A/N: They aren't cousins, it's too predictable and too boring. I have more faith in JJ than this! But if it is confirmed canon that they're related, I'll be the first to chuck all of my fic out the window and off the face of the earth.

She woke up dead in a world of black.

Rey had found herself in tight situations before, but she always figured something out. Her mind was quick from the tests that life on Jakku had given her, and her body even quicker. She was made of lean muscle, the product of long work days and the small amounts of food it put on the table. But everything changed the day she found BB-8 and Finn was brought into her life. Suddenly, she was thrown into a conflict much larger than herself and wanting out of it desperately.

She woke up to find her arms and legs restrained by cold metal and entered a panic. Rey fidgeted and tested the strength of the bonds, and soon discovered that escaping wouldn't be so simple. She then felt for the knife she kept in her back pocket, only to find that it wasn't there.

Fuck.

The door opened.

Fuck.

She was afraid, truly afraid for her life for the first time in years. Her palms were sweaty and her eyes darted back and forth, looking for a way out that wasn't there.

Fuck.

It was him, the one they call Kylo-Ren. Rey assumed him to be the leader of the First Order, or at the very least someone very high up based on the way he walked and commanded the stormtrooper who had been guarding her door. He wore a mask and his figure was obscured by black clothing so that there was no true indication of his identity. Rey composed herself and made eye contact. Her gaze was fierce and unyielding.

I won't be intimidated by him. I won't let him win.

"Where is your base?" Kylo-Ren said. His voice was distorted and difficult to understand.

"I'll never tell you anything."

"I know your traitor of a friend is keeping the droid there."

"You don't know a thing about the resistance, otherwise you wouldn't have brought me here. I have nothing you want," Rey said.

"On the contrary, you have everything I want," Kylo said. He raised his hand, but was interrupted. Rey was frantic to do or say anything to derail the interaction.

"You're nothing but another coward hiding behind a mask. Let me go and I'll show you a real fight," Rey shouted, leaning forward. She had a wild look in her eye and her nostrils flared, "Take off your helmet and fancy armor. I'll take you on right now."

What he did next surprised her. He took of his helmet and dropped it on the floor. The loud noise made Rey flinch. She certainly didn't expect him to be so young, or so handsome for that matter. It was unsettling to her, to think that she was attracted to the enemy.

"Am I less intimidating to you this way?" Kylo said before moving closer, "Now, I'll ask you one more time. Where is your base? If you don't cooperate, I may need to resort to more… unorthodox methods." He inched closer and moved a clump of hair away from her face with his hand.

"Don't you ever touch me again," Rey said, jerking her head away from his hand.

"Then we're going to do this the hard way," Kylo said. He raised his hand again, summoning the power of the Force and invading Rey's mind. But instead of extracting the information he needed right away, he elected to have fun exploring her memories first.

The sun is shining brightly into her eyes, Rey is about 6 or 7 years old and back on her home planet Jakku. All she sees is the sunlight and two dark figures obscured by the light.

"We'll be back for you, just you wait." The voice was warm and comforting. It was sweet like sugar and in that moment Rey felt safe. But just like that, she was alone.

The landscape changes, she finds herself at 10 years of age, wrapping the cuts and icing the bruises she wore as a result of crawling through the old abandoned ships of the dunes for parts. The rations she'd traded them for sat on the table across the room, and the pain was just as fresh to her as it was all those years ago.

But then she is herself at 15, the time she'd been captured by slavers passing through the desert. The same fear she felt then echoes through her mind. Her wrists are bound crudely with a coarse rope, and the knot is just loose enough to undo.

Rey's eyes have widened in shock. She couldn't figure out what he was doing, or how to stop it. She didn't know where the surge of resistance came from, but she pushed back on Kylo as aggressively as she could. His presence was being forced out of her thoughts. She leaned forward and looked him in the eye.

Kylo was very obviously taken aback. He was even more so when Rey managed to break into his own mind.

"You are afraid," Rey said with a smirk, "Afraid that you'll never be as great as Darth Vader."

"Enough!" he shouted, and with a flick of his hand her head slammed back onto the hard metal and she was unable to move.

"You are nothing but a dirty desert rat, and you would do well to remember your place," Kylo spat, "The Force is strong within you, but you are untrained." He relinquished his hold on Rey and she breathed deeply now that her lungs were no longer restrained.

"You'll never find Finn, you might have me but you'll never take him alive," Rey said with a smile.

"You have great potential, you could be incredibly useful to me if you were trained," he said before picking his helmet up off the floor and putting it on. He dismissed the stormtrooper guarding the door, as he was wary of the possibility of her using mind tricks on him to escape.

"I'll be back for you, just you wait," Kylo said with a laugh. The door closed behind him.