Ren: A Collection of Kylo Ren One Shots

Intoxicate

Busy was good. To be busy was a distraction. And any distraction was good.

During the day, Rey did what she could to keep her mind active: repair mangled X-Wings with Poe and Rose, practice her Lightsaber welding, tutor the rebels on what she knew about the First Order and their new supreme leader. During the day, Rey was fine. At night, things changed.

Finn stood outside Rey's corridor on the sixth day of the new year, listening. It was close to midnight. Rey hadn't come from her room since she excused herself early from the mess hall that supper, and Finn worried. Since their near escape on Crait almost a year ago, he noticed a change within Rey. Her once bright, charismatic energy seemed to dim over the course of the weeks, and he feared that whatever flicker of light was left would soon be extinguished if he didn't say something.

A sniff.

It was the first sound he had heard since venturing from his own bedroom, and he let out a sigh of somewhat relief. She wasn't asleep, he decided, and raised his fist to knock. The door slid open before his knuckles even touched the metal.

"Rey," he said, startled. She looked up at him from her small bed, her cheeks red and tear stained. Finn was immediately wracked with guilt for not showing sooner. She had needed him, but he hadn't come.

Rey was glad to see her friend. She knew when he first stood outside her door, but didn't open it until she was sure he wanted to see her. She wiped away what remained of her tears, and smiled softly. "I'm pathetic."

Finn shuffled closer, his bleak shadow becoming more familiar. "Not any more than I am for not knocking sooner." He sat next to her, and the Jedi pulled her knees up to her chin. "What's wrong, Rey?"

She wanted to tell him everything. From training with Luke on Ahch-to, to the fight on Snoke's ship. Her stupidity of falsely assuming she could redeem Ben Solo; that memory of all others tormented her the most.

She hadn't told anyone the specifics of what last year's battle entailed, and as Finn nudged her encouragingly, Rey's mouth twitched. She wanted to tell him everything. So she did.

She finished her side of the story twenty minutes later with absolutely no interruption from her friend. When she looked into his eyes, she could tell he didn't know /what/ to say. Not that she blamed him.

"Wow," he finally mumbled, blinking. "I didn't know..."

Rey snorted. "No one did. Does." There was a moment of comfortable silence.

"So, do you still...see Ren?"

Rey shook her head and looked to the floor. She had told Finn almost everything. Almost. She would never admit trying to reconnect the bridge between her's and Kylo's minds. Several times. Perhaps it was good fortune that it never worked.

She would never admit that Ben Solo had been her medicine a year ago, back when she first felt true loneliness in the cave on Ahch-to. And she would never say that she thought he could be her medicine again.

"Do you want me to stay with you tonight?" Finn asked, breaking Rey's train of thought. Another tear, this time of gratefulness, slid down her cheek. She smiled and reached over to embrace him.

"No," she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. "I need to be alone."

Finn left a few minutes later, not completely convinced that Rey was fine though she said otherwise. She wished him goodnight, and listened as his footsteps faded away in the dark hallway of the shelter. Again, she was alone.

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, Rey's heart trembled within her chest. She refused to let her emotions get the better of her, and she slowly curled into a ball on her side, staring at the wall. Before closing her eyes, she called, one last time, to her toxic vaccine.