Archive of Our Own

Lyra gasps and turns to face Rey, her eyes slotted against the harsh sun above the dunes. Lyra has just been struck in the side, with a weapon Rey has never seen. She had been struck by a group of black-clad men— thieves? assassins?— who’ve descended on their little troupe of scavengers. The only dozen or so people Rey cares for in the world are all screaming, clutching at their wounds, falling, dying. But Rey sees only her mother—her mother who is about to fall. Lyra gives her daughter a soft smile, and all other sounds melt away as Rey rushes forward and eases her down to the hot sand. Her mother’s eyes flutter closed.

The wound is black, as if singed, but it’s cold to the touch. Her mother’s chest trembles as it rises and falls. Rey looks around for anything to help, but there is nothing, and no one. Only the sounds of death are surrounding her. And the intruders are advancing on her. One in particular, a tall one with a scarf shrouding everything on his face save his fierce eyes, is a few paces away. He raises his hand towards her, the only scavenger left unstruck. Rey looks up to the sky, tears welling up in her eyes. The sun glows overhead, shining intently on her face. Her mother will soon die and she will die soon after, and there is nothing she can do about it. The man’s hand clenches and she feels an ice chill flood her veins. The man throws his fist at her in what is surely meant to be the fatal blow. This is it, she thinks and clenches her eyes shut.

The burst of cold energy he sends roils through her, but it doesn’t hurt, it just passes through. And in its wake is a sudden warm, flowing heat. Rey opens her eyes, seeing in her mind’s eye exactly where the sun shines in the sky above. As if a long cord of light and energy is connecting her to the sun. Rey breaks out in a sweat. A tingling sensation starts in her fingertips. She looks down to see little pricks of light shining out of her fingers. In awe, Rey touches herself on the arm, and feels that same heat, leaving behind a bit of singed hair and a pink burned spot where she touched herself. Quickly, scarcely breathing, she looks up to see the man running towards her, eyes glaring furiously.

With every ounce of focus she can muster, Rey thinks of the sun and raises her tingling hands at him. She pushes whatever this thing is inside of her, directly at him. A whoosh of heat passes through her and at the man, catching his dark clothing aflame. He emits a startled noise as he stops to try and put out the flames. Two of the others, faces similarly shrouded, gather around him, making angry noises at each other. The other intruders are already leaving, assuming their job done.

Rey shivers from the cold that she is left with. Her mother makes a groan beneath her, and Rey remembers the task at hand—protect herself and her mother, no matter the cost. She mentally reaches up towards the sun again, foggy with exhaustion, and points a single finger towards her distracted adversaries. A single spark flies from her finger to the patch of dried, old grass at their feet, which instantly catches fire. The flames quickly spread, forming a wall of fire between herself and the remaining intruders. Through the tall, licking flames, Rey spots the searing glare of the one she burned. He holds her gaze for a beat, and then turns away. All three figures slink away into the shadows of the dunes.

Rey turns to her mother’s wound, the terrible black frozen gash. Rey tears a piece of her armband and tries to stop up the hole, although it’s not bleeding. The flesh is just slick, blackened...dead. Her mother’s pulse is erratic. Tears spill from her eyes as she turns to her mother’s face, which gazes off into the distance. This cannot be the end. But there is nothing Rey can think to do. All she can hear is the crackling of the fire nearby and her mother’s labored breath.

The power, something whispers within her. Perhaps she can channel more than just fire. Heat. Light. Health? Rey glances back up at the sun. But she feels completely empty of the sparking heat that had been coursing through her— she feels chilled to the bone. She mentally grasps to find the sun again, places her hands over the wound, and thinks she feels the power building in her, coursing through her. She closes her eyes and...nothing. Rey looks down to see her mother’s body slack, her eyes half open, her chest no longer rising and falling.

“No!” Rey looks at her hands again and they are slick with dark, poisoned blood. She sobs and cries out in pain as the desert around them starts to spin, her mother’s voice echoes from beyond the horizon.:

“You couldn’t save me…”

Rey wakes with a start, panting and launching out of bed. The dream recedes rapidly away.

She catches her breath and looks around her. She takes in the gently gurgling geometric fountain in the corner and the lush carpet of moss; the books and piles of weapons on Rose’s side of the room; the stained glass windchimes twinkling overhead; and above her, at the glass ceiling and stars overhead, the brightest being the sun.

She’s in her room, in the Solarium School for Solar Magic. She’s in Copernica, the city stronghold of the aubade—the solar magicians. She’s on the moon, far away from her life before, on Earth.

And someone is playing a very loud song with a soaring trumpet solo in the common room.

Rey rubs her eyes and rolls out of bed, instinctively reaching for the sun and using its power to turn on her bedside lamp. She enters the airy common room, where her flatmates are all getting ready for the big day—Chiaroscuro in Copernica, Rey’s first-ever. The biannual competition for the light, where she and all of her roommates will duel against darksider magicians— the obscura. Rey takes a steadying breath. Rose, Rey’s roommate, is doing a headstand against a wall in deep meditation, her shiny black hair covering her face in the process. Poe is practicing jabs, dancing around along with the music, and checking his short, curly dark hair in the mirror. Finn is in the kitchenette, standing by the brewing chicory coffee and tapping his long fingers against the counter. Rey makes her way over, dodging a prancing Poe to get there.

“Dreams again?” Finn asks when he sees the haunted look in Rey’s eyes.

“Dream. Just the one that I’ve had for years. From when my mom died...” Rey reaches for an emerald mug and pours herself some of the hot, spiced drink, adding in some flax milk and stirring it thoughtfully. Finn nods knowingly.

“I get them, too. I just try not to think about it.”

Rey leans affectionately on Finn’s shoulder and he pets her head.

“Yeah.” She doesn’t sound convinced. “I’m just worried it’ll affect my game today,” she says, trying to change the subject.

“Nah. You’re the best anyone has ever seen. Who cares if this is your first one? That just means they’ll pair you with the other newbie. Poe’s taking bets that you’ll break the record for the fastest knock-out.”

“What’s that about me?” Poe yells over the music.

“You’re trying to make money off of other people’s suffering!” Finn retorts.

Poe smiles and jabs finger guns at Finn, seemingly harmlessly until Finn’s coffee begins to boil in his own cup. He swears and puts the hot mug down on the counter with a clatter. Rey chuckles, feeling more like herself again. She turns and is immediately faced by a very focused-looking Rose.

“Wanna get ready?” Rose asserts.

“Ok, let’s do it,” Rey grumbles, knowing what’s ahead. Rose puts her hand on Rey’s shoulder and marches her back to their room, where their ceremonial robes, decorative flowers, and—Rey shudders—lots of gold glitter, awaits.

~

Rose and Rey emerge late and giggling. Rose, who enjoys playing up to her name, has adorned herself in floral patterns, including a rich rose tapestry robe that she made herself with inlaid golden threading and fresh roses braided into her crown of plaits. Golden eyeliner completes her look. Rey, ever one to try and be more subdued, in spite of the adornment expected from the Solarian team, wears a flowing burgundy cloak that has long sleeves and drapes behind her, decorated with gold in a geometric pattern. Every Solarian team member must prominently feature gold in their uniform, ever reflecting back on their life force, the sun. She wears her chestnut hair in her characteristic three buns, but Rose insisted on adding three golden sun-shaped hairpins to hold each. “Your name is Rey, after all,” Rose had quipped. Golden glitter dusts her eyebrows and the bridge of her nose.

They make a run for it through the center of Copernica, the Greenhouse City. Each paved avenue of shop carts and food stations and houses is bursting with decorations for Chiaroscuro, hemp paper lanterns and golden mirrors and flower-shaped solar panels adorning everything. Even the trees and ivy marking the avenue carry twinkling, jewel-toned baubles that scatter colored light and chime songs all across the city. The city is mainly deserted except for the few stragglers still making their way to the stadium, and for good reason. It’s not every day the Solarium fights the Lunaceum, the school from the dark side of the moon.

Rey has never visited the dark side. She has only heard mention of the feud that’s been going on between them since the beginning, since there were the aubade. Darksiders come from the other side of the moon, where there is never interference from the sun for their dark magic. The obscura pull from the darkness, the way that the aubade pull from the light. They have their own city, Selene. There’s been an official, yet hesitant ceasefire for the last few centuries, a détente drawn along the border of the shadow of the moon. It’s broken only for tournament days between the schools. This time, Copernica is hosting.

Rey and Rose barrel into the hallway leading into the stadium just as their teammates are lining up to go onto the field. They quickly find their places. A tremendous trumpet blast announces that it’s time, and an upbeat brass band begins a jazzy rendition of the Copernican anthem. The other players begin to step out into the noisy stadium. Rose turns back to Rey, beaming, squeezes her hand, and says, “Good luck,” and then takes her turn strutting forward onto the field, to enormous applause. Rey is last. She takes a deep breath, remembers Poe’s advice to just imagine the crowd naked—How the dark does that help? Rey wonders to herself—and walks out onto the moondust pitch.

She is greeted with thunderous cheering and singing and clapping. She trains here every day but she’s never seen it so beautiful, the high arched glass ceiling refracting light from the sun and stars into a million shifting rainbows and colorful fabric hanging from every column and bench. The brass band plays on the pitch, all dancing out of sync, wearing sequined uniforms and huge dangling jewelry. She sees Leia, the head councilwoman of Copernica, waving down at Rey from her viewing box, resplendent in a long green and pink cloak and bonnet that changes accent color in the light. There’s Luke, her teacher and coach, leaning against the wall next to the dugout player’s seating, wearing his usual worn green robes but with a floppy, glittering rainbow hat that’s practically falling off the side of his head. Luke seems to take the same approach to all this required adornment as Rey does, and she likes him all the more for it. Rey makes her way to the dugout, her heart beating in time to the music, smiling widely. Her teammates pat her on the back as she finds her seat between Finn and Rose.

A hush falls over the crowd and the band fades out. A low bass hum reverberates through the crowd and Rey sees that it comes from a single cellist seated in the middle of the pitch. The lights dim to nearly black, illumination coming only from the sun and stars above. The dark-haired cellist continues with her long, slow, deep notes. Polite clapping sounds from the other side of the stadium announce that the dark side has arrived. Rey strains to see them, a team of tall players led by a striking woman with short blonde hair and a gray and black panelled cloak, sparkling with gleaming dark blue accents.

“Who’s that?” Rey asks Finn, intimidated.

“That’s Phasma, she’s really good,” Finn responds.

“He’s only saying that because she kicked his ass last time,” Rose quips.

Finn throws a spark at Rose’s rose hair piece and she frantically makes sure he didn’t singe any of her uniform.

Rey watches the progression of the obscura, walking to the solemn music and insistent applause from the Lunaceum fans who are visiting the light side along with them. They are here to prove something to their raucous, gaudy, uncivilized counterparts—or so Rey had heard that her fellow Copernicans and aubade are described by the darksiders. Poe had told her that they’d renamed Apollo—a city in the Apollo crater of the dark side of the moon—Selene, after the goddess of the moon. The Lunaceum team walks with grace and maybe the hint of a sneer, stunning in their flowing, dark robes. Rey has gotten so used to the bright colors of Copernica, the muted palate and dimmed lights bring on a strange nostalgia—she had almost forgotten what nighttime felt like.

A tall figure walks onto the pitch and Rey catches her breath. This person— his dark hair flows in the breeze of his gait along with the tails of his high-collared robes, swirling by his ankles. He wears an expression that is restrained, but he is clearly straining from that effort. He flexes his gloved hands, then clenches them into fists.

The sound of Rey’s heartbeat floods her ears. Her scavenger instincts are fully dialed up, trying to find a scrap of information about why this person is eliciting such a response. Rey’s eyes soak in every aspect of him, searching for something. The man in black turns towards Rey, as if he could sense her eyes on him. She flinches as their eyes connect, as if she had been physically struck.

Brown, like molasses eyes. The color is warm but the expression is cold, and fierce, and incensed. She knows those eyes.

Her heart sinks, an ice chill seeps into her veins. No. It’s you.

The man who tried to kill her. The man from the desert. The man from her dreams.

Rey clasps her hand over her mouth, trying to contain a heavy sob. Finn and Rose immediately turn towards Rey, holding her shoulders and looking at her questioningly as she shakes and gazes straight ahead, staring at her walking nightmare.

“Hey, what’s going on? Are you ok? Nervous? Do you need a medic?” Rose peppers her with questions. He turns away and enters his team’s dugout, extinguishing Rey’s flare of terror for the moment. Rey slumps against her team’s bench. Almost all of the team is looking at them curiously, and Poe and Luke are pushing their way towards them.

Everyone around her is trying to make sure she’s ok, but Rey’s head swims with questions and she can scarcely hear them. Who? Why? How? Racing ahead to the implications — What was a darksider doing on Earth? Killing a defenseless band of scavengers? Why is he here? Rey feels the grief for her mother, for their life, seep in where her terror left. Her life as she knew it, since Luke found her in the sand that day, and took her away, takes on all new colors. It wasn’t a random act, her orphaning. She is a part of this war. She always has been, somehow. But mostly, Rey misses her mom more intensely than she has in years, like a roar in her ears. No, no, that’s the crowd.

Rey snaps the lid shut on the tidal wave inundating her. It’ll do her no good here, and now.

A laser-like focus descends over Rey’s vision, looking to where she last saw the tall figure. The worried questions coming from her friends and coach enter back into Rey’s hearing. She offers a tight smile, and tries to take a deep breath. Her friends look on, silenced.

“Who,” she clears her throat, “Who was that?”

“That darksider? Kylo Ren. He’s Councilwoman Leia’s son. Do you know him?” Rose proffers.

Leia’s son? He’s the one who tried to kill me? The unanswered questions battle for dominance in Rey’s mind once more. Amidst trying to find her calm again, she makes a decision not to share what she knows. It seems that the others don’t know about him hunting scavengers on earth. Leia certainly wouldn’t. Something’s wrong here. Rey needs to know more.

And besides, they might try to stop her from taking her revenge. The thought of taking the life of the person who took hers from her pumps hotly in her veins. Yes, I’ll wait.

“I—no. He...reminds me of someone. I just...bad flashback is all. I’m ok.”

Luke looks unconvinced, but turns away and back to his seat. Finn holds his arms wrapped around her shoulders and most everyone else returns their gazes to the field, where the musicians are clearing away.

“Finn’s duelling him today,” Rose tries to add helpfully.

“Yeah, thanks, Rose.” Finn retorts nervously.

Everyone shushes them.

Last walks on a pale red-headed boy, about Rey’s age, with the barest wisp of a beard on his chin. Rey thinks this must be Hux, her opponent for the day, and the only other first-time player. In spite of her earth-shattering revelation, she sizes him up. Poe sidles next to Rey conspiratorially.

“Like I said, kid, you’re gonna cream him from what I hear. Word on the street is he’s a very nervous player. Now, that could work to your disadvantage as he’ll be unpredictable, even if he’s trying to be by-the-books, but I think you outdo him in sheer power alone.” Rey grins over at Poe, touched that he had been running reconnaissance for her, and helping her regain some of her strength. Even though this has just become way more than a game.

The darksider coach, Chirrut Imwe, is smiling—unlike the team he’s presiding over—even beaming out from the team’s dugout. Famously, the blind Imwe had so developed his dark side powers that he had acquired a second sight, and could “see” everything around him. Rey wonders if the same could be achieved with light sorcery. Imwe pokes his head out from the dugout and nods towards Snoke, the Duke of Selene. Snoke, presiding over the proceedings in a viewing box directly opposite Leia’s, nods back. Another very tall man—Do all darksiders have to be so tall? thinks Rey—Snoke’s face is covered by a disfiguring burn mark that no one mentions. He is otherwise bald and pale, and wears a shimmering velvet cloak of iridescent silver.

He and Leia raise their hands towards each other from their boxes across the field, and the cellist and the brass band hit a single note as one, bringing the crowd to focus on this one moment. Rey feels ill as she watches Leia. What does she know about her son?

From the leader’s boxes, two flames burst out, a dark and a light, fireworks and darkworks. They chase each other around the field in a glorious display of power, control and mastery of their respective magics. The two meet in the middle, join together, and burst out into light and dark confetti over everyone.

“Let the games begin!” Leia and Snoke chant over the crowd, and the crowd roars. Even the darksider audience members letting out a whoop or two, the lightsiders going characteristically wild. The lights come up to exactly half-light, the meeting place of light and darkness. Rey takes a deep breath to regain herself, remembering that what she’ll see in the matches ahead will come in handy. The first battle is on.

Poe, who has been conferring with Luke in the corner of the dugout, is the first to take the field. He swaggers to the robust beat of the music, winking and blowing kisses at the fawning crowd. Rose rolls her eyes.

“If he spent half as much effort training as he does flirting…” she mumbles. Rey looks on. She’s been to dozens of practices now, but an aubade fighting an aubade is completely different from an aubade fighting an obscura. Lightsiders can fight each other for dominance, who has the best grasp of their power, but light against dark is a fight for the space itself. Light versus light is for who gets to illuminate the room. Light versus dark is about whether the light or the darkness will win. Rey feels the light sparking in her fingertips as her feelings of powerlessness subside. Now, she feels anger.

Phasma walks out onto the pitch from the obscura dugout, the very image of self control. As Poe charms the crowd, Phasma stands in the center of the field, waiting with barely concealed impatience. Finally, Poe turns and meets her there. A gong sounds. The players pull from their power and ignite their weapons.

Poe’s is a glorious lightsaber with a beautiful golden hilt and an orange blade of pure light. Phasma’s weapon is much harder for Rey to really see. It’s as if a shadow were focused intensely on the blade in her hand, difficult to render in this dim setting. A wave of recognition from Rey’s dream hits her again, and Rey wonders about the figures who had stood next to Kylo. If Kylo is involved in killing my mother, maybe all of the darksiders are, Rey thinks bitterly. Everyone is suspect.

Phasma lunges at Poe with a grunt and Poe dodges and counterattacks, his brilliant saber reflecting off of Phasma’s ice blonde hair as it arches overhead. Phasma parries and uses her other hand to pull in a wave of darkness from the sky, which puts Poe momentarily in shadow.

Rey’s heart is in her throat and she grips the cool ledge on the player’s dugout.

“C’mon, Poe!” Finn yells next to Rey.

But as soon as Finn shouts his support, along with several other of Poe’s admirers, a beam of light shoots out of the shadow, and Poe is brilliantly illuminated as he descends both twirling his lightsaber and directing beams of light at Phasma. Phasma is on the defensive, blocking each of Poe’s attacks but being pushed further and further away from the center.

With each hit, the light in the room increases—fractionally at first, so that Rey barely notices it—but eventually to the point where the light starts reflecting off of Poe’s golden jacket buttons. Phasma fights off the attacks and tries to scatter darkness into the room against Poe’s gaining advantage, but he seems to be one step ahead of her. In one final push, he knocks her to the ground, each other’s sabers pushing up close to the other’s neck.

“No!” Rey yells along with her other lightsiders. The two are locked in. Phasma, who had been gritting her teeth in effort, purses her lips and makes a delicate kissing noise towards Poe’s nose. Poe flinches, allowing Phasma to scramble to her feet and cast a shadow far and wide across the stadium. The gong starts to count off as everyone is submerged in inky darkness—1, 2, 3.

Rey doesn’t know what to do in this kind of darkness. She’d experienced it a few times in training, just to know what it was like, but she hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet. It still evokes a panic in her. 5, 6. And yet, something familiar. She even can’t see the stars. 7, 8. No! Rey thinks. We can’t let them win!

But then a distant glow starts in the far side of the pitch. Poe, holding his glowing saber high, is gradually getting brighter, the only light in the whole stadium. He brings it down to the ground with a smash, scattering the light everywhere, casting it so that every corner in the stadium is gleaming and completely shadowless. The light glows unnaturally. The gong countdown starts again. Poe full-on tackles Phasma as the gong continues to tick, knocking her down and preventing her from casting any further darkness into the room.

9, 10. Poe is declared the winner, to exuberant cheering from the lightsider crowd. Fireworks erupt overhead. Rey is on her feet with the rest of her team, screaming loudly amidst other lightsiders. Rose jumps up and down with glee. Poe swaggers back to the dugout, bearing a roguish grin.

“What the hell was that?” Finn demands as Poe returns to his seat.

“I bet K-2S0 double or nothing if I turned around a countdown. Looks like I made some gold today,” Poe smiles again, before taking a drink of hibiscus water from the bottle Luke has thrown at him.

“Drink up, high roller. You’re gonna give me a heart attack one of these days,” Luke chortles as he turns his eyes back to the pitch.

Poe returns to his seat next to Finn and places a calming hand on Finn’s shoulder. Finn is looking away distractedly, biting his lip. Rey also feels anxiety rising up inside her.

I’m about to see him again. Kylo. Stay calm. I have to stay calm.

“Good luck,” she says to him. Attention from Poe and Rey shakes Finn out of his distraction. He looks at them with a half-smile, eyes lingering worriedly on Rey, takes a deep breath, and stands up.

“Showtime,” he says, trying to emit a kind of confidence. The crowd’s clamor dies down as the players are announced, and Finn takes the field. Across the way, Kylo Ren does the same, looking at Finn with intensity. Rey shivers, but the reaction is not nearly as intense this time. Now, it’s pure focused hatred, her seeing Kylo. He’s shed his cloak in favor of a gleaming black tunic. Monster.

The players meet in the middle. Finn offers Kylo his hand, who just stares at him. Finn retracts his hand awkwardly.

“This is not going to go well,” Rose mutters to herself.

To Rey, it has become even more important that Finn win.

The gong sounds and Kylo goes immediately on the offensive, igniting his dark saber, a deep, startling scarlet color, as he twirls into a swinging attack. Finn, caught unprepared, dodges the swipe and struggles to ignite his lightdaggers. Rey’s heart is already in her throat.

“Come on, come on,” Rey mutters, about to spark them for him herself. He gets them ignited in a brilliant shock of emerald green in time to deflect Kylo’s next attack in a cross, but it’s cost him. The room is noticeably dimmed already. Finn makes a hasty retreat to the other end of the field to regroup, the crowd cheering encouragement to him as he does. Kylo paces and points his darksaber at Finn, pulling in another darkburst from the sky with his other hand. Arrogant bastard. The stadium becomes cloaked more in shadow.

“Finn’s losing his nerve,” Rose whispers to Rey.

“No, I think he’s regaining it,” Rey returns, eyes glued to the game, sharply watching Kylo stalk the field.

Finn closes his eyes and, amazingly, light begins to spark out of him, dancing like stars away from him across the pitch. Kylo begins to bat away at them with his darksaber but there are soon too many for him to take on, thousands of dazzling, floating, tiny lights across the dark field. One lands on Rose’s nose and she giggles in delight. Rey sees Finn take another breath, draw his hands together, and suddenly each floating star pops into clouds of light that spread out and chase the shadows until the stadium is warm and glowing. The crowd is stunned to near-silence, before the lightsiders explode in applause.

“What an amazing move,” Rey utters with awe. And ferocious pride. Take him down.

“He’s got to fight to maintain the advantage, though,” Rose responds. As if he had heard her, Finn begins swinging his daggers in a quick motion around his body, coming as Kylo walks steadily towards Finn, swinging his saber front and back and forward so that Rey loses track of it. Rose leans in closer to Rey.

“Kylo’s moving so much like a darksider—see how they use that elegant kind of dance style? That’s Imwe’s signature. He says he teaches the students to let their spirits move them,” Rose says. Rey studies the movements, so different from the timed drills Luke makes them run. How can we beat that?

Kylo gathers a shadow from the sky with his other hand and twirls the darkness with his saber into a red and black cloud that oozes towards Finn. Rey sees that Finn is doing the same, gathering two balls of light behind him and using the daggers to shoot light streams to different corners of the stadium. Finn is definitely gaining ground—the stadium is more light than shadow now.

Kylo reaches Finn and starts an onslaught with his saber, ruthlessly cutting into Finn’s advantage. Finn begins to falter, defending himself with the light daggers, but Kylo chases his retreat this time. Rey can see Finn gritting his teeth, straining under the attack. Finn catches Kylo’s darksaber in a cross in his daggers, and as they stand, locked in place, Finn sends one swift kick to Kylo’s solar plexus. Kylo bends over in pain, and Finn sends more light out to take advantage of his distraction.

Luke chuckles on the other end of the bench. “Classic Skywalker move if there ever was one. Take that, Imwe!” The darksiders ignite in protest. Rey grits her teeth, gunning for Finn, anything to oppose Kylo.

But the advantage doesn’t last long. As Rey watches, Kylo staggers up, holds out the hand that isn’t bracing himself against his knee, and Finn crumples where he stands. Not an illegal move, necessarily, but a dirty one for Kylo to darken some of the nerves in Finn’s body. An uproar surges from the lightsider crowd, with cries of foul play and calls for a referee. Boos echo across the field. Kylo, undeterred by the outcry, looks up at the darksider leader’s box, then sends another dark blast at Finn with a smirk. Finn passes out completely.

“No!” cries Rey, her heart lurching as she sees Finn’s eyes flutter closed.

Kylo quickly envelopes the field in darkness. Rey feels herself grasp the railing and foist herself up onto the field, reaching out with her inner light to try and find Finn’s. You murdering villain. You traitor. You will not take another from me. The gong has begun to sound. 1, 2. Rey walks, and as she approahces, discovers another light. Rey comes to the troubling realization that Finn’s light has been completely extinguished. But then, who’s is this other? Darksiders don’t carry a light in them. There’s no one else on the field. It could only be Kylo. She moves towards it, feeling like she’s pulled in. The panic she had felt before in the total darkness is non-existent. She feels only the ground beneath her feet and the light ahead, the sounds of the crowd fading. She reaches Finn’s body on the ground, and crouches down next to him. Rey turns inward, feeling the darkness around her. 3, 4.

She closes her eyes, not that it matters in a world she cannot see in, and reaches up with her inner light, as she has been trained. She knows—she knows—that the stars are there above her. The beautiful, life-giving sun is there, too, even if she can’t see it. 5, 6. She reaches, reaches, out into the black, and there. Above her right shoulder, just a bit. The sun. Her sun. She channels everything she has, feels the light coursing through her.

Then, she blasts a beam of light from the sky on down, shining on Finn and Kylo directly with golden radiance. Finn startles awake, and all three look at each other in amazement, and the crowd is startled to silence by her completely illegal move. Finn moans and sputters, the beam having restored his inner light, his body frantically spasming. Even Kylo, instead of having the usual sullen frown, has a look of peace about him, and even a soft smile on his lips. Rey looks down at her hands, just on the cusp of wondering what the moon she had just done, when she is struck on the side by a frozen, bracing blow.

Holding her side, she turns to see Kylo, clearly having shaken off whatever effect the light had had. He then looks up to the viewing box, where Snoke presides over them. There seems to be some unspoken order from Snoke as he surveys the field. Kylo then nods and points his darksaber directly at her. He pants with effort as he gathers another beam of darkness from the sky to launch at her. The crowd gasps, confused and concerned. The referees are arguing loudly. Rey roars with anger. You are everything I hate.

“Rey! Catch!” Finn shouts from the ground nearby, and throws his lightdaggers, one after the other to Rey’s open hands. She pauses for the briefest moments to connect the two ends, so that when she quickly pulls from the sun and ignites them, they form a staff of blinding green light. In spite of the hit that still chills the point below her left ribs, she releases a yell and charges towards the formidable figure of Kylo Ren. The crowd, still confused but caring less about the game than at the prospect of some good entertainment, are cheering wildly on both sides. The referees shake their heads in disbelief. Finn wisely gets out of the way of this new match-up.

Rey swoops in on Kylo, swinging the staff above her head. Kylo braces himself, and begins twirling his darksaber across his body. They collide in the middle in a clash of sparks and sound, saber against staff. Rey looks deep into Kylo’s eyes as their weapons push against each other. It’s you. Do you know me? Do you remember me? she thinks as she digs in deeper and pushes harder. She sees no light, no spark in his dark eyes, only grim determination and focus. She also also sees anger, cool and clear, like Rey’s. You destroyed everything.

She catches her breath, and he releases a small gasp as well. He breaks the clash between their weapons, swinging his saber and stepping away, assessing her with widened eyes. Before another moment passes, he feigns right and leaps towards Rey in a flying lunge, coming at her saber-first. Rey braces herself and knocks his saber away, dodging it, spinning her staff across her body and over her head. She feels herself fall into the same mental place she was in before, in the total darkness. Her inner light burns pure, inspiring her limbs to move with power and a grace she’s never felt before. She sees and hears only her opponent, her nightmare, burning darkly in her sight.

Kylo falls into step with her and starts to parry back, their weapons screaming at each point of contact. Swing, hit, swing, hit. Twirling, moving, slashing, sweating. Rey is so focused on the fighting that she is startled when she starts to notice that the field has gotten noticeably darker. Kylo has been bringing in the darkness while her focus was on the match. As if we were still playing a game. Very clever. Certainly not clever enough. Very well, I’ll play. Rey pulls more light from the sun and supercharges her staff with it, resulting in sparks of blinding light emitting out of it like a sparkler. The sparks dissipate out through the field, causing flare-ups of bright white arcs that Kylo has to shield his eyes from. Rey is relentless in her attacks him as the light courses through her. What will I do when I win? How can I kill him?

Then, all of a sudden, Rey’s light is gone, snuffed out like a candle. She falters but stays standing. Kylo has a single hand raised, clutched in a fist. Evil, evil man. Her muscles slacken and her staff disengages. She grimaces and finds the sun. As best she can muster, moving as if through water, she reaches her hand up to the sky. She barely registers Kylo doing the same, reaching for the darkness between the stars. The stadium is quickly darkening.

She locks in to the sun and feels the direct link between herself and the light. She feeds herself from that light, reignites herself, and stumbles forward. She builds on that link to the sun, strengthening it from that star to hand and back. The beam grows and grows. She still feels weak, but she is ready to strike. She is ready to win. She turns to look at Kylo.

Kylo is doing the same across from her. He pulls from the darkness in a beam of black, but his eyes are completely focused on her, charged with rage. He is preparing to deal what he thinks will be a final blow, possibly even a fatal one, given the look in his eyes. Oh no you don’t.

She gathers one more gulp of light, and, hand outstretched to him, unleashes everything she has at Kylo Ren.

Kylo roars and does the same. The whole place flashes in light and darkness as the two columns throttle at each other across the field. When the light and dark collide, a deafening thunder fills the stadium and a wind blasts around Rey, tearing at her hair and clothes. She continues the onslaught of light directly at him, as he does the same with his darkness. The two powers meet in between them, clashing and swirling in a sparking, hot electrical storm. Rey sobs with the effort but doesn’t back down. She feels a surge come from his end and she returns the same, both of them skidding apart from each other with the weight of the effort, still matching power for power in the storm of their own creation at the center of the field.

Then, the storm at the center of the field contracts into a tight ball of energy, shaking Rey and Kylo out of their stances as their energy coils are cut loose. The energy explodes out over the stadium, bright light and perfect darkness blasting out over everything. Rey shields her eyes in the blast, noticing that the rest of the crowd is, too. Oh, right. The audience. The game. That’s what was happening here, according to everyone else. She receives a full impact of the blast, hot and cold together, wind and light and force cutting into her. She can feel her very atoms buzz as her body seeks to balance the light and darkness that tears through her. She’s been thrown to the ground, she realizes, hair staticky and her breath shaky. She props herself up on an elbow and takes big gulps of air.

Rey gazes around her, taking in the audience as they react with shock at the explosion, aware of Kylo laying flat-out on the pitch across from her, when some of the crowd starts to point and gasp at the center of the field. She turns to face it as well. There, right where their columns of energy had met, is a spinning sphere of light and darkness about the size of a bowling ball. It has beams of light peeking through churning darkness, folds of light with darkness sparkling through. It’s something Rey has only seen before in astronomy class, in deep space images of dying stars. It glows. It pulses. It’s impossible. Rey realizes from the deathly silence of the crowd that no one else has ever seen anything like this, either.

All of a sudden, the crowd breaks into frantic commotion. Luke runs onto the field, followed quickly by other Solarians. A lightsider med team quickly ushers Rey away. As she glances back one more time, she meets the eyes of Kylo Ren standing next to Imwe, his gaze unreadable, while her feelings course inside of her impotently.

~

It’s late evening, the sky ever bright with starshine. Rey is back in her room, arms wrapped around her legs, playing back the day. She hears the hushed tones of her roommates in the other room. She knew they’re talking about her. Her reaction to Kylo Ren, the rage none of them have ever seen come out of her before. What they know, and what they don’t. Should I tell them? She and Kylo Ren, the first lightsider and darksider to ever make that...thing. People are calling it The Supernova.

Because it sounds cool, thinks Rey. She sighs and leans back on her bed, putting her hands over her eyes.

A star of light and darkness. No one knew what it was, nor could they move it, manipulate it, or affect it. It was probably still there in the middle of the stadium, rotating peacefully on its axis, light sputtering and swirling through it. She builds a small ball of light in her hands and spins it while she thinks.

An unprecedented light-dark micro star is the least of her concerns. The whole other part of the planet could be implicated in her mother’s murder. Kylo, acting with others, doing- what? Attacking Earth humans with darksider magic? That must break the treaty at the very least. Who should I tell? Rey hasn’t felt this alone since a kindly hooded figure found her sobbing in the desert by her dead mother.

Rey starts. Across from her on her bed, a pair of eyes reflects in the light. She quickly takes in who is there on her bed— the long, tousled black hair, the pale skin, the layers of black clothes, the deep eyes. Kylo Ren. What? They both scramble to get more than a breath’s distance apart, and Kylo’s hand goes through the wall when he reaches it.

“How are...what are you...why?” Rey sputters.

“I could ask you the same thing.” Kylo mutters in response, perturbed.

Kylo Ren is in my room. “You killed my mom!” Rey screams suddenly, her confusion overcome by her fury.

“How...” Kylo’s face contorts and darkens.

“The deserts of Earth? Last year? Now you remember? Why did you think I tried to kill you?”

Kylo refocuses. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Rey laughs mirthlessly and quickly launches a light blast towards him. It scatters directly through him and knocks one of Rose’s potted plants off the wall. Kylo barely registers the blast. It is quiet as Rey stares at Kylo, seething, while he wears a face of calculated impassivity.

He inhales to start speaking, and Rey unleashes herself. “What could you possibly have to say to me? You have a mom, the best mom. You killed mine. You are somehow undermining a peace that has lasted for centuries to kill innocent civilians, and it’s not even clear why! What do you want from me now? You’re haunting me? Like almost killing my friend today wasn’t enough?”

Rey’s breath heaves from the effort of yelling. Kylo inhales to start speaking, calmly, and this time continues.

“I’ve heard of dark warriors projecting themselves through space, but those always turn up as a negative image, you know, black for white and vice-versa. I see you...as you are.” His voice softens.

“I’m going to kill you,” Rey grits out.

“I didn’t kill your mother,” Kylo responds with equal fervor. He looks surprised with himself.

“You—what? Then the people you were with did. And you almost killed me!”

“Do you remember what happened?”

Rey snorted. “I dream about it almost every night. In excruciating detail. Over and over again.”

“If I had wanted to kill you, don’t you think I would have succeeded?”

“What do you mean?” Rey stops short.

“I easily snuffed out a highly trained aubade today for the sake of a game. What would have stopped me from finishing you?”

“Then what? Why? You got everyone else…”

“It was a...complication. The only way you would have joined us was for you to be alone. But your proclivities, it turns out, went the other way.”

Rey stares at the there-but-not figure of Kylo Ren sitting on her bed. My proclivities? She tries to speak again.

“Do you mean I was meant to be…”

“Yes, it was a recruitment expedition. For you. My blast was meant to subdue you, to take you with us. But instead, it pushed you towards...the light.” Kylo shudders.

This new information overwhelms Rey. My mother died because of me. All the strength in Rey’s body that she had been channeling towards her ire leaves her. She crumples onto her bed, eyes brimming with tears. She softly cries to herself, losing the capacity to care about the strange darksider ghost in her room. He shifts uncomfortably.

“You weren’t supposed to know. It...complicates the treaty.”

Rey’s tears continue to fall.

“I’ve never seen someone who had been so strong in the dark side revert so quickly to the light. No one ever has. It’s only either one, or the other. Or none.”

Rey’s curiosity penetrates her sadness. She looks up through her teary eyes.

“What is dark magic?”

Kylo pauses, looking down at her. “Do you ever get angry, or sad, in a way that it feels like no one can reach you? You’re like your own personal black hole?” He casts a vulnerable, haunted look.

Rey pauses this time. “I wish I didn’t.”

“Well, dark magic is taking that feeling and matching it to the darkness of space. All of that...place...with nothing in it. No light, no sound, no air or matter, just darkness. It’s not hard to find. And then you just cast it.” Kylo seems relieved to be able to speak on something he knows.

“Yeah, I saw that today. Your magic is like…undoing the world. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Now, you, you’re one of the best sun casters I’ve ever seen. The way you actually bend light is amazing, and that refraction... I should know, I grew up around all of them.”

Rey bats away the compliment like a gnat.

“You grew up over here?” Rey thinks about what it must have been like to grow up with Leia as a mother, Luke as an uncle, and students around all the time. She looks at Kylo’s figure, dressed in all black, and can’t picture it at all. She can only see him as he is— alone.

“Of course. But it was never for me. I don’t have that same light you all share.”

Rey snorts. “Liar.”

Kylo’s eyes widen, sharpen. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do. I saw it. In the darkness.” Rey leans back on her elbow, pensive. “If I started with dark magic in me, couldn’t you still have the light?”

“Rarities like that only strike once every few generations. It would be impossible.” Kylo looks away. “And you were a darksider. Are, possibly.” Kylo’s gaze turns back to her, almost hungrily.

Rey feels something shift inside of her. Today had been so much. She possessed dark magic. Darksiders killed her mother. She and this tall darksider— the one who had possibly given her her lightside powers— had made a light and dark supernova, and now could see and hear each other from opposite sides of the moon. And his gaze, though hooded, reaches something inside of her. She felt so, so tired.

“How do I get rid of you?” Rey asks.

“I...don’t know. This is new.” Kylo looks pensive.

“This is all new. We have to be the ones to figure it out.”

“That...I agree.”

“You know what’s also new?” Rey asks.

“What?”

“The proto-star we apparently constructed in the middle of the Copernica stadium.”

Kylo exhales a few times, until Rey realizes that he’s laughing. He has a crooked smile to prove it.

“Yeah, good luck cleaning that up,” Kylo retorts.

“I’m glad you’re so concerned.”

“Well, every scholar in Selene is frantically going through the scientific and astrological archives to find out what it is. Especially, since we’re being honest, if it can be used as a weapon against us.”

“Geez.”

“I’m sure your side are doing the same.”

Rey sighs. A silence falls over them.

“I’m sorry about your mom. I wouldn’t have...if Duke Snoke hadn’t...” Kylo hesitates, seeming to take a moment to think about his next words. “It shouldn’t have taken place.”

“Yeah.” Rey looks down at her fingers.

“I’m Kylo Ren.” Rey looks up to see his hand extended.

Feeling surprised at the official introduction, Rey does the same. “Rey. Just Rey.”

Their hands clasp while their eyes meet. His hand is warm, callused and...she can feel it? He seems to realize the same thing at the same time and his eyes light up at the discovery. They can touch each other. A tiny spark of light passes through them and...Kylo vanishes from her room, with a breath of chilled air. With him, the last of Rey’s energy leaves her. She’d met her mother’s murderer and watched him knock out her friend. She’d tried to avenge her mother, and in the process created a supernova. Only now she’s discovered that he’s somehow haunting her through darksider magic, full of secrets about who she is. She still feels his gaze upon her, though it’s vanished into the night.

She falls onto her bed and into a deep, dark sleep, dreaming of deserts, light, and a pair of warm brown eyes.