A whimper wakes her. Rey opens her eyes and in the stillness wonders whether she dreamed the sound.

Everything sleeps on the Falcon. The bunks, mostly empty, slump against the walls. A light in the corridor sprawls half-into the room, its pale fingers softly curled against the shadows. Across the cabin from her, Finn breathes long easy breaths. His jacket lolls at the end of his bed, one sleeve thrown out. The noise wasn't his, then.

Rey snuggles back into her pillow, snuffling its woolly smell.

But the whimper sounds again.

Now that she's awake she can place it. Behind her. But the wall should be the only thing behind her. Which means…

Kylo.

Deep brutal weariness slams into her, stealing all sensation from her arms and legs.

Not again.

Move with any noise, think with the finest glinting edge, and she'll wake him. They'll fight. It's all they've ever done since Crait. Each strike will rattle her teeth. Each force-twist will scrape her bones. Each taunt will banish any compassion still clinging between them. They'll circle, knifing the air with stale tired aggression, until the force-bond winks out.

It'll be a waste. A hideous waste.

So Rey drains the tension in her body with a long sigh and buries deep the sharp things in her mind. Just this once, let them be silent.

But try as she might, she can't ignore his cries. Those tiny mewls, issued from some raw young part of him she never gets to see anymore. Though no louder in volume, the longer she listens, the larger they grow, ballooning, straining...

She turns over, soundlessly as possible, and there on his back he lies. There he quails, his dark lordship Kylo Ren, half-sunk under her covers like a pale scuttled ship in black waters. His brows tent together. His neck-muscles seize.

For a moment, a mean sneering giddiness flutters in her chest, bubbling up her throat like a laugh.

Then she notes the cold gleam of sweat, the shroud of pain. The feeling evaporates. This idea to look at him - it was terrible, truly. Now the bunk above, that black mass bearing down, is his yawning dread. The blanket around her shoulders, pressing, constricting, is his spiny panic. His rage and loss open to her like a whole round dark world to the moon.

Rey needs it to end almost as keenly as he does.

Summon her saber. Hold it just so over his heart. Ignite. It would be so easy. But Kylo shudders in his sleep and the notion shrinks into distant fancy.

She prods his shoulder instead.

He jerks awake, snarling, eyes veering like tiny dark speeders. His lightsaber crashes to hand. But something - maybe the sight of her, very soft and still in the bed beside - gives him pause.

"Can we not?" She murmurs, trying not to wake Finn. "Neither of us ever wins."

His shoulders lift. He says, "This time…" but his lightsaber doesn't scream to life.

"I'm tired. You're tired. Let's just sleep, okay? Fight next time."

The speeders lock on her, hovering.

She deserves suspicion. She can't remember the last time she didn't immediately refer to him as some variant of a vile animal.

Just to prove her dedication to the point, Rey closes her eyes and expels all the air from her lungs. Of course, under the blankets, under her posture, her muscles thrum with tension. Every other sense sharpens and brightens. Her lightsaber waits under her pillow, should she need it. This thought she shelters from Kylo's probing mind.

The moment drags.

At last, his weapon plonks out of his hand. He settles beside her.

Rey opens one eye, then the other. Kylo lies not two handspans away, watching her. That's all they do for a full minute. Watch each other's eyes, perhaps anticipating the other to take advantage and hack the other to pieces.

It reminds her of a different time. Memory rises, rises, leaking softness back into her limbs. Ben, frozen on some distant planet for reasons she'll never know, huddling beside her for warmth without a word. Herself, starving on a disastrous cargo run, eating lush silky fruit from his hand. Swallowing guiltily, Jessika in the next room.

"What did you dream?" she asks because that's the kind of thing they used to talk about.

He snorts. "I dreamed I found you and your precious resistance and razed both." A lie if she ever heard one, but he rolls over. His broad defenseless back opens to her.

She follows the line of his neck and shoulder up and down.

"Night," she ventures, after a while.

He grunts.

She dreams of healthy white ships, laden with fruit, skimming over fair seas.