In which stories are told and mysteries pondered.
Kneeling in the straw by the restrung tripwire, Rey looked up at Kylo. He looked back. Shaved and freshly bandaged, propped up on his bed of fleeces, he looked—he looked—
Well…good, she had to admit. In more ways than one. Stronger than he had been only a few minutes ago.
It was almost dark outside. She could feel it. He obviously did, too. Her chest tightened.
“Are you going to ask me what we’re doing here?” he said.
Rey shrugged. “Surviving. Isn’t that enough?”
“No.”
No, it wouldn’t be. That rule-the-galaxy ambition must still be simmering. She couldn’t see him in that role. It was…what? Too big? Something else that would swallow him up? No, that wasn’t quite it, either. On the other hand, she couldn’t see him hiding out on some backwater planet for long, either.
“Then we’re surviving until you can stand up without using the Force.”
Impatience or resentment flickered over his face.
She drew up her knees, linked her arms around them. “You never wanted to kill me?” she said. “Never-ever, or just never last night?”
“Never,” he said.
“Oh.”
She thought of all the times she’d tried to kill him. Judging from the weight of his gaze, his thoughts were along the same lines.
“Why not?” she said. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
Han, skewered on his lightsaber—
No. She didn’t want to go to that place.
His mouth tightened unhappily. “Maybe I enjoy tormenting myself. Pain fuels the dark side. Didn’t Luke teach you that?”
“No.” Had that image of Han been her own? Or leaked through the bond?
“Pain, anger, hate— You’ve been teetering on the edge, Rey. There isn’t much you seem to hate, but you were working on it with me. It would’ve be easy to let you keep hating me. I could have. Give you an excuse, and you’d turn to the dark all by yourself. I wouldn’t even have to push you.”
“You said you didn’t want me to turn. Are you warning me?”
He gave her a strange look, one that raised goosebumps on her arms. “Maybe,” he finally said.
The mallikin in their pens snorted and stamped. Rey whipped around, her hand going to Kylo’s lightsaber.
The hassash was scuttling toward them through the straw. Rey tried to suppress a shudder, but one weltered over her anyway. The creature came to the hidden tripwire and paused, cocking its head at her. Carefully, it raised one limb after another, lifting itself over the tripwire. Its wide, lipless mouth stretched in what Rey could only think of as a grin, then it scuttled over to Kylo, passing close enough to force Rey to step back.
Kylo watched her as it clambered up to his shoulder, fingering and sniffing at his bandages. “I don’t think it will hurt you.”
She thought of the thing clinging to her last night, the open, hissing mouth full of teeth, the three purple eyes glaring at her and shivered again. The tightness in her chest was increasing. It was getting hard to breathe.
She felt eyes on her back and turned, her hand going to the lightsaber again.
“Rey,” Kylo said sharply.
She jumped and turned back. “Right! Right. Sorry.”
The dark was rising again. She could feel the nightmare panic beginning to press on her, trying to pry its way into her mind.
Kylo opened one arm in silent invitation. She bit her lip and eyed the hassash. It cocked its head, gave a questioning mew and climbed off him, folding itself into a bundle in the straw on his far side.
The dark worried at her like a sandstorm, trying to wear away reason. Rey pushed back against it, gritted her teeth and walked over to him, settled herself against his side. He curved his arm around her.
“Rey,” he said. “If I try to take—”
“You didn’t take anything last night,” she said fiercely. “You think I—”
“I wanted to,” he interrupted. “With the dark side so strong, it’s hard—” He swallowed.
The air seemed suddenly thin again. “What?”
His arm suddenly clamped around her, pinning her to his side.
“That’s what.” His voice by her ear was dark, hungry. He relaxed his grip again.
She’d stiffened when he gripped her, her heart lurching into her throat. Now she thrust away and knelt in the straw. That edge of panic returned. Her thundering heartbeat didn’t help.
“Why?” she said. “Why do you have to make everything hard, Ben?”
“Because this is hard. If you turned, if I did, it wouldn’t be. Since that isn’t happening, you need to know what you’re dealing with,” he said calmly. Calm wasn’t what she felt through the bond.
Since that isn’t happening. There it was. He had no intention of turning away from the dark.
She narrowed her eyes, anger blazing through her. “You’re forgetting again. I’m a scavenger. Nothing in my life was ever safe. I’m used to it.”
“I’m not forgetting. I know you’re capable of protecting yourself. You’ve proven it many times.” His jaw knotted. “But you shouldn’t have to be on guard against your partner.”
The anger evaporated. Oh.
The hassash rocked on its limbs, keening unhappily. Keeping one eye on it, she edged within Kylo’s reach again.
“Verrannallu said the dark side calls to you?”
He nodded once, his mouth in that tight, unhappy line again.
“Would it help to think of something else?”
Interest warred with wariness on his face. “What do you have in mind?”
She picked at the straw, feeling foolish. “I could tell you stories.”
“Stories.” Almost, almost he smiled. He ducked his head. “No one’s told me stories in a long time.”
That almost-smile completely disarmed her. She eased down by him. His arm came around her again, but there was nothing threatening in it.
“I used to tell myself stories, but I don’t remember anyone ever telling them to me.” She settled against him, searching for happy memories. There weren’t many.
“One time I found a holo-display in a star destroyer’s crew quarters,” she began. “I sat and played with it a while and finally got it to come on. The man in the holo wore an Imperial officer’s uniform. The woman he had his arm around had her hair braided on top of her head, with curls hanging down over her shoulders. She was beautiful. They held a little girl with pigtails on each side and one on top, like little fountains. She was laughing, looking up at the man, and he and the woman were smiling at the cam.
“I took it back to my shelter. I kept it a long time. Every night after I lay down, I looked at it and told myself it was me and my family, and we’d been on that destroyer before it crashed. We all got out in an escape pod, but we were separated and they’d been looking for me ever since.” She sighed. “Then I found out how long ago those ships crashed.”
Kylo was silent a long time. “Rey,” he finally said. “Bedtime stories are supposed to have a happy ending.”
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know that.” She thought again. “Okay, here’s one. There was one ship that had crashed in the Sinking Fields, so it had been buried a long time before it surfaced again. The central processing core was still intact, full of precious metals. It was a legend. Anyone who got to it would eat for the rest of their lives.
“One day I was running away from thugs and that wreck was the closest place to hide. I don’t remember what I’d done—something to make Unkar Plutt mad. They weren’t giving up, so I kept going deeper and deeper, wiggling into smaller and smaller spaces. It was pure accident…”
Kylo fell asleep first, tonight. No surprise, as much as he’d pushed himself today. Rey laid her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat while the dark raged and slashed like a storm beyond them.
* * *
Kylo dreamt of Luke and the lightsaber again. This time Rey wasn’t a witness. This time she was him.
She felt the brush of the Force against his mind that had brought him out of a deep sleep. The sound of a lightsaber igniting came as if in a dream, then a green glow pressed against his eyelids. He opened his eyes, sleepy and confused.
Wake up, she heard Kylo command himself. Wake up!
The dream continued, relentless.
His uncle stood over him, the glow lighting his twisted features.
Fear burst through Ben. Fear—and the Force. It ripped through him, almost with a will of its own. His hands came up. His lightsaber flew into one. Without his thought, it brought up his weapon in a parry as the fingers of his other hand curled, pulling at the roof.
“Ben, no!” Luke shouted, then the timbers of the little house crashed down around him.
No, Kylo’s mind whispered. Stop this. Stop dreaming this.
Ben scrambled up and out, wreckage slipping and stabbing under his bare feet. He couldn’t catch his breath. He shook so hard he could barely hold his weapon, the night air cold through his nightshirt. His mind spun, blank with shock and terror and the scream of one question: Why? Why? Why?
People were running toward him—the other students. Lightsabers slashed the night like comet trails under the glowing sky. Shouts came— “What happened?” “Where’s Master Skywalker?” “Is it an attack?”
Ben stood and shook, his lightsaber juddering against the dark. “He was going to kill me,” he panted. “He was going to kill me!”
His voice came out high and wild, nothing he recognized. Rage began to shoulder fear aside.
Dead silence fell for the space of three breaths. The other students were blue- or green-edged shadows moving through the dark, wide eyes gleaming in the glow of their lightsabers, mouths gaping open.
Shouting started again, a jumble of panicked questions.
“Master Skywalker!” Ledel’s voice. “Master Skywalker!” he shouted again, then frantically, “Where is he?”
“He’s not here.” That was Raich. The fear in his voice made it hard to recognize, but Ben knew the hunch of those shoulders.
A girl screamed, “Look! Ben’s house! He must’ve been there. He’s killed him!”
“He tried to kill me!” Ben screamed again then lightsabers were coming at him from every side.
He slashed and parried, driven like a hunted animal, snarling like one. One attacker went down. Someone to his left gave a savage scream where two other shadows clashed. The whine and crackle of straining lightsabers came from behind him. He whirled to see two more students fighting. A blade hummed past his ear and shoulder, close enough to scorch. He caught the return stroke with a backhanded parry, ducked and slashed upward. The other’s lightsaber flew then there was the thud of a body hitting the ground.
He turned, turned again, crouched and ready for another attack. Others stood around him, dimly-lit shapes and shadows also in fighting crouches. His breath was loud and ragged in a stillness broken only by other panting breaths and the hum of lightsabers.
Ben backed until he could see all of them, his weapon ready. Six. Six more he’d have to take—
“Ben?” The voice was high and shaking. Jaena?
“Come on, then!” Ben snarled, fury and fear burning through him. He raised his lightsaber. “Well? Come on!”
“Hey, Ben.” That was Barr’s voice, trying to sound soothing. It shook too much for that. “We’re not coming after you.”
One of the girls was crying. One of the fellows, too, by the sound of it.
Another figure slowly approached, lightsaber lowered, one hand upraised and open. Embry. “What happened?”
Ben didn’t lower his weapon. “I woke up.” His teeth wanted to chatter. He clenched his jaw to keep them still. “He was standing over me. Luke. With his lightsaber.” He saw it again, his uncle, the lightsaber—He slashed his free hand through the air to drive away the vision. “He was going to kill me!”
“No,” Jaena wailed. “No, no, no…” over and over.
Lio’s eyes were wide in his long face, horrified. “Maybe you were dreaming…”
He didn’t sound like he believed it. He had eyes and ears like everyone else. Luke wasn’t just harder on Ben than anyone else—there was something about him that Luke really, really didn’t like. No matter how much he tried to hide it behind the Great Jedi Master guise.
“Why?” Embry said. “Did you—”
“I didn’t do anything! I was asleep!” Ben shouted, clenching his fists. He swept his hand in a violent gesture. Two nearby huts blew apart. Timbers tumbled down through the clearing like so much kindling. The other students shrank back, lightsabers going up defensively.
The action, maybe the Force, cleared his mind. He straightened, lowered his weapon. He felt the others’ fear beating at him. Still breathing hard, still shaking, he looked around.
Bodies lay sprawled on the turf. Dead. Not arranged-in-a-casket dead, but slashed and dismembered and even more horrible because they were people he knew who’d been alive just minutes ago.
Raich, who would’ve bullied him if he hadn’t been afraid of him. Shirra and Haggen, who called him Prince Skywalker. Char, who hid his envy behind politeness so exquisitely correct it became mockery. Danik and Ledel. People he didn’t like, some he probably even hated, but he hadn’t wanted them dead.
The others had shut down their lightsabers. Ben watched them, ready, but they only stood looking around, same as he did. He deactivated his weapon, too, but kept it in hand.
Jaena was crying openly. “What do we do? My mother— My sister— What do I tell them?”
“We aren’t supposed to have family,” Ben said harshly. “They took all that away from us, remember?” He breathed hard, choking on rage. “We aren’t supposed to have anyone.”
“They’ll kill us,” Arran said. “They won’t even listen to us. They’ll say we just slaughtered everyone. There’s nowhere we can go. We’re dead.”
Ben rubbed the back of his hand across his face. It came away wet, and to his horror, he realized he was crying. He clenched his jaw, shuddering with the effort to get himself under control.
“There might be—” His voice cracked. He stopped, cleared his throat. “I might know somewhere we can go.”
Silence, except for the sound of Jaena’s crying.
“Where?” Lio said.
That stopped him. “I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “Not yet. I will.”
“Someplace your father knows?” Embry said. “What’re you going to tell him? ‘Uncle Luke tried to murder me so I killed him and now I’m running for my life’?”
“Not my father,” Ben said. He was feeling better, stronger, no longer like the world was ending. “Someone else. Someone we can trust. His name is Snoke—”
Rey woke. Her eyes opened to the dark barn. Under her cheek, Kylo’s chest rose and fell unevenly, almost shuddering. She lay still, trying to tell if he was awake.
Awake or asleep, she could feel his pain radiating through the bond, even through the Force.
He wouldn’t want to know she’d shared that dream. Not after what they’d talked about in the afternoon. She knew he wouldn’t.
She closed her eyes again. Slowly, as if she was still asleep, she shifted, sliding one arm around his chest, tucking the other behind his neck. Kylo didn’t move. The pain was still there. Keeping her breathing slow and even, her eyes closed, she hugged him tight.
After a long time, his arm tightened around her and his hand came up to cup her head.
* * *
Two masked and black-cloaked figures stood in the middle of the battlefield, gazing down at their fallen brethren. Daylight and the parent planet’s blue glow combined to throw the scene and the abandoned ships nearby into double-shadowed, two-toned relief. Small scavengers skritched angrily from the rocks where they’d taken cover after having been disturbed from their feeding.
“Idiots.” Embern Ren picked up a fallen lightsaber. “Did they really think they could take him?”
“Four of them?” Magar Ren said. “They might’ve had a chance.”
Embern gestured at the bodies. “I only see three.”
“And one crater,” Magar said, tilting his chin at the blackened pit at the base of a nearby hillside. “Four.”
“They should’ve known better than to let Jaenk wind them up to it,” Embern said. “We all knew how much she hated him.” He picked up Barrath’s lightsaber, tossed it thoughtfully in his hand as he swept the ground with his gaze. “Do you see her weapon?”
“No.” Magar nodded at the lightsabers Embern held. “Strange that Kylo didn’t take those.”
Embern closed his eyes. Raising a hand, he reached out through the Force then opened his eyes again, frowning. “Do you feel this? Light side power was used here.”
Magar duplicated the action. “Just as much dark side energy. Kylo can access both…” He trailed off uncertainly.
“Not like this. This was strong. If he was using the light side, he put all his power into it.” Embern turned away, following a trail of crushed grass. “Magar. Look at this.”
After a moment, the other Knight approached and looked down. “Blood.”
Both men followed the rusty streaks through the grass, not mere spots, but an actual trail.
“That wasn’t a lightsaber wound,” Embern said.
Magar looked back at the crater. “Ardred. He shot him. An ambush. The others must’ve already been dead—or they would’ve finished him.”
Embern followed the splashes of blood and crushed grass to the imprints in the ground of a ship’s landing gear. He stopped and looked up as if watching the ship take off. “He was bleeding out.”
Magar looked back in the direction they’d come, frowning. “Look how far he was from his ship. With an injury this bad, Ardred should’ve finished him off before he reached it.”
“Someone was with him. Someone helped him,” Embern said with absolute certainty. He turned to look at Magar, his eyes wide under his mask. “A light-side-user.”
Magar snorted, then stared. “Skywalker? Trying to turn him back to the light?”
“No. It doesn’t feel like him.” Embern shook and shook his head as if trying to dislodge some unpleasant thought. “The girl. The rebel girl who’s supposed to be with him.”
Magar rocked back. “She’s a Jedi? How? From where?”
“Skywalker’s been gone a long time. Plenty of time to train someone.”
“Maybe, Embern, but that doesn’t explain why she’d be with Kylo. Why she’d help him.”
“It does explain a lot about Snoke’s death, though. And all his guards.”
“No,” Magar said, flat with disbelief.
The two men stared at one another, worry and confusion shivering through the Force between them.
“Kylo…and a Jedi girl as powerful as Skywalker—”
“More powerful,” Embern said. “As strong as Kylo.”
“How did they come to have a bounty on their heads, then? They should’ve been able to flatten everything in sight. What the kriffing hell is going on?”
“I don’t know,” Embern said. “But we’d better find out before we decide whose side we’re on.”
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