Light and Shadow
In which Kylo wins what he’s been working so hard for, and Rey realizes there won’t be another mark on the wall.
If Kylo had ever made a vow that Rey would never again scavenge, he’d be forsworn at this very moment. Because that was exactly how she’d spent the last several hours, after he ferried her in the Silencer to what she called the Graveyard.
There had been an argument about that. She won. He had a feeling she usually would.
The junk Rey had collected at the Graveyard lay jumbled together on a scrap of fabric—the components for a lightsaber, all scavenged from the wrecks of dead ships. He marveled, newly amazed at her ingenuity, her ability to find utility in worthless wreckage.
Ruthlessly, she kicked aside the strewn trash of her life that littered her shelter, clearing a space to work. He watched silently, sensing for her state of mind, but she seemed simply focused on the task.
She laid out the parts on her workbench, carefully setting the green kyber to one side.
Kylo studied them. “You aren’t making a staff?”
She shook her head. “It’s hard to kill someone with my staff. If I’m using a weapon, I want to be clear about what I’m doing.”
He nodded, then unclipped his weapon and set it on the workbench. “You can use mine as a template. You won’t need the lateral vents, but yours won’t be all that different.”
She looked up at him, startled. “But I might—”
“I’ll tell you if you’re about to do anything disastrous.”
She was still worried, but at last she nodded. Picking out Pilex bit driver from the Silencer’s toolkit, she began gingerly unscrewing his saber’s access panel.
“What’s the wire for?” She touched the carefully soldered red wire that ran the length of the weapon’s hilt. “My—” She broke off, began again, “Anakin’s lightsaber didn’t have one.”
“An adaptation for the cracked crystal. It gets too hot inside the hilt. The wire kept melting.”
She made a noise of comprehension and went on disassembling his lightsaber.
The last time he’d been through this process, Kylo had been someone else. He remembered his excitement, the joy and pride of accomplishment—one of his few moments of happiness during his exile with his uncle.
Then Luke had shattered even that.
Be calm, Ben, Luke had said. You’re letting your emotions carry you away again.
He wasn’t by nature a calm or contained man. He hadn’t been as a boy, either. To continually insist on calmness and detachment had been like plugging an active volcano. Everything he was forced to bottle up and ignore and deny turned inward, burning and tearing at him until he felt he’d explode.
“Kylo?” Rey said, turning to him.
He clenched a fist and pushed the memory away, breathing deep to calm himself. The irony wasn’t lost on him. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Her brows drew down.
He relented. “I’m remembering the last time I did this.”
“Oh!” She looked at the workbench then back at him.
He could see the struggle in her face as she put together when he must’ve done this, and with whom. And he realized…
He was doing the same thing to her that Luke had done to him.
He moved close, touched her cheek. “It did please me to build my lightsaber, Rey. You’ll see. Go on.”
She hesitated a moment, searching his face, searching him through the bond, then she turned back to her work.
He was surprised by how little instruction she needed. Because of the bond? Maybe not entirely. She’d been taking things apart and putting them back together again most of her life.
The weight and pain of the past fell away, leaving him floating in this moment, in this place, with Rey, her new lightsaber slowly taking shape as the sun slid lower outside her shelter’s door.
He lost himself in the pleasure of watching her work—the deft movements of her slim fingers, the intent line between her fine brows, the way she tucked her lips when concentrating on some particularly delicate task.
She looked up to catch him watching. It took a moment to realize she’d asked a question.
“Ben? Did you hear what I said?”
“You asked if you’d need cooling vanes. I was thinking.”
“Mmm,” she said in a tone that said, Sure you were.
He reached across her to pick up the lightsaber hilt, leaning close as he did. Her eyes closed. He felt in his own chest the way her heart sped. Slowly, unwilling to move away, he forced himself to examine the weapon.
It would be lighter than his—no surprise there, since it didn’t require the modifications his did to function. It didn’t have the clean lines of his grandfather’s lightsaber, but there was a certain rugged aesthetic to the scored and pitted metal, as if it scorned to hide its humble origins. In contrast, her welds and solders were clean and workmanlike, requiring very little filing—no one would ever look at this weapon and think junk.
“Try it without,” Kylo said. “You aren’t going to burn your hand, but you’ll know soon enough if it’s uncomfortably hot.”
He leaned forward to replace it. She took it from him, her fingers brushing his. The sensation of her touch unfurled up his arm, sending heat spilling through him. He looked down at her. Her eyes widened, questioning.
“The only things left are to wire the activation switch and set the crystal in the cradle,” he heard himself saying, his voice lower than usual.
Part of him wailed, What? No! Stop talking!
“Oh. Right,” she said unsteadily
The touch hadn’t only been physical—through the bond, he felt her snatch herself back and return to the lightsaber.
With his abilities, cursing had always seemed beside the point. Stepping back to give her room to work, he cursed himself now, long and silently.
“Do you do any kind of testing before you ignite it the first time?” she said after a while, addressing the question to her workbench. “This is a lot of power in a small package. Things could go really wrong.”
He cleared his throat to make sure his voice would come out even. “With the Force. It will tell you if there’s a problem.” He stared at her profile as hard as when he’d had her in that interrogation chair. “There’s a reason only Force-users carry a lightsaber.”
That got her to glance up. She looked away just as quickly. “But what’ll I be feeling for?”
“That’s what I’m here for. I know exactly what an unstable blade feels like.”
She didn’t look at him again, but she grinned. “I bet you do.”
He forced himself to concentrate on what she was doing. Not on the way her hands moved, what it would feel like if those slim, strong hands moved like that on him. A lot of power in small package…
No. This was not the time to be getting distracted. You’re letting your emotions carry you away again, Ben, he mocked himself in Luke’s voice.
It was like a slap on the face.
She picked up the crystal, turning it in the fingers one hand while she held the hilt with the other.
Kylo stepped close. “You’ll use the Force to set the kyber. I’ll help.”
He pulled off his gloves, stood behind her and set his hands on her shoulders. He made a conscious effort to concentrate on the task, shutting out the impulse to let his hands wander lower. She was shaking, just a little. Mostly excitement, he felt, with a thin thread of nervousness.
“Now, set it in the cradle and align it.”
He let his energy spill into hers, ink through quicksilver. She gave a little gasp but didn’t flinch back. Their combined energies glided along the crystal. He let her feel what he was sensing for—the crystal’s structure, the way its energy flowed, the way energy would flow through it.
She turned it, turned it again, then set it in the cradle. He felt her reach for the Force, making finer and finer adjustments until they were too small to see.
She withdrew her touch on the Force. “There?”
“Yes. Exactly.” Pride in her filled him. He let her feel it through the bond.
She took a deep breath and turned shining eyes to him.
He dropped his hands and stepped back. “Now finish it.”
She gazed at him a moment more before turning back to fit the top bezel.
After it was soldered in place, Rey held out the finished lightsaber in both hands, her nervousness and anticipation clear even without the bond. He laid his own over it, cupping both hers from underneath with his other hand.
He shared his sense of the physical alignment of the components, the flow from the power core, through the focusing shunt and harmonic energizer and at last out through the crystal.
“Do you feel that?” he said. “Can you feel how the power will flow?”
Her eyes closed. She cocked her head to one side. “Yes. It feels…right?”
“Yes.” Dropping his hands, he stepped back again. “Try it.” He didn’t keep the excitement from his voice.
She was excited, too. He remembered the way it had felt—your own lightsaber, that you made with your own hands, with a crystal bonded to you. He watched eagerly as she took the weapon in a fighting grip, raised it and touched the ignition switch.
The blade rayed out with a vssshh of energy, the brilliant green of sunlight through summer leaves…
…glowing with a rippling red aura.
Kylo’s breath stopped.
Rey lowered the weapon.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. The green glow lit her dismayed face, reflected with a glint of red in the widened eyes she raised to him. “I broke it, didn’t I?”
Kylo swallowed, his heart beating much too hard. He had to swallow again before his voice would come. “Look…”
He picked up his lightsaber from the workbench, ignited it. The ragged red blade crackled to life, spilled out into the quillions. She looked from it to him, perplexed. Her eyes fell to the blade again.
Red, yes. But in the growing dimness of her shelter, the faint blue aura was clearly visible.
Her lips parted and her eyes went even wider. “How…?”
“It’s been like this since the Nightfolk. Since I—” He couldn’t go on.
“Since you gave me your light?” she whispered.
He nodded once, extinguishing his blade. It hissed back into the hilt.
“But what about mine? Did I—did I hurt it to make it like this?” She seemed on the edge of tears.
“You’re light side, but you aren’t afraid to go to the dark. The one kyber in the galaxy that reflects that— It called to you. You found it.”
She stared her blade again. He could feel her reaching out to it, the crystal reaching back, its energy harmonizing with hers. She relaxed and her distress changed to wonder.
Kylo thought of his own weapon, its discord and confusion turning to anger and pain and betrayal when he’d bled it. It had always, always hovered on the edge of his control. But now—
It wasn’t like that now.
His eyes found Rey’s.
Balance. He felt the realization quake through her.
Yes.
He took a step toward her. “Rey—”
Her lightsaber whispered off. He wasn’t sure how, who had moved, but his arms were suddenly around her. He wanted to crush her, devour her, but was afraid of rousing her instinct to fight. Shaking with the effort to be gentle, he cupped her face in his hands, bent and kissed her.
She was the one devouring him then, her fingers knotting in his hair, her slim body pressed to his, her mouth hot and hungry. He had just enough thought left to wonder if her hammock would support him, let alone both of them, then the world imploded to a burning core of sensation and desire.
* * *
Kylo still felt like a predator to her instincts, especially now, as he growled her name in her ear, as his fingers pressed into her flesh, as his teeth marked her neck. His body was heavy and irresistible, bearing her backwards. He drew back to yank her shirt over her head, undo her breastband, shove her pants down off her hips. The heat of his hands on her skin contrasted shockingly with the dry, indifferent touch of air.
She stumbled on the clothes around her ankles. His grip shifted and her feet were up off the floor, the fabric of his tunic rough against her bare skin. She buried her face in his neck, his hair brushing her face as she kissed him. His scent surrounded her, dark and dizzying. His hands, one on her thigh, the other just beside her breast, were almost too much to bear, and yet still not enough. They moved and she was falling. Her eyes flew open to see the familiar stained canvas of her hammock swallow her, the fiery light of Kylo’s eyes roaming over her, his black hair hanging around his face.
He lowered his head. His hands and mouth moved over her, bold and burning. Rey fisted her hands in his tunic, pulling at it, wanting his skin against hers. Holding her eyes, he sat up, stripped off his belt, undid the hidden fasteners of his tunic, pulled off his undershirt to reveal the same massive chest she’d seen through the Force on Ahch-To. This time, she didn’t turn away, but let her hands rove across the pale skin, tracing the muscles beneath, the scar that slashed across his collarbone. He snarled and descended on her again.
His hand skimmed down her belly and between her legs, leaving a trail of goosebumps. She’d wondered what it would be like if he touched her. Now, she found out, gasping and arching, her eyes flying wide at the intensity of sensation. He held her down, his mouth on her breast as his fingers stroked and probed, relentless, drawing her tighter and tighter until she shattered in a fiery explosion. Panting and shaking and dizzy, she sagged bonelessly. He rose up to kiss her deeply again.
She let herself fall into his darkness, spinning and breathless. His weight came down to pin her as he brought her hands up over her head, both wrists captured in one large hand. His gaze devoured her first, then his mouth, fire that began under her jaw and blazed its way to the angle of neck and shoulder then down again.
Fear didn’t spill through her, but instead a surging river of desire that rushed over every nerve, coiling tight and low in her belly. Hungry darkness bloomed at her center, wanting, demanding. His hand slid down her thigh to her knee, opening her. Moaning his name, she rose to meet him.
Darkness pierced her, filled her, swelled within her in a wave of devastating pleasure. It surged and pounded like a storm, driving her mercilessly until light exploded again, obliterating everything but him.
* * *
Kylo quickly discovered the hammock ideal for trapping her under him. She felt so delicate under his hands, so slight a vessel for such powerful radiance. She would be so easy to crush, to ravage and plunder, but his darkness was driven back by her brilliance, a jewel he could do nothing but treasure.
He touched her through the bond to make sure he didn’t hurt her, didn’t frighten her, though the darkness howled to possess her, claim her, take her. He raised himself then sank into her, slowly and as gently as he could manage; savoring the feel of her around him, hot and slick and welcoming. His progress was arrested as he found that no one’d had her but him. Exulting, he fed his own fierce pleasure back to her through the bond as he pushed through, overriding that initial pain. Pain would’ve been even more pleasing—but the dark couldn’t have everything it wanted.
He drank in the sight of her, her lips parted, eyes closed, head tilted back to show the marks he’d made on her neck and shoulder. He brushed a thumb over her lips and her eyes opened, dark with pleasure. He held them with his as he moved, needing to see there what he felt through the bond—how she accepted him, wanted him. The reality of her here with him, moving with him, trusting him with something so precious, with herself.
The dark in him reveled in making her submit again and again, relishing her gasps and cries as she did. The bright core of light she’d fanned to life in him made sure she enjoyed every second of it. He couldn’t get enough, couldn’t get close enough, wanted to bury himself in her until her light incinerated him. Her windswept scent, the scent of her arousal kept him eager. The taste of her, salt and sweet; the feel of her, satin over steel, kept him ready.
It was a long time before he calmed enough to hold the glow of her close, her slim leg thrown across his hips, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. He combed his fingers through her hair, the fingers of his other hand idly drawing spirals and curves on the small of her back, trailing down over the tight muscle of her ass.
She murmured and pressed kisses to his neck, her hand roving down his body. He jerked and gasped when she touched him the way he’d imagined only a short while ago. Her leg slid higher on his hip, and he willingly roused once more to set her afire.
As her brightness descended to envelop him again, he didn’t even think to resist the call to the light.
* * *
Just like thousands of other nights, Rey lay in the dark of her shelter listening to the tick and pop and clink of metal contracting as it cooled. That was the only thing like all those nights.
Tonight, there was also the sound of a gentle snore and a strong, slow heartbeat under her ear. The warm surface under her was hard and lumpy, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Her body felt heavy, soggy, unwilling to move. It should’ve been easy to fall asleep, but a strangely pleasant ache deep inside, overly-sensitized places that sparked with the slightest friction, the musk of pleasure surrounding her kept a low buzz of stimulation going.
Inside…
Inside, her emotions whirled and bubbled and ricocheted, so many and so fast she couldn’t begin to say what they were. All she knew for certain was the warmth she felt.
Her bouncing thoughts landed on the marks on the wall. The night’s darkness hid them now, but she could still see them in her mind, going higher as she grew, deeper, more desperate, so many she’d long since stopped trying to count them. Counting had become much too painful.
There wouldn’t be another mark on the wall. Finally, finally, she was where she belonged.
Image credit: unknown
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