They don't touch, at first.

He stays to his side of the bed, she to hers.

During the day, he is gone for long periods of time. She is not permitted to be out of the quarters without him, and he is not inclined to take her wandering past the hostile eyes of other members of the First Order.

They share evening meals in silence and she remains in the quarters alone while he is gone. He feels her boredom and frustration.

He comes back one evening a month into their marriage to find her asleep, slumped across the table with a lamp in 20 pieces on the table in front of her, a crude improvised screw driver fashioned from the eating utensils she had found.

The next morning, she wonders how she woke up in bed when she'd fallen asleep at the table.

After Kylo leaves that morning, the door to his quarters open to reveal two Stormtroopers. They enter, dragging behind them a covered trolley. They leave without speaking to her, and she approaches the trolley cautiously. She removes the cover to find a small reconnaissance flight drone, poorly kept with the entire right flank in pieces. A small box contains tools.

Rey looks back to the door that the Stormtroopers had left through. Hesitant, but desperate for something to do other than sit with her own thoughts in silence, she goes to work, first discovering what is broken then repairing the drone. When Ren returns to quarters that evening, he is greeted with a smile and the excited, lit eyes of his wife.

"Thank you," she says hurriedly, moving towards him. "Thank you so much. It was you, wasn't it?"

Surprised by the excited emotion in her voice, he stares at her through the mask without moving. Seeing his lack of response, she shrugs, and happily goes back to soldering.

She rarely spoke to him, either afraid of him or unwilling to give too much when he gave nothing away. He was so used to hiding in her presence; controlling and hiding every emotion, no matter how powerful, that he could not turn the response back on so easily.

Sensing that he had not responded appropriately, he completed his nightly ablutions then joined her in bed. He could feel the happiness radiating from her; he knew she was not one to remain idle and the past month had been difficult for her to cope with. He had known that when he had ordered the drone to their quarters that morning.

It had not been easy for him, either.

He was hiding everything. He wanted her in a way he had never wanted anything before in his life. He was consumed by a constant ache below his chest. He felt her at his very centre.

He wanted her, in every way. He had never felt a connection this strong and, if he were honest with himself, was terrified of what it meant. He wanted to touch her, wanted to speak to her, wanted to share with her and have her share with him. He wanted to know what she was thinking and feel her share the Force with him. He wanted to share all with her- his belief that they were connected in some visceral way and that they had a great destiny to fulfil in the future.

He could not, though.

She was light and she hope and she was everything he had fought against for the last five years. She was what he had hated in his father and the weakness he fought to control every day. He needed to remain distant and controlled, or risk losing all that he had worked towards. Snoke had agreed to their marriage on the basis that a new generation would soon spring forth. The weight of his worries about the future, of how to reconcile or even accept these feelings and their dissonance from his goals…

He sighed. He was tired. Total control, fighting against what every part of him wanted and hiding the truth from Snoke was exhausting. He wondered what kind of damage it could really do to show, just a little, how he felt about her. A month of perfect control. He deserved a moment, a second of reward.

Touched both by a desire to show acceptance of her thanks and tired frustration with the distance he had kept between them for so long, after he had lay down in bed, he turned to her side and, slowly, hesitantly, rested his hand on her shoulder. He could feel she was still awake, could feel that she was surprised.

Unwilling to admit his fear of her rejection, he started to remove his hand and berate himself for his weakness.

Then, a sudden shift in her. A moment of understanding. He could feel her acceptance, her longing for some contact with someone, anyone, even him, if it just meant that she wasn't so isolated for a few moments.

She moved her small hand over his, and they fell asleep hands entwined.