apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

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

( 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.

( He doesn't get far enough away from that section of the ship fast enough not to hear Rey hollering after him as he makes his way down the twisting corridors to... somewhere. He doesn't know where. But it seems prudent not to be anywhere near her in the immediate future. The thought of seeking Chewbacca out in an effort to take on additional tasks now that his responsibility with the heating unit and coolant systems has been interrupted - false, a voice tells him, sounding suspiciously like one of the other two he'd been forced to listen to either; he left the area of his own volition and even has probable cause in returning, but continues walking (stomping) like a rain cloud further and further away from the hold and the system it houses.

Still, he doesn't seek out Chewbacca, and he definitely doesn't turn back around, and he absolutely doesn't give her the satisfaction in responding to the needling comments that she tosses at his retreating back. He refuses to look at it as a retreat, allowing the black boil of his own frustrated anger gnaw itself into an ulcer in the pit of his stomach. A plague of doubt descends on him now that he doesn't have the benefit of distraction, and while it doesn't lead him down a path to consider betraying the military faction that has housed him for the last two days and not killed him - if it could be labeled betrayal; he isn't exactly loyal - it does dole out some measured concern as to whether or not what he's doing is the right decision, never mind that it's the only one left available.

His steps eventually carry him to the cockpit, which is deserted for once. Out of the viewport, the capital city rises like a glittering gemstone, the light of a new day cycle breaking on the horizon and throwing long shadows over buildings and an urban sprawl that begins its climb toward waking. Even in here, with the door wide open, Kylo thinks that he can hear Rey banging around with unnecessary volume, and when he gives into temptation and casts out for her through the bond, he pulls back like a toddler who's reached too carelessly for a hot stovetop, burned by the radius of her anger, directed both inward and outward, tangled up in justified resentment and fair reasoning. Kylo shuts himself off and curls his hands into fists as his arms come up to fold over his chest, the long gloves dangling from his grip.

It feels sacrilegious to be in here by himself, staring at the chair that his father had sat in so many times over the decades that the seat has a permanent imprint of the man's backside worked into the leather. The controls are dusted with his fingerprints, and the smell that assaults Kylo the moment he draws from a still lake in an effort to control himself enough to notice it matches expertly with the way he can remember Solo smelling when he had pressed his entire being into his chest as a child, a son starved for a father's affection after being away for so long. Weariness catches up with him, dragging him under a riptide of sudden exhaustion, and he pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs furiously at his eyes with the pads of his fingers, until stars burst in the blackness of his vision, chasing away the burn, and he's forced to make a decision: stay and reconcile himself with the past or wander back down to the life support systems and deal with Rey.

He's out of the cockpit before he actively realizes that he's made the decision to vacate, and the closer that he gets, the more he can hear the racket that she's making as she no doubt checks and re-checks that he hasn't made any calculated sabotage attempts to the heating and cooling systems after being left alone for so long with them. What anger had faded briefly in the cockpit flares back to life at an accusation that rightfully has no place manifesting in light of the possibility that it does not actually exist, though it simmers to a lower level of buzzing irritation. Kylo stalks around the corner, the heavy trod of his foot suggesting that he is geared up properly to level her with an expertly dealt and another thing! before drawing up short several paces from the hold where she's working.

It takes him a moment's worth of listening, but eventually he opens his mouth. )

Likewise, scavenger. ( The heat behind it has dissipated, though it does nothing to diminish the value assigned to that singular noun. ) Are you done talking to yourself or would you like me to let you keep going until you've worked out how to have an entire conversation?

[ At the sound of his voice, Rey startles, slamming the back of her head roughly into the top edge of the open panel and swearing under her breath, some teedospeak pejorative that probably doesn't paint General Organa in a flattering light. Drawing herself out of the panel where she's rested her forearm and stuck her head, she turns towards him and waves her hydrospanner around like a knife with which she could threaten him into keeping his distance. Given his snappy retreat from her mind, though, she reckons that she doesn't need a weapon for that.

For a brief flash, the hate that simmers in her gaze looks as genuine as it had on Starkiller Base, for all the name throws her back to that moment, rending the haphazard kinship they had nurtured on Corellia through orders and desperation. Those orders feel heavier now, thinking that he can just press his mind flush up against hers when she wants to scorch him with another plasma beam for good measure, that she's got to keep in such close company and essentially babysit.

Still. She doesn't regret taking it on, and had she refused, she knows Luke would have accepted. (She's not sure she could have faced the General, though, knowing that refusal would have necessitated her son's execution.) That's a sobering thought, particularly in light of the vitriol they fling back and forth. It does little to tamp her instinctually incensed reaction to the way he spits scavenger like a slur, but it does something. She doesn't bite back, refuses to let it be the name that spurs on her snapping reply lest it give it some power, refuses to name him the monster that he had been now that he has taken a full step back from it for it would mean sinking to his level.

Regardless of how far she is from Jakku, she can't help but feel the barb well-placed, particularly when it comes in the corridors of the ship she had inherited in his father's death, de facto, salvaged and stolen and accepted in mourning. When she is wielding a borrowed lightsaber that she has no claim to, that she found in a chest in a basement a million miles away. She does not allow tears to blink into her eyes, but it cuts deep, the implication that she remains nothing more but a vulture, picking at the ruins and feeding on death. ]

What do you want?

[ She sneers it out in one breath, the huff coming at the end with extra air indicating that she'd had to force it all out past some other desired reaction. Beyond that, she gives him nothing but unwelcoming detest. ]

( The shifting ground between them slides back into place, so to speak, reestablishing familiar territory, the tectonic plates of their association with one another grinding up against each other in an effort to upset the relative order and cohabitation - if it could be called that - so that small, rupturing earthquakes can rock the foundation that they may have begun forging. Calling that the established order might be a paradox were they anyone else other than themselves, but in the turmoil and disturbance that they create in clashing with one another, Kylo finds himself able to breathe somewhat easier. There is release in anger, and there is comfort found in scowling at her, even when the dull clang of her head colliding with something metallic is ringing in his ears, the sharp burst and fade of sudden pain opening up across his own skull a testament to how tentative their own control over their own persons actually is.

Rey looks up at him with eyes that tell a similar story, the pool of her gaze brimming with disdain and threatening to bubble over. Not in tears but in the burn of rage that he can easily associate with. Another time, another place, he might have encouraged it, stoked and blew it to life, but now Rey doesn't rise to the occasion, even though he gets the impression that she wants to, based on the set of her shoulders and the way she brandishes the hydrospanner at him, like a knife. It's there one moment and then it's gone the next, falling like a meteor out of orbit, and Kylo is left to either salvage what's left of the fight that could evaporate or explode. The cockpit has calmed him somewhat, though, enough that the metal under his feet doesn't actually shift and the walls don't threaten to come apart, enough that he can get a lid on his own temper when she looks up at him not with hatred, exactly, but with something else that he can't necessarily name, never mind that he's felt something similar trace its way across his own face. )

You told me not to walk away. ( Kylo points it out as if it's the most obvious thing in the universe, although they both know it's bantha fodder. He might have heard her shouting after him but there's a perfectly good chance that he would have ignored her even if she'd shouted it right in his face. He tries again. ) In the interest of not wasting your own time and getting us off this rock as soon as possible, I'll show you where I left off with the heating unit. ( Not exactly a peace offering but he's still not interested in damaging the ship beyond repair and dashing their chances at leaving the planet because he and Rey continue to spat. ) Put the hydrospanner down. I'm coming in there.

( And back into the room he steps, squatting down as far away from her as he can possibly get, far enough away that he can point or nod without having to touch her, but close enough that his knees are in danger of brushing against her. He adjusts himself to make this less likely, and in the process settles himself into a corner that houses cool metal, pressing through the thin material of his flight suit to cool his overheated skin and calm the flow of perspiration that congeals across his skin. Kylo wipes the back of his neck with bare hands and stares at her out of eyes that still brim fire and brimstone but carry the weight of exhaustion deep in the pits of them. Walking himself forward on the balls of his feet, he reaches into the heating unit and pinches something, holding it out so her mechanically inclined brain might clamp onto the concept. )

I'm trying. ( It very obviously refers to more than just the ship and the heating unit. He doesn't look at her but nods at the gathered intestines of wires and metal brackets. ) This bit keeps coming loose.

[ The way he orders her to drop the tool only makes her bristle and want to keep it up more. Unfortunately, he also makes a good point. Rey reluctantly lowers the thin metal tool and props it over her knee while she leans back, a sour expression on her face barely muting a roll of her eyes, and gives Kylo a better look of the inside of the panel. He reaches past her, and she bristles in proportionate response with how close he gets, a sneer worked up by the time she can feel his body heat while he holds the troublesome wires up between them.

Only with extreme effort does she suppress her reluctance to cooperate and put it in check, prioritizing the Falcon and seeing it fly again. Redirecting her attention to the cluster of wires, she plucks it from Kylo's hand and squints at it, pulling the threads apart from the metal bracketing to see how it's joined. Then, she reaches into the toolkit in front of her with one hand. ]

No wonder. These things don't come with spare parts, you know. You can't just leave out an O-ring and expect it to insulate properly. [ The spanner goes between her teeth in a blessed moment of silence, keeping her from further chastising his understanding of the ship's mechanics. She threads the wires out of the metal brackets diligently and places an extra silicone plate between them, padding another thin sheet of metal. Then she threads them back through for a more secure fit, twining the frayed edges of the wires.

Holding onto the wires with one hand, she eases the hydrospanner back into her bag and rifles around until she produces a thin tube of sealant, which she squeezes over the wires until a thick gel sludge comes out and coats the exposed edges. She passes the tube over to Kylo and smears the black goo with her bare hands and holds the wires steady until it begins to crisp over and dry, insulating them to prevent further combustion the next time Kylo Ren loses his temper. ]

You replaced all the wiring that leads to the panel you blew out? [ She assumes as much, given that he'd made it this far, but it seems like a wise thing to check before relying on the repairs in deep space. ]

( Despite evidence to the contrary, particularly in the hard lines of his face even as he rearranges it into something befitting neutrality, Kylo is interested in what she has to say. It's a curious and strange role reversal, although she's not actually offering to teach him anything and seems to be more talking to herself than anything else other than scolding him, but he finds himself paying attention anyway, the bulk of his understanding hinging on terminology that he's picked up on over the years. It isn't comfortable, especially not with his calves and thighs burning as he tries to fold himself into a cramped section of the hold, barely fitting one person comfortably, let alone two, but it diminishes some of the disdain that had been looping between them, cutting down the anger lengthwise while he devotes the majority of his focus to paying attention.

Not an entirely quick study in all arenas, Kylo nonetheless has the propensity to grasp what's being discussed even if repetition will make it stick. He tracks the motions of her hands, the dexterity of her fingers, and turns his hand palm up when she gestures for him to take the tube of sealant, replacing the cap with a twist of his wrist. )

And some of the wiring leading elsewhere, and in a couple other areas of the ship. There was a section in one of the hallways on our way out of Corellian space that was drawing too much power away from the rest of that section. The lights kept going out. It was just some sparking due to the main power diverting, but the casing was all worn through. Chewed, almost. Rodents, maybe, or just age. ( He swipes at his forehead again with the back of his hand, smearing perspiration, and hands over the gloves in the even that she finds his work sub par and determines to oversee the process herself, from scratch. But she'll find no tampering and while the work might not be as immaculate had Rey been the one to do it herself, it's been done correctly and efficiently, as if he followed a textbook. No imagination. ) The panel itself won't seal. The front of it is warped. It won't be detrimental to navigation or sustainability once we leave Hapes, so you can wait to fix it until you're someplace less temporary. Just thought you should know before seeing it, in the interest of not having my head bitten off.

( In terms of bite, Kylo has delivered worse with more. He's tired of fighting with her in this tiny, boxed in space, full of metal bones and wires for veins, pumping oil and electricity for blood. It's doing neither of them any favors, and he would much rather get out in the open somewhere and charge each other head on if they're going to throw down gauges in this way. It also occurs to him that he has more important things to worry about than maintaining or disrupting an argument with Rey, which leads him to stand. Rey has more room to move as a result, and Kylo is forced to remain in the corner until she moves. )

When is General Organa due to arrive?

[ She tries not to be affronted by his implication that the Falcon was somehow plagued by space-rats lurking in the systems and hitching a ride to chew through the wires. At this point, she doesn't need to let accidental remarks offend her—he'll happily do it deliberately, it seems, so she begrudgingly rolls it off her shoulders with a shrug, letting go of the sealed wire casing and looking down at the similarly dried and cracking insulation that is left on her fingers. She picks it off and flicks it to the ground like a child might dried mud. ]

Within the day. [ In any angle, Kylo Ren manages to loom and menace, and it does her no favors to remain crouched below him: there's simply a lot of him to take up space. Straightening, she closes this panel up at least, which takes a thump of her fist against one corner, then slips out of the narrow quarters to spare them one another's proximity.

Except now, standing at full height, she must look him in the eye or deliberately avoid his gaze by staring flatly at his chest, and looking him in the eye puts on her the distinct social pressure to, absurdly, thank him for repairing what he broke. Or worse, apologize for the perfectly reasonable concern that he'd knocked Chewie out, put him in a closet somewhere, and absconded with the Falcon.

The perplexity of trying to sift out an appropriate reaction to the silence that stretches leaves her wishing she could simply knock Kylo Ren out and lock him in a closet until she was prepared to decide how to deal with him.

Instead, she breezes past him to examine the allegedly warped panel that he'd ruptured to begin with, examining the loosened lip around the edge and coming to her own independent assessment that, as he'd said, it wasn't going to fit back into place. Junk. The real kind, not the kind that people cast aside without considering if it could be repurposed. She'd need to find a new sheet to cover it at some point, but for now, Kylo was (unfortunately) right: it was harmless to go without. ]

Maybe you'd like to sleep in the meantime. It might improve your mood by the time she gets here, since you apparently stayed up all night trying to fix what you broke. [ Conversational, the rejoinder comes without Rey even looking back at him, still assessing the curve of the metal before she drops it aside and leans it up against the wall. ] It'll take more than one night to fix that.

( Kylo leaves the gloves in the toolbox with the tube of sealant and the hydrospanner, and a number of other pieces of expertly and inexpertly twisted metal that belie the use of the kit and the legitimacy of the pieces within it. Rey lets herself out of the compartment they've been crouched it, and Kylo spends a moment inside of it, glancing down at the work done on the heating and cooling system for lack of anything else to look at before following her out into the central loop of the winding corridors, into cooler, recycled air. She's looking him in the eye when he steps out, and he has little choice other than to look at her right back, reminded of a similar time not all that long ago, staring down a rather different individual through the screen of his helmet.

Who talks first? Kylo thinks, altogether unfamiliar with how to proceed when the contest is a battle of who can say less of what they're thinking, when the alternative means yelling and throwing things. It's a toss-up as to which one he would prefer, and he doesn't think Rey has any guarantees about which one she would find more rewarding in that moment either, if the look on her face is anything to go by. Like she wants to say something, like she wants to do something, like the fight is an internal one with no actual outcome or winner. Kylo can sympathize with that: he's been fighting with himself for as long as he's been fighting with anyone. But Rey turns and dismisses the moment, and Kylo is left to follow her down the walkway, vague thoughts of the general's arrival buzzing in the back of his head like a fly in a glass jar.

Where else is he supposed to go, though? It's a disadvantage that he has no rectification for. For as much as Rey has been advantageous in his liberation, so to speak, he recognizes his own prediction in the way that he follows her from room to room, feeling adequately leashed to the familiarity of her, rather than loyalty. She's become a constant in this unpredictable game, a rock in the middle of the ocean. Her island in the sea. It strikes him abruptly that he really does have nowhere else to go, just back down to the warped panel that he'd destroyed.

Guilt isn't exactly the word that he would use to classify what he feels in seeing it again, as Rey crouches to inspect the damage that he's done. Responsibility, maybe. It's the more practical option out of the two and any others that might come railing to the forefront, and he counts them lucky that he hadn't destroyed something else, something more important than a bit of metal susceptible to disfigurement. The journey ahead of them is long and clouded with darkness, whenever he tries to feel any part of it out, but he's never been good at that and has always felt the darkness laced throughout, so it's no surprise. )

Be glad I didn't rip an outward facing wall apart. ( He replies to her in a conversational tone as well, heavy with the implication that although the comment itself is delivered with the intention of being sarcastic, it smacks of experience and has more than just a grain of truth in it. Kylo can't deny her initial suggestion, though, feeling weighed down to the molecular level, heavier with the knowledge of Organa's approach. Probably he should feel success at having evaded the First Order all this way, but all he can interpret the churning of his stomach as is indigestion. He nods at her, even though Rey has her back to him. ) I'm sure you'll holler your head off if you find anything worth berating me over, but in the event you need me for anything that doesn't directly involve reprimanding me, I'll be one of the bunks. Hoth will have frozen over before I try out the palace's guest quarters.

( He'll take trying to cram himself into one of the tiny crew bunks over mistrustful eyes that probably have a clear suspicion of who he is any day. )

[ Only once he’s gone does Rey lift her head, stare back at the space he’d occupied, and let his words sink in with any real consideration. It’s hard to count herself grateful that he hadn’t killed them all, though practicality demands it, for in this hole she’s dug herself in bearing responsibility for his state, she realizes that the threat is very real. Rather than tackle that head-on, she shakes her head and mutters. ]

Hoth is already frozen. [ Which only serves to prove her point to the empty space in the doorway that she speaks to—he needs to rest. Confident that he’s cramming himself into one of the bunks in the crew quarters due to the passive, lingering feeling of claustrophobia within her mind, unsupported by her surroundings, Rey makes her way to the cockpit to settle in with the star maps, plotting potential courses, examining the Resistance's further options.

If they had even five of those Hapan battle dragons, they would be able to decimate the First Order. Find them where they live and root them out of the Unknown Regins like the vermin that they are. She has no doubts that the General would like that option: to her, it seems that the First Order and the Empire are one in the same, indistinguishable. Rey isn't certain that she's wrong, but she is certain that it would mean Leia has been fighting this war for more than thirty years. It's beyond Rey's scope of understanding, well beyond, and she only sets more stubbornly to the task of examining potential courses with that in mind.

Onderon seems like the obvious choice to take root on while they determine their next move against the First Order, which has been felling planets like dominoes ever since they destroyed the seat of the Republic. But it's senseless to start strategizing without Organa here to advise, and she knows that the General will not begin to advise until she has made her decision and been heard by Ta'a Chume. With a last look at the map, outdated by decades if the smudge where Alderaan used to be was any indicator, Rey turns it off and tears herself away.

So she occupies herself off the Falcon, exploring as much as Resistance members are allowed to of Hapes; she avoids the guides and guards alike where she can, slipping mostly unnoticed through the palace with all the ease and grace afforded to someone who does not spare the guards even a first nervous glance. She can pick out only snippets of the conversations of the passing Hapans, most of them using their native tongue, but among them, she can make out a few reiterated words accompanying leering looks in the direction of the Resistance members. Words for outsiders, she decides readily. Every language has a collection of unkind words for those who come from outside of it, and she finds no surprise in the affirmation that Hapes is among them.

A chorus of cheers greets her where the Resistance fighters are quartered, hours later, and she moves with all of them back out to the hangar where the one-time princess makes her landing. Rey can't seem to shake the awful sinking feeling that sets down with General Organa's shuttle telling her that something is about to go wrong. ]

( The bunk, as he knew it would be, is far too small for Kylo to fit into it comfortably. He spends an inordinate amount of time staring at the little box with his arms crossed, half-convinced and almost unwilling to test the theory that he isn't going to fit inside of it at all. Bone-weary exhaustion forces him to try his options, since the sofa in the main hold isn't going to do anything for his over-saturated brain and the fugue state that he feels he is existing in. Meditation has done nothing. The physical and mental toll of excavating Snoke clean from his head and then plunging desperately into aerial dog fights and flight paths, jumping systems and working throughout a night cycle at something he has never been preternaturally good at in the first place - it's all but decimated what's left of his mental faculties.

Never mind Organa and Skywalker. Never mind the physical ramifications of keeping walled defenses up around them, in the blast radius of their presence. Never mind the constant reminder of his father's gait, his shrug, his lopsided smile that Kylo himself has shattered from mirrors and reflective transparisteel. Never mind Rey knocking around in his head and him knocking around in hers, the two of them bumping knees and elbows in an effort to maneuver through this mine field they have planted in one another. Never mind the last thirty years.

He crams himself into the bunk with all the grace and dexterity that he can manage. Which is to say none at all. He's right about the length of the bunk and the width of it, too. Kylo has to draw his knees up to his chest and wedge them against the wall in order to lay flat on his side, and when he rolls to his back in the interest of staring straight up at the durasteel plating that comprises the bulkhead above him, his legs don't fit at all unless he angles them to the side, leaves one dangling outside of the bunk, an overgrown child trying too hard to fit into his childhood bed. He remains on his side, tries to will away the discomfort that blooms as a result of the pressure his weight is placing on his hip and shoulder, and does not find sleep as quickly as he would like or expect. Instead, Kylo listens to Chewbacca rattle around - or at least, he assumes that it's Chewbacca, given the direction of the sound - and flattens his palm over the healed bowcaster scar on his flank. When he turns his nose into the pillow in the interest of making an active effort to fall out of consciousness, he thinks that it smells too clean and unused to not have once belonged to someone else. His last thought before finally succumbing to the absolution of his exhaustion is an inquiry: who laid their head here in all the years that Han Solo did not?

Nightmares hunger for him in the dark well of unconsciousness, little teasing beckons that smart of bright sunshine on white beaches, the roar of the ocean loud in his ears, rolling back and forth, small shells under large feet. He's a boy but he's a man, and his mother guides him down the shoreline while the water rushes in around his boots and he sinks into the white sand up to his ankles. He turns to look at her, sand piling up to his knees, reaching his thighs, threatening to devour his waist, and he asks her not to let go of him, to pull him out. He tries to shout but his mouth is full of white hot sand, and Leia is not Leia but still is Leia, a confusing conglomeration of what she is and what she was and what he had hoped that she would be when he was young enough to believe in that kind of nonsense. Luke joins her on Kylo's other side, and together they wrap one hand each around his wrist and try to pull him out of the sand, but dark water rushes in from the belly of the ocean and he sinks down into the darkness. He wakes, damp with sweat and overheated, throat dry, but the consciousness is momentary and half-formed, so that when he wakes again later he won't be able to remember whether or not it was a reality or a transition, his father's ship a ferry from one bend in the river to the next.

He's on Ilum. The ground is cracked black with permafrost and Snoke's breath, real and bitter cold despite the fact that Snoke himself is tangible in this world, in his seat, surrounded by the shimmer of a million kyber crystals all shocked white with the depletion of their power. Snoke is seven feet tall, twenty feet tall, his height is immeasurable, and he opens wide, dark eyes with no bottoms and sees straight into Ben Solo's mind with razor sharp focus and precision, the pinprick of a knife, of a surgical laser, dissecting him to the tiniest atom. My poor boy, he says to Ben Solo, who is eight-years-old and covered in sweat. When the boy looks up, he is on a bridge that stretches endlessly in either direction. He has been on this bridge a hundred times before. There are boots on the bridge twenty paces from where he is doubled over, trying to breathe. Han Solo steps across the durasteel and a burst of red hits him like a spotlight. Ben tries to warn him, but when he opens his mouth sand pours out of it, made clumpy by black water, dark and viscous enough to be motor oil. Han is close enough to touch him, but instead of pulling Ben to his feet, he begins shoveling the sand into his hands and dumping it over the bridge. The tar-like liquid shines on his fingers, and Han says, with a lopsided grin full of blood, This stuff'll kill you.

They fall, and Ben - Kylo - is on the ground in the mud. It's raining. Lighting forks the sky. Thunder rolls from a distant murmur to the decibel of bullhorn overhead. He is on his feet, and the rain pelts against the helmet that he wears, taptaptaptap, but it's not his helmet. His helmet is in the dirt on Corellia. This one is new, the visor is different, affords him a wider range of vision. Around him are six black figures. They are watching him, waiting for him. Knights. He's confused. The number is wrong. There should be seven discounting himself. Where is Dryx? his voice comes through the helmet without the modulator, a muffled sound muffled further by the roar of thunder and rainwater. One of the Knights gestures with the unlit hilt of a saber, long and braced against the flat of a forearm. His eyes track the straight line afforded by the gesture and there is a bright spot in the dark din of night, fingers clawing through the mud, the long end of a staff raised to strike.

Red erupts. It melts bone and disintegrates muscle, turns blood to ash and cauterizes split skin. His arm burns under the weight of this dead body but when he moves to deactivate his saber, Kylo finds that he has no saber. He takes two paces to turn and sinks into a puddle, up to his ankles, up to his thighs. He doesn't sink any further but he can't move, mired in the mud, stuck between one slide and the next. When he looks up, the storm has broken, though the sky is still gray. Behind her, he can see the glittering stones of Hapes' capital city. His mother is beyond, gray and white in regal attire. Rey is washed in dark creams and tans. She offers him her hand, making to pull him out of the mud. He is eight-years-old and on his knees in the dirt. Get up already, she says, and the club from the rain swings. Rey falls and a Nikto with skin the color of chalk dust shows him black eyes that stare at him, unblinking. )

R -( Is as far as he gets when he bolts awake with his breath caught in his chest, slamming his skull against the bulkhead in the process. Stars and black spots blink in front of his eyes for a moment, and Kylo jams his palm into his temple in an effort to regroup, to get the room to stop spinning. It's only when he realizes that he's sucking in great lungfuls of oxygen, that he's been holding his breath long enough to have woken himself, that he manages to calm himself down enough to restructure the discombobulation that he feels. Reaching out for her is like trying to find a station through space chatter and static fuzz, but it's still faster than anything else he can conceptualize in that moment, as he actually falls out of the bunk and sprawls on the floor when his foot - still closed in a boot - tangles in the thin sheet he's been sleeping on top of. He can feel Organa's presence on the planet burning like a volcano, but it's Rey he floods with a sense of unease. ) Something's happening.

[ The sudden snap of the bulkhead dazes her as much as him, the sudden split of metal through her skull stopping her mid-stride with a keening noise that rings in her ears as she heads towards the edge of the hangar where the shuttle approaches from the edge of atmo. The can taste cooper in the back of her mouth, though she's not sure which of them bit down with the sudden shock fast enough to actually injure themselves, and she presses her tongue to the inside of her cheek to search out the wound in annoyance a moment later.

Kylo Ren's discomfort with his mother's arrival comes as no surprise, and it makes it too easy for Rey to dismiss it—and with it, her own, for she accepts implicitly that it is a result of the bleed of his mind into hers.

Her eyes, though, remain fixed on the fanfare of the Resistance fighters in the hangar who cheer and continue their victory celebration, several pilots clapping one another into hugs and rejoicing not that they had maneuvered past the First Order-riddled Corellian space in the wake of the fight, but that their fearless leader had. Joy which should be contagious barely makes a dent in the barrier surrounding Rey, a gloomy shroud of Kylo Ren's fear and unease. ]

Good morning. [ She advances, squinting up through the sunlight to peer out of the hangar and grin against the approach. ] Your mother's arriving. Believe me, you're the only one among us who considers that to be so stridently dread-inducing. [ But she slows, nearing the back of the group of Resistance fighters, and takes notice of the Hapans' comparable reserve towards Leia's approach. Turning her head, she notices it's not just some, but all of the Hapans who appear to hold stiff reservations moving too far forward to greet her.

The observation sticks in her teeth like gristle, stymieing her ability to celebrate the arrival and joining with her own ill sentiments towards the arrival as well as Kylo Ren's ominous promise of something. A more experienced Jedi would recognize it immediately as a disturbance in the Force, but then, Rey hasn't been granted the usual training process for Jedi, particularly not when reaching that conclusion would require her to look past the smiling veneer of lying faces around her. ]

Why do I taste blood?

( Similar to Rey's inspection meters and meters from where Kylo attempts to untangle his boot from the bed sheet, he runs the flat of his tongue over the inside of his cheek, searching for the culprit while getting unsteadily to his feet. His legs are liquid: an unfortunate side effect of having lain in a cramped position for the better part of two hours and an embarrassing result of being completely disoriented from the draining quality of the dream he had experienced. The wobble in his step leaves him reeling and angry, one hand reaching out to steady himself against the nearest surface that he can find as he wills some of the blood flow to return to traitorous appendages.

Weak boy, that voice says again. Kylo tells it to shut up and punctuates the command with a sharp, open-handed slap against metal paneling, stinging his palm and making the bones that run the length of his fingers vibrate with the impact. It also has the unfortunate result of bouncing around the walls of his own mind and tumbling across the bond that he shares with Rey. )

Shut up. ( The only benefit is that it doesn't sound as petulant as it might given the criticism that she's tossed so casually at him prior to him replying at all. It sounds like a command, an order, and while Kylo doesn't expect Rey to take it lying down, he also - perhaps falsely - expects her to listen to him as a result of the harshness of his tone. Everything that follows has a brusque quality, half a manifestation of his heightened sense of awareness and half because he's busy trying to get out of the ship. He has no idea where Chewbacca is, if he's gone to the hangar to watch the general's arrival or gone for more parts or if he has two massively hairy arms buried in the innards of this ship's underbelly, but he spares no time to wonder or search him out. He stops only in the hold to pull the tunic he had been wearing earlier over his head, cinching his waist with the broad swatch of leather that makes up his belt so that he can clip his saber to it. Kylo realizes that he looks ridiculous, but he can't shake the feeling that he's going to need it. Hapan prejudices be damned. ) Something is wrong. I can sense it. Can't you?

( His lightsaber smacks into his thigh as he takes long strides down the cargo ramp, and Kylo slips his hand down to his hip to wrap his fingers around the hilt, a measure of comfort and security. Knowing that it's there makes him feel more at ease, even if a cold prickling sensation has begun working its way up his spine. The immediate area is devoid of Hapans, leaving the docking bay filled with a sparse smattering of mechanics and Resistance pilots still working on getting their own ships space-worthy again. Kylo ignores them all, ignores the way they watch him move, hating him and marveling at him and some of them looking away discreetly as he stomps by. He lets his feet and the incessant pull of Rey's great sunspot within the Force pull him where he needs to go. More strongly, whether he wants to admit it or not, he feels Organa, a gathering of glimmering stones on a long distant shore, a lighthouse encased on either side by craggy rock. )

I had a dream. ( Kylo realizes how stupid that sounds the minute that he says it, but there's no changing it. The only word that wants to manifest on his tongue is Dryx. DryxRenDryxRenDryxRen. Rey's feelings, her perceptions of something coming, something bad, flood him. ) Where are you? ( He asks it even though he doesn't have to, hoping to cut down on arrival time by not forcing himself to sift through the present consciousnesses of every person around him. Eyes track him when he leaves the docking area, they track his blade. ) Tell me what you see.

[ Stinging numbness travels like an electrical impulse through her hand, leaving behind a bone-deep ache that throbs around her knuckles. Kylo Ren has the nerve to solicit her for justifications of the effects of his transference, and Rey clenches her fists to restrain her instinct to lash out and return the accusation. Her tongue finds the cut, worms against it, then forfeits its search.

The ever-present, pounding and anxious strain rippling out from Kylo’s mind leaves stains on her own, making it hard to determine what is her ill sentiment and what’s his—intellectually, she acknowledged the threat of precisely such a consequence when she endeavored to free him from the inexorable hold Snoke had over him, but to feel it interfering with something so important so acutely makes her less amenable. ]

How could I, through the interference you’re providing? [ But then, that’s not entirely true. The hesitant pulse of unease came before he woke, and though it would be easy to attribute it to his restlessness, that explanation left her cold with its insufficiency. Brown eyes track up to the sky to follow the approach of the shuttle, reaching out towards it with the Force to search the ship and the air around it for the source of the discomfort, but it seems harmless enough.

A second sweep finds the thorn.

Like a silken thread tethering the ship along its path to the ground, the twang of the swirling connection of energy sounds wrong, like an ill-tuned instrument. The fields of her mind open up and welcome Kylo Ren to the same view and perception she has, lifting away the thin cloak of dark that divides them and revealing the map of tendrils that infuse and guide every living being through the Force, but also the flight chief and the nearby ships that will help to guide him to her location.

Turning her attention, Rey searches the hangar for the source of the taint in the landing when the ship itself is harmless, and the cancerous taint spreads, thicker behind her, shrouding the Hapans. The flight chief standing near her passes orders to warriors who filter by, ordering them to prepare landing equipment, but not quarter. ]

They’re not going to help us. [ The realization is not truly spoken, not immediately for his benefit, but crashes in all at once as the inevitable synthesis of the stimuli that flood her as an indisputable fact. Leia Organa will not be welcomed here. With it comes dread—the longer Leia stays on this planet, the larger the yawning darkness at the edge of the Force will grow, the more danger she will be in. ]

It’s the planet. [ Not literally, perhaps—though she can’t be sure, if she’s honest—but in a significant enough majority that it seems to resonate with so many of its natives. ] We’re a disease and it’s trying to repel us: the longer we’re here, the more time the First Order has to track us here and drag Hapes into it.

( Although he grits his teeth at her initial comment, what follows it is enough to slow his long strides and lighten his heavy tread. Of course, he has to do that in the interest of weaving in and out of shoulders and elbows, most of the Hapan population nearly as tall if not as tall as he is. None of them have the deep imprint of a gash standing out like the crack of an egg, though, unevenly dividing one third of his face, pockmarked as it is, from the other, equally as speckled. He sticks out in the crowd as much as his ears constantly threaten to stick out from underneath the length of his hair, but Kylo doesn't let that fact slow him down, assuming that the time for propriety and reservation is long past if this is the conclusion that both he and Rey have arrived at.

He still can't determine whether or not what he'd dreamt was something premonitory or just a run of the mill nightmare, but there's a bad taste in the back of his mouth that he can't shake just as much as he can't shake the cold tingle that starts at the back of his neck and wanders the pathways provided by his nervous system, arcing little sparks of electricity over his arms and legs, down his back, making his hair stand on end. It intensifies when he feels Rey reach out despite her accusations and scolding, and he surges into her point of view with alarming ease, so much so that Kylo has to catch himself with his own balance as he hurries through a separate hangar and down a joining hallway.

The image that Rey sees superimposes itself onto what he sees directly in front of him, affording him some strange double-exposure that he's experienced before but still finds strange all the same. Her perception of the unease, the taint spreading like a black fume, wanders across their connection, and Kylo feels it too, filling him up to the brim until he can't determine what he's feeling and what she's feeling and who's feeling more of it. Her words leave his mouth dry, just as he steps into the same area that she occupies, surrounded by Hapans who turn to look at him as he passes, alternating between leveling heavy, dark stares toward their wayward outsiders - the crowd broken up by Resistance colors and normal faces as opposed to the glittering impossibility of so much beauty on one planet alone - and Organa's approaching ship. )

Can you reach out to Skywalker? He could relay the information. ( There is also the off chance that Kylo could do the same with Organa directly, but he isn't sure how her sensitivity, her ability, stacks up when the Force is diluted through so many physical beings. His link to Rey is the one connection that doesn't waver, and he uses it to draw himself to her through the crowd. ) Incoming. ( It's a warning before his hand connects with her elbow, a brief touch that doesn't linger and serves more the purpose of alerting her to his presence. Still, he doesn't switch to verbal communication in the interest of maintaining privacy and the upper-hand. ) We need to get out of here.

( We, us, them, he has to admit, as much as he tries to deny it. Every moment they spend on this planet is another moment they have lost somewhere down the line. He can sense that now, standing next to Rey with his lightsaber heavy against his thigh. )

[ The touch of his hand on her elbow is surprising and not; she feels his approach and can't help thinking she should be prepared for it on some level—and she is—but the very idea of casual physical contact between them feels intrinsically wrong on some level. Like trying to jam unlike puzzle pieces together until they have to fit. But for whatever reason, they do intrinsically (she knows the reason—she'd beat the reason into his head in an attempt to make it so that it was her he was this inexplicably inclined towards and not Snoke), and that's perhaps the more unsettling part of the matter.

She turns her attention up towards him, considering the harsh lines of his face and the harsher expression he wears, alert and ready for a fight—perhaps even hoping for one—but her attention is quickly seized instead by the visible lightsaber at his hip. Rey tilts her head to the side, an accusation on her lips, but it never makes it into anything clearly verbal, just the transferred feeling that pours freely from her mind to his while he continues telepathic communication. ]

I can try. There's the distance to consider, and whether or not he'll allow me to. [ The distance has never been a problem from Rey's mind to Kylo Ren's, and it as that fact that led her to test it with others, with Luke, and find it was more difficult. Not impossible, but when compared to something that comes so naturally, anything else feels like an uphill climb.

All the same, she throws her awareness outward, reaching through the Force for the connections she has within the ship. It's imprecise and ill-practiced, a sloppy grab compared to the smooth transition she makes into Kylo's mind every time, and the net she throws seems to rattle around aimlessly within the confines of the ship a moment. ]

We can't leave until we've warned the General. [ She hopes he knows that, but she doesn't believe him to be considering it when he says that they have to evacuate. It's more important to send the General packing than themselves: they can fight their way out. General Organa is crashing into a trap that will only get worse as time wears on. In all likelihood, the First Order could already be on their way. ] Turn back…

[ He gets just as much of it as Luke does; in fact, she can't even be positive that Luke has opened himself up to her enough to get a read on it, but she has to assume that he's feeling out the Force just as she is, equally aware of the danger they're plummeting into and how much more significant it is than the dangers that have pervaded their fight against the First Order. ]

( Her accusation leveled and directed toward the saber at his hip hits Kylo the same moment that her comments regarding restricted access to Skywalker in the way that he is suggesting do, leaving him a little flabbergasted and as much on the defense as he has been and typically always is. It strikes him as odd, in a way, that she wouldn't be able to communicate with her own master in this way, but then he had hardly had mutual access to Snoke's mind when they were still joined. That connection had been less of a give and take and more of a take and take and give from Kylo's side of the dividing line, but it still isn't what strikes him as odd in any capacity when Rey lays out the reality of the situation for him.

Rather, it's the realization that he had personally made assumptions about the nature of their dynamic and they had turned out to be wrong. Dimly, he wonders if it has something to do with Skywalker's perception of Rey's bond with his less than stalwart nephew or if it's something a little more benign, but there's not a great deal of time to consider basic semantics when they are in the middle of a throng that doesn't want them here in the first place. Rey doesn't seem bothered by her comments, at least, if her attempts to reach outward and glance the interwoven fabric of the ship and its occupants through the Force is anything to go by. Kylo can feel and hear her in his own thoughts, the long sweep of her arm as she stretches to make contact catching him in the trajectory.

He, too, notices the misplaced nature of some of the footholds that she seeks out, the bumps and divots in her connection that don't occur or appear when they cast out for one another, a seamless transition between one mind and the next. Feeling her scrabble for purchase in this way when he's able to so easily compare it to the distinct lack of difficulty that the both of them have when speaking to one another as they have been allows Kylo some greater amount of perspective, and it leaves him feeling a little buzzed in the wake of that understanding. This may be more serious than either of them are prepared for.

Rey's reach is long but grasping, a fist opening and closing around an extended hand. Skywalker is powerful beyond Kylo's knowledge of the word, as much as it kills him to admit it, and is likely to have felt the anticipatory brush of something waiting, lurking, preparing for the General's command ship to touch down, but he's not infallible. Kylo, of all people, knows that much. For what feels like a long time there is no response, and all around them the crowd seems to shift and breathe as one, low murmurs and tinkling laughter that doesn't sit right with the atmosphere. Kylo still can't shake the feeling that there is something hiding and watching in the shadows, and he casts out his own net, feeling for something that he can't be sure of, operating with the sudden thought that if Snoke is keen on either their whereabouts or their intentions, he could very well be throwing up smoke and mirrors to prevent his own intentions from being realized.

Ash coats the back of his mouth when Rey doesn't have an answer quick enough for his liking, and something that tastes a great deal like anxious trepidation claws down his throat. He has felt it before, more than once, and knows that despite his endeavors, it won't go away until he has exhausted the available resources, which means doing something he is not altogether prepared to do. )

General. ( Organa's presence, as Solo's had the moment that he touched down on Starkiller, burns like a supernova with her shuttle's approach. It wipes out and obscures everything around her and curls reality with the heat of it. He would shut Rey out, turn her away, but it requires more energy and focus than he is willing to spare at the moment, and as such she is afforded a front row seat as he attempts to bolster the strength of their connection with the two older members of this ragtag bundle of Force-sensitive nerves. ) You're walking into a trap.

[ The guidance of Kylo's familiar tether to Organa herself hones their joined minds in like an arrow, piercing through the hull of the approaching shuttle and rippling like a raindrop in a pond, the smallest of signs, but far-reaching repercussions. Rey's eyes widen, and she turns to fix her attention on Kylo with a measure of sharp confusion that searches him for a clear justification of the way he'd leapt to protect the General from the shapeless dark that threatened.

Perhaps it reflects poorly on Rey that she had expected him to dismiss her safety entirely, perhaps not, but it reflects something on Kylo Ren that even though he'd been able to run his father through, he'd buckled under the threat of harm coming to his mother and reached out for her with barely a moment's pause. Just as speechlessness frayed her response in the interrogation room at the indisputable realization that he was not some grotesque monster behind that mask, Rey stands in awe that he does not stand by now, for it means confronting the man that he is and not the beast she has imagined him as.

Strangely, it does not humble her, but instead offers a measure of reassurance that she has not made some terrible mistake in dragging him back from the brink of eternal night by the ear.

They feel the effects of Kylo's more concentrated missive in tandem, a flicker of energy pulsing around the hangar, then the shuttle above slows its approach. Seconds turn to minutes, and Resistance officers make their way out of the cabins of their various shaped and sized ships, a mutter spreading through the hangar and finally reaching their ears that Organa has issued an evacuation order.

Rey's hand flies immediately to Kylo's arm to turn him back to the Falcon. ] Now. Let's hope Chewbacca's finished the repairs to the shields.

[ In the hurry, bordering on a run for Rey whose stocky legs try to cover more ground than they can in mere level haste, to the ship, they break through a number of clusters of Resistance fighters, none of whom mention the rally point. Orders, in all likelihood, which would concern Rey if she had any intention of reuniting with the Resistance as it stands.

Rather, Kylo Ren is privy to a hundred unsatisfactory scenarios in which she tries to encourage Chewbacca onto another Resistance vessel to protect him from the inevitability of their tailing party as well, for she can't help but imagine their role in this. The tracker in Kylo Ren's belt, however scrambled. The Knights of Ren pursuing the traitor to deal with them. The safest place for Chewie is far away from them, just like the best way for them to protect Luke and Leia, Finn and Poe, is to go very, very far away. But she can't articulate it, telepathically or otherwise, in any meaningful way even as she breezes through portal doors that hiss as they open the path to the hangar where the Falcon waits.

Kylo stretched himself to the seemingly impossible to protect Leia Organa today. Rey owes it to her to find a way to do the same. ]

( The press of her fingers and palm at his elbow startle him slightly, a sharp jerk twisting him sideways in the abruptness of its appearance. For as much as he's initiated contact between the two of them - and even then, it hasn't been paramount by any stretch of the word - the reciprocation of it still borders on unwelcome and unexpected, almost anticipating a slide into something more aggressive and violent rather than just remaining as a persuasive tool in which to encourage him to follow her. Which is what he does once he's regained himself somewhat, slipping easily under the shallowness of his own reaction and turning to follow Rey through the crowd. She nearly breaks into a jog and then a run, but his longer strides mean that he doesn't have to break nearly the sweat in order to keep up with her, even though the distraction of his own mind and thoughts keeps him on his toes enough in its own right.

He could claim easily that Organa's destruction at the hands of the First Order through whatever channel - Hapans or otherwise - also assured his own mutually premature ending and let it live and die as that, but Kylo knows without having to examine it why he had done what he had done in standing next to Rey on the bay floor and reaching out alongside her. It isn't a fact that he's ready or willing to examine, and as such he falls back into the routine they have established over he last pocketful of hours and days of running with minds linked like arms, a chain that vibrates between them and melds into something so perfectly crafted that he at times can't tell who is thinking or saying what, who encourages the other through this throng or around this corner, who more acutely senses the encroaching darkness and lets it bleed into the other.

Guilt doesn't lance into him as Rey hurls scenarios at the walls of her own mind, but like the busted heating unit in the ship's interior, Kylo understands that he is more than partially responsible for the current state of affairs, even if Rey's implicit involvement can't be denied as well. She was the hand in the dark that drew him back into a twilight field, and now her task falls to seeing the both of them cross that field soundly to the other side, to whatever waits there for them. Still, her deliberation slams into the walls of his own mind, his own thoughts, until Kylo is inadvertently trying to come up with a plan of attack that doesn't involve an outright attack. The ship is in their line of sight before he says anything operating under the guise of trying to be helpful. )

I could knock him out and stow him on a Resistance ship.

( That, he knows, is absolutely sure not to be seen as a helpful suggestion, but it seems a more tolerable method of approach over talking to the Wookiee at all. Still, it's going to fall to Rey to convince him: if Kylo tried in any capacity, it's likely Chewbacca might insist on staying aboard just to watch him. Kylo knows, however, that Rey's intuition regarding her co-pilot's - and the rest of the Resistance, for that matter - safety is not wrong. Something is coming, and it's coming for him, for them. Their chances of survival are better apart than they are together, in this case. )

/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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do it rey put him in the closet pls

locks him in the millennium falcon bunks same diff

good job on your hoth comment, self. never reply to anything when you first wake up

LMAO I THOUGHT THAT WAS ON PURPOSE my b

YOUR RESPONSE WAS PERFECT /discreetly tags while in class la la la

Sameeeee

terrible people, the both of us

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