apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

open post.
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( In the brief moments available between Rey's proposed change in direction and the actual altering of their course to support it, he tries to think as quickly as he can, leaving his thoughts loud. Mandalore would be a preferable landing strip upon which to descend for reasons that have as much to do with the number of faces to blend in with, throwing Ji's perception of her leader through her scant understanding of the Force into a serious downward spiral, as it does with the superior resources available to them on an actual planet. The moon itself is agricultural in nature, despite the mines that dot the landscape, and still recovering from civil war decades and decades ago. Its lush forestry might prove decent for cover but wouldn't overwhelm Ji's ability to track the way so many bodies with so many thoughts and alternating pulses and heartbeats would.

But there's little choice in the matter, and he refrains from arguing any further as Rey angles the ship in that direction, his silence serving as support enough for the decision that she makes with or without him. The scanners can't pick up Ji's transport and if she has Snoke cloaking her from afar, tracking his newly appointed leader of the Knights the way that he was able to track Kylo, there's little chance that either Rey or Kylo himself will be able to pick her out of the limitless black blanket of space. Still, he keeps his eyes trained on the viewport in an effort to distinguish star from satellite, stationary rock from mobile figure, the emptiness of Mandalorian air from a hollow point in the galaxy bending light and sucking the world down into a vacuum.

After a moment, Kylo looks over at her. Not at the provocation of her voice as she airs her concerns but at the first hint of real doubt that flashes through her mind. He sees Endor, tall trees and a funeral pyre that burned high into the night sky, leaving behind ash and twisted metal, duarsteel and plasteel collapsed into a pile of melted obsidian. The end of an era, in more ways than one. Rey's thoughts grow deeper, darker, and he realizes it's because she's wading into the sea of his own thoughts and memories in an attempt to understand. Something in him is pleased at that notion, and despite the severity and time sensitive nature of the moment, Kylo spares the necessity of his attention and senses on the viewport to allow her to see what it is that she's looking for with greater clarity than she might encounter were he to resist.

Endor is there, a cross-contamination of her own thoughts as they spill into his. His grandfather's mask, warped and destroyed and leaking energy, power, influence, like sweet, cold water. Another mask, more defined, a helmet Mandalorian in design with a network of crosshatching; a long, black cloak pulled tight over strong shoulders, parting at the waist at the end of a diagonal slash in order to reveal a lightsaber, short and blunt, clipped and hanging next to a blaster. Gloved fingers rise to lift the helmet from her head but Kylo terminates the memory before it has the chance to become that tangible, as if the reminder of her face makes too real the possibility that Rey's concerns will manifest as reality. )

I'm sure. And I'm sure that she'll come alone. Ji does not play well with others. ( He says this with no small amount of conviction, somewhat frustrated that she would have the wherewithal to question him on a subject in which he is the utmost authority as opposed to her inexperience dealing with any of them outside of himself and the vision that she'd seen. ) Even if what you saw turns out to be true, it's unlikely that Snoke will pool his resources together so quickly. He needs to find us first, and the Knights need to test the boundaries of what they are and are not able to do under circumstances such as these. They know how I fight, what to expect. ( As much as it pains him to admit it, although admitting it does not mean that because they know his tries and tricks, they are somehow superior or stronger than him. His position at their head has determined that much already. But Rey. He glances over at her again, briefly, before skipping his eyes to the scanner and back to the stars ahead of them. ) You are an unknown factor.

( Even Snoke would have to assume as much. The only knowledge that he has of the girl that sits next to his apprentice now is what Kylo had told him on Starkiller, followed shamefully by her swift embrace of the Force and the abilities that it had granted her. Kylo swallows against the memory, unwilling to let it rise to the surface and sit within the broad cavity of his chest like a tumor, growing black and ugly along his insides and threatening to drag him down in a direction that he cannot afford to go at this late hour. Instead, he watches the sky and waits for Ji to make a mistake, waits for her impatience to get the better of her. A few of the Knights are excellent pilots that operate more like adrenaline junkies than people with the preternatural ability to fly. Ji is not one of them. Ji flies with the sort of skill that enables her to get from point A to point B without disaster occurring, but if she's tracking them now, her impatience won't stop her from showing up in some way, regardless of whether or not Snoke is shielding her.

It only takes until they are close enough to begin the landing procedure down toward Concordia, and then she shows up at the edges of his perception, angry and coming in hot. Rey, he knows, won't miss a beat in sensing her malevolence even at this distance. Kylo refuses to believe that their end comes in a similar fashion based on landscape alone. Ji will not be their undoing. )

[ Staring as she is, with all the wary discomfort of uncertainty and the prying intensity of her telepathic search, Rey meets Kylo Ren's gaze levelly when he turns towards her. She doesn't look away when he catches her eye. Instead, she allows images from his mind to flood her, first Endor, Vader's mask a relic of a time never known by either of them, and then Ji.

Just as she's getting a good look, mentally lifting her gaze to try to peer beneath the helmet, Kylo rebuffs her with sharp dismissal, sharp enough to jar her somewhat and wonder at the nature of it. Without assuming too much, it almost seemed to give the impression of some possessive sentiment that he still maintained—that only strengthened the threat that being out here alone with him against the Knights he'd led. If there was some significance to the bond between Kylo Ren and Ji, it would make it all the more likely that he might turn on Rey to rejoin her.

Rey tells herself it's pragmatic self-preservation that produces her not inconsiderable interest in what that history might have looked like, and not personal, but it's a hard lie to tell when she feels the numbing surprise of how Kylo then identifies her—an unknown. Appalling, given how much Kylo himself knew of her, most of it discerned during a time he still served under Snoke. They had battled through an inextricable bond for months across the galaxy, linked despite all their best efforts and training, stubbornly silent on the subject when it came time to report to their superiors. It took her longer than it should have to tell Luke anything of it. Apparently, he'd told even less to the Supreme Leader, and Rey finds herself deeply engrossed in exploring the reasoning for that, staggered by the implicit protection offered by his silence.

Only the sudden, blazing sense of righteous fury and vengeance flashes and brands her mind does Rey manage to wrench her gaze away from the steely prominences of Kylo Ren's face, as though jarred from a dream into a much more nightmarish reality. Rey composes herself in a scramble, a surprising amount of labor in her breath as she sifts her mind from his and tries to cloak herself in a net of energy that suppresses her own signature against outsiders. A technique that would have been useless against Kylo Ren due to the depth of their bond might earn them a few minutes' head start against Ji.

With a generous push of the gliding lever to her left, Rey accelerates towards the surface of the moon with startling speed, ready to put the inferno that must be Ji well behind them. They need to get to the surface. They'll have no luck from up here, fighting a Force-user in a more capable ship without the ability to see her sense her with enough accuracy. With Mandalore too far off now to be reached in time, their best bet lies in the forests of Concordia. ]

Hold on tight. [ That's all the warning he gets before the moon's atmosphere tries to skip them off the surface of its ozone; the turbulence that results from resisting the surface tension of that glorified pocket of collected air rattles the ship so hard that its whole frame skips off course, and Rey has to manually drive it back down towards the surface. They hurtle as if she's intending direct contact until they're barely above the treeline, at which point she pulls up suddenly and aims the Falcon for the craggy rock faces at the edge of the forest, which promise a mining pit in the mountainous region beyond. A good place to disrupt scanning equipment, a better place to lie in wait to ambush a Knight of Ren. ]

( If any of Rey's thoughts - her curiosity regarding his relationship with Ji, her surprise and interest in exploring the reality of what he had and hadn't shared with Snoke about her, the weight and existence of their bond in and of itself - bleed through the screen of his own mind, permeate natural fortifications built up over the course of a lifetime of subservience and discipline, or otherwise distract him from the nature and speed of Ji's approach, Kylo makes no indication or mention of it. He barely notices it himself, if it does, caught up in their unified acknowledgement of the small craft that barrels toward them seemingly out of nowhere, gunning for their back end and looping around to pull into a dive. Of course it's just as unlikely that he doesn't get some sort of chatter as a result of their crossed wires, but there's little time to separate Rey's perceptions from his own when the bulk of his attention gathers around Ji's signature hurtling toward them and what it is that Rey plans to do next.

Kylo can't get a read on either: Ji is still a garbled collection of static despite being present and Rey. Rey is too quick at the controls to anticipate anything other than a dash of anxiety mixed with vertigo-induced nausea as she rockets the ship down along the moon's atmosphere and does her damnedest to scuttle them all in a fiery mess that will streak across the sky. He's about to shout something about incoming fire - it hasn't manifested physically yet but he can sense the intent even as Ji momentarily blinks out of existence before winking back into it again like an open eye - when Rey banks the ship and he has to shut his mouth and grab first onto the wall to his right and then onto the console as the entire ship begins to feel like it's about to vibrate into a million pieces.

He's known how to fly a ship almost as long as he's known how to read and write, has done enough recon missions in all types of terrain and had to set down ships in electrical storms without a decent-sized crew to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. He has never seen anyone or anything fly the way that Rey does. Save one. It's as if her life depends solely on pulling off the impossible, if the way that the jagged horizon, comprised of the tops of tall trees and waxing waning hills, rushes toward them is any indication. Kylo glances over at her once, uninterested in watching rock face and cliff side collide with the viewport even as he knows instinctively that she will pull up with more than enough time to clear it, from her point of view, and fixes narrow eyes on the lines of her face and the stiff grip of her fingers around the Falcon's controls.

Kylo can't be sure of the sentiment that forces his expression the way that it does. It might be thinly veiled resentment or stern consternation. Or an attempt at deciphering the gears that make her turn without diving in to skim the surface of her mind the way the ship's underbelly does the tops of the trees. He doesn't investigate, whatever it is, and turns away after a moment once the ship is clear to set down. He can still sense Ji's approach somewhere on the planet, but it's far enough away for the moment to exist as a dull perception, an advancing bad feeling, than a bright star on the brink of explosion. )

Right there looks good. ( Kylo gestures toward a clearing that houses a mining pit adequate enough for their purposes. It's only when they've touched down that he glances over at her again. ) It's a wonder you haven't pulled this ship apart flying it the way that you do.

[ In the heat of their descent, she can feel his gaze burning the side of her face, wave after intense wave buffeting her with his investigation, but it barely registers in her conscious mind, which is fully focused on their survival of the insane feat she pulls to put Ji well behind them. The gambit seems to work, but he's turned away by the time she, breathing hard, turns to meet his gaze.

Rey lets her clueless stare linger for a moment before she follows his direction to nest the ship in the cradle of the open mine. The white shell of the Millennium Falcon is covered with dust and pock-marked with holes and divots, which helps it to camouflage with the mine. It'll have to do, and she'll have to hope that Ji's interest lies outside of blasting their ride out of here half to hell. ]

If this ship were going to come apart, it would have done it long before I got my hands on it. [ She abandons the yoke, lifting her gaze out the front to try and spot a speck of a ship in the clear sky above. Nothing. A hollow effort. She turns away immediately and tears out of the cockpit like a bat out of hell. ] Bring everything you'll need. I can't promise you we'll be back here.

[ She's come a long way from refusing to let go of the nightmarish hovel she'd called a home on Jakku for the delusional hope of her family that it represented; now, she's able to accept that there is every possibility that their survival will need to take precedent over the memory of Han Solo that steers this ship. At least his ship would see a burial, even if it was on some nowhere moon in the Outer Rim.

For her part, Rey only stops to stuff ration bars into the leather satchel at her hip with a fistful of bandages and tubes of low-potency bacta gel. War left no place for sentimentality or creature comforts, so she lowered the cargo ramp and waited at the head of it for Kylo Ren to join her. ]

( He's confident in their landing - and in Rey's talents for flying, even if he's too obstinate to say so out loud in a way that doesn't also act as a scathing insult - to serve as a method by which to confuse the stray they have managed to pick up along the way to Mandalore. Despite her impatience and aggressive nature, Ji's lackluster piloting skills make her a poor candidate for following their path to the exact letter, daredevil antics and all, and although the majority of their trip moon-side had been spent in a tailspin of whiplash apprehension, Kylo had not sensed anyone else as he'd sensed Ji. There's no guarantee as to whether or not there isn't a squadron behind her, waiting to bring up the rear, but that possibility is a bridge they will have to cross when the time comes, if it comes at all.

For a moment, they both stare up into the sky with the intention of spotting incoming chatter, but there's nothing beyond the lip of the mine they settle into, casting the majority of the ship into shadow and giving the appearance of artificial twilight. Rey stands first, but Kylo is quick to follow, breaking off from her in the interest of gathering his own things along with a glowrod that he finds stored in a cabinet above one of the bunks in crew quarters. It flickers ominously when he switches it on but holds true after a moment, and he carries it in his left hand so that his right is free in the event that Ji appears, as he has every belief that she will. There's a canteen near the galley, and with no clue how long this excursion might last or what the outcome might be, he fills it with recycled water - lukewarm - and slings it over his shoulder.

With little else to be gathered, he joins Rey at the mouth of the ship, staring down the length of the cargo ramp into the mine shaft. Dark eyes track a path from the metal flooring up to the bright splash of Rey's gaze, and Kylo nods, striding down the ramp ahead of her. He harbors little love for what they might be leaving behind and as such makes no effort to stop and say any sort of prolonged or even momentary goodbye. If anything, despite the nature of their endeavor, he is glad to be off the Falcon and everything that it represents, and has little to no issue with the possibility that this might be a permanent parting in more ways than one. )

As far as I'm aware, the mines are abandoned. ( And it shows. A few of the structures that denote lodging and office space have collapsed with time and age, though the only thing that has taken care to fill the hollowed out spaces and depressed sections of paneling is dust that has blown in from beskar mining. The possibility that members of the Death Watch are still active within the mines or that the mines themselves are still in use doesn't appear to extend itself to whatever mine it is they have landed in, if the stillness of it all is anything to go by. If anything, they should be able to feel Ji coming from a mile away, and it's with this in mind that Kylo throws a quick glance over his shoulder at Rey. ) Picking up on anything?

( He isn't, but maybe Ji has finally learned to hide herself from him, if Snoke's influence hasn't extended itself again to give her a shield to hide behind. )

[ Rey draws a deep breath, staring up at the bucket of rust that she's begun to call her home, then turns away from it with every bit of resolve she can muster and doesn't look back as they descend the cargo ramp. In fact, she doesn't look back even as it shrinks with its retreat as they surge onward towards the ruins of what used to be the mine; the ruins are a graveyard that reminds her of a home she'd had earlier than the Falcon, reminds her of the felled starships that she had scoured for usable parts on Jakku for years.

The only movement comes from the dust their boots kick up, and Rey takes slow, deliberate steps that try to mask her trail across the layer of dirt that settles atop the mine's pit. She stops at Kylo's question, turning her attention skyward and squinting as though she ere using her eyes rather than the Force to search. The same cloak of darkness that blacked out the scanning equipment persists like a dense fog that attenuates her field of view, and she shakes her head, dropping her chin with some marginal disappointment. ]

No. [ She turns and continues towards the mine facilities. ] But we don't need to know how close she is to know she'll come for us, which gives us plenty of time to stage an ambush for when she gets here. [ It's been rare, in her experience to have the drop on anyone from the First Order like this, let alone someone else with Force sensitivity—even Luke and Leia had sensed her arrival when she came to D'Qar and Ahch-To respectively. She plans to make the most of it. ]

We can suppress our signatures as well, lie in wait and draw her here. [ She points up to the ruined offices and barracks, squinting at the pile of dust and searching for a point of egress. ] Then collapse it to trap her.

( Her answer, however negative, inspires in him some relative cause for relief as much as it does some relative cause for alarm. Ji, while trained somewhat in the Force, does not at all carry the same aptitude that he and Rey have been privileged with as a result of their focused tutelage under masters brimming with knowledge of their own respective sides. She's picked up tricks through her own volition and learned how to swing a saber as a result of sparring with Kylo when the others yielded and he was still hungry for more, and she abandoned a planet that raised warriors and taught their daughters to be unconquerable; Ji is second in command for a reason, her tenacity notwithstanding, but this preternatural ability to cloak herself from arguably two of the strongest Force-users left in the galaxy stinks of Snoke and his desire for retaliation.

It is and isn't something that Kylo should have been expecting. He had been well aware that the Supreme Leader would stop at nothing to see the Knight he raised from a boy into a weapon punished, and it would be foolish to assume that Snoke's influence could not extend this far across the galaxy when Kylo himself has felt the heavy cruelty of his master's hand sliding against his mind, moving aside the thick bone of his skull to do so. But that had been understood as a result of the connection established between master and apprentice, the link that Rey had allowed him to break, spiraling down into this situation in the first place. That he is able to shield Ji from them in this way, presents two options, both equally as alarming as the next, though Kylo seriously doubts Ji's abilities within the Force growing so rapidly in two days' time, if Snoke has chosen her to replace Kylo in more ways than one. )

I don't know how likely it is that Ji wouldn't sense a trap with or without training in the Force. If Snoke is shielding her, then it's possible that he's helping her in some other way, too. ( But it isn't a disagreement or an admonishment. Just a statement of fact made as Kylo ignites the glowrod and holds it low. This doesn't afford them much light to see by as they pick their way through ghoulishly twisted buildings and husks of cold machinery, all of it rusted and rotted from old age, disuse, and time. ) I could project myself, if you were to cloak yourself. Draw her out that way so that we aren't waiting for her for two days while she scours the moon looking. Collapse it and trap her inside once she responds to the call and shows up.

You're offering to be bait?

[ She doesn't bother to hide her shock, presenting it with blunt disbelief that thrusts air from her chest in a scoff: he'd loathed the suggestion last time, and here he was being the one to make it. More and more, Rey has to wonder if it's a dogged pursuit of their goal, of the destruction of Snoke, or if it's merely a sense of reckless disregard for his own safety born of losing what he had to drive him. She doesn't pity him for that, though—rather, her acknowledgment of it comes only in the context of the danger it poses to her if she's right.

Luckily, it stands mostly at odds with whatever else he's been willing to do to ensure their mutual survival, and Rey holds onto that as reassurance that his death wish won't somehow get her killed (though she wouldn't disagree with him, if pressed, that he has it coming). Rey peers up at the craggy face of the graveyard of the mining operation that once lived here, narrowing her gaze to try to make out the details as she mulls his suggestion over.

Somewhere along the way, they found their footing in similar thought patterns. She suspects it's no coincidence that it comes on the heels of the covalence of their minds. ] Alright. [ Even if Ji knows, as Rey suspects she will, to expect Luke Skywalker's apprentice at Kylo Ren's side, standing as bodyguard and paragon of the Light, that won't inform her of where Rey comes from. They just need to pick the right stage.

She pushes a rusted iron door off its hinges, bent from weathering over the years, dinged and in disuse, then moves through the opening it makes beneath the low, sagging ceiling of the operation. Time seems to have manifested into a heavy weight, sinking the facilities as much as it has rotted them out. She winds her way to a staircase that can't name itself sturdy, but at least avoids the sprawling cancer that has blackened the rest of the place. Up she goes. ]

Somewhere open we can stand our ground in a fight, or something closed off where it'll be easy to bury her. Your call.

( Kylo says nothing for the time being, allowing the stone wall of his silence to serve as an effective response. He hadn't thought of it that way initially. Rather, he'd viewed it as a more reckless way of approaching the possibility that one of them might die in the next handful of hours and what it would mean for the one left alive. His confidence in his own ability and his pride along with being very confident in knowing that Snoke will want him alive means that Kylo doesn't stop to consider the idea that he might be the one to fall, but he doesn't know what it will mean in the event that Rey does, and he's uncertain what it says about his position on the board that he chooses to step in front of her, now, when she's already indicated that she believes he will later. This is a less direct method of approach, to be sure, more convoluted in their prolonged survival, but it exists as much as the disregard for his own safety. He knows Ji, at the very least, and he isn't afraid of her.

Glancing over at Rey once the blast radius of her shock clears the air and begins breaking up into the atmosphere, he doesn't doubt her ability for survival in the slightest, but that doesn't stop the thought from crossing back and forth over his mind all the same. What happens if one of them dies? How strong is the link that they have not only forged but strengthened between them in the days since Starkiller, since Corellia? If he exposes himself to Ji through the Force, does he risk exposing Rey where she lies in wait at the same time? How deeply within one another have their talons sunk? Questions for a master, no doubt, but he'd never shared his connection with Rey or anything about her at all, and now, as it all threatens to come crashing down around them, Kylo can't determine whether or not he's glad.

There's no time to imagine a world in which these questions are realized, though, and he distracts himself from it for the time being by steadfastly refusing to answer her, turning his back to peer in the direction that they came from, beyond the belly of the Falcon and cringing when the sound of rusted iron scrapes over his ears with a loud scream. Rey has moved several paces away from him, but he is behind her once more in half the time it takes her to cross the threshold on her own. And the threshold is every bit as decrepit and ancient and imposing as he would expect it to be. Not even the breath of ghosts stirs the dust that fills his head and coats the back of his throat, threatening to choke. Their boots are the first to have stepped here in decades, and the skeletal framework of the mine itself stretches up and down and ahead, reminding him of some of the ancient temples he has perused on his personal quest to eradicate the memory of the Jedi from the galaxy.

Rey's footsteps call him to attention as they tap up a staircase he isn't sure can hold the both of them, despite looking less affected by the slow decay of time as the rest of the mine is. He doesn't follow up the stairs after her until she's cleared the landing, and even then he's slow going, his footsteps naturally much heavier and louder than her own. His weight makes the steps groan, but the staircase holds, and when he emerges on the next level, the bright blink of her eyes in the dark is the first thing to catch the high, warm glow of the lamp in his hand. )

Out in the open, I think. I don't know that any of these buildings would be able to support the added stress if we were to draw her indoors, even if it would be more convenient. Here. ( He glances around, holding out the glowrod for her to take while striding to a spot that creaks and squeals ominously. Rey's weight seems supported for the most part, but it's entirely positive that between his body and the added weight of the clothing that he's wearing, she'll be able to go places on lighter, quicker feet that he will not. The path across the floor that he is able to take leads him to the broken framework of a busted window, jagged clari-crystalline jutting like canines. Through the web of fractured glass, the entrance to the mine proper sags. ) Or we could draw her into one of the actual mining shafts.

[ When it's offered, Rey readily takes the glowrod off Kylo's hands in a quick brush of fingers, the shifting light wobbling the shadows cast across his features and, she imagines, hers as well. She turns her attention away and takes off on deft feet that are used to rust and the wear and tear that comes with it, instinctively avoiding the weaker areas of the room, likely to give in under the weight of either of them. She's spent a lifetime prowling through the carcasses of the behemoths felled in another age, and it shows in her ease here.

Messy crates and machines fill the office, stacked upon desks and spilled over on bench seating, a variety of testing equipment, measures, leather straps and tie-downs—equipment used to haul product out of a mine. None of it looks usable anymore, though. That's the trouble of these more well-terrained planets; rust, mold, and a plethora of other weathering effects crept inside everything in ways that they didn't on dry, sunny Jakku. The worst she'd ever had to worry about was sun damage, and she'd learned fast that anything capable of being damaged by the sun was of no worth to Unkar Plutt anyway.

His commentary from the window draws her attention, as well as her ire. ]

Get away from there! [ She marches over and grabs for his arm to yank him back a step. The floor creaks, sighs, and something in the walls settles. ] You think that glass cracked on its own? [ She points to the maw of the window, then guides his attention up towards the bent uppermost edge of the frame. ] Pressure from the roof. You put more weight on this side of the room, and the rest of it could come down on you. It's not well-supported. [ She waves him back towards her. ] Now, come on. Slowly.

[ But while she waves him on, she redirects her attention out the window, fixed on the open shaft of the mine that he'd proposed. It looks even worse for wear, and plunging down into it could get them buried just as easily as Ji—permanently. Given her Force sensitivities, burying her beneath the administrative buildings would slow her down, not necessarily kill her; it'd be easy for her to protect herself from the compartment syndrome and other effects until she could wheedle he way free. But collapsing that much earth—minerals and sheer dirt volume alike—would kill her, unquestionably, and it could kill them too; it proposes the question of which they're really trying to do. Stop her for now, or for good. ]

How sure are you that we'd be able to make it out of the mine ahead of her? [ Rey, obviously, has her doubts—her only experience fighting other Force-users has been with Kylo Ren, and she has no doubt that he'd have been able to chase her out, had she tried this with him. After all, he'd survived the explosion of Starkiller Base. He was a cockroach. ]

( The sharp edges of broken glass hedge his vision as he bends to peer out the window with perhaps not enough sensory outpour dedicated to tracking the durability of the floorboards beneath him, if Rey's sudden snap to attention is anything to go by. Kylo turns just as the first word grabs his attention with a snag, half-expecting her to have spied the red dot of a rifle's sight along one arm or the high point of his forehead. Instead he finds the crook of one elbow caught in the strong curl of her hand and stumbles back off the course he had been taking at her forceful insistence. )

He - ( Is supposed to be something along the lines of hey or get off but she speaks over him and Kylo drags his feet back over the floor, away from the window. Behind him, something seems to slither down the interior of the wall, drawing his attention for a moment but not long enough for it to do anything other than make the floor groan again. His steps are slow, as instructed, and after a long moment he joins her on a more secure section of the second story.

Even the building seems to sigh in relief as, for once, he follows directions and takes careful steps where the imprint of her boots shows under the glow of the lamp, shadows jumping out of corners and stretching long-limbed along the walls. Kylo frowns at nothing in particular though the ire of his gaze settles more firmly on the floor and Rey's boots than anything else, his distaste practically palpable at being bossed around in any manner not at all dissimilar to the way he has ordered her about. )

All that scavenging for parts around half-collapsed structures must have paid off. ( It's supposed to sound scathing, but the urge to clear his throat of dust becomes too strong and instead it comes out sounding observant as opposed to anything productive like irritated or defensive. He clears his throat and throws his attention back into investigating the angles that the room throws, knowing that wherever they go risks trapping them alongside the Knight they are trying to trap in the first place. The mine seems like the best option, although it poses its own set of problems without even the threat of collapse, and Rey seems to pick up on them even when he can't feel her nosing around his idle thoughts and curiosities. His only response, for a moment, is to exhale and push his hair out of his face, thinking. ) Not enough to be confident in the decision, but I'm not exactly confident that we would be able to escape if one of the buildings collapsed either.

( That begs the question: what are they really trying to do? It hangs in the space between them, drawing dust with each breath and settling like a new layer both on skin and tabletop alike. Kylo sees no alternative other than the inevitable, operates under the assumption that not killing Ji here and now will only prolong the eventuality of her catching up to them again - with a greater number at her back. His mind skips immediately over the threat or possibility of surrender or abandonment here in the mines, where she will absolutely escape and live to fight another day, and goes straight for the jugular. The only world in which they walk away from this is a world in which Ji does not, and nothing about that notion sits irregularly with him. Knights have killed each other for as long as he's been a part of them, the survivors culling the initiates with brutal fervor. It's a wonder he and Ji haven't tried to kill each other before. )

If the mine itself is out of the question, I prefer the open air, at least initially. ( Kylo chances a quick glance over his shoulder, marking the entrance to the mine, calculating the distance mentally and committing it to memory based on sight alone. ) You're right, though. I thinking drawing her here and then backing her into one of buildings is our best chance. ( He looks back at Rey. ) You're lighter on your feet, and you can move better in structurally compromised buildings. It wouldn't be difficult for you to get the jump on her, trap her inside, if I pushed her there. We've hidden from her long enough. I'm not going to play coward and prolong the inevitable by continuing to hide.

Trap?

[ Rey echoes him, shifting a question to the end of the word to fall just shy of parroting. Her gaze lifts to his, searching his features—there's no judgment in them, just absolute honesty in her question; this isn't about telling him what he can or can't do, but finding out what he will do. It would be easy to offer her suggestion, firmly require that they stay on the side of trap, or even the more difficult route of making her own decision on whether killing her here is really necessary—a back up plan to allow for it, provided she doesn't take an opportunity to turn away from the darkness she's mired herself in. But that's not what this is about—Rey knows who she is. ]

Is that what we're trying to do?

[ Because the mine is a surefire way to kill her, and now he's hedging at the idea. Rallying her outside seems like a similarly effective way to push this to violence that they can't easily disengage from, can't draw a clear line of when to stop. The memory of how easily she'd stumbled upon the aching desire to spear him through with her lightsaber on Starkiller blooms in her mind as though it's fresh, and she can't imagine Kylo Ren is any less inclined towards violence.

In normal circumstances, they might not have the chance to discuss, to decide, but while they do, Rey plans to take it, damn him to philosophy and moralizing for as long as needed to come to some consensus. It helps that, to a certain extent, he's cornered. Sure, he could pop back down the staircase at a snail's pace without her guidance—he'd done mostly alright for himself—but even he has vocalized now that it's not the smart choice. ]

What if she's just as lost as you and needs a way back out of the dark? Shouldn't we … Shouldn't we at least offer that to her? [ Which only opens up the question of whether or not that really gives her a choice—death, or redemption. Rey tightens her jaw. The pragmatic, reasonable side of her knows what needs to be done in order to eliminate the inarguable threat against them, but looming darkness threatens the edge of her vision as if to warn her that it's a path she can't come back from, simply cutting down problems because she has the power to. ]

( The inflection at the end of that word - trap - light and lilting, drawn around the bright clip of her accent - another anomaly about her; what is a Core World accent doing on a wasteland like Jakku? - brings the heaviness in his gaze to level with her own, already waiting for him across the short distance that separates them, highlighted by the low burn of the glowrod. Kylo doesn't need the cloying shadows provided by the building and the landscape itself to darken both the color and the cast of his eyes as he glances at her, interpreting the meaning behind her question before she speaks again to clarify it.

Before he answers, he lets his eyes linger on hers, on her face, roving over the architecture of her bone structure and the map of her expression in an effort to suss out disagreement, a building argument, the combustion of the tension that has been leaking out of every interaction - extended or otherwise - between them since Corellia. He's surprised not to find it, is equally surprised to find instead an open curiosity as to his opinion. In some ways, it feels like a test, but there's little she can do if he doesn't pass it, and for as much as their individual responses spell out more than enough about them without the burden of detail, he knows that whatever answer he gives, the solution is more complicated than a yes or no buried within an explanation.

Eventually, he turns away from her, showing her his profile as he glances again out the window, the opening of the mine edged with the long, serrated teeth of the window. Fingers curl into fists of their own accord as she hedges around questions and hesitates in her delivery. They aren't tight but the strain that it builds in the muscles that comprise his forearms feels like stretching at the start of an early morning, bone-deep and relieving. Dark eyes skim the floor, travel to her boots and up the dirty material of her pant legs to bottom out on her own eyes with his chin tipped down. A frown twitches at the corner of his mouth, and the question she poses makes a giant ball of lead gather and drop into the bottom of his stomach like a stone. It's hot with the fusing together of many different things, and it's technically the ire that wins out first, but it's correcting her that noses ahead at the end. )

There are some people in this world that you can't save, Rey. ( His tone aims for brokering no argument, steeped in greater knowledge that she can possess about the enemy - what a word - they prepare to face. Of course, labeling Ji in such terms leaves wide open the notion that he is someone who can be saved, which isn't a connotation that he wants associated with himself and the choices that he's made. It leaves a bad taste in the back of his mouth, but if he's to prove any point to her at all, he can't call it into question. ) You can try, with Ji, you can give her the option, but she'll never make the decision to walk with you the way that I did. She isn't in the dark. She doesn't fight that -

( Glass breaks in the same moment that Kylo throws his arm out, halting a red bolt of blaster fire, wide and pulsing, in the air. It hovers just inches from where they are standing, as unaware of its intended target as Kylo is. His arm shakes momentarily with the effort of containing it before another greeting of tinkering glass shatters on the opposite end of the floor they stand on, a brief pause separating that noise from an ominous hissing as the room begins to fill with smoke. He reaches out to extinguish the glowrod in the same moment that footsteps clatter on the other end of the collapsed building, and Kylo drags Rey close enough to smell the sweat on her skin as he hisses at her over the plume of white mist. ) Move.

( Ji blooms in full manifestation at the forefront of his perception - and, he knows, Rey's - and he can almost hear the melodic drawl of her accent as he lets the blaster bolt tear a hole in the floorboards. )

[ A straining light in her chest resists the flag of discouragement Kylo Ren's thoughts infuse her with, layering stern and unwavering certainty through the emotional tether that binds them, but no answer can break through her throat before blaster fire punches through the glass.

Rey ducks, eyes wide with panic, but a gloved hand stops the bolt in its tracks, and she's left with the red light glowing in the reflecting gleam of her eyes as she stares up at him with an unabashed sort of wonder that hedges on horror. She's been on the other end of his telekinetic pull, the strength of his paralytic grip squeezing her while he skimmed the surface of her mind, but to see it stop blaster fire—that's something she's never seen the Force used for before.

An instant later, though, smoke pours through the room to hide the move from view, and it catches her off guard to feel Kylo grab her by the loop of fabric on her shoulder and yank her to him, bones knocking against bones as she stumbles into him. This close, she can see him through the mist, and she searches his face with an acutely desperate, scrambled look, and clasps her hand around his.

At his command, she grabs him and pulls him with her towards the window—it'll do them no good, staying in here while this mist is blocking their vision, while Ji has ambushed them despite all their efforts at planning, so that leaves one remaining option. Politics and philosophy can wait until later, but for now, they'll need to survive to discuss it. Without slowing down, Rey leaps unceremoniously through the broken window.

This is fine. ]

( Her hand grips around his so tightly that his bones and knuckles grind together, a creak within them that mirrors the groan of the floor as their quick steps make the boards squeal where he steps after her. He expects Rey to usher them quickly down the rickety stairs, regardless of whether or not their combined weight will be too much for the crumbling structure to hold up, and as such has every intention of heading in that direction when she pulls him in the opposite - or, rather, in another. He is not at all expecting to break through clari-crystalline as Rey proves even more reckless than he traditionally does, and Kylo only has a moment to tuck his face into the crook of his arm so that he might shield himself from the spray of glass shards and broken wood.

Totally fine.

This, of course, means that their - his - descent is less than graceful, and when he hits the ground it's with a burst of air forced out of his lungs. His hand has slipped somewhat so that Rey's grip extends further south, along his wrist, and his own free hand manages to twist itself around her shoulder during the long moment between the semi-solid foundation of the upstairs floor and the quickly rushing sight of the ground down below. When they do hit, he feels dazed for a moment but just a moment, a bright burst of discomfort - not necessarily sharp enough to be pain, though it certainly doesn't feel good - followed by a spike in adrenaline that has him rolling over onto his stomach and pushing himself immediately to his feet.

There's a loud banging sound from inside the building they have just vacated, and Kylo reaches across the minimal distance between himself and Rey to lay the heavy weight of his hand alone the slope of her shoulder. Words flow without thought or thought of consequence, leather-bound fingers curling in the fabric of her tunic to encourage haste. )

Get away from the building. ( It's a command barked at the same time a tall, dark figure appears at the jagged hole that's left of the broken window, the crosshatching of her helmet reflecting some of the light that it catches and shining silver-lavender as Ji peers down at them. Her long, heavy cloak flaps open over the shoulders, revealing the extensiveness of her wide belt and the overlapping fabric of the tunic underneath it. Armor, like Kylo's own, ribbed and lightweight but still durable and protecting the Knight's vitality. A blaster hangs in her hands, gloved and curled around the barrel and the trigger, respectively, but it's the dull wink of an old lightsaber - too short to belong to a master or even a knight; it almost looks like a training saber, or something in between that and the finished product Rey holds - that poses the real threat. Ji might not be trained to use the Force, but her knowledge of combat means that she won't go down without a fight. FN-2187 had scored a hit on him after all, wounded already or not, and Ji is someone who knows her way better around this blade than some nameless traitor.

From up above, Ji croons: Lord Ren. What have you done?

It isn't the threat of Ji's prowess with a blade that concerns him, though, as much as the weight of the blaster that she holds in her hands. The bolt in the upstairs room had felt heavy, like a cartridge-caliber shot, and while the blaster that she carries has the potential to do real damage, especially pointed toward them as it is, Kylo can tell that it doesn't posses a firepower equivalent to what he'd held moments prior. Nor could that blast have come from the direction that Ji walked in order to bring her to the dilapidated corner she stands in now, which means - )

I was wrong. She's not alone. She brought a sniper. ( He unhooks whatever wall has existed between himself and Rey up until this point so that they might communicate in this way, while at the same time refusing to back down from the issued challenge that Ji's appearance presents. When he speaks aloud, it is directed at her. ) Where is Aurren hiding? Or is it Sariss this time?

[ The mistake occurs when Rey tries to shield him from the fall, leaving her to land with her shoulder stretched, the point of articulation cracking cruelly on impact, jarring her with splitting pain that temporarily blinds her. She rolls over onto the shoulder, cradling it, dirt sticking to the blood on her face and arms drawn by the broken glass she'd charged through. One deeply drawn breath gets her up onto her feet, and though the echoes of agony rumble through her arm like shockwaves, she flexes and clenches her hand to make sure that it's at least usable for now.

She staggers under Kylo's guidance, still dazed enough to be nudged along like a child in a manner she'll be furious with herself for later, but she backs up with all the urgency of someone who has not lost sight of the fact that it was desperate enough to hurl herself out a window to escape.

It could be over. If they'd already planted charges of some kind—there was bound to be something explosive in the buildings. Her fried senses have her mind wandering, scolding her for taking the time to argue philosophy and morality with him rather than prepare, but as her feet kick up dust in the hurry to back away from the administrative section of the mine, Rey tries to muster up a background plan.

Sniper. Damn the both of them. Her lightsaber's in her hands, for all the good it will do, and she lights it up in anticipation of deflecting the fire—but she's never deflected something of the caliber that Kylo's warning threatens before, and she's not wholly convinced that it isn't just as likely to damage the blade in some form of negative feedback. It only occurs to her, with the hilt of her lightsaber squarely held in both hands, that the glowrod was lost somewhere along the way, and instead, the beam of her weapon draws attention to them through the smoke and the storm of dust. ]

The mine shaft. [ Damn the dangers. The familiarity of the connection between their thoughts helps to calm the tempest rattling around in her own head, giving her an anchor to level out the daze that she'd been left in after the fall. It occurs to her, and unfortunately she realizes a half a beat later that it was left open to him as well, that she could hide him there, defend the opening to the mine, and rebuff Ji herself if she wanted to. After all, he's the one she wants, the traitor that she needs to drag back before their leader in order to win his position. ]

( Rey's pain comes to him in waves, little snippets and previews of the full bloom that she surely feels, gliding underneath the surface of his skin and trickling down into muscle and bone like a thin needle in various spots. It almost feels like his nerve endings are coming awake after spending a long time in numbing nothingness, pinned and pinched and circulation cut off. Even as Ji's presence and the focus required to anticipate any move that she might make draws and requires the bulk of his attention, Kylo finds that the knowledge of Rey's discomfort serves as a reminder of how simple keeping track of her within the Force might yet prove to be, even if his eyes are not presently on her and his mind isn't tasked with the singular assignment of monitoring her movements. A task certainly made easier when the unfurling of her saber chokes the sound from his ears momentarily, an answering electric thrill running the length of his spine. )

She'll chase if we run. ( He says to Rey, barely a murmur over their shared connection, as if someone might hear, but his tone delivers it with the implication that this is exactly what they want, even if he doesn't rush to ignite his own saber, although he does wrap his palm around it and unclip it, ready. It's a strange, seamless exchange between the two of them. Different than it had been when he'd sensed her initially on Yaga Minor, different than it had been when he'd felt her coming for him on Corellia and every moment since. It feels like a unified front when they rally together in this way, a key sliding solidly into a lock, and Kylo has no doubt that it could be something truly amazing in its destructive prowess were they able to stop arguing for the five minutes it would take for them to learn how to use it.

Now is not the time, though, for arguing or for philosophizing about the bond between them, not with the feeling of being watched from somewhere operating as an active presence within his mind, nor with Ji raising one hand to lean against the crooked frame of the broken window and consider the both of them. Kylo wonders if she has always been so communicative through the blank screen of her helmet - and, by association, if he was as well - or if it's just a result of having known her longer than anyone else that makes her easier for him to read. Ji's hands tighten around her blaster and she refuses to answer the question he had directed at her in the interest of jutting her chin toward Rey.

Leader Snoke said she would be with you. He doesn't hold you responsible, she says, making it abundantly clear that she is no longer speaking to Kylo but to Rey instead, despite the glint of her helmet's square paneling as it angles itself in an abundantly unclear and unhelpful direction. He's quite impressed with what you've managed to accomplish. Although I'm personally not convinced. You've always been weak, Ren, since the beginning. Can't pick a side, can you?

Kylo feels a series of locks within him click open, even as he makes an active effort to keep them clasped. She's baiting him on purpose, digging in underneath muscle and blood vessels and working her way down to bone, tonguing at a cavity and gnawing at a wound that has not yet had time to close over, seal with scar tissue. Directing his ire is done with the express purpose of stopping his attention from drifting elsewhere, figuring out where it is that the other Knight is hiding, waiting to pick them off clean if they can't deflect the shot. He isn't sure that there is enough clarity in the air between the settling smoke and dust and Ji's broken tooth of a sore spot within the Force, and the bright blue of Rey's saber paints a target on their backs that they can't afford to extinguish. Time to make a choice. )

The mine shaft. ( Kylo's voice crowds into Rey's head over the sound of Ji's. He knows that Rey is ready to move, a burning sun of energy despite the mistakes that they've made, the time they've wasted. His confidence in himself bleeds into faith in her to do what it takes to ensure that they both survive. When that became a mutual benefit as opposed to a singular one, Kylo isn't sure, but in that moment he feels its twin within himself. Neither of them can fall. ) Run and don't stop until you're out of sight of the entrance. We need to know where the sniper is.

( The he thumbs his saber into life just as one of the remaining smoke bombs explodes into a haze on Ji's belt. From there, it's a dead sprint away from the administrative offices. )

Don't let her get to you. [ For all the ease with which she says it, reaching out with telepathic tendrils to soothe and bring calm as well as the surface level thoughts that she relies on to communicate makes her own sparking anger apparent. The acknowledgment of Snoke's interest by itself invades her in a way that turns her stomach, makes him feel omnipresent, and she understands the ease with which Kylo slipped under his control the first time in that moment, which makes hearing what Ji uses to lash him only compound with her own indignant frustrations, protective fire flaring.

When she realizes that she's just as likely to pour the emotional energy of her own response into the bond, she stoppers the empathic connection with all her might and instead reaches out with her free hand to touch his arm, pulling him towards her. ] Don't get yourself killed. [ It's not pragmatism. She can't hide behind that mask when there's a visceral, personal concern buried in the bright reflection of her eyes; for whatever it's worth in all this, it's not a mere matter of battle strategy that wants to keep him alive.

But her choice to linger there won't benefit either of them in the long run, so Rey turns on her heels and sprints for the open mouth of the mine, a black pit swallowing the terrain around it. Her lungs and legs burn with the scrambling strength of her sprint, hurling her body towards the shaft, and as she skids to the ground right near the door, red blaster fire pings against the dust to try and cut off her path; Rey reacts quickly, rolling to the side to narrowly avoid it and kicking up dust in the process. ]

( Rey's voice crowds his head the same way that her fingers crowd together when he bends his arm at the anticipated perception of her touch, so that when the bump of her palm meets the resistance of the ribbed armor lacing him from wrist to shoulder, he's not surprised by it or the reticulated presence of her voice in his head. It should disturb him, or at least disrupt him in some way, inspire some amount of vertigo at the inverted and upside-down backwardness of what is transpiring, unfold in real time rather than in just his own imagination, those little snippets of possible realities they had shared on Yaga Minor. Maybe as a result of their prolonged interaction and the strengthening of their connection as a result over the last few days, it doesn't.

Ji feels like the outsider, where before she was the oldest face that he knew, bridging both parts of his life in a way that not even Snoke could duplicate. A tangible, tactile thing in comparison to the untouchable, pervasive reality that represented his master. Even seeing him in person, watching him move and do something so ordinary as breathe, Snoke somehow still never seemed quite corporeal, just a shade, a husk, the ghost of something great and terrible made even more so in his own perpetual twilight.

Ji is a million miles away from reality now, the same way that Snoke had seemed even when he was the only real thing that Kylo could count on. Rey is the more grounding presence here, the new bridge built between the two rises that hedge the dark valley between worlds, even as she turns and tears off toward the mine shaft and he says nothing in response to a warning he could easy consider irrelevant. And for as far away as she is, Ji is the one who rips the hissing screen of smoke from her belt and leaps from the broken window of the equally broken building, sliding into a roll and coming up aces, a bright green blade flaring to life as she holsters the blaster she's been carrying.

It's an old saber, but she knows how to use it just as well as he knows how to use his, even if she doesn't have the benefit of being able to throw Force-based attacks behind her strikes. Her style is a blend of various forms, slipping in and out of one and into the other with a reliance that belies her inexperience with the Force but which works surprisingly well for someone so mired and talented in combat. She wastes no time in tearing after him, lashing out with a speed and strength that has more than once put him on his back. Kylo has seen her fight off more than one opponent this way without losing the spring in her step - if a heavy trod could be called that - and while he knows that he's better, he also knows that she won't pull punches. She'll try to cut him down, for her own purposes and to get to Rey.

The benefit to engaging her in combat means that wherever and whoever the sniper is, they're less likely to intervene on the off-chance that Ji is struck. Swinging his own blade in a wide arc of bright red designed to catch Ji's shorter green blade down low, Kylo considers his ability to use that possibility to his advantage, wondering how he might throw her into the line of fire if he can't make it to Rey in the mine shaft. Not knowing where, precisely, the other Knight is, their best option is to take them down one at a time, so he shoves Ji back with a heavy swing and takes off after Rey with a long, heavy stride, nearly catching up with her in the process. He's there quick enough to watch her skid to the side and go down in a cloud of dust that, for one crucial moment, makes his heart hammer hard against his breastbone, breath in his lungs, unsure of where the blaster bolt impacted and whether or not she's taken a hit.

It's just long enough to send another careening his way, driving him back at the last moment in a dodge that has him stumbling backwards toward a bright green beam, away from the black scorch where the blaster round kicks up dirt and dust and - Kylo knows - another waits to take its place. )

[ Panic bubbles up in her throat when she doesn't feel him at her back right away, like she gets the sense that he's about to do something very, very stupid—that paranoia is validated by the tang of plasma against plasma just beyond her shoulder, a flash of green and red blossoming at the corner of her vision—impossibly so, she realizes in the very same instant she realizes that it's the Force she's using to see the glow, and the surface of Kylo Ren's mind.

By the time she's on the ground, he's close behind, and she rolls up onto one knee and pushes herself up in time to thrust the blue beam of her blade into a deflective stance that knocks Ji's back. Rey whips the saber to either side in a pinwheel, wedging herself between Kylo Ren and his one-time subordinate, her back squarely facing the defector that she knows will be frustrated with her choice to insert herself rather than run.

In her mind, she urges him back, and the slow carry of her steps crowd him towards the edge of the mine shaft. They reach it—a surprisingly deep fall, but no more than twenty feet—just in time for an explosion of red to spray like fireworks over their heads, raining dust from the wall over the mouth of the mine shaft. Ji readies another swing, and Rey turns to use her free hand to push Kylo Ren down it—another fall on her tab, but this time, her boots land on even ground just below, and she peers out at a sprawling pathway, about twenty feet wide, with magnetic rails for carts to lumber along spiderwebbing out into the mountain.

If she had more time, she might be astounded by the sight. As it stands, she rapidly picks a direction and starts down it at a run. Strings of lights attempt to brighten the dark tunnel, but they've shattered and dimmed with age; luckily, the blue glow of her lightsaber keeps it from pitch, even as they journey deeper. She doesn't waste her breath one words, and isolation has left even her mind unnervingly silent, relying instead on feelings and impressions rather than coherent thoughts. She tugs at the edge of Kylo's to make sure he follows her down the right path. ]

( Ji parries and withdraws, spinning away quickly and recovering lost ground in a move that both mirrors and contradicts Kylo's own fighting style, using the popping flare of his long sweeps and high arcs and the rotation of a blade to wind up but where Kylo uses it to throw power and force behind his blade, Ji uses it to retreat, regroup. She watches the spinning blue point of Rey's blade from behind a mask that reflects the light, square durasteel panels washing blue, and then thrusts forward on Rey's downswing to catch her mid-level as Rey steps in front of him. Which is about the same time that Kylo gathers his bearings enough from going ass over tit in an attempt to get out of the way of incoming blaster fire and the inevitable sting of Ji's blade - either against his own or against his skin, however fast he can make himself turn - to see that Rey has stepped between them.

She drives him back like a siren wail in his head, and Kylo grits his teeth: in defiance, in anger, in retaliatory, childish petulance. This isn't her fight, he thinks, but just as quickly corrects himself with the knowledge that it's as much her fight as it is his own, pressing to the ground palms and fingers that feel the indentation of choppy gravel through his gloves as he scrambles to get up. His lightsaber screams in a heavy burst of red as it turns over in his grip, but there is no one there for him to fight. He drives deeper into the mine, turning back to throw a wild look over his shoulder just as the roof of the shaft over their heads explodes in a rainfall of rock and a rotted wooden beam and - there. He sees it. A brief, bright flash of a scope catching the last of the moon's sunlight, like a wink.

The green of Ji's saber rises, and Kylo lifts his blade with the intention of folding himself back into the fight but Rey reaches back and pushes him and it's enough to get his feet off of the ground again as he falls and hits the ground a moment later, knocking the wind right out of him. He's on his feet in no time, though he sends no small amount of resentment at her through the crackling connection of the bond as she runs ahead of him, and tears after her down the mine shaft, his mind a whirl of bright green and that single point of light across the way while Rey seemingly chooses pathways at random. His thoughts are hers and vice versa, making communication unnecessary as they plunge deeper into the darkness, and Kylo gets the sense that were he to sweep the ground with light other than the trembling glow offered by their sabers, he would see that his footsteps perfectly match the ones that Rey leaves behind.

Ji follows, though, always right on his heels, tracking them not necessarily by tapping into the Force and sniffing them out but by following the ripping of their breath through open mouths as they pull in stale, dusty air, by listening to the sound of their retreating footsteps and sliding rocks over ground that has not been disturbed in decades. She's quiet, herself, and when Kylo attempts to divert the flow of his attention harnessed on Rey down a different channel focusing on locating Ji, he's repelled as if she's batting him away, like bouncing off of a wall and back into position. The sensation startles him for its existence at all - she should not be able to do this - enough that he grabs one of the hanging, long-extinguished cords dangling bulbs for balance that is suddenly skewed, and rips it out of the wall, glass breaking under his feet as he steps on it.

At once there is a burst of green behind them, too close not to have been cloaked from them completely, and Kylo can't stop himself - he doubles back to level a hard blow. The ground underfoot groans, unhappily disturbed after all these years, and even in the dark he can see - they can see - that the structure is not at all sound. )

[ For a while, he holds close to her, and Rey comforts herself with the thudding sound of his boots and the labored rasp of his breath for his presence offers an anchor in the bottomless black of the mine, reminds her that she isn't plummeting down alone. But more than the physical manifestations of his presence a few hurried beats behind her, she focuses on the way that she can feel him, linked in perfect tandem so tightly that they might as well be a single unit.

That tether snaps all at once, and Rey can almost feel herself tumble forward towards the inky well of darkness that lies waiting for them, dust skidding up in a cloud around her and thickening it. He stops, turns, digs his heels in. The tunnels sigh. The mountain's foundation cries out, begging for respite, a groaning pain that sags with the weight of them, and the musty air stinks of something burning, the sediment spun to smoke by the path of their lit sabers.

The void left between them aches like a missing piece of herself, the Force closing its fist around her throat to shout her down from allowing that valley to grow between them. A shortened, wheezed breath floods her lungs. She whips around to watch and wait, panicked by the severity of the sensation as much as by the actual potential for loss that hangs heavy in it—this shouldn't happen. But then, there is no should or shouldn't for something that lacks precedent. It feels like he's been torn out of her to lose the uniformity with which they act, and Rey jerks to a stop, whipping around to peer after him.

A glow of green lights his silhouette on the steel and dirt and cobwebs of the tunnel wall where it curves around, and it cracks into a blossom of something hideous and near-orange as Kylo clashes with their pursuer. Rey gapes, choking back a cry of dread, and rounds the corner to reach Kylo's side: she finds Ji popping forward and back in a series of blows that reflects her acute familiarity with the fact that she can't best Kylo Ren in a battle of sheer strength. In some way, that emboldens Rey, leaves her feeling inimitable for driving his saber into the snow and ridding him of it.

Still. There's something sharp and targeted in the way Ji advances, something that searches out weak points and creates them where they don't exist. She lifts the saber with both arms, and Rey realizes that she's not in a position to get between them in time, so she takes the only other route she has to protect him: she raises her free hand, fingers spread, wrist tilted, and catches the blade on the downswing with thick tendrils of invisible energy to restrain it like a net. ]

( When he has the chance to hazard a glance down at himself in the dark, Kylo half-expects to see a long line of snapped tendon and sinew trailing from an open wound above his lungs, a puncture that gapes and sags like the hollowed eyes of the mask that burned with Starkiller. There is, of course, nothing, but in that nothingness is a great void that threatens to suck the air out of his lungs. It staggers him as he meets Ji's parry - she always leads with a parry, knowing that he will always lead with an aggressive slice - and his grip falters under the strength of her answering thrust. He's quick enough to deflect it and reprise the offensive position, but the cost of Rey's absence in the void of absolute darkness is surprising.

It feels like he's died. Or she's died. Even in knowing that they both still live yet - he can feel her eyes in the dark, even if he can't see them - the ache is substantial and alarming, and he can't immediately pinpoint the reason for it as he drives Ji back again and again with a series of hard, brutalizing blows meant to decimate her. She stumbles under the weight of one, and Kylo grits his teeth and almost growls through the unbroken barricade of white washed red-orange from the colliding light of their blade, but Ji slips free and swings wide and hard at his head, knowing that he will duck before she's able to score a blow but also knowing that it will put him on the ground.

It's so hard to see in the dark, and he can't sense either of the women in the tunnel the way that he should be able to. Kylo lets intuition guide him as he throws a hand up with the express purpose of shoving Ji and knocking her aim off only to find that the heavy ripple through the Force that he sends her way is not his own but Rey's, whose presence seems to roar to life the moment she manipulates energy and air and dirt and dust and debris to stop Ji's green blade from burning a hole three inches deep into his shoulder: a nice finishing piece to complete the set that Rey began on his opposite shoulder.

Kylo stares at her.

The coalescence of their blades creates a ripple effect of color along the wall, lighting the tight lines of Ji's shoulders as she struggles for a moment too long to break free of the hold that Rey - face cast in heavy shadow and wrists twisted under the force of her own ability - exerts over her. Kylo feels his pulse race with some unknown rush. No time to examine it, he takes a hurried breath as he propels himself to his feet with his saber in hand and slides in close to Ji's throat with the burning, shaking flat of his lightsaber. )

Drop it. ( His voice is low, rumbling up from somewhere deep, and he casts a quick glance at Rey to determine the state of her remaining strength, trying to gauge how long she can keep Ji held against the web of her power. When the Knight does not react with the speed he's looking for, the sharp edge of the anger that he has been keeping at bay since the Falcon splits open right down the center and spills everywhere. It fills the hollow ache in his chest and the hole in his mind where Snoke used to be and the bitterness of tasting dirt by the strength of Ji's reinforced swing. He replaces the smell of burning hair and melting fabric, heating metal, with the sharp curl of his hand around Ji's throat, throwing most of the innate physical power that he has without the assistance of the Force to back it up into the thrust of his arm as he pins her against the wall behind them. The toe of his boot snaps the ancient cord torn from the wall and a lightbulb bursts underneath his heel. He squeezes his hand. ) Drop it.

( Eventually, green falls away. Kylo doesn't - can't, won't - let go. )

[ It's not the first time she's used the Force against another adept, but knocking Kylo Ren unconscious and invading his mind is quite a far cry from physical restraint, and the force with which she can feel Ji repeatedly slamming against her controlling grip staggers Rey, moistens her brow with sweat, and tightens her fingers, which curl halfway with the flexing effort of restraining the failed Jedi.

Watching the monstrous form of Kylo Ren advance on her, making even the intimidating, masked figure of a stranger look like a helpless victim, makes it easier and not. Rey cannot deny the release of tension that takes place as his leather-wrapped fingers squeeze around the meat of her neck allowing Rey to breathe and exert less of her own power over the knight, but she can not ignore the moral qualms she faces in allowing him this tactic of swaggering intimidation.

Worse, it doesn't seem to cap at intimidation.

Rey chokes out a gasp as the lightsaber clatters to the ground, and she drops her hand, doubling over to gulp down air, weary in a way that she has never been—a claim she's been able to make more and more since Kylo Ren secured a more permanent position in her life. But it's not only her own exhaustion that suffocates her now; the miasma of Kylo Ren's untethered anger, set free from its chains like a rabid animal, swells and threatens to bury them all here.

The tunnel trembles. ]

Stop. [ She rasps the words, pushing herself back to stand and striding forward to grab at his shoulder; the distant sound of rattling laughter, strained for breath, sounds like it's a million miles away; it's not the muffle of Ji's mask that dampens the sound, but the surreality that dazes Rey. ]

( Darkness clouds his peripheral, narrows the world down to a slat of silver, duarsteel panels that reflect the angles of colorful light thrown by their lightsabers as Ji's head twists and her free hand comes up to dig gloved fingertips into the meat of his wrist through the ribbing of his armor that covers him head to toe. They scrabble, slip against leather, and find purchase across his knuckles, the blunt ridges of her fingernails pressed against the very tips of her gloves digging into the burnt skin across the back of his hand. It hurts, a bone-deep ache that sends shock waves rolling up and down his arm, bottoming out in his chest and making his grip around her throat jerk and his hand curl around the hilt of his lightsaber, still lit and spitting in time with his pulse. His blood sings, pounds hard in his ears, whites out all sound save for the modulator on Ji's helmet scrambling to mechanize the noise her mouth fails to produce every time she tries to take a breath.

Do it. The voice is back, whispering, and he still can't tell if it's a manifestation of something that always was there before or something else, something within him wholly separate from Snoke. It sounds like Snoke but doesn't, though if he were pressed to explain and list the differences, Kylo isn't sure that he would be able to. It rises in pitch and volume with the tandem rise of the darkness within him, drawing breath like a great storm about to crack on the nearby horizon. The tunnel seems to shudder with the anticipation of it, and Kylo himself feels heavier, somehow drunk with the power he clasps in his hand and yet steady enough at the same time to wield it. This is the perfect darkness that he had been looking for on the bridge, this is the clarity that he was promised. It lies in here, in this fluttering heartbeat, in this intake of breath, in his own hands. He is power, plain and simple, open and exposed like a stripped nerve.

This is Kylo Ren.

It's this that clouds everything, threatens to drag them all under. He feels an answering call in the girl he knows is still behind him, the same way that he had and has and, he knows, will continue to feel. His darkness eclipses hers but what builds in him recognizes like for like and sniffs it out in her like a bloodhound, magnetically pulled to her gravitational charge, feeding off of it and smothering it all at once. A fire consuming another fire to become larger, brighter, hotter. Whatever darkness there is in Rey that speaks to him is reduced by this, this onslaught, overpowered by these parts of him that he cannot deny, and it's this maelstrom that buzzes as hard and heavy in his head as the lightsaber in his grip that deafens the sound of Rey's sharp inhale, covers the tread of her boot, and muffles the rustle of fabric as she reaches out to grab his arm and pull him back. Someone is laughing, but Kylo ignores it and attempts to throw Rey off of him with a shrug. )

This is the only way it ends. ( He chances a glance back at Rey, eyes wild in the haze of green and blue and red. Kylo tries to reach for her, tries to make her see the inevitability, what happens next if they don't end it here and now: Ji pursuing them, the Knights regrouping, following them until they are eventually worn down, outnumbered, brought before Snoke; Kylo to endure the discipline necessary for his actions. Rey, forced to kneel. )

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