'Join me,' he said, holding out his hand. 'Please.'

The obvious answer, when faced with a homicidal, black obsessed megalomaniac with a nasal twang so pronounced it sounded like he had a womp rat stuck up his nose, was no. Particularly when he'd prefaced his request by asserting that she had no importance to anyone but him and thereby isolating her from any other social connection, readying her for a lifetime of controlling behaviour and emotional abuse. Her answer was going to be no.

And in fact, if he mentioned her parents one more time, it was going to be no, swiftly followed by another lightsaber in the face. But she hesitated, and she wasn't really sure why.

Any sensible female friend or relative would have told her that a dominating bully to everyone else, is not going to be any different with you, just because you happen to sleep in the same bed. Nobody changes for love. But her mother was a filthy junk trader who'd sold her for drinking money and had probably forgotten to give her that advice on the way past.

Rey stood there, just looking at him, at the haunted eyes and hunted expression, at the lips just poised on the edge of a tremble and she wondered. Could she change him? For a couple of minutes there she'd thought she'd succeeded, but if she left him now there was no chance he was coming back to the light. And the way he was looking at her, the hunger written into every line of his body, the need with which he'd breathed his final plea – surely these things meant that he was ready to change, if she asked him to.

She took a quick breath, stepped back a little to break the tension and flapped a hand at him. 'Do you think you could maybe, take your gloves off? That might make this a bit less sinister?'

He took another pace forward, and extended his hand. 'Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as.' Then he paused. 'Oh. Gloves off. You want to do the thing.' He gestured rapidly from her head to his. 'The bridge thing.'

She nodded. 'If you don't mind.'

'Do you think it will still work?' He put the tip of one finger between his teeth and hauled off the heavy moulded leather. 'Snoke said he was doing it just to annoy me.'

'That's not what he said.'

'That's what I heard.' He stuck out his palm. 'Alright, go on then. And then we can rule the galaxy as...'

'Will you stop saying that? We'll hold hands, and I'll see if I can have a vision of the future in which you haven't slaughtered half the known universe. Then I might decide to stay. Possibly.'

He looked affronted. 'Join me, and I promise not to slaughter half the known universe.'

'You'll keep it to a quarter?' She took his hand, but she could tell he thought that he'd already won.

It was instant, this thing between them, instant and powerful and brutally honest. There was nowhere to hide, she could strip him of all his defences with a single thought, leaving him naked and exposed. And he could also read her thoughts, which might be a problem if she continued any further with that analogy.

There were no visions to be had, not this time, only an impression of how strongly he believed in what he'd said. A new start, without all the baggage of the past, something fresh they could create together. She waited a bit, to see if any revelations about his past or his motivation were going to be offered, searching his face for some hint of duplicity.

Obviously, the answer should be no. She didn't want power, or glory, what she wanted mostly was for people to stop shooting at her, and each other. She hadn't chosen any of this, it had chosen her, including it seemed, the man currently returning her stare.

The Sith were dead, the last half a one still dribbling all over the floor, and the Jedi were dead too, or as good as, since Luke wasn't about to leave his island or do anything else useful. The Resistance was gone, reduced to a handful of people whose names she could probably list in under five minutes, the New Republic was gone, and the only power block left was the First Order. His First Order. The one he was offering to change if she stayed.

He hadn't turned to the light, the prospect of power kept him from it, and she had no doubt that if he ascended the throne it would be as Kylo Ren and the galaxy would become a much darker place. Black, most likely, given his usual wardrobe choices.

But not if she stayed. If she stayed, she could change all that, change him, turn him back to the light. Or at least the pale grey. If she left, he'd wipe out the Resistance, and then Luke, and then Rey herself, if she didn't run fast enough or hide well enough. But with her, none of that would happen.

Being brutally honest, the kind of honest he always was, it would take the Resistance at least ten years to rebuild enough to be able to assassinate him. Whereas with her at his side, well, if she couldn't turn him, she could at least kill him.

He swayed closer, so close that if she took a really deep breath she'd be resting on his chest and he gazed into her eyes as if he'd forgotten that anything else existed.

The obvious answer was no. The slightly more devious answer was still probably no. But the connection between them was instant, and powerful and it made her feel like she belonged for the first time in her entire life. Even if the person she belonged with was a homicidal megalomaniac with an obsession for black.

'Ask me again,' she murmured.

He said, 'Join me.'

And the way he said it was so low and hoarse and intimate, that she heard it as something else entirely.

'Yes,' she said.