apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

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

[ Somehow, the image of Kylo Ren gambling aboard the Finalizer with the stormtroopers is not one that Rey can summon, though she tries as she lowers herself into a seat at the dejarik table after some consideration of his offer. The attempt only furrows her brow, leading her to look him over with impregnable scrutiny until she can only shake her head. No, it simply won't fit.

The only reasonable explanation for his confidence dawns on her a moment later in the form of his father, and Rey feels her chest clench as her fingers dust across the table to reach for the switch and light it up, realizing that Ben Solo must have learned a long time ago at this very table. ]

You should give this ship more credit. For all it looks like a junker, it's held its own against your fleet plenty of times. [ She still calls it his fleet, the First Order, but only by reflex, and it's just as much reflex that she rallies to the defense of the Falcon rather than confirm her interest in playing with anything more than her physical presence at the table. Holograms of creatures she hardly recognizes roar to life on the table with jerky, uneven movements that speak to the table's disrepair, but it's enough for Rey to assess it with interest all the same.

She's never own anything that wasn't in disrepair. ]

( Kylo accepts the designation of the First Order fleet as his fleet without bristle or the need for correction, whether out of habitual association or something else entirely, something else that smacks of uncertainty even if his future association with that branch of power and authority in the galaxy is all but snuffed out. Hux would argue the semantics involved in her overarching nomenclature, and if there is anything that he is glad to be rid of in casting off the heavy, dark cloak of First Order bureaucracy, it's his affiliation with that redheaded ass, without question, however superficial the intent behind saying as much would be.

In a way, though, Kylo still associates himself with the inner mechanics and workings of First Order politics, the situation at hand too new and too fresh and too murky to be considered a true divorce of principles and loyalties. Settling on the uncomfortable sofa as far away from Rey as possible without actively balancing on and off the edge, he's aware of the strange dichotomy at work in suggesting games that his father taught him, on his father's ship, with his father's protegee, when he's still so embroiled, in his own head, in the state of the Order. When he killed the man in question himself. )

I'm not going to make excuses for the skill and talents of the TIE pilots that neglected to stop two - ( He's careful with his word choice, pausing briefly under the pretense of running fingers over his side of the game board as if refamiliarizing himself with the controls. ) - people and a droid from escaping from a wasteland like Jakku. ( The memory of his anger, of Mitaka's neck slapping like raw meat into his outstretched hand, rises easily to the surface. He acquiesces, somewhat. ) It's a fast ship. It always has been. In capable hands it's able to do unbelievable things despite its age and constant state of disrepair, when there's a pilot worth their salt at the helm.

( Those feel like lines recycled and edited with heavy corrections that don't tend as much toward blatant favoritism and preening, and he can almost hear Solo's voice in his own words as they come steamrolling out of his mouth, distracting himself from the fact that he's more or less just paid Rey a compliment without actively meaning to. Fortunately, the board is alight, caught in the projection of a previous game that was stopped midway through. Kylo stares at it a moment, watching the projections move jerkily and blink in and out of partial existence, losing arms or legs or tentacles or whole heads in the ghhhk's case.

Underneath the table, he jams his knee into the underside and all the holographs flicker out of life and then burst back into perfect detail. )

[ She opts not to deeply consider the implications intrinsic in Kylo's awareness of precisely how to jimmy the table into full functionality, the familiarity he demonstrates with this particular dejarik table's functionality. It would mean reflecting on the father that he killed, and she does not want to think of it when she is trying to save the son's by pulling him out from behind the nightmarish castle walls he has built around himself with his own choices. Rey is not sturdy enough in her current state to fact that train of thought, so she evades it entirely.

In doing so, she runs straight into the necessary acknowledgment that a compliment then lies in his words, for if she won't pay mind to his actions and analyzing them, she must at least answer those. It startles her a little, for although she had to acknowledge there was some praise implicit in offering to teach her in the first place, in exploring this tenuous link between them, in accepting her help to sever his bond with Snoke, she had certainly never expected him to state it outright. Particularly when he'd levied half-hearted, shell-shocked criticism at her after the flight pattern she'd followed through the field of asteroids near Roche. ]

And a good pilot knows how to repair it once they drop out of hyperspace, no matter how it shakes apart. We'll see it good as ... well, good as it was before we took off at least. [ She lays her palms on the table and, in doing so, seems to set the subject of the Falcon's state aside—to their mutual benefit. ] So, how does it work?

( More than content to drift away from subjects and lines of conversation that orbit the topic of his pedigree, Kylo spreads his fingers over the curves of his knees and leans forward so that his shoulders crowd the Dejarik board. Of course, explaining the nature of the game to her at all is, in and of itself, a callback to the person and past he has dutifully distanced himself from, buried under sand and dirt, but it's objective enough to serve a function in passing the time until they reach Hapes, at which point they will have a new world of problems to deal with, no doubt.

It's probably the most that he's said to her in one stretch of time, but Kylo explains the rules to her at face value, indicating her characters on the board and their individual strengths and weaknesses, naming them all with immaculate pronunciation and striking the side of the table once more - with a heavy kick from the toe of his boot as opposed to smashing the bottom of the thing with his knee - when her savrip wanders too close to his molatator in the interest of chewing on one of its haunches. Once he jolts the pieces back into their proper places, the savrip resumes swinging its arms and adjusting its vest. )

They become bored if you take too long to either begin the game or take a turn. ( He explains, with a detached sort of displeasure in his tone, before laying out the moves that each player can make during their designated turn, how the creatures are chosen, and eventually arrives at the inevitable conclusion. ) You want to destroy all of your opponent's pieces before they have the chance to destroy yours. It's very similar to holochess, just more violent and possessing the ability to reach a much broader audience as a result. ( He leans back into the stiff angles of the sofa, once again resetting their pieces where they have drifted in idle discontent. The savrip seems to drag its feet as it trudges back to its spot on the board. Kylo quirks an eyebrow. ) Has Chewbacca coerced you into a game?

I didn't know he played.

[ The statement comes out reflectively sad. Truth be told, there's not much that Rey knows of her co-pilot other than the fact that his coarse exterior is precisely that: the loss of Han came too soon into their relationship, and it was Leia who Chewie had sought for comfort in the wake of it.

The wookiee made his share of sarcastic complaints or rallying cries, but discussion of his late best friend mostly provoked unintelligible but indubitably dismissive warbling and stern mechanical work: he kept the loss with him and suffered it daily, wounds reopened by the haunted halls of the Falcon itself, which he could not abandon. It did not keep him from being kind to her, but to a degree, it was a distant sort of kindness, that welcomed her into Han's space only at a pace comfortable for Chewbacca, and Rey was happy to permit him that. He deserved it, to be certain, and she had been stunned and flattered that he had even considered her an eligible pilot to take Solo's place.

She wishes she could have known what he was like when Ben Solo knew him, but that was a lifetime ago—her entire lifetime ago, as it happens—and something about that timeline sticks in her mind like scrap metal in gears, stopping it up just long enough for her to find it significant, but frail enough to be crunched up and moved on from before too long. Nothing, she was sure, but her reading into coincidences. ]

Try not to be offended that I'm saying so, but I'm surprised you enjoy the game. [ She looks up at him from the moving beasts, a slight smirk lilting into her voice and twisting the corners of her mouth as she turns his phrasing back on him, though there's truth to the statement beyond the opportunity to take a jab at him. There had always been something graceful and refined in the cold, intimidating lines that carried Kylo Ren across a battlefield, even as he hacked in desperate fury across the snowy forest of Starkiller Base. Unhinged, and he still carried weight. By comparison, dejarik seemed a bar game. She could not picture him in the thick of Maz's castle, placing bets and leering. ] It's rough around the edges.

( Kylo snorts, and for once it isn't lacking in actual humor, though the color of it barely reaches his eyes as if it's as out of practice as the rest of his attempts at being anything other than disagreeable and hostile. Maybe because he recognizes that turnabout is fair play. Maybe because of her implied attitude toward his overall style - especially when Kylo himself is critical and aware of his unpolished edges, his distinct lack of finesse and innate skill lacking when it comes to something as crucial as, say, saber combat - offers the undeniable possibility of a good ego stroke. Maybe still just because he thinks it's funny. Whatever the reason, he doesn't take offense, though he does take the opportunity to correct her. )

I prefer chess.

( His father had not preferred chess, enjoying the carnage of dejarik over the perceived boredom of moving black and white pieces across a black and white board, but Kylo had always seen a remarkable amount of symmetry in the latter and had understood its value as something beyond him, where the violence of dejarik hadn't interested him even as a child who would later go on to take pleasure in wanton destruction and horrific brutality. Leia had played with him once he was old enough to be a worthwhile opponent, on the occasions she had time to indulge the both of them in that way, though not long after she had sent him away. He and Hux had tried to play once. The board had ended up embedded in the far wall and several of the pieces had crumbled by the time they were each seven moves in. )

It's more challenging, the games can be much more drawn out, involved, and there's more strategy required, somewhat. Not to say that dejarik doesn't have its methods and tactics for winning, but - ( He glances up at her across the board, and there's a ghost of something that looks like a grin hanging around his eyes if not his mouth. Some things, at least, change with time, if his apparent interest in the game is anything to go by. ) - as you said, rough around the edges. I assume that's why your co-pilot is so good at it. ( He presses a button on his side and its twin ignites on Rey's end of the table. Kylo gestures at her to press it in the interest of getting the game under way, although the decision as to who will move first is still to be made. ) I learned at a young age. I'm sure you can imagine how without my getting into the details.

( He wonders how long they'll dance around the topic, how long until the deep well within him opens up to something deeper and darker, until they're standing at the edge of another chasm, screaming into the hurricane between them. )

Would you like to go first?

You're only doing this so you can beat me in a fight.

[ There's a little grousing as she moves a piece—the Monnok, purple and lanky—forward on the board to approach his squad of monstrous holograms. Her nose crinkles at the way it lumbers across the checkerboard, its limbs swinging in an evidently programmed pattern that spoke to the Falcon's age more than the game itself. She knows better than to delay the game with any further pressing for details about Kylo's education on the game nor his familiarity with the Falcon's table.

Though she does lift her head to consider him, and the lopsided smirk that he wears, faintly reminiscent of the father he'd shedded, once her piece has moved. Rey props her elbows on the table, only appearing graceful in the movement because it's reserved and pointed in the way it takes up space, dominating the alcove where the table sits. ]

He hasn't played it practically since we met. Once with Finn, I think. [ And it makes her worry, if that wookiee is no longer taking joy in a game that he once held so dear, how he must be handling it now that Kylo Ren is on the Falcon—how much worse he'd take it if he walked out to see Han's killer playing at that same board. It sticks like a lump in her throat, keenly aware of what a betrayal her co-pilot perceives in her current project. ]

( He makes a noise of acknowledgement directed toward her initial comment but doesn't technically respond to it, letting her interpret what she will. Nothing he could say would be any evidence to the contrary, besides, and he has moves to make in his own right, nudging one of his rear creatures a couple of spaces to the left as he strikes out during his own turn. It's too earlier for tactical advantage or aggressive maneuvers, at least until he sees what angle Rey plays and what her overall strategy might be, and his overall intent is to demonstrate rather than decimate.

Her turn again, he leans back into the concave fold of the sofa and drops his hands in his lap. )

I'm sure that he would if you asked him.

( Maybe. It's a large assumption of character to make about someone he doesn't even know anymore. Rey has better insight into her co-pilots whims and desires than Kylo ever will, and more even than that, she cares enough to wonder, to worry. He exists in the metal cage of their current predicament as a passenger, acutely aware of the topic of discussion that awaits him should he choose to engage in whatever way, while they hurtle through hyperspace or after they've landed on Hapes. It's been months and still the prospect seems too ragged, the responsibility and guilt in his actions too bright and eclipsing to do anyone any favors. The particulars of that line of thinking draw him into himself, turning him quiet as they game progresses and unfolds in a series of moves and glitching animations. At one point, Kylo's Houjix takes one step forward and then disappears completely out of view. When it emerges, it's on Rey's side of the board, occupying the same square as one of her own pieces. )

This is ridiculous.

[ His reply seems to attenuate any efforts to prod at Kylo's more learned assessment of Chewie's state in the wake of what Kylo himself had done, and Rey is more than happy to take the hint and let it fall away there with nothing more than a noncommittal noise of thought to indicate that she has heard his suggestion. ] Perhaps.

[ On the contrary, she takes an aggressive stance in the game as the turns move onward, attempting to corner him in the same predatory fashion that she had risen against him on Starkiller once she'd accepted the guidance of the Force to supplement her own abilities. She fails to fork him effectively, and before any pieces can be properly shattered, one of the holograms flashes into another on Kylo's turn and Rey's expression twists and screws up in confusion.

Luckily, Kylo voices the same, though in him, it presents more as frustration. ]

It's not supposed to do that, then, I gather.

[ Despite the inquiry itself, she sounds unruffled by that outcome; given that the dejarik table finds its home aboard the Falcon, it comes as no surprise that it would be just as unreliable as some of the ship's more important systems—the hyperdrive, for instance, which has before sputtered in and out on her in a way that some might call dangerous (she likes to think, though, that Han Solo would simply call it an inconvenience). ]

Maybe we should open the panel and tune it up. It can't be that hard to— [ An unintelligible wookiee yell calls her to the cockpit, interrupting any comment she had aimed to make. Rey finds herself disappointed by the interruption in a way that startles her, but she spares herself the examination by standing and excusing herself from Kylo Ren's company with a brief dismissal. ] That'll mean we're close to Hapes.

Not exactly.

( He agrees without looking up from the board, trying to determine how he's supposed to get the piece to its designated square - a clutch and well-strategized move by his own account, despite the aggressive corners that Rey keeps beating him back into; she's a quick learner and it's a pleasant surprise, although he can't rightfully say that he's surprised by it - when she poses the suggestion of opening the console up and attacking the problem from the roots up.

It strikes him as a very practical but Rey-like thing to suggest, which leaves him wondering when he was able to classify some of her more less threatening or overarchingly aggressive characteristics into things that are intrinsically her, such as the way that she thinks about and approaches food or the pure, unchecked and real interest she has in opening things up and seeing what's inside. He wonders what else he might be able to shunt into categories, little things that he's picked up on without realizing, and subsequently wonders if she might be able to do the same of him, now that they exist so raggedly in one another's head, but before Kylo has the time to give the notion any real merit, Rey is standing and excusing herself, and not long after, he hears the telltale signals all around him about the ship's approach toward the intended target.

He says nothing to her as she leaves but does find himself standing, alone again in this beast of a ship, growling and groaning all around him. It gives him too much time to see his father in every corner, and in the interest of not searching for ghosts, Kylo settles back with his long legs folded awkwardly on the floor and slips his gloves back on to pry open the main panel of the dejarik board. He has no real conception of what he's doing, but he'd seen Solo and the wookiee pry open the center piece on this thing plenty of times as a child, had hung upside down and watched from different angles as the both of them shocked themselves in an effort to make the pieces do what they were supposed to. It can't be more complicated than reconnecting wires or patching frays in the circuitry, so Kylo buries his face and arms yet again in another collection of old wires and the threat of bright sparks.

It's better than the cockpit, at least. )

[ After helping the wookiee in the cockpit bring the ship out of hyperspace, Rey sits comfortably in the cockpit to guide it towards the central planet of the Hapes cluster. As she steadies it down, she's relieved to find several Resistance-identifying ships in the airspace popping up on her radar, and she eases the ship that much more comfortably down through the atmosphere for that presence.

The approach is steady, gliding amongst a flurry of ships that occupy the Hapes atmosphere, shimmering nebulae flickering above them, six of the seven moons visible in the night time sky that greets them once they're within the warm embrace of the Hapes atmosphere. The light keeps the planet from being properly dark, though there is enough light for the neat capital city to cast shadows long down the sides of the lush forest that surrounds it. Contrary to Coruscant and other city-planets, Hapes sports cities that coexist with the mountains and forest, tucked in small groupings in unobtrusive stretches that were once empty fields, occupying only spaces where their life is welcome, never conquering others.

Royal shuttles guided them into the Queen Mother's palace, where stretching hangars greeted them as diplomats, and Rey eased the old ship downward to join among gleaming, circular warships—battle dragons equipped with rotating guns and turbolasers. The kind of weapons the Resistance could use to stand a chance against the Star Destroyers of the First Order. Only once they're safely docked does she stand, extending the ramp, and go to track Kylo Ren down. It's nice, for a change, to make it down to a planet without having to dodge death along the way, and as a result, Rey seems to have a bit of life about her, though it's weary and swaying on her feet. ]

We've arrived. I hope you know something about Hapans because I'll need to know the best way to ask for real food and a comfortable bed. Hopefully your mother has paved the way for us. [ She doesn't wait for him, heading straight for the cargo ramp to wait for it as it opens. ]

( Around him, the ship lurches, docking onto the planet with the graceful touchdown of a ronto dropping into a pond. He hears the ship creak and groan and slow to a stop long before Rey comes looking for him again, giving him time to close up the panel on the game board and wipe his hands on his pants, streaked again with grease, fingernails dirtier than he would prefer. It isn't fixed, not by a long shot, and there is a tangle of wiring set aside for future examination, but it's a project for another time and another day, when the rest of the ship isn't in a more alarming state and he doesn't have the saturated paranoia of someone who has the impression that he's about to be ambushed.

It could be just that - paranoia - or it could be something else - an intuition that he shouldn't ignore despite the fact that he knows logically the other Knights should not yet be in hot pursuit. Hapes not exactly being sympathetic to the First Order doesn't help the elevated sense of vigilance that he has now that they have arrived, though Kylo wonders how much that has to do with being faced with the prospect of a whole new gaggle of people - a matriarchal society at that - being able to stare at him without the benefit of wearing a mask to conceal his face. Not that any of them would know him from any other face in the crowd, but the thought of being unable to shut himself away as he has been able to do for so long leaves him uncomfortable.

Nothing to be done about it, though, and it's probably a good thing not to have a mask that so starkly resembles the person he has become and the ideals he has followed for so long, the Order that he serves. Plain-faced Ben Solo, however dead or alive or here or gone he might be, is a much less alarming and attention-grabbing face than the sleek, imposing durasteel and black meal of Kylo Ren's helmet. He does retrieve the tunic that he had been wearing over his flightsuit once Rey fetches him from the main hold, tucking his saber into his waistband and pulling the fabric down over so that it conceals the dull shine of his blade. )

You'll want to do most of the talking. ( He says this mostly to Rey's retreating back, following her through the hallway and toward the ramp. ) The society is matriarchal. They'll look to you before they'll look to me for an explanation, of anything. ( Despite his domineering nature as a general rule, Kylo doesn't sound put out about this. If anything, he's mindful and aware while trying to be helpful in such a rushed and brief explanation. Having been raised by and born into a family history and tradition of powerful and terrifying women leaves a lasting impression despite decades spent disassociated from it. ) If your general has done you any favors, she will have contacted someone to discuss the conditions of your arrival, make it a little easier for you to get what you need. Or she will eventually, depending on the state of Corellia. Rey -

( He grabs her arm before she can descend any further down the cargo ramp, ready for the biting whirl of her or a jerk out of his grip with tight fingers around his bicep and his feet planted firmly on the decline. Kylo taps his finger against the lightsaber at her hip. )

Hide it. Perspectives on Jedi might have changed in this sector in recent years - ( Given their near-extinction at his own hands, but Kylo spares little thought for the past, the hardening of his expression, his eyes, the only indication of acknowledgement to the fact. He's in no mood to argue about it. ) - but the Hapans have never been particularly fond of them. Don't give anyone an excuse to cause trouble.

[ He reaches for her, and Rey raises her arm like she's ready to smack him away with all the force of a lioness until she realizes it's a harmless gesture. Piecemeal, her hackles come down, and she unclips the saber from her hip to tuck it away in the hanging pouch of her belt, resigned with some reluctance to take his advice on the matter. It seems a good way to disarm her and fight his way out onto one of the battle dragons, but she realizes that she doesn't see his saber on him anywhere either, at least not visibly, and that eases her somewhat.

They stride down the ramp abreast, naked and vulnerable, and the Hapans greet them in Basic—the best stroke of luck that Rey can say she's had all day. By their report, several Resistance ships have already come into the port, and the hangar attendants and diplomats that greet them all give the same mysterious impression that left Rey unclear as to whether they'd be happier to see the Resistance ships leaves than they'd been to see them come. ]

My name is Rey; we're with the Resistance. We need to make repairs to our heating systems and the shields. General Organa should join us shortly to speak to your ruler about our temporary asylum here. In the meantime, I'd be happy to explain the situation to her. [ The assumption of a female leader comes with a tentative glance back towards Kylo, seeking affirmation that his matriarchal depiction of the society had every appropriate result. The Jedi had once been diplomats, but Kylo and Rey seemed a poor entourage to establish the Resistance's place among the Hapans if they indeed loathed the Jedi as Kylo claimed.

The Hapans, Rey notices, are the diametric opposite of the scavengers that peppered the surface of Jakku; they work in total concert, and nothing in them grits or strains. Despite the unexpected arrivals, they carry themselves with grace, and turn to guide Rey and her attendants, Chewie joining them at the base of the ramp, around the palace in Ta'a Chume'Dan. Behind the guides that assure them that they'll see to it that the Queen-Mother (Rey commits the title to memory) is aware of their arrival, Rey leans over to whisper an assessment to Kylo Ren that needed no reply— ]

They're all so beautiful. [ For indeed, the Hapan people are as glittering as the lively planet they inhabited, but they all wear the same inscrutable expressions that belie uneasy mistrust. Too starstruck to think deeply on it, Rey merely accepts them as a people who are fortunate enough to enjoy the peace brought implicitly with the planet's prosperity, and she carries that presumption with her into the guest quarters of the palace. She cannot bring herself to blame them for the streak of paranoia that she reads into the eyes that track them, for it's too easy to presume that the Resistance's arrival here threatens their planet with the attention of the First Order. ]

( The surge of Basic that greets his ears when they step off the Falcon is the first real stroke of good luck he's willing to admit that they've had. Their escape from the First Order, in that manner, doesn't count, considering the risk it had involved and the fact that they had - Rey had - escaped mostly by the skin of their teeth, some skill, and good timing. Had they strolled off the ship and into a world populated by people unwilling to speak anything other than their native language, their time on Hapes would have been unpleasant to say the least.

Kylo, for his part, keeps quiet unless directly addressed, offering a nod here or a shake of his head there when Rey looks at him for clarification or affirmation. He lingers mostly behind her, defaulting to her elevated status on the planet and not rushing to challenge the status quo in the interest of not causing further trouble for their ragtag trio of wayward, barely united souls, and falls into step next to Chewbacca, who joins them belatedly although not unexpectedly at the foot of the ramp, forcing Kylo to keep several paces worth of distance between himself and the wookiee for the sake of expedient propriety. At one point he has to sidestep a tall, breathtaking woman as she shoulders through the crowd, and he steps close enough to brush Chewbacca's arm, the both of them looking at one another before they break eye contact at the same time.

The city itself is remarkable, and it lives up to the expectation that he's had of it since he was a child. Ben had been told stories by both his mother and his father, though one had seemed more practical and politically minded, a soft fondness with gentle ribbing, where the other had boasted of adventure and the vocal equivalent of collected stardust, glittering and invincible, elevating the lead male in the fabrication to the role of hero, good guy but not too good. Kylo Ren sees none of that mysticism imparted here and now, viewing everything through an adult's washed out frame of vision, but he supposes that he can see where inspiration lies despite approaching the city and its inhabitants with the analytical mind of a general, rather than a tourist.

The battle dragons are impressive, and he can conceptualize how they might have aided the First Order had negotiations gone in a different direction, but it's an old line of thinking to fall back on and it exists without any real intent or Resistance-themed malice. Mobile landing pads boast ships - some of them Resistance affiliated, he can see - and still have ample room for more, as if beckoning the spaces to be filled: a sharp contrast with the Consortium's stance on outsiders in the past, to be sure. The city itself, he knows, isn't huge, but it seems insurmountable from the ground, and while the population and general distribution of bodies is nothing compared to Coruscant, which he tends to automatically compare everything in the galaxy to in terms of sprawling size, it seems large as they pick their way through it, some of the glances thrown his way undoubtedly sour on certain faces.

Faces which, Kylo must agree with Rey, are quite beautiful. He has never personally been concerned with his own appearance - from basically birth he's known that his nose is large even for his face and has learned to hide his ears underneath the dark brush of his hair, never mind the collection of freckles and moles that map galaxies across his skin from forehead to thigh - but Hapans are, almost obsessively, and anything else that might demonstrate beauty. His large nose and, more than anything, the garish, red to pink to white slash of an imperfection across his face makes him stand out like a sore thumb. Unease prickles along the back of his neck at the attention, prickling across his connection with Rey as a result, but he ignores it. )

Selective breeding, mostly. ( He answers her once he has the opportunity, bending down momentarily to speak low directly into her ear, unaware of how close he's managed to get to her in his interest of maintaining space between himself and her co-pilot. Kylo straightens up and catches the eye of a female palace guard, who watches him, all of them, with extreme unease, her hand tight on her blaster and the remarkable angles of her face watching them until they pass through a door, out of sight. He takes the opportunity to whisper to Rey again. ) Don't take the paranoia personally. Hapans are mistrustful of nearly everyone that isn't one of their own.

( Behind him, Chewbacca grumbles, and Kylo straightens back up. )

[ The closeness and fullness of his voice does not startle her, for she's had it bobbing around in her mind more times than she can count already, and as such, the whisper only feels appropriate: the heat of his breath on her neck is another story, prickling her skin in a way that causes her to glance back with implicit discouragement in the uneasy look she fixes on him, but Chewbacca beats her to the punch and Kylo Ren makes space between them—some, at least. Rey shrugs the tension out of her shoulders.

The palace interior is grand without being gaudy; tall arches sculpted from some kind of mineral that glimmers like their rainbow gems make up the corridors, which are mostly empty. She'd never made the conversion to Hapes from Galactic Standard, but she imagines that it must be very late despite the glow that emanates through the wide open windows. Light of any sort seems unnecessary here, for even at night, the whole city thrums with energy.

The guides bring them into a room capped with a dome of glass that branches off in many directions, turning to welcome them to Hapes with pleasantness that, in the wake of Kylo's explanation, feels deceptive and unfeeling rather than genuine. By their explanation, the lot of them are to remain here with the rest of the Resistance forces to pass the night until a hearing can be arranged with the Queen-Mother. Rey keeps herself from looking too relieved until they are alone. ]

Send a transmission to the General. [ She turns to instruct Chewie on that. ] Make sure she knows we're here. I don't plan to stay long enough to meet the Queen-Mother unless I absolutely have to. [ The fatigue catches her in its completeness and she takes one look around the myriad hallways to rooms and beds that welcome them before getting overwhelmed by all of it. She draws a breath from deep in her chest to straighten her back and charge down one of them. ] And don't wake me up unless someone's dead.

( Rey disappears, leaving him standing next to Chewbacca like two friends who have just been left alone while their mutual, connecting link goes to the 'fresher. It's awkward and uncomfortable, especially given the presence of a few other Resistance personnel that drift in and out of the centralized area and cast bewildered glances in his direction, as if unsure as to whether or not they actually know who he is and are in a free falling tailspin to place his face and position next to a wookiee who is universally liked if not kept at arm's length due to his strength and intimidating height alone. Kylo recognizes the futility in the effort and turns away in the interest of heading elsewhere - though where else is anyone's guess, given their limited access to the palace and the planet - and comes up short in the wake of the small, hairy mountain that is Chewbacca.

Long seconds pass, and though the distance between them would be enough for a normal sized person to lie down between them and stretch arms and legs out luxuriously, Kylo feels the space compressed down to the length of a needle, caught in his own gravitational tailspin toward a conversation that he isn't altogether prepared to have. He opens his mouth, and Chewbacca closes his, only to open it again and growl something at him, quiet in the relative silence of their quarters and quiet for Chewbacca. Kylo, who has known Shyriiwook basically since birth, doesn't stutter in the translation. Did it scar? Chewbacca asks, and the both of them know easily without Kylo having to ask for clarification what his former guardian - this impossibly tall, fuzzy, mountain of a person that he had climbed on as a child - is talking about.

His hand goes automatically to his side where the bowcaster bolt had torn a huge chunk in his flank, leaving a starburst scar even after medical treatment. Yes, Kylo answers, and Chewbacca immediately replies, Good in a low warble that sounds angry and sad and disappointed and hollow and glad all at once. Silence returns, and Kylo finds that he is distinctly lacking in things to say despite knowing innately that he should come up with something. Remorse doesn't come, and it isn't because he doesn't regret the decisions that he's made - it's still too complex a web to assign real vocabulary to, and he knows that words will never be enough to undo what he's done - but because he knows that no explanation or action will forge a bridge when the ground on either side is still too unsteady to support the weight.

Dark eyes track the path that Rey had taken in her haste to pass out and regain some of the alertness she had lost in her state of constant vigilance and distinct lack of sleep, but by contrast Kylo feels wide awake and wired. He's unwilling to power down when the First Order could be close behind, when the Knights of Ren could be even closer. So in the interest of not losing himself to the task of distraction by way of unconsciousness, he makes a peace offering before Chewbacca has the chance to follow Rey's suggestion of contacting Organa, halting the wookiee's retreating form with a sharp Wait. When Chewbacca turns to look at him, striding the length of the hall that the taller figure has already crossed, Kylo offers: I can help with the heating systems, if you're interested in getting a jump on the Falcon's repairs.

If Rey doesn't want to stick around long enough to meet the Queen Mother - which will probably be seen as rude, but he has little cause for concern over that brand of bad blood, all things considered - then beginning repairs now is more practical than waiting until later. And Kylo would very much like something to occupy both his hands and his mind. It takes Chewbacca a long moment to come to a decision, staring hard at him with eyes that have always been able to look right through him, before he warbles a reply.

Eventually, back on the Falcon, hands and arms buried into the bowels of the ship under Chewbacca's deliberate and precise instruction - everything punctuated with the implied threat of or else - Kylo keeps his attention divided three ways: on the task at hand, on Rey's end of the bond, and cast outward, drifting among the stars, waiting. )

[ The 'fresher stings injuries that Rey had long since forgotten about, obtained during the fight on Corellia while laser fire threatened to bring the forest down around them in a hail of smoke and ash, and it stings, the steam rising up around her in a familiar portrait that brings her right back to that moment. The paranoia of the Hapans strikes a familiar cord in her, for they're not the only ones second-guessing those who walk their halls: even now, Rey second-guesses her own decisions as well as those of her companion. In a far-off memory, she quietly urges him—

I'd like to try something.

This grand experiment has dug her deeper than she'd foreseen, and she can't help imagining all the ways it could go wrong while the water courses over her. Her eyes snap open to stave off the haunting image of Han Solo's face illuminated by red light, far but easily distinguished all the same before he plummets down. She doesn't waste water, shaking out damp hair and stepping out the moment the last suds are drained out of it to leave her staring at bruises and cuts while she towels off.

Three portions, she determines as she glimpses at the water trickling down the drain.

Her hair is still damp when it hits the pillow, and no manner of plaguing uncertainties can keep her from sleep for long. It's the easiest she's ever drifted off in such a soft bed, and even in her present condition, a part of her longs for the stiffness of the floor below, but she can't drag herself out of the sinking plush of the mattress once she's lying in it, darkness closing in around her with a new kind of warmth, distinct from the Jakku sun.

Nightmares haunt her, though she can't say with all certainty that it's all they are for they feel too real and too familiar to be anything of the sort. They come in flashes, and in them, she's always freezing in the dark, distinguishing it from the light of Hapes, and a rasping whisper tells her that she is a weapon wielded by the Resistance and nothing more, that their affection and warmth is a mere mask, from behind which they command her potential. In some of them, a piercing blue saber glides cleanly through a slim black shadow. In others, she chokes on her own blood and stares into a mask of black steel with hollow eyes. The worst of them aren't characterized by the violence of burning ozone and clashing beams of plasma, but by a thick sheen of sweat and labored breathing.

She sleeps longer than she expects to, thrashing around and sweating as she does, but hours later she wakes with a wheezing start, as though a cold hand were clutched around her windpipe. A wild look around the room tells her that day has broken, and she re-dresses and tears out of the room to search the pod for her companions. A number of Resistance officers greet her, but none of them can recall seeing Chewie or Kylo Ren in any room that night.

Fear for the worst carries her past the scrambled offers of Hapans to help her find what she's looking for and into the hangar, running over the clean steel and duracrete floor to the Falcon, some mixture of relieved and unnerved to find it still there, for she realizes only then that bringing harm to Chewie did not implicitly walk hand-in-hand with absconding on the Falcon. Her exhaustion got the better of her, and she's cursing herself as she climbs aboard. ]

Chewie!? [ She jogs up the ramp, out of breath and trailing Hapan officers who wait at the bottom. ]

( While he doesn't go looking through her thoughts as if flipping through a rare flimsi suddenly available to him now that she's asleep, Kylo senses her unease long before he sees her. In the long hours that stretch into daylight, punctured by thoughts that stray so far into the bleak darkness of memory and fantasy that he can't adequately tell the difference between the two, much the same way in which he can't adequately tell the difference between what Rey lets bleed through her subconscious and what ekes out of his own deep well of nightmare fodder now that his brain is tasked with the responsibility of fine tuning his senses in multiple directions. He feels the swollen rise of her own panic like he's experiencing it through frequency static, through many layers of heavy linen, underwater, her own misgivings and fear at the prospect of his and Chewbacca's absence catching him in the sudden burst of her undertow, and Kylo looks up from what he's doing with the heating and cooling system with a stab of indignation digging into him under his ribs.

He doesn't catch her presence in the Force fast enough to reply to her that way - or maybe he does and just can't be bothered, given this perception of her staunch faith in his inevitable and realized betrayal and the way that it smarts unexpectedly, leaving him with the casual inquiry of why? pointing in a handful of different directions - but he is there to greet her when she comes up the ramp at half-tilt, looking for all the world like she's had the galaxy's most restless sleep, the stale sheen of sweat washing her face with oil and grease despite the fact that her hair looks clean and hits him square in the face with the scent of something light and floral, a direct contrast of what he's been associating with her since Corellia. It makes his nose wrinkle, face poised in a perpetual scowl. )

Knee-deep in shield repairs.

( There's an audience behind her, all of them looking sideways at him, an undercurrent of venom lacing the sets of their shoulders. If possible, Kylo looks even more displeased at their presence, though he does well to hide it, working at the build up of grime on his hands with a filthy rag. For a moment he stares at her, as if he might say something, and then simply turns on his heel and walks away, leaving the ramp open for her to clear, Chewbacca calling out at her, his voice closer than where he needs to be in order to set the shields back to proper working order at the note of distress in Rey's tone. Kylo, for his part, heads back to the stretch of the ship where he's been working, trailing a bad mood like black vapor in his wake. )

[ Fraying at the edges, she skids to a stop when she comes up on the lean shadow of Kylo Ren looming from the top of the cargo ramp, a counterpoint to his steely calm, even as it turns sour before her eyes and carries him away from her. Rey gapes in an attempt to find words, feeling as though she is obligated to justify something that was never voiced, but it's too late, and the thud of furred feet on the metal turns her towards Chewie, who approaches with yawning concern.

A defused ex-scavenger approaches him and throws her arms around his middle with a sigh, primarily for her own sake but also in silent apology for the circumstances she'd left him in while she rested. It couldn't be easy, sharing space with Han Solo's killer, and she hadn't realized either of them would so eagerly begin without her. ]

You haven't let him mess anything up, have you? [ She mutters it quietly to a great bellowing laugh from the wookiee, and she knows that she has been forgiven when he comments then that he's keeping an eye out.

A smile works over her lips just as the Hapan officials below call out for her and issue a request by the Queen-Mother to meet with her. It was a pleasant few minutes, at least, free from the staggering weight of responsibility. Leia's coming, Chewie reassures her as his great paw nudges her down the ramp. Puffing out a breath, Rey straightens her back in anticipation of the journey down to continue the endless dance that sweeps them up. Before she descends, she glances back at Chewie. ]

While you're hovering, would you tell him … [ And she comes up short. Both of things she finds necessary and appropriate to say when she doesn't particularly like the idea of justifying herself, and things that Chewbacca wouldn't begrudge her passing along. Finally, she shakes her head. ] Tell him whatever you want. [ And she heads down the ramp then with her jaw jutting out from the same refusal to look back that she sports in her stiff shoulders.

The journey to the Queen-Mother takes her through hallways equal in grandeur to that which she'd been led down with Chewie and Kylo to reach the guest quarters that presently boarded the Resistance, but it opened to an even more exquisite throne room that glimmered with crystalline jewels and vibrantly colored lights reflecting through them, gleaming off every surface, all of them deliberately reflective to generate the cacophony of light. Suddenly, she felt desperately underprepared and underdressed, but Rey could not recall a single circumstance under which she had worn anything more than the plain, functional clothes of a scavenger. She covered her leather satchel with one hand, feeling the telltale hum of her lightsaber there without reaching for it while she approached and subsequently kneeled before Ta'a Chume.

To her great benefit, Ta'a Chume revealed that she had anticipated the arrival of the Resistance as soon as she heard of their victory on Corellia. News, it seemed, travelled quickly, but the Queen-Mother offered no indication of whether or not it would influence the heavy decision that she knew lay before her—to support the Resistance and the Republic that it represented, or to remain (as Hapes always had) impartial.

When the Queen-Mother dodged, Rey took the opportunity to confess her distaste for politics and appeal instead for the mercy of the Queen-Mother to simply harbor them until the fleet could gather again: the Resistance, Rey assured, would not make any requests of the Queen-Mother's fleet until General Organa did so herself. Until then, they needed to merely lay low while the pursuit died down for another day. Diplomats from the rest of the Hapes Consortium present were reasonably incensed by the forthright nature of Rey's approach, but Ta'a Chume locked their gazes in consideration.

When Rey left the throne room, she felt sure she did so with at the very least Ta'a Chume's respect, albeit certainly not her favor. Hapes would house the Resistance stragglers until such a time they could rally with the fleet, but only with the promise that the disfigured defector that Rey had brought with her be removed as soon as their ship was airworthy. Rather than rally to Kylo Ren's defense unnecessarily, she assented, and made a pitstop to pick up rations that would outfit the Falcon for its next journey out. Though Rey had not yet charted or selected a course, she anticipated it would be a long one—one that could draw the Knights of Ren well away from the Resistance.

Begrudgingly, tethering Ta'a Chume's gift of supplies in the main hold, Rey accepted that it was a decision she would need to make only after seeking the advice of their best source of intelligence. So she went to linger in the doorway that separated the hold from the life support systems, including the primary heating control unit, and watched him in silence. ]

( The longer he goes into the day cycle, the more he feels as if he's having an out of body experience. Chewbacca spends the overwhelming majority of his time repairing the shields, taking breaks every now and then in order to make sure Kylo has not jumped ship or sabotaged something on purpose - or on accident; he has a baseline understanding of what he's doing but the Falcon is old, and there's a strange marriage ceremony in coaxing some of the newer parts bought and paid for on Hapes to cohabitate with the older parts that have yet to be replaced - and Kylo makes the executive decision not to follow after Rey's signature in the Force as she spends time in the company of the Queen Mother, leaving her to her own tasks and Kylo to his own foul mood.

Paying attention to what his hands are doing requires more attention than he has to spare, besides. He can't pay attention to the task at hand in a legitimate effort not to muck up the mechanics too badly and also hope to be able to search through the Force in the delicate way required to snag a Knight's blip on the proverbial radar and also pay attention to what Rey is doing while contending with the mood that he has descended into and the thoughts that come along as a consequence. It doesn't help that the first thing Chewbacca says to him once he's returned from the ramp, after explaining where Rey has gone, is that General Organa is en route, leaving Kylo's mood, if possible, even fouler. He spends a long moment staring into the paneling that he's working with, trying to manipulate some broken piece to bend so that he can snap it out of the cooling system without damaging anything else around it, and he considers, as Chewbacca meanders back down in the direction he had come once Kylo has no response for him, just breaking the piece in order to exert a little control over something.

He works it free with care regardless, knowing how it would be perceived and wondering if it matters all the same, wondering what he's doing here in the first place. They don't trust him, and Kylo knows they have more than enough reason not to, and he isn't sure why it perturbs and disgruntles him so much to know that they likely never will. Because you've defected, admit it to yourself, a voice says in the back of his head, when he is elbow deep in a white hot heating unit, long gloves pulled up to his biceps and a pair of goggles with a too-loose strap clouding his eyes, steam obscuring his already limited vision. Kylo doesn't recognize the voice, so he doesn't answer, too used to unfamiliar voices encouraging him in one direction or another, although he can't deny that whoever is saying it, whether it's real or not, isn't strictly telling a lie. He sees stretched before him the potential of the future like a rolling plain, pockmarked with his failures and ravaged by unrelenting winds. Behind him, the fields stretch in the opposite direction, razed to the ground and blackened, the scorched earth running deep enough to burn red in some places.

You can't erase the things you've done, another voice says, lower, deeper, softer, familiar but still alien. Not Snoke's then, but someone else's. They'll never trust you, no matter what you do. You can never be trusted, it says, just as Kylo straightens up and leans back, shoving the goggles out of his eyes as the steam clears with a wave of his hand, sweat pouring down his face and pooling in the neck of the flight suit, bleeding through at the base of his spine and under his arms. His concentration elsewhere as it has been, it's the first time that Rey gets the jump on him that he can remember, and in turning to find her waiting at the door, he does a slight double take as he realizes what it is he's looking at. )

Move. ( He gestures to her and begins stripping the long gloves off of his arms, wiping at his face with his sleeve as he shoulders out of the box of a room he's been working in to step into the cooler air of the hold. ) Enjoy your time with the locals?

[ It should come as no surprise that the brunt of his dismissal lacks kindness, given that she has had to sift through silt for it every time she’s seen a glimmer of it in the past, but the abrupt nature of his snap catches her off guard. Rey’s arms fall away from her chest and she straightens to free up a portion of the doorway, turning sideways as he narrowly passes her to track his expression. Anger rolls off him in waves, but it’s a strained and repressed sort of frustration that lacks the unhinged quality that she had seen levied at her in the forest on Starkiller Base. She would have a better idea of what to do with the other kind.

Guilt tries to work its way under her skin when, as he passes her, she spots sections of his suit damp with sweat, affording her a glimpse into how hard he has been working with Chewbacca to get them spaceworthy again. But she rejects the shame of regret and thrusts it from her mind forcefully: she had every reason to harbor the dread and suffer the fear of the worst that characterized her rough awakening. He has been a boogeyman for far longer than he has been an ally, and even now, she uses the term with tentative reservation: she will not hold herself to blame for the natural repercussions of his choices, no matter how fully she might understand them. ]

No. I don’t trust them. [ The few words she offers seem to hang uncertainty heavy in the air, doubt that General Organa is making the right choice to reach out for Hapes to aid her in the coming war. If she can convince them, Rey would not be sorry to see the monstrous ships they have still as rocks in their hangars on the side of the Resistance, but she cannot help reading into their silent scrutiny and whispers. Or into the fact that they stated point blank that Kylo Ren was not welcome here. In the wake of the accusation implicit in her hurried return to the Falcon, though, her mistrust seems easy to shrug off—laughable even. A personal flaw, not a reasoned assessment. ]

The sooner we get out of here, the better. If the Knights are coming for us, I don’t want to lead them to the heart of the Resistance. [ That’s a body count she couldn’t reconcile as necessary or tragic: it would be her fault for permitting it to happen. Stepping back into the hold, she moves around him to plant her feet directly in front of him, curbing his path and forcing him to face her down while she prompts him for input. ] What do you think?

( She stops him cold before he can get very far away from the hold, standing in front of him as if she were a rock that he would have to part around or erode away over time. Kylo draws himself up short - or tall, whichever - caught on the tail end of a glower that smacks of his lingering frustration and some smattering perception of the wheels that turn Rey's thoughts and mind as well. Operating under the personal assumption that he's doing her a courtesy, Kylo closes his thoughts off to her, never mind that he will have to open them again following her question and never mind that he is achingly interested in her conversation with the Queen Mother. As interested as he is, though, Kylo is equally uninterested in exploring the inevitable consequences that would arise should he go poking around in her head for clues when he hasn't been invited. Also, he's supposed to be annoyed with her; it wouldn't do much for his case if he went sniffing around her thoughts when he's supposed to be slamming a door in her face.

Rey's answer pleases him in a way that he can't rightfully name, though, somehow glad that she's not been so enraptured by the glittering and gilded city and its people to have lost herself and her sense of purpose in the wake of their beauty and the haphazard, quasi-hand of diplomacy they had offered upon landing. Not that he had thought for a moment that she might falter in her own sturdy steps due to anything the Queen Mother might have told her, but it's reassuring in its own way to realize the nature of their visit won't end in futility all the same, that the grease slicked into his hair and the new burn running the length of one finger won't amount to pointless acquisitions for whatever reason.

More than anything, Kylo agrees with her, and like Rey's presented reassurances here in the hold following her trip back into the palace, he finds relief in knowing that he is not the only one to harbor feelings of misgiving toward their illustrious and beautiful benefactors, never mind the aid they are providing in letting them dock in the capital city. It's an intuition that he assumes will persist even when Organa makes her way to the Cluster and has her own meeting with the Queen Mother, and for as much as he would actually enjoy watching that exchange, he hopes they won't have to stick around for yet another reunion.

It's a line of consideration that has him crossing his own arms, so that when Rey lobs a question in his direction, his shoulders are tight underneath the damp fabric of his flight suit and the gloves are bunched up into a firm fist. The goggles are still on the crown of his head, giving her unrestricted access to the full bloom of his expression as it shifts the set of his face from one of stony, poorly restrained sourness, bordering on infantile irritation, growing more and more put out the longer he has to stand trapped in the cramped corridor until it transfers into something tinged at the edge with a little bit of something like surprise. He shouldn't still be caught off guard by the fact that she would ask for his opinion - she's done it enough in the last thirty-six hours - but it still manages to stand out in some way every time it happens. He wonders when the novelty will wear off and answers her honestly. )

I haven't sensed anything. ( Those tall walls he had built moments prior as a courtesy done for the both of them come down, and Kylo presents himself plain so that she's aware of the fact that he isn't lying. Threaded through the honest bargain of his plain speech are the brighter colors of latent fear and paranoia, a pressing survival instinct that lines their motives up suitably, and an untwisted and truthful desperation to keep his escape as something that exists in the present rather than the past tense. He might not be entirely for the Resistance, not by a long shot, but what he says to her is said with the intention of sparing them all. ) It would be a difficult thing for even a Knight to penetrate something so private and well-guarded as the Hapes Cluster without detection and subsequent destruction, and Hapans, as you've no doubt seen firsthand by now, are a selective and secretive people who don't take well to uninvited outsiders. It's unlikely that the First Order will attempt to breach even the Rim Worlds, given the sheer power and size of the Hapan Navy, but... ( He trails off, looking over Rey's head at the adjacent wall, thinking. ) I'm not particularly interested in taking the risk. I think that the sooner we're off the planet, the better it is for us and, ultimately, for the Resistance.

( As soon as the word we comes out of his mouth, Kylo realizes that he has been lumping himself into a category with her almost from the beginning. She could kick him off the ship, could stick him in a shuttle and tell him to fend for himself, and he couldn't, in all logical likelihood, blame her for it. But she hasn't, and he knows now that she won't. Their wires have become too knotted to risk the time it would take to untangle them. Rey assumed responsibility for him on Corellia when she offered him her hand, and she has yet to retract the offer and stop assuming it. His arms tighten in on themselves, and Kylo wedges himself closer to the doorway, looking down at her. )

I'm going to tell you something, and I'm going to ask you to try very hard not to get immediately angry about it. There's a reason for it. ( In his opinion of her, that's asking a lot. It's probably something that he should have told her a long time ago, certainly before boarding the Falcon, but he's been using it to his advantage for so long that it hasn't crossed his mind until now. Kylo doesn't wait for her to respond, just plunges right in, speaking as if he's explaining something to a toddler. ) There is a position sensor installed in my belt, to broadcast my location in the event that the Supreme Leader or Hux need to locate me and I'm not within range of a comm transmission. I spliced into it a long time ago, before you get all up in arms about it, after I realized that it existed at all on Starkiller. The frequency has been scrambled since before you and I clashed on Corellia, so there's no need to operate under the immediate assumption that I've been drawing the Order or the Knights after us the whole time, though you're welcome to check and assuage your own suspicion if you want. It's in the main hold with the rest of my things. ( He straightens up further, until his back bangs into the door frame. ) We could use it. Broadcast a signal from coordinates far from Hapes or use it to draw the Knights away from a location in the likely event that they turn up.

( He doesn't think that Snoke is aware that Kylo knows about the tracker, despite the fact that it's been on his individual person long enough that he should have rightfully known about it long before the pieces all slid into place. Kylo is more confident in his capabilities as a splicer, given how he has managed to cloak himself in this way in the past, and while Rey might not be pleased to hear of its existence now, he sees it as a potential advantage when their backs are ultimately up against the wall. )

[ Were her life the only one to hang in the balance, Rey might let it go at that, but the fact of the matter is that if she isn’t positive that the sensor in his belt is deactivated, she will be jeopardizing Finn, Poe, General Organa, Chewbacca, and the whole of the Resistance where it rests here on Hapes. Those lives she will not gamble with.

She turns on her heels and beelines for the main hold where his possessions are piled, throwing materials haphazardly away until she gets to the belt and searches with deft hands across the stiff material for a place where it gives or where it’s especially stiff. With all the grace of an expert, she draws the sensor out of its place within the belt; holding it aloft, she reaches into the leather pouch at her side and rummages for tools, producing a fine-pointed pin for testing electronics for their broadcasting abilities—a fine tool for a scavenger trying to make sure that radio and communications parts remained functional. She worries it under the faceplate of the transmitter and watches the results come up, a jumbled series of unfamiliar characters. The kind of thing that could be either a scrambled transmission or some kind of code.

Her attention winds around with the turn of her head to fix on Kylo, narrow gaze drinking in the stiff height of him and the tight boxes he coils himself into. Either he is a desperate soul adrift as she was, or he is only content to remain among them because he knows it will ultimately hail the destruction of the Resistance. She has no answer, no clear path, only her gut and the promise of a plan he offers up to her; it is hard for her to imagine a way in which he could use the plan he provides against her, but she is no tactician. It occurs to her only then that the frustration of greeting the brunt of bureaucracy and Leia and Luke’s decision-making back on Corellia had been as much a boon as interference. She grinds her teeth down into dust.

Alone in this, they have little choice but to trust each other, and Rey does not miss the irony in the fact that she is the one to mistrust him, given that she is the one who had actively sought his death, who had tricked him into defecting. He is not the monster she has wished he would be. ]

You should have told me. [ She can’t let go of her anger, so she finds a way to justify it in a better way of handling it, as if it would have made her any less irritated with the impossibility of objective confirmation of his claims. Packing her tool away into the satchel again, she tosses the belt to him. ] On Corellia before we left: we could have dumped it there. Why bring it with at all? [ Marching up to close the distance between them, she puts on a good show of intimidation for someone a clear foot shorter than him, eyes blazing at the injustice and potential opening for betrayal. ] Leader Snoke is a poor safety net. You think if you activated that thing because it was going South for you here that he’d let you live?

[ It isn’t fair or right, reminding him so doggedly that he has no other options, that they have cornered him into a box from which he must cooperate with the Resistance, for he finds persecution in all corners, but Rey does it anyway. Only with the passing of time does she begin to pinpoint why she feels compelled to sling it at him like mud, and she wishes she hadn’t self-examined when it occurs to her that it’s because she’s hurt by it. How childish, to lash out for such a thing. To be surprised at an injury by an enemy. Seething—as much with herself now as with him—she drops her gaze and folds her arms over her chest. ]

We’ll stay here until the General arrives. Then, we can pursue the Resistance to their next target, within the Consortium or elsewhere, and eject it in an emergency shuttle with a course for whatever planet you find suitable. [ She waves a hand. ] Nar Shaddaa. [ That dismissal doesn’t do much for cooling her jets, but it does at least distract her with the pragmatism of planning. ] It will allow us to remain with the Resistance until Master Luke decides how the Knights would be best approached

( Rey's whiplash anger is nothing compared to the conniption he had thrown upon discovering the small implant, hidden under the maelstrom of pain clouding his better senses and judgment, lashing out at his own perceived failures and inadequacies as he had seen them painted on faces in the medbay as they turned toward him, crowded his immediate space in an effort to contain him after Hux had retrieved him from the collapsing world of Starkiller Base. It had been a perfect symphony of immediate and aggressive retaliation, the crack of the raw and clear rage a physical, actual sound as he crumpled expensive medical equipment, warped the bench that he was meant to sit still on, collapsed the metal husk of the med droid instructed to feed a sharp needle into his arm and circulate blood back into the gasping, empty veins. He had fractured a med officer's skull and broken Hux's nose, had spilled oil from the droids like black blood, and it hadn't been enough to stop the coiling heat of the perceived betrayal that stung so deeply.

That Snoke would chip him, him, that his master didn't trust his ability to perform a singular task without Hux or Snoke himself knowing where he was and potentially what he was doing at all times, that he didn't trust him or his convergence with the Dark Side, had bitten him deep and rabidly. In his examination of it now, it may have been the final turn in a series of locks and switches that had pushed Kylo in this direction, back toward the Resistance, toward the General. Maybe in Snoke's desperation to hold onto him so tightly, he had found a way in which to slip through and out, disappearing like sand and smoke into the galaxy, the scrambling of his frequency a type of parting gift. Except that he had been smart enough in the medbay not to scream outrageously about it and had instead waited until the Finalizer was back in procession, hurtling toward Ilum at Snoke's request, to hack into the chip and reprogram it to his benefit, the same way that he had scrambled the frequencies of his own private quarters aboard the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, the same way in which he had cloaked his ship and attuned the settings to his specifications.

He might be neither the pilot nor the mechanic that his father would have liked him to be, but his skills with code and splicing were better than anyone else he had ever met, bar none.

Still, Rey's anger is burning and beating and aimed directly at him, and all that he can do is trail after her, steps slower than the frenzied pace she sets for herself, leaning against the frame separating one room from the next in the same manner that she had approached him only moments prior. His anger has mostly abated, still existing in the back of his head, caught in a gravitational well and threatening to spiral downward into a fiery burst of an explosion at any given moment, but Rey's anger takes the spotlight now. He's left to watch her rifle through his things, glad that he still has his saber on his person in case she doesn't like what she finds and comes at him looking for a fight. Part of him welcomes it, lulled into a tentative routine and itching for something to shake up the monotony of labor that's settled in since they left space, and part of him knows it would only end in bloodshed and a suspension of the truce they've formed. He catches his belt when she throws it at him and answers her with a spit of words. )

I thought it could be useful.

( In more ways than one. Had the Resistance seen fit to dump him, he could have done as she's suggesting and left it somewhere while jettisoning himself into Wild Space, as much as the thought rankles him to even consider it for a number of reasons. But they hadn't, and here they stand. Kylo pushes off of the wall in order to meet the weight of her footsteps and the upturned angle of her chin. What she lacks in physicality against the superiority of his own build, she makes up for in the set of her eyes and shoulders alone. Kylo isn't cowed in the slightest; he pushes her back with the size of his body alone, not bothering to check his body language as he does so, but Rey barrels on around him anyway, forcing him to take a step back in the interest of not having his foot stepped on, though all she does is cross her arms. He lets her talk herself down from a ledge, though he can still feel the firecracker of her ire burning bright like a spark heading down a long wire to detonate underneath every word she flings his way. )

I know Snoke is not a safety net. You think that I don't? I didn't ask him to chip me. I didn't even know about it until Hux pulled me out of the snow after you nearly killed me. If I wanted to draw the First Order or any of the Knights down on the Resistance, then I would have done it already. I certainly wouldn't be standing here now, and I wouldn't have let you into my head on Corellia in the interest of casting off this aforementioned safety net. ( He straightens up, feeling heat burn low in his stomach, the bubble of harsh, cold truths working their way up his throat. ) We don't trust one another, and that's fine, I prefer it that way, but stop acting like you stand on superior moral high ground in all of this. You have painted me into a corner as much as I handed you the brush. ( Deft fingers pluck at the face of the belt before Kylo glances down at it, nails prying the position sensor free from the console. The whole thing gives a little whine as the sensor comes free, cracking the face of his wide belt, a small piece of it bouncing along the durasteel floor between them. Snoke had sunk his teeth and nails in deep. ) Do whatever you want with it. Give it to General Organa. Stow it in a pod and send it to Naar Shaddaa. Break it. Turn it on. I don't care.

( He grabs Rey's wrist and drops the little beacon into her palm, brushing past her on his way back down the corridor, thinking about all the things he would have rather said and how much he sincerely doubts Skywalker knows what he's talking about when it comes to deciding what to do about the Knights of Ren. As if it should be his decision. )

[ Kylo moves like a swaggering giant, from the thud of his footfalls to the stretch of his spine to the way he wrenches the sensor free from his belt, feeding on her anger and turning it back on her and driving it home. But Rey doesn't flag or shrink back: she stands like a stone in the midst of a storm, letting him spit any defense he likes around her while she weathers it unflinchingly.

He wears outrage more comfortably than she does, as though he has steeped in it long enough that after his initial defensive outburst, he can sink back into cold restraint that offers only the thinnest of veils to his frustration. It comes secondhand to Rey, who has felt and internalized anger at the sun and the sand and the wind and starvation and Unkar Plutt and her own ineptitudes but has rarely battled with the same interpersonal anger that commands and drives him. Her anger is directed at monoliths, which gives Kylo Ren more credit than he is due.

When he grabs her wrist, instinct tells her to throw him over her shoulder and pin him to the ground, letting him keep his head if he's lucky, but the moment is brief enough and his hands tight enough that he manages to shove the sensor into her palm before she can yank it break it along the seam of his grip, something akin to a snarl slipping past her lips that very nearly lends context to her charming partnership with the wookiee several rooms away, and then, just like that, Kylo moves past her to excuse himself, and she whips around to shout after him. ]

Oh, don't just walk away! [ She takes one, two steps to pursue, but otherwise stops in the middle of the hallway, pride tethering her to her spot and keeping her from running after him like the same lost child who had tried to wrench free of Plutt's grip to run after the retreating ozone trails of her parents' ship. ] Especially not when you were the one fixing the bloody heating! [ Instead, she contents herself with shouting after him with a series of complaints designed to improve her sentiments on the situation rather than see his behavior change. ] Which, by the way, you damaged in the first place.

[ But he's already gone.

With a sigh, Rey looks down at the chip in her hand, turning it over in her palm and considering its insignificance—in physical presence, and the more pressing question of whether it justified the unease and anger she'd turned towards him. Firmly, she reminds herself that she was looking out for Finn and the others, and she easily swallows the guilt. ]

And just what am I supposed to do with this? [ Whatever she wanted, or so he said, but she isn't sure what that is. Learning more about it seems like the obvious answer, but truthfully, she'll be happier putting it off for another day. Setting the problem it poses aside for now, Rey tucks it into her shirt and winds her way back out of the main hold and to the life support control room, where she crouches at the main heating control panel. Fetching a flashlight from nearby, she peers inside, examining the wire work he's completed with careful scrutiny. ]

Have to do everything myself. [ Except, talking to herself and examining the panel, she notices that a great deal of the work has already been done; if she had to guess, the reason no one had seen him in the guest quarters of the Hapan palace was because he'd turned right back around and worked through the night on this. No wonder he'd been incensed by the implication that he would turn tail or cling to his old loyalties. An unwelcome surge of shame burns under her skin, but she ignores it too—she has every reason to greet him with the reproach she does, and it will take more than repair work to earn a kinder hand.

Which isn't to say she isn't curious about the work he's done. He is, after all, the son of Han Solo, and it had been impossible to say on Jakku how much was Han Solo's duct tape work and how much was Unkar Plutt's maddening decision to leave the ship to rot away untouched. ]

How far did you get with this, anyway? Hopefully not far enough to make anything worse… [ Insults pour from her lips, keeping her company in a way that speaks of years of experience, for she doesn't really expect Kylo Ren to be listening to her anymore. No, she speaks to him in the same way that other people speak to air, fully expecting that despite her doubts, she will find little wrong. After all, even if he'd learned nothing from his father, Chewie had kept an eye on him; it couldn't be that bad. Finding him helpful beyond what she had anticipated, Rey shuts off the flashlight and sits back, looking the panel over with the befuddled and directionless frustration of someone who has misjudged. Finally, under her breath, she huffs out— ] I liked it better when I was trying to kill you.

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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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~~higher education~~