i found something in the woods somewhere.

[apparare]

open post. ▬ action ▬ prompts ▬ continuing threads ▬ force shenanigans

Comments

omg first I feel so privledged / sorry this is so long oh god

[huxed]

[ it’s a staggering defeat - as much of a blow to the ego as a dent in their numbers, and they slouch homeward, he goes to collect the fallen apprentice (blood on the snow, black clad limbs spread across the forest floor - his hair congealed in the dark liquid, clumped and matted) as he is told to.

(He had recoiled, when he had first seen the other man - something about the quiver in the other’s hands, shoulders - it had been an instinctual reaction; witnessing something so unbridled; broken but livid - the anger was a heat haze, just short of visible).

Defeats for the First order are rarer than sunshine on Arkanis.

He retrieves Ren himself, hoists him onto the floor of the shuttle’s docking bay, his own uniform soaked with the dark blood that has pooled beneath the man’s body.

What a defeat indeed.

But this is a single battle in a season of wars, and it may sting now, but the First Order is as resilient as a parasite, and they will lick their wounds. ]

You are a damned fool.

[ He grits it out at the force-user, panting into the simulated air of the hanger, a strand of Ren’s hair caught in the cufflink of his greatcoat.

The man’s face is a wreck, streaming from a long cut that will inevitably scar. He imagines that Ren will like that - a proper mark to wear, the first component of a new mask. Who knows though, he’s as unbalanced as that lightsaber he carries (it sparks with glitches, he remembers, buzzing as if touched by water). ]

Can I get some assistance, or are you all going to stand around and look useless?

[ Hux barks his orders at the troopers. Some things do not change. Defeat or not. He looks down at Ren, taps him on the uninjured cheek. ]

Stay awake, you idiot, Snoke will have my head if I turn up with a corpse.

[ he untangles the strands of black hair from his cuff, but finds that they are wound tight. ]

sorry i am so slow

[apparare]

( It's possible that the wounds might not have bled so much had he not curled his hands into fists and beat them gaping and angry. Even through blurring levels of consciousness, sweat and melting snow running into his eyes, Kylo can feel the blaring anger and rage fed and fanned by the twisting vines of pain, dulling now to a low simmer that leaves him with little more than the echoing reminder of his failure and what will come about as a result of it. Not to mention the pain itself. His face is on fire.

He becomes keenly aware of Hux's voice dragging him through gallons of water and into acute consciousness. Kylo surfaces viciously from the hazy in-between that left him prone on the forest floor before Hux plucked him from sliding into the fissure in the earth, gritting his teeth and baring them, against the pain in his flank, bisecting his face, against overall frustration of having Hux hovering above him, against that loss. )

For once in your life, shut up.

( The sharp sound of his voice isn't a surprise, the scrape of rock against rock as he throws off the first stormtrooper with an outward pulse from the five-point star of his palm. It's a violent shove, and it sends the solider into the wall with enough force to crack open his helmet on the bulkhead. Kylo's shoulders surge with the effort of converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. His vision slants under the strain of digging deep to find the necessary power to leave the trooper prone on the ground. )

Snoke is sure to be pleased with your latest endeavor.

( He means the Starkiller base, the entire weapon project itself. It brings a sense of satisfaction that dislodges some of the other rocks that make up the weight of his chest, never mind the punishment he knows waits for him at the hands of the Supreme Leader. )

♥︎♥︎♥︎

[huxed]

[ That gets a snort.

Hux disentangles himself from the fallen apprentice, mouth pulling into a sneer of its own accord; leave it to Ren to be mouthy, even in a condition as poor as this one. And then, one of his troopers is being thrown back, and the noise of it rings through the hanger - collateral damage for carrying a wounded force-user on board (untrue; said force-user seems to attract collateral damage regardless of his state - this whole endeavor of the past few months seems to have been nothing but collateral damage). The rest of the stormtroopers linger between following orders and their natural fear of Ren - Hux does not flinch.

He stands, stiffly - just an inch off from his usual well-put-together self (slightly bloodied, slightly disheveled), and looks down at the wreckage of Kylo Ren. ] We will return to base, and report to Snoke as soon as you're capable of something other than bleeding on myself and the floor of my ship.

[ He begins to order the stormtroopers forward once again (and there is a good four second pause before they follow his instructions, causing the general to cast them a swift glare). ] We will both face disciplinary action, and we will both deserve it.

[ Turning to Ren, Hux bends down, meeting the other man's eyes (that cut does give him a certain viciousness now, but what a memory; defeated and wounded by the girl - pitiful). ] And you will stop attacking my troopers.

[ They have brought a stretcher. Hux's eyes flick from it, to Ren - one eyebrow arched in warning.

(He does not pity the other man, but something, he can tell, is off. He's uncertain of what precisely happened back on Starkiller base, and doubts that he will ever hear the truth (from Ren at least). It founds its mark, though, whatever it was). ]

Where's the helmet? [ Hux's voice is pitched low, it's almost said as a conciliation for the briskness of earlier - a neutral offering. ]

[apparare]

( Kylo smiles, all teeth, a wolfish, ragged grin that doesn't touch his eyes. Hux should recognize the challenge in it. He doesn't smile often but when he does it's either a cause for serious, alarming concern or a justified warning for everyone within a fifteen foot radius to back up out of range of his grip if they value their windpipe. Lacking the energy to so much as swat at the general like an errant fly, Kylo resorts to pinning the other man in place with a sneer alone. It doesn't matter to Kylo whether or not Hux perceives him as a threat: they both know the only thing keeping Kylo from snapping his neck on a bad day is the Supreme Leader's insistence that he leave Hux alone and let the general do his job.

He turns his head to spit on the metal grating, surprised when it doesn't color pink with blood. It seems like that's all he can taste. )

Getting your hands a little dirty suits your complexion, General.

( As Hux orders them forward, Kylo refuses the troopers' assistance once again, though less violently this time. He won't be hauled up to sitting by a bunch of marvelously unpredictable - FN2187, he thinks, quite suddenly, unconscious in the snow - meatheads with blasters tethered to their belts like degenerates. Considering that makes him pause to consider his saber, and one look down at it once he's got his back up against the wall, long legs angled out in front of him with a curled fist pressed to the bowcaster burn in his side, tells him all he needs to know about the damage that's been done to it. )

Get off.

( The troopers back off, the stretcher bobbing nervously between the two that carry it. It takes serious effort, but he manages to pull the long lines and blunt edges of his body into a crouch, then a lean, until finally he's standing, knowing that the pain and discomfort he feels now will be nothing compared to what Snoke levels at him later. Hux will suffer, more than he has before probably, but his punishment will be a walk in a field of daisies compared to what the Supreme Leader will put Kylo through for losing the girl, the map, the last known link to Skywalker. Not to mention his defeat in general. His broken saber. Bile builds in the back of his throat, and he spits again. )

I removed it. Back at Starkiller. ( Which is about as forthcoming as he wants to be about that whole incident. Kylo turns his attention to the remaining troopers and lone medical officer dispatched to tend to a prone-to-tantrums Knight of Ren. He doesn't have to use the Force to get them to leave, but he does anyway, dropping his voice to an octave that doesn't run the high side of pain he's still feeling, saying, Leave. Now. Maybe it's just to prove to himself that he can still do it. He turns to Hux again once they've been left alone. ) Any word from our illustrious Leader?

so slow over here, sorry!

[huxed]

As always, your input, Ren, is indispensable.

[ Have a sneer to go with that comment, although it does lack something of its usual brand of scorn. It is difficult to take the knight altogether too seriously in his current state, intimidating though he might be. But, he does not like that smile - there's a venemous quality to is and he wants to recoil, as if by some prehistoric impulse that warns him of danger. Technically, Ren is a predator; he is quite capable of snapping any one of their necks, even in his current condition. But, the impulse passes as quickly as it became present, and he watches the other man spit, half-expecting it to be bloodied.

What a thing it is, to watch Kylo Ren attempt to pull himself together.

The man is comprised of such a sheer force of will that Hux finds that the room crackles with it. Naturally, the stubborn creature does not accept the offer of the stretcher, he ought to have guessed that any attempts at assistance would be shaken off with the arrogance of a sulky teenager. Hux's mouth draws into a thin line; there will, he thinks, come a day in the future where he will spend the entirety of it not exasperated at Kylo Ren. That day, however, seems to grow more and more distant. All he needs now, is for the idiot to do something irreparable to himself, to bleed out in his priggishness, his reluctance to user a stretcher after being shot six ways to Sunday. The floor of the hanger is a mess of blood. Half of it is on Hux himself already, so he grimly steps forward to clamp a hand around Ren's upper arm when he rights himself (if listing dangerously to the left counts as such), supporting a small amount of the other's weight.

Hux watches him cautiously, a beat passing before he speaks. ] No word, not yet.

[ Hux chooses to avoid replying to the comment about the helmet. Whatever happened on Starkiller base will, undoubtedly, remain exclusive to Kylo. He does not doubt that the man will deliver some garbled account when he is forced to make his report, but he is aware that it will be a far step from the truth.

The troops leave, and there is a twitch of irritation in the general's jaw, but he remains silent.

Then, clearing his throat, still keeping a hold of the apprentice's arm in order to ensure that the man does not topple over onto the floor (which, he thinks, is a distinct possibility right now). Hux attempts to sound unphased, as well as commanding: ] Seeing as you've dismissed the medics, I'll be escorting you to the medbay myself.

[reygun]

[ She's sent on a very low-key, quiet mission for the Resistance, testing her own newly acquired Jedi training, the Force a new and familiar thing all at once. The Falcon is exchanged for some non-descript ship, less noticeable, less conspicuous despite Chewbacca being her co-pilot, firmly stationed with the ship itself while Rey sets out to seek her own information. Her lightsaber ( it's Luke Skywalker's— it's Anakin Skywalker's ) is tucked securely at her left hip and entirely out of sight, her hair down and curled around her shoulders, seeking that certain junk dealer with the information she needs—

And then, she feels him: a burning in her veins, a throb in her temple, a hum in her ear she can't shake, hackles raised and immediately launched into the defensive, hissing a soft: We've got company, Chewie into the slim communicator at her wrist. Kylo Ren is here and if he doesn't doesn't realize she is as well, it won't take very long.

Evading him is improbable and she dreads and seeks it all the same, everything her new master wishes for her to avoid, everything she foolishly, actively seeks. She's not afraid of the adversary, a boy she's faced before, petulant and angry and flushed over the sharp bridge of his nose, too truthfully human to be a real monster, too much of a shade of his parents and she stupidly postpones the mission to find him, darting in and out of stands, eyes keen and watchful, feeling him near.

Rey reaches out with the fingers of the force, her touch gentle, prodding: ] Kylo? Are you looking for me?

[apparare]

( Strangely enough, the first familiar presence that Kylo Ren hones in on during the First Order's summit on some planet is not Rey's but Chewbacca's. It could be imagined, once he picks up on it, but the scar tissue left behind as an echo of his old guardian's choice of weaponry and wide shot - he's gone over it a hundred times in his head: there's no way the Wookie would have missed if he'd meant to kill him - twinges and aches. It doesn't slow him down or give him pause, but it does angle his head away from the table and meeting he is standing in on, Hux droning on about the cost of repairs to his fleet and the assembly of a further amount of Star Destroyers and TIE fighters.

Militarized planning has never interested him as much as what Snoke has taught him, especially lately, given their path to the Supreme Leader's star system so that Kylo may complete his training. This is a pitstop, just a detour, which is why it thrills Kylo so completely to feel Chewbacca's presence and, then, winking into existence as if it had always been there, Rey's.

Underneath the heavy metal weaving of his helmet, his breath catches a little in his throat, popping through the modulator in a way that makes some of the people around him nervous. He can see it in the hackles that raise along the backs of their necks, the raw panic that rolls off of them like fog. Hux does not stop talking but casts a weary expression his way. Kylo stops himself from using the Force to crush his windpipe for that sort of display alone. )

Seems like I've found you, doesn't it?

( By his estimate, the connection links around the same time, with him picking up on her but not establishing contact just several seconds before she does. The palms of his hand itch, his saber clipped to his belt, and it takes a great deal of willpower not to turn and stalk from the room and seek her out and ignite the raw power in his saber immediately. )

[reygun]

[ Forcing calm to roll through her own frame of mind in waves, she feels him out further, or at least as far as he allows her to. He's close but not exactly on her heels, the sharp peak of his excitement over their sudden proximity buzzing at he back of her head, her eyes glancing off the faces of the people she passes, wary of stormtroopers and First Order members alike. No one is paying a little scrap of a girl in neutral tones much notice, and she ducks into a dusty little alleyway to find her focus.

Chewie bellows at her over the comm, his own instinct sensing trouble, and she murmurs her reassurances before shifting her attention back to Kylo, shielding the location of their ship behind a well fortified mental block. ]

You weren't supposed to be here. [ Resistance intel had put Kylo Ren safely on his ship two star systems away, banking on the fact that the Order would skip over this little oasis, not exactly a hole-in-the-wall planet but nothing they might typically set their sights on for any political or military gain. Her back pressed to a wall, partially secluded in shadows, her hand falls with new instinct to her lightsaber, tucked beneath her tunic, fingers wrapping around the hilt but not removing it yet. ] I'm not interested in a rematch.

[ She means it— not particularly interested in dueling with him period, least of all in a saber fight. She leaves their connection open just enough for him to feel unthreatened, only wary, and still with that unwavering curiosity towards him. ]

[apparare]

Surprise. ( There's dull amusement in the tone he projects across to her. ) I'm more interested in your reasons for being here than I am tracking you down for a rematch. General Organa sending you on a scavenger hunt?

( The question might as well be rhetorical, given that he's sure he knows without having to dig deep what she's here for. While being more or less a hive for thieves, escaped convicts, and people with nowhere else to do, the planet serves as a central outpost for many traveling from one section of this system to the next. Having a heavy hand on it would be beneficial to the First Order's needs, and while those in charge - convicts in their own right - have not necessarily been amenable to talks regarding the military presence and ownership of their people, services, and homes in general, having three Knights of Ren gathered around the table has certainly ensured that these discussions transpire in a more favorable fashion than the last time Kylo set foot on this dumpster of a rock.

It strikes him belatedly how conversational his tone grows toward the end of his question, as if he's asking her what the weather's going to be like the next five or so days. He straightens his posture in the room and shoots a glance out of his peripheral at the Knight standing next to him, who sees fit to leave on the heavy claymore rather than the way Kylo is standing himself. Kylo neglects to make eye contact, which isn't an abnormality, in an effort to keep the others out. )

[reygun]

[ There hasn't been a moment when he isn't in her head, kept at a careful distance but still ever present, a dull flutter behind her eyelids, at her temple. Kylo keeps his thoughts just as guarded, constantly on alert of her presence and entirely capable of holding her at bay but still, Rey very privately finds herself growing used to it, to him. Not that she'd ever admit it, catching that hint of dry humor in his mental voice with some genuine surprise, feeling herself relax minutely. Never enough drop her guard. ]

You know I'm not going to tell you that.

[ And she isn't overly fond of the scavenger joke, either, but her reply lacks any malice or even ill will, tentatively feeling around his thoughts, catching the faintest glimpse of his environment. He's with his comrades ( if Kylo Ren considers anyone a comrade to begin with ) and he's keeping himself in check behind that helmet like always, still preferring him without, though she supposed it hardly matters when they're not face to face.

It might be just to grate at him a little, her own physical posture alert, if only to stay cautious of the surrounding populace, she adds with her own hint of humor, a healthy dose of sarcasm: ] —didn't miss me, did you?

oh look we finished a thread shows up with nonsensical images for another

[forcevisions]

omg nonsensical images are my favorite how did you know

[apparare]

( It's weeks veering into months before he sees her in the physical sense again, following their encounter on Yaga Minor. Without stopping to ask himself why, he had fabricated an illusion regarding the discovery of Resistance activity in one of the colonies swirling around in the wilderness of the planet but had informed Snoke and Hux that upon further investigation it appeared to have been abandoned for some time, that the expense of sending a fleet to scour the area in hopes of finding a clear picture of where the group had gone would be far greater than the payout. Hux had been beside himself with silent, simmering rage as Snoke berated the both of them for operating too slowly, Kylo in particular for not having the foresight necessary to have anticipated their movements. Another failure, another weakness, another pathetic display of his effort and inability to produce results. He could have his grandfather's ambition all he claimed, but the fact remained that at this age Vader had accomplished far more while destroying far less out of anger and frustration, which in turn only enraged Kylo further.

When they begin their final approach toward Corellia to collect two of the Star Destroyers that the First Order has commissioned, Kylo tries breaching the void to speak with his grandfather but is met with silence. He spends considerable time staring out the viewport on the bridge, Hux pacing the length of the area while lecturing one of the engineers, before he tries reaching out toward Rey. Sometimes, mostly in the last hours before the end of the night cycle, he's able to pick up images and suggestions of what she's doing or who she's with, the vague weight of a saber in hand, a sudden onslaught of spice assaulting his sinuses, the sense that she's casting a line out and searching for him, too, before one of the two of them or both at once slam down on it like the force behind the effort will be enough to sever it for good. It never does This time, he senses nothing from her, a staticky void, a vacuum of darkness. She has him shut out so expertly that he almost feels put out about it. The next deck officer who speaks to him regarding landing preparations gets stony silence for a full minute following his report before Kylo turns on his heel and leaves him a nervous wreck for Hux to deal with.

His first night on Corellia is spent restless and awake, staring into the forest that encroaches on the capitol city like a cancerous growth. Corellian winds have kept them from returning to the Finalizer while Hux and several other senior ranking officers haggle with the Corellians over prices, and Kylo would rather be anywhere other than Han Solo's home planet, regardless of how much distance has been traveled between now and his stumble on the bridge. The second night passes in the same fashion, though the moon goes from blaring white to murky, blood red as it hangs low in the southern skies, and he spends a useless two hours attempting meditation in the courtyard after he's run several training droids through. He gets an inkling of something through the Force but can't place it. It isn't until the third night that he realizes what he's picking up on is General Organa, looking for him. By the time he realizes it, the Resistance has the jump on them, and the first shots are fired as soon as the sun has disappeared for the day and the harvest moon has taken its place.

Resistance attacks come in waves, bowling over the First Order's defenses as they are attacked by Corellians and Resistance fighters alike. Hux calls for backup, but TIE fighters and the shuttles carrying more ground troops have a difficult time not only getting through Poe Dameron's aerial attacks but also in combating the high, strong winds. He might have sensed something was coming for them, but it will be Hux who takes the brunt of the Supreme Leader's anger this time, given his insistence on traveling to Corellia to collect his ships despite weather advisories. Kylo makes it a point not to care about what happens to Hux, cuts through them all like he's mowing down the tall stalks of wheat that comprise a good portion of Corellian farmland. He catches a glimpse of who he thinks is FN-2187 and doubles back at a jog, deflecting the white hot bolt from a blaster somewhere behind him, throwing his mind open in the process and immediately feeling it flood with - )

Where? ( Kylo isn't sure if he says it aloud or if it's broadcast out of his head like a particle beam aimed straight for her, but he doesn't have to wait very long for his answer. The electric heat that her lightsaber casts off fills the air with the smell of burnt ozone, and he turns to find her, looking for all intents and purposes as if she's been waiting for him. His mind opens and reaches for her, spans the distance that separates them. ) There.

( He charges. )

writes a page and a half of politics and training context i'm so sorry

[forcevisions]

[ Finding them wasn't going to be easy, but Rey's honesty made it easier, and for all the exasperation that came with knowing how long she'd kept the secret, both Luke and Leia were grateful for the eventual outcome. In sharp contrast to Kylo Ren's silence to his master, Rey confessed to hers readily once they had made their way to a new base in the ashes of a Rebel Alliance base on Yavin IV—Poe's suggestion.

As soon as he realized that there was no keeping her from it, Luke taught her what he had been holding back, including how to block the darkness out of her mind like Ben Solo had never been able to with Snoke. Practicing, Luke warned, meant coaxing him to her, but Rey was fearless and persistent.

For a while, she could simply feel him probing, become more aware of it while she was training. Once she was certain his presence was gone, she would alert Luke, and they would begin again with mental training. Then, she began reaching out to him to coax him into meeting her on equal footing in this mess of a connection they'd forged with one another, too strong to be ignored with even a billion billion stars between them. And she'd cut him short, or he'd beat her to the punch, but she'd get practice either way—as much prying past his barriers as setting up her own.

From then, he senses her only when he wants her to, and in the days leading up to the assault, Luke doesn't want her to allow it—so she stonewalls him. Nothing but a frozen vacuum greets him when he grabs for her mentally—as promised, she provides him fewer opportunities. Fewer ways to reach for what she had once freely been willing to offer.

Leia is the one who decides it ought to be Corellia, for the importance it holds to their family, and she decides it on the same night that she insists Rey call her Leia now—they are equals, Leia tells her. Rey is a Jedi knight, not a Resistance lieutenant, and Leia can remember the stories from her father of the dangers that come with mixing politics and the Force. They must remain separate and cooperative, or they too will fall prey to the Dark Side. (Rey still sometimes scoffs at the notion; there is only one Force. Dark and Light always coexist, always balance one another—you can't have one without the other, she tries to tell Luke, and he gets that same worried look in his eye that kept him from completing her training months ago.)

Rey does not take the title of General, as Obi Wan once did. She does not go charging with a fleet of soldiers at her back, or even another Jedi at her side—she goes in alone, and with one purpose: to make good on a promise.

Air strikes distract them long enough for her to get on the ground. Chewie and Finn busy themselves making for Hux, ready to cut the head off the snake and tear down the organization that enslaved Finn for most of his life, that stole his childhood and his family and any chance for normalcy, but Rey goes for another head.

She defends herself from him, putting up a cold void that keeps him from sensing her coming until she wants him to, until it's too late to keep her from the battle. Then, the floodgates open, and —

A surge of anticipation races through her veins when he calls out for her, his voice booming through her mind so keenly that it may as well have resonated in her ears. The light glints off his mask as he turns toward her, and she raises her lightsaber into a guarding position across her chest, ready for the clash when he rushes her.

There is no clang when pure energy meets its like, but the blades sing all the same and purple highlights the atmosphere between them, casting a glow over their dance that is both warm and cool in equal measure. When he sees her now, Rey wears the leather skirts and dark robes of a Jedi knight, those that he had never properly earned before defecting, those that Luke would not confer to him, and her eyes are weathered with resolve. ]

You've gotten slow. [ She boasts the surety in her skill of the Skywalker whose saber she has inherited—not Luke, but his father. Deflecting his swing with a heavy shove, she crouches to avoid a following hack, then brings her saber up in a flourish to try an upward cross-slash against his back. ] Accept that you can't win this. [ Surrender and sabotage are their best options—the Resistance is a blip beside the monolith of the First Order. This surprise attack is as much a hail mary pass as it is a siege. ]

this is the best thing to wake up to never apologize /heart eyes

[apparare]

( The solid blue beam is a sharp contrast to his, which still jumps and crackles at the edges despite the repairs. He's kept the quillons, even if the blade overall is more stable than it used to be following the attention he's given it while completing his training, remembering the smell of FN-2187's skin fusing with the soft leather of his jacket as the lateral vents allowed discharges of pure plasma to burn him. It's the crossguard that catches the angle of her lightsaber as he twists to avoid being sliced from coccyx to cervical vertebrae just in time, one arm crossed over his body at an angle that catches the weight of her strike but just barely. Padded armor and fraying fabric catch the blast radius of her blade and the smell of burning leather cuts the air between them as he feels the first careful sting of a burn across the back of his knuckles. The inertia of her movements and gravity work together to bring his blade to the floor, melting metal like paper, but he's ready with his free hand close to his chest, a verifiable wind up as he pushes back at her with a blow to get her off of him, setting her back a few paces and allowing him room to right himself, a dark thing rising to shake earth and dust from its shoulders as it wakes. )

We're just getting started.

( Pain drives him. Underneath the armor, behind the wall of the mask, he manages to sound amused, despite the dryness of his throat. Several paces away from her now - hardly out of reach by Force standards - Kylo has room to spin the hilt of his blade in his grip, a slow blur of red that issues a challenge. He favors flourish and flare, even when he isn't toying with an opponent, but he can already tell and is loathe to admit that she is the better swordsman of the two of them, from a certain point of view. The disadvantage of training with someone as powerful and wise as the Supreme Leader is suffering in combat training. He's always been skilled with a lightsaber, but Rey has the advantage of having studied with someone interested in rounding out her education and making her a warrior as opposed to having a master who knows that he is all powerful without the use of a blade. Kylo's skills have been improved and polished since the last time that he clashed with the girl across from him, as Snoke recognizes his use as an agent in the field, but just from the way that she holds herself, he can tell that, at this stage, relying on his swordsmanship alone would put him at a disadvantage.

It makes the task of anticipating what form she favors or what she's learned that much more difficult without opening the channel between them, but he's not interested in cataloging his own movements so easily for her in return for a bit of information. He's not interested in sacrifice. Or pulling his punches.

So he lashes out at her with a blunt punch to the gut through the Force, hoping to knock her off of her feet as he sprints the distance between them and crosses his blade in a heavy arc around him that brings it up and down and around in a blur, making it a difficult thing to predict where it's going to land. She'll be ready to meet him with the parry, Kylo knows, but he throws the full weight of his malice and adrenaline and the necessity of survival behind it. He can beat her. He knows he can beat her. He has to beat her. )

You've gotten sharp. ( Kylo somehow manages to make the compliment sound backhanded, as though he's offended and charmed by her progress all at once. He has to shout it over the loud roar of the battle that's burning down Corellia, and Rey glances his advancing strike off as he prepares himself for another offensive onslaught, squaring his shoulders even as he leans forward into his stance, holding his blade at an angle to the ground,. ) Or maybe it's arrogance.

looks up lightsaber forms and gets so many feelings about so many fight scenes i need jesus

[forcevisions]

[ Light flashes through the air with each spin of his saber, a beautiful display of the macabre, of great and terrible power misused. Pushed back by the force, Rey lands flat in the mud and swings her lightsaber immediately overhead to cut against his downward slash, which demonstrates the polish on his abilities as he slices more than hacks downward. She whips up onto her feet by knocking him back with a thrust of her lightsaber.

This time, she doesn't run for high ground.

In stark contrast to Kylo Ren's boastful posturing, Rey keeps her movements reserved and tightly focused, and when he comes blazing in with another arcing swing, she side-steps it and gracefully avoids the slash with short-steps to take advantage of his charges before she tries to catch his open flank with a powerful upswing of her own. ]

Surety is not always arrogant, though I can see how you might confuse the two. [ Her tone leans on "you" to deflect his accusation as expertly as she deflects his attacks, bearing all of Luke's patience in the same breath that she weighs all of Obi Wan's smug assurance and her own staunchly aggressive spark.

She waits for him to come at her again and whirls her blade in a defense, locking it in the joint of his quillons and using her own brute strength and the will of the Force to press his blade back towards him, ready to burn into his chest.

With his studying of the old ways, he would recognize the form, known and practiced now only to the line of Obi Wan's teachings, for any others who practiced it consistently were cut down with the Council. Though she lacks the stringent learning to name it, Djem So smoothes Rey's rough edges and focuses her fiery spirit into a singular weapon that rebuffs and evades to turn him on himself, just as she had done in his own interrogation room, just as she would do with the run-off of his own lightsaber pouring out the quillons given half a chance.

And she is certain, unerringly so, never letting the question of whether he might win this into her mind. And yet, as she forces his quillons back towards his body, she presses it towards his right shoulder—a move designed to disarm (perhaps literally, given the way her eyes burn with a grudge buried in a shallow grave), but not kill. Even now, in outright war, she does not come unhinged and cry for blood; she instead insults him with the belief that she can bring him out of this alive. It worsens as she takes advantage of being up close and person to reach out to him with a plea for ceasefire, a reminder. ] You have the power to end this, Ben.

[reygun]

[ she starts from an unplaceable dream one night ( —dark colors, swirling, her vision obscured by a low lying mist, the path before her tenuous and uncertain ) and she's in near agony, the skin on her face stretched and raw and overwarm, a diagonal cut, a low, simmering pulse of throbbing pain in her side above her left hip. Rey lingers in a few terrified moments of confusion before it abates and she realizes these sudden wounds are not her own, the healing remnants of a saber cut, a purposefully missed blaster shot.

Drenched in sweat in her cramped little bunk on base, the small of her back damp, she lifts a hand to touch her own face, smooth and unmarred, a phantom pain that eases the longer she's conscious until it's only a memory— a memory that isn't truly her own to begin with. Knees bent, her elbows sling across them, head bowed between them as she reigns in her focus, dredges up that infinite well of calm deep within in.

It finds her and her pulse evens out. She can hear Finn's endearing snoring a room away, grateful someone is having a peaceful night's sleep, BB-8 on lower power mode at the foot of her bed while Poe's away doing secret reconnaissance for the Resistence, a sincere promise to keep the faithful little droid by her side in his absence. They keep her grounded, her unexpected trio, a family she'd never anticipated finding, hodgepodge and mismatched but fitting together just the same, and stronger for it.

Her attention shifts back to the present and Rey closes her eyes again, inhaling slowly through her nose, exhaling out through her mouth and she inches up that carefully constructed wall damming her mind shut, a tentative prod across the bond to him, ghosting at the back of his neck, the curve of one wrist. Unbarred, the connection is as strong as ever, the channel between them open and obvious even as she shields the most important places in her mind from him.

Are you there? And of course he is. ]

[apparare]

( Nausea wakes him from a restless, spotty sleep, a tightly coiled knot of dread congealing in his stomach and sinking like a stone. He's on his side in the dark of his quarters aboard the Finalizer, the room a muted, gutted wash of blackness in the thick vacuum of space. They make for the Supreme Leader's seat deep in the Unknown Regions at his master's request. Following their gathering on the dusty planet in the Outer Rim - and his personal encounter with Rey - Hux and Kylo had stood at attention under the holographic projection of the Supreme Leader and received instruction for the better part of twenty minutes to cut out the fleet's limping journey across the systems and return to him promptly. The jump to lightspeed had come so quickly that half the fleet had been unprepared for it but they had made it all the same, bottoming out in deep space, far beyond the reach of Resistance reconnaissance and within three days' reach of Snoke himself.

Nausea wakes him, but the pain across his face is what keeps him awake, a deep ache spanning the diagonal slash and radiating outward like a blast radius. At the risk of bleeding out, the shot to his abdomen had been taken care of almost immediately following his return to the Finalizer after Hux had retrieved him from the snow on Starkiller, and the bruising he had sustained from beating the gaping hole raw with his own fist had faded, but the cut to his face still looked angry whenever he was without the helm. The med droids and officers had insisted that he let them knit and graft it but he had refused - violently - on more than one occasion, despite the pain. The worst of it had faded with the rawness of the injury itself, once new skin began to form and scar tissue puckered his flesh, but it hadn't dissipated entirely.

Mindful fingers trace the ridges and bumps of the scar in the darkness, mapping the constellations and systems native to the way in which it gaps the hollow of his eye and skips down his cheekbone, thinning out as it traces the ridge of his forehead and almost disappears into his hairline. He runs a hand through his hair and sits up in the cold, consuming silence of space. Alone in the dark without even the distant sounds of the night cycle's rounds to disturb him this far down the corridor of the officer's row, he's struck by how easy it is to anticipate her incoming. Her restlessness spans galaxies and stars, dodges planets and satellites. His feet hit the floor and he lets himself into the 'fresher to run water down the back of his throat, to pool in the cup of his palms so that he can scrub it over his face. Kylo gets the feeling that nausea he tastes in the back of his mouth is hers and is unsurprised when she nudges him a moment later, his reflection in the mirror over the sink his only real company. )

Of course I am. ( He manages to both feel and sound annoyed inside his own head. ) You've kept me awake for the better part of the night cycle.

[reygun]

Did I? [ Undeterred by his ever present irritation with her, she sits still in her bunk, narrowing in on her focus on him and likewise, leaving herself open enough to let something pass through their link without her notice— I hadn't meant to. Her nightmares, she realizes, must have inadvertently shifted between them, just as the echo of his fading wounds transposed to her. The force bond is a strange anomaly Rey continues to try and parse through privately and publicly keep at bay; General Organa will give her a passing glance every now and then, a flicker of a different sort of recognition passing over her lovely face, gone an instant later, an afterthought. It truly leaves Rey wondering if she can feel the nudge of her son's presence, lingering quiet in the back of her mind.

She touches her face again, fingertips creeping up a non-existent slice up her cheek, pausing at her brow bone, mirroring his own actions just before she'd heard his voice in her head. She can see him— standing at the mirror, cool water at the back of his tongue, muscles only vaguely tense with a few degrees less annoyance than usual. His hair is ruffled from sleep, or lack thereof, curling around a sharp jawline, and not for the first time does Rey wonder why he's kept the scar she's given him ( she doubts it has anything to do with being sentimental. ]

Not to nitpick the details, but this is really your fault. Maybe you'll think twice the next time you feel like rifling through someone's head without their permission. [ That, she also remembers with a startlingly uncomfortable clarity, an unexplainable pressure at the base of her skull, waves of something dark and suffocating rolling over her, memories clawed out of her mind at force— until she'd shoved him handily out and ricocheted back into his mind.

She's quiet for a moment, balancing the warring sensations of her warm cot, her hair spilling over her shoulders undone, Finn still snoring away on the otherside of the wall versus the chill of cold black tile beneath his feet, his large hands gripping the sink, how dark his eyes pool as he looks back at his own reflection and sees her, too, the faintest crease between her eyes. The nausea settles some. This shouldn't feel so normal. ]

Could you see what I was dreaming?

[apparare]

( Doubtful, he thinks, in response to her childish suggestion that he might rethink methods and tactics of interrogation based on this anomaly alone. He makes no attempt to snip that thought from the dialogue between them, letting another burst of cold water wash the scratching taste of bile down the back of his throat. The tap he leaves running, drowning out the non-existence of silence coupled with the resounding lilt of her accent in his head with the rush of the spigot. It's like slipping in and out of a hallucination, the image of her face superimposed upon the spartan environment of the 'fresher an odd contradiction in and of itself. The sound of water pooling steadily into the drain does nothing to alleviate the sort of warped vertigo it inspires, so Kylo cuts the tap off and stands in dark silence again.

He doesn't dignify her question with an immediate response but instead examines the conditions of their connection with alarming awareness. He feels and doesn't feel the warm, scratchy fibers of the blanket that tangles her legs together, smells but doesn't smell the lingering scent of sweat and motor oil. Kylo would bet a pocketful of credits that if he looked he would find the stuff caked under her fingernails or smeared into the creases and wrinkles of her clothing. He doesn't look. He turns his attention outward, which provides him the benefit of shuttering himself away from her to some degree. At least he thinks. The room is small and dark, but there is a low glow from the foot of the cot where the BB unit stands guard, he assumes, even in low power. A fleeting thought that he might be able to influence her in some way through this bond to show him the contents of the map comes and is just as quickly shuffled away, though likely not before she's had a chance to glimpse his intentions.

It seems a pointless thread to follow at this point, when they're so close to touching down with Snoke and she and the Resistance have both made it to Skywalker by now. Kylo makes sure to disguise that reality from her as much as he can, still unsure of the breadth and depth of what's unfurling between them. Their ability to communicate so soundly and with such startling clarity even at this distance is surprising. It had made more sense when they had feet on the same planet as opposed to standing light years apart. )

I was hardly looking. ( It's a non-answer, though he hadn't actually seen the contents of her head until she opened the channel and flooded into him. He leaves the small box of the 'fresher and pads through the larger space of his bedroom, calling his saber to him automatically as he trades one room for another and lets himself into the common area. It's barely furnished, but there's no need for comfort or convenience when he spends little time doing anything resembling either of those two options when he's here. A lamp glows to life at his command: there's no point in trying to regain unconsciousness when she's clearly not going anywhere. Undeterred, indeed. His tone remains dry and sarcastic. ) I assume that's why you felt it was necessary to keep me awake.

[reygun]

I told you, it wasn't intentional. I was sleeping. I'm not always thinking of you. [ She scoffs inwardly and hopes he catches it, only minutely annoyed by his sarcasm, a brand of dry humor she appreciates despite herself; maybe more, were it resulting from anyone but him ( or perhaps not— he's still an enigma she cannot bring herself to hate, despite the long list of crimes against him, number one being Han Solo. ) Those thoughts, she shakes out and conceals in her mind, instead following his slow assessment of her current location, only the most basic, her bed and the quiet, dim light of the room she's in, illuminated by an alien moon and the dull light of BB-8.

—and she catches the most briefest of inquiries in his direction, defaulted, questions not actually posed and Rey is grateful for it, Luke Skywalker's location meticulously tucked away in the untraceable corners of her mind, out of reach. The Resistence gratefully hadn't fully grasped the dangerous weapon she could become, Kylo Ren swimming around her head, all the information he could ever need at her fingertips.

Luke Skywalker knows and he trusts her and that's all she requires. For now.

She lays back in bed, an elbow pillowed beneath her head as she stares at the ceiling and sees so much more: she thinks she can smell him, something unplaceable and spicy, brow creased not with tension but thought. Rey knows she might be smarter to find herself more afraid of this unyielding connection between herself and Kylo Ren and yet she only finds herself more intrigued, drawn in further. This is between them and no one else. ]

It sounds like you weren't sleeping, anyways.

slides over here from tfln

[forcevisions]

[ All around the base, Resistance fighters scrambled, a flurry of disconnected parts that could not work in concert with one another, each trying to address the same problem. Even those without the appropriate skillset hummed, incapable of standing still, but for the flight commander, who insisted firmly that the problem lay in their old, secondhand equipment, barely updated since the last Rebellion.

At least, he kept saying it until Luke Skywalker climbed into the pit of a x-wing grounded for a blown engine and confirmed that the problem lay in a jamming signal. Without a way to reach the parts of the fleet in the air, it took him and Rey another three hours to get the engine overhauled and flightready so that Luke could go up and find it.

Leia and Rey both hated the idea, each arguing for different reasons that Luke was too valuable to the Resistance, and to them, to risk heading up there alone, but he did it. And Leia, strong as ever, took it without letting it bow her back. She even smiled at Rey when she told her to go get some rest, promising any updates.

But Rey didn't trudge back to her bunk. She started that way, distracted by trying to reach out for Luke with the Force, to get a sense of where he was so she could track him out there, but she diverted as soon as she broke the tree line. No matter what the Force-sensitive leadership of the Resistance had to say about it, an aura of distrust still centered around the barracks where Kylo Ren was quartered, permeating into the physical world through the squish of the 24-hour guard's boots in the soil around the perimeter, through the several rooms of buffer between his bunk and any other Resistance fighter, through the soldiers who are chosen to stay there.

Rey might be the only person in the camp who actually wants to be there. She announces herself with a knock on the door, an anxiousness thick in the air around her. Worry for Luke. ]

what's a lady like you doing in a post like this

[apparare]

( The datapad having fallen dark not long after his last returned message, Kylo leaves it discarded and dark on the neat and orderly posture of his mattress and the blankets that cover it, turning his attention instead to what might not qualify, necessarily, as a hobby but which easily qualifies as a distraction. Not that he needs one, when a careful pluck at the string of the bond between them reveals no tight, straining imperfections that might signify anger, and not when he is more than aware that Rey would be more than happy to alert him of just how angry she was and the reasons as to why were it a foregone conclusion based on their last few exchanges. He has begun learning the iterations of her anger with more precision, but he still spreads out a mat across the surface of his desk and unfurls a tool kit from the top drawer and begins disassembling the components of his lightsaber underneath the amber glow of the lamp.

Most of the damage that he had been able to repair following Rey's dismantling of it on Starkiller Base had been a temporary fix, stripped and cleaned and reconstructed with various parts over the course of the completion of his training under Snoke, meant to stubbornly preserve the design and display of the blade if not the function of it. Soldering wires together now along the exposed belly and scraping one of the quillons clean of residue only continues to prove to him the mistake that he had made in not scrapping the entirety of it altogether and starting from scratch. But the way that it shakes in his hand has become a sense in and of itself, and he knows the weight of it before it even slaps into his palm, and, even more, a larger part of him won't be called a fool for failing to produce something lasting.

Not for the first time, he considers the saber that hangs from Rey's belt with a mixture of bitter resentment and self-loathing, though it's explored less than even he might like at this point in the progression of their orbital lives as the girl in question's presence races through the Force like a jolt of electricity through the tracery veins. As a consequence, Kylo has a set of goggles pushed up over his forehead when he gestures toward the door at her knock, waving it open without moving from his seat, though he does tilt the chair back and away from the desk and its mess in order to get a good look at her as she steps across the threshold. He quirks a brow at her. )

Bad news? ( Anxiety rolls off of her like fog and burrows its way down into his bones until his knuckles feel stiff. )

idk terrible life choices probably

[forcevisions]

Luke's dealing with it.

[ Even without the benefit of their bond, the abrupt answer paints a clear picture of her dissatisfaction, and she trudges in to punctuate it with the scuff of her boots on the metal floor. She punches her thumb into the panel on the inside to slide the door shut behind her, so subconscious is her instinct to hide them away from the world.

The sharp punctuating notes of these movements all say the same thing: she would rather be dealing with it for any number of reasons, but instead, she's here. It doesn't escape her to be grateful, in a sense, because it means not arriving terribly late and feeling the need to justify her tardiness and her role in the Resistance to Kylo Ren, who she never wanted to apologize to for anything, even now. A larger part hates waiting. ]

We'll know when he does. [ For a moment, Luke is forgotten, and she approaches the desk, hands settling in a familiar pattern against the slope of his shoulders so she can peer over the top of his head. Her upper body presses to his over the back of the chair, and the saber at her hip clacks metal on metal as it swings forward with her. ] What's all that?

sorry you spelled best wrong i think

[apparare]

( That stiffness gives way to a jittery sort of energy, a sensation that inspires him to flex his fingers as much as the perception of an ache might have had it not changed midstream. The sort of impatience and the kind of anxiousness that she's describing between the shuffle of her boots against the floor, the jab of her thumb into the door panel, the general air of discontent that hangs around her like the permanent scent of sun and sweat, are feelings that he has more than enough experience with, although his reactions tend to run less contained than the control Rey exhibits and more in line with inserting himself into the middle of a perceived problem and running in an entirely different direction with it. His presence here should be testimony to that. )

Distraction. ( Kylo punctuates this answer with the clack of the chair legs against the floor, giving in easily to the familiarity of the touch of her hands over his shoulders and the parenthetical curve of her over his back. At this elbow, he feels the swing of that lightsaber - nearly close enough to brush against the fabric of his shirt, were it not impeded by the chair - and he spreads his hands over the puzzle pieces of his own blade that he's yet to fit dutifully back together. His thumbnail catches one of the shrouds covering a crossguard vent. ) I think one of the shrouds might be coming loose.

( But it's of no consequence given the state of things - or maybe it should be, given the state of things. If Skywalker returns with some sort of indication that they need to move, however quickly, it wouldn't do well to be caught with a dismantled lightsaber on his hands, regardless of what might be coming for them. No immediate consequence, then, as Kylo curls a hand around Rey's wrist and uses it as a means of trying to coax her around the back of the chair and down into his lap without having to haul her there of his own volition. And if not that, he'll settle for a lean against the desk, so long as he can mostly look her in the eye. ) Why Luke?

( To his credit, he doesn't choke on the name, but even Kylo hears the weight ascribed to a word that has become unfamiliar in his mouth. Still, this isn't about that particular history, and even if he thinks that he probably knows the reasons why Skywalker would be the one set up, he gets the sense that there's enough lingering frustration left in Rey following that decision that she might like to vent about it around someone who won't chastise her for feeling frustration. Why Luke and not you? )

this took me a really long time because all i did today was cry about carrie fisher

[forcevisions]

[ At his coaxing, she relented and spilled into his lap with a readiness that betrayed the thin measure of restraint by which she had refrained from climbing into it of her own accord right off the bat. Conversation about Luke made for a poor ambience—it always coiled Kylo spring-tight like a viper, ready to snap on the first unfortunate misstep. But this time, he drew the subject out, and despite the stubborn grind of his question, the resistance it showed, that offered some willingness to engage.

Perhaps after all this time he had come to accept that Luke (and his mother) could not be avoided and dismissed out of hand forever; sooner or later, this gridlock they faced would need to be dealt with, resolved. But probably not. More likely, his interest lay only in how it impacted her. He had that way about him. ]

Most of the fleet's up there. It took both of us to get something armed for worst case scenario to be spaceworthy for him, and Master Luke's the better pilot, the more seasoned fighter, the— [ To list the reasons, she realized, only reinforced her frustration and directed it inward at her inadequacies, so she stopped abruptly and huffed out a breath. ] It's strategic. We don't know what's up there.

[ She toyed with one of the vents of his saber hilt, rolling it with the press of a single finger across the desk top, her despondence resolute. Even if the reasoning made sense, she could not help but feel neutered by sitting here instead of flying up there with him. Worse, it made her realize something, something new: Luke considered himself more expendable to the Resistance than he considered Rey.

Swallowing something like that came in stages. ]

If it's something jamming our signal, like we suspect, I'll bet it's to stop the scanners, and the communications are a byproduct. It's just as likely they're trying to get something by us as they are trying to get anything into our airspace.