( 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
[ 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
( 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
[ 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.
quietly hides all my bookmarked lightsaber theory and forms info pages i'm saving these for a friend
( She doesn't allow him the luxury - or time - to respond, cutting at him with all the savagery that he would expect from someone who spent the entirety of her formative years alone and without any means of protection other than her own merit, who woke suddenly and found that she could lift the hand that was dragging her back without having to touch it. He knows that strength and power, can feel it flowing through him now though it gets trapped behind the dam of her constant assault. For a girl as scrappy and small as she is next to him, she hits hard, and his boots slide through the mud and stick, ripping grass and wildflowers until they cling to his boots halfway up to his knees. His arms shake under the strain they take at repelling her and then push back.
He recognizes Djem So with some annoyance after five minutes of trading blows, though not because he's particularly learned in that particular form but because he knows it was a foundation of Vader's unique style, and while Kylo sees the advantages of blending the fifth form with the others that his grandfather incorporated into his technique, sees Rey utilize it in a way that smacks of old world flare and skill - interesting, that - and genuine, unrelenting talent, it's Niman that he favors. Ironically. Lacking the totality of sufficient training that she receives from Skywalker means that he prefers a style more grounded upon Force-based attacks, a speciality he's ready to employ when she hooks her saber into his and pushes his blade back into his sternum.
It's a struggle, as he has to use both hands on the hilt of his blade to keep her from bearing down on him so completely that he loses an arm, but he realizes halfway through trying to get her off of him that she's not going to kill him. He can tell by the way she veers the intention of her aim behind the blue beam of the lightsaber to angle at his shoulder rather than mirroring the way he ran Han Solo through. It's hardly mercy, but it's there, pulsing between them as heavily as the breath she draws and the effort she puts into trying to subdue him, her jaw tight and mouth an angry, sharp line of bared teeth, eyes hard and shining over the hissing in their hands. In the mud, it's more difficult to keep his balance, to work one hand off of the hilt of his own red blade in an effort to dislodge her once more without buckling under her willpower alone.
And then she calls him Ben and the world more or less turns and shatters on a dime.
When he has the opportunity to put her on the defense, Kylo swings his saber like a broadsword, hitting heavy and hard, harder than he was able to when he was injured on Starkiller Base. The opportunity comes as a single point of anger shrinks and then swells before popping like a balloon. Something uncurls in his chest and he lets her lightsaber cut into the top layer of his skin before dropping his shoulder, grunting sharply at the white hot burn and pivoting on his foot. He lets her knock his blade down with her own again and uses the momentum to reach out for her, the back of her saber arm slapping into his outstretched palm by virtue of momentary surprise and sheer close-quartered combat, as he jerks her around and into his grip the same way he has tossed her from it in the past. He locks his fingers around her wrist and knuckles, trying to hold her still, a flash of pain searing where his skin is split open on his own hand as the flesh pulls taut. )
I know who has the power to end this. I think you're the one who's confused.
( There's no chance in hell that she'll allow him to hold her in that position for long, and contrary to her probable belief, he still isn't interested in killing her just yet. He makes the active decision to let her go, kicking her away from him with a carefully placed knee to her back that he chases with a glancing blow from a red slash. He smells burning fabric but isn't sure if he scored a hit on her skin and rounds on her, ready for her strikes with heavy blocks, hitting back at her hard, angry and contorted under the armor. )
[ The rage that roars to life within him gives him more power than she had planned, and he gets a grip on her that has her raising her saber, ready to disarm him quite literally, only for him to kick her away and follow-up with a slash that sends her careening to the ground and shutting down the lightsaber that skids away from her.
Agony shoots through her as the first lightsaber injury she has ever sustained cauterizes on impact, a mixture of stabbing pain as it rips her open and steady burn, simmering her flesh. She holds her pain to a low groan, pressing her forehead into the damp earth below as she clenches her jaw to suffer it. Years on Jakku taught her to mask her pain when it came, and remember the times it had been worse—as it turns out, she's never had it worse.
She works her jaw for just a few seconds, but they feel like a lifetime, time slowing and thickening the air around her as she waits for the inevitable downswing of his saber across her spine before she can recover. Concussion missiles and proton bombs flash on the horizon like a lightning storm, bright whites and blues sparking through the darkness, but the thunderclap of their combustion is deafened by the pain and by Rey's search for center.
One hand reaches out, pale against the dark topsoil, grasping clumps of dirt as she fails to reach far enough for the saber that trembles under her beckoning, too weakened by distractions.
Her eyes shut, and she finds silence, peace within herself in the form of the dusty inside of a wrecked imperial star destroyer. Cold clarity fills her, bringing the chaos into focus, muting the pain, and she clambers to her feet in time with his advance, real time returning steadily to the battlefield.
In another instant, she swipes the hilt off the ground, brandishes the saber, and spins to deflect another blow, digging her feet in. Purple light flashes each time their blades hum in concert, pinging off one another in a frenetic exchange of swipes. She comes back swinging, turning quickly from defense to offense, and gets just enough breathing room to pinwheel each slash, across from alternating sides, in an attempt to drive him back. ]
As long as that name holds power over you, you are still within the reach of the Light. [ Through gritted teeth, she shouts over the cacophony of war, ] Don't turn away from it.
hahahah to be fair they are like all kylo saber theories i'm so ashamed /hides face in hands
( Rey's lightsaber seems to wink at him from a distance, catching the light of an explosion in the east. An instinct within him instructs him to reach his hand out, coax the weapon to him, encourage it into the palm of his hand so that he can finally feel the weight of it the way his grandfather had decades ago. If it came to him now, the battle would be over, won, and not solely on the grounds that Rey would find herself defenseless. But Kylo knows without even trying that were he to stretch out his hand, fingers splayed, the blade would never answer to him now.
So he waits for her to rise with his feet planted shoulder-width apart, leaning into the grip he has on his saber as if it were a heavy staff or club, prepared and expectant that she will right herself as soon as her boots are able to find purchase in the muck and the mud. It's only a few moments, but it feels like forever, long enough for him to straighten at the knees somewhat, curious as to whether or not she is actually down. He takes a step, another, toward her, the red hum of his saber drowned out by the soundtrack of battle and the heavy staccato of artillery fire. Halfway to her he hears before he feels the light patter of rain whipped hard against his helmet by seasonal winds, and unbidden and uninvited, Kylo throws open the floodgate for just a moment to feel out her thoughts.
The whipcrack flare of pain strikes him low across his own back before he caps the connection as well as he can, and the sharp spike of rage that runs through the network of his veins and tendons and bones reaches out to replace it. A deep ache settles into the burns across the back of his hand and he flexes his fingers in an attempt to work it out, almost removes the glove itself so that he won't have to deal with the fused fibers later but knows there's no time for that. Her back is to him, a small but steady stretch of leather and cotton. A Jedi. A fire burns. )
Get up!
( Without the modulator, his voice might be more alarming. It feels raw and hoarse in the column of his throat. With the helmet in place, it booms like it's being issued over a loudspeaker. He strides forward, lightsaber at the ready whether she is prepared or not, and positions himself to strike. Rey meets him with renewed ferocity, and though he pushes her back offensively, her answering slashes and the speed with which she moves makes it a difficult offense to stay on. Eventually she slips back into control of the current of things, and he finds himself repelling her attacks in much the same way he managed before. It isn't clear to him how the battle will end, and he keeps an eye open for a window of opportunity, never mind that the gaps keep becoming smaller and smaller.
She eventually catches him at the tail end of a heavy blow, parrying expertly and forcing him to grip the lightsaber two-handed and rotate his wrists sharply unless he favors breaking them. He pushes down, but she has the figurative high ground and pulls up, effectively locking them together, close enough for him to see the shape of her words as well as hear them without having to strain, rather than her shouting over the roar around them. He bites back at her in response, close enough to do so now. )
What do you think you'll achieve by attempting to persuade me? ( Energy hisses and pops between them, their locked blades cracking. Hair burns and leather heats. A blank shock of expressionless steel tipped toward her, the best approximation of eye contact possible under the circumstances. ) A happy reunion? There is nothing to turn to.
excellent! also first week back at teaching is straight up killin me SORRY I'MS O SLOW
[ She shouts it over the thrum of their blades as they lock against one another, skill thrown aside for a battle of brute strength. Rey throws her weight into it to stave him off, jaw fiercely tightened with all the determination with which she meets the task. ]
You claim you want to bring order to the galaxy, but all you give it is war and bloodshed. End this.
[ The appeal cannot truly earn the title of plea because it is insistent and commanding, too much so to properly be considered a request. She demands of him the only outcome that is acceptable, and unflaggingly battles him into submission.
X-wings fill the skies with laser cannon fire from mounted guns, suppressing the ground armies over the hills beyond them, and the Resistance begins to overtake the larger fleet that the First Order is too surprised to properly organize. The heat of the battle barely touches Ren and Rey where they are, exchanging blows in the same private war they've waged in their minds since they'd first locked eyes.
Her heels dig into the soil, sinking by inches as he bears his weight and brute strength down on her from the joint of their sabers, but she does not budge, holding form to stave him off, too stubborn and too sure of her moral position to abandon her physical one to dodge the severity of his downswing.
Instead, she attacks on another front, thrusting her mind at his to pierce the veil of his helm and collect some kind of feedback of what battle he might be waging within to complement that happening outside of them. ]
PLEASE DO NOT WORRY. i just started back at school myself so I FEEL YOU
( He wants viciously to point out that the Resistance, for all its pomp and circumstance, touts the same beliefs while chasing the same results, that they, too, have had their fair share of propaganda filth with which to sway opinions in their favor. Neither side has a clean hand. General Organa is not so altruistic in her relentless and dogged pursuit of the First Order's desire to bring law and progress back to the galaxy, and when all is said and done, none of them are any more blameless than the other, mired in their individual quests for order and stability. He wants to bite it back at her, grind it in with salt and anger, another turn in which they are not so dissimilar, but he can't.
The sudden presence of her in his mind coupled with the strength and concentration needed to keep his boots from slipping too far in the topsoil and sending him to his knees, literally, makes it impossible to speak without sacrificing ground. Every muscle strains at attention, teeth tightly ground together, a long, drawn out exhale of frustration breaking apart in his throat and coming out through the modulator like a wordless shout. The beam of his blade shakes all the way down into his hands, where he holds the hilt white-knuckled. Rey finds a niche and shoves in a way that he has not encountered in anyone else he has ever come across, finding it as easy and natural to slip into someone's mind and sniff out answers, hurt them, as it is to keep them out in turn. She is like a wall of water, hammering against him without relent, wave after wave, but in the end all it takes is one tiny crack in the dam and she slips by effortlessly, a small rivulet at first and then more and more until his head is full of her, flooded with sunlight and sand.
Kylo Ren is on his knees in his own mind, thoughts a thunderstorm possessing an enormous amount of power. Aggressive, unchecked rage swirls and rises, fear builds and buffets it, whipping it into a frenzy that so often explodes outward. There is always, always, a shadow stretched over him, the tall and deformed silhouette that is sometimes-Snoke and sometimes-Darth Vader, both just ghosts, husks, of what they were and are, potential that he envies and craves and is terrified to fall short of. They are on a bridge - the bridge - that extends infinitely in either direction, a swirl of light beneath them that claws steadily upward until it slips over the edge of the bridge and spills like meltwater, pooling around the soles of Rey's boot heels and lapping up at Kylo's knees. Smoke hangs heavy and dark and thick, the result of some explosion, the smell of engine fire and motor oil heavy in the atmosphere.
There are whispers: Solo and Organa and Skywalker most prevalent among the many; Snoke is the loudest, with a voice like gravel disintegrating, rough stone grinding. Black smoke obscures his vision, and Kylo breathes deep, inhaling a great gulp of smog, letting it fill his head and lungs and consume him. The water at Rey's ankles now is bitterly cold, glacial pure and bright, and it floods his mouth and nose and ears as it drags him under its current, turning murky gray as both light and dark claw at him, pulling him down and ripping him apart before pulling Rey under to submerge her as well. Bright, cold water and cloying darkness turns to ash falling like snow, covering them both and making it hard to breathe. She stands above him, and he kneels in dead leaves and dirt, and she extends her hand. Once he has the conviction to reach for it, the ground opens between them, a gash in the landscape. )
End this? ( His voice is a loud echo without a mask in the cavernous space that they have carved out in one another. ) There is no end to this.
( Back in actual reality, an X-wing and a TIE fighter collide like a massive firework in the sky above them, and the resulting explosion and impact with Corellia makes the ground shake. Kylo stumbles with the force of the crash, close enough that trees several hundred yards away from them catch fire, and manages to miss Rey's lightsaber just enough to send them both sprawling in the mud. )
[ Rey has never imagined drowning. Until recently, she could hardly conceptualize enough water in one place for someone to bathe, let alone drown in. But Kylo Ren's thoughts—memories? defenses?—offer every bit the vivid picture to leave her body gasping for desperate breaths between choked pauses.
She can feel it as if the experience were her own, the water turning black as it fights its way into her ears, throat, and presses at her opened eyes, burning them. Whipping her head around the rush of water, she looks up to see light, tinted and dimmed as it filters in through the surface of the ocean they are pulled under. Just as she starts to reach for the surface, fingertips straining for the light, she turns and pulls her arm into her chest, looking for him and pursuing him instead.
Then they're on the ground, and he kneels before her like a man at prayer, shoulders heavy and defeated, and the step she takes towards him makes the ground tremble. He reaches to her, and her hand extends in kind. The ground splits beneath them as fingertips brush, and she is thrust from the very real hill she stands on just as he howls at her, the explosion-induced quake ripping her from the landscape of his mind.
The light of their sabers die, leaving them in mud and darkness, ears ringing, head pounding. She turns onto her back, groaning, blinking through the ensuing daze, and she spots the smooth black of his helmet and the thick pile of his cloak around him several yards away, in the opposite direction her inheritance flew. She rolls onto her stomach, and instead of seeking it out, reaches for him, too weak in the moment to do more than lift her face out of the dirt and grasp.
Another rocket whistles as it flies in, stray suppression from the Resistance or the First Order, it's all the same from down here, and spreads the blaze around them like a sickle.
The very image of Snoke that had suffocated him in his mind was about to become a reality, and Rey honed her focus to pick herself up off the ground. The fire crackled, catching between treetops and rapidly encircling them, while she scrambled for him. ]
We have to go. [ Urgency hardens her voice at the same time as it hurries it. ] Get up. [ Hands touch his shoulder, ready to drag him if she must. This isn't enemies at war; it's pure and it's human and it's good. They may kill each other one day, but she won't leave him here to die while she saves herself. Not when she waited a lifetime for someone to be willing to come back for her and save her before Finn walked into her life. ]
( Something has shorted out the wiring in his helmet. The ventilation system built within floods his nostrils and the back of his throat with an acrid, metallic taste and smell, and when he's able to breathe again and exhales, the modulator scrambles his voice like a badly tuned holostation. His ears are ringing, but the sound of a missile firing close enough to blot out the sound of battle not far enough away to be silenced brings him back some amount of focus. The view through the visor of his helmet is cracked and smeared with mud, and he watches distortedly as Rey extends an unsteady arm toward him.
It's disorienting, and in the haze of fire spreading and filling the immediate area with smoke, not so different than the landscape they were just pulled from, he can't immediately distinguish reality from the alternative. Her voice filters into his head through murky, static water, and Kylo isn't sure if it's the result of more damage done to his helmet or the speed with which he is returning to himself. Either way, it's unacceptable, and when her hand comes down on his shoulder to fist in the cloak that has unceremoniously bunched itself around his neck, it jolts something in him enough that he's able to climb up onto hands and knees.
He looks up at her and even through the screen of his mask he can see the color of her skin growing from shadowed and smeared with dirt and rainwater and sweat to bright orange with encroaching fire. The long span of his fingers reaches for her upper arm and catches in the fabric of her sleeve. No time to consider the moral implications behind her actions. Or his. Gets to his feet while shrugging her off and loses the helmet in a last ditch effort not to breathe whatever toxic mechanical failure is polluting the inside of it. That's two helmets down, and another cloak, as he unclasps the one at his throat so as not to slow him down. )
Move!
( His voice is a sonic boom under the heavy call of missiles and downed starships. The sky is alight with red-green laser fire and the bright horizon and sunset of bombs dropping in the east. Fire licks at the forest around them, and the glint of orange light chases the rounded hilt of her saber. Kylo nudges her toward it, unconsciously, barely realizing that he's doing it until it's done and they're tearing ahead of the blaze, two people so sure of where their feet fall that the dampened, trampled ground seems to pose no threat to them at all.
Until it does.
Above them, fire consumes branches and leaves, encouraged by the high winds and not drowned by the light drizzle that has started to fall. Below them, the level ground gives way into a slight decline that gradually turns into a sharp-angled hillside, until they are not so much running as they are sliding. )
[ When she reaches out for him while they run, everything from hovering to guide passively to actually pushing at his shoulder to keep him out of the way of a smoldering branch from above, she thinks of Finn, of the moment she realized that he was not holding her hand for her sake, but to center his own conflicted mind.
After being in Kylo Ren's, she can guess that his mind is equally conflicted now, and she offers him those brief flashes of contact as they stagger at a sprint through the wood, leaping over gnarled roots and trying to outpace nature herself. The desert, Rey quickly decides, was peaceful beside this. Sinking sands are predictable, and sandstorms can be weathered. There is no haven, no strategy, no evasive tactic for a forest fire.
Their steps grow shorter, and it's only when they stutter and slow progress that she realizes the severity of the decline, but by then her heels are digging in and she's careening down the hillside, sloshing mud around the grooves she cuts in her attempts for traction. The rainfall, which only barely pierced the canopy above them at first, now trickles steadily through, and it's the cold breeze on her damp back that makes her realize the forest thins this way.
Suddenly, she clasps Ren's hand, gripping him with enough strength to draw defined lines into the muscles of her arms while her other reaches out for a low, deadened branch of a tree. It breaks, scrapes her legs while it falls, and she grabs another, more alive but flimsier, whip-like, and she pulls herself and her enemy back just in time to narrowly miss the steep drop-off that is the cliffside they meet at the end of their slide. ]
We need to climb! [ Her deaf shouts rise above the roar of battle, but only just. ]
( Physical contact is such a rarity for him that even in these moments of desperation it strikes him as odd to have another living thing actively touch him in a way that isn't malicious in nature. Not to say that he doesn't inspire it on the rare occasions that it occurs, but it's an uncommon thing to stumble, however infrequently, in the darkness and find a hand at his elbow, hovering somewhere above the broad stretch of his back, to anticipate the twist of Rey's ankle in the rise of an exposed root and jerk her away from it. He tries not to let her slow him down, never mind that she is the one who reaches out for him and catches him at the wrist as the ground gives way so sharply underfoot that he drops to one knee and slides.
Kylo's glove is slick with water and mud, and he can feel himself beginning to slip through her grip like a fraying knot even as the decayed branch comes apart in her other hand, bloodies her knee and shin. He twists his palm in the circle of her fingers last minute, so that when the jerk comes from the sturdier of the two branches and saves them a trip over the edge of the canyon, Rey's grip is more secure and finds a stronger purchase, palm to palm and fingers locked vice-like around one another. The whiplash of the abrupt halt is enough to pull him back down into the mud, the backs of his thighs finding purchase before he springs up again, mindful of the fact that he is much heavier than she is, that if he allows gravity to pull him down he will take them both down without question.
Her voice is a roar in his ears, and he gets the impression that even if he were unable to hear her, he would know exactly what she was saying to him. He drops her hand as if it had burned him.
A certain degree of focus is required, and he actively clears his mind while whipping his head back around to search out the hillside. He doesn't anticipate the clarity with which he determines their path out but it doesn't take him by surprise when it becomes abundantly clear which way to go. Kylo wastes no time in shouting back at her. )
That way! ( He steps around her with great care, mindful of the ground's precarious position this close to the edge, and secures his foot enough to pull himself bodily upward. Kylo doesn't entirely trust her behind him, halfway waiting for her to bury her saber in his back, but he climbs and once or twice looks back to make sure that she isn't slipping, doesn't need some form of assistance. She doesn't, of course, but he still calls down to her - ) Incoming. ( - when he senses something large coming their way before the ground shakes and the trees tremble and the rounded body of a TIE fighter sans-wings comes careening through the forest and over the ridge they just tumbled down at a speed that launches it into the canyon rather than allowing it to roll down the hill. It isn't until the resulting explosion has engulfed the far side of the canyon in flames that he realizes he never once actually opened his mouth, slipped instead into her mind to warn her without thinking about it. )
[ The mud sticks to her soles and makes the journey upward slicker than she's used to, her heels glancing off the extrusions of rock and leaving her to foist herself higher with the strength of her shoulders alone, fingernails chipping in the narrow grooves she picks for handholds. They are not as smooth, level, and reliable as the metalwork of the rusted, forgotten imperial ships on Jakku, but her muscles remember the movements, and no amount of slippage flags her progress as she scales steadily.
But his warning reverberates in the recesses of her mind, sudden and strangely second nature, and instead of questioning, she presses herself flush against the rock face and masks her face behind her raised arm as the ensuing blanket of heat settles over them like a wave.
Dirt sticks to the sweat on her face, rubs off more grit from her shoulder as she lifts her face to look out at the fire that blazes, and her heart aches. That smoldering TIE fighter once could have contained Finn, or if things had gone differently, secured Poe. She knew nothing of the state they were in, fighting the battle on another front, and truthfully, she tried not to think about it, but in this …
Shaking her head, she casts her eyes upward instead and begins to advance again, pulling herself over the edge to securely leave the blaze below, smoke stinging her eyes and watering them, but otherwise as safe and sound as one might hope. Despite the billowing clouds of thick black smog that plumed through the sky, she gazed down at the foliage behind, feeling for her lightsaber in the midst of it.
Survival first. The Jakku way had allowed her to leave her most valuable possession behind. Her hands close around fistfuls of dirt, breaths escaping her lips in heavy pants. If she were to fight a war on any front, it wouldn't be with Luke's lightsaber. ]
This is madness.
[ And it shouldn't be happening. None of it makes sense—it's pain begetting pain. Every battle they fight feels like a temporary solution, a bandage on a wound that gangrene has rotted. ]
( Kylo pulls himself to level ground hand over hand, mud caking through his fingers, dead grass and browning leaves clinging to leather and wool. His hands scrabble so tightly for purchase that he rakes through thick, muddy topsoil to break cold earth underneath, knees and boot heels securing his footing as best they can, relying on intuition to guide him. He isn't nearly as good a climber as Rey, who scrambles up the slippery incline with difficulty, yes, but not without skill and with more speed than he manages despite being ahead of her. In this way, she crests first, hauling herself over the edge they had toppled down, and he surfaces half a breath after, on his hands and knees again with his head heavy between his shoulders, rainwater and sweat and dirt gluing his hair to his forehead, the back of his neck, the hollow of his jaw.
He allows himself to lean first on his elbow and then more completely on his back, rolling over with his knees bent and chest heaving, pulling oxygen and rain in through his mouth and nose, eyes closed against the spotty downpour that filters down through the treetops. Rey's comment prompts him to open them again, receiving a drop of rain directly in the corner of his eye for his trouble. For a quiet moment, his breathing is the only response that he offers her, caught up in trying to right the conversion of oxygen into carbon dioxide, their battle and the dead sprint through the forest catching up with the third and fourth act in their private drama. It is madness, and yet - )
This is still the beginning.
( It might as well be, for all the good any of it's doing. The two of them. The Resistance. The Order. The Knights and Snoke and Skywalker and all the orchestrators who move their pieces, his and hers, knights with free range of motion across the board. The Resistance will win this battle, and the Order will retreat to another base of operations, plan another series of attacks against Resistance forces and the Senate, and Kylo and Rey will clash again and again in a series of never-ending displays of skill. Until he kills her. Or turns her. For him, there can be no alternative, not where Snoke is concerned. Every encounter without one of those two outcomes is another mark against him. He could try to turn her now, or capture her, just as he could have on Yaga Minor. Kylo has the vague impression that whatever happens next, the outcome of this encounter will result in one more mark.
He sits up in one fluid motion, bracing his forearms on his knees, and does not look at her. )
The Order will not win today. Losing Corellian support will leave us scrambling for additional resources, and no doubt General Hux will bear the brunt of that responsibility, regardless of the circumstances of the Resistance's victory. The Supreme Leader hardly suffers fools in the wake of a loss. ( Despite the displeasure they are both sure to face yet again, despite the entirety of the situation that he finds himself in presently, Kylo manages, in his way, to sound amused at the prospect of Hux's suffering. It's not difficult, given how much he hates the son of a bitch. It's short-lived, though, as all fleeting thoughts and realizations are in the wake of the scolding he stands to receive as well. ) But one loss won't change the path of things. We will stay the course, you will stay the course, and before long there will be another clash, and then another and another. Your friends - ( He says the word like a swear. ) - could die. It's entirely likely that they will. Madness, yes, but it doesn't stop just because it feels as though it should. One day the end result will be different. One day, someone will win.
( Sitting in the dirt, quiet, borderline conversational, is a pause on their relentless quest to destroy the other in some way: she by dragging him back into the high noon glare of the Light, and he by coaxing her down into the Dark. She might have been a static void to him but he hasn't forgotten what he saw on Yaga Minor, the two of them a tandem unit, a devastating blow. It coats the back of his throat with a foul, sharp taste not unlike bile. )
[ It's as if he's read her mind, mentioning her friends, and it occurs to her a moment later that there's no reason to assume he hasn't pulled that from it at one point or another. It would be foolish to assume that he doesn't know every weakness she possesses, to rend Finn from her to weaken her. In all likelihood, he will be contented even if that is the only casualty of battle today.
She stays on the ground, watching Corellia burn to a cinder from miles above, lets the rain sting her cuts and bruises as it patters down. Staring out at the devastation, wondering if Finn or Poe or Chewie are buried in it, she decides that she will have to kill him. The resolution comes with startling pragmatism, for a woman who'd been aghast in taking her first life in the woods of Takodana, who prays for peace in the face of an endless and bloody war, who spent a lifetime learning the value of a life by fighting for her own.
Whether he will accept it or not, Rey knows that she understands Kylo Ren. Better than anyone, perhaps. She has known his desperation, felt his fear, seen his demons take form and consume him, but she would not be able to forgive him—or herself—that loss. It was General Organa's place to seek her son even after he took her estranged husband from her, but it is Rey's to settle on Finn's worth in this fight.
The Resistance would dub him expendable, but Rey will not.
And that settles it. Cold logic replaces the blind rage she'd felt charging him on Starkiller Base when she believed Finn to be dead, though it lands on the same result. Though she does not want to, though she would avoid it as long as she may because she knows that Snoke is the real enemy, she settles on her terms for Kylo Ren's life. ]
The Supreme Leader continues to suffer you. [ She answers him dryly after some silence, deciding only after careful thought to grace him with a reply at all. Slowly, she turns her gaze upward as an afterthought. ] The Resistance will not call a bloodbath a victory; we do not share your callousness in sacrificing the lives of our own.
[ Part of that, she knows, is because those lives are a precious and scarce resource. Where the First Order's propaganda has won the hearts of much of the galaxy, the Resistance is small, still grassroots, supported on General Organa's back by the beat of her heart alone. ]
I know you don't believe it will end with us. [ She knows what she makes of what she saw in his mind because she knows hunger, the bottomless, gluttonous ache that cannot be satiated, knows that no one is truly satisfied once they get what they strive for—like Unkar Plutt, they only increase their demands exponentially, pushing for more. ] When the Resistance is gone, that parasite will swallow you. It's not just a nightmare.
( Rey's heart goes out like the beat of a heavy drum, and that certainly is a difference between them, a weakness that he does not possess. Snoke had once accused him of compassion, spitting the word at him as if it were a filthy slur. Sitting in there in the dirt, Kylo knows without fault that he possesses no such compulsion, that his heart does not go out to any of the people fighting for his cause - hardly for Hux and not for Phasma nor for any of the other Knights on the ground tonight, though he can admit, even in Hux's case, that their loss would be a setback - and that there is certainly no one in the galaxy he would call friend the way that word chases Poe Dameron and the turncoat trooper and the Wookie like a searchlight. Therein lies the strength in loneliness, the knowledge that there is no one other than himself he needs to spend time worrying about.
He has no real words for her regarding the perspective of the Resistance nor for her comments regarding his master's position on Kylo's failures as an apprentice, despite his elevated status as the most promising of pupils, despite the way that he was groomed by Snoke himself. Partly because he doesn't care for her opinions and partly because he knows, at least, that there is more truth to the fictional nightmare of Snoke's existence on the whole and what it means for Kylo Ren than he has care to admit. And partly still because she sounds very much like Han Solo in certain ways that make his skin crawl and his blood burn, ever-present anger and disdain rising to the surface, muscle memory, reinforcing the grain of truth that wedged its way somewhere inside him and has yet to be shaken loose. The Supreme Leader is wise, he thinks to himself, from a lifetime ago, like a mantra, and says instead - )
There is little in the universe that is set in stone, even when it comes to the Force. ( Is as cryptic and Jedi-like an answer as he's willing to deliver. The truth is that he can look ahead or she can or they can rely on what they know of the other and of the circumstances surrounding them and try to determine the way things will go, but there are no guarantees. Save for the truths they know to be hardwired, reinforced by steel and concrete, unchanging as their positions on either side of the line. They stare at each other from across a series of chasms, of gulfs, and Kylo looks at her now across a short distance of six or seven feet, scrutinizing her carefully. ) You're so sure of my place at the end of the road. I'm curious about where you think you'll stand when that day comes, when the Resistance is gone and your parasite is all that's left.
[ Turning to look up at her foe, Rey finds herself studying him for a moment's silence, searching out the reason for his question—does he hope to instill the hopeless inevitability of that outcome on her? Does he merely wish to bind the focus to her fate instead of his? Or does he have some sort of genuine investment in the answer, in where her chips may fall?
There is, of course, the other possibility. That the Resistance no longer exists because it is one with the Republic again, and there is no First Order to resist—that they've won. With the Falcon, she could go anywhere, but she imagines she might first stop on Takodana, then join Luke in addressing the resurgence of the Force.
The furrow of her brow persists in her scrutiny, even if she doesn't project her curiosity into his mind—even if he does not draw lines of the sort, she will. That answer will not make it any easier to sort the good from the bad in this muddled mess of a war, and the dirt-caked scavenger from the outer rim, now out of her depth, does not need anything more to confuse her. ]
If I can't kill Snoke, then I'll make him kill me. I won't be a slave: my power does not belong to him. [ Her voice holds little malice; it is clean and straightforward, as simple as if she had long since made that decision. Now, though, she thinks of the eventuality, the potential for that to be precisely what happens, and reflects on what she saw of Ren's mind. ] I suppose he'd make you do it. I've known men like Snoke; you're never done proving yourself to them.
[ She knows he would do it too, even if he hasn't yet. The man who could look his father in the eye and run him through, unflinching, to solidify his bond to the darkness would not shy away from the murder of what they only looked on as a potential soldier. The trouble she caused them would soon outweigh her value.
Now, she is the one refusing to flinch as she stares into the black pits of his eyes and airs her morbid curiosity, ] Would you make it quick? [ He had given Han Solo that much, though she wagered it was as much a necessity for Kylo Ren to hold steady to his path as it was a mercy. ]
( Though they aren't obvious to him and though he doesn't go looking for them this time, Rey's thoughts - or at least her thought process - is plainly evident on her face. From the crease that appears between knitted brows to the hard line of her mouth, crowded by dirt, Kylo can at least see that she's thinking about it. He finds himself uninterested in navigating her mind to search out her thoughts on his own merit, waiting instead to hear what she has to say for herself. Her answer does not disappoint him, although he does feel the sting of a layered insult in a way that leaves him cold.
He knows what she sees when she looks at him, never mind what she's experienced in peering inside his head. Monster. Creature. Kylo neither makes nor craves apologies for any of it. There are no illusions as to the kind of person that he is, and he prefers it that way, wanting to be perceived as the sort of man who would run his biological father through and toss him over a bridge without hesitation or remorse. No one - certainly not Rey - needs to know that it had felt like pulling hooked nails out of himself, that the last pieces of him that were still irrevocably Han Solo's son had dug their claws in so tightly and held on with such desperation when the sever was supposed to be clean-cut that it had felt like something was actively ripping apart inside of him. He'd hated it, still hates it. It's weakness. Sentimentality. Compassion. And there is no room for that in Snoke's court.
Gloved fingers reach out to separate several small pebbles from the dirt and tall stalks of grass that have bent under their activity and the weight of the falling rain. He actually thinks about his answer before replying to her, fully cognizant of the fact that the scenarios they have described for one another are actual events that are bound to occur. )
It wouldn't be my decision, in the end. ( That's the truth of it. She isn't wrong, of course: they are all of them trying to prove themselves to Snoke in some way. It's just that Kylo is trying to prove himself to more than just Snoke. ) It isn't as simple as you want to make it. The day you think that you're powerful enough to kill the Supreme Leader is the day you overestimate yourself and the day that he makes you realize it. ( Dark eyes move from the small collection of stones he has gathered back up to her face. ) He is wise beyond measure and powerful beyond your understanding. If and when you find yourself at his mercy, you'll kneel before him or he will make you kneel. There is no easy way out where he's concerned. He'll torture you. He'll persuade you. He'll show you all the ways that the path you have traveled this far down are wrong. ( The small stones he holds lift from his palm to hover a few centimeters; Kylo does not even look at them or seem to notice that they have done this. His attention stays on her. ) Maybe he'll convince you. And maybe he won't. Maybe you'll fight back. You certainly have the spirit. ( It doesn't sound like a compliment. ) You wouldn't be used as a way to prove myself to him. Not like that, at least. He would probably want to kill you himself, if you keep refusing to yield. But -
( His tone is cool with honesty, and he doesn't say any of it to be cruel. This is the reality of the world that she has submerged herself in, and while the idea of him offering her a swift and merciful death at his own hand is a nice one, the reality is that her demise in that scenario does not come quickly or mercifully. It is at the end of a long stretch of dark days, and Kylo can't see that far ahead of them to be able to offer a concrete answer on any of it. Just experience. Knowledge. What he's seen and felt during his time as Snoke's apprentice. What he thinks may be something different, but he shrouds his mind with a heavy cloak, keeping his thoughts to himself, hidden away should she try to probe him for deeper answers. Instead, he flicks his fingers and the pebbles go scattering, rolling down the hillside and cutting the high grass, and it's a moment before he answers her question directly, each word sounding as if it's being wrenched from someplace unwilling to let go. )
[ With almost childlike patience, Rey sits with her knees bent, fingernails picking at the top seam of her boot while he speaks, offering to him rapt attention in the form of softly parted lips and a brow that furrows the longer he goes, so certain, so closed off, yet so telling.
She does not have to reach into his mind to understand how Snoke has driven him so desperate. It's in the lapses in his speech, the certain steadiness, and even the absent chaos of the swirling stones in his palm. Experience speaks through him, painting vivid pictures of torture and suffering, of what it must have taken to make Han Solo's child kneel, of what needling persuasions and visions he'd used to convince Ben Solo to reimagine himself as Kylo Ren.
It is not the terrible things that have happened to him that cause her heart to ache for him, but the certainty with which he claims that Snoke would not dismiss the task to Kylo Ren to prove himself, and the reluctant, pause-laden honesty with which he offered mercy despite it all. He cannot see for himself the foothold she has gained with him—perhaps for the best, or he would readily sever it—or he will not see it. Snoke would, if any image of him that Leia had described held any truth.
Before now, her insistence was always with peace in mind, driven by the conviction with which General Organa reached for her son but with the constant motive for peace being Rey's only real buy-in. Now, watching him muddle through the cloying darkness and smoke that she knows pervades his mind, she sees the flicker of a candle that carried in its flame Leia's hope.
Compassion is the only weapon against the Dark Side; Rey didn't need Master Skywalker to teach her that one (though he had given words to the thought). She sees it there in Kylo Ren, barely gasping at the surface as he tries to drown it in an ocean of suffering and hate. One hand reaches up, as if on instinct she might reach for him, but her fingers curl as her hand reaches her waist, staying there a moment.
It's gone, then, and she presses one palm to the earth to push herself to her feet, dusting her hands off and stepping forward to gaze down at him. For a moment, she doesn't speak, only stares down at his bent form and the rocks he juggles, weighing her power against his—and her will. ]
All that power. [ The wastefulness goes implied by his demonstration of how impotent he is to go against the will of the Supreme Leader. Slowly, Rey shakes her head, almost mourning, as she stands disarmed over him, hands loosely hanging at her sides. ] You told me once that you wanted to show me the ways of the Force. [ After a beat, she adds, ] I want to try something; will you let me?
[ The question is deliberate and heavy transposition of their first encounters, when no permission was asked, when power was exerted for power's sake simply because it could. What Kylo Ren would take, Rey would ask for, even after he hadn't offered her the same courtesy. ]
( Her hesitation, the instinctive - maybe - rise and fall of her hand as she briefly weighs the pros and cons of reaching out to him before she decides otherwise flutter at the corner of his peripheral vision once he's looked away again, but Kylo pretends not to notice, glancing over once more only after she's stood up. Their new position is not so different from what they both saw earlier. Trading the projected image of the bridge for the soft, melting earth, and his knees for a seat on the ground, it's nearly the same. He watches her clamber to her feet, steady in the shifting dirt, and looks up at her with his palm still flat and fingers splayed like a five-point star. There is no open curiosity or any degree of wonder written on his face as he turns it up toward her; his features have carefully rearranged themselves back into something befitting the removal of his mask. A mask itself, damp and dirty but showing nothing. Making a conscious effort to, at least.
It's hardly the first time that someone has mentioned those three words to him. All that power. It isn't the first time that he's heard it in that same tone before, either. Those words have followed him around his whole life, from careful, conscious awe to heartbroken disappointment, Skywalker's voice like a warning reminder against Snoke's soft, smooth whisper in his ear, a promise. Some of it had been imagined, and some of it had been real. Eventually the lines blurred and distorted until determining which was the illusion and which the reality seemed unimportant, and it all became real. Rey's implication is tangible in the cooling Corellian air, but Kylo does't balk at it. Once you've heard the Supreme Leader imply that your power is not enough, little else measures up.
He feels an eyebrow quirk at her question, but he stays on the ground for what feels like a long time after she's spoken, staring up at her in a way that manages to take all of her in at once, from the dark folds in the fabric she wears to the relaxed bend in her fingers as they hang at her sides. Skywalker's training is evident in every crease and line of her body in a fight, in the way that she handles the Force and uses it to guide and strengthen her, her footwork and the accuracy that she's gaining with a lightsaber. But it isn't all him, and Kylo can see that as plainly as anything. The way she holds herself, the weight of her conviction and attitude, the way in which she calls the Force to her and the way in which it responds, it's every bit the girl that he encountered in the forest.
He stands, one hand planted beneath him, fingers sinking into the mud under the weight of his frame rising slowly from the ground. At his full height, he is so much larger than she is that the idea of ever being unable to subdue and capture her seems ridiculous. One foot rises and falls and slides a fraction of an inch in the mud as he steps toward her and he is standing close enough to her now that if she reached out and he reached out, they could shake hands. Kylo keeps his at his sides, curled into loose fists that, for once, do not hint at outright violence. Reckless curiosity, interest, keeps him planted, watching her. )
Something.
( It's as much permission as she's ever going to get. )
[ Coming to full height as he stands, Kylo Ren stretches upward and blots out the light of the fires behind him, a towering shadow that loomed before her. The space between them grows tense, heavy with their closeness. Though her eyes do not betray her, fear grips her a moment, sure that he will instead take it upon himself to teach her in doubtlessly the same way that the Supreme Leader had taught him—through pain. But Rey, who has spent so much of her life with nothing, does not fear loss or pain. They are old friends.
She reminds herself of that in the moment when her recollection of his power and anger threatens her nerve, and steels her heart to what she hopes she can do. Only once had she seen the trick performed, suffered its effects herself, but she had never seen anyone force their will on someone like she had JB-007 either. The capability lay within her own spirit, dependent on its strength, and emboldened by her surety.
Her eyes shut, forcing Ren's cloying darkness from her mind and replacing it with meditative serenity that helps her feel currents in the air like sparks racing across her skin, power humming in the atmosphere that waits to be employed. The fire, far in the valley, heats the air and brings it in great billowing puffs up through them, carrying with it the stale and smoky scent of ash. It finds its place scattered among the molecules of the atmosphere just as she finds her place scattered among the stars.
Kylo Ren would only give her one attempt, and stakes like these mandated success.
Unremarkable, ruddy brown eyes open to fix on him, anchored and firm in her task, and she reaches one slight hand, fingers gently curved, to hover alongside his temple. For a moment she hesitates to close the gap—contact, she's sure, is not needed, but she could not say with any confidence whether it would help matters or not, and she needs all the help she can get.
She swallows the lump in her throat and feels her way into the cavernous web of his mind, but not for information or any true dive. Instead, she skims the surface, a web of interconnected energy matrices as complex as any star map, searching for something in particular, fumbling her way until—
Jarring realization crashes in all at once. Frantic earnest bleeds into him. Sloppy, hurried, she tries to dim his mind and drag him into the murky waters of unconsciousness as he had once done to her.
There is light in him yet, a dim flicker, ready to be snuffed out by Snoke, no doubt easily done if he snaps her out of his mind too quickly and severs the connection between them with the sharp point of betrayal, but one that could be kindled to something more if he could only be ripped away from the darkness. For his sake. For the galaxy's. They use the word cold to describe this kind of brutish pragmatism, but Rey's was learned in the heat of the desert, and it serves her well.
Deception paves the road to the Dark Side, but Rey uses it in the hopes of bringing him to those who could help break the hold Snoke has over him, who could eliminate the malaise that drags him down like stubborn, invasive tar. And she uses it too with hope that he will forgive her for it then, for she knows if she let him walk away, she would not forgive herself. Finn's lives and the lives of the whole Resistance lay heavy on her shoulders. He will understand, she assures herself. But only if it works. ]
( This close, there is nowhere to look but at Rey. He can feel the trepidation rolling off of her in slow, shallow waves but can't determine whether or not they are a result of his proximity in general, the potential that he has to simply reach out and snag her, or something else, something in her intention that he can't read and that she isn't telegraphing to him. It puts him on edge, his back straight as an arrow under the thick padding of his armor, the scratchy material of the clothing underneath sticking to his back and neck with sweat and damp. His hands at his sides, so loosely contorted, ball themselves into tighter fists when she's close enough to reach a hand out toward him. It takes a concentrated amount of effort not to recoil immediately, step back and away from her instinctively, the way that he had feinted almost imperceptibly and unconsciously away from Solo before catching himself and realizing the mistake made in that moment of weakness.
He won't make the same mistake again, holding still as her small hand, dirt under her fingernails, reaches out to tap against his temple. Her hesitation and uncertainty is evident in the way her fingers jump and then adamantly settle against his skin, as if she's reassuring herself that this is something she's capable of doing. It doesn't make sense to him right away, given her need for proximity when they have been able to peel back the other's mind and stare hard and searching into one another's thoughts without physical contact. Rey is the only thing that he can see, brown eyes wide open and peering into him as if she's seeing through him and beyond him and before him, navigating the timeline of his histories and possibilities with alarming accuracy, the set of her jaw and the line of her mouth a determined contrast to the fear that he feels pulsing through her veins, reaching spindly fingers out to curl around her convictions. She presses onward, but she never goes deep, doesn't take the plunge, reaches instead for the switch and -
Oh.
Something in his gaze shifts and though he hasn't looked away from her in the time it's taken the two of them to arrive at this point, Kylo's eyes harden and the muscle in his jaw goes, jumping all the way down into his neck as he tenses. She panics in his head like a bird, flooding into him with a speed he's not felt before, and he can see the deception and determination written across her face like it's been painted there. Her eyes tell a different story, but there is conviction in them, too, and Kylo, not so completely at her mercy, uncurls one fist from his side to wrap his fingers around her wrist with force enough to bruise. It doesn't jolt her out of his head enough for either of them to forfeit the gamble, but he holds onto her there for as long as he can, smothered under the weight of her influence in his head and unable to surface enough to drive her out.
He drowns. What feels like a cold grin starts at the corner of his mouth, and he thinks Ah before he can stop himself, angry and annoyed and oddly pleased in one way or another. That she would fall to this.
It had been so easy for him before, on Takodana, but now they are so much more evenly matched. He tries to reach down inside himself and utilize the raw anger that he feels stoking the fire burning throughout, but by the time he grits his teeth and digs deep enough to call on it, Rey has gotten in too far and poured too much water down for anything to catch. His fingers wrapped at her wrist loosen, holding her in a semi-circle of finger and thumb, the web spanning the distance between the two pressing tight to her skin in an effort to hold on. His other hand palms at his saber, feeling the weapon as if through layers and layers of wool and cotton. Nothing catches, ignites. Rage swells, expands, bursts. There is no channel available for it to travel, and it beats relentlessly, uselessly, against his breastbone. He fights back, takes a half-step toward her, dark head bowed in her direction, and then falls sharply to one knee under the meditative weight of her power.
He smells smoke and earth and sweat and blood and ozone on the ground, and a blurred, vague impression of her shadow hovers above him before Corellia becomes darkness. )
writes a short novel and traps you in this thread like kathy bates in misery
[ 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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oh look we finished a thread shows up with nonsensical images for another
omg nonsensical images are my favorite how did you know
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
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
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
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.
quietly hides all my bookmarked lightsaber theory and forms info pages i'm saving these for a friend
He recognizes Djem So with some annoyance after five minutes of trading blows, though not because he's particularly learned in that particular form but because he knows it was a foundation of Vader's unique style, and while Kylo sees the advantages of blending the fifth form with the others that his grandfather incorporated into his technique, sees Rey utilize it in a way that smacks of old world flare and skill - interesting, that - and genuine, unrelenting talent, it's Niman that he favors. Ironically. Lacking the totality of sufficient training that she receives from Skywalker means that he prefers a style more grounded upon Force-based attacks, a speciality he's ready to employ when she hooks her saber into his and pushes his blade back into his sternum.
It's a struggle, as he has to use both hands on the hilt of his blade to keep her from bearing down on him so completely that he loses an arm, but he realizes halfway through trying to get her off of him that she's not going to kill him. He can tell by the way she veers the intention of her aim behind the blue beam of the lightsaber to angle at his shoulder rather than mirroring the way he ran Han Solo through. It's hardly mercy, but it's there, pulsing between them as heavily as the breath she draws and the effort she puts into trying to subdue him, her jaw tight and mouth an angry, sharp line of bared teeth, eyes hard and shining over the hissing in their hands. In the mud, it's more difficult to keep his balance, to work one hand off of the hilt of his own red blade in an effort to dislodge her once more without buckling under her willpower alone.
And then she calls him Ben and the world more or less turns and shatters on a dime.
When he has the opportunity to put her on the defense, Kylo swings his saber like a broadsword, hitting heavy and hard, harder than he was able to when he was injured on Starkiller Base. The opportunity comes as a single point of anger shrinks and then swells before popping like a balloon. Something uncurls in his chest and he lets her lightsaber cut into the top layer of his skin before dropping his shoulder, grunting sharply at the white hot burn and pivoting on his foot. He lets her knock his blade down with her own again and uses the momentum to reach out for her, the back of her saber arm slapping into his outstretched palm by virtue of momentary surprise and sheer close-quartered combat, as he jerks her around and into his grip the same way he has tossed her from it in the past. He locks his fingers around her wrist and knuckles, trying to hold her still, a flash of pain searing where his skin is split open on his own hand as the flesh pulls taut. )
I know who has the power to end this. I think you're the one who's confused.
( There's no chance in hell that she'll allow him to hold her in that position for long, and contrary to her probable belief, he still isn't interested in killing her just yet. He makes the active decision to let her go, kicking her away from him with a carefully placed knee to her back that he chases with a glancing blow from a red slash. He smells burning fabric but isn't sure if he scored a hit on her skin and rounds on her, ready for her strikes with heavy blocks, hitting back at her hard, angry and contorted under the armor. )
give them to meeeee
Agony shoots through her as the first lightsaber injury she has ever sustained cauterizes on impact, a mixture of stabbing pain as it rips her open and steady burn, simmering her flesh. She holds her pain to a low groan, pressing her forehead into the damp earth below as she clenches her jaw to suffer it. Years on Jakku taught her to mask her pain when it came, and remember the times it had been worse—as it turns out, she's never had it worse.
She works her jaw for just a few seconds, but they feel like a lifetime, time slowing and thickening the air around her as she waits for the inevitable downswing of his saber across her spine before she can recover. Concussion missiles and proton bombs flash on the horizon like a lightning storm, bright whites and blues sparking through the darkness, but the thunderclap of their combustion is deafened by the pain and by Rey's search for center.
One hand reaches out, pale against the dark topsoil, grasping clumps of dirt as she fails to reach far enough for the saber that trembles under her beckoning, too weakened by distractions.
Her eyes shut, and she finds silence, peace within herself in the form of the dusty inside of a wrecked imperial star destroyer. Cold clarity fills her, bringing the chaos into focus, muting the pain, and she clambers to her feet in time with his advance, real time returning steadily to the battlefield.
In another instant, she swipes the hilt off the ground, brandishes the saber, and spins to deflect another blow, digging her feet in. Purple light flashes each time their blades hum in concert, pinging off one another in a frenetic exchange of swipes. She comes back swinging, turning quickly from defense to offense, and gets just enough breathing room to pinwheel each slash, across from alternating sides, in an attempt to drive him back. ]
As long as that name holds power over you, you are still within the reach of the Light. [ Through gritted teeth, she shouts over the cacophony of war, ] Don't turn away from it.
hahahah to be fair they are like all kylo saber theories i'm so ashamed /hides face in hands
So he waits for her to rise with his feet planted shoulder-width apart, leaning into the grip he has on his saber as if it were a heavy staff or club, prepared and expectant that she will right herself as soon as her boots are able to find purchase in the muck and the mud. It's only a few moments, but it feels like forever, long enough for him to straighten at the knees somewhat, curious as to whether or not she is actually down. He takes a step, another, toward her, the red hum of his saber drowned out by the soundtrack of battle and the heavy staccato of artillery fire. Halfway to her he hears before he feels the light patter of rain whipped hard against his helmet by seasonal winds, and unbidden and uninvited, Kylo throws open the floodgate for just a moment to feel out her thoughts.
The whipcrack flare of pain strikes him low across his own back before he caps the connection as well as he can, and the sharp spike of rage that runs through the network of his veins and tendons and bones reaches out to replace it. A deep ache settles into the burns across the back of his hand and he flexes his fingers in an attempt to work it out, almost removes the glove itself so that he won't have to deal with the fused fibers later but knows there's no time for that. Her back is to him, a small but steady stretch of leather and cotton. A Jedi. A fire burns. )
Get up!
( Without the modulator, his voice might be more alarming. It feels raw and hoarse in the column of his throat. With the helmet in place, it booms like it's being issued over a loudspeaker. He strides forward, lightsaber at the ready whether she is prepared or not, and positions himself to strike. Rey meets him with renewed ferocity, and though he pushes her back offensively, her answering slashes and the speed with which she moves makes it a difficult offense to stay on. Eventually she slips back into control of the current of things, and he finds himself repelling her attacks in much the same way he managed before. It isn't clear to him how the battle will end, and he keeps an eye open for a window of opportunity, never mind that the gaps keep becoming smaller and smaller.
She eventually catches him at the tail end of a heavy blow, parrying expertly and forcing him to grip the lightsaber two-handed and rotate his wrists sharply unless he favors breaking them. He pushes down, but she has the figurative high ground and pulls up, effectively locking them together, close enough for him to see the shape of her words as well as hear them without having to strain, rather than her shouting over the roar around them. He bites back at her in response, close enough to do so now. )
What do you think you'll achieve by attempting to persuade me? ( Energy hisses and pops between them, their locked blades cracking. Hair burns and leather heats. A blank shock of expressionless steel tipped toward her, the best approximation of eye contact possible under the circumstances. ) A happy reunion? There is nothing to turn to.
excellent! also first week back at teaching is straight up killin me SORRY I'MS O SLOW
[ She shouts it over the thrum of their blades as they lock against one another, skill thrown aside for a battle of brute strength. Rey throws her weight into it to stave him off, jaw fiercely tightened with all the determination with which she meets the task. ]
You claim you want to bring order to the galaxy, but all you give it is war and bloodshed. End this.
[ The appeal cannot truly earn the title of plea because it is insistent and commanding, too much so to properly be considered a request. She demands of him the only outcome that is acceptable, and unflaggingly battles him into submission.
X-wings fill the skies with laser cannon fire from mounted guns, suppressing the ground armies over the hills beyond them, and the Resistance begins to overtake the larger fleet that the First Order is too surprised to properly organize. The heat of the battle barely touches Ren and Rey where they are, exchanging blows in the same private war they've waged in their minds since they'd first locked eyes.
Her heels dig into the soil, sinking by inches as he bears his weight and brute strength down on her from the joint of their sabers, but she does not budge, holding form to stave him off, too stubborn and too sure of her moral position to abandon her physical one to dodge the severity of his downswing.
Instead, she attacks on another front, thrusting her mind at his to pierce the veil of his helm and collect some kind of feedback of what battle he might be waging within to complement that happening outside of them. ]
PLEASE DO NOT WORRY. i just started back at school myself so I FEEL YOU
The sudden presence of her in his mind coupled with the strength and concentration needed to keep his boots from slipping too far in the topsoil and sending him to his knees, literally, makes it impossible to speak without sacrificing ground. Every muscle strains at attention, teeth tightly ground together, a long, drawn out exhale of frustration breaking apart in his throat and coming out through the modulator like a wordless shout. The beam of his blade shakes all the way down into his hands, where he holds the hilt white-knuckled. Rey finds a niche and shoves in a way that he has not encountered in anyone else he has ever come across, finding it as easy and natural to slip into someone's mind and sniff out answers, hurt them, as it is to keep them out in turn. She is like a wall of water, hammering against him without relent, wave after wave, but in the end all it takes is one tiny crack in the dam and she slips by effortlessly, a small rivulet at first and then more and more until his head is full of her, flooded with sunlight and sand.
Kylo Ren is on his knees in his own mind, thoughts a thunderstorm possessing an enormous amount of power. Aggressive, unchecked rage swirls and rises, fear builds and buffets it, whipping it into a frenzy that so often explodes outward. There is always, always, a shadow stretched over him, the tall and deformed silhouette that is sometimes-Snoke and sometimes-Darth Vader, both just ghosts, husks, of what they were and are, potential that he envies and craves and is terrified to fall short of. They are on a bridge - the bridge - that extends infinitely in either direction, a swirl of light beneath them that claws steadily upward until it slips over the edge of the bridge and spills like meltwater, pooling around the soles of Rey's boot heels and lapping up at Kylo's knees. Smoke hangs heavy and dark and thick, the result of some explosion, the smell of engine fire and motor oil heavy in the atmosphere.
There are whispers: Solo and Organa and Skywalker most prevalent among the many; Snoke is the loudest, with a voice like gravel disintegrating, rough stone grinding. Black smoke obscures his vision, and Kylo breathes deep, inhaling a great gulp of smog, letting it fill his head and lungs and consume him. The water at Rey's ankles now is bitterly cold, glacial pure and bright, and it floods his mouth and nose and ears as it drags him under its current, turning murky gray as both light and dark claw at him, pulling him down and ripping him apart before pulling Rey under to submerge her as well. Bright, cold water and cloying darkness turns to ash falling like snow, covering them both and making it hard to breathe. She stands above him, and he kneels in dead leaves and dirt, and she extends her hand. Once he has the conviction to reach for it, the ground opens between them, a gash in the landscape. )
End this? ( His voice is a loud echo without a mask in the cavernous space that they have carved out in one another. ) There is no end to this.
( Back in actual reality, an X-wing and a TIE fighter collide like a massive firework in the sky above them, and the resulting explosion and impact with Corellia makes the ground shake. Kylo stumbles with the force of the crash, close enough that trees several hundred yards away from them catch fire, and manages to miss Rey's lightsaber just enough to send them both sprawling in the mud. )
OHG OOD
She can feel it as if the experience were her own, the water turning black as it fights its way into her ears, throat, and presses at her opened eyes, burning them. Whipping her head around the rush of water, she looks up to see light, tinted and dimmed as it filters in through the surface of the ocean they are pulled under. Just as she starts to reach for the surface, fingertips straining for the light, she turns and pulls her arm into her chest, looking for him and pursuing him instead.
Then they're on the ground, and he kneels before her like a man at prayer, shoulders heavy and defeated, and the step she takes towards him makes the ground tremble. He reaches to her, and her hand extends in kind. The ground splits beneath them as fingertips brush, and she is thrust from the very real hill she stands on just as he howls at her, the explosion-induced quake ripping her from the landscape of his mind.
The light of their sabers die, leaving them in mud and darkness, ears ringing, head pounding. She turns onto her back, groaning, blinking through the ensuing daze, and she spots the smooth black of his helmet and the thick pile of his cloak around him several yards away, in the opposite direction her inheritance flew. She rolls onto her stomach, and instead of seeking it out, reaches for him, too weak in the moment to do more than lift her face out of the dirt and grasp.
Another rocket whistles as it flies in, stray suppression from the Resistance or the First Order, it's all the same from down here, and spreads the blaze around them like a sickle.
The very image of Snoke that had suffocated him in his mind was about to become a reality, and Rey honed her focus to pick herself up off the ground. The fire crackled, catching between treetops and rapidly encircling them, while she scrambled for him. ]
We have to go. [ Urgency hardens her voice at the same time as it hurries it. ] Get up. [ Hands touch his shoulder, ready to drag him if she must. This isn't enemies at war; it's pure and it's human and it's good. They may kill each other one day, but she won't leave him here to die while she saves herself. Not when she waited a lifetime for someone to be willing to come back for her and save her before Finn walked into her life. ]
/drowns in a sea of education with you
It's disorienting, and in the haze of fire spreading and filling the immediate area with smoke, not so different than the landscape they were just pulled from, he can't immediately distinguish reality from the alternative. Her voice filters into his head through murky, static water, and Kylo isn't sure if it's the result of more damage done to his helmet or the speed with which he is returning to himself. Either way, it's unacceptable, and when her hand comes down on his shoulder to fist in the cloak that has unceremoniously bunched itself around his neck, it jolts something in him enough that he's able to climb up onto hands and knees.
He looks up at her and even through the screen of his mask he can see the color of her skin growing from shadowed and smeared with dirt and rainwater and sweat to bright orange with encroaching fire. The long span of his fingers reaches for her upper arm and catches in the fabric of her sleeve. No time to consider the moral implications behind her actions. Or his. Gets to his feet while shrugging her off and loses the helmet in a last ditch effort not to breathe whatever toxic mechanical failure is polluting the inside of it. That's two helmets down, and another cloak, as he unclasps the one at his throat so as not to slow him down. )
Move!
( His voice is a sonic boom under the heavy call of missiles and downed starships. The sky is alight with red-green laser fire and the bright horizon and sunset of bombs dropping in the east. Fire licks at the forest around them, and the glint of orange light chases the rounded hilt of her saber. Kylo nudges her toward it, unconsciously, barely realizing that he's doing it until it's done and they're tearing ahead of the blaze, two people so sure of where their feet fall that the dampened, trampled ground seems to pose no threat to them at all.
Until it does.
Above them, fire consumes branches and leaves, encouraged by the high winds and not drowned by the light drizzle that has started to fall. Below them, the level ground gives way into a slight decline that gradually turns into a sharp-angled hillside, until they are not so much running as they are sliding. )
sobs academically into my cereal this is fine
After being in Kylo Ren's, she can guess that his mind is equally conflicted now, and she offers him those brief flashes of contact as they stagger at a sprint through the wood, leaping over gnarled roots and trying to outpace nature herself. The desert, Rey quickly decides, was peaceful beside this. Sinking sands are predictable, and sandstorms can be weathered. There is no haven, no strategy, no evasive tactic for a forest fire.
Their steps grow shorter, and it's only when they stutter and slow progress that she realizes the severity of the decline, but by then her heels are digging in and she's careening down the hillside, sloshing mud around the grooves she cuts in her attempts for traction. The rainfall, which only barely pierced the canopy above them at first, now trickles steadily through, and it's the cold breeze on her damp back that makes her realize the forest thins this way.
Suddenly, she clasps Ren's hand, gripping him with enough strength to draw defined lines into the muscles of her arms while her other reaches out for a low, deadened branch of a tree. It breaks, scrapes her legs while it falls, and she grabs another, more alive but flimsier, whip-like, and she pulls herself and her enemy back just in time to narrowly miss the steep drop-off that is the cliffside they meet at the end of their slide. ]
We need to climb! [ Her deaf shouts rise above the roar of battle, but only just. ]
/dries your tears with many syllabi
Kylo's glove is slick with water and mud, and he can feel himself beginning to slip through her grip like a fraying knot even as the decayed branch comes apart in her other hand, bloodies her knee and shin. He twists his palm in the circle of her fingers last minute, so that when the jerk comes from the sturdier of the two branches and saves them a trip over the edge of the canyon, Rey's grip is more secure and finds a stronger purchase, palm to palm and fingers locked vice-like around one another. The whiplash of the abrupt halt is enough to pull him back down into the mud, the backs of his thighs finding purchase before he springs up again, mindful of the fact that he is much heavier than she is, that if he allows gravity to pull him down he will take them both down without question.
Her voice is a roar in his ears, and he gets the impression that even if he were unable to hear her, he would know exactly what she was saying to him. He drops her hand as if it had burned him.
A certain degree of focus is required, and he actively clears his mind while whipping his head back around to search out the hillside. He doesn't anticipate the clarity with which he determines their path out but it doesn't take him by surprise when it becomes abundantly clear which way to go. Kylo wastes no time in shouting back at her. )
That way! ( He steps around her with great care, mindful of the ground's precarious position this close to the edge, and secures his foot enough to pull himself bodily upward. Kylo doesn't entirely trust her behind him, halfway waiting for her to bury her saber in his back, but he climbs and once or twice looks back to make sure that she isn't slipping, doesn't need some form of assistance. She doesn't, of course, but he still calls down to her - ) Incoming. ( - when he senses something large coming their way before the ground shakes and the trees tremble and the rounded body of a TIE fighter sans-wings comes careening through the forest and over the ridge they just tumbled down at a speed that launches it into the canyon rather than allowing it to roll down the hill. It isn't until the resulting explosion has engulfed the far side of the canyon in flames that he realizes he never once actually opened his mouth, slipped instead into her mind to warn her without thinking about it. )
it's all they're good for tbh
But his warning reverberates in the recesses of her mind, sudden and strangely second nature, and instead of questioning, she presses herself flush against the rock face and masks her face behind her raised arm as the ensuing blanket of heat settles over them like a wave.
Dirt sticks to the sweat on her face, rubs off more grit from her shoulder as she lifts her face to look out at the fire that blazes, and her heart aches. That smoldering TIE fighter once could have contained Finn, or if things had gone differently, secured Poe. She knew nothing of the state they were in, fighting the battle on another front, and truthfully, she tried not to think about it, but in this …
Shaking her head, she casts her eyes upward instead and begins to advance again, pulling herself over the edge to securely leave the blaze below, smoke stinging her eyes and watering them, but otherwise as safe and sound as one might hope. Despite the billowing clouds of thick black smog that plumed through the sky, she gazed down at the foliage behind, feeling for her lightsaber in the midst of it.
Survival first. The Jakku way had allowed her to leave her most valuable possession behind. Her hands close around fistfuls of dirt, breaths escaping her lips in heavy pants. If she were to fight a war on any front, it wouldn't be with Luke's lightsaber. ]
This is madness.
[ And it shouldn't be happening. None of it makes sense—it's pain begetting pain. Every battle they fight feels like a temporary solution, a bandage on a wound that gangrene has rotted. ]
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He allows himself to lean first on his elbow and then more completely on his back, rolling over with his knees bent and chest heaving, pulling oxygen and rain in through his mouth and nose, eyes closed against the spotty downpour that filters down through the treetops. Rey's comment prompts him to open them again, receiving a drop of rain directly in the corner of his eye for his trouble. For a quiet moment, his breathing is the only response that he offers her, caught up in trying to right the conversion of oxygen into carbon dioxide, their battle and the dead sprint through the forest catching up with the third and fourth act in their private drama. It is madness, and yet - )
This is still the beginning.
( It might as well be, for all the good any of it's doing. The two of them. The Resistance. The Order. The Knights and Snoke and Skywalker and all the orchestrators who move their pieces, his and hers, knights with free range of motion across the board. The Resistance will win this battle, and the Order will retreat to another base of operations, plan another series of attacks against Resistance forces and the Senate, and Kylo and Rey will clash again and again in a series of never-ending displays of skill. Until he kills her. Or turns her. For him, there can be no alternative, not where Snoke is concerned. Every encounter without one of those two outcomes is another mark against him. He could try to turn her now, or capture her, just as he could have on Yaga Minor. Kylo has the vague impression that whatever happens next, the outcome of this encounter will result in one more mark.
He sits up in one fluid motion, bracing his forearms on his knees, and does not look at her. )
The Order will not win today. Losing Corellian support will leave us scrambling for additional resources, and no doubt General Hux will bear the brunt of that responsibility, regardless of the circumstances of the Resistance's victory. The Supreme Leader hardly suffers fools in the wake of a loss. ( Despite the displeasure they are both sure to face yet again, despite the entirety of the situation that he finds himself in presently, Kylo manages, in his way, to sound amused at the prospect of Hux's suffering. It's not difficult, given how much he hates the son of a bitch. It's short-lived, though, as all fleeting thoughts and realizations are in the wake of the scolding he stands to receive as well. ) But one loss won't change the path of things. We will stay the course, you will stay the course, and before long there will be another clash, and then another and another. Your friends - ( He says the word like a swear. ) - could die. It's entirely likely that they will. Madness, yes, but it doesn't stop just because it feels as though it should. One day the end result will be different. One day, someone will win.
( Sitting in the dirt, quiet, borderline conversational, is a pause on their relentless quest to destroy the other in some way: she by dragging him back into the high noon glare of the Light, and he by coaxing her down into the Dark. She might have been a static void to him but he hasn't forgotten what he saw on Yaga Minor, the two of them a tandem unit, a devastating blow. It coats the back of his throat with a foul, sharp taste not unlike bile. )
no subject
She stays on the ground, watching Corellia burn to a cinder from miles above, lets the rain sting her cuts and bruises as it patters down. Staring out at the devastation, wondering if Finn or Poe or Chewie are buried in it, she decides that she will have to kill him. The resolution comes with startling pragmatism, for a woman who'd been aghast in taking her first life in the woods of Takodana, who prays for peace in the face of an endless and bloody war, who spent a lifetime learning the value of a life by fighting for her own.
Whether he will accept it or not, Rey knows that she understands Kylo Ren. Better than anyone, perhaps. She has known his desperation, felt his fear, seen his demons take form and consume him, but she would not be able to forgive him—or herself—that loss. It was General Organa's place to seek her son even after he took her estranged husband from her, but it is Rey's to settle on Finn's worth in this fight.
The Resistance would dub him expendable, but Rey will not.
And that settles it. Cold logic replaces the blind rage she'd felt charging him on Starkiller Base when she believed Finn to be dead, though it lands on the same result. Though she does not want to, though she would avoid it as long as she may because she knows that Snoke is the real enemy, she settles on her terms for Kylo Ren's life. ]
The Supreme Leader continues to suffer you. [ She answers him dryly after some silence, deciding only after careful thought to grace him with a reply at all. Slowly, she turns her gaze upward as an afterthought. ] The Resistance will not call a bloodbath a victory; we do not share your callousness in sacrificing the lives of our own.
[ Part of that, she knows, is because those lives are a precious and scarce resource. Where the First Order's propaganda has won the hearts of much of the galaxy, the Resistance is small, still grassroots, supported on General Organa's back by the beat of her heart alone. ]
I know you don't believe it will end with us. [ She knows what she makes of what she saw in his mind because she knows hunger, the bottomless, gluttonous ache that cannot be satiated, knows that no one is truly satisfied once they get what they strive for—like Unkar Plutt, they only increase their demands exponentially, pushing for more. ] When the Resistance is gone, that parasite will swallow you. It's not just a nightmare.
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( Rey's heart goes out like the beat of a heavy drum, and that certainly is a difference between them, a weakness that he does not possess. Snoke had once accused him of compassion, spitting the word at him as if it were a filthy slur. Sitting in there in the dirt, Kylo knows without fault that he possesses no such compulsion, that his heart does not go out to any of the people fighting for his cause - hardly for Hux and not for Phasma nor for any of the other Knights on the ground tonight, though he can admit, even in Hux's case, that their loss would be a setback - and that there is certainly no one in the galaxy he would call friend the way that word chases Poe Dameron and the turncoat trooper and the Wookie like a searchlight. Therein lies the strength in loneliness, the knowledge that there is no one other than himself he needs to spend time worrying about.
He has no real words for her regarding the perspective of the Resistance nor for her comments regarding his master's position on Kylo's failures as an apprentice, despite his elevated status as the most promising of pupils, despite the way that he was groomed by Snoke himself. Partly because he doesn't care for her opinions and partly because he knows, at least, that there is more truth to the fictional nightmare of Snoke's existence on the whole and what it means for Kylo Ren than he has care to admit. And partly still because she sounds very much like Han Solo in certain ways that make his skin crawl and his blood burn, ever-present anger and disdain rising to the surface, muscle memory, reinforcing the grain of truth that wedged its way somewhere inside him and has yet to be shaken loose. The Supreme Leader is wise, he thinks to himself, from a lifetime ago, like a mantra, and says instead - )
There is little in the universe that is set in stone, even when it comes to the Force. ( Is as cryptic and Jedi-like an answer as he's willing to deliver. The truth is that he can look ahead or she can or they can rely on what they know of the other and of the circumstances surrounding them and try to determine the way things will go, but there are no guarantees. Save for the truths they know to be hardwired, reinforced by steel and concrete, unchanging as their positions on either side of the line. They stare at each other from across a series of chasms, of gulfs, and Kylo looks at her now across a short distance of six or seven feet, scrutinizing her carefully. ) You're so sure of my place at the end of the road. I'm curious about where you think you'll stand when that day comes, when the Resistance is gone and your parasite is all that's left.
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There is, of course, the other possibility. That the Resistance no longer exists because it is one with the Republic again, and there is no First Order to resist—that they've won. With the Falcon, she could go anywhere, but she imagines she might first stop on Takodana, then join Luke in addressing the resurgence of the Force.
The furrow of her brow persists in her scrutiny, even if she doesn't project her curiosity into his mind—even if he does not draw lines of the sort, she will. That answer will not make it any easier to sort the good from the bad in this muddled mess of a war, and the dirt-caked scavenger from the outer rim, now out of her depth, does not need anything more to confuse her. ]
If I can't kill Snoke, then I'll make him kill me. I won't be a slave: my power does not belong to him. [ Her voice holds little malice; it is clean and straightforward, as simple as if she had long since made that decision. Now, though, she thinks of the eventuality, the potential for that to be precisely what happens, and reflects on what she saw of Ren's mind. ] I suppose he'd make you do it. I've known men like Snoke; you're never done proving yourself to them.
[ She knows he would do it too, even if he hasn't yet. The man who could look his father in the eye and run him through, unflinching, to solidify his bond to the darkness would not shy away from the murder of what they only looked on as a potential soldier. The trouble she caused them would soon outweigh her value.
Now, she is the one refusing to flinch as she stares into the black pits of his eyes and airs her morbid curiosity, ] Would you make it quick? [ He had given Han Solo that much, though she wagered it was as much a necessity for Kylo Ren to hold steady to his path as it was a mercy. ]
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He knows what she sees when she looks at him, never mind what she's experienced in peering inside his head. Monster. Creature. Kylo neither makes nor craves apologies for any of it. There are no illusions as to the kind of person that he is, and he prefers it that way, wanting to be perceived as the sort of man who would run his biological father through and toss him over a bridge without hesitation or remorse. No one - certainly not Rey - needs to know that it had felt like pulling hooked nails out of himself, that the last pieces of him that were still irrevocably Han Solo's son had dug their claws in so tightly and held on with such desperation when the sever was supposed to be clean-cut that it had felt like something was actively ripping apart inside of him. He'd hated it, still hates it. It's weakness. Sentimentality. Compassion. And there is no room for that in Snoke's court.
Gloved fingers reach out to separate several small pebbles from the dirt and tall stalks of grass that have bent under their activity and the weight of the falling rain. He actually thinks about his answer before replying to her, fully cognizant of the fact that the scenarios they have described for one another are actual events that are bound to occur. )
It wouldn't be my decision, in the end. ( That's the truth of it. She isn't wrong, of course: they are all of them trying to prove themselves to Snoke in some way. It's just that Kylo is trying to prove himself to more than just Snoke. ) It isn't as simple as you want to make it. The day you think that you're powerful enough to kill the Supreme Leader is the day you overestimate yourself and the day that he makes you realize it. ( Dark eyes move from the small collection of stones he has gathered back up to her face. ) He is wise beyond measure and powerful beyond your understanding. If and when you find yourself at his mercy, you'll kneel before him or he will make you kneel. There is no easy way out where he's concerned. He'll torture you. He'll persuade you. He'll show you all the ways that the path you have traveled this far down are wrong. ( The small stones he holds lift from his palm to hover a few centimeters; Kylo does not even look at them or seem to notice that they have done this. His attention stays on her. ) Maybe he'll convince you. And maybe he won't. Maybe you'll fight back. You certainly have the spirit. ( It doesn't sound like a compliment. ) You wouldn't be used as a way to prove myself to him. Not like that, at least. He would probably want to kill you himself, if you keep refusing to yield. But -
( His tone is cool with honesty, and he doesn't say any of it to be cruel. This is the reality of the world that she has submerged herself in, and while the idea of him offering her a swift and merciful death at his own hand is a nice one, the reality is that her demise in that scenario does not come quickly or mercifully. It is at the end of a long stretch of dark days, and Kylo can't see that far ahead of them to be able to offer a concrete answer on any of it. Just experience. Knowledge. What he's seen and felt during his time as Snoke's apprentice. What he thinks may be something different, but he shrouds his mind with a heavy cloak, keeping his thoughts to himself, hidden away should she try to probe him for deeper answers. Instead, he flicks his fingers and the pebbles go scattering, rolling down the hillside and cutting the high grass, and it's a moment before he answers her question directly, each word sounding as if it's being wrenched from someplace unwilling to let go. )
I wouldn't draw it out.
no subject
She does not have to reach into his mind to understand how Snoke has driven him so desperate. It's in the lapses in his speech, the certain steadiness, and even the absent chaos of the swirling stones in his palm. Experience speaks through him, painting vivid pictures of torture and suffering, of what it must have taken to make Han Solo's child kneel, of what needling persuasions and visions he'd used to convince Ben Solo to reimagine himself as Kylo Ren.
It is not the terrible things that have happened to him that cause her heart to ache for him, but the certainty with which he claims that Snoke would not dismiss the task to Kylo Ren to prove himself, and the reluctant, pause-laden honesty with which he offered mercy despite it all. He cannot see for himself the foothold she has gained with him—perhaps for the best, or he would readily sever it—or he will not see it. Snoke would, if any image of him that Leia had described held any truth.
Before now, her insistence was always with peace in mind, driven by the conviction with which General Organa reached for her son but with the constant motive for peace being Rey's only real buy-in. Now, watching him muddle through the cloying darkness and smoke that she knows pervades his mind, she sees the flicker of a candle that carried in its flame Leia's hope.
Compassion is the only weapon against the Dark Side; Rey didn't need Master Skywalker to teach her that one (though he had given words to the thought). She sees it there in Kylo Ren, barely gasping at the surface as he tries to drown it in an ocean of suffering and hate. One hand reaches up, as if on instinct she might reach for him, but her fingers curl as her hand reaches her waist, staying there a moment.
It's gone, then, and she presses one palm to the earth to push herself to her feet, dusting her hands off and stepping forward to gaze down at him. For a moment, she doesn't speak, only stares down at his bent form and the rocks he juggles, weighing her power against his—and her will. ]
All that power. [ The wastefulness goes implied by his demonstration of how impotent he is to go against the will of the Supreme Leader. Slowly, Rey shakes her head, almost mourning, as she stands disarmed over him, hands loosely hanging at her sides. ] You told me once that you wanted to show me the ways of the Force. [ After a beat, she adds, ] I want to try something; will you let me?
[ The question is deliberate and heavy transposition of their first encounters, when no permission was asked, when power was exerted for power's sake simply because it could. What Kylo Ren would take, Rey would ask for, even after he hadn't offered her the same courtesy. ]
no subject
It's hardly the first time that someone has mentioned those three words to him. All that power. It isn't the first time that he's heard it in that same tone before, either. Those words have followed him around his whole life, from careful, conscious awe to heartbroken disappointment, Skywalker's voice like a warning reminder against Snoke's soft, smooth whisper in his ear, a promise. Some of it had been imagined, and some of it had been real. Eventually the lines blurred and distorted until determining which was the illusion and which the reality seemed unimportant, and it all became real. Rey's implication is tangible in the cooling Corellian air, but Kylo does't balk at it. Once you've heard the Supreme Leader imply that your power is not enough, little else measures up.
He feels an eyebrow quirk at her question, but he stays on the ground for what feels like a long time after she's spoken, staring up at her in a way that manages to take all of her in at once, from the dark folds in the fabric she wears to the relaxed bend in her fingers as they hang at her sides. Skywalker's training is evident in every crease and line of her body in a fight, in the way that she handles the Force and uses it to guide and strengthen her, her footwork and the accuracy that she's gaining with a lightsaber. But it isn't all him, and Kylo can see that as plainly as anything. The way she holds herself, the weight of her conviction and attitude, the way in which she calls the Force to her and the way in which it responds, it's every bit the girl that he encountered in the forest.
He stands, one hand planted beneath him, fingers sinking into the mud under the weight of his frame rising slowly from the ground. At his full height, he is so much larger than she is that the idea of ever being unable to subdue and capture her seems ridiculous. One foot rises and falls and slides a fraction of an inch in the mud as he steps toward her and he is standing close enough to her now that if she reached out and he reached out, they could shake hands. Kylo keeps his at his sides, curled into loose fists that, for once, do not hint at outright violence. Reckless curiosity, interest, keeps him planted, watching her. )
Something.
( It's as much permission as she's ever going to get. )
no subject
She reminds herself of that in the moment when her recollection of his power and anger threatens her nerve, and steels her heart to what she hopes she can do. Only once had she seen the trick performed, suffered its effects herself, but she had never seen anyone force their will on someone like she had JB-007 either. The capability lay within her own spirit, dependent on its strength, and emboldened by her surety.
Her eyes shut, forcing Ren's cloying darkness from her mind and replacing it with meditative serenity that helps her feel currents in the air like sparks racing across her skin, power humming in the atmosphere that waits to be employed. The fire, far in the valley, heats the air and brings it in great billowing puffs up through them, carrying with it the stale and smoky scent of ash. It finds its place scattered among the molecules of the atmosphere just as she finds her place scattered among the stars.
Kylo Ren would only give her one attempt, and stakes like these mandated success.
Unremarkable, ruddy brown eyes open to fix on him, anchored and firm in her task, and she reaches one slight hand, fingers gently curved, to hover alongside his temple. For a moment she hesitates to close the gap—contact, she's sure, is not needed, but she could not say with any confidence whether it would help matters or not, and she needs all the help she can get.
She swallows the lump in her throat and feels her way into the cavernous web of his mind, but not for information or any true dive. Instead, she skims the surface, a web of interconnected energy matrices as complex as any star map, searching for something in particular, fumbling her way until—
Jarring realization crashes in all at once. Frantic earnest bleeds into him. Sloppy, hurried, she tries to dim his mind and drag him into the murky waters of unconsciousness as he had once done to her.
There is light in him yet, a dim flicker, ready to be snuffed out by Snoke, no doubt easily done if he snaps her out of his mind too quickly and severs the connection between them with the sharp point of betrayal, but one that could be kindled to something more if he could only be ripped away from the darkness. For his sake. For the galaxy's. They use the word cold to describe this kind of brutish pragmatism, but Rey's was learned in the heat of the desert, and it serves her well.
Deception paves the road to the Dark Side, but Rey uses it in the hopes of bringing him to those who could help break the hold Snoke has over him, who could eliminate the malaise that drags him down like stubborn, invasive tar. And she uses it too with hope that he will forgive her for it then, for she knows if she let him walk away, she would not forgive herself. Finn's lives and the lives of the whole Resistance lay heavy on her shoulders. He will understand, she assures herself. But only if it works. ]
/sits on this tag for 100 hours
He won't make the same mistake again, holding still as her small hand, dirt under her fingernails, reaches out to tap against his temple. Her hesitation and uncertainty is evident in the way her fingers jump and then adamantly settle against his skin, as if she's reassuring herself that this is something she's capable of doing. It doesn't make sense to him right away, given her need for proximity when they have been able to peel back the other's mind and stare hard and searching into one another's thoughts without physical contact. Rey is the only thing that he can see, brown eyes wide open and peering into him as if she's seeing through him and beyond him and before him, navigating the timeline of his histories and possibilities with alarming accuracy, the set of her jaw and the line of her mouth a determined contrast to the fear that he feels pulsing through her veins, reaching spindly fingers out to curl around her convictions. She presses onward, but she never goes deep, doesn't take the plunge, reaches instead for the switch and -
Oh.
Something in his gaze shifts and though he hasn't looked away from her in the time it's taken the two of them to arrive at this point, Kylo's eyes harden and the muscle in his jaw goes, jumping all the way down into his neck as he tenses. She panics in his head like a bird, flooding into him with a speed he's not felt before, and he can see the deception and determination written across her face like it's been painted there. Her eyes tell a different story, but there is conviction in them, too, and Kylo, not so completely at her mercy, uncurls one fist from his side to wrap his fingers around her wrist with force enough to bruise. It doesn't jolt her out of his head enough for either of them to forfeit the gamble, but he holds onto her there for as long as he can, smothered under the weight of her influence in his head and unable to surface enough to drive her out.
He drowns. What feels like a cold grin starts at the corner of his mouth, and he thinks Ah before he can stop himself, angry and annoyed and oddly pleased in one way or another. That she would fall to this.
It had been so easy for him before, on Takodana, but now they are so much more evenly matched. He tries to reach down inside himself and utilize the raw anger that he feels stoking the fire burning throughout, but by the time he grits his teeth and digs deep enough to call on it, Rey has gotten in too far and poured too much water down for anything to catch. His fingers wrapped at her wrist loosen, holding her in a semi-circle of finger and thumb, the web spanning the distance between the two pressing tight to her skin in an effort to hold on. His other hand palms at his saber, feeling the weapon as if through layers and layers of wool and cotton. Nothing catches, ignites. Rage swells, expands, bursts. There is no channel available for it to travel, and it beats relentlessly, uselessly, against his breastbone. He fights back, takes a half-step toward her, dark head bowed in her direction, and then falls sharply to one knee under the meditative weight of her power.
He smells smoke and earth and sweat and blood and ozone on the ground, and a blurred, vague impression of her shadow hovers above him before Corellia becomes darkness. )
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. ]
hahahaha hey that's okay i brought a tent and rations for just such an occasion
excellent preparation
ty ty
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every time i think i'm not gonna write a novel, i write a novel -__-
it's ok i love it !! also did you see SNL pls tell me you saw SNL
this tag is dedicated to matt the radar tech
he told me kylo ren is shredded
i ran into him in the bathroom and he wanted me to give you this card
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literally have no idea what i am talking about la la la mechanics
Me always with Star Wars worldbuilding tbh so I feel you. Consumes EU at a glacial pace.
hahahha likewise. i just have multiple wookiepedia tabs open constantly
sobs i'm so bad at retaining reference material, but i just read 5 pages about sabacc and i'm like y
i am so proud of you. i never retain any information. i literally looked up 'glass' the other day
ok but like how much sleep had you gotten i feel like that is an important fact to consider
i mean probably like 7 which is 7 more than i usually get
oh .............. look i tried to excuse it idk what you want from me
and then i slept for like nine hours anyway it's fine you are forgiven
After this tag I know way too much about start wars spacecraft
hahahah totally applicable to every day situations absolutely
i'm so ready for the GRE question about quadex cores
my friend said he kylo ren told him quadex core questions are definitely on the GRE
truly a credible source
you can cite him your thesis
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/quietly hides my massive knights of ren boner
no get that back out hoW DO YOU EVEN FIND THESE THINGS
i stared FOREVER at the vision scene. and used lots of name generators. IDK MAKING THIS UP AS I GO
you are truly a hero to your people
more valuable skillsets for the real world
um it's super valuable ok you can write baby naming books and win staring contests
omg an untapped goldmine awaits!!!!!
now you're thinking like a murrican
drinking my miller light and eating my corn dogs
waves an american flag
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i know so much about dejarik now
scholar goals
/turns it into a thesis
academic applause
much more useful than my first class of the day that's for sure
filed under things i don't miss about school: useless classes
ugh it is the most useless class. love in world lit. you think it would be interesting. no.
oh my god my world lit class was the worst too it's a curse of bad professors
oh my god my professor is THE WORST i'm so glad it's not just me
it's totally a curse i had this white guy who would tell my poc classmates how racism felt
WOW DUDE WHAT. what is this guy doing teaching people
*~*~higher education*~*~
suddenly my teacher doesn't seem so terrible
some professors just need to stop
/ejects them into space
somewhere in this tag i changed tense and i'm too lazy to find them all this late. my gift 2 u
hahahah my gift to you was passing out so maybe we can be even
Haphazardly squeezes tags in at work
yes. good. i mean no. don't. stop. think of the children
They barely need me ok
well okay then i suppose it's alright
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