Soon after Ben left, a crew of mechanics came into her room to fix the wall he tore through. She distracted from the commotion by scrolling through the data-pad assigned to her. They were finished in a much short time than she would have thought, which prompted her to ask one of the men if this sort of thing happened often. In his hesitation, she found her answer.

So, Ben still remained a bit of a brat, it seemed. He was always feisty, arrogant, but it wasn't until she knew him as he was now that she saw true anger inside of him. Her words hurt him enough to ignite rage. She was trying to decide if she regretted what she said. Part of her did not. She was safe, that was true, but did it mean anything if he still chose to take over as the Supreme Leader and choose the First Order over his promise to her?

She worried if she made a choice too quickly in deciding to try to turn him. He showed her his heart in that elevator, all of his thoughts, his worries, his feelings. He was still tip-toeing the line between a full succumb and the chance of being saved. But in choosing to own the title of Supreme Leader, he took one step towards the Dark, while also trying to step towards the Light in Cyra's presence. She felt his shame when he told her of his new title. He was afraid of her reaction. He feared she would leave.

Cyra had no intent to leave. She was furious he was submitting to the ideals of the First Order once more, but as she was left with more time alone to think, it started to make some sort of sense. If he allowed someone else to control the First Order, it meant he would need to serve under a controlled leadership; with him leading, he would need not to worry about him or Cyra's relations because no one could dictate his actions. It started to become clear that he took the role to protect he and Cyra's relationship.

She started to realize he carefully chose his words to her. He intended to maintain the First Order where they were, not to continue spreading their reach. He implied no intention to track down the Resistance. Maybe it was his arrogance, in assuming they were too small to make a difference to their fleet, or maybe it was because he cared not of the Resistance anymore after facing Luke.

She wondered if Ben was thinking about Luke. She was sure, in the moment, he was too enthralled by seeing his former Master to accept his apology. It took Luke six years to admit his fault to the one person who deserved to hear it. They both could never return to the past and change their actions, but it was clear Luke tried to be sincere with his nephew, in what he knew were going to be his final moments.

So now there were a number of causal moments causing Ben's heart to waver. It was in his father, his mother, Cyra's return, Luke's apology. It seemed lately he could not escape his past.

Cyra didn't see Ben for the remainder of the time she was recovering. He didn't visit her. She was sure she was allowed to leave from the hospital wing, but with a bathroom in her residence and scheduled meals, she had no need. Instead, Cyra used her data-pad to read up on the galaxy history she missed in the last number of years and she listened to the music of old Bith musicians her father used to play when she was a child.

She practiced her physical therapy in both her leg and shoulder to regain the strength. She was regaining her strength in the Force by protecting her mind from Ben, although she was sure he had no inkling to see inside of it. She continued to practice lifting various objects throughout the room.

She regained even her mediation practice, if not to center herself in the Force once more, but to divulge in her memories. The maneuver pulled by the Resistance destroyed the Finalizer and with it, the backpack she carried for the last six years. Her lightsaber was now all she had left of the past, but even that wasn't truly hers.

In the quiet of the night, where she could be engulfed by the silence of her room, she tried to imagine the content of those letters. She tried to recall the scribbled handwriting of a boy who was writing quickly, trying to relay the information he learned to the eager girl who wanted to train from home. They were the letters of she and Ben, where he wrote every lesson he learned for her to practice and master. It was not fair, he kept telling her, that she was Force-sensitive and Luke denied her, when the other Padawan's were equally as powerful as Cyra.

Cyra didn't need to recall the letters  for any semblance of training. She wanted the content to return to the forefront of her mind to demonstrate to Ben, when he inevitably saw her again and found himself in her mind, how close to her heart she kept him in the last years, despite renouncing her love for him.

Her goal remained: returning Ben back to the Light. She may have disagreed with his decision to become the Supreme Leader, although she came to understand his intent and trust in his words to her to not advance the First Order, but she could not ignore the conflict in his heart, as Ben could not. In accepting his position and in accepting his love again and offering hers back to him, her goal had a chance. No matter how far he tried to run from Ben, she saw him in the facade of Kylo Ren, when they were alone.

It was a week and a half before the med-droid assigned to Cyra allowed her to leave.

"Um, but I don't have anywhere to go," said Cyra, confused.

"You have a protocol droid waiting to escort you to your quarters," said the med-droid. It bowed before her, then rolled back into its charging station.

Cyra frowned. Looking around the room, Cyra realized she had nothing of her own to be grabbing besides her data-pad. She grabbed it from on top of her bed and held it close to her chest as she started towards the door. She waved her foot over the sensor, causing it to slide open, and was greeted with a small, black BB unit.

"Oh, hello," she said.

It dropped its head in greeting, then started to roll away from her. She limped after him. He was ruthless in his navigation, cutting corners sharply, rolling through long stretches of corridor. Cyra knew he was tasked with guiding her and was not pressured to rush after him. After all, if he did disappear from her sight, he would have to peak his head back to find her again.

"Are you new?" she wondered.

The BB unit slowed to roll beside her. It beeped, in droid speak, and asked if it was obvious.

Cyra smiled down at the droid. "You're just a little eager. I don't mind."

Cyra found herself wondering why the First Order was so against not only easy navigation, but color. The Destroyer was stuck in a single color pallet of white, black, and grey and seemingly identical. Every hallway the BB unit led her down looked the exact same as the one they turned from.

She noticed Troopers begin to nod at her. She forced a tight-lipped smile at everyone who did so. She wasn't aware of what her position was aboard the Destroyer, nor why they were acknowledging her. She pondered briefly if Ben reacted a similar way as he did in her room when she was subdued by the Troopers on Crait; maybe they were trying to familiarize themselves as non-lethal to avoid death by temper-tantrum.

The BB unit came to a stop at the end of a hallway. A black door was sealed in front of her. There was a panel to the side of it with space for a hand. She applied her hand softly against it and felt the recognition machine hum underneath her fingers. The door split open, revealing yet another hallway, although this one had a singlular white door at the end.

"Thank you," said Cyra softly.

The BB unit chirped and rolled away.

Cyra stepped through the entrance. It closed behind her. She walked to the white door at the end of the hall and waved her hand along the sensor.

A staircase led down from the door and into an open living area. There were a few couches and an automated fireplace, a small dining table. A wall with an absent door separated the communal area from the bedroom and the bathroom. There was a bookcase against one of the walls, a desk. There were no windows, no lights that weren't of the fluorescent nature, but there was a splash of red among the mostly black interior, and it was refreshing.

Cyra peaked around the wall to the bedroom. She spotted her lightsaber on one of the nightstands beside the bed. She slid open the closet across from the bed and saw it divided into two. She pushed her hand into the filled half and recognized the ironed set of robes immediately.

In that same moment, she heard the front door slide open. Cyra closed the closet door quietly. She extended her hand, calling her saber to it. She walked back into the living room and saw Ben stepping down the stairs.

Ben greeted her when he noticed her, but he stopped at the end of the stairs. His eyes wandered the room, instead of meeting with hers. She tried not to smile as she noticed his demeanor start to shatter in her presence. His shoulders started to slouch, he was nervous to meet her eye.

She crossed her arms behind her back, shifting her weight between her feet. "Hi, Ben."

"I had this made while you were in the hospital," he explained, waving his hand to gesture to the room. "I figured you might want somewhere nice to sleep rather than a hospital bed."

"Thank you," said Cyra, nodding. She pointed towards the bedroom. "I assume you're moving in too, then?"

Ben raised his head from the floor. "Well, no, I don't have to. I can have them build--"

Cyra chuckled, causing him to fall quiet. "I was kidding. It's alright."

Ben nodded. He shrugged the cape from his shoulders and draped it over the couch. He started to pull off his gloves, one by one. Cyra briefly wondered if she should take her eyes from him as he was undressing. She had nothing to look at in the moment, besides him, but she found herself fascinated by the clothes clinging to his body, how he deliberately covered every aspect of his skin. Though he did not wear the mask any longer, she wondered about its absence.

Ben hesitated as he started to undress the belt around his middle. "I was younger when I joined. Snoke suggested it would help people fall into authority under me if they didn't know how old I was."

"You have grown since the last time I saw you," noted Cyra.

"You haven't," said Ben. When she was quiet, he looked at her and let out a quiet chuckle at the feisty way she was squinting at him. "I don't think you've grown since we were teenagers."

Cyra rolled her eyes. She watched Ben fold his clothes to sit nicely on the seat of the couch. He was left in his pants and a baggy long sleeved shirt. With nothing more to focus his hands on, his hands returned to sit awkwardly at his sides. At last, he made eye contact with her, to which she offered a smile and he nodded.

"I owe you an apology," she admitted to him. He remained quiet. "I'm sorry for what I said. I thought more about the situation and I came to understand why you stepped into power. I'm thankful for your protection."

"You thought I was going to hurt you," he said, ignoring her apology. Cyra opened her mouth, but he shook his head. "I would never hurt you. I would never jeopardize what I have with you. What I said was true, Cyra, I just want you. But I have since had other things to put in place so I can assure you and I have a fighting chance, like killing Snoke, like deciding how to move forward with the First Order, but do not doubt for a second that you aren't a factor in all of these decisions."

Shameful, Cyra lowered her chin. She had nothing else to say to him. She knew his love for her well enough to understand that he took the position of power to protect her, but she was desperately underestimating the lengths he took her in thought when making his decisions. How he always had.

Ben waited for her to speak. When she didn't, merely accepting his thoughts, he took a seat on the couch. He sat stiffly, though he sank into the cushion, and his eyes flashed quickly up to her, nodding for her to sit beside him.

Cyra sat stiffly as well, not due to the light discomfort in the air, but because it had been such a long time since she had been in comfort. She was used to the floor of the Cave on Ilum, or curled up in the cockpit of her old A-Wing. It had been a long time since she had been in a luxury space.

"I sense there are questions you have," said Ben. He put his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together. He did not have the courage to look at Cyra, though he watched her through the reflective panels on the wall across from them.

Cyra grabbed a pillow to hug on her chest, hiking her feet up on the couch. She slumped into the armrest of the couch, shrugging. "I sense there are questions you have, too, Ben."

He didn't have to be facing her for her to know he rolled his eyes. "Difficult."

"I could say the same for you," she said, nudging her foot into his hip. He flinched at the contact, his hand balling in a fist. Cyra retracted back into the corner of the couch. It was clear his contact with others was not at all in a playful sense. "But alright. Yes. I have a few questions..."

Ben's hand fell open again. He linked his hands together.

Cyra scratched her head. "Uh, what you told Snoke, on the Supremacy... About the vision you've had. A-About our future child..."

"No, it's not true," he interrupted. "I have had no visions about you. Not recently, at least. I just knew about Luke's vision of you turning to the Dark Side. I thought adding a child to the mix would be another safeguard for you and I. Snoke was with me from when I was a kid so I knew he would enjoy the thought of doing it..." Ben stopped when he felt Cyra tense. He looked at her, slightly alarmed when she looked at him, her mouth agape. "What?"

"How long?" she whispered. She didn't elaborate, but Ben connected where her head went, and he turned away from her again. He forgot she knew nothing of how long Snoke had been a voice in his head.

"I don't know. Longer than I can remember," he said quickly. "It's over with. There's no use in feeling bad you didn't catch on to it, or any of that. Don't blame yourself for any of this. I kept it from you because I didn't know until the night at the Temple that it wasn't my own thoughts and that it was someone else in my head."

Cyra blocked her mind from him, watching his reaction carefully, assuring he did not notice. He was too lost in his own emotional baggage to be noticing her distance her mind. She tried to push the new information to the back of her mind, saving it for later to think more upon. It seemed lately the folder in the back of her head was filling with more information about her past relationship with Ben, and it was not painting any of her memories as happy as she thought they were. 

Cyra decided to reach out and place her hand on his back. He was clearly embarrassed by his accidental admission. She reached out for him with her emotions, feeling his shame. "Ben, I'm not mad you kept it from me. And I don't think you're weak for not being able to resist Snoke's temptation...I've had years to relive that night on Mandalore, to think about what I would do, in your position. I just don't know. I don't. I just feel awful that you went through this alone."

Ben's head turned to her. "You're not upset with me?"

"I was never the hothead in our relationship, was I?" asked Cyra softly, smirking. He agreed quietly, turning his head back to the floor. She continued to rub her hand up and down his back, feeling his body relax under her soothing touch. "I've learned more in the last few days about our past history together than I have reliving it in my head through these years. I've grown and been able to see where you and I went wrong, where your family went wrong. Nobody is innocent in this. We were all just doing what we thought were the right moves. That's still true."

"What do you mean you've learned more?" asked Ben. She wondered if he even listened beyond her first words, when she heard the urgency behind his voice.

"Oh, I don't know. Luke told Rey about the vision of me, you had a vision of me--although that was a lie, I guess-- uhm, Leia said she knew the vision, too. Everyone's having visions of me turning to the Dark Side and dying except me," chuckled Cyra.

"I won't let you die," said Ben seriously. His body tensed under her touch again. His eyes were no longer laced with anxiety, of being in her presence, but rather with fury. "I...Skywalker and my mother said you died in their visions? How?"

"Ben, I don't know," said Cyra, returning her hands to her lap. Her exterior became guarded once more as his anger began to rise. "I thought you knew--"

Ben rose. "That's enough for tonight," he said shortly. He started to leave the room, taking the stairs in almost one stride. "I'll be back later. You should rest," he said, and he left the room and Cyra, who was awfully confused by where he needed to go.