Chapter Text
It starts as a tingling in the back of her head.
A single drop of water falling onto the still surface of a deep, dark lake.
She unconsciously pulls the blankets on her bunk tighter to her body, as if his very presence, even filtered through the Force, made the room colder. Fest was a planet covered in snow, but this chill was in her bones.
He sits on one of a million uncomfortable metal chairs on whatever hellish Star Destroyer he currently occupies, eyes trained on a datapad. He never looks up, but he has never needed to look to know what she’s doing, or how she feels.
“There is not a single thing inside those dusty old relics that you do not already have inside of you,” he says definitively, eyes still cast downward. She looks up at him, and it feels like she lost a fight she didn’t know she was in.
“You seem awfully invested in me not studying the Jedi texts.” A ghost of a phantom of a shade of a smirk—or an involuntary twitching of a muscle on his scarred face.
“You seem to have forgotten that I am the only living person in the galaxy who has read these texts. I, too, trained to be a Jedi.”
She resists the urge to spit that statement back in his face. It’s been weeks, and she learned that shouting and hurling acid just saps precious energy she desperately needs. Instead, she stays silent, and absentmindedly flips a page, ignoring yet another impossibly ornate passage about the dangers of passion. Silence now drives him wild, because for years Snoke’s voice had always lingered there, in the dark recesses, poisonous and plotting.
But not anymore. She turns a page.
It’s a mind game, after all.
He bristles. As she expected him to. Like a child who cannot bear to be ignored. Or a jealous lover spurned.
The thought comes as a surprise. Not that she’d ever known a lover.
“I’ve never lied to you. From the moment I took you away from Maz Kanata’s planet of thieves and the moment you—“ His breath catches. She feels him searing into her, and she tries not to swallow, despite the dryness in her mouth. It’s a sign of fear, weakness. If there was anything a predator knew how to do, it was to hunt. She wondered if she was already in his jaws.
“—betrayed me. Not once. No reason to start now.”
“I know,” she replies, curt. “You don’t have to tell me that. I understand that I’m just a stupid scavenger girl from some worthless desert planet to you, but even that, I know well enough.”
He breathes in deeply, calming himself, inhaling the sterile, sterling silver air of the battleship, which mingles with the frost of her base planet and something else—something distinct and sweet and alive that terrifies and thrills him.
“I don’t think of you that way.” It was time for her attack.
“If you’ve never lied to me, then answer me a question.” She phrases it as an assertion, not a question, not anything he can wriggle his way out of.
“Anything,” he says quietly.
“What are you afraid of?” she asks, finally looking up and meeting his gaze. The crackle of something fills the air between their eyes. Inexplicably, it fills her with excitement.
Him, driven, cruel, controlling.
Her, determined, sharp, smug.
“What do you mean?”
“Snoke is dead,” she says with a finality that she still cannot truly believe in. “Every person in the First Order is merely a cockroach under your feet. You are the Supreme Leader. You can crush them singlehandedly. Bend them to your will, even. You know this. So, what’s stopping you?” From being here? With me? Training me, guiding me, standing with me?
He’s in her head. She doesn’t even have to finish her sentences anymore.
“This again.” A sigh. “You remember what I said.” How could she forget?
Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.
“I’m not asking you the same thing I did in that turbolift,” she answers, searching his thoughts for something she couldn’t explain. “I’m asking you for your reason. I want to understand.”
“Do you?” She thinks she hates it. Him. “You have personal access to every memory I have ever had, and this is what you want to know?” But she knows better.
“It’s the only thing that matters to me.” This hurts him, and she realizes it before he can bury it in a chasm of anger. She didn’t know she had the capacity to tell a lie so wholly convincing.
The connection cuts. She can feel the receding waves of his rage, and something else.
Loneliness.
She looks down and turns a page.