Saving the Monster

Chapter 1

His eyes. It was the last image she saw before she closed her eyes and the first she saw when she woke. Of all the eyes that she had seen in her twenty years, those ones stayed with her the most. So wide, so dark, so full of emotion.

The eyes that she saw in her mind far more than she wanted to admit were Kylo Rens. To be specific, Kylo Rens eyes when she left him on Crait. She had wanted to be immune to his gaze after the throne room and his attack on the resistance but his eyes had been so very full of pain in that moment that she had paused. Paused and allowed those mesmerising eyes to reach into her soul and imprint on her mind.

It had been almost a month now and still, he was in her thoughts constantly. 

"Rey we good?".  Finns voice cut through her thoughts and she looked up from her desk.

"Uh yes, sorry, give me a minute ok?".  Rey closed the Jedi text that she had stolen from Ahch-to and stacked it with the others.  She had read and read those books and still was no nearer to deciphering the text, or understanding the illustrations.  They frustrated her no end and she was pleased that her friend appearing signalled the end of her studies for one day.

Rey and Finn had been tasked with setting up a new training route for Rey and the two of them headed out into the humidity of the dense jungle that surrounded their base on Ajan Kloss.

"Do you ever think of the battle of Crait?  Of what could have happened?"  Finn asked suddenly as he followed Rey, swatting at the angry swarms of Zess flys that buzzed noisily around his head in an attempt to sip at the sweat that beaded there.

Finn had decided in recent weeks that he hated jungles. Too hot, too humid and way too many things that bite.

Rey didn't halt her steady pace as she considered Finns question.  "Yes, more often than I like" Rey commented as flatly as possible, thinking again, with a kick of guilt to her stomach that she mainly thought of the man she had walked away from there, the one who had let her down so terribly.

Finn picked up his pace and as the path widened he grabbed at her arm, "I mean just think, if you and Luke hadn't shown up then where would we be? Huh? I'll tell you where, gone, that's where".

Rey stoped and turned to her friend, "You would have done the same, anyone of you would have"

Finn nodded but his hand stayed on her arm, stilling her, "Why were you on the supremacy, when it exploded, I've always been curious"

Rey swallowed hard. No one had asked her that yet. "I thought I could turn Kylo Ren, I was wrong, I was too late". Rey's voice trailed off as a deep, now familiar ache reached her stomach. She had been too late, her vision was wrong. The man she had seen in that vision wasn't cruel and bloodthirsty, he was kind and brave. Standing by her as her equal.

Next to her Finn scoffed, "Rey I've seen Ren, really seen him, there's no way he'd turn, he's pure evil, right through".

Rey nodded as the two began walking again.  She knew she couldn't tell her friend the full story, couldn't tell him the truth.  But what exactly was the truth?  Had she truly only gone to him to save the resistance or had it been the vision, the way it had made her feel about him? How many nights had she lain awake thinking about when they touched hands and how badly she had wanted to reach out and run her fingers over his face, to feel the raised edges of the scar that she'd given him. More than once recently she had dreamed of him and when she had awoken she had felt ashamed, deeply ashamed.

She was a traitor, or at the very least a weak person with deeply traitorous thoughts.