12. Chapter 12: Listen

12. Listen

Sometimes Kylo loved being away from the First Order, sometimes he hated it. Today was one of the days he loved it. No one here hated him, no one here was asking him to slaughter thousands of people, no one here was trying to manipulate him or lie to him – other than the traders, that is. Batuu was a no-questions-asked planet with a few select markets and lots of personal space. Kylo actually had his own little house for the first time since his training with Luke. It was damp and dark and he only had a bed (because he wanted to have enough credits to deal with emergencies), but it was his.

The only thing was, being alone was hard. So whenever Rey's thoughts broke into his solitude, he couldn't help but be grateful.

Today, he noticed instantly she felt different. Strange. He narrowed his eyes, trying to pinpoint the difference, and when he saw her, he got an idea. She felt lost, more than she ever had before. Uncertain. She always acted so sure of herself, but right now her emotions were tangled together in knots.

"You're in a bad mood," he said lightly, settling onto his bed and crossing his arms.

She made a face at him, nose wrinkling and eyes rolling. Kylo had to push down a heady feeling of fondness. "It's been a hard couple days," she told him.

He still sometimes couldn't believe how willing she was to be honest with him. It was still hard for him. This bond didn't always feel like theirs anymore, even though Snoke was dead. It just felt as if they could be found out after all, as if somehow this could be used against him again. And he couldn't stand that. It was the one good thing he had.

"Why?"

She rubbed her arms as if she was cold and glanced around her. "I just... People keep looking to me like I'm... like I'm Luke. But I'm not. I can't be what they need, Ben." She looked down and folded her hands together. "Not that you care. That's what you want to hear, right? That I can't be a Jedi or even a hero? Congratulations, you were right."

Kylo wasn't prepared for that, and was a little surprised at how bitter she sounded. He shifted in his seat and met her eyes, trying to analyze her feelings. Strangely, although he should have been glad to hear she was becoming disillusioned, he just felt uncomfortable. He wasn't entirely sure how to respond, so he went for something neutral. "Why did you decide that?"

She laughed a little. She could probably sense his confusion. "There was a woman, two days ago, who cornered me in the hallway when I was hanging out with Poe. She had a baby with her and kept asking me to bless the baby." Rey laughed, sadly. "As if I could do something to help her by saying some fancy words. Then Leia wanted to talk to me about it, told me she was sorry but that I had a responsibility to do things that were good for my image. She said everyone's relying on me to give them hope, so I can't let them down. The worst part of it was, she was right. Everyone needs me for something, so now it's not about me or what I want, it's just about being this... this hero who can save them all. But I can't." She rubbed her face with one hand, and Kylo sensed how hurt and alone she felt.

He knew that if he was what Snoke had groomed him to be, if he was like Snoke, he would tell her that this was why she should have come with him. He would tell her that this was why the Jedi would always be wrong, or why he'd resented his mother sometimes, or why believing in people was just painful.

But he didn't. Whatever he knew or thought was true for himself, he couldn't bring himself to hurt her like that. She was honest with him, and he wasn't going to use that to get his own way. She didn't deserve that from him. "Why can't you?" he asked, seriously. If anyone could do it, he thought she could. The one thing he absolutely knew about her was that she cared deeply for people.

"Because… I…" Rey stopped, then looked down and said quietly, "I'm not strong enough. I'm not learning anything new about the Force or the Jedi – everything's too confusing. I don't even have anyone to teach me how to use a lightsaber."

"I could." Kylo didn't know where that came from, the offer. He wasn't even sure how it would help, and immediately he wanted to take it back.

"You… you what?" She stared at him, as surprised as he was. He shrugged sheepishly. "You'd do that?"

"I could try," he said quietly. "If you wanted."

She felt excited through the bond, but her expression stayed sedate. "Maybe. I don't know how we'd make that work – the bond isn't exactly predictable."

"No." Kylo hesitated, then said, more quietly, "What about the Jedi? Why are you so confused about that?"

She shot him a venomous glare, and he sensed a brief moment of disappointment. "Oh, wouldn't you like to know."

He winced. He didn't know how to explain how he felt. He didn't want to dictate to her what to believe – everyone had always done that to him, so how could he justify doing it to her? But he was hardly qualified to give unbiased advice, either. "What if I promise just to listen?"

Rey eyed him warily for a moment, then he felt her relax and she sighed. "I… I'm in possession of some sacred Jedi texts from Luke's island – he said they were the originals." Kylo blinked and stored that information for later. "I took them when I left because I thought Luke might be angry enough to do something reckless to them. He'd talked enough about how the Jedi should end, and I thought they shouldn't, so I took the books. I've been trying to read them and figure out what I have to do, but..." She glanced at him again, as if to reassure herself, then continued. "I don't understand them, and what little I do understand just confuses me. I thought being a Jedi would give me answers, but it isn't. Nothing is."

To give himself time to think, Kylo stood up and started pacing. He remembered that feeling, of frustration and loneliness and confusion. Luke, who he'd loved to talk to before his training began and who had always been very understanding of him, started telling him that strong emotion was bad and that he shouldn't be angry at Han for never being home. It had hurt, but he quickly realized that wasn't something he should express either. And he was supposed to, what, tell Rey he thought it would all be fine? That if she just looked a little harder she'd find it all made sense and the Jedi were right?

And in truth, he was hardly qualified to help her – he had no idea what his own place in the world was anymore. So he sighed and met her eyes. "I'm sorry."

She seemed to expect him to say something more, but when he didn't, she shifted forward, looking up at him, and nodded. "Thank you."

He stopped pacing and said, carefully, "Maybe… Maybe if you don't go looking to the Jedi for answers?"

"Ben-"

"No, wait, listen." He sat down on the floor in front of her and tucked his feet under him. "Try to understand them, if you want. Be one, if you have to. But… maybe if you keep expecting that to be the thing that makes you feel… makes you know who you are, then if you don't find answers you'll feel like you don't know who you are, ever."

Rey frowned at him, but not like she thought he was wrong. He sensed she was thinking hard. "But where else can I look?" she asked him softly. "You said you thought I was nothing because of my parents, so what else is there?"

Kylo looked down. He wasn't sure. He'd only ever had his parents and his grandfather and his power, so now… now it was just him. "I meant… I didn't mean you were. I meant… I meant your position." He stopped and rubbed his face guiltily. It wasn't that she was nothing. She was the best person he'd ever met in his whole shitty life. So he tried to say what he knew should be right, what he knew would help her. "Your parents don't matter. To me, or anyone." He winced at how that sounded. "I mean, they don't determine who you are. That was… um, I shouldn't have said that they did. I mean, look at me," he said wryly. "I'm not exactly what my parents hoped I'd be."

"No," Rey said, smiling just a little.

"I don't know what to tell you, Rey," he said quietly. He wished he did, but nothing he said would sound right. Not for her and not for what he thought was true.

"That's okay. I just needed you to listen, and you did." She smiled for real this time, and he felt something… warm from her. Something gentle. It scared him.

But he hadn't let her down, and that… that was something. So little seemed right anymore, but this, talking to her, always did. He decided not to think about that too much. He was on his own now, so there was no one to know or care if he was weak. No one except himself, and he found it increasingly hard to hang onto Snoke's training.

She held out a hand to him, but he didn't take it. She smiled, like that didn't surprise her, and withdrew it. "I just want to say, Ben, thanks. I didn't know who else to talk to about this, and I was afraid you'd just try to tell me I should turn to the Dark Side. I'm just… I'm glad you didn't."

Kylo let himself smile, although not too much. He'd made the right decision. "I'm glad too."

"Also, I'm definitely going to take you up on dueling lessons," she said archly. "Once I fix Luke's saber."

"It's mine, actually," Kylo said, impulsively. "But okay."

Rey's eyebrows shot up on her head. "Oh. I'm sorry I broke it."

Kylo laughed. "It's okay. I hardly need it."

"True."

They fell silent, and that left Kylo too free to think, so he got to his feet and gestured for her to get up too. "Let's start now. Can you?"

"Now?" Rey stared at him, but slowly got to her feet. "I'm on the Falcon, so if I'm careful, sure. But how?"

Kylo hesitated, then took out his saber and handed it to her. "Use mine. Don't ignite it, though."

She seemed surprised he was offering, but she carefully wrapped her hand around it and settled into her stance. Not a bad one, at least. He tried to think of the forms he'd learned from Luke that would suit her, but could really only remember his own, which was a combination of two – neither of which he thought would be quite right. "Okay, I don't really remember the forms, so I'm just going to teach you what I use until I remember some of-"

"I have a book for that!" Rey grinned happily and scurried away, returning after a moment of rummaging with a small, green-covered book.

Kylo's breath caught. It had been years, but he'd recognize that book anywhere. He'd spent hours detailing small prints into the leather binding, after all.

Rey, obliviously, cracked it open to show him. His amateur-ish sketches next to columns and columns of detailed explanation of forms that he'd painstakingly copied from Luke's lectures and other books he read. He cleared his throat and reached out to take it from her, and for a moment he was startled when she pulled it away. But of course, Luke had told her it was sacred, like the other books.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just… This is the only one of its kind."

Kylo laughed at that, and she glanced at him, confused, until he gently took hold of the book and turned the pages to the front cover page. His signature stood out stark and black against the paper, far too outlandishly written, really, but a creation he'd been proud of.

Rey took a moment of squinting to decipher the curling script, and the resulting feeling of disbelief through the bond was so powerful that Kylo had to laugh again.

"Yours?"

"I guess," he said, not wanting to be too elated but really unable to hide his excitement. "I can find the right form for you now, put something together. Can I… Can I keep it?"

Rey grinned at him and let go of the book. "Of course! It's yours, after all, you- Oh!" She darted away again, back to where she'd presumably gotten the first book, and came rushing back with another book in hand, this one bound in plain brown leather, the cover and pages a little charred. "This is… I think the handwriting is the same? Is this yours too?"

He set down the first book on his bed and grabbed the second from her, hardly daring to actually hope, but he cracked it open and there were his sketchy drawings of candlewick flowers and kshyy vines and ewoks. "Stars," he said quietly, flipping through the pages. "He saved these?"

Rey felt so happy. "I guess. I wonder… could I keep that one? Or at least use it sometimes?" she said, pointing to the book he now held. "It helps me meditate more than the others."

Kylo shrugged, trying his hardest not to smile. "I suppose. I should… Rey… Thank you."

She opened her mouth to say something, but the bond slipped away before he could hear her.

Leaving him with his beloved books – and her, he realized with a sudden shock, with his saber.

"Shit," he said softly. What was he coming to? Still, he couldn't feel too sorry as he sat down on his bed again and started thumbing through the pages he'd thought were lost forever.

A/N: I pushed myself to have this chapter out tonight and by golly, I did! I was really concerned about it because Kylo is so... nice? in it. But with how close they were getting in TLJ (I saw it again a few days ago) and how closely connected they are and all, I'm pretty sure I made good character decisions. They care about each other, that's no secret, it's just they were both really disappointed for a while.

I think Ben being off on his own is going to be really good for him. He's away from his abusive master, Hux, and his family, so the only things he has to do are think and talk to Rey. He's been through too much and been manipulated or just disappointed by too many people - at this point being alone with himself is gonna be really good for him.