A Reylo Romance: "Don't be Afraid, I Feel it Too"

Kylo's Story, Part 2

"Rey wouldn't be happy if you died of hypothermia."

I sit up and look to where the voice is coming from. It's FN2187, standing a few yards away.

I get up fast, reaching for my light saber but then remember that it's gone. I grab FN2187 using the Force instead and he drops to his knees. His eyes go wide and I ease off a little to let him talk.

"What are you doing here?" I ask him.

"I came because I knew if Rey ever comes back, she'll come to you first," he says with some effort. I let him go and he coughs.

"Who came with you?"

"Just me." He gets up, brushing the snow off his knees. He's wearing the Resistance Pilot's jacket, the pilot whom he helped escape from the First Order. It makes me think of when I first saw him wearing it and not his Stormtrooper's uniform. He was at Rey's side, trying to be some kind of hero.

"I should have killed you when you first betrayed me, Finn," I snarl.

Finn looks frightened, always the coward. Then his expression changes.

"If I hadn't left, then you would have never met Rey."

I Force choke him again. I've been wanting to do this for a while. But first I'll search his mind. He resists but I push past his resistance with hardly any effort. Fear is always the first emotion I see when I do this. I go further, into his memories.

"I see you already know you're a coward," I say, wanting him to know what I see when I read all his pathetic thoughts. "You turned your back on Rey, at Maz Kanata's castle." I glare at him. "You lied to her about being with the Resistance, so she'd see you as a hero. Then you took the first way out you could find." I frown at the sudden vision of Rey's hurt expression that I see in Finn's memories.

Finn resists more, which I take as a challenge. He must be hiding something. I find it quickly. He's hiding his shame, of deciding to run and leave Rey behind to take BB-8 to the Resistance Base. And he's hiding the location of the Resistance Base, but I don't try to get it out of him. I don't care where their base is.

Suddenly I see myself in his thoughts, when he saw me holding Rey limp in my arms as I carried her onto my ship, my cape flapping behind me . His hate for me was as strong as his concern for her as she was taken away, but not as strong as his shame for being a coward and allowing her to be captured. He blames himself. She ran into the forest because of his betrayal of her trust, or at least he thinks that's why she ran off and got captured, because he'd abandoned her.

Another image seared in his mind that comes to the surface, without me even searching for it, is Rey opening a door and looking at him with her face full of tears, full of pain, then replaced by hope as he tells her to go after me. He loved her enough to let her love someone else. And yet he lost her again. I watch as she swings the red light saber at Poe, Finn's only true friend, a vision he sees in his nightmares when he dares to sleep. He lost them both that day.

I pull my hand away and Finn falls to the ground.

I shouldn't have looked. I shouldn't have seen. Disgust washes over me. I'd always go straight for the information I need whenever I'd enter someone's mind, not... like this. And yet I did the same thing with Rey when I first had her in my interrogation chamber, because she fascinated me, her bravery, her loneliness and pain so much like my own. I wanted to see...

I turn my back to Finn, taking slow breaths. I don't want to know about his love for Rey. It only makes me hate him more.

"How did you get away from Snoke's influence?" he asks.

I don't want to talk to him, but I find myself answering anyway. "He wants me to find the sword."

"So that when you find Rey you can take her to him all over again?"

I swing around and throw Finn against the nearest tree. He cries out.

"You shouldn't have followed me here," I say, dragging him forward through the snow to land on his knees at my feet. He grasps at his throat as though trying to unlatch my invisible hold on his neck. He's afraid I'll kill him. I don't need to read his mind to know that, I can see it in his eyes. I should kill him, for being a traitor, for standing at Rey's side like he had some kind of right to be there, after turning his back on her.

I raise him up high and throw him again, this time he hits a large tree branch with the back of his head and falls into the snow. I reach for my light saber to finish him off. But the only thing in my hand is BB-8's memory chip. I'd forgotten I was still holding it. Rey loved BB-8, and she also loved Finn as her friend.

I walk over to him. He's curled onto his side, unconscious, red blood on the snow beside him. My shoulders drop. I was wrong. He's not the coward. I am.