No longer alone in the navigation center, Kylo tried to comprehend the briefing he was receiving.

The man's stammering was impossible to endure, a quivering, nervous energy telegraphed clearly to him through the Force. Kylo leaned heavily on the control console and prayed for merciful patience.

"The droid…" He tried to keep his voice level as he asked the stupidest question imaginable. "... stole a freighter?"

Not just any freighter. A Corellian YT-model freighter. There was only one such ship remaining in the galaxy that he was familiar with. The sharp scent of degreasing solution hit the back of his throat once more, his soft palate constricting as it had days earlier when he'd stalked through the landing bay and smelled it near the technicians scurrying around the TIE fighters. He clenched his fist, the leather of the glove stretching tight over his knuckles, recalling the way the fluid settled around one's nails and lingered for days, staining the pads of fingers and roughening them.

The man licked his lips. "Not exactly, sir…"

He turned partway back in time to see Mitaka flinch as Kylo's hand moved towards the hilt of his weapon before continuing: "It had help."

A blinding light flashed through Kylo's mind, the same one he'd awakened to weeks before. It had woken him from a sound sleep, startling him enough to rear up and smack his forehead on the bulkhead above his bunk. It reappeared over and over in his dreams until he began to recognize it not as light, but a color. Grey.

He had not mentioned it to his Master.

"We have no confirmation, but we believe FN twenty-one eighty-seven may have helped in the esca-"

His saber carved bright arcs and valleys through the electronics before him, shorting out circuits and throwing sparks. His weapon was an extension of his arm, reaching where it alone could not and Mitaka quaked behind him to remain rooted to his spot, hoping he would escape the blade himself.

The traitor. He knew the trooper had not fired in the attack on Tuanul. He knew it and had let him live, but he unleashed his blame on the inanimate objects before him before thumbing the saber off once more. He was breathing heavily from the exertion.

"Anything else?" He managed to grit out.

Mitaka swallowed and went on, his voice hoarse with fear, "The two were accompanied by a girl-"

He whirled and Mitaka's throat met his palm. The smaller man's struggling weight shifted his own, but Kylo held him firm. The toes of his boots scraped the deck frantically.

It only an instant, but he knew now what the Force had been trying to show him. That the sensation of dry, fibrous insta-portions on his tongue hadn't been his own memories of long-range missions with his father. No, the feeling of smoothing long strips of grey cloth roughened with sweat and grit onto his arms wasn't merely a buried recollection of his time at the nascent Jedi academy with his uncle. His repeated dream of awakening cold, smothered in sand, listening to the grains scour the metal hull of a crude shelter wasn't some half-remembered tale of his uncle's childhood on a remote, desert planet.

The light was not a thing, it was another. A her.

He narrowed his eyes behind his visor as Mitaka clutched at his wrist with both his hands. He knew the man didn't have the answer to his question even as he asked it.

"What…. girl?!"