Into Darkness
In which Kylo makes a Very Serious Mistake.
To her surprise, Rey discovered that she had full access to the ship’s databanks. She sat on her bed, a datapad on her knee, browsing them.
The cruiser was called the Precursor. As she’d thought, it was old, but not as old as the wrecks on Jakku. It was assigned to the First Order Security Bureau, and the mission was what Dare had said it was: to track down and kill Kylo, her, and any possible confederates.
She wondered if he was insulted that an old ship with such limited weapons and troop complements had been sent after them.
They didn’t really expect to find us, she thought.
And now that they had…
Tell your commander ‘mission accomplished,’ Kylo had told Dare. To her, he’d said, Now we have a toehold. A way to fight back. The Precursor obviously wouldn’t be returning to the First Order with its prize. So…what did Kylo have planned?
Worry bloomed in the pit of her stomach. She put down the datapad and crossed to the door.
Rey tracked Kylo through the bond to a room behind another door in another corridor. She palmed the controls, ready to reach out with the Force if the door didn’t open.
She was surprised again when it did, opening on a large room dominated by a gleaming black table emblazoned with the First Order insignia in red. The officers at the table turned. Voices sputtered to a halt.
Kylo looked up at her and nodded an invitation. It seemed the Precursor’s stores hadn’t been able to replace his tunic, so he wore a First Order officer’s shirt and high-collared black uniform jacket. The hassash sat on his shoulder. It chirped at her and showed its mouthful of sharp teeth.
Rey froze for a moment, taking in the change in Kylo, determined not to be intimidated. She stepped inside and made a circuit of the room to him. Dare was there, too, no longer in stormtrooper’s armor but in a cap and white, close-fitting jacket. His presence told her he was someone more important than just another stormtrooper. He nodded and gave her a slight smile.
Eyes burned into her. She sensed curiosity and surprise, but no hostility, Kylo’s response apparently making it clear she was welcome. It didn’t feel right to sit at the table with the officers in their crisp uniforms, so she only stood behind Kylo.
She felt a brief flare of irritation from him—was she supposed to sit at the table after all? She wasn’t going to make herself any more conspicuous than she already was. Maybe he was used to power, but she wasn’t. In her experience, keeping a low profile went a long way toward staying alive.
“My partner, Rey,” Kylo said with a lift of a black-gloved hand.
So much for a low profile. The looks she got this time ranged from shrewd assessment to outright alarm. She was suddenly grateful for her First Order trousers and jacket and haircut. She followed Dare’s example of a brief nod and hint of a smile, working to keep her posture relaxed.
“Continue,” Kylo said to the men at the table.
“Peavy on the Finalizer would be one of your better candidates,” an officer said, a thin, bald man with a blade of a nose. “He despises Hux. It would be a fine irony, but at this stage, taking on the Supreme Leader’s flagship might be a bit audacious.”
Through the bond, Rey felt a surge of rage. “The Supreme Leader. Of course.” He cocked his head. “I assume his fleet is commanded by loyalists? How many destroyers?”
“Yes, sir, and six, in addition to the Finalizer.” The man rattled off names that meant nothing to Rey.
“All the rabid curs in one kennel,” Kylo sneered. “Hux might find it comforting, but it’s bad strategy.”
“That it is, sir,” Dare said. “He’s scattered those he deems less loyal to the Outer Rim and the Reaches. There are two stationed near Rakata that we’ve been keeping an eye on. Shiv Arkady commanding the Raptor and Orlen Vach of the Relentless. Arkady’s made no secret of the fact that he thinks the destruction of the Hosnian system was a strategic blunder. Vach has a mind like a computer sim. Cold as space. He thinks Hux’s fanaticism is a weak link that can bring down the First Order.”
“Does he, now?” Kylo said, sitting back. “Rakata,” he said thoughtfully. Through the bond, he was more than thoughtful—he was positively gleeful. “Then they won’t be surprised when those destroyers disappear.”
“No, sir,” Dare said. “I think that’s the point.”
Rey’s stomach clenched as Verrannallu’s words replayed in her mind: Among his kind, he might forget what he learned on Jannessi.
No, he couldn’t. They’d turned these people away from the First Order. They saw something better now. If they only started doing the same things—
She shifted, suddenly desperate to talk to Kylo. The hassash turned to look up at her, laid a small hand on her arm and crooned softly. She leaned back just enough that it couldn’t touch her easily. It gave her a reproachful look, then stretched toward her. It grabbed her sleeve and pulled itself onto her. Rey set her teeth as it climbed up to her shoulder, forcing herself to remember when it had tried to defend her after they’d taken the ship.
It knew. It knew she wouldn’t do anything while she had an audience. The creature settled, smoothing her hair and crooning into her ear.
She glared at it. That isn’t helping, she thought at it.
It only made a chuckling noise and nuzzled into her hair.
If the hassash meant to distract her from the discussion around her, it was succeeding. What she followed was only strategy and logistics, most of which would’ve gone over her head, anyway.
At last, chairs slid back. A low buzz of conversation broke out between pairs and small groups. The emotions flowing through the Force were positive—eagerness, anticipation, a sense of purpose. Kylo stood too, exchanging a few words with the officers who passed him.
Dare caught her eye across the table and nodded again. “Ma’am. Good to see you again,” he said and joined the general outbound flow.
After his acknowledgement, a few others nodded at her as well. Rey blinked, knocked off balance by the strangeness of it all. The door finally slid closed on the last officer.
Kylo turned to her, clearly waiting for whatever she had to say. The hassash finally—finally!—let go, leapt lightly to the table and spidered between glasses, caf cups and mostly-empty carafes of water.
“You want me to do what I did on this ship on two star destroyers?” she said. “You might as well have left me to the Nightfolk!”
“It won’t be as bad as it sounds. You’ll only need to work on the command. Everyone else will follow orders.”
“Only the command. Do you have any idea what you’re asking? Do you know what it’s like, to…to…” She ground the heels of her hands against her eyes.
“Battle meditation was traditionally used to strengthen allies—or weaken enemies.”
She dropped into a chair. “That’s not what I’m doing!”
“No. You’re turning enemies to allies.” Kylo sat down, too, studying her intently. “Show me what you do.”
She looked into his eyes where he sat almost knee to knee with her, opened herself and reached into his mind the way she had into Dare’s, on Jannessi.
In his dreams, she’d been a participant, then as Kylo himself. In this vision, she was only a witness.
“Stop that!” a child’s voice shouted, rough with emotion.
Kylo—no, Ben—was a child about the same age Rey had been when she found her Imperial walker. Nine? Ten? Fists clenched, black brows drawn down, he stood facing a bigger boy in green woods lighter and more open than the woods on Takodana had been.
The other boy jerked around. Something in front of him was making a painful keening sound. The startled guilt on his face changed to a sneer when he saw Ben. “Stop what? This?”
The boy deliberately moved to show what lay at his feet—a small, floppy-eared creature he had pinned to the ground by its tail. Grinning, the boy viciously whacked the animal with the stick he held, then skewered it to the ground when it fell. It screamed, twisting and lunging against the stick.
“I said stop that!” Ben shouted, taking an aggressive step nearer.
“Or what? What’re you gonna do, Prince?”
Ben stormed over and shoved the other boy hard enough to make him stagger back. The injured animal only flopped weakly to escape as Ben grappled for the stick. The bigger boy wrenched it out of his grasp and struck Ben, once, twice, again, hard enough the sound of wood hitting flesh echoed through the woods. Ben didn’t cry out. Fury blazed over his face and he raised his hand.
The other boy flew up and back, screaming in terror. He slammed into a branch about two meters up and fell. He hit the ground hard and lay still. Rey bit her lip to keep from crying out herself, shocked at how powerful Ben was even so young.
He stalked over to the boy, bent down and studied him. He turned his head once, as if someone had spoken to him. Rey had a sick feeling she knew whose voice he’d heard.
“He’s alive,” he muttered without any particular inflection. “That’s— Oh. Yes. I didn’t think of that.” He commanded, “Look at me.”
The boy’s eyes snapped open in his pale, sweaty face. He was panting and whimpering, echoing the poor, hurt creature writhing on the ground a short distance away.
“When they ask you what you did,” Ben said, “you tell the truth. No lying.” He was breathing hard now, too. “Tell me what happened. Say it,” he commanded.
The boy’s breaths were ragged and loud, his eyes wide and terrified. “I was torturing the squall.”
Ben bent over him. Rey could see the echo of the man in the boy’s menace. “Say what you did.”
“Please,” the boy whimpered.
Ben grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him up. The bigger boy screamed.
“Say it!”
“I stomped on the squall’s tail and beat it and stabbed it with a stick! It screamed. I liked hearing it scream. I wanted to hear you scream when I hit you!”
Ben dropped him. The boy sobbed with pain and terror.
“I can kill you,” Ben said in a voice all the more frightening for its quiet. “Next time, maybe I will. If there is a next time.”
He turned and walked back to the injured animal, knelt and smoothed its dappled brown fur where it wasn’t dark with blood. It still moved weakly, a soft whine coming from it with every breath. Ben laid a gentle hand over its floppy-eared head. It breathed out once and didn’t move again.
The vision changed. Kylo—yes, Kylo now, in his robes and mask—grown to his full height, but slim and whippy, without the mass and muscle yet. Maybe close to her own age now?
Hand outstretched, he stood over a line of people kneeling before him—three men, two women and three children, all bound. Two of the children sobbed in terror. The other, a young girl, stared stony-faced at the ground.
They were outside somewhere, at nighttime. The sound of screams came from a distance. The roar of fire was much closer, the flames turning stormtroopers’ armor a flickering red, fingering the fearful faces of the crowd gathered under their blasters.
Looming over the tableau was a towering holo of Snoke lounging on his monolithic throne. It cast the prisoners in eerie blue light, reflected off the chrome of Kylo’s mask. Rey shivered.
Kylo straightened, dropping his hand. One man collapsed onto his side, whimpering.
“This is all of them.” The vocabulator distorted Kylo’s voice. The sound of it made Rey’s stomach clench in remembered terror. “A brother and sister. Not much of a rebel cell.”
Rey looked at the little group again, going cold. A brother and sister—and their families.
“Such a pity,” Snoke said. “I’d hoped for something more…spectacular. Nevertheless, everything can be made to serve a purpose. Kill them,” he said with a negligent wave of the hand. “The children first.”
A cry went up from the from the adults, even from many in the crowd.
Kylo’s mask snapped up. “Master, the children—”
“Do you question me, apprentice?” Snoke purred.
Kylo hesitated. “No, Master. I only want to understand—”
“The question is your commitment to me. To the dark side.”
Kylo’s masked face turned to the pleading prisoners. The children, seeing the anguished adults, started to scream. Rey saw—felt—Kylo shrink back.
“You’re the focal point of the light and the dark,” Snoke said, softer than ever, almost mesmerizing. “The light grips you too tightly, Kylo Ren, holds you back. To realize your full potential, you must embrace the dark.”
“Anger,” Kylo whispered. “Pain. Power. But—”
“And what greater power than that over life and death?” Snoke purred. “Mercy, sentiment, compassion—these weaken you. The dark will give you strength.” Another languid motion of clawed, twisted fingers. “Proceed. This will be a lesson long remembered.”
Kylo ignited his lightsaber, took a step, hesitated. The prisoners wailed. Two of the women lurched for the children, screaming. Kylo’s other hand snapped up, fingers spread. He made a snatching motion, closing his fist.
The entire group flopped bonelessly to the ground. Dead.
The holo of Snoke shot to its feet. “YOU!” he roared. “You dare defy ME, boy?”
He thrust out a hand. Kylo arched backward. His lightsaber flew from his hand. He screamed—
A force thrust her away so hard Rey lost contact with her senses. Blind, deaf, buried so deep in her own mind she had no sense of her body, she struggled, panicking.
She came back to herself, to the ship’s meeting room. Kylo’s face was inches from hers, his eyes blazing like they had in Starkiller’s forest.
He gripped her face between his hands. “Don’t—ever—do that—again,” he snarled, giving her a shake with each word.
Rey grabbed his wrists and tore away, wheeling out of her chair. He towered to his feet after her. She snatched a carafe off the table. Glass flew with a shivering crash as she broke it on the edge and put the chair between them.
“I did what you told me!” She brandished the broken bottle. “You wanted to see what I do, so I showed you!”
The rage on Kylo’s face drained away. He straightened from his threatening hunch. “That was what—?” Realization dawned. “Rey. I’m sorry.” He took a step toward her.
She slashed with the bottle. “Keep away from me!”
He stopped and raised his hands. “Please, Rey. I didn’t mean— I’m sorry. Sit down. Please.”
Calm trickled through the bond. “Don’t!” She slammed up her mental shields. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you touch me!”
The hassash crouched on the table, whining miserably as its eyes flicked between them. Kylo shuddered out a breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, that bottomless patience of his welled up. After his outburst, it felt like a lie.
“Use the Force if you’re going to fight me,” he said. “You can throw anything you like without getting near me.”
“It won’t matter how close I get when I open up your throat!”
His calm crumbled. “Rey, please. What do you want me to do?” he pleaded. “Tell me what to do.”
She clutched the broken bottle like a blade and gripped the back of the chair, ready to shove it at him. “Why did you do that?” she demanded. “Tell me why. I want to know.”
His eyes pleaded. “I didn’t want you to see what I’ve done.”
“You think I haven’t seen every evil thing people can do to each other?”
“I don’t want you to see every evil thing I’ve done!”
Her fury wavered. She lowered her makeshift weapon but watched him. The hassash edged cautiously closer. She glanced at it and it stopped.
“You caught me by surprise,” he said into her silence. “I was expecting something else. Not having my darkness dredged up.”
Her mind was still closed, but she could see desperation in his eyes.
“It was like what Snoke did to you, wasn’t it?”
He dropped his gaze. “That isn’t why I pushed you away.”
“But that didn’t help.” Adrenaline was draining out of her and she could think again. “I made you feel—” helpless. Some powerful instinct made her swallow that. “—like Snoke did. Torturing you.” Pain twisted in her chest. “I was starved. I got beaten till I was able to fight back. But nobody ever tortured me.”
“Don’t,” he flared, his eyes blazing into hers again. “Don’t pity me.”
“Don’t start another fight, Kylo,” she snapped back. “I’m telling you I understand. If you can’t take that, there’s no point to this.”
He stared at her a moment, then nodded. “Let’s try again.”
“Are you going to blow up again?”
Another stare, this one cooler. “You haven’t seen me blow up. But if you’re worried…”
He unclipped his lightsaber from his belt and offered it.
Rey eyed it. “After I just threatened to slash your throat?”
“You won’t do anything.” It wasn’t a dismissive statement, but one of trust.
She thought about it, then decided she definitely didn’t want to see any blowing up that involved a lightsaber. She edged close enough to take it from his hand then stepped back again.
“Do what you did before,” he said. “I’ll be expecting it this time.”
Rey just stood, distrust bubbling like something poisonous in her. It didn’t help that the hassash was creeping closer again, still whining in that pitiful way.
“You have my lightsaber,” Kylo reminded her.
Her instincts told her to get out, to get away, it wasn’t safe, she couldn’t trust him. She forced herself to remember everything he’d done since Snoke’s throne room. So many things, so much more than one brief moment when she’d provoked his defenses by making him feel helpless and ashamed.
She pushed out a breath and opened herself again.
He was right—she didn’t want to see every evil thing he’d done. The old man flinging up his arms in a futile protective gesture the instant before Kylo’s lightsaber slashed down. Commander Dameron screaming in agony as Kylo ripped information from his mind. A First Order control room slashed to molten slag in his rage. The Raddus’ bridge blinking on the Silencer’s targeting screen as his thumb poised over the trigger.
Sick and cringing, Rey sifted through it all, searching for that glimmering star Verrannallu had spoken of.
It was almost horrifying how hard it was to find. There was so much darkness, so much pain and hate and rage. She didn’t know how he bore it, much less how he found the means to treat her with gentleness and care.
There—a flicker of glowing light. She followed it down, down…
A pulse of hope, a fragile dream. She reached for it, gathered it to her, poured her light over it until it unfurled.
Green grass and trees. Gentle hills and the glitter of sunlight on water, the smell of growing things, the fresh sweetness of flowers. People in fine clothes, only indistinct blurs of faces and forms—this was a dream, after all, not memory.
Kylo stood at the center of it all, wearing a formal black coat that fell past his knees, picked out with sparks of silver and pearl. Rey faced him wearing a shimmering dress that flowed behind her like a river under a twilight sky. He held her hands as a woman beside them intoned words, his face so full of…of…
She didn’t know what. She’d never seen a look like that before. All she knew was that it made her heart turn over in her chest. When the woman fell silent, Kylo bent his head toward Rey. She raised her face to his and they kissed.
She felt it—the softness and warmth of his lips on hers, the slight scratch of stubble against her chin, the press of his fingers on hers. His scent swirled around her, rich and dark. That hungry warmth woke in her again. She tightened her hands on his—
Rey dragged herself back into the meeting room in the First Order ship. Kylo stood in front of her now, holding her hands as he had in the vision. His eyes were very dark, as dark as they’d been last night in their Force connection. Her heart was thundering.
She realized they held his lightsaber between their hands. She relaxed her grip and would’ve stepped back, but his other hand tightened on hers, preventing her.
He watched her. Half her brain was screaming alarms at her, reminding her of all the awful things she’d seen. The other half still saw that speaking look in his eyes in the vision, felt his lips on hers, wanted to know what that kiss felt like in reality. She ended up frozen, goosebumps running over her skin and her breaths coming much too fast.
“That was potent,” he said, his voice rough.
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think. For a dream of her to be the star that gleamed through his storm clouds, a dream like that…
Kylo had the bond shut tight. His eyes… She couldn’t read them, either, but she thought she saw dismay or vulnerability and a hint of what might’ve been fear. After his reaction a minute ago, alarm started to rattle in her.
“I wasn’t trying to turn you!” she burst out, trying to pull away.
He wouldn’t let her. He clipped his weapon back on his belt, took both her hands between his and pulled them to his chest. “You can’t,” he said gently. “But if you could, that might’ve done it.”
“I wasn’t,” she insisted. She hadn’t been. And why hadn’t it even occurred to her?
“I know. Rey—” He stopped with a visible effort.
“What?”
He hesitated, a long moment that made it hard to breathe.
“I know why the battle meditation is so hard on you.”
Something in her plummeted with disappointment.
“Okay,” she said.
“Sit down.”
The chairs and table were still sprinkled with broken glass. She abruptly realized he must’ve taken away the carafe she’d threatened him with—it wasn’t in sight. She let him guide her into a chair a little distance away. He sat opposite. The hassash tip-toed through the glass and came to crouch by her elbow, its three purple eyes watching her anxiously as it whined softly.
Kylo leaned an elbow on the table, his hand dangling near her knee. “How did you know to try it?”
Her face heated. “From you. From what you did when the Nightfolk had me, when you…you gave me your light.” It was such an intimate thing, it was hard to talk about. She hadn’t realized how intimate until now. She took a breath and went on. “But with other people… I don’t want to give them my light. So I look for theirs.”
He nodded, understanding. She was glad she didn’t have to explain more clearly.
“In the process,” he said, “you’re taking in the darkness of those you’re trying to turn. That isn’t necessary.”
“I have to search for y—their light. How else can I find it?”
He sat back, thoughtful for a moment. “I told you battle meditation is a rare ability. I only know what I’ve read in the archives.”
Rey listened intently.
“It’s described as the ability to enhance the morale of one’s own troops, make them feel unbeatable. It was supposed to allow the coordination of troops and fleets, so that all acted as a single, unified entity.”
“Oh,” she said, stunned. She frowned. “That’s not what I do.”
“No.” He leaned forward. “But you could.”
She gave him a sharp look. She did not like where this was going. “I only want to know how to find people’s hope without—without drowning in the rest.”
She didn’t like the speculative look in his eye the moment before he answered. “I don’t think necessary that you find their hope. You only have to share your conviction that it’s there. Give the Force your intention. Not enter the minds of the people you’re trying to influence.”
“So…these two ships you’re talking about. I can just…let people see they have hope. Other choices.”
“I believe so, yes.”
Kylo still had himself shuttered, but there was an avid light in his eyes. Watching him, she calculated. You needed resources to survive, and she wasn’t naïve enough to believe one second-string cruiser would be proof against a determined First Order. Her brief time with the Resistance had shown her what that was like. Maybe that was why she’d slid right in with them—because their scrambling desperation had felt so well-worn and familiar.
“I want to make sure,” she said.
“I’ll work with you.”
“Kylo—”
That hunger disappeared from his eyes. “What happened a few minutes ago— I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
No one would ever believe her if she told them Kylo Ren had said he was sorry. It abruptly occurred to her that he’d said it several times already.
“I’m sorry I threatened to cut your throat,” she said quietly.
“You were frightened.”
“I wasn’t frightened,” she said.
“Admit it,” he said, annoyed, “Or did you threaten me for no reason?”
The hassash made a dry, chuckling sound. Before she knew what it was doing, it had clambered up to her shoulder, one of its hands resting on her bare neck. She shivered involuntarily.
“Okay, you scared me.” She broke from Kylo’s gaze. “I thought you were going to…to hurt me.”
“I will never hurt you, Rey.”
She took a breath to remind him of when he bounced her off a tree on Starkiller.
He must’ve remembered the same thing. “Never again,” he corrected himself.
She started to tell him if he did, she’d get him. She looked at the scar she’d given him and decided he already knew.
Image credit: Wookiepedia
Go to the previous chapter. Go to the beginning.
Go to this story on Archive of Our Own.
