Chapter Text
These feelings are not her own.
They come from far away, a red point of light in the endless void of her awareness.
It comes upon Rey at the worst of times, when she's meditating or practicing her forms, always under the bright all-seeing eyes of Master Luke. Anger so hot it boils her blood. Pain so cold it brings tears to her eyes and she draws blood biting the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.
She is helpless to these feelings and it is utterly terrifying.
"Master, help me." Rey whispers as her control over her body is broken halfway through the fifth move of her third form, muscles frozen, twitching from a force, perhaps the Force itself, that plays over her nerves like razor blades. Like lightning.
He approaches, her awareness of the sun that is his life dim, a distant blurred light and she is drowning under deep water. Master Luke raises a hand to her temple and the flinch is as much hers as Kylo Ren's this time. She'll never, ever get used to another being performing that gesture on her, however benevolent. "Dear child," His voice is heavy, "I can do nothing."
"Nothing?!" Her voice tears in a shriek as the pain ends as abruptly as it started and Rey collapses, a marionette with cut strings. Tears spill down her cheeks, an extravagant waste on Jakku, here just more mud where they drop to the dirt under her clenched hands. "He is doing this to me and you can do nothing?" Chest heaving, Rey sways where she kneels in the grass and dirt. She can feel him, a mirrored position on cold stone. Kylo Ren does not cry, but she has tears for them both. "Please," She gasps, "I beg of you, Master."
Master Luke sits beside her and rubs her shoulder, dries her tears. As the invasion fades from her mind, he stares out over the ocean, breathing deeply. "Take a day of meditation tomorrow. Strengthen your defenses. Clear your mind."
Slowly Rey unfolds from a feral crouch into lotus position, breathing from her diaphragm and letting the breeze carry the Light back into her mind. He's there, Kylo Ren, somewhere out in the darkness of space and day of meditation or not, Rey has a bad feeling about this.
Master Luke leaves that night. He does that sometimes and Rey never asks where he goes. He has his secrets as she has hers. If he wants to change that, confide in her, he will. She doesn't expect it, though, men with power have never looked at a little sand-rat like her as anything other than a snack. She'd like to think Master Luke is different, but after a month of training under him she's still not certain. Undoubtable that he has his own agenda, of which she is just a piece.
Still, let him have his secrets. The solitude out here is safe and familiar, green and blue instead of yellow, but the same sort of quiet she knew back on Jakku. Or almost the same. Back on Jakku she didn't have this extra-sensory awareness of others, of one in particular. The hut she shares with her Master is stifling, she grabs her staff and slams the door behind her, forcing the intrusive thoughts of haunted dark eyes away, losing herself in the burn of muscles and the raw beauty of the trek.
Rey climbs it to the highest point of the isle in time to sit on a rock worn smooth by generations of Jedi behinds and watch the sun disappear into the ocean. The fading light gentles something deep in her soul and Rey melts into the feeling as a cool winds stirs her sweat-matted hair. It's not just one point of light in the void, there are many; she can feel Master Luke on a nearby islet, motionless and pure like untouched wash water in the basin. Farther out are more, some bright, others dim, a galaxy of life all its own. It's beautiful.
The faint red one always draws her attention, is never lost among the many, like the Warrior Star in the Western sky over her den.
The awareness creeps back slowly, the fear and pain that is synonymous with Kylo Ren, Ben Solo. She can't hate him right now, not in the place her mind occupies balancing in the Force, in the star-lit evening. He's done terrible things, served terrible men, but he's still a part of the Force as much as she is, still a living being that does not deserve to live a tortured existence. The awareness grows, she wonders if he feels her the same way she feels him, if he ever tries to reach for her.
What a stupid thought.
Kylo Ren is evil, Rey reminds herself. Kylo Ren killed Hans Solo, tortured people because it was convenient; signed up to join the First Order under that monster Snoke. She leaps to her feet, forsaking the cooling rock and begins another combat drill. She can't think these thoughts. She cannot hate him, hate leads to darkness, but she cannot, will not forgive him, and apathy? It would be easier to grow gills and live in the sea than to not care.
The drills are simple, intended for young Padawans younger than 10, to be completed with training swords or sticks. Rey uses her staff for convenience, body moving through the patterns. Block, counter, side step, sweep up, sweep down, turn, repeat. It feels wrong. She feels wrong, skin hot and itchy even as evening cools to night, and she can't be sure now if the frustration is hers or someone else's. Deep breathes, finding her center, the sensation she finds is strange and cautiously, scavenger instincts sharp, she pushes out, back against the itchy crawling feeling that makes her want to cross her legs and squirm.
It's instant, a perfect fit as she slides into the not quite unfamiliar conscious, phantoms that aren't quite there dancing before her eyes. The frustration is overwhelming, despair at physical weakness, an aching endless want that Rey is too familiar with. She can't quite see, shades of grey flickering that might be a top down view of a long flat chest, long pale hands flicking a wide leather belt open, opening the button in black wool trousers. Rey feels her lungs force to motion, and knows that it's synchronous with him, her heart picking up speed as Kylo Ren's pulse quickens as he frees himself from the confines of underwear and pants.
Teeth dig into lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The sensation draws a shuddering sigh, hissed between clenched teeth as a thumb alights on the swollen head of Kylo Ren's cock, smearing precum over long elegant fingers and then gliding, oh god, gliding down to the thatch of coarse black hair. Pleasure is a swallowed gasp, motion repeating, variations on the theme, teasing light and then harder faster, hips thrusting into a closed fist.
Kylo Ren comes with a whimper, an image of warm golden skin and sparkling brown eyes flashing in and out of awareness almost too quickly to comprehend.
Rey is shaking with the aftershocks when she comes back to her body, jaw aching from clenching her teeth, drenched in sweat and underwear damp. She feels utterly repulsed, both in her witness to a moment she never wanted to see and her own visceral reaction. She's unclean now, in more than just a physical sense, and she needs a bath.
Her legs are shaking by the time she climbs back down, muscles fatigued to exhaustion from the day's efforts and the idea of taking multiple trips to fill the rusted metal tub is abhorrent. Much easier to strip to breast band and underwear, splash water on the bits that needed it most and drag her pallet and blanket outside to watch the infinity of space beyond the atmosphere.
The stars restore some of the calm she had lost thanks to Kylo Ren's intrusion. It still boggles her mind to think of each point of light being the center of its own system, even though she's visited several now, felt the subtle differentiations in the Force that connect and separate them both. Rey huffs a tiny sigh and rolls on her side to watch the ocean. Right now the stars and their respective systems only make her aware that Kylo Ren is out there, or in transit between them, somewhere, and she doesn't want to think of him, of long elegant fingers, a moment of stolen pleasure whimpered into empty silence.
It doesn't work of course. Dark eyes set over a wide mouth haunts her dreams, sorrow and pain streaking her awareness of the Force in blue and red, soft touches flashing gold behind her eyes, a smell of musk and the press of flesh on flesh, slip-sliding in the sweat of two bodies pressed close.
Rey's heart is in her throat, beating out of her chest as she comes awake with a gasp, sweat sticking the scratchy blanket to her skin. She kicks it off and shivers in the night air. The stars have moved: several hours yet to dawn. She can't sleep, not like this, with her blood up, skin craving contact, release.
It's not the first time she's had these feelings; she knows how to handle this want. Self-satisfaction is safer for a girl all alone, she knows what she likes and she's always been able to provide for herself. If this is the first time she's had a specific face in mind while peeling sticky underwear off and letting the air ruffle the smattering of hair on her pubic mound, well, she won't think about that right now. Deep breathes from her diaphragm; funny how similar masturbation can be to meditation when there's no Master looking over your shoulder. Rey smooths her hands down her breastbone, skating over the swell of her breasts, the hard ridge of her ribcage, the jut of her hips. The feeling tickles, teases, tantalizes and it's a relief to circle a finger around her clit. Her hands are cold against her searing hot sex, she shivers at the contact and drags a calloused fingertip over the hood. Flyaway strands of hair stick to her face, plastered with sweat and her awareness of the Force shifts subtly.
Rey freezes, hand still wedged between legs taunt with coiled energy. Kylo Ren, she knows the feeling of him, and maybe she can disentangle her hand, shut him out before he sees anything humiliating, as she had earlier. Maybe she can pretend none of this is happening. Moving her hand brushes against her clitoris, and light dances behind her eyes. She can't clamp down on the groan that bubbles from her lips into the silent night and what she felt of him before was a shadow to this feeling, curiosity building to crescendo and then exploding into a galaxy of arousal. The warmth, the want, engulfs her and even though she's objectively terrified, the dual rush of neurotransmitters won't let the traitor finger resting on her sensitive flesh be still. The tiniest motions are just on the edge of her control, sending electricity arcing to erogenous zones and she tries to keep silent, to not respond, to try and will Kylo Ren to get bored and go away. Trying to ignore the presence only increases the excitement she senses, a feedback loop that makes it even harder to keep still until she has never wanted, never needed anything, food, water, air, as much as she needs this completion.
With a choked groan she moves her hand, slow and careful and immediately the pressure in her head abates and she can feel the phantom of him in her free hand, hot skin over iron, twitching and thrusting even as she touches herself more urgently. Then it doesn't matter what he sees, doesn't matter what the consequences of this depravity are, there is just need and her own heavy musky scent as the pressure builds in her toes and surges upwards, muscles locking out as she shakes, shouting her orgasm to the empty sky. His presence is still there as she comes down and the solitude is devouring her, no longer a comforting friend but a beast to be kept at bay with human companionship. She reaches towards that feeling, that want, stretching with abilities that she doesn't think her Master really understands towards him, feeling his fatigue, a brief moment of respite.
'Are you there?' She has no idea if this will work, it feels like a waste of energy, a child praying to a god that never was.
There is silence for a very long time and, though she doesn't know quite why, a tear wells in the corner of her eye.
Then a response, not spoken aloud but simply appearing in her head. 'Yes.'
Rey shivers and retrieves her blanket and cocoons herself in the rough wool, curling up on half of the narrow pallet. 'Good.'
Then she sleeps and this time there are no interruptions.