Force Destiny

Stars

Kylo didn't know when it started, this fascination with her, this magnetism. There was an attraction in the conventional sense, yes, but it hadn't started that way. It should have been physical at first. It would have been simpler if it was something he could explain away as biology. With Sidious in his head, he had long ago learned to curb his... desires. If it were only attraction, he could have acknowledged it and moved on as he did with everyone else. He had tried to move past his fascination with her.

He had failed spectacularly.

Watching her now, as she stared at the vast universe before them, there was a soft hopefulness about her that reminded him of the moment she arrived on the Supremacy in that escape pod. She had looked ethereal, and he had done everything in his power not to drop to his knees before her in that crowded hangar. What terrified him was that he had been drawn to her long before that hangar. From the moment he heard about her, there was a fascination with her he couldn't explain. From the moment she fired upon him the first time, he couldn't help but wonder if it was her – his childhood hope.

When he had seen her dreams and memories – her past – and she had seen his deepest fears, he felt a connection, a deeper knowledge shared, long before he first felt the bond when she accessed his skills in the snow. Once their souls were connected, had he even had a chance? In the hut, that deep knowledge evolved into understanding.

She had seen him in a way no one else had, not even his close friends at the temple. She had seen the monster – he could hide nothing from her – yet she reached across the galaxy for him. He had recognized her strength and wit, but it hadn't properly occurred to him how beautiful she was until after she had touched his hand by that fire. Her wet hair that had fallen around her bare shoulders begged him to touch it, the fire reflecting in her eyes burned a fire inside him, and the promise she made him had changed the course of his destiny irrevocably. He thought he had been mistaken when she had refused him in the throne room – he thought she hated him – but now...

Now, he wasn't so certain what she wanted from him. Rey wanted him to turn, of course, and to save her friends, but there was something else. The events of the past twenty-four hours proved that. She would never reciprocate what he felt, he knew that, but it wasn't just hatred. He wasn't just her enemy. Was it attraction? Friendship? A kinship like she shared with the rest of his family? He didn't know yet. What he did know was that she was there with him, willingly, and that was enough.

"You're quiet," Rey said. He could sense her studying him, but he refused to meet her eyes. He feared the emotion he would see in them.

Kylo searched for an honest explanation for his silence. Staring up at the stars, he decided there was nothing safe about his thoughts, and chose to side-step the question entirely to preserve the tentative amicability that had formed between them. "Space is... complex, and infinite, and impossible to contemplate," he said, his voice sounding distant even to himself. "Yet we look to it when deliberating our own lives. We look to it for answers... even though what we see is a lie. There is so much darkness, but we ignore it to worship the light. And the light you see from those stars – it isn't the truth. Not anymore. When we look to the stars, all we see is the past. Still, there's so much beauty among so much conflict, isn't there?"

Rey hummed. "When you describe it like that, it reminds me of you." He could still feel the heat of her stare as she spoke, and he knew she was waiting for a reaction. Instead, he resisted the temptation to turn his head, and wondered what part of space reminded her of him. "Maybe that's why I spent so many nights on Jakku watching the stars."

You didn't remember that I existed. "You were waiting for your parents."

"I knew I was waiting for someone who was gone, but maybe I was wrong when I thought it was my family," she answered, and that was enough to draw his attention. Her expression was inexplicably soft. When had she started looking at him like that? He feared the moment it would change again. "Why are you not asleep?"