A Practical Guide To Speaking Fluent Monster

Chapter 1

Kylo Ren would always remember the very first time he met Clarra Lumero.

Mostly because Kylo Ren had decided, within the first nine seconds of meeting her, that she was going to be a problem.

It had not been some elaborate or fated introduction, like he had expected. There had been no tremor in the hull. No shift in the Force sharp enough to make him turn. No omen, no vision, no flare of power running down the dark walls of the interrogation block.

He had been standing in Interrogation Three with his gloves half-fastened, shoulders squared, mind elsewhere. The prisoner was already strapped to the chair. A minor Resistance courier. No rank worth remembering, no spine worth respecting, no information worth taking gently.

Hux was standing near the door, rigid and thin and irritatingly pleased with himself, which usually meant he had brought Kylo something unpleasant and expected thanks. He was talking, droning on and on about efficiency and proper protocol, but Kylo wasn't listening. He was adjusting the seal of his gloves with condescending slowness.

"... Doctor Lumero." Hux continued. "She will be assisting you during high-value interrogations from this point forward."

Kylo shifted his helmet a fraction toward him at that, but only because it was a stupid sentence.

Hux, to his credit or stupidity, continued in the same clipped voice. "Doctor Lumero specializes in psychiatric medicine. She will monitor the subjects remotely and advise when continued pressure is likely to damage information rather than retrieve it."

The word made Kylo's hand stop. "I don't require assistance," he finally said, his voice terse and soaked with irritation.

"Marvelous. Tell that to the last three prisoners whose memories you rendered functionally unuseless." Hux replied. "Ren, you require supervision."

Kylo turned his head with a slow, exaggerated disinterest, intending to dismiss whoever Hux had dragged down to the detention block. He had almost looked away before he saw her.

Kylo had expected someone older. Someone pale and severe and dead-eyed from years of First Order service. Someone who smelled of recycled air and regulation and fear.

Instead, a woman stepped around the General's frame.

Her.

She was tall, wearing practical black cargo trousers and the light blue wrap shirt of the medical wing. She was young—too young for a senior medical post—with heavy shadows beneath a pair of stormy blue eyes, and sleek blonde hair falling loose around her shoulders.

Kylo froze, the leather of his gloves creaking slightly under the sudden, unconscious tightening of his fists. Behind the dark, red-tinted visor of his mask, the breath stopped in his chest.

She didn't look like a Jedi. She didn't look like a queen. She looked ordinary. Thoroughly, wonderfully ordinary.

Striking, perhaps, in that inconvenient way certain things were striking before one understood what had drawn the eye. A clean line of jaw. A tired softness beneath the eyes. A mouth that seemed made for either kindness or too much trouble, and in hindsight, Kylo would consider it a grave injustice that he had not been warned which one of the two she preferred.

Kylo had just stared at her, the mechanical vocoder amplifying a breath that had caught slightly in his throat.

The woman looked back at him. She did not flinch beneath the dark, imposing stare of his visor. She looked up. Not very far up, which was annoying. She was tall enough that the full effect of his usually massive height was diminished in a way he found personally offensive.