyramid that could easily be mistaken for a useless knick-knack; just a forgotten bauble on a shelf.
“What would that be?” Kylo asks, modulated voice croaking from behind his recently repaired helmet, his index finger pointing at the cursed object.
The vendor shrugs. “That’s some kind of game, but I never managed to solve the puzzle and open it. I can make you a good price for that, just for you, Sir.”
Kylo nods, and the Em'liy man asks for a modest price: no need to meddle with his mind, then. But while Kylo reaches into his pocket to retrieve the credits stashed there, a quick, small hand sneaks out from under his cloak, clever little fingers snatching a couple of chips from his gloved hand before he can do anything. The hand belongs to a child, who runs away faster than light, leaving both Kylo and the merchant aghast. He hadn’t noticed them in the slightest: they were nimble, silent and confident in their theft, probably not even knowing that their victim was, in fact, the Supreme Leader of the First Order.
“I’m so, so sorry Sir,” the Em’liy promptly says. “That was Ladro Furis’ new kid, please, forgive her. She’s a good child, but he’ll beat her if she returns home empty-handed.”
Kylo is only half listening to what the man is saying, his mind already running to Rey, and her childhood on Jakku. She never had to resort to this kind of theft, as far as he knows, but he saw how Unkar Plutt liked to starve her whenever she failed to bring him junk good enough to sell or trade. He clenches his jaw, teeth gnashing behind the newly repaired faceplate of his helmet.
“Sir, I can give you the puzzle for half the price. It’s only a stupid game, after all.”
“Don’t worry,” Kylo answers. “Keep it for me, I’ll be back shortly.”
“Sir! Sir! Don’t hurt the child, I beg of you!”
Kylo doesn’t listen to the vendor, and begins to walk in the direction where the child disappeared. He can’t see any footprints in the whitish regolith, but the settlement is so small that there aren’t many places to hide. There is no one around, the dilapidated buildings only a faint echo of the past, dry walls now crumbling under the unforgiving winds that roll over the barren planet. Closing his eyes, he can sense where the child went, and he follows her invisible steps; he soon finds her, trembling in an alley behind a dump.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispers, crouching. “You can keep the credits.”
Kylo can see her bare feet peeking out from under a huge, empty dustbin. They’re small and dirty, her skintone matching the orange sky. A near-human, then. There are scabs around her ankles, like someone tied her up with shackles, and he is immediately filled with a blind rage. He has to suppress the instinct to raze this wretched place to the ground; he counts slowly to ten, and breathes deeply through his nose, the filters of the mask producing an eerie sound.
The child gulps, and he takes a few seconds to compose himself before moving the dustbin, its rusty wheels creaking on the regolith, exposing the child to his gaze. She’s a Togruta, the blueish montrals on her head barely concealed by her shaggy hood. Her eyes are huge and liquid, but even though she’s trembling he doesn’t detect fear in them, only stubborn determination. This kid reminds him of Rey even more than before.
Kylo pulls his hood down and unlatches his mask, its fasteners hissing in the silence of the abandoned alley. The child doesn’t move from her crouched position, big blue eyes glued on him while he removes the mask, revealing his face to her for the first time.
“What’s your name?” he asks her, his deep voice finally unfiltered.
The child doesn’t answer, but her trembling finally stops, and Kylo lets out a sigh of relief. She’s looking at him with curiosity now, like she can’t believe that under that scary mask there is only a boring human man with a broken nose and shaggy black hair. He reaches out, extending his arm towards the girl. She doesn’t flinch, but she doesn’t move from her spot either.
“Do you have a name?” Kylo asks again. “I have one. It’s–”
The Supreme Leader suddenly finds himself at a loss for words; in his head he sees flashes of an old man–his father–crying his name on that wretched footbridge; and flashes of a young woman–his equal in the Force–throwing Vader’s lightsaber in his direction, saving his life.
“My name is Ben,” he whispers to the child, almost surprised, like this Togruta cub just made him realize something important, something vital. “What’s yours?”
“Y–you,” she answers, her voice so feeble that he almost misses it.
“Your name is You ?” he repeats, and she nods eagerly, as if she’s proud of it.
This child doesn’t have a name. They simply call her you , like she can’t even be considered a person, and she believes it’s her own name. Once again, Kylo is almost blinded by rage, but stops himself before he can scare her like he did before.
“You,” he whispers, breathing deeply. “Do you have a home?”
The child seems to think about it, then she nods, looking unconvinced.
“Is someone called Ladro Furis living with you?”
She lowers her gaze, nodding almost imperceptibly.
“Can you bring me to him? I will give you this,” he says, showing her a credit chip, its shiny surface reflecting the orange of the sky.
The child gets up, finally accepting his hand, the credit soon stashed in a hidden pocket of her vest with the other chips she stole earlier. Her fingers are cold, even through Kylo’s leather gloves, and her hands are so small that he’s afraid he will crush her with his huge paws. When she starts walking, leading the way, he tries not to look at the bloody scabs around her wrist, but fails. Ladro Furis will soon be a dead man.
***
The little girl brings Kylo to the outskirts of another small settlement through a huge corridor drilled in the earth. If the place where they were before could be considered dilapidated, this one could be only described as literally crumbling to the ground. Ladro’s house is one of the few that are only partially collapsed, its rusty metal door protected by dirty rags sewn together in a careless way. She stops in front of it, patting Kylo’s hand.
“Stay here, Ben.” She finally talks, and hearing his old name pronounced by a Togruta as tall as his own boots is almost uncanny.
“Why?”
“I tell him first. Or he be angry.”
She enters the door, closing it behind her, and Kylo can’t help but worry, a sinking feeling that stems from his stomach and radiates through his limbs. He tries to listen to what is happening inside the dilapidated house, but his Bond with Rey decides to open right at that moment, announcing its arrival with that eerie, vacuum sound that Kylo found himself missing more than air after she cut him off on Crait. Unfortunately, this is not the best moment to interact with Rey and he curses the Force for its timing.
“There you are,” she spits, venom filling her voice. “ Our Supreme Leader. ”
She’s standing, sweaty, in front of him. She’s strong, and beautiful, and everything he could desire from his equal in the Force; he wants to respond, but he can’t indulge in a battle of words right now.
“Rey,” he whispers. “This is a very bad time.”
“Why? It’s not like I chose to connect with you like this. Are you too busy with your evil deeds to talk to me? Disappointed you failed to make a colander out of the Falcon?”
He’s about to bite back, but a loud thud from inside the house catches his attention. The child is crying, and the man is shouting at her. Rey is still talking as well, but he isn’t listening to her anymore, he’s trying to understand what Ladro Furis is saying. He catches a couple of morsels such as “gone the whole morning”, “only three credits” and “pay for this” before Rey starts yelling, too.
“Ben! Are you even listening to what I’m saying?”
Kylo breaks the door down with a kick, and ignites his lightsaber. In front of him is a scene he will forever struggle to forget: the Togruta child crawling on the ground, her face coated with tears, picking up the few credits she brought to Ladro. Her hood has been ripped, so he can finally see the colour of her montrals: a dull blue, interrupted by thin white stripes. The man is standing behind her. He's old and quite short, and his sparse white hair doesn't compliment his pasty complexion at all; he has the look of a slimy, underground animal.
Rey is still talking to him, but his ears are ringing, blood pressure keeping her voice at bay. A simple swing of the red blade, and the man’s head flies against a dirty wall. The child is still on the ground, bawling her eyes out, and Kylo, after extinguishing his saber, picks her up. She doesn’t even have the strength to offer resistance, and immediately hides her face in the crook of his neck. She’s warm and sticky, and Kylo covers her small head with a flap of his cape. He doesn’t know what to do next, but he knows that this little kid with no name needs him, and he’ll be there for her.
Rey is standing silently in the middle of the room, her chest heaving and her amber eyes filled with pain; Ladro’s beheaded corpse at her feet. Kylo looks at her for the last time and exits the hovel, cradling the girl against him until she stops crying, whispering to her that no one will hurt her from now on. Once he reaches the market, he leaves a whole bag of credits to the Em’liy vendor in exchange for the holocron, and he quickly boards his TIE fighter. The child is fast asleep on his lap as he returns to the Supremacy.
***
Kylo quickly gets used to the child’s presence in his arms. She weighs next to nothing and despite her still-open wounds, she stays asleep for the entire trip, her little hand squeezing the fabric of his tunic. He knows that there is a quarantine protocol to respect when bringing guests onboard the Supremacy, but he can’t wait to put her in a real bed, and he almost bypasses the checkpoint by nearly incinerating the poor attendants with his murderous gaze. They cower, but if they’re surprised he’s bringing a child on board, they don’t show it.
“Supreme Leader, we need at least a name to register them,” one of the officers pleads. “You can take them to your quarters, and we can arrange for the medical droid to come to you instead of bringing them back to the infirmary. We wouldn’t want to stress the child, Sir.”
Kylo bites his lower lip. The girl’s name is an issue since she doesn’t actually have one, and what she believes to be her name is a lie.
“Her name–her name is Yu,” he finally blurts out.
Changing someone’s name is not something to be taken lightly, and he doesn’t want to impose his choices on the child, like Snoke did with him–how every darkside master before him did with their apprentice. This child surely doesn’t know how to read, let alone write, and she won’t notice a single letter missing from her already short “name”.
The officers look at him. “Could you please spell that, Supreme Leader?”
“Yirt-Usk. It’s simple,” he answers.
“Any surnames?”
Kylo shakes his head. “Just Yu.”
***
Yu remains calm until Kylo deposits her on his bed, unconcerned about the dirty rags she’s still wearing. A bath and fresh clothing can wait until tomorrow, sleep and safety are what she needs most right now. Her eyes open as soon as he finishes tucking her in. They’re the same colour as her montrals, and her face is striped with white as well. He doesn’t know if her patterns will eventually change when–if–she grows up. The thought that she could die fills him with dread.
“Ben?” she’s asking, her voice feeble.
“Sleep. You’re safe now.”
“Don’t leave. Please.”
Kylo sighs. He hadn’t foreseen this, and flashes of the Falcon disappearing into the sky soon make his heart skip a beat. He removes his gloves, his belt and his boots, and joins the child on the bed. She extends a hand towards him, and he takes it, dwarfing it with his huge paw. The fact that she isn’t scared of him in the slightest warms his heart in an unexpected way. Maybe–maybe it’s not too late for him.
He notices her wrist is bleeding again, the thin skin breaking after the slightest movement on her part. Tomorrow morning he will order the medidroid to bring bacta patches. He also makes a mental note to cancel all his appointments for the following days.
After Yu finally falls asleep again, Kylo withdraws his hand from hers and touches her head. Her montrals are warm and firm, and she’s dreaming of orange skies and white horizons. There is no one else inside her head, just her.
***
The following morning, Kylo activates the bathtub in his personal bathroom for the first time in years and prepares a bath for Yu. She jumps in the warm water after disrobing herself and carefully folding her dirty rags, depositing them on a stool beside the tub. Kylo hopes she’s not too attached to them since they appear to be beyond repair; he has already ordered the sewing droids to prepare something especially for her.
Yu surprises Kylo by washing herself with little to no help. She doesn’t stall in the tub the way he remembers doing as a child, but she cleans herself in a quick and efficient way, like she has something very important to do. He helps her out of it, wetting his sleeves, and he’s helping her dry herself without opening her wounds again when there is a knock at the door. He leaves her on a stool, her small body engulfed by the Supreme Leader’s own bathrobe, and he approaches the door.
“I have ordered some bacta patches from the infirmary, for your wounds. You will feel better after I’ve put them on your skin.”
Yu nods, following his movements with her big, blue eyes. Kylo washes his hands and applies the patches in a matter of seconds as she sits on the stool wrapped up in his bathrobe.
“I’ve called also called a medical droid to check on you, and make sure you’re not ill. It’s quite big, and it can look scary, but it’s here to help us.”
Yu doesn’t answer him, but her eyes scan his body from head to toes, and she simply shrugs, as if big and scary things will never really intimidate her. The medidroid enters Kylo’s quarters, and she complies with its instructions without making a fuss. It explains the quarantine procedures in great detail, and then it pricks Yu’s finger to take a sample of blood. She doesn’t cry, simply looking at the droplets of blood on her fingertip with curiosity, and the medidroid begins announcing the results to the Supreme Leader.
“Race: Togruta. Biological sex: female.”
“We already knew that,” quips Kylo.
“Estimated age, in human standard years: five.”
Kylo gulps. He didn’t expect her to be so little, especially after having seen her fold her clothes in that precise, practiced way before her bath. Her big, blue eyes are still on him when the droid gives her several injections and announces that she has clear signs of starvation and a couple of missing teeth. The droid immediately begins organizing a nutritious diet for her, to help her restore vitamins and proteins. Yu says goodbye to the droid when it returns to the infirmary, and Kylo brings her into the living room, where another droid has brought the prescribed food from the cafeteria.
Breakfast reveals itself to be a little more difficult than bathing, since Yu seems suspicious of all the food spread in front of her; she stares but makes no move to try anything. Kylo is not sure he can handle her refusing to eat after having seen how Ladro Furis used to treat her, and especially after learning she suffers from starvation.
What if she’s so starved she will become sick from only a morsel? What if she continues to refuse to eat? What if she’ll try to insist on returning to Abafar? Is her stomach really gurgling, or Kylo is imagining sounds too now?
“Yu,” he whispers. “This is for you. Why aren’t you eating?”
The girl lowers her gaze. When a single tear escapes her eyes, falling on the bathrobe, Kylo gets up, scraping his chair across the floor, and picks her up, his hand cradling her small head against his chest.
“What’s wrong?” he pleads. “Are you hurting? Do we need to call the medidroid back?”
Yu shakes her head and keeps crying, and Kylo doesn’t know what to do. He wishes Rey would open the Bond right now, because if anyone knows how to deal with another–although smaller–starved woman from a desert planet, it would be her. Kylo had expected Yu to eat eagerly, just as Rey had done at Maz Kanata’s Takodana castle in one of the memories he’d glimpsed when he’d been searching her mind for the location of the map to Luke Skywalker; instead she’s crying in misery. Kylo feels like crying himself, or perhaps returning to Abafar and razing the whole planet to the ground.
“Yu, please, eat something. The medidroid said you need to.”
The child finally emerges from his tunic, her face blotchy and eyes full of tears.
“I–I don’t have anything for you,” she begins, hyperventilating. “I can’t pay! No credits, no food.”
Kylo inhales, and counts from one to ten in his head. Everything clicks now, and it’s so painful that he can’t help losing his appetite. He exhales.
“You don’t have to give me anything, Yu. I’m not Ladro Furis. You will never have to steal again, or pay for your meals, I will provide for everything you’ll need.”
The girl looks at him, bewilderment in her huge eyes, and she scrutinizes his face as though to be sure he’s not tricking her. He nods and then she’s hugging him, hugging him like his body is a lifeline, and she’s about to fall from a cliff. He hugs her back.
He took her from her planet, maybe without thinking too much about what he was doing: she’s solely his responsibility now, and he needs to protect her. She trusts him to do this and he’s damned well going to the best he can. Fear of failure has been a constant companion for his whole life, but he’s not sure he’s ever felt more afraid than he does right now.
***
After breakfast, new clothes and fresh linens are delivered to the Supreme Leader’s apartment, and Yu can finally wear pajamas–black, matching Kylo’s–and rest again between clean sheets. The food ordeal was so tiring that Kylo tries to take a nap with her, but he ends up looking at the ceiling instead, while Yu sleeps and metabolizes what could easily be the first real breakfast of her life.
While caressing her montrals, checking for unwanted presences in her head, Kylo thinks about how to reconcile his Supreme Leader duties with Yu’s presence in his life. She’s the only child on the Supremacy at this time, and he needs to spend as much time with her as possible. He refuses to consider submitting her to the presence of any type of nanny droid whatsoever. It would be cruel to force her to pass her time with a machine, instead of with another living being. He should teach her how to read, and how to write. He needs to find books to read with her as soon as possible, books that aren’t the Dark Side Compendium, or other seedy volumes he keeps in his personal library.
***
One of the things about Yu that surprises Kylo most during their first days together is how quiet she is. Even when she has nothing to keep her occupied, she sits by him, simply observing what he’s doing without bothering him in the slightest, but it doesn’t seem fair to her–she should have something to play with. A First Order ship is no place for a child and doesn’t have toys on board. Kylo has no idea about what Yu would like, since he can’t recall seeing toys in Ladro Furis’s hovel, and he wonders if she even knows how to play with them at all; she likely had only her own imagination to carry her through life on Abafar. He still remembers with fondness the Tooka doll he used to bring everywhere with him when he was little, and his first calligraphy set. Maybe he should order some flimsi sheets and some coloured pencils, they shouldn’t be too difficult to find.
The memory of the Tooka doll triggers another memory, one that makes his heart clench, but it’s not exactly his . When he searched through Rey’s head during the fateful interrogation that woke her powers, he’d seen her making a pilot doll of sorts in her AT-AT dwelling on Jakku, out of rags. There are plenty of sewing droids on board, and fabric, and yarn. However, he doesn’t want to leave the whole process of making a toy for Yu up to them, and he places an order for scrap fabrics, thread, and a needle. No one taught him how to sew, but after seeing Rey sewing her own doll, he thinks he can imitate what she did.
There is barely any coloured fabric available for Yu’s doll. Her new clothes are black, just like his own, and they also mimic his style: black leggings and a long tunic with a belt. She didn’t mourn her old rags at all, since her new dress is warm and comfortable, but the leather boots he’d ordered for her didn’t have the same success: she still likes to walk barefoot.
“Yu,” he calls her. “Come here. I’m making you a doll; let’s decide together what it should look like.”
The pitter-patter of her bare feet precedes her arrival. Dressed all in black, her natural colouring is even more striking: the orange of her little face is warmer than before, and the dull blue of her montrals and her short and chubby lekku are enhanced by the contrast with her clothes.
“What is a doll?” she asks.
“It’s a toy. You play with it. Didn’t you have toys, on Abafar?”
“Yes! I had stones. And sticks, but I left them behind.”
Yu smiles at the mention of what she considers toys - the first smile he’s ever seen from her. There are dimples on her cheeks, and Kylo has the sudden need to lower his gaze and send her away again so he can remain alone. He takes two strips of black fabric, cutting them as he saw Rey do to make her own doll, and he begins to sew. He stabs a needle into the fabric again and again like it’s the doll’s fault that life is unfair, and short, and cruel. He silently curses anyone who ever decided to have children and then did nothing to avoid fucking up their lives, over and over. Kylo shakes his head, trying to distract himself from the sick feeling taking root in his stomach. He doesn’t trust himself to speak now.
Yu closely observing his every movement. His stitches are irregular and he pricks his fingers more than once–the girl winces in sympathy beside him. The final result is sloppy and uneven like his lightsaber. But when he takes the only orange scrap–surely coming from radar technicians’ vests–to finish making the doll’s head, Yu surprises him, handing him a whitish piece of fabric instead.
“Don’t you want your doll to look like you?”
Yu just shrugs, and then offers him another grin.
While he’s stuffing the doll with scraps his ears begin to ring, and he’s suddenly aware of the vacuum sound of the Force Bond opening and quickly forgets about his musings. Rey . The usual bad timing of their connection is almost like a blessing; he can redirect his inner turmoil towards the scavenger instead of the poor doll.
“It’s impressively hard to avoid you, it seems,” she states, piqued, without so much as a greeting. “How did the murder go?”
She’s wearing grey clothing, and her body is on the ground, slumped against something. There is an object in her hand, which, upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be a glass–is she drinking now? He doesn’t take her bait, remaining silent and still so as not to scare Yu, and finishes stuffing the doll. It’s huge, broad-chested, with fair skin. If he didn’t know better, it almost looks like Yu tricked him into making a doll of himself, of all things.
“Tooka got your tongue?” Rey asks. “You’re always so impatient to spew out what’s in your head. Why so silent now?” She gets on her feet, abandoning whatever she had in her hand on the ground–definitely a glass, an empty one. “What are you doing? Are you... sewing?”
Kylo lifts his head, smirking at her, and erects his mental walls, closing her outside of the Bond. Rey is gone, leaving only her glass behind.
***
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Yu is better at sewing than Kylo. She surely learned out of necessity, and now he’s almost sorry he threw her old clothes away. During the evening, while he looks for books to read her on the library database–there is a whole library on this ship, a fact he hadn’t been aware of until he bothered checking–she finishes the doll using the few remaining scraps.
Kylo is toying with the glass Rey left behind–unfortunately, a mass-produced item, useless to determine her location–when Yu finally shows him the final product of their combined efforts. Now he knows it’s definitely him: it has a mop of black hair made with thread, two button eyes, and a long embroidered triangle right in the middle of its face. Is that supposed to be his nose? Perplexed, he touches the bridge of his own nose as Yu shows her handiwork to him, smiling wide, the gap between her front teeth finally showing.
“Is that me?” he asks.
“Yes!” she happily exclaims. “It’s you!”
The Supreme Leader feels something strange fluttering in his stomach, and a knot coiling itself tightly in the back of his throat. This is almost the same thing he felt when he touched Rey’s hand through the Force Bond, while she was on Ahch-To. He clears his voice.
“It’s time for bed, Yu. Bring your doll, and I can read something to you, if you want.”
Yu looks at him, surprised. If she had eyebrows, one of them would reach her montrals, by now.
“But I can read.”
She has, again, surprised him, and he feels an odd sense of disappointment at her words; he would have liked to be the one to teach Yu how to read. He’s not sure he can remember how old he was when he learned how to read, but surely he wasn’t five , or any equivalent of five in human years. He can recall he didn’t learn from his parents, but from one of his nanny droids, and when he’d told Leia that he could finally read by himself, she complimented him, but she never expressed regret about not being there to teach him. He can’t even remember where Han was at the time.
“What if I wanted to read to you?” Kylo whispers. “Has no one read to you before?”
Yu shrugs. “No.”
“Of course,” he says. “Go put on your sleeping clothes and then I’ll read you a bedtime story. The story I have found is about a Lady named Corvax, I hope you’ll like it.”
Yu brushes her teeth, changes into her pajamas and buries herself under the covers, ready to listen to the story.
“A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away, before the rise of the Galactic Empire, a woman named Lady Corvax and her husband, Lord Corvax, resided on a planet known as Mustafar, a lush place thriving with life. The two spouses lived in harmony with the natives…”
***
Kylo’s first month with Yu proceeds incredibly smoothly. The little Togruta is almost a ghost, always silent, readily tidying up after herself. She passes her time playing with her doll, drawing with the dax sticks he’s gifted her, or using the reader he’s given her for whenever he’s busy. He’d found her stories and fables from several Outer Rim planets to read by herself, while Lady Corvax’s story remains on his personal reader, reserved for their evenings, to read together.
Physically, Yu is easy to care for, but the emotional toll of taking care of such a damaged, little creature is sometimes hard for Kylo to bear. He knows what kind of life she experienced on Abafar–so similar to Rey’s it’s almost unsettling. Almost as unsettling, sometimes, is just how gentle and patient she is with him . She seems to sense how lonely and unwell he is, even if he tries not to show her. To be honest, Kylo has been unwell since before he was born, and it’s as if she knows and is trying to make it up to him by becoming his little shadow.
Usually, Kylo is the one reading to her, but sometimes Yu insists on reading to him instead, proceeding slowly and following the lines with her finger on the screen, often stopping to ask questions.
“Ben, why did Lady Corvax try to bring her husband back?”
“Because she was in love with him, and she couldn’t bear to live without him anymore.”
“What does it mean?”
Kylo has to think for a moment before answering. “It means that you care about someone so much that you would do anything for them.”
“Are you in love?”
Kylo Ren’s heartbeat speeds up. “Maybe. I’m not sure. There is this woman called Rey, but I don’t think she loves me back.”
“I hope she will love you. So if you die, she will bring you back,” she exclaims, blue eyes full of hope.
“I hope so, too.” He laughs, his voice booming in the quiet bedroom.
***
Some nights sleep doesn’t come, and Kylo lays awake in his bed next to Yu, listening to her breathing and remembering the feeling of helplessness that always accompanied him, from childhood to adulthood. He’s never been truly free, and now, being the Supreme Leader of the First Order just means that his cage is bigger, and armed with cannons. At least, now, he doesn’t have unwanted guests in his head anymore.
The child’s presence on board has caused mixed reactions so far. The First Order officers were astonished the first time he’d brought her to a meeting, letting her sit at his left side–Hux’s usual place, thus forcing the General to stand the whole time. By the end of that first meeting, Yu had drawn and gifted every single officer with a portrait, and a goofy attempt to write down each of their names–Kylo had taught her how to write the alphabet, starting with their own names. Even Hux had received his drawing and, before the following meeting, a padded stool had magically appeared alongside the Supreme Leader’s chair.
This meeting, however, doesn’t go as smoothly as the previous ones. Hux is pushing for attacking the Resistance, claiming that he knows where they’re hiding–he doesn’t–and that Kylo Ren is just stalling–he is–since he’s too much of a coward to kill his own mother–which he is as well. This leads to confrontation, that leads to shouting, that leads to Kylo threatening Hux with his gloved hand, index finger pointing at the General’s chin.
“Careful, Ren,” Hux spits, ready to walk away, and Kylo refrains from choking him only because Yu is still in the room.
He turns around to lead her away, and finds her petrified on her stool, her tears already falling on the flimsi she was drawing on, smearing the colours. The drawing is of herself, hugging her doll, next to him.
“I’m sorry, Yu. I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers to her, picking her up and bringing her back to his quarters. “I didn’t want to shout and scare you, I would never hurt you in any way.”
Yu stops crying, but her tiny body is still wracked by hiccups when they enter Kylo’s bedroom. He deposits her on the bed, and kneels in front of her, as if to atone for his sins. He’d forgotten that he’s not alone anymore, had almost lost control, and the only one who would be paying for his loss of control is the child. She seems to sense his distress and pats his hair with her tiny hands, as if to tell him that everything will be okay, and he breathes again.
“Who’s Ren?” she asks.
“It’s me. I am Kylo Ren.”
“But your name is Ben,” she observes.
He nods. “Kylo Ren is a name I gave myself a long time ago, when I didn't think I could be Ben anymore. I was scared and hurt and very, very angry and I wanted to be someone else. And being Kylo made me feel important and powerful, but I was still scared and angry.”
“Are you still scared and angry?”
“Sometimes,” he whispers.
“I think that Ben is a better name.
***
That night, Yu doesn’t sleep well. She mysteriously refused to read Lady Corvax’s story together, and went to bed right after dinner; and now her sleep is troubled, like she’s having nightmares, and isn’t able to wake up. Her forehead is clammy, and she keeps tossing and turning, fine sheets tangling in her short legs. Kylo tries to wake her up, but to no avail. His own mind is in deep turmoil since it looks like something is terribly wrong with her, and the ugliest memories of his own childhood emerge in his head like curd emerges from rotten milk.
“Yu.”
No reaction from her.
“Yu, wake up. You’re having a bad dream, It’s not real, I swear.”
Calling her is useless. She keeps moving and scrunching her face without waking up. Kylo decides to take a peek in her head to learn the source of the nightmare–he prays the Force that there is no one preying on her–but as soon as his hand touches her montrals, Rey connects with him, the usual vacuum sound of the Bond opening making his ears pop.
He curses the Force. They both see inside Yu’s head at the same time, they both see Ladro Furis threaten her with his fingers pointed at her chin, yelling, spit flying everywhere, and when the vision ends, Rey sees how Kylo’s hand is touching the child’s forehead while she is plagued by nightmares, lying disquieted in a rumpled bed.
“Who is that?!” Rey shouts, her pupils blown wide. “Why is there a suffering child with you?
Yu finally startles awake at the volume of Rey’s shouting, and looks around for its source. Kylo doesn’t know what to say, but he thinks maybe telling Rey that she has the same look in her eyes that she had back in the forest on Starkiller Base isn’t a good idea. He wants to tell her that Yu is no one, but it isn’t true; he wants to tell her that Yu is only a guest, but that isn’t true either. The closest thing to the truth he could tell Rey is that Yu is a foundling like her, and that he saved her from a life of abuse, but the words refuse to exit his mouth. He just looks at Rey, waiting for her to do something, to do anything .
“Did you kidnap her like you did with me?!” she asks, full of rage. “Did you torture her, Kylo Ren ?”
“No.” Ben’s heart breaks at her words. “Her name is Yu, and she saved me as much as I saved her.”
His mental barriers are down, and a lonely tear cuts across his scarred cheek. Rey grins from the other side of the galaxy, her face almost disfigured with a twisted sort of glee.
“I know where you are,” she spits. “I will find you and I will save that child, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
***
No one sleeps again after the connection dies. Yu, though still a bit frightened, is calmer now, hugging her doll and looking at Ben, who is simply staring at the ceiling as he lays on the bed, tears still streaking across his face. The child extends one of her hands and touches his scar. It’s like a feather, so gentle he almost can’t feel her fingers on his skin.
“Who’s the scary lady?”
“That was Rey,” he mumbles. “I told you about her.”
“Did she give you this scar?”
Ben turns towards Yu, an eyebrow straining toward his hairline. “She did–how do you know?”
Yu shrugs. “I just know.”
Ben exhales, tired. Rey was able to steal the First Order’s location from his mind, but somehow failed to see why he had to take Yu away from Abafar. He knows she’ll come alone, that she will try to talk him into letting Yu come away with her. She’ll try to change his mind the same way she tried to turn him against Snoke, armed only with a shadow of makeup–where she even found that on Ahch-To remains a mystery–but she wouldn’t succeed in turning him this time.
He will never capitulate, and allow himself to be separated from Yu. First of all, the child will never be safe with the Resistance, and second, he’s a selfish coward who needs this five year old Togruta girl to help him heal his shattered soul. He needs her because he’s a wreck. He needs her because he’s a barren planet plagued by long dead spirits. He needs her because she’s so small, yet so much stronger than him.
His hands tremble, and something soft gets pushed into them: it’s the doll.
“If you hug him, he keeps you safe. Even from the scary lady,” Yu explains.
“Thank you.”
He complies, hugging the doll close, and falls asleep in a matter of seconds.