Chapter 1: Bass

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"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." -Obi-Wan Kenobi

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Waking from nothingness it was like she had been swallowed by sand. Every part of her body was held firmly in place, her muscles paralyzed, her eyelids too heavy to lift. Only the automatic rise and fall of her breathing and gentle rhythm of blood thrumming in her ears proved her consciousness. So, she reached out with the Force.

All around her were only dense horizons of low hanging, immaterial grey cloud; embracing and subduing her like smoke. The smell of metal filled her throat, chalky and bitter like the decaying Star Destroyers in Jakku's graveyard of spaceships.

Slipping down into a careful probe of her restrained body she felt how cold she was, as intensely as in the frozen, quietly moaning coniferous forest she had last stood in. Fatigue blanketed her face and shoulders, pressing hard on her lungs, as if she had been climbing an endless mountain for years.

Seconds or hours passed before warmth began to seep in from the tips of her fingers, sliding through her veins like water through the roots of a tree. Summoning a surge of strength in a gargantuan effort she strenuously blinked through the heaviness of her leaden eyelids. Slowly, through bleary vision she saw that she was again in a room of thick metal walls, like the one she had woken up in on Starkiller Base.

There had been a black, masked monster crouching in front of her in that room. But he wasn't here now.

She was just alone in another metal box.

She thought back to the last thing she could remember… snow, trees, Finn, and the monster with his convulsing, crimson lightsaber. Her stomach clenched at the memory of him, slouched in front of her, baring his teeth.

Then, out of nowhere, as if sensing her awakening and beckoned by her thoughts, his force signature appeared. It came in a crescendo, growing stronger as he approached outside her door. A stroke of velvet brushed somewhere against her mind, as if he had once more laid his hand on her face.

She remembered how Finn had spat the name to her, like a mouthful of blood. Kylo Ren.

The door slid open and he stepped in like a storm, dark and rumbling the air around him. Waves of some emotion she couldn't determine emanated from him, swinging around his tall, lithe body. Bass echoed from his signature like a cello being played, reverberating in her tense, coiled muscles.

She narrowed her eyes, gnawing at her tongue and tasting iron as he approached and stopped in front of her. In thick, drawling silence they considered each other.

His cool, angular face was still unmasked, which plucked strings of curiosity that rubbed along the lines of her ribcage. She would have expected him to want to hide his face from even himself for the rest of his life. Mirrors across the galaxy would shatter at his presence. But as he regarded her, his cryptic expression was impermeable. Like looking into an impassibly dense forest. Or an inverted night sky, where the black stars lay scattered across his pale skin.

"How are you?" he finally asked.

His eyes, dark but gleaming with intelligence, brimmed with more questions than statements.

What? Rey couldn't think of an answer to such a off-key, nonsensical question. How could he care? Instead, she answered, "Where's Finn?"

"FN-2187? He was picked up by the Wookie that came with you to the Starkiller Base. But I don't know if they made it away from the planet before it imploded."

"Was he still alive?" The cavity of her chest shuddered like a moth trying to fly with wet wings.

"He was still breathing when I left him. But I sliced him from tail-bone to neck. I had to end it."

The finality of his statement, even if inconclusive, was overwhelming. Rey could not help it then from letting out a retching sob. Her throat and lungs felt full of glue. She squeezed her eyes shut and pushed her head back hard against the interrogation chair. How could every single connection she ever made be torn from her? Why did it always feel this agonizing? Her defenses should be more resilient.

She felt Kylo Ren silently waiting for her to open her eyes again and look at him. She didn't, and the minutes stretched on in throbbing silence.

Finally, he said, quietly, "I don't want to hurt you. And I'm not going to let anyone else. I'll leave you for now."

She pressed her eyes closed tighter, then felt him leave. The door slammed heavily behind him.

A bereft wave of cold rolled over her, pressing away the surprise from his words, I don't want to hurt you.

Instead, she thought of Finn, standing beside her in the forest. He was so good to her. And then she thought of Han; of him smiling at her beside the Falcon, and of him falling into the pit, a black, charred circle on the front and back of his torso. It was like watching an ageless ember that had seen and learned so much of the world sink into an anonymous dark chasm, somewhere he should never be, unless he went there by choice to learn or tell some secret.

She closed her eyes again and felt a tear come. It rolled down her cheek and into her clenched teeth. She couldn't stop it or move her hands to wipe it away.

"Han Solo. You feel like he's the father you never had." Kylo Ren had said as he looked into her mind on Starkiller. No part of her resisted its truth.

She had found ways over the years on Jakku to see the beauty and appreciate the softness of the sand dunes, treading in the stale pool of required confidence refilled everyday that someone would come back for her.

Han Solo had almost offered this to her, in an alternative way that she would have been just as happy to accept. He offered her a home and sense of belonging, companionship, consideration of if she had eaten or slept. Chewbacca had immediately accepted her with unabashed and automatic openness of the heart. And Finn, flashing disarming smiles, laughter and adoration, looking at her like he had never seen anything so wonderful, did so as well. He deserved so much.

Where is he? Finn. My friend who came back for me.

She knew that wherever he was, Kylo Ren would have determined it.

She had never met anyone like this man. He was like a gleaming black bird with incredible wing-span that would carry him from one side of the galaxy to the other. So unwanting of anything visceral. He was elegant, even charismatic. And when he took his mask off, his long face that hadn't lost its youth was so human she wouldn't have otherwise believed it.

Somehow on Star Killer base she had pushed into Kylo Rens's mind and she felt his fear; a leaf quivering to its branch although the snow had already come. This was a surprise, especially compared to his ravenous appetite for things she couldn't identify. Faces she didn't recognize dominated his thoughts. There was one of particular focus, disfigured and carnally intelligent which was accompanied by a particular marriage of fear and reverence. The rest of the faces were an anonymous cimmerian kaleidoscope. Except for one she knew: a younger Han whose eyes and mouth showed an amalgamation of concern that coalesced into something extraordinary; a planet's mass of feeling. The sentiment she saw on the face of Han conjured in Kylo Ren's subconscious was more intense than she could never remember seeing on any face, and it stirred a deep sadness and desire in her. There were other images as well; worlds of rock, snow, forest, water, and grass in variety that exceeded her imagination, and on some a diversity of beautiful, crude or dramatic architecture. But most profound were sweeping flashes of dark, empty rooms, some with a recurring disfigured object centered in the middle, and a night of pouring rain. There were lifeless bodies, sometimes bearing one well-placed cauterized wound. And there were his emotions; a convoluted, nebulous ocean of churning sentiments pushed down to a distance below the level of his conscious thought.

The power of the Force in him, a scarlet, pulsating glow that permeated everything, was astounding.

From what she saw she believed that someone like him could be anything in the universe he aspired to. Instead, he was this dark, streaming thing of questioning indignation.

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Rey waited alone in the cell maybe another hour. The apparatus that held her pressed sharply against her body, but she didn't notice it. She wanted to analyze her situation but as she tried to hold her thoughts at bay they pushed and threatened to tumble against each other with such intensity that she finally resorted to the meditation she practiced at home to balance her emotions. She was 9 years old when she had decided not to waste her time with worry anymore.

On Jakku her days had been a dependable pattern; continual layering of prediction and discovery that faded in the evening to bare and resigned solitude. In this time she would generate images of all the wonder she could inside of her X-wing pilot's helmet, imagining water and greenness, the flow of conversation that would accompany belonging to someone or something other then her hills and sky in the desert. The Rebellion pilot doll she had made when she was 10 years old was never a object for play, it was a promise, a form a personal insurance that in some places people cooperated with trust in each other, and one day she would allow that to herself as well, no matter what.

Suddenly and out of nowhere she felt him coming back.

Soon the door opened and he walked into the room, closing the door behind him with a thoughtless gesture. He stood in front of her, but not close.

"How are you?" he asked again, quietly.

"Why would you even ask?"

"I want to know." He said quickly, but gently.

His demeanor was so unlike what she had expected. He had just killed his father, probably Finn, and taken her prisoner to maybe kill her too. How had he not been pulled underneath by the weight of what he had done?

"Why don't you look into my mind and see?" She paused, disdainful, and added, "Or are you afraid of doing that again?"

He stood there in silence, but she felt the bass of his Force signature instantly grow heavier. He reached for his lightsaber, pressed it on, letting it snap and hiss at her for a second, then pressed it off.

"No." He said, then turned and left as quickly as he came.

No, I won't look, or No, I'm not afraid, she wondered, slightly both amused and annoyed that he had just walked away, again.

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Twenty minutes later he came back, carrying a glass of opaque fuchsia liquid.

"Do you want a drink?" He asked.

Rey stared at him, refusing to answer and intent to not show any physical response.

Something in his carefully composed face quivered, maybe anger, but he held it in. Turning back to the door he sat against the wall next to it, setting the glass on the floor and draping his forearms over his bent knees.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

She looked to her right at the wall, her heart fluttering with curiosity and surprise, but her throat and jaw too tight to answer.

Kylo Ren continued to watch her in silence. Whatever waves of emotion drifted around him before had calmed.

The silence gradually became unbearable.

"Why am I here?" Rey finally consented.

"The Supreme Leader Snoke asked me to bring you."

After a hesitant moment she asked, "Why?"

"He wants you to be trained, in the ways of the Force."

Gently, she said again, "Why?"

"Because you are incredibly strong in it."

"And he would train me?"

"No, I would."

She couldn't help softly scoffing, and looked around. "No." She said the word as heavily as if it were made of uranium.

"Why not?"

"I've already told you."

"What did you tell me?" he asked sincerely.

"You're a monster."

He chuckled, "What do you know about me?" he leered, encouraging her.

His smile would have been handsome if he were anyone else.

"You killed Han Solo, your father. You killed Finn, my friend."

"You don't know Han Solo. And you don't know that about Finn."

"What, that you killed him?"

"Yes, or that he's your friend."

She didn't respond, just glared at him. But inside she began to feel a tickling whisper of fear that maybe he was right.

After a moment Kylo Ren stood, strode towards her and continued, "He was trained his entire life to be a soldier, to love us and his purpose. He never once showed noncompliance or inclination to betray us. He was well liked. And then he killed a dozen of his sisters and brothers out of nowhere. Why would you trust him?"

Rey couldn't respond to this either, and she tried to push the fearful internal whisper away, but it resisted. She had been alone, unloved for so long. Trust was not something she had practiced much.

"Rey. You have two options. I train you, or I kill you."

Her eyes met his. "Is that coming from you or this Supreme Leader?

He didn't hesitate. "I'm going to give you one day to consider it."

She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes.

He waited for a moment then turned on his heel and left. After the door closed she felt a heavy rush, and heard the dim hum of his lightsaber ignite then thrash against the exterior wall, lacerating and dragging away against it.

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Kylo strode into the maintenance room, his breathing just starting to calm. The pulsing series of light, layering and rounding upon each other like petals that was the girl left him hyper-aware of himself, neck deep in a tar pit, his skin beginning to absorb the putrid toxins like an amphibian. It was a fact he could not deny, and now she saw it. Her.

Closing his eyes he forced himself to push the thought away, breathing in ragged, heaving breaths.

Perhaps a minute later, he opened his eyes, somewhat calmed, and looked at the T3 series utility droid he came her for.

"Go to the prisoner section and repair the wall outside of a cell 237" he snarled at the droid, which immediately departed.

Kylo stood in place in the silence of the empty room, allowing himself to focus clearly on his conversation with Rey in the cell.

Is that coming from you or this Supreme Leader?

He felt her aloft defiance as she said it. Her refusal to look at him. Her contempt. He hated it.

She was so perceptive. She saw minuscule things in his stance and thoughts that he was ashamed of, and repressed so deeply that no one else but Snoke would notice. Still, she judged him without legitimate justification. He wanted, needed her respect, admiration. He would have laid anything at her feet for her to smile at him and follow him conscientiously away to... anywhere. He couldn't explain it.

It was so unusual to meet someone who didn't show automatic veneration. He was Master of the Knights of Ren. He would become a Sith, once he trained her. He had come so far, sacrificing every part of his identity to do what was required of him. He killed Han Solo, among innumerable other individuals. Yet, for each of them he tried to imprint the face of, to always consider and remember what he had done and ensure the actions he took in the future were necessary.

She was his next conquest, in whatever form it would take, but he wanted compliance from her.

Unreasonably, he thought.

He had no business taming and keeping feral creatures. The Knights of Ren were even elusive to him, and that was fine. The labyrinth he occupied was not intended to include space for companions, and he has no desire for them. Hux most of all, his appointed counter-part, who had a few particular attributes Kylo had nonetheless come to appreciate for the efficiency in which the General fulfilled his role. The sleekness and devotion that Hux called upon at times could even be beautiful, as he wedged himself into a ridiculous mold of demanding and incorporeal expectations.

Still, Kylo recognized that Hux was just a man told from infancy to do a thing that he happened to do extremely well. He had very little imagination and very little appreciation of the living world.

Rey, however, did. He was awed by what he saw in her mind. A mind undeniably beautiful in its strength, its value of life, and its potential for power. When he first met her, her Force current, which she had not yet learned to check, was just stirring. Each time he had met her since it had grown, which was not something he had ever encountered before in a Force sensitive, but was fascinating to witness.

He should have expected the girl would be so resistant to him. Just a girl he had never met until a day ago. Although, he had known of her for much longer.

She was a wisp of smoke he had spent much of his life threatened by. And he had spent much of his career seeking the source of reverent descriptions from the Supreme Leader of an undetectable Force presence hidden in the anonymity of ordinary humanity. Now, he has learned that it was this ghost, this scavenger girl, whom he was required to take as his apprentice.

Unreal.

This beautiful, unbelievably Force sensitive girl who disdained him.

He didn't deny that he deserved the disdain of many, including her. He did not want it though. He never did, but it was a required companion to his decisions; bricks he had piled so high he could not see over them and no one could see in. He knew one day they would tumble onto him. Of course they would.

Activating his lightsaber he reduced the solid durasteel workbench beside him to shrapnel. In doing so he released the emotion his body could not contain back into the Force, which he would inevitably draw from again with each new coming breath.

Heaving, he turned and headed for the garages.

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Thank you for stopping by! This is my only Fanfiction, though I'm always working on my prose, so if you have any constructive feedback I would be so, so grateful to hear it! I can't deny that comments are the life-Force of writers. Thank you again, and may the Force be with you. ^-^