"You told me she was dead."
"Have care how you speak, boy," snapped Snoke. His presence aboard the ship now matched Kylo's size now, and was certainly less intimidating.
"The girl from my youth. The one you wanted to come with me when I joined you. She was there, on Ilum. She was real. Alive," continued Kylo. The last time they had spoken resulted in Kylo smashing his helmet to pieces. He mildly regretted that decision now, as it resulted in him having to genuinely trying to conceal the anger in his existence, all of it directed at his superior. "You told me when I stopped feeling her in the Force that she had died."
Snoke raised his eyebrow. He hummed in thought as he reclined in his throne. "So the girl lives."
"How?" snapped Kylo.
Snoke said nothing as he waited for Kylo to calm down. Silence filled the room.
"Such anger in you, Apprentice," noted Snoke. "Maybe I should order you to kill her, if she provides such distraction from your task."
"No," said Kylo immediately. "When I first joined you, you told me we were going to find her, because of the connection we had."
"The girl means nothing anymore. She was weak when you came to me, she'll be weak now. There's no reason to waste the time to train an insolent, insignificant girl. It's the scavenger girl we want now," said Snoke. "If Cyra presents such a rise in your emotions again, you will be ordered to kill her. Do not let her distract from your training. She is apart of your past. It is time you let her go."
"No, you asked me to bring her to you, so we could train her, and she could grow powerful with me," said Kylo quickly. He knew in Snoke's hardened gaze that he was overstepping his boundaries, and he was alright with the punishment his superior would undoubtedly give him. He simply could not let himself forget her, or miss the opportunity. "If she was able to hide from me, from the Force, that requires strength, does it not? Perhaps she doesn't equal my level of power, but that's only because she is the first in her family to have access to the Force. If you allow me to find her, bring her here, she's another weapon we have against the Scavenger. Two against one."
Snoke, although irritated by his Apprentice, could not deny the power of odds. His Apprentice was not weak in the Force, but his faith was shaken when learning he had lost the battle against a girl who had barely begun to use the Force. It was shameful. It was not to happen again.
As he saw the gears in Snoke's head turning, Kylo continued, "She'll turn to the Dark Side. Skywalker saw it. I did. She didn't turn that night because her father was still alive, but she will, now, that she's alone. She's been alone for years. She'll be eager for solace. For comfort."
"You think you can turn her?" said Snoke.
"I do," said Kylo. He was unwavering.
Kylo did not care if Snoke was feeling his anger. His only concern was finding out the mystery behind his childhood love. It seemed as if the ghosts of his past were trying to prevent him from fully committing to the Dark Side. His father, now Cyra. He needed to know what happened to her. He needed a last chance to convert her to be with him, because, now, he knew she would. Skywalker's prophecy, at last, was going to come to fruition.
Snoke did not say anything else. He merely nodded, with a swift, uncaring wave of his hand. He and Kylo both knew of his power and his strength. It would be easy to subdue her or kill her, if his mission went awry. They would lose nothing but time, although that arguably mattered little, since they were tracking the Resistance ships to their ultimate demise.
Kylo had no thoughts of why Snoke allowed him to go. He immediately stood and turned on his heel, retreating back to his quarters. A medical droid intercepted his walk, sending orders that it was time for him to receive more work on the scar across his face. He debated briefly about skipping it, but ended in following the droid. He held no mirrors in his quarters. He felt barely any pain from it, though he remembered being told that repeated tending would go far in making the scar less noticeable than it was now, with a grey stitching holding his skin together.
He sat in a chair, hands on his knees. He stared at the black floor in front of his eyes as a small droid used its prongs against his scar. He stopped focusing on it to drive away any pain he could feel by focusing on it. He thought of Cyra. He wondered what she looked like now. If her hair had gotten longer. He liked it long.
Kylo blinked to reel his thoughts in. No. He was only finding her for answers. He could have no feelings to the Light, no people from his past trying to 'save' him from committing to the Dark. It had been six years. His feelings for the girl had long passed when he mourned her.
His eyes moved from the floor when he felt the proximity of someone familiar closing in on him. He looked to the door, though it did not slide open. He raised his hand to push the medical droid away from his face. He watched the door, for a few beats, until it continued to stay shut, and he moved his head to search the rest of the room.
He saw her. The scavenger. As her eyes met his, their lips were synonymous in splitting in shock. Silence fell through both of their ears. They were seemingly carved into a bubble of the universe. Silent, alone. Just the two of them, in two separate spaces, somehow connected in an otherworldly surrounding.
Rey broke eye contact first. She grabbed a blaster and fired it directly at his abdomen.
Kylo grunted, his hands flying to the chairs arms as he braced for an impact that did not come. He looked at his abdomen, free of a blast, and whipped his head back to the position in which he saw her. She was gone. The rest of the room, the drab black interior with mild light, had returned in her place.
Kylo rasied himself. He ran from the room, into the hallway, accidentally sliding across the polished floor. He turned to see both ends of the hallway--empty, except for a mouse droid squealing away from him.
But then he felt her. He turned back around. He saw her, squinting at the sunlight from wherever she was, but looking at him.
He raised his hand. "You'll bring Luke Skywalker to me."
Rey continued to look at him. She was no longer squinting from the sunlight, through the scrunch in her brow remained. Her teeth were clenched as she was forced to look at him.
He felt her disgust. He said nothing of it. Grinding his teeth together, he retracted his hand, his shoulders releasing their tension. His attempt to control her mind did not work, whether it be by her strength, or their assumed long distance. He had never been engaged in whatever it was they were connected through, but he knew he wasn't doing it, and neither was she. He believed neither of them required the power to achieve such a task.
"You're not doing this. The effort would kill you," he said. When Rey continued to glare at him, he turned, checking the hallway behind him. "Can you see my surroundings?"
It remained empty, drab, matching the usual decor choice of First Order facilities. He turned to her once more, looking beyond her body, but he saw nothing. Just her. It was as if they were isolated in a vacuum of darkness. He only saw her body, in the distance, and he assumed she saw the same.
"You're going to pay for what you did!" snapped Rey, but Kylo paid no attention to her.
"I can't see yours," he continued over her. "Just you."
Rey's chest rose with an angered breath.
"So, no," he answered for her. He looked above her, beyond her. "This is something else."
A noise broke through from her side. A door opening. Rey turned, Kylo's eyes followed. All he saw was a distorted shape, a human shape, and a familiar presence alongside it. He recognized the shape of his former Master's energy even in the disguised Force.
"Luke," he said, and Rey whipped back to look at him, but their connection had lost.
Kylo stared into the replaced corridor. He wondered what was dictating their ability to see each other. The Force, he assumed. But why was the Force connecting them?
Although he should inform Snoke, he wasn't going to. Despite being his superior, having trained him, Kylo had no intention of confiding his superior again. He could not trust him any longer with questions. He remembered vividly the day he had stopped feeling Cyra's presence in the Force. It was mere days after he left her, and he ran to Snoke, asking why.
"Supreme Leader, it's Cyra, something is wrong. I-I can't I feel her anymore. Is she too far, is s-s--" he was begging for answers.
"She's probably dead," Snoke had said, without any mercy. "The Force can transcend across the galaxy. Your distance from her means nothing, if your bond is true. If you don't feel her through it, she has succumbed to it."
- - - - -
Kylo was interrupted numerous times on his way back to his quarters. The only time he stopped of his own volition was while passing a production dock. He was beginning to sense that familiar feeling from earlier. The scavenger. He stopped by the window, his eyes casting on the sparks of golden flares that were cascading down the left size of the trapezoidal window. He looked briefly in the production dock for a sign of the girl, but ultimately turned his chin, and saw her presence behind him.
She looked calmer this time. She had expected to see him, too.
"Why is the Force connecting us?" he asked. "You and I."
"Murderous snake," she seethed. There it was. The venom returned to her eyes the minute he started to speak to her. "You're too late. You lost. I found Skywalker."
Her boasting connected the thoughts in his head. It was not merely because he killed his father that she loathed him. He assumed Skywalker had mentioned what happened the fateful night of the Temple.
"Did he tell you what happened?" he asked simply. He couldn't leave Skywalker to explain his side of the story without having to explain his own to the girl. "The night I destroyed his temple, did he tell you why?"
"I know everything I need to know about you," snapped Rey.
"You do?" asked Kylo, a smirk forming on his lips. His chin lowered as he searched her eyes. It was there. The hatred grown from her own ignorance of events in the past. "Ah, you do."
Rey stared at him. As he took a step closer, she stood her ground, but her teeth bared, like they did the last time she prepared to fight him. Kylo had no intention of doing so.
"You have that look in your eyes," he noted. "From the forest. When you called me a mosnter."
"You are a monster," she said quickly.
"Yes, I am," he responded as fast.
Their proximity was closer than it was at the start of the conversation. She hadn't moved, but he had closed the distance between them, taunting her. He wanted to see how far she would go, or what the Force would allow. He was allowed nothing of the sorts-- he blinked once, and her eyes were gone from his sight. He flinched as he felt a dribbling from his forehead. He wiped his hand over his forehead and watched the collected water fall from his gloved hand.
Rey was somewhere near water, which didn't narrow anything down. But it showed him something else, far more meaningful to him than Skywalker, at the moment. Water suspending through their connection meant they weren't existing outside of the physical world.
Again, knowing their second connection was knowledge his Superior should be aware of, Kylo made no move to run to Supreme Leader Snoke. Rey had no idea how the Force was connecting them, nor did he. But he was sure as hell going to try to connect with the one person he wanted to utilize the Force to see--his old lover.