Obligatory warning: There are spoilers to The Force Awakens, as the characters involved might suggest.

I absolutely could not resist writing something about Kylo Ren and Rey after my boyfriend took me to see The Force Awakens on Saturday. The amount of tension between those two was absolutely overwhelming for my little writer's heart. Obviously, they are not related in this story (and I greatly hope that such carries over to the actual movies).

Bear in mind, I'm an extremely casual fan of Star Wars, so please do not burn me at the stake if anything is inaccurate. Thank you, and enjoy!

Slow Burn

Night did not exist in the expanse of space, for it was a construct of the physical world: a way to break the monotony of existence. It was a jailer, a cruel emperor, who imprisoned and dictated what could and could not be done within the land he presided over. It told them when to sleep, when the world was to go still, when the sun had to die and rise. And it had always confronted him with raw, gaping wounds and scars that were proof his heart had been mauled ten times over.

The universe did not conceal its eternity, beguile with contrived beauty, lie about the futility of the lives it presided over.

He supposed, however, that if space were to adopt a mask in the present moment that it would wear the abyss of navy that made the midnight. Starkiller Base was silent save for the omnipresent drone of the machinery's maws, the electrical whir of the power that thrummed through the monster's veins, the gentle rattle of crushing gravity against glass. Still as the affect of his mask, he stood a breath away from the door and waited for the smallest trace of a sound to send him thundering down the corridor; away from an unnerving fascination that could see to his undoing.

Was it merely a hiss of air from a vent or breath trickling from the impassive mask of a Stormtrooper? Was it his own exhalation, ragged and forced?

Steeped in paranoia, he listened for betrayal of the sound's origin. Moments fled his wrath, and the sound remained even, infinite, eternal.

He reached for the door.

Clang!

A heavy footfall; a sound too rude to be anything else. His head whipped in the direction that it had sourced from, predatory eyes zeroing in on the unassuming trooper that clambered down the corridor. Agitation, rage, and an undertone of apprehension prickled on his skin. With every step the Stormtrooper took, the maelstrom of emotions flourished until he was entirely swept up in the storm. It rushed through his veins, the impulse, the power, and he lurched. Ever irascible, Kylo Ren seized hold of the trooper's neck and thrust him against the wall. The pipe that the trooper's helmet collided with shattered from the trauma, pouring a torrent of white steam and metal shards down the length of his trembling form.

Slowly, Kylo Ren advanced, every footfall echoing with menace. His free hand darted to his waist, curling around the hilt of his lightsaber and tearing it free. It awoke with a roar of crimson flame, sending sparks flying. A bloodhound, the scarlet blade sniffed out the neck of the poor creature in its master's grasp and settled but a hair away from the base of the white helmet.

Later, he might reflect that his own brash temper was at fault for betraying his deliberate intentions of ensconcing himself outside of the prisoner's cell—and eventually within it—but for now he was intoxicated by his fury.

The crackling blade hovered dangerously above the trooper's neck. Caught between his overwhelming outburst and the rage that had already begun to temper, Kylo Ren clumsily slashed at the wall just to the left of the Stormtrooper's head. With a hiss, the metal bore the incandescent scar. His fingers slackened. The Stormtrooper crumbled to the floor. Moments later, he picked himself off the ground and scuttled away.

The departure left Kylo Ren to his devices, and he was quick to set his sights on the door once more. Beneath his malevolent eye, the barrier shuddered along its track, unveiling the cell. On the unassuming cot shoved against the wall, his prisoner lie. He wondered if she still slept soundly despite the clamor just outside of her door, and hated her a little if she did; hated her more if she didn't. Alas, she did not stir, and relief washed over him at the thought that he might be able to be economic with his hatred just this once.

One step placed him within the confines of the cell, and the door squealed back into place. Fluorescent light that had spilled in from the corridor was snuffed out by the shadows that pervaded the space; only the dim glow of the infinite universe remained. He towered over her unconscious form, draped in black robes and shadows and that ominous mask. The paltry light filtering in from the porthole-sized window mounted high on the wall was enough to banish the darkness from her features, and he drank the image in hungrily.

When she slept, the hard lines of her visage tempered into something soft, pleasant, inviting. He did not dare to admit aloud that he found her beautiful; that he wished their paths may have crossed in a different manner; that he hoped she might say the same of him if she were ever to see his face. And he wished, too, that he had worn another mask when they first ran afoul of one another.

He eased himself onto the edge of the metal cot, careful to not wake her. His gloved hands reached for his mask. A gentle click, a hiss, a rustle, and suddenly his cheeks were stinging from the cool, stale air. At his feet, he rested his helmet, and refocused his attention on the girl who opposed him, who vexed him, who enticed him. Wisps of copper-brown hair clung to her forehead, her cheeks, and her neck. A spray of freckles peppered the bridge of her nose. Her lips were rosy and dusted with dirt.

His hand enveloped one of the fists balled at her side. Thrumming through her veins, he felt the perturbation, the resentment. Beneath the peaceful facade of hers lurked a mind that was perhaps as tortured as his; anxiously, he reached into her head and began to read.

Over the years, he had learned that the victims of his power were smitten with the idea that he could witness their every last memory in vibrant detail; a fact of which he exploited, however misguided it might have been. It was entirely more frightening than the reality of his telepathy; if they knew that he only saw colors—emotions—and that it was only time and practice that taught him how to interpret them into images, he would not be as feared as he presently was.

Her present mind was a battlefield of red with the briefest glimmers of gold to egg the violence on. Bright, incandescent scarlet imbued with rage ran rampant amongst the deep, bitter crimson of resentment, and fireflies of tan buzzed excitedly amidst the pandemonium. His own thoughts painted the picture for him: the girl as a young child being pried from a faceless entity, hauled across the blistering sand dunes, and deposited in the belly of an extinct metal beast. Tears coursed down her dirtied cheeks all the while, and her screams echoed across the arid wasteland.

"Don't leave me here." She whimpered in her sleep.

Startled, he retracted his hand. The picture in his mind dissipated. The room grew silent. The world held its breath.

Rey.

That was her name, as he had somehow discovered. Never spoken by a soul, he perhaps had read it through the colors or had known it—and subsequently her—in a different life. Nonetheless, it only strengthened the pull that she commanded over him.

But, she did not know him yet, and he did not know what character he might be when they would formally encounter one another for the first time. The man who subdued her and locked her in the cell, and the man who presently sat but a breath away from her were worlds apart from one another. And in the same token, the man who sat on the cot and the man who would reach into her mind for the missing piece of the map would be entirely different characters.

In moments like these, he did not know who he was. Never Ben Solo, of course—the boy was long dead—but perhaps not Kylo Ren either. Kylo Ren would have woken her, raided her mind, taunted her with what he would find; desires and actions that he was sure would be realized with time, for malice was where he thrived. But, currently, he was a nameless shadow. A whisper in the darkness of space. A heart that bled as quick as it froze.

"Afraid..." Rey mumbled in her sleep.

A man that was afraid.

He wanted to laugh; instead, he leaned over her, touched his lips to her ear. A whisper passed through his teeth. "You haven't met me yet, but you may know me better than anyone else in the universe."

A gentle kiss passed from his lips to his fingertips. He pressed the cool pads to her lower lip. In her head, he reached and sifted through the whorls of colors until he came upon a soft blue entwined with the gentlest green. An ocean. An island. A curse to her later; a blessing now. He coaxed the scene from the depths of her mind and banished the blistering red and parched tan. Though he would interrogate her without mercy when the time came, he would give her peaceful dreams if only for a night.

And with that, he left; nothing more than a shadow in the night.

End

I will definitely be continuing this, so be on the lookout for the next part. Since this was my first attempt at writing a Star Wars piece, I would love to hear what everyone thought. Please don't hesitate to leave me a review! Happy Holidays!