Kylo Ren wasn't sure what he was going to say to Supreme Leader Snoke. He didn't often visit his master when not summoned directly, and never so late in a day cycle. He wondered detachedly if Snoke slept, or ate, or indeed left the room beyond this door. He was a living creature, under all that power, and Kylo supposed it would follow that he would perform such mundane tasks as these.

Kylo shook the absurd thoughts from his head, reaching a hand out to open the door. He was stalling, and he knew it; he was afraid to go to his master. Snoke had given him a singular task and had already commanded against that which he was coming to request. Kylo knew that whatever discussion awaited him beyond this door, it was not to be pleasant.

Come in, Kylo Ren.

The Supreme Leader's voice spiked through Kylo's mind, a slicing intrusion that took no care for the mind it invaded. It was not from Snoke that Kylo had learned his more gentle methods of navigating the thoughts of others, but rather they were a form of self-preservation that he perfected on his own. To see inside, he learned, one did not have to cut the thing open. The fact that Snoke disregarded these niceties was very telling of his master's superior mental fortitude.

I know why you are here, came his master's voice again, and Kylo swiped the door open.

That heat hit him again, brought him quickly from the calm cool of the hallway to the weight of his current mission.

"I know why you are here," Snoke said again, his great voice filling the sweltering room. "Though, I would have you say it out loud yourself. How will you defend your insubordination?"

"Master-"

The pain that shot through Kylo Ren was like lightning up his spine. His knees gave way beneath him and his breath punched out of him like a blaster shot.

"I am your master, Kylo Ren, and you would do well to remember it." His voice was like the clap of thunder that heralded the storm. "I sent you from here with the explicit order to kill the girl. Now, tell me why she lives?"

Kylo took in a shaking breath but remained on the floor, kneeling before the cruel being on the dais. Any amount of supplication would surely only aid his cause. "She has great power, Master. I have seen it. I did not think it was wise to-"

Kylo knew the moment the words left his lips that they were the incorrect ones, and that flash of pain shot through him again.

"You thought it unwise? Are you suddenly more knowledgeable than your Supreme Leader? Tell the truth!"

The modulator of his mask was crackling with each of his labored breaths. Kylo realized that he'd bitten through his lip and the blood from this was draining into the delicate mechanism that transformed his voice into something more formidable than can be achieved by flesh alone. When he spoke, the modulator popped and hissed as it shorted.

"It would be a waste to snuff such power-!" His words were lost in an anguished groan. Kylo felt that impact again, that pain borne of his own nerves set against him in agonizing treason. That was the worst part of Snoke's methods: it was Kylo's own body that supplied the pain, that bent to the Force of Snoke. It was only what his body was capable of withstanding, and the fact that it crippled him so thoroughly was almost as excruciating as the jolts of power.

Tell the truth.

That knife in his mind again, butchering his thoughts.

"She is like me, Master! Sh-she is unstable, but monstrously powerful. Were you not wise in kindling my abilities, in harnessing them for the Dark Side, rather than destroying it along with those others whom I killed?"

Snoke chuckled, that humorless noise that ran an impossible chill over Kylo's feverish skin.

"Clever boy. Appealing to my vanity. Though-" another dose of pain, one that had Kylo spurting the blood from his ruined lip over the inside of his mask's visor-"I know it is still not the truth. Do tell me. I don't enjoy this."

His master's voice held little warmth and he found that he did not believe him. Kylo fumbled with the release mechanism of the mask, the blood covered visor blinding him and rippling a claustrophobic panic over his twitching muscles. Once free, he gulped greedy lungfuls of hot, ashen air like it were purest oxygen.

"Why is the girl alive, Kylo Ren?"

The gentleness of Snoke's words paralyzed Kylo where he lay, crumpled and utterly spent. He knew then that if his next words weren't correct, they might also be his last.

"Be-because I want her to be alive." He swallowed, more blood than anything else, and his empty stomach turned. "That is the simple truth. Because I want it."

There was a long silence in which Kylo only breathed, waiting for the ending of his life, or the painful burden of its continuance.

"Spoiled little thing."

It was only when the pressure dissipated that Kylo realized that Snoke had been forcing him down to the ground. Its lifting gave him the freedom of his first deep breath in some minutes, and the movement was more painful than therapeutic.

"Have I not given you everything? Have you wanted for nothing these fifteen years? I saved you, Kylo Ren, from the wasted life to which Luke Skywalker would have confined you."

Kylo nodded against the hot grit of the floor, the blood oozing from his lip made sticky with the grime smearing onto his cheek. Shame washed over him as he listened to his master. As he understood. "Yes, Supreme Leader. You have been good to me."

"And yet you want? You are ungrateful. Unworthy of your place as Master of the Knights of Ren."

Kylo squeezed his eyes shut at this accusation. Felt compelled to assure his master that the girl was as good as dead. This time, he would do what was asked of him because it was right, and not question it.

But the words wouldn't come. He lightly chewed on his injured lip, igniting fresh pain for this weakness. He couldn't say it, even knowing that he was wrong and that the Supreme Leader was right.

He was worthless.

Kylo almost welcomed the pain of his master's entry into his mind, then. It was no less than what he deserved. He witnessed in agonizing clarity his release of the girl from her chains, his activating the taps of the bathtub for her. Handing her his favorite meal while she sat there with wet hair and bare feet. It was with great care that he shielded Snoke from his glimpse into the girl's mind, those private memories he had plucked like petals from a wilting flower. Only those memories that would save her, her conflict, her frustration, did he let past the silent wall he built.

And Snoke saw her tell Kylo that she didn't want to die. Saw her lift every loose thing in his quarters with little more than a shifting of fingers.

"You are a fool." Snoke exited Kylo's mind, leaving a pulsing absence in his wake. "I am ever an indulgent master, when it comes to you. It would seem that you are not the only weak creature in this room." Kylo closed his eyes at the words, afraid to hope and afraid his emotions would show plainly on his naked face.

"You may keep her," Snoke said simply, his tone clipped and punishing.

Kylo didn't know whether to be relieved or all the more terrified. Something else was on the heels of this allowance, and he knew it would not bode well for him or the girl.

"You may keep her, but you must test her. You know pain, Kylo Ren." Cool, spectral fingers seemed to trail through his hair, though they brought no comfort. "You know a life infused with it. That is the life she'll share with you, if you want her."

Kylo knew then what his Master would have him do to test her. How he would have her measured. It would either do what he could not and kill her outright, or, worse yet, bind her to him forever. His stomach, filled with blood and bile, heaved again and he was neatly sick next to his discarded helmet.

"I am your master, but I am still your teacher," Snoke continued when Kylo's stomach was spent. "I will let you have her, but for the lessons you will learn from it. If she is what you think, you will learn how damnable it is to shape power into a useful thing. You will learn the agony of creating a diamond from worthless coal, as I have." He paused, and Kylo felt compelled for the first time since entering the room to look up into the face of his master. He watched that sunken mouth pronounce his damnation in slow, deliberate syllables. "If she is not, if she has again deceived you, my dutiful son, you will die. If this girl threatens our goals, I will kill you, if she doesn't kill you first."

"Y-yes, Supreme Leader."

Kylo managed to stand, to dip a painful bow, and make his way to the door that would lead him away from this experiment in torture.

"Do not bring her before me," Snoke called from behind him. Kylo paused, though he did not think he had the strength to turn and face the Supreme Leader again. "Indeed, don't reveal to her that I am on-world. I am not so naive as you, Kylo Ren, to believe a broken mirror."

After staggering from Snoke's great room, his helmet dangling from his fingers, Kylo collapsed against the cool durasteel wall of the hallway. With shaking fingers he wiped at the drying blood from the lenses of his visor. The vision in his right eye was somewhat blurred and he hadn't realized its dull throbbing until he sat in the quiet of a military base mostly sleeping.

The girl had been pardoned, in a sense. But had he doomed her to a fate much worse than a quick slash with a lightsaber, freshly bathed and recently fed? He pushed the mask back on his head and stood on unsteady legs. He pulled what little strength he could from his connection with the Force and made confident strides to his quarters.

The stormtroopers he had curtly assigned to stand guard by his door stood still and undisturbed, and Kylo took some comfort in this. It was likely, then, that the girl had not escaped. He made a wide sweeping motion with his outstretched hand and the troopers were knocked violently aside. He heard them noisily clamoring back to their feet as the door to the antechamber closed behind him.

His heart faltered in his chest when he opened the inner door and did not immediately see the girl. Movement to his right caught his eye and he turned to see her wrist deep in the fractured panel on the wall.

She had pulled on his discarded gloves to insulate her fingers from electric shock and was attempting to resplice the severed wires by hand. The too large gloves muddled her movements and was making a clumsy job of her work.

Something about this, the familiarity with which she handled-fixed-his things, tripped a switch within him. He pulled his saber from his belt and ignited it.

The scavenger turned from her work, apparently startled. The jagged glass of the cracked screen caught a finger of one of his gloves and the thing pulled from her hand. Bright red blood stood on the tip of her first finger, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Say it again," Kylo demanded. The modulator in the mask had deteriorated further, causing his voice to come in static bursts. The girl's gaze was fixed on his crackling lightsaber, her eyes wide.

"Say what again?" she asked, her voice far away as she stared at what might kill her.

"Tell me again that you don't want to die."

She looked up at that and, for some reason, Kylo noticed a single drop of blood fall from her cut finger to the recently cleaned floor.

"I don't want to die."

He went to her, crowded her against the far wall as she stumbled away from him. As clumsy as if they were facing off again in the forest, in the snow. Her hand fumbled at the place where her weapon should be, though there was nothing there.

"Your life as you know it is over, scavenger. Either I kill you here, now, or you continue here with me. Either way, your life in the Light is done." He reached out a hand and tightly gripped her jaw. Her skin was hot beneath his bare hand and he wondered detachedly when he had last touched the skin of another person. "You can't go back. You won't be allowed to leave. I will show you what sacrifices come with making this choice and I will teach you what pain is."

He expected her to break, to crumble. He was echoing the words spoken to him by Snoke only minutes before, and he had been sick, and physically rejected the very idea. But she stood firm, tears shining in her eyes, and did not attempt to pull from his grasp.

He released her.

"Tell me that you don't want to die."

She tipped up her chin, and Kylo Ren felt the wild compulsion to reach out and touch her again. To pinch that sharp chin between his fingers and hold her in this defiant posture until the walls crumbled around them.

"I don't want to die."

He stepped away and extinguished his saber in one swift movement.

"Very well."

He replaced the hilt at his belt and reached to remove his helmet one last time for the night. When he looked back at the foolish girl still living and breathing not feet from him, she gasped at the sight of him. Worse still, she reached a hand toward him, as if to soothe him, as if to fix this hurt like she tried to fix the busted panel in his wall. With a snarl, he brushed past her outstretched hand and walked to the 'fresher.

Standing before the large mirror, he saw now the reason for her gasp. His lower lip was black with blood and bruising, yellow pockets of fat showing through in the deepest parts of the wound. His right eye was blood red from the capillaries bursting and the pupil was blown wide. That explained the blurred vision. He clenched his lips shut and exhaled, forcing air through the injury in his lip and spattering the mirror with blood. It hurt very much.

He then collapsed onto his forearms on the worktop in loud, angry tears.

It was some time before he was able to collect himself. Straightening his arms, he looked down at the mess his bleeding and blubbering had made of the countertop. He swiped a hand absently through the spit and gore and tears, only vaguely hearing the door to the fresher click closed.

The girl was holding out a towel, her face carefully blank. He considered her for a moment, the trouble this little nothing had caused him in the last hours. Thought of choking the life out of her or at least throwing her from the room. He thought again, only briefly, of pinching that stubborn chin in his fingers and angling her face to his.

He took the towel from her and wiped at his hands, then the counter. Once a section was clean enough, she set down a first aid kit and began to go through its contents.

"You use this a lot, I think," she said. Something in her quiet voice sent shame through him. As if she were afraid to set him off again. "There's hardly anything left in it."

His hands were planted again on the edge of the sink, his head hanging and his shoulders tense. The girl had heard him. The girl had seen him. How often was she to be witness to his weaknesses? How was it that he could seem to show her nothing but failures?

She suddenly reached for him, bacta smeared on her fingertips. He jerked sharply away from her and caught her wrist instead, squeezing just this side of too hard. Kylo swiped the ointment from her skin, its oily texture causing his fingers to glide smoothly over hers. He held on to her wrist as he applied it, wanting no other attempts at assistance. He hissed at the sensation of the bacta stitching his skin back together. It wasn't meant to be unpleasant, some even found the sensation euphoric, but skin healing that quickly always felt unnatural to him.

"You'll need a butterfly bandage to hold that closed, bacta or no."

He released her.

Kylo didn't answer, but grunted something like agreement. He took the bandage from her-at least she seemed done trying to touch him-and applied it the best he could, bringing the tender flesh back together. It would likely still scar, he thought, as he looked blandly at his wretched reflection.

"Did Snoke do that to you?"

His eyes darted to hers in the blood spattered mirror. "It's 'Supreme Leader' or 'Master,' scavenger."

She shook her head, that wide mouth tightening to a thin line. "He's not my master."

His lips twitched in what would be a smile if it didn't hurt so much. "He is now."

When he hadn't been looking, she had apparently applied more bacta to her fingers and was now smearing the stuff across his glass-shredded knuckles. He pulled his hand away.

"Will you stop doing that?" Kylo snapped. "Not every cut and scrape needs to be doctored away."

She ignored him and reached again for the tube of ointment. He snatched it from under her hand. He squeezed some of the greasy stuff out with a snarl and caught that reaching hand. He looked her boldly in the eye as he applied it to the cut on her first finger, though it was small and no longer bleeding. She looked slightly dazed as he did so, gasping at the cool tingle of bacta on her skin, and he noticed for the first time how her hair curled about her hairline, as fine as a child's.

"What-what," she started, licking her lips and searching his face for the answer to the question she was having trouble forming. "What did you say to Sn-to the Supreme Leader? What should I…" Her voice trailed off and her small hand moved in his. He hadn't realized he still held it, but now that he did, Kylo didn't think he could let it go.

"What now?" she breathed.

He took one more moment to look at her before answering. She was hard, but whole. Half starved, but sane. He wanted to remember the girl like this, as a person with her own mind and her own sense of determination, for as long as he could. It was easy to forget how things used to be, once your life was no longer your own.

"What do you know about the Knights of Ren?"