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The horrible roaring sound came first, echoing loud in Kylo’s ears.
It put him immediately on edge, something thrumming through the Force that was unfamiliar to him. His hand drifted to his lightsaber, sensing the threat as a shiver of fear darted down his spine.
Then, it hit. Kylo grabbed at his chest with a shaking rasp of air. By his extensive training that gave him the ability to hide his pain, was he able to stay upright as he stood at the bridge of the Vanquisher.
The silvery moon—he had already forgotten the name—floated quietly in the viewport. Personnel milled around him, giving reports of the airstrike to him, to each other, either not noticing or studiously ignoring their Supreme Leader’s state.
“Destroy them,” he had said of the airstrike on the Resistance installation.
The Resistance had turned to a guerilla-style method of attack after Crait. It was all they could afford to do, it seemed. But it kept the organization alive for almost a year.
It hurt. Pain radiated from his chest, down his left side into his leg. His ears were too hot and the Force was screaming, burning into his skull.
“Where?’ he breathed. “Why?”
And then he knew. The girl. Rey. The beacon of light that was tethered to him by a spider’s thread, reduced but still there at the end of their…their flirtation. Crait had done its job ending whatever fledgling relationship they had together. The bond burned now, unnaturally bright.
Stars burn brightest before their deaths.
“No.”
He turned on his heel, shaking finely, and stormed off the bridge.
No. No.
Enclosed in his spartan quarters, Kylo’s breath still hitched in panic, a survival instinct that wasn’t his to have. He fumbled and scrambled, trying to bring himself to a peace in the Force, so he could reach out. Just a little.
He reached, after months of shunning the bond. His mind reached, the girl, Rey, so close. He touched her mind and he dropped to his knees with a choking gasp. The pain doubled, tripled, needles and fire.
“No,” he moaned.
His breath hissed through his teeth, in sync with hers. The pain was from her. It couldn’t be anything else. No Snoke to plant thoughts into his head. This was real. Broken bones, lacerated flesh.
“Rey," he whispered, calling out to her.
“No!” The pain flared as Rey lashed out at him, trying to push him away. “You did this. You did this to me!”
Another guttural groan escaped his mouth.
Her image was clearing, a supernova turning to a human. And somehow the human image was more beautiful and more horrifying.
Blood soaked into her clothes, a gash from the top of her shoulder stretching down towards her breast.
The details slowly trickled in, fractured bits and pieces. The airstrike had come and blew a hole in their hiding place. It would have killed everyone in that structure had Rey not used the Force to keep the ceiling from collapsing. She had left herself undefended, and a piece of debris crashed down and struck her.
She was a hero for that. In a way, he had made her a hero. But, he didn't want it like this.
“You gave the order, didn’t you?” she said, each word paining her and him as they left her lips.
“Stop talking," Kylo plead, "Please.”
If you die, I don’t think I will be able to live afterwards.
It was a deadman's switch: one dies and the other dies with them. It was more effective a weapon that neither side could ever devise. Snoke, the Force, whatever, cleaved them together. There was no question about that. Their lives were interconnected, sharing strength and weakness.
He stumbled forward, both in the Star Destroyer and down on the moon's surface. His knees hit his bed and he flopped onto the sheets.
Pain flared again, a quick flare of aggravation. Somebody was moving her, to safety. He didn't want to think about who was touching her, who was caring for her. It brought an ugly feeling of jealousy that he was in no mood to mull over.
“Let me help,” he said.
A little choked gasp escaped her mouth, the bond shaking, seeming to fray. It had been too long since their minds had connected like this. It was never when either of them was under this kind of pain and stress.
He lunged forward, grabbing for the arm that rested limp by her side. He grasped her hand and the pain blinded him. Her pain was becoming his.
In the physical plane, he burrowed in the blankets, shivering. Shock. She was in shock and, now, he was in shock too. This was going to kill them both.
The Force hummed as they communed in a mutual pain. He hissed pained breaths through his teeth. Every beat of his heart sent pain wracking through him. His stomach heaved and churned. Snoke’s “lessons” had left him feeling like this. There was that sickening feeling like he was moments away from his body giving out.
Through the bond, he bowed over her. The people around her gave no indication that they could see him in his ultimate weakness. At least, he had that going for him. He would be a laughingstock in Resistance propaganda if he was seen fawning and swooning over a Jedi.
“Please,” he gasped.
He didn't know who he was pleading to.
The bond opened up in answer and he buckled.
When he awoke—the chrono told him that it was at least a day since the last time he was conscious—he was alone in his room. Panic, anew, jolted his weakened body.
“Rey?” he gasped.
His throat was dry and his stomach ached in a yawning hunger. The rest of him didn't feel great either. That couldn't mean she was dead, right? It couldn't possibly be. He would have been dead too.
Kylo’s body sagged into the bed and he closed his eyes. An inhale through his nose, his mind reaching through the Force.
He fumbled through the dark, looking for the faint strand that connected him and her. The image came first, outlines shifting to full shapes to sensation. The bond was something Kylo could never really get used to, but to have an answer meant everything to him at that very moment.
Rey barely looked like she was alive, matching how he felt. Her skin was waxy and pale. Bacta clung to her hair. If not for the slight rise and fall of her chest and the soft beeping of the medical equipment around her, Kylo would have thought she was dead.
Kylo reached out and touched the hand that lay by her side. Her right hand was bandaged and resting across her chest. More bandages crawled up her arm and down her chest, a mix of gauze and bacta. He almost swooned at the fatigue again, his body lending his strength to her.
Her hand was impossibly small in his, her entire body too small where she slept.
He tasted bacta and antiseptic and ash when he ducked down to press his lips against her hand. In his dreams, too many dreams to count, he had thought of salt and metal when he imagined the taste of her skin.
Another kiss and another. They were apologies, penance offered to someone who couldn't accept.
His fault, his fault. His eyes burned with tears. He wanted to attribute them only to extreme fatigue and frustration, but he could only lie to himself so much.
“I’m sorry, Rey. I know you probably won’t forgive me. I wouldn’t forgive me. But it’s okay. As long as you’re alive. That’s what matters.”
A stilted confession. He could only be thankful that she was very much asleep and couldn't hear him.
He wiped a hand over his eyes, pressing in to make lights appear in his vision. He didn't know how many painkillers he would need to take to make the all-encompassing pain lessen enough for him to keep appearances, but that was something for him to think about later.
The creak of metal alerted him to someone walking into the room. His instinct was to ignore them, but the soft, shocked intake of breath told him something was wrong.
He turned in his chair and froze, watching the woman who birthed him stand in the doorway.
Leia had her eyes forced laser-like on him, not on Rey, like no machinations of the Force could keep her from seeing him. Luke interrupted Rey and him in Ahch-To, now Leia interrupted him here.
Kylo knew she was exhausted, leaning on a staff. Leia had dark circles under her eyes since Kylo could remember, but they were particularly dark. This was a nightmare; it had to be.
The General of the Resistance and the Supreme Leader of the First Order watched each other. Kylo knew he could disappear from that room at any moment, but he could only sit with his hands clenched into fists.
“She will be okay,” Leia said, softly.
Kylo jerked, shrinking in his seat like when he was a child who just confronted on a misdeed. How long had it been since he had heard his mother's voice in person?
“I know," he murmured.
He sensed as much through the Force. The Force would bring him to the brink of death to keep her alive.
“Will you come back?” Leia asked.
The question was almost like a rebuke and he didn't know the true meaning behind the question. Was she asking him if he would return to Rey’s bedside? If he would pursue the Resistance again, bombing them? If he would turn to the light?
He opened his mouth, both a snapping answer and an honest non-answer warring on his tongue.
Rey shifted where she lay, breath snorting out of her nose.
Kylo recoiled in shock, fear and guilt welling up in tandem.
The bond shut between them, the med-bay and Rey and his mother fading to nothing, and he was back in his room.
His chest shook with a shuddering inhale and exhale, the slick of bacta still clinging to his mouth.
“Why did you do it?” Rey asked.
The connection had crept up on him, snatching him from that place between asleep and awake. His mind had been on her for days that it had become almost impossible for him to tell between his vivid memories and the actual bond.
He knew that this was real. Rey had crept her way into his consciousness until she stood in his room. Kylo sat unmoving in his chair.
She eyed him, his harsh judge. Though she was pale and weak, she still wielded great power over him. This was a problem. He should have cut off the bond while he had the chance. He should have left her to die, freeing him of this thorn, this fatal weakness from him.
“What part of it?” he droned. Feigning ignorance. That was a worthwhile strategy. Her mind was probably addled a bit from fatigue and didn't remember most of what happened anyway.
“You stayed.”
The echoed sensation, his hand in his own hand, crossed to him. The feeling of lips, his own lips, on his hand. Kylo’s face heated up, caught in the act. Had she been awake the whole time?
“We were both going to die if I didn’t stay,” he said.
A lame excuse, but it was partially the truth. He had needed to sustain her through the Force to keep them both alive.
She shivered, despite being covered in coats and blankets. “I don't think I believe you.”
“Well, believe me or not. I don't really care,” Kylo sighed.
Another lie. He cared almost too much about whether or not she believed him.
Rey watched him before taking a step towards him, then another and another. Kylo stayed very still as finally Rey stood less than an arm’s length from him. She was still pale and weak, but not nearly as bad as the last time he saw her.
She was still remarkably beautiful, a flame that still burned white-hot.
He expected a punch in the jaw and he would have deserved it. He would punch himself if he could, if it transferred more of the pain he caused her back to him.
Instead, she reached for him, her hand hanging in the air for a moment before letting it rest back down at her side.
“I should hate you for what happened. I should hate you for a lot of things. But I don’t.” Her lips twisted in something like a smile. “That’s sad of me, isn’t it?”
She winced and Kylo sucked in a small breath as a whisper of pain drifted through the bond.
It was sad for both of them. She still felt something for the man that caused her pain. And he was hopelessly...he couldn't allow the words into his mind.
“Don’t worry. I hate myself enough for the both of us,” Kylo muttered. A truth, this time. He had the limited strength to do his regular First Order duties as he had no choice but make appearances to stave off mutiny. Though the strike had been a victory, he felt nothing but pain for it.
He couldn't do anything right. He couldn't be Luke's perfect apprentice. He couldn't be Snoke's slave. Now, he couldn't be a proper Supreme Leader without being crippled inside and out.
Rey reached out again, this time her hand hanging in the air, expectant that he would take it. That desire ran through the bond, louder than the joined pain.
Kylo lifted up his hand and cradled her hand in his. A cool sense of relief shivered through him.
“I’m on three different medications right now. I can barely feel the right side of my body,” Rey said as explanation.
That explained the pain dulling in Kylo’s body. She was a glass of water after wandering through the desert.
They stood like that, Kylo unwilling to move or speak lest Rey remember who he was and recoil from the monster before her.
“Thank you.”
Kylo blinked. “Why are you thanking me?”
His heart climbed to his throat when she ducked down to kiss the inside of his wrist.
“I owe you one. On Jakku, I would owe you my life for saving mine. I’m not on Jakku anymore, but—.”
Kylo finished for her, “But there will be a day when I’ll need something from you and you’ll give it to me?”
Rey scoffed under her breath. “Well, within reason.”
“It won’t be me getting myself blown up,' he said.
An echo, echo, memory of the pain lanced through both of them.
“Promise?” Rey asked, painfully earnest.
It was something he couldn't promise. This was a war. He couldn’t be sure he would live to see tomorrow. He could avoid the unfriendly end of a bomb or a blaster all he wanted but there was no guarantee. This was an agreement between the two of them and neither the Resistance nor the First Order were meant to honor it as well.
They were doomed, both of them, until the war ended or the bond was severed. Neither of those things showed signs of ever happening.
Now, they could only be prepared.
“I promise,” Kylo said, wishing with every fiber that he could keep that promise.
His hand dropped away from hers, but his fingers still burned.
“I will see you again,” Rey breathed, the last words a faint whisper as she disappeared from sight.
That was a promise they both could keep.