Chapter Text
The speeder skimmed over the dunes, the engine humming steadily beneath Rey’s palms as sand whispered along the housing. Questions rose and fell with the terrain, impossible to separate from the strange, buoyant lift in her chest.
She hadn't answered Kylo's question aloud, but she had turned the speeder toward the light freighter that had caught his attention.
Behind her, his arm stayed firm around her waist. The openness she’d sensed earlier had narrowed and drawn inward. With each meter, the tension tightened further, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with her or her silence. Whatever she’d been catching through the shared awareness blurred, fogging like breath over glass.
The ship ahead grew larger as they closed the distance, and Rey eased off the throttle, bringing the speeder to a stop beneath the overhang where the freighter’s ramp would lower.
She cataloged the exterior on instinct. The damage wasn’t new, but it had been ages since she'd flown it. There was scoring along the plating, numerous patched seams, and a stress fracture she’d forgotten about near the dorsal strut. She narrowed her eyes, running through the list in her head. If the hyperdrive hadn’t been stripped and the fuel cells weren’t missing—
It might run.
When she cut the speeder’s engine, the sudden quiet rang in her ears. Behind her, Kylo remained quiet, his arm sliding away from her waist almost absently. Rey swung her leg over the seat and dismounted, boots sinking into the sand. She gathered her staff and the small bag of supplies strapped to her speeder. She dug for a ration bar, tore it in half, and offered him a piece.
He accepted with a nod of gratitude, and they ate in silence. The ration was dry and faintly metallic, the kind that demanded water though her canteen was empty. She swallowed the tasteless, sawdust-flavored protein and stared at the ship’s hull while she did so. A dozen questions crowded the back of her throat, and she sorted through them the way she sorted salvage. First by weight, then by what she couldn’t afford to leave behind. The small ones she set aside for now; they didn’t matter if the big ones had wrong answers.
She didn't understand the Force. What was it?
There was no question that the Force was with her now, like something long asleep had awoken. If she closed her eyes and listened, she could almost hear a low, constant hum threading through... well, everything.
Was it energy? That was the closest word she could think of. Energy that connected things. Her body to the ground, the air to the ship, him to her. And that energy could be used, which made it power, which made it dangerous.
Like Kylo.
Kylo kept his gaze on the ship as he chewed, one gloved hand curled at his side as if resisting the urge to use the Force. To do what, she didn’t know. Thus far, he'd used his power to freeze her, to pry into her mind - if only for a moment - and to send a flying piece of shrapnel out of their path. What unsettled her more was what the Force had done through her. There was the phantom ache of ribs that weren't hers, the mental shove she'd thrown back at him without knowing how, and the dark pull of the saber she'd refused on instinct.
What would it feel like to try and use it? Rey flexed her fingers without meaning to, as if the answer might be sitting in her hands. She eyed a pebble near her boot and thought about moving it. Nothing happened. The hum didn't change. The pebble sat there, indifferent, and she felt faintly ridiculous for trying.
When Kylo finally stepped clear of the speeder, he paused a fraction too long before settling his weight, one shoulder angling as if to take pressure off his left side. The pain didn't show on his face, but it was there in his posture. He stared at the ship with a closed expression. Rey followed his gaze. It wasn’t the newest in Plutt’s collection, or the fastest, or the easiest to bring back online. She wondered again whose ship it was. Or why this one, of all the wrecks scattered across the dunes.
He hadn’t said. And she hadn't asked yet. While she wanted to know, the question would open something he was clearly trying to keep shut, and there were different answers she needed first.
"Kylo." She said his name softly, knowing she was interrupting troubled thoughts. "I have questions."
He turned toward her, and every ounce of that intense, dark gaze met hers. "Ask them."
“Last night, you said you could teach me.” She kept her voice level. “Teach me what?"
"Control, first," he replied. She had the uncomfortable sense he knew about the pebble. "You'll learn to direct it. Move things, sense things, guard your own mind. The basic disciplines." He took a step closer, and she tried not to be distracted by the interesting collection of beauty marks marring his pale face. Control would be a good place to start, she thought, considering the Force had been reaching to her since the storm, showing her what it pleased.
"But before any of that, meditation," he added. "Learning to quiet your mind so you can hear what the Force is actually telling you."
She'd sort of already tried that. She sank past the noise of herself to find the dark inside, twisting and coaxing. But beneath it, the light waited, solid and sure.
"All right," she said. "Why?"
The word hung in the air, sounding blunter than she'd intended, and she fought the urge to soften it. She half expected the look Plutt gave scavengers who questioned the day's rates.
But Kylo didn't bristle. He was quiet for a few moments, his silence feeling more like contemplation than evasion. When he finally spoke, the words came slowly, as if he were working it out as he said it rather than reciting something he'd already decided.
“You—” he stopped, shook his head, and started again. “I’m offering you the chance to understand your power without having to figure it out alone.”
Her eyes stung, and something pulled tight beneath her sternum. Rey figured out everything alone. Which wrecks would hold her weight and which would drop her three decks in the dark. How to rewire a power cell without burning her fingers off. Which of Plutt's moods meant half portions and which meant none. How to sleep light, fight dirty, mend her own wounds. She was proud of that. But pride had never once kept her warm at night, and it had never quieted the wanting underneath: a hand correcting her grip. A voice saying "like this". Parents. A friend who outlasted a season.
"As part of the First Order?" she asked. She felt her expression flatten and cool, the wariness rising up through it like water through sand. Every story she'd ever heard about the Order was ugly. Raids, razed villages, and children being taken. She held the look steady and let him read it.
“No,” he replied carefully. “Supreme Leader Snoke would see your power directed at whatever threatened the Order.”
She didn’t recognize the name, but it sent a shiver skittering across her nerves nonetheless. Kylo took a step closer, and she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. The directness of his gaze was almost uncomfortable.
"You were tempted by the dark last night," he said. "You touched it, you felt what it offered, and you said no. Snoke would try to break that. Whatever it is in you that refused, he'd consider it a problem to be solved." His voice was flat and certain. He knew exactly how that process worked. "I won't bring you to him."
A hard press of feeling came through the muffled connection. Adamance. He was set against her going anywhere near him.
“Then where?”
"There's a cantina," he said. "On Takodana. The woman who runs it, Maz, is a friend. Or, she was. She knows the Force. You'd be safe to train there."
That qualifier wasn't particularly reassuring. Nor was the pronoun. You. Singular.
"And you?"
"I have to see my assignment through." His jaw tightened. "Deliver the map. That doesn't change. But after..." He trailed off, reaching with one hand to push his dark waves back from his forehead.
"After," Rey prompted.
"After is less fixed than Snoke believes," he said quietly. The words carried weight she didn't press on. But she heard what was underneath them. A choice he hadn't made yet, or hadn't admitted to making.
"So you'd leave me there," she said slowly. "Why shouldn't I wait here, then?"
"You can't train here," he replied. "The First Order awards bounties for Force users."
Rey looked back toward Niima Outpost. Plutt would turn her over in a heartbeat if it meant credits. But presumably Kylo wouldn't. Maybe he didn't need the credits. Maybe he was truly trying to save her from Snoke's control.
"How long?" she asked, her voice barely managing to stay even.
Kylo reached with one hand to stroke his jaw. "Give me a few days. A week at most," he said. "Then I'll come back."
The words touched old wounds, and no matter Rey's desire to believe him, her stomach tightened into a fist.
"I have no credits," she blurted, hearing her voice rise. The words came out faster than she intended, practically rushing in to fill the space he’d left open. "Nothing to offer for shelter, or food, or... I don't even have papers! I've no formal training, no clearance, nothing on record. I'm a scavenger!" She gestured at herself, the rags, the staff, and the empty canteen. "Why would your friend take in a nobody like me?"
Their gazes locked. Kylo's eyes darkened, and the line of his mouth went thin and hard. For a heartbeat she thought she'd angered him, that the outburst had cost her the offer, but the heat moving through the bond wasn't aimed at her. His gaze tracked down the inventory she'd made of herself and rose again slow and furious, as if he were memorizing names for a debt he intended to collect.
A shiver moved through her. No one had ever been angry on her behalf. That it came from him, a man she'd felt in the Force before she'd ever seen his face, whose presence could move through their connection like a storm front, should have frightened her. She really shouldn't find it thrilling.
"Maz doesn't deal in credits or papers," he explained. "At least not when it comes to the Force. She'll know to keep you out of sight." Rey turned that over. It didn't fit any system she'd ever lived inside. Nothing about the last twelve hours had fit any system she knew, either. Yet everything about Kylo, from his gaze to his voice, felt sincere. His lips turned up slightly. "The food is much better than rations. If you don't like it, we'll go somewhere else."
The almost-grin faded. "And you're not a nobody. Not to me."
Rey's throat tightened. The Force. He had to mean the Force. That made her worth the trouble. Her power was the asset, the thing that made a scavenger worth hiding and coming back for.She thought about the hash marks on the AT-AT wall. All those days. All that waiting. No one had ever suggested she might be worth something simply as herself.
She shook the notion off before it could take root. If she believed he meant her, just her, the girl and not the power, it would matter when he left.
"What's in it for you?" She could hear the strain behind the words. "I have nothing to offer you. No useful contacts, no ship of my own, no formal training." She held his gaze. "So why?"
"You came for me when you didn’t have to," he started. "And you—”
His jaw worked once. His gaze dropped briefly to the space between them before coming back up to her face.
"Whatever this is—" he began. One hand lifted, gesturing vaguely at the narrow air between their bodies. The motion was almost frustrated, as if the thing he was trying to name kept moving when he reached for it. "It doesn't just happen."
He let the hand fall.
"It's rare," he said finally. "Such a connection is almost unheard of." The next words came out quieter than the rest. "I want to understand it." He paused again, surprise flickering as the sentence arrived somewhere he hadn't planned to go. "Learn about it. With you."
Rey thought about the Force, the way it seemed to wait deep inside her, patient and present, nothing like the dark saber’s hungry pull. It felt right to acknowledge it, just as it felt right to acknowledge this strange connection between them—something even a skilled Force-user like Kylo couldn’t name.
Part of her wanted to go back, crawl into her AT-AT, pull the hatch shut, and wait for her parents. She knew how to wait. She’d made a life of it, a whole careful routine of patience and not-quite-hope. They were coming back. They had always been coming back. Any day now. Any ship.
Years of lying to herself, most of her life spent watching the horizon for something that never broke it. She wasn't that child anymore. She'd stayed too long as it was, past the age when waiting could be called a child's faith rather than habit, and she would not carry the habit into a new world and hand it a new ship to watch for.
The Force didn't make decisions for her. She understood that now, after last night. It didn't push or pull or tip the scales when she wasn't looking. But it was present, quiet and certain beneath the noise of everything else, and it was telling her something. Not to go, exactly, but that, for the first time, staying might cost her more than leaving. And maybe this power would help her discover who she was, what she was capable of, and what she could become.
She’d stopped asking those questions aloud because no one on Jakku had answers. Maybe the Force did. Maybe understanding it would mean understanding herself.
Maybe her parents had left her something after all. Just not what she'd been looking for.
"Okay," she said quietly.
She felt the loosening of tension between them. Then the corner of Kylo's mouth shifted, the almost-smile stretching his bruised lip. He gave a single nod, and she matched it.
After a moment, Kylo stepped to the control panel. One gloved hand lifted and stopped short, fingers flexing as if reconsidering the motion.
Then he reached and keyed the control.
Metal released with a muted thud. The ramp unlocked and began to lower, hydraulics hissing softly as it descended into the sand. A quick scan of the landing field showed no signs of Plutt's guards this early.
Kylo stepped back, clearing the space in front of the ramp. He didn’t look at her. Whatever memories the ship had brought to the surface, he kept them to himself.
Rey watched him for a heartbeat longer, then turned and stepped onto the ramp, her decision already made.
The surface vibrated faintly beneath her boots. Shadow closed around her as she crossed into the hull, the temperature shifting, the air inside stale and dense. Another scent lingered, something animal and musky she couldn’t identify.
She kept moving, angling toward the utility panels. As soon as they started the engine, the wrong kind of attention would follow.
She paused before opening the utility panel and looked back once. Kylo stood at the top of the ramp, one hand resting against the frame. His gaze moved slowly across the interior, taking inventory of something she couldn't see. Then it found her, and he let his hand fall.
She turned back without comment and popped the panel open. She thumbed the power switch and waited through the familiar lag as the system pulled itself awake.
A low hum threaded through the deck plating.
The console flickered, stabilized, and settled into a steady glow. Rey leaned in, scanning the readouts.
Air first. The pressure was holding. The indicator hovered at the midway point.
Water next. Lower than she liked. If they rationed, they might have three days. A shower would have to wait.
Fuel cells last. Seated and intact, but drained. Enough for one jump. Maybe two.
Rey straightened, eyes still on the panel. Under different circumstances, she would have suggested they resupply. But the Outpost meant Plutt, and Plutt had eyes on every transaction, departure, and ship that moved on the landing pad. He’d want payment. He’d want to know where she was going and why and with whom. He’d be loud, and he’d be obnoxious, and even if Kylo had credits, Plutt wouldn’t offer a fair price.
She cast a glance at the ship’s interior and decided she didn’t feel particularly guilty about taking it. If she tallied every portion Plutt shorted her over the years - and she had, more than once, lying awake in the AT-AT with nothing better to do - he practically owed her a ship.
“We can make one jump,” she said, turning. “Two would be pushing it.”
Kylo didn’t question the assessment. He had already shifted his attention, turning toward the cockpit as if the path were settled the moment she spoke.
“Then we don’t delay,” he said.