Hunger

True need hurts in the pit of your stomach, a hollowness begging to be filled. Rey remembers that feeling as well as her own name, because hunger was her constant companion for fifteen years, the closest thing to a friend that she knew. It held her close while she fought to sleep, the ache in her belly the only distraction from her loneliness. Hunger never lied, never cheated her, never left her behind, and its pain was a petty one compared to suffering of the heart. By age nine Rey had taught herself how to accept it, to work through it, to thrive off of her body's weakness instead of being crippled by it.

Now she's a Resistance fighter, and whenever she returns from a mission there's a hot meal waiting for her. Real meat, fresh greens, hearty bread, ripe fruit, and it's always something different every day. Luxurious fare for a scavenger, used to the same monotonous portions when she was lucky enough to eat at all.

Today she swirls her rare meat in its brown sauce, then cuts it into tiny pieces. It smells delicious, unfamiliar spices heating its scent, and Rey's mouth waters as she breathes in. She should eat, she knows, but her mission to uncover the First Order's new weapons schematics went poorly. All she can think about is Unkar Plutt, evaluating the fruits of her day's labors, and deeming them only worth a quarter-portion. If you don't earn your keep, you go hungry; this is the truth of the world as Rey sees it.

It seems wrong to take this food when she doesn't deserve it. So she slides her tray over to Finn, who frowns and asks if she's feeling all right.

"I'm fine, just not hungry," Rey lies. "See you later."

She wanders the base, trying to think of anything besides the familiar ache in her belly. She isn't paying enough attention, because she rounds a corner without looking and runs right into Kylo Ren. He steadies her, those large hands cradling her shoulders, and Rey feels small beneath the strength of his touch—the way she always does.

(She refuses to think about the nights they've shared together. How he sometimes comes to her room in the dark hours between dusk and dawn. How she lets him in, every time, because loneliness is a wicked thing, and Kylo's place in her bed keeps it at bay. At least for a little while.)

Her gaze is drawn to the thick, puckered burn mark that cuts across his face. The scar she gave him the night Starkiller collapsed. The night he murdered his father.

"Admiring your handiwork?" he asks, voice dry.

His hands are still on her, warm even through the thickness of his gloves.

Kylo has abandoned the menacing black clothes he wore while he was under Snoke's command, but he still dresses in dark colors and covers himself all over. Except for his face. He doesn't hide behind a mask anymore.

Rey steps backward, breaking the contact. She walks around him, doesn't bother answering his flippant question, and makes her way to her room.

She goes to bed early and lies on her back, staring up at the ceiling, hopelessly awake. Rey's stomach is twisted in knots, but she ignores the pain. Instead, she focuses on the sense of power she feels, the control over her own aching body. For once, she owns this hurt, instead of it possessing her. She's hungry by choice instead of circumstance, and Rey feels strangely proud of her discipline, as if resisting dinner was a test she'd passed.

She skips breakfast too, just drinks juice and takes a handful of vitamins. The supplements give her some energy, but they do nothing to help the hunger, and Rey goes to the shooting range to distract herself from the pain she's stubbornly inflicting on herself. She's not even sure why she's doing this, only that it feels oddly right.

She finds Finn and Poe already at the range, having a friendly shooting competition. If Finn's conceited whoops of victory are anything to go by, he's winning.

Rey can't help but smile, but she goes to a stall near the end of the range, on the opposite side from Finn and Poe. She picks up the practice blaster, studies its weight in her hand, takes a proper shooting stance, and aims at the target.

Her shots are passable but not impressive. Rey feels far more comfortable handling her blue saberstaff than a blaster, but she wants to be prepared for every eventuality, and there may come a day when she has to fight without the luxury of her preferred weapon.

She feels Kylo approach before she sees or hears him. His energy is overwhelming, a presence so strong in the Force that if she's attentive she knows when he's close.

"You're a terrible shot," he says.

Rey scowls, raises her blaster, and shoots again, determined to get one bull's eye before she stops. Her shot lands a few inches shy of the center.

"I'd like to see you do better," Rey says.

Kylo smirks, so slightly and briefly that she'd have missed it if she hadn't been watching him closely. Then he holds out his hand, clearly waiting for her to give him the blaster. Rey hands it over, stands back, and watches him aim at her half-mangled target. She counts six shots that land dead center, so close together that they overlap.

"How'd you learn to shoot like that?" Rey asks. She does her best to keep her awe out of her voice.

Kylo looks away, brown eyes distant, and says, quietly, "My father taught me."

There isn't much of anything Rey can say to that, so she says nothing.

"Can we talk somewhere private?" he asks.

At the dark look he gives her, Rey can't help but think of a night two weeks ago when he kissed his way down her stomach, warm mouth wet against her skin, and—

Either he feels her response through their connection, or her thoughts are simply plain on her face, because Kylo lowers his voice and says, "I'm not trying to get you in bed."

Rey blushes, heat blooming in her cheeks. "Fine. We can talk."

He follows her across the base to her quarters. It's the most practical, private place to have a discussion, but all Rey can think about once they're alone is how roughly he used her body the last time they were in this room together.

"Why aren't you eating?" he asks.

That brings her back to the present. She could deny it, but Rey expects that Kylo has noticed her hunger pains through their bond. Lying would be pointless.

"None of your business," she says.

"Maybe so, but I'm asking anyway." Kylo's gaze bores into her, vulnerable but intense.

Rey sits on the edge of her bed and puts her head in her hands. "I don't know," she admits. "I don't know why I'm…"

Starving myself. She doesn't have the strength to say that out loud, though.

Rey feels ashamed that he's caught her, but also strangely relieved.

She eats a small salad for dinner, then a biscuit for breakfast. Just enough to keep her going.

Rey carries on this way for weeks, and she drops enough weight that people begin to notice. Leia looks at her oddly, maybe worried, and Finn tries (not so subtly) to get her to eat half of his lunch.

On the twenty-fifth night since she started this fast, as she prefers to think of it, Kylo comes to her quarters. She lets him in, like she always does, and Rey can see right away that he isn't all right. His thick hair is disheveled, as if he'd been in bed, but he looks far too tired to have slept well. He paces her room, opening and closing his right hand, like he wishes he had something to hold.

"What's wrong?" Rey asks.

"Nothing," Kylo says, but his lie doesn't fool her. How could it? She can feel what he feels, the guilt that's burning in his stomach, every bit as painful as the ache of her own empty belly.

"You dreamed about your father," she says gently.

Kylo approaches her, pulls her into his arms. "I don't want to think about it," he says.

Help me forget, he means.

Soon they're pulling at each other's clothes, kissing, hands wandering everywhere. Possessive, proprietary. But when Rey is naked he stops, frowning. He touches the ridge of her ribcage, his long fingers tracing the protruding bones.

"You have to stop this," Kylo says. "You're hurting yourself."

"It's nothing I can't handle." She glares at him. "I know how to be hungry."

She leans back on her elbows and the movement thrusts her small breasts forward. Rey hopes she can divert his attention. That he still wants her, even like this.

Kylo pushes her down, kisses her throat, her collarbone, the valley between her breasts. "Your body deserves better than this," he whispers against her skin. "You deserve better."

He looks at her with such open, uninhibited concern, dark eyes pleading, that she can barely reconcile this Kylo Ren with the man who hunted her down a year ago.

Rey doesn't realize she's crying until she tastes the tears on her lips.

She faints in the middle of a strategy meeting and wakes an hour later in the medbay. Leia, Master Luke, Finn, and Poe are there, sitting around her bedside.

My family, Rey thinks. Not the one she waited on for so long, the mother and father who abandoned her to the cruelty of Jakku. A family bound together by love and loyalty rather than blood.

Finn smiles at her, but he looks more sad than happy. Rey manages to smile back, if weakly.

Leia explains that she's been put on intravenous fluids that should nourish her back to health within a week, and Poe promises that she ought to be back on her feet in time for their next mission.

She's more than a little embarrassed, but Rey nods and says, "Thank you."

The food served in the medbay isn't much more appealing than the portions she received on Jakku, but Rey eats her first full meal in a month just the same. It's difficult to keep down, but she manages.

Kylo comes after visiting hours should be long over; she imagines he bullied the medics into letting him inside. He sits in the very chair his mother occupied earlier in the day. Rey decides not to mention this.

They don't even talk, but something about his presence is calming. After an hour of sitting together quietly, Kylo stands and says, "Goodnight, Rey."

"Wait!" she says, without quite meaning to speak.

He sits back down, removes his gloves, and reaches over to take her hand. It's a halting, nervous gesture of affection, but Rey will take whatever comfort he offers.

She knows she'll never be able to forget the hurts she collected on Jakku, as numerous as the tally marks on the wall of her AT-AT. The desert taught her that her worth was redetermined every day, based on the bounty she brought to Niima Outpost. She learned that loneliness could kill her by inches. That, by some perversion, hunger could be her only friend.

"I'm not better yet," she says. "Not really."

"I know," he says. "Neither am I."

She supposes they each have their own illnesses, their own temptations to resist.

Author's Notes: Many thanks to Next to Something! Our conversation about Rey's poverty and the relationship between food and her self-worth inspired this story, and she was kind enough to beta for me as well.

People who have experienced food insecurity are at higher risk for developing eating disorders (and I can confirm from personal experience that going hungry does not mean you're immune to anorexic behaviors). As you might have guessed, I have a lot of feelings about Rey, food, and recovering from trauma, so expect to see more of this kind of exploration in future fics.