[ When his hand grasps her wrist, she's sure she's failed. It's over. But she stays the course, and a moment later, his knees buckle, and he tumbles to the ground with the lumbering thud of a felled colossus.
Rey heaves out a breath that she didn't mean to hold, relief strong enough that her eyes burn with salt; expended effort leaves her mouth dry and cracking, and her shoulders heave as if the weight has been lifted from them. Brown eyes stay fixed on the blackened mound of his body as if expecting him to rise, a trick, glowing beam of red singing for her, but it never comes. ]
I'm sorry. [ She doesn't crouch to meet him in her apology, which in itself is flat and though sympathetic, not truly apologetic, but stays standing victorious over him with her chest heaving. ] But it's the only way.
[ Lifting her chin, she closes her eyes and allows the slow drizzle of rain to wash the salt and dirt from her cheeks, cooling her and separating her from the blaze of battle once more. Shaking droplets free of her face, she slaps a hand over her forehead and pushes the last of it back into her already damp hair.
Then, she crouches beside him and grabs onto his arm, hoisting it over her shoulders to drape his torso evenly across her shoulder blades. Rey pushes with her legs to stand once she has his body evenly hefted across her, keeping one hand on his legs with the other holding onto his arms to keep his weight evenly distributed.
It's not a welcome weight, some two hundred pounds of dead force-user slung across her back, and it will make the journey to the relay point drudging and unpleasant, but it has been a long time coming, and General Organa—if she is alive down there somewhere—will have some small victory to mitigate all of this loss. But the weight burdens her with questions and uncertainties surrounding her actions, persisting into doubt in the miles she must hike, boots sliding across the mud stubbornly, leading her to stumble and fall on her path.
The last fires of battle have died down by the time she reaches the encampment, ash and smoke permeating the atmosphere, turning the air thick and gritty around the makeshift encampment set up by the Resistance. Too tired to reach out with the Force, she makes her way aboard a docked carrier with tenting material hoisted outside of it to expand its area; in the absence of the First Order's resources, temporary land bases like this one were the grassroots Resistance's only option.
Within the ship, Rey dumps the limp body of Kylo Ren onto a holo-table, and in doing so, brings tears to the indomitable General's eyes. The General—no, Ben Solo's mother—moves immediately to hover over him, expression openly contorted by the immeasurable grief and mingled joy that overcome her at seeing her lost son, her husband's murderer, for the first time as a man grown.
Feeling quite suddenly as though she is intruding on a private moment, Rey excuses herself from the room and steers the General's attendants out with her. As she reunites with Finn and Poe in the medical bay, she watches through the open tent flap as Luke Skywalker arrives to join Leia. Her own joy in finding them is tempered by uncertainty—that bringing Kylo Ren into the hen house is a wise choice, that she had not given into some unspeakable evil to use deception to bring him there, that it would do any good to confine him against his wishes and try to drag him kicking and screaming away from the monster in his head.
Only once they have settled privately on what was to be done with him is Rey invited out of the bog of her own thoughts to the felled First Order shuttle in which they had constructed a makeshift prison for him to stand guard and wait for him to wake. She stood between the airlock-turned-cell that they had confined him in and the exterior door, dirty and fatigued and yet unblinking, with arms folded beneath her chest, and reminds herself staring at the peace of his expression that she could not have brought him here if he had not offered her mercy and opened himself to her—her talent may be considerable, but not more considerable than his mental defenses. Still further, she persuaded herself the necessity of cleaving him from Snoke's hold, having seen firsthand what the Supreme Leader mired him in, having heard firsthand the misery of it as he projected the same fate onto her.
writes a short novel and traps you in this thread like kathy bates in misery
Rey heaves out a breath that she didn't mean to hold, relief strong enough that her eyes burn with salt; expended effort leaves her mouth dry and cracking, and her shoulders heave as if the weight has been lifted from them. Brown eyes stay fixed on the blackened mound of his body as if expecting him to rise, a trick, glowing beam of red singing for her, but it never comes. ]
I'm sorry. [ She doesn't crouch to meet him in her apology, which in itself is flat and though sympathetic, not truly apologetic, but stays standing victorious over him with her chest heaving. ] But it's the only way.
[ Lifting her chin, she closes her eyes and allows the slow drizzle of rain to wash the salt and dirt from her cheeks, cooling her and separating her from the blaze of battle once more. Shaking droplets free of her face, she slaps a hand over her forehead and pushes the last of it back into her already damp hair.
Then, she crouches beside him and grabs onto his arm, hoisting it over her shoulders to drape his torso evenly across her shoulder blades. Rey pushes with her legs to stand once she has his body evenly hefted across her, keeping one hand on his legs with the other holding onto his arms to keep his weight evenly distributed.
It's not a welcome weight, some two hundred pounds of dead force-user slung across her back, and it will make the journey to the relay point drudging and unpleasant, but it has been a long time coming, and General Organa—if she is alive down there somewhere—will have some small victory to mitigate all of this loss. But the weight burdens her with questions and uncertainties surrounding her actions, persisting into doubt in the miles she must hike, boots sliding across the mud stubbornly, leading her to stumble and fall on her path.
The last fires of battle have died down by the time she reaches the encampment, ash and smoke permeating the atmosphere, turning the air thick and gritty around the makeshift encampment set up by the Resistance. Too tired to reach out with the Force, she makes her way aboard a docked carrier with tenting material hoisted outside of it to expand its area; in the absence of the First Order's resources, temporary land bases like this one were the grassroots Resistance's only option.
Within the ship, Rey dumps the limp body of Kylo Ren onto a holo-table, and in doing so, brings tears to the indomitable General's eyes. The General—no, Ben Solo's mother—moves immediately to hover over him, expression openly contorted by the immeasurable grief and mingled joy that overcome her at seeing her lost son, her husband's murderer, for the first time as a man grown.
Feeling quite suddenly as though she is intruding on a private moment, Rey excuses herself from the room and steers the General's attendants out with her. As she reunites with Finn and Poe in the medical bay, she watches through the open tent flap as Luke Skywalker arrives to join Leia. Her own joy in finding them is tempered by uncertainty—that bringing Kylo Ren into the hen house is a wise choice, that she had not given into some unspeakable evil to use deception to bring him there, that it would do any good to confine him against his wishes and try to drag him kicking and screaming away from the monster in his head.
Only once they have settled privately on what was to be done with him is Rey invited out of the bog of her own thoughts to the felled First Order shuttle in which they had constructed a makeshift prison for him to stand guard and wait for him to wake. She stood between the airlock-turned-cell that they had confined him in and the exterior door, dirty and fatigued and yet unblinking, with arms folded beneath her chest, and reminds herself staring at the peace of his expression that she could not have brought him here if he had not offered her mercy and opened himself to her—her talent may be considerable, but not more considerable than his mental defenses. Still further, she persuaded herself the necessity of cleaving him from Snoke's hold, having seen firsthand what the Supreme Leader mired him in, having heard firsthand the misery of it as he projected the same fate onto her.
No. This is the only way. ]