When: October 9th, after this Where: Outskirts of town
Status: Log in progress
Rating: PGish
Rey stared down at the bright cell phone screen, her eyes glazed and unseeing as she tried to process what she was reading. She’d had a horrible feeling she knew what was coming ever since seeing Poe’s original message. In fact, she’d been convinced she could sense another Force user nearby for a while. When she’d first arrived, she’d tried to search for others through the Force but, without any real training, it had been like casting out blindly with no idea of what she was looking for or how to recognise it if she found it. Since then, though, she’d become aware of it: an energy. It had made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end when she’d sensed it. Now she understood why.
Ben Solo was here.
As she’d read the name in Poe’s message, a wave of mixed and confusing emotions rolled over her. It sent her stomach diving towards her boots whilst, at the same time, her heart seemed to swell and take up a position in her throat, where it proceeded to beat wildly.
Ben Solo was here. The knowledge immediately brought Rey an unexpected, unsolicited and unwelcome feeling of comfort, even as her rational mind warned her that this turn of events meant danger. He meant danger.
Despite fervently trying not to think about everything that had happened in their galaxy since she’d left Luke on Ahch-To, it had proved impossible, especially during the long nights alone in her bunk aboard the Millennium Falcon. Without anything else to distract her, she’d played the memories over and over in her head a million times, trying to work out why everything had gone so desperately wrong. How could she have been so mistaken? Every instinct had told her to put her faith in Ben, she had been so sure she was right, but in the end he’d chosen power over the light… ‘over me’. The thought had lingered malignantly in her mind, bringing up all the feelings of inadequacy she’d experienced growing up an abandoned child. The more she’d thought about it all, the more crushed she had felt: disappointed, betrayed, confused… alone. Most of all, she’d felt alone.
But she wasn’t alone any more. Ben Solo was here. Or was it Kylo Ren? Was there even a difference any more? She’d thought there was, she’d believed there was, but the choices he’d made suggested not.
The problem was, whichever way she looked at it, his being here complicated matters. There was no easy way to deal with this situation. Did she tell Poe everything she knew or should she keep it to herself until she had more facts? When had Ben (or Kylo Ren, she reminded herself) been pulled here from? What did he want? What did he remember, about Crait, the Supremacy, their Force bond? Did he even remember her at all…?
As the thought crossed her mind, she realised just how painful it would be if he didn’t. Her chest rose as she gasped down a sharp breath but then she lifted a defiant hand to wipe at her damp eyes as her jaw set in a firm line.
Her eyelashes fluttering, she made herself focus on the cell phone screen once again, her thumb moving shakily across the letters on the virtual keyboard as she drafted a clipped response to Poe’s most recent message. There was a long, tense pause while Rey waited for a reply but then the phone vibrated and Poe's words appeared on her screen. Without sending a response, she pushed the cell phone into her belt pouch then turned and made for the street. A blue-grey jacket lay draped across the back of a chair nearby, where she’d discarded it earlier, and she picked it up on her way past, pulling it on as she left.
~
Now she was out in the open, with the warm, nighttime desert breeze blowing across her face, Rey found that the determination she’d felt in her room had waned slightly. The hard line to her jaw had softened into uncertainty and her eyes had grown wide as she scanned the dusky landscape for any sign of movement. Gleaning what she could from Poe’s message, she had followed a route that led away from the centre of town, where the streets had been bustling, and out towards the quiet fringes, where the shadows seemed longer and more dense. Although she wasn’t cold, she shrugged her jacket closer around her.
She’d been rash, she realised, storming out here like this, just as she’d been rash to go racing to the Supremacy on a hope and a prayer. When she’d read Poe’s message, she’d wanted answers and had felt willing to throw caution to the wind to find them. Still, she was wondering now whether caution might have been the better option in this instance. After all, Rey knew she had no idea what version of ‘Ben Solo’ she was going to find here, if she found him, and she realised that there was a very real possibility that he wouldn’t be at all happy to see her.
It had also struck her, only once she was already too far on her way to turn back, that she didn’t even have a weapon with her - not one that she could use, anyway. Luke’s lightsaber was still tucked, broken in two, inside the leather pouch she wore at her waist. She’d been carrying it around with her, hoping some kind of inspiration would strike her on how to fix it, but now it just served as an unwelcome reminder of how helpless she felt. She wished she had her staff with her, a blaster, anything, even though she knew none of those things would be much use against the lethal, crimson saber of Kylo Ren.
Sometimes, when bad things happen, people say things like, I don't know what I did to deserve this. In the past, Kylo Ren had even been one of those people, awkwardly stumbling into some new terror through no clear fault of his own. The time his parents sent him away and his uncle tried to murder him, for example, came to mind.
This was not one of those times.
Kylo didn't really know what was happening here. He had several theories, none he'd yet been able to confirm or refute. But almost regardless of what the nature of the situation turned out to be, Kylo knew exactly what he'd done to cause it. Perhaps he'd been kidnapped by Rebels who, angered by his attack on their base and the death of both Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, sought to separate him from the First Order and use him to bargain with the Order or extract information. Perhaps Hux had discovered the true fate of Supreme Leader Snoke, and decided that his spontaneous exile on this deserted wasteland of a planet would truly be a fate worse than death. Perhaps the First Order had grown tired of catering to Kylo Ren's costly personal vendetta against the Skywalker family, and had marooned him here in an act of passive-aggressive mutiny. Or perhaps, as some were suggesting, he truly had just appeared here, in the middle of nowhere, lightyears away from any sign of civilization, because the force was trying to balance itself and had allowed the universe to punish him for some combination of the above mentioned things. Each possibility had a clear connection to something Kylo had done, in some instances several connections.
Of course, if you understood that to mean that he was taking any responsibility for his current predicament, you'd be giving him entirely too much credit.
Instead, from the moment of his arrival, Kylo had been angry. He was angry that he was separated from his ship, his knights, his soldiers, and the legacy that he had worked so hard for (well, pretty hard, before cutting a few corners by killing everyone who stood in his way). He was angry with Snoke for misleading him about the nature of his connection with Rey. He was angry that his gambit to hold onto both his power and Rey had been unsuccessful, leaving him with nothing but an increasingly tenuous grasp on the First Order's leadership.
He was also lost, disoriented, and cut off from the full strength of the Force that he had grown so used to feeling in his every fiber and sinew. And now, with the sudden appearance of Poe Dameron, who seemed to think he died many years ago, he was also extremely confused. Kylo knew Poe. And though he had harbored considerable resentment towards him since their parting and his perceived abandonment, he also knew Poe to be a relatively guileless person. Certainly not someone who could put aside the knowledge that the First Order had killed most of his friends and feign surprise at seeing his old friend Ben Solo alive after a decade's separation. Kylo had been caught off guard by the encounter, and without his usual supports in place, reluctant to destabilize the unlikely alliance. He couldn't trust Poe, but he didn't particularly trust anyone, and whatever entity they were up against, it was best to avoid fighting a battle on two fronts.
But there were two significant issues with this plan. The first, of course, was that Kylo Ren was constitutionally incapable of the kind of subtle deception and self-restraint required for a delicate spy operation. The second was that Poe Dameron knew Rey, and Rey knew exactly who Kylo Ren was. He'd accepted the fact that, by now, Poe had probably reconnected with Rey, which probably meant the jig was already up. He wasn't angling for a fight - mostly because he'd recently lost one with vastly more resources than he had now - but he had his lightsaber, and he would meet a challenge if it came for him. So it was with a combination of bitterness, resigned antagonism and hopefulness that he noticed the presence of another force user growing stronger in the back of his mind. Rey was approaching.
He felt for his lightsaber in the pocket of his cloak as he turned to look at the approaching figure, hazy from the desert heat and the soft purple of the sky as day turned to evening. But he didn't pull it. Rey had fought him to a standstill the first time they'd met, and he was fairly certain that he was only alive now because she'd decided it wasn't very sporting to kill him while he was unconscious.
“I thought you might come.”
Rey had been able to sense Kylo long before she’d seen him. And she had no doubt now that it was Kylo Ren that Poe had met out here, whatever name he’d mistakenly been assigned. The Force around him reeked of barely suppressed rage and bitterness. It sent icy tendrils snaking over Rey’s skin as she felt it swirl blackly around her, lifting the fine hairs on the back of her neck. If she hadn’t been completely certain that he had sensed her too, she would have considered doing the smart thing, turning on her heels and leaving him there, alone with his resentment. Instead, she strode towards him, not allowing herself to be cowed. She had learned, as a small child, you could choose whether or not to let fear control you and Rey chose not. Besides, she had a heavy dose of her own anger fuelling her onwards.
Rey’s eyebrows were drawn together in a hard frown when she stopped in front of Kylo Ren and, although he loomed over her, she met his gaze with steady disdain. Memories of the last time they’d stood this way, opposite each other in Snoke’s throne room, swam through her mind but she quickly stamped them down. There was no outstretched hand now and now was all that mattered.
“Why didn’t you tell Poe the truth about who you are?” Rey asked, her alto voice ripe with accusation as she cut straight to the question she was burning to know the answer to. She didn’t know why it mattered, not consciously. Consciously, she was sure there was a mundane explanation – self-preservation seemed a likely one – but it had still surprised her, that Kylo Ren had let Poe recognise him for who he’d used to be and walk away. It felt significant. The hope Rey had once held out for Ben Solo had been firmly stamped out on Crait but, although Rey hadn’t found the magnanimity to admit it yet, to herself or to anyone else, there was the slightest chance an ember did still remain, buried beneath the ashes. If she had allowed herself to acknowledge that fact, she would have realised that Poe still being alive had the potential to fan it.
Kylo wasn't sure what he expected from this confrontation, but the question surprised him.
The obvious answer, the one that came most readily to mind, was that Poe might be useful. He was a pilot, a talented mechanic, and a decent fighter. If they had to shoot their way out of this place and fly some sort of 20th century space shuttle, Poe was a good person to have in his corner. But he also knew, rationally, that Poe's potential utility was going to be limited significantly by Rey's presence, and her level of tolerance for his bullshit. He knew, rationally, that letting Poe live without revealing his identity was likely to create a situation in which someone else told Poe the truth, and Poe then had time (well out of Kylo's line of sight) to regroup with his actual allies. Potential consequences that severely undercut the self interested pragmatism of his decision.
Alternatively, there was also the fact that he was surprised. Kylo's ability to think on his feet was limited to a handful of specific situations, most of which involved stabbing, and he really wasn't sure how to have a conversation with a childhood friend about his recent foray into mass murder.
But maybe his difficulty finding the words to navigate - or even initiate - that conversation wasn't just surprise. For years, under Snoke's guiding hand, Kylo had tried to bury his past, to burn out every trace of the person he used to be. He tried repaint his former life as some parade of miseries which he had no desire to revisit, filled with misguided people who never really understood or cared for him, and which culminated in his attempted murder. But that wasn't entirely true. There had been people who were cruel to him, but there were people who were kind, too. Poe had been kind to him.
There was a bitter part of him that had once enjoyed the thought of Poe's reaction to the news about his fate. The same part that had wanted to punish his uncle for what he tried to do, even if it meant proving that Luke was right for trying to do it. (They say when you embark on a journey of revenge, you should first dig two graves. Unfortunately for Kylo, they don't say that in the Star Wars universe, because no one was around to write the Count of Monte Cristo.)
But that anger had proven hard to maintain when he learned that the reason Poe never responded to his letters was that he never got them, and the reason he never came looking for him was that his mother told everyone that he was dead. Truthfully, it was exactly the sort of excuse that he would have rejected out of hand, if it had come from anyone else. But it was such a classic Skywalker lie that he was almost embarrassed that he hadn't realized his mother would tell it, and Poe had always hung on his mother's every word.
Maybe Poe's earnest enthusiasm had just... sucked the fun out of hurting him. Or maybe the same weakness that had prevented him, once, from killing his mother now rebelled against being the source of Poe's disappointment. He had made so many efforts to let go of needless memories and emotions, to purge those vestiges of his humanity that held him back from achieving true greatness, even if it meant destroying it all himself. But the cracks in his soul that formed when he killed his father were large enough to let a little light back in. He wouldn't let it stop him from doing what had to be done, but it was proving unusually difficult to snuff out.
None of which he was going to tell Rey, obviously.
"Did you tell him?" Kylo asked, side-stepping the question and turning a curious glance in Rey’s direction. His tone was even, and his expression deliberately inscrutable. The fact that Poe had let his friend come after him alone suggested that she hadn't, but it was at least as likely that she simply hadn't told him what she was going to do.
Rey had known she was unlikely to get a straight response (or perhaps one so blunt that it would throw her off guard) but it irritated her immensely that Kylo had ignored her question and parried with one of his own, especially since it was one which Rey didn’t know how to answer. She hadn’t told Poe but admitting it out loud seemed like a defeat. She didn’t want to give Kylo Ren the satisfaction of knowing she had instinctively given him the benefit of the doubt… again.
“I wanted to see for myself who it was out here,” she replied, giving the explanation instead of the answer and sounding far less sure of herself than she had just a few moments before. She realised, far too late, of course, that by not telling Poe everything she knew immediately, she had unwittingly engendered something that dangerously bound her even more tightly to Kylo Ren: a secret. By hoping against hope that she would find a young Ben Solo out here (feeling betrayed, angry and alone after the destruction of the Jedi Temple, perhaps, but still with plenty of choices before him, plenty of opportunities to turn back to the light and, importantly, the chance to still be the boy Poe remembered) Rey had given Kylo Ren leverage over her. She hadn’t lied to Poe but she hadn’t told him the truth either and she knew how she would feel if she were in Poe’s shoes.
She really needed to stop acting so impulsively in future.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she continued quickly, not wanting her thoughts to linger on her own shortcomings, preferring by far to focus on Kylo Ren’s.
“Why did you let him believe you were still his friend?”