Chapter Text
Rey was brought back to consciousness by the persistent wail of an alarm.
—woo-eeeee-wooooo-eeeee-woooo-eeee—
That was for the acceleration compensator wasn’t it? Had it come loose again, why—
She tried to sit up too quickly and the pain hit her all at once, a sharp agonising flare in her shoulders and head, accompanied by a deep persistent throb in her back. The side of her face felt sticky with drying blood.
Her eyes opened by degrees, noting the darkness she lay in. Whatever had happened had knocked out enough power that even the emergency lighting hadn’t kicked in. Still, there was just enough that she could see that the viewscreen in front of her was cracked, full of sand, a tiny sliver of sky visible in the upper corner. She could taste the metallic tang of blood in her mouth and took a moment to spit it onto the control room floor.
It all came flooding back to her suddenly—she had lost control of the Falcon in the upper atmosphere, had been forced to make an emergency landing because of—
Kylo Ren.
She automatically reached for her lightsaber, finding it still hanging by her side, the cold metal solid and reassuring in her grip. Kylo Ren. The First Order had found her not far from here, cut her off. Only a small contingent of them but she’d been alone, overly confident in her own abilities to make this one quick trip untroubled. The Falcon demanded a co-pilot really but she hadn’t wanted to take Chewie or R2 away from Master Skywalker, aware of how lonely he’d been in his exile. Besides it should have been a simple supply run, there and back in under a day, nothing where she’d need the weapons or any of the advanced systems. And no one should have known she where she was. No one outside of the Resistance anyway.
She’d managed to take out most of the ships by steering through an asteroid belt but somehow he’d managed to evade the rocks, to stick to her until both of them were dropping lower and lower into the atmosphere of this random planet in a game of cat and mouse that had ended badly. Had ended with her lying here surrounded by wreckage.
I must have broken something, I can’t be that lucky…
Slowly, slowly she eased herself up from the floor, feeling her muscles scream once again in protest. No sharp flare of pain this time though, no grating of bone. Just the continual thud of pain in her head.
Maybe I really am that lucky.
A cloud of smoke erupted into the cockpit, the acrid smell of burning circuits made her choke and cough. Not good, those gases would be poisonous after a while, she would need to vent them as soon as she could.
She looked up, groping through the steam for the valve to release them and abruptly realised that poisonous gas might be the least of her worries. The sky was showing through the jagged hole above her, not a minor rent that would be patched up easily but a great irregular tear in the side of the ship. Something that looked almost certainly unfixable.
Well there’s only one way to find out.
She touched the lightsaber at her side, for luck or reassurance she wasn’t sure which, then began the laborious climb out.
The familiarity of the vista that greeted her was such that for one long, dreadful moment she was convinced she was back on Jakku. Sand stretched out in every direction before her, mountains of it shifting in the wind beneath a flat pale sky. The sunlight looked like it was just starting to fade into the blue hour. The lingering time before dark or just before sunrise when, back on Jakku, there had been the most activity. Cool enough to move around without overheating, not yet cold enough to bite.
There was no movement out on the open sands here though, nothing breaking the long stretch of the horizon. Well nothing aside from the First Order ship a few hundred feet to her left.
Grunting with effort Rey hauled herself over the side of her craft, sliding down until she hit the sand. The rear of the hull was ripped out entirely, wreckage strewn in its wake, a path of destruction that led back to the horizon.
I destroyed the Falcon.
A wave of despair washed over her, making her want to sink to her knees.
She’d destroyed the Millennium Falcon. The legendary Millennium Falcon. The last piece of Han Solo left in the world and it was scattered in bits all over this backwater planet. Her eyes were drawn to the spot where the other ship was lying on its side, black standing out starkly against the whiteness of the sand.
Well possibly not quite the last piece…
His ship had taken less damage than hers that was easy to see. A spark of resentment flared that she, the better pilot by far, should have ended up with her ship a wreck while his seemed only superficially damaged in comparison. Still an easier landing meant nothing, it just took the wrong circuit to rupture and the resultant explosion would take care of Kylo Ren.
Good.
The thought was vicious but after all that had happened today she allowed herself it. Master Luke would be thoroughly disappointed. Maybe it would have been easier to have forgiveness if her head hadn’t hurt quite so much.
For a long moment she simply stared at the black bulk of the ship, trying to decide on the best course of action. She needed to know if he was alive, needed to know how much of a threat he posed. They were out here alone, no back-up, it would be easy for him to surprise her. And if she stood any chance of getting off this planet at all she would definitely need to pillage his ship for circuitry, and tools.
The nose mounted loading ramp was hanging crookedly open, leaving enough gap for her to wriggle her way through, scraping her shoulder on the way in. It stung but she was already so battered, what was another minor injury to add to the list?
She crouched just inside, poised to run at the slightest movement, waiting until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Now that she was within it gave her some perverse pleasure to see that his ship was actually in a worse condition than she’d thought from the outside. Even though the outer hull was intact there were nests of wires hanging loose from the ceiling, panels that had slipped from the walls, the whole front console had broken in two.
Kylo Ren was hanging from the seat harness, like some kind of grotesque puppet, blood dripping down from his helmet to pool on the floor beneath him. Dread crawled over her skin as she watched him. Alive or dead, it was impossible to know until she’d dealt with the unpleasant matter of his mask. Silently she crept her way over, reaching up with unsteady hands. She felt around, shaking fingertips searching for the release. Waiting for his hand to shoot out, catch her by the wrist, something .
A hiss of air and it came loose, the smooth black metal sliding free under her hands. There was blood matted in his dark curls and his breathing was fast, shallow.
Unconscious, that was lucky.
The scar she’d given him ran red across his face, still livid and ugly looking but beyond that he was unchanged. It irritated her how open he could look, how young. Made her remember how, for a moment when he‘d taken his helmet off on the Destroyer, she had wanted to trust him.
Now she was closer she could see that the thick straps holding him up were charred and blackened in places. He’d been trying to cut his way through the harness before he’d succumbed to unconsciousness, lost his grip on his lightsaber. It was hardly a precision tool and in several places he’d sliced right through his clothing by accident, leaving shallow burns on his own skin. He had been desperate.
Like an animal trying to gnaw its way out of trap.
If she thought about him that way, a bloodied injured animal caught in a trap, maybe she could have empathy. But animals had no malice, animals only lashed out on instinct.
Where had the lightsaber fallen?
She fumbled around the debris at his feet to no avail, eventually finding it wedged between the pilots seat and the wall. It must have rolled after he dropped it, handle still wet with blood. She picked it up, holding the dark metal gingerly between her fingertips. It wouldn’t do to accidentally trigger it, the cross-guards might take a finger off. Besides touching it felt… wrong somehow , bad. Made her remember the flash of red light as it had stabbed through Han Solo’s chest.
Rey thought of the snow then, of running frantically from him. Of the terror that had overwhelmed her even as she raised the lightsaber to fight. Expecting to die, out there in the unfamiliar cold of a planet that wasn’t a planet.
“I hate you,” she whispered “I hate you, you’re vile.”
His lightsaber hilt was in her hand, metal cold against her palm, the feel of his blood sticky against her skin. All it would take was a flick of the switch and it would thrum to life.
“You deserve to die.”
She wasn’t even sure what planet this was, having someone else to look after who was this injured, even if they were an ally, a friend, would’ve been difficult. And if he woke up, recovered, it would only get infinitely worse. Rey pressed the end against his side, finger hovering over the button.
But it wasn’t in her to kill him.
The hilt clattered from her fingers as she sat back, a twist in her stomach. She wondered if Master Luke would be proud of her restraint or disappointed in her temptation.
The cold bit into her suddenly and deep as she crawled out of the ship, the sun having set while she had been deciding his fate. Above her in the clear sky, she could see there was a far distant white moon and innumerable bright cold stars. For a long moment she stared up, wondering which one was Ahch-To. It should be near enough to see from here, a pin prick of light amongst all the others.
A place she had started to think of as home.
A home she’d never see again unless she started thinking practically. The beacon on her ship had been damaged beyond all repair but his craft had one that was functioning, barely, the signal weak and flickering. Undaunted she dragged the remains of both back into the shelter of the downed command shuttle and set about dismantling them. It took quite a lot of jury-rigging but Rey managed to botch them together so that that the signal was strong enough it stood a chance of getting off planet, maybe even out of system if she was lucky. The persistent headache that was throbbing behind her temples didn’t help much, she must have hit her head harder than she thought.
Pressing the button to record the message, she spoke clearly, trying to sound as confident as she could “I am requesting the assistance of the Resistance .”
Who knew who would pick up the signal though? It could just as easily be the First Order. Maybe it was even more likely to be, they had more ships, more patrols.
At that thought her eyes flickered over to the black unmoving figure of Kylo Ren, wondering what her fate would be in that case.
The unsettling thought occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, no one would pick it up at all.
They could die here, both of them.