In which terrible fears are faced.
The Nightfolk crumpled Rey’s shields and ripped into her mind. Pain slammed all the way down to her guts and darkness erupted like pus from a badly healing wound. She screamed once, then memories, fears, nightmares surged up and over her, pulling her down.
She was screaming, crying, fighting to reach her parents as they walked away and left her. Unkar Plutt held her thin arm in a rough, painful grip. He shook her. “Be quiet, girl.”
But no, it wasn’t Unkar’s blubbery form towering over her, but someone else. A big, black-gloved hand engulfed her small one. She looked up, and up, along a length of more black into the scarred, frightening face of a stranger.
The man looked down at her. “Don’t be afraid,” he said gently. “You’ll be all right. Come with me.”
Rey went with him, because he held her hand. And because she wasn’t afraid now.
The memory changed to another, when she was maybe twelve or thirteen. She clambered nimbly along the twisted catwalks, slipped like the blown sand through the crushed corridors.
She was climbing into a compartment high overhead when her rope broke. There was a moment of shrieking terror, then the sand-drifted deck drove into her. She slithered helplessly down an incline to the bottom and lay, unable to move, barely able to breathe, pain gripping her like a predator.
Ominous pops and clinks echoed through the great ship. Sand hissed against its hull and through its innards as the world grew dimmer.
A tall, black-cloaked figure stepped into view. She started. She hadn’t heard anyone approaching, but here someone was, a man with black hair and a scar that slashed from eyebrow to collar.
He crouched by her, raised her head. “You’d better drink.”
From a bottle that looked suspiciously like her own, he tipped water into her mouth. He gently lowered her again.
“Who are you?” she said. “How did you find me?”
“You don’t know?” The echoes of his voice whispered through the vast spaces fast filling with night.
“I feel like I should…” she said slowly.
“You will. Does anyone know you’re here?”
“I try not to let them. Then they won’t steal my salvage.”
His eyes blazed, an alarming expression. He calmed again. He sat down and drew up one long leg. “Don’t worry. You won’t die here, I promise.”
As if he could promise any such thing. People died all the time, here one minute, gone the next…
But the suffocating fear was gone. He reached over, brushed the sand-crusted tracks of tears from her cheeks. She didn’t feel like crying again.
Another memory rolled over her. It was just another night, dark and silent and lonely. But tonight, she was so hungry, so hungry, shaking and dizzy with it. She reached for the stories she told herself, of beautiful green worlds, of oceans and islands, of a stranger stepping off some ship in Niima Outpost to look at her in sudden recognition and sweep her into a joyful embrace. Tonight, they were all hollow, dust and drifting sand, hopeless and futile.
In that moment she saw her future unspooling across Jakku’s wastes to end, sooner or later, in an empty, meaningless death. Sooner, the way things were going.
Despair crushed her. She cried until she couldn’t breathe, sobs that wrenched her chest and doubled her over. Exhaustion finally quieted her, but she still couldn’t sleep.
Weak and sick, she rolled out of her hammock, stepped over her staff where it lay within easy reach. Dressed in nothing more than the too-large shirt she wore for sleeping, she left her shelter.
The ground was cool on her bare feet. The night air raised goosebumps on her skin. She walked on, paying no attention to where. Where didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
An angry voice spoke behind her: “What are you doing?”
She spun, stumbled, fell to one knee. A man’s tall, black shape loomed against the star-sprinkled night. She should be afraid. She should rise to run, to fight, but was too weak. Bending her head, she sank down.
He stormed over, the scuff of his boots through the grit loud in the huge desert silence. “Get up.”
She didn’t get up. Tears were running down her face again. This was death, sooner than she expected. She didn’t let herself think if it would be easy or hard.
Gloved hands gripped her arms and hauled her to her feet. “Get up, I said. What’s wrong with you? I knew you were reckless. I never thought you were a coward.”
Her head snapped up at that. A thread of fire ran through her. “Let go of me.” She tried to jerk free of his hold, but he only held tighter. “Leave me alone!”
“You’ve been alone too much already. No. I’m not leaving you alone. You’re going back to your shelter and wake up in the morning with better sense.” He took her by the elbow, turned and marched her, stumbling, back the way she’d come.
“I’m not a coward. I’m not going back to my shelter to die and rot there. Let me go!” She pried at his gloved fingers.
“You won’t die.”
“I haven’t eaten in three days! Maybe four. I lost count. If I don’t find something good to sell soon, it won’t matter anymore.”
He pulled her around to face him, set heavy hands on her shoulders and bent down close enough she could see the scar that slashed over one dark eye and down his cheek.
“You won’t die,” he said fiercely. “You’ll find good salvage soon, maybe even tomorrow.”
“How do—”
“I just know. Trust me.”
There in the dark with an angry stranger, she didn’t see why she would. Maybe that’s why she did.
The darkness inside her tattered and blew away, leaving her floating in a fragile, hopeful place.
Now she stood with Finn high over a vast, cavernous space. Wind smelling of cold and pines blew at her back, flicked flecks of snow past them into the dimming air. Far below, Kylo Ren strode along a catwalk, a black-cloaked shadow.
“Ben!” Han’s voice rang out, echoing.
Kylo stopped, turned. Han came into view below, hurrying to meet him. Rey clenched her fists, wanting to drag him back. When he drew nearer, Kylo removed his mask and they spoke, their voices only indiscernible echoes. They stood so close, and Rey’s heart crowded into her throat—
The lightsaber ignited. Han stood pierced for an endless moment, then toppled. Rey screamed.
“No!” Finn shouted.
But it wasn’t Finn’s voice, and it wasn’t Finn beside her shouting in horror. It was Kylo.
She turned in shock. He pulled her to him, clutched her close, his head bent to her shoulder. “I wish I could undo it, Rey,” he whispered. “I wish I’d never done it.”
“Why, Ben?” she whispered back.
“I thought I could get rid of this pain. This needing.” Even at a whisper, his voice shook. “If I did something terrible enough, it would burn this weakness out of me—”
“It isn’t weakness,” she said. “It means…” She struggled to put into words what she understood in her heart. “It means you’re still whole.”
He was still, listening intensely.
“Snoke didn’t manage to cripple you,” she went on. “He couldn’t turn you into a soulless monster. You’re too strong.”
“Not soulless. Only a monster,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know what to do now.”
“I only know…how to survive. Mark every day since the terrible thing so you never forget who you are or where you’re trying to go.”
But she didn’t know how he could survive what he’d done. He might as well have driven that lightsaber into his own heart. The wound was so deep and so agonizing, she didn’t know how he bore it.
It drew at her now, a bottomless depth of darkness and pain. She wanted to heal it, but she already felt the same horror, the same rending grief. She gasped, sinking, drowning, until there was nothing left. Nothing but pain and grief and guilt and hopelessness.
* * *
Clamping Rey to him with one arm, Kylo thrust into her unprotected mind. She twitched and whimpered against him as nightmare surged up like foul water. He invaded her memories the way he had on Starkiller.
This time, he twisted them to his will. He stepped into each, protecting her, accompanying her through what she’d been forced to endure alone.
The last, of his father…
Her agony of grief and loss echoed his own. He groped for some way to protect her from it. There was none. Because he was the one who’d created it.
She slipped deeper into the helpless horror of seeing Han Solo murdered in front of her eyes. Her mind was nothing but churning darkness, pain that ripped her apart.
He tore himself away, looking wildly around at the Nightfolk surrounding them. Their eyes glowed with avid hunger.
“Stop!” he shouted. “You’re destroying her!”
Yes, they whispered. Then you will be free.
He dropped his lightsaber, thrust out a hand, gripping the dark side. He’d crush them all into bloody pulp.
Rey went limp in his grasp, the staff falling with a clank to the floor.
“No! Rey! Rey—”
He sank with her to the ground, pulled her into his lap. She lolled bonelessly, her breaths fast and shallow, white showing between her slitted eyelids. He tucked her head against his shoulder, held her close and tried to push the living energy of the Force into her. It was like trying to push water into an overturned glass.
He knew what it was like to be consumed by darkness. He knew how it could push you into madness and hopelessness and despair.
“It was me!” he raged at her. “Don’t let what I did destroy you!”
He was the one who had to bear the weight of the deed—not her. If someone had to have the strength to endure it, it should be him—
So give her your strength.
The thought came so clear it was like someone had spoken it in his ear.
Cradling her, he opened his mind, joined it with hers. He dug deep, searching through layers and years of darkness for some light to buoy her in a dark, drowning sea.
There—a memory long forgotten. His mother, dressed in formal robes for the Senate. He’d looked up at her, full of wonder and awe.
“You look like a princess, Mama.”
She picked him up. “I was one a long time ago, do you believe that?”
He touched one of the jewels in her hair. “Yes.”
More memories rose, bright bubbles in the darkness. Sitting on his father’s lap so he could reach the Falcon’s controls, making the ship swoop and dive.
Han laughed and ruffled his hair. “You’re a natural, kid!”
Riding on Chewie’s broad shoulders as he strode the high forest roads of Kashyyyk, holding out his arms and pretending he was a bird flying through the treetops.
Much, much later…another memory. He chased a frightened girl dressed in castoffs and dirty rags through the woods on Takodana. He caught her soon enough, reached into her mind—
Something flickered just beyond his grasp. He hesitated, held.
Any other prisoner, he’d’ve left conscious and terrified as the stormtroopers dragged her, paralyzed, to the shuttle. It’s what he should do, make her easier to deal with.
He didn’t want to. That flicker, the way it called to him…
He pushed her into merciful sleep then carried her himself, unwilling to entrust her to anyone else. In the shuttle, in his private compartment, he took off his mask, looking at her with his own eyes. He took off a glove, too, laid his hand on her cheek. The still-wet track of a tear lay cool under his thumb.
Very gently, he reached into her mind again, careful not to break the sleep he’d cast her into. A glimmer rose to meet him. He had a sense of awakening, an eye slowly opening within her to look back at him. What was it? Who was she?
He only knew that she pierced him like an exploding star, a sudden, unexpected gleam in his long night of rage and hate and bleak, black numbness. And that he couldn’t let her go.
Finding that brightness within him now was like igniting a lightsaber. The half-strength he’d wielded so long suddenly clicked, spilled out, and light and power poured from him into her. The weak flutter of her life steadied, like a flame sheltered by cupped hands. He held it, fed it, drew it into a firm, bright blaze. It grew, lighting him from within. And he saw.
She was wrong about one thing—Snoke had crippled him. For years, years, he’d kept him weak, unbalanced, forced him to twist and mutilate himself. When Snoke compelled him to kill Han Solo, Kylo would’ve broken entirely. Become nothing but a crazed beast to be used and eventually disposed of.
But Rey had been there. She’d seen him. And he’d gone after her. Not because Snoke told him to bring her, but because what he’d seen in her face mirrored the silent horror quivering in him.
Find her. There’d been nothing but that one, driving purpose to keep him focused, to keep him sane.
His father’s forgiving touch on his face burned and branded him as surely as Rey’s blade had. Every time he looked at himself, the scar would remind him of the depths he’d sunk to, the terrible things he could do in darkness and pain. That was why the bacta therapy hadn’t been able to heal the scars. Because he couldn’t be allowed to forget.
Kylo & Rey by PixelRey
Rey took a deep, shuddering breath. Color crept into in her face again, and her cheek warmed under his fingers. She stirred in his arms and her eyes fluttered open.
“Ben?” Her voice was weak and wavering. She blinked up at him as if trying to focus. “What did you do?”
He crushed her to him, pressed his face to her hair. “They can’t have you. I won’t let them.” He rocked her. “I won’t let them.”
“It was crushing me,” she whispered. “Then I saw…light. Everywhere. And I could breathe again.” She took another breath, almost a gasp. “It was you.”
He raised his head. His eyes ached with tears. “Rey, no. It isn’t what you think. I can never turn. I’m still—”
She raised a shaking hand to touch his scarred cheek. “I know. But you’re more than that, Kylo.”
Her use of his chosen name went through him like a blade, then he heard the acceptance there.
When had anyone ever just accepted him for who he was? His parents, his uncle, Snoke… All of them had wanted to change him, to force him into the shape they wanted. Rey, who saw him more deeply than anyone ever had, didn’t.
He gradually became aware of the Nightfolk surrounding them, a seething wall of shock and anger and disbelief. He called his lightsaber to his hand and ignited it. His power coiled in him, enough to tear them all to bits, enough to open the entire cavern to the sky.
“Touch her again,” he said, his voice strained with the same power, “and it will be the last thing you do.”
They shifted backward. You protect this Bright-one? She has bound you! Imprisoned you! Hurt you!
“I—!” Rey began to protest, struggling to sit up.
Kylo hunched over her protectively, lightsaber spitting in his hand. “She healed and guarded and cared for me when one of my own kind shot me. And the bond goes both ways,” he gritted out. “Me to her, and her to me. No one is breaking it.”
The mutter of the Nightfolk’s thoughts ran through them like wind through grass. The mutter resolved into a question: What is she to you?
He felt the light glimmering in him, no longer a tearing agony, but a well of strength. “She’s my center. My balance.”
Rey went still in his arms, not even breathing. He risked a glance down at her. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted in astonishment. He couldn’t begin to sort out the emotions he sensed from her.
Their attention swung to her. Kylo stiffened, ready to rip them apart if they tried anything.
You. Bright-one. The words addressed to her were decidedly hostile. What do you want with our brother?
He felt everything in her stutter to a stop then start up again, floundering. “I—”
She tried to sit up again. He shifted a hand to her back to help her, his heart suddenly beating hard. He felt her gaze on him, searching. It dragged his own down, irresistible as gravity.
“He…knows me.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “He shows me what I was waiting for. He helps me find where I belong.”
“Rey…” he said, his voice hoarse.
You belong with me, he thought but didn’t say. She must know it. She had to feel it by now. How could she not?
A confused murmur went through the Nightfolk again. How can this be? She means him no harm? He calls her his, but not for prey. She soothed his pain. She brought light, but it gives him strength. How?
“You won’t harm her,” Kylo broke in. “You won’t attack her again.”
And the Brightfolk? Do they promise to spare you?
“The Brightfolk saved his life.” Rey’s voice rang through the cavern now.
“Because she demanded it,” he added.
The Nightfolk’s confusion mounted in waves.
Small stones abruptly pattered down from the ceiling. The mind-voices fell silent a moment, then began again, jumbled whispers he couldn’t decipher. Anger and alarm welled up. Kylo felt a tremor go through the ground under him. Bigger stones fell, knocking and clacking as they struck. Dust tinted red by his weapon bloomed in the air, veiling the Nightfolk. He had a sense of questions whispering outward beyond his perception. The ground shook again.
Come! the Nightfolk said. Come with us!
Rey stiffened and scrambled to get up. “What—?”
Kylo pulled her to her feet, steadying her with a hand on her waist. “Get ready. If that ceiling comes down—”
The Brightfolk attack! Hurry! They swept around him and Rey, a multitude of hands on them, steering them across the cavern.
Another tremor came. Rocks hissed down like hail. Kylo choked on dust so thick he could see only a globe of red around them. He sensed back along the tunnel they’d come through. Nothing, no pursuit, no sense of minds back that direction.
“That isn’t the Brightfolk,” he said.
Rey whipped around, knowledge dawning on her face.
“We have to get to the town,” Kylo said. “Now.”
Image credit: “The Last Jedi – Kylo & Rey” by PixelRey (sorry, no link)
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Author’s notes:
There were some hard things to deal with in this chapter. First, the elephant in the room: Kylo’s murder of Han Solo. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to have done, especially considering that he tells Rey that he didn’t hate his father. So why did he do it? Yes, Snoke commanded it, but I felt Kylo had to have a reason of his own, too.
Then there’s the matter of Kylo’s scar. Pablo Hidalgo’s Visual Dictionary of The Last Jedi explains that the lightsaber wound scarred because bacta therapy wasn’t applied in time. Okay, I know this is the canon explanation, but I have trouble believing that a delay of a few hours at most would do this. There’s also the fact that Kylo is curiously unresentful of having been disfigured, never once speaking of it to Rey, though he becomes furious when Snoke mocks him for it. Some fanfiction writers suggest it’s because Rey was the one to give him the scar, that he somehow sees it as a mark of ownership. It seems more likely to me that it’s because he feels he deserves it.
Finally, I debated long and hard if Rey, the ultimate survivor, would ever have thoughts of suicide. I ultimately decided that in a moment of extreme physical and psychological suffering and weakness, she might. Obviously, she didn’t go through with it, pulling herself together on her own. I think this demonstrates more strength than if she never felt this kind of despair at all.
