Chapter Text
He shouldn’t be doing this. He knew that he shouldn’t be doing this, and yet each and every step brought him closer and closer to your door. People would start to notice that he had been entering this area of the base more and more often, they would notice and they would talk, and that talk would lead to rumors that would eventually reach Hux’s ears, which by default meant that they would eventually capture the attention of the Supreme Leader, who he had not been totally upfront with about his involvement with you. He suspected that, on some level, the Supreme Leader knew that too, but that was not something he had to concern himself with now. As long as he could insist that going to see you was an order, it made him feel a lot better about the whole thing.
He felt a whole lot less guilty, for one. In spite of how he had betrayed his uncle, he considered himself to be a remarkably unselfish person. He knew what he wanted and he knew what he had to do in order to get it, but there wasn’t a great deal that he actually wanted for himself. He had goals and ideals, the same as anyone, but they had more or less merged with what was best for the First Order, and what was best for the Supreme Leader himself. He had slowly allowed himself to slip away, to dissolve himself into his position as one of the Knights of Ren, and he regarded himself more as a member of that group and less of an individual in his own right.
The mask helped with that some, but he was starting to feel, and, well, that was sort of the problem. He was starting to feel. He could not ever before recall a time that he had experienced such lust, such hunger, beyond his thirst for power. There was something new that he coveted now, something tangible, and what was more, he could have it. He could take it. He could take you, and what was worse was that, on some level, he almost suspected that you wanted him to.
And that was something that still didn’t make any sense to him. He had choked you, he had hurt you, fuck, he could have easily killed you, and yet you seemed to brush that aside as if it was inconsequential. A part of him assumed that you had been hurt worse in your past, that your story of your childhood had been authentic and not rehearsed, and he felt a momentary bubble of anger thinking about the ways in which you must have been mistreated and abused in the past. He knew the unscrupulous characters that Han Solo often associated with, vile smugglers who deserved no one’s respect, and for a moment he paused to consider the bubble of anger that had flared up so suddenly in his chest. Was it because of the mere thought of Han Solo and the son he had abandoned, or was it because he was angry at the mistreatment he perceived in your younger self?
He couldn’t be sure, and this troubled him.
He was not good at living to help other people. Luke had so often tried to teach him to be sympathetic and to empathize with others. He said it was the Jedi way to help others in their moment of need, and yet the Jedi had all been eliminated in such a short span of time, and who had come to their aid then? How many of the people that they saved actually spoke out to try to protect them? Hardly any, as they knew better. They could see the Jedi for who they really were, just as Anakin Skywalker had done when he had left behind the Jedi Council in order to become Darth Vader and take his rightful seat at the Emperor’s side. It couldn’t have been easy for Anakin Skywalker to have left everything he had once knew behind to chart a new course; it would have been far easier for him to stay submissive to a Council that would never truly recognize his talents or appreciate his efforts, and so Anakin Skywalker had done the brave thing and had rebelled against them, charting his own course in the galaxy, with the intent of ruling it in order to bring an end to the chaos of a fragmented Senate and justice to the galaxy. He dared to believe that there could be an end to the petty squabbling and the Clone Wars, and as he had vowed to make it so, he had succeeded, casting away his former self to do what he knew to be right.
And so Ben Solo had attempted to do the same, leaving Luke and his inane teachings behind him, in order to chart a new course. At least Snoke was able to sense that he had been unhappy. He had become frustrated with Luke’s teachings, constantly feeling as though he was on the edge of something greater, on the edge of some new, greater burst of power, and yet Luke had always encouraged him to remain contented with what he had, chiding him against having too much power, all the while touting that it could have negative effects without ever explaining what that meant. It was only Snoke who explained to him that there were no drawbacks to ultimate power if you were strong enough to control it, and confirmed what Ren had been beginning to suspect, that Luke was weak, and he was afraid of Ren growing stronger than himself.
But that was beside the point. In the end, Ren had proven that he was able to overcome the familiar and head out into uncharted territory, just as his grandfather had done, burning all the bridges behind him in order to ensure that he could never succumb to weakness and fall back into that old way of life that would surely serve to only stagnate his growth and his potential. The Supreme Leader saw great things in him, treated him with the attention he so rightfully deserved, and Ren allowed himself to become contented with himself once again as he approached your door, rapping on the door with the backs of his knuckles. He deserved anything he pleased, and if he coveted you, then he could have you. He could take you, and he would allow no one to question him or make him feel inferior for wanting what he wanted.
But as you opened the door, a bit breathless, hair pulled back, the corner of your lips pulled back in a gentle smirk, Ren couldn’t help but let his earlier confidence slide away from him, crawling just slightly out of reach from his gloved fingertips. There was something about you, not in the way that you stood or the way that you spoke, but something intangible that seemed to radiate outwards like a soft glow, glimmering like the pristine white snow outside the base whenever the sun hit it at just the right angle in the early hours of the morning.
“Hi,” you chirp happily, and suddenly Ren notices that you seem just a bit, well, off. You seem a bit looser than usual, just a little too happy. He had always been able to sense at least some level of cautious trepidation when you opened the door, but now you seemed almost downright giddy, as if you had been anticipating his arrival.
Ren wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.
As Ren stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him, he couldn’t help but look you over as he tried to ascertain just what felt off to him. You laugh, suddenly, and Ren couldn’t help but admit that he had been unfortunately startled by the motion. “I’m sorry,” you say, “but you need to take off that helmet.”
Ren complies with your request, slowly, watching as you slowly move the side of your thumb back and forth against your lower lip while you watch him slip off his helmet, as if this was an action that you secretly liked watching. “I’m never going to get used to that,” you say, and Ren just simply lets the words drop lifelessly to his feet as he sweeps his hair back out of his face with one hand. “Not what I meant, just that you’re attractive, under there, I didn’t expect that.”
For a moment, Ren isn’t quite sure how to respond to this. He was a great many things, but attractive was far from among them, what with his angular jaw, long nose and long ears that he had been teased about as a child, from his so-called friends growing up as a child on Hosnian Prime, and even Han Solo, who had teased him on occasion. His long hair at least served to hide it now, and there were only a handful of people left alive who could recognize his countenance beneath his helmet.
In other words, no one had to know what he truly looked like anymore, and that pleased him.
But he detected no amount of dishonesty from you, in fact, you seemed downright open today, your guard lying in a puddle at your feet, and he considered for a moment that he could probably get you to say absolutely anything in this state, to get you to admit to whatever it was that he wanted.
It would be a lie to say that this didn’t concern him at least a little.
“Are you okay?” Ren asks slowly as he looks you over again, his eyes travelling the length of your body.
“Fine,” you reply simply, and Ren notes that your voice seems to steady somewhat as you take a deep breath. “So, you uh, got my message? Right? That I was trapped?” Ren dips his head forward slightly, and as a grin spreads across your face, Ren isn’t sure what to do with the feeling that suddenly stirs in his chest to see you looking at him like that. “I knew it. I knew you’d come through for me.”
The amount of confidence you had in a man that had so recently tried to kill you was unnerving, to say the least. “And how were you so sure of that?” he asks. His voice is guarded, trying to remind you that he was not someone to be trifled with, but you seemed completely unaffected as you answered.
“Because you like me.” The words are simple, and you pushed them out into the narrow space between you as if you were simply stating a fact. Ren can’t help but flinch, can’t help reject not the words themselves, but the intimation of those words. He knew what they implied, and he knew how dangerous they were for you both. “It’s not a crime, you know. People like me. I’m a likeable person.”
Also, apparently, quite foolish, although he could hardly blame you. He knew that you probably knew nothing about Supreme Leader Snoke, or how dangerous his visits to see you truly were. He knew that you were up to something, that there was something that you were not telling him, and yet you sometimes seemed to downright ignorant to your own Force powers, to everything going on around you, that he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of game you were trying to play with him. It almost made him believe that you were truly innocent, and he hated the sudden feeling of protectiveness that seemed to overcome him.
“I don’t like you,” Ren says firmly, although in honest truth, this was something that he was saying to himself more than to you. The Force knew that this wouldn’t be the first time he had spoken your name aloud, not the first time he insisted that you were just an objective, an assignment, and absolutely nothing more. He could see something pass over your features, some haunted look of rejection, but he can’t risk alienating you when he needed to find out the truth. He couldn’t risk pushing you away, even if it was in the best interests of you both. “But I don’t dislike you.”
“Well, that’s something,” you relent, as if you seemed to realize that was as much as you were going to be able to get out of him. “So why are you here? Are you going to try to read my mind again?” Ren hesitates, unsure of how to answer you. To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure exactly why he had come to see you again. He had just wanted to, his feet had simply led him in your direction, and while he had tried to rationalize each step and assign it some greater purpose, he didn’t know how to say that he had simply wanted to see you without making it sound that, well, obvious. Fortunately for him, you keep talking without giving him a chance to say much of anything. “Because it’d probably be easy to do right now. I did knock a little bit of the wall in my head down to call out for you, and I’m glad we have that connection now otherwise I might still be stuck in that room, okay, well, I probably would’ve starved to death by now, but at any rate-”
You were starting to ramble, your words slurred, and Ren resisted the urge to sink his face into both hands in exasperation. “Are you drunk?” he demands, watching with some idle bit of frustration as you spread your hands out in front of you like a child pleading innocence.
“It’s real wine from Alderaan,” you offer. “Like, can you blame me?”
Ren had absolutely no idea where in the galaxy you could have gotten that from, but at any rate, that wasn’t one of his concerns. Right now, you were drunk, and while Ren knew that he could talk you into almost anything, there was no guarantee that you wouldn’t regret it in the morning and hold it against him the next evening. For some stupid reason, he cared what you thought of him, and while he hated that he cared, he remained resolute in his decision not to hurt you.
Not again.
Never again.
Instead, he had to do what was best for the both of you, since you were apparently not in a state to think clearly for yourself. “I should go.” He didn’t truly want to go, which he regarded as yet another reason why he probably should.
“No.” Just as Ren had turned to leave, he heard the words behind him, firm and clear, as if you were giving him an order. It looks like you make a move to grab him, but as his eyes narrow, you seem to think better of it.
“Are you attempting to give me orders?” Ren asks, making the warning ring clear in each syllable.
“No,” you reply, but you don’t appear to back down, either. No one on the First Order base would speak to him in such a way, no one would dare, and yet you seemed to be remarkably bold for someone who seemed so powerless against him. If you had any secret powers that you were holding against him, he thought that you would have had revealed them in order to save your own life, but no, he had come close to taking it and yet you had only gotten decidedly weaker. Something else was at play, something keeping him from reading your thoughts, and while he was determined to find out just what that was, a part of him was just content to use this as an excuse to keep seeing you, not that he would ever admit to that.
“I’m attempting to stop you from making a mistake,” you continue, and Ren can’t help but feel at least a brief wave of surprise wash over him.
“And what mistake would that be?” Ren asks as he raises his eyebrows, attempting to humor your obvious drunken rationalizations.
“I don’t know when’s the last time you’ve been touched,” you venture. “But I liked it when you touched me. And I think you liked it when I touched you back. And someone made me realize lately that being touched is, well, good, so I think we should keep touching each other.” You visibly wince as if the whole thing was embarrassing to say, but Ren was regarding you with nothing short of curiosity now. He had never touched anyone like that before, had never watched them come undone underneath his hands, never seen them silently beg for more with each roll of their hips, and he had never allowed anyone to come close enough to touch him that way, not ever. He had tried to convince himself that he was above that, that he didn’t need human contact in order to be complete, that lust was just an idle distraction that prevented him from obtaining his real goals, and yet for some reason, he craved your touch more than anything, and he honestly couldn’t explain why.
You open your eyes again and seem to come to some sort of decision about something. “You know what, just go back to choking me again. Torture me, whatever, at least that will get me to shut my mouth.”
You really don’t know anything, do you? Ren's eyes dipped down to your neck, raw and exposed, and he thought about how he could close his fingers around your throat and watch you struggle for life again. A part of him wanted to, wanted to completely overshadow how he wished to have his lips there again, desperate to hear your soft moans as he brushed the delicate skin there with his tongue. He could picture himself doing it now, and he couldn’t help but feel his erection hardening against his thigh. “There are other ways to do that,” he ventures softly, but you seem ignorantly unaware of his innuendo.
“Oh, well, yeah,” you agree. “I mean, you could always-”
But this was too much talking for Ren, and he couldn’t hold back any longer. Words would only stall for time, and that was something that existed in short supply, especially on this base. Instead, he reached forward and closed his lips around yours, and he’s pleased to see that you wait no longer that a second before you reach up to kiss him back, running your hands through his thick, wavy hair. You moan against his lips as Ren guides you around to the end of your bed, and you quickly straddle him, wrapping your legs around his waist. Ren wastes no time in tearing off his gloves so he could feel your warm skin underneath his fingertips, sliding them down the bare skin of your back as he tries to absorb every inch of you.
This is what he had wanted. This is what he risked so much for, just to feel your lips against his and the warmth of your body against his rough palms. He could feel you wanting him, could feel you desperate for him, and this honestly gave him a greater rush of power than anything Snoke could have promised. He had hardly done anything to earn your affections, in fact, he had done the opposite, enough to seemingly banish them for good, and yet you seemed to be just as stuck on him as he was to you. He couldn’t sense much from you, but he could at least tell that you didn’t know why either, didn’t know where your feelings were coming from, only that they were genuine and that you weren’t as intent on fighting them as he was.
Ren breaks the kiss to finally, finally reach down to brush his lips against your neck, finding much more pleasure in the action that he probably should have. “Are you still trying to distract me to get into my head?” you murmur, and Ren's expression can’t help but sour. Here he was, trying to please himself, trying to please you, and yet you had reminded him that he had a greater role to play, that there was a greater mission here and that there were things at stake. He had responsibilities, and while he had always wanted to have them, suddenly now he simply wanted to want what he wanted without having to consider the consequences of doing just that.
“Stop talking.” There’s a command in Ren’s voice, and you fall blissfully silent as Ren’s hands explore your body. He makes the decision not to dip his fingers into your pants again, and as much as he was desperate to suck your sticky juices from his fingers again, you were still drunk, and he didn’t want to do anything that you might regret later, something that might ban him from getting to touch you at all. But you had indicated just a few moments ago that you liked being touched, and he liked touching you, and so he was more than content to simply run his hands along your sides, placing gentle kisses along your neck, your shoulder, your collarbone, anywhere he felt like, while you simply moaned and rolled your hips against his in response.
He reaches up a hand to pull your hair out of your ponytail, gently detangling it between his long fingers as he holds you by the nape of your neck, directing your mouth over his, delicately sliding his tongue between your parted lips. You simply moaned in response as you moved your hips languidly against his, as if you truly wanted this simple bit of contact as much as he did. You both liked this. You both needed this, and for a moment Ren couldn’t help but be reminded that there was something more here. You weren’t just anyone. You were something, although he couldn’t quite say what that was. He reasoned that there was only one person in the galaxy who could have the power to distract him from his goals, but he couldn’t figure out how you were doing it, or why. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t read your thoughts as easily as he could anyone else’s, it was that he sensed something about you, felt some sense of familiarity when he was with you, as if he recognized a part of himself, and that was something he still couldn’t understand.
“I don’t get it,” you venture quietly as you rest your head against his shoulder. “Why aren’t you trying to get inside my head? It would probably be so easy right now.”
Shut up. Just shut up. “Don’t tempt me,” he warns. For some reason, he doesn’t want to make you suspicious, and quickly attempts to justify this decision to you, to himself. “But I’m not going to take advantage of you. I want you to open your mind to me because you can; I’m not going to force you again.”
I’m not going to hurt you again. I still have barely been able to forgive myself for it the last time I did, and I will never hurt you again. He again felt a bubble of protectiveness towards you rise up in his chest that he quickly tried to push down and away from himself.
“Because you like me,” you venture, and for a moment he stiffens, cautiously pondering if you would seriously insist upon hearing him say it. But he couldn’t admit that to you, not when he wasn’t sure if he felt that way himself. He felt something, but the pull he felt towards you was too strong to put into words. It was something that went beyond simple liking, and yet he couldn’t describe just what it was that seemed to draw him to you.
“I don’t like you,” he insists, needing to hear those words said aloud. Maybe if he said them enough, at least part of him could convince himself that it was true.
“Okay,” you relent. “You don’t like me.” You seem disappointed by this, and Ren can’t help the momentary rush of panic in his blood at the thought of seeing you pull away from him. He didn’t know how to quantify it, he didn’t know how to describe it, but he wanted you close. He wanted you to stay, in whatever way that meant.
“You’re a weakness,” he finally admits, hoping that this choice of words would finally be the right one to explaining how he really felt.
“No I’m not,” you say softly, and Ren can’t help but look up into your eyes and something finally seems to click into place for you, drawing his attention. “You’re the great Kylo Ren. You don’t have any weaknesses. I’m just a pawn at your disposal. You’re just using me as you see fit.” You refocus your gaze, keeping Ren completely enraptured by your words, although he still looks wary all the same. “You’re still using me for your own ends, trying to wind me down, trying to get me to let down my defenses so you can get inside my head. That is your primary objective and everything else is just-” You place a hand on his chest as your lips move closer to his, whispering the last word. “-incidental.”
Thank you. Ren grabs the back of your head with both of his large hands as he kisses you roughly, nipping at your lower lip with his teeth before he wraps both arms around your back and pulls you close to him. This was it. This was what he needed to hear in order to convince himself to keep coming back here, night after night, without feeling guilty, and somehow you had realized that, you had pieced that together for yourself. You knew that he felt something tangible, and yet you didn’t force him to try to proclaim it aloud. You could sense his struggle, somehow, and you knew the exact right words to say in order to console him and alleviate his fears. A part of this concerned him, but another part of it thrilled him. He had never met anyone who truly understood him besides Snoke, and that was solely because it was so easy from him to break into his thoughts. And yet, he felt no such intrusion coming from you. You seemed to understand him, implicitly, and he only wished that he could do the same.
Ren allows himself to kiss you with all the fervor he can muster until you’re breathless, and he wraps both arms around you tightly as you sink into his shoulder, resting your head against him. Ren could feel a steady current building between you, and while he wasn’t sure if it was the Force, he couldn’t be sure it was anything else. You weren’t strong in the Force, you couldn’t be, and yet there was something innate about the way you seemed to understand him, as if you were channeling the Force without consciously recognizing that you were doing so. Was such a thing even possible? How were you able to read him so well without entering his thoughts?
He can feel you now, so close to him, and it’s not just your physical closeness, your hot breath against his neck, that has prompted this new feeling. He can feel a charge building in the air now, something that made every fine hair on his arms stand on end, and he knew that he would only have one chance at this. You were still buzzed, only now you were drowsy as well, and he felt close enough to you that he should be able to peek into your thoughts without you being too aware of such an intrusion. You had been able to reach out to him with your mind before, and if you had thrown the rope in order to anchor your mind to his, then he should be able to trace it back to you.
As you murmur sleepily and cuddle closer against his chest, Ren hesitates for a moment, wondering if he really should pry into your thoughts at all. But he has to, he knows he has to, not just to see whatever information he might need, but because this may be his one chance to understand you as well as you seemed to understand him. Quickly, he puts two fingers against your temple and pushes gently, first waiting for a reaction. You grunt slightly, eyebrows knotted together as you brace yourself, but overall you don’t seem to be in any more pain than you can handle.
Ren pushes a little harder, striking something he can only think to describe as a wall, as if there was something physically in place keeping him from venturing any further into your thoughts. But that shouldn’t be possible. You were as vulnerable now as you ever were, and what was more, you seemed to trust him. If he could only…
“You can trust me,” he says gently, not realizing he was speaking the words aloud until they already left his lips. “I won’t hurt you. Just let me look. I won’t hurt you, not again.”
“I trust you,” is the sleepy reply Ren gets back, and that’s all the confirmation he needs. Feeling closer to you than ever, he pushes again, gently at first, and then a little more firmly, until things start to come to him in flashes. They’re brief, lasting no more than a tenth of a second at most, but he can start to put things together. A flash of pride as one of her instructors, B, praised her in front of the class. Walking through a green field on a dirt pathway with a girl about her own age, that other girl, Sadie, as they laughed and walked through the warm sunshine of their home planet. He pushed further back, sensing something darker, deeper, and while you squirmed uncomfortably underneath his hands, he pushed onwards before he was confronted with a bitter sense of loneliness that seemed to permeate you to your core.
You were sitting in a dark grey room, and it appeared that you were in some sort of cargo ship by the thick gray walls imprinted with some sort of charcoal Aurebesh letters written in a vertical stripe down one side. The room was small, not tall enough for anyone to stand up in comfortably, let alone someone of his height, and yet there was a small cot propped up against the side of the room. It was a dark green color, and scratchy, like it had been roughly constructed out of an old burlap sack that you had found. There was a knock on the door beside the cot, and before you could even get up to open it, he could hear a gruff man’s voice. “Get up. Captain wants you. Pretty sure those pirates from the Western Reaches are set to double cross us again. You better not fuck this up for us; you don’t want to end up like the last one who disobeyed us by doing what she thought was right.”
You groan slightly and pull away, but just before you do, he catches a glimpse of something else. This memory is much harder to make out, flashes of bright sun, and of dark sand, and of a man, older, grey hair, a bottle in his hand, ripped clothes stretched across his wide body. He seems more or less indifferent as your tiny arms lunge towards him as if hoping he’ll reach out to grab you time, before strong arms pick you up and hoist you up over their shoulder, as if you weighed no more than a feather. He can hear your screams and cries of terror, your small voice filled with uncertainty, and all at once, Ren knew you hadn’t been lying about your past.
You were clearly in no state to be fabricating anything, and he knew without a doubt now that everything you told him that day had been true. You were sold off at a young age to buy your father more drink. You had served as an interpreter, and somehow you found your way to the academia that you had been sent from, and made friends with Sadie, who you regarded as your sister, while you took classes with her and served as one of B’s pupils. You were telling the truth. There was nothing you were hiding from him. You weren’t a secret spy from the Resistance or someone who was plotting against the First Order. You were simply here on an assignment from the academia, and that was all.
And what was more, Ren could get the sense that you truly hadn’t known anything much about him before you had stepped foot on this base. You had heard stories, but who he was, what he was, was completely foreign to you. You knew nothing about the Force, and while Ren was somewhat relieved that you weren’t a threat, that still begged the question of how you were keeping him out of your thoughts. You were naturally strong in the Force, but you had no idea how to control it. Did that mean that someone else was helping you channel your Force abilities without your conscious recognition? Ren couldn’t be sure, but he knew without a doubt that whatever was going on, you were somehow involved, and it was beginning to look more and more like you were the unfortunate victim of circumstances. If that was the case, the best thing he could do was to either stay far away from you for your own safety, or keep coming by to check on you, to keep making sure that you were okay.
You gently stir against his shoulder as you snuggle into him, and Ren brushes your hair back out of your face, laughing quietly to himself at the way you lean up and into his hand, as if you were silently savoring the small point of contact and silently encouraging him to do it again. He bends down to kiss you again, adjusting his position, as he adjusts you in his lap. “I should get going,” he murmurs against your lips, and you blink yourself sleepily awake, gently sliding off of his lap as if in no mood to argue. If you had noticed that he had recently been able to ascertain a few select images from your mind, you showed no sign of it.
“Come back tomorrow,” you tell him as you watch him slide his thick leather gloves back over his hands.
“Maybe.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, although now that they were there, they seemed to be as good as any. He needed more time to think about what he had just seen, and overall, more time to figure out what exactly this had meant. If you were no one of any real value, then who was keeping him out of your mind? And why bother, especially if you had nothing to hide from him? And if you really were keeping him out on your own, how were you managing it without being aware of it?
And, a bit more secretly, why was he so drawn to you? Why were you the last thing he thought about when he went to sleep at night? Why did he wake up almost wishing that you were there beside him? Why did he idly wish he was going to pass you in the halls when he crossed the Starkiller Base, and why did his thoughts drift over to wondering what you were doing when he received a spare moment to think for himself? It seemed to be unintentionally done, but how could it be? There was something wrong, some detail that was missing, and he wouldn’t stop until he knew what it was.
Regardless, he’s shaken from his thoughts as you reach out and grab his hand. “Tomorrow,” you say, looking up at him. “You can try to get into my mind then.”
So she really has no idea.
True, he hadn’t been able to gain much from you, but he would have thought that you would have felt something. Apparently you weren’t strong enough in the Force to realize that your thoughts had been searched, at least slightly, and yet you seemed strong enough to be able to somehow understand his? Something wasn’t right here, but he was secretly hoping the more time he spent with you, the more answers would reveal themselves. If not, well, it wasn’t as though visiting you each night was a completely intolerable affair.
“Maybe,” he repeats, although he can’t help but let a small bit of warmth creep into his voice as he bends down and kisses you on your forehead. He can feel your eyes watching him leave before he slips on his helmet and heads out the door, leaving you to shut the door behind him as he headed back to his own quarters for maybe an hour or two of sleep at best before he had to attend to Hux’s orders.
From somewhere behind him, Ren thinks he can feel a shiver of melancholy, and for a moment he can feel you reaching out to him again. In the back of his mind, he can picture you asleep in your bed, rolled over onto your side, one arm curled around your pillow, your other arm reaching over the covers as though they were reaching out for him. As his footsteps carried him to his door, Ren allowed himself to imagine that he was there with you, that you were curled into his chest, one arm draped lazily over his narrow hips. He can feel your hot breath against his chest, inhale the smell of your breath as his lips lazily brushed against your forehead, and-
Suddenly it was there, right there. For a moment he wasn’t sure where he was, all he knew was that he was with you, in his bed, in his room. He could feel you in his arms as if you were physically there in that moment, curled up beside him. As you looked up at him, he can see your eyes shining with nothing sort of adoration, of trust, but something pulled him back. There was something heavy in his chest, some sort of guilt that pulled him back from embracing this moment completely, and as he searched himself to try to discover why, suddenly the vision broke and he opened his eyes to find himself standing alone in the middle of his living room, eyes directed out towards the snowy landscape that rested outside the base.
It didn’t take him more than a few seconds to cross the threshold into his bedroom, and for a moment he honestly expected to see you there, waiting for him, curled up on your side with your arm stretched across his side of the bed, as if waiting for him to return. He could still smell you, could still feel you in his arms, and he wasn’t sure if it had been from your earlier interaction or if this had been something else. He had wanted a tangible sign, wanted solid answers, and yet the ones the Force seemed to be providing were more confusing than anything. Was that a sign of what was to come, or merely of something that he wanted? He wanted you to look at him like that, like there was nothing in the galaxy that you wanted but him, but where were those thoughts coming from? He had a future with the First Order, with the Supreme Leader, and you could not be a part of that future, no matter how much he wanted you to be.
But those were thoughts for another time. As for right now, he wanted you, and being near you was the only way he could think of to get answers, not that he was really trying all that hard to explore any other avenues or methods of approach. The Force, he hoped, would reveal more answers in time, if he was patient, and while that was not something he was necessarily comfortable with being, he could at least try. In the meantime, a lack of answers gave him the excuse to spend more time with you, and that was something he wasn’t exactly adverse to, even if his rational side tried to chide him against such childish thinking.
Still, as he drifted off to sleep that night, he couldn’t help but roll over onto his side and let his arm drape out into open space on the other side of the bed. He usually slept in the middle of his bed, sprawled over onto his stomach, but tonight he slept on his side, arm outstretched as if it was draped over you, eyes shut tight as he tried to replay the fantasy in his mind of you snuggling into his chest. He could feel the happiness radiating from you, and he tried to picture that now, tried to find solace in that daydream for no discernable reason.
Maybe it was just his fantasy, maybe it was just something he wanted, but a small part of him hoped that it was something that you wanted as well. A small part of him hoped that maybe this fantasy might become a reality, and in his sleepy state, he allowed himself to put all of his fears and burdens and responsibilities out of his mind as he just focused on you and you alone. For some reason, this action wasn’t as hard as he had expected it to be. In some way, it almost felt right.
Who was this girl?