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Rey doesn’t win every time.
Injury and…other concerns had clouded Kylo Ren’s focus in their first true confrontation. When they meet again, she is stronger. Aware of her power. But he is restored, and all of her new strength is nothing against the Dark Side.
She staggers under his onslaught. He can feel her scrabbling for the Light, for calm and certainty, but there is too much fear in her now. It slips away, and he wrenches her lightsaber from her grasp with the Force, crushing it. The abrupt shift in weight throws her; she slips to one knee, and his own weapon is at her throat before she can get her feet under her again.
“The Light abandons you so easily.” His voice echoes in the void between them, mechanised. He has not made the mistake of removing his mask this time. “The Dark Side is not so fickle. I know you can feel it beckoning.
“It can wave all it likes,” she grits out. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to say hello.”
“Ah. The pointless humour. Does it really make you feel better, denying the inevitable?”
“Yes, actually.”
He regards her, through the mask and the Force. The panic rises in her chest, and her body heaves in sharp, gasping pants. And then, a thought, so loud and so clear that she might as well have thrown it right to him.
If he was going to kill me, he would have done it already.
Her lips part in revelation. The Light roars back into her, a cresting wave washing away her uncertainty. She tilts her chin up, jaw squaring.
Behind his mask, Kylo Ren smiles. She can consider that a victory all she likes. He has no interest in killing her when she might be of use.
He brings the blade of the lightsaber across her throat instead of the point as he crouches, lowering himself to her level. The shuddering plasma reflects in her eyes, making them as red as the blade.
The colour suits her.
“I haven’t been patient with you,” he admits. “That’s my fault. But it’s okay. I know now. I can wait.”
Silence, except for the judder of his weapon. She doesn’t ask what for. She knows.
Her neck arches forward, and the surge of panic running through him is primal instinctive, as he jerks the blade back from her throat. Her lips peel back, and he can’t tell if she’s grinning or growling.
“Believe me. No matter how long you think you can wait, I can wait longer.” And it’s definitely a smile now, bitter and grim and something else he doesn’t know how to name. “I’ve had enough practice.”
He lets her leave, grateful for the mask that hides the twist of frustration on his face. It’s only after she’s gone that it occurs to him to wonder:
What are you waiting for now, little scavenger?
The next time he sees her, it is from a distance. She has a new lightsaber, another made from her own hands. She dances through Hux’s stormtroopers as though gravity has no hold on her, silver blades creating patterns in the air, carving them in armour.
There is a break in the carnage, a breath. He is hidden in the shadows, feeling no need to interfere with the General’s plans (or their failure), but her eyes are drawn to him anyway. She can’t see him, but she knows he’s there. He could close his eyes and feel her just the same.
Are these lives worth so little, that ending them is somehow of the Light?
For a moment, nothing. He is forced to wonder if she heard him. And then her mind slams into his, with neither finesse nor patience.
I don’t need lessons in morality from someone who slaughters entire villages.
I would say you’ve worked your way through a small village of stormtroopers by now, wouldn’t you?
He waits for the falter, for the black to encroach on her silver. There are cracks in her. He intends to seep through them.
It doesn’t come.
So certain you’re right?
Hux would never lower himself to get personally involved in a mission, which is lucky for Hux. The last stormtrooper topples as Rey withdraws her lightsaber, standing amongst the bodies. Her whole body heaves from exertion, strands of hair falling loose from her bun, slick with sweat and sticking to her face. She finds him again, unerring in the darkness.
Certain you are.
There’s a disorienting pull, and it takes Kylo Ren a moment to realise that she has invited – dragged him, actually – into her mind. Anguish swamps him, the sort of pain that could propel him through a battle of his own. He expects to see it weaken her; he hopes to see her drawing strength from it.
Their lives mean something. Her voice in his mind is subdued, but not soft with it. Quiet and weakness are unrelated. But so does mine. And so do the people I care about. And so do the people who will die if I don’t stop you.
There’s no taste of justification to the words, no certainty, no righteousness. She was faced with a choice, and she made it. Now she lives with the consequences.
He shakes himself free of her. She hasn’t raised her weapon against him, but he feels cut open anyway, raw. The scar bisecting his face burns in sympathy, or maybe that’s just in his head.
She pauses, teetering on the edge of another choice.
And then she is gone, swallowed by her own darkness.
He has never fought against a double bladed lightsaber before.
It requires a greater awareness on his part, more focus. Danger, dismemberment, death, they can all come from two possible directions now, and she’s fast enough that it isn’t always clear which one he has to worry about most.
He has never felt so exhilarated.
“You’re tiring.” It’s a struggle to maintain his preferred monotone, but he’s not wrong. The staff requires more motion from her, wider swings, better footwork.
He has never felt her so exhilarated, either.
“So are you,” she shoots back.
“And what will happen if I weaken first?” He won’t, but he’s curious. Her mind is an inscrutable thing to him now, ever since she invited him in. It’s as if, with that first invitation, she somehow made it impossible for him to return without a second. “Do you still want to kill me, Rey?”
The crack that splits the air when she brings her blade down on his would suggest yes, but she doesn’t say anything. It irritates him, the silence digging little fingernails under his skin. He disengages, shifts his grip, flies at her again.
She fends him off. Every time they meet, she is improved. He can’t help but wonder if she’s learning from him, as well as the old man.
He can’t decide if that’s something he should stop, or encourage.
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” she says finally. The memory of her anguish shudders through him, a pointless exercise. He can gain no power from her pain. “I’m tired of death.”
“Why fight me?” The anger in his own voice, even through the mechanisation, takes him by surprise. He can’t swallow it down, so he embraces it, feeds off it. Sparks fly as he hacks away at her defence, stroke by relentless stroke. “Why! Why do any of this if you have no intention of ending it?”
He cannot find a single hole in her.
“Because it stops you from fighting anyone else.”
He dreams of an ocean. An endless expanse of water, wide enough to rage in parts, soothe in others.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, her.
Luke is long gone from the island by the time he finds it. The old man has worn himself into the very stones, and the Force echoes that. Even when Kylo steps into the middle of it, there is barely a ripple. There is calm here, and sadness, but nothing of the Dark.
He can’t bring himself to hate it. That, a part of him muses, has always been his problem. He had thought he hated Han Solo. He told himself he hated Luke Skywalker. And the girl…
Well.
He’s never been able to lie to himself about the girl.
It’s no surprise when she shows up. There is a tie between them, a push and pull that he finds impossible to resist.
Does she feel the same way? Or is she here in response, rather than a part of it all?
It might be best, he thinks, if that question is never answered. He sits at the edge of the cliff, watching the ocean undulate before them. Waits for the inevitable snap-hiss.
His whole body seizes when she sits next to him.
There’s no elegance in her. She throws herself down like a sack of potatoes, unspooling on the salt-lashed rocks, a ribbon wound too tightly and finally released. Her legs dangle over the side, bare below the knee, smudged in oil and dirt. She leans back on her hands. Her lightsaber is clipped to her belt.
“What would Snoke do?” she asks, staring at the same emptiness he is. “If he were here?”
“The Supreme Leader has me. He has no need to visit places like this directly.”
“So you think you’re doing what he would? Enjoying the ocean and the quiet is on the Snoke-approved list of activities?”
He snorts. It’s a distressingly normal sound, unencumbered by the helmet. He should have left it on.
“I am not some child, trailing after his wishes and begging for approval. He doesn’t need to appreciate my methods to—”
He breaks off. There’s a smile playing at the corners of her mouth, as she tips her head up to watch a gull wheeling overhead. “Approve of the results?”
Frustration flares in his gut. He’s almost used to it, the ricochet of emotion this girl prompts in him.
Maybe he hates that, at least.
“Why are you here?”
It’s her turn to snort. She does look at him then, and there are hints of her own frustration in her face. She’s an easy read, and yet he still can’t seem to pin her down. “Yes, that’s the question. Why am I, a Jedi, here. In a place sacred to the Force.”
It’s somehow a surprise to hear her identify as a Jedi. She looks less like one than she had when they first encountered in each other, her clothes a uniform grey. Sitting next to her is nothing like being near Luke had been. She is strength, but she is human as well.
His mind reaches for hers, the expectation of rejection written into the mental motion. She doesn’t invite him in, but she doesn’t rebuff him, either. His thoughts skim the surface of hers.
It occurs to him that she has no expectations of him at all.
“You aren’t at peace.” He throws the words at her like a challenge. “I can feel it. Uncertainty rages in you. You don’t know your place, you aren’t even sure that you’ll ever find it. You don’t know what you want. And yet you are…stained with the Light. If you are what a Jedi looks like, how does Luke Skywalker dare claim to be the same?”
She raises her eyebrows at him. “If you’re what the Dark Side looks like, how can Snoke dare claim to be the same?”
He doesn’t know why that makes him angry, why that prompts the old, familiar rage to flare in his gut. He gets his feet under him, ready to stand, ready to reach for his lightsaber and end this meeting the way it should have begun, but she is already reaching. Not for her weapon, but for him.
Her hand closes around his wrist. And he should pull away, push her away. But he stills, and waits.
“You’re only angry because you know I’m right.”
His face twists, a snarl, a new mask. “What happened to someone who slaughters entire villages?”
“Nothing.” A tremor between them. Fear? No. He meets her gaze, and there is uncertainty there, but she’s not afraid of him. He knows what fear looks like on this girl. “Yet.”
He tears his hand from hers, tells himself he doesn’t stagger back. Removing her from him is a victory. “There is no yet. There is only what has been done, and what will be done.”
She rises. She’s nearly a foot shorter than him, and yet he’s the one who feels towered over. Her presence in the Force unfolds; it’s only in that moment that he realises just how powerful she is, not just here, but always.
“Then what are you going to do, Ben?”
There is no ocean in the dreams any longer.
There is only her.
Snoke’s holo is an irritation.
He’s not sure why now, after so many years. It has always been background noise to the Supreme Leader’s overwhelming presence in the Force. But lately – lately, he has looked up at the giant, ruined face of his master—
And been annoyed.
If he is so powerful – so supreme – then why does it need to be so large? Kylo knows what he looks like in person; not much taller than himself. The grandstanding, the attempt at intimidation that comes with projecting yourself to be the size of a building – what’s the point?
“You are troubled, Kylo Ren.”
He sketches a bow, calling on training older than the lessons he has received from Snoke to hide his irritation. Calm, he remembers, has its benefits. “No, Supreme Leader.”
A mistake.
-
Foolish, to deny – to challenge—
-
He is not that powerful yet.
-
There is only one way
to overthrow a master of the Dark Side
-
It does not involve the Light.
She is beautiful, in fury.
The thought swarms up from somewhere dead in the back of his skull, accompanying the realisation that her anger isn’t directed at him.
“He did something to you!” She swings widely, and he’s reminded distantly of their first battle, in all its brutal glory. She had marked him, then, and he had deserved it.
Has she marked him other ways, since?
He swats aside her efforts almost negligently. The Dark Side coalesces around him, crackling in the very air. To be near him is to hurt. She doesn’t back off her assault. “The Supreme Leader reminded me of my goals.”
“Yeah?” she pants. “Yours, or his?”
It’s a laughable question, but Kylo doesn’t crack a smile. It’s harder to fend off her next strike, and the one after that. “Why do you care?” he snaps back. “You have no reason – none – to be concerned for my goals. They are in opposition to yours. That is the only relevant piece of information.”
He has switched to attack without thought, and expects her to switch accordingly to defence. That is how their dances have gone lately, drawn out exchanges that give them both time to—
To—
But she doesn’t. Her silver blade blocks his red, and then she does something. He can’t see what, it happens too fast, but his lightsaber spins out of his hand and he waits for hers at his throat, the typical sign of victory.
The silver glow snaps out of the air, leaving them both in the shining darkness of Dantooine. Shallowly inhabited, there is nothing to block the stars. One of her hands fists in his cloak, dragging him closer, and the other—
There is a click.
The mask comes off.
And there are a million and one things he can do to her right now, because he is uninjured and flush with the Dark Side and she has lowered her main defence. In favour of being…closer?
She tugs his head down. Her forehead touches his, and an explosion ignites in his skull.
“Believe me. No matter how long you think you can wait, I can wait longer.”
There is something in you. I want to know what it is.
-
Their lives mean something.
So does yours
-
“I don’t want to kill anyone,”
I don’t want to kill you.
-
“Why are you here?”
What are you without Snoke?
-
“He did something to you!”
Why does that make me so angry?
“I am not,” he snarls, tearing away from her, “some puppet.”
“Oh, really?” she yells back, and her lightsaber is in her hands again. “Then prove it!”
Kylo’s fingers wrap around his before he realises he even called for it. There was a time when she had been afraid of that as well, but under the flickering red plasma, he sees only determination in her gaze.
And the anger. The thing he has been searching for, that she has dealt with so wellover the months, that there has been nothing for him to dig his nails into and pick at.
It surges through her and over him.
And he still cannot grasp at it.
He doesn’t remember how that confrontation ends. Who won, why they both came away from it alive this time.
He remembers her eyes and her power, and an anger that hadn’t been directed entirely at him.
It’s chance when he sees her again.
A street in Coruscant. He knows exactly where he is, and yet he is lost anyway. The sight of her walking out of a mechanic’s with a bag and a mouthful of whistles feels a little like the Force throwing him a lifeline.
He’s moving before he thinks about it. That happens too often, around her. And he doesn’t have the mask or the cloak or anything that might mark him as leader of the Knights of Ren on him, but people part to let him through regardless.
There is space around her as well, he realises. Once he has invaded it.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” she says, not turning around, “I’d appreciate it if it wasn’t around all these people.”
What she does or does not appreciate should have no hold on him whatsoever. And yet; he flicks a thought towards her of a nearby alley (people on Coruscant know better than to traverse alleys, even on the upper levels). She catches it, and follows, and when they possess the illusion of privacy—
He has wanted. That is what it is, to be of the Dark Side. You want and you want and you want, until it gnaws a hole inside you and lets everything else spill out. You wait for the darkness to creep in, only to realise it has already made its home there.
You cannot get it out.
He does not want it out.
And yet – this girl, this creature of the Light. Rey. It’s only once she has burrowed deep inside him that he realises he wants her. Separate from her falling, separate from the Dark altogether. Not because she’s some pure, untouchable thing that he can either reach for and ruin, or never attain.
She is exactly within his reach. She struggles, and she fights, and she works, and she still isn’t sure that she has chosen correctly.
He should be far away from here. Far away from her. He has the thought, acknowledges it, and then his fingers are grasping the grey of her robes, pulling her into him. Her own thought – this is a terrible idea – scrapes across his mind, and he acknowledges that one as well before shunting it aside with the rest and kissing her.
She kisses him back.
He doesn’t expect that.
He doesn’t expect the way she presses up against him. He doesn’t expect the way he welcomes it, shifting his hands to her waist, pulling her closer. He doesn’t expect the softness of it, of her, of them together in this moment.
He doesn’t expect to be wanted in return.
This moment becomes that moment, and disappears altogether. He parts from her with a gasp, his hands turning from pull to push in the space of a second. She steps off immediately, face flushed and eyes guarded.
“No.” His breath comes short, and anger flares with it because he is weak and she is as well. She wasn’t supposed to let this happen. She was supposed to end it, and the temptation with it.
The laugh that escapes him is bitter, incredulous. Has there ever been a Force user so threatened with falling to the Light Side?
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re fighting a losing battle, Ben. We both know it.”
He shakes his head, backing away even as he reaches for her through the Force. Once again, he is not inviting. But not rejected, either. He searches for her anger, for the possibility that he had missed that night as she chipped away at Snoke’s hold on him. And he finds it, because Rey is not in the habit of denying her feelings, even to herself. She has never seen the point of it.
But it’s not the sharp thing it was. The anger exists, but whatever threat or promise it might have held once is gone.
He is the only one in danger of switching alliances, here.
“The Light has never abandoned you,” she says, and she’s soft again. He hates it.
He can’t hate her.
“What the Light does is none of my concern,” he chokes out. “It can do what it lies. I have forsaken it.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I know it.” He turns his back on her. He can’t – he can’t. “A mistake. This won’t happen again.”
She says something . Probably for the best. But it’s not her words that linger, long after he has left the planet and returned to the First Order.
It is the sensation – her certainty – that he is very, very wrong.