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Jakku, the junkyard of the galaxy. A place so far from anywhere that mattered, and yet it was important to him because of what it meant to HER. Kylo Ren wrapped beige robes around his usual black clothing, and covered his face as he moved through the trading port. He watched Scavengers scurrying around, hoarding their finds and bartering bits and pieces of space junk for food and drink. It was hard to imagine her here, struggling for every scrap of food and drop of water. Anger burned inside of him that this had been her life. She’d had nothing, only the things she’d fought tooth and nail for. It was easy to understand why she clung to her beliefs so stubbornly, the mere miracle of her survival here had been because of that force of will.
A speeder had been easy to procure, and soon Kylo was racing across the desert wasteland. The coarse grains of sand burned his exposed skin, but the discomfort was nothing to the gaping hole inside of him. The wound left by her absence. A month after the death of Snoke, and the rage inside him had calmed, but still their link remained. He could feel it, an itch under his skin that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. He’d been ignoring it, not sure he could face her hatred and condemnation.
Murderous Snake.
Monster.
Creature in a Mask.
All things she had called him, and none were false. He’d been such a monster that his parents had sent him away as a child, afraid of the power inside of him. Even his uncle, famed Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, had been so afraid of him that he’d tried to murder him in his sleep. That betrayal had made fractured something inside him, and the dam holding back the Darkness had burst. In his pain, he’d turned his back on everything his family had taught him to believe. He was a monster, and she’d been right to run. She was good, pure, and so sure that she was on the right path. The only time he’d felt anything close to that had been for the briefest moment when he’d removed his glove, and across the reaches of the universe touched Rey’s hand. It had been brief, fleeting, but oh so real.
Ahead in the sand Kylo spotted a derelict, Imperial AT-AT. Unremarkable, except that he knew this had been HER home for as long as she could remember. He stopped the speeder and proceeded on foot. Time and sand had scored the surface, weathering the metal and obscuring its markings. He found a break in the hull and slipped inside…surprised that no one had yet pillaged her small home. Standing in the center of her living space he closed his eyes and breathed in, feeling a familiar sense of longing and crushing loneliness. Under all of the emotion he could feel HER, an impression left by her many years surviving out here in the harshest of environments. Alone.
Ben walked around the room, removing his gloves and stroking his fingers over the cot where she had slept. He imagined her curled up under her threadbare blanket, desperate for sleep, but afraid of those roaming the night. One of the walls was scored with countless tiny marks, and he realized that she’d marked the days she’d been there. Days without number, and no real hope that they would ever end…until they finally had. His eyes paused on a little ragged, handmade doll. It was cobbled together from scraps of orange fabric and twine, a little alliance fighter pilot. A tiny smile tugged at his lips at the evidence of something so very normal. Ben wasn’t sure why, but he slipped in into his jacket, taking that small piece of her to keep at his side. At least until he could tempt her back.
Ben stepped out of the wreckage and turned back to look at it. There was a need to protect the one place Rey had ever called home, and so he stretched out his hand and called the sand to come and bury it completely, hiding it from anyone that might dare violate this piece of her past. When he was finished, there was no trace of the AT-AT left…nothing to hint at what way beneath the dune. It took effort to turn away, but he mounted the speeder and headed back towards his ship. He regretted that his small moment of self-indulgence needed to end so soon, but he was the Supreme Leader now and he needed to return. But oh how he wanted to stay…