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Ties

Chapter 1: Noose

Author's note: So I didn't really like Reylo until I watched TLJ, but now I GET IT and I'm onboard. Let's do this. Like pretty much everyone else, as soon as I left the cinema I was imagining how that Force connection would continue on and where it might take our two confused lovebirds. To me, this is the most obvious first stop on that journey. If you enjoy then I may be inclined to write more.

This fic contains spoilers for The Last Jedi, obviously, so tread carefully.

The Falcon was quiet. Now that things seemed calm again, now that hours had melted away and the terrible events of the past days were already transposing themselves to the realm of dreams (or, more likely, nightmares), everyone had, as if on cue, claimed storage rooms as quarters or squirreled themselves away in cosy corners of the ship to rest. Only Chewie was still awake at the helm... and herself, of course.

She wanted to be asleep, but sleep wouldn't come. Her mind was a screen thick with images: a wind-swept island, a lightsaber, a hole so deep and so black it would swallow the whole galaxy, Kylo Ren's eyes under that mask, her face reflected back at her.

So instead of laying in her bunk she decided to take a stroll around the ship's long corridors. She ran her fingers over its surfaces, took in its sharp metallic smells. The place was a mess, even more so than usual, with Porg nests in the vents and the few supplies they had brought with them from Crait piled perilously against the walls. Already the Falcon seemed like a home, more welcoming to her than Jakku had ever been. And Han lingered in the air like a memory.

She was entering the main hold, contemplating a game of Dejarik, when suddenly everything went quiet. It wasn't like before, when the hum of the Falcon, its engines and generators, was an ever-present comfort. This was a deathly, unearthly quiet. A thrill of tension gripped her: it was happening again.

She turned and there he was, dark and cold and unreadable.

She was angry, yes, it burned in her like a white flame, and she felt her fists balling uncontrollably. But there was something else inside her too, swimming underneath the fire like a fish in water, and she couldn't quite grasp the whole form of it. Was it relief? Could he see the edges of it hidden in her eyes?

He kept staring at her. She wanted to shut the door in his face like the last time on Crait. But there was no door, and so she didn't.

"I've had enough of this," is what she said. "All of this."

He said nothing.

The fire was burning up through her, turning her tongue to flames. "If Snoke's dead then who's connecting us?" she spat.

His body twitched in the smallest of shrugs, and she couldn't tell if it was an admission of guilt or of his own lack of understanding.

She was overcome by an unexpected and piercing jolt of sadness through the rage. His eyes were tired and bloodshot, his skin wan, his shoulders heavy. He stood stiffly, projecting the hard aura of Kylo Ren, but she could see a broken Ben Solo hiding behind it all. All this pain, all this hatred... for nothing. She remembered how, after they both collapsed in the throne room, she had awoken first, kneeled over him, touched his arm and cheek, checked for signs of his breathing. Still reeling with shock, she had been afraid of what she was afraid of, afraid that by trying to release the bond between them she was in fact tugging it tighter. If only he'd come with her.

"I wish you'd come with me," he whispered.

In that moment his eyes were full of such conflicted sorrow it seemed like it would tear him apart, even as his frame loomed above her so solid and certain.

She erupted then. It was too much - all he was, all he could be, all he refused to become. And the way he wouldn't stop staring at her. She stormed away in the opposite direction, her footfalls ringing loud across the Falcon. Reaching the cockpit, she slammed the door behind her and felt the connection between them sever. That familiar hum returned to her ears.

Chewbacca turned around and growled at her in annoyance.

"Sorry, Chewie," she said as she sat down in the co-pilot's seat. "I'm antsy. Give me something to do."

The next few hours were spent in a blur of simple maintenance tasks and odd jobs around the ship as the rest of the crew slowly roused themselves from sleep. Rey was glad. It felt good to use her hands, her eyes and her instinct, and disengage her brain.

.

.

.

Approximately ten hours later it happened again. Rey had finally worn herself out and felt ready for sleep. General Organa (it still felt weird calling her Leia) was deep in serious discussion with the remaining members of the resistance about their next move. While the conversation dragged on, Rey whispered a quiet goodbye to Finn and managed to slip away.

She made it to the empty crew's quarters but her eyes were already slipping shut as she crawled into the small cot. Then, on the cusp of sleep, a black shape appeared in her peripheral vision by the doorway. For a second she wasn't sure if someone had walked in or if a demon had wrestled free from her dreams. Blinking, and bolting upright, she realised it was him again.

"I'm sorry," he said, and it seemed like he meant it.

He was wearing a thinner, lighter version of his usual heavy garments and for a brief sleep-addled moment Rey took specific note that yes, he did have his shirt on this time. He looked uncomfortable, maybe even a little sheepish.

"I'm trying..." he started, then had to stop and begin again. "I'm trying to understand."

Rey didn't want to respond. But something made her draw the sheets tighter around her and say, "Understand what?"

He had been staring at the floor, and now he raised his eyes to strike through her with a look of hope, and fear, and desire, and anguish. "Why you chose this, and not everything we could have together."

She had no idea what to say. It struck her how ridiculous this must seem, her sitting hunched in bed and him skulking by the door. A wannabe Jedi and the Supreme Leader's apprentice stuck in these tiny quarters, hating each other, drawn to each other, unable to escape their ties. The dim lighting made him look exactly how he liked to picture himself, draped half in shadow, grim and brooding and tortured. All of a sudden it seemed to Rey like the only thing left to do was laugh. It ripped out of her like bursts of blaster shot.

Kylo wasn't expecting that. Before he could stop himself he was wincing, and the fury that vibrated always beneath the surface rose unbidden.

"We could build the galaxy anew," he yelled. "We could break free from the past and forge a better tomorrow. We could do anything if we were together." He knew how it sounded. He knew he was just making things worse. But he couldn't contain the aggravated beating of his heart, like a creature on a leash, every time he saw her, or touched her, or thought of her trapped in that ship plagued by the ghost of his decisions.

Rey's laughter trailed off. She freed herself from the sheets and came, slowly, step by step, to stand before him. She stared up at him and willed herself not to show the tangle of feeling running through her arms and cheeks and the pit of her stomach. But her eyes were a sea of confusion. Kylo could see her chest rising and falling with uneven breath.

"Don't you get it? I don't care about building the galaxy anew. I care about my friends. About using the Force for good."

Now he couldn't even meet her gaze. "Just don't let yourself get hurt, Rey. I know exactly how much good the Force can do."

"Ben..." she began, then bit her tongue. She didn't want to make the same mistake twice. But she felt something bigger than herself thrumming through her veins, a power she could barely begin to comprehend, and it kept pushing her forward down this path. "You keep telling me to let go of the past. But I'm not the one holding on. It's a noose, and it's strangling you."

He was so close to her. If he only reached out his hand he could touch her, and in that instant it seemed like the sanest decision possible, no matter what might come of it, no matter if they might never touch again. If he was going to lose her he wanted to touch her one last time.

He raised his hand. And as he did so she raised hers, and they met together in the space between them, fingertips glancing, touching, then interlocking, the air all around still like the centre of a storm. Ben let out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding. Rey tried to say something - tried to begin to work out what it was she needed to tell him - but before the words came he had taken his other hand, wrapped it around her waist and used it to pull her towards him. Their eyes were suddenly so close that she could drink in the deep brown of his irises, the pain and potential that warred there. His chest was hard against her. His breath was shallow. She felt like she should want to escape, but she didn't, she felt an energy connecting them and it was so utterly right that it had to be this way, she could almost see the future emerging now like the light at the end of a long tunnel.

Ben was trying not to lose himself in that light. He'd forced his way into her mind before, a dark regret he held in his heart like a stone, but this felt different, as if she was opening to him and the invisible threads between them were vibrating with a sharp clarity. He couldn't explain what this thing between them had become. All he knew was that he wanted more of it even as he fought against it, wanted to drown in it until the madness he had been swimming in for so long made sense again. Until, somehow, this all came to an end.

He lowered his head to hers, and she raised herself at his touch -

And then there was a loud clanging noise as the door behind them began to open. They sprang apart, as if an electric shock was running through their bodies, and Rey had a chance to steal one last look at Ben's eyes, hungry with longing, before the door swung upon.

It was Finn.

"Finn!" she exclaimed, her heart racing. She knew he was gone from her side, and yet she still felt something of his presence there, crackling like a broken battery.

Her friend gave her a look. "I thought you were sleeping," he said as he entered the quarters.

"Just... restless, I guess," she mumbled.

Rey found it hard to relax for some time after that. Now she really did need sleep, but again it evaded her. Whenever she closed her eyes all she saw was a dark pit leading somewhere deep inside of her... and at the end of it was something she couldn't make out in the darkness, something she sensed growing. Eventually she had to retrieve the broken halves of Luke's lightsaber and place them beside her on the pillow like a protective ward just to rest the stuttering, uncertain staccato of her pulse.

Hours later, when sleep did finally take her, her dreams were confusing and coded, full of tall figures with masks for faces, pools of water and fires blazing with a white hot light. And always, always, for days and weeks and months to come, those hungry brown eyes.