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Kylo winced, walking gingerly into the medbay, trying to strip his tunic and armguards without jostling his injured side too much. It wasn’t working. This knife wound inflicted by one of his Knights during a training exercise was stinging like a bitch. He sighed and sank into the surgical chair, waiting for the med droid to whir over to him and begin to patch him up. He let the blood from the shallow cut trickle down his side, breathed deeply and tried to meditate with his pain. Meditation wasn’t working, either.
It was strange – he’d been feeling a phantom pain in his head for several weeks now. It was affecting his balance very slightly, hence the cut in his side today. The scans he’d undergone had come back negative, and he was now starting to suspect the force bond and Rey had something to do with the throb at the base of his skull.
Thinking of Rey was so much more painful that this stupid scratch. It had been nearly a year since Crait, since he’d killed Snoke, since she’d touched – no. She’d left him, rejected everything he was. It did not matter that breathing hurt when he thought of her. Letting the pain of heartbreak lancing behind his sternum continue was not constructive. Realising that perhaps he had a heart left to break after all was not constructive. The sad truth that she was likely his other half in the Force was not constructive. What mattered was order.
Rey had continued to appear to him through their bond, but they ignored each other now, never meeting the others’ eye, never getting close, walking in the opposite direction when the other materialised. In these moments, Kylo felt empty and so alone. Snoke was no longer in his mind, and Rey was making it very clear that she wanted nothing to do with him. At least his old master wanted him, wanted to be a part of him, never left him no matter how he failed him. His breath hitched and his hurt side twitched, more blood pulsing from the cut, wetting his side.
And then, the rush of air leaving the room and the echoing vacuum of the bond descending.
Kylo let his eyes raise slowly, and there was Rey, curled on the medbay floor, weeping quietly. He averted his eyes as he waited for her to disappear. Her soft sobs increased slightly as she must have registered his presence, and he could feel his eyes on him while he resolutely stared at the wall to his left.
“Ben?”
His head snapped to the front, meeting Rey’s swollen red eyes. She looked panicked, eyes clearly tracing down his bleeding abdomen as she pushed herself upright and came quickly to his side. They hadn’t been this close to each other in so long. He found himself looking up into her blotchy face while she sniffled and babbled next to him.
“What happened? I felt the burning in my side and I knew you must be hurt. Who did this? Are you safe? I was panicking; I just couldn’t take one more thing today, not after Leia ….”
Rey trailed off, her hand hovering halfway to touching his torn skin, eyes darting between his torso and his face. He noticed her breathing becoming ragged, hysterical. His mind – already so shocked by Rey’s appearance and feeling the weight of her anguish – felt sluggish, and he struggled to reconcile her panic with what she could surely see was a flesh wound only.
“Rey,” he breathed, reaching slowly toward her, “This is just a knife wound. No big deal.” He couldn’t help but feel like he’d heard his father say these exact words to his mother at some time in the distant past, when he was very small.
Kylo tried to push what calm he could through the bond to Rey, letting her feel his concern. She stepped back immediately, and he cursed himself for his stupidity. Of course she still loathed him, would still recoil from his monstrosity. He paused in his self-castigation when he recalled her mention of Leia, something cold trickling down his spine as blood still trickled down his side.
“Why are you crying for the General?” He’d meant this to come out coldly, but his breathlessness betrayed him.
Rey approached him slowly, wiping her tears from her face and steeling herself for something, he could tell, even though she kept her eyes on the floor. She raised a shaking hand, and he thought he was going to touch the place where she had scarred him on Starkiller. But her fingers ghosted past his face, slipping behind his head and coming to rest lightly on the source of the strange pain that had been bothering him for the last month, buried in his sweaty hair, pressing gently just above the base of his skull. This feels nice, he thought as he gazed up at her face, so close to above his now.
“Ben, the General has been diagnosed with cancer. She has a tumour just here.” Her fingers pressed lightly again in his hair, then turned soothing, moving down to cradle his neck. “I could feel your injury too and I panicked. I can’t lose you both.”
The pain in his head was his mother’s pain. He dimly wondered how much of his pain she might have been able to feel over the years, and the word was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Mom?”
Rey was pressed against him now, slumping over him, her head resting on top of his as she cried in shivering little bursts and stroked his back. His injured side had faded to nothing, and his arms felt like they were being moved by someone else as he brought them around Rey’s waist. He buried his face against her chest, unable to cry, unable to think, overwhelmed. Long-repressed memories of his mother came flooding back to him. Had Snoke been holding them back? There were happy memories there too amongst the more familiar and painful ones.
“Ben! Please!” Suddenly Rey was begging, tightening her hold, and he realised with a lurch why. The bond was fading and he could feel Rey slipping away.
“Don’t leave me, Rey. Stay with me, sweetheart,” he whispered, trying to grip her waist as her panic increased. He put everything he felt and knew of the Force into keeping her by his side, unable to be alone. A pulsing in the air told him Rey was exerting everything she had to stay, too. She wanted to stay with him. He poured himself into the space where he thought their bond was, pitting his will against the Force. Rey growled next to him, clinging fiercely to his shoulders and gritting her teeth in concentration.
Then – relief. He exhaled shakily and felt her do the same. His Rey was solidifying once more in his arms, and he thought he might have felt pain where her blunt nails had broken his bare skin, unwilling to be torn away. His sweat, blood and now tears were staining her clothes as they cried together.