A/N: A year or so ago, I posted the first chapter of a Reylo story that ended up going nowhere for me, creativity-wise. In the wake of The Last Jedi, I think I have found my inspiration once more. So I have reworked and rewritten and here's what I've come up with!

Thanks, as ever, to my beta - my sweet little sis - Kylo-Rey-Kenobi (the artist formerly known as Xaraphis). She has been pushing me to write again after such a long time away, and here I am, giving it a shot!

So here goes, nothing!

It is in dreams that Kylo Ren – Supreme Leader of the First Order and de facto ruler of the galaxy – is weakest.

Deep within the darkest reaches of the night, when his anger has quieted…it is then that his memories haunt him. They are insidious things, slithering up from far below to torment him; slashing and tearing at the heart he has spent too many years denying.

He sees his mother there, sharp-eyed and brilliant. She looms large over the barren landscape of his sleeping mind – a woman of strength and passion and unrelenting integrity. It has been over a decade since last he stood before her, but in his dreams, he remembers her smile…her laugh…the warmth of her touch as she ran gentle fingers through his hair.

There is a part of him that misses her still. It is small, but distinct – a phantom ache that feels exactly like the press of her lips upon his brow. It had stayed his hand as his Silencer bore down upon the Resistance Cruiser that carried her all those months prior…and he strongly suspected that it would stay his hand again in the future.

In the absence of his once-Master's prying and safe within his own unconscious mind, he can and does admit the truth…

He loves his mother. He will always love his mother…even if he can never forgive her.

His father is a fleeting presence and far more difficult to pin down. He is there and gone again, just as he had been through all the years of Ben Solo's childhood. Sometimes though…sometimes he is more solid and far too vivid. When his shadow shuffles up from the most deeply buried corners of memory, desperate and pleading – those are the worst times. He stands with his hand extended – but never, ever taken – before he falls and falls and falls away…

Even in sleep, Ren shies away from that red-stained flicker of Han Solo. The pain that halos his father's presence in his mind is a reminder of his greatest failure – a symptom of the weakness that was meant to have been exorcised at the end of his blade.

A weakness that lives within him still – the heart that had ached for the approval of a father who had feared him far more than he had loved him.

His uncle has always been there as well, though he is an entirely different sort of ghost – far more real than the parents who had given him up at such a young age. For years, he had been the stuff of terrors – large and looming and lit with green, flickering light, just as he had been, all those years ago.

In the months since Crait, though, a new Luke has taken shape, gained focus. Far from a monster, his old Master (his uncle) has become the cool, serene presence that waits, always, on the very precipice of the chasm where he buries his guilt.

It is narrow, but deep, this chasm; a jagged fissure that lies buried deep within his subconscious mind – as close to forgotten as he is physically capable of achieving. At the bottom of that gaping maw that should not exist, but does, lies – amongst far too many other things – the smoldering ruins of a ravaged temple and the scattered bodies of those that he had once called friends.

The pull of the Light is strongest there, in the very place where he had first sought to extinguish it entirely. There is danger in the glow that emanates from those bloody, black depths; a danger that he recognizes and avoids, even in his sleep.

It is a source of endless frustration for him, that lingering radiance. He has thrown his arms wide, embraced the Dark in every possible way he can imagine – in the worst possible way that he can imagine – and yet it remains.

But when he sleeps…

Hazel eyes, staring up into his in the lift carrying them up, up, up and begging him far more eloquently than words ever could, lit from within by an intrinsic goodness that calls to him even as he recoils from it.

When he sleeps, he finds himself face to face with the very things that he most wishes to forget.

The same eyes, swimming with tears as she lays herself open to him, reaches out for him, caresses his hand and gathers the tatters of his ragged soul between her small, slim fingers.

And tonight…

Tonight – like too many nights, of late – he dreams of her.

Those eyes again, staring at him across the length of the bridge that has been forged between them; hard, resolved as she reaches up and activates the switch, closing the door between them with a finality that causes his breath to catch and burn in his throat.

He bolts up in bed, gasping, arm flinging out, reaching towards the empty shadows that surround him…

Rey.

She is the newest addition to the pantheon of his nightly tortures and by far the most difficult to ignore.

Once his breaths have evened, he lowers his arm to the bed, the hand that had reached for the ghost of her curling into a fist, his skin prickling with the memory of her touch; the warm, gentle glide of her skin against his.

She had been so…so warm…

Throwing back the thin sheet that had twisted around his sweat-drenched body, Kylo Ren sits up before turning to drop his feet to the floor, relishing the chill bite of the bare metal against his skin. The air around him is cold as well, sending a shiver down his spine.

Dragging a furious hand backwards through his hair, palm grazing the very top of the scar that bisects his face, he steels himself against the echoes of his dream. She has haunted him for the better part of a year now, his ability to resist her shrinking in direct proportion to the waxing strength of the Bond that tethers them. She has fascinated from the very first moment he laid eyes on her and she nearly consumed him whole with little more than the brush of her fingers against his…

And then it had consumed him whole, devouring him utterly as she stood, so proud and true before the throne of a monster.

She had stood at his back that day, fought at his side.

It had been a euphoric feeling – the belonging, the rightness of it – and a fleeting one, not meant to last.

Not for him, blood-soaked and blackened as he was. A point driven well and truly home by the door she had closed between them, sealing herself off from him in more ways than one – at least, for a time.

The Bond is, as they have discovered in the weeks and months since, far more resolute than either of them…which is, he must admit, singularly impressive.

Shoving himself to his feet, he crosses the room to where his discarded clothing lies, draped over the back of the single, narrow chair. He dresses in contemplative silence, burying himself beneath layer upon layer of coarse, black fabric; the itch of the weave is an odd sort of comfort as it rasps across his skin. His shoulders relax beneath the weight of his chosen armor, and a puff of relief escapes from between the tight line of his generous lips.

He feels more himself already, and it is as he is pulling on his gloves that he feels it…the pull…

Rey…

Even on Jakku, she had heard the stories. Tales of the Empire…of the Rebellion…of the Jedi. Though the bulk of her dreaming had been of starships, there had been times – now and again – when she had reached toward the highest star of all…

What must it have been like, she had wondered, to be a Jedi?

She still wonders, sometimes, though she well knows that she will never truly bear that mantle. Not when there is no one left to show her how.

You need a teacher…

The words whisper through her mind, spoken in echoing unison by two very different voices – both of which spark two very different aches of longing in her chest. One is bittersweet, a memory she will cherish; a lost opportunity that she will always mourn. The other…

The other she ignores. Entirely.

Curled over the body of her speeder, Rey weaves between the thick trunks of very tall trees and in and out of the dappled shadows cast by the sun trickling down through their heavy boughs. Her eyes focus forward, even as she forces her mind backward; ten months fall away and she is once more standing before Luke Skywalker on a rocky, sea-soaked hilltop, heart in her throat as she offered him his old lightsaber.

She can still remember what it felt like – the flash of hope when he took it.

The stomach-churning disappointment when he tossed it so unceremoniously over his shoulder before stalking away from her without so much as a word.

The man she had found on Ahch-To was far too broken to be the savior the Resistance had needed – or the teacher she had dreamt of – but he had, in the end, given her far more than their initial meeting had suggested he would. He had given her a foundation, a basic understanding upon which greater knowledge and power could be built.

It wasn't at all what she'd hoped for, but it was, at the very least, something.

Not that it had prepared her in any way for what had come after, but still.

Something.

Looking back, she isn't sure why she was surprised. Life, she has found, has a peculiar way of always being precisely what you don't want it to be.

Not that I disagree, but…when did you become so fatalistic?

Gritting her teeth and refusing to look anywhere but at the landscape before her, Rey pretends she didn't feel the jolt that goes through her at the sound of his voice in her head.

I've no idea, she shoots back before she can stop herself. Care to wager a guess, Supreme Leader?

She can feel his sigh as if it were her own and she hates it.

For a long moment, there is silence in her head though she knows perfectly well that he's still there, and then…

What are you doing? Everything around you is a blur.

They've gotten better at this, over the long months that lie between Crait and now; they have more control over it - can see more, feel more. They have learned how to turn it off and turn it on, though there are still times when it has a mind entirely its own. They have also discovered that actually speaking has become unnecessary, their minds so well attuned that they can communicate by thought rather than word.

She chooses to pretend that doesn't terrify her, though she can admit that it's far simpler this way. It certainly makes for less odd looks from her friends and comrades. She'd grown very tired, very quickly of being known as the odd girl who argued passionately with blank walls and empty hallways.

From time to time, she wonders if he has encountered the same difficulties…but then she remembers what he has become, and she doubts that anyone would dare question Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.

That name – the wrong name – leaves a bitter taste on her tongue, particularly when paired with that title and she leans further over the speeder, hardening herself to him as best she can.

That is none of your business.

Rey…

Her heart thumps hard in her chest and she shudders.

Go. Away.

Another sigh – deeper this time, and edged with resignation.

Fine.

He was gone then, leaving a gaping emptiness in her mind where his had been only moments before. Almost instantly, longing surges up from within her, leaving her insides aching and her throat tight as she bites down on the urge to call him back to her – to bridge the distance between them once more.

She hates this thing…this Bond, between them. It has complicated her life in ways beyond measure, tying her irrevocably to a man she wants to hate, but can't.

A man she wants to love, but won't.

A man her head commands her to destroy and her heart demands that she save, leaving the rest of her to languish in the confused middle ground that lies between the two and Rey is, quite frankly, exhausted by all of it.

Her life has become a constant battle between conscience and sentiment and all she can think of is how very, very unfair it all is.

She hadn't asked for this.

But now, she has it…

And she's terrified to admit just how much she wants it.

As she curves sharply around a particularly large tree, turning until her body is nearly parallel to the grassy ground tearing by beneath her, Rey swallows hard behind her helmet and scarf.

She is so very tired, she decides, of being so very afraid all the time.

The trees fall away suddenly, the brightness of the unobstructed light nearly blinding as the land before her opens up into a swath of wide, flat plain. It is dotted here and there with the tall, twisting spires of crystal that Alvorine is known for, but none of them stand between her speeder and the edge of the plateau that falls away sharply half a mile ahead. Rey's grin widens and she presses her heels down, accelerating hard, reveling in the adrenaline that spikes through her blood and drowns out everything else.

Perhaps this isn't the healthiest way of dealing with her problems…but it is, by far, the easiest…

Less than fifty feet from the edge, she pushes her toes down, braking hard. Her speeder kicks sideways before it skids to a stop just shy of the drop off. Hopping off, she walks to the edge and peers down into the valley below. It isn't terribly deep – perhaps only a hundred feet or so down to the grass-covered floor below the canopy of trees that loom above it – but it is far wider than she had anticipated, and she narrows her eyes, skimming over the tree tops and attempting to pick out some sign of the ancient temple complex that is rumored to reside within.

Her eyes drift to the west and suddenly, she feels it. It is faint – a mere flicker of power; old power – but it is enough.

She knows her course now.